June 2018 Bulletin
Entry posted by abhorsen. in bulletin
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Welcome to the HPFT bulletin, where you can find all of our major monthly announcements and information about upcoming events! This month, we've also got an announcement about our upcoming second birthday celebration.
If you're new, first and foremost: welcome to HPFT! It's awesome to have you with us. 
HPFanficTalk is a forum/archive - the forum is Harry Potter-themed (including a year-long house cup), but we talk about other fandoms, too, and the archive is multi-fandom/OF. 
We have a strong culture of support for other writers and feedback here, including a story help section, challenges, and reviewing events, so if you're a writer, you've come to the right place. 
A quick rundown to help you get started here on the forums: please post in the 'Welcome to HPFT' topic +here to say that you've read over the rules and understand them. You can specify your house in that post or in our sorting ceremony +here - once you do, we'll sort you into the right group so you can see a common room that only people in your house are allowed to see. You're welcome to post in your common room and/or in our introductions forum +here to introduce yourself if you'd like, and you may also find our +FAQs helpful.
Enjoy your stay!
@abhorsen. will be joining the Professor team part-time in addition to her main duties.
There's a lot more activity around the site these days, and after some discussion, we decided to change our application process a little going forward. We'll still hold onto any applications submitted for three months before you need to reapply (i.e., until September), but we'll be giving people the chance to apply for the first week of every month. (Other than this one - for this month, applications will be open from June 11 - June 18.)
You can find the application +here.
A more detailed rundown on how HPFT staffing works can be found +here.
If you have any graphics on the archive (or here) that are hosted on imgbox, please rehost them elsewhere; we'll be removing links in the meantime. (Right now, google is insisting that all graphics hosted there are malware, so we need to remove the links.)
We're thrilled to announce that we've started a new area on the forums... Graphics Talk!
We've had several requests for this over the past year or so, but we haven't gone ahead with it before now because we had concerns about not having the activity level from artists to sustain the structure of the requesting sections of graphics sites like TDA and Shadowplay. However, when @just.a.willow.tree suggested that we structure it as similar to the review requests instead, we started discussing it as a staff and decided to finally go ahead with it.
So: now it's there. Enjoy!
In addition, please note that we have a new prefects' challenge! The prefects' celebration challenge will run through July 15, and gives you several prompts to choose from. Keep in mind that entering and placing in prefect challenges counts for more than normal challenges if you're working toward your challenge badge - we hope you can get in an entry!
Our four houses have all been in the process of running their house awards this month! Hufflepuff is just starting the nominating process, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are both doing their reading week(s) prior to opening voting, and Slytherin just finished voting up. If you haven't stopped into your house recently, you should definitely check them out - and if you don't have a house yet, it's not too late to get yourself sorted by posting +here!
Our second birthday is quickly approaching! We hope you'll join us for our celebration.
Our first head student just joined our community here at HPFT in April, but she's a very familiar face to anyone who's spent time at TDA. 
She's quickly become very active in her common room and engaged with the community as a whole, and she recently put her first story into the queue. (Coming soon! ) She's already become a very positive presence in our community, and we're so thrilled to have her here. Please give it up for...
Our second head student this month also recently found HPFT, but she was active on the HPFF forums, so we were happy to see that she'd found us! She's quickly gotten involved with the forums and has been very active on the archive, posting a novel as well as several shorter stories, and her nominations for her house's yearly awards were very well-deserved. Congratulations to...
Congratulations again to both of you. We're all so lucky to have you in this community! 
Please PM me with which of your stories you'd like us to feature next month!
The Prefects have decided to honor one of our amazing admins for June’s Order of Merlin, just in time for HPFT’s anniversary month!
And the winner is….
You know her for amazing stories and her reputation of making everyone cry when she inevitably breaks your heart; but on and off the screen, Rose is a wonderful, hardworking fearless leader - on both the archives and the forums. This month especially, we can’t thank her enough for helping create this new home for us all. As part of the admin team, she’s so approachable and encourages honest communication and discussion while also working hard to create a safe, open and diverse environment for us.
After a series of unfortunate events unfolded in April, she spearheaded a new Review Transfer Tool, so everyone could save their beloved reviews from old sites and transfer them onto the archives. She also does a lot of the coding work on the archives, and is always around for anyone who has questions about site rules or if you just want to chat. Overall, we can’t imagine this site without her.
Please take a moment and join me in congratulating Rose, and thank her for everything she does.
June's SotM goes to...
@just.a.willow.tree for her story an absence of sound!
and then i am silent.
banner by empyreal @TDA
Every month, HPFT runs Fic Night, where a staff member reads a nominated fic from one of our members. You can check out @TidalDragon reading Two Months by @Levana for May's Fic Night +here if you haven't seen it yet!
This month, we're featuring the story of the month, the fic night story, a recent head student fic, and some of the stories from our FROGS top threes and winners of previous house awards that have the longest titles, since they fit easier into these awards. (Click for links, though please note that some links you click on may be rated M.)
June 3 - The Angst Alone Challenge by @Margaret
June 15 - The Love __________ Challenge by @just.a.willow.tree
June 25 - The Stop Shop And Rework It Challenge by @Levana
July 15 - The Prefect's Celebration Challenge by the prefects
July 31 - The Aurors Tale Challenge Season 4 by @StarFeather
August 1 - The Vocational Challenge by @sapphicsunrise
August 10 - The Anything But Harry Challenge by @scooterbug8515
And finally, we want to wish a very happy birthday to all of HPFT's June babies. Feel free to stop by their profiles/APs/writing journals on their special day!
1 - @Deeds
2 - @Slide
4 - @ImaRavenclaw; @manno-malfoy
21 - @TreacleTart
22 - @ichigopan
23 - @AngelEyez3954; @Rose Ameile Hunter
27 - @facingthenorthwind
OoM written by @dreamgazer220. The rest of the bulletin write-up and all graphics by @abhorsen.. Please remember to rehost & credit if you'd like to save your awards!