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 the results of our Fic Feud event and some announcements about new forum features and some major archive changes, including a tool to transfer any reviews you have back up from HPFF over to HPFT.

(This is a bit of a long bulletin, so buckle up. )

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!

Hufflepuff: 3449.5

Ravenclaw: 2200

Gryffindor: 1916.5

Slytherin: 1655

 

We already bumped the additions to the staff/prefect team from our April apps a week or so ago , but we'd like to officially welcome them to the staff team now (as well as announce a couple more changes)!

@Levana and @victoria_anne have both joined the Muggle Liaison team! Maggie and Bianca both bring some great previous experience to the table, and our ML quartet is planning some amazing new things in the coming months. We're thrilled to have them aboard!

In addition, @MegGonagall has decided to switch from her current role as Professor to being a full time member of the Auror team!  @PaulaTheProkaryote is also joining the validating team part-time in addition to her Muggle Liaison duties, and @TidalDragon and @Alopex will be joining the moderating team part-time.

We're also very excited to add @Slytherinchica08 to the prefect team; anyone who's seen Erica around the forums knows how friendly (and animal friendly!) she is, and we're psyched to have her help.

Enjoy your new roles, everyone!

Please note that in the original version of the bulletin, Paula, Meg, and Kevin had all joined the Auror team part-time, and we had no part-time Professors.

We have a couple new features on the forums that we'd like to introduce you to!

1. Skins. Our wonderful headmaster @Alopex uploaded two new forum themes/skins earlier this month, so you now have three to choose from (including the default). You can find the announcement +here, and the option to change your theme at the very bottom of the forums. Holly did an amazing job, and we're so psyched to have them!
    
2. Badges. HPFT has some of the most dedicated, hard-working, and talented writers/reviewers in the fanfiction community, and we've decided to add a feature that formally recognizes that. It's entirely opt-in. If you choose to participate, you'll be able to claim badges for various accomplishments and milestones that you reach, events you participate in, and leadership roles that you've filled. You can find more information about our badges and how to claim them in the new badge sub-forum +here; we'll be making them visible over the course of the next hour or so.

3. NaNo Nests. In addition, if you participated in Camp NaNo and would like your Novel Nest either moved to our +Writing Journal section (if you don't already have a journal) or merged with your regular writing journal (if you do), please post a comment in your NaNo Nest by May 7. If you don't comment by then but change your mind later, you can just contact any Professor - they'll be happy to move it for you, even if the Nest has been hidden.

This month we have several notices, announcements, and reminders in regards to our Archives!

1.  Review Transfers from HPFF -  @toomanycurls has been working on a system to make transferring of any reviews you'd gotten on HPFF to HPFT over the years much easier! With this system, you won’t have to copy and paste everything manually at the right story, but it gets done for you! You can find the post about it +here; if you follow the instructions there, your reviews will be moved in the next month of so (depending on demand).
   
   In addition, we would also like to remind you about +this poll in regards to possible new functions on the archives if you haven't seen it yet!
    
2. Archive Advisories - There are two impending changes in regards to archive advisories that will be implemented shortly. The changes will be regarding two of the advisories: the Hate Speech advisory, and the Sexual Assault advisory.
   
   Based on member feedback a couple months and internal discussion, we shall be splitting the Hate Speech advisory into two advisories: Hate Speech and Derogatory Language. The first will be reserved for very serious slurs that are universally seen as problematic, and the second will be for other slurs. Changes will be implemented when it comes to ratings as well (some stories, for instance, will now be fine with a T rating instead of an M).
   
   Based on internal discussion, we shall be changing the Sexual Assault advisory into two categories: Consent Issues (Severe) - e.g., depictions of rape, mentions of child abuse - and Consent Issues (Mild/Moderate) - e.g., unwanted kissing, grey consent areas, etc. The second will be allowed at both T and M ratings.
   
   The new tags have been posted, and the site guidelines have been updated. You can also check the +consent issues tutorial and the +profanity/slur tutorial for further details.
    
3. Reminders: Lastly, the Validators would like to remind you all to please read the emails we send you after we validate your stories. In all rejections and some acceptances, notes will be written in to point you to specific areas of concern. In rejections, those need to be changed for us to validate your story. Here are a few reminders for everyone to keep in mind:
    

• If you had a chapter rejected for a rating that needs to be changed or an advisory that needs to be added, please keep in mind that the software won't register changes unless a space (or something similar) has been added to the end of the chapter and saved. If this isn’t done, the chapter won’t go back into the queue.
   
• Please also keep in mind that if you throw in a lot of chapters of the same story into the queue (which is fine!) and we have to reject one of those, we will leave the rest of the chapters alone until the necessary changes have been made. This is to avoid having to reject multiple chapters of the same story for the same reason, as that would be very demotivating and unfairly impact your ability to get CA status later.
   
• Do keep in mind that the rejection/acceptance emails will sometimes come into your spam box. Do check that too if your chapter isn't up and it's been a week (for shorter stories/individual chapters) or two weeks (for novels). If it takes longer than that to get validated and you haven’t gotten an email or a previous chapter hasn’t been rejected, feel free to reach out to @abhorsen., @BellaLestrange87, @Ineke, or @Renacerá on the forums or email us at validator@hpfanfictalk.com!

HPFT is now on facebook! You can find the page +here.

It's yearly house award season! All four houses are either in the process of running their awards or are about to start them. Stop into your common room for more information if you already have a house. If you don't but would like to join one, contact @abhorsen., @Alopex, or @toomanycurls - we'll get you sorted ASAP!

Our first Head Student this month has been wonderful on the archive and the forums over the past couple months! On the archive side, they've posted a number of reviews and uploaded more than a dozen great stories, and on the forum side, they're also posting all over the place, including starting some really interesting topics that we've all gravitated toward! Congratulations to...

@facingthenorthwind!

Nix has also been keeping our validators busy (and very entertained!) with the stories she's been posting to the archive, and she's left many reviews over the past month as well. In addition, she's a great member on the forums, participating in a number of threads in both her common room and the broader HPFT forums. This is very deserved, and please join us in congratulating...

@Nix!

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 Aurors for May’s Order of Merlin! And this month, the winner is….

@Ineke!

You know her for her undeniable enthusiasm, love for Cursed Child, and, of course, her outstanding dedication to our archive.  When a series of unfortunate events rolled out, causing a wonderful spike in membership for both our forums and our archives, Ineke didn’t let that slow her down.  She rose to the challenge and in the month of April alone, has validated well over 280 chapters!

Please take a moment to thank Ineke for all she does on the forums, but especially the queue, for keeping wait-times down while always encouraging authors to submit new stories and chapters despite the high number of chapters in the queue.  

We can’t imagine our archive without you, so thank you for all you do! 

We are very excited to announce the winners of Fic Feud, this year’s staff-hosted writing competition!  As a quick run-down, participants in the competition were assigned a partner, with whom they had to write a two-to-four chapter story, with four elements chosen for each chapter.  To make it more difficult, they were able to sabotage another team by either assigning or blocking elements.

Coming in with the top score overall are @pookha & @Levana for their story A Rescue In Space And Time (M)! This story really stood out to judges on the creativity/difficult elements front and scored strongly in that area.  These two have each earned 75 points for their house (Ravenclaw & Hufflepuff), in addition to 5 points each for the chapters they wrote. 

Our runners-up are @Rumpelstiltskin & @victoria_anne with their story Mask of Truth! This story earned the highest score in cohesiveness.  Each of them has earned 50 points for their house (Slytherin & Hufflepuff), in addition to the 5 points each for the chapters they wrote.

Our other four entries are listed below. Each earned 5 participation points for the author’s house.  This has resulted in 12.5 points for Gryffindor, 27.5 for Hufflepuff, 15 for Ravenclaw, and 10 for Slytherin.

• Marriage Isn’t A Fairytale by @Alexis Black & @forever_dreaming
• Decay Theory by @Dojh167 & @Aphoride
• Everlasting… by @StarFeather & @just.a.willow.tree
•  The Madness of Magic (M) by @Pixileanin & @Phoenix Potioneer

And just some additional recognitions:  We’d like to extend our congratulations to @StarFeather, who had the highest focus-on-elements score by a decent margin.  We’d also like to recognize the team of @Pixileanin & @Phoenix Potioneer for being the only team to write more than two chapters.

For those curious about the scoring rubric/process:

May's SotM goes to...

@Chelts-rhj for her story Stand Tall!

Alba Williamson is a cross-word loving Ravenclaw in her seventh year at Hogwarts. Pity is her nemisis, and pride is her guiding light. Determined to keep her head up through thick and thin, she struggles with the challenges of cerebral palsy. Though her best friend James helps as much as he can, things are sure to change with the Triwizard Tournament right around the corner.

banner by @abhorsen.

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 Constellations by @Unwritten Curse for April's Fic Night +here if you haven't seen it yet!

This month, we're featuring the winner and runner up of our Fic Feud event as well as the story of the month, the fic night story, a recent head student fic, a few stories from our FROGS top threes, and a staff pick! (Click for links, though please note that some links you click on may be rated M.)

 

Congratulations, @Chelts-rhj, @frombluetored, @Levana, @manno-malfoy, @MegGonagall, @Phoenix Potioneer, @pookha, @RoxiMalfoy, @Rumpelstiltskin, @Unwritten Curse, @val, and @victoria_anne!

May 7 - The Soulmate AU and Random Prompt Challenge by @MadiMalfoy

May 10 - The New Beginnings Challenge by @Crimson Quill

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 31 - The Aurors Tale Challenge Season 4 by @StarFeather

 

And finally, we want to wish a very happy birthday to all of HPFT's May babies. Feel free to stop by their profiles/APs/writing journals on their special day!

2 - @FireCrest
6 - @water_lily43175
8 - @Oregonian
10 - @bahneebee
16 - @LunaStellaCat; @magnifique
23 - @Dojh167; @esmeraude; @Gabriella Hunter
24 - @Aphoride
25 - @HeyMrsPotter
29 - @MeIsMoonie
30 - @DictionaryWrites
31 - @greisful; @SnitchSeer

 

all awards by @abhorsen.. Bulletin write-up by @abhorsen., @Alopex, @dreamgazer220, and @Ineke. Please remember to rehost & credit if you'd like to save your awards!