Announcement

[hso_mods]

Here is what the list of requested trigger warnings is:
A guide to assist you in not hurting your fellow participants in the HSO.
That post is not a list of rules, it is information.

It is not in any way appropriate for you to decide what other people can or cannot be triggered by. You do not get to decide that, and we will brook no argument on that topic. Furthermore, there is no hard and fast rule for triggers, because they do not follow a logical structure. There is no line we can point to, saying 'ten years is a significant age difference, but nine years is not.' Asking us for those numbers does not constitute asking us for clarification.

Practically speaking, a good rule of thumb is to consider whether the potential trigger is a significant theme in the work. When in doubt, warn and specify.
And finally, nobody is getting points taken away if they forget to add trigger warnings. Nobody is getting disqualified, nobody is getting punished in any way. We have spent the past week reworking the schedule so that we have enough time to read through the entries and add trigger warnings where necessary before posting them to the main HSO comm. We know you are going to miss stuff. We are going to miss stuff ourselves.
Nevertheless, we are committed to providing trigger warnings for all of the main round entries, and we have no intention of giving up on that commitment.
If you do not feel that you can agree with this mission in word and in spirit, the HSO may not be the right event for you.

Because of the reactions to the trigger warnings post, we are postponing the bonus round 0 for 24 hours (until May 20 11:59PM EDT) so that we can be sure everyone here is on the same page before we open the main comm to content creation that might potentially endanger HSO participants.

Edit: comments have now been unscreened.
Please be advised that there is a flashing gif about halfway down the page.

Announcement #2

[hso_mods]

In the sign-up form, we asked for 'any triggers you would like to be warned for' specifically because we wanted to emphasize the serious nature of the request, but in later conversations with various individuals who have expressed that they did not interpret it as specifically and seriously as we intended it, it has become apparent that the phrase 'trigger warning' is being taken more broadly. Furthermore, as has been pointed out to us, 'trigger warning' is not a value-neutral term; it does real and significant harm, particularly to individuals whose identities are deeply connected to the items listed.
We have discussed the matter and agreed that it is appropriate to amend the categorization to 'tags.' Thank you to everyone who called us out, and we apologize for our mistake.

With regards to languages: mimicre made an Anglo-centric and extremely thoughtless error by amending the list to include 'non-English languages' rather than a particular language that was asked for. They sincerely apologize for their hurtful behavior.
We are currently reviewing the situation and attempting to find a solution that causes the least possible amount of harm. If you have any input or suggestions, they would be much appreciated.

One thing that we had not previously considered was the inclusion of a 'no tags used' option. We agree that this is a necessary option to offer, and will be implementing it throughout HSO 2012.

We have made several serious missteps in this matter, and we would like to extend a formal apology to those we have hurt. We ask for your patience as well as your forgiveness in these things, and we understand if the way that we handled the matter has made you feel too unsafe to continue participating in this year's HSO.

With that said, we want to emphasize that we are treating each trigger warning request with the utmost seriousness. On the balance of things, it does far more harm to attempt to 'vet' requests or otherwise seek some standard of 'legitimacy' than it does to assume unusual triggers are 'joke entries' or 'trolling.' If you would prefer for us to tag your main round entries, we are willing to do that for you.
As we have said before, we are not taking points off anyone; we are not punishing anyone in any way for not including trigger warnings. We did not post that list so that you would be concerned about following the rules. We posted it to let you know how best to make this a safe community for your fellow HSO participants, and we posted it to let you know exactly what we will be looking for to tag the main entries with.
We are not limiting your content creation in any way. Entries containing every single one of the listed requests are still considered valid for the HSO. All that we ask is that you tag the entries (or opt out of tagging them) in order to give your fellow HSO participants a heads-up.
To reiterate: absolutely nothing has changed in terms of what you can or cannot do, and what is and is not acceptable for the HSO. If your team's main round entries contain untagged elements and you do not opt out of the tagging system, we will tag them for you and post your entry as usual. We are simply giving you the option to assist us in this endeavor.

The HSO is not a public space, like AO3 or other places that only use very common trigger tags. It is a private event with needs specific to its particular participants, who have a finite list of triggers. Our goal is to keep these specific people safe, and we can do that by tagging entries appropriately.

For now, comments to this entry are screened. Once the mods are able to be present to respond to comments in a timely manner (most likely within 5-10 hours), we will un-screen comments here and on the previous two posts.
Comments are now unscreened, and we have no plans to screen them again at this moment.

Brief definition of 'trigger'

[hso_mods]

The following post contains brief textual descriptions/examples and discussion of trauma and being triggered.

It has been brought to our attention that we have been remiss in not providing educational resources on triggers, which has caused a great deal of confusion, misunderstandings, and disrespect.
We hope that this post will clear things up a bit. If you feel that the information presented here is inaccurate in any way, we would appreciate your input and correction.

( Read more... )

Bonus Round 0

[hso_mods]

Hey shippers!
The HSO is starting in two weeks, and just like last year, we’re doing a swap meet as a warm-up before things really get going.

Rules

1. Create a set of 2-6 icons or 1-3 banners (or both!) for one team that is NOT YOUR OWN.


2. Icons/banners can feature canon art, fanart (ONLY fanart that you have permission to use!), quotes, lyrics, gifs, basically whatever you think is awesome! Remember that these are presents and not black solicitations. We're trusting you to put some degree of heart and soul into them!


3. Upload them somewhere (cl.ly works pretty well!) and post/link them here with the appropriate title format (see below).


4. If/when your team receives a gift (and feel free to request icons/banners if you are in need!) it would be nice to thank the gifter, even if you don't end up using any of the graphics! You are of course not obligated to use them or thank people or anything. But it would be cool of you to acknowledge people's hard work!


5. This challenge will run until 11:59PM EDT on June 1. After that time, even if it's just by a minute according to the timestamp, no submissions will be accepted for points.

Title Format

FILL: [YOUR USERNAME] ([YOUR SHIP]) - TAGS: [TAGS]

[YOUR USERNAME] should be self-explanatory!

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team that YOU belong to and to whom the points will go. Please use the characters and quadrant in the following format:

KANAYA<>KARKAT

Replace [TAGS] with any applicable tags (see the list). This section is optional!

Posts not using this format in the title will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, no matter what they contain. They, like all comments on the comm, are subject to the Wank Policy.

Sample title:

FILL: MIMICRE (TEAM JADE<3KANAYA) - TAGS: DROWNING, DEPRESSION

Scoring
The first five entries from each team for this challenge will be worth 10 points each, and the next five will be worth 5 points each. While your team can absolutely submit more than ten entries, the eleventh entry onwards will not be for points; it will just be for fun!
This is not how most bonus round entries will be scored. This is more of a bonus bonus round! For info on the normal scoring system, see here.

All scored content must be created new for this round.

Resources

GNU Image Manipulation Program - Unfortunate name aside, GIMP is actually one of the better open-source image editing programs out there. If you don’t have any software like photoshop, this is the place to start! (Plus, it’s free.)
Lost and Taken - An excellent site for high-resolution textures.
Font Squirrel, Lost Type Foundry, and League of Moveable Type - Free font resources! And the best part is that they're all hand-picked or created by professional graphic designers, so you won’t have to slog through a million lower-quality fonts.
Icon-Extras - A pretty good resource for icon tutorials and the like. Also features textures, brushes, bases etc. that are particularly good for icons (rather than the all-purpose textures at Lost and Taken).

Note that DW icons are 100x100px.
Banners can range quite a bit in size depending on layout but are generally around 150-400px tall and 400-800px wide. This is pretty flexible, though.

We would prefer that any questions about this challenge or anything else in the HSO be emailed to homestuck.shipping@gmail.com, as we cannot guarantee that we will see and be able to respond to your comment in a timely fashion.