DOINK! Chocobo Races 2012: Open for August!

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DOINK! Chocobo Races 2012
August Theme: Rare Character / Rare Relationship Ship Month

We're ready to officially kick off the 2012 round of the DOINK! Chocobo Races – we hope you all are too!

Administrative Bits

• If you haven't yet chosen your team, make sure you sign up here if you want your work to count for points!
• Confused? Need a refresher on the rules? Wondering how to post? Get more information about Chocobo Racing here.
• You can browse the Chocobo Down list at any time!

The Official Start of the Chocobo Races
Saddle up your chocobos – the round is officially open! From now on, any work posted to our LJ (ff_exchange), our DW (ff_exchange), or our AO3 collection (chocobodown2012) will count towards the races. Remember that you can post any work that fills a prompt from our Chocobo Down Database -- but you'll get bonus points for following the month's theme.

The bonus theme for August is Rare Characters / Rare Relationships. This is the theme that people were the most excited about seeing in the DOINK! Exit Poll, so we really hope to see a lot of amazing fanwork coming in!

What counts as a rare character or a rare relationship?

• As a first start, it shouldn't be a main character or a huge pairing/ship within the fandom. (Examples of obviously big chars or pairs might be Cloud, Zack, Sephiroth; Squall/Rinoa, etc.) "It's a big/popular character/ship done in a rare way" doesn't count – this is a month to showcase smaller and unappreciated characters and relationships alike, so please don't try to squeeze by on a technicality.


• The character or relationship has to be rare within its fandom to count. (For example, Cecil/Rosa or Rydia/Edge don't count as rare pairings just because FFIV is a small fandom, because they are fairly big pairings within the fandom. We'll have a small fandom month later when you can appreciate your bitty canons, don't worry!)


• Within those general guidelines, we're willing to let people operate in good faith, and decide for yourself what's a rare character or a rare ship. If the mods do have to make a call on whether or not your work counts as a rare character or rare ship, we will use our own exchange history (how often has that char/ship shown up in DOINK! works?) as well as presence on archive sites (fanfiction.net and AO3 mainly). We think that's fair. If you're worried about where we'll draw the line, you can always contact the mod team and have us make the call!

But the character/relationship I want to appreciate is so rare, no one has ever prompted for them in the Chocobo Down Database. What do I do?
You'll have a chance to leave prompts for your favorite tiny characters and rare ships, so don't worry if they aren't represented! We'll open a post, where people can leave new prompts in the comments, some time next week. We want to encourage a balance between filling prompts from our database and letting people ask for new things; a week-long waiting period is our compromise.

How will the scoring go?

• Any work that fits the theme of rare character / rare relationship will receive 10 points.


• Any work that doesn't fit the August theme, but is submitted in August, will still receive 5 points.


• Remember that you have to be signed up for a team before you post your work in order to get points!

This round will be open for the month of August – later in the month we'll post a reminder to let you know exactly when the round will be ending.

We hope you're all ready to represent your teams! Ready, set, go… the 2012 Chocobo Races have begun!