portal2anniversary

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To our Judges and Team

Due to bad health conditions for both admins, our meeting is put off to the next weekend. We apologize dearly to everyone. Please keep getting ready!

- The Admins

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Thank you all, and many congratulations to our sister initiative! We are looking forward to this.

We have a team!

I would like to personally thank the Portal community for how quickly so many people offered their assistance to this project. It honestly reminded me of why I love you guys so much to begin with. But enough about feelings. On to facts!

Portal Secret Santa 2014 is officially a go!

Please give a warm welcome to this year’s PSS team members, mvtk42, mercuryhomophony, babycharmanderkeckleon, armonah, and silverstreams! Together, we plan on this making this the smoothest PSS to date. We’ll be updating the FAQ page with up-to-date information fairly soon, meaning the application should be live within the next couple of weeks. Thank you all again for reaching out so quickly!!

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To all Judges

A reminder: our meeting will start in half an hour from now, 1:30 PM PST. See you soon.

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Be sure to help out the Portal Secret Santa event! They're much earlier than we are, and they need all the help they can find.

Portal Secret Santa anyone?

Hey everybody! It’s getting to be that time of year again, so I figured now’s as good a time as any to get the probe out there. If you would be interested in participating in the Portal Secret Santa, please like or reblog so I have an idea of how much interest there is. Please reblog this post so that fellow Portal fans can see this and have an opportunity to put in their two cents. Liking, commenting on, or reblogging this post DOES NOT mean that you’re committing, ONLY that you might be interested in participating.

Additionally, if there’s anyone who would like to join the PSS team, PLEASE let me know. Being on the team mostly entails making sure that applications are filled out correctly; randomly matching participants for Santa-recipient pairs; and ensuring that their prompts are compatible.

I will be very busy this school year, and unless I have some help on this, I will not run it. Many hands make for light work, my friends.

Spread the (hella early) holiday cheer!

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I know you've said you don't want to do a fanfic competition because of the difficulty judging it, but why not instead have some challenge prompts? No competition, just some fun stuff for writers to play with so they're not left out.

That sounds like a great idea! We’ll pass on your ideas to our Chell judges rignt now. If we do an activity like that all fanfics that come in will be posted up here during the anniversary!

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Hello! English is not my first language so I wanted to make sure if I understood correctly: Will there be more Contests/Activities than those that are announced so far? Also if we apply to partake in Activities do we have to apply beforehand and then when the Picture/Text etc. is finished submit it or do we only have to submit our Picture/Text etc. to be part of the Contest? I am a bit confused and would be very grateful for an answer!

Hello, anon! Yes, there will in all likelihood be more contests than those hinted at so far. The number and nature of the contests depends on the efforts of our judges and the amount of interest in other types of contests. Since the anniversary is so far away we have a lot of leeway in our contest choices.

Whether you apply before you send in the material will depend on the contest. Here’s how we believe it will probably work:WWWD? and WWGD?: Yes, you have to apply first, then you’ll be given the link to the contest space.Quizzes and Debate: Anyone can participate without applying!GMod and Test Chambers: Anyone can send in their pictures and test chambers, but it has to be before a certain deadline.Art (Contest and Activity): Again, anyone can send in their artwork but it has to be before a certain deadline.

We’ll make everything clear for each contest when we make the announcement post for each. Until then things are subject to change.

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Out of curiosity, what are your plans to encourage novice fanartists to participate in the competitions? Because going up against BNF's can be discouraging.

You have a very good point, Anon. We’re going to have a fanart contest, as well as a fanart activity. While the contest can and will be won, the activity has no pressure and no winners. We’ll post up the art for both during the two days of the anniversary.

There’s always a risk of being discouraged when going up against people who are more famous than you. We’ll keep the entries for the contest as anonymous as possible, though some artists are quite recognizable by their style, in order to make it as objective as possible. This will happen by sending the art to the judges with simple numbers and no artists named. We’ll keep the submissions in store for only the administrators to know who the final winners are.

Honestly, though, the whole point about this event is to have fun, show off fresh faces, and bring the fandom together. We’re not going to pressure you or show favoritism in this, and we’ll show you our work as we go along to let you see that. If you have any more concerns like this, please tell us.

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Our New Judges!

Valued and dear test subjects,

We are proud to officially introduce our judges! Here is the final list of our moderating team:

Chell: ladytitanium, neverrwhere, jaywings, did-you-reboot Cave: der-mediziner, repulsion-gel, gladosinabox Caroline: nightmaren, trenidia, did-you-reboot Doug:  neverrwhere, repulsion-gel, trenidia, jaywings

Ours is a well-organized team, and we are all looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us. 

Further communications about the nature of the events, their timing and the applications as test subjects will come from us in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, and do not forget to grab your testing equipment!

-The Admins

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Update on Judges!

Thank you so much for your response! We now have quite a few judge applications, and are almost ready to pick the judges. On that note, this account will begin announcing judges this Saturday. That's not to say we'll be done with accepting applications then, since some might drop out and leave, but it's best to get your name in beforehand so we can see where you'll fit best.

On that note, we are very happy with the applications we've received! If you sent in an application and we didn't send you a little reply back to let you know we got it, then please don't hesitate to either send it in again or send it to us via e-mail at portal2anniversary@gmail.com. Once we start collecting our new judges we'll get right to work with planning the events further and making up contest material.

Start dry-cleaning those lab coats, applicants. Our cameras are watching you.

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I was just curious, when do the tests/activities start? And how many judges are needed for each category/will they be noted in a post later on?

Tests and activities, depending on the type, will begin later this year to give everyone time to get ready. For the Chell section, entrants will begin roleplaying around December or January in order to have the finale on the date. For the Cave category, the quiz and debate will take place on the anniversary itself. Caroline and Doug sections will accept entries around October until a little before the anniversary so we can judge them in time.

- Admin emberwhite

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Hello! I was wondering, what's the Gmod thing about?

We haven’t decided what all the contests and activities are going to be about, but for GMod we were thinking of giving out funny prompts people can fill. We are not yet sure about what the media and the organization will be, though.

— Admin altairattorney

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Are there any prerequisites to participating in any of the competitions? I'm wondering mainly about the roleplaying one. Do participants have to have roleplayed the characters beforehand (or have an active roleplaying account on Tumblr or elsewhere) to participate, etc?

Good question!

No, you don’t need any particular experience in a category to enter, or even a roleplay account. For that contest (and you’ll find out more later on) when you enter you’ll be given a number that will be your basic identity, like GLaDOS 1924 or Wheatley 7386. The number will be random, yet unique to you because you’ll use it when interacting with the other competitors and answering the judges in a private Chatzy. Thus a roleplaying account isn’t needed to take part in the competition.

- Admin Emberwhite

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About the fanfiction (different anon here) I get that totally, but what if you put a cap of 1000 words or less on entires? Or is that still too much? I just ask because I know that it is actually a challenge for a lot of writers to write something interesting in that short of words. If you set a theme, and challenged people to write less than 1k of something interesting the most IC for their fav character they could make it, it might work? Up to u guys though!

The amount of words is almost irrelevant, since a fanfiction category would be so subjective that it would depend for a large amount on the judges’ tastes. Trying to make sense of it would be roughly as hard as getting GLaDOS and Wheatley to agree. (As a fanfiction writer I know where you’re coming from, though.) On the plus side, however, our roleplay section also challenges writers to think on their feet as they respond to prompts while in-character.

—Admin emberwhite

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I was wondering, if we are accepted as a judge for one category, does that exclude us for participating in others? For example, can a map judge still participate in art?

Of course! You can take part in any contests unrelated to the ones you are judging and any activities. For example, If you are a judge for roleplaying, you can’t take part in any of the roleplay contests, but you can join in anything else, roleplaying activities included (non-judged).

— Admin altairattorney

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for the application, could we choose multiple categories we would be willing to judge, or do we have to narrow it down to one?

You are free to judge multiple categories! Just bear in mind that the more you want to judge, the more work you’ll have when the time comes.

—Admin emberwhite

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On the areas of judging, I noticed there was nothing for fanfiction. Is this just an oversight, or is fanfiction not going to be featured?

It was our deliberate choice to leave fanfiction out of the games. We would have loved to include it; however, as we are authors ourselves, we know fanfiction involves too much subjectivity and requires a lot of time to be fairly judged.With a group of so many other activities to manage, a full fanfiction contest would slow everything down significantly.

— Admin altairattorney