#rinharuweek

[shiruba-tsuki]

Rinharu Week - Day 10: The Final Stroke 2 (Blue)

I don't feel.. like I can't breathe... You can swim like yourself, Haru. Yeah. Sorry... For saying those mean things. No, I've always said selfish things to you, too, since we were kids. Sorry. You taught me what was important. I appreciate it. Idiot. I'm the one who always wanted to be like you. Don't keep making me say it.

[pinkstarliight]

“It’s my turn—to show you a sight you’ve never seen before!” - Day 1: Splash Free | A rushed rinharu week day 1…. my winter break starts today so hopefully i’ll have more time to work on the other days

[leavescrown]

Rinharu week

I finished my first story. Can't wait to post it when Rinharu week starts<3

[thenightpool]

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Are you starting to get in the holiday spirit yet? 👀 We have something that might help: it's @rinharuweek!

Are you working on a submission? Which prompts are you eyeing this year? Feel ✨free✨ to tell us all about it in the replies/reblogs!

[tomakehimfreeart]

[sharkinlovewithadolphin]

by sharkinlovewithadolphin

Rin wants to become a chef. Haru… well, Haru just wants to cook. Preferably with Rin.

Words: 2310, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Free!

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Matsuoka Rin, Nanase Haruka

Relationships: Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka  

Additional Tags: RinHaru Week 2023, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Cooking, Confessions, Jealousy, Jealous Nanase Haruka, Fighting

[aguaporcelana]

I already have a part of my fic but I want to publish it now but I want to wait for the RinHaruWeek but I'm obsessed but i want to contribute something to the event but the blorbos consume me aaaaaaaaaaaa

[i-swim-free-for-the-team]

"Abyss" for @rinharuweek

They finally gave us a dolphin Pokemon for this purpose only

[meiiior]

Rinharu week day 3: Drive

[kassiopeiaturtle]

Oh my god, such an amazing artwork for my favorite fic! I feel as if I got a Christmas present!

Day 10: Other Sports AU - @rinharuweek 2023 ❄️

How crazy to think such arrogance and judgment could lead to such understanding and love. What a life they would have missed, if they weren’t brought together by such a small thing.

Wanted to draw this scene from @sharkinlovewithadolphin's fic I’ll make that cold expression of yours heat up! Hockey player x figure skater is such a classic combo, it was definitely a fun read ⛸️ Give it a peek if that's your thing!

[shiruba-tsuki]

Rinharu Week - Day 4: Bond    ↳ Don't enjoy it!

[rinharuweek]

🌸RinHaru Week Starts Soon!🌸

Take your marks! There's one week left until RinHaru Week returns for its 10th run! We hope you're just as excited as we are for all the posts to start rolling in. If you're already prepared, make sure to check our FAQ and Rules page for posting information and guidelines.

Haven't started working on your submissions yet? There's still time! Check out our Prompt List and tune in to our podcast, RinHaru Week Radio, where we discuss the prompts and give you ideas on how to use them!

And don't forget, participating in RinHaru Week will earn you entries in our Giveaway! Check out the Giveaway Post for the details, and a peek at the cool prizes we have in store! 🎁

Let's pull out all the stops to celebrate our first 10 years together! We hope to see you there 🏊‍♂️ 🌊

[pinkstarliight]

Rinharu Week Day 2 - Future Fish | still a day late LMAO.. pose is a redraw of the lavie MV (by surii)

[leavescrown]

Prompt: Social Media

Author: me

Rating: PG-13

Summary:

Rin has to explain to Haru why posting more pictures of himself will help him get sponsors.

[thenightpool]

rinharu wrapped 2023

We almost can't believe it's already time to bring out the kadomatsu again! 2023 just raced by, didn't it…?! Let's take a moment to look back on everything Rin & Haru (and their fans!) have achieved this year.

🌸 Archive of Our Own

The Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka tag on AO3 now holds 3,674 works!

That means 173 new fics were posted this year. (There might've been more than that, but it's hard to keep track of creators privatising their older fics!)

And the Night Pool's AO3 collection is up to 90 works!

.

🌸 The Night Pool

Here at TNP, we revived @sakurathon, a cherry blossom-centric event! This year, the event received 40 works by 19 lovely participants.

Since it was such a big success, we're bringing the event back on April 27th & 28th 2024.

°•. ✿ .•°

We also held the aquatic-themed Unleashed Blue, during which 20 participants created 51 (!!) otherworldly works for us.

With permission of the creators, we lovingly collected them in a 400+ page commemorative zine. You can download it on linktree

°•. ✿ .•°

Writers filled an impressive 35 prompts during our prompt meme Make a Splash! that we held in honor of Haru's birthday.

Read the fills on AO3

°•. ✿ .•°

Rin & Haru's Big Warm-Up, our monthly prompt event, received 16 new works on AO3 across the year & more on socials.

Check out our collection on AO3

°•. ✿ .•°

We also kicked off rinharu fandom's very first bang: MEDLEY!, a mini + reverse hybrid bang that will start posting in March!

(Psst. Sign ups are still open for a few roles!)

°•. ✿ .•°

We held 3 training camps – super fun writing retreat weekends – over on our Discord. We have 4 more retreats planned for 2024!

If you'd like to join us for the next one(s), here's the info

°•. ✿ .•°

We posted 33 new fanart translations!

Here's the link to our masterlist

°•. ✿ .•°

And finally, The Night Pool beat out Harurinralia to win our Ultimate Rinharu Moments Tournament that we held back in April on both Twitter and Tumblr!

.

🌸 Other Fandom Events

It's been a busy year!

In July, @starstarfairy hosted Wave Of Memory (@rinharumemories) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Free! The event ran in two wave on tumblr and Twitter and combined polls, fan memories, and all types of fanworks.

@sweetheavenfics helped us run the RH-friendly @soumako-week in September!

@ryu-outsider hosted the month-long daily prompt event Free!cember here on Tumblr. It welcomed the entire fandom. The event was promoted by eleanorenchanted and run via hashtag.

And @rinharuweek ran for a full 10 days this year in celebration of the show's anniversary! They are just wrapping up.

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🌸 Official News

Free! turned 10 in 2023. Omedetou gozaimasu!

Free! The Final Stroke Part 2 broke all of the series' previous records in the box office, bringing in over 1 billion yen

It also finally made it to Crunchyroll.com for the US & select others

Miyano Mamoru & Shimazaki Nobunaga fed us (+ fanartists' inspiration) well by shouting "HARU!!" and "RIIIN!!" at each other before hugging passionately during the 10th anniversary event at the Saitama Super Arena

We got tons of amazing new art; including a cover illustration for Free! The Band Live's Ever Blue performance in Yokohama, Animedia's July W-cover, Sweets Paradise's promotional art, and Kyoani's 10th anniversary event's illustration

Rin's ripped jeans (+ THE ANKLETS) in the Matsukiyo & Cocokara's Top Of Summer collaboration launched a thousand fanworks

Matsuoka-senshu, Nanase-senshu, Kirishima-senshu & Yamazaki-senshu represented Mizuno at the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka

Spoon2Di recently restocked volume 78 & 85 on their webshop, and Akiba Pass Shop opened pre-orders for some gorgeous tapestries featuring said art

Karatz, Bikkuriman Choco, Iwami & DECOL all bumped Rin up to 2nd place in character listings (where he belongs!!)

Last but not least, KyoaniShop bankrupted us all by releasing amazing new merchandise (and also did not try to hide that Rin is the Free! series' 2nd protagonist, either…)

--

Thank you so much for being here with us in 2023. We hope it has been a wonderful & creative year for you. Here's wishing you an even more rinharu-filled 2024!

[museaway]

Happy 10th anniversary to my beloved Free! fandom. When I was struck down by a fever in late 2017 and decided to watch the anime, I had no idea the ways the fandom would influence me. So since @rinharumemories is a memory event, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to finally write a love letter to the fandom! 💙❤️ 

(Adapted from this twitter thread!)

After my fever-inspired crash-course, Free! fell out of my head for a while, but Rin never did. The following year, I watched a cosplay tutorial for him on YouTube and decided to watch Take Your Marks. I saw The Bench Scene. Suddenly I had an OTP!

My first-ever rinharu friend, Rubi, encouraged me to write fic and kindly beta read for me! I was neck-deep in anxiety at the time because of another fandom and Free! was refreshing. My anxiety was so bad that she actually screened the comments on that first fic to make sure I could read them without spiraling.

I found more shippers & joined the Sakura Pool discord, where I would meet my dear SweetHeaven! Su & the other friends I made there helped shape @ficwip's early days as a hashtag game, and (along w/friends from SPN & VLD) were some of our discord's initial members.

When I was designing the ficwip discord, Aenya was kind enough to share tips for role-based channel permissions & let me pick her brain about modding a year-round space! Her advice was invaluable, an absolute lifesaver. 🙏🙏🙏 

Around this time, through the original #ficwip game on Twitter, I met fellow writer @matsuoka-lin and we got to be friends. (During the pandemic, Lin would join the ficwip server and we would recognize our Aquarius bond ♒)

Late into 2018, I was still writing rinharu fic, and I also participated in Inktober, with a good number of the images being rinharu themed. It had been years since I’d drawn, but those two brought it out of me. Sadly, that December, the VLD finale hit during my very first @rinharuweek and launched me back into the VLD fandom for a couple of years. I never finished my RHW '18 entry. But I never forgot Free! or rinharu, and definitely not Rin, who was my profile pic more often than not. 

Flash forward to 2021. Su won a fic giveaway & prompted me to write a rinharu amnesia fic. I worked on it across 11 months. That awoke my muses, and I ended up writing rinharu hanahaki for @ficwip's 5k!

Last August, I was days away from announcing a fandom-wide SPN event when I recalled my dream of a rinharu bang and mentioned it in passing to Lin. We talked for eight hours straight. By the end of the conversation, @thenightpool had been born. 

We started TNP with the humble goal of five participants in our first event, a mermaid-themed fic & art fest. We had months to prepare! Then something happened with FS2 and we scrambled to launch a Halloween fest that we pulled off thanks to incredible contributors. They formed the foundation of the TNP discord, which is set up a lot like ficwip’s to be a year-round little creative community. We’ll actually be launching our own version of fw’s writing retreat weekends later this month! 

The merfest, which got renamed Unleashed Blue, blew past our expectations — as did Sakurathon, a dormant event that we revived for a weekend in April. UB ended up with 52 entries; we’d hoped for maybe 15. Sakurathon was such a success that we rescheduled it immediately. Right now, we have a prompt meme running, and have events scheduled through 2024! 😅 

In addition to @thenightpool, we’ve formed @iwatobievents to promote events across the Free! fandom. And we’re running events there too, for Nagisa and Soumako. Because what is sleep!! 

So the TL;DR is that the rinharu fandom helped give @ficwip life, has inspired me as a writer and artist, led me to my best and dearest friends, and will make a big dream come true later this year: I’ll finally be running a rinharu bang! 💙❤️

And I still have a Rin Matsuoka icon.

(eta: I did, up until the day I posted this. It may temporarily be changed to another favorite character!)