#sakurathon 2024

[hapeemoonlight]

"Sakura Pool"

I'm such a creative fellow with my titles (lol). This is my submission for this year's sakurathon! As always, these events are lots of fun!

[sakurathon]

🌸🔓 SAKURATHON 2024 IS OFFICIALLY OPEN! 🔓🌸

It's already April 27th over in Japan, which means Sakurathon 2024 — a 2-day event centred around all things rinharu (& harurin, of course!) involving cherry blossoms — has now officially kicked off! 🥳

Your friendly neighbourhood mods from @thenightpool are on stand-by to share (and love 💕) all entries in the #sakurathon tag here on Tumblr (and also on Twitter & Bluesky!). We also have a unique AO3 collection for this year's edition here! For more information on how to post your entries, please check out our posting info. If you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to let us know by sending us an ask or an e-mail at rinandharuaremarried@gmail.com. 🙏

[cookie4hope]

The destined meeting of the firey Rose and calm Cherry blossom Fairy!

Oi, Haru! I want to show you a sight you've never seen before.

[dragon-of-timeless-blue]

SAKURATHON IS HERE!! and as my entry for this year chan chan channnn:

A FIC OF THE BELOVED RINHARU FANCHILD SAKURA TRAVELING TO THE PAST (by cherry blossoms magic lmao) feat. The coolest of the aunts, Auntie Gou! ❤️🩷 🌸

It's just a silly little fic that had been floating around in my mind for a long time and it's finally taken shape, I'M SO HAPPY! o⁠(⁠(⁠*⁠^⁠▽⁠^⁠*⁠)⁠)⁠o

ALSO! This time, I made an English version!! (so my english speakers mutuals can take a look(⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧)

[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!

[kassiopeiaturtle]

Sakurathon 2024!

I posted it on time on AO3, really! Here my contribution to Sakurathon 2024: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55527439

It's only a short piece, but it was the first time I specifically wrote for an event. So I'm happy with it, and I'm looking forward to the next one 🌸

[declawedwildcat]

It's kind of funny, actually - I found @thenightpool before the first event, stumbled across a post for the Halloween party while in the tag at random. I didn't think much of it (other than that the stock image for Unleashed Blue was gorgeous, I later came back and stole it for my phone wallpaper lol) since I had never participated in a fandom event beyond just consuming the end results, so I moved on and forgot all about it.

Soon after though I had been working on something on my own that happened to fit into RH week, so I joined up there and ended up making twice what I planned to. It was fun and there were still people who loved this ship as much as I did, so when TNP's recruitment post for Unleashed Blue came around again I decided fuck it, the deadline is long, I can pledge a drawing and the worst that can happen is I don't finish in time.

I thought for sure it would be another Discord server that I join, mute, lurk in once and a while, and then leave like most others I've tried. Instead I found people that were fun to chat with about this thing I loved but haven't had friends mutually invested in it in years. Everyone is so supportive both there and here on Tumblr, everyone works together to make all the creations the best they can be with brainstorming and group sprints and pom-pom emotes when they're too busy to join in lol.

Before I knew it my "one drawing" became like, five plus playlists and screenshots and a story that doubled my published word count. I said I would be too busy for Sakurathon and then got pulled in, said I would be taking a break over Make a Splash! and then joined anyway. I have no solid plans for the 2024 events and yet have no doubt that I will wind up in them anyway with the sheer creativity and love that this group fosters.

Everyone has been so great and I'm glad to meet you all, but especially to our tireless mods: @museaway and @matsuoka-lin, you guys have put so much effort into all of this it's unreal. I have no idea how you guys keep things running alongside all the other projects you manage and personal lives on top of that. The love that you guys have for this fandom and everyone in it shines through every single day, I'm glad I get to see even a portion of that. Thank you for all that you do. Please don't overexert yourselves.

My only regret is that I didn't join when I saw that first post. Happy one year, and here's to as many more as you'll have us for!

[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!)

[sakurathon]

Help us make a Sakurathon 2024 playlist!

For so many of us, music is a huge part of our shipping experience. This year, we've created a collaborative playlist for Sakurathon to capture the songs that you associate with Rin, Haru, and cherry blossoms!

If you have a Spotify account, you can add songs directly. If you don't have an account, leave a reply with the song title and artist, and we'll add it for you if it's available!

🌸 add a few songs (up to 5!)

🌸 listen to the playlist

[cookie4hope]

Happy Sakurathon 2024

They both had the same idea and just took the chance before someone could get embarrassed.

[sakurathon]

Sakurathon '23 has now officially come to an end! 🌸

Luckily, it was such a success we've already decided to bring it back next year! 😂 Go ahead and mark your calendars: Sakurathon 2024 will be taking place on April 27th & 28th! 🫶

In other words, THANK YOU to everyone who participated! 💙❤️

P.S. Don't worry if you didn't get your piece in on time, though. We will still continue to reblog stragglers for a little while longer (and this year's giveaway winners will, of course, be announced sometime later this week too)! Stay tuned. 👀

[museaway]

I have penciled in nearly all of the events I'm running from now through the end of 2024! I love being able to see across the next year and know what I need to do.

In case anyone would be interested, here are the upcoming public events and the accounts where you can find more information!

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🌸 Sakurathon - a cherry-blossom themed rinharu fest the weekend of April 29 & 30. run via @sakurathon

✍️ the ficwip 5k - an all-fandoms, all-ships AU event! sign ups open in June, with open posting throughout August. run via @ficwip

🏝️ Sheith on Vacation! a super low-stress hashtag event from the BangSheith team, with open posting all July. run via @bangsheith

💦 Make a Splash! a rinharu prompt meme hosted on AO3. the meme opens on Haru's birthday (June 30th) and will stay open throughout July. run via @thenightpool

🐬🦈 Rinharu Mini & Reverse Bang, a hybrid event combining a traditional mini bang with a reverse bang! join one or both tracks. sign ups open in September, and posting will start on Rin's birthday (February 2nd). rules & schedule to be released soon! run via @thenightpool

🦇🌞 to-be-named aster x dante project, a lil nu: carnival fest that is still in the early planning stages. it will combine a prompt meme with a commemorative digital zine. since this ship is tiny, a group of us are planning this on discord and it will probably be later this year. if you ship it too please pleeeease reach out!

💕 Hey, Sweetheart. an all-fandoms, all-ships Valentine's Day event! posting will be mid-February 2024. run via @ficwip

✍️ The 5k 2024. June - August 2024. run via @ficwip

🥇 Go for Gold! a month-long rinharu event running across July 2024. details are still in the works, but you can warm up for the event with our monthly prompts. run via @thenightpool

🧐 Twists & Turns, a rinharu mystery fest & digital zine! we'll open sign-ups next March, with posting slated for November 2024. run via @thenightpool

--

and while it's not on the official schedule yet, @thylabang will be returning in some form, and with a new mod at the helm (this one is very, very, very tired) 🖖

[sakurathon]

🌸🔒 SAKURATHON 2024 IS NOW CLOSED! 🔒🌸

And that's a wrap (for now!), everybody! 🥹 Thank you so much for joining us in the #Sakurathon tag again this year. We hope you had as much fun as we did! 🙏💕

P.S. The winner of our physical giveaway will be announced & contacted on Wednesday, May 1st. 👀 In case you missed it, we already announced the winner of our digital giveaway over on Twitter. Congrats, neverdeluland! 🥳

🌸🔓 SAKURATHON 2024 IS OFFICIALLY OPEN! 🔓🌸

It's already April 27th over in Japan, which means Sakurathon 2024 — a 2-day event centred around all things rinharu (& harurin, of course!) involving cherry blossoms — has now officially kicked off! 🥳

Your friendly neighbourhood mods from @thenightpool are on stand-by to share (and love 💕) all entries in the #sakurathon tag here on Tumblr (and also on Twitter & Bluesky!). We also have a unique AO3 collection for this year's edition here! For more information on how to post your entries, please check out our posting info. If you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to let us know by sending us an ask or an e-mail at rinandharuaremarried@gmail.com. 🙏