If you have been here for a while, you will have noticed by now that the forum has fallen asleep over the course of the last few months. The influx of new stories has been drastically reduced since the peak of activity back in June, and the lack of feedback for authors has made the forum utterly unattractive for new authors to post their stories here. We are on course to end up in the same state as all our predecessors. But we don't want to accept that. And our attempt to change that is Project Relaunch. I would like to tell you what it is all about and want to invite you to join us in our efforts to breathe new life into our community. Without your help this plan cannot succeed!
Project Relaunch begins today with this announcement. And it is a plan for the next 2 to 4 months. It begins with a new contest schedule. We will return to a higher frequency of contests focused mostly on short stories again. But the contests will now follow a predictable pattern and be mapped out six months in advance. So you will know today already what the May and June contest themes and formats will be. So if you dislike a particular contest, you can skip it and start working on a story for a later contest months in advance. But be aware: all contests will be part of a season lasting 6 months and at the end of the season a season champion will be crowned!
Then, for the next two months, you will see us posting a new discussion topic every day in the Book Club, the Dining Hall or the Questions and Feedback board. We want to invite you to participate in these discussions but also would like to hear your feedback on a few things: We want to update the emojis, post reactions and tags on the forum, and your insights will be very welcome. But please, feel also free to start discussion topics of your own! There is no need to wait for one of the team members to create a discussion topic you're interested in.
And finally, you will see us add some features to the forum or redesign existing ones over the course of the next few months. For example, there will be an overhaul of the user interface for the rating system. It has become a very common occurrence that readers don't rate stories they like and we believe the user interface to be the main reason for that. So if you are looking for something very simple to do: Think back to stories you liked and give them a rating if you haven't done so already. It helps the forum a lot and takes only seconds.
Ultimately, all we're trying to do here will only matter if you support us by being active yourself, by leaving feedback for our authors. Our community lives and dies with the appreciation we show our authors. So support our efforts by supporting our authors!
Season Pass Contest Schedule
January:
- Title: Ravished in a Flash - The Flash Fiction Tournament
- Format: Flash fiction (250 to 1,000 words), several rounds depending on the number of participants
- Theme: New theme for each match
- Score: 5 points per match victory, 10 for the tournament winner, 5 for the runner-up.
February:
- Title: Kristen's Board Memorial Contest
- Format: Short stories (1,000 to 5,000 words)
- Theme: Consensual
- Score: 1 - 25, 2 - 15, 3 - 10, 4 - 5, 5 - 5
March:
- Title: The Spin-off Contest
- Format: Short stories (1,000 to 5,000 words)
- Theme: Write a spin-off to a highly rated story (rating 15 or higher) of another author featuring a character of the original story as the protagonist
- Score: 1 - 25, 2 - 15, 3 - 10, 4 - 5, 5 - 5
April:
- Title: April Fool's
- Format: Short stories (1,000 to 5,000 words)
- Theme: The joke was supposed to be harmless.
- Score: 1 - 25, 2 - 15, 3 - 10, 4 - 5, 5 - 5
May:
- Title: Party Hard!
- Format: Short stories (1,000 to 5,000 words)
- Theme: Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'Roll
- Score: 1 - 25, 2 - 15, 3 - 10, 4 - 5, 5 - 5
June:
- Title: Stories about You
- Format: Medium stories (5,000 to 15,000 words)
- Theme: Second Person POV
- Score: 1 - 50, 2 - 30, 3 - 20, 4 - 10, 5 - 5
In February, it will be one year since our predecessor forum RavishU went down. Back then not only RavishU met its end, but also its sister, Kristen's Board. In its final years, Kristen's Board was focused on consensual stories and in honor of its demise we will have a short story contest for consensual stories as part of the season pass.
In March, April and May we will have short story contests for a spin off contest (each participant will pick a story on the forum rated 15 or higher from another author and write a spin-off for it featuring a character of the original story as the protagonist,) stories revolving around April Fool's, and stories revolving around "Sex, Drugs, Rock'N'Roll".
The season ends with a medium length story contest in June. Each participant will write in second person narration Stories About You. Essentially, you're going to write as if the reader is doing the actions of the story where the main character is "You." If that sounds confusing, this story is an excellent example of 2nd person narration.
The winner of a short story contest will get 25 points for the season and the runner-up 15 points. The final medium-length contest is more challenging and will award twice the usual points. So last minute upsets in the standings will be possible!
And to account for the possibility of someone not being able to participate in all contests, the final score of every participant will consist only of their 5 best results. So skipping one of the contests should not prevent you from winning the season if your other 5 contest results were great!
The awards
In January and February the team will create new discussion topics every day. But that doesn't mean that in March everything comes to a halt again. In March, users will have the chance to nominate stories and authors for the Ravishment Academy Awards. And in April, when we reach the one year anniversary of the Academy, we all get to vote for story of the year, author of the year, and many other categories we have not yet decided but would love to hear your suggestions for in a separate topic we will create soon. We also need to commission someone artistic to make the trophies for us. While we could use AI to generate them, we think a personalized trophy made by a human is more our style.
New features
Starting today, you will see a short tutorial message at the top of the page that informs you about a feature of the forum you might not yet be familiar with. Whenever you move to another page or reload the current page, the forum will choose a different tutorial to display at the top of the board.
Then, as I said before, we will redesign the rating user interface to make rating stories easier and more intuitive.
And finally, we will change the access to the Community Favorites board in such a way that you no longer need 50 points to unlock everything at once in there, but you can unlock stories in there one after the other as you gain more reputation. Hopefully we get our first community favorite soon with more activity on the forum!
Off-season contests
We would also like to run additional contests in parallel to the season contests. These contests will be based on prompts suggested by the Pillars of the Community. The first ten prompts suggested by Pillars will be put to a vote and the three prompts with the most votes need to be included in a story for it to participate in a contest.
The Academy needs you!
This is the outline for our plan to wake the Academy from its slumber. Whether this plan will be successful depends on you! If you support us by commenting on stories, rating them, helping us get our first Community Favorites, by participating in contests and discussions, then we can catapult this community to new heights. But if you insist on consuming the stories on the forum like you're choosing a show from the Netflix menu, then the Academy will become less and less attractive for authors to post their stories here. It is up to you what becomes of this forum. We want it to live on for a long time and prosper, and we need you for that to happen. Thank you!
