Submission Rules

General Rules

All Work must be YOUR OWN WORK! Any work that is not yours (for example an image that a friend created for your website) must be appropriately credited. All entries submitted to X-Day must be submitted by their creator. If a work is created by a named group, then it should be submitted by a leader of that group, and that group name be credited in the submission's "other creators" detail.

Plagarism is among the worst things you can do creatively or professionally. This means taking other people's work, in whole or in part, and claiming that it is your own. Plagiarism will result in immediate disqualification from the X-Day competiton, and perhaps banning from future competitions.

You may submit both competitive and non-competitive entries, which will be listed separately from each other. A voter may rate any entry, or leave comments on it, whether it is competing or not, but only competing entries may win any awards. You may have up to 10 competitive submissions total in each of fan fiction, fan art, fan media, and 5 fan web sites. You may have up to 15 competitive submissions total over all categories. Your total of competitive and non-competitive submissions over all categories is 30. The submissions process will be the same in either case, and you can change which of your submissions are competing any time before the submissions period ends. Each submission can only go in one normal type-based sub-category.

Every work you submit must be separate and distinct. Please don't submit multiple chapters of a novel as individual short-stories in the short-story section of the FanFiction category and then also enter the entire work in the Novella subcategory. Use common sense - if you wrote a novel, enter it as a novel unless you really feel some part of it works as a short story. Likewise, do not enter multiple parts of a serial as separate submissions; rather, submit all parts as a single serial submission; you may submit exactly one part of a serial if it will work as a separate story, instead of the serial, however. The Manager and Judges will be glad to help you determine what is and is not separate and distinct - just email us.

All fanfiction and/or poetry submissions that contain Adult Language/Events/Situations MUST come with a warning to the X-Day Manager. This is so that your submission can be labeled correctly. Failure to do so will result in your submission being removed from the competition.

Having explicit or adult images in your fanart or on your website may disqualify you from the X-Day competition. If you have a question about what is and is not acceptable (or what might not be allowed) email the X-Day Manager. The Manager and Judges reserve the right to make these judgements.

In keeping with previous years, adult content is not entirely banned from X-Day, but it is regulated and strongly discouraged.

All submitted contest entries, whether art, fiction, or web sites, must be approved for listing on the site (whether competing or not) by the X-Day Manager and/or the X-Day Judges. Any "adult" content must be mentioned in the submission form - a method for rating the content will be provided.

FAILURE TO MENTION ADULT CONTENT IN THE SUBMISSION FORM MAY BE GROUNDS FOR REMOVAL FROM THE COMPETITION!

All FanFiction must announce any adult content at the beginning of the story/poem. The X-Day Manager has the final say on what will and will not be permitted to compete. SoftPorn is NOT allowed - kids view this site, so be responsible. All web sites will be checked by the X-Day Manager at some point to ensure that they are entering in the correct category.

The titles of all works may not contain adult phrases, as titles are listed on the main Submissions page before anyone has the chance to be disuaded by content warnings. An indication for the level of adult content will be listed beside the title in the main list.

The Manager and Judges may add a category to accomodate a large number of a certain type of submissions, however this is very unlikely. If your entry is going to be re-categorized, you will be notified by email.

The X-Day yearly competition is intended mainly for works related to Marvel's X-Men and related titles or characters. However, some works for other Marvel titles and characters will also be accepted, if they are ones that fans who like the x-titles are also likely to read. Preferrably, these will have had a significant amount of creative-based in-continuity interaction with x-title characters over their history, not including things like brief cameo appearances or company-wide mega-crossover marketing events or merchandising products. Or they could be by a common creator, or have a similar tone to the x-titles. Technically, the entry doesn't need to have the slightest relation to X-Men, even if that is what X-Day is biased towards. If in doubt, ask the X-Day Manager.

All submissions are handled automatically through forms on the web site. When adding a submission, you first indicate the main category that it would go in (fan fic, art, media, or web site), and you provide any adult content warnings. You also say what sub-category to use and whether the entry will compete or not; those two details can be changed later. This year, any work that will be listed has to be on the internet somewhere and visible to a web browser; you do not paste them into the submissions form, but rather you paste the web url to them. Each entry may have two urls, one to a copy on your server, and one to a copy on the X-Day server, each where applicable.

After submitting an entry, that work will be placed on a queue so the X-Day Manager and/or a judge can examine it and approve it for listing; when they approve it (which shouldn't take more than a day or two), the work will be listed to the public on the web site. During the approval process, the work may be moved into a different sub-category than you picked, in which case you will be notified; if you have a problem with the move then ask about it.

Submissions Hosting

It is expected that many creations which you submit will be hosted on your own web servers, particularly the larger works like web sites. However, as a courtesy to help make X-Day more enjoyable to everyone, you will also be allowed to store some submissions on the X-Day server, mainly smaller works like fan fiction and fan art.

This is allowed partly so that visitors viewing your works can get a consistant experience between the various fan fiction and fan art in regards to how quickly they download, and in regards to availability. Unlike the mainsteam free web hosts, the X-Day server does not impose restrictive bandwidth caps which lock visitors out of your site for much of the day; works stored there are always available, so voters have a chance to actually see them at any time. Moreover, works on the X-Day server tend to get preserved over the long term while typical fan web sites come and go every day, taking their content with them. So people viewing the X-Day archives can still see many of the entries, even if the originals disappeared.

If you will be using the X-Day server to host entries, then you should upload them before registering those entries on the submissions form. This is done because you provide the url for the entries, on the X-Day server and/or your own server, in the submission form. That said, you can change the url later, in which case you can decide to use the local hosting after the item is registered, and make it work.

How this will work is that, when you are logged into your account on the X-Day website, you will be able to see the ftp server, username and password which you can connect to with your own ftp program. You upload files to the X-Day server via ftp, just as you would with any other web server. However, this ftp username and password is shared with all other contestants who are using the server, so you must be careful to not trample over stuff that other people uploaded there. This is an honor system.

To start off, when you connect to the ftp server, you must locate or create a folder in the ftp root directory which is the same as your login name; get the letter case right too. Then you can arrange your stuff inside that folder however you feel like, as if it was your own little website. A short time later, usually once per day, the X-Day manager will look at what new stuff has been put in the ftp root directory, and the new stuff will be moved from there into the actual web site location where web browsers can see it. At that point, the items will be visible on the web, and they will not be in the ftp directory anymore; that means the other people can't touch your stuff anymore even by mistake.

To make things simpler for me, you should try to upload all the stuff you want hosted at once, because I prefer to move your folder only once. But if you do want to add more items, then re-create a folder with your personal login name for the new stuff, and I will combine them with the previous folder. If you want to change an existing item, this is more complicated, so you should email me about it. But try to make all your changes at once.

Because I have to pay for my web hosting, each person who stores their entries on my server should try to keep the total of all their stuff under about 1MB in size. This may encourage you to be more efficient and keep your art files from getting bigger than they need to be. Typical fan art doesn't need to be bigger than about 100K per picture. This is also an honor system. Please contact the X-Day Manager if this presents a problem.

Under no circumstances may you link from an external website to files that you upload to the X-Day server; I do not want them to eat my server's bandwidth. The files you put there are for the X-Day competition only, and may only be linked to from the main X-Day site (set up via the submissions form). Files you upload should only link to each other or back to the main X-Day site. You are also permitted to link to external web sites from your uploaded files, but this should be limited to things like "the creator's home page".

Submissions - Special Rules

Special rules for each main category are as follows...

Fan Art

Fan Art submissions must follow these rules:

Fan Fiction

Due to the general length of Fan Fiction submissions, and the fact that few voters take the time to read the Fan-Fiction submissions, FanFic submissions must follow these rules:

• When a story comes in multiple chapters or parts, all parts are submitted as a single entry and the total word length will indicate in what sub-category it's listed. The one exception to this is serial fiction. A series is a plot arc composed of stories that are, in themselves, complete works, and that depend on one another for sense to a lesser degree than book chapters. In order to qualify as a serial, the work should have at least four stories. Duologies or trilogies should be treated as one story with two or three parts, and submitted as a single work with a combined wordcount and entered in the appropriate category.
• ALL submissions must be complete. We can't judge a half-finished story. There will be awards again next year (we hope), so save your works-in-progress. The only exception to this is with serial fiction (but not Round-Robins); even in those cases, you must have at least 4 parts, and the end of the last one must be at a logical pause (not a cliff-hanger).
• Novels, Novellas and Novellettes (works over 17,500 words): A one to four paragraph (roughly 1 printed page) teaser/summary/preview must be provided in the submissions form. This one page short story will be posted on the X-Day site, and should be written/edited with the intention of garnering interest in the entire story. Voters will be able to read the preview and decide whether they want to finish the full work or go on to the next entry. Links from the preview to the full, completed work will be maintained by the X-Day Manager, and will be clearly visible. In this manner, each voter can determine the quality and content of a longer story, without overburdening him/herself by reading the complete fan-fiction submission. (But we still advise that voters NOT to make their choices SOLELY from the summaries!) Problems with this (your story is just barely over the length limit, etc.) should be communicated to the X-Day Manager, so that we can work together to resolve it.
• Adult Language / Situations: Fan Fiction that contains Adult language or situations must carry a warning label on the X-Day Submissions Page, and must also carry a warning at the beginning of the story.

Fan Media

Fan Media entries must follow these rules:

• Comic strips must be in JPEG or GIF or PNG format, or be composed of multiple images, each in those formats.
• All film or video (that is not a Flash movie) needs to be in Quicktime format, which is a film industry standard, is high quality, and is playable anywhere, or use another format supported by Quicktime 6. DivX is probably okay. Do not use Windows Media or Real Video.
• All music or radio plays need to be in one of the following formats: AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AIFF, WAV, or another format supported by Quicktime 6. Do not use Real Audio or Windows Media.
• For physical works like wearable costumes or dolls, you should provide photographs of them; the former modelled preferably; a picture of yourself or another person dressed up in a costume that you made, such as a halloween photo, can be used (and the end of the submissions period in 2003 should be late enough for you to submit a 2003 halloween photo if you want). Since these are 3-D works, it is good to have both front and side views (or more). You should also include a brief textual description of the item; for costumes, you should have a list of what clothing items are included, including accessories.
• Submissions that contain Adult language or images must be allowed to compete by the X-Day manager and the Judges, and they must contain content warnings.

Fan Web Sites

Fan Web Sites must follow these rules: