Now that all participants have submitted their forms, we will move on to the next course of action. The event will continue as follows:
All participants comfortable going first will be added to a randomiser. Once a starting person has been selected, those comfortable going last will be randomised.
I will reach out to the selected first and last people and confirm if their estimated date range works for them - if the date range doesn't work for one or both, I will restart the process until both parties confirm.
When everything is settled, the remaining participants will be randomised, assigned a date range, and reached out to. After each participant has agreed to their dates, the Timeline will be posted.
To keep things simple, the event will officially start on Sunday, 30 March 2025 at 00:00 UTC-5!
After the first person has completed their contribution of the corpse, the second person will be contacted at the beginning of their date range and given the last five lines of the fic or a cropped portion of the fanart. This chain will continue until the corpse inevitably finishes.
Due to higher participation rates this year -- we will be running two corpses concurrently in an attempt to avoid this event going into June/July 2026!
What does that mean for you? Nothing! The event will continue as normal - don't think too much about it.
Below are the deadlines for outreach and date range confirmation:
February 28th — The first and last randomised participants will be contacted. They will have until Sunday, 2 March 2025 at 00:00 UTC-5 to confirm their date range.
March 2nd — If one or both participants cannot complete their date range, alternates will be selected. They will have until Monday, 10 March 2025 at 00:00 UTC-5 to confirm their date range.
March 13th — All other randomised participants will be contacted. Because this group will be much larger and may need more changes, they will have until Thursday, 27 March 2025 at UTC-5 to confirm their date ranges.
March 29th — The official Timeline will be posted.
March 30th — The event begins! The first person starts the exquisite tomarrymort corpse and has two weeks to finish and submit their contribution. This pattern will continue and repeat until the corpse finishes (decays).
- Submission Requirements
Free Rein is still in play - however, to maintain consistency, here are a few things requested of each participant:
- All participants must submit their contributions to the corpse via Dropbox. Doing so will help keep everything consistent, easily mergeable, and manageable when transitioning to AO3.
Each participant will receive an individualised Dropbox link to submit their portion! You do not need a Dropbox account to submit - do not share your link.
Please send me your last five lines or the cropped/altered version of your art separately via your preferred contact method so that I may pass it along to the next participant!
- All fanart participants must submit their contributions to the corpse with a link to their art. Feel free to send the link separately or within the submitted Dropbox file. Doing so will help with image embedding when transitioning to AO3.
- All writing and fanart participants should edit their fics/fanart panels for proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar to the best of their ability. If you can't, please contact a beta reader for editing.
- All writing and fanart participants should exclude any explicit material in the contributed portion that is passed on to the next participant! No explicit material should be present in the last five lines of the fic or within the cropped portion of the fanart sent.
“Explicit material” is defined by AO3 guidelines as content containing explicit adult themes, such as porn, graphic violence, etc. Which includes some of their major archive warning tags.
HOWEVER - via overwhelming majority, NSFW is allowed this year! All participants are over 18 and unanimous in the inclusion of NSFW. Please be mindful and continue to follow AO3 guidelines for explicit material.
- Aim between 500 to 2k words; or 1 fanart scene with a small amount of dialogue to 3 scenes with no dialogue (no pressure).
- Here are some randomised words to help inspire you: dialect, board, revoke, log, layout.
- If all else fails, pick a classic Tomarrymort trope: Time Travel, Dark Harry, Soulmates, Harry and Tom Grow Up Together, Forced Proximity, Voldemort Wins, etc. and apply it to the portion given to you.
- Don't focus on making a cohesive story/narrative; that's quite possibly the last thing we want. Review the portion sent to you, and just create until you feel things have suitably gotten out of hand or until you think you've confused the person after you well enough.
- Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to have fun. (And submit what will likely be the most extraordinary Tomarrymort AO3 story that ever was, of course.) If you aren't having fun, please reach out; I'll do everything in my power to help you have fun.
From my rough calculations - the event will finish sometime on or before Monday, 10 November 2025 at 00:00 UTC-5.
Now, this is a long timeframe. If anything changes your availability in the meantime, please let me know as soon as you can. With enough notice, we'll be able to make a quick and painless swap with someone further down the list. This way, everyone still gets to participate.
Thank you for returning for a second year or joining for the first time! There are new changes, so if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to direct message, send an ask here on Tumblr, or reach out on our Discord (18+) server.
