#kiscon2022

We are looking for fic and art submissions for our KiScon 2022 Zine.

For fic, any length is fine-- drabbles, meta, ficlets, one-shots, and poetry of any rating. This can be from any Trek 'verse, but we ask that the main characters be Kirk and Spock. It is a digital zine so any length is encouraged!

Art submissions are also needed. Any digital medium is fine, although digital images should be at least 300 dpi for best viewability.

The deadline is August 1st.

Please send all submissions to Carleen at  kszinesubs [at] gmail [dot] com. Visit https://kiscon.org/zine.html for more information!

Please feel free to signal boost!

LLAP,

If you would like to show your love for KiScon and K/S in style… we have a limited range of merch available on our Zazzle store, with magnets, mugs, tote bags, pins, and T-shirts (in various styles and colours). The logo is based on a design by arminaa, created for KiScon. Proceeds go towards our projects and the upkeep of the KiScon website.

We would like to showcase some guest recs! You can send an ask or DM me. We are looking to post several times a week and curate a list of our favorite things. We just need the following information: Title of Fic/Art Creator of Fic/Art Link Your Fandom Name (in case it's different from the account you're sending it from.) Your Rec Any 'verse is fine, as long as Kirk and Spock are the main pairing. If you have any questions, please let me know! ~Lost

Save the dates:

KiScon 2022 (entirely online): 4-6 November

Deadline for program booklet submissions: 1 October Deadline for goodie bag submissions: 1 October Deadline for art show / auction submissions: 1 October Deadline for vidshow submissions: 10 October Deadline for cake contest submissions: 1 November

Upcoming KiScord Pub Nights: 17 September, 3 p.m. EDT 1 October, 5 p.m. EDT 15 October, 3 p.m. EDT 29 October, 5 p.m. EDT

Dear K/S friends,

Greetings! We hope you've had a great summer, and we especially hope you are well and unharmed by a certain pesky virus. (It made the rounds in the concom, unfortunately, which is also why there was no newsletter in August.)

And now it's September, pumpkin spice is in and on everything, and we are back with our newsletter/progress report. The countdown on the KiScon website informs us that the con is in fewer than 60 days, and it's high time to address a few important points.

1. Upcoming deadlines:

The zine deadline is now in the past, but there are so many other deadlines in the very near future!

a. Program booklet:

If you have a dealer membership and want us to include information on your fannish business (including links to your Etsy, Bigcartel, website, etc.) in the program booklet ("con book"), please get in touch asap! We offer you this advertising space as part of your membership, but we require your input for this no later than 1 October!

The same deadline applies for anything you want us to include in the con book, e.g. announcements of fic fests, fannish events, zine projects, promoting of fannish spaces and communities. Please send your submissions to larissa @ kiscon . org!

b. Goodie bag: Let's fill the digital goodie bag for our attendees! We've already talked about this in the 2nd progress report, but here's the gist: Anything that can be downloaded and shared digitally is fair game as long as it has a creative or transformative element (which simply means: no episode or movie files, no unaltered stills or publicity photos)! Here are some suggestions to get those creative juices flowing:

Want to make a podfic or filk or mixtape/playlist for the con bag? Have some cool Trek-themed crochet or sewing patterns that you would like to share? An awesome desktop or phone wallpaper or digital stickers/badges/icons that members can then use on their social media? Maybe a cool recipe for K/S cookies or a lovely manip? A link to your amazing Star Trek picrew maker? Colouring pages or printable paper dolls? Send your goodies to larissa @ kiscon . org until 1 October, please.

c. Art show / auction: We talked at length about this in the last newsletter; please see the details there. Again, 1 October is the deadline, and the relevant contact email (both for submissions and any and all questions) is: artshow @ kiscon . org. d. Vidshow: Send us your creations, lovely vidders! Deadline for vid submission (preferably by Dropbox or similar download link): 10 October, to larissa @ kiscon . org. Please use the form on the KiScon website for giving us the details (title, length, etc.) on your vids.

Premieres of all genres: these are vids that have not been published on the Internet or distributed on DVDs/tapes yet (we are lenient if the vid has been shown at a convention in the past, as long as it is not available anywhere). Vids created in or after 2020 (and unpublished) are eligible for our competition.

Classics of all genres: vids that showcase the history and rich variety of K/S and Star Trek vidding from the late 1970s to the 2010s.

Fun & danceable song vids for our Disco Night & Sing-a-Long (Saturday night): exactly what it says on the tin – upbeat vids suitable for singing along and dancing the night away!

For more details, please see the 2nd progress report. This seems also like a good opportunity to mention that there are (physical) prizes for the winners of our competitions. K/S notebooks and badges and many other delightful items are waiting for you.

2. Program Survey (open until 30 September): Which tropes are your all-time favourite? How has the portrayal of the K/S relationship changed over the years? What is the future of K/S fandom? Explore these topics and many more in our panels and discussions! We've collected your suggestions and also brainstormed many more topics, and now it's time for you to vote! This survey is meant for already registered attendees or those who plan to register for the con. Please let us know which online panels and activities you would like to see and attend at KiScon (this is not a fixed registration for individual panels, just a survey to better tailor the program to your interests!), and whether you would like to moderate/present one or more. The titles are not final – if you claim a panel and have a better title in mind, do let us know. There are a few activities (e.g. vid shows, opening ceremony, cosplay etc.) that are a fixture at KiScon, and therefore they are not part of this survey. If there is more than one mod offer per panel, we'll get you in touch with each other.  If you do not see your must-have panel on this survey and think that Spock will be sad without it, please add it in the comment field at the end of the survey. Not all panels and activities will make it into the program – as much we would love a week-long con, we sadly only have a weekend. For all questions, panel tech requests, etc. – please use the comment field. Panels will be held via Zoom; if you want to offer an activity but are unsure whether you can pull it off online or whether you might need something beyond Zoom's infrastructure (e.g. for an interactive game), just drop us a line in the comment field at the end of the survey. We are happy to hear any and all ideas, and we will do our best to find solutions that work for all. Big thanks to all of you!

3. Demographic and Feedback Survey: Lillian created this survey to help the concom get a better feel of the needs and specifics of our community. Important: There are a few questions that are optional (e.g. age, gender, how did you get into K/S etc.) and if you do not want to answer them, this is totally fine. The key questions pertain to the convention itself – are there any access needs or technical barriers we should be aware of, how well informed do you feel about KiScon activities, what can we do better, etc.

We are not going to share the responses with anyone outside of the concom, and the data will only be stored until the end of the convention. 4. Pub Night Shenanigans: The last Pub Nights at the "KiScord" (KiScon Discord server) were great fun and we were excited to see/hear both new and familiar faces/voices. Some of us opted for joining the chat with video (in T'Lara's experience this makes following the conversation much easier), and some with audio only – either is fine during Pub Night. One of our games resulted in a K/S Mixtape that you can enjoy on Spotify; listen to the songs that are quintessentially Kirk/Spock for our Pub Night members. The playlist will hopefully grow in the future. Another game led us through the alphabet, this time on the hunt for tropes / tags. A big thank-you to Lillian for compiling the tropes and creating the playlist!

(You can download a high-res pic of the trope cloud here, for easier zooming and trope exploring.)

The next Pub Nights are on: 17 September, 3 p.m. EDT 1 October, 5 p.m. EDT 15 October, 3 p.m. EDT 29 October, 5 p.m. EDT

For the October sessions, leading up to the convention, we will dedicate a part of each gathering for addressing technical questions. We'll happily explain how to use Conline, Discord, and Zoom. If you feel uneasy about the virtual framework of this year's KiScon, here's your chance to get familiar with all the tools and platforms, and Ask All The Questions. Apart from these dates, you can always reach out to us if you need more assistance (1lostone @ kiscon . org and lillian @ kiscon . org).

5. Cosplay:

Put on your awesome costumes or uniforms for our virtual Saturday night banquet and win a prize. You can take part in the cosplay competition by either showing off your costume via Zoom during the banquet or, if you are more comfortable with this, by posting your cosplay pics (recent ones, please, not from past conventions) to the dedicated Discord channel on Friday or Saturday during the convention. This channel will only be open to registered attendees.

Cosplay is also encouraged all weekend long, for any of the panels and activities; even if each one of us attends the con while sitting in our living rooms, let's do it in Trek style. Or show off your fabulous K/S and Trek tees during our Zoom sessions.

6. Where to find information & announcements:

Official website KiScon Discord server Tumblr blog Twitter Conline Facebook Group Dreamwidth

If you signed up for the newsletter only recently and want to read the issues you missed (there's plenty of useful information in them), you can find the links to  the past newsletters on our website in the FAQ section.

7. Last but not least, a reminder: Sign-ups for Kirk/Spock Advent Calendar 2022 are open, and so is the creation period!

(art by Page of Wands) See all the details regarding schedule, how-to, rules here: K/S Advent Dreamwidth K/S Advent Tumblr AO3 Collection Profile for K/S Advent 2022 Signups will stay open until Friday, 30 Sep 2022, 11:59AM UTC. Let's submit All The Prompts! Also, the AO3 collection is already open for posting, should you want to get your work in early (it will stay unrevealed and in the approval queue until 1 Dec, though). You do not need to post a prompt in order to claim one, and you can also post works that are not based on a prompt. Deadline for posting is Sunday, 20 Nov 2022, 11:59AM UTC. Please see the fest's FAQs and rules for more details.  Yours in K/S,

Mmmmm. Cake.

A beautiful K/S-themed cake has long been a staple of KiScon throughout the years. We would like to carry on with this tradition even in the digital setting and invite everyone to take part in our cake contest. While we won't be able to taste the sweet creations, we'll be able to enjoy them in a visual way. Be it a big cake with buttercream drawings, or adorned with marzipan figures or peens, be it a K/S action figure variation of the infamous Barbie cake, or be it cake's little cousin, the cupcake, go wild and surprise us! We will present the creations in a virtual gallery (recipes/explanations of symbolism etc. and – of course – photos) and KiScon attendees will vote for their favourites. Photo toppers are allowed, but we ask you not to use other people's fanart without asking the artist first. You can create your K/S (cup)cake anytime before the con, but we need to have your recipe/photos submission no later than November 1st, 2022: [email protected]

2015 winner:

Ahhh! We are almost there! (a little more than 26 hours from the time of this message...)

Any attendees- please make sure to check the email you used to register on Conline for your Conbook. This is the 62-page book that has allll the information- answers to technical questions, the auction and dealer information and most importantly, the panel schedule!

Attendees should have updated Zoom and Discord. If you need any assistance please reach out here or @1lostone on our KiScord.

WE ARE ALSO STILL ACCEPTING CAKE CONTEST SUBMISSIONS! Please don't let this KiScon tradition go uh... flat. You can still whip something up and submit it up to the beginning of the con. They can be as serious or as ridiculous as you can manage! You don't even have to bake it- feel free to buy one and decorate it with your favorite K/S shennanigans!

Dear K/S friends,

Greetings! How is it May already? We hope you got well through the various April holidays. It's high time for our second progress report! Some of the following might be “old news” for you, but we think it is important to repeat details about registration & Discord. 1. Registration: You can sign up for our virtual KiScon 2022 directly on Conline. Please note that we handle all registrations through this framework this year. Registration is a 2-step process: 1) click “Join” to enter the KiScon area on Conline, then 2) click “Registration” to sign up for our 2022 convention. For a detailed explanation with screenshots, you can reach out to us! We recommend that you use a fannish name for your Conline profile, ideally your badge name (if you usually put both your real name and your fannish name on convention badges, only use the fannish part). 2. KiScon Discord (“KiScord”): You can join our KiScon Discord server by following this invite link. To make things a bit easier for the con staff, we’d appreciate if you could add your badge name also to your Discord profile name so that we know who is who. :-) For the convention weekend, there will be special channels for activities and chat, exclusive to con attendees. We will also create "Starfleet Academy" channels a week before the con, for training and practice, so that members can get used to the virtual setting and try out things. You can, of course, just take part in the convention by joining the panels in the Zoom sessions, but we strongly encourage you to also join the Discord server; it provides another layer of discussion and socialising during the con, and it will be the quickest way for you to get technical support if needed; some activities and games will require Discord. As always with all things computer and internet, we are very happy to help you if you have questions or encounter problems. We want to make this experience of a virtual KiScon as pleasant and smooth as possible for you. You can email me directly for help (1lostone @ kiscon.org) or feel free to send me an ask here or at my personal tumblr. There will be a Pub Night on the KiScord on Saturday, May 28th, 5:00 p.m. EDT (what time is that for me?) Join us for chat and games! This is also a good opportunity to get more familiar with Discord.  3. KiScon Fanvid Shows: send us your submissions! There will be three vid shows at KiScon 2022: Classics, Premieres/Competition, and our famous Disco Show on Saturday. To make these shows as awesome as possible, we ask you to send in your vids, please! Whether you are an old-skool vidder or a newcomer, queen of angsty vids or king of crack, seasoned scholar of K/S eye-sex studies, or master of plot transformations — we’d love to feature your works at the KiScon vid shows! We are looking for:

Premieres of all genres: these are vids that have not been published on the Internet or distributed on DVDs/tapes yet (we are lenient if the vid has been shown at a convention in the past, as long as it is not available anywhere). Vids created in or after 2020 (and unpublished) are eligible for our competition.

Classics of all genres: vids that showcase the history and rich variety of K/S and Star Trek vidding from the late 1970s to the 2010s

Fun & danceable song vids for our Disco Night & Sing-a-Long: exactly what it says on the tin – upbeat vids suitable for singing along and dancing the night away! 

Submission guidelines:

Star Trek TOS, TAS, movies, reboot are all welcome! However, we strive to keep the balance between TOS and reboot – we reserve the right to shift around vids between classics and disco tribs, if necessary. The focus should be on Kirk/Spock; we will accept a limited number of gen vids, though (but no other pairings).

Length limit per vid: 5 minutes.

Submissions of up to three vids per vidder permitted. A team counts as a person of its own.

Attending membership is not required, but if you grace us with your online presence at the convention, be prepared to get a virtual room full of adoration.

For the competition: There are two categories, drama (angst, serious topics, death, H/C) and humour (anything angst-free, happy and upbeat). Each vidder can send in one vid per category for the competition. (You can still submit more vids to the shows, though!) The attending members of KiScon will vote after the show and determine the winners, who will be featured on the KiScon blog and recced all over the ’net.

There is also going to be a download link with the vid shows after the con, as a goodie for attending and supporting members. Let us know if you’re fine with your vids being included in it.

Please submit your vid as high-resolution and high-quality as possible, and use reasonably common and reliable formats (e.g. .mp4, .mov, .avi – please spare us the pain of .flv or .wmv files). We want your work to look fabulous. For more details and technical instructions, please get in touch with T'Lara: larissa @ kiscon . org

Please register your vids as soon as possible by letting us know what you plan to send in (vidder name, title, song, genre, universe, length), either via the form on the KiScon website or send a message to T'Lara! Deadline for actual vid submission (preferably by Dropbox or similar download link): October 10th, 2022. We are looking forward to seeing your contributions!

4. KiScon Goodie Bag: Our traditional con bag will be entirely digital this year! Sadly, this means no chocolates (insert stoically sad Vulcans here)! But while you will, of course, get a .pdf file of the con zine, a .pdf file of the program booklet, and a download link for the vids, we will also include various other digital treats for you. Usually there are also goodies donated by con attendees or supporting members in the bags, e.g. stickers, sweets, flyers, bracelets etc., and we would be happy if members continued this tradition also in the virtual space. Anything that can be downloaded and shared digitally is game! Want to make a podfic or filk or mixtape for the con bag? Have some cool Trek crochet or sewing patterns that you would like to share? An awesome desktop wallpaper or digital stickers/badges that members can then use on their social media? Maybe a cool recipe for K/S cookies or a lovely manip?  The only restriction is that goodies need to be fannish in a transformative way, that means e.g. no video files of Trek eps, no audiobooks of pro novels, and no unaltered screenshots or officially released images. When in doubt, just ask us.  You can also send in digital flyers for your fannish projects, but these can also be included in the program booklet — which brings us to the next point… 5. KiScon Program Booklet:

The program booklet or “con book” not only provides all members with the schedule and a detailed overview of all the activities during KiScon, but will also include a section on dealers and year-round fannish spaces, much like a directory. If you would like us to include  links to your zine project, fannish event, fic fest, Trek podcast etc., please get in touch with us. This booklet will be compiled fairly close to the convention to reflect updates and changes in the schedule, but we’d appreciate if you sent in your submissions until October 1st, 2022.  Members who have a dealer ticket will get a more detailed listing. Please let us know how you would like to be presented in the booklet (for example: a list of all your available zines, announcements of new issues and calls for zine submissions). 6. Where to find information & announcements: Official website KiScon Discord server Tumblr blog Twitter Conline Facebook Group Dreamwidth 7. Last but not least, a signal boost: T'hy'la Bang (completed) & Sunflower Auction (ongoing) For your K/S delight, please check out the awesome fic and art from the T'hy'la Bang 2022: AO3 collection, masterlist. There's such a cornupia of talent in our fandom! <3 We'd also like to make you aware of Sunflower Auction, a multi-fandom charity project for Ukraine. Creator sign-ups are open until May 10, 2022, 23:59 UTC. Several fans from the Trek and K/S community have already signed up. Yours in K/S,

T’Lara and Judy