Welcome to Thousand Roads' sixth annual review blitz, our biggest feedback event and your opportunity to catch up with the fics you've spent the past year meaning to read. If you've participated in a review blitz before, you should find this one familiar! If this is your first blitz, take a look at "Getting Started" and the FAQ, then refer back to this thread if you need to find something specific--no need to absorb everything at once!
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread! To discuss the event in general, give or request fic recs, or otherwise chat with other participants, please use the general chat and hype thread! To redeem your points for prizes, please visit the prize claim thread instead (note: prize claim will open at the beginning of the event!). And if you'd like to get the word out about your stories and arrange review exchanges with people, the self-promotion thread is there for you!
Getting Started
If you're new to Review Blitz, it might seem overwhelming--things are certainly busy during the event. At its heart, though, Blitz is pretty simple. Here's how to approach it:
1. Set up your account in the Thousand Roads Companion app. This is the web site we'll be using to track reviews through this year's Review Blitz. Visit the registration page to create an account in the companion, then follow the instructions to link the account with your forum identity. Once this is done, you're good to go for the event.
2. Read and leave a review for a story on Thousand Roads. Any story posted to the Thousand Roads forums will do! Your review should be at least 250 words long and abide by any feedback guidelines provided by the author, but other than that, any kind of review is fine! If you have trouble thinking of what sort of feedback the author might appreciate, you can find tips and potential prompts here.
Not sure what you'd like to read? We have an index of stories posted to the forums with summaries, tags, and information on completeness, as well as a number of threads for recommendations, such as the Master's Eight or Seven-Day Fic Challenge. The self-promo thread is a great way to get a taste of what fics are out there, as well as arrange a review exchange with their authors. Feel free to ask for recs in the general chat thread, too!
Note that there are some stories where the author has posted some chapters to Thousand Roads but has yet to bring over everything published so far. You can still review chapters published on other sites for points so long as at least some of the story is posted on Thousand Roads. Your review should be posted to the forums, although you can also crosspost it elsewhere if you'd like.
3. Log your review. Visit the review submission page of the companion app and enter the link for your review. You can get the link either by clicking on the number that appears at the upper right corner of your review and copying the url of the page it takes you to or by clicking the share link at the upper right corner of your review and copying the URL from the box that appears. Then enter the number of chapters you covered with your review. (If you reviewd a one-shot, the number of chapters is one!)
If your review qualifies for the weekly theme (see the Scoring section below for more information), you can check the box for the weekly theme, and if you reviewed a long one-shot or chapter (6500 words or more), you can enter a link for as many of those chapters as apply for your review.
Once you hit submit, your review will be sent to the approval queue for one of our Blitz volunteers to look at. As long as everything looks correct, your review will be approved, and you'll earn points!
4. Get prizes! Check out the prize claim thread for information about all the different prizes you can redeem your points for, as well as how to do so! You don't need to write many reviews to earn a prize; if you can write 3-5 reviews in a month, you'll probably be able to pick something up for yourself, and the more reviews you can manage, the bigger you can win.
After that, repeat steps 2-4 as often as you'd like! If the thrill of competition motivates you to spread more reviews around, you can try to hit the top of the leaderboard and claim the biggest prizes. If you want to take a more relaxed approach, that's more than welcome, too--even one review written for the event is one more than would have existed otherwise, and one more author happy to have gotten feedback on their work!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What fics can I review for points during Blitz?
A: Any fic on Thousand Roads during Blitz is eligible, with the exception of fics that the author has requested be ineligible for Blitz. You can find a list of those fics below in the "Scoring" section. In addition, late reviews for Catnip or other forum review events cannot be logged for points; reviews for exquisite corpses are also ineligible.
Q: How does scoring work for fics that are partially on Thousand Roads but have more chapters available on other sites?
A: As long as a fic is partially posted on TR, you can review it for Blitz, including chapters not yet posted on TR. Keep in mind that in order to count for Blitz, the review itself must be posted on TR in that story’s thread.
Q: Can I review drabble collections? How does that work for scoring?
A: Any story with multiple sections (multiple chapters, drabbles, etc.) where the average number of words per section is less than 250 is worth one point. Your review must cover at least 250 words of material to count for points.
Q: What about a single drabble? How many points is that worth?
A: To be eligible for any points in Review Blitz, a review must cover at least 250 words of material. Therefore a review on a drabble or single chapter less than 250 words long is not worth any points.
Q: How do one-shot anthologies work in terms of scoring?
A: Any story with multiple sections (multiple chapters, one-shots, etc.) where the average number of words per section is greater than or equal to 250 is scored as though it were a chaptered fic, with each section (in this case, one-shot) counting as a chapter.
Q: Can I participate even if I don't have a story posted on the forums?
A: Of course! This is a reviewing event, and you can review and win prizes regardless of whether you have stories up on Thousand Roads.
Q: How many times can I claim the weekly bonus?
A: You can claim a specific weekly bonus once per fic. If, for example, a fic qualifies for two different weekly bonuses, you can claim the bonus for the fic once in both of those weeks, for a total of two times. The exception is week 2, where you can instead claim the theme bonus for each chapter reviewed of a fic, any number of times, rather than only once per fic.
Q: If I post my story after Blitz is started can people still review it for Blitz?
A: Definitely!
Q: Are reviews on April Fool's Day chapters eligible for points during Blitz?
A: Reviews on April Fool's Day or joke chapters count as normal reviews for the purpose of Blitz, unless the author has excluded that chapter from Blitz via opting-out. Previous reviews on April Fool's Day chapters also qualify as reviews for the purpose of weekly themes (i.e. "an author you haven't reviewed before").
Q: How do offsite reviews factor into Week 1 theme eligibility (review an author that you haven't reviewed before)?
A: For the purposes of the Week 1 theme, only reviews on Thousand Roads count--so if you have previously reviewed an author's work on another fanfic site(s), but have never reviewed them on Thousand Roads, you can still claim the bonus for reviewing their work here!
Q: How do offsite reviews factor into Week 2 theme eligibility (review a story that you've reviewed before)?
A: For the purposes of the Week 2 theme, only reviews on Thousand Roads count--so if you have previously reviewed an author's work on another fanfic site(s), but have never reviewed them on Thousand Roads, you cannot claim the theme bonus for the first chapter of that story that you review in Week 2. However, if you review more than one chapter of that story during this week, you can claim the theme bonus for the second chapter you review as well as all subsequent chapters reviewed during that week.
Q: How does the Week 2 theme bonus work with multi-chapter reviews of stories I haven't reviewed before?
A: During Week 2, you can claim the theme bonus for each chapter of a story you've reviewed before, including during this week. Therefore, if you post a three-chapter review of a fic you've never reviewed before, it will be worth 4 points (1 point for the first chapter with no theme bonus, 1.5 points for the next two chapters, including the theme bonus).
Q: How do contest reviews factor into Week 1 theme eligibility (review an author that you haven't reviewed before)?
A: If you judged a contest on Thousand Roads and wrote a review for a fic as part of it, then you're counted as having reviewed that story on Thousand Roads, so you should not claim the Week 1 theme bonus for any further stories you review by that author.
Q: Can I re-review chapters that I've already reviewed before, but that have undergone significant edits or that I've had new thoughts on?
A: Yes. If you can write a new review that still meets all other Blitz review requirements and isn't repeating your old review, it would be eligible for new points. Bear in mind that this will be up to organizer discretion.
Blitz Scoring
The heart of Review Blitz scoring is simple: one point for story or part of a story (one-shot, chapter in a fic, collection of drabbles, etc.), as long as that piece of story and your review are 250 words or longer. For reviews covering more than one section, the point value is either the number of section reviewed or the number of words of the review/250, whichever is lower. (Review length is determined automatically by the Thousandroads Companion app.) However, there are a number of ways to earn bonuses if you'd like to spice things up a bit:
- For every three chapters of a story that you review, you receive one bonus point! Get caught up on a longfic you've fallen behind on, and you could find yourself with a big bonus to your score. Keep in mind that this is subject to the constraints of the point calculation formula. So a 500 word review covering three sections of a story will not net you a bonus point, because the formula only counts that as a review of two sections. However, if you reviewed again with a 250 word review, you would receive your bonus point for having reviewed three sections.
- Each section you review that's 6500 words or longer is eligible for one quarter of a bonus point! Get rewarded for that extra time spent reading.
- 🔥🔥 NEW in 2024: Turn up the heat! 🔥🔥 People who've been reviewing up a storm will accrue a heat bonus that makes it more valuable to leave reviews for them in turn! The heat bonus for an author is equal to
(# of chapters reviewed + 1)/(# of chapters they've received reviews for + 1) - 1. Sound complicated? Don't worry! The Leaderboard will keep track of who's on a hot streak and highlight them, along with displaying their current heat bonus. The basic idea is that authors who've been doing a lot of reviewing but haven't gotten as many reviews in return are worth a lot of bonus points! The heat bonus is rounded down to the nearest half point and capped at one for authors who've reviewed fewer than five chapters, two for authors who've reviewed fewer than twenty chapters, and three for all others. You receive it once per author the first time you review the author and they have a heat bonus > 0.- Finally, Review Blitz has four weekly themes that award an additional one half point for qualifying stories during the week that they apply. These can each be claimed once per fic per theme. This year's themes are as follows:
- New Faces! Review an author you haven't reviewed before. If you've reviewed them on a site other than TR, but not on TR itself, they still count for this bonus! (Week 1 starts when Blitz does!)
- Catch-up sprint! Review a story you've reviewed before. For this week only, you can claim the theme bonus once per chapter of a fic, rather than only once per fic, and the usual repeat chapter bonus does not apply. (countdown to Week 2 start)
- Short 'n' Sweet! Review a one-shot. (countdown to Week 3 start)
- Spread the love! Review a fic that's been reviewed at most twice this Blitz. (Any fic with two or fewer Blitz reviews at the start of week four qualifies.) (countdown to Week 4 start)
Please also note that authors may choose to opt their stories out of Review Blitz. If you review that fic during Blitz anyway, you won't receive any points for it. The list of exempted fics is below:
Have More Questions?
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread or ping the Blitz Questions role on our Discord server! You can also send a message to @Dragonfree, @kyeugh, @icomeanon6, @lisianthus, @Mirage, or @Negrek!
I'd also like to thank everyone who's volunteered to help out with this year's Blitz, whether that's on the review-approval end, prize support, or even just providing recs and suggestions for improving the event! I'd also like go give a special shout-out to @Dragonfree, @icomeanon6, and @kyeugh for helping maintain and enhance our web app for this year's event. Thanks for all your hard work!
And of course, this wouldn't be much of an event without all the people who dedicate their time and effort to reading fics and leaving comments for their authors. Let's have a great Blitz, everyone!
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