IFC Finals S2R1

Hello there! Welcome to our digital spaceship castle.

Artwork credit - @jimramones on steemit

Hello again. :)
I'm glad that it looks like some of you will join us for the finals of the IFC season 2!

At the beginning of the season we set out to explore the universe more and we did explore a bit, but also got a bit stuck for a while too and perhaps even lost at some points.
There were some great stories and awesome artwork created and unique insight shared.

A few of our significant achievements in my opinion were making some good progress on another new IFC song which still needs to be finalized and put together properly and recorded at some point.
We also got some support from one of the bigger names on the former steem now hive platform which was really cool.

And... One of the most amazing and fascinating things in my opinion was how we started to create our own new language with numerous new words being added to the dictionary and all of them are interesting.
I definitely feel like that is going to be a quest in the future seasons to keep working on over time, the implications to me are mindboggling!

I could see how in many years we could develop quite a vocabulary or "dictionary" and we could do quests which incorporate those words and it could be really quite special I think...
It also helped lead me to some other ideas about how all of this might work in a crypto sense and gave me a few really intriguing ideas.

Plus leaky20 suggested to work more on the story and also to focus on perhaps building a new world as a theme which I really vibe a lot with, apologies if the story felt a bit distant... I'm not the best creative/fantasy sort of writer, last season I had a few people helping with that who were really good at it.

Anyways... Things I've been doing in the real world will I'm very hopeful allow me to factilitate the IFC even more in the not too distant future and hopefully allow me to offer much better prizes which I believe will probably attract more players. :D

This season I tried to reach out to my audience on Facebook and had very little interest, I think because so many people don't understand the value of crypto yet... If I could offer some good cash prizes, I think things will pick up a lot around here regardless of whatever is happening with the politics of steem/hive/Facebook or any other social media we should be able to sort of... Survive on just about any social media and we can even play by email now too, so... That's really important I think.

I could see in future seasons how this could really become even more meaningful and significant and I am super excited. :) I want you to know that you're all important to me and I love you.

I hope for this IFC idea to continue on into the future for many years even after I die if everything goes really well and I'm so grateful for each season and each individual person who participates, if this game lasts many years into the future you will be some of the sort of "founding pioneers" or "historical players" and I think every single one of you are unique and awesome people in your own ways and I've loved reading/experiencing/learning from your diverse personalities and thoughtful entries. Thank you.

I would like to say that my eyes are still an issue and one of the main things we need to figure out is how to get this game running more by the players (Or if I get enough money I can hire judges full time and pay them much better, yet it would be most ideal if the players could somehow do that instead...) so I can spend less time looking at computer screen reading lots of text which strains my eyes.

If we can do that where I have to stare at the computer screen much less... And I can offer better prizes in the future... That would be epic I think! And... I will work towards that. <3

Hopefully! Enough about the future and all that though, let's get back to the task at hand as I don't want to waste your time.

I was going to try to set up who is playing who in advance, but... Around half of our players have told me they are not certain if they will play or not and it's a "maybe"...

So... I feel as if I should figure that out after, and that once all the entries have been submitted and the week is over I will officially match up the opponents sweet 16 style with the person in 1st place playing the person in last place and the person in second place playing the person in second to last place and so on so forth.

I will say however the names below of people who have said they will be available and those who have said maybe so you can sort of get an idea of who you might be playing against.

@ayushjalan 5-54-0 Maybe
@jbreheny 3-40-0 Maybe
@leaky20 2-30-0 Confirmed
@shaheerbari 2-25-0 Confirmed
@bengy 1-22-0 Confirmed
@simplymike 1-10-0 Maybe
@nmcdougal94 1-09-0 Maybe
@wholeself-in 1-09-0 Confirmed
@mistakili 1-08-0 Confirmed
@plushzilla 0-06-0 Maybe
@owietus 0-05-0 Was confirmed but now is a maybe?
@bashadow 0-02-0 Maybe

PS... I may come in here and change these as the maybe people turn into yeses or nos.

The subject of our first finals quest is.. "Synchronicity".
I started noticing synchronicities back around 2012 and I've been experiencing a lot of strong synchronicity in my life in recent times and I find it to be a fascinating subject and phenomena.

I feel like studying my dreams and their relation to my perceived reality has increased my connection and understanding with this and to some degree I think it is synchronicity that we are all here together to experience this event right now as well.

It might even be more significant than just some completely random happenstance, some people believe you meet other people for a reason and maybe there is some kind of reason we are meeting each other...?

I dunno... It's difficult to describe and I can't even fully elaborate on some of what has led to this kind of thinking, however... Some things that have happened especially in recent times really make me wonder about these kinds of things and how maybe there is something deeper going on.

But, nonetheless... Even though I don't personally really subscribe to destiny or fate it almost seems like there's some kind of spiritual destiny or fate kind of thing in regard to us all meeting here and at the very least events have happened/transpired in the world in a very specific way differently for all of us to be here right now which I think is neat and valuable in it's own right.

So... Let's explore more this idea of synchronicity and to start here is a modern definition of the word.

"syn·chro·nic·i·ty noun 1. the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection."

And here is some etymology.

"synchronic (adj.) occurring at the same time," 1775, shortening of synchronical (1650s), from Late Latin synchronus "simultaneous" (see synchronous). Linguistic sense is first recorded 1922, probably a borrowing from French synchronique (de Saussure, 1913). Synchronal "simultaneous" is from 1650s. Related: synchronically."

Your goal can once again be accomplished in virtually any manner you see fit, you could write a personal story, a short story, a scientific sort of prose explanation or do a poem or make a YouTube video or do photography or create a song or draw/paint or perhaps you could do some combination of those things or other things or just about whatever you want really, it's up to you how you create your entry as long as it's somehow related to the subject of synchronicity.

If you have any questions please try to get in touch with me on here or on discord/facebook/email, best of synchronistical luck to you all!!!

PS please give me a lil patience when the rounds are over as I don't have any judges lined up right now in advance and I'm going to have to ask around and find some, I'll do my best to be as fast as possible about it now that we are at the finals and I will try to continue tagging/communicating with everyone who is still playing in the finals into the future with the results and new rounds, etc.

We have received assistance and 165 steem from @curie and 10steem from @underground and I have confirmed that @ats-david @krnel @timcliff and @ura-soul will also be supporting us this season.

Curie, underground, ats-david, krnel, timcliff, and ura-soul are all witnesses, so if you support what we are doing here at the IFC please look into them and give them a vote for witness as well. By the way to vote for ats-david you should vote for his @ats-witness account.

Also it looks like @ecoinstar will donate 100 shares of steembasicincome to the winners, with 60 SBI going to the grand prizer winner, 25 SBI to second place and 15 SBI to third place.
And thanks to @bengy for delegating 25 steem. :)
A special thanks as well to @davemccoy and @newbiegames and @newbieresteemday who are not technically sponsors but we have worked with them in the past. Looks like newbiegames and newbieresteemday have been inactive for months though we still use their tags for the time being.

The challenge will finish after 7 days when the post ends and provides its payout cycle or when all entries have been submitted.

25% of the post payout goes to curation and after that what's left will now be split up 75% to the winner of the round and 25% to put towards building up the @ifc account.

For those who play via email.. This will be recorded and saved for you, and.. If you're unwilling to make your own steem account we will at some point be willing to convert it for you to whichever currency however.. Not for small amounts, you must earn at least 10 steem for us to take the time to do this for you.

Rules

1. Round 1 of the finals for season 2 starts now and the subject is "Synchronicity".

Create a blog post on Hive for the contest or send an email if you are playing via email.
Title of blog post or subject of email must contain, "IFC Finals S2R1"
Leave a link to your post in the comments below unless you are playing via email in which case myself or someone else will do so. (This part is important and a lot of people forget this, please put the blog link in the right place so our judges can find it)
And you also have to use the #ifc tag in your blog post as well unless you are playing via email.
You must accept that if you somehow get hurt doing any of our quests you can not reasonably hold us accountable. You must take responsibility for your own choices and actions in life. This is a voluntary game where you choose to play. Only you can make such decisions for yourself.
You are responsible for paying the appropriate government taxes, fees, and service charges resulting from any transactions with the IFC or Marketplace. We are not responsible for collecting, reporting, paying, or remitting to you any such taxes, fees, or service charges, except as may otherwise be required by law.

Acceptable content

A. A blog post or email about or related to the subject of "Synchronicity"

B. Language is primarily in English and if you would like to participate from elsewhere in the world it is up to you to translate your message into English so we can understand you.
C. Do your best to make sure everything is properly sourced.
D. We also encourage role playing for those who enjoy doing that. :)

Also we now have judges guidelines so you can see what the main judges generally look for in an entry, links to those will be below.

https://steemit.com/contest/@apolymask/my-judges-guidelines-for-the-ifc
https://steemit.com/informationfinding/@xomegax/guidlines-ifc
https://steemit.com/ifc/@charisma777/the-ifc-is-baaaack-you-won-t-want-to-miss-this-season-check-us-out
Good luck in the contest!!

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