Hello, just to quickly address this since AC is coming up this month and I don't want anyone to panic if they see this comment:

Our AC policy has always been that threads started in the last 7 days (1 week) of the previous month are submissible. It is posted on the AC hub page under "AC Directions" and on every spreadsheet.

I will address the rest in a larger comment once I am able to read through everyone's responses and get a general idea of points so everything is consolidated, but I wanted to specify that that has always been the policy.