The bean, it must be found. For MHD's Fairytales contest.

I have no idea why I wrote this. All I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the ti--wait no that's a lie, I said, repeatedly that this was stupid and shameful every time I mentioned working on it.

The truth is I needed to publish something before the end of the year and there is CLEARLY a burning need for wolf stories in the psyche of children using the internet. But then they write them badly, or make their wolves behave like clans of cats. So here is a simple straightfoward story of a young wolf leaving his pack in search of a better life. Maybe no one will ever feel the need to write another one now, or if nothing else maybe this will give them ideas for how to do it in slightly more minimum-standards-meeting ways.

Final conclusion however is that writing about some dumb animal with no agency is not something I'd recommend.

If you don't know what this is for, then it isn't for you.

The Dutch sure have some odd traditions. I don't know if this video will break the front page or not. It might, but that would be fitting in a way considering this is basically an SCP. One of many cursed things that scheming little goblin Darius has inflicted on my psyche over the years. width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LFSsoCWi06E?si=s8k0zI8FXdoj0_Jt" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="">

Congrats on keeping to it all year! And congrats Sherb on getting the coveted, near mythical 8.

I can't read through all of this at the moment, but here, have a comm for sparking an involved discussion. How "short" are you planning this short story to be, though? It seems like there's a lot of information to pack in with all these different judgements. Really though my immediate impression is that it's just a pretty fucked situation all around lol. I'd argue the only moral setup would be to either let everyone into Heaven and just accept that there are going to be some real shitbags in the mix, or else create some big eternal waiting area for holding souls until whenever God wanders back in to sort them all out. Both for the "judge not" reasons that Wildblue brought up since humans are in no way equipped to decide something like this without bias on an actually just basis, and because of the whole "better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent be condemned" that's the basis of Western law as well. Jury selection seems terrifyingly random too with no one being held to any standards, sounds like anyone could get screwed over over cultural difference or different beliefs in the impact of nature or nurture on personal responsibility. Or if a 9 year old's soul is up to be judged, does that mean nine people also got judged by a 9 year old? (I don't know if you've been around a 9 year old recently Briar, but they are retarded.)

Okay, Avo provided the tiebreaker. It's Story B for the win! That was a fascinating match, I really was unsure which way it was going to go, and through most of the voting period it still wasn't clear. We didn't get a huge turnout on the voting this time, but quality made up for quantity since most of you providing big chunky posts with detailed information on why you made your decision, I hope the authors will take it to heart. Congrats Liminal on the win! Wildblue, you lost a few matches ago to a funny retard, now you're losing to a furry joy creature. Maybe the lesson to take away is that you need to start including more memorable characters. (Both authors should get a commendation when they reply to this post btw, just in case I'm not around it would be NICE if someone else would do it.)