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The thread to be used to post your storygames/discuss them. As a reminder, the storygame is technically due at 9am EST on June 1st, so as of now there's still about 11 hours left. Here are the entrants:

Contestants

Cat2002116

Chris113022

Cricket [Former Mystery Contestant D]

Curtain64

Digit

EbonVasilis

ericyopy

Fluxion

Leora [Former Mystery Contestant C]

Mizal

MrAce

Orange

QingBo [Former Mystery Contestant A]

SpartacustheGreat

WouldntItBeNice [Former Mystery Contestant B]

If you're on the list, please post a link to your storygame. We'll likely judge until the end of next weekend, (so till about June 11th), but it's possible we'll be finished judging by the end of this weekend.

Reposting initial thread post just cause.

Killa's Spring Thing Contest!

Theme: Bring me to Tears - Life can't be all sunshine and rainbows

Format: CYOA

Deadline for entering: April 1st at 12:01am EST

Deadline for submission: June 1st at 9am EST (In case someone feels like working in the wee hours of the morning)

Focus:

As you may have expected, the focus of this contest is to produce something that makes people get the feels. The lower end of this scale would just be to make some characters have a real sad backstory, or to kill off poor Timmy the orphan. But you're all better than that. The better way to approach this would be to have tragic or bittersweet endings, however the tears don't have to be tethered to the ending.

The most important objective here is to make the reader sympathetic to your characters, as that's the only real way they'll care enough about them to possibly feel for them.

The genre doesn't matter, although for obvious reasons Romance is the easiest target.

Entry Requirements & Prizes:

You can post in this thread your intent, or you can PM me if you're shy. Keep in mind you will still be publicly flogged if you fail to complete a story. The PM option just allows for some surprises.

The entry fee is 100 points.

All those that submit a valid entry will get the fee back, plus 10 points for trying.

1st Place Winner will get an additionally 100 points for winning the contest, no trophy because I'm the poor admin, a Commendation, and a Featured Story if it's good enough to merit featuring.

2nd Place Winner will get an additionally 50 points and a possible Commendation, if it's good enough to merit one.

3rd Place Winner will get an additionally 25 points and a possible Commendation, if it's good enough to merit one.

If you do not submit a contest story which meets minimum contest standards by the deadline, you will not receive any rewards or points back.

And just for kicks, you'll get a bonus 25 points if you somehow manage to make a story where the reader cries due to happiness, rather than sadness.

* See EndMaster for rules regarding your service to him if your entry sends you into negative points.

* Stories that cannot meet minimum site standards count the same as a non entry and get SHAME.

* One entry fee/bet per site member. No alternate accounts.

Judging:

The judging panel will consist of Moderators/Administrators and selected highly esteemed community members that do not wish to enter.

How many judges are there going to be?

Edit: Whoops, wrong post!

Contestant Entries

Cat2002116's Entry: NOTHING

Chris113022's Entry: Last Days

Cricket's Entry: Ineptitude

Curtain64's Entry: NOTHING

Digit's Entry: NOTHING

EbonVasilis's Entry: NOTHING

ericyopy's Entry: Vindicta

Fluxion's Entry: The Cottage

Leora's Entry: I Can Hear You

Mizal's Entry: Ancient Heart

MrAce's Entry: NOTHING

Orange's Entry: The Cliff

QingBo's Entry: NOTHING

SpartacustheGreat's Entry: Lone Star

WouldntItBeNice's Entry: Neon Genesis Evangelion

On mobile so no (EDIT: THERE IS NOW) fancy clicky link: chooseyourstory.com/story/last-days

Thanks for posting that for me. Btw for the record I was first so any bonuses, well... ;) hehe, kidding. Really disappointed I didn’t get to use the code you and others helped me with. Just ran out of time on that storygame. But it will show up eventually.

My story has been published. Here is the link.

Weeb.

Weeb.

This is not the story I intended to write, but it is a story.

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/ineptitude

Fuck everything.

Had more planned obviously including fratricide and four more flavors of sadness, but about to leave for work now so you guys get what you get.

Really wish we could've had Friday night to work on these.

Honestly, you guys had way too much fucking time as it is.

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/the-cliff

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/lone-star

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/vindicta

I didn't realize how long it would take to type and copy/paste on a phone. However I got it done even in a slightly unfinished form. Tried something different, at first i was going for sci-fi then decided to just stick to history. Guess I might be the one of the last, last minute contestants.

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/i-can-hear-you

Everything is finalized. For some reason it keeps telling me that the story isn't old enough, even though I know there are others who did theirs within the last couple of days. I set it to sneak preview, but does anyone know how to get past this error?

EDIT: I was informed that the wait time for stories to be published was increased to 2 days. I will be able to publish later today if that still counts. I think everyone can still access the story since it is set to preview.

View post on imgur.com

I don't know. People aren't being very merciful. There's still time to take End's offer. *shrugs* I didn't even know about that limit. Why is it there? I suppose to prevent truly shit tier stories from being published.

Apparently some noob was trying to post stories every day or something. The wait time used to be a lot shorter than that.

I've heard of people wagering their accounts on these contests, so stranger things have happened. Maybe you can make some sort of deal with the Devil for a personal extension due to you not being aware of this wait time, so long as your story is actually finished?

If the word count is still 19360 when published then that's proof it was finished at this time and has gone unedited.

There's no wager even allowed in this contest. The story's finished, I'm not looking for an extension. It just won't let me publish it. Also, can you please stop replying so fast, I've been trying to edit a working link to my story into the last 2 posts and both have been blocked by replies XD

Here it is.

I distinctly remember there being flash contests where people were given something like 4 hours to make a storygame and publish and everything was fine. Some badmin changed it to 2 days.

My World History 101 professor did that for our final exam. We got into class knowing there would be an essay to write as the final exam, but not the topic. So we get there, and his topic was this: "What is the meaning of life?" We were given an hour and a half to use examples from history to give an answer to that absurd question.

I believe a couple of asshats just wrote "42," but that was a fun experience. If I remember correctly, my answer was something along the lines of cycles, cause and effect, action, and reaction, and tied together everything from Newton's laws to the physical features and climate of the land of a given early civilization influencing their deities. I think I finished by noting that the universe tends to favor symmetry, and noted the similarities between the shapes of a spiral galaxy, a whirlpool, and the yin/yang symbol. Got an A+.

The universe tends to favor symmetry more than you could imagine. Search around for Emmy Noether and her breakthroughs in theoretical physics and mathematics to the theory of symmetry.

Over a year ago dumbass and it's been mentioned in several of these threads including conversations you were directly a part of. Chaos thread for one specific example I remember immediately. (You remember the Chaos contest, right Ford? Oh..I'm shirt, I mean Ford's robot host...)

Anyway absolutely called this and am now laughing my ass off as planned even though it will probably be fine. Leora, just don't edit anything while it's still unpublished or you're trash.

E: bit it's OK because you have your terrible memory and lack of ever publishing a real story as an excuse, no one is blaming you

Oh yes, forgot about End's offer. Suppose that can be a consolation prize if Killa disqualifies yours.

Nope, that offer is gone. Should have taken it when she had the chance.

I never had any intention of taking that offer, and I certainly haven't given up.

Believe it’s 3 day wait period.

48hrs on the dot; just checked.

The error message says 2. It says I can publish it at 2pm today. The stupid thing is, I actually made it a couple of days ago, it's not like I just generated it 3 hours before the deadline or something. I just wish I'd known.

Well it's up to Killa if he wants to accept your story or not.

Until that confirmation, you'll be in the SHAME pit until further notice.

I completely understand if that is the case. It's my fault for not knowing the site rules, although this is my first published story and I don't recall seeing that rule in any of the articles. If it is there, that's definitely my bad. If not, I feel like that should be posted somewhere.

The contest template they all copy and paste should be edited to include a warning probably, so that in the future people can be disqualified without mercy.

Haven't edited a thing since linking the story here, and published it the minute the site would allow. Now I can only pray that Killa will have mercy on my poor, ignorant soul.

Yeah its fine. Ill accept it.

Well contest time is over and SHAMING time begins!

Alright, made the list of entries nicer and updated points. I'll do the 10 point completion bonuses once judging is done just in case someone entered something that can't even be considered an attempt.

Glad to see 9 of 15 people actually completed something. Though it seems like the extra time really didn't change much. Was worth a short at least.

I think the issue with a two month deadline is that it seems like such a lot of time that there's absolutely no pressure to stay working on it, so people put their stories aside awhile and then kind of forget about them. Seems like several people started off strong in the first week and then just kind of flaked out. Wibn was the only one I'd hear from who seemed to be working consistently the entire time.

Not allowing entrants to bet silly amounts of points against each other may have also been a factor...less rivalry meant less discussion and therefore less overall interest maybe?

It was probably was the time thing. Personally when given more time to do something, I tend to slack off. With a shorter time slot, it puts more pressure on everyone. Although a 9 out of 15 return rate is still pretty good.

Half of those were bashed out entirely in the last 48 hours though. We would do just as well with a one week contest at this rate.

Not for me. In my case it was me trying to bite off way more than I can chew in terms of scripting, and the site going nuclear seriously interfered with my testing of it. Some have expressed their disagreement with my desire to add such scripting, in particular the scripting relating to aesthetics, but I was trying to do a lot more than that. Still, I managed to get a back up story finished, like so many of us this contest.

Mine was a case of being attacked by sickness. It's my own fault for falling behind of course, but I was on track for the first month and a half :(

It is your fault, yes.

Thank you so much for reaffirming the thing I've said about four or five times already. I couldn't possibly take responsibility for my own actions without the Steve Seal of Approval ^_^

You're welcome. It's nice to get a second opinion and to have people back you up.

I take it we get our entry fees back once our stories have been judged?

That you do.

Finally read through all this bullshit. Sending the top 3 to Killa soon.

I gave Killa my ballot. Ranked 9th through 1st.

I thought he just wanted the top 3 right? I added a fourth place, but didn't bother with the rest.

He said he'd take note of comments if I had any to give feedback or something. So I just ranked everyone and gave a short summary of why they got what they got.

So how many judges still need to get their votes in?

Although honestly I was half expecting this whole thing to be shut down with all contestants disqualified and SHAMED by Friday night.

Berka and I are still judging, so half are done.

I should be done tonight, but more likely to submit results tomorrow.

With the extra time the judging is taking, I actually went back and read through the stories and decided I was probably a lot more generous with the ratings than I should have been.

As a result, I lowered my rating by 1 for everyone, except one of you since it's impossible to give out a zero.

Don't worry though, this didn't change any of the top 3 of course.

Honestly, per the quality and having two months to work on them, the winner doesn’t deserve the full point reward. Points back and 5 extra for achievement unlocked: Setting the bar just high enough to trip a dwarf.

Really we should just not mention this contest ever again and try to forget it happened.

How dare you drag my ratings down!!! I deserve praise for the 22hours of work I put into that thing! And it's my first game, so I deserve special treatment!!!

(I'm joking, for any noobs out there who can't tell. Don't expect special treatment on your first storygame. It won't happen.) In all honesty, I'll just be happy to see the judges' feedback on my writing.I know I could have done much better than my last-minute entry, but hopefully the critiques will help me to improve as a writer. And I want those points back... it'll put me at 500.