GRIMDARK FANTASY CONTEST
Deadline is 11:59 PM (EST) January 31, 2021
Reward: You’ll get potential pointless points, potential commendations and potentially featured if you’re not totally incompetent.
So the new Dark Fantasy category needs some fattening up and this contest is an organized way to go about doing it because we’re lawful evil around here.
All you lot have to do is write a dark fantasy story. If you’re having trouble with what that entails exactly, well there’s some stories already in that section you can read for inspiration, though I’d just recommend the currently featured ones for the best examples.
The main thing to remember is you shouldn’t really have a Tolkien like set up with traditional good vs. evil. Even the “good guys” are going to have major flaws. (Gandalf’s an opium addict, Aragon’s grabbing elf pussies, Legolas is a tranny, etc)
Basically anti-heroes, villain protagonists, thicc dark elf women, grey and black morality, lack of real good people, a world ranging from ultra cynicism to outright nihilism is the order of things and everything is horrible.
This doesn’t mean you can’t still have good endings of course, but it’s probably coming at some sort of cost.
Also remember to keep it fantasy. Looking for The Witcher not WH40K.
Still, this doesn’t automatically limit you to a “medieval” setting. Besides setting it even further back technologically speaking (Ancient world, stone age, etc) you could very well go as far ahead as steampunk. I wouldn’t really go further than that tech level since then you start getting into urban fiction territory.
While this wouldn’t be completely unacceptable if you approached it right, the problem with urban fantasy is a lot of it starts going more into the modern horror territory and/or faggy vampire romance and nobody wants that.
And yes, while all this is appealing to your inner edgelord, don’t write a graphic RAEP scene on every fucking page. We still need an actual story you degenerate. We’ll care more about who is performing the aggressive breeding strategy if you take the time to create a plot.
In any case you've got plenty of time to do something decent, so it should be a simple enough task even for you. Remember to post a link to your story here when you're done.
Good luck.
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate darker and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dread.
Sure.
Locked.
I'm getting the vibe that I just got voluntold into this contest...
Welp, time to start writing.
I'd love to participate! I'm usually more of a sci-fi guy, but always down to branch out.
@Starbourne good attitude
Somewhere down the way you pissed off most of the CYS Pantheon. You’ve been cursed and marked for death.
Basically you climbed that mountain peak in your copper armor during a lightning storm and raised your sword high in the air and shouted to the heavens “THE GODS ARE ALL BASTARDS!”
Ironically, the only important one who you didn’t piss off was me, so I’m eager to see if you funnel all that negativity and write a good dark fantasy story. It's the perfect genre to do it for.
Now is the time to decide whether you’re truly “Star Born” and absorb the inevitable lightning strike and come out stronger for it, earning a place in the halls of the honored where you will live forever
OR
You fail miserably and your burned body tumbles down the mountain side hitting every rock cliff along the way until you’re already an unrecognizable hunk of charred bloody flesh by the time it smashes into the ground where upon it is feasted on by an inbred scavenger family.
The choice is yours!
Contestants So Far
enterpride
Northwind
poison_mara
WouldntItBeNice
hetero_malk
PerforatedPenguin
ninjapitka
Mardox
I should wait til after my exams to do this, but put me in for everything I got.
I'll give it a go. Might as well try to get out of the Pit of Shame.
Locked
Ah, okay. Thanks for letting me know!
Tempting. Might have an idea if I can get the hang of the more advanced game mechanics in storygame. Edit: On second thought I'll just stick with the writing aspects since I've never touched the advanced editor. Challenge accepted.
L O C K E D
Wannabe_Human
Starbourne
fluttershypegasus
Chris113022
jster02
corgi213
smalllovebirb
clockman
Mizal
I would like to enter the contest.
Great.
Keep in mind that you can write about all the grimdark pegacorns you want, but if it's MLP then it would still be classified as fanfic, not Dark Fantasy.
And on a side note, it took her awhile, but I see Mizal has finally figured out a way to troll me back for all the times I did it to her.
I won't forget this.
Funnily enough I did have a My Little Pony choose-your-own story planned out a few months ago that was definitely veering into that terroitory. I could quite easily take the plan for that and turn the "grim dark" dials up a bit.
The story had entirely original characters anyway so I should still be able use the story by switching out all the overt references to the series. Though I'd definitely like to write a proper MLP fanfic on another occasion.
76%! Beat that, fuckers.
67% :(
I'm honestly not a huge Grimdark fan, my inner Edgelord is virtually nonexistent at this point. Anything I wrote would still probably have some measure of hope to it, maybe even a good ending or two, despite the dark setting. If that's okay, I might still consider joining, but I'm still on the fence
Oh fuck
Guess I don't have a choice now. Thanks for the clarification, that does help somewhat. Now I've just gotta figure out what the heck I'm going to write about.
Joining
Locked...heheh
Good luck, honorable birb
Metal
TheChef
Fluxion
BANNED AND SHAMED so far
DrDre (And multiple alts)
I would like to give it a try.
locked
Jokes on everyone, I'm not reading shit and picking a winner based on who annoys me the least.
I'm in.
Lol
When you finish your story where are you supposed to post it?
Ok thanks.
Make sure it is fully published prior to the deadline. Sneak peek doesn't cut it.
fluttershypegasus - DONE
TheCanary
Garrison_Bell
LuvLee
I'm in!
If I do a dark version of a fairy tale, is it dark fantasy or fan fiction? Either way, count me in. I want to join the dark side!!!
And the bronie faggot is the first across the line with a story because of course they were.
What all this means now is even more SHAME for the rest of you if you fail to turn something in.
I've got like, a few thousand.
Naturally, I was compelled to also jump off the ledge and plummet to my second-death, whereupon I was reborn, and climbed to the top to somersault over the edge again, like everyone else.
I think this was a coordinated effort to get noobs to kill themselves, but for me it was just fun to jump to my doom over and over again.
Side note: it's amusing to see what are apparently supposed be ghosts running to the top of the stairs and committing suicide by ledge jumping. Or just doing forward rolls all over the ground over and over again. One guy actually did forward rolls all the way up the stairs, and then forward rolled over the ledge.
Also I think I'll put this in my storygame.
Finished reading the brony story and so far he's in the lead.
Good work folks.
I will give it a crack. sign me up.
Going to reach 14k tonight. How's everyone's word count coming along
They're "Fuck you" aren't they?
it's a list of every woman who ever rejected me and then just "they will pay" repeated
16k words reached
That's a lot of women...
17k words reached
21k words. I may have to cut back to something more reasonable now that my second semester is starting, but I expect to finish by this weekend.
about 4K so far...
delay it til tomorrow so my head start is an even 20k words
PerforatedPenguin - DONE
ninjapitka - DONE
Mystic_Warrior
AmritaB
I initially wasn't planning to join this contest due to my lack of ideas and wanting to take a short break from writing during the holidays. However, after being hit by inspiration a few days ago, I was unable to stop myself from creating a storygame which happened to fit the genre of this contest. While there may only be less than a week to write, I am slightly encouraged by the fact that some people have not written much either, so I will officially announce my intent to join the dark fantasy contest. My storygame would be a lot shorter than Breaker and Dreamtruder, but I certainly hope it would be good enough for this contest.
Deadline extended to the 31st.
I said it in the Discord, but only on CYS would people complain about getting more time to finish/polish up their contest story.
If you've already finished and can't think of anything else to add, then just submit it now and be done with it. Ninja for example always turns his stories in early anyway and gets in the high rankings.
I liked it better when you said you also hope he loses his dick in the process as well though.
So with this new extension Mara has promised to take this extra time to make her story even better and laugh in all your fucking asshole faces. This is on top of also promising to laugh at Northwind if he loses all his story data and somehow his penis in the process. (Though honestly, we'll all have a good laugh if that actually happens, well except maybe Northwind)
As for me, I fully expect most of you lazy sloths to continue to squander this merciful extension and still fail to actually turn anything in.
Carry on.
Is there a minimum length for this?
Apologies if this has already been answered, I didn't read the entire thread.
I didn't get the sense he was directing that at you.
Ninja's story was not only awesome, but he also finished a week ahead of the previous deadline. I'm seriously impressed by the fact that he put out such a good story within such a short timeframe.
The less stories I have to read and the more people I can throw in the SHAME pit, the better.
You can just cut your penis as a tribute for being asshole back then. I hope you end your game if you need my help tell me"
Yes, good idea! I think that with some reworking you could end up with a really great story.
Just wanted to drop by and say I enjoyed your story, however it is. Probably doesn't mean much from just some random dude, but still.
Also shame I didn't see this earlier, I totally would have applied, the story I chose to write on my own pretty much fits in the "extreme edgelord" category.
I think I would very much prefer not to, seeing as there's like a day left until the deadline. But I guess no good deed goes unpunished. If posting has automatically counted me in, there's nothing I can do but await the pit of shame.
I see you ran afoul of Mara's web.
Well no point in rushing the story now. Who knows though maybe you'll get out in the future.
Deadline extended to 11:59 PM (EST) Jan 31st.
poison_mara - DONE
WouldntItBeNice - DONE
Chris113022 - DONE
Mystic_Warrior - DONE
Celicni - DONE
Mystery Contestant
Well you could playtest it yourself, no?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Did you all think the due dates being moved were for all of your betterment?
I'm still EndMaster's daughter, fools.
In order to avoid being shamed I've rushed out a story. I'm very much not satisfied with it, as I wanted a couple more characters in it, to spend some time on describing them and letting the player form some kind of connection with them (only for them to brutally die later on of course). Like fuck, my character's mother and father don't even have names.
Also, a lot more of describing...everything...the feels, the smells, the landscape descriptions.
That is not to mention the overall length, and happenings in the story. The first part is probably about 50% as long as I would want it, and the "road" is legit like 10%. I wanted actual events happening along the trip, but what can you do. Had to skip over all of that to get to write an ending of some kind.
And of course, it's (mostly) just a text game with zero scripts. I think I literally have 2 pages only where some kind of change happens based on certain variables. And speaking of change, I wanted to make some alternate paths.
Finally, English is not my first language, and this is literally the first "story" of any kind I've written since high school. I've been looking up some of the articles to improve my grammar, especially that one about punctuation with conversational quotes. Don't be too harsh :(
I'll add some more stuff tomorrow, but we're approaching the deadline fast. Out of curiosity, and speaking to the competitors here, what is the word count of your (finished) story? To see if I should pump those rookie numbers up.
Of course, by now I should have known that was to be my fate by asking a question in the thread. I can be a bit slow to learn at times.
Anyway, I'm liking my story, but unfortunately the plot pieces didn't fit together in my head until today, and that's just not enough time to write something worthwhile. Nevertheless, I will keep working until the buzzer.
I loved your Wheeler and Brandt story. I wonder if that means I'm a bit sick in the head.
Oh, and the count Osmond one I enjoyed too. I don't think either of them are bad to require a takedown.
For the record, though, I took the Osmond down 9 times in about 30 minutes after publishing it due to unseen grammatical errors (which is what happens when you start the story on the night the contest is due, which I did in that case).
I have completed my entry: Fall to Hopelessness.
Due to the merciful extensions, this was the first contest I have joined which did not result in a last minute panic-writing session to finish my storygame (yet it's not much of a comparison since I've only ever joined two others before this). I certainly hope this storygame would be good enough for this contest.
A bit late now but good luck with your storygame!
I love how there's a My Little Pony story and a crap story that's going to get unpublished in between all the Dark Fantasy contest entries.
I've finished my story: Vincha.
Final word count is 22144.
I'm sure there's a lot of grammar and typing issues, but I really only had time to proofread it once, due to the whole getting-sucked-into-and-having-only-two-days-to-write shebang.
Lol, you just showed up like everyone who had like 2 months to submit something. I'm glad you did because now the SHAME of those that have failed will be even greater and funnier.
Thank you! Though it was you that kinda voluntold me to participate sooo...
Okay, I'm all caught up on all the stories that got submitted so far.
One of you is in the lead.
Two of you would have gotten higher scores if you'd worked harder.
One of you didn't suck as much as everyone said you did.
Three of you wrote well thought out stories, but they just didn't really fit the theme I was looking for.
And one of you would have probably easily won the contest had you not made a severe error.
Are we going to get a thread post contest about which person is which description, with your deep thoughts on our stories?
Probably in the winner's announcement thread.
The background and font are so cool, you dick.
enterpride - DONE
Northwind - DONE
hetero_malk - DONE
Mardox - SHAMED
Wannabe_Human - DOUBLE SHAMED
Starbourne - SHAMED AND BANNED
jster02 - SHAMED
corgi213 - DONE
smalllovebirb - SHAMED
clockman - SHAMED
Mizal - DOUBLE SHAMED
Metal - SHAMED
TheChef - SHAMED
Fluxion - SHAMED
TheCanary - SHAMED
Garrison_Bell - SHAMED
LuvLee - SHAMED
AmritaB - SHAMED
TharaApples - DONE
Scroll up a bit and you might be able to find out who this mystery contestant is.
(Assuming that person isn't a judge, but if that's the case, it is unlikely the extension would benefit them.)
http://chooseyourstory.com/story/silent-spire My story for the contest
1 hour left.
It's back, better start publishing quick!
Here's my entry.
This site tried to kill me, but I wouldn’t let it.
http://chooseyourstory.com/story/winter,-after-the-harvest
THAT'S TIME AND THE REST OF YOU ARE SHAMED!
(And banned in one case)
Starbourne standing on the mountain saying that the gods are bastards did not, in fact, work out for him
lmao
Well this is what happened to him:
Your Adventure Ends Here.
Just have to read North's and then a winner and rewards will be declared.
