Alright, I don’t like drawing out who won in some sort of cheap game show fashion especially since it’s clearly obvious.
Sherbet won.
While of course longer stories don’t always dictate a sure win, they do tend to have more “stuff” in them that allows for more entertainment potential, along with more branching, endings and other things I’m looking for in these contests. Sherb basically covered all of that and hell, I even went and read a previous story he wrote just to see how it connected to THIS story.
So yeah obviously succeeded in keeping the engagement level pretty high.
He’ll be getting my trophy since he’s definitely put out enough quality stories at this point. This one will probably be featured once it gets enough ratings (Might already, I’ll have to check)
Now then here’s the list of everyone in relative order which will be followed by some notes.
1. Reborn by Sherbet - 8
2. A Prayer for Destruction by Malk - 8
3. Revenge of the River Lord by GP - 8
4. Polaris by MHD - 7
5. The Sojourner's Home by Petros - 7
6. Terrorist by Ben - 7
7. The Grand Pharaoh's Tomb by Dire - 6
8. The Red Church by Peng - 6
9. Where the Clouds Want to Go by StoryTurtle - 6
10. How To Bring an End to Things? by Darius - 6
11. The Village That Was by goodnight - 6
12. A Hill to Die On by Corgi - 5
13. Avarga by Enter - 5
14. Golden Gaze - Establishing a Foothold by Kezmark - 5
15. The Caverns of Grobblebad by Mizal - 5
16. DRIVE by Wizzy - 5
17. The Boy Who Would Be Duke by Milton - 4 (Disqualified)
18. Cleansed by Bezro - 3 (Disqualified)
19. Distant Past by Alienrun - 1 (SHAME Lol)
Alright let’s talk about the major 3 that would appeal to me specifically based on the content and tone in which they were written: Malk, Petros and Ben’s stories.
Malk’s actually written stuff like this AND won with a grimdark story before, so he definitely had the major edge (Literally) going this route. Arguably if he’d written even only half as much as Sherb did and still kept up the same quality he might have very well won instead. Could potentially get featured depending on how the ratings go on it.
Petros’ story wasn’t actually “edgelord” or “grimdark” but playing as a slaver is definitely in the dark category. He went a more comical route which definitely helped considering he didn’t actually spend much time on writing the story at all. Had enough branches though I could have definitely seen the story having more to it. Dunno if he intends on adding any more stuff to it, but its one of those I’m looking at to see if it’ll be high enough to feature in the scifi section.
Then we come to Ben’s story which given the topic he picked, this was probably the best way he could have went with it. Really something going for complete shock value probably shouldn’t actually be excessively long. Where he excelled at (Besides obviously trying to emulate Love SICK and some of my other stories) was including little “epilogues” of what the consequences were of your fucked up actions. (Whether you ruined your dad’s rep or not, etc) Helped raise the enjoyment level a bit.
Alright now for the 2 “normal” stories which were highly rated. MHD and GP’s.
Well there isn’t much to say about MHD since she always puts out quality and her own art in her stories. I clicked some path though and it was a bit disjointed from the previous page. This one will probably end up getting featured in the mystery/thriller category once it gets enough ratings (If it hasn’t already) I know I didn’t play it as intended since I pretty much stayed a professional and didn’t have decadent lesbian sex with the aging starlet. Also didn’t have sex with the robot, but that was because he was black.
However, I know some of you might be into that sort of thing so I’m sure the ratings for the story will get even higher!
So Pancake was definitely the surprise in this contest because I really unexpectedly enjoyed this one enough that I actually went through all of the branches and there were definitely a lot of different ones. I even got the best one first (New Chieftain) and I was compelled to explore more of them. I can say if Sherb and Malk hadn’t been in the contest Pancake would have won.
Alright on to the next group which were solid stories (6s) These were Peng, Sturtle and Goodnight
Really nothing much to say on any of them other than they’re fine stories to add to the site. Peng’s is closer to what I would normally read of course. However, I’d actually say Sturtle’s is potentially feature worthy in its category depending on how the ratings go. Which I’m not sure if it’s staying in Family Friendly or it should go in Fanfic since it’s actually based on Candyland which would make it the SECOND story based on a boardgame on here. Nice touch that he added his own art to it as well.
Next group are the unfinished/rushed and there were a lot of these folks as is tradition. These were Dire, Darius, Corgi, Enter, Kezmark, Wizzy, Mizal
Now out of all of them, I liked Dire’s the most and I feel like if he had actually finished it, he probably would have gotten a higher rating. The funny thing is I didn’t necessarily expect to like his especially after he mentioned there was a maze (Though I avoided that path altogether) He also had a lot of “back to previous page” links which I never care for since there’s a back button. But other than the maze, I went through every path so it kept my attention. What probably helped was during the whole riddle path he had a different death for every wrong answer when he could have easily just linked to a same one (You fall down a hole and die). Attention to death detail always gets major approval.
For Darius…I dunno man. He wrote about necromancers and for whatever reason my attention just wasn’t there. I know it was REALLY short compared to most of Darius’ work in the past so maybe it being unfinished didn’t help or maybe Cel was right and he needs to just stick with writing gay shit. Still, obviously work was put into it, so can’t ignore that.
I had the same problem with Kez’s story. Just didn’t have much attention span for it. Again maybe it was due to being unfinished. Seemed like it took awhile to get to the buying slave girls for the harem part and then the story ended.
I had even less of an attention span for Wizzy’s. Though the formatting didn’t help in that case. Already had decided by then Sherb was winning anyway by the time I got to his. With a title like drive I was expecting some Mad Max type shit.
Enter’s was pretty linear along with being rushed which of course lowered the rating, though I could see signs of an interesting story there.
And I’ll be honest, by the time I got to Mizal’s I was in no mood to click various links to buy shit and look at extra info. Mizal had already said she hadn’t finished, was taking it down as soon as the contest judging was over and I had already decided Sherb was winning anyway. Still, again there’s a lot of potential for a whole village building sim/story there.
Corgi's wasn't really "unfinished" so much as it was just short. I suppose if more had been written it sould have gotten bumped up to a 6 and alongside Peng in that group.
Finally the “rest” Bezro, Milton and Alienrun
Well like I said before Alienrun made such a nuisance of himself that his late entry was not given mercy and I didn’t even bother reading it after having to click a bunch of stat links. Let this be a lesson in STOP FUCKING WHINING.
Bezro’s story got a generous pass considering the walls of fucking text that were in it. Fortunately he had enough branching and different endings. He probably should just take that one down though and either severely overhaul it or just scrap it and write something else.
Arguably Milton’s might have even gotten a pass to be in competition if he’d only been as late as Alien or Bezro (Like 1 minute rather than 15 or however long it was due to technical difficulties) since I saw a lot of work actually in the story when I skimmed through it. Again I only skimmed this one to see how much work was done and if it had branching, etc. I don’t think I would have been much into reading it though. I feel like our resident history story writer Will would be a better judge on it. It’s another one that probably needs to be taken down to be worked on and making sure all the links are properly ended.
Well guess that’s it for another successful contest prompt.
Yes, I said successful. We got some good stories added to the site and honestly I never expect even half of you lot to turn in shit anyway. The first prompt contest was more of an anomaly. Getting submitted stories in the high teen range is actually always doing pretty good for any CYS contest.
These contests are always more about adding more high quality stories to the site to add to our glory, spreading the tales of our magnificence across obscure corners of the web to the point so that even in the camps of our faggot enemies they have no choice but to speak highly of our writing ability while whining about how “toxic” we all are.
Because remember it isn’t about money, it’s about sending a message.
Plus I finally got to throw all the known Mormons into the FOREVER SHAMED part of the pit.
Yep, always WINNING around here.
