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It’s summer again as we know what that means: school’s out, holidays are coming and, most important of all, it’s time for the 2025 SUMMER READING COMPETITION! And this year we’re playing teams! That’s right – all participants will form teams of three and set out to read, rate and review as many stories as they can in quest of Featured Reviews and the chance to win fantastic prizes (My Trophy, Commendations and Points). But this year there are more points available than ever before:

For every Featured Review on a 1-4 Length story you earn 1 Point, on a 5 Length story you earn 2 Points, on a 6 Length story you earn 5 Points, on a 7 Length story you earn 7 Points and on an 8 Length story you earn 10 Points – registered competition participants only. Points will be tracked individually and for teams every few days and recorded on Mystic Warrior’s Leaderboard of Awesomeness (Patent Pending). There is the potential to earn a massive amount of Points here so don't miss out on this unique opportunity!

But that’s not all – there will be Mini Challenges issued on Fridays and played over the weekend giving teams opportunities to win additional Points and / or Cards. What are Cards, I hear you cry? Cards are how you fuck up other teams or unfairly tilt the board in your favor. There are four: the two Strategy Cards, Strengthen (Double your team’s earnt points for 24 hours) and Stop (Protect your team from Select or Swap) and the two Sabotage Cards, Select (Force another team to only review stories from one genre for 72 hours) and Swap (Force the permanent trade of someone from your team for someone from another team, requires a two-thirds vote).

Oh yes, my friends, this will be a war with dirty tricks, cunning strategies and all-out crushing any hopes your rivals have of getting anywhere in this competition. So, what are the prizes then (apart from the joy of ruining another team’s hopes and dreams)? Well, this year we have a lot:

Top-scoring Individual: 1st Place: Will’s Trophy and 300 Points, 2nd Place: 200 Points, 3rd Place: 150 Points.

Top-scoring Teams: 1st Place: 100 Points each, 2nd Place: 50 Points each, 3rd Place: 30 Points each.

Other Benefits: You will always get 2 Commendations for each Featured Review and 1 Point for all Featured or Unfeatured Reviews anyway. With up to 400+ Points available to the winner other benefits include Bragging Rights, winning a Trophy, earning Ranks and Order Titles as well as increasing the feedback all authors on this site receive for their stories (and getting to tell the untalented just how truly lousy they really are) so there really isn’t a downside to this.

Or is there?

Well, our local Noob Eviscerator and all-around Prince of Darkness informs me the (surprisingly full) PIT OF SHAME will suck in all those who join this competition and fail to write a single Featured Review (and for those already in the Pit, including uniquely, those poor unfortunate souls who have been Triple Shamed, escape or ascension to a less shameful level may be available for prize-winners depending on the whims of the Mighty Powers of Darkness a.k.a. End).

So, what are you waiting for? This competition will run from 11:59pm 31 May - 11:59pm 31 August 2025 EST and participants can sign up and register for teams by posting on this thread any time. You will sign up individually first, and then those running this contest (Mystic_Warrior, myself and the Admins) will randomly allocate you into teams ASAP (ideally within a day or two) so you can get busy reviewing – Featured Reviews will not count until you are in a team (this is to prevent the site’s strongest members ganging up together in a super-team to annihilate everyone else)! Team members can then pick their own names as long as two-thirds of the team agree on it. This thread is for sign-ups only, progress will be tracked and the Leaderboard posted in a separate thread and winner results will be announced at the beginning of September.

Good Luck and let the War of the Words commence!

Perfect timing for me to "intentionally" postpone the long review for this month to the start of the next one. Also since it's not specified are we getting teamed up on random or will there be a draft?

It will be randomised, but you can use the 'swap' card to team up with members you want to work with.

That does make more sense as to why that card exists and why somebody would want to use it.

Yep, it's randomised. Can we count you in CavusRex? :)

Sure, actually sounds more exciting than running around asking people how serious they are about the contest.

Sign me up. I will do at least one (1) review, I'm serious this time!

Locked (Not that it matters for mods, of course).

"Cards are how you fuck up the other team"

Will! Such language!

I just wanted people to think the competition was cool and it sounded better than "give them an oopsy-doosy" :D

How does one acquire a featured review? I have had a few but have never known the mechanics of how such an honor is bestowed.

Essentially the Admins decide which reviews are worthy of featuring. The criteria differs slightly but generally the review needs to be well-written, reasonably comprehensive and constructive or useful for readers and / or the writer(s), if that helps. Are you in Flux?

Let me review the rules one more time. Also, I suggest you increase the point differential between longest stories and those near them, because 1 point difference may not be enough of a carrot (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 5, 8).

But yeah, give me a minute to make sure I won't be damning myself by joining this contest....

EDIT: Okay, it seems the only way to become a slave in the Pit of SHAME is to fail to get one review featured. I think I can manage that, and if not, I deserve the shame. I'm in.

Too late

LOL of course. Good thing I was going to join anyway. This contest needs engagement. Just put me on RK's team so I have a good chance of winning ;).

I feel like poor RK will be bouncing from team to team over the course of the contest.

We're going to make some changes to the points awarded just fyi, Will will update later.

Hey Will and Mystic,
I'd love to join! I'm unsure of whether contest fees work the same with reading contests as they do for writing contests. Regardless, I'm in the first level of SHAME, so I guess I'm paying the -50 point contest fee.

Based on what you said, escaping the pit is also possible, right?

>Based on what you said, escaping the pit is also possible, right?

Lol

Well, in any case, there's still all those sweet points up for grabs!

There's no contest entry fee, just the thread of sinking further into the Shame Pit in the case of failure. And yes, if you happen to be a winner End will consider your case so escape from the Shame Pit is possible. :)

I'll join

RK gave me a nudge so I'll throw my hat in! I had plans to churn out more reviews anyway so might as well do 'em for some points.

nice! Also, locked

Excellent, nice participation so far :D

I'm in! Yahoo!

Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but probably changing the number of featured comments per story to 5 rather than 3 seeing as there's been an increase in better comments in general.

(And an increase in shitposting comments as well, but as we all know, the fools have got to have their fun)

Great Suranna :D And yeah, it's certainly a possibility if that's something you want to do. I think the number of featured stories was increased because there were so many good stories being written so increasing the number of featured comments too would create more space for all the well-written reviews (though, conversely, there are still a lot of mostly older and / or shorter stories still with just one or no featured comments).

Alright, I like reviewing. I'll toss my hat in the ring!

Welcome! :D

Ok everyone, we’ve had a good turnout so far :D We have randomly assigned participants into the following teams:

Team 1: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.

Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.

Team 3: Mizal and Suranna.

We’ll add an extra member to Team 3 and form more teams once more participants join but for now people can now start reading, rating and reviewing to begin earning Points and we’ll launch our first Mini Challenge on Friday!

One of the first things it’d be fun to do is to think up a name for your Teams – I’ve given you numbers for now but it’d be more fun to have names. You can chat about it here or pm each other and as long as two thirds of the team post here that they approve the name we’ll use it. I had a browse online and some of the names I liked are “The Winning Team”, “I Am Smarticus”, “No Eye Deer”, “One Wheel Short Of A Unicycle” and “I Got 99 Problems But This Competition Ain’t One” but I’m sure you’ll be great at thinking up your own names.

Entry into the Reading Competition is permanently open and the sooner you sign up the sooner you can start winning points for yourselves and your teams. The Leaderboard has appeared in The Parlour Room to help keep track of how everyone is doing. One word of advice: you might want to post Reviews on more recently written Story Games, particularly in the Newly Created Storygames section, or those written by active members as these are the most likely to be spotted and commended by Admins. Good Luck and if you have any questions please ask them here!

Team 3 is fucked. :)

Interesting name!

Locked!

The actual name will be either Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us

Ill Join team 3 for the funsies, but ill take it a bit slower than usual. 

It's all random, both of you calm down.

I'm in this year too.

Do your worst.

Logged on for the first time in awhile and saw my pointless points had dwindled from a whopping 480 to a measley 380. This seems like a good chance to totally not get distracted and sink further into the pit of shame... what could go wrong? 

I'm going to enter to force myself to review one story this summer at least. I haven't looked at this in ages so this could be fun. Might try to get something started tonight so at the very least I have something.

My understang is that I just need to do a review and it will automatically count towards the contest.. let me know if I need to post my review in a specific thread or something. 

Oh, I must have forgotten to link the tracking thread. I'll ask Will to edit the OP later, but you should track all your reviews there and we'll add them to the leaderboard.

Oh! Hello! Been awhile.

Yeah, a few years... it's good to talk to you again, Mizal. I hope things have been going well around here!

CYS never changes.

Shadowdrake, I think MHD took away 50 points temporarily for not voting in the thunder dome.

All you have to do to get the 50 points back is to go to the thunderdome 2025 thread, read the 2 tiebreaker stories and see which one you like.

Also, it's really cool that you're back.

I loved your time traveler Gower and time loop haunted house stories.

Oh, I see. I guess I should go do that and get an easy 50 points... maybe.

Thanks! I am glad to be back. This writing community is the best I've found, and I haven't been motivated to read or write as much as I should be.

I appreciate the feedback! The Gower story was very fun to write with input from Gower himself. I hope he is still around! The time loop story I'm surprised to hear positive feedback because it was my first story and really just a way to test the editor. At the time it was written it got very poor feedback... but I did update some of the issues and I'm glad you liked it!

Gower still can be summoned on occasion, but he's working on the third game in the Tally Ho series, and he otherwise seems like he's been perpetually buried under a mountain of (mostly AI generated) papers to grade.

....well, last time I tried talking to him he did say something that sounded a lot like "I will play Blue Prince until I die", but that can't be right, I must have misheard.

(There's no way he'd punctuate it that way, for one.)

Glad to hear he is writing a new story and still around! I'm terribly sorry about the AI generated papers though... Last I heard, as far as 20 years from now, they never figure out a solution to this problem. 

Hmm... yeah, that must have been some static or hacking: something was messing with your communications. You should really use the tried and true tin cups on a string method rather than all this crappy internet stuff. Boring grammar was not Gower's thing.

The OP mentions both Switch and Swap, but I assume these are the same thing?

Yep, they are the same thing.

Damn it, I'm in

 

Can I join Team 3

Locked

Hey, another familiar face. I hope life is treating you well, Ace.

He's doing well despite the preasure.

Inside joke? Or did someone take over Mizal's account? It's been awhile--anything is possible here.

The joke: you can still create a drinking game around Ace's posts.

Ah, I didn't notice it in his original post because I read it while doing something else, haha. I get it!

I'm just as slow as I used to be.

Please, I invented that trick.

Are you still in Taiwan btw, or is that done with school out?

I've also been okay. Thank you!

Count me in.

Great, it's really good to see so many people joining :D Participants only need to write at least one commended review in the next three months to contribute but the more the merrier :)

UPDATE: Mizal has informed me that even more points will be available! For people who write a Commended Review of stories 1-4 in length they will receive 1 Point, 5 in length, 2 Points, 6 in length 5 Points, 7 in length, 7 Points and 8 in length, 10 Points. This is to represent the time and effort it takes to read and write a meaningful review of the longer stories as opposed to the faster time to read and review a short story. This is for competitions participants only so, if you are feeling ambitious, please give some thought to read and reviewing some of the larger stories on the site. Remember - reviews on more recently-written stories and stories by active authors are more likely to be spotted and commended by Admins than stories written back in the pre-iPhone era :D

I'm mention to that we're doing away with the "three featured comments per game" guideline as of this month. So that may be either good or bad depending on whether you were hoping to strategically knock people off the featured list (which would be WAY too difficult for us to track anyway), but hopefully it'll mean an end to people thinking they shouldn't bother if they see a game with already featured comments.

In fact, there might be another thread related to this soon.

This is pretty interesting info, thanks Ace :) I think the way the points are offered is fair and it's also worth mentioning this is only for the whole story, depending where the end game links are or the branching structure the amount read would probably be a lot less, a commendable review can still be written just following one branch from start to finish.

I'll sign up!

Nice!

Good Morning! On our second day of the contest, we now have 15 participants so the teams stand thus:

Team 1: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 (a.k.a. Team 3 is Fucked, Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us): Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
Team 4: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.

Things are still getting underway so there is plenty of time to join before the first Mini Challenge this Friday where people begin competing for the opportunities to mess about with other teams or fix things in their favor :D Don’t forget to chat a bit with your team mates and feel free to come up with a killer team name that will really make an impression (of some kind) on your rivals 😊 All those listed are having their points tracked on The Leaderboard already so feel free to check it out here in the Parlour Room if you haven't already!

Well okay after talking to Suranna I'm actually a bit more optimistic now, and Darius is a good inclusion. I'm going to suggest calling Team 3 Natural Born Winners now just for the sake of a peppy name.

Although it really depends on the availability of Swap cards as to whether there's any real purpose to team loyalty, if we're all just playing musical chairs with them than it's a much more mercenary game about using the people around you for short term benefits while they're there.

Steal cards wouldn't be released too often. There will be mini-challenges once a week with the chance to win a card (which may or may not be 'steal') and/or points, not to mention that a steal could be blocked with a 'stop' card. Most teams would remain with their members for most, if not the entire duration, of this contest.

I suppose for really loyal teams, there's also the possibility of swapping two members of other teams just to cause a bit of chaos.

Goddamn it. I just HAD to say "Do your worst" didn't I?

Fuck it. Time to review.

EDIT: Last year there was a rule stating that for a review to qualify, it had to be authored by someone who had been active since at least 2020. Will that be the case this year?

According to the rules, no. According to recommendations, you have a higher chance of your comment getting noticed if it is an active member.

I vote we change team # 4's name to "Your Worst" or "Doing your worst"

How about just "The Worst"

I know it's your natural imclination to be nice to everyone, but you don't have to be nice to holman--he's expressing here that he thinks you suck and that it's gimping him to have you on the team.

Only in jest. I don't really mind who I'm teamed up with.

I'm aware, but I cope with comedy, or spite. I'll only cry for a minute and then review a story or something. Plus it seems like I can switch people off my team if I want, so that's fun!

Until then, we can be team "The Worst" I'll concur and that makes 2/3 vote!

Ironic since Shadowdrake is the only one on that team with a review so far.

Plot twist: Ben's halfway done with his 5500 word review of Eternal

That would certainly be a great way to skyrocket to the top of the leaderboard. Also, it looks like your team is winning so far.

I'll take the points, then ship him off too the worst team and realize my dream of writing an entire story game out of just comments on other peoples stories, complete with choices, multiple endings, and somewhat relevant feedback. I play for keeps... until tomorrow when I lose motivation.

Which would be worth 1 review, same as Shadow's.

It's not about the points it's about sending a message.

Nah. I did complete a 1,500 word review of Ace's story though.

If I was gonna review Eternal (again) it'd take me the length of this contest to finish it. Eternal is a masterpiece.

I appreciate the vote of confidence! When I eject Ben I'll bring you on board team "The Worst"

My service seems to be causing double posting issues. My apologies.

Yeah, the storygame doesn't have to be authored by someone active since 2020. However, if anyone is thinking of only reviewing 2-length storygames from long-forgotten authors, well, let's just say that they're not going to be handed out commendations easily.

Maybe we'll just unpublish them all and nullify a bunch of reviews at once.

The so far winning team has decided that our name shall be The Review Bored. It's surprisingly easy to agree on one when not a single member actually cares about names.

Indeed, the motion to name the team The Review Bored was duly passed—unanimously—mere minutes after proposal. We look forward to our potentially inevitable victory.

Alright, I'm in too.

I see there's people entering all over this thread so I can't possibly not get involved

Could I join in a few weeks? By then, I might have the time to work on reviewing games.

You can join at any time according to the rules. Just a pro-tip... lurk until you are ready to join. Once you make a post like this there is a chance you are just considered "in" the contest. 

Well, I guess it's time to rearrange my schedule now.

I wouldn't worry too much about unless you get teamed up with somebody who really wants to win and you care about their feelings. The contest will go on for months after all so there's plenty of time to not get shamed.

If you wait until everyone else forgets about this... you might just sneak into an easy victory! Although there are a lot of people in this mob. I wouldn't feel pressured, all you need is one good comment on 3 months. Take your time.

Aren't you in middle school or something? It's summer, you have infinite time.

Heh, not for me! I've still got finals coming up, so it's crunch time!

I say this, yet I spend half my time just listening to audiobooks. At least now I have something else to procrastinate with.

yeah, you're already in. Well, depending on the whims of Mystic, Will, and the admins. There's sort of an unwritten rule where if you post in the contest thread, you run the risk of being voluntold into the contest.

But you can always start reviewing in a few weeks.

You just joined, congrats.

You can start reviewing in a few weeks, this is running till the end of August.

Hey all, here are the teams now following the 3 new participants forming Team 6:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 (Natural Born Winners, Team 3 is Fucked, Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us): Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Team 6: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.

Darius or Suranna need to confirm a name they like for Team 3 and Teams 2, 5 and 6 can pick one too if they want something more exciting than numbers. The Review Bored are off to a flying start while The Worst is, ironically, in second place and Team 2 is off to a good start as well but it’s still very early days. 😊 Well Done to Mouse, Cavus and Fluxion. :D

Team 3: the Late Bloomers

We'll figure this out eventually!

Team 3 is Fucked is an excellent name

Team 2 should be Grill Night and the Newbie

Lol. I love this!

Putting forth 'Mercer Gang' as team 6's name.

Seconded

RK asked, so I shall oblige

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: IcePrincess21.

Team 5 still need a name and Team 7 will get its other members once a few more people sign up (meanwhile IcePrincess can start reviewing). 😊

I would like to join

Welcome :)