Alright lovers and loverless (I feel you bro...), it's that time of the year again, and this time I decided to celebrate with a writing contest! Anyone is free to participate, and all will be rewarded! No need to inform me if you will/will not be participating, I'll know who all does it when I get the story submissions. Now keep in mind this is not some kind of group admin related contest, this is simply one member of the Fallout: Equestria Group wanting to do something fun with anyone else willing to participate. So if you have any questions or concerns feel free to talk to me about it, and not the other admins.

The prompt? A "romantic" Hearts and Hooves Day in the wasteland. Will you're young, strapping stallion take his lady on a romantic date? Or maybe a romantic dinner for two in the wasteland's most romantic resort? Here are the rules:

1: Your short story must be a minimum of 1 thousand words long, and of course must pass Fimfiction's moderators and site rules.
2: You will have from now, until midnight (Central Time) February the eleventh to complete your story. (Of course I'll be lenient on this rule for special circumstances.)
3: Your story must first be successfully published on Fimfiction (Passed site moderator's inspections), then PM me to let me know and I'll add your name to the list of contestants.
4: Your story will be 'graded' on writing quality (grammar, spelling, etc.), originality, characterization (How relatable are your characters, how much depth and personality do they have?), and of course the plot of your story. There will be special prizes for first and second place winners (All others are automatically tied for third, but keep in mind everyone who enters the contest automatically wins a prize.) which will be decided by me when I finish reading all of the entries. I'm giving you a week and a half to write this, so don't be scared to take your time and put some thought into it! ^_^

Best of luck to everyone, and if you have any questions/concerns feel free to PM me or leave them in the comments.

4036581

A "romantic" Hearts and Hooves Day in the wasteland.

Romantic
adj.
Conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.

Yeah, I can do that I suppose. Although love is a very subjective thing. But I guess if the characters love eachother in their own eyes it doesn't matter.

4037235 Exactly! I was wanting to leave the prompt pretty vague so people have plenty of ways to interpret it.

4036581
I'll see what I can do, ten days to come up with a romantic style FoE?

That'll probably simple enough.

Actually writing it on the other hand...

Well, I'd say wish me luck, but since you're a judge that may not be the greatest thing to say.

Push comes to shove, I'd at least be willing to help judge if I'm unable to actually write one due to my own laziness, I already have plenty of FoE piling up in my read later, may as well take some off before I need to start them anyway.

But at this point I'm rambling, so I'll just stop typing, and get back to my videos.

4037308 Well, time to fall into the old method of just sorta pulling OCS of mine from the FOE-OC hat to ship together, right?

I'm thinking someone like Amber Light or White Wash with someone. Or hell, even together because #canon isn't a thing for OCs.

Or if I'm feeling adventurous I can do Fink and Pall. Not that a gay unicorn stallion and an aromantic pegasus female have much potential for shipping, mind you, but that's why it's called being adventurous.

(Oh god the name dropping I'm so sorry)

4036581
Ah, shoot. I really didn't have time for this, but then I had a shower thought. Now it's gotta be done. We'll see what happens.

4040093 Shower thoughts are best thoughts!

4040232
Been having a lot of them lately. Loads of music, business and story ideas. I'd love to have some drawing ideas, because Lord knows I need the practice!

4036581
Okay, so if I were to write two very short stories (a little over 1,000 a piece) would I be able to submit them as one double-feature? Like an old, drive-in movie style but instead of exploitation/horror it'd be two different kinds of romance.

I only ask because I just finished one of them, but the shower has spoken and desires two stories of minuscule length.

It's gonna be fun to see what people come up with.

In other news I can't wait to have a non-mature-tagged story.

4041831 Sure! Though I don't think I can let you have both first and second place... But it will certainly improve your chance of winning, can't what to see what everyone comes up with ^_^

4036581 Quick questions: Does it need to be SFW, and, is there a max word cap?

Because I may end up going overboard if I continue down this path.

4043904 No to both, let your creativity roam free!!!

4043298
Nah, it's just two very different and very tiny love stories in one package. The whole thing will probably not even be half as large as the largest story submitted, for brevity is the way of the Warb. Unless it's sentence length in forum posts we're talking about, apparently.

4043904
Also, funny you should bring up NSFW. This will be my first non-mature outing.

Good hunting, everyone!

4044765 Well than, instead of ending with a line leading up to sex I shall write it. Because fuck it, if I'm going to write the first 1.4k words badly I might as well write some sex badly too.

Seriously, three revisions later I still can't get the story to anything decent. Like, I detest it. So I may not submit the story for judgment if I can't make it read better.

4036581 Where do I go to submit my story to the contest? Sorry, but I'm not just new, I'm really new to this site and how to use it

Well considering the setting and what little i know about you guys...
Dis is gunna be gud!

I personally suck at writing, but I am interested in what may come out of this so:
Are the entries gonna be published/posted somewhere for the "general public" to read? Or is this gonna be a "closed doors" contest and we will only know who wons?

4044835 Well so long as it's long enough for Fimfiction all is well I suppose

4045320 NEIN! Even if you don't get first or second, as I said all other entries are tied for third and everyone get's a prize

4046401 Okay well unfortunately Fimfic doesn't actually have any means to officially register stories into a writing contest. So basically just publish your story like normal (Maybe include something about the contest in the description if you so choose) then PM me when it passes site moderation. From there I'm going to create a bookshelf with all of the entries on it so everyone can see all of the submissions.

4047221 I'm going to make a bookshelf with all of the entries, and probably post a link to it here as well as my user page. ^_^

4047317 Oh crap. I don't get to be anonymous. Now I feel embarrassed to publish mine, because, well, like I said, it's not good.

Also!

Du sprichst Deutsch? Wie geht's?

4047492
Halt! Sprechen wir jetzt Deutsch? Das ist geil!

Also, yeah. This is going to be a fun contest.

4047221
If you've not been around for a contest, it's pretty awesome. You get to take a peek at a number of writers' styles. Shoot, you may even find you new favorite sitewide author.

4046401
Sweet. Welcome. Have fun and much luck to you!

4047761 Ich lerne so viele Dinge über die Menschen, wenn ich sehe sie Deutsch sprechen.

You'll forgive me, incidentally, as I'm learning German now as opposed to being a native speaker, so it might not be the best.

4047956
Übe jeden Tag. German starts off easy, but then it breaks your heart. And then come the idioms. Oh, the idioms!

4048142 The struggle is real, yo.

4047317 I get that part, but where do I go to PM you?

4047492 "There is no shame in defeat! Only in surrender!" And no I'm afraid there's not much need to learn German here. I do speak some decent Spanish though, and I took two years of 'Ancient Greek' :3

4048643 Oh well that's the easy part! Okay to PM someone, just go to their user page, and on the hot-bar below their name and bio there's a button that says mail. Click that and huzzah! You're sending a PM ^_^ (For some reason you can even do this to yourself >_<)

4049341 Before I forget to ask, what's the prize? Is it, maybe, 30 dollars or a Pink Eyes book? Because I want either of those things. :L

4049798 I can't be ruining surprises now... I'll let everyone know soon enough ^_^

4049828 God damn you!
I guess I'll just submit my story and input it into the contest, regardless of the quality.

4036581
Does it need to be complete, or can we submit chapters? I need to know if I'll need to condense this into a one-shot.

Just got the idea, I'll get on it tomorrow.

4036581
Well so much for my submission.

4050944 No it doesn't have to be a one shot, but I will check publish dates to make sure nobody submits a story they wrote like a month ago

4052203 Oh teh noes!!!! Well... do you wanna try another one? I mean you still have some time left ^_^

4052735 I mean, at least we've determined that you need the crossover tag on Fallout Equestria stories.

But... hmm... I'll try again. Lol.

4052735
It'll still be short enough, but not as short as it could be.

4036581
So, other writing contests have their own folders. Will this one have a collection like that? If not will you post the stories in a list somewhere? Reading other entries is a lot of fun.

4062486 Sure will! I'm going to make a bookshelf for it. I'll post it here, as well as on my User page. I may be able to get the other admins to agree to a temporary folder, but as it stands seeing as this isn't an official group writing contest I doubt it will get it's own folder like the others : /

4064642
Who knows? There haven't been that many contests. Have fun reading. You certainly have your work cut out for you. Hopefully my stories are either good enough to tickle your fancy or bad enough to MST3K.

To all of you who wrote a story for this event: sorry about the ubiquitous FiMFic Fo:E downvote brigade. They got to me the second my story was approved.

4036581 I have sent my entry in for approval.

Well here we are everyone! I'll still be taking late submissions into tomorrow I suppose, but when I start judging them tomorrow night then I may not take any more submissions so try to get it in before then!

4065008 Eh fair enough, that's because they usually tend to be a pain in the flank to run them. But so far you guys have been pretty awesome! ^_^ And yeah I'm pretty sure nearly every Fo:E story on the site has had that problem

4067833 Cool! PM me when it's officially published and I'll add it to the bookshelf.

Hey there. I really wished I stumbled across this forum post sooner. A friend told me about this contest and I was excited to start a story for an entry, I've made some decent headway into it for only starting yesterday. However, I'll be preoccupied for most of the 11th (today) and will most likely be writing the remainder of the story overnight. Considering the moderation's "approval time", I can see the story being approved someday mid-12th (tomorrow). Would you still be able to allow me to enter then?

4068885 Hihi! Sorry I just got home or else I would have replied sooner. Yes You can certainly still go through with it. The 'deadline' I posted above was more a recommendation more than anything else; if there's one thing I've learned about running contests and such over the years, it's that it's better to set an early deadline and show lenience than to have a finalized deadline and having people miss out. x3 I've already started to 'grade' some of the entries I have so far, but so long as I have time to read through yours by the end of the 14th then there won't be any problems ^_^

4070629 Awesome! Many thanks to ya. I'll be sending you a PM when the story's up and passed through moderation.

I'm just keeping people's attention on this thread.

4070629

I've already started to 'grade' some of the entries I have so far

Awwww, schnapple!

4072199 Well you certainly got my attention xP Well if it's silly songs you want, then silly songs you shall have!

Alright everybody the contest has officially come to an end! Here's the bookshelf of all the story entries: (boop).
And here are our winners!
First place goes to Sophos for his story Date with D3st1ny. The prize for winning first place is one handy dandy printed copy of the one and only Fallout Equestria: Pink Eyes! Congratulations ^_^
Second place goes to Tutis75 for his story Dinner at Dragon's Den. The prize for winning second place is a minimum 10k word story written by me (and co.) about whatever you want!
For the prize that everyone wins, each contestant get's to have an OC of their choice featured in a group picture that I'm commissioning from the talented FarewellDecency. As soon as I get all of the information from everyone I'll let her know so she can get started.

Again thanks for participating everyone, this was really fun and I hope to do more of these in the future!

4079637
Wow, I seriously thought Dinner at Dragon's Den should have won, but I guess I am kinda biased. I also kinda got excited and blurted out that I won a writing contest; so now I'm dodging questions from my family concerning what it was about. They know I write and that I like ponies, but they don't know I write about them.
Embarassment is a useless emotion, but I'll fight that off later; I won a thing! Ah! Dude, just... my stories never seemed terribly well-recieved. I need a moment... How many contestents were there by the way?

Woo! Second place is fine with me. A shame that Spoiler Alert wasn't able to get his story in on time though... But yeah, I'm pretty happy to win second place, so that's cool with me. Congrats to Sophos for winning, and to everyone else that entered! Now I just gotta decide what I want written. o3o Thanks for running this Derpy, hope to enter whenever a new contest comes.

4079792 four total contestants, but Warbalist pretty much submitted two stories so you were running your story against 4 others.

4080039 Also that reminds me... What holiday do you guys thin we should do next? I have something planed for American Independence day, but that's quite awhile off...

4080704 Well, there's always St. Patrick's Day, but I'm not sure how to fit that into an Fo:E theme.