All right, I've done it. I sent off an e-mail to EQ After Dark asking if they would be willing to plug our contest. Now what we need is to have an actual contest for them to plug.

As the first person to bring it up, I suppose that makes me in charge of organizing the thing, unless someone else is just dying to take the reins. If anyone wants to help or has something to contribute, go ahead and send me a PM.

We'll need a few judges, preferably an odd number in case of ties. I of course volunteer, since I'm planning on reading all the entries we get anyway. It would be nice to get another judge that can offset my personal biases (I'm sorry to admit I'm not a big fan of M/M or r63), and a third judge that is a clone of me so that we can vote down Judge II and pretend we're being fair.

**Judges So Far**
1. Esle Ynopemos
2. Foxi Hooves
3. Bandaid

We also need prizes to offer the winners. I'm open to ideas on this. If we have any talented artists on hoof, maybe a commission might be possible?

Lastly, I need your thoughts on what rules to set for the contest. When should the deadline be? Minimum(/maximum) word limit? Do we allow fics in which selfcest occurs but isn't the primary focus? (It's hard to imagine what could possibly be so attention-grabbing in a story that selfcest would get pushed to the periphery, but the potential is there, I suppose.) Should we require all entries to include a certain phrase in order to prove it was written for the contest? Keep in mind, the fewer questions you answer, the more power you leave to me, and you really shouldn't trust me with any power.

Once we have a few more details worked out, I'll be sure to send a PM to Wanderer D so that hopefully we can get in on the next Group Events post.

On an unrelated note, does anyone know if we can get our old Cheerilee banner back? Fluttershy's cottage is nice and all, but we ought to have something more... selfcest-y.

565468 I offset your bias, so I'll volunteer.

565473 Okie dokes, you're in.

565501

If you don't mind, I'll volunteer for the last spot. This should be interesting...

565765 Done.

All right, folks, we don't need any more judges. Still need ideas for prizes and a discussion over little details like should we allow incomplete fics, and who gets to drag my wheel-less chariot around.

I would say a minimum of 5000 words would suffice nicely. It's long enough that it should be a good read and good use of our time and it allows the author to choose whether or not to extend the plot. Although I've been wondering if the stories submitted should be only clop.

And no, I don't think we can change the Fluttershy cottage picture. Unless we can change the HTML of this page, I don't see any other way...

574853 The group founder has the power to change the header. Has anyone heard from Twinkie Spy lately?

I don't think selfcest stories have to necessarily be clop. Perfect for Me is an excellent example of this (Though the author, being awesome as he is, has a separate side story for cloppy scenes to go along with it).

5k words sounds reasonable. Authors need some space to explain how there is two (or more) of Pony X, after all.

I think I've grown fond of the idea of including a passphrase in the contest entries. We want fresh selfcest stories, after all, not just a collection of old ones. I was thinking we could have authors include the sentence, "You must learn to love yourself."