Feeling depressed? Need something off your chest? Come, one and all, to Selfcest is the Best Cest's

Love Thyself Contest!

Your friends will be impressed!

That's right, break out the typewriters and mirrors, folks, it's time to start writing some selfcest! Shipping ponies with each other is fun and all, but it's so much better to ship them with themselves! Give us a story about some more creative uses for time travel, or some other kinds of fun that can come from using the Mirror Pool. Maybe a changeling that enjoys being a copycat, or somepony meets a version of themselves from a parallel dimension. It's up to you, just so long as somepony ends up smooching themselves!

Rules:

The rules are pretty simple. First, there's a 5,000 word minimum. This has some wiggle-room; if you've got a great selfcest story that's sitting on 4,900 words, send me a PM and I'll probably make an exception for you, but selfcest generally should take a bit of space to explain how and why it's happening.

Clop is definitely allowed, but is by no means required. If you've got a story where Fluttershy meets her clone and all they do is cuddle, that is fine (and no doubt very cute).

At some point, your story must contain the sentence, "You must learn to love yourself." How you work it in is up to you. Bonus points for finding a unique way to insert the line.

Stories must be complete at the time of submission. You can of course leave things open for a sequel, but the story should stand on its own as a finished narrative.

Judges:

The judges for this contest will be myself, Foxi Hooves, and Bandaid. We're happy to answer any questions you have if you PM us, though I can't guarantee we'll have the right answers.

Prizes:

Once all the entries have been judged, the winner will receive an art commission from the wonderful and talented kits. Second place will get a commission from me.

Deadline:

The deadline for this contest will be March 15. Send me a PM with a link to your story by that time. You've got a little over a month to write. Go for it!

If you've got any questions, send me a PM. Good luck, and good writing!

581374

Hmmm, I dunno, I can't write romance fics. Is R63 allowed too?

581571 As long as it's r63 of themselves, yes, it's allowed.

Hmm... I could get behind this, though of course, I need to find an idea first and some motivation to roll with it. So, would it be preferable for it to be a one-shot, if has to be that length at least? Or at least, not overly long, if it has to be completed by the deadline? Just curious, even though it seems to have a bit of freedom (at least, if this is an official one, even though there's less than 100 of us and some may not even still be around ).

I have a idea I could do for this.

582334 If you can roll out a 100k-word epic and have it completed by the deadline, more power to you. Of course, I'm staking my continued sanity when March comes around on the gamble that most of the entries will be between 5 and 15k words. Still, as long as it makes the minimum, length will not be considered a factor during judging. I might want to curl up in a corner and whimper for a while if I open my inbox and find seventeen stories over 50k words long each, but us judges will do our best to judge fics fairly regardless of how short or long they are.

As for who's still around, I'm not sure. I visited our group founder's page, and it indicated that they haven't been around for 18 weeks (We might need to bug Knighty about transferring Founder status to someone who's actually still here, but we can worry about that later). But this contest will be advertised beyond just those of us that are still here. Once I'm satisfied that everyone's cool with the rules presented here, I'll be firing a PM off to Wanderer D to get us in on the next Group Activities post. We're also going to have a post up on Equestria After Dark, and I might post a thread in the Clopfics group as well.

582531 You should definitely do it.

All right, the statute of limitations for voicing objections to these rules is now arbitrarily over. This is now the OFFICIAL contest thread. All advertisements will be linked to here.

EDIT: Closed it just a few hours too late to get in on Wanderer D's group activities post. Dangit!

I have a pretty ridiculous idea for a Fluttershy X Fluttershy clop. I figured it would be best not to write it, but now that you posted this, count me in.

I'll be shooting for second place of course. That way I can make you draw some alicorn OC with a bad color scheme.

587230 I suppose if they really want, first place can trade down and hand the commission from kits off to second place. But kits is really a better artist than me, and more professional at it, besides.

I'll be looking forward to drawing Bananablade Nightspindle for ya if you make it, though.

587397 As always, the story is more for myself than for an audience, but if I somehow manage to win a commission, I'll come up with something good to illustrate.

Alright,after months of thinking about it,i will write my first story&enter my first writing contest.
I need to Check some things beforehand:
1:The goal is to get a mare to have sex(or cuddle) with herself,or to let her think to have sex with herself,right?
2:They need to be together,and no one else has to be involved in the selfcest,right?(aka no 2.5-some)
3:No OCs,right?
4:No weird fetishes?
5:At least one of them has to be the canon one,or not?
6:Only one story/Person,right?

PLEASE answer if these things are right or if i understood something wrong.
Well,read from you all soon in germany!

Since I can't go to sleep, I think I could answer some questions while I'm here. For your questions, NitrousBlast:

1. The pony only has to be attracted to him/herself in a romantic capacity. It is entirely your decision to decide how far it should go.
2. Yes, they have to be together with themselves.
3 & 5: To be frank, I am unsure about the use of OC's but the guidelines pretty much gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, as long it fits the allotted criteria and isn't over the top.
4. Again, that is entirely up to you.
6. Judging from the fact that we have 'story' in the guidelines instead of 'stories', I believe this is the case. However, if this changes, I'll be sure to let you know.

And I was just beginning to write a selfcest story.

I'm In.

588266 Pretty much everything 589387 said is right. OC's are fine. I actually hadn't thought of the possibility of one author submitting more than one story. I think it'd be fairest to limit it to one submission per author.

Weird fetishes are fully permissible, but keep in mind that the judges are only human. We'll try to keep uncomfortable squicks from affecting our judgement of the story itself, but there's no guarantee that the one vore/scat rapefic won't be running with a bit of a handicap.

Good luck!

Question regarding the required line insert

Can it be part of a continuing sentence or does it have to be distinct on its own?

589387 589660 Thanks Everyone who cleared it up,that helped me deciding about who my fic is.
But I wont tell,the story will be a bit more on the funny side.

PS:Dont worry,no extreme fetishes are involved,Selfcest is awesome enough as it is on its own.

PPS:My life will ruin itself in the next few months,but IDC

589865 Just so long as it's clear enough that the judges don't miss it, you can use it however you want.

I'm on this contest like a hobo on a ham sandwich!

Oh, and DIBS on the fic title: "Double Vision".
I'm claiming that one now!

591956 You can have it as far as I'm concerned.

That prize is a good as mine. MWAHAHAHAHA.
(Rubs hands together in glee)

592840

I've totally got this contest in the bag I hope everyone has a great time writing these stories; I hope the judges have a great time reading them, and I wish everyone good luck.

591956>>592840>>593800

Aha, it is nice to see some healthy competition. And don't worry, I'm sure that we will enjoy every one of your entries!

Can the key sentence be paraphrased? Like- "We've got to learn to love ourselves," et cetera?
Should be fine if not, but just curious.

601337 It should be close enough to be recognizable. Other than that, yeah, it's cool.

Couple new questions for this contest, thanks to reading some of the new responses and such.

It doesn't matter what method we choose of shipping a pony with themselves, of the current ones listed in folders for this group? Or if we even manage to come up with some other way of doing so that isn't among the main ones?

And does it have to be a one-on-one deal, can't do like say, a multi-pony one with multiple Pinkies as in a possible idea just came up with, where after she thinks seriously about how none of her friends get her, she gets the most obvious idea to clone herself using her Pinkie magic to get to the Mirror Pool again, because who understands Pinkie better than Pinkie? Even though I did at first think of this being best if a one-on-one idea, dunno if could get out of control if she tried doing the same thing as last time, but I doubt so if kept her in character (aside from moment I mentioned before), after the last time she did that to hang out with all of her friends.

604792 That is correct, any method you can think of for having multiples of the same pony is fair game. And it doesn't have to be just two of them. Make a whole Mirror Pool orgy if you like.

605394

Maybe we should make a new folder every time a new category shows up or a placeholder 'Misc.' folder to store all the other fics that doesn't qualify in a folder yet.

605394
Heh, I probably won't, but thanks for clarifying! It's just, as I said, when came up with that idea initially for Pinkie showing one of her more irrational thoughts about her friends not getting her (not saying she'd be depressed like in Party of One or after what she did in Too Many Pinkie Pies) and coming up with something simple (which is saying something for her) about someone to understand her (after all, who better than yourself?), wasn't sure if could also do that for this specific contest, even if that'd MAYBE defeat the purpose of loving yourself, if there's more than one permanent(?) selfclone. *shrugs* Of course, not saying that I'll do that idea (especially after what I think she learned that time), even though right now, it's the best one I got for this contest if I get to it in time, after hopefully writing a few other stories/chapters first. So I have some practice writing ponies, as this one won't be due for some time, even if shouldn't procrastinate just because of that. But have other reasons for wanting to write some other stuff as well first, hopefully.

605428 That'd be nice, but I think we need someone with founder privileges to add or modify group folders. Since TwinkieSpy hasn't been on in almost 20 weeks, that means we'll need to bug one of the site mods to transfer founder status to someone more active.

581374
The deadline for this contest will be March 15. Send me a PM with a link to your story by that time. You've got a little over two months to write. Go for it!

Should completed stories be kept private until judging, by the way? I don't expect posting early would matter much with a set of specified judges, but I thought I'd ask.

607922

No, I think you have the option to post them as free as you want, as long we get to see it before the end of March 15.

...well, unless Esle is planning on flooding FIMFiction with a sudden influx of selfcest stories but that's another story.

607922>>608136 While it may be tempting to try and see if we can cover FimFic in a landslide of selfcest just to make the internet quake in fear of my POWER BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!

...ahem.

Um, no, you are not required to keep your story private. Post it whenever you like.

Well, I'm glad to see that our contest is on February's Monthly Group Activity Report. How's everyone doing on their entries?

692699 It's comming along well. Currently at 4,200 words. Got distracted writing a human story along the way. Had to start over from scratch at one point to avoid a massive plot hole.

732936

That's good, that's good. /o/ I wonder how many people are in this contest though. It wouldn't be a contest if there was only two, three people in it, now would it?

733274 If you are willing to take advice from a lowly member, then you should try to plug this competition more. Create some new threads to advertise it, as aside from this initial post and the one plug in the monthly group report, there has been almost no adverts for it and people may have forgotten about it.

735105

Actually, I was thinking of several places where we can advertise the contest on. One would be sextyminuteponies, since they seems to already garner plenty of attention there and since they support fanfiction writing (especially clop), I have no reason to see that they would reject us.

Almost 10 more days left until the contest ends! Just a general reminder for those that are participating in this contest. /o/

5 days to go now. Get your entries in. I know I have.