M/M Shipping Contest IV Results · 6:08am January 9th
copied from the forum post after the break:
Hello all! I am so very sorry for the long wait. These past few months have been difficult for me, especially with my physical health, and getting this post together at last was the first thing I did once I got well enough from my most recent spell. I would like to thank all of you not only for your patience, but also for making this contest what it was. The time I spent reading the stories you have written and discussing them with my wonderful co-judges have been bright spots in what has otherwise been a very rough period of my life.
As always, there were many stories that were greatly enjoyed and beloved, but will not appear in this post. If you have not yet, I encourage you to look through the entries and read and support them however you can. Winner or not, each has at the very least contributed to the $190 donation that has been made to OutRight International on this contest's behalf!
Among the 6 winning entries out of 19 total, the total monetary prize pool of $410 will be split up like so:
First Place: $150 + 1 art based on the fic by AltruistArtist
Second Place: $100
Third Place: $70
Judge Prize (x3): $30
Now, on to the results!
Judge Prize: "Courtship in the Lunar Court" by Snow Quill
One should not read Courtship in the Lunar Court expecting poetry that reads like a song, perfectly worded and proportioned, with an airtight rhyming scheme. One, because Snow Quill’s double-dipped poetry & M/M contest entry is not perfect in its rhyming and meter, and two because that’s a STUPID way to read poetry.
You read poetry to feel something, and I certainly did. Because Courtship in the Lunar Court is not a series of love notes written to each other by Kaveh Akbar and Dr. Seuss (I ship it), it’s between Nightshade and Silver Platter, two aging rookies of romance who have never given themselves a chance at love, and who will throw obstacles in their path to love because it’s their first time experiencing this beautiful thing, and fuck if they know what to do with it.
They have distinct styles, but both write in a way that is earnest, unrehearsed. When the words don’t rhyme, you can see them rushing to get to the good part. When the meter is a beat too long or short, you can see them forgetting how to count for a moment because they’re distracted remembering that look they stole his way, the softness of his step, the same heart-flutter echoing back at them from the last time their eyes met. And every once in a while there is a line that does read like a song, and makes you glad this story was written in verse.
Judge Prize: "Zephyr Breeze Doesn't Know How To Flirt" by alafoel
Zephyr Breeze may not know how to flirt—but boy, does he know how to overthink! Author alafoel uses their uniquely descriptive authorial voice to great effect in this story, exploring the jumbled inner machinations of Zephyr’s mind as he struggles with the seemingly insurmountable task of asking out the handsome captain Shining Armor at a coffee shop. This story perfectly captures an irreverent documentary style, painting a picture of each and every one of Zephyr’s thoughts and actions down to hyper-specific minutiae. We are bearing witness to this inelegant goofball at the most flustered he’s ever been, and with every passing second, the audience is treated to delightful, nimble prose illustrating the faces he’s pulling and witty remarks he’s fumbling. Whether or not he’s successful in this hapless romantic endeavor is something you’ll have to read to find out.
Judge Prize: "Clockwork Pygmalion" by CrackedInkWell
Sometimes, things can be nice.
“Clockwork Pygmalion” has a strong fairy tale vibe right from the get-go. It doesn’t try to pull the rug out from under you, up the stakes for no reason, or otherwise hit you with a “gotcha!” The letter at the opening is a warm invitation that says, “It’s safe here. There is happiness in the world, and I’d like to share mine with you.” But the story has depth and thought as well. There’s a good splash of social commentary, thought exercises throughout, and great moments of characterization even for minor characters. I felt healed after reading this story, and I wanted to highlight it because, in addition to the talents of the writer, it feels like the kind of story the world needs more of.
Congratulations, CrackedInkWell. You’ve made something beautiful here, and I appreciate it on a deeply personal level.
Third Place: "First Week on the Job" by Silver Needle
I loved the personalities in this one, both in choice and execution. It is a wonderfully fresh take on Flash Sentry, the background horse whose backstory every fanfic writer has to invent because he was never given any. As a confabulist that is constantly making up increasingly ridiculous backstories for himself, he is the perfect foil for a Blueblood at his most canonical: so full of vanity, so sure of his own intelligence, and so very empty of self-awareness. What follows is a dynamic ripe for irony, sardonic wit, undeservedly acerbic insults, and other British-coded things that are a delight when pulled off as well as this story does. And even if it were just an exercise in writing this dynamic for the length of this story’s wordcount, it would still be a good story that I enjoyed very much, but what makes it great is the perfectly Blueblood-sized grain of self-awareness towards the end that really ties together just why this ship works for Blueblood, irrespective of the truth of any of Flash’s stories about himself. And I think that is beautiful.
There’s a certain magic in taking a character from “Ugh, this guy sucks” to “I’m weeping and clapping and cheering for him! Go, you precious idiot, GO!!!!” Silver Needle does that twice in one story.
“First Week on the Job” is all about interpersonal chemistry. Silver Needle puts on a clinic for how to explore the depths and crevices of a character through interactions rather than info-dumping. There are a lot of layers here: the frustration and cat-and-mouse game between Blueblood and Flash is entertaining in its own right, but the mystery of what’s really happening in their heads makes the story all the more compelling, especially on a second or third read.
Excellent work on this, Silver Needle! You’ve excelled at so many different aspects of character-based storytelling, and you’re well deserving of this win. Congratulations!
I remember when Flash Sentry first moonwalked into the Equestria Girls canon to a shower of tomatoes and bricks thrown by bronies across the fandom. I gave the rough crowd the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t about him stealing their bookwaifu, and took it at face value that the hatred was borne from him being a dumb “blank slate” jock with no business playing a major role in any story (but it was always the waifu thing, ADMIT IT). I didn’t get the fuss, though. If he’s such a blank slate, why not headcanon him to be more interesting?
Silver Needle gets this – and crafts a Flash Sentry that is not only clever, fun, and delightfully devilish, but a perfect partner for our favourite pompous and neurotic ass, Prince Blueblood. In First Week on the Job, we’re treated to a sustained cat-and-mouse interaction between these two stallions that lasts all 4,000 words and never stops being a hoot. Have you ever watched an Abbott and Costello routine and thought, man, these two are so funny, but it’d be really cool if they were dating each other. Well, look no further than our third-place finisher. Congratulations, Silver Needle!
This story presents Flash Sentry as I’ve never seen him before. And it’s a version I would love to read several more stories about! “First Week on the Job” is best described as charming: from its jaunty prose to the witty dialogue. Flash here is written to be rakish and eloquent in a way that reminds me, endearingly, of the Westley from The Princess Bride, yet rather than romancing a good-natured princess, he’s set his sights on ingratiating himself to a far more ignoble royal charge: Prince Blueblood. Unlike Flash, this is a Blueblood I know well. He’s in typical form as his bossy, vain self, but his characterization is kept deftly lighthearted, making him an enjoyable romantic counterpart to Flash and someone you want to see become an ultimately better version of himself. In fact, both of the leads are compellingly flawed stallions. Blueblood is: see above! and Flash is a compulsive liar, one whose tales of his history and prior guard placements shift and change with increasing sensationalism. Once this dishonest habit of his is revealed, it’s easy to pick up on his untruths throughout the story, and even easier to laugh along to Blueblood’s vexation as Flash’s lies continue to frustrate and mesmerize him. However, by the story’s conclusion, one particular detail of his history is revealed that calls into question how real it is. It’s kept just ambiguous enough for the reader to draw their own conclusions and brings home the vibrant chemistry of these two.
Second Place: "Luck On the Rebound" by TCC56
As I read this story, the thing that repeats in my mind is just how well-crafted the writing is. TCC56’s Equestria is a delight to be in, full of little details and asides that really make this tale feel like a part of the larger world with all of the characters and places that we know and love, humming along as it does. That itself is part of the alchemy of the story, you see.
Party Favor x Troubleshoes starts out feeling like two names that feel like they were picked randomly out of a hat. But TCC56 really pulls together not only the commonalities between them, but also a story that binds the two that is so natural to their canon backgrounds that the ship ends up feeling like something that could be picked out of the canon show—if the canon show itself were even better. And I love how it strikes the perfect balance of whimsy that is often omitted entirely by many works, without sacrificing any of the more realistic and relatable themes that give this pairing the weight that it has. A rare feat, and one that I always enjoy seeing pulled off so well.
I laughed out loud at a coffee shop reading this one, and the strange looks I got from the other patrons were worth it. It’s not just a great sense of humor. “Luck on the Rebound” has an immense amount of heart and weaves so many themes together: the melancholy of “what if,” the spark of attraction, the randomness of the universe, and the courage it takes to roll the dice one more time.
I felt good after reading this story. Life and love are complex, and LotR (which is what that acronym means now—fight me, Tolkien!) delivers so many different facets that drive that point home. Party Favor and Troubleshoes feel like their own individual, complete characters with their own arcs, and we see enough of their pasts to understand all the machinations of the universe that conspired to have them meet, fall apart, and meet again. It’s woven beautifully into the MLP canon while still taking the liberties it needs to in order to make a cohesive story with deeper themes.
Amazing work, TCC56! Your story tickled my funny bone, tugged at my heartstrings, and toyed with my thoughts in a way that I’m still untangling. Instant favorite. Congratulations!
Luck on the Rebound is my favourite kind of fanfiction:
the gay kindthe kind that selects two characters that had zero interaction in the source material, and then makes them interact a bunch. And TCC56 does it in a way that makes you feel like this interaction totally happened—not in the show but behind the scenes—because of how perfectly the characters align. It’s in their mannerisms, their view of the world, and in the fountains of kindness hiding underneath their guards.Party Favour and Troubleshoes’ downtrodden luck with their cutie marks and the Starlight-canon-expanding adventure they embark on together is a heartwarming good time, and will strike true with any readers who have experienced a missed connection in their lives, and who wonder what could have been, and if they could only cross paths again at a time when the stars are better shaped for them to explore what can still be.
Bravo, TCC!
Party Favor and Troubleshoes Clyde are, to me, a deeply compelling pair. Despite never having interacted in canon, both of these stallions share some fascinating thematic similarities. Both are entertainers, both have a history of adverse experiences centering their cutie marks, and both have known the sting of social exclusion. Author TCC56 explores each of these subjects throughout, showing that what makes these two chronically lonely stallions so alike has also contributed to driving them apart. Both saddled by a past of insecurities and seclusion, either self-inflicted or enforced by the doctrine of an oppressor, it’s clear that they’ve had good reason to avoid closeness with others—but just as doggedly have held tight to a past moment of genuine connection between one another, however fleeting. At its heart, this is a story about meeting the right someone at the wrong time and then meeting them again at the right time. It’s about having a brief brush with a genuine person under disingenuous circumstances and holding onto that like it’s proof you’re deserving of love. And ultimately, it’s about reclaiming your agency and worthiness at the moment your life has finally stabilized and you’re ready to try and make a meaningful connection again.
All in all, “Luck on the Rebound” is funny, heartwarming, and showcases wonderful characterizations of both Party Favor and Troubleshoes. And if that wasn’t enough, the concluding author’s note sheds light on the worthwhile cause for which it was written. Thanks for making the world a little gayer, TCC56!
First Place: "Ice Station Zebra" by Botched Lobotomy
Well, it’s yet again time for me to sit here dumbfounded about how to give the praise this story deserves while knowing that my own writing skills are not up to the task.
A lesser version of this story would have needed to be twenty times as long. There are no shortcuts here, with all the characters being OC and the setting and plot being far removed from the context of the canon. To give this story’s ending the weight that it does have in less than fifteen hundred words is such a marvel that I will be studying this, as well as marveling at it, for a long time to come.
A single run-on paragraph, Ice Station Zebra can and should be read as poetry itself. There is just so much packed into its short, vivid sentences. There is so much sensation here, flashes of materials and tastes and smells and feelings that stitch together into entire scenes full of weight and meaning by implication. Few details are explicitly given about just who the protagonist is and why he is up there in the frozen north. Just enough, just the perfect amount, to make me feel everything that is needed about his alienation and despair.
And the warmth! That moment of warmth in the middle, fittingly expressed without language within the story, a necessary and beautiful use of its M-rating. The range itself is just impressive, let alone how well the story uses the contrasts and all its poetry for the impact of its final lines. Augh, the beauty! I’d just be repeating that over and over again if this blurb truly were stream-of-consciousness instead of mimicking it. Anyway, yeah, love this story. It’s so unique, pulls off that unique thing so well, really implants in my mind, makes this whole fandom thing worth it. Please read this, carefully, savoringly.
Primal. Brutal. Sexy.
“Ice Station Zebra” takes the concept of “show, don’t tell” and asks, “What if we only showed?” The reader can feel every heartbeat of the main character, every twist and turn that their emotions take, how the cruel world is getting to them, their love, their anger, and all of their sorrow. The story is memorable in a very instinctual way: even if I couldn’t tell you specific sentences, I can remember each beat of the story from a single reading because of how much I identified with this character I have almost nothing in common with.
From a technical standpoint, ISZ takes a lot of risks, and practically every one of them pays off. The formatting is the starkest and most obvious, but while lesser stories would be distracted by such a choice, this story is enhanced by it. There’s also an incredible amount of detail and character work in just 1,500 words.
Botched Lobotomy has a masterwork on their hooves here. This is one of those stories that I’ll talk about in writing panels at conventions as a must-read for anyone that wants to improve the resonance of their works. Congratulations, Botched!
One of my favourite things about Ice Station Zebra is that it completely shatters the trend of M/M contest winners being the longest submitted entry. One can picture Botched Lobotomy seeing the long-winded previous winners agonizing over our 15k-and-above-word stories and saying “pfffft, I can win in like a tenth of those words, watch,” and then they went ahead and did it.
When reading Ice Station Zebra, the structure and prose brings the barren, frigid wasteland of the Frozen North to “life” (such as it is), and sucks the reader down into its icy hold, imprinting onto them a world where conditions are brutal, food is scarce, life is not fucking fair and it is not going to get any better, ever, and you should be thankful you’re even alive, so suck it up and get used to it. But then, a chance of romance, bringing with it the exact warmth that both the protagonist and the reader are yearning for, lusting for, while never concealing the harsh reality that awaits just outside the lovers’ embrace, ready to strike them down.
Ice Station Zebra reads like classic literature, a Jack London short story ponified. It’s in and out in a cold flash of bitter, tragic storytelling, and it’s endlessly quotable; even the title leaps off the tongue, gunsight raised. My sincere congratulations to Botched Lobotomy for penning this awesome story, and my extreme thanks for writing and submitting it this year, for it’s a story that has stuck with me ever since I read it, and I still find myself sucking the rations from my teeth all these weeks later.
During the close of our judging discussion, we reserved a moment just to gush about our love for “Ice Station Zebra.” And it isn’t difficult to see why. It is visceral, sensual, and incisive—a stunning expression of the written word.
The format, a dense wall of unbroken text, is much like the frozen wasteland our protagonist occupies. It challenges the reader to empathize with him directly, to push through the visual fatigue of this environment and be rewarded by the momentary pleasure of one beautiful line of prose after the other. In its entirety, this story is told through intentional fragmentation. It is constructed through sentences that lack the scaffolding of definitive articles, forgoing structure and distilling every experience down to pure jolts of sensation.
As such, this is a work that ultimately defies the usual conventions of “shipping.” Rather than following known characters, it features an unnamed zebra protagonist and his encounter with an unnamed lover of unexplicit species and origin, one who doesn’t speak his language, yet is nonetheless able to communicate with him in this desolate state in a way no other creature could. It is a choice that works to great effect to tell a story about social exile. There is an important theme of “othering” at the core of this narrative, one that operates outside the subject of cruel and directed bigotry one may be wary to encounter in a queer work, yet is nonetheless resonant to such an experience of condemned isolation. The love these two creatures share may not be understood by all, but when expressed between them, it is, for the moment, all they need. The way this story handles sexuality and violence is unflinching: mature in the way of keen insight, rather than obscenity. In this primal world, divorced from social roles and norms, these subjects are presented as sympathetically carnal comforts, be it the relief that comes from killing for a meal, or receiving the touch of another.
In just over a thousand words, author Botched Lobotomy has crafted a chilling, emotional powerhouse of fiction. This is an inspiring work that makes me feel so excited about storytelling and freshly amazed by how we are able to use language to express the inexpressible.
It was a privilege to read this work and I encourage all those reading this blurb to do so as well. The setup and payoff of the final line will haunt me for a long time.
[Adult story embed hidden]
And that is it! Thank you all so much for being here with me. You are the ones that make it worth it.
Winners will be contacted by PM for their prizes within the week. In the meantime, if you do crave more contests, do check out the following currently running one:
- The (Un)Happy New Yuri Contest, running until 2025 Jan 31
See you again this fall for this contest's next edition!
congrats to all the finalists and winners! :D