The More Most Dangerous Game - Contest · 11:15pm Jan 3rd, 2015
Hi guys! Guess What?
So, a lot of y'all may remember something of the original Most Dangerous Game contest, in which everyone worked tirelessly to prove that there's no such thing as a bad story idea. From Humans in Equestria, to OC alicorns, to second-person perspective, authors brought their A-game, and wrote the craziest and coolest stories in history.
Well, the contest's back. And now it's even more most dangerous! I've partnered up with Equestria Daily (of Equestria Daily fame) to bring you: The More Most Dangerous Game! Now fortified with extra Danger!
You can find the main post we wrote here on Equestria Daily, which should explain most of what you need to know about it. Reposting here now for your pleasure:
The More Most Dangerous Game
What This Is
(Blah blah blah exposition)
Almost everyone knows the great classics that kicked off the MLP fanfiction scene. Cupcakes, Past Sins, and so on. Many people are big fans of these stories, but many believe that these stories’ transcendent fame is only because they came first. “Perhaps they were the best in their time,” some will say, “But MLP authors have come a long way since the days of yore—we can write better now.”
Well, now’s the time for you all to put your money where your mouth is! The Second Most Dangerous Game is about “Revamping The Classics,” where the authors of today can write their own takes on the great story ideas of old. Five prompts, corresponding to great tales of the past, have been crafted, and you are challenged to pick one of them to re-imagine.
Take note that the idea here is not to “fix” the old stories. You shouldn’t, say, wholesale copy the plot of My Little Dashie, but write it better. The idea is for you to use the prompt to write your own take on the original idea. How you would approach it, given the same basic premise. The old story provides the aged spirit of the story—but the body is new, and comes from you.
How will you take on these classic tales?
The Rules
-Word Count Minimum: 2500 words. Word Count Maximum: 15,000 words. Some slight allowance may be given to stories that go over, but in general you should strive to fit within 15,000 words.
-Submissions must be complete when submitted.
-Submissions must have been written for this contest, meaning no old fics.
-One entry allowed per contestant.
-Use only one prompt, please. In the previous Most Dangerous Game, we got an awful lot of people trying to score as many prompts in their entry as possible. It was an admirable effort, but this time please try to do your best work possible using only one of the prompts.
-No crossovers, unfortunately. While one of the prompts is based on a crossover, this isn’t really the contest to submit a Fallout: Equestria sidestory or similar crossover attempt. Both because the audiences/judges may not be familiar with the source material, and because we feel it’ll encourage greater creativity for each contestant to come up with original concepts to tackle the prompt, instead of everyone going to the Fallout universe for ideas.
-Standard Equestria Daily rules regarding sex/gore apply (Find them here). One of the prompts is based on Cupcakes, so we are expecting to see some blood and such, but try not to go too far overboard. You can go the distance without in-depth descriptions of Pinkie playing skip-rope with someone’s organs.
-You may see a way to interpret any of the listed prompts in ways that run entirely contrary to the stories on which they were based. While you can try to do this, keep in mind that the goal of the contest is to “revamp” the classics, and create your own take on the original idea—which does suggest sticking at least a little bit to the spirit of the story. This being the case, the judges will probably look a bit askew at your entry if you try to, say, twist the Cupcakes prompt into a story about Pinkie building a spaceship to promote scientific discovery and goodwill. So just keep that in mind.
-Have fun. This, if anything, is the most important rule. Don’t stay up and chew your fingernails off to make your story perfect. We want this to be a fun contest for everyone.
The Prompts
-"Pinkie Pie invites a friend over to Sugarcube Corner. Little do they know that they’re in for a dark surprise." (Cupcakes)
-"A human finds a young pony abandoned in a cardboard box, and decides to raise them as their own." (My Little Dashie)
-"An old foe is reincarnated in the body of a young pony. What will the Mane Six do when they find out?" (Past Sins)
-"Lyra has always suspected that humans are real, and doesn't care if everyone else thinks she's crazy for it. She's about to find out that she was awfully, horribly, spectacularly, right." (Anthropology)
-"In an Equestria devastated by an apocalyptic war, the few that remain try their best to survive or rebuild--however they can." (Fallout: Equestria)
Submit Your Entry at the Form Here!
Contest runs from today (Saturday, Jan 3, 2015), for three weeks, until Saturday, Jan 24th 11:59 PM CST. Any entries sent in later than that won’t count, so make sure you finish in time!
Prizes
Because every contest should have prizes!
To Our Top 7 Winners: An art prize from one of the following artists — first place gets first choice, second place gets second choice, etc.
-Harwick (two characters, simple backgrounds)
-Tetrapony
-MoonlitBrush (Not comfortable with humans)
-Left2Fail
-NekoCrispy (“I can offer sketches, color sketches and detailed sketches as rewards, two characters in a piece at most and no complex backgrounds. Stuff I'm not comfortable drawing is gore or anything gross like scat or farting. I'm cool with drawing anthro and human.”)
-NCMares (“Not comfortable with humans, keep background simple”)
-James Corck (“Game for anything. Does digital and traditional art.”)
-Awarded by random drawing from all qualifying contestants: A RANDOM DERPY! Which is to say: previously a Derpy plushie, loving re-maned with soft yarn.
More Prizes as we get ‘em. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to help sweeten the pot!
Contact
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me here in this blogpost, on Fimfiction or via email at fifthanthem@gmail.com.
We’ve also decided to use the Equestria Daily group on Fimfiction so feel free to come over and brainstorm ideas and discuss things with everyone here, or ask questions regarding the contest.
That’s everything, guys. Now get going!
Obs, what have I told you about selling your soul?
Take me with you!
Well I have an idea already. This might be just what need...
I'm kinda tempted to try my hand at it, might be something fun to poke at.
Only one topic? But but but my Chrysalis baby in a box found in the wastelands of post-apocalyptic Equestria by Pinkie Pie the cannibal fic yearns for creation.
Well, that's exciting! The last Most Dangerous Game produced some good stuff, so I'm eager to see what people come up with this time around.
Maybe I'll even participate, this time.
>EQD involvement
Aaaaaand every bit of interest I had in the contest immediately plummets.
Huh...well I guess I'll give it a go.
No Rainbow Factory?
I lost the game
Oh damn I'm tempted to enter
Well, I'm game again. And this time I'll bear in mind that it's not a contest of speed.
You realize at least one person will now this, yes?
>inb4 Cold in Gardez enters and contest over
I'm crying because I'd love to do any of these and I won't be able to.
While flawed in other ways, Past Sins and FO:E actually have great premises, so this game might not be so dangerous after all
Do we have to recreate the story or can we give it a new one?
2698611
You don't need to recreate the original's plot (and, in fact, it's probably better if you don't try to copy the original). You just have to write your own story, using the prompt to provide the basic idea, and the original story to provide the "spirit" -- a general idea of the tone/direction your entry should look to follow. For instance, a story based on the Cupcakes prompt should probably not end up as a lighthearted comedy, where Pinkie's dark secret is that she secretly likes healthy food. Because that's not particularly true to anything that Cupcakes was about.
I'd consider doing something with the old foe reincarnated into the body of a young pony, likely something with Sombra and the horn he left behind, but I don't have the time or the talent to pull it off. As such, I'm going to be sitting this contest out. However, I wish the best of luck to those who do enter.
I have high hopes for this contest. I only wish I could be certain that I'd have the time to read all the winners.
Well, somebody tried several years back
2698575
i can do it this time
i believe in myself
even if no one else does
but yeah he's so totally got it in the bag again
something something GOD DAMMIT OBS
2698575
I hope he enters again. We still need a tiebreaker after Outside Insight.
Excellent. The time around this resulted in lots of great stories, so I cannot wait to see what is written for this one.
Considering one of the best gags* from the original "Cupcakes" is actually pretty similar to this, I doubt anyone is gonna be able to beat that fic at its own game. Still, I anticipate great fics for every prompt.
*Ha! Ha! Double meaning!
Does it have to be a girl pony and guy human, or can they be switched? I'm planning on doing this prompt, but with a pony of the opposite gender and a human of the opposite gender.
2698715
That's actually a good point. We didn't think about something like that. So sure, go for it. We'll switch the MLD prompt to something a bit more gender-neutral.
2698724
Thanks! Good to know~
Huh; I was just thinking about an idea that would technically fit under the FO:E prompt the other day...
Oh screw it; why the hell not? I'll throw my tricorne into the ring,
Now I just need to try and shoehorn it into 15k words,
Guilty!
Hmm... I'm a bit worried about the FO:E prompt. I'm not sure how it's going to result in anything different from the hundreds upon hundreds of existing FO:E side stories. Are there any other "classics" that could replace that prompt?
Otherwise, this looks awesome! I'll be looking forward to reading the entries.
2698533 Just curious: what do you think are the implications of EQD's involvement?
2698755
We're hoping that authors will take the opportunity to get creative with their post-apocalyptic Equestrias. It's possible that folks will try to write a Fallout Equestria sidestory and just swap some names out to remove the crossover content. That sort of thing will likely be pretty obvious, though -- for the lack of original concepts, if nothing else ("Well, gee, more POWER ARMOR?"). It's possible that people will try it regardless, but I'll state up front that you're more likely to impress the judges if you come up with your own ideas for the Equestrian post-apocalypse instead of cribbing relentlessly from FO:E.
2698764
Actually, question related to that: does it have to be an apocalyptic war, or can it just be an apocalyptic event?
2698777
The prompt does say war, so war it must be.
2698761 Implications, nothin'. I don't like the idea of working with them. EQD has a notoriously stubborn moderator base and a greatly inflated sense of self-importance. Many very good fics have been rejected because they don't follow conventional rules of English, and many incredibly mediocre ones have been accepted because they were mechanically sound despite their lack of decent storytelling. It's a website that the community lends far, far too much importance too simply because of an exclusivity that's hardly exclusive at all. "You don't use run-ons or fragments as narrative tools, you're in".
If I'm just hanging out with guys like that, I don't mind, but I prefer to write around people whose heads aren't entrenched so far up their rears their ears are filled with intestinal fluids.
OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH I'm so in!
Let's hope I can work up the guts to actually submit something.
Oh jeeze, getting flashbacks to when I tried to read the entirety of the Dangerous Game entries in a week. The horror, The horror. Will be fun to see if this gets the same amount of response.
2698803 I see. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for answering!
2698782 So, exactly how much free reign with these prompts do we have?
Edit: also, with the Equestrian apocalypse prompt, does it have to be global apocalypse, or can it be exclusive to that one freaking huge continent?
Hmm. This is tempting. I might just do this...
Oh my, a random Derpy. I...
I think I might have to try a stupid, silly idea.
2698803 My apologies that EQD being involved bothers you so much. I believe a couple of EQD Pre-Readers were involved in the last contest in the judging aspect, so do you mind me asking how it differs? In this case there are again a couple Pre-Readers among the judges, but for the most part it's still the same contest. We're hosting it and helping drum up prizes, but EQD itself isn't going to be overly involved.
If it's not being rude would you be willing to show some examples of good stories being rejected for grammar issues and poor stories being accepted?
I know in the past it's been a large problem, so if it's still going on I'd like to try and remedy it.
2698943 I'm probably revealing my own poor reading comprehension, but are you saying that judging is going to be totally divorced from the typical EqD acceptance process? (Except for the overlap in staff and the nominal goal of finding good stories, I mean.) Like, would it be hypothetically possible for a good-but-flawed story of the kind Badgerpony describes to win the contest yet be ineligible for a regular EqD feature? If so that should allay any concerns.
Guess I'll give this a shot.
Why not?
AIP§
Hi.
So if we decide to enter this contest we submit it where?
2698582
No, the real reason you're crying is because deep down, you know you'll end up forcing yourself to review all of the entries.
But seriously, that's a shame. Too much life stuff getting in the way?
I think I'm gonna give this a go I've never done a contest before. Just one thing for the prompt for past sins does villains who are no longer evil be counted?
Dang, I actually wrote a story for MLD that would've went perfect with this....welp >3<
2698803
Actually, this contest is almost entirely independent of Equestria Daily; the only difference between this one and its first iteration is that Equestria Daily is helping promote it. You're not submitting to Equestria Daily. If it's having Equestria Daily pre-readers as judges you're skeptical about, it only looks like less than a third of the judges involved are pre-readers, so there shouldn't be any big worry.
Also, you automatically get the chance of winning a free Derpy plushie just for entering!
Is the Alternate Universe tag allowed?
I'M IN I haven't done a competition in forevers and I have just the idea lying around in my howling wasteland of stories that never got wrote