Cid, Prompts, Mass Promotion, New Contributor, and The RP · 6:13pm Aug 11th, 2012
(Speaker: Bronymaster)
First order of Business: Cid
As some of you may or may not have noticed/been told, Cid Gaius has officially left his position as admin of the group.
It is sad, again, to see an admin go. Unfortunately, work and life have been preventing Cid from being active, and he finally just let the job go. His parting words from his job:
“I’m not one for pretty words ...so ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’...”
While Cid will be vacating his job as Admin, he has assured us that we might still see him around the group a bit, so that is good news. I have also decided that, no, I shall not be hiring a new admin in his place.
Second Order of Business: The RP
Okay, so some rumors have been floating around, and some have you have been told that the RP is going to get deleted/destroyed/wiped/redone or some other variation of the words “changed” or “deleted”. Obviously, this has caused a bit of worry.
Now, clearly, I’m not just going to get rid of the RP. It is simply too popular, and I’m not one for shooting myself in the foot, so it will be staying. However, there WILL be changes to it.
For a long time now, I have thought the RP is a mess thanks to a combination of A) people breaking the rules when Tri’s not around (You people know who you are), and B) General craziness. So, in an effort to fix it, there WILL be changes made to the RP, and yes, it is getting wiped and restarted.
Now, I’m not going to reveal more details than that, since we will be making a blog post specifically about this soon enough, but one of the biggest worries I heard was that we were going to do this without consulting the group or asking opinions first.... I’m kind of hurt by that, actually, but no, we will not be doing this without consulting people first. As I said, we’ll be making a blog post about it and everything. Until then, just hang tight and RP as you usually do.
Third Order of Business: Prompts
So....as everyone who was with the group back around the 30-50 member marks (I think) remembers, we used to have a weekly prompt that we would do. Well...I’m bringing it back.
Now, for those of you who weren’t here when the group was that small, what this is is nothing more or less than a bi-weekly (It used to be weekly) writing challenge. You are given a specific prompt (Only 1), and are given a maximum of 2 weeks to write a response to said prompt. the prompt itself puts (you) or another character in a situation, or in an area, and usually sets you up to write. For example:
You are running through the Everfree Forest when you find something. What do you do with it?
Something simple like that. You can write the preluding scene where you are running, or you can skip right to finding the item and take it from there. Furthermore, this little prompt here only said “You”. This means you can use an OC OR a pony from the show. (Loopholes FTW). Basically, provided the prompt doesn’t specifically state that you must write for a certain character or in a certain tense, then you can basically leave it up for interpretation. Here’s an example of a more restricting prompt:
Spitfire if running through the Everfree forest, being chased by a Manticore.
Here, you are told to write for Spitfire as she runs from a Manticore. this does not mean you must start out with her being chased, as you can do the preluding scene to her being chased by a Manticore. All it means is that you MUST have SPITFIRE being CHASED BY A MANTICORE at some point in your prompt response.
Now, there are rules for making a prompt response (Otherwise, I guarantee that someone would find a way to make a meta troll-clop fic about Spitfire and that Manticore, and we don’t want to read that, since this is meant to be a serious writing exercise). The rules are pretty straightforward, though, and are mostly common sense:
1) Serious fiction only: this means no trolls, no meta, and no emoticons in your story, and you must follow the prompt.
2) If your story has any gore (All ranges are allowed) or clop (Only implied. Explicit (Pure/detailed Clop) is not allowed) whatsoever, please put a disclaimer of some kind at the top of your post.
3) The minimum word count is 1,000 words, and you must post your story before the 2 week deadline is over.
That’s it. Outside of those rules, you are free to do as you wish with these prompt responses.
Now, as far as you are concerned, that’s all you need to do. However, at the end of the 2 week deadline, this is where the Judges’ jobs come in. Whenever the prompt ends, I will have all of the responses/entries put into a Gdoc, where all five judges will come in and judge each fic. The five judges are GingerNutGin, Bronymaster, PeregrineCaged, Sunnydaze, and Tricondon. This is the scoring template:
Impact: How lasting an impression your story would leave (Can also be defined as memorability, but not really). Worth 5 points.
Professionality: Simply put, this is a technical skill score. Total value of 5 points.
Entertainment: A story can be technically sound and quite creative, but if it’s not fun to read, there is no point. Max score of 5.
Creativity: How original an idea or how original an execution they managed to make. max score of 10.
Naturally, I’ll average all five scores together, and whoever gets the highest score wins. The winner of the contest gets there fic posted as a story under the AS profile (Unless they would like to post it under their own profile or would rather not have it posted at all).
A note about letting us post your prompt response on the AS profile: If, say, the story got featured, you are admitting that you are letting the AS profile receive the feature instead of you. Let’s say user A made a prompt response and won the prompt. User A provides us with permission to post their response on the group profile. Their response gets featured. However, the story is not under User A’s name, thus they do not get the feature nor the benefits from it. Yes, we provide you with the credit for having written the story, but it won’t be the same. However, at the same time, you have also just provided the group with some very valuable self-promotion. We advise strongly that you think this over before giving us permission.
The first prompt is to be posted not long after this blog is posted, actually. Remember, this if for having fun and practicing your writing, so I don’t want to see anyone raging at another person just because they won or something silly like that.
Fourth Order of Business: A Mass Group Promotion?
You read that correctly. In a vain and awful awesome attempt to promote the group, we are having EVERYONE make blog posts promoting the group. This is entirely optional, but at some point today we request that anyone who read this make a blog of their own promoting the group, whether you have no followers or a 1,000. It matters not to us. So why have I decided to do this?
Well, while it may seem quite egotistical (And it probably is at that), I want us to do this because our recent member gainage has gone from...8 members a day to less than 1. I’m not sure what caused this, but I’d rather remedy that. Besides, I think this will be a good little experiment to see what would happen if, say everyone in the group were to make a blog about the group in the same day.
Again, this is entirely optional, and if you’d rather not participate, then that is absolutely fine and I have no ill will towards you or anything silly like that. I simply request that everyone make a blog at some point in the day promoting the group, whether it be now or later. If no one participates, that’s fine. If everyone participates, I’ll be blown away and take a picture of me biting a hat to give to you. Or I’ll put a shoe on my head like Coal did. I’ll even put the picture on here. 
Okay, it’s official, if everyone participates, I will put a shoe on my head and share the picture. I’ll probably hide my eyes or something, though, or wear shades. Last thing I need is to be identified for who I really am.
Yet again, I’ll say this: It is entirely optional and this is all probably very, very egotistical and awful of me. If anyone has an actual ill will towards this project, you can blame it all on me.
Thank you for your time, and I wish you all the best of luck with the prompts!
Meeting Adjourned
I like the idea with the prompts.
So when exactly will the RP change?
I plugged the group before it was cool to plug it lolololol
I'm hoping the prompts are a fun way to get people more active, it is--after all--why I suggested 'em, since I didn't know you had tried that before, hah!
As for the blog post--all I hear is: *bugle call* CHARGE!
280872
Lol
Glad the rp is up!
Though, I have too many projects. So, Im not kidding, but this year I hope that I will be able to join. Far too many projects!
280889
Just whenever you are able, my friend!
Prompts, eh? Color me intrigued
Sounds cool
280946
280950
He joined a couple days ago, actually.
When is the RP scheduled to change?
280996
There is no set schedule yet, but remember that I said that we'll be making another blog post in a day or so that explains this further.
Regarding the the story prompt.. this "you" can also mean group? If I wrote about a group of ponies finding something in the everfree forest, does it count?
Lovely stuff as always, now back to business.
...I have no business currently. Damn.
Hundreds upon hundreds of blogs!!!
Well, I'm pretty sure all of my followers either already know about the group, or are just tired about my rants on how amazing it is. But I never get tired of promoting.
Allons-y!
281159
Oh yeah. Whoops.
281584
Yes, yes it does count (Loopholes FTW!)