Hi all! People were talking about ways to liven this group up again (because if there's one thing Maud loves, it's excitement!), so I'm pitching an idea for a writing competition.

Here's how it works. People suggest different ideas for a task for Maud to complete. It can be anything, from the mundane, to the epic, to the ridiculous.

Anyone who wants to enter the competition can pick one of those tasks and write a one-shot about Maud completing that task. When it's done and published, they can post a link to it in the group. The first completed story will be the First Labor. The second completed story will be the Second Labor. And so on until we have a full set of Twelve Labors. Each Labor will be a separate story, so there's no need to coordinate with other entrants. They can all be written separately without affecting each other.

No quality control will be imposed, so it doesn't matter how good you are; anyone who wants to enter is welcome, and all stories will be accepted (at least until we have twelve!).

I'm happy to organize this contest. What do people reckon, is there any interest in this? Comment below if so!

4269133 She may have grown up working on a rock farm, but what working in a quarry?

That could be fun,

4269273 - well, I'll be looking for specific tasks, but I'm going to wait until more people have registered interest before I start taking suggestions. :)

4269311 How "specific" are we talking about?

4269342 - as in tasks with clear objectives, such as "eat a bagel", "clean Twilight's castle", "defeat Bulk Biceps in a hoof wrestling match", etc. The task must have a success condition. :)

4269358 Okay, hm...

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Oh, I know! Get a REALLY big block of granite, and she if she can turn it into a pile of pebbles with her bare hooves. Granite is a VERY strong igneous rock.

4269407 - that's one idea. Hopefully more people will pitch in and we can get something going. This group has 500 members! Some of them must still love Maud, right?

4269424 Well, I still love Maud. And I even came up with a rock-themed quote not too long ago:

"Strong like granite, impermeable like slate, and rough like sandstone."

One rock from each family; igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. I had a slight geology obsession when I was a small child,

4269133

How about her mining rocks? In Magic Duel, we see Trixie with Pinkie Pie and Maud's father and she's mining a rock with a pickaxe (Well, I think she was anyways. I can't quite remember.)

4269572 - these are things that Maud can do, but I was thinking a bit wider than that. The Twelve Labors of Hercules (on which this is based) are twelve tasks that Hercules was forced to do as penance, and they were all supposed to be things that he'd never be able to do: slaying the Lernean Hydra, cleaning the stables of Augeas, capturing Cerberus, etc.

I'm not going for a Greek epic, though; it's supposed to be a silly contest of Maud doing a bunch of things that she might not usually do.

4269598

True true...

Maybe like how Spike in "Spike At Your Service" made a giant rock tower for Rainbow Dash, Maud could either maybe knock it down herself and mine it all with her bare hooves before they crash to the ground after she knocks it down, OR she can mine all the rocks with a single pickaxe from the whole tower from bottom to top before they smash her? Or maybe from top to bottom creating a huge rock storm in the process?

4269634 - as long as there's at least a thousand words of story potential in it, it's all good! But this all depends on getting enough people who are interested. ^_^

Nopony else? I checked everyone who said they were still around two weeks ago, and almost all of them have logged in recently enough to see this. Y'all can tell me "no, hawthornbunny, that's a terrible idea, what were you thinking" if you want. I just wanna do something for Maud!

4269133 I'm thinking of something right this second.

Ooh! Do you mind if it takes place in the same universe as my other Maud fic, Of Night and Stone?

-Kirb, got sunshine in a bag. (yt • da • tr)

4271158

I'm thinking of something right this second.

Yay!

Ooh! Do you mind if it takes place in the same universe as my other Maud fic, Of Night and Stone?

Well it depends, I was planning two sides to this contest: audience suggestions, and people writing things based on audience suggestions. So if you're writing, then what you do will depend on the suggestion that you take. I don't see anything wrong with setting it in a different universe though, as long as readers won't find it hard to follow.

Maud gets a date?

4269133

This is fabulous. Sticky posting this now.

*gasp*

Thanks! I thought the idea was dead because there seemed to be not much interest a few weeks ago, and... well, maybe that's still the case, but if people wanna do this I'm still happy to organize it. I just need some measure of interest.