Hi guys! Guess what!

So, the judging panel period for The Most Dangerous Game has come to an end, and I'm proud to say we managed to acquit ourselves handily. All six of us managed to rate and judge an ungodly number of stories within the three-week period, and while not all of us managed to judge all the fics, it's still a pretty impressive affair. Rest assured that the results were in no way impacted by the fact that some of the judges couldn't make the time to get everything done--in fact, we specifically prioritized anything that had the opportunity to make it into the top five of fics--so no worries there. We might be able to backlog some of the stories we didn't get to during the voting period.

Again, lemme remind y'all that the precise results of all the judging (meaning scores and such)--especially on the top five fics presented here--will only be published at the end of the voting period, so as to not influence the results.

'Fore we go any further, let's take our hats off for the handsome judges of this fine contest:

-Blueshift
-Obselescence
-Jake the Army Guy
-Thorax
-ABagOVicodin
-Alexstrazsa

All of them have done a fantastic job here, and I really want to thank them for their volunteer efforts. Blueshift, in particular, deserves applause, as he managed to judge all sixty-four valid entries for the whole she-bang. Not even I managed that! Although I'm only like three short, and would've managed to finish those if I hadn't come down with an ultra mega death infection on Tuesday.

Regardless. I award Blueshift the Curly Wurly of Honor:

Godspeed, man. If you're interested in seeing some of what he had to say for the (non-finalist) entries, you can check his post out here.

Anyhow! It was a brutal slapfight, but we managed to discern a top-five list of all the entries for you handsome folks to appraise. It was exceptionally cutthroat, I have to mention. There was an impressively thin margin here, and a couple stories only barely didn't manage to make it. For a reminder on the specifics of how the judging works, refer to this thread here. The gist of it is that you're just ranking the top five contenders from your most favorite to your least favorite. Easy, right?

The voting period'll last for about ten days from hereon out, or until such time as I'm pretty darn certain no new votes are being cast. So you do have time, and a couple weekends' worth of it, but don't dawdle if you want to cast your vote.

Now, with that said, let's take a look at our contenders here. Presented below -- in NO particular order, are our contenders:

It's a slew of hard picks, but there can be only one winner!

So, what are you all waiting for?

3455090 Well, looks like I've got some reading and voting to do. Honestly, the more I looked at the other entries coming in ever so quickly, I shelved any hopes of making it this stage, and with good reason as it turns out.

Nevertheless, I'll go and cry in a corner now for my loss.

EDIT: Also, I see that we're going with the original plan of five finalists.

3455135

Yeah, in the end I figured that anything more than five would upset the overall schema of the judging method and be a bit of a bear for the audience to read through. It really was pretty close, though.

I'm actually shocked Succession didn't make it. I really, really like that story.

3456978 we must assume that obs wanted to avoid accusations of beard nepotism. Or it was the lizard aliens.

3456978
To be fair, they said that the top 7-8 stories were all pretty close, so I'd imagine Succession didn't quite make it.

Anyway, as I have said elsewhere, my vote order was, from best to worst:

Far From the Tree
To Love the Sun
For Whom We Are Hungry
In The Place the Wild Horses Sleep
The Filly and the Sea

The top three were also my top three picks from the contest (alas, I didn't read Far From the Tree before the deadline).

As always happens:

When I get into a contest around here, reading the other entries quickly made me realize that not only was I not gonna win this, I wasn't even gonna make the top five.

Still, I'm glad to see three of my favorites as actual finalists. On my scorecard, "For Whom We are Hungry" just edges out "The Young Filly and the Sea" for first place--the whole reason I entered this contest was to see if I could write a story in 2nd person, and while its turns out I largely can't, Cold in Gardez definitely can--while "In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep" is my choice for third.

With the other two, I put "Far from the Tree" in fourth since, once it eventually arrives at the spot where the story should begin--Applejack watching Chip come down the stairs--it works nicely, but the way "To Love the Sun" characterized Celestia just didn't work for me at all.

Good luck to all the finalists, though, and thanks, Obs, for giving me yet another thing to do instead of working on the Rarity story I've been trying to write all year.

Mike