Hello, hello, hello Poniverse, Happy Holidays one and all! I do hope those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend had a lovely holiday yesterday.

As I'm sure most of you are well aware of, tomorrow marks the end of Season 5 of MLP. It has been a long and lovely season indeed, and we've all made many wonderful memories together getting to watch it and share our thoughts with one another here on our wonderful community. But that said, that's the great thing about the Poniverse and brony community! We don't stop being an online home for bronies far and wide between seasons; we're up 24/7 year round, whether or not we have new ponies to look forward to each week! And to kick off the off-season and the holiday season, we've got a fun community event for our entire community lined up which our fanfiction writers will be especially interested in learning about.

That's right, it's time for another fanfiction contest, courtesy of Poniverse Fimfiction!!! This is Poniverse Fimfiction's Hearth's Warming Eve Contest 2.0!!!

As with our Hearth's Warming Eve contest last year, this year's contest's theme will also tie into the holiday season. That said, there will be some differences as well, in no small part because this year's contest will also tie into MLP Forums' Making Christmas Merrier charity event! Here are the contest rules and parameters:

(1) For those of you who have not heard of MLP Forums' Making Christmas Merrier before, MCM is a charity event which MLP Forums tries to run every year in order to raise money to buy toys for the young patients at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. If you'd like to learn more about the event and possibly donate to it, click here; we've got a $4,000 CAD benchmark this year and will happily take any contributions anypony can spare. MCM is running now and goes through December 19. How does this relate to the contest, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked! This year, all entries must not only be tied to or centered around Hearth's Warming Eve in some manner, but specifically must relate to the theme of CHARITY. Now, granted, this more specific contest prompt means that it'll be a little trickier to fit in genres like horror if one feels so inclined, but we still feel that there should be plenty of wiggle room for writers with this contest prompt to write a wide variety of stories.
(2) Entries should be no longer than 25,000 words. We'd prefer that all entries be one-shot fics, but if the author requires multiple chapters for their fic, that's fine, so long as the fic does not exceed 25,000 words and is complete upon entry.
(3) Entries cannot exceed a Teen rating. We will not accept any Mature rated fics, whether they be Gore fics, Slash fics, Clop fics, etc. That's not to say that you can't enter scary fics (though why you’d want to for Christmas is beyond me, but eh, to each his own), but our group has a strict policy of not accepting Mature rated fics. If any Mature rated fics are entered, we will not read or review them.
(4) Fics can be submitted to the contest in the folder titled Hearth's Warming Eve 2.0 Contest Entries.
(5) Contestants can enter no more than 1 submission of their own work (and please, do not enter any other author's work into the contest, even if you're doing it for them; if they'd like to enter the contest, they can do so themselves).
(6) Entries will be accepted until January 1, 2016; after that date, we will accept no new submissions.
(7) While it is not required that you use Poniverse's mascots in your entries, we are happy to have you do so and highly recommend that you do. For those of you who have never used our mascots before in a fic, profiles on all of them will be posted below for your reference. Feel free to also reference the winning entries from our Poniverse Mascot Summerpalooza Contest, found here, which are considered to be canon in the Poniverse universe. We cannot guarantee that if you use our mascot's that your entries will automatically be Poniverse canon, BUT if we like them enough, they may just end up as a part of the Poniverse canon.

Poniverse Mascot Profiles

Pixel Wavelength: Pixel Wavelength, Poniverse's overall, benevolent alicorn OC mascot, is a complete and total sweetheart: generous to the core, friendly as heck, super motherly as well. She's that friend you can call at 3am in the morning crying and she'll come to your house with food and a hug. She's pretty naive, though. She's also not very adventurous, preferring to stay home and work on creating better technology. She's a bit of a 'mad' scientist, you could say, in the same vein as Twilight. She's very scientific, certainly. She wants to make the Equestrian version of a computer that can work with all species of pony! In fact, within our own crazy Poniverse canon where computers apparently exist in Equestria, she also happens to be the Princess of the Internet, something I'm sure ya'll could do some very fun stuff with in your writing.

Buffy: MLP Forums' mascot, Buffy is an absolute bundle of fun. She was based off of Shift, who designed her. So she will sometimes speak in CAPS LIKE THIS. Kind, adoring, would do anything for a friend. She's not really a voice of wisdom by any means, but she still gives her opinion anyway. She's a blabbermouth, and loves to chat (since, you know, forums and all!). She's a huge fan of watching shows and getting into heavy (but friendly) debates about them with the ponies around town. On a sadder note, she tends to feel lonely quite often, which is a big reason why she makes her voice so loud. She wants to be heard, to feel important and noticed.

Viola: Pony.fm's mascot is an uptight musician, who specializes in violins. She is quite the social luminary, and comes from a family full of musically talented ponies. She has a personality and exhibits mannerisms in the same vein as Rarity, including the manner in which she speaks. She is a bit snobbish when it comes to ponies trying to befriend her, but outside of her tough (seemingly mean at times) exterior is quite the caring pony. She is loyal to her friends to the very core. She's definitely the straight man of the mascots - rolling her eyes at puns and boorish or uncouth behavior. Still, she's always willing to help out her friends and give them advice. She's quite good at it!

Viridian Meadows: Equestria.tv's mascot loves to gather her friends up for late night movies. She loves to crack puns and jokes (much to Viola's dismay at times), and is very much the jokester of the group. She can be quite the sassy pony too; quick with comebacks and always the one to break the silence. She's very confident and sure of herself. Sometimes, she run her mouth and fail to be careful in what she says, and that can be a bit of an issue. She's a budding filmmaker.

Nova Blast: PoniArcade's mascot, Nova Blast was named after his parent's favorite arcade machine. Nova Blast was raised by video games - he practically lives and breathes them. Especially as a video game creator. Despite this, he was never a 'nerd.' Like Viridian, he's cool and confident. Suave. The one who has a group of mares and stallions swooning over him. Nova tries to think of himself as this too cool to touch dude, but he's very much a dork at heart. He loves his friends to the core, even if he doesn't always show it. He's not one for hugs or 'I love yous,' but he does care a lot. He just has some trouble expressing himself.

Wordplay: Leave it to the roleplayers/world-builders to have most a story for him. Pony Roleplay's mascot Wordplay is actually the only mascot with siblings, an older brother named Road Map and a younger sister named Fair Dice. Wordplay is a bit shy, but is a strong writer and D&D player. He is the quietest among his friends, but don't think lightly of him; he has a very sharp tongue, and can get irritated easily. He's a perfectionist, and has a bit of trouble when it comes to sharing. He also happens to be a colt-cuddler (for those of you not in the know, that means he prefers stallions over mares), and we do ask that this trait of his not be changed, though it is not, I repeat, NOT necessary to bring it up in any fic about him, and the same can be said as far as any of the mascots love-lives or sexual preferences are concerned.

Wordplay is the stallion depicted in the various artworks, and is the storyteller and RPer of the family. Fair Dice is his fractionally younger twin sister, and is far more interested in the mechanical aspects of RPs, with resolution systems, min/maxing, and so on. The little-seen Road Map is the much older brother who spends his time in the basement running massive, overenthusastic wargame scenarios such as the War of the Sun and Moon, or the Fall of the Crystal Empire. And painting all those miniatures. Can't use unpainted miniatures, you know! That would ruin the experience.

We hope to announce the contest winners on January 15, although that date may change depending on whatever real life demands may arise at that time. The fics that come in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place will be featured on our Fimfiction group, MLP Forums, and the Poniverse Newsletter for January or February, along with reviews published for each one. In addition, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners will also receive free art commissions; these pieces will be 1-2 character full art pieces with a basic background, and may be whatever the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners desire, whether it be cover art for a fic, or just art of an OC. Artists who will work on these commissions will be announced in this thread at a later date, so keep your eyes open for that information.

We hope you enjoy this contest as much as our previous ones, and hope to see some wonderful entries that help get us all into the holiday spirit yet again! So get to it writers, and show us what you've got! Let’s do our part with the mighty pen to make this the most wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time of the year!

Contest Update

I'm pleased to announce our three artists who will be doing prize art pieces for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. Just as a reminder, prize art commissions may be 1-2 character full art pieces with a basic background; besides those limitations, they may be whatever the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners desires, whether it be cover art for a fic, or just art of an OC or show character. With that said, here are our artists.

1st place art prize: Longtime MLP Forums member Bugplayer (deviantART ID: Bugplayer) has generously offered to do the first place prize. Be sure to check out his awesome art (and amazingly adorable ponies) on deviantART!!!

2nd place art prize: Another Poniverse staff artist, the talented Melon Blitz (deviantART ID: KE-M72) has also offered his services for our second place prize. Be sure to check out his sweet art on his deviantART profile!!!

3rd place art prize: Finally, yet another Poniverse staff artist, the lovely LiraCrown (deviantART ID: LiraCrown) has offered her services for our third place prize. Be sure to check out some of her fantastic art on her deviantART profile!!!

That's all I got for this contest update, everypony. Let's all give a big thank you to all three of these wonderful artists for generously donating their time and talents to our contest!