Do you love Shining Armor? Do you hate Shining Armor? If your answer is yes to either/both of these, then this is the place for you! Shining Armor is a Terrible Dad is a sequel to Cadance is a Terrible Mom. The original contest was a success, and I've been itching to host another like it ever since. The premise is the same, only the roles are reversed: Write a story about Shining Armor being an awful parent.

You may be asking, Why host a contest like this? Who in their right mind would enter? Is your hate-boner for Shining Armor so massive that you have to make his suffering into a contest? Why does ANYBODY think this is a good idea?

To which my response is: Shut up, I'm bored.

Introduction out of the way, let's move on to the rules.

RULES

1. No Mature stories, same as last contest. We're looking for wholesome stories about bad parenting.

2. No Fetish tags. That should be obvious. This contest doesn't exist because we want to read a bunch of incest fics, it exists because Shining is a himbo dad we want to see fail.

3. No child abuse. Even if you have the talent to make any topic funny, try to avoid veering into edgy territory. I know it seems impossible, but take it as a test of creativity. A test to see how bad of a father Shining can be.

4. Maximum word count is 5,000. Minimum is 1,000. PM one of the judges if your story surpasses this word cap but you still want to enter the contest. If the word count succession is within reason, we'll work with you. However, points will be docked based on every thousand words.

5. Stories must be published after February 22, 2024 and placed into the submissions folder. Submissions will close on March 22, 2024 March 29, 2024 at 11:59 CTZ.

6. You are allowed to write serious stories. This rule exists because there was a story in the last contest people were rooting for that didn't place because it didn't fit the format. We will be more lax on that rule this time around, HOWEVER, this is primarily a shitposting contest, so serious stories will be reviewed with a serious mindset. In layman: It better be good.

To add to that, I don't mean to deter people from writing a serious story because this is a shitposting contest. While we will have a stricter approach to them, take it as an opportunity to floor us.

7. Up to 3 stories are allowed per person, however, you can only win with one.

8. Don't write a trollfic with the end goal of offending a lot of people.

9. Judges are allowed to write stories, but they are not subject to placing.

10. Stories must include link to contest saying that it's involved in the contest.

With rules out of the way, let's introduce the judges!

Judges

Flutterpriest

Based Cadance Enjoyer.

RunicTreetops

You probably haven't heard of him.

Soaring

Only writes HiE. Can't be trusted.

Muggonny

Some asshole idk

Special Back-up Judge

NorrisThePony

Does something, idk, I'm just the host.

Simply not writing a story about horrible parenting not enough for you? How about a bribery!

Prizes
1st Place: $50
2nd Place: $25
3rd Place: $10
Honorable Mentions (up to 3 each)

Now, we've had all sorts of comments in the past asking how a story about Shining Armor/Cadance being a terrible parent could possibly work without the involvement of child abuse. My normal response to this would be, "Wtf dude, are you okay?" but my follow-up would be, "Oh, that's right, some people have a healthy relationship with their family."

While I feel like there are obvious ways to write a premise such as this, we went ahead and came up with a few prompts for you to write around! Note that it isn't a requirement to follow any of these, but please write goth Flurry.

Prompts

1. Flurry is goth

2. Shining lets Flurry play with a set of keys, and one key goes to the Royal Armory

3. Shining picks Flurry up from school

4. Baby’s first drink

5. Shining tries to understand Flurry’s slang

6. Shining attends a PTA meeting

7. Shining has bad “Captain of the Royal Guard” habits

8. Flurry learns the fundamentals of gun safety

Finally, the grading of each story will be based on the following rubric.

Rubric

Grammar: /3
Characterization: /5
Creativity: /5
Flow: /5
Impact: /7
Goth Flurry: /1

Overall: /25

And that's about all you need to know! Now get to writing!