There have been some concerns that I am peer pressuring people into writing goth Flurry Heart. I take these accusations very seriously, as making such baseless assumptions is as egregious as the crime itself. There is not a soul on this green Earth that can prove what I'm doing is manipulative, and I simply want to read silly stories about goth Flurry Heart.

But to answer the question, yes, I am.

I added the "Goth Flurry" to the rubric both as a joke and as an incentive for more people to write Flurry Heart wearing a choke collar. I wasn't concerned about whether it'd meddle with the results of the contest because, by the end, the winners would be discussed among the judges either way. However, I don't want to deter people from entering if they feel that this lowers their chances, or if the chances of a weaker story placing occurs. Again, the final results are up to the judges, but I am willing to put my desire for black-lipsticked alicorns aside to listen to the common folk.

Should the Goth Flurry point be removed?

To be fair, you did make a point that “that one point could be the difference between winning or not” and that could definitely lead to a heavy influx of Goth Flurry fics as desired, but could also lead to unoriginal concepts.

I just worry if everyone is doing Goth Flurry with similar tropes etc. that points could end up docked on the creativity section. Is the one extra point worth that risk to me? No, so I won’t be writing Goth Flurry. But if people genuinely want to write Goth Flurry because they have a good idea for it, then they can definitely do it!

I wouldn’t bother with the extra point for writing Goth Flurry. Seems like an unnecessary double edged sword for me. Maybe after this host a contest that IS specifically for writing about Goth Flurry

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It is too late. People are already writing. Changing rules mid-stream is bad. Shoot, I already turned in my words.

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Make a bonus bracket for the Goth Flurry stories based on how much you personally like how the goth Flurry was written, and have those results be separate from the main contest?

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Update

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I added the "Goth Flurry" to the rubric both as a joke and as an incentive for more people to write Flurry Heart wearing a choke collar.

Was creating a "Goth Flurry Heart"/"Goth Pony/Creature" group something you considered/would consider, to make any other existing/new stories easier to find? At this point, there are dozens of stories and authors with goth Flurry. And there'd be a few stories that are withdrawn/excess/late submissions, or non-submissions. (I haven't seen this question asked before)

I didn't see any goth pony stories in existing groups (https://www.fimfiction.net/groups?q=goth), and the only goth pony group had 0 stories (and will probably close soon without other administrators).