Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Jorick
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Jorick Magnificent Bastard

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Alright folks, time for the voting and feedback period for the second month of MASC. Apologies for the delay, I got busy IRL and just now am getting the time to do forum things. Better late than never though, right? Let's get right into it. The prompt for the month was...

Fear


Write a story that involves the main character encountering their greatest fear. The source of fear can be as plain or abstract as you like, as traditional or strange as you want, so long as it is whatever your character fears the most. Send your entries via PM to @Jorick before midnight (in the Pacific Time Zone) September 12th.

Extra Challenges: These are optional. The entry that best fulfills each extra challenge (as decided by @Jorick) will be highlighted after the voting period ends.

  • Old Dog, New Tricks: Use a commonplace horror monster (vampire, werewolf, zombie, etc.) as the source of fear, but add a unique twist to how they work.
  • Comedian: Fulfill the prompt in an amusing or comedic way.
  • Conqueror: Have your character conquer their fear.


Voting Rules:

1. Submit your vote by posting in the voting thread before the deadline: before midnight (in US time zones) on September 22nd.
2. Submissions are posted anonymously for a reason. Revealing which entry was yours before the voting period is over will result in disqualification.
3. Contest entrants cannot vote for their own entry but are invited to vote for a competitor's entry.
4. Comments on and critiques of the entries are highly encouraged, but do keep in mind that criticism should be constructive rather than destructive.
5. The entry with the most votes in the end will be declared the winner. @Jorick will also highlight those who did the best job tackling each extra challenge.
6. All site and contest moderation rules are of course in effect.

And here are our entries for this month:





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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Hank
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Hank Dionysian Mystery

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Alone has my vote. The atmosphere of unease and dread is carefully and skillfully crafted and I enjoyed that it ultimately amounted to nothing more than a nightmare. This avoids the need for finding an explanation to explain everyone's absence that is undoubtedly less interesting than the fact that they are absent. It works very well as a representation of Mike's fear of loneliness. Hell, it's a nightmare I could see myself having.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by BrokenPromise
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BrokenPromise With Rightious Hands

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Yikes, these reviews are a bit sloppy, but I didn't have a lot of time to write them.







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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Salenea
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Salenea Gatewatcher

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My vote goes to Alone.

I felt Fear is the best portrayed there.
It is also the one that is the easiest and most pleasant to read.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Jorick
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Jorick Magnificent Bastard

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Well then, those votes make this a pretty simple announcement post.

@Calle is our clear winner this month with all three votes going to Alone! Congratulations, and well done.

As for the extra challenges, both Old Dogs, New Tricks and Conqueror go to The Darkness Within. Aside from being the only entry to use traditional monsters, this entry managed to present them in a way markedly different from the traditional stories even in such a short time. The protagonist of this entry was also the one to most clearly overcome their fear, thus the double win on the extra challenges.

While none of the entries was blatantly comedic in nature, I'm going to name Journal of Alexi Kravinov as the winner of the Comedian challenge. The musing on suicide and how it's the process of buying a gun rather than the intended use that put him off of the idea was amusing in a very macabre way that I quite enjoyed, so kudos for making me chuckle despite the dark subject matter.

MASC will be going on a bit of a hiatus while I retool some things and play with the schedule. Keep an eye on the Writing Contests subforum and/or the Current Contest box on the sidebar of the front page to see when MASC #3 begins.
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