Dragonfree
Just me
Criminal Intent: A Villainous Organization One-Shot Contest
Every generation of Pokémon to date has included a villainous organization or two as part of the plot: in the main series we've had Team Rocket, Team Aqua and Magma, Team Galactic, Team Plasma, and Team Flare, and spin-off games have even included quirkier entries such as Team Cipher, Team Snagem, the Phobos Battalion and the Go-Rock Squad. But in the games, these serve as antagonists on the player's quest rather than the focus of the story.
In this contest, we want you to write stories focusing on these villainous organizations: whether it be a short ficlet about the daily life of low-ranking grunts, a large-scale heist thriller or a character study of your favorite team leader, it's all fair game so long as the story is clearly about the team.
The Rules
- All normal Fan Fiction rules apply.
- Your entry must be about a canonical villainous organization existing in at least one installment of the Pokémon franchise.
- It must be new and written for the contest, not simply a story you've written and published before that happens to fit the bill (or a rewrite of one).
- Do not post your entry publicly until the results of the contest have been posted. However, you may send it privately to others for feedback before you submit your entry.
- Entries must not exceed 10,000 words. Different word counters often give different results for the same text, and we will account for this, but if your entry blatantly goes over the limit, we will ask you to edit it down and resubmit.
If you have any questions or concerns about what would be allowed, feel free to post in this thread or PM the judges.
When your entry is ready for submission, either PM it to Dragonfree or e-mail it to antialiasis@gmail.com before 23:59 UTC on October 16th, 2015. I will handle getting your entry to the other judges. If you make edits to your entry before the deadline passes, you may resubmit it.
The Judging
The judges for this contest are bobandbill, Creepychu, Dragonfree and Sike Saner. Once the deadline passes, we will each independently read all the entries, write reviews for them, and rank them according to our individual opinions. When everyone is done, I will compile all the reviews, the entries will be given points according to their placing with each judge (precisely how the points are given will depend on how many entries we get), and their final ranking will go by this combined score.
Although unexpected delays can happen, particularly if we get more entries than anticipated, we will do our best to get the results posted before December 1st, 2015. Once the results are ready, every story will be posted here, from lowest- to highest-scoring, along with their rankings and reviews from each of the judges. If you would like us not to post your entry with the results, please contact us and let us know before the results are posted. If an entry is too long to fit in a single post with its reviews, only an excerpt will be posted.
Tips
- The judges will consider spelling, grammar and punctuation - simple proofreading errors will count against your story, so be sure to give it a good read-over before submitting it! Again, sending your story to a beta-reader for feedback is allowed and even encouraged, so take advantage of that.
- Keep your stories focused and self-contained. Entries should be able to stand on their own as short stories, and while creative interpretations are encouraged, bogging a story down with extensive headcanons that don't actively contribute to the narrative is a poor move. Conversely, if the story cannot be understood clearly without reference to other fics you have written, this will drag you down. Make the story as long as it needs to be, but no longer.
- This is a contest about the villainous teams, and we'd like to see the theme really being central to the story - if it seems completely incidental to your story that the characters involved are team members, it will be at a disadvantage compared to a story that really explores the teams in an interesting way.
- Above all, though, just write a good story and have fun!
Every generation of Pokémon to date has included a villainous organization or two as part of the plot: in the main series we've had Team Rocket, Team Aqua and Magma, Team Galactic, Team Plasma, and Team Flare, and spin-off games have even included quirkier entries such as Team Cipher, Team Snagem, the Phobos Battalion and the Go-Rock Squad. But in the games, these serve as antagonists on the player's quest rather than the focus of the story.
In this contest, we want you to write stories focusing on these villainous organizations: whether it be a short ficlet about the daily life of low-ranking grunts, a large-scale heist thriller or a character study of your favorite team leader, it's all fair game so long as the story is clearly about the team.
The Rules
- All normal Fan Fiction rules apply.
- Your entry must be about a canonical villainous organization existing in at least one installment of the Pokémon franchise.
- It must be new and written for the contest, not simply a story you've written and published before that happens to fit the bill (or a rewrite of one).
- Do not post your entry publicly until the results of the contest have been posted. However, you may send it privately to others for feedback before you submit your entry.
- Entries must not exceed 10,000 words. Different word counters often give different results for the same text, and we will account for this, but if your entry blatantly goes over the limit, we will ask you to edit it down and resubmit.
If you have any questions or concerns about what would be allowed, feel free to post in this thread or PM the judges.
When your entry is ready for submission, either PM it to Dragonfree or e-mail it to antialiasis@gmail.com before 23:59 UTC on October 16th, 2015. I will handle getting your entry to the other judges. If you make edits to your entry before the deadline passes, you may resubmit it.
The Judging
The judges for this contest are bobandbill, Creepychu, Dragonfree and Sike Saner. Once the deadline passes, we will each independently read all the entries, write reviews for them, and rank them according to our individual opinions. When everyone is done, I will compile all the reviews, the entries will be given points according to their placing with each judge (precisely how the points are given will depend on how many entries we get), and their final ranking will go by this combined score.
Although unexpected delays can happen, particularly if we get more entries than anticipated, we will do our best to get the results posted before December 1st, 2015. Once the results are ready, every story will be posted here, from lowest- to highest-scoring, along with their rankings and reviews from each of the judges. If you would like us not to post your entry with the results, please contact us and let us know before the results are posted. If an entry is too long to fit in a single post with its reviews, only an excerpt will be posted.
Tips
- The judges will consider spelling, grammar and punctuation - simple proofreading errors will count against your story, so be sure to give it a good read-over before submitting it! Again, sending your story to a beta-reader for feedback is allowed and even encouraged, so take advantage of that.
- Keep your stories focused and self-contained. Entries should be able to stand on their own as short stories, and while creative interpretations are encouraged, bogging a story down with extensive headcanons that don't actively contribute to the narrative is a poor move. Conversely, if the story cannot be understood clearly without reference to other fics you have written, this will drag you down. Make the story as long as it needs to be, but no longer.
- This is a contest about the villainous teams, and we'd like to see the theme really being central to the story - if it seems completely incidental to your story that the characters involved are team members, it will be at a disadvantage compared to a story that really explores the teams in an interesting way.
- Above all, though, just write a good story and have fun!
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