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Criminal Intent: A Villainous Organization One-Shot Contest

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!
 
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Starlight Aurate

Just a fallen star
YES! This sounds like an amazing idea for a contest; I'm so happy we're having another one here!! Not to mention that the lineup for judges looks pretty incredible!

I have a question: I know you said you don't recommend using headcanons and such in our entries, but if our one-shots connect to current fics we already have, is that all right? I was thinking of using characters (but not necessarily plot points) from Drowning, and I just want to make sure that it would be okay to do this since I know that not everyone has read my fic and I won't expect them to know my characters.
 

Dragonfree

Just me
Headcanons are fine in themselves; it's just that a story that is little more than an introduction to your massive headcanons is less interesting as a story than one with more of a narrative, and since this contest is not about headcanons or interpretation, your primary focus should be on writing an engaging story rather than showing off your headcanon.

Similarly, it's fine if there is a connection to your existing fics, but if we're left confused if we haven't read your existing fics, or the story isn't as interesting without backstory given in your existing fics, or something like that, then that's going to hurt your score. The real point is just for the story to stand well on its own as a self-contained work - so long as it does that, then it doesn't matter whether it involves headcanon or connects to other stories.
 

Psychic

Really and truly
I'm loving this theme! That the Pokemon franchise relies so heavily on evil teams can feel a bit uninspired at times, but there is so much potential for interesting headcanon there, as well as general exploration of who these teams are, from the grunts to the leaders. Also major props for mentioning the teams from the side games (though I can't imagine bobandbill letting anyone forget about the Colo/XD teams)!

Looking forward to this!
~Psychic
 

Matori

THE QUEEN IS BACK
Oh man thanks you guys for doing this. I'm definitely up for it, and I'll see if I can get another of my famous Team Rocket stories banged out in the next two months!
 
This sounds great! I really have no idea which team I'm most interested in writing about, but I'm coming up with ideas for all of them, so I guess that's a pretty good problem to have. These contests really get ideas flowing for me, and I like that the theme is so specific while still opening up potential for so many types of stories. Now my only issue is sitting down and actually writing something. Still, I can't wait to give it a shot and then read some of the entries!
 

TeamUniverse12

Team Universe Boss
This sounds fun, I've always adored villains in stories! I might just participate, see if I can think up something interesting...But, whether I participate or not, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone else's entries!
 

The Teller

King of Half-Truths
Well, you all know where my evil-team-focused stories are located, so feel free to look those up for free inspiration. Now I'll gotta come up with something on my own that doesn't deal with Rocket, Magma, Aqua, Galactic, Old Plasma, New Plasma, Flare, Snagem, or Cypher...
 

Zbger

Fiery Blaze Lucario
Hm... It's all fine and good, but how do we post the story?
 
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JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
Hm... It's all fine and good, but how do we post the story?

Hmm. If you mean how do you submit the story, that's covered in the first post, which phrases it better, so I'll let it speak for itself.

If you mean how do you share your story, it's a general thing to not do so until after the contest is over and the results are posted. After that, you just post it like you would any other story ... if you want to, of course.
 
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Blackjack Gabbiani

Clearly we're great!
My time has come.


Now then, a random question--what all groups are you considering? Because I've had an idea for a Conquest fic and there's a sizable "evil army" in it...

Though admittedly I'll probably just write Galactic again.

Oh yeah--how many can we submit? You say it all in the singular but I'm not overall sure.
 
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Starlight Aurate

Just a fallen star
My time has come.


Now then, a random question--what all groups are you considering? Because I've had an idea for a Conquest fic and there's a sizable "evil army" in it...

Though admittedly I'll probably just write Galactic again.

Oh yeah--how many can we submit? You say it all in the singular but I'm not overall sure.

I'm pretty sure that it's limited to one entry per contestant. But I suppose the judges would be better to answer this.

As for me, I was considering Aqua/Magma, but I feel like I should try to step outside of my comfort zone and do something else. Though, not playing any games past the 3rd generation might pose a bit of a problem there...
 

Blackjack Gabbiani

Clearly we're great!
That still gives you Rocket and...well, "Neo" Rocket. And I guess Great Rocket if they count (despite their name they're not connected).
 

Dragonfree

Just me
We've discussed it and we're agreed that yeah, we'd like to keep it to one entry per person. If you wanted you could replace an already-submitted entry with a completely different one before the deadline passes, but then only the final one would be judged and placed.
 

The Teller

King of Half-Truths
Are we all just gonna pick one evil team from a fishbowl and do that, locking everyone else out of choosing that team? Blackjack Gabbiani doing Team Galactic, starliteevee doing either Team Magma or Team Aqua, me doing Cipher? 'Cuz I'd be okay with that. And I'm most likely gonna be doing Cipher. Just need to take a round trip to Arizona to get a sense of the place first. What's everybody else thinking of doing?
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
Are we all just gonna pick one evil team from a fishbowl and do that, locking everyone else out of choosing that team? Blackjack Gabbiani doing Team Galactic, starliteevee doing either Team Magma or Team Aqua, me doing Cipher? 'Cuz I'd be okay with that. And I'm most likely gonna be doing Cipher. Just need to take a round trip to Arizona to get a sense of the place first. What's everybody else thinking of doing?
No, that seems unfair to me if we did it that way, and restrictive on how many people could then actually enter (only so many teams after all). There can be multiple entries about the same team.
 

The Teller

King of Half-Truths
No, that seems unfair to me if we did it that way, and restrictive on how many people could then actually enter (only so many teams after all). There can be multiple entries about the same team.

Sorry, that was meant as a joke. It just seemed amusing to me that no one seemed to be thinking of writing about the same team (or members within).
 

Blackjack Gabbiani

Clearly we're great!
Haha oh golly.

Well, truth be told I can't narrow down who I want to write about or what series I want to do them in or anything.
 

MerCurry

Functioning Idiot
Ooooooooh...

Okay, question, can we use more than one group or there's a clear limit?
 
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