Used and Abused - A Short Story Tournament - Winner: Shocker

[Shocker]

@Claire sorry to hear you withdrawing. I thoroughly enjoyed your take on the split personality.

Thanks, I really liked you being so into the inspiration for the names of the characters.

I’m having fun with names all the time so I notice when somebody else is doing it as well.

[Corvid]

I withdraw my participation from the tournament. I was @Perverted Mimic. If @Traumatized Teddy enters a story, they would therefore win the QF-3 match by default.

Currently, only one of the contestants has posted a story. Those that want to stay in the tournament, please be aware that you have

Timer Loading

left.

@Claire, @Lucius, @LaLia, @HistBuff, @Vile8r, @John_F_Drake, @Vela Nanashi, @Blue, @Corvid, @Shocker, @RapeU, @HumiliationInc, @Hazard, @skuttrusk, @LtBroccoli, @Writers_Bloque

...Zoiks. I... hope this notice precedes a flurry of inspiration in contestants...?

[Shocker]

I withdraw my participation from the tournament. I was @Perverted Mimic. If @Traumatized Teddy enters a story, they would therefore win the QF-3 match by default.

Currently, only one of the contestants has posted a story. Those that want to stay in the tournament, please be aware that you have

Timer Loading

left.

@Claire, @Lucius, @LaLia, @HistBuff, @Vile8r, @John_F_Drake, @Vela Nanashi, @Blue, @Corvid, @Shocker, @RapeU, @HumiliationInc, @Hazard, @skuttrusk, @LtBroccoli, @Writers_Bloque

...Zoiks. I... hope this notice precedes a flurry of inspiration in contestants...?

I think it's not a problem of inspiration, but the deadline is tomorrow, so no need to upload early.

[Corvid]

...Zoiks. I... hope this notice precedes a flurry of inspiration in contestants...?

I think it's not a problem of inspiration, but the deadline is tomorrow, so no need to upload early.

You may well be right, but given the possible need for corrections, tidying, missed word counts, etc., I hope that anyone who can upload a little bit early chooses to do so. (Though that may admittedly be a reflection of my own phobia of screwing up forms, and the like.)

[Writers_Bloque]

I guess I can cobble something together or sit this one out.

[skuttrusk]

I could post today but am I already too late??

[Lucius]

I could post today but am I already too late??

No, there's almost 7 hours to go.

[skuttrusk]

Great, thanks!

[Claire]

Contestants:

• @Shocker
• @Blue
• @Writers_Bloque
• @Lucius
• @Vile8r
• @LtBroccoli
• @RapeU
• @Hazard
• @Vela Nanashi
• @HumiliationInc
• @John_F_Drake
• @skuttrusk
• @HistBuff
• @Corvid
• @Claire
• @LaLia

I returned ownership over your stories from your pen name accounts back to your normal accounts. But please give it a look. In case I mixed someone up, please let me know.

[Claire]

I moved all contest stories to the public stories board and deleted the tournament voting board. Here are a few of my thoughts on the tournament for the community in general and @RapeU in particular.

I would not repeat a tournament in that format for short stories. The drop out rate was simply too high. And I hope nobody reads that as an accusation towards those who dropped out. Writing a short story is a serious time commitment. I get that life interferes with different things, that one might struggle wih a prompt or that the idea one came up with didn't work out as intended. That is totally understandable. But in the round of 16 4 people dropped out and one person was 5 days too late but allowed to participate anyway. In the quarter final 3 out of 8 people dropped out. And for the semi final, 2 out of 4 people dropped out, thus turning the semi final into a premature final.

The format is just too sensitive to people dropping out, especially in such large numbers.

What did bother me though were the people who dropped out without even saying a word. I totally get not being able to finish a story in time, as a matter of fact, I myself dropped out of the tournament. But I really don't understand why contestants can't find two minutes of their time to write a quick message that they won't be able to make it. I would consider that a sign of respect towards the organizer and the other contestants and I hope that this will be different in case @RapeU or somebody else decides to organize another tournament.

If I were to organize another tournament, I would probably suggest a flash fiction tournament every 6 months or so. And contrary to what some might suggest, I think the fairly quick pacing of the Ravished in a Flash tournament was a good thing. Having this tournament go on over the course of two months was just too long, I think. But having each round, writing and voting, not take more than a week for Ravished in a Flash kept the tension high and was manageable because flash fiction can be written fairly quickly.

What I have mixed feelings about is creating a seperate board for the tournament stories. In general, I like the idea a lot to just pin the contest stories to the top of the board. That gives them extra exposure and that works quite well. But when we got 12 stories for the Gang Rape Galore contest it also became obvious that this many pinned stories took away almost all attention from non contest stories during that time (Don get me wrong though, the contest was a huge success nevertheless, the only time the forum ever felt truly alive). So when it looked like we would get 16 stories for the round of 16 of Used and Abused, I thought that pinning 16 stories to the top of the board, and another 8 two weeks later, would just drown out the attention for all non contest stories for too long. However, looking at the view counts for the tournament stories, even the two highest rated stories (24 reputation each) don't have particularly impressive view counts. Even the current rather unpopular Rashomon contest might edge these stories out in terms of views. So this is a bit of a dilemma I have no solution for. Either, you pin all contest stories to the top of the public stories board and thus have them take away all the attention from the non-contest stories in case of a contest with 10+ entries. Or, you create a seperate space for the contest stories which seems to hurt the attention for the contest stories, at least in terms of views.

What this does show once more though is this: Creating too many sub boards for stories is a bad idea. For all its flaws, one thing does work well on this forum: You can get a similar amount of attention for your story even if it doesn't fit into the most popular gang rape category. That is a clear improvement over RavishU. So new sub boards for stories should always seperate stories by a clear and unique criterion and should not be used for vague genre categorization. That is what tags are for.

So these are my thoughts on the tournament and what conclusions to draw from them.