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And The Winners Are….
Mary Sue can now be proud, shamed, put on a pedestal, embarrassed, and a many other things, don’t you agree? The 19 stories submitted for this Challenge did it all. Most of the judges commented on a number of stories in one fashion or another. There should be an award for judging. The tally came close to seven stories. And now the results…

The award for Best Overall goes to:
”Harry Almighty” by lilyevans_Jan30

The award for Best Comedy goes to:
”It That A Wand In Your Pocket?” by St Margarets

The award for Most Insane and Most Profound Social Commentary goes to:
”Spenser For Hire-Two Knuts A Word” by Spenser Hemmingway

The winning stories are now prominently listed in our Featured Stories section. Those of you that have multiple chapters or need to do some editing may continue at this time. The Challenge category is back open. If your story is completed, please ensure it is edited and YES, as completed.

The 2009-4 Challenge is coming very soon. Dig out all those old Harlequin romance novels!

I would like to thank my many judges who worked hard for this Challenge: AM, BG, CQ, DW, EB, GC, JH, JS, LW, MB, NSL, & YC. You know who you are. Thank you very much for all that reading and judging. It wasn’t easy this time around. The Challenge would not exist if nobody judged them.

Some authors have asked if I would tell them how well they did in the judging. If you wish, e-mail me and I will tell you your results.

P,S.: That difference, Sue Who, and we’re getting back on track.
Sir Ollivander on 2009.07.15 - 10:52PM ()

Comments



Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.15 - 11:00PM to say:

Congratulations to the winners. All were most deserving.



M_And came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.15 - 11:34PM to say:

Congratulations to the winners! You all rock! Now if I could figure out Sir Ollivander's clue...Seven days? Does that include six nights? And what's with the reference to Harlequins? Can't dig out what I don't have (Although my wife has a Barabra Cartland collection in boxes somewhere). Could it be in reference to...nah, I got nothing. - Mike



Spenser Hemmingway came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.16 - 01:28AM to say:

Thank you. I was hoping for Most Insane even ahead of Best Overall. It's easier to explain to my family.

As for Social Commentary... Uhm, I am neither endorsing nor encouraging doing that to lawyers and/or literary critics. Still...don't eat the school's mystery meat.

Intentional social commentary? Hmm...?

"What is the moral?! Must have a moral?! Muggles...tomorrow; comedy tonight!!"



Milarqui came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.16 - 02:42AM to say:

Oooh, damn! I worked a lot on that story and got nothing! Well, it was a first good attempt, I suppose... :(



lilyevans_Jan30 came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.16 - 07:18AM to say:

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry . .

Thanks to everyone who wrote, read, commented, and voted. All of the stories were various degrees of great, in a truly awful way. (or is that awful, in a truly great way?) Well, it was a lot of fun to write.



St Margarets came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.16 - 08:00AM to say:

Even if I'm never published and all my writing is forgotten, I'll die happy knowing I wrote a story called "Is that a wand in your pocket?" What a literary legacy. :) Thanks for creating such a fun challenge!



jennyelf came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.16 - 09:17PM to say:

Congrats to all the winners. Spenser- great allusion to "A Funny Thing Happened...". I love that show! :)



MySweetNothings came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 12:41AM to say:

@St Margarets. I hope you can still die happy knowing that on the website, it's known as "It that a wand in your pocket?". Oh, those typos sure get to you. Hilarious story though. I read a couple of the non-winners, and all which I read were really great. The judging had to have been really close, and this was actually really funny. I'm kind of sad I came in too late to participate.



Milarqui came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 08:18AM to say:

It has recently become to my knowledge that Spenser Hemmingway was a judge in this contest, as well as a contestant. This should have prevented him from posting a story for the contest, but yet he participated and won (and he didn't follow the rules, as he didn't use one of the titles), The existant conflict of interest in this situation should have been apparent to the judges, and thus I make the petition that the prizes Spenser won are given to other people more deserving of them (and, of course, that weren't judges).



Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 10:52AM to say:

Like the curse on the DADA position at Hogwarts, Spenser's winning one or more prizes in every competition is a SIYE institution (or at least it has been since I started visiting the site). It's easiest to just assume that one of the prizes is already spoken for before you start.

One could suggest blind judging (names not attached to stories until after the judging) as a way to remove the appearance of favoritism yet still permit participation among the judges, except that it'd still be obvious which story is Spenser's.




Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 10:57AM to say:

Forgot the smiley face on my prior post:

:)




agnostic came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 11:00AM to say:

Hmm ... seven days --> possible reference to 'Seven Days', the TV show? Seems convenient for introducing a Time!Travel premise. You've got your standard time machine that allows you to go back seven days in time and alter history for the better of mankind. Handy little contraption. Harry could really do with one of those... :D



Spenser Hemmingway came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.18 - 11:52PM to say:

Milarqui--Challenge entrants are quite often...very often judges themselves. I actually scored your story fairly high. I do not do politics. I do not deal with upset cheerleaders..

Everyone...please judge my stories on your own. I guess this will be my last Challenge, as I will not battle Freedonian mugworms.

Yesterday, the seventeenth of July, was Spenser's birthday--the fifth anniversary of the day I began to write. It was the day I read about Harry trying to dump...well...I created a different reality.

I have two more stories in the works. I'm too tired tonight to battle cheerleaders. My good friends--beware of people who are sure they are right. Mischief managed! Eric...yes Eric.



sanidad came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 12:17AM to say:

Milarqui -- Precluding someone from judging a challenge because they are a participant, or vice versa, because of a potential conflict of interests was also a concern of mine the first time I was invited to be a judge, so I asked about it. I was informed by the Challenge organizer that SIYE operated on the honor system, ie. it trusted the invited judges to do so in an unbiased fashion, and had never run into any problems in the 5+ years they had been running the challenges. And that was good enough for me. Naive? Perhaps. But there are so many judges (usually 12+) that one person's vote may not make much of a difference in the long run.

I can understand that you're upset at not winning an award for a story that you are proud of, but really, there are no guarantees in these contests. Judging is very subjective, even down to how the different categories (which change for each challenge) are interpreted. My favorite challenge entry that I've written (and I'm perfectly aware of all of that story's shortcomings) did not win anything, but one of my other stories in another challenge that I thought (in my own, personal opinion) was notably weaker did. It comes down to whether a story will resonate with each judge or not.

Please don't lose sight of the fact that these challenges are for fun, after all. The parameters of each challenge are meant to be a way to stimulate your creativity more than they are meant to be a spotlight on who may be the better writers who contribute to the site. This challenge in particular was an opportunity for us to poke fun at ourselves and some of the conventions we lean upon to create HP fanfiction. We should be taking this time to enjoy everyone's contributions rather than slinging accusations.




Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 02:42AM to say:

Spenser: I think it's an overreaction to quit the challenges.



Milarqui came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 04:58AM to say:

Spenser: I'm not saying that you should quit the challenges. I'm just saying that you should just either become a judge or a challenger, and if you want to be a challenger you would just have to leave the judge position. sanidad: Yeah, I'm a bit upset at that, but that was not the main factor in my complaint. It's just that the potential conflict of interest that posed having Spenser as judge and participant seemed to be slightly unfair to the rest of the challengers (and the fact that he won 2 prizes IS very suspicious). I just ask that, when someone wishes to participate as a challenger, s/he has to relinquish the judging job to someone else. I'm not asking for much, no? I also know that this is for fun, and I also plan to participate in the next challenge, but if I were to be chosen as a judge, I wouldn't participate, precisely so that I don't have a conflict of interest.



Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 07:12AM to say:

Everybody - I, and I alone, run the Challenges. I make the rules, I pick the judges, and I say who wins. The owner of SIYE and Head of administration don't even know who the judges are or know who gets what votes or nominations. However, they do get a copy of the spreadsheet of all nominated votes at the end of each Challenge. Judges may or may not reveal themselves when they leave a Review. That is their choice.

I determined a few years back that if I have more than 8-10 judges, no one judge can throw the winners off. This was a time when it was difficult to get judges to volunteer in the first place. So the rule is that any Challenge author can also be a judge. This has never been a secret. If anybody has issues, please bring them to me.

By the way, Spenser Hemmingway's Challenge submission received the most votes from our 12 judges. He took tops in the two categories he won in. Second place was close but no cigar, as we say.

Currently, I have limited Internet access as I am a patient in my own hospita. I will address this more if need be once I'm released and go home.

Spenser/Eric: don't you dare stop submitting Challenge stories! Don't you dare stop being a Challenge judge! You have always asked me if it's okay and I have always given you my word it's okay. Tom
Sir Ollivander
SIYE Administration



Torak came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 07:12AM to say:

Milarqui, don't be so childish. It's a bit of fun, there are no prizes apart from the honour, and there are enough judges to make any single judge incapable of bludgeoning the results. SIYE challenges have always allowed people to both write and judge, and in my however many years here I've never seen any indication of foul play. Conflict of interest? Not a big deal.



Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 07:19AM to say:

Milarqui I received your request, along with a few others, to tell you how you did in the Challenge. I will send them out to you in a few days as soon as I get home to my own computer. Sorry for the delay.



KateriBella came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 08:22PM to say:

Eric/Spenser, don't stop doing any of it! Thank you for judging, thank you for beta-ing my story (which didn't win anything, but it was a blast to write), and THANK YOU for submitting! I would think that being a judge and a challenger would be twice as hard: you have to put your own imagination against the imaginations of several other authors who are gunning for the same awards you are, while at the same time, have to look at yours from a completely-third person perspective when you're judging. Happy Belated Birthday, Spenser, and Happy Writing Anniversary, Eric!



tangle elfwand came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 10:27PM to say:

I don't think being a judge buys you any favours with entering a story. If anything it gets you to over-criticise it. I highly doubt any of the judges voted for their own story, I know I didn't.



Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 10:58PM to say:

In the interest of being contrary, I'm going to state that Milarqui raises a valid point: irrespective of whether it's so, there is at least an appearance of conflict of interest. If this were a professional contest with monetary prizes, you can bet that there'd be a stink over judges competing and winning.

That said, it's only fanfiction. If all that's at stake is bragging rights, is it worth the trouble fixing the optics? Doubtful, but I also think we shouldn't immediately dismiss as "childish" concerns of those who recognize potential for abuse in the system. It's human to feel disappointed at not winning and to wonder about the process.




Perspicacity came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.19 - 11:04PM to say:

(continued from prior post) Sir Ollivander has made a nice post outlining his philosophy with the contests, one which should nicely assuage author concerns of fairness. In the end, I think there probably is a teensy bit of bias helping out the judges' stories, but that's counterbalanced by a teensy bit of negative bias since judges tend not to vote on their own stories. It's probably a wash in the end.

Eric shouldn't quit entering or he'll throw off all my math. :)

Hope you get well soon, Sir Ollivander!




Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 05:15AM to say:

Not sure where/how to announce I'll be unable to finish mine ... anyone who's looking for closure ... well they beat the bad guys ... LOL It's just I've been busy, unwell, swamped with otehr issues and lost momentum and I just don't think I'll ever get back to it. Congrats to all the winners - I especially liked St Margarets' entry :)



St Margarets came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 06:56AM to say:

MySweetNothings - LOL - I noticed that too. It's a just another reminder we live in a fallen world where typos exist. Thank goodness for the sheer perfection of MarySues in fanfic . . . Kezzabear - remember this contest is supposed to parody *bad* fan fic. Why not write your last chapter as one lame (funny) author's note and include the thrilling defeat of the bad guys that you had planned? Spenser - remember what Dumbledore said to Hagrid about universal approval? No? How about Abeforth and his inappropriate charms on goats? Now you remember! Everyone remembers that line. The point is, keep doing what your doing (just stay away from the goats)



Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 08:34AM to say:

I could do that. *ponders* When I finish dying I'll get right on it ... LOL



St Margarets came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 08:37AM to say:

Kezzabear - you must live another day to write badfic. Think of of the children - or something. :) Hope you feel better soon!



Spenser Hemmingway came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 08:47AM to say:

Someone out there must read these news postings. When I checked my email this morning, I found thirfty-seven messages encouraging me to continue writing. As I said, I don't do politics, or put up with church ladies in a snit, nor, apparently, do those who wrote me. I do however appreciate my readers...enough to reconsider. I have some thinking to do, Thanks everyone. Eric



ginny_lola came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 09:45AM to say:

All the stories in the Mary Sue Challenge were great, I have to say that...I think I might just add every single one to my favourites list...and don't quit the challenges, Spenser! I love your stories, they're always hilarious!



Professor Scroll came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.20 - 10:38AM to say:

I am honestly surprised by the comments of a few members of SIYE. Nothing about the challenges or judging has changed since I joined years ago. Sir Ollivander has always done an exceptional job to find ample judges for each contest to keep things fair and even. I know when I used to have the time to write a story for a challenge - time has been very hard to find lately - I trusted everyone to be fair. If I wrote a story for the challenge, I know that personally, I wouldn't even consider it when making a decision. For the other stories, I would cut-and-paste the body of the story to Word, add the Title, and then print them off. Then, I would retire to a comfortable chair, and with my trusty red pen, I would essentially beta them, making notes in the margin. Then, I would reread them and my notes to make my decision. I commend everone who writes and judges these Challenges. I also challenge Milarqui to make the considerable time to be a judge in the next Challenge.



yentila22 came out of the woodwork on 2009.07.24 - 02:21PM to say:

I agree with ginny_lola and would like to add that I hope Kezzabear will finish her fic.It was terrific!


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