One-Shot Contest: Magical but Mundane
The Pokémon World is a place of adventure, full of legendary heroes, outlandish villains, and world-ending threats. However, it’s also full of people living peaceful lives: spending their days at work or school, keeping up with their hobbies, and taking for granted the fact that they live in a world full of magical monsters. With this contest, we want to explore an aspect of the Pokémon World that canon rarely shows us: everyday life. How would the life of a farmer, a chef, an accountant be different in the Pokémon World than here on Earth? How do heroes spend their days when their adventures are done? For this year’s one-shot contest, show us what it’s really like to live in the Pokémon World!
Story Guidelines
Your story should portray day-to-day life for someone (human or Pokémon) in whichever version of the Pokémon World you prefer: animeverse, PMD world, mainline game canon, etc. It’s fine to focus on well-known or heroic canon characters if you like, as long as the story focuses on their day-to-day routine rather than their adventures.
The Pokémon elements of the setting should be important to the story; a story that could take place on Earth with minor tweaks will not score as high on theme as one which could only happen in the Pokémon World. An easy way to frame it might be: how would the presence of Pokémon (and/or absence of humans) change day-to-day life?
Entries should be no more than 10,000 words long. Different writing programs will give different word counts, so be sure to check your story using this online calculator, which is the one I will use to determine eligibility. There is no minimum word requirement.
The story you submit should be a new one written for this contest, not one you've written previously that happens to fit the contest theme, and it should adhere to Thousand Roads' story guidelines. Please refrain from publishing your work online until the final results of the contest have been posted.
All entries are due by 11:59 PM UTC on June 30th, 2024. Not sure when that is in your timezone? You can keep track of the deadline with this handy online countdown. To enter, send your story to Negrek via PM or DM, or e-mail it to fyeahpokefic@gmail.com. Please indicate whether you’d like your story to be included in the zine (see below) when you enter. One entry per person, please.
Judging and Prizes
As we did last year, we’ll randomly split entries across two separate flights: Pikachu Flight and Eevee Flight! Each flight will have its own set of judges who will rank and review all stories, resulting in two sets of top three winners. A huge thank-you to this year’s panel of esteemed judges: Dragonfree, Flyg0n, JFought, Kandykorn, kintsugi, lisianthus, tomatorade, and Windskull!
Last year we wanted to feature contest winners in a special zine on the same theme as the contest… and it did not happen! This year I’d like to try it again, while addressing what I believe are the factors that stopped it from getting done last time. The zine will remain opt-in, and any entrants can wait for the results to come out before deciding to participate. However, if you would like your story to have the potential to be illustrated, you’ll need to specify that you’d like to participate at the time you submit your entry, since artist applications will open before the judging period ends. More information about the zine will be made available this weekend, but for now the most important things to know are:
- You will not be required to participate in the zine to participate in the one-shot contest
- Participation in the zine will be opt-in rather than opt-out
- You will have time to make edits to your story after receiving judge feedback and before submitting a final version of your story to the zine
Feel free to ask any questions you may have about judging or prizes (or any other aspect of the contest) in this thread here, or send me a DM if you prefer. As always, I hope you enjoy writing for this year's contest, and good luck to all the entrants!
