One-Shot Contest 2024 Theme Poll + Judge Call
It's that time of year once again! We'll be hosting our fifth annual one-shot contest this June, and that means to kick things off we'll first need to decide what everyone's most excited to write about. Thanks to everyone who offered up potential themes, and to the moderation staff for helping to narrow down the list and figure out the best wording for several of these. If you aren't familiar with how our one-shot contests usually work, feel free to check out last year's results for a sense of how everything comes together. The short version is that all participants write a short story on a common topic, and then a panel of judges provides detailed feedback and ranks the entries to determine a top-three set of winners.
This poll is open through May 31st UTC, and the contest writing period will kick off immediately after on June 1st! There are ten theme options here, and you can vote for as many of them as you find interesting! Most of them should be pretty self-explanatory, but for any of them that may be mysterious, you can find more information under the spoiler:
The Meaning of Strength: Strength is often central to the Pokémon franchise: leveling up, developing a team, creating bonds that can withstand anything--but what does it really mean to be strong? What kinds of strength are there, and how do they shape the Pokémon world?
Weird Pokémon Lore: The Pokémon world is full of both strange creatures and strange facts about them: kadabra make clocks run backwards, ground-up stantler antlers are a cure for insomnia, sinistea arose from a lonely person's death. This unusual Pokémon lore often isn't explored much by the franchise, tossed off in a Pokédex entry or NPC dialogue and never revisited. For this theme, we'd like to see you dig in and expand upon some of this underutilized lore! You might focus on what it's like to be a mind-reading lapras, write a story about researchers investigating dragonite's flying speed, or anything else that puts a spotlight on some unusual Pokémon attribute or power.
Past and Future: The clash between past and future has been a theme throughout the Gen IX games, and for this theme we'd like you to tackle it head-on yourself! Your story can take place during any time period, and might or might not feature time travel, but one way or another we'd like you to explore the tension between past and future in the Pokémon world.
Heart of the City: The Pokémon world is full of fantastic places--and its cities are no exception! From Lumiose glowing tower and notoriously confusing streets to Lively Town's bustling square, Pokémon cities are in many ways similar to those in our own world, but would operate very differently with magic monsters in the mix. For this theme we'd like you to explore urban life in the Pokémon world, whether that's focusing on an existing city or creating one of your very own.
Unusual Jobs: A world as full of diverse and magical creatures as the Pokémon world is sure to have jobs as strange and wondrous as the creatures themselves. For this theme we'd like you to focus on one or more unusual jobs might find in the Pokéworld: rhyhorn racer, Frism farmer, legendary Pokémon attendant, or whatever else strikes your fantasy!
Beauty in Repair: We often regard broken things as ugly, useless, or simply inferior to their undamaged counterparts--but sometimes an object can't come into its own until it's tested, and people who suffer can become stronger and grow in new ways as a result of what they've gone through. For this theme we'd like you to celebrate the beauty of what's been broken, and how it can be mended. If you're familiar with the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing pottery with gold to create new works of art, that's the sort of philosophy we'd like to see for this theme.
Natural Disaster: The Pokémon world is certainly prone to unnatural disasters, from frozen time to wormholes to other dimensions, but it has to deal with a lot of the problems we experience in our world, too: floods, fires, frost, and more. How does the Pokémon world deal with its natural disasters? How might they have shaped its people and its history?
Daily Life in the Pokémon World: Most of the Pokémon canons focus on heroes, the movers and shakers who bother legends and become champions. For this theme, we'd like you to turn your attention away from these grand adventures and towards day-to-day living. What is daily life like for a humble Pokémart employee or a PMD-verse orb-maker? How does the presence of Pokémon (or lack of humans) influence how the average person lives?
My Greatest Treasure: Naranja Academy asks its students to seek their greatest treasure, and for this theme we'd like you to do the same! Whether it's a character discovering what they treasure most, acquiring what they've always dreamed of, or even falling short of their big goal, this theme asks you to explore the nature of treasure and what it might mean to characters in the Pokémon world.
Ancient Civiliations: What came before the Pokémon world as we know it today? For this theme, we'd like you to take us back in time to explore life in an ancient Pokémon civilization--or perhaps reflect upon it from the point of view of someone living in the contemporary Pokémon world.
Weird Pokémon Lore: The Pokémon world is full of both strange creatures and strange facts about them: kadabra make clocks run backwards, ground-up stantler antlers are a cure for insomnia, sinistea arose from a lonely person's death. This unusual Pokémon lore often isn't explored much by the franchise, tossed off in a Pokédex entry or NPC dialogue and never revisited. For this theme, we'd like to see you dig in and expand upon some of this underutilized lore! You might focus on what it's like to be a mind-reading lapras, write a story about researchers investigating dragonite's flying speed, or anything else that puts a spotlight on some unusual Pokémon attribute or power.
Past and Future: The clash between past and future has been a theme throughout the Gen IX games, and for this theme we'd like you to tackle it head-on yourself! Your story can take place during any time period, and might or might not feature time travel, but one way or another we'd like you to explore the tension between past and future in the Pokémon world.
Heart of the City: The Pokémon world is full of fantastic places--and its cities are no exception! From Lumiose glowing tower and notoriously confusing streets to Lively Town's bustling square, Pokémon cities are in many ways similar to those in our own world, but would operate very differently with magic monsters in the mix. For this theme we'd like you to explore urban life in the Pokémon world, whether that's focusing on an existing city or creating one of your very own.
Unusual Jobs: A world as full of diverse and magical creatures as the Pokémon world is sure to have jobs as strange and wondrous as the creatures themselves. For this theme we'd like you to focus on one or more unusual jobs might find in the Pokéworld: rhyhorn racer, Frism farmer, legendary Pokémon attendant, or whatever else strikes your fantasy!
Beauty in Repair: We often regard broken things as ugly, useless, or simply inferior to their undamaged counterparts--but sometimes an object can't come into its own until it's tested, and people who suffer can become stronger and grow in new ways as a result of what they've gone through. For this theme we'd like you to celebrate the beauty of what's been broken, and how it can be mended. If you're familiar with the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing pottery with gold to create new works of art, that's the sort of philosophy we'd like to see for this theme.
Natural Disaster: The Pokémon world is certainly prone to unnatural disasters, from frozen time to wormholes to other dimensions, but it has to deal with a lot of the problems we experience in our world, too: floods, fires, frost, and more. How does the Pokémon world deal with its natural disasters? How might they have shaped its people and its history?
Daily Life in the Pokémon World: Most of the Pokémon canons focus on heroes, the movers and shakers who bother legends and become champions. For this theme, we'd like you to turn your attention away from these grand adventures and towards day-to-day living. What is daily life like for a humble Pokémart employee or a PMD-verse orb-maker? How does the presence of Pokémon (or lack of humans) influence how the average person lives?
My Greatest Treasure: Naranja Academy asks its students to seek their greatest treasure, and for this theme we'd like you to do the same! Whether it's a character discovering what they treasure most, acquiring what they've always dreamed of, or even falling short of their big goal, this theme asks you to explore the nature of treasure and what it might mean to characters in the Pokémon world.
Ancient Civiliations: What came before the Pokémon world as we know it today? For this theme, we'd like you to take us back in time to explore life in an ancient Pokémon civilization--or perhaps reflect upon it from the point of view of someone living in the contemporary Pokémon world.
In addition to this year's contest theme, we're also looking for judges! These are the people who will read the entries, write reviews of them, and determine their final ranking. This year, I'm expecting that any given judge will have 10-15 fics to evaluate. The judging period will start July 1st, and we'd be looking to have judging wrapped up by the end of August. This is our second year of splitting the judge team into two groups, each of which will evaluate half the entries, which means that you can both enter and judge if you so desire! This year we have four open judge slots to fill!
If you're interested in judging, please post a comment below or send me a DM! And if you have any questions about what it means to be a judge, please don't hesitate to ask. You can look at last year's contest thread to get an idea of what sort of work judges do as well.
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