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Welcome
Well, fellow Scholars and Scribes, we've made it again to the end of our THIRD monthly invitational! We've seen many new faces over the past month as a result of the incredible #dreemport community and hope to continue seeing more of y'all's work! Today, however, we want to shine a spotlight on a few standout Scribes who entered into this month's invitational to provide us the best story they could in 800-1.5k words! Their challenge: A horror story with the central thematic element of a timepiece.
I have to be honest with y'all, they did not make the judges deliberation easy. There were some really heavy hitters submitted for judging this month, and when I say that we had to split hairs on each piece to find our top 5 LET ALONE a top 3... guys, it took us 3 days of discussion and individual deliberation to finally settle on today's rankings. Y'all should be SO incredibly proud of your work, because we the judges are proud as hell! Now, without further ado, let's see our winners!
Drumroll, please...
Our Winners!
Gold: 30 SCHOLAR, 3 SCRIBE, and 3 HSBI goes to: @thoth442!
Thoth provided us with a daring and unnerving second person perspective story that puts you, the reader, in the shoes of an individual whose inheritance of a watch which gives them a special power... or is it a curse? What would you do if given this power? Find out what Thoth thinks you would do down below!
Silver: 20 SCHOLAR, 2 SCRIBE, and 1 HSBI goes to: @driptorchpress!
Driptorchpress brought us another unnerving and unrelenting piece, following an individual who inherited a timepiece from her father, who inherited it from his. The pacing of the story combined with the unrelenting "tick tock" makes for an incredibly enjoyable and spooky read!
Bronze: 10 SCHOLAR and 1 SCRIBE goes to: @zakludick!
Zak felt called out with this particular competition, and rose to the challenge with another side story that fits beautifully into his larger steampunk world, The Clockwork City. A young woman is being pursued by a band of thugs when something lurking in the shadows begins to hunt them down, one by one...
Runners-Up:
Two exceptional authors who we felt deserved special mentions as Runners-Up (especially since we were so divided and had to split hairs on the merits of all the top 5 pieces!) were:
@schemataobscura and @gracepro!
Schemata brought us the incredible story of Keeping the Watch, an unnerving tale of a slow descent into madness. And Grace brought another heavy-hitting story, The Monster of the Clock, proving that not all antiques are suitable as retro decorations... Both of you provided amazing stories that, quite honestly, we judges argued for HOURS about, trying to deliberate where to put y'all! Keep honing your craft and continue practicing, we see GREAT things in store for both of you!
You will both be receiving 5 SCHOLAR and .5 SCRIBE as reward for your good work and participation.
Conclusion
So, this concludes our August S&S Monthly Invitational! Rewards will be divvied up within the next 24 hours so be watching your wallets to ensure your winnings come through!
Special thanks to my fellow judges @grocko and @relf87 for your service and valuable insight, you guys were absolutely incredible and a pleasure to serve with! Also, special thanks to @relf87 and @leofinance for your sponsorship of this competition with the generous contributions of 20 SCHOLAR and 200 LEO, respectively! These rewards will be distributed amongst contestants within the next 24 hours as well. 50 LEO to the first place winner, 40 to second, 30 to third, 20 to each runner-up, 4 for each contestant, and 2 for each guest judge (as a small thank you for your hard work)!
In honor of LeoFinance's sponsorship of this Invitational, let's get #ss-monthly trending on Leo Threads! We would like all contestants (and readers of this post, if possible) to share this announcement post on Threads with the #ss-monthly tag and a brief message of appreciation to the Leo community for their contribution to our community competition!
Thank you all for following this competition, be watching for the next monthly contest to drop this week! Easiest way to track them is to follow me since I will always be hosting the contest from this acount, but the general rule of thumb is that they'll always be dropped in the first week of a new month and pinned to the top of the Scholar & Scribe community page with the #ss-monthly tag! See y'all in the next one!
As always, take care of yourselves and each other, and stay thoughtful!
Your friendly neighborhood dork,
~Thinkr
About the Scholar and Scribe Community
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Aha! Thank you very much with my Bronze place win! I am honoured!
Well done to @thoth442 on your Gold win and @driptorchpress on your Silver! Well done!
Congratulations also to the runners-up @schemataobscura and @gracepro!
I am pretty sure I have read all of them except Curse of the Father which I will read right now!
Cheers to @thinkrdotexe, @relf87 and @grocko for judging and what I can only imagine to be a massive task in reading and deliberating. Again, thank you and I am very proud to be chosen to be in the top three.
It was a pleasure to judge the stories y'all brought to the table, and you are absolutely right: deliberation was difficult this month! When I say that we were splitting hairs in examining the merits of each piece, I'm not joking! It was intense! !PIZZA !CTP
Awesome stuff. This is a very good thing and it forces everyone to bring their A game. Getting anywhere near the top is a great thing!
I completely agree! The folks who make it up into the top 5 are the cream of the crop, and definitely an example for everyone to examine and learn from! Hopefully, this competition encourages people to continue to hone and perfect their craft as they continue to push the envelop further! I hope to join one of these days, but we're still ironing out the whole judging process to be more streamlined. Once I get it in a sweet spot, I might relinquish my spot on the judges panel here and there... who knows!
I felt that I needed to take a break for one month at least after winning Gold in the first one.
Maybe it would be a good idea to set up a sort of rotational judges panel? Some other members of the community need to take the position of judge and give you the chance to compete.
It is such an honor that I got into the top 3 again. You see... like many who write as a passion or hobby, I very often have doubts about my work and my quality of writing.
One or two bad comments could stay with a writer for years and I have been deeply wounded by some remarks made years ago.
To be consistently chosen for a top position serves to bring me evidence that I cannot deny myself, yet even then I do not really get any sort of ego from it. It just means that I get a little bit of validation that tells me that when I put the effort in, I CAN write good stuff.
Thank you guys again.
That's kinda what we're doing. I'm asking members of the community to serve on the judges panel with me. Once I have the "format" nailed down, I'll be able to hand-pick people, give them the format for judging and whatnot, then leave the dm so that they can deliberate without me being involved in it. Until then, though, I'm happy to continue serving as a judge. I honestly just really enjoy it! haha
You are absolutely capable of writing great stories! Don't let the haters say otherwise. Take the constructive criticism and leave the nay-sayers, because you put up solid work! It was our pleasure to deliberate over your work and the work of your competitors, y'all really brought it this month!
😁😁😁😁😁 Thank you!
Looking forward to the next one!
Congrats! The judging was intense but fun! Hehe!
I'm honored! Congrats to everyone else mentioned here 🙂
I look forward to next month and another selection of awesome stories!
We're looking forward to it as well! Thank you for your involvement in the contest, now we get to look forward to seeing more entries next month! !PIZZA !CTP
Rewards are sent out! Thank you all again for making this competition amazing! We'll look forward to seeing you in the next one...
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Wow!! Congratulations to all the winners, runners-up, and everyone who persevered and submitted a story to this competition. It takes great courage to battle the demons of self-doubt and put creative work out there for everyone to see, I salute you all. I want to express my gratefulness to the Scholar and Scribe community for this initiative and all the encouragement. As writers, we welcome all critiques, positive and negative, and it's always nice when something works out. I feel honored and humbled to be recognized this month. Thank you!
!PIZZA
!ALIVE
Thread: https://leofinance.io/threads/@thoth442/re-leothreads-5h5rmv
@thinkrdotexe! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @thoth442. (4/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
Amen to all the above! Everyone really brought the heat to this competition, and y'all certainly made it difficult for us judges to make a decision on ranking! It was a pleasure to read over and judge the work brought to us, thank you and everyone else for making this competition truly amazing! It was also our honor to award you with your ranking. You took a very daring approach to story telling with your second person perspective, and it could've monumentally flopped, but you told a story that touched on a visceral aspect of the human experience: the feeling of responsibility. I think that anyone put in the shoes of the MC in your story would likely seek solitude so they didn't feel responsible for horrible things happening because of their intrusive thoughts or imagination! It was a bold move, and it paid off beautifully!
Well done, my friend. And well done to all contestants who put their work out there to be read and judged! It takes guts, and we appreciate the hell out of all of you! !PIZZA !CTP
It was a great experience and it's a pleasure to participate in this event as a judge! Congratulations to all the winners and heartfelt thanks to all those who have participated! :)
!PIZZA
It was awesome to have you on the judges panel, my friend! I hope to do it again in the future! !PIZZA !CTP
Congratulations to all of our winners 🙌
And thanks so much for the prize :)
!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL
@thinkrdotexe! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @wrestlingdesires. (2/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
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Congratulations to all the winners. I am sure it was very difficult to choose, Thanks for sharing.
It really was! Make sure to check out their stories, and you'll see why! !PIZZA !CTP