Recently, GumOnShoe posted the winners of the April monthly contest. Due to a current ban status, I'll throw my thoughts here for now.

For a start, here's my votes in no order:

The Lame Sauce 8.5/10
Joswaldo 3/10
full-metal-albatross 1.6/10.
MattTheParanoidKat 7/10.
themanthelegend 2.5/10
aides 1/10.
CaptAcid 9.1/10.
Monocrom 8/10. (I think that's the score I gave, my Notepad program hates me and decided to lose the score I gave him).
Scarab 8.9/10.
WritersBlock 8.6
4urentertainment 6.6/10.
TheReno 0.5/10.
D3MON-SL4YER 1.5/10
gamerpeepinpa 4.5/10.
blakedatch 3/10.
pyromaniac616 2/10.
Zerok 9
Sentio 8.3
RapeMuffin 8.6

If you want to go into detail about what I liked and what I disliked, throw me a PM and I'll be more than happy. I couldn't be bothered to make an in-depth analysis at the time so I'm offering it now.

For a start, congratulations to the winners, even if I don't entirely agree with it (as usual). As much as I liked Monocrom's entry (I really did enjoy it), it felt like it didn't focus on the theme enough. Even with Monocrom's suggestion of how it's about the rebirth, it felt almost taped on. It was a great story, I was just disappointed how it didn't stay to the guidelines close enough.

Writersblock's entry was, lack of a better word, confusing. I felt thrusted into an abstract land with little to no information. I just felt too lost among the plot. The language was beautiful and the character well done but I just felt generally confused with the idea of a "Timekeeper". Zerok's entry, personally, felt too descriptive based (I know, it's silly to say but it felt like that) and the metaphor for the rebirth, at that stage in voting, just felt tacky. Even if I did really enjoy the idea of the fire wiping clean the land.

Maybe I preferred the entries I did because the rebirth was less metaphorical? As much as it's nice to read a story that has some depth, when you have to read through ten stories all that preach the same idea of someone's personality or life being reborn in a row, it gets tiresome. For example, Monocrom's story offered an abstract idea of a woman's life being reborn. It was actually more rare to come across a physical rebirth (Scarab) than a metaphorical rebirth which felt slightly strange.

I don't know why but I some how hoped for the other judges to maybe shift through my entry and give me a score. Just so I'd personally know how good or bad it is. Sort of so I can keep check of how good my stories are. Maybe I'll ask them later about, maybe not.

Another thing I felt was strange was how polar the stories were. They were either diabolical (some even to the point of being unreadable) or they were enjoyable (which made it a bit harder to shift between the top 5 or 10 and decide who was best). It was strange how many people (e.g. KitsuneNoir (which I'm surprised Gumonshoe didn't pick up on before posting it for him)) couldn't get above the required word count. Really, if I could offer any advice or any lessons to be learned from this, it's to check your word count when you're done because even if you write as good as Bret Easton Ellis, you wouldn't even have your story looked at.

Anyway, again, congratulations to the winners, hard shit to the losers and I hope everyone enters again.

I can already imagine Fyndir reading this and screaming at me.