The "A Thousand Words Contest III", to give it its slightly unwieldy full name,¹ has published its results! Out of 166 entries, just two fewer than last year's edition, 46 have received gold, silver, bronze or pewter (it's a thing, apparently) medals or honourable mentions, so 27.7%. Of which a goodly number are by gloamish, who set some kind of record by having their five entries all place, one with each kind of recognition!
¹ I could have shortened it to TW3, but for us Brits that abbreviation is already taken!
Although there were only six hon menshes this year, as against nine in 2023, and there were no specific Judge's Prizes (fifteen last year), the significant increase in the number of bronze medals awarded (seven last year, twelve this) and the introduction of pewter medals (sixteen) means there are several more stories which were given recognition at some level than there were in 2023's contest. I'm not actually sure why Judge's Prizes were removed, but that's not something I'm too exercised by.
I am currently considering what to do about reviewing these. In particular, how far down the rankings to go. In the past I have reviewed all the medallists and mentions, but with the largest ever count of those I'm not yet in a position to commit to doing so this time. I think it can be taken as read that gold and silver medallists will get covered. Probably bronze too, but pewter and hon mensh I don't know about. Even if I do, I may not run these reviews in one big block of a month or so, but instead break them up with one or two conventional editions of PR in the middle.
As for my own little entry, Cleaning Up, I never expected it to get anywhere (as indeed it didn't) and I certainly don't expect to be grumbling that the stories that placed above it were worse. As the longdesc says, it was written in an hour after I decided close to the closing date that I'd like to continue my record of always having submitted something for the Thousand Words event. I'm not an expert speedwriter and it shows. I'd actually have been fretful had it won something, since it would have suggested a dearth of great fics around it.
Also, I said I'd expand a bit on my previously stated unease about the contest showrunners' decision regarding Experimental works. It's not my contest of course so this is just a personal opinion, but I tend to think that staying within Fimfiction story rules makes sense as being an integral part of the challenge. Sure, push them as far as you can, subvert them gleefully – that's part of the fun of contests – but if the story is deemed to fail site rules on something like formatting, that's your bad luck. I feel choosing to run that risk is also part of the fun.
So, I'm not entirely on board with the contest rules changing to allow fics that would fail site moderation to enter in blog form, all the more so since on a purely personal level I've kind of had enough of the type of Experimental fic that majors on doing weird things with formatting and word count. I fret that in next year's contest (assuming it runs, as is planned and hoped) Experimental will be full of fics that don't even try to conform to site rules. That to me will not be the same competition, and (again to me) will probably not appeal as much.
This doesn't mean I won't support the contest, of course! I love it, I feel it's run very well, and I think it's thoroughly good for Fimfiction and for ponyfic in general. It simply means that in 2025 I suspect I may just pay less attention to the Experimental category than to the others. That said, of course, I don't know how the contest will be structured next year, so I reserve the right to do a screeching 180 if it turns out to appeal to me after all!
