Redwood stories · 1:32am Sep 5th, 2015
For those not in the know, I competed in the OC Slamjam contest while it was running, for which I created a character called Redwood. I was in the contest for two rounds, winning one legitimate victory and one default, until I failed to submit a story in time for the third round due to a lack of inspiration. My two stories were Strange Bedfellows and Liaisons, both of which I recently edited and published on my own account, since the contest had concluded and I no longer felt the need to keep my anonymity.
As of today, both have been revoked. According to the moderator who I spoke with, they should not have been approved in the first place, as they broke FimFiction's rule about reposting stories that are already on the site. While the versions I published have been altered from the contest versions for spelling corrections, name alterations, and to fill some minor plotholes, the differences were not significant enough to warrant an exception to this rule. It sucks, but those are the rules, and I'm not going to complain about that. But I can link to the unpublished stories where relevant, and for those who want to read the dangerous, forbidden words that I've written, you can now find links to the edited versions of both stories here in this blog, on my userpage, and in the Borderworld group's forums (where both stories are now classified as supplementary material).
As for the future of the Redwood character, I do have plans for further stories involving and/or about her, and I did permit other authors who were involved in the Slamjam to use her for whatever purposes they contrive as well. Anyone interested in further Redwood stories in general should look up what other authors have already done with her in the contest, and keep an eye out for news on continued Slamjam-related projects. Anyone interested specifically in Redwood stories written by me will know when they're here, since you're presumably already following me if you're reading this blog.
That's all for now.
New chapter of To Keep the Fire Burning coming sometime soon. Watch out for it.
You know, I figured they could have made exceptions for this seeing how a lot of others did it too... that sucks but... eh. Rules iz rules I guess.
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Some people who seem to have been allowed to publish their stories may still yet get a message like the one I got, and some may slip through the net anyway and get ultimately away with it. I guess it depends on how much the moderators care to pursue this.
In my case, it was originally just Liaisons that was revoked, and the mod who messaged me missed Strange Bedfellows entirely, despite Liaisons having been the more heavily edited of the two. But he revoked that story too when I pointed it out to him in the interest of honesty.
Considering one of the main mods HOSTED the competition, I think if they intended to start it they're gonna finish it.
I think it's a fair rule, though. This is within the guidelines, and you can't give exceptions just for the sake of it. You'll just have to be content with linking, as unfortunate as that is.
Kudos on being honest, too.
That's just dumb.
Both stories are pretty nice (although I liked Liaisons more) and I would never found them if you did not publish them in your account.
And I believe that I am not only reader here who does not check contests but looks for new stories of followed authors.
It is normal practice when story from contest is polished and expanded later by author.
Now in this case - you have to either leave it as it is (which means that a lot of your existing and most of new readers could miss the story and that polished version will never see the light) or remove story from contest account (if you can do this) and publish polished version here (which means loosing contest version and possible future readers coming from contest).
BTW: I suppose if go with latter option and remove the story from contest to publish it here - it could draw mods attention to the issue.
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Removing stories from the contest version so that the authors can publish them themselves sets a dangerous precedent and impacts the reading experience of people trying to read all entries from the contest, so I really wouldn't want to do that.
It is a damn shame that my followers may now never be aware of the stories, but that's precisely why I made this blog, and why I linked the stories everywhere it's applicable to do so. And this is also at least part of the reason why I have a group and I regularly encourage my followers to join it - most of what I write ends up there, even if I can't otherwise get it onto the site. The vast majority of my followers have probably seen only a fraction of my actual work, most of them knowing me just for Human or my Discord oneshots.
But that's just how people work. If they're not interested when they see it in their feed the first time, aggressive marketing will just seem obnoxious. So I just gotta leave them to it. If they're interested enough in my writing in general to follow me, I just have to trust to fate that at some point they'll visit my main userpage out of curiosity and see all the links in the sidebar for everything else I've ever done.
Heh. So YOU'RE the author who beat me by default in the first round. Nice job.
Also, too bad about not being able to post the stories. Cool that you'll write more Redwood in the future though!
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Ah, I was half-right. I did think that you were an opponent of mine, but I initially assumed you were Wind Whistler. This is good to know, because now I can credit you in the author's notes for Bedfellows.
3370663 Thanks. Sorry about not giving you any kind of a challenge, but school got in the way of me writing anything.
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It's cool. I eventually ended up giving someone else a default victory too. Sometimes things happen.
3370698 Yep.
I just posted my own collection, and Meeester looked at it twice and approved it with no problem. Here's hoping that it gets to stay up!
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Fingers crossed.