So my weekend was fun. Part of that was being the judge for a contest that is called Iron Author. Essentially the point is to take 24 hours, take everything you know about being a good (or at least passable) author and throw it out the window. Be bad, be terrible, be downright disgusting. In concept, it was to write worse fiction than The Eye of Argon (google it, its actually a hilarious read, for various reasons).

Results have varied over the years (predictably) from an entry that was banned outright due to having been written in brown gel pen on single ply toilet paper (and for which I suspect that Con Ops now handles all entries with rubber gloves) to a chose your own adventure, complete with a Klotski puzzle and infinite sex loop (the "good ending").

Last year was notable for containing the most squick ever seen in one place--in fully typed and email-submitted entries. I will not go into detail.

This year was rather uneventful, aside from having a record number of entries (18 in total), likely due to Kylle Gold being a guest judge (usually the prior year's winner is forced to judge, I started the tradition). I only had two that I scored outside the recommended -5 to +5 scoring (with +5 being publishable, you're doing it wrong). New math is not uncommon for scores. The two entries I scored outside these bounds (not counting a pair of -6s) were scores of +4-i and "the square root of (-4 otter)"

And then three entries hit my email.

All three of them were the winners, first second and third.

The winner this year was an entry entitled, "Xenochu, I chose you!: Judgement Day." It was a pokemon/aliens/carebears cross-over.

It is the only entry that even comes close to the goal of Iron Author. To channel your inner 13 year old, and write the best possible fiction you can. And still be terrible.

And of course, we make all the winners read their entries.

KyellGold
Most entertaining part of the Iron Author contest: watching sparf slowly have an aneurym as the winning entry is read.