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. . .there was the first Short Story Contest (SSC). The contest started not with the idea of newsgroup members competing to see who was the best author, but rather with the thought of encouraging posting during the all-too-quiet summer months and to give us short, fun spanking stories to read in between trips to the beach and work in the garden (yes we're a global group, but the SSC is a product of a June - August summer).
2007 marks the 14th contest. I think that's something to celebrate -- 14 years being a long time even outside the internet and several lifetimes on it. The contest has survived (thrived even) the move from the alt.* to the soc.* hierarchy and various painful flamewars, as well as the natural coming and going of posters. It has been organized in a variety of different ways, some years having twenty or more categories, others having as few as five. Over the years, the contest has prompted delurks from new authors as well as the return of old friends. Most newsgroup writers (and since we're a text-based forum, that means everyone) try and write something for each contest. The variety is to be celebrated -- all facets of the spanking kink are welcome on the newsgroup and in the contest -- a notion that's always been a newsgroup strength.
When I started thinking about this year's contest, I wanted to do something a little different and have a guiding theme, both to make this contest distinct in some way from the one I organized in 2001, and also to visually inspire the contest archive for this year. This being the 13th anniversary of the first contest, I originally thought of using "Bad Luck" or "A Series of Unfortunate Events" as a theme. This eventually grew into using the broader notion of The Gothic. That's not to say only gothic stories are welcome of course -- it's just a visual and thematic contest hook.
The annual contest is one of the best traditions of this newsgroup -- maybe even the best. I'm honored to get to be a part of it this year.
A final note: the contest is open until September 15. Do you know where your story is?
What is "the Gothic"?
Gothic literature is often referred to as "romantic horror" or "dark romance." Classically, a gothic tale is a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery. The gothic is connected to 18th century art, literature and architecture with repeated revivals throughout the 19th - 21st centuries.
Seven themes that frequently appear in gothic works:
(from: http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/goth.html)
Other definitions of gothic literature: "a literature of nightmare. Among its conventions are found dream landscapes and figures of the subconscious imagination. Its fictional world gives form to amorphous fears and impulses common to all mankind, using an amalgam of materials, some torn from the authors own subconscious mind and some the stuff of myth, folklore, fairy tale, and romance. It conjures up beings--mad monks, vampires, and demons--and settings--forbidding cliffs and glowering buildings, stormy seas and the dizzying abyss--that have literary significance and the properties of dream symbolism as well. Gothic fiction gives shape to concepts of the place of evil in the human mind." (MacAndrew, Elizabeth. The Gothic Tradition in Fiction.)
Classics of Gothic Literature
For more examples and a longer definition see the Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_novel