Better Late than Never: The June 2006 Lemon Contest

[Nate Hunter]

Summer 2006 Lemon Contest

The theme for this contest, announced on 28 May, is Most Uniquely Executed Straight Pairing. The pairing will be in this case open to human or digimon ONLY pairings, no cross-breeding allowed. Inter-season (Digimon Adventure - Digimon Savers) crossovers may be used, but are not the focus of the story. Inter-series (Digimon with any non-Digimon series) may not be used.

An example, in summary, which I do not want to see anybody using, is as follows:

Title: The Twist
Pairing: Masaru Daimon / Izumi Orimoto
Summary: When Izumi gets recruited by DATS after returning from the
Digital World, she falls in love with Masaru -- and he just can't
resist her body. Will they just have good hot sex, or will they be
able to work out a relationship?

This is acceptable even as a crossover, because it is only inter-season, and not inter-series. Note that you may generate any reason for the pairing as long as it's believable in terms of your story, and you may execute it in any way you want.

The grading will be done by our select panel of judges, and will focus on five categories, each worth 10 points.

[PLOT] - This category rates the concept and plot of the story regardless of anything else. Well thought out stories will probably score better here than those quickly thrown together.

[CHARACTER] - This category rates the character development and behaviour within your story. Keeping them closer to the anime will tend to rate you a better score, as long as the reviewers know the characters.

[SEMANTICS] - This category grades on use of grammatical and semantic issues. Use of proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. is important -- and this includes not abusing punctuation.

[LEMON] - This is a lemon contest, and one of the grading criteria is how well you write your lemon scene. Anybody can write porn, but can you write sex that flows with the story? That's what this category is all about.

[WRITING] - This judges the overall writing of the story in a literary fashion. Use of literary tools like metaphor, alliteration, skilled prose, and other good writing techniques will get you a good score -- but hanging on clich

[Nate Hunter]

We have 4, and a possible fifth judge -- if any judges want to enter, you may send your entries, and if the fifth is up for it, the top 4 reviews for each lemon will be used. Judge entries will only be sent to the other 4 judges in that case.

Also, I have received one submission, which reminded me that I forgot one rule:

The subject line of your submission should begin with: [DAD CONTEST]

This way I will know it isn't junk mail. Anybody except the author of "The Break Up" who has tried to send me an entry at this point, please e-mail it again to kharonalpha [AT] hotpop [DOT] com with the subject line updated to reflect this. Future entries, please do the same.

Also, I may remain around for a bit longer than I thought -- so maybe I'll do another contest next month, or in August, depending on how things go this month.

[Wisemon]

I hope lots of people enter this contest. I'd like to have some competition this time.

[Nate Hunter]

48 hours for entries -- yes, a little longer than I announced earlier, but I hope to have more than two entries. Wisemon, if your story is finished, please send it to me ASAP. Likewise with anybody else who is entering. Presently I have only two stories -- May I Take This Dance and The Break Up.

Authors entering are anonymous to judges besides myself, so please don't post your entry title on here to help prevent any bias from entering the judging. Judges may enter, so if you have something you think will work here, send it to me!

[Wisemon]

Not that there's any rush, but when do you think the judging for the contest will be tallied?

[Herr Mullen]

Indeed, when are the judges recieving these?

[Nate Hunter]

I really want to apologize for the great delay... I hadn't expected to be just starting a job as the contest ended, but I'm getting these out asap -- both of the entries I seem to have received.

The entries are "May I Have This Dance?" and "The Break Up"

If you sent an entry and it is not mentioned there, please contact me about it post-haste and I will attempt to get it to the judges.

Judges: Review deadline is five days from midnight, or the end of the day on Monday.

[Herr Mullen]

Just reveiwed both of the two I recieved.

[Nate Hunter]

We have four scores in on each of the 3 entries now, and though I'm waiting on one more, I think we have our winner. However, I will wait until Tuesday to say any more, but simply put, two of the fics are contenders here, although it's a shame we had so few entries. Till the last scores come in, we're almost through this bumpy road.

Also... the prize, in addition to AOTM until the scoring for the next contest is done, is a request fic (One-shot only!) from me. One I promise I'll complete (Sorry Archive! I still mean to finish that one for you!) by the end of summer.

[Nate Hunter]

I'm going to post the preliminary results right here, neglecting the scores from our fifth judge, since he only sent me scores for two of them. If he gets back soon, I'll update, but I don't suspect it will impact the matter of won. Presented here are my comments, and only mine, not those of the other judges, alongside of the combined scores (ie: out of 40 possible points)

In Third, and last, place, is DV85 with his entry "The Break Up". To be fair, none of us reviewers cared for the style, and all of us scored it below 50% of total points available.

DV85 "The Break Up"
Overall score - 31.5% (F)

Plot: 11/40 - 27.5%

The plot seems rather thin for a serious attempt, not to mention that the past plot (Kari saw Davis's penis earlier!) is thrown out the window to convey a virgin experience come the lemon scene. At least the not seeing Tai's is addressed here, even if not given a decent reason (the Japanese are less shy about showing their naked bodies around family and the same sex than Americans tend to be). It's a bit weird seeing someone who isn't blatantly a DaiKari fan and TK-hater doing this, but it does help with uniqueness... except the plot is so thin I could sneeze through it.

Characterization: 8/40 - 20%

The characters are completely out of character. How many girls are really going to give a guy -- who isn't even her boyfriend -- head just because he hurt his crotch (granted, she wasn't, but couldn't she have more easily gotten some ice for it?)? If Kari doubts whether or not TK likes her, why does he have a spare key to the Kamiya apartment? And TK doesn't seem the type to me who would slap a girl he liked, even if he was mad at her...

There IS characterization, but there's no reasoning behind it, and it's so completely unlike what we see in the show that it doesn't even seem relevant to the series.

Semantics: 14/40 - 35%

Though most of the punctuation and spacing is great, there are grammatical issues throughout the story -- which a lot of foreign writers also show -- in the english sounding too formal, or just too stiff, during dialogue. Speech that's just a bit off from the right or casual way of saying it, not unlike the way Omi speaks in Xiaolin Showdown. It makes the story seem a bit too contrived when dialogue reads too properly and not quite "right". Also, Takeru's family name is "Takaishi", not "Takashi". Also... having only double spaced paragraphs makes the story that much harder to follow for me. Use some way to show us when the scene is shifting, man.

Lemon Scene: 17/40 - 42.5%

Finally we get some prose in this desolate pile of sand. Dull, gray sand -- not even the golden or pale brown, this sand has just been gray up until now, and now we get a bit of color. A shame it's barely more than pastels -- not in the way of a pastel being gentle, but in the way of it being less vibrant. It's better than the rest of the story, but only just enough to be barely palatable, and not quite engaging. It almost seems... formulaic, which detracts from what uniqueness it might otherwise have.

Overall Writing: 13/40 - 32.5%

It isn't that this story is "bad" so much as it is that it's simply "bland". But in the world of art, the two are almost synonymous. Proper use of prose throughout the story would have helped to colour the scenes, while proper use of dialogue -- and some choice idioms -- within the lemon would have made it more vibrant and engaging. Again, not a bad story, if you're the sort of person who enjoys the taste of ice water or celery. If you like some flavor and color, though, it may be best to look elsewhere. The lemon scene is the only redeeming quality I can find.

Here's a bit of advice, DV85 -- quality > quantity. You could have gotten away with a much shorter entry if you had put in some effort to make it a quality entry rather than a long one or the first (coincidentally, it WAS the first) to get in. I'd rather have someone who gets theirs to me at the last minute but has quality than something like this. And here's some pointers that may help, though taking them is at your own discretion.

Points to improve:

Reaction Shots --

"T.K, calm down!" Kari tried desperately to reason with him. "You're overreacting!"
"You stay out of this you slut," he said, turning towards her, the back of his hand flying across her face.
Tai stared at the red mark this boy had just left on his little sister, and found his anger a force he could no longer manage. "T.K, you son of a bitch!"

Your original is dull, but by interposing and mixing up the content, the dialogue and prose flow together. Characters act when they speak, they act after they speak, and other characters react when spoken to. They react not only to actions, but to words, but your content failed to fully demonstrate this interaction of actions.

Presentation --

You gave us this:

[quote]