Time Contest!

The "SCPs In Time" Contest


In First Place is… And the Winner Is..., by Smapti!

In Second Place is… Skipping Time, by Roget!

In Third Place is… Automata Et Cetera, by Ihpkmn!

Congratulations to all our entrants and thank you for participating!


What's all this, then?

It's a contest. Specifically, it's a contest to explore the ultimate decider, the one foe against which all things will fall. Barbra Streisand Time.

Everything is affected by the passage of time, however much or little. Everything changes or is changed. So your task, should you choose to accept it, is to write about how one (or more!) SCP Item interacts with time or changes over time or how it existed in a different time period or, well, you get the idea. And although this doesn't exclude SCPs that explicitly deal with time, wouldn't it be more interesting to work with one that doesn't obviously do so?

Can you give me some examples of what might be acceptable?

Sure:

  • What was SCP-049 like back during the time of the Black Plague?
  • Metal eventually corrodes. How does SCP-359 react over the course of years or decades to this slow degradation?
  • What might happen if SCP-682 got caught in a time loop?
  • SCP-1048 uses some unusual ingredients when he makes new friends. Can he make a new friend out of Time itself?
  • The article for SCP-1124 was written by a future version of the Foundation. How would the current-era Foundation react to it?
  • SCP-1323 is only accessible at certain times of the year. How do the inhabitants react to this time-based restriction?
  • What happens if two SCPs that deal with time are accidentally exposed to each other?

If you want to use on of these as a jumping-off point, feel free. But these are just examples; you don't have to stick with them.

Why're you doing this, Drewbear?

I always like seeing what people come up with when challenged, and as a new Admin I felt like flexing my muscles a bit.

So what're the rules?

  • All entries must reference or utilize an already existing SCP.
  • One entry per author. Collaborations are okay, but that counts as each author's entry; no writing both a collab and an independent entry. No more than 2 authors per collab.
  • Entries must be new. That is, you can't submit a Tale that already existed before this contest started.
  • All entries must be tagged with "tc2013" ("Time Contest 2013") to be considered.
  • No significant edits to entries once they're posted.1
  • No entries will be deleted while the contest is running, even if they drop below the normal deletion threshold.
  • All entries must be posted by 2359 EST (UTC -05:00), August 31, 2013.
  • Voting will remain open until 2359 EST (UTC -05:00), September 7, 2013.
  • Entries must be rated +20 when the voting period ends in order to be considered. If there aren't any that clear that threshold, there won't be a winner.
  • The Tale with the highest vote-count wins. In the event of a tie, I could do something silly to break the tie, but probably won't. Probably.

Enough about the rules. What do I get if I win?

The winner will get to pick one of their own articles to be featured on the Front Page. If a collab wins, each author will get to choose one of their articles to be featured, with scheduling at Admin discretion.2

I have other questions. Why didn't you look into the future to know what they were going to be and answer them already?

Because despite what you have may heard, I don't actually have any control over my precognitive abilities. At least, that's what I tell my Foundation handlers.

Seriously, though: ask any other questions in the comments and, if they're significant enough, I might post & answer 'em here on the page.

Are contestants allowed to vote on other entries?
Tentatively, yes. That said, I will be keeping an eye out and if it looks like anyone is maliciously downvoting other entries so as to improve their own chances, we will Have Words, and I might disregard their votes for the purposes of judging. On a related note, I won't vote or comment on any entries or give feedback for drafts for entries until after the contest is over, so I don't unduly affect things.
Does cleaning up purple prose count as "changing content" for purposes of whether you're allowed to make the edit?
Yes, cleaning up purple prose does count as changing content.
Can I remove my entry to rewrite it, then resubmit it?
Nope. Sorry, but you thought it was good enough to submit, so you're going to have to deal with it as-is. Besides, that's rather blatantly an attempt to change content, which is already against the rules. You're always free to rewrite and repost AFTER the contest, though.
If I want to write a Tale about an SCP Item in a different time period, how far back/forward should I go, minimum?
The farther you go, the better, but I personally would consider there to be a minimum of 50 years. Basically, far enough out of the "modern" era that tech and society/culture would be significantly different. If you could replace all dates in your Tale with "2013" and it wouldn't make a difference, you need to rethink.

List of Entries

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