Your contest has really come a long way since it was first created!  Well done! 
You've got a descriptive title, appropriate rating, 3 genres, large enough font for the many older members, clear instructions, and a nice use of color without being overpowering. Wonderful work!
This will be my last review because your item is nearly as perfect as I can make it. Everything in this review is now just me being super picky and isn't impacting the rating, obvously. 
The 1st line bugs me each time I read it. I've tried to ignore it because there were bigger problems and because it's not wrong. But it sounds awkward to me. Though it could simply be a difference between where I'm from and where you're from.  You have "We all have misheard..." but for me, I think "We have all misheard..." sounds more natural.  Again, this review is being super picky. 
Consider centering that line and the one below it since they are at the top, introducing the contest. It's not bad how you have it and it might not look any better with my suggestion. But I think of those 2 lines like an intro/title of sorts and think I'd like them centered...maybe. Try and see what you think. It might then throw off the next bit that's not. I can't say for sure until I see it. 
With the other usages, I agree with you choosing "malapropism," but I feel like when it comes to the definition portion (which is really well done, BTW), you might should use "malaprop" instead. But I'm not sure about the parts of speech here so I could be wrong...and I'm too lazy to look to see.   But you're using "mondegreen," not a "mondegreenism," so I think maybe define "malaprop" instead of "malapropism." Okay, I did look it up and am still a bit confused about which you "should" use, but I still think it's "malaprop." Also, when reading, the example they used was "Jesus healed the leopards." 
Be sure your comma placement outside the quotation marks in "for all intensive purposes" is correct because it bugs me. It's wrong in American English, but perhaps it's correct for British English. In US English, commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks. But I know in British English, it's not always the case. I think it depends on the usage, if I recall.
Your mondegreen example always amuses me.
Consider putting some spaces after your definition of "mondegreen," before you say which round this is and when entries are due. That part isn't really connected to the part above.
So, you'll post prompts at noon WdC time, but they are due at midnight? Cool. Seems simple enough and if you are near WdC time, you're not having to stay up all night just to post the next prompt on time.
Are you sure you want to lock yourself into judging those 2 days? Very few people (if any) post the exact days they'll be judging because things come up and expectations are set. If the can't be met, people are disappointed. If it takes you 4 days to judge and you have these dates posted, people will be unhappy. If you have nothing posted about judging, people won't notice and certainly won't think your judging is "late." Things come up. You might not be feeling well. You might win an all expenses paid trip to a foreign country but the dates are July 14-16...
I like that you accept vicarious stories as well.  That opens up opportunities for folks because we only have so many examples. You could consider a future round, when people have exhausted their real world examples, where people can write fake stories that include them...just a suggestion for a future round. Though I still think you won't be able to get too many rounds out of this if you run it monthly. It's a fun idea, but there are limited entries possible from our lives. 
Consider not putting spaces between the sentences where you are talking about how to post the links since all that goes together. Also, when telling folks where to find the entry ID number, consider "...not at the top of the item for the book as a whole" instead of "...not for the book as a whole." Also, you need a period at the end of this, whether you opt to change it or not. You and your randomly missing periods.
I love that you bolded just the 13+ and not the whole line regarding the rating. I think that's not commonly done, but actually makes the rating stand out more than bolding the whole line. Excellent choice that I hope to remember to suggest for folks in the future.
Ohhhh...I FINALLY understand your "Note." I thought I did, but just realized I didn't. I thought the bit about previously written stuff was just an aside, but no. It's referencing the previous bit about things not needing to be written during the contest timeframe. I thought that 1st part was saying you could write it after, but you could also enter previously written stuff, but if you write it and enter late, it won't be judged. Yeah, I've read this several times now and JUST understood what you meant. I'd rework that part.
Maybe just delete that first part about it not needing to be written in the timeframe of the round (since I thought that meant it could also be written after the round ) and just say "Previously written items are accepted." And you can tighten up the next part by saying, "Late entries are not accepted."
Good job putting the "under 500 words" in bold so people understand that you REALLY mean 499 is the max. I love that you are clear about how you'll be checking the word count.  Consider adding something about author notes, links to your contest, and other parts of the item that aren't the story will not be counted as a part of the word count.
Consider suggesting people link back to your contest and giving them the link for it using the double braces method so they can just copy and paste the link. It might help you get another entry or two if someone reads/reviews someone's entry and are like, "What a fun story." They can also be like, "Oh, it's written for a contest? That's cool. Let me check it out!" You never know...
Yeah, I know. I'm giving ideas you might want to have incorporated into the 1st revision. I'm not the best reviewer and am clearly not great at coming up with all the ideas on the first try.
A note about the ribbons, the ribbons at the very bottom of the awardicons, the ones that are like a strip of ribbon folded onto each other, those are intended for awareness-type items, not for regular awards. People don't always know that and will award them as a regular awardicon instead of for items that are specifically like a story about breast cancer getting the pink Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon. I know this because not only have I seen it, but in the very beginning, I did it. It's technically fine, but it's not what those ribbons were originally intended for. The more regular looking award-y ribbons just above them are the ones you should probably use in most cases when handing out awards.
Here's another idea that just came to me.  (Sorry I can't think of all my ideas on the 1st review. ) You could post all the previous winners in a dropnote. That might be fun for people to read. Of course, from time to time, a person will delete something and you'll see the blue "invalid item" thing pop up and so you'll need to delete that, but still, since your entries are short and probably regularly funny, it might be a great idea to add. You can post them as a bitem or not. But I wouldn't do a regular item entry, personally, unless you said "written by ____" just because I think it's nice to recognize the writer. Actually, if you did that, tagging the author, even if they delete the item you could just change it to "Deleted item written by Schnujo is Late to Lannister  ." Optionally, you can use the item-type link that includes the author's name--litem. It looks like "The Contest Challenge"  by Schnujo is Late to Lannister . But when the author deletes the item, you have no idea who entered what. Whereas if you post the item and the author separately like "The Contest Challenge" by Schnujo is Late to Lannister, you at least know who won if they delete their tiem.
In my contest, "The Whatever Contest -- Closed for Now" , I post all the people who entered each round (but don't include their entries--didn't occur to me to do that when I 1st got started) and when I declare winners, I put the little gold, silver, and bronze trophies next to the names (you would only use the gold one, of course  = {e:TrophyG}) and HM by them if they get an honorable mention. Naturally, you don't have to do this, but it's what I do.
Do you know how to create dropnotes, in case you want to do that to post all entries or to post winners?
{dropnote:"Previous Winners"}
July 2023 Round
{/dropnote}
Okay, yeah, my challenge isn't a legit entry. I'm using it for illustrative purposes. Anyway, no pressure to post previous entries or winners. Most contests don't. However, your contest entries are short and I would imagine many are hilarious, so I think it would be fun to include that. Also, remember there are different ways to tag folks, if you choose to post their item and their name separately so the winner isn't lost if they delete their item. There are a variety of ways to tag, but the 3 most common are user, suser, and huser. In case you aren't familiar, here they are...
{user:schnujo} = Schnujo is Late to Lannister 
{suser:schnujo} = Schnujo is Late to Lannister
{huser:schnujo} = Schnujo is Late to Lannister
Most folks prefer suser for this type of thing (and for most things, though I tend to lean towards huser, but in this, I'd probably do suser as well). But you choose what makes you happy, if you do this at all.
This is me being uber picky. It bothered me from the start and continues to do so, but I thought it was being too picky and there were so many other things to address in previous reviews, that I left it alone. But it still bothers, me and you have so little to think about changing now, that I'm going to bring it up.
Your Judges section--I'd prefer either the whole thing be together without spaces between you and the "and" and Empathy or there being a space between "The judges of this contest will be" and you. I prefer them all together without spaces (or so I think without seeing it lol) since they are all part of the same idea, but I'm also okay with the spaces, if it's all spaced out. But as it is, it just bugs me. Yeah, I know. I'm being completely ridiculous. Well, that's what you get when I review--RIDICULOUS!
The contest page is looking FABULOUS!!! (Despite the really long list of suggestions I made for possible corrections. ) You've done a fabulous job with this! I love it and am so happy to see it come so far! I also appreciate that you take so many of my comments and implement them. I hate when I put a LOT of time and effort into a review (as I do with pretty much every one, which is why I hate reviewing so much lol), but then the person doesn't do anything with it. Granted, if they didn't ask for the review, that's on me. Also, I hate revising things, so if it's not an activity like my contest or challenge, I also don't usually do anything to fix it up, even after a review. But still...don't be a Schnujo.
Great work on your contest! And I see you have a few entries now as well. YAY!  Fantastic! Good luck and have fun with your entries!!! And remember, if you find anything that you absolutely LOVE, feel free to nominate it for "The Quills" through "Quill Nomination Form 2024" . Also, consider you and your co-judge (ignore the made up word ) doing reviews for the items. Though if you do, I strongly recommend not giving 5 stars to anything or at least not until you've chosen a winner. If you have 2 people who get a 5-star review, but you only choose 1 to be the winner (though you can always have a tie, of course), the other person will question why they didn't win if their item was also 5 stars. Yep, it not only happens, it makes sense. So, I tend to give everything 4 1/2 stars (or less) when judging because I can nearly always find SOMETHING wrong. Then I can freely choose the winner from among the 4 1/2 star items.
If you decide to review every item, I'd put that on the contest page since people tend to love that.
If you are looking for reasons to choose one over another and give it words (because sometimes we know we like something better, but it's hard to say why), you can say things like the title wasn't attention-grabbing, the description wasn't interesting, they didn't include all 3 genres (though they could argue that that's not a legit reason not to choose them as a winner and I would agree, but still, it's a thing you can comment on and give them reasons for why it's important to include all 3 genres--it's the #1 way people search for items to read or review, Mods search for Newsletter items using genres, and you're automatically entered into all the genre categories you list if your item is nominated for "The Quills" ...now back to the reviewing list), parts were confusing, they language was to wordy (things like "He said that he was hungry" instead of "He said he was hungry" though doing that once might not knock a person from the winner's circle, but a lot could), it wasn't clear who was speaking, the descriptions weren't useful to the story (with only 499 words, every bit needs to play a part--even if it's only adding interest), the rating wasn't correct (in your case, they'll probably rate something higher than necessary--again, probably not a reason to not allow them to win), punctuation or spelling is off (but remember British and American English are annoyingly different ), etc...meaning I can't think of any more examples.
Okay, now that your eyes are probably bleeding from my excessively long review, I'll let you go. Great work on this contest! It's looking fantastic! Good luck getting lots of entries and remember that though not every entry is Quill-worthy, if you find anything that is, it should be nominated for "The Quills" . (You can click the plus sign in the upper right corner of the item to keep up with it better because it will then appear in your favorites--same with "Quill Nomination Form 2024" or you can just remember the item alias, {item:quills} and {item:quillnominate}. (That 2nd one is singular.) If you can't remember all that, just try to remember {item:quills} because you can find the nomination form on there. You'd nominate for Best Flash Fiction. The genres are an automatic thing. We can't nominate something specifically for Best Comedy. And if they don't have Comedy listed as a genre, no matter HOW hilarious it is, it won't win Best Comedy without Comedy being listed in the genres.
Okay, really, I'm winding things up now (for like the 3rd or 4th time ). Wonderful work on this! Keep it up! Good luck getting lots of great entries! |
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Thank you!
My review has been submitted for consideration in "
You just posted the exact same thing (as far as I can tell) right above. Am I missing something?
Nope, definitely want to remedy that with another review. 
I totally forgot they died! 
Without having even read the story, if you're listing Pets, I'm sure you can list Animals. I would guess also Home/Garden, based on the title. I've started reading and think you should go with Comedy as the other option. 
) and decided to spend time with her instead of going climbing with his brother. His brother had a tendency to climb without safety gear, but my ex- always made him wear it. He carried a lot of guilt for many years after that. 