Bio Writing Contest 2022

[oddrobin]

 

214 and NFTG Super Group (Excelsior) presents:

City of Heroes: Homecoming

Bio Writing Contest

2022

 

Greetings, super beings of all servers!

 

We want to know more about the creatures we fight crime and cause mayhem with. We cordially invite you to submit your best character description, aka bio, into our bio writing contest. We will be giving away almost 2 billion influence in prize money to the following winning places:

 

Best Hero Bio
1st: 500 million
2nd: 250 million
3rd: 100 million

 

Best Villain Bio
1st: 500 million
2nd: 250 million
3rd: 100 million

 

Best Bio 1023 Characters or Less
One Winner: 150 million

 

Hero and Villain bios must be between 1024 and 5000 characters.

 

 Entries will be accepted starting March 14, 2022. The last day to enter is March 31st, 2022. 

 Submit them online (starting 3/14): https://tinyurl.com/biocontest  

 

For more information, please visit the forum event calendar post or our contest webpage.

 

Questions? Comments? Contact us.

 

This contest is not affiliated with the City of Heroes: Homecoming team in any way. It is being created and hosted by the independent super group 214 and NFTG (Excelsior).

 

⚠ Do not contact Homecoming GMs with questions about this contest. 

Edited February 28, 2022 by oddrobin

[DoctorDitko]

So glad to see this!

Great idea -- I've been promising to hold one when I'm rich and famous, but that's a long way away.

Cheers!

 

[Black Talon]

This sort of thing I can express full support and appreciation for: with a 1,023 character limit for the bios - and that includes spaces/punctuation - it's Shakespeare's, "Brevity is the soul of wit" come to life.

 

Will be submitting a couple, and just hoping that the organizers of this shindig see fit to eventually publish the whole darn bunch of them (creators permitting).  I love looking at the backstories of a person's favourite invention.

[Clave Dark 5]

Wait, so where do we sub our entries?  On that webpage, starting the 14th?

[oddrobin]

Just now, Clave Dark 5 said:

Wait, so where do we sub our entries?  On that webpage, starting the 14th?

Yes. Starting March 14, entries may be uploaded on the webpage: https://tinyurl.com/biocontest
The contest is being promoted early to give people time to flesh out their entry. I'll make the entry site more obvious. 🙂

[UltraAlt]

17 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I've been promising to hold one when I'm rich and famous, but that's a long way away.

 

Yeah, I hear you keep buying converters and you don't have the luck of a gambler.

[DougGraves]

so everyone will be on a bio break?

[oddrobin]

2 hours ago, DougGraves said:

so everyone will be on a bio break?

Extra points if your bio was written while "doing your business."

 

(j/k that's not a real thing)

[DoctorDitko]

That what I thought was happening the first time I heard the term.

I'm thinking, "Really, we're almost to the Reactor Room and you want to work on your backstory?"

They probably wondered why I was outspokenly encouraging...

 

[Techwright]

Should it be a fresh, never frozen bio, or can we select the best from those of ours that are aging like fine wine?

 

21 hours ago, Black Talon said:

... it's Shakespeare's, "Brevity is the soul of wit" come to life.

*Looks at the 5-hour full performance Richard III play*

Ironic.

[oddrobin]

3 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Should it be a fresh, never frozen bio, or can we select the best from those of ours that are aging like fine wine?

 

*Looks at the 5-hour full performance Richard III play*

Ironic.

Whichever you consider to be your best one, whether it is fresh and vigorous, or wise and weathered. Also, you may submit more than one, but can only win one prize.

[Clave Dark 5]

7 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

They probably wondered why I was outspokenly encouraging...

It was you saying that you "couldn't wait to see it when they were done" that really put them off.

[Luminara]

On 2/28/2022 at 1:18 AM, Black Talon said:

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

 

*sesquipedalian angst*

[Safehouse]

8 hours ago, Techwright said:

Should it be a fresh, never frozen bio, or can we select the best from those of ours that are aging like fine wine?

 

*Looks at the 5-hour full performance Richard III play*

Ironic.

What I love about that particular Shakespeare quote is the fact that it originated in Hamlet, and is spoken by Polonius - a pompous, hypocritical windbag - during a long tirade. It’s such a good declaration! So when you see it as part of a monologue that shows the character uttering those words doesn’t live by them, it become an almost humorous line 😆 

[InvaderStych]

On 2/27/2022 at 12:26 PM, oddrobin said:

Best Bio 1023 Characters or Less
One Winner: 150 million

 

Hero and Villain bios must be between 1024 and 5000 characters.

 

 

Wait. I am easily confused. 

 

Are </= 1023 character bios their own category and the root of the contest is for full, extended bios?

 

Should Vigi & Rogue submit as their blue/red residence suggests? 🙂

Edited March 1, 2022 by InvaderStych

[srmalloy]

On 2/27/2022 at 12:26 PM, oddrobin said:

Hero and Villain bios must be between 1024 and 5000 characters.

Well, that blows out the six-and-a-half page bio that БРИГАДИР's bio turned into... It's annoying working inside the 1023-character limit when you have Unicode characters in the bio, because each one is 16 bits wide, taking up two characters of space.

[oddrobin]

3 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

 

 

Wait. I am easily confused. 

 

Are </= 1023 character bios their own category and the root of the contest is for full, extended bios?

 

Should Vigi & Rogue submit as their blue/red residence suggests? 🙂

There are three categories:
1. Hero biographies (1024 - 5000 characters): 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places
2 Villain biographies (1024 - 5000 characters): 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places

3. Best biography 1023 characters or less (One winner only)

Partially why this contest exists is because of how quickly those 1023 characters are eaten by our supers' stories. But we also want to recognize the possibility of packing a lot of story into such few words.  

Character count for this contest will be counted by a word processor that counts things such as an apostrophe as the singular character it is. Because of this there will be a bit of wiggle room when comparing the 1023 character limit in a word document to the 1023 character limit in the game's character description area.

Edited March 1, 2022 by oddrobin

[cranebump]

12 hours ago, Techwright said:

Should it be a fresh, never frozen bio, or can we select the best from those of ours that are aging like fine wine?

 

*Looks at the 5-hour full performance Richard III play*

Ironic.

Well...when it comes to overbearingly long, nothing really beats Hamlet. Not that that's a good thing...:-)

[cranebump]

3 hours ago, Safehouse said:

What I love about that particular Shakespeare quote is the fact that it originated in Hamlet, and is spoken by Polonius - a pompous, hypocritical windbag - during a long tirade. It’s such a good declaration! So when you see it as part of a monologue that shows the character uttering those words doesn’t live by them, it become an almost humorous line 😆 

Beat me to it.:-)

[oddrobin]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Well, that blows out the six-and-a-half page bio that БРИГАДИР's bio turned into... It's annoying working inside the 1023-character limit when you have Unicode characters in the bio, because each one is 16 bits wide, taking up two characters of space.

Character count for this contest will be counted by a word processor that counts things such as an apostrophe as the singular character it is. Because of this there will be a bit of wiggle room when comparing the character limit in a word document to the character limit in the game's character description area. 

[Clave Dark 5]

16 hours ago, oddrobin said:

There are three categories:
1. Hero biographies (1024 - 5000 characters): 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places
2 Villain biographies (1024 - 5000 characters): 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places

3. Best biography 1023 characters or less (One winner only)

Partially why this contest exists is because of how quickly those 1023 characters are eaten by our supers' stories. But we also want to recognize the possibility of packing a lot of story into such few words.  

Character count for this contest will be counted by a word processor that counts things such as an apostrophe as the singular character it is. Because of this there will be a bit of wiggle room when comparing the 1023 character limit in a word document to the 1023 character limit in the game's character description area.

Oh, huh, that actually excludes most of my bios, I keep them short.  Guess I can still hope for that "you must don't have to be this tall to ride" category though.

[gamingglen]

I would hate to be the person to have to read 1024-5000 character-count badly written short stories of members of the Mary and Marty Sue family.

 

So one 1023 character-count category for heroes AND villains, yet heroes and villains each get their own categories for 1024+?

 

Or is this some attempt at free reading material?  Or steal someone else's work for comic book/role-playing NPCs' backstories for future publications?

 

Suggestion: have bio character description contests IN the game. This seems like an obvious thing to do so it makes me suspicious of this contest. 

 

After some thinking, I'll pass on submitting my own work I have had to edit and rewrite to fit into a 1023 character-count description. 

 

 

[oddrobin]

42 minutes ago, gamingglen said:

I would hate to be the person to have to read 1024-5000 character-count badly written short stories of members of the Mary and Marty Sue family.

 

So one 1023 character-count category for heroes AND villains, yet heroes and villains each get their own categories for 1024+?

 

Or is this some attempt at free reading material?  Or steal someone else's work for comic book/role-playing NPCs' backstories for future publications?

 

Suggestion: have bio character description contests IN the game. This seems like an obvious thing to do so it makes me suspicious of this contest. 

 

After some thinking, I'll pass on submitting my own work I have had to edit and rewrite to fit into a 1023 character-count description. 

 

 

The main reason I started this contest was because I am frequently annoyed at how much editing of my story I have to do to make it fit into that little 1023 character description area. I figured other people might have bios longer than that, too, they might like to share. That's who I am targeting. 

One of the parts in the legalities section of the rules and guidelines state:

All work submitted remains the contestants' property. We will not claim rights to any writing or images entered into the contest. We will not share contestants' work with any other parties. We will not publish contestant's work. We will not use any of the contestant's work for financial gain.

Other than having the contest in game, what could be done to make this more reassuring I'm not after people's writing?

In case we do more writing contests in the future (which I hope to), how do you imagine a character description contest would happen in game?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by oddrobin

[oddrobin]

5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Oh, huh, that actually excludes most of my bios, I keep them short.  Guess I can still hope for that "you must don't have to be this tall to ride" category though.

Shorter bios fit into the 1023 category. It simply has to be less than 1024 characters. 

[Black Talon]

On 3/1/2022 at 7:36 AM, Safehouse said:

What I love about that particular Shakespeare quote is the fact that it originated in Hamlet, and is spoken by Polonius - a pompous, hypocritical windbag - during a long tirade. It’s such a good declaration! So when you see it as part of a monologue that shows the character uttering those words doesn’t live by them, it become an almost humorous line 😆 

This is taking a total sidetrack off CoX, not to mention superhero stuff in general, but - in my opinion - Polonius is, in fact, one of the most tragic characters in Hamlet...without ever knowing (or considering) he is a tragedy.  Polonius speaks words of wisdom on a repeated basis in the play...without ever applying such wisdom to himself, because he's already too intelligent to be subject to all that trifle and pettiness.  If the guy had ever bothered to turn a moment's worth of wisdom (knowing the world and others) into enlightenment (knowing oneself), the play would quite likely have had a Scooby-Doo type ending, with Claudius saying (as he's taken away by law enforcement), "And I would have gotten away with it, too...if not for those meddling kids!"  Ophelia and Hamlet would have been married in the final scene, with Horatio taking over Denmark's national Intelligence network, bonds formed with Fortinbras (because he and Hamlet were essentially the same guy), Polonius given an advisor's rank, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern told to go back to school and learn something.

 

Sorry to have gone on at such length about this, Safehouse, but your statement did lead to a great deal of inspiration over a story I love.  Anyway, back to the CoX stuff...I wonder if Lord Recluse has a daughter that ever considered turning the Rogue Isles into a haven of law and order?  Almost Shakespearean...