Quote by Mendalla
quite naturally pretty and should probably ditch some of that makeup.

Definitely.

Shrewd and confident with flashes of genius in her songwriting; other times lazy. Decent singer. At least she doesn't need autotune.

Catchy songs overall. Certainly wouldn't turn them off if they came on the radio, but wouldn't turn many of them up either.

Visually she's not very appealing. Waaaaaaaay too much makeup = insecurity for me. But I'd fight Kistin for stock if Taylor was a company. She's badass at getting what she wants.

Fabulously worthy winners. Such amazing creativity on this underrated site. Congratulations.

Really enjoyed reading the entries, and thank you WriterGirl for the amazing support you give to us all.

What a fabulous idea, WriterGirl, thank you.

I'll throw my hand in with a piece entitled "Nowhere To Turn"...

----

I pause to wipe sweat from my grit-streaked brow. The relentless desert heat shimmers forever beyond the brittle brush and dusty tracks my idling car made, countless uninhabited miles from the interstate.

Summer had been brutal. I repeat under my breath: “I had no choice. No option.”

Casting a gaze to the Pontiac’s trunk, flies buzzing above the stench, I suppress more tears and vomit, then continue digging her grave.

Astounded to have even been close given the great stories I was up against. Wow. Congratulations to everyone who won and entered. Some amazing takes on what was a tough theme.

Thank you Molly for organising it, and the judges for their unenviable task of ranking the entries.

The theme and concept seemed so simple on the surface, but when I got down to it, proved decidedly more difficult than I expected to fashion a story. Maybe that should have been the story itself!

Judging by the excellence of other entries, this might have just been a me-problem, though. Loving this field.

Ghostbusters.

Primer.

Ronin.

The Usual Suspects.

Quote by Mendalla
They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years

Not Invented Here, lol.

I've never seen forum software that does the quoting in quite the same way as here (not saying that's good or bad), nor the paste-a-link-over-the-text-to-hyperlink (which is unintuitive, but cool in a way, even though you can't easily edit the link after). But my exposure to forums has mainly been limited to punBB, FluxBB, phpBB and Vanilla. And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

I expect (guessing) the sticking point for integrating an off-the-shelf system is licensing. None of the software you cited is open source, and runs proprietary code.

Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize. They always do something you don't want and you spend ages either searching for a plugin or have to find a way to hack it yourself.

I don't advocate DIY when there's good software already tried and tested, but maybe they have reasons for it.

Quote by Mendalla
I find it's a bit flaky, though

You and me both. As you say, quote too much and it doesn't work very well. Also trying to quote "By 'eck, it works" from one of the posts upthread failed. Not sure why. Might be because the user is "unknown", or because it contains an emoji, or any number of other factors.

It'll probably get fixed in time.

Quote by Mendalla
Update for the new SS 2.0 interface

Update on the update. You can partial quote for better focus:

1) find a bit of a post you want to quote.

2) select it.

3) tap Quote beneath that message.

4) the bit you selected will be copied into the Write a Reply box. Type away to reply to that point.

5) rinse and repeat steps 1 to 4. Each time you select stuff and hit Quote, the quoted text and who said it will be appended to the Write a Reply box for you to reply to in context.

I'm in. Just tell me what I need to do.

What a fantastic result. Well deserved to the top three and congratulations to all my fellow entrants, top ten or not. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the different approaches to the theme. And thank you to the judges and everyone behind the scenes keeping the site running.

Quote by Mendalla
Anyone else getting pumped to hear the results?

Yep!

Yep, some amazing stories. No way I'd be able to judge this.

I think I have an idea. 1300 words in, and it's going well. Fingers crossed it turns out okay.

Got my work cut out for me after reading WriterGirl's though.

Congratulations to Ping, Violet and WriterGirl for their outstandingly chilling/wacky tales. Supremely well deserved. And well done to everyone else who entered. I read them all and was thoroughly entertained/spooked.

Only just ventured into the forum to find I don't need to promote my story, Dark Image, because Mendalla already did it for me. Thank you!

Really enjoying the creativity in the stories on display. Some absolute crackers.