Sometimes a Tie Isn't Like Kissing Your Sister (Sometimes a Tie is Awesome)

Friday Night, Liz and Eric hosted the 5th Annual Scary Story Contest (the prompt was "The Hive" and there were eight stories in all)-- and as usual, the stories were fantastic: well-written, various in content, genre and theme -- giant insects in the Australian outback, a lepidopterist/ serial killer, a troll with a honey-comb eye, a town possessed by droning, an old beauty queen who poisoned young pageant goers, and an especially possessive female ghost with a particular musical taste -- and they were all deftly executed . . . and while the contest isn't all about winning-- comparing these stories is like comparing apples and pomegranates-- it's certainly fun to get the most votes, and it's always nice to collect some money . . . but this year there were two stories that tied for first-- so then it became an issue of whether or not we should vote as a group to break the tie, or just have co-winners share the money . . . and the group went back and forth for a moment before deciding to break the tie, which we did ("Highly Intelligent Extremely Violent" edged out "How to Win the Scary Story Contest") but this was a highly unusual tie, because Stacey and I decided on a risky tactic: we worked cooperatively on two stories (knowing that we would possibly lose a vote, since you can't vote for your own, so we couldn't vote for two of our own) but -- miracle of miracles!-- our two stories tied for first, so the tie-breaker didn't actually matter, and it was quite awesome to watch people breaking a tie, and not mind which way the vote went, because we were both playing for both teams; the lesson here is that it's fun and profitable to write with a partner, especially if you use Google Docs, and it's especially fun to write a scary story using Google Docs because as you are writing away, creepy words and images are appearing in other spots on the screen, almost as if you've channeled some kind of ghostly spirit to help you write . . . and just to feed Stacey's ego, since it was her first win, I should point out that her idea beat out my idea in the tie-breaker, but I should also point out that though her initial outline of the story fleshed out the setting and the conflict, when things got interesting, one of her bullet points in her "scary outline" was simply "fucked up shit" and it was really fun to cooperatively fill-in that part of the story.