:::fanfare, Andi (the webmistress of ZFA and fanfic authoress on occasion) steps up to the podium:::

Welcome, welcome!!! Welcome to the first-ever ZFA FanFic Challenge! I'm Andi, the admin of ZFA (a humble ickle Zelda fansite - find it at ***http://zeldafans.storiesfrom.us***), and I come bearing much fanfic goodness, as written by five of our members!

For those of you who don't know what a fanfic challenge is, it is a rather… dare I say it?… zany event where people are giving various properties that a well-written fanfic must uphold…

Whether it's writing a fic made up of words that begin with only the letter "S" or giving people a weird pairing to work out (think Ganondorf/Impa, only weirder), all fanfic challenges end up with really kick-butt entries… ::grins:::

For our first challenge, we ( :::points to Jeff, the forum king (***http://zeldafans.proboards20.com***)... smiles::: ) decided to start the authors off with a relatively easy task, but one which would point out one of the major flaws in Zelda fanfiction - Everyone's extreme lack of minor characters. Honestly, you people! Everything in the world isn't Ze- or Ma- Link!!!

:::coughs:::

So, anyways, everyone who submitted a fic for our first challenge had to write a story between 1,000 and 5,000 words that starred one of the minor characters from Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask… and for the sake of arguing, all minor characters were just those who weren't Zelda, Link, Malon or any of the Sages…

And thus, with such a broad topic (when you think about it), we got an insanely diverse number of submissions!!!

We got…

"Of Fairies and Their Gossamer Wings" by canihavea-soda (featuring our cute little Tael from MM)

"Karma" by Gunoung7 (with the House of Skulltula)

"A Day of a Bomber" by Darko (who I don't believe has a fanfiction.net account… check out his stuff at ***http://zeldafans.storiesfrom.us***)… (I think you can figure out which characters are the stars of /this/ fic)

"Ghost Child" by DarkBlacknoid (Starring Dampe, That Blonde Kid From The Graveyard, and the Stalchildren Brigade)

and "Fade to Bones" by MysticSaiyan7 (Aeris Deathscythe to people who know of her from ff.n)… (with the Blue Guy from Kakariko Village/The Lost Woods… you know… the one with Cojiro… you know who Cojiro is, don't you?… the blue chicken…any of this ringing a bell? :::sighs:::)

Anyways, this fic wasn't just created for the authors to show off their works in an anthology or to plug them and my website… :::shifts eyes:::… okay, so maybe it * was* to plug the site (http://zeldafans.storiesfrom.us), but there's another reason that this section was put up here…

You see, we needed some people to judge this fanfic challenge, and I figured that the fine people of Fanfiction.net would be more than willing to do the job!

It's not that hard! After you read a fic, just click "review" and give the story you just read a score between 1 and 5 stars - each person will get the points you give them plus 1 for every review submitted, and whoever has the best average score wins and gets to write the prologue for our upcoming RPG…

You don't have to be signed in or anything to submit reviews - just post them up, and all shall be tabulated…

:::grins:::

oh, and as a last note, since ff.n has an extreme problem with "formatting", anything in bold is represented with a *, and anything italicized has /'s around it…

Now, *Get to Voting!!!*