Q’s Winter Wonderland 2022 – A Flurrious Expansion

Happy holidays!

Unlike all other gaming competitions, this one is going to take the usual gaming event and incorporate it into the broader Bravo Fleet expanded universe as a writing prompt for your characters to overcome. This competition is open to all Bravo Fleet people, whether gamers, writers, or just people that like silly episodes.

For those unfamiliar, Star Trek Online has an event during December called Q’s Winter Wonderland. Q (or in the case of STO, Q’s son Q Junior) has heard about differing traditions of winter celebrations for various species around the galaxy and decided that he, too, should be involved. This has culminated in a fantasy world where there are pie-eating Breen, a Snowconian (a fusion of a snowcone and an Iconian) defending a village of gingerbread people from animated snowmen, assimilated snowmen making cold puns, and a German-Klingon fusion demon called a Kramp’Ihri. Also Neelix is there and he’s threatening to cook with you.

The writing prompt for this competition:

Q has prepared his Winter Wonderland tradition, but somehow this year it has gone horribly wrong! Now, there have been reports of snowmen attacking and freezing personnel, candied Klingon demons of folklore swimming through decks, gingerbread people trying to declare asylum, and what looks like a Fekl’hiri popping up everywhere throughout the galaxy stuffing personnel into sacks and beating them with reeds. What is your character going to do when they meet one of these on their ship, and how will they respond?

Fiction Rubric

Criteria

• Answer the prompt above in 300 words or less.
• Competition will be scored by use of the prompt, originality, humour, characterization and perspective based on the Fiction Rubric (linked above)
• Entries must be submitted by the date and time indicated on the competition prompt, in the format indicated.
• Major canon characters may not be used but may be referenced, unless otherwise specified in the competition prompt. (For example, your story shouldn’t be set on the Enterprise but you could reference the Picard Maneuver.)
• Bravo Fleet characters owned by other authors may not be used without permission from the other author; this is a single author competition.
• Entries must be submitted by the date and time indicated on the competition prompt.
• Entries must adhere to language and content standards appropriate for a general audience, as per Bravo Fleet guidelines: there may be occasional use of mildly offensive language (cursing), occasional instances of violence, but not graphic description of violence or injuries, and occasional references to sexual conduct, but not any descriptions of sexual intercourse or explicitly erotic situations.
• Entries must adhere to Bravo Fleet’s non-discrimination policy and may not contain inflammatory language related to sex, gender, race, country of origin, sexual orientation, religion, or ability.