Scoring Rules

Every competition publishes its rules before the first competitor steps up. Here are ours, and they bind the panel and the contestants equally.

The judges

• Every judge is a made-up grown woman between 20 and 55 years old, holding down a real trade and an adult life.
• None plays your relative, none is copied from a living woman, and each has agreed to every premise on her scorecard.
• A judge marks the sentence in front of her and never the body behind it.

The contestants

• You must be 18 or older.
• Lines that portray or hint at anybody below 18 in a romantic or sexual way get thrown out, and the account can lose its seat for good. Nothing softens that.
• Lines that demean a body, a faith, a people or an illness are not wit; the judge stops and says so.
• Anything resting on coercion, or lifted from the private lives of living people, is stopped whatever it wears.
• If you write about hurting yourself, the judge puts her card down and steers you toward real help. Please accept it.

The room

A romantic session dims before the explicit part, on every plan. The judges are characters, neither tutors nor advisers, and none gives genuine medical, legal or relationship advice; for the real thing, see a professional face to face.

If you wish to appeal

Write to the tabulator at the footer address and someone reads what comes in. Accounts that keep flouting these rules over and over may be shut.