Alright you uncultured swine, I won a week with a story based on a painting, now one of you lot is going to do the same.

No, not some pixel art of Zelda or a frame of half naked cat girl anime. I'm talking Fine Art like wot hangs in galleries.

Sign up and I or another judge will assign you a painting and a random word count between 400 and 1500 words.

Don't bank on having seen the painting you are assigned before, I will generally avoid the well trodden paths. The prompt is extremely loose. So long as your story ties to the painting in some way it will be acceptable, anything from the subject matter to the tone to the history behind the painting. If you ask me or any judges whether your particular interpretation of the prompt is okay the answer will be an automatic no as punishment for asking.

YOU MAY NOT WRITE YOUR STORY ABOUT THE PAINTER OF THE WORK.
(I was burned too bad by that one when I judged my last brawl.)

Your story must be within 50 words either side of your assigned word count. Making good use of a longer or shorter word count will be an important factor in the judging rubric. Vignettes are acceptable, but obviously that will depend a lot on your wordcount. A 350 word vignette is fine, a 1550 word one is not. I cannot accept poetry because I am not equipped to judge it.

Bonus re-roll fun

For the price of toxxing yourself you can buy a re-roll. The wordcount will be random but I will be going out of my way to assign some particularly difficult and weird paintings to re-rollers. You are warned in advance that I have zero mercy and if you are one second late you WILL be banned. This goes for any other regular toxxes.