A HUGE thank-you and heartfelt congratulations to all of our Tales out of Time #WritingContest authors!  

This past week, a judging panel consisting of myself, @Dax_aussie_boy and @Jacien read and thoroughly enjoyed every author's entry.  We then individually scored each entry on a scale of 1 to 10 in three different categories: detail, creativity and impact.  Our individual scores were then combined and averaged to establish a final score for each entry, thereby deciding our top three winners!  Click the link below to find out who won and to read all of these amazing entries!  We hope you'll all enjoy Stonewall's amazing writing talents as much as we did!

The writers of our top three ranked entries will be contacted within the next day to arrange for delivery of prizes!  All of our other contestants will be awarded TWO Stonewall credits, which can be redeemed for in-game loot through our Stonewall Credit Store!

Quote by suigetsu

so, we won 100 ec? i can but a drink from my replicator ?

No, it's a bit more that you won... I think you can actually buy a replicator from it....

Hello Fleethearts!



Here are the confirmed and valid results of the Eurovision Star Quiz:

1. Place, with 10 of 12 points: Orondei
2. Place, with 07 of 12 points: CrashCart9
3. Place, with 5.5 of 12 points: Chipz416
3. Place, with 5.5 of 12 points: Dutch2010

Congratulations to the winners! We hope you enjoyed the Quiz as well as the event!

so, we won 100 ec? i can but a drink from my replicator ?

Finally! The costume contest is over, as well as the Eurovision Song Contest, and, as predicted, it was a show of glamourous glitter and timeless trash.



There were only a few participants in the Yourovision Fashion show-off, but we were able to determine the winners in three categories at least with our new voting system. Here they are:

Timeless Trash



1. Place ~ TedHembach
2. Place ~ Tie: Kierix and Orondei
3. Place ~ Chipz416

Lookalike Group



No winners in this category, as there was only one participant. Nevertheless, here's the honorable mention: TedHembach as Lordi, the finnish winner from 2006.

Lookalike Solo



1. Place ~ Tie: Chipz416 and TedHembach
2. Place ~ Jaidenrocks84
3. Place ~ Orondei

Glamourous Glitter



1. Place ~ Sirannataan, with the stunning maximum of 36 points!
2. Place ~ Tie: Chipz416 and TedHembach
3. Place ~ Jaidenrocks84

The Prizes

Each first place will get 2 Stonewall Credits, 1 lockbox key and a lobi fashion item.
Each second place will get 1 Stonewall Credit,1 lockbox key and a fashion item from the winter store.
Each third place will get 1 Stonewall Credits and a fashion item from the summer store.



Please note, as the Teds planned and managed the event, they refrained from getting any prizes from this contest.
Thanks to all participants for showing off their ideas and styles!

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Hello Europe, hello World, hello Universe. The show is over, the winners have been determined. That means we have the results of our Yourovision Heavy Betting Game! There were 414 bets placed with a total winning pool of 20.700.000 EC (this includes the doubling of the bets by Robin74, thanQ)!




And now the winning bets, here they are:

First Place ~ ISRAEL

65 bets were correct! This makes a winning sum of 86.155 EC per bet, but...
...11 bets were placed by the Teds, who don't want their winning sum, as they organized the event itself. So, throwing their winning back in the pool, this makes an amazing
103.705 EC
as winning for each correct bet placed.
The winners in this pool are (in alphabetical order):
Arcam, Dutch2010, Kierix, Lopez4700 and Orondei! Congratulations!

Second Place ~ CYPRUS

Only ONE bet was placed on this result. So, the whole betting pool will go to the member placing this bet, this means
5.500.000 EC
go to Lopez4700! Congratulations!
But, there is a surprise here, so up to the next place...

Third Place ~ AUSTRIA

...here it is, the surprise: Austria was the only country which nobody had placed a bet on! This means, according to the rules, that the price pool will go into the next higher place, which is the second one. So, congratz again for the only winner of the second place, who is Lopez4700! You will get the price pool from the third place too:
5.400.000 EC!

Last Place ~ PORTUGAL

Only 5 bets here were fitting, and those were placed by the Teds. As said before, the Teds don't want their winning money, because they organized the event. But in this case there is no other winner, who placed a correct bet, so the price-pool of
4.200.000 EC
will be given as donation to the Department of Fleet Resources. They will buy some cool stuff for the fleet (you can ask Admiral Gareth for what the money will be spend, if you want to know).

ThanQ all for playing this game with us! There will be a small consolation prize for all participants who didn't win. You will find it in your ingame mail some time next week.

Here are the ticketnumbers and their respective placements:

***Last hippiepunk Jury Update Personal Top10 before the Grand Final***

1 - Moldova
2 - Slovenia
3 - Albania
4 - Serbia
5 - Australia
6 - Bulgaria
7 - Italy
8 - Estonia
10 - Israel
12 - Norway

Hello again! This is T'Lara from the desert planet Vulcan. As logic states, here are our votes for the Eurovision Song Contest 2018:

First of all we have to name three contestants we would like to mention, as their performance is to good to go by unnoticed: Austria, Estonia and Finland. Great songs. Now to our points:

1. Sweden
2. Norway
3. Denmark
4. Serbia
5. Slovenia
6. Italy
7. Moldova

Our 8 points go to the neo-looped-chicken song about not being a stupid-boy-toy: ISRAEL.

10 points we give to our new family member AUSTRALIA with their encouraging hymn about love.

And finally, our 12 points for our winner of the contest, to the shooting star runner up...
...BULGARIA! Congratulations.

Live long and hear music!

Yourovision Heavy Betting Game Update2

Finally, 414 bets have been placed. This distributes into the following price-pools:

First Place	Second Place	Third Place	Last Place
5.600.000 EC	5.500.000 EC	5.400.000 EC	4.200.000 EC

The bets were placed on all qualified countries except Austria.

The betting offices are closed now. No more bets will be accepted.

Greetings, this is T'Lara from Vulcan calling again. My logical analysis of the participants, their songs and the countries they represent of the Second Semi Fimal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 is complete. Here are the results (countries with strike-through will not make it to the Grand Final - in order of presentation):

• Norway
• Romania
• Serbia
• San Marino
• Denmark
• Russia
• Moldova
• Netherlands
• Australia
• Georgia
• Poland
• Malta
• Hungary
• Latvia
• Sweden
• Montenegro
• Slovenia
• Ukraine

Green = qualified for the Final :-)
Red = not in the Final :-(
I'm still excited waiting for the #yourovision party!

HI,

It seems we have enough BL/Yaoi creators that I thought I'd start a thread on places to announce, market, or advertise your game once it's released. It seems Boy Love is in this strange category where a lot of people love it or hate it, so people who normally wouldn't play Visual Novels will actually play a BL VN, or people who generally love VNs will actively avoid the BL ones.ote: some of these places discourage self-marketing. But it would be nice to mention BL games we've played and like to others. I have yet to play a single completed BL game from Lemmasoft (I'm expecting to see a bunch here late 2012 when all your WIPs pan out), so I'm actually quite eager to play a good one and let the world know about it!As for VN sites this is the only active VN forum of which I'm aware.
(There is reddit.com/r/visualnovels, but I don't know how many of those redditors will play yaoi, as it seems mostly like it has mostly a Katawa Shoujo-ish fanbase.Another note: I'm not familiar with the anime or manga scene, so these sources are skewed to English-speaking sites. Please add any places of your own!


For more details:
Animated explainer video production agency

Thanks!

***hippiepunk vote UPDATE after the First Semifinal***

Oh wow this was so much fun! And oooooh my I was so wrong in predicting who will not qualify! Albania AND Lithuania made it to the Final!
Well, had Albania performed their song like this from the start, I would definitely had remembered them from the beginning. This was way better than the video, I think their place in the final is well deserved.
And Lithuania...? I don't understand it. Croatia, Switzerland, Armenia out but... Lithunaia in? But, okay, it's part of the fun that Eurovision surprises you and I love that too... although I still don't get it. Do you? Can somebody explain this to me?

Also, having heard the live performances and since Switzerland was thrown out I am forced to change my votes for points 1-7:
1 - Albania (yes they performed from nonqualifier to my Top 10, that's what Live can do if you do it right)
2 - Denmark
3 - Slovenia
4 - Australia
5 - Bulgaria
6 - Malta
7 - Estonia

Peace, Love, Anarchy - hippiepunk out

Heavy Betting Game Update 08 May 2018!

Thanks to a very very generous donation from our fellow fleetie
*** Robin74 ***
all four price-pools will be doubled by him!
So take your chance and get your bets placed, as this this offer is limited to a few thousand bets.



So far, 200 bets have been placed. This distributes into the following price-pools:

First Place	Second Place	Third Place	Last Place
2.950.000 EC	2.750.000 EC	2.650.000 EC	1.650.000 EC

Greetings, this is T'Lara from Vulcan calling. My logical analysis of the participants, their songs and the countries they represent of the First Semi Fimal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 is complete. Here are the results (countries with strike-through will not make it to the Grand Final - in order of presentation):

• Azerbaijan
• Iceland
• Albania
• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Lithuania
• Israel
• Belarus
• Estonia
• Bulgaria
• Macedonia
• Croatia
• Austria
• Greece
• Finland
• Armenia
• Switzerland
• Ireland
• Cyprus

Green = qualified for the Final :-)
Red = not in the Final :-(
I'm excited waiting for the #yourovision party!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated in Stonewall's "Tales out of Time" #WritingContest this last month!  The contest is now closed and the judges will take the week to read over all of these amazing entries!  We'll announce the contest winners the week of May 14th, 2018!

The little girl looked up at her mother’s sombre chequered uniform and began rubbing her eyes. Mother was wearing her going-away-clothes. But her mother was unmoved.
“Don’t cry, Vinara. It is unbecoming! I will be back sooner than you think.”
Four-year-old Vinara knew what was expected of her. Obediently, she wiped her cheeks and attempted a clumsy Romulan salute, fist to shoulder. Her other hand clutched a toy warbird so hard it hurt. Mother’s expression softened into a smile. The metal rings on her shoulder strap jingled faintly as she lifted Vinara in her arms and planted a proud kiss between her forehead ridges.
“Much better, daughter! You, too, will one day serve our empire with distinction!”
Three decades later, the Romulan Star Empire of old was dust. So much for the high hopes her parents had once held for one Vinara Lleissan Tovath, in a time before the riots, Klingon attacks, mass arrests, food shortages and fleeing from the Tal Shiar. By a strange twist of fate, however, Vinara now was indeed in command of a warbird. She felt no pride. Only a growing sense of apprehension as she stood on the corridor and realised the turbolift was not working. Again.
“This had better not happen when we arrive at Sol.” she whispered, and sighed. As commander of that warp capable embarassment known as the RRW Llaiss, it was her duty to make sure that both ship and crew made a proper first impression on their Federation allies. Certainly not the impression that everything was going the way of the homeworld.
Vinara would have preferred to stay on the new homeworld, where there was plenty of scientific and medical work, but Command had decided that her interests made her suitable to work with the Federation’s Starfleet. The decision seemed sound until you realised the Llaiss was a D’Deridex class battleship, and no place for a scientist. It was probably because of the cocktails. Someone higher up probably knew about the cocktails and Drozana Station, and disapproved. That Tal’Mera for sure was no fun. Perhaps, if she didn’t botch this, Vinara thought, they would all be transferred to something that wasn’t falling apart. She was brutally jerked from her thoughts by a melodic chime that meant a Romulan crew’s worst nightmare: The artificial quantum singularity that powered the ship was unstable. Vinara tapped the comm unit on her arm and began ordering emergency procedures as she raced towards main engineering.
Forty years ago, the Reman in charge there would have been chained to the bottom of a dilithium mine. Now, she was giving orders to the mostly Romulan crew, while at the same time welding something inside a control panel. Sparks flew. Warning lights flashed on every console and the noise of alarms was deafening.
“Status?” Vinara yelled, trying to make herself heard.
“Bad! Unless I – got it!”
Containment fields were raised, non-vital systems shut down and everyone breathed again. Vinara bowed to the still shocked engineering crew.
“Excellent work, everyone. And to Chief Engineer Veril, congratulations!”
“It’s the old circuitry,” Veril remarked “it can’t handle the energy fluctuations. This ship wasn’t meant to support the singularity that’s in there! Vinara, someone stuffed a brand new singularity core into the old bird, with no thought for the consequences!”
“Suggestions?”
“What we need to do, is to manually readjust the containment field, then recalibrate the power flow from the singularity so it doesn’t overload every relay on the ship. Right now, I’ve rerouted power through the nullifier coils to boost containment field resonance, but if we don’t get this done, the event horizon might begin incongruent expansion. An expanding singularity - ”
“Might cause temporal fluctuations, paradoxical physics, and gravitational anomalies, I know.” Vinara sighed and as Veril ushered the crew back to work, she allowed herself to shut her eyes. Her mother would have known how to handle this. But her mother was dead. Unexpectedly, Vinara felt an arm around her shoulders. “We’re going to get out of this one, too!” Veril whispered. “Trust me!”
Vinara looked at her friend and managed to smile. Her mother would have disapproved, but her mother hadn’t fought through the hook spider infested lower levels of Drozana Station. And the hook spiders hadn’t been the worst. Vinara clasped Veril close, then hurried to the bridge to coordinate whatever was needed in engineering.
Several hours later, the crew of the Llaiss had their miracle. One by one, systems came online and they resumed their course. As they passed another star system, sensors picked up a Klingon vessel, and Vinara ordered the ship to cloak. No need to fight from a weak position. The Llaiss lurched suddenly. Something was making the big D’Deridex jump like a frightened epohh… Vinara was pitched forward onto the deck.
When she got to her feet, she and the senior staff of the Llaiss were standing on an unfamiliar bridge. In the central chair was a greying Romulan man in an old fashioned silver uniform, who looked bored as a group of small attack vessels led by a Klingon bird of prey screamed towards them at break neck speed. Proximity alerts chimed.
“Now.” The viewscreen burned bright white as the Llaiss dropped her cloak and fired. Multiple close explosions rocked the warbird. Burning wreckage spun past. Vinara and the others stared at their counterparts who didn’t seem to know they were there.
“Status?” demanded the commander. On the main viewscreen, ships of many different types careened past, over and under the Llaiss, spitting brilliant, deadly trails of weapons fire.
“The Jem’Hadar are destroyed.” came the tactical report.
The Romulan commander inspected his fingernails. “The Klingons?”
“Sir, I believe they are… singing. The Calypso is hailing us!”
A young human voice came over the comm. “Llaiss, that was close! Are you alright? What about the Nugh’Tag?”
“Llaiss reporting ready for battle, Calypso. The Klingons are reporting another opera.”
The human laughed. “Calypso ready! Let’s follow their example and make this a day worthy of song! Transmitting attack coordinates.”
The deck pitched again and threw Vinara towards the main viewscreen. As she pushed herself up, she noticed the silence. The bridge was empty, except for the usual, familiar crew. Overhead, control lights indicated the cloaking device was active.
“What exactly just happened?” Vinara asked nobody in particular. “Engineering?”
“The internal comm system is down again, sir.” said the science officer. “Sir, I believe we must have somehow travelled backwards in time to the Llaiss’s past.”
Vinara supported herself on the back of her chair. “Get me engineering. Don’t tell me this ship’s cloaking device now causes us to travel through time! Pilot, where are we?”
“Still on course. According to the ship’s chronometer, no time has passed since engaging the cloaking device. All systems operational and within normal parameters. The cloaking device is active and functioning as expected.”
As far as the bridge crew could piece things together, the incident had probably been caused by a resonance effect between the nullifier coils and the unstable quantum singularity, creating a stored energy build-up, which had been released as a phase-shifted temporal pulse once the cloaking device activated and polarised the nullifier coils. The details could be worked out later, when they had analysed all the data. For now, something else mattered more.
“This thing served in the Dominion War.” Vinara said with new found respect. “That’s how old the Llaiss is! And it survived to this day.”
“Makes you wonder about all the things it saw, and about the people who worked here before us.” replied Tovan, First Officer. “It’s a piece of history! From when we were allied with the Federation and the Klingons both.”
Veril refilled everyone’s glasses. “And now that history is ours to continue. To friends present and past!”
“To friends.” Vinara repeated. “To the best friends one could possibly wish for! And to the Llaiss. We have a legacy to take care of. Do you think the captain of the USS Calypso is still alive? Let’s find out.”
Two days later, the RRW Llaiss decloaked before Earth Space Dock, causing momentary confusion among the operations staff. A flustered traffic control warden assigned them to a standard orbit until a place to dock a D’Deridex had been found. Vinara cut the connection and called up a message she’d downloaded earlier to her padd. The miniature image of an elderly human male was crying and smiling at once.
“What can I say!” the man said. “Of course I remember the Llaiss! I didn’t think I would ever see that ship again. The big bad bird, we used to call her. Commander, I am more than pleased to meet you and I will be there in person at the space dock. Perhaps we can share a cup of tea somewhere, and you can tell me what has happened during all that time. I know I have a thing or two to tell you!” He smiled warmly. “You are very welcome!”

#WritingContest #talesoutoftime

Are you ready to learn some moves? Leeeeet's do this!

As opening and closing act of the #yourovision 2018 we want to perform some silly group dances with you. The first one will be the choreography of the Buck Fizz song 'Making Your Mind Up', which was the ESC winner of the year 1981. It was also the first song in the history of Eurovision that featured a costume change on stage! The second dance we want to do with you is the song 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai' from Verka Serduchka, 2^nd place in the ESC 2007. This one is even more silly but very shiny, as we will do it in silver and golden costumes!
If you want to participate in our group dances, this post is for you, as it will provide all information needed: which emotes to use and what costume to wear, and some helpful tipps like creating a keybind file for faster dancing. Such a keybind file is also useful for the dance instructor on Risa.

Instructions, Choreography and Costumes

"Making your mind up"

Instructional Video

Emote Choreo PDF for printout (please rightclick and save it to your harddrive, then print)


How to make the Costumes for the Bucks Fizz Dance


"Dancing Lasha Tumbai"



The Emotes

For the silly group dances we use the following emotes (alternativ emotes are in braces). Emotes marked with a star* are used several times, they would be good to bind to a key - see next topic.

"Making Your Mind Up"

dance_snake / talking (yes) / attention* / dance_club / shrug / wink (alert) / engage* / no_way* / dance_side step / dance_shuffle (dance_samba or dance_samba_advanced) / dance_wavehands / slow_clap (talk or yes) / dance_runningman / tug

"Dancing Lasha Tumbai"

point / countdown / dance_unusual (dance_wavehands) / dance_fan / blow_kiss* / bye* / dance_jester (jumping_jacks) / yeah

The Keybinds

A very convenient way to execute emotes are keybinds. This way you don't have to scroll around in your emote list, instead you simply press a button. On the other hand, you have to bind your emotes to keys first. But this is easily done.
You can bind keys by typing the command
"/bind key toggle command Param1 Param2 …"
in your chatwindow. You have to do this for every key that you want to bind. Much faster is the method to make a txt-file with the keybinds and then bind the whole file at once.
Here is an example, which binds the dances used on Risa to the keys 1 to 9:

1 "emote dance"
2 "emote dance_club"
3 "emote dance_robot"
4 "emote dance_snake"
5 "emote dance_raisetheroof"
6 "emote dance_wavehands"
7 "emote dance_runningman"
8 "emote dance_legkick"
9 "emote dance_sidestep"

Save this file as 'dances.txt' in your STO main folder. Next step is done ingame:

1. Backup first! Save your existing keybinds by typing in your chatwindow:
   /bind_save_file old_keybinds.txt
2. Load the dances.txt by typing
   /bind_load_file dances.txt
3. Done! :-)

If you are unhappy with your new keybinds, you can restore your old ones by binding your backup file: '/bind_load_file old_keybinds.txt' !
For more information about keybinds please look here: STO Keybind Guide


Links

Example Video for a STO Emote Group Dance: Thriller

Original Bucks Fizz Video: "Making Your Mind Up"

Original Verka Serduchka Video: "Dancing Lasha Tumbai"

For all other events involved please look here: Stonewall Yourovision 2018.

“REAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!” screamed the Orion male in an interrogation chair in the middle of a darkened room.

“Do you know what this is?” a figure spoke from behind him.

Callex mustered the strength to raise his head, and in so doing, a bead of sweat dropped from his head upon his bare chest sliding down to the floor. He recognised the Klingon pain stick, from his time on Qo’nos in servitude.

“We’ve modified it so that it tears the skin and rips into your flesh, but then you’ve felt that already.”

Callex then felt the cold metal of a hypospray touching the side of his neck before the recognisable *WOOOOOOSH* of the injection. The hand holding it traced the vein and down to his bare chest, where sweat had left a trail moments earlier.

“I have just hypersensitised all of your pain receptors in your body. The humans have a saying, “a pound of flesh”, intended as a quantity of mass for payment. Is your green flesh worth the inconveniences that your captain cost me?!?

The pain stick delivered another parcel of pure pain to Callex and it was excruciating for him. He was exhausted after hours of enduring this, never once seeing the face of his torturer. His mind began slipping, his will on the verge of breaking…his life starting to flash before his eyes.

“What…have you done….to my master…?” Callex muttered as best he could. His voice was coarse and dry, deprived of water and food.

"Why are you willing to give everything up for him? Why did you come here? Did you think you could save him?"

Callex knew what his master had done. For he was right there beside him. The Orion slave. The loyal servant. The secret lover. A bold mission deep into Romulan space that had gone terribly wrong.

Callex found this trait about his captain intoxicating. Full of adventure, boldness and braveness, always ready to take on the galaxy…it was hard not to have fallen in love. It was this boldness that led to the rescue of Callex from Klingon servitude years before and Callex happily became his new slave. But it blossomed into something deeper between the two men, something formidable that would be worthy of Klingon song.

“Do you know what your captain…your Master did to you? Before his trial, he sold you. You belong to me…now.

“No, he could never do that…he would never do that….”

“You forget your place, slave. You are property. You are mine.

“No…no….." Callex's mind began running away with confusion and emotions that would annoy Vulcans no end.

The Romulan turned away, smiling with achievement, and moved to the rear forcefield wall of the room. He signalled to the guard who deactivated the field to leave.

“Are you sure this slave is worth all this trouble?”

“Yes,” replied a figure who had been watching patiently in the corner. “Yes, he is.”

Callex’s former master and his new one left side by side together, as salty tears ran down his face to sting the open wounds left upon his body.

…to be continued…? #WritingContest

Hello, this is hippiepunk from the planet Autonomia calling!

It was so hard to make a choice who to vote for. So before we start I want to make an honorable mention to Iceland and their classical utopian ballad „Our Choice“. It is a really good song, but the general quality this year is so high that it's just not good enough for the Top 10. Same goes for other good songs like Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Macedonia and the UK just to name a few.
The list of who I really expect to fail in the Semis is shorter:

• Lithuania, because the song is just tooooooo boring.
• Hungary, because Rock has it hard in the ESC anyways and... in hungarian?
• Albania, because I can't even remember the melody.
• San Marino, sadly. The song actually has its moments but... I guess they won't make it.

Now enough of pre-talking, let's get to the point and start with the points from 1 to 7:
1 = Denmark
2 = Estonia
3 = Bulgaria
4 = Slovenia
5 = Switzerland
6 = Australia
7 = Malta
and my 8 points go to the timeless and powerful canzone italiana per voi – Italy!

The ten points are awarded to the incredible Netta – who is nobody's toy but such a joy to listen to!
10 points for Israel.

And finally... my big twelve points... douze points... for the best song in this years songwriting contest... go to... the uplifting song written about how to write a song by the amazing and already eurovision-crowned songwriter Alexander Rybak!
12 points for Norway!

I am curious for more opinions! What do you think? What are your ten favourites? Who do you see dropping out in the Semis in a few days?

With all the best wishes to all our fleets #yourovision fans! Love and Peace!
hippiepunk