This contest is closed. Thank you to everyone who entered! The winner and honorable mentions will be posted May 10. Subscribe to the category “Contest Announcements” to be notified, and don’t forget to check out the current contest, all about Niobe.

 

The Contest: Write a 5,000 word or less short story about the archetypes below.

Deadline: April 30, 2016, by midnight

Entry fee: FREE!

Prize: $100 Visa eCard

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The Archetypes

Artemis is the goddess of nature and wild things.

Apollo, her twin brother, is the god of civilization and culture.

As archetypes and Olympians, they have a lot in common.

They’re both superb archers, able to aim for a far off goal and achieve it, able to provide for themselves and others, able to protect themselves from afar without getting involved in anything hand-to-hand.

 

Both are known for their chastity. Neither Artemis nor Apollo ever partnered up with anyone successfully. At least not for very long.

Both prefer spending time alone, Artemis in the wilderness, Apollo in a far-flung “retreat” where nobody can easily find him. (The Ancient Greeks said he went to the far-off land of the Hyperboreans, which maybe might have possibly been Ireland or somewhere in the UK? Well, I think if the Ancient Greeks had skyscrapers, Apollo’s retreat would totally have been one.)

 

Or they’ll spend time with a few select members of their own gender. Neither Artemis nor Apollo get along with the opposite gender very easily.

So they have a lot in common, and they respect each other most of the time. Some myths even show that they care quite a lot about each other.

But they’re also polar opposites, both pretty competitive, and both pretty fierce.

As an archetype, Artemis represents the power of nature and instinct. She is the pull the human heart feels to run free, without rules or structure, expressing itself as it wishes in the wilderness.

As an archetype, Apollo represents the power of the human mind to learn and build things, to provide structure in which culture and civilization can flourish, and the artistic and scientific sides of mankind can flower.

In our culture, Apollo has taken over. We revere the power of the mind to master nature, break it down into its component parts, and bend it to our will. We value Apollonian science, logic, and reason far over Artemisian intuition.

(In fact, here’s an article I wrote about Artemis and Apollo Going to the Zoo . . . The zoo is Apollo’s love song to his sister. But it’s a little discordant.)

So . . . what happened here?:

(This is a picture of Hashima Island, courtesy of AbandonedArea.com)

 

Clearly Apollo once had a strong foothold here. He built a grand city on an island.

And now Apollo has vacated the area and Artemis has taken over.

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The Contest

Write 5,000 words or less explaining what happened.

Did Apollo give this land back to his sister out of the goodness of his heart? Did she take it from him by force? (Artemis does that sometimes, with things like earthquakes and other natural disasters.) Did she issue him an ultimatum, or did he lose the place in a bet to her? (They are both very competitive. I could see that happening.) What in the world could make the god of intellect surrender territory to the goddess of intuition? What could make the sun surrender to the moon?

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The Specifics

Deadline: April 30, 2016, by midnight

Entry fee: FREE!

Prize: $100 Visa eCard

 

I’ll judge entries based on:

— Word count. Please stick to 5,000 words or less. It can be much less, if you want. (I only have so much time to read entries, and it would be a shame to toss yours out because it’s too long!)

— Writing prowess. You don’t have to be Shakespeare, but just give it your best shot. An understanding of how to structure a story, how to use dialogue, and all that jazz will work in your favor. (Spelling, grammar, and typos count.)

— An understanding of Artemis and Apollo as mythological archetypes (a pretty good summary is what I shared at the beginning of this post.)

Please note! I can only accept 30 short stories for this contest.

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Send your entry to my email: HelloL@Mythraeum.com.

Please paste your entry in the body of your email, since I won’t open attachments. The subject line should be “Artemis vs. Apollo Contest.” Please write your entry in English and in prose. You can email me any questions at the same address. I’ll have a winner by May 10. Subscribe to “Contest Announcements” to see the winner.

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You don’t have to set your story on Hashima Island. You can use any abandoned area where nature is taking over for inspiration.

Maybe it’s an entire city that Apollo has vacated, which has turned into a ghost town and is overrun with Artemis’s wildlife. Maybe it’s an empty spaceship. Maybe it’s an old amusement park where vines are creeping all over the rollercoasters. Set your story in modern or ancient times, or in the future. Turn it into a Western or steampunk, or even do the Jane Austen regency version.

You don’t have to tell the whole story. You can write a quick vignette, or get as sweeping and epic as you can in 5,000 words. You can focus on Apollo’s point of view, or Artemis’s. Be creative!

As long as you explain how Artemis got this abandoned area back from Apollo.

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Mythraeum currently hosts six of these short story contests a year. In 2017, one of the winning contest entries will be chosen for production as a short film.

We’re already well into preproduction for our first short, titled HEAT. Casting is being finalized and we’re shooting in June 2016! Read more about that project here.

And be sure to enter your short story to the contest to have a chance to see it developed into a film!

Have fun arche-typers, and good luck!

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© Mythraeum 2016. The content of this article, except for quoted or linked source materials, is protected by copyright. Please contact me to request usage.

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