It's that time of year again

[supergee]

She felt as desperate as someone trying to dream up a startlingly new entry in a contest that had run on way too long, so that everyone was writing verbose, formulaic entries and maybe it was all a karmic payback for treating "It was a dark and stormy night"* as such a horrible opening that its creator should be mocked forever for writing it.

*Yes, I know that the sentence continues past that, but many people quote the opening as if it were bad enough by itself, and this year I have access to an eloquent defense of Bulwer-Lytton.