This time, I want to avoid the "overly specific or limiting idea" type of bad theme more than anything else. Even the silly ones are a lesser evil.

To advance my goal, I've given myself a bunch of rules. These are rules that prioritize destruction of a certain kind of evil, letting most lesser evils through to give the former a smaller fighting chance. Scrolling down now, you'd probably see the themes I've approved in that screenshot with some scrutiny, but read these rules first:

1. All themes that are asking for an overly specific engine, gimmick, or style of gameplay must be slaughtered.
2. Themes that limit the scope of the game must be slaughtered.
3. If there is uncertainty about whether a theme poses one of those problems (#1 & #2), it too shall be slaughtered.
4. Any theme that is impassibly terrible or needs to be flagged must be slaughtered.
5. Memes shall be slaughtered if they don't happen to possess some quality that - through coincidence - might actually be of use.
6. Silly-looking themes must be slaughtered if they are pretty much uninterpretable nonsense or don't have a very good opportunity for angles being taken on them.
7. Silly-looking themes, if bad in no other way, must be allowed through to lower the chance of anything else - if viewed as problematic by this list - getting through to the finals.
8. All other themes must be let through.

The rules have a hierarchy with highest priorities at the top, like Asimov's Laws or a BEDMAS equation. Already you can see there's still a surprisingly high number of rejected themes here.

This does, as you may have guessed, count on the fact that there will still be a whole lot of people who don't vote in the same way. Normally, in a democracy or Romhack contest, counting on how other people will vote is a terrible idea and results in self-fulfilling prophecies and outcomes you don't want. Well, I see this as my best chance. We've had a lot of outcomes that many people didn't want, so I figure I might as well try something new.

And if you're still wondering, Why are you being so lax with some of the filtering? - it's just because I really, really don't want any themes telling us to combine two incompatible genres or control the environment instead of the character, and would rather make a Ludum Dare title about literally walking on eggs.