Good luck to all finalists! Judging by the podcast, there seems to be scads of top quality entries this round, so this looks like a dead heat for first place!

The Game!

This non-story is a vivid testament to my (permanent?) inability to write any non-trivial pony story anymore. I had decided to skip this round outright, but that zany idea popped in my mind at the very last moment so I finally changed my mind and resolved to give it a go. I don’t regret it because:

1. I wrote something, which is better than zilch;
2. I would’ve been unable to compete against any other stories anyway, the level being so high this round;
3. Most important, it made some of you smile and laugh, which was my only goal.

>>Posh

There was no angle, because there was no story idea at all. It was just a way to coalesce a few show events into the framework of a children's game. For the rest, see just below.

>>Cold in Gardez

Absolutely spot-on. The meta part was a way to pad the rules to reach 2k, which, by the way, it did not without the further bolstering of both - - - ✂ - - - lines. So yeah, in a way that entry should’ve been DQ from the get-go. Happy to know you skimmed over it and didn’t waste much time on it, which it clearly wasn't worth.

>>Xepher

This was written like four hours before the deadline, with half an hour taken away in order to eat. So yeah, I left some typos floating around (“chose” instead of choose, “build” instead of built, “one of the token” with a final s missing, and two or three others here and there). Sorry for that. But I’m pretty interested in knowing what grammar mistakes you found, TBH.

Also, I check with ePub version, and it works perfectly fine with me, so I suppose something is wrong with your parameters. Try choosing another font, maybe?

>>CoffeeMinion

Eh, thanks for liking the Oroboro’s joke!

>>Haze

Haze you’re so right. I could've written a game describing the long way through the School for gifted unicorns, starting at the initial test and ending the same, i.e. you become Celestia’s new precious pupil. But… that didn't spring up into my mind, and frankly in three hours I wouldn't have time to jot it down.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write your thoughts down.

>>AndrewRogue
>>Ranmilia

Agreed. I almost copy/pasted the line which explains how to win, in order to put it before the “Rules” section and create a single line “Goal” section. I hesitated, then was distracted by something else, and forgot to do it. To be 100% honest, I wasn’t really regarding that piece as serious enough to make it look like a true game ruleset. This was

This wanted to be a fool’s game. Sorry, a foals’ game. The rules are intentionally kept basic. They derive from a very famous and common French board game called “Le jeu de l’oie” (Goose game). I’m perfectly open to expanding the rules to make it suitable for an older public. That would be an interesting challenge.

>>Rao

I will ensure some food company installs a pipeline from the goldfish factory directly to your home. :)

>>horizon

What, you didn't comment on my fabulous entry? :P

(Sorry I've been so useless this round, guys. I have literally been unable to finish reading any of the stories, and obviously I wasn't able to completely finish the story I wrote, either. I'll make up for it next pony round.) :fluttershysad:

No Brakes Irreversible

This is going to be an exciting long story, maybe even a novella. I plan to post the first two chapters Monday night, and a new chapter every week thereafter until it concludes. If you're intrigued, you'll probably enjoy where it's headed (and maybe even if you're not intrigued). Tags will be Adventure, Mystery, and Tragedy. (Gasp! Trixie can write stories without the Dark tag!) :derpytongue2:

As most of you noticed, the ending is tacked on (the title was arbitrary to support it). Obviously developing a mythos then never using it is not a good thing to do to my readers. I stopped short for a number of reasons:

* Oops time to stop writing now derp derp derp
* I thought I had 6,000 words to work with instead of 8,000 because my brain has the dumb
* Even if I'd known I had 8,000, unlike TPoaS, I can't do this one justice in a space that small
* The random idea the prompt gave me is something I want to develop much further
* I don't want to reveal what happens to any of you potential readers! :raritywink:

One last reason was that I care much more about receiving feedback than winning the contest. I was torn between crap ending and no ending, and I probably should have gone with no ending and just included an author's note that I could not finish this in the space allotted but will develop it later on FF.

My sincere thanks to everypony who commented, for whom I don't reply to individually below:
>>bloons3 >>Novel_Idea >>The_Letter_J >>Novel_Idea >>AndrewRogue >>Posh

Now come the specific responses.

>>Xepher
Thank you for realizing that my story was intentionally cut short because it would have been longer than the contest could allow! Your feedback on less obvious problems was incredibly useful. The only thing I'm not sure I agree with is brainstorming vs. theorizing. Those are actually very different things. Brainstorming is the task of throwing as many somewhat-relevant ideas onto the drawing board as possible, without scrutinizing them in any way. This gives you a space of ideas to start working within, and it helps you to think outside the box. Theorizing is attempting to construct a consistent model that explains how something works, though I probably should have said hypothesizing, which is coming up with testable explanations that can be part of a theory. Twilight is saying that it's useless to start proposing possible solutions when they haven't had time to think about the full range of possibilities.

>>Fenton
I don't think the potion working based on friendship is a difficult sell, though I might be wrong. That part of the story would explain why Celestia's memories are what Twilight was able to observe (in the show). The fact that the potion is a mixture of earth magic and dark alicorn magic shouldn't preclude how it functions. Zecora's magic sometimes functions on abstract principles in the show, like the curative flower for the cutie pox requiring Apple Bloom to tell the truth. But let me know if you still think this is unrealistic.

>>Ranmilia
I appreciate the feedback, but I'm slightly confused by it. Outside of dialogue, English has two voices: active (subject-verb or subject-verb-object) or passive (object verbed by subject). Using passive voice (like "the chair was sat upon by the pony") is usually considered bad form, so most writers use it very sparingly. So I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting I change. Show vs. tell is always something to work on, and I totes agree the tacked-on ending is telly. It's not necessarily bad to show Twilight's value judgments in third-pony limited perspective, but in the ending I slipped mentally into first-pony from Twilight's view without realizing it and it turned into the author breaking the fourth. Reminding me of this is appreciated.

Thanks again for the feedback, everypony! :twilightsmile:

>>Monokeras

Sure, I can do a quick round-up of some of the technical issues I saw. It's just a sample as I skim over the story again. I'm also skipping pretty much all the punctuation ones, since, as I mentioned, the special symbols just don't work on things. I can see some here in Chrome on my desktop, but most others are still missing

"almost every other surroundings" (every is singular)

"or try to clean them in dishwasher." ("a" or "the" dishwasher)

"foals under three of age" ("age three" or "three years of age")

"the player puts its token on the new square, he must" (he or it, pick a gender)

"all players must get back to the beginning" (go, not get)

"one of the players that currently stand behind you. If there is none..." ("are none" as "players" is plural.

"the Cutie Mark Crusaders have build a strange flying contraption" (built)

"You accept to embark with them" (agree, not accept)

"speak your fears up." (bizzare phrasing, "speak up about your fears")

"you have to deduce 4 from the die roll" (deduct)

>>Xepher

Thanks a bunch! That way I can even improve! :)

>>Trick_Question
It was a bit obvious that you didn't have the time to finish this, but like I said, what you already have here is great, and I can't wait to see it expanded on FimFic (And voilà, another follower :D)

I don't think the potion working based on friendship is a difficult sell, though I might be wrong. That part of the story would explain why Celestia's memories are what Twilight was able to observe (in the show). The fact that the potion is a mixture of earth magic and dark alicorn magic shouldn't preclude how it functions. Zecora's magic sometimes functions on abstract principles in the show, like the curative flower for the cutie pox requiring Apple Bloom to tell the truth. But let me know if you still think this is unrealistic.

I think you can keep the idea of the potion based on Friendship magic. However, I think it needs to be detailed a bit more. I don't know how you picture it, but from the story and what you said, I feel that the trigger for the potion to work is dark magic, but the memories the drinker is able to see is based on Friendship, like you can't see memories of people you aren't friend with, and/or you can't see memories of events that aren't deeply connected with Friendship.

That being said, it wasn't that hard to sell for me, it's just that it lacked some details for me so that I could fully grasp how it worked, and it is definitely not something that "destroys" your whole story. It was just a little nitpick.

Didn't get to this before the finals, but this one made finals, so here goes... As before, reactions as I read, then some summary.


Once upon a time, then umlauts in the second sentence, and a place setting. I'm thinking germanic fairytale.

Grundale? Greendale? The community college? :-)

"But summer didn't last long..." Dun dun DUN...

Mermaid tale?

Some small typos.

Liking the old grandpa.

Griffons in the past tense. Rationing, etc. If the intro didn't say "before equestria" I'd be starting to think this is some post-apocalypse future instead.

"The sun's going away?" Not quite a title drop, but close.

Sundial scene... we already know what's happening, gramps straight up said it. This scene is superfulous.

Named for a solstice ritual. Okay, title and character name mesh. On with it!

"Could she... No, it was silly." No author, it's not and you know it. Don't drag it out for us.

"The sun was going away." How many times can she repeat that?

"She wasn't sure where the sun went at night, but if she kept following it as best as she could, she was convinced she could get there eventually." Okay, this meandered away from fairy tale into more traditional story for a bit, but this feels right back in fairy tale land.

Griffon... okay, glad that wasn't a chekov's gun earlier.

"What's the catch?" I SO expected a fish/salmon pun here.

"like gargling a burning dung heap!" Sounds like proper scotch.

"I'm sorry the sun's going away." I swear, if she says that ONE more time...

"Go hunt the sun in its western bed." Back to fairy tale.

And he knew her grandpa, of course.

Siegfried? and... Maudie = Mattilda = Brumhilde? I think I see what you did there, you and your umlauts german fairy tales. While we're on names, "Geir"? (Googles it) Ha, "Spear."

"Ember told stories of her grandfather as a wise old stallion, and Geir told them of him as a foolish young one." Nicely worded, but is recapping/telling instead of showing.

Good descriptions of jungle and seashore, as it feels like this is speeding up the pacing, which is definitely been dragging for a bit. Kinda waiting for the adventure to start.

Sleeping on a cloud over the sea, what could go wrong?

Hmm, in canon pegasi can make and do a lot more with clouds. Is she young/inexperienced, or are these skills unknown at the time? Kinda weak reasoning for her getting "lost at sea."

*plays jaws theme*

And enter the mermaid. Namaka? (Google again) Godess of the sea, of course.

Hmm, lots of typos starting to show up again. Rushing near the end?

Would've liked to see more of the siren's city.

"The sun is going away." *Smack* Bad author, bad!!! Seriously!

"This the archipelago of the sun's nightly rest!" What, just like that? This feels unearned to just faint and wake up at the destination.

Okay, I love this image, the sun literally setting down atop an island and cooling off at night.

"my brethren, up there in the sky, burning for eons, moving through the whole sky" Fairy tale moment... we need more of this and less of the meandering.

"Celestia Invictus, Guardian of the Sun!" Boom! Yes, like that!



Okay, I really dig the ending of this one, but there's a lot of slow burn (no pun intended) that could be trimmed. The sundial bit, for instance, is great exposition, but... grampa already told her (and us) everything we needed before that. It's not like, as a reader, we thought he was lying. Half that early stuff could be cut and not really sacrifice much. The flight south, meeting a griffon had some good moments, but then it just... skips to the sirens who hand her the quest marker.

So yeah, a really great fairy tale core to this, with a cool/unique mythos, but needs to decide if it's a fairy tale or an adventure story, and really work on the pacing.

First thing first, I need to talk about this hectic weekend of writing. If you’re not interested in reading my boring life, you can just skip to the reply section (I won’t hold a grudge against you, I promise).


Writing started Friday at 2pm and ended Monday at 2pm for me, but this weekend was special. Indeed, we were celebrating the 60th anniversary of my grandparents wedding. I knew I wouldn’t have much time to spend on crafting something deep and meaningful, but the idea of a pony rediscovering Friendship through The Friendship Journal sticked to me and didn’t left me.

So I started writing around 3pm, and stopped around 5pm, because it was time for me to go to my mother’s place. I had the core of my story, but I needed to rework and expand a lot of scenes. As it was, it only was a draft and nothing more. I told myself that I could write while going and coming back from the place where we were holding the party. I was a fool.

The rest of the evening was spent in chatting and waiting for my sister who was coming from Canada just for the weekend (Just so you know, I hadn’t seen her for a year). She arrived around 1am, and, of course, we kept talking for about one hour (so no time to write late in the night).

Next morning, we woke up at 6. We had 4 hours of driving ahead, and 4 hours is nice for writing, right? It is, if you’re not the driver. Exhausted by the time difference, my sister couldn’t drive and my mother couldn’t too, since she barely slept that night, thrilled at the idea of this wonderful weekend. So I ended up driving the whole way.

I’ll skip the details of the party. Just so you know, I had obviously not time to write during the whole weekend. During the trip back on Sunday, we switch driving with my mother halfway, but I slept the whole time, so still no writing.

We arrived late in the evening, and kept talking and talking. It’s only between 1am and 3am that I managed to write a bit, with a lot of exhaustion. While 3am rang on the clock, I knew there was still a lot of problems with my entry. I had aimed very high and the result was… average, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open and Morpheus was calling me in his embrace.

But, Fenton, you sure had the whole Monday, right? Of course not. My sister had a plane around midday, so once again, we waked up early, driving her to the airport, and waiting for her plane while trying to prolong for a bit the wonderful time we had. But every good thing comes to an end, and we said goodbye to my sister with a heavy heart, even though we knew we would meet her again in a few weeks, in Canada this time.

My mother dropped me at her workplace, which is fortunately near where I live. I hurried up to go home, just in time to read my entry one last time before submitting it at 1:50 pm.
And that’s it. I am still impressed that I’ve been able to write something decent with all these constraints. I am even more surprised that it has also resonated with some of you, so now it’s time to answer to each one of you.


Reply section


>>AndrewRogue
Your points are more than valid. Like I said, I didn't have much time to polish it and the two main problems you raised are things I will definitely working on before submitting it to FimFic.

Neigh Digger's personnality is indeed lacking. In my mind, his main trait is sarcasm but I know that there aren't enough sentences to show that. He is aware of the propaganda but he is also convinced that unicorn are the master race, since he was born and lived with this ideology his whole life.

As for the mood of the story, I couldn't agree more. Since my time was limited, I focused on the events and the progression in the discovery of the journal. I knew at the time that the atmosphere I wanted to create was poorly conveyed, but I had to make choices. Like I said, that's definitely one of the major point I'll rework.
As a side note, we talked in Discord about the fact that you felt your reviews lacked optimism and positivism. Even though you aren't really praising anything with this one, the points you've raised are very valuable. I struggle to improve my writing and having clues on what I need to work onto is very helpful. In a way and in fact, your review has optimism, because it encourages me to be better, and I wanted you to know that. So keep doing what you're doing (at least for me).


>>Rao
Like I said, lack of time didn't really help my entry to have a strong atmosphere. The part you mentionned about Neigh Digger finding pegasi and earth ponies in the village is a scene I had to keep short if I wanted to finish this in time. Originally, he was supposed to be disgusted by this fact, and to try to contact the Committee to report this "madness". And thanks to you, I now know that this scene is important for the story's atmosphere, so I will put extra efforts on this one.


>>Xepher
You were right when you claim that the author was not a native. Typos are more obvious coming from a non-native I suppose. As for "aerostat", that's what my dictionnary gave me as a translation for the French word "dirigeable". I didn't take the time to check if it was the right word, and unfortunately, airship was the right word.

The narrator here talks to themself in an overly specific way, explaining the thoughts rather than just having them, and repeating a lot of the same thoughts over and over in only slightly varied ways. This could use a lot of trimming, as there are many possibilities to say the same things in much more interesting and concise ways.

I can understand the feeling. I tried very hard to not simply repeat the same things, and phrasing them in a different way. If you could kindly point where you think the repetition is too heavy, I would be grateful (I'll give a link to a Gdoc at the end of the retrospective)

Keratia (from keratin) is an interesting name for a unicorn place. Nice job with the word construction, author!

Thanks to Monokeras who gave me the idea with his nickname.

I feel there's a great core to this story that really resonates with the same heart that drew me to MLP in the first place. I actually teared up a bit as I read the last segment, as I could see what the author was going for as a message, and that message is spot on for what ponyfic can and should be.

I want to encourage you to keep writing. Practice and perseverance will absolutely improve the technical skill of your writing, and that's a journey you have to endure if you want to write, but you can't teach "heart," which this story has in abundance. Keep at it!!

I... Thank you. That means a lot. You teared up a bit at the last segment, and I was on the verge of crying when I read your review. I know that I have already improved from where I've started and I also know that I still have a long way ahead. But the fact the main idea of my story has somehow resonated with you, that's... very important to me. I'm glad the "heart" is here, even though the execution is sometimes clumsy, the fact that it is not enough clumsy anymore to overshadow the feeling I strive to convey, it's huge, and heartwarming. Thank you very much.


>>Ranmilia

What happened to the immortal, all powerful alicorns, though? Or Discord? Or Spike, and other dragons and long-lived creatures? Those are parts of MLP as well, rather important ones at that. The part I struggle with most here is simply the idea that Equestrian civilization could have fallen into this dystopian turmoil from a canon-ish start. It's nice to see it restored at the end, but the cheery mood is undermined for me by the troubling questions of how Equestria fell apart, and whether it might fall again.

I left these questions unresolved on purpose. My main focusing was restoring the Friendhsip, but I can understand how this unanswered questions can be jarring. I don't know how I will be able to tackle them when I rework this, but know that I'll spend time to think about it. And if you vere have an idea on the how, don't hesitate to say it (I'll give a link to my Gdoc at the end).
Stay tuned on the Writeoff group for when I'll add the new version (or simply follow me on FimFic :p)


>>Posh
I see why the ending feels like resolving everything in a blink of an eye. Like I said, time constraint didn't play in its favor. I will definitely capitalise on the fact this is a first person narration. As for the protganist's name, his name is Neigh Digger, a play around Lone Digger, the song by Caravan Palace. I wanted my pony to be an archeologist so the Digger part was obvious. The first part however, took me more time. I wanted it to express that his words are important. I don't know much about horses but usually, when animals produce sounds, it's because they have something really important to communicate (fear, lust, happiness...). So I ended up with Neigh.
And I'm glad that the story was engaging for you, despite the clumsiness.


>>CoffeeMinion

First up, I should let the Author know that the resolution--despite being told as a telly and convenient quick-cut away from the action--moved me close to tears. Perhaps there's just something appealing about the thought that the power of friendship (as filtered through our favorite ponies’ experiences) could have such power to mend a deeply riven world. I want to believe. And IMO the story does well by making that its ultimate thrust. Good on you, Author; you have given us something to cheer for.

For this part, I will, more or less, repeat what I've said to >>Xepher. Thank you, thank you very much. I'm ecstatic that what I wanted to convey deeply resonated with you too. Neigh Digger's journey (and Twilight and her friends actions) is something I truly believe in. People's actions affect the world they live in, and even if the consequences can seem unimportant at the moment, their importance and their meaning exist for others, either it is now or later.
Lack of the details, as you guessed, is mainly due to time constraint and the hectic weekend I had. The expanded version will definitely have more details, and more work put into. And don't worry, your critique was helpful, even more helpful when pieced with the others.
As for the month name, it is based on the French Republican Calendar, created during the French Revolution. Since the names of the months are closer to the nature, Fructidor is the month when you can "harvest the fruits of your labor". There are other names related to things like blossoming that I will include while adding more entries about Neigh Digger fighting the Committee.


So, once again after a pretty long retrospective, I only have to deeply thank each one of you for your time and your comments. Even though some has moved me more than others, each one is very valuable and it reinforces my determination to improve my writing. I'm very glad that I've finally managed to convey the core idea of my story, all the more so as this time, this idea meant a lot for me. So thank you again. I wish good luck for those still in the competition and for the others, I wish them to keep being inspired to write, as it means that I will have more stories to read coming from you.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves and your folks.

PS: Here is the link for the Gdoc for those who are interested and have time to spend helping me.

This feels like worldbuilding/character exercise. It's neat and fun to read, but it doesn't have the sort of 'overcoming conflict' sort of things that I like in a really good story, nor is it focused enough a specific mood or feeling to carry through as a thematic piece in a specific way. (Horror, romance, etc.)

I mean, it's far from bad, but I'd like to see some change, some growth, some powerful conclusion. As-is, it seems more like a still-life than a drama or adventure.

Hrm.

I feel like Gem isn't really explained enough. We get some handwavy about 'equestrian magic' and emotions, and that seemed like mostly it, which feels weak to me, even in-universe. I think you're missing an opportunity to add kick to your mindscape scene by leaving this unaddressed; after all, if Sunset figures something out about what's going on, I'd like to know how; and I feel like elements should tie together more tightly than they do? Unless I missed something important.

Other people have covered the shipping aspects here better than I could hope to. I'll admit, I was a bit iffy about that aspect, although I didn't have quite as strong a reaction as some seem to have had. It just seemed more... unlikely than actually wrong, maybe? Dunno of that makes sense. :/

There's a lot to like here. I just wish it all pulled together a bit more snugly.

>>billymorph
Side note, how old is Marble anyway? From the show I guessed she's the youngest child but if Pinkie's in highschool then she's got to be low teens, which does make the relationship a lot harder to swallow.

">>Xepher
"The little sister you’ve never even thought of..." but who she just kissed. Who's now looking at her chest and blushing. The underage thing here is squicky.


Marble is Pinkie's twin sister. Stated in "Hearthbreakers."

Pinkie Pie: This is Marble Pie, my baby sister who's only a few minutes younger than me but she'll always be a baby to me, isn't that right?

As impressive as your poetic opening is, I have trouble applauding it, because it does very little for the story overall.

Sure, it's incredibly well done, but... structurally, you're pulling a bait-and-switch (starting the story twice) for no real reason. Narrative-wise, none of the elements introduced there are used later; even the play's big departure from canon (that Luna back-stabbed Celestia) needed a later recap, because what the story later addresses isn't in this part of the play.

I dunno. I mean, I really, really want to give you props for the poetry and presentation, because I was legit prepared to read 8k of Shakesdeer and maybe even enjoy it, but... I had to re-orient to a totally different story after just a scene.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh here. While I do think the words you've used there aren't pulling their weight, it does lend a sense of gravitas to this playwright's work, and the presentation really does sell Pomade as a talented director; your skill shadowing his skill, as it were. :P

Well, I'd argue you could probably achieve the same effect in a third the words, but maybe not. And that would also cramp the poetry, which was nice. /shrug.

Anyways, on to the rest. I do like the ideas here; your characters are presented as nuanced and realistic, and both Luna and Pomade come across crisply. The dreamscape is surreal but clear, and some of the details were wonderful. (Gold star! Spinning the rings on the planet.) However, I'm again a little disappointed by how the gist of this story is handed over with a straight-up monologue. Any hints of tension were quickly defused through reasonable discussion, which is, admittedly, a credit to your characters, but I found this somewhat... less than compelling.

This kinda feels like a wax fruit; beautifully presented and polished, but when you bite it, there's nothing there.

I feel like I've said it before; I prefer badly polished but ambitious stories to polished bland ones... but then I look back to the poetry, and I'm like "this is totally ambitious!" but I come around again and I'm like "but it's not doing anything for the narrative!"

I dunno. I'm going to have a bit of trouble scoring this one, I think. The extreme dichotomy between the two parts, and the fact that they're not meshed nearly as hard as I'd like to see, is going to have me bouncing this up and down my rankings for a bit. On the one hand, I really want to give this some credit for all it does right, even if I feel like that's mostly on a surface level. On the other hand, I feel like there are deep systemic flaws here, holding it back from being so much more.

Was this started with the intent to write a poetic epic, but switched halfway through due to lack of time?

I feel like I got a little ranty there. Hopefully something I said is useful to you. I did enjoy this a lot, even if I'm not really sure what to do with it.

Hmm, I like this a lot.

I think having Ember head towards the griffon outpost first - even if that means moving the outpost to the south - would make the tie-in with her grandfather and griffon stronger. I mean, finding an old friend of gramps just camping in the woods seems... less than likely. Even if the outpost is gone, just using the power of proximity would make it seem a bit less unwieldy. Also, I'm pretty sure you don't need herbs to make good whiskey. Just care and time. Although perhaps unhealthy grain would make as good an explanation.

Foreshadowing the sirens with gramps limp was great. I do think having him foreshadow the suns resting place somehow (not really sure what would work well without tipping your hand too hard) would make the ending seem a bit less tacked-on? Not that I couldn't tell where this was going pretty early on, but the 'random old stallion' bit seemed kinda... ehhh.

There's some great descriptions in here, and I enjoyed the journey. Most of this falls together very well, and the prose is very clean and pleasant.

Nice work!

We covered this Radio Writeoff! If you're interested in my thoughts, there's a link to our recording here.

We covered this in Radio Writeoff! If you're interested in my thoughts, there's a link to the recording here.

It's in the second part.

Also, Quill desperately wants you to post this on FimFic so he can write a many, many word essay about how awesome it is.

(He liked it a lot.)

We covered this in Radio Writeoff! If you're interested in my thoughts, there's a link to the recording here.

It's in the second half of the first part.

Well, I made, like, one throwaway comment, and then I was going to do a bunch of reviewing and then life ate my brain. Oops.

+N to everyone who's participating. See you next round, maybe? (Maybe.)

>>Light_Striker
Not maybe, surely. :p

So I've been really busy this week hence no reviews on my end for which I apologize to people.

>>Ranmilia
This is actually accurate! I have a whole lot more that was planned but basically I ran out of energy.

Fluttershy was going to show up with Zecora, and long story short they'd figure out that the Phoenix totally ate a bunch of poison joke and that's why Celestia is all head-noodled, Luna is totally asleep and Twilight is suddenly Smol.

Meanwhile Horselestia was going to see Twilight as her filly and hijinx would ensue as Twilight tries to get her to stop and Celestia won't and so on and so on.

I wasn't quite sure what my ending was going to be other than the usual poison joke cure wouldn't work.

>>Rao
She's a horse. She doesn't talk, she whinnies and whatnot. That's why! And yes. It was a dig at trickle-down.

>>AndrewRogue
I didn't go completely over the top. If I finish and publish this I might. I haven't decided.

>>horizon
Not drug abuse! More like 'Oops the Phoenix was spiked with Poison Joke'. And me ending it because I wanted to go to bed when it had another 5k+ words to go to be truly done.

>>Posh
Yes! All accurate.

>>Xepher
No, not a feghoot. It's taking Posh's challenge and ending early because I got sleepy.

Anyhoo! Thanks for comments everyone!

>>Novel_Idea
I remember the phrase "baby sister" but not the "few minutes younger" bit. Even at the same age as Pinkie though, that's still high school, whereas Sunset is a fair bit older, having been Celestia's former student before Twilight, and Twilight having been her student since "magic kindergarten," implying that Sunset's been in high school (or at least the human world) since before Twilight had her entrance exam. That suggests Sunset is at least 10 years older, making a relationship with a literal underage high-schooler "inappropriate" by human standards.

Yes, I know timelines here are fuzzy at best, and so my headcanon (with Sunset being 30) isn't neccessarily what the author had going, but... from my reading of it, we've got the "Twilight" (the horrible vampire movie) thing going on. Dude in that is a magic creature and LOOKS like a high-schooler, and even goes to school, but is really a hundred years old, making him a statutory rapist. Sunset's been "in high school" or at least the human world, for like 10-12 years.

How do you do, fellow kids?

Now, I'm not saying the author did this on purpose or anything. Headcanon varies a lot, especially with fuzzy things like ages, so they probably had a totally different read on it. But the story itself uses phrasing like "little sister" and, combined with Marble's overly shy/innocent (some might say "childlike") attitude, it just feels like it's a little risqué.

See >>Xepher.

While you do a fine job writing in the chosen style, I feel this is a case where the chosen style still hurts you. A lot of Luna's monologue comes off sounding a bit odd as she describes things I really question why she'd be describing. Moreover, coming from a long history with jRPGs, I've kinda had my fill of silent mains forever. Finally, this honestly just rubs me a bit in the wrong way of feeling a lot like a bit of self-insert power fantasy with how the unnamed protagonist relates and succeeds.

Still, prose is good and the dreamscape as presented is interesting. I just think the format hurts it more than necessary.

Thanks folks for reading and commenting! ^^ Ahh, I wish I would've had more time with this one. I took the impression from some of the comments that the core elements I was aiming for were mostly in there, but that it needed a lot of polish and (especially) clarification. That was probably unsurprising given that this uses an obscure character, a lore-dependent AU, and an unusual perspective/framing story... plus what you see here was written almost entirely between the hours of 10pm-4am last Sunday night/Monday morning, which did not help in the slightest. For those who don't follow me on FF, suffice it to say that I had a big exciting trip in early June that's had massive knock-on effects, and this was the only time I could squeeze in some uninterrupted writing time last weekend. (I subsequently spent most of the week paying for lost sleep, but I wanted to participate. I hate not participating in a Pony round.)

...Well, so I kinda lied just there. While everything I wrote for this was indeed written last weekend, bits and pieces of the idea for this have been kicking 'round my head ever since the Troubleshoes episode aired, which was over 2 years ago(!). My knee-jerk reaction to the episode was that someone needed to ship Derpy and Troubleshoes, and I began brainstorming how to do it. I even went so far as to write & publish two stories in a series that were meant to build to a third where Troubleshoes could walk in and the ship could be launched, but I never managed to get the final story past an outline that I felt was lacking. I finally gave up and consigned it to the dank depths of my Google drive in Fall 2015.

A bit later in 2015, Oroboro wrote a wonderfully atmospheric post-apocalyptic Equestria Girls AU story called Sunset's Rest, which I highly recommend; it's short on plot but long on mood and worldbuilding. Oh, and any resemblance between the AU I used in this story and the AU in Oroboro's story is totally intentional because I'm overly ripping-off his great idea. :-P No seriously, I loved his portrayal of an aging Sunset who's seen too much and who tries to make her corner of the world a better place while carrying the combined guilt of her original fall-from-grace with Celestia, along with the guilt of her failure to stop Twilight/Midnight Sparkle from destabilizing the multiverse at the end of Friendship Games. Someone mentioned FG was their least favorite EqG movie, and I'm right there with 'em; but I have to admit that its climax offers a perfect opportunity to envision a "what if" scenario where things could've gone horribly wrong.

Anyway, at some point during a desperate brainstorming session in a past Writeoff I was trying to mix-and-match pieces of old ideas to see if I could get anything to click, and one thing that emerged was this bizarre idea of trying to write DerpyShoes shipping set in Oroboro's AU. Of course I didn't end up doing it at the time, but it was so manifestly weird that I figured it was worth writing down. I've kept coming back to it from time, trying to figure out a plot (or even a cast), but I kept bouncing right off of it; absolutely nothing about my old light-&-funny DerpyShoes ideas seemed like they could work in such a dark setting.

But this time around, things were different.

I saw a picture of a dead unicorn in a desert, which got me thinking about Blueblood meeting an untimely end. And a "Fool" Tarot card that made me think about how Troubleshoes would probably find some way to get himself into mortal peril even if he was otherwise succeeding at his goals. And then I thought about Sunset herself being at the core of Oroboro's AU, and how she'd react if someone came to town looking for trouble... and how she'd react if someone came to town looking for answers.

So assuming I haven't already lost you, here's my story's whole backstory and mystery demystified: At the end of Friendship Games, Sunset failed to reach Sci-Twi with her message of friendship, and the two ended up fighting instead of reconciling. Sunset emerged victorious and managed to re-seal the dimensions, but stray bursts of unchecked power wreaked havoc on the planet and its orbit. (Note that she'd channeled a great deal of magic into protecting the people who were present to witness the fight). Faced with rising temperatures but cut off from the Equestrian magic that might help her fix the world, Sunset did all she could think to do: rebuild Canterlot into a relatively safe bulwark against the savagery that rose amid the new North Amareican desert.

Roughly 5-10 years after those events, Blueblood came down to Canterlot after a lengthy stay in the "Crystal Empire," a somewhat-organized but still pretty ragtag group of towns to the north. While he'd originally come out of curiosity regarding his (missing and presumed dead) aunts, Blueblood found he rather liked the relative order he found in Canterlot, and he decided to insert himself into the community and begin seeking comfort and power. But he was far from a good man to start with, and life in the desert had only hardened him; details can be left to the imagination of the reader, but suffice it to say that Berryshine lost a sister, and Ms. Ditzy Doo gained a child. A few years later, things stabilized enough in the Crystal Empire that they could afford to start looking for clues about Blueblood's whereabouts, as he'd also made a few notable (though not necessarily criminal) waves in the Empire as well.

So that's the setup and everything. But who was who?: The schoolteacher was Ditzy/Derpy/Muffins/whatever. I tried to make it clear from her description and demeanor, but I hesitated to name her because I wasn't sure which name to choose at this point. I wish I'd just picked a name and run with it, though, because that probably would've been the single most helpful thing for those who were confused. I also wish I could've managed to insert one or two more tiny morsels of backstory about her becoming the schoolteacher; basically she's not the smartest person in town but she's very nurturing and good with kids, and that proved to be what Canterlot needed after losing Cheerilee. So then that brings us to the person in the shadows, who was Sunset herself. I hoped that would be clear by the end, though I see not everyone got it. But Canterlot is her town; she figures she's paid for it with blood and guilt, and Blueblood only left her with more of both. And of course Blueblood was the already-dead bad guy.

All right, so what happens to Troubleshoes at the end of this? Does Sunset see the good in him and do what she can to make things right? Or does she get rid of him like she got rid of Blueblood? (Come on, of course she'd try to make things right; this is Sunset we're talking about. What Blueblood did was beyond the pale; what Troubleshoes did was the earnest bumbling of a good man.)

On to comments!

>>Novel_Idea

Definitely top tier here on narration alone. But add in some cute shipping and an alternate timeline with Sunset Shimmer as the single one keeping what's left of Canterlot alive? Hook, line and sinker. Great job!

Bless you for your early and positive review! I wasn't sure if this would resonate with anyone but it totally did! ^^ ...I just wish it had done that with more people! D:

I actually missed who the love interest was at the very beginning. I missed a single word and it slipped by me until I went back at the end.

This would go on to become a recurring bit of feedback (more or less). For whatever reason, I don't see the problem. If you (or anyone) would be game for pointing it out, that would help me tweak things.

>>billymorph
Coming on the heels of the previous review, this was my "Oh crap! I lost the audience after all!" moment. D: Also a clue that not naming names was hurting me...

>>Rao

Good job all around using a rare character in an interesting AU to tell a troubled tale.

Many thanks! Also this was my "No it's OK, I've got this after all!" moment as I was tallying reviews.

(...Come on, I did an all-nighter on a work night to write this thing. I wanted it to make good.) :-P

>>Ranmilia

I'm likely sounding way more negative on it than I feel, because it's hard to praise the prose through the accent and it's hard to praise the content through the problem of obscurity. But it really is just those two issues.

While the first time I read your comments I thought you were dinging me for writing a mystery (which... like, half the point is that it's a mystery), on subsequent reading I realized you'd given me some really valuable feedback here. There's a shroud of obscurity covering this whole thing. T-money's accent is definitely part of it... I felt it was important to get the character voice right, but I'll admit it kinda ended up being an apostrophe salad. And the other thing is that there isn't enough clarity of names and descriptions at the moments where the story really needs them. I was trying to stick with what could plausibly serve as T-shoes actually speaking all of this out loud to Sunset, but there are moments where the audience needs more help getting there.

Just my luck, usin' a writin' competition as my first time in a long time writin' First Person Hayseed perspective... :-P

>>AndrewRogue

While I can track the events that take place with relative ease, I can't really track the story itself because it is more or less fully obfuscated by a character who both seems to know nothing and spell nothing out. There is nothing wrong with mystery, but the reader needs SOMETHING to hook onto.

Beyond that, while I am a big fan of organic world building, sometimes you need to be straightforward, and fanfiction is one of those times where establishing right out the gate that something is AU is important to avoid forcing a hard swerve. While I think that might be what you were trying to do at the beginning, I don't think it quite succeeds because it simply puts me in mind that we're in a different region of Amareica than EqG takes place in, and thus dealing with a slightly different sort of life. It takes a while for me to be sure about the AU thing, and I still don't really have a good picture of what the world we're dealing with is.

Actually it might've been your review that helped me realize the full depth of what the previous one was saying, so thank you. For what it's worth though, I tried to lay the groundwork with the AU stuff as early as I could after the opening "sting" with the gun. I agree that it still could've been clearer with this kind of contextless presentation, but I feel like this is a case where it it was on FimFiction and there were big ol' EqG and AU tags on the story (as well as short and long descriptions helping set things up), that would probably work.

>>Not_A_Hat

I think this is trying to hang too much on its in-media-res opening, and not doing enough to hold attention in the middle or really sell the ending. (What happened in the past? What's going to happen now?) Plus, the accent is a bit much, and some of the world-building seemed unnecessarily confusing. I won't say you totally lost me, but I definitely skimmed a bit in the middle.

On the other hand, I really do like the idea of Troubleshoes X Derpy, and both of them are just kinda... wonderfully bumbling through the whole story here. This has some great elements and some not-so-great elements, but on the whole I think I like it.

I love this, and thank you for writing it. ^^ It's encouraging while continuing to hammer at some of the same points others made about the lack of clarity in the middle section. It also makes the point that I very much am trying to hang a lot on the opening. Part of that is... well, it's embarrassing; at some point in the 2+ years that this story idea was germinating, I actually wrote a brief opening paragraph that I liked much better and that established the whole AU thing very succinctly. Then of course I actually finally use this idea in a real live Writeoff, and I'm like... "Crap, I can't use that as the opener!" :-P

>>Xepher

"Postapocalyptic Cowboy Noir."

This is the best thing. ^^

I kinda want to know what happened to the world, but I'm not feeling any real interested in who Clyde is hunting for, as everything has just been him hitting dead ends and "I don't want to talk about it" which doesn't expose the reader to any real info. Even when "the teacher" comes to find Clyde, and says she's seen "that man" they still don't name him. I'm in the dark, author, and it's making this ride less fun.

Interesting interesting interesting feedback. Part of how I was trying to do this was to show T-pain continuing to make progress in spite of (and in fact sometimes because of) the dead ends. Like... he talks a lot about luck in his episode, and I was trying to play with luck as a concept. He gets lucky as he's going along but then ends up fabulously unlucky in the end because his luck runs out.

That might be too understated at present though...

I have no idea who the schoolteacher is (it's not cheerilee I think), who's holding Clyde at the end (unless it's Sunset) who the murdered pony was he was tracking. or much of anything else. For the love of ***** why couldn't you just have characters uses names like a normal story? Seriously!

Eeyup. Names are good. This should've been obvious, but 10pm-4am brain didn't make the connection. Props to you though for guessing correctly on Sunset!

---

...And thus ends the longest retro ever. :-) Thanks for reading, and hopefully this'll make its way to FimFiction sooner rather than later.

Let's just get the bad out of the way quick. I'm not fully sold on the Twilight voice, don't retrospect first person narration unless you're purposefully doing a fully retrospective story, and the nature of Twilight's dream is fairly unclear compared to those around her.

Otherwise, yeah. This is great.

Tone is an important thing. I think I've talked about it here before, but a very common piece of writing advice is to deliver what you promise to the reader. And this does it magnificently. Right from the getgo there is a pervading sense of disquiet or discomfort (a very good take on Discord too, by the by) that informs you how this story is going to work. I disagree with >>Xepher that it snaps to weird horror from blissful surrealism. It's a terrible and wonderful thing all at once, and it stays that way through.

It didn't occur to me until I was reading comments, but >>Ranmilia is right: this actually feels a lot like We Know the Devil for reason I don't want to overly go into here because, like him, I think it is rad and it should be played blind if you want to play it. For the sake of completeness, though... (spoilers for that game ahead - seriously, go buy and play it):

These transformations are both wondrous and terrible, as it were, things all at the same time. They are ponies freed to be themselves as they most want to be, no matter how monstrous and strange that might be. At the same time, I feel like this change is a bit less... positive than that in WKtD, because it seems to come at the cost of separation and detachment from each other, while the finale of WKtD has a distinct sense of belonging as Jupiter, Venus, and Neptune achieve their monstrous freedom together.

Seriously though, ultimately, while this tone of story isn't generally my thing, this is great. Plain and simple.

I agree with >>Rao, >>Morning Sun and >>AndrewRogue

There is no story. It's really hard to keep reading because there is no plot and no hook. It could have been more interesting with more humour and more world/magic-building.

I'm not going to search for the source. I shouldn't have to look for the source to find this submission interesting, it should be interesting by itself. I believe references should be used like easter eggs hidden in games/movies/whatever: if you get them it's fun, otherwise you can still enjoy the main content.

Writeoff Mash-Ups: Preliminary Edition

Trouble! No Brakes for 72 Hours: Troubleshoes' investigation into the disappearance of Blueblood leads him to board a train bound for a place called Quifons. He's not sure what that is, or where it is, or of many of the specifics surrounding his work. All he knows is that it's been three days, this train hasn't stopped once, it's snowing outside, and all the other passengers keep glancing at his neck...

THAUMIC FIRES: The Game! It's the boardgame conflagration that's sweeping the nation! It's Thaumic Fires: The Game! Study up and roll the dice for a chance to land on one of thirty whimsical tiles, each one presenting a different opportunity to be rendered a pony-shaped carbon crisp.

The Fool and the Waterline: Neigh Digger's mission to find the Elements of Harmony goes poorly, until he encounters a dreadlocked witch who offers him a tarot reading. Of course, he isn't carrying any money, or anything beyond non-perishable food, so the majority of the story is just the two of them haggling over bread crumbs.

Unsolicited Ghost Remedies: "Look at this, Princess," said Twilight, holding up a letter. "It's an ad from the human world for Sugarcoat's ghost-whacking business. If I can get in touch with her, I might be able to persuade her to come to Equestria, and beat this phoenix dust problem out of you with an old baseball bat!"

"Whiieeeeerherherherherher," Celestia whinneyed, bumping Twilight's hoof with her nose. Twilight sighed and slid another slice of apple into her mouth.

I meant to get reviews written on Saturday night, then didn't get home until 2 am and wanted to at least do mash-ups instead, then fell asleep and was gone all day Sunday, then had company Sunday night … long story short, >>Posh beat me to mash-ups, and it's great to see I wasn't the only one thinking of them!

---

NO BRAKES: A PRACTICAL APPROACH — Your approach to uncontrolled automotive motion should vary greatly depending on the source of the difficulties in stopping. If your brakes have burst into magical flame, see our previous guide. If your vehicle is being controlled by an underage driver, relax, as they are most likely taking you to Quifons. If you are currently in midair, rest assured that sudden deceleration is immediately inevitable.

The Roe King's Trouble — Now I can understand y’all might be upset about some unlucky archaeologist liberatin’ your artifact of limitless power, sir. But I’d be powerful obliged if you’d just unfreeze time and let me make my wishes before you start flingin' round them death curses.

The Unsolicited Archetypist — IS YOUR MARE DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR DR*EAMS? Give her the best s-l-e-e-p of her life with SOMINOL! Dre.am faster, harder, more viv!d, like the stallion you always knew you could be! Visit www.BestDreamsCheap.q TODAY

To Bring Back The Sun And Not Pick One — Ember Spark visits the sun's resting place on the distant horizon — only to discover that the sun is actually AU her, and that as imperfect as she is she's actually a better Ember than that lazy-ass shirker.

Unexpected Hazards Of A Gem Beneath — Sunset Shimmer gets a concussion and falls in love with Amethyst Star … and then her girlfriend Marble Pie shows up. They have a threesome. Oroboro's squeeing is audible from orbit.

A Walk Beyond the Stars: A Cantata Mezza Voce — Floating letters of fire coalesce in the dream-realm alongside you. WALK, they say. "Where?" you ask, clutching your cello nervously. My red eyes narrow. The letters thicken.

The Nightmare Remedies — "Hreeeeheehhweewheeawh spheehee hwwrrhmmph!" the on-stage Celestia said, and Pomade could see the dark alicorn in the back of the auditorium frowning a little harder. Maybe, he thought, my next play shouldn't focus quite so strenuously on historical accuracy.

>>Fenton
Get me a hypertime bubble to write and review in and then we'll talk about "surely". :-P

Preliminary Reviews: Make-Up Lightning Round Edition

Unsolicited: A premise that holds potential, but which doesn't really capitalize on it. After the first letter, I thought that it'd be a slightly comic, slightly poignant, take on an Equestrian mail-dating service, which I was looking forward to. But it kinda clings to a "safe" approach of just, as >>Xepher put it, ponified spam.

I'd enjoy a story like that, I think, if it offered some insight into the characters and institutions of Equestria. But as is, though it's at times amusing, it's not really substantial.

THAUMIC FIRES: A PRACTICAL APPROACH: I hate to gang up on bloons (sorry, dude), but...

As with my previous review, I think this would have succeeded if it'd been written in a particular character's voice, and if it had done something more to offer insight into that character, or institutions, or events in Equestria. A spin on what would, otherwise, have just been dry technical writing. It's world-building without context right now; I would have liked to see world-building with context, however. What events prompted the authorship of this manual?

The Fool and the Sun: Some fresh imagery, but it's not really enough for me to shake the feeling that this ground is well-beaten enough as is. I don't mind revisiting a good cliche (and this particular subject matter was already saturated with entries long before EqG; just swap out Sunset Shimmer with S1 Luna), so long as it brings something unique to the subject matter.

I don't see that. It's done okay. It's not bad, by any means. But despite the (admittedly creative) set-up, it didn't capture me, I'm sorry.

No Brakes: ...I identify strongly with Twilight, because I have no idea what's going on, despite how earnestly the story is trying to explain what's going on. The situation is only exacerbated by the abrupt finish... which, I think, only exists to give this story its title.

Props, however, for doing something witty with Zecora's dialogue; I liked when she had to pause to think of how to maintain her rhyme scheme (at least, I think that's what's going on there).

Looking for Trouble: My, this is a time for crack pairings, isn't it? :P I really like Troubleshoes here, but this story suffers from some of the same issues as No Brakes. Namely, an abrupt finish that doesn't resolve the story's central conflict, and a series of unanswered (and, indeed, unexplored) questions.

And that's all for my preliminary reviews. I'll try to take some more time for the finalists in the next few days.

This is the kind of story that is right up my alley, which makes it a disappointing that I feel like I never really connected with it.

I think there are two problems (I'm going that a lot this round...) that really jump out at me.

1. I don't think the chemistry between Luna and Celestia is quite there. I'm having a hard time pointing at exactly what the issue is, but something about it just doesn't quite click. Maybe the dialogue isn't quite snappy enough or something? There is just something that isn't quite selling me on them bouncing off each other.

2. I think the story pulls in too many directions. The home life and the adventure don't really smoothly flow from one into the other, instead sort of providing a diversion. I'm really having trouble explaining this one. Basically, while the ideas link, they feel like two very different plot flows that coincidentally slam into each other, rather than one really informing the other.

This is a less major issue, but the family life here is... a little strange and doesn't quite feel like it parallels anything comfortably? I'm a little rusty, but I sorta feel a situation where everyone was still living in the household would just not occur. One or more of them would be out of that house.

Still, all that said, you have the heart of a charming little sword and sorcery romp here! I think a bit of polish and smoothing to really make everything link in a satisfactory manner will fix it up good.

You use the word smirk 20 times in the story. That is one smirk per 399.7 words. You have multiple paragraphs where you use the word smirk multiple times. This is amazingly overbearing. I -actually- hated this word by the end of the story and wanted to punch Sunset in her smug face. Not even joking, I physically twitched at Sunset's smile at the end because I thought it was her smirking again.

ANYHOW.

This is the cute, overly saccarhine characters interact and crush and love sorta nonsense I love, but I think it comes up a bit short. The interactions, while cute, really never feel like they much progress beyond crush-y, if that makes sense? There is a lot of adorable snark and joking, but it just never quite crosses that boundary to where I'm overly convinced they are hitting it off? You do some little things good. Stuff like TV watching and that is actually super good. Just those quiet moments. But they need to... hm... they need to engage together in these things.

Actually, literally as I type it out, that's what is missing, I think. They chatter and stuff in absence of the actions going on in their lives. They should be chattering about what IS going on in their lives. Mutual love of sushi. Getting a kick out of MST. Etc. Etc. You've definitely got the hang of them interacting and bouncing off each other, you just need to push it those few extra inches to really sell things, I think. Tighten the story up, cut some words, and give us a little more meat to the romance. When the big break is one character not even realizing they want this, it's a bit weird.

I'm stuck in loops where I say the same thing for like, three reviews in a row. Music pones are, unsurprisingly, up my alley.

So, this one has a pretty large and obvious issue, and that is that it isn't really a story. If I squint really, really hard there is sort of an arc of grumpy Vinyl acquires a roommate and maybe we see something coming from that? But that's not really a very satisfactory arc. Even in slice of life, you really do need to let things happen.

Cut back on the description/atmosphere stuff early on and get us some meat a little quicker. Not only will it stop things from being overwrought (atmosphere is good, too much atmosphere suffocates), but it'll also let you start introducing your story hooks (rather than setting and character hooks) a bit earlier. You've got the latter. You need the former.

>>Posh
I wasn't sure how to do a clearer ending for Trouble while staying in the perspective and narrative structure that the rest of it is told in. Would it be jarring to have an epilogue where it jumps out to a third-person conversation between Sunset and Berry to wrap things up?

>>CoffeeMinion It would be, yes. Maybe examining the mystery itself would be the better course of action. There are a handful of hints pointing toward what's going on, but they're vague, and nothing really happens to bring them all into focus and explain just why things are going the way that they are.

Maybe a little more set-up regarding Blueblood, and a little more of Troubleshoes putting the pieces together as he's exploring the town, would improve the resolution. Maybe something to justify Sunset's presence at the end, too (and to indicate that it IS Sunnybuns, of all people, taking an interest in Troubleshoes's activity).

It's also unclear to me just why she'd consider killing Troubleshoes. With Blueblood found dead, there's not much reason for him to stick around and keep causing trouble in the town. Killing him would only draw more attention to Sunset's little fiefdom, and lead to more strangers poking their noses around.

>>CoffeeMinion

I wasn't sure how to do a clearer ending for Trouble while staying in the perspective and narrative structure that the rest of it is told in.

Yeah. I think if you did that you would run into the same problems that were discussed in Radio Writeoff for A Walk Beyond The Stars, of trying to narrate action, and the difficulties thereof. Not to say it can't be done, but it's a big challenge and the format typically feels pretty artificial.

Would it be jarring to have an epilogue where it jumps out to a third-person conversation between Sunset and Berry to wrap things up?

For me, it would. You might want to consider instead doing a time skip and having Trouble Shoes narrate the resolution to a different listener — that allows you to keep the same narration style and tense, which would make the cut-away less abrupt.

>>AndrewRogue

#EndZipfTyranny2017( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

>>CoffeeMinion

This would go on to become a recurring bit of feedback (more or less). For whatever reason, I don't see the problem. If you (or anyone) would be game for pointing it out, that would help me tweak things.

grey mottled dress not too far off her skin tone

This is what I missed. I have a bad habit of occasionally skimming even my favorite stories. If a critical line is in the middle of a paragraph there's a chance I might miss it. I did catch that she was blonde, but I didn't make the rest of the connections. Ironically, I do remember the dress, but for some reason, I don't remember the "not too far off from her skin tone."

Honestly, I thought this story should have done far better than it did. For my slate, I actually ranked this at the top. I am a sucker for Sunset and AUs, but more than anything, I just went totally nuts over the voice. I could hear the character in my head, narrating this whole thing.

So if I launched you out on a happy note, take it! I still stand by this was one of my favorites I read this round. :)

Make sure you get this in for Jake's contest! I want to read the final version and I think it'll do great. Hell, when I first read it, I was like "whelp, so much for my entry."

I don't really have much to add to any of the above. The big core issue is that the meat of the story, as it is presented (the "monster") is over in a flash. If that's not the actual core of the story, I think you need to shift the presentation of things around to make it clearer that the interactions between Sunset and Marble are really intended to be the meat of the story, while gemmy is our potatoes.

Also reading this and Hazards so close to each other was kinda weird.

>>AndrewRogue

Also reading this and Hazards so close to each other was kinda weird.

Besides the similar subject matter, Sunset's characteristics and quirks are so similar across both stories that I'd swear they were written by the same author.

>>Posh
She smirks way fucking less in this story.

No, I'm not letting it go. >:|

>>AndrewRogue *smirks*

>>JudgeDeadd
>>Haze
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>horizon
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>The_Letter_J

Well, this is a late reply. Basically, I tried to do something clever and cool, but after four-or-five hours of failing I kinda gave up and did this.

As to why she's centered around Canterlot, I had to hide a weird glowing orb of light that's hanging out over the Everfree Forrest somehow, and her tail did the trick.

>>Posh
Great feedback, thank you. I'm incorporating much of this into version 2 electric boogaloo.

>>horizon
Fair enough. I might just try to punch-up the current ending a bit. At least clarifying that it's Sunset should help.

>>Novel_Idea
You old charmer. Flattery will get you everywhere. :-p

I seem to have neglected to comment on this picture.

A few weeks ago, I discovered allrgb.com, and I thought it would be interesting to try to create an image like theirs sometime. Rainbow Dash seemed like an especially appropriate subject for such a picture, and this prompt seemed like a good time to make a picture of Rainbow Dash.

I would have liked to create a picture with all 256^3 possible colors in it, but I think this round would be long over before my computer finished, and the resulting picture would have been too big for this site anyway. I think this size worked as a reasonable compromise though.

In case anyone didn't realize, I wrote the program to create this picture from scratch. The basic algorithm was actually pretty easy to put together. Adjusting it to make it run in a reasonable amount of time and create a decent output was a bit of a struggle though.

As for the picture, I started out with this image that I created from some vectors I found. I probably should have put something a bit better together, but I was running low on time and didn't have much to work with. I really would have liked to have used a picture of Rainbow Dash doing a Sonic Rainboom, just for all of the colors, but I couldn't find anything to use.

When I ran that picture through my program without doing anything special to it, this was the result. Not too bad, but I thought it would look better if Rainbow stood out more.

So after making a few adjustments to the program, I eventually produced the picture I submitted. Okay, that's better, but what if I made the sun and clouds stand out more too?

Unfortunately, this was the result. It might have turned out better if the sun had solid borders instead of gradients and if the clouds looked a bit different, but time and resource constraints got in the way. But even then, the background probably still would have ended up rather purpleish like this. Again, it might have also turned out better if I had made a Sonic Rainboom picture instead of one that's 90% blue, but oh well.

Also, it took something like 30 minutes for my program to create each image, so the entire process was rather slow. I stayed up way too late finishing this, and I only got it in a few hours before the deadline.

>>Fenton
I'm curious to know what you think of the second picture I liked above, and how you think it compares. I did consider submitting that version instead, but I liked this one more.

>>horizon
I'm glad someone here understands me. :p
Yeah, I know that this didn't turn out looking the best, but I was quite happy to see that someone understood what I was going for and appreciated it.

And thank you to everyone else who offered opinions as well.
>>JudgeDeadd
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>Trick_Question

Then the alarm clock bleats, and her fingers fumble for the snooze button, and she stares out toward the rising sun, and she showers dresses cooks eats, drives parks opens greets, loves chides warns guides

BREAKS ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE, BREAKS ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE

Snark aside, this is gorgeous. A thorough, exhaustive, incredibly moving portrait of a character who I don't think I've ever seen get quite this much development or attention. I have some issues with elements of its premise (the cross-dimensional conversation that Human!Celestia and Equestria!Luna have doesn't add up, imo, and I find it questionable that Celestia has zero notoriety, despite her past as literal not!English royalty), but the elegant prose and character work drown out my complaints.

There's one more detail I forgot to add earlier that I wanted to bring up: the nickname "Amy."

Now Amy is a perfectly reasonable nickname for Amethyst. The problem is that it just kind of comes out of nowhere right at the start of the climax. Now maybe I'm just a bit slow, but I stared at that line for several seconds, trying to think if there was anyone named Amy in the show, before I finally figured out that it was supposed to be a nickname for Amethyst.

Yes, you did use the name once before, but that was 5000 words earlier.

Now, if you want "Amy" to just be Sunset's pet name for Amethyst, or something like that, that's fine. That means it makes sense not to use it in the narration or anything like that. But you should at least try to have Sunset use it more, or possibly have Amethyst make some comment about the nickname.

This is, of course, a very minor complaint, but it is something that I think you should be aware of if you plan to do anything else with this story.

>>Ranmilia
>>Trick_Question
After thinking on this some more, I'm pretty sure I understand what you were getting at now. Thanks for the useful feedback!

Okay, after sufficiently numbing my frail and fractured soul with copious alcohol abuse, I've come to the conclusion that this story is actually brilliant, even if it took me a little while to figure out just what the fuck was going on. It's got this subtle, eerie feeling that creeps up on you; something is wrong right from the get-go, and despite the normalcy of the setting and the sequence of events, that feeling only builds until the story hits its climax.

And then you need a drink. Badly.

I reread this, earlier, and what really hit me was the amount of subtle foreshadowing, right from the get-go. There's a lot of stuff that the characters mention in conversation with one another whose significance only becomes evident on a second or third pass. See Discord's and Rarity's dialogue in their respective first scenes for examples; I'd find them myself, but all the alcohol has rendered me incapable of remembering precisely what they are.

But they've all led me to a particular interpretation of this story: It's a dream. Discord's. The oft-mentioned Starbuck's, a surrea detail which can't and shouldn't exist in Ponyworld, signposts this to me early on, and the way the way that Discord drifts in and out of the narrative makes me think of someone slipping in and out of a dreamscape as they fall asleep and awaken. The ponies themselves are the archetypes which bind his dreams together, and he is the titular archetypist. The only dream he unbinds is his own, and it seems to have disastrous consequences for him.

The story's ending is chilling, and I find myself wondering if the esteemed >>Ranmilia was being ironic in declaring it a non-downer. It's a gorgeous cap to a gorgeous story, don't get me wrong, but it's just... ow. A total kick in the gut.

Minor complaints: Luna falls out of the narrative, after being mentioned multiple times and putting in a memorable appearance where she outright calls the premise of the story a complete load, and that seems like wasted opportunity. Also, implied StarTrix < implied StarTwi. Absolute garbage.

8/10.

A beautiful, heartwarming tale, elegantly written and told. Great world-building and character elements.

But I find myself less than impressed with the protagonist, Proto-Celestia,. She doesn't feel like an agent in the story; as a protagonist, she accomplishes little on her own. She just kinda flops her way around the world and eventually completes her quest by sheer luck, after almost getting herself killed. Her existence also begs the question of what Luna's origins are, but that's beyond the story's purview, I think.

And with my reviews finally out of the way, it's time for...

Writeoff Mash-Ups: Finals Edition!

A Gem Beneath the Archetypist: "Do you remember what we used to be like?" Sunset whispered, stroking a hand ending in hoofed fingers through Marble's splendid gemstone-mane.

"Nnnumm."

Tales from Another Sun: And Not Pick One: "I changed my mind. I don't want your job. Please excuse me."

Ember's hooves clopped loudly on the linoleum as she shuffled out of the office, not sparing Captain-Vice-Principal Celestia, or the angry, red-hued profanities that she slashed in the air, another glance.

A Walk Beyond the Nightmare Macabre: "Oh. You.

"I hadn't expected to see you again, so soon after our last conversation. You've started writing that manuscript, have you? Great. Just great. A musical number? I... don't see why not, though I must admit, the musical genre has never made much sense to me.

"...Because why would ponies pay money to watch one another break out into song when they do that habitually, and on a daily basis, Pomade? Yes, you see my point. Now, if you'll just stop staring at my hindquarters, I'll remove those sidlegrents from your impressively swollen mammary glands. Don't worry, your dreams are completely confidential; I won't tell Bloom. But, between you and I, if you knew what she dreamed about, you wouldn't be so self-conscious."

Unexpected Hazards of the Roe King's Tomb: Luna pressed her lips against the faun's in a wet, clumsy kiss. It was her first, ever, an awkward and unromantic imitation of what she'd seen grown-ups do to one another. But when she pulled away, she saw the Roe King smiling.

"Yes," he whispered, his cheeks aglow. "Of course I'll go to the wedding with you."

They vanished, leaving Celestia alone in the tomb with a terminal binder-blow to the head.

"Hrrumpum," she nickered as she lost consciousness.

>>The_Letter_J
I definitely like it more. It feels more consistent to me. Rainbow Dash still stands out from the rest of the piece but this time, her colors merged more effectively with the background. We still don't see the background enough (or we see RD too much), but it's definitely better (at least for me).

Now that I saw the original picture, I may guess what could be done to improve a rendering with the program you created. If more elements are more contrasted with the background, like the clouds and the sun, they would have probably stand out more, just like Rainbow Dash. I think the difference in colors between the clouds and the sky was too low (only shades of light blue) to make them visible once you have run the program. I don't know, I'm probably wrong.

>>Xepher

Postapocalyptic Cowboy Noir

So... I am likely going to steal this for a subtitle in the FimFiction version. This is seriously gold, IMO. ^^

Yay, I finally have a Most Controversial award, and I didn't even need to write about Babs Seed exploding to do it.

SO proud of myself. :D

Congratulations to CiG and Xepher for their medals, and thank you all for reading and enjoying!

I'm mildly surprised that nobody called out the title; just copying and pasting it into Google would have led you right to the source:

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

--Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"

And I do like the poem, both as a piece and as a sort of tonal contrast to this. Honestly, though, the title was the result of last-second quote-mining on my part looking for something I could use, because I was drawing a complete blank and had about five minutes before the deadline. :( It sounded vaguely litfic-ish and I thought, "Great, that'll set expectations appropriately, let's go with that."

As such I agree with >>AndrewRogue that it's plodding, and not even entirely representative of the story's themes. I would dearly love suggestions, because two weeks later I'm still drawing a blank.

---

The rest of this is gonna be too random for a retrospective, but I've been saving up commentary to share:

- The numbered sections are going to turn into FIMFiction chapters. I wanted a bigger division than a simple [hr] would allow, especially since (2.) is the turning point from present into past tense, and in Writeoff-land it becomes very difficult to signal that you're doing that intentionally without ginormous outsized bold flashing signposts.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher >>Rao et.al.
* If you're confused by the final scene of part 3, go click the link in >>Not_A_Hat. Quill Scratch explains it exactly. (tl;dr: Principal Celestia has a dream in which she's talking with Luna, and belatedly discovers she's dream-talking with Princess Luna.) Any lack of clarity in that scene is a casualty of the time limit and I am doing my utmost to signpost it better.

>>AndrewRogue >>Ranmilia
Re the chat log: If I hadn't written this piece I would have been a little worried about the unfiltered opinions on display. For me though, I've been doing this long enough that I was able to gloss over the sharp edges and grateful for the deeper analysis. Thanks for taking the chance on that -- it seems like it involved a judgment that the author of the story you read would have the experience to take it in the right spirit, and I think that judgment worked.

I appreciate the critique wrt the drifting emotional arc. I agree that's also a failing and I'm trying to smooth that out with some motivation changes to add coherence.

There are a couple of complaints I'm not sure I can effectively address. Frex, I totally get the class/first-world-problems thing -- and it's a critique I've leveled at other stories before, myself -- but I think the only way to fix that is to improve the rest of the story so that it's possible to empathize with her despite her unbelievable fortune. I'm going for a compare-and-contrast with Princess Celestia, and the more parallels I draw the more inevitable that critique becomes. Heck, maybe it's just inherently an unfixable thing in the context of a show about groomed-by-royalty,-sister-to-a-prince,-chosen-one-Marey-Sue Twilight Sparkle? MLP has some blatant bourgeoisie overtones and I'm embracing them because of the story I want to tell.

"Dictating ethics": Hm. I kind of figured I was signposting Celestia as something of an unreliable narrator when it came to her opinions of her own actions. Well, that should be fixable by making a few sentences about that Part 1 conclusion less definitive/more subjective.

>>Xepher
"Europa" was a failed (semi)ponification, just trying to make EqGverse feel a little more parallel-but-not-identical-to-Earth. Eh. I use the word a grand total of once; easy enough to remove.

The car crash: Implied but never stated was that Celestia and Luna's parents died. Given multiple complaints about confusion there I can just make that explicit.

Well damnit! I just lost this writeoff for sure, and I will duel singly or in pairs any who disagree!

I'd like a two-man duel, please! I choose the silver medalist as my second. ;)

>>Posh
stars damn it you earworming bastard >..<

Finally, I'd like to give a non-explanation explanation for the meaning of that scene about getting woken up by the window tapping:

That's in the story because it literally happened to me on Writeoff weekend.

I had a Search & Rescue mock search to attend early Saturday morning, and I was up until super late Friday night trying to wrap up my non-Writeoff obligations (and type out the first scene or two). I set three alarm clocks for 7 am and the tapping as described woke me up five minutes before the first one, bright and fresh and alert. (Actually, it was slightly weirder than the story version: the tapping was on my bedside dresser.)

I'm not certain when exactly I fell into the Grant Morrison school of writing, but it's certainly an interesting ride.

cc: >>CoffeeMinion >>GroaningGreyAgony >>Cold in Gardez

The Retrospective Macabre

Let me first express my disappointment that nobody besides Andrew correctly guessed that this was me, despite all the signature elements which should have given away my authorship. There are two things I'm known for: giant eyeballs and gratuitous Shakespeare references, and both were present in this fic. Did anyone pick up on them? No. Y'all gotta learn, I'm not the Scratchtavia guy, the Sunset Shimmer guy, or the Equestria Girls guy; I'm the Eyeballs and Shakespeare guy. C'mon.

Okay, that's out of the way. So.

I don't say this often, but I really wish I could've had this one back. Usually, when I write what I feel is a sub-par writeoff entry, it's because I think that either the concept or my ability to competently execute said concept are fundamentally broken. This was a rare instance where I had absolute confidence in my idea, but failed to write it effectively, not because of incompetence, but because of constraints outside my ability to control. I wrote this in a few hours, staying up late on a night that I couldn't afford to stay up late, having already spent most of my allotted writing time working on a different manuscript that left me too burned out to do much prewriting for this one. I was working right up against the deadline (those Shakesdeerian passages, alone, took me two and a half hours), with a wireless connection that has gone out of its way to frustrate me for the last several weeks, with minimal time to revise and edit, or even proofread. The end result?

A story which didn't meet my expectations.

I'm pleased so many people liked it, but I can't help thinking how much more you'd have liked it, how much better it would have been, if I'd taken more time to explore it. Or even to articulate more than half the stuff that I wanted it to include. There were numerous elements that I wanted to work in, that I had the space to work in, but not the time needed to really make them shine, so all you get is some neat imagery and dialogue, and a conflict that flops around before abruptly resolving with little effort. It sucks.

Take the OCs, for example. So many people praised the character work in this story, which is weird to me, because I considered that one of the story's greatest shortcomings. There were elements to Pomade Well's character that I simply didn't have the time to articulate in the story. For instance, the reason he's so egotistical and thin-skinned: he's the illegitimate son of a prostitute, and he's spent his entire adult life trying to distance himself from that fact. He had a cruel nickname, too, something Luna would point out when trying to establish a dialogue with him: Whoreson. Whoreson Well. It was supposed to be a pun on Orson Welles. Likewise, "Blooming Garland" is supposed to be a reference to Judy Garland, but without Pomade's epithet, the context for her own name-pun isn't there, so it falls... flat.

The conversation with Luna would have been more contentious, too, with her momentarily losing her patience and snapping at Pomade. The two would eventually reach a little common ground, with Pomade realizing that Luna's also struggled to distance herself from a negative image, which helps to inspire his decision at the end of the story.

But all of that ended up on the cutting room floor, to my disappointment. C'est la vie.

Let's get some responses out of the way:

>>CoffeeMinion

So why am I leaning more toward Strong rather than Top Contender with this mofo? Well, to be honest, the central conversation between Starmare and Slick Top feels strongly reminiscent of the CMC conversations it's structured after and which it references. This is something where I struggle to point at any one thing and say it's bad; more like, in a fic full of brilliance and overwhelmingly awesome potential, that feels like it needs to be the biggest moment, and right now I don't quite feel like it lives up to that full potential for me. Maybe it's just too reminiscent of those past conversations. Maybe I don't quite buy that Slick Top is persuaded to do the thing he talks about doing at the end. Or maybe it feels a bit anticlimactic having him end with just talking about doing the thing, even though I actually like the conversation he has there with Tail Lady.

>>Novel_Idea

I'm really not sure what to think of this story. I loved the characters. Pomade and Garland were both brilliantly done. I admit, I loved Garland's sultry vibe and the back and forth between them. That was simply magnificent. Luna's characterization was also spot-on. The characters really drove the story for this. However... I can't help but feel a little let down by the ending. What bugs me is I can't put my finger on why.

I think you're both right in your assessments here. The story, like Pomade himself, never reaches a climax.

oh, someone stop me. :D

Speaking of climaxes, CoffeeDad, I didn't think the tail-thing was quite that flirtatious... when I wrote it... but on rereading it, yeah, it's probably the sauciest thing I've ever written a pony doing. Not counting that scene in Jelly God where Rainbow Dash abruptly asks Twilight if she can play around underneath her tail for a while, and Twilight says yes, but only if she does the thing with the rubber chicken again.

>>Ranmilia

So I was just about ready to rip into this one and say that it should have kept its form, used iambic pentameter all the way through instead of just in dialogue, and cleaned up the language to be consistent and readable. Then the first scene ended and it turns out the play was, in fact, the thing. Got me good!

It's still kind of a problem, though, because that first scene as it stands feels very different and superfluous to the story that comes afterwards. Like... I get it, you did the play scene just to do the play scene and have it be fun to read. It's fanservice. Okay. Nothing wrong with some fanservice! But it might be better if it wasn't so transparently fanservice. Try and work in some more of the play's specifics later, to make it more important in the following story, or change the play scene a bit to include some groundwork for the later story.

Heh, it may come as a surprise, but I'm in no way an expert at writing Shakespearean verse, and as I said earlier, what little is in here took me about a third of the total time I spent writing the story. I would not be able to swing an entire story written in iambic pentameter. I can applaud myself for doing so functionally, but it's lacking the florid elegance of the Bard's work.

The play was supposed to come back into the mix during the scene with Luna; she would have summoned up a copy of the play and started reciting a monologue patterned after Richard Lancaster's opening soliloquy in Richard III. There would also, incidentally, have been some backstory given for the play, indicating that Shakesdeere wrote it with the intent of currying favor with Celestia and nabbing a place in court, with her as his patron. The play was successful, and has enduring popularity, but Celestia never attended a performance, the implication being that she disapproved of how it portrayed her sister. Which would also have been a historical in-joke, as Richard III, along with some of Shakespeare's other plays, was written to curry favor with the crown by upgrading a historical figure to full-on evil villain status.

That part was cut. And it hurt to cut it out.

"Her Majesty suggests, while invading your dream, that you consider a new production that paints her more positively..." I can see that the author was going for a positive spin, but what's actually written pings me as highly uncomfortable, authoritarian, and directly threatening.

I had the same thought as I was planning the story; that was exactly what I didn't want Luna to do, and I didn't want her to come across that way. Luna's motivations aren't to get a propaganda piece out of Pomade; she doesn't want him to write something that paints her in an explicitly positive light, but one that shows her for who she is: someone who fucked up, was cast down, and sought to make amends for her crimes. She's made peace with her past as Nightmare Moon, and doesn't think it's something that should be forgotten.

But she doesn't want that to be the only thing people know her for, and deep down, she's afraid that's all anyone ever will know her for. She wants people at large to know the Luna that the CMC and Twilight and her friends get to know, but is too withdrawn and awkward to do the leg-work herself.

I think "A Royal Problem" proved that much, at least. :P

>>Xepher

No, not heavy metal, an Evanescence video. Gag me!

...I mean, I know I said I'm no expert, but damn, man. That actually hurt my feelings a little...

We know Luna dreamwalks, having her overly explain it to Pomade (while technically correct for him maybe) slows the story here.

"You were the mare in the audience!" this is also obvious to the reader.

That's knowledge the reader is privy to, yes, but not something Pomade would know off the bat. I think it makes sense for him to be shown making these connections and speaking them out loud.

Though I agree that I could at least trim down the amount of exposition Luna delivers.

Okay, overall, the opening was a BIG risk, at least to me. This really felt like overwrought blather, or self-important teenage goth poetry, which in this fandom, is something that happens more often than we probably want to admit. Had I been reading this on fimfic without other knowledge, I would've quit before the reveal that it was in a play, because the thought of enduring an entire story with that level of melodrama is a no-go for me.

I like playing around with fandom cliches and tropes when I write. "THE STORY OF NIGHTMARE MOON :D" has been done to death, in every single way imaginable. So one of my ideas when writing this was to play around with that kind of premise, and to intentionally evoke the kind of melodramatic angstiness one would expect to find in that kind of story.

(Your "Evanescence" remark was more or less on the money, but still, ow, man).

But I see your point, and as >>Not_A_Hat points out, it's a bait-and-switch when the story doesn't need one. I don't mind indicating to the reader that the scene's taking place in someone's imagination sooner than I do.

...And I don't actually have anything to say in response to Not_A_Hat, besides that. Sorry, man. It's because you keep lying, and insisting that you're not a hat, when you so clearly are one. It's like when Ebony Way gets upset over people calling her a slut, even when she so totally fucking isn't omfg66666666!!111.

I guess that's all I have to say here. Thank you all for reading, and I'm glad I could entertain you. But you're still all jerks.

>>horizon

Three - I think - residences ago, I woke up several times to the sound of someone knocking on my bedroom door, only to find there was no-one there.

It wasn't as convenient as yours, because it never woke me up when I needed to get up. :P I figure it was a water-hammer in the plumbing my sleep-addled mind bent into rapping on a door, but who knows? Maybe the place was haunted.

>>Fenton
No, I'm pretty sure you're right. I haven't really tried to verify it, but I am fairly certain that part of the problem was that the picture was mostly blue. If there had been more places for all of the mostly-red and mostly-green pixels to fit in, I'm sure the whole thing would have looked better.

And like I said, I was pretty close to submitting that version, so I don't mind you liking it more.

>>CoffeeMinion
Heh, go for it! It definitely fits, and as I said, I think the voice you gave Troubleshoes here is absolutely and exactly that. It's like Max Payne meets Dark Tower, with just a bit of Preacher thrown in.

>>horizon
First off, seriously? Heheh... the one story where I said clearly and definitively it was better than my own... that's the one I just edge out. :-P I love this fandom!

But in all honestly, I really did mean it when I said this deserved to beat my own entry. Not that I'm not smirkingly happy that I took silver, mind you. But this was a great story, and was definitely the top of my own slate, though strangely enough, I had pegged CiG for this one, and you for his story, since to me it was a bit more "ephemeral" than this one.

As to "Europa" I didn't mean that word itself was a failed ponification, but rather, the events there, with the parties and the marriage, felt out of place to the rest of the story. It was the focus on angels (and general judeo-christian religious motifs that go with them) that felt at odds with the otherwise "ponified" world. Not bad, mind you (again, top of slate) but odd, in a way that should either be reinforced as intention, or removed for simplification.


In any case... congratulations! I think this was the best story of the round, and am glad it placed!

>>Posh
First off, would it help to know I put your story third on my slate? Seriously. And if I'd been allowed to rank my own story, I would've probably put it just slightly under yours. I genuinely liked this story by the end, and felt it edged out my own. The "harsh" things I said at the start were/are genuine though, but... by the end I judged the story of high enough quality that the author (anonymous at the time) should be able to take (and in fact deserves/needs) very blunt criticism. Had I not thought so highly of it, I would've edited my comments and pulled some punches. But I didn't, because this was good.

That said, I gave blunt reactions literally as-I-read, as I've found that is literally the most effective form of a feedback an author can get. I've been running the ORCs (open read and critique) sessions at the EFNW convention for... holy crap? More than half the life of this fandom? (/me is old.) New authors need coddling and encouragement, but good authors needs raw reactions and honest feedback.

Your poetry WAS very Shakespearian, which is to say "full of itself." I think it did exactly what you intended for it to do, but the danger is that without first telling us what the story itself is setting out to do, a reader may confuse that early part the the overall gist of the tale. Hence why I called it risky. It paid off, as you pulled it together into a tight story, but... moving this to fimfic, while keeping some "surprise" I would definitely consider giving the reader a hint slightly earlier that they're in a "scene" and not the stories full, 5k word reality. Honestly, a cover image alone may be enough, just something that hints at cardboard wings or whatever clue of a play you can think of.

All that said, I genuinely think this story deserved to place above my own, so thank you for writing and sharing!

Holy crap! Silver? *facepalm*

Seriously, when I complained about not having enough time, I meant that literally. I'm in PDT, and at 10:30pm, I didn't even have an idea what to write and went to take a shower. I got out, sat down, and then wrote this entire thing in one solid 6 hour stretch, taking breaks only to refill my liquor and to use the bathroom. When I said I didn't even have time for an edit pass, I meant that absolutely. I typed furiously and had 67 seconds to spare when I typed that final exclamation mark. I barely had time to skim for the few uses of italics and make sure I hadn't fowled the BBcoode... so of course a few minute slater, I started seeing so many embarrassing typos. I've cut a lot of deadlines in my life, but never this close.

But... This exemplifies my writing. When the Muse shows up, I can "just write" and it flows. When she doesn't, I can struggled for days with 10x the effort, and not even make the finals.

I don't say that to "brag" but rather to inspire. I mean that part honestly. Everyone can write, and I read many stories in this very contest which I feel were better than my own. I know I placed 2nd only by luck... well, with passion and practice, but the latter two describe a lot of the contestants here, which is why I love the write off. This time, I was lucky enough to have a solid idea come to me, and that let practice and passion carry the baton to the end.



Okay, now onto specific responses:
>>Rao
Thanks for the early and positive review. It shouldn't, but I feel it likely does set the tone for future readers. And yes, I thought of Luna too, but... as noted by others, she's not in THIS story. :-)

>>Fenton
Agree that I definitely need to rework the encounter(s.) I started out trying to write a 2000 word story... by the time I was naming Geir, I realized I was writing an 8k story and had to really rush it.

>>Ranmilia
Oh my god, the pacing! *facepalm* I butchered that horribly. Like I said, I literally wrote this in one single pass of 6 hours or less. There was no outline, plan, or anything, and when I finally read it for the first time a few days into the pre-lim round (yeah, I was afraid to read my own story) it was just... ugh. Definitely want to rework pacing. It repeats a lot of info early on, then later just skips over whole parts that should matter. In my own "fake" review, I point out how it goes from traditional "epic" to fairy tale and back too many times as well, never mind the awful repeating of that damn "The sun is going away" phrase. :-)

>>AndrewRogue
Per agreeing with Ran, see reply to ran above. :-)

But I want to punch up the sundial bit as key, maybe let that be a more organic "discovery" instead of a repeat. Also, fisherponies... Yeah, I get you, but.. You can't have nordic seasides without fishing I think. Plus, ponies totally eat meat outside of the vegan capital of ponyville. :-) But speaking seriously, that weirdness is deliberate and intentional... this is the ancient past, and I was trying to make it feel weird in custom to the modern Equestria.


>>Not_A_Hat
Thank you, and very good suggestions both. Writing in one fell swoop leaves zero time for foreshadowing, and that is one of the main things I want to correct before doing a public version of this tale. Now that I know the end, it's much easier to foreshadow all the things.


>>Posh
Thank you. Also great criticism. Ember is a weak protagonist here. She works up the will to leave, but that's about it. The rest of the story happens TO her instead of because of her, and I need to fix that. I said as much in my own self-critique... speaking of which...

>>Xepher
In which the author responds to his own fictionally anonymous self-criticism.

I need to trim up the focus in the early parts. There needs to be more foreshadowing, but also less repetition of information. The sundial should be a proper discovery, not something her grandpa more or less begs her to look into. I need to even out the pacing, avoiding the "skips" over most of the adventure. Most of all, I need to make Ember EARN her victory at the end. And I definitely need to delete at least half the literal invocations of "The sun is going away." :-P


Okay, thank you again to everyone that critiqued, reviewed, and/or voted. I'm surprised and happy to take silver with something that felt so rushed. Congratulations to Horizon and Cold in Gardez for their own medals as well.

If anyone has anything else to add or suggest before I work on reworking this for publication on FIMfic, do let me know!

Aww man, I really thought this one was going for a medal. Ah well, there were some really strong entries this round so I'm not surprised I got squeezed out. Congrats to the medallists!

Now, on to a retrospective.

The Roe King's Tomb

I want to say before anything else, I had no idea why everyone keeps going on about fish eggs. I figured this is an across the pond thing, but in the UK I've never heard of a roe being anything other than a species of deer. A little googling suggests that roe is a fairly common term for fish eggs, but I'd honestly never heard of it being used like that. I guess I don't eat as much caviar as you guys ;)

So, onto the story. About 90% of issues this story had was time. I had a busy Friday and work on Monday, so this was more of a 48 hour challenge for me and the idea I had turned out to be way, way too long for the word limit. My pre-edit draft of this was 8,800 words so a full 10% of the story was chopped before I could post it. A lot of nuance and character ended up on the cutting room floor and worse than that I ran out of words for the end. The actual exploration of the tomb was supposed to be at least another 1,000 words to properly build up tension and the epilogue both lost a lot of character and one of the key points of the story. It was noted a few times that this was a missed chance to detail Celestia and Luna's ascension, but this was never that story. This was the story of how the sisters became immortal.

I did not have the room to explain this. Spelling it out was at least 200 words and by the time I realised I needed that segment I was way past 8,000. I had this as a potential post-epilogue snip:

"Oh, Luna. I was going to ask, when's the King's healing thingy going to wear off? Only, I nicked myself with a knife this morning and it healed before I could blink."

"Don't worry about it, I'm sure it'll fade in a few days."

But its not very funny, not descriptive and I really didn't have the words to spare. In the end I cut it and went with the more generic blessing interpretation.

The lack of space also prevented me from putting in many of the world-building elements I had in my back-pocket. This story is actually a prequel to another one of my write-off stories The Age of Harmony, although that's right at the end of Celestia and Luna's time as wandering adventurers and this is the very beginning. After that story got a really good reception I went away with Orbiting-Kettle and we brainstormed some ideas for a Sword and Celestia MLP setting full of dead gods, dead kingdoms and the pillars of the world crumbling beneath their hooves. I didn't really have time to write anything serious off the back of those, but I've been itching for the chance to use the setting for something.

Ultimately, if I was going to do anything to fix this story it would be to blow out the word limit and maybe double the length. Not sure if I'm going to do this, Ranmilia pointed out the FiM link isn't very strong so I might even re-write this as a wholly original setting. Better pacing, stronger world building and more space for the actual adventure would do a lot to improve the story.

>>Rao Thanks Rao, glad you had so much fun. This review brought a huge grin to my face, so thanks. One of my longest running themes with the Royal Sisters has always been the idea of 'still waters run deep', giving them far less regal and composed histories than other writers tend to and its great you enjoyed that interplay. Come to think of it, this is my fourth story with a bawdy and mischievous Celestia, so I'm surprised that didn't give me away.

I'm also pleased to see you picked up on the Deer references. There's so much narrative hidden away in the idea that the the Equestrians change the seasons and move the heavens. Its played as a harmony thing in the show, but you can also read it as a world that's so fundamentally broken that the ponies have to hoof turn the engine of creation. There's a lot of mileage to that idea, I think.

>>horizon Ah, spelling and grammar errors. I think 'a strong entry despite spelling and grammar issues' is my tagline on this site. Mostly it was an eyes too big for my stomach moment as I had at best an hour to edit this, and most of that time was cutting content to fit under the wire. Ah well, next time time management!

>>Fenton Thanks :) This was very-headcanony so that's a fair critique. I didn't go for the alicorn transformation in the end because I really didn't think enough had been done to really justify it. Instead I went with a more subtle boon that, alas, got lost in the shuffle.

>>Xepher Sorry to hear you slipped the hook, Xepher. Overall I agree with a lot of what you say, the story had too much in it to be tight but not enough to properly explain itself. Grail's a good example of a nice character, but there's just not enough room for his purpose (explaining the class system and Luna's mixed blood) to actually pay off in the story. I would have replaced his role with another scene with Comet with infinite time to tweak, but Write-off...

>>Ranmilia Urgh, that one's bad. Glad you had fun, though.

>>Posh

...That avoids all the cliches implied by that premise, and takes the story in a unique, creative direction.

I aim to please :D

While it got answered in comments, regarding family, feudal times are complex, messy and don't always conform to modern morality. But in short Strawberry had Celestia with Radiance then Luna with Comet. Whether she married Comet before having Celestia I never decided, it wouldn't be usual to marry late after both parents are well established and its definitely not unusual for the Lord of the Manor to sleep with the staff. A lost line mentioned Comet being more guilty about flubbing a contraceptive spell than being caught sleeping with Strawberry.

It would probably have been simpler to drop the half sibling thing, but it did a good job of pulling Luna in two very different directions. Which turned out to be pretty key to the drama.

>>Not_A_Hat Thanks Hat, a lot of the tomb scene got lost due to word count so I'll fully agree that there should have been more skill in exploring the tomb. Alas, time and words were against me.

>>AndrewRogue Sorry to hear I didn't grab you. Not sure what went wrong with the chemistry but I'm sure some polish will do a lot of good, as you said.

And that's all the comments. Thanks everyone for their feedback!

Now to get this, and like a dozen other Write-off stories, onto FiM...

>>Xepher Dude, I'm not really serious. I appreciated your candor entirely. You and I are cool.

*pounds it*

>>Xepher

If anyone has anything else to add or suggest before I work on reworking this for publication on FIMfic, do let me know!

Aside from what I already, there isn't much I could add. About the drowning scene, if you want me to be more precise, either send me a gdoc link, or find me on the Discord server. Don't know if a longer explanation could help or if you need it, but I'm willing to give it to you anyway.
As for Luna's origin story, like I said, either you have a sequel in mind, or you could try to give some hint about her (don(t know how you could do that though).

>>Novel_Idea
She's "Crispy Sparrow" on FimFiction; I'm sure she'd be happy to give her take on it.

Can you read the kanji on the board?
Can you read the shape of her heart?
Who stained that heart black?
Hey! Who was it? Who was it!?

Blar. Short version is, despite working on this ostensibly for three days, I just never really came to grips with it or got a good flow going, meaning I ran out of time with precious little to show for it.

As most of you surmised, this is an AU story where Nightmare Moon was not stopped by the Mane 6 and conquered Equestria. In other words, it's roughly based on one of the alternate timelines presented back in the Season 5 finale. I decided to do some alternate timeline shipping because I'm a monster and I like trying different takes on Vinyl and Octavia. Rich Vinyl, poor Octavia isn't new to me per se, but serious Vinyl, less serious Octavia is... thus here we are. Plus, I think, it made a more intriguing concept to play with a Vinyl who gave up music and her passion for the life of a military "hero" and an Octavia who has clung to it, but been forced to debase herself as a thief and the like to keep getting by.

The other big thing I wanted to do here was present both an AU and an "evil" empire where it is really only the backdrop to the characters. Nightmare Moon rules. It is a fact of life. She doesn't run a strictly evil empire, just one that went through a very tough period of adjustment that has resulted in heavily stratified classes of haves and have nots. There is a bit of imperialism and conquest (which I have retrospective debated dropping for campaigns against the Crystal Empire led by Sombra and the Changelings to further set up the ambiguity), but, on the whole, it is just a kingdom of eternal night where the Princess expects love and worship, but is otherwise not like enslaving ponies or anything. Just led to some rough times as the world adjusted to eternal night.

So what was the story intended to be here? Well, roughly speaking, (and this was the reason I cited the tarot image), the idea was taken off the ol' Persona 5 teaser from way back when ("You are a slave. Want emancipation?") and, really, Persona 5's themes on the whole. Vinyl and Octavia have both found themselves trapped in their current lives, and have no idea how to escape. Neither is happy, but it is how they know to get by.

By hanging out together and facing whatever trials I would have come up with, they would slowly realize they have the power to change their lives and, together, they would make the decision to run far from Canterlot and start over somewhere else.

Of course, I didn't really get there, so instead I was forced to hope what I did could vaguely constitute an ending even thought it really wasn't. :p

All told, based on the reception, sounds like it miiiight be worth actually pursuing this idea?

And, since I was bullshitting about titles this round (I'll try and get back with Ran and get the post reading summary of titles done sometime soon), the title this round was... pretty straightforward. The first half was meant to make it extra clear this was an AU (and heavily imply the Starlight modded worlds), and clearly set it up for Tales from Another Time to be a series of shorts if desired. The second half was me being cheeky. Music terms get thrown around a lot with TaviScratch, and Cantata Mezza Voce (a song sung at half voice, if my butchering of terminology is semi-accurate) both spells out the ship AND Vinyl's muteness.

It's a dumb title.

Anyhow, thank you all and here's some direct responses!

>>Cold in Gardez
"Liked it better than I expected" seems to be the watchword of all the reviews here! :p Yeah, that was another thing I was trying to do this round: experiment a bit more with writing atmosphere and environment. If you check anything else I've read, I don't really do a lot of it. So yeah, definitely went overboard in spots.

But yeah, as you correctly ascertain, I fail to deliver an actual story.

>>Fenton
See the above, though I am curious where you got sci-fi, modern tech out of this one.

>>Posh
Yeah. I really wanted them to actually converse the night Vinyl brought aivatcO back, but my energy was flagging and I was already screwed.

That said, surprised that line set off the exposition alarm. I'll have to hit it with the axe of editing.

>>Xepher
Real fact, I honestly feel a bit weird that I hadn't tried mute Vinyl before this given the arguable canonicity of it. So yeah, tread by writers, but since I haven't personally done it, wanted to mess with it. But yeah, that's a big part of why it is just an element, rather than a focus. I don't really have anything new to add to it excpet maybe it being another element by which Vinyl is somewhat isolated from her peers

re: the night triplicate: Hah. I never noticed that and that was actually 100% unintentional. When I need a filler pegasus who is a professional, I just like to use Night Glider. It actually wasn't at all intended to tie in and I totally blanked on that. I'll adjust that. Night apple was actually intended as a bit of world building to imply that some new crops have come into existence since the rise of Nightmare Moon since, well, moonlight sucks for growth.

Rao nailed the red eye thing, but considering she wears the shades generally, it is a bit confusing. It was mostly the idea that fully divesting/concealing her military identity basically removed everything she thought of herself anymore.

>>Ranmilia
Good flavor text, eh?

"Sorry I burned down your village. Here's some gold."

>>Rao
See the above. Well, above the above, at least. :p

>>Not_A_Hat
I would've liked to see those things too!

>>AndrewRogue
You suck, buddy. Learn to finish (or even start) your stories. You had 72 hours.

Sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to thank all of you for your feedback.

Perhaps for my first writeoff I should have been less ambitious. I realize that the story needed more thinking and working out in order to make sense. The fact that Celestia can move the sun was at the same time the core idea and the bane of the story. The MLP canon allows for a unique twist (or at least rare) on vampire stories, but the power level of Celestia alone is such that instead of replacing the vampire threat with another one (fatigue, sleep deprivation), as was my intention, it should easily eliminate most threats presented.

>>Novel_Idea

This felt like a story trying to be a horror story without actually going into horror.

That's because it never meant to be a horror story. The focus was meant to be on survival.

>>AndrewRogue

Beyond that, the team could use some punched up characterization as, right now, they still pretty much qualify as red shirts.

Indeed, if I went for a mature/gore story, there would have been a couple of deaths.
Anyway you're right. I figured that a minimum of staff would be required in a (unspecified, I admit) diplomatic mission to a foreign land, but in doing so I had too many characters that needed characterization.

>>Xepher

She counts "eight" at the start, but ten ponies are named.

There are nine ponies. Celestia didn't count herself.

Some formatting problems with quotes, likely copy/paste problem from an editor.

Yes, it was copy-pasted from an editor. I should have checked before submitting.

>>Ranmilia

The author might not have as much experience as some of the competition, but they're clearly trying and headed in the right direction, and I love seeing that. Thank you for writing and throwing your hat into the ring here! Take all the feedback into account, keep on writing and keep on learning!

Thank you! :-)

I found your feedback to be useful, constructive and encouraging, and I really appreciated it. I hope I'll be able to improve myself for the next contest.

>>Posh
You know, there's just something right about a tangentially-Shakespearean character with a nickname of "whoreson." +10 genre points, thou stale! :-p

>>moonwhisper
Welcome to the Writeoff. :-) Hope to see you back for future ones!