>>Morning Sun
We see a bathroom in the Pinkie Sense episode, when Faust was still working on the show.

>>Morning Sun
I don't really agree. 99% of that zoo-smell is shit and unwashed flesh/hair.

Now that my second story has been revealed, I can now officially reveal that Day One took second-place on my original slate of all 48 stories. :raritywink: And no, I had no idea it was yours.

Also, this one missed the cut by a hair's breadth! Remove a few words from the other stories and it would have popped in.

Fading Lights had beautiful prose and some really neat ideas. I definitely didn't score it on the bottom of the finals. It just needs more of a story with it.

You continue to improve as a writer. If only you could see that yourself...

Fading Lights

>>Not_A_Hat (Hey Hat boy!)
>>Xepher
>>Rao (Thanks Rao! ;) )
>>Trick_Question
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Posh
>>Kitcat36
>>TheCyanRecluse
>>CoffeeMinion
>>AndrewRogue
>>Orbiting_kettle

Thanks for letting this fic’ slip into the finals. Really, I never imagined it would. :) In fact, I feel guilty because, as you have all noticed, this was more a scene than a story, therefore I expected it to be scathed the same way Cold’s Trembling had been. I don’t think I write better prose than Cold, so I’m left wondering why mine qualified and his failed.

Last finalist place well deserved.

I had no idea how to christen this “story” so I ended up with the title of a Genesis’s song.

So Twilight is dead, and her soul lingers for a while in Equestria’s world before being reincarnated some place else. However, as is expected with reincarnation, all of her memories and even knowledge of her previous self are lost.

In this transitory state, she can still perceive the objects of the world, but not its denizens, except for the two alicorns whose presence extends beyond the normal realm of existence in which every other living being is trapped. She can see them as spirits (aka blobs) and they in return are vaguely aware of her presence and/or thoughts, with Luna being more sensitive for reasons mentioned in the fiction.

There was nothing beyond this, barring some hints to a higher reality level and a myth of creation, with the underlying assumption that only those who had witnessed the creation of Equestria had been given the “grace” of being immortal (or to last as long as the world itself lasts): the two princesses, Discord, and maybe some other unknown characters yet. Those in turn could “bless” others (make them ascend) but while that would make them look similar, it wouldn’t bestow immortality on them. Of course I had no time to develop all this in 750 words, so it was left dangling and unsatisfactory.

Celestia has difficulty to adjust to the fact that Twilight died, despite being aware of her limitations. Also, yes, Luna is pretending not hearing Twilight’s voice, so that Celestia does not clutch at straws.

This piece was more an experiment into writing descriptive and elaborate prose than a true story, as all pointed out. I'm sorry for "stroke" instead of "struck" and “an other”, which I substituted back from “the other” but forgot to delete the extra space.

Anyone – I’m glad you found the prose enjoyable. Thanks. Yeah, the format was way too short to elaborate on all the outlined notions. Beside, as noted, the idea itself was trite and dull. I apologise for this. It’s a testament to my current lack of ideas with pony stuff. Sorry everyone. :/

Oh. Wow. I thought this one seemed promising, but I never expected to strike gold.

Retrospective coming soon. For now, thank you very much to everyone who rated and reviewed Just After Midnight, and congratulations to Kettle and horizon for medaling.

Sixth place. That's a new personal record.

Retrospective coming after work, most likely. Perhaps not at all.

Who knows?

>>Baal Bunny >>Rao >>FanOfMostEverything >>Monokeras >>Posh >>AndrewRogue >>Trick_Question >>Shadowed_Song >>Xepher >>Not_A_Hat >>CoffeeMinion

Thanks, everyone, for the feedback. I really appreciate it! :>

>>Monokeras
On the contrary, it's a testament that you do have interesting ideas (and beautiful writing). You just need to lead somewhere with them, which takes time and words. Many of us were left wanting more.

Also, if this fic had been scored lower, then your other fic would have made it into the finals because it was at the top of the cut fics. So there! :derpytongue2:

>>Syeekoh
IMO, your story easily deserved to medal. I placed it first.

Except for maybe Favor Those, this is the only story I demand be published on Fimfiction.

I no longer do author guessing because I deeply, deeply fear insulting authors in the process. (Also, I'd keep taking first place and that would just be unfair.) However, I still like to see what other ponies thought, and the new graph...

Wait. Aha! You can click on the circles and see things. That is much better. Nevermind.

Except: the green lines, when you haven't clicked, are 99% invisible on my monitor. They need to be a little darker, because I literally can't see them.

Oh, 'grats to FoME and also to O.K. (Horizon, you got so many medals already I'm not sure I should 'grate you for that new one :P)!

One more non-native speaker to get medalled! That’s great! Kudos!

Question on ribbon colors!

When I put a small mention of placing in my fic description, I'd like to color 4th something accurate. The problem is that there are different ribbon color schemes in wide use.

Normally I'd go with the most common, which starts blue, red, white, then yellow: that's what gets used for sports so you see it in most situations.

However! Horse shows use blue, red, yellow, then white. That seems more appropriate for some reason. :raritywink:

I'm probably going with yellow, though, because there's less chance of miscommunication.

Thanks, folks:

And congrats to our winners!

This is a piece I've been wanting to write since "Do Princesses Dream..." aired a year and a half ago--that final image of Luna asleep in that odd landscape made the story's first line pop into my head, and it's been floating around in there all this time waiting--so thank you, once again, Writeoff, for giving me the jab in the brain that I needed to get something done.

As for rewriting, I'll definitely make it clearer that this is indeed the Tantabus narrating. Luna absorbs it back into herself at the end of the big dream fight, and, well, it's gotta do something with itself now that its no longer charged with kicking Luna sideways every night, doesn't it?

As for the form, it's called blank verse when the lines have rhythm but no end rhymes. I did a lot of playing around with enjambment, running sentences from one pentameter into the next, and with polysyllabic line endings--not exactly feminine rhymes since, y'know, there's no end rhymes. I think reining that stuff in and breaking the piece up into its actual lines and stanzas should help with the hypnotoad effect that >>CoffeeMinion and others identified here--it's easy to get caught in the rhythm and come out the other end with no idea what the story was actually about...

So thanks, folks, for the comments. I'll give this a good vacuuming and polishing, then it'll go into my poetry collection over on my AugieDog page

Mike

Right, guess its time for some retrospective. First of all, thanks everyone for your support on this story. I've been struggling to get anything written for a couple of months so its nice to get into the top ten with this one, even it it's just into the top ten. Thanks also for the comments: >>FanOfMostEverything >>ChappedPenguinLips >>Remedyfortheheart >>Not_A_Hat >>CoffeeMinion >>Xepher >>Trick_Question >>Shadowed_Song >>Orbiting_kettle >>Monokeras >>Kitcat36 >>Astrarian >>AndrewRogue >>TheCyanRecluse >>Posh

This was my second story written for the contest and only just squeaked over the finishing line. As such I'm aware there's more than a few spelling and grammar errors, though if we're honest, spelling and grammar errors are practically my MO at this point :P The basic idea for this one was to tell a 'morning after' story where the date was a disaster but the teller was trying not to admit it. It rather morphed in the writing into a bit of banter between Starlight and Trixie and Trixie, as usual, self-sabotaging to the best of her abilities.

A couple of people mentioned that the characters seemed a little off. I think in part this is because we don't have much canon or fanon for these two interacting but their roles in this story are also pretty generic. This story could have easily featured Rainbow Dash and Rarity without even having the change the final joke and that's a bad sign. This is, in part, due to the restricted word count as I cut a lot of the banter between these two to make it fit and the date really needed a lot more detail to work as its own story.

Still, I do think this one managed to be constantly funny and as these two are canon friends I've got to put them in a room together more often. Starlight's good natured jabs were my favorite thing to write this contest after Celestia's list of defeated foes.

To answer some specific comments.

>>FanOfMostEverything

I’d much rather see the date itself, then cut away from the front of the hotel to Trixie recounting what happened next.

Yeah, a flash back with an unreliable narrator would be a smoother way of doing this. Probably something for the short story contest though as this barely fit in the wordcount as is.

>>Not_A_Hat

The correct answer is obviously to lock her in the hamster-ball and roll her around until she capitulates and expresses her undying love for you.

The magic of friendshipping, everyone :P

>>CoffeeMinion

I wasn't as sold on Starlight, though; I struggle to think of her as being this well-connected or socially adept, regardless of her close association with the Mane 6.

I'll admit that I've not been following this series that closely so my headcanon of Starlight is a bit off most likely. Personally I've found she tends to be witty, adroit and rather personable unless she actually has to make a serious decision, then it all goes to hell in a hand-basket. Kind of an anti-Twilight come to think about it.

>>Trick_Question

Good catch on the style change, I hadn't even noticed that myself.

>>AndrewRogue

Trixie's depiction of sex is the funniest thing in this write-off I've read.

Not depicted, my running around trying to figure out the acceptable rating on this site before the deadline ;)

>>Posh

Besides how to house ungrateful, rehabilitated ex-villains in her luxurious friendship castle, with free room and board, while softballing lessons your way to justify keeping you under her roof?

Well, they bonded over their mutual defeat by Twilight Sparkle, you didn't expect her to get a fair hearing with this audience did you?

Happily Ever After*

The fixed version is now up on Fimfiction! Thanks so much to everypony for the invaluable feedback. :heart:

(If you missed it, my retrospective and response to feedback is over here.)

So, well, color me surprised. Thank you all for the feedback, it is always appreciated and I'm quite happy you liked the story.

I was brainstorming ideas for the write-off for a while until I narrowed it down to "The Morning After the Revolution". And then I remembered again what my best friend told me years ago. His parents were political refugees who had fled from a dictatorship. They came to Italy and lived there for a long time. And yet, even if they knew they were safe, for years, every time they saw some police officers in Riot Gear (for some soccer game) or checking cars for whatever reason, they went stiff. For such a long time Police and military had been the enemy, the people that could whisk you away, the people that meant danger or even death, that the reaction had become almost instinctive.

"Stories about Ponies are stories about people" Cold In Gardez (n.d.)

And then, thinking about what the aftermath of Sombra's reign must have been come almost naturally.

Now to the justified criticism moved to this story.

It seemed that the motif baffled the reviewers, which means I somehow failed to deliver. It was my intention to use it both as a sort of mantra, the thing you repeat to yourself when you are almost panicking, and as a focus of the worries of Shining Facet. My intention was to show that she would, if things went south, to distract the guards and allow her daughter to flee, and also that she was keeping her calm just barely. I will clearly have to rework it.

>>Trick_Question

I think part of the problem is it made the story seems like a moralistic poem from the 1800's

I think, if it's okay with you, that I'll need a better explanaition for this. I'm not sure how to interpret this, but I really want to understand it. Maybe we can do it through PM's as to not add noise to the thread here.

>>Monokeras

Turns out this is way “brighter” and they simply don't trust the guards.

I kinda think it made it all worse, but the explanation of why that is so is outside the scope of this post. Maybe we can continue this discussion in chat sooner or later.

Again, thanks to everyone who took time to comment and criticize, I really appreciate it.

Oh, I also may need some help with editing and proofreading before I post this on FimFiction. If there are some volunteers that would be splendid :D

>>Orbiting_kettle
I just meant the repetition made it seem like a poem where the motif was inserted to reinforce the message of the poem.

It reminded me of a children's book, "And They Were Strong and Good", that talked about some White kid's ancestors and just described a few things about each family and then dropped the title again at the end of every page. It was kinda creepy because they looked super-stern and angry, kind of like old photos sometimes do because you had to hold still for several minutes.

>>Trick_Question
Thanks, now it's clearer.

I can see what you mean, I'll have to see how to fix that or at least lessen this impression.

>>Orbiting_kettle
One way might be to vary the mantra a little, even if by only adding or removing a word, or combining it with a previous sentence via — or ; or something. But there are plenty of options. It was easily one of the best stories in the contest even in its current form: I don't think you need to change anything. But the mantra did stand out a little and seemed strange at the end because there wasn't quite enough focus on the foal to make that the central message.

But that's a single read. Maybe if I read the same thing tomorrow I'd change my mind. :derpytongue2:

>>Trick_Question
The FIMFic folder for the round has been created. Sorry for the delay.

(I would have done it earlier, but I was on vacation when the round started and sick when prelims ended.)

If anyone here needs contributor status on FF so they can add their stories to the group, just speak up and let me know.

>>horizon
I know! I added my story to it like an hour ago. :twilightsmile:

But yeah, it'd be nice if it could be more automatic. I'd bet Roger could write a magical script that would log in and add the folder the moment the prompt is chosen. :V

Hey, everypony! I can't believe I came in 23rd! I still barely believe I made it to the finals! Thanks so much, everyone! I want to write a proper retrospective, but that will have to wait until tonight. I just needed to say thanks now that I have the opportunity!!

>>horizon That's your excuse for the lack of mashups this round? Hack! Scoundrel! I believed in you. We believed in you!

Mmkay, so, post-mortem on Twix My Shits She's Done My Oriface:

>>CoffeeMinion
>>Monokeras
>>KwirkyJ
>>Xepher
>>georg
>>TheCyanRecluse
>>Orbiting_kettle
>>Trick_Question
>>Foehn
>>Not_A_Hat
>>ChappedPenguinLips
>>FanOfMostEverything

So, first of all, the title, as pointed out, comes from Othello, and is a reference to Iago suspecting Othello of cuckolding him. No, it doesn't have any thematic significance to the story beyond the common subject matter of infidelity. It's an artifact from the original plan I had for the story, which was focused on Cadance's insecurities over Shining sleeping with Incognito!Chrysalis.

I canned that version because I didn't like the direction it was taking, and I didn't like how Cadance was coming across. In that version as in the final, Shining had withdrawn from her, but rather than trying to get him to open up, she'd withdrawn from him in turn, taking it personally that Shining wouldn't make love to her, and reading all kinds of implications into it. He didn't want her because he'd already had someone better, or so she assumed.

There's something to be said for that interpretation of the character; it's a very flawed and (dare I say) human portrayal of Pink Winghorse. But I didn't think it was true to who she was, so I rewrote the story and took it in a different direction. I didn't change the title to reflect that new direction because I couldn't think of anything better in time.

I agree with the primary issues people raised with it, too. The conflict and resolution happen at a breakneck pace; in hindsight, I really couldn't tell this story in 750 words or less without wrapping things up unnaturally quickly. Before the prelims had finished, I was already thinking of ways to address that, and I think I have some good ideas for expanding it.

Thanks to all who read and responded to it, except for Trick_Question who did not understand the reference and is probably a giant prep n pozer who duznt even kno who GC an MCR r.

EDIT: This writeoff ruined my streak; I was two-for-two as a medalist in the competitions I'd participated in up until now. I hate you all for making me a LOSER. D:

>>Posh
(This should probably be posted with the story, or at least have a link in the text, so we have a link to the story.) :derpytongue2:

I understand you're kidding about my ignorance, but:

Yes, I assumed the title was a reference from one of Shakespeare's more famous plays (I would have guessed either Othello or Hamlet), and I could have easily Googled it. The point of my pedantic "gee what's Office mean" is that the title, though clever, uses esoteric language which is mismatched with the language used in your story. It's also too far removed from what's happening in the story: this isn't a story about Cadance's reaction to Shining Armor, which is what the title seems to imply (because the Office is Cadance's). Rather, this is a story about Shining Armor's perspective and demons.

More generally, I think you'll leave some of your readers confused about the title, which means it's probably not the best title for a Fimfiction story if you intend it to have a wide audience. And a story with this theme is relevant enough that it should have a wide audience.

EDIT: We know you're kidding about not medaling, too, but most authors here have never earned a medal despite trying over and over again, so try not to push too hard with the complaints.

Just After Midnight

This was definitely interesting. As I noted before the preliminaries began, I had to trim a few hundred words of fat off of this, almost all of it even more grandiose turns of phrase than what made it in. I suppose the key to minifics is to start big and whittle them down.

This was one of those really convenient ideas that springs out fully formed and comes prepackaged with its title. After all, mornings officially start at midnight. There's still plenty of darkness between the end of the night and the sunrise. Similarly, Celestia probably needed some recovery time between banishing the one person who'd always been with her and putting away the celestial object now branded with that person's face.

Mince Pie is the result of one of those questions that no one seems to ask but bother you once they do: What was everypony else doing during the sisters' battle? I wanted to keep her name unknown until the end. Otherwise, it might telegraph how she was going to resolve the situation. Going first-person was a revelation in that regard; my original plan was to play the pronoun game, and that hit the usual pony fiction wall of too many "she"s. I suppose my original intention was that the story was an excerpt from her memoir or something similar, though I never really pinned that down. I'll have to do that.

The pacing is definitely a little off, but that'll be an easy fix once I have infinite space to work with.

Thank you to all of my reviewers, including >>Kitcat36, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Foehn, >>Orbiting_kettle, and >>Xepher

As for the rest of you, individual responses follow:

>>Trick_Question
Hmm. You may have a point on the archaic English. We'll see.

Canonically, I'm also pretty sure the castle had been abandoned by ponies years prior to the fight between Celestia and Luna, but that would ruin the premise of the story, so I don't consider it a flaw.

Citation needed.

Canonically, it's also the case that Celestia never actually spoke in the archaic fashion that Luna does, but I think this is secondary to the need for clarity which I mentioned above.

See, it's discrepancies like that that make me suspect that the flashback potion wasn't a perfectly reliable narrator. After all, Luna doesn't speak in the archaic fashion during the conflict. Either she invented the you/thou distinction while banished on the moon or that's not exactly how things happened.

>>Not_A_Hat
Excellent point about the issues with Mince looking back with shame and scorn. Definitely something to adjust in the polished version.

>>AndrewRogue
I was hoping that the contrast between the past elaboration and the simple statement of fact would work out better than it did for you. Whoops. ^^;

>>Monokeras
I tried to indicate that Celestia had only begun to heal, but word count got in the way. As for the sentence structure... well, Trick may be onto something with just using archaisms.

>>Posh
Ooh, good point. Completely forgot about class divides, which isn't something one can do when writing a feudal society. I'm going to need to think about this...

>>FanOfMostEverything
I remembered in the flashback that the castle was deserted and decaying. Also, Canterlot and the new castle had been built prior to Luna's banishment (I'm fairly certain).

For the archaic speech, it's not just the episode (which gives several examples), it's Celestia's writing in the Journal of the Two Sisters. The language there is unchanged, whereas Luna uses archaic-sounding language because she enjoys taking on airs and appearing formal. The Journal dates to before the Castle of the Two Sisters was constructed (and before either Celie or Luna earned their cutie marks). Since the Journal appears in the series and it matches up with the book precisely, the book is official canon.

Also, it's just not a good device to use. Look at CiG's horizon's masterpiece, the one with Celestia and Clover the Clever (which also misses canon because Clover was female, but who cares). Did Celestia ever speak with 'prithee's and shit? Nope. horizon used other devices in the story to convey the fact that it happened long ago, and left the language in the form that readers could read.

>>Trick_Question I note with growing suspicion that you did not deny the accusations of being a prep n a pozer. Totally not inviting you to my goffik birthday party now. D:<

>>Orbiting_kettle
>>ChappedPenguinLips
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Not_Worthy2
>>Monokeras
>>Xepher
>>Trick_Question
>>georg
>>Not_A_Hat
>>CoffeeMinion
>>JudgeDeadd
>>AndrewRogue
>>Posh
Thank you all for commenting on my story! It's much appreciated!

Now, retrospective on Abhorrent Amalgamation!

So, Duo Cartoonist released their The Moon Rises animation and I pretty much fell in love with it. I also wanted to experiment with my writing.

So I wrote a dimonologue between Luna and Nightmare, which people seemed to appreciate.

I wanted to start it off with Luna and Nightmare having distinctive voices which eventually began to blend together at the end, so for Luna, I chose a more technical approach and for the Nightmare I went with a far more poetic patter, which kind of swapped at the end. To sort of accentuate the grandiosity as well as make the alliteration work, I chose purposefully obscure words like pulchritude and utilized alternate definitions, like using incubus as a synonym for nightmare(guys seriously come on I don't think anyone's writing about sex demons in a pony writeoff).

I have to say I'm mostly pleased with the result and the reception, although in hindsight I probably wouldn't have cribbed a line from Genesis again―especially not from the King James Bible. There probably was a far more subtle way to invoke religious dog-whistling, like how I used the phrase "Accept me into your heart".

The give and take between the two, especially mid-sentence, was an absolute joy to write. One issue I'm having now is that I barely managed to breach 400 words and now have no idea how to expand it.

You know, it's kind of funny because I had a dream that I got a silver medal and was pretty pumped. Then I woke up, and when I went to freshen up I thought in my head "there's no way I got second place. I probably got... sixth." And to my surprise that was right on the nose!

Once again, thanks to everyone who read and commented on Abhorrent Amalgamation. I appreciate it!

>>Syeekoh

(guys seriously come on I don't think anyone's writing about sex demons in a pony writeoff)

Well, if anyone was going to do it...

>>Syeekoh

(guys seriously come on I don't think anyone's writing about sex demons in a pony writeoff)

Isn't that exactly what Gardez did with The Lamia?

>>The_Letter_J

Oh, hush.

>>Posh

Fair point, although I intended

Synthesizing with the sticky sluice of the incubus

to be synonymous with

entangling my essence with nightmares

.

If that many people were misled by my choice of wording, I suppose it's something to look into, but I personally think the intended meaning combined with the alliterative appeal is absolutely sublime, so I'm loath to change it.

>>Syeekoh
I think the latter of the two is vastly superior. The alliteration sounds like you're inserting poetry into the middle of drama, and it doesn't work for me. And it also is kind of confusing even if you have a large vocabulary.

Use words that people can read. Twenty-dollar words should be used very sparingly.

I've just given this advice a bunch of times in a row, so I'm going to repeat it here because I think it's good advice.

Be very careful using dialect and related English gimmicks in a story, especially if it makes things even a little harder for a portion of your audience to read.

Dialect always seems like a neat gimmick, and it's usually a terrible idea. It's easy to overdo. It should be limited to cases where a character is known to speak in a certain manner, the writing should not be a transcription of the sounds (like 'Ah' for 'I' with Applejack), it shouldn't be overdone (also easy to do with AJ), and it should be dropped completely if it makes things hard to read.

Yes, there are exceptions in award-winning fiction, and they're exceedingly rare. You are not James Joyce, and if you're writing prose rather than poetry, you shouldn't be describing things with super-flowery or poetic language. You should put English in your characters' mouths unless the story absolutely needs the dialect, and even then, you should limit it as much as possible.

Look at Cold in Gardez's... horizon's

Wait. What the buck. He took it down? I'm almost certain it was his story, and certain he published it, but it isn't on Fimfiction. Horse jesus. This is a crime against fiction. :(

Okay, then. Remember horizon's masterpiece with Celestia and Clover the Clever that spanned centuries. He did lots of things to illustrate the changes in time and character and period and society, but he didn't make Celestia talk with EME dialogue. She used normal English, because that's what people can read. Adding EME crap would have made the story harder to read and overall made it worse. It would have added nothing.

It's tempting to try to toss in dialect and flowery language and little unusual-English gimmicks, because it's a cheap way to add color and illustrate oddities. It's also a really bad idea, except for some very specific kinds of poetry.

Or maybe if you're James Joyce. Who I've never bothered to read, and probably never will.

>>Orbiting_kettle Okay, so it turns out I don't have enough time to get a retrospective done today. For the record though I would be totally up for some kind of anthology/colab project about these two :D

>>billymorph
Well, let me know when you have time to talk about it. I think it would be an inordinate amount of fun to do that.

>>Trick_Question
Are you thinking of Time Enough for Love? It's horizon's story, it hasn't been published on fimfiction yet, and it's Clover the Clever, not Smart Cookie. But unless CiG wrote a suspiciously similar story without me knowing...

>>Syeekoh
Loath. Loath.

:P

Oh wait, it was Posh who I already corrected, not you. Anyways, yeah, 'loathe' is a different word.

>>Posh

That's your excuse for the lack of mashups this round? Hack! Scoundrel! I believed in you. We believed in you!

Actually, my excuse for the lack of mashups was crashing last night before I could get a post written out, because I was going to at least join in the fun!

Incidentally, it's super awesome to see so many people jumping in on mashups! That's the way it's supposed to be. :D I just started becoming the mashup pusher because, lo these many months ago, the group started falling out of the habit and I didn't want to see the tradition die.

---

Breaking Breaking - When Trixie's nonconsensual snuggling habit becomes an addiction, her friend Berry Punch stages an intervention.

Day One Two Three Unicorn Tail Hairs - Raindolph sneaks into Canterlot Palace to steal tail hairs from virgin unicorn filly Twilight Sparkle. Drunk Celestia stumbles in on him and banishes him to the moon. He and Luna build an empire out of moon rocks.

Age Of My Friends - When Twilight pardons two turkeys for Applesgiving, she learns a bit too late that they're actually immortal turkeycorns who have been harassing Celestia and Luna since the Age of Discord.

And spot me a moment of prep for this next one:

*cues music*
Twilight.
Rainbow.
Sweetie.
Alfred.
Fading Wanting Trembling Morning -

Sisters, former, Scoota, pony.
Searching captain flying fying.

Twilight fading, Rainbow wanting, Sweetie trembling, Alfred's morning.
Sisters searching, Former captain, Scoota flying, ponifying.

Twilight fading (sisters searching)
Rainbow wanting (former captain)
Sweetie trembling (Scootaflying)
Alfred's morning (ponifying)

(Repeat in various combinations, with catchy industrial SFX, until end of song)

>>Not_A_Hat
I stand corrected. Thank you.

>>Cassius
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>AndrewRogue
>>Foehn
>>Posh
>>Trick_Question
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Monokeras
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Xepher
>>georg
>>Rao
>>JudgeDeadd

I dare say this has been my most successful entry in the Writeoffs yet! Sure, I didn't score all that highly, but the feedback has been phenomenal. I don't know if I've ever had a Writeoff entry so heavily discussed as this one.

When I entered this contest, I was in the middle of a mental crisis that had practically stopped all my literary productivity. I'd recently been hit with some scathing criticisms by people I respect and was struggling to find a way to meet their interests. So backwards was my thinking that I'd come to believe I needed to get rid of all my long-established tools and try to learn an entirely new style from scratch. The result was a style that even I considered bland, and in a way this entry was a test run.

The responses to this fic have taught me otherwise. I realize that I don't need to change a style of writing that most people liked and I enjoyed using, I just need to tweak some things after the fact to fit the perceived error. In a way, it was dumb of me to think that my old methods were wrong or naturally flawed. It also reminded me that I don't have to accept everything my editors say. I think I'd just gone so long without having a proper, opinionated, aggressive editor that I'd forgotten the need to stand up for myself.

So thank you, all of you. This contest and your feedback has gotten me back into the spirit of things, and maybe next time I'll be able to produce something worthwhile.

Having said all that, to the underlying issue that most hurt this story: subtlety. I can't deny that being subtle is an important point for me in writing; I tend to prefer forcing my readers to think and be observant rather than throwing everything in their face, which assumes them to be too stupid to see the clues. The downside to that, as so many have pointed out, is that often times I can be too subtle and/or neglect to give away the things that not everybody knows.

I had assumed that everyone would recognize the tower damaged by Spike's rapid growth during Twilight's exam, or the book through which Sunset Shimmer could write to Celestia. Most troubling, I actually anticipated people recognizing Sunset's last line, which was taken directly from her background story in the comics – when I myself had to look up the quote. Really, Paul, what were you thinking?

So the lesson learned: know what calls for subtlety and what does not. Now the only real question is whether I can keep that lesson in my head.

...

This contest reminded me why I enjoy the Writeoffs so much. Can't believe this is my first entry since June.

>>Trick_Question
Almost certainly >>The_Letter_J is correct. Time Enough For Love is mine, is as described above, and is still (far too slowly) undergoing final edits before it's crossposted.

(I commissioned some amazing cover art for it from Nadnerb.)

>>horizonDaft Punk came up on my Pandora as I was reading this post. I'm not sure if I should be amazed or appalled.

>>Not_A_Hat
My work here is done. ^____^

(Once I get a retrospective typed up, anyhow.)

>>The_Letter_J
>>horizon
SHIT that's it. Derp derp derp.

I actually checked all of horizon's stories on FF too just to be sure. But I remember seeing art that got made for the story!!! Where else would I have seen art?

>>horizon
THAT'S the art.

See how I could have confused this for CiG (since he does all his own art). I am sorry I misremembered your amazing fucking story but put it up someday it is one of the most glorious things I have ever read in my life.

>>Trick_Question
Well, I kind of did lace poetry throughout the entire minific.

>>Syeekoh
Not that kind of poetry, no.

ANGRY EYEBROWS ARGUEWOLF ARGUES FOREVER >:V >:| >:V >:| >:V

EDIT: I only do because yours was the best fic in the competition. :heart:

MOAR EDIT: oh who the buck am I kidding I do this with everypony :facehoof:

>>horizon
>>Trick_Question
Yes please, the requests are doubled!

(Plus I'm still totally not posting Wub until Love goes up...)

>>horizon
Honestly though that title might be the only thing about the fic I'm not 100% on. It sounds a lot like Brian from Family Guy's hack novel, "Faster Than the Speed of Love". :derpytongue2:

Even though it fits the story like a glove, it seems slightly hackneyed and isn't evocative enough to remember. Hmm. Hmmmm. I'm thinkin'...

>>horizon
Ooh, Synchronized Devotion? No, no, wait, that's shit too. :facehoof:

The Hour of Dedication? Shit that's terrible. I'm so bad at this.

I might hit something, I just need to thesaurus for a few hours starting from "love" and "time", then give up and try another angle. :V

>>horizon
In a Time of Need? Oh fuck that's even worse! (Okay maybe it's not that bad, but still, bleah.)

Stop me! Please, somepony stop me! :raritydespair:

I need some additional time for my retrospection, but I wanted to say that I’m quite pleased to have made the top ten. Congrats to the medalists, and all those who did better than they thought they deserved. And to those who did worse, take comfort; you have at least a spark of the fire in you if you’re even posting here at all.

And I should clear something up at this point.

>>Monokeras

(Horizon, is that you?)

I am persistently receiving compliments of this nature, for which I thank you.
However, for the record, I can unequinicabely state that neither Horizon and I are both not a changeling.
Thanks all too muchly.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
QFT

"H-hi guys." The disheveled pony rubbed at a coat that might have once been considered kempt years ago. He swallowed nervously, looking around at the others with him.

Perhaps thirty or forty faces looked back at him, sitting in a circle close enough to foster some sense of intimacy. An odd assortment of creatures they were—mostly ponies, but there was the occasional biped and even a sentient teakettle among them. Some faces he knew from past sessions; others sparked only vague senses of recognition; he hadn't been attending very much recently.

Some of those gathered began to notice the poor pony's hesitation, which only made his nervousness worse. He fidgeted in his chair with an almost seizure-like intensity before the pony sitting next to him reached out and laid a hoof on his shoulder.

"It's okay," said Derpy. The stallion wasn't sure why there was a toliet roll and a glowstick in her mane, but it actually had a disarming, almost comforting effect on him. "You're among friends."

"She's right," said an orange pegusus, who buzzed his wings in a nearly insectine way. "Nothing leaves this room."

The stallion breathed deep and steeled himself. He looked back through the crowd, briefly locking eyes with a boa undergoing a severe case of indigestion before squeezing his eyes shut and forcing the next words from his mouth.

"Hi everypony," he said. "My name is Bachiavellian, and I am addicted to Princesses."

-----

Retrospective: Tired

Fun fact, I went with that title cause it was literally the only thing I could think of at 3 AM in the morning of the night before submissions closed. And since the story is about being tired both physically and emotionally, that means this title has *triple meaning*. I'm so damn creative.

Anyways, I really did not expect this to make the finals at all. I kinda found myself at a point about 3/4 of the way through when I realized that it was nothing but talking heads and exposition, and I was sorely tempted to dump it right then and there. I've quit on fics for smaller reasons, after all. But it was far, far too late to come up with and write a new idea, and I was already sick of my writing unproductivity over the last few months, so I kinda just bit my cheek and finished it anyway.

Thanks for the reviews, everyone! It seems like virtually all of ya'll gravitated towards the same issues that I had with it, but it feels good to have my hunches confirmed anyway.

-----

.>>FanOfMostEverything
Definitely not complete. This is probably the nautical equivalent of walking into a drydock, looking at one of the skeletal keels, and asking the baffled shipwright, "Let's she how she floats, huh?"

>>Xepher
I'm glad that the mood-building seemed to have worked for you! Again, totally agree that it doesn't feel like a self-contained story. Thanks for your thoughts!

>>Trick_Question
You're entirely right, and you bring up some good points about Celestia's character. I think a lot of the issue is that the whole talking heads thing makes everything feel like a loredump, which is probably exacerbating the headcanon issues you're rightfully having. Thanks for the review!

>>FrontSevens
Happy you liked it! Agree that there isn't very much meat here, but I'm glad that what little there is worked for you!

>>CoffeeMinion
Yep, the presentation was about as flat as a cutting board. I probably needed about a thousand more words (and a dozen more hours) to make this idea work like it did in my head. Thank you!

>>Posh
Thank you for your thoughts! Personally, what I was going for was that Celestia never really wanted to be a Princess; she occasionally strikes me as quite the introvert. But I understand how having a catalyzing event would make the internal conflict feel more concrete. Appreciate it!

>>Not_A_Hat
That is a very interesting way to take this premise. I'm kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't come up with it myself. I don't think I'm likely to edit/publish this one, but your suggestions have definitely sparked my thought processes for another story. It's a really fun concept to play with. Thanks!

>>Orbiting_kettle
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it, and agree with your comments on the lack of character development. This was definitely one of those times I was really feeling the time crunch, so not all of my ideas/explainations made the final cut. Which is a mite disappointing, but such is life sometimes, I suppose. :P

>>Monokeras
Yep, yep, yep. Celestia opens up one of her deepest secrets because it was plot-convenient. My rittin skilz r thru the r00f. Thank you for your thoughts! And for the record, Celestia would totally have a catering service walk through 10 miles of wilderness to deliver a weekly cake.

>>AndrewRogue
Yeah I was really rolling my eyes at all those typos when I reread this the next morning. Totally understand your lack of investment; there's not much going on in the story at all. But I'll have to respectfully disagree with the Twilight being OOC thing--she totally strikes me as an acronym kind of girl. :derpytongue:

-----

Whew, that's everyone!

So, congrats to our medalists, and hope to see you guys next time!

>>Bachiavellian
"Hi, Bachiavellian," says an obvious wolf bitch poorly disguised as a pony. "Um, though, everypony, I don't really belong here, exactly," she adds. "I'm just here to, like, meet ponies..."

Skeptical looks bore into her.

"I mean, I just, it's easy to write stories about Princesses because... because the characters, um, lend themselves... that's all... it's not like I worship them and those glorious, shimmering mantles... as they whip about in the open air... without the slightest hint of a breeze..." (cough)

...and then she breaks down crying directly into her paws hooves.

>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Rao
>>Orbiting_kettle
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Xepher
>>Trick_Question
>>georg
>>Astrarian
>>AndrewRogue
>>Posh

So I am the writer of this... thing. Story may not be the right word, as I have a habit of writing scenes rather than stories. I took people's advice from the last Write-Off and published three things this time, in order to boost my feedback.

With this particular Write-Off, I set out to do something that I don't seem to have done at all in any of my written works: keep a consistent tone. It seems to be the biggest thing that's stopping my stories from becoming good (besides being incoherent and incohesive), so that was what I was focusing on. With each of them, I went for a different tone: strained and a contemplative/reactionary tone in "A Talk With Yourself," horror and lack of mercy with "The Power of the Sun," and intimacy and cuteness with "After A Wild Night."

As the feedback has told me, I failed all three times. With the first, no one could tell who was talking, it didn't go anywhere, and for a strained relationship, it was boring. With the second, the first part was cheesy, and the second didn't match canon, making it ridiculous. With this story, the pronoun switches from he to she to he ruined the immersion, even though it was intentional every single time. This tells me that I'm not yet skilled enough to make a consistent tone throughout. Or tell a coherent story. Or make sense.

But I'm not bummed out about that. I was earlier, frustrated that none of my stories achieved what I had intended, but now I can look at them and tell myself that I need more practice. I am honestly frustrated that the story I put the most effort into scored the lowest out of all three, making me second-guess myself, but as horizon has told me before, some stories just need a little more love. As I need a lot more practice.

All criticisms are fair, and I thank you for them. I may participate in the next Write-Off, or I may take it off to focus instead on working the basic things I'm not good at (coherency, cohesiveness, logic and tone). I'm thinking positively about this, so I hope that's at least progress. Whatever happens, good practice with you all for the next Write-Off.

As for my critiques, I got scared that what I was doing would detract people from writing further, and that it wouldn't even provide useful information anyway, so I stopped. There were a few I wanted to dissect (A Good Filly, Post Metamorphosis, After Party, Dawn and Scorpion Days), but I didn't because of the mentioned reasons. [To Seekyoh, I'm sorry if my critique was too long to read; I tried being as thorough as possible]

>>Not_Worthy2
I loved the story, it just needs tuning to make it less confusing for the reader to piece together.

These Writeoffs are hard as buck to do well in because you're competing against lots of masterful authors. One large flaw can derail a story's placement, even if the story itself is great. It is a mistake to think your story is bad based on its placement. Don't worry about the ranking: focus on the feedback and modify the story to make it shine. I'd like to see this one on Fimfiction someday.

Pardon My Friends
18th place? Well, that's one of my better showings, so I'm certainly not complaining. I don't think I have a whole lot to say about the story though.

As I'm sure was quite obvious, this was my attempt to write a Thanksgiving-themed story, since this writeoff aligned nicely with American Thanksgiving. I somehow came up with the idea of "what if those turkeys that get pardoned every Thanksgiving were actually getting pardoned for some crime?" And everything just sort of built off of that. I didn't even intend for this to be a feghoot at first. I just decided that trying to overthrow the princesses would be an amusingly ridiculous crime for some turkeys to commit. But once I realized the potential for a coup/coo pun at the end, there was apparently no going back (an additional pun involving "flying the coop" is left as an exercise for the reader). Personally, I don't even really consider this a true feghoot. I just think of it as a comedy that happens to end with a pun.

And since several people mentioned it, I'll quickly mention the "eyes blazing like a metaphor" line. Basically, it was 2 AM when I wrote that. I couldn't figure out how to say what I actually wanted to say, and that seemed like it was close enough, and I liked it too much to get rid of it. I have no regrets.

>>Orbiting_kettle
Okay, confession time. I think you might be giving me a bit too much credit (not that I'm complaining). I did primarily intend it to just be a terrible pun. But I did intentionally leave in some ambiguity with the situation, so I think I might understand what you're seeing there. But I would appreciate it if you would explain it more for me.
Also, you have no idea how incredibly happy I was when I saw this as the first comment on my story.

>>Trick_Question

These seem like inconsistent emotional displays. I'm sitting here trying to smile and roll my eyes at the same time, and it isn't working.

That's canon. ;p
Yeah, I realized as I was writing it that I was mentioning eyes a lot. It's probably symbolism or something.

>>Not_A_Hat
Oh, good. A reader completed the exercise. Kind of. ;p

>>JudgeDeadd
I completely agree, but see what I said above about this not really being a true feghoot.

And thank you to everyone else too!
>>Xepher
>>PaulAsaran
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Moosetasm
>>Posh
>>Shadowed_Song
>>CoffeeMinion
>>AndrewRogue

>>The_Letter_J

"eyes blazing like a metaphor"

I've started doing stuff like that when I'm just not in the mood to think. Take this quote from one of my stories that won a contest.

“I don’t understand,” Rainbow said like someone who doesn’t understand.

I was literally writing it 10 minutes after I came up with the idea with 4 hours until the deadline and I couldn't come up with the words I wanted to use, so I just put that in.

As long as you're fine with lines like that dictating the tone of your story, I don't see a problem with it. BTW this story was the top-ranked one on my slate because it was just so much fun to read.

>>Bachiavellian Remember, Princesses are friends, not food.

This is totally an elephant.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it!

>>Syeekoh
<3
Oh, I am very much okay with those sorts of lines setting the tone of my stories. I should really try to write a story filled with as much of that sort of thing as possible.

>>Syeekoh
I assumed the "metaphor" line was an intentional attempt at metahumor. It's actually one of the only things here that made me chuckle (oh deer... more on that below).

>>The_Letter_J
This is where I admit something awful: I bottom-slated this at the very beginning (fourth from last, and none of the stories below it made the cut). :facehoof:

I don't know why feghoots often turn me off so much. I think it happens when it feels like the entire story was just a setup for the punchline, in which case it feels like a waste of space because you could have done the same joke in 50 words. For some reason the story didn't sit well with me, and I think I felt this way because I wasn't seeing comedy anywhere but the groaner at the end—and, the feghoot fell flat for me too.

In one Writeoff, I actually did score a feghoot at the top of my slate (or very very close), but it was pretty amazing. It was the one that ended with "a herd in the band...". The entire story was funny, and I laughed several times. Even thought everything was building to the feghoot, the trip there was amusing enough that it wasn't obvious setup. The feghoot wasn't the point of the story, in other words: it was just the cherry on top. (And the punchline was a very impressive spoonerism.)

So I'm sorry and I feel legitimately bad for not liking this more than I did. :fluttershysad: I should go back and reread it a few times, because there must be more to it. Many ponies loved what you wrote, so you did something right.

>>RogerDodger
The only request I have right now is to make the un-highlighted green lines in the guessing section darker, because they're totes invisible on my monitor (I think N_A_H noticed the same thing). A lot of the highlighting on the site is hard to see in general, like the prelim ballot yellow vs. blue to mark the stories that made the cut. You could stand to darken most of the highlighty-things. I'm not sure if you're using a dimmer monitor or what exactly, but I use a triplet of ViewSonic 1080p LED monitors.

>>RogerDodger
Er, added it to issue tracker. Do with my gripe however you please. :twilightsmile:

>>Trick_Question
I mean, it was kind of a bit of metahumor, I just happened to come up with it for other reasons.

In my defense, this story really wasn't intended to be just a feghoot. As I mentioned before, my goal was just to write a comedy that happened to end with a pun. And if the humor just didn't work for you, then I can accept that. Humor is incredibly subjective, after all. If I read a fic that was clearly trying to be a comedy, but none of it was funny to me, I'd rank it pretty low too.

I remember that story. It was really good, and I'm pretty sure it was at or near the top of my slate too.

And honestly, I kind of wish you had put my story even lower on your slate, if only so I could have gotten that "Most Controversial" award.

>>Not_Worthy2
Please don't get discouraged! I thought this was fantastic and it was a lock for my #1 spot for most of the Writeoff (falling only to #2 by the end, versus the Cranky/Matilda one). I think the pronoun switching is a comparatively minor technical issue; the core of this remains strong. I would suggest that even if it didn't achieve the goal you set out for at its beginning, it achieved something worthwhile, and it deserves to live on.

Looking more broadly, >>Trick_Question nails the challenge of the Writeoff: you're up against some of the best authors in the fandom, who through whatever combination of talent, experience, and spare time, have demonstrated a much better than average ability to write popular stories.

"Goodness" doesn't always track with popularity. While I think it's sour grapes to explore that thought-line too far, I wouldn't automatically equate a lack of popularity with a lack of goodness. If the feedback on the story you thought would be your best helps you improve without being discouraging, then hopefully it's still worth having written it.

So, Entering and Breaking. I'd like to start by saying that I personally wasn't very happy with this one, and I'm surprised it did as well as it has.

My initial (and, really, only core) idea from my idea jar (thanks, CoffeeMinion!) was "sugar as metaphor for debilitating substance addiction." Naturally, the microfiction format doesn't lend itself to deep exploration, so I set out to write a little scene showing a pivotal moment: where a character is made to realize the hole [s]he has dug for themselves. Cue my brain rolling to a blunt Berry Punch I like to read and write, a little inversion of the supposed-dentist having a sweet tooth, and you arrive at the core premises for this piece.

Now, it has been noted that these characters have contrary canonical information in the episode, "Amending Fences". I don't care. I forgot about that entirely in the process of writing. Mea culpa. Sorry it threw some people, but I'm glad people were willing to put up with it.

Unfortunately, I think an essential element I had hoped to convey was missed by every reviewer: less important is the addiction than the fact that it is debilitating. Pinkie Pie is not the central addict, because she doesn't have problems. Berry Punch is not the central addict because she doesn't have problem. Berry Punch may well be an addict in her own right, but she seems to have her act together, at least for her friend. Again, too subtle for my own good, and mea culpa. Related to this is the alcohol in the smoothie: first, it's Berry, so of course there's alcohol in it; second, there probably isn't much, and it's well offset by the fiber and complex sugars; and third, it is entirely possible that the blood sugar spike is exactly what Minuette needs to get going. Shrug.

Final notes:
* The use of semicolons for sentence fragments was deliberate; the four-dot dashes was not doing my homework and misapplying the "omission including full stop" for "tailing off" (tailing off as opposed to interrupted).
* Other substances, such as salt, may have been a better choice…
* Sugar probably doesn't result in significant drowsiness per se, but a sugar crash does induce lethargy and usually an upset stomach—excuse enough to want to just lay down and die. Minuette's forgetfulness here is, accordingly, probably more a product of sleep haze than anything else.
* I'm glad some people picked up on the nastiness of corduroy for a pillow.

Thank you all for your thoughts!
>>GroaningGreyAgony >>FanOfMostEverything >>Rao >>Trick_Question >>Syeekoh >>Bremen >>Posh >>AndrewRogue >>Xepher >>Shadowed_Song >>CoffeeMinion >>Monokeras

>>Not_Worthy2
Ooh, if you're still interested, I'd love it if you were to dissect Post Metamorphosis! The more feedback, the better. I already have a bundle of ideas on how to lengthen, rewrite, and change it from the other comments to make it much better; I'd absolutely love to hear what you have to say!

And I actually liked your stories. I thought the voices for pony-Cheerilee and EqG-Cheerilee were distinct, although there's a little polishing needed--nothing the average editor wouldn't be expecting to help with. (or even just prereader). I read The Power of the Sun briefly and actually thought it was pretty cool, but I didn't read it in time to vote properly... I thought the idea was really neat and it made perfect sense to me that Luna would pose as Celestia in Chrysalis' dream--although I can't easily explain why I thought it fit so well. Maybe because we've seen an antagonistic relationship between Celestia and Chrysalis in the show, while we haven't really seen any direct interactions between Luna and Chrysalis? I liked it. After a Wild Night didn't really do much for me, but that was purely because the topic isn't particularly my cup of tea and I couldn't really figure out why Big Mac and Fluttershy had done this. I thought the writing was solid and the pronouns didn't bother my immersion. I was planning to read the story for comprehension, not quick-read-get-through-fast, and I was confused with the pronoun change briefly, but I quickly figured out it was deliberate, read on, and got my explanation. The prose in that piece was certainly nice, though. I hope this helps a little--don't be so down on yourself! You're doing great, and I'm sure you'll only get better from here!

>>The_Letter_J
I was quite convinced that the joke was about the alleged (it's complicated) Coup attempt in Turkey and over the request of extradition for Gülen and the US refusal to do so on a whim (they are right to refuse but it's very complicated).

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/11/politics/turkey-us-fethullah-gulen-ultimatum/

I saw the final joke as some kind of cutting comment about hair-splitting (the difference between Coup and Golpe, same thing but in different languages), about the whole mess and about the uncertainty of the situation.

>>Not_Worthy2
The pronoun confusion was a technical issue that detracted a bit but is relatively easy to fix. You experimented a bit there and it didn't work out completely, that happens. The write-off is ideal for this kind of experiments because you tend to receive topical feedback on what worked and what not. Your story still scored highly on my slate, it was good and touching. You di a great job.

As for my critiques, I got scared that what I was doing would detract people from writing further, and that it wouldn't even provide useful information anyway, so I stopped. There were a few I wanted to dissect (A Good Filly, Post Metamorphosis, After Party, Dawn and Scorpion Days), but I didn't because of the mentioned reasons. [To Seekyoh, I'm sorry if my critique was too long to read; I tried being as thorough as possible]

Honestly, I appreciate any form of critique and feedback. Even if, for some bizarre and improbable reason, the things you say are not things I consider problems, it still is the feedback from one more reader that helps me understand how different people react to my story.

As long as you are not a jerk about it even things like "Your story made me feel uneasy/bad/sick and I can't score it/finish it because..." are quite useful data-points.

>>Orbiting_kettle
Sorry to disappoint you, but I definitely did not have that in mind when I wrote this. I remember hearing about some sort of political instability in Turkey a few months back, but I didn't know any of the details and I had completely forgotten about it until just now. But if I managed to accidentally create some sort of brilliant political satire, then I'll take it.
It turned out better than the time I actually tried to write political satire in a writeoff.

>>The_Letter_J
Well, I still liked the story :D

Similitude

Not much to say about this one, other than that the reviewers mostly nailed it; my first draft of this story weighed in at 1,400 words, and that's without the scenes with Discord and/or Luna I'd considered. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to get it down to 750, and I ended up cutting out basically all the introspection and interaction. I probably would have been better off with a different, less ambitious concept, but by then it was too late to start over.

I did keep the original version, though, and there were enough encouraging words that I might end up polishing it and putting it up in the group (which would be my first story on Fimfiction; I was waiting on something especially successful in order to start off with a bang).

>>Trick_Question

I might slightly disagree with this one. I know Chrysalis doing what she did for her hive was common fanon after Canterlot Wedding, but I think To Where and Back Again showed that at her core all that Chrysalis cares about is Chrysalis.

Also, I think it's clear that since being reformed Starlight is nothing like Chrysalis. What I was going for in this story was more her worrying that she was like Chrysalis *before* being reformed, and I felt that isn't really true, because while Starlight was wrong in her goals, she didn't ignore those around her; she at least thought she was helping the ponies of her town, and reacted badly to the suggestion that her time travel was hurting other ponies.

>>Orbiting_kettle >>Foehn >>ChappedPenguinLips >>Not_A_Hat >>Xepher >>FanOfMostEverything >>Monokeras >>Posh >>Winston

Whoops. Apologies to the finalists I missed. I thought the write-off defacto included all of them.

Anyhow.

An Advanced Lesson in Friendship

3 write-offs. Numerically my placement is getting worse (13 - 14 - 15), statistically my placement is getting better (not doing math). Beware, I'm slowly escaping the middle.

Anyhow. This story.

I looked at the prompt. Decided no one was actually gonna do the obvious drunk sex fic, so I decided I would. What can I say, I'm a filthy shipper and I like the obvious stories sometimes.

Anyhow, I had the basic shape of the story from the get go: Starlight panics and considers a nuclear option, this offends Trixie, this forces Starlight to admit that her fear isn't because she doesn't want to be with Trixie but because she does, fin. Just a very short, simple turn. Unfortunately, I was out all day, so I couldn't actually sit down to put that into writing

Fun fact, originally I had a different ending line pair which I will present here:

“Do you think I should tell Twilight about this?” Starlight asked after a moment.

“Trixie would rather you didn’t.”

Anyway, the big failure here is some combination of pacing and tone. I think we have near consistent agreement on this point. This is, in fact, part of why I tried to make it explicit that Starlight was the one who invited Trixie back. Her panic comes from the fear of things changing, which ties into the idea that things are already different because she -doesn't- just want to be Trixie's best friend.

That said, I fundamentally agree that I probably need to use some extra words (or have skipped the opening) as the turn is too intense. This is a bit of the problem of my normal style being condensed down to this size.

It seems like the question of Starlight's backslide is a tough one here, as it got varying reactions. For the most part, it isn't really intended to be a "serious" thing she's actually going to do - it is just an immediate, panic reaction. If given some time to cool down, she'd arrive at it being dumb, which I suppose is not actually evident. That said, I could probably avert the whole issue by just sticking with mindwiping being the panic reaction.

But yeah, not much to say here, I guess. Advantage of consistent commentary across the board.

Thanks to: >>Orbiting_kettle >>Xepher >>Rao >>Astrarian >>TheCyanRecluse >>Trick_Question >>georg >>Shadowed_Song >>CoffeeMinion >>Posh >>FanOfMostEverything

>>FanOfMostEverything

I wanted to keep her name unknown until the end. Otherwise, it might telegraph how she was going to resolve the situation.

Huh, wow. It hasn't even occurred to me that she and Pinkie share a family name. It adds nicely to the story.

>>The_Letter_J

what if those turkeys that get pardoned every Thanksgiving

Huh. Not being American, I've never heard about this tradition, so no wonder the premise of the fic seemed pretty random to me.

>>KwirkyJ
I had one additional thought that I'll share because why not: Swapping Minuette for Pinkie Pie could make the sugar addition angle make more sense. Pinkie is insanely over-the-top ravenous with sweets, and I could see a small amount of alcohol being used as a starting point to help her see she has a problem there.

>>KwirkyJ
SAAAAAALT! MAKE IT SALT INSTEAD OF SUGAR FOR THE LOVE OF LUNA!

(sorry)

No, I see where the sugar thing makes more relatable sense. My idea is not the Only Idea. But still...

>>Bremen

I know Chrysalis doing what she did for her hive was common fanon after Canterlot Wedding, but I think To Where and Back Again showed that at her core all that Chrysalis cares about is Chrysalis.

On that part we have to disagree. If somepony magically changed all of your children into bizarre animals and you had no idea how to save them, would you submit to the enemy, or run away and plot? She's filled with rage, sure, but she's a mother who lacked the ability to help her children. And we see her acting motherly earlier in Season 6. Bad guys might tend to be "alien" on the show, but even beings with very alien mindsets have families that they sacrifice for.

As for the message, I must apologize because mine was not a fair criticism: I was mentioning the message that I would want to send. It might be critique that the message you were trying to send was not obvious to me, though, so at the end I wasn't sure the conclusion resonated with my expectations.

>>JudgeDeadd
I anticipated this problem. In fact, I was hoping for it. I have previously had the pleasure of explaining the tradition if pardoning turkeys to a very confused Canadian friend who was certain I was making it up. So I was hoping that someone would say that pardoning turkeys seems like an unrealistic tradition, just so that someone else could explain that it's a real tradition, thus providing additional amusement to all involved.

But I suppose that plan didn't work because the turkey pardoning just seemed like another bit of silliness in a silly story.

Okay, originally I wasn't planning to do a retrospective because I didn't see the use in it, but I don't know what to do with this story.

It's sort of a conundrum: people seem to suggest either making Violet more fleshed out as an OC, or for RD to come to a more resolute conclusion / have an arc. The problem I'm having is that I didn't intend for either of those things to be the focus. My intention was for RD to spill her problems on a pony she doesn't know but sees herself in, and not to come to a conclusion - I want the lingering feeling of RD's feeling of emptiness without actually resolving it (as depressing as it sounds).

The focus isn't really on Violet, but I felt she needed to be there, because RD sees herself in her, and she feels the need to pass on some advice to an up-and-comer like her, only to realize too late that her advice was more "here's what that thing you want is really like" when it was supposed to be the "work hard to acheive your dreams" stuff she's been spouting for her time being famous (side note: it's been years since retirement, but she still has "many years left" - i.e., she's about middle-aged). What I'm planning to put in here later (and should've put in here) is that she doesn't feel like her friends would understand because none of them really wanted or knew fame, hence why she says this to an aspiring Wonderbolt like she was.

I dunno. This is probably my responsibility to think about as the author, but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Wow. I thought I had managed to make the story dark and moody, but re-reading it now, it feels pretty trite. No wonder it took only 22nd place. There's one or two lines that I like, but if I ever decide to publish this, you can expect it to get completely rewritten.

I see that I've managed to confuse a lot of people with what the setting is... I tried dropping a few hints, but it seems that wasn't enough. As others have suggested, this is meant to be the Nightmare!verse from "The Cutie Re-Mark". The bit at the very end, where Nightmare Moon promises to teach Rainbow Dash the lost art of the Rainboom (this admittedly feels somewhat awkward and forced), was put in solely to provide a hint as to which universe this is.

The story was originally conceived as an AU where Rainbow accepted the Shadowbolt temptation, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it truly work because 1) the Shadowbolts are implied to be just an illusion anyway, and 2) there was no way -- at least, none I could think of in the limited time -- that the baseline universe Rainbow would betray her friends from Ponyville like that; especially for some lame, edgy Wonderbolts knockoff popping up out of nowhere in the middle of spooky woods.

At the last moment, I realized that the solution was obvious -- the canon provided a very fitting alternate universe right there.

The assumption is that in this continuity, Rainbow (having never caused the Rainboom and gotten the whole gang together) presumably didn't grow up to be as fiercely loyal as she is in the canon universe. (Although she's no less spunky and impulsive -- certainly enough to assault a godlike conqueror with nothing but a weatherpony team, and with enough force of personality to get her companions to go along with this plan!). What's more, she presumably felt frustrated all her life, feeling that she wasn't living up to her potential and that there was some sort of a grand destiny she hadn't yet achieved. Hence why she could plausibly accept Nightmare Moon's offer.

>>Trick_Question

But then, the title doesn't make a lot of sense because it's a reference to something that never happened in this iteration, and the Nightmare did not tempt Dash in the same way she was originally tempted.

The title sucks >:P It doesn't even make sense because it's way too informal for the subject matter. Dash could say that to a friend, but I can't see her saying something like that to someone she fears more than respects. I like fancy titles but didn't have time to come up with anything good before the deadline. My first idea was simply "Undying Loyalty" and I should've just gone with that instead.

>>Rao

a missing end-quote ("I will dispel your doubts.)

That's because she's continuing her dialogue in the next paragraph. As far as I know it's within the rules of English punctuation (see "multiple paragraphs" here.)

>>JudgeDeadd

That's because she's continuing her dialogue in the next paragraph. As far as I know it's within the rules of English punctuation...

I've known that rule, but I see it used so infrequently that it seems totally unnatural to me. While tempted to use it, I suspect other readers might be confused, so I avoid doing it.

However, it hasn't come up much in my fiction because I never have a character speak for more than a paragraph without interspersing some action in order to break up the speech. Breaking up the speech with small action or carry elements makes dialogue feel more natural and evocative to me. If a character is truly giving a long speech on a topic that requires the reader's total focus, that's a different situation.

(For an example of how I do it, see the second chapter of the Fimfiction version of my gold-winning fic, The Price of a Smile. It happens a few times in the second-half of the chapter.)

I'm not saying my approach is better, by any means. Just that it's a different approach.

>>JudgeDeadd

No wonder it took only 22nd place.

Don't worry, I will always write a fic that will finish worse than yours! :P

>>Monokeras
I'll take the converse bet.

>>horizon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmpRs7xN06Q

Reminds me of a line out of Skywriter's excellent In The Bleak Midwinter

I sighed. "Don't your—I mean our—people feel the need to celebrate something in these short, cold days? To lift their spirits at least?"

"Short days are long nights," said Rose. "And the cold is the king of the wastes without, ever hungry, ever greedy to claim our tiny island of warmth and light. We do not celebrate in the dark and cold. We huddle together, crying out to the howling void and praying that it will avert its jaws from us for one more day." Rose took a little sip from her mug.

Wow, look at all the comments. Well, 24 out of 50 or so isn’t that bad, considering I wrote a HiE. I’m still not sure what’s up with Google Docs. Everything I write is double spaced, but when copy/pasted into Writeoff or Fimfiction, it turns into triple spaced. Fimfiction actually cheats and turns triple-spacing back into double spacing for display purposes, but it’s still a pain. Anyway…

Harry Potter? Seriously? The_Letter_J had it perfectly here. In short, HP does not have familiars, they have pets, and they don’t talk. The students don’t make their own wands. They’re wizards, not mages. You know, there were wizards in fiction before JK Rowling. Lawrence Watt-Evans has a magnificent series set in Ethshar with wizards and magic and dragons, oh my. And of course AugieDog has his Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel series (published, too) which I drew a lot from. (Hey Augie! You have Fanfiction now! :)

The word limitations crippled a lot of what I was trying to do, since I was putting 1.5k words into a .75k sack. I chopped the final version until blood ran under the door. There’s pruning, and there’s arboricide with extreme prejudice. Sadly, the word ‘adult’ in front of unicorn caught the axe, so some people thought those were Sweetie Belle’s tail hairs. Sorry. Ditto for making it crystal clear that Raindolph was using a *spell* to check the (ahem) suitability of Rarity’s tail for his final exam project.

The power of purity has long been a matter for literature. Jesus being born of a virgin (although the word is more properly ‘maiden’ but bear with me). The Church’s insistence on priests being celibate. Sir Galahad who had the strength of ten men because his heart was pure. The theory that the only way to catch a unicorn is to put a young virgin out in the woods, and the unicorn will come trotting along and put its head down in her lap to be captured. (Read The Unicorn Creed by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough for some really funny approaches to the subject.)
So in a Darwin sense, intelligent magical creatures in a magical land who don’t want to wind up being harvested for their parts get… innovative, as anybody who has killed a few hundred rats in a MMORPG to find only one or two quest item tails can testify.

---

>>JudgeDeadd
>>M1Garand8
>>Trick_Question
>>JudgeDeadd
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Xepher
>>Baal Bunny
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Monokeras
>>Rao
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Morning Sun
JudgeDeadd : Good catch. The word ‘White’ got clipped in the bloodbath it took to crop this beast down to fit.

M1Garand8: Using *alicorn* Twilight Sparkle’s tail hairs for the *unicorn* tail hairs called for in your wand instructions can be a very bad decision.

Not_a_hat: One shortcoming of the minific is the inability to get out the crayons and color in the background.
“So all we need to do is invade the castle, sneak down to the dungeons, free Princess Luna from her chains, and sneak her back out again.” Pinkie Pie rolled up the map she had just shown to Twilight. “Piece of cake. Oh, and we need to get some cake too while we’re in there.”

“What was that, Pinkie?” asked Twilight, who was still blinking due to the blinding speed of the presentation.

“Explaining things for the audience,” said Pinkie. “Now come on. We need to hurry before the opening credits start.”

Baal Bunny: I *thought* about trying to match this up exactly with the Cluny story background, but I decided to use them as inspiration instead. Many thanks for your little fuzzy idea spawner. :)

Xepher: The expanded (or non-chopped) version that will show up in FimFiction has Rarity keeping a few ‘color swatches’ of her friends to use when crafting outfits. If expanded, it would be a full wall cabinet with carefully-labeled patches of mane/tail/coat hair from nearly every pony in town.

FanOfMostEverything: That’s really my goal with most of my stories. I want you to have so much fun reading them that you don’t notice the gaping plot holes and poor grammar. If I do it right, I can roll right on into publishing whole series on Amazon, or write political advertisements, whichever lets me keep my soul and put a pool in the back yard.

Rao: Well, I don’t think Rarity would hold still for *that* kind of purity test.
“Pardon me, darling, but I’m going to beat you senseless with this chair while screaming at the top of my lungs now.”

AndrewRogue: Raindolph *is* an idiot ball. He’s at the bottom of his class, but still skilled enough to make a very difficult wand out of impossible to find materials. Perhaps he just has test anxiety.

Shadowed_Song: Fantasy has a long history of requiring really dumb rare ingredients for spells/potions/devices. Look at Twilight and Cadence traveling to the end of Equestria to get the cure for Discord’s Blue Flu.

Posh:
Yeah, I can see that conversation.
Twilight Sparkle: (stomps hoof) I am not an inexperienced virgin! Why I’ll have you know I’ve kissed a stallion dozens of times.
Rarity: Good night kisses from your father don’t count, dear.
Twilight: Oh? Um.

CoffeeMinion:
Yeah, I can see that if Raindolph hung around Equestria too long.
Rain: Excuse me. Ladies. Why do you all keep coming back here?
Lyra: I don’t know. There’s just something… exciting about you.
Rarity: I’ll admit, darling. I find your presence quite soothing too.
Sparkler: Can I lay my head in your lap?

And yes, I plan on publishing it on FimFiction, as a one chapter and can be expanded if demanded.

AndrewRogue: I like Trick_Question’s comment about ‘Even Twilight’s butt is powerful’ :)

Trick_Question: One thing to remember is when you’re exposed to a particular scent for a long time, your brain tends to edit that out. Somebody who works in the sewers for a living can still smell roses, even if a newbie at the same site can’t. I’m quite certain that Twilight Sparkle’s first (unspoken) thought when she went through the mirror was “What is that strange smell?”

Thanks, guys. Look for this shortly on FimFiction.

>>CoffeeMinion
I will probably expand this to include when they decide to go on a date, and the date itself. I have a few fun things I could do with it. As for the other stories, I don't know how I could make them work with the established canon, though I would like to give the Cherilee one a go someday. I'm not upset at how my stories placed, for the most part; I am just confused as to how the story I worked the hardest on did the worst.

But positive thoughts going forward! Thank you for your words.

>>Trick_Question
I'm not discouraged in the slightest! I'm not upset that it wasn't popular either. I am a little disappointed that I didn't accomplish what I set out to do (make a consistent tone), but win some, lose some, right? I think all three of my stories were worth writing, now that I don't have the depressing sickness hanging inside of me. Thank you for your kind words. :)

>>Kitcat36
I'm glad you got something out of my stories. :) I will see what I can say about Post Metamorphosis. I believe that I can get better from here on, if I focus on my weaknesses and defining myself as a writer and person. Thank you for your kind words.

>>Orbiting_kettle
I'm happy you enjoyed it! Experimentation does seem to be the thing I want to do in these Write-Offs. I'll take that to heart; I can learn what works and what doesn't, and perhaps when. Thank you for your kind words.

I guess I'll end this by saying that I'm feeling good moving forward. I plan on practicing more, not neglecting my reading, and hopefully be better for the next round.

Hey, retrospective on this finally! So, basically? This story just flashed into mind of an Equestria that was suddenly...empty. Why? I don't know. Something happened. But what? I honestly don't know. The only concrete things I had were that it was sudden, and that Celestia/Luna are implied to go last. Again, why? Not sure. Some vague ideas but nothing concrete.

The Luna bit threw people, clearly - I had sorta seen it as 'She was trying some kind of ward to stop things' and we are seeing the moments immediately thereafter when she finally fails.

Why did it happen? I do not know. It's like life in that way. Things happen, and we are left with the absence afterwards.

>>JudgeDeadd
I'm bad at doing descriptive. That, and I stream of consciousnessed it, yea.

>>FanOfMostEverything
The vibe hadn't been picked up on yet, but I was going through 'Slow unveiling', but waxed too purpley clearly.

>>JudgeDeadd >>CoffeeMinion
This is more on the nose, yes. 'Sinister and melancholy beneath the surface' is what I wanted to evoke!

>>Moosetasm
You're fairly on the nose for what I wanted (Apart from 'larger' - if I edit/publish this it won't be much more than this, because the sensation of confusion and sense of disquiet is what I want). But yea, it starts out seemingly idyllic and...boom. Most were asleep. I think. But not all.

>>FrontSevens
I can't fully, either. I think it's Luna's wards to keep herself protected, or the castle protected, or trying to undo things - one of those - finally failing, and so she too is ...gone. But perhaps it is her causing it. I never settled.

>>Trick_Question
Sad and bereft of meaning is somewhat the goal. It's like life - sometimes sad things happen and we are left feeling robbed and unsettled.

>>Xepher
I have not read that though I can see the similarities, although my reading of Bradbury sort of gave me 'Pandemic' or something as a cause, and it seemed set much faster after humanity had passed on. But - it does sort of go for the atmosphere Bradbury often produced.

>>georg
Would only that more had felt as you do :)

>>Astrarian
Philomena didn't show, and her/possibly Tiberius would fit in well if I do expand it. As for the spell circle, see above for an explanation!

Well, now that nobody's checking the thread any more (doubly so since it's a weekend) I can :yay: at my bronze. ^.^

I don't know that I have a whole lot to say in retrospective, other than to offer a little bit of context. This was kind of a "safe" story for me, in that I picked a small idea I could write comfortably within the word limit and didn't try anything particularly experimental. Safer stories are far less risk for more internet-point reward than experimental stories, but the writing reward is a lot less: you don't learn as much from the attempt or the feedback, and you don't push to expand yourself as much. I would have tried something more ambitious if I'd had more time, but I was visiting (non-Writeoff) friends in Seattle at the time, and I basically dashed this off in an hour while I had a little bit of downtime and a quiet corner.

Counterbalancing that was the fact that I got one of said friends to give me a hot take on my original draft of the story, and it's thanks to her that this did as well as it did. The original version was nothing but a tone piece about the farmers' doubt. Granted, the current story isn't much more, but I had originally ended it at:

"Any second now," Pistachio said, his heart pounding against his ribs.

"Sun'll rise," Pecan said tightly.

My friend/beta-reader looked at it and gave me an "eh" -- it had some of the bits that folks appreciated here, but didn't go anywhere. So I reconsidered it, and took her advice, and bumped the timeline a couple of minutes so I could put that conversation immediately before sunrise, and wrote their little jump-scare and their suppressed relief, and that tied everything together a lot more nicely.

It's also worth noting that over the ... um ... two and a half years (!) I've been doing the Writeoffs, I've gotten so much better at planning minifics out. I used to reliably have the same problem everyone complains about here, of ideas way too big for 750 words that got slashed down to the bone to reach entry size. I've learned over time to scope the premise down to something simple enough to fit. This one was pretty much just "Two farmers try to repress their fears just before the first sunrise after Luna's return." No plot, no progression, just letting the emotions carry the moment: a "scene that wants to be a scene", as I've said about minifics before, as opposed to the "scenes that want to be a story" because you have big emotional beats that feel like they're moored into something greater we also need to see. Sit-In did a similar thing in under 650 words; The Red Forest was under 450. You can get a lot of power out of short fics by picking one thing to hammer, and hammering it hard. It's much harder to tell an actual story -- because 750 words only gives you one thing to effectively hammer (two if lightning strikes), and "progressing a plot" is the one thing you're choosing, instead of developing emotional resonance or doing deep worldbuilding or exploring tone.

My recent string of minific medals largely -- with oddball exceptions like Only, Only, Only Me -- represents me giving up on the idea of telling 750-word stories and writing what sort of boil down to short tone poems with story elements. I think that's one of two story types that do disproportionately well in the allotted space, along with fairy tales (which can lean on a predeveloped idiom to evoke feelings and tone from a sparse, telly style). At times I miss the old me who was still willing to fight that fight and wring beauty out of prose chopped down to the bone. But I've been pushing for bumping the minific wordcap up to 1000 for years now, and that hasn't gone anywhere either, so eh.

Congratulations to everyone for a good round of fics, FOME and Kettle for their medals, and see you for short stories!

>>horizon "...I used to reliably have the same problem everyone complains about here, of ideas way too big for 750 words that got slashed down to the bone to reach entry size..."

It's experience. Back in high school, when the teacher asked for five hundred words on something, I used to despair at having to write that much. Now, I'm going to fight to keep this blog post under 500 words. By the time I hit 90, I plan on writing so much I'll never have time to die.

It's a day late and a dollar short with:



>>Kitcat36
>>Posh
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Trick_Question
>>Monokeras
>>Rao
>>Bachiavellian
>>Xepher

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting! I guess I'm guilty of tapping the well of time-travel pseudo-romanctic shenanigans for two Writeoffs in a row, but it's an interesting well, and I don't regret the attempt.

Fun facts: I wrote this in a restaurant, about 20 feet away from (and with an excellent view of) the bar (inspiration!). Berry and Doc are two characters who I've written before and who I enjoy writing. I've never gone in for the random drunk hookup thing (srsly, why), but it seemed like a reasonable setup given the prompt. Any resemblance to the cafe scene in Back To The Future 2 is completely intentional.

A number of people commented on Berry rolling with the situation too quickly. While I (obviously) side with >>FanOfMostEverything's take on this, it's something I'll address in the cleaned-up version. And thank you >>Trick_Question; it's already got more words and is approaching release in the foreseeable future. (Also, I imagine Derpy's fine; I headcanon that his adventures sometimes get her home to Dinky later than expected, leaving the poor filly home alone sometimes, which makes Derpy sad and mad.) >>Rao highlighted the moral quandary that the situation presents, which is awesome; this will get fleshed-out a little more in the final version. I didn't really notice the pacing issues >>Bachiavellian mentioned, but I can kind of see them in hindsight, and I'll try to tune that up, but it might not be perfect.

But then we have the money comment by >>Xepher. And all I can say is aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh, you are completely right!! WHY WASN'T IT BAD WOLF?!?! I was struggling to come up with a suitable gag there, and the perfect answer should have been obvious. Rest assured, that's going in the final version. :-p Also, I've tried to move the line you mentioned as high as possible, as I agree it should be part of the story's hook. As for his goals in the situation: He's genuinely trying to figure out what happened the previous night, and he's horrified about the possibility of having cheated on Derpy (because aaaaarrrgghhhh I ship it), but he can't stop it from happening, because the space-time continuum really will go all pear-shaped if he does (and of course, he hates pears). So it's kind of like a thing where you want to look away from the trainwreck but you can't.

...

And th-th-that's all, folks! :heart:

>>Baal Bunny
I know this chat isn't really still going on, but I was checking some stuff and just followed the link to Familiars and wow, was it great! Do you have the title of the book you published that's the collected Cluny stories? I need more!

I’m sorry again for the delay. Thanks to all who commented!

This piece started, appropriately, with a morning burst of inspiration. I was sure the general topic had been done, but I thought I might feel my way into an interesting angle. I was at first hoping to leave it completely ambiguous as to whether she let her rage get the better of her. I decided it went better with a little quiet note of hope at the end

The lumps of stone are in fact supposed to be what would eventually become the S1E2 elements. I have perhaps been influenced by fanon in which one reason Celestia chooses Twilight and Co. to wield the elements is that she herself can’t touch them anymore; the enormity of her act, necessary though it was, offended them or broke her connection with them, though this was perhaps ameliorated when they were used to redeem Luna. I’ll try to clean things up in editing.

>>Cassius
I wasn’t sure about the “fools” line, but in limited space couldn’t find an alternative. This thing is just a little too large for its straightjacket and I will be correcting some issues when I put it on FIM.

>>FanOfMostEverything
I can’t say I had quite that goal in mind. The main part of it came forth without much conscious processing. I’m glad it still connected with you.

>>Orbiting_kettle
I intend to either tone down or justify in editing.

>>Rao
I’m glad you liked it.

>>Posh
Thank you!

>>Trick_Question
>>JudgeDeadd
if I may PM you, I’d like to get your help in resolving the ambiguity in the final version

>>Not_A_Hat
I did have to leave out a few things that might have smoothed the way. I will try to reintroduce them.

>>Xepher
As mentioned, I’ll work on her language. Thanks!

>>AndrewRogue
My authorial reason for not moving her is so she can reawaken at the scene of the event and see instantly the result of what she did, which saves some exposition. I meant to justify it by having her doctors think she shouldn’t be moved, but I lacked the space to to convey this elegantly.

>>Monokeras
Thank you for your flattery, both explicit and implied.

>>CoffeeMinion
I’m not sure I want to continue it past its present end, but I will consider it. Thanks!


Thanks to all again! I hope the story gave you some heliopause for reflection.

>>Kitcat36

Alas:

I'm still writing that book, and I've vowed not to take part in any more Writeoffs till it's done!

But then I vow a lotta things...

Right now, there are 11 shorts stories about Cluny and Crocker, ten of them spread out in the Sword and Sorceress series of anthologies--vol. 19, then volumes 23-31--and one in a collection called What Happens Next from Furplanet Books. I'm pasting the first 8 stories together and writing a bunch of connecting material to tell the story of Cluny and Crocker's first year at Huxley College, and I've been determined to get it finished for about three years now.

Maybe by next summer?

Mike

>>Baal Bunny
Oh, OK, I guess I misunderstood something I read about it. I hope work on it goes well! I would really love to read it :twilightsmile:

Can you let me know when it comes out so I can buy a copy?