It is time for miniature writings of cartoon horse program to distract us from the rest of the everything!

Oh man, I'm always a fan of unknowable angels. I really like this world that you've built up here of demons raging like monsters or wild animals and angels being more their opposition than having any major care for the humans caught up in the middle. The story has a great air of desperation in big and small aspects, from Lana's need to figure out if her family is safe after her home was destroyed to the simple need for water and survival. I also just like how you wrote the angel's dialogue, I think you did a good job of making an obviously alien creature that could still be mostly understood by the audience.

The Shadows Retrospective Here

>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>KwirkyJ
>>Bachiavellian

Thanks for the comments! I did the initial sketch for this in a somewhat frenzied haze, and ended up liking the mood of it enough to try to expand on it better. It's certainly not very realistic with the skulls being hollow or the shadows being inverted on the ground, but those things just felt right to the mood I was making and I had a lot of fun doing it. It's been a long time since I did something with a ton of pencil shading, or really drew in pencil at all, and I'm actually still happy with it. I'm glad this prompt inspired me to do something, and this drawing inspired others to write!

I really like both this piece and the framing. I would really like the framing better if it didn't have a really obviously edited clump of white in the bottom left though. Even having it match the color of the brick behind it would've been an improvement in my mind, as it is right now it's really distracting unfortunately. I like the texture that chalk on brick has though, and I really like the contrast both in colors and lighting here.

I really love this one. You captured so much of the forest very minimally but very powerfully, and the figures are just present enough to be unsettling. It looks like this is chalk as well, and I really respect your ability to work with that while creating something that looks as crisp as this. Between the general sharp foreboding of the piece and the inversion of "brightest day and darkest night" in the alt text, this has a great, unnerving, wrong air to it.

I'm wondering if this is somewhat Shadowrun inspired, or if I'm just getting that mood from moonlight and crumbling concrete in a big city. I gotta agree with Kwirky as well, don't put yourself down! Shadows really are hard, but you don't have to tell your audience what you think the weaknesses of your piece are. Make as best you can, and let people enjoy it how they will. I do enjoy this, as well! I like that you used a dappled brush for moonlight, and I like the mood that has. If you're working further on lighting, I'd say you should try to mess with multiple shades and intensities of light and shadow. Parts of the rubble pile on the left would probably have darker shading where multiple shadows overlap, and the edges of the light, especially moonlight, are often softer. I do like the composition here and the mood you captured, well done!

The texture to this is fantastic, it gives it an especially otherworldly vibe. I actually like that you can see it through the figures, it gives them an added ghost-like presence on top of them appearing to be floating. Personally I think I would appreciate if the center of the painting maintained the effect of the white paint only being on the texture that it has towards the outsides, but I still love this piece.

>>CoffeeMinion
At the very least, they're comfy and easy to wear.

Uh. So, while I definitely understand why there weren't fics submitted in this current time period... what do artists even do?

Oh cool, drawing first! Been a while since we've had one of these, looking forward to seeing what everyone submits!

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Man, it's been forever since I've seen a MASH reference, especially in a pony fic. I almost didn't get it until the last couple lines, which also do a very good job of tying in another interpretation of "the other side." I did re-read after I understood who Hawkeye was, and I was easily able to read his lines in his voice. Nice job capturing that.

I can honestly say I read Mono's message on mobile and thought it said "get fuck" which I thought could also be appropriate for the Writeoff. In my defense, I am both dyslexic and used to being sworn at.

>>MLPmatthewl419

I second doing another fic based on art round!

Also gonna hopefully participate this time. I've been, uhh, life-changingly sick for the past while now, and I'm hoping there's still something I can make myself do with my time other than stare at walls!

I had an idea. It was a pretty neat idea too, I think. And, as usual when I have an idea I really like, I couldn't write a single sentence of it.

I'm not even going to rush a last-ditch crack comedy this time, I'm just going to go to sleep and hope for better inspiration in the next round. :ajsleepy:

>>Icenrose

"Sure, it's not like anyone's still burning this stuff."

Sid couldn't help but smile as the little girl beamed in happiness, picking up some of the long-cooled charcoal and running back to her friends. The group of kids giggled as they drew patterns across the rocks scattered around the dry and grassy plain, some of them wrestling and smearing the char across each-others backs. A disgruntled sigh brought his attention back around the fire, where the elders still sat.

"You cannot simply avoid this forever, Sid," the eldest warned, "the stars did not choose you to be a caretaker. You must let them go."

Sid wilted, stealing once last glance at the children at play before returning his gaze to their village. Very few fires were left burning, as the sun had disappeared over the horizon some time ago, leaving only a fading soft glow to light the sky. The huts still bustled with activity though, and Sid's eyes were drawn particularly to the fires of the cooking hut. Normally, the warm glow of the cooking fires and the delicious smells of smoked meat would make him overjoyed, but now the lights seemed cold and foreboding, the smoke rising from the chimneys twisting to form chains that slowly reached for him.

"Everyone has their purpose among us," another elder explained, "it is how we have survived where our rivals have fallen. You should be proud to support and feed your people."

"I am proud to help my people, elder," Sid paused, his mind screaming at him to stop there, to simply accept his fate, "but..."

Sid let his eyes wander to the children. Only a few moons ago he was among them, leading them on new adventures against fantastical foes, encouraging them against dragons and spirits, carrying the tired on his own back as they made their way home, a smile on every face. He felt an ache in his chest as he imagined life without them. A life where no loud voices called out their new discoveries so that he would come over and tell them how good at exploring they were. A life where little hands didn't pull at his shirt and stuff flowers into his hair. A life where tears weren't stopped by his gentle words, where fights didn't return to friendships by his intervention.

To him, it was no life at all.

"... what if the stars were wrong?" Sid vaguely felt himself asking.

The silence that followed was so absolute, it seemed as if the wind itself had stopped to let the gravity of his heresy sink in. Sid's eyes met those of the eldest, and he shrunk back immediately from the righteous fury held within. Every suggestion of disobedience fled under that gaze, and under the snarling words spoken as if by an angered god.

"They are never wrong."

>>Trick_Question
... why the fuck did I actually watch Pony and Boy. Oh my god.

...

watches it again

>>AndrewRogue
>>libertydude
>>Monokeras
>>WillowWren
>>Whitbane
>>Ion-Sturm
>>Xepher
>>Dolfeus Doseux



Okay so to come clean, yes I did comment on my own story arguing about author's intent. However, I gotta say I honestly was a bit miffed that people thought I was just adding lesbians for points. I do live in a place where marriage is very open, and I tend to use same-sex couples as much as opposite-sex ones in my stories because I don't feel like either one is "special" above the other or needs justification. Just my two cents there.

Anyways, probably the most disappointing thing to hear about this story was that it was cliche. I googled it after seeing comments about that and, yep, sure enough, this was not nearly as original an idea as I thought it was. :pinkiedespair: However, I really appreciate people not being afraid to label it as such. As somebody who, due to spotty literature education among other things, isn't quite aware of what is and is not cliche yet, it helps me build up to someday writing ideas that are far closer to original.

I am glad to hear that most people found the writing itself well-done, it's always nice to feel like you're tangibly improving. I think, in the future, I'll be focusing more on trying to write tighter and more tangible conflicts. Once I can get those down, well, the sky's the limit!

Thank you again to everybody who commented here. :twilightsmile:

EDIT: Oh, also, the all-caps title is for a reason. The actual doomsday clock updates are formatted in all-caps, so I wanted to hint at that with the title and then confirm it with the last line of the story.

I guess I'm the odd one out here, because I found myself more confused than entertained throughout this story. To me it just seems like the usual villain meets friendship but plots revenge but with a Google watch thrown in for some reason? I'm sorry if this is harsh, and humor is very subjective so this might just not have been my kind of story.

I feel like I had something important to say but then I read Andrew's depressing information about goldfish and now I'm just kinda sad.

This story was kinda funny, but I did feel it pulled me out of the narrative a few times just because I couldn't quite get a grasp of your world's internal logic. I ended up with a lot of questions in my mind about why the fish didn't do anything about its realization, when it seems like the story just wanted me to chuckle. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how you'd fix that and still keep within 750 words. :/

So I started off this round intending to comment on everything in my slate, commented on one story and then got assigned a big coding project. So this time I'm going to try and comment on everything in the finals! Probably!


Since Quill just about curbstomped anything I could say about the meter or flow of this (which is great because boy he knows a lot more then me in that field) I wanted to talk about subject matter.

Somebody above said that this seems too heavy of subject matter for a children's rhyme. I strongly disagree. Some of the most common rhymes I remember from my childhood were very, very heavy and dark when you think about them for more than a second. A child will most likely not understand the heaviness now, but will reflect on it later in life.

That feeling of reflection is really captured here. It's a bit broken by the missing rhymes and breaks in meter, but it still shines through in the piece as a whole. I appreciate this piece a lot for being able to grasp the heart of a children's rhyme as well as the appearance.

Also, this may just be a personal thing for me, but I'd have liked it if you'd used the refrain one more time. Right now, with only one repetition after the initial appearance, it doesn't feel as much like a true refrain. Just once more or so would've made it feel more cohesive imho.

>>WillowWren
I have to agree here. Maybe it's because I live in a place where same sex marriage is very normalized, but I didn't even think for more than a second about the fact that they were lesbian, and I don't think the author thought about it either. If the story emphasized them being lesbian a lot I might've thought the token lesbian was being invoked, but it didn't feel that way.

Though maybe the author was just trying to get the most controversial prize on an otherwise plain story, who knows. :ajshrug:

I actually submitted something I think is not trash for once!

That's, uh, not to say I think it's good. I still wish I came up with a better idea. But at least I didn't write a random comedy in the last hour! Again.

Hmm. For some reason, my phone thinks that this page is in French. Silly phone, images aren't in a language!

In any case, this seems to be an OC replica of one of the Changeling warriors from the Canterlot Wedding episodes. The pose, eyes, race, and hairstyle all point to this being heavily based off of a Changeling that was transforming into Twilight in the episode. You've got a bit of wonky proportion though. The head is bigger than it should be, while the front legs are both smaller than they should be and also appear disconnected from the body by your linework.

Also judging by your linework, I assume you're not the most confident with drawing. Frankly, though, this is a rather good attempt. Many people end up just tracing stuff, but it seems you put in a real effort to try and replicate the pose on your own. Don't get discouraged, especially about proportions. I know people who've been drawing for years and still have proportion problems. That's why references are super helpful at really any level.

Thanks for submitting!

Also, can't remember Moondancer's cutie mark so I might be wrong about this being an OC.

Man, whoever keeps posting "where are those who were before us" is really determined. I don't think I'll end up voting for it, but props for keeping it up.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Reading comment this gave me more of a headache than reading this story did.

I'm going to agree with Hat, this feels like it tries to be too many jokes at once without solidifying any one joke enough to have real punch. I also think you focused on the gruesome nature of the event a bit too much for this to feel like a true comedy. Maybe if you'd described it in less harsh, gorey ways it could've been funnier, but it instead struck a semi-uncomfortable middle-ground.