何ってたか、てめえ？特殊作戦群の卒業クラスでは一番だった俺は無数のアルカイダに反して極秘の使命に関わったし、公認キルは３００人以上なんだぞ。游撃戦兵で、自衛隊の最高の狙撃兵だ。てめえなんてありがたりの目標、それだけ。間違いない、この世に見たことない正確にぶっこわすぞ。ネットでそんな悪い口なんて許せると思うのか？考えなおせ。話しながら日本中のスパイネットワークを呼んで、IPをたどってるので、嵐のために準備を。生活と言う可哀想さの殲滅を持ってくる嵐だ。お前はもう死んでいる

There are a lot of fun details in this one, but my favourite is definitely the towels at the end. A slow scroll down the artwork tells a fun story of naiive heroism, then crushing reality, further horrors, and finally a soft landing and a comedic ending. I like it. The only thing I don't understand is the end of "line three", right after the crushing log trap. There appears to be some statues? Maybe an elevator? And a fan on the wall? And does something activate the trap door? It's not clear to me.

Favourite though. Love the creativity.

This piece is particularly dazzling. I am trying to see a shape in the darker parts of the image, but maybe there isn't one.

Excellent title too. Really stirs the imagination.

The murky, blurry edges and the soft brown colour behind the silhouette makes me think of a forest fire that's either in the distance, or close-by yet dying out. But perhaps I just have fire on the brain. I often do.

I've always liked the contrast created by white-with-black-outline next to black-with-white-outline. It makes it seem like she's not simply holding a black flower but a flower that has sucked the life out of everything around it and left no trace. The harsh interface between the rose and her hands adds to this.

I did not have any time this weekend so I'll have to give this one a pass. Next time for sure (ha, ha, ha)

>>GroaningGreyAgony
ty gga! I will comment on em l8r

Thank you for drawing me this spider, GGA, and for including the correct number of legs.

There is something devilishly funny about receiving such a glowing comment, and to talk about how this story was clearly mine privately with you over Discord, only for it to place last because it was at the bottom of the only slate it was on, and for you to guess someone else wrote it.

Genuinely great entertainment. It's too bad we don't have more commenters and voters but the juxtaposition between this comment and the results page is too funny for me to be mad.

<3 u >>Monokeras. Hope to see you in the next round!

The flow of the dialogue and prose is stilted in this story. Stuff like "One good reason for living up that north" and "Each day its burden. It is vain to grieve or rejoice in things to come, which may never come to pass." Also Stella's eyes "hopping" from one pony to another. Just little strange ways of speaking of describing things that hindered my reading.

Also, I know that single quotes are used for dialogue in Europe e.g., but is there anywhere where the single quotes are on the inside of the commas and periods? That really threw me off. Also, there's a series of lines from NMM that are missing the quotes at the beginning to show that she's still talking after the line breaks.

I was also confused by the reveal, because it left me wondering if Sombra had intentionally created this trap to bring about NMM, and if so, how on earth did he predict that, and if not so, then why exactly did he make the pool? There's also extra information in the final paragraph that hints to a much wider story but doesn't actually add to the minific or the twist ending. The fact that Sombra has a different name, that he's meek and bashful instead of how we know him, that Stella has been trying to protect him. It might have fit better if the mirror's creator was introduced earlier in the story, but all that info gets in the way of the twist.

And who is Stella, anyways?

So many questions!

Thanks for writing.

I liked this one as it's quite well contained--it's a clear story, just a few characters and an ending that's not rushed. I suppose my critique of it would be that I didn't really care much for the protagonist--either as a hero or as a buffoon. I just didn't get to know him that well, so I didn't really relate to the Jester's impatience with him.

Overall the writing is quite pretty, though, and I especially enjoyed the final line.

Like the previous entry this one seems like too much story for the scope of a minific, and it ends quite quickly. Dazzle's sleuthing takes up most of the story and is hard to understand because of how fast it moves and how many moving pieces there are, and then the last three paragraphs go even faster. You lost me there. I also would have thought that the spiritual aspect of the story would have been more prevalent, but it only shows up in the last two paragraphs.

Adagio's stripping of Sonata's agency also leaves me with a poor taste in my mouth. At least, I think she's using siren powers to get her to shave her head. Made me feel icky. You couldn't have just explained what was happening to your friend? You had to mind melt her?

There's a decent amount going for this story. Mostly in the dialogue. But I think the scope of the story you were trying to tell was bigger than the minific can contain--the ending two sentences stop the conflict suddenly when it's not really finished yet. Still, it's giggleworthy! Was a strong entry this round.

Thanks for reading y'all, not really sure how I pipped georg's story given the vote spread but I'm not going to look too closely at it and just say thanks.

Was good to be back in some small way. I'll try and be around for the next one too.

thx for the reviews Old El Pasco & Princess Mononokeras

>>Pascoite
>>Monokeras
Ditto. I had no idea.

>>thebandbrony
>>Rao

Thanks, guys. Quiet round, but it's always nice to get some feedback.

Be well
M-

Okay sure, Writeoff, I'll write my review a second time. No problem. Feel free to erase my work any time you want.

Ahem.

So, I liked this story the whole way through. It sets up the conflict nice and succinctly, the character work is nice, and then it ends. Oh.

It felt short a resolution, is my point. Twilight's "I'm not." feels like it should preceded a scene break, not end the story altogether. Like my boi Band up there, it raises questions about why Twilight isn't surprised. And those questions have answers! They're just not here. Celestia likes pranks and all, but woof. She doesn't seem to type to force Equestria into default.

And maybe you ran out of time? Because we are only just above the word limit. Either way, thanks for writing and participating, and good luck in the shakedown!

This is quite lovely. I struggle a bit, engaging with Pinkie Pie stories, though. She's strange, and that's the point, but that makes it hard to read her antics sometimes. So someone used the kitchen. What's the big deal? I yearned for a straight-man in the scene to give Pinkie the raised eyebrow and ask what exactly she was doing, so that I can point to them and say "Yeah, what they said." With Pinkie on her own, I'm just supposed to take her silliness at face value that something is wrong.

Speaking of something being wrong... nothing is. it felt strange that the conclusion to Pinkie's Pinkie Sense Attack was that "something was wrong." Her sense is always proven accurate eventually, although it may take some interpretation to find out how it was accurate, but here, nothing is wrong. Things are actually pretty right.

Plus, "the flour bags are closed with a different coloured clip for every day of the week so the flour could keep track of time?" That's... really weird. And what would lead the kids to using a different colour clip anyways instead of reusing the one that was already on the bag? How about just... there's less flour than yesterday? A new bag's been opened. Is that not enough of a clue?

I dunno. Overall me likey, it's a very complete and contained story. It just seems like it's missing something to really elevate it, although the only thing it may be missing is a character I like so I dunno :S

Thanks for writing!

Splitting 1250 words into four scenes is tough. Spreads your story right thin, it does. And for a cerebral story about dreams, what's real, and what's fake? Man. I'm sorry, but I'm totally lost.

So we have one chase scene which Twilight thinks is not a dream. We line break when Twilight wakes up, and have a bed scene which Twilight thinks is real. Then a line break that accompanies no transition, we are just asleep again and experiencing one more chase scene that isn't a dream (according to Twilight), and then we wake up mid-scene without a line break. And then we line break into a fourth scene that's a direct continuation of what was just happening ahhhhhhhhhhhhh—

I'm all for stories where the reader is left to come up with their own theory, but there's a fine line between an open-ended story and a story where little to no clues have been presented as to what's going on. I'm unfortunately not the type to fill in gaps very well, and the only conclusion I could come to is that Celestia is torturing Twilight and secretly hates her. I had to come to the comments to see the recursive dream idea. But whose to say these scenes are even sequential? And since when did Sombra have anything to do with nightmares? Wasn't he more of an illusionist? AND WHY DID WE LINE-BREAK MID-SCENE??

Sorry. I'm too lost. There are many ways out of this forest, but I have no compass, and have been snared by thickets.

Thanks for writing, though! And good luck with your bad self.

This was fun! Me likey. I only wanted to bring up one thing, which is the reveal.

Twilight took a closer look at the painting. The crowd of stylized friends and neighbors marched in perfect lock-step, driving spears through Discord’s paint-splotch heart.

The canvas was also screaming very quietly.

“Well, no harm, no foul,” Twilight said with a shrug. “Congratulations Starlight! I don’t know how the painter’s guild will react to being made redundant, but if they survived the invention of the camera, I’m sure they’ll survive you.” Twilight turned around, took a long, gratifying sip of her ultra-refined-sugar-and-a-little-bit-of-coffee drink, readjusted her bag on her shoulder, stopped, frowned, and turned around. “Wait.”

She marched back over to the painting and put her ear to the canvas. Sure enough, she heard a tiny, high-pitched chorus of screams coming from the canvas.

Twilight leapt back.

So, we don't really get anchored into Starlight's or Twilight's perspective in this story, and for something slice-of-lifey and comedy-y like this, that's not that important. Comedies are omniscient all the time. But the narrator shouldn't be figuring stuff out moments before our two leads do.

When Twilight approaches the painting, we essentially hunker down into her perspective, and when the painting is revealed to be screaming, she says "no harm, no foul". Wait, wh—Twilight! It's screaming! Much harm, many foul!

And then there's a second reveal in the next paragraph, when Twilight catches up, but we've already heard that it's screaming. Why is she second in line?

Here's the thing: The line "The canvas was also screaming very quietly." as its own separate paragraph, is the perfect reveal. Shit's funny. The moment that line is read is the moment Twilight should be leaping backwards.

And sorry to harp on this, but that joke is the fulcrum of the whole story. I'd argue it's as important as the opening, for a story like this.

THAT'S ALL FROM ME HOPE I'M HELPFUL GOOD LUCK IN THE CONTEST

Okay so this sounds like a premise for a novel. I'm not surprised people are asking for more; I want more too.

But here's the thing, as interesting as the premise of a reborn city is, I don't care yet about anyone yet. I don't care about Brass Tacks, and I don't care about the recipient of this memo. I have no context outside of this note as to what's going on, and Brass Tacks' opinion of the situation is all that I have to go on.

If you do expand this at all, I highly recommend starting at the beginning (hue hue). Let's meet the new archivist before anything goes wrong, because they're the main character here, presumably. It would be great to find out about them, what they think of the new job, maybe have Celestia welcome them in and hoof-wave away the fact that the position has a lot of turnover, that sort of stuff. Oh, boy, what an exciting position! Hey, what's this note? Oh. Oh dear.

By the way, didn't you get the memo? This is a Season 1 ponies round. Mentioning Celestia is simply not going to meet our quota. Minus three points.

Thanks for writing :V