>>Bachiavellian
Keep in mind my memory over the past few years has been really bad for medical reasons.

And there's nothing to apologize for. You're not the ones who drilled it into the ground.

>>Bachiavellian
YOU!

(I didn't remember you fessed up to it)

EDIT: Wait, this one's more appropriate.

>>Gander
I've been warned about your kind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrVNwqbH0kA

>>Miller Minus
Can I please stop writing fiction now

I have to grade exams :raritydespair:

I'm currently writing something for the R-Rated competition and I didn't even want to enter that anymore but I can't stop my hooftappity halp

The biggest problem here far and away is that the story is mostly telly exposition, and it's super-detailed, massively complicated, long-winded tell.

If I were writing this, I'd start by showing the disaster. Or, if you want to start in the wastes, have a flashback to the disaster very early on. Don't tell us what happened, show us. This is especially relevant when what you have to show is incredibly theatrical! Who wouldn't want to write word-porn about Amblegeddon? Who wouldn't want to show us the Mane 6 surviving and coping, or Fluttershy's funeral? If you're pressed for time or space, keep in mind it doesn't take many words to do this, but even a few words with some questions unanswered is better than telling us rote. This is a wasted opportunity, and without it the story languishes in exposition.

Same thing for Discord telling Twilight what happened. Please don't give us paragraphs of Discord telling us the technical details of the past. Do a flashback. Show us.

It was a skeleton, it had no gender.

Show canon disagrees.

One huge unspoken issue here is that even if they save the world, Discord will lose his mind yet again when Fluttershy grows old and dies in sixty years. He'll probably try to go back in time yet again to be with her, and what effect will that have? Her mortality and its effect on him needs to be addressed or at least lampshaded, because anything they do here is at best a very short-term fix for his loss. There's no way he wouldn't be aware that all he's doing with centuries of effort is potentially buying another small dose of his drug.

The ending is a little weak. Part of the reason for this is that your explanation for what Twilight needs to do differently is not as cohesive as it needs to be.

You tell us that Twilight's despair is lifting, but I'm not seeing it with show, nor does it seem believable. The story at that point is terribly bleak, and Discord is starting to cry. Convince me better.

I agree with >>Posh that switching from Rarity to Ocellus is a mistake, especially since you also show us Starlight's personal thoughts between the two. It seems like the primary reason you do this is so you can have a surprising reveal at the beginning of the story, but there are other approaches you could take that don't necessitate glomming onto Rarity's headspace. Maybe have the same character who sees the reveal also help to defeat the Pseudocellus (which is totes what Twilight would call it) so we can stay consistently with a character who can appreciate the payoff. Here you're toggling between perspectives and it doesn't help the story.

However, I don't agree that there's anything wrong with the title, nor do I think it's intended to be meta. It just sounds like a response to the title of the picture that inspired the story. In FiM they've murdered potentially sapient magic beings before, so an exoskeletal golem doesn't seem like a big ethical quandary to me if you're not focusing on that aspect of it (though it's fun to do that for drama).

Starlight said, thinking to herself.

Totally confused here. Did she say it, or did she think it to herself? Context suggests she said it out loud. Choose one. "You may also want to use formatting to separate the two," said Trixie. Gosh I hope I'm not offending the author with my comments. I'm always so bad at this. I have no right to criticize anypony here. What's wrong with me? Why am I such a bad person who needs to die? Forgive me I'm sorry I'm not crazy I'm not crazy. Thank goodness nopony can hear my thoughts. Whew, she thought, badpersonbadpersonbadperson.

vagina

Gallus, Silverstream and Smolder emptied the contents of their jars on Pseudo Ocellus.

You have an issue with microparagraphing. This is a problem I have in my writing, and you have it a little worse than I do. During dialogue it's okay to have a single paragraph be a sentence, but normally you want to combine sentences into larger thoughts than this unless you have something super-important to isolate. You need to push yourself to make your paragraphs larger. For this paragraph in particular, it really stands out because it's in the middle of an action sequence and you just hoof-wave over all the action with a single sentence paragraph that says "this stuff happened". But there are other less severe examples throughout.

"I take that as a sign that I should stop reading for a bit."

Not sure if Twi would say this, especially since the crime in question is she just has a book in her office? I'm not sure why having that particular book is a bad thing.

The payoff is very flat because we already knew Ocellus was going to ask Sandbar that. Make it a surprise.

Okay, I give up. I'm ranking this one near the top.

It'll be very funny if it turns out I wrote it.

>>Pascoite
I admit when I say "realize" the syllables are so close together you can hear two when I'm actually pronouncing three. It's more how I think about it in my head that controls how I see it in a poem.

*** ROGER ***

The "Last event" section needs to be "Recent events" and put stuff that has concluded in the past five days to a week. This event never appeared there for any length of time because two events ended simultaneously.

Somepony please get this suggestion to him, I dunno if he'll see this and I can't join the chat.

>>Posh
It's rough, because the story is otherwise excellent. This would be a solid candidate for first place were it not for that one issue.

It might still make first place, actually. The story I really like isn't likely to do well because it's too disturbing, and I still think this one tops all the others I've read so far. I still need to finish two of them, though.

It would be really, really weird if I end up top-slating this story, or more likely ranking it second after the one that was practically written for me. Abstention is also likely. I'm not sure what to do here. The writing is amazing but it's so painful to read and the ending doesn't carry through the evil, so that theme seems unintentional.

>>Pascoite
I can't pronounce realize in two syllables unless I'm trying to mangle it, so in a poem it should be three (for me). I wouldn't see it as two unless you made it re'lize.

By far the biggest problem with this story is that Timber Spruce, like Flash Sentry, is a total Gary Stu. You make it even worse by having him save the day with magically incredible athletic prowess (he even saves her mother's life!), having him be perfectly understanding of Twilight's flaws and immediately forgive them, his only emotional development is that he's shy about making a good impression on Velvet because, being perfect, he desperately wants to be Twi's boyfriend, and so on. It's irritating beyond words. His Gary Stuness is just terrible, and it makes him incredibly boring and grating. He needs some flaws to show through, even in a story of this length. You did it for Sparkle and Velvet, so I know you can do it for him.

There is definite sexual tension between Timber and Velvet in the first part. I don't think you intended this, but it's there. You're describing his charm, she's evaluating him, and cursing the fact he isn't Sunset, and the way it's framed it seems like she's irritated by his positive demeanor because she's responding to it personally. It doesn't make sense that she'd be irritated by him being too perfect, which I think is what you were trying to imply.

If you go this route, you need to indicate why Velvet would be attracted to Timber aside from his looks, and I think we need to see evidence of what she sees in him in order to understand why she's tempted: is she dissatisfied with her husband, or midlife crisis, or envious of her daughter's youth, or what? If you don't want to go that way, you need to more clearly illustrate that Velvet has distaste for him, and give us a hint as to why (maybe experience with former dates) because his Gary Stuness really makes it weird that anypony wouldn't like him immediately. That factor is not coming across right now, so it's creepy, and gets worse when he jumps on top of her.

Twilight's parents decided "long ago" (assumedly when she was small) to allow her to essentially raise herself, with no restrictions? Without even bothering to check up on her, unless she specifically comes to them for help? She almost burned the house down when she was twelve and that makes them watch her less! This isn't just free-range parenting, it's positively negligent. Children aren't tiny adults, and this is way too much. She doesn't even seem to care that she almost died today, or that her daughter could have killed herself. She just says "oh, sometimes I worry a little". Horse jesus, lady. You're a terrible, terrible parent.

By "wagging his fingers at Twilight", did you mean "waving at Twilight" or maybe "wiggling his fingers"? Wagging means waving side to side, and the only finger you can wag is the index finger, which is done to scold somepony.

I refuse to believe Twilight's middle name is "Matilda", or that anypony in this universe would be named "Timothy". Unless they're a Pie.

"I'd do it myself, but I was in such a hurry to get down here last night that I forgot my geode." You lost me.

I'm pretty sure Velvet would have Tylenol in the house. Offering somepony a pain reliever they all-but-certainly have access to in a modern household is presumptuous and weird. Oh, but wait: why miss an opportunity for Timber to be a Gary Stu even more! Maybe you could have her cough too, so he could pull a lozenge out of his ass for her. And then he can go volunteer at the homeless shelter! :trollestia:

(Do you see why Timber is incredibly annoying?)

The punchline worked perfectly, though if that's the payoff, maybe trimming the story down a little would help make it more solid.

That said, the story would be much more amusing if Twilight Sparkle had shit herself. Okay, maybe not. But if you were trapped in a bubble for an hour while being threatened by a robot, don't you think you might pee at least a little?

>>The_Letter_J
It was still amusing!

First, story stuff.

So, Nightmare emerged from herself? I'm not sure I follow this.

I think the theme of the story could be a little more coherent. I don't understand what Nightmare represents to Luna psychologically. Why is she tormenting herself this way? How is this different from the Tantabus, apart from it not being magical in nature? What is her subconscious mind attempting to do here? It isn't clear to me. Your subconscious doesn't seek to torture you. That's the opposite of what dreams do for you, even nightmares. They're built to decouple emotional connections from memories so you can move forward.

Since the dreams are not necessarily connected to reality (the last dream for an obvious point), I'm left uncertain as to whether Luna did, or did not, elope with Twilight Sparkle.

I don't quite buy the ending yet. All of a sudden, Luna's fine. How did this happen? What was she thinking or deciding that led to her character growth?

I'm not sure Luna having no control in the realm of dreams is believable. Perhaps she should willingly remain within the dream because she is determined to learn from it.

Now, writing stuff.

This prose is super telly. You need to focus on showing us what Luna looks like, and allow the reader the latitude to determine what this means for her emotional and psychological state. The dialogue is also a little telly in places when you use it for exposition. Sometimes that's okay, but in other places it doesn't feel natural for Luna to directly describe things that happened to her in the past when she argues with herself.

Showing is something you should really push yourself to do. Even when you are showing details, you have a tendency to hoof-wave it a little. I don't know if it's a fear of trusting the reader, or a fear of trusting yourself to do it well. But, for example, when you describe the gore, you have an opportunity to paint with reds, and you don't take it. Instead you say "there's some gore and viscera". You don't have to get super graphic to show gore, and you can still speak poetically, "rivulets of red" instead of "blood" is fine if that mutes the rating. But you really need to work on painting a detailed picture and giving up control over the value judgments to the audience. Showiness is a very difficult thing to do, but it's the soul of good writing.

It should be "younger of", not "youngest of", and "sister's story" rather than "sisters".

EDIT: "Twilight would die by other means, the oracles assured her of that much." What is this about? I feel I'm missing out on important details here, as the reader. Invite me in.

Okay. I've had time to calm my apples.

My long-term memory over the past few years has been poor for medical reasons, so I don't recall if I've ever had to abstain from an entry before, but I might need to do it here. This story is beautifully written, composed, and directed. The only problem is the characterization of the antagonist, but it is a tremendous problem for me. The fact that the protagonist is clearly infatuated with her from scene one only makes it tragic.

I really don't think I'm going to be able to get across how atrocious this is, so let me try to be direct. She never softens one iota. She never does anything nice for him, ever. Everything she does is abusive, usually in the extreme. She literally gets him sent away to a boarding school, TWICE, for EIGHT YEARS of his life, when all she had to do was admit she played a prank on him. He willingly tests a dangerous device for her, and she uses it to cover him in shit and invites all her friends to come take pictures of him when it happens.

This guy is an orphan and he has NO FRIENDS. She is literally his only social contact. By the end of the story his grandmother is probably dead as well. Zero ponies in this story are nice to him. Zero ponies in this story provide him with emotional support, apart from his grandmother in the beginning. It's absolutely horrifying.

This mare is never his friend. She is never nice to him, not once. She never lets up and she loves hurting him. The only time she shows any affection for him at all is a kiss she does specifically to taunt him, which shows that she knows he's infatuated with her and she wants to use HIS FEELINGS to hurt him even more! My Stars. It's absolutely appalling and unconscionable. That line made me physically sick to my stomach. The fact that it worked on him makes it far sicker.

Reading this story makes me want to kill myself and I am not exaggerating when I say that. That's not much of a challenge, granted, but I can't read it again in its current form. You are celebrating the worst kind of bullying that exists. True Heart is far worse than Cozy Glow and Michelle Carter combined. My, what a perverse name to give her.

I'm sorry for how I feel about this story. You're an amazing author. You write so well, and your scenes are perfectly balanced, and everything else about the story is perfect.

All night as I tried to get to sleep I kept running through possible addenda to this story I might post here, but I can't bring myself to write anything involving these characters, even to illustrate a point.

I'm done now.

>>_Moonshot
Had I the time and inclination, I'd look at the 'i' and 'o' letters.

It matters not, however. It's a good poem without the gimmickry.

>>Baal Bunny
The fact that this poem beat the living crap out of everything else is proof Writeoff readers have good taste.

Every single reader top-slated it except for one reader who bottom-slated it, possibly to reverse-effect-poison the slates in order to improve their own poem's score. I can't imagine another reason you'd bottom this.