Oh, holy cow, my prompt was selected :o

Does this count as my first gold medal? :O :O :O

-insert joke about scrambling to submit story at The Last Minute-

I funny wheeee :>

>>007Ben
Poetry doesn't exist :o

Howdy everybody,

So it's 24 hours till the prelims end and I want to call attention to some under-reviewed stories. We have a pretty even spread of reviews this time around (about 75% of the entries have 4 or 5 reviews, which is great!) but there are still a few that could stand to have another review. The following entries have 3 reviews as of now:

5. Wounds
15. Pocketful of Time
17. Knight
36. Stasis
39. One Day I Shall See a Bird
46. Protracted Plight

I've already reviewed Pocketful of Time, Stasis, and Protracted Plight, so if I have time to review more today, I won't be able to review those (I mean, I could, but I've already reviewed them so it'd just be a comment of me saying the same thing I said before >.>).

Let's bring 'em all up to 4! c:

Well, the stars aligned and I had a decent idea for an entry. Then I wrote it. Then I finished writing it and submitted it. >.>

I don't imagine it'll do well, but it feels good to break my non-participating streak. I'm back, I suppose. Hi everyone. :p

Well folks, we're doing pretty darn well with reviews so far, but there are just a few more stories that could use some extra love:

5 unique commentors:
In-between the worlds

6 unique commentors:
Why Gardening is So Good for You
Losing the Struggle
Endless Struggle™
To Be Free
Machine

Let's bring 'em all up to seven! It's a good number, after all -v-b

So. I wanted to try something new.

We’ve done title mashups before. However, this time I wanted to try… passage mashups :o

Basically, I took passages from two different stories each and mashed them together. Maybe it’s funny, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s stupid, but I had fun, at least :>

Misquoted from the Writeoff
A picture is worth 2 to 8 thousand words edition

T H E R E I S
N O S U C H
T H I N G
A S H E
A V E
E E
N

"R... And an E. And—I?"

The roar in his ears returned, intelligible in the relative quiet of Crystal Clear's office.

Heaven, it crooned.

"Is that an S?" Sombra asked, reaching up to mop at his brow.

Did your grandmother never tell you that there is no such place?

(from Sombra Visits the Hereafter)

The meal was finished, and Spike had started to clean the kitchen, leaving Twilight Sparkle deep in their thoughts at the table.

Thoughts, ideas, wants, desires flew between the twinned minds. What-do, do-think, think-feel, idea-explore? How-make-query-desire-practical?

“Spike,” Twilight Sparkle called, thoughts collided, bouncing, flying back and forth. “Take a letter.”

"Leeeeeettter," Spike warbled. "D. D is for 'Dear Princess Celestia, signed, Twilight Sparkle’. That's, um, lots of letters though. 'Dear', that's four, 'Princess', plus eight—"

(from Twilight, Up in Smoke)

The Swiftstep Brew faded. Zelabra looked confused for a second, turned to face Zecora… and collapsed with a sigh.

“She has quite the temper, even for one so young. Now, stand aside, for I do what must be done.”

“She isn’t hurt, at least I trust,” Zerrin said, though Zecora could hear the anger in his words. “So I must ask… phoenix dust?”

Zecora nodded.

“That phoenix dust, it’s a helluva drug,” Zerrin said with a bow. “Perks pinions up, and puts a smile on yer mug.”

Zecora replied, “We may be stuck in this hole that we’ve dug, but phoenix dust is still a helluva drug.”

(from Rise of the Path: The Musical)

Less than 12 hours to go and only 2 more fics have just 3 reviews:

36. Stasis
46. Protracted Plight

If you've got a few minutes and you're in the reviewing mood, give 'em a read. Though of course I may not speak for them, I'd imagine their authors would appreciate it :>

Congratulations to the finalists! :D

~ ~ ~

A Decent Joke

So. Here’s a post-mortem.

This was a pretentious little experiment done on a short amount of time (because the contest times changed from noon my time to 6:00am, I guess? So I was in a bit of a panic).

This is supposed to be my super hilarious satire on feghoots. I don’t like feghoots. From a reader’s perspective, they’re clever and fun, but from my perspective (as a writer), they’re not all that clever. Once you come up with a decent pun-chline, it’s not all that hard to come up with the story that comes before it. So the structure you saw was the idea—it starts out innocently enough, then come a barrage of contrived feghoots, then a semi-meta commentary on feghoots, and then kind of a depressing ending.

In my head, the last part was comedic. I thought it would be pretty ridiculous (i.e. funny) for Jackie’s dying wish to be that her husband tell better jokes. But I guess that could’ve used some work >.>

The story’s message is summed up in this exchange here:

“Was it really all that clever, Rhett? Was it so smart?”

Rhett shrugged. “Did you laugh?”

Personally, I don’t think feghoots are all that funny, but hey, if they make people laugh, then who am I to knock ‘em.

>>Ratlab
>>The_Letter_J
I came up with two possible endings for this story. It originally had a happier ending, what I called “the Disney ending”, but at the last minute, I opted for the darker ending, since I thought it’d be funny for Jackie’s dying wish to be that her husband tell better jokes. Apparently I botched the execution of that one >.> I guess I could’ve made it more overdramatic to make it funnier. Probably could’ve played to the absurdity a little bit more. Ah well. Next time. ^^

>>Trick_Question
See above for my reasoning for the ending.

It’s somewhat hard to “Think about how Police Squad actually works” when I’ve never seen Police Squad >.> I might give it a watch later, sure, but I just thought that was presumptive.

I’m not sure if I agree with you on the switch from serious to silly. I think what I’m learning in writing comedy is that people sometimes need jokes to serve as sort of “comedy cues”—indicators that what they’re reading is silly and not meant to be taken too seriously. The problem is, with how short the story had to be, the feghoots might come as less of a surprise if the first part wasn’t serious. Perhaps some light comedy would’ve been a good indicator, but it might’ve undermined the seriousness of a wound like Jackie’s… Hmm. I’ll have to think about this one.

You make a good point on the unrealistic-ness of Jackie’s wound. Her lack of anguish at such a deep gash is my fault. To be able to keep that, I could’ve made a joke out of that, probably, looking back on it, or made the wound less severe. The sudden oncoming of her death is also my fault. After switching to the darker ending, I forgot to change the rest.

>>MonarchDodora

this feels like a quick experiment by a capable author to a tight deadline

Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell. :P The experiment and the tight deadline parts, I mean.

>>Kitcat36
If you've got the time, I say go for it. Neutral-to-negative feedback is still feedback, and you'll have that much more writing experience under your belt. :>