I'm happy to finally have written something again, though I wish I'd done a better job. I think I got some good takeaways, though, which is always nice.

>>thebandbrony
I'm glad you enjoyed it.

>>TitaniumDragon
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>Bachiavellian
To be honest, it didn't touch me emotionally either, which I think Bach summed up well:

this kind of feels like a "look at this sad pony and be sad" sort of deal

I have a habit of falling back on these sort of stories in minific rounds, and I think I'll learn a lot more if I start moving beyond them. They really don't lend themselves to anything interesting.

>>Bachiavellian
>>Pascoite
Cheers for the helpful feedback in spite of how lacklustre the story was! I really appreciate the detail in these reviews - I knew the story was flat, but was having trouble spotting exactly why (other than the above). These really gave me something to work with.

You appear to have edited this partially in a word processing program and partially directly on the site, because of a difference in what the quotation marks look like.

Good catch.

I'm always partial to well-written fluff, and this is a sweet little piece. I like how well-crafted the atmosphere was that a vague mention

“But the Empire...” he said, continuing the thought his memories had begun.

is enough to nail-down the time period without any further window dressing.

It's not entirely clear why Celestia initially disguises herself - to avoid being seen on the streets? To avoid frightening the couple? - and that drew me out of the story, briefly. But that's a small gripe. On the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

This is well written, and there's not much more to say. You've done an impressive job fitting a full arc into 750 words, and giving it space to breath. You've clearly put a fair amount of thought into the piece, and it shows.

The ending didn't belabor the point, and it didn't need to - nice, short, and sweet.

Going to again echo >>TitaniumDragon's sentiment - the narrative voice was too all-over-the-place for me to really connect with it, and the multitude of out-there details to absorb felt a little high for a minific. Divergence from established canon is fine, but the magnitude of it here, both in setting and in characterization, left me without much to grab onto.

I'm always a sucker for some poetry, and this was neatly done. Some fumbles with the meter here or there - the closing stanza feels like the first line could lose a syllable, for instance - but overall fun. The trading of lines gave it some diversity, the opening stanzas felt like those satirical "Mary Had a Little Lamb" variants, and the closing scene was sweet.

And hey, the ending got a laugh from me.

Nicely done, author.

I play tabletop RPGs with a group of friends. The other week, the DM hadn't had time to prepare anything, so we decided to give Risk a go instead.

It ended up with one person demanding a rematch, and the rest swearing never to touch the game ever, ever again.

What I'm trying to say is cute piece, author.

Most short stories have some sort of narrative arc to them. What's the point, after all, in reading one if nothing actually happens?

This piece didn't have one, but worked in spite of that. The imagery and descriptions were beautiful, and rendered the story less of a narrative and more of a poignant portrait of two people. It succeeds largely on the strength of its prose and insight.

Thanks for the entry, author.

I was trying to figure out how to phrase what I wanted to say here, but >>TitaniumDragon said it well - the story's a sweet vignette, but doesn't aspire to more than that. Which isn't a bad thing. It just is.

However:

“But it’s not!” I blurted, frustrated. “What happens when- when- when we can’t visit you anymore?” I didn’t want to bring it up, not now, not here, but now it was out in the open for everyone to see.

Felt slightly forced? I don't know. Something in the way it was written felt too telly for me, as did other parts, though that's possibly a result of the Writeoff time limit. Nonetheless, something to work on!

The writing's not bad, but it's just so weird. Was Luna a figment of Celestia's drug-addled brain? Celestia becoming a smoking, crack-addicted alcoholic after Luna's banishment feels so off-base that I'm just left mildly perplexed, and feeling like I'm missing something here. The issue with veering this far into personal interpretations of characters is that you risk alienating your audience in the process.

Your prose is fine, author. Your characters of choice for the subject matter confuse me.

Tier: Odd

Hmm, to disagree with the above, this one felt a little jarring. Before we get into that, though, I'm going to be a pedant.

Coco immediately noticed that the doctor winced.

The bulk of the sentence is window-dressing for the last three words - the added length just makes it slower to read.

"Wait, you are not?" Coco asked.

The lack of a contraction feels unwieldy.

She furrowed her eyebrows – after all, weren't therapists supposed...

"After all" makes little sense here, and isn't needed.

I'd also revise the usage of commas:

This, along with his strange fondness of potted plants made her wonder if he was gay.

There should really be one after "plants", and this isn't an isolated case.

The voicing also feels a little off. Consider:

"Nevermind." The doctor rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm begging you, stop trying to flirt with every nurse who comes to your house to administer your medication. Some of the less assertive ones already ended up infected."

"Rolls his eyes" implies a dismissive or sarcastic tone - which is immediately undermined by "I'm begging you". Try reading it out aloud - it doesn't feel like the way anyone would speak.

All-in-all: I appreciate the subversion attempted, but the prose was jarring, and the tone felt off; the story brushed off a city-wide quarantine for comedic effect, and it didn't really feel earned.

There's merit in the idea, but it could use some polish.

Hmmm, this one fell a little flat to me. Nicely written - the opening in particular is quite strong, and the voicing was great. So kudos there! But I feel it doesn't work as well in a minific format. The word count is too constrained to both set up the norm and subvert it strongly enough in the space of 750 words - the sudden shift leaves the reader with whiplash, and by the time we're starting to adjust, the story's over.

That being said, I'd be interested in reading an extended version of this.

I actually liked this one a lot more on second read. Sweet tone, nice prose. Makes good use of its word-count constraints. A greatly original idea? Perhaps not. But nonetheless, solidly executed. Not sure it could be extended much beyond its current length, but that's not the point of the exercise, is it?

Hmmm.

So this feels less like a story in and of itself, and more like a scene from a larger narrative. "Nurse is actually there to euthanize secret agent" is something that requires some degree of investment on the reader's behalf to actually be effective, or shocking. Nothing really happens - the reader is just informed of the status quo. There was a near-botched criminal act in which Celestia intervened. The survivors are to die.

Some of the description is really nice, but there's a lot of it - take the opening paragraph, for example

The white earth pony patted the pockets of her smock, checking that their contents were still present. Satisfied, she donned her nurse’s cap, the red emblem almost identical to the cutie mark on her flanks. A tray with a covered dish lay on a table, which she took in her mouth and laid across her back. After a few measured breaths, she confidently strode around the corner.

Step by step, she trod down the ward towards a door at the end. Flanking the door were a pair of Royal Guard, each clad in their resplendent armor. As she approached, they rose to a more attentive position, looking at her appraisingly.

There's just a lot of [adjective noun]. And whilst setting a scene is all well and good, I don't feel this piece ever rises above that. We get told a setting, and then the piece ends.

Tier: Needs Work

Y'know the thing where someone apologizes for their entry in advance, and everyone sorta just rolls their eyes? Well it's been a solid 18 months since I've written anything, and I've certainly not gotten any better in that time.

So, uh, apologies in advance folks.

Don't have the time to write anything this round, but should be around to write reviews!

The prompt fit perfectly with an idea that I'd had floating around for a while, but it turns out that I'm far too out of practice to get it done by the deadline.

Best of luck to the rest of you.

>>Rao

So I popped in before bed to see what the prompt was, saw "TBD," figured I was early, and then wandered off.

This.

Let's see how much I can get done in the next two hours :|

Memento Retro

I think this is the highest I've ever placed. New PB! Congratulations to all involved, especially ye medalists.

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. Reviews in general seemed to be a lot...friendlier than other rounds? Lots of solid encouragement. The story was pretty much as >>AndrewRogue described it:

I'm pretty sure the idea here is that HE is being temporarily preserved in the sim and they just use the comment about the wife to judge whether or not he wants to live like that, since informing him directly would be a problem. He chooses to die at the end.

I definitely could've done the voicing of the perspective character a lot better, as a lot of you noted. I think the short stories reach their peak when they explore interesting ideas not to explore the ideas themselves, but to explore them in the context of human relationships; that's something that this piece failed to do. I'll probably convert this to ponyfic, and use the extra word space to flesh it out and develop the persona a little better.

>>Not_A_Hat
Thanks for taking the time to leave a voice review! The shift from horizontal to vertical clicks was meant to highlight the man's realization that there's only a single pair of footsteps despite there being two people walking; at the end, when the 'doctor' vanishes, the pattern doesn't change. In retrospect, it probably doesn't add much to the piece.

>>Ranmilia

Going click click click through a featureless hallway just doesn't do much for me with this presentation.

Fair enough.

Also, maudlin minis about justifying or exploring reasons for suicide are suuuuuuuuper duper played out as a Writeoff motif. It's like the Sad Sunbutt of Original Mini.

Also fair. Thanks for leaving a detailed review in spite of that! I'll definitely try and shift the focus away from the setting in the rewrite, and focus more on exploring the issues surrounding the simulation.

>>horizon

So they have an ethical issue with informing simulated people of their sim-ness ... which we learn by them bringing up the concept of simulation to a simulated being, in a way that causes him to realize he's simulated? :P

Can confirm, gaping plot hole that I just sort of left there.

Surely any simulated reality constructible via modern technical principles would have some sort of interconnection capabilities.

Why is the man being asked if he wants to remain in the sim if death is two minutes out no matter what he does? And why, if they have the capability to indefinitely extend his life, is he not being given the ability to schedule his own death? Putting a deadline on this is extremely disorienting, regardless of which scenario above is true.

More good points that definitely need to be addressed in the rewrite - cheers for the comprehensive feedback.

>>Trick_Question

It doesn't seem like walking through the door should indicate the protagonist not entering the sim, even though I'm neigh-certain that's what your intent was.

The idea was that walking through the door was him exiting the sim. Hopefully that'll be clearer once I clean up the internal logic.

>>libertydude
Glad you enjoyed it. Cheers for the review.

>>Haze >>Monokeras

I think the hints aren't subtle enough, it spells it out a little too cleanly.

I can't really make head and tails of this.

Having these as the first two reviews was mind-numbingly frustrating :P

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
To be clear, I was not commenting on your review; rather, I'm terrible at balancing subtlety when it comes to Write-offs. Normally over-do it, occasionally spectacularly under-do it. So, personally, I agree with the sentiment therein expressed; I've found it better to err on the side of bluntness.

Re. this story specifically; yeah, it's probably not necessary. That being said, I totally missed it the first time.

>>horizon

Disagree. See: the endless regrets about trying to be subtle in the Writeoffs.

Amen.

I'm going to have to agree with >>AndrewRogue here; I enjoyed this one. Nice use of bookends. If not an original concept, then a solid execution thereof.

My largest issue here is how jarringly different the persona's counterparts' personalities are compared to his own sans-explanation; I suppose it's played for comedic effect vis-a-vis the bookends, so it's not entirely unjustified, but it feels a little off.

Nonetheless - a fun read. Cheers, author.

Part of the problem of late reviews is that it's difficult to speak without repeating others. I'm in agreement with >>Ranmilia here; I thought the concept was interesting, the execution was good, and the analogy was clever; nonetheless, the ending fell flat for me, as I wasn't sure what exactly I was meant to be taking away from this. The story started as mildly absurdist; veered into comedy; and finished with the out-of-the-blue death of the narrative persona. Which was funny, in the sense that it's dead-pan delivery successfully shocked me the first time, and tied up a clever story conceit; nonetheless, it didn't do particularly much for me, which leaves me conflicted; in a purely narrative sense, it's a strong ending. In terms of emotional engagement, it's not.

Nonetheless, the story was a good read. Thanks for the entry, author.

Hmmm.

I'm going to have to agree with >>AndrewRogue >>Dubs_Rewatcher >>Ranmilia here; there's no real story here. The absurdity of the guy's actions generates humor, to be fair, but outside of that, the story doesn't do much.

Part of the problem is that we start by establishing that this date is going terribly:

"But first, we need to talk about parallel universes."

Oh my god, I thought, he's starting with that? "I hate you so much," I whispered as my head thudded softly against the laminate of the table.

...and we finish with the natural conclusion thereto, with no twist, or change, or subversion, or subthread, or progress, other than the mounting stupidity of her date:

"That means that somewhere out there in the innumerable universes there's a version of me that's stupid enough to forgive you." I dumped the glass of water out all over his pile of straw wrappers and stood to leave. "Good luck finding it."

There's no arc - the narrator's conclusion merely re-affirms her opening position. I feel as if this could be a good scene as part of a comedy - it is genuinely funny at times - but it lacks the breadth to stand as a comedy in-and-of itself.

Another good laugh. Decently paced, good use of the word-space, unexpected use of the prompt, solid enough conclusion. Thanks for the read, author.

“Hello, all. My name’s Dan…” the Dan to Dan’s right began again.

Heh.

This got a laugh. Solid escalating absurdity played straight. I gather you had a lot of fun writing this one, author; thanks for the ride.