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Why did I just get the email saying that prompt selection for this writeoff was starting? How am I supposed to redeem myself after last time now?
>>Baal Bunny
I suspect that's the problem right there. "Real" is being pronounced as "reel," losing a syllable. I grew up in basically the middle of the areas >>Pascoite lists, so I naturally pronounce it that way too.
Long vowels:
Followed by liquid consonants--words that rhyme with "eel"
I suspect that's the problem right there. "Real" is being pronounced as "reel," losing a syllable. I grew up in basically the middle of the areas >>Pascoite lists, so I naturally pronounce it that way too.
>>_Moonshot
I thought pretty much the same thing about yours. In fact, I ranked yours second on my slate, right after the one that we all gave first place to.
I don't even think that this was bad, necessarily, but I knew going into it that people around here tend not to care much for meta jokes, and even I didn't think this one was all that funny. I think about all this has going for it is the surprise limerick at the end. And when I read all the other entries and saw how good they all were, I knew I was going to end up very near the bottom.
And remember, I did predict that this would happen:
>>Trick_Question
Thanks! That really is all I was ever aiming for.
I thought pretty much the same thing about yours. In fact, I ranked yours second on my slate, right after the one that we all gave first place to.
I don't even think that this was bad, necessarily, but I knew going into it that people around here tend not to care much for meta jokes, and even I didn't think this one was all that funny. I think about all this has going for it is the surprise limerick at the end. And when I read all the other entries and saw how good they all were, I knew I was going to end up very near the bottom.
And remember, I did predict that this would happen:
Low effort entries
And meta references
Always turn out well
>>Trick_Question
Thanks! That really is all I was ever aiming for.
>>_Moonshot
>>Pascoite
>>Baal Bunny
>>Bachiavellian
>>Trick_Question
>>LoftyWithers
Well, I can't say I'm surprised that this got last place. In my defense, I had originally thought this round started a few days later than it did, so I ended up only having about an hour to put this together.
And yes, this was very autobiographical.
>>Pascoite
>>Baal Bunny
>>Bachiavellian
>>Trick_Question
>>LoftyWithers
Well, I can't say I'm surprised that this got last place. In my defense, I had originally thought this round started a few days later than it did, so I ended up only having about an hour to put this together.
And yes, this was very autobiographical.
>>Trick_Question
Well, that would be appropriate, given the prompt.
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.
Well, that would be appropriate, given the prompt.
This is clearly impressive. It did start to feel like it was dragging on a bit too much for me towards the middle, but that could just be an unavoidable side effect of reading every line twice. And really, this probably gets more impressive the longer it can go on for.
This is also the only entry where I can make a pretty good guess at the identity of the author. Though I am basing my guess on the fact that I have only seen this type of poem once before, and that one was written by one of the authors here.
This is also the only entry where I can make a pretty good guess at the identity of the author. Though I am basing my guess on the fact that I have only seen this type of poem once before, and that one was written by one of the authors here.
>>Anon Y Mous
If that's what the author was going for, then I give them points for trying, but I don't think it quite worked.
If that's what the author was going for, then I give them points for trying, but I don't think it quite worked.
I once had a girl
friend break up with me like that.
I took it better.
I counted your lines.
The syllables weren't quite right
In a few of them.
Still, I enjoyed this.
Haiku are fun to play with.
It was a good read.
friend break up with me like that.
I took it better.
I counted your lines.
The syllables weren't quite right
In a few of them.
Still, I enjoyed this.
Haiku are fun to play with.
It was a good read.
I enjoyed the story this tells, but I agree with >>Baal Bunny that it needs a few more details filled in for the story to flow better. And the last stanza just seems a bit lacking to me. It doesn't really wrap up the story, in my opinion, it just tells us that a lot of time has passed in the human world. But since he was taken from the human world when he was an infant, he shouldn't have any memory of how it was before anyway. I think it might have been better if you got rid of the last stanza or two and then either ended it there or cut back to either the daughter or the changeling for a final stanza or two. The changeling might be the better option because you started with it too.
her brows look like sin
Wouldn't a cyclops have only one brow?
I enjoyed this, but I wish it had used the fact that the characters are monsters more. The bits about the zombie misplacing his foot and his fingers getting caught in her hair were great, and the line about falling in love and falling apart was decent enough, but I wanted more of that.
In fact, I don't think the fact that the girl is a cyclops even matters at any point. She could just as easily have been any other type of monster, and all you would have had to change is a few details about her physical insecurities. While the zombie got those good bits I pointed out above, she didn't even get one groan-inducing eye pun.
It's been about two years since I last did anything around here. But I promised people at Bronycon that I'd be back eventually, and I enjoy writing poems occasionally (even though the last time I did so was even further back than my last appearance here), so here I am.
I have been informed that this is a crossover with Pom Gets WiFi. But even without knowing anything about that game, this is fairly amusing, in a goofy strange way. And it has a good message at the end, so that's nice.
>>Not_A_Hat
Just call your story "Twilight Sparkle Tries to Use a Keyboard" and you'll be good.
Just call your story "Twilight Sparkle Tries to Use a Keyboard" and you'll be good.
>>Fenton
No, I'm pretty sure you're right. I haven't really tried to verify it, but I am fairly certain that part of the problem was that the picture was mostly blue. If there had been more places for all of the mostly-red and mostly-green pixels to fit in, I'm sure the whole thing would have looked better.
And like I said, I was pretty close to submitting that version, so I don't mind you liking it more.
No, I'm pretty sure you're right. I haven't really tried to verify it, but I am fairly certain that part of the problem was that the picture was mostly blue. If there had been more places for all of the mostly-red and mostly-green pixels to fit in, I'm sure the whole thing would have looked better.
And like I said, I was pretty close to submitting that version, so I don't mind you liking it more.
There's one more detail I forgot to add earlier that I wanted to bring up: the nickname "Amy."
Now Amy is a perfectly reasonable nickname for Amethyst. The problem is that it just kind of comes out of nowhere right at the start of the climax. Now maybe I'm just a bit slow, but I stared at that line for several seconds, trying to think if there was anyone named Amy in the show, before I finally figured out that it was supposed to be a nickname for Amethyst.
Yes, you did use the name once before, but that was 5000 words earlier.
Now, if you want "Amy" to just be Sunset's pet name for Amethyst, or something like that, that's fine. That means it makes sense not to use it in the narration or anything like that. But you should at least try to have Sunset use it more, or possibly have Amethyst make some comment about the nickname.
This is, of course, a very minor complaint, but it is something that I think you should be aware of if you plan to do anything else with this story.
Now Amy is a perfectly reasonable nickname for Amethyst. The problem is that it just kind of comes out of nowhere right at the start of the climax. Now maybe I'm just a bit slow, but I stared at that line for several seconds, trying to think if there was anyone named Amy in the show, before I finally figured out that it was supposed to be a nickname for Amethyst.
Yes, you did use the name once before, but that was 5000 words earlier.
Now, if you want "Amy" to just be Sunset's pet name for Amethyst, or something like that, that's fine. That means it makes sense not to use it in the narration or anything like that. But you should at least try to have Sunset use it more, or possibly have Amethyst make some comment about the nickname.
This is, of course, a very minor complaint, but it is something that I think you should be aware of if you plan to do anything else with this story.
I seem to have neglected to comment on this picture.
A few weeks ago, I discovered allrgb.com, and I thought it would be interesting to try to create an image like theirs sometime. Rainbow Dash seemed like an especially appropriate subject for such a picture, and this prompt seemed like a good time to make a picture of Rainbow Dash.
I would have liked to create a picture with all 256^3 possible colors in it, but I think this round would be long over before my computer finished, and the resulting picture would have been too big for this site anyway. I think this size worked as a reasonable compromise though.
In case anyone didn't realize, I wrote the program to create this picture from scratch. The basic algorithm was actually pretty easy to put together. Adjusting it to make it run in a reasonable amount of time and create a decent output was a bit of a struggle though.
As for the picture, I started out with this image that I created from some vectors I found. I probably should have put something a bit better together, but I was running low on time and didn't have much to work with. I really would have liked to have used a picture of Rainbow Dash doing a Sonic Rainboom, just for all of the colors, but I couldn't find anything to use.
When I ran that picture through my program without doing anything special to it, this was the result. Not too bad, but I thought it would look better if Rainbow stood out more.
So after making a few adjustments to the program, I eventually produced the picture I submitted. Okay, that's better, but what if I made the sun and clouds stand out more too?
Unfortunately, this was the result. It might have turned out better if the sun had solid borders instead of gradients and if the clouds looked a bit different, but time and resource constraints got in the way. But even then, the background probably still would have ended up rather purpleish like this. Again, it might have also turned out better if I had made a Sonic Rainboom picture instead of one that's 90% blue, but oh well.
Also, it took something like 30 minutes for my program to create each image, so the entire process was rather slow. I stayed up way too late finishing this, and I only got it in a few hours before the deadline.
>>Fenton
I'm curious to know what you think of the second picture I liked above, and how you think it compares. I did consider submitting that version instead, but I liked this one more.
>>horizon
I'm glad someone here understands me. :p
Yeah, I know that this didn't turn out looking the best, but I was quite happy to see that someone understood what I was going for and appreciated it.
And thank you to everyone else who offered opinions as well.
>>JudgeDeadd
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>Trick_Question
A few weeks ago, I discovered allrgb.com, and I thought it would be interesting to try to create an image like theirs sometime. Rainbow Dash seemed like an especially appropriate subject for such a picture, and this prompt seemed like a good time to make a picture of Rainbow Dash.
I would have liked to create a picture with all 256^3 possible colors in it, but I think this round would be long over before my computer finished, and the resulting picture would have been too big for this site anyway. I think this size worked as a reasonable compromise though.
In case anyone didn't realize, I wrote the program to create this picture from scratch. The basic algorithm was actually pretty easy to put together. Adjusting it to make it run in a reasonable amount of time and create a decent output was a bit of a struggle though.
As for the picture, I started out with this image that I created from some vectors I found. I probably should have put something a bit better together, but I was running low on time and didn't have much to work with. I really would have liked to have used a picture of Rainbow Dash doing a Sonic Rainboom, just for all of the colors, but I couldn't find anything to use.
When I ran that picture through my program without doing anything special to it, this was the result. Not too bad, but I thought it would look better if Rainbow stood out more.
So after making a few adjustments to the program, I eventually produced the picture I submitted. Okay, that's better, but what if I made the sun and clouds stand out more too?
Unfortunately, this was the result. It might have turned out better if the sun had solid borders instead of gradients and if the clouds looked a bit different, but time and resource constraints got in the way. But even then, the background probably still would have ended up rather purpleish like this. Again, it might have also turned out better if I had made a Sonic Rainboom picture instead of one that's 90% blue, but oh well.
Also, it took something like 30 minutes for my program to create each image, so the entire process was rather slow. I stayed up way too late finishing this, and I only got it in a few hours before the deadline.
>>Fenton
I'm curious to know what you think of the second picture I liked above, and how you think it compares. I did consider submitting that version instead, but I liked this one more.
>>horizon
I'm glad someone here understands me. :p
Yeah, I know that this didn't turn out looking the best, but I was quite happy to see that someone understood what I was going for and appreciated it.
And thank you to everyone else who offered opinions as well.
>>JudgeDeadd
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>Trick_Question
This is a story that I would have absolutely loved if I had read it several years ago. But while I still love crackships and appreciate some cute romance, it takes a bit more than that for me to love a story these days. So instead, I'll have to settle for really liking this story. :p
I think a large part of the reason why I like this story is because it does feel a lot like the stories that I did read and love back then. And those feelings might be hitting me in the nostalgia a bit.
Now frankly, I'm not entirely sure what else to say about this story yet. It does a good job of satisfying my emotions, but my mind has some problems with it. Let's see if I can talk them out with myself here.
I think the big one to start with is the climax. Obviously, we all know that this is going to end with Amethyst and Sunset hooking up. The fun comes from seeing how they get there. And you do a decent enough job with the buildup, though the firebird dahlia basically gave away the climax to me. And that climax was fairly lackluster. It's just Sunset saying "okay, let's kiss," and Amethyst saying "oh, this is kinda nice" before she has a chance to remember that that wasn't what (she thought) she wanted. Most stories would have had Amethyst freak out and run away so she could process what had happened and realize and come to terms with the fact that she does like Sunset like that. And while that is pretty cliche, the reason stories do that sort of thing is because they need conflict. And this story is completely lacking in any sort of drama or conflict. There's not even any tension that something will go wrong with the wedding. Even the fact that Sunset had a concussion is easily brushed away.
The biggest source of possible drama that you do keep bringing up is whatever happened during Sunset's visit to Equestria. But nothing comes of it, so that doesn't count.
Now writing a light, fluffy, conflictless story is certainly an option, but I think it also makes the story less interesting. So I think you should consider adding some sort of conflict that either drives Sunset and Amethyst together or temporarily splits them apart.
Of course, part of the problem might be that you ran up against the word limit and didn't have the space to do anything else. But it's something to keep in mind if/when you expand this.
(And if anyone disagrees with what I'm saying here, please let me know. I'm mostly just typing whatever comes to mind, and I'm perfectly happy to be convinced that I'm wrong about this.)
The other problem with the climax is that it's all based on a misunderstanding. Now while I appreciate the subversion of the misunderstanding bringing them together instead of driving them apart, it's not very satisfying. Even if Amethyst was subconsciously trying to impress Sunset the entire time, the fact remains that most of what she did to impress Sunset was completely unintentional, and we know it. The climax isn't very climatic if Amethyst doesn't work for it at all.
I'm also disappointed that Sunset's mind reading powers didn't come into play at all. The dream sequence reminded us all that their powers are a thing and seemed like some decent foreshadowing, especially since there had already been plenty of touching by that point. But we never get any sign that Sunset has read Amethyst's mind, intentionally or not.
In fact, that could have made the climax interesting: Sunset accidentally reads Amethyst's mind, realizes she hasn't been hitting on her this entire time, and starts acting disappointed and hurt. This confuses Amethyst, who tries her best to cheer up Sunset, and eventually it all leads to a confrontation and/or Amethyst realizing that she does like Sunset.
Or you could even just use it to have Sunset prove that Amethyst does like her, even though she doesn't realize it yet.
There's also the old "everyone is lesbians and hooking up with each other" cliche that ponyfics love so much, but that mostly just got eye rolls from me.
While I am very aware that some high school students do drink, it just seems wrong to me that any of these kids would. These are supposed to be the good kids who in a a world right next door to the one made out of sunshine and rainbows. It just doesn't fit right with the tone of the story to me. (Now that I go back and check, I can only find the one reference to Flash drinking, but I thought there were more. Still, I think my point stands.) But maybe you're from one of those places where it's legal to drink at 18, and I shouldn't assume American laws/standards.
But by far the biggest problem with this story is that Sunset doesn't appreciate how great that bone joke was.
In summary, I did enjoy this story a lot. It's definitely not perfect, but I think it's about 80-90% of the way to being great. And I don't think it will be difficult to push it the rest of the way there once you're not limited by the constraints of the writeoff. I look forward to eventually reading the remastered version.
Also, before I figured out what type of story this was at the beginning, I was honestly expecting/hoping that Amethyst and Sunset would stumble through the portal together and somehow get merged together into a bottle of body wash. I don't know where such an idea could have come from.
I think a large part of the reason why I like this story is because it does feel a lot like the stories that I did read and love back then. And those feelings might be hitting me in the nostalgia a bit.
Now frankly, I'm not entirely sure what else to say about this story yet. It does a good job of satisfying my emotions, but my mind has some problems with it. Let's see if I can talk them out with myself here.
I think the big one to start with is the climax. Obviously, we all know that this is going to end with Amethyst and Sunset hooking up. The fun comes from seeing how they get there. And you do a decent enough job with the buildup, though the firebird dahlia basically gave away the climax to me. And that climax was fairly lackluster. It's just Sunset saying "okay, let's kiss," and Amethyst saying "oh, this is kinda nice" before she has a chance to remember that that wasn't what (she thought) she wanted. Most stories would have had Amethyst freak out and run away so she could process what had happened and realize and come to terms with the fact that she does like Sunset like that. And while that is pretty cliche, the reason stories do that sort of thing is because they need conflict. And this story is completely lacking in any sort of drama or conflict. There's not even any tension that something will go wrong with the wedding. Even the fact that Sunset had a concussion is easily brushed away.
The biggest source of possible drama that you do keep bringing up is whatever happened during Sunset's visit to Equestria. But nothing comes of it, so that doesn't count.
Now writing a light, fluffy, conflictless story is certainly an option, but I think it also makes the story less interesting. So I think you should consider adding some sort of conflict that either drives Sunset and Amethyst together or temporarily splits them apart.
Of course, part of the problem might be that you ran up against the word limit and didn't have the space to do anything else. But it's something to keep in mind if/when you expand this.
(And if anyone disagrees with what I'm saying here, please let me know. I'm mostly just typing whatever comes to mind, and I'm perfectly happy to be convinced that I'm wrong about this.)
The other problem with the climax is that it's all based on a misunderstanding. Now while I appreciate the subversion of the misunderstanding bringing them together instead of driving them apart, it's not very satisfying. Even if Amethyst was subconsciously trying to impress Sunset the entire time, the fact remains that most of what she did to impress Sunset was completely unintentional, and we know it. The climax isn't very climatic if Amethyst doesn't work for it at all.
I'm also disappointed that Sunset's mind reading powers didn't come into play at all. The dream sequence reminded us all that their powers are a thing and seemed like some decent foreshadowing, especially since there had already been plenty of touching by that point. But we never get any sign that Sunset has read Amethyst's mind, intentionally or not.
In fact, that could have made the climax interesting: Sunset accidentally reads Amethyst's mind, realizes she hasn't been hitting on her this entire time, and starts acting disappointed and hurt. This confuses Amethyst, who tries her best to cheer up Sunset, and eventually it all leads to a confrontation and/or Amethyst realizing that she does like Sunset.
Or you could even just use it to have Sunset prove that Amethyst does like her, even though she doesn't realize it yet.
There's also the old "everyone is lesbians and hooking up with each other" cliche that ponyfics love so much, but that mostly just got eye rolls from me.
While I am very aware that some high school students do drink, it just seems wrong to me that any of these kids would. These are supposed to be the good kids who in a a world right next door to the one made out of sunshine and rainbows. It just doesn't fit right with the tone of the story to me. (Now that I go back and check, I can only find the one reference to Flash drinking, but I thought there were more. Still, I think my point stands.) But maybe you're from one of those places where it's legal to drink at 18, and I shouldn't assume American laws/standards.
But by far the biggest problem with this story is that Sunset doesn't appreciate how great that bone joke was.
In summary, I did enjoy this story a lot. It's definitely not perfect, but I think it's about 80-90% of the way to being great. And I don't think it will be difficult to push it the rest of the way there once you're not limited by the constraints of the writeoff. I look forward to eventually reading the remastered version.
Also, before I figured out what type of story this was at the beginning, I was honestly expecting/hoping that Amethyst and Sunset would stumble through the portal together and somehow get merged together into a bottle of body wash. I don't know where such an idea could have come from.
The biggest problem with this story is that it ends just as it's getting started, but I'm sure you're aware of that. Since you're about 3000 words short of the limit, I'm guessing that you just ran out of time.
While the "Twilight tries to find out about something Celestia is hiding from her" and "Twilight ruins everything because she won't leave well enough alone" cliches are hardly new, they're not as overdone as something like "Alicorn is sad because immortality," and this story was interesting enough to keep me engaged the whole way through.
I was glad to see you address the "Why don't you just go talk to Celestia?" and "You know this is a terrible idea, why are you still doing this?" problems that most stories like this seem to ignore or provide unsatisfying answers to. While I still found myself saying "Come on, Twilight, you know this can't end well," I do think her actions were justified and in-character.
I also enjoyed seeing Twilight bring in Starlight and Moondancer to help her. Why write a story about Twilight being Twilight when you can write a story about three Twilights being Twilight? All you need now is a way to add Sunset and SciTwi. Oh, and Zecora is always a nice touch too.
The one thing I would change about all that is that it seems a bit odd that Starlight and Moondancer don't know each other yet. I may have been mistaken about this, but I was under the impression that this story takes place a few years into the future, so they should have had plenty of time to meet, especially since you have Twilight say that she wants them to meet. And that line was basically a throwaway, so there's no reason you couldn't change it, unless you were setting up for a scene later on where they do meet for the first time. Either way, I recommend you adjust that line a bit or make the timeframe of this story a bit more clear. But of course, this is really just a nitpick.
Like I said at the beginning, the biggest problem with this story is that it's missing its second half. Once you write that part, I'm sure it will be a great story. And while this didn't end up being my favorite of the three stories based on my picture, it was a very close second.
And as a final note, because the nonsense word "Quifons" is so important to this story, I was honestly expecting it to end by somehow working "Quifons" into a feghoot. And I must admit that I was slightly disappointed that it didn't.
As I mentioned earlier, I've only read the three stories that used my picture as a prompt.
Of the three, this is by far the worst.
First of all, I don't see how this connects to either of the pictures it uses as prompts. I could almost see this using Protector as a prompt, since it at least includes Spike and his love life, but I don't see how these two relate. Unless it's because this is a trollfic and you think those pictures were submitted as trolls. I can't speak for Super Trampoline, but at least some people (and by that I mean Dubs) seem to think that Tall was a serious and excellent entry, and I didn't intend mine to be a troll either.
Now the story itself is...nonexistent. It's a few sentences about someone reading a letter surrounding several paragraphs of spam mail. That spam doesn't say anything interesting, and I found myself immediately bored and skimming through it. So I guess you get points for writing realistic spam, but that's not something to be proud of. And while some of the characters' reactions to the spam were at least slightly interesting, it doesn't really matter because you immediately cut to the next boring letter. I didn't even have any real reaction to Spike's letter because I had been bored and disengaged with the story for so long by that point. What surprised me the most was that you just end with two empty sections at the end. But as far as I can tell, those are probably just there because you just stopped when you hit 2000 words and forgot to clean up after yourself.
And there's nothing to tie it all together either. If you had ended the story with a short scene about how these letters were all part of the CMC's latest plan to get their cutie marks, or Flim and Flam's latest scheme to earn some bits, or Discord doing some particularly unimaginative trolling, then there would have at least been a story. It probably wouldn't have been a great story, since you would have had to come up with something extraordinary to justify 2000 words of empty spam, but it would have at least been a story then.
Or you could just listen to >>AndrewRogue and spend more time on the characters' reactions to the letters and less time on the letters themselves. That would work too. After all, we've all seen spam before. We know what it looks like. You only need to give us a few sentences and we'll all be perfectly capable of inferring the rest of it. And then you could spend more time showing us the characters' reactions which really were the most interesting part of this.
I'm sorry I'm being so harsh, but I think the fact that you used my story as a prompt just made this feel more personal to me. But luckily for you, I doubt that I'll be reading any stories not based on my art, so you don't have to worry about me putting this at the bottom of my ballot. (As it happens, the other two stories are on my initial slate, so I might still rank them (if the site will let me rank only two stories), but this one isn't.)
Of the three, this is by far the worst.
First of all, I don't see how this connects to either of the pictures it uses as prompts. I could almost see this using Protector as a prompt, since it at least includes Spike and his love life, but I don't see how these two relate. Unless it's because this is a trollfic and you think those pictures were submitted as trolls. I can't speak for Super Trampoline, but at least some people (and by that I mean Dubs) seem to think that Tall was a serious and excellent entry, and I didn't intend mine to be a troll either.
Now the story itself is...nonexistent. It's a few sentences about someone reading a letter surrounding several paragraphs of spam mail. That spam doesn't say anything interesting, and I found myself immediately bored and skimming through it. So I guess you get points for writing realistic spam, but that's not something to be proud of. And while some of the characters' reactions to the spam were at least slightly interesting, it doesn't really matter because you immediately cut to the next boring letter. I didn't even have any real reaction to Spike's letter because I had been bored and disengaged with the story for so long by that point. What surprised me the most was that you just end with two empty sections at the end. But as far as I can tell, those are probably just there because you just stopped when you hit 2000 words and forgot to clean up after yourself.
And there's nothing to tie it all together either. If you had ended the story with a short scene about how these letters were all part of the CMC's latest plan to get their cutie marks, or Flim and Flam's latest scheme to earn some bits, or Discord doing some particularly unimaginative trolling, then there would have at least been a story. It probably wouldn't have been a great story, since you would have had to come up with something extraordinary to justify 2000 words of empty spam, but it would have at least been a story then.
Or you could just listen to >>AndrewRogue and spend more time on the characters' reactions to the letters and less time on the letters themselves. That would work too. After all, we've all seen spam before. We know what it looks like. You only need to give us a few sentences and we'll all be perfectly capable of inferring the rest of it. And then you could spend more time showing us the characters' reactions which really were the most interesting part of this.
I'm sorry I'm being so harsh, but I think the fact that you used my story as a prompt just made this feel more personal to me. But luckily for you, I doubt that I'll be reading any stories not based on my art, so you don't have to worry about me putting this at the bottom of my ballot. (As it happens, the other two stories are on my initial slate, so I might still rank them (if the site will let me rank only two stories), but this one isn't.)
>>CoffeeMinion
And what, exactly, is the problem with that strategy?
And how are you ranking the stories, if not by how much you like them?
Not knowing what to say about the art or how to give helpful comments is one thing. I can understand that completely. But if you're able to form enough of an opinion to say "I like that one," then you can vote on them.
Yes, you might not know enough to understand or appreciate how much work went into a piece. But guess what? That happens in the writing rounds too. It's happened to me with writing and art. And yeah, it kinda sucks when people don't properly appreciate your work, but that comes with the territory. It's something that we all just have to accept. And if anything, it's easier to understand intentions and effort in the art rounds, because the artists have the option to add a caption to explain themselves.
You might not be a professional art critic, but we're not professional artists. Most of us also aren't professional authors or editors. We don't let that stop us, do we?
(Note that I didn't vote on any of the art the pieces because I have no bloody clue how to meaningfully rank art other than according to whether I liked them.)
And what, exactly, is the problem with that strategy?
And how are you ranking the stories, if not by how much you like them?
Not knowing what to say about the art or how to give helpful comments is one thing. I can understand that completely. But if you're able to form enough of an opinion to say "I like that one," then you can vote on them.
Yes, you might not know enough to understand or appreciate how much work went into a piece. But guess what? That happens in the writing rounds too. It's happened to me with writing and art. And yeah, it kinda sucks when people don't properly appreciate your work, but that comes with the territory. It's something that we all just have to accept. And if anything, it's easier to understand intentions and effort in the art rounds, because the artists have the option to add a caption to explain themselves.
You might not be a professional art critic, but we're not professional artists. Most of us also aren't professional authors or editors. We don't let that stop us, do we?
I am honestly quite surprised with how well-received this was. I mean, it didn't actually do that well in the end, but the competition was stiff, and I at least got some nice comments. And if it weren't for the people who thought that this was the absolute worst thing in the competition, I wouldn't have finally gotten the much-coveted "Most Controversial" award. So everything worked out in the end.
As you might have imagined, this picture began many months ago when I came across a bottle like the one in the picture. I immediately observed that the "Sunset Amethyst" sounded like a pony name. This thought was reinforced when I continued to see that bottle in the shower over the next few months. When these art rounds started, I knew that I had to find a way to submit a picture of the bottle to one of them. Luckily, it didn't take long for a prompt I could work with to come up.
I'm glad I was able to make this idea work, and that it prompted some stories. The three stories that came from this are the only ones I've read so far (and likely the only ones I will read), and I'm glad that I'll finally be able to comment on them without the risk of breaking anonymity (or at least raising the suspicions of anyone paying attention).
>>horizon
You always say the nicest things. :D
Yeah, that's a blanket that I hung up when I realized that the wall wasn't going to make a decent background. It was the best thing I had available, and I thought it worked well enough. I did think it would have been nice to put one of those castle playset things in the background, but I don't have any.
As you might have imagined, this picture began many months ago when I came across a bottle like the one in the picture. I immediately observed that the "Sunset Amethyst" sounded like a pony name. This thought was reinforced when I continued to see that bottle in the shower over the next few months. When these art rounds started, I knew that I had to find a way to submit a picture of the bottle to one of them. Luckily, it didn't take long for a prompt I could work with to come up.
I'm glad I was able to make this idea work, and that it prompted some stories. The three stories that came from this are the only ones I've read so far (and likely the only ones I will read), and I'm glad that I'll finally be able to comment on them without the risk of breaking anonymity (or at least raising the suspicions of anyone paying attention).
>>horizon
the art here is kind of at right angles to the average submission. But I can say unambiguously that this was worth a grin. It certainly works on a storytelling and humor level, with its commentary on the naming conventions of the show's Twilight-analogues, and its composition tells the story at a glance.
You always say the nicest things. :D
I suppose I would have appreciated seeing, like, some sort of printout (or scribble) of Canterlot castle as a background rather than the ... fabric?
Yeah, that's a blanket that I hung up when I realized that the wall wasn't going to make a decent background. It was the best thing I had available, and I thought it worked well enough. I did think it would have been nice to put one of those castle playset things in the background, but I don't have any.
>>Haze
It never even occurred to me that you might have made the stamps yourself. Knowing that definitely makes this more impressive to me.
It never even occurred to me that you might have made the stamps yourself. Knowing that definitely makes this more impressive to me.
Paging WIP