>>Trick_Question
No, it's pretty clear to me that this is about a changeling after the S6 finale - unclear if it's Chryssi or not, but it doesn't totally matter, I don't think.

Not everyone faithfully follows every bit of canon - this fic makes perfect sense if you take the assumption that before the changedlingening, all changelings (except Thorax or whatever) were part of a single hivemind that only works as well as it does because of how many... what are members of a hivemind called? "Individuals" sounds kind of off-the-nose.

dissenting opinion: i loved the genuine well written friendship between Pinkie and Twilight for its own sake, and thought the juxtaposition of it with Starlight and her being left out, and her new "friendships" being fake and forced was both beautiful and obvious. the only thing that takes marks away from that is how many people have whined about "Starlight's redemption being too fast" (Which it was), but if that leads to nice character interaction like this I can't fault it too much

mspaint is the tool of the gods, aliasing in non-pixel-art is incredibly underrated. Using "better" tools won't get you better results, often it just muddies the actual strengths you're showing off here - that is, really strong composition and focus.

>>Winston
"Identifying Marks" just means "don't use your signature or logo". Being obvious is fine, explicitly identifying it is less so.

The eternal struggle of prompt submission: knowing there was a dozen times you though "wow, that would make a great Writeoff prompt" in the past month, and remembering none of them.

Going to be a busy weekend for me, and I'm still not sure I've ever written anything using multiple thousands of words, but we'll see what happens.

Okay, so there's two stories here, and I can't grasp the exact meaning of either. Twilight and Spike have to read this book for some unstated reason before they can leave? Why? I get that the idea being the framing story is that the book drove Twilight nuts, King in Yellow style, and I watched friggen' Danganronpa 3 so, sure, I can accept that. It seems like the framing story would be significantly more effective if Twilight was enthralled by the story and assigned it to Spike as valuable reading, instead of confusingly terrified by it, then?

In the sub-story itself, there should be a sense of insanity and incomprehensible action, and so I think it kind of works there. It's lacking a bit of description though – Whirl is some kind of horrific alien... probably? At first he's "something", and then later has a "new form". Is he robotic in nature, maybe?? If you're going to have a straight gorefic, which I can get behind, at least give me enough details that I think I'm imagining the same thing as you (if not so many that you get DQ'd.) Get some more discrete beats and escalation in there, too – things sort of jump to "And then everyone died!" in the span of two paragraphs, without giving any chance to dwell on any individual bit.

I appreciate the world-building and storyline you present outside the zone, but it's hard to comprehend the status quo. In such a post-apocalypse, who is even writing this description? For who to read? There's a structure you could create with this that only implies these questions, without making them distracting, but by removing so much of the detachment at the end it makes them pertinent.

I don't think that taking a personal tone with the ending is a bad call necessarily, but it's awfully melodramatic and jarring in its current state, when it seems like it should be much more resigned.

I liked this. As noted, it's kind of shallow – there's an emotional hook that's strong, but it doesn't break any new ground or present a meaningful conclusion based on its idea. It mostly just makes me go :(

But it nailed the tone of getting me to go :( and I appreciate that. The pacing and contrast of the emotional bits and the dry science worked very well.

>>Exuno
Alright, the last piece is solved! The image files uploaded, when opened as raw text, have some hints embedded at the end. The first explains

"Do not go there. Just take the URL's keyword, and give that to derpy.me again."

and the second

"Close, but not quite! You need to extract the answer."

Converting it to a .7z and pulling out the files inside gets a .txt titled "Good Job" with a link here and the password "woodenspoon".

And that's that! Fun puzzle, thanks for constructing it. I enjoyed the prose and writing, too – honestly, even with all the riddle and meta elements removed, and just the story submitted by itself, it probably wouldn't have been near the bottom of my slate. <_<

Tom grunted a monosyllablic assent, and seeing Colonel Tom Stafford

Using Tom's name twice separate from each other is awkward, and that's a rough start early on here.

"Hey, Tom, uh. Is your - is your insulation all burned off here? On the front side of your window over here?"

I'm... not actually sure what the specific scene is or what's happening here yet. Which is bad. They're in a spaceship of some sort, obviously, but what are they doing. Why are they just sitting not trying to fix or investigate anything? If Tom is next to Gene, shouldn't he be able to see his window himself?

"Yes, I got it, too.

"Got" what? The burning?

If that was the way the universe was,

But he wouldn't believe it until he saw it.

The flow of this paragraph feels contradictory. The lead-in sounds like immediate acceptance, but the end clarifies it's anything but. Changing out "wouldn't believe" for something like "if that was the world he lived in, he needed to face it with his own eyes." Except then that repeats the second sentence there too closely.

"Boy, that sure is weird music," he mused.

So Gene recovers from an encounter with an alien that might also be a Higher Power, and this is his first reaction? Going back to thinking the music is weird, something he had already devoted plenty of thought to earlier?

what John had done or seen

what had John seen or done? Wasn't Gene the one watching everything?

"I wouldn't believe there's anyone out there."

Who said this, in response to what?

---

"Astronauts see the Nightmare while passing by the moon" is a solid story, and I think your intent to capture the horror and otherworldliness of the scenario was fairly on point, actually. Despite being confused and distracted by many of the point-by-point logistics, the tone of the encounter rung through well.

The fundamental issue is that story is missing the "Astronauts" piece, really. The three characters here barely express any traits whatsoever, don't seem to have logical trains of thought, and generally only exist in states of "strangely amused" or "2spoop". It actually feels more like I'm watching a trio of stoners in a basement who think they're in space. <_< It makes it somewhat hard to empathize with the gravitas of the situation.

Also, I guess I'm going to be the first one to complaing about feeling totally let down by the title here. Snoopy Vs Azathoth would be a fantastic battle, and yet neither of them feature here at all! D:

I didn't honestly like this much, sorry. You've got an introspective stream-of-conscious ramble from a single narrator, and you need to own that a bit more than you do. A work like this is carried by its characterization and voicing, and I don't feel Twilight here. That's admittedly a little subjective, but to extend the point... if you asked me to put this character in a specific situation and write about her reaction, I don't think I could. You need to add some sharpness and uniqueness in here, some memorable beats that give the writing texture.

Ignoring all that – the underlying concept here is nice, of Twilight musing on her own name. It manages to be fairly comfortable despite not going anywhere or doing anything significant, which takes a certain amount of finesse in knowing what ideas you can include and which would be distracting.

"beggars the question" as noted is a little unusual – especially because I have no idea what she means in that context. There's two meanings to the phrase: the initial "secretly assumes a premise" and the modern "raises a question", and I can't tell what either of them would refer to in specific.

I'd also call out the phrasing of

waking in the late afternoon, it's literally painful to drag

– "is" is the verb of the first clause, and so it would flow more naturally if it weren't contracted.

>>Haze
I inserted the data into my riddle-solving application and came up with this image (I should have been able to figure that one out myself, honestly) which contains an easy link to a bad ending, but can also be used as a spell for the good ending(?).

I'm not sure if that's as deep as the rabbit hole goes – it's a pretty satisfying story so far, but all the zalgo text is currently meaningless and seems like a weird red herring; and I'm pretty suspicious of the specific cadence of tags in the "ignore" and if there's any meaning in that.

I kind of think this would have worked better if the first layer was visible in the fic itself instead of the bbcode – it might have actually qualified for the word limit that way? It probably still wouldn't have done well, but I think you could have left enough clues to that there was something to look for, and it would have been more directly engaging by putting us in Starlight's place before we broke out of conventional story-reading.

I'm kind of in complete agreement with >>Ferd Threstle , at least.

I don't think I'd go as far as saying your characters are poorly written – they're not, really, they have very consistent and noticeable traits – but... I don't actually like any of them. There's no real charisma. I think it might be that you hit the characterization button a bit too steady – every paragraph is a soft repetition of "Sam is sleazeball" and "Alan is a stick in the mud", without letting any particular moments stand out and really flaunt that. The essence of humor is in the timing and managing your audience's tension. Varying the build-up to each punchline, and occasionally throwing in a surprise or subverting their expectations.

Title should have been: The Sexophonist

(Proveably!) One of the strongest entries this round. I really liked it, and yet it didn't quite make the top of my slate. Part of that is... it's sort of an archetypical Top Contender, with it's melancholic tone and solid prose and strong, resonant theme and clever narrative touches and... ...it was too good and things that have a more distinct strength or hook end up standing out to me more?

I really enjoyed the flow of Twilight and Celestia's gaze drifting upwards – it wasn't subtle, yet it created the illusion it was, and it always naturally fit. The single paragraph of anecdotes was perfect, totally supporting your theme and conveying so much in great word economy. All the prose and description fully meshed with the gloomy tone presented.

I think the actual moralizing bothered me a little, though, in that it didn't have quite the nuance to avoid being incredibly cynical, and it... I'm not sure. Something. The actual point I think it's trying to make, less than 'Don't examine relationships, that's bad' is that... 'A lot of the time you have to pretend you're living in a better world than you are, because that's the only way to make it happen.' Cognitive Dissonance is the strongest human person superpower! The danger in the threads isn't that they reveal things that should be obvious, it's that they're reinforcement of the present and against that things can change.

Also I guess that we're unfairly judgmental jerks that hold people to unrealistic standards, and read far too much into certain associations and generalizations because we form them based on woefully incomplete and misleading information. Superpowers can also be used for evil. :pinkiesad2:

Heh. I was actually going to comment on how this felt a bit like Big Princess Week – you only really have one joke here, and you tell it immediately. Everything else is just dry action, attempting to capitalize on emphasising the absurdity of the original point. If the original joke actually hits it out of the park for the reader, this can be great, but if not, the entire thing ends up a bit flat. I think it's clear that's not a killer problem, from the other reactions, but I thought I'd throw in the contrasting opinion.

I'm actually kind of thinking back... was The Contest the same way? I recall enjoying that a lot more. I'm not sure if it actually had more sub-jokes, and inherently clever escalations of the theme, or if the basic premise just clicked much more for me.

I'm not sure I can rate this story fairly, just because it involves solid Spike and Twilight talking to each other and I am so utterly starved for that. Thank you so much for allowing them to have their cute ambiguously-familial relationship.

The actual content of the conversation was okay but nothing special; but the fic is entirely carried by the tone it set, and I think you did a great job at that.

I thought this was a really silly jaunt that accomplished exactly what it wanted to, and I enjoyed the ride. Unfortunately most of the things that make it succeed at being an absurd little reference piece also make it... not an entirely satisfying general story, so I can't bring myself to rate it too highly.

I absolutely loved this. It has the tepid moralizing of "Killing is always bad!!" and manages to present it in a well-balanced and resonant way?

I love the idea of Twilight keeping her own notes this way, and trying to simultaneously correct the official record, but being too torn-up about it try and express these feelings to a public that's obviously going to disagree with them. Likewise, the tone of voice is slightly erratic, changing from blasé to self-depreciative to somber; but I think that really fits the emotional arc that one goes through when trying to talk about something like this.

I also like how it just ends, after Twilight's vented a bit and is ready to go back to being a reasonable and well-adjusted pony.

Basically, it's totally perfect for me, and if weren't for my stupid weakness to really smooth dialogue this would be at the top of my slate.

This is absolutely perfect. Brilliant humor that comes from natural and honest characterization, spot-on smooth voicing, and a decent side of Rarijack.

I rather like this. The scene itself looks very pretty. Starlight's stresses are well-conveyed and make her very sympathetic, but agreed that Celestia's actual talk is weak and soapbox-y. The point it's trying to make is nice, but it doesn't do a good enough job of making it to resolve things as nicely as they turn out.

Really hope this gets an expanded version.

Pretty much in agreement with what's been said. There's a solid understanding of humor here, and it brought a smile to my face for most of the read; but it's kind of rough in flow on micro and macro ends. A bit more time to smooth it out, and a bit more space to let some of the jokes breathe instead of skip from one to the next, and you have a solid comedy here.

This is... pretty good? It has a charming quality I can't put my finger on, honestly. I liked it a lot on my first read, but on the second, I'm kind of noticing a lot of... not quite strengths? The entire section on the Badlands doesn't seem to contribute to the story. The old lighthouse keeper's warning doesn't mean anything, because there's no reason to think the seaponies are a threat. There doesn't seem to be a concrete point or theme the tale. Our two shipped characters get barely any description and any action they take is told from a very distant perspective.

...I think fixing any of those would make this a much weaker piece? Clearly you're doing something right. Please share your secret with the rest of the class.

Apparently I'm the only one who wasn't totally a fan of this, huh.

Admittedly I'm kind of biased against war stories, but even so, the descriptions in this weren't wowing me. The pacing was kind of flat, too – it felt kind of like there were three different scenes with no transitions between them, and only the last one actually ended.

I think the most interesting thing you have here is our point of view character having their emotions on full display, while claiming they're not having any and and chastising everyone else. I'm assuming that was intentional. I would absolutely focus on that aspect in a rework. Other than that, I don't really care about what's going on here – kind of an inherent problem of trying to write characters attempting to be bland and emotionless.

There's not really enough here for me to care about, sorry.

The intent is to capture that dreamlike quality, sure, but that also means that... everything just happens without feeling like there's an important logical series of events to follow along with. If you want to write this as psychological horror, we need to see any of Spike's emotions at all, more than just the most surface-level discomfort.

I really really liked this. It captures that awkward tangle of uncomfortable emotions that are just there very well, without making a dumb or judgemental point about them.

People have commented on the description being a bit stiff, and I can't disagree, but I almost think it works as a contrast to the kind of abstract imagery there's supposed to be.