Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to place with this piece. It's a bit of an oddball - I essentially wrote a story about the Nightmare being a creeper and Luna deciding to play Minecraft while heavily channeling my 15 year old self's love of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm amazed I made it work at all, and I'm glad you all liked it - thank you!

>>Light_Striker
I don't know about you, but I would buy that game in a heartbeat. Space Horse Princess builds fortress on the moon? Hell yes.

>>KwirkyJ
Perhaps my greatest weakness in this fandom is that I am morbidly fascinated by the two OG Alicorns and their stories. I do write about other things sometimes, but it's these two that I keep coming back to. Ah, well - there are worse vices to have.

I couldn't get a good read on what the Nightmare was after, exactly, but did perceive that it is deeply invested in Luna (its host, in more ways than one?) and it had this sense of unrelenting... hunger? It wants Luna, and while it will give her space it won't ever go away.

You got a pretty solid read on the Nightmare actually! The key conceit I was working with is that the Nightmare is ultimately a part of Luna. Something conjured from the depths of her psyche and dark magic, and as such is deeply and inextricably drawn to her. It's obsession made natural, like an electron drawn towards a positive ion, striving to complete the whole it was once part of.

I'm less clear on Luna. She's grieving, then she's seizing upon something to do, then... seizing onto the only other entity available? Her shift(s) came across as abrupt, and it's difficult to intuit why she makes these behavioral changes -- not enough space to explore it, in part.

Mixed feelings on this one.

Totally fair. I was trying to explore the grief and isolation that Luna would have gone through - after four hundred years alone, I think most people would turn to the only company they had left. I think the pacing particularly fell apart in the second half, after Luna gets up, but it's a bit iffy throughout.

Thanks for reading, and for the feedback! It's always appreciated.

>>CoffeeMinion
Heh, I suppose that could be the genre! I was thinking more Mooncraft as Light_Striker alluded to. Building for the sake of building, of leaving a monument, not so much making a civilisation.

Anyway: wow. That's a lot of feedback, and a lot of it very flattering. Thank you!

my biggest quibble: Luna's relatively quick turnaround.

Yup. Totally understandable. I'm actually reasonably happy with how it came out given the whole 'short shorts' thing, but if/when I rework this it will definitely have a bit of fleshing out just to give the isolation time to breathe a little.

But she just stands up all of a sudden, and boom, it's SimCity-time. I can clearly see the conversation leading up to it, yet it still feels like a sudden shift. Maybe that could be mitigated by planting some earlier seeds about wanting to build? I have to think there could be some space in the midst of repeating "is this not what you wanted" for someone to drop hints about building that empire.

This is very good advice, that I will most likely be taking! Although there is, in story, a massive gap between Luna standing up and the constructed city it is pretty abrupt narratively, and there could definitely be more to hint towards this being the outcome of the story.

I'll also poke at the kiss at the end. It kind of makes sense, but also kind of comes out of nowhere. I totally get why Luna's embrace of the Nightmare would go in that direction. But for that moment to carry weight, IMO it would need more buildup than what we get right now.

That's very fair. It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision to add that, and I went back and forth on keeping it or not, but I just felt it worked for where I'd taken the characters (or at least where I'd envisioned them to be). There's definitely more I'd want to add if I expand this. I'd make the Nightmare's obsession with its creator (and subsequent disillusionment when she spends four hundred years sitting in one place) clearer, and there was originally going to be a scene of Luna mourning her weird lonely little world back on Earth too.

>>thebandbrony
THIS IS EXACTLY IT! Oh man, thank you for saying this, I wasn't sure if I'd played this right. Luna and the Nightmare's relationship isn't supposed to be romantic at all - it is, as you said, desperation (on both their parts), resignation (on Luna's) and a little bit of obsession (on the Nightmare's, although I don't think I really conveyed it in this version). Thanks for reading, glad you liked it!

>>CoffeeMinion
I'm in a very different timezone so I can't say it applies that much to me, but for what it's worth I think it's an excellent idea!

Huh. I actually got an entry in early. Early.

...Alright, who gave me superpowers? Come on now, out with it!

>>horizon

What were the setting details that clicked for you later on, or that you had to piece together on your own, which you wish you had known from the beginning? In other words, what would I need to work into the first scene or two (or an earlier prologue) in order to give readers a softer landing in the story?

I feel like >>Comma Typer said this a bit more eloquently than I will, but I actually think you did pretty well at this, as I sort of said in my earlier review. While that initial cold open is a bit jarring, that's kind of inherent to a cold open. While there are some questions at the start they don't feel like ones that should be answered at the start - they're all ones that are either answered as we slowly learn more about this world through the course of the story, or ones that don't need to be answered, and give some depth to the world.

What assumptions did you have to unmake that I might give readers a little better help in breaking up front?

Pretty much none? I sort of got that it was some multi-versal superhero romp from the start, it was the finer details that initially eluded - which is what I assume you were aiming for.

Overall, I think you have more issues from running out of space than you do the cold open. In particular, Liam's story arc suffered for it - fix that up, and I think this should be just fine.

>>FanOfMostEverything
o_o
That is what I was actively trying to avoid.

Darn it all. She's supposed to be the trying-but-doesn't-know-what-she's-doing-stepdad archetype.

>>Meridian_Prime
As whoever the heck this is said, this was a deeply unpolished effort, and looking back I can't help but feel it deserves its tenth place placement in this round.

It's not terrible - I've definitely written worse - but it's got a lot of flaws, and there were some strong entries this round. Mostly, this comes down to a lack of time: I know we had plenty of it to write, but I ended up being super busy for most of that period. Most of this was written in the five hours leading up to the deadline, and I think it shows. The other big reason, one which was exacerbated by the time issue, is the fact that the whole thing is in first person. Confession time: this is a first for me! I'm definitely way more comfortable writing from the perspective of a narrator, that good ol' third person omniscient, and even as I was writing this there were so many points where I just thought 'damn, I don't know how to make this work from Scoot's pov'. Or worse, 'I don't know what the heck I'm doing writing from Scoot's POV'.

Anyway.

>>FanOfMostEverything
This is totally fair. On re-reading, the tonal dissonance between the bits of Scoot's writing where I succeeded in capturing the voice I wanted to capture and the bits where I... didn't, is huge. Basically, to answer the things you specifically highlighted: this story was supposed to be a heck of a lot darker than I think it actually ended up being. The Crusaders deliberately targeted Diamond Tiara in this because in this version of the MLP universe, the Crusaders are kind of assholes. Hence why, as glossed over by Scootaloo, Featherweight has an actual restraining order against them.

I've already mentioned that Scoot's diction is just literally me slipping through the cracks, but for Rainbow Dash, well. I think I did a decent job of setting up Scootaloo as not the brightest carrot in the patch, and I was going for that Awkward Dad Energy with Rainbow. I thought contrasting that with Scootaloo thinking she was kind of lame with Rainbow being all worried about being a good role model (and completely missing the Very Obvious Shadiness) would be funny. I don't think my execution was wonderful (again, super rushed) and frankly the humour may just not have landed for you, which is fine. Comedy is subjective.

Last but not least: I attempted to oblique references to the prompt. First, Sweetie Belle mentions that Rarity has gone to Manehatten for "a queue patient's ill terror pee" which is a mangling of "occupational therapy". Second, a barely there gag which I didn't even fully write out about Cheerilee wailing about overtime. It was supposed to be something along the lines of 'no overtime is worth this!'

...Yeah, not my finest effort overall.

>>Chris
Carrot Top's presence was indeed something of a tip of the hat. I swear her getting stabbed was not meant as any kind of message. ^^;

There are laugh-out-loud moments here, and I'm generally inclined to judge a comedy by its highs rather than its lows. But everything here feels tonally disjointed. From language (Scootaloo apparently has the voice of a dapper englishmare, except when she's dropping f-bombs) to setting (if you're going to make a joke about how nobody at the market notices a bunch of screaming and an alcohol fire ten feet away from them, best not to undermine it by making the impassibility of the market a plot point right afterwards) to level of psychopathy (which vacillates from "kids are dumb" to "these are actual literal psychopaths")... I'm just wishing this story would pick a lane and ride it.

There's a lot here, and it's all on point. I'm glad you thought there were some funny parts - honestly, as long as this story (in this state) managed to deliver some laughs I'm happy. But yes, Scootaloo has a looot of tonal dissonance (in my defence I purposefully made sure there was precisely one instance of an f-bomb and I'm pretty sure it was justified in the circumstances - but yes, my own ridiculously-proper-received-pronounciation english came through a wee bit strong) and man I buggered up the setting (I can't believe I missed something that obvious). And last but not least, I had a lot of trouble with the tone/level of sanity for the characters. I think a lot of that I can trace back to trying to write in first person - I was going for a still-obviously-childlike and therefore very troubling brand of psychopathy, which I think would have worked a tad better with a narrator. But then I've basically written that story before - it's still up on my fimfic account. (¬_¬)

Right now, it feels like you've got a brutal dark comedy in mind, but you're continually undermining it to try to make it feel more FiM-ish. And the effect is neither rather than both. If you want to go full dark, go full dark. Make no apologies, punch me in the face from the word go, let me know "this is a completely brutal story that uses a few canon personalities to poke fun at an edgefest," and dare me not to go along with it!

This is what I should have done. I can put down some of it down to trying to crunch everything at the last minute, but some of it is just me being a derp.

Anyway - thank you for an incredibly in depth, insightful, and helpful little review. You nailed a lot of problems with this piece, and gave me some hope that I can rescue it.

>>Baal Bunny
Yeeeeep. Should have gone all in on that tone - worked in those original plans to have Cheerilee as a former violent offender, Applejack as a small townl mafia boss, and Twilight Sparkle as your local friendly Doctor Mengele, who is definitely not burying a test subject body no siree.

>>Comma Typer

In which Sweetie Belle blends in with the fish.

"Know the fish. Be the fish.

More seriously: yes, this needs some proofreading. It's a disjointed rambling mess and if I ever actually publish it (honestly, kind of unlikely) it'll be with some serious work done.

What does a bean and a kidney have to do with Ruby Pinch and Scootaloo trying to run away from Applejack?

So this was intended to be a call back to Ruby Pinch essentially being a pint-sized godfather, and basically: Scootaloo asked Ruby to hide her from AJ's wrath, who did so (by stashing her in her house, where she tells this story to a passed out Berry Punch) in exchange for Scootaloo promising her a kidney. Scoots agrees, thinking she's referring to kidney beans because, as previously mentioned in the story, she's not too good at Biology.

Oh. I just answered my own question just now, huh?

Yep! That was my (very oblique) attempt to match this to the prompt, and I'm glad someone spotted it! I was also going for the classic "ket is for horses" meme, so it all tied in nicely.

this is a very blunt and very straightforward comedy piece. Black comedy, to be precise. It's interesting that it's not just straightforward: the rather long-winded tone of Scootaloo somehow makes all the raw surprises here all fun and good to the point that, for some reason, some of the errors just fit with how, for lack of a better term, broken the story becomes as it gets into the end with the depravity and insanity levels rising.

Thank you! I really was going for that 'steadily increasing insanity' feeling for this one, so I'm glad that at least came across. Thank you for the feedback, I really do appreciate it.

>>Bachiavellian

I really like the super stylized first person narration here. It's got a nice noir-y parody flavor to it that really does a good job of setting up tone and reader expectations from the get-go. I personally think the best jokes are the over-the-top descriptions that Scootaloo gives of her fellow Crusaders and each new character as they come in.

Wow! I feel like the super-stylised tone really didn't land for most people, so I'm glad you liked it so much. I'm also glad you liked my crusader descriptions, I was pretty proud of those - I think if I'd managed to maintain the quality of the first bit of the story throughout this would have been a stronger entry, but alas.

Now, I'm going to be honest and say that not a lot of the jokes landed with me in the end. That's not as condemning a statement as that sounds, though, since I frankly have a pretty odd track record when it comes down to disagreeing with other reviewers about comedies. I don't write a lot of humor in general, but if I were to hazard a guess as to why these jokes aren't doing it for me, I'd say that maybe it's because there's not much of a contrast for the ridiculousness to play off of. I don't want to say that this needs a straight-man role (because character deconstruction comedies rarely need one), but there might be some other way to keep the reader from becoming desensitized to the sheer craziness that's happening.

So in the end, this didn't really end up being my personal cup of tea, but I do think that it does do a bunch of things right. I'm not entirely sure why this didn't work for me, so I'll just let you take my reaction as a data point.

Thanks for entering!

Comedy is subjective. If it's not your cup of tea, it's not your cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. I just appreciate that you took the time to outline what you liked and didn't! In terms of a lack of straight man - you may have a point. Honestly, there was never meant to be a straight man (other than possibly an expanded version of Carrot Top) - the sheer craziness is kind of the point. But I know that doesn't work for everyone - and regardless, both the unfamiliar territory of first person and the rushed second half/two-thirds really tripped me up at the finish line I think. All that aside, thank you for reading and reviewing. It's always appreciated.

>>Rao
And the nicest comment is saved for last - thank you! I personally think this entry was pretty flawed in the end, mostly due to a lack of experience with first person and the simple fact that I rushed it. But a comedy succeeds if it makes people laugh, and so thank you for reading and therefore ensuring that this succeeded.

Also I'm really glad you liked the 'ketamine' and 'stab the mayor' lines. They were some of my favourites. ^_^

This isn't a bad story, but like >>FanOfMostEverything said it doesn't really feel like a pony story. In fact I'll go a bit further than FoME and say that it doesn't feel like a pony story at all - the pony names feel slapped on at best.

It's a concise, tense and well-written snippet of cop drama, with a realistic feeling portrayal of talking down a potential shooter, in what I'd guess is rural America. In an original round this would be scoring highly for me. But I'm really not getting the ponies here.

The grown up versions of Caballeron and Yearling you've got here feel very natural and real (sorry >>Chris gotta disagree with you there!) and really fed into the sense of a surprisingly down-to-earth story for a pair of very much not down-to-earth ponies. The first half/their conversation felt meandering enough to be real, but focused enough to be the kind of important conversation that people sometimes need to have with each other. The second half, on the other hand managed to make me d'aww over a character so barebones they may as well be a skeleton, so good job there.

All in all, an excellent effort!

While I liked it, and got a few chuckles out of it, I'd say that this looks pretty unpolished to me. A lot of fun ideas, as >>Chris said, but the execution sometimes is just a bit lacklustre.

You also seemed to keep wanting to switch to the third person perspective - there are bits and piece that don't actually make much sense if Scootaloo is telling the story as we're supposed to believe she is? If this was an attempt to experiment, then there are worse places to do it for sure, but I'm not sure it really worked for you.

Still, there are some genuinely funny moments, and as oblique as they were I did appreciate your references to the prompt. Keep at it!

It's a cliched and rote compliment at this point, but someone's gotta say it: this feels like an episode of the show.

Not a very long episode, but still - the light hearted feel, the friendship lesson learned, the charming and snarky banter between Spike and Caballeron (of all people!) it all just felt good. And the take on the prompt is certainly fun. Good job!

Conceptually, I like this a lot. Execution-wise, it's a little weaker, but it still has a lot going for it.

First off: while the beginning is a little jarring, it feels purposeful, a way to throw the reader in the deep-end of this particular version of the MLP universe. There are some odd choices in vocabulary (I find it weird that the 107,134 year old alicorn uses words like 'bash' when for most of the time she speaks in highly formalised and almost technical language).

The middle, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. Again, I think it's supposed to be at least somewhat confusing, but there are parts that I still don't understand, and events that don't seem to connect to anything else. For example, what happened when Twilight got stabbed by that weird spear? Was that part of the reset spell? Something else? All in all, I found myself wanting a bit more there.

However.

The ending? Magnificent. The section with Discord cleared up enough for me to mostly understand what was going on, and everything after Twilight woke up was so damn good I could feel my jaw dropping. Seriously, the burning scene was just absolutely riveting writing, and Twilight's fall gave me honest-to-goodness goosebumps.

This is unpolished, but you've got something good here if you work on it a little.

This is just a delightful read. Suspenseful and wholesome in equal measures, with a masterful use of narrative perspective to divert the readers attention.

It feels like I'd be spoiling the read for others if I said much more, but I will say that this on both first and second reading is one of my favourites, and that you're tying with Kill The Bugs for best interpretation of the prompt.

...Well, Odd is definitely the word for it.

This story is distinctly odd, for better and worse. The idea is fun, and execution is great, but as >>FanOfMostEverything justly pointed out, the sisters are just... odd. The foul-mouthed thing didn't bother me so much but I did find their (as well as the other angel's) total obliviousness to Satan's shenanigans baffling.

A well executed and fun idea, but once more I have to agree with FoME - if this was a first chapter, I'd be cautious about the rest of the story.

...I did like the early stuff about Celestia and Luna's drunken hookups though!

Of all the early sci-fi greats, Heinlein was always the one I found least appealing. It's the ultra-militarism - one of the great appeals of early sci-fi for me in particular was how starkly optimistic it was. No unrealistic promises of utopia, just a belief that we could and would reach the stars and build a better life out there. The Mass Effect vision, as opposed to the 40K vision, if you will.

This is all essentially a justification to say that while this is fantastic, I don't know that I liked it all that much. Nothing to do with your writing skills - this is pitch perfect. Every line feels carefully crafted, and the way you transformed MLP's characters into Heinlein-esque ones is nothing short of inspired (I particularly liked the implication that the Skinnies are either EqG humanoids as >>FanOfMostEverything
says, or just straight-up humans). To say nothing of probably the best take on the prompt in the whole bunch. It's because you nailed the feel of this genre so well that it leaves me a little cold.

As such, while it's not really my cup of tea, congratulations on a damned fine job.

I liked this quite a lot more than I expected to! Slice of life has never massively been my thing, but the uncomfortable candour between Celestia and Star Swirl really worked for me. It really felt like they were both unsure how to navigate their new dynamic - not awkward, just unsure. And the conclusion reached was a interesting one (and one of the best justifications I've seen for the Princesses behaviour in general).

>>FanOfMostEverything Does raise a good point about the microwave I hadn't thought of though.

Still, a solid piece of work, and bonus points for Luna bringing eternal night to her ant farm.

While it's certainly a little bewildering at the start, I found the starkness of the world-building here quite refreshing. The whole time I was reading I got the sense that there was a very large world we were not privy to just beyond the corners of the scene, and the at world seems really interesting. Now, some of this is probably just a matter of taste, and there were bits that could probably use some cleaning up - it's not super clear what actually happens to Apocalyptica at the end, and I don't just mean the copy in Liam's head.

But yeah, I liked this! Fun world, a well thought out story, and a chuckle-worthy use of the prompt.

To all the (other) entrants: you are all annoyingly talented and I've no idea how I'm going to pick my top five let alone three.

Submitted with 1m 50s left—talk about cutting it close!

O_o
Well.
This is certainly an interesting time to try and come back into the fold. No idea how I'll pull this one ot...

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Fic is up! Thanks again, hope you like it.

This feels like an episode of the show--specifically, one of the episodes that the fanbase tear into.

If that sounds harsh I'm sorry, but I think the other commenters have gone a long way to describing why that is.

Let's start with what's good. The writing is impeccable. As I said it feels very show like, in that you capture that sense of childhood and wonder and just the right amount of poking fun that the show does. The real problem is, as everyone has said, True Heart and the town's reaction to her 'antic'.

She pulls a ridiculous amount of shit, a lot of which is aimed directly at the person who she ends up falling for, and gets away with absolutely everything. Which would be fine, if we were given some small clue that her actions aren't okay. That this is in some way the point of the story--sometimes people get away with shit, and 'true romance' is not necessarily a good thing. But there really isn't. Unless the title is some oblique, sarcastic reference, but that doesn't come through in the text at all.

So while this is a well written and mostly coherent story, you really need to deal with that in some way shape or form. Either make clear that this is not, in fact, a perfect love story, or give True Heart some serious tweaks.

As Bachiavellian said, this gets that whole 'episode of the show' feel down nicely. The story is fun, the characters are mostly in character...

My biggest problems with the piece have actually been brought up already. First off, while her scene is nice, Rarity being POV at the beginning makes little sense given she not only doesn't return to POV but isn't really that important a character for the story as a whole.

I also think it's a bit odd how late the main conflict gets introduced. Pseudo-Ocellus should really be a thing a lot earlier. Also, you kind of gloss over whether or not P-Ocellus is actually alive, and the ethical quandaries that raises.

That aside, this is a fun little story, and could be pretty good with some cleaning up here and there.

Okay, so first off I really like the concept here. I'm a sucker for anything to do with Luna and NMM, and the idea that the Nightmare is some weird pseudo-Freudian part of her psyche is conveyed pretty well.

I have mixed feelings about the story as a whole. On the one hand, the general surrealism of dreams was conveyed well--strange imagery, odd jumps between places and topic. However, I found NMM's attempts to sway Luna a little... simplistic. Maybe I just read too many of this kind of fic, but her arguments felt like the most basic ones she could make. I dunno. I liked this, but I really think you could do more with it.

I do have to also note that there were some noticeable typos and general mistakes here and there; missing words, grammar issues, etc. Not the most important thing ultimately, always something you can fix later, but still.

Finally: if the title is a reference to the MGMT song, n i c e.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
I actually finished it about 10 minutes before you made this comment? Coincidences are weird. Also, time differences, hence why it took so long to reply!

I think I might just publish it mostly as is; it hasn't been proofread or edited by anyone but me (or at all yet because I've been lazy), but that kind of keeps it in the spirit of the writeoff! The only thing that's missing now is the cover art, and I wanted to ask if I could use this? Honestly nothing else would really fit as well; I turned this picture into an actual scene in the story so it makes a lot of sense. If you'd rather I not, I'll find something else--just thought I'd ask.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
I have like 80-90% of a fic for this done and I am incredibly frustrated that I didn't manage to finish it, because this piece deserves it. When I do finish it (in the next few days if it damn well kills me) I wouldn't mind linking back to here to credit this artwork, if I have your permission? The story wouldn't exist without it after all.