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Crossing Over · Friendship is Short Shorts Short Story ·
Organised by CoffeeMinion
Word limit 1000–5000
Show rules for this event
#1 · 3
·
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Friendship is Short Shorts, where—

“Hold up, Mr. ‘Coffee Minion’ (if that’s even your real name)—this contest says it’s for ‘Short Stories,’ not ‘Short Shorts.’ Have you gone mad? This isn’t where you said you’d take us! How is this contest even relevant to your titular group!”


Ah yes, I was ready for this question. I will answer by offering a couple of personal observations about our traditional Short Story rounds. These reflect some opinions that are solely my own, but please bear with me for a moment.

First, the usual minimum of 2000 words means that authors have a good-sized hill to climb to even get something in at all. You can’t spend much time brainstorming without putting a serious crunch on your writing time. Granted, we’re setting a pretty good amount of writing time here, but IMO the point still stands.

Second, the historical maximum of 8000 words can be pretty beefy to get through as a reader if you’re trying to fit in reading around life. And if you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself 8k deep with a fic that just hits the word limit super hard, that’s potentially a big chunk of time you’ve had to spend just to make that ultimately simple determination.

Which brings us to the 1k-5k limit of this contest. As with the last Friendship is Short Shorts contest, this is an experiment. But if I’m right about my thoughts here, I think this should create a favorable set of conditions for attracting slightly longer fics than last time. 1k isn’t unattainable even for people lobbing in an entry at the last minute, and 5k should give folks just enough space to explore while still making for a speedy reading experience.

Of course, as with any experiment, it will either work out or we’ll learn something. But one thing I learned last time around is that you guys still have plenty of fire in the belly for MLP! This’ll be the first Pony contest since the show ended—let’s send it off in style!
#2 · 1
·
Also, bit of housekeeping: nobody panic that there are no future FiSS contests scheduled at this time. Roger just redid the FiM & Original contest schedules last night to make more room for custom group events, which is great! I just need a bit more time to absorb that and adjust accordingly.

I should be able to get the schedule reworked by the end of this contest.
#3 · 5
·
Never enough poni
#4 · 3
·
Probably wouldn't enter this time — taking my time with Penumbra — but will be around to review. Hope we get to see some good stuff for this round too!
#5 · 3
· · >>CoffeeMinion
Ot is a false prophet.
#6 · 2
· · >>Bachiavellian
>>No_Raisin
Rip and Tear... until Ot is done.
#7 · 2
·
>>CoffeeMinion
As promised, just this once, I've voted for it. It's in the hands of fate, now.
#8 · 1
· · >>CoffeeMinion
Thank God.
#9 · 2
·
>>Miller Minus
Well. I suppose the meme will live on. This is a very good prompt, though!
#10 · 4
· · >>Baal Bunny >>CoffeeMinion
❗️If you are putting anything from season ten in, make sure to put a spoiler warning in the beginning❗️

I don’t want to see any gosh darn spoilers >:(
#11 · 4
· · >>CoffeeMinion
>>Anon Y Mous

Season ten?

The show only went nine seasons...unless I've once again slipped sideways in space and time--or "spime" as we call it.

Mike
#12 · 3
·
>>Baal Bunny
There was a recent announcement about a series of “season ten” stories in the comics, though I rather suspect >>Anon Y Mous is just pulling our collective foreleg. :trixieshiftright:
#13 · 8
·
First time I’ve participated since 2015. Time to see if 4 years of not writing has improved my skills.
#14 · 4
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Wow! Guys, this is a great showing. 13 fics is not only an increase from the 11 we had during the first round of Friendship is Short Shorts, but this event’s 35850 words blows the previous one’s 12553 words completely out of the water!

Now, of course, the different word limits make this an apples-to-oranges comparison. But take a look at who’s in the competition as well! We’ve got all three recent On The Verge medalists: thebandbrony, alarajrogers, and wishcometrue. We’ve got several returning participants from Uncharted Territory, such as myself, No_Raisin (who also medaled last time), Moonshot, and Lofty Withers. We’ve got thisisalongname, who’s back for the first time in a few years! We’ve got Writeoff veterans like Baal Bunny, GGA, and PinoyPony. And in an exciting and mysterious turn, we’ve got the ever-enigmatic Anonymous.

Guys, this is a strong field. Let’s all go have some fun and drop some helpful reviews on it!
#15 ·
·
Aw fuck. Was that today?

Well, I was way over the limit anyways. Fml as usual, I guess.
#16 · 3
·
Well folks, I haven’t made it as far with reviews as I was hoping; chalk it up to a weird week. But as we stand here on the precipice of prelims giving way to finals, it’s time to invoke the ancient tradition of PRELIM MASHUPS!!!

The Things You Do For Being Hooked: While Wallflower tries to locate a pair of anonymous ne’er-do-wells who keep blasting inappropriately cheery music at all hours, Bon Bon develops a feeling deep inside of her that leads to Lyra being high on bereaving.

Perfectly Imperfect Pants (Macabre): Thanks in no small part to Discord feeding her dubious information, Rarity finds herself quite thoroughly confused about who among her circle of friends has a crush on who, and is led to do the only thing that seems reasonable under the circumstances: make wedding tuxedoes for all of them. Zephyr Breeze misinterprets this as actual interest in him and proposes marriage. Twilight officiates their wedding after going goth for no discernible reason.

Dead Callback Walking: A merry mix-up in Discord’s attempts to bring Fluttershy back from beyond the veil lands her as a spirit haunting a random griffon’s fridge in Pony New Jersey. After some initial awkwardness involving her disapproval of his drug use, the two come to bond through their glorious crusade against the undead who have also overrun Pony New Jersey. Discord shows up several weeks later, marvels at their success, and proposes marriage to the Flutter-fridge.

Daring Pony Memories: For those who can afford it, The Enchanted Tome can let you live a life of unending adventure, far beyond the dissipation of your physical body. The only catch is that you’re stuck sharing it for all eternity with a pretty explicit father-figure. Got daddy issues? Yeah, sorry, those aren’t going anywhere...
#17 · 1
· · >>No_Raisin >>GroaningGreyAgony >>CoffeeMinion
Why were several stories missing from my voting slate? I understand why my own story wasn't there, but there were two or three others I didn't see. Is there a second round of voting and people randomly get assigned to only some of the stories for the prelim? I'm not sure how it works.
#18 · 1
· · >>CoffeeMinion
>>alarajrogers
The roster is big enough that you don't get all the entries on your slate, at least during prelim.
#19 · 2
· · >>CoffeeMinion
>>alarajrogers
Once you rank all visible stories on your slate, there should be an option to add more at the bottom.
#20 · 1
·
>>alarajrogers
>>No_Raisin
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yep, and this feeling of missing a couple of stories is something that stands out more clearly in a round of the current one’s size. Smaller rounds just put everything on your slate from the get-go (more or less), whereas with much bigger rounds, it’s more immediately clear that your slate is only offering a fraction of the stories.

However, as growing pains go, this is actually something I’m glad we’re encountering with FiSS right now. It comes part and parcel with growing from Uncharted Territory to Crossing Over. There’s something exciting (IMO) with chatter and review activity driving interest in a story that otherwise would only get however many eyes on it as part of regular slate distribution.

We’ve got a ways to go before we recapture the glories of yesteryear—not that that has to be a goal, per se. But signs of growth and health are encouraging!
#21 · 2
·
A’ight folks and folkettes, do you know how long it’s been since I last got to do FINALIST MASHUPS?! Cuz I sure don’t!!

The Pants of Memory: As Celestia’s cognitive faculties fade along with her aura, she finds herself drawn into an endless memory of this one really sassy pair of jeans that she wore as a teen. Her subsequent attempt to break out of her nursing home to go find them leads to the tragic defenestration of Zephyr Breeze. (Tragic in the sense that they’d just installed the window; it was young, and should have had a long and meaningful life ahead of it.)

Stick To The Perfect Script Imperfectly: Trouble has been brewing on the set of the long-running soap opera The Young And The Ponies, as on-screen romance bubbles over into off-screen love affairs. But when a new cast member is brought on to play a lusty eyepatch-wearing fashionista, the lines between on- and off-screen liaisons become so blurred that the network threatens to take them off the air if they can’t dial down the sex and violence...

Hooked on a Callback: Discord’s plan to save Fluttershy from death goes awry when David Hasselhoff unexpectedly moves the shooting location of his latest music video to Horse Hades. Fortunately, The Hoff is able to redeem his mistake by blasting one of his greatest hits and removing Horse Charon from the scene in his car, enabling Fluttershy’s escape. For not even the guardian of Horse Hades can resist all ponies’ natural tendencies to get swept up in impromptu musical numbers...
#22 · 4
·
FimFiction folder is now up! Please add your stories as you migrate them to FimFiction!

If you don’t have access to add your story, just hit me up on FimFiction, Discord, or by replying to me here, and I’ll make you a “contributor.”

I’ll be posting some more wrap-up thoughts later, but thanks everyone for your stories, and for making it a fun round! I’m definitely curious to know what you thought about the format, length, and any other details of this contest that you feel like commenting on. Again, feel free to reply here (or whatnot) and let us know what you think!
#23 · 6
·
I'm so embarrassed! My clever plan was to comment on everyone's stories at the last possible minute so people wouldn't be able to observe which story I hadn't commented on and figure out which story I wrote. Maybe I take this anonymity thing too seriously? But between a high workload for end-of-month and preparing for Halloween, I have been swamped and haven't had time.

Everybody, I wiil be commenting on the fics, but it might not happen until Friday. Same for responses to the comments I got.