Achievement unlocked: Finalist. (Reach the finals one time.)

I know words on the Internet don't always transfer emotion correctly, but I'm super excited to have gotten this far! Honestly didn't see this coming based on the reviews I got.

>>007Ben As a fellow first time finalist, I concur. Good luck to all.

>>007Ben
>>Mordred
Congrats to you guys and others!

This is only my (some small number)th time making it. I'm shocked that it happened, and I'll probably end up at the bottom of the finalist pile, but it's gonna be a wild ride while it lasts. :-p

Still no baby, though. I better plow through my finalist reviews while I can...

>>Trick_Question
See, now I feel silly, since I kinda forgot the comics existed... after getting the first 30-some issues as they came out. -_-

Still, this is as good an excuse as any to re-read them.

Let's start a spam! =P
Heh, Just kidding around...

>>007Ben
>>Mordred
Congrats to you two!
Same thing happened to me! Woo! First time in the finals!
May I gloat with you guys? Please?

I'm thrilled to be in the finals, I can say I have made it!
However, In all honesty, I feel a little out of place in the finals.
I've intruded on the prestigious space of professional writers, when clearly, I am an amateur masquerading as a professional.
...Can't really complain about making it into the final rounds... many writers would give anything to trade me places.

>>CoffeeMinion
Hey, don't say that about your own story.
Heck, I'd even say you would get at least a decent score.
Even if life is a bit hectic, it's usually in that time of trial that the writer pulls out their best stories when they don't mean it...

All in all, Congrats to all who made it to finals! Good Luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Congratulations to everypony who made it into the finals. I'm super chuffed to be joining you at the first time of asking. I appreciate, and am thankful for, all of the feedback so far; regardless of where I ultimately end up in the listings, I've gained some valuable insight in how to improve my work.

Good luck! Particularly to those of us waiting for positive baby-news too. Tick tock...

>>Trick_Question
I would not. That'd be gross. Ew. Ick.

whew, looks like I won't have to do any extra work.

I was drunk. idea based on something Cold in Gardez said weeks ago in the discord channel, which hopefully he doesn't remember.

I watched people getting on SaintAbsol's case over this, and couldn't say anything. do you really think the author of this fic is gonna be offended over it? actually I felt worse from people trying to defend me than the insult itself. don't fight each other.

Okay, since it's been revealed who wrote this, I can finally comment about it.

I realize the story just sort of... ends and doesn't have a lot of resolution and I make no excuses for my poor writing on the matter. Hopefully, I can actually put in some legitimate conflict and depth to the whole thing. Still, the general response has been positive and I think you for that.

Let's see if I can pound this into a real story.

>>Trick_Question
>>Haze

A question:

About the Discord chat--if I were to log in there now, would I be able to go back and see comments folks had made about stories in this round or previous rounds? Or are those comments lost beyond recall at this point?

Mike, Often Confused About Technology

>>Baal Bunny
I do not know this.

>>Baal Bunny
Technically you could, but there's literally about three thousand messages a day in the chat, and Discord doesn't have a search function (yet), so you'd have to manually scroll through all the conversation for hours upon hours.

>>Monokeras
If none of us commented on things we're not qualified to comment on, this would be a much quieter place, and we would all be the worse for it.

>>georg
Well I understand your point Georg, but while I could comment on French poetry, English poetry is still way beyond my skill. I don't even know what exactly the rules are in terms of metric and/or verses. Suffice I mispronounce a word and I could make a pointless comment.

So on poetry, really I prefer stay silent and let qualified experts such as Horizon or you speak up.

>>TitaniumDragon

Also, given how many people asked whose sibling Winking Star was, I obviously did a bad job with that.

For whatever it's worth, I just screwed up and I withdraw any complaint I had in this regard. Really, it was made perfectly clear with this exchange:

“We were just talking about all our siblings.”
“Oh. I hope Twilight didn’t say anything too mean about me.”

As for "Twilight's sister", that's even more clear, but I think I misread "sister" as "Sparkle"; in any case I was certain the last line belonged to Twilight herself.

So... yeah. My fault, completely.

>>TitaniumDragon
I never commented on how deeply disturbing the double entendre of "Winking Star" is in the first place, probably because I expected somepony else to mention it.

I'm just going to assume she has another sister named "Flexing Ponut". :trollestia:

I broke my main rule here. I condensed a much larger concept to fit within a minific. I knew doing that wouldn't turn out great, but I was really into the idea and wanted to see reactions to it. This lead to where SO MUCH had to be taken out, or transformed into something simpler so the story doesn't fall apart, but I'd invested too much time to quit. I was greedy.

the disappearing floor was probably a line i had to delete to fit within word limits, and didn't think anyone would assume it's not there just because i didn't describe it. ironically, I like the misinterpretation more, it sounds even more eerie and nightmarish. I'll have to work that in intentionally, if I keep that scene (it was originally something very different, but I needed a way to rush some explanations in)

don't write a huge story as a minific. but sometimes the idea latches on to you and won't let you move on.

>>Exuno

Eep!

Then I'll just here and now officially resign myself to not being able to keep up. :)

Mike Again

Congrats to our finalists, especially the first-timers! Well done, indeed!

Bygone Griffons of Greatness, Appendix A: King Grizzle - A Retrospective

First, thank you so much to >>Ceffyl_Dwr, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Trick_Question, >>FanOfMostEverything, >>The_Letter_J, and >>Monokeras for taking the time to review my story. I'm not terribly surprised this didn't make it into the finals - it's never a good sign to be sitting in front of your screen hollow and slack-jawed at 2am (four hours left on the submission window), knowing that you need to do something more for the story and being thoroughly unable to conjure the words. Time management, as is usually the case for me, was my undoing.

As for the story itself, I'm very pleased that the format seemed to work so well for so many of you - I, too, love studying history, and I thought this would be a neat framing device for the narrative (though I agree, >>Monokeras, it does make things feel a bit stodgy - I think the lack of actual story bits weaved through the text left little else but the format to look at). Thanks to >>Trick_Question for pointing out that supposition has no place in an academic text, I'll be sure to re-frame the last section by more direct comparisons to other sources.

For most of the writing process, I was worried that I might beat readers over the head with what I was trying to imply through the dig site. That's part of the reason why I only wound up telling the ending of a story, rather than a fully fledged tale. Still, I have some ideas on how to go about expanding it so that there will be more of a point and purpose.

Thanks again for all of your feedback, everypony. Keep an eye out for the finished product down the road, though!

>>Haze

You're in luck! I don't remember.

But this should've been in the finals anyway. I'm sad it wasn't on my slate.

>>Cold in Gardez

I'm sad it wasn't on my slate.

Everypony is sad.

>>Haze
I'd still like to see more of this, or a cleaned-up version of it, or something. This shoulda been a contender.

WOW did a lot of my prelim slate drop off in the finals. Oh well; some interesting-sounding stories were added...

Gonna be honest, I really didn't care for this one. I get that it's trying to capture the mood of this "Capture the Flag" event more than the actual plot, but the sheer oddity of the story (crossbows being used like laser tag, the existence of humans in the world, the complete seriousness of this event) makes it a little hard to concentrate on the mood. It'd be like if there was a movie all about Liberace-dwarves roaming the streets of Manhattan while looking for a treasure of buried Golden Crisps, and the audience is supposed to act like this isn't odd at all. There comes a point where something has to be explained, minimally at the very least, and this story's lack of that just confused me.

On top of that, the mood itself feels kind of indecisive. It's treated as extremely serious, yet it's just a Capture the Flag game. We're not really told why this is (is there some kind of political stake? are these war games?), so it's hard to figure out if the description of the event is meant to be taken seriously, or if the description itself is supposed to invoke hilarity through its over-seriousness. Either way, I'm just left scratching my head.

I sort of like the concept behind this story, with Minuette and Moon Dancer looking for a time travel spell. But the story feels oddly rushed and I really don't think the ending entirely works. Is it supposed to be some sort of ironic punishment or something? I don't know, I didn't fully "get" this one. Interesting effort, though.

Okay, there are plenty of stories I like that don't really end with any clear resolution to the problem. But I think the main problem here is that since the story is trying to build up to a resolution, not delivering it sort of goes against the purpose of the entire piece and makes it feel kind of pointless. It's an anti-climax in the most negative sense. The personalities of Maud and Twilight are pretty accurate, but that's really all that I can say for the piece.

Eh, I wasn't really feeling this story. There were a few neat comic touches ("Don't tell Fluttershy" being my favorite) and shooting Rainbow out of the sky was an unexpected flourish, but there wasn't much to it other than that. It wasn't bad per se, but it wasn't making me laugh all that much either.

I'm not sure how to feel about this one. On the positive side, Blueblood the Malevolent Seductor of Inebriated Mares is an interesting interpretation of his character; I certainly haven't seen a fic that portrays him in this way, at least. I also kind of liked the descriptions of Blueblood's, er...former flings. It was so deliciously dickish and narcissistic that I couldn't help but shake my head at how much bigger of a tool Blueblood was here than in the show.

However, I have to say that Octavia's accent kind of bothered me. Not only is a lot thicker than what is seen in the show, it also felt exaggerated to the point that I could barely tell it was supposed to be her. I also think that the tone of the fic is a major inhibitor of the final piece. This story treads the line between "gloriously tasteless" to "dude, not funny" pretty tenuously (stories about borderline date rape often come off that way), but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Maybe the story would've been stronger if it was either a drama about Blueblood's destructive attitude toward mares, or a humorous tale of Blueblood coming across a mare who'll be more than he can handle. Combining both attitudes just feels like the fic's not sure if it wants to be serious or silly, so I'm just left confused by the end result. Interesting character concept, but it needs a bit more tweaking.

I liked the details in this story, particularly in regards to the book and the environment overall. But like everybody else above has said, everything is so darn obscure and vague that I can't figure out what's going on. What does "reality shattered" mean? The world ended? Time jumped back? The fic raises more questions than it answers, and not in a good way.

Late review, but I have to say that there were some aspects I enjoyed. The sudden genre shift from action adventure to dark romance felt abrupt to some, but I kind of liked the mixing of genres. Maybe it could've been smoother, but it didn't bother me much as is. I also liked the inclusion of the SeaPonies (what? They're fun!).

However, I agree with the others on the ambiguity aspect being a problem. Nothing wrong with being minimalist, but sometimes we need a bit more than simply starting in the middle of the situation. I also think starting out so loud and ending so quietly so quickly did feel a bit odd and out of left field. It probably wouldn't be a problem for me if the the fic was a little longer, but as is, it felt slightly too abrupt for me to fully wrap my head around. On the right track, with just a little refinement needed.

My God, this is an honest-to-goodness complete story arc with a strong enough romantic hook to bring me close to tears.

There's nothing I can add to this but praise. Unlike the overwhelming majority of shortfics, I don't think this misses anything by being exactly as long as it is. Maybe the ending could use some better explanation, but I'm willing to go with it as-is.

I'm also about 99% sure I know who wrote this, given some structural and thematic similarities to a very memorable past Writeoff entry. To which I can say it's impressive that the author can just bust out quick little slices of brilliance like this at-will; and if this story ends up medaling (as it should), at least the rest of us can take solace from the fact that we've been beaten by the best.

Tier: Top of my top contender list, and unlikely to get dislodged

I'm going to be "that guy" and say that I actually really liked this fic. The whole start-up of the fic as taking place within Tartarus and being a meeting between villains was interesting, and I thought the new fiend was a pretty neat character in concept (maybe not in character though). But what I really liked was how serious the story starts out, with the villains acting so in-character and Hak'Tak basically being living nightmare fuel that devours Equestria single-handedly. It's a pretty creepy description and I was actually waiting for the apocalypse to happen...

...and then Pinkie showed up to defeat the evil.

It's such a bizarre change in tone, that I couldn't help but laugh. It can be risky to spend most of a story building up to one joke, but I feel like this pulled it off decently enough. The stuff after that was kind of "meh", but in the end, I enjoyed reading this.

Hmm. Competent writing, a decent enough message, and yet... I don't feel any kind of connection here. Starlight talks through her fears; Celestia gives her rebuttal; roll credits.

Author, I wish I had better feedback. If I can think of something more specific to explain why this didn't hook me, I will. I certainly don't see any glaring issues holding it back. Maybe the point >>Morning Sun makes is part of it, though; there's nothing Celestia-ish about Celestia here. If anything, Zecora might make for a much more interesting choice.

Tier: Almost There

Wish this were on my slate. It would easily make the top three.
Ranked at #2 on my slate.

I do love how well the story is told in the extremely limited word count. Just a beautiful use of the language. It's a simple story, but a satisfying one. It's quite odd to see a different reader wishing that Beacon drowned; a story is not more meaningful or profound for ending in tragedy. This one works for me; it's just ambiguous enough to give a sense of unsettling exoticism, but optimistic enough to leave the reader without feeling like they've been punched in the gut.

Great material.

>>libertydude
Don't worry; I outed my views on it a while ago, so we can both be "that guy" together. :-p

>>Trick_Question
That was not intentional; I was just looking for synonyms for Glimmer and Shining as I figure that is clearly the theme naming for the family, right? >>

I’m basically with >>horizon here – it felt a little weird that these guys who weren’t that good at what they were doing were being sent out on a stealth mission.

That said, I did like the story, and I thought it worked well. The bookends of the piece worked very well, and the scene was compact and did what it was trying to do.

This was cute, but I was slightly confused about whether the story is about what happened this morning, or if the kiss was why he now opens every day at 5 am?

The kisses were amusing, as was Dry Roast’s response to them, and there was a nice little bit of atmosphere here which worked well.

It isn’t much as far as a shipfic goes, but it sure is a good reason to open your store at 5 am every day.

I’m not quite sure if I buy Twilight doing this… but, well, whatever.

This was amusing. I thought it was cute, but I think it suffered a bit from, as Horizon noted, a bit of jitteriness – at first it seemed like it was about Luna returning from the Moon, and it took a bit to settle into being the silly comedy thing that it was. It was obviously pretty irreverent towards the source material, but it was amusing in its own way. Clopernicus was a great joke/pun, and I thought that a lot of this was fairly funny.

Apart from the introduction, I’m not sure if the ending quite ended up panning out as strongly as it could have – I think if the story had instead played up Twilight having been a bit more at odds with the nobles, it would have sold the ending a bit better (and could have been down with ALL the princesses, not just Sunbutt).

Still, I can’t say I didn’t smile a little.

Discord asks Twilight on a date.

This tried way too hard with some of the descriptions, and consequently, they ended up being a distraction – doubly so because some of them (in particular, conveyed an impression of raised eyebrows) felt almost painful to read.

I’d like to say that this didn’t really come together for me, but it did. However, for a lot of the middle, my attention was drifting as I felt like the voices and the various descriptions left me disconnected from what was going on. I just struggled to focus on it.

That said, I do think this was an interesting idea, though I think establishing more clearly earlier on that the voices are Discord’s would be helpful, as well as maybe making them a bit more distinct.

The biggest problem I had with this thing was that the whole paramedics thing doesn’t really square with the ridiculousness of them hitting each other with pastries.

The gun was a beautiful thing of silliness, though, and the description of it went from “Ugh, ponies with guns,” to “Lol, ponies with guns” in just a few lines, so well done there.

Overall, the contrast of absurdity with seriousness worked well here, and I liked it on the whole, apart from the weirdness of the paramedics at the end.

Why is Scootaloo here? The two pieces of this story – sharing the place with Scootaloo and Applejack having been pranked and looking for revenge – don’t really fit together.

There’s some cuteness here, but the story does not mesh as a piece.

Also, Applejack's lines weren't quite funny enough, or Applejack enough in the case of the "pound you into pulp" bit.

I agree with the others – the first half is a decent setup, but the second half, while it more or less went where I thought it might, didn’t quite deliver. That said, I don’t think it is necessarily too cruel so much as it just wasn’t funny enough in its cruelty. I think having more of a list of things that Rainbow Dash did wrong while trying to mack on Cadance (and a funnier description of the dire situation Rainbow Dash is in now) would be funnier.

Moondancer’s was the best of these; they felt like they sort of steadily slid downhill, though, as the ponies were less and less penitent and humbled by their experiences. While I get why they were ordered in the order they were in, I'm not sure that they really came together as a piece, as the advice was mutually contradictory and I'm not quite sure what the false document is supposed to be if they're contradicting each other so sharply.

I saw this one coming, unfortunately, and subsequently didn’t get chills, as I’m pretty sure I’ve read this story before – heck, I think Monsters from a previous writeoff even played with a similar idea, though the resolution of that one was stronger.

The main problem here is that I think that we ended up too detached from it. I think this could have been stronger if it had been more proximate to the events of the story.

This story reminded me of how much I need to write a certain story.

That aside, this was mildly amusing at the end, but I have to admit that most rap battles don’t really do much for me, and this was no exception. Beyond some of the more questionable rhymes (rapt and adept don’t actually rhyme; rapt and adapt would, but adept has the wrong vowel sound).

I’m with everyone else on this one; the donut demand felt like it was a bridge too far, and I’m not sure that the final scene actually worked quite right.

The interrogation – and Twilight’s bossiness – were amusing though.

Poor Shining Armor

The descriptions are solid, but ultimately, I'm not sure that this really adds to the tale of Hearth's Warming.

Man, I feel bad now—if I had read this while it was still in the running, I totally would have recognized the song. Just reading the first line of this got the tune stuck in my head.

That being said, aside from the wonderful ponification, there's not much going on here. I don't really see any conflict. It's just kinda... a scene.

>>FanOfMostEverything
I've found your weakness!

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

>>TitaniumDragon
Well, if I can be so bold as to speak for the perverts among your readers, "winking star" immediately brings that to mind.

Generally speaking, it's a weird turn of phrase. "Wink" isn't very much like shine or glimmer, and stars don't wink.

The ones in the sky, I mean.

Other than when pegasi are flying, I mean.

>>Trick_Question

By most people's standards I'm pretty damn perverted, but I didn't think of that until it was mentioned.

I thought "Winking" was meant to be a fourth-wall thing; she's the author winking his eye to the audience in a "You-see-what-I'm-doing-here-haha" way.

This just didn't pull me in like it should have. However, I don't think that is the author's fault. At least, not entirely.

The writing style was direct and the pacing was constant. Tweaks to the style could have given the scene much more emotion than was presented. The problem with this is the wordcount limitations, which make it hard to properly build the descriptions for that while also conveying the entire scene. Had the author tried a more evocative writing style, I think the story would have been forcefully brought up short.

But this concept is rock-solid, and I can see it making for a great Sparity piece once the restrictions are lifted and the author has the flexibility to expand upon it properly.

Finalist Phase fiction re-jig. Welcome to the top three of my listing. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I was a little confused by how much blood Daring did or didn't leave on the floor. I also noted one particularly odd-looking turn of phrase:

She coughed a little cough

But I like that this was a complete story, in the sense of Daring not only facing a challenge and succeeding, but transcending it and trying to befriend the Sphinx. The thing I feel is missing is a sense of why Daring wanted to be there in the first place. Presumably she knew about the Sphinx and sought out the dungeon, but why? She doesn't gain anything at the end; she just reaches the exit.

I know, it's a quibble. But Daring doesn't just go down into dungeons for the heck of it, right? (And if she did, that could actually be a cool opportunity to deconstruct the usual genre she ends up in...)

Tier: Almost there

I'm also coming late to the party in terms of being able to offer new things that others haven't noted.

With that said, the story as a whole didn't work for me. My two biggest issues are a lack of clarity around the physical circumstances (cf: the debate over who is and isn't in jail), and my feeling that this isn't really a story, it's a snippet from/teaser-trailer for a much longer story. As evidence of the latter point, look at all the shipping fodder that's mentioned without spending time to develop it. We the audience are being asked to accept a lot of things as "history" without build-up in either the show or the story itself, and we're only being offered a single (admittedly very strong) idea to justify the whole situation.

There are ways of making that work, of course, and the overall quality of this story's prose makes me think the author is capable of it. But I would have much rather seen development of any one of the many cool ideas floating around in here, than hints at what the whole thing might look like if the word limit was higher. So much time is spent during the build-up that there's hardly any payoff.

Tier: Needs work

Egad, this story was like getting gouged in the heart with a broken bottle.

It's perfect as-is. I mean, maybe the beginning could have used more space to set up the seduction, and maybe the part where real!Rarity comes in could have used some expansion, and I have to wonder if he'd try to contact someone after that happened instead of just sitting there crying, and I'm on the fence about whether I'd like to get the other characters' reactions to the ending line... okay, so maybe not "perfect", but it works for me bigtime. Dear author, please season this to taste with ~250 words of any of the above ideas and post it.

Tier: Top contender

Author, I'm sorry, I couldn't keep up with the voices. I like Discord, and I wanted to like this, but the presentation is just too much to keep up with in its current form. I'll give you credit for trying to capture Discord's internal thoughts, though; this could be the start of a longer fic that expands a lot on that idea.

Tier: Needs work

This is glorious.

I mean, I'm probably only slightly less in the target audience than >>TitaniumDragon is (I went and saw Rockapella live back in the day), so I should probably try to curb my enthusiasm a bit before it compromises my objectivity.

...

Nah, screw it. :trollestia:

We've got over-the-top absurdity here that makes brilliant use of its references, and its limited word count. The only real nit I can pick is that >>Trick_Question is dead right in saying a ponified name would serve it better.

Tier: Top contender

Others have noted that Garble's presence didn't make sense. To some extent, I disagree; the story gives him a plausible reason to be there, and it built the expectation that Garble would help explain the underlying conflict in the story, and start giving us more hints about what had happened. Garble's entrance would have been a great opportunity to do those things, because the story up to that point was doing a good job of hinting and teasing at something bigger going on.

But unfortunately, from "Standing above her" onward, the story ceased forward momentum and became largely about Spike having wings. IMO, in a minific, you can't spend too much time establishing the situation; you kind of have to jump in there and hope the audience is buying what you're selling. This one had a great setup, but it shifted into neutral when it should have hit the gas.

Tier: Needs work

Going to jump on some bandwagons here: >>Icenrose, this is gorgeously silly. >>TitaniumDragon is right, the paramedics thing was weird.

Otherwise, I dunno, this is some great top-tier comedy.

Tier: Top Contender

Hee hee. Clopernicus. :-p

It takes a while for the central concept here to be introduced, and I think that works against the story as a whole. The beginning is a little rough as well; maybe merging and shortening the first two sentences would help things start with more of a bang. I didn't mind the ending, as I was sufficiently engaged in the story by that point to follow the situation's absurdity.

Also:

armour on armour

This is all I could think of. (YouTube Video) :-p

Tier: Almost There

In the first paragraph, the full stop should be a comma. That makes for a pretty long, mouthful sentence so you should rephrase.

Gate then gates? How many are there?
The idea of Celestia and Luna letting Twilight at the tiller is not new, but her reordering the celestial bodies is fun.
The major gripes here are the puns, which are not that great and distract rather than add anything, and the end which is clearly meh.

There's a good amount of tension here, and the guy's emotions and doubts are clearly depicted. The end maybe is less punchy that it could've been.

I have no real further comments: it's both well written and effective. I'm just not a sucker for changeling war stories, which, I think, are a bit tired, so while this will end up fairly high on my slate because it's solid, I won't place it right atop it.

This fic is solidly written, no doubt about it. However, I find the plot horribly contrived. Where does that changeling come from? All of a sudden, Twilight is back? You could've her and Rarity come back precisely when the changeling was about to assault Spike, that would've made for something funnier maybe?

And, well, the punchline is... more sad than funny?

I think many people like this piece because they nurture a secret desire for a lecherous, deinhibited Rarity raping Spike.

Not really impressed, besides it's my second changeling story in a row.

Look at my avatar.

Read this story.

Look at my avatar again.

Yeah yeah. Gushy, but also very telly. There is not much shown, everything is told. And yet you leave out some important information. Who's speaking? An adult Spike? I thought Spike had a crush on Rarity. What happened to Ember exactly? What's the role of Twilight in this?

The resolution is weak. There's no real punch in this story, since it's all-tell, and too vague. The concept is interesting, but it needs a major overhaul.

Strange pick of words ‘Air displaced’? Why not just blown out? Your first section really reads academic. Even the second paragraph is somewhat clunky. ‘Blood tinges the air’ sounds like the air is coloured in red, for example.

Dust swirling with breaths? It's like she's breathing dust. You mean with each step maybe?

all scattered on the stone floor […] the bones strewn about: redundant. We know that already. You're already strapped on words, so don't use them to tell us something we already know. Ditto “And then something broke the silence. A voice like a god’s,…” “Then a godlike voice resounded,…” Same image, 50% words saved.

Ponies have maws? Really?

The plural of Sphinx is sphinges. You like 'moving air'. The Sphinx is a she, then a it.

Small flubs. Of course, it's rather a scene than a story. Problem here is that the stakes are low: we all guess that DD will get away scot-free. Consequently, there's not much tension. The end is, well, rather good. Now, there's still a fundamental question left unanswered here: why is the Sphinx watching over the exit and not the entrance?

In all, not bad, but not outstanding either.

This is the epitome of the sort of Discord's fictions I despise the most. If you wanted me to hate your fic, you zeroed in. Yet, this is personal taste, so I'll just abstain.

Skirmish

After a little slow start, I didn't expect so many reviews, thanks everyone! :3

I apologize for the confusing lack of context. To ensure the "scene" to be as standalone as possible and fit in the word limit, I ended having to cut quite a bit of setup and description before I even began. Irony.

(Should have been a warning sign that I should have submitted this for short story instead. =P)

So the context is this (expanded some since what I've submitted):

Bright Spark is part of a team in a youth sports called PaintWars, which basically Paintball with medieval weapons (and controlled unicorn magic). Several other races also participate in the sport, mainly the griffons and deer. It was a few years after First Contact with the humans in another parallel world (it's a very long story) and humans have been migrating to Equestria, bringing their own form of the sport, which is of course, Paintball. Since ranged weapons weren't unknown or banned (crossbows and magic were allowed after all), the humans were allowed to play (not necessary in actual competitions, since everyone is still unsure about the humans). And they were decimating their competition with superior small arms tactics and rate of fire.

So the actual premise is that Bright Spark had been hearing rumors about these humans owning her rivals but didn't quite believe it. One fine day, after a war session with a griffon team (which they beat handily), a group of humans approached them for a friendly match, which her team leader Sun Skimmer accepted (and Bright Spark can't help but add a few disparaging remarks, after which it escalated into a bet that if the ponies can't get even one of the humans, they'll have to buy the humans a dinner). Note: expansion in brackets.

And the entry is of course what follows.

>>Haze

actually I liked the "excessive shaky-cam" effect here, because it's used intentionally.

>>FanOfMostEverything

In all, this does a good job of conveying the confusion and desperation of the climax, but it’s the narrative equivalent of excessive shaky-cam; you captured the mood, but I can barely make out what happened.

That was probably because it needed an editing pass, only the first half barely got any editing done on it.

>>FanOfMostEverything

Also, it’s not really clear how the humans did what they did

>>The_Letter_J

At the very least, I would have liked to know what the humans did to win.

Like I said above, the second half needed editing to make it clearer (and to figure out exactly how the humans located and tracked the ponies).

What actually happened was they had a lone gunner in the ponies' path to the thicket and two more further back (all in concealed positions). The lone gunner initiated harassing fire (which took down Broccoli and Lily Vane) and spooked them into an ambush by the other two (which took down Sun Skimmer and Stratus Cloud). Bright Spark and Cauliflower were finished off by a paintball grenade.

>>libertydude

On top of that, the mood itself feels kind of indecisive. It's treated as extremely serious, yet it's just a Capture the Flag game. We're not really told why this is (is there some kind of political stake? are these war games?), so it's hard to figure out if the description of the event is meant to be taken seriously, or if the description itself is supposed to invoke hilarity through its over-seriousness. Either way, I'm just left scratching my head.

It probably has to do with my writing style and me haven't nailing down the narrative voice yet for this entry. First drafts tend to do that to me. D:

>>The_Letter_J

And I don't know if it was inspiration or coincidence, but the ponies' weapons reminded me of this.

This is totally what I envisioned for the pony weapons. :pinkiehappy:

Once again, really thanks for all the reviews! :3

Normally I don't like silly, but this kept me smiling from beginning to end.

Well played, author. Well played.

I don't have much to add here that hasn't already been said, Writer. This is a nice little adventure tale, but there are some logistical concerns that need to be addressed in order for it to make more sense.

>>Monokeras

The plural of Sphinx is sphinges.

...

I learned something today.

>>M1Garand8
Wow. I'm not sure if even eight thousand words would've been enough to do this idea justice if you wanted to capture all of the background details. Definitely looking forward to an expanded version given this information.

>>Icenrose
Pedantry :P

I'm not going to review all the finalists, but there are a few pieces I might have useful feedback for, so I'll speak up occasionally as I do my reading.

As others have noted, this whole thing is fueled by the power of imagination, and the story needs to decide exactly how close it's going to hew to reality. The COOKIES and conversation near the end clash in tone with the neck-breaking. A couple of language nitpicks:

- Here's one that contributes to that tonal disconnect too. A "foundry" is an ironworks. The rest of the story makes it sound like they're invading a facility that processes food, which would have no need for metalworking.

- "He snuck a peek of the gate": This is a really subtle point of English, and I've just spent 20 minutes of googling trying to find an explanation of why it's wrong. I struck out, but can at least show that the usage "snuck a peek of" is unknown: use snuck a peek at. Now it's going to bug me all day figuring out how to explain why this is the case, because "Here is a sneak peek of my iPhone application" is correct, for the same reason "here is a photograph of my dog" is. (*) But you wouldn't say "Here is a peek of my iPhone application". Something about "a sneak peek" changes it. Note: "A sneak peek at" is also correct, so maybe it's simplest just to stick with "at".

I think what's happening has something to do with the different relationships that "at" and "of" imply: "of" binds more tightly. This gets into predicates vs. adjuncts (probably?), which is above my linguistic pay grade.

Gaah. Do we have any English teachers in the audience?

“Negative, you’ll compromise the mission!” Pound yanked an orb off his belt, “I’ll distract them with a flash grenade.”

Isn't this meant to be a stealth mission? I mean, in the real world, they're trying to sneak cookies out of the pantry. Throwing something whose point is a massive burst of sound and light seems like it would "compromise the mission" at least as much as a guard assault.

- Referring to "The Pink Spy" as "General" is weird. Spies are field operatives with dangerous jobs. Generals have so much operational knowledge that it would be ludicrous to risk them out in the field.

I know most of these things could be excused with "Well, it's their imagination, they just got it wrong," but the story wouldn't be hurt by correcting it, and it would be less bother for the part of your audience that's paying attention to details.

Anyway, the main thing to fix in editing here is to re-envision the imaginary mission in a way that feels more lightheartedly Equestrian (reinforcing the tone of the ending rather than clashing with it) and logically holds together a little better. The core premise is strong and this is most of the way there.

Tier: Almost There

What previous commenters said. Please write more of this incomplete story. You'll definitely have me as a reader.

To expand a bit on the "incomplete" thing — and >>Morning Sun's "Act 1" assessment — this is pretty much textbook Act 1 of the three-act story structure. There are other ways to write stories, of course, and it's definitely possible to write scenes that stand alone in a Writeoff context, but what's happening here is that this sets up a really juicy conflict, and ends right as it's starting to address it. Its strength as a character piece is overshadowed by the fact that it's making all these promises about seeing Celestia and Ember head to head (which is a pretty juicy hook, let's not mince words), and the core arc is so strongly bound to that future conflict.

I also feel like I ought to draw the distinction between what I think of this as a story and what I think of this as a contest entry. As I said, you've got an instant reader if this gets expanded and published; your character work is great, and I think you're setting up something great here (and it's also about characters I like. NOT BIASED AT ALL). But this is getting dragged down to the middle of my slate by the context of the contest: this Writeoff is about taking 400-750 words and producing a complete story in that space, and then judging which stories did the best given those limitations. This is easily Top Contender-level output in terms of my engagement and enjoyment and its construction, but I've gotta dock it for that incompleteness, just like I would have to dock a story which had consistently poor grammar or flagrantly ignored the prompt/genre.

Tier: Almost There

Unfortunately, Writer, this story falls victim to the very trope it opens with - I've heard read this one before.

THAT SAID, I think this is a very competent re-skinning of the story. I agree with >>georg, each of the girls feels present, but not obtrusive, and their voicing is on point.

I'm not sure I agree with >>TitaniumDragon; if you reframe the story such that it's happening directly to Fluttershy, rather than a story she's retelling later, there will be even less to differentiate it from the original material. Though he is correct, it doesn't quite have the same impact when told this way.

>>Icenrose
Keep in mind that TD's fiction philosophy is "terrorize/hurt Fluttershy".

>>Monokeras

Alright, Since the Ibuprofen is out of my system, I'm finally coherent.

I apologize for my harsh review, I wasn't in the best of places, and didn't give this fic much of a chance.

Now, since you revealed it's true nature, expanding it to 'rule of three' sounds like a fantastic idea. I guess it got (for lack of better terms) crippled by the word count.

I hope you aren't too angry about it. If it makes you feel any better, I look forward to reading it when you're finished.

>>The_Letter_J
It's not the fact that it's (essentially) a crossover that is the root of the problem. (Speaking of the other crossovers you mentioned: you can see from my review of FBTwi that I recognized the references and my misgivings there were from a construction flaw in the piece. And I went back and read the Master Chef crossover, and while I've never watched that show, your story was entertaining, and I probably would have put it approx. top-middle slate and a Solid if I'd voted on it.) And it's definitely not that I have problems with ponifications of pop songs.

I should refer back to what I said in >>horizon about my opinions of this as a creative work vs. my opinion of it as a Writeoff entry. And as I noted in >>horizon, knowing the context definitely improved my opinion of it as a creative work. It's the "judging it as a Writeoff entry" bit that gets weird and sticky.

The Writeoffs have had occasional debates about how to handle "ponifications" of non-pony content as entries. There was a big debate in the Behind Closed Doors round, for example, over Chris' "The Arena", which used the exact plot and structure of The Lady Or The Tiger with MLP worldbuilding layered over the top. Then, in the "Closing Time" round, my Iridescent Iron Rat was a direct adaptation of The Stainless Steel Rat, borrowing the core premise and plot but reinterpreting it far more broadly and changing the plot's challenges to be uniquely Equestrian; that didn't stop a substantial debate over whether readers should dock it for its use of the source.

There's a lot of grey area there and opinions can legitimately differ, but to me the difference is in what it brings to the table above and beyond the crossover/source material. Imagine a fanfic that was an exact retelling of an MLP episode; we might admire it for its prose or its language, but it doesn't seem fair to credit the fanfic author for enjoying the plot, dialogue, or characterization, because those are things that another author (the show writer) was responsible for.

Iridescent won a gold medal, but despite being a SSR retelling, I don't think anyone could argue it wasn't its own story. I invented "traiting" out of whole cloth, opened with a totally new scene showing Jimmy using sleight-of-tongue on a dragon, used Cloudsdale's unique architecture as a plot point in his escape, split Inskipp into two separate characters and reconciled them both with Equestrian history, and changed the outcome of the heist that gets Jimmy captured (again with a twist specifically grounded in Equestrian technology). If you summarized the story you'd see the beat-by-beat plot points of SSR, but at least as much work went into the story as if I'd created it completely from scratch. Similarly, it seems pretty clear to me that no matter how much structure and premise Time is an Important Ingredient borrowed from Master Chef, there's a lot of great material there that was created out of whole cloth, such as Rainbow's entry with a store-bought box of cake mix and her jerry-rigging Spike as an oven.

Song lyrics … it's hard to disentangle in that way. What you choose to ponify and how you choose to ponify it is certainly original effort, but there's a lot that carries over untouched even if you change all the words: rhyme scheme and meter, prosody, rhythm, emotional beats and pacing. Leaving lines totally untouched can (as you note) strengthen parallels to the original song, and as a matter of effective writing often can be a good decision, but I feel like the only thing I can judge this story on as a contest entry is how it changed what it changed.

You are, of course, free to have whatever opinions you want and to vote however you please, but I feel like you are being a bit unfair to me.

And I'm sorry for that, but judging adaptations is a tangled and fraught issue, and judging it only based on the merits of the new material is the compromise I worked out for my own standards back when these issues first came up.

It's probably also unfair to some authors that, in general fiction rounds, I judge MLP stories as if I knew absolutely nothing about the show. But I've gotta pick some way to judge, and I'm trying to strike a balance between blindly rewarding enjoyable stories, and rewarding stories which best align with the letter and spirit of the rules.

This kinda turned into an essay, but it's a tough issue. :\

>>Trick_Question
Noted! I need to start keeping files on everyone so I can get better at guessing. ^^

I Don't Do Mornings - A Retrospective and an apology letter to all readers

Now that the author of this egregious story is revealed, I'll entertain you guys with a short reference:

Writeoff Association: *points sharp quill at Pinoy's neck* "The only reason why you're still alive, pony, is that I find your stupidity mildly amusing"
Pinoypony: "Well thank you, Writeoff, but I find your criticisms extremely harsh"
Writeoff Association: "Who do you think you are, Pony?"
Pinoypony: "Who do you think I am, Writeoff?"
Writeoff Association: "..." *snickers and laughs*
Pinoypony: *joins in laughing, after a while, ruins the moment* "Why are we laughing?"
Writeoff Association: *stern glare* "Take this egregious piece of filth to the bottom of the Ballot"

... and just like that, Ibuprofen has worn out, -pain ensues.

I got this idea when I was fresh out of the dentist's office. "Hey, why don't I make a fanfiction about Twilight having a major insanity meltdown? Ibuprofen is common, not so strong... but my, It's making me loopy, why not do that with Twilight and caffeine?

:facehoof: Yeeeaaahhhh.... in hindsight, not the best idea. Just another example of why I can't do trollfics... even when I'm... you know what, lets not go there.

>>Astrarian
>>TitaniumDragon

Got it. It's hard to determine what's been overdone and what's never been done.
"When in doubt, give em' cliches a broken leg" (Oops, spill-over Ibuprofen -_-)

>>FanOfMostEverything

WELL I... (thinks about reply)... you know what, on second thought, I'm not going to fight with you, you know your stuff. That's why they call you FanOfMostEverything.
I'm just joking around! In all good nature, thanks for checking the technicalities!

>>Trick_Question
>>The_Letter_J
>>Ceffyl_Dwr

Got it... Go big or go home when it comes to insane trollfics.
Also, Prompt Drops... Eh, let's not talk about that, I'm shivering at my own work now 0-0. I'll make sure that the story fits the prompt first... and not put it into dialogue.

>>TheCyanRecluse

Finally! Someone who got the joke! It was Pinkie's Coffee! (laughs awkwardly).
Well, this is the best reviewer in this section. I gotta say, TheCyanRecluse knows how to handle a fic that shouldn't see the light of day. Most seemed offended, while Cyan keep their cool. Kudos!

~Final Thoughts~
... I guess that I got a lot of people I need to make this up to. Good idea in theory, bad move that will cost me years to atone for this error. Seriously, I apologize to all of those who ended up in an asylum by reading this.

Welp, off to the Cryo-beds with this- see you guys in two years!

TL;DR

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, -DO NOT READ THIS FIC. viewing this has driven many to harsh reviews this round. For the safety of you, and others around, DO NOT READ.

>>Monokeras

Because using the metric system is like a signature. The moment you read ‘two-meter’ you know I’ve authored the fic: so much for the anonymity. No one in the anglo-saxon world would write this, at least outside a scientific article. But inches and feet are so alien to me I didn’t even twitch when I proofread that text twice.

Ironically, despite living in America, I make an effort to use "meters" etc. in pony stories, because Equestria has always felt like a utopia to me, and any country that well-run should have a unit system that makes goddamn sense. :V

I don't think I've ever used "foot" (as a unit of measurement) in a pony story, except once in the Writeoffs when I did it deliberately to throw people off my writing style. I'm also overly fond of "cubits", which has the dual benefit of: A) sounding archaic enough to fit in with Equestria's schizo-technology; and B) being archaic enough that I have to use a unit converter, which forces me to get the numbers right.

Also Horizon, thanks for mashing up my two stories. Did you guess they both were mine, or was it mere coincidence?

Coincidence — unless you deliberately titled your two stories similarly! I mashed them up because the "Viator"/"Aviary" correspondence worked rather well.

>>horizon
I appreciate your writing this. I think it's a good conversation to have... unless it's already been had, and I'm just showing up late. Q_Q

I try to balance rewarding the stories that work for me, with rewarding those that don't necessarily work for me but have clear technical quality and/or artistic merit. But I can think of fics where the confluence of working for me personally and being nominally coherent have greatly influenced my rankings.

The Carmen Sandiego one is a great example. It's one of my top picks, because it's well-written, makes great use of its references, and hits my sense of absurd humor dead-on. But to what extent am I letting personal taste guide that ranking? Probably quite a lot, if I'm being honest.

What's the best way to approach that dilemma?

I've definitely seen worse Discords. I appreciated the non-traditional poetrism; I think that's by far your strongest point in this. Some of the humor is take-it-or-leave-it, but that's just part of the nature of something like this. I think the overall point of representing the kind of nerves that such a situation brings about really came through, though.

Agreed that some way to track the voices better is neccesary, or else abandoning the concept that each one ever speaks more than once altogether. I could tell they had distinct perspectives, but it was still frustrating trying to sort it out and double check what had happened.

"Hey, hey, hey!"

...I still can't but hear Fat Albert here, though. I'm honestly not sure if it's fitting or not.

This didn't really work for me. You've got a silly montage that's maybe worth something in video or comic form, but as a minific it's way too dry. Written fiction humor is a lot more based on comedic timing, and the 'throw a bunch of silly imagery out' style found here is going to find as much an audience.

I really enjoyed the first half of this! You've got strong prose, and the tempo and feeling of sentences was well conveyed. Ember quickly becomes a relatable point of view character, and I'm interested in what she starts feeling abouy an invitation from Celestia.

...the latter part was more problematic. I don't think your technical writing falls apart, but the content suddenly becomes another one of those soapboxes talking up Celestia and making her seem awesome (becuase the show kind of refuses to). If you want to do that, I can't fault you, but you're doing it in a way that... doesn't particularly reflect either of the characters having the conversation, and their feelings. It also plays up her character in a strange way, emphasizing her pure strength and ability to lead ponies, rather then her wisdom and virtue.

...I suppose you could argue that's all Torch's perspective as a cynical dragon, but there still problems with that, in that the text doesn't actually cast any doubt on his reliability (as noted, finish this off with Ember meeting Celestia and getting a totally different impression and you're golden), and that I can't really see Celestia maintaining a status quo where a nation is quietly living in fear of her (though I admit this is kind of subjective biases.)

>>FanOfMostEverything
Forget 8k words, my revised outline has already at least 2 chapters! :pinkiecrazy:

This was cute, yes.

Also cute.

Solid writing. The description holds my attention, and it maintains a solid feeling of tension.

The story doesn't really do anything, though. It somewhat undercuts the original Hearth's Warmimg Story (which I'm impressed is possible, given it was previously resolved by ponies huddling up in fear). The actual characters of Pansy, Cookie, and Clever don't quite get displayed at any point, and the outcome is pre-established, so I'm not totally invested.

Mane Six friendshipping! PogChamp

This is actually really good, on a re-read. The underlying story is a little stale, but everypony is voiced very well and I like it.

Most of the legit criticism has already been made, so I'm just going to point out that

Zecora paused and leaned in for effect, “far worse off than I am now!”

needs to be a lot more succinct. It just be a very deliberate not-rhyme, rather than a number of words tacked on the end. The only thing that I can squish in there is "in trouble.", but you could probably rephrase the entire thing into something stronger.

It would be way more effective to just stop at the scene break, too.

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.

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.

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.

The basic plot and the humour are pretty good. The joke is solid, though a little dated. I'd like to like it more, but for me it falls flat for simple technical reasons.

There are grammar issues sprinkled throughout, some of the descriptions are a tad confusing, forcing a second read to understand what's going on, and in other places they are too simplistic, lacking immersive power. There's nothing fatally wrong with it, but all those little flaws add up to drive me away from "being there". To paraphrase Family Guy: "I'm very aware that I'm reading something on a screen right now."

It's a good story - it just needs to be told in better words. A good editor or two would probably do wonders 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.

Re: other comments saying "Why are these clearly unprepared guards on such an important mission?"

Really, guys, considering the professionalism, intelligence, and fighting skill the average Royal Guards display in-canon, the soldiers in this story must all be legendary heroes of Equestria, every one.