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I found myself wishing this had just started at the sabbatical line. The rest of it feels like unnecessary setup for that one moment of genuine emotion.
It's a very good moment, though.
Tier: Almost There
It's a very good moment, though.
Tier: Almost There
A great scene, held back by the plot not continuing beyond where it does.
Tier: Good Stuff
Tier: Good Stuff
It's a beginning. It shows promise. Ultimately though, it doesn't stand as a complete story on its own.
Tier: Needs Work
Tier: Needs Work
Woot. I had meant to review a bunch more, but at least I managed full prelim & finals slates.
Top five of Georg’s second Round Micro Reviews for the new stories on my slate Princess Not Included: Scores are letter grades for Plot, Technical Work, and Characterization mushed together, with an E for stories I find particularly Enjoyable. Ranked by how I like them, not necessarily how perfect they are on the score. (and posted all at once, from top to bottom so they line up on the chat.) Listing positives(+) of a story before the negatives(-). WAY too late this time. Arrgh!
Enjoyed! — The Midnight Lesson — A+ — First impressions: Starswirl - Nailed perfectly. (+) Excellent characterizations, excellent backgrounds, good decision to cut Luna out of the lesson in order to reduce the complexity of the story. The story flows well, good pacing, (-)just a little clumsy with the bowl (which is Starswirl’s crowning achievement, as the inventor of the amniomorphic spell.)
Death Party — A+ — First Impression: Another All My Friends Have Died story, but this one has some light-hearted levity in it. Interesting. (+) The rest is picture perfect, kept on the light side, with proper grammar and no real potholes. She even has a legit point, as a princess cannot experience life the way a mortal can, and Celestia has a point that at some time, she’s going to get bored of that too. One might wonder if Celestia went through a century or two of this.
Best-Laid Plans — A+ — Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh Horizon wgah'nagl fhtagn. Grah'n 'ai zhro, Yoggoth shoggor hlirghoth wgah'noth Hastur mg 'bthnk h'athg gotha, y-sll'ha nashagg fm'latgh n'ghaog nnnnw nnnathg na'ai.
Burden of the Crystal Princess — A — First impression: Huh? (+) A rich story, full of deep thoughtful consideration of just what power holds the Crystal Empire in place, and at what cost. (-) It took me two readings through to catch it, and I’m still a little conflicted on the meaning of it all. I’m a shallow-water reader at heart, I suppose.
The Wrong Side of History — A — First Impression: Classic Pony Pie Fights. +1 point. (+) Once again, an alternative side of the world where assassination attempts are carried out by pie is a wonderful thing, and those princesses who think of getting between the warring factions are going to get creamed (sorry again) (-) It just seems to lose a little with the reveal and not seem to hold together without possibly a little more ice cream and some chocolate topping.
“miss-sight” should perhaps be “oversight.”
“I’d like take away my title and give it to somepony else, yes.” < Dropped a word in the rush.
I like the dialogue and characterisation. Well done.
“I’d like take away my title and give it to somepony else, yes.” < Dropped a word in the rush.
I like the dialogue and characterisation. Well done.
Hours before I get last in finals...
There's a Metaphor in Here Somewhere (also the Simpsons)
Originally, while walking home, I came up with the idea that Twilight was getting credited in all the newspapers and stuff for all the group's work, and the other Elements were angry. But since the prompt was Princess Not Included, I decided to reverse it and make Rainbow the center of attention. I came up with most of the plot in the shower, along with the fourth wall breaking, which originally was gonna be a much longer scene involving Discord, but I had to cut for space. It wouldn't have been any better.
The second scene is just because I thought of the pun/Simpsons reference and wanted to use it, but knew it was too small to have it's own story, so I put it in this one. It's my favorite part of the story.
This story is a badly written crackfic at best, and a trollfic at worst.
OH AND BEFORE I FORGET ACTUALLY I GOTTA EXPLAIN THE TITLE
One of my original ideas for this piece was gonna be a commentary on how during the Olympics, the media had a tendency of reporting on female athletes exclusively as a commentary on their male counterparts. That's where this line kinda comes from:
But about halfway through I decided that it wasn't worth it. I kept the title though because there's always gotta be a metaphor in there. Also the Simpsons. Also that's gotta be the worst Applejack-ism in the fucking world. A cider press in January? Seriously?
>>Not_A_Hat
Nah
>>georg
I didn't intend for it to seem like Rainbow bribed anyone. She's too cheap for that.
>>CoffeeMinion
/me blushes like a dying schoolgirl
>>MrExtra
I certainly hope not, considering EqG is my favorite thing in the entirety of MLP.
There's a Metaphor in Here Somewhere (also the Simpsons)
Originally, while walking home, I came up with the idea that Twilight was getting credited in all the newspapers and stuff for all the group's work, and the other Elements were angry. But since the prompt was Princess Not Included, I decided to reverse it and make Rainbow the center of attention. I came up with most of the plot in the shower, along with the fourth wall breaking, which originally was gonna be a much longer scene involving Discord, but I had to cut for space. It wouldn't have been any better.
The second scene is just because I thought of the pun/Simpsons reference and wanted to use it, but knew it was too small to have it's own story, so I put it in this one. It's my favorite part of the story.
This story is a badly written crackfic at best, and a trollfic at worst.
OH AND BEFORE I FORGET ACTUALLY I GOTTA EXPLAIN THE TITLE
One of my original ideas for this piece was gonna be a commentary on how during the Olympics, the media had a tendency of reporting on female athletes exclusively as a commentary on their male counterparts. That's where this line kinda comes from:
"You're making us feel as useless as a cider press in January," said Applejack. "It's like we're all just your assistants!"
But about halfway through I decided that it wasn't worth it. I kept the title though because there's always gotta be a metaphor in there. Also the Simpsons. Also that's gotta be the worst Applejack-ism in the fucking world. A cider press in January? Seriously?
>>Not_A_Hat
The first bit of this was genuinely interesting and funny.
Nah
>>georg
I didn't intend for it to seem like Rainbow bribed anyone. She's too cheap for that.
>>CoffeeMinion
Well, I can see who wrote this now, so I can't say this is an unbiased review.
/me blushes like a dying schoolgirl
>>MrExtra
felt more like arbitrary hate for the EQG universe than anything
I certainly hope not, considering EqG is my favorite thing in the entirety of MLP.
“The delegate from Yokeshire abstains. Courteously.”
*squee*
Alas, this most treasured reference has little actual bearing on the rest of the the story, Writer. While it paints a crystal clear image of the buffoonery of the Senate Hall, seeing this mysterious motion pass doesn't actually add anything, save perhaps to justify Princess Celestia's thinly veiled contempt.
Still, it's interesting how the four titles bequeathed upon Celestia in Article I are references to princesses that won't even exist for another eight hundred years or so, and I like that "Duchess of Canterlot" is included among them. It does throw a bit of a wrench in the works with regards to establishing where in the timeline the story takes place, though - it's not until Article III that we realize this is taking place in the past.
Ah my story. So, what's my excuse for this? Well, the prompt popped up and at first I thought "Wow so TBD IS the prompt! THANK GOD!" Then I hit refresh and it came up with the "Princess not included." I uttered a mild swear and then drove to the store. After having spent the better part of my day at work I didn't want to go to the store but there I was.
So I wandered around and got some not really needed items and headed back and bounced between two plans. The first was something that I read at least three other people write. The second was this. A story that I quickly found out I hadn't enough room to pull off the way it needed to be pulled off but, something I could squeeze in some of what would make me chuckle. So I went with Party Jail, Midnight Peeper, Crystal Pop, and two variations on Twilight's name that a strung out customer goes on about.
The customer here is one I've seen before many times with many different faces. I jammed it in there knowing this was going nowhere and said, "Well, that's a thing."
So I wandered around and got some not really needed items and headed back and bounced between two plans. The first was something that I read at least three other people write. The second was this. A story that I quickly found out I hadn't enough room to pull off the way it needed to be pulled off but, something I could squeeze in some of what would make me chuckle. So I went with Party Jail, Midnight Peeper, Crystal Pop, and two variations on Twilight's name that a strung out customer goes on about.
The customer here is one I've seen before many times with many different faces. I jammed it in there knowing this was going nowhere and said, "Well, that's a thing."
Page Two
This story is a good chance to bring up a discussion point: quibbling.
One could read this and easily complain: parchment takes a long time to make. You can't just rip the skin off a horse, scribble on the back, and send it on its way -- you need to cure it for days, scrape off the hair, stretch it on a rack and dry it. It takes a while. In that light, you could say this story lacks realism.
But that's not the point. Every story, no matter how well crafted, requires some suspension of disbelief. What's important for our reading of this story isn't the process that goes into making parchment, but the willingness of Celestia to literally flay herself in order to prevent Tirek from hurting her ponies. As a device, that works very well.
As for the rest of the story, it's unusual. The main character -- the hero, the ones who makes the important decision and around whom the action is based -- doesn't even appear. It's Celestia who drives the story, even though she only says a few words and they come to us via letter (as it were). But she is the main character here, not Luna or Firefly.
There's not much here to judge in that light, give how little of Celestia we see. Really this story is just the author's way of saying "Here's how much Celestia cares." And that's cool. It's a well-crafted, but very small story.
And stories are allowed to be small. That's not a flaw -- it's a choice.
This story is a good chance to bring up a discussion point: quibbling.
One could read this and easily complain: parchment takes a long time to make. You can't just rip the skin off a horse, scribble on the back, and send it on its way -- you need to cure it for days, scrape off the hair, stretch it on a rack and dry it. It takes a while. In that light, you could say this story lacks realism.
But that's not the point. Every story, no matter how well crafted, requires some suspension of disbelief. What's important for our reading of this story isn't the process that goes into making parchment, but the willingness of Celestia to literally flay herself in order to prevent Tirek from hurting her ponies. As a device, that works very well.
As for the rest of the story, it's unusual. The main character -- the hero, the ones who makes the important decision and around whom the action is based -- doesn't even appear. It's Celestia who drives the story, even though she only says a few words and they come to us via letter (as it were). But she is the main character here, not Luna or Firefly.
There's not much here to judge in that light, give how little of Celestia we see. Really this story is just the author's way of saying "Here's how much Celestia cares." And that's cool. It's a well-crafted, but very small story.
And stories are allowed to be small. That's not a flaw -- it's a choice.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Some of the stilted language comes from word over-repetition. "Her," in particular, appears 36 times -- nearly 5% of the entire story is the word 'her.' It's in the first sentence four times alone.
Other parts are plain telly: "Windy just giggled, enraptured by the story."
Some of the stilted language comes from word over-repetition. "Her," in particular, appears 36 times -- nearly 5% of the entire story is the word 'her.' It's in the first sentence four times alone.
Other parts are plain telly: "Windy just giggled, enraptured by the story."
This is one of those times when 750 words just isn't enough to tell the story you want. This is more of a prologue or first chapter than a complete story. Minifics are brutal like that.
>>Dubs_Rewatcher >>Misternick
Guys, even if you think you didn't do well, please wait until the results are up before you break your anonymity.
Guys, even if you think you didn't do well, please wait until the results are up before you break your anonymity.
Fan pretty much said it all. What you've got here is the first rock tossed down a hill, it has the potential to become a rock slide but it's pretty unremarkable on it's own. I hesitate to say it's just a retelling of EQG with one small change, but it doesn't feel like that adds anything to the story.
The results are in! I'll have retrospectives on my pieces soon, but for now, congrats to Chris, Jaxie, and Horizon! And thank you to all participants.
Congrats to:
Our winners, and thanks, folks, for giving my "Stupid Tree" story 4th place. I've been working on the final version all week--It's ended up at about 1,500 words and will be "going live" on FimFiction within the hour. It was my first idea for the prompt, and I finished the draft here it before noon on the writing day. Thanks to the comments, I've smoothed it out a good deal and given it an ending I'm much happier with.
"Princessence" came to me later in the afternoon, and I spent the evening hammering it together. It's got another couple scenes in my head, and I hope to get them actually written down this weekend.
This was a fun round!
Mike
Our winners, and thanks, folks, for giving my "Stupid Tree" story 4th place. I've been working on the final version all week--It's ended up at about 1,500 words and will be "going live" on FimFiction within the hour. It was my first idea for the prompt, and I finished the draft here it before noon on the writing day. Thanks to the comments, I've smoothed it out a good deal and given it an ending I'm much happier with.
"Princessence" came to me later in the afternoon, and I spent the evening hammering it together. It's got another couple scenes in my head, and I hope to get them actually written down this weekend.
This was a fun round!
Mike
>>FanOfMostEverything
...What are you talking about? My fic was already dropped in prelims.
...What are you talking about? My fic was already dropped in prelims.
Introduction to Amareican Civics
This was my first entry, and the thought process was fairly straightforward. Given the prompt, it felt appropriate to focus on the universe that has principals rather than princesses, and Sunset would definitely feel that loss. Many people have noted how Equestria could be seen as an application of Plato's Republic, with not just an enlightened and benevolent philosopher-queen, but an immortal one. So, take that philosopher-queen's student who wanted nothing more than to join her and become an essential part of that system, and plop her in a very different political system. Hilarity logically ensues.
Unfortunately, as my comments on this round have shown, I think way too much about background information, especially for minifics. Between that and not writing an outline, I got too wrapped in justifying Sunset's existence rather than actually having her do things. This is why it's important to plan things out.
Still, I definitely know what to do to polish this one up. I know taking the political angle may be a bit of a risk, but hopefully having an author's note available will allow me to make it clear that what's distressing Sunset is the sheer contrast in political systems, not my personal views on the state of the system at the moment. (Mostly, anyway.)
Great feedback from everyone: >>Orbiting_kettle >>Baal Bunny >>CoffeeMinion >>devas >>TheCyanRecluse
Special shout-out to >>Morning Sun for catching the dig at the Pledge of Allegiance.
This was my first entry, and the thought process was fairly straightforward. Given the prompt, it felt appropriate to focus on the universe that has principals rather than princesses, and Sunset would definitely feel that loss. Many people have noted how Equestria could be seen as an application of Plato's Republic, with not just an enlightened and benevolent philosopher-queen, but an immortal one. So, take that philosopher-queen's student who wanted nothing more than to join her and become an essential part of that system, and plop her in a very different political system. Hilarity logically ensues.
Unfortunately, as my comments on this round have shown, I think way too much about background information, especially for minifics. Between that and not writing an outline, I got too wrapped in justifying Sunset's existence rather than actually having her do things. This is why it's important to plan things out.
Still, I definitely know what to do to polish this one up. I know taking the political angle may be a bit of a risk, but hopefully having an author's note available will allow me to make it clear that what's distressing Sunset is the sheer contrast in political systems, not my personal views on the state of the system at the moment. (Mostly, anyway.)
Great feedback from everyone: >>Orbiting_kettle >>Baal Bunny >>CoffeeMinion >>devas >>TheCyanRecluse
Special shout-out to >>Morning Sun for catching the dig at the Pledge of Allegiance.
Standard Dragon Story*
Of course, the story I threw together last Saturday night did vastly better. Part of that may be the lack of politics, but I'm pretty sure it's because it's a lot better focused and funnier.
With this one, I took a different angle. Instead of using a situation where there isn't a princess from the start, create one where her absence is a lot more unusual and notable. Then my mind went to narrative convention, then Terry Pratchett, then why the constellations are in the sky. Also, I remembered that this image exists. The end result was an unexpected expansion of my headcanon. I already have the Fimfic version outlined.
Again, thanks for the feedback: >>ArgonMatrix >>Morning Sun >>EmotionalFlight >>CoffeeMinion >>Not_A_Hat
Of course, the story I threw together last Saturday night did vastly better. Part of that may be the lack of politics, but I'm pretty sure it's because it's a lot better focused and funnier.
With this one, I took a different angle. Instead of using a situation where there isn't a princess from the start, create one where her absence is a lot more unusual and notable. Then my mind went to narrative convention, then Terry Pratchett, then why the constellations are in the sky. Also, I remembered that this image exists. The end result was an unexpected expansion of my headcanon. I already have the Fimfic version outlined.
Again, thanks for the feedback: >>ArgonMatrix >>Morning Sun >>EmotionalFlight >>CoffeeMinion >>Not_A_Hat
>>FanOfMostEverything
Cool image, reminds me of this similar one. Constellations make for fun characters. Also, something something cool short story.
Cool image, reminds me of this similar one. Constellations make for fun characters. Also, something something cool short story.
Equestria Girls*
First of all, thank you >>FanOfMostEverything, >>ArgonMatrix, >>Bachiavellian, >>Monokeras, >>Baal Bunny, >>TheCyanRecluse, >>Misternick, and >>MrExtra
It seems like there was a clear (and quite valid) consensus of this being a decently executed scene, but just an intro into a larger story.
Mea culpa; this wasn't what I intended.
In my mind, this was a meta-joke about how without Twilight being a princess, the whole EQG plot goes off the rails and this little 750 word thing happens instead.
I think much of the issue comes from that last line. I had considered ending it with 'well, sometimes that's just how these things end', but I thought that would be an odd and defeatist thing for someone to say at that point, so I went with the subtler 'ends of the Earth' (emphasis, unfortunately, only mine). I should remember that little thing about subtlety in the writeoffs.
I'm glad the scene and characters worked, at least, and thanks again for the feedback.
First of all, thank you >>FanOfMostEverything, >>ArgonMatrix, >>Bachiavellian, >>Monokeras, >>Baal Bunny, >>TheCyanRecluse, >>Misternick, and >>MrExtra
It seems like there was a clear (and quite valid) consensus of this being a decently executed scene, but just an intro into a larger story.
Mea culpa; this wasn't what I intended.
In my mind, this was a meta-joke about how without Twilight being a princess, the whole EQG plot goes off the rails and this little 750 word thing happens instead.
I think much of the issue comes from that last line. I had considered ending it with 'well, sometimes that's just how these things end', but I thought that would be an odd and defeatist thing for someone to say at that point, so I went with the subtler 'ends of the Earth' (emphasis, unfortunately, only mine). I should remember that little thing about subtlety in the writeoffs.
I'm glad the scene and characters worked, at least, and thanks again for the feedback.
I cheated (in a certain sense) a bit on this story, in that a part of it was inspired by real events.
Anyway, the Internationale pâtissière is an anarco-surrealist group inspired by Noël "l'Entarteur" Godin and which uses cream-pies as a form of political protest, thrown while screaming "Gloup Gloup" and being as ridiculous as possible. Transposing them to Equestria and making them a "serious" threat there was something that I had to do sooner or later, and the prompt was perfect for that.
I wasn't really satisfied with the result. While the core of the story practically wrote itself, the version I submitted had some problems as the reviewers pointed out. The ending is probalby the most problematic part, but once eliminated the word-limit I should be able to fix it. Still, it performed better than I hoped, and I will certainly rework it and try to publish it on fimfiction, even if I will need an editor for that. Anyone wanting to help?
>>CoffeeMinion
I love the term Absurdist-dramedy and will shamelessly steal it.
>>Pastoral >>GaPJaxie >>FanOfMostEverything >>TheCyanRecluse >>Waterpear >>Not_A_Hat >>georg
Thank you for your time and your reviews. They helped quite a lot and it's always a pleasure to have one's work examined and dissected :pinkiehappy:
Anyway, the Internationale pâtissière is an anarco-surrealist group inspired by Noël "l'Entarteur" Godin and which uses cream-pies as a form of political protest, thrown while screaming "Gloup Gloup" and being as ridiculous as possible. Transposing them to Equestria and making them a "serious" threat there was something that I had to do sooner or later, and the prompt was perfect for that.
I wasn't really satisfied with the result. While the core of the story practically wrote itself, the version I submitted had some problems as the reviewers pointed out. The ending is probalby the most problematic part, but once eliminated the word-limit I should be able to fix it. Still, it performed better than I hoped, and I will certainly rework it and try to publish it on fimfiction, even if I will need an editor for that. Anyone wanting to help?
>>CoffeeMinion
I love the term Absurdist-dramedy and will shamelessly steal it.
>>Pastoral >>GaPJaxie >>FanOfMostEverything >>TheCyanRecluse >>Waterpear >>Not_A_Hat >>georg
Thank you for your time and your reviews. They helped quite a lot and it's always a pleasure to have one's work examined and dissected :pinkiehappy:
Retrospective: Page Two
This was one of the most controversial stories of the round, and I have no idea why. Some ponies put it at the top of their slate. Other ponies put it at the very bottom. It looks pretty much random across the board. I didn't get a lot of useful feedback, apart from FOME and Cyan finding the premise thin or unrealistic—but the premise (obviously?) isn't the point of the story.
My stories often score across the board with random-seeming rankings. Maybe it's because they're too dark for some ponies, or maybe they're just not very interesting stories.
I regret only having the emotional fortitude to finish one minific this time. If you're curious, the fic I almost finished was about Sombra's Door being Twilight's former reality, but she flips out with enough magic power to rewrite the Universe to suit her plans to become a princess. I showed Morning Sun that one but she didn't care for it. I had a couple of others planned but I'll probably roost on the ideas for a while.
Results aside, I like this story enough that I plan to fix it up (by subtly clarifying that Luna intends to hurry in part to help save Celestia's hide) and post it.
Again, I regret failing to participate more this time around, especially with reviews. I'm not in a good place right now, and I'm hoping ECT will fix all that.
This was one of the most controversial stories of the round, and I have no idea why. Some ponies put it at the top of their slate. Other ponies put it at the very bottom. It looks pretty much random across the board. I didn't get a lot of useful feedback, apart from FOME and Cyan finding the premise thin or unrealistic—but the premise (obviously?) isn't the point of the story.
My stories often score across the board with random-seeming rankings. Maybe it's because they're too dark for some ponies, or maybe they're just not very interesting stories.
I regret only having the emotional fortitude to finish one minific this time. If you're curious, the fic I almost finished was about Sombra's Door being Twilight's former reality, but she flips out with enough magic power to rewrite the Universe to suit her plans to become a princess. I showed Morning Sun that one but she didn't care for it. I had a couple of others planned but I'll probably roost on the ideas for a while.
Results aside, I like this story enough that I plan to fix it up (by subtly clarifying that Luna intends to hurry in part to help save Celestia's hide) and post it.
Again, I regret failing to participate more this time around, especially with reviews. I'm not in a good place right now, and I'm hoping ECT will fix all that.
Hey, 19th ain't half-bad for my first time in one of these—I'll take it! I also have the distinguished honor(?) of having the second-most controversial story in the finals, which admittedly surprises me. I didn't know how well people would take to this concept, and I guess it varies pretty wildly from person to person.
I've had this story idea in the back of my head for a while now. For those who are still confused by it, the basic premise is that King Sombra, before he was defeated way in the past, placed some sort of curse on the Crystal Heart that prevented it from functioning on its own power. Princess Amore, the first ruler of the Crystal Empire, effectively sacrificed herself by going into permanent stasis within the Crystal Heart, powering it with her own life force and magical essence. When Cadance took over leadership of the Empire, she discovered Princess Amore within the heart, very weak from having maintained the Crystal Heart's magic for over a thousand years. Princess Amore told Cadance that, when the time came and Amore could no longer support the Crystal Heart, Cadance would have to take up her mantle in order to protect the Empire. Amore still had enough strength to uphold the Heart for several decades, theoretically giving Cadance plenty of time to enjoy her life for that time. When Flurry Heart shattered the Crystal Heart, however, that strained Amore's power immensely, essentially fast-tracking the process and giving Cadance very little time with which to enjoy her last moments of free life.
Now, fitting all of that into a minific was simply out of the question—and perhaps it was folly on my part to stick with the concept at all, knowing that it would likely be confusing in such a short space—so I did my best to show one of the more poignant moments in that story arc as well as giving subtle hints at what exactly had happened to lead up to this moment. Obviously it worked for some, but not for others.
I'm tempted to write this all up in a long-form story, but that might interfere with some other planned stories I have going on the back burner. Still, it would be fun, interesting, and would allow me to give a more complete story arc to this concept as well as answer some questions that would no doubt arise from such a concept (Why did Amore have to maintain the Crystal Heart even while the Empire was in exile? Could Sombra's curse somehow be removed from the Heart, eliminating the need for Amore/Cadance to uphold its power? Couldn't the citizens of the Empire simply relocate themselves across Equestria, allowing the Empire to fall so that Cadance could maintain her freedom? Et cetera). For now, though, I'll settle for answering some of the issues mentioned here.
>>Pastoral >>Misternick >>Orbiting_kettle >>FanOfMostEverything >>georg
Thank you all for your feedback! Hopefully the little blurb above helps to elucidate some of the meaning and details that I couldn't work into such a short space. I also didn't realize that Princess Amore was such a niche character—I figured she was fairly recognizable, but I guess not everyone keeps up with the comics, so that's my bad for adding a potential extra layer of confusion for some of you.
>>Not_A_Hat
That's definitely not the feeling I was trying to evoke, and I apologize if it came across that way for you. I was trying to get across an ever-present feeling of dread—the idea that, in the back of her mind, Cadance knew what was coming but was trying not to acknowledge it until it was absolute. The revelation wasn't meant to catch her, or the reader, entirely off-guard. And I certainly didn't want to leave the reader in the dark like that. If you have any suggestions on how I could avoid such a pitfall in the future, I'd love to hear it! Always looking for ways to improve.
I've had this story idea in the back of my head for a while now. For those who are still confused by it, the basic premise is that King Sombra, before he was defeated way in the past, placed some sort of curse on the Crystal Heart that prevented it from functioning on its own power. Princess Amore, the first ruler of the Crystal Empire, effectively sacrificed herself by going into permanent stasis within the Crystal Heart, powering it with her own life force and magical essence. When Cadance took over leadership of the Empire, she discovered Princess Amore within the heart, very weak from having maintained the Crystal Heart's magic for over a thousand years. Princess Amore told Cadance that, when the time came and Amore could no longer support the Crystal Heart, Cadance would have to take up her mantle in order to protect the Empire. Amore still had enough strength to uphold the Heart for several decades, theoretically giving Cadance plenty of time to enjoy her life for that time. When Flurry Heart shattered the Crystal Heart, however, that strained Amore's power immensely, essentially fast-tracking the process and giving Cadance very little time with which to enjoy her last moments of free life.
Now, fitting all of that into a minific was simply out of the question—and perhaps it was folly on my part to stick with the concept at all, knowing that it would likely be confusing in such a short space—so I did my best to show one of the more poignant moments in that story arc as well as giving subtle hints at what exactly had happened to lead up to this moment. Obviously it worked for some, but not for others.
I'm tempted to write this all up in a long-form story, but that might interfere with some other planned stories I have going on the back burner. Still, it would be fun, interesting, and would allow me to give a more complete story arc to this concept as well as answer some questions that would no doubt arise from such a concept (Why did Amore have to maintain the Crystal Heart even while the Empire was in exile? Could Sombra's curse somehow be removed from the Heart, eliminating the need for Amore/Cadance to uphold its power? Couldn't the citizens of the Empire simply relocate themselves across Equestria, allowing the Empire to fall so that Cadance could maintain her freedom? Et cetera). For now, though, I'll settle for answering some of the issues mentioned here.
>>Pastoral >>Misternick >>Orbiting_kettle >>FanOfMostEverything >>georg
Thank you all for your feedback! Hopefully the little blurb above helps to elucidate some of the meaning and details that I couldn't work into such a short space. I also didn't realize that Princess Amore was such a niche character—I figured she was fairly recognizable, but I guess not everyone keeps up with the comics, so that's my bad for adding a potential extra layer of confusion for some of you.
>>Not_A_Hat
That's definitely not the feeling I was trying to evoke, and I apologize if it came across that way for you. I was trying to get across an ever-present feeling of dread—the idea that, in the back of her mind, Cadance knew what was coming but was trying not to acknowledge it until it was absolute. The revelation wasn't meant to catch her, or the reader, entirely off-guard. And I certainly didn't want to leave the reader in the dark like that. If you have any suggestions on how I could avoid such a pitfall in the future, I'd love to hear it! Always looking for ways to improve.
>>ArgonMatrix No need to apologize; I don't regret reading it or anything. And I'll say again that this very much is something of a peeve of mine. I think it affects me inordinately compared to others, but I'm not sure how to compensate for that, so the best I can do is tell people and admit I may not be in their target audience.
I've spent a bit of time thinking about this, and I'll PM you what I've written on FimFiction. Since we don't have proper notifications here, I can't be certain you'll see it.
...and it got kinda long and rambly. :P
I've spent a bit of time thinking about this, and I'll PM you what I've written on FimFiction. Since we don't have proper notifications here, I can't be certain you'll see it.
...and it got kinda long and rambly. :P
It thoroughly amuses me how this story is one of the few stories to have multiple guesses, and basically everyone pinpointed exactly who wrote it.
>>FanOfMostEverything I didn't check the mythos carefully. I looked at a couple of Wiki pages, grabbed some names, and said, "Eh, nobody but FOME will know the difference."
>>Astrarian
That was the big question about this piece: whether that transition would work. Some people said it did; more said it didn't. I don't know whether the claim that you can't do a transition like that is good advice, or dogma on a par with saying that a story must be a single action in a single place on a single day, as the neo-classicists did.
Readers, how do you know whether you're reacting to the story not working right, or to the story not matching your theories about how a story is supposed to work?
>>Not_A_Hat
You're correct. My abominations are OOC.
>>Astrarian
It does feel to me like the tone changes from comedic to serious in a bit of a jarring manner, though.
That was the big question about this piece: whether that transition would work. Some people said it did; more said it didn't. I don't know whether the claim that you can't do a transition like that is good advice, or dogma on a par with saying that a story must be a single action in a single place on a single day, as the neo-classicists did.
Readers, how do you know whether you're reacting to the story not working right, or to the story not matching your theories about how a story is supposed to work?
>>Not_A_Hat
Oh, and although I haven't read much Lovecraft, I was under the impression that the Lovecraftian abominations aren't really out to defile things. Aren't they mostly just inscrutable and dangerous to be around or something?
You're correct. My abominations are OOC.
>>Trick_Question
How would you change it?
>>georg AAAAH! AAAARGH! MY BRAAAIIN!
Sorry, did you say something?
You crapped on a gem. I'm very disappointed.
How would you change it?
>>georg AAAAH! AAAARGH! MY BRAAAIIN!
Sorry, did you say something?
Ten minutes later in the light of the new dawn, a single unicorn left the small group still discussing the ritual down in the bailey and vanished into the castle. Far above, Princess Twilight Sparkle watched, still respectfully silent next to the temporarily unemployed Sun and Moon. It was a moment she had dreaded far more than the ritual itself, and there was no way to prevent it other than flying away into the bright sky and leaving the inevitable confrontation to Celestia and Luna, who undoubtedly had faced far more embarrassing moments.
As the tapping of new shoes on ancient granite flooring neared behind her, Twilight turned to greet the young unicorn headed her way. She was far too young for this to have been more than her first circulum, and the bright and cheerful smile filling every single bit of her face indicated just how happy she was to have participated, or as Twilight's sinking heart realized from the tiny golden sun clipped to the unicorn's cape, to have been selected to lead the ceremony this morning. She stopped a respectful distance away from the three alicorns and bowed with practiced grace before speaking.
"This is such an honor, Your Highnesses. Thank you." Her grin became even larger. "With particular thanks to you, Princess Sparkle."
A response was warranted, and although Twilight waited for either of the elder alicorns to make it, they both remained stalwartly silent, with Celestia even prodding Twilight with the tip of one wing and just the faintest sly smile. Finally, Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath and said the words she had been dreading.
"You're welcome, Trixie."
As the tapping of new shoes on ancient granite flooring neared behind her, Twilight turned to greet the young unicorn headed her way. She was far too young for this to have been more than her first circulum, and the bright and cheerful smile filling every single bit of her face indicated just how happy she was to have participated, or as Twilight's sinking heart realized from the tiny golden sun clipped to the unicorn's cape, to have been selected to lead the ceremony this morning. She stopped a respectful distance away from the three alicorns and bowed with practiced grace before speaking.
"This is such an honor, Your Highnesses. Thank you." Her grin became even larger. "With particular thanks to you, Princess Sparkle."
A response was warranted, and although Twilight waited for either of the elder alicorns to make it, they both remained stalwartly silent, with Celestia even prodding Twilight with the tip of one wing and just the faintest sly smile. Finally, Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath and said the words she had been dreading.
"You're welcome, Trixie."
Well, it's a shame that this wasn't on my slate, because it would definitely have gotten a high score. I was actually expecting a few stories of this nature... A funeral or the like, and the premise being that Princesses are not included in this sort of thing. Though I was expecting something a bit more somber and depressing.
This took the same general sort of idea, and ran with it in a completely different direction. I love how you have immortal angst... but you know, not really. I mean, Twilight isn't terribly upset about the fact that she's an immortal princess and has, and will continue to, outlive all her friends and loved ones... She's upset about the fact that being a princess keeps her separated from everyone else, and all the exciting things going on in the world right now!
If anything, this is more like.. Anti Immortality Angst. And it's well written, with excellent characterizations of both Twilight and Celestia. Very well done, and definitely deserves its medal. :)
This took the same general sort of idea, and ran with it in a completely different direction. I love how you have immortal angst... but you know, not really. I mean, Twilight isn't terribly upset about the fact that she's an immortal princess and has, and will continue to, outlive all her friends and loved ones... She's upset about the fact that being a princess keeps her separated from everyone else, and all the exciting things going on in the world right now!
If anything, this is more like.. Anti Immortality Angst. And it's well written, with excellent characterizations of both Twilight and Celestia. Very well done, and definitely deserves its medal. :)
Relinquishing: A Retrospective
I don't actually have a lot to say before getting to individual responses, but I want to say that I'm very gratified by the positive response to this story. Seeing the comments trickle in here over the past week has been a much-needed pick-me-up, and the little gold medal is a wonderful cherry on top. Thank you all.
I'll probably put a touched-up version of this in microfic collection on FiMFic over the weekend, assuming I have time to do that touching-up by then. Now, person-specific comments!
>>Morning Sun
That's exactly what I was going for, and I'm glad it came through!
>>Bad Horse
Between this and the nice things you said about Wyrmlysan on TD's recommendation blog, you have been disconcertingly nice to me lately. I think your evil facade is slipping, and the mushy-hearted Nice Horse is starting to peek through!
>>Cold in Gardez
I haven't been around for the last few writeoffs, but I certainly see what you mean about the line being blatant. On one hand, I want it to be; Celestia's trying to socratically guide Twilight into expressing herself so that she doesn't just stew. On the other hand, I don't want readers to think I think they're stupid. I'll take a look at it, but I don't think I want Celestia to be to subtle--if not for the reader's sake, then for Twilight's.
>>GaPJaxie
Thank you!
>>Baal Bunny
Given to someone who's got a copy of Morning, Noon & Night on his bookshelf, that's high praise indeed. Thanks!
>>devas
Sorry that this story didn't work for you. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make it work; if a glimpse of how life doesn't always conform to your plans, not just despite, but even because of your successes, isn't something you see as worth exploring, then I don't see any real way to address that in the context of this fic.
That's not to denigrate your opinion at all! I'm just saying that I don't see any way to address your comment, in the context of this story. Thank you for taking the time to think about it, regardless; I do appreciate the comment.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Thank you!
>>TheCyanRecluse
Celestia's gotten genre-savvy to the point where she doesn't really bother with contingency plans any more, assuming instead that some conveniently-located savior of Equestria will pop up without her bothering to worry about it overmuch. The ancient Unicornians, being less versed in the ways of preordained success, didn't want to leave anything to chance :) In all seriousness, though, thank you!
>>Not_A_Hat
It's funny; I would have thought that a story where Twilight goes from being forced to the sidelines during an event which was a lifelong goal to "cheered up" in a few hundred words would show her to be very shallow indeed! My goal was to show how important this was to Twilight, and how it had been a benchmark she measured herself against, hoped to achieve, perhaps even planned on, growing up. It sounds like that didn't come through clearly, though. Do you have any suggestions to communicate that more clearly?
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Thank you!
>>georg
"Epilogues by georg" should be a thing.
I don't actually have a lot to say before getting to individual responses, but I want to say that I'm very gratified by the positive response to this story. Seeing the comments trickle in here over the past week has been a much-needed pick-me-up, and the little gold medal is a wonderful cherry on top. Thank you all.
I'll probably put a touched-up version of this in microfic collection on FiMFic over the weekend, assuming I have time to do that touching-up by then. Now, person-specific comments!
>>Morning Sun
That's exactly what I was going for, and I'm glad it came through!
>>Bad Horse
Between this and the nice things you said about Wyrmlysan on TD's recommendation blog, you have been disconcertingly nice to me lately. I think your evil facade is slipping, and the mushy-hearted Nice Horse is starting to peek through!
>>Cold in Gardez
I haven't been around for the last few writeoffs, but I certainly see what you mean about the line being blatant. On one hand, I want it to be; Celestia's trying to socratically guide Twilight into expressing herself so that she doesn't just stew. On the other hand, I don't want readers to think I think they're stupid. I'll take a look at it, but I don't think I want Celestia to be to subtle--if not for the reader's sake, then for Twilight's.
>>GaPJaxie
Thank you!
>>Baal Bunny
Given to someone who's got a copy of Morning, Noon & Night on his bookshelf, that's high praise indeed. Thanks!
>>devas
Sorry that this story didn't work for you. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make it work; if a glimpse of how life doesn't always conform to your plans, not just despite, but even because of your successes, isn't something you see as worth exploring, then I don't see any real way to address that in the context of this fic.
That's not to denigrate your opinion at all! I'm just saying that I don't see any way to address your comment, in the context of this story. Thank you for taking the time to think about it, regardless; I do appreciate the comment.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Thank you!
>>TheCyanRecluse
Celestia's gotten genre-savvy to the point where she doesn't really bother with contingency plans any more, assuming instead that some conveniently-located savior of Equestria will pop up without her bothering to worry about it overmuch. The ancient Unicornians, being less versed in the ways of preordained success, didn't want to leave anything to chance :) In all seriousness, though, thank you!
>>Not_A_Hat
It's funny; I would have thought that a story where Twilight goes from being forced to the sidelines during an event which was a lifelong goal to "cheered up" in a few hundred words would show her to be very shallow indeed! My goal was to show how important this was to Twilight, and how it had been a benchmark she measured herself against, hoped to achieve, perhaps even planned on, growing up. It sounds like that didn't come through clearly, though. Do you have any suggestions to communicate that more clearly?
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Thank you!
>>georg
"Epilogues by georg" should be a thing.
Terms And Conditions: Retrospective
Before we get into responses or what have you, I'd like to address the prompt connection. I use prompts as launch points - the final product doesn't necessarily relate to the prompt directly, but was thought of because of the prompt. There is always some connection to the prompt leftover after I finish writing and possibly rewrite - this one in particular was strenuous because I forgot to work the actual connection into the story. The reason this is related to the prompt is:
1) The title.
2) The fact that the word Include and the word Comprehend are synonyms.
This is... well, it's strenuous at best. I thought it was neat, in a self reflexive kind of way, but the end result was that no one knew the prompt connection and I probably got docked points.
Well, that's all for that. Feel free to tell me if you think that the above is unreasonable.
Thank you all for reviewing this story. I wasn't expecting it to do nearly as well as it did, especially after the prompt connection problem.
Responses!
>>Cold in Gardez
The thing is, he actually does say that. In fact, that's basically his first two lines:
I'm unsure what to do to fix it if that isn't obvious enough, since the sentence you gave as an example is a bit blatant. Yes, I can get away with a lot of tell in this format, but I try to avoid direct stuff like that. Suggestions?
>>Jupiter VII >>FanOfMostEverything
I definitely need to lock down Spike's vocabulary. Based on the pilot, he has trouble with words like precipice, but I'm pretty sure he would know the word sustenance. Either way, I need to expand or constrict his vocabulary, since it's erratic here.
>>GroaningGreyAgony
That was an editing error.
Thanks!
>>Orbiting_kettle>>TheCyanRecluse>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you!
>>Not_A_Hat
The phantasms were a red herring because I didn't really have a plan when I threw them in. I needed a symptom that Twilight would be able to see and recognize, but Spike and company wouldn't, since I wanted her to be making reports interspersed throughout. This was the most obvious choice. I need to either pick something else or give them real meaning, but in the intended context they were just there to let Twilight write the word phantasmagoria.
In terms of the headers, I realized after submission that the first two headers should have been different (Twilight is going through synonym sickness, after all.) I'll switch it up in an editing pass.
This is a magical malady - to Spike, the closest thing he's ever seen would most likely be poison joke. Zecora is the obvious choice to go to in this instance. On the other hand, I could make that much clearer, especially with more words.
Once again, thank you for all of your comments.
Before we get into responses or what have you, I'd like to address the prompt connection. I use prompts as launch points - the final product doesn't necessarily relate to the prompt directly, but was thought of because of the prompt. There is always some connection to the prompt leftover after I finish writing and possibly rewrite - this one in particular was strenuous because I forgot to work the actual connection into the story. The reason this is related to the prompt is:
1) The title.
2) The fact that the word Include and the word Comprehend are synonyms.
This is... well, it's strenuous at best. I thought it was neat, in a self reflexive kind of way, but the end result was that no one knew the prompt connection and I probably got docked points.
Well, that's all for that. Feel free to tell me if you think that the above is unreasonable.
Thank you all for reviewing this story. I wasn't expecting it to do nearly as well as it did, especially after the prompt connection problem.
Responses!
>>Cold in Gardez
The thing is, he actually does say that. In fact, that's basically his first two lines:
Twilight is trying to get me to write stuff, but I’m having troubles understanding her. I'm pretty sure the Synoni-ymy Sickness is doing something to her speech.
I'm unsure what to do to fix it if that isn't obvious enough, since the sentence you gave as an example is a bit blatant. Yes, I can get away with a lot of tell in this format, but I try to avoid direct stuff like that. Suggestions?
>>Jupiter VII >>FanOfMostEverything
I definitely need to lock down Spike's vocabulary. Based on the pilot, he has trouble with words like precipice, but I'm pretty sure he would know the word sustenance. Either way, I need to expand or constrict his vocabulary, since it's erratic here.
>>GroaningGreyAgony
That was an editing error.
Thanks!
>>Orbiting_kettle>>TheCyanRecluse>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you!
>>Not_A_Hat
The phantasms were a red herring because I didn't really have a plan when I threw them in. I needed a symptom that Twilight would be able to see and recognize, but Spike and company wouldn't, since I wanted her to be making reports interspersed throughout. This was the most obvious choice. I need to either pick something else or give them real meaning, but in the intended context they were just there to let Twilight write the word phantasmagoria.
In terms of the headers, I realized after submission that the first two headers should have been different (Twilight is going through synonym sickness, after all.) I'll switch it up in an editing pass.
This is a magical malady - to Spike, the closest thing he's ever seen would most likely be poison joke. Zecora is the obvious choice to go to in this instance. On the other hand, I could make that much clearer, especially with more words.
Once again, thank you for all of your comments.
>>Bad Horse
Bluntly, I'd take out the goofy humor. You shift from:
...and then morph it into a story about two parents who murder their only child (who they cared for more than a million years) and decide to become ponies because they've becomed too strongly tied to the mortal culture they're in after taking mates—which is absolutely amazing when you narrate it happening, leaving the conclusions to the reader rather than relying on telliness. Each one of those two things could make for a good story, but both of them together did not work for me, especially not in the space of a minific.
Of the two, I like the one that doesn't try to be funny much more than the one that does, even though they're both good in various ways. Your words actually made me identify with parents who murder their only beloved child, which is impressive writing. I don't really think of this as a Sad story, even though it's very Dark.
The other problem with the story (minor) is the shifting between "this is not translatable in any language" followed by direct translations. I suspect that was intended as humorous irony, but it seemed like sloppy lack of consistency in a couple of places. It's challenging to try to portray an incomprehensible alien mindset, and this kind of mutes the punch of the ending since "we can't understand why they do anything they do", even though we clearly can throughout the entire fic (nothing they do is truly senseless or cthonic).
Bluntly, I'd take out the goofy humor. You shift from:
To be smothered to death once in each of Tsathoggua’s armpits every day until the stars expire is too good for the salesthing that sold me a pony colony with no princess.
...and then morph it into a story about two parents who murder their only child (who they cared for more than a million years) and decide to become ponies because they've becomed too strongly tied to the mortal culture they're in after taking mates—which is absolutely amazing when you narrate it happening, leaving the conclusions to the reader rather than relying on telliness. Each one of those two things could make for a good story, but both of them together did not work for me, especially not in the space of a minific.
Of the two, I like the one that doesn't try to be funny much more than the one that does, even though they're both good in various ways. Your words actually made me identify with parents who murder their only beloved child, which is impressive writing. I don't really think of this as a Sad story, even though it's very Dark.
The other problem with the story (minor) is the shifting between "this is not translatable in any language" followed by direct translations. I suspect that was intended as humorous irony, but it seemed like sloppy lack of consistency in a couple of places. It's challenging to try to portray an incomprehensible alien mindset, and this kind of mutes the punch of the ending since "we can't understand why they do anything they do", even though we clearly can throughout the entire fic (nothing they do is truly senseless or cthonic).
>>FanOfMostEverything I didn't make it to the finals and my name was already showing. I wouldn't have said anything otherwise. Though it is worth noting not to say something if you are still anonymous.
First off, congratulations to our winners! Seriously, I'm extremely jealous of their ability to write about pony princesses so wonderfully.
Of course, I'm biased as hell. I love pony princesses waaaaaay too much. Look at my top scorers for any almost any round, and I think you'll notice a disturbing trend. Hell, just crtl + F any story I've written for "Celestia" or "Luna." It's goddamned scary.
Retrospective: The Midnight Lesson
Well, fifth place out of almost seventy entries is my best minific showing to date! I might be getting the hang of these things. :P
Anyways, as per usual with FiM Minific rounds, I used this event as an opportunity to experiment with my writing. When the prompt came out, I kinda just tried to think of genres/topics that I hadn't written yet. In the end, I decided to go with something dark, even though the end product is probably not so much dark as it is slightly uncomfortable.
And also as per usual, the most common criticism is a lack of an ending/closure. I'm starting to think I might get a cutie mark in writing incomplete stories.
Finally, I really appreciate the reviews, guys! Seriously, I think I might have developed a physical addiction to praise over the internet. You guys really need to stop enabling me.
>>Pastoral
>>Waterpear
>>CoffeeMinion
For those of you who are dying to know what happens next, it's basically what FoME said. Celestia learns dark magic, which is how she eventually teaches Twilight about it in the season three opener. I think the show also implies that she had to use dark magic against Sombra, but that might just be me reading between the lines too much.
Regardless, I appreciate the feedback! I'll keep working on getting my stories to properly finish instead of just end.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Seriously, how the hell do you figure out exactly what I'm going for in all my stories? It's supernatural at this point. Will I gain your reading comprehension powers if I eat your heart?
>>Orbiting_kettle
Thank you for leaving your thoughts! Glad you enjoyed it.
>>Bad Horse
I originally did have a couple of extra lines of squick where Celestia can't get blood out of her fur without spreading it around, but I had to cut it for length. Such a shame--they were really fun to write.
>>Not_A_Hat
Yes, that monologue was painfully telly in hindsight. In my defense, I wrote it at the ass-end of a four hour writing session (cause I'm that slow) after getting off of work at 11 at night. It genially sounded pretty okay to me at the time. :twilightblush:
The logic behind Star Swirl's reasoning is that if you're immortal, you're going to see basically everything that could possibly happen. Celestia will see every new threat to Equestria from that point on till the end of time. I was trying to give the impression that Star Swirl wanted Celestia to be ready for every possible thing that could happen, since she's going to be around for them when they do happen.
... and I probably just broke my record for most uses of the word "happen" in a single paragraph.
Thank you for your thoughts! I know I have trouble communicating complicated concepts through dialogue, so I appreciate you pointing out where I might need more work.
>>TheCyanRecluse
For your first question... I genuinely did not think of that. I guess the concepts of "alicorn" and "immortal" are so closely associated in my head that I forgot to realize that Celestia's immortality wouldn't be immediately apparent to any onlooker.
As for Luna, she's still a little pegasus filly, here. :P Should have definitely made that a bit clearer, though. Thank you for your feedback!
>>georg
Thanks for your thoughts! I'm glad that it mostly worked out for you, aside from that pacing hiccup. I did have some trouble transitioning from the first part (Celestia wondering what happened to Star Swirl's leg) to the rest of the story. Next time, I'll try to make the seams a little less obvious.
Well, thank you guys for another great Writeoff. I'll see you all in the next one!
Of course, I'm biased as hell. I love pony princesses waaaaaay too much. Look at my top scorers for any almost any round, and I think you'll notice a disturbing trend. Hell, just crtl + F any story I've written for "Celestia" or "Luna." It's goddamned scary.
Retrospective: The Midnight Lesson
Well, fifth place out of almost seventy entries is my best minific showing to date! I might be getting the hang of these things. :P
Anyways, as per usual with FiM Minific rounds, I used this event as an opportunity to experiment with my writing. When the prompt came out, I kinda just tried to think of genres/topics that I hadn't written yet. In the end, I decided to go with something dark, even though the end product is probably not so much dark as it is slightly uncomfortable.
And also as per usual, the most common criticism is a lack of an ending/closure. I'm starting to think I might get a cutie mark in writing incomplete stories.
Finally, I really appreciate the reviews, guys! Seriously, I think I might have developed a physical addiction to praise over the internet. You guys really need to stop enabling me.
>>Pastoral
>>Waterpear
>>CoffeeMinion
For those of you who are dying to know what happens next, it's basically what FoME said. Celestia learns dark magic, which is how she eventually teaches Twilight about it in the season three opener. I think the show also implies that she had to use dark magic against Sombra, but that might just be me reading between the lines too much.
Regardless, I appreciate the feedback! I'll keep working on getting my stories to properly finish instead of just end.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Seriously, how the hell do you figure out exactly what I'm going for in all my stories? It's supernatural at this point. Will I gain your reading comprehension powers if I eat your heart?
>>Orbiting_kettle
Thank you for leaving your thoughts! Glad you enjoyed it.
>>Bad Horse
I originally did have a couple of extra lines of squick where Celestia can't get blood out of her fur without spreading it around, but I had to cut it for length. Such a shame--they were really fun to write.
>>Not_A_Hat
Yes, that monologue was painfully telly in hindsight. In my defense, I wrote it at the ass-end of a four hour writing session (cause I'm that slow) after getting off of work at 11 at night. It genially sounded pretty okay to me at the time. :twilightblush:
The logic behind Star Swirl's reasoning is that if you're immortal, you're going to see basically everything that could possibly happen. Celestia will see every new threat to Equestria from that point on till the end of time. I was trying to give the impression that Star Swirl wanted Celestia to be ready for every possible thing that could happen, since she's going to be around for them when they do happen.
... and I probably just broke my record for most uses of the word "happen" in a single paragraph.
Thank you for your thoughts! I know I have trouble communicating complicated concepts through dialogue, so I appreciate you pointing out where I might need more work.
>>TheCyanRecluse
For your first question... I genuinely did not think of that. I guess the concepts of "alicorn" and "immortal" are so closely associated in my head that I forgot to realize that Celestia's immortality wouldn't be immediately apparent to any onlooker.
As for Luna, she's still a little pegasus filly, here. :P Should have definitely made that a bit clearer, though. Thank you for your feedback!
>>georg
Thanks for your thoughts! I'm glad that it mostly worked out for you, aside from that pacing hiccup. I did have some trouble transitioning from the first part (Celestia wondering what happened to Star Swirl's leg) to the rest of the story. Next time, I'll try to make the seams a little less obvious.
Well, thank you guys for another great Writeoff. I'll see you all in the next one!
Aster Invictus: the retrospective
When I hit submit on this story, I was pretty proud of it. Making finals was a pleasant surprise, and even now, I'm satisfied. It has a complete story arc in about 540 words, and it's also actually kind of cool. I can't wait to touch this up and expand it for Fimfiction.
That said, it's got some flaws:
1) The prose is terse to the point of curtness. Part of me wants to blame this on the minific format. After all, everyone knows that stories often get too ambitious for the minific format, and end up suffering as a result. Yet I had plenty of breathing room within the word count. So this likely can't be fixed with the minific panaceo of "add more words." I think this exacerbates the story's other major problems, as well.
2) The ending isn't ambiguous enough. What I wanted out of the ending was unclearness over whether the narrator actually was the chosen one or whether she'd just gone off the deep end. That's not what I got; everyone unanimously thought that she was crazy. I really should have seen this one coming and patched it up with a line like "'No!' said the Princess clad in friendship. 'You're good enough!'" There's certainly room to maneuver here. But that may not be the best choice, because...
3) The ending needs reconsideration entirely. I don't recall what the original goal I had in mind was, but the ending as you see it was literally decided on as it was being written. If nothing else, the whole possible mental illness thing is probably not in very good taste.
---
>>Not_A_Hat I think the central idea here is wrestling with the concept of "the chosen one." Like, can the chosen one ever be horribly flawed? If she fails to live up to the most important virtues, was she ever really chosen? If not, doesn't she have to live an immaculate life?
>>georg Invicta? I was under the impression that aster is a masculine noun in the nominative case. At any rate, you've sniffed me out. My Latin education consists of reading the first two chapters of the Wikibook on it.
>>Bad Horse I'm amused that your comment basically amounts to "this story is good because it's a story."
Everyone else, thank you for your comment: >>FanOfMostEverything, >>Trick_Question, >>Monokeras, >>CoffeeMinion, and >>TheCyanRecluse. And to those who read but didn't comment, thank you too.
>>FanOfMostEverything
Embarrassingly enough, this title wasn't intended to be permanent (though, I did end up liking it). I was on vacation with my family when I was writing it and got called away "just for a few minutes" during the editing process, and wound up forgetting to go back and change the title on this and "An Opportunity For Improvement", which I was going to rename "Fixer-Upper".
Oh, well...
I also never got a chance to finish my third entry, which was going to be called "Deposed". I'll probably post that to my short fiction collection at some point, when I get a chance to write it.
Embarrassingly enough, this title wasn't intended to be permanent (though, I did end up liking it). I was on vacation with my family when I was writing it and got called away "just for a few minutes" during the editing process, and wound up forgetting to go back and change the title on this and "An Opportunity For Improvement", which I was going to rename "Fixer-Upper".
Oh, well...
I also never got a chance to finish my third entry, which was going to be called "Deposed". I'll probably post that to my short fiction collection at some point, when I get a chance to write it.
Thanks for the reviews, everyone! I really had a fun time with this. I also had an idea on how to expand this a little, and may be releasing it as a stand-alone in a few days.
The Circle of Life placed 32 of 67, which I suppose is better than a smack in the face with a wet mackerel any day of the week. If I had it to do over again, I would have ended it after ‘It was the last time she saw her grandmother alive’ and used the additional words to flesh out the nursing home section to a fair extreme.
Editing killed a lot of this story, because clipping this down to 750 words cut out a lot of the heart-tearing that I really like to do, the reminiscing of Sophie about how her grandmother used to be so strong, boosting her up onto the backs of horses, and so clever, able to tell stories about their adventures in a magic place called Ponyland for hours upon end, and now she’s fallen so far, but still refuses any help to get out the little bag with the mysterious artefact, although Sophie still can carry her back to bed when she was done. I plan on expanding this and making a One Chapter Unless Liked Enough To Continue story. Any additional chapters would be the adventures of Sophie in magic pony land, so much the same and so different than her grandmother’s stories.
Although there would be one minor difference in the story that I publish that will change the whole direction of events. Can you see it?
The unicorn lit up her horn with pale green magic and removed a heart-shaped locket on a chain from the bag, although the sad look on her face showed it was not the answer she was looking for.
>>MCA
Didn’t like HIE: Yes, but some people do. The whole of G1 was a limited HIE, which was probably a mistake on Hasbro’s part because if a little girl (target audience) did not empathize with the human character, they probably would have empathized with the ponies if she had not been there. (Hence G4)
>>Morning Sun
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Not_A_Hat
Earlier Generation: (G1) Yes, this is based on G1, although I did not go so cryptic as to use Majesty (the original Celestia-ish character) or have new little ponies being born by magic mirrors (seriously.)
>>Morning Sun
Morning Sun: Grandma Megs is Megan Williams, the original little girl in G1. Unfortunately, people age even on this side of the rainbow bridge, and while thousands of years have gone by in Ponyland, almost a century has gone by here. She’s passing down the ancient artifact ‘The Rainbow Of Light’ to a new 11 year old Megan (Sophia Megan McAllister, because we don’t have cloning, sorry)
I promise more emotions in a continuation, if I ever get that far. For those of you who read me, you know I like the feelz :)
>>Cold in Gardez
>>CoffeeMinion
>>TheCyanRecluse
>>tPg
>>Trick_Question
>>Waterpear
Editing killed a lot of this story, because clipping this down to 750 words cut out a lot of the heart-tearing that I really like to do, the reminiscing of Sophie about how her grandmother used to be so strong, boosting her up onto the backs of horses, and so clever, able to tell stories about their adventures in a magic place called Ponyland for hours upon end, and now she’s fallen so far, but still refuses any help to get out the little bag with the mysterious artefact, although Sophie still can carry her back to bed when she was done. I plan on expanding this and making a One Chapter Unless Liked Enough To Continue story. Any additional chapters would be the adventures of Sophie in magic pony land, so much the same and so different than her grandmother’s stories.
Although there would be one minor difference in the story that I publish that will change the whole direction of events. Can you see it?
The unicorn lit up her horn with pale green magic and removed a heart-shaped locket on a chain from the bag, although the sad look on her face showed it was not the answer she was looking for.
>>MCA
Didn’t like HIE: Yes, but some people do. The whole of G1 was a limited HIE, which was probably a mistake on Hasbro’s part because if a little girl (target audience) did not empathize with the human character, they probably would have empathized with the ponies if she had not been there. (Hence G4)
>>Morning Sun
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Not_A_Hat
Earlier Generation: (G1) Yes, this is based on G1, although I did not go so cryptic as to use Majesty (the original Celestia-ish character) or have new little ponies being born by magic mirrors (seriously.)
>>Morning Sun
Morning Sun: Grandma Megs is Megan Williams, the original little girl in G1. Unfortunately, people age even on this side of the rainbow bridge, and while thousands of years have gone by in Ponyland, almost a century has gone by here. She’s passing down the ancient artifact ‘The Rainbow Of Light’ to a new 11 year old Megan (Sophia Megan McAllister, because we don’t have cloning, sorry)
I promise more emotions in a continuation, if I ever get that far. For those of you who read me, you know I like the feelz :)
>>Cold in Gardez
>>CoffeeMinion
>>TheCyanRecluse
>>tPg
>>Trick_Question
>>Waterpear
>>Chris So, I've thought about this for a bit, and I feel like there's two things going on here... and neither of them are really very much on your end.
Firstly, I've never felt Twilight was strongly characterized by a love for tradition? Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it's never seemed a core part of her character to me.
Maybe touching on places in the show where Twilight has shown a love of tradition, mentioning how those things have been powerful for her, might build that characterization a bit more? Something like dressing up for Nightmare Night, or the Hearths Warming Eve stuff, could rationalize her desire to be part of what's going on in regards to her character.
Secondly, I think I'm not the sort of person who places a lot of value on tradition in my own life. Stability in general is not a goal I hold very highly? Security yes, but stability... Perhaps that's why I don't connect with this as personally as some.
Maybe touching on why tradition is important to her could make it a bit more sensible for someone who doesn't connect as strongly with wanting to be part of history? More than just how important it is; what is it about attaching herself to history that draws her? It's not the fame. The sense of being part of something bigger? I dunno. Perhaps this is in there and I just missed it. :P
Well, I hope this is helpful, but... this story was already in the top third or fourth of my ballot based on construction and what, so it's not like I had any serious problems with it. Sometimes I'm just not who the story is aimed at, and that's totally fine too.
Firstly, I've never felt Twilight was strongly characterized by a love for tradition? Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it's never seemed a core part of her character to me.
Maybe touching on places in the show where Twilight has shown a love of tradition, mentioning how those things have been powerful for her, might build that characterization a bit more? Something like dressing up for Nightmare Night, or the Hearths Warming Eve stuff, could rationalize her desire to be part of what's going on in regards to her character.
Secondly, I think I'm not the sort of person who places a lot of value on tradition in my own life. Stability in general is not a goal I hold very highly? Security yes, but stability... Perhaps that's why I don't connect with this as personally as some.
Maybe touching on why tradition is important to her could make it a bit more sensible for someone who doesn't connect as strongly with wanting to be part of history? More than just how important it is; what is it about attaching herself to history that draws her? It's not the fame. The sense of being part of something bigger? I dunno. Perhaps this is in there and I just missed it. :P
Well, I hope this is helpful, but... this story was already in the top third or fourth of my ballot based on construction and what, so it's not like I had any serious problems with it. Sometimes I'm just not who the story is aimed at, and that's totally fine too.
Retrospect
Second Writeoff entered, woohoo! And something I can submit to Fimfiction after adding
This fic was written after a long, boring trip home. I was absolutely shit-tired for the entire day, having stayed awake till 2am the night before, but I at least had the motivation to plan out some ideas for the prompt.
One of those ideas was a sadfic about Celestia talking to Twilight about the former’s loneliness, due to her seeing Luna only at dusk and dawn (as Luna is nocturnal or something). But in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t choose to put this idea to paper since Celestia would have had ample opportunity to make new friends, and it would be hypocritical for Celestia to send Twilight out for friendship lessons while neglecting her own relationships.
Anyway, let’s get to the story itself.
> In the distance were plush ponies of a carnation-pink winged unicorn alongside a snow-white unicorn, a similarly white winged unicorn, and a lavender winged unicorn as well.
Upon re-read, I think this is a pretty awkward sentence. It gets repetitive with its ‘unicorn’, so I’d probably rephrase the ‘unicorn’ part into a separate sentence.
>>Bad Horse
>> I think I'd like this better if the characters were humans shopping for pony plushies. Having non-MLP MLPish ponies shopping for MLP plushies confused me.
>>TheCyanRecluse
>> I have to agree with the bit about having non-MLP ponies buying MLP merchandise is... weirdly confusing. I kept expecting someone to mention them being old legends or that somehow the princesses have 'sold out' or something.
It was intended to be set in an AU where princesses didn’t exist and they pretty much were in our modern society, but in hindsight, with the story as-is, there was probably no real reason I couldn’t have made them humans. Maybe if I had more time I could have elaborated on it more, fleshing the AU out so it wasn’t just Earth with the substitution filter s/human/pony.
>>ArgonMatrix
>> both Aether and Eddy (odd names, but I can dig it)
>>Caliaponia
>> One part that did give me a little bit of dissonance was the names. While they were definitely 'pony', Eddy pops into my mind much more readily as a human boy than a unicorn filly.
I actually had a lot of trouble thinking up names for these two characters. It took half an hour
>>Bad Horse
>> I didn't like it the first time I read it, because it "didn't go anywhere". When I re-read it, not expecting it to go anywhere, I liked it a lot. :P
I think this “not going anywhere” is becoming a tendency of mine. Whoops.
Kidding aside, I couldn’t think of any other way to end the fic that made sense to me. Even from the planning stage, I didn’t see Aether as the type of pony who could have her deep-seated cynicism be completely reversed in 750 words. So I went the lazy route and had an anti-climax instead. When submission time rolled around, I thought more people would point it out, but I suppose not.
>>TheCyanRecluse
>> You see, I'm one of those terrible people who pretty much never buy merchandise for anything. Despite being a fan, I don't own a single piece of MLP merchandise. Heck, I used to be a big fan of the show Gargoyles in my youth... And I think the only merchandise I own from that fandom is the season one and two DVDs. So in short, I am a marketers worst nightmare, and have never stared at a toy in the store, pondering the philisophical implications of purchasing it.
Believe it or not, I own literally no MLP merch at all as well, apart from the MLP comics that my friend bought from a Humble Comics Bundle. I might get a plushie should I have the cash, though.
>>georg
Oh, I had 0 confusion as to who Grandma was. I was more going with 'How is Sophie labelling herself as Megan'? If it's her middle name, that works.
Oh, I had 0 confusion as to who Grandma was. I was more going with 'How is Sophie labelling herself as Megan'? If it's her middle name, that works.
>>Bachiavellian
I can guarantee that you will not gain my insight by eating any of my vital organs. Or nonvital organs.
I can guarantee that you will not gain my insight by eating any of my vital organs. Or nonvital organs.
>>Orbiting_kettle
I am utterly derping in my attempt to locate you on FimFiction, and my free time is limited, but I'd be up for helping a bit.
I am utterly derping in my attempt to locate you on FimFiction, and my free time is limited, but I'd be up for helping a bit.
I medalled! I medalled in a minific round! I medalled in a minific round with poetry! My high-scoring track record comes overwhelmingly from short stories, and it's always a pleasant surprise to see a minific come together like this. Thank you to everyone for reading and enjoying it — especially all the commenters unused to poetry who forced themselves to evaluate it for their slate.
I've been having a good run lately, and I broke some new ground last month: I'm now the first author with a gold in all four of the Writeoffs' categories! (Cold in Gardez beat me to "score a medal in all four", and so far we're the only two.) You might think that "medalling with poetry" is another Writeoff first, but it's not — Chris' "An Equestrian Gaur" accomplished that years back — and bronze arguably isn't even poetry's high-water mark (4th District Court, which was mostly in the form of song lyrics, won gold). Nevertheless, this joins a very elite club.
Only, Only, Only Me even did better than Corejo's original, for which I feel a little guilty — though it was acknowledged that "Only, Only, Only You" suffered from being severely padded out to meet the short-story round's 2000-word minimum, and was a vastly stronger story in its final published form at ~1200 words. (If poetry in a minific round is Writeoff hard mode, poetry in a short-story round is Writeoff "I Wanna Be The Guy".) This was absolutely meant as a love letter to OOOY, and I do hope that OOOM got people to read OOOY who otherwise wouldn't have.
I designed OOOM — which focused on the Nightmare's initial seduction of Princess Luna after she started getting upset with Celestia's popularity and her own exclusion 1000 years ago; hence a "princess not included" — as a prequel to OOOY, which focused on the Nightmare returning in the modern era to discover that Luna no longer wants her. While OOOY was about the Nightmare wrestling with her feelings upon discovering Luna's change of heart, the core of my piece is about showing the way the Nightmare originally preyed upon Luna, taking advantage of her vulnerability with a bait-and-switch. OOOM is wonderfully coy about the Nightmare's motives — ostensibly focusing on the relationship, but breaking both the narrative and the meter in a few places to hint at an uglier side — and I ran hard with my intepretation of that, building up a portrait of kindness masking manipulation and abuse.
As such, the arc of the story here is the way the Nightmare gets what she wants despite Luna's unwavering love for Celestia — first feeling out the direct approach and being rebuffed, then retreating to kindness while maneuvering to exploit Luna's isolation, and then using intimacy to get her hooks in. By the "flawless nightmare face" line her victory is inevitable, but as she starts revealing her true goals, she initially cloaks them in platitudes like "justice" to see if she can get full buy-in. When that doesn't happen, like any abuser, she simply starts overriding Luna and taking control.
The next-to-last stanza is where you can see Luna start to realize the mistake she's made; the reassurance she gets in return is perfunctory and ominous. By the last stanza the Nightmare's not even bothering to pretend to care. I definitely intended that to line up with the context of OOOY, with the Nightmare returning like the old abusive ex who doesn't realize her old tricks don't work any more, desperately falling back on the platitudes that worked the first time.
Corejo willing, I'm going to publish this (more or less as-is) to FIMFic in my Never The Final Word story continuation collection.
A few responses to comments:
>>Morning Sun
Well, now my silence on this story makes sense, if it didn't before. ;-p I wish someone else had written it so that I could have jumped in on the poetry discussion.
Seriously though, I'm amazingly flattered by the number of correct guesses. That suggests that when people think of medal-worthy poetry they think of me — despite OOOM actually being my first Writeoff submission in the form of metered verse. AugieDog/Baal Bunny is much more prolific in that area, along with Georg; and Chris and Corejo (among others) have also previously turned in strong entries in the genre. I hardly feel like the go-to author for top-tier poetry.
[multiple people]
Am I really the only one who felt that "FRAY-uhl, PAY-uhl" was an acceptable reading of the line? :-p (*googles syllable rules*) Ugh. I guess I'll scrap those two words and try to find something with similar meaning, cadence, and internal rhyme.
About the structure and italics:
>>FanOfMostEverything
This analysis is a much clearer statement of my intentions than what was rolling around in my head when I was constructing it, but yes, this was very much the intended effect.
When writing, I initially started with paired couplets like OOOY did (AA BB CC etc.), but the poem already felt thematically and conceptually derivative, and I felt like I had to extend the structure to bring OOOM more fully into its own. Couplets also lent OOOY a strong sense of flow, matching the rhyme and then moving on, and worked well with its stream-of-consciousness monologue narration. OOOM was a single side of an implied dialogue (albeit a lopsided one), and needed more give-and-take. As I was writing the first stanza, trying to efficiently identify the characters and setting through textual hints, I settled on hinting the Nightmare by using "flow" for her movement, and looking at the first three lines and the rhyme of "flow", my brain stuck on Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening (nice eye, >>Not_A_Hat), and then I absolutely had to include the third A-rhyme and include "Whose tears these are I think I know" as a tip o' the hat (I see what you also did there, >>Not_A_Hat). From there it was natural to settle on the regimented form of AABABB to reflect the give-and-take of the dialogue.
>>Morning Sun
The technical reason for the italics is that AABABB felt way too symmetrical for the relationship portrayed in the piece. I wanted to forcibly break the symmetry, and spacing tricks didn't feel sufficient. When I played around with it and settled upon italics, I realized that reinforced the intrusiveness FOME commented on, and to a lesser extent the tonal shift of the Nightmare's observations vs. her direct actions. I wasn't able to bring that last part out quite so successfully (there are a few stanzas which blur the lines between the oblique and italic parts, and e.g. "If only she displayed such care" shows the Nightmare being far more devious in oblique than she is in italics), but I'm glad it still came across that way.
One thing nobody commented on, by the way, is that every set of rhymes in the piece is unique — except for the set containing "Sun" in both the first and last stanzas. That was very intentional, bookending the piece with the Luna/Celestia//NMM/Celestia dynamic and otherwise following a strict progression. (The duplicated "honeysuckle darkened lips", the only other reused rhyme, was an homage to OOOY's similar repetition.)
>>Not_A_Hat
First of all: you magnificent bastard, this is quite possibly the best review I've ever read on writeoff.me. Don't you ever say you know nothing about poetry, if you can put this together for a mere comment. (Having no training in poetry, or no historical grounding in it, I'll accept, but merely in the construction here you've displayed more insight about rhyme and meter than 90% of people who attempt the form.)
[img]http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif[/img]
As to the wordcount issue: the original version of OOOM clocked in at 307 words. That was as long as I dared to go for a poem exploring the themes I covered (the progression of manipulation in the Nightmare's approach), and I started to panic at the thought that, just like Corejo, I'd have to start adding filler just to reach the minimum.
I lucked out. After an abortive attempt to add filler stanzas at the beginning providing more prologue (which wrecked my solar symmetry, and I'm glad I scrapped it), I decided to work blue and add in the sex scene — which provided the literal and figurative climax of the piece, and the transition that turned the lip-suckling into a meaningful part of the poem instead of an oddly-wedged-in wordplay homage. The need to expand also forced me to add the justice paragraph, which improved the flow of the ending. Given the point of the piece, I would despair at expanding it any further.
I can't explain much better than I have above. This is an emotional and psychological exploration (told through one side of a dialogue); if that doesn't grab you then I'm not sure I can edit this into something which will. The tension here is all implied — Luna's reaction to the Nightmare's early suggestion, and her reaction to the late revelation of the Nightmare's true goals, and the fact Luna gets manipulated into something horrible she never intended to do.
I don't think your failure to be drawn in here was an issue with this being poetry. There are plenty of things which can make readers bounce off a text that have nothing to do with its form, and I honestly don't think more knowledge of poetry or poetic forms would help (or have helped) your engagement. My guess would be that there's subtext here (because this leans pretty heavily on subtext) that you missed or disagreed on; for example, simply reading Luna as a totally willing participant in the process flattens this story out tremendously, and the cues that I provide to contradict that are not beyond alternate interpretation.
Thank you for engaging with it as heavily as you did anyway!
>>Bad Horse
You are, I'm afraid, far beyond me in terms of historical textual analysis (I have written more poetry, but I categorically reject that I know more about it as a genre than you do, because I would simply be incapable of putting together the posts you wrote here). OOOM wasn't an attempt to follow any particular tradition, and by writing in ignorance of the historical styles I probably stole some of the good (and bad) parts of each. So your posts about which tradition this is trying to follow are somewhat chasing after shadows. Still, they were fascinating.
You appear to disagree with the New Critics, and based on what you say I would be with you. My best answer to "what should poetry have to be considered good?" is a sort of Stewartian shrug, which isn't philosophically satisfying but it gets me by. The question of how to evaluate poetry relative to prose is a mighty huge can of worms, probably worth a blog post I doubt I'll have time to write, and a vigorous comment discussion thereon.
At a first pass I'd say that I evaluate poetry vs. prose in a vaguely similar way to how I evaluate dance vs. theater. I treat poetry as a dance with language — (mock interpretive dance all you want, but) not only is it trying to be beautiful but also to contain meaning. The "body language" of the piece, if you will.
And like body language vs. spoken language, you have to read meaning in different ways than you do in prose. A good poem will reinforce its theme with meter, for example, as I tried to do here — though a far clearer example would be An Impromptu Private Composition, etc. and the claustrophobic awkwardness of its iambic monometer — but (just like body language is also important in theater) because prose and poetry use the same fundamental vocabulary, there is overlap. And just like body language is powerful for communicating emotions and less so for communicating precise meaning, poetry is primarily an evocational experience.
>>Baal Bunny
That's a great idea, but the seduction here is a symptom, not a purpose.
The metrical point is a great one, though, and I'll prod at the sections in question.
This is already a half-day response, so I'll cut it short there. Thank you all once again; congratulations to Chris and GaPJaxie and to every one of our participants; and see you in the short-story round(s)!
I've been having a good run lately, and I broke some new ground last month: I'm now the first author with a gold in all four of the Writeoffs' categories! (Cold in Gardez beat me to "score a medal in all four", and so far we're the only two.) You might think that "medalling with poetry" is another Writeoff first, but it's not — Chris' "An Equestrian Gaur" accomplished that years back — and bronze arguably isn't even poetry's high-water mark (4th District Court, which was mostly in the form of song lyrics, won gold). Nevertheless, this joins a very elite club.
Only, Only, Only Me even did better than Corejo's original, for which I feel a little guilty — though it was acknowledged that "Only, Only, Only You" suffered from being severely padded out to meet the short-story round's 2000-word minimum, and was a vastly stronger story in its final published form at ~1200 words. (If poetry in a minific round is Writeoff hard mode, poetry in a short-story round is Writeoff "I Wanna Be The Guy".) This was absolutely meant as a love letter to OOOY, and I do hope that OOOM got people to read OOOY who otherwise wouldn't have.
Only, Only, Only Me - Retrospective
I designed OOOM — which focused on the Nightmare's initial seduction of Princess Luna after she started getting upset with Celestia's popularity and her own exclusion 1000 years ago; hence a "princess not included" — as a prequel to OOOY, which focused on the Nightmare returning in the modern era to discover that Luna no longer wants her. While OOOY was about the Nightmare wrestling with her feelings upon discovering Luna's change of heart, the core of my piece is about showing the way the Nightmare originally preyed upon Luna, taking advantage of her vulnerability with a bait-and-switch. OOOM is wonderfully coy about the Nightmare's motives — ostensibly focusing on the relationship, but breaking both the narrative and the meter in a few places to hint at an uglier side — and I ran hard with my intepretation of that, building up a portrait of kindness masking manipulation and abuse.
As such, the arc of the story here is the way the Nightmare gets what she wants despite Luna's unwavering love for Celestia — first feeling out the direct approach and being rebuffed, then retreating to kindness while maneuvering to exploit Luna's isolation, and then using intimacy to get her hooks in. By the "flawless nightmare face" line her victory is inevitable, but as she starts revealing her true goals, she initially cloaks them in platitudes like "justice" to see if she can get full buy-in. When that doesn't happen, like any abuser, she simply starts overriding Luna and taking control.
The next-to-last stanza is where you can see Luna start to realize the mistake she's made; the reassurance she gets in return is perfunctory and ominous. By the last stanza the Nightmare's not even bothering to pretend to care. I definitely intended that to line up with the context of OOOY, with the Nightmare returning like the old abusive ex who doesn't realize her old tricks don't work any more, desperately falling back on the platitudes that worked the first time.
Corejo willing, I'm going to publish this (more or less as-is) to FIMFic in my Never The Final Word story continuation collection.
A few responses to comments:
>>Morning Sun
It thoroughly amuses me how this story is one of the few stories to have multiple guesses, and basically everyone pinpointed exactly who wrote it.
Well, now my silence on this story makes sense, if it didn't before. ;-p I wish someone else had written it so that I could have jumped in on the poetry discussion.
Seriously though, I'm amazingly flattered by the number of correct guesses. That suggests that when people think of medal-worthy poetry they think of me — despite OOOM actually being my first Writeoff submission in the form of metered verse. AugieDog/Baal Bunny is much more prolific in that area, along with Georg; and Chris and Corejo (among others) have also previously turned in strong entries in the genre. I hardly feel like the go-to author for top-tier poetry.
[multiple people]
“So frail, pale, wan and fey,” … feels like it lost some syllables
Am I really the only one who felt that "FRAY-uhl, PAY-uhl" was an acceptable reading of the line? :-p (*googles syllable rules*) Ugh. I guess I'll scrap those two words and try to find something with similar meaning, cadence, and internal rhyme.
About the structure and italics:
>>FanOfMostEverything
"Snowy Evening" goes AABA BBCB, and so forth, adding to the sense of steady progress, allowing us to see the next stage of the journey on the horizon. "Only, Only, Only Me" Goes AABA BB CCDC DD and so forth. For me, that structure lent itself into the theme of something alien and external insinuating itself where it should not be, its nature only becoming clear when it's already too late to stop it.
This analysis is a much clearer statement of my intentions than what was rolling around in my head when I was constructing it, but yes, this was very much the intended effect.
When writing, I initially started with paired couplets like OOOY did (AA BB CC etc.), but the poem already felt thematically and conceptually derivative, and I felt like I had to extend the structure to bring OOOM more fully into its own. Couplets also lent OOOY a strong sense of flow, matching the rhyme and then moving on, and worked well with its stream-of-consciousness monologue narration. OOOM was a single side of an implied dialogue (albeit a lopsided one), and needed more give-and-take. As I was writing the first stanza, trying to efficiently identify the characters and setting through textual hints, I settled on hinting the Nightmare by using "flow" for her movement, and looking at the first three lines and the rhyme of "flow", my brain stuck on Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening (nice eye, >>Not_A_Hat), and then I absolutely had to include the third A-rhyme and include "Whose tears these are I think I know" as a tip o' the hat (I see what you also did there, >>Not_A_Hat). From there it was natural to settle on the regimented form of AABABB to reflect the give-and-take of the dialogue.
>>Morning Sun
The italics appear to be when the Nightmare is whispering her more sinister temptations - the non-italicized words are the words of her love, the italicized is where she is trying to sway Luna into acting.
The technical reason for the italics is that AABABB felt way too symmetrical for the relationship portrayed in the piece. I wanted to forcibly break the symmetry, and spacing tricks didn't feel sufficient. When I played around with it and settled upon italics, I realized that reinforced the intrusiveness FOME commented on, and to a lesser extent the tonal shift of the Nightmare's observations vs. her direct actions. I wasn't able to bring that last part out quite so successfully (there are a few stanzas which blur the lines between the oblique and italic parts, and e.g. "If only she displayed such care" shows the Nightmare being far more devious in oblique than she is in italics), but I'm glad it still came across that way.
One thing nobody commented on, by the way, is that every set of rhymes in the piece is unique — except for the set containing "Sun" in both the first and last stanzas. That was very intentional, bookending the piece with the Luna/Celestia//NMM/Celestia dynamic and otherwise following a strict progression. (The duplicated "honeysuckle darkened lips", the only other reused rhyme, was an homage to OOOY's similar repetition.)
>>Not_A_Hat
'More words might help', I'd like to say,
It seems, though, you have answered nay.
This barely bobs above the count,
That it must meet to join the fray.
First of all: you magnificent bastard, this is quite possibly the best review I've ever read on writeoff.me. Don't you ever say you know nothing about poetry, if you can put this together for a mere comment. (Having no training in poetry, or no historical grounding in it, I'll accept, but merely in the construction here you've displayed more insight about rhyme and meter than 90% of people who attempt the form.)
[img]http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif[/img]
![[img]http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif[/img]](http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif){kind=link}
As to the wordcount issue: the original version of OOOM clocked in at 307 words. That was as long as I dared to go for a poem exploring the themes I covered (the progression of manipulation in the Nightmare's approach), and I started to panic at the thought that, just like Corejo, I'd have to start adding filler just to reach the minimum.
I lucked out. After an abortive attempt to add filler stanzas at the beginning providing more prologue (which wrecked my solar symmetry, and I'm glad I scrapped it), I decided to work blue and add in the sex scene — which provided the literal and figurative climax of the piece, and the transition that turned the lip-suckling into a meaningful part of the poem instead of an oddly-wedged-in wordplay homage. The need to expand also forced me to add the justice paragraph, which improved the flow of the ending. Given the point of the piece, I would despair at expanding it any further.
But I'm not seeing arc or plot;
It's pretty, but it is not fraught
With tension, anger, or device,
To draw me in. My heart's uncaught.
I can't explain much better than I have above. This is an emotional and psychological exploration (told through one side of a dialogue); if that doesn't grab you then I'm not sure I can edit this into something which will. The tension here is all implied — Luna's reaction to the Nightmare's early suggestion, and her reaction to the late revelation of the Nightmare's true goals, and the fact Luna gets manipulated into something horrible she never intended to do.
I don't think your failure to be drawn in here was an issue with this being poetry. There are plenty of things which can make readers bounce off a text that have nothing to do with its form, and I honestly don't think more knowledge of poetry or poetic forms would help (or have helped) your engagement. My guess would be that there's subtext here (because this leans pretty heavily on subtext) that you missed or disagreed on; for example, simply reading Luna as a totally willing participant in the process flattens this story out tremendously, and the cues that I provide to contradict that are not beyond alternate interpretation.
Thank you for engaging with it as heavily as you did anyway!
>>Bad Horse
I wouldn't call this Frost-style, but a much older style. The liberties with grammar and elevated style are 19th-century, and if you want to match the rhyme scheme, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is more similar in voice than Frost, despite that one line.
You are, I'm afraid, far beyond me in terms of historical textual analysis (I have written more poetry, but I categorically reject that I know more about it as a genre than you do, because I would simply be incapable of putting together the posts you wrote here). OOOM wasn't an attempt to follow any particular tradition, and by writing in ignorance of the historical styles I probably stole some of the good (and bad) parts of each. So your posts about which tradition this is trying to follow are somewhat chasing after shadows. Still, they were fascinating.
You appear to disagree with the New Critics, and based on what you say I would be with you. My best answer to "what should poetry have to be considered good?" is a sort of Stewartian shrug, which isn't philosophically satisfying but it gets me by. The question of how to evaluate poetry relative to prose is a mighty huge can of worms, probably worth a blog post I doubt I'll have time to write, and a vigorous comment discussion thereon.
At a first pass I'd say that I evaluate poetry vs. prose in a vaguely similar way to how I evaluate dance vs. theater. I treat poetry as a dance with language — (mock interpretive dance all you want, but) not only is it trying to be beautiful but also to contain meaning. The "body language" of the piece, if you will.
And like body language vs. spoken language, you have to read meaning in different ways than you do in prose. A good poem will reinforce its theme with meter, for example, as I tried to do here — though a far clearer example would be An Impromptu Private Composition, etc. and the claustrophobic awkwardness of its iambic monometer — but (just like body language is also important in theater) because prose and poetry use the same fundamental vocabulary, there is overlap. And just like body language is powerful for communicating emotions and less so for communicating precise meaning, poetry is primarily an evocational experience.
>>Baal Bunny
Give us some concrete, sensual details: the gentle rasp of feather against feather as the Nightmare caresses Luna's wings; the tickle from the nebulous hairs of Luna's mane as the Nightmare leans forward to whisper in her ear; stuff like that.
That's a great idea, but the seduction here is a symptom, not a purpose.
The metrical point is a great one, though, and I'll prod at the sections in question.
This is already a half-day response, so I'll cut it short there. Thank you all once again; congratulations to Chris and GaPJaxie and to every one of our participants; and see you in the short-story round(s)!
>>Not_A_Hat
Thanks for going into detail like that! I'll definitely have this in mind when I get to touching up the story.
Thanks for going into detail like that! I'll definitely have this in mind when I get to touching up the story.
>>horizon
Aww, you're making me blush! But I would argue that doing something by instinct and guess-and-check doesn't really count as 'knowing', even if I somehow manage to do it fairly well? Still, I really didn't expect syllable counting and a rhyming dictionary to get me that far. Maybe I'll have to start believing Dubs when he tells me I'm a poet. ^_~
As for bouncing off the subtext, you're likely right. Part of it may have been that I never really could decide what you were doing with the italics; the separation was so obvious I assumed it was changing something very big in the narrative, like Luna speaking, (I think the line with 'nightmare face' screwed me up a bit on who was who...) but I could never really satisfy myself on what was going on. Your explanation here clears that up, but... I dunno. I obviously I missed some cues.
Even as an amateur, though, I'll hazard a suggestion. You could try:
"So frail and pale and wan and fey",
if you aren't interested in re-working that one line too heavily?
First of all: you magnificent bastard, this is quite possibly the best review I've ever read on writeoff.me. Don't you ever say you know nothing about poetry, if you can put this together for a mere comment. (Having no training in poetry, or no historical grounding in it, I'll accept, but merely in the construction here you've displayed more insight about rhyme and meter than 90% of people who attempt the form.)
Aww, you're making me blush! But I would argue that doing something by instinct and guess-and-check doesn't really count as 'knowing', even if I somehow manage to do it fairly well? Still, I really didn't expect syllable counting and a rhyming dictionary to get me that far. Maybe I'll have to start believing Dubs when he tells me I'm a poet. ^_~
As for bouncing off the subtext, you're likely right. Part of it may have been that I never really could decide what you were doing with the italics; the separation was so obvious I assumed it was changing something very big in the narrative, like Luna speaking, (I think the line with 'nightmare face' screwed me up a bit on who was who...) but I could never really satisfy myself on what was going on. Your explanation here clears that up, but... I dunno. I obviously I missed some cues.
Even as an amateur, though, I'll hazard a suggestion. You could try:
"So frail and pale and wan and fey",
if you aren't interested in re-working that one line too heavily?
>>horizon
Huh. So you took her intentions in a different direction than I did. Original intent in OOOY wasn't that NMM wanted destruction for destruction's sake. She was the salve that Luna went to in her initial struggle against being overshadowed by Celestia's radiant reign. Taking from the write-off version (who's scene referenced here was cut from the final published version), NMM stumbled upon Luna in a dream while praying upon some other pony. She, a parasite subsisting on the night terrors of others, was taken in by Luna—kindred souls cast to the fringes of society. From that shared bond, they found comfort, and, eventually, love. True love, not hollow platitudes and poisonous words meant only to feed an empty stomach. It's not just a need for sustenance; NMM needs Luna emotionally, intimately. The entirety of the first scene—whether you reference the original or published version—ring true with this. Anything gleaned as duplicitous, while not necessarily incorrect, strays from my intention in the piece.
Nightmare Moon is not inherently evil. She only seeks what is, by her definition, correct, deserved, and necessary for self-preservation (and by extent, preservation of those she loves). It just so happens that what she defines as such falls within the category of evil from our perspective. Rather than being evil by nature, she is actually just a monstrously aggressive creature, and with such predatory aggressive instincts bent toward the defensive, it magnifies her inherent violence. If someone were mentally/physically abusing the one you loved right in front of you, would you not go fisticuffs to make them stop? If people failed to appreciate the hard work your loved one does for them, would you not do all that you can so that they do appreciate it? (Looking back, I can see where this might have fallen apart some with NMM's mentions of "We" being interpreted as she's doing this for herself. Those weren't meant as a Royal We's, but rather as 'us together''s—as the First Lady with her hand on her husband's shoulder as he poses for pictures behind his desk in the Oval Office.)
The only difference here is that NMM doesn't understand moderation (nor good/evil, only what is 'fair.' Eye for an eye and all that), and will stop at nothing to achieve what it is that she desires: Luna held to the esteem that she deserves, which is only achievable by removing the one that holds her back from that esteem. She only employs her manipulative powers in order to do what she feels is in Luna's best interest. A "Mother knows best" sort of thing.
In contrast to your interpretation, it's through her undying love for Luna that she's more than willing to commit the atrocities she mentions, which, I think, makes the piece all the more stronger than if she were just some insidious parasite who took pleasure in destroying the lives of others and taking the throne for herself by puppeteering another's body; she's doing what she thinks is right and is being punished by the world at large—and the one she loves—for it. By her aggressive dog-eat-dog nature, she cannot even fathom why she is being punished for doing the 'right' thing. It's such a sick and twisted sort of tragedy that I can't help but love, namely for the original theme this story was grounded in:
Sometimes, the harder we fight for the ones that we love, our actions are often what ultimately push them away.
Still, derivative works have their own life to live, and by virtue of that breathe life into the original. No matter the differences in our pieces, I love what you've done here.
That about wraps up what I have to say in response to your retrospect. There's probably a few points here that I forgot to touch on, though, so feel free to poke me back.
Huh. So you took her intentions in a different direction than I did. Original intent in OOOY wasn't that NMM wanted destruction for destruction's sake. She was the salve that Luna went to in her initial struggle against being overshadowed by Celestia's radiant reign. Taking from the write-off version (who's scene referenced here was cut from the final published version), NMM stumbled upon Luna in a dream while praying upon some other pony. She, a parasite subsisting on the night terrors of others, was taken in by Luna—kindred souls cast to the fringes of society. From that shared bond, they found comfort, and, eventually, love. True love, not hollow platitudes and poisonous words meant only to feed an empty stomach. It's not just a need for sustenance; NMM needs Luna emotionally, intimately. The entirety of the first scene—whether you reference the original or published version—ring true with this. Anything gleaned as duplicitous, while not necessarily incorrect, strays from my intention in the piece.
Nightmare Moon is not inherently evil. She only seeks what is, by her definition, correct, deserved, and necessary for self-preservation (and by extent, preservation of those she loves). It just so happens that what she defines as such falls within the category of evil from our perspective. Rather than being evil by nature, she is actually just a monstrously aggressive creature, and with such predatory aggressive instincts bent toward the defensive, it magnifies her inherent violence. If someone were mentally/physically abusing the one you loved right in front of you, would you not go fisticuffs to make them stop? If people failed to appreciate the hard work your loved one does for them, would you not do all that you can so that they do appreciate it? (Looking back, I can see where this might have fallen apart some with NMM's mentions of "We" being interpreted as she's doing this for herself. Those weren't meant as a Royal We's, but rather as 'us together''s—as the First Lady with her hand on her husband's shoulder as he poses for pictures behind his desk in the Oval Office.)
The only difference here is that NMM doesn't understand moderation (nor good/evil, only what is 'fair.' Eye for an eye and all that), and will stop at nothing to achieve what it is that she desires: Luna held to the esteem that she deserves, which is only achievable by removing the one that holds her back from that esteem. She only employs her manipulative powers in order to do what she feels is in Luna's best interest. A "Mother knows best" sort of thing.
In contrast to your interpretation, it's through her undying love for Luna that she's more than willing to commit the atrocities she mentions, which, I think, makes the piece all the more stronger than if she were just some insidious parasite who took pleasure in destroying the lives of others and taking the throne for herself by puppeteering another's body; she's doing what she thinks is right and is being punished by the world at large—and the one she loves—for it. By her aggressive dog-eat-dog nature, she cannot even fathom why she is being punished for doing the 'right' thing. It's such a sick and twisted sort of tragedy that I can't help but love, namely for the original theme this story was grounded in:
Sometimes, the harder we fight for the ones that we love, our actions are often what ultimately push them away.
Still, derivative works have their own life to live, and by virtue of that breathe life into the original. No matter the differences in our pieces, I love what you've done here.
That about wraps up what I have to say in response to your retrospect. There's probably a few points here that I forgot to touch on, though, so feel free to poke me back.