early retrospective time!

thanks for participating in this silly experimental riddle! Despite spending most of my creativity on this during that 24 hour period, I was willing to take a risk and lose a lot of points in exchange for fun. Even if it wasn't DQed, I expected at least half the readers to not study it closely and bottom-vote it (or they noticed it, but don't like riddles). The worst outcome would not be the DQ, but the hypothetical case where nobody cared enough to solve it to the end.

I really regret the Zalgo text, because it is such a misleading red herring (and MAYBE responsible for the epub crashes, but not certain? arggh I feel so bad about that). The original version didn't have that, just blank text, which made the riddle much stronger. But at that late hour I'm tired and stressed (and trying to work on another story) and made a stupid change.

With the blank space version, only 34 words appear on screen. Talking about this with Roger created the odd ruling that unprinted text doesn't count towards the minimum, but does count toward the maximum. My story was simultaneously below 400 and above 750. I've created a paradox! We are truly in the Twilight Zone this round.

Anyway, that was the first clue. How could it be 750 words in the gallery view, yet only 34 words on screen? There's more than meets the eye, and eventually someone will get curious and look into why. The Zalgo text makes this clue much weaker, because who knows how many words those count as? And instead of a perfect blank signal in the TXT file (underscores or zeroes), it's white noise which could potentially hide a signal, wasting readers' time. Lesson learned.

It was not intended to break the word limit (as I understood it), so the entire hidden story was written to be exactly 750 words, matching the reported wordcount. And I made it a simple self-refential story so (1) the gimmick would add to the effect of reading it, and (2) the story could provide new clues too. I'm not sure if one of them was too subtle (the journal itself shouldn't be as heavy as described, I should've added another visual clue to the first image file), but some people did figure it out anyway. I like it when people collaborate and share ideas to solve this kind of thing together <3

The next part I considered is that people stopping at different points in the puzzle would get a different "ending", especially if they don't know if there's more to be found. I decided to roll with this, making several stopping points that each transform the context of what came before. So someone might assume it was a trap, and that's the end. Then someone else might discover that it keeps going, and blow everyone else's minds. I didn't want to make it a branching-story, felt like a cop-out, so I wrote an ending that could tie it all together as one continuous story.

Since it's only a minific, I didn't want to get too elaborate with the puzzles. I thought it was alright to have a pattern of doing the same thing as before, just in a slightly different way. Puzzle-ception. First you look at the TXT source, then get a URL, then you need to turn that image into a TXT file. Rule of threes, do it one more time, to get a clue that the last image is actually a ZIP file. These are simple editing tricks that I looked up. Anyone can do them too, but they're not widely known.

If you enjoy this type of riddle, I recommend checking out Notpron, which heavily inspired this "story" by creating puzzles on thinking-outside-the-box instead of cracking difficult codes. I had a lot of fun solving Notpron with friends around ten years ago, though I only got to level 116. I wanted to share what that experience was like.

Grats and good luck to all finalists!

Thanks to all for your reviews. ❤️
This was of course experimental, it was also the first time I wrote a second-person fic.

The story was inspired by this scene from Octopussy.

I’m a bit puzzled no one got the Berlin post WW2 reference here…

That’s all!

See you next round folks.

>>SPark
No worries, no offense taken. But to answer the question... yes. The real challenge of a minific is to come up with a story that fits such a short format. Cramming a bigger tale into the space isn't some "instant failure", but it does mean lower marks, at least from me. I don't mean to disparage authors that submit something anyway, that's fine, but stories that fit the format best are what I rank highest. I've personally abandoned or re-written half a dozen fics of my own when it became clear they were too long. Actually, one of my favorite stories I ever wrote started as a minific, but was too long to fit and do right, so I abandoned it in the contest, finished it, and put it up on fimfic instead. http://www.fimfiction.net/story/256749/you-cant-have-everything-your-way

How in the actual fuck did this not make it to the finals?

Looks like I'm still in this. I honestly wasn't sure this time around.

Furthermore, so is most of the top of my slate. Everything I rated at 6 or higher (because I'm an old fuddy-dud who misses the radio buttons) got in... with two exceptions. Special thanks to CoffeeMinion for "Crisis on Infinite Twilights" and to Morning Sun for "The Changelings are Due in Canterlot," on top of the appreciation for all our non-finalists for participating.

To everyone else, myself included, best of luck in the finals.

Retro...

'What I wanted to do was take a silly idea, like a character(s) dialogue is taken verbatim from another source and modified minimally to fit. The original concept was to keep the intro the same, but subsitute Starlight in, and have our emotionless Vort's mistake her for Twilight. They give her praise, until she tells them that she's Starlight, then they give general dissaproval stemming from Starlight's time travel. While they hail Twilight as their savior, they disaprove of the trust given to Glimmer.

Eventually Twilight shows up, and then we get more into how long you could drag out a story with the barely modified dialogue.

What I really should have realized is that the ratio of content to lines is too low, in that the Vortigaunt dialogue saturates. In moving forward (If I ever want to get this adapted for fimfic) I'll make sure to decrease the directly transposed lines and maybe focus more on adapting the stilted way of speaking that the Vortigaunts use.

Thanks for the feedback, better that I get it now than later.'

crepuscular really is a grotesque word, isn't it? I was planning on pointing that out before reading the story and finding out Twilight already did it for me.

This could've easily lost my attention if it got too rambling, but it was interesting enough to succeed as a hook. Well done.

But dusk and dawn belong to our true selves, all pretense removed.

hmmm. good points, Twilight.

but that sentence there becomes the climax, and the rest of the story lets itself resolve. instead, I believe that's the exact point the story needed to unfold, to connect to a new idea.

right now it's nicely "comfy" but kinda forgettable after the moment has passed. it could easily become something enlightening and memorable with a little extra push.

>>FanOfMostEverything
The love is appreciated, man. ❤️

Congrats to our finalists! I'll get a retro up for mine tonight.

A friend sent me a link to possible cover art for Quackers. Posting it here for the record.

Oh, gods. Look at the comments. Now I need to make a response to all of them. This is going to take more work than Quackers took to write (20 minutes with giggle breaks, and 20 minutes to get the little ASCII characters lined up.)

>>GroaningGreyAgony Thanks, and I'll keep it in mind, but I've got an eight year old (really) drawing a Quackers cover. I actually had *no* idea Quackers was a G1 Twinkle-Eyed Pony, who had a narrative voice VERY much like I used.
(Wiki entry for Quackers)

Incompetence, for sure. I did a bad job of conveying it, though! But yes, this was meant to be a very silly sendup, a 'But what if, in the original, they had all been aliens?' bit of sillyness. No political commentary intended, at least not this time around!

As for Luna? That was just random, a bit of Douglas Adams attempted channeling, yes.

https://youtu.be/GNGc9zmpK5M?t=3s

Zaid's hat survives. For now.

Also, shoutout to Twilight Council and Crisis. Both were in my top three, and I'm sorry that they didn't make it to finals.

Post them on FiMfic quickly so that I can say kind things about them.

EDIT: Oh. Twilight Council made it to...

Huh. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me.

>>Posh
Shove it in your ear. :P

Okay, so... this was obviously a complete and total flop. Exactly one person seemed to understand what I'd been trying to do, and they presented that understanding as a criticism. So... back to the drawing board, I guess?

I think the real problem here is this story is static

<--the thing in question.

The idea was basically The Twilight Will Last Forever, and I was trying to get that across (to the point of using up precious words repeating things, just to show that nothing had changed and nothing would ever change!) But I guess the nuke thing which was just the first idea I came up with for something with enough whammy to get both Celestia and Luna was too distracting, and then the line where Twilight was trying to remember how she'd moved the sun and moon way back when made everybody somehow think Tirek was relevant now and it was just obviously way too confusing. I should apparently stick to stories where there's mostly text and not subtext. :P

I honestly thought it would be super obvious what was going on, I was concentrating more on how to make that sense of static sameness come across.

So yeah. Big fat belly flop there.

What It's Worth: Retrospective

I agree with all the criticisms levelled at this one, so I'd just like to thank everyone for commenting and pointing out where I could improve. I enjoyed writing this, but once again I tried to cram an idea into 750 words that needed more space to breathe, and characterisation and clarity suffered as a result. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now!

Thanks again, all.

>>Morning Sun I'm sad this one didn't go on, it was my favorite TZ episode reworking.

>>QuillScratch
It seems I wasn't really paying attention when I read those lines the first time, because now that I've reread the story, I don't know how I could have missed it.

So I take what I've said back, I also laughed during the second reading and that will weigh in its favor.

Huh. I loved this story. And I don't give a rat's ass about prompt relevance. As far as I care, it's an honor system, and I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt.

>>Corejo Seconded.

Very beautiful and evocative. Except for one writing boo-boo below, very clean, too. Not sure how it fits the prompt, but the prompt encouraged you to write this, so it's okay.

setting the filly on her back

This is a pronoun antecedent fault. You want her to refer back to Princess Celestia, not the filly. How the sentence reads is that Celestia put Twilight Sparkle hooves up (i.e., on her back) somewhere, probably the floor. As you can see from me struggling against the vagary of the wording, the sentence needs to be recast. My best would be "setting the filly in the small of her back," where "small of her back" logically is a place for the filly to be, not a pose for the filly. An alternative would be "mounting the filing on her back" using the equestrian term. Multiple pronouns in a sentence are a danger signal. Sometimes I change the gender of bit players in a scene so I can use he and she. Not possible here, of course.

So, Princess of the Ruins was my entry this time, and I messed it up. I still like the core concept, but I failed to sell it properly in the space I had at disposal, which is kinda the point of the write-offs.

Thank you all for the comments and the time you took to review the story, it will all be put to good use in the extended version I hope to finish the next week. Or the week after. Soonish anyway. It should also answer all the questions and ambiguities. I thought it through, I swear it.

The las sentence is probably the worst error I made in how I wrote the story, as the meaning was quite different from what I intended. It should have been more along "I've seen it now. And, Twilight, despite everything, we never doubted you." No excuses here, I should have been more careful.

>>CoffeeMinion
I shall read San Palomino, as currently I have no idea there was a similarity. Thank you for pointing it out.

>>Syeekoh
I'm glad you liked it and you got that right.

>>Morning Sun
>>SPark
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>FanOfMostEverything
I see how it comes out as random. I should certainly point out how it came to that.

>>Shadowed_Song
Thank you.

>>Xepher
I really messed up with the information compression this time. Something I hope I'll be able to rectify.

And now, onwards to rating the finalists.

Ah my crappy little story. Well, first off I didn't edit it other than to omit parts and shift things around that I'd imagined in period of time I worked on it. I had something more elaborate in mind but... 750 words is just that and so like someone cutting down an R rated movie movie for a G rated tv station I had to omit and change a bunch of things on the fly. By the time I was done I had to go to sleep.

Second I was more interested in telling a Twilight Zone/Tales From the Crypt/Creepshow type story (The first of which had a story end similar to mine though with admittedly better build up) more than I was concerned about the FiM universe, canon or otherwise. It's also why I didn't use preexisting characters (to the best of my knowledge). With stuff I've made up I can do whatever I really want and it's not out of character.

As far as the hooves and tools issue: they've shown in the show that there is some sort of squeezing, clutching capability with the hooves. There are handles on tea cups and and tea pots so they can grip with them. As far as the gun issue goes, if cannons exist in this world so do guns. The design would probably be sans trigger guard though due to a lack of fingers. The gun itself I should have noted was a revolver with five shots. She'd used one each on her husband and his lover before firing into the woods.

The autocoach: This was one of those changes on the fly. Initially I'd had it planned that that the rain was going to stop a little earlier before the monster showed up. When it did she would fire twice into the woods as she backed away, she'd slip, fall and the gun would go off and strike her in one of her back legs. Limping through the woods, certain the creature was behind her she'd come across a cabin with the light on and beg for help. The owner wouldn't be very willing at first but she'd say she was hurt and so he'd unlock the door and let her in. Things would go from there. In the end though she was still going to be out of bullets and would meet her own fate at the maws of weretimberwolves.

I didn't have space for that. I'd already had her backstory in there so, autocoach and wrap it up.

Will I ever go back to this? I dunno. I've hated working on the longer version of The Princess Party so much that I'm more than reluctant to write much of anything anymore.

This felt more impactful when I thought it actually was Twilight who had somehow fused herself with a ship in some way - like there was a bioorganic-mechanical fusion at play, which added layers of tragic intentional self-sacrifice.

As if, instead we have Robo-Light thrust into a sort-of-torment from what appears ignorance. That's not nearly as compelling to me; now it's just more 'Oops' than 'Yes, I suffer, and it is torment, and I weep, but there's a point to it all'

This works better if it's the far future as others have speculated, but yea, that definitely did not come through to me on my reading. If this is a case of 'The world is gone save Celestia', then her wanting to pass on Excalibur makes far more sense, if she is going onto her form of Avalon.

The flow of the words (not the pacing of events, but, like, the actual grammar) felt odd to me at several points here. I'm not sure if it doesn't have enough commas or what, but it just felt off.

Sorry, that's probably not very helpful. :/

Story-wise, this is nicely economical. Quick pick-up, Effective exposition with interspersed jokes, and a nice clincher. I agree with Horse Voice that the 'adventure bard' is mostly a DnD thing, (although Terry Pratchett does an amazing riff on this in his graphic novel 'The Last Hero') but Equestria is more music-y, so I think I could buy it. I guess I'd have liked to have this explore Moon Dancer's feelings a little more; mic-drop Lyra was great, but I'd have loved to see what the reaction was.

All-around good, even if it didn't knock my socks off.

I am the poetry hater, and while I can appreciate the gimmick here, I admit to me that's all it felt; a gimmick. I couldn't connect with the piece like in Only, Only, Only You/Me, and without that?

Doubly so since I read it twice and still couldn't figure out the story in it. The first bit is her being afraid as a kid, sure, but the latter? Comments show nobody else is quite sure. I kinda of expect this to medal, and that somewhat disappoints me because I think it's going to medal more from 'Oh look, poetry form!' than any actually meaning or deeper insight therein.

Relies upon a pretty straightforward interpretation of the five characters, besides Dashie herself. Which isn't really bad, since I think the focus is supposed to be on her anyway.

So it's not really the story of them playing the game, but rather, the story of Rainbow Dash tricking them into trying the game, and them getting sucked into playing it. Nice, but I wish we'd had her do more to swing Applejack and Rarity into playing than just wringing her hooves and saying "this is way more cool than that other stuff you wanna do."

Like, Pinkie was already down with it, because she's Pinkie and easily entertained. Twilight gets suckered in by the presence of books and math. And Fluttershy, she woos by appealing to her fondness for animals and treesmanship. So... why couldn't she have appealed to Applejack and Rarity in the same way? Could she have? Definitely.

I liked it. But I wish Dashie'd had more to work with, with respect to the other members of the cast.

>>QuillScratch Did you, um... (shyly scuffs a foot under the table) read it out loud in the podcast, perhaps?

Actually pretty funny! Structurally, not the strongest I've read, but the characters and their interplay are natural and well-suited to their respective voices. Moonie, moreso than Lyra, because Lyra doesn't have a whole lot of established characterization, besides being "best friends" with Lyra, and probably having trust issues.

That Moondancer, though, damn. Especially her implied bitterness toward Twilight. As a big fan of Amending Fences, I appreciated that. That's a rift that needs a little more healing, I think.

Well above average, as far as the stories I've currently read/ranked are concerned.

Gorgeously written with some moving, heartstring-tugging dialogue between Celestia and Big-Sister-Lestia. I don't know what the precise cosmology at work here is, and I don't really need to know what it is. All that's apparent is that the narrator is in a position over Celestia that's analogous to Celestia's over Luna.

And it works. Boy howdy, does it work.

Hmm, all six characters in a minific? Bold move, Author. You've pulled it off tolerably well, too; this is quite pleasant.

I do think you're hampered a bit, however; by going for breadth, it becomes difficult to add depth. I thought this was pretty good, but not really amazing in any one way.

Things are tight enough that we might start missing mortgage payments.

This may just be me, but... Three generations and they don't own that farm yet? I dunno if I can buy it. Maybe if there were extreme extenuating circumstances, but I'm not seeing that here.

“Don’t borrow money from friends, that’s what Granny always says,” Applejack told her, as if that settled the argument.

This is actually really good advice. Unless your friendship transcends money - but at that point, just ask for a gift, honestly.

The money was the easy part, but how to come up with a solution that Applejack would accept?

Um. Didn't Applejack literally start the story with one? :/ Just say 'Yes I'll hire you six grand carry some rocks."

Honestly, it was like nopony knew how the game was played.

Maybe because they can't figure out the rules? This story is sorta all over the place. It's solid in grammar and paragraph construction, but 'the game' doesn't come in as an idea until the final line, and several things seem to get undue attention. Like, if it's about getting Applejack and Twilight to realize they should loosen up, then all the discussion on why Applejack needs money isn't that important, maybe? I dunno. There's definitely a story here, and it hints at theme... but I can't piece it together into something cohesive, because its continually leaping in new directions.

It's not super dramatic or deep, but you know what? I don't really care. This made me laugh, and I didn't notice a single editing flub. I even laughed audibly at the 'third degree sick burns'. :P

Nice work, thanks for the giggles. :)

>>Not_A_Hat
In defense of farm debt, it's entirely possible they went through some rough times and had to remortgage, take loans against the farm equity, or some other financial nonsense. Also worth remembering is that given how unbelievably old Granny Smith is, those three generations might be a few decades longer than usual. Plenty of chance for the above financial woes to happen.

Good point about AJ leading with a legitimate funnel for the money, though I'm not sure hauling gems is worth 6,000 bits. She might have taken issue with being paid so well for manual labor.

This gets points for taking things waaaaay past the logical extreme.

The end reveal also works very nicely.

On the whole, a well put-together piece. I wish there was more than one joke in it, but it's quite solid even as it is.

>>Rao While I won't say your argument can't work, I'd file all of that under 'extreme extenuating circumstances' myself. More time alive should equal more time to pay off debts or save money, and there's no indication in cannon of them having serious financial trouble.

I mean, it definitely could happen. But I, at least, have trouble buying it without some indication that this is AU. Because my headcannon is different, I guess. Perhaps I'm not in the target audience, so make of that what you will, Author.

Oh. Oh! >>georg, I am so sorry; I accidentally left this out of my personal honorable mentions. I thought it was in the finals. I somehow missed its absence on the new slate.

>>Corejo >>Pascoite
Thirded.

I also found the 2nd half easier on the brain than the 1st half and.... hold on, hear me out!

Reading it, it felt like I was climbing a grueling mountain just so I could ski back the way I came.

Twilight's entrance exam is a gargantuan obstacle in her way. Once she's made it to the top, it all becomes frictionless. She can move freely now, and it seems strange that she was so frightened in the beginning.

the 1st half is obviously Twilight's entrance exam with Spike's egg. my interpretations for what's happening in the 2nd half:
she's reflecting on that same experience in hindsight (a little too safe)
she's become a teacher herself, seeing those same fears in her own students. (I like this, but it might be a stretch!)

this poem is a gimmick, but I think it's a gimmick that serves its story exactly as it is should. despite the story being a bit difficult to understand, and the poetry not that fun to read out loud. but the emotional effect of the symmetry might be the real point here.

maybe it's ultra-subjective bias. it reminded me of the process of creating Just A Test - making sure the cleverness matched the story. it resonates with me personally, seeing a similar creative spirit.

for others it might be too clever for its own good.

So, now that this story got bottom ranking, I can say it was a really bad idea to try to make this work on only 750 words. Well, I guess I can now expand on this later.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Never again will I try to make lovecraftian-inspired work fit into a 750 word limit.

...Well, if you haven't read Voltaire, you should.

I think you need to re-work your imagery in the opening, and streamline it somewhat; a few of your word choices are slightly at cross-purposes, and although that's not usually a big deal, the more densely you pack meaning in the more precise you have to be about connotation and denotation. 'compressed onto', 'dwindle', things like that felt wrong to me, and switching trillion/billion would make the 't' alliteration more pronounced... unless you didn't like that, in which case moving a few of those 't' words out might be worthwhile.

In the end, this is an interesting idea and has some nice images, but... it's lacking the reason and philosophy that make a philosophical argument compelling, and so it rings hollow in the end. I can actually decide if I agree or disagree with Voltaire. Here, it seems like the author is attempting to sway me with emotion, and I just have trouble buying it in such a short, disconnected piece.

... but considering AJ has been shown to do impossible stuff with her power of the universe changing to make everything she says wrong, couldn't she just say "Granny is dead" and bring her back?

Aside from that though, this had both good atmosphere and execution. It definitely felt the closest to an actual Twilight Zone episode to me.

>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Monokeras
>>SPark
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>JudgeDeadd
>>Xepher
>>Shadowed_Song
>>Rao
>>Posh
Is that everybody? Yeah, I think that's everybody...

First of all, let me say thank you for reading this and giving me a moment of your attention and a comment. It would seem, rather unanimously, that I missed the payload here by a wide margin. But I tell you, I'm somewhat flummoxed here. As I mentioned in the Discord chat, I can't help but feel that there was a bit of overthinking going on here. I mean, it is likely my fault that that happened, but I'm really not sure WHY.

This started off with a simple idea: copy the basic Twilight Zone format of the old black and white TV show, hence the opener to set both that tone and lay the expectation groundwork. To me, the Twilight Zone was the show that explored the "clever" twist and bait & switch tropes of storytelling. It got a lot of legwork out of seeming to be smarter than it was by making the audience feel smart when they figured out what was going on. Outside of a few stand out episodes, however, it really wasn't all that good...but hey, nostalgia glasses will do that for you.

So I took a simple idea, that Sunset, a character that is known for going above and beyond for knowledge and power, would just assume that the things Celestia told her or taught her had deeper or hidden meanings. She was looking for subtext and expecting it to be there. Celestia's catch phrase sticks out in her mind as a possible source of hidden meaning, but she's never figured it out. But that's the kicker. There is no deeper meaning than what Sunset already knows: Celestia is the All-Mother and a big horse.

I mean, I start playing my hand right at the beginning. I state in the title that this story is a BIT TOO LITERAL. Right before Sunset's dream I point out that some phrases are just what they appear to be. Sunset merely thinks there is something deeper and dreams up being an actual little pony. Her sleep addled mind comes - albeit in a roundabout metaphorical way - to the conclusion that she should let go of what Celestia has said to her. To stop trying to find a deeper meaning that doesn't exist. It's holding her back, limiting her, "making her small." It's time to get on with her life and be with the people she calls friends.

Then the last line was a literal hat tip back to the Twilight Zone format and the 'last minute double twist ending' that a lot of the episodes had. A literal was-it-all-just-a-dream-or-was-it-real, duh duh DUH kind of deal. But that just served for greater confusion, apparently. My wordsmithery needs more practice it seems. Plus the original version was over 1000 words long, I tried to trim just fluff out of it, but I think I might have snipped that context too, somehow.

I know this is starting to sound like bitter grapes and bitching, and I really don't mean it to. I value all of your opinions and feedback, but as each of these comments came in, I just kept thinking, c'mon this isn't that hard or deep...

Sorry.

>>Fuzzyfurvert
If I may... The story title is a "Bit Too Literal," yes, but in the narration/intro, you write

This is story about a girl learning the truth...

That implies, by Twilight Zone standards, that whatever Sunset learns IS "the truth." She learns in the dream that ponies are super small (but that shouldn't hold her back, of course.) Nothing contradicts that, and the "flash of hair" at the end seems to confirm the dream as something more, and therefore something true.

By that logic, I (and I suspect others) take away that it was Celestia who is "a bit too literal" with her saying, NOT Sunset in her interpretation of that saying, as Sunset was looking for something metaphorical, not literal.

So we're left with three actual views on the saying, with two possible endings. Sunset starts off thinking it is a deep metaphor. She learns something new though (per the intro) and your intention seems to have been that it is "just a saying" with no deeper meaning. However, a lot of us who read it interpret it as the saying turning out to be literally true. To be honest, I think either either interpretation is equally valid, if based solely on the story as written. The good news is that it's probably a minor fix to provide just enough more info to shift it clearly to what you intended.

>>Xepher
Hmmm...I think that might be it. I conflated the the wrong bits and just confused everyone. I swear, it's always the tiniest thing that can throw a meaning or connotation out the window and create a snowballing effect.

The story does have great potential... both by its premise of a cataclysm (an all-too-familiar one to the readers) utterly changing everything we know, and depicting it from Twilight's viewpoint, as she tries to cope with what happened. I encourage you to work on it.

>>SPark

But I guess the nuke thing which was just the first idea I came up with for something with enough whammy to get both Celestia and Luna was too distracting...

Don't take it the wrong way, but I do prefer the story in my head. "Twilight went too far while fighting Tirek", by virtue of its connection to canon events, seems more interesting than "One day, there was a nuclear explosion for no particular reason."

and then the line where Twilight was trying to remember how she'd moved the sun and moon way back when made everybody somehow think Tirek was relevant now

Well, that's not surprising... there was no indication whatsoever that the word "it" in "How had she done it" refers to moving the sun; instead, it's natural to assume that "it" refers to the nuking itself.

Orange and purple bathed Twilight's castle

crackled fragrantly

The firelight flickered from a thousand facets

Sorry, but lines like these don't sound very much like something Rainbow Dash would say.

I shivered, then smiled. I liked spooky.

I kept smiling; nopony had seen me act uncool.

These, on the other hand, are so Dash. Good lines!

Of course Twilight would get a castle for two—no three ponies. I walked in, looked both ways into a really long empty hall. [...] "Sheesh, Twilight. Enough room for books?"

...The castle has been around for a long time now, and only now Dash notices that, oh right, it's kinda bigger than a cottage?

On the whole, this is a pretty nice and cozy story, though I have to question the entire premise. Did Twilight and Starlight set up this a whole secret plan to lure Rainbow Dash into a secret room? It seems that it kind of stretches the believability for me, and it seems a little unrealistic that they'd just go and make her into a guinea pig like this, without asking her permission.

Subject Theta 32

I blame my recent binge reading of SCP Foundation's trope page.

(I probably simply wanted to write an SCP report just for funsies.)

Spike attempts to write a Special Containment Procedure Friendship Report dictated by Twilight Sparkle for her own record.

But the SCP report and Spike's adorable attempts to sound out words over 3 syllables don't mix quite as well as I'd have liked. That and the premise of the Subject in question vying too much for attention made the end result a bit of a mess.

The entry was an unholy love child between my interest in protagonists from The Voice Among the Strangers and Misunderstandings and the aforementioned SCP Foundation. Also, Spike's snarking about Twilight's word choices amused me.

I had fun writing this. :3

>>FanOfMostEverything

Hmm. Looks like Twilight takes over on writing the document after a bit.

Actually, Spike took down the entire thing, except for a few expunged portions. He was still sounding out words but he had a dictionary now.

>>Morning Sun

The problem with this as said by others is that what does the SCP format add here? There's none of the other hallmarks of SCPs beyond the vocabulary used; as in there's no massive paranoia, no comedic-callous disregard for human life, so forth;

This was the major issue. Namely because Twilight (and by extension, Equestria) isn't a paranoid, callous institution. Instituting that paranoia and callousness into the report warps Twilight's character, which I consider even worse than having a "neutered" SCP report. It's a Morton's Fork, really.

whereas DATA EXPUNGED in SCP-verse is a thing for 'This is too dangerous for eyes', censoring here appears done for...why?

There are twofolds to this. Any "Data Expunged" in the editorial section is under the Rule of Funny (Noodle Incident). Anywhere else, It's under "standard" censoring rules. As far as I can tell with the new Normal that the Magical Land of Equestria anyway. =P

The blackbox censors are a throwback to the older versions where those censors still show some partial information. Sadly, this has been discontinued since they cleaned up the articles several years ago. The partial reveal of information taking away from the article was probably the reason why it was cleaned up in the first place.

>>Xepher

That said, I will say I'm curious about the actual premise here. A human and a griff-i-taur child? Yes, tell me more! Tell me that story, don't just tease me about it under black bars and edited text!

I know, right? That's what makes SCP articles so maddening sometimes. But their aim is to always encourage the readers to fill in the details themselves. Because Nothing is Scarier. And the interesting stuff never gets revealed. Probably why the censorship was even more serious nowadays.

>>CoffeeMinion

Very Greek mythology-ish there with subject 2's combination of traits.

I was actually basing it off how hippogriffs traits were expressed. One description I missed was actually mentioning 32-2's beak-mouth, making her look somewhat like the Tengu from Japanese mythology.

Thanks for the read and reviews, even if I confused you with some obscure piece of fanfiction. :3

Hey, belated mini-retro. Good luck to all finalists!

The Twilight Show

There’s not much to say about that little story. I had this idea loitering for a while in a corner of my mind, and it was nice to be able to put it down. I gladly hand it to you that it was exposition dumpy, the dialogue was a pretext to stuff as much information as possible. I appreciate you all finding it nicely written (except HatANot, but thanks for nitpicking) — thanks from the bottom of my heart. On the other hand, I was somewhat put off by the many comments that said something along the lines of “it breaks canon”. What of it? It made it sound as if breaking canon meant blasphemy! :P

In any case, I don’t think I’ll have time to tackle the two upcoming short story rounds, so more likely I say until next minific round. Meanwhile, have fun!

>>Monokeras It's the same character, basically, just a different iteration of him. It's not like we're dealing with Alicorn Catgirl Spike-Chan. God, can you imagine someone writing a story about that? Ridiculous. Heh.

Funny, and cute, although Rarity scratching Spike behind the ears seems... weird... given the nature of their relationship. You can see the twist coming from a mile away, though, which can work in your favor if you tweak the rest of the story and just embrace the wrongness. Add subtle little off-color moments to indicate that this is not the Ponyville we're familiar with. Y'know?

Just a suggestion.

>>Xepher Riffing off of this, you could probably solve the problem by omitting the astronauts' full names until the last scene.

MLP-inspired real-world historical cosmic-horror fiction. That's quite a genre buster. A really good genre buster. If I had to criticize, I'd say that not enough is done to make Nightmare Moon's presence seem all that Nightmare Moon-y, and you could swap it out with (generic eldritch abomination) to no effect on the story.

>>Posh
Y'know, if I wasn't already in the midst of commissioning a cover for Alicorn Catgirl Twilight-chan's Excellent Adventures, I'd be tempted to get one of those. :derpytongue2:

Genre: Slice-of-twist

Thoughts: This is a simple story that meanders a bit before hitting the reader with a last-minute twist. It's fun! My only real wish would be for a little more ambition in the scope of the tale; I spent most of it wondering where it was going, as the journey isn't quite as fun as the destination.

Also, yes, Sparity ear scratchies is... maybe a little funky? I dunno.

Tier: Strong

...So... am I the only one who thought the narrator was blind, and reading in Braille, going by the first paragraph?

I quite agree that this is a well done monologue, but I don't hear it coming from Twilight at all. The thoughts themselves? Sure. The way they're delivered? That doesn't sound like Twilight's voice to me.

Normally I feel some amount of trepidation when I submit a Writeoff story, but this time I felt confident I had a winner: it’s a complete adventure that fits into a 750-word package, and it has a memorable main character with innate appeal and relatable goals. What’s not to like?

In hindsight, my first mistake was failing to be mindful of the differences in pace and tone between the beginning, middle, and end sections. I thought it flowed pretty well in general, but I can see now that the middle and end do only what they absolutely need to do to advance the plot. I kinda recognized that going in, but I thought that would be a strength, and it wasn’t; the high-octane silliness of the beginning part sets expectations too high to just speed through the rest. I suppose that’s ultimately not a bad problem to have as I look at expanding it. But I can also see that Twilight-Chan is more of a spectator than a prime mover, despite her one moment of persuasiveness that wraps things up, The miniskirt thing may also be a recurring element, but it doesn’t reach the level of being thematic, and it ultimately wasn't strong enough to hang the whole story on.

Another mistake was expecting just the Twilights who make it on-screen to carry readers’ interest through the middle section. That would’ve been a tenuous prospect even if The Twilight Council wasn’t in contention, because of course people would want a big crazy variety of Twilights! How didn’t I see that coming?! Alas.

Of course, something else that probably didn't help was going up against The Twilight Council.

I blanched when I read early reviews of The Twilight Council, and blanched again when I read the story proper. I thought I had an original idea here, but I think it’s indisputable that The Twilight Council handles a similar concept in a stronger and more memorable way. Hopefully my reviews and comparison of them didn’t come off as sour grapes; I tried to be honest, but it’s hard not to be biased. I ultimately abstained on The Twilight Council due to my lack of objectivity.

Thanks to those who read and reviewed this!
>>SPark
>>Posh
>>horizon
>>Haze
>>Not_A_Hat
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Xepher

And fear not, Kawaii Neko-Chan Towairaito (love that!) will ride again when this makes its way to FimFiction. Yatta!

>>georg
Maaaaayyyybeeeeeeee...

>>Corejo >>Pascoite >>FanOfMostEverything
Fourthed? Fourthded? Quatered? Whatever the right word is >.>

>>Ritsuko
>>Fuzzyfurvert
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>SPark
>>Haze
>>Fenton
>>Xepher
>>Shadowed_Song
>>CoffeeMinion

I've been writing on and off for the past three years, and in that time I started to notice something about my style. My stories often end up with an overwrought narrative, full of needlessly long rambling and overtly detailede descriptions that could work just as effectively or even more so were they to be trimmed down, much like a garden that has been left unattended for too long and now has grown wild and randomly until the point it obscures the house behind it.

Therefore, in order to give myself a challenge--because writeoffs are usually such a walk in the park--I decided to tell this story using nothing but dialogue.

I'm mostly satisfied with the result and hopefully this means I'll be able to write less meandering stories in the future.

Now, let's get down to bussiness. The original draft of this story was somewhere around 1.2k words by the time I stopped. I was going a bit more in-depth regarding what Spike knew of Twilight's plan. Seems I couldn't stop being wordy. Therefore I decided to start from scratch, and while I managed to wrap up the initial conversation, I was well over 800 words and without a conclusion in sight.

I'm somewhat amazed that I ended up going right up to the word limit even though I didn't use anything other than dialogue. That'll show me to create a condensed story, huh.

Being less than pleased with myself, and with only a few hours left until the deadline, my inner butcher came out masquerading as an editor and I started cutting out everything that wasn't absolutely essential to the the flow of the narrative--though perhaps, it did hamper the reader's ability to get a firm grasp of the story itself.

Before dwelling further into the making of this piece, perhaps I should come clean about what actually transpired in the story. Spoilered just in case you can live with the mystery: Spike's remark about not having much knowledge about Nightmare Moon prompted Twilight to delay her letter to Princess Celestia until she had a well-rounded plan to deal with her. Seeing how this is a pre-friendship Twilight, this meant she tried to face the problem by herself, which in turn led her to dabble with dark magic. However, dark magic requires a cost, and in this case that means part of Twilight herself got banned to the moon as Nightmare Moon was re-sealed there, evidenced by the additional spots on the moon.

After that happens, Celestia calls the guard to try to handle the aftermath as she goes to grieve the loss of her sister for the second time as well as her student, which leaves a female guard to interview Spike, seeing how he was the only one in the area who witnessed what transpired.

Regarding that last point, Spike made an off-hand comment about there being a lots of guards in Canterlot and even seeing the one interviewing him around the castle, thought that bit ended up getting the axe.

Having established the backstory, I think I did at least a passable job of carrying the atmosphere. The storyteller within me would have loved to dwell in the mind of Spike and the interviewer, or how those feelings influenced their words in this case. However, the time and word constrains as well as that naggy editor voice in my mind demanded that I told the story in as expedite manner as I possibly could which, as mentioned, dealt a severe blow to its intelligibility.

Be that as it may, I still feel the biggest detriment to the story as a whole--aside from the title--is the conclusion. You wouldn't think that a rush job meant to close the story as soon as possible and in the least amount of words would result in an unsatisfying ending, but I guess we learn something every day.

Since this story is a report about a guard transcribing her interview with Spike about the incident at Twilight's tower, the original ending I had in mind would be about said guard summarising the report and tying it to the previous event, thus giving the story a more rounded closure that cleared things up without outright explaining things to the reader, which is what I think I'll do once I adapt this story for FiMFiction.

Oh, and one last thing.

why such a dead end title for the story?

Because I'm objectively bad at coming up with titles. Honestly, sans very few exceptions the range of emotions I have for my story titles range from disappointment and mild annoyance to outright hate and disgust. I used that title as a placeholder while I wrote the story, but as the time left slowly dwindled and my body and mind grew tired, I gave up on trying to come up with something decent.

The random numbers of the title mean it's the first day of the first month (the day after Summer Sun Celebration) at 7:30 in the morning.

I'll try to think of something better.

Anyway, this was a learning experience, and I wish the best to the finalists. See you in the next round!

Definitely not a great start to write-offs for me, I think I should have picked a better idea to fit a 750-word limit. However, I do want to thank everyone who critiqued my entry you guys gave me great advice to use in the future. Nowhere to go from here but up.

So, writing is solid, story does what I think it wants to do, and just falls utterly flat to me. This sort of humor works for some people, but for me, the pacing and build up of the jokes is pretty much non-existent, which causes them to fall pretty flat. Take it with a grain of salt, though, because based on upper comments, the humor does work for some people.

Humorous, and avoided dipping into wall breaks. Keeping all the Protagonist symptoms 100% in-universe was a good touch. Really wouldn't mind reading how this adventure plays out in full, honestly.

Great choice of imagery with the ropes and the jellyfish. But, on the whole, I wasn't really moved. There's a hint of something more grandiose going on when we see, "After Star Swirl himself had asked her the question." That line might be tugging at some alternate origin for our dear Twilight, and that is a tremendously interesting hook that we don't really explore afterward.

But, it also might just be above my head, philosophically.

This is quite good. Nice prose, though very confusing lead-in, as I suspected this was Twilight having left Equestria. I do agree that this sort of information could be delivered earlier, and probably should be.

Beyond that... while the story is intriguing from Asteria's perspective, I feel it also loses a lot of its impact. For her, there isn't much of an actual conflict. she's self-assured about what she's doing and why she doing it. I don't really get a sense of doubt or even of regret. Basically, the interesting story is Celestia's here, but we see very little of it. We're pretty detached from the emotional conflict because we're in the calm which I think removes some of the story's emotional impact.

Pleasant enough prose, but I'm left a bit cold by the voice. This just doesn't feel "Twilight" to me; this is someone much more poetic that book horse, I think. Your mileage may vary here, of course. Still, like I said, it is pleasant naval gazing and has very nice diction. Not a lot I can advice here aside from consider retooling the voice a bit. Or don't and just let it try and stand as a slightly different Twilight.

Hugely cute baby Spike and Papa, here. I enjoyed the little emotional inserts when Spike is being hoisted, the dad joke, and the forelegos gag. Sure, we jump to PG-13 at the end, but pasta us better with a little sauce, I say.

>>Fuzzyfurvert
Never seen any episode of the Twilight Zone, so no wonder I didn’t get it… :P

Welp, call me a tree, 'cuz I'm full of sap right about now. I have a soft spot for the old Golden Oak Library (#savetree) and this tickled it just right. Spike comes off as extra sweet, but still within his juvenile range with his don't wake the sleeping dragon bit. Well played all around.

(>>Not_A_Hat)


(Sorry it's a bit late!)

Genre: Ground control to Major Tom

Thoughts: I'll echo >>Posh's comment that the use of NMM here has such a light touch that you could use a more generic eldritch horror without losing anything. I might even go so far as to say it would be stronger for doing so, because it makes less sense to have a brush with NMM in specific than a less name-brand ancient evil. There are also some clunky mechanical aspects to who is where in the ship that makes the whole thing hard to visualize, as >>Xepher mentioned. I also don't get the title, or how it connects.

And yet, the whole thing hangs together better than i might expect given those nitpicks. It's a tale about a brush with the creepy unknown, and it succeeds at being so. I think the Disney line is the perfect way to tie things together.

Tier: Almost There

>>CoffeeMinion

This was explained to me by someone else, so I can't take credit for it, but the title, and all the other names in the story are taken from the Apollo 10 space mission.

Genre: OBJECTION!

Thoughts: I burst out laughing at multiple points. Thank Celestia I'm home by myself right now; this would've been gratuitously embarrassing to try to read in public. The Vinyl thing was so pitch-perfect... granted, Vinyl is one of my weaknesses, but I can't even. The only misfires IMO were underutilizing Harshwhinny, and setting up the Vinyl joke again with her. Also the Luna thing was a little too random, but you used her shapely legs well.

Top slate. 10/10, would Lawyer Dash again.

Tier: Top Contender

Adorable baby Spike shenanigans with a healthy dollop of headcanon Night Light, and a dad joke that had me chortling like a babbeh boy. I'm gonna stay neutral on #ForelegoGate, but add my voice to those complaining about the tone shift at the very end.

With the addendum that I really don't like how "girl time" changes meaning at the end. I think it raises some very unfortunate and unintended implications, given how it's used throughout the rest of the story. This story's a cute little G-rated, fun-for-the-whole family romp of defying gender roles, and I'm uncomfortable with it straying too far from that wheelhouse. Maybe she smooches him and says something like "maybe you can have girl time with Twilight next week, and I can play with the forelegos."

0/10.

That was pretty.

But I am also enough of a pedantic filly to point out that the way galaxies and stars are depicted is inaccurate, giving me no choice but to rate this story a shameful negative one bajillion/10.

This is the most absurd thing I've ever read in a Writeoff. It would be second, but I didn't read Pinkamena's Wake. The premise alone is nonsensical, and the lengths to which the story goes to justify it takes it even further into the realm of nonsense (dragon law gives dragons the right to impose dragon law on foreign countries?!), and isn't that just the spirit of the whole prompt?

"Alright. Raise your hoof. Now swear."

Vinyl coughed weakly. "Fuck."

"Thank you.

How can something so simple have me laughing so hard?

Infinity Billion/10.

>>CoffeeMinion
Nopony asked for a Super Bonus Double Review!!, but you're getting one anyway!

Genre: OTT joke setup

Thoughts: Coming back to this now that I'm not competing with it... I think my take on it is similar to before. There's a really funny and imagination-grabbing piece in the middle, and the thing at the end is the joke, but the beginning leaves me completely cold. If the purpose of an intro is to set the scene and hook the reader's interest, I think the decision to leave us with just the question and not any context is hard-mode. Again, I think it would be better not to force us through the context shift, and just open with Twilight's teleport. You could drop some more mentions of The Asker of the Question to keep it glued together... like maybe one of the Twilights could speak in a Vortigaunt style and call her that.

Also, it strikes me as a bit odd for Twilight to talk up the depth and significance of the question as much as she does with the group. I get it that the whole setup means that this is meant to be uber-pedantic Twilight on brain-steroids, but for that reason wouldn't it make sense for her to approach the question as an idle but intrusive thought? And then let the other Twilights get hooked on it not because of its stated significance, but because they can't help themselves? Again, that's probably what happens anyway, but it's not how Twilight sells it, either to the council or the reader.

So I think there's room to polish the humor side of this, but I can't deny it does what it does pretty well. IMO the moment that makes the whole story is the orbiting star-walrus.

Tier: Almost There

>>Posh

Maybe she smooches him and says something like "maybe you can have girl time with Twilight next week

Yaaassss, this is what the ending needs.*



*Posh definitely did not pay me to agree with this suggestion.

>>CoffeeMinion Of course not. I don't need to pay people to agree with me.

I'm just naturally always right.

[url=""]Dub_Rewatcher[/url]
[url=""]007Ben[/url]
[url=""]Zaid Val'Roa[/url]
[url=""]SPark[/url]
[url=""]Haze[/url]
[url=""]AndrewRogue[/url]
[url=""]Monokeras[/url]
[url=""]scifipony[/url]
[url=""]FanOfMostEverything[/url]
[url=""]Xepher[/url]

I think that's everyone who commented on my entry, Fallen From Grace, and I want to thank all of you for putting in comments about it. I wanted to contribute something to this contest (sorry it wasn't very good), and I've gotten feedback and suggestions that I'll definitely try to incorporate in my future attempts at fiction.

The story was supposed to be something of a throwaway bit of adventure (kind of like the prologue to an Indiana Jones movie) set in the Nightmare Moon world from 'The Cutie Re-Mark'. Twilight Sparkle, still a blank flank in this world, decided to try her hoof at being a 'real-life Daring Do'...not realizing there really was a Daring Do wandering around. A bad first encounter (not unlike what happened in 'Daring Don't') caused the two of them to become rivals over the years: this version of Twilight is sort of a Lara Croft to Daring Do's Indiana Jones.

Things changed when Nightmare Moon took over, and now Twilight's been trying to use her skills to find some kind of artifact, anything at all, to be able to defeat the Fallen One and restore Celestia to the throne. Unfortunately, she's had to make some unsavory alliances, Cabelleron and his crew being one of them; the same people funding him are just about the only serious group even contemplating revolution, so Twilight had to either team up or try to find a Wonderful Widget on her own. It helps that this Twilight has a slightly relaxed sense of morals from her years of being in more than a few...interesting locales...

With Twilight as a researcher on the team, Cabelleron has begun to pull ahead of Daring over the last couple of years and so she in turn has had to make some...interesting choices. Daring doesn't care much about politics or who is on the throne, only that the items that she finds are dangerous in the extreme and need to be locked away. Nightmare Moon has offered funds and help in exchange for Daring's services, and the dark alicorn really is trying to lock these artifacts away...and the world hasn't really ended...and Daring isn't really doing anything she didn't do before...

So while they were fighting/forced to work together to grab yet another trinket, the idea in the back of my mind was to have them argue about who was worse: Twilight, who has decided to work with an unsavory element that will likely use whatever power she gives them for nefarious ends, or Daring, who has taken up with an evil dictatorship that at least is a 'devil you know'.

...

Now that I look at all of this, I'm shaking my head and laughing at myself. I was trying to write a minific that required that much material to support it (at least I didn't have Twilight and Daring stuffing themselves in an old refrigerator and getting blown across a Neigh-vada test range...), and even worse...

None of that material appeared in story, or at least not much, and from the comments that were so graciously offered, I've think I have an idea where I went wrong (beyond the technical issues, which are relatively easy to fix).

For one thing, I was essentially trying to tackle too complex an idea in too small a space. I should have gone for a simpler idea more easily expressed, instead of doing something that was too baroque (or maybe rococo) in nature and that required more set-up to make sense.

Another problem I had was not providing enough information to the reader. I was too trapped in my own mind (something which happens all too often, I'm afraid) and wasn't thinking of the questions someone who walked into this cold might ask. That was very selfish of me, and I apologize for that.

And then I was trying to be too clever by half. I thought I was creating an interesting plot twist at the end, when in fact I was yet again confusing the heck out of the audience.

I don't think I really had any 'core' in the story, either, as in a central conflict or narrative that would tie everything together; if I did have something like that, I did a very poor job of putting it in.

In my defense, I had been working a lot of extra shifts at my job recently, and due to my schedule I only had three to five hours to think on the prompt and put something together. So I was rushing through it while suffering from some brain meltdown. And there was the fact that I've never tried writing a minific before, which didn't help either.

But enough with excuses: I'm very glad I was allowed to participate in this contest, and hopefully I'll be able to join in again for the next one. I didn't do very well this time, but I'll see what I can do about improving next time.

And is it too late to comment on other peoples' work? I'm still new to the etiquette of this site, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. I won't be doing anything today, but I have read all the stories that were submitted to this contest and have some thoughts on some of the entries.

>>SPark
If you or someone else would care to point out the instances, so I could see if it is an error or intencional?
>>JudgeDeadd
The Narrator is not in the story, isn't that the point with a Narrator?
It is Twilight Zone. The main character is playing Pinkie Pie, which is supposed to explain these descrapencies.
Teh change, as such ad already begun or taken place. That is just Rarity beinf Rarity.
It is the boots that is responsible for these noises, not the floor. Typical rubber noise.
The Library is Twilight's Zone.
>>Not_A_Hat
I could try to watch out for the issue, while I sometimes do use it for special effects. for the Mini, the word count is versy strict.
Darling was as a nickname, while I can see how it can be tricky to Capitalize it in other instances.
There is an intended break, clearly marked, the rest is intended to be one section.
For an option, what if you are thinking too deep to see the obvious?

Genre: Quantum Leap

Thoughts: There's interesting worldbuilding here, and there's a fun bit with Discord, but the transitions between parts are rough. I liked the way the story lulled me into thinking it wasn't going to have a twist, and then it hit me with a strong comedic twist. Yet at the same time, I feel like the perspective jump from Velvet to Sparkle disrupted that lulling process a bit.

Tier: Needs Work

Genre: Discord being Discord

Thoughts: I do like me some Discord being Discord... so why didn't I like this as much as I expected based on the title, reviews, and concept?

As often happens when adequately compensated, I find myself agreeing with >>Posh. The concept here is fun but it doesn't quite work itself up to the madcap fever pitch that Discord shenanigans on this scale could ideally reach. Maybe that's a case of my own expectations working against me, but the slow burn of escalating impacts on the world doesn't feel like it goes far enough before getting chopped-up by the speedy resolution.

The bit in Quills & Sofas was perfect. Give us more of that.

Tier: Almost There

>>HorseVoice
This explains why people chose to omit the tag entirely
I do put effort into choosing these with care. Did any of these come ut as off, or did I nail them?
>>JudgeDeadd
I have written such stories, but his is not one of them.
>>FanOfMostEverything
In MLP. Twilight Zone is a Library, isn't it?
>>AndrewRogue
If you could point out instances where you feel they are in error, so I can look into the issue?
>>Morning Sun
Character soomed into the castle, meetsRarity who have her wear boots before they go to the throne room together for a council meeting.
>>FanOfMostEverything
the Pinkie is dissoriented and thus takes time to orient herself propperly.
Rarity was in the castle already, for the council meeting.
That could be explained as a Fashion. While I am less Fashion forwards than Rarity.

>>QuillScratch
I can as well admit to have made a few erros here and there. While some of the issues are deliberately put into place too.
If you can point out instances, so I can look into your complaints?

From the top, how do you read dialogue and action tags?
Secondly, does the clauses require to contain individual comas to count as equal?

It could help, while I need to interpret some items from a different perspective.

I certainly could use help with these tenses.
Just a matter of the exact intended meaning behind these issues in some cases.
Expression translates poorly.

For the Dreem-like, it's Pinkie Pie, in a Twilight Zone, but that doesn't address the issues themselves.

With a hint of editoring, that should be fixable.
Hope it isn't the previous mentioned issues that puled you out of the intended flow.

It isn't clear if that eas the Actual Twilight, which could explain why she ignored the character in the beginning.
The zooming out is when the change is initiated and takes place.
Rarity offers her clothes, because rarity as they join on the path towards the throne room.
Then they go to the room, and see the Actual Twilight Sparkle.

With some more time, some details could have been added?

I had originally envissioned a different conclusion, but made this one as I came to the point.

What if the grammar made the disconection wider, or the disconnection compounded your technical issues here?

>>Ranmilia
The Beginning is in a Library, and the zooming out.
Middle is zooming in, meeting Rarity and heading towards the Council meeting.
The end is arriving at the meeting.
>>Xepher
I can easily emphasis with your situation here.
>>horizon
Yes, he certinly did put in an effort. I appreciate his Post too.
The title is Important, but it doesn't tel the story; merely opens up the door, for the reader to enter the premise.

Needs work, I can easily agree with you on that point.
I could recognise a few errors by myself, after I had published it. But then it was too late to change it.

>>eusocialdragon
Feel free to comment on anything you'd like.

>>Ritsuko

To clarify, said-bookisms should be the last thing you spend a lot of time on. "Said" is an invisible word, so you can pretty much use it in most cases, and it won't stick out, as repeated words tend to. Alternately, you can often include dialogue in a paragraph along with an action taken by the speaker, and simply avoid using a said-bookism altogether.

>>eusocialdragon
For what it's worth, that does sound like a fascinating premise for a larger story.

Also, if you go to your story page, you'll be able to see all the comments for it. Moreover, you'll be able to reply to them in a way that will notify the commenters that you said something. Just click that curving arrow on the top-right corner of each post.

And as long as the final results haven't been announced, you're always welcome to comment on stories. (You're also welcome to do it after the results are announced, but we're a lot less likely to look. ;) )

>>Ritsuko
You've raised a lot of questions and clearly there's a lot I can say in response to this. I'm going to limit myself to three points, for now, because it's late and I really need to head to bed soon—besides, these are the three things I think I have something worth saying in response to! If you would like me to elaborate on any of these, or if you'd like to hear my (less interesting) thoughts on your other points, feel free to message me on Discord.

While some of the issues are deliberately put into place too.

If I might ask, what are your reasons for choosing to break with convention? Could you perhaps give an example of one such moment in this story, along with a brief explanation of your choice? I'd be really interested to take a look at those, and perhaps have a chat about whether or not those choices are working in your favour.

does the clauses require to contain individual comas to count as equal?

For the first use of semicolons, the "equal" aspect is... rather hard to define. Personally, I would avoid using a semicolon in an instance where one of the clauses explains the other, even though those two clauses would clearly be related: those clauses would not be equal, and I would use a colon instead. For borderline cases, I wimp out of making an actual decision and use the far more versatile dash! (Don't be like me. I am a lazy author. Find a style guide you like, and stick with it.)

To confirm, this first use of semicolons has nothing to do with commas. You can happily link a complete sentence that's riddled with commas to another independent clause that has none using a semicolon.

It isn't clear if that eas the Actual Twilight, which could explain why she ignored the character in the beginning.

A far more obvious and reasonable explanation would be that Twilight didn't hear the initial call! Perhaps she was engrossed in work or thought? Perhaps she was too far away? I think it's a big stretch to assume that the Twilight we see at the start is not the real Twilight.

Assuming she isn't, though, what does that actually mean for the story? This fake Twilight is gone after two paragraphs and never mentioned again, and the idea that she might be real or fake doesn't seem to have any implications for the other things that happen. This is what I meant by the logical structure, for what it's worth: the first two paragraphs happen, and the story moves on without them affecting the rest in any way. If an event in your story has no effect on anything else that happens, why have you included it?

It's worth noting that this kind of criticism can be applied to many of the things that happen in this entry, which is what creates that sense of disconnection. Nothing in this story seems to have any lasting consequences: events merely happen, one after the other, until the story finishes. You could easily remove any moment from this story (except, perhaps, the introduction of Rarity), or add any event of your choice into it at any point, and I don't believe it would have any meaningful impact on the experience of reading it. And that, I believe, is why so many readers thought that the story was disjointed, cryptic, confusing, and incoherent.

I'm afraid that's all I've got time to cover tonight. I hope all of that helps!

>>eusocialdragon
I'll say it again.... it was the most exciting story idea I'd seen in years. Lots of people wrote about Nightmare Moon's AU, but who even thinks to explore that setting with Daring Do? and on top of that, having her be a rival to Twilight instead of automatic friend. Very creative there.

>>QuillScratch

As I look down, I could see the dark, shiny, pink boots. I feel Rarity strapping the shiny, black saddle tightly on my back.

If this is an issue pointed at, the solution would be to omit the word "could" and everything would be fine.
My intent is to widen the meaning a bit further.

With the first case, it links he dialogue and the action.

You can happily link a complete sentence that's riddled with commas to another independent clause that has none using a semicolon.

This sounds like the first segment.
On that note, the problem may be tha the next paragraph ould have used a semi-colon as well?

A far more obvious and reasonable explanation would be that Twilight didn't hear the initial call! Perhaps she was engrossed in work or thought?

Since we are in the castle, and the library to be exact; one posibility is that it was Starlight Glimmer, the Pony that play Pinkie Pie saw. If she is new in Ponyville and did not know of Twilight's student such a mistake should be easy to make?
Is it possible Starlight could pull a deep spell on the Pony, on instinct? Haycart or anything esle to give the impression described in the fic?

Nothing in this story seems to have any lasting consequences:

Would it make sence to assume that it was never Twilight, but Starlight who pulled haycart over the Pony? She wouldn't know she is Pinkie Pie instantly and she wouldn't instinctively recognice Rarity.
Once she realized she is pinkie pie, her actions changed rather drastically.

And that, I believe, is why so many readers thought that the story was disjointed, cryptic, confusing, and incoherent.

Why do I have the impression this happened to my previous(first) entry, and that it is likely to happen again and again? While it made more sense once you see the order of the story in the fic.

I hope it doesn't come out as afterconstructions to defend what was just a bad story in the first place.

Okay, you got me. I don't even know what I expected after the other multi-Twi fic but damned if you didn't deliver a unique experience. This feels like pulling an all-nighter for a test, only to discover you mixed up the schedule and pushed for the wrong subject.

It's simple, it's great, and Star-Walrus might be my favorite thing out of this Writeoff yet. Definitely a high contender.

I'd medal this for most unexpected take on the prompt without hesitation. My only gripe, and others have mentioned it, is that you could replace Luna with some other 7-8 legged monstrosity and it wouldn't lose much effect. Also, why does she have that many spiked legs? There might be more clues I'm missing, but a couple readings haven't yet revealed them.

Still, a great mix of real-world and fictional events.

Posh's Sexy Mash-Up Mash-Down: Finals Edition

Trial by the Twilight Council: Chimeric Shoggoth Purplesmart, from the Realm Between Realms Where Time Tells Half-Truths, runs a gauntlet of reshelving procedures, proctored by Spike. The purpose of the test is to determine whether or not she may participate in high-level negotiations with her counterparts throughout the multiverse. Special guest appearance by Alicorn Catgirl Twilight-chan!

In the Twilit Safe Zone: Filly Twilight seeks comfort from Celestia after waking from a bad dream. Celestia, not really wanting to be bothered with it, banishes Twilight to Discord's belly button. Twilight decides she likes it there more than reality.

Protagonist Exclusion: Post-apocalyptic Lyra and Moondancer must battle thaumaturgical monstrosities in a calamity-stricken hellscape, caused by Twilight indolently lounging in Discord's navel lint rather than stopping Nightmare Moon, or any of the millions of other threats which seem to spawn at random around her.

(Needless to say, this story and the one before it are in continuity with one another)

The Passing of the Outer Limits: Celestia flings her horn to some watery bint, but misses and accidentally hacks off Asteria's horn while she's off gassing up Betelgeuse. Things are... awkward... between them after that.

No Zoning Permit Allowed: Twilight Sparkle is denied a zoning permit by her cross-dressing father as part of her parents' elaborate sex games. Traumatized, she refuses to leave the castle ever again, and an emotionally distraught Spike must chew and spoon-feed her cornflakes. Sometimes, he wishes he could just end everything for the both of them...

So I found this generally funnier than Coup, but it kinda runs into the same problems for me. The rapid fire joke delivery leaves very little build-up, especially since most of it is just random stuff happens. I will admit I laughed at the flyover learning (which I think had good structure and even build), but for the most part... eh? Not awful, but not my sort of comedy again.

Very funny, though the end didn't quite jive with the overall humor. It's nice to see Blueblood get some attention, because heaven knows I can't work with him.

>>eusocialdragon
That sounds like an awesome story concept! Props to you for taking a shot at something big. I'm no stranger to the allure of trying to tackle a big adventure in a minific round, as evidenced by this thing that later got expanded into this thing. Clearly I'm still not resisting the temptation very well. But hang in there and carry on; the main thing is to keep trying and learning things when you write.

Definitely needs a bit of a cleanup pass. Small example, you could cut the last sentence from the third paragraph and lose nothing, but clean up the narrative flow a little.

I'm not quite sure I like the protagonist syndrome call here? The problem is it is so lowgrade and reasonable that I don't fully buy the premise of a slowly widening weird world. It's not a bad way to approach it, but yeah, it just doesn't quite click for me.

I dunno, I hate to say this and maybe it's just me being tired, but this is one of those stories I can't actually put a finger on as to why I don't like it more.

I know this one didn't make finals, but I heard about it through the Writeoff podcast (yo >>Not_A_Hat!) and was curious.

This is greatly amusing! Maybe it's not a "story" per se, but it seems like required reading for HiE-curious writers. It seems a bit sad if what >>Cassius says is true about the same jokes having been around 5 years ago, but that seems more like a case of tropes that won't die rather than it being invalid to continue skewering them.

I do wish this had shown up on my slate, though, because I probably would have put it in a high tier, and those were pretty thin in the prelims.

I feel like this dips more into diet-Junji Ito territory rather than straight up Lovecraft. Which is fine, because Ito is terrible and amazing. You also scratch my "Nightmare is its own thing" spot, so points on that.

Whew, ranking all the finalists was a task alright. Tons of strong entries across a surprising breadth of genres. Hats off to everyone.

Hm. I honestly feel that this is a technically worse Crepuscular, but possessing a little more heart.

The imagery of world lines is interesting and honestly a bit odd to me, since it's not how I generally conceive the infinite potentials of all of time and space, but it is also possible I am just sleepy and being dumb.