Congrats to our winners:

And I'll look forward to upthumbing them on FimFiction soon!

Oh, and to answer >>ToXikyogHurt's question, my story "The Road Goes on Forever" is the one that got called "meringue"... :)

Mike

>>Trick_Question
I didn't get bored so I can't help there. Maybe I just really like it obvious :/ I like you using Flurry, a lot, so I'm glad you're keeping her. Can't wait to see it on FimFiction!

Thank you everyone for the critiques! The vast majority of the problems came down to the simple fact that it was rushed. I finished most of this on the final day, and had to heavily abridge most of what I had initially wanted to do.

>>Trick_Question The primary point to this fic was to be a heroic last stand, inspired by the real life Warsaw Uprising. There was never intended to be a deeper message, other than to entertain through a war story and empathize with the characters.

>>CoffeeMinion Power Metal is my biggest influence in writing big action set piece fics. So yeah, the movie version of 300 definitely had an influence on the tone of the story, as did several songs by the Power Metal band Sabaton. There is always an element of shlock to my stories, though I do intend for it to be serious enough for the drama to be real and impactful.

>>TrumpetofDoom The formatting issue was, again, due to it being rushed. I was at college at the time of publishing, with a few minutes on the clock left,and *bam*, Internet goes down. So I had to copy/paste ASAP an hope that the indentation worked. By the time I notice it didn't, it was too late to edit. I originally wanted this to be a middle chapter of three, but time constraints meant it was cut short.

>>Zaid Val'Roa I often have banter between characters in my stories for some levity, but I understand how the close proximity to the dramatic sudden ending made it more than a little jarring. That's something I'll change for the re-edit.

>>2Merr My intention was for Scarlet to be fed up with Jester and wanting to get on with the fight, so he ignores the annoying pony in favor of more important stuff. Silver and Midnight were supposed to get more screen time, but yet again, time constraints killed that. I wanted one of them to be trans because if gender is irrelevant in a war situation, then why not have more characters who *aren't* cisgender by default? As for Jester's betrayal, it was supposed to be sudden and unexpected, but oddly enough, when I showed my editor this fic, he enjoyed the subtlety of said betrayal. How would you change it to make it less of a face-heel-turn without being too obviously foreshadowed?

Thanks again to all who commented! I plan on making an expanded and properly edited version of this in the new year. Follow me on FimFiction under the username "Mystic Mind" to see what else I do. This story is intended to be a spiritual prequel to my fic, "Siege of the Crystal Empire", which I think you will all enjoy due to its longer and more polished nature than this one!

>>Pascoite
Sorry, was scrolling to press all the replies out if habbit O:)

>>Baal Bunny
Purple link: already had my upvote.

Oh, The Clash. What a bunch of lovely chaps.

Before I say anything else, I want to thank everyone who voted for this piece. I'm proud to have finished in first place for the first time! I'll work hard to make enjoyable pieces in the future.

Alright, time for a little introspection. Maybe it's because this is one of the first stories I read and one which I enjoyed which made me want to get to work on it right away. I mentioned this in my comment on the other piece: that one captured the feeling of isolation I got from reading the story, and if I'd had the time, I probably would've taken a similar approach. However, I decided to make a piece which focused exclusively on Twilight, because at its core, this story is about her inner conflict and her endless pursuit of knowledge. At least, that's the way I interpreted it and the way which made it easier to draw.

>>CoffeeMinion
>>Lamplighter
I'm glad you liked it. I had a fun sketching and then inking and painting. I had the chance to try a few techniques I've never tried before, so it's good to know I fared decently.

>>Caliaponia
Twilight was the first part of the drawing I made. Once I inked her, did the flat tones and the basic shades, I just sort of focused on the backgrounds for the better part of a day. I am well aware this contradicts what I just said about focusing on Twilight's inner conflict, I never said I was good at being congruent with my ideas.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yeah, after being done--for a value fo the word--with the backgrounds, I should've gone back and work a bit more on Twi. I wanted to give a little texture to her fur and mane, but I ended up not doing so because I needed to finish reading the story submissions. (I wish there had been more time to draw, though. I almost didn't make Tramonto and had to rush Flutterflesh because of that. In future art rounds I think I'll stick to fewer entries if it means I can give them all the polish they deserve.

>>horizon
I'm glad you liked Twi, I really made the effort to make her look proportionate, though I ended up using a vector as reference for the eye position because they didn't look (heh) right in my sketch. Regarding the clouds, I was trying something different with them because my first attempt looked as a bunch of low quality cotton left in a bowl of dirty water. I think the end result is... better, though still far from perfect, I should've tried to blend them a little bit without losing the strong shading I wanted to give it.

If you didn't like the sea, you should've seen how it looked before I added the waves. Here, take a look. I'll agree that it isn't perfect, though. I like how they look near the horizon, but it took me so long to make that segment that I ended up just copypasting it on the rest of the ocean while changing the opacity and other values, which was a mistake, as it creates an unappealing contrast as a whole. Duly noted.

And then the rocks. Ugh... Those patches of colour were meant to be blended later on and then given a texture to look like rocks being touched upon by sunlight. Of course, it's overcast, so the light touching those rocks wouldn't be as vibrant. Plus, the final effect did not look good, so I just scrapped it and tried to give the rocks a bit more definition.

Ah, and the grass. I was just lazy so I made two layers sandwiching Twilight and used the grass brush on Photoshop. I'm taking full responsibility on the laziness there.

Overall, I agree that these mismatching styles somewhat detracted from the piece, but I still enjoyed making it. (I wish I'd know it would end up having that effect, I would've doubled down on the patchwork style and find a way to tie it with Twilight's inner conflicts, but such is life)

>>Lamplighter
Hey, if you still wish to use this as the artwork, feel free, I'd be flattered. I do want to touch upon it and fix a few of the issues mentioned here, so let me know when you'll put your story up on FiMFiction and I'll be sure to have it ready by then. ^-^

>>Zaid Val'Roa
That'll just make my day. As soon as I touch up the story that is. I haven't actually worked on it since I first submitted it.

This writing contest can really suck it out of you can't it?

Ps. I almost added the word "now" to the end of the title, but I thought that would have been a little too on the nose.

>>Lamplighter

This writing contest can really suck it out of you can't it?

Yeah, I hear you.
Take your time with polishing your story, just remember that You've Got to Let Me Know when you'll be putting it up on FiMFic.

I'm happy to have made it to finals, it's been a while since a short story of mine has made it in. I think since last year.

I normally consider myself to be an acceptable--if unproductive--writer in most circumstances. Funny how that flips when it's time for a writeoff. I suddenly become a fast writer with barely passable execution. But hey, enough self-deprecation. I've got to own up to my shortcomings.

>>Cyrano
>>Baal Bunny
>>TrumpetofDoom
>>CoffeeMinion
>>WillowWren
>>Bachiavellian

As I address your many concerns about the story, I also want to talk about a bit about what the story itself was meant to be and how I would make a good butcher.

The core idea behind the story is Princess Luna offerings a service to dying ponies: Craft a dream for them so they can live out the things they wished they could've done in their lives as means of getting closure so they can die with at least a small positive in their last days. She does not euthanise them. Here's one snippet I ended up cutting as the deadline and word limit loomed over me:

“Indeed. Dainty Dove still talks about the session you had with her last month.” nurse Tender Care said, “she tells everypony who will listen to her about how much fun she had with you.”

While Luna’s smile didn’t falter, it was no longer a smile born out of a mix of pride and mild embarrassment, but rather a smile of contentedness and, perhaps, a dash of melancholy hidden somewhere within it.

She was quick to suppress it, however.

“Oh, and what about old Mister Spear? Last time I came he seemed to be getting better,” Princess Luna asked, and not a second had passed since those last words had left her lips before the mood between them sombered considerably and silence took over.

“I… I see,” she said, catching the implicit meaning.

“It’s alright, at least he finally got a respite from his condition,” nurse Tender Care said in a somewhat rehearsed way that let Luna know this probably wasn’t the first time she said those particular words.

Perhaps a bit too blunt, but I think it drives the point home. Luna offers her service to those who are about to die.

Now, another issue which came up was why does she have to disguise herself to do this, and how does it work with the hospital. Regarding the first question, there are two answers. >>Rao got most of it right, in that coming under a fake persona makes the patients feel more at ease and can let them open their hearts instead of trying to be reverent for the sake of the Princess. It's one thing for, say, a priest to office your wedding, and a completely different one is to get the Pope to do it. It would change the entire feel of the event.

The other reason is that providing this service under an alias serves as a contingency. Princess Luna is already known as the guardian of dreams, but it's not quite known that she can craft dreams. If this became something more known, it could create some issues, mainly lots of ponies vying for the chance to get their loved ones, or themselves, a tailor made dream. Or hey, this is Canterlot, maybe some snotty noble demands to hire Solacing Dreams and get personalised dreams at the expense of the ponies for whom Luna really wants to do this. So, instead, she provides the service under a fake name, and lets the Hospital choose a small number of ponies each month who get to enjoy this. You'll notice that this is not brought up in the story.

There was a brief allusion to this when Luna mentions that the Director deemed Summer Breeze's case fit, and that's it. I also wanted to hint this with the letter Luna is reading early in the story, but I never got around writing that due to time and word constraints.

Whoops.

Now, moving on to the meat of the story, we stumble upon my biggest issue as a writer: my overwrought--and at times overbearing--prose. Long story short, I feel the build up is drawn out, the imagery is alluring but ultimately inconsequential, it brushes upon emotional points rather than hitting them, the little conflict there is in the story is explored in a shallow way, Luna takes a very laissez-faire approach to solving Summer's troubles, and the dénouement is rushed and unearned.

I think that covers most of it. Now I'm going to try and defend what I did.

My original plan was to have an action from Sunset elicit a reaction from Luna. Much like the first two dream scenes did. Summer is happy to be flying, but stumbles accross a town and reacts negatively. Luna sees this, wonders what is going on, and then decides to find out. Sounds simple enough and that dynamic should help pinpoint Summer's insecurities and have her face those fears at the end. I think we all know how that plan turned out.

The reasons which led to my dowfall were interconnected. First of all was my aforementioned long prose, I try to rein it in, but it just takes over some time. Summer Breeze's scenes ended up being too long for their own good, stretching what little interesting aspects it had until they were padded with scenery filler, as >>Xepher brought up. this is what made the wordcount rise, so I had to start trimming things here and there, though that ended up not being enough.

This leads into the second problem. The lack of action on Luna's part. Despite intending to be a back and forth between her and Summer, it ended up being Summer flying on her own with Luna being a passive observer. This happened because I had to cut several planned Luna scenes to make up for the words Summer's portion had eaten up. They would've been short, yes, but crucial to get the full scope of the story. Here's one which I did get around writing, and which covers up one issue raised by >>ToXikyogHurt about Summer's flightmates:

As Luna came to know with the years, there is a peculiarity of dreams regarding the ponies who appear in them. All the inhabitants of our dreams are not creatures made up by our minds, but rather the faces of real ponies who we have seen during our lifetime.

We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, and therefore have an endless supply of characters for our brain to use during our dreams. This is the reason why Luna never paid too much attention to the many faces that she saw in the dreamscape, given that most of the time she wouldn’t recognise them.

However, she could clearly recognise the ponies who had approached and then were left behind by a speeding Summer Breeze. If only because she had seen them all in a picture just moments before entering the realm of dreams.

She didn’t have to guess, Luna now knew something was wrong with Summer Breeze.

She followed Summer’s path as she kept flying up in the sky. She was going to find out what had wronged her, and she’d do her best to set it straight.

Oh, you can just feel the extraneous verbage.

But not all is tears, I can definitely see how I can improve this. If I learned anything in my mad dash to submit this story was just how many irrelevant phrases, expressions, and descriptions I use. If I were to keep the story structure the same but get rid of those, I'm sure I could lower the wordcount by a few hundred. Still the core of the issue are the needlessly long Summer scenes, and the missing Luna pieces to complete the puzzle. I trust I can tighten the narrative into a shorter and consistent story that actually packs an emotional punch.

However, I still would need to address another major detriment of the story, and that is the ending.

As it's been mentioned before, the grand resolution of the story is Summer spilling her guts to Luna and she gives her a small reassurance, meaning the entire story could've been avoided by having Summer talk with one of the hospital's psychologists. This is entirely unsatisfying, but as much as it may be for you to have read it, it's even more so for me because I didn't get to write the ending that I wanted.

I'd like to direct your attention to this line of dialogue which, as >>Trick_Question mentioned, was also needlessly repeated:

“I create the setting for the dream, your subconscious does the rest,” Princess Luna said

I didn't include this just for the sake of explaining how the dreamscape worked.

My initial plan was to have the dreamscape morph into the night of her accident, with Summer reliving that moment due to her subconscious inability to let go until Luna steps in and brings everything to normal, which would then lead to a healing talk which wouldn't rely on a rather dry reminscing, but on more emotional outpouring from Summer.

Y'know, showing instead of telling.

There's also the matter of why Summer is in the hospital. She has a skim-and-you'll-miss-it line about trying an unassisted flight which sent her to the hospital, but that's it.

I just got so caught up in those early scenes and trying to present Summer's dream that I couldn't get to tell a story I wanted to tell in the best way possible. That really bothers me, because this is a concept I wanted to try for some time.

However, as a mean to wrap this equally long autopsy in a lighter note, I wanted to quickly share a few thoughts I had to make the story more dynamic and less like sugarcoated sedatives:

a. Turn Luna's arrival to the hospital into a more rounded introduction to the premise of the story which adequatelly hints at all the backstory I mentioned here without turning into an infodump, so I can devote the body of the first chapter to Summer Breeze and Luna's interaction.

b. Cut down all which doesn't serve to the plot or Summer's characterisation, reinforcing the visual language of dreams instead of the telly parts, creating more engaging scenes which serve a clear narrative purpose.

c. Change Summer from a nice old lady in her late seventies to a younger~ish mare maybe just past middle age. This would let her have some more spunk than a septuagenarian while also letting me explore darker emotions in her. This would also make the reader more interested in why she's going to die, since it's less expected for someone in their late forties than in someone in their mid to late seventies.

d. As I wrote this, I came up with other possible scenarios where Luna visits other sick and dying ponies as Solacing Dreams, so I can explore other types of reactions, but I'll only do that if I manage to succesfully pull off an improved Summer Breeze chapter.

---

Man, almost 2k words just in this reply. I wish I could write this fluidly when dealing with my stories. Anyway, once again a huge thanks to everyone who read my story and to those who left feedback. It's greatly appreciated. And if you read through all of this post-mortem, then give yourself a hug from me. Or a cool secret handshake, whichever makes you more comfortable.

So, this did significantly better than what I was expecting. I mean, I had this idea I wanted to do, yes? Except it was Sunday night and I still hadn't figured out an angle, so I said fuckit, I'll sit down and write about having no ideas.

But doing it directly was feeling meh, and then suddenly, hey, let's do it was Rarity and of course dresses and basically just come up with every way I can complain via her about having no ideas until it's 2,000 words in!

Which is why it is florid and purple and goes nowhere through the bulk of it, because I was literally writing just to write and did not care that it was probably bad. The goal was always 'Do SOMETHING' because hey, no improvement without practice/effort.

And then near the end I hit on 'Wait, what if it's her own wedding?' because originally the client was some snooty Canterlot pony and the dress was just a dress, but a ton of my friends are Rarilestia trash of late and the concept Rarity was getting married suddenly leapt to mind. This was also because around 1400 or 1500 words I was completely dry on ways to kvetch until I hit the wedding angle and it gave me fresh life to go through the end.

And thus, well, this. It's totally florid and purple and likely either overlong or simply heavily unpolished because it was pure stream of consciousness of 'Write, write, write, what nah, IDEA, write, write, done, submit!'

Hence no foreshadowing early on, overly purple, and so forth. And yet apparently some people loved it which is great!

>>The Power Wolf
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>Rao
Glad you liked it, and double props to Rao because that's exactly what it was.

>>Trick_Question
I didn't reveal long before the twist because until the near-end, because during most of it there was no planned twist! And that's also why it's somewhat overly florid, it's completely unedited and in need of a ruthless polishing which I probably will not do, knowing me and it will languish with my other unedited stories, ah well!

>>Bachiavellian
This one produces a question - what plot-thread? I mean the dilemma is 'I dont know what to do', and then it's just being along for the ride, really. I can think of a bit of extra whimsy or two, but mostly the core won't change.

>>AndrewRogue
Pff, this is the fault of Carapace/Mono getting Silfoe & Amar addicted to it. Mostly Silfoe though since she's a friend.

>>MrNumbers
>>GaPJaxie
There was no substance through most of the writing so yea, it was all spices. Totally guilty on that one! If I pursue it further I'll have the advantage of central conflict going through it all and have some ideas like it being 'The Last Dress' she's stuck on (Because of course she made the Bridesmaid's Dresses and Celestia has her own (Because bride can't see pre-wedding day and Rarity IS the bride), and is stuck on her own and then the eventual reveal that that's why she's having so much trouble or something.

But that's all contingent on going back. But yes, the criticism is pretty much totally on point and I knew that going in.

>>Xepher
>>Winston
It's a bit tonal breaking, but I am a sucker for that silly meme. And at the time (And Xepher picked up on this) the goal was length and the idea produced extra paragraphs I needed then!

So yea, thanks everyone! Feedback is apt, and I will totally cop to 'Story was a rush job of 'write just to write'' so this is the totally unvarnished first draft that is definitely flawed and having said flaws so poignantly pointed to be benficial. Arrr. Them crabs is fearsome foes.

Totally read this after the end and was like 'This is going to be a new version of The Last Question, isn't it?

And it was, and it was nice to see a different answer, and it was a fun journey, and had I not read The Last Question I would love it way more.

But I admit, as I consider The Last Question to be like, my favorite story ever, this suffers because it compares so readily to it and, well, it isn't found wanting. It's just hurt a touch by me going 'Ah, but Asimov did it better'

On the other hoof, if my only complaint is 'Asimov did it the best' I suppose that's a good person to be competing with :)

>>Morning Sun
Well, I'm just gonna spitball wildly, right now. If this were my story, I think I'd have another character in the room for Rarity to bounce her thoughts off of. Someone who might be annoyed and/or worried that Rarity is working herself so hard on the night before her wedding.

But of course, I totally get that you want to leave the focus on Rarity. Personally, I think this is playing on hard mode, but go for it! I'd be interested to see what a spruced-up version looks like!

>>Cyrano
Thank you so much. Feel free to use my painting! It was made for the story.
My Deviantart is https://malawichild.deviantart.com

So, I think I just won my first silver medal, or something. What.

Retrospective: No Spring Chicken

I just want to start by saying thank you to everyone who voted this up. I was actually blindsided when I woke up this morning and saw the Discord notification on my phone of Xepher's congratulations message. Honestly, I thought this would place mid-low on the finals slate.

The general rule I've noticed around the Writeoffs is that the stories that get talked about are the ones that win. It's more true for the minific rounds, granted. But still, the fact that this story was one of the last 3 stories to get a third review and was dead last in review count when I finally went to bed had me honest-to-god convinced that I'd be fighting for 8th or 9th place. I mean, this story was never even mentioned in the Discord chat until a few hours before results came in.

Consequentially there are so many stories (*cough* *cough* HEAT DEATH *cough*) that I felt should have medaled. Anonymous voting can be such a fickle mistress.

Okay okay, shutting up about my surprise now. Will talk about the story.

So, I came up with the idea of retirement when I thought about the prompt for a bit. I actually originally envisioned the story to be a lot darker than what you see now. In my first outline, I had Rainbow refusing to retire because of self-confidence/self-worth issues, until she alienated herself from the other Mane 6. Breaking her wing would have forced her to stop flying, which would eventually lead her to make amends with her friends.

I wrote the first scene on Friday with that tone in mind, and it was significantly grittier. There was blood and swearing and the whole nine yards. Needless to say, on Saturday morning, I took a look at it and rightfully called it garbage. Saturday was spent mostly coming up with a new outline and hacking the first scene down into something that wasn't 2edgy4me. On Sunday, I lost a lot of writing time and ended up finishing the first scene and the rest of the fucking story in one goddamned epic sitting. It was awful.

I finished, barely awake at around midnight with work the next day, so I kind of just searched for formatting issues before I passed out. Hence, why we have "fingers" instead of "feathers".

I'm still very proud that I managed to put this together. This is probably the most writing I've done in such a short time in years. At the very least, it's been more than a year since I last participated in a Short Story contest, so I'm really, really happy that it did so well.

On to responses!

---

>>CoffeeMinion
>>2Merr

Automatic heresy, Big Mac / Sugar Belle OTP

There was also a weird typo where you misspelled Sugar Belle...

It will be a long and a cold day in hell before I let a one-episode hussy ruin six years of the most perfect ship to ever grace Equestrian waters. I will Flutter my Macs until my fingers are cold, stiff, and dead.

.... But really, I'm glad you guys liked it! Yep, CoffeeMinion is on point about the romance being rushed. I agree with 2mer that the story can be much longer. If I didn't have have a pathological inability to complete my writing projects, I might even think about expanding this one to a multi-chapter story.

>>Cyrano
Ugh, yeah, that's what I get for not doing a good editing job. The whole three or four months or weeks or what not kerfluffle happened because halfway through I finally realized I should look up and see how long it actually takes these kinds of injuries to heal. And then I changed my mind repeatedly over how long I thought Dash would be willing to keep her wing in a sling. So yeah. Messy. Also, agree that the children were not implemented well. No excuses here, especially since I don't like seeing this kind of kid-characterization when I myself am reading stories. I don't know how you still managed to like the story even after everything, but I'll just say that I'm glad you did!

>>Trick_Question
Very true. Like I said earlier, the Romance aspect was not something I planned until about 2/3 into the writing period. So it's rushed. No two ways around it. I like your idea much more, and I'll probably go with it if I were to expand. Happy you enjoyed the story!

>>GaPJaxie
This is actually exactly what I was thinking when I was re-reading the story for the first time on the Monday after writing. Thank you for your honesty; it's good to have my suspicions confirmed. Appreciate you leaving your thoughts!

>>Xepher
>>Winston
Darn, I actually liked "Jack" a lot. I thought it gave it a more down-to-earth feeling to complement the maturity of the characters that I was shooting for. But I guess the reader is always right. : P ,,,,,Maybe I can pull off "Jackie"...

Happy you guys liked how the story felt!

>>Rao
I'm surprised that you're complimenting my prose, considering how it's probably one of my bigger frustrations whenever I write. I guess what they say about putting in the extra effort is true. Also, ditto on the shippy business being less than entirely seaworthy. Thank you for your thoughts and for your kind words!

>>horizon
Getting a "Top Contender" from horizon is a hell of a drug. Color me pleased that you liked it so much! I completely agree with your assessment; I by no means consider myself the among the most creative of writers, but I'm glad that I still managed to make these cliches work. :)

---

Again, big thanks for the silver! I've had fun, and I hope everyone else did too. Till next time!

I wish this had appeared on my slate. It was a pleasure to read, one of my favorites this round, and not just because I'm drawn to stories about music and musicians. It was clearly written with care for its subjects and themes.

This story works well as an introduction to the bar, and I agree with others that this would make a great setting for a series. As an arc for Octavia, I found it satisfying enough. For a professional musician, completing a commission for such an important patron would be no small thing. Some more words about her process could help strengthen the stakes and illustrate the conflict. More details about the other characters would also help bring the bar fully to life, and I would read that all day.

In the debut performance scene, I found myself feeling rather separated from the music and, consequently, the events and characters themselves. It's right on the verge of drawing me in, but--somehow the description of the music seems disconnected from Octavia's experience of it (aside from its increasing difficulty.) It sounds like you're already on that, though. I did appreciate all the musical details you took the time to include.

One thing I thought of, which you can of course take or leave, would be a move to Luna's PoV at some point while she's hearing the music. I would love to experience it as she does. Maybe that's a different story? I would read that too. Thank you for writing!

I had been sitting on a bizarre short story collection for several months and I just couldn't figure out how to end it. And then the prompt was "Here at the End of All Things." And suddenly I had 3000 words and an ending. There's just something about the Writeoff and getting me to write.

If you guys want to read a weird short story collection, it's up on Fimfiction.


You all had a lot of fantastic feedback and criticism. Rainbow's voice not changing as she went through the transformation was an issue, and I think the final version fixes most of that.

And Discord's voicing was off, that's true. Instead of fixing it at the end, I added a lot more of his original voice to his chapter in the short story collection. I tend to give my reformed (billions of years later) Discord's much different voices than on the show. Mostly because I felt like he had the most to grow and change, while everyone else kept most of their voices throughout the trillions of years because they actually didn't need to change that much from where they are now.

>>MrNumbers
Out of all the feedback, this stung the most. Mostly because I spent a long time trying to figure out how to solve it and my brain just did not come up with a good solution.


Oh well... at least I shoved it out there instead of letting it rot in my google docs like I do with most of what I write.

Thanks everyone ^__^

I'm not usually one for retrospectives, and to be honest I considered not writing this one? But seeing how this was pretty much a troll entry that had an... interesting response (to say the least), I figure I could do this for once. I’ll try to write a short one.

So. Retrospective on (The Flesh is) Weak.



To get the cat out of the bag as soon as possible -- I agree with >>horizon in pretty much everything he said (with one exception that I will mention later). If I had seen this story in my ballot, I probably would have given it a lot of shit. I think? I can't really know.

I said already that this is a troll entry earlier on – now I gotta explain what I mean by that.

This is honestly the closest thing I’ve ever written to a crackfic. The core idea – Fluttershy gets pregnant with Discord, gives birth to the universe – was one I’d had for a while, but I never got around to writing it. When I saw that this writeoff’s prompt fit the story to a T, I thought, hey. I can write it now.

Problem: turns out I couldn't!

I quickly noticed this was honestly too hard to write without making it way to artsy, in a way that at least to me seemed honestly ridiculous. I have trouble with artsy prose -- I get way, waaay too pretentious for my tastes. I've written some truly unreadable shit when going artsy.

So, because it was 1am and it seemed like a good idea, I simply stopped trying. I went full artsy. I made everything up on the fly.

That’s why I agree with Horizon, really. It’s not like I am a master writer who can SEAMLESSLY PARODY arthouse, it’s just that I made shit up as I went. Nothing in this story means anything, I simply kept throwing stuff at the page and then wrapped it up with minimal editing.

The parenthesis mean nothing. They seemed artsy, so I just put them there. They’re the definition of style without depth, really, because they FEEL artsy and experimental. The repetition and themes of mortality and immortality are only there because they give the story an air of depth it honestly lacks.

The teeth thing was one of the few ideas I genuinely liked! Both in theory and in practice – and then Horizon linked that ‘ten fours’ link and I couldn’t believe that the one thing I thought was cool is actually the most ridiculous one. Serves me right. Dang.

There’s a beat that literally happens twice in this story, because, as I said, I was making shit up as I went:

Like there was something growing in every part of her.

(“and I hope he suffers.”)

Celestia hoped it, too.

She left the room when she couldn’t stand it anymore.

Celestia turned around. She had to talk to Twilight. The matter was solved, and Fluttershy was no more.

(“and I hope he suffers.”)

“I am sorry, Discord. For having you and Fluttershy meet. For causing this. But I hope you suffer, too.”

It literally happens twice in a row!

Likewise, the very start – the four lines that most of you accurately pointed out as a misstep, because they spoil the entirety of the story. They do, I agree. I didn’t realize this when I wrote them, mind you. I merely thought ‘eh, let’s start it with cool lines’ and then didn’t bother thinking twice about it.

So yeah. I wrote this as a joke, expecting people to lambast it. The proofreaders (remember that I’m ESL, so I need people to check grammar and such – they obviously aren’t writeoff participants) fucking hated it. I fucking hated it. I was sure people would fucking hate it.

People didn’t fucking hate it.

I want to repeat that this wasn’t malicious on my part – I wrote it as a little joke. I was really, really close to post it under ‘anonymous’, but I didn’t do it because I felt it’d be funnier if people knew who had written the joke.

So. Hmm.

See, thing is – the story clearly worked for many. I went full ham with the prose and made it ridiculous, but it still worked for some.
>>GaPJaxie, >>Trick_Question, >>Rao, and >>CoffeeMinion all felt was effective to some degree, and the only difference between them and the proofreaders is that I didn't tell them 'I wrote this to make fun of myself'.

So, is this story good? I can't tell. Horizon hated it, some other people loved it. I respect pretty much everybody in here, enough for their opinion to matter -- when someone raved at me on how good Flesh was on the Writeoff's discord, I was genuinely confused. I thought they were fucking with me.

They were not!

I honestly can't tell what I've learned from this experiment. I guess it's another proof of the good ol' split between writers and readers: I see this story as the entire process behind it (me laughing as I wrote the words 'LET THERE BE LIGHT' and feeling like William Shatner fighting a rubber lizard). The readers see it as an end product (a strange story about Fluttershy giving birth to the universe). Turns out, those are two REALLY DIFFERENT things.

It was interesting. Really! And a bit scary. The joke got out of hand quickly, and now I don't really know what to take from this story. I doubt I'll ever post it -- and if I do, I suppose I'll classify it as a crackfic. It's honestly what I think the story is. But if the readers -- most of them -- disagree... who am I to talk?

It's a strange experiment, the Writeoff. Makes for interesting situations. This was a bit of a dramatic round, so I'm honestly kind of really regretting writing this now of all times? But, eh, better to be honest than anything.

If you hated this story, I'm honestly with you. If you liked it, I'm actually really happy, if confused, at your reaction. I wrote this to make fun of myself, and don't ask me how, but I made a prank where the only victim is me backfire.

Honestly, at this point -- the only thing we can agree on is the fact that I really, really suck at artsy shit.

>>Aragon

Honestly, at this point -- the only thing we can agree on is the fact that I really, really suck at artsy shit.

No, we can't agree on that.

Don't talk down to us for liking your story; it's insulting. This is a good story, even if that wasn't your intent. You did a good job with it, despite your best efforts. Set aside the self-deprecation, and deal with it.

The challenge before you is to learn something from the experience that you weren't expecting to learn. Embrace that challenge, and try to work on appreciating what you've done here non-ironically.

If you liked it, I'm actually really happy, if confused, at your reaction.

Awwww.... but it's so good though! I top-slated it.

it’s just that I made shit up as I went.

Isn't this what being a writer is all about? I don't see the problem.



Well... I'd say publish it because it's fanfic man, it's not that big of a deal. Some may like it, some might not. But that's life. You just happen to be in the "I don't like it" crowd. Which happens with writers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>Aragon
7 ballots ranked you in first place. Nobody else got more than 3. I don't know what that means, but it's damned interesting.

>>Aragon
Sounds like a case of reverse-Magnum Opus Dissonance. :-p I for one hope that you do choose to publish this, as I think it's a strong little horror piece.

It's also true that you never really know how an audience is going to perceive something. I thought I was aiming pretty high this round but my story didn't rank anywhere near what I thought might be possible. But that's a learning experience too. I got what I needed out of writing what I did. There's lots to learn either way.

tl;dr: Writeoff good.

>>Pascoite
Yeah, that's why I was convinced it was going to medal. Declared first-place-on-slate finishes are almost always a good pre-results proxy for medal winners; the major exception is when a story is polarizing, getting both strong positive and strong negative feedback, and six hours before voting ended there was no clue that anyone else was feeling negative enough to bottom-slate it like I did, and acclaim from a number of normally-critical reviewers. (Though I do remember AndrewRogue's voice review being critical as well.)

And I stand by a thing I said in my review: for as much as I disliked it, it clearly worked for enough people to be doing something right. (I just am the exact wrong person to say what that is.)

>>Aragon

I honestly can't tell what I've learned from this experiment. I guess it's another proof of the good ol' split between writers and readers: I see this story as the entire process behind it (me laughing as I wrote the words 'LET THERE BE LIGHT' and feeling like William Shatner fighting a rubber lizard). The readers see it as an end product (a strange story about Fluttershy giving birth to the universe). Turns out, those are two REALLY DIFFERENT things.

QFT.

---

Full disclosure: I was informed privately, early in the round, that Aragon had submitted a trollfic — but not what it was, or any detail beyond that fact. I wrote my review with a strong suspicion, but no confirmation, of the nature of this entry.

Based on that (and the general acclaim for the story with no real counterweight), I was more aggressive than I'd usually be. But that's not really an excuse for tone. In hindsight, I think my review was too mean-spirited, and I regret posting it on those grounds — even knowing the author agrees.

In between that, my role in the recent poetry debate, and general discouragement I may touch on in my retrospective, I'm beginning to question whether my contribution to the Writeoff is, on balance, a positive one. :\

>>horizon

I honestly don't think picking up that a story was fishy, and calling it out when you feel it is, is "a negative contribution". Honestly, it's kind of the opposite.

That aside, I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one who thinks the writeoff would be much worse without you; just this round alone you wrote two or three extremely helpful posts for the new writers, and your reviews have been a stable for quality criticism for ages.

As fucking ironic it is for me of all people to say this, don't undersell yourself, man. You truly make the writeoffs a better place, and I say that extremely cheesy thing with absolutely zero hint of irony.

Firstly, thanks for reading; thanks even more for commenting!

I'm glad you generally seemed to like bits of this, even though different people liked different bits. I think I can explain...

My 'plan' for this basicly runs out just before Luna shows up.

I had just wrenched myself back awake to finish writing with about five hours to go and realised I couldn't fit a proper character driven ending. So I made a joke. I think of this as two stories welded together: I think the seam looks okay but it's not ideal.

I'm going to let it sit for a while longer then I'll take another crack at getting it right.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Basically spot on.

>>horizon
I enjoyed subverting the prompt.

I'm afraid you've partly imagined your favourite bit :( I had no plans for Rarity to swap tickets with anyone. I like to let the reader infer things though so I can't say I'm unhappy.

I also like to skirt the boundary of 'shipping' so I'm not sure if Twi and Rarity are a couple or just good friends here; I like to believe it doesn't matter.

Toffy-swirl is just an aimless British pun. A toff is a member of the upper class, a toffee swirl is a sweet.

Thanks – I hope I can bring this up to where I want it.

>>Baal Bunny
Meringue? ;)

>>Lamplighter
I'm glad the jokes landed well with you.

>>Trick_Question
A fair concern. I'm pretty gender-blind in ponyfic these days, I wasn't really going anywhere specific with the f/f flirting. I need to work a bit harder laying out motivations towards the end.

>>MrNumbers
I don't have a spanner to hand but I'll see what I can do with a keyboard.

I meant for Rarity to start a little unsympathetic and then have Twi reign her in, and I never really got to the second part.

>>WillowWren
Foppish was just an offhand joke. I take the shotgun approach – I pile them in and hope enough of them are on target. I see I'm going to have to find a way to salvage something from Luna, even if I just have to split her off into a separate fic.

>>Rao
My dialogue is a crutch but it's nice to know it's not unappreciated.

>>Xepher
I think I've covered that I hardly knew what to do with the story myself.
Luna Ex Machina is regretably all I had time for.

Rarity is supposed to be intentionally over-selling the 'fame and power' thing a bit, I think I can fix that to be more obvious.



Again, thanks all who read. I look forward to participating in more writeoffs.
Like and Subscribe!

>>Morning Sun
I am not aware of that Asimov story, so I'll have to check it out. But yes, if I'm taking a back seat to Asimov, then that's a good place to be!

>>Pascoite
You are correct, I don't know what other demands you have on your time. But I completely understand not having time to participate.

However, if you submit a story of your own (and thus participate), you're getting feedback and votes from others. Not (and more especially NEVER) doing the same yourself is unfair to the rest of the group. If everyone did the same as you, we'd have no writeoff at all. So any way you slice it, your behavior relies on others putting in more effort than yourself to keep things going. And not pulling your own weight is "slacking."

Now, I don't hate you for it or anything, and I'm not trying to start a fight. You're also right that forcing people to vote would just get random votes or whatever, and enforcing stuff by rules is rarely best anyway. I also don't want you to not submit things (I actually had your story picked for first place on my slate, and enjoyed reading it.) But I'd feel remiss if I don't call you (or anyone doing it) out on this type of thing, as I think it ultimately harms the community, and that's something I really don't want.

So all I'm saying is think about it. Is it really such a big ask that you spend a two or three hours reading in a week where you probably already spent 4+ hours writing in a single weekend? No one's saying you have to provide paragraphs of (or any) comments on everything, or read the entire contest. But simply judging your initial slate seems like a minimal, reasonable "price of entry" to me. I hope you can understand my point and maybe reconsider.

>>Pascoite
One thing to fix the confusion at the end would simply be to have at least a male pony find her in the alley. Then at least moving from "him" to "her" would only be the Sunset/Celestia/Chyrsalis options, and not also the one laying out the bread.

E.g. Maybe something like this:

But I didn’t need her his bread. She’d already fed me [the moment he decided to give it.]

When I originally read that, I thought that the mare was giving bread, and Celestia had already fed her (like snacks at the meeting or something) so this would at least clear up some of that.


As for my earlier comment about the pacing in the office scene... That was a play-by-play as I read, of course, so doesn't stand out too bad in a normal read through. The main thing there might be to just accelerate the action a bit. It felt like a lot of internal thoughts for "sunset" with very little happening externally. Perhaps pick out a few key "moments" you want in that scene and fine-tune the wording of those to carry the emotional/internal weight, instead of relying as much on "building" her panic and worry with a lot of smaller thoughts/reactions.

>>Pascoite
Briefly, a couple things on your extended questions:

Not only can't she digest it, but it's so strong that it makes her take on those feelings of guilt as well. That compounds her general non-aggression toward Celestia into making Chrysalis feel bad about what she's doing.

This feels to me like a rather non-intuitive approach to take toward changeling digestion. (After all, eating love doesn't make them more loving.) I think you're going to need to explicitly exposit this bit, in particular. If it was explicit (and sufficiently lampshaded), though, it probably would have settled a lot of my confusion.

So she has two choices.

She can try to assuage Celestia's guilt and make her a viable food source again, or she can make a hasty exit. At first, she does the former, but it's immediately apparent that it's never going to work. Celestia's never going to lose that guilt. Chrysalis then does the latter, but she still attempts to patch things up.

This may suggest you need an earlier reveal — so that we're not trying to interpret the climax of your major character arc in hindsight, rather actually understanding what the significance of the choice is as she makes it.

Chrysalis is teetering on the edge between those two choices, and promising to write is a desperate attempt to make Celestia feel better, but as soon as she says it, she knows she doesn't want to keep that up … (etc)

Keep in mind that this change of heart, in your source text as written, takes place in the span of a single ellipsis:

“I’ll write to you. I promise. Or… it’s alright with me if Twilight shares the journal with you. Then you can keep up.”

I don't think I could have interpreted that ellipsis as a change of heart without being a mind-reader. I really think you'd need to split those two lines into separate paragraphs, and steep the story in Chrysalis' mind-state for a while in between them, in order to give that pause anything like the significance it deserves.

Hope that helps.

>>Pascoite

Chrysalis is teetering on the edge between those two choices, and promising to write is a desperate attempt to make Celestia feel better, but as soon as she says it, she knows she doesn't want to keep that up. [...]

I agree with Horizon -- this is pretty much impossible to guess from the story alone. There's too much information here that you want to convey, especially if you're being obscure.

To be completely honest? I think that the best way to make this story work is to simplify and streamline it. You have either a carefully constructed story with a lot of little details -- changelings can't eat guilt, Chrysalis is alone and has been working by herself for so long she doens't even feel resentment anymore, so she tries to help Celestia, etc -- or a streamlined, plot-twisty story that looks like one thing and then ends up being another.

Certain elements are simply too unintuitive to keep them while delaying the twist. If you want to really explain these things, the ones that the reader won't catch up immediately, then you need to explain them completely. Nobody's really going to understand all this from just a hint and a small pause in Sunset's dialogue.

A way to do it, I suppose, would be to wait till the end of the story -- once the identity of Chrysalis is revealed -- and then explain everything in a way that hopefully doesn't feel too exposition-heavy. But, to be completely honest, that's inelegant. You would manage to make the story very enjoyable on a re-read, as readers would be able to pick up on all the tiny details and bits of foreshadowing... but that's a risky move, and it sacrifices the first readthrough.

I think the best you can do is to eliminate anything that's not essential to the story. That way, you make the road to the plot twist much faster, and much more satisfying for the reader. Strike out (or just don't address) elements that aren't necessarily tackled by the main plot, as well as anything that makes the story too hard to write or to get.

I'd say everything related to Chrysalis' newfound sympathy for Celestia should go out, with the guilt thing staying for plot reasons. Details about how Chrysalis is alone and her wings shine and all that stuff, those you can keep, because otherwise you run into a plot hole. I'm wondering if you should expand the bit about Chrysalis sneaking into Twilight's castle to gather intel regarding Sunset -- it IS addressed in the story, but it's a small line, and it's easy to skip (I myself missed it at first! But I double-checked, thankfully).

The rest... Well, you know the story better than me, so you can probably judge yourself. This story doesn't quite drag, but it gets overencumbered with details. Less is more, yo.



(Also, I missed that this was Chrysalis -- I think that, by the time you reveal she's a changeling, there's nothing keeping you from outright stating her identity in a much more explicit way. That's up to you, because other people did get it, so I don't know. I think it would add to the story, however.)

So yeah, eliminate anything you feel is too complicated to convey in an obscure way. I think a shorter, less detailed, tighter story would be much better, and would have much stronger a punch.

Otherwise, you'll have to balance a lot of stuff, and you'll have to give away the twist too soon. The main conflict -- "Sunset" talking to Celestia and reacting weirdly, running away, revealing herself to be Chrysalis -- is strong, but if you add too much glitter to it, you take away a big part of its strength.



God, I find it actually rather difficult to leave a review here without previewing the comment -- I tend to ramble and forget the points I was supposed to make. Anyway, like with Toxikjoghurt: I liked this story and I think it can be polished to a state where I like it even more, so if you need an editor (or would like more detailed feedback with a GDocs and all that shit) I'm all up for it, hit me up on Discord. If not, that's my two bits in a nutshell, really.

Here's hoping that helped!

>>horizon
I was reading this comment and wondered how there was a story I hadn't read. Then I remembered when I read your story I didn't get the twist, so it was a completely different story when I read it.

I should probably reread it to bring my count to thirty-seven.

>>Xepher
Then you're just getting back to the same concept that there's a responsibility to review if you enter a story. If you want to incentivize that, then it's your prerogative to withhold all your reviews until the authors are revealed, and if an author didn't post any reviews, then don't post your review of his story. You won't have any way of knowing whether he voted. though; not all voters post reviews. Plus it's a lot bigger time investment than 2 or 3 hours. When I'm paying the attention level required to review something and not just read it, I can get through 2-3k words per hour. My ballot would have taken me more like 12 hours, which is most of a week's allotment of private review requests and queue submissions, and honestly, those writers need the advice more. Anyway, I've done writeoffs since 2012 and reviewed far more stories than I've entered, so if there's a karmic balance, I'm still well on the positive side.

Besides, which do you value more, votes or reviews? I did review one story this time, and I spent about 3 hours reading it, thinking about it, and writing up my various responses on it, which is the time investment you were asking me for. In the prior minific round, I reviewed 11 stories, 1 shy of the number on a ballot. But I didn't vote because not many of the stories I reviewed were on my ballot. I valued giving reviews to stories that had the fewest over reading what was on my ballot so I could vote. In the last original short story round, I spent about an hour reading a story and discussing it with Cassius to help him with his review of it, even though I didn't enter a story.

Alright, let's retrospect. First:

>>CoffeeMinion

This is pretty obviously the Horizon Embrax joint that he keeps promising us.

The comparison is flattering. Nevertheless, I challenge you to revel in your wrongness, CoffeeDad.

So, this... this, I didn't feel good about at all from the start. I say that every round, but usually, I have some inkling of a modicum of a good feeling about what I write, because I usually have an idea of what I'm trying to say in my writing, even if it doesn't come out very well. This time, I didn't know what I was trying to say, and the story feels like a mess with a lack of a coherent message. It was rushed out, barely edited, and generally makes Garmonbozia look like Eyeball.

Bad execution, and rushed out the door to boot. More because I didn't want to lose third place to Andrew break my streak of consecutive ponyfic rounds (the last one I missed was August 2016) than because I had an actual story to tell.

I had a little trouble coming up with an actionable idea this round. My first idea was to write a story I'd had planned for a while, but that fell apart for two reasons. First, it's an apocalyptically themed sequel to Eyeball, and while I think I could have written it without that particular plot connection, the other major problem was the question of length. I don't think I could squeeze that idea underneath 8k words.

My second idea was a story about the CMC's last adventure together -- they've grown up and found their respective niches, with Sweetie Belle becoming a singer, or something, and Scoots being a physical therapist/trainer for the disabled (being, it turns out, physically incapable of flight). It would have focused on Apple Bloom and her feelings of inferiority and disappointment in herself; Granny Smith passed, Big Mac married Sugar Belle and moved to Our Town, and Applejack's aging and not looking to settle down, making A.B. feel obligated to stay on the farm at the cost of her other aspirations in life.

But I couldn't come up with a story to hang that all on. So I went with my last idea: buddy comedy with Thorax and Ember flying to the literal ends of the earth just to hang out, maybe fighting a big worm, or meeting Daring Do, or... something. The actual idea, I made up on the fly. I think it shows.

Yeah, even as late as the minutes before I submitted it, I didn't know what to do with this one. The plot, structure, and narrative never came together for me, and while I think I could have made it work if I'd given myself more time to write... you can't really argue with the results. I'm glad so many people liked it, but I feel like I let myself down this time.

So, let's get to some responses:

>>Icenrose

I do have a quibble - if I’m doing my math correctly, Bellicose is accusing Ember of (indirectly) killing three thousand members of his crew. While the pirates are clearly unsavory folk (buying and selling sentient beings, clipping wings, etc), the wholesale slaughter of so many tiger folk (rakshasa?) should probably elicit some sort of response from Thorax, rather than have him take it so well in stride.

The obvious answer is that I didn't think those numbers through enough Bellicose is exaggerating the size of his pirate fleet.

Something else tickled my brain in the bar scene - what’s the deal with the pegasus, the thestral, and the bird with the big hat? It feels a little too specific for stage dressing is all, as though it’s ringing the faintest of bells in my memory. Maybe not, though.

Hat-Bird is a reference to the recent movie: the Zoe Saldana character, whose name I don't know. I haven't actually seen the movie. The other two characters are from my personal canon; this is actually their first appearance in anything that I've written.

>>Trick_Question You have exceeded my knowledge of chemistry, Trick, and proven me a charlatan.

Regarding the romantic overtones between Ember and Steve Thorax fuck it, Steve, that you and a couple others noticed: those are mostly unintentional. I did set out with the notion of making it a romance. The idea was that Ember is attracted to Thorax, because he's completely different from the kind of company she's used to, while still possessing some modicum of a spine. She would have admitted, during the bar scene, that dragging Thorax across the ocean to Telos was her idea of a date, because she likes him, but has no idea how to relate to him, or anyone who isn't a dragon.

Some of the imagery in the story leans toward that direction (the quasi-hugging, for instance), but I dropped that plot thread late into the writing process. You're free to read it as having romantic overtones, however.

>>Xepher A great big "this," tbh. I wish I could have given the dialogue another pass, and I wish I could have had more time to feel out Thorax's voice and character. I'm mostly okay with how I handled Ember (though I re-read Garmonbozia this morning, and was embarrassed to discover how similarly I wrote Ember in this story to Aria Blaze in that one), but withThorax, I feel like I faceplanted.

You're still a butt, of course. :P

Anyway, that's about all I have to say. Thanks, guys, for your support and critique. I'll try and do you proud next round.

>>horizon
One small detailed difference: eating love doesn't make them feel loving, because the love itself is the food. It's other emotions attached and intertwined with the love that alter the flavor, and if they're strong enough, start to alter the eater's emotions.

>>Xepher
>>horizon
>>Aragon
Thanks for your additional feedback. This is going to be more complicated than I thought. Might be some time before this story surfaces again.

>>Posh
*revels*

:rainbowwild:

>>regidar
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>ToXikyogHurt
>>Kitcat36
>>Aragon
>>Fenton
>>Trick_Question
>>Posh
>>MrNumbers
>>GaPJaxie
>>Xepher
>>WillowWren

Well, I did everything else this round audio. Might as well post mortem this way too.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1thyaCRTuqCui2uqIzX87uqFRKU9D5vil

Addendum: Failed to comment on it while mentioning Trick's comment, but I wouldn't exactly call that a twist so much? I can sorta see where you're coming from, but it was just sort of an active choice regarding Octavia's characterization and the idea of some optimism going into this series of battles, only to have it stripped away.

>>Zaid Val'Roa, >>Fenton, >>horizon

Undiminished: Retrospective

After Entropy’s ending choked me up, I figured it would make a good subject. Sadly, I was too busy to sit down and work on it until the last day. I drew Twilight and the tile in charcoal, then drew the others in pencil on a separate paper, and combined it all in Photoshop. (The pencil sketch is here.)

I had intended for Dash to be quickly taking AJ’s hat and plonking it on Rarity; you can tell by her expression that she’s up to something. Both Rarity and AJ are likely aware that something is wrong, but both do not wish to ruin the picture by causing a ruckus, though Dash is probably in for some Stern Words or a Swift Kick afterwards. This all might have been clearer if I’d had time to color it, which would also have made it obvious that Twilight is the main subject.

Thank you for your kind comments!

>>Zaid Val'Roa, >>regidar, >>Fenton, >>horizon, >>ToXikyogHurt

Eagle’s Leave: Retrospective

In retrospect, this should have been called “Those Who Have an Eagle’s Leavings.” It’s easy to be funny later.

I had this idea almost immediately after the round started, but for a while I was at a loss at to which story I could use for a link. I’d been sure that someone would include a Tolkien reference apart from me, but if so, I missed it. And then the week got busy, and soon it was a day before deadline with nothing done.

After finishing Undiminished that evening, I went to bed, figuring that I only had time for one art idea in this round. As it turned out, I woke up with one hour to spare before I went to work. And part of my brain said “Naw, no way” and part said “There’s no harm in trying it.”

It was obvious that I would have no time to execute it as I originally planned, so I went with Cheap Doodle in MS Paint style (though drawn in Photoshop.) This style, in which coat colors are suggested by the line colors, was popularized by TheWeaver, IIRC. I scribbled it all with relentless haste, and posted it with just a few minutes to spare for tinkering with the title and alt text.

I froze a bit on how to outline Rarity, then chose the color of her mark for the line, to subsequent confusion. And then I went and outlined Gandalf the White in grey. Go figure.

Thanks for the comments and praise! It is hasty, but as horizon notes, it at least does what it needs to do to convey the joke.

>>Cyrano
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>Lamplighter
>>zaponator
>>Trick_Question
>>Morning Sun

Sorry for the late reply. Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback!

Just to be clear, I'll explain a few references.
The Tirek reference comes from the first Gen1 movie. I didn't watch it, btw, just made a quick research to describe the scene.
The bookworm is a reference to a IDW comic.
Fyre-Flye is Lauren Faust's nick on Deviantart. So yes, Princess Fyreflye is basically Fausticorn, only with a less obvious name.
Wild Fire is a OC created by Sibsy, who worked as storyboard artist on the show.

Why Wild Fire? I simply didn't know any other OC of artists who are still working on the show.

I wanted to integrate a bit of real-life, and the concept of show generations, as an in-world cosmology lore. I had this idea in mind for some time, but I had to find a way to translate it into a story.
I realize that Wild Fire is an odd choice, but if Celestia or Twilight was meant to create the next generation, the connection with the real-life G5 creation would be lost.

I will definitely try to improve this story, especially the scenes and the characters that were too rushed. I hope to publish it on FimFic someday.

Thank you for reviewing my story, see you next time!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
It's cute and funny. Doesn't really need to be much more.

>>The Power Wolf
Ah man, I loves me some Sabaton as well. Notwithstanding my occasional forays into EDM, most of the time I listen to stuff on the Power or Thrash (or proto-Power/Thrash) sides of the fence when I'm writing. I definitely think there's great energy and inspiration to be drawn from the heavier metals when writing Pony!

>>moonwhisper
Man, work on this right now and strike the G5 hype/fear train while it's still in the station.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>The Power Wolf
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Lamplighter
>>Fenton
>>Trick_Question

Thank you very much for all the feedback and constructive criticism. I'll consider them carefully as I develop this story further, and in any future stories I may work on. This is my first writeoff and it has been quite the learning experience.

To be honest, when I started developing the idea I had for the prompt, I'd totally underestimated how long the story was going to be. When the deadline neared, I rushed an ending just to submit something on time. I don't regret it, but I wasn't very happy with it either. Hopefully I'll do better the next time I participate.

Again, thanks very much for taking the time to read and review my story. :)

>>writeratnight
Being able to gauge the length of a story idea up-front is definitely a skill that takes development like any other!

For what it's worth, I'm currently dealing with a story that I started as a fun little lark that's mushroomed into a 100K-word monstrosity...

>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>CoffeeMinion
>>GaPJaxie
>>Posh
>>TheRiverSings
>>moonwhisper
>>Trick_Question
>>Xepher

Um. Hello, everyone. This is my retrospective for Shoot for the Stars, coming... about three weeks late. Sorry.

I'm really making this comment to plug the completely revamped version of the fic, When We Took Back the Stars, which has just been posted on FiMFiction. It can be read by clicking on this nice colored text.

It's got a similar concept—Luna's lost control of the stars, wants them back—but pretty much everything else, from the characters to the setting to the style of narration has been changed. In addition: it's actually finished! It doesn't just rush to an ending like this one does!

Yeah, if you couldn't tell, that's 100% what happened here. I basically started writing this with only a few hours to go. In addition, I thought the deadline was an hour later than it was. As such, I had to both rush writing the last two scenes, as well as cut three more scenes I had planned.

The reason I wrote this was twofold: 1) I got the idea of shooting stars disappearing for the thousand years Luna was gone and thought it interesting, and 2) I've always wanted to write a fic where pre-Luna Eclipsed Luna refers to the Mane 6 by the name of their Element. I saw that once in a fic back in 2011, and I've always loved the idea.

I have no regrets for Twi cuddling Rarity. Cuddle your friends early and often.

Looking back on old art entries. God, this one is great.