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Keep Pretending · FiM Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
Show rules for this event
Pull Yourselves Together
Exactly who do you think you are?

It’s funny, in a sad way: everyone knows that Daring Do and AK Yearling are two different ponies. It's obvious. One's fictional, one's not. Everyone knows.

Except for those few fans. Rainbow Dash, Princess Twilight, that... one guy? Quibble something. They saw that Daring and Yearling are one and the same. They know.

But you and I know better, don't we?

Look at you. Alone at your desk, a bottle and a half of cider down the hatch already, but at least there's less fewer bottles here than rejections. Daring Do and the Black Curse sent off to the publisher, for the fifth time, and Celestia only knows if they'll like it—this last adventure was a mess and it's not the kind you can wrangle into a narrative, except that saving artifacts doesn't pay the bills so you have to. Look at you, not knowing if they'll like it. Not knowing.

Wouldn't it be nicer if this was a story? Where the ending is planned out from the start?

If you had control, like me, it would be great. Daring Do always has control. Even when I’m tied up in some collapsing temple. Look at you, free as a bird and with the wings to match, and you can't even

Okay, smashing the cider bottles helps no one. Look what you did! The page is all wet, you'll have to find somewhere else to










Are we done with our tantrum? Calm down.

Using the whiteboard now, huh?

In chapter two Daring Do should reflect on her mother, who taught her

Why would they like it now, you sent in four other drafts and they were all rejected. “Trite.” “No coherent theme.” “Not up to your usual standards, Yearling.”

Connect theme of family with villains, who are trying to prove to their fathers that

Okay what are you doing. You know this is your whiteboard, right?

Maybe I can turn all these rejections into

The one you plot my stories on. Real helpful, writing me over your notes.

a metastory about the importance of perseverance in the

Stop it!

face of adversity

Stop erasing your notes just to make me beat up on you! If you do that, even I won't know what's supposed to come next!

It's not helping

It's not










This is better. But back of rejection letter—way smaller than a whiteboard.

Not to mention, you can’t erase these words like on the board. Make words count.

It's okay. You've got money in bank. Even if Black Curse doesn't pan out you'll



be fine for bills. You can publish a stinker or two and stay in the black. It's okay.

You are a little me, AK. Every author is a little their characters. You most of all.

(There don’t seem to be as many rejections now that you’re writing on them, huh.)



You do know the future. You do know what comes next. Let that heartrate fall.

Or at least how you'll respond to it. You'll pull through just fine.

After all, you're Daring Do.



Take a deep breath.

You're going to be okay.

We're going to be okay.

I'm going to be okay. Because I’m Daring Do.

Pics
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#1 · 1
· · >>Aragon >>R5h
Genre: Hello Me, Meet The Real Me

Thoughts: This one's tough for me to rank. It's not structured like a traditional story, but it's effective in laying bare the internal conflict of someone like AK/DD whose life must bounce between such different personas. I like how she takes more control at the end, even though the moment is abrupt enough that I didn't fully appreciate what was happening until my second read-through. The use of whitespace was effective as well.

I think, if anything, I felt a little disappointed that there wasn't some kind of swerve that would explain why DD's internal voice seems so strong and separate from the bodily experience it describes her having. Like is she under the effects of an artifact that causes her to have dissociative experiences of some sort? I don't think it's bad that such a swerve didn't happen; it keeps the story very self-contained and inwardly focused.

So in the end, I thought this was done pretty well overall, even though I think there might be more to be done with the concept here.

Tier: Strong
#2 ·
· · >>Aragon >>R5h
I think the telliness here is okay given the way this story is told. I like it. But I think it's still a little more confusing than it needs to be, primarily the middle portion. On a second read it makes perfect sense, but I'd challenge you to try to make it more obvious that A.K. is literally writing all the words you see in the middle on the whiteboard.

Part of what makes it hard is the italics. I don't see somepony switching styles to do the interjections. Maybe a bullet point for the A.K. parts or a dash to start them would be a better marker, because you want those to be confused so the reader is clued into the fact that they're reading something actually written down: both parts on the same board.
#3 ·
· · >>R5h
Well, now that the art is done, I can comment on this.

I liked it. CM and TQ covered just about everything here, so I don't have much to say. But I thought this did really well for the style and concept. It was a little confusing at times, but part of that feels intentional, even DD/AK don't quite get it. The whitespace was, honestly, my favorite part of this. As much as whitespace bothers me to the moon and back, this story did it absolutely perfectly.

So, good luck in the judging!
#4 · 3
· · >>R5h
I think the main thing with this story is that its execution is both its main point and its main setback, beause you have two options here: either risk breaking immersion by stating exactly what is going on, or be as natural as possible when writing the monologue and risk the reader not really getting what is going on.

Because this is a monologue in the end, really, just a stylistic one. For what is worth, I really like this approach -- I've seen many a dramatic monologue before, especially during minific rounds, and this one is adding something new to the table. The easy way out here would have been to simply have Daring Do/Yearling talk to herself and have that be the entire story, but this goes and play with the execution to give it some freshness.

I like that! It shows a desire to push this particular genre to new places, which is what it kinda needs, to be honest. Dramatic self-pity monologues are like peanut butter: by the seventh scoop, you can feel your windpipe crushing itself in self-defense. This story at least adds some jam.

(God, I hate peanut butter so much).

Anyway, yeah, that's the positive. I also appreciate that this lacks as-you-know-isms -- or rather, the ones it has are at least natural enough not to break immersion. Problem is that the story ends up being rather confusing because, yeah, that execution that I just praised prevents you from describing anything, Author, and I think the story suffers in the readability area because of it.

So what I got was that the entire first third is Yearling talking to herself after getting all the rejection letters. Then, she smashes the bottles of cider in a hissy fit and tries to fix the novel up, which is why she moves to the whiteboard. Everything in cursive is what she's writing down; everything not in cursive is still her inner monologue, or the metaphorical little devil sitting on her shoulder. Then she starts writing on the back of the rejection letters for the last third, and that's why she's suddenly writting four-line paragraphs. Through all this, she's just talking to herself, or letting her own depression/biggest fears/self-doubt trashtalk her and her work, while her more conscious self is actively trying to fix whatever problem she's facing.

That's what I understand, however. Note how apparently nobody else seems to think this -- unless I'm misreading her comment, >>Trick_Question interprets it as Daring Do literally writing everything on the whiteboard, and switching styles to reply to herself. Likewise, >>CoffeeMinion suspects that this might be a more literal split in personality and there's some magic artifact or whatever affecting Yearling/Daring Do.

All this shit to say -- it's kind of hard to know what's going on, which is ultimately the biggest problem with this story. I like it for what it is, and for what it's trying to be, but I also don't know how to fix the obvious problems.

The most obvious thing I'd do here would be to move this out of the minific restriction of 750 words, and then amplify it. Let it breathe, add some narration instead of having it be all internal monologue, and properly set the stage to clear up any confusion and clarify meaning. Fair's fair: trying to have Daring explain the situation to the reader more blatantly ("Oh, so you are writing the words on the whiteboard while talking to yourself, now? That is so weird", shit like that) would be so awkward you'd definitely lose more than you can gain.

But as it stays, it's undeniable this is a bit complicated to parse. So yeah, obvious advise is to actually turn this into a proper story without the dramatic monologue/epistolary form, and just have narration explain what's going on while Daring Do battles her demons.

Only, y'know, if you do that you sorta lose what makes this story special, which is its formatting. So I kinda wonder if that's the right choice? Because doing that defeats the purpose of trying to add novelty to the self-pitying monologue (I think I might be biased against that genre? I keep referring to it like that and it certainly sniffs of negative connotations, that name) and you just end up with a story where Daring Do goes through a crisis.

Also, this sort of thing is fine for a short story, but a long story might suffer from lack of content unless you double down on the style. That I'd like to see; a heavily-stylized 2k story that deals with something as simple as self-doubt and how trying to get shit done is a solution but it's hard to do it can be really interesting. It also sounds really hard, but hey, I'm just throwing a glove here, you pick it up if you want to.

Alternatively, add more shit to it so it fits a 1k-to-2k story structure a bit better. Don't fucking know what, though. I like the fact that she adds details about Daring Do's family -- which is also her own, by virtue of the book being autobiographical -- in such a cynic way. 'Add foreshadowing about the mother'. Maybe dwelling on that would create an interesting story: the way her parents affected her, the way she keeps using the things closest to her heart as two-dimensional characters for her books, the good ol' metaphor of the artist as a whore, selling themselves out for money, because what is art if not one's soul made physical? And what does it mean if you create art only to make a profit?

Etcetera, etcetera. There's a lot of potential here, is what I'm saying. So I find it interesting, n so on.

Ultimately: I think this story is good! I honestly don't think you can do better than this in 750 words. On if this should be 750 words to start with, I can't say -- that's the author's thing to decide. Adding more words would imply, by necessity, adding more things, and that might destroy the simplicity of it all, which some might argue that is the story's main asset.

Tell a simple story in a novel way: there's value in that. So, unno.

This one isn't in my ballot, but if it were, it would probably be top half. I think? If anything, for the lack of as-you-know-isms, because Jesus Christ, fuck those.



>>CoffeeMinion
Also, funnily enough, I think the structure of this story is the single most normal thing about it. Three arcs, clearly differenciated because there's a really big line break between all of them: internal struggle, battling it, and then defeating it. First it's just the monologue, then the whiteboard mumbojumbo, then writing on the back of the letters.

I'd say that's as traditional as you can get, and I appreciate how this is not just a rambling monologue, but an actual structured character arc with clear differenciation. I think you meant that the formatting is not that of a traditional story, rather.
#5 · 2
· · >>Trick_Question
First of all, thank you all for commenting! While I wish I'd done somewhat better, I can be happy with how well I did do in this round, and with having made it to the finals.

>>CoffeeMinion
Kinda like what Aragon said, I disagree with your assessment that this story was not traditionally "structured". It does indeed have three acts and each one ends when the main character makes some choice. But yes, the formatting is unconventional.

I'm not sure if you think there should have been some sort of magic item causing this dissociation, or if you're glad there wasn't: your comment kind of says both things. But nah; while I can understand wondering whether something more fantastical was going on, ultimately it's just AK Yearling/Daring Do writing on a page (or whiteboard or rejection letter) and doubting herself.

>>Trick_Question
I see what you're getting at - lack of clarity was probably this story's weakest link, despite my best intentions. However, I'm not sure why bullet points or dashes would have been clearer than italics. After all, there's no particular reason why Daring would use bullet points any more than she'd use italics, right?

>>MLPmatthewl419
I'm glad you liked it!

>>Aragon
Hoo boy, this comment is longer than my whole story!

I'm glad you appreciated the three act structure, because I felt it was important for the story to have some forward direction - some sort of progression, even as self-contained and microcosmic as it was. It's just a shame that your peanut butter opinions are so terrible.

As for the clarity... I'm afraid I honestly don't know what I'd have done. And I also don't know how to expand it - in fact, I'm not sold on the idea that it needs to be expanded into something that can be posted to FiMFic, or even that I could. I appreciate your suggestions, though - they seem like workable ideas for such an expansion!

Once again, thank you all for your feedback!
#6 ·
·
>>R5h
Nopony writes in italics, ever. That's why it doesn't look like the italics are being written on the board.