Putri Jaran and Meaning

I’m reviewing these fics together because I have the same thing to say about both of them. And I want to preface this review by saying that these fics are sitting at #1 and #2 on my prelim slate. In other words, they’re both doing some things very well.

But they’re also lacking in a key and similar dimension – the actual narrative arc of the story.

Some spoilers follow, but I’ll try to keep them to a minimum.

Let’s start by describing the plot of Putri Jaran and Meaning in brief.

Putri Jaran: Equestrian annexes a small Pacific nearby island nation that produces pineapples daya fruits. The story follows Kesu as he grows disillusioned by the imperialistic tendencies of the Equestrian overlords.

Meaning: Princess Cadence returns from banishment and discovers that Equestria has changed for the worse in her absence. The story follows Cadence as she learns just how terrible an impact her actions had on the world.

Fair enough? I think those are pretty neat ideas for stories. Great settings. You could put some pretty dramatic characters in those worlds and really do some incredible stuff with them.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, we just get… the setting. The 3,285 and 4,017 word versions of those synopses.

What is the narrative arc in either of these stories? What decisions or actions do the characters take that drives the story? What do they do?

Well, in Putri Jaran, Kesu, um, goes to school. And listens to Twilight Sparkle, who honestly has a better claim to main character of this story than he does. And then, at the end, he mutters “Okay.”

But! But! He becomes disillusioned by his experience! That’s character growth, you say! And yes, that is character growth, but it wasn’t driven by the character himself. It was driven by the setting – living on a small island nation taken over by Equestria. Kesu himself did nothing in this story except passively receive the plot. He wasn’t a party to the conflict. He had no agency. He just was.

Stories, of course, don’t need to follow traditional styles. Literature is always changing and must always change. But when you write a story that forgoes conventional elements like a protagonist who is involved in a conflict, you’d better be onto something really big. I didn’t get that feeling here, instead all I got was a story about imperialism in the Pacific, except with ponies. And, frankly, I’m not sure that was something that needed ponies.

Jumping over to Meaning, we get a story about Cadence, who is returned from banishment after some terrible calamity caused by her monstrous acts. She speaks with Celestia and then Twilight, and in the course of these conversations realizes that things are much, much worse than she feared: It’s been 1000 years and everypony is dead because of her.

Neat setting for a story, that. You could do some crazy things in a situation that dramatic! But the author didn’t. He just spent 4,017 words putting together an incredible setting for a story, and then… He hit submit, apparently.

But! But! There’s a twist, you say! And yes, there is a twist at the end. But let’s talk about twists.

The point of a plot twist is to force the reader/viewer to go back and reassess everything they’ve witnessed up to that point in the context of new information. The addition of that small piece of information completely changes the story they’ve already experienced. Plot twists are great and amazing devices. In The Sixth Sense, the twist at the end reveals that Bruce Willis is a ghost and has been dead the whole time. For people who didn’t see that coming (as I did not), it was a mind-blowing revelation.

In Meaning, we get to the twist, and it forces us to completely reassess everything that’s happened so far in the story! Which is… well, mostly just Cadence talking to ponies. And… yeah, that’s it. That’s pretty much all she does.

Just like in Putri Jaran, there’s no conventional plot to speak of. No conflict. There’s not even any character development in this one. Just Cadence learning about the story’s setting, then at the end, realizing things are much worse than she thought. That’s it. Like Kesa, she has no agency.

---

So why did I put these stories at the top of my prelim slate? Because, for all that they lacked some components of a story, they had others in spades. Putri Jaran did a wonderful job building a world and characters in a short period, and the future described in Meaning was compelling and certainly original. By those merits alone, these stories stood out from the pack, and I expect they’ll do well in the finals.

So, authors, please do not think I didn’t like these stories. I wouldn’t have written nearly a thousand words about them if I didn’t find them interesting and compelling enough to critique.

I reviewed this story as part of a 2-for-1 with Putri Jaran, over here.

Good luck to all finalists!

>>Fenton
>>bloons3
>>Novel_Idea
>>Rao
>>Kritten
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Posh

Thanks every buddy for your comments.

I completely ran out of time with this one. Really I wrote the last line at 12:02 GMT, encroaching on the five minute extra grace period given to us by Roger. Then I had two minutes to catch a couple of typos and here we go. So no wonder the end is not satisfactory. I really couldn’t’ve written a more detailed scene, and I had to conclude. And I had zero time to edit (which is only a half-truth, since I partly edited the first third last Sunday).

I had this idea for the Most Most Dangerous Game and it was originally published under the name Urheimat. It was structured differently, featuring Lyra instead of Daring Do (I think the end would’ve worked better if I had stuck to my guns and used Lyra, but then the context would’ve been harder to set). Present Perfect had smashed it, especially because of the English, so I nuked the fic completely, and kept the idea “for another time when I would’ve improved”. Well, the English has slightly improved, but not enough it seems to pass muster. This version will follow the first one into the bin and I’m disowning the idea for good; if anyone wants to take a crack at it, be my guest.

Also, no, it wasn’t inspired by the recent movie Planet of the Apes that I never watched, though someone mentioned it before when I wrote the first version. All I’ve read is the original book by French author Pierre Boulle (a classic of French SciFi) and the first film with Elton.

Once again, I feel bad I gave you something enjoyable for like 75% and then betrayed your hopes at the end. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against me. I apologise and really, for those who know me, that doesn’t buck the trend: there’s always something I botch badly and the whole fic fails miserably.

See you next round with better hopes. At least, with minifics, I’m a bit more successful.

And since Saint Exupéry seems to be all the rage, let me finished on this: “Future successes grow over the ashes of former defeats.”

Thank you guys for reading and laughing for the most part. Comedy is hard, especially comedy that goes this far over the top. Based on the overall response I'll confess getting my hopes up a bit about making finals, but it is what it is. I think this will clean up fast for FimFiction; the gist of the feedback about what needs to change is that it should be tighter and punchier. As you might've guessed, I was struggling to get it up to 2K words for a while there; this will probably be optimally tight at around ~1700.

This was written entirely during the wee (and slightly less wee as the night went on) hours, well past the point where I figured it wouldn't be possible to get something in. It therefore reflects whatever high-octane stupidity was rattling around my brain at the time. But at risk of being self-indulgent, I woke up the next morning (really like an hour later) and read it and thought it was funny as hell. I still think it's funny as hell. So while you should never overdo things too much with a self-review, I figured this might be the one time to make an exception. Hence >>CoffeeMinion.

Also, in the grand sense, this is all >>Posh's fault for protesting my lack of submission. :-P I've no idea how serious that may or may not have been, but here we are, so thank you.

>>FrontSevens / >>Fenton - Excellent points all around, thank you.

>>TitaniumDragon / >>horizon / >>Rao - Very well, comrades; I'll roll the next one tighter. (lol 420 lol good jokes lol)

>>wYvern - Did I do a LOTR reference? Yes of course I did. That was intentional. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move on! :3

>>Novel_Idea / >>eusocialdragon - Very glad you enjoyed it!

>>bloons3
>>Novel_Idea
>>FrontSevens
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>AndrewRogue
>>wYvern
>>horizon
>>Chinchillax

Here goes the recap. First, thank you for your comments. I must say that I rushed this one a bit because I wanted to do another entry. I didn't have time to finish it and instead, I should have focus on this one.

Anyway, I won't reply to every comment made, because several are the same and thus I'll address them now.
The main criticism is the lack of backstory and the infodump on the second part. To explain that, I had only the idea of the nightmare at first. I wrote it but as you can guess, it was far from matching the wordcount. Moreover, I needed to resolve Lyra's nightmares and, because I couldn't launch myself into writting session therapy or whatever, Luna was the perfect Deus Ex Machina.

But then, I felt like it would be weak and poor if she just showed up at Lyra and BonBon's house "Hello, I'm here to resolve the plot". So the idea of the Agency and Celestia came to my mind as a way to subtly bring her and, as I was writting it, this idea took a more important place in the story.


>>bloons3
I've already addressed your point about the radio communicator but for the 'gunshot', I must admit that I haven't think for a second that guns weren't very common in Equestria. So that's something I'll probably rewrite.

>>Novel_Idea
>>Posh
>>horizon
Let's talk about Celestia switching from anger to asking for forgiveness.
Anger might not have been the best word here. She wasn't supposed to be very angry, just angry and asking for explanation about why BonBon has contacted her, risking to reveal the existence of the Agency to Lyra and to get caught by their 'ennemies'.

Celestia's emotions should have been like this. She's angry because BonBon has taken a risk but because she's Celestia, she asks why and makes one rough comment. She wanted to lecture BonBon but she can't because BonBon yells at her, telling her all about her frustration, her anger, her disappointment etc... So Celestia understands BonBon's feeling and it makes her past failure more painful. She tries to explain her choice and asks for forgiveness, even if she would do the same knowing what it would cost. And she doesn't overcome her guilt, like she didn't overcome the fact she was the one who had banished her own sister. It's something she lives with.

Maybe it wasn't enough clear the way I wrote it, I'll keep that in mind when I'll rework on it.

Anyway, let's talk about one more thing or two.


>>FrontSevens

I put a leg I wish to be one of a surgeon on her shoulder

I think this is awkwardly phrased. I also don’t understand it. Why would she want her leg to be a surgeon’s?

Awkwardly phrased, certainly. If BonBon wants her leg to be a surgeon's, it's because Lyra is an open-wound. Thus, by showing tenderness, she hopes to stitch the wound.

>>horizon

Mostly because that isn't how people's emotions work

I don't really know how people's emotions work but do you? :p Moreover, Celestia is at least one thousand years old and she is immortal. I surely don't know how someone immortal thinks and feels.
Jokes aside, it seems that I failed to convey how Celestia reacted to all of this but since I wrote it in first person, it was hard to do it without breaking some basic rules of narration. I'll think about it when reworking the fic.


I reread my recap and I can see that it's not very organized. I'm sorry about that but I'll stop here before rambling for ten more pages.
I thank all of you again. I'm glad you enjoyed the idea behind the story and I'll make sure to execute it better than here.
For any question or reclamation, you can find me on the Discord Chat.

See you on Discord or on the next round,
Take care of yourself and your folks.

>>Rao
I understand what you're saying about the ending to this story, and I don't hate it myself. I was trying (and probably failed) to say that a number of readers might feel that this kind of an ending is something of a 'deus ex machina' for Sunset.

Though, now that I think about it, all that would really have to be done to 'fix' this 'problem' is to have some sort of changed detail to show Sunset and the audience that her trip had some effect on the past.

Huh! I'll be. I had you pegged for Back to the Future.

What else have I been wrong about?

>>Monokeras
Go ahead and watch the original Planet of the Apes. I really recommend it. Seriously.

And let us both have good luck next time.

>>TitaniumDragon
>>Novel_Idea
>>Haze
>>horizon
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>Monokeras
As I said before, I had gotten sick during the Writeoff weekend and had only two days for writing, since I was so weak the second day. I had written only the first part during the first day, I planned to watch one or two episodes to understand Starlight's character more, and even plan more on how to explain things much better with the entire story while tying up loose ends with grammar fixing and typos on the third day. I always put at least three hours into all of my stories with fixing up technical issues. Obviously, this wasn't present here.

Instead, with the first day only having 1.5k words written, I had to write the other 80% on the last day. I stayed up to 3:30 AM finalizing everything hoping that people would at least have fun with my story. If you did, then thanks fam-fams.

Don't understand why the village ponies took Trixie under their wings just like that? Well, right after the duo met with the mayor, they were supposed to have a quick emotional speech in the middle of their bingo match, which lead them to soften up. While quick writing, I forgot this. I realized this the next day during my first read through.

Wonder why Sunset and Starlight are confused? To me, they're the same characters. Same origin story, same personalities, same character role, hell, they even have rhyming names. I should work on that more, but yeah.

Trixie going over the top a little bit was going to be explained, but that was cut from the final work as I didn't want to go into stuff that I could just simply skip. Thinking about it now, I could've placed it somewhere else though with one line or two, however.

And they were able to put all of this together in how much time, again?

"Tomorrow would be fine, or even the day after. Well, you can have as long as you like, really."

Not blaming you or anything, but I also should've shown the passage of time within the story too so you wouldn't have that misunderstanding. Even if it was in a quick montage format. Would quick montages work in written form? I don't know.

Oh, and the funniest part for me was during the play, to where I stopped caring. I really like the idea of vikings battling it to the death in my stories, so as the play progressed, I purposely made it so they were transforming into old men. Hey, it was 2:00 AM when I wrote that and I was extremely tired. I had to entertain myself someway. :P

I may finish this and put it up on fimfiction, but I don't really feel like it right now. If I ever get bored in the future and just want to, then maybe I will.

>>Kitcat36, >>Not_A_Hat, >>Kritten (nice quads!), >>TitaniumDragon, >>The_Letter_J, >>Not_A_Hat, >>GroaningGreyAgony, >>Not_A_Hat, >>horizon, >>wYvern, >>Kritten

The Incensed Learner

Thank you all very much for the praise and critiques!

I was biting my tongue on this one, and still felt compelled to make a rebuttal comment in the form of a fake review. I had planned to do some fake reviews all along, and it would be silly to always pan one’s own work in a fake review, but still I’m cringing now, thinking of how obvious I was being.

That wasn’t supposed to be a bowl at all. (If it were a bowl, the line I draw here joining the center points of the cone base and the marks would be a curve. *) Still, it’s my fault as an illustrator that I didn’t address that possible confusion. I should have just put a flat disc under the yin-yang and left it at that, but I wanted it to look more dimensional. I should have made it more obvious that it’s just a stand.

I did mean for the smoke on the left to be a unicorn head, but there’s a certain attraction to leaving that ambiguous. I am less happy with the dragon’s head, partly because the transparent brush I used has a pattern that becomes more obvious in the short strokes.

I had no unifying story behind this piece, save that I wanted a unicorn and dragon to be confronting each other in the smoke, but I did want to make the incense burner look mystic and sinister. I tried for this by drawing corrupted versions of Celestia and Luna’s marks, striving to give them the look of evil eyes. The arrows on the cone were inspired by the traditional eight-arrowed symbol of chaos, to give someone the chance to link in Discord if desired.

Technical note: no 3D rendering was involved. This was all done in Adobe Illustrator, with some retouching of the smoke and the spherized URL added in Photoshop. It’s all flat shapes, strokes and gradients, with partly-transparent brushes for the smoke curls.


Thanks to everyone who helped this image to take a technical medal!


* #include <horizon(roger.plz.add.image.embedding)>

>>Kritten
You mean the Charlton Elston film? I saw that one. I didn't watch the new instalments in the franchise.

Good luck to you for next round! :)

>>Fenton
>>wYvern
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Kritten
>>Monokeras
>>Posh
>>Novel_Idea
>>Rao
>>horizon

So I was the author to this... Thing. To get the elephant in the room out of the way, no the fuck-ups were not deliberate, unfortunately. I have not really used multiple text commands at once before, and wasn't aware that the order had to be specific or else it would break. On top of that, I'm going to get a stupid question out of the way and ask how you can view your story as another person would see it before submitting. I didn't know that was a thing you could do. :facehoof:

The next big problem with this is the "epilogue," which I just completely deleted in the currently ongoing rewrite. The first one and a half thousand words of this story were written about eight hours before the cutoff at 8pm while I was on a plane, after I had spent the rest of the writing time really trying to write a serious idea and utterly failing. At about 3am I saw horizon's post about submitting anyways, and it inspired me to finish the last bit of what I could and get it out there anyways. For some reason, my brain linked nonsense in Ponyville to Discord and thought "oh I should explain that." Unfortunately it was 3am and I was not fully awake enough to not be stupid, so I wrote it in. I wasn't able to finish the idea and that hurts this story a lot, but I'll go into that a little later.

Lastly, my complete overuse of adverbs. Is it sad that I trimmed them down a lot while editing and still left enough to be a problem? In my speech I have the same problem of inserting adverbs or qualifiers where they are not quite needed. I developed that habit originally as a way to soften my speech and make declarative statements less confrontational. Over time, it's seeped into me just adding -ly words willy-nilly to my speech and writing. I'm working on fixing that, and I think next time I write I'll do so without any such adverbs at all. When I edit it, if it feels like an adverb is actually needed, I can add it there. Hopefully that'll help me fix this.

I think I am going to continue writing this story to the original ending I had thought of. This story started off with enough planned plot points that I probably would've hit 5~6k words with it. Due to the fact that I got this idea so late, I wasn't able to write everything I wanted to. horizon got it right, I had planned for there to be three confrontations and for the second one to have gone very differently. The second confrontation was supposed to introduce the idea that DarkStorm was not actually a creature of Nightmare, but of another force called Nonsense. The third scene would have been Bon-Bon, uh, I mean Doughnut Steel and Heart Harp, venturing into the heart of Nonsense and putting a stop to it once and for all. Now that I have the time, I'm going to finish it like I meant to in the beginning.

Thank you to everybody who pointed out things to fix, or who said what they liked. While it was flawed pretty badly, I'm glad this story could provide some fun! I'll try to get Doughnut Steel up on fimfic as soon as I stop re-writing and nitpicking it. So in about three years.

Congratulations to all our finalists!

Up in Smoke - Retrospective

Didn't make finals, for only the third time ever. Not even disappointed. Kept reading story after story thinking, "This one's better than mine. This one's better than mine. This one's better than mine ..."

And I mean, it's not like I didn't know this was coming. As previously noted, I submitted a story I knew was crap relative to my usual efforts, because that's what deadlines sometimes make you do. (>>horizon >>horizon >>horizon)

For your consideration, I'd like to repeat my lesson learned from the last time this happened:

So this is a useful data point, and one I hope other authors here can take to heart. If you speedwrite an entry, it doesn't reflect the quality you're capable of. The magnitude of the effect is pretty startling: My medalist record with short stories I've spent three days on is 72% [8/11], and my finalist record with short stories I've spent less than 24 hours on is 33%!

The way to win Writeoffs is to act like you're here to win them: set aside the three writing days, carefully draft a cool idea, and give it the time it deserves.

Which I didn't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seriously, I can't overstate the magnitude of the effect here. Updated short-story numbers: Only 1 in 4 speedfics have made finals. (25%) Full-weekend stories: 14 medals of 19. (73%) Granted, more writing time wouldn't have saved this story, but it would have given me time to start over, and work on the fallback idea I had somewhat firmed up.

Anyway, most of what I wanted to say about this, I already complained about in my posts above; two scenes in, it wasn't going anywhere and wasn't particularly funny. I managed to find some second wind with the closet scene, and ended up with something that I guess I don't entirely regret.

On a reread, I guess I would call this stupid but amusing (as opposed to the hot messes that my other non-finalists have been). Given the choice of 1) not posting it, 2) ripping it apart to not make it much better (because it was stupid by design), or 3) shrugging and sharing it with the world because people seemed to generally enjoy at least some things about it, 3 seems like the path of least resistance. I'll clean up the low-hanging fruit (like the ALL CAPITALS crap) and get it posted over the next day or two (after I put in a few more hours on TEFL, which I've been procrastinating on this weekend).

Btw, the joke about a dead pony winning the Ssh Championships was stolen from an homage to Cold in Gardez's "The Contest".

>>Posh

competently executed

>>Fenton

Mid-tier

>>TitaniumDragon

kind of funny

Cover quotes! :B

Thanks, all, for the reads and reviews.
>>Rao >>Dubs_Rewatcher >>Kritten >>Morning Sun >>Novel_Idea

>>horizon

the Ssh Championships

I didn't mention this in my review, but yeah, I laughed out loud when I read that.

Although I assumed it was a reference to... uh... the one where Fluttershy babysat the CMC. I forget what it was called.

>>Posh
Heh, I figured you figured I'd done that one. My brassy self-review here probably also helped throw off the trail. Winning!

...Or not. But hey, this one cleaned up faster than I thought, and the cover art came together in 10 seconds flat.

I dunno. I'm weird. But I'm glad to have somewhere to be weird with others.

I still love how the Drawing Red Dot has jumped the tracks and is floating off in space. Look at it go!

>>Monokeras
I sincerely hope that you continue this. I want to read a proper conclusion for the journey this took me on. I think Daring Do is a fine choice. All we really need now is what happens after their meeting. :heart:

>>Monokeras
It's Heston. Heston, I say!

>>shinygiratinaz
As >>CoffeeMinion noted, I slipped pretty hard on the mortal sin of a banana peel that is telling instead of showing. This was my third draft from a third perspective for a second slice of time in the world as I saw it. It took two days to really solidify a concept and most of the last one to figure out what wasn't working, so by the time I made it this far I had to cut some corners. Since I'm working from a limit narrator perspective I couldn't get too detailed on the resolution without breaking character.

Coffee, your philosophical waxing is much appreciated, and I will certainly remember your advice going forward.

Furthering >>Haze's comment, the timeline is also vague, but that's not at all intentional. I screwed up pulling in the foundations from the first draft, which I wrote from Apple Bloom's perspective, into the submitted work. I am, however, glad to see everyone fine with seeing the Crusaders as primary protagonists.

>>Novel_Idea
>>MLPmatthewl419
As above, raw failure to pull together my multiple disparate drafts into a single cohesive submission. Most of your questions have answers either there, or in my brain. Which is useless here, I know. I'd really like to work this into a clean, full-length piece. I don't think we've seen a lot of Souls-esque softovers (thanks for the word, Posh!) in the fandom.

>>Posh
Sunset and Starlight's ages are canonically a bit ambiguous, as best as I recall. We know Sunset's a little older than Twilight at least, and I always imagine Starlight as being a few years older than what Sunset would be. I imagine the Crusaders being in the rough equivalent of their mid to late-20s for this, which would put Rarity et. al. somewhere in the 40 range, and Sunset and Starlight a bit above that. You're quite right in that I didn't adjust everyone's dialogue to reflect the aging properly. That's something I'll keep a keen eye on when I touch on this again.

>>AndrewRogue
It's embarrassing that I didn't catch on to how obvious the bonfire line would be when I wrote it, but I was honestly thinking of the art piece at the time rather than the direct pull from the game. The title of the art piece being a direct lift from the game makes missing it all the worse for me :\

I leaned way too heavily on the ambiguity trait from Souls and botched setting up the proper narrator introductions in a timely manner, along with a host of other things. I have learned that I am no Miyazaki, that's for sure.

Thanks to everyone for reading along and all the detailed comments. I'm a bit proud to be the only Souls-type entry this round (and ever, as far as I've seen, though I doubt I'm the first to do it), even if it didn't come out all that well. Good luck to the finalists!

Very much a "for somebody, but not for me" story.

Don't have much to say here. It is quite competent (though there are some editorial errors that'll need clean up, minor wrong words, that sort of thing). Just... not a story that really hooked me, but I suspect that's more a little less interest in the core of the subject material.

I will say I'm not a huge fan of the use of "Pearl" here. I don't like homaging that sort of thing too directly in pone. But that's a personal taste matter.

This story was very literally incomplete. As some folks surmised, this is literally incomplete. This story follows the hook -> rising action -> abyss -> rising action -> catharsis -> resolution model, but, well, I only figured out what I was going to write with about four hours to go.

I knew I had no chance of getting it done within the time limit, but it had been so long since I had written something for the Writeoffs, I figured that I was due to actually do something. Moreover, Horizon was finishing up his own story that he wasn't really happy with, so I figured I shouldn't chicken out, and I thought that I could at least get some punch out of the punch at the end here.

As such, this basically got over the first hump in the story and I literally got to Luna starting to go into her "there's no afterlife" thing (which is when Applejack plunges off into the abyss), so for those of you being like "Well, this doesn't really have a resolution" - yeah, it doesn't, because it wasn't written in time.

Sorry about that.

Anyway, the actual full story is going to be much longer (about three times this long) and has two central conflicts: Applejack dealing with her newfound doubts about whether or not an afterlife actually exists (including her anger at Luna for even suggesting such a thing, as well as her anger at herself for maybe being too willing to believe something that might not be true), and Applejack dealing with what she's supposed to say to Apple Bloom about death, as Apple Bloom is sure to have a lot of questions about it and Applejack doesn't want to burden her little sister with her doubts, but also doesn't want to lie to her and have her go through what Applejack is struggling with.

>>horizon

I'll clean up the low-hanging fruit (like the ALL CAPITALS crap) and get it posted over the next day or two

... wait a second, what the heck am I thinking?

It's less than three weeks 'til 4/20. :-p

What do you mean it's already April, why didn't anybody tell me? Oh, well. Overdue retrospective incoming.

I didn't have much time to draw, otherwise I would have tried a few more sketches with the stallion and the skeleton in different poses and with better composition. Under my circumstances--about three hours of leisure time a day--I decided to run with my very first draft. Also, as I drew this a story idea popped up in my mind, and I believe thinking about that particular story may have influenced in the way the drawing developed, and in turn made it not as great as a general inspiration piece. Sorry about that.

Here's my story idea, which I'll eventually write: Imagine an Equestrian scientist in whatever the equivalent to the Victorian era was for ponies. In an effort to find a way to immortality, they experimented with imbuing ponies with the magic essence of phoenixes. In a shocking twist of events, it backfires (heh) and it creates fire undead ponies. Pony dies, burst into flames, keeps going because of the phoenix magic, but doesn't quite regenerate because equine and avian magic don't mix and is left as shell of who it used to be filled with pain and regret.

Think less zombie apocalypse and more existential dread and wondering about the nature of life--Hence the horrified expression of the other pony--and lots of incidental killing as well.

I was also thinking about ways of tying it to the core of current FiM canon. Fast forward to the present, and some cult/idiot passer-by releases the same disease/curse/whatever, and it's up to Twilight and the M6 to figure out how to solve it and find out how the ponies from the past solved it. Both the past and present stories would develop simultaneously, probably alternating every chapter.

I'd have to polish this idea much more before it can become something readable, as well as deciding if I want to keep it a self-contained story about Equestria's past.

I'm still more or less satisfied with how this image turned out save for a few points that I'll mention in a moment.

First off, thanks for your kind words and general feedback.

>>Fenton
How curious, I was listening to Funeral March for a Marionette while colouring it.

>>Not_A_Hat
>>The_Letter_J

like they're missing the feet

Ok, funny story about doing the best with what you got. I drew the skeleton using pics off of Google as a reference, but as I drew the leg, I realised I drew it out of proportion in comparison with the pony in front of it. Instead of erasing it and trying again (because I pressed the pencil a bit too hard) I decided to show the bone slowly fading into ashes, thus better tying it to the prompt. However, the result didn't translate too well to digital and I had to scrap it.

Whoops.

Also, they're not supposed to be anthro, I just drew them sitting too upright. Had I had the time to properly draw the hind legs, perhaps this whole misunderstanding could've been avoide but alas, lack of time.


>>TitaniumDragon
>>QuillScratch
>>Kritten
Ah, yes. The background. Remember how I said I had to scratch the idea of the bones fading into ash? Yeah, the background is another aspect I had to discard lest I missed the deadline. In the end I did have to use a random victorian wallpaper and start tinkering with it in Photoshop so I could present something other than just a blank background, which may have worked if I had tried a solid color with some minor shading.

A similar background is what I had in mind for the final piece, but actually drawn, and with other elements that tied the idea of "old-timey science experiment gone wrong" in a better way.

>>QuillScratch
>>GroaningGreyAgony
I glad you liked it so much. I only wish I could've polished it up a bit more. Maybe I'll get to that once I write out the story I have in mind.

Anyway, even if this inspired no stories--yet--I sitll had a lot of fun, and I'll definitely try to draw again, and maybe actually write something!

I wish the best to those still in the running!

>>Zaid Val'Roa
That story concept sounds awesome. :coolphoto:

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Ya know, that story concept does sound amazing. You should work on that one day.

So, I sorta like this one, but it drags really badly. There's a lot of material that can be cut to let you really laser focus on the emotion, particularly the beginning or the end. Simply put, you have two kinda distinct stories going on here: Pinkie trapped in the timeloop or Twilight maintaining a fake reality.

They really don't properly meet, I feel, which bogs things down.

Ideally, I think, you pick one of these two ideas to be the core and you cut the half of the story that doesn't address it, which I think, ultimately, will clean things up. That said, no matter which side you choose, the reincarnation scene should be cut immensely. That's pure falling action and we all know what the actual punchline is, so it being so long is a bit bizarre. We don't gain that much out of it.

Also Pinkie's drastic action really feels tonally out of sync with everything else.

Oh, and there is a bit of problem that the ending -really- seems to fly in the face of Twilight's assertion. This seems like pretty standard reincarnation in a lot of ways, which heavily contradicts here "there's nothing" assurity. If she was -afraid- there was nothing it'd be fine, but she seemed 100% sure.

>>CoffeeMinion
Thanks for Helston.

As for the story, no dice. Like about all my WriteOff “pieces”, it’s disposable, throwaway material (shit).

But don’t worry, you have plenty of better stories to read and you’ll have forgotten about mine in a couple of days, hopefully! :) 💜 too!

[Retrospective="Twilight, Sparkle"]

>>Novel_Idea

This story was quite dense, and as you said, not in a good way.

>>FrontSevens

This story kind of changed from how I had wanted to start it. It would've been something like there's an alien in Twilight's head that has her memories, and thinks like her, except when it doesn't. You'd have the same body-control duality thing as well.

The first sentence of that draft was going to be: "Twilight wanted Spike. twilight would not allow it."

I get what you're saying This draft is kinda dry, and really what I should've been going for is more of a conversation than thoughts flying at each other. It's an interesting concept, just not an entertaining one.

>>Fenton

Yeah, as a I said above, this story needs more internal dialogue and less 'Do this? Yes, want much do!"

>>Kritten


Yeah, that was another issue with this story. Not much happens. I had written a small paragraph where thunders into the kitchen and demands 'Twilight' tells her what happened to Twilight, but I cut it moments before I submitted.

If you have to read my story twice to understand it, then I've done a poor job setting the scene. Thanks for the feedback!

>>Rao

It was hard for me to conceptualize how the whole duality-thing was going to happen.
I tried to explain it out loud to another person as: "A is A and thinks B is B, and then B thinks B is A and A is... hrrm. Okay, A thinks A is 1 and B is not 1..."

What I wanted to do with the whole 'Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other was show that they each think that they're the original and that the other is the copy.

I'm glad that you liked it, and I hope to get it spit-shined enough to get it on fimfic in a little while. After some major editing of course :) .

>>Posh

Well I wouldn't wish Beckett on anyone, but if you're into that kind of stuff, I won't judge.

Yeah, that was a major problem with this story. The language was so dense and packed that it made everything pretty much inaccessible unless you were willing to spend the time to dive into the story and make sense of everything.

What I wanted to do with

Spike, their assistant-brother-son-friend-dragon

was show that it was more of a thought than something spoken. If you had to tell someone about your dog, you'd say, "Well his name's Fido. He's got a nice brown coat that's soft. He's really fun to play with, and I love him." But the concept of Fido in your mind is Fido-soft-play-cute-brown. The concepts of what you're referencing kind of attach themselves to the object itself.

>>TitaniumDragon

Yeah... I agree with you that this story was tedious to read. I believe Quill Scratch was referring to it as

the one with 143 instances of the word "Twilight", And 209 hyphens

If I had written more for this entry, I would've tried to explain the split, but as you said, it's confusing not knowing why it happened.

>>horizon

I gotta agree with you on some of these points.

Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other

went over like a lead balloon, and it kinda did drag the whole pacing down.

As I said above, there was a scrapped paragraph at the end where Celestia was going to be introduced. The brick-wall ending is one of the issues with this story.

>>MLPmatthewl419

If I edit this, style would definitely need to be changed. Right now it just feels blocky.

>>Monokeras

You certainly had an interesting interpretation of the first few sentences...

---

Well thanks everyone who read and commented. I'll definitely be using this feedback if I decide to dump this on knighty's lawn in the middle of the night get this up on fimfic. Welp, time to put my nose back down to the grindstone.

[\Retrospective]

Writeoff Mash-Ups: Preliminary Edition

Death, Suicide: The Element of Death suddenly splits into two distinct personalities, Death and Suicide. Thrill to his inner monologue as he debates his every response to Spike the Camouflaged Dragon-Pony's questions and accusations.

Rise of Donut Steel: The Musical - Turn Off The Dark: Broadway's very first take on a superhero musical! Lyra volunteers a reluctant, drug-addicted Bon Bon to do battle with a horde of ancient thestralcorns, whose jazzy beats and rhythmic snapping threaten to drive all of the Pie Family to madness. Featuring a musical score and soundtrack produced by Pinkie Pie while high on some sort of mystical, boulder-based narcotic.

Celestia's Cello Damage: Celestia smokes Philamena's ashes and accidentally breaks Octavia Melody's beloved cello in her stupor. Without thinking ahead, Vinyl volunteers to deflect the blame from Celestia, in exchange for a favor to be cashed in at a later date. When Luna learns of this arrangement while investigating Vinyl's brain, she blackmails them both.

A Spark of Hereafter: Applejack feeds a dying Granny Smith to the First Flame, making her a Nana of Cinder. Luna shows up to go on a highly insensitive monologue about how great Granny Smith's flash-cooked flesh smells, forcing Vinyl to provide rimshots after all of her jokes, per the terms of their arrangement.

Up in Morituri: Lyra suffers night terrors resulting from the battle against the thestralcorns, so Bon Bon drunk-dials Celestia and leaves a profane message blaming her on her voicemail. Celestia shows up the next morning with a box of phoenix blunts to help mellow out the both of them.

While high, they inadvertently win the World Ssh Championships, stealing Fluttershy's title and driving her to suicide in despair. Unfortunately, Death and Suicide still haven't finished their debate, so she's unable to die. Spike, realizing that his problem has solved itself, shrugs and lights up a phoenix blunt

>>Posh
I love that these all share the same continuity. Between that and >>FrontSevens's text-based mashups, we've had some creative variants this round.

>>horizon They're all part of the MUCU, the Mash-Up Cinematic Universe.

>>horizon
SON OF A

I'm going to have to write another pony weed story in the next 17 days, I think

>>bloons3

I'll definitely be using this feedback if I decide to dump this on knighty's lawn in the middle of the night

Don’t do like me!

>>TitaniumDragon
You know, I'm somehow disappointed that the reason for this ending is because you didn't have enough time.

If it was done on purpose, I would have liked to talk about why, how, when etc someone choose to end a story like this. I'm sure I would have learned a lot of things even if I really hated it.

I'll wait for the complete story then.

>>Cold in Gardez

What decisions or actions do the characters take that drives the story?

While I understand your complaint, I also can't say that it particularly bothered me that these stories didn't have character agency. Speculative fiction is littered with stories where the characters serve primarily as our window onto the worldbuilding, and the impact of the worldbuilding is the point of the story, to the point that what we remember about it has nothing to do with character development.

Off the top of my head … the character conflicts in Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes are basically irrelevant to the stories' point, except as a way of establishing how bad things have gotten. Planet of the Apes in particular is basically a feghoot, except with a moral instead of a punchline: This is where nuclear war leads.

I'm also reminded of Ray Bradbury's All Summer In A Day, in which the protagonist spent the entire story locked in a closet. The lack of agency there served a point — turned her into a victim.

Finally, *cough* lost cities *cough*

That having been said, authors: all other things being equal, agency makes for a much more dynamic story. I'm thinking of Horse Voice's The Writing On The Wall in particular, which is about Daring Do (big spoiler!) exploring a strange ancient ruin that turns out to be the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository; it kills her and Ahuizotl with radiation poisoning. I'm trying to picture the story without all the tense maneuvering between Daring and Ahuizotl that pads out the middle story, and it would have been pretty darn thin and unsatisfying. While it's ultimately meaningless, what the Daring/Ahuizotl clash does is give the twist something to play off of — and makes it work in the first place, because a Daring Do story with no conflict happening is pretty much a flashing red light telling you that the author is trying to pull off a twist.

I think Meaning stands up a little better in its current, agency-free form than Putri Jaran — although, like CiG, both are in my top three regardless. If Putri suffers from its lack of agency, I think it's only that Kesa seems perfectly balanced between the factions in such a way as to evade any personal consequences — neither an Equestrian sympathizer to the point where he alienates his friends and neighbors, nor a resister to the point where he suffers from the crackdown, nor someone trying to avoid the conflict who faces uncomfortable pressure from both sides. Agency doesn't necessarily involve picking a side — it means making a choice and dealing with the consequences of that choice. Neutrality is a choice, but we don't see the consequences of it.

Adding agency to Meaning could be problematic, if only because it's already so buildup-heavy to begin with. Giving present Cadance meaningful choices with consequences creates more padding before your reveal, and also starts potentially running into idiot-ball issues — the question of why the core problem outlined in the twist wasn't brought up earlier when it would have been relevant to her actions. The pacing right now feels just about on-point. I think this might be a case where you want the All Summer In A Day agency model.

Genre: Um, wow. Nice head-fake with the title. That really wasn't a comedy.

Thoughts: Dark and compelling, but ultimately leaving us with more unanswered questions than answered ones, and not necessarily in the best way. I suppose it's a tragedy of sorts in the end, but it almost strikes me as more of a deus ex machina, because it's a random student and we don't really get any resolution about what the Elements are. I mean obviously they're of the "make you go kill-crazy" variety, but that's all we get to explain the journey we just went on.

Still, there's strong characterization of everybody involved here, and the atmosphere is moody, and the shift to horror at the end is powerful.

Tier: Almost There

>>horizon

Planet of the Apes in particular is basically a feghoot, except with a moral instead of a punchline: This is where nuclear war leads.

I suggest you read the original book by Pierre Boulle. It is so much superior to the movie, in every way. And the punchline is galaxies away from what the film made of it.

Genre: Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Thoughts: It's about at the moment when >>Cold in Gardez and >>horizon both top-slate a story that I feel it makes sense to pause, take notice, and then try very hard to figure out why.

And, um, I don't get it with this one. :-/

I'll acknowledge that this is well written. It's actually really clean and well constructed from a technical perspective. There's much to recommend it in that regard.

But there's also some stuff that other people have mentioned that doesn't work for me. Rather than putting forward my own unease about the limitations of character agency/arc, or the problematic hopelessness of Tyrant Sparkle, or that the story hits a full-stop right as it seems like it's getting going... frankly, I can point right back at the other reviews mentioning those things and say, "Me too, except all that stuff keeps it lower on my slate."

Maybe it's a question of personal interest/appeal, but I feel like the arc here would need to be fleshed out a great deal more before I could put it higher. Right now it's basically a couple thousand word way of saying that imperialism sucks extra-hard when it's Twerklight Sporkle in the driver's seat, but we don't get to confront how that really impacts either Miss Sporkle or our young hero. Like I could really use a humanizing moment where it's actually Twilight going through with this.

Tier: Almost There

Genre: Everything is fine... wait... OhSHI---

Thoughts: Okay, now this is some hard-hitting horror up in here. I totally buy the Nightmare Cadance aftermath thing and all of the little bits of hints of backstory that we get about it. I love the thing with her mantra, and how she feels when she feels again. I also love the Pinkie stuff and the moment with Smarty. That's friggin gold. Even the opening bit with Celestia and the guard were perfect in the way that they established a sense of not-quite-normalcy.

Dat reveal, though. Chilling.

So actually I feel like the reveal could be a lot stronger if we got the part about synthetics right at the end. Right now it's close to the end but i mean let's get that right as the very last thing before Twilight's closing question. I feel like that would keep the horror going at maximum tension, whereas right now it pulls back just a tiny bit by explaining the amount of time that's passed and trying to recruit her to help with Luna and Flurry.

Tier: Top Contender

>>CoffeeMinion

Just to clarify, this story was at the top of my prelim slate. It did not fare nearly so well in my finals slate.

Genre: Dark comedy romance

Thoughts: The mix of darkness and comedy in the beginning... oh, it's brilliant. Brilliant I tell you. The shower scene is even more brilliant for the sheer volume of hilarity that gets mined out of bits like the interaction between Death and the water, and then Vinyl falling down.

I felt like the darkening tone in the middle made sense. Without any ill will toward the characters... I kinda wanted to see that explored more. It's a uniquely uncomfortable situation and the story reaches toward unexpected depths with what it starts to do there. So in that sense, going for the unmitigated happy ending feels almost like a let-down, because it swerves away from those depths.

But I probably wouldn't have minded as much if it wasn't Death himself who came around, considering that he had just given Vinyl a pretty hard sell on the hereafter a few scenes before. It feels too easy--dare I say, bordering on cheap--to have him suddenly just be all like, "Eh, nevermind."

Ultimately though, those are all the complaints I can come up with here.

Tier: Strong

I'm not sure what else to say besides thank you.

Thank you all for reading, reviewing and commenting on Death's Suicide.

I like this. That said, I think it has a bit of a pacing issue. While the heart is there and the interactions are good, I still found myself losing focus every now and then just because this is a decently long story for a fairly short concept.

That said, I don't really have an immediate suggestion for what to actually do, but I would just suggest tightening it up a bit. Cut some words. Really hone in on that heart you have in there, because it is a really, really good heart.

So, voice is pretty good on this one, which is nice. Fairly solid first person perspective. No complaints there and I think it's among the best 1st Person I've seen in the Writeoff.

Content-wise I'm a bit less satisfied. This is a fuzzy area, but in fics that aren't really explicit AU, I tend to want something that resonates a bit with the show canon. This... doesn't, really. This is very much it's own entity with little in the way of character/concept/theme connections. I dunno, it is a very fuzzy, I know it when I see it sort of distinction, but this fic fails it to me.

I might also be hitting another weird personal objection because I recently finished The Windup Girl which, while not necessarily about colonialism proper, covers similar thematics. And it kinda grates me a bit.

To reiterate though, writing itself is super solid.

I feel like such a sourpuss, but I kinda fall on the side of this didn't do it for me. At a base level, it's kinda because I spent most of the story waiting for the other shoe to drop, which I think reduces the impact of it actually happening for me. The swerve wasn't really enough of a swerve for me, as it were, so I was bracing for the horrible the whole time.

I also run into a bit of a logistical issue in that it feels... wrong for Twilight to have forgotten what emotions are, if that makes? I mean, of course, it is difficult to imagine having no emotions at all (or lacking them for a thousand years), but her reactions just don't quite click right with me.

Originally, this picture was gonna have Twilight herself standing next to the grave, competing my homage to one of the best episodes of Spongebob Squarepants ever.

My first and biggest mistake with this piece, though, was making it too good. Next time I'll be sure to let my real MS Paint skillz shine. Hell, maybe I'll even splash out enough money to get a free trial of KidPix.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Originally I was gonna make it a full star, but once I was halfway through and realized I had made the Star of David, I thought it was funny, so I kept it. Just pretend Twilight's last name is Goldstein.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
I was tempted, trust me.

>>TitaniumDragon
I thought—and still do think—that the zoom in is funnier than just having it read the text outright.

>>horizon
I have no idea what this means.

I am tremendously proud of the title and alt-text, by the way.

I laughed harder than I probably should. There are some good scene ender lines.

The meat is just a little thin on this one, though. While I like the arc that's going on, I feel you don't quite sell it well enough and lean a little too much on the Pale Trotter to push both directions. He's the one who really gets in Vinyl's head on the negative side and the positive side. You really need to give a little more on Octavia and Vinyl's issues with her condition. Make Vinyl feel like more of a burden. Make Octavia feel a bit more tired of having to deal with Vinyl.

Also, there are a couple nagging questions. As stated, the actual nature of the curse and how Vinyl got it could use a little more exploration. You don't need to lay it all out, but a little more would help.

Personally, I really liked this one. An off-beat origin story that sounds like something out of the old comic books.

If I have a problem with it, it's that the story doesn't quite seemed finished. We never do hear what happened to Sparkle Dust, and Sombra never really spends time trying to go back to normal, he just goes nuts and start vaporizing ponies. That, and the fact that the Sombra you've painted here is a loner who doesn't like being around others, rather than a megalomaniac who wants to crush those others under his iron-shod hooves. The character presented to me here sounds more like he'd want to go off to a cave and polish his 'Precious' crystals than take up residence in the royal palace.

There's also the fact that, for being in the title, Crystal Clear doesn't get much screen time; he just kind of points out a danger to Sombra and then picks some stuff out of Sombra's eyes later and...that's pretty much it. You might want to think about giving him a slightly larger role. (Perhaps trying unsuccessfully to help keep Sombra sane from the influence of the Element shards?)

Anyway, sorry if I sounded negative there, but it really is a very good entry in my mind. Thanks for sharing!

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
"Working blue"

My first and biggest mistake with this piece, though, was making it too good

Then I think Twilight was a significant omission. As a troll entry, what this really lacks is a mouse-drawn circle-blob pony outline in the empty space on the right, with cyan tear lines streaming down its misshapen frowny face.

Mash-Up Cinematic Universe: Finals Edition

Twilight's Memento Mori: When Rainbow Dash dies of a fatal heart attack after performing a rainboom with Twilight, the Purple Princess of Friendliness ventures into the depths of Hell itself to free her soul from the torments of Neightan.

All of which happens off screen. The story picks up with Rainbow Dash having her scrambled eggs chewed for her by Twilight. Twilight suddenly inhales her mouthful and chokes to death. Rainbow sighs. "Not again..."

Sunset Shimmer and Discord GO TO THE OPTOMETRIST: Discord pranks Sunset Shimmer by blowing a handful of crystal dust into her eyes, reawakening her latent demon side and filling her with a lust for CRISTULLLLLLZ. Discord takes her to an optometrist to get some eye drops.

Unfortunately, the optometrist is the still-spurned Twilight Velvet, who prescribes Sunset a bottle of taco sauce instead of eyedrops. Wat a tweest!

The Meaning of the Stars: Chrysalis is released from her imprisonment, and offers to make amends to a deeply depressed Twilight. Twilight wordlessly gives her a plate of scrambled eggs and leads her into Rainbow Dash's nursery, tripping and breaking her neck six times along the way.

Ashes of the Wheel: A bunch of Horse War 2 veterans perform a ritual to bless the hull of a new battleship. Then the world ends, and they do it again, except they're in high school, blessing the new paint job of someone's totally tubular 'Stang. He's planning to use it to impress the hottest girl in school into going to the end of the year Fearsome Fiesta with him, but the car won't start, there's a badger in the engine block who won't leave, and worst of all, he's got a zit on the end of his nose! And the fiesta's tomorrow!

Major bummage, dude.

The Putri Path: Zecora's hometown is raided one day by the self-proclaimed Malevolent and Fearsome but Also Pretty Hot God-Empress Twilight Twinkle, who wants all of the town's precious taco sauce for her high school's Fearsome Fiesta. Her aide-de-camp, Pinkie Pie, strikes up a conversation with Zecora, and they both agree that this world sucks a lot more than the last one. To undo it, they climb Mt. Zebramenjaro, and ask Nightmare Moon's lingering spirit if she'll maybe reset time.

Nightmare Moon can't really be bothered (she has a lot of trouble with "meaning"). The plan is almost undone when Twilight Twinkle arrives to personally put a stop to it, but she accidentally runs into a tree and snaps her neck, because the curse from the last world followed her to this one. Nightmare Moon laughs, and decides to reset the world out of gratitude for breaking through her clinical depression and helping to remind her what feelings are.

Zecora wakes up to Discord and Demon!Sunset at her door. "D'you have any eyedrops?" Discord asks while chugging a bottle of taco sauce. "The last optometrist we spoke to was unnecessarily hostile."

Zecora smiles. All is as it should be.

>>Posh
10/10 would reset again

Author: I'm afraid that, as a poetry snob, I'm going to have to be the grumpy dissenter here. So much of this is tied up in its Zecora dialogue, and it was rare for me to read a line of Zecora dialogue without wincing. This has severe problems with both rhyme:

“Uncle, I thank you for your kind guidance, yet I must pursue the Path no matter the resistance.”

(Assistance! Assistance!)

[img]https://68.media.tumblr.com/d65199faddc4e37bf776c000987021ac/tumblr_nyqhnq6qMa1uu96c6o1_500.gif[/img]

"No, in the end, the Path was about something much greater, something to strive toward forever after.”

("After" is virtually unrhymable and you may want to recast this whole line. Greater/later? Also acceptable in a slant-rhyme sort of way: …something more/…strive toward.)

… And meter:

"I understand, my unicorn friend. There is much to celebrate when such a parting is at its end."

While writing Zebra couplets allows you some liberties, trying to pile a 16-syllable erratically-stressed ending on a 9-syllable setup just emphasizes the brokenness of the meter.

At times this got especially painful — such as here, when both rhyme and meter were broken, followed by an immediate lampshading that what we just read was supposed to match:

“I… am not… I cannot bear this, my dear teacher! Please, do not depart and leave me here!”
“Ah, dear Little Shade… your Weaver’s Tongue has become so strong… I wonder if you are even capable of the People’s Tongue now."

The only way I can parse this as a Weaver's Tongue couplet is to rhyme "dear" with "here", which slams you to a halt mid-sentence and throws the syllable balance off even further than it already is.

So … poetry tutorials have come up here on occasion. Please forgive me for not reinventing the wheel here; it's better to link (as Corejo did) to a tutorial site like writingrhymeandmeter.com, or to have you click through those old threads (especially the first one Not_A_Hat did) so that you can take a look at the problem in the context of someone else's work. Do a little reading about meter and syllable stress and you'll see an immediate improvement in your work.

I'll also note that I find rhymebrain.com an invaluable resource for writing rhyming poetry on tight time constraints — it's no more cheating than looking up a word's spelling in a dictionary, and can give you a lot of ideas about unexpected ways to bring lines together, especially if you look up rhymes for a couple of synonyms in succession.

Beyond the poetry … mmm. The others praise your story hooks, but I could not enjoy this book. Since couplets broke repeatedly, the rest stood little chance with me. And though this fell to bottom slate, there were things which I did not hate. The alchemy did seem a strength, and it flowed well despite its length. And your intriguing central premise felt executed without blemish.

All of this suggests a Tier
of "Almost There". I'll write that here.

Dammit, everyone. Stop not having watched Back to the Future! You're making me feel old. :raritydespair:

This felt solid as an adventure comedy, though (as noted) it feels like it hits a bit of a wall with the ending, if only because she doesn't entirely restore the status quo, and you're setting up for a rollicking sequel that can't quite materialize in Writeoff space. The plot wiring also feels a little too exposed in places. Though I do love the way the story draws both from its movie source and its ponymovie source to hare off in a different direction from either of them, and Sunset's casual willingness to go along with Discord is a fantastic early subversion.

I really wish more follow-up had been done on the siren meeting. That plot point getting dropped entirely was a major factor in the feeling of incompleteness — it seems at least as worthy of follow-up as the Twilight-parents thing, because on its face it doesn't seem to square with canon.

Those are the major things dragging it down in my voting. Regardless, this was a shamelessly fun read and a clear exemplar of its tier. Jokes landed and the plot and characterization were satisfying. It's a hell of a statement on the general quality this round that there are no less than seven stories above it in my finals rankings. I can think of a few rounds where this would have been a medal contender on my ballot.

Tier: Strong

Unfortunately, I've been busy and out of town for the past week and a half, so I haven't had much of an opportunity to reply around here.

>>Not_A_Hat
>>horizon
No worries; all is forgiven. I actually feel a bit proud that think this could have come from a decent vector source.
Though I think that there might need to be some sort of conversation about trusting artists if we're going to continue to do art rounds. Is it fair to dock someone for just copy-pasting a few preexisting images together? Possibly. *cough*Donut Steel*cough* Is it fair to assume that someone did so simply because it kinda looks like it? Maybe not.
Clearly I have some bias in this situation, and it doesn't help that, as TD clearly demonstrated, anyone sufficiently familiar with the show's vectors will be able to tell that this one is far from perfect (hint: look at the eyelashes), and would never be found in the typical sources of vectors.
But just as we assume that authors have not copied another story they like and just changed some names and turned people into ponies, shouldn't we assume that artists put more work and creativity into their pieces? Admittedly, the analogy is not perfect, as art seems to be more accepting of clearly derivative works than writing. But if anything, that should just make my case stronger.
Anyway, even if I am completely wrong, I think this is a conversation that will need to be had at some point.

>>TitaniumDragon

It is from the 20:13 mark of the second episode of season 1, as it cuts from Pinkie Pie crying after Luna and Celestia reunite to her saying "You know what this calls for? A PARTY!" and as it cuts back to Ponyville.

Ahhhh. That's where it's from. I don't know why I didn't think to check that scene.

Now the rest of your post, I have problems with. It might not have been your intended message, but it seems to me that it basically boils down to "some artistic mediums are inherently inferior to others," which I think is a load of garbage. If I had sketched out the same picture with pencil and paper, would it have automatically have been better?

>>horizon
Stop feeling old, horizon, you're starting to make me feel old too...

Anyway, you and >>Novel_Idea pretty much said everything I was thinking.

You know, this literary discourse is great and all, but nobody besides myself and FrontSevens has mashed anything up, and I find that to be a very sad and lonely state of affairs.

:(

>>Posh
I am usually good for mashups, but I haven't even had time to review any stories. :(

So, another story where the writing is super solid but I have to grumble about other things.

To be blunt, this story really lacks a hook. There's never a moment where the story really grabs me by the arm, yanks me over, and goes "Holy shit, check this out!" It's banking too much on sucking in with mystery when... really the mystery only exists because we're given an out of order narrative.

In a lot of ways this kind of reminds me of an issue I have with a lot of indie horror games that try to emulate Silent Hill 2. They throw the player in weird environments with cool mysterious stuff going and crazy monsters. Just like Silent Hill 2, right? Well, no. For some reason they always seem to forget that Silent Hill 2 opens straight with character and motivation. "I'm James. My wife is dead. But I got a letter that said she's waiting for me here in Silent Hill, so I came to check it out." Bam! Hook! We have a character, we have motivation, we have drama, and we even learn a bit about the state of our main. Once we have that, THEN the game starts sucking us in with the crazy.

Here, we don't have much of that. We lack the context to assign value to what Zecora is doing initially because we can't make value judgments about her choice. Are the zebras right about this being stupid? Is she right about this being important? Is the promise worth anything? Why is the promise so important to her? Etc. We don't need answers to all these questions, but we do need answers to some of them.

Basically, this is a solidly written and, in the end, a neat story, but it never gives me a reason to care about it or get involved.

Night was coming, and winter was coming, and the good things of the world always went away.

This is an achingly beautiful line, even out of context.

The story around it is solid, too. It certainly accomplishes its narrative goals. I just wish that it had engaged me more. >>TitaniumDragon's third paragraph hits uncomfortably close to my reading experience: uncomfortable because I can't be sure how much of that is my general indifference toward the fluff/feels/Slice of Life genre this occupies.

I guess how I feel about this is that it's ... safe? It's a well-told story, but it puts that prose skill into something that points at a destination and then walks toward it in a slow, straight line. The characterization is great, and I do like what flashes of worldbuilding we're shown, but I never felt convinced that the outcome was in doubt, and that takes a lot of the wind out of my enthusiasm sails.

Contrast this with something like Putri Jaran -- similarly strong of prose, and similarly predictable in its arc (It's about pony imperialism! The empire is jerks! Imperialism is bad!) but at least giving us a travelogue of something entirely removed from the show. All other things being equal, the extra risks that story took in rolling its own setting was enough to catapult it most of the way up my slate. Plus, even though "imperialism is bad" is an awfully thin theme, at least that felt like it was trying to be about a theme, as opposed to this one trying to tell us ... what? Sticking by your friends is good? In original fiction, I could spot you that, but this is a pony story, and that's something baked into the setting as much as the protagonists having hooves.

Finally, this feels like a "submitted at the deadline" ending. No shame in that, this is the Writeoffs, but I do have to factor that into my scoring, and I hope that you're making this less abrupt in its edited incarnation.

Tier: Strong

A Top Contender, and yet fifth place on my slate. Sorry, author. You've got some crazy competition this round. Feel proud regardless.

I have to admit, with a trifle of guilt, that without the context of the Writeoffs I wouldn't appreciate this one as much. But it's just so, so delicious that you took one of the crackiest pics in the gallery, interpreted it faithfully and literally, and yet ended up with such a juicy character drama. Where it falls short against the other TCs is in the sense of ... kind of incompleteness, but maybe more lopsidedness? ... that >>CoffeeMinion and >>eusocialdragon reference. That ending with the queen is powerful and tidy, and stops where it needs to, but it feels like there are a lot of dangling threads abandoned by that gear-shift.

Tier: Top Contender

That was funny. Unfortunately I'm both old and haven't seen BttF, so I can't comment much there.

Really, my only complaint is that this definitely needs an editorial pass, as pacing (scene, mostly) is all over the place and pretty haphazard. This story feels a lot like the sort that's a first draft written on a caffeine bender. Just slam out stuff, be funny, and hope it works. Which it does, for the most part.

Neither about colors nor stars. F------------, do not recommend.

Tier: Top Contender

Seriously though, no particular criticism. Enjoyable story, though with the benefit of fridge logic I question why Chrysalis had to be so vague in dreams, forcing Starlight to "figure it out". I mean, yes, she didn't want to reveal herself, but why not say "this is how to defeat the gravity spell" straight out if her goal is to alter the past?

I didn't read this until finals, but it jumped into my upper tier. Not quite past Meaning, but it has none of the structural issues mentioned in my review of the others, so into a solid second place it goes.

>>Posh
Well, let's do something about that!

Excerpt-Based Mashups, "CSI: Equestria" edition

---

The Color Of Memento Mori

“Oh, that’s the map table!” Twilight’s face lit up like the sun with her smile. “Someone has a friendship problem. Let’s go see who’s solving it this time!”

Vinyl only hesitated for a half-second before she stood up. “Cool! I’m nearly—” she started as she stepped out of the shower, but couldn’t finish, the words dying in her throat as she tripped over the shower’s lip and slammed muzzle first into the floor at just the right angle to fatally snap her neck.



The Meaning of Putri Jaran

“Princess, where is Kelon?”

"Smarty Pants makes it go away. I have no idea why.”

Cadence gave back the doll. She let her gaze wander to the other ponies on the street. None of them seemed to even notice the crying Princess in their midst.

“Thank you. You see, when whatever it was went missing, ponies stopped going out, going to work. They stopped mating, and eventually stopped eating. When we asked them why, they always asked back --"

“When is he coming back?”

Miss Twilight blinks a few times. “I don’t know. It’s not up to me.”



Ashes of The Wheel

“Earth ponies want to return from whence they came, pegasi want to fly forever, and unicorns want to be remembered. May all three tribes get their wishes as part of this ship.”

And with those words, he turned the vial over, allowing the ash and debris to fall into the furnace below. Despite the updraft the heat should have created, the flakes fell straight down into the metal, as if weighed down by something heavier than simple carbon.

Iron stepped aside. And one by one a silent procession followed, each old sailor stepping up to the edge, saying a few quiet words, and dumping their container of ashes into the steel below.

Pinkie looked into her cup, and squeezed her eyes shut. She inhaled deeply, and her breath hitched just so.

"To new beginnings."

She downed it in a single gulp, shuddering at the mish-mash of bitter flavors.

Twilight tried to suppress a shudder, but her own distaste was plain on her face. "It's, um... it's really quite... tasty."

"Uh, seriously Twilight?" Spike looked skeptically at the unicorn. "This tastes, like... like, there's a word for how this stuff tastes, but I can't remember it."



Sunset Shimmer and Sombra Visit The Optometrist

“We don’t have to—” the woman began.

“Alright.” Sunset licked her lips.

“Wait, what—”

Sunset grabbed her cheek, ran a thumb across it, then leaned in to press their lips together.

The woman squeaked, and practically melted in Sunset’s arms.

Sombra turned to look, and found himself met with two piles of dust: one as pale and colorless as Quickshine's coat and the other as shimmery and radiant as the finest of—



look it's not my fault that half our finalists were about murder

(Sorry for the delay, everyone)

>>Haze
Legit lolled at each of these. You win the thread. :D

>>Novel_Idea >>Posh >>Kritten >>Fenton >>TitaniumDragon >>FrontSevens >>CoffeeMinion >>eusocialdragon >>Rao >>TheCyanRecluse >>Posh >>horizon >>MLPmatthewl419 >>MLPmatthewl419

7th place huh? This makes the 4th Sunset story I've gotten 7th with. :3

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! Your feedback was all very useful. I've already got a pretty solid idea on what needs to be changed and edited to fix some of the issues with the story, and if I'm punctual about it, you might see the story up on fimfiction by Monday. I've even got a coverart for it already.

The story was definitely written in a rush, and still ended up the longest writeoff entry I've ever done.

Frontsevens:

The eighties things were sort of… there, their only real involvement being scenery where the narrator takes a minute to sightsee and go “Look, the eighties! Leg warmers! Some crooner singing about the power of love wink wink”. I feel like how I put that is a bit harsh, but that’s honestly the vibe I got from it. The references were just references and weren’t enough to interest me. I think I would’ve liked more involvement in that sense, I suppose, if at all; making leg warmers plot-relevant or forming jokes where the punchy bit of the joke isn’t just the phrase “leg warmers”.

You're not wrong. Most of the story was written on Sunday, and as I sat there writing, I realized I couldn't actually think of any particularly clever or in depth 80s references, and didn't have time to do the research or have an editor around to consult. So it ended up being rather shallow.

Rao:

I'm not 100% sure if him shaking off water a bit later is the joke I think it is, but I sure as hell hope I read it right. Can confirm, ladies love the bikes.

I'm glad somebody mentioned this. It was my favorite joke and it still makes me giggle.

Horizon:

I really wish more follow-up had been done on the siren meeting. That plot point getting dropped entirely was a major factor in the feeling of incompleteness — it seems at least as worthy of follow-up as the Twilight-parents thing, because on its face it doesn't seem to square with canon.

Honestly, I figure Sonata probably forgot about the whole event within a few days, let alone thirty years. Humans all look the same to her. Either way, my planned changes also involve some improvements to Sonata's role, so we'll see how that pans out.


Thanks again, and I'll see you all again in another writeoff!

>>Haze
Nice... lol.



Oh, and btw, congrats to the winners.

>>Novel_Idea >>Kritten >>Fenton >>Posh >>Rao >>horizon >>Cold in Gardez >>CoffeeMinion

Thank you for all of your input. I really only managed to wrap my head around the idea Saturday evening, and wrote it down in one big top-to-bottom chunk on Sunday. Considering this, I'm quite happy how it turned out, but I apologize for any nightmares my story may have caused.

Novel_Idea:

The beginning of this story felt… too thick, I guess is the best explanation. Especially considering that this is an action scene, the sentences are simply too long. In fact, I’m not even sure the first paragraph is needed, because the second has the appropriate feeling of an action scene. And the further I get in… it almost seems as if it was done by another author entirely.

The thing is that it doesn't start out as an action scene... at least that was my intent. Cadence got dropped into reality and is being accelerated towards the ground by gravity, but she's so far in her head that she fails to take action for a bit, before her instincts kick in. I'll try to rework the beginning to make that clearer. Your observations about my writing may very well stem from me being a bit rusty and just getting back into the groove of things as I was writing. Like I said, it was one big 11 hour sitting I wrote this in, and I went for an instant editing pass, but those usually don't yield much improvement... having a week or so between writing and editing yields the best results in my experience.

Kritten:

If you have a really good concept for the story, you shouldn't force your audience to read through things that can be summarized with a quick sentence or two, or better yet, not at all. The entire beginning part could've been skipped, alongside a couple events here and there.

I could be snarky about this and say that everything can be summarized in a quick sentence or two, but I get where you're coming from. Since this is a very strange story in that it lacks a real plot or character development though, I feel that it needs the setup to turn the concept into a blow. Otherwise I could just as well write the summary and be done with it. "Cadence cast a spell that turned love into hate, Twilight cured it by accidentally getting rid of all emotions, ponykind went extinct and Equestria is now populated by robots." /story

Even in stories that have plot and character arcs, there are passages that don't directly contribute to either. In e.g. LotR, one of the most memorable bits and mystical passages for me was the part in the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil. They cut that one in the films completely, because, like I said, they don't contribute to the main meat of the story.

In this day and age, most things are streamlined to perform a certain task, and people don't move unless they have a destination. This translates into fiction as well, but I don't think it necessarily should.

I'm sorry it didn't work for you, but I don't think I'll be changing a whole lot of the pacing.

Fenton:

It seems you wanted to arrive as soon as possible at the moment with Cadence and Twilight but you still wrote two big scenes. The scenes felt weak and rushed. [...] Moreover, even if the story is from Cadence's POV, I think you should stick closer to her. Sometimes it seems like you were going away from her eyes and it didn't help to feel her pain and sadness.

That's valuable feedback, and I see the weakness, too. I'll try to up the quality of the prose and, like you said, make it closer to Cadence's POV to remedy that. I have a very easy time writing first person, but in third limited, I still struggle a lot to stick to a certain character proximity in POV, and it shows in this entry.

Posh:

I'll mention that Cadance's dialogue feels unusually stilted and unemotional [...]

I tried to have her more formal since the last time she's met Celestia and Twilight, they were in all-out confrontation. I think it would feel unnatural to go back to chummy dialogue, and not being overtly emotional is also a way of being polite in my eyes. I'll have a lookout and re-asses line for line during editing, though.

What she did is apparent. Why she did it... I don't really grasp that. Nor do I fully understand the significance of Smarty Pants.

Yeah, I dropped a hint but didn't really expand enough to have enough information in the story to let readers guess. My head-canon was that Twilight had taken in Flurry as a student, which meant moving to Ponyville, spending less time with her mother, and also having someone else to look up to. Shining Armor could've started spending more time with Twilight as well, the brother-sister bond gaining more importance as the marriage with Cadence grew older. In short, emotional attachment turning love into hate through jealousy. Maybe I can work this in more clearly.

As for Smarty Pants, I just wanted the image of a filly starting to cry without her plush toy to contrast it against the emotional numbness. Just like with Celestia, it was also to show that, while they don't feel it consciously, their bodies still express signs of distress.

Rao: Thank you for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

horizon: Thank you for the encouraging words. I'm really glad the story and the slow setup worked so well for you... really gives me the confidence to stick to the pacing.

She's woken up by a bird in the morning, but the night is deathly silent? Where are the night animals?

Yeah, I mostly turned the night deathly silent to imply that the autmatons populating the city shut off all at once instead of petering out, that's why I mentioned the bustling city a few times before. The bird was just something I came up with on the spot and went with without giving it thorough thought. I guess I'll scratch it during editing.

Also, thank you for all the other nitpicks, they'll come in very handy.

(BTW, I don't have a story in the RCL yet, but Horse Voice recommended one of my stories a few weeks back. I don't know how quick your process is, but you might want to hold back on judging it then and see which, if any, of the stories is worthy.)

Cold in Gardez:
Thank you for your well-meant critique. I was aware I was pulling a bit of an M. Night Shyamalan move with this story. I had planned for Cadence to come from her banishment un-reformed first, and trying to unleash revenge with her emotion-based magic once more, only to find it utterly ineffective, and developing her from there to where she's at the end of the story.

I decided against it though: A) because I didn't know if I could pull it off in the time frame I had for writing, and B) because I didn't know if I could pull if off convincingly at all. It would've meant Cadence trying to do a whole lot of things to no effect, and I'd have to address the changed nature of the pony population much earlier or find ways to distract from it, compared to if she'd come back trying to fit back in. I think that's the idiot ball issues horizon spoke of in his answer to your review.

I'm not saying it cannot be done, though. Just probably not by me.

CoffeeMinion: Thank you for mentioning all the things you liked about it. Although critical feedback is good to improve, feedback such as your's is also very valuable so I know what not to cut! :)

So actually I feel like the reveal could be a lot stronger if we got the part about synthetics right at the end.

I definitely see the merit in that. I'll try rework the last scene a bit to move it further back!

AndrewRogue:

I also run into a bit of a logistical issue in that it feels... wrong for Twilight to have forgotten what emotions are, if that makes? I mean, of course, it is difficult to imagine having no emotions at all (or lacking them for a thousand years), but her reactions just don't quite click right with me

I see what you mean, I found that "the thing we've lost" business a bit grating, too, when I re-read it the next day. I'll have to think of a way to hide that a bit, but I still think having her address "meaning" as the thing that was worst losing is important. She and Celestia struggle with it, but they've found a way to deal with the loss of emotions.

Additional Thanks to Cassius: I don't think I'd been able to come up with this concept if it weren't for the Automating Friendship artwork. I've really loved this "prompt begets art begets stories" experiment, and hope it'll become a regular thing.

I'm astonished at just how well this did, considering how little I thought of it. It didn't crack the top three, but it came close...ish. Provided you don't look too carefully at the results.

This story's been in my head for a little while now, actually. I've had it listed on my profile as a coming attraction, albeit with a different title and an impenetrably obtuse description, for about a month or so. For the first time since I started participating in these contests, a prompt matched an idea that I'd already had, and while I did my best to come up with something different, I ultimately went ahead with it, against my own misgivings.

Of which I had several. The reviews I got enumerated many of the story's most dire flaws; add to it the ones I picked out in my own dissection, and the end result is a story which I consider the weakest product I've ever submitted to a Writeoff. I'm glad it resonated with so many people, but to be perfectly blunt, your taste appalls me.

...I'm kidding. It is actually encouraging that I got a positive response to this story.

So I think the biggest issues people took with this story were the pacing and the ending. The ending was something I flip-flopped on repeatedly. I don't think I was, emotionally speaking, in the best place when I conceived the story, and whether or not I bothered showing the rebirth of the world sort of depended on my mood at any given time. There were moments where I just wanted to leave the story on Twilight ending reality as she knew it, and other, more level-headed and less nihilistic moments, where I wanted to emphasize the rebirth aspect of this cycle of death and rebirth, and leave readers on something hopeful and optimistic. I think that's why the ending is so overwritten.

I could have had my cake and eaten it too, though; I could have shown the reborn world without belaboring it, and going into detail about so many things which were not important to explore. I suppose I just wanted to be thorough in depicting a living, breathing, functional reality. Still, bulking it up to the extent that I did meant cutting out what I consider a pivotal scene in the story.

I wanted to do more with the time loop aspect of Wheel, and play around with the S1E1 setting. The only concrete idea I had, however, was Pinkie Pie meeting Zecora in the Everfree after her failed attempt to communicate with the Tree of Harmony. They'd have a conversation that recalled Zecora's treatment in Bridle Gossip, and Pinkie would make an effort to befriend her, eventually admitting that she came out to the woods with the intention of doing something drastic. She sort of talks around the issue, but it would gradually be revealed that Zecora is also aware of the time loop, though not to the same extent as Pinkie (being more attuned to the natural world than your average pone, Zecora would have had a feeling of deja vu, rather than a full understanding of who and what and why). She would encourage Pinkie to put a stop to it, giving Pinkie the resolve she needed to go through with her "something drastic," showing the moment she decides to kill herself and fake!Twilight.

Also, she would have gotten the poison in this scene. Zecora would have been picking toxic 'shrooms, and would have said "oh, be careful with these mushrooms, they will make your brain go boom if you eat them, something something beat them. Rhyming's hard."

There's one last thing I want to mention, before I start responding to comments, the one thing that I'm disappointed nobody picked up on (which indicates to me that I, ultimately, failed to convey my message). That's the meta aspect of this story. I wanted it to be a commentary on the state of FiM, as it relates to the MLP franchise as a whole, as an iteration on a brand which will, inevitably, end, and be replaced by something else. Something familiar, yet altogether different. FiM still has at least two seasons and a feature film in the offing, plus Equestria Girls and the comics, but there are fewer years ahead than there are behind. It will end, probably sooner rather than later, and when it ends, all that'll be left is us. Us, and our memories of the show, and whatever fandom remains. Pinkie's insistence that there's someone else watching is supposed to be an acknowledgement to the reader/viewer. Someday, this'll all be over, and all that'll be left is you and your memory of who these characters were and the world that they inhabited.

The message I wanted to send is that it's okay to say goodbye to the show. What comes next won't be the same, but we'll still have our memories of the old world, and the new one'll still have a meaning of its own. Probably. Unless they go the Teen Titans Go!/PowerPuff Girls route, and make G5 a soulless, half-baked meme-comedy with zero value or staying power. In which case, maybe using a trite, clicheic high school setting as ~the new world~ was soooomething of a mixed message. Heh.

...Anyway, enough of that.

>>horizon

The *entire* real-Twilight scene, basically, ends in the same place it starts off. It retreads a lot of ground that the scene starting with Pinkie waking up already (effectively) covers: the stakes of the big plot decision and the arguments upon which it turns. It feels to me like Twilight's decision was finalized before breaking Pinkie out of the simulation, which means that the entire real-Twilight scene doesn't move your story at all.

I see your point. I think, to address that, I can move some of the dialogue from that sequence to the previous one, in the library, and make the latter scene a much shorter denouement to the previous ones.

(Nitpick: It also raises questions about how exactly Pinkie is manifesting in real-Twilight's reality, given that she appears to have been created in Twilight's simulation and to not actually exist on real-Twilight's level.)

Details cut from the writeoff draft would have suggested that faux-Equestria existed on the Map Table. Twilight essentially killed the entire simulation besides Pinkie Pie in order to have that last conversation with her on the table itself.

>>Fenton

For me, I stick to the latter. That's why I was talking about a sparkle of hope. I hold that sparkle close to my heart, as hard as I can, because I want to see the characters' decisions to not be vain and I want to be able to make the same decision if I were at their place.

I apologize in advance for stepping on your interpretation of the story, but... yeah, the world ended. Twilight didn't start a new fake reality; she reset the real one. Or, rather, she stopped preventing the real one from being reset.

>>Novel_Idea

You get major bonus points from me for making Sunset and Twi sisters, but that's because I'm biased as hell regarding Sunset. And Twilight Twinkle? Moon Dancer's name for her? Priceless. I also like how Pinkie Pie is the same. Somehow... I have a feeling she's a universal constant.

Pinkie's like Patches from 'Souls. Unbreakable. And, sometimes, a spider.

"Twilight Twinkle" was more of a mythology gag than that, though; it was the name of a character in a previous MLP gen, and was also the original name for Twilight Sparkle in G4. Copyright kept Lauren Faust from using it, iirc, so she cheekily renamed her to Twilight Sparkle. Which, personally, I like a lot more.

>>Novel_Idea

That being said... I'd definitely read a series about Twilight Twinkle and her new friend Pinkie Pie. That... sounds like some fun times.

I wonder if it says something about my ability as a writer that so many people enjoyed the trite high school setting... :P

Either way, thank you for your kind words. I'm gratified that this story made such an impact on you (on Fenton, too, needless to say).

>>AndrewRogue

Also Pinkie's drastic action really feels tonally out of sync with everything else.

Yeah, I agree. I came to the same conclusion in my own self-critique. I think changing her characterization somewhat, and giving her more of an arc (showing her making the decision to kill herself, rather than starting the story with her intending to do "something drastic") would address this point somewhat.

Oh, and there is a bit of problem that the ending -really- seems to fly in the face of Twilight's assertion. This seems like pretty standard reincarnation in a lot of ways, which heavily contradicts here "there's nothing" assurity. If she was -afraid- there was nothing it'd be fine, but she seemed 100% sure.

It's not that there's "nothing" after this. The end of one universe heralds the start of another, and the old world is recycled to make the new. Twilight knows this. Her crisis isn't that the universe will end without a chance of a rebirth. It's that, in being reborn, all the baggage of the previous one is swept away, and she doesn't want her life, and the lives of her friends, to be a cosmic shaggy dog story. They lived, and died, and then they were forgotten, because any possibility of them ever being remembered, and any traces of their existence, have simply stopped. The new world has no memory of the one before, so Twilight and Equestria are forgotten.

Hence why she chooses to hold it back, and preserve the memory of Equestria.

Thanks also to everyone who I didn't respond to (>>Monokeras, >>Rao, >>CoffeeMinion, and >>wYvern); I promise I found your feedback helpful and/or encouraging, and I appreciate your taking the time to read my awful, awful story.

And, jokes about sour grapes aside, congrats to our medalists. :)

(All the cool kids are doing this, so might as well try it out.)

Well, for a first-time Writeoff, Path did a hell of a lot better than I expected. Frankly, I was really looking forward to the end of the Prelims so I could put this thing to bed. The very last thing I expected was to making it to the freaking Finals. Especially since a personal bombshell hit me a day before this entire thing started, one I’m still reeling from. Like... life-shaking sort of thing. I’m shocked it came out coherent at all. That weekend was a nightmare in more ways than I can say.

Let’s get the basics out of the way: this concept was not suited for a Writeoff. This was a story that needed way more time than I could afford to give it. In fact, I would have likely done some sort of Philomena story instead, but I wasn’t about to do that Cigar thing. I like Philomena too much to do that to her. But then I stumbled across “A Thousand Years” image and it just screamed for me to tell that story. Then I did what I usually do: discovery write the entire thing with a vague idea of where I wanted to go.

The truth is, I had this idea bouncing around in my head for a while as a sequence of four stories, each from a different race other than ponies. Zecora was the one I wanted to end on… but… well, she was also the only one I had a fleshed out story for without a ton of worldbuilding.

So yeah, all I ended up doing for Zecora’s speech patterns was using a low-tier online rhyming dictionary, and I focused on the last word. This was the first story I’ve done where I didn’t have time to do my standard audible edit, and of course, it’s the story that needed that the most. All I had to do was read the dang thing out loud and I would have been able to fix probably 70-80% of the problems. But… I wasn’t able to.

>>FrontSevens

You seemed to set the tone, ironically. A lot of people just went meh. I’m curious where was the point you stopped reading though. And I wasn’t expecting anyone to tell me a story of mine was “too rich.” I'm actually honored by that!

As for Zecora’s combat… that was an issue I knew going in. I didn’t see Zecora fighting a timberwolf in the traditional manner, and I wanted to stick with the idea I have about timberwolves being feral earth spirits. To stick with the shamanistic style, she wouldn’t fight such things head-on. And the “Catnap Elixir” felt like a cheat… but honestly? I didn’t quite know how to solve that (especially in the word count allotted), but I needed something to highlight the conflict. Hm. Might be worth maybe moving the Zebra fight to the beginning.

>>Posh

Oh. So that's what "the stars will aid her escape" meant.

There’s got to have been stories that have dealt with this before, I just haven’t come across them, but lately that line has been in my head.

(also, hey, it's Starswirl! Not that it matters, really, but... it's Starswirl. Yay?)

Yeah. He needed to be handled differently. I’m not even sure I knew who he was when I first put the figure there.

I also feel like Zecora's rhyming was of inconsistent quality, which is... just one of the hazards of dealing with a whimsical rhyming zebra, I suppose.

...stupid rhyming Zebras.

>>Fenton; >>Posh  - Raven

Dubs pointed it out, but just wanted to make sure it was addressed. Raven is indeed Celestia’s aide (or at least one of them). She’s been a favorite of mine since SaintChoc’s Raven, which pretty much permanently cemented her in my mind as an aide. I’ve thought about her like that for so long, it never even occurred to me that some might not know who she is.

The only catch is I’m not quite sure how to fix that within the confines of the story.

>>Fenton Thank you! Before this comment, I was starting to regret writing the whole thing. :P

>>wYvern What was that thing that engaged you late in the story?

“Eee? Core? Ah?”

This was really cute, though.

Yay! I’m glad folks liked this. I personally thought it was adorable… but what I think and what is isn’t always the same (hell, it’s rarely the same).

>>Rao Thank you! I’m glad I got a few comments. This story really jived for some… really didn’t for others! Well, I guess strong reactions one way or another is good, right?

>>Dubs_Rewatcher Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

>>TheCyanRecluse

I love the way each flashback and labeled, and each one moves backward in time, while the story moves forward.

This was actually a lot of fun. I did several translations into Swahili (and made sure to translate it back and forth to be sure it was the right word) and stayed with that theme, as the words Brenda M. Crichlow used in “Bridle Gossip” were based loosely on the language (since they couldn’t get a translator/coach in there to do it properly). I also have no idea where I came up with the idea for going backward and forward at the same time. Just happened.

>>horizon

Author: I'm afraid that, as a poetry snob, I'm going to have to be the grumpy dissenter here.

The moment I read this, I went “Aw crap. I’m screwed.” I have confessed my sins. Seeing you outdo me in the comment was a painful lesson. You win, you win! ^^;

>>AndrewRogue

I was surprised you didn’t figure out that I wrote it when I asked you about it the other night. ^^;

Anyway, just saying thanks for good feedback (and it was all really solid feedback). I have learned one very important lesson: stay the hell away from Zecora for Writeoffs. And thank you again for being charitable enough to rate this into the finals!

>>Novel_Idea

“We cannot allow you to follow the Path any longer, Weaver,” said the stallion. “Your actions would destroy us all.”

This was the first line that heralded some meaningful conflict.

>>wYvern Perfect! That dovetails with my revision of moving that conflict to the beginning of the story.

So sorry I didn't get this one read *during* the period or had it come up in my slate. Excellent.

Best. Ending. Ever. *splat*

>>Posh

There's one last thing I want to mention, before I start responding to comments, the one thing that I'm disappointed nobody picked up on (which indicates to me that I, ultimately, failed to convey my message). That's the meta aspect of this story. I wanted it to be a commentary on the state of FiM, as it relates to the MLP franchise as a whole, as an iteration on a brand which will, inevitably, end, and be replaced by something else. Something familiar, yet altogether different. FiM still has at least two seasons and a feature film in the offing, plus Equestria Girls and the comics, but there are fewer years ahead than there are behind. It will end, probably sooner rather than later, and when it ends, all that'll be left is us. Us, and our memories of the show, and whatever fandom remains. Pinkie's insistence that there's someone else watching is supposed to be an acknowledgement to the reader/viewer. Someday, this'll all be over, and all that'll be left is you and your memory of who these characters were and the world that they inhabited.

You know, I got the idea a meta interpretation from this story but since I've rambled last time about everyone calling stories meta, I kept my mouth shut.
The meta interpretation I got isn't exaclty the one you described.
For me, I saw Twilight as the obsessed fan of MLP who constantly rewatch the episodes, hoping to find again the little spark(again) he got the first time he has watched the show. So he keeps on rewatching and rewatching, to the point that his whole life is MLP centered, until one day, one of his relatives comes to explain that his obsession isn't healthy, that this is not living. And thus, he finally let go and start to live again.

I apologize in advance for stepping on your interpretation of the story, but... yeah, the world ended. Twilight didn't start a new fake reality; she reset the real one. Or, rather, she stopped preventing the real one from being reset.

You have every right to step on my interpretation, or any other one but in the end, even if a reader's interpretation isn't the one you wanted him to have, he will keep it, no matter what. And in this case, I gather that what you wanted to say is what I heard so it's good.

>>Posh
I find the end of FiM to be a sobering thought. It feels like I just got here! I missed the "peak" years everyone gets all nostalgic about! I've no idea what the community was like before, but I'm still impressed by it now.

I also question if it's really ending. Two seasons and a movie is a lot of certainty and financial commitment from the powers that be if it's really heading downhill.

Or maybe I'm in denial. I don't want the ride to end, I really don't. Maybe I'll run out of stories to write, but there are still far more than I could ever read.

But to the story's point, I suppose the differences between this and what comes after aren't reason enough to give up and refuse to acknowledge the passing of time and the changes it brings. But even there, FiM and its community have changed as well, and it isn't done changing. Could the hardest thing be for those who did see the glory days to accept the good-but-not-as-good of what's come since?

I propose to contemplate this over nachos.

>>wYvern
What I've come to find when it comes to detailing worldbuilding in just about every medium of art, whether it be in writing, video games, or art, is that worldbuilding is only entertaining for those who want to look for it. You see games like Fallout where to get a good grasp of life before the bombs--that is before Fallout 4--in it's brilliant placement of props and the such to give short stories as to people's lives before encountering their fate. You'd have to explore and actively think about what you want people to find. Minor things could also be inserted with dialogue, like I did with my story, noted in the comments, where it has to be read and actually dissected in order to be fully understood. Being told the life before the setting is never interesting for me, as it stalls from the actual story from the beginning. This is especially when I have to sit in front of blocks of words. But if you find it necessary, then I won't be capable of stopping you.

Putri Jaran

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading my story, Putri Jaran, aka "Imperialism and Javanese Puns: the Story."

As >>horizon guessed, the inspiration for this fic came from misinterpreting pretty much everything in Ello Gov'na. The first few times I passed the picture in the gallery, my automatic assumption was that the chimney brush was a palm tree, the smoke in the background was a cloudy sky, and the other buildings in the background were the ruins of a shantytown-sort-of-area. As such, my mind immediately jumped to Atlantic colonial literature, a genre I have some background in. I eventually realized what Haze had actually drawn, yes, but by that point I already had the idea stuck in my mind of Equestrian imperialism, told through the POV of the foal in the artwork.

However, despite having the idea clear in my mind, I really had no time to write that weekend. I spent most of the weekend working on some academic essays, and then once I was done with those—barely ten hours before the deadline—I still had workshop responses to write. I only started really planning out Putri Jaran about five hours before the deadline, which left me with four hours to write and (not really) edit.

As such, there's a metric ton of content that I had planned to write, but just didn't have time to. This content includes:

-More character development for Kesu!
-More character development for Tresna!
-More character development for Twilight!
-More character development for everyone!
-An actual follow-through on the secret political meetings storyline!
-IMPLIED STABBINGS!

So, yeah, I've already got loads of stuff that needs to be added in. I'm sorry for submitting an incomplete story—I hope nobody was too frustrated with it.

Before we get to replies, an explanation of all the names—the alternate language used in this is mostly Javanese, with a few exceptions that I'll note.

Kesu: from the Javanese kesucian for innocence
Tresna: Love
Piandel: Magic
Pinter: Smart (he's gonna have a bigger role in the rewrite too)
Kelon: Melon
Daya: Power
Putri Jaran: Princess of Horses
Enom: Young
Wedi: Fear

I think that's all of them. As you can see, they're all pretty on the nose—I might change a few upon expansion. Although I like the sound similarity between putri and putrid.

>>Novel_Idea
>>Haze
Agreed on all counts. Thanks for reading!

>>TitaniumDragon
Disagree with the first point, agree with the second. I'll do my best to show why this situation is unique in the rewrites.
Thanks for reading!

>>Fenton
We already talked about this yesterday morning, but thanks again for reading. And I appreciate the comparison to Kettle's story.

>>Posh
>>horizon
Hard disagree with the complaints about Twilight not working in this story. Based on everything I've seen of Twilight—and I've watched the whole show, and I have a pretty good memory I'd like to think—I can more than see Twilight as someone who, consciously or unconsciously, puts the Equestrian national imaginary above all. I can totally see her having so much trust in her country that she can excuse any sort of wrongdoing on its part. And I can totally see her being so enthusiastic about her upbringing and everything she's been taught is "right" that she'd be overeager, if not zealous, to bring other ponies into her fold.

That being said, this is something I can explore with more detail in rewrites: the seeming contradiction between Twilight being a pony of understanding and friendship, and yet being blinded by her own nationalism/patriotism.

A few notes about the statue thing for Horizon: I didn't intend for it to seem like Twilight is "giving up" on Piandel after it's beheaded. I was trying to imply more that her rose-colored glasses have come off, and she's realizing that assimilating the island into Equestrian culture isn't going to be as easy as she thought. Remember, also, that it's a statue of Celestia—I can totally see Twilight being personally offended at it being defaced.

>>Posh
To be fair, it's not like the book she wrote was exactly original, or even based on experience. It was basically just a summary of another book she had read, condensed into bullet points. Hell, they even comment on how the guidebook is unfinished, because Twi doesn't know anything outside of what the other book has told her.

Thank you both for reading, though. XP

>>MLPmatthewl419
Oh, well. Thanks for trying anyway.
(And for guessing me correctly... do you just know me as the boring guy? ;) )

>>Cold in Gardez
Agreed on all counts. See what I wrote at the top for something of an explanation. Sorry for the disappointment.
Thanks for reading!

>>horizon
Agreed.
I already thanked you, silly!

>>CoffeeMinion
Well now I'm never recommending your story to the RCL folk >:V
Just kidding. I mostly agree with your comments. Thanks for reading!

>>AndrewRogue
I'll grate you, you son of a bitch.
Thanks for the compliments, though. And thanks for reading.


Extra thanks to Haze for drawing Ello Gov'na, the best picture in the competition. A true triumph of the human spirit, really.

>>RogerDodger
I thought the drawing time was absolutely fine, but I thought that the voting phase was too long.

This title took way longer to come up with than it should have and took like, six iterations before I settled on this version. Roughly speaking, it means something along the lines of "The Art of Living: Remember That You Have to Die."

Probably. I failed Latin twice in college.

Anyhow, real talk, I was just about ready to skip this round because I was burned out, but then Haze went and drew a Vinyl and Octavia picture. And I was all "Goddammit. I can't very well not write when a literal invitation to do TaviScratch is stuck out there. That would shame me immensely. I mean, I have a bunch of TaviScratch art on the wall immediately behind my computer. How can I chicken out now?"

Which left the question of what to write about. And I'll be honest, I don't quite remember how I got to the idea for the story. I'm pretty sure it was some logical chain of thought along "Well, what would be amusing for Octavia to do under these circumstances? Kill Vinyl. How do I make that romantic?" And, well, you see the result.

The story arc was mostly a natural consequence of the way I write. I hadn't actually intended for the story to take the turn it did, that's just what I ended up writing because I'm not good at sustaining humor. The idea of treating Vinyl's condition a bit like a serious illness that requires constant care just sorta came to me, and that framed the remainder of the arc. That said, as usual, the problem with the way I write is that coming to that conclusion as I'm writing means I have to build additional detail back in, and the Writeoff often leaves limited time for that, so I leaned pretty heavily on the Pale Trotter to motivate there.

I will shamelessly admit right now that I am unduly proud of the last line of the story and suspect it may be one of the better closing lines I've written.

>>Haze
re: build-up: Yeah, can't argue that. I think it'd really sell things a bit better to just solidify the conflict a bit more. Just get them to the point where Octavia is a bit exhausted of dealing with Vinyl, and Vinyl feels that.

re: technical details: Another yeah. I actually wanted to make a point about the curse only being dangerous to Vinyl, but nopony besides Octavia feeling comfortable about it anyway (e.g. if she attended Tavi's concert, she'd had a radius of empty seats around her).

>>Novel_Idea
That is far too kind a comparison. The Pale Trotter has little on Death, though there was definitely some... inspiration there? (Also a very brief temptation to USE ALL CAPS, but I restrained myself.)

>>Posh
I am indeed not Majin. Though I did briefly consider while I was writing that this indeed did have some similarities to Solving for Death.

>>shinygiratinaz
Thank you kindly.

>>Fenton
I'm gonna address all these re: backstory comments down at the bottom. Bear with me.

>>TitaniumDragon
I am completely satisfied knowing at least one person who wasn't me laughed out loud at that.

>>Rao
Pale Trotter is a true bro(?)

>>CoffeeMinion
And here I was worried I shifted the tone a bit too dark too quickly. Good to hear it sounds like my transition was a bit better than I thought it was.

I wanted to address the unmitigated happy ending thing. I can sorta see what you mean with it, and I suspect I can plumb those depths a bit more, but there was very much a concerted effort here to... well, reject the oft common answer of taking the escape option and portray that a couple who really, truly love each other might want to milk their time together for all that it's worth, even if there is pain and suffering involved. Fight for what they have, as it were.

Beyond that, agreed that I lean way too heavily on the Trotter for both swings on Vinyl's end. I thiiiiiiink there is something to be said for him contributing (there is some cuteness to him relenting to the idea of "You know what, you two really do love each other"), but it really needs to be Vinyl's concern and Vinyl's choice.

>>georg
I'd complain you cost me gold but hahahahahaha no.

RE: BACKSTORY

So, since this came up, I thought I'd talk about this since I'm STILL undecided how to address this during revision since I see feelings both ways.

There was a period where I was considering adding a brief bit of spiked narration after scene 1 or 2 that was a very silly and brief "how we got here" sort of narration involving a misguided attempt by Twilight (drunk on her recent successes) to reform the Alicorn princess of death, Muerte Death. This met with unfortunate results as Tavi was recruited (unwillingly) to be one of her Dreadknights and, unfortunately, Murete Death's defeat did not restore her, forcing Vinyl to go on an epic quest into the depths of Tartarus, dropping some sick beats on the keepers of souls, and trading herself for Tavi. Tavi, in turn, marched straight to Twilight, said "this is your fucking fault, fix it" and thus some hard won friendship speeching and paperwork bought Vinyl a reprieve that allowed her soul to remain post-mortem and Tavi to restore any damage done.

However, Vinyl is still marked for death by the universe (think of it like Equestria has the whole Discworld death hourglass thing going on, and Vinyl's has either distinctly run out or just sort of flows randomly now), thus the current situation.

I obviously decided to pass on including it for the moment because my current version of it is derpy and a little too much for a quick summary and I thought it was a bit funnier to just let it hang in the background. I've had some non-writeoff suggestions on things to do with it (including involve Discord, potentially replace the Trotter with him, but I'm walking back on that). I've also been mulling a more compact and punchier joke to potentially use.

So yeah. That's where I was (and I guess, still am) with that. We'll have to see where my brain takes me.

Anyhow, as usual, thanks to everyone and I'm glad you all enjoyed it.

>>AndrewRogue

(Also a very brief temptation to USE ALL CAPS, but I restrained myself.)

I normally would be all for that... but this is Death we're talking about. He looks at the rules of the universe and says "BUCK THAT. I'M DEATH. I DO WHAT I WANT!"

>>RogerDodger

Should we do this again? If so, how often?

Definitely. It was really interesting to base stories on pictures than on a single sentence.
I suggest to alternate between art rounds and normal rounds. For example, the next Fim Short Story won't be an art round and then the next will be. Same thing with every other kind of rounds (Fim Mini, Original Short Story, Original Mini)

Is the drawing time appropriate?

I can't really say. On one hand, having four days let the opportunity for artists to really work on a single entry and polish it. On the other hand, four days let the opportunity to enter several pieces.
Maybe only three days, maybe allowing to submit only X pieces. I don't really know.

Is the voting system appropriate?

The other possibility that I can see is to have a slate, just like what we have for fics. However, it seems that pretty much everyone has ranked all the pictures.
(Maybe add guessings for the arts?)

Do we need any new rules for art rounds?

I can't really say once again. Aside from any rule you could set for the server to handle the round properly, I don't think that we should ask authors to draw with specific tools or anything.

>>RogerDodger

Should we do this again? If so, how often?

Maybe half of the pony short story rounds. I'd say less than half, though.

It would be funny to do it for Minifics by adding a severe restriction, like 100x100 pixels or something. Even as I suggest this, I think it won't turn out nearly as well. Minifics work better with minimalism. Artwork complicates that.

I have a hunch this won't work as well for Original Short Story rounds. Authors can write about anything they choose (potentially for publishing), and using artwork will unnecessarily restrict that. On the other side, artists would have too little restriction, since they can't draw fanart of recognizable characters. The art might become more vague or even abstract. I suspect it would be less fun than it was here.

Is the drawing time appropriate?

I did all of mine within one day - maybe an hour for each at most. I think most others spent similar time.
Some authors are busy for 2 of the writing days, but still produce a good entry within that 1 last day.
The drawing time is fine; it's to give artists at least one day to work on something, since it's not even over a weekend.

Assuming artists should spend several days to polish a masterpiece is a mistake. I was more worried about quantity and variety. During the writing period, many regulars said they couldn't find anything inspiring, and I thought we'd have fewer fics than usual. The turnout was still on par, but I suspect it would've dropped if we had fewer drawings. My feeling is we got lucky and had just the right number of art entries. I don't agree with limiting multiple submissions.

(this goes back to why I'm unsure minific art rounds would work. we'd need a lot of pictures to cover the huge variety of minifics we usually get)

Is the voting system appropriate?

idk

Do we need any new rules for art rounds?

I'm not sure what the captions add to the creative process, it adds too much text to the prompts. Here it seems it was used either for jokes, or artist commentary explaining a picture. the jokes are harmless, but I'd rather not have the explanations.

the lightbulb award seems awkward when there's a 4-way tie. fics were spread more evenly than I expected, but they could also choose multiple drawings. we'll probably see more ties in the future.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
For my guesses, I went with authors I know first... then the others I assigned randomly based on how familiar with the author's name I am. So, no. You are not "the boring guy" xD.

>>RogerDodger
I'm just going to add my tidbit as a regular artist.

Should we do this again? If so, how often?

I've done several art contests before, but this is actually the first time I did this kind of thing where instead of gaining some type of prize, the writers would write a story about a piece of art. Essentially, the artist gets to see the their piece 'come to life', so to speak. Personally, I enjoyed reading the various stories on different pieces and how the writers interpreted a image.

I think I would do this again and about how often, well, I guess it depends if the writers feel up to having drawings or images as prompts.

Is the drawing time appropriate?

It's really under the condition on the artist's quality of art and what they are drawing. If I wanted to get serious and use my painting style art, it would usually take me a day or two if I had free time, which isn't much lately. I believe the four days is appropriate.

The type of prompt and type of story the writer is writing also contributes to this, but I don't know. So a day or two depending on the type of story the writers would be writing.

Is the voting system appropriate?

I did think the length of voting time was a bit excessive. I get it if it's a story since some takes longer to read than others, but for art I think 3 or 4 days would be find which would give enough time for those in different time zones.

I don't have any other personal opinions on this topic besides voting on a art piece really depends on a person's perference on what the art style and the message are.

Do we need any new rules for art rounds?

Probably limit the number of art entries. I think the max of about 2 would be fine.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher

Based on everything I've seen of Twilight … I can totally see her having so much trust in her country that she can excuse any sort of wrongdoing on its part

YOU'RE WRONG. FIGHT ME BRO.

In all seriousness, though: I read stories all the time with headcanon I disagree with. And I stand by my statement later in my original post:

However, you're making Twilight Sparkle reject friendship-based solutions, and if you're gonna do that you need approximately an ocean of lampshading. Every story I've seen make that work has completely fucked her up, on-screen, in some huge way, and the story then extensively explored that fallout.

If this is a thing you think Twilight would do, sell it. I'm willing to listen to an argument about why this particular international dispute is different from Yakyakistan and the Dragon Kingdoms, but it's got to overcome the fact that she is literally doing the sort of thing that gets the Cutie Map flashing danger beacons and pointing ponies-like-her at poor, misguided her. And you further have to explain why she's sending police instead of Pinkie Pie.

The more you do this, the more the story becomes about Twilight falling from her ideals — which is not a problem, just keep that in mind as you plot out theme and focus and plot arc.

More detail in rewrites will be a good thing.

>>horizon
You see, I don't think that—in Twilight's eyes—she is deviating from her ideals. Twilight sees Piandel's "barbarism" as the problem, and imperialism/colonialism as the friendship solution. She sees the forcing of Equestrianism onto them as a kindness—like she's enlightening them to how great a friendship-ruled magical kingdom like Equestria is. And eventually, even if it doesn't seem kind, her belief that she's helping becomes so great that enforcing the friendship solution becomes the main goal.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you mean. But all the examples of "lampshading" you give just seem like excuses to write a character OOC. I don't see Twilight as acting OOC here. It's just an extension of her love for country that we see in the show.

>>RogerDodger Since I didn't participate in the art phase, I'll only weigh in on the frequency of art writeoffs.

I liked it. But, speaking personally, I would rather not do an art writeoff for every round. Perhaps we could alternate?

>>RogerDodger
Should we do this again? If so, how often?

Yes.

I dunno, but I'd like to try at least one original fiction round like this, and a minific round as well, because people tend to write more stories for those; it would be interesting to see what sort of trends might come out of the broader prompt selection. So I nominate next ofic minific round for an artoff.

Is the drawing time appropriate?

Yes. Maybe it could be shorter if it was over the weekend, but I think that, if you're holding it during the week, err on the side of more - so people don't feel artoff time is fighting against things they need to do.

Is the voting system appropriate?

Yes. Well, IIRC, part of why we have finals with writeoff rounds is to better pinpoint the 'top' fic, and the no-prelims approach hamstrings that. I'm not sure when/if this will be a concern with art; it's possible that, since art is much higher-bandwidth than writing, (it takes less time to appreciate a picture than to read even a minific - probably also why the voting time seemed a bit long) simply having big ballot sizes would work just as well.

I'd still like a thumbnail option on the ballot, though.

Do we need any new rules for art rounds?

The one issue that I feel is still unresolved is the 'can you write for your own art' question, which got a lot of discussion originally. Not writing for your own art is more in-line with how I feel the rules should work, (especially the 'no work based on previous works' thing) but it does introduce the unfortunate (if fairly unlikely) chance of catch-22 scenarios, where an author/artist's anonymity could be seriously compromised in finals. Still, if you don't DQ in that situation, I think the group could live with it; if it happens, it happens, and it could be pretty sucky, but it's not that likely.

The art finals could also be extended to be as long as the writing finals. that doesn't feel satisfying, though.

Since each story can have multiple prompts, maybe restrict an artist from writing a fic that's prompted by only their own art? This would maybe keep people from pre-writing, on the idea that they'd have to blindly select another piece. It might also be enough to keep it from being simply either/or for name guessing. On the downside, it's non-intuitive and annoying to explain why the rule is that way.

Another option would be moving the whole art contest back, and only taking the top few art pieces as prompts. Or, maybe even doing a separate checkbox ballot for prompt images, like the one for phrase prompts. This would (hopefully) make things uncertain enough that people wouldn't pre-write. It would also let you move the arting time back, so it could be on a weekend. On the downside, this would possibly increase participant fatigue, since we currently have a fair overlap between artists and writers. If we had a larger population with less overlap, I'd say this would be the way to go; split them into totally different contests, and then use the connection between them to keep aspects of each fresh. You could even do a full cycle - vote on fics to draw pictures for, vote on pics to write about... :P

Anyways, whatever you decide, it would be nice to have a concrete ruling.

>>bloons3 >>Novel_Idea >>Fenton >>FrontSevens >>Posh >>Rao >>Monokeras >>AndrewRogue >>CoffeeMinion >>eusocialdragon >>horizon


Many thanks to Not_a_Hat for providing such excellent inspiration. I had convinced myself that I was done with the fanfiction rounds, and then I saw his entry and something in my brain went lol wouldn't it be funny if u interpreted that as Sombra being at the optometrist. And then I was like "lol that would be funny" but then I accidentally played it straight and the result is a complete mismatch between the comedy-implying title and the comedy-lacking interior. Oh well. Drama happens.

Thanks for leaving your thoughts, comments, and criticisms. It's fairly apparent that this story is completely lacking an emotional component because I've been waiting to hear back from grad school for a month and have had all my emotions scraped out of me with a red-hot scalpel of anxiety, and also that there are plenty of loose ends that need trimming--things I'll keep in mind should I revisit this for fimfic publication (which is unlikely--this was mostly a joke for the art).

As usual, the amount of talent, skill, and creativity on display in the Writeoff is nothing short of remarkable. Congrats to Cold in Gardez and AndrewRogue for their lovely entries, and a great job to everyone who managed to submit something within the time constraint.



ALSO I GOT ACCEPTED TO GRAD SCHOOL AND I JUST TURNED 21 ON MONDAY SO IF I NEVER ENTER ANOTHER WRITEOFF PLEASE ASSUME I DIED OF CELEBRATORY ALCOHOL POISONING AND TELL MONOKERAS THAT AZURE AND CERULEAN ARE BOTH SHADES OF BLUE AND THUS EQUALLY ACCEPTABLE FOR DESCRIBING THE COLOR OF THE SKY.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
I'm not so sure about this. the episodes about Starlight's town seem to emphasize that Twilight's not an "ends justifies the means" leader. the town may look like happiness and peace and harmony, but she instinctively disapproves of the methods to get there. if anything, she's usually focused on getting the details correct, that she can't plan out the overall solution (though not always)

GaPJaxie's 81 Days story uses this characterization of Twilight, for a story with similar themes on historical politics and imperialism. and maybe it's just headcanon since I liked that one so much. but that's what I saw written between the lines in Putri Jaran, this Twilight is also trying to be friendly (#1 priority) but these honest cultural misunderstandings keep piling up until all trust is lost. I liked the promise of that idea, even though it wasn't fully fleshed out yet. at the breaking point, I think she'd always choose friendship over resorting to force.

so now I'm not really convinced if it fits your intended message. I could kinda see Celestia as being the greedy imperialist, while Twilight has too much blind faith to notice what Celestia's guards are doing behind her back, but then a Tyrantlestia AU would need to be justified. all while being told from Kesu's point of view, and he barely understands anything going on.

also I'm not sure what "barbarism" Twilight sees here. They already have schools and markets, and trade with Equestria, so they're not exactly undeveloped and primitive. So far there's the clash of cultural and religious differences, but enforcing conformity seems a lot more like villain-Starlight than Twilight....

>>AndrewRogue

RE: BACKSTORY

even as a summary it's still pretty funny. almost like a Douglas Adams style expository tangent, where the details aren't important because it sounds like a ludicrous tall tale anyway.

I vote you should include it! but keep it relatively quick, and tell it in a funny unexpected way, then it won't be distracting.

Anyhow, real talk, I was just about ready to skip this round because I was burned out, but then Haze went and drew a Vinyl and Octavia picture.

This might be the best kind of inspirational influence: making people be creative and win medals even when they don't feel like it!

>>Fenton

I suggest to alternate between art rounds and normal rounds. For example, the next Fim Short Story won't be an art round and then the next will be. Same thing with every other kind of rounds (Fim Mini, Original Short Story, Original Mini)

I like this idea. I think the art round has been pretty fun, and I'd like to see it continue for the other story types. I think everyone was working out what would and wouldn't work this round, and future rounds will probably have better content in regards to pieces that inspire a story. Though I thought we had some great pieces this round for that.

>>RogerDodger
General agreement with other responses, but would like to suggest separate scoring for art and writing.

(And if they're going to be combined into an overall score, which I have no strong opinion on, then the fact that >>Haze completed five pics in one day suggests that art pieces should be scored more like minifics than short stories.)

Well, this round is coming to its end. Almost everyone has done his recap of his own story and we're talking about the future contests. But before the next contest in a few days, I wanted to say a few words.

So, as last words for this round, I'll thank RogerDodger for providing us a free environment where we can have these contests, an environment he keeps on improving.

Another shout out for our fellow podcasters who take on their time to offer us a few hours of discussion on some of the entries, that usually lead to discussion to litterature.

And last, but not least, a big shout out to all the writers and the reviewers for obvious reasons.

That'll be all.
Take care of yourself and your folks.