>>horizon

“Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.”

'Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.

"Caliban Upon Setabos".

*disappears again*

I'm going to run with the theory that you are Eldritch abominations. Faust is your Herald, and Hasbro is the self-less hero who destroyed what once seemed good, knowing it would get them scorn, as a mean to save our world from forces beyond our understanding.

I've always been a fan of Pegasi-Love-Storms as a concept.

Ah, interesting reveal at the end. But, I do have a slight problem with how this is a slice of life and action-packed little story.

All-in-all, however, this is pretty dern good. And thanks for your contribution!

Genre: Random Comedy

Thoughts: This might not be everyone's cup of tea. The whole thing hinges on mining humor out of an OOC over-the-top horrible person pony version of Twilight. But you got me laughing out loud on multiple occasions here, so mission accomplished! Starlight's line about mind control was particularly hilarious. The ending series of gags was great too.

Complaints-wise, the main thing I would pick on is just how random it was. Randomness is almost certainly the point here, but if anything, the amount of setup and scene-setting for the various gags might work against it. Too many gags that transition into other barely related gags without fully resolving the funny stuff set up by the previous gag. The Doctor Whooves bit stood out as an example of what I mean: we get some beautiful scene-setting of Derpy in a Faraday cage, and then the narrative dumps them unceremoniously.

So in summary, I felt this was very well done in most ways, but some of the humor (or maybe just its pacing) would benefit from some fine tuning.

Tier: Almost There

Well, that was interesting. I guess my complaint here is that it's a little fast paced. Not much you could do about that, though.

Anyway, thanks for contributing!

I mean, I don't have much to complain about except how very, very fast paced this is.

Otherwise, this is good. Thank you for contributing.

I can't tell if I like this one the most, or if I hate it.

It's very emotional, with amazing characters, and altogether well written... but still. Something about it just doesn't... resonate with me. I will have to abstain on this one.

However, I do thank you for contributing.

Beautiful. And that's all I have to say, about that.

If I had to describe this story in one word, it would be: "Warm." It's not exceptionally complicated, nor did it ever really surprise me, but it did give me a solid case of the warm-and-fuzzies, and I get the impression that that's what it's supposed to do. The little bits of world-building serve well to space it out, the framing device is effective, and while you do see it pretty much all coming from the beginning, it doesn't overstay its welcome.


In short, it was enjoyable. An effective realization of a traditional storytelling concept.

This is well written and I enjoyed reading it. You took me along for the emotional ride, from the Mayor's palpable, frustrating loneliness to the genuine laughs at Pinkie and her attempts to cheer up Mayor Mare.

My favorite thing here is your characterization of both main characters. Pinkie Pie is delightful, and I think you've really got her internal and external voices down. I especially liked your descriptions of how Pinkie's personality and abilities manifest physically, in her ears and hooves and mane and tail, in her entire body, really.

The Mayor is sympathetic in a very, well, human way. I can empathize with what she feels, deeply isolated from the community she's made the center of her life and work. Her difficulty navigating her feelings, responsibilities and expectations is believably illustrated. The tension between her need for friendship, Pinkie's need to offer it, and the (initial, apparent) gulf between their personalities and ways of life creates conflict and a goodly amount of awkwardness, which gives the whole story a realistic feel. I'm rooting for a breakthrough while also cringing in the appropriate places at Pinkie's boundary issues and Mayor Mare's internal struggles.

To me, perhaps the most revealing and succinct line was: "Well, I mean she’s always being Mayor, but she’s not always being mayor." The difference in capitalization is subtle and effective.

Boneless Pinkie made me go *eek," but it was also perfect. And it's cute when she calls her Mayor Mayor Mare.

I was not expecting the Mayor Mare mane revelation, and it beautifully sets up the exchange that follows. I *love* Pinkie's surprise.

Like the Mayor, it took a little tracking for me to follow some of Pinkie's dialogue, but that's Pinkie. In this case I think it adds to the story, making me pause with Mayor Mare to parse what's being said.

The only time I was taken out of the story was the end of the exchange with Fluttershy and her "Not really." It took me a second to connect that to the initial question, rather than Pinkie's "Maybe that's the problem." I think.

That's one small bit (and maybe it's just me!) in a really solid story. It left me with a happy feeling. Thanks for writing it!

It's... different. I really like the idea of Pinkie Pie associating the discovery of new colors with joy. This could certainly be an interesting concept story, with some revisions. But as is, it really doesn't work for me for a few reasons:

The first is the early sections. I understand that they're establishing the concept, but very little happens in them, and the pacing is slow. They started to drag after awhile, and I wondered when the story would get to the point. I think they could be dramatically shortened without losing much.

Second, Discord felt a little out of character. Giving someone a new appreciation for the joy of little things isn't exceptionally chaotic. He serves as a genie in the story, and his character is more complex than that.

Finally though, the revelation at the end. I think I see what you were trying to do, but honestly, it felt more like Pinkie Pie was having an acid trip. There are simpler and less trippy ways to represent this sudden enlightenment. For instance, she could see the world in black and white and have each color filled in one at a time.

Would love to see a revised version of this. This is one of the cuter Pinkie Pie's I've read in awhile!

Genre: EqG Cosmic Horror?

Thoughts: Can I just start by saying that I love what you've done with the Sirens here? There was some grousing when EqG characters appeared in a previous round, but I don't mind in the slightest if it's well done. The Sirens have their place in canon, and I think it's great to get a fresh take on the old starving-Sirens scenario.

Next up, I have to give props for the ambitious storytelling on display here. You could've done stories just with Aria's, Adagio's, or Sunset's bits of this, and probably could've succeeded at making them engaging. As it is, we get all three, and they all help drive the narrative in crazy and creative directions. The hints we get about what's going on are unsettling, as is the imagery. The final explanation of what Adagio was up to is poignant and dark, as it should be.

There's simply so much going on here that I'll bump this up a little on principle. However, I could use some more explanation of some things. E.g., what's up with the corn, or the evil horse, or the dude stuck working with the creepy guys? What exactly does Sunset do with the tree, because everything at that point reads like some kind of unspecified substance trip? It's all vivid and cool and weird... and with cosmic horror stuff, I get it that not knowing is part of the package deal that the characters end up with. But I don't feel like we get any real explanation of what happened or where the little dudes came from, and the problem with that is how the ending leans on the happy resolution of their deal with Adagio. If we had the straight Cthulhu-eats-your-sanity ending, then I wouldn't care as much about some of those details. As it is, I feel like the story is trying to add layers of complexity but stumbles a bit in their execution.

Again though, the ambition is strong with this one, and the execution comes pretty close to living up to it.

++EDIT++ Tier: Strong Abstain (apologies, but I find myself struggling to reconcile what I'd interpreted as very great ambition in the concept and imagery with the revelation that portions of those may have direct roots elsewhere. It's still very well-delivered, but the "wow" factor for me really did come from some of the stuff that looks to have its origins in Twin Peaks, and I'm no longer sure how that should lead me to rank this against other stories.) No Bloody Clue -- this deserves recognition for the quality of writing and the adaptation of the ideas it borrows for the MLP universe. It still suffers from an acute lack of clarity on some key plot points, such as Aria's vision and who the Fireman might be. Not to mention all the uncertain stuff like who the little dudes really are, and what's up with the Sunset-horse, et cetera. But it's really well done regardless...

I'll echo the previous comments that this was adorable! I love the concept, you've got a good Pinkie arc, she felt very in-character, the premise is believable and fits the universe, and it's heartwarming to read.

Unfortunately, I think the pacing needs some work. While a lot of the little sections are good, where you were going with this became clear almost right away -- it just took us awhile to actually get there. Pinkie's antics are cute, but they go on for some time, and after awhile I started to feel they had overstayed their welcome. I'm not sure if this story needs more content, or needs to be shorter (individual preference I suppose), but it feels about 1/3ed too long for how much it has to say.

I... did not expect to be taken into such a ride. And I'm not talking only about the swerve into AU, though there's that too.

I wasn't too fond of the style, but it did a good job in conveying the story. The dark, somewhat twisted story. However, it was a nice story nestled in the frame of a tea time conversation, which sadly doesn't really go anywhere. Really, I feel the framework brings the potential of this story down. There's no arc for Fleur or Fancy, even though they're the characters who introduce the story for us. Fleur starts dislinking Blueblood, then gets suspicious of him, gets proven right, and ends mad at him. Fancy sorta orbits her.

Leaving that aside, though, I feel the core story could be improved upon by dwelling a bit more on Blueblood's feelings. It'd be hard to do since he is the one relying what happened to a third party, so there's a limit to how much he's going to open up.

Ah, I find myself torn. Though I would be interested in reading a polished version of this story.

First off, this is an amazing little story you got here.

Second, I find myself, once again, echoing >>Zaid Val'Roa. This time about how it could use more depth, more vertical storytelling[1]. You have amazing character relationships, but they could get better. Wonderful characters themselves, but they need more time to shine. It just... needs to go a little deeper to hit the oil field.

Regardless, amazing story. Thanks for contributing.

-------

[1]Part 1,Part 2

There's a lot of powerful imagery here, but I'm sorry to say I didn't actually get much from it. To summarize what I believe literally happened:

>Blueblood shows up at a dinner where Fleur is not at all pleased with him.
>Fancy Pants asks him to tell a story of his lost love.
>He tells a story where it looks like that lost love is going to be Rarity, but it diverges quickly to talking about Sweetie Belle.
>He then tells a story in which he, allegedly, accidentally got Sweetie Belle pregnant by her sitting in a chair he'd just masturbated in.
>Fleur tells him to leave, the end.

There are certainly a lot of themes I could read into this: Blueblood as a manipulative bastard, implied pedophilia, or the crawling sensation of having someone in your home you feel is a monster. The use of language is generally strong. And the imagery, such as that of Celestia's Cult, is quite interesting. But it just didn't really come together for me. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to take out of it, other than a vague sense that Blueblood is even more of a bad person than previously implied.

I think this story could really use a stronger conclusion -- something to tie it all together at the end.

I... don't think I'm sold on the tragedy here. There's a lot to like; strong descriptions, interesting worldbuilding, and characters dealing with strong emotions. But I'm just not feeling it.

To me, this reads like some sort of... redemption story, or coming-of-age thing, with Rainbow growing out of being a selfish asshole into a somewhat better person. The arc there is pretty strong, and I like that you're going for emotional depths, but... the opening really grated on me.

Part of that's because I just straight-up disliked Rainbow, but Cloudchaser's death also felt kinda hollow.Or maybe 'melodramatic' is a better word? I once saw a quote that said something like: "Drama is people doing amazing things for very good reasons. Melodrama is people doing amazing things for bad or nonexistent reasons." And although this starts out with a bang, the reason for the suicide is dragged out, and out, and then, even when it's explained, I just couldn't really buy into it.

Basically, I don't think I can decide if these 'familiars' are supposed to be alive or not, whether or not Cloudchaser's death is actually something to be sad about or not. So she was 'hurting Rainbow'... But Twilight goes against her instincts to help Rainbow Dash, so couldn't Cloudchaser have done that too? Or, if she couldn't, then what was Twilight doing there, and how did she do it? And if these familiars can't do something like that, then does that mean they're incapable of learning, of free thought, of changing themselves and making meaningful decisions? If they can't, then is there really any meaning in Cloudchaser's decision? Wouldn't it have been pre-determined by her programming, and Rainbow's actions? But if that's the case, isn't this system pretty poorly made, despite how it's supposed to stop ponies from hurting themselves?

I dunno. I feel like... no matter how I twist it around, I just can't make Cloudchaser's suicide fit into the story in a way that actually makes sense to me, and that's leaving me with more frustration than enjoyment here. Was it meaningful or not? The story seems to contradict it's own narrative.

On the other hand, this read fairly smoothly, despite swapping viewpoints randomly a few times in the beginning. The world is brought to light in a nicely understated manner for the most part, and I'm sure some people will find the visceral quality of the narrative arc more interesting than confusing.

Overall, I think this is pretty good. But I just couldn't buy in.

“Yay is right. You wouldn’t believe what Rainbow and I—” Sunset looked at Fluttershy, scanning her up and down. “Uh. ‘Shy. Why are you wearing my jacket? And my shirt? And skirt? And boots?”

Fluttershy glanced down at the oversized clothes hanging off of her, then up at Sunset. She frowned. “You didn’t leave me the WiFi password.”

I laughed.

Okay, more seriously, this story was mixed for me overall. There's a lot of good material in this story: Sunset being able to read her own mind, Rainbow gaining some insight into who Sunset used to be, two characters confronting their fears, and good shipping humor. It even had some good character building moments:

Rainbow Dash spent fifth period the same way every day. First, she walked to the soccer field. Then, she saved the world from aliens.

Tensing her legs, Rainbow set her gaze on the ball in the center of the field. She murmured, “Thirty seconds on the clock, and the contract’s been signed. If Rainbow Dash makes this shot, the aliens leave Earth forever. If she misses, they steal all our babies.”

This one’s for you, babies.

I have totally been that person, and reading this felt right for Rainbow Dash, and fun to read. It made me like CHS Rainbow Dash, while also feeling distinct from MLP Raindow Dash. It was a strong story hook and a clever opening.

Unfortunately though, the story also felt cluttered to me. Any one of the aspects you have here could make its own good full length story, and by shoving them all together, you don't give any of them the time they deserve. You could easily spend 8000 good words just about Sunset confronting her darkest fears, but instead, she has to share that words with Rainbow Dash's fears, and with exploring her own mind, and with giving the backstory on the mind-monster, and with the Fluttershy humor, etc.

It makes everything feel rushed, and while you do a respectable job on it overall, the end result is that the story just feels shallower than I was hoping for. It was still entertaining to read, but it straddles that unfortunate line where it's not quite serious, but also not quite laugh-out-loud funny (except that one Fluttershy line).

I think this story needs structural changes and a tighter focus before it can really work, but I would love to see a revised version.

I think I need to abstain on this one.

I'm not much for unstructured, un-rhymed verse. I can't even tell if this is metered. I applaud your ambition, but this isn't for me.

I guess... contrasting to 'The Hollow Men', one of the few free verse poems I'll actually claim to enjoy, I'd like a faster pace. In T.S. Elliot's work, the imagery is packed much closer together, the lines are no longer than a few words, and the verses are terse with sharply varied content.

I'm not saying you should write that, because you should write exactly what you want. Just... I'm probably definitely not in your audience. I apologize, because I couldn't finish this.

So... some good, some bad, but overall? Brace for a pretty positive review!

First, the bad stuff. I did figure out where this was going by the fourth text block, which is not that far into the story. Though you did keep me wondering up to that point, the reference to Predictions and Prophesies gave it away, and after that it was just a matter of getting us to the reveal, which could drag a little. A lot of the information in the various reports is redundant or obviously irrelevant, and I spent a lot of time googling obscure medical terminology in case it turned out to be important (it didn't).

Generally, I think the story could really benefit from revealing the mystery later, making the hints a bit more obtuse, and giving us more perspective on the issue so we aren't just repeating the hospital and guard reports over and over. The solution to the mystery could also be developed a little more in its own right -- for instance, by a hint of what it would be like for Twilight and NMM to be stuck together, or Celestia wondering what will happen when both escape together in another thousand years.

That said-

While I may have figured out the mystery pretty early, I did still enjoy the rest of the ride to get there. The points of view you have here are simple, but easy to understand and identify with. With few words, you nicely build up a small cast of supporting characters, who are as developed as they need to be for the framing device. It was a quick read, easy to get into, and bottom line? I enjoyed it.

This is the last one on my slate! I'm posting a review of it below, but in the actual voting, I gotta abstain. Guessing who wrote what is fair game, but I'm so sure I know who wrote this, I'm not sure I could be unbiased.

>>CoffeeMinion

Generally, I have to agree with CoffeeMinion. Humor comes from mixing the mundane and the absurd -- if a story is all crazy all the time, the reader starts to expect it, and so it stops being funny. This story lands a bit too far on the absurdist side of the spectrum.

The jokes were all individually funny, from Twilight wondering if the spell would just hurt Starlight, to running into the Doctor and his experiments, to the final brick joke at the end. But they came so fast and so frequently, that I was bracing for the next absurdist twist, and so when it came, what should have been a laugh-out-loud joke got a mild chuckle. More than anything else, what this story needs is to slow down its pacing a bit, and to give the jokes time to build.

You could, if you wanted, cut some of the random side jokes -- like the Doctor putting Derpy in a Faraday cage. Like CM pointed out, they do show up quickly and get dropped just as fast, which is usually poor form. But I don't think cutting them is a must have. Random side-cuts are sometimes expected in comedy stories, you just need the pacing of the humor to support it.

In short, I suspect with a few edits, this story would be hilarious. I hope you stick with it after the write-off.

Tier: Almost There

>>Not_A_Hat
I wanna jump into this thread to rebut this even though I get the feeling we'll probably end up podcasting about this one. Specifically, I wanna ask why you're looking for a faster pace in a story that spans years? Slow pacing is the better choice, imo, for reflecting that. Particularly in poetry, and especially in free verse, form that reflects content is almost always the right choice.

Like horizon, I wanna spend a bit of time with this before I post (or podcast) my full thoughts. Still, first impressions are important and I expect the author will benefit from hearing them (even if I come back later to contradict myself), so here are mine:

• That first sentence (after the dialogue, which is punctuated as a sentence despite the dialogue tag? aaaaaaaaaaa) is glorious and I adore it.
• Dubs poked me on discord while I was reading this about uncomfortable and awkward choices of line breaks and ever since I've been unable to not notice them. Sorry, author. [Edit: spoilered so I don't affect other people the same way Dubs affected me.]
• The heck is going on with dialogue punctuation? Like, I know in prose that carrying dialogue over to a new paragraph is done exactly as you have done here, but... these are line breaks in poetry. You don't need to re-open quote marks for every single one. Doing so, as I think you've aptly demonstrated, makes it really diffiult (not to mention exhausting) to read.
• Pro tip to people struggling: read it aloud. Oh my god. This isn't even pretty words: it's pretty sounds and pretty mouth shapes and it just feels good to say. If anyone wants me to, I'm happy to record a reading of this one (I know there are a bunch of folks here who struggle to read free verse, and I figured that might help them judge it. Plus it's pretty and I want to. So there. Nyeh.)

Nice work! Strong characters, with a meaningful personal conflict, in a well-rounded setting, all couched in (mostly) crisp prose. There were a few stumbles (pretty sure it's 'gall', not 'gaul'; the non-standard linebreaks seemed like a strange choice; I felt like there were a few odd word choices or sentence flow issues) but looking past that, there's a lot of strength in the foundations here.

I do feel like the themeing is a bit loose; the connective tissue between 'these are the problems', 'these are the actions', and 'this is the meaning' didn't really seem to come together properly for me at the end. So, Pallete feels things, that solves his problem of 'not loving painting', so he decides to stay? Sounds good! I just wish I had a stronger idea why feeling things solves his problem, and why that, in turn, causes him to stay. And how it all ties into this line:

Du Hoc knew that he was no longer the only one who sensed things such as this.

What are 'things such as this'? It seems like it should be really, really important to the story, since you totally switched character viewpoints to mention it, and the last line and the title both seem to be making Du Hoc an important character, but I'm just not picking up on what you mean at all.

All in all though, this was really nice. It had a few slips and felt a little weak at the end, but on the whole it feels fundamentally strong.

>>QuillScratch I want faster pacing because I find this very offputting. Sure, form that reflects content might be great, but I don't think it's worthwhile if it makes the piece boring.

But then, I don't think I even agree that the slow pacing mirrored the content. Admittedly, I didn't get much farther than

The Moon and Sun came to rest upon

But in the opening block, between Luna's opening question and Celestia's reply, there are sixty-three lines of poetry. I pasted this into a spreadsheet to count. It's full of florid description, ballistic capitalization, and vague stuff like

To say it in short what horror compares to Love without Expectation?

Make of that what you will. But sixty-three lines between the question and reply? Unless you're going to say that the response was years coming, I don't think that's 'pacing reflecting content'. It's just confusing.

Blergh. If you're right about people voting this up for the podcast... I should probably take another go at this tomorrow. Maybe when I'm better rested I'll have a higher tolerance, and can formulate some more worthwhile opinions.

That's one gut punch of an opening line. I'm really fond of Fluttershy and had to take a moment before I could read on, hesitant but needing to know what happens next. Well done setting up the emotional weight of the situation right away. Your descriptions are at their best, to me, when creating atmosphere for the especially sad or creepy scenes.

The intensity of the opening scenes loses something for me later on. I feel like it might have benefited from a few more references in different places to Fluttershy, her friendship and Twilight's grief over her loss. A lot of that emotion manifests as action with Twilight, which works too, but the specter of Fluttershy's death sort of fades into the background even though it's driving the action.

The stakes being what they are, Death being notoriously permanent, the resolution felt too easy for me (although don't get me wrong--I'm very grateful for that happy ending.) Then again, it left me wondering about exactly what happened back there, in a way that made the story stick with me.

Your depiction of Death is really interesting. At first the lovable rapscallion routine, plus his forgetting Fluttershy's name, had me doubting his competence to keep his "business" running as well as he says it does. But afterward, I had to think about how much of that was real and how much Death was keeping to himself.

And then I wondered if Twilight really woke up in Ponyville, or if the whole thing was just another simulation. o_o

On a final note, Tuba Mirum is a great name for one of Death's assistants.

>>Not_A_Hat

Unless you're going to say that the response was years coming...

Yes, I am:

“You have not brought an answer forward,” the Moon said, years later...

>>QuillScratch That's seven paragraphs down from what I'm talking about. :/

>>Not_A_Hat
True, but the implication from it and other quotes that I would find if I weren't walking to work is that this conversation quite literally spans centuries. There being no narration to specifically indicate that there's a time jump between the lines of dialogue you specify is no reason to assume there isn't one, in the context of the whole piece. I'll concede that it's a large gap when first reading, but... well, poetry does have a long tradition of being long-winded re:exposition (c.f. Paradise Lost), so I don't feel that's necessarily a bad thing.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not 100% on board with how the pacing has been slowed in several cases, here. But the execution being off doesn't mean that the poem would benefit from a faster pacing, given its subject matter: just a different approach to slow pacing, here and there.

(And given I still haven't spent the time with this one that I feel I need to, I'm not convinced I'm gonna be saying even that much against it by the end of the week.)

I don't have much to add here. You only have OCs, and still managed to make me care for them, and that feat is already something in itself.
See >>Zaid Val'Roa's comment for both the praise and the concerns.

I hope to see this expanded on FimFic.

Thank you for sharing.

There's a lot of tonal whiplash in this. We go from what should be incredibly sad (but, unfortunately, comes across to me as rather overplayed), to an argument, then to a delve through otherworldly horrors, and then to a... comedy? Death's manner is rather whimsical, and while I'm absolutely fine with the idea of a laid-back characterization of Death, doing so in a story that's been pushing the "SAD" button as hard as it can up to that point is rather jarring.

The ending seems somewhat incoherent as well. We're told by Death that the afterlife is a place of joy and happiness, and he offers to let Twilight talk to Fluttershy and see if she wants to come back. But instead of that, he basically cons her, sends her back in time, and has her rescue Fluttershy from death in the first place? What happened to the dead enjoying being dead? What happened to giving Fluttershy any say in the matter? Why the need for the deception in the first place? Are the dead actually miserable? What about everypony else in the world who dies in an accident, but doesn't happen to be friends with a princess?

Needless to say, these questions are unaddressed in the story. A lot of weighty questions are unaddressed. Instead we just get the standard happy ending where everyone survives. The legend of Orpheus is memorable and lasting because it teaches a lesson – it still has us thinking and debating two-thousand years later.

A good try at a story, and the writing is generally fine. But I think it misses on the execution.

Huh, first review for this one.

A few unfortunate typos aside, this story manages to set its tone early and well. We get the cold and the isolation and the feeling that this is a fallen world. I worried for a moment it was some kind of Fallout derivative, but happily that wasn't the case.

The background story relayed by the grandfather is nice, but the device isn't used very well. I'd have rather had that information introduce some other way than "Main character remembered the backstory her grandfather told her once." Yeah, it takes more effort, but the ultimate effect is that it blends more evenly into the story.

The ending is ambiguous, but not in a bad way. If you find other reviewers saying things like "This felt incomplete," take that as a compliment – it means they were absorbed enough by the greater story to want to see it through to resolution, even though the point of the particular story you set out to write was simply how these two ponies found the halves of the Crystal Heart and brought it together. They may ding you for it in the voting, though – disappointing your readers is risky business.

I do wish the story was more complete as a story, though. That is, I wish the main characters had to do something more to achieve their goals. They struggled through some snow and a mountain, yes, but all that occurred in the beginning and middle of the story. What's the climax? What decision did they have to make? What opposition did they have to overcome?

Points were cut off due to the lack of a tag for the X axis.

Anyway, this is an interesting piece to analyse. First of all, the lack of a line for Twilight makes me reach the obvious conclusion that she's the one making the graph, but then I see Applejack doesn't have a line either, which in turn makes me think Twilight is making this for Applejack, in an unorthodox attempt to solve a friendship problem of sort.

As mentioned before, the lack of a tag for the X axis makes it hard for me to figure out what that problem is, or why the friendship curves behave the way they do the longer they go.

Still, I got more out of this than I imagined I would, nice work.

Is it cheating to have this much text in an art entry? I only say this because I feel the drawing itself already conveyed most of the feelings expressed in the text. Perhaps a bit more emphasis on Rainbow Dash's facial expressions would have been able to transmit those emotions just as well.

Still this is a solid entry, and that nebulous end to Dash's trajectory makes me wonder what the effects of reentry speed had on Rainbow. I quite liked it.

The good news: Hurricane Irma didn't destroy me or any of my family members. The power also came back on in under 24 hours, restoring the A/C and Internet connection for us.

The bad news: This means I can read and critique all of your stories.

>:D

Be very afraid.

>>QuillScratch ...yeah, not buying it. So, I did finish reading this, and you're right, there are indications that this conversation stretches centuries.

HOWEVER!

This can't apply to the first paragraph, for several reasons.

Firstly, the first clear indication that the conversation takes centuries comes in at

And their talk would pause a moment
--I mean this less literally--

And this doesn't happen until the fifth paragraph. If the author intended the pacing in the opening to reflect the passage of time, that should be marked! Because in every following instance I noticed, the passage of time was marked, either by blank lines, or explicit numeration (like your 'years later') or some combination of the two. Claiming that the dialogue in the first paragraph takes 'x long amount of time' between the question and answer is as ridiculous as postulating the pacing is slow because Celestia and Luna speak reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyy slllllooooowwwwwlllllyyy. Like, you might be right, but I can't agree that the textual evidence supports it.

Secondly!

What's going on in the first paragraph, between the lines of dialogue, is fundamentally different from what goes in the rest of the poem. What we have in the rest of the poem is dialogue and description of time passing; what we have in the first paragraph is dialogue and description of the sisters. This is important, because if you describe time passing, then it obviously takes time, but the narrator's description in stories usually doesn't. Like, if my character rounds a bend and stumbles on a glade, which I then narrate a lovingly detailed description for, it doesn't matter if the description is one paragraph or ten; it doesn't take up any of the character's time, because it's narration. That's what we have here; not descriptions of character actions, but narrative descriptions of the sisters themselves. As such, claiming there's centuries between the question and answer is like saying Celestia and Luna don't talk and reply at normal speed, when they obviously do; we see them talk normally all the time in the show.

What I mean to say is, the author would need to do more than they have to sell me on this, because it looks to me like an extreme break from narrative convention and show canon.

Thirdly!

In the rest of the poem, the pacing is less slow.

That is, in the parts where it explicitly takes centuries between question and answer, the lines are shorter, things are broken into paragraphs of reasonable length, and the author doesn't dwell on a single image or metaphor for more than a few lines. (Except for the whole 'nuh-uh, uh-huh, nuh-uh, uh-huh' thing Celestia and Luna have going... and this might be an artifact of length, but I'd have liked to see more development in their discussion) That is, if the pacing is supposed to reflect the content, then why is it faster-paced in the end, where the lengths of time are explicitly mentioned, as opposed to the opening, where the only support for 'it takes centuries' is inferred from later information, and weakly at that?

To re-iterate, I won't say the pacing is 'bad'; I don't think I can judge that. But it's definitely not for me. And... I just don't think I can agree with your statement that it reflects the content, no matter how it's spun.

---

Anyways, as I said above, I did finish the poem, and I found the bits I hadn't read rather more readable than the bits I did. So here's a bit of not-pacing-related critique. Author, your imagery feels rather too opaque to me. Things like 'unconditional love is horrifying' feel... too confusing, without enough payoff. I can't tell what you're trying to do by asserting something that seems like nonsense to me, so it simply feels nonsensical. Victory is a woe of the flesh? What? Some things like the explicit narrator (the 'I can only say what I'm told' bits) doesn't seem to be doing much of anything, either, except adding an extra layer of abstraction. The last section feels especially odd to me; I have no idea what Sulva is (googling got me something on a ww2 beachhead, or hindu scriptures for making fire altars?) but it's apparently really important here, enough to be in the closing and the title. ...I just have no idea what it means.

I still don't think I'm going to vote on this, because I'm probably definitely judging it too much like prose; I've been told I shouldn't do that in the past.

Since the colours are so intense, I'm going to assume Dash is cuddling with Zephyr Breeze.

This is probably my favourite of this round's entries, if only due to the style. Simple but powerful enough. Kudos!

First impression: I've read this story before. But I can't find it. At least, it involved a very similar “Twilight doesn't go to Ponyville; instead she stays in the castle and tries to fix it herself and it goes badly wrong” plot, but I'm pretty sure the ending was different; the purple in the moon is unfamiliar. Am I hallucinating?

>>Not_A_Hat
>>QuillScratch

The first paragraph's time seems to be wonky... perhaps because I'd say it's outside of time.


In the end we have Luna explicitly say that they "stopped over" in this world, and in the beginning we have the weird trippy thing about "then/now" and "forever" which makes me think the long first passage is that journey from wherever they were before the present world to come to rest in what would be Equestria. Guessing here, but unless the author is thinking space (which I don't they they are) then what's there? Sort of a formless chaos? Well--

That is what it is like to see the Sun, walking in the god’s playing field
Between one universe and the next.

So we're talking two alicorns trotting from one universe to the next. Through what? It's not entirely off base to say that what was envisioned was some kind of timeless pre-creation chaos situation. It can't be merely space, or with the way this intro goes it woulda been like 15 lines about stars.


I think it also might be a mistake to take the lines literally. I was just thinking about how the Greeks used to make up speeches to put in their histories. Everyone knewthat wasn't what was exactly said. But it didn't matter because the spirit of the thing was captured and that was what they cared about. Likewise, old testament texts tend to give that sort of "who knows what they said but this is pretty close" as well, where you have people fall in to hebraic poetry with the parallelism and such. Each argument could be a single snapshot, but it might also be a sort of summation, like this was where they sorta said over many days and hours around this period of time kind of situation. If that is so, then long gaps would mean not a strained conversation but merely a chain of island-like conversations.


Frankly parts of this read like someone half falling asleep. The first half reads like a tenth grader going for Milton and the second half reads like that same tenth grader switching over to Eliot. If the first half is too slow than the second is too fast by far. I'm actually going to say that the whole thing is too fast after the descriptions of the sisters.


If I'm readin' this write, I would guess that the introductions of the sisters was more than just playing around but that it was supposed to set up the conversation. When they talked about to what extent they were alike/similar/inseperable I think we were supposed to have our answers in the first 35 lines or so, but it just doesn't hold up. There's some parallalels where specific things are described in similar language, both end in a sort of question-and-answer (Being Seen/Being known) but its muddy and confused. The quicker pacing only really helps, I feel, if the introduction had been more solidly going in one direction. Otherwise it's just snappy and short. That works for Eliot because every line is building on the one before in lockstep and he could make a line be exactly the length it needed to be every time. Here? I feel like you lose what merit this has if you get too frantic, even if it tends towards the ponderous (which it does. A lot.)


Lastly. Quotation marks. Argh. Next time, indent. In fact you could forgo them altogether and straight up do it like Milton does with the offset lines and stuff.

Hmm. For some reason, my phone thinks that this page is in French. Silly phone, images aren't in a language!

In any case, this seems to be an OC replica of one of the Changeling warriors from the Canterlot Wedding episodes. The pose, eyes, race, and hairstyle all point to this being heavily based off of a Changeling that was transforming into Twilight in the episode. You've got a bit of wonky proportion though. The head is bigger than it should be, while the front legs are both smaller than they should be and also appear disconnected from the body by your linework.

Also judging by your linework, I assume you're not the most confident with drawing. Frankly, though, this is a rather good attempt. Many people end up just tracing stuff, but it seems you put in a real effort to try and replicate the pose on your own. Don't get discouraged, especially about proportions. I know people who've been drawing for years and still have proportion problems. That's why references are super helpful at really any level.

Thanks for submitting!

Also, can't remember Moondancer's cutie mark so I might be wrong about this being an OC.

An unusual timeframe we have here.

While everything here is great, from the characters' interactions and voices to the pace, I feel it lacks some stakes. We have a complete arc, but this arc isn't that big. That's my main concern with this story, but aside from that, the whole is solid and stands on its own.

I also need to mention how you nicely set the timeframe, without being too blunt, screaming "THIS HAPPENS IN THE PAST!"

So good job for the S1 fic, and thank you for sharing.

So... metafiction, kinda, huh.

Eh. I'm not sure I have much to say here. This failed to grasp me; it felt simultaneously too self-aware and not self-aware enough. I had a hard time believing these were the sorts of things Luna would actually say; this feels meandering and not meaningful enough.

It seems to me that there's some thread of progression in the first two-thirds, which just kinda derails and dissolves at that horizontal line. Then the narrator starts a whole new thread of reasoning, which sorta frays out again at the end.

Some specific things bothered me in the logic, but I don't really feel like breaking this down hard enough to analyze them. Suffice to say, most of this felt vaguely philosophical-ish, but I never felt like the reasoning was actually sound enough to back up the character or the delivery method. As such, I have a hard time getting behind it.

It's ambitious, but ultimately falls short of its goals, I think.

>>Cynewulf

It can't be merely space, or with the way this intro goes it woulda been like 15 lines about stars.

This made me laugh. :P

I will note, though, that googling 'Field of Arbol' suggests it's from C.S. Lewis; he apparently used it for the Solar System in his Space Trilogy. Since this and the stars doesn't appear until after that section, I'd say you're right; either they're 'outside space' somehow, or the narrator not knowing where/when they are (as he says) produces the same effect.

Are Twilight's right legs thinner than her left legs? Or do the holes just perfectly overlap?

Also, you just made me think that Friendship Power Twilight wouldn't look that out of place with the reformed changelings.

Huh, interesting.

On the whole, I think I like this? It's interesting to see something less linear like this, and it mostly worked for me, the story slowly coming together from the hints and things. The formatting actually worked fairly well, I think, and I didn't notice and big mistakes with it, which is fairly impressive.

What bothers me most, I think, is that the pacing here is really quite slow; it seemed like a lot of the details here really aren't building towards the ending, or are just kinda there-to-be-there, without properly adding to the world or situation. As such, there were parts I had a hard time focusing on properly.

Ambitious, and it comes together. I just wish it was punchier, I think.

>>DuskPhoenix

Silly phone, images aren't in a language!

Ce n'est pas Moondancer
But she is indeed supposed to be Moondancer.

But yeah, I'll echo Dusk's comments about this needing some polish regarding proportion and finishing touches, also since the fire signaling the transformation was so subdued, I almost thought moondancer got changeling legs stitched to her.

It was a good attempt, but a little extra work would've made it shine all the more.

I enjoyed this one a lot.

The styling feels a bit inconsistent; the stream-of-conciousness thing done with Rainbow in the beginning kinda caught me off guard, but then it sorta peters out and vanishes from the rest of the story.

The middle felt a bit slow to me; I'm glad you didn't go through the weather day-by-day, but it didn't really feel like everything you did put in was playing tightly into the plot, either? Maybe I just missed something, I dunno. I'm not really sure that cutting it would be the right answer, either. The middle felt a bit long is all, I guess.

I'm a little mixed on the ending. I don't think I'm reading what you intend there, but I'm honestly not sure what I'm missing. Was the whole thing because RD loves Flitter? Or was there something deeper about Rainbow's emotions/motivations in there that I'm missing? Was the 'you're right' just talking about the Wonderbolts being gloryhounds? If so, what's the conclusion Rainbow's drawing from that?

All in all, though, this felt really strong to me. The jokes were great, the characters were entertaining, the prose was crisp; I just think it ended a little less excellently than it started, I guess.

That lack of X-axis labeling is gonna haunt me. The interpretation of the piece can go so many ways without it.

For example:

Weight (ounces) — I can only assume that a) Twilight generated these graphs by continuously feeding them ice cream, and b) Rarity had been having a really bad day.

Kilometers per hour — While at first glance Rainbow Dash's line makes no sense, it's actually somewhat profound: as her speed increases, everything becomes more and more about her, and her friendship capacity suffers accordingly. For the others, the graph just shows speed tolerance, and apparently Rarity is an ex-fighter pilot.

Number of seconds on-screen in an episode — Make sure not to introduce all of your friends at the beginning, or you're gonna have to carry that friendship problem solo by the halfway mark! (Also, the lack of Applejack starts to make sense.)

Number of seconds into a sexual act — The first evidence for "Rarity is best pony" with which I cannot find fault.

Micrograms of LSD consumed — No wonder Rarity's the creative one.

Years — (Buy some apples), that got morbid.


Personally, though, I choose to believe that the X axis is degrees Kelvin, implying (based on melting points) that Rainbow Dash is primarily made from lead; Fluttershy from zinc; Rarity from aluminum; and Pinkie Pie from plutonium.

What, Twilight and Applejack aren't good enough for you?

All the snark aside, I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said. I guess I'll say it anyway. The lack of X-axis is fairly annoying, but that means I get to choose what it means!

And I choose... premeditation. You see, Rainbow does everything meaningful spur of the moment, Applejack doesn't do anything as often and is still pretty improv, Pinkie Pie does a lot of forethought and something really meaningful, and Rarity does all the planning and it turns out the best.

Those back legs are pretty odd, though I can see what happened. You erased part of the image, then couldn't really add in the other leg.

The amount of text here is a little odd. Still, good entry.

(I think you're implying Rainbow died, though, so you are not my favorite artist)

I can't tell who that stallion is, and I think that was the point. This looks like watercolor paint, though, so extreme points in my book.

Judging by the cutiemark and hair color, this is supposed to be Moondancer. My question is did you purposefully leave out the glasses? The lack of them bothers me. And I, once again, find myself echoing >>Zaid Val'Roa. The fire is a little subdued.

Dude, nice piece you got here! Unfortunately, I got nothing to say that hasn't been said by >>Cold in Gardez already.

Twilight should have just taught Pinkie about Impossible Colours. That should have kept her occupied for a few weeks.

I had a blast reading this. Honestly, you managed to put a smile on my face for most of the story. Like Jaxie pointed out, though, the story could use a bit of tightening. I liked the different points of view Pinkie considers in regards to her colourful quest before she settles on Discord's path, and I'm sure you can find a way to make all this more structurally sound.

But yeah, good job.

I SHIP IT!!!!

And I love this thing. You got amazing characters, character interactions, and you left the ending slightly ambiguous. The middle is a little slow, but very important and should probably not be changed.

Random comedy. Huh. That's not really something I particularly like, nor dislike. It usually falls flat for me.

This one did a bit better, I got a few smiles here and there, but I think the main problem has already been raised by the others, and that's that it leans a bit too hard on the absurd side. I must say that it was still an engaging story, though. It's just too bad that the resolution felt plain for what I expected to be a big thing.

Sorry I don't have much to add. Others have said it all.

Thank you for sharing

Yeah, basically the problems the others said.

I did enjoy this, though.

Ay, Dios mío. I think I love this.

This was subjectively beautiful. I had this huge grin plastered over my face as I read and I can't even explain why. I couldn't have imagined that seeing Equestria devolve into an objectively ideallistic dystopia due to Rarity discovering Pantone® would bring me so much fun.

The story had its fair share of issues, of course. It quickly changes into expository retelling of how Equestria has changed, and only reverts to more traditional narration once the revolution comes and goes. Even though I don't know the effects of expanding these concepts could have on the flow of the story, I'd like to see it done.

Overall, a curious little tale which found its audience in me.

Also, speaking of true colours, I was under the impression that we reached absolute blue in 1998.

As good as this is, I found it a little on the boring and hard to read side. However, it clearly shows exceptional writing skills.

So I'm at a loss for what to say other than "Thank you for contributing."

I'm not sure what to think of this one. It has extremely good writing, but the story is a little lacking. I can't quite put my hoof on what it is, though.

Hmm. Well, that was interesting, with shades of ridiculous.

Good use of a fairly weird concept to build an engaging story. The pacing was pretty good, the flow was fairly strong, the characters were nicely defined, it all made sense.

I did feel that the interactions between Limestone and her mom, right after the purse was snatched, were a bit odd; one moment they're sharing a grin, the next moment Limestone seems really disappointed with her?

Other than that, the lack of nuance in Limestone's mom's character grated on me a bit. She ended up feeling rather overly one-dimensional. I mean, I get that she's caricatured, but it would be nice to see some shading to that, I think. Surely she has redeeming qualities?

In the end, though, this was quite enjoyable. Good work, thanks for writing!

Adorable. I don't know how, but it is. Pinkie was truly enjoyable as an actual character instead of a silly, bouncy pony. Great job.

Oh wow, that's good. I can't think of any words that do this story justice, so I must point you, the author, to the comments above mine; both good and bad.

I. Adore. This. Story.

Bear in mind that I am the kind of nerd who falls in love with effective punctuation and paragraphing gimmicks, and that at least 50% of my love for this story is entirely due to punctuation details, but this story really worked for me. Sure, there are some things it could do better (the magical side of the climactic battle against the Marabunta was quite the anticlimax compared to the character-driven, emotionally-heavy side, for example), and it would benefit from an editing pass or two... but I really, really enjoyed this!

My biggest criticism, if it can be called that, is that I feel either not enough or too much was made of Fluttershy's arc. Like, we get a whole scene setting up her trying on Sunset's clothes, and in the final scene we get to see the result where she has... tried on Sunset's clothes. It feels like wasted words as is, but it also feels like it has real potential to get some good character-driven development there (though probably not to the same depth as Rainbow and Sunset).

Do not let that take away from how much I enjoyed this fic—I certainly won't. This is definitely a Top Contender.

(Horse? HHHHOOOOORRRRRSSSEEE)

---

P.S. Did I not mention how cool it is to have a fic with a clear ship that uses that ship as a central thread for the narrative without actually including one of the characters in said ship? That was refreshingly awesome. And it certainly helps that I have an unhealthy addiction to SunLight fics.

I see this story, and I see all the little things. I see all the small parts that form the shape of the story as a whole, and I can see how they work together. And I like what I see. It's when I take it as a whole that the problems of the narrative jump out.

First of all, I can see how Dash's development throughout the story was supposed to go, and the flag points are there (starts cocky, Cloudchaser's suicide turns her belligerent, reluctantly starts to better herself, and achieves growth) and don't misunderstand me, it's an interesting arc, but they need to be smoothed out a bit more so the change feels more organic and that catharsis moment at the end has more impact.

I can see >>Not_A_Hat's issues with Cloudchaser's suicide, but I think it worked well enough. Within her autonomy, she fell in love--or familiar's equivalent of falling in love--with Dash, and when she realised she was no longer the best for Dash, she couldn't cope with going on without her, and, perhaps in a way to ensure Dash's privacy, decided to end her life. It worked for me, but I won't oppose if it gets fleshed out (Hah!) a bit more in the future.

Overall, great tale.

Oh boy. It's one of those fics, right? Yes, it is.
However, if you aimed for shock and disgust, I'm afraid you didn't lean hard enough towards whatever you're implying here. So I'm not gonna rant, you can move along if you came here just for that :p

In term of writing, I think I got what you tried to do, having a story within a story, but as >>Zaid Val'Roa said, your frame story is the weakest point. The stakes are very thin, Fleur and Fancy don't learn, or do anything. However, that kind of setting is something I've already seen in litterature, with the frame story not being that important, and without any real stakes too. But what these stories lacked when it came down to stakes, they usually compensated with a strong callback to the framed story.

Here, I'm not sure about what I'm supposed to get from all of this, but I still have an idea, so bear with me.
>>GaPJaxie has made a good summarize of what happen, so let's use it (except for the masturbation part, I disagree here). From what happens, I feel we're supposed to think Blueblood is the bad guy.

However, and without dismissing that fact, I think Fleur could be as bad as Blueblood. I mean, we learned from the very beginning that she defines herself with makeup. Even with Fancy and her close friends, she uses some tricks on them, both to please them and to put herself in a good light. Moreover, we learn that, when Blueblood is eyeing her, she usually don't mind stallions looking at her beauty and her body (only Blueblood's look disgusts her), but she can't stand her husband agreeing with Blueblood on mares being compared to lands to conquer, or fights to win. I don't think I'm overinterpreting when I said that she sounds very superficial, and a bit of a hypocrit.

With that in mind, I understand why she can't stand Blueblood. He reminds her of who she is, in a way. I got a strong feeling of Don Juan for Blueblood (dunno how famous this myth is for Americans), so the way he lives his life, considering mares only as a source of pleasure (both physical and mental), makes him a mirror in which Fleur doesn't want to look.

That being said, I think it helps to decide what to do with Sweetie Belle. Knowing if she was actually pregnant or not, if she has been raped by Blueblood, or has willingly bitten the apple with him is almost impossible, simply because of the fact that Sweetie Belle's story is told by Rarity to Blueblood, who then tells it to Fleur and Fancy, so definitely not a primary source (without mentionning that it's probably not really reliable too).
So following my interpretation, I think Sweetie Belle is a bit similar to Fleur. She sees Blueblood as an intruder, but somehow, her hatred for Blueblood is tainted with desire (remember the line: "Her little sister, who was fourteen despite her innocence"). Is she making up the pregnancy or is she fantasising it? I can't tell, but she's definitely not indifferent to Blueblood.

Speaking of Blueblood, and despite everything I've said, I don't think he is a character we're supposed to relate to. The very first sentence clearly states that Blueblood is Satan for me. He corrupts everypony he approachs, from mares to fillies.

I'm also pretty sure that the Harmony cult, or Celestia's cult, or whatever, is clearly a parallel to Christianity, which matches the theme of your story and the very first sentence.

Anyway, I'll stop here, because I feel like I might be going too far. This was quite a ride, a very solid story with strong images (careful with typos, though), and a story that was definitely worth putting a lot of thinking into (at least for me).
If I had to offer some suggestions, I'll agree with both >>Zaid Val'Roa and >>GaPJaxie. The beginning and the conclusion need to be stronger if you want your reader to understand what they are supposed to get from your story. That's the weakest point, but I'm pretty sure with some time, you'll be able to tie everything together.

Thank you for writing.

Edit: tagging >>MLPmatthewl419, in case where what I said could helpful for everyone to get a better idea of what it is. Or confuse them even more :p

What >>Not_A_Hat said.

As fun as this was, I feel it lacked a bit of depth. Limestone's characterisation was solid, though the same can't be said for the rest. Everyone feels as though they serve as stand ins for the duration of the scenes. Cloudy Quartz got more time to shine, but she never quite broke her shtick of sanctimonious mom character.

I enjoyed this story, and even laughed a couple of times, but I'm not left with any big impressions after being done.

Ditto on the pacing, a bit of breathing room would have done wonders for the story.

I found myself enjoying the story as I read along, though, so I can't say it completely failed. I liked the way Twilight was characterised, and I think would have liked to get a few more snippets of her fanfic playing alongside the events in the real world.

But yeah, a nice tale.

This is a lovely Chapter 1.

It took me a little while to spin up from the understated opening, but once the hook of your premise sets, it's pretty compelling, and this does an excellent job of bringing Gerard to life (and showing off the core generosity of Rarity, and slipping in neat little details like the tea they both discuss). So I'm rather favorably inclined to what's here, and I certainly would be curious to read more of it.

It is, however, a lovely Chapter 1, and for Writeoff judging purposes I am forced to evaluate it based on how the existing text works as a standalone, complete story. In terms of three-act structure (which certainly isn't the only way to write stories, but is a good default framework unless you're doing something structurally unusual), this basically feels like it ends with the inciting event: Rarity is confronted with the backstory of the coat and makes the decision to accept the job, creating a situation where her life is about to be altered; and you stop right as your story is getting started.

Now, it's possible that your goal was to write this as a much more limited arc: framing her decision as the climax, and having the story turn on her making that choice. But if that's the case, then the story has some big structural stumbles.

First of all, it seems like a foregone conclusion from the time she invites him in for tea that she's not going to say no; she spends way too much time getting invested in his story to build up any tension over whether she might refuse or not. There's no compelling reason for her to say no, either; she offers the abstract observation that she needs to start working on her fall line, but Gerard's very next line points out that he can potentially compensate her enough to make that irrelevant. What is she sacrificing by saying yes? Basically, nothing. If you are trying to center your conflict around her decision, there needs to be conflict: a tradeoff or a sacrifice that she's forced to make.

Also, if you intended her decision to be the climax, since you ended on it there's no denouement: no sense of resolution where we see the outcome of her choice. Again, this isn't strictly necessary — I'm far too fond of leaving the denouement hanging myself, to emphasize the choice over the fallout — but if you do that you have to really double down on making the choice a meaningful one, and force the reader to confront whether it was the right choice or not.

So, despite what's here being good, this is going to end up drifting down my slate. Take heart, author: I'd love to read more if you keep going from here (or rework the conflict to have Rarity make a meaningful choice — such as, Gerard can't afford to pay her and she needs the money from this year's line, but saying no means turning down a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and making baby gryphons cry). So get to work and get this one to FIMFiction!

Tier: Needs Work [1]

EDIT: Tier upped to Almost There

--
[1] General request for feedback, to everyone reading this: Do you think there's a need for me to add an "Incomplete" tier for my Writeoff judging, for situations like this where "Needs Work" is simply a commentary on the story not standing alone? (I can't really tier it higher because I'm trying to indicate my assessment of the story as it stands now, as a standalone experience.) Or does "Needs Work" feel like it covers that? If you had written this, would having "Needs Work" at the end of my comment of encouragement motivate you to pick the pen back up, or would it make you feel like you'd rather ditch this and work on something else?

Genre: Mystery/anti-nudies PSA

Thoughts: Ooo, two Sirens fics in one Writeoff? And apparently there's a Limestone fic floating around too?! I'm spoiled! Stop you guys! (Don't stop, please don't stop...)

[DWK]Okay. So.[/DWK] The fundamentals here are really strong. We get a complete story (a quality never to be underestimated, always to be celebrated) that successfully gives Sci-Twi her own little Rarity Investigates! kind of arc. The mystery is short but adequate, and the moment where Twilight pulls everything together is great. The story's humor and shipping are woven in deftly, and they manage to go past "satisfying" and approach the realm of "charming" for me. Considering that the specific ship and circumstances surrounding Sunset's predicament might not otherwise be my cup of tea, I'll give major kudos for that!

Others have called this rushed. Honestly, I'm just not feeling that. It's a bit convenient that the Sirens found an email provider offering that specific domain, and the non-ponified Earth names were jarring (and it may represent a missed opportunity to give them a truly Greek domain extension rather than just .com). But for a short, straightforward mystery where the humor elements are more than just peripheral, I find much to be satisfied with. Oh, and the ending was gold, too.

Thus far I've found little to complain about. I do feel that this is missing a certain je ne sais quoi to catapult it up above all possible competition. I grant that that is fabulously nonspecific feedback, but I apologize, it's all I've got.

Tier: Strong

>>horizon
How about "Keep Developing" as a catch-all for both cases?

(Either way, I'm probably long overdue to stop mooching off your tiers and go my own way. I'm grateful for your tolerance thus far. The tiers have been a really helpful way to think about categorizing stories when providing feedback, but I never meant to camp out on your coattails for so long...)

++grr, how do you get size tags to work on here?++

>>Zaid Val'Roa
This reads like a comics panel to me, so I have no problem with it. AFAIK, there is no specified limit for words used in art. Perhaps Roger can weigh in, but I’m pretty sure he’ll just say that as long as no rules are violated (such as using an image to get around word limits) it should be left to the voters to decide if it’s a problem.

The art here is tight and compelling, with a dark theme that takes the prompt in an interesting direction. A top-tier piece.

I saw it coming since Paint left the bar for the first time. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy how it build up to his reinvention, though. I liked it a lot.

This was quite a fun, although I wish we could've seen a bit more of the reactions to Paint's change and the effect this had on his downfall. Nevertheless, this was a solid piece which can only improve with further work.

Hmm, a nice little character piece.

This isn't particularly moving, in my opinion, but it's thoroughly pleasant. There are a few odd bits; did you type this on something with autocorrect, by any chance? (Herd -> heat? Node -> knot?) Calling the coat 'anthracite' was rather strange to me, but maybe that's a style? I don't think I've seen that used for color...

Anyways. The characters were pleasant and well-realized, the prose was fairly clean and transparent. The backstory was interesting enough, even if I didn't find it particularly compelling, and the whole thing was sorta low-level warm-and-fuzzy. I liked it! I just didn't find it particularly moving.

Very nice, even if it didn't knock my socks off.

>>CoffeeMinion Size tags take a number, like the 'font size' you'd see in a word processor. Numbers too large or small don't seem to work, though; I'm pretty sure you can do at least 12 - 22, but the range might be a bit wider.

Twelve

Twenty-two

“Each night I make the same nightmare"

Why not ask Luna for help, then?

Oh, well. >>Cold in Gardez nails most of my complaints. I understans why you chose to portray the events in that order (Funeral to set the angst and regret in Twilight, argument with Celestia to get the plot going, Twilight gets to Tartarus), and yet I can't help but wonder why spend so much time with these scenes if the story is going down a more comedic path. Same goes for the resolution, it just feels cheap and raises more questions.

Now, I try to abstain from saying "this would have been better had you done this instead", because it's your vision and not mine, but I feel you could take your core concept of Death being a fun-loving, yet professional guy and repackage it into a different context. Keep the same comedic tone and make it about Twilight wanting to learn more about Death and Celestia deeming it acceptable for her to meet her brother. If you want to still have an emotionally strong opener, have whomever character dies be the one to experience Death and the afterlife first hand only to return to the real world due to being resucitated just before it was too late. Just spitballing.

I like the core story you have here, but it could be much better if you bounced the idea a bit more. And if you ever do, I'd love to read this again.

Oh, my gosh, that was so nice. I'm not even sure why this resonated so much with me, but it did. You had me hooked and reading with a smile all the way
through.

Let's talk about the rough, now. While I like Gerard's backstory, as >>horizon said, Rarity leaves much to be desired. What's there is good, but it's not enough. Granted, she wasn't the focus of the story , but more involvement and higher stakes, or even a stronger realisation for her at the end could make this pack a bigger punch.

There is some quite nice prose in here and some clever word use, but ultimately I'm left feeling pretty lukewarm by the end of this?

Ultimately my issue is that I don't think this does quite enough to really impress or entertain me. The only thing that really stands out is some of the prose and wordplay (and, to reiterate, there is some super good stuff there!), but it is... kinda dull, and unfortunately that dullness permeates the whole of the work. The pace is slow, the prose is largely quiet and soft spoken (even the potentially more intense bits still read pretty gentle to me), the conflict is fairly familiar territory all told, etc, etc, etc. This is not to say that you can't do these things, of course, just that doing all of them at once can be a problem.

Ultimately, I'm just not engaged. This is pretty, but I don't feel like it provides me a particular reason to care, if that makes sense.

That said, some of this might be poetry bias. I'm just not a huge fan, so take that with whatever salt you might. It does certainly seem like some of the poetry fans are responding way better than me!

Formatting actually made this one a bit tricky to read (it was hella hard on my phone, looks a bit better on PC, but still, it is worth noting).

I understood the reference.

>>GaPJaxie has already mentionned my main problem with this entry.
You start your story in media res, but after a couple paragraphs, we have no less than seven paragraphs of 'info-dump'. I understand they are important for the resolution, but I'm sure there is a better way to do it.
My suggestions would be to either start with half of your explanation, then have the scene with Twi and Pinkie, and after give the rest of it, or spacing your explanation with some actions.
As it is, starting with people interacting to then have several paragraphs of back-story threw me out of the story a bit.

But aside from that, it was great. The premise is engaging, and Pinkie's voice is quite good. There are a few nitpicks I could mention here and there, but nothing like the beginning.

As for Discord, I'm sure you can have him more in character by suggesting that the reason he helped Pinkie is because her parties bring chaos. It may be enjoyable chaos for ponies, but it's still chaos.

Anyway, this was a really pleasant read, and it should score pretty high. Thank you for writing.

Most of the comments above me have said something about Cloudy's characterisation, and, though I didn't find it nearly as offputting as it seems that they did, I have to admit that her characterisation is a teensy, tiny bit flat in this story. What frustrated me about that wasn't the fact that she was little more than a caricature: it was that the story ends right at a point that could be a powerful character moment for her, and allow her to break out of those restrictions. I'm not saying that the story is incomplete because of this—far from it, because I thought that this was a delightful and compactly-structured story—but I certainly do think that a rethink of Cloudy's character arc (or, as it stands, mostly lack thereof) would be beneficial to the story as a whole.

But generally speaking? This was a fun story to read. It managed to tie together what felt like totally distinct and disjointed narratives in a satisfying, engaging way. You managed to take the contrast of the Pie generations' speech as a joke and got about as much mileage out of it as possible—I'd almost suggest cutting down a little on that, or at least spacing it out somewhat, because it skated dangerously close to wearing thin for me, but I think it can work as-is.

One thing to consider, if you go on to revise this, is the story's focus, because as it stands I'm not entirely sure I can pinpoint it. Perhaps it's because of the disjointed narratives I mentioned before (and I wouldn't recommend getting rid of that because, as I said, the way they come together over the course of the story is really rather excellent), but it's very hard to pinpoint exactly what this story is trying to be. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing! But most stories benefit from having a tighter focus, and I don't think it would harm this story if you tried to make it clear just exactly what that focus should be.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this piece a lot. Unlike other reviewers, it's certainly left an impression on me, and a fond one at that. For me, then, this piece is definitely a Strong entry—though based on just the handful of stories I've seen so far, it's certainly up against some tough competition!

(Horse? HHHOOOORRRRSSSSSSEEE)

Going to agree with previous commenters. This is a great story idea with good characters, and I would really like to see it expanded a bit. I can feel where you're going with this and the arc is intriguing, especially the mentor relationship with Palette and Du Hoc, and the examination of their similarities. Right now it feels like a painting that just needs a little more shading and detail to make it really shine. Seems to be a running theme with a lot of these entries, which totally makes sense!

Your prose overall is solid, and I would enjoy more exploration of Palette's artistic perspective while he's taking in his surroundings (which could also be an opportunity to expand on how it feels to *think* one is in love with painting when they're not, really.)

Like other readers, I found there were some places where the word flow and sentence structure threw me off. I wonder if some of this could be improved with different punctuation choices and/or a little more variance in sentence lengths (breaking some of the longer ones into 2 or more shorter ones, etc.) But I do think the longer visual descriptions serve this concept well. Thank you for your contribution. If you decide to do more with this, I'd very much like to see what comes of it.

>>horizon
I'm gonna agree with >>CoffeeMinion, and say you should completely replace "Needs Work" with "Keep Developing." It covers a couple more instances and generally sounds better.

One of the more solid entries I've seen this round. Quite nice, and manages to pack a lot without bursting at the seams. Which is not to say that it couldn't use some breathing room. As >>GaPJaxie says, you have a lot of interesting scenes and plot points, but they all have to fight for attention in the 8k wordspan. If you were to expand this into a longer story, maybe even a multi-chaptered one, each of them would have their moment to shine, and the whole story would be better as a result.

Still, that doesn't detract from the quality of the story. Even if I would have liked a few more moments of downtime, I still had a blast.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Oh dang, I should've just Googled the title. So this is a Twin Peaks crossover of sorts? Interesting... though unfortunately I've never seen Twin Peaks, so it doesn't work for me in terms of any connections with deeper lore. I guess I feel a bit disappointed, though, because some things that I'd interpreted as sheer creative WTF can be explained away by referencing a Wikia page. (Which, granted, might mean I should check out Twin Peaks...)

Hmmmm.

>>CoffeeMinion

Which [...] might mean I should check out Twin Peaks.

Oh, my God. yes

>>CoffeeMinion

Either way, I'm probably long overdue to stop mooching off your tiers and go my own way. I'm grateful for your tolerance thus far

Just as a note on that: I've made both the HORSE system and the tier system freely available under Creative Commons. I want other people to use the system if they find it useful!

>>horizon
Personally I just like yelling HORSE at people.

Actually I use HORSE these days mostly for my own benefit: it helps me to think about how different elements of a story's composition stack up and that in turn helps me think more clearly about what I can learn from any given story. I hope the authors whose fics I'm using it for find it as helpful as I do!

---

It seems a lot of people were more moved by this story than I was. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a sweet enough tale, and the idea is solid and emotive... but I really wasn't all that sold on the way in which that idea was conveyed. I found this entry fairly inconsistent in terms of quality of prose: I'd get through a fantastic couple of paragraphs, before being slammed with an awkward construction or a word out of place in a phrase that didn't quite feel natural (and in a story with as much dialogue as this one, natural language is super important!) All in all, I found that quite jarring, and it made it difficult to keep myself immersed in this one.

That said, I'm going to have to fundamentally disagree with >>horizon's main criticism of this story. I don't buy that Rarity's decision is meant to be a climax: it is the denouement (the climax, so far as I'm concerned, is right before the hr break. The entire story builds up to that moment where the final threads are sewn together, and that paragraph is effectively the moment that the whole request makes sense*—both to Rarity and the reader. Is it a bit forced? Sure, most of the fic is. But it's definitely a climax for this story's arc.) And with that approach to understanding the story's structure, I think this makes for a very well-packaged standalone story.

All in all, while I admire the idea and structure of this piece, the actual story as is isn't quite working for me. I'd love to see this edited, though, because I think that the idea and story behind this piece deserve to shine. For now, though, I think you're going to need to Keep Developing this one.

(Horse? HHHOOOORRSSSSSSSSEEE)

---

*ok so little bit of confusion-clearing here: yes, I know that denouement is defined to be the moment that everything is tied up neatly after a climax, and here I am describing a moment in which everything is tied up neatly as a climax. I think the reason this feels climactic here is that the driving force of this story is the reader's (and Rarity's) desire to fully understand Gerard's request and so, naturally, the moment in which we do is the moment of climax: the final short scene, therefore, acts as the resolution of the less important question "Will Rarity say yes or no?", tying up that loose end. The inclusion of the final sentence hints at how this is a denouement, because by bringing up the very reason that Rarity had earlier been so reluctant to take on such a workload and stating outright that it is no longer a concern, the author ties the resolution of that tension back into the very thing that caused it. And that, ultimately, is why I fundamentally disagree with horizon on this story's structure.

*mic drop*

>>horizon
Well then, that's different! ^^

Tier: Awesomesauce

Both funny and scary. A world where everything is measurable isn't something I want to see happenning. Thankfully, we're not there yet, and will probably never be.

As for the story, I don't have much to say. It was funny enough to score some points, it has a solid structure and complete arc to add some more, but I'm afraid there isn't much to take out from it.
Still, a strong story I'll probably rank pretty high.

Thank you for sharing

>>QuillScratch

I think the reason this feels climactic here is that the driving force of this story is the reader's (and Rarity's) desire to fully understand Gerard's request and so, naturally, the moment in which we do is the moment of climax: the final short scene, therefore, acts as the resolution of the less important question "Will Rarity say yes or no?"

I disagree, which I think is behind why we have such different readings on the story's intended arc.

First of all, if learning that Gerard's daughter is Gabby is the climax, then that piece of information must be a revelation which answers a question the story proposes; or recontextualizes information the story presented in another context. The climax is the story's most significant turning point or moment of resolution, that which everything has been building up toward.

So if that revelation was intended to be a climax … it comes off as really anticlimactic to me, which gets back to my argument about the story having structural problems.

> the driving force of this story is the reader's (and Rarity's) desire to fully understand Gerard's request

But we do understand Gerard's request — right from the beginning. The first scene gives us the line: "It will be a gift for my daughter. Please."

What we don't understand is:
1) Why it's so important to Gerard that he's willing to spend a fortune on it;
2) Why he chose Rarity.

#1 turns primarily on the identity of the cloak's creator; the final revelation doesn't actually clarify or recontextualize that question (except for maybe in the very minor sense that "She's how Griffins should be". BUT this isn't even new information: we're told well earlier "Because my daughter is more like my father", which provides the same emotional inflection.)

#2 certainly hinges centrally on the final revelation. However, the reason that is important is because it impacts Rarity's decision, and therefore her character arc. I've covered my feelings on that in the earlier comment.

(As a standalone revelation? My reaction to it was a mild "Okay," and moving on to see how that affected her choice. I mean, Gerard spends the entirety of the story talking about his history and his father; the identity of his daughter, and the link to canon that creates, has no thematic impact on that, except as discussed above.)

So I think your analysis here is wrong, at least wrt whether that revelation is (or can be) a climax. The idea that this is primarily about Gerard rather than Rarity would put the story on stronger footing, but I stand by my earlier comment.

Okay, I've been steadily making my way through my slate, and I haven't reviewed anything yet (time and energy kinda not really there), but when I read this...

“Why hello,” the proprietor intoned. “You ladies are welcome to Posh Pantsuits,

...I kinda had to say something.

A sweet, heartwarming image, true to the prompt. Top tier.

The Artist is getting some of the basics right, as this is recognizably a pony/changeling. The pencilwork and coloring is decent, but the scan should be adjusted to make it and the colors brighter.

Artist, if you can just put a decent skeleton under your work, your artwork will improve enormously. Those exercises where they show you how to draw ponies using geometric shapes? Practice with those a bit! Your proportions are off in this piece, and this, combined with the shapeless torso, give the whole thing a feeling of sloppiness. Mastering basic forms and keeping an eye on proportions will take your artwork to another level.

Twilight is secretly a changeling! Or, clipart Twilight pastes white ovals to her legs.

I won’t say that clipart works can never reach my top tier, but let’s say they have certain hurdles to clear, and being an original topic is one of those hurdles. But the “Twilight is secretly a changeling thing” has been done to here and back, so I’m afraid I can’t rank this very high. Thanks for participating!

Artist, I see you’re doing something creative here, so props for that. Your deeper meaning escapes me. Is this the graph of one episode, or multiple seasons?

>>horizon

I choose to believe that the X axis is degrees Kelvin, implying (based on melting points) that Rainbow Dash is primarily made from lead…

A grim reference, perhaps?

Genre: Snowcrash

Thoughts: CiG says a lot of what I might. Basically what we get here is a tasty slice, but I'm left wanting the rest of the pizza.

...And now I'm struggling to not just reiterate CiG about the plot and character arcs. Maybe one thing I can add is that I found it very hard to keep the two characters' names separate in my head, perhaps because they're so short and nondescript, and the characters themselves don't get much description besides "sister wearing a better snow wrap" and "vaguely tsundere sister who has a better snow wrap but doesn't want to use it." Eventually I gave up and just let the story happen, and it actually became a lot more enjoyable from that point on. So I guess what I'm saying is that the two characters don't have enough going on to really distinguish them from each other. That ultimately does more to keep the characters at arms length rather than to build my emotional investment in them.

I will say, though, that the descriptive language of the environment was quite good! I also felt some feels at the end, once we see who the statues are.

Tier: Keep Developing

I was back and forth on how I should feel about Sirocco. Rainbow's affection for him sets up high expectations, but I could practically feel the tension of the Family Secret hanging in the air. I got the impression that he would, in actuality, be some short of shitheel, but I didn't know where he'd fall on the line of "gambled too much" to "child molester."

I think "child abandonment" is a happy medium. But he's not without his reasons, and he's still a little sympathetic (and I say this as someone with the life experience of the twins), so bravo for pulling off that balancing act. For all his obvious faults, his family still loves him very much, and that says a lot. Dying a hero at that point is just icing on the cake.

I've been caught up in the rush of grief and trying to organize things you'd rather not have to think about post-family death, so I'll disagree with >>Fenton about the cramped feeling (which isn't to say he hasn't had that experience, of course. I wouldn't think to presume), but I understand that things can feel disjointed and that sometimes you can laugh even in the most severe grief. Often, you must, or it will eat you alive. One of my most clear memory from the day my great grandfather died is sitting around the dinning room table with the extended family laughing as we shared memories about what a crotchety old bastard he was and how much we loved him anyway.

So, thumbs up.

I dare not call it a complaint, but I would like to see a bit more of Scootaloo in the later sections. I get that she's a new addition to the family so she's not as emotionally invested as everyone else so she's not as integral to the flow as emotions start running higher. That said, her role in the shopping section was adorable.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yes, but this one is an alicorn changeling with feathery wings! At least her tails not ratty like the rest of those nasty ole changelings.