Plot's solid, writing's solid. Unfortunately it was a character piece, and there was very little done to differentiate the characters, give them unique voices or make them stand out from each other or be interesting.

Not nothing, I mean. Just not nearly enough to make this story engaging or make a lot of what happens clear or significant. I found it really hard to care a lot of the time when things happened to these people. The plot was a very archetypal, staid structure which is fine; That's not a criticism, that means you executed a solid framework to hang things off. The criticism is that by itself it's skeletal, when it needs more meat and flesh on the bones to be engaging.

At this point, I couldn't actually tell you any of the character's unique traits or characteristics. I'm sure I noticed them while I was reading, but I've forgotten them over the course of writing this comment.

The amphora was a very interesting Macguffin to center around though. It's a very strong concept to toy with, and I did like the concept of this.

This story delivers a lot to think about with very little effort, and it honestly does get better with each read-through. Well done with constructing the twist! This story is pretty much textbook on how to make your readers scroll the hell back up in the best possible way.

It's not often that I disagree with >>horizon, but I do want to point out what I considered to be a flaw. Specifically, the first two-thirds of this story really did not engage me greatly. For all intents and purposes, it looked exactly like another "guilty-feeling pony is sad about her life" story, which we've probably all seen more times than we'd like. It was not until the hints became pretty obvious that I sat up and leaned forward towards my computer screen.

To fix this, I would not suggest making the upcoming twist more clear; I think you've already telegraphed it pretty well. But maybe try to frame the interactions between Sunset and Celestia as something other than the whole "I shouldn't have come!" guilt-trip song and dance we've all seen before. The twist will have so much more impact if the reader is that much more invested in the conversation between the two.

But I do agree with horizon that the ambiguity regarding the ending. If Sunset is the changeling/narrator, then it doesn't make much sense that she is frightened by the fact that she cares about ponies. If this changeling isn't Sunset, then how does she know so much about Sunset's life?

This problem has an easy fix—just clarify. :P

Overall, I think this story has a heck of a lot of potential, but my reading experience did fumble significantly at the afore mentioned key moments. I'll be honest and say that this is definitely not the entry that I enjoyed reading the most from a purely personal standpoint, but I'm also honest when I say that I think this one excites me the most when I think about what a re-work can do for it.

Okay, so, this is a real good story and I'm frontloading to say I almost really liked it.

This starts off being too unsubtle; Everything until the subcon/con scrolls is laying the premise on too thick. It's beating the audience over the head with it being weird, but it doesn't meaningfully advance the audience's understanding of the weirdness until that point, which was honestly more frustrating than it was interesting.

The Flurry conversation is pretty perfectly paced and executed. Right amount of subtle hints to overt statements, good speed, neither too fast nor too slow. That point of the story is easily where it's strongest.

Then you go from too hot to too cold: The ending is too oblique and subtle. It feels like an obvious attempt to leave what happened up to the reader's interpretation but, honestly? I feel like that was the wrong move when you give so much explicit detail about what's happening. Worse still, it's done at the expense of a meaningful emotional payoff.

We don't know how bad or how meaningful Twilight's fuckup is outside of the dream bubble. It's just not quite enough for me to know that she's miserable in here if the alternative is... well, the end of the world. We don't really understand the circumstances -- or at least I don't -- that drove her to this in a lot of ways, which I find more interesting than the end result of it not working. The hints are good and interesting! The implications could be! But there's just not enough there, at the end, and I would have liked the situation with Discord to have been made a little more overt than it was.

This reads as toeing the line between having a definite, concrete idea of what it wants to have happened, and not wanting any one answer to be the truly correct one. Or, as 2merr said, of running out of time.

She counted off on her fingers.

What you you even call wing-fingers? Wingers? Hmm...

Anyway. There's a lot of great description going on throughout. It's evocative without getting purple or overstaying its welcome in the word count. I agree that we could use a little more insight into the history between Dash and AJ before we jump on the romance train. AJ's surprise at seeing her at the farm is good, and her biting back feelings and walking a different path in the road is great on top of being a nice bit of imagery hearkening back to their (lack of) history, but doesn't quite sell it.

That said, I'm all aboard this mid-life ship. Choo-choo, bitches! Let's ride.

>>MrNumbers

The author might have meant to use the second one and failed at it. I personally don't see it though.

If that was the point you were trying to make, then yes, I did miss it. I'm not sure how I was supposed to get that from your first post, but you have now clearly stated it, and I acknowledge it as valid.

(I didn't think I was being that unreasonable in assuming that a term with a well-known definition in regards to literature was being used that way by a piece of literature discussing the happenings within itself, but I'll acknowledge I'm not the best judge of my own reasonableness or lack thereof.)

You're arguing someone, somewhere might have issue with taking the stance that Twilight is a mortal for the purposes of this story, when you're the only one listing it as a problem.

First of all, I'm not the only one — >>Caliaponia also commented on it, and added another, better reason why the sentence I was talking about doesn't quite work in context.

Second, the issue is not that aliTwi is mortal. I'm not actually quite sure what's bugging me, but I'm pretty sure it's something related to the presentation of the fact, rather than the fact itself. Maybe I'd have been fine if it was indicated earlier in the story, or if there had been some kind of handwave justification for why she's still mortal, or maybe it doesn't need to be there at all and there's some better way to fit in the line "Because mortals are not to meddle with immortals" that avoids the question of aliTwi's mortality entirely — because I do like that line, and I don't want to see it just cut.

I think maybe it comes down to managing reader expectations (which is kinda the core of my other complaint as well). I was not expecting "mortal aliTwi" to get dropped where it was, and then it wasn't followed up on or expanded on, which left me unsatisfied. If it worked for you, then good for you; it didn't work for me.

Lampshading how little something makes sense or matters doesn't stop it being true.

>>Kitcat36
I hope my feedback wasn't too harsh, because my intention isn't be be discouraging, but to provide an unvarnished appraisal in the interests of getting the most out of what a story can do to help its author improve. That's sort of a 'tough love' thing, I know, because I've been on the flip side and it does happen to me. It can be a bit of an emotional bruise for a short time, but I find that's what helps me the most in the long run, which is what these writeoffs are all about. So hopefully you're helped in some way by my not holding back.

I would like to be clear that you didn't do bad, you just didn't hit some of what I would have needed to see in a story like this for it to be a standout.

Shorter paragraphs, simpler sentences, less navel-gazing. This is the epitome of writing that reads like writing; You're always aware you're seeing words on a page, something a person has written. Even when it's good words, it's not immersive. This paragraph was a chief offender to me;

I had never liked tea, but I poured a mug and gathered it up by my face, letting the steam radiate over my skin as I clutched the heated ceramic against my pasterns. A brown-tinted traitor stared back at me from the rippling surface, but not even that dark hue could tone down the icy blue of my eyes, a blizzard amid the swelter. “Thank you,” I muttered into the cup, ringing hollow.

This would be a great story at half the length.

I have no criticisms to give to this.

“Livid. I can tell. You don't have to be a book for me to read you,” Twilight joked.

Popping down mid-read to say that I love this line with all my poor scribbler's heart.

And we're back. Witty, drunken dialogue, and a surprise—but not twist!—at the end. While fun, I feel like the Luna gag takes away from the more thoughtful (if inebriated) tone the rest of the fic gives off. I'm a huge fan of princess jail, though (I've done it myself, once), so only minor casualties on the score sheet for the tonal dissonance.

Special Delivery is not prompt. Late retrospective is better than none?


>>Trick_Question, >>Zaid Val'Roa, >>horizon, >>Miller Minus, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Rao, >>Kitcat36, >>MLPmatthewl419, and >>Not_A_Hat, thank you for your feedback! To be honest, I kind of felt like I'd won the comment lottery this round.

This was a bit of an experiment, as I'm of the the 'writeoffs are for experiments' school of thought. That isn't to say that a fic can't be aimed to win, but playing to known strengths doesn't seem like the best use of a round, as compared to getting skilled feedback on a problem area. The end results are frequently weird, sometimes wonderful, and, yes, all to often wrecks, but useful ones.

In this case, I wanted to use OCs (need to be better at character development), and was trying my hand at multiple perspectives (usually use just one). Although that ended up being a poor fit for this particular story, I'm still happier with it than most of my recent writeoff entries. It may not have hit the right emotional notes, but the core conflict and arc are there.

I felt >>CoffeeMinion may have summed it up best with his "strong set of moving parts" summation, and >>Trick_Question, >>horizon, and most of the rest had cognizent points on just what bits were jamming each other up.

So, for me, this is just about a textbook example of the value of the writeoff, as I basically now have a roadmap of what to do.


As for some nuts and bolts, backstory, and comments.

I didn't have time to write on Friday or Saturday, although I did come up with the 'End of all things' as Discord's address on Saturday. I was originally leaning towards a 'Discord has gone missing' plot, but I couldn't think up a satisfactory reason as to why. Postal delivery didn't pop into my head until Sunday morning, but of course that's not really all that long to write, especially with various chores and such to do, and I think I ended up finishing around midnight.

Prompt was the focal character for the idea, with Indicia brainstormed as a way to make the scenario work. As mentioned earlier, I was experimenting with bouncing the perspective back and forth between scenes, but I find the arguments for making Indicia the sole POV persuasive.

The horoscope was an early idea, both to establish character and where Prompt being late (not very, but technically) would cause an ultimately positive chain of events, but I was short on time at the end and never came back to tie it in/clean it up properly.

I wrote the start and end first - the middle couple of scenes got short shrift.

As a born and bred American who has spent less than a week in Britan, I still have no idea why 'flaming row' was the first thing that popped into my head to describe a big fight.

Glad folks seem to have generally enjoyed it, and some of the smaller touches, even if it didn't make the finals. Thanks again for all the excellent feedback, and congratulations to the finalists.

>>Caliaponia

born and bread

bred

>>Caliaponia
Also, in case that seemed rude, I should add that I share your opinion that the Writeoff is better as a feedback system than a competition. The competition element, however, particularly the two-round voting, encourages me to push to do my best. If you make the finals you get more feedback.

I think you have a good story with great action and some minor flaws. I hope you end up posting the end result to Fimfiction.

>>Trick_Question

the Writeoff is better as a feedback system than a competition.

It’s a feedition system.

Or a competiback. Depends on the hour of the day and the phase of the Moon.

>>Trick_Question

born and bread

bred

Don’t overstep the bredline!

Very nice:

But I was confused by what actually happens in that last section. Does Twilight send a message back from thousands of years in the future to Princess Celestia the night after they had their argument? If that's what she does--and like I said, I'm not sure that's what she does--then why does she do it? Doesn't it create the possibility of paradox? I mean, Celestia now knows that Twilight solves the problem, but she doesn't know what she's supposed to do about it. Certainly she'll want to help Twilight, but is she supposed to? Or is she supposed to do nothing? Maybe a message more along the lines of "Don't worry. I'm taking care of it"?

Lots of fun, though.

Mike

… it's a day before the end of finals and there are art pieces with only one comment? Let's fix that, people!

Compositionally, I think this works surprisingly well for its simplicity. I have a sneaking suspicion the vase was put into greyscale in order to not have to deal with clashing colors between the muted vase tones and the pastel pony tones, but it also works as a look, especially with the shadowy surroundings. I'm of mixed feelings about the blobbish nature of the ponies in the top row; they work with the composition, but also break me out of the piece a little with their lack of detail. The windigos in the lower row, though, work very well, I think.

I wonder if maybe an Element of Harmony, or Twilight's six-pointed star, might have been similarly overlaid onto the geometric designs at the top?

Probably middle-tier for me but I like it as a piece.

This is a nice piece, and Twilight in particular is drawn skillfully - it evokes her emotions well.

My main nitpick is that Twilight seems to have been drawn in a slightly different style than the rest of it. While her edges have a soft gradient, the clouds and rocks have only three or four, rather distinct shades.

Their distinctness makes them feel blocky to me, compared to Twilight's more refined figure. Don't think this kept me from liking it, though.

Another art piece with only one review. Let's spread around some love. Also, >>RogerDodger, is it possible to add comment statistics in on the Art Gallery page the same way as on the Fic Gallery, in order to make it easier to realize when feedback is spread unevenly? (Maybe just put something like: [💬5 👤3] after the piece's title?)

Like Zaid, I could talk about the flaws in the pony proportions (though Celestia's hind legs and Sunset's neck stand out to me more than Sunset's legs), but presumably with your apology in the caption you're already feeling the pinch there. What I do like is the balance of the composition, and the focus blur putting the emphasis on the spilled tea as a stand-in for the stand-off in the background. The choice of colors sort of half-works; Celestia looks a little washed out, but Sunset's faded dark pink is excellent as a complement to her out-of-focus-ness. Consider making Celestia more pink, maybe? Or using some subtle accents for her mane?

I like the emotion in Sunset, and the contrast of emotions, though I'm not 100% sure it works in concert with the source. I guess the tea spilling is that point in the story when Sunset freaks out over the tea being poisoned? But I don't see anything about spilled tea explicitly in the text, and if that were to happen, my mental image of that scene would be something like it dropping to the floor as Celestia lunged in for the hug.

Still, thanks for submitting! A valiant effort against the time crunch!

>>Baal Bunny
I think your guess is correct. I suspect Twilight knows she can't cause a paradox no matter what she does, so it didn't detract from the punch for my read.

This one only had two reviews. Anyone else want to drop some feedback on our poor underappreciated artists?

Like >>Fenton this really threw me when I realized it was Twilight — she's got a peytral very similar to Celestia's (except for the cutie mark/element of harmony star), the tiara and long flowing mane, the long neck/Celestial proportions, and she's holding up a scroll with a picture from Ponyville just like Celestia does in the show opening. If you intended to make some sort of point about Twilight taking over Celestia's role or something (like Fenton, apologies, haven't read the source story), you may have succeeded a little too well. The black-and-white format may have worked against you here: even a little bit of splash color to draw attention to the star, or some spot purple highlighting on Twilight's pelt, might have been enough of a "Wait, what?" prod to draw the eye to the figure and resolve the dissonance.

The composition is effective, but the execution feels uneven to me. You've got this amazing detail in the picture, and this smudgy effect in the left outer darkness, but what looks like scribbles in the darkness to the right and the haze surrounding the picture. The dissonance is disorienting me a bit, and I think this would have been stronger sticking to a single style.

This does do some interesting things, though, and Celestia's Twilight's (edit: dammit my brain just cannot accept that) thousand-yard stare is sticking with me. Thanks for submitting!

And I'll try to leave much briefer thoughts on the rest of the art pieces while I'm at it.

Here: I'd just be repeating >>regidar, so +1 to that.

The scratches were indeed a subtle and well-done touch. I'm left dissatisfied by the composition, though. I can't help but feel like there was a missed opportunity to play with the entire canvas rather than just fade to black, given that the source story made a big point of the Flutterflesh being a room-filling cancerous sort of growth; by confining the composition to a single isolated lump, it really mutes for me the feeling of surrounding/overwhelming oppression that I feel like this (is? should be?) trying to convey. Maybe there's detail in the black that I just can't make out on my monitor? Anyway, thanks for submitting!

This picture is well composed, and the cup is particularly well done - both in what it adds to the composition, but also in the perspective and foreshortening the decorative design on it.

I'm not reading much from Celestia, but Sunset is emotive. Both are reasonably well done; not quite as clean as the cup, but they're also more complex subjects.

Of course the elephant in the room is that this is a sketch, and has trouble stacking up on fully fleshed out pieces.

Overall, it seems like a solid foundation for a piece. I'm guessing that the artist may have run out of time, in which case, I hope they will manage to complete it.

Good on you for sourcing your vectors, artist (cf: >>Zaid Val'Roa >>Fenton). (For the record, the links in the caption go here and here.) I see what you're going for, but that idea of an army of cosmic Twilights reshaping the universe is a little hard to communicate with that single halo of same-sized figures; it also felt odd to me that the big central one looks kinda indignant or upset rather than … man, I don't even know what I was expecting for someone undertaking a project of that magnitude, but anger isn't it. Maybe some sort of Bodhisattva-like peaceful transcendence?

So, yeah, not sold on the execution, but a worthy try. Thanks for submitting!

This isn't going to win any awards for the quality of its linework, but it's still impressive how much was conveyed by simple things like color choices and well-chosen details (like the single line for the flowing spread of Luna's mane in panel 1, or the prison window setting the scene in a few simple line-strokes). Agreed that the Rarity color choice in panel 1 was Trixie-unfortunate. The sight gag of the second panel was certainly amusing — so, artist, regardless of your voting placement, you did your job. Thank you!

Clever idea, and skillfully done. I'm guessing that this is a composite with an actual amphora, in which case it was well done. Most of the pony images feel organic, particularly the bottom layer. The top images have a few issues; the rightmost ones feel like they're leaning a bit too far to the left, while the rightmost ones are standing up too straight. Regardless, it still comes off as an appealing whole. Thanks for sharing!

Again, this isn't going to win any awards for the quality of its linework, being a pencil sketch with scribble shading, but what's here offers a clear glimpse of its intentions. The cliffsides are probably the strongest part of the piece, and I do appreciate how the little details of horn and tail shape make it pretty clear that the jumble of scrawls in the middle is Twilight Sparkle. The scribbles at the base of the cliff are evocative of waves crashing against the cliffs, but I really would have preferred a more even, unhurried pattern to the distant ocean shading. Take this from concept to less-hurried execution and I think you'll see future pieces rise significantly in the ratings. Thanks for submitting!

I'm starting to get into my upper tier here, where I have to start making tough ranking decisions separating "more deserving" from "most deserving". This is a really dynamic piece, and I like a lot about it — the shading in particular is excellent, and the unusual choice of green for the backlighting works surprisingly well with the pony color. The figure is dynamic and emotional.

I question the decision to spend so much time on the (admittedly fantastic) shading while leaving in the pencil roughs of the figure itself, though. The muted outer lines do work well with that backlighting effect, but then you've got the head-circle you used for reference still cluttering up the face, and it's disorienting seeing such a halfhearted window against the quality of the foreground. (Leaving it subdued was a good choice, but it still breaks the fourth wall for me with its aggressive sketchiness.) So, high tier, but edged out by my top votes. Thanks for submitting!

EDIT: And this is only the third review for the picture, so one final reminder that there's still a number of art pieces needing some feedback love.

Enjoyed it overall, so keep that in mind as I begin nitpicking.

Although it started off balanced, it transitioned into almost pure sci-fi. Given the setting, I'd personally expect some shades of technomagic. Magic antimatter containment, or runes carved into the neutronium, with the elements at its core type of thing.

Also, although the piece explores Twilight well, I end up wondering about everypony else. I understand that they aren't the focus here, but Twilight hasn't completely moved beyond friendship, has she? Was her uploading project finished before her friends passed? Not Spike or Celestia, I'd imagine.

It's perfectly fine for Twilight to be the focus and make up the bulk of the avatars, but it seemed odd for her to be the only one. Some technobabble reason? Did she perfect it in secret, and mass-upload everypony without them realizing it? (wouldn't that put a spin on things).

If it wasn't a secret, and she did perfect the tech before her friends passed, I'd love to hear some offhoof mention of what they're doing - even at a thousandth of normal speed, I imagine Pinkie Pie would still be trying to throw the mother of all goodbye parties

Had niggles about paradoxes as well, but that angle has been covered.

Those points aside, I found the fic generally solid and enjoyable.

Another in my high-but-not-top tier, held back only by the unevenness >>Caliaponia mentions. Twilight's figure is straight-up professional quality here, full stop. And I think I do like the clouds on balance, despite their shape and shading corresponding to no actual clouds I've ever seen. But that same blocks-of-color effect works less well for the sea than the clouds — I can't not see the static of a dead TV channel (which, um, I guess is thematically appropriate but still frustratingly distracting). And the cliffs look more like Minecraft cobblestone in their odd regularity than actual rock. And the grass atop them has a texture matching nothing else in the piece. The overall effect of the background is a sort of patchwork quilt that pulls my eye away from the figurework I want to admire.

Just work on those backgrounds, though, and this will be hard to compete against. Thanks for submitting!

Top tier for me, because this is a piece that knows what it wants to do, aims high, and hits. The stylized vector work here (I assume it's vector: if not, further bravo) is sharp, evocative, and immediately identifiable; furthermore, you've got a subliminal Jesus thing going on (whether you intended it or not) with the hair/crown of thorns and the dramatic shadows. Fine work!

And rounding out a full art review set with my top contender.

Again, knows what it wants to do, aims high, and hits. I do have a nitpick or two — primarily fixing that white blotch on the figure's leg — but this edged out Tramonto for me based on the depth of emotion evoked. The bleeding effect of the watercolors down the page is a great use of the specific qualities of the chosen medium. The wall and coffee cup throw the pic just enough out of symmetry that it keeps the eye wandering, and the sharpness of the face is great contrast to the bleed of the colors. Well done, and good luck.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Every single one of these is beautiful.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Oh man, that last one is glorious!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
I love this. Bonus points for the last one still fitting the mood of all three component pieces. Well done. ^^

>>GroaningGreyAgony
This is the best thing in the history of ever

>>GroaningGreyAgony

Stay Back! That’s My Kombucha!

I wonder how Flutterf'taghn tea would taste like.

Mysterious shop with no one in it? So it's run by the devil/wizard/etc. and will probably disappear the next day after the item purchased goes horribly wrong (of course.) :-)

A few typos are showing up here and there, enough to start getting distracting, but on the upside, obviously "oopses", not lack of skill from the author.

The premise, once explained by the shopkeeper, is a very interesting take on the prompt.

Moondancer's internal thoughts are (often) distracting. We can tell the shopkeeper is "overselling" or "annoying" and such, because we're shown how he's acting. MD thinking again what was just shown is basically telling us what we just saw.

MD's also way too quick to accept the truth of the shop's claim. She goes from incredulous one moment, and skips right past doubt, acceptance, testing, etc. to thinking about the long term implications for the shopkeeper, asking how he could stand it... all in like two paragraphs. And then is depressed about it herself a sentence later.

And then reverses it.

And then it ends.

Alright, this story has a very cool take on the prompt, and the actual plot points in this story all line up nicely. The pacing, however, is way off. As mentioned, Moondancer's italicized thoughts mostly just repeat what was just shown in the action or dialog, slowing things. The reveal of the shop itself is an infodump from the shopkeeper, rather than a "discovery." And the last few paragraphs go from incredulity, to accepting sadness, to understanding and hapiness in like three lines.

In other words, this is a story with four beats to hit, but the first takes most of the story, and the final three pile up at the end. If this was reworked, and those beats spread out a bit, this could be really great however.

The voices here are really perfect. Everyone's on-pitch, and it really brings out the chemistry between bug-boy and dragon-girl. Likewise, a lot of the humor worked for me as well. All in all, a very pleasant read!

Still, I'm not quite top-slating this one because I felt that it had some focus/pacing issues. I'm not sure how to describe it other than by saying that a lot of the story felt meandering. Basically the entire first scene (while definitely entertaining) doesn't really do much to set up the primary conflict. From a purely plot-based perspective, it can probably be replaced by four or five paragraphs. We're not really introduced to the main conflict until they make landfall at Minos, 2 kilo-words into the story.

That means for almost 30% of the story (including Ember's retellling of her past), I had nothing to latch on to, and was constantly wondering what the capital-letter Main Point would be. Of course, Ember's story pays off later, but that does little to help that during my initial read-through, I was losing focus while she was telling it.

After that, we spend a lot of time talking about the conflict between Ember and Thorax, but I don't think we spend enough time resolving it. It's only at the beginning of the final scene does the tone become conciliatory, and then Thorax proposes a solution to the problem a mere 200 words away from the end. I really enjoyed the build-up of the tension between the two of them, so everything getting solved so quickly felt like slamming down the brakes on a train.

Before you hate me, let me reiterate the fact that I still really, really enjoyed reading this story. The little moments of character-based humor, the dialogue, the prose was all top-notch in my book. But I think this story really struggled to fully engross me, because of the pacing issues I mentioned above. I would suggest finding a way to more clearly introduce the central conflict earlier on, and spend more time with the resolution. That way, your reader can more easily enjoy a full story arc, supported by the splendid characterization that you already have.

Thorax, Pharynx... origin story? No, Ember shows up. This should be fun! (Suspecting romance story now.)

An eyewitness saying Correlation != causation.. made me smile, but I feel I've seen that somewhere before.

Something feels off about the voicing here. There's... the characters are too self-aware I think, to the point where it's feeling a bit meta. Pharynx saying "bitch", as well as talking about selling roofies to ponies and doing "back alley vasectomies" just makes this feel off to me.

Why is he flying slow? He's a changeling, change into a dragon and get on with it!

Ember ranting about being summoned sounds way too much like she's still a rebellious teenage girl. No, more like what a bad movie thinks a rebellious teenage girl sounds like.

Oh, and she's just casually like "I don't think I killed anyone... directly." Thorax better freak out about casual near-murder.

"Garble's a little bitch... you can't make me mate with him." Ugh, this dialog is actively painful to read at this point.

And Thorax actively applauds her story, nevermind near-murder, theft, etc. that should really have him questioning her moral character by now.

Really? REALLY!? Tempest's broken horn as a garnish for "bitch drinks." And ember picks her teeth with it... and Thorax is still okay with this. *sigh* I feel he may as well be an OC at this point, for how out of character he's acting.

So I ended up just pushing through to the end on this one, and biting my metaphorical tongue on further running commentary.

As is probably clear from the above, I'm not a very big fan of how this was written. The author uses "bitch" like a punctuation mark for dialog, and combined with the rest of the crassness, non-nonchalant murder of thousands, etc. Well... this feels like it escaped from 4chan.

I really wanted to like this one starting out, and the basic skeleton of the story has all the parts I'd want to see. Backstory for Ember, some glimpses of the harsh lands outside Equestria we saw in the movie, Thorax out of his comfort zone, etc. But the way it's put together here is not only unsatisfying, but actively repulsive to me. Even if the same content was there, but it was played differently, it might've worked. E.g. if it took the dark humor angle, and Thorax was actively horrified by all the things he learned/saw about Ember and her past, that could be great. My point is, I'm not offended by the actual content itself, but I don't think it matches the characters or helps this story structure at all.

And on top of just being "off," I think the crassness and violence actively distracts from the story. It makes everything a joke. The same way bottles just bounce off Ember's head to no effect, any "serious words" the main characters say have no weight to them, as this world as shown is basically consequence free (at least if you're a main character.)

A fun idea and a strong high-level pacing makes this one pretty easy to get into the groove of. Nice work with that! If I'm being honest, though, I have to admit that this one wasn't quite my cup of tea. Gonna do it like a band-aid, here's my take:

There is no real conflict here, outside of the perfunctory "face your worst memories/past" deal. Luna, your main character, stays pretty much stagnant the entire way through. Summer Breeze learns a "don't worry, you've lived your life well" lesson that just feels a bit hackneyed. And the reveal that Summer lost her flight in an accident doesn't really strike an emotional chord with me, because we already knew that she could not fly for a significant period of time before the present moment. Learning about the exact circumstances and timeline wasn't really emotionally compelling for me.

In other words, you're trying to give the reader some warm fuzzies without really earning it. As a reader and a writer, I firmly believe that you can only evoke true sympathy for your characters when you put them in conflict with one another or with themselves. The fact that Luna plays part of the wise and mysterious benefactor so rigidly throughout the whole story felt inorganic and anti-sympathetic to me. And Summer's only internal conflict is learning a lesson she honestly should have learned a long time ago.

My advice: don't be afraid to throw a wrench in things! Luna doesn't need to be the perfect, benevolent figure she is. Explore the reasons why she might be doing this dream-therapy for ponies, instead of brushing it off with "she enjoys seeing her ponies happy." Instead, maybe this could be a dreaded obligation, or a long-forgotten practice from before her banishment. Flesh your main character out, is what I'm saying. Likewise, Summer should not be a perfect delicate little angel. Let her get angry at times, let her be inconsolable at times.

My point is, there needs to be some kind of meaningful friction somewhere. I hate it when I say that a story might need a top-to-bottom makeover, but I honestly think the best way to improve this piece would be to reshape it to showcase some kind of character flaw in Luna, Summer, or both. Like I said, I thought this was a neat idea, but even if your premise is strong, you need an equally compelling conflict to make the kind of emotional impact you're trying to achieve.

>>Xepher
I just wanted to say, I think it's funny how we posted reviews that are basically opposite in every way about 30 minutes apart from one another. Just goes to prove that in this crazy world, reasonable people can still disagree. =P

I think I'm out on this one; I won't be able to push through my finals slate. Sorry. :/

Fangz 2 ever1 4 al da gr9 stoyas u fukkin rok6666666!!!!!!!!!!666666666661111

I was pretty much engrossed from beginning to end, so that's a huge win in my book. Great work with Bunny-Cereal and Glim-Glam's voicing; their back and forth was super entertaining for the most part. I say that because I did feel a little tempted to skim during the dialogue between them while they're walking to Canterlot, but I think that's mostly a pacing issue and not a character one.

I will have to echo >>GaPJaxie and >>Zaid Val'Roa that Twilight has weak voicing. I like the initial subversion when she's caught off guard, but after that she kind of ping pongs between being Celestia, being season 2 Twilight, and being a textbook. Pick a voice (but not "textbook") and stick to it. And try to tone down some of the info-dumpy bits she's saddled with. The paragraphs that talk about the other alicorns and time travel in particular really do feel like lectures, but in a bad way.

The ending was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While I liked that it didn't just end with "Yep, Future-Twi's life sucks, The End", I can't help but wonder why Glimmy didn't just tell present-Twilight everything. Which made me start to wonder how cool it would have been if future-Twilight was actually waiting for Glim and Trix so that she could send them back to their time. Anyways, back to the point, which is that if I'm honest, that very last scene was a bit too much of a blatant tear-jerker for me. Personally, I would have preferred if it had cut off a handful of paragraphs sooner—as it is, I think it might be stretching the moment. But of course, that's mostly personal opinion.

So yeah, brush up on your Twi-scenes, and I think you've got a real heavy-hitter here!

A lot of typos and punctuation errors cropping up early in this. Some tense problems as well.

Ah, a hospital... okay, I'm curious now to see where this goes.

This story is falling into the trope of hiding the hook. I'm several pages in now, and every interaction Luna has actively avoids using any specific terms about what she's there to do. That effectively makes most of those interactions pointless, as they don't advance the plot.

Okay, she's here "to fly" and Luna knows something is slightly off about that... and the village shows that again... and the group of ponies again... this is a LOT of filler (decently imaged filler) without advancing things.

Then, just as we think we're about to get some info (while Summer is remembering stuff) another pony literally interrupts, leaving us in the dark still.

And it's LITERALLY looped around to the start of the whole dream, and still no answer. I'm really hoping this is all some great symbolic puzzle that will make sense at the end, but otherwise, I feel like nothing has happened for the last few thousand words.

When the ending finally does arrive, it's not too shabby. It's a bit predictable, though the fact that the accident was when she was young, and not just her age that took away her ability to fly... that was at least a small reveal.

Overall, I'm afraid this feels like a pretty standard story. Peace when at death's door is a good message, and a good image of something Luna would do. But the pacing here is just far too slow for me.

While there are some nice images in the dreamscape, I think even that concept was a bit wasted. Despite being in a dream, nothing much is actually SHOWN in all the imagery. Instead, Summer literally TELLS Luna what happened to her.

This is a hugely missed opportunity, author. A dream is the ultimate place to show instead of tell, and so having Summer just blurt it all out in a few paragraphs feels like a let down.

Still, overall, a really lovely idea at the core of this story, and a great use of her power in an important way.

>>Cyrano
Oh, that clears things up. Thanks!

Personally, I think it shouldn't have been so subtle. But go ahead and take that with a grain of salt, author, because I know I can be a dumb reader sometimes.

>>Posh
Same boat here. I always get fresh wind in my reviewing-sails if I make finals, and I tend to peter out a bit if I don't.

Clearly the solution is that people need to vote me into finals more often. :-p

Hmm, a lot of time spent squeezing through to seats.

Prose is flowing very well, so a breeze to read up through the "cheap seats" remark. I was about to comment on how the story is dragging out the hook, but... it's apparently intentional, as Rarity herself is trying to avoid something. Let's see if this works, since just because a character is in the dark, doesn't always mean it works for the reader to be as well.

Okay, it's revealed quickly afterwards, so a character-based excuse for dragging it out mostly works.

Some great banter here between Rarity and Twilight. Both sound spot-on in their voices so far.

Kicked out of the theater was starting to stretch it. The restaurant being closed... okay. But now we cut to a jail cell? I confess, you've lost me. I don't know what this story is about at all by this point.

The jail conversation... Rarity's desire for fame/power is kind of dark and OOC to me. Wanting to be known for what she does, yes, that kind of fame, sure. But not wanting fame so she can get away without paying, so she can have ponies "jump to her every whim." That doesn't feel right.

A lot of the jail discussion is kind of amusing. Once Luna shows up though, and it's back to skipping out on the check... Again, "not having the money on you" is different than sneaking out through the window. The latter is clearly a crime, so I don't think this really works as a comparison.

And that ending... okay, it works. Made me smile at least, though I think the way it's given (through Luna's speech) is a little too much telling, and is an awkward fit.

Overall, a relatively pleasant read, for, even when it wasn't advancing the story, the banter between Twilight and Rarity is pretty great. The rough patches for me are Rarity's desire for the wrong kind of fame (as previously mentioned) and Twilight being willing to skip out on the check. Both of those just feel too out of character. The last problem is the overly convenient coincidence of Luna. She shows up, accused of the same thing, and wanting the same power/gifts-from-fame as Rarity, and really just serves as an infodump source for the final punchline. "Haha, you're being treated like peasants BECAUSE it's the law!"

Avoid outright lawbreaking, have Rarity want nice things/favors/etc. because she wants Twilight to have them (not herself), and find some better way to explain the ancient law than a Luna infodump... then this story would really be great!

Oh, and really weak prompt connection, but ha-ha. :-)

Genre: Make-a-Wish

Thoughts: I like this as a frame for potentially delivering a stronger resolution. As it is right now though, the ending seems to focus on the more existential aspects of making peace with death and regret, but I don’t feel like Summer’s story really resolves. She gets to bare her pain, but the way she does so feels disconnected from the rest of the narrative. I understand that she’s reliving the day or couple of days before one of her biggest regrets in life, but then we get to hear about the regret, and then... she flies off? IMO that doesn’t scream “satisfying arc” to me.

Buuuuut, be aware that that might be as much personal preference as anything. I think what’s here is successful at connecting on an emotional level, and is generally well-constructed. While there are typos, those didn’t bug me as much as the repetition of, “It wasn’t long before...” and variations on that theme. That’s a valid and useful turn of phrase, but there came a point where it had just cropped up too much for me to not be distracted.

Hmm. This review is coming in harsh. I really don’t want to leave this there, though. I think there are good bits in here all the way up from the concept on down to the actual content that we get on the page. That said, I feel like it’s missing a certain je ne sais quoi to help it really sing. I personally would look at firming-up the resolution to address that; like perhaps one of the flyers was her lover/“best friend”/favorite business associate, and part of her grief about the way she lost her wings was tied to losing that special somepony without getting to say goodbye? —Don’t take that as a sure prescription, but consider it as an example of the sort of thing that might make this tie together a bit more for me.

Tier: Keep Developing

I'd like to leave some nice comments in the art, but unfortunately, I can't really do more than say whether I liked it or not. I can't speak from any position of authority on art, and I haven't read any of the stories they link to, so I can't say what interesting interpretations they had. Sorry.

Starting off with some quick time skipping, hmm.

Okay, definitely sensing a sci-fi bent here with talk of fusion, so just confirming a guess from the title.

Ah, there's the thesis question methinks. "How do you move the stars?" Are we firing up the explain-o-tron?

Okay, Celestia hiding things, worrying, now outright lying. Let's see where this goes.

I love the bantering between Twilight and Celestia in the garden. The line about a nose like two Us trying to make a W is... amusing. Double-U, har-dee-har, author.

And BAM, reveal. Illusory stars? True Sky? Do tell! Though this is a bit late for a hook, I do want to see how this connects to the title.

"Not worry about proton decay? ... How can you say that?!" Possibly one of the most Twilight things I've read.

Okaayyy... The lab and dentist chair? Mind upload? *Sees AI Sparkle* Yep, Mind upload.

"thousand of neutronium bodies in murmuration like starlings of old" I'm just a sucker for poetic technobabble.

Hitting a few typos here and there, mostly punctuation and missing/doubled words. Suspecting some rushed edits.

A computronium needle the length of a small country with a universe of mind uploads in it being chucked through a tear in spacetime by an anti-matter rocket. Yeah, that TOTALLY has "My Little Pony" written all over it.

The bell metaphor is back... I swear, if this does a "For Whom the Bell Tolls" bit...

And we're back in time for... ah, a final message.

Okay, so overall, this one is a bit of a roller coaster. A couple of slow creaks and clanks as it starts up hill, then a wild ride, before a slow coast back into the station.

I am a sucker for science fiction in my pony, so this was a strong contender for me. Where it needs some work is in the focus. Twilight out-stubborning the universe is a powerful thing. Celestia having hidden that the universe is actually dying is a powerful thing. Twilight, even "at the end of all things" taking the effort to send a message back is a powerful thing. But connecting these is a tad haphazard.

The reveal of the "lie" to Twilight is... well, that mostly works, but I feel it could be stronger. The latter connection, of the message to the "point" of the story, that's a bit weak. When Twilight and Celestia first talk, Celestia basically says all the stuff about "Everything ends." Then we cut to this crazy sci-fi ride for a bit. To get the message to hit home though, the author basically has Celestia go out and literally rehash and repeat almost the exact same thoughts, words, etc. to tee up the final "You're wrong" message. There really should be a better, smoother way to do that without essentially duplicating a scene.

Still though, even roller coasters with some rough spots are a pretty fun ride, and so is this.

I think this is well-done for what it's supposed to be, but these kinds of constructed creation mythologies don't really do much for me.

The core difficulty with these is that they're stories about that which is incomprehensible in human terms. Interesting stories are relatable stories - as Cold in Gardez said it, "Stories about ponies are stories about people" - and that which is incomprehensible is correspondingly not relatable.

That's not to say that this story doesn't try admirably.

Unfortunately, it's hard to say that it ever had a chance of success. The only way these stories can be told in understandable terms is to project what one feels are profoundly limited cross-sections of where the characters and their motivations intersect with what is comprehensible from our perspective as humans. This tends to be very frustrating, at least to me, because it feels as if what we're able to see is just a pale shadow of the real story of these beings: a story that fundamentally cannot be told because mere mortals could never understand it. In short, we're tantalized not just by a story we're not told, but one we cannot be told. Nothing is more despair-inducing than to feel our own microscopic insignificance.

I think that this comes about as a result of what most constructed mythologies do, which is that it takes a distinctly different perspective from most mythologies that emerge ad hoc from genuinely held religious beliefs. Genuinely believed mythologies that have accumulated and developed over time and tradition tend to be told from the human perspective looking outward (note how the Old Testament is a collection of stories about individual people and the events they experience from their human perspectives), while these constructed mythologies tend to be told from the outside looking in. This is the main factor that, again, leads to the above issue with these stories being about incomprehensible beings and therefore not really something we as humans feel we can grasp a real comprehension of.

What I do like: the departure from the way most other creation cosmologies involving supernatural beings explain the introduction of evil and/or suffering (or in this case more just a sense of disharmony) into the new creation. Usually these are pretty bleak, invoking the idea of genuine intractable malevolence on the part of one of the outside entities responsible for influencing the course of the conditions or events within creation. The idea that the discordant influence which seems antagonistic at first is in fact designed to contribute to the innovative value and and betterment of the whole is refreshing. By way of contrast, compare to mythologies like Tolkien's Ainulindalë and Silmarillion, or the Judaeo-Christian narrative of the fall of Lucifer and the temptation of Eve, which are pretty depressing exercises in explaining the existence of evil and suffering by simply projecting the worst characteristics of humans onto supernatural beings.

So, look. I've gotta speak up on this one, but before I say anything else: Enjoy your medal. With the feedback I'm seeing above, there's no way this isn't gonna finish in the top three. Well done.

Author, feel free to stop there. Because critique should be about improvement, and when I'm swimming against the tide this much, my opinions are most likely going to point you in a direction that will wreck what other people enjoyed about the story. You're on to something here, as much as I hated it.

So why speak up at all? Because I feel like I read a totally different story from everyone else in the thread (with the possible exception of >>AndrewRogue), and I'm struggling to understand what people see in this. And in order to figure out that disconnect, I have to lay out where I'm coming from.

Science-fiction/fantasy fans talk about "bouncing off" a work — getting violently ejected from a story that other people enjoyed. I bounced off this story so hard.

Not from the start, though! I've gotta stop for a second and say, author, I legitimately commend you on the intro. It's been a long while since I've seen that strong a hook. It's a sledgehammer to the face, and the best possible thing you can do at the beginning is smash the reader into your story. There's some discussion above that might help you in fine-tuning the wording, but it's right where it needs to be, even if there are some edges to sand down.

Which leads in to -- it takes a lot to lose me after grabbing my attention so strongly. And I can tell you the moment I gave up on this story. It wasn't the parentheses (even though I found them weird and awkward). It was a slow slide through some bewildering prose choices I'll get to in a moment, and crystallized right here:

Celestia did so. Four tens. Ten fours. “Forty,” she said. “Forty teeth ...

... and that's terrible.

Seriously, author, that is a particularly unfortunate choice of words in a story going for gravitas. Points for getting the number of horse teeth right, yes, but you can't just drop the repetition of "forty" combined with "four tens" into a story without understanding the references that calls up for readers. Unintentionally breaking the fourth wall is a kiss of death for a story with serious artistic vision.

And it's not even the worst problem with that quoted line. Let's read that again:

Four tens. Ten fours. “Forty,” she said. “Forty teeth.

Repetition is a time-honored literary technique. It adds emphasis and weight to a story, and builds theme.

This story picks the craziest things to emphasize.

Pain, his eyes—pain so strong it was clear this was not a carved stone, but a once-living beast that was no more.

“Because,” Celestia said, sitting in front of the statue, observing it, glaring at it, hoping she could melt it with her eyes alone, “you are indeed no more, Discord. You are gone from this land. Forever.”

The statue did not answer.

In three sentences I count five different ways of making the point that she is talking to a statue. Including Celestia's dialogue telling the statue it's a statue. Twice.

The story is absolutely choked with this sort of sledgehammer driving-home-the-obvious, to the point where I actively felt condescended to.

She had known loss, and she would never forget it.

Celestia knew this, in her heart.

It hurt.

Hold the phone. Loss hurts? :pinkiegasp:

Four tens, ten fours…

…plus one.

“Forty-one teeth,” she said out loud. “Forty-one teeth, one more than before.

Dang, it's a good thing I don't have to do basic math here — that moment of mental effort might have slowed down my reading. And I sure am grateful I can learn that forty is four tens and ten fours without scrolling back up the page to where that was already hammered in.

Because in her mind, there was a coda, a post-scriptum to the message, that made her fly as fast as she could.

I need you.

That’s what the letter had said, to Celestia.

Thank you for the clarification that the thing just described as being in her mind and guiding her actions was actually the thing she interpreted.

There were good news.

“I know what to do, Twilight.”

There were bad news.

“But I am afraid that you are not going to like it.”

I mean come on.

I'm trying to tell myself to rein it in, here. Obviously this is a story a lot of people like, and what I'm writing is bordering on attack here. I'm sorry for that, author. But I could quote nearly half the story and keep filling in these examples of writing that I had to wade through while feeling like my intelligence was being insulted.

Trying to examine that a bit more dispassionately ... there is one thing that does which I might not be giving enough credit: it lends the story a strongly childlike, innocent tone. There's an argument to be made that that gives it a fairy-tale feel; fairy tales are similarly tell-heavy and somewhat pedantic. And if that's your goal, you do accomplish it well, if everyone else's enjoyment is any indication! So, once again, take all my salt with a bigger grain of salt.

But I still think, even spotting it that, the narrative structure feels to me like a failed experiment. That's because I typically tend to frame my critique to stories in the context of theme and tone ... and I feel like you're picking a childish, innocent tone that is completely at odds with the weighty themes you're trying to swing.

“It was a tragedy. I am sure you will always regret it. But sometimes regret is not enough. You fell for her—and you killed her, Discord. Because she’s a mere mortal, and you are not. You didn’t mean to. And I am sorry.”

This feels like it should be one of the central thematic cores of the piece. But not only did it come across to me like a lecture, that tell-heavy, choppy-sentence style made it sound like Celestia was explaining to a three-year-old why stealing Johnny's toy is wrong.

Again, there are ways in which that style works for you! I'll reiterate that it lends genuine power to the opening. And there were scattered moments throughout the piece where that bluntness lent the piece its own sort of terrible beauty:

Celestia felt her stomach turn upside down. She tried to look away, but there was nowhere else to look at. The walls, the floor, the whole room, it was only Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy. Pulsating, bleeding meat, going up and down, breathing, swallowing, spilling all over.

But I found it so relentlessly infantilizing that any goodwill I had for those moments was washed away in the flood.

This needs, in other words, to learn how to modulate its tone. (I phrase that as a prescription: see my initial disclaimer.) The worst offender is when your narrative tone creeps into dialogue; I've already cited a few examples of that sort of toddler-talk making your story founder on the shoals. But it just needs to tone it way back, in general. It's like I said in previous rounds about single-sentence paragraphs: if used sparingly, they can punch readers in the face, but if you spend the entire story doing nothing but punching readers in the face, it's a very different (and much less pleasant) experience than a well-timed blow to catch them off guard.

This story left me feeling like a punching bag.

But still. But still. As much as I hated the experience of reading it, I still think it's better that you wrote this than didn't. We learn by pushing ourselves. This feels, if nothing else, experimental; and we can learn from experiments even if we don't like their results.

I won't soften this with any more praise beyond the few elements I pointed out as legitimately liking. But neither will I begrudge you your medal (and, presumably, your subsequent FIMFiction success), and ultimately that should mean more to you than anything I say.

Tier: Keep Developing

You know the drill here.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=11dUkzTOiVDNFG96__uS9jeDkmjb_n3TB

>>AndrewRogue
Mr. A. Rogue, may I recommend using some background noise elimination goodness on your recording? I’m not sure what you’re using to prepare your audio, but I hear a constant background hiss, which is something that Audacity can likely remove in a matter of a few seconds.

Blah blah audion.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RiWockitPBDj1hvlT2w__WwpjZjm5zNh

Brief addendum: I missed the twist. The twist is clever and solidly woven in, but overall doesn't affect the nature of my audio review and, in many ways, sort of amplifies it. It ends up being hard to engage and look for it because I'm so forced backwards by the stuff as presented. That said, seriously, nice job with that. It is clever.

>>CoffeeMinion If I do this again, probably. My integrated sound card sucks and is causing the hiss. Audacity removal that I tried actually has problems because my voice is also comparatively low, so the ways I found to kill the hiss also killed my voice. So yeah, if I try to do this again, I'll try and get it sorted. Sorry.

Stressed Rarity is a bit of a cliche at this point - it's been a central plot element in several show episodes starting all the way back in season 1, so we're well familiar with this. Not saying it should be wholly avoided (for instance, it could certainly be part of a larger story that also does other things), but it's not a novelty or bringing anything new to the table by itself.

I felt some tonal conflict with the veiled 'Rarity battles giant crab' meme references. This story addresses a serious dilemma for Rarity in a mostly serious manner, then invokes that bit of absurdity without a lot of apparent rhyme or reason to its presence. It's fun, but just doesn't mix well enough with the rest of the material, for me.

The language is... well, I have two thoughts. One is that it's immediately identifiable as Rarity. But the other is that the prose is a little too purple for her. Yes, she's fancy, but she's not usually this ostentatious. The essential wit is there, but she strikes me as usually somewhat more direct and less flowery than this. Her use of linguistic flourish tends to be more for accentuation than an 'always on' thing. It also tends to go out the window sometimes when she's stressed, unless she's using it as an element of an expressive performance of just how stressed she is and trying to get across a sense of, 'Oh, woe is me, whatever shall I do?' which doesn't quite ring true here because this is internal dialogue, not a show being put on for somepony else.

That aside, I think this piece characterizes Rarity well, both in her dramatic neurosis about getting the job right and in her finally settling on a solution by employing some clever lateral thinking - whatever else she may also be, Rarity is quite a smart horse, which I feel she sometimes doesn't get enough credit for, so good work on that.

And just so I don't end the round on a bitter reviewing note, I want to give this one a shout out as it shoulders its way to the top of my slate.

One of the few stories I've read this round that hits its stride near the end and closes strong. That second to last scene in particular is lovely. But it felt strong throughout.

A little coda on the talk this round on originality. One of Kurt Vonnegut's rules of writing is:

To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Originality can certainly elevate a story (and there are several stories I've praised this round on those grounds). But originality also isn't a panacea. And there are plenty of ways a story can be great without being "original".

You could, if you wanted, call this story a string of cliches, and the characterization would be kinda fair: Dash-breaks-wing, old-mane-six-looking-back-regretfully, immortality-angst, the-next-generation, etc. But the things it digs into are grounds enough for me to ignore that I've read stories like this before. What distinguishes my Top Contenders from my Strongs is, more or less, that I finish the story acknowledging its flaws but not caring about them; and this passes that test with flying colors.

I wish I were as eloquent in dissecting what I thought this did right as I was in dissecting what I thought other stories got wrong. Sorry I can't provide that, author. In exchange you'll just have to take my high vote.

Tier: Top Contender

>>Trick_Question
>>The Power Wolf
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>zaponator
>>GaPJaxie
>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you, everyone, for your reviews.

I definitely think this is way shorter than this kind of story should be - writing under time pressure is always interesting. This entire entry was written in a hair under five hours, and I hit submit with about one minute left on the clock. And yeah, it shows. I was left feeling a little frustrated at the time, because I had the distinct sense of having written a frame and hung whatever bits I could on it more than of having written a full-fleshed story. Still, I also felt I had a worthwhile concept that I could do something with because there's a lot to address and explore in it, so I was pleased with it in that way. With the feedback provided here, I have a lot of confidence that I can expand this out into something really good.

Okay, that's a dark start. Everyday is the same? And it includes a pill which takes 15 minutes to work. Yeah, this can't end well.

Yup, totally normal day under The Dome.

Twilight just told Rarity what she wouldn't like, so... all the ponies under The Dome are simulations or replacements of some kind. Right? And (judging from the "adjust elements" line in the checklist) somehow connected to or powered by the Elements?

All signs continue to point that way, at least through the eating contest. Starting to feel repetitive at this point.

Basement, now we're getting somewhere... yup, tree of harmony with the elements in it. Called it!

Oh, and it's got release notes from Dwarf Fortress.

This is feeling curiously similar to a recent episode of The Orville, where a crewmember locks themselves in the holodeck and wipes their own memory, in order to try and prove something to themselves.

And with the finish... yeah, feels a lot like that. The hug is a nice emotional touch though!

Overall, this story... does something weird for me. It kept me interested even as my brain was pointing out why I should be bored, and indeed, even when doing things that other stories did which actually bored me.

Now, that's not to say the pacing couldn't be improved. The main conceit of the story is given away pretty early on, so the further encounters with additional "cast members" serve more to drag it out than to provide clues to the mystery. The other problem is that, at the end, we're still left with more questions then answers. That's always a fine line to draw, of course, as leave some mystery can be a good thing, as long as the clues and cliffhangers are strong enough. But, while there are some great glimpses here (OP Flurry Heart being the one to break into The Dome is fantastic) the primary question of "what happened?" remains almost entirely unanswered, and to a reader like me, that's frustrating.

So yeah, an interesting idea, fairly well executed, but to my tastes, drags out the obvious a bit too long, while still never giving the full answer it teases.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Pretty sure it's Dwarf Fortress: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-most-ridiculous-patch-notes-from-10-years-of-dwarf-fortress/

Negatives first: 'Jack' is probably the weak part of this story - not just the use of the unfamiliar nickname, but that her past history with Rainbow Dash amounted to nothing more than unspoken longing. It seemed to be implied early on that there was a bit more to it than that, perhaps some sort of actual active relationship at some point. If you tune that a little to make what's implied about their history together more consistent, and maybe lose that nickname, I think the story would be better off for it.

But that turned out to be pretty minor, really. I loved this one. My bigger take-away: it does the most important thing a story can do, which is that it engages me throughout. I was drawn in, I wanted to keep reading. I wish I could more easily describe in more precise non-subjective terms why this succeeds, but it's tough because how exactly to accomplish this is not a fixed-form problem. 'Engaging' is an emergent property of interacting parts, rather than one concretely identifiable thing. There are many things that factor into it and many different ways to do it, but also many mistakes that can prevent it, and each story is different in what it takes to make it work.

But this one does everything it needs to, and it does it right. This story will medal. I'd be very, very surprised if it doesn't.

Thanks for a great story, author.

Well, uh... you've got a career waiting for you in modern art, I guess, so there's that upside to look at.

Really got me with the twist at the end! Well done with that.

The lead-up, though... this is the kind of story you have to read twice. That can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be really satisfying for the reader when something that they can sense a deliberateness to but don't understand suddenly comes together and there's that neat moment of, "it all makes sense now!" On the other hand, this can also backfire for many readers, who will feel their time is wasted if they do have to read twice to get it. Ideally something like this should hit the best of both worlds - allowing readers to get that sudden moment of delightful comprehension, but without being so subtle that it requires a second reading to catch what's really going on. Execution is everything for making this kind of story work. I'm actually finding it hard to come up with any detailed critique of the execution here because it's something I'd have to think about for a while and let it stew, which I don't think there's really time for. Personally, I liked it, though I am also in agreement with many of the shortcomings noted by the reviewers above me.

Ouch, typo in second line already.

That's not what "deadpanned" is.

Trixie is coming off as too much of a child here. When Starlight just gives into it and goes "Heheh, sure thing" my immersion started to crack.

It is late at night IN the library, it's not a "late night library."

Okay, I'm going to stop nitpicking language here. Suffice to say, a lot of minor things are just "off" ever so slightly without being entirely wrong. Non-native English speaker/writer maybe? Regardless, I'll focus on plot and similar from here and skip the nitpicks of phrase.

The "hoof in warm water..." bit got a smirk from me.

Eyes closed? Really? I know MLP is a cartoon, but this is cartoon comedy of the lesser sort. No one actually forgets to open their own eyes.

I said I wouldn't nitpick language, but I didn't say I wouldn't praise it. This line is great: "glowing a deep and foreboding red, like a bloody wound in an already blood-stained sky." Also, yeah, red giant phase, let's do this future!

Okay, this bit about how Trixie can always find/read/see "roads" as etchings or whatever is seriously, strongly plot important, I know it. The problem is, the question "is it a road?" comes BEFORE we hear how importantly critical roads are to Trixie. To have her just infodump how incredibly weird it is to not find any road at all AFTER the fact weakens the story immensely. If ever something needed to have foreshadowing, it's this. Maybe start the story off with Trixie and Starlight on a walk, lost in the woods, and "Trixie is never lost, because there is no road that Trixie cannot see..." and that will make this conversation inherently scary from the start, without having to infodump/explain it.

Technical Nitpick: If all the plants are gone ("maybe Celestia ate all the plants"), and all the dirt is read (implying oxidation) then how is there oxygen to breathe? Note: I did this time-jump to oxygen-less future thing in the last write-off with "Plane-Jumper."

The "cheesy" humor in this is called out directly by a character. I'm not sure if that lands quite right. It kind of makes me dislike it more, but... Trixie and Glim-Glam are better with cheese, so...

They've arrived in Canterlot, and I have honestly forgotten how/why they got into this mess. I'm engaged at some minimum levels with character alone, but I have no idea of any plot or greater story beyond "oops, end-of-world time-jump."

How is a story so alternately sluggish, yet filled with gems like "as if the city itself was moaning a dirge, mourning the souls that once brightened its streets."?

Trixie again goes childish, with "My hoofsies are tired too..." That's not a nitpick, that's a key problem I'm seeing. Trixie is Trixie at the start of the story, but, the purpose of stories like this, where characters are thrown into foreboding and new circumstances, is to let them grow. More important, to show that growth. Trixie should be dropping the 3rd person nouns, and "growing up" a bit by this point. Lapsing back to this childish line feels like it defeats the growth shown so far.

Is Twilight The Architect? "I've been expecting you."

Breaking her stoic act... good. Got me back in.

Twilight is going a little too "guru" here with the riddle-speak.

"Nothign lasts forever... entropy." Crap, I just read this story as "T.S. vs. Heat Death."

Annnnd... title drop. Nice entry, but a bit of a splash. 8.8.

"It was a wonderful life." Aw shucks... and dang it, that's just liquid pride, that there.

Damn liquid pride!

Ho boy, was this story a ride. As noted early on, there are a lot of linguistic problems and minor issues throughout. I'm not quite as convinced this is an ESL author as I was at the start, but... well, it's not an insult if it is. The thing is that many elements in this story show great skill, yet many minor things feel off. That's why it feels like English-as-a-Second-Language to me.

There are a lot of good emotions on show here. Trixie and Starlight do a good job with banter for the most part (exceptions above) and the main jab of the story, as they encounter Twilight, is really strong in structure.

The problems here come from a few sources though. First, the story has no "direction" for a very long time. Starlight is doing no-no magic, and Trixie is there for... reasons? Not clear on that. They flash to a wasteland as an "oops" but then we have pages of "nothing happens." Yes, there is some minor character development, but (again, as noted) it seems to revert. Trixie and Starlight don't seem to grow/learn anything on the long march through the wasteland. It's only when they get to Twilight does the plot and characterization advance at all.

The bits with Twilight pretty much work as-is. A lot of emotion to unpack there. But on a more technical note, Twilight should be godess-like at this point, so couldn't she have found them earlier in Ponyville or Canterlot? Surely her senses extend that far a million red-dwarf years from now?

The message to the future Twilight is a great, humanizing touch. It's the icing on the cake in the plot structure here, and... strangely, almost the exact opposite of "T.S. vs. Heat Death" (where Twilight sends a message BACK from the end of time instead.)

I guess my main complaint here, in an otherwise pretty strong story, is that everything feels a bit random and haphazard. It's all just accidents until the very end. No pony has a mission, no pony learns a lesson, no pony grows. Just some decent ponies make a mistake, and then do a good deed. Or rather, Starlight does all that, and Trixie just provides someone to talk to/at.

Yeah, that's the biggest issue. Trixie is a bystander in all this. She just rides along for no reason, other than the author needs someone for Starlight to talk to.


(Also, holy crap, this is my longest review yet, and I still need another one in the next 128 minutes.)

At first this story seemed sorta over the top dramatic. Then the twist... You are some hell-a good. All the things in the story that seemed like Sunset being super over the top drama queen, was the perfect set up for that paradigm shift of a twist.

Cue "Sum 41 - Heart Attack"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGMTm6uxFQ4

Slow start here (literally and figuratively) but at least a minimal hook with the "empty house" and "outvoted" contrast.

Depressed and newly separated (divorced?) Sunset... yay?

Yes, 5-10 minutes for tea is way, way too long!

Twilight... okay, that was slightly unexpected, but...

Yeah, too blunt. Twilight (and especially SciTwi/human Twilight) is too neurotic to get into a romantic relationship and then be able to play it that cool when picking up her stuff.

But... Ignoring canon/headcanon for a moment, this is a pretty decent showing of a breakup. It's not over the top like some movies, and it's not flat denial like in other movies. It feels very real.

My problem is that it feels very real for any two, actual, living humans. There is, literally nothing at all MLP about this except the names. In fact, shoehorning this into pony only weakens it. As noted above, this doesn't feel like how Twilight would act to me. But if it was just an original human character, it would totally work.

So... a really good story in general, but worse without 's/Sunset/Sally/g' 's/Twilight/Tilly/g' to shed the pony facade.

>>Bachiavellian
Heh, indeed. I started reading this before you posted, so as I read through the comments before submitting my own (I still write my whole comment before reading others, then tack on responses at the end) I hadn't even seen it.

But yes, this was probably the story I most "violently" disliked. To clarify, I could (and do) say much worse things about New York Times Bestsellers as well. If it's not for me, it's not for me, and I get that. But I think Anchorman said it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmTK_eSOCN4

(P.S. When do we get youtube and/or image links in here?)

When a woobie comes along
You must kick it

Dang.

These circumstances and this kind of body horror + psychic trauma could really get under my skin--but they didn't, here. >>horizon's critique covers a lot of the reasons. Some of the words spent on multiple repetitions could perhaps be used to tell more of this story. I know the repetition is intentional. Maybe it's telling me something I haven't figured out yet.

The horror of the circumstances felt like a blunt instrument when it might be more effective as a scalpel. To mix metaphors, I saw too much of the monster, and too soon. But I didn't feel the things that should have followed. I was told a lot about how awful everything was, but in a way that felt like someone trying to convince me.

Obviously it worked for a lot of other readers, though, so maybe this one's just not quite my style. It will probably stick with me regardless, and that's something. Thanks for writing.

Okay, I did it. I got in a real, full review (and vote) on every finalist. Apologies to those that got out in the first round, and which I couldn't get to. Just too many words this time.

Well. I at least read and voted on all the stories on my slate, even if I didn't get in a review on all of them.

Are you happy writeoff.me? Are you!? I spent ever spare moment over the last two weeks pouring my heart into to you, writing for you. Reading for you. reviewing for you! And now I'm 30 chapters behind in my East-horse and Dashing-Apples!! How dare you! You take my heart and leave be bereft, I am want for more, but left empty instead, well enough I say! No more of my life will you have, back to FimFiction where I can be safe in the works of others. Adieu, farewell and goodbye...

Call me.

Genre: John Hooves Movie

This is well-written. I would have liked to see more variety in the interactions between Octavia and the other ponies in the first scenes. It did feel like the same conversation each time, which certainly justifies her mounting anger. But--okay, when she thinks of telling her mom she wants to check in on her health I thought, "That's a good idea actually, maybe this will show us another dimension of their relationship." It was a little disappointing, I admit, when Mom just got mean right away and flipped her an ultimatum. It does work for building up to the "moment of truth" you planned for Octavia here.

The ending with Vinyl is nice and warm and I like the energy it brings to the story, but like other readers I would have liked to see some of that earlier. Octavia actually bringing Vinyl to a meal/event could have created some interesting opportunities, like showing how these other ponies behave differently (or don't) in her presence.

I don't mind stories like the ones I've heard before, if they're good stories. Some things will keep being told and retold as long as there are people to hear and identify with them. And there will *always* be people who want to hear about forbidden love and underpony triumph. You just keep on improving and writing the best forbidden-love-and-underpony-triumph tales you can.

Well. Even though my story bombed, at least it inspired the art that won. That's a victory right there =(^.^)=

Now I'm gonna go and sleep this off, Adieu.

Congratulations to the winners!

Special congratulations to all 36 contestants for earning the first "Most Inspiring" award! You really did write an inspiring story. :trollestia:

>>Kitcat36>>Pascoite>>Fenton>>zaponator>>Zaid Val'Roa>>Caliaponia>>Lamplighter>>Trick_Question>>GaPJaxie>>Xepher>>AndrewRogue

I agree with everything... except one thing. It’s not a cliché, it’s canon :P


https://youtu.be/o494WLBFjj0

I present Uncle Wing (a.k.a. Shopkeeper based on Mlp wikia)

Dragon: may I use this art for the cover image of my story on Fimfiction? (Maybe without the watermark, provided I leave whatever attribution you prefer in the description? But the watermark is fine if you want it there.)

>>LiseEclaire
Those aren't mutually exclusive categories. :pinkiesmile:

I didn't see the shopkeeper here as the one from Magic Duel, because the latter didn't appear to be supernatural in nature. Either way, it's a minor quibble.

Familiar

I'm surprised more ponies didn't realize I wrote this story. It would be hard to make the signature stronger, although Heat Death, Entropy, and Flutterblob also smell a bit Tricky.

Thanks to all my reviewers:
>>Kitcat36 >>TrumpetofDoom >>GroaningGreyAgony >>ToXikyogHurt >>Zaid Val'Roa >>2Merr >>MrNumbers

Now, the retrospective, which will basically consist of questions on how to fix things.

0) I know the ending was too short. The deadline made the last few sections overly short, and I'm working on fixing that. No advice needed on this one.

1) I realize parts are boring. I'm adding more foreshadowing which helps a little bit, though I'm not sure how to 'speed up' the cake competition tasting part. Advice on what's boring and how to correct would be appreciated.

2) The early part of the story is too overt about the weirdness. I'm going to downplay the Rarity meeting to make it curious that Twilight is critiquing fashion, but not super abnormal or obvious, and I'm adding foreshadowing to the walk to the farm (so it hints that Twilight's mood is what causes the fire). I want to leave the pill in, because I don't think that gives anything away. What else needs to be fixed on this front? Is the 'checklist never changes' hint too obvious?

3) The meeting with Flurry will be expanded, and hopefully this will develop her character more. I agree Cadance would be a stronger choice, but I'd rather use Flurry as a confirmation that the story takes place in the future.

4) I'm not sure how to deliver more information about what happened, but I'll try to squeeze it in using Flurry's meeting with Twilight and Twilight's retrospection afterwards.

Oh, and I'm glad you saw this as a reference to Release Note rather than plagiarism, which it was. I hope I can use that anyway. (It's true that deer were intended to be sapient and that was changed after Lauren left the show.) Also, did somepony say something about Dwarf Fortress, that 'game' that's just an inside joke because it doesn't actually exist? That thing has always bothered me.

Thanks again! I wanted to publish this immediately, but I need to wait for dragon's permission to use his art, and I need more time to fix it up. I think you'll all be pleased with the final result, it's already shaping up nicely.

>>Lamplighter
Welcome to the pony house. :pinkiehappy:

>>Lamplighter
Thanks... core idea worked!

>>ToXikyogHurt >>Trick_Question

Thanks, but... I went so far out of my way to just generalize the "specific" numbers. Almost everything is some very round number or approximation, save the tear itself. It's a meter wide payload, hundreds of km long. It's a galaxy wide, and parsecs distant, etc. Nothing was meant to be specific because, for once in my writing life, I didn't actually DO THE MATH. :-) Seriously, I always do the math, and this time I made it up. But...

Neutronium... it's not just "Neutron-Degenerate Matter" but a classic term used in sci-fi for extremely dense materials, and even before that, as "Element Zero" in scientific theory. Also, even if it was compressed stellar core.... sci-fi-twi is already manipulating the strong and weak forces at the core of a star, so why couldn't magic-talking-horse-spaceship have found a way to stabilize ND-matter? :-)

>>Pascoite
>>Trick_Question
Cool story, ya'll. But... Do you really note vote on stories even when you're in the contest? That seems like slacking. I don't intend to be rude, but the whole point of the writeoff to me is to get comments and judgements from as many people as possible. Winning is secondary.

>>Rao Thank you, very much!

>>MrNumbers That may be the nicest review I've ever seen from you! :-P



>>Baal Bunny There was (supposedly) foreshadowing about how some of the CMB (cosmic microwave background) had patterns echoing the past (big bang) but as the end approaches, more and more echoes are coming from the end of time, instead of the beginning. I admit that setup is really weak and mushy. But yes, Twilight (in the process of closing out the universe) "rings" spacetime in such a way that very specific patterns echo back through all of time and paint a few words across the sky at one specific instance. It was meant both as an "I told you so" and as a "I never forgot."

As to paradox... as others noted, everything that matters (the trillion souls uploaded in to the computronium javelin) exited THIS universe several minutes/eons ago, so it doesn't matter. (And yes, it hurts me to write an explanation so utterly imprecise.)

>>Caliaponia
Thanks, and no, she hasn't given up friendship. It was just that... she was the first. The first to upload is the first to copy is the first to ascend. She saved everyone (literally, in the universe) else, but... she cloned herself because that was the easiest thing to do 12.5ms after uploading and realizing she could. Even Pinkie would take a least a couple of seconds to appear, even if you yelled "Surprise!" and had a cake. Twilight could copy herself a thousand times over by then, so she did.

As for "technomagic" it was implied but not specific. E.g. there just simply has to be huge amounts of magic in those neutronium ships to make them even possible, much less work as they do.



As to general complaints.... Yeah, holy crap did I fubar the numbers. I know this, as I didn't DO the math for once!


Secondly, I still insist that Neutronium is a sci-fi word, not just neutron-star core material. Also, magic horses who are literally the singularity incarnate trump physics. :-)

Thirdly, DISCORD!!!
Yeah, holy cow, I know... I know. I knew when I wrote it. But this story doesn't work as sci-fi if "entropy" is a character. Discord is chaos (not entropy) in this head-canon, and that's a social idea, the same way that "harmony" is about cooperation, not literally notes played at a certain offset.


Now, to the things no one called me on, but should have...

1. I'm totally conflating "Proton Decay" with "Vacuum Collapse" in this story. The closing borders of "the universe" and even the word "collapse" are the latter, but many of the specifics go into proton decay (which is the actual "heat death" model.)

2. This is a heavily inspired by Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, where the idea of tearing spacetime a new a-hole by means of galaxy-scale construction comes from.

3. Micro-probes (the "Neutronium Twilights") are inspired by both Bank's "Culture" series, and ... a novel I can't remember or find at the moment.

4. Oh, come on, Clestia's nose looked like two Us trying to make a W. Double-U!!! It's hilarious! You should all laugh at my super amazing witty joke of linguistic knowledge! :-P

>>Xepher
No, I don't vote. I used to, but I don't have time to read that many stories. This is a topic that came up long ago, so I'm not surprised you didn't know about it. There was a proposed rule that if you didn't submit a ballot when the first round closed, your entry would be eliminated. That might get a few more people to vote, but most such people would either not enter in the first place or vote on the stories randomly or by others' recommendation. Of the options, I think letting people not vote if they don't want to is the best one. And it's pretty presumptive to call that slacking when you have no idea what other demands on my time make reading horse words a lower priority. If you really value my input, then ask sometime. I do lots of private reviews. You'll also probably wait a couple weeks until I can work you into my schedule, which illustrates why I'm not going to cram 8 of them into a single week.

Hi! I just wanted to say that I loved this piece. It really evokes the feelings I was shooting for when I wrote the story, and it looks great!

I would love to use this art for when I post the story to FIMFiction, but not without your permission and somewhere to link to you for credit. If you're okay with that, let me know, and if not, no hard feelings.

>>LiseEclaire
I'm confused what you're responding to me about.

you're all butts

retrospective impending

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Debt repayed in full.

Seriously, I don't even...

Is there a prize for getting the top two and bottom two results in the art category?
Thank you so much to everyone who liked my art entries, I had a lot of fun making them!

>>Winston
>>horizon
>>NotEnoughCoffee
>>regidar
I appreciate everyone for giving everyone else a chance by voting this last. I appreciate your selflessness.
Alright, this was obviously a joke, though at least it was one I had fun making. In all the five seconds it took.

>>GroaningGreyAgony

The Euvum is described as being more than a black dot.

You're just looking at it from really far away.

"(The Flesh Is) Weak" was one of my favourite entries this round, and I only wish I'd had the time to make it justice.

>>QuillScratch
Yeah, my first sketches didn't give me the impact I wanted, so I googled "writhing mass of flesh" and >>MLPmatthewl419 was the one which fit the nebelous idea I had in my head the most, so I flattened out the colours and started painting over it to get a similar feel of the flesh. I admit I should have used that as a base to flesh out (heh) my original idea, but it was the last day before the art deadline, and I wanted to submit something for the story.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Eh, what do you know?

>>Fenton
I'm glad you liked it, I had fun making it, and only wished I could've taken it further.

>>horizon
I had my fair share of issues with the background. It was originally going to be a standard room which subtly warped as it reached the Fleshieshy. Sadly, the effect didn't look nowhere near how I envisioned it and I had to fiddle with it until It looked somewhat interesting, but then it clashed with the tones on the blob, so I had to darken it so she could at least stand out a little bit.

Whoops.

I'm glad the scratches made it look nice, though, so there's that going for it. Live and learn. Hopefully I'll fare better in the future.

This is a difficult kind of piece to write, where it relies so much on the reader picking up subtlety. Too subtle, and readers don't understand what happened, not subtle enough, and you give it all away up front. That said, this was actually pretty fun to write, coming up with things to say that work from either perspective. Interesting that so many people read it twice to get that effect, because I almost suggested it, but I don't know that it would have been a good idea to try inserting something like an author's note. However, I wasn't terribly engaged while writing the second half, and I didn't get much time for revision or edits, which may fit with why horizon liked the beginning better. More on that in a bit. But it's essential for this kind of story to get outside opinions, because subtlety is nearly impossible for the author to judge himself; he already knows everything that happens and why, after all.

>>Winston thought the "read it twice" was problematic, and I'm not sure I'd change anything to accommodate that. A second reading isn't going to alter the concept as a whole; it's just going to show how the details still work for the different perspective, and those are minutiae the reader isn't going to remember anyway, so while I know it may hinder some readers, it's a risk I'm probably willing to take.

>>Cyrano
>>Rao
>>Xepher
>>Lamplighter
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I wonder if you wouldn't have any feedback about how to apportion the subtlety better. If so, scroll down a bit further to where I reply to horizon and Aragon, since I'll be going into detail there.

Then we have the middle ground folks. >>Caliaponia and >>Trick_Question didn't spot enough of the clues to decide exactly what the ending meant. Given that horizon kind of felt this way, too, I probably erred on the side of not giving enough information. And to >>AndrewRogue, I presume you're in this camp, too, but I haven't listened to it yet, and truth be told, I'm probably not going to remember to when I get home from work.

>>GaPJaxie
I'm actually not surprised by this. You've said before that the way I like to write limited narrative voices just doesn't mesh with your tastes very well, so the part I spent more time on doing so is the part you like the least. This also brings up another issue. You felt it was bland in concept because it's a Sunset reconciliation story. horizon and Xepher liked it because it was a Sunset reconciliation story. You didn't like the writing style, but it won Aragon over to a concept that he even started out feeling was inherently bland. So when different people (who know what they're doing, moreover) cite the exact same thing as a strength and a weakness, I really don't know what I'm supposed to do with that.

A few specifics:
>>Trick_Question
Celestia didn't go over Sunset's failures to chastise her. She took ownership of it and blamed herself, which accentuates the flood of guilt she feels from Celestia. Maybe I should have a more explicit uptick in it here.

>>Xepher

It drags on a little too long in the office before the hug happens.

>>Bachiavellian echoed this. It's another thing I'm trying to fine-tune. I had a couple of competing interests here. One, I was aiming for a particular word count, closer to 2500, and ended up overshooting it, so I have space to cut back, and this is likely where I'll do so. But I also wanted to push the reveal as late in the story as possible, and once the hug happens, Sunset's reactions necessarily become more pronounced.

>>horizon
>>Aragon
And here we come to the meat of it. You two are the ones I'd particularly like to engage with to fine-tune this, since you spelled out more details of your reading and you pretty much understood what happened.

Aragon hit almost everything spot on. horizon wasn't as sure, but the interpretation he settled on as most likely is also more or less the correct one. This is the full explanation, plus the clues I left to try getting it across:

The story takes place after Thorax and all the other changelings left. There's nothing explicitly saying a time period, but Chrysalis noting her wings were glittery (this was new to Thorax, so was probably an unknown effect prior to that) and her working entirely alone and never mentioning she had anyone else to feed was supposed to hint at a time period.

Chrysalis is just so beaten down from trying to live on her own that she doesn't even harbor resentment toward Celestia. She explicitly says she doesn't have ill will anymore, which wouldn't immediately stand out, but on a second read would explain why she later tried to work toward Celestia's benefit and why her wings had started to glitter a bit.

Now more to the question of exactly who this is. I've already said it's Chrysalis, and the "royal" line horizon picks out is the spot where it's most bluntly said. The fact that she's working alone supports this, too. Yes, she could be some isolated low-ranking changeling, one that missed all the goings-on because she was in the human world or something, but the "royal" and the aloneness together point toward it being Chrysalis post-Thorax.

Now, because it's Chrysalis, Sunset clearly hasn't been a changeling all along, but even if this weren't Chrysalis, she explicitly says she's never been through the mirror. Bachiavellian asks how she learned as much as she did about Sunset, and Chrysalis says that directly: that she'd snuck around Twilight's castle enough to eavesdrop. She doesn't actually know that much, but she thinks it isn't necessary.

So once Chrysalis learns enough about her, just think about it. This is the perfect crime. Chrysalis doesn't have anywhere to stash the real Sunset away under guard, and she hasn't been able (or hasn't wanted to) go through the mirror to do it anyway. Besides, she knows she might not have any magic there. But Sunset never comes through. There is the one EqG short where she did briefly, but Chrysalis may be unaware of that. Chrysalis can impersonate Sunset. Celestia loves Sunset and has very powerful love, which makes it an ideal feeding scenario for her. The real Sunset is exceedingly unlikely to show up and blow her cover. Pretty much everyone else who knows Sunset lives in Ponyville, so Chrysalis is unlikely to encounter anyone in Canterlot who will blow her cover (this is another reason why the guard surprises her). Chrysalis actually goes through these criteria at the same spot where she says she never went through the mirror. She could keep up this deception for a long time.

However, it breaks down. Celestia feels so much guilt about Sunset, and it's part and parcel of her love, so Chrysalis can't help eating that too, and it's unpalatable. Not only can't she digest it, but it's so strong that it makes her take on those feelings of guilt as well. That compounds her general non-aggression toward Celestia into making Chrysalis feel bad about what she's doing. So she has two choices.

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

This is the one thing Aragon didn't catch in response to horizon's question about why Chrysalis would take the risk of promising that Sunset would write. Chrysalis is teetering on the edge between those two choices, and promising to write is a desperate attempt to make Celestia feel better, but as soon as she says it, she knows she doesn't want to keep that up. So she offers to let Celestia read the journal because she's reasonably sure Twilight and the real Sunset wouldn't mind, and that way Celestia can keep up with Sunset again. Originally, Chrysalis had hoped Celestia would be an ongoing food source, and the offer of letters and statements that she didn't blame Celestia were a last-ditch effort to salvage that.

horizon's right: this is a huge risk. She wouldn't have taken it if she felt her long-term plan would work, but it's fallen through, so only now is Aragon correct that Chrysalis doesn't care if she's exposed. It's over anyway. She only needs to buy enough time to get away, but even then, she wants to do so in a way that helps Celestia heal, and she states this outright in wishing Celestia would accept her forgiveness so she could leave. Why? It goes back to Chrysalis having generally lost her aggression toward Celestia, plus Chrysalis being forced to feel the guilt she's ingested.

Then at the end, even purged of her guilt, Chrysalis still has a fleeting moment of wanting to help someone and wishing Celestia well.

Any advice on where the sweet spot is at getting all that across better without just dumping explanations?

>>Cyrano
>>CoffeeMinion
>>GaPJaxie
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>AndrewRogue
>>Trick_Question
>>Rao
>>Bachiavellian
>>Xepher


First things first, thank you! I haven't been around these parts in a few years, and I was a bit blown away by all the awesome feedback and critique. I'd forgotten just how dayum helpful and cool this community was. I'll certainly be taking all of it to heart, no only in editing this story, but going forward as well.

What I was attempting here was bittersweet. Actually even that doesn't quite fit... Bittersilly? It's a weird juxtaposition of tone that I, personally, just adore. "The world's ending, everything sucks, and nothing you do can change it, but hey lets have all the characters treat it as if it's a lighthearted comedy." I knew going in that there would be issues blending the two, and between the complaints of Trixie being too silly and Twilight being too serious I think I was right. That's probably my fault. I'm learning, and hopefully coming out of this I can get it better the next time I try to write inevitable-doom-based semi-comedy.

This story was rushed. I'm not attempting to offer an excuse, merely an explanation. I wrote this at midnight on the night of submissions because I'm a lazy procrastinating piece of shit and submitted it straight away without fixing anything. It's pretty easy to see evidence of this throughout the story, but even more so towards the end. I won't pretend to claim that I'm a good writer, and that 'if only I hadn't been rushed' this would've turned out as a perfect story. Of course that would be wildly untrue.

Shit I fucked up: So it's been pointed out at least once that the story is,a least a little bit, fundamentally flawed. There's no real story here, just things happening. Meh, I can't/won't really do much about that. That's more something I have to keep in mind when concepting new stories in future.

I've had people praise Trixie's character and decry Trixie's character. Different strokes for different folks. Suffice to say that I enjoyed her. That's gotta count for something right?

Twilight's whole conversation... bleh. Not great. A lot of people pointed at it from a lot of different directions for being shitty, and I'm inclined to agree. I'm not going to lean to heavily on my crutch of 'rushed', but rather I'll accept responsibility for just fucking that bit up. I'mma for sure edit that bit for a tad more consistency, if nothing else. Hopefully somewhere in that process the scene becomes less of a slog, too...

Lastly, of course, the myriad of spelling errors! Yeah, sorry, that one I'm blaming on my rush. :P

Let me know if I failed to address any major concerns! I'm ending this now 'cause I don't want to make it aggressively long, but if I utterly failed to mention something you thought was a big deal, lemme know and I'll come back. If not, then goodbye! See you next time I do one of these. Hopefully I won't wait two years this time.

Gate was one of the most solid entries I've read in the writeoff in a while, and I needed to make something for it, so I decided to tackle the element which starts it all, the accursed amphora of... uh... Yeah, I've got nothing.

>>Fenton
Thanks! For an art round, I think visual appeal is high praise already. I'm glad you liked the lighting. The vase I used as a base was--as others have guessed--in colour, and more brightly lit. So I darkened it and painted over some of the edges and part of the front to get the effect of being lit in the shadows.

>>horizon
I'll admit that getting an even look between the amphora and the ponies and windigoes was my main reason for making everything black and white, but I was also aiming for an effect of mystery and foreboding by having the vase surrounded by darkness, with only its major details standing out as it reached the source of the light.

I think I sort of achieved what I wanted. The more I looked at it, the more I realised the top row of ponies could've used a bit more shading to better blend with the vase as a whole and, yes, I went overboard with the stylisation and ended up with blobby ponies.

As for what could've been included in the drawings on the amphora, well I just went with what the story mentioned:

crystal pony phalanxes aligned against windigoes, elaborately dressed courtiers presenting gifts to a monarch, a pale mare nursing a foal beneath a crystalberry tree

Maybe I should've taken more liberties with it and created a more interesting composition. Still, I'm happy you liked it.

>>Caliaponia
Yeah, I fumbled with lots of pony vectors trying to get them in the appropriate position and shape they would be if seen on a three dimentional vase. A few let a lot to be desired, mainly the ones reaching the edges, as you mentioned.

Overall, I'm mostly satisfied with how this turned out, and I'm glad you liked it.

>>Trick_Question
I would honestly love to read this once you expand it a bit and punch a few dings out. This was already good as it is, so I'm looking forward to the refined version.

>>Trick_Question
Sure! You can credit me on deviantart or Instagram. (I think I'm gonna post the whole thing without the watermark on my deviantart later if you want)

I'm so glad you like it. 😄

dev: https://drawingdiscord.deviantart.com/
ig: https://www.instagram.com/dragon_discord/

>>Fenton
>>horizon
Thank you so much for your guy's feedback! As you may have noticed I was stretched for time. I've had three hours of "free time" these past two weeks so I didn't have time to line it or create any semblance of a background.

Although I was pretty proud of my twilight I do need to work on backgrounds. It's a rough spot for me and I wasn't exactly sure on how to do it this time around.

Once again, thank you so much for the reviews!! :D

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Lmao I was actually going to make that reference but I decided against it, I wanted to make the piece a bit serious :P

.....now I'm slowly regretting it....

I loved Wake-up Call. Even with its fair share of issues, I think it's a lovely piece and I wanted to make something which captured the feelings I got from reading it. I'm going to break down the process of creating this piece.

In the story, Sunset is going through an emotional low point in her life, but there's a faint glimmer of hope near the end. So I thought what would be the best way to represent this, and I remembered the chiaroscuro technique, which deals with strong contrasts between dark and light, so I decided to take that approach with Sunny. Then I thought about how Sunset is said in Italian, and that gave us Tramonto.

Now, I'm not going to claim this is a chiaroscuro piece, those require a mastery of the craft I don't hope to achieve anytime soon, but I think it captures a bit of that spirit.

Also, I'm not at all subtle with symbolism, but I thought someone would've mentioned how Sunset is surrounded by darkness but is still looking into the light, even if she's not out of the shadows yet, which evokes that slightly hopeful note in which the story ended.

>>dragon discord
>>regidar
I'm glad you liked it so much! I had a lovely time making this, and I'm glad that passion came through.

>>Fenton
The caption is there to remind everyone why I don't write comedies. I am not a funny person, at least not on purpose.

>>Bachiavellian
I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how I should portray Sunset's face. I made a couple of sketches before setling on what became the final product. Perhaps I was subconsciously reminded of Greek theatre masks as well, because I wanted the darkness on Sunset's eyes to sort of represent her troubled heart and mind, because even though there's a silver lining at the very end, there's still that hurt inside of her and I hatemyself when I start speaking like this, so I'm just going to say I'm glad you liked it and thank you for your words.

>>horizon
I don't know how to work with vectors, I did everything with Photoshop by adding clipping masks at different opacities until I got the shading I liked.

Nevertheless, I'm glad you liked it as much as you did. I didn't go for a Jesus reference, though (missed the chance to make a Christian Sunset Shimmer reference there, I know). However, I'm a firm believer that art isn't so much about the intentions of the artist, but what the observer gets from it, and that's more important, at least in my opinion.

I'm glad you all liked it as much as you did, and I hope to keep delivering quality in future art rounds!