Based on the title, I was really expecting a RariDash fic.

In regards to what I got, though. Well, I don't know. It tried, it really reached for that emotional investment; it just... didn't quite get there. Honestly, author, great effort. With a bit more time to get this to that level, it would have been something amazing. Although, I really don't think the Sunset Shimmer thing worked at all. Probably shoulda cut that.

Again, great effort, I really hope this gets a bit of revision and goes to Fimfic.

I'm gonna disagree with >>MLPmatthewl419 here: so far, this is juggling with two other stories at the top of my slate. I could nitpick about tiny things like Rainbow borrowing AJ's accent for "showin'," but I don't have any major complaints about the story, and I want to compliment it for a solid structure which does a thing I love to see: it starts out a little absurd, escalates into a lot absurd, and then pivots that absurdity into genuine emotion and character insight. As ridiculous as this positions itself to be, headcanon accepted.

Author, I know you don't have a whole lot of feedback right now, and I want to offer more constructive critique, but there's not much I'd do differently here that would have major impacts on the story. I'd put a little more emphasis on the moment when her parents start giving in on her assertion that the medals are all real, and a cleaner break between their denials and their coming clean (right now there's a mushy middle period where they're a little half-and-half). And "Sunswhat" could stand to be a little more absurd. But mostly, good job!

Tier: Strong

I am not really sure why, but this didn't emotionally resonate with me. Maybe because it's late, and I'm still wiped from work, but I ended up feeling like some of the dialogue was kind of there just because it had to be. Dash had to spend a few lines being angry, then she had to ask these questions, then Bow and Windy had to answer this certain way, and then we get our payoff. Maybe I'm being thrown off by the double-reveal structure here. But my honest gut-reaction was that revelations felt kind of unsatisfying, and emotional follow-up to both of them felt kind of muted.

Sorry, I'm being pretty subjective here, but I hope that this is useful to you in that if nothing else, it gives you another datapoint for you to gauge your reader's reactions.

If I'd known that this was going to be completely ignored in the finals, I would rather have been eliminated early.

>>Bachiavellian
>>horizon
>>MLPmatthewl419

thanks for the feedback.

>>Posh
Well. I mean. We only got about 30 comments total in the finals, a significant fraction of which were yours. (Thank you for that, by the way.) I had set aside last night to do more, but got pulled away from home on short notice, and since I'd already spoken up it wouldn't have helped you anyway.

I really hope that more people who have been silent about reviewing will consider paying forward the time investment that went into the feedback they received, and speak up about stories they read. I tend to write longer reviews which take longer to assemble, but still, at minimum, I try to make it a goal to write the same number of reviews that I receive. Instituting that as a rule would do more harm than good, but at the very least I'd like to see that become an unspoken community standard.

>>Posh
Sorry man. I pushed myself pretty hard on feedback during the prelims, but by the time finals came along, stuff was just pulling me elsewhere.

>>horizon
I'll second this. Where all my reviewers at? I probably pushed myself a bit too hard during prelims, but it felt like the review situation just wasn't getting a lot of traction.

I admit to being salty about the outcome here. This story received a tepid reception at best in the preliminary round, and generated all of zero buzz in the finals. It's hard to see why it made it at all, and I don't even have a decent sample of reviews to inform me of why it did. To be blunt, I feel irrelevant.

But I think I have a legitimate complaint here as well. Bear with me.

>>horizon
>>CoffeeMinion

I don't think that we can mandate that participants review extensively. Time simply doesn't permit that in most cases. I'm also not sure we can, or should, as a community, expect people to do that as principle. I know most people this round didn't have the time for it; I know I certainly didn't. It really isn't fair to expect that from people, especially during a time of year where people, speaking generally, don't have the time to invest in slow, methodical horseword reviewing.

The problem isn't just a straight lack of participation in the review phase. It's that there's a lack of proportionality between authors, reviewers, and submissions. We had one person account for one third of all finalists disregard that I can't math, but relative to the number of finalists a fuckton nevertheless, in a contest with more than fifty entries overall. My ballot was stacked with submissions all written by the same person, while there were several stories which never even would have come to my attention if I hadn't gone out of my way to look into them -- and I bring that up as a reminder that not everybody is going to be in a position to do that. People will generally stop once they've finished reading the stories on their ballots. And that's normally fine, but we had too many entries for that to be a viable system this time around.

The high number of stories, combined with low turn-out in the review phase, and an RNG which both giveth and taketh away, means that a lot of people's stories, my own obviously included, flew under the radar. There were multiple (quality!) stories with three reviews, sitting at the bottom of the pile, by the last night of finals. In a contest with as much activity as this one typically sees in the writing phase, that should simply not happen in the reviewing phase.

If these issues are going to persist, then I think we need to seriously consider putting a cap on the number of submissions people can make.

>>horizon
I'll try and do better in the future. Honestly it's less a question of pulling one's own weight for me and more a massive, crippling inability to muster up the sense of self-importance needed to express an opinion.

>>Skywriter
With ya on that one. Personally, I feel I lack the credentials to provide useful feedback when my own writing is full of holes. On further reflection, though, I know I'd want to hear from anybody regardless of their skill, so my hangup is kind of irrational.

>>Posh

If these issues are going to persist, then I think we need to seriously consider putting a cap on the number of submissions people can make.

I'd... honestly agree here. I mean, in the mid-prelims (cause that's when I had the time) I went through as many low-comment fics as I could, but... none of them were on my slate. Which made me sad. So a cap could be great here.

Or perhaps the solution is to just completely change out the fics on your finals' slate in bigger rounds. Then you're reading different stories... actually, I kinda like this idea more.

>>Skywriter
I totally get that. And I'd like to respond with a few words an essay about how to review, not because I necessarily think you need it, but because my experience is that a lot of people are silently scared to have opinions, and I want to offer a way of thinking about that which might help in general.

Which is:
Your experience of the story is always valid and useful.

It does require the expenditure of Ego Points (sometimes a pretty massive one!) to diagnose story problems, and to prescribe fixes. But that's not what you need to do to review — and that's also not always going to be helpful! If you actually do understand what the author is going for, and you show them where they went wrong and offer a course correction, that can be amazing feedback — so it's a skill worth trying to develop — but fundamentally, what we as authors want to know is exactly the thing that every single reader, no matter their experience or their hesitation, is best able to provide.

Namely: We wrote a story. Is it coming across in the way that we expect, or are readers getting hung up on things in our blind spots?

The way to answer that question is just to see what the experiences of readers are — and that simply requires telling us your experiences!

"This story hooked me at first, but I got thrown by the way Celestia loved pies in the second scene, and I never really reconnected." "I was extremely confused right up until robot Flurry Heart's arrival, but when we hit the bloody violence after that, I gave up on trying to understand and had fun." "The mystery was engaging, but the reveal was underwhelming. How does the shotgun wedding of Equestria Girls Applejack and pony Tirek tell us who the murderer is?"

The hardest step in editing is to ask the right questions. It's not how to fix scene A or line B. It's which scenes need fixing to get the story firing on all cylinders. The mere act of saying where the story did and didn't work for you is the most valuable possible feedback, and also the easiest.

And I'll repeat the big takeaway again: Your experience of the story is always valid and useful.

When you diagnose what's wrong with a story, you can be wrong. (If I say that robot Flurry Heart's appearance isn't dramatic enough, but the story's actually a comedy, my advice is probably useless.) When you offer fixes, you can be doubly wrong — because you might be wrong about whether that improves it, and wrong about what the problem is. But when you react to the story, you are telling the author how a reader reacted, no more or no less. You CANNOT be wrong. You are simply drawing their attention to the spots which caught yours.

Maybe your reaction won't be the same as other readers'. Maybe you're an outlier. But it's still valid! You are a reader who reacted in a certain way, and that means there exist other readers who will do the same. If three people say "Robot Flurry Heart was great!" and you say "Robot Flurry Heart's Jamaican accent turned me off", that's incredibly valuable, because it's adding data points to say that maybe there are still things to be tweaked around the edges, to pick up the minority of readers cuing off of the things you reacted to. Even if the ratio is 10 to 1, it's still good to say, because you might be picking up something genuinely worth fixing that everyone glossed over, or maybe the author's willing to let it stand and lose a few folks at the edges. But with that data, you're giving them the tools to decide.

Maybe you're literally misinterpreting the story. It's still valid! We have a great example of that just upthread: look at the last few comments to Trixie's Secret Admirer. Several readers misinterpreted a story because of unintended implications of an action that should have been totally clear with a little thought. But the misinterpretation was widespread enough that it's worth the author's time to rewrite it to prevent that from going awry. Reading it wrong still helps the author.

Maybe you're working on two hours' sleep, and blew right past the dialogue tag where the critical climactic line was said by Celestia instead of Tirek, and mistakenly thinking it was Tirek completely upended the themes of sisterhood which made the story work, and so you hated a story that you should have loved. You're … okay, maybe you're a little wrong. But it's still worth saying! Talking about your experience of the story gives other readers a chance to say "Uh, wasn't that Celestia's line?" and then you get to reassess and re-review. Reviewing isn't a completely ego-less activity. But that way at least you get to update your voting while it still makes a difference!

Yes, super top-tier reviewing — the sort where you go beyond that and deeply analyze and give concrete suggestions — is hard and error-prone; I've fucked up several times in large ways while trying to be prescriptive, and I've probably caused some lasting damage. The fears of giving bad advice are not invalid. But — and this is a BIG but — you can very safely have 90% of the effect just by saying what did and didn't work for you. And even if you're intimidated by reviewing, reacting is much less challenging than it seems.

>>Skywriter
>>Rocket Lawn Chair
The thing that's cemented the Writeoff's place in my heart has been the workshop aspect of it. I have few illusions about my skill as a reviewer, but I've also been on the receiving end of reviews both fair and foul, and I think that having a greater diversity of views seems to be almost more helpful than a smaller amount of super-"good" feedback.

There are extremes at both ends where that breaks down, of course. Obviously there are a few truly excellent reviewers who we all can try to learn from and emulate. But I think people come here to hear what others think, and there are only so many horizon reviews to go around. :-p

But with all that said, I'd encourage you guys just to get stuck in with trying to share whatever you've got next time. Who knows; you might make an observation that helps point someone toward a key improvement that they can make to their story!

(EDIT: ack, ninja'd by horizon)

Okay, so I don't want this post-contest review to come off as an act of pity (even though pity definitely played a part in this, but don't take my word for anything, I'm no psychologist) and the last thing I want for this story is to become the poster-boy/girl/attack helicopter for the current situation, but I did have some insight on this story that perhaps became easier to pinpoint than before the contest ended.

First off, the story gets straight to the point. Part of me was happy that it did, but at the same time, another part of it was simply confused that the scene was resolved so easily. As the contest went on, some of my fellow authors started pointing out the things that I wondered about this story, but quickly realized that it wasn't exactly the thing bothering me in my case. It took me a while (too long of a while, in fact) before I started grasping at just what my issue with this story really is.

The story seems set up with only a single conclusion to progress towards to.

Okay, I'm aware of how stupid that statement is, but I think with many of the other stories here, there were moments in the story where, had the characters made a different decision, we get a different conclusion. I honestly can't imagine a part in the story where should anyone make a different decision without going out of character, the story would end up in a different place. It's impressive, in a way, because everything seems to be neatly and perfectly built to that conclusion, but at the same time, it left me feeling like it should've been a lot less rigid in that aspect.

I can't really say if that's the reason why there's little talk about, but I can honestly say it's my personal reason for why I'm finding it so hard to figure out something to say about this, especially as I'm being particularly nitpicky with my above reason. I do hope, however, that others bring their insight into why this story's good. In my case, the characterization is perfect, the dialogue is an ace, the situation is absurd but handles itself perfectly, the writing, in general, is great. My gripe? Perhaps it was too perfect.

Onto the topic of reviewing and talking about the stories on the site itself, there's definitely more that can be— no, has to be done. I definitely need to review more often myself and I hope my fellow writers would do the same.

Hope it didn't get to you as badly as I imagined it did. Can't imagine the WriteOff without you around, bud.

>>horizon
Thank you for your words.

You do realize you just invented like five really amazing story ideas in your hypothetical examples, I hope.

>>Posh

I'm sorry about crowding out the other competitors, Posh, yours included. At the time, I was used to submitting multiple entries within the rules, and since reviewing was optional I didn't think I was doing anything unexceptionable. Certainly no malice was intended; it caught me by surprise (an unpleasant one at that) to find out I was actually ruining the experience for others.

So if it's coming to that, then it's clear I simply can't continue writing like this. Again, I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you and the other people taking part, and will take steps to prevent it in the future.

>>BlueChameleonVI
I think there should be a submission limit, but there isn't. You have nothing to be sorry for.

I'm going to stop opining and go away now.

>>BlueChameleonVI I've had time to think on this. I still think there should be a cap on the number of submissions possible. But, dude, if you want to submit fucktillion stories per round, that's aight. Just be around for the reading and reviewing phase. The writeoff isn't just a place of competition. It's a community built around reading and reviewing.

So be with us. :>

Pantsu-chan, I'm sorry your story was passed over in finals, only to turn into ground zero for the Great Writeoff Slapfight of '18. Granted, it was a slapfight that needed to happen, and I'm rather in agreement with your last post about it. (Double-granted, your story's ranking was still a heck of a lot better than mine.) But while it's not as fruitful to go back and opine now, maybe one more blurb won't hurt anything.

In brief, I think this manages to be poignant despite being short on both word count and setup. Though I'd be curious to get more context for why they're getting together and having this conversation now. Without that, it's a scene that feels reasonable for the characters to have together, but it's unmoored from some of the natural concerns that might either bring them together or inform the central revelation about financial issues. What brought Dash back into their home? What's the context of how their home works given the financial issues that are suggested? Things like these would open up more depth.

But the humor works, especially with the Sunset Shimmer award. The core of what you're going for comes across, I think. It could use more of a lead-in, but what you've got now feels pretty great just as it is.

I would've rated this well if it had come up on my slate, but regrettably, it did not.

>>CoffeeMinion

Pantsu-chan, I'm sorry your story was passed over in finals, only to turn into ground zero for the Great Writeoff Slapfight of '18.

Believe you me, I'm cognizant of the irony here. Story gets passed over in prelims and finals, becomes the most commented-on entry in the post-mortem.

Who says bitching and moaning never got'cha nowhere? :trollestia: