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And hey, I beat horizon, so that's another thing off the bucket list.
I mean, you already did that back in I Regret Nothing, but mega-congratulations on repeating it with your first ponyfic medal! :D
... Hey, who turned out all the lights?
Super-belated Retro: I've Got a Secret!
Okay, so I had this idea banging around in my head for a little while, because I'm slowly becoming convinced that Tempest Shadow is actually something very worthwhile to have come out of the movie. It recently clicked in my head that she's basically season 1 Luna, so of course from that moment on it was inevitable for me to write a piece starring her.
As for Pinkie, I still feel like I don't write her a lot, but if you break down the numbers, out of the Mane 6, she's probably gotten some of the most horsewordcount from me. I still don't really feel comfortable with her voice, but there don't seem to be any complaints about her character. *Shrug*.
On a side note, this is one of the very few stories I've written that fails the Ctrl + F "Princess" test. Enjoy it while you can, suckers, I'm going straight back to Celestia and Twilight ASAP. :P
>>RB
>>CoffeeMinion
>>GroaningGreyAgony
When 100% of the reviews focus on the resolution, I think it's safe to say that it wasn't good. Thanks for your thoughts, ya'll!
I actually originally had planned for another little chunk of dialogue to follow-up Ponker's name reveal, but that would have added 200-300 words to a draft that was already overshooting the word count by a couple of dozen words, so it was never going to make it in. Oh well; sometimes I guess 750 words is just never going to be enough.
Super-belated Retro: I've Got a Secret!
Okay, so I had this idea banging around in my head for a little while, because I'm slowly becoming convinced that Tempest Shadow is actually something very worthwhile to have come out of the movie. It recently clicked in my head that she's basically season 1 Luna, so of course from that moment on it was inevitable for me to write a piece starring her.
As for Pinkie, I still feel like I don't write her a lot, but if you break down the numbers, out of the Mane 6, she's probably gotten some of the most horsewordcount from me. I still don't really feel comfortable with her voice, but there don't seem to be any complaints about her character. *Shrug*.
On a side note, this is one of the very few stories I've written that fails the Ctrl + F "Princess" test. Enjoy it while you can, suckers, I'm going straight back to Celestia and Twilight ASAP. :P
>>RB
>>CoffeeMinion
>>GroaningGreyAgony
When 100% of the reviews focus on the resolution, I think it's safe to say that it wasn't good. Thanks for your thoughts, ya'll!
I actually originally had planned for another little chunk of dialogue to follow-up Ponker's name reveal, but that would have added 200-300 words to a draft that was already overshooting the word count by a couple of dozen words, so it was never going to make it in. Oh well; sometimes I guess 750 words is just never going to be enough.
>>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.
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.
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.
>>Trick_Question
Short answer: I'm messing with the session code, and hopefully it's fixed now.
Long answer: The reason that the server would crash and have to be reset every ~45 days is that new sessions being built up by non-persisting clients would eventually fill up the server's storage. These sessions were all useless, but distinguishing them from actually useful sessions to clear space is expensive.
Instead of doing that, I decided to change the session storage from being in files on the server in /tmp to being in the cookie itself. The upside of this is that errant sessions don't endlessly fill up space on the server, and session data survives a server reset. This is a relatively old idea that's regained popularity since ways of doing it securely have been made robust. The downside is that the cookie data is sent on each request, increasing bandwidth, and that cookies have a size limit of 4KB. However, since the session only contains the user id, this isn't really an issue.
The Perl module that implements this cookie store, though, has a few kludges to it that prevents me from doing a few things I want the session to do: (1) setting the sameSite, httponly, and secure flags on the cookie; (2) only resetting the cookie when necessary; and (3) resetting the cookie if its more than a day old, to prevent expiry.
Coming to your specific question: With this module, the cookie that stores the data is actually different from the one that stores the session id, and the config setting I set to make the cookie expire in 1 year instead of the default 1 day only applied to the latter, so while the session itself persisted longer than a day, the data did not.
So to get the session behaviour I wanted, I wrote my own session handler, which should behave nicely and not cause any problems from now on.
Short answer: I'm messing with the session code, and hopefully it's fixed now.
Long answer: The reason that the server would crash and have to be reset every ~45 days is that new sessions being built up by non-persisting clients would eventually fill up the server's storage. These sessions were all useless, but distinguishing them from actually useful sessions to clear space is expensive.
Instead of doing that, I decided to change the session storage from being in files on the server in /tmp to being in the cookie itself. The upside of this is that errant sessions don't endlessly fill up space on the server, and session data survives a server reset. This is a relatively old idea that's regained popularity since ways of doing it securely have been made robust. The downside is that the cookie data is sent on each request, increasing bandwidth, and that cookies have a size limit of 4KB. However, since the session only contains the user id, this isn't really an issue.
The Perl module that implements this cookie store, though, has a few kludges to it that prevents me from doing a few things I want the session to do: (1) setting the sameSite, httponly, and secure flags on the cookie; (2) only resetting the cookie when necessary; and (3) resetting the cookie if its more than a day old, to prevent expiry.
Coming to your specific question: With this module, the cookie that stores the data is actually different from the one that stores the session id, and the config setting I set to make the cookie expire in 1 year instead of the default 1 day only applied to the latter, so while the session itself persisted longer than a day, the data did not.
So to get the session behaviour I wanted, I wrote my own session handler, which should behave nicely and not cause any problems from now on.
>>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. :>
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.
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.
>>Trick_Question
A while back I spent a while thinking about the guessing system and how to make the awards meaningful.
Most of the relevant ideas I posted in this GitHub issue. Admittedly, most of the thinking was about the avoided detection award. The most relevant part:
Maybe there's actually a solution after all: punish wrong guesses slightly (maybe 1/5th of a point), enough to discourage uninformed guesses, but not enough to discourage mising a guess. Then, with uninformed guesses not diluting the data, an "avoided detection" award might have some meaning.
A while back I spent a while thinking about the guessing system and how to make the awards meaningful.
Most of the relevant ideas I posted in this GitHub issue. Admittedly, most of the thinking was about the avoided detection award. The most relevant part:
Another thing I try to keep in mind is that wrong guesses are basically meaningless, at least as far as the observed data is concerned. Most people make about 6-8 informed guesses, and then either don't bother with the rest or just throw in a mostly random one.
Maybe there's actually a solution after all: punish wrong guesses slightly (maybe 1/5th of a point), enough to discourage uninformed guesses, but not enough to discourage mising a guess. Then, with uninformed guesses not diluting the data, an "avoided detection" award might have some meaning.
>>RogerDodger
Perhaps wrong guesses should be penalized based on the probability of a random guess being incorrect. If I wrote two stories out of fifty, guessing me incorrectly should be worth minus 1/24th of a point. That way, guessing me for every story would be worth exactly zero points.
Perhaps wrong guesses should be penalized based on the probability of a random guess being incorrect. If I wrote two stories out of fifty, guessing me incorrectly should be worth minus 1/24th of a point. That way, guessing me for every story would be worth exactly zero points.
>>CoffeeMinion
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:
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:
>>horizon
IT'S HAPPENING
Back When Tigers Used To Smoke is now taking submissions! Go check out the blog post for details. :)
(cc: >>Pascoite >>CoffeeMinion >>WritingSpirit)
IT'S HAPPENING
Back When Tigers Used To Smoke is now taking submissions! Go check out the blog post for details. :)
(cc: >>Pascoite >>CoffeeMinion >>WritingSpirit)
That was wonderful and quite touching! (Wow, these are so much easier to do when the contest is already over!)
Not bad, though the dream angle felt obvious to start with. The dialog was a big confusing though, as it felt scattered (authentically dreamlike?) I guess I would've preferred more examples of ponies being evil (scoring points) instead of just mocking/teasing Chrysalis. Still, a great, serious twist on the image prompt!
Great dialog, though the premise feels a bit wonky (she's stabbed herself in a tree and shoves candy in the cut?) I get that's from the image, but without seeing the image first, it feels odd. Otherwise, a fun, quick story.
>>Zaid Val'Roa
May I use this art piece for my completed "Letting Go" story on Fimfiction?
May I use this art piece for my completed "Letting Go" story on Fimfiction?
>>Trick_Question
For the record, Zaid has responded to me in the affirmative. :pinkiehappy:
For the record, Zaid has responded to me in the affirmative. :pinkiehappy: