Oh dear, this isn’t poetry. These are song lyrics. Not at all a good idea. A purely textual representation of an auditory medium never goes well.

It’s an interesting concept, certainly. Human Fluttershy somehow channeling the experience of her equine analogue’s transformation in “Bats!” into a song raises some intriguing questions. But the execution falls flat without the tune.

>>FanOfMostEverything

A purely textual representation of an auditory medium never goes well.

Well, actually ... ;)

But Writeoffsplaining aside, I largely agree with FOME's assessment, and 4th District Court is an interesting compare/contrast. As he notes, song lyrics in a visual medium don't have the hook of the music to anchor the words, which means that all the audience can do is really read them as poetry; and if you're going to enter them in a visual-medium contest, you have to account for that.

Part of what made 4th District Court work (though a small part, alongside the core humor and the dialogue/interplay and the images it evoked) was that I wrote it as poetry, basically. Take a look at the respective choruses:

Don't let them say we didn't have a cure!
The world has to know that while our motives were impure,
The Everfree Elixir was a surefire pony fixer!
Don't let them say we didn't have a cure!

versus

And no pony knows that I'm
Over their heads
Over their heads
With eight apples left on this fruit tree
They’re on my mind
They’re on my mind

The former is strongly, if not perfectly, evocative of a specific cadence (with heavily iambic patter and a close brush with common meter). It's got both ending rhymes (cure / were impure) and internal rhymes (know / mo-tives; Elixir / fixer). But with the current song, "Over their heads" and "They're on my mind" are both four-syllable lines with three stresses, confounding reader attempts to fall into a rhythm (which the longer lines also don't help), and aside from the slant rhyme of I'm/mind (and arguably pony/tree, which is REALLY a stretch) there's no textual interplay here. The words, in short, are not the part of the song which grabs the listener, and that means that you're losing all that grabbiness in the transition to visual media.

So how do you fix that with editing? You ... kind of don't. :\ Unless you're willing to make your song more show-tune than pop-rock -- taking some lyrical cues from Gilbert and Sullivan et.al. and writing lyrics that stand as poetry -- this sort of entry is basically Writeoff on impossible mode, because of the media mismatch. I wonder, maybe, if you were writing this to be sung along with an existing song, how readers would take a story which included an editor's note at the top saying "To the tune of" and providing a Youtube link? I suspect readers would still look askance at it because it's leaning on the crutch of the music for its impact, but at least that way it would stand in its proper context. If the music here is original, more power to you, but it really needs that extra dimension.

Anyway, how's the rest of the story? I like the way it grounds the lyrics with the Rainbow Rocks crowd (though the transition to the generic "the band" feels abrupt; I picked it up, but you may want more context there for a softer landing). This definitely hints at an intriguing concept, of that cross-world bleedthrough, which I wish it had explored more. As it is, that second section feels like it does a nice job of providing (necessary) context for the lyrics, but little more.

I'm always in favor of genre and form experimentation, and experimental pieces in Writeoffs more generally. But the nature of experiments is that a lot of times they're going to fail -- they'd hardly be "experiments" if they didn't. This one feels like a miss, but I commend you on pushing the envelope.

Tier: Needs Work

I did think there is the germ of an interesting idea here, as has already been stated quite succinctly. I don't think spending so much time on the song was the best use of your available words, though. I appreciate the attempt at experimentation, but only about fifty percent (maybe) of it felt overly relevant to the narrative, and the rest just absorbed words that would have been better spent exploring its context, which, by contrast, was undernourished. You could have probably had the characters simply discussing the more relevant lines perhaps, but I appreciate that might have taken the story away from the stylistic approach you wanted to run with.

Interesting, and commendable, but it didn't really do it for me. Thanks for sharing your work, though.

Well, it's better than "Bats"... :yay:

I think it's an interesting idea, and I like the execution. I'm just not drawn in enough at the end because Fluttershy doesn't seem to be particularly emotionally invested in the song, and it has no direct relevance to the world they're in. The connection between the universes here feels more haphazard than essential, which is frequently a problem in EQD stories.

>>FanOfMostEverything, >>horizon, and >>AnyoneElseWhoWantsTheTune
It looks a lot like The Fray's "Over My Head (Cable Car)" to me, and comparing the two makes it pretty obvious that that is what the author was going for. As someone who has vastly overestimated the writeoff participants' knowledge of/ability to understand references and crossovers like this on multiple occasions, I sympathize with the author here. It probably would have been better to include a link to the song at some point.

As for the story itself, the first part is an interesting and unusual, in its presentation if nothing else, take on Flutterbat. The second part seems weaker to me, and based on the wordcount, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just thrown on to push the story over 400 words. Which is a shame, because it has the potential to be the most interesting part of the story.

>>The_Letter_J
Oh! Well, don't I feel like a silly? ^^;

Yeah, linking the source song would've been a very good idea.

>>The_Letter_J
After some further consideration, while I do think knowing the source song makes me a little more favorably inclined to this entry, I don't think it's enough to change my voting. A cross-comparison to the original lyrics shows that there's a lot which is left nearly untouched, making this more of an adaptation than an original work. And while it's a pretty nice adaptation (and clearly enough to dismiss any worries about plagiarism), in a contest context I don't know how much I can credit the current author for the strength of the lines that are similar to the original.

So, uh, I stand by the previous post's review, I guess.

Well, well, the lyrics here are both great (I mean, intimating on “Bats” was a good idea) and dumb. But 99% of all lyrics are, so I cannot really hold you a grudge for this. I mean, it’s the combination of lyrics with background music that makes a song a smash hit.

Problem is, since I've never heard the original song, I've no tune to associate with it, and it sounds quite hollow.

But commendation for having chosen an entertaining EqG setup. The last part was nice.

Over Their Heads (Apple Farm) - Retrospective
"Let's see...I tried writing a crossover with MasterChef, and that had issues because almost no one here watches that show, and I tried writing a story that referrenced current events, and that didn't work because no one knew what I was talking about...I know, I'll write a story based on a parody of a triple platinum pop song that hit the top ten in the US (and apparently did pretty well in other countries too) and was being played on the radio all the time several years ago. That can't possibly go wrong."
Yeah. Someday I'll learn to stop overestimating the writeoff's ability to understand references like these.
</rant>

I already talked a bit about this story in my fake review (which I honestly mostly wrote to help you all figure out the song) over here: >>The_Letter_J
Like I said there, I really should have included a link to the song. I thought the song would be recognizable enough without it, but clearly that didn't happen.
The second part was thrown in just because the song is only about 350 words long. I needed some padding, and that was the best option I could come up with. So I just threw it on at the end in a few minutes. So if that part seemed weaker or less thought-out, that's why.
I never actually gave much thought to whatever is connecting EqG-Fluttershy to Flutterbat and the implications of that until people mentioned it in their reviews. There is some potential there, and should I ever do anything else with this story, I will probably focus on it more.

>>FanOfMostEverything
I was kind of hoping that you would live up to your username and recognize the song. If anyone was going to, I would have expected it to be you.

>>horizon

I'm always in favor of genre and form experimentation, and experimental pieces in Writeoffs more generally. But the nature of experiments is that a lot of times they're going to fail -- they'd hardly be "experiments" if they didn't. This one feels like a miss, but I commend you on pushing the envelope.

Thanks. As you might have noticed, I enjoy using the writeoffs to experiment.

>>horizon

A cross-comparison to the original lyrics shows that there's a lot which is left nearly untouched,

I intentionally left several lines similar to help people recognize the source material (not that it helped), but I think that saying a lot was nearly untouched is a bit unfair.

making this more of an adaptation than an original work.

He said in a fanfiction contest. ;p

And while it's a pretty nice adaptation (and clearly enough to dismiss any worries about plagiarism), in a contest context I don't know how much I can credit the current author for the strength of the lines that are similar to the original.

You are, of course, free to have whatever opinions you want and to vote however you please, but I feel like you are being a bit unfair to me. Yes, some bits are similar. But I changed the parts around those bits, and in doing so, I gave them new context and new meaning. The similarities, in my opinion, just serve to highlight the differences.
If it helps, you can think of this as a crossover of sorts.

And that's really all I've got in the way of replies to comments. The rest of your comments basically either come down to "I should have linked you to the song in the story" and/or just focused on the scene at the end, which I addressed above and was by far the least important part of this story to me. Thanks for reading this anyway.
>>Ceffyl_Dwr
>>Trick_Question
>>Monokeras


And in case anyone is curious, let me tell you where this story came from.
Every time I tried to think about the prompt, the original song came to me and would not leave my head. Since this left me completely incapable of coming up with any other ideas, I had to go with this one.
The first thing I thought of was that if I made the story about Fluttershy, I could change the name of the band from "The Fray" to "The Afraid," so clearly I had to do that. My first idea for the song was to make it about Fluttershy's struggles to do everything she's had to do as bearer of the Element of Kindness, and how she's over her head in all these responsibilities.
Then I was trying to think of a good phrase to replace "cable car" in the title and the song, and I wanted it to be something that (at least sort of) rhymed with "cable car" to help keep things recognizably similar. And the first possibility I thought of was "apple farm."
So I was left with a song about Fluttershy involving an apple farm. And when you're combining those two things, it's hard not to jump to Flutterbat. After that, it was just a matter of coming up with new lyrics that made sense.

>>The_Letter_J
For what it's worth, I would have read the hell out of a MLP/MasterChef crossover this time around. That was great. :michelinstarpinkie:

>>The_Letter_J
Sadly, music is one of my weaker areas of expertise. Little of what I listen to was made after I was born, and most of that is either soundtracks or Weird Al.

There's a reason I call myself Fan of Most Everything.

Man, I feel bad now—if I had read this while it was still in the running, I totally would have recognized the song. Just reading the first line of this got the tune stuck in my head.

That being said, aside from the wonderful ponification, there's not much going on here. I don't really see any conflict. It's just kinda... a scene.

>>FanOfMostEverything
I've found your weakness!

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

>>The_Letter_J
It's not the fact that it's (essentially) a crossover that is the root of the problem. (Speaking of the other crossovers you mentioned: you can see from my review of FBTwi that I recognized the references and my misgivings there were from a construction flaw in the piece. And I went back and read the Master Chef crossover, and while I've never watched that show, your story was entertaining, and I probably would have put it approx. top-middle slate and a Solid if I'd voted on it.) And it's definitely not that I have problems with ponifications of pop songs.

I should refer back to what I said in >>horizon about my opinions of this as a creative work vs. my opinion of it as a Writeoff entry. And as I noted in >>horizon, knowing the context definitely improved my opinion of it as a creative work. It's the "judging it as a Writeoff entry" bit that gets weird and sticky.

The Writeoffs have had occasional debates about how to handle "ponifications" of non-pony content as entries. There was a big debate in the Behind Closed Doors round, for example, over Chris' "The Arena", which used the exact plot and structure of The Lady Or The Tiger with MLP worldbuilding layered over the top. Then, in the "Closing Time" round, my Iridescent Iron Rat was a direct adaptation of The Stainless Steel Rat, borrowing the core premise and plot but reinterpreting it far more broadly and changing the plot's challenges to be uniquely Equestrian; that didn't stop a substantial debate over whether readers should dock it for its use of the source.

There's a lot of grey area there and opinions can legitimately differ, but to me the difference is in what it brings to the table above and beyond the crossover/source material. Imagine a fanfic that was an exact retelling of an MLP episode; we might admire it for its prose or its language, but it doesn't seem fair to credit the fanfic author for enjoying the plot, dialogue, or characterization, because those are things that another author (the show writer) was responsible for.

Iridescent won a gold medal, but despite being a SSR retelling, I don't think anyone could argue it wasn't its own story. I invented "traiting" out of whole cloth, opened with a totally new scene showing Jimmy using sleight-of-tongue on a dragon, used Cloudsdale's unique architecture as a plot point in his escape, split Inskipp into two separate characters and reconciled them both with Equestrian history, and changed the outcome of the heist that gets Jimmy captured (again with a twist specifically grounded in Equestrian technology). If you summarized the story you'd see the beat-by-beat plot points of SSR, but at least as much work went into the story as if I'd created it completely from scratch. Similarly, it seems pretty clear to me that no matter how much structure and premise Time is an Important Ingredient borrowed from Master Chef, there's a lot of great material there that was created out of whole cloth, such as Rainbow's entry with a store-bought box of cake mix and her jerry-rigging Spike as an oven.

Song lyrics … it's hard to disentangle in that way. What you choose to ponify and how you choose to ponify it is certainly original effort, but there's a lot that carries over untouched even if you change all the words: rhyme scheme and meter, prosody, rhythm, emotional beats and pacing. Leaving lines totally untouched can (as you note) strengthen parallels to the original song, and as a matter of effective writing often can be a good decision, but I feel like the only thing I can judge this story on as a contest entry is how it changed what it changed.

You are, of course, free to have whatever opinions you want and to vote however you please, but I feel like you are being a bit unfair to me.

And I'm sorry for that, but judging adaptations is a tangled and fraught issue, and judging it only based on the merits of the new material is the compromise I worked out for my own standards back when these issues first came up.

It's probably also unfair to some authors that, in general fiction rounds, I judge MLP stories as if I knew absolutely nothing about the show. But I've gotta pick some way to judge, and I'm trying to strike a balance between blindly rewarding enjoyable stories, and rewarding stories which best align with the letter and spirit of the rules.

This kinda turned into an essay, but it's a tough issue. :\

>>horizon
I appreciate your writing this. I think it's a good conversation to have... unless it's already been had, and I'm just showing up late. Q_Q

I try to balance rewarding the stories that work for me, with rewarding those that don't necessarily work for me but have clear technical quality and/or artistic merit. But I can think of fics where the confluence of working for me personally and being nominally coherent have greatly influenced my rankings.

The Carmen Sandiego one is a great example. It's one of my top picks, because it's well-written, makes great use of its references, and hits my sense of absurd humor dead-on. But to what extent am I letting personal taste guide that ranking? Probably quite a lot, if I'm being honest.

What's the best way to approach that dilemma?

>>horizon
Thank you for this comment/essay. I do want to reply to it, I am just being delayed by the process of moving. I'll try to get to it when I can.