Reviewing this late, I have little to add to what’s been said. I like this and look forward to seeing a fuller version of it on FIMFic.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. It feels off to me, and more than I think is intended. Part of that is Twilight's voice. She avoids contractions like Data in this, which makes her "idle musings" seem far too formal for the relaxed attitude she seems to have at the start. The four stars, that seems too specific. Maybe I'm not remembering some exact scene from the first episode, but four stars seems like it needs a more specific "dread" than just the general sense of foreboding we get here.

The end of the main scene also throws me, as she's clearly seeing a new phenomenon, but she looks it up in a book anyway, and (no surprise at all) of course it's not there. But the timing of that makes it seem like she (or we) should be surprised.

The last scene is where my uncertainty really kicks in though. I think this is showing Twilight becoming infected with the madness that leads to Nightmare. That she will keep it secret, not tell her friends, etc... that sets up a nice bit of foreshadowing that's properly creepy, if my reading is correct. The problem is that the rest of the story doesn't really set that up with any certainty.

If that is the case, that the pulsing stars invade her dreams and her mind, then hammer that home a little stronger. Have her closing her eyes, and still seeing the stars. Have her go inside, and make it clearer than even through a dozen yards of stone, she still sees the pulsing of the stars. This is a very basic premise, and it's repetition (and escalation) that make that sort of thing creepiest.

I've never heard of this game, but on the other hand I'm not entirely unfamiliar with that kind of board games, so maybe that's why I didn't have a problem fully getting into the story.

Anyway, even though it's a small and humble story, I really love this. It's a nice slice-of-life piece where each of our favorite six characters gets to show off her personality, and pretty much every line of dialogue is delightful.

On one hand, I love the atmosphere created by the writing, as well as the general tension implied. I can really feel Twilight's situation, when the entire world falls apart around her and she's just trying not to panic.

On the other hand, the story is ultimately kind of unclear. Just what happened? When is this actually happening? Are Celestia and Luna dead? We don't know exactly. All we get are scraps of Twilight's panicked thoughts to go on.

I wasn't magic. I couldn't have been magic.

Uhm, I think this was meant to be "it", not "I"? Because it doesn't make sense otherwise.

How had she done it, when she'd been hiding the power of all the alicorns from Tirek?

This is also difficult to parse; I'm not fully sure what you meant there. When seeing this particular sentence structure, the first meaning that comes to the reader's mind is one of opposition: "how could she have done it in spite of having been hiding the [blablabla]", which doesn't really make much sense.
Another interpretation is that you're trying to squeeze two separate pieces of information into one sentence: who is responsible for the incident (Twilight), and when did the incident happen (at the time when she'd been hiding the blablabla.) This just comes off as a very awkward sentence.

Celestia's sun. Twilight looked away from it, but that only brought Luna's moon into her view. They couldn't be gone. It wasn't real.

The third sentence here can throw the reader for a loop--you'd just referred to the sun and the moon, so it's natural to assume that "they" refers to these celestial bodies, and it requires a bit of thought to realize it actually refers to the two princesses (um, it does, right?)

So: good writing, powerful imagery... but the story is hampered by some crucial information being conveyed in a highly unclear way. Once fixed, this might be one hell of a story.

>>Xepher
Oh. That does make sense if you take "turned on its ear" literally. The problem is that it's such a well-established idiom that I never thought to. Well, that, and in order for Yakyakistan to be south of the exclusion zone, the world would've had to have been twisted around as well as tilted. Or tilted about 180 degrees. It's such an extreme adjustment that referring to it so obliquely made me dismiss it as a possibility.

We have just over a day left to vote and review. Time to highlight the stories that could use more love:

“Never Dream” (#8), “Bit Too Literal” (#9), “The Twilight Show” (#11), “The Changelings are Due in Canterlot” (#34), “Crisis on Infinite Twilights” (#45), “Reach for the Stars (#48), and “The Happiest Ending” (#60) all have seven reviews by seven reviewers.

“The Passing of the Burning Brand” (#20) and “Playing the Game” (#21) each have eight reviews by seven reviewers, while “Eolotthowghrhoighuay” (#24) has nine reviews by seven reviewers.

“Crepuscular” (#4), “Invaders From Another World (#12), “All Nightmare Long” (#15), “You Open thus Door with the Key of Friendship” (#23), “The Twilight Council” (#39), “What It’s Worth” (#43), “Back to Freedom” (#50), “The Tirek Zone” (#51), and “The Masquerade” (#52) all have eight reviews by eight reviewers.

I'm sure you all know what to do.

Ditto. Abstention. I can’t properly assess poetry, how impressive it might be.

So, it was proposed (by me) that someone (being me) should do a mash-up of all sixty entries with Quackers Goes to The Fair. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. No reason.

1. It's Over, Quackers

Final chapter in the Quackers series. While exploring Equestria for the upteenth time, Quackers the Duck discovers and unwittingly detonates Celestia's emergency nuclear silo, destroying Equestria.

2. Quackers Goes to The Deep

Twilight, in an attempt to show other intelligent alien lifeforms the joys of having a duck, launches Quackers into the vast emptiness of space. Quackers is not amused.

3. Fair Quackers Goes Crepuscular

Quackers decides that he wants to see more of Equestria's night life and dyes his feathers black. The ponies who love and cherish Quackers are dismayed with his new fashion sensibilities, but are confident that this is just a phase.

4. Quackers Goes To God

After the events of the smash-hit Quackers Goes Crepuscular, Quackers is looking to repent for his sins. Luckily, Celestia is there to help.

5. Tyrant King Quackers Goes to the Fair

Quackers, having failed to find salvation in Celestia, decides that he must become the villain Equestria needs in order to cleanse it. He returns the Fair he visited in the first book and harasses everyone in his path.

6. A Riveting Tale of Quackers Conquest

The mane 6 challenge the God-Tyrant Quackers to a game of Twilight Imperium that determines the fate of all of Equestria. But first, they have to explain the rules of the game for nine hours. Eventually they give up and say he can just learn to play as they go.

7. Never Dream, Quackers

After his defeat at the hands of the mane 6, Quacker is brain-washed into forgetting his past by Starlight Glimmer in an effort to pacify his desire for galactic conquest. But in his dreams, he is haunted by the suffering he has caused in the past.

8. Quackers Goes Too Literal

Quackers is confused for the span of an entire novel over the relative size of ponies and how they can be little if they are actually full sized ponies but at the same time are little relative to a size of a horse, and he just can't deal with this contradiction.

9. Trial by Quackers

Quackers starts a cult of personality designed to procure the darkest secrets and forbidden tomes from Twilight's library to restore his iron-grip over Equestria. But first he has to learn the Dewey Decimal System.

10. The Quackers Show

Quackers is thrown into the world of Equestria Girls after a spell he learned in Trial by Quackers goes awry. The cast of Equestria Girls tests Quackers with the Kobayashi Maru in order to see if he is fit to be integrated into the main cast and maybe be featured in the next movie.

11. Quackers from Another World

After being kicked out the continuity of Equestria Girls, Quackers returns to Equestria to conquer the planet again, but only succeeds in mildly irritating Octavia. She hits him with a broom, prompting his immediate retreat back into the wild.

12. Is Quackers in the Literal Sense

Quackers has an existentialist crisis over his inability to defeat Octavia and loses all sense of himself. He tries to become like other members of the mane 6, but fails. I think.

13. A Good Quackers in Equestria

The mane 6 have been trapped in a pocket dimension created by Quackers' immense psychic power, and they have to keep him happy, or he'll erase their asses from the continuity. This mainly consists of bringing Quackers bread crumbs.

14. Long Quackers Nightmare

A Quackers villain origin story. An eldritch abomination touches Quackers in his dreams and gradually imbues him with its corrupt essence. The darkness gives Quackers vast powers, but also drains his sanity, becoming a shell of the duck he once was.

15. Awesome Fair Quackers!

Twilight, feeling pity for Quackers, creates a pocket dimension of eternal fairs for Quackers in order to keep him content in reliving his halcyon days before his fall into madness. Quackers is pleased with this development.

16. Welcome to Equestria Quackers!

The prequel to Quackers Goes to the Fair. Quackers fills out an immigration form to Equestria from the neighboring land of Yakistan, but his travel visa is voided. He decides to immigrate illegally instead.

17. Quackers Libs

Discord makes unwelcome edits to Quackers' My Little Pony fan fiction, which angers the duck of destiny. Discord and Quackers both employ the fullest extent of their continuity-altering powers to wrest control of the MLP-Universe by rewriting sections of each others' fan fics.

18. The Obsolete Quackers

After being trapped by Starlight Glimmer's equalist movement, Quackers plans a murder-suicide in order to defeat his foe, knowing full well that the Dark Gods of Equestria will save his mortal form.

19. The Passing of the Burning Quackers

The extended-universe sequel made after the events of It's Over, Quackers with permission from the original author. It describes the death of Celestia in the nuclear apocalypse and the effect it has had on the environment.

20. Playing the Quackers Game

Quackers devises a get rich quick scheme to defraud the government of thousands of bits by exploiting Twilight's Sparkles' childhood affection for him. It succeeds, and Quackers quickly becomes a millionaire living the high life. But all good things come to an end eventually...

Okay that's it for right now, but I'll be back with more Quackers stories!

Oh hey, notifications went live?

>>Not_A_Hat Testing, testing...

>>A_Hat Huh. I can't notify my own alts? Interesting.

Would someone do me a favor and reply to both of the posts above, so I can see how notifications work on alts and what?

>>AndrewRogue
This is a rushed entry, but time isn't the issue.
You could give a few indications on items bothering you and suggest something?
>>Misternick
Only one story is the best, but that is for later.
Oh yeah, good old Twilight Zone.
>>Morning Sun
Went anywhere?
No, not really; but where would you want it to go, based on what you were faced with?
>>FanOfMostEverything
That does come out as odd.
If it isn't part of the Twilight Zone issue that brought us to the story? I would wager on residual disorientation, but that is just me.
The simplest answer is that she already was in the Castle, due being summoned to the councile in the first place, and just stepped in on Pinkie.
Could be a Ponification error, or a fashion style?

How is this cryptic? Are you sensing imagery or symbolism behind the story?

>>Not_A_Hat
As you wish.

>>A_Hat
Your wish is my command.

>>AndrewRogue Sweet, thanks Andrew. :)

So, it turns out that replying to any alias sends all notifications to the same spot, which is cool.

It also turns out that the notification link only goes to the general discussion thread, not the actual post that the reply was in. This is probably less of a problem if the replies are inside a story thread, but maybe I'll mention it to Roger...

EDIT: turns out there is a link that goes directly to the post, but it's not obviously a link, so I missed it the first few times. You have to click that little non-blue arrow at the very end of the notification.

Quackers Mash-ups Cont.

21. To Serve Quackers Friendship

Twilight Sparkle is asked to arbitrate a dispute between the two Equestrian Monarchs to determine who has a right to Quackers' friendship. Twilight Sparkle is about to give the opinion that they are both able to share Quackers' friendship, but she is abruptly cut off by two foot notes.

22. You Open This Door With the Key of Quackers

Quackers is transported to the continuity of the Twilight Zone following an elongated argument between Celestia and Luna over who gets to keep him in their room. Rod Sterling makes him feel very uncomfortable and he doesn't have a fun time.

23. Eolotthowghrhoighuay... Quackers

Quackers retreats deep underground to avoid Luna and Celestia after a diplomatic tensions on who gets his friendship fizzle and encounters a wistful diamond dog talking about a pegasus. Quackers relates to and befriends him because they are both not very good at speaking English and Quackers has wings.

24. Quackers' Protagonist Syndrome

The eldritch creations inhabiting Quackers' mind reveal unto him that he is simply a fictional depiction of a duck in an unlicensed reproduction of a fictional show. This knowledge destroys the last remnants of Quackers' sanity, and he realizes that he can do pretty much anything without consequence since he is the protagonist of the Quackers offshot series.

Critics claim that this is the point where Quackers got too meta.

25. Quackers Goes To the Fair

First book in the series. An adorable duck goes to a fair and makes everyone happy, not knowing the darkness that he soon will bring to the world and the ponies he loves.

26. Quackers vs. Azathoth

After the events of Trial by Quackers, the acolytes of Quackers'c cult manage to retrieve the Necronomicon from Twilight's library. Quackers quickly learns that the source of the eldritch power that he has been cursed with comes from the Outer God Azathoth. Using his occult powers, he tries to perform a ritual to summon Azathoth into Equestria, but only succeeds in briefly creating a portal to the real world. Buzz Aldrin doesn't report this to NASA.

27. Quackers' Reveries

The Equestrian Magician Association launches an undercover investigation into the source of Quackers' magical ability after he inadvertently transforms Twilight's parents into a cactus. To cover up the source of the immense magical power, the lead investigator tell Twilight that she destroyed her parents instead, and everyone in the kingdom pretends that she is some super powerful magical user to maintain secrecy.

28. Quackers' True Ascension

Quackers uses his powers to alter the continuity of the Magical Mystery Cure to make it so he replaces Twilight as the new Princess of Equestria. Celestia comes to explain to him the extent of his Princess responsibilities, which he just ignores.

29. Quackers Goes to the Exclusion Zone

The flavor text of the remnants of Equestria following the events of It's Over, Quackers in an unauthorized module for the Quackers Dungeons and Dragons and dragons games. The author is currently in negotiations to seek licensing for publication.

30. Home Sweet Quackers

The reboot by a new author following the death of the original author of Quackers Goes to The Fair. Twilight takes Quackers through a dimensional portal to negate the previous continuity of the Quackers universe in order to free up the author to create new Quackers canon.

31. Quackers' Safe Zone

Discord adopts Quackers and shoves him in his navel for no discernible reason other than Discord is just a really odd person.

32. Quackers of the Ruins

Sequel to Quackers' True Ascension. Frustrated with Quackers' lack of initiative in being the new Princess of Friendship, Celestia just completely destroys the instance of the continuity and fucks off to a parallel dimension.

33. The Quackers are Due in Canterlot

Princess Luna, suspicious of a plethora of an uprising of ducks in a small town outside of Canterlot, goes to investigate. She is immediately subdued by an army of small ducks and replaced by a duck that sort of looks like her.

34. The Quackers' Limits

Quackers appeals to Celestia's long lost sister to help him conquer Equestria, but she is too busy moping to be of any assistance.

35. It's a Good Quackers

Pony Rod Sterling follows Quackers around for an entire day, pestering him with long-winded story after long-winded story in a vain attempt to try to persuade Quackers just to go back to the fair.

36. Transcript of Quackers Interview 0101730A

Another Retcon of the Quackers Series made by the new author proposing that Quackers never actually went to the fair and met Twilight, thus never had the opportunity to destroy her parents.

37. Subject Quackers Theta 32

Sequel to Transcript of Quackers Interview 0101730A. Quackers is picked up and investigated by the Pony Magical Association due to his immense magical aura that threatens to destroy Equestria. The isolation eventually drives him mad.

38. The Quackers Council

In an event similar to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Quackers consolidates all of his identities across every single Quackers continuity to join forces and overtake Equestria.

39. Quackers Goes to the Shortest Coup d'état in Equestrian History

Blueblood, furious with Quackers' continued popularity and finesse with the ladies, decides that he shall take it upon himself to assassinate Quackers. Unfortunate for Blueblood, Quackers is beyond strength and immediately obliterates him with an earth-shattering quack.

40. Are There Any Paranoid Quackers in The Writeoff Tonight?

Quackers meets the spirit of the original author of his story, who tells him that he is a Marty Stu creation that should be tossed in a dumpster fire. This destroys Quackers' spirit and breaks his will to live.

More Quackers sometimes in the future!

Is it Mashup time yet? It’s Mashup time.

Don’t Tickle Azathoth
The Blind Idiot God has one weak spot, which strongly resembles the fuzzy tummy of an adorable little kitten. Don’t. Don’t.

To Serve Sonata Dusk
(It’s a cookbook. A cookbook full of SPOILERS.)

Twilight Sparkle Seeks the Masquerade
Nopony understood her Starswirl costume last Nightmare Night, but it’s sure to be a hit this time with her improved modification of the Want It Need It spell.

The Passing of the Test
Celestia visits a lake by mistake. There is nothing to see here. DQ’ed. Her horn like a spiral shell contains a lithe, repulsive worm, a slippery alien leech that defeats her good mind with repugnant thoughts… then the eternal white silence.

Fallen from the Outer Limits
Celestial Alicorns squabble over a dimming star and knock it out of the heavens by accident. Or was it another Plot Twist (tm)?

The Thousandth Invader from Another World
What’s this Displacement dressed up as? Oh, another Starswirl. Yawn.

This is the first I've sen of Arbiter Twilight, and pairing it with Celestia and Luna having a tiff is all the better. Cake-fiend Celestia is a bit derivative at this point, but it became so because it works well, so no skin off in the long run.

Footnotes are a bold choice with word limits as tight as they are, but I think you used them to both comedic and clarifying effect.

Mashups, huh? I could go for some mashups.

Crazy Libs
"Don't worry, she's not an octopus."

Yet Hope, In Part, Goes to the Fair:
How silly, simple U> had been –
To think ô present; What would it say,
If ô impressed \Ô/ today,
With quackless fluke – the U> sin?

Twilight's Awesome Safe Zone:
"Getting me to study? Awesome! Wait, where is this place, anyways? And why does this chair feel like dryer lint?"

Welcome to Equestria, Tyrant King!
Please select the box signaling how effective you plan to be as a a villain:
☐ STAAAAAAAAIRS! CRYYYYYYYSTALS!
☐ Other (additional processing fees apply)

This story really creates more questions than it answers, and I admit that the extension of the conspiracy is quite vast, considering the common wisdom "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

All that aside, the idea is quite interesting and the brief scene we had here is fun. The writing is solid and it was a nice read.

Expand it, answer some of those pesky questions and you have prime material here. As it is, it's nice but a bit unsatisfying.

"The Titan goddess of nocturnal oracles and falling stars, Asteria."

Damned fine pull for a character. In reply to the other comments, I think the "falling out" isn't so much that as a simple family matter of "big sister has work to do, peace out." Hurt feelings, yes, but not any real wrongdoing.

There is nothing to forgive, I sign instead. There never was. I found my stars. You found your world. We are happy now.

Seems like clue enough that this might be the case.

Also, author, your second line makes it clear that some stars do literally fall, while some need to be relit, and that small morsel is indeed a juicy one for me. I'm reminded of another story in which Luna begins to hear the wishes made on falling stars, and I now wonder if there isn't room for thematic connection between the two.

FINAL ROUND, FIGHT!!!

41. No Quackers Allowed

Backstory of the inciting incident that caused Quackers to turn Twilight's family into cacti in Quackers' Reveries. Twilight and her mother are playing a game together and purposely excluding Quackers because they fear the all-mighty wrath of his soul-rending Quack. Twilight's dad tries to cheer Quackers up by performing a cross-dressing cabaret routine, but this only serves to make Quackers even more upset.

42. What Quackers' Worth

Twilight gets Quackers a book for his birthday, but Quackers isn't really interested in it because he can't read. Twilight tries to address Quackers' illiteracy, but he curses the book in spite. Later, Twilight decides to re-gift the game book to Spike, and it traps him in a pocket dimension.

43. Twilight Sparkle is the True Crime of Quackers

Twilight tries again in vain to teach Quackers to read by producing a hand-written poem made especially for Quackers. Quackers, however, realizes that the draftmanship is utter garbage and tosses it away, irreparably hurting Twilight's feelings.

44. Crisis on Infinite Quackers

An adaptation of the Quackers saga by an inexperienced Japanese mangaka that was published in Shonen Jump in April of 2018. Quackers-san is a ninja shinobi samurai that has to defeat the evil daimyo in order to bring peace and justice to the land. However, he has to first recruit a series of alternate reality Quackers-sans with the adequate skills to help him perform this undertaking. The rest of the manga is just a copy of 13 Assassins.

45. The Meaning of Being Quackers

In the post-nuclear apocalypse, Quackers has a heart-to-heart conversation with Twilight about the sins he committed while he was a mortal duck in the realm of the dead. It is apparent Twilight hasn't forgiven him for killing her friends, family, and everyone she ever knew, but the talk gives Quackers some peace of mind about the whole situation.

46. Quackers' Dance Revolution

Quackers accidentally starts a full-on war in the dragon kingdom after completely obliterating Vinyl Scratch in a dance off that leaves her completely paralyzed. Quackers is put on trial for crimes against humanity and is found innocent on the virtue of being too cute to commit something so atrocious.

47. Reach for the Quackers

Through a series of brow-beating, passive-aggressive comments, and gaslighting, Quackers manages to convince Luna to retake the mantel of Nightmare Moon in order to destabilize Celestia's iron grip over Equestria. All the pieces of Quackers' master plan come together, and he is the one pulling the strings that decide the fate of Equestria.

48. Quacker Goes Vört Vört Vört

Quackers' master plan is finally revealed, and he opens up a trans-dimensional portal to Xen, allowing the Vortigaunts to come in and enslave all of Equestria.

49. Back to Quackers

An armed resistance has sprung up to fight against Quackers' complete and utter domination of Equestria. This story chapters the final moments of a dying resistance soldier fighting against the great and glorious Quackers' army. Quackers will not tolerate insubordination.

50. The Quackers Zone

With some persuasion, Quackers manages to convince Discord to sell out the mane 6, the last bastions of resistance to his totalitarian rule. A depressed Discord is sad for the rest of eternity.

51. The Quackers Masquerade

Fancy Pants, trying to get in with the new established tyrant, attempts to find Quackers at a upscale masked ball and chat him about perhaps not killing him. Unfortunately, Fancy Pants is distracted by a very attractive mare and forgets to ask Quackers not to kill him. This will have repercussions in the future for Fancy Pants.

52. The Quackers Town

A story of Quackers' childhood living in a hamlet outside of Canterlot. The Townspeople love and befriend Quackers, and treat him well. However, once Quackers is touched by Azathoth, he loses controls of his powers and gorily slaughters everyone in the entire vicinity before realizing what he had done.

53. The Thousandth Quackers

An alt-universe written by an a fan of the Quackers saga. Twilight asks Princess Luna why she imprisoned Quackers on the sun, and Luna harshly rebukes her for not knowing what a menace Quackers was to society.

54. Yet Hope, in Quackers, Found Purchase

Quackers abstains from being mashed up with this story because he doesn't know anything about poetry, infuriating its author.

55. Twilight Sparkle Seeks a Quackers Permit

Twilight attempts, despite literally everyone trying to convince her that it is a bad idea, that she should adopt Quackers and files the paperwork to make him her pet. Celestia immediately rejects this, so Twilight goes behind her back and does it anyways.

56. Crazy Quackers

Quackers is cursed with the ability to alter the continuity to the opposite of whatever it is he says. Eager to abuse this power, Quackers attempts to kill Granny Smith. However, since Quackers can't speak English, the power doesn't work. Frustrated, Quackers just kills Granny Smith the old fashioned way.

57. Fallen From Quackers

Quackers instructs his minion Daring Do to retrieve a precious artifact so he can summon Azathoth, but she encounters Twilight along the way. Twilight tries to convince Daring that she is headed down the path of destruction, but the corrupting influence of Azathoth has already crushed his will. Twilight resolves that she must defeat Daring and Azathoth to free Equestria.

58. In The Twilit Palace

Celestia tries to console Quackers after his encounter with Azathoth by telling him that he will never be alone, but this only serves to dismay Quackers further. Celestia tries to recite the "All the land touches is my kingdom" speech from The Lion King, but fails miserably.

59. Quackers' Happiest Ending

Final chapter in the Quackers saga by the second author before he retired. After exhausting all manners of schemes and plots, Quackers decides just to alter the continuity of the story to where he just wins. And he does. Quackers wins everyone.

60. Quackers' Monsters

A spin-off created by the son of the second author. A murderer treks out to the Everfree to dispose of some bodies, but just as the dirt is shoveled over the graves, she encounters Quackers. The night does not end well for the murderer.

61. Just a Quackers

The most straightforward Quackers story. It's just a Quackers. How much simpler can it get?

I want to start this review by seconding the points made by >>Not_A_Hat and >>SPark. I’m going to explore some of the points they have made in detail, as well as one or two of my own. The approach I'm taking here is not something that I would normally do, and I felt I owed the author a brief (ha!) explanation up-front for this.

I am the kind of person who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to errors in stories. I would always rather assume that a mistake is there either because an author is deliberately using it to make a point, or because the strict time-limit of the Writeoff has made editing difficult. However, when an error occurs consistently, I am led to believe that that the author makes it without thinking (and that they may not even know they are making a mistake!) Since this happens a few times in this story, I decided to go into quite some detail about grammar and the like—author, if I am mistaken and you are fully aware of these issues, I would like to wholeheartedly apologise for coming across as a condescending prick. Please know that I am writing this from a genuine wish to see you improve, and not with the intention of being a dick.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's start by talking about semicolons, because this story contains six of them and every single one of them is incorrect! As has been said before, semicolons may be used in two ways: firstly, to join two independent clauses of equal importance without using a coordinating conjunction (you can remember these by the acronym FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So), which is usually done to emphasise a strong connection between those two clauses; and secondly, to separate items on a list where one or more of the items themselves contain a comma (like I just did!), as these commas may confuse the meaning of the list otherwise. In this story, you have consistently used semicolons in three different ways:

1) To join two independent clauses that are already connected by a coordinating conjunction. This breaks convention, which states that a comma should be used in these cases. It’s worth noting that the clauses have to be independent for this to work—for example, if one clause implies a subject from the previous one then no comma is needed! Example:

I tried to protest;, but she clearly did not listen…

2) To join an independent clause to a subordinate clause, alongside a subordinate conjunction. This also directly contradicts convention! Punctuation and subordinate clauses is a difficult topic, and a lot of words can be written about it. Here’s a link to a handy guide about them! Examples:

I take a few more steps; before I noticed this white Unicorn mare…

As I stop;, I see the roots of the old oak…

3) To connect a participle phrase to an independent clause. Again, participle phrases aren’t easy, but they should always be connected using a comma or no punctuation at all. Here’s another link to help you with those, if you want it. Example:

“No problem, I have them right here!” she exclaimed;, pointing her right hoof at a fresh set of boots and a saddle, before me.

Semicolons are a really useful bit of punctuation when used correctly, because they can allow you to connect ideas in fun and exciting ways. Hopefully these pointers will help you to identify the places where you're using them incorrectly!

Another error you seem to be making regularly in this story is switching tenses mid-sentence. Like !Hat, I couldn’t find any reason behind these switches, and they only made it harder to understand what was going on in the story. Here’s a particularly jarring example that I wanted to touch on:

As I look down, I could see the dark, shiny, pink boots.

Why is this so jarring? It’s because the subordinating conjunction “as” implies that the independent clause that follows occurs simultaneously with the subordinate clause. But the two clauses are in different tenses! How can an action in the present occur at the same time as one in the past? (Answer: special relativity. But even if English allowed for that (which it rarely does), it wouldn’t apply in this case—the events are identical, not space-like separated!)

All in all, tense changes like this make reading the story much more difficult. When the grammar you’re using implies one relation of tenses and the words you’re using imply another, your readers are probably going to get rather confused—and if they don’t, it’ll probably be because they’re correcting the tense errors in their head as they go, and following the implication of your word choices. This isn’t a good thing! Generally speaking, you don’t want your readers to devote time and energy to figuring out what you intended to say, because that’s time they could spend thinking about the message you’re trying to convey.

!Hat talked about you capitalising some odd words, but instead I wanted to talk about lack of capitalisation in two instances that, in my opinion, possibly need it. First of all we have “Twilight Sparkle’s castle of friendship”, an example that is excusable: “castle of friendship” might be a description and not a name, but it seems odd to describe it as a castle that happens to belong to friendship, given one of the canon names is (The) Castle of Friendship.

The second example I’ve spotted (and there may be more!) is certainly more obvious:

I see the roots of the old oak, the golden oak library in which Twilight had been living…

Golden Oak Library is a name: that library was never literally golden, so there’s no way you can pass this off as a description. Therefore, it requires capitalisation. That’s just the convention, and I can’t do much else than call it out as an error.

I know I’ve spent a lot of time on technical issues (in quite some detail, and I apologise for that!) and I haven’t yet touched upon the story itself. To me, this story seemed distinctly lacking: it was a series of events that followed on, one after the other, but had no common focus or goal. I suppose that’s why a few commenters have called this story “dream-like”—only dreams, really, have this kind of structure.

It’s very important, in most stories, for the chain of events to have a logical structure, i.e. the chain of cause and effect that makes a story more than a sequence of disconnected events. To paraphrase Trey Parker, don’t let your story be “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened…”, because stories are far more exciting and engaging if they follow formats like “this happened, therefore this happened, but this happened…”

I bring this up because this story does feel like the former, to me: “the main character sees Twilight, and then Twilight ignores them, and then their senses fade, and then they see Rarity, and then Rarity puts some clothes on them, and then they realise they are Pinkie Pie, and then they are in the Castle of Friendship, and then they go to the throne room, and then they see Twilight.” There are, arguably, causal links between some of these moments, but in every case the causation is tenuous and makes very little sense (how, exactly, does putting on a saddle let the main character realise who they are?) I feel that this story would strongly benefit from a close examination of the causal links between the actions that drive it, and a reworking of the structure of the story to reflect that. It might also be worth focusing on the ending, because at the moment it doesn't feel like the story ends so much as stops awkwardly, and I think this can be attributed to a lack of structure that leads up to the ending.

To conclude, I found this story very frustrating to read. Grammatical errors made reading it quite challenging, at times, and the disconnected structure meant that challenge was somewhat unrewarding. I hope this comment, long and technical as it has been at times, can help to explain many of the things that I felt let this entry down, and I hope I have explained them thoroughly enough that you might be able to apply them as more general lessons to your writing in other rounds, as well as outside the Writeoff.

[Many thanks to Ceffyl Dwr and Monokeras for helping to tidy this review up and generally making me sound less waffley! ❤]

The Thousandth Year

So I came into this expecting another Celestia/Luna story, and you delivered in a pleasantly unexpected way. So, yeah. You got me. Letting Luna be the hero and Celestia/Solar Flare be the villain is certainly an interesting concept. In fact, it looks here like S01 E01 Luna trusts Twilight more than S02 E25-26 Celestia does. #BestPrincess Then we move on to the prophecy and Twilight's aversion towards believing that The Mare in the Sun is even a real thing to the point of being completely nonchalant about the Solar Flare. Interesting...

I like that this story is open-ended enough to allow for readers to take the story in different directions, but it's defined enough that there's a definite push in a certain direction. That balance is something I rarely get right, so it's all the more powerful for me when I see it in the works of others. Also, the dialogue felt very natural and retained the teacher/pupil vibe pretty well, I felt.

However, being myself a fanfiction author who takes the question "How did this happen?" to borderline unhealthy levels, the answer to this question is not very well-defined. It's obvious that Celestia turned to the dark side, but never mentioned how or why. From the opening exposition of the very first episode of MLP:FiM, Nightmare Moon has been portrayed as jealous, even hateful in some interpretations. Celestia's motives here are vague at best.

Still, the lack of motives detracts little from the first reading, and what made it into the final cut is pretty quality work.

I can't quite grasp the intended purpose here. On one hoof, it seems to be about wiggling out the meaning, if any, behind Celestia's trademark phrase. This plants well into everything being suddenly huge/Sunset being tiny, but then we get into "Let me go" territory and I'm lost again.

Bus Driver Celestia says, "You are only as little as you let yourself be.” I feel like this is meant to be the theme bridge, and I can almost feel it, but it doesn't quite bust my kneecaps.

The Tirek Zone

And right off the bat, we've got another AU. "Starlight's Tirekverse" to be precise. Is that like, the one from the show?

I hate simply rehashing everything that everyone else says, but that's the danger of arriving late to the party, I guess. The dialogue was confusing at first, and besides that, there's a lot going on here. I think you're trying to say that without the Rainboom, someone or several someones screwed up the timeline AND that Twilight couldn't switch her friends' cutie marks back. But then you go on to mention the Rainboom. I'm not against the Rainboom happening at the wrong time; I've done that myself in my near-complete story about one of the "bad timelines" (which started in Writeoff, I might add). I'm not sure the minific rounds are the right venue for trying to tackle something this complex. What you ended up with is a bunch of rapid-fire, one-off hints to how the timeline fell, and I'm not sure I'm piecing them together correctly.

After character re-introductions and an argument, we get a big block of backstory that didn't really go anywhere. But after that, we get to Discord. That last scene, and really the concept as a whole, has a bit of potential, so I advise you to clean it up and try again. Regrettably, I must score this story for what it is, not what it could have been.

“Yer breathin’ fast again, darlin’.”

Applejack just said "darling." That's not at all unsettling...

The Town

"Emily," huh? Any relation to one "Tom?"

Wow. That's a really weird mental image... (Maybe that's why Emily can't scream, >>Morning Sun.)

Joking aside, I legitimately thought this was an HiE/displaced story-within-a-story at first. (I'm still not thoroughly convinced that it's not.) Also, you might want to say upfront that Emily was a brat, otherwise the "incurring her wrath" bit leaves the reader confused.

Young Emily watched from her room as the townsfolk stormed her home...

And nobody thought to grab her? You know, that girl who was the bane of all the other school-age kids?

Then, there's the framing story. The obvious implication is that Whirl somehow got to Twilight, but why not Spike too? Is Emily particularly protective of this book? If so, why leave it around in the first place so anypony can wander into the library and pick it up?

Horror isn't typically my forte, but I've practically copied-and-pasted clippings from everyone else anyways, so here goes; a common theme I'm seeing is "slow down and build tension." Try using descriptions, not just actions.

>>Crafty
Mostly agree with Crafty here.

Some punctuation errors and grammatical mishaps.

There are clearly defined beginning, middle and end sections, props for that! But they aren't particularly connected or relevant to each other, so the end product doesn't feel like a coherent story. The beginning is especially clunky, we don't really need that backstory dump about her marriage.

Also, as other comments pointed out, this isn't really a pony story and actively clashes with the FIM setting. I'm not very sold on the Twilight Zone angle either, it's just "twist ending: the guy was a monster!" That's enough to qualify as using the prompt, but not much more.

Overall on the low side of average to me. It's not a complete trainwreck, definitely has potential, but needs more polish and thought in order to convey more than "here are some things that happened."

Here we have a pony spinning a little question about the nature of names and destiny. Names tend to be very destiny oriented, or very family-centric, and thinking on it now it's a wonder we don't see more discussion on the topic in canon and via the fandom. So, it's definitely a topic I can see Twilight thinking about (and those tend to be my favorite topics), even though the voice isn't quite pitch perfect.

Well, I've made it through my slate plus several others, but realistically I'm not gonna get through many more before finals.

Speaking of which, I estimate my chances of making finals at ~25%. I thought mine was good at time of submission, but alas. At least I learned some things.

And speaking of that, I'm grateful as always for the feedback we give to and receive from each other through the Writeoff. It's sometimes hair-raising to have people read things you've written so quickly, but it can also be educational. I think the overall tone and quality of reviews has generally been good this time around, which is important, because never forget that there's a person on the other end of the story. I like it when what we offer each other is both feedback and encouragement. ❤️

"fewmets" I learned a new word today!

Everything absurd was beautiful. Twilight injuring Vinyl from 3 countries over, Iron Will's turns of phrase, Torch being a perfect weirdo dad-thing. Nazi comment was maybe a bit over the hill into Serious Town, but vampire dance nazis, however...

I'm amazed at the level of comedy this prompt has pulled out of us. "Smaller homes, smaller businesses, smaller princess" is hilarious.

And lo and behold, straight up bringing in Rod Sterling as Sterling Rod, as a relative of Silver Spoon no less, is one hell of an idea. I am thoroughly impressed. Bit of kinda-gigantic world building, too, since we now know that narrating is an actual job that affects the world state in a meaningful way. Very clever.

This is a top contender, for sure. I thought I was about to wade into some heavy muck, but then the air cleared a bit and I started to smile once I pieced things together. At some point though, I have to imagine it would just be easier for Twilight to memorize everything raw.

She has the time to kill. Probably. Maybe.

>>Cassius
A breathtaking tour de force. Thank you for taking us on this journey.

>>Not_A_Hat
Let's mash.

It's a Good Life in Equestria: Twilight's parents are saved from eternal torment when Silver Spoon catches her uncle narrating under his breath.

The Deep Outer Limits: Two alicorns, one flesh and blood, the other silicon and copied engrams, find solace in each other's company.

Is This a Bit Too Literal: On the bus ride home, Sunset dreams of being Pinkie Pie in a waking fugue state.

Snoopy vs. Monsters: The crew of Apollo 10 very definitely never saw a small horse burying a body during their lunar transit.

The Council of Infinite Twilights is the True Crime of a Song, Yet Hope, in Part, Finds Purchase: All Purplesmarts in the universe convene to discuss how much one needs to know about poetry in order to review it for a competition. And to badmouth all instances of Abacus Cinch.

I'm afraid this entry left me quite cold. It blatantly ignores the prompt, and eschews complexity in both prose and narrative in the pursuit of its gimmick. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me a good gimmick, but a bit of emoji art isn't enough of one to sell me on this. Nothing is done with the art aspect, it's just there at the ends of lines. No hidden jokes or messages or subversions, no attempts to add to the story through multiple emojis, they're just there.

Similarly, "it's children's lit, it's simple on purpose!" is not a great excuse for entering See Spot Run in a writing competition. Good children's lit is very difficult to write, because it needs to follow strict rules in form and content depending on its targeted reading level and culture. Evaluated in that light, this is far too long. Its vocabulary is closer to prereading (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon) than early reading (Dr. Seuss), so the target word count should really be less than 400, pushing the low side of the minific limit rather than the high. It should also center around a single character and idea, or two characters at most, whereas this follows three characters and two settings and doesn't move between them very well. The main moral lesson, sharing the doll with the unicorn, is barely mentioned rather than being a focal point.

Celestia... well, Celestia in general doesn't really have anything to do with Quackers or the main narrative, she's really only here to indulge the art gimmick. But as long as we're here, I'll also note that she is surely more than capable of quacking and/or pooping on the grass if she desired to do so.

And, finally, what I've been dancing around and trying to find a tactful way to say is that the concept here is essentially the same as the DQ'd "Just a Test": an attempt to circumvent the restrictions of the minific format by writing a completely different form that just happens to technically meet the explicit requirements. Judging it against other entries here wouldn't be fair to either side. Combining that and the lack of prompt use, I'd disqualify this if it was up to me, and I'm afraid it'll be bottoming my slate.

I would like to applaud the author's ambition, though, and make clear that I intend no offense or slight to them with all this! It's clear they had good intentions and put quite a bit of effort into writing this! Thank for make! Sorry for to be dreamcrushing!

>>Ranmilia You bring up an interesting point about prompt-appropriateness.

I really enjoyed this fic, its one of my favorites of the writeoff, but does it have anything to do prompt? Probably not. Should that be grounds for disqualification? I cannot say. The site rules do state though:

For rules that have a degree of ambiguity—in particular, genre and prompt rules—enforcement at the fringes is done by voters.

This seems to imply that there is no way to "disqualify" a story other than rating it low. And it seems, most people are not going to do that.

So, with the rules as currently written, Quackers quacks ahead.

I'm familiar with the source episode, so subverting my expectations might have been a little easier than others. That said, I still had a good time here. I'll second >>Posh's question about whether it was an act to lure in Luna or genuine incompetence on the Changelings' part. Incompetence works better, in my opinion, but the other options still slides nicely into a high slot.

Hm. There's certainly a strong atmosphere here, but I didn't get horror from it until the very end. Until that point, it seemed like a typical lonely Twilight combination of nostalgic brooding and sudden scientific curiosity. "That elusive sense of wonder the poets write about," one might, and did, say. This makes the final transition quite jarring.

I think an overall lack of clarity hurts, too - what exactly is the Nightmare being referenced here? Nightmare Moon, right? Then why not just go ask Luna about it, and pay off the reference to her? The story explicitly states it's only been ten years since then, hardly enough time for Equestria to have fallen apart into the gloomy dystopia it would take to sustain a "Twilight goes crazy in her castle under the baleful stars" ending.

All that said, I love the prose here, and both Lovecraftian Horror and nostalgic musings are aesthetics dear to my heart that this story does well by! But to polish this up, I think you'd need to pick one or the other, for the minific length, or extend it into a proper short story to do both. As is, the tonal confusion keeps this around an average grade for me.

This story made me smile, Author. Thumbs up!

>>Syeekoh
I am spiritually Heinlein. But which one?

I like this story’s metaphysical idea, but the ending feels too abrupt. Giving Twilight more time to absorb to the new information and react or reconcile herself to it would help.

>>Crafty
I do see that, and that is why I felt I had to advocate for scoring Quackers low, rather than abstaining or keeping my thoughts on it to myself (which I was very tempted to do.) This isn't really "at the fringes," even its fans seem in agreement that there's nothing of the prompt here.

The issue here is not with following rules for the sake of rules, but consideration to all the other writers who put themselves through extra effort trying to follow them. Many other entrants discarded good ideas they wanted to write but didn't fit the prompt, and wrote more difficult and less polished concepts instead in order to fit it. That's not hypothetical, it's very clear that this happened just from reading the comments thread or talking to folks in Discord.

The same thing applies with people stressing themselves to write a complete traditional prose fiction piece in 400-750 words. It's a very challenging format! And, yeah, because it's challenging, I know it's really tempting to try and find a way to subvert it by doing something nonstandard... but going too far off the rails is not cool to the people sweating to stay on them, y'know?

I'd feel pretty darn bad if I tossed out a bunch of good ideas because they didn't fit the prompt, and busted my brain writing a prose mini, only to have it lose to someone who ignored the restrictions everyone else thought they were under. (Not that I, personally, am in any danger of this happening. My own entry is not very good.. though in part because I spent a couple hours thinking about the prompt to start off.)

Still, as you say, people are free to vote however they want. Just tossing my view on it out there for thought.

>>Ranmilia
Your concerns are both valid and well argued. I guess we will have the answer after the prelims.

Maybe it would be worthwhile to bring this discussion to the Discord chat and see what people there think. I would imagine that a clarification on the rules is also possible (for future writeoffs).

PS I think that you are right, and the fic is not prompt-appropriate. But it's also the one that brought me the most joy. I can't bring myself to score it lowest.

"Cantervale" gives me some little AU tingles, which would explain the out of character bits people are picking up on, maybe. That, and Celestia's never been noted as a governor, exactly. Rarity is fabulous though, and pushes through AJ and Twilight's quirky hang-ups with poise that would make Havel blush.

I say well done.

"Of course Twilight would get a castle for two—no three ponies." - Do castles usually come in the single-occupant variety? I'm not an expert in castleology, or whatever.

First person is always a treat when it's done well, and this fits the bill. Good use of lighting to set up the time of day and help the spooky atmosphere along a bit. "My skin tingled for a moment and I heard a faint whir-whir-whir." - The spell for the room kicking in/reading her mind/whatever, I wonder?

I don't have the concern with Starlight using magic on Dash that some others brought up. While it seems she is (or Twilight is via Starlight's spell), it seems like the personal component is pretty read-only in nature, and then it sets up a room accordingly. Pretty innocent at this level.

Two thumbs up.

As a self-contained AU piece, I can appreciate this. I can also appreciate the creepiness that it evokes, especially once Starlight comes into the scene and everything just clicks right into place.

Although the effect is kind of ruined by the use of the actual song lyrics at the end

Princess Celestia and her Adventures in Arthurian Legend?

Actually works very well, provided one can recognize what the hell is going on with the watery bint lobbing scimitars at kings in other dimensions. I don't care for the framing device, though. The source material would use those opening/closing monologues to set up and wrap up the story, and to bridge the audience both into and back out of the 'Zone. Here, you only have one vague passage at the start, and a pseudo-Serling paragraph at the end. Doesn't feel like I'm being organically led in and out of a realm of the mind where eyeballs float in the spinny black void.

Beautiful prose, though.

The trap Twilight sets is decently clever, but as has been pointed out, it has a few holes in it, such as why using magic would "reveal" Starlight to all the others, why Twilight lets herself die, etc.

Overall though, my main takeaway is that the writing needs work. There are lots of grammatical errors, even in the first couple of sentences (two clauses with "upon" in the second sentence, "adhered by" instead of "adhered to" and others. The story also bounces back and forth between present and past tense... a lot.

Bottom line is that it needs a lot of work, but there is a core premise that could make for a strong story if the proper effort is put into it.

>>FanOfMostEverything I don't mind a clever, obscure pun, but I draw the line at having to do homework to understand a work of fiction.

I'll say this in its favor, though, the writing style (and even the odd errors here and there) work if you read it in a diamond dog's voice. Their grasp on language and syntax isn't fantabulous, after all. If done to give the narrator a unique voice, maybe even to hint at their true nature, maybe even to create a dreamlike atmosphere that makes sense when you re-read the story with that context in mind...

Then that's rather clever, and I applaud you, author.

Celestia smiled with the corners of her mouth.

...as opposed to...?

A softer, more subdued take on the fall of Princess Luna. Nightmare Moon begins, not with a bang, but some folksy, charming dialogue by a cute batpony.

>>Monokeras

Hmmm… I think Celestia is too unconcerned here. She wouldn’t design a surrogate for dealing in that matter.

I like this a lot, actually. Gives some depth to their relationship by showing how lacking in depth it really was. Suggests that Celly could probably have avoided Luna going Lunatic if she'd played a more direct role in her life.

Okay, great opening. Yeah, it could be slightly more punchy, as Horizon said, but it works and sets a fun tone out of the gate. The next few bits are pretty good as well, and definitely had me hooked. Given the farcical nature of this though, I really wanted to hear NekoTwi end every sentence with "meow" for some reason.

There's too much interference, meow!

What was that, meow?

... we need to talk about something, meow.

I don't know, it's funnier in my head.

Annnnyway... Yeah, good start, and a funny premise. But it gets a little confusing in the talky bit of the middle. First off, it's not quite clear to me at first who Midnight and Glasses are, and by the time I realize it's EQG, it's halfway done with the scene. The miniskirt bit is also played too straight. It's part of the opening sentence, it's brought up again by the others, and is obviously a Plot Point, but... the resolution is just to say "let's have a serious talk about sweatpants" and that feels like a major let down, especially compared to the high energy the story opened with. I'm not quite sure how to fix it, but the ending needs to be at least as funny as the premise, with miniskirts somehow saving the day. Or maybe it being laundry day (maybe for another version of herself) to start with, and so she actually is wearing sweatpants on this "atypical" day, and that makes all the difference. Or just go dark, and do the Horrible Bosses bit, "I'll kill your Cinch if you kill mine."

Lastly, I feel like there were way too many missed opportunities to use the phrase "Short Skirts and Explosions" here. :-)

Wait, I know this one! She freezes time to consult The Twilight Council!

>>Xepher

Given he farcical nature of this though, I really wanted to hear NekoTwi end every sentence with "meow" for some reason.

I believe you mean to say "nyan?"

Seriously hurting your weeb cred, pal.

>>Shadowed_Song

I'm not entirely sure what i just read. It was well written, but I took nothing from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2ytrFZoIN4

Is this supposed to be a parody of Grandiose Revelation Stories? Is there a metaphor I'm missing? This doesn't feel like the promised Twilight Zone; it feels more like the Sun-Slightly-Dippy-In-The-Afternoon Zone.

What's the message here? Why was Sunnybuns even concerned with that particular phrase? What is the point?

I feel this should have been funny, but it just didn't work for me. I mean, yeah, I get it, but it feels like a one-off visual gag that Discord would pull while other, bigger stuff is going on. Making it the focus of the whole story falls a bit flat. Maybe if the ending was punchier. Just leave it at the reveal, and the disgust Twilight feels the moment she realizes she was snuggling in belly button lint. Everything beyond that is just sort of too much explanation, and an explained joke is... well, not.

I don't like the narration referring to Twilight as Spike's master... the implication is that their normal relationship is analogous to that of a person and their dog.

Also, Scootaloo's line feels wrong coming from her voice. Ditto Luna's. I can't hear her using the word "gumption" under any circumstances.

The premise is amusing, as a subversion of the whole EqG storyline, but it raises a number of questions and opens more plotholes than you can shake a Spiderses at. Not sure how to feel, but it's probably going to wind up below average on my slate because of that.

Mostly I'll just second what others have said. The intro and the end are different things, and that just doesn't work. To be blunt, the end bit, with the running and the screaming (and the glaven!) it didn't convey any real sense of fear or horror at all. So yeah, take that first bit, and make something more out of it, and skip the direct cut to an actual "horror" episode of The Twilight Zone.

Beautifully written, and a wonderful premise as well. The framing at the start and end feel totally disjunct though. Yes, I understand it's to set it up like a TZ episode, but it doesn't work, and asks questions that are still unanswered.

Beyond that, a little clearer glimpse into the setting, and especially the timeframe, would be good. My "impression" is it's a far future thing, but yet she still has her shoes and peytral? Seems odd if there's "nothing more to save."

Author, I'm sorry to admit this, but I mostly skipped Twilight's writings in this story. Looking at the comments tell me that some of these were song or fandom references, but I'm not quite able to recognize them, and thus that whole section of the story becomes basically gibberish to me. Furthermore, the ending part really just makes the story itself even less comprehensible in my opinion. Why did Twilight decide to write that of all things instead of an actual story? Why is Twilight entering a youth writing contest when this seems to be the adult version of Twilight being portrayed? When and where did Spike learn "human" swear words, and why is he using them when I cannot imagine canon Spike even considering doing so?

This kinda seems like an attempt at nonsensical or off-the-wall humor, but it just ends up confusing and kinda feeling like it's trying to make an excuse for itself to exist. Sorry, but this is a complete flop for me. .-.

EDIT: I refreshed myself on the lyrics of some of the S1 songs, and I now recognize a fair bit of these. However, on a second and more thorough read, this almost made it worse. The substituted lyrics seem either really dark and mean-spirited or completely random. I just... don't get what you were going for. At all.

Twilight Sparkle Runs from a Disembodied Voice?

...Funny premise, I suppose, but the story doesn't do much with it. Also, while I can understand a fearful response to a mysterious voice from beyond that only you can hear, the words that the narrator is saying would probably elicit confusion rather than terrified running.

Especially from Precocious Purplesmart. I feel like this is something she'd try to analyze and quantify.

I want to start by saying I appreciate the effort that went into this. Having a color-blind dog describe things (grey sun, white feathers and coal-black fur, etc.) is a subtle touch. The title threw me, until I saw Ghothi and then things clicked. Setting up a pun at the end, and one based on "if wishes were fishes" is great as well. The concept of not-quite-understanding that ties it all together is clever indeed.

What doesn't work for me is how he has the concept of "picking up a date for supper" or "watches" that he doesn't even wear. Feathers too, for that matter. It's frustrating not really understanding how much connection there is to the world above. Moreso, why this particular connection to a hoofball game and a griffon commentator.

And that's my overall problem. This is stunt-writing, and sets up for itself some narrow rules for the game it tries to play. When I see that, I can't help but be overly critical when it falls short in places.

But... this still gets a decent ranking in my mind, even if I would've liked to see a more solid story to go on top of all the cleverness.

I thought this was going to be Faux Lovecraft Horror Bait, but the story winks at you in just the right way, at just the right time, to reassure you that isn't going to be the case. It's great.

I won't say I laughed out loud, but I definitely did snortygiggle and smirk as I read it.

>>FanOfMostEverything This. Only issue. Seriously.

Everyone guessing that it's Luna is horribly wrong. It's clearly Applejack. The characters are using weird diction that doesn't match their voices because that's part of the masquerade. If she weren't hiding her identity she'd say "WELL SHEWT Y'ALL LETS HAVE US HERE A GOOD OL' HOE-DOWN YEEHAW FANSEEPANTSEE"

and Fancy Pants would say "how crude."

I agree that the ending line just kinda put a sour note on my reading experience, but...

That's not even close to enough to hamper my enjoyment of this story. The moment I realized that not only was this set in a courtroom, but it also featured Rainbow Dash as a lawyer, you had my full attention. I actually laughed outloud at the first "raise your hoof and swear" instance. I don't know why I didn't see that coming but it was hilarious to me, and the entire rest of the story was packed with pretty good jokes as well. If that last line wasn't there, this would be my favorite of the stories I've currently read. As it stands, it's still definitely in my top five.

...Oh! Oh, Starlight's Tirekverse! I get it now. I think.

Not that knowing that helps one way or another.

I was sure this would be a comedy, but it gets surprisingly somber at the end, and I'm not sure what to make of that. Feels like two halves of a story that don't gel together.

Regrettably, I don't think I'll be able to finish all sixty stories. I seem to make a habit of falling short in the stretch, don't I?

Sorry to you authors who I overlooked. :/ Hopefully, I'll see you in the finals.

The sentence structures in this story strike me as often awkward, and the constant switching between past and present tense doesn't exactly help. Watch out for that in future writings, and read some books to get some ideas for how to keep your sentences fresh!

As far as content goes, I concur with the other comments: it's not clear exactly why this plan "reveals" Starlight and foils her plans, or why Twilight still had to apparently die. The inclusion of the party cannon makes the story feel overly comedic, but then Twilight actually dying plunges it all the way in the other direction to overly tragic. Just doesn't really work overall.

Props for telling a complete story, though, that alone is worth praise in a mini round. Better luck next time, friend!

>>Fenton yep, I'm not familiar with the SCP format (whatever it is) and I'm lost. This one does win my IDGI award, though.

This is probably the best slice of life entry I've read so far (I've only got about 10 stories left to go too.) It's sweet, voices both characters very well, is a witty interpretation of the prompt, has just enough of something "happening" to keep the story moving, the language is vivid without being cloying, and wraps up with a satisfying conclusion. Very, very solid, and a pleasant read.

But, it's a story that takes no real risks, and by playing it safe, doesn't get quite as close to the top for me as a few other stories that risked more. Still near the top though, so great job!

Technical: Holy moly, these sentences are loaded with adjectives. Try to keep the number of your descriptive words down, they'll have more impact overall if you only venture into adjective land once in a while.

Content: I... don't really get it. I mean, I get what happened, sort of, but how am I supposed to feel about it? Good, that Night Light (and maybe Velvet?) are having a good time in there? Bad, because they're really a cactus and maybe sort of dying? Clearly, Twilight's magically powerful, so will she still be picked up as Celestia's slightly more traumatized apprentice in the outer world? Does it even matter? I don't know. There's some irony to be had in the researchers' statements, but I can't find any emotional context or clear tonal cues to go with it.

I think this is very close to being good. The framework is all in place, but it needs to take a clear stand somewhere, establish a tone and let the reader know how to feel. Whether that be existential horror or "things were actually okay" sad comfort or something else - anything as long as it's something. As is, I come out thinking "That certainly happened. :|"

Clever choice of episode to adapt, as we typically see ponies as "little" so if that were reversed, it's amusing. Beyond that however, this one falls rather flat. Horizon and others have hit all the technical details, so I won't rehash that. I will just say keep trying, as it's clear you had something good in your head here, but it needs more work to make it fully into our heads as well.

I have to agree with most of the other comments, this is incoherent and I have no idea what's intended to be going on. The prompt and time format make it hard to tell how much (if any) of the disjointedness is intentional. Perhaps the author ran out of time, or perhaps they were aiming at some sort of reference or surrealism - I don't know, and regardless of the intent, the outcome flat doesn't work.

Thank you for submitting, though! Next time, try to focus on making sure your story has a well defined beginning, middle, and end, and is clear enough that an average reader could understand and summarize it after a single pass.

Well written, but I can't get past the jarring disconnect between the violence (not just a fight, but a "hundred thousand" dead) and the cashier's reaction. If it'd kept to cartoon violence (e.g. nobody dies, just lots of property damage) this would play better to me. But... seeing someone literally more concerned with the no-smoking rule than the death of thousands is haunting. I don't know if you were intentionally going for this particular type of internal dichotomy, but... well I'm going to just go ahead and Godwin myself here. The Nazis were famous for their anti-smoking stance, yet seemed nonplussed by certain other atrocities.

Yes, I know I'm probably reading too much into this, but... I just can't stomach an "innocent bystander" when the crimes are of this magnitude. >>Misternick mentioned "The Last King of Scotland" and if you've seen that story (the movie's pretty good) then you know what I mean. So yeah, I want to like this, I want to enjoy the cognitive dissonance here, but I can't get past the unforgivable amount of evil.

>>georg
The SCP format is used at this site–http://www.scp-wiki.net/–which is a sort of darker version of the Men in Black, mixed with creepypasta, SF and Lovecraftian horror. This story is presented in the style of one of their documents, which explain what kind of threat a thing is and how to successfully contain it for the Good of Humanity.

I like what this tries to do, but I'm afraid I've seen it done better before. While the tone here is actually pretty solid, the descriptions and actions make it very hard to form a mental picture of what's going on. The "twist" is also gone the moment we realize this is one of the Apollo missions in the third paragraph when Tom's full name is given. The rest plays out too directly, it's just a glimpse, and nothing to challenge the (MLP-aware) reader's assumptions.

I don't mean to be too harsh. It's not a bad story, and I applaud the attempt to use a historical event and make it fit with our magic horse world, but it just doesn't bring enough new to the table.

Comedy? Horror? Softcore pornography? You be the judge, except you can't, because neither God nor mare can judge Pinkie Pie.

This was an amusing comedy read, although I was able to call the twist from the title. As others mentioned, the last line doesn't quite work with the cadence you've established up until then. The punchline is the most important part of a comedy like this, so that's quite unfortunate. I came away from it thinking it was fairly unmemorable, except for one thing...

... which is just how difficult it is to write a comedy, especially a Pinkie style comedy, in the first place. It's really extremely supremely freakin' hard! Just look through writeoffs of the past! Hardly anyone dares to try, and those who do try tend to fail in spectacular fashion. Thank you, author. Yeah, you tripped at the finish line and missed out on the big points, but you tackled what I would consider the hardest pony to write and made it to the end without trainwrecking. Mediocre marks for execution, but a high difficulty multiplier, as it were. Take some pride in that. (Yeah, I just realized I'm echoing HorseVoice a few posts up.)

I see where this is trying to go, that reading the words themselves drive you mad, but it doesn't convey that very strongly. Give us something more "off" at the start. Have her finish the book before calling in spike to read it, then we'll be questioning more.

As for the middle story itself. A few notes: Emily is a weird name for a pony. It's mostly told at a kid's story level of language, but then "Near-total infant mortality rate" sneaks in there, along with "assaulted." It breaks the tone. Keep it "kid's story" because phases like "viciously executed them in a bonfire" are actually far less creepy then simple, kid-level words. Give us gore, in small words: "The townsfolk took mommy and put most of her in a fire."

The end... I'm unsure of. It's not clear if Spike is infected or not by his reaction, so this leaves things a little too ambiguous. Maybe have Spike end with "I don't feel so good..." or some such.

>>Posh
I always knew Applejack was secretly a unicorn. :pinkiegasp:

I'm with most of the other comments here, in that I think this is a great idea that doesn't have enough room to shine. I feel bad saying that since I've said that on a few stories now and it should probably be expected since this is the minific round, but it's true. It feels like the start to a bigger idea instead of a story in itself. That said, I really hope you continue this, because this does feel like a pretty good start.

So, I'll say I don't think this is a "story" and as such, isn't going to rank very high for me in what I consider a story-writing contest.

This is more of an image macro in word form (what the kids today call "memes.") I do like the details though, and have to note the way Luna is specifically left out in the opening leaves me scratching my head. The digs at bad HiE are amusing, but old hat, as Cassius said. The ending... no qualms there. Zork and other text adventure games always killed you quickly and without warning too, so it's not off the mark.

Mainly agreed with >>Exuno here. A piece that goes so all in on a character's internal musing needs to hold up against rigorous scrutiny, and I'm not sold on Twilight's specific voice being captured particularly well here. Much of it comes off as very safe, generic monologue that could belong to any introspective character.

Another issue I'm surprised nobody's mentioned yet is the problem of cutie marks. I know, I know, that whole debate is a giant fandom trap full of spikes and fire, but it feels a bit neglectful to fail to mention them at all in a monologue about predictive nominative determinism and conceptual essentialism in Equestrian society.

I do like the prose, quite a bit really, but I wish this went somewhere, had more strongly characterful Twilight specific touches, or had a more concrete payoff.

I will be brief. I don't get it. And if I can't understand what is actually happening in a story, then I can't really say I enjoy it. Sorry!

First, "slight-of-hand" stood out to me. Author, I assume you've already re-read this several times since the submission deadline, and have been kicking yourself enough for that already.

Now, as to the rest... Brilliant, absolutely spot-on Pinkie Pie here! I love that you let her use the big important words as well as the silly ones, and I always find that makes her a much deeper character than she's usually portrayed as.

I did chuckle a tad at the premise, but as it was given away by the title, there was less of an impact. The rest of the comedy, while not bad, does it exactly what it says on the tin. Pinkie discovers a ticklish spot and goes for it, and the title's already told us it will end badly.

The actual ending here is therefore the crux. "And that's how Pinkie Pie Destroyed Equestria" is a great line. I like it, because it seems like it's a non-sequitur. But it's not very funny. It's the expected outcome, you tickled God, bad things happen. I think I would've much prefer a few moments of epic build-up, show us the surge coming, have Pinkie start pleading "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I stopped!" as Celestia lifts off the ground, eyes glowing, the world getting darker... Then have her make a weird scrunched face as the world normalizes. "I just peed a little." Or just straight up have her fart a rainbow (since they were apparently already coming from her nose, and she IS technically part unicorn.)

Point is, the expectation (at least for me) was something bad. The final humor needs to be in subverting that, IMHO.

So, technical problems have been hit on already, so no rehashing from me, but know that they were distracting.

My main impression is that the author has a really great idea in their head here, with cool AU twists, and we could always do with more Daring Do stories. Twilight as her rival is fun as well, as is the opening scene where they have to work together to survive the trap. This story has all the elements of greatness to it, but the execution is...

Well, even ignoring the technical, too much happens too fast, and so much of this AU is unclear. Because of that, we have very little idea of any of the character motivations, and it becomes difficult to connect with any of it on an emotional level.

I'm afraid this goes in my middle tier, but I'd love to see this idea expanded, like others have said.

Ooh, I like this quite a bit. The writing's nice and crisp, the characters bounce off each other well, and the plot's perfectly executed to the minific length, with a conclusion that is sliiiightly rushed but still pretty satisfying. Very well done in almost all regards.

Other comments found the character voices a tiny bit OOC at times, and I'd tend to agree, but I also view that as a strong positive trait rather than a negative. I think characters should surprise the reader slightly in how they speak and behave (within reason, of course.) It keeps them fresher and more interesting to read than Applebot and Raritybot parroting the first stereotypical lines anyone could imagine them saying to each other.

The one point I do take issue with was also already raised: just how did Applejack get this deep in the hole in the first place, and with nobody noticing? The explanation given doesn't feel sufficient, and the question's too quickly brushed over. Perhaps that's a "Twilight Zone" aspect...? Nah, reads more like the author just couldn't come up with a better rationale in the time constraints. Some imaginary points off, but it happens, and doesn't kill the story to me. Still a strong contender in my regards.

>>Ranmilia
You make a good point, and I have to agree here. The prompt-relevance isn't there for me either. Beyond just it being "unfair" to others that may have skipped easier ideas, I actually have a larger concern. If a story doesn't clearly match the prompt, is there any way at all we can know it wasn't written well in advance of the contest? Now, I'm in no way suggesting the author here "cheated" or intentionally did anything at all wrong, but I'm saying that I feel if we (as a group) routinely allow fics that don't match the prompt, then it may encourage someone to eventually cheat in that way.

Having said that, I'm NOT advocating for any rules changes or anything. I think the way it is now, "vote your preference" should be plenty to keep such a potential problem in check.



Moving onto the actual story. First, it is cute, and sounds like a proper children's story, so it's not bad on that count, but a children's story doesn't really stand up in a writing contest against the rest of the entries.

The typographic tricks just don't work for me either. Maybe it's the font I'm using or some such, but webbed feet is just an underscore, and Quackers is just a U with a greater-than symbol. If that looks like a duck to someone, then I am not that someone. Beyond that, I really dislike typographic tricks as story. We already had one that was DQed this round (though not for that specific cause), and there seems to be at least one more in every write off.

Look, I work in IT, I grok web design and programming. I've made entire graphical logos with nothing but CSS. I appreciate the skill/creativity required to do stuff like that. But technical trickery is not the same as story telling. I'm here to compete on that skill, not on who has the best understanding of BBcode tags or unicode characters. So when I see "stories" reach for anything more elaborate than bold or italics, I start to cringe.

Apologies, Author, as I don't need to rant here in this space. A few small text icons at the end of some lines isn't a big deal really, it just reminded me of a larger trend I dislike.

This one is REALLY solid, save for one part. After the first scene break, Apple Bloom seems to already have a pretty good theory about what's happening. How she got there, and exactly what she's testing for need to be more clear. With how good the rest of this is written, I'm almost positive this was a victim of last-minute editing for length. Put those missing paragraphs back in to even out the pace, and this is a brilliant and haunting. Definitely one of the most creepy versions of "Opposite Day" I've seen. Bonus points because it's Applejack, element of honesty, and so a curse that instantly make anything she says false is just perfect!

Only other note for improvement is, right at the end, AJ says "no, no, not yet" when she thinks Granny Smith is dead, and that should've resulted in the opposite, that is, killed Granny at that point, rather then the other line a moment later. Fix it up, and have AB say the first bit instead. Or, make it so that AJ is only thinking it and not saying it out loud.

The Twilight Council and Stasis Field are from two different games and entirely different tech trees. Flavor fail, 0/10! Just kidding.

I've not much to say here that hasn't been said already here. (Mostly because I was busy all week and am getting last day reviews in. Whups.) This is a fantastic comedy, strong all around, balancing quick but catchy character sketches, amusing interplays, and a drawn out serious-turned-comedic punchline based on Twilight's core characterization. A joy to read, except for two minor wording quibbles:

How does one's identity, the choices someone makes, and therefore who they are, vary with simple circumstance of upbringing?

The "does" in this sentence scans poorly to me, because my eyes see the following commas and assume it's a list rather than subclauses of the singular "identity." It might be technically correct as is, but could probably be rewritten in some clearer form.

And secondly... it's "donut," not "doughnut." This is an absolutely vital matter to the totality of my enjoyment, more pressing by far than any question of donuts vs cupcakes or cinnamon vs chocolate and candy sprinkles. Unprecedented serious affair. Fisticuffs at dawn. Just kidding again. Congrats on what looks like quite a high placement!

Personally, I think I understood both halves just fine, though the second seemed to flow a little bit better. The first half to me seems to be about Twilight growing up and hatching Spike, and the second seems to be about her trying to figure out the prophecy of Nightmare Moon's return. In any case, I thought this was just brilliant, and a beautiful read.

Ok, I first wrote some specific scene critiques here, but then realized that wasn't the way to go because really everything doesn't fit. This just doesn't work as a standalone story. From the first line's warning, I conjecture that the author realizes that too, and that it went something like this: "That prompt makes me want to write something in this canonical AU that the show briefly portrayed. Let's set up all the things I need to show what's going on, let's make sure the Mane Six all get lines, and the emotional beat I want to hit is bringing in Discord and tying it together with the alicorn magic, and... oops I"m out of words and time, polish a bit and submit!" Something like that, yeah? Noble ambitions and an outline of things to accomplish, but it just didn't come together in practice.

I guess the most useful thing I can offer here is to scale back what you're trying to do and think about the format and length constraints in a writeoff first and foremost. There's no way you're going to be able to cover six, seven, technically up to eight or ten different characters, establish an AU setting (even if it is one from canon) and have multiple scenes of action in a minific. Ain't gonna happen, even for the world's greatest genius of word economy.

The way* to make this work is to pare it down. Take the outline and figure out one or two vital points, the core beats you absolutely want to hit, and give yourself a plan for a beginning, middle, and end that introduce, develop, and give closure to those concepts. Don't worry about worldbuilding in the initial plan. Write your core scenes, and then look at what you have and figure out what the reader can simply infer from dialogue and description you were going to include anyway. If you still need more setup in order to make X point make sense, then put that setup in as early and as lightly as you can. Be as minimalist as you can, and then go fire up the word counter, and... probably see that you're still over 750, but you'll be in a much better spot to proceed. For example, I think you could get a full mini out of just the Discord scenes at the end, if you fully outline what it is you want to accomplish and convey in them!

So, yeah, this attempt trainwrecked, but that's okay. I like that you aimed high. Hope to see you keep at writing!

*Implicit in all writing style recommendations: "The Way" is not necessarily the only way or the best way, just a way this commentator would recommend. Beware of Amway, Safeway and Ghostway.

I fidget and quickly a hoof through my mane, hoping I look presentable, "Why I stay up here?

Quite a few typos and technical errors in this one, I'm afraid. The above quote alone has two missing words and an incorrect comma, and continues into a run-on sentence. The run-on may be intentional, but there are enough errors outside of the protagonist's voice that I'm hesitant to chalk it all up to intent. No quick cure for this, I'm afraid. Read all your writing with a critical eye towards catching simple errors, especially ones you know you're prone to making!

As to the content of the story, I loved the color play and diamond dog imagination fill-ins! The naming gimmicks didn't bother me either, although the title threw me for a little bit. What does bother me is... well, the base concept and storyboarding. The ending kills my interest, because I was invested in E and Ghoti and what they were doing, and suddenly it's thrown away!

It'd be much more palatable to me if the "dream" and date actually were real and this was a diamond dog that had come to the surface. That might sound like a drastic change on the face of things, and I understand it's really hard to think about and spot changes of direction like that mid-writing, but I don't think it would really take that much! You could still do most of the color and name beats, fulfilling the prompt sufficiently, and you'd have a natural lead in to a sweet ending where the griffon starts to correct him and/or lets slip some unusual assumptions of her own. The plot outline marks this out as a downer, but the strength of your writing here is in the sweet earnestness of the characters and the amusing wordplay, which all point in the direction of a more positive story.

This story has pretty nice prose, and a very good punchline at the end! Shame the rest of it isn't a comedy, though. It's a lengthy setup for the single joke that turns bland a couple of paragraphs in, when the narrative dedicates itself to telling us about cool things that happened rather than actually showing them. "Show, don't tell" is the name of the game here; I'd like this many times better if it was set at a different point in the events, and showed us either some of the actual worldhopping, or the upcoming party.

Yeah, the twist is amusing, but it doesn't rely on the setup being boring to work. The same punchline could have been done with, for instance, Spike pulling out a pear and eating it during the party after some amusing antics, or at the end of hopping through a couple of dimensions just when Twilight's sure she's got the right Spike back. As it is, the story makes a point of telling us how cool these things were/will be, but we only get to see this mundane scene and that makes me sad.

Pretty textbook flaw as far as such things go, though. The writing and the base setup are otherwise solid. Just keep a critical eye on your story and make sure you're telling the most interesting version possible, starting and ending at the most interesting points. Show, don't tell, show, don't tell, all work and no play makes Discord a dull boy, etc etc.

Alas, I called the twist as soon as Shining Armor appeared, and hoped I was wrong, but I wasn't... and I'm not even familiar with the Twilight Zone episode/movie in question. So I can't comment on the charges of chop and swap, but I can say that this was unfortunately predictable, and predicting it took the enjoyment out of it. Nothing out of the ordinary happens once you know the premise. Twilight does her thing, is exposed, confronted, immediately relents, boom done. >>Not_A_Hat hits it on the head for a more in-depth examination of how to do horror, and >>Xepher says everything I have to say on the quick escalation and lack of anything past bare bones beats.

I do like the dialogue and diction used (assuming they aren't pulled verbatim from TTZ, but it doesn't sound like they are?) so that's a point in favor. There's potential here, that's what makes me sad. You could do this idea so much better.
Here's an example from just the previous FIM writeoff. Come back and be creative!

Not to pile further on this story, but I'm trying to read it for my slate (with the deadline ticking in) and struggling pretty badly. The thing about stories like Finnegan's Wake is that they're super-dense and almost unreadable, but they're unreadable in a way that has layers of meaning if you stop and pick it apart. Contrast with your opening:

... loved by none except the fulminating recidivism of bathos donning the sun-garbed florets borne out of the normalcy of the tide.

What even is a "fulminating recidivism of bathos"?

fulminating, adj.: hurling denunciations or menaces
recidivism, n.: the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend
bathos, n.: (especially in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.

Trying to assemble that phrase from its grammatical parts, presumably "bathos" is a metaphorical representation for a character who exemplifies that trait, and we have to dig for further clues in the fact they wear "sun-drenched florets" (little flowers), except the florets come from something tidal, meaning they're water flowers, or perhaps associated with the lunar cycle except "sun-garbed" contradicts that. Getting back to the bathos, we have fulminating recidivism, which ... um ... implies someone who keeps relapsing into making threats? That plus the bathos plus the context of pony suggests we're talking about Trixie, but then I don't get the tidal sun-garbed florets, since she wears a cape and hat with moon and star symbols.

Put it all together and it sounds like we're talking about Trixie being the only one to enjoy someone's singing. If that's not what you're going for, author, I suggest you take a look at your vocabulary.

And while "fulminating recidivism of bathos" has a vaguely catchy 5/4 cadence going on, I'm going to score prose that has both meaning and meter over prose that just has the latter.

... he writes, before reaching the second half of the story.

So yeah, I think I see what you were going for here, but I feel like you outclevered yourself. The problem is that your audience has to endure several hundred words of deliberate gibberish before a jump cut to your framing story, and the framing story's point appears to be that the gibberish we read is gibberish, which I feel like I was perfectly capable of figuring out on my own. That steamrolls any humor I could have gotten out of your punchline, and leaves me greatly annoyed that I wasted so much time looking up dictionary definitions on a good-faith assumption that you were trying to Finnegan all up in this.

That said, I'm going to try to set aside my resentment and score this based on what it was trying to do.

Can I suggest flipping the order of the scenes, or better yet, deleting the first scene and then just dribbling it out in small doses as we go so we can discover the horror of it along with Spike? I feel like this could have been legitimately funny if we followed Spike sipping some coffee, picking up the manuscript, reading that first wretchedly incomprehensible line, and doing a spit take.

I guess the big takeaway here is expectations management. Signal to readers as early as possible what you're doing. It's funnier if we're in on the joke.

Tier: Needs Work

"Meep!" said Fluttershy.

Sorry, the last line seemed to be missing, so I'll fill it back in here.

More seriously - see all the other comments. Too much setup, not enough payoff, torn between comedy and suspense/horror, would be improved by picking one direction and going in it. What's here now is an entertaining ride until it ends, at which point I feel disappointed because I was crediting all the repetition and buildup with increasing amounts of "there'll be a payoff for all this at the end" and then there wasn't enough of one. A common mistake - keep it in mind for next time!

Fun, but a bit bland to me. All the storytelling goes into the monastic order atmosphere, which lost a lot of its charm as soon as I saw "Place and Name" and realized A. what was going on and B. that I was probably not going to see more than a glimpse of Twilight or the actual work (and, indeed, we do not.) The title is Trial by Fire, and the Order is lead by an adult Spike, yet we don't get to see much of him either, and the pun opportunity is lost. (The most lamentable of neglects!)

So... a philosophical divide, I suppose. Some say that jokes taking place entirely offscreen are funnier. I am more of the school of thought that this is not the case unless there is a smaller onscreen joke setting it up first. Too much is concealed here for me to buy the idea that Twilight's Research Meltdown is actually That Bad. A little more showing and a little less telling would do wonders for my mental buy-in!

The only two things I have to offer here are

1) to thank >>QuillScratch for such a detailed examination of some of the technical errors, which I hope will help with editing; and
2) to point out to the crowd, since nobody seems to have mentioned it yet, that the title appears to be riffing off of the prompt:

[The Twilight Zone] Is This in a Literal Sense

I wish I could say that helped me understand the context of the story any better, but even with that insight I still feel unmoored. I'd be curious to hear more about what's going on here, author, after the anonymity period is finished.

Tier: Needs Work

oh my god this was a riot

actual out loud belly laughs, not even joking

You know. Actually. Hold on. Hold. The. Phone. Let's... let's... let's check that prompt list out again. I remembered something.

Something Coffee_Minion can read to his kids (16)

Ah. Okay. That makes what happened here much more clear. Someone was like "Hey, that prompt that didn't win really inspired me, I'll write something for that anyway and submit it, like a bonus for people." Yeah, I get it now. Not sure how I feel about doing that, it still shouldn't win against the actual prompt, but I was definitely too harsh in saying that someone randomly decided to write whatever. Sincere apologies about tha- a - a-...

Oh.
Oh. My. God.

It is the Twilight Zone.
It's the Twilight Zone of Writeoff, where a different prompt won.

I... I don't even know for sure if the author intended that, or if they were just submitting an alt prompt for fun. But they certainly could have intended it. It seems not completely implausible, and that's enough to get past my "rawr ignored the prompt get out"...

>>Xepher is still right about the typographic tricks, and I still stand by a pretty harsh assessment for children's lit vs regular writing, and people really ought to submit something resembling "standard format" prose fiction so entries can actually be critiqued well and ranked against each other fairly. But I guess I have to walk back my biggest objection here and give this an actual rank (a bit above trainwreck tier, "kind of did what it wanted to do, if not well in some respects") because wow, that's so crazy it might actually be a thing.

>>Ranmilia
One thing I brought up in the podcast (which should be edited and posted at some point in the next few hours!) is that this story felt more like it was meant to be someone reading a picture book to their kids than an actual picture book. Thank you for pointing out that connection to the Coffee_Minion prompt—that really builds a stronger case for my reading than my points about the narrative voice did!

>>Fenton
I disagree with your point on that quote: Spike's line there made me laugh out loud, precisely because it was lampooning poor exposition in dialogue. There's a hint of self-awareness to that moment, and I think Spike was the perfect character to pull it off with.

Just felt like I should throw my defense of that line into the ring. I've not got much else to add here, author—this was a delightful entry from start to finish.