>>Posh
You started something
Now in haiku I say it's
On like Donkey Kong

Dance Dance All Nightmare Long: Twilight is haunted by visions of Iron Will in a leotard, and is filled with a creeping sense of dread that someday she too shall wear one.

The Twilight Council's Happiest Ending: Faced with the ultimate question, Twilight summons the ultimate council. Sadly, Imperator Twilightosa continuously derails the proceedings with her sophomoric jokes about the potential double meaning in Twilight Prime's inquiry.

The Discord Masquerade: Fancy Pants' evening starts awkward and rapidly gets worse as Discord has a laugh at his expense.

No Deep Allowed: Alicorn Probe-AI Twilight-chan tries to remember special memories of time spent with her parents, but the constant vision of her dad in a dress only weakens her tenuous remnants of sanity. (I mean, it might've been okay if it was a flattering dress, but it wasn't, no matter what her mom said at the time.)

WAFF delivered. That said, I think the fic undermines itself a bit by presenting itself as something more comedic initially before really honing in on the feels. I think you'd benefit from trimming the first half of this fic quite a bit and getting to the meat a bit faster.

Beyond that, Spike doesn't quuuuuite feel right to me? I feel like he's a little too eloquent and a little too empathetic here, maybe, but I'm also not really sure of Spike voice right this very moment.

End style change is really, really jarring.

Beyond that, the idea is cute, but unfortunately really underutilized, IMO. Like, really, I think the lib should have covered everything once it started, including the ending. As is it ends up being kind of a gimmick, rather than a solid core concept.

Second funniest thing I've read this round. This is more my style of humor, absurd but tightly coiled around its absurdity. Builds on and delivers its one joke quite well, even if I could guess the shape of it from the outset. Still, super charming.

Cunnilingus joke might be a bit too much, though. I chuckled, but it is really out of left field, especially compared to the remainder of the content.

General definitely needs a bit of a textual pass comment.

Opening is solid and the idea is interesting, but it really doesn't do anything that interesting, unfortunately. There just isn't a lot of steam after the initial joke. I suppose one could argue the meandering nature is the point (narrator is busy, so no story), but eh... it just doesn't work for me.

Really good open though.

Cute joke, delivered approximately 208 words too late. Unfortunately, the rest of the fic, while competent, just isn't particularly engaging.

Cute, but lacking much in the way of substance. Sorta like many FFG games.

</shots fired> </I kid, I love you FFG>

Honestly, I kinda think this story is mis-structured? Sticking the reveal in the middle (and having it eat up so much of the word count) is bizarre. This seems a lot more like it'd be better suited spending about 90% of its word count building up Night Light's happiness and maybe even further highlighting how unusual it is and then cutting that out from under everyone with the reveal.

Also Sunshine's entire last line makes him look like a serious asshole by completely disregarding everything Dawn Strike -literally- just said.

Also thaumometer and honestly that entire beginning of the middle probably pushed me a little too hard into thinking about Unseen University. Will be really shocked if writer is not a Pratchett reader.

Anyhow, this kinda falls under that category of stories I just don't like, which is sad to be sad. Personal preference thing here, but yeah, just not fond of this sort of stuff.

This is a nice scene, but I'm not sure I buy it as a story. Trying to apply traditional analysis to it doesn't yield much: the characters don't undergo any changes or have any desires fulfilled, except in very brief technical senses. Most of the writing is either fluff descriptions of things irrelevant to the narrative (such as Lyra's living situation) or Lyra and Moon infodumping and as-you-knowing at each other.

Pleasant to read, but mostly because it expends its entire economy of words and concepts on trying to be pleasant and catch the reader on a constant succession of hooks. Why does Moon want Lyra -> what's Protagonist Syndrome -> what's Twilight got to do with anything -> what's up with these visitors -> whoa what's Lyra doing -> and we're done! Hooks are good! Hooks are great! Hooks are necessary! But payoff is important too, and there isn't enough here for me. Style over substance, as it stands.

Still quite good on execution, mind you; this is one of those comments that's going to come off way more negatively than I actually feel because I'm rambling and trying to pinpoint to myself why I felt disappointed after reading it. It seems way more common to find entries that have a solid, fully contained structure, but struggle with execution. Here, the execution is fantastic and it's the concept and storyboarding that let me down.

Cantervale was weird and kinda disconnected me a bit since it put me in question of what this story actually was. Seemed too accurate to be AU, but...?

Can/Can't typos are always silly. Easy to make, but you should watch those because they jump out massively.

Otherwise, I like this. Cute, fairly smart, solidly characterized (though AJ gets a bit lost, it isn't too bad since this is actually a Rarity story), and fun.

Rainbow Dash coughed. “Probably like 8 hours.”

Silence filled the room again.

Extremely accurate summary of Twilight Imperium.

As most others have said, though, there's not much to bite into here that doesn't boil down to "the Mane Six interact with their standard personality traits." You could cut everything in the first half except that quote and maybe a couple other sentences, show just the aftermath scene and have more or less the same story.

Alternatively, cut some of the characters and focus on two to four interacting instead of all six. Just not enough space for six ponies to bounce around in a mini. For character pieces like this, I want to see how they break their usual molds rather than conform. Rarity and Fluttershy sooort of do, at the end, but I didn't get enough depth or explanation to understand or be satisfied with their reactions, respectively.

I was with this most of the way through, but a couple of the jokes fell flat. Celestia's slip of the tongue about the moon, and the final line, in particular. There's no reason Flurry Heart would be carrying cyanide, so it's not really funny to me, and calls back the earlier required suspension of disbelief about Blueblood being that dumb. (It is Blueblood, so it's not completely inconceivable, but...)

Really? Crepuscular twice in one writeoff?

Also small snark for the idea of "the lizards have abnormal leg counts" as a subtle thing. I'd totally notice if the lizard had 8 legs.

Once again I feel that the Story is coming from an Author who has read some Pratchett. Not quite as solidly as in Reveries, but the Feeling is certainly there.

Fun and generally solidly Written.

Well, Twilight is the Element of Magic, and Mark Rosewater, Head of Design for Magic: The Gathering, is often on record saying "it is better to craft things that will be someone's favorite and someone else's least favorite than things that are acceptable but unexciting to everyone."

So, the premise here is a hard sell to me. It's lacking a hook, I never felt very interested or invested in what Twilight was doing. The closest we get is Star Swirl's mention, but then whatever happened to him? Rao hit it on the head here (and unfortunately, so did Posh: we have another story in the finals with an extremely similar concept and better execution.) Nice feelgoods though, pardon my running-out-of-time dissections!

>>Ritsuko

Why do I have the impression this happened to my previous(first) entry, and that it is likely to happen again and again? While it made more sense once you see the order of the story in the fic.

I'm sorry to say that no, it still doesn't make much sense either.

From what I understand, the plot is basically: "One day, Pinkie goes to Twilight's castle, she meets Starlight who casts a memory spell on Pinkie for no reason, Pinkie wanders around in a daze until she meets Rarity, who gives her some clothes, at which point Pinkie regains her memory and enters the council room, end of story"

Basically, the problem here is that everypony behaves completely erratically and out of character. Starlight apparently casts a memory spell on Pinkie... for no reason. Rarity meets her own long-time friend, and... immediately feels the need to introduce herself by name: "I am Rarity!" (Hint: people don't "declare" their names like this in real life, ever. Not in casual conversation, anyway.) Also, nobody else, neither Rarity nor Twilight, seem at all concerned about Pinkie wandering around in an amnesiac daze.

(EDIT: Only now I've noticed this part of your reply, which says

Is it possible Starlight could pull a deep spell on the Pony, on instinct?

...but this doesn't make much sense either... We're supposed to believe that good!Starlight would just "instinctively" cast an amnesia spell on her friend? Then she'd just wander away without caring about it at all?)

Contrary to some other comments, I didn't have any problem understanding this. In fact I thought it was quite clear, I had the concept speculatively in mind almost before Celestia was introduced! Asteria comes through clearly and elegantly. Very nice writing there!

Unfortunately, the conflict with Celestia is not quite as well defined. I kept waiting for some reason, some answer as to why this happened, especially when Celestia mentioned reconciliation. But an explanation never materialized. Asteria is just a robot flying the universe and feeling nothing more than twinges of annoyance. That's a nice foil to Celestia's emotionally driven presentation, but... why?

Partially coloring my judgment here is the fact that Sad Sunbutt is such a common theme in the pony writeoffs. I read the last few before finally jumping in to participate, and it seems like in every one, there's always several stories along the lines of "Celestia is consumed with angst and grief about having lost Luna/Twilight/Future Twilight/various ponies she outlived, and lives on heartbroken and yearning for emotional reconciliation." Many such stories appear and rely on this trope to provide conflict, but few attempt to answer why she is so torn up. I am afraid this entry joins the collective.

Another take on last round's Cold Iron. Polar opposite tone, though.

I think it handles the man (pony) machine hybrid thing a bit better, but I'm less fond of the actual content.

>>Ritsuko

If this is an issue pointed at, the solution would be to omit the word "could" and everything would be fine.
My intent is to widen the meaning a bit further.

While omitting "could" would make the passage you quoted consistent in tense, it makes the whole passage present tense. However, the vast majority of the story seems to be written in past tense. Why have you swapped from one to the other? It is incredibly rare that tense-swaps are necessary for meaning (far easier to use relative tenses than to change the tense of the narration entirely!)

Further, if you want the passage to be consistently in present tense, while maintaining all the meaning of "could", you may wish to use "can" instead!

Since we are in the castle, and the library to be exact; one posibility is that it was Starlight Glimmer, the Pony that play Pinkie Pie saw.

While there is nothing in the text that contradicts this reading, there's absolutely nothing in the text that directly supports it, either. I'm still not entirely sold on the idea that the Twilight of the opening paragraphs isn't the real Twilight, so the leap to Starlight Glimmer seems particularly tenuous to me. I think it's clear from your comments that you are trying to set up an unreliable narrator, but the key with unreliable narrators is to give the audience some textual reason to assume that they are unreliable. I'm afraid that this story only gives me reason to assume that (very) strange things are happening around the narrator, and not that the narrator is lying.

Is it possible Starlight could pull a deep spell on the Pony, on instinct?

Is it possible? Yes, I suppose it could be. But again, there's nothing in the text to imply this conclusion. Indeed, the very fact that (fake) Twilight doesn't appear to react in any way to the main character's shout would strongly imply the opposite, to me.

There's a principle called Occam's Razor, which I find applies very well to how readers will respond to a story. To quote Wikipedia's wording, which is far clearer than my own: "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected." The interpretation you seem to have intended for this story requires far more assumptions than other interpretations (for example, my point in my previous post that perhaps Twilight simply hadn't heard the main character requires rather fewer assumptions than "it was actually Starlight Glimmer all along".)

Essentially, my point boils down to this: if you want readers to reach a conclusion, don't rely on them making assumptions that have little or no basis in the text. Instead, give them clues in the story that will lead them to the conclusion that you want them to make!

Why do I have the impression this happened to my previous(first) entry, and that it is likely to happen again and again?

If you think that this is a consistent issue with your stories, perhaps it is something you should focus on? Next Writeoff, if you enter, you may want to try and focus specifically on making sure that there are clear links of cause and effect between the things that happen in your story, and most importantly on ensuring that everything that is in your story has a clear and well-defined purpose. Think about Chekhov's Gun: "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story." I think that, if you work on this issue, you may find fewer people are confused by your stories.

(It's worth noting that both >>HorseVoice and >>JudgeDeadd have made some very useful points about your word choices and your characterisation. These are also things you should keep an eye out for ways to improve at!)

The last colors of evening faded from the appropriately crystal-clear skies of the long-lost Crystal Empire as the songs of day birds gave way to the nightlong vigil of the crickets. Night Light turned away from the window of his opulent palatial guest suite in the Crystal Castle, his mouth resting in a contented smi

Wow. Stodgy.

In general, the text is studded with many adjectives or adverbs, which add little to it (do we have to know the sheets are white, for example?). Crossing out unnecessary adjectives/adverbs not only will allow you to stuff more meat into that ridiculously cramped format, but it will also make your sentences more impactful.

Yeah, I have some difficulties making heads or tails of that one. Is that two different timelines? So princess-dom and stuff only happen in the imagination of two potted cactuses? Sorry, I’m a bit at sea here.

oh no, not one of these things. yeah, the whole show was a hallucination, random synapses firing off in the brain of a vegetable.... literally!
so what? where's the story?

I would've been interested in seeing how this affects the lives of Twilight and Shining. better or worse paths? but instead it's just focused on how he couldn't be happier, while everyone else is sad and pity him. manipulative.

(tagging >>Ritsuko for threading, but this is general advice/discussion)

Essentially, my point boils down to this: if you want readers to reach a conclusion, don't rely on them making assumptions that have little or no basis in the text. Instead, give them clues in the story that will lead them to the conclusion that you want them to make!

Quoting >>QuillScratch for truth, and because it's just that important to work on.

If it helps, this is a problem EVERYONE has. Everyone. I have literally medaled in the last five rounds in a row and this STILL trips me up occasionally. It's not a mistake that you grow out of making — it's a mistake that you learn how important it is, and pay more attention to compensating for.

Case in point: one of my entries this round has been getting comments indicating people missed the point of the ending, which I'll talk about in the retrospective. Another illustrative case: my worst-rated entry ever had a subverted punchline that I expected people to notice, but I cut it off a few words too soon and it flew right past everyone. (I took a poll in the comments: just one reader understood something I thought would be obvious.)

There's a saying you'll hear from the old-timers around here: "Don't be subtle in the Writeoffs." That's kind of our "show, don't tell" — easily misinterpreted and sometimes misused as a prescriptivist cudgel, but it absolutely gets at a deeper truth that 9 times out of 10 will improve your stories. Your readers are not mind-readers. They don't know what you're TRYING to do, only what you WROTE. And there are some ideas that seem like good ideas, but will absolutely fail if you don't add context copiously, quickly, and aggressively.

Yet another case in point: Harmony Needs Heroes. I've written 21 Writeoff short stories, and that's one of only two not to make finals. This probably sounds like I'm bragging, and if so, I'm sorry — but my intention is to point out how crucial the comprehensibility problem is, and how pervasive it is, and how hard it can sink a story despite everything else being done at the top of your game. (I can make Writeoff finals in my sleep — when I don't, it's because I've written a story with big problems. This is one of them. Learn from my failures!)

I strongly suggest reading the first scene of HNH to get some idea of what people must have felt like reading your story — the feedback thread for it was a solid wall of complaints about the incomprehensibility of the opening. What's going on is that the narrator is dragged out of his sleeping bag by a sandspider that snuck up on him while he was sleeping, and he tries to fight it off with several of his friends. That was completely clear in my head when I went to write it, but how is a reader going to know that sandspiders exist, or what they look like, or who the friends are that help out?

In that case — as with your story here, I suspect — I made everything blurry and confusing as a deliberate stylistic choice. I succeeded, which was a problem. Readers need to be able to make an emotional engagement with the story — to care about what happens. If they don't understand what is happening, or (more importantly) if they don't understand why it's happening, then your story is just words on a page. Getting them invested is crucial so that they follow along with you as you answer those questions.

And that, by the way, is why I focus so aggressively on your story setting a good hook. The best writing in the world means nothing if you don't engage your reader.

>>horizon
Sometimes you do want your story to be a puzzle. But, while among your readers are many who would relish a puzzle, most will want a plainly presented story. In a writeoff environment, you are best off letting readers know what they are in for as quickly and clearly as possible, just as Haze presented an entry that was clearly not expected to be interpreted as a standard story.

I like what E. B. White had to say about it, in his expansion of Strunk’s The Elements of Style.

16. Be clear.

Clarity is not the prize in writing, nor is it always the principal mark of a good style. There are occasions when obscurity serves a literary yearning, if not a literary purpose, and there are writers whose mien is more overcast than clear. But since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one. Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say, “Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” Even to writers of market letters, telling us (but not telling us) which securities are promising, we can say, “Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!”

Clarity, clarity, clarity. When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences.

Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

Posh's Less Sexy (But Still Somewhat Titillating) Mash-Ups: Finals For Real Edition

Snoopy vs. Dance Dance Revolution: NASA is baffled by mysterious, profane audio of the Apollo 10 crew being put on trial for dancing in a manner which displeased someone called Nightmare Moon (whose legs are apparently fabulous).

A Good (if Abridged) Life: Sterling Rod ruins a game of Twilight Imperium by narrating every action taken by the Mane Six until Twilight asks Starlight to escort him off the premises. Starlight does, grumbling about how she never gets invited to board game night. She winds up in bed with Sterling Rod, and learns how appropriate that name is.

The Meaning of Being Crepuscular: Spectral Twilight waxes poetic to elderly Rainbow Dash about how much more alive she feels at night. Rainbow is too busy looking up the word "crepuscular" in the dictionary to listen. That is, until her glasses fall off her nose and break. But there was time now...!

Awesome! Libs: Rainbow discovers a game of Discord Libs in the castle library, and plays with it instead of studying, trapping Twilight, Spike, and Starlight in an increasingly dangerous game of life, death, and scrolls. Lots and lots of scrolls.

The Happiest Thousandth Home Sweet Home: While plumbing the mysteries of life and reality with the help of Cosmic Squid Twilight (guest-appearing from The Twilight Council), Twilight and Spike venture into a reality where Luna's and Celestia's places are reversed. She asks her existentially plagued counterpart what the happiest ending is, baffling her, and parallel Twilight joins Prime, Spike, and Twilight Squiddle in searching for the answer.

I was rockin' with this up through the Vinyl segment. Everything past that point seems a little more random, less funny, and there's no final punchline. Good jokes, good attempt, runs a little out of steam at the end. Probably places pretty high for me, but it's up against some stiff competition in comedy.

Nthing other comments, good scene, not so great standalone story. Presents a very nice idea, spectacular prompt fit, but doesn't develop it and suddenly ends. I hate dismissing such a nice scene that way, but yeah, format did a number on it, I don't get a satisfying resolution. Too many ellipsis in the early paragraphs, perhaps, watch out for that.

This existed.

I'm tempted to leave it at just those two words, but that's perhaps a disservice, so. Slice of life is not really my bag, I'll admit that up front. There are some examples of the genre I do like, though, and they tend to be centered around something: a tone, a mood, an idea, a theme, a central character or two to explore. This, I don't get anything from. I could read a hundred pages like this and feel nothing.

Would've loved to see some risk taken, or something built on here, a comedy setup or stronger character moment. As is, I'm with Xepher, it plays too safe to score points. (I'm not even sure that's intentional, either - kinda gives me the vibe that the author came up with the pun from the prompt, and then just grasped for some character filler to put around it. If so, fair enough - you still managed to get a complete mini out of it, and that can be a victory of its own.)

Hm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Comedy relies on a strong ending punchline, and the best comedic scenes have strong jokes at the start and midpoint as well. This entry drops its payload on the start, follows through with some good second-place jokes in the middle, but doesn't have anything bringing it home. If there was one more top tier quality joke at the end, I'd take this as a winner. But alas, such a weak end drops the mood and lessens the memory of how good the beginning was. I think this is very close to being great, closer than most of the comments are giving it credit for. A noble effort.

“I know a fun game!” exclaimed Discord.

On the list of phrases to run away from as fast as you possibly can...

This works out pretty well for me overall. Could've used another pass on word economy, though. Cutting the initial scene way down would allow more time for the conceit to play out, and it should've been kept up throughout the ending as well. I felt the Quills and Scrolls bit, essentially a random place, was the weakest point, and the more structured end still kept me engaged despite dropping the gimmick. Combine the strong points of both!

>>Exuno
Regarding the story title. Snoopy was the name of the Lunar Module for Apollo 10. (Charlie Brown was the Command Module.) Azathoth is from the Cthulu mythos, the being that is dreaming the universe. The "music" heard has been suggested by some as being the sound of those dreams.

So... as others have pointed out, this is an emotional hook piece. It doesn't really stand up to examination if you poke at any of the whys or hows (why don't the probes just get Twilight to fix this?) But it's not really trying to. That's a little incongruous with the detailed space survey stuff, but okay.

Unfortunately, the emotional hook was completely lost on me when I saw the italicized lines and blurted "Is this a Daft Punk songfic?!"

And... it kinda is. I really don't know what to make of that. It did stop the hook quite well though. I think there's a better version of this to be had without the italics and with some more nuance and lip service to the setting. Perhaps that's just my taste. Or perhaps it's having to rank this against another entry (The Outer Limits) which is so extremely similar that it even shares the same major flaws. I see what you're going for, but oi, tough beats.

Hail, Author! Stand atop my slate!
With this reflect-review of mine,
I’ll not write off your effort fine.
‘tis clever work to thus relate.

The scheme that you select, forsooth,
From A to B and B to A
In smaller structure shows the way
The work at large is mirrored. Truth

Is herald to a higher scheme?
This retrospective cast we see
From mare to filly, obversely,
We hope to read more than there seems

For purchase in your prosody,
So densely cast we closely strive–
A task not fit for all alive,
Yet worth pursuit for those that see…

Yet worth pursuit for those that see
A task not fit for all alive,
So densely cast we closely strive
For purchase in your prosody;

We hope to read more than there seems.
From mare to filly, obversely,
This retrospective cast we see
Is herald to a higher scheme?

The work at large is mirrored. Truth
In smaller structure shows the way
From A to B and B to A
The scheme that you select, forsooth,

‘tis clever work to thus relate.
I’ll not write off your effort fine.
With this reflect-review of mine,
Hail, Author! Stand atop my slate!

As usual, I'm late to the comment party, and everything has already been said. All I can add is.. Rod Sterling? Silver Spoon's uncle Sterling Rod? Brilliant!

Well, that was interesting... And while I'm not sure where I expected it to go, I definitely didn't expect it to go there. O.o

Though the initial idea of Twilight having her own little pocket dimension to hid away in is interesting... Just so long as it's not actually Discord's belly button.

I laughed. I cried. I moved this towards the top of my slate. Completely absurd, yet still hilarious. Good job!

This is all atmosphere and nothing else for me, sadly. Then again, 'Equestria explodes' has been done so many times now that destroying everything we care about needs to have a good reason behind it before I give you credit for doing more than milking free emotional drama.

As is, I have to dock this one because it seems like it's all about milking emotional drama. 'EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE IS DEEEEEEAAAD!'

I'm just blazing through reading the last few finalists and not planning to review any more, but I wanted to give this one a special shout out for nailing the Mane 6's character voices. The only suspect line is Fluttershy's near the end, and it's probably more a matter of taste than plausibility.

I was entertained.

(Edit: nvm, there's more finalists than I realized. Losing consciousness. Go medalists go!)

Hey, the most Twilight Zoney fic in the whole competition (as of yet). Nice. Beginning is the biggest issue, because the leap to madness was... very unprecedented. Works well after that, though.

I just realized I hadn't commented on this, except briefly during the podcast (which you may or may not have heard.) I'll go into a bit more depth here, even if you have.

This was an interesting gimmick, but even considering that I'm Not_A_Poet, I had a hard time getting into it. The phrasing often felt unnecessarily convoluted or pointlessly 'poetic', even putting aside 'What'd'. For example:

It's quaint; and judging eyes abound –
In silent vigil kept.

I'm not really sure what you're doing with the 'kept' here. And:

--I found
My solace shattered, what they spurned

And whispered, true.

While a moments contemplation may link that 'true' back to the 'found', it's so distanced by line breaks and capitals and lack of a connector between 'shattered' and 'what', that it becomes rather awkward. And:

How simply, silly had I dreamed?

This one really messed with me. See, 'simply' is an adverb, while 'silly' is an adjective. While I could maybe accept just 'silly dreamed' as 'silly' modifying the dream that is dreamed, putting both of them together like that throws cognitive dissonance in; not only does my mind first go verbwise before jerking due noun, it leaves me unsure if the emphasis here is on the dream dreamed or the action of dreaming.

Anyways. It did seem to get somewhat better as the poem moved on, and I appreciate that perhaps your choice of structure made this extra difficult, but... suffice to say, I couldn't really get into the first few paragraphs (stanzas?) easily.

Continuing, I'm not convinced that changing the direction did enough. The verses in the second half of the poem came across almost like the ones in the first half. That is, it seemed to be repeating the same thing, despite mirroring the direction? Like, your change of structure didn't produce a big enough change of meaning for me to feel it was really worthwhile. Perhaps I'm missing what you were getting at, but... it seemed to tell the same story twice, for me.

Perhaps I would have found this more impressive if I hadn't seen the gimmick done before, and (in my not-very-good-at-poetry-opinion) slightly better.

Needs a cleanup pass. Lot of the phrasing could be better.

Decent scene, but doesn't feel too much like a complete story.

Also I accidentally zoned out at the beginning and thought the main character was Blueblood and the stallion was just a body double, allowing Blueblood to be sure nopony would guess it was him in the mask and that he'd really learn what ponies thought of him.

Another story that would benefit from technical cleanup. The idea is cute and I think actually works quite well, but yeah, there's a lot of clunky writing in there.

Cute idea, but I was having a bizarre amount of trouble actually reading this. Not quite sure what it is. Possibly the inserted dialogue? Actions and the like just don't quite seem to line up right.

And, for completeness, I have chosen to abstain from poetry this round. Sorry!

Oh. I forgot to comment on this one. Another fic that would benefit from a short lead in. I also have some issues with the idea that her friends wouldn't believe her.

Otherwise pretty solid.

>>eusocialdragon
Quick FYI, if you reply on your own story, it makes it easier to follow the conversation. :-)

That said, I hope you keep writing. As you said, it was too big of an idea for the minific format, and I think that's your biggest problem. The rest (the technical and other) is just a matter of practice. Keep at it. Like I said on the story, I think you've got an interesting world built in your head. Translating that into text that ALSO translates back into other people's heads it the hard part. But please do keep at it!

On a side note: Would it be possible to separate the general discussion thread from the individual story comments? I know we originally just had FIMFic forums, and it was a matter of necessity to have just one big thread there. But now that @RogerDodger added all this cool functionality here, it feels like a holdover that the main thread is still all jumbled up. E.g. if we want to discuss general themes and the like, it's drowned in the sea of story-specific comments.

So, just felt I needed to clarify my view here. Previously, I went off on a rant about "typographical tricks" and this story really isn't relying on that, so please ignore those bits. I still stand by the fact that it's not really hitting the prompt to me though.

That said, I really did find this story cute, and in the appropriate contest (e.g. had "A story CoffeeMinion can read to his kids" won), this would've been near the top of my slate, as I honestly giggled at some of the silliness here and think it would be great to read to some of my younger cousins. For what it sets out to do, this story works great. However, it just doesn't play in the same league sport as stories about Twilight turning her parents into barely sentient dreaming cacti, Celestia returning her horn to the Lady of the Lake, or Applejack being cursed to kill with a word.

>>Xepher I like the current system a little bit more, since it allows people who aren't currently viewing/participating in a story's conversation to follow the discourse (and perhaps contribute, should they see something in there that strikes them).

The rest of the Posh Council concurs. Including especially Alicorn Neko-Girl Posh-chan and Pan-Pan-Pantsu-Posh, from the dimension that noposhy likes to visit or talk about.

>>Posh
Ah, let me clarify: I'm not asking for the "everything" feed to be cut/replaced. I'd just like to have a new feed/thread for "non-story" discussion, to go along with the feeds for each individual story. I think it'd make a lot more sense if you're trying to follow the more general discussions, rather than those of specific stories. Keeping an inclusive "all-contest" thread is still fine by me though.

>>horizon
I thought you were going to quote Vonegut again. :P

Everyone has brought up great points, so I don't feel like there is much to add.

I just wanted to say that the "And, like all eternities, there was eventually an end" was a line that particularly stood out to me. Very nicely put :)

Congratulations to TheCyanRecluse, Xepher, and Corejo! I'll get up a full retrospective of "It's a Good Life" when I get back from work.

Well, a hearty congratulations to our finalists, with a super special shout out to Xepher. Getting three in the finals, and medaling as well, is an impressive feat.

Also: it was you!!!


...


B-baka.

Aw man, that was a really close fourth place. Congrats to the winners, I'd read a surprisingly few number of the top slots so they were a nice surprise.


Also, Haze why did you guess you wrote everything?

>>billymorph
I figured I'd get at least one right :(

Congratulations to our medalists, and to every other finalist too.

I will destroy you all.

Congrats to the winners!

>>CoffeeMinion
LoL... do you have any idea how hard it was to keep silent and pretend to not know as you talked about your story directly compared to mine? :-P

But seriously, thanks. I really don't think "Crepuscular" should've made it, and the fact that it literally placed last in the final round kinda proves it. Though, I really am disappointed I couldn't pull first. Not that the winner didn't deserve it, just... it almost hurts worse to almost-win than to just outright lose.

Still though, NekoTwi still needs to say "meow," not "nyan" because "What's the problem here, meow" is funny in english, and "nyan" is not.

FYI, this was my first-placed vote. Good job Skywriter! Not sure how I beat you.

This was my second placed vote. Nice job! Still not sure how I beat you.

Man, I totally did not see this as yours, Horizon. FYI, this was my third-place vote, and I'm not sure how/if my story deserved to top this.

FYI, this was my fourth place rank. I'm still surprised by the results, and that this didn't place higher.

Nooo! Curse you! You beat me! And I had you pegged for fifth! But seriously, great job and congratulations on a deserved win!

>>AndrewRogue
So, I tried to keep it clean. I literally was thinking of long hairs getting stuck in my beard after making out with my last girlfriend. Not cunnilingus. (I would've mentioned "curly" if I had meant that.)

Congratulations to the medalists; you all definitely deserved to win! And my congratulations to everyone else for their entries and for allowing newcomers like me to participate.

>>Fuzzyfurvert
>>SPark
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Posh
>>Haze
>>Haze
>>CoffeeMinion
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Ranmilia
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Rao
>>AndrewRogue

Okay, thank you very much to all that commented, and I'm very happy that most of you seemed to really like this story. More so, that I got a silver out of it! Woot!

To bare all though, I have to admit this was directly inspired by "The Council of Ricks" from Rick and Morty. I almost titled it "The Council of Twilights" but was afraid that'd give away too much. But no one seemed to mention it, so perhaps my worry was unwarranted. Also, per my own false "review" I really do wish I'd had more room to expand the middle bit, and interact with more strange Twilights. This is definitely one I think I'll try to expand for FIMFiction.

Yet Hope, In Part, Found Purchase, Retrospective

Because you guys commented and I didn't reference you below:
>>Fuzzyfurvert
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Moosetasm
>>SPark
>>HorseVoice (Do I get to watch you eat your hat?)
>>Light_Striker
>>Xepher
>>CoffeeMinion
>>JudgeDeadd
>>Posh
>>Rao
>>shinygiratinaz
>>Morning Sun
>>Haze
>>GroaningGreyAgony (I have to say again that I loved this comment <3)


Alright, so. This one was loads of fun to put together. No idea where to begin, since I’ve never retrospecc’ed a thingie for a writeoff, but here goes. For starters, I’d like to link to a pretty picture that, while not the inspiration for this piece, holds a lot of the same emotion that I was going for. You can also use it as a tl;dr for all the stuff below if you want.

Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing people try and piece this together. Collectively, most of my intended story was picked out, and while It’d be nice to see it more universally understood (that’s most surely the wrong word, but I’m tired so that’s the word I’m gonna use), it was fun to watch the interpretations run wild. Shows quite a few people were engaged.

This piece was meant to be two separate perspectives: the ‘down-read’ from filly Twilight just stepping into the exam room for her entrance to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, the ‘up-read’ newly-crowned Twilight looking back on the event in light of all she’s accomplished thus far. (I will refer to these two halves as such because the intended format of this poem is to be physically written only once and then read down and up.) As far as how clearly those perspectives come across, the down-read, according to the comments, I believe was much more successful.

In the interest of gathering as many opinions and critiques as possible (because that’s literally why we’re all here), below is a line-by-line of the intended meaning for this poem in full-frontal transparency, so that you all can yell at me about parts where I fucked up, because there’s a good handful, and I’m sure many more I didn’t notice post-entry:

How frightening the world had seemed.
When first I tried to hatch my friend,
I feared my schooling found an end…

Intended to be pretty straightforward.

How simply, silly had I dreamed?

She had big aspirations for herself. The sky’s the limit! This is evidenced from the show in how encouraging her parents were whenever they were on screen. But in light of this entrance exam, she’s doubting how foolish her aspirations were. Also, >>Not_A_Hat
is right that I derped on using the word ‘silly’ as it’s not an adverb.

How silly, simple I had been –
To think me ready;

Taken literally. She’s chiding herself for those aspirations.

What'd it say,
If I impressed Princess today,
With tactless fluke – the scholar's sin?

What would it say if she passed this test by sheer, dumb luck?

Was this the destiny I’d earned?
It's quaint;

“Am I destined to fail? It’s fitting, I guess, since I wasn’t prepared for it.’”

and judging eyes abound –
In silent vigil kept.

Referencing the teachers who stared down on here with silent, judging eyes.

I found
My solace shattered, what they spurned

And whispered, true.

She’s lost all composure, and her upreparedness that they spurned and what they whispered amongst themselves were all true, because she was unprepared.

Here, there was a technical issue with the comma, which I noticed from Not_A_Hat’s confusion on the meaning of this part. That comma shouldn’t be there, in either the first or second half of the poem.

The grounded fears
Found purchase in my trembling heart
Still innocent.

A bit of repetition with the lines before it, but with added mention that she’s innocent, that she’s unaccustomed to this sort of situation, that situation being unprepared and about to get her metaphorical ass handed to her by this exam.

Yet hope, in part,
Saw fit that I should hold back tears

And strive against.

Pretty straightforward here. Literally to try despite the assumed outcome.

A silent plea
To Princess – aid, prepare, to share –
(To hatchling, now to fledgling mare)
To help with what was asked of me –

She says a prayer to Celestia, then to Spike the unhatched egg, and then to herself. Also, that ‘now’ should be a ‘then,’ to better clarify that.

Inveigle them to empathy;

Literally, convince them to empathize and, therefore, help. Mostly, I just love the word inveigle, but, admittedly, this was a filler line to prop up the poetic structure.

Is ignorance, unfettered, bliss?

But would it really help? Is it better this way, that they don’t know and therefore don’t help? It’s a bit of a stretch, I’ll admit.

There were no books the likes of this;

Two-layered line here: the literal intention being there were no books on hatching dragons, the sub-meaning being there were none on how she should feel about her coming failure/her inability to inveigle Celestia/Spike/herself.

Yet years gone by had helped me see

That tender youth knows simple truths.
I fathomed, clear, behind their eyes:
Those simple truths – those damning lies –

Here’s where the story falters most glaringly. At this point, it was around 9pm, I had stayed up through my bedtime, and I was racing the clock, as I had to be on my way to work by 10:30 (which I wouldn’t have gotten home from until well after submissions closed) and I hadn’t yet proofread my poem.

Having been awake for about 22 hours by that point, I was out of poetic gas. My brain had had enough, and was stuck in this sort of limbo where it could only think of enjambed lines, yet I was more or less in a pickle with trying to make sense of everything and just getting myself out of those damned sentences that all ended in-line. Somehow I succeeded on that front, but at the cost of losing clarity on just what’s actually going on. My poetry brain said ‘oooh, reuse the word “truth” cause that’d be a good little poetic flourish,’ and that’s about all I remember of how this section came about.

tl;dr, the intended meaning here was to be ‘she sees within the teachers’ eyes that they don’t care.’ However botched it comes across is up to you.

What spurs the fears of helpless youths!

Seeing them staring down at her like that was terrifying. In retrospect, this is mostly fluff, if not at the very least strong for the perspective.

I curbed my heart and trembled, cowed –
When first I stepped into that room,
From tow'ring teachers glaring doom.
"Well, Miss Sparkle?" echoed loud,

Pretty straightforward, then cue the quote from the show.

---

"Well, Miss Sparkle?" echoed loud,
From tow'ring teachers glaring doom.
When first I stepped into that room,
I curbed my heart and trembled, cowed –

This restates the previous paragraph. Not much I can say good in that regard, other than it’s still perfectly readable.

What spurs the fears of helpless youths!

Here, though, comes the big turnaround in perspective. It’s not yet apparent on initial read, but as the reader continues on to realize this is newly-crowned Twilicorn, this is to be interpreted as she’s angry at the ways adults can act that can deter children in such a way, reinforced by the next lines.

Those simple truths – those damning lies –
I fathomed, clear, behind their eyes:
That tender youth knows simple truths.

Here, the rough patch on the down-read reads very smoothly is reworked into a much clearer read, that she’s damning how those teachers acted, that they assumed wrongly that tender youth is stupid and not worth their proper attention—cause remember those teachers were all a bag of dicks and a half in the show.

Yet years gone by had helped me see
There were no books the likes of this;

“Children are not stupid.” They might be ignorant to the way the world works, but that does not make them stupid.

Is ignorance, unfettered, bliss?

Is it okay that they the teachers think this way and/or should she accept it?

Inveigle them to empathy;

“Fuck that shit.”

To help with what was asked of me –

Drawing from the phrasing of the previous line, rather than its underlying meaning: Convince them to help her with what was asked of her.

(To hatchling, now to fledgling mare)
To Princess – aid, prepare, to share –
And strive against.

Here, the parenthesis, like >>Jordanis rightly commented, directly references her ascension to Twilicorn (from filly, to pupil, to princess). Synthesizing these lines with the lines above, the whole is meant to say that she wants to convince them to help with whatever she’s meant to do as a new princess, because don’t forget that she had no idea what she was supposed to be a princess of back then. (There was even a song about it!)

Again, that ‘now’ should be a ‘then.’

A silent plea

Saw fit that I should hold back tears
Still innocent.

Though she’s been made a princess, she has her doubts on just how ready for this new position she is.

Yet hope, in part,
Found purchase in my trembling heart
And whispered, true.

“Yet hope, in part, found purchase in her trembling heart and whispered that yes, she was ready.” (Personally, this sentence is my favorite part of the whole poem. It is also why it’s the title.) Again this comma comes back to bite me. Removing it clarifies this better.

The grounded fears

My solace shattered,

Though she may doubt, she believes in this hope that has found purchase, and in that, her solace shatters the fears of those doubts.

what they spurned
In silent vigil kept.

This one’s an oddball sentence that doesn’t parse correctly on reread. I intended this to mean that the ‘they,’ being an ambiguous group of haters who are gonna hate, spurn the solace that shattered her fears/Twilight in general, but the sentence structure doesn’t really work with that, since the comma makes the dependent clause reference the grounded fears rather than her solace. Shame on me, right?

I found
It's quaint;

Literally. In retrospect, she finds the whole situation quaint.

and judging eyes abound –

Now that she’s a princess, all eyes are on her, including those previously intended spurners.

Was this the destiny I’d earned?

With tactless fluke – the scholar's sin?

Here, in light of the quaintness of it all, she’s starting to wax nostalgic, especially at how oddly it all began.

If I impressed Princess today,
To think me ready;
What'd it say,
How silly, simple I had been –

How simply, silly had I dreamed?

The ‘today’ here being the day of her ascension to princesshood. If she was able to convince Celestia that she’s ready for princesshood today, what does that say for how silly and simple she had been to fear those failures she had as a filly in the entrance exam? Also, the adjective strikes again. I really don’t know why I didn’t notice. Damn the inverse exceptions to the adverb -ly rule.

I feared my schooling found an end…

Essentially, answering her own question and propping the stanza.

When first I tried to hatch my friend,
How frightening the world had seemed.

This is meant to hit as more of a capstone to that nostalgia. It would have been stronger, I think, if I used an ellipsis on the end, but that would have had the ill effect of an ellipsis on the start of the story, which would ruin the initial tone of the down-read, so I let it ride on the nostalgia of the previous lines.

---

And there we have it! In all, most of what I see on my own is that I need to work on density and better figure out how to trim fluff lines without compromising structure. But what do you guys think? Comments and critiques are greatly appreciated. I want to improve on my poetry and stuff, so please, please, please poke me about anything relevant.

As always,
Onward and Upward!

P.S. I’ll say this for Jordanis cause of his comment: this poem took me 7.5 hours to write.

I just noticed something on the site-wide scoreboard. Once this score goes into the computations, I'll have all three medals! Sure, Horizon has like 20 golds and 50 bronzes, and Cold in Gardez has 20 silvers and a bunch of golds. But I'm the first to get the trifecta! That totally makes up for being like 26th overall, right? :-P

Twilight Sparkle Seeks a Retrospective Permit

Thanks to everyone who read and commented. *glares pointedly at Syeekoh (and only Syeekoh)*

I didn't think this'd medal, after reading some of the competition, but I'm pleased to see how well it did. Especially since, as has been pointed out, it took a rather straightforward (some might say safe) approach to the prompt, rather than doing anything inspired or defying convention.

I tend to gravitate toward these little two-person character pieces whenever a minific rolls around. >>Ranmilia's assumption about the story's genesis was pretty much spot-on, in fact. I think I box myself in trying to come up with a plausible way to tell a complete story in a short span, and I just default to "two characters having a conversation about something." I don't think anyone noticed this, but Zoning Permit is basically the same exact story as Pinching Flurry, and I consider that a personal failure. Not that the story's a failure, but I failed to come up with something more original and interesting, and just defaulted to what I knew when I sat down to hammer out a piece for the competition.

And I would like to break away from convention and try something a little different next time.

For now, though, let's get to some comments:

>>Monokeras

The conclusion is illogical. Why in Equestria is Spike's presence required for Twilight to levitate precisely where her old balcony used to be? I don't understand that.

It's the gesture that counts; he doesn't need to be there for her to do it. But she just exposed a little bit of vulnerability to him, and he wants to show support. This also dovetails with >>AndrewRogue's remark about Spike feeling a bit too empathetic; I think, where Twilight is concerned at least, Spike's capable of showing maturity and responsibility beyond his years. Empathy, too. I think he understands and empathizes with Twilight to a greater extent than the rest of her friends do, hence why he's usually the last person to stick by her when things get extra rough.

Tying in with what Not-A-Hat Venom Posh said: It's definitely supposed to be friendshipping. Twilight and Spike have one of the most complex, multifaceted, and heartwarming relationships in the show, and I'd argue that it's a lot deeper than the friendship between she and any given member of the Mane Six, just because of how many roles they play with one another. I love that relationship, but I have no interest in seeing it develop beyond what it is on the screen: a deep, familial bond between two people who fill a number of roles in each other's lives.

Turning that romantic would be... Oedipal. And shotatastic.

...Since the general consensus seems to be that it's sweet, yet unremarkable, slice-of-life material, I'll probably post it as-is, with a few minor tweaks to the language.

>>Xepher ...*points to own trifecta*

>>Posh
*Glares back intensely*

Should have gotten 11th.

(the prompt relation is that since she's the Princess of it, dusk is "Twilight's Zone")

>>Skywriter
Thanks!
But also no thanks because you got my hopes up and made me think I was gonna win. Skywriter? More like BLUEBALLSwriter.

>>SPark
The immortal/immoral thing was a pun and a callback to the first scene.
Thanks for reading!

>>Orbiting_kettle
Missing? Your family is gonna report you missing when I kidnap you.
Thanks for reading!

>>Not_A_Hat
I really don't think this story is as random as everyone seems to think it is. Except for the ending. That's pretty random.
Thanks for reading!

>>Ritsuko
>>JudgeDeadd
Butts.

>>CoffeeMinion
I hope so. But I hate cleaning.
Thanks for reading!

>>FanOfMostEverything
I'll fix it up so you can say Thank You on FiM and make me smile.
Thanks for reading!

>>Xepher
Blame google for telling me that cyanide tastes like metal. I knew I should have tasted some before writing about it.
Thanks for reading!

>>AndrewRogue
Cool.
Thanks for reading! And buy your daughter a puppy.

>>Rao
I had no idea what I wanted to write about, so I opened up a session of Pony Clicker to see what random ponies it gave me. Blueblood was one of the first ones.
Thanks for reading!

>>Ranmilia
No reason? You've clearly never met Flurry Heart.
Thanks for reading!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>shinygiratinaz

Pre-Retrospective

Congrats to all medalists! And thanks to those who put both of my stories into the finals in this round. Competition was tough and voting was weird, and I’m glad to have made it this far among such good company.

When the prompts had all been submitted for this round, but before the title prompt had been selected, I sat down to make a story idea for each prompt, no matter how silly the prompt or inane my idea. As I promised, I am now posting this list, though partly edited and redacted. There are some ideas I want to keep for myself, and two got used in this round, which I will include in my retrospectives.

---

Under The Surface
Seaponies have access to an ancient secret which may be the only hope of saving Equestria. All they have to do to wield it is convince Twilight Sparkle to kill Celestia.

The Unwelcoming
What does Pinkie do when someone leaves Ponyville forever? (death?)
Charon is the antipinkie?
What would make Pinkie want to stop being friends with you?

The Lamest Story Never Told
Why bother? This prompt won’t win. (use that zip file idea here?)
How do I not Meta (Meta(Meta))

And Then, Things Got Worse…
Season 7!
Brickbarrel gag
Degenerating time loop

Flying High
Mac with wings?

Ponies Behaving Badly
[REDACTED]

We’re Not Gonna Take It
We’re gonna leave it!
Twisted sister?
[REDACTED]

That’s supposed to happen.
What does that button that’s on the back of Celestia’s throne do?

Children of the Night
Anything with no batponies!
Shadowcritters, abandoned experiment?

Who Do You Think You Are?
Discord proves to Twilight that identity is trumped by perception.

It Wasn’t a Dream. She Really Is Calling Me to Go to the Lake.
[REDACTED]

The Haze Fan Club
A device that blows fog all over when it strikes people.

Something Coffee_Minion can read to his kids
The legend of Starbuck, cafe-server to the great.

An Oddity
A spaced oddity
What does the button on the back of Luna’s throne do?

[Memes]
Metamemetical Memas
Nooo! My Spheghoots!

And Then There Were None
no words. words words words
no more alicrons
no more stars
no more cakes
Celestia holds on to her sanity with the very last cake in the universe. Heat death will finish when she completes it. She can’t give it up.

Sequels Are Never as Good as the Original
(Make a sequel to someone else’s fic)

All Work and no Play
…make a jackass a dull boy
Finish work on the record player. Press to play.

Praise the Sun!
Celestia braises the sun by accident; the culinary misfortune turns out to be a boon. Turns out the sun is best cooked sunny side up. Sorry to poach a tender topic.

Red and Black
roulette
I see a red horn and I want it painted black
red birth, black life

That’s What Forever Means
sappy romance
The meaning of an alicorn is forever.

The Twilight Zone
[REDACTED]

A Night To Remember
Luna figured out how to (?) and put an asterism in the sky to mark it. She and Twi discuss its meaning.

Fairy Tale
Clyde’s tale?

An Acquired Taste
meat
m3mes
magical resonance

Godshatter
[REDACTED]
Celestia pops in a cloud of feathers.

An Early Spring
Ponies learn tension physics.
Still learning to placate windigoes and achieve wrapup.
[REDACTED]

Kicking the Habit
I won’t be a nun anymore!

The World At Times May Veil Its Blessings
[REDACTED]

Take a Long Walk
around the world
skirt the forest

You Have to the Count of Five
Count von Funf?
…To write a story

Miracle of Love
Oy, how original
…That people don’t strangle each other?

A Glass Case of EMOTION
emotion museum
in case of ennui, pull handle
Hope still trapped inside

Don’t Touch That
…button on the back of Cadance’s throne.

While the Princesses Sleep
The servants creep, playing silly games with the guards (sliding on carpets, etc.)

The Mare, The Myth, The Legend
Lion, witch, wardrobe
Twi, Nightmare, Celestia

Best of Both Worlds
What’s at the lagrange point? Where’s the barycenter?
Bust of both worlds. Tiny aliens colonize Sunset Shimmer’s bacon bits, start an intermammary war.

Random Pretentious-Sounding Phrase
Silly pretentious story!

Pick a Random Conversation Heart and Use It as Your Prompt
This prompt will never win, either.
Squinty face creates a vile idea
is boop the snoot available?

Your Hidden Side
4d extensions?
RD is sick of losing her sides when Pinkie cracks a good mememe. But she keeps a spare side just in case.
Girls go to Boston Market and lose track of how many sides they got!

Stolen Identity
[REDACTED]

Changing of the Guard
Guard steals a little between time to write fanfic. A group of them have kept things going for a while, perpetuating an old story that has grown into a legend. Time to pass the torch?

I Didn’t Look Back at the Wreckage. Let the Guards Find It.
…And I got beaned by broken bricks when the bomb went off.
Burglar steals wrong thing, triggers elemental trying to escape from imprisonment. Destroys other artifacts in trying to contain it.

>>FanOfMostEverything, >>Fuzzyfurvert, >>SPark, >>Not_A_Hat, >>Monokeras, >>Cassius, >>Posh, >>Rao, >>Dubs_Rewatcher, >>Xepher, >>RawCringe, >>CoffeeMinion, >>TheCyanRecluse, >>AndrewRogue

Twilight’s Safe Zone: Retrospective

This was the idea I wrote for this prompt before the round started:

The Twilight Zone
Twi’s special place, a dimensional space she can pop into when she wants to be alone. Used since childhood. Turns out it’s a (hole in one of Celestia’s toys / Discord’s navel / Luna’s old bathtub / Faust’s vagoo / ?)

I judged that Discord’s navel was the most amusingly distasteful location that was also not too distasteful, and off I went. I did overwrite, and I spent a lot of time compressing it to keep the Twilight Velvet scene in the beginning, to which I’d gotten attached. I should have just removed it and saved it for the Fimfic version. I will smooth out the discordant junction in editing.

>>Rao

Though I’m a bit curious why it wasn’t made of stone when she was young.

I did address this! I mentioned that sometimes the walls seemed stony and sometimes leathery, and then Discord says that Twilight’s appearances were “discontinuous and nonconsecutive.” So, in the 15,782 year span between Discord’s cleanings of his navel, she was appearing in his navel at random times, only a few of which fell in the duration of his statutory confinement. (If I hadn’t done it this way, I would have had to have the stone walls turn leathery right after Discord was freed, which would have been too much of a tip off.) I could of course make this more clear, and I plan to do so now that I have time and additional space.

Thanks to all for the crits and kind words!

>>Jordanis, >>SPark, >>Morning Sun, >>Not_A_Hat, >>FanOfMostEverything, >>AndrewRogue, >>JudgeDeadd, >>Posh, >>Xepher

The Passing of the Burning Brand: Retrospective

Twilight’s Safe Zone having reached the point of completion in my mind, I found that I might just have time for a quick second fic. So I told myself “Just let yourself go. You can make it a silly crackfic. Write as if it doesn’t matter and see what comes out.”

So I tried that for a bit and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I then reread my prompt list for inspiration:

It Wasn’t a Dream. She Really Is Calling Me to Go to the Lake.
Your horn is really excalibur. I need it back.

(Whoever wrote that prompt, can you tell me what you had in mind for it? I am curious. And well spotted, >>AndrewRogue!)

So all this pretty writing came out instead. For some silly reason,* my fic came out initially at 600 words and I got fixated on keeping it at that number. As >>Jordanis first stated, I should have put the spare words to use.

Consensus is that I didn’t make it clear enough that this is far future Equestria, in a “Dying Earth” situation, and there is no one left by now for Celestia to protect. I will make this clear in the Fimfic version. I intend to strip the first half of the Serling narration and the Twilight Zone specific references, but keep the afterword.

Again, thanks to all for the criticism and praise!

---

* We were discussing word limits in chat:

Cassius - 02/12/2017
Write a mini that is exactly 400 words

Groaning Grey Agony - 02/12/2017
Nothing shall come of nothing. Speak again.

Ponyess - 02/12/2017
Nothing shall come from anything and everything

AndrewRogue - 02/12/2017
400 is ultra tight and I respect it.

And it's time for a retrospective!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Jordanis
>>Moosetasm
>>SPark
>>Fenton
>>HorseVoice
>>Xepher
>>AndrewRogue
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>scifipony
>>Posh

To start with, thank you all for the comments and critiques! I'll do my best to keep them in mind going forwards. Overall I'm pleasantly surprised that I was able to get as far as I did in my first Writeoff, but I'm also a little disappointed that I allowed myself to make some rather large missteps. Onwards and upwards, I suppose!

For starters, I didn't notice exactly how many -ly adjectives I was using while I was writing, but boy are there a lot. I've never really considered how that can bog down a reading, so thanks to everybody who pointed that out. The prompt relation in my idea was that "the twilight zone" was literally an "area of twilight," and I wanted to make this "area" to be something worth remembering for the characters. The points about the perspective change and pronoun confusion are greatly appreciated too, since I didn't even realize how off those were.

My biggest issue, and I think this was the most damaging of my mistakes, was that I really messed up the tone and meaning of Celestia's speech. The tone seems to have been interpreted as cute and fluffy, which was definitely part of what I wanted, but I had intended the last few paragraphs to slide into melancholy. I had actually wanted Celestia's speech to feel a bit off for Twilight's situation because I wanted the speech to read like it was being spoken not fully as an encouragement to Twilight, but also as a promise for Celestia to right her failures to Luna through Twilight(especially the last line of the speech). I think I didn't emphasize this enough for it to actually be understandable though. My only hints ended up being how Celestia initially reacts to Twilight's description of how she felt in her nightmare, Celestia staring only at the moon while she spoke, and Celestia's trembling at the end. I also initially had Twilight actually start questioning the logic of Celestia's speech, but I cut that out at some point when trimming down. The purpose of the last few lines was originally to have Twilight realize that Celestia seemed upset about something too, and Twilight's hugging Celestia tighter was Twilight's way of trying to comfort Celestia despite the situation being intended as the reverse. I don't know what I was thinking in trimming this part out because I think it would have helped a lot with getting to the meaning I intended.

Overall I think this ended up being a decent story, it just wasn't the story I thought it was in my head. I'll have to work more on what to trim and what not to trim since I think that was a big part of my problem. It seems like it'll be a while before the minific rounds come back again, so hopefully next time I'll have a bit of a better eye for it.

>>Corejo Mmm, I think part of why I felt the second half didn't change enough had a lot to do with where the mirror-line falls.

You mention in your retrospective that the perspective turn-around doesn't come in solidly until the first line of the second verse after the mirror. The fact that the reversal of text and reversal of meaning don't fall in the same place is, I think, why it's perhaps not obvious on the first read what's going on, and that may be part of my problem with feeling the reversal didn't change the meaning enough.

I'm not entirely sure how you'd do about adjusting that. Add another verse? cut a verse, part of a verse? If that show quote wasn't useful for making it absolutely clear what the situation is, I'd say cut those two lines about teachers, and mirror things in the middle of that verse, but I don't know if that's actually a good idea.

I'd like to note down more specifics, but I don't think I can wrap my brain around making adjustments forwards and backwards at the same time. :/

>>Xepher
Hah. I thought about it being a possible Council of Ricks when I read it, but then went 'There's no Twilightest Twilight' here, so the most important Twilight was missing.

>>Corejo

(Do I get to watch you eat your hat?)

>_< ... Oh, hush up and pass the ketchup.

no retrospective

only thing I will say is...

someone somewhere ranked this entry above another entry.

this is deeply frightening.

>>Moosetasm
>>SPark
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>Not_A_Hat
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Misternick
>>Xepher
>>Ranmilia
>>Rao
>>AndrewRogue
>>CoffeeMinion

Thanks muchly for the feedback, everyone. I only wish I had had time to enter writeoffs sooner, since even if I don't win anything, I can still use the advice and fix the stories up for fimfiction later. Getting into the second round was a personal victory too, so a "thank you" to the voters!

It's a Good Life

I actually had two ideas this round. The first was a Lost Cities-style exploration of human Twilight's lab on the night she first detected signs of something going on at Canterlot High, but it just didn't pan out beyond the first few sentences. Don't know if there wasn't enough meat to the concept or if I just can't work with that style, but there wasn't enough time to puzzle that out during the submission period.

Instead, I went with what you've all seen here: Rod Serling in Equestria. No, the man's last name was not Sterling. I just made it that to fit the noun phrase naming conventions of ponies. Fortunately, that quick ponification came with some very helpful implications about Rod's family, and by extension his supporting cast. Throw in a nod to how the series starts and a Versebreaker-esque metaphysical labor force, and...

Well, let's be honest; you get something woefully half-baked. I hashed out the concept, but never really pinned down what I wanted it to be, resulting in something that neither formed a coherent narrative arc nor was silly enough to excuse that incoherence. I'm happy to see that some people liked it, but this could've been a lot better.

As for what to do with it now... I'm honestly not sure. This definitely doesn't seem like something that can work as a full-fledged story on its own. I suppose we'll have to say, though it may end up going straight to Dueling Keyboards.

Oh, and I completely bunted on the title. Didn't help that SPark ponified that episode. :P

In any case, thank you all for your commentary and your time. See you next month!

>>Syeekoh >>GroaningGreyAgony >>Posh >>SPark >>CoffeeMinion >>Not_A_Hat >>Crafty >>Xepher >>Fenton >>Rao >>AndrewRogue >>Ranmilia >>TheCyanRecluse

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Ah, you're super right. I must have glanced over it, or perhaps the shock of the big reveal shook my memory. Good clue, in retrospect!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Ooh, I may need to try this exercise next time. At the very least, it looks like fun.

*blink blink* Holy crap! I can't believe this won first place! I was hoping it might medal, given the positive reviews, but based on how many good stories there were this round, I didn't have particularly high expectations!

So, a retrospective... I am, obviously, the author of "Trial by Fire." Which I wrote in maybe three or four hours.

On my kindle.

While stuck waiting for my delayed flight in an airport.

Needless to say, I am rather surprised it came out as well as it did. Or that it has done as well as it has!

I don't recall the exact origins of this little gem on an idea. Just that "Twilight Zone" made me think of a zone of something around Twilight Sparkle. And for some reason I had also been ruminating people's peculiar obsession with ritual and ceremony. And not just around religion. Just think about how many little rituals and ceremonies we have... From weddings and funerals to handing over of keys or changing out of guards...

Anyway, those two ideas collided and out of that mess came this story. I really enjoyed writing the dialogue between Brother Inkwell and Acolyte Bookkeeper. It was fun trying to write a bit of ceremony that only hinted at their true purpose at the beginning, before slowly making it clear. I waffled on whether or not to include Spike in the story itself, or just reference him as the order's creator... I considered having him be the serious but loving grandmaster who judges and aides his students... But then I decided that he'd find all the pomp and ceremony around his mother/sister/boss/best-friend to be a bit over the top and ridiculous.

Spike complaining about them being overly melodramatic, and Rarity having a hoof in the order's creation, were last minute additions that I'm particularly fond of. ;>

Inspiration is a very peculiar thing. After I started reading other entries, I was struck by a strong bit of it, which if I'd had earlier would likely have been written instead of this piece. After seeing so many people go for a straight Rod Sterling Twilight Zone interpretation, I had a brilliant idea... A rewriting of "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" wherein William Shatner sees a muffin fall out of the sky and get sucked into the engine... And then a cross eyed pony lands and waves at him, before trying to get at the lost muffin... Destroying the engine in the process. Of course, Derpy keeps falling off the wind just before anyone else sees her...

In the end, Shatner grabs the gun and shoots the window out... So he can toss the adorable pony his breakfast muffin...

Yes, my mind does go to strange places...

>>Ritsuko
I'm using 'elder' here as a synonym for 'older' more or less...Though he is one of the Order's Elders... But I picture them using a more martial artist style of ranking... After all, they are an Order of warrior monks. They battle chaos, ignorance, and misplaced library books!

>>SPark >>shinygiratinaz >>Morning Sun >>Posh >>Crafty
Thanks for the comments! I'm glad you all enjoyed it so much! :)

>>Fenton
Okay, now I'm curious: Who did you think wrote this one? I'm guessing it wasn't me, because I generally assume that my writing and writing style are good at slipping under the radar. ;)

>>Light_Striker
Hmmmmm.. *looks up 'proscribed'* You're completely right! I don't know why I thought proscribed had the opposite meaning.. But for some reason prescribed just doesn't sound... right. There's some other, more ceremonial word floating around the back of my head that fits there just right, but now I'm not sure what it is. Curses! My vocabulary is dwindling in my old age!

>>Not_A_Hat
Honestly, I wasn't sure how big of a part of things to make Spike at the beginning. He was always going to be the origin of the Order, but I wasn't sure how visible to make him in this story. The beginning was supposed to be the real heart of the story, with the ridiculous, amusing, and somewhat appropriate ceremony our eager Acolyte goes through containing most of the humor. I didn't want to go too over the top though. And it would have been difficult to keep the ceremony going and amussing while not quite giving away who their order was devoted to... So I decided to do it in two halves, one from the perspective of the eager Acolyte, and one from the wise Master of the order.

>>FanOfMostEverything
"Ritual seems to form around princesses like dust on the back shelves." I am so stealing that line. Hmmmm.. Actually, it would make a decent Write Off prompt if it were just a bit shorter... ;>

>>Xepher
I'm actually quite surprised by how 'well polished' it came out myself, especially given the medium I was writing it on. In some circles my typos are legendary, and I didn't really have a lot of time to proof read it. And sorry, but despite being stuck in an airport terminal for several hours, my brain was fully focused on comedy. Which is odd, because an airport terminal is probably only second to the DMV in places that should make one think of dystopian futures. O.o

>>Rao
Ah, but here's the problem with that: Ponies keep writing more books! And there's no way one pony, no matter how long lived or voracious a reader, can keep up with all of them! Of course, this certainly beats the alternative.. An eternity with nothing new to read. Just suggesting such a thing to Twilight would likely mean nightly dream visits from Princess Luna for weeks!

>>Ranmilia
Wait, I missed and opportunity to pun? Where? Where?? But honestly, even if I'd had more words, I'd still have kept the details of Twilight's melt down off screen. I wouldn't be able to do it justice, or make it funny / horrifying enough to create the outcome we see in the end. Well, maybe I could manage it, but it would take a lot more than 750 words to amussingly break a pony's mind like that. ;> And Twilight's melt downs aren't necessarily that bad. The order might have just picked up a bit of melodrama from their founder's love interest... On the other hand, Alicorns only grow more powerful as they age... She might be even worse than we can imagine, and Spike is so blase about it for the same reason frogs don't jump out of a pot of boiling water if you raise the temperature slowly...

>>AndrewRogue
I have indeed read quite a bit of Prachett! And he is certainly one of my favorite authors. Alas, his style is one I could never replicate. Though for some reason when I was writing Brother Inkwell, GhostOfHeraclitus's Dotted Line was a character that rather sprung to mind. Now there's a fellow who writes very Prachettesque works, IMHO. Though that could just be because he writes his ponies as very British. :)

>>Xepher
...... I was really hoping for a Silver at best.....
But really, I read your story as well, and it was ranked quite highly on my slate. So congratulations right back at you! :)

Thanks for the reviews, and to everyone who liked this story and voted it up! :)

>>GroaningGreyAgony
I choose to believe that one of the [REDACTED]s was "What does the button on the back of Twilight’s throne do?"

And you had so little faith in my prompt submission too. I mean, you turned out to be right, but still.

I wrote a long response to everything but I accidentally refreshed the page. Whoops. Didn't expect to get most controversial, should have picked a different endings, thanks everyone who liked my take on Pinkie.

Congratulations to our medalists TheCyanRecluse, Xepher, and Corejo! Also to my fellow finalists, and to everyone entering this round. My voting seemed a lot tougher than usual as I tried to figure how to juggle the top third of my slate.

Dance Dance Retrospective

Because I have very odd patterns of media exposure, the very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the prompt was not the old TV show, but this techno song from the first Playstation Dance Dance Revolution game. And from Dance Dance Revolution I got the idea of, well, a dance revolution. That was the intended prompt connection. >>Morning Sun has a fair point that there was no actual DDR action in this game, so to fix that lack, I give you this:

(darn it roger please support image embedding)

[img]https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/6/20/12056__safe_twilight+sparkle_fluttershy_animated_artist+needed_discorded_flutterbitch_dance+dance+revolution.gif[/img]

Also, apparently I missed that as of Season 6 DDR is officially in pony canon. That could have led to a VERY different story. Instead I guess my brain short-circuited somewhere into this:

[img]https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/6/23/17419__safe_rainbow+dash_artist+needed_parody_ace+attorney_phoenix+wright_objection.png[/img]

… because the idea of a dance-off combined with my lack of sleep (>>horizon) just charged straight into the land of random comedy without even a pause for breath.

The core of this was always escalating dumb jokes via refuge in audacity, in a "there are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to start" sort of way. (Blame that on the zeitgeist and my crankiness over 2017 politics.) F'rinstance, Dash's objection about Ember's lack of objectivity due to knowing Twilight is followed up directly with having Torch as the other attorney, which nobody ever comments on. Dash's cross-examination of Vinyl was purely there to provide an explanation that made the least possible sense, and then lampshade it to acknowledge how stupid it was, with a gratuitous sprinkle of purple prose. I'm pretty proud of "third-degree sick burns" and the swearing-in jokes, and those were probably a big factor in why this did as well as it did.

I kind of ran out of steam after that, honestly, and several reviewers rightly called me out on it. The fourth-wall break of the Harshwhinny section was a cheap joke that only worked because everything else around it was equally dumb. Long-time Writeoff fans might remember Part-Time School Nurse Luna from Through The Fire And Flames (*writeoff version). The anticlimactic dad joke was always planned, thus offering a concrete demonstration that the act of planning something doesn't make it a good idea.

And I really choked when it came to the end (I knew that when I was submitting the story, but I had nothing better). It was as stupid as the rest, but in an unfunny way, and I just didn't have any more energy to kick a solid ending line out of the story. I think >>Rao is on to something: it's edgy enough to cross a line but not edgy enough to be humorously insane. I'll shift it into a higher gear when I post, unless I hear better suggestions for the ending.

Anyway, once I got this one out of my system I was able to calm down and write a more serious entry. I still had fun, though, and I'm glad folks mostly liked it! I'll add it to my story collection on FIMFic.

>>SPark >>GroaningGreyAgony >>Monokeras >>JudgeDeadd >>Ritsuko >>Astrarian >>FanOfMostEverything >>scifipony
>>Xepher >>shinygiratinaz >>Not_A_Hat >>CoffeeMinion >>Posh >>AndrewRogue >>Ranmilia >>TheCyanRecluse

>>Haze
>>SPark
>>Astrarian
>>HorseVoice
>>Not_A_Hat
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>JudgeDeadd
>>Xepher
>>Posh
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>CoffeeMinion
>>AndrewRogue
>>Ranmilia

Thanks for all the comments and feedback everyone. Ok, so retrospective time.

This was an idea I had after an older write-off (forgot which one exactly) in true testament to only having the good ideas the day after. As a result, it has lived in my head for a while and has gone through several iterations of how to execute the core idea, which in part led to a bit of disjointedness, most notably the random TV at the end I didn't have time to introduce at the beginning. I knew that was a bit of an issue when I finished, but given that it was late at night at the time and I had no ideas how to fix it I hoped that the randomness of the rest of the piece covered for its sudden appearance.

For feedback about the underlining/other small specific things:
>>Xepher
Only the actual changing of a word is underlined. After that, the alteration is now "normal" in the scene, and as such characters react to it (as opposed to ordinary Mad Libs where they have to pretty much keep the words in a box- when doing a random noun they couldn't later describe it by other wider nouns, such as an instrument, or use the specific properties of whatever is conjured, i.e. the rattling Twilight hears)
>>Haze
Yeah, in retrospect I agree. It was underlined because it was meant to be the pony they end up ultimately giving Discord to use.
>>Xepher
The point of this was to be Twilight's blurting a stream of consciousness and then a deadpan realization. I don't think I got the tone across properly though, so I'll have to fix that if it survives with the changes to the ending I'm planning.

Now then, the two most common criticisms seem to be the beginning and the end. The beginning I'll have to tune up- redoing the start off and either expanding or cutting the explanation of the game seems to be in order. As for the end, continuing the gimmick seems like a good idea. The main reason it got cut was because of how the game was working in the TV iteration. Kinda starting to regret that one, but they needed a way to watch, and something out of place does seem like the best match for Discord.

Finally, this is my story I liked the best so far, and the first one where I think I've gotten good enough to actually polish it up and post it on Fimfiction. Although that probably won't be for a while, seeing as I want to expand it a significantly, really only have time on weekends, and have to figure out how to get (a) proofreader(s) as well.

I want to belatedly note that this was the story on top of my ballot, and while second place was a heartbreaking call I didn't have to ever seriously think about first. Excellent job. Looking forward to seeing it make the leap to FIMFic.

(And I should remind everyone that I've added a folder to the FIMFiction Writeoff group for this month's contest. If you expand your entry to 1000+ words and publish it there, add it to the Writeoff folder! Everyone who has submitted at least one Writeoff story should have contributor status in the group — if not, PM me from your FIMFic account and I'll fix it.)

>>Syeekoh
I'm disappointed this didn't make finals. It was fifth in my prelim ballot and would have landed in my top 25% overall, I think. The weird tone was probably what made it a tough sell, but by that same token it was creative and intriguing.

I want to offer some late encouragement here, Fenton: while neither I nor the crowd rated this particularly high on the finals ballot, it's the story I'm most looking forward to seeing on FIMFiction in an expanded form. For Writeoff purposes I have to evaluate how well the story works as a standalone piece, and this was hit especially cruelly by the 750-word cutoff. Basically, you have a marvelous Act 1 here which doesn't work by itself, but completing the story with Acts 2+3 is going to give you something magical.

First off, thanks to all who commented.

>>Fuzzyfurvert
>>SPark
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Exuno
>>Monokeras
>>Posh
Yeah, no way am I avoiding the Lost Cities comparison here, though the direct inspiration was the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and some of the travelogues I've seen of that abandoned area. So at least I got the tone (mostly) right for my aim it seems.

My "vision" of the world was that Twilight had let loose some accidental spell that literally blasted a crater, destroying canterlot, the sisters, and herself. In the process, it sent the world's axis tiling almost ninety degrees on it's side. The Sun and the Moon are left just barely wobbling in farther orbits from the blast, and as such that there's only a thin band of habitable area around the now-northern (previously canterlot) and southern poles where both can be seen in the sky at the same time, and give just enough light that plants can still barely grow. Everything else, where only sun or moon is visible in the sky, or where they ever set, is too cold for life.


>>Monokeras
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Astrarian
So I thought I was being subtle AND clever by describing yak-yakistan to the south, showing that the world isn't oriented the way it should be, but then I realized Equestrian geography isn't exactly solid to most people (unlike if I'd described Canada as west of the former USA) so this just ended up looking like a confused mistake. Definitely strike one there. And then...

>>Astrarian
>>Haze
Yup, completely confused my OWN sense of direction, and wrote east when I meant west for the stone herd. Strike two!

>>AndrewRogue
Yeah, writing this I used "Crepuscular" and the word stuck in my head, so I tried to squeeze in a quick third entry musing on that word. Strike three! But I thought the lizard thing was clever, especially that a SINGLE lizard might even have a variable number of limbs. I mean, it's not like when I go on a hike I count legs on every lizard. :-)


Thanks again everyone, and if/when I expand this, I'll try to fix up all that's been pointed out.

Thanks to everyone that read and commented!

>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Not_A_Hat
>>FanOfMostEverything
>>Cassius
>>Rao
>>Rao
>>Ranmilia
>>Haze
>>Posh
>>AndrewRogue

This was a last-minute third entry, inspired as I finished writing "Exclusion Zone" and couldn't stop thinking on how weird the word crepuscular (which I'd used there) sounded. So I took the easy route, and channeled my inner Twilight to muse on it. As was noted though, it was really just me musing on it, with only vague notions of her PoV as I did so. As such, the voice is a failure, as it's just me here, not her.

I still think the word is fun, AND that there's some great introspection Twilight could get out of it, but I need a serious rework to make this have a "point" as well as to make it sound like her.


>>SPark
>>scifipony
>>Exuno
Yup... written while sleepy (and rushed) at 3am. So I totally just typoed that "beggars the question" bit. Definite facepalm as soon as it was pointed out! Then I saw I'd also said "predictive nomenclature" when I'd been unable to recall the phrase "nominative determinism" and had meant to go back and correct that, but forgot. Double fail!


That said, thanks again everyone! I'll try to keep character voices in my head better next time I write first person.

>>Xepher
Probably by being overall better and not sprinkling fancy-fart words all over everything. That is the general consensus I get.

The Outer Limits — Retrospective

Dang it, I knew that scoring gold instead of bronze last time was going to screw up my medal streak. Instead of two 3rd places I picked up a 1st and a 5th … ;-p

In all seriousness, though: I'm grateful that this scored fifth place regardless, especially against such strong competition! While I wrote Dance Dance Revolution first and briefly considered having that be my only entry for the round, I felt like I owed it to myself to submit something besides a crackfic. With the brief time I had remaining in the submission period, I did a little prompt brainstorming. The title of this one came first, as word association from the prompt crossed from TV show to TV show, and then that sort of backfilled into the idea of a pony out in the far reaches of space where the rise and fall of the sun didn't change the lighting, and things sort of dropped into place from there. >>Morning Sun name-checks Bad Horse's "The Gathering" — which I didn't consciously think about while writing this, but in hindsight was absolutely a subconscious inspiration and/or source. Looking back, I feel bad that this is toeing the line of stealing that story's ideas and emotional punch, though I think it's still got enough of its own thing going on to be publishable.

Also, as I vaguely noted in >>horizon, it was a little disheartening seeing so many comments which suggested that I'd failed to communicate the point of the ending to readers, so I want to talk about that for a moment. It's an explicit compare and contrast that serves as a statement not just about Celestia, but about Asteria and her emotional arc:

It occurs to me, in hindsight, how much it must have hurt [Celestia] to move Luna's moon. How much heartbreak was sublimated in that punctuality. Refuge in routine.

This is the easy part. The narrator is providing an out-loud judgment of Celestia (not to mention reinforcing something that we already know). She sees Celestia's behavior and, in it, recognizes her pain.

Then I set course for the next flickering star. Soon, it will need to be relit.

This is the implied part, and contrasts with/follows directly from Celestia's "refuge in routine".

Unleash that same logic on the final paragraph.

Asteria's in denial.

I tried to hint at that throughout the story. She deliberately blocks out Celestia (closing her eyes against visual communication) when Celestia might make an emotional appeal. She denies having emotions (which several of you commented on), but Celestia merely saying her name can, "despite everything", cause "a tiny twinge at [her] heart". Celestia has been on her mind a lot lately. She admits to being annoyed. These are not robot things. My intention with the story was to present a narrator who was trying way too hard, and tell her story through the cracks in her facade.

Too subtle for the Writeoffs? Maybe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can try pushing in a few more hints before dropping this into my shorts collection on FIMFic (publication requires 1000 words and I doubt I can make it work at twice the length). I'll definitely name-check Asteria earlier. I'll think about adding in a little more about Asteria and Luna but I don't want to disrupt the flow.

>>Rao

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

you know what I'm just going to pretend that was intentional

Seriously, I just made up a name that sounded right, the fact I had her working with falling stars was literally coincidence. But now that it's been pointed out, that is awesome as heck.

Thank you all for reading and commenting, and see you next round!

>>Xepher >>SPark >>Not_A_Hat >>FanOfMostEverything >>Misternick >>CoffeeMinion >>Posh >>AndrewRogue >>Ranmilia

>>Fenton
>>CoffeeMinion
It's just AJ. The "why" is no more complicated than "It's a Twilight Zone shtick." I didn't really think up anything more complex than that.

>>Monokeras
Granny won't be waking up.

>>Not_A_Hat
>>CoffeeMinion
Good eye picking up on the fact that it's not an opposite-type curse. My intent going in was simply that any declarative statements would be "wrong" immediately upon making them. Hence, the clock experiment to clarify the nature of the event.

I was careful picking out AJ's last words though. If she said, "she's sleeping," that can be wrong by virtue of Granny being awake or dead. But by saying "she's just sleeping," there's an implication of relieved fear that can only be wrong by virtue of death.

>>Xepher
Quite right. It's a huge leap for Apple Bloom to start up an experiment to see what was up. I planned more instances of wrongness originally, but word count is a cruel mistress. When AJ says, "no, no, not yet," that's not really a declarative statement about anything in particular, so it can't be wrong, exactly. Although making it a thought instead of spoken is a fantastic idea nonetheless.

>>shinygiratinaz
I hadn't thought of that option at the time. An expanded version would definitely have a "can't undo" scene/test put in earlier on. Good catch.

Everyone else: Thanks for reading. 7th place is pretty good I'd say, and I'll happily take >>AndrewRogue's "Most Twilight Zone" award as well. Not bad for my... 4th (?) Writeoff.

I appreciate everyone that took the time to review. The fimfic version is currently sitting at 4k words, but who knows what it'll end up looking like in the end. (If I publish it at all)

Thanks everyone!

>>Rao

There's a hint of something more grandiose going on when we see, "After Star Swirl himself had asked her the question." That line might be tugging at some alternate origin for our dear Twilight,

I agree with you there. The expanded version ended up with Star Swirl becoming the main character antagonist.

>>Not_A_Hat

...Well, if you haven't read Voltaire, you should.

I haven't. I'll have to remedy that soon.

>>Crafty

I just wanted to say that the "And, like all eternities, there was eventually an end" was a line that particularly stood out to me. Very nicely put :)

^__^

>>SPark

This was inspired by Asimov's The Last Question, wasn't it?

Not what I had in mind, but it probably was an unconscious influence.

So this happened.

Honestly, at a lot of levels this was a writing exercise for me with two goals.

1. Write the Mane 6 (with an emphasis on someone not Twilight)

2. Write more than two characters.

Basically, neither are things I do much. If you look at everything I've written for Pony, it's mostly side and background characters. And even in longer formats, I tend to favor two character interaction scenes. So yeah, I'd decided before the round started that I was gonna rectify both those things. I also write a lot of third person limited, free indirect speech, so I opted against that this go round too.

I actually didn't care for the prompt much, and I didn't want to do what I figured would the the obvious gags (direct TZ parody, AU story, Twilight centric story), which left me kind lacking ideas. Then I looked left at my game shelf, saw TI sitting right above my Vinyl and Tavi plushes and was like: "Hey, that'll work." The rest is approximately 600 and some change words.

I didn't want Twilight to be the "feature" pony, so I considered matters and decided Rainbow Dash has already been shown to like board games, so might as well use her. Twilight was an easy sell, as was Pinkie. AJ could be baited with a challenge, and I'd sort of intended (because I'm a dirty rotten shipper) to imply Rarity/AJ as a couple of sorts (admittedly did not succeed so much), so Rarity tries because AJ does.

Then it turns out everyone loves the game because tabletop games are awesome.

And that's all really. I really did expect this to wash out in prelims (or barely squeak in) because, all told (and as many comments agree) it was kind of a nothing story. Just a cute bit of slice of life with no real depth or twist.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
I feel this review more than anything kinda sums up this story. "Decent job, author" indeed.

>>Orbiting_kettle
I was kinda curious. I thought that I could maaaaybe get gamers who might understand the concept if not TI itself, but yeah, this was dead against non-gamers. You are probably right re: darling. Honestly I was using as a character indicator to avoid dialogue tags in a spot or two. And yeah, 8 hours is optimistic but isn't that an important part of the game too? Lying about how incredibly long it will ACTUALLY be? :p

>>Fenton
Yeah. For better and worse, I purposefully boiled the characters down aggressively (including the tree wink, wink, nod, nod) for simplicity is working on voice and fitting in the word count. As far as prompt connection, it is tenuous as all hell, but it was mostly that playing TI puts you in a little zone when you get into it as your who world revolves around the cardboard and plastic and friends for a lot of hours. A Twilight (Imperium) zone, one might say. Ha ha.

>>Moosetasm
See above. I don't disagree. Also about this comment I was starting to wonder how many other board gamers were part of this group.

>>Morning Sun
Thank you kindly.

>>SPark
As has been pointed out, Twilight Imperium (3rd Edition) is actually a real game and everything written in this story is true. Prompt connection is still hella tenuous.

>>Haze
Yeah, in retrospect you are right and I needed to have a time indicator in the first scene. I also would've loved to work in a couple cracks at FFG's expense, but just didn't end up feeling the space (you are indeed correct that it wasn't an actual joke about FFG rulebooks from that era being absolute dumpster fires, it was more gamer personality: RD would want to just tell people how to play and deal with things as they came up while Twi would want to read the rules). And yeah, you're also right, I ended up with a smaller journey than I wanted when it turned out half the cast was ready to play from the get go.

>>FanOfMostEverything
I think this is probably one my best titles. And finally, someone who hasn't played TI. And is possibly not a board gamer, which would send this story falling flat on its face.

>>Monokeras
I'm starting to think I write stories with the active goal of landing near the bottom of your slate, Mono. Between being a fantasy writer and a gamer who likes writing about games, I think I'll have to work very hard to avoid that sort of comment. :p

>>Xepher
No apologies needed! For better and worse, not doing a deep dive (while worse for the story) was my actual goal here. So, one could say I succeeded at failing, as it were.

>>Rao
Typo. Embarrassing, because I actually proofed this story a couple times. And agreed re: adding a bit more meat. Honestly, somebody brings it up a few comments down I think, but doing 6 characters in a mini is a silly, silly idea. There just isn't room to do a lot.

>>JudgeDeadd
I expected a little more of this, honestly. Some tabletop familiarity but not TI specifically. Also glad to see that it does seeeeem to work at that level? Thank you for the kind words.

>>Posh
No argument. I should've made Dashie work more for the win there.

>>Not_A_Hat
Yep.

>>AndrewRogue
Honestly, many FFG do have a lot of depth and making this comment while thinking about playing some Chaos in the Old World or something hurt me. =(

>>Ranmilia
Stop telling me to cut the entire first half of every scene I write, Ran. =(

>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you kindly.

>>Rao
If it's any additional consolation, you won my slate and I am vicariously salty for you that the best Twilight Zone story didn't medal. :p