CoB Perma-Rejected · 5:50am Apr 7th, 2013
City of Brass has been turned down by EQD permanently. On its first strike.
That's definitely a new low for me. 
The reason cited (for the permanence, that is, not the rejection itself, which had many other reasons) was "plagiarism". I didn't know what I was doing was plagiarism, and certainly didn't know it was bad enough to earn the story a ban.
For the record, the prereader was very nice about it, and worked hard to give me a helpful review. But this has made me rethink City of Brass as a whole. For one thing, Bilious Brass was referred to as a Gary Stu. That came as a surprise to me--I've always thought making someone stupid was kind of a deal-breaker for Stu-ness. In addition, the opinion of the prereader was that the story simply tries too hard to be musical.
Honestly, I have to agree.
This story was more fun when I started writing it, but as its inherent flaws have become more apparent, I've started to think it's a waste of time. There are other fics I could be writing. I'm getting ideas all the time. Is it really a good idea to stick with a fic that may simply be bad?
It saddens me to think of shelving City of Brass. I was proud of the story, I was looking forward to writing more Bilious (one of my favorite villains to write), and I was, for some time, proud of the work I'd done on the songs. But I think shelving it is what I'm gonna have to do.
Anyways, sorry about the big speech. I'm just kind of getting my thoughts down.
Surprisingly, the prereader indicated that character interactions are my strong suit. It's funny, because I always thought comedy was my thing. Maybe I should work harder on editing my other, more interaction-heavy works...
Oh, and on an unrelated note, I'm past halfway through the script! Huzzah!
Well that's just no good. But hey, #YOLO
What were you apparently plagiarizing is what I wanna know.
987743 Songs. I tried to keep the parodies close to the originals, so people would be able to keep track of where the lyrics were in the tune. Apparently, I went too far. Or to close.
987939 Huh...that's interesting.