REVIEWS: August Minific Writeoff

At last! I've spent all week on review and critique of every story in the August minific writeoff. Brace for incoming text — between the 52 stories, I've typed up over 14,000 words of reviews.

That's a lot.

The thing is, I'd like to think that there's something worthwhile in my reviews, even for stories you didn't write. My reactions to the stories cover similar ground to the other reviewers', but I've focused more intently on ways to address writing faults and improve the story. Often, this means I go off on tangents about writing principles and deconstruction of common problems. In these 14,000 words, I talk about the Rule of Three; scenes vs. stories in minific; making every word count; what crossovers require; the alienness of Equestria, and far more. If you're just here to read horsewords, go ahead and skip this; but if you'd like to learn from the shortcomings of other authors' work as well as your own, you might want to give this a skim. (Since all of the reviewed stories are under 750 words, it's also easy to cross-reference the stories with the writing issues I discuss.)

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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Three quick notes before we get started:

A) These reviews are in alphabetical order. (The number before the name is where it appears on the writeoff gallery list. You may want to open that in another tab so you can cross-reference my critiques.)

B) Going into this level of detail and deconstruction took me way too much time. If you learned something from a review, or it will help you edit and improve your story — whether the helpful bit was in your story's review or not — please leave a comment saying so. If my work didn't tell you anything that the other reviewers didn't already say, please be honest and tell me. If the solid week I spent on this project isn't actually useful to others, I need to refocus.

C) I've included a HITEC score for each story. What's a HITEC score? Click that link to find out, and help me refine the rating system!

In brief, HITEC is a rating of the story's relative strengths in five areas — Hook, Idea, Technical, Execution, and Consistency. HITEC does not measure stories against each other. Every HITEC score adds up to 100%, so think of it as "x% of what I appreciated about the story comes from this category".

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4. 25 Famous Last Words
First impressions: Title is promising. Twilight amnesia. Some minor grammar slips.
Evaluation: I think we have here an early candidate for the Most Controversial category — seeing as how there's a trick to it that's never explained (disclaimer: I am not the author). If you're in on the trick, it's pretty amusing, and if you're not, this is going to look like the worst kind of random. Here be spoilers if you missed it while reading through. (EDIT: Though a later glance at the other reviews suggests most folks got it.)
At any rate, this is pretty much straight-up silliness, with the curveball of Twilight's speech. There are some hints (the title, Pinkie's name-drop) but it's overall subtle. The effect was used well, but unfortunately it doesn't feel like it works without that insider knowledge — the surface story is too random to make this sing on multiple levels, which would have been truly delicious. Still, made me smile a bunch, and that's worth something, even with the meta-penalty.
HITEC: 20-30-20-10-20

22. A Moment of Clarity
First impressions: An unnamed someone meeting death? This one seems to want to unroll slowly.
Evaluation: Alright, so this was actually about memory loss. Works pretty well in hindsight, but it took me longer than I was comfortable with to pick up the scenario. Some of the descriptions were frustrating — I get that we're seeing this through Granny Smith's blurry eyes, but "there was something at the top (of the face) obscuring it" doesn't even hint that this is Applejack and that was her hat, and as readers it would help for us to be more grounded than the main character, feel like we understand something even if the narrator doesn't. The very first hint I had to the characters' identities was the trees outside the window, which vaguely suggested the Apples, but then one of her three visitors had died?! … and just like that I'm completely lost until the names start flying and the titular moment comes around. I guess if that's the effect you wanted, it worked, but frustrating the reader is generally not going to work in your favor. Granny's last words have some good punch, but would have a lot more if we knew all along this was about her and the Apples, so the whole story could build their characterization instead of simply the last 100 words of it.
HITEC: 20-20-20-10-30

42. Alawst King Do(ne)
First impressions: I have absolutely no idea what an "Alawst" is despite googling (though there's a Daring Do signal here). The story had better explain the title's wordplay.
Evaluation: That's disappointing — it's just the first and middle names of A.K. Yearling. "Alawst?" Seriously? But looking beyond that, this is an impressive retrospective in monologue. The framing is effective — the single line of the mare at the start sets up the twist that brings the whole thing crashing down (and had me guessing that she was in legal trouble over Ahuizotl's death, so nice little misdirection). She strikes a great tone of regret. Needs an edit pass, such as the judge calling her "Ms. Do" instead of "Ms. Yearling" when Do exposits that she changed her name with marriage — but when my biggest gripes boil down to nitpicks over names, you know this has a strong foundation. (EDITED TO ADD: -1 point for that horrible title pun, now that it's been pointed out in the review thread, and +1 point for sneaking it past me.)
HITEC: 10-30-20-20-20

37. And a Smile Means Friendship to Everyone
First impressions: Disney-quote title. Celebrity worship. Fleur is way underused, so you've got my attention.
Evaluation: You explained the joke. DON'T EXPLAIN THE JOKE.
… on the other hoof I think I would have missed it if you hadn't explained the joke. So I'm glad the author's note was there, but if it doesn't work without the author's note, your idea is too obscure to get laughs. The way to do this, if you really need to stretch for this particular gag, is to work the A/N information into your earlier exposition. You have an entire section full of Fleur at a news conference; how hard would it have been to have a reporter address her as "Miss Dis Lee"? Of course, if you'd done that, you'd have telegraphed the ending gag a mile away. Basically, what I'm working around to saying here is that I don't think there was any possible way to sell this joke, but this was a valiant attempt, and I wish you'd applied the writing skill on display here to a smarter premise.
HITEC: 20-0-30-20-30

21. Brother of Mine
First impressions: Intro paragraph reads like Lost Cities. This is a good thing.
Evaluation: Great setting, premise, and smooth writing — you had me, alas, right up until the ending. Unless there's some canon I'm not aware of, the final question is totally robbed of its punch by what we know of MLP's present day, which is that it did work out pretty well for him. (If I'm wrong, then this is relying on some deep implication that really needs to be baked into the story in exposition somewhere.) I can't help but feel that this needs to be a longer story — it was setting up for some really stark choice or inner turmoil, but the bit of disquiet we see just isn't enough, and I'd have loved to see more interaction between Scorpan and the ponies. (Aside: Who's the fifth "other" after Tirek, Celestia, Luna, and Starswirl?)
HITEC: 40-20-30-10-0

44. ...but whose?
First impressions: Title clearly plays off the story denouement. Tentacle beasts…? Mini-Smoozes or something? My brain leaps straight to hentai. Bad brain!
Evaluation: I ended this thinking, "The questions at the end? Those are both really good questions, and I wish they had been answered." Is this even an MLP fic? It reads more like an HP Lovecraft tale that just happens to have ponies in (what with a few nods like unicorn hornblasts and a blue pegasus). Don't get me wrong, it seems like great Lovecraft, but that's not what I'm here to read. Wait — the flying blue pony is "like me", the narrator, who has a unicorn horn. Is this supposed to be Celestia and Luna? There aren't nearly enough textual clues to draw conclusions, alas, and the weird goop monster appears to be either a crossover or a completely original creation. (Missed opportunity for Smooze-fighting?)
I do see the clever meta-textual thing going on with the title and the two final questions. The problem is, without knowing the protagonist's identity, or having any sense of their chances, or knowing what's at stake in the fight, that meta-text doesn't have any impact. This would benefit from playing its cards way less close to its chest about the backstory of the scene it shows.
HITEC: 10-10-30-10-40

34. Caped Crusaders
First impressions: Nice titular double entendre with superheroes and the CMC. Glad to see the story does in fact play that up.
Evaluation: This definitely threw in a few headfakes, breaking my expectations every time I almost had a handle on it. I thought that, given the premise of CMCs as superheroes, the press conference was a weaksauce way of exploring it, so it was great to see the story subvert itself when the villain arrived. But then the reporters ended up being the Mane Six (I didn't catch the identity of the questioners until a second read — nicely done), and the plot was resolved without ever getting to see the CMC in action. That might have worked if it was foreshadowed that they were just kids playing around and the thing was a setup from the start, but no — apparently they're grown-up, legitimate heroes, but still are stuck in their sisters' shadows. That's really sad (and would have been great as the point of the story, but didn't feel intentional).
This feels a little like a nitpick, but Lord Tempest's arrival is plenty to meet the theme — for some reason the "one-liners" aspect of the press conference feels forced. It does have the benefit of establishing the CMCs' heroic creds, but their prior wins could be massaged in a little more smoothly. Anyway, overall, there's a lot of unfulfilled potential here, which further editing or rewriting could tease out.
HITEC: 30-30-10-10-20

39. Daring Do and the Curse of Ahuizotl
First impressions: Title promises straight-up archaeological adventure. First paragraphs do not disappoint.
Evaluation: I'm not sure what I think of the kicker of Ahuizotl killing Daring's father, though the story follows through on it; I can't help but think that such a thing would grimly alter the nature of their … adversariality? … from what we see in the show. And I'm really not sure what to think of the ending. All I can say is that structurally, everything feels like it's leading up to a big reveal, but I'm missing some key piece that ties it all together. In the absence of that, If I try to dissect the story I'm probably firing at shadows, so instead let me offer some advice from my role-playing days that might help the author fix it: the so-called "Rule of Three." If there's something that it's crucial for your PCs readers to pick up on to advance the plot understand the story, don't drop the hint just once. Sprinkle it in. Give them multiple ways to figure out what's going on. To its credit, "25 Famous Last Words" did this — there was the title, there was Pinkie's attribution of one of Twilight's quotes, and there was the running theme of the quotes themselves. Looking at other reviews, it seems like most people put two and two together with that story, so it could benefit you to similarly be less subtle. (EDITED TO ADD: Oh! Huh. That's really clever, actually, but since I had to read comments to figure it out, the score and commentary stands.)
HITEC: 30-20-30-10-10

15. Disconsolate
First impressions: Fifty-cent title word. Graveyard. Bracing for dark and/or tragedy.
Evaluation: Like the previous story, this seems to be relying on implication to carry its weight. I don't think it succeeds, but for a different reason. Two sisters and a husband, the lie, the halt at the end: there are a lot of things pointing very strongly to a murder, and there's nothing in the story which I read as contradicting that, and good use of exposition to put the clues supporting that in central positions. That having been said, the use of background characters/OCs and the lack of space to get us into the head of the love triangle (exacerbated by the viewpoint character being an outsider) leaves the impact of the reveal falling flat. We're not close enough to the tragedy. I suspect this would have been pretty damn creepy if it were, say, Pinkie and Maud, and had been another 500-750 words longer, to show us more of the "happy marriage" with tension simmering below the surface.
HITEC: 20-10-20-20-30

28. Epitaphs
First impressions: Two in a row with titles implying Dark, in first-person present narration. First few paragraphs seem more mystical. Let's do this.
Evaluation: For some reason I was convinced that it was Twilight visiting the graves, so when the Discord reveal turned at the end, it had some real impact. Nice job feeding my misdirection with things like the mention of Spike. This is a solid story, and accomplishes what it set out to do. My primary critique is that the final sentence is a mess. ("World" is misspelled, and I have no idea what to make of Luna having Celestia's cutie mark, nor how to feel about what it most obviously seems to imply, that being her death — since we don't get an epitaph for her like the others.) Despite that major last-second stumble, I finished this story appreciating the way it sold its premise; even though "visiting graves" by all rights should have turned out rather hokey, the writing carries this through to the twist. Falls just short of my top contenders.
HITEC: 20-0-20-40-20

18. Eponalepsis
First impressions: That title. The tide of the Pun-ic Wars turns; my brain's fields, a-salted. That title.
Evaluation: Sweet stars, so very literary. This reads halfway in between prose and poem, with a shine of epic, some modernist turns of phrase … oh hell, I have no idea, but it's certainly unique. I'm detecting a massive Judeo-Christian influence here, with turns of phrase that feel biblical, and "The Nightbringer" ripped straight out of Paradise Lost and thrown into a weird inverted context that kinda pony-works. There are some lovely subtle details, like the transition of dialogue tags at Celestia's final sunset.
I wish the big-picture story was as impressive. I'd have liked to know what happened between Celestia and Twilight, or at least been given some hints; at only ~550 words, you had more room to let that breathe. Was Twilight taken over by the Nightmare? That's all I've got, but there's no hard evidence for or against it in the text, unless I'm supposed to read between the lines and note Luna doesn't seem to be in charge of the night any more, but that's really reaching. And if the Nightmare theory holds, why would she have agreed to Celestia's request at the end?
HITEC: 40-10-40-0-10

46. Fall
First impressions: Extremely ambiguous title (descent? season?). Sombra? Hmm.
Evaluation: I don't often see a familial relationship between Sombra and Cadence posited. I wonder why that is? Here, it felt like a genuine twist — perhaps in a "Luke, I am your father" cliché kind of way, but it worked for the story nevertheless. Writing quality was strong, the exposition felt natural, and even though Fiocco (bonus trivia: that name is apparently Italian for "Snowflake") is an OC it felt like we got a pretty good sense of him in 750 words. The story does everything it needs to do, and made great use of its space constraints. Like Epitaphs, this is a strong story with a last-second misstep — in the last two paragraphs, the story suddenly goes ultra-telly, and the fall seems both artificially lengthened and anticlimactic. I suspect deadline pressures at work here. Delete the final section and rewrite it, and you'll have a good short piece. Unfortunately, since that weak final section is also the only thing which ties it in to the theme for me, I'm going to have to dock this one from "one of my top contenders" down to the "great-but" tier; that's totally a contest scoring thing, so don't take it as a slight against the story's quality.
HITEC: 20-20-30-30-0

1. Falling Apples
First impressions: Bad Horse seemed highly impressed. Cheerimac. No "eee"s on the "nope".
Evaluation: Well, this is interesting: a story that only works in the context of the writeoff! Seriously, if you added 250 words and threw it up on FIMFiction free of context, you'd get some weak chuckles, but the ending would come way too far out of left field. The fic absolutely requires the prompt to land the punchline — which gives it a surprising amount of bite, enough so that the straight-faced story suddenly derailing into a gag — which is one of my least favorite things in writeoffs, ever — didn't leave me feeling cheated. Solid writing and character interplay throughout, too. I'm not sure this will make my shortlist, but definitely color me among the impressed.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

50. Final Resting Place
First impressions: Daring Do and sidekick. "In Situ" is a great exotic-sounding pony name, enough so that I had to stop and see if it was a pun. Hang on: they're old.
Evaluation: Minific competitions see a lot of entries that don't "tell a story" in the sense of introducing and resolving a conflict, but rather explore a single scene, or a moment in time. There are some scenes that need to be stories, and there are some scenes that work well as scenes. (If I could better predict which was which, I'd do better in the minific writeoffs.) This is a scene that works as a scene. There's nothing at stake here (except maybe whether Daring would like it, but I called the twist halfway through, and there was no way she wouldn't), but the characters are memorable and authentic, and the core idea is touching. I think you accomplished here something that I tried and failed to do with one of my entries, and I'll talk about that more after judging finishes. The ending lacks the punch of what precedes it, but comes to a natural, quiet close. A little less audacious than Falling Apples, but equally solid, while keeping the same tone all the way through.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

33. Final Witness
First impressions: "Witness" makes me think of a courtroom. Not sure what to make of the open. Gonna guess it's about AJ's parents' death.
Evaluation: It was. And it's got some interesting ideas, though I'm not quite sure it sells them. AJ talking about the last words she learned in school broke me out of the story; trust me, if you're ever in that boat, any thoughts of distant, abstract profundity will be completely wiped out by the tragedy right in front of your face. Would have held me better if she'd started imagining what her dad might have said, turning it over obsessively in her head and bringing up old mistakes she hadn't quite forgiven herself for, and that would also have contrasted better with the twist at the end. That, incidentally, is another one of those things with lots of potential, but there's no foreshadowing, and reading back through Granny's dialogue, there's no signal that it's on her mind until the ending — I'd have loved some subtext that Granny's horribly bitter at AJ for a reason that she can never dare reveal, and trying to convince herself that it's alright at least as much as she's trying to convince AJ. Clean that up, as well as some of the repetitive dialogue, and you'll really have something here.
HITEC: 20-30-30-10-10

47. Forging Harmony
First impressions: Title doesn't give me much. OCs? Ooh, young Celestia.
Evaluation: So what I said about Final Resting Place? This one is a scene that DOES need to be a story. At least, it needs another 500-1000 words, where it can give us the rest of the scene — I'll bet you all the prize money I win this round that it was shaved down to the bone to reach 750 words. It reaches the limit and then has to very suddenly force a great deal of the story out via implication: we know Celestia wins, but we don't know how she overcomes the 6:1 guard ratio (nice subtle detail with the numbers, btw). We know that she's right about harmony, or maybe that she isn't, but the title seems to take a positive stance. And most importantly, we know her famous last words are totally missing Luna, who really should make an appearance in the story to heighten the ironic subtext. The story really, really needs to end on Celestia's line, though, because Serene's comeback totally deflates the effect. I want to read this story on FIMFic, but it's too big to fit in the competition. (One parting nitpick I couldn't work in anywhere else: the viewpoint switches between Serene and Celestia halfway through, and it would be stronger if you picked one whose head to stay in.)
HITEC: 20-30-30-10-10

23. Generations
First impressions: Ambiguous title. Pony Jeopardy — huh, cool. "Al Extra Bucks"?
Evaluation: Oh — Al Extra Bucks. Derp. Must be sleepy, since it took me reading "Alex" to get that. Though that does lead into a pot-calling-kettle-black criticism: the story suffered a bit from its profusion of names. I lost who was who once it shifted to the human side, and to have the game host be "Al," "Alex" AND "Mikey" was weird. At heart, a cute idea with some d'aww (fun fact: Lauren Faust is currently childless!) and some egregious typoes amid its generally smooth writing, though the idea of kids playing Jeopardy for fun was weird, especially, when they acted so pitch-perfectly like children otherwise. At heart, good, but the strange and familiar were just off-kilter enough that it didn't land smoothly for me.
HITEC: 30-20-10-30-10

Side note: After normalizing my scores I ended up giving "Generations" a 4/10. It was clever, and good reading, and it reached for something ambitious, but fell short of making it wonderful. Please note that that description applies to a "below average" score, which spreaks really well of all the stories in this competition. The vast majority of these writeoff stories would have been worthy of a thumbs-up if posted to FIMFic.

13. Half-Moon
First impressions: The first three words of the story are "A full moon". It pretty quickly introduces the Nightmare, so I think I see where you're going with this, but that does jar against the title.
Evaluation: I'm afraid this story struggled a great deal to hold my attention; various elements of it kept breaking me out of the narrative, and every time I settled back in to reading, it would throw me another curve and I'd richochet off the edges of the text. For one, it never made up its mind what the relationship of Luna and Nightmare Moon was supposed to be. They go back and forth from being directly adversarial (Luna being frightened, finding her wits, standing up in challenge, and ultimately throwing a hoof) to slinging arguments like debate partners. What's Nightmare Moon there to do? Does she have any power to corrupt/attack Luna (which is necessary to explain Luna's fear) or is she just there to plant ideas? There were similar issues with the characterization and the way that the characters drove the plot. Is Luna really the pushover this story paints her as (in which case there's no real conflict)? Is this a story about post-Season 1 Luna, with all the lessons about friendship and reconciliation she's learned, or are we rehashing the show's backstory and invalidating all her growth? Does Nightmare Moon really not know what happened after she was defeated, and why is Luna being so accommodating as to tell her? If this is post-Season 4 (with Twilight having her own castle), why hasn't the castle's decor changed to reflect the diarchy, like it pretty clearly has in canon? I mean, if you're going to go with modern Lunar grievances, it's a little cheesy but you could cite the "Luna doesn't get a throne in the opening credits" thing. All in all, this is just too much at odds with the show to make sense in that context, and doesn't develop itself well enough (or originally enough) to justify me spotting it an AU tag and evaluating it on its own merits. There were some neat moments, like NMM snarking at Luna about the rhetorical question, and on the level of individual sentences/paragraphs it read well, but it really needs more attention to overall structure so that it can bring out consistent characters with well-defined goals, and let those goals drive the plot.
HITEC: 10-20-20-20-30

30. Humming Brew
First impressions: Some word repetition in the first paragraph. The brew is literally humming. I sense impending lead-up to horrible last-line pun.
Evaluation: I think this is the first time I've ever been disappointed that I didn't just read a feghoot. I'm serious — I was expecting one, and then it sorta … deflated. All of the signs were there. The curious insistence on specifics, like the blood of an ice-breathing dragon. The completely over-the-top fourth-wall breakage as Twilight hammered in the prompt (which works, by the way! It was among the funnier moments of the piece, taking refuge in audacity) — signaling that the story wasn't going to take itself seriously despite mostly playing it straight. And instead of Celestia delivering some crazy punchline about Twilight's adventures being bloody vial when hummin' iced (please tell me someone here can do better; that took me most of a day), we get literal anti-humor and a laugh track. That's audacious, I'll give you that, but it didn't make me like the story.
I want to talk about that failed feghoot for a moment because it illuminates a principle that a lot of inexperienced writers miss: making every word count. The reason I think that building up to a horrible pun is the right place to take this story is that suddenly all of those odd little details you're interjecting (like the price of ice-breathing dragon blood) become relevant, because you call back to them in the punchline. Right now they're padding, because they don't add to the comedy, and they don't meaningfully reflect on your characters, so they don't create any emotional connection with the reader; potentially, they might be cool as setting (worldbuilding for its own sake), but that literally works at cross purposes to your story, because the more that your readers start genuinely caring about what you're writing, the more that pulling the rug out with a punchline is going to upset them. For contrast, see how everything in Alawst King Do(ne) pulls together to heighten the reveal: we meet the ending speaker in the first few sentences, and the question of her identity is left hanging the whole time, while Daring's monologue simultaneously provides the exposition that makes sense of that question AND sets up a tragedy that lets the final question really hammer in the impact. I can't think of a single section of that story which I could remove without harming it.
Also, if it hasn't been mentioned yet, the story bounces back and forth between present and past tense. That's a big no-no, but fortunately it's easy to fix in editing.
HITEC: 30-20-10-20-20

17. It's Liquid Pride
First impressions: Huh, it is "Waddle". Great first line though.
Evaluation: There's just something fundamentally awesome about playing straight something that the show presents as a joke. Better yet, playing straight something that everypony in the show should trivially be able to catch as a joke. The show gets some good mileage from ponies being yes that stupid, and it works here too. I was grinning as it dawned on me that the title was being played literally. International incident indeed.
I do think that the final section overplays the joke a little; his last words are the high point, and the jump-cut is on some level necessary, but the longer it goes, the more padding you have after the punchline. Other than that, great idea, and the story does its job.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

14. Laugh, Laugh
First impressions: "Ponyacci". Jumping straight into the Watchmen reference, eh?
Evaluation: Let's not mince words: this is a Robin Williams eulogy. That presents an interesting judging dilemma, because it did have some power to it, and how much of that would lose its impact outside the lens of current events? It's clearly heartfelt, and the emotions carry through; though there were a few moments that made me uneasy, like "there was always a chance things would get better". That's a touchy thing to say when talking about suicide, because people don't go that far unless they genuinely have stopped believing that, and platitudes have to take a back seat to reason and empathy if you're ever put in a position to talk someone through that sort of low point. All things considered, though, while this may be "cheap" feels in the sense of low-hanging fruit, it certainly carries itself.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

27. Lessons of the Heart
First impressions: Well, that's one of those conversation starters that's not going to go anywhere good. You have my attention.
Evaluation: Super strong characterization; Filly Twilight and Mentor Celestia's voices are near-perfect here. I notice that Celestia avoids answering Twilight's actual question, and I have to suspect that's deliberate, though in a scene that short, without some narration of the thoughts inside Celestia's head, it does feel like it robs us of a chance to further illuminate the premise. The last line isn't great, either, since it's clear long before that point that her pre-S1 move is what we're talking about, and crystallizing it does little beyond formalizing it to fulfill the writeoff prompt. On the other hoof, it does a wonderful job of that, and gets an ending smile after all the drama.
All in all, this was solid, though I have a nagging sense that it could have been even better; maybe sink fangs deeper into that confrontation of insecurities that drives the opening lines? I think I was just hoping there would be something more clever or surprising — this is really good in the same way that Slice-of-Life stories are, and I'm not a huge fan of the genre.
HITEC: 20-10-20-30-20

10. Listen
First impressions: Reduit? Oh my. Someone's a fan of The First Time You See Her. (And so am I.)
Evaluation: This has all the magic of the story it's cribbing from. If this is Skywriter, it shows; if not, he's got some competition. Bonus points for interpreting "last words" in a way that has nothing to do with death.
How do I evaluate a story that is basically fanfic of a fanfic, though? It happens to be a fanfic I've read, so it's hard to say how well this works from a cold open. This does feel remarkably self-contained, though, with exposition smoothly worked in; even without having read that story, things like the "Sacred Nap" and the alicorn foal's first words carry themselves. Despite being OCs, the characters are well-defined, and the tension of Loquacious' decision comes clearly through (amazing how the single word of her name can add such weight to the story).
Actually, on further thought: this does a remarkable job of establishing itself as a standalone story despite being explicitly set in FTYSH. Here's what you should know about FTYSH to appreciate this story: "Baby alicorn Cadance was raised in a temple in a backwater town called Reduit by an order of priests who worshipped her, and artificially kept from growing through complete isolation from the outside world, to the extent that she was a newborn to entire generations of them." And I'll be darned if the story doesn't smoothly exposit or imply every single one of those points — without screwing up the pacing or running over the wordcount limit. So not only is this a fantastic story in its own right, it also is a pitch-perfect lesson on how to write a crossover accessible to readers unfamiliar with your source material. This has no business being anywhere but my top contenders.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

3. Love Thine Enemy
First impressions: Cadence scouting for defeated changelings. Premise seems clear; it'll be interesting seeing how it ties to the prompt, though.
Evaluation: This is a good story to skim to get a sense of the "making every word count" principle I mentioned earlier: the first few paragraphs' commentary on Tundra simultaneously illuminates his character and also gets inside Cadence's brain to illuminate her. If anything, it's a little too good at making every word count, because I suspected the ending pretty much the instant he refused the doughnut, and that weird bit about her lighting her horn pretty much sealed the deal. That made it hard for me to appreciate the rest of the story on its merits, because I was trying to figure out how much of that subtext I was supposed to pick up before the technical reveal. It might help to edit it and tone back those first few scenes — maybe have Tundra demur the doughnut rather than refuse ("Oh, thanks! My stomach's still a bit unsettled from this heat, but I'll grab one after a little nap"), and more explicitly exposit what she's doing with the bolstering spell (which I ended up interpreting as her trying to confirm her guess about his identity). In general, this was well-written, and worth reposting to FIMFic after some introspection on how much to hide before the reveal and some massaging accordingly.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

11. Moving Heaven and Earth
First impressions: Ponies arguing about Celestia's powers. Historical drama? Ooh: correct use of "thine". Good sign.
Evaluation: However, "mine" was a goof: those forms are used immediately preceding a vowel, so it would be "mine own eyes" but "my very own eyes". Still, good Luna dialogue. And, yes, this was a historical drama, and pulls out all the stops. The unicorn council seems cartoonishly villainous, but it's a guilty pleasure to watch their comeuppance. Nice d'aww moment at the end, though it was a little over the top for me, possibly as a consequence of the tight wordcount limiting the amount of connection we can make. This does work as a standalone story — it introduces a conflict and resolves it — though I do wish I were reading it embedded within a longer work; a climax like this deserves more backstory, more worldbuilding, and a sense of the broader historical stakes. I'd have loved to see more examination of the pressures and motives behind the Council's behavior, maybe a sense that there's a broader social revolution they're trying to forestall, to ground their villainy a bit. I'd also have loved to see the circumstances behind Celestia discovering she could raise the sun, which would have helped Luna's own revelation feel like it came less from left field. That's way too much to ask in 750 words, though; I can't fault this story for not breaking the rules of time and space, and yet I have to, because that sense of incompletion makes it feel like it falls just short of greatness (and my top contenders).
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20. Apparently a lot of today's batch are very evenly written!

43. Next Step
First impressions: A Manehattan rooftop. Superheroes? Business owners. "Candy, Toys, and Military Munitions"? Pinkie Sense tingling.
Evaluation: I sat up and took notice at "Well, it does kinda make it look like a sunset": dry humor, and fantastic jab deflating the opening scene. There's equal moments of greatness scattered throughout, and I like what we see of the OCs. A few editing issues, including the stray question mark in that string of overpunctuation, "billboards", and a jarring tense change halfway in. You'd think that a pony with a name like "Yo Yo" would totally understand what's going on with "High Low". You'd also think that a fire department would, oh, be composed of weather pegasi who could just fly them off of the rooftop; I know that's essentially nitpicking, but it's a real pet peeve when authors treat Equestria as interchangeable with Earth, when so much of the joy of writing pony stories is in the sense of magic and alienness that their world operates on. I'm not sure how you would have worked in "last words" if they weren't about to jump off a building, but I'm confident from the flashes of cleverness on display here that you could easily edit the story to accommodate that — I think you could get some real mileage out of the build-up of their impending doom and the complete anticlimax of having the rescue pegasi interrupt their tearful goodbyes. Finally, it feels like a wasted opportunity to not even name-drop Pinkie given the nature of their business. Don't get me wrong, though: I must just be in a nitpicky mood, because having said all of this, the story is fundamentally enjoyable, just a little bit on the weak side of solid.
HITEC: 20-20-10-40-10

26. Once More With Feeling
First impressions: "Buffy"-reference title. Something about changelings. Accidentally read a spoiler in the review thread that this is Hard Reset-related.
Evaluation: This is an interesting story to compare and contrast with "Listen", because OMWF is a Hard Reset fic every bit as much as that's a FTYSH fic, and the different ways in which they handle their links to their source material are instructive. "Listen" bakes into its 750 words enough exposition that it feels like it works as a standalone; I didn't even know OMWF had anything to do with time-looping until the final scene, when "Well, that didn't work" came out as literally the only clue, and the impact of that phrase is totally lost unless you've read Hard Reset and understand its significance. The golden rule of crossovers (or derivative fic) is that, if you want any audience beyond existing fans of that work, you have to include enough context that someone can follow your story without having seen the original. Even knowing going in that this was Hard Reset-related, I had a very hard time following it. I couldn't even figure out that the main scene was talking about Twilight and Spike until I reread it.
The second problem is that — having tied your story so closely to the original Hard Reset — you are, as has been pointed out, simply rewriting The Reign Of Queen Twilight Sparkle. That's hard to do in 750 words, so credit where it's due, but … well, see the next review re: the power of fanfiction.
Fun trivia: "Once More With Feeling" was the original title of my Lyra-and-Bon-Bon-fight-over-musical-numbers fic Fugue State, but fortunately my prereader pushed me into improving it. I think the title's much more appropriate here.
HITEC: 30-0-30-10-30

51. Once Upon a Time in Appleloosa
First impressions: Title drop of a classic Western. Story backs that up.
Evaluation: This stays very faithful to the tone and theme it sets (although it's closer to the famous A Fistful of Dollars duel than the title drop). There's some editing roughness — e.g., "ain't" is a present-tense verb; "doing about 'bout that"; and I have no idea how one steps curtly — but in general the writing flows well and the scene is vivid. The main problem is that this follows the "Showdown At High Noon" formula so rigidly that it doesn't feel like there's any meat to the story. The power of fanfiction is in its ability to embrace and extend the source material — to go beyond that which we've already seen, or remix the familiar in new and surprising ways. You can't just play this scene straight, for the same reason that you can't just write a story that retells an MLP episode — if we want the original, we'll watch the original. What you need to do is take a swerve from the cliché in some fashion. This can be comedy (apple pies at 20 paces!), fantasy (the antagonist is a unicorn and magically jams Braeburn's gun — what now?), drama (the antagonist is a jerk, but actually has a wife and kids, who show up as they step outside — can Braeburn kill a family man in cold blood?), or any combination of those. I'd recommend starting by thinking about how the classic western scene would change in a world of ponies, and when you rewrite this, take this scene and make it your own. (It may also benefit from becoming part of a longer work, where you can build a story arc that leads up to the shootout and makes the shootout resolve a wider issue that invests us in the characters.)
HITEC: 20-0-10-30-40

41. One Day in the Crystal Library
First impressions: Very first word is misspelled. *twitch* Oh, wait, that's lampshaded a few paragraphs down, but still. Maybe chuck in a hyphen or apostrophe to note that it's deliberate?
Evaluation: This does all the big things right. It needs a final level of polish — there were a number of little things that tweaked me while reading — but it's a fundamentally solid story. Filly Cadence is just the right amount of adorable, Sombra's internal narrative and dialogue both sell the long-suffering-explaining-to-a-child thing, and the final scene is just as long as it needs to be. Plus we get to see both his "famous last words" and his actual last words, doubling up on the prompt. The explosion is the cherry on top, and (like the fourth-wall breaking in Humming Brew) successfully takes refuge in audacity to positively add to the story.
My most significant criticisms feel nitpicky, but they're what kept this from my top contenders, so: Second paragraph repeats "little" in a way that doesn't quite work if deliberate. Hard to reread something "without noticing". The whiplash reference breaks tone. Cadence's gasp should come before her dialogue. I'm not sure what a "growing crystal platform" is. Honestly, I don't know if these would have bugged me so much if that very first word hadn't riled up my inner editor. The good news is they're pretty trivial to fix on an edit pass, and then I really hope to see this on FIMFic.
HITEC: 10-20-10-30-30

7. Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies
First impressions: "Pony Does X" title — but I've seen a few good stories in that genre, so let's suspend judgment. First paragraph has editing issues, which raises a caution flag.
Evaluation: I'm going to be rough on this one, but author, take heart: the first step in writing a great story is to write a story with problems — after that, it's just a process of editing and learning until you get it right. It's great to see you putting your work out there! Take a look at the other stories in this competition, and learn from their mistakes too — part of why I try to write extended reviews is to go in depth into what makes stories good or bad, and to talk about the principles behind where stories fell short.
So let's focus on your ending for a moment. Most of your piece strikes a tone of light-hearted comedy, with Pinkie (the show's most comic character) being Pinkie, and then doing stupid things, and then hallucinating. Suddenly, right at the end, she punches Twilight in the face, and then dies. It's possible to play death for comedy, but that's not what you're doing here — if this was a sitcom, you wouldn't cue the laugh track at Pinkie's death, you'd have a moment of awkward silence or maybe, maybe, reach for a d'aww. The thing is, 750 words really isn't a lot, and it certainly isn't enough words to sell such a dramatic shift in tone as your comedy's main character dying. Look at the highly-rated stories in this competition: they aim for a single mood, a single idea, and then write everything to reinforce that central point. Here, the strongest feature of your story is the silliness of Pinkie's altered mental state — you want the rest of the story to reflect that as well.
I really don't think you can do that and still have Pinkie die (though I could be wrong; experiment with it and see if you can make it funny, if you're willing to work with some seriously black humor). How would you work in "famous last words" without a death? Probably, by having Pinkie say something like "What could go wrong?" midway through, and then showing her drug trip as the consequence of her decision. You might want to consider having Twilight eat a brownie, too (hint: most mouth-ingested drugs take anywhere from half an hour to several hours before they start kicking in), because right now she's playing the role of "straight mare", but Pinkie's interactions with her don't play off of that enough to improve the humor; having them both hallucinate could give you an opportunity to play two different kinds of silliness off of each other.
The story also would seriously benefit from an editor willing to work with you and point out problems in language use (e.g.: brownies aren't actually pastries), character (it feels bizarre to see Pinkie Pie actively angry at one of her friends), and show vs. tell (there are several places where your dialogue description tells us the same thing that's in the dialogue itself). But my review is already as long as your story, so I'll just encourage you to keep trying and move on.
HITEC: 20-30-0-0-50

38. Quotes
First impressions: At a glance, the story apparently is nothing but quotes. An interesting choice of format — this will sink or swim depending on whether it's able to tell a coherent story with it, because while compilations of fragments can make for interesting reading, this is a story competition.
Evaluation: "… This will sink or swim depending on whether it's able to tell a coherent story with it." -Horizon, 1014 N.D.
I'm a sucker for a well-done epistolary, and I appreciate the audaciousness here, but I'm not sold on this as a story. It appears to be taking on the entire sweep of Equestrian history within 750 words, which is way too much ground for a coherent narrative. I was picking up little hints of threads throughout, like the era of the three tribes and Luna turning into Nightmare Moon, but then we get into various empires and eras which seem made up (and this strange recurring theme about seed planting that I had no idea what to make of), along with skipping over other important eras I expected to see (was there anything about Discord's rule or the fall of the Crystal Empire?). The format prevents us from learning anything about events and ponies such as the Wake Takers, so I'm unable to do anything more than comment "Gee, that sounds like a cool story hook; I wish you'd written a story about it". Which one? Pick one! Great worldbuilding is on full display here — it just needs more focus, down to the level at which all of the quotes feel like they are illuminating a single theme.
Finally, if these all are — as the competition theme implies — the quoted ponies' final words (hey, "let there be light" as a Celestia closer worked for Eponalepsis), then Twilight Sparkle's final quote becomes dark, dark, dark. Was Equestria a failed experiment?
HITEC: 20-40-20-10-10

25. Race the Sun
First impressions: Intriguing concept — doubly so if this operates on Equestrian physics, and the sun is a small nearby object and literally raceable.
Evaluation: I think this is the first story I've read where the famous last words are an inspiration to the main character, and I'm glad it was done that way; the theme seems to be drawing out a lot of dark/tragic stories, and it's a breath of fresh air to get this sort of hope spot. The ending reinforces that, and ends the story on a high note. It's a little bit rough along the way — there are a few stretches where it lapses into technical talk, like the speed of the sun (nitpick: since it seems to be using Earth physics and she's racing the sunset as the sun circles the planet, shouldn't 464 m/s refer to the ground speed?) — and that sort of technical analysis breaks the narration because it doesn't sound like something Rainbow Dash would think. (This could be easily fixed by lampshading it as a fact that Twilight had told her.)
The story's major difficulty, really, is that it's often very telly — and when you have a story with only one character and no dialogue, it's going to sink or swim on the strength of its descriptions. "In less than ten seconds she broke the sound barrier and not much later she broke through the cloud layer" — this feels like it should have been a huge, pivotal moment; we should have been right there with Dash, feeling her wingtips quiver under the strain, feeling her heart hammer in her chest as adrenaline slowed time around her, watching the clouds whip by, but instead, one of the story's major high points becomes basically a footnote. Same with the sun starting to rise. Same with the anxiety and uncertainty at the beginning. "Telling" pushes story elements toward the background, when you're trying to gloss past something or establish it as there but not immediately important; "showing" pushes story elements to the foreground, and draws the reader's attention in. I hope you rewrite this — take a pass to tone down the tech talk, and take a pass to find those matter-of-fact descriptions and make them as vivid as the paragraph starting "As she reached the stratosphere…". (While you're at it, fix the verb tense changes.) Those changes alone will give you something worthy.
HITEC: 30-30-10-20-10

9. Rain
First impressions: Ambiguous title. Celestia at a funeral? The opening quote is kind of a grammatical mess.
Evaluation: Opens with some interesting worldbuilding, although the second and third paragraphs have some repeated sentences that probably aren't intentional and fail to add any impact. Points for having them mourning Blueblood — now we've got something. We already know Luna is Celestia's sister — I'm getting a sense that some careful rereading would let you trim out a lot of redundant or unnecessary words, and that process would improve the story. (Some of the sentence structure and vocabulary — especially using "the Taps" rather than the song's proper name, "Taps" — also makes me suspect you're not a native English speaker. An editor who is might help you smooth those subtle issues out.)
Anyway, the idea that Blueblood is deliberately boorish is an intriguing one, and the strongest part of this story. The funeral carries its own weight, and the worldbuilding does its job of providing context for the death and then getting out of the way. Blueblood's actual last words are, even for Blueblood, bizarre — if he were rallying troops, he would speak about the principle they are fighting for ("We will not be food!") rather than his personal desires ("We don't want to be food!"), and if he were dying a coward, he wouldn't have thought of his troops and led a charge. This one has a lot of potential to improve with an editing pass.
HITEC: 20-30-0-20-10

*. Rainbow Dash's Last Words
(This story missed the submission deadline, but per my promise in the review thread I'm treating it as if it had entered.)
First impressions: Straightforward title. The idea of memory crystals is kinda cool. There's a word missing at the end of the first paragraph.
Evaluation: Given that this entire story is an excuse for the horrible pun at the end, it actually holds together pretty well. Some of the interactions between Dash and Shy and the animals are pretty cool, and as far as portrayals of horribly drunk characters go, I think it worked; the slurring wasn't overdone, and that sense of "judgment gone straight out the window" feels fairly authentic. Could use an edit pass, but the characters feel natural, and that redeems a lot.
Reading this after "Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies" made me wonder what it is that made the mixture of character death and humor work here but not there; Shy/Dash and Twilight/Pinkie both play similar roles. I think the major difference is the quality of the characterization — Fluttershy was basically born to play a straight mare, and her awkward refusal to rein Dash provides some of the comedy for things like the hedgehog juggling. Also the fact that the framing device means we're explicitly looking back on past events (with the death offscreen), rather than seeing Dash die in front of our noses; as the quote says, "comedy is tragedy plus time".
So how would this have done overall? Well, it's more pun than story, and even with the best pun in the universe it's hard to make that memorable. Still, the execution is pretty competent and the story has hints of hidden depth. I'd have rated it a 4 (which, as noted after the "Generations" entry above, is a compliment).
HITEC: 30-10-10-30-20

29. Regrets
First impressions: That's a hell of a first line. Too bad it appears to be in the context of a prank; I'm one of those weirdos that would have been all over a weird AU like My Little Timberwolves or something.
Evaluation: If you spot this One Big Thing — that Twilight is capable of this sort of gratuitous sadism, especially over a wet pile of books (she lives in a library and yet she doesn't have book maintenance and/or water evaporation spells?) — then the story holds together pretty well. That's an awfully big thing to spot it, though; I was startled to see it and it left me with an uneasy feeling throughout the story.
Aside from that, it's actually really clever. Dash-as-doll is a remarkably novel idea (how about that, I did get my crazy AU after all!), the Crusaders' tortures are funny (though, thank goodness for small mercies, they didn't decide to strap her on a rocket and blast her off into space), and Scootaloo's echo of the central line is an excellent ending. I had to quell an ethical protest in my brain to enjoy it, but I did enjoy it.
HITEC: 30-20-20-20-10

45. Some Things You Just Shouldn't Say
First impressions: Guessing from the title this is going to mine a vein of social awkwardness. Missing comma in first five words; missing period in second paragraph. Ah: this seems to be about saying something of the "what could go wrong" variety.
Evaluation: The main thing I noticed about this fic is that it's got problems with telling. Like with "Race The Sun" (read that entry for a good overview), there are pivotal moments in the story that are robbed of all their emphasis by pulling away when you should be zooming in and adding detail. For example, when she walks into the post office: "A light brown stallion dangled his legs over the edge, watching ponies come and go while he ate lunch. As Twilight entered the building a small spider crept onto the stallion’s hoof. Surprised, he accidentally knocked a paint can over the edge of the scaffold, drenching a surprised Twilight Sparkle." You provide loving detail right up until the moment it matters — and then the actual punchline that your joke has been building up to is tossed away as an anticlimactic five words.
Comedy is about pacing and timing. There are moments when the story gets the rhythm right (the ending line wraps things up much more cleverly than I expected), and moments when this clearly falls short. On your editing pass, as you're fixing those typos and grammar issues, think about what moments you want to emphasize and make certain that you're using language that draws you into the scene. Sudden motions (like a paint can landing or Dash smashing into Twilight) need short, punchy sentences — but make equally certain you're describing things actively and showing us the character's reactions. Which is funnier, "Twilight stepped on a banana peel" or "Twilight yelped as her hoof skidded out from underneath her, flipping ass over teakettle as the peel sailed into an innocent bystander's face"?
HITEC: 20-30-10-30-10

35. Spring Cleaning
First impressions: Not sure where the title's promising to go. Dusting the bookshelf is a smart open — it establishes character right away and gives us a free look inside her head from several different angles.
Evaluation: The writing on this felt shaky at first (especially with that glaring third-paragraph tense and narration change), but definitely improved as it settled into its tale of overcoming regret. That sense of picking up and moving on struck a strong and authentic chord I haven't felt from many other stories in the competition. (Maybe it's because I'm at the point where I could use a little spring cleaning in my own life?) Anyway, there's a core maturity here and a sense of fundamental goodness about life that plucks at the same strings the show itself does. Beyond that, this is a really tight character study. Practically every sentence is pulling double duty, painting a picture of the scene and of the protagonist.
It's really saying something that, despite its technical problems, this story crept into my top contenders. I kept tripping over distracting details — like that broken window, which in a story this tight should have foreshadowed the core regret instead. "The creation of nature," which isn't in the poetry book at all, and "the creation of ponykind," which also isn't, unless the book she's reading to her child contains erotic poetry. "I really think it would be a good idea," which isn't problematic in itself except that the "creation of ponykind" thing implies their letters are discussing having children together, and you don't go back to "just friends" after that. "She didn't deserve [the letters]", which is problematic because it's the only part of your story which implies she was the one who did something wrong to end the relationship, and you can't just toss that in as a one-off (if it was true instead of a writing error); it needs to have more context around it when you've done nothing but build up sympathy for her. The story may need some word-by-word editing attention to shake out all those small but crucial goofs. However, even after all that, the story made me savor a slice-of-life mother-child moment: that's no small thing, especially in such a small space.
HITEC: 30-20-10-40-0

31. Sunset Rising
First impressions: A mild enough title pun that this isn't necessarily a comedy. Opening merely establishes the character and that she's still full of herself. Let's read on.
Evaluation: Alright, points for an "Equestria Girls" fanfic, but WHERE'S MY HUSBANDO BRAD?! … I kid, I kid.
This one was written well, but I had mixed feelings about it. There were some essential details that stood out as weird, like Dash's conversational turn-on-a-dime, or that seemed counterproductive, like Sunset already owning an animal shelter bookmark (since it's introduced later on with the scarf, establishing it via Sunset's own possession makes it weirder that she wouldn't already be invested in it, which makes the vehemence of her reaction ring hollow). Sunset mostly feels Sunsetty, but her explosion at Fluttershy feels over-the-top in a way that I'm not sure the 750-word limit let you establish strongly enough to square with the post-redemption premise. (The other characters are fine.)
I do appreciate the Anna Karenina quote — great way to literally use some last words in a fresh way, and very naturally fit it into your story. I also appreciate that Sunset's ultimate solution addressed the problem without giving in on the scarf; I think a less experienced author would have had her capitulate rather than think around the issue, and it would have felt more twee. The lateral solution felt both more authentic and more true to the theme.
HITEC: 20-20-30-20-10

16. The Bearded Geezer
First impressions: Title is clearly about Starswirl, but first paragraph isn't. "Unicorn filly" isn't much to go on — maybe pre-ascension Celestia, except the camera clearly fixes it in the modern day. Gonna have to read it to square those.
Evaluation: This story is awfully coy about names. The only one ever used was "Celestia" in the last paragraph. While withholding Trixie's identity does vaguely aid the reveal, and while the initial "bearded geezer" references do offer a little characterization, I'm not sure what purpose is served by never naming Starswirl. Also, because I had no clues to the filly's identity, on my first read I missed the subtleties like her thinking about how "great" and/or "powerful" Starswirl was. I'm not sure whether I should have caught those or not, but I didn't.
The other major problem I had was not feeling like I had a clear picture of the story as it proceeded. With "No matter how much she begged, pleaded, threatened" etc., it made it sound like Trixie did basically everything she could, and then Starswirl's ghost showed up after she gave up; if that was the case, how did she activate it the first time, so that she knew about it to brag to her classmates? (Also: I guess she was in school, but not in Celestia's school? I wish that had been further explored, because the ending raises questions canon doesn't answer: why didn't Twilight know Trixie, why was she a traveling entertainer, etc.) Then, I guess Trixie stops mid-gallop and her camera slides through a doorway, setting off a trap which she doesn't pass through, but the next time we see her, she's through the doorway anyhow?
(Edit: Oh — based on spoilers in the review thread, she ducked underneath a trap at head/chest level. Yeah, that was too subtle for me, and Trixie's dialogue after dodging the trap doesn't help — even after getting context I still can't connect that back to the earlier clue. I think it would have worked better to have her simply trot through, without any camera accidents, and have her bypass the trap while standing up simply by virtue of being a filly — that reinforces her arrogance in a way that her luck doesn't.)
I see what you're trying to do here, and the writing's generally solid, but between those issues I never really connected with the story. The main issue to fix is to draw the reader in, giving us something to connect with and being more straightforward about what's happening and why.
HITEC: 20-20-30-10-20

24. The Darkfire Phoenix
First impressions: Title hints at worldbuilding/mythology. First paragraph sets clear narrative voice, establishes timeline and some setting hints. I'm in.
Evaluation: Fun fact — according to food-service-industry legend, the 100 folds of a chef's hat represent the 100 ways chefs can cook an egg. The claim that there's 24 methods to kill a phoenix instantly adds a similar color to the Wonderbolts-as-monster-hunters AU you've got going here (though if you edit this, putting something in their uniforms as a nod to that would be super cool).
The story's unique voice and those sorts of little details contribute to a solid adventure in its 750 words. "Method 25" is liquified badass. What's going on with Spitfire's self-immolation and her cryptic last line? I have no idea, but the way it tells the story leaves me desperate for more details, which is exactly what I want out of this sort of minific — a well-realized world to play in and a glimpse of even more beyond the fences of its wordcount. I do have to penalize it a bit for the way the last paragraph (and the narrator being jailed) is crammed in so inelegantly; this really needs more words to tell its story. But that won't stop it from sneaking into my top contenders, and I hope there's more where this came from, to be posted in the expanded form it deserves.
HITEC: 30-20-20-20-10

49. The Dying Words of Starswirl the Bearded
First impressions: Straightforward title. Clear establishment of characters. Not grabbing me, but functional and not objectionable.
Evaluation: I found myself really sympathizing with Spike in this story. Twilight's in full Twilight Obsession mode here — I'd go so far as to say borderline autistic — and Spike's clearly enduring her commands (and her insistence on splitting hairs between "ghosts" and "psychic imprints of dead ponies"). That did make it satisfying to have the last words be so deeply anticlimactic; the story's best line was Spike writing them down.
I do wish that the notion of "his words were so deeply meaningful, mere words couldn’t express them" had been better phrased; I get what you mean, but as written, the idea is logically contradictory. Other than that, this is pretty solid, with one big structural flaw: Twilight's behavior, as mentioned, is hard to sympathize with, which means that (like Spike) I feel like I'm being dragged along on the ride, rather than getting invested in a historic discovery. The characterization is good, but there needs to be a reason for us to care about her and her goal.
HITEC: 20-20-30-10-20

12. The Last Line
First impressions: Ambiguous title. Great opener — I love the crossed-out cliché(s), which tells us a huge amount about the story very efficiently and cleverly.
Evaluation: The first temptation in a story-about-stories like this is always to interpret it as a meta-discussion about its own composition and the competition it's in — which made it disorienting-slash-mildly-insulting to read the line about "you're writing a children's story", until the later exposition kicked in and grounded it in Spike's work for the Cake foals. To be honest, much of the fun of it was that two-layer commentary, which the insistence on the simplicity of his story broke for me. (And to your credit, you toy explicitly with that meta-level, with lines like "'and then she asked me what the end of the story should be?' That'd be a terrible ending!") However, there's a nice bit about how stories shouldn't be bad just because they're for children which wouldn't have fit without making your premise specific like that, so I can't dislike it totally.
The moral, too, seems squarely targeted at us authors. I don't agree with the explicit moral — in fact, the story seems to be a self-refutation of its own advice, in that the last line is important, and the one Spike eventually came up with is far superior to his originals, excellent both for his purposes and the story's — which leaves the whole thing feeling incoherent. But for all that, it was cool reading a story where it felt like I was in on a subtle joke. I feel like I'm giving this one a score higher than its textual quality deserves by bumping it up to the top tier, but I don't want to disregard my own personal enjoyment of a story in an effort to grade it "fairly" in some abstract sense; that way lies madness. I'll just note that this seems like it'll be a hit-or-miss story, and it hit for me.
HITEC: 30-30-20-10-10

2. The Last Words of Star Swirl the Bearded
First impressions: Title straightforward. Starts telly.
Evaluation: My feelings about the story's telliness changed over the course of my reading. At first, I was disappointed; the direct lecture-style address of the reader made the story feel abstract and distant. As it continued and the tone stayed the same, however, I started to really warm up to it — it became the story's unique voice, something like cracking open an Equestrian encyclopedia and reading nonfiction set within the setting. (I call this "culturalia": an artifact from an alien world, presented in the context as if we were inhabitants of that world, coming across it in the course of our daily lives.) Then, suddenly — with the line "Twilight Sparkle knew all of these hypotheses …" — it completely broke the encyclopedia-entry format, lost its narrative voice, and became a disappointingly tell-heavy story again.
It might sound strange, but I think this would have worked better if it had stuck to its guns and kept its narrative distance from Twilight and Starswirl. If it had been formatted explicitly as a series of quotes or articles (similar to what "Quotes" set out to do, but with more cohesion), then that telliness could have added to the narrative effect it was attempting to establish; but in a traditional story, feeling like the narrator is lecturing to me is a good way to make my eyes glaze over.
Otherwise, there's not much to say about the story. Having dozens of ponies in the room as he speaks his final words makes the fact that they were lost that much stranger. I didn't have any objections to the punchline, though I might have felt cheated if the story had been less distant and I had been drawn in enough to be invested in it.
HITEC: 20-20-30-0-30

40. The Next Viral Ad
First impressions: Title promises interesting premise. First paragraph's use of "carolina blue" and "artichoke green" is making my lower eyelid twitch. Introducing ponies by their color generally isn't a good strategy, and forcing me to google exactly what shade of blue a "carolina" is in order to understand a detail that will probably never be plot-relevant compounds the problem.
Evaluation: Let's get this out of the way: "I bestow you with my wish for good fortune" is not a quote that has ever come out of the mouth of any actual person. It's a crazy mix of Luna-like anachronism, nouveau-riche pretentiousness (why not simply "Good luck"?), and a complete disregard for grammar. There are language issues throughout, so I suspect English is not your native language — which means an editor can help you with errors like this — but even counting translation problems, the dialogue is poor. Accents can be extremely difficult for non-natives to get right, so either work with an editor or stick to writing characters who speak the way you do.
That having been said, let's talk about suspension of disbelief. This is a tricky issue to address in editing feedback, because it's extremely subjective — especially in pony stories, where canon and headcanon regularly clash and there are a thousand different valid interpretations of Equestria. I could say "your premise is logically impossible" — and it is; you're suggesting that an advertising agency would kidnap their customers, and then flagrantly show off their guilt by posting pictures of the missing ponies after they vanish, and continue to get away with it — but if you want to talk about logical impossibilities, MLP's opening statement is that there are two princesses who move the sun and moon around in the sky. Another writeoff entry focused on that impossibility, and I enjoyed it. Here, your impossibility feels like it destroys the story. Why should this crazy idea be different?
One answer is that suspension of disbelief is relative to the expectations we arrive at a story with. Because we are all here as MLP fans, it's "safe" to use a crazy idea like ponies raising the sun and moon, because that's already baked into the universe we're writing about. (My story Fugue State took an equally crazy idea — that ponies literally break into musical routines — and was well-received; but again, this was building off of an idea we had already seen in the show, and exploring the implications of an existing expectation interpreted in a different way.) There's nothing about canon Equestria to support a dark idea like random kidnapping from evil corporations, so the burden of selling that idea as a plausible one is on you.
The second answer is that, if you are starting with such an extreme premise, that your story has to explicitly explore that premise. If I were to write a story where ponies change color every time they hiccup, I couldn't just make the plot about "Twilight Sparkle checks out a library book" — I would need to write about, say, a master thief who learns an ancient, banned method of inducing hiccups so that she can disguise herself for her heists. Or I would need to explore how society deals with ponies who might not match their license photos during allergy season. You can't just spring an implausible idea on the audience in order to create a shocking twist — it has to be baked into the setting. The reason that we accept MLP's sun and moon control is that it puts the strange idea front and center, within the first 30 seconds, and gives us an entire mythology based around the war of the sun-mover and the moon-mover. Twilight Sparkle's first action is to confront the sun-mover with the legend she read. Then the first episode creates consequences based on that idea — if Twilight Sparkle does not succeed in her mission, the world will be faced with eternal night — and the redemption with the Elements of Harmony specifically reconciles those forces. By not talking about the kidnappings up front, and by having the characters not act like they're in a world where ponies mysteriously vanish all the time, your reveal conflicts with the logic of both Equestria and the real world (one of which will be the default logic of your setting).
Without that core premise, I'm sorry to say this story simply doesn't work for me.
HITEC: 20-0-10-30-40

20. The Pony and the Phoenix
First impressions: Philomena is probably a safe bet here, but I'll have to read on to figure out who's the pony. Something of a cold open.
Evaluation: It was an interesting decision to tell this one from Philomena's POV. There were places in which it led to a confusing vagueness in the text — it took me a while to realize that the "hole in the wall over his nest of cotton" was a window, and there was no textual clue that the window was closed until he opened it. It also made the one-sided conversation weird, since we're hearing this from Philomena's POV but we're not seeing her dialogue. (The ambiguity in whether or not she actually understands him does help make up for that, and I thought it was well-done.) On the other claw, it turned the final line into one of the strongest closes I've read in this competition.
Overall, I like the effect. The pacing drags a little through the monologue, and I'm not sure whether that's fixable, because it's the digressions like the chirping that sell it — but having mentioned the above, I can't come up with much else to critique. This makes my top contenders, and that slowness was the main thing holding it back from a higher score.
Random thought: It's curious that everyone who wrote about Starswirl and/or Philomena titled their story starting with "The."
HITEC: 20-20-20-10-30

19. The Shortest Possible Distance
First impressions: Epsilon?
Evaluation: Huh, how about that, I called the punchline. Though to the story's credit, it plays with both variants of its title phrase, and gives Twilight some deep geekery along the way. This is a neat (and sharply written) little mini-adventure, solved with SCIENCE! Thaumaturgy!, though that's hurt by the one-strike-you're-out nature of the test being deeply weird. Not only is this impossibly unfair to the students — if you can't test hypotheses safely (stepping over a wall was a reasonable and fairly daring guess if the clue could be interpreted as "straight line", and for his cleverness he was instantly failed) and you also can be failed by unexpected events that aren't a direct consequence of your decisions (the flash that did in the three fillies was the first time they had any reason to suspect that line of sight was dangerous), then your grade is at the mercy of random chance. Also, narratively speaking, it leaves the confrontation feeling too rushed. Given that 2/3 of the competitors have permafailed within a few seconds of starting, any rational student would immediately say "screw speed, I'm going to try to be the last one standing". Twilight's teleportation win feels too deus ex machina for my tastes, with her improvising a complex new spell she's only heard rumors of essentially out of thin air (though the lingonberries were a nice touch). I'm sure that the exposition for it was a casualty of the wordcount, but those are the breaks of a competition like this.
HITEC: 20-30-20-10-20

36. The steed of Theseus
First impressions: Greek mythological reference — although the pegasus was Perseus' steed, not Theseus', and Theseus is mostly known for killing the minotaur, not riding anything. Story starts with Celestia and Twilight. If the title's metaphorical, I think I'm going to be lost.
Evaluation: Yeah, I have no idea whatsoever about the title. That's one of several things this story felt like it didn't explain, probably due to the word count. There were a few huge leaps where I had to stop, blink, and readjust before I continued, like Celestia's tyrant reveal. Twilight's leap to the final question makes no sense to me, which robs the final exchange of its impact, though it still gets its point across. I don't think Celestia's actions (or the way she chooses to discuss them) are brought forward in a way I can believe, but if I spot the story the premise of her former tyranny (I'm willing to do that on the grounds that it was simply written roughly), that does put some real gravitas in her moral, and it's an issue that immortals indeed would have to find strategies to address.
Technically, word use was largely fine, but grammar was shaky, and you could benefit from a refresher on how quotes and quote attributions are formatted — the FIMFiction.net site FAQ should have a link to Ezn's guide, which is worth a read.
HITEC: 20-40-10-10-20

6. The Worst It Could Possibly Be
First impressions: Title hints at comedy. Story almost immediately escalates into "yet another Monday disaster," which reinforces that, and then it promises armageddon.
Evaluation: This is among the more hit-or-miss stories that I've read this competition, but when it hits, it's on. I'm not a fan of random comedies, but the escalation into the ludicrous — from the expected screaming of the flower trio, to Discord's machinations, to the changelings, etc. — is marvelously handled, with little elements like Pinkie Pie and the mind-reading layered in like delicious cake. It stumbles pretty hard over Spike's recap, though, which in a story this short is 100% unnecessary; those words could have been much better used to continue the escalation. Other elements, like Fillydelphia's transformation and both repetitions of "that didn't work", felt similarly unnecessary. Spike's behavior is also awfully strange — I get that you're playing it for comedy, but his focus on waffles while the world ends outside seems kinda sociopathic when we're hearing the story through his POV. (Also strange: the fact that he doesn't even think of Twilight until well after finding "Pinkie.")
I don't think the ending ultimately works, but it works better than I thought it would. Talking about the universe ending certainly works better as a meta-story, and the idea that it's being assembled as brainfuel for Discord is surprisingly natural. I'd love to see more of this snark and more of the one-liners and jokes that connect — just work on keeping the humor more consistent, and be willing to toss out the jokes that aren't pulling their weight.
HITEC: 30-20-20-30-0

48. There Once Lived a Princess...
First impressions: Historical story, or maybe something modern about Canterlot, retold as fairy tale? There's a stage, so maybe this is a play, but there's a jury, so this is a trial? So many questions.
Evaluation: It did settle down pretty quickly; public trial of a princess we don't know. Halfway through I realized I'd read a spoiler for this in the forum thread: this is apparently about the princess who drank the love poison mentioned in Hearts & Hooves Day. The problem is, the only textual clue to that is the list of crimes read out in the sentencing, and that's a really thin link; I would never have gotten it on my own. Without that context, it's difficult to connect with this story, and 750 words isn't a lot of space to sell that connection in. The "Rule of Three" mentioned in Curse of Ahuizotl above might help you out — your hint #1 is the list of crimes; if she drops something in her inner thoughts about not having felt like herself lately, reflecting on her madness (whether or not she knows it was poison-induced), and then more explicit exposition about how madly she loves her husband, then we're starting to get something there. At that point, piecing together the mystery becomes part of the point of the story, and the readers get to feel clever along with you.
HITEC: 20-10-20-20-30

8. Those Awful Rumors 'Round Town
First impressions: Scootaloo's an orphan.
Evaluation: I confess I'm not 100% certain what's going on with the final scene here. It's pretty clear that something's fishy with the identical mom and dad clones (and sister/brother clones?), but Equestria's a magical enough land that I can't 100% rule out, well, something Twilight Zone-ish going on like her actually having six dozen sets of parental automatons. If I had to guess, the most plausible explanation (especially given the end of Scene 1) seems like this is something going on in her imagination, and she's got a mom doll and a dad doll in the empty home she's squatting in. Probably the story needs some more solid hints to back up its creepy imagery, but maybe I'm just missing something big.
The speculation is good reading. I'm definitely amused by Truffle's upper-class accent, though IMHO it would have been even funnier if played up another notch, and the "product of noble inbreeding" explanation is probably going to get stuck in my headcanon (along with my "Derpy is a princess" idea from 18th Brewmare). Same with the Scootaling idea. The speculation, actually, was the most fun part of the story, and I think you pulled off the transition to creepy/sadfic pretty well. Solid; just work on that reveal.
HITEC: 20-20-30-10-20

32. Why Pony Pants Were Invented
First impressions: Pun senses tingling. Second paragraph raises some awkward questions. (The third paragraph immediately lampshades them away, but the overall effect hurts the flow of the story.)
Evaluation: This story starts working blue early. For instance, what sort of abusive mother names her foal "Tit Wank"? And his dying words were about shitting in pants? It might be fair to say that he had blue genes.
… I only wish the story had given me a pun that awful, but no, it won't even allow me the dignity of suffering through a Feghoot. This is a straight-up shaggy-dog story, building to a pointless, cynical anticlimax, and forcing me to sit through poop jokes along the way. Hello, author. My name is horizon, and there's pretty much no way to make me lose interest in a story faster than poop jokes, but I had to read through this anyway for the competition scoring. So congratulations, you've successfully trolled me.
If that was your intention, feedback is pointless — but if this was a serious attempt at a story, let me know and I'll try to find something more to say. (The discussion in "Humming Brew" broadly applies here, though Pony Pants' technical quality was better.) Meanwhile I'll score this low for good Technical but a waste of my time.
HITEC: sorta lol

5. You Had to Say It
First impressions: "How could anything go wrong?" Time to see what will.
Evaluation: Similar to "Regrets", if you spot this the One Big Thing that Discord is mortal enough to get injured by a runaway cart, it holds together pretty well. Of course, that's an awfully big thing to spot it. Man, if it was that easy, Pinkie Pie could have singlehoofedly defeated him with a clever prank. Imagine the AU where that's the case. Discord is the butt monkey of Equestrian history. He keeps showing up over and over again to cause chaos — and then Celestia shows up, floats him a big gift-wrapped box with a faint hissing sound inside, and takes cover until the explosion.
Now, the notion that he's proud enough to be done in like that — that feels like Discord all the way. And the other characterization is pretty good. (Though Pinkie really should know what Twilight's referring to, when she talks the last time she destroyed Ponyville — after all, she was there.) I still can't buy Discord's powerlessness, but the story's generally solid; I would put it in the category of "formulaic but entertaining", and the final punchline was worth a smile.
HITEC: 20-20-20-20-20

---

Whew! Now that that's done … those are the reviews; which are my top scorers?

The official Horizon Judge's Choice, and winner of at least $5.00*, is:
(drumroll)
10. Listen

(* If it wins another prize, then the Judge's Choice award shifts down my list to the first story that otherwise would not receive any money.)

My second and third-place picks:
42. Alawst King Do(ne)
24. The Darkfire Phoenix

And, rounding out my Top 10, here's the list (in order) of Honorizonable Mentions:
1. Falling Apples
50. Final Resting Place
20. The Pony and the Phoenix
35. Spring Cleaning
11. Moving Heaven and Earth
28. Epitaphs
41. One Day in the Crystal Library

Thank you to everyone for participating, and good luck in the final judging!

Comments

[Skywriter]

Thanks for all this, Horizon. It's a great service to all the entrants.

[Eakin]

That awkward moment when you realize that you got so wrapped up in working on your own stories you forgot you needed to read and score at least 26 of these before 2:00 tomorrow.

Still, happy to see that you liked my entry well enough, and that's all I'll say until the big unveiling

[Bachiavellian]

I really appreciate the feedback, and I can't wait until I can start talking about it in specifics tomorrow. I don't think I've ever seen something quite like your reviewing/scoring system, and it makes me want to use it myself. You also get points for the acronym.

[journcy]

i accidentally all of the reviews

...by which I mean, that you did all of these was really cool. Also, I continue to be intrigued by the HITEC metric; I'm still not totally sure if I'm into it. But.

[Titanium Dragon]

You were helpful on some of them. One of them you weren't especially helpful on because, well, everyone and their brother (including myself ) said the same thing about it. Well, not EVERYONE everyone, but yeah. Ironically, that's the one I'd most like your help on, because reasons that will give it away if I go into it more. Also because of other reasons that will become immediately obvious once you realize who wrote that story. Well, assuming you remember something I said at one point. Somewhere.

If you haven't figured it out already, just from me saying this much.

Anonymity is hard, man. I'm not used to being anonymous. I'm not just a face in the crowd!

On an entirely unrelated note, all of your favorite stories were mine. Every one of them.

[Bad Horse]

I wish you'd broken this up into 2 or 3 posts, just so I could comment on them without lots of scrolling up and down... but...

- I don't think you're using the HITEC score as its illustrious inventor intended. You are mostly giving 20-20-20-20-20 to the stories you like best, and low-entropy scores to the ones you like the least.

- "The steed of Theseus" refers not to the legend of Theseus, but to a question about the ship of Theseus. It was sailed from city to city for hundreds of years. Along the way, pieces were replaced as they wore out, until no pieces of the original ship remained. Is it still the ship of Theseus?

- I think you are missing a possible meaning of "she didn't deserve them" in "Spring Cleaning": that the letters were lies. Derpy now knows they were lies, and that she was fooled, but rather than getting angry at him for lying, she is disappointed in herself for having allowed herself to think she was that special. That says a lot in a few words.

- Rain:

Blueblood's actual last words are, even for Blueblood, bizarre — if he were rallying troops, he would speak about the principle they are fighting for ("We will not be food!") rather than his personal desires ("We don't want to be food!"), and if he were dying a coward, he wouldn't have thought of his troops and led a charge.

Actually I was just mentally composing a blog post on how wonderful I thought his last words were, even though I didn't like anything else about the story. They are wonderful because they do what you said--they are cowardly and heroic at the same time. I may post that later tonight.

- ...but whose?: I thought it was clear that the monster was a big awesome Lovecraftian monster, and the cocky blue pegasus was Rainbow Dash. Re. your rule of 3, probably Dahs should have been mentioned earlier in the story to make that apparent. But I can't imagine why one would want to know which specific Lovecraftian monster a monster was, since Lovecraft himself never found that distinction important enough to justify characterization. In fact I would say any characterization of a Lovecraftian monster would make it understandable and hence not Lovecraftian. The purpose of the monster is to be terrible and awe-ful, not to have a backstory.

- I seem to be the only person who had an allergic reaction to Moving Heaven & Earth, Forging Harmony, Epitaphs, & There Once Lived a Princess, because they all do that fan-fiction thing where someone tells a story whose only purpose is to point to another story that we already know. They aren't stories themselves. They may contain all the individual elements that a story has, but the development of those elements lies outside, in a different story.

[Thisisalongname]

2395395

- I seem to be the only persojavascript:void(0);n who had an allergic reaction to Moving Heaven & Earth, Forging Harmony, Epitaphs, & There Once Lived a Princess,

Probably not the only one. I know I ranked Moving Heaven & Earth and Epitaphs lower than some others that weren't as technically sound simply because some of the other stories took more chances and tried to come from a new direction. There are a million mane six grave stories, tons of Celestia/Luna being cute for the sake of cuteness, and the twist in those weren't all that original. Its those types of stories that are hard to hate, but because of that they also don't illicite much emotion out of me anymore.

[Titanium Dragon]

2395395

- I seem to be the only persojavascript:void(0);n who had an allergic reaction to Moving Heaven & Earth, Forging Harmony, Epitaphs, & There Once Lived a Princess, because they all do that fan-fiction thing where someone tells a story whose only purpose is to point to another story that we already know. They aren't stories themselves. They may contain all the individual elements that a story has, but the development of those elements lies outside, in a different story.

I don't disagree that this can be a bad thing, but I think it is only a bad thing if it is done poorly; I enjoy stories like this, but on the other hand, I can find them to be totally horrible. I mean, is there any doubt about how Moving Heaven & Earth ends, or what happens after the end of Forging Harmony? No, but I don't think that's really the point of the stories in the first place. I think if those two stories have a flaw, it is that the people writing them ran into the word count limit; they needed more time to be evocative, because their purpose was to evoke rather than to tell us the ending. They are journey stories, whose destination is already known.

They are, I think, perhaps the most fannish of the fanfiction in some ways, but on the other hand, a lot of the legends in the backstory of things like the Lord of the Rings are really a setup for a plot element, and there's all sorts of stuff in the appendices which is about what totally happened a long time ago and set things up for the story, even though they are purely extraneous to it. Magic: The Gathering has some stuff like that as well, even for things which there isn't anything to fan onto - the tale of Eight and a Half Tails, a kitsune who had cut off half of his ninth, final tail because he believed he did not deserve it, is fundamentally this sort of story, in that it points towards who he is. It doesn't matter that, as far as I know, he doesn't exist outside of that story (though he may be in the Champions of Kamigawa books; I've never read them), it still is fundamentally the same sort of thing.

And I think "how we got here" stories - things which fill in little moments of backstory and do nothing else - do have their place. Maybe they're a bit self-indulgent in some respects, but on the other hand, it is kind of fun to see things like this in fanfiction. That's why there are so many stories about the fall of Luna, prior to season 4 and even thereafter, even though the story had already fundamentally been explained to us.

Epitaphs is a classic graves fic, and while it worked for some people, I think I've read too many of these stories to be affected by them unless you do something punchy with it, and this story didn't. And you're right that it was fundamentally pointing towards something we already knew, but I think it actually committed a larger sin in that it was talking about something we already knew which we saw, and doesn't go beyond that - Discord was reformed because of the Magic of Friendship™ and all of the ponies' lives weren't expanded beyond what we saw on the show, with last words that felt a little bit tryhard (and stuck in their mouths in some cases). It was trying to be poignant so hard, and while it worked well for some folks, it fell flat for me.

There Once Lived A Princess, on the other hand, expanded on a story of tragedy by making it even more tragic. I thought it was a nice enough story, but on the other hand, it only barely was a pony story.

Of course, I rated those all as being above the average of the contest so I guess I wasn't that hard on them, though I preferred Forging Harmony and Moving Heaven & Earth to the other two.

[Titanium Dragon]

2395486
I suspect that Listen and the Hard Reset fic whose name escapes me at the moment may suffer similar fates from those who felt that fanfics of fanfics were inappropriate and/or that they were just too confusing without knowing the source material.

Dunno, though. We'll see.

Of course, if they're hard to hate, how did they get low scores?

[Georg]

You're a brave, brave man. I tried looking through the entries and trying to do a review on them, but I only lasted through about four. I'll work on it.

[Thisisalongname]

2395555

Hard to hate doesn't equate to great, just one of those that's hard to mess up. An example would be my story on my page, wrote it specifically cause its cliche and easy.

[Chris]

I read through all your reviews, and at this point, I've read enough comments that I don't even need to refer back to the fics to remember which one's which. Very nice, very helpful commentary!

As for the HITEC scores, though... after the first few fics, I started breezing past them. My first thought was "I don't know that they have much utility to anyone but the author, but then, they're aimed at the authors, so that's fine." But when I got to my fic, I tried looking at the score first as an experiment, and found it didn't really mean much to me without the commentary--and after reading the comments, seeing the HITEC score didn't seem to add anything.

Now, that might just be me, or my fic particularly might not have been a great test subject, so don't go putting too much stock into what I say. But if you're looking for feedback, I loved the reviews, but found the numbers to be a bit of a wash.

2395395

I didn't really talk about titles when I commented on the stories, but I loved the historical nod of The Steed of Theseus. Of course, I also loved Alawst King Do(ne), and appear to have been almost the only one who did, so my taste is probably suspect.

[Bad Horse]

2395885

Of course, I also loved Alawst King Do(ne)

The story, or the pun?

If the latter, you are lost indeed.

[Chris]

2395963

Something about puns that try too hard just makes me happy. I read Frank & Ernest unironically, for goodness' sake!

[Bad Horse]

BTW, horizon, I only commented on things I disagreed with, and passed in silence over the things you said that I agreed with. Sorry!

[horizon]

2396447
No harm, no foul. I'm just suspending responses till tomorrow because I was out all night, and if I wait I can engage once people no longer need to be cagey about their fics.

[Titanium Dragon]

Incidentally, regarding a few stories:

25 Famous Last Words - I think that the fanfic fics and possibly the historical fiction stories probably have the edge on this one for most controversial. I personally didn't like that the famous last words weren't world-appropriate, as there are lots of famous last words which could be.

Listen - I found some of the details in this story confusing more than enlightening, as someone who hadn't read the original story.

Moving Heaven and Earth - This makes me wonder what would have happened if the author had written about Celestia raising the sun for the first time as another contest entry, and whether that would have biased people for or against the story. Has anyone ever written linked minifics before? Would people have noticed? Would it have been "cheating", even if both were standalone stories? I also found it interesting that both of the Celestia in the past stories felt like they hit the word limit and cut stuff out to make it fit. This one, I think, did a better job of it than the other one did, but both felt like they had been shaved down by several hundred words.

Once More With Feeling - I hate how someone assumes this is a Buffy title reference and not a reference to a common phrase every single time someone uses it.

TOTALLY UNRELATED TO ANY STORY: Regarding memory crystals: I read a greentext story once which was about Cadance after Shining Armor died, storing all of her memories in crystals so they wouldn't be lost, obsessing over them. I was disappointed that the story didn't subvert it by being more ambiguous and bait-and-switch, making us think it was Cadance from the image, but not actually specifying it and revealing it was Sombra.

I'm still sad it wasn't.

Spring Cleaning: The point of "not deserving the letters" was that they were false, empty flattery; she didn't deserve it because she didn't earn it, as the only purpose of the letters was to get her to sleep with him.

The Dying Words of Starswirl the Bearded - I'd bet that the writer meant to use "letters" instead of "words", given the context.

The Last Words of Star Swirl the Bearded - I agree with your analysis; it needed to go with one or the other, and I think the initial way would have made it more distinctive.

There Once Lived A Princess - Actually, there were some more hints, mostly talking about her beloved, both towards the start and towards the end. The crimes really were a giveaway to me, though, because how many princesses are there in the show?

Those Awful Rumors 'Round Town - The ending of this made no sense to me either. If it was all in her head, it didn't do a good enough job of conveying that, and needed more to push for it. It felt like it was played worryingly straight, as in, it was supposed to be that she had way too many parents, and thus the irony was she still wasn't happy for it, but that, well, sucks.

Why Pony Pants Were Invented - I am actually sad that story did not make a pun about a depressed pony with blue genes. That's actually a great punchline for a story like this.

You Had To Say It - I don't actually think Discord is invincible. In fact, I think it is pretty clear as of Season 4 that Discord is physically vulnerable. He's extremely powerful, magically, but he can be harmed, I think - the Tazlwurm got him sick for realsies, and Tirek seemed to be able to cause him physical discomfort even prior to sucking away his magic.

Also, I take back saying that you didn't say anything new about one of my stories; you did. Or rather, you contributed to a divide on it.

Anyway, for my guesses:

I'm guessing that you wrote Liquid Pride, because you're you (and because of errant secretion sounding like something you might write), and Forging Harmony, because you're the only person who picked up any significance to the fact that there were six guards, if indeed that was meant to be significant. Also you mentioned that it seemed like it got cut down, which sounds precisely like what someone who wrote the story might say about their own story that was too long and got cut down because they ran out of space.

[Titanium Dragon]

2396170
My father always taught me that the longer the joke was, the better it was, and adores Feghoots. He once told me a feghoot which he stretched out to something like forty-five minutes.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I love how no one can seem to agree on my story. People have loved it, hated it, been largely indifferent towards it, and their reasons for why they felt that way are equally varied.

I do look forward to the reveal. There's quite a bit I wish to say.

In any case, thank you for the sheer effort involved here.

[PresentPerfect]

So 20's across the board is what the author should be looking for here? :B I have to admit, you moving into 100's for the total from the 10 points you introduced HITEC with threw me, but given that I didn't notice any scores that weren't a multiple of ten, it looks like you could just drop the zero and save yourself 3-5 characters per line. :B

Only three more hours and I can post my reviews! ;_;

[Super Trampoline]

2396170 liked for that delicious pun. Surely you're familiar with the atrocity that is Pearls Before Swine?
kimtuck.com/imageshacker/aac30f8af94c9e2c0179aa45980a9626.gif

[Silent Strider]

You made me skip sleeping so I could read all your reviews

About The Darkfire Phoenix, the "cryptic" line was actually foreshadowed quite blatantly at the start; it's the motto of Spitfire's old Wonderbolt team, the one that was killed by that same Darkfire Phoenix. This kind of subtle foreshadowing and world building disguised as throwaway banter is the main reason I loved this story, BTW.

Also, thank you very much for your reviews I'll likely post a few things about my stories when the reveal is made, both here and at the Writeoff thread.

[Super Trampoline]

Darn. Listen got 4th. Looks like I was .03 points from getting five bucks.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Now that the secret's out and you know I wrote the story that begins with a misspelling (a.k.a. "One Day in the Crystal Library,") I'd like to say a few more things:

1. Thank you for bringing this to my awareness. It was surprisingly fun.
2. I'm immensely glad to see my story managed to eke its way into your top ten, even with Cadence's imperfect pronounciation.
3. This is a growing crystal platform. (Note the "Oh, I have legs again" face.)
derpicdn.net/img/2014/5/13/625674/medium.png

[Silent Strider]

Well, thanking you again for your reviews, I’ll leave some comments about them.

BTW, might I suggest that, when you do those in alphabetical order, you do it like librarians and disregard the initial ‘the’, ‘a’, or ‘an’? Less cluttering at ‘T’.

Caped Crusaders

I attempted to focus too much on the joke and too little on the CMC; I should have let them shine instead. It would have been far stronger if the CMC captured the vilain and the Mane 6 merely prevented the escape and collateral damage.

Being still somewhat in their sister’s (and idol’s) shadows was intentional, but not as a source of conflict; it’s just too big a hurdle to jump, and I imagined the CMC as past worrying about that, to the point they are willing to ask for their help when needed.

I’m not sure how else I could have done the joke; I guess by easing it in, using the previous questions to lead to it? While there are other stories to be told with this setup, this one was about that joke, so I couldn’t really leave it out.

Epitaphs

In the original version Discord would see the Solar Memorial behind Luna, before the mention of her double cutie mark. Also, there would be something about how he was going to take part in saving the world, in that he would mention going to meet Luna’s companions, and his own role as the new keeper (but not user) of the Elements of Harmony; I was also considering mentioning how Twilight sacrificed herself to bring back the Elements, which is what turned Discord into the Spirit of Harmony, granting him new powers but making him lose his old ones.

But, alas, word count.

(The typo is a common one for me; for whichever reason, ‘word’ and ‘world’ are mixed in my mind. I almost typed ‘world count’ in the previous paragraph.)

The Bearded Geezer

Star Swirl was supposed to be named by Celestia in her scene, when she talks about the fake tomb, but I was already gasping for words and thought his identity was obvious enough. Trixie, on the other hoof, was never meant to be named, but was meant to at the end be obvious to anyone that knew her (and, if the reader did not know her, then no issue in not naming her, right? )

‘Great’ and ‘Powerful’ were meant to be noticed by the attentive reader, or by everyone else on a second reading (I imagine they act as a beacon for anyone that knows the filly is Trixie); I almost emphasized those words to make catching them more likely, but reading aloud with them emphasized sounded really weird

Not explicitly stated, but the whole “no matter how” part was meant to convey that she had no idea how she had activated it the first time. The activation in the fic had an editing error, though; Trixie was supposed to accidentally touch her horn to a specific engraving (which would measure her magical power, but this bit would be left just implied). Trixie having gone to the same school as Twilight is semi-canon (stated by Lauren Faust, but only after she left the show).

About the trap, I was intrigued as for how so many readers found it confusing, though on a new reading I think I can see how; I never mention that Trixie had already passed the doorway when she looked back and analyzed it, and I didn’t catch it because I already had in my mind that she went through the doorway

You Had to Say It

Actually, I don’t think Discord being mortal enough to get injured is that hard to consider, due to the ending of Three’s A Crowd. But I did downplay too much his ability to avoid bad things happening to him. I think I can fix this specific issue by tying it to the end of Discord’s convalescence period after Three’s A Crowd, implying that he is recovered enough to get out of the bubble but his powers are still not at full power.

And about Pinkie being there: she was reacting to how Ponyville’s near destruction was preceded by Twilight tempting fate — and in a song, even — in Magical Mystery Cure, rather than to the near destruction itself. And Pinkie wasn’t there to see Twilight’s song; she was at Sweet Apple Acres at the time.

[HoofBitingActionOverload]

Hello, author. My name is horizon, and there's pretty much no way to make me lose interest in a story faster than poop jokes, but I had to read through this anyway for the competition scoring. So congratulations, you've successfully trolled me.

Ouch! It really wasn't a troll fic, though.

But it's okay. We don't all have the intellectual capacity necessary to enjoy poop jokes. I forgive you.

[Xepher]

First off, thanks for both pointing out these writeoffs to me so I could join in, and for the reviewing effort here. The HITEC thing is intriguing, but more on that in a minute.

First thing of note: I was amused that my guesses on authorship for your two stories turned out to be right. You'll note in the pre-reveal reviews I posted for both those I mentioned "the usual suspects" and you were the top of that list, with Bad Horse and, distantly, Skywriter being the others. At first I didn't even realize the pun in Eponalepsis, as the word itself seemed to loosely translate (seizure of (equine) godhood) to the story's plot for me. Then I saw the word epanalepsis somewhere, looked up the definition, and knew that story had to be yours! Just saying, your big words make you easy to spot!

Now, as to your review of my story, "The Shortest Possible Distance"... most of my response is in the main forum thread. To your review specifically though, I think you mostly pointed out what I already knew. As you rightly say, word limit really did me in with some of the description, especially for the action-based stuff.

One thing that did stand out in your review, was how you mention the "unfairness" of the test/exam. This is quite accurate, but to me had been a minor issue (though intentional), since most fantasy/wizard tests always seem to be completely arbitrary and luck based anyway (thank you Harry Potter and other YA fantasy fiction.) So I didn't realize it stood out as much until seeing your detailed critique of it. As I was going for a properly "SCIENCE!" solution, I now see that not having a scientific (or at the very least, academically reasonable) test setup really muddles the reality of the story. Definitely something to work on in a rewrite.

Now as to HITEC: Having worked closely with you to set up the Iron Author judging for Everfree, this seems very familiar and comfortable to me. I like the acronym, as it makes it easy to remember which score in a sequence goes with which element, and the 5 components you broke it into also work quite well.

That said, I'm not sold on the zero-sum (or rather 100-sum) nature of it. It seems awkward to me that fixing one component reduces a score in another. Ex: You gave my story 20-30-20-10-20. That means one thing (Idea) stood out as better than everything else, and one (Execution) stood out as needing work. If I raise that 10 up to 20, then the 30 drops back to 20 as well. So I improved/adjusted only one thing, but TWO elements changed. Now nothing is left to indicate that "Idea" is stronger than the other components. Information has been lost, and that bothers some primal lobe in the back of my brain.

Yes, one can argue that two different revisions are actually different stories (and thus can't be compared to each other with this system) but... The fact of the matter is that on first scoring "Idea" was better than "Hook". In the second, they are equal, even though neither the Hook, nor the Idea were changed. To me it seems there should still be a differential between the two, regardless of where the other scores or the overall average moved to.

My personal idea on the issue would be a more "absolute" scoring system. I love your categories and acronym, but a 1-10 in each without a constant sum would be, in my opinion, more useful. Also, presenting each component score with an explanation for that specific number could be VERY useful. With your reviews (as an experienced reviewer) it's pretty easy to tell which comments apply to which of the scoring areas, but if you deliberatly broke it up by component score, I think that'd make it an easier system to use for less experienced reviewers. It'd give them five specific things to focus on when talking about the story, on top of their "general notes" and help prevent oversights that often happen when reviewing a lot of things in a short time frame. E.g. "Oops, totally forgot to explain why the hook didn't work for me."

[Von Snootingham]

May I echo others when I say thanks for making me aware of these writeoffs. I may not have been eligible, but I still had fun. (And hey, it got me off my ass and writing!)

I think it's hilarious the extent you went to to pretend you hadn't written the Curse of Ahuizotl, pretending to not get the twist and then going back and editing the post once it was pointed out to you, all the while having been the guy who wrote it. I can really appreciate your dedication. I give you two trollestias up for your commitment to the deception. Kudos.

In your review of my story, the one where I killed off Dash for the sake of a shitey pun, you posed a question.

Reading this after "Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies" made me wonder what it is that made the mixture of character death and humor work here but not there; Shy/Dash and Twilight/Pinkie both play similar roles. I think the major difference is the quality of the characterization — Fluttershy was basically born to play a straight mare, and her awkward refusal to rein Dash provides some of the comedy for things like the hedgehog juggling. Also the fact that the framing device means we're explicitly looking back on past events (with the death offscreen), rather than seeing Dash die in front of our noses; as the quote says, "comedy is tragedy plus time".

Okay, it wasn't really a question, but you wondered about it. I think it's partially in the deservedness (is that a word) of the death. In Brownies, Pinkie has done nothing wrong. She accidentally makes some bad brownies, ODs, and it kills her. It's a tragic death. But in mine, Dash deserves it to a degree. She's celebrating by getting horribly plastered, torments some innocent critters, and the antagonizes some vicious beastie. It's not tragic so much as it's a Darwin Award. She acted stupidly, did something dangerous, and it killed her. One was senseless, and one was deserved, just a consequence for dumb behavior. In theory, any death should be tragic, but we have a way of reducing that when we think the victim may have deserved it. And it's a fine line too. For example, think about how my story would have felt, how you'd have felt about it, if instead of drinking to celebrate getting into the Wonderbolts, she was drinking to mourn that she'd been REJECTED. Because that's how it was in my very first iteration, but then the whole thing just felt sad.

Of course, a large part of it is also, as you said, "comedy is tragedy plus time". Although I think that quote is maybe slightly inaccurate. I've always felt that the "plus time" quote is just a specific example or maybe a subset of a broader principle. It's not specifically that time lessons a tragedy. It's DISTANCE. Time is just a form of distance. Here's a quote from one of my favorite shows, Dead Like Me:

Charlie Chaplin defined the thin line between comedy and tragedy. Say you see some poor slob get hit in the head with a bucket of wet cement and fall on his ass. From twenty feet away, that's funny as hell. But you get too close, close enough to see that pain, then it's no longer funny. You've gotta learn to step back far enough to see the funny in everything.

So while time does indeed lessen tragedy, it's because it's far enough away in the past, where you can look at it more objectively and see the funny. In my story, I'd assumed that Dash's death was recent. Recent enough that Fluttershy is still mourning. She doesn't find it funny, after all. It's funny to us, but not to her (pun aside), because she's not far enough away yet even if we are. She was there and saw it. We didn't. Like you said, it happened off-screen, and that's what gives us the distance we need to be able to see comedy rather than tragedy, unlike in Brownies, where it happens "in front of our noses."

Now that I've rambled on long enough (about my own story no less), I'm gonna wrap this up. Again, thanks for getting the word out about this. Keep us posted for the one, will ya?

[TheNumber25]

Thank you for your review and for rating my story so high, horizon! I can't express how important a vote of confidence like that is to someone returning after such a long absence.

If you're interested, I've posted an explanation of my story in the main thread (and it's longer than the story itself). I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

[Starlight_Flight]

So.. where can I find these writeoffs next time one comes up?

[Silent Strider]

2404949
Register at the Writeoff site and, under options, you can choose to have an email sent to you whenever a new event is set to begin.

Or monitor the group's forum here at FIMFiction; a post will likely be made before each event begins.

Some authors — like PresentPerfect, who is the one that first alerted me to them — also like to do a blog post whenever a new Writeoff is starting, though I found that to not be completely reliable; they are under no duty to do so, after all, and people sometimes forget things.

The event happens roughly monthly (well, the recent ones seem to be more like once every four weeks), currently alternating between minific events (400 to 750 words) and short story events (2000 to 25000 words). If the pattern holds, the next one will start with prompt selection September 12, and will be a short story event.