End of an era: scoring and final say · 10:36pm Aug 28th, 2014
Well that was quite the adventure. Honestly, I'm really glad I did it. Read some good stories. Found some nice folks. Got to have a whole host of likely contentious opinions. Picked up a few followers, too :)
So, it really just falls to me to make my final top 10 list before I leave this all behind. Firstly, however, it was mentioned to me that I had, in fact, missed one story, so:
Outsider
By Raugos
Prior to his graduation rituals, Lenny takes some advice from his friend and heads to Equestria to broaden his horizons.
I got no reservations in saying that the twist here is clever. It's easy enough to see something is up, so you're kind of looking for it when it comes, but I have a rule about such things that comes from my RPG background. Never base a twist on information not given. You, as the narrator, are the eyes and ears for your audience. You can imply, distract, and misdirect all you like, but when it comes to the crunch, if you have missed out vital information that forms the basis of your twist, then you've just lied by omission to your audience. This made me feel more than a little uncomfortable.
But like I said: it's clever. Sadly, it also feels like half a story. Sadly, as nice as the underlying (if incomplete) idea is, it also breaks the prompt like the Hulk with a migrane.
4/10 Prompt: Rejected
So onto the wrap-up itself. The weirdest thing by far was trying to decide how I was going to score the stories to decide a final top 10. I mean, if you asked me what my top 10 favourite stories were, it'd be a breeze, but I quote Couch Crusader:
The best entries, in my opinion, will take both parts of the original prompt and take them somewhere honest, thought-provoking, and (because we're writing fics, after all!) fun:
Write a story...- 1) about ponies
- 2) from a non-pony's point of view.
So, I'm going to start with my top 10 stand-alone stories, and then modify it to take the prompt into account. I'm also going to talk about each one and how I felt about it. There will be spoilers aplenty. You're had plenty of time to read them already!
Obviously, I've excluded myself from the scoring stage.
1. Queen of Queens
The only story to have genuinely left me in a euphoric stupor after reading. I had to spend a half hour soaking it in before I could even write down my thoughts. This twenty-year mini-epic centred on a concept so stupendously ingenious that it filled every ounce of imagination I unwittingly brought to bear on it. To see it unfold, regardless of one or two issues I had with it, was a rare pleasure I do not expect to feel for some time.
The problem with it is, it's not about ponies. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had been pretty lenient about it in my previous evaluation, too. Now, it has a fair bit of ponies in it, and they do have a profound effect on the outcome, but it is always a story by changelings about changelings.
2. Rise
My early benchmark for the competition held up extremely well. Rolling a coming-of-age story into a cultural cataclysm and shaking it up with a profound cultural misunderstanding is a staggering achievement. It easily matched the emotional kick I got from any other story, but the pacing and complexity of the whole was more or less flawless. Which is not to say that it was perfectly written, else I'd have scored it higher, but the key story elements combined perfectly and never left me wanting the next 'thing' to happen. That's always a sign of really good storytelling. The only thing that really tripped me up the ease with which Misty's father shakes off generations of cult-like behaviour. The start did such a good job of setting that culture up that it was hard to swallow when it was so easily undermined.
However, we again face the issue of the story being about the breezies and their culture. Yes, their culture is a response to ponies, but that's hardly making the most of the prompt. You could have replaced ponies with anything else and the story would have been the more or less the same.
3. Changeling: The Movie
Good comedies are so rare that I can't help but be happy when I find one. The sheer level of snark throughout had me in frequent giggles, and the parallels drawn between Twilight and Chrysalis – as well as the casual way it was handled – really gave the story a consistent feel of both scathing humour and cohesive story. Much like Rise, it was there ending where things unfortunately felt the weakest. The plot tie-ups on both sides felt by far the least funny and relevant parts of the story, leaving my with slightly less of an experience at the end than I expected.
As for the prompt... well, here we have a problem. Since doing the initial scoring, the whole question about prompts has reared it's head. if you were extremely picky, you could even go as far as to suggest that the story may have breached the rules of the competition with the final scene centred on Twilight and Spike. It's not exactly written from a pony PoV exactly, but it shows how problematic the lack of clarity is when I even have to even consider this at all. Being a comedy, a story about Chrysalis doing a partly-fake documentary about ponies is a fairly decent shot at the prompt, but that ending kinda neuters any bonus points it might have otherwise gained.
4. The Last Trumpet's Call
The first of the classy stories I read, and even in hindsight, that ending hits hard. It was tough to decide how to score it once I'd read everything else, because while it isn't as strong as a stand-alone story as some others, it's infinitely more real than its peers, which is exactly what CiG said he was going for. It worked. Holy flaming cheesewire did it work. Yet, the middle just didn't hold my attention as I thought it ought to. The pieces of the story didn't produce a series of interlocking conflicts, challenges, and events, so much as a collection of these things all pointed towards the finale. Where Changeling didn't leave me dangling for a second, Trumpet hung around a little longer than its content was welcome.
And again, the prompt use was nothing special – little more than a story that happened to a crew of mostly ponies, rather than actually being about them. Not that it was failing the prompt or anything, but it isn't picking up any bonus points for imagination from it.
5. Little Apple
I never really expected this to be here. I never thought one of the shorter stories would capture my attention so much, but when Winona leapt out in front of a timberwolf to defend its family at any price... that moment was pure magic. Feeling the limitless devotion from the dog's point of view, realising just how terrified Applebloom was because she'd inadvertently caused a potentially lethal situation for her lifelong friend, feeling panic because the whole story has been reminding you about how superficial the communication between them is: this is the stuff special stories are made of. And it all worked because so much care and attention was given to the framing and voice that I was utterly sold on my dog PoV when the climax happened. I don't think it could even win because there just isn't enough of it, but it's definitely special.
Still, it's also probably the weakest of its peers regarding the prompt. The story is more or less about ponies, but only in the most perfunctory of ways.
6. Destination Unknown
I cannot express just how much I appreciate the subtle understatement in this story. Take one ultra-generic ship, explore the reasons why a changeling might leave his own kin and explore a new life, add some touching moments that characterise a romance through the tiny details rather than the sweeping gestures, and then leave the reader with a rare and relateable sense of hope for the future.
This is how you do a fucking romance. Get it? Not some dime-a-dozen Hollywood bastardisation, but a genuine narrative filled with respect, dignity, and emotion.
It's not as sweeping as story as those above it, but this one will gain a step or two when it comes to the prompt because it's actually about the character 'finding' himself amongst ponykind. It will of course lose one or two points through not actually being in the finals :(
7. I AM DEMON
Once I'd had a good long think, I just couldn't overcome the feeling that the story was held back by the gimmick too much. The story is fantastic, but there really isn't an excuse for having to highlight sections to read the words and wade through what ultimately end up being overwrought descriptions.
That said, the story is pure genius. Watching ponies interact from a PoV that can see their real-time obfuscations but doesn't understand them is such a novel implementation of good showing and such an ingenious use of the prompt that it should have scored so much higher. It should have been untouchable, but it isn't. Not that I mind Aquaman going with the experiment in the slightest, but I think his idea here was too good to take such a big risk.
Add to all that that the story has one of the most competently executed motivation switch-ups I've ever seen, and... well, actually, that kind of makes it a shame.
8. My Father Used to Say
The other story that didn't make it. Nightwalker pulls off such an incredibly smooth narrative for his laid-back slice-of-life story that the somewhat forced prompt use is far more invisible than it has any right to be. A little introspection, a little pontification about ponies, and a little action to seal the deal, and it's just... nice.
Nice in all the good ways, not the weak ones.
9. Mortal Coil Foiled
When it comes to stories doing their thing with a bit of flash and bang, this gets my marks for pulling of tragedy with the gravity such a tag rightfully deserves. It's this far down because the prose isn't consistently good enough to push it higher, and the thick narrative voice is deeply engaging at the start but starts to grate after a while. But it's a train wreck and you can see it coming. Like a good tragedy, though, it walks the line between knowing something is coming but not knowing how it will come. Suspense + mystery + voice + a look at the nature of ponies?
The execution is holding back a solid idea and an interesting prompt use, here.
10. Veni, Vidi, Verti
It amuses me that, having helped to edit this one, I had no idea where it might end up in my scoring, if much of anywhere at all. The flaw that keeps this story down is the lack of pacing and direction for the first half. It's probably a couple of thousand words too long, to be honest, and that's really not good. But what it does with you when you get the meat of the story, though... I likes it. I do. It was pretty much written with the intent to take what most changeling stories were likely to do (and often did, in the end) and do the opposite. It's definitely a unique use of the prompt, too: when is a pony not a pony? When it's a changeling.
But really, what makes a pony anyway? That question is what sneaks this story into my last spot.
So, that done I want to say a few things about PRIDE.
What's been really weird is that I went into the competition thinking that prompt use was a really important aspect and kept my focus on that all the way through. I was thinking about it after each story read and was sure that it was going to remain an important factor for me. When it came to choosing my top stories, though, I found it very hard to integrate it into my thinking. That, of course, made it really hard for me to consider how my story might fit in amongst all these other, thoroughly worthy, stories. I have great confidence in the most technical aspects of my craft, and I focused on prompt use heavily, but as to whether it would actually draw people into it's narrative? I wasn't sure. I realised soon after the deadline that I'd missed a few important details that would flesh out the world a lot better, but I also knew they were specific enough that their omission would pass unnoticed if my writing style could keep a reader focused.
Of course, I really wanted to have a message above and beyond the interactions of one griffin and one pony village. I wanted to focus on some ramifications of the show that many probably wouldn't think of, like what happened before there were unicorns to raise the sun. Once I had the slur 'skybreakers' in mind, the rest came together – a parallel to the incessant urge of mankind to expand into anywhere that held things of value, regardless of what was there before. After all, the show can't go two minutes without reminding us how ponies are parallels for people, even down to having pointless handles on all their cups. The baggage goes both ways. I hope it worked, but there is nothing left except to wait, now.
Scoring my top 10 to include the prompt was odd. At first, I left my story in the list out of interest and it quickly showed just how much bias goes into judging a contest. It wasn't bias for my story because it was mine; it was bias towards what I think is good writing, a good story, and what the prompt really meant. No matter what way I scored it, I always came first once writing, execution, and prompt use were all figured together, but it was always by the tiniest or margins. Of course, a few moments thought and I realised it made perfect sense and didn't matter one jot: it was coming out for my top 10 anyway.
So, after too much time spent pondering, my final 10 are:
1 / 1 I AM DEMON
2 / 2 Queen of Queens
3 / 3 Changeling: The Movie
4 / 4 Rise
5 / 5 The Last Trumpet's Call
6 / – My Father Used to Say
7 / – Destination Unknown
8 / 6 Hello, My Name Is…
9 / 7 Little Apple
10/ 8 Veni, Vidi, Verti
– / 9 Au Natualligator
– /10 We Who With Songs Beguile
The first row is the top 10 of all stories in the competition, and the second is my top 10 out of the official finalists.
The same reason that I had difficulty coming to terms with my feelings about my own story was the same reason that I AM DEMON ended up supplanting it's competitors. There wasn't much in it, in the end, but among a tight field, the stories that really stuck it to the prompt made up good ground. I'm sure Obscelescence will be quietly pleased that he scraped in above Blueshift by virtue of better prompt use.
My Father Used to Say overtook Destination Unknown through better prompt use, but their absence from the top 23 along with Mortal Coil Foiled, gives me three more stories to have a quick ramble about.
Hello, My Name Is...
So this crept in on prompt use. Another changeling story, but this one keeps a bitter comic tone by using a tight narrative that constantly assesses and comments of the absolute stupidity and absurdity of ponies as a race. That was always going to be a shoe-in for prompt use. The writing isn't all that solid, but the quality is consistent, readable, and actually funny – although it's fair to say that the snappy cynicism appealed to me particularly.
The other thing this manages is to tie in the oh-so-popular Canterlot invasion without actually wasting time re-narrating anything. It's all new, yet your reader knowledge adds to the suspense and even ups the ante in the giggles department. It also has a far stronger finish than the other comedies, and most of the other stories, for that matter.
Au Naturalligator
Another solid prompt use is Gummy meeting other alligators in the sewers of Manehattan and being forced to make a choice about how he views ponies and how much he trusts them. The slightly iffy pacing perfunctory writing kept this down in my favourite stories list, but having Gummy ponder the nature of ponies in order to set up a wonderfully uplifting reunion with Pinkie earned this a number 9 spot.
We Who With Songs Beguile
Finally, this one was just outside my top 10 initially, and while it's prompt use wasn't as sharp as the other that gained ground, its fundamental strength through clear narrative voice and warm, welcoming style managed to pick up the last place. It's a good example of how much difference it makes every aspect of a story is solid. Half a mark off in a couple of areas where lots of other stories fell foul and this would have been no-where. But, good proofing and a focused goal (as unfocused as the character telling it may be) really make the difference in how much fun it is to read.
So in the manner the actual judges will be scoring the competition:
10pts. I AM DEMON
9pts. Queen of Queens
8pts. Changeling: The Movie
7pts. Rise
6pts. The Last Trumpet's Call
5pts. Hello, My Name Is...
4pts. Little Apple
3pts. Veni, Vidi, Verti
2pts. Au Natualligator
1pt. We Who With Songs Beguile
And that's it. I'm all done. Now I just have the other trillion things that have piled up while I've been doing this.
I guess I have to go write stuff again, now.
Now I want to see your top 10s too! I'm sure you've all read most of the finalists by now, right?
-M
(quietly pleased with himself, too)
I really, really like We Who With Songs Beguile. So many authors tried the animal angle, but that was, I felt, the only attempt that really nailed it.
2410047 I think Logan knew when to cut corners. The more personality you shove into the birds, the less bird-like the narrative becomes. Keeping the right inferences, terminology, and points of note was fundamental to keeping this as a strong bird-PoV rather than just A. N. Other intelligent animal. I still think Little Apple made for a better animal PoV. But We Who With Songs Beguile had a more readable voice and style. The former runs the risk of putting people off through the gimmick, but the latter does not.
I can see how it could appeal more.
2410072
And Little Apple was hardly bad in that regard, either. I think I may have found the story less compelling, but that's just me.
Oh, and happy 50th blog post. :)
Oh hey, now I just have 12 Outside in stories to read! ^_^ thanks Quizzy!
I haven't read all 20+ finalists, but I've read a good number of the ones you placed in the top 10. I think I'll post a similar blog when the winners are announced, along with my thoughts (plus a few others like Nightwalker's).
You called the last contest pretty accurately. Will be interesting to see how you do this time.
2411383 Heh. Ordering five pre-picked stories is just a little bit easier.
Well, my thinking there was it was about ponies because everything the Breezie culture was was a response to that. As to 'replacing the ponies', I did actually put serious thought about adapting it into an 'original' story, but ran into the problem that the crux of the story is based on some very unique pony stuff (namely the Apple family's methods of apple harvesting, the manual changing of the weather and magic).
A few people mentioned that. I was obviously way too subtle, but in every single scene he's in, he does break the rules for his daughter in some way. It's just that the whole story is from Misty's POV.
2411730
I didn't think it was bad on the prompt or anything, but some stories did some fantastic things with it and this just didn't stretch it very far. That's why I had to give it to I AM DEMON in the end, because it ran further than almost anyone else did with the prompt. In the end, it's just personal opinion on what makes prompt use good.
(Also: Taking a Gander is an exemplary example of what I thought was a marvellous prompt use)
Really good point. But I also think I said at the time that it wasn't going to take much; it just needed something the reader could hand their hat on. You know, prime the reader with the thing they need to have in mind before the pace picks up.
And I don't think it was ever that the change of direction itself seemed odd – that fitted perfectly with the character you had described – what made it seem off-kilter to me was that you had actually presented him is ever harder-lined than usual before the switch-up happened. Now, if I'm just doing a character analysis, that makes complete sense: falling back on cult-like behaviour in a time of crisis. However, what I needed to see was just that one crack in his façade before the moment of choice. One moment he could give ISIS a run for its money and then he changes completely. He was, I suppose, too perfect in his refusal, even when Misty obviously distracted from her damaged wing. Even going back and looking at it analytically, the events transpiring only ever show him as being hard-line. I need to see a moment of vulnerability to make it feel natural. Even just a too-long silence might do the trick (but no single tear™ or I'll smack you!).
That was my take, anyway, but I feel confident that if you put it to the others who mentioned it they'd say something pretty similar.
Hope that helps!
-M
I see that you had Veni, Vidi, Verti instead of the Veni, Vidi, Mutatio.
Heck, if I hadn't randomly decided that the title looked off, no one would have known it was mistranslated! And then everyone would have been using the misnomer as if it was correct! The horror!
I'd like to say I was the reason the story did as well as it did.
2412361 I'm not sure if it's apathy or trained indifference that it never even occurred to me to wonder what the title meant. I'll have to ask Secret why he chose it...
2412372 I came, I saw, I changed. Pretty unique and clever, if you ask me. Might was well be the changeling's motto.
2412388 Huh. That is clever. And I never knew.
Thank you :)
Story links would be nice...
2419928 Bloody old nags causing trouble...
(I was a bit blogged out at the time. Updated now.)
2411383 Well, I called the winner (against the run of play for the first two results, no less), but that's about it.
Beyond guessing that, I pretty much crashed and burned :(
I'm going to agree with most of your picks except for I am Demon. I mean seriously? It's disjointed, changes color every few words, and yanks the reader around like a yo-yo.
I loved The Last Trumpet's Call (heartstring tugger) and Veni (an onion that keeps unwrapping as the story continues to reveal a quite un-onionlike core), but Rise really caught my attention and hasn't quit (My pick for #1).
2421239 Trust me, I wanted to dislike it for those reasons, but what the story did with it was exceptional. Between that and the absolutely inspired prompt use, it nudged ahead by a whisker.
Since it actually won, I can't have been that far off.
2421251 I am reminded of a rather bizarre sculpture that my town purchased for a large sum with two commas in it. Those who hate it, declare that it is ugly and cost the city far too much. Those who love it claim that it is fantastic, because, of course, the city paid a sum for it that has two commas in the price. I fall within the group who apparently is not deep enough to really appreciate the true meaning and existential beauty of the piece, both in the sculpture, and the fic.
It's art. If everybody liked it, it wouldn't be art.
2421268 I feel the same way about Moonlit Palaver.
2421286 The first fic in weeks that I've literally fallen on the floor laughing when I hit a line.
“Princess Celestia of Equestria,” announced the guard.
I think I hurt something on that line. Literally blindsided me.
2421319 Ahh. That'd be the difference then. I found it so obvious that it fell completely flat, for me.
Horses for courses, and all that.
2421239
I've seen you make similar remarks in a couple different places, which admittedly has piqued my curiosity. Could you elaborate a little bit on your thoughts about the story? It seems like you had a big issue with the pacing and narrative style, both of which I put heavy focus on fine-tuning as best I could, so I'll also admit to being a bit self-conscious about those aspects.
2425547 Okay, I’m *horrible* at describing what I like and what I don’t like about stories, which is one reason I normally don’t do reviews, but you asked, and here goes.
1. Colors - There’s a reason EqD doesn’t like colored text. They’re like little potholes in the road that jolt the reader out of their suspension of disbelief. And in the first screen, there are six of them. And it gets worse. I see why you did it, but that still adds to the difficulty of reading it.
2. Hook - The initial hook doesn’t. The first line, the first paragraph, they’re all disjointed and random, which again I see why you did it that way since its a newborn perspective, but it just makes me want to skip down to where the story makes more sense. Which brings us to —
3. Perspective. Combining a newborn with first person POV gives a much stronger emotional appeal to the character (and I’ll admit to doing it quite a bit with Monster), but it’s a little like Shakey-Cam when filming Cloverfield. Yeah, there’s a monster out there and it’s scary, but I’m starting to feel a little queasy and can we stop yanking the POV around so I can enjoy the movie?
4. Setting. It relies extensively on outside knowledge to place the first scene, which again I can see why you did it that way to keep it shorter, but suddenly to ram full tilt into this sentence:
He came here with Smart Cookie and Clover, with Commander Hurricane and Princess Platinum and Chancellor Puddinghead.
That’s Telly as all heck. To be honest, I bailed right at that point the first time I tried to read the story. I think I read about a page farther the second time before getting lost in the scene transition and actions.
The third time, I forced myself to read all the way through. Once I managed to force myself over the hump at the beginning, it wasn’t too bad, although I found myself skipping ahead far too often when things got all introspective, and only really figured out what was going on when I hit this line:
...how in the ever-widening world of Equestria there’s a fun-sized little Windigo in my sunforsaken bedroom!”
“Ah, that makes more sense,” I said. “Oh, wait. No it doesn’t,” I added.
At least Starswirl describes what is going on, and then things settle down into a more readable story. Still a little scrambled, but the shakey-cam is now a steady-cam as we progress through the rest of the story. Only one error (or at least it looks like an error) before struggling to the end.
When I stretch my hand out to nudge her back up,
...and then we get to the end of the story and it’s over. Not bad. If it was on FimFiction, I’d give it a thumbs up. Probably not a favorite though. I can see why other people would like it, but I can’t think of any potential changes where I would like it more, which would make the story better in that regard. I’ll admit my weird sense of humor and twisted logic because my first thought would have been to rewrite the hook and first para like this (go ahead and wince. I’m weird.)
In a frozen cavern surrounded by the screams of attacking Wendigo, Clover the Clever was giving birth. It was not a normal birth, by any measure. No apprentice of Starswirl the Bearded who had ever survived their first year could ever define ‘normal’ in the same way again. But even by that warped and twisted measure, this birth was anything but ordinary...