Oneshotober Wrap-Up · 2:07am Dec 5th, 2014
So, in reviewing the Oneshotober entries, I’ve written 24,155 words thus far (26,244 counting this blog).
You people have written 203,055.
I’ve reviewed longer works than that before, but it’s still quite a bit. So, what have we learned?
Well, I’ve learned that sleep deprivation was much easier to deal with at 20 than it is at 30, and confirmed that I’m well on my way to carpal tunnel syndrome. Also, I think I’ll be dropping that Read It/Avoid It thing at the bottom of my reviews in the future, as I always have trouble thinking of things to say for it that aren’t just reiterating points from the review itself.
I’ve also learned that peanut butter cake is a perfectly acceptable idea. Peanut butter icing, however, is excessive.
Author Performance
So, what kind of impression did each participant leave on the site?
Yes, we're reviewing the authors now.
Listed from highest aggregate score to lowest, as I felt that was the best representation of overall performance, combining number of stories entered and the quality of those entries. Including average score, number of entries, total words written, and their best entry.
1. Admiral Biscuit — 3.19 — 31 entries — 62,706 words
Easily the strongest contender this year, and the only one to, without question, complete the challenge. This was basically an opportunity for Biscuit to show off that he’s fully capable of writing a ton of stuff, in a very short time frame, while maintaining quality. If every Oneshotober run was more like his, I don’t think the event would generate any hate.
Best Entry: The Mares of Diomedes (Mature, Gore)
Second-Best Because That One Was Mature: Braiding
2. 2006midnight — 1.73 — 15 entries — 18,228 words
A relatively new and young author who has a solid grasp of the basics, and is capable of quite a poetic and descriptive style. She has a lot of potential, but seems content to use her writing more to express herself than to entertain others. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does mean her work doesn’t really push her boundaries, and can become repetitive.
Best Entry: Tears of Blackened Ice
3. Ianpiersonjdavis — 2.63 — 8 entries — 14,860 words
Unfortunately, despite having 8 entries that I rated fairly well, nothing from this author really stuck with me. I can’t remember anything that happened in any of them without going and looking, save for a couple. And alas, it seems they have grown tired of writing, of the show, of the fandom, and how their disability (autism) is the hip thing to mock right now (on that point, seriously people — as soon as you use “autists” as an insult, it lets me know I can go ahead and dismiss anything you have to say), and has left the fandom. So, it seems that, unfortunately, I’ll never have a chance to get a better impression of their writing.
Best Entry: Fluttershy Donates Blood
4. Takarashi282 — 2.57 — 7 entries — 31,659 words
And this one I can remember just fine, if only because I can think of him as a genre writer — crossovers, in particular. And while that only makes up half of his entries, it’s still enough to make an impression, particularly when one of those is the longest fic in the entire challenge. All told, a pretty solid writer, though characterization could feel a bit iffy, and plots could get a bit too random or over-complex.
Best Entry: The Rotting (Mature, Gore — Unfortunately, none of the rest stand out enough to be a runner-up)
5. The red knight — 0.95 — 19 entries — 29,002 words
The second-most-prolific author in the challenge, and likely one of the more infamous by the time it was half done. This might surprise some considering how harshly I reviewed his stories, and I admit I was getting pretty frustrated with them after a while, but I don’t think TRK is actually a bad writer. I’ve read many stories that were worse than his in concept and characterization. His major failings seem to stem from his stories being very rushed, which was likely exacerbated by a writing challenge like this. Expanded to control the pacing and cleaned up for grammar and spelling, a lot of what he wrote would have been perfectly enjoyable, aside from two points: Coil Sparks and Humble Pie.
TRK showed a strong tendency to force his OCs into anything he wrote. The problem with this is that whenever they appeared, they stole the spotlight, and they never gave the reader any reason to be interested in them. If they’d been background cameos, that might have worked. If they’d been more fully-developed characters following their own ongoing story as a “B Plot” throughout his one-shots, that could actually have been fascinating. But instead, they dropped in, demanded the reader give them attention, and then vanished without adding anything of note to the story.
Finally, when I brought up the impression participants would leave on the site up in the header to this section, TRK is who I had in mind. Between his rushed writing and a number of forum posts and comments, TRK made it fairly clear he was writing for attention rather than any sort of personal fulfillment. That’s a good way to gather a hatedom in short order.
Best Entry: Rated M for Mash
6. Regidar — 2.50 — 6 entries — 8,927 words
As probably the most infamous participant in this year’s Oneshotober, there isn’t really much I have to say about Regidar. I mean, he’s known both for his straightforward writing as well as trolling. He’s closing in on 2,000 followers, for Luna’s sake. What I can say, though, is that it kind of felt like he was just phoning it in a bit. Out of six entries, one was outright shitfic, three were utter randomness, one was personal venting, and one was just some weak history drama. All in all, he didn’t do nearly as poorly as some, but I’m certain he could have done much better.
Best Entry: Rainbow Dash and the Power of Imagination
7. Garbo802 — 2.80 — 5 entries — 10,567 words
I already kind of knew Garbo as a fellow PCaRG reviewer (and wow, I haven’t done anything for that in a couple months now), but I hadn’t really read anything of his before this. After Oneshotober, I can say that we definitely have some different approaches to headcanon and the show’s tone. But beyond that, he overall seems to have a pretty solid grasp on light slice of life stories, though they seem to generally fall a bit short. Either due to feeling like they failed to explore their concept fully, failed to connect with the reader, or just made questionable character and plot decisions; one way or another, they just didn’t really work out, more often than not.
His best entry, however, was a totally different animal: a strange but effective combination of freeform poetry and word art that made an excellent meta point.
Best Entry: No Such Thing
8. Grey Faerie — 1.44 — 9 entries — 10,452 words
I’ve only seen or heard of Grey Faerie through this challenge, and it unfortunately didn’t reflect terribly well on her. Likely due to the time constraints in the challenge, all of the stories in her compilation felt rushed and were generally unedited. However, there were other issues I fear might be more permanent. Talking heads, telling, and questionable characterization were prevalent, and while editing can ameliorate those, they can also become a core problem of the narrative, and be very difficult to remove.
Best Entry: Behind The Mirror
9. TheExhaustedBrony — 2.25 — 4 entries — 5,969 words
For running the 2014 event, Exhausted didn’t submit much. Maybe he was too tired?
I was going to find a video compiling jacksepticeye’s terrible puns and put it right here, but apparently there isn’t one. Honestly, I’m surprised.
Anyway, we got a couple total-randomness stories, a slice-of-life comedy that was almost impressive in how nowhere it went, and some Chrysalis sympathy. Unfortunately, only the last one was really worth remembering. If I had to nail it down, I’d say Exhausted is pretty good with his characters, but plot is a weak point. Kind of like me, I suppose.
I, too, have a weakness for plot.
I was so close to making this another Shining Armor pic.
Best Entry: Discussions With a Defeated Queen
10. Black Jesuz — 2.00 — 2 entries — 4,063 words
A bit of an odd duck, this time. Black Jesuz never officially joined the challenge, but did submit his stories as Oneshotober fics. From what I saw, he’s capable of delivering a pretty good emotional punch sometimes, but his stories come off a little bit generic. Not only do they fail to really stand out as pony fics, but they’re also not very strongly pony-oriented. In both of his entries, I could have done a Search & Replace to turn “pony” into “person” and “hoof” into “hand”, and nothing would really be lost.
Best Entry: Three
11. SonicMlpGamerandArtist — 1.00 — 3 entries — 3,900 words
SonicMLP seems to have a predilection for mediocre darkfic and character angst, where the character eventually surrenders to their issues and goes insane or is otherwise lost. However, questionable characterization combines with a number of poor narrative choices to prevent the reader from engaging with the characters in a manner that would make stories like this effective. These are, however, problems that can be overcome through the simple act of getting more practice with writing.
Best Entry: Wanderer — Really, none of the three were particularly good, but this one at least lacked the characterization problems of the other two.
12. Biker_Dash — 2.00 — 1 entry — 1,588 words
I’m surprised Biker did so little. I talk to him on a pretty regular basis, and know him from PCaRG, so I’d seen his plans for this event. He had all 31 story concepts ready-to-write ahead of time, and had a particularly ambitious goal of using every character and genre tag on the site between them. And then he only actually wrote the first one. I mean, I came up with something like 40 ideas, and only wrote nine, but still.
Anyway, Biker has some very clever and unique ideas, and his writing style doesn’t have any major technical issues, but it somehow often feels a little flat. His Oneshotober entry didn’t change that impression any.
Best Only Entry: Breezies vs. Parasprites: An Apocalyptic Meal
13. DiamondBurritos — 1.00 — 1 entry — 1,134 words
I can’t really say much about Diamond beyond that they seem to be very new to writing. Their only story from this month was plagued with very, very basic problems that generally work themselves out after the author’s first few stories. I’ll allow that some of the problems were due to time constraints, but there are others that are simply poor writing regardless. On the other hand, Diamond seems to do review blogs of their own, albeit usually about non-pony things, and those seem to be pretty solidly written.
Best Only Entry: Harvesting With a Friend
Finally, here are the top ten fics from the challenge. If you read nothing else, check these out.
Top Ten Fics
1. Admiral Biscuit — The Mares of Diomedes (Mature)
2. Admiral Biscuit — Braiding
3. Admiral Biscuit — Diamond Tiara Dies Alone
4. Garbo802 — No Such Thing
5. Admiral Biscuit — Highway 502
6. Ianpiersonjdavis — Fluttershy Donates Blood
7. Admiral Biscuit — Playing in the Park
8. Admiral Biscuit — Syzygy
9. Admiral Biscuit — Silver Spanner gets her Cutie Mark
10. Takarashi282 — The Rotting (Mature)
And with that, I declare this ridiculous project over. Now, I just need to review a story on PCaRG at Flare’s request, edit something for Rocinante, try to finally update TBTK, and work on plotting out one of my non-Pony original works, before I start on the next ridiculous project.
Actually, I might start on the next ridiculous review project before I plot out my original story. I kind of gave myself a deadline on that one.
Why not both?
Also, TheExhaustedBrony's link is broken.
2634438
Cause I've already done so many of him, mostly.
And fixed it already.
Hooray for giant ridiculous reading projects I just started a new one yaaaaaaay D:
The only thing crazier than competing in One-ShotShot-Ober is reviewing it.
my only possible defense is that I was going through some rough emotional stuff, and writing in general was a side thing for me. You'll notice I wrote three in at the beginning of the month, and then sort of... gave up.
Because I was curious and I might've said so early on, here are numbers and what they are for. I don't like math, but I'll do it for curiosity's sake.
The average rating, counting all thirteen authors, is ~2.01.
The average rating, not counting TRK and 2006midnight, is ~2.13.
(I was wondering if it was any better without those two when I noticed so many negative ratings for TRK so quickly. Only a little.)
In either case, the average rating is approximately slightly against, using your system. Considering that your five-point system is slanted in language to sound relatively positive (I would've called a 3 "ambivalent" or "meh/neutral" rather than anything with positive or negative connotations), this is quite significant in terms of implications about overall One-Shotober quality.
2634841
All authors: 2.19
Excluding TRK: 2.45
Excluding both TRK and 2006: 2.58
I run numbers on pretty much everything. And unlike you, I'm a bit of a math nerd.
Yeah, it's slightly against, but I'd say that's more indicative of fanfiction in general, rather than this event. And the couching things in positive descriptions comes more from not generally mentioning a score of Zero. I reserve that for utter garbage, and that's kind of rare — though I can think of two authors who'd earn it on a regular basis, and no, neither one is TRK.
So it's more like a six-point system rather than five. And I don't like giving myself a neutral option. I choose it much too often when I do.
Edit: And when I copied that from OpenOffice to Drive, it only saved the values, not the formulae. Oh well, raw data is still raw data.
2634868
I just added up the ratings you gave the authors and divided them by the appropriate number, whereas I see you got those numbers by adding up all the stories and dividing them by that. Humn.
I like my way because it's less work.