Bradel Reviews the Write-Off – "Behind Closed Doors" · 2:43pm Dec 13th, 2014
So this "Write-Off" thing happened, if you weren't aware. And it was kind of a smash—31 short stories (2000-8000) words, written by 27 different authors, including some of the best writers on the site. Cold in Gardez? In there. The Royal Canterlot Library crew? Four of five participating (including yours truly). Bad Horse? In there. Pascoite? In there. AugieDog? In there. I could go on.
This was my first Write-Off, and in addition to penning one of the stories, I thought it'd be nice if I could read through the submissions, provide some short reviews, and turn in a full panel of votes. On the one hand, that was a tremendous amount of fun (especially participating in the event discussion thread, which I've been obsessively reloading since Sunday). On the other hand, that meant I read over 110,000 words of pony fiction this week solely for the purpose of the Write-Off. So this week is going to be another oddball for my reviewing schedule, and instead of five regular reviews with the standard scoring/recommendation, I'm giving you guys 31 short reviews with my Write-Off votes and scoring based on horizon's "HITEC" system, which is designed to help writers by giving the reader's opinion of the relative strengths of a story (and thus where their editing efforts should best be directed). Links to all the stories have been provided, in case one or more catch your interest. As a quick shorthand, anything I score at 7+ can be considered a recommendation for you guys to go read—but these are just my impressions, and if you're interested in reading any of the others (or all of them!) I think that's very cool. There's been a lot of disagreement on scores for a few of these, so if you stick to the ones I put at 7+, you've got a good chance of missing out on some stories you'd like, or that are written by authors you know.
Winners (and authors) will be annouced on the Write-Off site Sunday night / Monday morning, depending on your time zone. I'm excited for that. But frankly, I've had so much fun doing this that I'm just pumped about Write-Offs in general, and I suspect you'll see me doing more of this in the future!
1 – Creativity Unbound
I find this one conceptually interesting—I tried something similar with Luna a long time ago, but in monologue / conversation with the reader—but the execution here falls flat for me. The hook I genuinely like. It's active, and it feels like it's launching the story neither too early nor too late. I'm not a big fan of the partial-italicizing here. It's a bit like too many apostrophes in Apple Family dialect—it's a phonetic crutch to get the words to read the way you want, without actually digging into the character's voice. This is something I still struggle with too, but I've developed the impression that you can do better for character voice by just working on word choice and making sure the text scans the way you want. Once the reader buys into your depiction of the character voice, the reader will generally start putting the correct stresses in him/herself and you don't have to mark up your text and make it ugly. My real problem with this piece, though, is that Rarity feels OOC here (and given that this is 2000 words of uninterrupted Rarity-speak, that's a big problem). Rarity here seems way too self-absorbed. Oh, she's self-interested, sure—but here she's going around openly bragging, and that's not something canon Rarity does, I don't think. She'll enthuse about something, but she won't openly brag.
Her relationship with her friends feels very one-sided here, too. I think that's a byproduct of the format of putting (almost all of) them on screen but making them all cardboard cut-outs. Here, they literally exist only for Rarity's benefit. It feels ugly, and it had me half-expecting (and to be honest dearly wanting) some sort of twist where we learned that Rarity was having a nervous breakdown or had just learned she was terminally ill, something, to justify a much higher-than-normal stress level and explain the overwhelming OOCness I felt.
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2/10
2 – What We Wanted to Do
This is my jam. I had some concerns with the voicing in the present-tense sections early on, but decided it could believably be Apple Bloom after a while mulling it over. And honestly, this is my favorite type of Apple Family characterization. This is also dead-on for my kind of humor. Whoever wrote it (I think my money's on horizon) knocked this out of the park. It's not a perfect story—the central conceit isn't terribly original and there are a couple moments of sitcom-level "Of course that was going to happen". Still, I enjoyed the heck out of this story. This is going in my favorites when it comes up on Fimfiction. My biggest criticism? I literally cannot believe Apple Bloom didn't get a cutie mark here.
H 15 I 15 T 30 E 30 C 10
7/10
3 – Unlocked Emotions
Some nice imagery early, but this really needs an editing pass. Fifth paragraph is already nonsense, narratively. There are a lot of timing errors in the prose, and this is kind of hard to get through. That said, I'm almost done reading Daetrin's "Apotheosis", and the author does a better job setting up a romance between the two characters here than Luna and Twilight got there. So there's definitely some potential here, but it's getting (forgive the pun) snowed under by the prose and execution.
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1/10
4 – Audit
I've been spoiled for this one a bit, already. And to be honest, the spoiling makes for a better hook than what the story presents. Prose is solid, but the intro is description-heavy and doesn't seem to raise any interesting questions. And... that holds true all the way through. This is 5000 words of Spike cataloguing rooms. If I needed a reference guide to the Castle of Friendship, this would be my go-to thing, but there's hardly any story here and it reads like what it is: just a list of stuff. Well written, but not particularly worth reading.
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2/10
5 – The Arena
I held off to the end with my voting for this one. I've had it on NA all week, but the more I think about it, the more I think that's not really appropriate for me to do. I'd never read "The Lady and the Tiger", so I didn't know how close this hewed to the original. As an academic, plagiarism makes me very upset—but that's something I bring to write-off, not necessarily something I feel like other people should share. I'm not saying "The Arena" is plagiarising, I'm just saying that I think it's somewhat cowardly for me to just avoid the issue by not reading the original story and refusing to vote on this write-off entry. Part of that is because, if it were legitimately plagiarism, I'd feel incredibly uncomfortable if my lack of vote helped it medal in the competition. So off I went to read it.
There are differences between the stories, as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion. Among them: "The Arena" is the better written of the two and the more impactful (though some of that may be because it concretizes itself into a setting we know). "The Arena" has a framing plot which is absent in the original, and I like that framing plot a lot better than the orginal's "What do you think, dear reader?" It also develops the notion of using this judicial format much better. Characterization is pretty much a toss-up—"The Arena" gives as good or better a depiction of the ruler, in fewer words, but doesn't do as much work with the lovers. On the other hand, the themes and the central plot are nearly identical, excepting a small change in agency between the princess/archduchess and her lover.
At the end of the day, I don't feel like this is plagiarism. It's fanfiction. Mark Twain one suggested that there are no new ideas in the world, just new arrangements of old ones. I'm pretty comfortable with that, and with this story. The writing is excellent. The extrapolation from the original is excellent. Everything here is excellent, really. If I didn't know that this story had already been told in almost the same form, this could have easily been my pick of the write-off. As it is, I really like it, and assuming the author publishes it on Fimfiction, I expect that it'll go in my favorites list, but I can't give it extremely high marks in this competition, because it represents a lot less in the way of new ideas than something like, say, Dirty Prancing. So my HITEC score for it, and my vote, are as follows:
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4/10
6 – The Star Chamber
If you're going to do a descriptive opening, this is the kind I like. It's multi-sensory, pretty dense, and it's over quickly, with the story moving to character interaction by the end of paragraph two. I'm not sure I like the pacing through the first 2000 words (this story is one of the longest in the writeoff), but dialogue does keep it moving. Voicing on Cadance seems weak in places, and I'm not sure how much I like the OC in the fourth section. There are some fun bits of symmetry here, though, with the story revisiting themes throughout. Sections in the eponymous chamber move quickly, but aren't always as well directed as they should be. Still, the writing here is good quality and fairly tight, so I'm assuming this must have been written by someone I know. Given the entrant list and the bleakness, I'm inclined to guess Bad Horse.
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7/10
7 – Hearth Swarming Eve
Twilight feels OOC in the hook, and it feels like active language is getting crammed in here for the sake of said hook, but it feels unnatural to me. And that's looking like a bit of a running theme—well written, but little niggly holes that bother me. Ferinstance: Chrysalis complains about how she's lost all her best infiltrators thanks to the Wedding Fiasco and tells Twilight she'll have to fix what she broke, and Twilight reads that as "So you want to feed on us", which seems very non-sequitor based on what Chrysalis just said. A couple paragraphs later, Chrysalis asks for military intelligence and material support for what sounds like conquering other nations, and Twilight seems to entertain this idea, which feels grossly out of character to me. There's a moment where it looks like that initial OOC-ness will get paid off (and is explicitly mentioned in the text), but then the author removes the explanation a couple thousand words further in, which just exacerbates the problem. Otherwise, this is a good, well-constructed story—though it does feel an awful lot like Rarity writing a self-insert Mary Sue, thanks to her hyper-competence and Twilight's general schlubbishness here.
A couple in-line notes that I thought deserved mention, though.
"They'll be fine. They know to come inside when the storms get too bad."
Am I the only person who reads this and wants to see a Fluttershy / John LeCarre crossover fic?
"If you only offered suggestions you thought she would accept, it wouldn't be much of a negotiation, now, would it?"
Obviously Rarity was paying attention to US politics in the 2008-2010 period.
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8/10
8 – Ill-Gotten Gains
I don't know if I'm just in a different reading mode from earlier or what. This story is super active, which yay, but the prose also makes me twitch uncontrollably. It's a very nicely put together piece... that desperately needs someone to come through and sweep up all the weakening phrases, unnecessary adverbs, and clunkily cliche structures. They're not horrible—I can read this just fine—but every sentence or two I just get this irrepressable urge to red-pen. This could be so much better, and so easily! It's already nicely concrete. It's already active. It's already interesting. It already has a cute resolution (that I've already seen like five times—please tell me this isn't the standard for write-offs..). But dayum, that prose needs a trip to the spa.
H 30 I 10 T 05 E 30 C 25
5/10
9 – Amara
I like the idea here, but there are enough plurality and tense errors here that the prose keeps distracting me. Also, Marius isn't an especially compelling character to start on, I feel like. The choice to start with that scene is sound, I think, so what I'd really recommend is more personality for Marius—some sort of motivation, even if it's just for a sandwich as they say. I'm also a fan of using a minotaur base description for humans. I don't think I've ever read an HiE story, so I don't know if this is common practice I just haven't seen before, but it works nicely to me. The D&D sections feel a bit too overtly D&D by word choice: references to parties and familiars for example. There's also too much here for the word count. 3200 words might suffice to tell the Alicorn Amulet story, or the Dinky story, but not both. The ending feels rushed, and there's almost no connection between these two stories except through Marius. Tying them together would improve this considerbaly.
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4/10
10 – The Millennial Vault
I always like myself a nice bit of horror. Between the title and a well-executed first couple paragraphs, this did a pretty good job with the hook. The two primary OCs are fun to read. Neither winds up with a whole lot of personality, and they're occasionally hard to distinguish, but that doesn't really interfere with the narrative (for that matter, if their distinctness mattered more to the narrative, they'd probably be a lot easier to tell apart). The author does a very good job making them active in this story, though; in fact, this may be the most active story I've read so far, which is probably why I come away with fairly positive feelings. Actual use of stakes here, and some tension and resolution, even though it's underdeveloped in this format. If anything, this could stand to be substantially expanded, with some more framing story (definitely keeping the focus on Breaker). Although the writing is quite good here, there are a number of usage errors which kept nagging at me throughout. One note: HITEC-wise, I feel like there's not much to pick apart here. I stand by my comments above, but I think the strengths and weaknesses here are too balanced for HITEC to be very useful.
H 20 I 20 T 20 E 20 C 20
5/10
11 – Disappearance of Chaos
It's jumping out to me early that this one needs an editing pass. There are some missing and redundant punctuation marks, spelling errors, and odd structures. The hook isn't too bad, and this is one of the few times I've seen 3rd Omniscient really seem to work. Normally, I like tight character focus for characterization, but this is being structured as a heavy event story, almost like a news retelling, and it plays well for me. (It also makes me want to go find my copy of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", wherever I left it, and finish reading it.)
I actually really like the bit about Twilight falling asleep with her muzzle in a plate of spaghetti. This is foreshadowed nicely with a throw-away line from Fluttershy, and when it got paid off, I got a good laugh out of it. Also, a couple lines later, I have to ask: am I the only one who's bothered that "Murphy's Law" wasn't ponified into something obvious like "Marephy's Law"? Keeing the real-world version, especially when an (admittedly terrible) alternative is so readily available feels weird, but maybe I've just been writing pony fiction too long. Similarly, it's not clear to me that anyone on the internet will be able to "[do] a barrel roll" seriously, ever. I imagine it looks bad even in WWI/WWII pilot fanfiction.
Okay, enough commentary. By the end.... Honestly, can't tell if trollfic. There are a couple bits at the end (reflected lasers hitting space cats? the elvish word for 'friend'?) that are completely non-sequitor, and then it ends with Discord trying to sell Twilight some land in Florida, which... let's jus say was not the payoff I anticipated. Still, this winds up being more of a story than a lot of things this write-off, and I'm appreciative for that. I was going to comment on how the mountain-climbing bit doesn't really do much in character or plot terms, it's just a transition obstacle and thus kind of boring, but given that the whole thing went trollficish at the end, it's not clear that wasting time is actually contrary to the story's goal.
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5/10
12 – A Pale Horse
I'm immediately bothered by the fact that OC takes exactly 15 minutes for lunch, but has to walk two blocks to get to where he eats lunch. This reads like he winds up with about 3 minutes for lunch, overall, though from context I think it becomes clear that the 15 is probably supposed to be time in the park. I'm also a little bothered by the fact that he walks two blocks in the rain to go eat his lunch, in the rain. After the sort of neurotic intro, my first assumption here, too, was that OC has Paranoid Pony Disorder and is inventing all of this "I'm being followed" business. Which is a bad place for a story to get me, since I'll be dissatisfied if he is in fact making it up because I guessed it so early, AND I'll be dissatisfied if he's just plain old being followed, because then why did the author do so little to convince me he was being followed? (The early evidence for OC being followed is "I feel like I'm being followed. Oh look, I saw a mysterious reflection that immediately went away wehn I turned around! I know with absolute certainty that I'm being followed. Them's crazy words.)
Okay, so yeah, I got to the end, and I feel like this was just pretty much telegraphed. Yes, it was overly obvious that he was crazy. Which means as soon as the story established he was crazy, any continuation obviously meant that it'd be revealed he wasn't. The big problem here is that this is being played like a psychological thriller, but it doesn't have enough going on to be one. A reader who's even a tiny bit genre savvy is going to see where this is headed and be one or more steps ahead of the narrative. This desperately needs some sort of distraction or complication so the reader isn't just spending their whole reading time calibrating toward the ending the author will be forced into.
H 15 I 15 T 30 E 10 C 30
3/10
13 – All The World's A Stage
Kind of a terrible hook here—show recapitulation for ten paragraphs (many of which are thankfully very short)—though given what this story is doing, I'm not sure how easy that problem would be to avoid. And to be frank, I really like the idea behind this, and I think it's my favorite interpretation of the prompt so far (25 stories in). There's not a whole lot of story here, though, and because of that the whole thing winds up being fairly forgettable. I think I may have a better understanding of why Bad Horse has spent so much time talking about what makes a story after going through this write-off, because the biggest problem I have with most of these stories is that they aren't, and they just aren't very memorable to me because of that. Good character work, I think? See! I just finished this, and I already have a hard time figuring out what I read!
H 10 I 40 T 20 E 15 C 15
4/10
14 – Extreme Princess Tension (E.P.T.)
This is another story that's serviceable but not terribly engaging. The hook works surprisingly well, probably from a surfeit of detail, even though it's essentially multi-paragraph exposition. Sparkler is also a stand-out, with the author doing a good job telling the story from her perspective and giving her some personality through family and geology references. There's quite a bit that feels tacked on here, though, like the double-naming for Sparkler and Sparkler's teacher who is exposintroduced in about three roles at once (Sparkler's teacher, Twilight's coltfriend, and somepony's soon-to-be-fiancee) without those ideas being well connected. You might wonder how spoiler-text roles #2 and #3 can fail to connect up. Circumlocution, dear reader. The joke here also overstays its welcome a bit; actually no, strike that, it just kind of fails to be funny, though I get the impression the author meant for it to be funny. This plays better as straight-up slice of life. All in all, a nice core/heart, but getting weighed down by circuitous language and storytelling, and without a very clear idea. Oh, also, the write-off theme seems to get double-used oddly: directly invoked in the last paragraph, but far more relevant to the narrative every time somebody bangs into / hides behind / etc. the shop doors.
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4/10
15 – Burning Bridges
With the first person narration and thought interjections, is it weird of me to think that this sounds an awful lot like a Japanese "visual novel". Canterlot Hearts, anyone? Anyway, this winds up reminding me of "The Years of Ar and S", idea-wise. Unfortunately, while the prose is fine, the story never sold me on why Sunset would buy what Aria is selling—which isn't to say Aria is being dishonest, just that her section doesn't do a great job making her arguments and Sunset never gets much motivation beyond "I need to learn more about friendship". Some nice background work on the EQG world, though!
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4/10
16 – Some Doors Aren't Meant For You
This story was... thoroughly unobjectionable? It actually had a decent hook, jumping straight into the denoument of another story, though while the effect worked well for the hook, the author continued alluding to non-story material as the story continued, which was more confusing than amusing. At it's heart, this is basically a "The Mane Six hang out and talk" story, and straight up the most direct take on the write-off prompt that I've seen. I don't know if this is unfair, but knowing what little I do, I'm going to take a stab that this is Door Matt's entry, solely based on the story style. Things get a little jumbled since we don't have clear perspective and character voicing on the Mane Six relies on cliche more than personality, but it'd be hard to do a whole lot more here with the quick back-and-forth banter. To me, though, that suggests the author would be better off fixing a clear perspective and taking a step back from the banter; I suspect the piece would flow better that way. The off-color humor really does nothing for me (cf. Dirty Prancing where the off-color humor is hilarious, because it's so unexpected), and the resolution is sweet but again nothing terribly special.
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3/10
17 – Rough in the Diamond
Now I know why I tried to stay un-spoiled while reading. This took me completely by surprise, and is in my top three stories for the competition. It's some of the best friendshipping I've seen, and with two characters that rarely get to spend much time together canonically. The antipathy at the beginning feels a bit OOC, but I think it's avoidable and entirely forgivable because the whole point of the story, really, is to pay it off in the wrap-up. The fight scene is okay, though it could be spruced up a lot, which would make this story really outstanding. I know I've blogged about writing strategies for fight scenes; they're not something we mess around with much here. What I'd shoot for is less blow-by-blow and more intentionality. The blow-by-blow isn't too bad here, and that's because the author is already using a number of important tricks like focusing on fighting style and character reaction. I think this can be stepped up, though. Give us a bit more planning from Rainbow Dash. How does she want an exchange to go? How does she readjust when LD messes up her plans? The bit where Rainbow notices what LD is doing with air currents is exactly the sort of work you should be focusing on here—how can you bring Rainbow's special talents (or LD's) into the fight, and how can you make this more of a battle of wits and discovery for the reader instead of a blow-by-blow account? That said, it's still very well executed. And the whole thing is so unexpected that I found myself grinning and cheering pretty much the whole way through. Awesome, awesome stuff. And in fact, I think this is going to be the third story where I don't bother with HITEC, because this is very nearly fit to publish right now, I'd say.
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10/10
18 – P.T.S.D.
Clunky hook: I'm having to try to do time adjustments in my head on line two, and we're flipping between speech and narration with no obvious way to distinguish. Discussion of academic journals is confusing: multiple titling and sarcastic reference to fiction. After reading it, this feels like a weird mix of Portal 2 ("Solving problems is addictive and mind-deforming"), Dune ("The friendship must flow; I'm a third stage princess navigator"), and Pony Withdrawl ("It's been six damn months since Season 4 ended; hurry up all ready, Hasbro!")
H 10 I 25 T 15 E 20 C 30
2/10
19 – Dressing Room
The hook here is somewhat engaging, but the choice to lead off with greentext formatting is off-putting. I was initially annoyed by the refusal to name the main character, but for once somebody actually paid that off—and to be honest, that fact helped me get into the story a lot because it meant I'd underestimated the author, he/she had surprised me, and now I felt like I had to give him/her the benefit of the doubt. There are some niggly continuity details, though—like, I don't know that I find it very believable that Star Power is 16, the rest of the cast are her age, and they're all established professionals (and not all originally actors). Other than that, I don't have a lot to say about this one. Like a number of the other stories in this write-off, it's unambitious but well done—though in this case I think it seems more well done than most of the other stories of a similar vein. I'm wondering if this might be Pascoite. I'm also going to have a hard time deciding on a vote for it, because it's good but it doesn't really do much for me.
H 10 I 20 T 25 E 20 C 25
7/10
20 – The Sunset Room
Nice. Hook.
Okay, I'm barely in and this is just screaming Bad Horse to me. The physical detail, the fantastic mood creation. If this isn't Bad Horse, somebody's been studying up on him, and my earlier guess for a Bad Horse fic is looking pretty darn stupid. I'm surprised to be finding as many little grammar issues as I am, given how awesome the prose is, otherwise. Reading this makes me feel a serious need to step up my writing game (and oh how I wish I could focus more energy on that right now). This piece has some masterful description work and tension manipulation. Definitely one of my top stories of the competition. Author, if you're not Bad Horse, good job fooling me. Fantastic stuff here.
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8/10
21 – Remember
Hook works well on me, because I was born on Guy Fawkes day. "Chaos Plot" is definitely a bridge too far, though, I think. There are a number of spots where this celebration winds up feeling a bit hokey because it seems too tied down to the author wanting to imitate Guy Fawkes (so I'm guessing the author is probably British or at least a Commonwealth citizen). Prose is noticeably better than the first two stories I read, though, and it's not too hard to stick with this one. Discord's characterization goes off tune pretty often to me, but the author is making a decent attempt at character voicing, and that's worth some praise. Journeyman-level stuff here.
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3/10
22 – Dirty Prancing
I assume this must have been Present Perfect, not for any particularly good reason, but because if I were Present Perfect, this is the story I would have written. It's like a horrible parody movie review, and the beautiful thing about it is how incisive it is. I've never actually seen "Dirty Dancing", but I'm assuming this is basically a full and near-exact recapitulation, except that every character is precisely calibrated to be the stupidest, most overblown, most idiosyncratic version of themselves. It's hard to even know how to deal with this story. It sucks for character development, but that's because it's doing something like nega-character-development where the goal is to make characters as undeveloped as possible. With the possible exception of some of the dance practice running on too long, this is pitch-perfect satire.
VOTING NOTE: I'm going to wind up pulling a point off this story, though, because it took me forever to figure out how the prompt tied in. In the end it did, but it was blink-and-you-miss-it.
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8/10
23 – Through Glass
About halfway through this story, I started to wonder if the author was just playing around with the fact that horses traditionally fail the mirror test. Another super description heavy piece without a whole lot of story to it; not a whole lot of new Rarity character insight either. It's fine as writing goes, but it doesn't do much to distinguish itself. The twist is easy to figure out by the story's midway point, and I had suspicions early on, though the writing seemed a little inconsistent on the point early, since it seemed like narration reflected two different sets of actions. The story picks up when there's some dialogue to follow, but that's awfully late in the piece.
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4/10
24 – Time Off
Oh wow. This is... painful, on a lot of levels, and none of them good. I'm sorry, author, but I can't get behind this story at all. The opening scene with Dotted leaves him feeling so OOC that I'm already pretty queasy with this story. Luna's straight-up Shakespearean dialogue in the second section started to give me some new hope and it had a nice bit of comic undertone, but then it's played for pathos instead. Dotted's second appearance is much better, but he's still just way too familiar toward Luna. The scene between Luna and Twilight in the cellar has shades of greatness but it's not earned in any way through the rest of the text. The Sunny Skies scene is exceedingly ambiguous, exacerbated by the lack of any hint of try-fail cycles after the earlier set-up for Twilight's task being nigh-impossible. I can't tell if the author meant for the grave to be Celestia's or not, or if he/she meant it to remain ambiguous, but all three of those are problematic because the author hasn't laid the groundwork for any of them. And the final scene ends up feeling just as painfully disjointed and off-topic as the rest of this story.
Given the shades of quality in here, and the fact that someone was willing to attempt a Dotted play, I'm guessing that this was probably written by a pretty good writer. But I think this is far-and-away the most disappointing story I've read in this write-off. Whoever you are, you're better than this.
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3/10
25 – The Brightest and the Best
Establishing shot open on a 2300-word story? Author, what were you thinking!? Prose here is serviceable but very meandering in the first bit; I'm not sure this story would clear the minimum word count if it were properly trimmed. It has one of the first nice uses I've seen of 3rd omniscient in pony fiction, though, and the author is doing a decent job giving different voices to different characters. The scene with the examiners is a gem, though, and reminds me of Skywriter's "Martial Bliss" and Pascoite's "Friendly Correspondence". If it managed to keep that level of fun throughout, I'd want this in my favorites. As it stands, the story is more of an edge case. Definitely worth 2300 words of my time, though.
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7/10
26 – Unto Whom All Doors Are Open
I've heard that some people are curious for my take on this one, given that I'm a practicing Catholic and heard an awful lot of stuff that sounded similar to this Sunday last—and most Sundays. It looks like this has drawn a couple N/A's from people who aren't comfortable voting on it. I'm perfectly comfortable voting on it, because I think it's just not very good. Sorry, author. The perspective character's voice has a difficult tendency to wander into KJB-style constructions for no apparent reason. Having them in the liturgy part of the story, fine, but narration here should be distinct if this has any hope of being a story. Which, sadly, it doesn't really—because 90% of this is just liturgy adaptation without storytelling. And I tend to not be a fan of the liturgy here, either. It's a bit like reading James Joyce. Even accepting the frame story as a story worth being interested in—which is a big stretch, given how little we have to go on with that frame story—the professor doesn't seem interested in recording anything legitimately interesting, like people's ponies actions, or expressions of faith, or any sort of individual behavior. The rare bits that deal with this are drowned out by liturgy-retelling. As a Christian, I find myself very ambivalent about this story. As a writer, I can't find anything here to recommend it.
H 20 I 20 T 20 E 20 C 20
0/10
27 – Knowledge and Wisdom
Cute intro, and way more concrete than the last three. Rambling prose, though, and some minor errors. The descriptions bog it down a little toward the beginning, though it really picks up once it has two characters to play with. Nice characterization of young Twilight and Celestia. I'll be curious to see who wrote this one. This author definitely has some good skill at his/her disposal. I have to admit to some small annoyance at the second test, though, which is actually a paradox, but I guess Twilight's probably too young to pick up on that. Otherwise, a very pleasant read. Good job, author!
H 15 I 25 T 25 E 25 C 10
7/10
28 – On Wings of Ashes
Again, I'm glad I didn't get spoiled on this one. This is a really cute story—and it's a story, thank goodness—which not only does a good job with character voices and perspective, it drops in... I don't even have words... The "Nightmare Moon Incident" is one of the funniest things I read all write-off Hook could use a little work. That second paragraph is all sorts of ugly. But this is one of the most original stories in the 31, I think, even though it's still playing to friendship and sweetness like so many of the others. I've got a sneaking suspicion this is going to be the new Baal Bunny entry, but I guess I'll have to wait a few more days to find out. Well executed, and not a whole lot for me to say here.
H 15 I 25 T 20 E 25 C 15
9/10
29 – Easy as Cake
Weird 3rd/1st flip in the opening paragraph, a bad cliche in the second, and a very funky avoid of "by your leave" a couple more down; not a great start prose-wise. Also, hmm, this looks like it might be a GhostOfHeraclitus fan (definitely not Ghost, though, because I know he's too overworked to write ATM and canon Dotted would never say that to Celestia, though the thought is nice). Author is trying to do some character voicing, but this is a bit hit-and-miss. Applejack is generally good, Rainbow Dash is generally bad—she uses words and phrases that really aren't her style. This moves along at a nice clip, though, and it's a fun read. Unfortunately, a lot of it is predictable, especially the cake gag, and the lack of novelty makes it feel like it's overstaying its welcome some. The green mane repetition, along with other uses of green, made me start to wonder if the author had a thing for green (can I guess this was me?) but that actually got paid off nicely in the end. I also liked the twist on what Celestia and Luna were up to. All in all, good but not great. Again, I'm going to be interested to see who this was. Not a master writer, judging from this, but somebody who I think is showing promise.
H 15 I 30 T 30 E 15 C 10
6/10
30 – Terror Incognita
I don't think I've reacted this badly to a story in a while. Prose is perfectly good, but the hook is deadly boring to me and the story doesn't bother resolving itself into anything particularly interesting before the scene break. If anything, the fact that the second bit is a lead-in to some sort of epic-scale CMC story makes things worse, not better, because that sounds awesome and here it's both unearned and completely not set up by the opening. In one sense, good on you author for being able to make me mad at you instead of just turning in something blasé. In another sense...
Oh, Luna voice also bugged me too, but that's kind of a minor thing.
H 05 I 40 T 30 E 05 C 20
3/10
31 – Funatics
I had the same initial reaction as Bad Horse, that this is probably Cold in Gardez, based on the first section. Frankly, I'm under-read and I don't know his stuff well enough, though, and the later bits make me less sure it's him. I wonder if it might also be horizon, whose stuff I know a little better. But the fact of the matter is, I don't care who wrote this.
My first inclination in responding to this story was just to post something like the following and let it alone: [This is a video link]. But that's not really fair to whoever wrote it, who's probably expecting a love letter legitimate reaction.
Author, whoever you are, if I'm not already following you, I'll be following you at the conclusion of this write-off. Everything I've ever said about how to do description right, you just did it. Your character voice for Luna isn't my headcanon, but it doesn't matter because you stole Luna from everyone else and now she's yours. I don't even care about the fact that the plot here is a little thin and this story is mostly an excuse for a trip to the dentist. No, the story is not perfect—but whoever you are, author, you are perfect. Never change. Just write like this until the day you die, because you are making the world a better place. I love you, abstract and ill-defined anonymous entity—or rather, I love your words, but does anything else really matter here? No, I say it does not! Whoever wins this contest doesn't matter to me anymore, because you have won my heart.
H 20 I 20 T 20 E 20 C 20
10/10
Through Glass
2651360
c.f. most of academia
Haha, haven't we all?
Getting feedback on your story is great. Seeing how others give feedback, and how it compares to your own, is even better, because it reveals reading strategies you wouldn't have tried, or techniques that might have slipped beneath your radar.
Also, nice job on the reviews :)
2652232
Thanks!
And, um...
Yeah, it'd probably be good if I paid more attention to that the next time we all do this, and learned a bit more, still!
Ok, now it's time for me to review the review... Wait, we have a no meta rule. I forgot.