FlutterDash Contest #4 – Winners · 3:08am Nov 15th, 2017

Howdy folks! The judges have read all the stories and the results are in. Drum roll, please!

Eh, close enough.

In third place, we have…

A Spooky Date
by Fircoal
Romance, Slice of Life
7,083 words
Fluttershy was never a fan of Nightmare Night. The spooks. The frights. It was far from her cup of tea. Rainbow Dash, however, enjoyed the holiday and one Nightmare Night wanted her mate, Fluttershy, to enjoy it as well. And with some convincing she was able to get Fluttershy to agree to go with her for some Nightmare Night fun. The only catch was that Rainbow Dash had to make sure the poor fragile pony wouldn't get spooked. A job only made harder by some weird behaviour around the town…

This story ended up winning third place on the strength of a number of its little jokes and good ideas, which helped leave judges with a positive impression of the piece, but everyone noted that it needed more work sanding down the rough edges and corralling the ideas into their best forms and deliveries.

As one of my fellow judges said:

This story wasn’t great, but it was still very good, and for me, it was the clear third place selection. A Spooky Date is a cute, fun story with good characterization and very solid prose. This entry had all the means to be a “great” story, but I’m stuck saying while it’s better than average, it just isn’t there.
Fircoal is obviously a talented author, and that’s very evident in their grasp of their own style. It’s consistent, and smooth, I enjoyed reading this story as a whole, and an idea, it was reliable. And while there’s praise I have for this story I’ve touched on, I feel the criticism I have for might be a bit more valuable, and for a blanket evaluation, I’d say “great in concept, almost there in execution.” What I mean by that is the author tried to do a lot of great things, but it was a bit hit or miss.
…
Overall a fun, enjoyable read, that had some really good moments, and by far the best joke of the entire competition:
They had dawned more fun costumes, a far cry from the other scarier outfits. Rarity was a famous actress. Applejack was an apple. Pinkie Pie was a pie. Twinkle Sparkle was a book, Spike was a large horn, and Starlight was Starlight. Leave it to the former dictator to find a way to ruin the fun of everything.

In second place, we have:

A Negative
by JackRipper

Sex, Romance, Comedy, Alternate Universe
4,187 words
One of the positive things about being enlisted in the Solar Guard is all the possible mares Rainbow Dash could chase after.
A negative? The one she's really after is in the Lunar Guard, and she's pretty… batty.

An AU fic about a different Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, this story was broadly liked by the judges and consistently placed high on their ballots. It was noted as having solid writing and few errors; one judge said “It hurt to place this anything lower than first, because I think this was the best written story in the contest.” The setting of the piece and the divergence between the canon cast and what we see of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy here creates questions in the readers’ minds that kept many reading and engaged, and the story’s quick pace helped keep things moving and push us towards a resolution between the characters.

However, this also ended up being a double-edged sword. The dangerous thing about AUs is that AU fanfics lose one of the greatest virtues of fanfiction – we cannot rely on our knowledge of the show for understanding the characters. This Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are quite different from the show version, and this creates a sense of dissonance in the audience, and for some of the judges, they were left feeling like the unanswered questions raised by the story but unable to be answered due to its brevity lingered in their mind more than the chemistry between the characters.

The story ended up having an additional chapter posted after the contest was finished, and a couple of the judges expressed their enthusiasm for reading more about the world Jack gave us a glimpse of.

On a personal note I have to say that I enjoyed the terrible pun titles, both of the story (A Negative) and of the chapter (Be Positive). I’m sure a vampire bat pony can tell the difference.

And finally, in first place, we have…

Something Sweet to Bite
by ToXikyogHurt

Comedy, Slice of Life
4,148 words
Rainbow Dash has five really great friends, and Fluttershy might be the really-greatest of them all. But lately Rainbow has been thinking that perhaps not all is as it seems. Mind you, she wasn't granted the Element of Loyalty for nothing.

I had never read anything else by ToXikyogHurt, and I suspect that is true for most of the judges; this was only the second story that author had ever published on the site, with their previous one having been posted all the way back in 2012.

Yet, this one ended up topping most of the judges’ ballots. It made us smile, and it is hard to beat a story that every judge not only likes, but really wants to like by the end of it.

A silly piece about Rainbow Dash mistaking Fluttershy for a vampire, this story nicely escalates the humor scene by scene, subverting and double subverting the audience’s expectations as it goes on. It starts off a bit slow, but by the end of it the judges all noted they really liked it, and it ends on a strong note that earned more than a few real-life laughs.

The chemistry between the characters was noted by several people, and it was noted as being the best “FlutterDash” story in the contest due to its good characterization and the way the characters work together and bounce off of each other.

This story was a pleasure to read, and I think all of us would love to read more from this author.

I’d like to thank all of our contestants for entering, and everyone who read the stories along with us!

I also appreciate my fellow judges – Dalek Saxon, ChappedPenguinLips, and Tilgoreth – for taking the time to read all these stories. All of us have additional feedback that I didn’t put into this post for the sake of brevity, but which will be included in the thread after this post on the FlutterDash forums. And that goes not only for the winners – I wrote something up about all of the stories in the contest, and there are notes from some of the other judges about many of the contest entries as well.

I will be contacting all of the winners shortly so that they can choose their prizes. Thank you all for participating, and I hope to see you all for the next contest, whatever that might be!