Okay, time for the standard follow up. First off, sorry I didn't get reviews of the finalists done; I just didn't have time. If anyone who I didn't hit in the preliminary reviews wants me to comment on their story--whether you were a finalist or not--send me a PM and I'd be happy to shoot my thoughts your way.

I'm not at all surprised that Horizon wrote 4th etc., nor that it won handily, nor that CiG rocked out (though I was surprised at how many stories he wrote). The revelation that really did shock me was BobfromBottles writing In the Fields; I don't think I've ever read anything but comedy/SoL from you, Bob. Digging the versatility!

Now, to talk briefly about my story...

Not a lot to say about this one; it was meant to be cute and silly, and I think it mostly was. I shot myself in the foot by doing an even worse job editing my story than usual, and by botching the ending. Originally, the story ended when Scoots realized the other two had left, but I knew that wasn't complete (and at less than 500 words, I had room to play around), so I was trying to edit and add on a proper conclusion at the last minute. I got the gist of what I was going for in at the end, but it doesn't fit together nicely. Something to fix up when I edit it!

Now, a few thoughts from the reviews I got:

4150797 (PresentPerfect)

So, for you and everyone else who commented on the "womb" part of "wombosis:" it's definitely meant to be pronounced "wawm-BOW-sis," and has nothing to do with gynecology. It's actually a reference to my D&D group, where the running joke is for the players to refer to every ailment from plague to hangovers as "explosive wombosis" and lament how it's incurable, and the only thing for it is to put the afflicted out of his/her misery. That's actually a reference to an internet meme, I discovered--though apparently in the transition from internet to gaming table, it changed its spelling. I think I'll change it "back" to wommblosis, just to remove that confusion.

Also,

Pancake-ea, I can't

YES YOU CAN, PRESENT.

YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT.

4150871 (Chinchillax)

Glad you enjoyed!

4151354

I wasn't (consciously) aping anyone with the intro, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone's already used the same cold open for their story. As for the pacing, that's probably a result of me being comfortably under the word limit and not feeling the need (or having the time) to go back and cut fluff. That's definitely something I'll look at when I revise this.

4152327 (Titanium Dragon)

The ending's definitely going to get a little punching-up, but I don't think this will ever be anything other than a "smile" story. It's not meant to be gut-bustingly funny so much as... well, "pleasant" is probably a good word for what I'm going for: something that puts you in a good mood after reading it without ever breaking you out of its "kids being kids" conceit. Glad you enjoyed it, in any case!

4153188 (Fanofmosteverything)

Sometimes, friendship is vivisection.

Isn't it, though? Glad you enjoyed!

4157444 (bookplayer)

My, but that sure felt nice to read. Glad you liked it!

4159530 (Everyday)

I was glad to hear that you (and others) felt the voicing was strong. Scootaloo was easy enough, but I really wanted 'Bloom and 'Belle to feel distinct without having to rely (solely) on AB's accent. Thank you!

4160118 (Southpaw)

Glad you enjoyed! Yeah, the last sentence was... forced. I'll be working on the ending before this goes up. Thanks!

4163118 (Thornwing)

I don't know that I have a lot of room to expand this; I'll probably just put it in my minific collection. Thanks for the kind words!

4167606 (Pascoite)

Thanks for pointing out the wavering perspective; I'll be sure to look at that when I edit this. Glad you still found it fun to read!

4169514 (Von Snootingham)

Thank you!

4169898 (Silent Strider)

I knew I was playing with fire a bit by making the topic extreme surgery (even of the imaginary sort), but I felt like anything less wouldn't have been funny--Scootaloo needs to be out on the "extreme" end for the interplay between her and the other two girls to work. I also threw in the "put the limbs back on with rainbows" bit to try to keep this firmly in "silly kids" territory. Sorry that wasn't enough for you; I'll be sure to give this some thought when I'm editing, and see if there's anything I can do to make it less dark without destroying the joke.

4172525 (Filler)

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm hoping that gussying up the last part of the story, and giving it a better last line (ugh), will address this.

4179640 (monokeras)

I think I like tablenéebenchward too much to mess with it--I get attached to stupid jokes, sometimes to the detriment of my stories (though I'll look at how else to present it). As for "pancake-ea:" originally, I was going to have Scoot say that, wait for Sweetie to correct her, and when Sweetie didn't, that's when she'd realize she was alone. I thought that was a little too joke-y for the fic, though, so I changed it around. It seems to me like the sort of thing Scoots might have heard Sweetie (or somepony) say once and then liberally misused, though that might be pushing it; I'll give it some thought. And yeah, the last sentence will be... improved.

4182408 (Kwirkyj)

Like I said above, I don't know that I can make it less "crossing the line"-y without losing the joke. I'll give it some thought, though; thanks for the advice!

4188644 (baal bunny)

Glad you liked it, even if it didn't quite manage a full story arc!

4192065

Thanks for letting me know when the review became silly; I wouldn't want to accidentally listen to a silly person, now would I? But yes, Scootaloo gets pretty over-dramatic; I'll think about if that can be toned down without losing the joke that she's being over-dramatic.

Once more, thank you everyone for your reviews, and for sharing your stories! I had a lot of fun the last couple of weeks, even if I didn't get to participate as fully as I'd have liked. Congrats to our first-timers, and good job to our medalists (except horizon, who did, in fact, jinx it. Dangit, guy!).

4194804
Well, that makes me embarrassingly happy to hear.

4194812
This is new information. It seems that I am not nearly as on top of my background pony game as I thought I was.

Damn. Looking at that scoreboard, everyone's scores were really close this round. There was less than a one point difference between 2nd place and 21st place. That's absolutely crazy to me. Great showing, everyone!

On an unrelated note, it seems that I have avoided detection yet again! I wonder how long I'll be able to keep this up.

4194778
We've previously discussed our differing values on the requirement for exposition in a story, and I don't want to reopen that. I will respond to a few specific points you raise:

as I intended it, Dash spelled out how she wanted her funeral to go

Then it seems to me that, without more explicit textual support, you're relying on an audience interpretation that matches your headcanon. To me, the idea that Dash would pre-plan anything to that extent, much less her funeral, is bizarre. She's reckless, impulsive, and most likely going to die at supersonic speed while working on an aerial stunt nopony's ever accomplished. If Dash had the awareness of her own mortality to pre-plan her funeral, I submit, she'd have to slow way down. I could accept that sort of personality shift with a significant time-skip, but again, there's no textual evidence to lead me to that path.

"Don't need Gilda anymore." Well... she doesn't.

Here's the thing about that:

When is this set? Because "Griffon The Brush-Off" is one of the earliest episodes chronologically, and I'd say that already made pretty explicit that Dash doesn't need Gilda anymore, but you're projecting those emotions onto the specific act of Dash dying (which I still can't parse as a reaction a person would actually have to a death, but fine, Gilda's weird and petty, whatev). From here all I see is an unexposited contradiction with canon. I don't even know what assumptions I'm supposed to be making in order to end up where it seems obvious to you I should be.

As I said in my review, if you start from the postulate that it's a funeral everything falls together beautifully, but I can't get there from the text plus (my interpretation of) canon without running into a contradiction. You're allowed to say "your headcanon is stupid incomprehensible to me, and you should have picked that up in the first place," but I think I'm also allowed to say "a better text would be accessible to people with a wider variety of initial approaches."

Edit: You never called me stupid, and I didn't mean to imply you did; sorry if I'm getting touchy, but for some reason this seems to be one of those topics we can't see eye-to-eye on.

So, I wrote "I Will Learn", and I wanted to thank all who gave me a review! This story wanted to be much longer than it was, so it was a bit tough pulling down the word count, and I cut out a lot of elements that would have clarified things. I am currently rewriting it, and fleshing out the ideas people had trouble with(and putting out that "burning" hut...). I'll have something up and published soon, and I hope you all decide to give it another read through!

Answering a couple questions-
4150270 (Sharp Spark) Yeah, I was thinking "savanna" but my brain equated the setting to "desert". Pretty silly mistake on my part. And there was in fact a reason behind the names! "Makonnen" is named after a general and governor of Ethiopia, Mäkonnen Wäldä-Mika'é. "Sangoma" is the name of a type of healer in traditional African medicine, a diviner (Zecora disagrees with this form of healing, preferring herbalist remedies. This is one of the elements I took out because it was getting wordy, but I'm bringing it back). "Zeilo" is a more masculine version of Zeila, a port city in Somalia. I've decided to cut this name out of the character it belongs to.

4192065 (Trick Question) I imagine I'm not the author you thought had wrote this, but thank you! About Zecora's mohawk...in my headcanon, Zecora's tribe sees mohawks as a symbol of high masculine status, and it's definitely not allowed for Zecora. As for shaving it, I'm thinking instead having her cut her mane short (I imagine it was almost as long as we saw it in "Luna Eclipsed") and styling it up into a mohawk.

These are my final thoughts.

I'm very flattered by all the guesses ponies made for me, though I am startled that anypony thinks I could ever write the nasty, gory details from LITSBM(sic), even though the story is Trixie-consistent.

Thank goodness someone guessed me for Pinkie's Pie. I was starting to think I didn't have my reputation for the kinds of sex things I've never actually written.

I'm surprised nopony thought I might have written Love at First Sight, but my ability to write is nowhere near bookplayer's level so I can buy that. That story is perfect. The only reason I 9'd it was that it didn't seem to have taken the effort that some of the other stories took, but in retrospect I have to question if that was a fair decision on my part.

I'm not surprised nopony guessed TD for I Want to Go Home. That one surprised me, too.

I can't believe somepony thought I wrote To Soothe the Savage Breast. I'm nowhere near that good. (Same thing with Love and Other Bandages.) Also, did you think I actually wrote in bold red letters "this is the best story and it should win" on my own review? -<"Fluttershy, have you met me?") You vastly overestimate both my ability and my self-esteem, though I can't say for which the error is greater. Because of one of them.

I am a little surprised that somepony thought I wrote Applejack Kicks It Up a Notch, because I don't think I can do that kind of comedy properly. Also, lighting the elderly on fire rarely makes me smile. (Well, not anymore, I mean.)

I'm very pleasantly surprised somepony thought I wrote IWTCIRD. Yet another amazing fic that missed the cutoff.

* I cannot understand why To Soothe the Savage Breast scored as low as it did.
* I cannot understand why Good Girl scored as low as it did.
* I cannot understand why The Cure for Death scored as low as it did.

Somepony explain those to me, because I found each of them to be incredibly powerful.

Apparently I am the only pony who thinks Titanium Dragon could have written Gilda Has the Floor. This seems odd to me.

I would like to repeat that The Artificial Donkey and Trixie Invents Yoga Pants (and also the third fic I mentioned above) are better than most fics that made the cut. I am forced to assume the reason for these two is sex (no idea for the other).

Finally, I have conclusively determined that Cold in Gardez is the Nicolas Bourbaki of The Writeoff Association, so you can stop pretending you're a single pony now. You're not fooling anypony, you know.

4194778 Wait what? I reviewed Gilda Has the Floor and I never realized it was a funeral. I guess I'm just that oblivious?

4194691
Isn't it awesome!!!!!

I was you two writeoffs prior, and your firsts were mine.

4194847 Next contest should be in about two weeks, but it's the full one, 2k-8k words. Those alternate with the minifics, unless something else gets wedged into the schedule, which has only happened once before.

If you happen to have your ears on, MalWinter, you're the highest-placing first-timer, so I'll make the same offer I did last time: a full review of the story of your choice, up to 10k. I'll try and track you down, assuming you have the same name on FiMFiction, if I don't hear back within a couple days.

4195054
Well, no, I don't expect people to pick up my headcanon. Here's what I do expect:
Hey, this looks like a wedding.
Hm. Now it looks like a funeral, An unusual one, but there's nothing there that can't be a funeral. Maybe Dash just doesn't want the run-of-the-mill thing, which jives with her party in "Pinkie Pride."

While a couple people did miss that it was a funeral, you were the only one to say you couldn't buy it as one even after looking at it that way, so I don't think it's fair to frame it as an issue of accessibility.

It's not even headcanon here, just an interpretation of character, which everyone does every time they write. I know Dash doesn't usually plan things, but sometimes she does when she really wants some outcome that she knows will be in doubt. Take her planning in "May the Best Pet Win," "Hurricane Fluttershy," or "Flight to the Finish." She can be organized and forward-thinking when she's motivated to be. I definitely don't see her as wanting a vanilla-flavored funeral, so wouldn't she do something to make sure she didn't have one, especially in a situation like that, where you have to plan for it, or you don't get a say anymore?

4194714
Ponies don't accuse you of being a changeling. You keep accusing yourself! You are not very good at the changeling thing.

4194732
Echo struck me so incredibly hard as being female, I didn't realize it hadn't been made explicit.

4194742
As long as she ships Pinkie Pie into the first-person view again.

Ah, but who am I kidding. She can see right through me.

4194930

After all, nothing says young love like a few hundred frogs slipped into the window some night.

That sounds like something Maud Pie would do, and when asked to explain, she would say, "I thought it would get your attention."

4195115

I just wanna know when the next one is. Hopefully on the start of next month, so I have time to write in the holidays before my next semester starts...

4194998

it's definitely meant to be pronounced "wawm-BOW-sis,"

STOP RUINING MY HEADCANON IT IS EXPLOSIVE WOOOOOOOMB-OSIS!!!

Seriously, though. Wombosis is hilarious beyond words. Embrace your wombosis. Let it envelop you like a warm, fluid suspension filled with nutrients, um... crap I can't think of the word.

Ah! Starbucks.

4194778
Oh Celestia! I never would have realized it was a funeral. Add something to the end; that changes the story completely!

4194714
I also find it amusing that you feared your guessing would be embarassingly terrible and you got second place in it.

4195054
I had no idea at any time it was a funeral, but I don't think Dash having a living will or whatever is unusual. She might be forced to make one for the Wonderbolts, and certainly Twilight would help her prepare one. So it seems reasonable to me, sure. Just not figureoutable from the clues I'd been hoofed.

4195105
Eh, I prefer Truth Algebras to Lie Algebras. get it Boolean

(All the mathematicians laugh. Alone, where nopony can hear us.)

4195113
4195163
It'll be obvious it's a funeral when it's coupled with another story. As I alluded to in my discussion post, this story was meant to be a prequel to another minific that I can combine with it into a full story.

4195151
There should be a longer story event in a couple weeks, then another miinific event a month later. There's a schedule thread on this forum.

4194208

Also, you say there is information in people's distribution curves, which I agree with. But since the distribution curves aren't publicly available, isn't that information hidden? (or maybe you can access this stuff; I'm no regular here)

I meant it in more the sense of "choosing which stories are the best".

The reason you use the whole scale is because the scale is only relative to other stories in the contest.

4194247

As an relevant comment, there may be contradictory definitions of 'normalizing' at play here. What Trick was pondering and you caution against interprets it as equal-interval or something similar (and I'm not entirely sure where that interpretation comes from, exactly); what you suggest with "use the whole scale but don't alter your distribution" is, I am fairly sure, the correct technical use of the word.

Depends on what formula you use to normalize votes.

4194279

8: I Want to Go Home; The Perfect Cure for the Common Cold

Ah, consistency.

Anyway...

Congradulations to our winners!

Horizon, he who has won many gold medals, and who clearly deserved this one with a ridiculously huge gap between first and second place.

I mean, seriously. 8.60, compared to 6.87? Jeez.

And congrats to second place... which was a... tie?

Wow. Between Pascoite, long-time returning champion, and Cold in Gardez.

Followed of course by Cold in Gardez and Cold in Gardez.

SIX in the top third. I'd say "I'm impressed" but, well... okay, yeah, I'm totally impressed, and this totally beats the pants off all the rest of us. Well done.

Though, man, I think that means that... hm... *counts* Cold in Gardez with 6, Pascoite with 3, Horizon and myself with 2 each... were we seriously the only people who put multiple stories into the top third?

Also, people terribly overestimated me; someone put me down for The Topiary Garden, Love and Other Bandages, and First, Last, and Always. I'm not Cold in Gardez, folks. I'd be warm in Gardez if I was.

4194597
Well, when CiG bats for the fences... he finds out that Horizon already hit something through the billboard, but he gets a lot into the first row of the bleachers.

So, I probably owe some explanations. It's 6:40 am here, though, and I need to get to work.

Full post tonight when I get home.

4194691
I actually have to agree with Jake here. Maybe set a cap on the number of entries for a person. There were 104 entries from 67 authors. That means a full third of the stories were from duplicate writers. These contests have really blown up in the past few months, necessitating the prelims, and yes, while a lot of that is from many new authors coming into the fold, it's also because people are writing so many stories. As Jake pointed out, Cold wrote 7 stories, all of which were in the finals. I don't have any illusions about myself being that good or having any chance of winning, but I personally came in 38th. The finals were the top 35. If there had been a cap on submissions, I might have had a chance to at least make the finals. Once again, no way in hell I'd win, but at least I'd be getting myself out there and be more visible. It's also a lot of work. When the total number of stories is increased by 50%, everyone has to read and review a lot more, many of which might not be completely serious efforts from experienced authors who just wanted to get a silly idea out or something. I mean, do we remember the fibrous nuggets?

I don't know, I guess it's not really fair to be imposing restrictions. It just feels to me personally like some people are kinda going overboard and stuffing the box. But maybe that's just me.

4195193 Ah, gotcha. I feel less like an idiot now.

4194998
What made it worse for me is that I tend to see how children play as a reflection of what they might become when they grow up, so seeing Scootaloo that enthusiastic about pretend dismembering one of her friends made me think of Cupcakes, and... well, from then on it was impossible for me to enjoy the fic.

4195101
Huh, what? The first part of The Return of Harmony is Discord doing a big, blatant game with the Mane 6 (and winning), while (for me at least) the second part suggests his true game was trying to corrupt the Mane 6's personalities and he (more or less) gracefully accepted defeat when Twilight beat him at it, in a way that is even reminiscent of Hide and Q. Three's A Crowd is just Discord testing Twilight (though he does play the part of a jerk in doing it when Twilight wanted some quiet time with Cadance, or the part of a good guy pretending to be a jerk for those that think he knew beforehand Cadance wouldn't enjoy her quiet time). And in the other episodes he appears he is always testing Twilight or the other girls in one way or another, even if that isn't the focus of the episode.

The thing that both irks and thrills me the most about him is that, in every episode Discord appears, his actions only make sense if he has some kind of hidden agenda, one that (for me at least) seems clear but isn't confirmed in the episode. He had already won in The Return of Harmony before the episode even started, but if you look at his actions as a Q-like game it makes perfect sense (well, as much sense as Q could make). He could have dashed any hope of stopping him and gone on a rampage in Keep Calm and Flutter On if he just vanished one or two of the mane 6 (as the elements were protected, but the ponies apparently weren't), but looking at it as a duel of wits he willingly entered just for kicks (and that Fluttershy won by, against all reason, deciding to not truly compete) it too makes sense. His actions in both Princess Twilight Sparkle and in Twilight's Kingdom are random and crazy, unless you see them as he having adopted Twilight as a kind of pupil, and thus wanting to play the role of a trickster mentor to her (which could also explain why he is Twilight's "key friend").

Very belated, but...

4172690

However, that ending wasn't meant as a joke per se. I sincerely suspect that Dash would be immune to the Blue Flu; that seems like the kind of twisted logic that Discord's magic would use. One thing I cut was a sentence after the ending: "And she was." It seemed like it would be too neat of an ending, but now I'm wondering if it may have helped the story.

Your story doesn't show or suggests anypony else getting sick, or getting exposed to one of the patients, apart from Rainbow Dash appearing without a hazmat suit at the ending, but there wasn't enough time for it to manifest (and nopony sneezed on her); as such, everything talked about how the disease spreads is just ponies guessing at something that never had a chance to happen, which means the reference to Rainbow Dash being immune is merely Pinkie's train of thought.

On the other hoof, if it worked as you said it would be a joke anyway. Discord's joke, but whatever

4194691

I'm a little concerned Cold got so many entries in the finals. To be sure, he's a fantastic writer and person but God daymn... he got all seven of his entries in, which totals to a whole fifth of the finals. If that's not entirely discouraging/disappointing for some of the participants, in particular the new guys—of which there are many—I'm not sure what is. Maybe next time set a cap on the number of fics people can enter with for these types of competition?

I'm not (says the guy who got two into the finals, and very nearly got three in). Writing six top-tier stories in a day is really hard, and only a relatively small number of folks are capable of doing it - only five people (myself, sharpspark, Horizon, Pascoite, and Cold in Gardez) managed to get more than one story into the top 35 this time around (and Cold in Gardez guessed correctly. I was somewhat suspicious of him guessing only five. I should have been more suspicious. I wasn't expecting SIX from one person).

Just gotta up your game, man.

Though, heck, you DID make the finals...

From my point of view, there are two things:

1) The writeoff should encourage us to write more. Doing something that discourages us from writing is bad.

2) I'd rather read more good stories.

If someone can put in six stories and beat the pants off the rest of us (except for Horizon), then so be it, and I'd rather read six good stories from Cold in Gardez than NOT reading six good stories from Cold in Gardez.

How did you guess me correctly, you crafty bugger?

Obsessive stalking. That's pretty much the only way to do well in the minific author guessing.

4195298

unless you see them as he having adopted Twilight as a kind of pupil, and thus wanting to play the role of a trickster mentor to her (which could also explain why he is Twilight's "key friend").

If I were Twilight, I'd be right sick of that by now. How many trickster mentors does one pony really need?

Actually, I like that theory and feel it's supported by the wink he gives Celestia at the end.

4194732

Unless I missed something, Present Perfect is the only one who either picked up on that or just defaults female.

I guessed that she was female as well. In fact, the idea that she was male never even occurred to me.

And Echo is an earth pony, but that doesn't matter much to the story. It's not like you have to visualize her.

I see what you did there.

4) I'm too lazy to look up the comment, but somewhere early in the competition Trick Question asked how people submit fics that are 750 words exactly. I know in my case, the whole morning before the deadline was spent removing sentences and individual words, adding words in other places, and muttering "I need three more words to add this. Where can I get three more words?"

Same thing here with mine. Every single one of my stories this time around was over 750 words; I did a poor job of length guessing. One was 1200 words originally.

Sigh.

Correctly guessing lengths seems to make for stronger stories as you don't have to leave out important stuff. I did much better my first competition when almost all of my stories came in at the proper length.

4195391

If I were Twilight, I'd be right sick of that by now. How many trickster mentors does one pony really need?

Well, Zecora was also originally meant to be one of her mentors, and that zebra isn't exactly straightforward...

(Not joking, you can find this in interviews about season 1 )

4194812
I have to admit to feeling ashamed that I didn't catch that the drinking-from-something-to-become-immortal thing was an Indiana Jones reference, and I totally should have.

Anyway: There's talking about my own stories to do!

4th District Court, Canterlot, 11:35 a.m.

The core that the prompt gave me here was the Flim Flam Brothers selling something that actually worked, except that -- them being who they are -- they couldn't resist perverting it for profit. That led naturally to them explaining themselves in a courtroom, and I wasn't in the mood to write a ponderous moral drama, so I figured the most ludicrous thing that could happen in a courtroom would be everyone breaking out into song. The major influence there, as 4169200 noted, was my short story Fugue State (which you should definitely enjoy if you liked the premise of this).

There was a mess of other influences that made this into the thing everyone enjoyed. Some of Cold in Gardez' What We Wanted To Do, from a previous writeoff, snuck in — most prominently in the shameless protagonists vs. the quiet umbrage of the court, and the use of the narration alone to set the courtroom scene. I genuinely thought I was swiping the "versebreaker" idea from FanOfMostEverything, as I noted in 4169722, but apparently I accidentally created something awesome. I also realized a few days later that the structure of the chorus is super similar to "It's Sister Jenny's Turn To Throw The Bomb," which was unintentional; I was working from a base of iambic pentameter in the "Love Potion Number Nine" sense. There was also a definite touch of Gilbert and Sullivan in the ridiculous rhymes. "Go find that darn calliope!" was as fun to write as it was to read.

Pretty much everyone had an opinion on the formatting, but from the consensus it looks like I stumbled into the sweet spot. Going in, I was expecting a lot of reactions like 4169514 (who ended up skimming it) and 4154874 (who was bugged by it), but it ended up doing what I'd hoped it would do: identify the speakers and give a visual suggestion of the spatial back-and-forth of the rapid-fire Flim-Flam patter, in a minimally obtrusive way. It was great to see all the discussion about bold, colors, script format, etc., come to the same conclusion I did: trading one gimmick for another would have alienated people without adding any advantages, and nobody even seriously proposed prosifying it ("Brother, no!" he sang), which would have utterly wrecked the pacing. Ultimately, as Quill Scratch said in their Google Doc review: "The author has taken a risk, and it has absolutely paid off."

4154818 (Baal Bunny) suggested shifting Flim and Flam to center and right, which to me wouldn't work as well; Flim has the majority of the lines, and having the formatting be center-lopsided or right-lopsided would have made it a more tiring read, I think. (My original idea was Flim at left and Flam at right, with the court in the middle, but that would have failed for similar reasons both visually and metaphorically: why would they be on opposite sides of the courtroom?) Besides, 4163073's point about the moral subtext of their positioning, while unintentional, is great, and I'm happy to leave it as-is in order to invoke that. (Speaking of subtext, 4154874 mentioned the "ow" as a suggestion that Flim was off-balance when the versebreaker wrecked the song. In my own head, it was just mental feedback from the wrecked song-spell, but I like your interpretation better.)

(While I'm quoting people: a shout-out to 4151223 for reviewing all three of my fics in one slate — which amused me greatly, especially since I spanned the entire gamut from "Scrap" to "Publish".)

What's next for 4th District Court

I think it does deserve expansion and separate publication. However, if I did, it would run straight into the wall of FIMFiction moderation, since there's an explicit ban on stories in script format. I'm not going to de-format it, because it's the formatting which makes it work. I suspect the only good way to end-run the moderation problem is to write enough "supplemental material" for that to pass moderation on its own, and have "4th District Court" be just a chapter of a larger work (since the story at that point would not be in script format, just a fragment of it). That would kinda take the wind out of 4DC's sails.

Still, everyone (including me) seems to love the Versebreaker idea, and it would be cool to dig more deeply into the Versebreakers' perspective with more chapter(s) of them solving problems. I'm super tempted to write an explicit Fugue State sequel in which Lyra becomes a Versebreaker ... but to be honest, that's not high-priority enough to derail the others things I need to be working on.

So here's an idea: I'm throwing it to the winds. I'd love to assemble a short-fic anthology about ponies who are Versebreakers, and include 4DC as one of the central chapters of the collection. If the idea of a pony whose job is stopping musical numbers sparks something in your imagination, please write up your own spin on the idea! Let's say a minimum of 400 words, max 8000. (Bonus Horizon points if you write it in Fugue State's continuity, but totally not necessary.)

Submit stories to me via PM or a link to Google Docs. If I get at least two other submissions in the next two weeks, I'll curate the collection and post it with as many reviews and signal-boosts as I can wheedle out of my ponyfriends, and try to make the time for that Lyra story I just mentioned. If not, 4th District Court goes in my short story collection and the Fugue State sequel goes onto the general to-do list, where all my best ideas sit around twiddling their thumbs until I discover the eighth day of the week.

4195508
I may take you up on that communal versebreaker thing. I'm definitely going to scour my work for proto-versebreakers. At the very least, I can give Dinky Doo a cool internship.

4195096

I'm not surprised nopony guessed TD for I Want to Go Home. That one surprised me, too.

Yeah, I don't think anyone saw "random sci-fi story out of nowhere" out of me. Well, except for Bad Horse, because he knows that I secretly love pony suffering.

Though I'll admit there was something about it which SHOULD have given me away, but I botched it.

Because, you see, it was supposed to be another Celestia's history fic. And I didn't execute it correctly.

The person who noticed that Twilight would never not know how the drive worked was right; that was a big hint that it wasn't supposed to be Twilight.

Alas, I screwed up the sister-in-law thing by removing the reveal that she was Luna, and I was being too clever. I had considered signing it "Your faithful student, Princess Celestia" but I ended up moving the faithful student thing elsewhere and not making it a letter.

The ambiguity was entirely intentional, but it wasn't supposed to remain ambiguous.

Anyway, more on that story when I'm actually responding to that.

* I cannot understand why To Soothe the Savage Breast scored as low as it did.
* I cannot understand why Good Girl scored as low as it did.
* I cannot understand why The Cure for Death scored as low as it did.

I think folks explained why they didn't think these were super highly placed; you might want to look at their reviews and see why.

Apparently I am the only pony who thinks Titanium Dragon could have written Gilda Has the Floor. This seems odd to me.

Heh. Maybe more might have guessed that, if people had bothered with author guessing.

Only seven folks did, though.

4195124
The best thing about the "not a changeling" thing is that it is actually even funnier than you think it is. I know once I realized who Horizon was, I found it hilarious.

4195411

Same thing here with mine. Every single one of my stories this time around was over 750 words; I did a poor job of length guessing. One was 1200 words originally.

I tend to cut things at either a conceptual or outline level, before I get to actually writing things to full length. Out of 13 minifics I posted up to now with 745+ words, I don't think I've ever gotten over 800 words in the first non-outline draft, most coming in the 730-755 range.

But then, I'm exceptionally consistent in getting about a 5 to 1 words ratio between finished minific and outline, so if my outline comes out at 150 words, I'm peachy.

Of course, this only means that all my cuts are in the conceptual and outline phases, and those can still harm the fic.

4195449

Well, to be fair, it's something so common that there are even tropes about that; between fountains that give youth and those that give immortality, I could name about a dozen stories that use it from the top of my head. In fact, the inspiration for making it a fountain rather than, say, a trough was the fountain of eternal life in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (only in the comics, it's not in the movie).

4195096

Somepony explain those to me, because I found each of them to be incredibly powerful.

IMHO, there were few technical flaws that we, mere mortals, could detect, and particularly so in the finalists, so to a larger than usual extent the voting was driven by personal preferences. And those can be crazy; the two I thought headed for first and second place (The Frog of Love and The Symposium) didn't even make to the finals (though this might be a better example of how I'm out of touch with popular preferences than of how crazy voting gets )

Congrats to horizon, Pascoite and Cold in Gardez for being the top 3! :3

4194732

People who thought I wrote multiple things must not have been paying attention to my whining about the prompt.

In all fairness, I hated the prompt and wrote four stories, so it didn't necessarily mean a whole lot.

4195096

I'm not surprised nopony guessed TD for I Want to Go Home. That one surprised me, too.

I'm surprised no one guessed TD for that one--and also surprised no one guessed me, since it's pretty similar to "Mortality Report".

4195271 Let me guess: Time travel?

4189640

Luna missed one thousand years in a heartbeat and didn't suffer at all

Now, now. That's just your head-canon. My head-canon is full of delicious lunar suffering.

Thanks for the kind words about Artificial Donkey!

4195508 Huh, I read the chorus to the tune of "Grandma got run over by a reindeer."

Your song is better.

Folder is up, though I suspect there'll be fewer entries in it, minifics and all. :B

I really feel sorry for anyone who starts off in a writeoff now, because not making it through to the finals is super-boring and likely super-discouraging if you're not confident in your writing. I kinda feel like I may back off from reviewing writeoff entries completely, though, just doing whatever I have to to qualify through prelims and leaving the rest to fate. I certainly don't want to stop writing, because this remains the only way I can turn out complete drafts on anything like a regular basis, it's just taking up way too much time to do anything more than that.

4194732
Even after reading this, I can't imagine Echo not being female. c.c Odd.

4195508
I have half of a half baked idea (a quarter baked idea?). I'll get back to you if it pans out.

4195817
It's canon from the books, the comic books, and from WoG (both the writers and Lauren), as well as implied by Luna remembering things from the distant past like they're yesterday in Luna Eclipsed. However, I am not dumb enough to think that means you must fall into line. There's a lot of sway with the mythos, given that ponies were writing about it long before Hasbro realized they needed to make her a recurring character.

And you're welcome; but it's true. And you damn well better publish that story in some format on Fimfiction!

4195847

I really feel sorry for anyone who starts off in a writeoff now, because not making it through to the finals is super-boring and likely super-discouraging if you're not confident in your writing.

With so many people competing, it's definitely a lot tougher than it used to be. I'm of two minds about the "Finalist" thing: somehow it's more discouraging to score 36th out of 101 and miss the cut than it is to score 36th out of 101 and be able to tell yourself you were in the top half. On the other claw, "making the finals" suddenly means something: for a week you are sitting directly alongside Cold in Gardez, Pascoite, Cold in Gardez, Cold in Gardez, Cold in Gardez, etc., and even if you end up scoring #35, "Finalist" has a great ring to it.

Multiple stories from top entrants is definitely a heck of a headwind, but that strikes me as a social problem rather than a technical one. I agree completely with 4195385 here, both in his points about the reading it provides, and in the problem's limits — for all that our concerns are legitimate, we are literally just arguing about Cold in Gardez being so good he can write us in circles. I wrote three stories and only one was in serious contention; Titanium Dragon wrote four, had two finalists, and didn't crack the top ten (would have placed 9th if it was one-fic-per-author); Pascoite went three-for-three in the finals but, again, only had one in serious top contention. If that's a problem, the first step is just nicely to ask Cold in Gardez to leave some room for the rest of us, though I half-suspect that when he speaks up after work he'll say he was doing this to test his limits and/or set a record, and doesn't plan on that sort of death-march again.

For my own part, I seriously considered publically announcing I'd written "Granny Knows Best" after seeing it got to the finals, in an effort to self-disqualify (really, in my opinion, that story had no business being a finalist; I just wanted reactions on the particular experiment I was making with it), but I wasn't sure how that would affect 4th District Court. If there had been an option during story submission to remove all but my top story from the finals, I would have opted in to it.

I feel like I owe Filler an apology, because "Blight," which I specifically singled out for praise in 4191910 was #36, and didn't make the finals because of me.

4195271
Oh for fuck's sake you can't all possibly go to work at the same time! One of the Cold in Gardez who stays behind can explain things for us.

also what is a Cold in Gardez I mean really

4195283
On one hoof, I was thinking the same thing for a while. But on the other hoof, in order to pull it off, the team of Cold in Gardez have to produce seven high-quality fics in a limited space of time, so they kind of deserve all the slots they win.

Besides, if the five of them split up and created separate accounts, it would have the exact same effect.

I’m always amazed by the dedication and interesting discussions that come out of this group, especially the amount of feedback you get in return for what you’ve written. My word count to comment word count ratio was 745:1655, more than double what I wrote. The fact that this many people participated and so many people reviewed stories is amazing.

So I wrote The Cure for Death.

The idea for this actually stems from thinking long and hard about methods for immortality in the Harry Potter universe, which stemmed mostly from following Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I was wondering why everyone at Hogwarts isn’t required to gain a phoenix animagus before graduating.

This led me down a web of ideas that eventually culminated in “The Cure for Death.” I can’t stand that title and I’m still not sure what I should have called it. I also kept wracking my head for different ways for how to frame this idea for a story and ended up with my third "grandmother on a deathbed" story.

Naturally there are a lot of reasons why transforming into a phoenix to avoid death could be a very bad idea.

Problem #1: Do we have a spell that turns characters into phoenixes?
Problem #2: How does phoenix rebirth really work? Do phoenixes keep their memories between lifetimes, or is their personality wiped clean every time they die?
Problem #3: If you did manage to die and be reborn as a phoenix, would you be able to turn back into your original form? What age would you be? A baby? A teenager? Or back to being as elderly as you were?
(Problem #π : From an MLP perspective, why aren’t there natural phoenixes everywhere? We’ve seen from Dragon Quest that phoenixes aren’t magically created. They reproduce sexually like most creatures. This is kind of a problem because after a few thousand years phoenixes should be everywhere. It’s a constantly increasing population that doesn’t die. Speaking of which, what happens if you tried to eat a phoenix? Actually… I should probably stop my thought web there, because a phoenix busting out of your chest like a chestburster from Alien is more than a little terrifying.
Wait— Perhaps dragons are a natural enemy to phoenixes and the lava pit at the center of a dragon’s stomach is capable of permanently digesting them?)

The magic system I made up for this story was that Celestia could not transfigure an animal that was born as an animal into a sentient being. There’s a fine line between animals and sentient beings and while it’s possible for a pony to turn into an animal with certain spells, it’s impossible to turn a normal animal into something sentient like a human or a pony. When Philomena died and was reborn she was stuck under the rules of creature transfiguration in which she can’t change into something sentient again. This is why Celestia’s spell failed.

And this is the plot hole for the story. Celestia should already know the rules for transfiguration, or at the very least this is when she gets a graduate studies unicorn to analyze the problems and limitations of this particular spell in their entirety.

One of the big questions was, “why doesn’t Celestia have tons of Phoenixes around everywhere of all her old friends?” If I ever expand this fic, I’ll probably say something along the lines of she didn’t know how to change them back, and the them as phoenixes isn’t the real them she wants to know them by. Celestia also probably has some sort of agreement with the concept of death. It isn’t for her, but it serves a purpose and she isn’t about to mess with it without consequences or good reasons. Philomena was the only exception she’d allow for herself.

I also got a lot of advice on characterizations, which yes, I didn’t do a very good job on. The whole thing was described as having a flat tone, without much flair, which I can agree with. I had a tough time trying to put everything in 750 words, but that’s a lame excuse, I know. But yes, it does need a lot more for it to make it as a story.

It's another story on my "good ideas, bad execution" pile.

4189663 HoofBitingActionOverload
This idea has already been explored? Well darn. I thought it was such a novel idea and I didn’t know anyone else had thought of it before, but I suppose with 1.2 billion words now I shouldn't be surprised. Can you link me to some of those fics so I can see what they did?

4170718

The Cure for Topiary Gardens: Far in the future, Twilight Sparkle's student, Firecracker, lays on her deathbed. With her final breaths, she begs Twilight to use 'that spell.' Tearfully, Twilight accepts and lights her horn. A moment later, Firecracker is turned into a bush.

4194291

...and the dying mare wouldn't seem like kind of a douche who wants to guilt a close friend right as she dies, which is awful.

I didn't even think of it from that perspective. Thanks for the advice.

4159581 4151999 4195096 4156004 4163118 4162279
I'm so glad you all liked the story!

4195385

Obsessive stalking. That's pretty much the only way to do well in the minific author guessing.

Being able to know three or four predictable and good authors and guessing randomly from other authors whom you know have done well in the past seems to work pretty well. You really don't have to guess too many to squeak into fifth place on that, unless I get a lot better at it.