This thread is for posting which stories from the incoming folder have not quite lived up to our story standards or otherwise have gone against our submission guidelines and as such cannot be accepted at this time. If you no longer see your story in the incoming folder and it has not received a ribbon, it is probably somewhere below. Ctrl-f is your friend. If you are looking for a rejection from before October 28th, 2014, you may wish to dig through the old rejection thread.

Rejection posts are generally of the format:
Rejecting: Name of Story (with link)
Amount read:

Contributor's thoughts (if any):
Admin's Reason for rejection:

Just because a story ends up here does not mean all hope is lost. If you have an issue with the specific reasoning of your rejection or otherwise have questions, feel free to PM the admin who reviewed your story. Otherwise, any author whose story we have not been able to accept is free to edit their story to resolve the stated problems. Submit your revisions at the next available folder opening.

Now, let the crushing of hopes and dreams commence

3743541

Been wondering when we would get around to doing a new thread. About time for some refresh honestly.

Bring on the soul crushing!!!

3743541 Ooh, does this mean the folders will be opened finally?

3744067 There was an announcement about them opening yesterday.

3744076 Has it already opened and locked?

3744082

Opening Announcement

Details in the link above.

3744127 Ok, so it will be opened soon, sweet.

3743541

Psst...It's 'further ado.'

3744851
Adieu is French. We are a classy Library.

Let's make this of use, shall we?

Rejecting Anthropomorphic Seed (Story on Hiatus)
Rejecting Wither (Story submitted to wrong folder)
Rejecting Flash's Demon (Story submitted to wrong folder)

~Twi

3743541 Think it might be worth making a new contributor thread as well?

Another thought as well: Do you guys have a spreadsheet tracking stories? A spreadsheet that listed rejected stories (with a link to the relevant post) might be useful for future reference, if you guys don't already have one.

3745257
Possibly internally, but as for authors finding their posts, it would still be a bit of a problem. Organization is something we probably need to take another look at, but that's down the road a bit.

Edit - and a new contrib thread might be reasonable to look into as well.

3745087

Yeah, but you just said 'further goodbye', so...

3745309
We are also mostly American, which means while we like our fancy foreign words, we have no particular interest in using them correctly

3745232

That's my bad, I came in when the under 10/20k was already closed and submitted Wither to the only open one like a moron, because I was in a hurry.

It's so hard to submit to you guys when you only open your folders for like ten minutes at a time once in a blue moon, and I need to be on around that time to even know. Not that I'm complaining, I understand because of the massive flood of fics that would come through if you didn't strictly enforce that but damnit.

3745257

I think we tried a spreadsheet once a long time ago, before most of the current crew got here, but no one ever used it.

Rejecting Don't Open Your Eyes, Scoot
Read: All
I am well aware that the story was recommended by a contributor, but...
This.. was really painful. And not in a good way.

First things first: I'm well aware of what this story was attempting to do. It attempted to depict the notion of rape and then make the characters deal with consequences. HOWEVER, this is one of the topic where the author needs to tread carefully in order to mix engaging with tasteful. Unfortunately, this story goes way out of the tasteful part and steps into the fetish zone.

But let me explain this in detail: This story is ~17k words long, and the first two chapters are there for building tension. HOWEVER, the only tension that I managed to gather from the first two chapters was "Two stallions are watching RD in a creepy manner." And in the third chapter where the assault occurs, out of 9k words chapter, 8k of those is more or less detailed depiction of the act. The big problem with that is that it is totally and completely unnecessary as there are far better ways to do this, and because of it, the original message of the story is lost.

And on top of it all; the story is missing sex tag for some reason.

~Twi

Rejecting The Wizard and the Lonely Princess: Hallowe'en Special
The story was submitted into wrong folder.

~Twi

3746744 that was my bad, it was late and i misclicked on my ipad. Also rejecting good fics because of an error is a waste IMO.

3747084
If I ignore the misplacement, the story still suffers from way too many mechanical errors to be let in. Missing punctuation, clunky dialogues, profanity just because somepony wanted to make an "edgy" character and so on and so forth. Not to mention that the story also heavily relies on the knowledge about Harry Potter, which it shouldn't.

~Twi

3747102 thanks for clearing it up for me

Rejecting The Heart Swap
Read: halfway through chapter 3

First, Serac:

Heart Swap = Against

Read: all

There's so much this fic does right, but so much it does wrong. It's a Pokemon crossover, but it's much tighter in scope than most crossovers that show up on the site. The only crossover element is a Manaphy egg, and it isn't an impediment to understanding the fic.

Anyway, the fic starts out with the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying to hatch the egg. It's your standard "CMC are kids" type deal at first, and then the egg begins to hatch--which causes the Cutie Mark Crusaders to swap bodies. Now, this is a tricky thing to write because the names are confusing, but the author does explain who becomes who in the author's notes. Props for that. I can't really think of any better way to handle that sort of challenge.

The story plays its body swapping well; the Crusaders have to adjust to their new bodies, and antics ensue when, for example, Sweetie Belle is in Scootaloo's body and gets stunt flying lessons from Rainbow Dash.

Alas, despite its charms, I can't recommend this story. There are erroneous tense shifts and said-bookisms throughout: here's an example:

“But Pinkie Pie, you already have blue eyes!” Rarity reasoned as she sat on her crystal throne-like chair. Each of her friends has one that circled around a crystal-like round table.

It needs editing, But the story also contains PG-13 sex comedy that is completely out of place and doesn't contribute to the story.

Sweetie Belle glared at her. “I'm not gonna let something...breed with me again, after last time!”

This line is...yeah. It isn't much less gratuitous in context, either.

And the last two chapters suffer a precipitous drop in quality. The sex jokes get more numerous, but no less prurient. And even the non-sexual jokes veer into tastelessness. I apologize for the spoilers, but this quote is a perfect example:

“S-s-sorry!” [Fluttershy] apologized, horn fluctuating. “J-just tell me wh-where you live and I'll teleport you there. I pr-promise not to burn you like the rest...” she took a quick glance at the pile of blackened and unconscious ponies, flies swirling above them. And they weren't dead yet, [Pinkie Pie] assured her.

There is also a portion of the last chapter that outright angers me with its offensive subtext, but I'm not sure if I'm reading it correctly, and I don't think I can remain professional while describing it.

Needless to say, I don't think this belongs in the library.

I do not have much to add. The grammatical errors alone are common enough to ask for another proofreading. Compound that with its annoying tendency to shove gratuitous sexual references in our face and never speak of them again, and it managed to lose any goodwill I might have had for it within the first half of chapter one. Just... why?

3749099

it managed to lose any goodwill I might have had for it within the first half of chapter one. Just... why?

because it was rushed. that's why. xD
thanks for the reviews anyway. :3

Oh boy it's been awhile. *Cracks knuckles, neck, back, and ankles* let's get into this.

Story: Community Service
Read: All of it
Final Verdict: Rejection

It's hard to call a story sad when you aren't exactly moved while reading it. That's kind of how I felt when I was reading this. It's suppose to, in a nutshell, consist of sad diary entries written or Diamond Tiara (or possibly others. I was unsure a few times who was writing). Before I go on here is Froggie's review:

Nutshell: inconsistent character voice, poor characterization, immersion / formatting issues, general failure to deliver on its tags

My first point of inconsistent character voice is arguable. I decided to ignore grammatical problems with the story, as it's written as if it were a child's diary, but I did notice some strange things about how Diamond Tiara spoke from entry to entry. She'd switch from casual, laid-back, normal speaking:

It was really sweet, and we even talked for almost an hour. I could use another friend right now. Even a blank flank like her.

and transforms sometimes into a more verbose type of speaking that sounds off for a little girl like DT:

She’s sophisticated enough to warrant my attention at least.

or

Her friends however had no such charms.

Perhaps it's just me nitpicking, but it seems odd to me that her tone of voice changes like this in the course of only a few journal entries.

Another problem I found with this story was the characters. Being marked as a Sad story, the purpose was to, well, make me sad, which it did not do. It seems that watching DT struggle with her situation is where the sad value was supposed to come from. However, a reader tends to only feel sad if they care for, can relate to, the character that is struggling. That isn't the case for me and Diamond Tiara, and this story does nothing to help me care for her as a character. On the show, she's written as an unlikable, uptight little girl. I'm not supposed to like her; my soft spot for her is nonexistent, and so I don't actually feel sad when bad things happens to her. This story didn't portray her in a light that made me want to care; it was trying to yank my feelings out of my heart with a chain that was rusted so badly it broke as soon as it was picked up. Their characterizations don't manage to make me feel sad, which isn't good for a story marked as such.

Finally, there are very odd immersion-breaking bits in the story. They're descriptions of the page / text that a journal entry is written on, and they read awkwardly when taken with the rest of the story.

Day 11 (holes puncture the top of the paper)

Personal tip: Stop thinking about death, whatever you do, just stop (The text is illegible due wet spots that have smudged the ink.)

These little descriptions are very distracting, and pushed me out of my immersion in the story. This is something that's hard to work around in diary-style stories; the best tip I can offer is to not mention them entirely, insert images into the story that feature actually smudged text (while some would debate this practice, it's more visible than a sidenote) or mention them from the diary author's POV (i.e. "I'm crying but I don't care").

To sum up, this story fails to make me sad, which is a problem for a story marked as Sad. The protagonist is unlikable and her voice fluctuates from casual to formal. There are immersion-breaking descriptions that would be better off incorporated somehow else (or not included at all). As such, I recommend that this story not be included in the library.

I quite agree with these statements. The story isn't bad as a whole, but it could use some polishing. A few little things I have issues with. I don't care for the profanity. Assuming this is show aged Diamond the profanity doesn't really fit or work. Words that kids use like stupid, butt head (plot head if you want to go there), and things like that would have been fine. Words like...well the words that were used seem out of place. I would suggest changing them.

Another thing is a few times I wasn't sure who was writing the diary entry. I was under the impression that this was all Diamond Tiara. It was weird to see an entry from Silver Spoon pop in. Not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps reconsider the idea.

Final Thoughts: Not bad but needs some polishing. Please consider what I said about the swear words. I have nothing against swearing, but I don't feel it fits. Touch on what Froggie said as well. He had many good points in his review.

-Mayhem

Oh boy two in a row. Most unusual for me.

Story: How Could You?
Read: All of it
Final Verdict: Rejected, for now anyway

That ending was not what I was expecting. Still, I couldn't help but snicker a bit. All that lead up into that was actually a good use of story telling. Still have to reject it. Don't Look at My Name Bro's review will tell why:

Recommendation: Against

Read: All

While I do admit that this story gave me a bit of a chuckle at its unexpected ending, I'm gonna have to reject this one almost purely because of its numerous grammatical errors.

“Come on, Sweetie. You can do this,” she then started opening closets and chests that she had already searched through.“you promised Rarity.”

(For the record, the comma at the end of that quotation should be a period, and the following "she" should be capitalized. The second quotation should also be spaced away from the period, and "you" should be capitalized as well.)

At first, I thought that this was just a simple slip of the hand, and that a similar error wouldn't show up again in this story. If this was the case, I probably would've recommended it. However they seemed to be coming more frequently as I read on...

“Yes! Now I just have to get it down” the little filly said as she trotted towards the shelf, which towered high above her.

A missing punctuation at the end of the quotation. I may be a little more harsh towards these kinds of errors than others, but they irk me to no end and almost completely break my immersion in a story.

[“Oh, that’s good to know.” Sweetie Belle’s heart calmed down as the shelf stopped moving. “Bring it down, would you? And don’t forget the threads”

Once again, the same error in this quotation.

“I’ll do so sis!”

(Missing a comma before "sis".)

A small nitpick, maybe, but the OCD in me comes out when I see a sentence that doesn't have a comma in it after addressing someone.

Silence fell upon them, neither wanted to be the first one to speak. Finally, after what seemed like ages, Sweetie Belle spoke.

That was surprisingly quick when it came to tension-breaking paragraphs. I feel like the tension could've been elaborated upon a bit more before just jumping right back into the dialogue.

“It’s been…” She looked down, she couldn’t face her sister “it’s been several years now.”

Yet another missing punctuation at the end of that sentence.

“All the time you’ve been here you have kept this…” Sweetie Belle’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she finally spoke again “I don’t even know what to call it, Rarity.”

Yet again.

“I’m…” Rarity stifled a sob before continuing. “I’m sorry that you had to find out this way, Sweetie Belle,” she gave a tentative step towards her sister “I was going to tell you, I swear I was, you have to believe me.”

And again.

“I just wanted to wait until I knew you could understand, until I thought you were ready to... to understand.” Rarity sat on her haunches and looked straight at Sweetie Belle “Could you find it in your heart to forgive a stupid, stupid mare?”

And another one here, as well.

“Rarity…” She steeled herself, for she knew that whatever happened, she had it coming. Still, the sensation of little legs throwing themselves around her neck was not what she expected. “I’m sorry”

And this was the last error of that kind that I recall showing up in this story.

Now, usually I would just blame this entirely on the author's grammar skills, but then I saw this in the description:

Made for /mlp/'s daily 30-min writing prompt, sadly it took over half an hour to make this.

Instead, I'm going to assume that it took greater than 30 minutes but less than an hour to write this, and blame it on rushed writing with no time to proofread.

I really hope this is the case.

Please.

I beg of you...

(Okay, back to business...)

Overall, I liked the story itself, just not the presentation. I recommend a proofreader or editor to look over this story for any other errors (both grammatical and mechanical) that I didn't point out here, and then try resubmitting after that. Though, as it stands now, I cannot recommend this story for Twilight's Library.

Grammar, always rearing her ugly head . We can't escape her horrible clutches. Ah don't fret though it happens to all of us. Still there is enough here that I can't approve this, despite liking the story.

Final Thoughts: Proof it. Get a few people to look at it. Otherwise not much else to suggest.

-Mayhem

Rejecting The Library of Discord
Read: all

First, Noble Thought:

Verdict: Against

Story thoughts:

This is an interesting premise. An infinite library full of every possible permutation combination of words up to 410 pages long and anthologies of books... I was expecting the reveal to be that, somewhere in the mess, there was a book that Accord read that was the reason for him turning mad, with Twilight needing to find the one book that would turn him sane again. Nope.

I'm not familiar with the source crossover material, and I'm not sure it even makes a difference in my recommendation for this story. This story tells almost everything. There is a lot of math in this book and the first chapter (the prologue) read more like a blog than an actual introduction to a story.

Another issue is tense shifting. The tense shifts multiple times over the course of the story - going from past tense to present tense with no apparent narrative or informational reason for it. It feels almost as though the story starts addressing the reader. That's very distracting and pops up consistently throughout the story.

An example of this:

He had run out of books to read and that had to be fixed soon.

“But how?”

Well, a book is simply an assortment of letters on a page. Perhaps there is somewhere where there is every single book that could possibly exist. How many books could that be?

Accord pondered this thought for a while and came across a lot of math that he wasn’t prepared for.

There are also a cases of mis-attributed dialogue and thoughts written as narrative. This may be the source of some of the tense shifting, but even so, it's not formatted properly as a thought. Also, if those tense shifts, and the one above, are thoughts, then many of them are unattributed.

Next, there is a ton of math and big numbers thrown around, which mean very little to a reader. A lot of it is also repetitious, with it existing in multiple places throughout the story, serving no purpose other than to throw around mind bogglingly large number and remind the reader that this is a very, very big library.

The story repeats ideas in different ways, in multiple chapters. Presumably to impress upon the reader that this is a big library. There are numbers everywhere. Repeated over and over until they're essentially meaningless background noise.

The pacing for this story is also incredibly fast. For something that's supposed to feel tedious, tense, and empty, we don't have a chance to encounter that. It rushes through the library, and by the third chapter (the second one after entering Discord's mind) Twilight has the tool she needs to find the end.

Then, we find that Twilight can teleport entire universes. And that the library is 10^463633 universes (each 91 billion light years in length) but there are only 200000^262400 number of books. By this calculation there is not one book per light year. Nor even one book per universe length. There is one book per multiple universe lengths. Sorry, no. Especially considering the 410 page book rule.

Edit: Got this wrong. Sorry.

200000^262400 = 1.3 million digits long (at this point, it's just ridiculously big number) (10^60)

10^463633 = 463634 digits long.

Actual maths: There are 10^10^5.96724 books per universe length of the library. (Thank you, Wolfram Alpha) This is a big number, yes. 10^59 books per universe length. My math was off, but the point was not. Having this math in the story served little purpose except to distract from and pull the reader from the narrative.

Mechanically, aside from the issues with dialogue attributions and thoughts as narrative and thoughts, apparently, as unattributed dialogue or as narrative:

Even though everything was well lit, the only thing Twilight could see was that far below reached a black vanishing point. “How big was this place?”

Past tense dialogue should be present tense to make sense in this context, or be a part of the narrative. Another part is the directions.

Also, sometimes, it feels like Twilight is standing at the edge of an abyss, but then she's standing in the tunnel and it goes in front of her, not down. While this might make sense in a Discord mind, Discord in this story is presented as an entirely and wholly logical being who has lived since the beginning of some universe many trillions of years ago, and the narrative does not indicate that the direction shifts for Twilight.

Suggestions:

Let us feel the despair, the emptiness, the loneliness. We are told these things, and then rushed off to the next point. I'm not saying it should be a slog to get through, but more time spent in Twilight's head throughout the ordeal would have made more sense. Or, more simply, make the library smaller.

This story asks the audience to accept many things that, even with an AU tag, are wholly unbelievable, told through a narrative that is dry and repetitive and full of numbers and math for what appears to be there for the sole purpose of impressing the reader. Instead, it's frustrating and disconnects the reader from the story being told.

There were enough tense shifts and miscellaneous typos (especially missing words) to ask this be given another proofreading.

Beyond that, I never lost the feeling that the meat of this story was a massive headcanon dump. While an interesting headcanon can make for a good read, when it is the focus of the story, we are left with a story concerned more with explaining the mechanics of everything than the story it is trying to tell. This results in the aspects that drove Noble crazy such as the telling of what is going on rather than making it actually relevant to the reader (number noise), as well as the inclusion of more exposition than is necessary, such as the 1,500 words of rushed windup at the start that read like a video game tutorial. Did not help that the mind-exit technique was instantly rendered useless.

I advise going back and asking what the meat of this story is. What experience do you wish to impress on the reader? Then consider where you throw things in for the sake of piecing together the story (example: the paper-thin opening chapter and a half). Where is the exposition necessary for supporting the main experience and where might it be better to leave it as an appendix? These bones need more flesh.

3755422

These bones need more flesh.

Truffles confirmed for most metal admin.

Rejecting That's How the Accursed Cookies Crumble
Read: all

This story suffers from very odd turns of phrase that had me squinting and re-reading in multiple places. For example:

Dash, showing great impatience, tapped her hoof on the floor over and over, waiting for Pinkie to show signs of mobility. Having made the arrangements for having all 2,467 of the doughnuts transported to where the trebuchet awaited use her patience to be complete with the project was now being tested…and Dash did not suffer waiting well.

There are also several instances of several speakers in the same paragraph, a run-on sentence or two, and sudden scene transitions such as:

As Dash screamed in frustration Applejack chuckled to herself, then turned to a nearby picture frame and spoke, "She don't know half o' what this here 'curse' kin' do, right partners?"

Unknown to Pinkie the cookies alone were not the only accursed object in that room. As Applejack spoke her image and words flew through the pictures in Pinkies room to a distant place. The Frames of Vision curse, a powerful and potentially dangerous one, transmitted these words and images to a suite in the nearby Hotel Sea Biscuit. There vast canvases were arranged, and the oils, paints, and watercolors of their construction danced around, showing off the interior of Pinkie's rooms to an assemblage of more than a dozen ponies, reptiles, and friends, all of whom smiled at Applejack's comment.

As Applejack returned to the suite she looked above the door to the big hoof-painted banner. "Operation: Have Some, Pie!" it read, and she giggled at the name.

Notice how first we are with Applejack in Pinkie's room, then we mention that other ponies are spying in, and suddenly AJ is at the door to the suite. It's a segue in the present followed by a timeskip without warning that ultimately makes sense, but requires some re-reading to straighten it all out in one's mind. The mechanics of this story made it a chore to read. This is the last thing that one wants in a comedy where we need all our attention focused on catching the jokes.

I am also unsure of the choice to have the conspiracy so much in the foreground. It ends up being a laugh track telegraphing the pranks and wasting much of the shock value when we finally get around to them. Not very effective. If the reader is laughing, the last thing they want is to follow that joyful scene with a 3 paragraph slog of other ponies laughing. The pranks themselves were... well, they could have been interesting if they were not telegraphed. The mule managed to be amusing at least. The final bombardment of donuts could have been played up more. For the coup de grace, it felt like it was there and gone. More description would have been nice.

3755422
Thanks for the feedback, Noble Thought and Sir Truffles. You delved into great detail to explain all the parts that didn't work.

It's a story that does need to be fleshed out a lot more than it currently is. It's too fast, with rough language, and I didn't realize how repetitive it was until you mentioned it.

Thanks for taking the time to tell me how to improve it.

Rejecting Carpe Noctem
Read: all

First, here's Noble:

Read: Up to meeting Firelock, skimmed the rest.

Story Thoughts:

This story suffers from a number of things - beige prose, misused words, inconsistent characterization, tense shifting, overuse of a variety of said bookisms, improper punctuation, perspective shifting.

1. Misused words (There may be more, this is not an exhaustive list)

Her body fazed through the walls of the building, landing her directly in the room of the nightmare.

Fazed is used improperly twice (phased is the word you're looking for)

I’ll have to solve this one immediately, Luna though to herself.

2. Tense shifting (occurs throughout the part that I read)

At least, that is what Luna kept telling herself. Her sister had been fairly distant since her return.

Now that she had arrived, Luna formed herself in the dream.

The blue alicorn ensconced herself into her bed, and with a flick of her horn had the covers settle over her. Their warmth had Luna feel herself nodding off in no time.

3. Said bookisms

“I’m just happy to get back to work… Tia,” Luna replied,

Maybe things are getting back to normal, Luna decided.

“Well, I’m exhausted,” Celestia declared.

4. Improper punctuation/Capitalization of dialogue

Punctuation

“All we’re missing is some tumbleweed.” Luna muttered to herself.

Capitalization

“W-who are you?” She asked,

5. Telling

This one is a bit more nebulous and I'll take a moment to explain why this becomes a problem for the story. This is a combination of being telly, fast paced, and full of action break after action break.

The most noticeable part of beige prose is the telling. There is very little showing in this story, with only a few instances of showing something. The below is an instance of blatant telling, a misuse of a semicolon (should be a full colon).

It was a lie; her head was still viciously throbbing. Luna only said that to make Celestia feel better, and it worked. Her sister smiled.

6. The story switches perspective quite often, or adopts a third person omniscient view. It's a little hard to tell, because it happens almost every time another character talks.

Suggestions:

Stick to "said" or "asked" if it's necessary to use a saidism. Most of the cases in the story would not actually require "said" or "asked" and would be better served using an action to tie the attribution to the dialogue.

A proofreader would help iron out the issues with the improper punctuation, capitalization and misused words. With the LUS, a "her" or a "she" is not out of place, and in most cases throughout, a pronoun would be better than the indirect description of the character doing the action or saying the thing. In other cases, the proper name of the character would fit better. It's a situational thing.

For the beige prose, reduce the telling - show. If Luna's lie worked, don't just tell us it worked, show us Celestia's reaction and convince us that it worked.

With lots of telling, there is often an issue with pacing, as in the story moves far too quickly for the length it is, and too much information gets compressed into too little space.

For the tense shifting, stick to past tense. In the examples I gave, "is," and "now" are present tense and "had" is past perfect and is more typically used for conveying information about events before the 'current' events of the story, not to describe events in a "past" now.

As for the perspective switching, this story (being so far primarily about Luna) would work better as a story told from Luna's perspective instead of switching between characters constantly.

Mechanics issues aside, I was left wanting by the ending. This story we are sold on is Luna helping Lyra with her problem. At least half of it is flashback-story detailing a bog standard LyraBon relationship, the purpose being to allow Luna to conclude Lyra is... obviously in love with the mare she is already with and has cold feet. This was more or less obvious from the start (especially if you have read any other LyraBon fic), but it could still work if Lyra was forced to confront her issues through her flashbacks or was otherwise engaged by the story. However, what ends up happening is that we get two halfway decent LyraBon mini-stories told by Lyra after which the entire conflict is resolved by Luna Canterlocking: "THOU ART IN LOVE. BOOK THE ROOM ALREADY!" Lyra says "oh yea, we kinda are in love. Ok." Problem solved. The snap resolution of the plot takes the rug out from under all the exposition and left me wondering why we needed 8k words for all of this.

I am also rubbed the wrong way by how trivially the story treats Luna finding Lyra making out with a fake dream Luna. Yes, Luna is appropriately outraged as she should be. But then the story remembers we are supposed to be focusing on Lyra despite everything up to this point being focused on Luna and they shrug it off in favor of Lyra's problems. People don't just make up after something like that, especially if Luna had never encountered anything like that before. The throwaway explanation at the end and especially Luna's shrugging it off just rubbed salt in the wound. You don't throw something that emotionally charged into a story if you never intended to focus on it -- very distracting.

3759876
You are quite welcome. Good luck with your revisions.

Rejecting Main Event
Read: all

First, Noble Thought, who was more or less on the fence:

Recommendation: For (Edited)

Read: Chapters 1 & 2, skimmed 3

Edit Addendum: I have come to realize that I have been too strict in my recommendation judgements, and I will be revising a few of them in light of that. This story, despite the flaws that I found, is likely still within the bounds of being accepted into Twilight's Library. The mechanical flaws were not so dense that it detracted from the story itself, and the main issue I had with the story is very much up to interpretation - the telling and attribution of actions in the first chapter are not so bad that I could not follow what was going on.

Story thoughts:

The story could be interesting. Rainbow Dash could react the way she does to Applejack's 'dissing' of her favorite sport, especially as into describing the action as she was. Likewise, it wasn't completely out of character for her to forgive but not forget later.

What was out of character... or at least out of logic, and I had to re-read this part several times to try and understand (I failed) the internal logic that Rainbow Dash was running on to challenge Applejack to a wrestling match. One moment, she's talking about the Wonderbolts and how Applejack dissing Wrestling as 'fake' (scripted) was also dissing the Wonderbolts (who are not a competitive force). And the next, she's challenging Applejack to a wrestling competition because they have to prove who's the better pony.

Let me explain: The Wonderbolts DO compete, and they probably compete in friendly little unofficial competitions with each other, but they are not devoted to that competition. Rainbow Dash would know this, and her equating wrestling to the Wonderbolts would be like Applejack saying Apples and Oranges are just as good, because they're both fruits. And Applejack would argue vehemently against anypony who said it. Or at least disagree politely and say "Well, apples are better, but I am biased."

The ECW is a completely competitive entertainment enterprise. They exist for the competition and, while the players may be friends outside the ring, inside it is all about competition and the script.

Mechanical and other issues:

LUS is used rather extensively throughout this story, to the point where it became a distraction to getting engaged in the story.

Just going through the first chapter - the prologue - it was very hard to feel a connection to anything going on. There are unattributed actions everywhere, which makes it feel as though the actions are being taken by the reader.

There are numerous mechanical errors, so much so that I had a hard time deciphering some sentences for them, and other times there is action after action after action without any emotional or suspenseful connection to anything else. It's overly distracting.

There are little quirks of narrative flow - bits of overly wordy or awkwardly worded phrases, missing commas, run-ons, misused words, improper punctuation, and awkward phrasing throughout the first chapter alone.

I made a non-exhaustive list of some examples below.

I did continue to read through chapter two and skimmed three, but did not see an improvement, and the LUS, awkward phrasing, punctuation issues and misused words continued to be an issue.

Meanwhile requires a comma after it. Also, this sentence is very awkward and a run-on, with one independent clause following another without a coordinating conjunction to make them fit together.

Meanwhile Amazing stood at one of the corners with the title celebrating with the fans, one pony was watching all from her home with an excited look on her face.

Double punctuation - only the exclamation point is necessary. Also, who is it a surprise to? We haven't been introduced to Rainbow Dash yet, so at this point it feels like the audience (the reader) is the one who should be surprised, which makes this extremely telly. It would have been telly even if it were Rainbow Dash.

“You’re Amazing!”. The whole place was shaking, it was surprise it didn’t fall apart.

And again. Unattributed action. Unbelievable to whom? The commentators?

“ONE! TWO! THREE!” The explosion of cheers was unbelievable. The commentators had difficulties hearing one another even with the headphones on their heads.

This story is in serious need of a proofreader or an editor to iron out the flaws. I cannot recommend this story to the library as it is. Tightening up the narrative would be recommended as well, and putting a little more characterization of the ECW out of Rainbow's, or Spike's, mouth would serve the story better and add to the side of the ECW. Which, right now, seems incidental to the plot despite being the inciting incident for the wrestling match between AJ and RD.

Although Noble did later decide to recommend, they did bring up enough points in their initial thoughts to give me caution. Ultimately, I believe this story at the very least needs to be cleaned up, and I feel justified asking for a bit more of it to be written before I can feel certain in a judgement either way.

First, I find that this story does need a through proofreading for punctuation and capitalization surrounding dialogue, particularly the double punctuation that Noble pointed out, a few instances of missing punctuation, comma splices, improper apostrophes, and other miscellaneous typos. The errors are both obvious and inconsistent.

Moving on to the prolog, I was immediately struck by how disjointed some of this action is:

Even though he was tired and hurt, Green stood up as fast as he could and ran to the ropes to gain momentum. Black Hooves struggled to get his head off the mat when Amazing ran directly to him and then he twisted in midair striking the earth pony’s nose with his left hock.

“Green Shining! Green Shining!” screamed Fore ‘Bradshaw’ Layfield with excitement.

“He’s knocked out!” Microph said with a very loud voice. “This is his chance!”

The unicorn was breathing in rapid gasps, lying down and exhausted. With his last strength he covered the bigger stallion with his foreleg. The referee; an elderly earth pony, slid immediately to his side and began the count, the whole crowd counted with him.

Note first how we refer to Green Amazing as 'Green' one sentence and then 'Amazing' the next sentence. If we are supposed to be referencing one character, it makes no sense to keep changing up the name. Green is running at Black one minute, but then suddenly he is in midair, and the next paragraph he is on the ground. Quite difficult to follow. The prolog's action could definitely be cleaned up.

Moving on to the body of the story, I did get distracted by the cornucopia of different terms for Applejack: orange mare, cowpony, farm mare, you name it. Attributions are invisible. It is ok to repeat the character's name as often as you need, and if you want to go less conspicuous still, pronouns are your friend. I am also confused by the comedy tag. I never saw even an attempt at humor.

Apart from that, chapter 2, the last currently published chapter, did not bode well for the rest of the story. The conflict the story seems to have settled on is that Twilight thinks wrestling is too dangerous for Applejack and RD while they assert that they can wrestle if they want. The problem is that after two scenes of this conflict, the story seems to have stalled out. Chapter 2 is 2,600 words of "It's dangerous" "no it's not" without developing any content whatsoever. We do not even know whether wrestling is dangerous at all because we have not gotten a look at the rules or how everypony intends to apply them. While I will admit this could improve in later chapters, I am at the very least cautioned enough to ask the story be fleshed out with additional chapters before I let this in. 10k words or completion should be sufficient to get a good idea.

In the meantime, I would suggest going back and re-examining the specifics of this conflict. What specifically does Twilight fear will go wrong? What specific things can Rainbow and AJ point to to assuage those fears? What problems might Twilight have with the solution? What does everyone need? Where can they compromise? At the moment, the two parties are talking past each other. This can work for a scene, but if we keep coming back over and over with no development, not only does our conflict get stale, but our characters soon turn into obstinate huffs shouting baseless assertions over each other because they never established any substance to work with.

3767125 Thanks for your points, Truffles. I'll think about how could I improve the second chapter or the following ^^

3767433
Best of luck.

Rejecting: A Young Twilight Goes to the Book Store
Read: all

First, Noble:

Recommendation: Against

Read: all

The good:

I thought this was an interesting look at a young Twilight's first encounter with a book store, and I thought captured a not unlikely view of a foal age Twilight's reaction to what other ponies might do to books, considering how little we've seen of her as a foal, and how much she loves books. Her reaction on seeing a brand new bookstore she's never encountered before is, likewise, very likely.

The Bad:

The story suffers from a few flaws.

Misused/missing words (not exhaustive):

Not to mention the ones who just sat there and grabbed at the tables or in the corners, interrupting her concentration.

Grabbed looks like it should be "gabbed"

A simple, warn, hanging sign of a pony reading a book.

"Warn" in this context, should be "worn". Also, this sentence is a fragment.

She’s never owned book before, though.

Missing an "a" before owned.

No mater, back to the shelves it goes.

"mater" in this context should be "matter".

It was always a treat to smell when she could find a fresh, untouched book at the library, but never has her nostrils been welcomed with it on this level!

"has" should be "have"

Tense shifting is endemic throughout the latter half of the story and is what really broke my engagement. I can usually pass over misused words, but tense shifting is an especially straining thing for me to read through. The story strays from the past tense at the start to drift between present and past tense between paragraphs, but also sometimes in the same sentence.

Her head felt light, and smile wide. This must be paradise! Walking deeper in the dry-cavern like store, she explores the shelves of books. Familiar titles float by her vision, a few she’s only heard rumor about, some she’s never even heard of! But all pristine, newly bound hardbacks.

The previous paragraph had been in past tense.

Shivering, she sends the book on its way to the shelves as her flushed cheeks died down to their normal color.

This tense shift occurs mid-sentence with "died" past tense, coming right after the first half of the sentence being in present tense.

With the length of this story and the level of basic flaws in the story, I have to recommend against this story.

This story needs to be proofread for tense errors, misspellings, fragments, run-on sentences, and other miscellaneous typos.

I would also suggest tightening the focus of the story. The description and the story promise two completely different things. The description discusses a tale of Twilight getting fed up with ponies' treatment of books, and the opening few paragraphs support this claim. Then we suddenly flip entirely around and end on a grown Twilight telling Rarity about how she first found a book store. The actual bookstore scene is mostly about Twi trying to decide which books to buy with a bit of imagery at the top.

This does not form a very cohesive whole given the expectations we are expected to expect. The mistreatment of books business is forgotten in the first 300 words, and Twilight's sadness at the bookstore closing is thrown in at the end out of nowhere. It all feels very rushed and tacked together, especially given the length. I would at the very least advise a revision of the description. In addition, it would be reasonable to pick either the "mistreatment of books" angle or the "cool bookstore closing" angle and giving the entire focus over to that one idea. When we are working with under 2k words, there is not much room for both.

Story: Love in the Night
Read: First two chapters
Verdict: Rejected

I agree with Winter on this one. The idea the story has is nice but it's lacking in a lot of areas, at least from what I read. Perhaps it gets better later on, but if the readers attention isn't grabbed by the first few chapters then we have an issue. Here are Winter's thoughts:

Reviewing: The love in the night

Read: Two chapters, skimmed the third

Recommendation: Against

This story is very raw. I like the idea behind the tale, but unfortunately its execution is lacking.

This is a very tell-heavy tale. The reader is shown almost nothing, as just about every sentence is a description of an emotion, event or scene.

Purple prose is also rampant, along with comma splices:

He walked inside and immediately spotted his group of friends sitting at the table, he sat down at the free spot right next to Dashing Star, a bat pony with jet black fur and red eyes, he had white short mane combed backwards.

“Look who finally showed up! Our dear future captain!” Void Night shouted from across the table, he was slightly less muscular then Supernova. His fur was a dark shade of blue similar to Supernova while his long straight hair was black with a few gray highlights. He too was a bat pony.

Run-on sentences:

Supernova walked through the huge hallways of Canterlots castle, making sure there aren’t any unwanted visitors, the normally calm and collected night soldier now was nervously swaying on his legs as he trotted back and forth.

...there also should not be an 's' after 'Canterlot.'

Missing articles:

Reason for his nervousness was a challenge given to him by one of his friends on their night off, as he patrolled the area he couldn’t focus on anything else then what was he supposed to do.

Misspelled words:

Supernova shook his head as his thoughts wondered wandered to the place they weren’t supposed to be.

Celestia walked through the regal hallways of tremendous Canterlot Castle. The sun was at its zenith as she entered royal kitchen and slowly trotted towards the fridge, all the while a huge frown adoring adorning her face.

...and finally improper dialogue punctuation:

“How do you know that I am bothered by something? Is it the cake?” She asked him as they walked side by side towards her destination.

“It’s about Luna.” She said and Discord nodded motioning for her to continue.

I would suggest finding a good editor and proofreader, as this story needs a lot of work. Don't tell us how Luna and Supernova are feeling, show us. Also, make use of this guide and others like it before resubmitting. This is a good tale with a cute premise, but it's not acceptable at this time.

I don't have much more to add to this. I agree that I like the concept. It's nice to see Luna shipped with someone totally obscure for a change. It get's a little old reading TwiLuna fics for the millionth time.

Final Suggestions: Basically just look at what Winter pointed out. Everything is accurate and are all causing problems with this story. I do like this story and would love to accept it once some fixing happens.

Story: Trust
Read: I got about halfway through and then started skimming
Verdict: Rejected

This story was traveling at ludicrous speed. I also thought it was very bland and not very eye catching so to speak. Plus no breaks in the text or anything. I believe there was a scene transition but that doesn't really qualify as a break. Here are Noble's thoughts ():

Story Thoughts:

First up is the narrative voice - Celestia does have a voice in the narrative, and that's good. What's not so good is that it devolves into telling after pretty much the first paragraph and we get told a lot of backstory about Pinkie, Celestia, and spies.

Next up is that Celestia seems... very much not herself. I realize this was written in the very early days of the fandom, and that we hadn't seen a lot of Celestia, so I'm not gonna say much more about this, as it gets to be rather nitpicky. But even then, we had seen enough of Celestia to surmise that she likely had a mischievous kick, not an outright trollish kick.

The telling is the main problem with this story. Backstory is told, motivations are told, there's very little in the way of scene setting, and most of it is expositional dialogue. This paragraph, for example, is nothing but exposition:

"For fun, and being a regular pony for a few hours will help me to understand how mortals see things. I can do it in my own, but it would be cheating because I’d just be holding back and pretending to be normal. With the spell active I won’t have any other choice but to just be a unicorn for a few hours. Besides, I might think about tutoring you if you do this small favor for me. " Princess Luna looked at Twilight’s eyes, smiling.

This is not how people talk to one another in a semi-casual setting. I realize this is before Luna Eclipsed, too, so we hadn't seen how Luna is, so not going to comment on that.

The action is all very bland, consisting mostly of "said and actioned", "said, emoted", and "character actioned" constructions.

The pacing for this story is also very, very fast. I was half tempted to mention that I skimmed the whole thing, because that's what it feels like throughout the story - the story itself skims over the plot, and for all of the plot elements it brings at us, it stays on each of them for only a short period before moving on to the next. This, combined with the extremely telly prose, makes for a story that is very hard to follow.

This is made worse because it's common for there to be a time break without a scene break indicator, and then we are elsewhere without much in the way of scene setting to let us get used to the new setting.

This may have been before some of the more advanced formatting options came about on the site, but even a "***" between scenes would have been very much appreciated.

The final half of the story is more of the same. Telling, beige prose, and too many plot elements introduced too quickly to have a chance at letting the significance of any of it sink in before we're rushed off to the next plot element, leaving the the last important thing, which may or may not have been important, far behind.

Suggestions:

Spread out the plot elements far more. For the amount of information we were presented with, this would do better as a multi-chapter story, spending perhaps a scene on each of the major plot points instead of cramming five or six into each scene, and on some cases, into a single paragraph.

Show us emotions. Don't tell us "She said, surprised." that tells us she's surprised, not that she is surprised. This becomes a problem when the dialogue that's supposed to be surprised comes off as wooden.

The dialogue feels extremely wooden in places, existing only to convey a plot element to the reader, not to convey information from one character to another. This is mostly where the characters are discussing the plot elements directly, and not telling each other what they want. Figure out the personalities of the characters, try to put that into the way they phrase their sentences and not just have it be same sounding dialogue without a personality behind it.

Break away from the common constructions from time to time. I'm not saying it all needs to be changed, but a little variety in the way the character's dialogue is attributed is very, very welcome, and makes it feel less like we have read the same sentence again.

Use scene breaks. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but even an extra space between the scenes would have made those sections less clunky and more followable.

I agree. This story was rushed, no other way to say that. It was cute, sort of, but it's lacking in good story telling. Celestia did feel off. I think the author pointed something out about that in the contributor thread, but still it's hard to read a story when a character just doesn't seem quite right.

Final Suggestions: See Noble's suggestions. They are extremely detailed and provide excellent ways to improve this story. Anything I could add would just be repetition. The only one I want to repeat is put some transitions in. It's painful to read that much text without a break. Also, and this is just me, but expand this story a bit. I know it's a one shot, but I can't help but feel there is more that could be added to it.

Rejecting The End As I Knew It
Read: chapter 1

This story needs to be proofread for comma splices, fragments, run-on sentences, and any other scattered miscellaneous typos that catch the eye. And, here's Winter with some additional thoughts:

Recommendation: Against

Read: All presented chapters

First of all there's this:

Gratuitous Gore: I don't mind some gore if it advances the plot. Gore for the sake of gore is not something that I feel should be in Twilight's Library, though.

...so that's a bad sign for a story that does indeed have gratuitous gore.

Second, there's the grammar:

Pinkie Pie never disappoints when it comes to surprise parties, though she did kind of have a crutch since I was always so busy I would forget to walk from how much I keep teleporting form desk to desk.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

Comma splices:

Giggling with delight inside my mind, the book as a first edition signed Daring Do novel of her latest escapade, Daring Do and the Gorge of Doom.

Groaning my eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the dark I was met with the dusted remains of the inside of an old house.

Bursting out the door with my wings flared, the clouds were catching up, blanketing all underneath with pure darkness and horrifying screeches followed.

These are just a few examples.

Storywise, there's this big problem:

Might be useful if I have to not use my magic, pointing my horn limits my vision more than anything if I were to shoot a beam at a fast moving entity or so help me, another pony.

That's just not right. As we've seen many times:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rs-dmlEDDkE]

Twilight's vision is in no way limited when using her magic, so that wouldn't be a concern.

I am not at all familiar with the source for the crossover, so I have no way to judge if the violence is related to the game (?) or not. This story needs an editor and proofreader before it can be accepted.

Rejecting The Life of a Flightless Filly
Read: all

First, here's Winter:

Recommendation: Against

There are just too many things wrong with this story, starting with the contrived ending. The author is asking the reader to believe that Scootlaloo's parents are in the Wonderbolts, but once they lost her they stopped looking after only two years? And that no one at the hospital where Scootaloo ended up after her accident neither recognized her, nor took her to her parents? Rainbow Dash somehow doesn't know Soarin and Spitfire lost a child, and therefore never makes the connection between their lost filly and the filly she found? All of that is just too much of a stretch.

Even if the story did not have such plot holes, there would be a problem with it being recommended just from the many errors.

Constant improper dialogue punctuation:

She closed her eyes and sighed happily as he did so. "You're avoiding the question," She said, trying to sound stern but failing miserably.

"Still cute" he interrupted, leaning forward and kissing her.

Improper use of the hyphen:

Spitfire grinned and began going over the stunts, but her mind was wandering ahead- to when she and Soarin could be alone together and continue what they started...

Improper homophone:

"Okay, but don't go to far" she said, looking up at Scootaloo who had crawled onto her head.

Find a good proofreader and editor, clean up the plot holes and make use of Ezn's Guide. Good luck.

Winter hit the nail on the head. The dialog punctuation/capitalization is not only wrong, but inconsistently wrong, and there were enough comma splices and miscellaneous typos scattered about besides to ask this be proofread again.

The ending is as problematic as Winter described. Spitfire/Soarin's fame (and probably wealth/connections as well) combined with the fact the sensible first step when looking for a missing injured person is to send out a description to the local hospitals in case someone brought them in makes the ending extremely suspect. I find it even less likely that a sensible hospital would let a random stranger take custody of a brain-injured child. Missing parents? Put out a public notice. Who is going to be looking for a public notice? Spitfire, Soarin, and anyone else they can get looking (quite a few people, given the Wonderbolts are famous and all). Any way you look at it, this ending needs to be rethought.

Rejecting Their True Desires:
Read: 2 paragraphs (~300-400 words?), skimmed another 2 / 3 paragraphs.
I-I honestly have no idea what I'm reading. Not only that the story is in dire need of editor and / or proofreader, since most of it is a huge block of text, but it also conveys absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The general gist behind is that the mane six are evil... because... Um... Well, they are, and plot feels like it is ripped from a low budget slasher movie.

Ugh. No.
~Twi

Rejecting The Great Equestrian Novel
Read: all

This one walked a fine line. First, here's Winter:

Read: All
Recommendation: Against

I struggled over this one, because it does have some redeeming qualities. The entire story is banter between Queen Chrysalis and one of her subjects, and at times the exchange is very amusing. However, there are several problems.

(1) It speaks of rape as an in-joke.

“My stars, I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.” Crystal Night put his face into his hooves. “My Queen, you cannot put the phrase ‘Rape Wound’ in the title of a story. Rape is an intrinsically taboo act for ponies.”

“What do you mean?” Chrysalis asked. “I rape ponies all the time.”

Crystal Night facehooved again. “Yes, I know. I’ve raped ponies, too. That’s not the point. You are writing a novel to be sold to ponies. Your audience finds this act intrinsically offensive.

I know that's supposed to be funny, and I can see where it might be seen as such, but it just sets a weird tone.

Speaking of tones, there's (2) an obscure reference to the Holocaust in the names of the changelings Crystal Night and Broken Glass. I wasn't sure if that was deliberate until I read this:

“Well,” Crystal Night said, “popularity is a function of attention, while quality is a function of substance.” He looked Chrysalis in the eyes. “While your book may be getting a lot of attention, it is a literary holocaust concerning quality.”

I think the author may trying to be edgy, and I may simply be just a stick in the mud, but those vague tones don't sit well with me. For what it's worth, this isn't a solid rejection, as there are things I like about the story. Given the questionable material, I thought it best to err on the side of caution, hence my decision.

After reviewing the story, I could see Winter's point. However, I did note in my read-through that we were dealing with Changlings who were never shown as anything more than villians, the story never struck me as asking us to condone or find the objectionable content funny in and of itself, and the character interaction was more or less strong. On the other hand, it does walk a fine line and there are some things one does not joke about. I ultimately decided it was close enough to warrant an executive examination. Here's Arcum:

Well, let's see. This is the section of our standards in question:

Tasteful

Stories must be respectful to the sensibilities of a general reader as well as the subject matter they are covering.
...
... Rape will not be accepted unless it is actually sympathetic to the victim, and is actually handled as the traumatic, life-altering event it is....
...
- Sensitive issues should be treated in a fair and respectful manner to all parties involved.

I do tend to feel the passage in question is trivializing rape by using it as a throwaway gag. I have trouble picturing a serious situation in which Queen Chrysalis and her advisor would both have repeatedly raped ponies and also be trying to sell them novels, and not understanding why rape wouldn't be offensive strains credulity even further.

That pretty much does leave this as humor, and for me it falls short in that respect as well. The type of metahumor involved in this fanfic with tearing apart a fake author's work in a fanfic as commentary on fanfic writers has been done a number of times in the past, and this one didn't honestly seem that amusing to me.

The fact that the original rejection in the contributor thread has three thumbs up and two thumbs down tells me that this is controversial, and whether it was tasteful to a general audience is one of the criteria.

At the end of the day, while this story may find a receptive audience amongst the fans of black humor, we ultimately decided that this particular story is not quite right for the Library.

3783241

I'm not intending to overturn judgment on this (I have long since lost that right) but I do recall hearing the author of that particular story talking about it. If I remember correctly, I believe the intent was based on the concept of impersonating someones lover to achieve some love energy related end, which in our world is certainly considered rape.

The thing is, that is exactly what Changelings do in the show. They impersonate somepony and feed off of the love others have for them, which could easily meet the definition of rape. I'm of the mind that I don't think the story handles the subject improperly, more that the word is being applied to something that it technically represents, but that we don't view as abhorrent as we would anything else the word is applied to.

As was said, it's a fine line. I just wanted to make sure both sides of the line were being examined prior to judgment.

-Lumino

3783519
I did indeed read that comment on the story, but I seem to recall that was another person offering explanation. Perhaps the author later went with it, or maybe I read a reiteration. In any case, the story so casually had two villains bring it up and discard it without examination that it would be completely reasonable for a reader to take it at face value and chalk up the casual treatment to changelings being heartless villains. Furthermore, in a crass comedy of "lusticorns" and "sexicorns", it is nice that the author might bring up that insightful idea at the bottom of the comments section, but in the context of the greater story, it is hard to buy these characters are using the word with that kind of finesse. The framing points the reader towards audacity, not technicality.

3783691 3783519

In particular, I don't believe a "rape wound" is normally something acquired from anything other than forcible rape, and that was the name being objected to in the first place.

--arcum42

3783519
3783691

That was Cerulean Voice that had brought up that point.

But in the end, rape is still rape, no matter how you slice it.

3783716

And that is exactly right. I wrote Chrysalis as being naive enough to think that that was an acceptable pony name. Her editor has a problem with it, however.

I can appreciate that you found it less than amusing and I'm not going to even attempt to contest your decision. I can accept that The Great Equestrian Novel is too controversial for Twilight's Library.

Edit: looks like Mayhem beat me to it

Rejecting The Toymaker's Marefriend
Read: About half of the story.
This... story... is a fetish fuel (the reason I'm not linking it) and it really doesn't do much to disguise it. Blech. No.

Keep in mind, while TL does accept stories with sex in them, there are strict criteria for acceptance. Fetish fuels and clop because clop... aren't one of those.

~Twi

Rejecting Blankness
Read: 1 chapter (3.3.k words)
The premise of the story (as much as I've read it) is interesting, but it is in dire need of editing / proofreading. Within the entirety of first chapter I hardly saw anything without errors...

“What’s the point of having a day off if I’m going to wake up early anyway?”

Character error: This is way out of Twilight's character. She should know that having a day off doesn't have anything to do with waking up early.

“Huh..? What’s happening?” The a sleepy voice of Spike came from the foot of the bed, muffled by Twilight’s blanket.

Multiple errors: Invalid punctuation and capitalization, accompanied by clunky wording.

“Oh, sorry, Spike,” She she apologized as she got off her bed and wrapped the blanket on her magical aura, pulling it from Spike and stretching it over her bed, “and good morning.”

Multiple errors: Missing direct-address comma, capitalization error and abuse of 'as'. In the case presented, Twilight apologized while she got off the bed, take Spike's blanket and put it back to bed. That's quite a bit.

Once she was done rearranging her bed, she turned around and faced his her assistant, “Since we’re awake, I was thinking we might as well start the day.”

Sudden gender shift.

There are many more errors, but I don't want to list them all. Get an editor and proofreader to help you out with fixing the errors before resubmission.

~Twi

3789583
Hmm, I would have sworn there was more in the story than "clop because clop". Though I can't argue whether I've struck the right balance between "hitting the reader over the head with the point" and "hiding it too well".

Oh well. Sorry you disliked it that badly. For what it's worth, I honestly thought it might have a chance, based on the announced standards and the stories already in the relevant folder of the library.

Rejecting: Ars Magica: Book One, The Thirty Second Blackout
Read: halfway through chapter 1

First, Noble:

Read: All three chapters

Recommendation: Against

Story presentation:

Misspellings, missing comma in the description.

"Commic" is spelled "comic"

"Allthough" is spelled "although"

No one realized just how much life depended on the constant and uninterrupted flow of magic.

I find this rather hard to believe. Especially after Tirek disrupted all the magic and all of the ponies lost their magic. That would be something rather hard to mistake for something else and I would think immediate concern would be Tirek had returned. Also, that incident should have cemented the idea that life depended on magic. Pegasi couldn't fly, unicorns could barely do anything, and earth ponies... can't... earth pony. If they hadn't been aware of how much magic meant to the world, something I highly doubt anypony was ignorant of it before, Tirek's appearance would have made it very apparent.

Story thoughts

It starts off with the magic gone, apparently, and Twilight is relieved. Second, she doesn't realize that her magic is gone until she tries to use it. That's not a terrible thing by itself, and is mostly up to headcanon, really.

The story starts out interesting enough, but there are a number of mechanical issues: Intermittent tense shifts, missing punctuation, incorrect punctuation, a few misspelled words, that show up throughout just the first chapter. I've made a non-exhaustive list of these below.

The story itself presents a few things that are mostly up to headcanon that seem to be off, as far as logic internal to the story is concerned. Some thoughts below, about the internal headcanon and some of the narrative issues I felt acted as a barrier to engagement in the story.

1. Magic is everywhere, and just about everypony knew this to be a fact of life - this is mostly an issue with the introduction to the story in the long description.

2. Magic can be drained, even by changelings. This was something that Chrysalis had to wait for a magical event to happen. A celestial magic event, something that Twilight was aware of even before Chrysalis told it to her, and apparently could not be done at any other time, hence Twilight being lured to Chrysalis' demense in order to trap her and force her to give up her magic.

3. Magic, once drained, is gone until it is taken back from the one who drained it or otherwise replenished. Even Tirek, the most dangerous threat to Equestria in... ever, according to the show, had to be physically near the ones he drained magic from. Twilight should know this. She had her own magic drained, would have received accounts of that magic being drained from others, and once magic came back, should have ruled out that it had been drained or that a Changeling could have done it.

4. All magic everywhere being disrupted shouldn't be the cause of one changeling, alone. Twilight should know this.

5. When, in chapter 3, happening before the magical event, Discord explains everything to the Princesses, we get a narrative dump explaining that magic is going away and that Discord was born of it.

6. All three chapters contain quite a bit of narrative exposition instead of some other, less clunky manner of presenting the material. It's not terrible, but it does get in the way of engagement.

7. This story starts In Medias Res, and only skips back to the reason the way things started in the third chapter.

8. I'm not certain we've reached the inciting incident yet. If the inciting incident is the loss of magic, then that's already gone, but in chapter 3, it's hinted that there's a being or a thing that's gathering or using magic at an unprecedented level - even more so than Tirek. I would expect the reveal of this creature/thing/object to be the incident that drives the story into the next act.

9. There is a good deal of telling throughout. Telling emotion, dumping exposition.

10. As this story adopts a third person omniscient viewpoint, it's hard to feel connected to any of the characters. Picking a viewpoint for a chapter - Twilight in the first, for example, and then Twilight/Rep in the second and then one of the sisters or Discord in the third would have served to engage the reader far better than skipping around from character to character.

11. The pacing feels off in spots: it's slow where it shouldn't be, and fast in others. Not terribly, but enough to make it feel too rushed or too slow for the events presented where it does happen. This is mostly in the case of lengthy descriptions dropped in where they probably shouldn't be, or exposition dumps where a slower exploration of a concept would be more appropriate and more engaging.

I did like the way Discord was handled. He felt like Discord, with the proper amount of disregard for sensibility, but also being helpful in his own way. Kudos.

A thing about exposition:

If there is a chunk of explanatory narrative, it's always a good idea to ask if it's necessary to the story. Does it serve the plot? Does it answer a question provided earlier? Does it ask a question of the reader? (not literally) Does it need to be there? Can it be presented as interactions between two characters or a character's internal dialogue or supposition? If not, then it may be best to excise it or adjust the exposition or the story to fit what you want to tell. Narrative exposition can work, but it can't just be dropped in like a boulder in a toilet's reservoir. It'll make the story explode. (Not really.)

I will congratulate the author on not relying on Lavender Unicorn Syndrome to identify who is doing what. You have my thanks.

This felt weird: hoofculean - was there a Hoofcules? Herculean effort comes from Hercules.

Repetition

An orange citrine on the floor and a bowl of other assorted gemstones on the table were evidence that he had been preparing himself some Jewel Pancakes for breakfast.

This is mentioned above the description of the castle, then repeated again from Spike's dialogue.

“I just had a few gems while I was making my Jewel Pancakes. Don’t think I’ll ever touch a citrine again.”

Missing comma in the underline.

Spike tried to get to his feet but a sudden lance of pain struck him in his stomach again and he doubled over.

An ellipsis is three dots. There is an ellipsis character and two periods here.

I’ll cast a pain reliever on you…..as soon as I find it.

Improper punctuation after and before an action. There should be two periods and "Let's" should be capitalized instead of two commas. Problem spots have been underlined. Also Spike is supposed to be capitalized.

Come on,” she lifted spike up onto her back, “let’s go to the library.”

The next three paragraphs are devoted to describing the library, something that seems odd given that Twilight is concerned with Spike's stomach ache. The fourth paragraph starts with:

Now though, the grandeur of the library was the furthest thing from her mind.

After spending three paragraphs describing the grandeur of the library, this feels off. If it was played for a joke, I think it missed.

Spike felt what? There's a missing word here.

Spike felt as his body was engulfed in Twilight’s familiar purple aura and then, the pain slowly ebbed away and finally stopped all together.

With the problems I had with the story enumerated in the numbered section, and the mechanical issues noted from the first chapter (I stopped looking for them actively after the above selection,) I am afraid that I cannot recommend this story for the library. A once-over by a proofreader/editor is recommended, as well as tightening up the narrative and possibly solidifying the internal lore of the story.

Recommendation: Against

This story needs to be proofread for improperly punctuated/capitalized dialog, comma splices, improper non-dialog capitalization, and the numerous other issues Noble noted above.