The 18th Brewmare of Bluey Napoleon · 8:05am Jul 24th, 2014
So there is a group which periodically runs write-off competitions. They are short things, but often feature a lot of fairly solid writers writing new stories under fairly tight time constraints. This time, the theme was "History Repeats", and I felt one story in particular, The 18th Brewmare of Bluey Napoleon, deserved some recognition for being very funny and for executing on some truly terrible puns which are, as we all know, the best kind. As the stories are written anonymously, it is hard to say for certain who wrote it at this point (though the common guess in the group is that it was written by the Ghost of Heraclitus, or possibly Terry Pratchett), but it is still well worth reading.
EDIT: The story was in fact written by Horizon, and can now be found here.
I think I know who wrote this. Georg, I believe. He and the author of The Celestia Code (can't think of his name for some reason!) are the only people I know of that use footnotes. So far, this is actually really, really good. As to be expected from Georg, if that is him. See, I admire him because he has SO MANY GOOD IDEAS. If I had the inspiration and imagination that he had, I would be a published author.
Not me, I'm afraid. If I had to guess who could write it I'd go Horizon, MrNumbers, or as 2311740 says, Georg.
[12.5] Actually, the statue of the Spirit of the Horrifying Reality of Civic Inequalitude is located on the other side of the gardens.
Since Secretary 2311789 has disavowed any knowledge of these fictions,
((insert Mission Impossible joke here))
… time to restart the speculation! I'm afraid my guesses are more prosaic, based on the fact that both PresentPerfect and Pascoite are basically guaranteed to enter any given writeoff, and both have racked up an impressive record of medals. This seems more like Present's style, especially in a "the-author-doth-protest-too-much" way with those puns, but I'm not sure I've really seen Pasco trying to do this sort of comedy before, and if he's branching out I think he'd be capable of it.
If I'm allowed to be a little more fanciful, I'd like to think that this is Bad Horse proving he can not only write Safe For Ghost stories, but he can write Ghost stories. A shot across the bow, as it were, to coax Ghost into getting another of his awesome stories out there.
To be honest I think "Naval Gazing" beat Brewmare out on sheer pun-ishment — but I wasn't a fan of the swerve NG took into Crusader-land after setting up such a cool adventure, and I think it was much more about the puns rather than telling a coherent story the way Brewmare did. (Really beginning to think the writeoff site needs some way to tag stories; it's amazing how much difference properly setting expectations at the start can make to a reading experience.)
2311740
The Celestia Code was iisaw. Is that a recommendation? May have to read it!
2313118
I will say, it is quite depressing to be so easily replaced.
Georg is a pretty good guess. He does similar comedy well (his Celestia/Luna comedies), and writes quickly.
Now that the authorship secret's out:
2313391
tomorrowlands.org/images/pony/smiling-changeling.jpg
Easily? Easily? I had to study two years for this! If I'd had to keep the ruse up I'd have had a nervous breakdown by the end of the month.
Sorry, Ghost old bean, it is my professional opinion that you're irreplaceable.
2322424
Congratulations on the win! And as for being replaced, well, I'm looking at some fairly convincing evidence that I apparently can be...
2322519
Clearly, this should be encouragement to write more.
Either that, or next write-off, we ALL pretend to be you, just to confuse everyone else.
2322424
PS The Oxford Kama and rhetorical daggers STILL make me giggle whenever I think of them.