The Royal Canterlot Library biennial · 7:54am Oct 2nd, 2015
..just one of many ways in which the RCL is like parsley.
RCL is celebrating its second anniversary and in honor of that they are bending the rules a bit: they are going to feature a second story from an author (something they never do). It goes without saying that this author will be, henceforth, famed in story and song, and a little bird tells me their face will be on a rebuilt Colossus of Rhodes. 
Okay, here's where it gets complicated.
The way they choose an author is by audience vote. Now, you might imagine I'm going to ask you all to go and vote for A Canterlot Carol? Well no. Not quite. What I'd like most of all is for you to go to the voting thread, check the nominations carefully, and then vote for the story that deserves this singular honor the most.
I mean, as much as I like my stories[1], everything that's been nominated is top-notch stuff by top-notch authors. So. Choose carefully.
Normally I wouldn't make posts like these but there's been an... incident. The integrity of the voting was called into question due to someone blogging about it, and this caused one of the most popular stories to be withdrawn. I'd like to see the story people like the most featured, at the end of the day, because it's meant to be a celebration and the most beloved story ought to win. The fact that The Descendant withdrew his is a crying shame and I hope that by doing this I might redress any perceived unfairness, and bring his stories back.
[1] Because they are... y'know. Mine.
My vote has been cast already, all respect to The Descendant. But yes, it approaches criminal that he felt he needed to withdraw his stories from the running. Here's hoping he can be persuaded to re-enter.
You all should vote for A Canterlot Carol though.
Because I can't upvote my own post, and I was the one who nominated it.
Though there's nothing preventing people on voting for more than one story. I actually did vote for one of the other stories as well (The Destruction of the Self).
This rule aggravates me.
Because an author has never written something better after writing one thing great. If a followup work eclipses something that was initially accepted, then what? Can't their just be author sections where once an author gets accepted it's sorted by that, not by the individual story?
And also, this fic-voting system is being so poorly done. Why not an outside polling site? SurveyMonkey, GDocs, there are so many better ways to do this.
Argggh.
Anyway, voted for Contraptionology! and Christmas Carol. Mad Science and Ghostfic, heaven, I'm in heaven.
3436566 Rule? What rule? There wasn't a rule involved here. Someone griped about the blogging and then TD withdrew. Present Perfect actually said TD shouldn't withdraw.
3436629
I think 3436566 probably means our not-exactly-a-rule rule that we try to not feature the same author twice, if we can avoid it. It has nothing to do with deservingness of stories and everything to do with trying to spread the Magic of Friendship to all corners of the fandom. From a social action perspective, we want y'all to learn about cool new authors who are writing really good stuff.
We've had a secondary list for a long time with stories from authors we'd already featured, in case we run out of new authors to post, we've had a pretty good time finding new people week in and week out who haven't been featured already. (Because honestly, lemme express a bit of personal prejudice here, if we were just picking stories by merit, there are a few people you'd be seeing way too often, and everybody would get pretty bored with seeing them all the time.)
"...just one of many ways in which the RCL is like parsley."
Now I shall have to do a story in which Rainbow Dash eats the parsley off her plate during a state dinner, and Twilight goes into a full-fledged panic over the consequences...until she sees Princess Celestia do it too.
I could call it "The Wrong Petroselinum" (in honor of "The Wrong Fork.")
Ending lines: The parsley was chewy and rather dry, but it had a certain taste to it that was different than she expected. It reminded her of the state dinner, actually, which was also chewy and dry, but different. She considered as she chewed, and watched a number of the diplomats tentatively pick their parsley off their plate and chew with similar contemplative looks. Sometimes, something new and different did not have to taste good in order to be good, and that made tonight's brief foray into worry worth it.
She was still going to thump Rainbow Dash on the back of the head after this was all over, though.
3436732
Also, it means you guys don't need to think up whole new sets of followup interview questions for repeat interviews.
3436394
It won't matter at this point. This blog and others presents his withdrawal as a fait accompli and says he is gone which actually will steer traffic away, re-entry or not he is sunk at this point.
Hopefully RCL will learn from this experience and have a much better system for next year.
3438704
Regardless, the whole mess was caused by someone complaining someone was too popular, thus giving them an unfair advantage, causing the author in question to remove himself from a competition. It's more than a little tiring when people take a special occasion and ruin it for others because they can't just not complain.
3436520
Wait, we can vote for more than one??