Never The Final Word: Week of updates! · 11:06pm Sep 12th, 2016
So I've got a few back-burner projects that are getting finished on Dragon Time — popping back up after slow-cooking long past the point at which mere mortals have forgotten them. Case in point: After … um … literally a year since my Never The Final Word open anthology of commentfics was last touched 
, I finally managed to set aside an all-nighter to dig through my submission backlog.
So prepare for a whole bunch of minific goodness this week — including one of this month's Writeoff medal winners, and a rare piece from GhostOfHeraclitus! Details below the break.
When a story touches you deeply, sometimes the only appropriate reaction is to respond in kind.
This is an open anthology of minifics which continue or revisit other authors' fanfics — embracing and extending, and reflecting on questions raised by the work.
We've got a great blend of new and classic stories here, extended by pieces ranging from scary to sappy to silly. (I post NTFW features in pairs, in order to avoid story-update spam and provide a greater range of reading experiences; each day will offer a lighter piece and a more serious piece.) Among the features up on deck this week:
• Lunae Lumen's comic take on Aegis Shield's "Human Rituals"; and GhostOfHeraclitus' epilogue to Bad Horse's The Gathering.
• horizon and FanOfMostEverything's comic riffs on GroaningGreyAgony's If I Was Wooden Matter...?; and GroaningGreyAgony's alternate endings to Defoloce's Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No.
• Georg's bittersweet extension of Chris' Writeoff gold medalist "Relinquishing"; and Lunae Lumen's dark twist on Darth Link 22's "About Last Night".
• FanOfMostEverything's whimsical extension of PonyAmorous' Unleash the Magic (Under Controlled Experimental Conditions); and my Writeoff bronze medalist "Only, Only, Only Me", a prequel to Corejo's RCL-featured "Only, Only, Only You".
I want to talk a little more about that last one. Both Corejo's piece and my own are poems about Nightmare Moon's complex feelings toward Luna — one story of unrequited love, and one story of abuse and manipulation. Given that this is only the third time in the history of the Writeoffs that a poem has won a medal — which requires winning the hearts and minds of a lot of readers who shy away from poetry — I think you've got something special to look forward to.
If any of these sound interesting, go visit Never The Final Word and start tracking it now — you'll get notifications as they're posted, and each individual minific is only one to two minutes' reading. Also, there's already two dozen minifics in the collection from a broad range of great authors (including my infamous "Sombra x Cheese Grater" crackship), so go take a look through the Table of Contents — I bet you'll find a story you've read, and a chance to see how that inspired someone.
Have you seen, or written, a cool commentfic that deserves to be in the anthology? Drop me a PM, or speak up below! (And if you've told me about it before but it's not on my list above, please tell me again — chances are good I just lost the message along the way and forgot to drop it in this batch.)
I've got a bunch of commentfics!
... in my head.
(I wrote a crappy villain sonnet for Augiedog once does that count)
You know I've scrawled at least a hundred poem comments on all sorts of things. I never save them. The value was in the moment.
goshdarnit D:
4207189 You know, I think I've gotten one or two of those. The moments had real value. Thanks!
4207269 Absolution was the best. Wrote the first chapter as a response to a joke in a PM.
Also, we both know Featherprop. Neat
Georg wrote another fine one:
For my Baal Bunny story "Bowled Over" a few weeks back...
Mike
Ooh, I'll look forward to these.
4207213
On that note, I guess there's the one I did on "A Most Irregular Tea Party."
If it's still there, and
things blatantly trolling the author qualifyit's not a content issue for a teen-rated anthology. :V4207156 4207715
You two are gonna make me add another day of updates.
4207189
I totally get the impulse to see commentfics as sand mandalas, and there's definitely a beauty in transience. More power to you for savoring those moments as moments!
But I'm a dragon. I hoard things. (And it's also cool to see how this community builds off of each other's work, and to get submissions extending stories I wouldn't otherwise have read.)
4207213
Look at it this way — there's gonna be
810 new minifics for you to review someday when you're feeling lazy and want to poop out a review blog that doesn't require a lot of reading!(Speaking of reviewblogs, the final wrap-up for the 80 Days fics is coming today or tomorrow.)
4207363
Add me to the Featherprop crowd (though not well — just as a Fimfic/twitter follower).
4207753
I have had to turn away (or at least request edits to) commentfics for breaking the anthology's T rating, but really the bigger concern would be that I don't want to clutter the collection with in-jokes.
… though I can't say I'm not tempted. needs more sparity though
4208942 I just wish I remembered them sometimes.
4208942
That's a completely reasonable concern.
I'm pretty sure I wanted to include that, but thought it was a bridge too far, even for a trollfic extension of a crackfic: the two simply had nothing to do with anything in the story. Looking back, there may have been a way to do it, but all I'm seeing at the moment (aside from pure non-sequitur) is both kludgey and twists Discord as he was presented in that story, which seems contrary to the point of the exercise.
4208942
Oh, I guess I didn't need to leave you that other comment, then. :B
And the thing about Final Word is, it's not easy minifics, because I usually have to read the original story first. D: And who knows how long that'll take. One of them's even based off something incomplete!
I think you mean "bitterhilarious!"