Jinglemas! · 1:47am Dec 23rd, 2017
As previously advertised, Jinglemas! More specifically, the Secret Santa organised by Petrichord, in which unsuspecting others got a FimFiction author inflicted on them, and by way of karma prevailing in the world, these authors receiving the same treatment from those unsuspecting others who'd turned out to be fellow FimFiction authors all along.
More specifically, the Jinglemas present I received, courtesy of DragonGeek, where I requested Discord, and where I received what I asked for and more in a neat wee festive tale which delivered accounts of the history of Santa amongst ponyknd, the modern take on said Santa, and the Discordian take on said Santa. Gie it a gander, and you won't be disappointed.
My own for Monochromatic's in there as well, hogging the first chapter and a stupid amount of word space. It's got Rarity in it, at least, which is always a redeeming factor. It, along with many of the others, should get reposted to my own account near the end of the month.
Stay tuned, and stay safe till the inevitable Fairytale of New York posting. You ken you were looking forward to that as its own Christmas tradition. 
Just read your entry. Magnificent stuff, and excellent use of the uncertainty that Starlight brought to Equestrian time travel. I do hope we get to see some of Celestia's drunken tampering with the fabric of reality.
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Thank you! Lobbing characters through space-time seemed like a reasonable way to approach the festive spirit, and I hope Monochromatic shares the notion.
Your own piece is good as well. Romantic entanglements are always a fun thing to bring to any family festive get-together.
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* Digression from an amateur palaeo fan: Although I'm a bit confused about the "covered in spikes" description; I genuinely wondered for a moment if you were talking about stegosaurs or ankylosaurs, which are spiky dinosaurs but definitely not theropods. The "tiny arms" bit makes me think of theropods like T. rex, but apart from claws and the occasional horn, I'm not aware of any spiky theropods.
The rest of it was a bit too grim for my tastes. I guess when you start out thinking about a Wodehousian comedy and a playful-if-chaotic time travel series, going on to read passages about ponies on the brink of starving to death results in some severe mood whiplash, which I never quite recovered from. That said, I guess part of it is just that, when everything's currently lumped under one submitted fic with no finesse for tags or age-suitability ratings, I was going in blind anyway, so it's not your fault if I proceed on false assumptions.
But seriously: Bertie and the Tardis. Time travel comedy. Five star performance, chap. You could do it. Or will have been having must possibly been to do it after it was going to have been done yesterday in the future, I guess.
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Hah, I've been reading a fair bit more Wodehouse this year. It's entirely possible he's rubbing off. I've certainly noticed much more keenness on my part to try first-person narratives, at any rate, and they tend to suffer from my own particular breed of humour like most other stories do.
The 'covered in spikes' one referred to a different primeval creature than the unlucky theropod, something stegosauride. Rarity herself isn't hugely well-versed on palaeontological matters in addition to time magic, and would sky away from assigning an exact type. Plus, vagaries of evolution in a world where magical talking quadrupeds are the dominant lifeform. Ponyville's just lucky that none of the saurians had magical powers themselves.
Fair enough about the grimness. A good amount of it was deliberate - Equestria pre-unification should be a jarring and considerably unhappier place from modern Equestrian eyes, and nigh-starvation seems like a reasonable concern to extrapolate for a migrating population moving through a harsh winter without access to earth pony food supplies. Though if I set up the wrong mood altogether in the early part by making Rarity a bit too Woosterian, then that's on me. An 'Adventure' tag should suffice for it when it's independently uploaded, though I'm swithering between 'Everyone' and 'Teen' in light of said grimness.
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I only noticed because I've been reading some Jeeves and Wooster recently myself, and the style certainly captures the casual polysyllabic what's-it of the old bean. In a purely memetic sense, your work is a c. off the old b., if you don't mind my saying so.
Ah, I see. Never mind, in this case. We got Opal besting a dinosaur. Can't say fairer than that.
It definitely does the job, I grant you. As for the rating, if you'd like my guess then I think Teen might be the safest bet. While we have seen an emaciated Lily in an Apple Bloom fantasy, that was clearly a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visual gag in a moment of childish histrionics, whereas your portrayal is pretty vivid and unflinching and with the heavy implication of casualties.
My guiding principle is that, if it's too heavy for the show to realistically portray, it goes up to Teen level. Anything lower would need a bit of softening (like the show's own take on the Founders), or so I think.
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Good logic. Expect it to sport a yellow T in the top left as and when it's published, then.