Emergency new story announcement: Equestria's End by Aquillo · 4:44am Nov 11th, 2012
This isn't really an emergency. Aquillo posted Equestria's End two and a half hours ago, so it's too late for it to get into the featured box. (This is one of the many reasons the featured-box algorithm sucks so very hard: After the first hour, it takes several hundred views within 6 hours to get into the box, which is possible only if the author has a lot of watchers or the story has one of those titles like "Fluttershy's First Time" that so many bronies find irresistible. It's unlikely for a story to get in the box by people telling other people that it's good, because that takes several hours.)
It's just one chapter of 2800 words, but it's outstanding. The writing style is powerful--not sparse, but not wordy anywhere. The story opens in the middle of an apocalypse, but Aquillo resists the temptation to try to wow us with it, and gives us only little glimpses of the world ending, in the spaces between the main action, which is a tender and courageously deliberate discussion between Rarity and Twilight.
It has a little bit of a horror feel. Twilight and Rarity don't give the apocalypse their undivided attention because it comes once a week. Then it resets and starts all over again, but worse. A movie exec would say it's like Groundhog Day meets 2012.
It certainly sounds good, I'll definitely check it out. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
That story looks absolutely phenomenal.
There is no way in hell I will read it unless I know it ends well.
>implying stories ever get featured purely because they're good
Strange story (but good one), clearly needs more exposition.
>> They are sometimes, but usually this is because the author's built up a set of watchers over many months by writing good stories. Stories could get into the box based on quality, if the box didn't only measure some function of views divided by hours since posting. The first problem is that if six hours pass before people find out it's good, it's too late. The second is the box doesn't care about downvotes, based on the number of stories I've seen in the box with lousy upvote/downvote scores.
Fluttershy's first time, you say?
Well, I'ma go write a story. Thanks, Bad Horse!
494921 Been there, done that.
495423 Ah. Yes. How silly of me to have forgotten. Did I say write a story? I meant copy/paste.
And I will be, in a sense, original ('cuz no one's stolen another's story before, right? [Lies]), and I will have all the followers.
And maybe someday I can be as good as Bad Horse.
Ok, wow.
Sorry it took me so long to get round to checking this out. I'm an irredeemable procrastinator and it shows. As it stands, something like this matters far more to me than the feature box. Having a soulless automaton give me a nod of approval's because people enjoyed my synopsis/funny title/image enough to open the doc is hardly the same as somebody going out of their way to recommend my work. This... yeah, this matters. I am also honestly surprised by the amount of praise EE is getting; it makes me feel like I'm missing out on something big every time I have a read through of the text for editing. On the other hand, I also get sneak peaks and the ability to screw it all up, so I guess... I lost control of where this joke's going. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Twilight_future.png
Anyway, thank you. I'm not sure if I said that, somewhere in all that rambling, but I mean it. That you'd do this is amazing in and of itself.
492873
I'd like to say that it'll end well (after all, you need to end in light when you go into the dark places) but I honestly can't say. The current ending is 'good', but if a better ending comes along that's darker... I can't promise not to go down that road. Sorry.