"Dibs on My Sister" Won the February Found Out Contest! · 11:29pm Mar 7th, 2021
Well, guys, I did it. First place out of 19 stories. Link to the announcement.
I'm pretty stoked about winning. Since the announcement, I've picked up 4 new upvotes and sadly one angry anon downvoted both Dibs and its parent fic, Don't Feed The Bats. It's all good though. So long as my haters are at my back and never at my front, then life is good, eh? 
It does feel good though. Back in 2019, a very large part of me wanted to quit this writing thing altogether. While 2014 and 15 were great years to be the Freshman Aficionado, scoring win after win, 2016-19 was a very dark time. A Sophomore Slump that swallowed any recognition I had and rendered me invisible to the rest of the site. Generic HiE was now cringe. The Old Heroes of 2011-12 whose footsteps I followed in were now overrated and lame.
As an aside, even Fallout Equestria bashing is now a thing now, not because it sucks but because it's old, Grandpa! Get with the times, maaaaaaan! (eyeroll) Yeah, there are legit criticisms of FoE but goddamn it y'all, you will never write something that good in your life and neither will I. Get some perspective, zoomers! 
Rant over.
Reverse Gender Role: Equestria (RGRE) was now a generally understood formula and people were now min-maxing this genre, recreating and surpassing my initial successes with ease. The Future was now and people were writing Young Six stories while I toiled away in obscurity, bitterly clinging to a canon that ended with season 2 as my mentor Firesight scored win after win in 2017, enjoying great success with his own OC universe and epic-length clopfiction stories like Midnight Rising.
I was an old man, washed up in the gutter. An anachronism that should have died in 2013 that wasn't even a brony until 2014.
The fandom melted away to nothing. Men I highly respected like Denim_Blue and Demon Eyes Laharl left the fandom along with them, and I became very resentful of being passed by. Firesight can vouch for me on this. How many times, old friend, did I lament the fact that no one wanted to read story clop anymore (unless it was yours)? No one wanted to read about my headcanon and all that stuff. Who cares, bro. We've got generic stroke fic #3343343784304730-432499324 to read that has Anon in it! This is so much more worth my time than the history of Thestralslovakia! Screw your headcanon. I need to jerk off, AJA! (sigh)
I tried my hand at long fiction and have a ton of canceled stories for my trouble.
I tried rebooting TSoP and quit. In 2016, I'd developed a passive loathing for my own story -- Movie Night -- that was both well-loved and superbly rated.
I grew experimental in 2019, writing the failed prototype for the Thestralslovakia-verse called Fertile Ground: Earthmother and a Fallout Equestria story that actually managed to feature! ... for like 5 minutes. It was the best 5 minutes of my entire life since 2015 when I was on top of the world.
I have experienced so much failure, it's actually kinda hilarious.
And now...
Dibs on My Sister, a story focused on OCs and utilizing headcanon which grew from the ground over five years won a big contest and featured at #1 on the site. A headcanon no one was asking for more of. A story that contains, among other things, earplay -- a fetish so obscure, you need a team of internet archeologists to find fanart that features it. Dibs on My Sister is, without a doubt, one of the most UN-featurable things to have featured on this site in quite some time. No OC fic in the history of Incest in Wincest has ever even managed to rank, let alone win the top prize.
And yet both things happened. Dibs won over the hearts of the people and I am forever grateful to the people who left supportive comments on my blogs and the story itself and to the nice people on the Incest is Wincest Discord server.
I'm thankful to Firesight who really wasn't in the mood to edit it but did so anyway. I couldn't have managed it otherwise in such a short time.
And I'm thankful to the contest organizers for making this contest possible in the first place. Kudos guys! The bats are definitely going to eat well on my dime.
200 Dollars worth of prize money is on its way to Australia to support Megabattie from Youtube in her efforts to save the threatened bat population. If you have the money to spare, I urge you all to do the same. Link to Tolga Bat Hospital. Post "Megabattie" in the note using Paypal.
The story of Charon, Phoebe, Europa, and Roseluck is not over. There will be more stories following them around and my lore surrounding them and Thestralslovakia itself will be expanded upon. Until then... take care and thanks for reading.
And if you want to see more of the Thestral lore in action, I will point you to the sequel of Firesight's epic war fantasy story, Into The Storm:
There's one notable difference in that his Thestralslovakia looks more like a republic than a monarchy but you can just headcanon that it was a republic for a short time after the Lunar Rebellion and before Season 1 Episode 1 of MLPFiM proper. That should fix the issue of what government type they are. But all of Firesight's "Firefly" stories are canon to Dibs and bear the AJA-seal of approval. Check that out too if you like epic war.
"my haters are at my back"
Giggity.
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They'll never see me coming but they'll always notice me leave.
Appreciate the shout-out!
And thanks for again plugging Into the Storm! Come for the thestral lore and stay for the epic battle scenes, character development and worldbuilding, folks.
That can work. As for Thestralslovakia, I have them as a republic because I figure at that point they're trying to preserve Nightmare Moon's supposed Lunar Republic, whether or not that's actually what it was.
It wasn't just you. How many times did I bemoan the fact that I couldn't get much traction or comments on my clopfics, despite what I felt were their high quality? But, I'm stubborn, earning my likes chapter by chapter with epic-length stories. Persistence pays, and if I imparted nothing else to you, I hope I did that. But, you've now done something I never have and may never. A #1 feature, and with OCs in a personal verse, no less! That's utterly amazing to me. You did it, Kohai. You played the site's meta game and won!
Write what you love, not what is popular. Because it doesn't matter how many people love you if you hate yourself. Write what you love, and it will show through in your work. That lasts longer than any flash in the pan meme fic.
And smile at your haters. The best revenge is a life well lived. Smile at your haters. It kills them inside.
Here's to the bats.
Here's to you.
You have earned this.
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Well deserved win for a writer with plenty of talent and some great stories under his belt.
Giving the money to charity is a nice touch, speak volumes of your character!
Congrats again!
Congrats on the win. Happy that you've got some spark back from this, you're a great writer. Anyway, I'll be over here writing generic stroke fic #3343343784304730-432499325, but in the meantime I'll grant you another follower.
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It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it! Thanks for the follow.