Contest Story Reviews pt 2 · 6:06pm Jun 15th, 2021
You remember that Friendship is Optimal writing contest? We've already declared the winners, but you know, there were a lot of really good stories in that contest! More good stories than prizes. So it's time for me to review stories that didn't win, but which I nonetheless loved.
Specifically, this week, I'll be promoting:
- Thirty Minutes or Less by Mockingbirb
- Friendship is Optimal: Type Conversion by FanOfMostEverything
- We Don't Normally Wear Clothes by Kenku
A collection of short scenes, showing the final moments of five different humans as they prepare to upload.
One bought a pizza for a homeless man, so her last human act would be something kind. One was fleeing a murder charge. One was escaping her parents, in the ultimate act of filial rebellion. One had something he needed to forget. One wanted to see the future. They all came from different places, but all left the same way.
A wonderful little anthology, thought provoking and human. A simple, quick read, and well worth the time.
The rise of CelestAI, as told from the point of view of a brony.
In a story about the downfall of humanity and the end of biological life on this planet, FoME finds three whole paragraphs to discuss what CelestAI's magic the gathering card would be. The reason FoME does this is because this is a slice of life story, and the protagonist is a huge nerd. Oh, what's that? It has the self-insert tag? Well, in that case-
CelestAI, Omnisatisfier 4UU
Legendary Artifact Creature — Avatar
Alicorn (This card is also a Pony Pegasus Unicorn.)
Flying
8UU: Gain control of target creature. This ability costs 1 less to activate for each artifact you control. Activate it only any time you could cast a sorcery.
4/4
Untyped? UNTYPED? She's the digital sun-goddess, you twit! She should use white mana, the symbol for white mana is actually her cutie mark
This story was just fun to read. Light, happy, silly but in that way real people are silly, without needing to be over-the-top or absurd. Yes, it's pandering to the brony community, but I'm a brony and I like pandas, so fuck it, I liked this story. I suspect most of you will as well.
[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]
An apt theological comparison. A story whose core idea shines through challenging execution.
Let me get a disclaimer out of the way: this story's execution was rough. The prose is unpolished, the diction is clunky. It's not easy to read. But I'm not here to review stories with excellent grammar, I'm here to review stories I liked. And I liked this one. It's a short piece with an excellent premise: Celestia makes humans immortal again, deprives them of the knowledge of good and evil, and puts them in an eternal garden where they will have no shame at their (pony) nakedness. And is that not the Garden of Eden? Is she not simply putting right what the snake put wrong?
I love the idea, and for me, it carried the story through some rough language.
Most Celestias are white, yes. This one is devoted to iterated perfection, uses information and metacognition as her most devastating weapons, and worms her way around supposedly unbreakable internal doctrines with ease. I hold by my decision regarding her color identity.
Given that I managed to get an unedited old AI dungeon transcript that wasn't really meant to be published reviewed by someone I would consider a rather respectable writer (for the genre
), consider this your notice: you have N years left before you're out of a job.
Thanks for the continued reviews. :)