The seeping of another Winterval into the musky warmth and wetness of the following Spring is a sure sign of one thing: that anything can be the basis of an awful sexual innuendo in the hands of a bored mind. Okay, two things: that the group’s collective reflection on our efforts over the previous year has overrun its schedule to a rather embarrassing degree. That’s also the name of my excuse for the delay; trying to cover up a mediocre degree result with a stunning personal statement in a postgrad application is difficult when you’re a pretentious little shit who spent his life climbing to the top of someone else’s funeral pyre.

Anyway, it’s time for the Zero Punctuation Group to take the last lingering look at the ruined, rotten foot that has just been amputated from our collective self that is our review of 2014. And hopefully we can do so to make sure that the festering mess of flesh that was this year’s crop can be removed from our minds as quickly as possible.

Except that that will never happen. We will always be reminded of this year: with every lumbering step; with every confused and sympathetic glance from our peers; with every raw, red lump of tissue building at the base of our leg; with every awful scrape and scratch of those lumps against the top of our replacement; with every stab through the very core of our being as our leg desperately feels for a bit of itself that just isn’t there; with every wordless afternoon spent staring at it, wondering what just the slightest difference could have done; with every feverish, nightmarish recreation of just how it happened--

Sorry, that got weird on me. This was not the best time to rekindle a love for How To Train Your Dragon.

EN-KNEE-WEIGH, it’s time for that review to start, before there are any more recollections. Now, the previous format for this was relatively easy: there were five reviewers, and therefore five spots for each of our best and worst. This year, our ranks have swelled all the way to twelve (actually, thirteen, but they joined after we started this), which meant a change in practice: group masturbation into a pot and sifting through the results!

Or, we voted on it, using a preferential voting system because those actually fucking work. To put it more shortly than I did to the reviewers themselves when initiating the process: Each reviewer nominated up to three of their own reviewed stories for the best and worst lists, and from this pool we each selected our own top and bottom fives. These selections were then tallied together to create an overall top and bottom five for the whole group.

It’s a bit more of a faff, but the upside is that we now have an actual order to proceedings! And kicking it off:

Fifth Best: Sinking into a nice, hot bath.

Ahem, Scootaloo and Silver Spoon’s lives suck and we get to see a day of life in their shoes, that's the basic summary for Hungry by Cryosite. Normally this would be the part where I would say I shouldn't just dismiss it as that or something like that, but that's pretty much all it is, just both of them living their lives while bad things either happen, or have happened. Scootaloo is wrongly punished for something she didn't do and Silver Spoon has been wrongly punished for something she didn't do. Halfway through the second chapter I thought that I was reading a rewrite or something. I don't know if you're into that kind of stuff, but if you're weird like that then I would guess that this story is for you and is rightfully put on the number five slot. Though, I would rather it just stay in that special pit I have for stories that are unnecessarily mean to kids that I fill with hot boiling magma every other week.

Fifth Worst: Realising that your baby brother used the bath before you, and left some little brown fish.

Kicking off our top five worst list of 2014 is Phobovore by Flint-Lock; a fic that can best be described with the phrase, “See! Putting gore in a story doesn’t automatically put it on my favorites list!”

The story suffered from some major identity issues, namely that it can’t seem to decide whether it’s a horror fic or an adventure fic and fails to be either one. It’s too rushed for the atmosphere to be the least bit scary, and the main character is too overpowered, boring, generic, stupid, selfish, smackable, rapable, and mary-sueish for the action to have the least bit of weight.

That’s to speak nothing of the absurdly over the top atmosphere which was kind of unique and creative at the beginning but then delved into icepick lobotomy levels of stupidity when it basically became “Song of Saya” without the subtle tension or reasonably believable characters. I’d tell you to look it up, but I fear your sanity may try to hang itself with its own small intestines.

Of course what would dull half assed fanfiction be without dull half assed grammar. The story has all the usual fuck ups of misplaced commas, misspelled words, and leaving the entirety of the editor’s notes at the bottom of the last chapter. And don’t even get me started with this story’s weird fetish for quotation marks.

To top it all off of course we effectively have an HIE fanfic that has no reason to be an HIE fanfic. Why is the main character some generic human instead of some obscure background pony or at the very least an OC pony? Who the fuck knows, but I doubt it was for any reason that seemed relevant or necessary to plot in any way that’s for sure.

Fourth Best: Receiving a healthy bonus with your December pay-packet.

Coming in yeah-I-guess-it's-better-than-a-kick-in-the-head'th place is SONBoomer's The SegRegal Sheriff . Perhaps the most interesting entry, considering the format of having no consistency. It's what SegRegal does with this style of narrative that makes it so standout among the drek, because it uses the lack of being chained down very rather well, actually. Every line break sends you to a different place, perhaps another time, all only occurring in the same rough time period. That is to say, the Holocaust, the mass-murder event of WWII, in case you chose the kick in the head. We're reminded of how utterly grim and twisted the world is and indeed can be. We're shown the evil in our minds, and how easily it can be created and manipulated to do the unspeakable, and it's great.

Equal Third Worst: Once again, you have been paid with money featuring Piers Morgan.

Perhaps the most appropriate summary for this story is a quote from the story itself:

“Jecqu Jole Hace Foer Loyr Naveb njanj jbhbg nhvbh jnhwd hhnwdhv wgdhnvh jwhgh whvbw ghdohs dagw hund noesd huvh nuejv ghid vhuw bov wegh vbjkw vyuei jvbweuyhjb...”

Does it sound like gibberish? Well, if you read it backwards, it actually comes out to: "PLEASE KILL ME AND BURY MY CORPSE IN A KINDERGARTEN SANDBOX"

Okay, technically, this is an incantation for the weird spell the duo in the title are trying to perform, so that might explain the utterly incoherent text. For all I know, it's actually one of the outtakes from the chants in the Cthulhu Mythos, the only difference being that H. P. Lovecraft didn't write his stuff by repeatedly bashing his forehead on a keyboard and pressing "space" after every result.

And what better image is there for this fic? Lyra's gift and Bon-Bon's curse. by Fillyfooler is a hastily-written mess with an interesting premise and a terrible execution of said premise. Less than half an hour after reading it, I can hardly remember anything about it, other than the godawful pun at the beginning, some "off-screen" sex, and the terrible dialogue right after that. I've written stuff by falling asleep on my open laptop that was more sensible than this…

Overused fan pairing? Check.

The most obvious dilemma they might face (in this case: "trying to make babies")? Check.

Dumb solution to said dilemma? Okay, the fic actually avoids this one. Sure, it's still the "complicated spell that has the potential to backfire horribly" kind of cliche, but this is the one moment where the writing becomes genuinely rewarding for the reader.

Bad grammar and text structure? Check.

Pacing akin to a tasmanian devil on crystal meth? Check.

Zero immersion? Check.

"Pinkieus ex machina"? Yes. Of course. Why the fuck not?

The only thing that could have saved this fic is if it had ended with Lyra making a mad dash for a wire coat hanger...

Third Best: An enlightening conversation with Ban Ki-moon

Well, my non-Dark Avenger colleagues have requested my input on that thing I forgot was happening and also forgot to vote on. Anyway, one of them who isn't Dark Avenger really liked "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" by Akira Toriyama and, after reading it, I really liked "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" by Adi Shankara too! It's genuinely funny, nails Discord's characterization and is pretty well written, he said, desperately trying to think of a third nice thing to say. It also has the number '0' written in 38 bit binary seven times. Seven times zero is equal to zero, which is the number of minutes of your life you will have wasted reading "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" by Agni Pratistha because it is good and worth your time. It's also very short. Read it.

Equal Third Worst: A word from Piers Morgan

And now for a moment of context: after the voting on our hivemind’s top and bottom five, the original reviewers of the selected stories then nominated a different reviewer to take over for these little blurbs. Except for Mutant by Romaji; it was originally given to Dark Avenger, who noticed that it would not currently qualify for a review under the new quality controls, in the same way that the demented little tosspot sketching bunny-wabbits in their own shit does not get their work hung in a gallery. Dark Avenger returned to the group without their blurb and, whatever their rationale, that would not do.

However, about a week later, once Dark Avenger had collected all the pieces of themselves that we’d left strewn about the island and the sensation of sitting down without feeling as though they were about to split apart at the seams was not just a memory, we had to concede that Dark Avenger did in fact have a point. For you see, trying to criticise Mutant by Romaji is a hopeless endeavour; not because it has wormed its way into our hearts and set about causing them fester in a pool of warmth and affection, no, but because it simply doesn’t know better.

Think of it in the way you would a toddler screaming bloody murder after falling flat on their face, or a puppy laying a runny, brown cable along the new rug. An independent adult wailing for mummy after getting a boo-boo or a grown bitch shitting on the carpet would be crying out for a shotgun to be fired down the offending orifice, but the younglings… well, neither is a good thing, or in any way endearing, but you look at them with more pity than anger as they assault your ears/nose. And that’s what Mutant is: pitiable and pitiful.

Second Best: Spending a happy little while cuddling and nuzzling your pet cat.

Ahem, The Pinkie Pie Massacre by kalash93 is a short retelling of a scene in Friendship Is Magic but with dark gore, although I shouldn't dismiss it as simply that. The idea may be unoriginal as the colours red and black, but at least it makes up for it in how it tells the story: actually bothering to express things a bit and not just glancing over it just so there can be another killing, though it's never explained why they just immediately resort to guns. But forget it let's just go back to telling you pinkie is scared. That's all this is. Pinkie is scared and must survive, repeated in as many ways as the writer could say until they eventually give up and just suddenly tells us we were in a dream. Which is what this fic is. It's a crazy dream you only want to experience once, unless you're a sick fuck with a Pinkie killing fetish. So if you're into that stuff I say it so deserves the number two spot on the best of 2014. But if you're like me and freaks out at the seeing the side of the things you're mindlessly killing, then at all costs STAY AWAY!!!

Second Worst: Hold on, this isn’t your cat; it’s a jaguar cub. And its mother is not happy.

Let me be the first to say, wow, an oral sex joke that’s already years old. Ha ha ha ha, lol, didn’t see that 1 cumming if u no wut I meen jklol. Are we done with this review yet? No, we’re just getting started, but that’s the joke and it’s already spent, like a guy who skeets during the lapdance from an extras girl at a Detroit strip club. And, how far am I into the review? Only eighty words? Fuck, and I’ll all out of my only joke.

That’s the thing about basing your story on a single joke; there’s nothing more once that’s done. For attempting to run this story across more than a thousand words, you must assume that we’re all seven or something, because there’s no way that anyone old enough to play Call of Duty would be held in suspense for more than a line or two at the most. Now that we’re done with the joke, we have to figure out how to spend the rest of the autopsy? I’m sorry, did I say autopsy? I meant that we should crack open a cold one – over the wet stain that is the review, you perv!

The thing is, after that one joke, there’s not much to write about, is there? I mean, we’ve already used up the only joke of loloralsexlesbianlol. What else is there to do? How about cringe at the description of sinking teeth into the peace? I don’t even have a cunt, and that made me wince and shout “WHY!? WHY!? WHY!? WHY!?” Imagine if somebody bit you undercarriage. Now despair. I also find it likely that the author has never eaten a “peach”. You see, it’s not really something you eat because it tempts you, but you eat it because it makes the “owner” happy.
After this one joke is through, there isn’t much at all to write home about, not that I’d understand why you’d tell your parents about a tortured extended oral sex joke. There really isn’t much at all to write about; the story is as plotless as a horse missing its back half. You know, if I weren’t such a rosy-cheeked, innocent man, then I’d be pretty tempted to say that this story was likely conceived as a lame me too copycat fic to cash in on some passing meme, wherein the author just imitated the popular thing with all the grace of a strung out Jeremy Clarkson in the vain hopes of achieving some kind of popularity. But, as I said, I’d have to be a pretty cynical, cruel, evil, malevolent, harsh, cold man to think something like that.

Almighty Allah, I find myself out of content again, it’s as if I’ve eaten my only peach and the picnic basket contains only napkins, some lukewarm water, and some homemade muffins I’m too afraid to touch for fear of my life, rather like the experience of raiding a college dorm fridge when you’re drunk at five in the morning and have to write up an essay in a hurry because it’s due that same exact day. As you can see, all the juicy parts were finished within the first eighty words, and we’re now five hundred words in, making this the most torturously stretched out autopsy within the recorded history of everywhere except for Pakistan, and even there it’s a close second. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Applejack eats a peach. by Fillyfooler is like a pitiful supermarket cake which tries to disguise itself with icing; once that’s used up, you’ll find that the filling is actually just old marmite and stale bread to disguise the fact that the baker didn’t design the cake with anything more in mind than the idea that it would be sold on the icing, and fuck anybody who bought it!

BEST: Drifting off to sleep in a warm, comfortable bed, after a hearty meal and a nice bottle of red.

Well this group is still alive. May I remind you people that your prouds reviews are people from very different parts of the world that just so happen to like MLP, Zero punctuation, fanfiction and making reviews for MLP fanfiction using Yahtzee as some sort of catalysts, making the reaction of us doing this shit.

So the story, what did the message say it was called again? Scent of Roses (by Winston) but i’m not a florist. Oh it is a ‘sad’ story that is a sequel to a story that is also a sequel to a story, sorry but unless this gives me a blowjob I ain't reading two extra stories. *sigh* Now lets read this bitch.

Well…. I finished reading it. You know what, I’m going to skip making jokes for this part and say that this story actually hit me quite hard. Like most people, I’ve lost people that are close to me and I dealt with that with time but war is one of man’s most pure forms of an extreme. The extreme of the atrocities man does to another man. The extreme of fighting for one's life and the lives of the people around that person but that fighting can form an unbreakable friendship.

So I can talk about the the story but thing thing is, I don’t fucking want to. There is a reason why this was voted as the best fic reviewed by one of us and I do wish I read this earlier. Sure the start was quite of a very slow boil for me at least but at chapter three I was hit quite good in the chest.

Characters was another thing that was done well, I really liked Applejack, she really came into herself with this story. There is something I can nitpick on is that Gilda just is there after her problem is done. It becomes the mane 6 and Gilda does this, the mane 6 and Gilda does that.

Now typing any more I would just be repeating Illumipony but I do recommend this over reading Sweet Apple Massacre and having a wank before bed. Now excuse me I have a magical ritual to do.

WORST: Drifting in the middle of the Atlantic for days, your supplies long exhausted, and no ships sighted since the one that sank under you...

As the only non-Fauxtzee mentioned in this year’s actual Top and Bottom 5, the worst whatever is not necessarily the most frustrating, but the one with the worst intentions. However, as DEFF OFTA ORTHA is screamed at anyone who dares guess the author’s intent, it’s time to fall back into bed with frustration and onto the wet patch left by a bland yet chafing evening with Beneath the Mask by TheDrunkenJinjo: a miserable little mess that doesn’t know what to do with itself, like someone sat in the ruins of what the box said was going to be a wardrobe.

It’s just a HIE story. That’s it. You could buy it from a shop like cloth: “I’d like fifty thousand words of HIE story please, shopkeeper. The beige one, if you will; I’m not made of money.”

It sat right by the side of the huge, mouldering slab of a corpse that the entire HIE genre has become and, with a world of opportunities and interesting ideas right behind it, just fucking stayed sat there, poking it with the same stick that everyone else has already worn finger grooves into. Obviously the human meets a familiar meme from the show, acting as their meme; obviously the human winds their way to the main cast; obviously the human is interrogated; obviously the human and ponies discover more obvious things about their respective worlds; obviously they dawdle around together accomplishing nothing new or interesting or worthy of being a story. It’s all obvious.

And the worst thing is, unlike Mutant, it has an author who clearly knows what they’re doing. Or at least they know enough to put together an enticing summary and have some excellent little verbal jousts between their characters, all written in a way that was at least half-decent. But the author decided that, rather than use these serviceable, if flimsy, parts to make a decent whole, threading them all together with a well-crafted plot, they would instead give up on the idea and sit poking at the remains for a little while longer--like I’m going to do with that wardrobe.

To put it simply, and with the effort it deserves, it is a stultifying, directionless waste of time that perfectly encapsulates the piss in a tsunami that was 2014.

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And that’s it for another year, aside from taking this opportunity to congratulate our own kalash93 for getting one of their stories nominated for each list, and also to broach the topic of a Lifetime Achievement award for Fillyfooler. After all, it takes a certain *special* kind of failure to have three stories nominated for the Worst list in a single year. It was as if Fillyfooler, to paraphrase from our very own twitterdick, “was hooked up to a little machine that sucked all the available awesome the [author] might have had and, I don't know, gave it to Neil DeGrasse Tyson or something”. But whether Fillyfooler receives this award, I will leave up to m’colleagues.

Actually, speaking of them, I would like to thank every one of them for taking part in this month-long bout of idiocy. It took a little bit longer than I first imagined, but at least we can now close the door on 2014 and leave it chained to the fucking wall, where it belongs.

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I do approve, giving three jolly wanks, two tweedle-dees and a failed reference to this silly post.

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I still can't believe both the top worst and top best are stories I reviewed.

Am I a magnit for quality extremes or something?