Ho ho ho, greetings from the reviewers of the Zero Punctuation group, who all trust that you had a happy and merry Diwali, Thanksgiving, Bodhi Day, Yule, Festivus, HumanLight, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Hogman— oh fuck it, Winterval.

I genuinely do not understand the hostility that greeted that whole concept.

Birmingham City Council gave us a lovely idea which embraced and encompassed not only all of the celebrations and festivals scattered through the wintry season but also the general air of merriment and goodwill that settles on the nation for the last eight weeks of the year, and also the first few weeks of the next one, without having to go through the clunky rigamarole of listing each individual one and trying not to forget any. It did not set out to replace Christmas, no matter what the many shrivelled enfeebled husks that were once humans would like us to believe.

Apologies to all the non-Britons who had to read that spurt of bile towards some shameless manufactroversy mongering, which has only recently begun to clear after the best part of a decade; we’re not here for that.

Instead, I’m delighted to announce that to celebrate the New Year, and ape the actions of His Expletive Expelling Excellency, we reviewers would like to present our Top Five and Bottom Five stories for 2013!

However, before we get into the list proper, there is something that needs to be clarified: while this idea was merrily bouncing around my brain for much of the latter half of December, I only saw fit to propose it to my fellow critics quite late.

New Year’s Eve, to be precise.

Therefore, rather than delay gratification for our supporters by arguing over actually ranking our stories, for this first year we have selected the easy option: Each of the five reviewers has selected the best and worst stories that they have personally reviewed for our list, which are presented in no particular order.

Got that?

Are you sure?

Brian, what about you?

Okay, then.

Without further ado, here are the Fimfiction.net Zero Punctuation Group’s Top Five and Bottom Five stories of this year just passed!

Receiving your wages at the end of a long shift

Bloody Christ fucking a chihuahua up the nose, I thought my critics were harsh on you readers, but at least once they've fucked you they leave. I cannot get them off my arse about this "Top and bottom" shit! What the bloody fuck do I know about reviews and stories, anyway? I only wrote two of the fucking things, and one of my reviews was as shitty as the story it was smeared across!

Anywho, my top and bottom is a choice between a wad of shit that may be gem-encrusted-gold in the center, and a shining example of the most common, bland, and pointless sort of fanfic of any fandom.

The former is Rise of Ponietheus, a dark story written about a quarter as well as the reviews its author writes for this group, and the latter...

Looking at your cash to see that the face on it is Piers Morgan

Is Dark Tails New Friends, a self-insert fanfic that just sort of hobbles around the idea that its a story or the fact that it should entertain.

Use for reading if stuck on a island

I only had the choice of three stories, one of those being a collab and two story reviews being canceled. So choosing a story to be the top of 2013 for me became a bit more difficult like choosing which wheel to take off your car because you lost a bet or something.

If you read all our reviews you might be surprised by my choice as my top story. Come up to get your theoretical award…. “Through a glass darkly” by SpaceCommie.

This review was a collab with Twitterdick (There were miscommunications at the time) and both of us ranted on the characterisation being really bad and some very nitpicky things like how photosynthesis is possible but if I really needed to read something I would choose this story for its dark world at I could easily be immersed in.

Pointing this out that I don’t prefer to review incomplete stories so with getting top spot surely means something.

Use for toilet paper if stuck on a island

Like I stated, I had only three stories to chose from and with this being the bottom I had to chose one from two. In theory this means what the choice would be easier to make but theory is like the original Xbox 360, the chance of failure is too high, oh just putting it out there the original Xbox 360 had a failure rate of 54.2%.

But now it is the time to say my bottom story for 2013…. “A Historical Pun” by River Road.

This was actually the story that made me the 2nd reviewer for this group because Flutterdash 1 made the group. I’m not bragging, just pointing that there is a bit of history with me and this story that might be a shock.

Don’t get me wrong this is not a truly bad story like the game Ride to Hell Retribution 1%, which was just a really broken game; it is just that it was the worst of the three stories I have reviewed.

The problems I had with the story was that it pointed something out stupid, had Rarity say a line that didn’t feel like something she would say, a plot point that could of easily be used better and the fact that I needed to go to the comment section see a comment the author has written to understand what the pun was.

Finding a $10 bill on the ground and using it to purchase a meal at your favorite sandwich shop.

"Dream Whisper" by Dream Whisper

It feels strange giving a "Best of the Year" award to Dream-Whisper-Story, but giving the fact that I'm still actively thinking about it after a few months - whereas most of the rest of the stories have slowly drifted into the farthest archives of the who-gives-a-shit part of my brain along with most of elementary school, dentist visits and all those repressed homosexual urges. Buried deep within the Dream-Whisper-Author's abhorrent writing style lies a pretty good story brought to life by a believable lead character that I honestly connected with. The way you write can grow, evolve and improve over time but what you write about is very indicative of who you are, and Dream-Whisper-Author is a good storyteller. If you have a high bullshit tolerance threshold, a lot of patience and a willingness to extend your benefit of the doubt then you could do a hell of a lot worse than Dream-Whisper-Story.

Discovering the $10 bill is actually a dog poo and that everyone at the sandwich shop hates you.

"The Apple of my Heart" by TheExhaustedBrony

Yes, "Madness of Sound" was worse in practice but the principle behind "The Apple of my Heart" bothered me enough for it to warrant further discussion. Fate would dictate that my first official critique for the oh-so-loathsome 'romance' genre would encapsulate everything that turns me away from the genre, and lo did my enjoyment plummet. The romance felt sticky, forced, invasive and left me unsure of whether or not I should contact the authorities. Or maybe that was the recurring dream I keep having? ... NO, Uncle Kris, I don't want to go into the puzzle closet! Anyway, "The Apple of my Heart" is nightmare that there's no waking up from. It had as much sentiment, believability and good-feeling as Auschwitz the day the warden discovered his wife had cheated on him.

Going home drunk while being helped by the girl who might just end up becoming the love of your life

My choices for 2013 were rather limited, since I did not have the opportunity to review more than a handful of stories between the rest of the tedious labors that I was forced to take care of while contemplating a quick and painless suicide. Even more difficult is the task of choosing a "best" one, since my experience with the stories submitted to the group has been "mixed", to put it lightly. Still, if someone were to put a gun to my head and tell me that I either name my favorite from this year or I die... then I would probably tell them to aim very precisely.

Oh, fuck it... very well, I shall give 2013's "not so shitty story" award to For All to See, written by the talented and yet somewhat misguided Pearple Prose. What at first glance seemed to be the absolute worst kind of story that I would have to drag myself through ended up being a more or less tolerable experience, especially when compared to most of the filth that we tend to come across.

Yes, it is cliche. Yes, it is only there to provide context for us while Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna shag each other. One might even say that it got off easy, since I had close to zero expectations from the very beginning. Despite all that, this story was everything but the aggravating mess that I expected it would be. Decent atmosphere, decent writing, no glaring issues with grammar, no obvious signs that the author spent less than five minutes refining their work, and while it does commit several of the unforgivable sins of horrible shipping fics, it was still a pleasant surprise within the endless tide of shitty stories plaguing this site.

The girl is actually your mother, and she is not happy that you french kissed her

While I could take the easy route and just pick on some of the featherweight contestants (i.e "my 1st storie eva, plz dont h8 me" type junk), I must admit that the worst kind of experience for me when reading a story is almost always disappointment. A good title and/or short description that suggests a decent concept, followed by a horrible execution. A promising first chapter (or first few chapters), followed by the story taking a nosedive into the public sewage system. Whichever the case, it's always worse to be promised an adorable little puppy, and then be presented with the rear half of a dead wolf, than to walk into the restroom at a gas station and confirm your suspicions that it smells like shit in there.

All that said, while there were a few warning signs at the beginning of To Guard Equestria, such as the fact that it's a HiE story and that it "replaces" the canon storyline, the writing in the first chapter still seemed to suggest a good story waiting for me ahead. That glimmer of hope was quickly torn away from me once I realized how it mercilessly screws up what we've seen in the show, and that the human character is a Gary Stu, not to mention most likely a self-insert. In other words, he is a cunt.

If you ask me, nothing short of a nuclear attack on Ponyville during the first episode could have fucked up the original FiM storyline any more than this abomination did...

Wrapping yourself up in a big, thick duvet, that still smells of fabric softener.

Another reviewer with only two choices to select from, and with a staggeringly easy decision to make. So, come join me in the Hot Tub of Loveliness, Journey to the Centre of the Rainbow, and make yourself comfortable. I do apologise for being quite so rough with your delightful bottom last time we met; I hope The DJ Rainbow Dash wasn’t too upset.

No, this story isn’t perfect, and yes, I found Rainbow Dash’s dialogue to be particularly stilted in what was supposed to be a piece focussed on her (and Twilight), but so what? Her dialogue could have been propped up on poles so tall it wouldn’t find the air to breathe, and I would still proudly defend this one, because this was one of the few stories that I read all year—not just counting those for this group—which managed to so seamlessly blend a character-driven plotline with some exquisite world-building, without ever losing its lighthearted tone.

That last part’s the key, because there is some serious stuff in JttCotR: The relationship between Dash and Twi is given plenty of time to develop naturally, and that includes some frank introspection about the nature of their relationship, as well as some (out-of-nowhere-but-still-) gripping scenes where the pair are put in very real danger. Plus the wider world of Equestria gets a few breathtaking extensions that I found genuinely interesting. And yet, throughout all of it, there’s this gentle undercurrent of optimism that, to me, makes it feel like part of the show’s world, not just something that borrows its characters.

Like I said, it isn’t perfect: the writing is a little too dry to truly sell Equestria’s new assets, and I still stand by my feelings that a nice opportunity was missed later on, but I can accept those sacrifices for one of the most engaging stories I’ve read in quite some time. And while the style may not have suited describing an epic landscape, it provided fantastic support for the characters’ conversations and interactions, some minor fumbles aside.

So I would like to revise my original rating of this Journey to the Centre of the Rainbow: it’s not just good, it’s great. Perhaps I’ll read it again some time and have another chance to explore its bountiful tracts of land.

Wait, this is the duvet your little cousin used last night. Why’s it so damp?

As I mentioned earlier, I only had two options to select from, and I do feel kind of awkward for making sure that this author gets a second mention in the worst of list, but make no mistake: the choice of The Last Stand by TheExhaustedBrony is not by default. There’s bad, and then there’s the stories so willing to flaunt their mighty awfulness that they leap out of the screen and threaten to give you a third eye socket.

The first six chapters of this story race along with no regard for atmosphere or pacing, and yet still somehow manage to be both utterly bland and teeth-splittingly frustrating. It almost feels like characters that were supposed to be involved with this mess turned up their noses at the mere idea of being associated with it, so their familiar epithets are given to vacuous automatons that only occasionally remember to spit out something vaguely reminiscent of the real thing. On top of this, the writing is completely uninspiring, beloved names are dropped into mincing machines to desperately inject some tragedy without grasping the point, and the whole plot tramples through scenes borrowed wholesale from other, better stories without adding anything of value.

And then came that last chapter...

If we were handing out awards for these, The Last Stand would have won the “Babylift Air Disaster Award” for snatching catastrophe from the jaws of rescue. That last chapter gave at least the vague hope of something worthwhile to be extracted from the mess, with characters doing something other than sit around and wait for the next faxed extract from ‘Zombie Writing for Complete Fuckwits’, but at the time of my review it appeared that it was just a hasty tack-on with no possibility of development. Since then, the latest update has at least continued this better characterised and better all-round offshoot, so I’ll upgrade that award to the “President Not Sure Award” for doing at least a little bit to lift things above rock bottom.

Still, if anyone’s seen the movie that refers to, you’ll understand just how microscopic that level of improvement actually is, so get up onto the Wall of Incompetence, The Last Stand; I’m not that good of a shot, so I need you kept still!

So, that’s that, and we bid an overdue farewell to 2013, moving on to what probably should be a decidedly more unlucky year in 2014; every stain who decided that thirteen is unlucky and so thought before putting themselves in a situation with a potential negative outcome will presumably stop giving a shit before climbing aboard their even-lower-rent Jackass homage. From the reviewers at the Zero Punctuation group, flutterdash1, Dragacane, twitterdick, Dark Avenger, and myself, we wish you another pleasant jaunt around the great thermonuclear cataclysm that will eventually be the end of the little rock we call home.

And I would like to more personally thank my fellow reviewers for humouring this festering turd of an idea, incubating it with me and helping it to realise its dream of being the mighty, city-swallowing landfill you see above.

You guys are great!

2578375

I didn't make it on to the shitty story list!

Y'all are doing good work. Keep it up!

2578375

Huh.

I can't say the review gave me much hope in placing here. Surprising, to say the least.

You guys do good work. Keep it up.

2578965

Would it make you feel any better if I said it was more of a "lesser of many evils" type of choice?

Just kidding, it really was a pleasant surprise compared to the others...