The Motion of the Stars
by Carabas

This is the story of a broken world. This is a story of (magical) war, wastelands, and death. But more than anything, it is a story about sisterhood, hope, and Rarity's Element (we all know what it is) in a world lost to strife and isolation, where wreckage burns and ponies are few and far between. And it is a beautiful story.

At the time of reading it, I wasn't a very big Rarity fan, having seen so many unflattering depictions of her and just not quite getting her character and what made her tick even after years of watching the show. This story still brought me close to crying despite my moderate grudge against a smol marshmallow horse (other stories would too, and I'd grow to like her, but that's another story entirely). The prose is splendid and the characters intact and present, yet new and with more experience in their changed setting. World building isn't glanced over, but there is some well done mystery too that leaves the reader asking questions about the interesting setting. The prose is engrossing from the start and the action top tier. There is badassery too.

And goddamn those feels.

Water Pony
by BlazzingInferno

An outstanding take on a culture that few write about, with a pony as the outsider. Complete with world building, drama, and a lot of interesting relationships among the lovable (and sometimes not so lovable) OCs. If you want looks at places outside of Equestria and plenty of good prose to boot, this is an extremely good read and epic in its own right.

5896018 *looks at second highest upvote of 11* ...I think you broke the contest.

Question: Are stories by curators already featured in the RCL eligible?

If so, what if they've had a PFV (or 6-star) feature, but not RCL?

Alright, I'm getting a little angry here.

This being made into this sort of popularity contest isn't working. I'm getting the wrong kind of signal boosts into my feed, and it's making the votes go all over the shop as a result.

This shouldn't be a popularity contest. Full stop, end of sentence. This is about correcting the record, which should mean curators figuring out the biggest indignancies as opposed to... this shouldn't be run like who should get a second post.

Right now entries are being nominated for liking an author enough they deserve a second feature. We've had that competition before, Ghost won. This isn't that competition, and I don't think that should be run that way. Right now I'm not seeing anyone else explain why the previous feature doesn't best represent the author compared to the new one, just that they like this second story as well.

"Pride" by Inquisitor M

This was an interesting piece of far-off and long-ago, from an alien (griffin) perspective. It nailed all of those pieces, and did so while leaving the reader to figure most of them out on their own. Besides this, it managed tone delicately, leaving hope throughout before dashing it with the degree to which the protagonist is a bit character in someone else's story, able to make a bit of a difference in one little corner of the setting, but little else.

I believe it is a better representation of M's work as a whole, in that I felt the purely slice of life/romance/relationships angle taken with "Every Mare Needs Her Stallion" put it at the low end of the activity level spectrum of his stories compared to what I'd seen.

The Railway Ponies: Highball by The Descendant

I believe The Descendant achieved something special here. The tone is both suffused with nostalgia and, through the dedication and love of the main character, romance (think "the romantics" not shipping). This sentiment comes within a story where the fantastic and magical elements of the FiM setting are significantly downplayed. In a sense these are a bit at odds, but the resolution, which takes the form of a more truly magical magic* flowing from Highball's last chance to be who he was meant to be, doing what he loved with all his heart.

I didn't find "Variables" to be nearly as affecting, and it's something that I could much more easily being done--or the same effect achieved with a similar story--by someone other than The Descendant. Highball, on the other hand, is a distillation of the wholesome and romantic aspects of TD's work that I'd expect to be about unique on this site.

*Than the physical magic of the show. As I said in the comments, "On which note I'll call foul on the notion that there was no magic to the railroads—there certainly was that day."

5896478
Entirely valid point. I've adjusted my nomination to take that into account.

In the wake of the Mbwun killings , Spike seems to be better off then he was before: his large, muscled body is a far cry from the chubby baby he was, and he no longer has to go through his hundred-year wyrm sleep. Life, however, is rarely so simple. As he and Twilight move back to Canterlot, Spike finds that his new body may very well mean the end of his old life.

Why I Recommend There are a ton of stories out there that talk about Twilight's and Spike's relationship but this one has to be among the top five that I really recommend and love! The story in all is about what happens to Spike once he is a full dragon, when he is the size of a building and no longer the small innocent helper we have all grown to love, and what the challenges are between him and Twilight. I really can't do this story justice with a simple review, its one of those stories you have to read to fully experience it. While it does have a Disney like ending, at the end of the day we all need that Disney magic in our life to give us just single moment of clear closure that becomes harder to find as we get older.

5896478

Right now I'm not seeing anyone else explain why the previous feature doesn't best represent the author compared to the new one, just that they like this second story as well.

Did you read the first sentence of 5894744? bookplayer is known for writing romance and she runs many shipping groups. Lost Time is not only one of bookplayer's better stories, it one of the best romance stories on the site and provides a unique approach to a romance that leverages some of her life experiences (versus those of the typical shipfic writer on the site).

5896604

That's one of the comments I've upvoted in this thread for a reason, yes. Gold star for doing the right good thing.

5896478
We did this last time, by popular vote, and the eventual winner was A Canterlot Carol, which was certainly deserving.

It worked just fine and dandy.

I think this is totally fine. It isn't like something terrible is going to win; it is going to be something by someone who is good. It is fine for the general public to vote on this stuff from time to time.

All the signal boosts I've seen so far have been fine.

And as for the nominations... eh. The contest states:

Which RCL-featured authors do you think should be refeatured, to showcase a story better representative of their strengths?

This can be interpreted as a genre difference or simply as "this is a better story than the one that made it into the RCL".

But I did nominate a lot of shipfics for a reason.

Indeed...

GAPJaxie's RCL story is An Arbitrage of Moments, which is a very serious story. Regarding the Need for Sex Education is a totally different genre, a comedy.

HoofBitingActionOverload's previous story was Where Have the Stars Gone? He wrote a lot of very funny stories, as well as a lot of shipfics, and Spring is Dumb is both of those, as well as genuinely one of the best stories on the site.

Kits wrote a bunch of shipfics; Twilight's List is his most popular story, one of the best TwiDash stories on the site (it is often seen as "the" TwiDash story), and a totally different genre from Who We Are and Storm, which are both serious stories, instead of romantic comedies.

Bad Horse's previous RCL story, The Magician and the Detective, is a crossover Sherlock Holmes/Trixie shipfic of sorts. Trust is one of his punchy philosophical pieces, and is very powerful.

Skywriter has written both very serious and very funny stories; Princess Celestia Hates Tea, his previous RCL story, was a comedy. Roaming is a very serious and touching story. Likewise, he is also known for his Cadance of Cloudsdale cycle, so A Princess by Any Other Name is nicely representative of that and is just an all-around excellent story.

And amongst stories I did not nominate, as noted, Lost Time is a shipfic by bookplayer, a writer known primarily for being an awesome shipfic writer.

I'm sure folks have their reasons for what they nominated.

5896902 At the same time, very few of them have explained why they feel it's a better representation, you included.

5896939
What, you're saying you're NOT psychic?

Tch. For shame!

It is not an unreasonable point. Admittedly when I was writing my recs yesterday, my main thought was "Why does this deserve to be in the RCL?", because, well, if it doesn't belong in the RCL, what's the point? As such, my pitch to the audience was along those lines - these are great stories which deserve to be in, which fit the contest requirements.

I'm actually going back through and adding in the reason why I threw these stories in particular in, though.

5896952 Well of *course* I am. but I know better than to delve into such a filthy mind...

5896478
5894656

I'm also thinking there's a much better way to approach this, and it involves making two significant changes to how this would work:

1. The RCL staff instead ask the featured authors themselves whether or not the story of theirs that was featured best represents their style or not. Those who say it doesn't and then provide a valid explanation as to why may suggest a better example of their work which does.

2. Instead of only showcasing one story selected this way, you show many of them, but with a less thorough review of each. This could be done all at once, or over many weeks. It might even be possible to delegate said task to a new, separate spinoff group with different staff called RCL: Correcting the Record.

Taken together, these changes would undoubtedly remove the 'popularity contest' elements which are currently upsetting multiple people while simultaneously allowing more than one author accurate representation to the reading public.

5896958
Tch. It's probably for the best; I memorized the design for Bad Horse's Orbital Death Cannon, it'd be inconvenient for someone to see that.

Anyway, I have added explanations. You could even say I... corrected the record.

Eh? Eh?

Okay, I'll go now.

I really need to get around to reading several of the other nominees.

But first... time to watch Doctor Strange.

5896239

I second this! I second this *so hard.*

Fractured Sunlight, by Oroboro.

Before I extol the virtues of this story, I should mention that I have no bias, either for or against, the pairing depicted. Shipping is not my thing, and I don't honestly care who winds up with whom in a given story, as long as mai waifu, Cranky Doodle Donkey, remains available. This story didn't win me over by pandering to my love for Sunnybuns and Awkward Human Purplesmart as a couple, uguu desu etc. etc.

It won me over with its premise, its execution, and the stellar (har!) writing of the entire cast, across the board. The characters are fleshed out as living, breathing human beings, and the romance which develops between the two 'shipped together is at once adorable and highly believable. It tackles and deconstructs many of the issues and cultural clashes that'd crop up between someone raised in Equestria and someone raised in Equestria's bizarro, human-populated counterpart universe, while subtly building up to an immensely satisfying resolution.

All of which make it, I think, a better example of Oroboro's literary canon than his RCL entry, Tom Stoppard is Mai Waifu: A Starlight/Sunset Shipfic. It's a fine story, but it's also an esoteric parody of an already esoteric piece of existential literature, and I don't think it captures the spirit of his work quite as well as this one does. FS is an excellent cross-section of his various strengths as a writer, and a more complex narrative than Rosenset and Glimmerstern are Dead. I hope you'll give it a try, and that you'll at least consider featuring it in the RCL.

Buttspoop.

One Last Act of Tragedy
by Majin Syeekoh

Every year, on the day Princess Twilight Sparkle saved Equestria from its greatest threat, she mourns the loss of who she was.

While Majin Syeekoh's current feature definitely shows off his comedy chops, I think that this piece shows that when he wants to, he can craft a fantastic dramatic story too.

This story:
-Shows how to do an AU right
-Perfectly captures Twilight's voicing and character
-Has an amazing three act structure, that perfectly develops both Twilight's character arc and shows her grieving process
-Has one of the best opening paragrpahs I've ever seen in a ponyfic:

"The way this is phrased, you'd think this is when I murdered Tirek. This would be incorrect. This is when I teleported both of us to the moon and accelerated the celestial bodies to build up the momentum required to murder him."

-Delves into the always present question of whether it's possible to show mercy to even the most evil of creatures and/or whether non-violence is an option when faced with violence
-Has footnotes. LOTS AND LOTS OF FOOTNOTES

This is far and away my favorite story by Majin. I hope you show it the love that I will always have for it.

5896348

I was not expecting anyone to renominate me. And especially not for that story. Thanks, FoME.

5896478 5896965
We've had a little discussion about this, so I am (tentatively) speaking for the RCL on this one. (Other curators may pop up here to dissent, and that's fine too; there's a certain amount of cat-herding that's unavoidable.)

This is about correcting the record, which should mean curators figuring out the biggest indignancies as opposed to... this shouldn't be run like who should get a second post.

This shouldn't be a popularity contest. Full stop, end of sentence. ... Right now entries are being nominated for liking an author enough they deserve a second feature. We've had that competition before, Ghost won. This isn't that competition, and I don't think that should be run that way.

Please bear with me as I try to walk the tightrope on this one. This will be long — sorry.

This is absolutely about correcting the record, we agree. We're trying to keep the focus on that. It's unfair to wipe things out and start over in midstream, so we're going to work with the framework we've got rather than changing the rules; but we will do what we can to monitor things and nudge everyone in that direction.

However, us just picking refeatures isn't the way to fix that, for reasons I'll explain in a second.

This both is and is not a "popularity contest". We firmly agree, it is NOT about raw numbers of fans; if that were the case, instead of a vote we'd just refeature SS&E It IS, though, about what our readers want, and for better or for worse, the best way to do that is democracy.

It's important to emphasize that, even knowing that a direct vote has problems, we chose the contest structure deliberately. (Democracy sucks sometimes, but until Friend Computer takes over, it's the best tool we've got to hear from crowds.)

The reason is that we've got (by design) a somewhat insular process — which has the benefit that we're spending our time providing features, rather than arguments and justifications about our decisions (which demonstrably create drama and increase burnout), but has the downside that opportunities for public input are limited and people feel disconnected from what we do. If someone thinks we should feature a given author, our story recommendation thread is always open and we take recommendations seriously, but if someone thinks there was a better story for one of our featured authors, there's really nowhere at all to give voice to that.

And we certainly could re-feature authors as a matter of practice! In fact, we've got a stack of fics in our tracking spreadsheet that's 21 high, of stories that we have scored as qualifying for a refeature. And that's only the ones we've scored! The truth is that if an author can write at a featurable level, they've almost certainly got multiple works at that level. Every RCL author deserves a second look.

But even if we limited ourselves to that pre-made queue and ran through it at our usual pace ... that's literally half a year that we can't turn the spotlight on anyone new.

One of our core goals is to spotlight the variety of quality fanfiction, and the humbling number of authors writing here at a professional level. Back at the beginning, the decision to make the process prejudicial toward new features was deliberately made in order to promote that variety.

If y'all think we should be doing re-features more often, that's a discussion we can have separately (not in this thread). "Zero" is not the correct number, but beyond that it gets tricky.

Back to what that means for this contest:

We want public input. Voting is imperfect but necessary for that. We are putting faith in you — our authors, readers and voters — to go along with the spirit of that, and nominate/vote based on showing off works that better represent the author than the existing feature does. Maybe trusting people to do that instead of OMGZ THIS FIC IS GUD is a mistake — but I don't think so. Right now, even if there are problems, I'm seeing a lot of people respond exactly in the spirit of the contest, either up front or due to feedback.

Speaking of:

Right now I'm not seeing anyone else explain why the previous feature doesn't best represent the author compared to the new one, just that they like this second story as well.

We agree that's a good idea, and that we should have specified that up front. PP's adding it into the top post, but I'll put it here too: When nominating a story, explain how it represents the author better than our existing feature.

Some nominators have already done that, either on their own in response to you. (Hooray! Thank you!) I'll ask the others to edit accordingly:
5894692 5894770 5895817 5895836 5896018 5896202 5896206 5896233 5896239 5896244
5896347 5896400 5896401 5896403 5896404 5896529

Voters, please take that into consideration. What we want are your opinions of which stories best "correct the record", not just which stories deserve a spotlight.

I'm getting the wrong kind of signal boosts into my feed, and it's making the votes go all over the shop as a result.

I've seen one or two, but mostly my feed is full of people boosting in the spirit intended.

Please PM me or one of the other curators with links to the blog posts violating the spirit of the rules. We'll review them and talk to their authors. If they appear to be having a significant impact on the voting, we can examine further sanctions — but as of the time of this post, we're seeing a good spread of opinions and no immediately obvious signs of vote-stacking. We've also still got two weeks left on the clock to address problems that crop up.

As nominations slow down to a trickle I'll be collecting them all into a single post and/or spreadsheet, so that voters can refer to a "ballot" with easy direct links to the comments where they can register their upthumbs. And we'll definitely be posting a reminder to vote next week along with that ballot. (That'll be a good time for a reminder of our theme, and a request to vote accordingly.)

Also, I'd like to make a specific note here about voting, just so people know. (It hasn't come up here, but I've seen it mentioned in a few of the signal-boost blogs.)

We will determine the winner on upvotes alone, NOT upvotes minus downvotes.

Taking downvotes into account would give everyone incentive to both vote for their favorites AND against everything else. Another of our core values is doing our best to keep our features and community interactions positive, and a thread that's a sea of redthumbs goes against that value.

5896357
Deleted post since its multiple nominations were resubmitted individually.
5894663
Deleted nomination which was on the ineligible works list, after the post author retracted it.

5897513

PP's adding it into the top post

Oh yes.

THIS IS DEFINITELY A THING I AM DOING

5896478

Right now I'm not seeing anyone else explain why the previous feature doesn't best represent the author compared to the new one, just that they like this second story as well.

5897513

Voters, please take that into consideration. What we want are your opinions of which stories best "correct the record", not just which stories deserve a spotlight.

I did. That's why I mentioned how my entry exemplified a more typical Lucky Dreams fic as well as why it's good on its own. I didn't put a huge amount of emphasis on it, true, but it's there if you look. I don't even disagree with 5896205's entry here for Lucky Dreams (I was seriously considering it). I just think my candidate's a little better all-round as a fic.

(Heck, I'd honestly nominate my own work if it wasn't both unfair play and against the rules; one atypical horror fic against practically everything else I've written is strongly unrepresentative. I wouldn't even put it in my personal top five. I do have some idea what this thread is about, initial cock-up notwithstanding.)

5897582

Nah, Numbers was talking in general, not about you specifically. The first few entries were specifically written with the idea of this thing in mind; it's the ones that came after that were just 'this is a good story vote for it'. You're one of the exceptions.

5897513

While variety is something that you DEFINITELY want to look for, if the idea of re-featuring is so appealing that A) you already have a list of possible re-features, and B) the public seems to be super into letting a good author be featured twice, maybe you really do need to look into striking that balance.

You do four features a month, right? One per week. Just do new authors three times a month, and now and then you re-feature an old author on the fourth week. Not always, not every time, but now an then. Something like that, maybe?

5897582
Thank you, then. What I'm looking for is just a good-faith effort in that direction, and you've done that. I composed the post at 4 AM and I was pretty hasty with tagging, so this may be more about my reading comprehension than about you.

5897607
Let's have that conversation after the contest. I'm not sure (B) is established -- because we're hearing here from people who do want refeatures, but I think there's a substantial contingent of authors-who-haven't-been-featured-yet-and-want-the-chance who might not want us to modify our already-slow posting schedule. And even if you're right (which very well might be the case) there may be alternate ways we could approach that, such as the spinoff group 5896965 suggests.

It's a complex topic, is what I'm saying, and let's treat this contest as the beginning of a longer dialogue rather than dilute what it's trying to do.

5897801

Ay, definitely. The contest has started already, and people are voting and submitting stuff; cancelling it all of a sudden would fix nothing. Opening the dialogue for later does sound interesting, though; if anything, to see if B) was indeed a thing. Personally, I think it is? As long as the re-features don't take over the new authors. That'd just be shitty for the nonfeatured people, and nobody wants that.

But yes, that's for later. So far, contest is what matters. A poll or a thread or whatever can be done once this business here is finished; till then this is just distracting, I suppose.

5897801
I'm actually okay with the RCL only rarely refeaturing authors.

The only real reason I'd suggest going for much more in the way of repeats is if you guys are starting to have trouble finding a new author to feature every single week. If you guys can keep finding RCL-quality stories from various folks (and not like, "oh, we gotta stretch it for an RCL post" but like, "Yes, we are enthusiastic about this story!") then... well, it helps get people's names out.

I mean, I already know Cold in Gardez is a great author, but I don't know (insert unknown person X) here is!

Well, okay. I actually recognize a sizable chunk of the people you feature.

But then, we all know I'm a creature of taste.

Aragon's current featured story, A Million Little Lights, is a lovely piece of work which deserves its feature and then some. But I wouldn't necessarily call its reflectiveness and relatively philosophical tone representative of Aragon's strengths as a writer.

Fridge Horror, on the other hand and for my money, definitely is. It's a comedic whirlwind which, past an initial flurry of madcap chaos and Pratchett-y wit (if Pratchett was doped to his gills on acid), resolves entirely and unexpectedly coherently. It's exceedingly readable, funny as all get-out, and one of his best comedic pieces. Peak Aragon. Go check it if you haven't yet.

One Tenth-Bit
Estee
Slice of Life
1 Chapter
9,707 words

There are things which are not crimes -- things which others are determined to see as crimes in spite of all evidence, truth, and reality, as long as their false perception gets them what they want. After a visit to Barneigh's Exclusive Garments And Saddlebags, Rarity has found herself on the receiving end of that self-enforced delusion, facing anger, accusations, and abuse of power for the smallest reason of all --
-- one created by the smallest minds.

Why I added it: As 5895747 said, Estee's a good writer.

Why I think this is a better representation than Five Hundred Little Murders: Estee's Triptych Continuum, which again to refer to 5895747, "is set in a somewhat darker, more mysterious, more cynical, but also more magical Equestria". Estee goes deeper into how Equestria could function as a realistic setting. Friendship may still be magic in the Continuum, but as the various antagonists in the show have shown, ponies can be selfish, rude, and simply uncaring. In One Tenth-Bit, Estee manages to weave various subtle points from canon together into a single narrative that maintains canon personalities but does so within a context that would never be on-screen. For all this, Estee manages to do it all with effectively only three characters in this piece: Rarity, Princess Luna, and (as far as I know) a police-pony OC named Officer Cropski.

Let me begin with Luna, who is the actual motivator for all the events, but is off-page until the last portion of the tale, Estee makes use of a number of canon points from Luna Eclipsed. There's the line where Luna laments the foals running away in terror ("By all the adoring shrieks of the children as they run away.") While plain text doesn't give the proper context, I am sure that the reader likely remembers that the delivery of that line is loaded with emotional pain. {*} From this, Estee seemingly takes the stance that Luna is upset because she's something of a patron to children. Indeed, we see that multiple times in canon when she visits the CMC in their dreams. In One Tenth-Bit, Luna is gathering funds for an "adoption center [and] to go with [her] fountain and wishing well funds", a worthwhile set of philanthropies (perhaps) that may fall under her Court's jurisdiction. (I almost went with Naked Lunch as my suggestion, but decided to go with a canon-character heavy piece instead. There's a line in that work where Luna waxes on about griffon sheltering of orphans {1} which also would go towards speaking of Luna's desires to do well by children.)

As patron princess of children (seemingly), Luna either asked Rarity directly to assist (making use of her status as Bearer of Generosity) or Rarity found out and offered to assist (more likely based on comments in The Hypocrisy Of Tolerance about fears of falling into an Element). In canon, we know that Rarity is exceptionally detail-oriented and observant. Before Twilight and Spike (i.e. Rarity's draconic digging assistant) came along, we can infer that she had made numerous trips into the fringe or possibly into the wild zones to gather gemstones for her use. As she says here: "'I have a trained eye, Officer. My magic allows me to detect gems: I admit that freely. ... But I also spot them. A glint of Sun or Moon off the right protruding surface, a slightly different shape to a cliff edge. Signs. Without my magic, I can still tell where jewels are likely to be found. That skill translates well to spotting lost funds.'" And so we have the initial motive force for this piece: Luna desires to help children and Rarity is assisting out of Generosity.

We also know, from numerous Canterlot scenes, especially in early seasons, that residents of the capital are rather... haughty. (Blueblood and other attendees of the Grand Galloping Gala are perhaps the best personifications of this we've seen.) In a real-world context, nobility and upper classes are generally seen as insular, unwilling to readily admit newcomers to their ranks. This is reflected in canon when Rarity lies her way through Sweet and Elite to ingratiate herself into the nobility she so covets (or much more explicitly to the reactions to Hayseed Turnip Truck).

Now we've set up where Estee shines: fleshing out a more grounded, a more real, and indeed, a likely more functional Equestria. The games of the nobility in the Continuum aren't quite as cut-throat as those in the Lunaverse, but they read as far more realistic: small, subtle changes to the social web to shut somepony out and discourage future attempts at social climbing without being so gauche as to identify themselves as the cause. And so Rarity is detained for an innocent act.

Rarity's out of sight of her friends, out of sight of her [actual] social enemies, and out of sight of the nobility. As she even internally monologues, she could try to pull rank with her status as Bearer. But she doesn't do anything that we would initially suspect other than give the benefit of the doubt to Cropski. Canon has numerous examples of her histrionics; points where something is "just the worst thing ever," complete with a fainting couch and oh-woe-is-me lamentation. But that is all mostly an act. It would have to be for a businesspony like Rarity to have any success at all. And so, in a situation where Rarity-as-damsel should be bawling her eyes out, Estee has painted a picture of a shrewd and cunning mare who sees through the theater of her detention and correctly posits the reasons why it occurred. Her explanations for her actions (being in Barneighs, picking up the tenth bit), for her knowledge (of Equestria's version of Miranda rights), for the bits in her possession (claiming what is lost) can all follow from canon with very little in the way of alteration of her core character (save that she's not being a drama queen, which again, must be mostly an affectation).

Here is the dimension that must be behind the scenes for the character; the not-terribly-child-friendly workings that allow a world to function but won't be on-screen in a show. Rarity may bear Generosity, but as she says, "Generous, does not mean stupid."

{*} The initial impression is that she's still sensitive about the whole Nightmare thing, but it is easy enough to read an additional portion of that pain as being because she likes children.
{1} "'Even during the harshest of times with the griffons, Crossing Guard, I tried to remember... that even if somehow, all was lost, but Sun and Moon remained... the children would be all right. It kept us from hating them too much.'"

Edit: Fixed a typo in a fic's title.

Thank you all for making your voices heard!

5894699 5894744 5896018
While it will take us a little time to get the refeatures assembled, I did want to note that as of the close of voting, these were our top three (in case the upvotes change for some reason). I'll contact the authors and get the ball rolling!

5919727
I don't know if you read Chris's blog, but this result should surprise precisely no-one, despite all the talk of it not being a popularity contest. To distill it into something concise:

It absolutely was going to be a popularity contest for several reasons. Only a popular author would have enough readers who had read enough of their stories to even know what their style is, much less agree that the nominated one(s) better matched it than the already-featured one. Plus the people who aren't even abiding by the rules and just vote for the popular folks because they like them. Nobody is going to see one of these relatively unknown authors, read all their works to get a sense of their style, then read the nominated one to see it it's a closer fit. Plus the stories nominated early on will tend to do better, because people aren't going to keep checking the thread to see what new nominations there are and vote on them as well. The first nomination will have the most people see it. I mean, nobody came back anyway. You got all your nominations in the first week, and most of those in the first 2 days. So it'll be author popularity primarily, with a minor effect of when the story was nominated. There's not even that comprehensive a spread. Of 181 (at the time of the contest start) RCL-inducted authors, 28 were nominated. Look how many nominations barely got any votes. It's not that people disagreed with the nomination, but that they had no idea about that author, didn't investigate, didn't care. As of the time I posted on Chris's blog, 1 story got 40+ votes (total up and down), 3 were in the 20s, 6 were in the teens, and 24 got single digits, including 11 that got fewer than 5 votes.

As soon as I saw the announcement for this, I knew skirts would win it. Didn't matter what story was nominated, didn't matter if it actually satisfied the stated goals of the contest. Skirts would win. The three winners are 2nd, 80th, and 85th in follower count. All as expected.

5925670
I think that's only half true. While I agree that you needed a certain level of "popularity" or public attention to be nominated and have a shot, past that the results don't really follow as a straight popularity contest. Aragon, Arad, Skywriter, The Descendant, Georg, Hoopy McGee, and Regidar all have more followers than I do, and Estee, GaPJaxie, Bad Horse, and Kits are all in the same league. Most of them are on the first page of nominees, some of them several times.

I did bump the contest on my blog, but I never mentioned that I was nominated, and I know a few of those people listed did the same.

Basically, I seriously doubt looking at that list you would have predicted bookplayer and Aragon as second and third if you thought it was a popularity contest.

5926016 I wouldn't have necessarily predicted you and Aragon, but I definitely had my money on skirts winning. 2nd and 3rd might not go to the next two highest follower counts, but they were still going to fall to people with 1000+ followers. My point is folks like Casca and his 133 followers never had a chance, just because not enough people are familiar with his work to vote for or against him.

Yes, several of the people you listed have high follower counts (and I listed all the nominees' follower counts in my comment on Chris's blog), but the problem with some of them is they're not fresh in anyone's minds, and many of the newer readers wouldn't even know about them. It's been a long time since The Descendant posted a new story. Likewise with kits. Hoopy had a long hiatus (1 story in the last year and only 5 in the last 2 years), and Jaxie only recently started posting again (and subsequently stopped). Arad's only posted 2 stories in the last year and a half. Bad Horse is in a middle ground, as he posted a bunch of stuff about a year ago, but now it's been almost a year since his last story. Georg's a weird case, since he likes to wander over to the controversial side and piss off readers on purpose, so I figure the universal appeal isn't there. Some people on the list are also really only known for a single story, so people won't have read anything else by them.

So in addition to popularity, I should have added currently active. I would have guessed 2nd and 3rd place would go to some combination of you, Aragon, Estee, and maybe Skywriter, and that's with little to no knowledge of any of your writing styles or the specific stories nominated—just from looking at follower counts and who's still consistently putting out material.

I'm not accusing you of anything, btw. I don't know who has or hasn't signal boosted this, and you can't control how people vote. The result's just unsurprising without even considering the stated objective.

5926170 I think it is worth noting that Skirts did absolutely nothing to point people to this contest, either on FimFic or anywhere else.

On to the point that actually is relevant: Austraeoh is far more indicative of the type of thing Skirts writes than The Numbers Don't Lie. Numbers is a good story, certainly, but I think that many people agree that it wasn't even remotely what Skirts should be in the RCL for. Background Pony, certainly, or Austraeoh as the spiritual successor to his unfinished End of Ponies would make far more sense. Austraeoh showcases' Skirts' talent for stringing together epic tales, creating interesting original characters, weird and often silly humor, and the insane fight scenes that many of his followers appreciate. Numbers is great, but it was technically a collaboration between him and another writer. Not wholly his own style, at all.

If this is about correcting the record, then Skirts' new story is far more on the mark to that goal.

5926288 I never said skirts did anything wrong. I also never said Austraeoh was a poor choice for the contest's stated objective. What I said was that nobody else had a chance at winning, even if they had an equally good claim on that objective, because you'd never get enough people to vote for anyone else.

5926298 The nice thing about having high-profile people in the running is that it brings in more interest, and people who are paying attention to other nominations might upvote other stories along the way. Yeah, you're not wrong that there's an element of hivemind that causes issues, but I know that I'm not the only person that upvoted more than one story, or found new stories to read through this contest, even if my primary interest was coming to vote for Austraeoh as a better story to be featured for Skirts. Even if the popular authors have a better chance of winning, the other people that are nominated are getting residual interest from readers who come for the "big names", and take the time to peruse the other nominations. It's a net win, in my opinion.

What's your solution to the issue, then? If an author has over a certain number of followers, they aren't allowed to be in the running? I've seen a few people concerned about this, but I haven't seen any tangible solutions for the perceived issue.

I think, if this is a concern in the future, that the RCL chooses a group of authors, maybe even categorizing them into groups by follower count, and offers up only authors with similar follower counts for the contest. They could to a number of rounds, working their way through most-to-least follower groupings. Yeah, this means a lot more work, but the question of "big names will always win" will be less of an issue.

5926298
5926340 I think that people should nominate stories in these threads and then the RCL crew could read them. Let THEM decide who is most deserving. They could read, say, the top five or ten choices and pick from that. Or all of them. Whatev.

5926404
That could be a ton of work for the RCL, and doesn't do the same thing being done here.

Let's say Bob is famous for his horror fics. Lots of readers love them. The RCL looked at Bob, and none of them liked his horror fics, so they featured him for that one comedy he did.

As soon as the contest comes around, Bob gets nominated for a horror fic, and the RCL... still doesn't like his horror fics. Because the RCL members just aren't into them, even if the readers think they're mistaken.

It's kind of hard to correct the record when the people doing the judging made the record that way for a reason in the first place.

(Now, Horizon did mention that they do have a list of people they would want to feature a second time, but that's kind of a different sort of thing, and would end up more along the lines of what you're talking about.)

5926413 I get that, but anything else is basically going to end up with what you see here. Now, I don't particularly mind that. It would be nice for lesser known authors to have a chance, but popular authors are generally popular for a reason. Also, I think the RCL crew is probably objective enough to see the merits in a story that they don't particularly enjoy. It's part of being a critic to see through your bias. I think the team does that reasonably well.

But there's no perfect system. I can see the downsides to my proposal, but it would allow for less of a popularity contest. I'm good with either direction, really. I just like people to have access to good stories.

5926340
5926404
5926413
I just think this whole effort was doomed to failure from the start. It ostensibly said it wasn't a popularity contest, but the way it's designed, it can't help but be precisely that. To go the other way, jug's proposal of letting the curators pick is fine, but they already have some re-features waiting in the wings if they ever run short of new authors to induct, and it's no different than that, except it limits the pool they can draw from. So it would be just a more out in the open version of what they already do, and it doesn't require the huge time investment bookplayer talks about. Maybe this contest is just a way to shift that workload to the readers? It'll still be biased toward the authors who get read the most, though.

And bookplayer makes a good point about a writer's best story versus their best "typical" story. That's really going to come down to personal preference. I can see readers wanting to get that one story that's in the author's wheelhouse, whereas others might want to see the author's best work, regardless of whether it's representative of the author's normal style. I'm in the latter group, as long as it doesn't have a genre/tags that I find distasteful.

I much prefer when RCL finds unheralded authors. As they've said, it's more about featuring the author than the story, the implication being that readers are encouraged to check out more of their work. Popular authors already get plenty of publicity. Does skirts really need the RCL to direct readers to him? Is there anyone who can't find plenty of forums advising them of what other stories by skirts they should read? I'd rather see a relative unknown get some much-needed attention than a mega-star become slightly more of a mega-star. With the obvious caveats that some of the authors might not ever write outside their "style" or whose other stories might not meet the RCL's quality threshold, of course. Along those lines, I did wonder in Chris's blog what would happen if the chosen story is one the curators felt wasn't up to their normal standards. Likely, they'd feature it anyway, but I found it interesting to consider, though it's not likely to be an issue with this group of authors.

5926433 Respectfully, I disagree with you. I just don't see the issue that you do when it comes to the nature of this contest. This contest was about choosing different stories from authors that are already featured in the RCL, and that includes a wide gamut of good writers with varying levels of popularity. If the RCL was concerned about featuring less well known authors, they would have changed the nature of the contest. This was an opportunity to correct the record on what story was featured by them, so it was open season for anybody to have a piece entered.

So, what would you have done differently? Would you have them say, "Only authors with under 500 followers are eligible"? Or 1000? What's your cut off for when one is too big to be given an opportunity to correct the record on what one story is featured by the RCL? The RCL isn't about picking up unknown authors, it's about curating good writing, and that means choosing a single piece out of a body of work that best exemplifies the author's body of work. The opportunity for the people to choose a better, more fitting story was on the line here. And if that means that a popular author gets a story chosen... so what?

I much prefer when RCL finds unheralded authors.

Seattle's Angles does that, right? There are plenty of opportunities out there for unknown writers to have some attention, but the RCL's whole goal isn't about that, is it? I mean, I might have a fundamental misunderstanding about what the Royal Canterlot Library's goal is, and feel free to correct that misconception if I do.

I mean, I'll be frank, the only reason I initially came here was because somebody told me that the RCL was giving an opportunity to change what story is featured for an author in the Library, and I heard that Skirts' currently featured story was Numbers. That didn't sit right with me, at all, so I came, saw that Jake had nominated Austraeoh, and agreed that that was a good choice. I ALSO checked out some other stories as well, dug into the RCL, and noticed a lot of cool stuff by authors I knew, and also stuff by authors I did not know. So, I'm fresh to this whole thing. But, from what I can gather, the RCL isn't about unknowns, it's about quality stories.

I'll refer you to Horizon for a possible soloution to your issue, though:

If someone thinks we should feature a given author, our story recommendation thread is always open and we take recommendations seriously, but if someone thinks there was a better story for one of our featured authors, there's really nowhere at all to give voice to that.

You can absolutely recommend stories and encourage them to take a look at unknown authors. So, that's part of your issue, addressed.

5926450

Seattle's Angles does that, right?

Kind of. They prefer to feature stories with under 1k views, but they don't care how popular the author is. For example, two review blogs ago, they had a story by Titanium Dragon and one by GaPJaxie. They're looking for unheralded stories, not unheralded authors, though there would be a lot of overlap.

You can absolutely recommend stories and encourage them to take a look at unknown authors. So, that's part of your issue, addressed.

Not really, because that has nothing to do with this contest, and I've already mentioned that a fair number of the 180+ inducted authors aren't well known. That's the RCL at large, not this contest. I should know—I was one of the founding curators.

I just don't see the issue that you do when it comes to the nature of this contest.

It's twofold. First, how many people are actually going to go read "Austraeoh" because it gets put in the RCL? Pretty much everyone already knows who SS&E is and what he's written, and while it's a nice badge of honor, it doesn't change anything. That's fine if, as you say, the RCL is just a mechanism for showcasing good writing, whether or not it actually helps any readers discover something new. But for an extra honor, it sure seems like it should do something the regular one doesn't, and while a bunch of people will clap and agree that this was a good choice, it's not going to get many people to read it. But my main thing is this, from one of horizon's posts above:

We firmly agree, it is NOT about raw numbers of fans; if that were the case, instead of a vote we'd just refeature SS&E.

Well, as the contest was set up, it couldn't be anything but a popularity contest, and it came to the inevitable end that SS&E is being refeatured, so they could have saved a lot of time by just taking that shortcut in the first place. A contest with a foregone conclusion is hardly a contest. I guess it's just a matter of which SS&E story to feature, so fair point on that, but it's a minor one, since the RCL is more about directing readers to an author's entire body of work anyway.

5926621 Whew.

I'm just saying, again, that this contest was not about featuring new authors. These people have all already been featured. This was about fans getting a chance to correct the record. That is happening. So what that a popular author won? They have every right to be in the running, and you seem rather insistent that that is bad or wrong, because you keep arguing the point.

You keep offering up criticism, but I don't see you offering up solutions. You keep ignoring my points when I try to offer you solutions like suggesting cut off points for followers, or doing this contest as a tiered series of rounds based on follower count. If I came up with that off the cuff, I'm certain the RCL guys could have figured out a way to do this differently... but they didn't. They did it this way on purpose, obviously, knowing how it would likely play out. This isn't about getting a new person featured, as none of these people are NEW to the RCL, this is about fans picking a better story that better represents an author.

You seem to think this contest should have been about authors with low follower count, but it wasn't. It's like you've fundamentally misunderstood the entire point of the contest or the intent behind it. You're looking at it as a way to grab more views or followers or something, but the whole point was about correcting the record.

So, what's your soloution, then? I'll offer up another idea, trying to be constructive. Maybe, considering you're a fairly well known author, you could start a group that is about featuring good, yet unknown authors. I'd join that group in a heartbeat. Hell, I have 400 followers I would promote it to.

See, I fundamentally agree with your overall issue of wanting to see good unknowns get featured. But this wasn't about that, so I can't get behind you. I want to get behind you, though! Your battle is one I want to fight, but the problem is that you showed up to the wrong battle, at the end of a totally different fight, and are acting like you missed out on the fight you wanted. You didn't. Wrong battle! We can start your battle elsewhere, friend, and I'll follow you in.

5926621 I edited my response above to carry the tone I wanted. I'm not trying to be aggravating, because I agree with your issue on a basic level, I just think you are trying to fight the wrong fight in this instance.

5926837 Don't get hung up on the "new authors" thing. I've said that's just a preference of mine, and I said in my last response that my main problem was how this was billed as "not a popularity contest" when it absolutely is. I'm not offering solutions, because I don't have any. I don't think this was a good idea from the start, and my solution is not to do this in the first place. I'm not invested in it enough to come up with a way to do it better, plus it's already done and isn't likely to happen again any time soon, so there's not much point. If it's a popularity contest, just admit it is and carry on. If it isn't, then public nominations and voting aren't the right way to do it, but then that just puts it back into how the RCL already operates.

5927094

We both had issues with how this was run, but results have been announced and nothing can be done about it. I made a similar argument, too, and that has been addressed earlier in the thread by Horizon.

5927164 I saw, but it seemed like you'd tired of pressing the point from last time, so I decided to tilt at the windmill for this round.