Reviews part two!

9:Dawn
Really obtuse dialogue mechanics there, combined with an annoying bit of LUS. Honestly, this got boring quickly. There is only so much you can take out from a conversation about “you” vs. “thou” and this story seemed desperate to drain the corpse of that horse of each drop of blood. Frankly, I’m not sure there is even a story behind all that idle chatter, a real story that has something significant to tell, even after the initial conversation.

10: Friendship is not Magic
The hook is done well enough, although I have to question the logic of the story at times (“A river of molten magma” three feet from Twilight? What is convection?) but the author has a good grasp on their scene pacing, which many others fics failed to provide. That said, while the hook was alright, the central conflict—Twilight’s broken horn—was introduced too late and too abruptly. I also have to dock points off for a certain imbalance in the voice: First we get a paragraph-long description of the dragon’s name (which is a secondary detail), then the explanation for Twilight’s predicament (which is central to the story) gets brushed off with a literal “villain of the week” explanation. It just goes downhill from there, I’m afraid—the conversation with the dragon is predictable and obvious, the lesson is too in-your-face, the philosophy too sophomoric. And even with all that, the finale has no resolution at all: what is Twilight going to do? How did the dragon’s words change her? Something must happen for the trek to mean anything, and Twilight can’t just say that it did mean something.

11: Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air
Really pushing my buttons here with all that LUS. While the story does a good job of introducing each element soon, it doesn’t go about doing it well enough, which may sound a little self-contradictory. For example: Instead of starting with everybody’s prolonged reaction to the villain’s appearance, it would be best to start with the villain herself (it need not be too detailed at first, just something to give us a concrete image to picture). Likewise, a quick wide shot of the first scene would save us from having to add a new element on each new paragraph. Adding all those characters to the mix was pretty unexpected, but again, can’t say they were introduced well enough. This story has a very show-like feel to it, but I can’t say that in a good way. With this genre and subject matter, a more serious tone would do better. (Also, I could guess easily that the mysterious unicorn was Luna, although I’m not sure if making her the “antagonist” was a good decision, as it resulted in a rather weak ending with a questionable moral.)

12: Negotiations
Someone ordered jokes in bulk and is now having a sale. But the torrent of jokes dies down midway and the story takes on a serious tone—perhaps too serious, because Pinkie really is too sane. I came in expecting something silly and fun, but the abrupt change kinda tore off the rug from under my feet and left me disappointed. I think the author thought the same, since the style became less engaging as the story progressed. That said, interesting idea.

13: Applejack Goes to Magic School for Some Reason
I highly doubt that Applejack wouldn’t know about unicorns, even at such an early age. Did she not go to school? I’m not liking the pacing on this one—it’s just a bit too slow, too eager to stop and stare at unimportant details, too willing to state the same thing over and over. There are plenty of other issues, like PoV switches, that further remove me from the action. But probably the worst problem is that it’s a comedy that’s simply not funny. The term we have adapted for this sort of story is “excuse plot,” and it’s not a compliment. There’s a kind of comedy based on contrived coincidences, but this is not how it is done.

14: Parental Attachment
I’m pretty certain that rewriting stories from previous writeoffs is against the rules. Still, you did say you were going to do it. That said, I think this was better in its first incarnation: yeah, now there’s an interesting (and gross) explanation for Scootaloo’s parents, but the structure is all wonky and full of unneeded parts.

15: Mark of Destiny
This is written well, although perhaps too preachy. The ending is basically the same as what the protagonist did—a cop-out with no real decision and the story suffers for that.

16: Farsighted
I’m sorry, but this is giving me flashbacks to internet creationist arguments. I was kinda hoping for a story about Twilight and Smarty Pants, but this is just a vaguely philosophical argument dressed up in prose.

17: Oubliette
Well, this was dying already, but the parrot quote killed it for me. There is a progression towards Tirek’s madness in the prison scenes, but it is too passive, too slow, perhaps because of the viewpoint. The only actual event of interest happens at the very end. And speaking of the end, Celestia’s reaction seems a bit out of character.

18: For the Best
I like to think that AJ’s business sense outweighs her stubbornness, at least on occasions when she’s had the chance to be persuaded, and I imagine that she wouldn’t have problems with having Twilight pitch in from those royal coffers. After all, it’s her farm now, too. It’s just headcanon, but it does highlight a problem: like many shipfics, this one suffers from not convincing me of Twilight and AJ’s relationship. The wedding is discussed like a birthday party, while the whole thing about a princess getting married to a farmer isn’t even touched upon. And speaking of discussions, this is yet another fic which disguises chatter as story. There’s a lesson here, sure, but I’d like to see it shown, not talked about.

19:Daring Do and the Jade Songbird
The style needs touching up—lots of weak adjectives and adverbs right from the start. This reads very much like one of those pulpy stories, or perhaps something from a kid’s adventure magazine. Not the kind of writing I prefer, but it is appropriate. Can’t say much about the plot or characters—adventure is adventure. Though I feel like changing the PoV, or at least the emphasis, from Ginger to Daring would have done good for this story. Although the end was pretty sweet.

20: The Color and the Silence
The style feels somewhat purple, with lots of haughty asides and unnecessary emphasis. Perhaps grape-colored? Yet there are quite a few nice details and subtle foreshadowing which add better, more meaningful color to the narrative. Said nice details appear alongside needless repetition (yes, she did not deserve it, yes, she feels guilty). At this point, I realize that the story is like a rollercoaster of quality. same rollercoaster happens to Celestia’s emotions, which seem a bit too drastic to me. There’s a lot of backstory alluded to, and it’s clear enough to say what is happening, but never clear enough to tell exactly how I should feel about it.
Now I am confused, damn.

21: The Sweetest Water
Well, this really is like a fairy tale, I’ll give you that, which is a nice change of pace from the other stories. However, I think the narrative repetition went too far. Sure, it’s a staple of fairy tales, but even fairy tales don’t overuse direct repetition like that. Still, I liked it.

22: Feel
There’s really no reason to put the whole flashback in italics. Don’t follow this trend—with a few exceptions, it’s a poor way of orienting the reader. Another problem is an overreliance on physical description of characters. Such things have a nasty tendency of becoming generic and forgettable. The trick in describing characters is in showing their personality, not their looks. I like the worldbuilding in this, except… “Utter Flutter?” Really? The structure isn’t that great either, what with the flashback taking too much space in the middle and the final sentence giving no real resolution to the story.

23: Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope
The narration flows smoothly, which is always a great boon in my book, but some things are just repeated too much, like the rather obvious “skeeters” and the chatter between AJ and Mac. On the same note, AJ really does like to belabor the point. As for the plot—well, Tumblr much? The humbug’s description got a chuckle out of me, I have to say. Besides the rather absurdist premise, the structure feels very similar to an episode of the show, and this time in a good way, so I can give some extra points for that.

I've got to say, reviewing the writeoff was far more interesting than participating in it this time. I am very interested in the identities of several authors. Looking at the other reviews, it looks like we're going to have major variations in votes, which is a rare enough thing. In short, can't wait to see the results!

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The Utter Flutter was actually a thing in G1. Basically, all of the flutter ponies flapped their wings and used the gust to kill the Smooze, which was basically a purple shoggoth.

Yeah, G1 was weird.

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Utter Flutter was "okay Flutterponies, win at everything now!"

It was literally deus ex whateverwingsisinLatin.

I gotta say, doing the scoring this time was particularly hard. I use a linear distribution, which in this specific case means two stories at every score, but there were not enough stories I disliked to fill the lower scores, which means I felt like I was drowning puppies in close to a third of my scores

Now, for my reviews. I must say that I stopped reading this thread when the first reviews came, so I don't know if I'm being repetitive.
(Well, I actually stayed away from forums as a whole, including news sites where I often comment on the news, such as EQD; I had the same kind of near panic attack that a year ago pushed me into giving MLP a chance. Dummy me should have remembered that taking part in this community helps avoid those issues.)

Love Call
Not sure I can agree with the world building, more specifically a zone devoid of magic to the north of the Crystal Mountains, but the idea was solid, and I quite enjoyed both the development and the imagery. I do have two gripes with it, though. The first is that my grasp of poetry is about as strong as a flying squirrel’s grasp of flying, which is to say, weak and faltering at best, which does prevent me from evaluating — or properly enjoying — the story; I would have enjoyed it quite more if it was written as prose. The second one is that the final part, where it basically tells everything that happened, kills the (pardon the pun) magic of this entry for me; if it must be there, then I have the feeling it should have been smaller, to the point, something that could be the epigraph engraved in the tombstone rather than big enough to (metaphorically) require a leaflet distributed at the entrance.

Stallion Whose Name I Forgot
Okay piece, seems mechanically sound. It does trip my “not pony” sensors in about every aspect of the story; the back story (someone in a coma after a heart attack, apparently one facilitated by alcohol), the theme (it feels more like a typical mythological journey of self-discovery than anything MLP-related), the scenario (blood-soaked room, how clothes are referred in the scene where Rarity sleeps out, bean bag chairs — how does a pony even sit on one of those?), and so on. Not too strongly, but enough to put me out of my immersion and to question if this wouldn’t be better off as a piece of original fiction.
It was interesting and well written, though I can’t say I enjoyed it.

Waiting
This one has more than a few grammatical and mechanical errors, which did distract me from the story from time to time; it needs some extra proofreading. It was not enough to prevent me from enjoying it, but it was enough that the errors were among the foremost thing on my mind as I finished.
As for the story itself, I loved it. Though the end is well known, learning how it got there is interesting. Also, nailing Pinkie in but a few short pieces of dialogue was a neat trick, though it did have a bit too much exposition around it.
In short, great idea, not so good execution, and it really struck a chord with me.

And Yet…
Making a series of snippets set in the future, instead of a single story, was a bold move. And, for me at least, this one pulled it. I enjoyed most of those.
It does lose points with me on two issues, though. First is that this does not feel like a story, something I do expect on those short story competitions; no conflict or resolution in most of those snippets, and when added together they don’t create one either. Second, but that is just my personal preference, I still cringe whenever I see Twilight’s crystal castle referred, and having it be the last part of the “story” made me end it with a very low note indeed, killing the enjoyment I’ve been building from the early ones.

Homecoming
It’s a pleasant enough collection of scenes, though it does not make a full story in my opinion. No tension, no conflict, etc, is something I accept readily on the minific rounds, but in the short story ones I expect something more. Also, the narrative voice sounded a bit too much like it belonged in a children’s book, with the specific way it straddled into telling (and using exclamation points!).
It was an enjoyable bit of world building, though.

Three and a Half Seconds
The idea is not bad. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of idea that, after being done well and famously for the first time, can’t be effectively pulled off again for a long while afterwards, and in a story with this kind of sixth sense-like plot twist figuring it early on can really ruin the whole thing. Also, the prompt did feel shoehorned, and I do get the impression that without name-dropping the prompt it would still have been a good enough fit without feeling so forced.
There were other disturbing things in the middle of the story too, like the thought about assisted suicide, which I’m not sure was a good call even for this fic. But, overall, apart from knowing the ending from when Apple Bloom first saw Sweetie Belle, it was a nice story.

Just One More
There is something in the way third person present tense was used that put me off, made me feel somewhat uncomfortable reading this, kept me from being able to connect to the narrative. Then there is the subject matter; I’m not sure I can truly enjoy a story like this.

A Light in the Dark
The present tense here was well written, but there is something very off-putting about reading a story in present tense that clearly happened a long time ago, and more so when there is a large temporal gap in the middle, so I’m not sure the tense choice was the best one. Or perhaps it could be done with the first part in past tense and the second part in present tense, reinforcing the idea of the time gap, and making the first part feel like a memory.
The first scene did feel drawn out, indecisive, for me. Part of it was likely intended, due to Celestia dancing around the subject, but I believe a good part of it was the author leaving in things that should have been cut out to tidy the story in order to stay above the minimum size. It does weaken the impact the story could have, unfortunately.

Dawn
Amusing. This one seems to imply that Celestia and Luna were originally unicorns that ascended into alicorns, given the way no mention of wings was made when the sisters were discussing what makes ponies special. I’m not sure it can fit the canon, though it seemed clear enough for me to not really bother me (my issues with stories that deviate from the canon is when such deviation comes as a surprise to the reader).
One slight gripe, how much of the story depends on knowing the relationship between “thou” and “you” in old English without a clearer hint about it. I’m not sure if that is common enough knowledge to expect every reader to know it. Otherwise, enjoyable.

Friendship is not Magic
Small nitpick: due to this fandom’s misappropriation of the word, I believe it better to use “clip-clop” when going for the onomatopoeic usage.
I wonder what is the true ending the author intended, as this one ends with multiple endings implied, any of which could reasonably come to pass. Nicely written, though with a few errors that threw me off a bit. Leaving the ending open is likely to be the best way to please both me (who look at the ending and see Twilight recovering her horn when she becomes worthy of the magic, and returning to the dragon fully restored) and the readers that don’t prefer all pony stories to be so… well, not dark.

Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air
This one has a potential issue in taking a, well, non-unanymous interpretation of Celestia; enjoying the story depends on whether the reader likes the idea of Celestia being the puppeteer behind the curtain, and even that wasn’t done as well as it could. It would have been better if stronger reasons for the presence of the four ponies in the second part were given, and even better if, like in the series pilot, those reasons could stand by themselves without the idea of Celestia meddling with everything.
Picking two very obvious ways to tackle the prompt, and interweaving them into a single story, was interesting. Neither is exactly new — the Project Manehattan part seems lifted from the Science of Discword series, and the songweaving part is so common it has a trope — but the combination helped them not feel stale.
That did bring issues, though. The epilogue… felt strange. Like it was three epilogues interleaved into a single, long conversation.

Negotiations
Earth Pony magic (and, apart from being a bit more flashy, fairly close to my own headcanon about it). Nicely done, especially how it was basically a huge exposition/headcanon dump without feeling like such.

Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason
A little bit of alternate universe fic, aiming for the kind of comedy that arises from misplaced people in uncomfortable situations, like Spike trying to sing the Cloudsdale anthem.
Unfortunately, it’s a kind of humor I can’t really enjoy, so while there was nothing else in the story that made me dislike it, I still couldn’t enjoy it.

Parental Attachment
The gist of the story was very clear from the beginning, perhaps too obvious, though the wrong guess was still hilarious. Plus, the reaction at the end. Not sure what to make of the final explanation, though; it left me thinking that it shouldn’t be possible, which is kinda ironic in a fictional story about magical talking equines.
On the other hand I’m not sure the mix of comedy and personal drama was as well executed as it could; for me, at least, the juxtaposition did more to nullify both halves than to highlight them.

Mark of Destiny
Surreal. Though the fourth wall demolishing at the end came out as at the same time too abrupt and subtle, I had to read the ending a couple of times to notice it was intended, and not an error.
It’s an interesting exploration of a concept, even if one I can’t really agree with, as it differs too much from my headcanon on how cutie marks work. That being said, the headcanon issues were the only ones I had with this piece; otherwise I didn’t find much to complain. Apart from the unexplained “interesting friends” thing, but, while I would have preferred a bit more closure on that point, it’s a small enough issue to not interfere with my enjoyment.
Oh, and calling that purple crystal tree thing ugly? Whoever wrote this gained an extra point or two from me for that alone

Farsighted
It managed to put a smile on my face in the first paragraph or two. This one is that exquisite blend of comedy and introspection that is hard to nail down without dulling both, and managed to wrap enough change and conflict in it to feel like a story to boot.

Oubliette
Interesting, though grim. A character descending into madness, centered about an unsympathetic character that the reader is unlikely to care about, which dulls the sting of this little horror piece into something I — who tend to avoid anything from the horror genre — can still enjoy. I’m not sure it would work with actual fans of the genre, though. And Discord is the perfect character to pull it off, though the implications aren’t the most comfortable ones.
The unmarked stream of consciousness in the middle did throw me off for a bit, though; the border was jarring, which had in me the effect of making me keenly aware of its boundary, which I don’t think was the intended effect.

For the Best
And we get to the obligatory shipping
Which, in turn, means that I can’t be as objective as I would like with this one, my dislike for shipping and all that. Oh, well.
It also feels more like a couple scenes strung together than a story. The message is a good one, though, even if delivered in a somewhat blunt way, and for the most part enjoyable.

Daring Do and the Jade Songbird
There is something in the way sentences are organized, and punctuation — especially commas — are used, that make the reading feel somewhat off for me, though I don’t know enough of the language to tell if it’s a real issue or just something in my mind.
One mechanic thing that nagged me is that I got the point of view character wrong in the beginning. The advice I was given was to have the first action or dialog in any scene where the point of view character is established or changed involve said character; I guess the same could have been done here. It sure would have helped figure early on that the exclamation points I almost complained about were from the filly’s stream of consciousness (quite acceptable) rather than being used by the narrative voice (usually a bad choice that can create telling issues).
(Thinking again, it does use a profusion of exclamation points in the filly’s thoughts; it gives her the air of an hyperactive brat without she even having to externalize her thoughts or act. If that is the effect the author wanted, great; if not, then it might be an issue.)
And… the one trap Daring Do has to go through could be overcome with a simple flap of her wings? Yeah, going to flag this as a negative.
The rest, though, was nice, reasonably engaging. And the ending was a quite good touch. It might not be the best written, but it’s among the stories I enjoyed the most this round.

The Color and the Silence
I’ve seen enough oracles in stories, but a building that acts as an oracle is not among the common ones. Nice introspective piece, striking the right balance between what is said and what is unsaid to leave the reader with mysteries without being irritating. The ties to about every piece of official MLP content — comics, movie, and multiple episodes of the series — without making it overly blatant were nicely done. It was perhaps a bit slower and more introspective than I tend to prefer, but I can’t find fault in this story.

The Sweetest Water
A fairy tale through and through; my main issues with this piece aren’t about it per see, but about the traditional fairy tale format, the way it repeats things in an attempt to hammer them onto the listener. In other words, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and what I disliked couldn’t be changed without changing the central characteristic of the story.
(And it did pass me such a Zelda vibe, with the waters being roughly equivalent to the triforce — including which one the villain took — that I wonder if the author is a Zelda fan.)

Feel
Huh, carapaces? I don’t think Flutter Ponies have carapaces, though I could be wrong; I don’t know much about pre-FiM ponies. Using smells as a way to communicate emotions does sound amusing, though, and it’s one of those things that could fit the episodes even if not mentioned, since TV doesn’t convey smells (and it’s appropriate given that insects do use smells to communicate).
Also, white and gold being the most visible colors in the snow, while dark blue blends? That wouldn’t happen, not even at night, since the light colors would blend while the darker one would appear as an unnatural shadow.
Apart from those details the story was engaging, I specially liked the way it weaves show canon into the bit of world building it does, using the tales of windigos, the disappearance of the crystal empire, and Discord to tie it all together and explain why Equestria doesn’t know about those ponies. Well, more or less; if they had previous contact with the Crystal Empire the newly reawakened ponies of the Empire would remember them, but that is a minor issue.
The main issue, though, is that it feels too much like just the first chapter of a story, and not a chapter that could stand alone at that.

Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope
This one feels to me almost like a rehash of Contraptionology; same main character with a very similar first person voice, similar tone, same style jokes. The piece, especially the first scene, feels like a giant rehash of every possible pony meme involving whoever is in the scene.
But the author got it to work. Amusing ideas, good pacing, jokes that really resonate with the plot. Just like Contraptionology, It straddles the thin line between comic and ridiculous in a way I rarely see done, but remains firmly planted on the funny side of the line, even as it touches it. This was my favorite piece in this event.

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G1 was very weird.

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When I hear utter flutter I think of a cow that has the shakes.

Reading back through the reviews, a few quick responses:

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Big emotions like anger are like spice: a little bit is great, even crucial, but ladle on too much and your bread pudding just turned into Cinnamon Challenge: the Dessertening.

I nominate this as the best line of the entire review thread.

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Applejack Goes to Magic School For Some Reason: …I'm personally not a fan of comedies of error. There just came the point where I simply couldn't believe the ponies around Applejack could be that clueless.

Have you (or anyone else here) read kazerad's stories of the MLP RPG he ran? The group of players were ALL non-spellcasters in Celestia's Academy for Gifted Unicorns, except for one who was Twilight Sparkle, the teacher. (One of the PCs was a gryphon with a toilet-paper tube taped to his forehead.) It was, as they say, stupid brilliant, and great reading. It may have primed me to appreciate Applejack Goes To Magic School, but I felt Magic School stood up on its own; it's that old science-fiction adage, spot a story one premise you don't ask it to explain, and see what it does with it.

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Thinking about the fact that last competition, Horizon noted my incorrect use of my/mine, I wonder if [Dawn] might have been Horizon's story for this week. He finally lost it and got tired of people screwing up Ye Olde English and wrote a story where he could explain the T-V distinction in story form.

Ironically, while I was aware of the T-V distinction due to my old schooling in a Romance language, I wasn't aware that was ever a thing in English! So someone out there is an even bigger language geek than I am.

Relatedly: Dear Dawn author, if you know anything about Old English, drop me a line. I'm still keeping an eye out for someone I can consult on that for my Haylander historical crossover.

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Stallion Whose Name I forget - Really, the only thing I am missing is the meaning of the Phoenix

I'm pretty sure it's being used for its overall symbolic meaning here, rather than its personal meaning to Rarity. Phoenixes represent rebirth and renewal; her journey is simultaneously about literally finding new life, and about reinventing herself by metaphorically leaving behind that which was holding her back.

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([The Sweetest Water] did pass me such a Zelda vibe, with the waters being roughly equivalent to the triforce — including which one the villain took — that I wonder if the author is a Zelda fan.)

Huh, I never even thought of that link (pun not intended). The notion of things coming in threes is so ingrained in fairy tales, though, that it simply seems like convergent evolution. Life, Desire and Knowledge don't feel to me like they cleanly map to Courage, Power and Wisdom.

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Looking at the other reviews, it looks like we're going to have major variations in votes, which is a rare enough thing. In short, can't wait to see the results!

Yeah! It's hard keeping track of 23 different stories, but I don't think there was a single story everyone liked or a single story everyone disliked. Even having read all the reviews, I feel like it's going to be really tough to call a winner, which is a great feeling. At one point I figured I had "Most Controversial" locked up, but at this point I think even that is going to be a pitched fight.

Just for fun, here are my predictions for medalists:
Gold: Applejack Goes To Magic School for Some Reason
Silver: The Sweetest Water
Bronze: Either Negotiations, or Tumbling…

The comedies were both fairly divisive (despite getting my top marks), but based on previous rounds' judging, I think the people who have voted without reviewing are likely to go easier on them than the more thought-provoking ones. I personally thought Sweetest Water fell flat, but it's getting fairly consistent praise. I've seen Negotiations on a few top-three lists and it's probably got the best medal shot out of all the "serious" stories (not that Sweetest Water isn't serious, but it's got the fairytale gimmick distinguishing it from the standard prose tales).

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Cross-posted from Horizon's blog, my response to his responses (in case some folks aren't going to read through the responses there, but would like a bit more from me):

Waiting: Man, you figured out the right way to write this story here. This is definitely the proper way to do it, and it would be a vastly better story than what is there now. Well done. That is a very clever bit of tension and would set up the whole thing much better.

And Yet...: I agree about Fluttershy's thing feeling like it was the weakest of the lot in some ways, and I also agree about the final sentence; honsetly, the ending was a bit of a damp squib, especially after the other ones in the middle. It wasn't terrible, but it would have been better if it had ended more... something.

Also, I have to agree that it was a bit weird that they all weren't obviously set within the same world.

Homecoming: Unfortunate implications... but true ones, if we look at world history. Really, such is the nature of all underdeveloped peoples, and given that they are set in the 1880s-1920s roughly-ish...

Though on the upside, zebras are both black AND white.

Question for you, Horizon: Do you think that The White Man's Burden (the poem, that is) is straight (i.e. it means directly what it says), sarcastic, or meant to have ironic undertones while saying what it says?

Besides, Twilight has princess privilege. If the sun shines in her eyes, she can move it.

Which I'm going to include in a story about Celestia someday, in a simultaneous show of power and laziness. Why move five feet over into the shade when you can move the sun a little bit and get the shade to come to you?

Just One More: One thing that kind of ruined this story for me is that I've seen similar stories before. And they were fetish stories. And well, they're kind of icky. And thus, this story, being... well, essentially the same as some of them, came off as a bit icky to me as well for similar reasons.

Dawn: Well, my opinion on this piece is that, as you noted, the plot didn't really pay out properly.

I wonder if it might have been better if it had gone on for longer - instead of ending where it did, have there be a scene break, Celestia gets down with the other ponies, and only 2-4 of them are there because she's early. One of them is Mister I-Should-Have-Been-A-Gardener, and the other one (or multiple ponies) are someone who sneers at Celestia and Luna showing up. Sunflowerbutt guides Celestia through connecting with the sun, and once she does, maybe Luna encourages Celestia to move it, while someone else scoffs at the idea of any one pony (gotta use that thou), possibly directly mocking Luna for having such faith in her sister, and Celestia decides to "politely" show him up by moving the sky a little, and ends up realizing it is easier than she thought and does it more?

I dunno. I think the ending needs to change though, which would also warp some other stuff in the story and possibly tighten it up.

Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air: Honestly, Applejack is probably the easiest character for me to write, because her voice is so CLEAR to me. The hardest in my eyes is probably Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy - Pinkie Pie being a cartoon character is a bit of an issue, as is the fact that she is so inconsistent to begin with, while Fluttershy suffers from the issue of being interesting.

I think Pinkie Pie is the only one of the mane six I have yet to write a shipfic about. I'm not even sure if I really have one planned. I do have sort of a Pinkie Pie - Fluttershy break up story idea... but uh, not the same thing.

This reminds me, I need to finish Shotgun Wedding.

Anyway, as an Applejack connoisseur, I must agree; she should have used varmint.

Negotiations: Honestly, one thing about stuff like this - making bargains with magical elements of nature - is that they usually have some sort of price or cost, traditionally speaking. The Warlock in 4th edition D&D is an example of this, and frankly, Pinkie Pie seemed to imply the same - that her powers came at a price. She is clearly a star warlock; when she looks up at the sky, every once in a while, the stars all open up and a million eyes look down upon her.

Parental Attachment: My thought on it being changelings was that she had simply more or less just bribed two changelings to pretend to be her parents so that no one would realize she was an orphan.

The Sweetest Water: I still feel like this story's moral felt wrong. I know it was supposed to mean that the sweetest water was love, but it really came off to me more as "know your place", as he turned down everything to go home to a boring life. Doubly so because none of those gifts are what make people unhappy.

Feel: This was, at one point, a common enough fanon that I am aware of it - basically, the idea is that the Flutter Ponies were the ancestors of the changelings, and the changelings were Flutter Ponies that had... something happen to them. The very strong implication in this story is that they're going to the south in search of the Queen's daughter, and that that daughter is Chrysalis.

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I actually made Kaz give me copies of all the material from that thing, and have been meaning to run it as a one-off. The problem is that, alas, anyone who has heard about it cannot do anything but DM the thing, because the entire point is how ridiculous it was.

He also told me something rather... uh, dark, about how it ended.

Ironically, while I was aware of the T-V distinction due to my old schooling in a Romance language, I wasn't aware that was ever a thing in English! So someone out there is an even bigger language geek than I am.

Huh. Well, the more you know I suppose.

I knew about it both from studying French and because of Shakespeare. And because I've read like 90% of the linguistics articles on Wikipedia.

It is a little ridiculous. I have learned so much about language families!

And yet my perspective on languages is that we should let all the little ones die and just speak the big ones so that everyone can talk to each other.

Of course, the fact that English is conveniently common and generally convenient for other things (Chinese writing is just an absolute disaster - it has far, far too many characters, and I really have no idea how people stand writing on keyboards in languages like that) means that I think everyone should speak English.

No cultural supremacy issues there.

Hey, I didn't get time to write up reviews for everything, but having voted I thought I'd chime in on my top three:
1) The Sweetest Water, because I'm an absolute sucker for fairy tales.
2) And Yet..., because I felt like the vignettes were connected and well constructed. I knew what was going on but I was never bored. Also got a bump for ponified Downton Abbey.
3) Dawn, because I love Hearthwarming-era pony relations, and the fic was sweet and well written.

Other stray notes (gotta hurry, human-Trixie is waking up):
I found Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason to be really disappointing. I expected there to be a reason why Celestia, would have invited her, even if what happened after was a conceit, and when there wasn't it just became a game of idiot ball on everyone's part. Not my kind of humor.)

I really loved Pinkie in Negotiation.

I liked Farsighted, but I felt like when Applejack got frustrated she came across as kind of high (Don’t you see, man? It’s, like, we’re here, and that’s magic!).

Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope felt ugly to me, in both subject and voice. The ending made the subject work in the narrative, but didn't change a fic's worth of bad taste or an Applejack who felt like a parody even outside of the SJW parody. Not my kind of comedy.

Other than things mentioned, I didn't really have an strong opinions, and most of the fics got my average to good scores. But if you really must know what I thought about something I didn't mention, feel free to ask.

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(Chinese writing is just an absolute disaster - it has far, far too many characters, and I really have no idea how people stand writing on keyboards in languages like that)

Simple, we use hanyu pinying and then pick the correct word. A little unwieldy but it works. =P

Okay, here we go. I did the first two on Monday, lost the reviews when Firefox crashed, and then put off trying to do this again until today. And since I, as I always do, have left this down to the wire, I'm going to keep them pretty brief. So let's have at it.

Love Call
I had written a long thing about how I felt this would have been better suited as just prose, since it basically was anyway, and a diatribe about how I dislike the concept of free verse poetry since it seems me that what makes poetry poetry is the organized structure of meters and rhyme schemes, and if you're just going to just throw all that out, then why even bother to make the claim that it's poetry? But then it got lost and I don't feel like going into it all again. I liked the basic idea of this story and how it's framed as a primary archaeological source, but I felt this would have been better just told as prose rather shoved into some uneven stanzas and passed as poetry. I couldn't get past that. Also, (and expect to hear this a lot, I think, because it's such a vague one, but I don't really see a connection to the prompt.)

Stallion Whose Name I Forgot
I was very confused on this one. At first it seemed like some sort of alternate universe story, which is all well and good. But then it kept getting more and more confusing and making less and less sense. I got more and more frustrated as it went on because I felt like it was full of all sorts of symbolism that I just wasn't getting. And then the end came. And everything was completely vindicated. Suddenly all the dream-like imagery made perfect sense. I know a lot of people hate the "it was all a dream" play. But I LOVE it. I love good story twists. Especially ones that were right there for you to pick out the whole time and you just never picked up on it. This is what this was. I LOVED IT. (Again, not really seeing a prompt connection.)

Waiting
... Oh my god, this is an incredible concept. I mean, it's not like it's entirely original, since it's mostly an adaptation of the Matrix as seen from the outside, but it's still incredible. The idea that the entirety of Equestria is a computer simulation being created in real time by the participants, who are actually coma patients? Wow, I mean, holy cow, man, wow. This uses one of my three favorite story hooks, "'what is real' and the nature of reality vs fantasy" perfectly. I'd say I want to read more of this, but I feel like this explored what it needed to and any more wouldn't add to the story or the world. And don't think I didn't notice that the doctor's name was Selena. As in Selene, the name of the moon. As in the realm of the keeper of dreams. I'm on to you. My only gripe is, again, the lack of connection to the prompt.

And Yet...
Not so much a story as a series of cute vignettes. I actually do see the prompt in this one, so yay for that. Um, not much else to say.

Homecoming
This one was very beautiful. I loved the look into Zebra culture. Though, I was totally expecting it to turn into some sort of Zebra Pon farr, and Twilight was going to be mistaken for Zecora's mate. I'm glad it played it straight instead of going comedy.

Three and a Half Seconds
After the second story, I figured something had to be up with this one too. I figured the something had actually happened to Applebloom, rather than Sweetie. I just wish I knew what it was. I feel like this one could have benefited from some more explanation. Like what actually happened and is going on.

Just One More
Not to be too rude, but hoo boy is this one just a mess. I like stream of consciousness, but this one was just too much. It was way too loosey goosey. And it felt really rushed. I mean, the beginning started out alright, but the end was not good. And it definitely could have benefited from some proofreading. About the only thing it had going was it's adherence to the prompt, although I think it took it a little too literally.

A Light in the Dark
An interesting origin story, but I fear one that's not so unusual. Celestia first raises the sun in defiance of the Council of Haters. There were at least two stories just like this in the previous contest. Also, I don't really get a connection to the prompt.

Friendship is not Magic.
A nice philosophical lesson and a masterful working of the prompt. I'm just too dumb to figure out what was resolved. Was the lesson that she doesn't need her horn?

Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air
I don't know, it was kind of hard to read. I don't know if it was me or what. I just didn't care for it. Maybe I was just thrown off because you don't normally get action adventure stories in these sort of contests.

Second half tomorrow, even though the contest is over!

Results are in! And:

> Bronze medal: Mark of Destiny by horizon (6.88)

what

what

I was literally expecting anything but a medal after those reviews.

brb mind blown

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Uh, grats...?

Edit: Dang, I pegged Mark of Destiny as JasontheHuman's but I was wrong. D:

Well then! The contest results are in, and I earned fifth place with... Dawn.

Sorry, 3647474 , my knowledge of Old English is pretty poor. I know... very little, beyond its bizarreness. I apologize.

For those of you who speculated on this: yes, it was a last minute submission.

A very last minute submission.

A very, very last minute submission.

As I noted, I had two story ideas - one of them was How does she buy oranges?, a story about Rainbow Dash and Twilight trying to figure out how Zecora's never-ending rhyming works, and trying to trip her up on it. Rainbow Dash thought it was magic, while Twilight wasn't so sure.

The problem was that I had to come up with a LOT of specific Zecora rhymes avoiding, well, words that don't rhyme (for instance, orange). The specificity of this scheme combined with the time limit meant that I realized I had no chance of finishing it on time.

So I went over to my OTHER idea - Dawn. Which, as you might imagine, was a story I had been thinking about writing, and then this contest actually made me write it (which was also the case with Moving Heaven and Earth). The reason I hadn't actually published that story is because I was rewriting it, but I wanted to write THIS story and publish it first. I was reluctant to write it because it was very closely associated with the last one, and, while it was even earlier, it still had my dirty, dirty clawprints all over it.

Unfortunately, I wrote this whole thing in... a very short period of time (a couple hours) and, uh... yeah. I didn't have time to edit it. At all. I literally didn't even read it over again before I submitted it; the only time I read it before I submitted it was as I was writing it. So that probably explains some of the oddness around it.

Anyway.

To deal with some of the things some folks noted:

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Yeah... I... really thought it was a good idea at the time? I mean, I really liked the idea. I actually used it this way in Moving Heaven and Earth, but it wasn't integral to understanding that story. Here, however, I used it as a central thing.

The problem was, as you noted, it was... well, an obscure linguistic point, which fortunately some folks got (and then I tried to accuse Horizon of knowing about it, which apparently he did not. I thought it was a safe bet, as he caught my my/mine error previously. ). Unfortunately, I think I did a poor job of explaining it in the text; I really need to shape that up. I really liked the idea of this argument, because A) it is educational and B) it shows disrespect, but apparently I C) failed to actually explain it properly in the text, which D) means it wasn't educational after all.

My review of my story was honest; I wasn't super happy with it after I submitted it, and I still felt like the ending of the story was off for reasons that 3647024 noted. Basically, my problem with it was that I felt like it didn't give Celestia enough agency, and that the story wasn't coherent enough - it needed a better end to it.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

3647614
Well played, good sir.

I was surprised that Applejack Goes to Magic School For Some Reason didn't do better than it did; I'm not surprised by Negotiations and The Sweetest Water doing as well as they did, though.

I actually got placed about two places higher than I played myself in the story ranking this time around, as I had my story in a three-way tie for 7th place.

Though, with a tie for first place, that's going to be fun for our prize giver outter.

I guess it is time for the Chaos Orb solution, huh?

For those of you who don't know, this is Chaos Orb:

Chaos Orb is a magic card that you flip onto the table from far above to destroy other magic cards - namely, all the cards it lands on.

It was only ever printed in the first three printings of the game, which were all VERY small printings, and as a result is now super valuable and super rare - and even way back in the day, was super valuable and super rare.

It is banned from every tournament now...

...but long ago, it was not.

According to legend, in one such tournament, a player in the finals was facing down his final opponent. It was the last game, and the winner would take home the prize.

The player realized there was only one way for him to be certain of victory.

So he played Chaos Orb, and used its ability... and tore it up into tiny little pieces and sprinkled it over his opponent's side of the table, losing his valuable card but winning the tournament.

Aaaand the results are in. Hey! I wasn't last! What a pleasant surprise. I definitely deserved it. Why was I one of the controversial stories? I thought it was a pretty easy agreement that it was terribad. ...Wait wait wait. Waiting ranked below mine!? That one was, like, my FAVORITE! Are you people nuts?

So yeah, Just One More. I apologize wholeheartedly. As I mentioned a week ago, I procrastinated until the last four hours and pumped out this 2500 word shitpile in that time. I had an idea for a story and I just didn't have time to do it the way I wanted to. I had to completely change the way the story was going to go, which is why it felt so rushed, especially the end. The writing was going well, and then I looked at the clock and it was 10 minutes to deadline, so I had to wrap that shit up as quick as possible. Call this one "bad end". I'm already working on the actual story I wanted, so I'll be sure to post that so you lovely lovely folks can see what was SUPPOSED to happen and compare.

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Hey, a TwiJack story! I wonder who wrote this. *cough* Bookplayer *cough* Sorry, had something tickle my nose.

I'll just leave this here...

[9/11/2014 10:19:32 PM] bookplayer: So if I do this write off, should I try to write something "good" so I can hide my identity, or say screw it and figure out exactly how TwiJack or AppleDash fit the prompt (thus ensuring that anyone who knows me can figure out exactly which one is mine, and probably turning off people who don't like the ship)?
[9/11/2014 10:21:10 PM] bats: I guess it depends on the prompt. If something AppleDashy or TwiJacky jumps out at you, go for that
[9/11/2014 10:22:48 PM] bookplayer: bats. Have you ever known me to think of any subject where a AppleDash or TwiJack fic didn't jump out at me?
[9/11/2014 10:23:16 PM] bats: That thought occurred to me as I was typing that out. :D

Though oddly enough, my first story was AJ and Twi friendshipping, about Applejack mentioning to Twilight that farmers have found a certain kind of magic doesn't work on potatoes. But the ending was too close to Feeling Pinkie Keen, and I couldn't think of another way to do it.

So I went with my shipping idea and tried to make it as non-shipping as I could.

Sadly, I was unable to finish reading/reviewing all the stories this time. Below are the ones I did finish (and score!) just before the deadline.

For the Best - A really enjoyable slice of life. I loved the introspective conversation about the nature of fate/destiny between Celestia and Granny Smith. Overall, very well written with some great characterization. I do think it's a little weak on the theme, being only the transitive idea that "destiny = magic" which I think isn't quite the right way to look at it. Still though, enjoyed every minute of the read.

Friendship is not Magic. - Definitively impressed by this one. Broken horn, harsh journey, ancient names that aren't-quite-right... It's got it all. The characters are awesome, the visceral descriptions brilliant, and the overall "moral" astounding. Point is, this one assaults from every direction, and hits the target on pretty much all of them. If had to make one negative remark, it'd be that the name issue for Ferros was too obvious and telegraphed. Perhaps I read too much fantasy, or maybe it just means the story sold the rest so well that it was inevitable. Either way, I just absolutely KNEW that the "of" didn't belong in that name from the very first mention.

Three and a Half Seconds - Again, another one where the ending was horribly clear from less than halfway through. That said, it played the part out brilliantly. I loved it for the pain it caused me. Everything is so real, so clearly a pony hurting for her friend, and yet, so clearly fighting for herself too. Really awesome character work, but... doesn't quite get top marks because it's not really on topic/theme for this contest.

Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason - I really wasn't sure what to think of this one. My first instinct is to be pissed off. It's a shaggy dog story, with the premise that "AJ doesn't know what a unicorn is" and/or "No one realizes she's not a unicorn." Either being equally stupid. As such, the ending was telegraphed from the first page, and the rest felt like a drawn out gag. I kept hoping for a twist, that the ending would be something other than the obvious, and therefore clever, but it never came. Instead, I just felt like I wasted my time reading a giant troll fic.

Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air - This one was odd. It felt, sentence-by-sentence, as fairly well written, but on the whole, it was very hard to follow exactly what was happening. As such, my overall impression was rather mediocre, even though I sense there was some more poignant meaning the author was trying to achieve.

Waiting - Wow, this one hit a lot of feels in weird places. Generally speaking, I love sci-fi, and pony-explained-by-sci-fi is an especially guilty pleasure. To that end, this one gets top marks. Where it falls short, as with many others, is adherence to theme. Even though I liked it as a stand-alone piece, it doesn't really show the broad spectrum of "magic in everything," but only a "this one unexpected thing is also magic." Still though, I loved the story, so, still good marks, just not perfect.

Homecoming - And another great tale. Weird, and by that I mean "unique." Yet poignant and plausible as well. I sense a lot of real-world ceremony and language imported here. Part of me likes that... it gives weight and depth. On the other hand, part of me feels that simply borrowing existing human culture and painting pony pronouns on it is a bit disingenuous. Still, I did enjoy the read.

I'll read/review the remaining three stories in the next three days or so and post them, even though I can't vote on them any more

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Clearly this means I need to write a AppleDash or TwiJack shipfic next time, just to make everyone think I'm you.

Realistically speaking, as we all have access to stylo, we can probably figure it out anyway.

I rather enjoyed the story, as I noted, and it did fairly well.

It's really, really weird to me how far some outliers are from my own votes. When I'm within a single point (1.00) of the actual score, I think nothing of it. But the outliers are interesting... the stories where my vote was radically different from the final tally. I'm normally reluctant to expose direct numbers but... I think we're all mature individuals here. So please dont' take this as me begrudging anyone their well-earned victory. I'm simply saying it's weird how far off-typical my own numbers were.

#1 Friendship is Not Magic. - This was my only 10/10 vote. Yet it only scored 5.67. I'm not saying other voters were wrong, but I really think there's some extremely interesting data to be gained by quantifying this discrepency.

#2 Dawn - A 9/10 from me, yet 6.5 overall. Again, I know it's personal taste, but... I really want to know why. I want numbers on this!

#3 Applejack goes to magic school for some reason - Well, this one won "most controversial" (really? I was only 4th for that?) so no surprise on this. But again, I felt almost like it was a troll fic (and scored it really poorly, 8/10, sorry Jason), despite the fact that I tend to love JasonTheHuman's writing in general.

#4 Feel. I gave it an 8/10. Final was 4.89. That's BELOW my own story (And Yet...) which I personally only scored at 6/10 (optimist I am) yet came in at 4.94 in reality. This is, perhaps, the most interesting to me, because I can't possibly be more biased than I am with my own story, but was still barely a single point off, yet I clearly thought Feel was better by several notches, yet everyone else saw it the other way around on average.

Anyway, enough of that. Again, not complaining about results, just saying the statistics on this are really interesting and something I want to understand more about.

That said, congratulations to all the winners. Especially Horizon, who apparently wrote one of the three stories I didn't get to read yet (but I will soon.)

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I don't really have any problem with listing my scores, I just don't know if people really WANT to know.

For reference on those:

Friendship is not Magic: I wasn't terribly enamored with this one. It got a 3 from me.
Dawn: This was my own story, so obviously I couldn't vote on it. I would have given it a 6 had I been able to vote on it, almost entirely because I'm a terrible nerd. As I noted in my review of this story, it really needed work. It is going to be improved before I post it, once I figure out what I want to do with it. Suggestions are welcome.
Appplejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason: This was my only 10.
Feel: I gave this one a 5 because, quite frankly, it isn't done. It is the start of a story, it is the first chapter of a larger piece, and as a result, it isn't really "done".
And Yet...: I gave this one an 8:

For reference, my top rated fics were, in order, Applejack Goes to Magic School for Some Reason, The Sweetest Water, and then a tie for third place between And Yet... and The Color and the Silence. People seemed to agree on three of those, though not so much on And Yet...

And Yet's score changed the most of any of the stories in the competition. I actually originally rated it at something like 4 or 5, then as I read more and more stories I ended up keeping on bumping its score up higher and higher until it ended up at an 8 more or less by default.

Horizon's story gained a couple points after I found a couple things in it I missed, but I still had it rated as somewhat below average (though not far below average as I did originally).

Though man, the pun and the play with the second person perspective at the end.

So what have I learnt from this write-off? (I wrote A Light in the Dark, by the way)

I've learnt that it is entirely possible for me to write over 2,000 words in that time period, and have it make sense.
I've learnt that I need to learn how to write a proper conflict.
I've learnt that my grasp of grammar and spelling is fine as it is.
And I've learnt that there is no way in blazes I can read over 70,000 words and give them a score without melting my brain cells.

Oh yeah, and that Nightmare Night is not a part of the Winter Solstice. Thanks for pointing that out, everyone.

I'm just reading through everyone's reviews, and I can't help but feel like almost everyone just HATES everything. Like, a lot of these are " 'Yeah, this one sucked.' 'Yeah, this one sucked.' 'This one could have had potential for X reason, except it sucked.' 'Yeah, this one sucked.' " I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

So I'm actually a little surprised that the reviews on Feel was more positive than I expected. Of course, objectively it still did worse than Rain (which is unsurprising).

And actually this is a prequel to Brave Front which I entered 4 contests ago.

Here are my full thoughts on my own entry:

The setup was to be honest, pretty bad like the points TheNumbers25 mentioned. Originally, the story was meant to be at least twice as long and would have mitigated the characterization problems. But I simply didn't have the time (and panicking close to the deadline wasn't helping) to plot out the scenes properly.

The flashback with Queen Rosedust could have been shorter but I let it get away from me and the ending is just meh even though I did my best in the last 6+ hours to make it at least somewhat workable. I'm aware about the name confusion problem but I didn't have time to rework Glitter Dust's name. Overall the plot was paper thin and the story messily constructed, so much that I opted out of the contest for a while. I'm going to extend the whole thing and make it a three-parter or something.

But enough self-bashing. I'm glad that the world-building was generally positively received. The Flutter ponies in this universe is a cross between a normal pony and a changeling--current design is that they are "normal" ponies with the feelers on Queen Rosedust from G1 and the green/blue wing thingies the changelings have, though they're colored dark green. ... Kind of a grotesque design now I think of it.

The flutters are empaths, they feel emotions as tactile and olfactory sensations, though I still need to tweak them a little as I was making the senses up a little as I go. They live under the mountains to the north of Crystal Empire and had very limited contact, like "a few Crystal pony explorers/prospectors got lost and were rescued" limited and Queen Rosedust wanted to send a trading mission down to open relation just before the Empire went balls up with Sombra and limbo. They rely a lot on magic infused crystals, for lighting, heating etc... since the Flutter Kingdom was rich in crystals and poor in everything else.

As for all the Glitter Dust speculation, I wonder if I should spoil this...

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Obviously, I can't say what I voted for Feel because I wrote it but I would have given it a 5 or 6 if it wasn't mine.

I gave Dawn a 7, Appplejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason a 8 (might have been a 7 but I can't remember exactly), and And Yet... a 8. The highest scores I gave were 8s.

Some brief words on Mark of Destiny, because I've got a few answers and then some burning questions.

So, it started out as a meditation on cultural imperialism, which I thought I handled alright, and then pivoted into the question of response (withdraw and cloister, or engage and adapt?), which I thought I handled rather less well. The deal with the superpowered Cutie Marks was, firstly, to make this a uniquely pony story rather than "Earth meets $world_with_magic"; and secondly, to draw the sharpest possible contrast with the banality of destruction. The thing that is destroying Equestrian culture is the thing that we use to play video games.

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I expected the ending to be polarizing, but I was unprepared for how it would be polarizing. A number of people criticized me for not taking a stand on Mark's decision, so let me throw this out there in hopes of starting a debate: How should it have ended, in your opinion? Which side should Mark have taken?

The ending I wrote was designed to both literally and narratively push that decision straight into the lap of "you", the reader, and I'm hoping that I included enough context to support legitimate answers in both directions. (Among the casualties of cutting to 8k words.) Mark's choice is certainly a cop-out for Mark, the character, but I didn't intend for it to be a cop-out for Horizon, the author, because Horizon's point was to ask the question — not answer it, nor steal the reader's thunder by developing Mark.

His Obi-Wan cutie mark got singled out for hate, too, which is probably legitimate. I'm open to suggestions. The "use the Force (of destiny)" thing was unintentional; I was just trying to wrap back around to the opening scene, giving him a deliberately pop-culture mark to synthesize the thesis of Earth life and the antithesis of Equestrian magic, but I'm not wedded to the imagery.

3635039
> all the paperwork and scientific babble doesn't feel much like Equestria
That was the point, yeah. Like the bit I mentioned in my self-review about Lisa giving directions via the Starbucks.

> Mark says he recognizes Twilight from TV, yet every time a character is introduced, they get an over-detailed description rather than just their name.
The "Princess of Friendship" is the only one he recognizes, because she's a celebrity, and he doesn't even know her name. That, and the third-person limited, was intentional, to reinforce the dehumanization … de-equinization? … of all the Equestrians that we as readers are familiar with. (The first Equestrian who gives him her name is Applejack, which is his turning point.) Still, I'll fix "golem" and see if I can tone the LUS back.

3641179
> that Celestia & Twilight would be so incredibly outmanuevered strikes me as a bit contrived
Was I too subtle with the second scene? Mark is literally being mind-controlled by his newly Marked friend. There's outmaneuvering, and then there's supernatural cheating.

3637025
Sorry it didn't hold you. I know HiE is a wasteland of overused tropes, but I didn't think that "humans getting literal superpowers from Cutie Marks" had been done before. Is there anything in the writing that alienated you, or was it just not a genre you wanted to read?

3647701
The ending actually threw me off because I was like "Why did he settle for a beer cutie mark?" (The whole "Alec Guinness" thing and all. ... A Star Wars fan I'm not.) and the implications of the second person thing was lost on me but that was my brain not processing anything properly by then.

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That wouldn’t happen, not even at night, since the light colors would blend while the darker one would appear as an unnatural shadow.

Actually, dark blue is the best at disappearing at night than black or light colors. Black shows up as, like you said, an unnatural shadow.

Sixth place overall, and second most controversial (beneath an actual Tumblr flamewar story)? Not bad at all.

I figured it might not be everyone's style of humor, but the people who liked it seemed to really like it. Sure, it doesn't make sense, but I had three days to explain how Applejack becomes the top student at a magic school completely by accident. It's based on a lot of misconceptions, kind of like my story A Season Of Giving, but doesn't wrap itself up as cleanly. I'm just glad I finished it on time.

3639810
I'm going to take a wild guess that MidnightQuill mentioned it to you. He asked me at lunch one day what he should write about, I came up with this story idea in a few seconds while playing the Mage's College quest in Skyrim, and we both decided to try it. I think he's working on his own version.

My top stories were Just One More (I actually liked the narration and the abrupt ending, which I guess some people didn't) and Tumbling Down The Slippery Slope (I thought it was hilarious, and surprisingly like a real episode). Those were both 8/10. After that were Friendship is not Magic and Farsighted both at 7.

3647614
You think you're in shock? I don't know whether I beat Chris by less than a hundredth of a point or if the entries are just arranged in such a way that mine comes before his, but I came in first and I don't know how.

That's not to say I'm unhappy about the results, but I'm definitely surprised. Still, going by the discussion during the submission period, I was one of the first people to have a concrete idea of what to write about. "Everything" is a pretty wide field of possibilities. I decided to focus on an underappreciated aspect of Equestrian magic near and dear to my heart, earth pony magic. Celestia really sold them short in the Season 4 finale. "The strength to work the land"? Really? That's it?

Yeah, that wasn't going to stand. I brought out my headcanon, including the non-card-game version of Pinkie Pie, and worked a narrative around it. I really enjoyed the chance to write a Berry Punch different from the norm. I also deliberately wrote Apple Bloom without the phonetic accent I usually use for the Apple family, the better to disassociate the story from me. That was an interesting experience, especially since I say lines out loud to make sure the dialogue flows properly. And yes, I do it in the characters' voices, or at least something close to them.

Still, looking back, using Twilight as the seeker of knowledge might have worked better than Apple Bloom. I had to push Bloom to the limit of her character to get her where I needed her to be. Twilight might have been burned (well, stung, contused, anvilled...) last time she studied Pinkie Pie, but this time would be from the perspective of the student rather than the researcher. On the other hand, here I had the advantage of a child's ignorance, pettiness, and sense of wonder. Also, it seemed to work pretty well as is. I probably could've fleshed it out some more, but it felt complete.

Oh, and to answer your question from my review blog, my top six were as follows:

1. The Color and the Silence
2. Mark of Destiny
3. The Sweetest Water
4. Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope
5. Oubliette
6. Feel

3647492

She is clearly a star warlock; when she looks up at the sky, every once in a while, the stars all open up and a million eyes look down upon her.

And she smiles and waves and asks Shub-Niggurath about her kids. Because she's Pinkie Pie.

3647622
And from that story was born a very silly card:

3647694
I think there were a few problems here.

First off, all of the stories obviously missed some folks. Dawn was rated as the highest story by at least one person, possibly more than one, and but other folks felt it was completely terrible. In fact, this goes for most of them - Mark of Destiny got third place. I gave it a pretty low score. And Yet... earned an 8 from me, but judging by its placement with an average of less than 5, obviously some folks vehemently disagreed with such a high rating. Thus, you had people saying that stories were very meh, while others liked them a lot.

Secondly, I think a lot of the stories were unpolished. My story wasn't edited at all; it was totally raw, and several folks noticed. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who did such.

Thirdly, I wasn't super enamored with the stories this time around. And Yet..., as I noted, got an 8, but I didn't feel like And Yet... was a blow me out of the water story; it got an 8 because there were only two stories I put clearly above it, The Sweetest Water and Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason.

Fourth, a lot of us simply have extremely high standards, and we're basically judging first or second drafts which haven't been reviewed by anyone else as finished products. It is a lot harder to get a short story into good shape than it is to get a minific into good shape.

3647698

I gave Dawn a 7, Appplejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason a 8 (might have been a 7 but I can't remember exactly), and And Yet... a 8. The highest scores I gave were 8s.

What was the lowest score you gave, out of curiousity (just number wise, not story wise)?

I generally try to use the whole scale so as to maximize differentiation.

3647701
My problem with the story, as I noted, was that it was too "fanfictiony" for my tastes; it really isn't my cup of tea. I don't think there's any getting around that, really; I doubt I'd really like any story like that. Doesn't mean that other people won't, but it isn't my thing at all. Honestly, the fact that it was what it was pretty much would prevent me from liking it; the entire point seems to be to note the banality of it all, but it was precisely that which sort of drove me away. So basically, given the theme of the story, I simply am unable to like it, I think.

3647804
You tied for first with him; you both got gold medals. As there were only 19 voters, it would be impossible for any of the scores to be separated by less than 1/19th of a point - and given that most of them only were voted on by 18 people (as the authors couldn't vote on their own stories), you're actually looking at 1/18th of a point divisions - or 0.05 or 0.06 points difference.

Congratulations!

3647622
Well...

umm...

shit.

3647623

I actually have Just One More a 10. It was one of the few fics that captured my attention enough to keep my reading the entire thing in one go.

In the event that used my prompt I end with a wooden spoon. Talk about irony

Though it was a round with unusually high quality and competition. Just to see how close this round actually was: take the last placed story (my own Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air, with a score of 3.72), add its deviation to the score (2.67, the sum coming to 6.39) and see where it would land (in 6th place). I don't have the deviation for the highest placed entries, but I think it likely that if the same process was done to the two entries that tied at first (but deducting the standard deviation), they would land below 6th place. If that is the case, in statistical terms, it means that the entries were close enough that the scoring process can't actually be certain of whether the first placed entry is better than the last placed one, at least not within the chosen confidence level.

3647474

Huh, I never even thought of that link (pun not intended). The notion of things coming in threes is so ingrained in fairy tales, though, that it simply seems like convergent evolution. Life, Desire and Knowledge don't feel to me like they cleanly map to Courage, Power and Wisdom.

Well, I agree that desire doesn't usually map so clearly to power, but you mapped desire to power in your story yourself. Wisdom and Knowledge are a fairly close (though not perfect) match, leaving only life and courage as the odd one, though I did see courage described as the will to live more than a few times. Which is why I thought about the Zelda connection

3647701

His Obi-Wan cutie mark got singled out for hate, too, which is probably legitimate. I'm open to suggestions. The "use the Force (of destiny)" thing was unintentional; I was just trying to wrap back around to the opening scene, giving him a deliberately pop-culture mark to synthesize the thesis of Earth life and the antithesis of Equestrian magic, but I'm not wedded to the imagery.

Actually, I interpreted that mark as the "only hope" cutie mark, and take it to mean that Mark will get to play a bigger role in the conflict, whether he wants or not. I'm not sure if others came to the same conclusion; I've still got to catch on to this thread.

So, this is my first writeoff. Would anyone be willing to explain to me how scoring works? The numbers next to our pieces, are those the average of scores we got? I'm hearing stuff about standard deviation? And why do controversial pieces have two different scores.

They should make a table with a giant Chaos Orb decal on it because I'm feeling really salty right now and want to flip a table and cause untold destruction and I wasn't even in the competition.

I'm assuming that FoME actually gets first place and Chris gets second, unless I'm being completely off about this. Anyone against this speak up please, I guess?

Or we could have them FIGHT TO THE DEATH for first and second. I'm up for that, too.

I'm still surprised FoME is up there. Apparently my offering of Magic gave him super strength. Or super determination. Yeah, this prize thing is going to be a thing.

Gonna announce prize winners later in other thread later. I'm at work and had to tell off a general service guy who had jumped into the cardboard compactor to unclog it, so I'm feeling rather traumatized, perhaps even more so because there's two first places to face nest at, and I haven't yet decided who'll get my personal choice award. Maybe that'll give me some time to decide.

3647917
Negotiations and The Sweetest Water were tied, hence both being awarded a gold medal.

Like, actually tied, on the same level, cannot beat each other, bona fide tied?

Argh!

*facenest*

Truly was not expecting this to happen. I dunno. Maybe I should make Chris and FoME do a mini write-off to break the tie... no... damnit. I don't think that's entirely fair. Coin flip? Does Chris play Magic? They can duel for it... ungh. I'll lament over this conundrum as I work, but suggestions would be appreciated.

3647701

Two bits - one, the main issue wasn't so much it was pop culturey, as it was too pop culturey; if it had been something more symbolic, I'd have been fine with it. Second, I suppose if superpowered Cutie Marks let them mind control Princesses, then...sure, but that still falls into the same odd territory for me of 'I have a hard time buying that they would just roll over and keep accepting it', given the mind control effects are temporary, and that's assuming they'd have no resistance to such, which is really where mine issue lies.

On Jade Songbird - it's funny in that the things people are most unhappy with are the things I was most unhappy with, because as soon as I hit the Valley I promptly ran out of ideas for what to do between the Valley and my ending. And I had about 90 minutes to submit, as I thought the contest ended at 2 PM Monday afternoon, not 2 AM Monday morning, and as a result I had 0 words written 4 hours before the deadline.

Which then sort of shot me in the foot, because when I hit a spot and got stuck I had to just power through it and had no time to come back and try revising later.

Still, I am quite happy with the end result, and once it has a proper edit job, feel it will be much better.

Also, Horizon wins points for being the only person who realized that Daring never once actually talks to or otherwise interacts with Ginger beyond bare necessity, even if he thought that choice was frustrating. This entire story was about doing something new to me, both in writing in the pulpy style and in the deliberately making stylistic choices that have a deeper meaning to them beyond the initial.

The takeaway so far, I know, is clean up the commas, find a way to make the flashback less of an infodump, and find a way to make the middle portion drag less. Maybe try to make the dedication from Twilight not so 'Let me hit you in the face with the moral, dear reader'.

3647907
The score next to our piece is our average score.

The number next to the stories in the most controversial section is the standard deviation of the scores of the piece.

3647924
Idea~!

We put the two fics through another vote to see which one people liked more. Yeah, that might be more reasonable. I'll see if I can set up something during lunch. If that's alright with everybody.

3647973
Uh, we already did that. That's what the vote was. Wasn't it?

Here's a question: did YOU vote on the contest?

3647886

As one of the low downvoters, my problem with it was that it didn't really feel like it was targeting the extreme side of things. Rather, it was going in a 'Let's turn real issues into strawmen, then decry them'. The problem therein is that there are far too many people for whom that viewpoint isn't a joke, but how they actually think, and especially after the past month I am quite tired of extremism in general.

From the writing perspective, AJ's inner voice was good, although it does suffer narratively from cribbing 'Check your privilege' from the real world. It'd have been way better if it had come up with a phrase that felt Equestrian, whatever that may have been. The humbug is a cool concept, and one that really would do well revisited in a story that's not trying to be weaker social commentary at the same time.

3647815
Uh, 3 was the lowest I gave. Didn't normalize the range. =s

3647989
3647886

This, basically. Although after seeing Golden's explanation of the piece, I regret giving it such a low score... as I mentioned in my short write up, Applejack's narration was done very well.

Man, when was the last time we had a tie for first place? I know it happened once before, but it's probably been years. :B Good show Fan and Chris (I'm not at all surprised you wrote Sweetest Water). I am surprised Mark of Destiny did so well and horizon wrote it. It sure as heck feels like a MDG entry, and just like that contest, goes to show that HiE isn't a cesspool where stories go to die and a good writer can make a good story out of anything.

I think this is my best showing in quite some time. :O I was psyched to see my story on a lot of people's top lists; thanks to all who enjoyed it! :D I've got a few responses for reviews upthread so hold on to your butts

3633340

I was a bit sad that Twilight/the Rainboom didn’t end up shattering all the windows, though.

The thing I didn't quite get across was that the Tower was completely cut off from the rest of Equestria. That Celestia even heard the Rainboom as a sigh was supposed to be shocking. (I guess she needs to convey that.)

3635067

What is these "things" the "moon" (or rather NMM) "asked" Celestia to do?

It's actually the Tower itself that is sentient and able to make predictions of the future. Whenever it does, it falls to Celestia to react to the prophecy shown on the window: sometimes she has to make it happen, sometimes prevent it, and sometimes just find the scene depicted, as in the final scene of the story. This has been going on for so long that she knows she has to do these things -- the one time she refused to act, it ended in catastrophe -- but is frustrated that a stained glass window is all she has to go on.

how is predicting all this prophecy stuff when the tower was commissioned by her subjects and is for all intents and purposes non-magical and "prophecy-y".

That's meant to be some fridge horror.

Also, the story doesn't seem to have anything to do with the prompt?

Going along with the above, the "everything" in this case is the Tower, which has its own magic that allows it to do all this stuff. Where did it come from? Who knows. I think my time in the SCP Foundation is leaking over into ponyfic, I seem to have issues with not explaining things and expecting everyone to be okay with that.

3636068

It bugged me that the end of the story doesn’t seem to match up with canon (unless my understanding of the timing is wrong, wouldn’t Celestia have to already be outside and near the school by the time the Rainboom went off to match up with her scene in Cutie Mark Chronicles?)

I was going by memory, and my memory is crap. :B I'll have to double-check the episode and make sure it lines up.

and the reference to “eating for two” doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface and is kind of misleading

I was hoping the context would come through. I kind of waffled on using that phrase because I knew it would be confusing. I'll probably take it out if I ever go back to this one.

3639810

where’s the “color”? You forgot half your metaphor! :B

I was so embarrassed when I realized this. D:

FYI, working title for this story was "TOWER", all-caps. Then I noticed the imagery at the end and went with the literary title that horizon at least liked. :D

3641220

Does it do this with every little event, or is it just the major ones? Why is Celestia so afraid of it if all it does is predict the future? Sure for us that is terrifying, to know for sure what will come and how our destiny is set, but Celestia is immortal so the effect is greatly reduced. We have a hint at the consequences of not listening to it, something about a city and a bad thing happening, but the urgency and fear of inaction is not specifically justified to us. I'm still stuck on why the story has almost sinister undertones, yet the actual events and explained reasons are relatively benign. Your eldritch god appears to have no tentacles.

Celestia feels trapped by the Tower. She tried to disobey it once and disaster happened, so now she's stuck frantically trying to figure out cryptic messages and prevent further disaster. If she doesn't act, she fails; if she doesn't figure it out in time, she fails. (It's probably not clear, but the time frame varies wildly, from well in advance to minutes prior, as with the final scene of the story.) I'm not sure what you find "benign", though.

I dunno, I get the feeling that people would have liked this more if I'd said somewhere that the Tower was animated by a collusion of fate, raw emotion and the ambient magic suffusing Equestria. Not saying that that's how it happened, but it seems the concrete is valued around here. :/

And now for the news. :B

3647622
I'm shocked that's not an Unglued card. Though that's a very Unglued solution to using it. That's fuckin' brilliant.

3647804
ofuk

Thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way. :D Not to knock it, but I'm not surprised Negotiations won. It was a "safe" choice, which is to say lots of people liked it, it was solid on its own merits, and I didn't notice a lot of negative criticism about it. But yeah, good story, I'm glad to see it in the top row. :D

3647701
His cutie mark was supposed to be about fate manipulation; I was expecting dice or something fairly concrete. :B

Mark is literally being mind-controlled by his newly Marked friend.

wait what the fuck hold the phone here

3647799
No, actually, I was thinking of Aquaman at the time. Not sure where I might have heard the idea, but if I did, it definitely wasn't from anyone actually related to the story. :O Go figure.

3647886

Most people who disliked it did so for the subject matter, saying that it made fun of people, or made fun of them, or was a dumb parody fic. I don't necessarily doubt your concerns - I noted in my own "review" of my fic that the fact that Twilight, rather than AJ, is the one to solve everything raises some unfortunate implications (though this, for some reason, wasn't actually the focus of anyone's irritation).

I just wanted to point out that my main problem was not that you were making fun of SJWs. It was that I felt your AJ came across as stupid, not just in the SJW parts but in incidental asides, to the point where it felt like a parody of AJ to me. Of course, I remember starting to read Contraptionology and not liking it, so maybe that was my problem there too.

Reflections time! I've had a blast and a half writing, reviewing, and hearing everyone's thoughts for this one. I'm really glad at myself for being able to put out a lot more words than I thought I could, and being able to hear everyone's critique has been ridiculously wonderful. Thanks for another great event!

So, if anyone's interested, here's some thoughts about my own story, Homecoming (5.22/10).

First off, regarding 3647024's concerns about the imperialistic undertones, I had absolutely no intention for this at all. I have to admit, I'm woefully ill-informed about these subjects, and your review had me on a frantic little googling spree when I saw it. The only reason Clear Cut is from high-class Canterlot is because I wanted him and Twilight to find a connection rapidly, and the only reason he's a jeweler is because there was originally supposed to be a scene where he explains how he helped make the Spellcaster's Sand Zecora uses and the costumes that the actors wore (cut for pacing/word count). Regardless, my sincerest apologies go to anyone this might have offended.

On an unrelated note, so far I'm two for two at submitting write-off entries that apparently don't have any meaningful conflict. Damn, I swear I'll put some flipping conflict in my next one even if I have to use alicorn space-fights and Twi-splosions to get there. Stay tuned next month for Homecoming 2: This Time it's Personal.

Also, I realize I did not come close to doing the best job on zebra dialogue. I'm very, very bad at metered poetry, it seems. Basically, it was taking almost half of my writing time on Zecora's dialogue alone. About mid-way through Sunday, I finally conceded defeat, placating myself with the fact that in-show Zecora's rhythm isn't always perfect, and there were like two times where she might have used a half rhyme. The result, unsurprisingly, isn't the prettiest to look at. If I ever decide to publish Homecoming on its own, it'll only be after I've gotten myself a lot of time (and help!) to work on the couplets.

Some reviewers have expressed curiosity about any inspiration/sources I might have drawn on for the play/song itself. A couple of keen readers noticed that it takes its repeated line from a Swahili proverb that I thought was fitting. Furthermore, some of the key themes of closeness to nature and resilience of spirit were inspired by plays and poetry that I read for a Caribbean Culture and Literature class I took last semester. Other than that, though, this is mostly my own brain-spawn.

This is a lot of things I want to respond too, so bear with me if I have multiple posts in succession. Don't want those they are aimed at to have to read through a ton of stuff to find where I mentioned them.

3647694

I'm just reading through everyone's reviews, and I can't help but feel like almost everyone just HATES everything. Like, a lot of these are " 'Yeah, this one sucked.' 'Yeah, this one sucked.' 'This one could have had potential for X reason, except it sucked.' 'Yeah, this one sucked.' " I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

This contest is more like a writing workshop than actual contest. The reviews and critics are harsher than would normally occur in order to better help the author and to give them as much information on why a story did or didn't work from as many views as possible. Even stories I liked I still pointed out what bothered me about them, and my reviews don't accurately show how I voted. Treat the story like a tool and the author like a blacksmith. He has to run it through the fires of debate and beat it with the hammer of critic in order to shape it into a useful device. But the author must also learn how to keep the fires from getting too hot and to not use the hammers that would break his tool rather than shape it.

3647701

Sorry it didn't hold you. I know HiE is a wasteland of overused tropes, but I didn't think that "humans getting literal superpowers from Cutie Marks" had been done before. Is there anything in the writing that alienated you, or was it just not a genre you wanted to read?

Both. I can usually power through genres I'm not a fan of (except tragedy, if you don't tag your tragedy I will avoid you for life) like I did with the poem one and the zecora main, but HiE holds a specific spot in that category. When you bring humans into play, you also bring human logic and reasoning. Meaning I can no longer just accept magic, lack of economic impact and tons of other things I ignore with my pony filters on. During the first part I was so distracted by how the economy would have crashed, how the curite marks "just work", and how cutie marks are used to take the effort out of things thereby taking out the idea of achievement. All this kept circling around in my head and once he went to equestria and found he was going to be spending most of his time there I realized they would never be resolved so just stopped before my inner economist had a heart attack.