Hopefully I'll be able to make these in time before I go to bed!

Reviews 2/7

Somewhere Beyond Us
Scootaorphan. Done pretty badly, too. I'll be honest; I'm not able to point specifically at something and say why it doesn't work; I'm not good enough yet. Anyway, Scootaorphan stories (and I hate the fact it's its own genre here) are very easy to screw up under the best of circumstances, and the two characters feel don't connect to each other at all. Sorry.

On the Trail We Blaze
So who's on first, anyway? That said, I liked it, but I don't understand if it's implied in the story, or if it's editing editing errors, but there seem to be two copies each of Twilight and Trixie :-/

Community Announcements
This fanfic captures perfectly the spirit of its source material. That is, Welcome to Night Vale. The author's lucky I'm intimately familiar with it, because otherwise I'd be lost. Unfortunately, the story is plagued by the huge, structural problems Night Vale itself suffers from (and because of which I quit that particular fandom): an overload of vague creepiness that doesn't actually go anywhere, whimsy for the sake of whimsy, and a non existent plot. I'm gonna give this a N/A, because I don't have it in me to give this a low score when it's so quintessentially...Night Vale.

The Dragon's Riddle
This was majestic, and I really, really liked it. I'm also a sucker for riddles (the whole time I though the answer was going to be “the present”) and I loved the fact all the answers could have been correct; it gives an interesting moral dimension to the dragon, the fact that what's important is not the riddle but the character of who answers it. Also, the headcanon is good. Anyway, this is a very strong contender for first place.

Depths
Good sense of emotion, good sense of urgency, but I have no idea what the curse that's affecting Twilight is doing :-/

The Slow Fall of an Unfamiliar Star
This is everything I hoped was going to be addressed about Flash and Sunset being in relationship once but which never was shown. Another very strong contender.

Where the Sun Goes When It Sets
I feel for Twilight. The sensation of knowing that a child is not stupid, but that he or she simply cannot grasp something yet is...uniquely frustrating. A very good story.

3699365
Horizons:
If I got it right, the point in time was an excuse to get future Twilight to send the rest of the mane 6 back without knowing their actual mission; the rest of the mane 6 convinced Twilight that there was an emergency in the past that would need them all to solve, otherwise I believe future Twilight would have come alone. I believe this is also why past Twilight thought they came to solve the crisis; Twilight would, as always, have taken lead and explained the situation, and her friends couldn't say otherwise to not give up their deception. And the crux is future AJ saying the line to past Twilight, so past Twilight does not repeat the error future Twilight did, thus time travel was needed. It got a lot confusing, unfortunately, with the two Twilights being referenced by the same name.

3699365
Virgin Green Fields - I’m struggling for much to say here, beyond “I like it”. Good use of all the senses, incorporating taste and smell and such. Normally as a reader, this info feels hella superfluous to me, but I feel like here, it’s deployed with an effective purpose. I also like the twist of Clover longing for an intellectual. Aaaand now I just spotted the double entendre of the title. Well anyway, this fic just really comes together. Good show.

Further than Before - Something in RD’s tone is grating on me a little. I get that she’s emotional right now, but… *snaps fingers* She sounds petty. OOC petty. She’s been burned in episodes like MMDW but it’s been more about hurt pride than about anger/disappointment aimed at individuals. Also, the anger comes and goes, as you swap from “how I’m feeling” paragraphs to “action I’m taking” paragraphs. Ehhhh… Okay, I do get the sense that “over the horizon” is being symbolic of something. But symbolism doesn’t work if the literal actions make no sense. You’re strapping RD with a pretty big Idiot Ball in order to make this metaphor make sense, and as a result, the literal story is nonsense. And then more pettiness against Rarity at the ending. Dunno, the thrust of the story, and the symbolism, feel very like RD. But RD’s tone and the Idiot Ball trope really drag this story down.

Behind the Night - “Nonsense. This can’t be harder than the”—Celestia shot a mischievous glance at him—“practical ‘advanced scheduling’ lesson you put her through.” I always used to get that backwards too, so I keep an eye out for it :P Anyway, I really like the thrust of it. It’s super dialogue-heavy, with very little set-pieces only a few facial reactions, but it’s one of those nice “canon explaining” pieces. Celestia sending Luna into Nightmare Night unprepared always struck as somewhat neglectful on Celestia’s part, but this does good at justifying why and for what purpose. Kibitz of course works as a nice foil for Celestia to bounce ideas off of.

Over Horizons - Point of order: when Trixie is speaking across multiple paragraphs like this, you don’t close the quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph. “I! Am! Over! You!” Uh, sweetie, no you’re not. Just right now starting to heal? Sure. But a single gut-kick and a dramatic speech are small measure against a life being destroyed and a twelve-year revenge plot, in part becoming a mirror of the pony you hate. Still, she achieved her closure, and closure is super important in a situation like this. Execution-wise, though, I didn’t really empathise much with the story Trixie told. I objectively recognized it as a tragic backstory, but given the trope employed, it lacked a lot of emotional weight, which hurt the story as a whole.

Making a Better Nightmare - Zero? WHOA WAIT. My body was not ready for that crossover. This worked surprisingly effectively! In hindsight, Equestria is filled with many sincerely frightening things, yet without Pinkie misinterpreting Luna’s actions, the Nightmare Night we saw was exceedingly mild even for Equestria. The idea of a frustrated malevolent spirit like Bone Blossom, then giving her a tempering yet encouraging mentor in the form of Jack, is just dripping with creativity. Good show.

A Story Not Unlike Winona - I literally almost tipped over backward in my chair, crushed by all of the meta. But hey, whatever inspires you, I guess… Welcome aboard! Ehh, I wouldn’t have a character named ______, even if they’re your anonymous self-insert; just have Marigold reply “hello there” and avoid situations where she’s calling the other pony by name. This is also 99.9% dialogue; find more excuses to describe the scene and/or give the ponies something to do. For example, Marigold’s line about “the morning rush is over but the lunch crowd has yet to arrive”, this just dumps exposition in her dialogue, and doesn’t sound like anything a person would naturally say. So, rather than dialogue, have Marigold look around the room, let the narrator describe how there’s morning sun through the windows, and all the tables are empty, etc, then have Marigold say “Sure, tell me more about this write-off thing.” No no, even for a meta gag, no hyperlinks to other fics in the middle of your own Aaand you actually did this pun. We all joked about doing it, but you actually did it. Well, kudos for having the guts I suppose, lol. And now, Horizon must go commit sudoku, for having inspired the pun. Anyway, I’m no expert on meta comedy fics, but what hurt this one the most was all the setup. The two characters only existed to be mouthpieces for the joke, since we don’t see anything inside the shop and the ponies themselves just sit and talk without any body language. Further, the bulk of this fic is just a transparent explanation of this group’s write-offs. Considering that everyone reading your fic is a fellow participant in said write-off and therefore knows how they work, that doesn’t really add anything to the story. Sorry. It’s always great to see new faces, so I hope you’ll try again next time.

The Storm - Twenty five? Would she even be able to see the storm, at that distance? Nevertheless, I like the description on that slow rumble. Really, I liked a lot about this. It represents a peaceful summer evening before a storm nicely, both in literal descriptions as well as just the atmosphere of the fic. The secondary plot with AB is subtle—a bit too subtle, IMHO, since I almost missed it and I’m note even positive if I got it right—but once I got it, it really connected nicely. Good polish to this. It just… feels good.

Enlightenment - I’m always a sucker for city puns. Ha, okay, I smiled. Granted, I’m not a fan of the bit about “Enlightenment was a journey, not a destination. No matter how…” This just sort of sits the reader down and explains the moral… Well, the perceived moral. And I get why you did this: in order to close that scene and move onto the next, but still… *shrug* Regardless, then we get the second and third subversion with not-a-city-over-the-horizon, not-an-endless-journey, not-some-answer-over-the-pony, but rather a blank piece of paper over him, to symbolize enlightenment. Love it. Execution/mechanics wise, it was fine, neither distracting nor wowwing. Having read a number of these master/student proverb stories, it felt right at home.

Story Time - The lack of speaking tags confuses this, since we need to keep track of AB’s lines. I think you’re fine with not using quotation marks, speech tags, etc, but if you do so, I’d recommend putting all of AB’s dialogue in italics, so that we can easily spot it as additive to the narration. Careful, Granny switches from past to present tense. Ehh, but then you have a line break, and you shift back into narrator/speech-tags. Strictly necessary? Keep to one format or the other if you can, for a fic this short. I did like the story-in-the-story. It was cute, and the lack of an internal moral was amusing and felt appropriate for Granny. I’d quip that AB had some fun narrative interruptions at the beginning, but then you sort of abandon this altogether; you probably could have had more fun with this.

Antecessor - “As the sun sets in the forest…” I’m litterally hugging myself as I read this. This ominous dread is positively chilling. And you’ve got me fearing the worst for the child. She… burst into… Oh man, well done. I wasn’t expecting that phoenix twist at all. And the wooden box finally makes sense… Wait, dragon egg? It’s mentioned that this is during Discord’s rule, but it seems like the implication is that the father was indeed a dragon? Given that he’d be angry if he knew about the second home. Well, it’s a fantasy setting, also Discord, so I’m willing to suspend disbelief that they’re capable of having a child. Anyway, nothing to say here. This is terrific. It always amazes me to see something like this put to paper in a mere 24 hours.

I haven't been reading all the reviews (though I'm reading more than I normally do!), but has anyone sussed out what makes the story "not unlike Winona"? That title just bothers the heck out of me.

3698370
Good

gravy

3699045
Man, it's not even that deep. "Dem hips" is just internet speak.

Also yeah, the VCR thing bothered me too, I forgot to mention that. :B

3699769 I have no idea about that title. I figured it would be related to one of horizon's stories or something, but a character search ends that little theory. I'm at a loss.

Important, Please Read

I forgot to mention in my reviews that I'm not casting votes for the following stories:

Caro Nome
Making a Better Nightmare
The Slow Fall of an Unfamiliar Star
Chasing Your Own Tail

My reasoning behind this is that, because I'm not familiar with the source detail, it would be unfair to give them an arbitrary rating based off of the little I know.

3699769
It's a shaggy dog story. Not unlike Winona, only shaggier and a story. (Well, more of a feghoot, but that's what I assumed the author meant.)

3699723

The Storm - Twenty five? Would she even be able to see the storm, at that distance? Nevertheless, I like the description on that slow rumble. Really, I liked a lot about this. It represents a peaceful summer evening before a storm nicely, both in literal descriptions as well as just the atmosphere of the fic. The secondary plot with AB is subtle—a bit too subtle, IMHO, since I almost missed it and I’m note even positive if I got it right—but once I got it, it really connected nicely. Good polish to this. It just… feels good.

Twenty-five seconds is roughly five miles away; you can see clouds much further away than that.

3699934
That's really bad.

3699769
Sorry if I came off as cranky there~ But it is quite a bit of allusion.

3700078
As I noted in my review, at least we were warned.

As for Over Horizons, I think my problem there was that I took everything the stallion said with about a ton of salt. I figured the "twin brother" line was a blatant attempt to escape blame, or at least escape.

It's probably bad that I'm continuously spamming F5 with the feeble hope that there is more criticism inbound.

...I should probably get started on rewriting my fics.

3697914

Caro Nome: For those wondering, the title translates to "dearest name."

I did a little Google search (because Caro Nome is close to a nonsense expression in my language) and found out that it's the name of a fairly famous Italian aria, and the lyrics are a love declaration. Not sure if that was the intent, but it does fit like a glove, given the fic and the character's name.

Managed to get a fic in this time, so reviews! part 1 out of 4 below:

1-) Property: Meh. Prompt drop in the first sentence was weird. Needed some more editing passes, there are a lot of weird sentences and strange word choices. The tight focus on Applejack helped the atmosphere, but the reasoning for the traveling (killing because that land belonged to distant ancestors, what?) was strange, and not properly explained. Might work as an introduction to a grimdark AU, but not as a standalone story.

2-) Horizons: While I liked how it only implies most things, it is often needlessly obtuse, like in how it tries to conceal Twilight’s age, or in the way her friends never talk about the real subject. The advice from the future feels gimmicky, even if the future Mane 6 are interesting characters in their own right. I like the twist of having future Twilight appear in the end, it is clever and recontextualizes the fic. Twilestia comes from absolutely nowhere, and adds nothing to the story.

3-) MechaCelestia versus Giga Fluffle Puff: The whole fic is essentially the title. This is one of those stories that suffers from the length restrictions, but I appreciate the effort of trying to cram this into 750 words. Bonus points for using Fluffle Puff and the Godzilla references.

4-) Caro Nome: ”Searching like a VCR tech” is the strangest metaphor ever. I haven’t seen Rainbow Rocks, so I have no idea why I should care about Adagio and Aria. Left me with the distinct feeling this was a failed attempt at a trollfic centered around the last sentence.

5-) Why Doesn’t The Sun Shine?: ”Nasally noble” is such a weird description. Prompt name drop. I like the combination of characters the fic went for, and the first half has some very nice interactions, but the ending is very nothing. I can’t imagine a point in time where that interaction would happen, yet no-one would remember to call Twilight. Despite the length, pacing manages to be too slow.

6-) To Whom it May Concern: Rarity is just too oblivious, and her speech is pretty OOC. It waves aside an abusive relationship just too easily. Extremely heavy handed. I have no idea what it has to do with the prompt. The prose is very competent, and I like how it managed to weave this version of Equestria with the character interactions.

7-) A New Day: Superfluous prompt dropt. I like how Trixie is written, and even without external indications it is clear it is her speaking from the beginning, that is some great character voicing – as well as overall prose. While I appreciate the dramatic irony between her intentions and her actions, what Trixie does in the episode has little to do with impressing at least one of the Elements.

8-) Touched: ”They were briefly tasted by the darkness” is an awesome phrase. In fact, other than some punctual issues, the writing was great. I liked the idea of a vampire that completely rejects all glorification of their role, and the great atmosphere helped a lot in this regard. The prompt drop at the end had a profoundly negative impact on the overall story, cheapening the effect of the ending.

9-) Rainbow Dash Can’t Make Skeleton Jokes to Save Her Life: Prompt drop didn’t bother me too much here – even if the story had little to nothing to do with it. Looks like everypony took a level in Dashing Swordsman, given how many puns there are here. Alliteration was distracting and superfluous. Pretty good as far as random stories go, but it is too bare bones as it is.

10-) Kiss By Wire: A very cute SoL/romance Derpy/Doctor fic. I loved the pacing and the theme, and while I think it only fits the prompt in a very circumspect manner, I like it all the same. A little too simple and direct for me to love it, but very competent over all.

11-) Virgin Green Fields: Probably the most unnecessary prompt drop so far. I liked the perspective shift, but the dialog is terribly wooden. I like the concept, the theme of racism, and found the fic on the whole enjoyable, if not great. The scenario descriptions were the best part.

12-) Further than Before: Loved Rainbow’s characterization. This is one case where it used the prompt in the text, yet it felt earned. I like the idea of Rarity sarcastically saying Rainbow should do it – and probably learn from the mistake – but her idiocy by the end makes this story take a turn to the incredibly dark. That, or set-up an interesting adventure fic. Still, I can’t get the image of Rainbow Dash eventually getting too tired to fly over the sea and falling to her death.

13-) Behind the Night: Another terrible prompt drop – these are seriously immersion shattering. It is hard to imagine a shadow more under the shadow of Celestia than Ponyville. Loved the characterization on Kibitz, and his interaction with Celestia, and the concept as a whole. It could have used some more Luna, in order to reinforce the difference between the sisters. As it is, it feels too much like Celestia is grooming her sister for power, which goes weirdly unacknowledged, give that this is a story that tries to address their power imbalance.

So far, the "just over the horizon" sentences seem to be slowly eroding my patience, to the point I am afraid I will be pretty unfair with the rest.

Review Wars Episode 5: The Editor Strikes Back!

Friendly Correspondence: Oh my goodness, that was lovely. Heartwarming and uplifting at the same time, and you even managed to put in a cute headcannon about how Celestia's side of the fire-mail system works. Wonderful voicing of Celestia, both in her speech and in her writing. Easily one of my favorite stories of the bunch!

It Still Rises: Gosh, that's depressing. And really, really chilling. I love how the mood progressively gets darker and darker as the story goes on, which complements the reveal as it happens. Great job at gradually building up a sense of wrongness in the reader. This one's definitely my favorite out of all the darkfics so far.

Dawn Rising: I hate the fact that I'm being so harsh on virtually every warfic in all the writeoffs I've participated in, but there seems to be categorical flaws with how they can be presented as minifics. In this case, there's definitely not enough bulk here to satisfy most readers. We're never told much at all about the Kirin and why exactly they're at war with ponies. And by showing us only the very end of Twilight's imprisonment, it kind of cheapens the emotional payoff of seeing her freed. Also, there are some instances of weird word choice: "In walked a gunmetal Pegasus, his metallic fur shining in the morning light."

Last Slice: It's a shame that this story suffers so obviously from the word count. The piece kinda just rushes itself to the finish, without taking any of the usual stops along the way. A comedic tone is established and subsequently lost within paragraphs, making a big enough disconnect that the two halves of the story are very noticeably different in tone/mood. Despite this, there's some excellent Granny Smith dialogue, and a wonderfully open-ended conclusion, despite the finality of the scene. I only wish the edges were a little bit smoothed out.

A Former Student of Mine: Cheerilee feels awfully out of character in this one to me. She's definitely in a different emotional place than she was in the show, but we don't see how she got there—its like we're kind of just told to go along with it. In the end, its kind of hard to feel good about a pony being cheered up if we don't even know why they need it in the first place. There's definitely a great degree of mechanical skill in being able to express Cheerilee's moods so well, but without a contextual reason for it, I'm afraid there's not much to take away.

A Couple of Tossers: I really love how the tone of the narration remains bemusedly detached from the ridiculousness being written all over the page. And I'll have to admit that I blew an embarrassingly loud raspberry at the safety box joke. This is silliness done of silliness's sake with an apologetically so-good-yet-so-bad take on the prompt. The weakest points are when the story breaks off to describe the more uneventful throws, but it wasn't a deal-breaking distraction for me.

Hospice: This one tries to go straight for the heartstrings, with an almost brute-force weight behind its throws, but I'm not sure you can pull that kind of thing off in less than 750 words. It doesn't help that there are some voicing issues with Lily in the first scene. I might be letting personal feelings get in the way a bit, but I don't ever remember not understanding what death was, even as a kid. I always thought that was just something you picked up along the way, from playing with dead bugs and the like.

Apprentice: Telling-not-showing seems to be the biggest issue here, along with bland action descriptors. This is something that can only really be remedied through experience. I suggest reading a lot of stories with rich prose. In the world of ponyfic, my first recommendation would be "Siren Song" by GaPJaxie if you're okay with some pretty dark content. Also, on a thematic level, "Apprentice" is pretty muddy. I'm not sure what the takeaway is supposed to be. It seems to start as a set up for Rainbow Dash to learn a lesson from the more experienced Daring Do, but then Dash is proven right. Bit of a whiplash moment, which you definitely usually want to avoid in a minific like this.

Rattlers: The concept of the monsters themselves was totally creepy and mysterious, but I'm afraid that's probably the most interesting part of the story. The sacrifice felt flat, because "I'll keep them distracted!" has got to be one of the thinnest and most overused way to get a character to endanger themselves for someone else. And the pun at the end felt out of place to say the least. I'd suggest focusing the story on the rattlers themselves. If I were writing this, I'd ditch any kind of explanation except for the "steal your skin" concept. That way, the piece could play to the horror and mystery of it, and you'd have a really fun monster to play with for 750 words.

Everypony loves long sunsets: Equal parts silly and princess-cute. It may have spent just a bit too long in the set up with the Mane 6, but the payoff worked well nevertheless. I'm afraid I'll have to agree with some of the other reviewers in that Celestia feels a tad bent out of shape in this one. Her brand of humor/pranks is usually a lot more subtle, but everypony else was on the dot.

Okay, hopefully I'll be able to finish the rest of these tomorrow in one fell swoop. There will be no survivors.

Reviews 3/7

Everypony Loves Long Sunsets
Nice, cute, silly. Good characterization of everyone involved.

Rattlers
I started this thinking it was going to be a nice relaxing horror fic...and then the depravity of skeletons came out. I want my money back. That said, this fic had a couple of big problems: first, that its tone is inconsistent, and it can't decide whether it's a comedy or a heartfelt you&me against the world moment, and secondly, as far as I can tell it doesn't use the prompt at all.

Apprentice
Ahh, a nice “meeting your heroes and finding out they're not who you thought they were moment. I approve of this, especially because from what we've seen on the show, Daring would probably kick Rainbow in the behind if she ever tried to give lip. Unfortunately, the ending is very weak :-/

Hospice
A good, solid story, which handled its subject matter respectfully and well. It helps that I can actually see that particular cutie mark as a positive thing and not as a horrible curse, which must've been tough for the author to convey. That said, my only bone to pick with it is that you could have taken out the pony element out of it and it would be practically unchanged.

A Couple of Tossers
Funny. I can see this actually happening in the show, although if I were Shining I'd be more concerned about the safety of the wife than any eventual retribution.

A Former Student of Mine
Yikes. I could taste the bitterness flowing through Cheerilee. Interesting exploration about how ponies in the main cast could eventually overshadow anyone else.

Last Slice
Pretty good. You made me like Granny Smith, which is hard, since I think she's a cantankerous old hypocrite in the show. Here, however, she's near the pinnacle of how a person in her position should behave.

As with last time, here are my first impressions of the entries:

Property
The story feels like an AU. The Badlands was described as a place worse than the Everfree forest and ponies, griffons and goats were sent there to develop the land? Apparently, Big Mac was already there and was killed by the wild beasts there. I'm still not sure what's the oath is about... Overall, this doesn't feel like the Equestria we know from the show but I'm okay with that. The atmosphere is good. The omniscient narration is decent though the prose is a little difficult to get through.

Horizons
At first I thought older Twilight was seeking the advice of her younger self regarding Princess Celestia and herself, then I realized it was older Twilight and her friends traveling back in time to advise the younger Twilight. The twist is nice, with the "worries" of her old friends as a Red Herring but it was clouded by the lack of separation between the younger and older Twilight. Overall, the story feels like a snapshot of a much longer story. I hope the rest gets written, seems like it would be a pretty nice story.

MechaCelestia versus Giga Fluffle Puff
Fluffle Puff! Like the Fluffle Puff videos and comics, it is silly in an off-beat way. This could have been one of the videos easily but it doesn't quite hit the mark. I believe it can be better with some tightening of the "action" prose to make it shorter and punchier. Also, Fluffle Puff "speaking" kinds of put me off--her non-verbal communication is a big part of her charm, after all.

Caro Nome
Dem hips. Also, Adagio/Aria ship. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing that meme. You know who you are. =P Other than that, the story is short and sweet and punchline hits well. I wish the joke was stretched just a little longer though.

Why Doesn't the Sun Shine?
Shining Armor, Fancy Pants and Fleur de Lis try to raise the sun by themselves because Princess Celestia couldn't for some classified reason.

I feel the story couldn't decide whether to be a comedy or slice of life. The story setup to a comedic premise but devolves into a little bit seriousness. I feel the story could have been better if it played on the comedic bent more. And I have one lingering question: Why couldn't Luna raise the sun? Maybe the story happens before Season 1 but the time period is not made clear in the story. Overall, the story is a cute little look at a few characters (and Blueblood) and points out the need for better contingency planning in regards to raising the sun.

To Whom It May Concern
One-sided Rarilight shipping. I like the narration, a third-person limited from Rarity's perspective. The prose is distinctly Rarity, peppered with words from her vocabulary. The writer would do well to expand this for submission to fimfic after the contest is over.

A New Day
Oh, you have no idea what was going to happen there, Trixie. The rest of us knew how that went. All in all, a nice short character study of Trixie. I like it.

Touched
I think the author quite nailed the emotion and characterization of a vampire (I'm guessing vampires), the story is short and effective. The identity of the narrator was never revealed but that is not necessary as the characterization is great. I really like this a lot. The ending made me .

Rainbow Dash Can't Make Skeleton Jokes to Save Her Life
Oh noes, bone puns! D: Dat trademark though. A nice little comedy of the Mane 6 fighting skeleton pirates while mouthing off bone puns for some reason (but who cares?). Fluttershy feels OOC though. Also, the ending could be better if it ended on RD gulping rather than her running.

Kiss By Wire
Ditzy/the Doc Time Turner shipping. Ditzy feels more uptight than her canon personality and the Doc Time Turner is totally adorkable. All in all a cute little shipping story.

Virgin Green Fields
Smart Cookie meets Clover the Clever. A nice look into the mindsets of both the pre-classical era Earth ponies and unicorns. It'll be a hoot to see Smart Cookie and Clover the Clever look past their prejudices and hook up. The author should really expand on this.

Further Than Before
Rainbow Dash tries to fly over the horizon. A noble goal to aspire to but ultimately foolish. The characterization of Rainbow Dash is spot on. Overall, it feels like a first person perspective aesop.

Behind the Night
Princess Luna heads for the Nightmare Night festival in Luna Eclipsed while Celestia discuss about Luna's training to return to her duties and the reason for ascending to the throne of Equestria. The stuffs Kibitz and Celestia discussed weren't exactly new but it's nicely written and everyone is in-character, so I have no complains.

Over Horizons
The title is a play on the story's premise and that's okay. The story is a short, a little too short and I didn't feel very drawn to either Trixie or Horizon. The idea that Trixie was a rich heiress swindled by the OC is something I haven't seen before. The story is well written and does what it aimed to do.

Making a Better Nightmare
I like the setting and Bone Blossom is wonderfully fleshed (har har) out. I get the feeling that this is a crossover with something that give importance to the festival that falls on 31st October across the multiverse. All in all, nice story.

A Story Not Unlike Winona
What the Meta? ... I couldn't decide whether this story is really appropriate and/or applicable. This is too meta for me. I'm sorry but I can't decide anything on this.

The Storm
Whoa. This is surprisingly deep in just 750 words. The prose is good and the imagery is wonderful. And the hint at the end, it hits just nicely in the gut. Overall, a great story. o_o

Enlightenment
Enlightenment, how you do you reach it? Sweet Home certainly didn't get it but that's always part of the learning process, isn't it? Anyway, the story is nice, simple aesop about journey (tied to the prompt). The horizon joke near the end killed the feeling the story had going though. Seriously guys...

Story Time
Well, the story's a little weird and I'm with Apple Bloom near the ending. But the ending makes up for everything. Nice story.

Antecessor
A dying mother cares for her son. The prose is a little hard for me to get into but overall the imagery and emotion is good. It's a nice look into how Spike's egg ended up in the ponies' hooves (that's what I'm assuming). Judging by the appearance of Luna at the end, it happened quite a long time ago too.

The Infinite Blue
Scootaloo flies over an icy sea in search of land. The story is decent but the author can do better by putting in some more desperation in Scootaloo's thoughts and actions. She had been flying for 20 hours, tired and no land in sight. Supplies had ran out back on the ship. Multiple crew members were injured, many badly and wounds infected. None of them were going to last more than 3 days unless they found land. The navigator seemed to have pointed her in a wrong direction, given that she hadn't found land after 20 hours of flying.

I think the tension and conflict would be better with Scootaloo fighting back her fear and desperation and suppressing her increasingly franticness, all the while debating whether to return to the ship and face disappointment or face potential death by exhaustion.

Six
A phoenix gets caught by ponies and escapes by rebirth. The author captured the perspective of the phoenix nicely and I'm pretty much caught from the get-go. I was certainly rooting for the phoenix at the end. All in all, nice story.

Mortar
The author did a good job with the perspective, which set up the twist nicely. The writing is decent, a little heavy on the "I" but otherwise nothing much wrong with it.

In Front of You
Nice tie-in of the prompt with the spell. A bit of a Red Herring in the beginning but the title kind of spoilt the ending, not that the story isn't that subtle with Spike's parentage when Steven Magnet showed up anyway.

Today Happiness Is Just Over the Horizon
A simple story about Spike trying to find happiness after reading a fortune cookie message. Spike and Twilight are in-character and overall the story is well-written. The horizon joke at the end put a damper for me though...

Friendly Correspondence
Hmm, the story wasn't badly written but Celestia's sudden tears is a little jarring. A little more explaining of Celestia's feelings would definitely work better. Other than that, the story's decent.

It Still Rises
That ending... The writing and characterization is good though I wish the build up was a little tighter, right now I couldn't feel the tension of the impending doom right until the last quarter.

Dawn Rising
Well, the story could use some expansion. There is definitely some good things to show, especially the worldbuilding and the conflict. As of right now, it's a small part of something much larger, I hope the author do expand on this.

Last Slice
Granny Smith passes away from her perspective. The story isn't bad but there's no conflict and nothing really interesting happens until right at the end. The alicorn OC is decently characterized and I wish I could see more of her and the world of the afterlife because that would have been interesting from the perspective of such a pony as Granny.

A Former Student of Mine
At first I thought it was going to be about Twilight and Celestia but I was pleasantly surprised. A nice insight into how Cheerilee had taught the children of Ponyville. Sweetie Belle and Cheerilee are both in-character. Though I'm a little disturbed that Cheerilee had been contemplating suicide, at least that was implied right in the last line. I'm not sure if that was intentional on the author's part.

A Couple of Tossers
Amusing and totally not a vulgar title aside, the story is silly and it doesn't shy away from that. Also, poor Shining Armor, he's getting the couch for the rest of his life. Everyone's in-character and this could almost be one of the episode, if a little more silly than usual (it wouldn't be out of place in an Andy Price issue though). The story is light and fun and enjoyable.

Hospice
A cutie mark story! Also, a sad one. The ending is touching but I wish there was more emotion when Lily was observing the nurses, and more questions and the story would be so much better.

Apprentice
Formatting needs some help, especially when it doesn't follow the writeoff rule. The writing is a little telly, with a few no-nos like writing actual numbers in dialogue and some conjoined action and exposition paragraphs. The writing overall wasn't bad, just formatting issues and I wish there was better tension between Daring and RD (shown, rather than told). It's a good try for a beginning author, I'm guessing.

Rattlers
The story is well written, though I find the horror a little lacking. RD and Rarity are in-character but the tension is kind of lacking. I'm thinking a bit more action with the Rattlers would be better. The ending though, is what pulled the story up some. The last line is actually great. (And that is how you do a bone pun, RD from Rainbow Dash Can't Make Skeleton Jokes to Save Her Life.)

Everypony loves long sunsets
A cute little story. I wish the author did more with the antics of the sun and the moon, at least extend the interactions of the sun and moon longer.

Where the Sun Goes When it Sets
I'm not sure what to think of this one. On one hand the story is nicely written and the narrator decently fleshed out but I still find something lacking. Maybe it was because the narrator was given the answer instead of having realized it herself/himself.

The Slow Fall of an Unfamiliar Star
Ooooh. Sunset Shimmer just before EqG happened. It's a really nice look into her relation with Flash Sentry and her motives for the first movie's events. Though the whole thing is a little undermined by a comment from Sunset herself in Rainbow Rocks but it doesn't take away from the story when seen only from the perspective of the first movie.

Depths
The story is simple, emotive and I like it for that. The madness of Twilight gets gradually explained, which is a nice touch. I just hope there was more explanation on how Twilight got "afflicted" in the first place and the "entity" inside the maelstrom though.

The Dragon's Riddle
Nice world-building on this one. I'm not one much for riddles (I'm not good with one) so I can't really tell if the riddle portion are good. On the whole, the story is well written, with that epic feeling emanating.

Community Announcements
Welcome to Night Vale Hollow Shades. I'm not too familiar with the podcast but I think it captured the essence of the podcast decently, with its vague horror couched in announcements. My only gripe is it wasn't Fridge Horror enough.

On the Trail We Blaze
Subtle Trixie/Twilight shipping. The interactions between the two of them are great and the author can definitely expand this into a one-shot. There isn't much to the story otherwise, however.

Somewhere Beyond Us
Well, like I said last time, I'm not a big fan of Scootaorphan stories but I'm not going to complain about it. Though it's a little surprising that RD is an orphan, which makes a nice little connection between the two of them and I applaud the author for that. I wish there was a bit more emotions in the narration though.

Just Over the Horizon
Poor Angel Bunny. Between the yearning to go beyond the horizon and Fluttershy's kindness, he's stuck in between a rock and a hard place. The story is simple but effective and Angel's perspective is wonderfully crafted and narrated. I could feel his urgency, his yearning and desperation and his despair when he gives up... until tomorrow. Really good.

Chasing Your Own Tail
Sunset Shimmer tries to talk to Sonata Dusk about not being a villain and living life simply and Sonata is just... Sonata. The mention about Sunset Shimmer being in the Day court as part of her patience is a little weird (since when did Celestia's students sat in the courts anyway?) The characters feels a little off but nevertheless written reasonably okay. There isn't really much to the story, overall.

And I'm a Horizon
Okay, I just have to ask: What's with all the horizon jokes? It's getting a little distracting...

Well, this story is full of horizon puns, which wasn't so bad. The story is actually amusing though the horizons having cameras seem rather out of place (if the "video shoots" were any indications). I'm pretty sure this was written by the same author who wrote A Story Not Unlike Winona, complete with the same url tags in the narration. At least this one was surrealistic instead of full on meta like the other entry.

Rebus
This... this isn't even a story. This is beyond a trollfic. This is beyond Meta. I can't... Please... show some respect for the contest. =/

A Tale of Caution
This feels like an aesop or fairy tale rather than a pony story. The characters can be replaced by humans and nothing is changed. Also, the moral of the story feels off and is actually a little disturbing as Straw abandoned his brother Chaff to his fate with the dragon. The story is well written but the morals just doesn't fit the story.

From On High
The story feels disjointed. The first section talks about RD feeling awesome/in awe at the top of the world, then the second section has RD proclaiming it to be "nothing special" and her friends are "way cooler". It may be typical RD bravado but it just doesn't gel together for me.

Escape Plan
A future Equestria story. The bleak atmosphere is decent but a little lacking. I think the lack of tension contributed to that. The world-building is nice. The author can definitely improve it a lot by cutting down the exposition and taking a leaf out of how Virgin Green Fields build the perspective and thus the world. Equestria seem pretty well-off to be able to afford space rockets while they were claimed to be devastated. I hope the author expands on this because there is some very good world-building potential here.

Whew, that is all 49 entries. Took me far longer than I expected. I'm a little disappointed that there wasn't more horror entries, given the month.

Reviews 4/7

Dawn Rising
Feels a lot like grimdarkness for the sake of grimdarkness :-/ I couldn't get myself invested in the characters (the kirin, especially, is a blank slate of a perfect monster, and not in a good way). What this fic does well is portraying Twilight's plight–I had fun reading it. One thing that could have helped this a lot, I think, would have been going in detail as to why releasing the enemy general is such a hard thing for Celestia to do, and why she/he is scum. All in all, I think this suffered greatly from being confined to <750 words–a prologue may have helped.

It Still Rises
This was nice, although unfortunately not much happens during it, so I can't say much about it :-/ Also, I'm maddened by the ambiguity of the last line–is it an objective fact, or just there to set for mood purposes?

Friendly Correspondence
Celestia in tears over a measured response from Twilight? That feels very...out of character to me. To give a practical example, I cannot imagine an expanded version of the episode with this scene in it.

Today Happines is Just Over the Horizon
For the next writeoff, I would like to propose the rule that words from the prompt not be used in the entries themselves; I'm getting sick of seeing the word Horizon everywhere. Aside from my grumblings, I really like the fact that it's implied Twilight has been speaking to every important pony in Ponyville in her official role as a Princess. I also spluttered at the last line and its payoff. Not much to say here.

In Front of You
...okay, other reviewers have said, but...how the hell did Steven fit into the spa? Anyway, “stupid dumb badly designed butt of a spell” got a chuckle out of me, together with the fact Twilight in her frustration grabs the scroll before Spike, who's the one who's actually invested in this can read it, but I'd have liked to see Steven's role expanded–it'd be nice to see what he thinks of all this.

Mortar
Oh. A bait-and-switch in the middle of a war. I read a very, very similar sci-fi story*, and I have to say, this version is done better; it legitimately surprised me. The ending is the good kind of bittersweet, too.

*In a school textbook and everything! It was supposed to be a testament to its genre!

Six
This, I liked, and I feel it's a very strong contender. The way the actual situation is slowly revealed is done well.

Reviews 5/7

The Infinite Blue
Welp. This was done well on the technical side, and I can find no faults with it. Manages to get motivation, character and investment all at once.

Antecessor
Innnteresting heacanon and worldbuilding. I thought the child had been dead for the whole story, but this is infinitely more interesting. Good use of foreshadowing, too: “dead creature had no emotions” makes a lot more sense once one reads to the end.

Story Time
Heh. This was pretty good, although there wasn't much of a point to it. In essence, it's fluff.

Enlightenment
A good story that is crippled by its ending. The meta use in a serious story was jarring, as was the sudden tone shift from Buddhist parable to banter between friends.

The Storm
Good story, and good world building. It took me a while to figure out how the two separate story threads were connected, but once I did the story felt a lot more poignant (although I'm somewhat insulted by the idea that going to college (which is...very, very vaguely implied to be the reason for Applebloom's leaving) is like having to weather a heavy storm. Fitting, though, in some way).

A Story Not Unlike Winona
Argh! Argh! Argh! No! Don't do that! Argh! Also, this might win Most Controversial.

Making a Better Nightmare
This is how one does a good crossover. On the flipside, the three people who aren't familiar with The Nightmare Before Christmas are going to be really confused. And it gets point for creative names; even when the standard pony name is Adjective Noun, I still don't see the format being used to its full effect.

Since I've been reading reviews of it and keep seeing this mentioned, I feel like I need to openly state that I really liked Fluffle Puff 'talking'. She often seems borderline retarded in the videos, so finding out that she actually possesses deep insight into the world around her and is merely unable to express it helped make MCvGFP funnier for me.

3699934
groan

3700131
You weren't the only one who took it that way, but I think TD's analysis makes a crazy amount of sense. It'll be interesting to see what the author says afterward (inb4 author is TD :V)

I'm honestly surprised by how many people don't seem to have seen A Nightmare Before Christmas :-/

Reviews 6/7

[rant]

That's it, I'm officially beyond fed up with the word “Horizon”. This is getting real stupid, real fast. I know this is just a personal opinion, but for the next writeoff, maybe we should put an additional restriction on not explicitly using the prompt in the story?
For Frig's sake, one story in ten had “Horizon” in the title itself! And this is not counting the stories which are unrelated to the spirit of the prompt and try to get away with it by sticking “just over the horizon” in a random point of the story.

Honestly, so far the stories I've enjoyed the most have been those that didn't touch the prompt at all, or which touched it so lightly one almost didn't catch it on a first reading.

[/rant]

Over Horizons
Plausible, and Trixie and Flam probably deserve each other anyway. That said, I hated the prompt in the title, the prompt in Flam's fake name, and the prompt dropped in at the end. Not a completely bad story, though.

Behind the Night
This felt show appropriate. No, scratch that, this feels show appropriate if the show were for teenagers and could delve into slightly deeper territory. So it's IDW comics appropriate, basically :-P It doesn't have a lot to say, but it says it well.

Further than Before
Excellent interaction between Rainbow and the rest of the Mane Six. I don't think the show has done it yet, but I believe that Rarity would, indeed, understand and side with Dash at that particular level; they are very, very different people, but they do have that quality in common. That said, I'm gonna have to take off points for making Dash dumber than she is–I don't really buy her not understanding the entire concept of “Horizon”.

Virgin Green Fields.
“Virgin green fields, untouched by ponies, stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. The soil was rich and moist, but just firm enough to be perfect for plowing” for some reason, this line felt almost pornographic to me. I doubt the author intended it that way :-P Anyway, this is a good exploration in prejudice, and how it can affect the victims of it–and how the victims can then perpetuate it themselves. I wish this were expanded into a full-length story, just to see the eventual playing out of seeing Clover and Cookie understanding and appreciating each other.

Kiss By Wire
Heh. This was pretty funny. On the other hand, it relies a lot on fanon characterization, and there's not much of a point to it. Also, Turner is pretty stupid in this.

Rainbow Dash Can't Make Skeleton Jokes to Save Her Life
I wonder what this fic is about. I hope it's about Rainbow Dash trying to make skeleton jokes.
And oddly enough, I'm a bit disappointed. There was more focus on the others than on Dash. That said: Dear god...make...the puns...stop.

Touched
Now show me on the doll...
Pah. This was a mediocre vampire story, and a bad pony story. Vampires as cartoonishly evil monsters can work, but then don't try and make us empathize with them. Honestly, there's so many issues with this, and it's so bad, I'm not going to go more in depth with it unless someone asks me to.

I'm going to have to agree with 3701440's rant. "Don't directly mention the prompt" is up there with "don't use the word in the definition" in terms of what not to do with writing. Maybe it was because of the short word limit offering minimal words to dilute the prompt drops, maybe it was the short writing period and people scrambling to find workable ideas, but this was rather annoying.

The last batch of my reviews! Feels good to be typing that out.

Where the Sun Goes When it Sets: There's little more heartwarming than a lesson well learned. Great message and wonderful prose. The weakest point, however, has got to be the characters. I'm not sure who the narrator and their mentor is supposed to be, but personally it didn't even occur to me that this story could be about Twilight until I saw other people's reviews. If it is Twilight, there might need to be some work done to maintain her voice. If its not, the lack of knowing who it actually is adds what I feel is an unnecessary complication that gets in the way of fully enjoying the story.

The Slow Fall of an Unfamiliar Star: I wish Sunset Shimmer's characterization was done this well in the movie. Beautifully evocative language, and the first person narration of Sunset's emotions is exemplary. Does a great job of providing emotional context for SS's actions that just isn't there in the movie. Nice work!

Depths: I'm left very, very lost by this one. I'm honestly not sure if the author was strained by the word count or if he meant to leave things this vague. I assume she's trying to find a cure for being a draconequus? But instead of feeling satisfied at the reveal, I'm still left scratching my head. I feel like it'd take a much smarter person than I to figure this out.

The Dragon's Riddle: Brilliant. Love the myth-esque feel of this. I'm not exactly sure if "mercy" is the best literal answer to the riddle, but I think the point the author is trying to make is that it's a reflection of what the pony needs. I'm guessing that this demonstrates to Ragnarok that the humble pony (significance of names?) had an understanding of what the world needs. I'm fairly sure I'm wrong, though, so I'd love the author to clear things up after voting closes.

Community Announcements: I have a weak spot for dark comedy (loved the Cornetto Trilogy), and this didn't fail to make me laugh out loud. Never heard of Night Vale until I saw the other reviewers' comments, but now I'm nearly compelled to check it out. Nice show! Really liked the last section in particular.

On the Trail We Blaze: This could use another editing pass. I think there's a couple of times where 'Trixie' is swapped out for 'Twilight' and vice versa. Also, I'm having trouble reading these lines in the characters' voices, which makes it harder to enjoy the banter (which is rough, considering it makes up for most of the story). I just can't see ponies using semi-swear words. It gives it an almost adolescent tinge that I don't think works with the characters.

Somewhere Beyond Us: It is very, very difficult to make something enjoyable when you start with a flawed and cliched premise. I'm sorry, but in my opinion Scoota-orphan has got to be the cheapest and most over-used way to illicit "the feels" in this fandom. I'm also facing some believability issues here—I mean, who sees a crying kid, decides to take her home, and immediately jumps to the conclusion that she has no home? Personally, this ended up being fluffy with no real substance for me.

Just Over the Horizon: This has got to be the strangest take on a self-abusive relationship I've ever seen. We always assume our pets love us the way we love them, or at least aren't intelligent enough to loathe us. Nice job turning with that notion on its head. It creates a small, but noticeable shift in the way we might interpret Angel's behavior. Wonderful imagery, powerful prose.

Chasing Your Own Tail: Another Rainbow Rocks fic. Like with "Caro Nome", I'll give this one another read-through after I've actually seen the movie. As it is right now, I don't think I'm getting half of what the author is trying to say.

And I'm a Horizon: Um, there's not really that much to this one. It's just the one pun on the title, and a few variations of it. Also, the hyperlink didn't work. In the end, there's just not much about this story that worked for me. It's definitely not a waste of time to give it a read, but "mildly entertaining" is all the mileage it gets from its premise.

Rebus: Clearly, the author went and threw mechanics, pacing, and premise entirely out the window, so I'm going to wing it here and just go with how much I liked it. It's meta to an almost obscenely inappropriate level, but I'm actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's definitely not going to be winning first place any time soon (and it certainly didn't earn a 10/10 from me), but there's a dumb silliness there that has a surprising amount of enjoyability underneath the total and intentional disregard for how a story should be written.

A Tale of Caution: There's not much to connect this one to ponies. Also, I think an essential part of fairytales is that we should know who to cheer for or who is right before we see their actions take effect. In that regards, the tale is a bit muddy. Also, the language isn't quite what I'd expect from a fable. I appreciate the attempt to keep the sentences simple, but it's been a bit overshot, to the point that it feels like I'm reading a list of events. There's definitely quite a bit to enjoy about this story, but the distractions do pile up, and in the end it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.)

From On High: Loved it. Some absolutely wonderfully well-written third-person Rainbow Dash. And thank you so much for being one of the only stories not to have the word "horizon" in it. The ending is totally Dash, but with a maturity that's nice to see in her. And you managed to make one of the best new city name-puns I've ever seen. Nice work!

Escape Plan: Heavy on the info-dump, which naturally comes from trying to put so much new lore in 750 words. This would work a lot better if the author ever decides to expand on it. Interesting premise, but its hard to become emotionally connected if we're just being told how bad things are, instead of being shown discrete examples of how tough life is for Arkon.

And there you have it! I'm going to give my scores another lookover, then I'll post my top picks and averages.

3701461

I think it's also a combination of the prompt itself not being easily tractable; with "There is magic in everything" and "Famous last words" there are way to show the spirit of the prompt without mentioning it, like having someone on their deathbed speak up or having a metal armadillo suck ambient magic, showing that indeed there's magic in everything. [1]

Unfortunately, there are very, very synonyms for horizon (boundary, vista, reach, etc can work, but their shades of meaning are a tad too removed to easily get a point across, and would be clunky).

That said, that is not an excuse for the laziness I'm seeing; I'm astonished no one thought to use a circumlocution like "exceeding one's own limits" or "going beyond what the eye can see".

[1] plus magic itself is a fairly common word, and so the eye skips over it.

3701461
3701476
In fairness, these contests deliberately do not have any sort of rules for scoring. If you want to dock points based on having a weak tie-in to the prompt, for including the phrase "Just Over the Horizon" verbatim, for featuring a cameo by a certain author, or any other grounds, you're well within your rights to do so. I'm absolutely going to be penalizing fics for weak prompt tie-ins this round; if your story loses nothing by removing the one sentence about your character glancing at the horizon for no reason, and there was no other symbolic representation like Devas listed, then you didn't write to the prompt, and name-dropping it in an attempt to pull a fast one is insulting.

As for the word "horizon" itself, this gets a free pass from me, because it's the prompt's fault, not the writer's. I'm reminded of the contest from a while back Sweet Music, where 75% of the fics had this mysterious little music box playing a relevant role in the plot. True, they coulda been more creative to stand out from the pack, but the authors were simply adhering to the prompt, so the cross-fic repetition wasn't their fault.

3701476
3701500

Well, I guess the main reason is that, contrary to most prompts, Just Over the Horizon is a common phrase, something that often feels like a character would say. If it wasn't the prompt (and, thus, in the minds of readers all the time) I bet many of the places it was namedropped wouldn't feel irksome, or even be noticed.

And, in some cases, it's the proper expression to use, and using a substitute instead would sound false. Like in the fics that directly deal with the philosophical question of something that lays just beyond the horizon.

For myself, I will dock points for a name drop only if I find it inappropriate for the passage where it was dropped. For example, if a character goes out of character to mention the horizon. Which is more or less my rule about shoehorning the prompt, so I'm not really changing anything this round.

Okay, voting results!

Top five scorers were The Storm, Virgin Green Fields, Six, Friendly Correspondence, and From On High.

Average score was 4.74 out of 10, and the median was 4.5, which is considerably lower than my scores for "There is Magic in Everything", but closer to "Famous Last Words." Feel free to interpret that in anyway you want.

3701500
3701511
Oh, don't get me wrong, I didn't dock points just for using the phrase. In many cases, it was just an annoyance that didn't enter into the scoring at all, and in a few, it fit in seamlessly. I basically did the same thing as Silent Strider; when the phrase was used as a way to excuse the existence of the story, that's when I started docking points. I'm not trying to make it some grand mortal sin of writing; it just bugged me and I was commiserating with devas.

Reviews 7/7

Finally! After all these fics, I can finally see the end, just over...oh god...no...nooooo!!!

A New Day
A concept I don't remember seeing before, and yet it felt already stale. Perhaps because I figure out the whole plot a third of the way through :-/

To Whom It May Concern
The only flaw I could find is that Rarity seems deliberately obtuse; for a woman as socially savvy as herself, it beggars belief to think she wouldn't understand what Twilight was doing (especially since the only other pony she could have been referring to would have been Applejack). Thus, she's either heartless or stupid. I make all this sound much worse than it is; it was a heartwarming tragedy, and a strong contender, I think.

Why Doesn't the Sun Shine?
Man, I want more canon interactions between Shining and Blueblood. Lots of unexplored territory there. Anyway, this suffers from not going into the depth of the situation enough; the reader's left wondering what the heck happened to Celestia, and there's an odd plot hole; if Canterlot is already descending into chaos, why isn't Shining out dealing with that, perhaps leaving his subordinates (and maybe his sister, since the spell asks for immense amounts of power) to research and power the spell? Also, the idea that ponies wouldn't have contingency plans in place for a sudden absence of their Princesses is kinda absurd...if it weren't for the fact that the show makes this same mistake. *facepalm*

Dear Name
I was about to write a heartfelt compliment at capturing a torrid romance between Starscream and Megatron, when the last line completely killed any good will I had towards this story. It puts the whole thing in a mean spirited joke kind of category, and implies the only thing driving Aria is pure lust, instead of the love you made us think was breaking her heart. For shame.

MechaCelestia versus Giga Fluffle Puff
Kaiju fight between silliness. I can dig it.

Horizons
Why do Twilight's friends have to come back in time under false pretenses? Couldn't Twilight (or whoever cast the time spell) simply send back a piece of paper with “Celly like, like likes you, ya dig? Go get her, girl!

Property
Yeah, I don't get this. The only way this works is if Applejack isn't an Element of Harmony and if Celestia isn't on the throne, because I doubt sending random people to die in a dust bowl (I guess?) is something a sane government would do.

Phew! That was all of them.

First time I was able to review all the stories in a writeoff. Interesting feeling.

My final hugbox score is 4.98, which surprises me, since in all the other writeoff entries I've had a lot of trouble in giving out low scores*...maybe I'm getting more critical? Or maybe this particular batch was a bit weak.

Anyway, my favorites, AKA the ones I gave a score between eight and ten (included): To Whom It May Concern, Virgin Green Fields, Behind the Night, Making a Better Nightmare, Six, The Slow Fall Of An Unfamiliar Star, The Dragon's Riddle. Take that as you will.

*I try to go for a score of 5.00, mainly so I don't give all entries too high a score and fail to differentiate the good from the great.

3698560

Making a Better Nightmare: More skeletons? Awesome. It's sort of interesting how the "holiday worlds" seen in Nightmare Before Christmas cross over with pony holidays, but I was never that clear what "Nightmare Valley" was like. This might just be an idea that would work better as a longer fic. I'm also not sold on the idea that they don't see Halloween and Nightmare Night as being the same thing--unlike Hearth's Warming Eve, there's virtually nothing separating the human and pony versions of this holiday.

A Story Not Unlike Winona: This was funny in the "I want to punch you" sort of way. The dialogue is okay, but I think it's too meta to be seriously considered for the contest.

The Storm: The atmosphere is really well done. At first I thought it was just about how Equestria's weather system works, then it ties in Dream Valley. It's a very interesting story, but I'm not sure how (if at all) Apple Bloom leaving for... someplace... is connected. Will she only be coming back for a visit once a year or something? If that's it, I don't think a destructive storm once a year is too similar to seeing your family once a year.

Enlightenment: Pretty generic and cliché "wise sensei" archetype. The awful pun at the end came out of nowhere. There's quite a few "shaggy dog" stories in this write-off that end with awful puns, but this was one of the weaker and more groan-worthy ones.

Story Time: You probably could have used some kind of formatting to set apart different speakers as they interrupt the story. Otherwise it was hard to tell them apart. I know you intended for the story to fall apart at the end, since Granny tends to be that way, but I almost wish the end of the story had been even more odd and anticlimactic, with an even more confused moral.

Antecessor: Good visual description with a very somber tone. I think I was able to catch on that they were bat ponies (I think) once the fruit was mentioned. The ending was still really confusing. I don't know what the "indigo light" was, but I assume the alicorn was Luna. You have to be careful when writing an intentionally vague story like this so that we actually know just enough about what's going on and how to feel at the end.

The Infinite Blue: I expected this to be a more standard adventure story, especially since Daring Do is involved, but it quickly turned a lot more graphic than I expected. The most important parts of this story are in flashbacks, and when you have a tight word limit it's hard to give them the attention they need. There's a few good moments of description, but a lot of it feels like exposition (which I'm guessing was to fit within the word limit).

3701374
Alas, Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993. It predates a significant chunk of the fandom. I was a teenager at the time I'M NOT GETTING OLD, YOU HUSH, GET OFF MY LAWN

3701440

“Virgin green fields, untouched by ponies, stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. The soil was rich and moist, but just firm enough to be perfect for plowing” for some reason, this line felt almost pornographic to me. I doubt the author intended it that way :-P

Are you suggesting that they were writing a crop-fic?

Anyway, this is a good exploration in prejudice, and how it can affect the victims of it–and how the victims can then perpetuate it themselves. I wish this were expanded into a full-length story, just to see the eventual playing out of seeing Clover and Cookie understanding and appreciating each other.

Time to set sail on the S.S. CookieClover.

3701440
3701461
3701500
I don't really mind title drops at all, and I never was frustrated by them.

But I'm kind of a sucker for that sort of thing.

Also, a number of stories didn't drop the whole thing; some left out the "just", and some just used the word "horizon".

I dunno. I wasn't upset.

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Also, the idea that ponies wouldn't have contingency plans in place for a sudden absence of their Princesses is kinda absurd...if it weren't for the fact that the show makes this same mistake. *facepalm*

In all fairness, when the leader of your civilization is an immortal, I can see why people might not think about the idea that she wouldn't be there.

Why do Twilight's friends have to come back in time under false pretenses? Couldn't Twilight (or whoever cast the time spell) simply send back a piece of paper with “Celly like, like likes you, ya dig? Go get her, girl!

Man, are you an Ozy and Millie fan? Because I've always been terribly amused with "like, like likes". It is rare that we in English get to repeat the same word three times in a row. Probably why the buffalo sentences always amuses me.

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Enlightenment: Pretty generic and cliché "wise sensei" archetype. The awful pun at the end came out of nowhere. There's quite a few "shaggy dog" stories in this write-off that end with awful puns, but this was one of the weaker and more groan-worthy ones.

The problem I had with this one was that it didn't make up its mind about what it wanted to be; I'm good with a story about ice cream koans, and I'm good with an actual koan, but this didn't seem to know which it was.

Antecessor: Good visual description with a very somber tone. I think I was able to catch on that they were bat ponies (I think) once the fruit was mentioned. The ending was still really confusing. I don't know what the "indigo light" was, but I assume the alicorn was Luna. You have to be careful when writing an intentionally vague story like this so that we actually know just enough about what's going on and how to feel at the end.

Jason, you misunderstood. They're dragons. The egg was Spike's egg. It even says "dragon egg" at the end.

The Storm: The atmosphere is really well done. At first I thought it was just about how Equestria's weather system works, then it ties in Dream Valley. It's a very interesting story, but I'm not sure how (if at all) Apple Bloom leaving for... someplace... is connected. Will she only be coming back for a visit once a year or something? If that's it, I don't think a destructive storm once a year is too similar to seeing your family once a year.

I think the point was more that new experiences make you grow as a person, even if they do make you uncomfortable.

REVIEWS, PART 2 OF 2

I see … the front 25 is where all of the horrible me jokes were.

For extra whimsy, I'm adding "Cameo analysis" of all stories featuring me as a character. The CA score has nothing to do with how I rated the story; it's just a silly little arbitrary number about how well I was used.

Part 1: 3696611

25. Today Happiness Is Just Over the Horizon
HORIZON FANSERVICE COUNT: 2
Core here is nice show-style Slice of Life. Good conservation of detail. Dragged down by prompt-as-punchline; simply not funny but at least integrated thoughtfully.
Cameo analysis: Withholding my name until the final line creates confusion with Savoir Fare (misspelled btw) and makes my scene confusing. But I've got a meeting with a princess, and I guess there's some depth to the use of The One Pun. 4/10

24. In Front of You
"The Horizon Effect" is brilliant prompt interpretation. Turning it into a flat joke … not so much. Points for dragon headcanon but execution ultimately feels disjoint. More seriously, your story is utterly ruined by bizarre physics-breaking worldbuilding: what's this about Ponyville having a spa?

23. Mortar
Swords and mortars? Anachronism really hurts you here. Why so coy about protag.'s race? Hard to get invested; need more exposition to justify non-pony grimness.

22. Six
Framing device invests simple (potentially cliché) story with real emotion. Strong unusual viewpoint. Says a lot w/o exposition; fine use of word limit. Well done.

21. The Infinite Blue
Compelling (if dark) idea, but all the action's in exposition. Captures a mood well, at least. (MINI-LIMIT BREAK: As a longer story, this would work much better if you told the whole thing as it was happening rather than as a flashback; there would be some tense adventure drama in the storm and their survival decisions. However, if you expanded it that way, you wouldn't be able to capture the same atmosphere of the bleak endless moment of flight; you'd have to tell the complete story from disaster to rescue (or death). So I'm ambivalent in saying this needs to be longer: it would be interesting that way, but it would be a different story.)

20. Antecessor
LIMIT BREAK, gotta unpack this one:
All through the story, I thought the child's (repeated and heavily emphasized) silence was implying that he was dead (reinforced by mom's wounds and dad's death), and that this was a tragedy of a mother in deep denial, trying to "save her son's life" all for nothing. The ending recontextualized that — I guess the kid was a dragon's egg the whole time? — but in a way that left me with more questions than answers. Apparently dragons self-immolate upon death or something? That's not at all common in dragon mythology, and MLP canon has given us a different race that does do that: phoenixes. But that doesn't seem to be the case here, since mom stays dead. Then there's the alicorn's arrival. From the color, it sounds like Luna? But the only dragon/alicorn relationship we know in canon is Celestia having Spike's egg, and this story's timeline puts it back in the Discord era, so I can't place the alicorn or their importance. The title suggests maybe it's an ancestor of Spike's, but there's no textual clue to support that. Basically, there are way too many missing pieces here for me to be anything near satisfied with the ending twist (although the inversion of the repeated line is effective). In the absence of editing to clarify that, and a lot of extra words to bake that full context in, the tragedy I thought I was reading might have made a more compelling story within the wordcount limit, though I don't know if you'd have been able to recontextualize the silence as effectively.
Wait. Waaaaaaaiiiiiit … is Discord the father who wouldn't have approved of the second home? … no, no he's not, because dad's "dead" now, not stone; and because "the draconequus had nearly driven her insane" and her husband helped protect her from that. Mmmf. Back to square one again.

19. Story Time
Nice bedtime-story feel but interjections confusing. (More missing italics?) Dragon's faceclaw too modern/human/4th-wall-breaky. Overall, entertaining.

18. Enlightenment
HORIZON FANSERVICE COUNT: 3
Stereotypes uncomfortably thick, but quite evocative of kung-fu films. Glad it didn't build to "Long Wok Home" pun. Double prompt interpretation yay!, but first feels overexplained.
Cameo analysis: Big points for resolving the plot and interpreting the prompt before my cameo even began: that gave my appearance the feel of a post-credits movie scene, making it feel like a bonus rather than shoehorning it in. There's a single quick inside-joke gag line, and then The One Pun is implied rather than named, and the closing punchline has nothing to do with the prompt; not to mention someone's been reading my poetry. This, folks, is how to sell the same joke everyone else is telling. 10/10

17. The Storm
Stormwatching, worldbuilding and characters feel very true-to-life. I'm just going to use the rest of my 140 chars telling you how good it is.

16. A Story Not Unlike Winona
HORIZON FANSERVICE COUNT: 4
Metacommentary on writeoff, but no actual commentary—we all know how it works already. That leaves it too thin. Occasional color + end joke aren't enough to carry it.
Cameo analysis: The story's likely to fulfill its prediction of near-last place, but someone's done their research — the Changéling reference is authentic yet obscure Horizonalia, and it's always nice to see my trollfic name-dropped. The One Pun refers to writeoff score rankings, which means you beat me to the joke, darn it. D: On second thought, I'll add a bonus Cameo Point for that, since that will stop me from cracking a joke that was too obvious for anyone to appreciate. Thanks for taking the fall for me. 7/10

15. Making a Better Nightmare
Props for Nightmare Before Xmas x-over, but asks too much familiarity to stand alone in short wordcount. Who is protagonist? Characters need more compelling connection.

14. Over Horizons
Interesting: "Horizon" but not a cameo. (I'm glad—Flim earned that kick.) Amazing how much difference "Casablanca" opener made. Good character use.

13. Behind the Night
OMGWTF 0/10 KIBITZ BUT NO TIBBLES!!1! (I kid.) Nice detailed look behind Luna Eclipsed, but feels too … analytical? No, exposition-y. Shame it's so dry; it makes good points.

12. Further than Before
This won't end well. Nice RD voice, though if it is a Rarity prank, that's got uncomfortable implications. Simple story, but what's there is good.

11. Virgin Green Fields
Ouch. Suddenly, a biting look at casual racism. The contrast tells the story without lecturing; good build-up of sympathy, nicely paced. Well done.

10. Kiss By Wire
Would be better with more words/context around the romance, since this jumps straight to payoff scene—but I'm impressed regardless. Inventive enough to be sweet-not-sappy. Nice!

9. Rainbow Dash Can't Make Skeleton Jokes to Save Her Life
This exists only for the puns. (Mini-limit break: And for the alliteration, but those don't add to the humor: don't confuse clever with amusing. The essence of humor is subverted expectations. A pun is a word used in an unexpected (technically incorrect) context, which creates cognitive dissonance that has to be resolved by connecting its auditory meaning with its contextual meaning. A string of alliterative words doesn't use them in unexpected (incorrect) ways, maybe unless you drag it out to the length of V's monologue in V For Vendetta and subvert the expectation that you can't construct sentences for that long without breaking your streak.) Puns are, alas, mostly meh. (Tibia one was great, but transformation was unneeded and belabored the joke.) "Wurst"? I don't get it. Dash's complete inability was worth a smile, but this needed to offer some real groaners in contrast, and didn't.

8. Touched
Vampire hunter x-over. Backstory feels generic (and non-pony), but oddly compelling nonetheless. (Seriously, this is about as original in its genre as Orphanloo is in pony, but the prose is captivating.)

7. A New Day
Subtle tragedy; makes sense as backstory. (Nitpick: Ponies don't "bray", only donkeys/mules—threw me off of reveal in unfair way, but not gonna penalize over single word.) Quite good overall.

6. To Whom It May Concern
Proper heartbreaking. Rarity's cluelessness stretches credulity—but at same time, that feels like it puts us in Twi's horseshoes & emphasizes overall tone of cruel unrequited desire she's struggling to be at peace with. Meta aligns remarkably well with narrative. The more I think about this one, the more I like it.

5. Why Doesn't The Sun Shine?
Interesting premise, but I'm struggling to spot you Fancy/Fleur as powers behind throne. Could just be that Shiny feels remarkably passive for his station. That said, oddly disappointing that they had no ultimate effect.

4. Caro Nome
I've mellowed about trollfics—I liked some this round!—but bait-and-switch still a dealbreaker for me. This throws away nice buildup for memeish one-liner. Sigh.

3. MechaCelestia versus Giga Fluffle Puff
Title made me laugh! Story…not ludicrous enough, honestly. Calling "Pfftbbl pffblt!" attack is great: level of crackfic to aim for here. Generic Gojira action scenes not nearly as fun as the parodic romp you sporadically pull off.

2. Horizons
Confused until time loop revelation came out, but satisfied on reread: that ties it together remarkably well. Feels authentic to characters. Nice! Nitpick: Kill "Twah" with fire.

1. Property
Opens purple: "Backdrop of dust and death" (yikes). Awfully ambiguous about choice vs. oath (letter unneeded if it's a commitment). Train imagery vivid. Feels prologuey.

My top five, in order:
The Storm
To Whom It May Concern
Six
Community Announcements
Virgin Green Fields
(with several honorizonable mentions just missing the cut)

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That's why we feel old.

Anyway, more reviews between coding pages at work!

To Whom It May Concern: Rarity helps Twilight pen a love letter to an unspecified recipient. Hmmm...the set up is pretty open, leaving the shipping specifics to imagination of the reader. You could supply any twi/slash you want and it fits which is kinda nifty. Props.

The only bit that threw me was the part at the end where it's revealed that Rarity is in a one-sided/loveless marriage with Blueblood of all ponies. That's just cruel. Rainbow's whispered aside during her exchange with Rares implies that the letter was supposed to be for Rarity, which adds some subtext to the previous scene, but then also destroys that open-endedness to the shipping. The writing is pretty solid though so I can't fault the author there.

I'll do more when I get home.

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Re the "just over the horizon" title drops:

One benefit of not spending my week typing out reviews is that I can geek out over complaints like this! I went back through, story by story, and compiled statistics on prompt-dropping …

… and my conclusion is, none of us gets off easy.

Total number of stories: 49

Stories that include the exact four words "just over the horizon": 18 (that's over 1/3…)
+Stories that include the words "Over the horizon": 5
+Stories that include close variants*: 17
= 40.
Stories that legitimately avoid a prompt namedrop: 9
(6, 20, 21, 22, 29, 30, 34, 44, 47)

When we're complaining about text in literally 80% of submissions (including mine; and yes, I agree that prompt-drops were overused), what this means is that all of us need to laugh self-consciously and recognize how we failed. This isn't bad apples spoiling the barrel; this is harvesting a week late.

I'd like to gently suggest that this is a failure of the prompt rather than a failure of our writing (and, yes, I voted for the prompt too; I'm not deflecting blame here). A good prompt is an ambiguous prompt. It's ambiguous in emphasis (is "Long Way Home" about distance? about choice [long vs short]? about the journey? etc). It's ambiguous in degree (around the block or spanning worlds?). It's ambiguous in language (what does "home" mean?).

This prompt strikes me as all about specificity. "Just" over is much more specific than "over". A "horizon" is a very specific word: it's a boundary, but an explicitly geographical one, in a way that "just over the line" isn't. It defines a specific distance: that which is at the edge of our vision. A horizon specifically evokes earth and sky, pushing us at weather and sunrise/sunset. Authors stretched that geographical boundary to mean time as well as space, but everyone was pinned into some really specific patterns.

In the past I haven't voted for a prompt unless I could immediately come up with two very different interpretations of it — because if I'm having trouble pushing its boundaries, other authors will too. I ignored that principle here, and in hindsight I regret it. I admit it, I got sucked into the whimsy of the name-drop, but "horizon" is a terrible prompt word and that "just" was a killer.

Next time we'll have to vote for the prompt "Present Perfect" instead.

--
* Examples: Three "($SUN) ($VERBS) the horizon"s; four "($CHARACTER) ($LOOKS) ($PREPOSITION) the horizon"s; three "Just over ($DISTANT_LOCATION)"s; etc.

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I think I once submitted "the perfect present" at another write off :-P

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Point taken and humbly withdrawn.

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Actually, I voted for it because I immediately thought about two meanings: the figurative (roughly expressed as just out of reach) and the literal (beyond the literal horizon). And I found a few others after it was selected. I didn't find the prompt limited.

I also don't see name dropping as related to the prompt being limited. I see it as more a factor of either the prompt being easy to include, or else something subtle, that writers were afraid readers wouldn't get.

As a mental exercise, imagine the prompt was "Let's Go". Now imagine the percentage of fics that would name drop the prompt

Next time we'll have to vote for the prompt "Present Perfect" instead.

We could always propose something like "A Perfect Present", and then trick PP into unwittingly giving permission for writers to include him in the stories

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I posited this on my blog, but I'm guessing the reason so many writers name-dropped the prompt is because, in the last few writeoffs, several reviewers have been pretty aggressive in identifying stories that didn't sufficiently utilize the prompt; I'll bet that at least some of the name-dropping is people going "oh heck, what if the (other) reviewers think it's too subtle?," and then going off the other direction with it.

Personally, I think the prompt should be seen as a prompt: a starting point, a source of inspiration. I can count on one hand the number of stories I've read in these writeoffs and afterword shrugged and said "I don't see any connection whatsoever," and still have plenty of fingers left over, and that's the level a story has to be at for me.

That said, how strong prompt usage should be is another of those "up to the individual voter" things, like scoring itself is. I just see the spate of "just over the horizon"s as a natural reaction to the comments stories have been getting. It's a call-and-response dance between writers and reviewers, and now that everyone's complaining about the name-dropping, I predict it goes away next time around.

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I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've always chalked it up to having been in writing contests where directly referencing the prompt was a big no-no, but at least I'm not alone now. :D

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Unfortunately, the opposite is everyone going "I don't see what this has to do with the prompt!" Which, personally, I never give a damn, though I'll praise exceptional prompt usage when I see it.

It also doesn't help that there's no real synonym for 'horizon'. :B

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no stop D:

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We could always propose something like "A Perfect Present", and then trick PP into unwittingly giving permission for writers to include him in the stories

THIS IS NOT A THING THAT WILL HAPPEN

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Time to set sail on the S.S. CookieClover.

I'm sailing it so hard.

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We all failed as authors. Well, 80% of us anyway.

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... several reviewers have been pretty aggressive in identifying stories that didn't sufficiently utilize the prompt; ...

I thought that was only me? For the record though, I did not dock points for "not following the prompt".

EDIT: Welp, for my Top 5 (not in any particular order):
- Virgin Green Fields
- The Storm
- Making a Better Nightmare
- Six
- Just Over the Horizon

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Savoir Faire (misspelled btw)

Actually, no. Hasbro apparently likes to mangle French when creating fancy names (or perhaps they get AJ to write them down ), so his name is truly Savoir Fare. The same thing happens with Fleur Dis Lee and Flaire De Mare.

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I've heard "Fleur Dis Lee" was actually a copyright/trademark issue with "Fleur de Lis".

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There must be something else, otherwise they would have done like hey did with Winona and Opalescence (and every mane 6 apart from Applejack): find a different name that is not yet taken.

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What? But —

…

whaaaaaaaaat.

HAAAAAASBROOOOOOOOOO

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Apparently, the "Fleur Dis Lee" was given by the Gameloft game, I checked. Still can't find the issue with "Fleur de Lis", though. =s

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Trademarked names (as is the case with Fleur Dis Lee) are vetted by Hasbro, as far as I know. So, even if it was Gameloft that created her name, Hasbro was still consulted about it. And I would have to dig the interview, but I kinda remember someone at IDW saying that Hasbro takes a look and authorizes any new pony character (in case they like it enough to turn it into a toy, apparently).

No, I don't know what got into them to mangle French so badly it's painfully apparent even without knowing the language. I would pledge temporary insanity if I was them

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I warned you about trying to write short reviews bro. It keeps happening.

The Infinite Blue - Another one of those fics that I’m just torn on. The bit at the very end, I love, with the despair and the endless blue and the inability to keep going for much longer. Very reminiscent of stories about botched space travel where they’re running out of food/oxygen. So, ending? Great. But I have issue with most of what gets us there. Telling the whole story via flashback detaches us from the action, so it feels less visceral. A.K. Yearling as the plot hook seemed unnecessary, but I guess she was as good as anything. This is just a personal thing, but I’m a bit squeamish about bad things like dismemberment happening to ponies (not that I’d dock points; I just don’t like it). Scoots is canonically a weak flyer at best, even with the implied timeskip. Yet you’re throwing her on thirty hours of flying, therefore no sleep, after being starved and dehydrated, 50% more than her longest flight to date, no ability to rest or glide, and in general making the conditions perfectly unoptimal. Yet somehow her performance is jaw-dropping (if ultimately futile). Yeah, not buying it. She’d drop like a rock after five hours tops, and yet that wouldn’t make the story any less gripping. Dunno. The more I think, I wonder if the backstory really adds much. I’m reminded of an entry from an earlier contest. If you read that (Ch1 at least) there’s a mention of the princesses which plays an important role in the plot, but it’s kept super vague and brushed aside in only a single paragraph. Partially that’s due to what the nature of what happens (no spoilers) and partly because it’s not the princesses’ story—it’s Twilight’s. In the same way, I wonder if your fic would benefit from less RD & crew, and more Scoots.

Six - Currently listening to irrelevent music. Well that pays off really nicely, both from the literal and symbolic meanings in the story. I had a huge grin on my face at the last word of the story. The story also does a nice job at slowly unfurling the narrative, dropping additional hints each paragraph. I’m confused about the bit with the memories though. Presumably this is her life flashing before her eyes, but why could she not remember any of it until that moment? Shouldn’t she be able to remember her life prior to being in the box, without her needing a death-flashback? It wasn’t that long ago, right? I mean, if she was kept in the box which apparently was never opened, wouldn’t she have died in just a few days from hunger and thirst? Even bits like the line to Sparky… The amnesia just feels a bit contrived.

Mortar - MFW warfic. Again, not gonna dock points for matters of personal taste, but I just don’t see ponies and diamond dogs coming to blows in such a manner… But I understand the genre has its appeal so, so be it. The subversion of the narrator’s race did put a clever twist on things, and it had nice foreshadowing, such as his ability to cover his nose and run at the same time. The… for lack of a better word, I’ll simply say “quality” of the narration seemed really hit or miss to me. We’ve got great lines like the “body is a raging inferno” metaphor, immediately followed by something clunky like “In the distance, oh yes, very, very far away, I could see it.” It just gives me the sense that the author could do better here, maybe with more time to rewrite. If I pretend these aren’t pretty ponies getting pulverized, this piece does do a good job at painting the bleakness of war, with its omnipresent death around the narrator, and the mortar-fireball karma representing the countless lives being swapped tit-for-tat like chess pieces… I’d just really rather brush them than make them go to war.

In Front of You - Just a few paragraphs in, I immediately have a love-hate relationship with magical intelligence. On the one hand, the author is probably a programmer, and this is just computer AI tossed slapdash into Equestria with the prefix “magical”. On the other hand, the idea of casting a spell that creates a temporary purpose-built AI (in the computer science meaning, not the Hollywood meaning) is a really cool concept and I feel like that could be a crazy-awesome addition to an adventure fic. I think what rubs me the wrong way about the concept is that, like computer AI, you’re treating the magic with the same cold, unthinking logic of a computer. In most fantasy settings, magic can have rules but the mechanics aren’t explained in detail, to preserve the mysticism. Anyway, enough on that. There’s a bit of weirdness with paragraphs. Like, paragraphs 4, 5, and 6 are all Spike, so I don’t understand why it’s not all one paragraph. Oh… man… I can’t believe this fic is going in this direction, and moreover, I can’t believe I haven’t seen it more often in fics. Well… okay, hmm. In this case, my entire rant about magical AI was irrelevant because the spell really isn’t an important detail, as rather, it is merely a lampshade that “magic can’t fix this.” For all of his importance to the plot, Steven only gets a single line of dialog, and is mostly just narrated while the camera focuses on Twilight. There’s enough strong hints in the narration—color, mustache, immediately hitting it off—that Twilight could reasonably suspect the possibility, even if she has no proof. This could make for a more interesting investigation, rather than Celestia Ex Machina. And while the reveal is an amusing enough headcanon, it gets deliberately foreshadowed throughout the entire second scene, so the final line lacks any real oomph because the reader saw it coming. The premise of this fic is a good idea; I just feel that you could play with the idea in a different way.

Today Happiness Is Just Over the Horizon - Spike taking a fortune cookie as a legitimate prediction is adorable. Whoa, an actual interrobang character… you almost never see those. *groan* Okay, I know I’m being unfair, saying that the koan fic including a Horizon cameo was funny whereas this Horizon cameo kinda-sorta ruined the ending. But with Enlightenment, this was at least playing with the formula of one of these master/student fics. In this fic, you could have dropped the cameo and you’d still have a very sweet story about Spike searching for happiness in the wrong places when in reality, happiness is spending time with ponies who care about you, etc. The Horizon cameo was tacked on purely for prompt relevance, spoils the little Twilight-Spike bonding moment, and thus it just angers me a fair amount :V Also, you’re right at the word cap so there’s not much you can do about it, but some of these scenes (like the West scene) just feel really anemic. I guess there’s no strong narrative reason that the scene needs stretching out, but… Compare and contrast merging all of those scenes together, with Spike giving Twi a single, sullen rant about how he tried all four directions and found nothing. Given the word-count limit, I feel like this format might work better.

Friendly Correspondence - Okay, in a rare display of restraint, I’ma remove my shipping goggles for one minute (ONE. MINUTE.) to talk about what’s going on here. Magical Mystery Cure, Twi’s coronation, Celestia introduces her. “Fillies and gentlecolts, may I present for the very first time…” And right there, there’s that little warble in her voice, because you can just tell how ridiculously proud of Twilight she is. She’s been watching and teaching and pushing for years, and arguably that victory hits her emotionally just as strong as it hits Twi. Yet, on stage, she has to preserve the facade, so the warble is all we get, yet it speaks volumes. This fic definitely hits the same vein for me. What it loses in the brilliant subtlety of the voice warble, it makes up for with an outpouring of unrestrained joy and love that Celestia never gets the chance to display in canon. So, all the dawws. Seriously, all of them. Now, writing a letter worked; I’m happy with the results. But in the name of constructive feedback, notice that even with how moved to tears Celestia is, the letter-inside-the-story feels very composed and thought-through, whereas the Celestia outside of the letter is riding high on emotion, a teary-eyed mess. Compare the idea of having Celestia confide her feelings to Philomena instead. The thoughts would be more jumbled and rambling, but would also speak more directly from the heart. Of course, this is a pro/con sort of thing, so keeping the letter format is by no means a bad choice. All in all, I love this. *checks his watch* Okay, that was a minute. Time to reward my good behavior with a Derpibooru binge.

It Still Rises - Twilight didn’t need to turn to open the door, and she also didn't need to turn to the door… to see who was standing in the door? Mmm. The problem I’m having here is that this does seem like a good story, but I can’t help but be reminded of a very similar fic from a prior write-off. I’m trying really hard to judge this thing on its own merit, without inviting comparison between the two. I do like this kind of premise, where there’s a bleak hopelessness and the author helps us empathize with that feeling. I think I’d quip that you tipped your hand a bit early. There’s building foreshadowing, sure, but right around the point of soldiers wanting to spend time with their families—around half-way through—it’s apparent that we’re in some sort of bleak doomsday fic since there’s not many other plausible reasons for soldiers to abandon duty to spend (fleeting) time with family. The remainder of the fic, then, just explains the specifics of the impending apocalypse, but arguably those details are much less relevant than Twilight’s reactions and feelings. To that point, I’m not 100% sold on why she’s resigned herself. Raising the sun/moon are exhausting, and the princesses both presumably failed, so absolutely the outcome is bleak, but part of me wonders why she would rather stay in Canterlot preserving status quo rather than making a heroic last stand with the Elements. Issues aside, this is still a very enjoyable fic.

Dawn Rising - Yadda yadda, I don’t like things like horn rot, whatev. I like an aspect of this fic, namely that reunion of Celestia and Twilight. Between the former sacrificing something great, and the latter losing all hope but having it all return in that one sight, it was a very sweet moment. Buuut… Exchanging Twi for the general carries a logical understanding that this was a terrible sacrifice, but we don’t get to see the repercussions of that POW release, so all we can do is speculate. We see enough of this second empire, and the tense negotiations, enough to understand what’s going on and to serve the narrative, but nowhere close enough to be sated. The whole fic has enough that the story works but it sort of begs to be part of a bigger story. Since the former is true, I suppose this does indeed get a good score, but because of the latter, I feel a touched dissatisfied.

Last Slice - Mmm… this touches on some interesting ideas. I do like the idea of taking a very pony, episodic-style look at death. And conceptually, the idea that Big Mac is sad but nopony is shown grieving, and indeed that Granny just hops into bed and then “wakes up” like it’s the most natural thing into the world, feels like a very healthy view on death. At the same time, this just moves sooo fast. She ribs Big Mac to go make a great-grandfoal, then says she’ll die soon, then “lol, no srsly, Soon™”, then she get in bed so she can ded, then she ded. I mean, I’m being a little facetious there, but I legitimately was bracing for a full-on comedy fic, the way that this was being so irreverent. I know that this transition moment was supposed to be the focus of the fic, so I’m resisting temptation to ask to see the Granny and Death Adventures at the end of the fic. But if the transition moment is the focus of the fic, it then feels a bit weird to sprint through it all.

A Former Student of Mine - Expected Celestia, pleasantly surprised to get Cheerilee instead. Mmm… Seriously, I’m doing this way too much in these reviews, but this just puts me off a bit too much. Cheerilee being out of touch with Sweetie Belle’s music, causing a conflict as she’s happy for the mare but actively dislikes what she’s making of her life… yes absolutely. There’s good tension in there, and we see a bit of it. But what the hell happened to Cheerilee? “What good would that do? Basic math, reading… anypony can do that. You don’t need me.” That just does not sound like how I’d picture her at all. Heck, this is closer to Discorded Cheerilee in my mind. Even if we’re presupposing that all of her old students are doing misunderstood things like being pop stars, it’s a pretty far leap to be so far jaded that you view your life’s work as a failure. She’s at least see that ponies in town are happy, or have hope for the future generation, yeah? Sure, that’s what Sweetie’s visit helped to reestablish, but I’m just unsure how Cheerilee fell this far in the first place. Also, while I understand that magnet hooves are a thing in the show, hiding a bottle of pills in a “clenched hoof” stretches the anatomy a bit far. It sounds like she’s just moping in a chair all day anyway, so you could hide the pill bottle nestled in her blanket, or something.

3703506
Given that most of these are from third parties rather than Hasbro itself...

3702661

When we're complaining about text in literally 80% of submissions (including mine; and yes, I agree that prompt-drops were overused), what this means is that all of us need to laugh self-consciously and recognize how we failed. This isn't bad apples spoiling the barrel; this is harvesting a week late.

I disagree very, very strongly with the idea that this is a bad thing. This isn't actually a problem.

I'd like to gently suggest that this is a failure of the prompt rather than a failure of our writing (and, yes, I voted for the prompt too; I'm not deflecting blame here). A good prompt is an ambiguous prompt. It's ambiguous in emphasis (is "Long Way Home" about distance? about choice [long vs short]? about the journey? etc). It's ambiguous in degree (around the block or spanning worlds?). It's ambiguous in language (what does "home" mean?).

The prompt lent itself towards such. It is just something worth keeping in mind, when we pick out future prompts, that some prompts are likely to wind up with them in the story. "Just Over The Horizon" really only has two meanings; either something which is about to come to pass (i.e. figurtively just over the horizon), or something which is literally just over the horizon. The latter meaning is almost invariably going to involve something related to the prompt. Yes, you can use it in another sense, but it is pretty forced or outright obscure (I do have to give the person kudos for talking about horizons in computing, though it feels weird because, unfortunately, spells as programs is odd).

This is true of any prompt which is highly likely to be taken literally, and which is about a physical object in the world. So if you don't like it, don't suggest anything where it is most likely to be used as a real-world noun.

EDIT: THis post formerly had material from a post for the OTHER thread in it. Whoops. Sorry.

3704057
Actually, I don't see the prompt as limited.

Horizon can be the point at which ground (or water) and sky appear to meet, but it can also mean the limit of a person's perception, experience, or interest, as in the expression "broaden my horizons". It can also be extrapolated to one's sphere of influence. That limit can be in either time or space. And that before you get to the joke of using a character named Horizon.

Just Over can be interpreted as just beyond, at the exact limit, above, atop, etc. It also does not give an indication of movement; you could have something that is about to cross over the horizon and approach the characters, you could have the characters sending something over the horizon, you could have something that the characters know is just over the horizon but they don't try (or dare) to approach, and so on.

Heck, the separation between Equestria and the world of Equestria Girls can be seen as an horizon, and so the opposite world can be described as just beyond the horizon. Thus, at least the first Equestria Girls movie actually fits the prompt (I didn't see the second one yet).

(And I'm surprised we didn't get a fic involving a black hole.)

I do agree that many stories never went beyond those two interpretations you gave, but those were far from the only possible ones.