3885352 Aww. I didn't get to write anything?

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3885697
24 – Time Off
The "out of place" doesn't really bug me a whole lot. He's not dealing with bureaucracy here, but he's still working in a role involving the princesses, so it isn't an awful fit. I spent a lot of time trying to square up his role here in my head and find out if I could suspend disbelief, and I came to the conclusion that I could buy Dotted playing something of a mentoring role with Twilight (who's probably the most administratively inclined / gifted of the princesses, anyway), and that the familiarity he shows with her might not be totally weird. But even then, there were spots where I felt like he just showed too much familiarity, to the point that I couldn't accept.

Admittedly, I probably get exposed to Dotted more than most people because I've kind of got a Batphone for GhostOfHeraclitus and he sometimes prattles wisely instructs me about Dotted's personality. But Dotted as I've come to think of him is very hands-off with Celestia and Luna, because they're essentially religious figures to him (just ones that he actually has to work with, from day to day). If you've ever seen "The West Wing", I think he treats them like everyone on that show treats President Bartlett—they like him, they admire him, they may occasionally disagree with him, but they will never show anything approaching even a hint of disrespect to him. They can't be friends with him. And similarly, I feel like Dotted can't be IC and be friends with Celestia or Luna, or fail to show them proper respect. I think I could see him being a little more that way with Twilight, if it were understood that they'd gotten to know one another, because Twilight is the Princess of Friendship and all. But between Dotted and Luna, or Dotted and Celestia, I envision a wall that really limits the amount of snark or second-guessing he'd be willing to engage in. Possibly a very little, but never enough for somepony to call him out on it. At least that's my feeling.

3885190
I've caught myself abusing 'moment' many times, and many more are likely to follow. The particular case I mentioned (100k manuscript) was the word 'but'. Yes, there were too many 'buts' in my novel. Sigh.

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What We Audited
What we wanted to do, including all the lists and transcripts the CMC collected.

3885925
So that's what they call high school dances nowadays? Makes sense.

3885352
I wrote Dirty Prancing? HOW DID YOU KNOW!? *claims credit*

Since I haven't read any of you guys, and don't know anything about any of you, I just took the advice given and guess Cold in Gardez for all of them. Well, that's not true. There were about half dozen I guessed one of the self-professed new-comers.

>> horizon 3880570 3880610 3880931 3880966
OO OO! This is fun! My turn!

Terror Vault - After a thousand years, Luna's giant vault will open, but only for Applebloom, and reporters are going to be released and destroy Equestria.

Unto Whom All Doors Aren't Meant For - The Mane 6 wonder what's behind the church door, but Celestia tells them to bug off and nopony finds out anything.

Remember Chaos - Twilight climbs a mountain in Coltember to find the missing Discord only to discover he's been astral projecting all along while trapped in a statue advertising real estate.

Dirty Pramarma - Two red and black alicorns fall in love while dancing and the resulting sparks between them blow up Zecora's resort.

Through the Diamond (or Rough Glass) - Rarity has to fight her mirror double.

Knowledge and Ashes - Young Twilight contemplates going into the restricted wing of the library, but Celestia catches her and sends her to prison, where she gets some tats and learns to brew cider in the toilet.

Time Off Stage - Celestia abdicates the throne to achieve her life's dream: to direct a show in Breignson!

The Sunset Star Dressing Chamber Room - Twilight is interviewed by a magazine and has to tell the truth about her embarrassing hoof fungus.

The following is half review / half soul-searching and I'm putting it out here less to prompt discussion and more because I feel like I just ought to be public about this, because I like being forthright.

5 – The Arena
So I've been holding off on my voting for this one, and I've had it on NA all week, but the more I think about it, the more I think that's not really appropriate for me to do. I'd never read "The Lady and the Tiger", so I didn't know how close this hewed to the original. As an academic, plagiarism makes me very upset—but that's something I bring to write-off, not necessarily something I feel like other people should share. I'm not saying "The Arena" is plagiarising, I'm just saying that I think it's somewhat cowardly for me to just avoid the issue by not reading the original story and refusing to vote on this write-off entry. Part of that is because, if it were legitimately plagiarism, I'd feel incredibly uncomfortable if my lack of vote helped it medal in the competition. So off I went to read it.

There are differences between the stories, as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion. Among them: "The Arena" is the better written of the two and the more impactful (though some of that may be because it concretizes itself into a setting we know). "The Arena" has a framing plot which is absent in the original, and I like that framing plot a lot better than the orginal's "What do you think, dear reader?" It also develops the notion of using this judicial format much better. Characterization is pretty much a toss-up—"The Arena" gives as good or better a depiction of the ruler, in fewer words, but doesn't do as much work with the lovers. On the other hand, the themes and the central plot are nearly identical, excepting a small change in agency between the princess/archduchess and her lover.

At the end of the day, I don't feel like this is plagiarism. It's fanfiction. Mark Twain one suggested that there are no new ideas in the world, just new arrangements of old ones. I'm pretty comfortable with that, and with this story. The writing is excellent. The extrapolation from the original is excellent. Everything here is excellent, really. If I didn't know that this story had already been told in almost the same form, this could have easily been my pick of the write-off. As it is, I really like it, and assuming the author publishes it on Fimfiction, I expect that it'll go in my favorites list, but I can't give it extremely high marks in this competition, because it represents a lot less in the way of new ideas than something like, say, Dirty Prancing. So my HITEC score for it, and my vote, are as follows:
H 20 I 00 T 25 E 35 C 20
4/10

3885722
For some, the absolute joy of writing pony fanfiction could lead to a lifetime of participation in the group. For others, the lottery test is probably the way it would go.

(People say they would keep their jobs after winning the lottery. Very few actually do.)

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I would not keep my job if I won the lottery, because waking up at 5am on alternate weeks is not fun. Not fun at all.

I've just realised there's going to be more than a few disappointed souls among my Followers when I upload the finished version of my entry, since at least half are expecting Cards II any day now.

[EDIT] 3886054
Just seen you wanted some discussion on that. Thankfully it was one of the four fics I read.

I can forgive the "plagiarism" issue mainly because we're talking about over a hundred year gap here between the original and this. That might not matter to some people, but after that length of time, it's not unreasonable to believe that someone else could come up with an extremely similar idea (IE: Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, less than 20 years between em). I know that's not the case here, that it's a direct lift of the concept, but with the character and tonal change, it's a fair argument to call this more of an adaptation than anything else.

[EDIT EDIT]
Just seen you wanted actually less discussion on that point, because apparently I lose the ability to read coherently at 1am. Piss-sticks. What a waste of a post.

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Horizon's Reviews (3 of 3)

A bit late, but long-winded to make up for it!

I've been playing around with my review formats to see if different styles force me to write more constructive feedback. On reflection, I'm definitely not going to do "good/bad/suggestions" again. Because suggestions are by definition targeting things that I find weak in the story, this means that I'm forcing myself to write twice as much criticism as praise; it's harder to contrast the good and bad parts when I compartmentalize them like that; and the praise is front-loaded so it feels like I'm rushing past it to tear into the story. That strikes me as unhelpful in tone, and the whole point of these is to be helpful to the author.

1. Creativity Unbound
Good: 2,000 straight words of Rarity is a feat. Effectively sells her desperation as she tries to avoid work.
Bad: Dramatic monologues are a hard sell. I don't know what the ending implies (none of my guesses are adequately supported by the text). (EDIT: Consensus is "she locked herself out", which turns the ending from confusing to a disappointing anticlimax.)
Suggestions: As noted below with #3, it's great to see experiments, but those carry the risk that the experiment will fail. Here we have a vaguely Joycean ramble; it's not that textually thick, thank the stars, but it's got that same wall of words effect, which Rarity herself acknowledges several times. If you're gonna go for a monologue, Rarity or Pinkie Pie are probably the best choices, and despite a few rough spots (repeated self-deprecations about running overlong; and voice-breaks like "coo-ee") I'll spot you this one. What's harder is the massive edge of desperation that soaks through the entire piece, and the fact that her friends aren't reacting to it (or that she's not letting them get a word in edgewise); you might have actually been better served by a more Joycean mixture of dialogue with internal narration, so that we weren't left wondering how the other ponies were reacting to her torrent of dialogue.

2. What We Wanted to Do
Someone went there.
Good: Consistently funny throughout, and "4,550" is spit-take hilarious (along with the understated way it plays Twilight's reaction). Beautifully toes the line of the Teen rating. This is character destruction comedy I actively enjoyed, which for me, is the biggest compliment I've given out this round.
Bad: This isn't Apple Bloom.
Suggestions: Let me unpack that, especially since I just praised the character destruction: based on the vocabulary and the very adult subtlety of the narrator's delinquency, clearly we're doing Robert Heinlein Writes MLP here. (For the non-sci-fi fans: he has a bit of a reputation for writing every character as an undifferentiated copy of the same witty genius.) The thing is, MLP gives us enough distinctive character voices that Heinleining them (yes, I just verbed a proper noun, deal) is a disservice to the source material. As I noted last round, you can play characters straight and be "pony"; you can actively subvert the canon characterization and still be "pony" (because it's still a direct response to the show); but you can't ignore the source material. I would have been totally willing to go with Bloom as secretly an eloquent juvenile delinquent, if there had been more textual lampshading of that premise; but basically you're telling us she's Bloom via authorial fiat, rather than showing us she's Bloom via matching the way she speaks and acts with canon (or showing us enough canon to explicitly subvert it). The suggestion someone else made of lampshading the statement as a hired lawyer speaking could be interesting, but it might be better to inject hints of her original character into her voice.
If this ends up outside my Top 5, that's the sole reason why.
Finally, Diamond Tiara is the sole voice of reason. I see what you did there. And it was hilarious.

3. Unlocked Emotions
Good: Distinctive narrative style. Legitimately colorful OC protagonist.
Bad: Unless I'm missing something here, the characters meet for the first time while walking down the stairs from the eighth floor, and by the lobby they're a couple. ಠ_ಠ
Suggestions: I commend you for taking risks with the unique voice of the story; it's always refreshing to see authors experiment. Unfortunately, the nature of risks is that they won't always pay off, and there are ways in which this experiment fails. Namely, the disjointed voice that makes the narrator so unique also makes it very difficult to connect with him, or the world he describes; I spent most of my reading time trying to piece together the early story through the obfuscation of his rambles.
It feels like it severely shifts gears to get from the "old stallion surviving winter" to the (very abrupt) romance, and while crushing on someone at first sight is a thing, this moves way too fast especially for someone who by his own admission has no experience with homosexuality. Combined with the voice issues, I'm sorry to say I couldn't get invested in the relationship at all, which kills this story. Maybe something more like talking -> scarf sharing -> the gesture of friendship turns Dry's head -> Ala then moves in with the touchy-feely stuff, and at the first nuzzle all Dry's latent issues explode, and he has to sort through the climactic reluctance before reciprocating anything?

4. Audit
Breaking format again:
This gets my second-ever N/A, because I didn't finish the story. I'll tell you the line that stopped me dead: "It was impressive, but it was two floors down from the bedroom—very inconvenient." I look at that, and realized with growing horror that as Spike had just started the second floor, I was only 1/4 done with my reading. I was already forcing myself through the lists at that point, and the realization just deflated me.
This story, to the extent that it's a story, is an excruciatingly deep and focused character study of … well, a building, and by proxy either its builder or its owner. However, the owner isn't the sole source of its layout (I can't imagine a design springing up from Twilight's subconscious that includes gardeners and guards), and what commentary it does make on its builders (the cool details like the one-way door in the guardroom) is drowned out by irrelevancies like the number of flowerpots and library books, and the numerous empty bathrooms and audience halls (plus the direct repetition of the entrance hall information). Plus its "builder" is arguably an abstract force of magic, i.e. Harmony, which would make this entirely thematically incoherent. As an aside, what I did read felt very "Earth nobility", rather than a reflection of Equestrian society (they have gardens; do they have cloud storage? How would unicorn magic alter architecture?), which feels like a missed opportunity.
This is essentially unreadable in its current "single giant info-dump" form, which is a shame, because it's certainly original; and observations like the guardhouse and gardener's room could have been interesting with less noise polluting the signal, and a clear idea of what this exploration is meant to reflect. Read Cold in Gardez's Lost Cities for inspiration there, in which four cultures are similarly evoked using nothing but buildings; but note how every detail directly tells us something about their culture.
I'll also note that the parts I read never answered the one burning question the piece left me with: why did the castle create some awfully specific tchotchkes (the crystal mop in the closet, the pots and pans) but leave other rooms entirely unfurnished?

5. The Arena
Good: Colorful, distinctive narrative voice. Great melding of The Lady Or The Tiger? into greater Equestria, and some beautiful extensions of the idea (the two hidden choices being flexible). Unquestionably strongly written.
Bad: Though a lot of improvements are there, the emotional core of the story is identical to the source story, which makes me uncomfortable heading into the voting.
Suggestions: There's very little I would change here; this was a great read and it's publishable. However, talking specifically about writeoff voting: after a bunch of thinking, I'm docking this a few points from its original place in my top five, because the impact of the story doesn't feel like it comes from anything the author did. With other crossovers e.g. Dirty Prancing, watching the original first didn't spoil the writeoff story, but here, the core question remains "A princess is forced to choose between horrible consequences for someone she supposedly loves, and a choice that benefits her lover at the cost of personal sacrifice; what do our assumptions about her choice tell us about human nature?" That the self-sacrifice is "give up her title to join him" rather than "see her lover marry a different, amazing woman" does change the timbre of the question, but the dilemma's the same. It's like the difference between using Sherlock Holmes to write a pony mystery, and writing a ponified The Adventure Of The Speckled Band. I feel like to be fair I have to throw out the central dilemma while considering how to score this.
That said, there's a lot to like here in the ways it extends the idea, like the gryphon and the dagger. The Emperor's choice to inform his daughter tells us a lot about them, and the fact that it's explicitly her judgment rather than his is the sort of inversion I want to see in an adaptation. My question is how much to ding it for overreliance on Frank Stockton, and the answer ended up being "Not much"; this ends up just outside my top five.

6. The Star Chamber
Oh sweet stars, Fall of Equestria. It went there.
Good: Squares the circle between an innocent Equestria where friendship is the ultimate trump card, and a more gritty Equestria where friendship has power but innocence has to be preserved Omelas-style. The core "you can't speak what you don't believe" conceit as an interpretation of the historical Star Chamber's purpose. The gut punch of confronting the fandom's most sickening product, without making the story have value only as a FoE reaction. Another "holy shit" for using the Friendquisition unironically but not making the princesses tyrants. It's way too rare for a story to do something with the setting I didn't think could be done. Dammit, Cold in Gardez.
Bad: The last line only has power as a closer if we're supposed to assume in advance that she goes and fails, and I don't think that's what you were going for. It sounds like a sequel hook, but I think this needs to stand alone; an explicit trip to FoE-land would derail the best things about this and turn it into just an anti-FoE piece.
Suggestions: Yeah, just gonna 10 this. Do revisit the ending before you publish it, though.

7. Hearth Swarming Eve
Good: Undercurrents of Christmas spirit without drowning in holiday schmaltz. The play-within-a-play(-within-a-story). Rarity's diplomacy. Provocative moral.
Bad: Story took a horrible swerve at the Roseluck scene. Chrysalis' motives opaque. Unsettling moral.
Suggestions: This has a hell of a lot to recommend it, but it's clear this was cut significantly to hit its 8,000 words, in a way that collapses the story right at the end (which will knock it out of my Top 5, in favor of stories that did what they set out to do). The climax in particular is way too compressed — Rarity's realization comes out of nowhere, unless I'm supposed to be reading more into the mirror thing than I am. If the implication is that she was a changeling all along, and that she never comes clean about it, that's too subtle, although it does reinforce the themes nicely. (I think that's contradicted by the text, though, especially Chrysalis' reaction to her in the last scene; not to mention in canon she was in Canterlot during the Royal Wedding and wasn't ejected by Shining Armor's spell, and there's no textual hint that she might have been swapped out since.) Anyway, your first priority is to stretch this out to 10k or 12k or wherever you were aiming for with it — the rest of the writing's sharp enough that that might solve its problems.
Rarity's character is rather odd if Rarity actually is Rarity. Why would she choose the changelings over being honest with her friends, when she could open up and they could all make the decision together? I hope that was just another casualty of the wordcount.

8. Ill-Gotten Gains
Good: A lot of fun! Quite solid heist story with a whimsical twist.
Bad: Final scene funny, but the ending's anticlimactic. The gravity spell is fun, but overused; it would have been cool to see a wider variety of creative solutions to the problems she faced.
Suggestions:
This is another of those stories where Fridge Logic exposes big gaping issues, but it's still getting a good score because even taking those problems into account didn't stop the story from entertaining me. In particular, the first Luna meeting and Switch's reaction to it were priceless.
"Why don't the guards look up in a world where pegasi exist?" (as someone previously mentioned) is a glaring security flaw; there really needs to be at least one problem which she couldn't ceiling around, which would also help make your Equestrian setting more vivid. I don't have much to add to the other reviews' excellent analyses, but thanks for a fun read.

9. Amara
I was wondering if this was a crossover with that old D&D comic, but that was Yamara. I googled a bunch of the names, but found nothing relevant. This really feels like a crossover, but I don't know what with.
Good: Shows some promise as original fiction (or as a crossover) — it sketches its characters out efficiently. Prose is technically clean.
Bad: Way too much going on.
Suggestions: I've reread this several times, and while everything's clear enough on a moment to moment basis, I still have no idea what's going on beyond "dimensional crossover with Equestria" and "the alicorn amulet has a mare trapped in it" and "Dinky Doo is in the other dimension". I guess — but this is just a guess! — she met Marius in Equestria after whatever went down with the trapped spirit in the tower (the Alicorn Amulet spirit?) pulled him through to Equestria. But I don't know why she'd be in the other world, then. Was she kidnapped by the smugglers? But she seems remarkably non-traumatized and friendly for that to be the case. That highlights the ongoing problem here: there's just so much happening offscreen, that it's like filling in a Mad Lib where half the words are blanks. Giving details through subtext is a legitimate storytelling technique, but I think there's just not enough in the text here.
We're introduced to a lot of human characters but given almost no reason to care about them (except for Marius' implied good-guy-ism and the others' reluctant willingness to save his crotchety old butt). What's there is fine, but your immediate goal should be to slow way down and spend more time with each of the characters, unspooling all the plot onscreen so that we can see how they react and get a sense for why we want to root for them. Based on the writing on display, at twice the words, I could have been really impressed, but I can't give a good score to a story I can't understand.
Finally, what the heck does the title refer to? It's never mentioned or explained in the text.

10. The Millennial Vault
Good: Great job introducing the OCs. Maybe I'm biased because of my work in the news industry, but their banter kept me strongly engaged, with cool little details about both themselves and the world around them.
Bad: The story falls apart after the vault is opened (for reasons others have covered).
Suggestions: I second the observation of how disappointing it is that the vault monster took out a princess but was stopped by a flashbulb. When OC protagonists succeed where show cast failed, they often feel like Mary Sues. Also, if you're going for a horror story, you can't be afraid to twist the knife a little. Compare this to The Sunset Room: that was memorable because it did terrible things to Big Mac, and because it gave consequences to Applejack's bad decision. This one's more like summer-blockbuster horror in that the teflon protagonists take on a big but conquerable foe, but even summer blockbusters have bystanders getting ripped apart to sell how serious the threat is.
If the horror was done as well as the setup, you'd have something here.

And that's that!

Horizon's Top Five: (in best-first order)
6. The Star Chamber
31. Funatics
2. What We Wanted to Do
22. Dirty Prancing
28. On Wings of Ashes

3886054
Your forthrightness is appreciated. I'd be fine with this if it was published with a note to the original story, which I'll excuse while it's in a temporarily anonymous writeoff format. Even if the author has never read the story everyone says it's based off of, I think a note is still warrented by the author to acknowledge the similarity.

Hearth swarming eve
I avoided this one because it was long and got mediocre reviews. But I liked it a lot. Good writing, good characterizations, interesting and even touching plot. Almost makes me not want to kill all changlings. I would like it to be a fair mystery, meaning one possible to figure out. I didn't buy that she invaded ponyville to read a book, but Rarity seemed so certain of it that I thought it was just bad writing and stopped looking for other explanations..

And now that we're creeping up on the end of judging …

Last time I was pretty confident in guessing the three medalists based on the reviews (and went 5 for 5 in my predictions). This time, it's a lot less clear; my top five don't overlap with the ones getting the most consistently good reviews, so I'm not on the same wavelength as the crowd, and there's also a lot less consensus in the "favorite" lists posted to this thread. Seventeen of our 31 fics have made someone's top 5.

Even stranger is the disconnect between the top five lists and the reviews. The stories that have most consistently shown up in the top lists are also consistently coming in for strong critique, while stories that readers say they enjoy are hit-or-miss in the ratings. Still, I'm gonna Nate Silver this, trust the numbers over my instincts and beliefs, and put out some voting predictions I personally find weird:

Gold - __________Funatics*______________
Silver - _____Hearth Swarming Eve*____ (but I won't be surprised if they're switched)
Bronze - ______Dirty Prancing___________
Closest Contenders - … … … The Brightest And The Best … … … … On Wings Of Ashes … … …

Most Controversial - The Arena, The Dressing Room, The Star Chamber, Through Glass, and What We Wanted To Do
(it's a lot tougher to order these, so I'm just gonna rate myself based on how many show up in the list)

(* Edit, T minus 30 minutes: On further analysis, switching gold and silver before voting closes.)

3884742

Your reviews. I like them. Another. thoranother.jpg

Uh, thanks I guess?

3886411
Is this what we're doing now? Predictions? Sure, I can give that a shot. I'm going to be considerably less refined about how I do this, though, and just go by general buzz and what I remember seeing. Y'all can point at me and laugh once the real winners are announced.

Gold – _____Rough in the Diamond_____
Silver – _____Hearth Swarming Eve_____
Bronze – _________Dirty Prancing_________
Closely following – Funatics, On Wings of Ashes

Most controversial – The Star Chamber, The Arena

3885316 Holy crap, Bad Horse thinks my suggestion is worth listening to?

Alright, I haven't been reading further and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to turn in a sample ballot this round, but I'll try to get up some quick reviews of the other stories I finished just to not leave the authors hanging.

Some Doors Aren't Meant for You
While I agree with what somebody said upthread that the discussion of what's behind the door should be pushed into more ludicrous territory, that whole part of the story is basically fine. There is a big tonal disjunction between the mostly-comedic majority of the fic and the final scene, though; the latter is too sad, too fast, and it doesn't seem to flow together. The story as a whole would have been stronger if it just stopped at that last scene break.

However, the central idea between the final scene is actually pretty strong. The story as a whole also would have been stronger if that was maintained, but tied into the earlier stuff better. So the story's not great, but the building blocks of a pretty good story are here, and you can get there by cutting or expanding. Kind of an interesting position to be in.

Dressing Room
I hope it won't come across as too negative if I say that two of the stories in this review were direct improvements over two in my previous round. The interview format here is a less original conceit than "Audit"'s checklist/architectural plan, but "Dressing Room" uses it to greater effect -- a lot of stuff here is a good example of the kind of oblique exposition I was talking about before.

We get a lot of information about Star Power and her fellow cast members, but this premise really made me hunger for more broad-spectrum worldbuilding as well. Are there princesses in the "real" Equestria? If so, are they Celestia and Luna? If so, how does that work with the show's premise without getting somepony executed? Except for that last and most perplexing question, those seem like easy "yes"es with the story as written; but Equestria as we know it doesn't really seem to have TV shows, even though it has cinemas, and a premise like this creates a lot of opportunity to contrast Star Power's Equestria with Twilight's (her world immediately seems closer to ours than Twilight Sparkle's Equestria does, but they still have pony names and such; I want to see where exactly it is on the spectrum). It's easy for worldbuilding to slip from storytelling into just using a story to infodump about the setting, but the more character-based "read between the lines" stuff here is so solid that I think setting could be handled the same way.

I agree with -- I think it was Bad Horse? -- that the use of >le may-may arrows for the interviewer would have been better served by conventional italics, and that the opening was a little disorienting (I haven't felt the need to consider the interview premise a spoiler, so I would say make it as plain as possible). I also didn't feel the ending hit me very strongly. I'm not sure what would work, though; a lot of what I liked here was the aforementioned read-between-the-lines aspect, but a big twist or reveal wouldn't suit this premise at all.

If I didn't mention it before: I think I'm focusing on the negative and what needs fixing more than I'd like with these reviews, and I think a lot of that is because I delayed between reading and writing. I know that when I read this story there were lots of small details that I liked. So I'll just point out one that I'm not sure I even caught the first time: it's neat how Star Power's name and cutie mark story work so well with Twilight's. (I wonder if scripts are re-written around the actors in this universe to account for this sort of thing?)

The Sunset Room
The other story with an improvement: in this case, horror of the unseen, building up to a final scene showing what's "behind closed doors". It works better this time because we see just enough to actually know we have something to be horrified by, and because the actions of the main character(s) have a direct bearing on the finale (Twilight was definitely a side character in "The Millennial Vault"; you can definitely do horror where the bad stuff is inevitable and the main characters just sort of experience it -- Lovecraft barely did anything else -- but "Vault"'s unknown monster didn't deliver much, whereas AJ's conflicting desires here are relatable and allow her own decisions to give the finale more impact). All the obvious problems here are fridge logic with the premise, which has been covered pretty well above. Not really sure what to add.

Funatics
(Pronounced "phonetics", of course, because why not?)

Again, disoriented by the intro. It's not clear that the pair of balloons was Luna's, or what's up with the flowers, and the prose in the first scene is generally kind of dreamy and loose and impressionistic. It's nice, but it's pretty jarring as we slide into the main plot:

Pulling the night entirely into place and setting the stars to shine, I turn to my sister, see the love of the moment reflected on her face—

And realize that this means war.

There's clearly supposed to be a humorous disconnect here, but to me it was more like "Huh? War? I thought we were smelling flowers!" All the actual events work well within the context of what we later understand about the princesses' reverse-prank-war-thing though.

On top of that, it took a while for Luna's voice to really feel strong. The story was a lot better once Pinkie showed up and things really got underway.

Okay, so my reaction was pretty mixed this round, and (even though I'm working on an undersized sample) I think I see a common factor in how these stories stumbled. The easy way to say it is that they aren't very complete stories, since a lot of them didn't seem to take their premise anywhere and the rest could have gone farther. However, plenty of these stories either are good vignettes or have the building blocks for one, so I wouldn't say it's a plotting issue exactly. Rather, almost all of them seemed to struggle to one degree or another with something I mentioned in a few specific reviews: tonal disjunction. What I mean by that is, a lot of them felt like parts of different stories stitched together, even when the events involved are logically connected.

For example, "Audit" has the dark aspects that Bad Horse quoted above, but a hopeful ending; the two aren't mutually exclusive, but without any linking material they make for strange bedfellows, and so the ending just emphasizes how much wasn't followed through on from the dark stuff. It's not the fundamental problem with "The Millennial Vault", but the professional banter in the intro doesn't contrast with the tense middle part in a constructive way. I already mentioned how it plays into "Some Doors Aren't Meant for You", which could have taken and run with either a comedic or melancholy tone, but doesn't put in the work of fusing them. Etc.

I suspect this is just a byproduct of working on a deadline; most of the authors here are pro enough to make a fic that makes logical sense, but maybe it's harder to make all the pieces work together on a thematic level. I also wonder if it has something to do with the prompt. Earlier in the thread people were kind of chilly towards the prompt because it seemed pretty narrow; maybe what I'm seeing is a byproduct of authors trying to write the type of story they're good at and finding that it doesn't fit well.

3885631
This is a good starting point. I've rewritten your code to get near-perfect accuracy: stylo.pl

3886662
A clear improvement, I'd say. Far more elegant, too.

T minus 1 hour 23 minutes or so I want to see!

Seems like we have more than a few novice writers here, given the kind of issues some of the stories have. Don’t give up, and if something I say sounds harsh, be aware that it’s with the intent of pointing what I saw as flaws so everyone here can improve.

Now, continuing with my tradition of posting my reviews as close as possible to the moment the authors are revealed without missing work next day due to lack of sleep, I give you my own take on the stories. I regret not having read them earlier to take part in the discussions; tomorrow I might practice a bit of necromancy on topics I think I have something to say, as well as answer a few things about my own story.

I didn’t read most of the reviews, so I might be a bit repetitive.

01. Creativity Unbound
I’m not sure what the point is. It seems to me that Rarity is having a breakdown and it’s already affecting her faculties, and that the boutique door is just a representation of an inner block, but I might be reading more than there is in the story.
While Rarity’s voice seemed fairly well done, the extent to which she was rambling seemed out of character to me (which is what pushed me into the breakdown interpretation), and that lengthy rambling overstayed its welcome.

02. What We Wanted to Do
I wanted to like this entry, given its theme and how it played straight with what the reader thought would be behind the closed doors, but there were a fair number of snags.
Biggest among them was the narrator’s voice. The narrator is supposed to be Apple Bloom giving a spoken apology about her (and the CMC’s) actions, but not only it doesn’t sound like her, it doesn’t sound like something spoken either. Too formal, too many thought out words. It’s the kind of tone I would expect of Celestia or Luna when doing a formal speech, or of Twilight if she had the time to write her words beforehand.
There’s also the sheer scale. A small misunderstanding is believable; a huge one, involving all the schoolfillies plus Spike, and one that went unnoticed by any adult even as the children purchased a huge amount of printing supplies on credit, not so. It’s also hard to believe that none among the children had any idea what was happening. I think it would have been quite a bit better as just the CMC plus Spike.
The way money and supplies, and the finished newspapers, were tracked also threw me off. The tracking of supplies and finished newspapers could have worked by, for example, putting Spike at it, but precisely tracking money in the canon MLP universe is tricky because the show never cared about money; the value of things is just what is needed to keep the story flowing, and beyond that it’s not consistent. Doing precise money tracking without throwing the reader off in a MLP fanfic is something that needs more care and work than I believe can fit in a short story, IMHO.
Not everything was bad, mind you; I quite liked how the narration and the flashbacks interweaved, and some of the ideas were nifty. But, taking it all together, I don’t think this story worked.

03. Unlocked Emotions
This one doesn’t feel to me like a pony story, despite being peppered with amusing smalltalk that is clearly pony, creating an interesting dissonance, not altogether unpleasant. I enjoyed the story, and the writing, quite a bit, despite the subject not being something I usually enjoy reading about.
Where I do see a flaw in this story is in how it handles the time; it’s quite clear that the protagonist is narrating something that happened in the past, but which parts and feeling are in the past and which are in the present isn’t always clearly shown. There’s also some confusion about who each paragraph is, with things like a paragraph with speech from one character amid actions of the other.

04. Audit
I get the impression we had a DM thoroughly enjoying a bit of dungeon building here
This is basically a little romp through the new castle, discovering what it contains. As a former DM myself I enjoyed the format (as long as I kept pretending it was about any other castle), but I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea.
There are two author-controlled things I didn’t like about this story. First, Spike is painted as more mature than in the show, but hiding some of his maturity from Twilight; I don’t think the show supports this. Second, there is no conflict here; while I did enjoy this little romp, it was more in the way I enjoy a well crafted description than as a story.

05. The Arena
It feels truly unequestrian, but in this story this works for it. I’m not sure if the gore, even if described in as light a way as it was here, is called for, though.
I need to read the original; I know of the story, but never actually read it. So, I’m not sure if the fate of the guard was revealed before the end in the original or not, the way it was revealed here.
The fact I know something of the original also means that this one failed to properly impress me; even with my sparse knowledge of it, and knowing the fate of the guard, it allowed me to predict all that would happen in a way that completely robbed the story of any impact. Thus, while I do find it well written, it didn’t move me.

06. The Star Chamber
I… have little to say. I’m not sure I completely agree with Celestia’s voice, it felt a bit too formal, but the story justifies that aplenty. And, while the story was a fair bit darker than I tend to enjoy in pony fiction, it was powerful, a great example of what it means to be a princess.

07. Hearth Swarming Eve
The prompt namedrop made me wonder if this was planned for the “A Moment of Clarity” prompt and then repurposed to the current one. I liked the choice of Rarity as the protagonist, and the way it was handled.
Not so sure about the mystery, though, as it seemed to hang too much on characteristics of the changeling race that are not set in canon and vary from author to author, which for me made it feel like a sham instead of a true mystery, and Rarity’s deductive leaps too outlandish. It would have worked better for me in a series, where the specifics about changelings for the author were better defined, but as a single story it lost me somewhat. Quite enjoyable despite that, mind you, just didn’t hold my interest as much as a story with this quality of writing could.

08. Ill-Gotten Gains
Funny, if a bit predictable for anyone that is a fan of prankster Celestia; I liked seeing the gravity spell again, and as someone that loved playing as the Alien in Aliens vs Predator I can attest to the fact no one seems to look up
The main flaw I see is that the thief didn’t know of the upcoming birthday. If she had studied the palace that intently she should have known of it, and perhaps even used that in her plans. This harms believability a bit.
While not pretentious the story does very well what it proposes to do, as long as the reader can accept a scenario that is a bit less serious than canon.

09. Amara
And this one makes me wonder if it was written to the prompt “Red and Black”.
There are a number of small grammatical errors, like missing commas, spread across the whole story (and I’m counting obviously unintentional tense shifts here); they disrupt the reading somewhat, this story needed some extra proofreading. I believe you need to think of other words to represent Cassius “talking”, Caw became grating through sheer repetition before long. There’s other instances of repetition, such as the ridiculous sounding “crown on her crown”.
This one has interesting ideas, but some feel underutilized. What was the point of Dinky being taken away, for example? That felt like a stillborn story arc. I’m not sure if it is a crossover of some kind (Albion is used as the country’s name in more stories about a magical England than I can care to name) or if the human world was made just for this story, but whatever it was, the author handled it well, putting enough context to understand what was needed without feeling like a huge infodump.
All added together, this felt very rushed, as if it was put together at the last moment. I would love to see a properly polished version of it, though.

10. The Millennial Vault
The typo at the first proper paragraph didn’t do the story any favors, and it does continue with small writing issues, like extraneous words (“completely dominating”) and some bits of what I tend to call clumsiness. For example, “Twilight’s voice lit up the area like a match”... not sure this is the image you wanted to conjure, as a match tends to be associated with burning things down.
No guard or clerk remaining at the door? The two newsponies being able to just walk inside unopposed sounds like a stretch.
Can’t say I liked the ending. Too many unanswered questions about what was there, why was it there, how did it end there in the first place, why release it at the time the doors opened, and so on. A little uncertainty in the ending is one thing, but not answering anything and only raising more questions is another entirely.
All in all, didn’t really kept my interest.

11. Disappearance of Chaos
Huh, the mane 6 weren’t the bearers of the Elements of Harmony for some time already before Tirek even showed up. And unless I’m very mistaken the new castle is at the outskirts of Ponyville, at the shore of a lake that appears to be Saddle Lake.
Mixing actions by different characters in the same paragraph, and changing who “she” refers to, isn’t advisable.
There are also some typos there (like “perked up at the work help”), and there are needless words too (like in “flying lobsters that were flying eastwards”).
Not sure Murphy’s Law should be invoked by name in Equestria; after all, who is that pony named Murphy? Also, a straight Lord of the Rings reference? There are times and places for Earh references, and while Discord is one of the common sources of those, having them delivered through Fluttershy is at least strange.
As for the plot itself, I can’t say I liked it, sorry. It’s basically a rehash of “Three’s A Crowd”, but not as amusing.

12. A Pale Horse
Rain boots? Well, I guess they exist, as AJ has used galoshes once, but they don’t seem common. All in all, the combination of tone, the little details, and the plot itself make this story not feel actually pony, though this is my main complaint about the story.
It’s an interesting, and interrupted, take on the slow fall into madness, and fairly well written at that. I just wish that the title didn’t give the ending away. I guess I’ve read too many stories about the pale horse, so between that and the title I recognized the trappings immediately.

13. All The World’s A Stage
Surreal, in a good sense. I liked the writing itself, though it did feel a bit stilted at places.
The idea is neat, though not exactly original; both Warner and Disney have been using similar jokes since before I was born, and the tradition of breaking the fourth wall goes to before cinema itself came into existence. To make something noteworthy with such old ideas require either a new take on the idea or superb execution, tall hurdles to cross, and I think this story didn’t quite make through.
Apart from that, my main issue is lack of conflict; the beginning is a rehash of the ending of the second episode, then there is a small bit of actual story in the middle, and the rest is purely scenery. Neatly constructed, but nothing really happening.
BTW, is that G1 Spike?

14. Extreme Princess Tension (E.P.T.)
First telling that Twilight is entering in one paragraph, to then spend the next one describing her entrance, is a bit jarring. I would rewrite both, merging Sparkler’s impressions onto the paragraph that shows Twilight entering.
Loved the Pavlovian joke, though the name, being an Earth one and not really pony, did strike the wrong bell. The pregnant pause joke also made me chuckle when I noticed what was Twilight’s predicament.
Can’t say I enjoyed the story as a whole, but it was more due to my own preferences (and how the story breaks canon) than to the story quality itself.

15. Burning Bridges
Little iddle comment, but I chuckle quite a bit whenever math is used as the de-facto hard class in an attempt to create a connection with the reader; for me it was the opposite, math was what I always excelled at, so this actually makes me less prone to connect with the character.
The idea is not exactly original; Matrix made it quite popular, and the Forever Evil DC crossover recently brought it to the fore again. And either Aria’s theory is bonkers or else she’s lying, given the post credits scene with EG’s Twilight. But, apart from this, I can’t quite find issues with this story.

16. Some Doors Aren’t Meant For You
Nerd points for using the proper name of the turtle, and for having Twilight nerdrage about it.
Docking points* for Joe pulling a chair, though. In the show ponies rarely sit on chairs; for eating on tables they seem to sit either on low stools or on cushions, if they sit on something at all. Pulling a chair throws me right out of whichever immersion I was at that time. As do a few too anthropomorphic gestures, such as pinching the bridge of the nose (is it even possible to pinch the bridge of a horse’s nose, even with fingers?).
Funny conclusion, though I’m not sure Celestia’s answer makes sense. Despite saying (well, thinking) that she tried to avoid calling attention to it, her answer is like she wanted to throw oil into the fire.
* figuratively; not actually docking points from the score.

17. Rough in the Diamond
Is this a Fight Club reference? Sometime I have to watch that movie.
The idea is so ludicrous that it’s funny. Well, the part about Rarity liking to fight, I mean; I do believe she is quite better at a fight than her manners imply.
I liked the action scene, though outside it I believe there was a bit of an issue with the indications of who the speaker was. Not that it mattered much, it was easy to guess who was talking. I also can’t fully condone the initial exchange between Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, it sounded off enough that I thought there would be some flashback to explain the hostility. Overall it was entertaining.

18. P.T.S.D.
… What the heck did I just read?
Well written, funny, the little interruptions were at the right time to reinforce the narrative rather than impair it, the notetaking took care of filling in on Twilight’s behavior and the Doctor’s mindset with its own unique flavor, the little details lent it a life of its own. A bit too outlandish for me to truly love, but still quite enjoyable.

19. Dressing Room
Fourth wall breaking and absolutely meta. Not sure I would call it a story — it’s literally an interview — but enjoyable in its own right, even if it’s just one large infodump about an alternate universe.

20. The Sunset Room
Not exactly the kind of story I enjoy, though I won’t hold this against it. “Like a ritual in an ancient monastery” — good imagery, but I don’t think it appropriate for Applejack; using some farm chore that must be done slowly and methodically would have worked better. Not sure how I feel about AJ’s metaphor being too close to the truth. Overall it was neatly written, evocative, but the tone and subject prevented me from ever being immersed in the story.

21. Remember
Given that most of my knowledge of Guy Fawkes comes from “V for Vendetta”, if the celebration had any meaning for the story, it was lost on me. Perhaps due to that what I got was a formally sounding exhortation from the princesses with some comic commentary from the pre-reformation Discord; amusing, but little more than that.

22. Dirty Prancing
Apparently a spoof on “Dirty Dancing”, a movie I’ve not seen. And a take on the “Red and Black” prompt.
I said that before, but how can one even pinch the bridge of a horse’s nose with a hoof?
The story had a kind of elseworlds quality; as long as I look at it as something that happened in an alternate universe, it’s fine. And, while it looks a bit too human compared with what I usually enjoy in pony fic, the little pony details (like Chrysalis’s “fart”) helped prevent it from looking too human. Though, seriously, a red and black Alicorn that is prince of dancing?
What do make me cringe about this story is the too fast change in the little grasshopper. And the ending, while surprising it felt really out of place (and inconsistent with the setting).

23. Through Glass
The Narcissus influence was clear for me before the first quarter was over, and since the whole punch of this story lies in the surprise, it was robbed from all impact, unfortunately. In my humble opinion it would have worked far better if it was a fair bit shorter, though that was impossible for this specific event.
On the other hand, apart from the fact it grew boring fast, I could really picture Rarity doing this (and she does refer about herself in the third person from time to time), so the story did have that going for it. Not sure if it meant that Rarity had a crunch on Applejack or on Rarity, though

24. Time Off
Dotted Line! Though I’m not sure that would be his reaction or how he would speak.
The joke about ponies not getting Luna’s speech was offsetting, both at odds with the fact she was ultimately understood in Luna Eclipsed and with how both supposedly intelligent journalists and nobles raised up in tradition would miss the meaning.
Uh, a filly named “Unwilting” from an once ageless alicorn; poetic.
Sunny Skies? I like the fanfic reference.
Interesting. Not really my cup of tea, but enjoyable and without immediately noticeable flaws.

25. The Brightest and the Best
I thought I had the ending figured from knowing who Twinkleshine is and being able to read the inscription, but it got me and was still completely believable (or, completely believable for that subset of fics that picture Twilight as a far greater prodigy than she knows). Well done.
Huh, not sure what to make of the Lulamoon reference, since her having attended that school is near canon (mentioned by Faust herself, but only after she left the show). I can roll with it anyway, though I would have enjoyed it better if she entering the school was used as an example why the three tests exam is still needed.
Well, she didn’t turn the examiners into potted plants
Overall amusing, though it suffers a bit from being about an event whose conclusion is well known.

26. Unto Whom All Doors Are Open
Seems like an account of someone that doesn’t know about the Catholic religion getting to spend a day in a Catholic monastery. It doesn’t quite feel pony. And the sweetie Belle reference did feel too out of place and out of tone.
Apart from that, it seems out of place in canon and doesn’t offer enough to picture the setting as an alternate universe one. Added to the fact this isn’t quite a story as much as the description of a setting, leaves me with the floating image of a monastery I can’t place anywhere, so — despite not finding flaw in the writing itself — it didn’t really work for me.

27. Knowledge and Wisdom
The fact I’ve actually seen purple grass made me chuckle for the wrong reason. Not much to say about this one, though it doesn’t quite resonate with me; I mean, keeping a book of dangerous spells locked I can understand, but keeping one with dangerous ideas… I’m not sure I’ve ever visited a library where books were kept out of reach due to their contents.
Well, there’s also the fact I already had free roam of one of the local libraries when I was likely the age of filly Twilight
Generally well written and enjoyable, even if I don’t fully agree with parts of it.

28. On Wings of Ashes
Huh, wasn’t the fact EG Pinkie does not have a party cannon explicitly mentioned in the first movie?
If Sonata is the protagonist, this story falls into the trap of making the protagonist too alien for the reader to relate to. Her cluelessness is astronomical.
I liked the idea of Sonata having a special talent for directing music, and finding her own place in school, but the high school drama version of Luna’s rebellion really pushed me the wrong way. The part making fun of the relationship of the EG universe and the MLP one also wasn’t amusing.
Then there is the cop out in that this is a redemption story, but it just sets the start of the path and then skips over the actual redemption. I think it would have been better if it either stopped one scene earlier, or else added flashes of Sonata’s path to redemption.

29. Easy as Cake
Some of the other stories used more than one prompt, but this went overboard. It used, and namedropped, the prompts that placed from second to seventh, and found a new way to involve doors in each scene. Plus a book opening / book ending matched set of the red doors opening and closing.
I’m not sure using the punchline in the title was a good idea; that, plus the forespotlighting of the time travel spell, gave the ending too soon. The green in the spy wasn’t as blatantly telegraphed, but it did stand out by contrast, since about the only description of colors in a pony were of that green mane; it’s the same effect one would get by having just one object colored in a black and white comic, and not appropriate for subtle approaches.
Otherwise, I found it enjoyable; “Sweet Celestia” did draw a chuckle from me.

30. Terror Incognita
Interesting. While I did see stories about them being related to dreams (heck, I wrote one myself), and stories about their future roles being important, I’m not sure I’ve seen this take on why Luna appeared to two of the CMC. The “choosing not to choose” line appears to be right out of Rainbow Falls, but it does feel appropriate here. A bit too open ended, but not excessively so.

31. Funatics
Touching and well crafted, I found it enjoyable even though it’s the continuation to a comic I didn’t enjoy that much. Perhaps a bit too sugary, and what it does have in feeling it unfortunately lacks in actual content. Not much else to say about it.

3884240

I really want to know how I developed this reputation. c.c

Me too. I'm kind of just blindly rolling with it because it is funny

3884408
Man, I actually found it really heartwarming reading that. Anybody whose feeling down about the reviews they received, read this!!

---

One and a half hours left. The competition is nearly over. I still have six stories to read (which is no biggie) and eleven stories to review (definitely a biggie).

Seeing as I'm not going to get those reviews out in the next hour, I'll do a quick overview of the event.

Mentally, I've been sorting these entries into four categories:

Entries that fail to tell a story and fail to execute it well.
Entries that tell a story, but fail to execute it well.
Entries that don't tell a story, but execute it well.
Entries that tell a story and execute it well.

Most of the stories either fell into category two or three. They either told us a decent story, but were let down by aspects of the telling, or they told us a story with serious flaws, but told it well. Quite a few failed on both accounts. A fifth of the stories, by my reckoning, succeeded in both areas.

(Take this with a grain of salt. Personally, I believe that the story itself is inseparably interwoven with the language used to tell it, which is why I find it difficult to plan out the minutia of the plot in advance -- how I am writing on the day changes how the story unfolds.)

On a more qualitative level, while I didn't think any of these stories are at a publishable level for traditional print, they are at a reasonably high quality compared to the majority of stories of FiMFiction. With editing, some would reach a publishable level, and some would become solid stories in their own right. It's been a fun experience reading and reviewing, and the quality of feedback has been especially high.

As general advice to writers, what we all need to do now is edit and trim. Even if you think your entry was an irredeemable bit of trash, edit and trim. Edit and trim. Find the weak points. Find what works. Cut the first and keep the second. You might find you can save the story inside the trainwreck, and even if you can't, you'll learn valuable stuff on how to write better.

Finally, a quick apology to the authors who were on the receiving end of my first ten reviews. I hadn't really figured out a good format for my reviews, and so a few of them were, I think, unnecessarily harsh and maybe a bit unhelpful. Sorry about that! It was only later on that I found a form that was both reasonably quick and clear.

3886885
Heartwarming is what I do!

Usually.

3886832 Wait, "Funatics" was riffing on a comics storyline? Do you mean the canon comics? Because I can't remember one that goes with the premise, which is making me feel sorta derpy.

3886885
I'll throw out one other piece of editing advice, courtesy of Stephen King's book on the subject: Kill your darlings. That is to say, if you really love a particular sentence, turn of phrase, or plot device in something you wrote, be more than willing to get rid of it. If everyone here trashed the aspect of your story that you hold most dear, you don't have to bend over backwards reworking everything else so you can keep it. Was the story written solely to introduce readers to that one single thing? If something in your story just plain doesn't work, be willing to make the hard call and get rid of it.

3886899
The Friends Forever issue 7, with Pinkie Pie and Luna; the story is kind of a continuation of the comic.

3869644 stylo insists that you wrote that story, BTW.

3886918
For some reason I'm hoping that at least one person gave their own story an absolutely scathing dummy review

3886935
Insider information, heck! If we run Roger's code, we can all guess that NULL POINTER EXCEPTION wrote all 31 stories, just the same as him.

3886935
Stories (fic/view route) will have the list of suspected authors underneath them.

Results will list the top 5 guessers and the stories that they guessed the author for correctly.

3886905 Thanks, I'll have to reread that one.

I actually managed to turn in a valid ballot! I won't try to review the last few I read, since they were more under duress, but I did want to congratulate the author of "What We Wanted to Do", which was a great story and my only 10.

ETA: The comics are awfully quick reads, not that there's anything wrong with that. I had forgotten how good that one was! I especially liked the "Fancy Shmancy" joke.

Semi-real guesses based on a combination of factors:

Audit: Pineta
The Arena: Chris
The Star Chamber: Cold in Gardez
Hearth Swarming Eve: Horizon
Amara: M1Garand8
Extreme Princess Tension: Georg
Dressing Room: Georg
The Sunset Room: Bradel
Dirty Prancing: PresentPerfect
Knowledge And Wisdom: BlazzingInferno
Terror Incognita: Baal Bunny

Everything else was me just throwing together guesses at the last minute. Or in the case of Bad Horse, stylo's hatred of categorizing him usefully. Yes, it gave me some other solutions for him as well, but all of those got beaten out by other people in stylo after some investigation, leaving him storyless - or at least, devoid of stories I felt it was likely he would write. As such, yes, total blindguessing.

FoME had the same issue - it grouped Terror Incognita, Hearth Swarming Eve, and Dirty Prancing with him. Like half the other good writers. Thanks, stylo; you're really coming through for me tonight.

So, my random flailing (I don't really believe any of these):

Funatics: Bad Horse (close to Moments, of all things)
Unlocked Emotions: Bad Horse (close to Keepers)
A Pale Horse: Bad Horse (blind guess. Apparently he's a busy man)
Disappearence of Chaos: Foxy_E (based soley on the fact that they have 0 published stories)

100% blind without even any logic behind it, as if the above made any sense, but these were literally slotting in names:

What We Wanted to Do: GAPJaxie
Creativity Unbound: Fan of Most Everything
All the World's A Stage: PorsineSnake
The Millenial Vault: Pascoite
Unto Whom All Doors Are Open: Von Snootingham
Remember: Door_Matt
Rough in the Diamond: SharpSpark
PTSD: Thornwing
On Wings of Ashes: Silent Strider
Ill-Gotten Gains: Doseux
Burning Bridges: Oroboro
Some Doors Aren't Meant for You: Morning Sun
Time Off: KwirkyJ
Easy As Cake: Thornwing

3880366
You should have known, PP. A well-written story that you absolutely couldn't stand? We've played this game before, you and I. You should have known who wrote it.

You always should have known.

3886971
Third place on guessing!

And very middling placement wise, which doesn't surprise me - this was my second least-favorite writeoff entry.

Congradulations to our winners:

The Brightest and the Best by Pineta
Hearth Swarming Eve by Horizon
Rough in the Diamond by sharpspark

And to our most controversial entry, The Star Chamber. Well played, Bradel. Well played indeed.

Also, how did not a single one of you guess Through Glass was mine? RariJack shipping, long inner Rarity monologue...

Makes me wonder what you guys thought I did write.

Ahaha, I knew it. I knew you wrote Dirty Prancing, PP. =P

3886978
I was so sure you wrote The Star Chamber. D:

So, my guesses weren't terrible

Amara: I guessed this with the power of "M1Garand has a big mouth"
Hearth Swarming Eve: Stylo, plus it was the sort of thing he'd write
Dirty Prancing: Present Perfect said he brushed up against the limit, and he didn't write The Star Chamber or Hearth Swarming Eve, so it was this by process of elimination.
Knowledge and Wisdom: Stylo here again, along with content
The Arena: Stylo and content here again.
PTSD: This was a wild, blind guess that paid off.
Rough in the Diamond: This was another blind, wild guess that paid off, though I do know SharpSpark and it may have subconsciously guided my hand.
Extreme Princess Tension: This was stylo and glancing at a few of his stories.

3886986
I was afraid people might think that. The Butterfly's Burden is somewhat similar in many respects, and it involves Luna and Celestia and responsibility, themes I seemingly enjoy.

On the other hand, I didn't write anything nearly so good this round.

On the upside, though, fixing it is relatively easy - I just have to lop off like half the text.

3886939
How hard would it be to dump a list of the stories that had the most incorrect guesses? Like, to just list the top 5 stories that made for random guessing.

Actually two things - which stories had the widest spread of guesses and which had the most incorrect guesses.

3886991

Amara: I guessed this with the power of "M1Garand has a big mouth"

Hue. Just couldn't keep my mouth shut when the first review(s) came out. =x

Bad Horse got me good though, that stylometric thing is pretty powerful. =o

3886992
Well, it's definitely competently written but it doesn't stand out much. D:

3869738
I'm framing those Celestia Points, Horizon

Huh. That turned out far better than I expected. It's funny - I got the idea for Rough in the Diamond first but thought it was incredibly dumb. So I wrote A Pale Horse as an attempt to try my hand at a kind of horror, got frustrated that it didn't work just right, and submitted it on a whim anyways. And then the next day I wrote Rough in the Diamond and it totally did work, like way better than it had any right to. There were a lot of good points on both stories, and I'm going to try to clean up and straighten out a few edges on them. Really great to have the feedback here.

And 2nd in guessing! I was absolutely certain on Hearth Swarming Eve, Dirty Prancing, and Funatics due to my own sketchy use of grep to hunt for style stuff, The others were educated guesses - though I should have put Door_Matt for Millennial Vault since he has written a previous story with the same OC. But my style metrics insisted it wasn't him, and I listened! Oh, and Doseux tipped his hand here in the topic... When he corrected my joke about Unto Whom All Doors Are Opened to use the correct rhyme scheme, and I had forgotten it even used a rhyme scheme.

3887004
I note that "Through Glass" had zero correct guesses (click the story page and scroll down all the way).

"Millennium Vault", "Unlocked By Emotions", "Audit" and "Creativity Unbound" all had zero correct guesses. I imagine there's probably more; I skipped around to find those.

Incidentally, for those who haven't figured it out yet: the stories list the suspected writers at the end of them.

EDIT: Not a single person guessed I wrote Through Glass. That's interesting, because stylo told me it was close to Temptation.

Pretty much flat in the middle. About where I expected.

(Some Doors Aren't Meant For You)

Thanks for all the feedback, folks! Sorry I didn't give any myself, but I've been pretty busy this past week, and reviewing isn't quite my bag. Maybe I'll participate harder in future contests.

The feedback I did get was a little confusing, tbh. For every point that was made, someone suggested pretty much the exact opposite point on it. But ultimately I know I could have done better. I wasn't super inspired with my idea, and didn't fully explore it in a way that would have had a much stronger impact.

I will defend myself in that when I wrote it, I had just finished reading some IDW comics (The Reflections Arc in particular), and the Mane 6 tend to be a bit snarkier in their interactions with each other there than they are in the show. (Twilight and Rainbow Dash even have a small running joke about thesaurus use or lack thereof.)

I'll probably leave this story sitting in my gdocs for awhile until I feel like coming back to it at an indeterminate point in the future. Still, participating was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to next time.

3887004
Most incorrect or fewest correct guesses? Either way, not difficult.

The main difficulty I see is... what would you title that under? "Stories for which most author guesses were incorrect" seems like a bit of a mouthful.

3887029
Most deceptive? Most deceptively written?

3887029

3887029
You could probably just have 'Unguessed Stories', since there's at least a few of them. Don't know if you can extrapolate that to always be the case in future writeoffs though.

3887032
I was thinking that or most elusive.

3887029
Not really looking for a permanent feature, just a one time query. I could probably figure it out myself, but I'm a little lazy.

3887011

The others were educated guesses

Honestly, I'm still curious how anybody pegged me for The Star Chamber. I got two nods, but I know where one of them came from and it was half-accidental. I was really looking forward to stepping forward and being like, "HaHA! None of you knew that was me!"

...except you knew that was me.