Other issue is that having another list of titles seems a bit repetitive. The titles have already been listed once on the page.

Perhaps, for stories with no correct guesses, they get the award "Avoided detection". (Taking suggestions on 16x16 .png's with transparent backgrounds.) Since stories have their awards posted beside them, you can see in the main listing those that avoided detection. Much cleaner.

Stories people thought I wrote:

Hearth Swarming Eve (1)
Dressing Room (1)
Knowledge and Wisdom (3) - I was the #1 guess for this.
The Star Chamber (2) - I was the #2 guess for this, tied with the actual author and Pascoite.
Dirty Prancing (1) - I'm curious who guessed this one.
The Arena (1) - Also curious about who guessed this was me.
The Sunset Room (1) - Did you guess this randomly, or via my love of endings like that?
Ill-Gotten Gains (2) - I was tied for the #1 guess for this.
Time Off (1)
Some Doors Aren't Meant for You (1)
Terror Incognita (1)

As for Through Glass, my own story:

Foxy_E (2), Chris (2), PresentPerfect, Pascoite, Prompted_by_Raridash, Morning Sun, Thornwing, FanOfMostEverything, Cold in Gardez, GaPJaxie, KwirkyJ

Clearly my strategy of writing something mediocre to throw you all off paid off; you all way overestimated me!

In other news, A Pale Horse had 5 people agree that Bad Horse wrote it.

He didn't.

3887043
I would like to hand out awards to people for maintaining their anonymity, though.

Whoo! I am very happy given that I spent 2 days trying and trying to find something I was happy with prompt-wise, and finally went 'Ponyfeathers, I haven't topped my heist idea' and went with that!

Now to respond to feedback! If I don't respond directly, just know that I appreciated each and every one of you who took the time to review it!

3867509 3878408
Mutliple 'I want to know what happens to Quick Switch!' So yes, that's definitely something I am taking to heart, giving her a resolution after the reveal.

For TD, On the birthday, one thing I've noticed about myself over a few of these is that I really like to be subtle in revealing the full story. Too much so, it seems, as Touched in particular was noted for. I didn't want to out and out say 'It's the Princess's birthday tomorrow!' because I felt that would give away the scheme too soon. I'm still dubious on revealing that bit, but agree I need to add in more hints about what's really going on.

3869129
I very much agree with this on the Vault falling flat, because this went from word 0 to finished in 4 hours or so, and that was where I really started running low and just wanted to get to the resolution. I am very glad Quick Switch came across so well for you!

3871416 3886275
Comma abuse is my nemesis, one I struggle constantly to avoid. I have a bad tendency to do very long, rambling run-on sentences, with commas being my next big obstacle. Prior to that, it was semicolons in writing, and I've largely purged those. Yet the comma remains. On the sisters, the idea here is that they are not being callous; Luna is trying to prevent Celestia from nabbing cake, Celestia is ensuring a wanted thief is captured while also using that capture as a ruse to get access to said cake.

For the obstacles, yea - I fully intend to go through and make that segment more detailed/creative now that I'm not rushing to meet deadline.

3872846 If you're interested in red penning for serious, let me know

3875825 The cake thing comes from Ponyville Confidential, because certain characters get little enough screentime that small moments like that end up being major parts of their character; thus, for Celestia, a very common fanon bit for her is she has a major, major sweet tooth.

3876509 3886832
A couple in the 'Add more foreshadowing' column, which shall be kept in mind!

3878645 Even though it was short, this was one of my favorite feedbacks!

3880366 Luna expected Quick Switch to be Celestia, as TD later noted, and the trap was a double one - luring Luna away from her vigil, while also snaring a major thief!

3884157 I may borrow a bit from that idea if you are okay with it!

3887056

'Most Anonymous' would be a good way to put it!

So which of the people who guessed a lot of authors correctly used a computer program? I sure did. I didn't guess one single story correctly without it. And I lost one by not believing stylo. So I did worse than random, but the computer covered for me.

3886939

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

Nice feature! Thanks!

3887045
Really, very much a guess. I couldn't nail anyone down to it from style, and I eliminated a few contenders from consideration due to their reactions (like Bad Horse). I actually changed my mind a few times, and then slotted you in there figuring that hey, you're a good writer and capable of writing it. Though when I went to go check, your review seemed to raise a flag for me... I guess because it seemed surface-level, without ever mentioning the themes themselves, when it seemed like this was a story that almost demands the reader chime in on those? Nowhere strong enough to confirm, but good enough for me to like the guess.

3887017

"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.

... and that even though stylo insisted GaPjaxie wrote "Audit".

3887045
Stylo clusters it with your stories. The main difficulty lies in the fact that your stories ended up very spread out in stylistic analysis, so you had to cut them down. I actually had it in my top 6 guesses for you, along with Rough in the Diamond, The Sunset Room, Dressing Room, Time Off, and Terror Incognita.

I had eliminated it because it fell closer to Time Off than to any of your other stories in one of the iterations of cutting down. Someone who was more cautious than I (or using somewhat different tools, or using Stylo better than I was) could have potentially IDed it that way.

3887057

I may borrow a bit from that idea if you are okay with it!

Sure, go ahead.

3887051
Roger, how do you feel about this?

"On Wings of Ashes" was written on a lark, based on an ill-advised promise I made to Present Perfect. I did not expect it to do well at all, so on the one hand, I'm pleasantly surprised to see it in the top half, at least.

But on the other hand, this is something that's increasingly befuddled me for the last several months of these write-offs, once the participation increased quite a bit. When I get top-five endorsements from the likes of experienced reviewers like Bradel, horizon, and Present Perfect, yet don't finish anywhere close to that, I don't know what to do with it. I wonder what they're seeing in it and why nobody else does.

I also found this interesting: I had to score 272 points just to break even on all of my old scores depreciating. So I finished as low as possible without seeing my cumulative score drop. 12th of 31 seems an awfully high bar for that.

3887057

For TD, On the birthday, one thing I've noticed about myself over a few of these is that I really like to be subtle in revealing the full story. Too much so, it seems, as Touched in particular was noted for. I didn't want to out and out say 'It's the Princess's birthday tomorrow!' because I felt that would give away the scheme too soon. I'm still dubious on revealing that bit, but agree I need to add in more hints about what's really going on.

Thing is, "It is Princess Celestia's birthday tommorrow" is one of those innocous things which can be used as a cover for other things - for instance, if she got in precisely because it was Princess Celestia's birthday (for instance, posing as someone who was going to set something up or something, or sneaking away from a group of such folk after they were let into the castle) then everyone would simply assume that it was a detail she was taking advantage of, rather than something which was crucial to the ending - thus, you could drop in the detail without giving anything away.

Or she could use such a group as a distraction or something. I dunno. There's lots of possibilities, though, for working it in in a non-awkward way.

The real problem is that I didn't really feel like the ending was fairly alluded to at all before Luna showed up, and while I had guessed early on that one of the Princesses might be the culprit, that was mostly a "I know that guy" guess because such a detail was obviously going to be important and who else would do it but one of the princesses?

3887083
I like it.

3887063
My guesses were also computer assisted, but I ran out of time because I didn't have any real libraries established ahead of time, and I didn't really start until later today.

Plus several folks were absolutely terrible with Stylo; you and Bradel in particular broke things up horribly, but a lot of folks had their stories attracted to a few stories. I spent like an hour trying to disentangle your results, because I wanted to get YOU right, at least, but Stylo refused to help me.

Amusingly, two of my wild guesses at the end were correct, which is actually pretty decent (though in all fairness they were a bit less random because I had already eliminated a bunch of other stories).

Even with a computer program, it is pretty hard.

But only my top section of guesses in my post were computer assisted, really; yours was "computer assisted" in the sense that stylo was useless, and the rest were me guessing.

In all fairness, Stylo did say that Dirty Prancing was consistent with PP. I was debating whether or not I wanted to guess all three long ones as PP's, but horizon stuck out so much as the writer of Hearth Swarming and I was reasonably certain that Dirty Prancing was PP's, so I pegged CiG for the last long one (incorrectly, as it turned out).

I assume M1 is given away by Stylo as well; I didn't bother, because I knew elseways.

3887022 Hey, I thought of something shmoopy I should have said in my review of "Some Doors". That bit in the beginning, about the island turtle, was totally great. Contrary to whoever said they liked "Amara" for the traditional fantasy elements, I really like seeing sort-of-storybook-sort-of-goofy cartoony stuff like that, or the potion ingredients in "Tittle Drop" last round; that sort of thing is a big comparative advantage of the show, where you can make rainbows in a factory and then vacuum them up later, Timber Wolves are made out of actual timber, Cerberus likes to play fetch, and gryphons can somehow grow mustaches if they're snooty and French enough.

(And while I have your eyes: you say that the feedback confused you by being in opposing directions. You probably saw it, but in my review I made note of the fact that it could have been made stronger by revising in either of two directions; is that what you're referring to?)

Man, I really wished I had gone through everything. It was cool seeing a healthy mix of authors I'm familiar with and ones I'm not in the fics I did read (and, specifically, congrats to Sharp Spark, who I think was my second-highest vote and who wound up with the bronze medal; I'd never read anything by you before but comments in this thread), but it sounds like I missed a chance to read some good stuff while it was anonymous, and of course I wasn't able to appreciate the crack crossovers upthread. Next time I have to either review each fic as I read it or not plan to at all, because catching up on my reviews was the biggest thing I procrastinated on.

3887078

Audit was an experiment in trying something new -- a totally different style from my usual. I think if I'd had more time to work with it, it could have been something good, but as it stands it was a bit of a train wreck. Given that I wrote it in about four hours, perhaps trying a totally new style of story was too ambitious a goal.

3887090

When I get top-five endorsements from the likes of experienced reviewers like Bradel, horizon, and Present Perfect, yet don't finish anywhere close to that, I don't know what to do with it. I wonder what they're seeing in it and why nobody else does.

I'm wondering if it's a matter of who's voting and whether the influx of people mean a change in taste, but as this is my first one, it's hard to speculate too much. Both On Wings of Ashes and Dirty Prancing scored lower than I expected, and I'm guessing maybe some of it is the general type of story they represent? They may hew a little too close to zany antics for some people, and it's easy to develop an antipathy toward zany antics stories when bad ones get so much traction in the feature box, and when they can seem a bit like they're not even trying to be good writing. PP, horizon, and I tend to be some of the most open to this particular type of story I think, possibly because I think we all like writing them too.

If there's a thing we're seeing and other people are missing, I would guess it's that line between zany antics and satire—and that's a line I feel like both you and PP were well across with your entries in this write-off. Satire is a hard literary form to pull off, though, and I can see how some readers might not consider it that way. For me, the reason OWoA and DP both situate themselves as satire is because of their particular incisiveness, like I mentioned in my review for DP. As an example from OWoA, the Luna flashback scene is entirely discontinuous with your narrative, but it's a really phenomenal piece of humor. Theories of humor often focus on hitting people with things that are inevitable yet unexpected, if I remember correctly. That's a good description of the Luna stuff—we know where it's going but not how it gets there, and you manage to create a scenario that's both credible and incredible at the same time. On the other hand, if someone wants a standard narrative line, you're not giving it to them. You're digressing into irrelevant material. But that material is worth the digression.

I sort of suspect that the issue is, a lot of people think writing comedy is easy because it's what so many bad writers focus on. What you and PP are doing, though, is a different sort of comedic writing; something that takes a lot more skill, I think. It's much more P.G. Wodehouse than Chuck Lorre. OWoA was my third highest rated story of the competition, and for my money, you're doing everything right. I'm also kind of shocked, myself, that more people didn't feel that way.

3887011

Your two stories:

Were responsible for half the 10s I gave out, and when I clicked over to your main page here, I rediscovered that you wrote "The Good, the Bad, and the Ponies," one of my very favorite stories on the site! Reckon I oughta go poking around your archives this week...

And thanks, folks, for giving "Funatics" 4th place. I've added a couple paragraphs to the third act and think I might have finally figured out what the story's about, so I'm aiming to release it either Monday or Tuesday.

Mike

3887110 While I can't exactly say I liked it, I hope you paid attention to what people liked about it. The interesting parts are really interesting, they just don't manage to carry it.

3887090
Well, even my story made at least one top 5. I got 15th.

My thoughts on why On Wings of Ash might not have scored that highly:

1) Equestria Girls. Some folks still haven't seen it, and thus don't have any innate connection with the Equestria Girls characters. Others simply dislike the 'verse.

2) Lots of other stories competing for the top spots.

3) My problem was... I never really connected all that much with the main character. She was amusing enough, but she didn't interest me terribly strongly, and she felt kind of like she got swept along by the plot - she had little real agency in the story.

And while the idea of Luna being an ex-con was interesting, unfortunately, I didn't really feel like the Nightmare Moon incident was all that great. The idea was pretty good though - Luna stealing Celestia's parking space was actually rather genius. But there were lots of bits in there which were a little bit awkward, like the Cutie Mark Crusaders, or bits of the Nightmare Moon Incident, or the minimum security prison gag (which, while theoretically funny, didn't actually make me laugh for reasons that I'm not quite sure about - though her "Huh?" afterwards might not have helped).

It wasn't bad by any means but while it had some good stuff it just never really came together for me as a whole.

I also found this interesting: I had to score 272 points just to break even on all of my old scores depreciating. So I finished as low as possible without seeing my cumulative score drop. 12th of 31 seems an awfully high bar for that.

That's because your median placement is 3rd. 12th out of 31 means that you're not even in the top third of the stories.

3887106 You suggested a varied approach, pretty much everyone else pointed one way or another. Other stuff varied as well. (charecters sounded great! Vs their voices were off and a little ooc, etc.)

Yknow, a lot of people also indicated Celestia's reply was too curt. In the actual doc, I included the emoji at the bottom of the letter, indicating that Celestia doodled a little picture just to show she was teasing, but I cut that out from the submitted version because of formatting reasons.

Oh, for what it's worth, about "The Star Chamber"...

Thank you guys for all the great input on it. I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet; I know what I was shooting for, but I get the feeling a lot of readers didn't by the time I ended it. I'm still trying to get a handle on what promises I was making and what readers were expecting in the payoff, and I don't think I'll be able to fix it up until I understand that better. Hopefully I'll have it out to Fimfiction before the next write-off, but I've got a bit of Christmas-related work that needs doing too.

I might wind up contacting a few of you about it, to see if you're willing to share further thoughts. Or if you really want to share further thoughts, feel free to PM me about them.

ETA: Also, thank you all for giving me the party favor. I find this an entirely acceptable way to begin my tenure in the write-off.

Avoided detection awards are out.

3886931
I tend to do that all the time.

Also, YAAAY! Results are in!

3886971
I'm actually offended you would think I was Unto Whom All Doors Are Open. I assume you though my review of it was in jest, a case of "methinks the lady doth protest too much" to try to move suspicion away from myself. But no, that is legitimately the one story that angered me because I do NOT like having religion shoved at me. That is one of, and possibly my largest, trigger. I was raised Catholic and for 18 years, I went to church every week, sometimes more for holidays, went to weekly church classes, didn't eat meat on fridays, read from the bible during lent, had my communion and confirmation, etc. All of it forced on me while not believing a lick of it. I don't appreciate people trying to push more religion at me because to me, that's them saying, "I don't think you're smart enough to make up your own mind about what you think. Let me tell you the correct worldview."
*Deep calming breaths*
I'm sorry about that. See, that's why I cut off my commentary on that fic when I did. I tend to rant about that sort of thing. I apologize. That wasn't anything you explicitly said. I was just slightly incensed by anyone thinking that I would write something of that nature.

Now onto happier things, and what I actually DID write! So yes, I wrote All The World's A Stage. (How did you know, Horizon? Lucky guess or have you been studying me?) Or rather, I wrote about half of it, ran out of time, and submitted what I had. The main criticism for this story was that it wasn't really a story so much as an incomplete idea. That's because that's EXACTLY what it is. Let me add another entry onto the deductive author guessing process:

- Does it start out well enough, an interesting idea, developed decently, if clearly needing an editing pass to clear up some obvious typos, then hits the minimum word limit and abruptly ends, as if the writer procrastinated until the last minute and is only just barely making the limit in the last two minutes?
----->Von Snootingham (Then again that would have fit a good third of this rounds' entries)
It almost happened on my first outing, Famous Last Words, where I tried to finish and ended up being a couple minutes late. It happened for There's Magic Everywhere, where I slowly had Twilight absorbing and analyzing magic and then suddenly turning giant and eating everything the end. (still need to finish that story) I actually got Over the Horizon done on time, but that was a short one, so eh. And it happened here. I didn't start until about 3 hours before the deadline, because I'm stupid like that, and I didn't even bother trying a quick wrap up this time. I just cut it off mid conversation. I've been working on finishing it (barely. all my free time this week that wasn't taking care of daily chores in WoW has gone to reading and reviewing everyone's stories.), so that should be up soon so you can see where it's actually going.

I'm taking some of the suggestions to heart too. Someone called Stu Luna's stunt double, and while that wasn't what I'd been thinking, that's too awesome to pass up. And while the dragon wasn't g1 Spike, I'm sorely tempted to do that. The other main criticism was that the recap of the pilot was too long. I actually trimmed that down ALOT. Twilight actually goes on quite a bit about each of her friends and I parsed that down to one word each. I didn't want to assume that every reader had intimate knowledge of the scene and remembered it exactly, so I left in enough to set the stage. But enough people called me out on that that I've trimmed it down to almost nothing, so we'll see how that looks when I publish.

I see in addition to the previously noted Whom All Doors, the computer generated guess for Dirty Prancing, and Horizon's correct guess, people guessed me for Emotions, Audit, Pale Horse, Vault, Bridges, Cake, and two for Remember. I'm curious to know why people specifically guessed me for different stories. Was it more case of the computer algorithm guessing for you? Was it something you thought about me in particular? Was it just process of elimination? I'm dying to know!

In conclusion, this was another fun round of the Writeoff. I'm glad to have participated, I'm happy with what I've written, and I'm thankful for the advice people have given me on it. I'm glad to see some of my favorites did so well. I hope everyone had fun and I hope to see everyone back soon for the next one!

3887127 Hmm, I should clarify, then: I don't think a varied approach would work, but I think either approach could work. It depends mostly on how badly you want to keep the impact of the final reveal. As for the letter, that was something I don't think I objected to in my review, but it was a scoche out of step with not only the finale but the preceding stuff. The reason it wasn't off-putting, though, was that (if you go pure no-finale comedy, and maybe even if not) the snarkiness of everything else should be boosted to match. Wild speculation is more fun to read if it's really wild, and as I imagine a Sadlestia-free take, the tone of everything else rises to match.

3887114
Humorous writing is quite difficult. There's a reason that the humorous author reference pool in terms of real books is so small.

Dirty Prancing I think was in part a casualty of stiff competition and in part a casualty of people not being familiar with Dirty Dancing - I've never seen it, and thus the fact that it was actually almost entirely a parody of it completely zoomed past me when I read it. I did enjoy it anyway, but it didn't quite make my top 5 (my final top 5, for the record, were The Star Chamber and Hearth Swarming Eve (both 10s), Dressing Room (9), and Ill-Gotten Gains and The Brightest and the Best (8s).) Dirty Prancing at some points kind of lost me because I wasn't familiar with the source material and thus didn't know why certain scenes had to be included, which made them seem like they were just kind of there for no reason.

3887123 I didn't vote on "Wings of Ash". Are the votes tallied in a way where non-participation matters? Assuming everyone has a normal (or uniform) distribution over their non-N/A votes, will a story with one 10 vote and the rest N/A beat a story with a 9 from every voter?

3887132
I'm not seeing any icon at all next to Time Off.

3887151
Heh. The query I hacked up took away Bad Horse's ribbon because he got the sleuth award.

Thanks & fixed.

3886583
Oh, incidentally, I think I'll be obnoxious here and point out that I totally called two of the medalists, three of the top five, AND most controversial before the results were announced.

HaHA! I may not have Stylo, but I have prestedigitative vote-guessing powers!

3887171
Well done!

Is it bad that I extract a certain amount of pride from the knowledge that, due to having no publish stories, I probably screwed with everyone's stylo programs?

Anyway, this was a great experience! I had fun writing The Sunset Room -- partly because I got to try out all the neat tricks I learned from Writing Tools by Peter Roy Clark -- and it was neat to see my story do as well as it did, especially given its significant flaws.

Also, I'd like to give thanks for all the feedback. I submitted my story five minutes after the deadline, by my clock, with no editing and a rushed ending. A lot of the responses pointed out that those two areas needed work, so in my editing pass I'll make sure to give them the attention they deserve. Also gotta turn around that Fridge Logic, make it more believable. Hopefully I can turn The Sunset Room into something solid.

3887129
I'd be happy to give some focused criticism and/or editing help, if you'd like :)

(P.s. Cheers for recommending that in your interview with Nekonyancer, Cold in Gardez! It's a fantastic book.)

3887135
Oh no, at that point I had less than 10 minutes left and was just shoving random names into the remaining empty spots. Anything outside of my "real guesses" (which were noted at the top, above the line) should be considered as "TD was desperately throwing stuff together to get a vote for every story".

So no offense intended, your name was literally chosen entirely at random because I didn't know which story was yours and it was one of the stories I hadn't assigned an author to yet.

I didn't even remember your review of the story at the time I was assigning it, otherwise I would have guessed differently.

3887178
I think a lot of the problem with it was that, for all the work you put into the liturgy, there was very little in the story, and that made it a burden to read regardless of the liturgy. I do still think that's going to be a bit of a third rail in general, in this community (and most of the internet), but it would have been a lot more palatable if there was more focus on Doctor Whooves and his reactions; more physical detail; if the liturgy were broken into smaller chunks instead of broadcast wholesale; and if the narrative voice (the 3rd person perspective of the Doctor in this case) were more clearly distinguished from the liturgy by word choice and phrasing.

If you did those things—and most importantly among them, if you really built in a fundamental story structure, even if it's still mostly "outsider observes alien culture"—the story would work a lot better. I'm guessing it wouldn't get a super friendly Fimfiction reception c.f. third rail, but I think it'd be a much better piece of writing and something you could potentially be proud of, above and beyond the liturgy work.

3887178
Never apologize for anything you write. If it's something you felt strongly enough to put the time, effort, and thought into writing an entire story about, it's worthwhile. My personal feelings for the subject matter are just that: personal. Don't let that stop you from writing it. If everyone avoided writing things that upset someone, we would have no written language. I think Banned Book Week is the best week of the year at the library (I work at a library). It brings people's attention to writing that has at one time or another been considered contentious. If this is the sort of thing you like to write, then you gotta do you. If anyone doesn't like that, they can just ignore it. (I admitted in my review that I skipped over half of it. I ranked it a N/A.) So never apologize.

3887189
Ha ha! I figure that was most people guesses about me, was process of elimination and random guessing. I'm not exactly well known, so most people don't know what to make of me.

3887090
Agreed with the posts upthread, but I think there are two factors here: the general, and the specific.

Specifically:
You wrote this story essentially for Present Perfect, and you sold me on Luna fanservice despite (or perhaps because of) how crazy the prison version of her was relative to movie expectations (and common sense). That explains two of your top-fives, and Bradel had a damn good point about the humor which applies here too; I'm much more willing to go along for the ride if the underlying writing is strong.
And frankly, it's taken me a minimum 4-6 months of writeoffs to come around to appreciating the particular blend of character destruction that the old-timers seem to take in stride. When I first got started here that would have rustled my jimmies. (You'll recall the "bad" section of my gushing review was (verbatim) "Everyone else will hate it.")

Generally:
A) The silent majority seems to vote differently from the loudest reviewers ... and, being silent as they are, doesn't give any indication as to what drove their votes. I think, though, you can see patterns around the edges of the reviews, especially those who don't speak up as commonly.

Ah ... here's what I was trying to say above: Note that you and Cold in Gardez both scored similarly, both have the same high level of writing quality, and both got a number of critiques that boiled down to: these aren't the characters. For readers intensely into the field, straying creatively farther from the source material is a positive, because we're jaded on the common tropes. For more casual readers, sticking to the source material is a positive, because that's what they're here for. "Muscle-bound tattooed Luna" is going to provoke quite different instinctive reactions in both audiences, and you're playing to both here. Similarly, I was willing to overlook CiG's failure of Apple Bloom voicing, but virtually every review mentioned it, and it made a clear difference in the voting.

B) Consistency is a major and silent factor in how the voting plays out: someone who does consistently moderately well will beat someone who does erratically amazingly. Note that both "Funatics" and "Hearth Swarming Eve" were on a supermajority of Top 5 lists[1]. and "Rough In The Diamond" was only on two, and yet all three were basically neck-and-neck in the final tally (and all beaten out by "The Brightest And The Best"). The difference is that "Funatics" and "Hearth Swarming Eve" were also both on the Most Controversial list (which I didn't expect, but should have based on the reviews). "Rough In The Diamond" wasn't; thus, the people who scored it low didn't score it as low as the people who scored Fun and HSwE low. Given that you were only on a few Top 5 lists, then what's going to make the biggest difference to your ultimate placement is how the people who didn't love it approached it (whether it was generally liked or whether it was divisive), so the negative reviews are going to be a much better metric for your standings than the praise.

C) An additional half a point would have bumped you to #6 -- which is the difference between, say, 10 people scoring your story "7" and "8". These are not dramatic differences here.

--
[1] In my case, I genuinely don't understand this. More in my post on my story.

3887207
Ideas carry stories a long way, as does execution. Hearth Swarming Eve had problems, which is how it landed on the Most Controversial list - and its problems weren't small ones, either. But the idea and the general flow of the story, I think, mostly worked, and while the ending did not the rest of it worked well enough for me to not leave me feeling too terribly dissatisfied. And by that I mean I liked it rather a lot.

Liking something in spite of its flaws suggests to me that there is something there which is outweighing the problems a story has.

"Muscle-bound tattooed Luna" is going to provoke quite different instinctive reactions in both audiences, and you're playing to both here.

I actually liked that idea; it was an interesting depiction of Equestria Girls Luna who had, at least in the first movie, no actual personality.

I would like to thank everyone for the reviews and critiques for this write-off. This being my first write-off event, that I more or less jumped into on a whim, I feel rather well-received. I had an interesting time going through the various discussions here, after submitting my own votes, and noting how my takes on the various entries differed from (or had similarities to) the various reviews, and I was pleased to find that much of the feedback for my submission largely matched my own critical assessment. I would I might backtrace and use this post as a response to all those who reviewed, but that is beyond me at the moment; this will be fixed in the next version.

I would also like to give a bit of a story, that perhaps many of you can relate to. The prompt came up, and after an hour, I had a half-dozen ideas milling around, vying for attention; unfortunately, they were all crushingly in one way or another, and I didn't want to -- or simply couldn't -- bring myself to write any of them. After a day or so I had an idea that I wanted to tell. It was a downer in its way, juggling some head-canon with the Pies and coping with Pinkie Pie leaving for Ponyville. The idea sat and sat and sat until, a few hours before the deadline, I had written and deleted a few hundred words several times and found myself before a disturbingly familiar blank page.

At that point, I told myself that I would write something, even if it wasn't this moving gem of a story I wanted to tell, and that I had to run with something. I ran around for about an hour (and by 'ran around' I mean sat in my chair and glowered at the screen with probably more intensity than is healthy) and tried to find something, anything, to tell. I forget exactly what it was, but it had something to do with going mad under the stress of a creative project, and I ran -- this time, my fingers darting around with alacrity -- with the idea (if projecting a bit, perhaps?). 2000 words, ninety minutes, and a single editing pass with the misplaced notion of making it a guessing game to determine which word will be emphasized next (an idea I'm sure I'm stealing from someone I admire), and you get a piece with no title that flows madly significant abandon, with no punchline. Some ideas were dropped and some themes found as I had gone along, but there was simply no time to smooth things out without risking it devolving into nonsense. Pick an inane title, paste in text, and submit. Until I read the first review of it, I was almost sure I had written borderline horror; then I read a review, re-read my entry, and realized that the ending was, given the text, probably nothing more than Rarity locking herself out of the studio. Calling the entire exercise 'experimental' is generous -- I may have simply cut exposition to get the words out in time, even if No One Else Can Get A Word In Edgewise was always the plan.

All this is going a long route to say that I wish I could have given my first entry a better showing, but there is nothing for it and no one but myself to blame. (Time will tell whether or not I go back and make my entry more... presentable.)

Your collective feedback has been most welcome, and I eagerly look forward to the next prompt. Time permitting, I will endeavor to offer reviews of my own in the future, if not for this event.

3887011

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.

I cannot believe I actually got away with that, even though my first fic only has a hundred or so views. Still, I'll take that Avoided Detection award with pleasure.

But yeah, to put a long story short (since I'm off to work in half an hour), Millennial Vault started as a completely different concept, became the current idea on the last day when I realised we were using Behind Closed Doors, and then switched from comedy to horror halfway through writing because I lost heart in the comedic take I had at first (I initially had it the Vault only contained Luna's personal diary).
And of course when I finished at 3am, there was no chance of me going back over to paper over the cracks, so 23rd place is fully justified.

Hope some of you read the fully edited version when that goes up sometime this week, because it'll be a massive step upwards from that sloppy mess.

3887229
Speaking of this story, do you mind if I use this idea of Rarity rambling non-stop without letting anyone get a word in edgewise for a story of my own? I'll make sure to give credit where it's due in an author note. I've just gotten a stroke of inspiration from this and I think I might be able to do something really fun.

So ... a couple of quick reflections on the competition.

First of all, apparently I won a medal(1) along with two Writeoff first-timers(1). Hearty congratulations to Pineta and sharpspark, whose stories deserve all the praise they got! Newcomer Bradel also won Most Controversial, and I see at least five other new names. I hope you all enjoyed the experience, and that you've got some good feedback to chew on. Not all of it will be useful to you -- those writing one-way feedback like the writeoff reviews can't see your vision for the story; they can only see what's on the page and what would have made the final product stronger for them -- but they can give you new ideas to try, and fresh ways to challenge you to push your boundaries.

(1) I really did not expect this. (2)
(2) I'm still trying to figure out which one I expected least. Seriously, I wrecked my story to fit it into 8k words, and the competition from the returning champions was formidable.

Hearth Swarming Eve

Here's something that won't surprise you: my 8,000-word story was about 7,000 words in when I realized I had 3,000 words left to write. I short-circuited to the big reveal early in the Roseluck scene, wrote the most abbreviated possible ending I could that still came to a reasonable close, and found myself staring at 8,700 words with half an hour before the submission deadline.

Well, I had to hack several scenes to pieces to do it (Twilight's idiocy, among many of the flaws pointed out by reviews, was a casualty of that), but I managed to squeak it in with three minutes left -- minus the compelling climactic scene that I'd been building up to the whole time; minus the resolution for the "Rarity and the pocket mirror" plotline; minus the clues explaining Chrysalis' plan; and with some editing-induced character destruction. When I clicked submit, I estimated it would struggle for the top half. (I also thought that about Mark of Destiny a few rounds ago, which similarly floored me with an upset, but I sincerely thought Swarming was far more poorly handled.)

So ... yeah. I'm normally pretty egotistical cognizant of the fact that I write things that people enjoy, and I normally enjoy reading my own finished products, but I feel like this particular story's a pile of problems. I guess it was, as 3887213 says, held together by ideas that were interesting enough to land it on a bunch of Top-5 lists anyway. (You have no idea how awkward I felt as those piled up. I had to add a bunch of praise to my self-review so I wouldn't be the only person who had nothing good to say about it. ) But I'm gonna keep up the momentum, and edit it and push it out by this time next week -- this has a short shelf life, because it's a Hearth's Warming story, and needs to go up in time to be seasonal.

I've copied all the reviews down into my writing file and will go through and take advantage of all the excellent feedback. I do want to single out 3876124 for the idea that "Queen Chrysalis" is actually a changeling imitating their now-dead ruler, which ties the entire thing together so brilliantly on multiple levels that I'm ashamed I didn't think of it myself. Anyway, thank you all for believing in it, and occasionally enjoying it despite its word-limit-induced faceplant.

3887289
I'm glad you found that bit of feedback useful; if you need any help with editing work on the story, feel free to give me a poke, I'd be happy to help.

I'm not too surprised that the story was crammed in there; at first I pegged it as PP's story because it was the most obviously crammed in, but I realized it was your handiwork later on (and it was especially obvious with stylo, which had your clawmarks all over it). I do look forward to seeing it fully, gloriously realized.

So, as is now clear, I wrote the "well-written but mediocre" Through Glass. Everyone decided that I wrote much better stories instead, which is both flattering and kind of sad at the same time. You all expect better from me. Apparently I need to live up to that expectation.

The feedback on this was pretty clear: the story was a cute idea, but it was too long, and it stretched out the central premise for too long. I was actually kind of worried about this; I knew that the story was entirely hinging on the central idea, and that if people figured it out too soon it would be too long, but, unfortunately, this being a write-off, I couldn't really shop it around to people who didn't know the premise to see if they figured it out too soon.

People praised the initial bit with the hat, and seemed to catch on afterwards, so I'm cutting out the bit with the dress and greatly slimming down/reworking the flirting section to get to Applejack's appearance faster so that I don't end up belaboring the point.

Was there anything in particular in the story past the bit with the hat that any of you felt needed to be preserved when I rework it?

3887313 I think I mentioned that we need to see how AJ's flirting works in the context of Rarity being caught out -- Rara's embarrassed during the conclusion, but maybe she can spare another reaction in the meantime or something.

Did you spool it out as long as you did strictly to meet the minimum wordcount, or were you trying for something else?

I just entered this on an impulse, and by some fluke my story made it to the top! Thank you everyone for the votes and feedback, I will work on an improved version taking account of all comments.

I rather regretted doing this last week when I had to catch up on all the work I had put to one side while writing (I don't know how some of you manage to write 8000 words in that time - do you not need to sleep?), but I least I did find time to read and vote on about half of the entries. My favourites were: Hearth Swarming Eve, Dressing Room, and Ill-Gotten Gains.

3887322
I didn't go back and fatten the story up deliberately, but I included more in the pre-Applejack scene than I had in the outline probably in part because it wasn't very long to begin with.

I think the real problem is that I kind of was running with two ideas - Rarity is a narcissist and Rarity wants to impress someone without seeming desperate - and I really needed to cut out one angle or the other. Some of the things were meant to hint at her trying to impress someone and psyche herself up to some extent:

“Oh, nonsense. I’ve seen the look you were wearing many times; you are trying to impress someone.”

The mare blushed, her lips moving again.

“You don’t want to say who? Well, no matter. Though I think that whoever it is doesn’t deserve you; that hat is beautiful, but what kind of pony wouldn’t notice you even without it?”

The mare’s eyes flickered, and her ears fell slightly, her playful expression slipping; Rarity could feel her own falling away as well as she sighed.

“I’m sorry. You’re right; just because they haven’t noticed you yet doesn’t mean that they won’t if you put in a little extra effort. With an outfit like that, they’re sure to notice you.”

But she won't even say who she is trying to impress to herself out loud.

The fact that the other things were too fancy were also supposed to be hints at who she was trying to impress.

The problem is that narcissism is inherently amusing, but I don't think it was well-executed, and I think it ended up a bit of a muddled mess. I think what I'm going to end up doing is having her "show" "the other mare" how to act (practicing her look, more or less), and then get carried away with her fantasy about what is going to happen when her flirting-by-not-flirting pays off... at which point, naturally, Applejack comes in and sees her about to kiss herself in the mirror.

3887333 Ah, the "impressing somepony else" part flew right over my head.

I've been continuing on with the fics during this sleepless night, in spite of the fact that voting's closed. I definitely would have gotten "Creativity Unbound" a higher score if I had been able to vote on it; I had to look at TD's reviews to get the final little twist, but that wasn't really the point of the story. This'n made me want to punch Rarity in the face, but it did a really good job of doing so.

Then I followed it up with "Hearth Swarming Eve", which contrasted with the above nicely and which earned its silver on the strength of the place-name "Minotaurial Guinea" alone (although among the small proofreading errors was that it's later referred to as "Minotaurian Guinea"). Obviously I enjoyed everything else about it too.

3887348
I will freely admit there is a story on FIMFiction which I didn't really care for but upvoted for no reason other than a single, really terrible joke in its conclusion which made me bust out laughing in real life.