4089221

It is a very dorky story. This is after all the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which is also a very dorky amusing story!

4089247
Speaking of, new chapters are coming out for that now.

4089247 {Morning Sun}

Just post it to the ship's 4chan, and check after a few hours to see if anything was modded up to +5 Insightful.

Oh well now you're just rubbing my face in the silly.

(I don't mind the silly, but it tarnishes what could be a fascinating work. Granted, if the writing were better and had fewer plot holes and the dialogue worked, but you get the idea.)

EDIT: Actually I no longer care about the silly and the plot holes because the story is so enthralling. I'm tired of critiquing shit. It becomes hard to enjoy things when you critique them too much.

4088608
I found it. It's from Bats! From my recording it's at 20:39 right as RD cuts away from Fluttershy to Applejack. It's a crop of the full screen cutting out Applejack from the shot completely and blacking the background of the orchard. There are a couple other shots from earlier in the episode that might work too.

or this

I took the logo off the first one. Let me know if you want it off the other one too.

4089671

Hooray!

And thank you! "Bats" was next on my rewatch list, looking for the picture. I should be able to crop AJ out and such, then it's just a matter of rewriting the story to make it "first season compatible."

Mike

The Old Gray Mare - Author reflections
Suspected authors:
Dolfeus Doseux, sharpspark, FanOfMostEverything, Baal Bunny

So, this was something I threw together in a couple hours on Sunday just so I wouldn't have to deal with having my other story be my only submission. I'm really not sure why people seemed to like it and why the other one got the finger pointing for typos when this story is practically unedited. I must have been in the zone or something because I really just wrote this without even thinking about it.

The whole point of this story revolves around the season 4 finale line:

I guess I just don't really understand why I'm here... All I seem to do is smile and wave.

Now that Twilight has found her purpose in life as The Princess of Friendship, it puts Mayor Mare in an awkward situation. Having a Princess in town is one thing, but having the castle right next door tends to sway the public into taking issues to the highest power and bypassing the local officials. That leaves the Mayor with little more than a "smile and wave" kind of job.

I originally thought of this story along the lines of a "Mary and Gary" prompt (I almost submitted that for my choice). Mayor Mary Mare was going to resign her post in Ponyville and go live with her brother, Governor Gary Mare, in Manehattan. There was going to be some little bit in the middle about how everyone just assumed "Mayor" was her name and how the surname of "Mare" caused some problems for her brother. The whole "Mary and Gary (Sue)" trope would have been left completely unaddressed in the normal sense.

I rushed this along and paid most of my attention to the beginning and middle sections. Everything up to the packing and leaving part was okay, not great, but okay. The end was a total rush job to try and pull something together. I was certain that I wasn't going to give it a pure happy ending, but I needed to find a point to break the story off.

Likewise, the ending felt weak; the very final sentence was not that strong, and the final scene was as sappy as the Cutie Mark Crusaders after one of their crashes. That isn’t to say it was a terrible idea, but it just didn’t feel like it resounded as strongly as it might have with me.
-Titanium Dragon

The ending kind of sucked. I was running out of time and didn't do a good job of pulling it out in the end.

I don't think being elected to the post of mayor technically counts as a commission
-Baal Bunny

Yeah, it's not the right word, but it's all I could think of at the moment. I would have changed it had I bothered to go back and edit any of this.

Sometimes, reading a story inspires me to do odd things. Take this line, for example. When I saw that, I made an odd reaching gesture to this line with both of my hands, as if I were going to try choking those words. “Mayor Mary Mare”? Is this some kind of cruel joke?
-Everyday

This was supposed to be the inside joke to the whole thing being that her brother would be named Gary Mare. I didn't actually put that part in because... I'm lazy.

The question of the mayor is a pernicious one. Twilight was already rendering her obsolete in Season 1. When the Palace-Tree sprouted, even City Hall got outshone. This story faces those questions unflinchingly and, like Ms. Mare herself, reaches the only logical conclusion. But that doesn’t erase all that she’s done for that community.
-FanOfMostEverything

That's really the whole point of the piece. Mayor Mare thinks she doesn't have a purpose anymore, Twilight tries to remind her of everything she's done and how she's not useless, and then she goes and leaves anyway. There was a small item that I had a line in there for that was going to set her at odds with not having a family to care for and how her work became her child/husband/family. She didn't want the same thing to happen to Twilight, but couldn't bring herself to be that blunt. That's probably something I'll try and bring out if/when I update this.

This is a solid piece of work, and the first story to draw an emotional reaction from me (other than frustration—does that count as an emotional reaction?) during this write-off.
...
Good work with this story, author.
-Bradel

The emotional rollercoaster ride became a little bit of payback for submitting the prompt you did. I appreciate the kind words. They hurt even more knowing that I didn't put a whole lot of effort into this, and where I did put my effort got a full on rejection.

I will agree that it was kinda telly when it came to the mayor's emotions, but it fit the tone of the story and didn't bother me too much.
-Pigserpent

I wasn't really focused on creating that emotional connection. I sort of skipped around between sections and never let the story play out in the POV character's head. The ending was rushed and had very little to say on the topic other than the telly nature of my exposition lampshading the entire thing.

First off, a minor nitpick: Mayor Mare here was portrayed as old and has worked at least fifty years as the Mayor (making her at least sixty-eight years old) but canon contradicts this in Ponyville Confidential where it was mentioned that Mayor Mare dyes her hot pink mane gray (the "Mane Dying Scandal") and the IDW comics (if you count it as canon) shows her to be the same age as Cheerilee as they appeared in the Canterlot High School Prom in Issue #12 (with that hot pink mane). There's nothing with the author choosing this interpretation but this bugged me a little.
-M1Garand8

I can't really speak to the comics since I haven't read all of them. The part about the mane dying didn't really matter to the story here as she could still be old and dye her mane to look more age appropriate. The fifty year thing was just a random big number. I could have said twenty or thirty just the same. The main point that I was trying to make with the age remark is that she's been mayor so long that it's all that she can ever remember doing. Her whole life has been sucked up in her job and now that her job is reduced to the smile and wave, she's got nothing left.

Give us more substance when it comes to Mayor Mare. Hint at what she has sacrificed earlier. Be more specific.
-Foxy E

I'm terrible when it comes to originality and inventing things on the fly. With how little time I spent on writing this, my brain just wasn't able to come up with anything more poignant or creative. The tie back was only supposed to go as far as the walk to the castle and then back to City Hall. I never really figured on the train station bit until I actually got there and had to find some way to end the story.

Brilliantly written. Make one more editing pass for dropped commas and the like. I'm sad she left, but happy the cliche alternative was avoided. I really want to hear more of the farewells at the train station, such as from the rest of the mane six; having just two of them really didn't sell it enough. Similarly, I'd like to see one more beloved landmark that she's given the town.
-BlazzingInferno

I agree with all of this—all except for the first part. Thanks for the kind words, but I really don't think this was all that brilliant. It has some potential, but I'm going to have to dig it out.

Well, steady pacing is this fic’s strongest point as it marches toward it’s surprisingly unsurprising ending.
...
I was surprised by this one.
-Fuzzyfurvert

The pacing is fine because I didn't stop to look back at any point in the story. I just plowed straight ahead with reckless abandon. I was totally surprised that people had such a positive reaction to the story. Maybe it is all due to the subject matter, and being that people seemed to like that, it didn't matter that the story itself wasn't proofread and got thrown together at the last minute with a frantic ending.

“Perhaps by forcing the issue, I would find the decision would be made for me. That seemed to be happening a lot more lately.” Damn.
...
Hits you right in the cry-place in exactly the right way, too. Fantastic.
-PP

Somehow I seem to write stories that PP likes. I don't know how I happen to do that. I guess it just goes to reinforce the idea that the topic was a popular one, but that the writing suffered at my hand.

The plot itself isn’t much, but the strength of the writing carries it and turns the story into an enjoyable if slow, piece. The characters are also enjoyable and feel like themselves.
-Silent Strider

Scratch the above. I don't know what to think now.

And that's it. When I tried to write well, I failed. When I didn't try, I got praised. You guys are really messing with my head. Hopefully the next round won't be so crazy.

4089954

When I tried to write well, I failed. When I didn't try, I got praised. You guys are really messing with my head. Hopefully the next round won't be so crazy.

I'd say the lesson there is not to overthink it. Let the words flow without editing them to death.

4089954
Sorry to hear this was a mixed bag for you. I stand by the positive things I said for both of your entries.
I know how you feel; my most popular story on fimfiction was written in less than four hours, and has hundreds of times the views and likes of stories I've put months of work into

Dunno who will see this, but: Congratulations to bookplayer and Sharp Spark for being hot stuff with their Closing Time stories on the main page already! Horriblesad is currently No. 0 and Interestingymorefimlike is No. 1, but I expect there will be some Greco-Roman wrestling for a while. And those slots are even First and Second if you have "view Mature" selected*!

(* Which as a proper author, I, of course, never do. I asked a forum of degenerates and took them at their word, as no possible moral alternative was available. I mean, seeing written text intended for 18-year-olds only (as if the written word could somehow be an X-rated movie, and it still kind of creeps me out that there are restrictions on content here) might expose me to casual innuendo and/or existence of penises which I cannot possibly tolerate; the graphic foal death/mutilation and bloodletting/murder in the stories in question is infinitely more appropriate ugh okay fine I promise I will finally shut up about this someday.)

4090715
I always run with the safeties off. I mean, what would My Little Pony be without a bunch of gratuitous sex and violence? A fantasy show targeting little girls? Bah! We all know this is a show for young men who can't keep their dicks from flying out of their pants.

4089954
I was going to write something long-winded which basically amounted to what 4090034 said. If it helps, I'm learning the same lesson too. I recently tried to give a thorough edit pass to my gold-winning story from months and months ago, The Case Of The Cowled Changelings, based on the Writeoff feedback, and edited it into a much bigger mess that I'm trying to figure out how to beat back into shape.

(My hat's off to you, by the way, for not only writing two entries this weekend but ALSO having one of them be the only entry longer than mine. Even with more mediocre contest scoring, that's a crazy amount of words to put out at anything resembling final quality.)

4085512

I used to write very simplistically, but then I started cringing when I read over too many simple sentences in a single paragraph. The simple sentence is not a foreign being to me, but it hasn't been a friend in years, and I think for the sake of fanfic writing, I might need to adjust that. If it can be said in a simple sentence, no need to make it a complex one sort of thing.

The above discussion might be relevant to you too. It sounds like you were trying to deliberately sabotage your basic instincts for writing, in an effort to do things differently. That's a great impulse, because forcing yourself out of your comfort zone is the best way to improve; but when you're throwing out those basic instincts, be willing to listen to feedback on the results and abandon the experiment if your changes don't actually improve your work.

(In this case, if you've settled on the idea that complex sentences are better than simple ones, maybe now's the time to ask why you think that, and look at examples of both complex and simple sentences to find out what is more attractive (to you and others) about one or the other. I suspect there's a deeper principle at play and "write more complexly" is an overbroad idea that somewhere in it contains what you're really trying to express.)

Welcome to the Writeoffs, by the way! The Wooden Spoon should be taken as seriously as you want to take it, but the one thing you shouldn't take it as is a mark of shame. You finished a complete story in three days, and put yourself out there for criticism; that alone puts you in the top 10% of Writeoff Association group members! (Only 36 entries this month and over 400 people subscribed here.) Look at it this way, if you stick around and compete again, the only place to go is up. I look forward to the results!

4090715
I feel vaguely obligated to hurry up and get The Iridescent Iron Rat out there in an effort to have the Writeoffs pull a top-three hat trick, but I genuinely don't expect it to featurebox. There are a number of entrenched stories in the box right now; I don't have an immediately grabby description or cover art to catch casual eyeballs; sci-fi is a niche; obscure crossovers are a much smaller niche; and the main character is an OC. Even if I somehow got an immediate positive turnaround from Equestria Daily and launched it with the tailwind of an EqD feature, it would be an uphill climb.

4090779

We all know this is a show for young men who can't keep their dicks from flying out of their pants.

Don't forget middle-aged women who can't keep our dicks from flying out of our pants.

4090862
I think it will hit the feature box running. It's an amazing story (certainly my favorite read of the ones I have thusfar read), and it won for that reason, and ponies will love it. Let it be free! (But don't rush it if you're editing.)

4087967
Thank you for pointing me at that story, just in case I haven't been clear! I'm not finished with it yet (grading is going to drain me for the next day or two, then a cancerous recurrence of it coming this weekend), but I'm enjoying it.

I suspect that this somehow tied into that reason ponies keep telling me I should read and then perhaps write for Optimalverse, whatever that might be. Don't tell me, though. I value my ignorance.

It's not Twilight/Dusk/Celestia/Solaris's [[untranslatable-symbol]] to make for them.

Okay, this is frustrating me like mad. I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're saying here. What in Equestria does that symbol you're using mean??? In all the human references I'm looking through, it only has a circular definition! I am legitimately stumped. Do you guys use a word that intentionally has no definition? Are you sure...?

4090959
You have yourself some large mareballs.

I've been wanting to use that line myself for some time now.

4089954

So, this was something I threw together in a couple hours on Sunday just so I wouldn't have to deal with having my other story be my only submission. I'm really not sure why people seemed to like it and why the other one got the finger pointing for typos when this story is practically unedited.

The obvious answer is "you're just better than us". :B I mean seriously, I threw mine together over the course of mostly just Sunday and it came out far worse for having done so.

4091039
At least I have someone to testify I haven't lost all my mareballs yet.

EDIT: I can't help but mentioning that is not the worst "lost my marbles" pun I have put forth on Fimfiction. There's a far worse iteration of it in one of my stories.

So, since I actually did end up winning something this round, I thought I'd write a little blurb about my author guessing. It had very little if anything to do with Stylo since I can't really figure out how to effectively use it with the sample size and options. Most everything I guessed came right out of reading the forum and a small bit of luck/familiarity with the authors' writing styles.

A Day in Ponyville, Axis outed himself as the last story entered right before the deadline #36
Back to Normal, I had no better guess than the obvious one on this. Guessing was done long after the reading and reviews were finished.
One More Round, GrandMoffPony wrote something between #30 and #34 based on forum posts and timing of entries. That meant with Rose Petals going to fairly obvious TD, the choice was between Iron Rat, Party is Over, Trinkets and this one. I happened to guess right on one of those.
Passing of the Torch, Morning sun outed himself in the forum by posting he just submitted and there was only a one story increment in the counter.
Pranks for Nothing, This was a tossup between TD, Bad Horse, Horizon, and Bradel. The forum, along with PP, swung my vote toward Baal Bunny. I'm still not a Fluttershy.
Rose Petals, obviously the TD is the only dragon terrible enough to make Fluttershy cry like this.
Setting the Beat, I figured this was someone new, and I picked solely by going off the avatar pictures. The most musical picture won the guess.
Some Trade-Offs Mean More Than Others, This guess went mostly on style. I figured Oroboro as the kind of author that would write this one. That and he pretty much outed himself on the forum as well given the timing of the "all done" post.
The Museum of Lost Histories, Since "Pranks" was off the list, I had to go with Bradel on this one. It showed his style and archaic knowledge of historical tidbits.
What Bartenders Do, Bugle outed himself as writing story #35.

Now for the near misses.
I should have guessed bookplayer given the TwiJack love in Dubious Enchantment. KwirkyJ all but screamed that he wrote Cold as Starlight. Dolfeus Dosex should have been obvious for Lunnas Ache given his prior entries. The conversational tone in Cold Hooves sounded like it could be PP, but I stuck in Bookplayer seeing as how I couldn't get away from sticking PP on the Itchy Love Story.

Notable misjudgments.
I had HoofBiting down for Contradictions when he wrote something completely different than what I would expect. Good Taste I would have never guessed came from Bad Horse. I had him down for writing Iron Rat, so i was way off there. I should have listened to Stylo since it kept saying Horizon for the Iron Rat. I thought for sure that Pineta wrote Coming Home. Now I know I shouldn't discount Dash in the next round especially since he wrote something really good and incredibly fast being the first story submitted.

This should have been a whole lot easier since I knew that no one else wrote two stories but myself. It was simple multiple guess with a narrowing pool of choices. Choice is a word in the English language and you sometimes have the option of choosing things; they don't always end up being the best choices, though.

4088891

I think it needs to be more explicit. Like, in the italics, I had added in dialogue that had explicitly stated how "the event" changed her relationship with Fluttershy. As it was on my first read, she seemed kind of like, "I don't want to do this becuz you suck in bed" to me at least. After some more deep thought, it came out at me as my earlier post(s) point out.

4089093

So what you're suggesting is that you didn't feel there was enough evidence that Flutterhy's latest attempt had the potential to be different? And that really kept you from getting any extra feelz from it? Do you believe that, by adding the scattering of the petals over the bed to the beginning, it might would help out?

Like Titanium said some other time:

But the final cruel twist of the piece - the titular rose petals sprinkled on her bed - were supposed to complete the tragedy at the beginning, of Fluttershy sending Angel out into his hutch because Fluttershy thought she was going to be doing stuff with Rarity.

Or did you get what I was doing there and just didn't feel like it was significant or different from past attempts, or felt like not understanding what was going on hurt it even beyond that because of lack of context?

Fluttershy has initiated something of this sort before, her conversation with Angel and Rarity's statements make that pretty clear. It shouldn't be thrown to the hayside; Fluttershy is supposed to be feeling more confident, more heated even that tonight would be the night. She is supposed to be at a humble sort of high where she is expecting fireworks off the port bow. What she is going to get is a cannonball to the hull instead.

I'm no Fluttershy nut myself, but to get her hopes up for something only to have them crushed is what makes this ship sinking impactful for the reader. Rarity not wanting to carry on with the relationship in part because she thinks it is hurting Fluttershy, and in part because she doesn't feel the kind of intimate love that she is looking for should also add to that.

4090862

Yeah, definitely an overbroad statement that I used there. Thanks for the welcome, albeit, there is always a place other than up, since I could get whacked with the wooden spoon again. I don't want to go Lunnas Ache on people, but I don't want to look like I can't write on at least a high school level in my own language. I don't want to write like my audience can't figure anything out on their own, but I also don't want to leave them in the complete dark either.

Is there a week between write-offs? I would presume so.

4091392

So what you're suggesting is that you didn't feel there was enough evidence that Flutterhy's latest attempt had the potential to be different?

Yes.

And that really kept you from getting any extra feelz from it?

Exactement.

Do you believe that, by adding the scattering of the petals over the bed to the beginning, it might would help out?

No, not really.

I liked the Fluttershy pathos at the beginning, but if you (i.e. TD) want to make the ending punch harder, I think what you need to do is give her some more obvious hope (which seems in line with what Strythio is suggesting). I just never get the feeling she's got a rational view of things here, and that she has a legitimate reason to expect the evening with Rarity to go well. Rarity's side of the conversation makes her seem delusional, to me. Which is fine, but which nerfs my ability to generate much hope for her. And frankly, I like that Rarity does that.

Which lends itself toward the idea that something at the beginning would work well—something to set the stage of the romance, maybe introduce a hint of Fluttershy's insecurity (which she's carefully avoiding in her perspective) and a lot of her hope. Maybe let Angel be an audience stand-in, watching judgmentally and providing just a hint that things aren't all right; put some tension against the Fluttershy perspective. The rose petal spreading scene could definitely work for this, and since you've got it in mind, it's probably your best choice. I don't really have other ideas. But if I were giving advice (which I suppose I am), I'd say that what you should be focusing on is the perspective work on her and establishing an unreliable view of the situation which Rarity will proceed to deconstruct at lenghth and in traumatic fashion. Then you get nice symmetry with the existing ending.

4089671
4089844
I cleaned it up some more for you. Background is blank, and I pulled AJ out giving RD a more natural right foreleg. Scratch the first one - here's the full clean one.

4089026

Oh yeah, TD, since 4091432 is all discussing your story and not bothering to tag you about it, maybe I should help him out with that.

4091342
This is not meant as a criticism of you particularly – and honestly I opted out of author guessing this time because it's kind of exhausting and I would rather give it 100% or not at all – but I think we could really do with a change in the system so time of submission doesn't correlate to fic number. I don't see anything wrong with you using the information. But having that information available seems to pretty heavily go against the point of the guessing game, and the social counter is that people shouldn't announce when the enter fics or whatever, which is just... kind of annoyingly unclear and un-fun.

4090862
Well, I'll promote it. Maybe others will as well, if they liked it enough; both of those stories got boosts from folks posting about them. And I reviewed them both and recommended them both.

I'm going to make some adjustments to Rose Petals with an eye towards a post sometime this week, but we'll see. I have fairly good "luck" with the featured story box, though.

I also need to post some other stuff, and finish some other stuff...

And finish some original fiction...

...really it sounds like a lot, but the only barrier really is laziness. And at the moment, a food coma. Stupid Mardi Gras.

4091730
Thanks, mysterious stranger!

4091342 Huh. I figured I got guessed because the title is really similar to my first writeoff entry, which I didn't actually realize until I submitted.

Although it is totally my style.

4091749

Well, the rules did say you are not permitted to do anything that would compromise your anonymity, so as long as the fics are posted on the site in the order in which they are received, then it would be problematic announcing when you submitted your fic right after you finish submitting it (or worse, pointing out that you are 25th to submit or something of that sort).

Course, a change to the way the submissions enter the que could work too.

4091432

So, after reading your entire post, is that a yes to all three of the quoted questions?

4091783

Good luck with your workload, and may the petals fall where they may.

4091749
This isn't meant to disagree, but I'd like to also point out that the previous guessing winners have gotten their awards almost entirely on the backs of a statistical analysis tool, and Roger has said outright that he doesn't care if people do that. So, basically, the author guessing competition explicitly incentivizes brute force and skulduggery.

I'm not a fan of that, but so far it hasn't gotten in the way of the things I find important about the Writeoff. If enough people are having fun with it the way it is, I can just pretend it doesn't exist (or play, but not play to win, as I did this round).

The fact that Thornwing skunked the stylo users is impressive enough that I can't be too critical.

4091829
...yeah, sort of. I did notice that. Which was why I tried to emphasize that the rose petal scene itself wouldn't do much for me, but that I thought it might make a good venue for doing other work that would.

4091844
Right, and I don't think it's wrong to utilize that information if it exists. I'm simply saying that if it's technically feasible to remove or rework that particular system, I think it'd be beneficial.

If you're doing stylo or whatever, you're ultimately comparing style, even if it's the computer doing so and not yourself. The submission number thing is entirely extraneous and mostly seems to reward keeping track of who said they submitted their fics and when. It's kind of a newbie trap (I believe Bugle last round said exactly his submission number, which effectively broke his anonymity for those who saw it and knew the system quirk – that's bad, outside the guessing context). And the social solution like 4091829 says seems not fun to me. I always like hearing just how many people are rushing to complete their fics at the last minute!

4091531

Thank you:

Once again.

Mike

4091868 4091844 4091749 4091789 4091829
I'll have to agree that there is some lack of fun in picking up on forum queues to decipher the authors of certain fics. I don't like having things be totally obvious from innocent slipups. The flip side to that is that people can certainly play that game too. I can say I submitted story #whatever, but that doesn't actually guarantee that I did. I kept saying all along that I wrote a "story" for this round when I actually wrote two. I also said I wasn't writing anything or that it sucked, which they both sort of did in a way, but that's kind of part of the game as well. TD is directly vague in saying things like, "that's exactly what I would say if I wanted to throw you off".

I guess I see it as a side game to play and have fun with. A number of my guesses this round came from following the forum posts. I didn't go off of that 100% when I picked my final ballot, however. I still took a look at the stories and what I knew of the authors that I was putting up for each fic before tossing in the names. Looking at the other two sections of my post I think you can see that I had some second guessing going on that I could have followed to much better results. Being attentive to the forum isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

I think it's pretty clearly shown that Stylo is nowhere near perfect or even good at making guesses without the proper input. Unless you spend a lot of time cleaning up the text, filtering the bogus words, gathering a sizeable corpus and actually running the stats behind a couple dozen filters and options, you aren't going to get anything particularly useful. I think people are scared about making guesses thinking that they are wasting their time going up against people using a computer to pick the winners every time. That is so not the case.

I debated about even making my post about how I picked things. I ended up posting it because I wanted to show how it was done and how imperfect the process really was. I got lucky more than anything. I could have been totally off by following people's comments on the forum. In practically every instance I had to weigh a number of factors given the person making the comment and narrowing the choices based on that or not. It's a forum style guess more than a story style guess in that case, but it goes along the same principles of trying to decide who wrote what and how much that makes sense based on what I know of their history and potential future writing.

I've done a couple things in my stories to throw people off guessing. I've given myself good reviews and bad reviews in my mock reviewing. I've changed my capitalization methods seeing as I normally write Alicorn, Pegasus, Unicorn, and Earth Pony as such. I may even throw in some English colour once in a while just for fun. Every story I've written has been about a different main character. Stylo hates that.

Not a lot of people seem to be playing the author guessing game. It might not be of any interest to some, or it might be the burnout people experience after running the race of prompt, submissions, reading, reviewing, and voting. We only had 22 people vote on the finalists this last round. At least that number was higher than the number of finalists, but it's far less than the total number of people that entered a story and way less than the number of people that submitted a prompt. People seem to lose interest if they don't have a horse in the race. If we look at the prelim voting, we see there were 76 ballots cast. Conservatively, 35 authors entered their mandatory ballots. I accounted for a total of 6 ballots myself along with being one of the 35. So roughly if every author filled out the mandatory ballot, on average, every author took up one more ballot on top of that. That's far less time spent on the first week than was normally given in recent rounds, especially given that there were probably only a few people that took extra ballots and most likely took all that they could seeing as most of the reviews were done on the first week anyway. By the finals week, a lot of people had moved on; more than half the count that started the race. The author guessing gives people like me something to do while we're giving extra time to people who might need it for actual reading, voting, and reviewing. I had everything read and votes tabulated by Wednesday on the prelim week. I didn't have all the reviews typed up, but I had read everything and given my scores and notes on the entire field. I certainly don't expect anyone else to do that. The author guess gives me something to do besides making productive use of my time in writing and editing more stories.

One last thing. I kept track of a bunch of stuff during the submissions, but I buried that page for a good week and a half while I read and reviewed everything. My scores were all voted and locked in before I even thought of looking back at the page of notes. Even though I had a pretty clear picture on a couple stories for who wrote them, I honestly put that thought completely out of my mind for the reviews. I don't want anyone to think that it in any way tainted my reviews or scoring. I swear it got put aside and out of mind seeing as I don't think it would be fair to take a bias into a review process. You might think I'm just saying that to CMA, but it's the honest Applejack truth. I'm serious.

4091749
I'm not convinced there is a direct correlation to begin with. I distinctly remember submitted Apple Knots and seeing that there were now 13 entries. I briefly considered posting something about being lucky number 13, but decided against it in case that was the order that the fics were presented. Instead, mine was number 27 in the gallery.

4091844
I haven't mentioned this, but that's how I got Bugle as well, and I picked up on some of the same things Thorntail did as well (I got Moff wrong though, IIRC). I missed that Axis said that they were the last one to submit. Indeed, the way that I won best guesser in the minific round was exactly via watching people posting that they'd submitted stories and checking the stories submitted counter to figure out what story numbers were likely theirs.

Stylo is a powerful tool, but with 36 entries and 30-odd writers, it requires a lot more patience (or familiarity with the program) than I have to use it effectively. It was useful for confirming my guesses, but I didn't get many good guesses via stylo. Also, if you write in first versus third perspective, it throws stylo off a bit as well, and there are other things which stylo doesn't like very much.

Not that stylo isn't a useful tool, but you have to be reasonably clever about it, and the larger the pool of writers, the harder it is to use effectively. It doesn't help that not everyone in the competition actually fully resolves under stylo anyway unless you go through a ton of work to do it; that is to say, there are multiple people in the competition who overlap enough stylistically that stylo cannot reliably separate all their stories. The more people you have involved, the harder it is for stylo to work its magic, and the more work you have to do running the program to separate them properly.

Rat, Pranks, and The Museum of Lost Histories were all confirmations of my guesses. Back to Normal was a guess based on subject matter. What Bartenders Do was from forum posts. Stylo alone gave me only Apple Knots and Cold Hooves - two stories. Or, to put it another way, even without Stylo, I still would have gotten second.

Though, to be fair, it isn't as if Stylo was really "wrong" on the others so much as it simply narrowed thinks down; Dubious Enchantment got fingered as being bookplayer's, for instance, but it also fingered Bradel, and bookplayer was fingered for more than one story which I felt was plausible for her. Now, I should have guessed Dubious Enchantment because of TwiJack, but I wasn't really thinking about that by the time I did my guessing; in retrospect, though, it was obvious, and maybe had I done all that analysis up front before I started reading the stories I would have cottoned on. Might do that next short story round.

For minifics, stylo is probably useless.

Another problem is that if you simply run with a bunch of stories, you often end up with attractions between incorrect ones; Rose Petals clusters with my other stories if you run only Rose Petals plus my other stories, but if you try and run all of the stories through stylo and aren't clever about your exclusion list, stylo won't tell you that Rose Petals might be mine. So, if you were very patient, you might be able to get better results out of stylo, but it would require more time than I think most folks are really willing to put in.

4092021
I deliberately mislead people this round about when I submitted my submission, and sometimes deliberately pretend that something else is mine, especially when someone is suspicious about it. I stuck Rose Petals in as my very first review, for instance (and, ironically, in the first round where we don't go by numbers, it was story #1) because I figured that people would see it and not bother

I don't think most people do that sort of thing, though.

4090999

Choicechoicechoicechoicepenischoice

4091342

*Herself, and she

4092199
Look at the URL if you click on your story from the Gallery page. You're story #736. Those go strictly in chronological order; the first submission this round was Dash the Stampede's, which was #724, so you were in fact 13th. Thornwing leveraged that for his guesses, and a few rounds ago that was how I "hacked the site" and blew everyone's minds with A Basilisk For One.

They're presented in random order in the gallery, but the fic number is fixed.

4092377
More like fic's'd, AMIRITE 8V

4091868
It's arguable that the slip up is on the authors' parts for revealing information that could allow their authorship to be deduced. (As another example, people frequently leak their word counts.)

Nonetheless, as you say, I can just as well conceal the information on my end. It would not be too difficult.

4092495
This isn't fair, I can't upvote and downvote a comment at the same time.

4092668
Now that would be a novelty...

4092021

I didn't do to much guessing because, well, other than using or creating some program that analyzes Stylo with some other published input as a reference, there is hardly any reasonable way to go about it as a first-time write-offer. I barely know people's names much less their writing, and would literally be throwing a dice for complete and random guessing. And I don't like having to completely go off of luck; I want something that might could narrow down the choices other than the list of people who participated.

It would take quite a few write-offs and actually connecting submissions to author before I personally would want to attempt educated guessing.

4085523

Starswirl's familiarity with the symbol in the middle, I suspect, could have been him being famaliar with the Element itself, much less the future cutie mark bearer of that symbol. However, I would have to actually go back and read that book to say that with certainty. I at least get why Starswirl was given the insight though at this point.

4092634

I'd say yes please, if only because it's actually a little motivating to be able to do the 'Oof, almost there' sorts of posts, and I really don't want to play mind games around story submission time in order to keep from accidentally revealing myself that way.

4091342

I thought for sure that Pineta wrote Coming Home.

That means a whole lot to me :D I'm honored I placed so well in your rankings.

With everyone's confusion and all, I made vital changes to the final product that should hammer it down clearly now. I got a great response at first, so I think I handled it alright. Also, congrats to those who hit the FB.

Hey all!

So I apologize for vanishing shortly after the start of the preliminary round, only showing up now days after the whole thing ended, but here's my explanation for why. Truth is, I "dropped out" of the WO this time, so didn't actually read anything. I managed to pick a bad time to start trying the WO, as I really underestimated the time commitment and it was really stressing me out. So I made the painful (but probably correct) decision to just drop out entirely to actually focus on the stuff I needed to get done (like, say, working on my portfolio so I can find a job that isn't soul crushingly miserable). I didn't say anything at the time in hopes I might find the time to at least read my 7 fics anyway, but never got around to it.

I actually wrote two stories for this, not just Bartenders. Problem is, I wasn't remotely satisfied with either of them. In large part because I didn't actually have nearly as much time to write them as I wanted, and neither flowed very well narratively as a result. Another large part was because my editor quite bluntly told me they weren't very good =P So I wasn't going to submit either, but was talked into at least submitting the better of the two about an hour before the original deadline so I could at least get some feedback on it. I scrambled to edit it a little, but didn't manage to finish, even with the extra hour. I didn't think it was going to be even remotely readable at the time.

Apparently despite this, I managed to be the highest ranked of the unranked entries? That makes me wonder what would have happened if I had submitted my votes. Would I have made it past the preliminary round? Guess I'll never know now.

Anyway, I think I need to take a break from this whole writing thing for awhile, despite only just getting back into it. I definitely won't be back at the end of February for this (unless the prompt actually is "fibrous nuggets," if only because I have a stupid idea for it that I could probably write quickly and not have to worry about it much), and I'm betting March is unlikely as well. Maybe April? We'll see how much stuff has changed by then. But I'm afraid now is just not the right time for this. At least I realize it and won't pointlessly stress myself out about it anymore.

Thanks to everyone for being an interesting little community, and one I wish I could actually be more involved with currently. Another thanks to everyone who read Bartenders and reviewed it, hopefully I'll look at those later so your work isn't wasted. Best of luck to everyone, and I hope you all keep writing amazing stuff.

4093018
I would strongly recommend going over the reviews. They're the most useful part of the whole exercise in the long term. The start of the thread has a link to a spreadsheet that has links to the review posts sorted by both story and reviewer, so it'll be easy to find the ones for What Bartenders Do.

Here's me:

Expressing my ignorance in the hopes that someone can enlighten me.

While looking at the results again to see where "Pranks for Nothing" ended up in the final tally--12th place--I noticed that it was #2 on the "Most Controversial" list and was, in fact, the most controversial story to make it into the final round. The Writeoff FAQ says, "The controversy rating of a story is the standard deviation of the votes it received." So I looked up "standard deviation" on Google 'cause I have no idea what it is.

The first link Google gave me was the Wikipedia page, but the article there, while written in English, used words in a way that a clueless, half-century-old Humanities major like me could not even begin to understand.

The second link Google gave me was to mathisfun.com. This seemed more likely to be written for my grade level, and while I came away with an understanding of how to compute a standard deviation, I still didn't understand why anyone would compute such a thing.

A little further down Google's list, I came to a link to robertniles.com that said, "A simpler explanation of standard deviation, written by a former math-major-turned-journalist who likes to explain math to people." So I now think I understand why this is a useful exercise to do, but I'm still not quite sure what it means in the particular case of our little story contest.

With "Pranks," the number in parentheses on the main list--which I'm guessing is the average score--is 5.84 while .99 is the number in parenthesis for the story on the "controversial" list. Does that mean that, generally speaking, two-thirds of those voting gave it something between 4 and 7 while the other third went to either 3 or lower or 8 or higher? Or am I once again misunderstanding what's going on?

Mike, Trying to Broaden his Horizons

4097264
I'm a little curious as to how the scoring actually computes given the prelim round. Roger said he would be taking prelim ranking into account for the controversial scoring. Since all we did is order the fics 1st through 7th (and in some cases first AND second), I wonder how that translates to a numerical score, and then how that was used in computing the stddev.

Also, The Old Gray Mare is now posted on fimfic with about 1200+ additional words to sift through. Let me know what you guys think of the beefed up train station scene.

4097543
Just commented on the story, but I'll also reply here.

I thought it was good. The expansion gives the send-off more impact, and also makes it feel more evenly paced. I think you could do with modifying Filthy Rich's lines a bit, because it feels a little bit corny. The sudden turnabout and willingness to let the mayor know. Didn't tickle me right.

4097543
Excellent. I'll read it when I get a chance

4097264

The easy definition of Standard Deviation is : '2/3 of all results are within one standard deviation from the mean'

So since Pranks got a 5.84, the system is saying '2/3 of all votes are within 4.84 & 6.84, and the other 1/3 are outside that range'

Or rounding up, it means the bulk of the votes are between 5 & 7.

4097774
4097852

Three in the featured box with mature on! I didn't think mine would make it. Thanks guys!

It's even got a cute little flame on it.