4098219

Ahhhhhh, nice!! Good to see it getting recognition. It tops most of the stuff you can find in there. (Although recently, with all the published writeoff entries, the box has been pretty good.)

I'm gonna be posting my story from the "Behind Closed Doors" writeoff tomorrow. I just hope it gets some view, haha.

Feels like we should be coordinating these attempted box takeovers

4097543
4098194
4098311

Thanks, folks:

I'm surprised to see that I actually got the gist of it. Looking back at the previous couple of contests, though, yeah, they all seemed to have had controversial stories with numbers around 2.5. Even "Lunnas Ache" only managed a 1 this time around. Maybe the preliminary round makes the bell curve pointier? Sharper? Steeper? I don't know the terminology, I'm afraid...

Mike

4098355
It's probably because the prelims only gave us seven "scores" to assign to fics. So if you assume each fic was rated seven times, and those scores were {1,2,3,4,5,6,7}, then the standard deviation is 2.65 [1]. That means to score more than "1" in the most controversial listing, you would need your scores to be, on average, either 7 or 1.

With different averages, and number of votes, this changes, but it serves the point: With only seven voting options, it's very hard to have high standard deviations. You'd basically need a story getting rated a mix of 7's and 1's/2's to get a controversial rating above 1.

(If you'd like an example of what bad math and bad logic look like, please, look above)

So yeah, the prelims make the bell curve more phallic

---

[1] SQRT[(2*3^2+2*2^2+2*1^2)/4] = 2.65.

Which is close to 0.33*7 = 2.31, which gives us 1 s.d. if the scores are adhere to a normal bell-curve.

4098481

Why do you divide by 4 and not by 7? You have 7 samples here, not 4.

. . .

Okay. Might I say that this does not bode well for my semester? Because if I make mistakes like that . . .

I'd say my logic is flawed as well. It's probably just rigged up so he finds the s.d. of every story, then standardises them against the highest s.d.

Rule 34 works even for Gaussian distributions.

Everyone has their kinks

4098345
4098321

We've got four in the box right now! Keep it going everyone!

4099233
Wow. Congrats, everyone!
I guess I need to hurry up with making Lotus less of a sociopath (I swear she just had a long, stressful day).

Next time....next time...

4100024
oh god this needs to happen

HAPPEN ALREADY

also you should post the annotated version :B how'd that appeal to you, anyway? I haven't checked it in a while.

At some point:

"Pranks for Nothing" should officially emerge from the submission process. Till then, though, there's the link in the previous sentence if folks'd like to take a look at the rewritten version.

4100471

I notice that the FimFiction version doesn't have the final scene in the waking world. Was that a deliberate excision on your part, or did those paragraphs fall through the dreamhole somewhere along the line?

Mike

4100024
4100360
I beat you to the first upvote PP.

4098526
I would guess that's because this is the first writeoff to have a prelim round. Roger might have tinkered with how it was calculated because of that.

4099233
Perhaps I posted too soon. Ah well :V Have fun with that popularity, yo.

And now we wait.

4091342
4092955
Of the twelve stories I read this time, I ranked Coming Home No. 2 (after Dubious Enchantment). Lovely story. Very cool that someone thought I wrote it. Could I have done that? Maybe, but I wouldn't have done such a good job - I would have probably spoiled the simple sweet tone with too many bad jokes.

I'm also amused and a little flattered that someone thought I wrote Lunnas Ache. It's not inconceivable that I would do something like that, but my version would have more Lewis Carroll references, and I would have given it a quite different ending.

Instead I escaped detection with my experiment at writing a sort-of Dickensian pony story. Thanks to everyone who commented on End of the Day. Interesting mix of comments, and all valuable.

What was I playing at with this one? To me it mainly an exercise in world building - to see how much I could do in four hours. I liked the idea of creating a historical Canterlot setting based on Victorian London. Characters came second. Plot third.

I guessed I wouldn't get away with such a pretentious opening, but it was fun to write, and no line better sums up the inequality of the period. But, guided by Dicken's ghost, this theme became much more dominant than I expected. I didn't think much about the ending before I started writing - I just assumed that it would end with Celestia lowering the sun, and then conclude with some random punchline. When I got there I realised I would have to address the social inequality somehow.

How to conclude this? An over-sentimental Lion-King-esque ending suggesting that now that the Princess has woken up everything will be miraculously okay? No. Celestia and Tick Scribbler build a barricade in the streets of Canterlot and launch a revolution against the ruling classes? No time for that. So, with twenty minutes left, I hacked Dickens some more, aiming for an optimistic finish - suggesting that things will improve for one character at least - but remaining clear fixing deep-rooted social problems will not happen anytime soon.

As a background note. Lord Mayor is the title used for both male and female holders of the post. I spent ten seconds deciding whether to use Mayor or Mare, and went for the latter as no pun is too horse.

Regarding Rose Petals, if anyone is about:

What would be the best summary for it?

Rarity makes Fluttershy cry.

Rarity breaks up with Fluttershy.

The worst anniversary dinner is the one spent alone.

No one wants to "talk" on their anniversary.

Fluttershy has planned the perfect anniversary dinner, but Rarity wants to "talk".

4102021
I guessed Lunnas Ache was yours on the basis of "you write weird stuff" and "Stylo thought you might have written it".

4104938
Depending on the other tags, one of the last two.

4105125
Romance, Tragedy.

4105196
I'd go second-to-last.

4105223
Thanks.

4105223
4105243
One of the last two. Second-to-last if you want to tease more. Last one if you want to play it straight and serious.

4097543
The way it was done for last round is not very good, truth be told.

Prelim scores are n - 2i + 1, where n is the number of stories in the record and i is the order of the story in the list. This produces a range that is different from the [0, 10] used for prelim votes. To attempt to normalise this, I calculated the prelim and public stdevs serparately, then took the average of the normalised stdevs using the simple normalisation (n - min)/(max - min). This limits the range to [0, 1], and makes it so whichever story was most controversial in the prelim round can't be beat by any entry that got votes in the public round (hence defeating the point of doing all this in the first place).

What should (and will) be done is to instead normalise the scores in the prelim records to the range [0, 10], and then calculate the stdev of all the votes. This still leaves some bias to stories which pass to the public round if the mean score in the public round is not 5 (likely), but it's sufficient.

The controversial scores currently posted for this event don't retain any of the meaning a stdev holds.

4105251
Looks like it is going to be the second to last.

4105251
4105223
Used your suggestion for the story summary; it is posted to the site now.

Rose Petals

No one wants to "talk" on their anniversary.

Thanks to all of you who helped and reviewed my story, or even just wrote something about it or read it!

4105285
Yeah, it looked a little weird to see the numbers being so close together. The problem exists by taking two systems and artificially merging the results without creating a baseline for direct comparison.

I believe you said the prelim reading list can vary in size, so the only way to make the comparison work is to normalize the ranking to the 0-10 scale and then do the stddev math at the end, or else create two different scoring groups that stay differentiated (Most Controversial(Prelim) and Most Controversial(Finals)).

Okay, I have to ask: Is EQD fast-tracking our writeoff submissions? They've posted three of them in the last 48 hours already.

(if so, I might submit mine, lol) xD

4105285 4106277
I would probably say there should be two separate awards. Or possibly only an award for only one side or the other.

Since the very structure of the voting is different, it seems like it's truly difficult to compare - you can't fully normalize it, because, for one, some people don't give 0 - 10 scale rankings to begin with. If, for ludicrous example, all the voters in the final round only rated the stories at a 6 or higher, it seems like a prelim round that normalized to 0 - 10 would be much more likely to have stories take most controversial, because it's forcing full range usage.

But all the math stuff makes my head spin, so if you can figure out a fair way to compare I'm all for it.

4107470
It helps to have an inside track with a couple of prereaders in the group here...

Not that they would play favorites or anything... and not that I'm complaining if they are...

Even outside of that, we have a lot of good writers here, and people seem to put out a lot of good stuff from this group. All the feedback and reviews really do help make for some great stories.

4107470
4107586
I suspect the speed has something to do with the fact that they've already read the stories in question, and thus are more likely to know whether or not it is up to snuff.

Plus it means that they don't have to dive into the story queue.

4107917
This is entirely correct. :B

Very late answer, but:

4087090 (Titanium Dragon)

There are many things that could be used in place of those too human expressions and gestures. Let me just tell more specifically why I thought those two particularly bad.

- Wrapping the hooves around the shoulders. In humans (with hands) it's a spontaneous gesture, often unnoticed by the one that does it. In horses, if it's even anatomically possible, it's anything but; the horse needs to first take her weight off her front hooves, which means either rearing or sitting in an upright position, making it a very deliberate gesture. To top it all, the only situation in the series I can remember a similar gesture being made is when Cheese Sandwich is singing the Goof Off song, which definitely is among the worst images you could conjure at that point in your story. As for what you could use in its place, Fluttershy was already crumpled on the cushion; there are a number of protective gestures that a prone pony could have been used, for example slinking back. You could also use breaking eye contact, or even have her wrap her wings protectively around her body, in a very pegasus analogue of the gesture you used.

- At arm's length is not as problematic because, like you said, arms can be used to refer to the forelegs, but is a strange expression for a race whose natural posture isn't atop two legs nevertheless; it coves the personal space in front, but not to the sides or to the back the way it does for a human. It also does not make much sense because, with their relatively short legs, long necks, and large heads, at arms length for the ponies would be more or less muzzle to muzzle. I could see Spike using that expression, perhaps Twilight or Rarity if they got it from him, but not the others. As for what to use in its place, you could go for the remaining distance between their muzzles, or eschew describing the distance and go for a description of the aborted gesture (a hug? a kiss or nuzzle?).

4087102 (Titanium Dragon)

Actually, this is open to interpretation. Trixie isn't Twilight-strength, sure, but she seems to still be far stronger magically than the typical unicorn, and at the start of Boast Busters she did lasso AJ and made RD dizzy with a rainbow; if she was a paper tiger, between AJ, RD, and Rarity, I believe they would have unmasked her. And then there is the bit of semi-canon info about her going to the same magic school Twilight went to.

(In the comics, her mirror universe counterpart is even an alicorn )

The way I see it, her issue isn't that she is incompetent. She is actually good at what she does, and judging by her cutie mark her talent seems to be magic, or at least a specific branch of magic. Her problem was a mix of hubris and boasting in pretending to be the best and most powerful mage in existence and expecting others to not find out she was not, which of course blew in her face.

4088368 (Foxy E)

When it comes to Pinkie swearing, she is a special case: she is childish. It's hard to imagine somepony whose biggest insult in the series is "meanie" using more adult insults. Unless there is a very good explanation, it throws her out of character.

(The way she goes through anger, or what passes as it for her, is also very off, which is another reason natural use of insults, for her, feels very unnatural.)

Now, Rainbow Dash swearing does feel natural, or at least as natural as swearing in MLP can feel

4086257 (Oroboro)

Your Santa Ex Machina was particularly out of place because you managed to have a good ending, maybe even great with some tweaks, without it. After losing or sacrificing the chance of getting what they wanted, the characters managed to get something even better (judging by Rainbow Dash's gift); that is not only a perfectly happy ending, it's very much in line with the show. Adding a Santa Ex Machina atop that was like doubling the sugar when baking a cake.

I believe a good way to have your Santa Ex Machina would be to expand on how the characters found the substitute gifts, with Santa helping them because he heard about their good deeds; that way your dose of happiness would be applied when the characters actually needed it. You could even go for Santa remaining incognito while helping them, to reveal his identity only later, through the letter.

Looks like this round produced some amazing stories, to judge by the feature box lately. Now I wish I hadn't taken February off :(

4058462
Bradel:

There's so much good paralleling going on here. And I adore Gale's thought about unicorns getting wing lock because it subverts the other reading, which I still hold to, that Gale herself has wing lock. It pushes that out of the text and into the subtext, where it resides more naturally anyway. It wouldn't have worked as a reveal, I don't think, so better to not even discuss it. But between her fascination with the cat clock and the story behind it, and the fact that she can't remember the steps to the tengere, and the way her imagination seems to auto-complete scenes, I get the strong impression that she's midway along herself. If this is accidental, it's a beautiful accident. If it's intentional, all the more wonderful. If you wanted to bring this out more strongly, you could, potentially, add one or two lines, toward the beginning and/or end, about Gale being cold. I'm not sure whether I'd do that even so, though. I thought the piece was beautiful as is, and I'm getting the implication without that extra bit. I do think if you're looking for general readers to get that implication, though, it's going to go past most of them. Tossing in a cold line at the beginning (and not the end where it looks like a reveal) would spice things up quite a bit on the subtext front for more general readers, though, I think.

I just wanted to note that I've been going through this story for HoofBiting, and the original version does slip this in:

She opened her eyes and she was still in the library and she was cold. She listened to the music and thought about her grandmother.

I just published the updated version of Apple Knots, now with a (slightly) less sociopathic Lotus and an extra massage patron. Thank you again, everyone, for your feedback and suggestions. I'm very humbled that Apple Knots took fifth place, considering the fantastic stories that this contest produced