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On we go with Flashfic 150! February is the shortest month, but for the same reason it's also the one where you get the largest proportion of it before the contest closes. Isn't that brill? A one-word prompt this time around. Should you wish to submit a one-word story then there's nothing stopping you. Just remember that the rules subversion of shoving in hyphens everywhere to fool the word counter has already been tried, and in true contest tradition I generally only let people get away with any one trick once.
Here are the full rules.
You'll note that Rule 6 still explicitly disallows any G5 content. This may change before this year is out, but that depends to a considerable extent on people's feelings here. As always, do feel free to comment in the relevant thread (pinned in the forum) if you'd like to contribute any thoughts on that rule, whether positive, negative or mixed.
Remember, there is no prize, as such, for this contest -- but if you win, you will be able to choose the prompt for the next contest. You'll also get a mention on the group's front page. There should in fact be another part to this bit, but unfortunately Form B35 (ii) pages xii to xxiv were completed in blue ink rather than the required purple and are thus inadmissible. This space unintentionally left kinda blankish.
Prompt: "Bureaucracy" (selected by last month's winner, SparklingTwilight)
Rating: E or T
Word limit: 150
Closing date: Monday 21st February 2022, 11:59 pm UK time (world clock)
Please reply to this post with your entry. This makes it easier for me to keep track. Please do not leave feedback until after the closing date.
Entries are now open! Have fun!
7639057
Oh Amereep, you're really in for it this time. Political stuff is just something I can't grasp if my life depended on it.
If I'm not mistaken, bureaucracy is a process of order, so how can something in order be so confusing?
Royal Matters
7639057
Moar Bureaucracy!
Edit: 18 - Bureaucracy
A Fashionable Form of Corruption
-0-0-0-
BANG BANG
"Court is now in session!" Twilight said with gusto.
"We need to demolish the Eastern part of Ponyville" Rarity said matter of factly
"Why?"
"Because"
"Well that isn't a very good reason"
"Because the houses are old."
"..."
"Because I want to build that trampoline park Pinkie mentioned?"
"..."
"Alright fine! That snooty stallion Hoity Toity opened up one of his boutiques and it's putting me out of business!"
Twilight had to admit, she wasn't very fond of Hoity Toity herself, but she cant be doing corrupt government things. "Sorry, Rarity, no can do."
"But if you won't use Eminent Domain for your personal interests, what even makes you a leader?
Twilight had to admit, the life of a Princess was pretty boring without destroying someponys life every once in awhile "Deal"
That night, several bulldozers rolled up to Hoity Toity's boutique, and absolutely destroyed it.
The End
-0-0-0-
By the way, Eminent Domain is the law that a government can basically say "Nope, your land is mine homeboy" and kick you off of it. Pretty messed up, but thankfully it isn't as heavily abused as it could be.
7639057
I hope this one stands a better chance. I decided to go for the outcome of bureaucracy, the laws themselves, for the prompt.
So without further ado,
Law Of Life Debts
Removed this entry from official consideration due to concern it didn't fit the theme well enough. (I mostly wrote it as an excuse for the ending John Wick reference.) My contest entry is the one much further down the thread from February 18th.
Let's Just Keep This Quiet
7639057
What Ho!
Off work today, feeling a bit crap.
It's all in the Paperwork
“We have no quill scribe.” Luna glared at Raven Inkwell.
“You must complete the purchase and requisition orders highness.”
“Six! Six forms for one quill!”
“The palace accounts and inventories must be kept up to date and accurate.”
Luna’s frown deepens. “We have seen the accounts, despite thy greatest efforts. Never a greater work of fiction has been created!”
“Traceability is vital for good governance.” Raven cringed as the temperature round her dropped sharply.
“Obfuscation is the word we would use! And yet, we still have no quill to create an indent for a quill!” Luna lifts one wing and with an irritated grunt pulls a primary feather. Sharpened, split and the point dipped in ink the papers are signed.
Raven Inkwell stands tall and proud contemplating the last moments of a good life. “I’m sorry Princess these forms are invalided. The signature should be in blue not black ink.”
7639057
Friendship is Paperwork
“Would you say you’re Best Friends (Exclusive), Rivals/Nemeses (Secret Best Friends), or Best Friends (As part of a Best Friend Group as defined under Section 28(b) of Schedule 2)? If it’s the latter, we’ll need the hoofprints of all members of the group,” said the tax pony.
Bon Bon looked up from the half-filled form and exchanged a glance with Lyra. “Which one gets us the best tax break?”
“That depends on your other Declared Friendships and your financial interdependence. I’d consult this booklet.”
The tax pony placed a thick document on the table in front of them. Bon Bon gulped.
After a half hour of reading, she thought she finally understood. “Okay, and just for the sake of argument, what would happen if we, er, got married later on?”
“Ah, you want ‘Best Friends’ (Euphemistic). That’s a completely different form.”
7639057
Yes princess celesta
dear princess celestia
I'm sorry princess celestia we can't leave the equestrian open and make cantalot a diplomatic state, firstly we can't brake the union of friendship just because equestrexit means equestixit as you may think as well as the fact you clamed it would be better for farms and the fisherponies despite being 1000 miles in land and cantalot not having any farms. i saw your silly train with "we send 2 million to ponyvile why not the phs" (pony health service), but we know last year you spent 2 million on bananas in tax clams.
this vote you are going to put up for the ponies seems very rigged into your favour, the amount of spam tins with vote yes to equestrexit is obscene, I please advise you stop before your hurt the cantalot exchange rate to bits to celestial dollars,
your Faithfull student twilight sparkle
7639057
Paperwork Nightmare
“Uh… Pinkie? What are you doing?” Twilight asked, watching her writing between two large stacks of paper.
“What–?! Nothing–! Everything’s fine–! Why’d you ask?!” She gradually let out a psychotic laugh before inhaling and going back to writing.
“Okay… So, what is all this?”
“Paperwork.”
“I didn’t know you did paperwork.”
“I don’t! But ever since those guys from ‘the government’ came to Sugar Cube Corner, they wanted me and the Cakes to get all this done by tomorrow, or else they’ll shut this place down! Can you believe that?!”
“That sounds terrible! Hmm… Maybe I can help,” Twilight insisted.
“You will?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty good at paperwork, after all,” Twilight bragged.
“Thank you!” Pinkie beamed, giving Twilight a hug.
7639057
Ha!
I wrote this story at the end of January, and then I put it aside so I could look at it again later with a fresh eye.
In retrospect, I think I should have posted it immediately.
Author's Note
(Yes, Sebastian seems a little wrong about the formal definitions of atheist vs. agnostic, thank you. He didn't bring an Earth dictionary.)
7639057
This is my official entry.
Welcome to My World
Two and a bit days left to enter, everyone!
And now just under one day to enter. Last call!
7639057
Hello! First time entering, and sorry if I'm cutting it a bit close:
Early Lunch
7648810
That's fine. If you enter one minute before the deadline, you're still okay. And welcome!
Ideally, I'd have given myself a bit more time to tweak this. Unfortunately, I suck at pacing myself — hence why I'm coming in at the 11th hour!
:P
It's not much, but here's hoping the ghost of a good idea can phase through my wall of underdeveloped melodrama.
Follow the Leader; or, Lorded
EDIT: It's only been ~2 hours and hindsight is already making me hate how this turned out. Sorry, everyone.
7639057
7639067 7639086 7639065 7639243 7640294 7640819 7641287 7641325 7642741 7646915 7647630 7648810 7649147 7649240
And time's up! Another very pleasing entry this month: regular writers, new writers, returning writers, a great mixture. Thank you to everyone who had a shot!
EileenSaysHi: As requested, it will be your second fic that is considered for the contest.
As usual, I'll now take a few days to think about my judging. Meanwhile, of course...
...feedback is open!
7641325 Is Twilight Sparkle drunk in your story or were you drunk when you wrote it?
Third-time FF150 writer, first-time reviewer! Time for some unsolicited thoughts that I'm sure everyone wants to hear!
(puts on suit of armor)
7639065 I read through this one a few times trying to figure out what's going on but honestly I'm lost. All the huh huh huhs made me keep waiting for Celestia and Luna to start talking about how they're gonna score.
7639067 The hell, Twilight? Mandatory sex laws? I mean I guess it's not the worst kind of police state, but still...
7639086 I see Twilightdickery is gonna be a theme in this contest. Could use a grammar pass, but I got a good laugh out of the sheer bluntness of this.
7639243 Thank goodness Mr. Potato Head wasn't the one who saved them.
7640294 F-minus-minus
7640819 Poor Luna can never catch a break in these contests. This got a laugh.
7641287 I think this one did the best job nailing the theme of the contest. Excellent work.
7641325 Even worse, Celestia completely failed to address the critical issue of the Appaloosan backstop!
7642741 Considering her masterful filing system, you'd think Pinkie have no trouble handling a little bit of paperwork. A cute story, if a bit vague.
7642778 "And in the space marked, 'Do Not Write in this Space', SparklingTwilight wrote, 'Okay'."
7646915 See, the Wizard of Oz would've gotten away with everything if he'd just saddled Dorothy with paperwork instead of worrying about a projection system. I don't really read a lot of HiE, but this was interesting.
7647630 Will this hack ever stop writing about Sunset Shimmer?!! Geez.
7648810 Twilight: "I knew not pushing back on unionization would come to haunt me."
7649147 This feels like it's more "governing" than "bureaucracy." But hey, props for being the only heavy drama story this month.
7649240 Ditto on the category. I don't think we ever saw Cozy playing chess in the show despite her cutie mark (metaphorical, I know, but still), so that's fun.
7649318
I was basically trying to imply that some poor dope had to run back and forth down a long corridor to relay a message to one of the sisters. You know when two people are fighting and they are in earshot range, they may say...
'Toby, tell Jill that those sweets will make her fat.'
'Toby, tell Sara that she needs to mind her own business.'
...and Toby has that, 'why me', expression for being a victim in the middle of this quarrel.
7649342
Gotcha. I knew it was a third person or an audience but I couldn’t figure out that the two of them weren’t supposed to be in the same room.
7649318
Fun fact: she's awful at it.
I won't rebut the point around the suggested prompt deviation, as if it feels to a reader that it's more about X than Y then that's very much on me. I believe the two are linked, at least in the way I've tried to approach the theme, but I wrote and submitted this at the death last night, and a bit more time editing would have likely given me the word space needed to better convey what I was going for. A learning point for me there, I'm sure. Essentially the lesson on the use and treatment of unpromoted pawns was a metaphor for the treatment of unelected officials in the administration of government—something Cozy Glow needed to improve her approach to. The rest was just sass and bashfulness.
Feedback is always welcome, actively solicited or otherwise, so thanks very much for taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Very much appreciated.
7649318
Sex is Magic.
7649318
Well, I am a bureaucrat IRL!
7639065 I think Twilight would veto it. Daylight savings is a nightmare for bookkeeping.
7639067 "More children means more paperwork. It's a win win."
7639086 Eh, he's rich, he can afford another store.
7639243 The law excludes dragons specifically. Somebody anticipated this happening.
7640819 "Also now that you've added an outside quill into our inventory you need to fill out these forms to update our records."
7641287 It's actually very dystopian. You get better tax breaks the more friends you have. Most ponies are only in poverty if they're socially awkward. CEOs list their thousands of employees as 'friends' as a tax write-off. One guy listed the entire phone book as his friends and the government owed him 2M bits before anyone caught on.
7641325 Needs a bit of editing. Unfortunately don't know enough about Brexit to tell if the joke is funny.
7642741 Ah yes 'the government'. Finally cracking down on health and safety I can presume. "So you walk on your hooves, and then use them to bake?"
7646915 Right idea to be honest. Religion is too much of a hassle, always asking you for stuff like 'repenting' or 'donating to help the children' or 'stop eating all the communion wafers' or 'go home you're banned for life.'
7647630 Really enjoy happy Sunset. Just a real little wholesome moment.
7649147 Interesting idea but hard to have emotional impact in such a short amount of time.
7649240 Maybe we should play checkers instead.
7639065
I'm with you dude. I didn't even bother trying to come up with an idea this month because it was clear up front that it wouldn't happen.
The "huh, huh, huh" repetition reads oddly. Is that Twilight nodding along with their explanations? It kind of feels like a singing effect, so I ended up checking whether it was formatted like a poem. The three-column format does help save you word count by letting you out of using speech tags. Though you usually see this format as dialogue-only, since it makes narrative actions feel out of place. Watch the correct grammar for Ye Olde Speake. But hey Twilight gets unexpected pudding, which is always a good thing.
7639067
Ah, absurdist comedy of the character assassination type. You hid the twist well. Only suggestion I'd have is to toss in a few more jokes on the way so it keeps up a steady supply of humor.
7639086
I was expecting more of a joke at the end. Without it, it comes across as a farce, which will depend a lot on how sympathetic the reader is to your point. And by law, Hoity Toity would have to be fairly compensated. I bet most of the entries this month will end up being humor. Word choice reads fine, but pay attention to your punctuation. A lot of it is missing.
7639243
Hmmm. A couple of editing mistakes, and pay attention to your character actions. You have "Shining and Cadance looked to each other" after he was already looking at her. I'd call this Spike abuse (the series did plenty of that already), but this angles it toward all dragons. Makes me wonder why they were excepted? That would help make the joke instead of just being plot convenience, so that's all I'd suggest.
7640294
Hey, not humor. On the minus side, this spends an awful lot of its word count on exposition. On the plus side, it does a good job of creating an atmosphere, and in a single word, the nickname he uses for her, it implies a whole lot about their relationship. This is the one that's stuck with me the most so far.
7640819
Some editing misses in this one, too, and you don't keep the tense consistent, plus another one that gets Ye Olde Speake grammar off. For the humor, though, this is what I was talking about earlier. There's a final punchline, but there's another running joke leading up to it, so it's not just beating you with the same joke again. That's a good way to surprise the reader, and surprise is the heart of what a minific is about.
7641287
Funny alternate look at their relationship, but I can't imagine why the tax pony wouldn't have listed that as one of the initial possibilities. So while the poke at their relationship is funny, the existence of the form is less so. Plus in this system, why would anyone be honest? They can't be the only ones playing it for what saves them the most.
7641325
I think this is a poke at Brexit? I'm sorry, but I didn't understand what was happening.
7642741
I was waiting for there to be a zinger or a joke at the end. Still, a nice friendshipping moment between them.
7646915
As a friendshipping moment between OCs without the context for why they're friends, it's always going to be a hard sell for readers to invest in them, but this is a charming look at bureaucracy harming what could have been a religious belief.
7647630
Another where I was waiting for there to be a joke at the end or for the other shoe to drop. By the end of the second paragraph, it's already made its point, but it is still nice to see Sunset so happy about something that means a lot to her. Celestia's participation in illegal activities notwithstanding...
7648810
Just a few suggestions to help you save precious word count. Look how your second paragraph just repeats what the first one says. The dialogue version plays better, since it's evidence of how she feels rather than the narration just telling me how she feels. Fun bit of light humor. If it does happen frequently, I'm surprised Twilight hasn't stopped by before, or that Fluttershy doesn't already know. Or that someone as detail-oriented as Twilight wouldn't have come up with a system to prevent it after the first time. Good friendshipping atmosphere, and the character voicing is on.
7649147
There's a good setup here, and I like the implications that Spike being the ambassador would complicate their relationship. Though it lacks the context of why losing Ember is having such an impact on him personally. I can come up with reasons why it might, but that's the kind of thing best handled in-story. It keeps up a good foreboding atmosphere.
7649240
Nicely atmospheric character interaction that implies a lot about their relationship in a short space. The only piece I'm missing is why they're interacting. Did Flurry Heart release her from confinement? Or is it an AU where she never was? I'd say that chessfics are pretty cliched, but this one makes a direct metaphor of it, so you're good. Hard to say, but this might be my favorite of the entries.
7651100
Glad to see someone liked my first entry, hah. I enjoyed writing it and I still like it, but I was worried it came across too much like an in-joke.
Also, I wasn't really intending for both of my entries to make Celestia seem especially crooked, but I guess that’s pretty much the case. In the second one, it's always been kinda my headcanon that she'd be Sunset's best avenue to getting a legit (or legit-enough) ID (since Sunset clearly has one by Tales of Canterlot High/Summertime Shorts, given she can visit a movie set, own/rent a flat, take a driver's test, board a cruise and attend a music festival) and having very useful government connections would be a good EqG analogue to her Princess counterpart's powers.
7651100
It was a messenger running between princesses. The 'huh's are basically them gasping for air, fatigued and drained from all the running.
I also find that changing fonts styles and colors can also be effective, but I chose columns for this month because of my prior statement. The layout is trying to get across that this messenger is stuck in the middle of these two princesses and their side of viewing things.
7639067 7639086 7639065 7639243 7640294 7640819 7641287 7641325 7642741 7646915 7647630 7648810 7649147 7649240
Okay, I think it's about time I put up a results post! A lot of interesting, clever and/or silly ideas in here. All those things are good! But...
Hon mensh 1: paperhearts -- While I did consider EileenSaysHi's point as far as the prompt goes, I don't think your piece is outside the bounds of what "bureaucracy" can cover. It's a strongly written minific with a nicely satisfying structure and an interesting couple of characters to have interact. Getting in a few minutes before the deadline probably has some relevance to bureaucracy too, though I'm afraid I managed to fight off the urge to give extra points for that!
Hon mensh 2: EileenSaysHi -- My opinion chimes pretty well with that of hamster wizard: it's cute, it's gently feelsy, it does feel like it could have happened that way. It may not be the flashiest fic, but it does a nice job and takes a slightly different approach to the prompt than many in that Sunset is not (now, anyway) being thwarted by bureaucracy but successfully coming out the other side.
Winner: ReedHoarse -- I now have this horrible feeling that something like this actually happened in the wake of "Slice of Life". Bon Bon is a businesspony after all, so who could blame her for thinking of tax breaks? I was unreasonably tickled by "Best Friends (Euphemistic)" as well. Oh dearie dearie me.
Congratulations to ReedHoarse!
Please come up with a prompt for the March contest, and all being well I'll put it up in a few days' time.
Congrats also to our two hon menshes, and indeed to everyone who contributed this month. I'm still slightly amazed that FF150 is still going after almost five years. And with that in mind... the April contest will have one little twist. Nothing fancy, but something I think might be fun as a one-off. I'll reveal at the start of March exactly what it is!
By all means continue feedback if you wish.
7651100
Thanks for saying so, gotta provide a better punchline to make sure the joke lands and humor is achieved.
7651161
Thanks! Prompt for next month is Myth And Legend
7651938
Really hope Logan approves that prompt, because not only did I instantly have an idea for it but I compulsively wrote it already.
7651938
Thanks! Sounds like a very interesting prompt!
Oh, and the special extra next month? I'll put it in the header for next month's thread, but: as a special one-off, the winner next month gets to be the judge for the fifth anniversary FF150 in April! (Don't worry, if you win but really don't want to do that I'll have an alternative.) Also due to this, I'm making a special exemption to the "can't win twice running" rule. ReedHoarse, if you enter in March your story will be eligible.
(Thanks go to Somerset Cider for the idea.
)