6644168

OK!

Sighclops

wistful, one-eyed, cranberry-farming ponies, extinct

about 200 words

The farmers in the rich cranberry bogs north of Fillydelphia say its good luck when a foal is born with but a single eye in the middle of his or her forehead since it means the family has some Sighclops blood in it.

6644152
If two weeks is considered a long wait, Murcushio has been waiting 16 days, and I've been waiting 24.

6646879
WELL THEN I GUESS I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING TODAY.

Murcushio was named 'mercushio' in the doc, which is why I guess I missed him? I looked through the thread but I couldn't find his story; it's in the story tracker, however, and it's marked green -- so maybe it just passed and that's why there was no feedback, I'll look into it.

As per yours, I remember seeing that it was blocked to editing, and I guess that marked it as 'looked at by Aragón?' I don't know. We've been doing somewhat heavy edits on the entries that needed the finishing touches to post the first batch already, so replies to new stories might be a bit slow, but anything that's been waiting for weeks should ideally be taken care of soon enough. Fixin' that now.

6646889

Good timing, Aragon, I was about to send horizon a message asking if my entry had passed because it had been marked as in editing for weeks with no notes.

6646889
While we're making you feel guilty, I looked over the comments you left on my entry, but I don't know if I have to edit/change/rewrite anything else.

We've been doing somewhat heavy edits on the entries that needed the finishing touches to post the first batch already

Ah, crud. Then I better finish a couple of art pieces I have before then.

6647279
6647145
6646879
6617827
6613561
6613665
6613790
6613772
6613951
6614135
6619480

Aight, y'all got your entries edited and accepted, so if you can look at 'em and see if there's any lingering comments left, please clear 'em up as-is and I think we're done! (Also if you have any doubts, tell me). Telling you here 'cause to be honest, I've messed up the story tracker before so might as well make sure y'all know as soon as possible.

Hopefully the rest of the entries -- which horizon edited -- will be wrapped up soon; I'll give them a look asap, and then we can finally move on. We're advancing slowly but hey, we're advancing, that's what matters. Thank you all for your entries!

(Also this means that if you want to write a second entry, you can --some of you already sent prompts according to the story tracker, so if you wanna write one of them, please tell me which one in particular and so on. Cheers.)

6649811

I added a suggestion in 6619522 , and would like to write it if you approve the concept.

6649811
My other potential submissions are in 6614652 and 6624771 and I'm not sure whether I should just run with the one I'm most interested in writing, or if you or horizon want to pick which one sounds most interesting or would help keep a more well-rounded set of articles. The nuisants in particular are already finished—what's in the thread post is it—but I can see wanting to keep that one on standby until you know whether you're still going to be overloaded with insects.

6649811
For your approval: 6617827

6649811

Mine should be regarded as finalized and clean unless you have further comments or edits.

6649811
Did a last few edits to mine to wrap up some issues with the ending, but for the most part I think it's as good as I can make it.

6649861
Living ceramic vase approved! Lessee what you bring to the table.

6650063
Horizon liked the animal described by P.T. Barn and I honestly like the structure of that one too, so if I can pick, I'd go with that one? Keep in mind though that as far as everybody knows, Nightmare Moon is a Halloween story, not an actual thing that happened, so if you could fiddle with the timeline a little or avoid outright saying 'when NMM came' that'd be great.

6650126
Single entities are perfectly fine. The entry passes with a caveat -- we already have gemback spiders, that look like gemstones; if you could make the dragon slightly different that'd be wonderful. Simply have him have a hoard that is not just riches or something, or do something weird or strange, if you can? To avoid overlapping, mostly.

I may have an idea I've been sitting on for a bit, but I'm thinking it may be too similar to the Whispering Bellow.

Name: Cetus

• Description: Literally, a very big whale made out of stars. Metaphorically, a term for something very obvious and in plain view that nevertheless remains frustratingly obscure.
• Word count: 300-ish, ideally less.

• Fact: Cetoi are marine, whale-like relatives of ursas, expect that -- predictably -- they're even more ridiculously huge. They migrate somewhat irregularly up and down the Celestial Ocean on their way to and from unknown locations to the north and south of the current Equestrian cartography. They tend to swim close to the coasts and have on a number of occasions gotten in the way of sea travel. Even when they stick to the open waters, their immense forms are easily visible to ships and flyers. They're not subtle animals.

  Despite this, Equestrian science known little to nothing of them or their lifestyles beyond the fact that they're big and turn up in the oceans sometimes. Certain scholars have taken to using the term "cetus" to refer to something grand, obvious and in plain view, yet frustratingly obscure. Certain especially cheeky scholars have suggested that the grandest cetus of them all is none other than Her Highness herself.

The most important bits, to me, are the "huge, obvious and in nothing remotely like hiding, but we still know next to squat about them" part and the bit about Celestia. It was inspired by how we know surprisingly little about the mating habits, migratory patterns and lives of blue whale, despite them being the biggest things on Earth and having to surface regularly for air, and it seems to me this concept is easiest to work with a marine animal.

6651155
Given that there's going to be an overarching plot having to do with NMM, it might be a good idea to be a little more specific about how we should be treating it. I was taking it as there being vague legends about her being a usurper long ago, such that she was possibly seen as an exaggeration of a real pony, but that nobody thought she was actually going to come back. The fact that Ponyville (which didn't exist back then) has a very accurate statue of NMM for their Nightmare Night antics leads me to think they at least consider her a historic figure, though the games they play related to that and the idea that that's actually her in the moon are just seen as superstition and foolishness. Kind of like how Bloody Mary was a real person, but there are games and urban legends kids spread about her. To wit, Twilight reads about her in Predictions and Prophecies, a title which suggests some real basis. From the transcript:

The Mare in the Moon, myth from olden pony times. A powerful pony who wanted to rule Equestria, defeated by the Elements of Harmony and imprisoned in the moon. Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about nighttime eternal! [gasp] Spike! Do you know what this means?

For you see, the mythical Mare in the Moon is in fact Nightmare Moon, and she's about to return to Equestria, and bring with her eternal night! Something must be done to make sure this terrible prophecy does not come true.

So Twilight sees the Mare in the Moon as a myth, but she seems to accept Nightmare Moon as a real-life figure. She's only calling the former mythical.

Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about everlasting night.

But she's somewhere in the middle on NMM's return. She calls that a legend, while she doesn't refer to the character herself as one.

But it sounds like maybe you want us to treat everything about her as completely fictitious. That's still plausible, but in either case, all the contributing authors should have a consistent tone about it.

Seems posting in here is the norm now, so here's Smelter. Hopefully this one won't require quite as much editing

Here's the gdoc for the wish golem. I'm sure you're more than happy about more editing work

Things have been a bit quiet around here. That being said, would it be alright if I offered up drafts for another creature or two? I've had them written for a while now, and I thought it might be nice to have the publicly viewable since things have slowed down anyway.

A month later than everyone else, I finally have Arimaspi Tyrant Lice all done

Man, this kept falling through the cracks. I've finally got a draft of animal once described by P.T. Barn ready for editing.