it's time!

firstly, my greatest apologies for this being so late. i wanted to take my time, and to make sure that i was in a proper emotional state for all this. i doubt that the series of circumstances and events that caused this delay will happen again any time soon, so i am reasonably certain in promising you that this kind of lateness will not recur!

i do mean for these contests to be for the contest themes that are too specific for me to feel right about asking for a site post for, but this particular contest's theme goes beyond that. it's actually the most meaningful type of story to me, because it's exactly the type of story that i came to this website to find, during a coronavirus lockdown haze in late 2020 that possibly reprogrammed my brain to the point where it seems reasonable to me to spend too much money on horse fiction contests. and when i could not find it, i cursed the gender imbalance of this fandom and joined the site, intending to write them myself.

so i am truly grateful to all five of you that submitted an entry. i thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of yours, and i actually agonized about how to do the prize distribution for quite a while because of how good the stories were! it was very difficult to figure out a first place winner, and i actually even considered expanding the prize pool so that every story would win one. and though it is the point of a contest to pick out winners, it did feel like picking favorites out of my nonexistent children.

so i would like to take this moment to recognize the two stories that did not end up winning prizes. i loved Mockingbirb's Fluttershy, Postal Detective for its unique premise of the "Woman" in question being an Equestrian mail carrier werepigeon, told with characteristically delightful, offbeat worldbuilding. and i loved Omegathyst's Waking Up for its bold carrying of the torch of HiE romance tropes into the new generation of ponies, driven by #relatable disbelief of the fandom's neglect of Pipp Petals. in both these cases, i just wish that i had more of it to read!

and as will be the norm for these Personal Contests, the prize pool is determined at the same time as judging. the amounts here in total are much more than i had expected to budget out for this competition, and are very unlikely to be as big next time. they are partially an apology for my lateness, partially a recognition of just how amazingly good and personally meaningful these entries have been to me, and partially a recognition of just how difficult it was to pick out a winner.

• First Place: $50
• Second Place (tie): $25

now, on to the results!

it is truly an embarrassment of riches that i can have a fic as good as Strangely Truculent Unicorn Portaled Inside Demesne! in a contest and not have it take first place. with a title that i read as being inspired by those of Japanese light novels, this is a wonderful tale of a bizarre encounter between a smug blue unicorn and our protagonist, who may or may not be her counterpart in our actual, non-Equestria Girls world's Japan.

the disorientation our intoxicated narrator feels about this situation is beautifully rendered through the disjointed paragraphs at the beginning, and the entire story is suffused with the wit, poetry, wordplay, and edifying external references that i've come to expect at this point from SparklingTwilight. and the Trixie here is absolutely divine, her self-absorption bleeding naturally into a pony-centric worldview that clashes with her expectations of the world of our demure narrator. this is a Trixie story in its purest form, and a wonderfully entertaining ride that i cannot recommend enough.

this fic also contains what could be seen as deliberate subversions of this contest's premise, from the acronym of the title to the direct recall and literal interpretation of the wording of the prompt. but given the nature of the story's scenario, the pensive mood that the ending left me feeling was actually very fitting, and the protagonist's interior world and reactions very #relatable. and despite the fact that it's a bit marginal in terms of the contest theme in spirit, it was very difficult to not place this first as well. that is how good this fic is!

--Bicyclette

EStrangely Truculent Unicorn Portaled Inside Demesne!

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy

"An angry blue unicorn popped up in my den. How do I get rid of her?"

• Human
• Trixie

SparklingTwilight · 4.8k words · 493 views

as its wonderfully irreverent title suggests, Woo Fluttershy 2: 2 Discord, 2 Tase is a sequel to I'm Going To Woo Fluttershy And Tase Discord, and i recommend reading both for the full experience. they are based on a reading of Discord as a powerful older man who has to be tolerated and taught empathy by the young women in his life, despite the awful way he behaves to them again and again. an unwelcome intrusion into a show that is otherwise about six young women who get to live full and unfettered lives in a world and society built for them; a rare thing that is particularly precious to me about this setting. this is an uncharitable reading of the smug draconequus, and not the only one i hold, but it is a valid one.

it is on the back of this righteous rage that our protagonist travels to Equestria to woo Fluttershy and tase Discord, setting off an extremely genre-aware HiE adventure, filled to the brim with witty meta-jokes and spot-on characterizations of both the beloved yellow horse and the hated Star Trek reference metajoke. i can't emphasize enough just how fun these fics are, mixing deep truths with both self-aware irony and begrudging sincerity in the style of early 2010s Tumblr, the very height of human culture across all of time. it is without exaggeration to say that to truly understand a part of me, one must understand these fics.

it was a very difficult decision to not also declare this the winner of the contest, and if both the prequel and this story had been a single entry, i definitely would have. i encourage you all to read them, and enjoy.

--Bicyclette

TWoo Fluttershy 2: 2 Discord, 2 Tase

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Comedy

What if we kissed (while we worked through our relationship issues) (over Discord's limp body)

• Profanity
• Alt. Universe
• Human
• Fluttershy

Apple Bottoms · 4.4k words  ·  18  12 · 424 views

the biggest reason WiE stories appeal to me is the idea that Equestria is just a better world and society than our own. that through a human character in this world, from our world (and not the similarly sanitized one of Equestria Girls), one can explore the possibilities of a place where one does not have to content themselves with the mere idea that, in many respects, things are the best they've ever been. that one can imagine a society where the indignities of living in this one not only do not exist, but have never existed. Equestria as a place to heal, and to imagine a better version of our lives.

The Sun Always Sets in the West heightens this by using a human character from a world far harsher than our own. even the grass of Equestria is an unfathomable luxury to Red Lucy, coming from the Mojave Desert of Fallout: New Vegas. and the peacable queendom feels even moreso when it means no more slaver raids or radioactive creatures to deal with.

Bon Bon is the perfect mare for this story, with her monster hunter past giving her a taste of how fragile both the peace of this world and life itself can be. the development of her mutual attraction with Red Lucy and the little details highlighting their differences as a cross-species romance were an absolute delight, and their tragic but inevitable separation was so beautifully rendered that it literally made me cry. but even there, the fic ends with a wonderfully thematic lesson: having taken her time to rest, Red Lucy must go back home, carrying her memories of her time in Equestria with her as an inspiration to make her world of misery and suffering a better place. for all of these things and more, i am proud to stand by this fic as the winner, and honored by its entry into this little contest of mine.

--Bicyclette

TThe Sun Always Sets in the West

• MLP: FiM
• Fallout
• Romance
• Adventure

Before Lyra, Bon Bon had another short, bittersweet affair...

• Violence
• Profanity
• Crossover
• Twilight
• Bon-Bon
• Other

Space_Kase · 13k words  ·  12  3 · 402 views

thank you again to all of you who have entered, and i hope each one of your stories get the readers and comments they so deserve. all prize winners will be contacted by PM to disburse their winnings. in the meantime, here are some other contests you can enter:

• my Science Fiction Contest, ending on 2022 Jan 06
• Shrink Laureate's Generation 5 Bingo Writing Contest, ending 2022 Jan 09
• Reactception's Sunset Shimmer x Trixie Lulamoon Contest, ending on 2022 Jan 30
• my Self-Shipping Contest, ending on 2022 Feb 03

thank you for reading, and see you again soon!

7624590
You should do another one of these. I was going to enter. Stupid reasons said I couldn't.

7692388
yeah i definitely plan to return to this theme, i just love this type of story too much!

7692394
Do it :D Hell, I'll probably even have a cover art for the story I had in mind. That never got written.