Hey everyone, I'm here to announce the winner to the Flutterdash 3rd Writing Contest: Change. This is later than I would've liked, but life gets in the way so to speak.

Anyways, the winner to the contest is Pumpkin Cutie Pie's Entry - The Music Box

Congratulations to you for winning this surpisingly filled contest, it surely wasn't an easy feat to do. The runner up is AugieDog's entry First Pony Plural and rounding out the top three is SamRose's Something Happened.

Here are the Judge's personal rankings.

Sage Element - Contest Funder.

1. The Music Box - Pumpkin Cutie Pie
2. Night Flight - Alphamon_Ouryuken
3. Something Happened - SamRose

Titanium Dragon - General Advertiser/Marketer

1. Left Behind - Shrink Laureate
2. First Pony Plural - AugieDog
3. The Music Box - Pumpkin Cutie Pie.

Dalek Saxon - Competley Useless

1. First Pony Plural - AugieDog
2. The Music Box - Pumpkin Cutie Pie
3. Something Happened - SamRose

Sage_Element should contact the winner eventually and work something out to recieve the cash prize.

As for everyone else, I thank you for your participation and will remind you that every one of your stories shall apear on the front page at some point in the near future, if it hasn't been featured already.

Overall, I'd say this contest was a resounding sucess. 19 Entries (1 did get disquilified for not being completed on time) which is almost double both our first two contests combined. It is quite possibly the most written for contest ever on FiMFiction for a ship based group and that makes me very proud of this group as a whole and the ship itself. It shows that FlutterDash is still going strong.

I have no idea when our next contest will be, but I can see I'm more eager to get it started knowing that we have quite possibly a lot of people willing ot participate in it.

Public Voting!

Now we should be starting the People's Choice Awards so to speak. And we're going to do it in the most inneficient way possible in that I'm just going to do it here since this is all short notice (really busy day in real life for me) and I want to get this contest fully completed sooner rather than later. So a thread has been created for this purpose where you go to and cast your choices.

If you wrote a story...you can't vote for your own obviously. You can't vote for a story more than once. Story obviously has to be a contest entry ( Full list here or you can just check the folder). Finally, the voting process will take 2 weeks. So on November 7th I'll reveal the People's Choice and depending on the circumstances, I'll post it along with the Judge's choice as well on the front page.

Let the voting commence!

Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone involved in this contest, from the writers, to the two other judges, and to anyone who votes.

Thank you everyone.

~ Dalek Saxon

5588114
Ahhhhhhh!!!! Thank you!

Oh, and just wanted to let you know, it's "The Music Box" not "The Magic Box"

5588141

You would not believe how many freaking times I've called your story that throughout the judging process, even when I go to your story to link it I still somehow managed to incorrectly call it the Magic Box. ...I blame The Doctor honestly with his Magic Box as I've had DW on my brain for awhile now. Grrr...

Anyways, fixed...and congrats.

5588151
No problem. I'm just so happy. I nearly broke my arm fist-pumping

5588141

5588159

Don't forget to particpate in the People's Choice Award judging...if you care to that is.

5588172
Of course

Of course, Pumpkin Cutie Pie won. I'm not really surprised.

I'm very happy with this result - the right person won. An amazing story writer, and at 13 years old too! Wow, reminds me of a young, well... me! So full of passion, brilliant ideas, and a party pony lover - that is what you call FANTASTIC. (Ninth Doctor from Doctor Who reference)

You deserve the win, Pumpkin Cutie Pie!

Congrats Pumpkin Cutie Pie!

5588184
Thank you so much!

Darn I didn't win again, I have the worst luck with contests.

Anyway, congrats Pumpkin.

5588209
It's OK! We still like to see moar stories!

5588209

You might win the People's Choice Award...that's something.

5588248 Oh yeah totally, I'm a huge FlutterDash fan myself and it gave me an excuse to write another fic about it, so it was something at least.

5588265 Not really the same, but yeah.

!

5588561

Chin up, there's always the People's Choice Award! That's a popular vote from the group as a whole than from just the three of the judges.

I still need to read the other stories so I can vote in that thing. I keep on making myself too busy though. x3

And oh well I didn't win. D: I was pretty sure that was going to happen though. x.x But oh well.

Congratulations to all our contestants!

Sorry this went up a bit late, that was my fault really; SOMEONE forgot to turn on Steam today, which is how I've been chatting with the other judges.

"Man, I wonder why no one has said anything to me. I thought we were announcing this today."

I am truly a genius.

ANYWAY

I have written up reviews of all of the stories, but haven't started posting them yet. If any of you would not like me to review your story, please let me know. I'm going to start posting them tomorrow.

5588141
And a special congratulations to you for your victory. You made the top three for all three of us! Well done.

5588199

Congrats to Pumpkin and SamRose:

And thanks for the runner-up spot. I'm so happy I finally got to write a story about sky squids!

Mike

5588780

I'm so happy I finally got to write a story about sky squids!

A man who can truly keep his priorities straight.

Congrats to Pumpkin Cutie Pie, and to everyone who entered. I'm nearly finished reading them all, and there are a surprising number of good stories here, so I encourage everypony to go read through some of the less appreciated ones.

I forgot to say: congrats are in order for the other two runners up!
I'm pretty sure that their stories are amazing as well. In fact, I guarantee that everyone's were GREAT!!!

Unlike probably mine....
And I say that, because it ended up being a bit rushed because of a mix between school, and the fact that I lost half of the stuff when writing it.

But eeh, there's always next time. And like I said, I never entered to win anyway. I still got enjoyment out of it.
Enjoyment is more than enough for me.

5588151

I blame The Doctor honestly with his Magic Box as I've had DW on my brain for awhile now. Grrr...

You know... that could be an idea.

Someone could actually create a story called The Magic Box, starring the Doctor.

I'd say that I'd do it, but I'm already eating more than I can chew as it is. I'm already writing:
Fluttershy's Secret (three chapters done so far)
Ponies at Dawn, Monsters at Dusk (my special Halloween story, dedicated to Mister Phoenix)
Driven to Insomnia (a very random story featuring Twilight Sparkle)

I can't take anymore. I'll pass out from the stress of writing... then I'll probably hate writing...
then I won't wanna write no more.....

I know Titanium Dragon should be covering some, if not all, of the stories in his blog. However, if anyone else wants to know what Sage and I thought of your story (or any of the entries in general) for the contest....or just want to hear it from straight from the Dragon's maw....feel free to ask us here what you want.

Thank you.

5588159
Congrats on the win
You earned it!

5588650
Still, I thought my story was a shoe-in for a win. It had everything: in-character dialogue, simplicity. comedy, romance, a little drama, and a happy ending. Finding out that not only did it not win but not even placed, that's a big blow to my confidence. I mean, I figured that it being one of the few stories with a happy ending in the contest was an edge. Seriously, why is it so many people prefer sad stories? Also, I can't believe I got beat out by 'First Pony Plural'. I mean, no offense, but that story was hard to follow at some points.

5589348 Sometimes sad stories leave a bigger impact. Without a little sadness in the story, it would leave less of an impact when the happy ending finally comes.

Plus, I'm not sure if 'flying as fast as Rainbow Dash' being so easy, and thrilling, is accurate and in character for Fluttershy. Even in bat form.

5589542
Well, I thought I made her transgression into it sensible.

5589629 Well I don't know how others think, but to me, I find it hard to believe that after one test run with her new wings, Fluttershy would suddenly want to challenge Rainbow Dash to a race. Sure she can gather confidence from her performance, but that wouldn't make her want to outshine Rainbow Dash with it. Her body may be different, but she's still Fluttershy.

5589299

if anyone else wants to know what Sage and I thought of your story [...] feel free to ask us here what you want.

Okay, I'm a little curious why my story placed higher with one judge than with the other two. I'm not fishing for complements - The Music Box is adorable and deserves to win - just curious about the different thought processes.

(I know there are some typos and mistakes in it. Now the contest is over I plan to go back and fix more things.)

5590058
Where is Titanium Dragon when we need him

5589629
Critically, there was nothing really wrong with your story. It was relatively smooth, and well rounded. Nothing about it had me about with joy, or with disappointment. All it needs is something that leaves more of a shock/lasting impact on the reader's remembrance.

5590144
Umm... I know I won, but do you think I could get any feeback too? Usually I'm the one that's told I didn't leave the reader with enough to feel. I'd love to hear any criticism :3

5590119

Titanium Dragon told me he was just going to do it all via his blog and then link it accordingly here...so if you want his opinion...stay tuned I guess.

As for
5590170
5590058
5589348

I'll give you my thoughts on your stories when I get home later tonight so...uhhh...stayed tuned as well.

CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!

5590244

CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!

Oh noes!

5590170
As I look back at your story, I can still see why I wanted it to win. But here's the thing

One of the biggest things for me in a story is diction- particularly, sophisticated, somewhat elegant diction. None of the stories really had my idealized conception of sophisticated diction, but yours started off well. Your handling of dialogue, however, seemed juvenile, by comparison.

It's not that it's bad. Otherwise, you wouldn't have won. But it just seems comparatively simple, or straight forward. Sometimes this is a good thing, but I felt as if the lack of sophisticated diction in some areas subtracted from the narration in others. You weren't obligated to adhere to any specific standards of diction, it's just my sense of ideal.

5590271
Hmm. I never really thought about the dialogue all that much. I mean, I tried to make the writing a bit more sophisticated, as I like flowery writing, but I usually just go with what I think the characters will say. Hopefully, I can work on making the dialogue sound less juvenile.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

5590144
Fluttershy being permanently stuck as a bat wasn't enough?

5590493 If the characters themselves don't feel that sad about it, there isn't much reason for others to feel bad for them. Sure, being stuck in a different form could be quite tragic if the pieces are put together, but the way Rainbow Dash expressed it to Fluttershy, it made it seem like it was an improvement and had almost no reason to feel sad for.

Maybe if Fluttershy had experienced the affects of her looks when other ponies saw her and that devastated her, Rainbow's comfort would've had more of an impact.

5590543
I wasn't trying to make it look like Fluttershy being a bat was better than when she was a pegasus. I was merely having Rainbow Dash help Fluttershy look at the positives of her new form. Rainbow's own way of helping Fluttershy cope.

5590703 But the way we were shown, there wasn't anything really all that negative to begin with. Fluttershy only feared her new form because of her looks, and there wasn't much negative expressed on that. Like I said, if Fluttershy had experienced bad reactions from other ponies, or even from some of her animals, it would've helped show the negative impact her bat pony form had, making Rainbow's showing of the positives feel much more sweet afterwards.

Fluttershy didn't have much reason to fear, other than the thought of reactions that 'might've' happened, but was never shown.

My first set of contest entry reviews are up!

It contains the following stories:

5590760
5590703
While my review of this story is not going to go up until tomorrow, this was my central feeling about the story as well; I didn't actually feel Fluttershy's emotional low, so it was hard for me to feel like the ending, where Fluttershy comes to accept her new form, was really triumphant.

Later than I would've liked but I'll give my general thoughts to your stories now.

5590320

Let's start with the contest winner, which got my second place position OBJECTIVELY. My list is entirely objective when I sat down and reviewed the stories. I based my reviewing on content and quality rather than how much I enjoyed them or not. Your story is one of those that subjectively upset me because of the twist. The writing was fine and nice, I thought the story was average and I was originally going to write it off as a typical hook up fic. Then the twist comes and it becomes it own thing to my complete surprise, which then suspequently quickly infuriated me to no end. I felt cheated, robbed, and deprived of my typical happy and fluffy ending. I was so heartbroken and wanted it to go down the fluffy route.

The strange thing though is when I stepped back and looked at it objectively, it was better for that though and making it a generic hook up fic would make it a lesser story. Which also infuriated me because that meant it was like I was wanting it to be a worse story for me to enjoy it more. Other than the twist it's nothing too special in terms of story, but because of that twist and that gut punch it stood out amongst the rest to me and I had to give it it's dues and give it the second place position behind AugieDog's.

Overall, it's a good read worth a looksie.

5590253

Let's get your story out of the way next, which was TD's number one choice. I'll be honest, the story content is good, the characterization is good, and the writing itself is solid. However, you did something that is just one of my pet peeves in general and that is it jumps around a lot. I will admit it's more of a subjective thing, in that I just generally dislike stories that jump around with cuts and major time jumps of any kind. Normally I am forgiving to this, but your story jumped around enough to where it broke my immersion at points and I both subjectively disliked that and objectively thought it wasn't good.

That's not saying the entire story is garbage. No, far from that actually. It would probably be 4th or 5th on my list based on content and writing alone. It's just that one thing dragged it down for me and perhaps that's just my subjective views overruling my objective views, because I'm sure other people can read it and have no problem with it...like TD for instance. So I can see why people woudl really like it and think it would deserve a high position.

So overall, it's a good read, just for me it just wasn't as good as my top three for that reason alone.

5590703

Ok, you're up last. Where do I even begin? Skylight pointed out some of it in earlier parts, in that Fluttershy's problem wasn't that...problematic. It's hard to feel invested when your arguement is just a character saying something is bad. Had you shown Flutterhsy's plight in that ponies would were scared of her or ridiculed her or whatever to make her upset...as say in Hurricane Fluttershy where she's upset and crying after ponies made fun of her. So when Rainbow came by and resolved quickly in a matter of factly fashion it just felt unearned for Fluttershy to quickly get over her problem.

Everything after that feels a bit...too fast paced. Everything's so timely resolved and there's such a fluffy ending because of it that it really feels vapid. Because of that, nothing sticks to me...I even had to re-read your story again before I did this to get a reminder of what happened/what the story was like. Compare that to Pumpkin Cutie Pie's story where that twist was such a gut punch to me that it could do nothing but stick with me to where I didn't need to re-read it to remember it.

Finally there's the grammatical issues. I'm not much of a grammar stickler, but it's definitely a story where it needs some editting. Notably in the dialogue where lines of speech sometimes have no puncuation. "Such as this lines like this" when really "It needs to be something like this," with commas at the end or some kind of proper punctuation. What's odd is that some lines do have proper punctuation and others do not. It was noticable enough and distracting enough to where it took it down a few points for me.

It's not complete garbage though. I liked the concept a lot and honestly if you made a sequel story to where Fluttershy is still dealing with her change...such as ponies actually being shown to be afraid of her to give her a reason to feel miserable, dealing with some after effects of the change like some animalistic tendencies, or just going to see the natural Bat Ponies that already exist within the universe like the ones in Luna's Royal Guard to get an understanding of their culture and to be accepted by them.... I'd probably read it and be down with something like that.

But in the end, your story was just complelty meh to me. Not awful, but not great and I'd probably place it....maybe in the top 10...maybe...I didn't bother doing a full list of 1-18, but I get the feeling your story would be in the middle somewhere at the 9-11 range.

I hope that helps you all with wanting some feed back, gives you something to mull over, or gives you some ammunition to attack me if you disagree with me in every way.

Anyone else having any story based questions for me or Sage_Element? I'm sure we'll be happy to answer them.

I wonder how my story would've faired into this. With how long of a story it is, I knew it would never be finished in time, but it's surprising that and idea like this came just about the time this contest started.

Even if I could've finished it in time, I don't think it would've faired that well since it doesn't exactly have as much focus on Rainbow and Fluttershy as these other stories did. And I really wished that the story, Revenge Solves Everything, had been finished because that one was being my favorite with how the premise was going.

My second set of contest entry reviews are up!

5592489

...you did something that is just one of my pet peeves in general and that is it jumps around a lot. I will admit it's more of a subjective thing, in that I just generally dislike stories that jump around with cuts and major time jumps of any kind. Normally I am forgiving to this, but your story jumped around enough to where it broke my immersion at points...

Thank you for the feedback. It's definitely true, the story does jump between flashbacks and the present-day scenes with little direct connection. It's partly a result of how I approached the particular challenge of writing to a deadline, which was basically to throw scenes at a wall and see which ones stuck.

But it's also something I seem to do a lot in my writing. It's evident in several longer stories I'm still working on, could drag them down. So I'll have to be more careful of it in the future.

5592489
Uh, you know saying that it's not 'complete garbage' means that you think part of it is garbage.

5592536
Not recommended? That's pretty harsh.

I had thought that I had come up with a winning story idea, but to get such criticism like this, it really destroys one's confidence. It might be a while before I can write again.

I'll say this though: I don't think I'll be making a sequel to that story after all.

5592686

Not recommended? That's pretty harsh.

I don't recommend about 60% of what I read. I'm generally regarded as being pretty stingy in my WRs and above. I mean, if you read the rest of that review post... I gave NRs to everything else as well, with the exception of Augie Dog's story.

Don't stop writing just because I give something a NR. Everyone starts somewhere, and there's always room for improvement.