The Spring Fling has Flung! [Long Post Inside] · 1:18am May 24th, 2023
Hey everyone! I put a lot of work into this blog. There's quite a bit to talk about—not just about the Spring Fling, but I'll also be talking about when you should expect to see something new from me, what my future plans are, that kind of deal.
[EDIT] Sorry some of the images are broken. Wouldn't it be great if image hosts weren't all dumpster fires??? It's like we learned nothing from tinypic.
I. Sprung Flung
i. But First, Let's Talk About What Matters
That being me
sorry if you get this joke
Before I get into what actually matters about this contest (Not me), I want to go over my own personal experience and feelings about it. This was my first time doing something like this ever—in this fandom or otherwise—so it was a big enough deal to me that I'm going to ramble about it at the average length of one of my chapters.
First, I want to say being part of it was an absolute blast through and through. When everything was concluding, I was actually a little bummed because I didn't want it to end. However, as fun and enriching as everything was, it was also a good bit surreal. The good kind of surreal, of course.
I gotta preface this next bit by clarifying that I am not comparing myself or my work to anyone else, and this shouldn't read negatively in any way. These are just some amusing observations I couldn't help but make.
Like I mentioned it in the comments of the results post, I'm a relative newbie in this scene. My account has been here since March of '21, but it went largely unused until I started posting my own content here in September of last year. Meanwhile, all my co-judges are much more established than I am, with a minimum of 6 times as many stories as I have. Again, I want to be super clear, I'm not saying this to try and compare—numbers are not why I am here doing what I do.
It's just that these are all just things I kinda couldn't not notice. Like, if you'll forgive my use of this stupid meme, when I read the initial contest post and saw all the other judge names next to mine, I just kind of thought it outwardly looked like this:
Don't let the distance fool you tho we're friends <3
Not only was that surreal, but it was especially so to be in the position of judging entries from authors I recognized, and whose work has had influence over my own, some of which might be reading this right now. This was best illustrated when I saw an entry from Oroboro, author of one of my all-time favorite fics Fractured Sunlight. Of course, her name appearing had nothing to do with my opinion on her entry, but knowing I would be in charge of scoring something from her made me feel, as best as I can describe it, backwards.
More than anything, though, I feel very lucky and am grateful to have been in that position, and I hope it's not the last time I get the chance to do something like that.
To wrap this up, I need to give big shoutouts to Dewdrops on the Grass, The Sleepless Beholder, and TCC56 for helping make this whole thing every bit as smooth as it was fun. I'm very glad we all got to do this together.
Last, but not least, an extra super duper big mclargehuge shoutout to EileenSaysHi for the same reason as above, for organizing the contest and inviting me to be a part of it. It's just not an Avery Day blog post unless I find a reason to thank Eileen (It's not my fault! They're just very good at being thankable 
)
ii. "What Did You Think of My Entry?"
I would love to comment on absolutely everything, but this contest had a lot of content in it. In total, there were 31 stories, and about 190k words total out of that. Referencing my comment from the results page again, there was a lot more to like in this contest than there was to not. I meant it when I said there was something I liked about each entry.
Over the next couple days/weeks, I'll be leaving comments on the ones I liked the most. You'll have to forgive how slow I'll be with this—life is still a bit hectic, and I have to divide my time and attention pretty carefully for the next little while. But there are some entries I liked that didn't get recognized, or that I didn't get to comment on, and I'd like the authors of those entries to know that.
However, I won't be leaving a comment on absolutely everything. As much as I would like to, that would just take too much time. That said, if I don't leave a comment on your entry and you're curious as to what I (and only I) thought of it, you are free to send me a private message to ask me. I cant guarantee I'll get back to you with a long review, but I will try to give you something to work with.
iii. Personal Favorites and Recommendations
This next section is going to be a bit stream-of-consciousness, because if it wasn't, it would take me 6 days to type up this blog post (and as I finalize this post, I am on day 3) so I apologize if it's a tad scatterbrained, and if I don't mention your entry.
This shit had me like this for an HOUR
Yes, this is one of the award winners. Yes, I have a blurb on it on the results page. Yes, I've already praised it once this blog entry, and in a comment, and so has everyone else in the results and comments of this fic. But that's not enough.
Oh. My. God. This story reduced me to a sobbing fucking mess the first time through. And every subsequent time through after. When I finished it, I cried so much, and had to gush about it to my wife and several of my other partners even longer after that. It's just resonated with me that hard.
This fic plays tennis with your emotions, knocking you back and forth between extremes. For a few paragraphs, you're smiling wide, watching Rarity and Sunset's relationship blossom into romance. The next, you're whipped right back into reality, where you know nothing is right. You see the low points of their relationship, and you feel the regret from Rarity as you do.
You get to the end, and the very real reaction Rarity has to everything finally hitting her at once is heartrending. The entire time I was teetering on tears, but there's a section where the Sunset facsimile asks Rarity if she should be headed back, and from the point where Rarity answers "head back to what?" all the way to the very end destroyed me. I'm not joking when I say I just went back and opened up the story so I could pinpoint those lines, and that alone was to cause tears to well in my eyes. When I left my big comment on it, I cried again. This story is absolutely beating my ass. It could be argued it plays on some easy beats to invoke an emotional reaction, but hey! It works! This shit hurted.
There's more insight in my comment, so if you're interested, go read more there. If you have not read this story first though, please, please, please fucking read it. I mean it.
Honey by RubyDubious
Somebody please give Rarity a break.
This was my judge prize, but I have to recommend it again. I like to keep my writing history close to the chest, but before I went on my extended hiatus from writing many years ago, the stuff I was writing at the time would regularly involve fear and tension in settings where those emotions are tonally dissonant, and graphic descriptions of body horror.
Body horror itself is something I've always been morbidly, but passively interested in, so when I saw that warning on this story, I was immediately intrigued. Like I said in my judge comment, this was the only horror entry, but it managed to stand out to me for reasons that go beyond that. Unless my memory is failing me, I believe this story is the only one that was told non-linearly, and I love it when stories are told out of order.
Rarity and Sunset's romance in this is so good. The second chapter manages to be super cute while also having such an uncomfortable level of tension held throughout. I can't help but be like 'd'aww' but I'm always anxiously waiting for the shoe to finally drop. I'd love to explain exactly what I mean, but I don't want to spoil anything for those that haven't read it. If you want to know more about how I felt, you can read my comment on the last chapter. Please read it first, though.
She's married, actually.
Funny story about this fic: I had no idea it was going to be entered in the contest, and that's why my comment on it is so old. Granted, there was no rule against commenting on entries before the judging period concluded, but I figured I might as well explain that. I left that comment, and then two days later it was in the pool, and I was like "oh jeez that's kind of awkward."
However, what's funnier than that is this story in general. There are so many good lines in this from start to finish, and everything about the latter half is just pure gold. It manages to be equal parts heartfelt, explosive, and absurd all at the same time. I especially, really, truly love the characterizations in this—especially the three characters that appear in this who I've also written about before.
Sixty five hundred words, but the pace makes it feel like six-hundred and fifty in the absolute best way. This was a favorite of mine before it was even in the contest, and if you read it, you won't find it hard to understand why.
Also hi, Dubs!
"You haven't seen Cadance around here, have you?"
From one highly entertaining entry to another. This one starts with a cute premise, and it only gets cuter as it continues. Much like the story before it, it also continually escalates until it reaches a very percussive and entertaining climax.
One of the things that carried this story for me is the characterizations. Almost everyone feels exactly right; no bit of dialogue between characters feels off-kilter, or like they're saying something they wouldn't say. Dash is oblivious to a fault, AJ is as stubborn as it gets, and Sunset is helpful to a near fault. There's a bit at the end with Cadance that got a really good laugh out of me too, but I won't say how or why. You gotta read it on your own to find out. Don't be intimidated by the word count—much like the entry before, this one reads like it's half its actual length in the best way.
Also hi, Calypso!
Pretty much read the whole thing like this.
I don't have as much to say about this one as I do a lot of the others, but I felt the need to mention it because it's super adorable. Seeing a first person story written from Derpy's perspective was kind of a surprise, and I was even more pleasantly surprised by how well the author voices her. It would be easy to play on how clumsy and slow Derpy tends to be depicted and not do much else, but this story manages to make her feel like a character beyond what she tends to be typecast as. Overall, this story had one of the strongest cute factors of all of them.
"Fix her? With the power of science, I can make her even worse!"
Unfortunately, this is where I must scold the lot of you. Not FOME (and I hope you don't mind the acronym), mind you, the rest of you. Thirty-one entries and only one is directly about SciSet??? Do I mean nothing to you people???
Jokes aside, this one managed to pull something off that none of the other entries did: give me a character I'm very familiar with, and give them a personality that runs against that familiarity. SciTwi in this story is nothing like how I write her or how I like her written—but it absolutely works and I adore that about this story. Both Sunset and SciTwi are the most detestable little shits [affectionate] throughout this, and they're just perfect for one another.
There are a lot of good qualities about this fic aside from that: the pacing is fast, but doesn't feel like it's speeding. The interactions are all very charming, and everything feels just detailed enough. It makes every word it uses count, and the technobabble manages to steer completely clear of the 'Suspension of Disbelief' alarm which is not an easy feat.
There's only one thing I must say: I fear for these two. Their love may bloom in this, but the roots of their romance are rotten, and will almost certainly not last through more than one cold season. This isn't actually remotely serious—it was something I scribbled in my notes to be silly, so I thought I'd share it here too. Definitely give this one a read over if you haven't; you'll love it.
Also hi, FOME!
I swear I'm not trying to play favorites with my followers here, y'all are just good okay?
The only relevance this screenshot has to the story in question is that both of them feature these two being gay and sopping.
This one takes a little bit to get going, but it's well worth getting through that bit. The nature of it not having any dialogue makes it hard to comment on things like characterization, but if nothing else, this features a wonderful and heartfelt display of intimacy. It's worth a read for reasons outside of its creative gimmick.
"You know what? That actually makes being trapped at an eternal music festival seem not half bad."
When we were divvying up who got to do blurbs on what, I actually volunteered to do this one, but handed it over to Dewdrops who did a wonderful job illustrating exactly what I liked about the fic as well. In this competition, there were only three stories that managed to make me shed a tear, and this was one of those few, the other coincidentally being the other honorable mention Give Me Anything But Blue. There's an absolutely heartwrenching scene right before the end of this that pushed me to my limits.
This story is heartfelt, it's intriguing, it's bleak, and it kind of messes me up in a very particular way. When I think of the special this is based on, I think about how fast paced and goofy it was. But this manages to flip that on its head and make a really unsettling concept out of it: immortality in an intangible reality. I'd give you more details, but I don't think I could properly explain all this in a way that matches how fascinating it is to read. Definitely check this one out if you haven't.
iv. Closing Thoughts and Personal Honorable Mentions
Once again, I'm sorry if I didn't get to your entry in this post, or if I don't leave you a comment, but you're free to ask me.
Other stories (barring the other contest winners and already recognized entries) I particularly enjoyed are:
- Makeup and Distractions by ShowShine
- And She Captivates by SilverNotes
- Just Bros Being Bros by DualSoul1423
- Gone Fishing by Moproblems Moharmoney
Even if I didn't mention it in this post, most of the entry pool is worth reading. Pick something; you'll find something good! Thanks for reading all of this if you did, too!
II. Where To Next?
Or, 'and now, you can finally stop reading.'
But if you didn't, you're now part of a super special cool club of people I like, so congrats! We meet nowhere at never every week!
My last blog post was almost two weeks ago now; the one where I said I was extending my break. Unfortunately, I don't really have a window for when that will be ending. This is actually for a couple more reasons now.
Before I get into that though, my health has improved quite a bit already, and I'm back on track with a lot of that, but I need to stay on track with it as well. That means being a little more involved than I have been the past few months. That means I'll be a bit slow with everything.
However, and as bummed as I am about the contest ending, it being over means that I can finally go back to sitting inside my gay little bubble, writing my gay little stories, and I very much intend to do that. It's warm again, and I'm very inspired lately.
But. I think I need a palette cleanser. My mind is being pulled toward other projects, and the reason why is not because those concepts are more appealing than what I have, but because they're outside of what I've been doing for the past while now. I've been sitting in the same pool for a little bit too long. The contest went a ways toward showing me that I feel a little stagnant with what I've currently got.
Since the last CA chapter dropped, I've written quite a bit of one-off material, but I haven't submitted any of it because it's kind of unpolished and/or unfinished (you might notice this is a pattern with me lol). I think part of the reason I haven't been able to work on a lot of it is because I've been yearning to write about some other concepts and genres outside of the little universe I've built for a little while. This leads me to talk about something exciting, but I have to be vague with it for the same reason I didn't bring this up before now: because it's in the very early stages.
You see, I still want to write another story about my two favorite dorks falling in love—that hasn't changed one bit—but I need to do something that isn't purely a romantic/angsty drama, and completely unrelated from anything else I've ever done.
My girlfriend and I were workshopping some ideas together, and we tossed one concept around that really stuck with me. I kept tossing it around in my head on my own for a bit after, and the more it rolled around in my brain, the more other ideas I've had for other stories started getting picked up by it. Like that one video game with the ball, you know the one! From there, it became kind of a monster.
Now, the reason I can't be more specific with what it's about beyond that is because there's a lot of trimming and truncating to be done, as well as the fact that I have nothing to show for this aside from some concept art for the cover. But I've not been this excited with an idea in a while, and I can't wait until there's more to share.
If CA doesn't get an update anytime soon, assume that's why. If this concept is half as good as I think it is, I want to give it some attention and some time to bake. I don't want to say CA is going on hiatus quite yet, because I could change my mind on all of this, but as I say with frustrating frequency, time will tell!
The working title is TECHNOMAGICOMMUNION.
III. And, Finally
Check out this image:
I don't really have much else, but I thought it was weird to just have two sections. That's all for today!
Thanks for reading 
Hi, Avery!
Very glad you enjoyed the tale of the redeeming power of love and how it can be put to better use in the form of vengeance through giant robots. (And yeah, these two are not exactly good people at the moment, but Sunset being drawn into Twilight's support structure will help with that.) Some excellent picks among the other highlights. Wonderful to hear you had such a good time with the contest in general, and I look forward to seeing what you put together next.
And who knows? I might be planning something for the fall and may remember how much you enjoyed this...
derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/4/3/2313104__safe_gameloft_spike_clothes_disguise_hat_male_meme_solo_sunglasses_trenchcoat_wow21+glimmer_your+mom.jpg
I'm extremely relieved to hear that you're doing better. Seriously, health related complications suck.
Glad you made it through judging 190k words unscathed and stronger than ever! I'm sure the learning curve was quite something, but it sounds like you had a lot of fun and I'm happy to hear that!
Hmm, my immediate thoughts on as to who the pairing could be, based on the color and first word of the working title is VinylDash, but that's probably just a red herring. Very curious to see what it's about!
Also, um...
hello
5730110
Thank you so much! Drop me a line whenever!
5730118
Thank you for this I think
5730120
That's a good guess, but the name is inspired by a mishmash of different things that have influenced me recently. It's one of two working titles, but I'm less sure on the other one, and neither really tell you much about what it's really about on the surface. You'll just have to wait and see!
Thanks kindly for the mention and I'm happy to hear you're doing well.
Maybe, but you already have a bigger wordcount than me lol
Awww glad i can keep giving reasons for thanks
So glad that you got so much out of the contest! Makes me even more glad I could provide the opportunity
I'm glad that you participated too; it was wonderful getting to see your opinions, of which you have plenty, and they're fantastic opinions at that. I hop we get the chance to work together again on a future contest.
yes! yes!!! cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/886610029380272179.webp?size=96&quality=lossless
seriously though, thank you so much for your thoughts! that it made you shed a tear is so wonderful to hear, and Penance will always be something worth the time it took to wrote it because of that.
and thanks for all the work in judging and putting together these thoughts! to my shame i have read almost none of the other entries, though i can second having enjoyed Gone Fishing. fascinating and fully-inhabited characterizations of both Micro Chips and Trixie