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Hey, it's May! You know, at the moment I'm sometimes finding it a little difficult to remember what day of the week it is, as they all rather blur into each other when you're at home all the time. Thankfully, I've remembered that we've ticked over to a new month and so there's a new round of FF150 to set up.
Here are the full rules.
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. Usually I can't think of much more to say than that, but this time last month's winner Impossible Numbers has provided me with something. He's suggested an optional extra challenge, which I'll mention below.
Prompt: "I'm Flying Without Wings" (selected by last month's winner, Impossible Numbers)
Rating: E or T
Word limit: 150
Closing date: Thursday 21st May 2020, 11:59 pm UK time (world clock)
Optional challenge!
Easy: Don't write about Scootaloo.
Medium: Don't write about pegasi.
Hard: Don't write about any flying species whatsoever (e.g. alicorns, griffons, dragons, birds).
I will not take the challenge into account when judging, except insofar as it produces a more interesting story overall, so you shouldn't worry if you don't feel like participating in that part of the contest. The challenge is purely a fun thing for those who'd like to give it a go.
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!
7206663
er... I believe the prompt is "I'm Flying Without Wings," and last month's winner was Impossible Numbers
7206663
Well since the 'numeric nemesis' is back, it would be wise that I should try for this month.
Because June already has its winner decided.
Curiosity
7206663
"One-a These Days! Bang! Zoom! To the Lulamoon, Alice!"
7206663
--Sweetie Belle
7206663
Well, I haven’t done this in a while, but here’s Pigs not in blankets
Mark drove down the street, grumbling under his breath.
Of course his sister’s toy pig had to be in the garage when he was working on his truck, and of course oil spilled on it, and, of course, his parents made him go buy a new one.
Honestly, He thought, pulling into his parent’s driveway, It’s such a pa-
“Get back here!”
He could only stare, shocked, as an actual pig sailed over the hood of his car, an orange horse-thing sailing after it.
Parking and quickly getting out and running after them, he saw that they weren’t even touching the ground, both creatures gliding on air.
“Gotcha!” The horse-thing cried out in a farm girl voice, grabbing the pig. “Now le’s get you an’ Twi’s flight powder back through the portal.”
Turning, she saw Mark staring at her with a slack jaw.
“Uh... Hi?”
When pigs fly... He thought.
7206693
Fixed! Thank you for the correction.
7206693
7206911
I've been Unpersoned. Now I officially don't exist. There was never an Impossible Numbers. Anything you've heard about such a character was an utter lie.
Getting back to today's topic...
Four entries already, and we've only just opened up the shop. Could be a good run, but inspiration has yet to pass me anything. (For my own prompt too! For shame).
If I think of anything, I'll come back later. If. But I'd certainly like to. I need to up my writing game again.
7206663
Hi, I'm new and I decided to try this out! I hope you like it.
Hard level (unless Twilight talking counts, then medium).
7206663
And lo, I return.
There's something about background characters, ever since this fandom took off, that's always fascinated me. Namely, the fandom's ability to make them on par with the main cast despite having much less material to work with. Of course, it's usually an exercise in picking one tiny detail in the middle of an episode and generating a massive amount of fan speculation off it. But it just seems such a strangely satisfying thing to do, at least in my view.
So anyone who's seen Testing Testing 1, 2, 3 from Season Four might (might, mind) recognize something in this one. A couple of details were lifted from other episodes too, and some were invented out of whole cloth, but that's the seed that led to this particular example of new growth.
Otherwise, I hope this little flashfic entry stands perfectly fine on its own as a mini "What if?" for two largely peripheral ponies.
You Will Believe A Cherry Can Fly
Also, nice! Five entries already - six if you include mine - and the month's barely started. Maybe we'll get enough for some honourable mentions? That's always a good sign of a healthy-sized contest.
7206663
wings
7208622
Gah, you beat me to it! I had this ready to go last night but couldn't think of a title!
Crippled wings
Edit: 04 - Crippled Wings
Title: "Letter delivered on the day after the armistice"
=======================
My love,
Never have I so feared the dawn.
Never has my heart been so heavy while Moon cuts shadows in the night, every darkness bottomless in perception, every void infinite in possibility.
Never have I so longed for night to stay, bask in the heat of your presence, shiver at the touch of your breath upon my coat, sink into the scent of every part of you, lose myself in the completeness of us.
For tomorrow I fly away to war.
For tomorrow with my comrades I will ride leviathans of martial intent, mourn my innocence in endless wait, and fight, shedding blood upon our mother far below.
Or return one final time in unconscious rush to her bosom.
Or perhaps be tenderly laid to rest into her dark repose.
War has come, and I must go.
So long, my love.
So long and good night.
7208765
I feel like this was written for last month's prompt which was So Long and Goodnight... this month's prompt is I'm Flying Without Wings. If I'm wrong then ignore me7208786
I wrote it for this month, but the idea that my muse came up with and whacked me about the head with until I wrote it down was obviously influenced by last month’s post. That isn’t against the rules as far as I know, but it obviously sets me up for procrastination commentary of all kinds!
(P.S. I’m in my late fifties - no millennial jokes unless you’re one of my kids, in which case turnaround is fair play.)
7208803
Ah, makes sense then lol!
7208803
Perfectly within the rules. Thanks for the explanation!
7208701
7209015 I used Scootaloo, so I basically cheated on Easy dificulty.
7209094
Needs sequel... where it turns out Scoots is alive.
7209099 You haven't seen many of my stories yet, it seems. A story ain't over until the main character dies a horrible death.
I don't think this story needs a sequel. Scootaloo was being stupid, so her death was justified. Everything is as it should be.
7209184
Maybe you should write an autobiography...
Just kidding!
7209099
Don't worry, Sweetie Bot has a built-in jetpack!
--Sweetie Belle
7209210
Phew!
7209190 I think I just might. But there are at least 50 more years of ordeals to be had before the final chapter. The greater the suffering, the sweeter the release.
7209210
My story, my ending.
7209305
My headcanon, my ending.
7206663
Here's my submission for this month
Into double figures now! I think I can definitely promise an hon mensh this month. Keep 'em coming!
7208655
I would say strange minds think alike, but that's pending information on your part.
7210289
Keep in mind mine's not technically an entry, since it can't legally compete this month. So it's actually nine.
(Sorry. My inner pedant made me write this.
)
7211696
Well, if we're being pedantic, I'd just point out that I said we were into double figures now. I didn't actually specify eligible entries. So it's ten. So there.
7206663
Gah, I have to wait 18 more days for the results! So many philosophical stories here, and I wrote a comedy.
7210270
If I had to pick a story to win other than my own, I would pick yours. Well done!
7206663
Here's my entry.
So, I was thinking about the prompt and then was thinking about the title sequence and how much I prefer the old one (and not just because best pony features more prominently in it (Logan will know who I mean)) and then I thought 'Where did Twilight get that balloon from?'
That's a lot of hot air
“Princess?”
“Yes my faithful student?”
“May I have a balloon?”
“Of course Twilight. There is often a balloon seller out side the castle gates, let me summon a maid. Would you like one in a particular shape?”
“Not that sort of balloon princess. I was thinking of one with a basket so that I could go flying.”
“And where would you fly too?”
“Umm? Ponyville!”
A sharp intake of breath, “And why there in particular?”
“Well, it’s not to far away and…..and….it was the first place I saw on this map.”
A slow release of tension, “Let me see what I can arrange Twilight. You will need an Aeronaut’s licence and there are very stringent requirements and…. tough…. tests….” As soon as Celestia opened her mouth she knew she had said the wrong thing when Twilight’s eyes lit up with joy.
“Stars preserve me! I’m getting too old for this.”
Unfortunately I'm over the word count, but I don't wish to take any more of a hatchet to it. Still here it is so hopefully folks will enjoy.
That's not flying This is flying
"Nothing like it is there wind through your feathers and the speed"
The pegasus chuged back his cider slamming the empty tankard upon the bar table.
"Am I right"
His gaze cast left and right to the around the table. The group all cheered at once.
"You can say that again it feels magnificent"
The clamour stopped the collective gaze turned to the earth pony sat behind who'd piped up.
"What in Lunas name would you know"
The bemused pegasus retorted.
The earth pony took out a picture from his saddle bag gazing at it.
"The moment she said yes I felt it. As I headed home my hooves never touched the ground I felt lighter than air. All my problems seemed small insignificant far below me"
He mused as he took a sip from his own tankard.
"That's not flying"
The pegasus scoffed.
"Oh .. so you've never felt that then .. I'm so sorry"
The earth pony gave him a nod filled with pity before he sauntered off leaving the confused looking group
Anyone else who feels like joining this month's pretty busy FF150 party, you have 71 hours to go.
7206663
Am I too late?!
7206742 7206797 7206799 7206812 7208284 7208622 7208655 7208701 7208765 7210270 7212542 7216351 7222052
Your time is up, everyone! A really good entry this month: no fewer than 13 entries! (Impossible Numbers' is ineligible since he won last month, but 12 eligible entries is still excellent.) Well done the lot of you -- and welcome to those who are new or returning. Astrarian, you submitted your fic at exactly 11:59 and so it is eligible.
I'll have to take a few days to think about these, so please expect a short delay. The results will be up no later than Tuesday, though.
In the meantime, you can now leave feedback. Enjoy!
7222063
Oh, I left feedback already... Did I break a rule?
7222063
Nailed it! (sorry though! inspiration is a fickle mistress who smacks down 20 minutes before the deadline sometimes...!)
7206742
I’m wondering if this was meant for this month’s contest or last month’s. Regardless of which, it was still interesting to read, and not something I expected coming into this. Well done and manages to sell the mystery vibes in ~150 words.
7222256
It was made for this month as an attempt to dazzle the competition by taking the optional challenge and doing it on a extreme level by writing a story about something that's underground. I couldn't think of a plot other than something involving diamond dogs, but after jakkid166 commented on a detective story of mine, I thought a detective involving something that was 'six feet under' could work.
Course, something involving a ghost can be debatable in terms of if it's flying. However, you're investigating without a body, so in a sense, 'you're flying without wings'.
7222063
That’s a lotta entries. Hope I make the honorable mentions.
7222077
The great rule in life: if no one's shouting at you for it, you didn't do anything wrong.
A bit of feedback for y'all. Unlike last time, I'll try to keep this short and sweet. Also, the usual disclaimer applies about personal tastes and biases and so forth.
7206742
Cards on the table: I'm not overwhelmingly a fan of mature/teen-rated MLP. Don't know why - it's not as if I'm squeamish about gore or violence in general - but this is just in case that affects my review going in.
Also, there's a weird case of "dangling participle" in the second paragraph, and while I don't usually regard this supposed grammatical crime as anything but a stylistic issue, here it was weird because it took a distracting while for me to figure out to whom the "yak-in-the-box" applied: the criminal, not the narrator.
That said, the twist in this one is clever, even more so when I read 7222327 to get its relation to the prompt (though that's also kind of the problem; it should be more obvious from clues in the text itself). I like the noir-esque feel of the narrator; the details and wordplay given paint a vivid picture. Ultimately, the style is strong.
That said, I'd have preferred slightly more explanation on the case rather than repeated variants of "X ends with some clever comment about the murder(er)". I get basic details, like "mare is murdered, then guy investigates and gets killed", but less time on intestinal wind instruments and more on jotting down a brief who, what, or why might have helped make this feel more grounded and less erring on the generic (before the twist happens, I mean, which immediately improves it for me).
7206797
That is an unexpected reference in the title. It's apt for the fic in one obvious way, but weirdly associates that with threatened domestic abuse another way, and I cannot for the life of me tell whether I like it or not.
Also, there's an erroneous case of using two punctuation marks (in case you're wondering, it's the "!," in the third paragraph).
On balance, I think I'm a bit neutral on this fic, and it's only fair to admit the choice of characters is one reason (I'm not a huge fan of either). On its own terms, the fic does well, as I could easily imagine this dynamic playing out, especially given what appears to be Trixie's alicorn complex.
But outside that and the stunt itself, there's nothing particularly juicy for me to latch on to. It doesn't tell me much I don't already know (there's no major or strong objection from Starlight, so her turnaround and reaffirmed friendship don't feel like a big deal either), it doesn't really explain why Trixie is doing this (I like the implication of vain glory, but it would be nice to have more of an idea of why this matters so much and what Trixie's inner thoughts are on this), and it doesn't have any particular stylistic gimmick for me to admire like the previous fic does (consider, for instance, telling this from Trixie's first-person perspective; imagine how lively the prose would be if she kept butting in as the Great and Powerful to comment).
I have a tough time pinning down the one cause, but the effect is that I kind of slide off this one. Neutral is about right for me.
7206799
A cute joke. The story is peppered with little clues that don't make full coherent sense until the last line, which is good story structuring. Rarity and Sweetie Belle are pretty funny in how they handle it, Rarity's lines in particular: I particularly like Rarity's undignified "You should woosh past." Rarity attempted a wooshing gesture.
Don't have much to say, since most of my most quibbling complaints (e.g. it's not exactly "deep") are pretty obviously beside the point. A good'un for giving me a laugh.
7206812
Another personal bias I should show face-up on the table: humans in MLP are not something I normally seek out in fanfiction. Regarding the pony-on-Earth genre in particular, I'm very distracted by the fact that this just sort of happened, without even a token explanation, for no further point than to wrangle up the punchline. Maybe I'm just inevitably picky about the very concept of the genre, but the setup doesn't work for me.
Which isn't to say this is a bad fic on its own terms, even though I personally didn't like it much. The little bit of characterization of Mark at the beginning regarding the pig was the main bit I latched onto (well, that and the AJ cameo with the pig, because AJ) because, human-in-MLP aside, it's at least a promising start. There is some needless capitalization in the third and in the last paragraph ("he thought", not "He thought"), but it's written well for the most part, so no major complaints there. This is another entry that feels like it was written for the punchline, but since the pig doesn't actually seem to fly, the punch the line should have feels a bit weak. And I think there was another way to get to it than to use this particular genre setup (if we're going for a flying pigs joke, setting it in Equestria and maybe involving either a "pigasus" or Pinkie "oink oink oink" Pie might have been less distracting for me).
In conclusion, I'm really not the person to ask about this one, I'm afraid. I hope something in these ramblings of mine proves useful to you.
7208284
I'm a hardass, so "medium" setting.
Similar to SweetAI Belle's, this is a one-joke story, but I think it fumbles the execution at just the wrong moment. I do like the intended joke, though not being a reformed-Starlight fan, that's almost certainly influenced by my petty pleasure at seeing her insulted.
The main problem is that the payoff for the joke happens halfway through the story, so the rest has to find something else to get the giggles going, and Spike making a crack about reaching higher shelves is not a particularly strong substitute (feels more like something to put before the punchline). With a joke fic like this, the best thing to do is to leave the reveal for the very end (in this case, the weight joke).
A few other issues as well: outside of dialogue, there's pointless verbiage being added. For instance, '"Yeah, I guess you're not as pudgy anymore," Twilight remarked, missing the point.' That underlined bit is entirely unnecessary (we can see for ourselves she's missing the point; we don't need the joke explained to us). Another example is 'said Twilight, wondering what she was driving at'. And 'Spike chose this moment to say' is a little redundant, as 'Spike said' would do the same job with fewer words. Especially in a scenario when you've got hardly any space for words, ruthless cutting to bare-bones essentials is a must, and trusting your readers to get the point goes a long way to freeing up space by relying on implication and clues in the text.
As a final if nitpicking complaint, 'making Twilight's mouth form an 'o'-shape' reads more like a stage direction than a natural-feeling bit of prose. It's not enough to describe what's going on just any old how. If you're going to do that, try to make it vivid, for instance by having the narrator comment on what's going on or show an attitude that fits the genre (e.g. sarcastically mocking it in a comedy, or dourly using morbid similes in a noir detective piece, or lingering lovingly over poetic descriptions in a romance). Give the narrator a little bit of a spice.
Again, I've been a bit of a Debbie Downer here, but I at least hope something here proves useful to you personally.
7208622
Thus begins the Cherry Berry trilogy. Seriously, how is it we ended up with three Cherry Berry fics?
7208655
Speaking of which...
Gah, I love a bit about how one tribe member wants to be in another tribe (seriously, my own fic in this round is just one of many where I've applied that idea), so I'm already looking forward to this fic as early as the first paragraph (because that sort of tragic dream is so ripe for conflict and characterization). I suppose I ought to call this a bias, just for a fic instead of against a fic.
The first two paragraphs have the best stuff for me. They explain almost single-handedly her motivation. Since I'm in critic mode today, I will add that they felt a bit disconnected from what follows; sure it gets the quest for flight started, but that sort of thing feels like a constant motivation rather than a one-off starter, so not even nodding in its direction makes the payoff seem weaker and makes the opening feel slightly less relevant. The fic has this lovely tragic dream thing going on, but ending with that dream fulfilled and no acknowledgement, say, of that mother motivation means we lose the sad punch of what could have been a slam-dunk ending.
I might be unreasonable here. The fic's well-written (I'd probably exorcise the "They were wrong" as being needlessly too explicit when the actions speak loud enough for me, but that's quibbling). It's still good at what it does.
7208701
Is this a dark comedy, or am I a really evil person for laughing at the end?
Although to be fair, the followup between you and RandomGuy101 doesn't help matters.
OK, for real this time: my biggest problem is that Scootaloo is waaay too dumb. If it's a dark comedy, fine. If it's not, it means the drama is undermined by how ridiculously suicidal Scootaloo's plan is. If we were going for tragic, and since there is a kind of rationale behind the decision, maybe have Scootaloo have Rainbow keep watch, or use a bungee cord, or otherwise set up an obvious safety precaution, and then hit the reader by having it fail. Cut to the snapped bungee cord, or Rainbow having a "I Let Gwen Stacy Die" moment, or anything else. I mean, I can believe Scootaloo is desperate, just not that stupid.
Second biggest problem is that I can't tell for sure that this is a dark comedy, which would obviate a few other criticisms I have of the setup. Like, if so, then a few wry comments in the narration, or some other comedy-esque touch, just to clue me in before the big finish. Otherwise, one of those other criticisms is that I don't see the point of the fic. "Scootaloo is desperate to fly" wouldn't be breaking any new ground on its own, and it feels like a missed opportunity to maybe use the occasion as a mini-commentary on suicidal depression or something that would give the drama some heft.
I think what I'm saying is that I don't know what this fic is going for - genre-wise, philosophically, topically - and I may be laughing at something I shouldn't. I just can't tell, so all I can extract for certain is "OMG, LOL, how is she that dumb!?"
I fully confess I might be unhelpful here as a critic.
7208765
This fic is too opaque for its own good. On the one hand, the imagery is especially thick, and so largely generic in focusing on darkness or the motherland or so on, that while I can't say it's bad (though "I will ride leviathans of martial intent" is an especially flummoxing metaphor where the imagery is borderline absurd, which is not a good thing when you're trying to be serious), it isn't hugely inspiring to me personally. I'll fully admit I could be a hypocrite here, given my own tendency to spill purple ink over my own prose, but it also serves to emphasize another problem I have with the fic.
That problem being: what is going on here?
Not that I'm oblivious to the war, but there's a lot of "why" missing here. If this is set in ponyland and not World War One, you can't just stick a war in there and expect a reader to accept that without explanation, because there's a big gap between the show and what you're trying to do (in another way, that was my complaint for a pony-on-earth fic above). I get the gist that this narrator is dreading war and clinging to a lover, but questions line up to make me feel dissatisfied with that setup, like: Who is this pony? How is there a war on? Why is he so attached to his lover - for all I know, it could be anything from "our life passions overlap and our personalities complement each other" to "she's got a real nice bod"?
It overall feels hazy. That's probably why I would have preferred less synonymous descriptions about darkness at midnight and more clues on the whys and wherefores of all this.
I don't mean to be harsh or unduly nitpicky, but I bounced off this fic and I'm trying to pin down why. The poetry can be good at times (I'm partial to the darkness ones, myself). I don't know... It might be worth seeing what someone else says, because this might be just my own response. I hope I'm making some kind of sense here?
7210270
This is another fic I'm not really best placed to critique, since romance isn't something I seek out. I don't want to blame the word count necessarily, as I think it is possible to cram a reasonable explanation or two here and there. And I might as well admit I'm of the school of thought that says "just because they get along in canon, doesn't mean you've got enough to justify a sudden romance; there's a lot of leg-room and work to do yet".
Long story short: I might be really biased against this fic. I like both characters, but I'm not 100% sure why AJ and Autumn Blaze would make a great couple, and I fully admit this is likely the expected reaction of someone who doesn't buy a ship in a snap of fingers. Maybe a couple of lines about their dating history might alleviate that complaint, showing how the relationship developed, that sort of thing?
The voicing work at least is pretty good (the "golden pools" line is my favourite for tying back to her name and the season in one go), and I like the twists in the earlier sentences. Good way to start a fic there. A few punctuation issues present: for instance, sentences ending with commas or with nothing at all. And as a snapshot fic of the sort Pascoite isn't usually in favour of, it does its job excellently with the strong through line of angels, so well done there. I'd give it a good rating for what it sets out to do; I at least thought it had a nice poetic feel.
7212542
It might be a bit cliche to trot out "my faithful student", but I don't have a major prejudice against cliches, so I'll say this dialogue-only obvious way of introducing two characters without even adding a "Twilight said" got me on the fic's good side immediately. Might seem strange to say that, but I thought it was a subtly adept way of establishing character without being explicit, so credit where it's due.
As for the rest... I'm having a problem there. It's an explanation for how Twilight got the balloon, and that's not exactly a gripping topic. The only interesting psychological side comes in the second half, when Celestia lets slip the trials... which is a bit of a weak joke, because "Twilight loves tests" isn't going down as the shocker of the year. More to the point, this fic seems like a case of "hero goes to the bathroom", where we get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes and it's presented as too mundane or unconflicted to generate any interesting drama (in fiction, there's rarely any story-strong reason to have a hero go to a bathroom; usually, it's a pretext for something else more dramatic or comedic).
Briefly put, I think you need some kind of conflict here to go with that setup. Because this feels like pure setup to me, which was one reason I didn't find it satisfying. I don't think so much time should've been spent on the balloon half of the fic if it's basically Twilight asking and Celestia giving.
As for the comedy, Celestia initially mistaking the balloon for a smaller portable one is a gag that'd work better if rattled off in short, sharp dialogue, not ploddingly exposited in an overextended mini-scene. Compare:
with:
See how much punchier that is? Quick jabs, not overly telegraphed roundhouse punches. That's the ticket. A comedic sentence can be funny when it's long, but that usually only works if it's blatantly ironic/sarcastic or absurd from the get-go. And in a 150-word fic, every word counts, so overlong sentence-making is already a risky tactic to deploy in this context.
Lastly, I did notice some formatting errors here and there. In that section I quoted, for example, I see a comma splice, and if you're going to use vocatives (the bit where Twilight addresses Celestia as "princess"), then they should be cordoned off from the rest of the sentence with a comma in turn.
I don't want to come across as needlessly discouraging, so if this critique isn't helpful to you personally, that's fine. I'm calling by my own standards, but no one said those were the only standards. I'd recommend seeing what someone else thinks and, as the cliche goes, taking all this with a pinch of salt.
7216351
That title's formatting is not instilling much confidence in me from the get-go. It's a run-on sentence with a capitalization right in the middle.
I'm going to say a bit regarding grammar/punctuation/style/etc. here, but it's a big bit. I strongly recommend checking how to use punctuation and so on, because it was an active problem for me when reading this one. For example:
"Nothing like it is there wind through your feathers and the speed"
That's an ungainly run-on sentence, and it doesn't look intentional. Compare:
"Nothing like it, is there? Wind through your feathers, and the speed..."
A few dots and lines here and there, and suddenly the muddy pond is crystal clear. There'd be quibbles here and there (the ellipsis at the end is more a matter of style than strict rule), but overall that's the sort of thing to keep in mind.
To be fair, it's not like grammar, spelling, and punctuation are substitutes for storytelling ability, but they do raise red flags to many readers, so it's important to spruce them up a bit. After all, if you're making errors with regards to how you write, they might take a dim view of what you're actually writing about. And unfortunately in this case, it also actively hampered my ability to parse the text, meaning I was more distracted by the stylistic jigsaw puzzle I had to assemble than by the picture each piece contributed towards. Speaking of which...
I kinda like the comparison here, and what's going on. Earth pony uses flight metaphorically, pegasus jerk shoots it down, and earth pony delivers a burn using that same metaphor. It's basic, but serviceable. I'd have been happier with names rather than "pegasus" and "earth pony", but it at least feels like the fic is leading up to a payoff, which isn't something to take for granted in a 150-word fic. I would've complained about the earth pony spelling out the flight metaphor for love, but it works in context: of course the dumb jerk pegasus is going to need it spelled out to him, and of course the earth pony wants to express himself so. That part I don't have a problem with.
7222052
Aha, got in before the door closed, huh?
And rounding off our nigh-inexplicable Cherry Berry trilogy, we have...
Uh oh, a romance fic. Like I said before, I'm not qualified to discuss these, though given it's a double-billing of background characters - about whom we know virtually nothing in canon - you've got an escape clause to invoke if necessary.
I kinda like what you're going for, and the overacting craziness is smile-inducing, but overall the joke feels a bit wobbly to me. Little inconsistencies, such as why Berryshine thinks Cherry's leaving town when ballooning is her job and she's got a stranger for a passenger, or what the actual fight was that motivated this reaction (since we don't know what happened, we can't actually tell if Berry's overreacting or not, or what it says about Berry that she is).
If Berry's supposed to be drunk, that might wave aside a lot of this, but nothing concrete actually says she is, and there aren't any clues in the text: I only make that guess because of fanon, and it's scrambled in turn by the logical possibility that your version of Berry might be just as nuts sober anyway.
Scrambling the signal further is Button Mash's final line about both of them being crazy. Am I supposed to interpret Cherry as such? Because her behaviour is not in the same ballpark as Berry's; she consistently comes across as the one being reasonable, and yet that final line makes me wonder if I missed something. Which, again, scrambles where it shouldn't.
Also, it's a bit lacklustre as a finishing joke, partly because of that whole "Is she?" issue around Cherry, partly because it's not a particularly clever tack to take ("You're crazy!" is not going down as a particularly sharp barb to use). That said, I can't immediately think of a way to improve it. Best I got at the moment is something like this:
It works in the same way as the original version does, impugning not just Berry but Cherry as well, while giving a more explicit rationale for doing so (after seeing Berry's reasoning-or-lack-of, what does Cherry see in her?), yet it does so in a quick jab of a line that's not just a repeat of a previous line (i.e. it's not another variation of "X is crazy!"). And it gives the fic an unexpected finisher by twisting Berry's antics into a dig at Cherry's expense.
I don't think it's a particularly strong way to finish, but I do think something like it (with Button delivering some kind of unexpected punchline) would be stronger than the original. The key I'm trying to get across is to jab your reader with some twisted new way on how to see the preceding behaviour, in a way that adds fresh hilarious misery/embarrassment on a victim.
Overall, I did like this one, but in a "that's just enough on the good side to qualify" sense, not anything full-blooded, and I hope in this comment, I've pinned down why. I'm not 100% sure myself, to be honest. What do you think?
7222469
Thanks for the feedback. I debated (internally, and not very long) on whether I should submit this. The form (a poem sent in a letter) limited how much exposition I could do to clarify the scenario sufficiently to make it understandable to the reader, as this was sent from a soldier to his/her love who would obviously know the context and so the writer wouldn't waste time explaining what the intended reader would already know. Also, the flowery language was meant to evoke the clumsy attempts at poetic imagery one often encounters in letters sent home from the front by soldiers of the first world war (just because that period appears to be closer to the technological level displayed on the show). Also, I hoped the title would set the stage sufficiently for the reader to pick up the rest, but hey, sometimes it works, and sometimes it don't!
7222469
Jokes aren't my forte and your variation is much stronger in the confines of the word count and the rubbish material you had to work with. In general, I think you gave this ficlet more thought in your review than I did writing it! I'm sure you couldn't tell.
Like I said, it took 20 minutes, those 20 minutes being 23:39 to 23:59, and I'm not a funny writer anyway, and oh boy it all shows and I deserve all the constructive criticism for being silly enough to take part with only 20 minutes to spare, but I also don't care all that much about the final product because I'm just trying to participate in writing again (which might work out better if I didn't wait for inspiration, meh). Thank you for the feedback! :)
7222469
Darn.
So no weight jokes because it looks like I'm hating and insulting them when I actually like them. I can deal with that. I'm also not going to do comedy anymore because it seems out of place with all of the philosophical ones. There are many stories here way better than mine. I also need to work on execution or it won't take off like ThePinkedWonder's stories.
I see what you're saying. So if I give away the punchline too early, I won't get any laughs. Can't have that happening in a Comedy.
Okay, so I need to be more concise and let the readers make the inferences they need.
So be concise, but still be descriptive or my story won't look as good as it could.
This is very useful. Thank you for the advice. I'll definitely keep it in mind when I do my next entry.