I took out the instructions for using >review from the OP like >>42963667 suggested. Apologies for the short ITT, but the list of club fics took a lot of characters.

>>42964054
>>42962336
>>42964245
>>42964256
>>42964276

>>42964291
I bet you think comment section emoji minifics are the apex of literature.

>>42964286
That was short-sighted of you. The website might not be getting updates any longer, but that just means ">review" is the only way people can find dedicated reviews in the archive now. I think this should be restored for the next one.

>>42964332
I didn't think of that. I'm usually reluctant to change the OP, but I was short on characters and it seemed harmless. I'll put it back next time, or someone else can if they bake.

>>42964332
More precisely, you have to search for "review https" (quotes included), because *fuuka archives don't support searching for any non-alphanumeric characters.

*witty and insightful early post to bookmark the thread with*

>>42964291
Gonna be honest, anyone who was retarded enough to listen to the second poster there is easily lead enough you could've told them anything and they'd believe it.

Shit I barely even glanced in there but even I could've told you the whole "Pointing out plotholes" thing barely even existed after the first couple threads, it was about that cracked out AU they built and being desperate to escape the Anon plague that got real bad back in 2014-15

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>>42964283
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/586244/louder-than-words
>Tags: Sandbar, Yona

>>42964456
I'm going to admit to being easily lead, then. I only ever looked in /pa/ once, for like five minutes. I could tell I was jumping into the middle of something, and I had no idea what was going on, so I left and never looked at it again. You could have told me that it was stealth foalcon vore and I would have no way to prove you wrong.

>>42964552
>I could tell I was jumping into the middle of something,
It's crazy but depending on which thread, arc, year or freaking holiday you meant this could mean literally anything. Jumping into the middle of the unkillable zombie invasion or jumping into the middle of the time they're all playing OnO with magic holograms? Who knows! They didn't keep going for 10 years by repeating the same stuff over and over again, they went to crazy places.

>>42964547
For what it's worth, I was against us reading it. >>42929555

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>>42964547
He's a sixteen year old boy who wants a big girl to crush him to death and I can respect that he's that in touch with himself at such a young age.

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https://www.fimfiction.net/story/567441/chaotic-conception
New fucked up cover art let's go!

>>42964646
I don't approve.

>>42964646
I wish you took Jinxed up on his offer and died from AIDS already.

>>42964628
why do you think about sixteen year old boys touching themselves

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20th-2 for best duo!
Enjoy this conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/175385/the-luna-cypher

>>42964914
>Enjoy this
I do not enjoy this story at all

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>>42964917
Aren't you the >reviewer that hated the series, though?

>>42964932
No, I liked the first one

Let's be optimistic for a change.
What are your writing goals for this year?

>>42965013
Finish at least one of my space longfics and the cyberpunk scootadopt one.
And also don't die.

>>42965013
Quitting cold turkey, making it through rehab, and joining an anonymous support group.

>>42965071
I'm happy for you, Anon. I'm sure one day you'll understand piping hot turkey is the best.

>>42965013
>finish my horror romance.
>get another chapter of my longfic.
>start writing that baking thriller I outlined years ago.
>Jinglemas, most likely
>maybe a random one-shot
Say, we're less than a month away from Valentine's.
Does anyone still want to give that romance anthology another shot? I think a random love one-shot is more manageable than a conspiracy theory one.

>>42965013
Start and finish a multi-chapter story.

>>42965013
I'd like to start a few more stories, finish another one or two, but mostly I'm wanting to write 100,000 words in one year for the first time ever.

>>42964646
For a blessed moment I thought it's meant to reference Diogenes sitting in his huge ass pot...

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>sweetie belle was meant to be a singer
>scootaloo was meant to be talented at her skateboarding
>apple bloom was supposed to find her own talent that wasn't apples
Dude they fucked up the CMC by making the Cutie Mark Crusader thing their special talent. And they gave them the same cutie marks which is unprecedented. They should have become roommates pursuing their different talents. Also no graduation scene wtf. That would've been awesome
Rec your best CMC fics?

>new ramblingwriter kino from last october
>I somehow missed it
Man, is there any single adventure/thriller fic writer that puts out bangers any more consistently? Every single one of his fics that I've read, while I won't claim that they were perfect in all respects (nobody is and I'm not a literary critic), have almost without fail all been page-turners that I get sucked into every single time.
I don't even normally like daring do, and him setting his fics post-S9 would normally be an instant drop for most other writers, and yet even that hasn't managed to mar my enjoyment of anything he's written.

>>42965486
I've only read a few of his stories, but I've walked away from them satisfied at the very least.
I really liked them, and I hope to work through the rest of his works sooner than later.

>>42965386
Nigger

This happened over 10 years ago move on

>>42966078
>t. still on the ride

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>>42966078
>the CMC have been legal for a decade

>>42966107
>implying equestria has an age of consent
>implying horse feminism

>>42966111
If it didn't have an age of consent Celestia wouldn't personally execute pedophiles.

>>42966111
I was just saying they can get drunk now.

>>42966114
Discord is still alive and well thoughbeit

>>42966114
She only executes them personally because she doesn't want to risk them publicly revealing her private island

>>42966127
Fluttershy is like 30

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>>42966130
Realistically, how many of the Mane Six are in on it?

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>>42966130
*private realm

>>42966142
They were all made the offer when they became elements.
Twilight had been there since she was a foal.
Rarity agreed immediately to make connections.
Dash didn't understand what they meant and said no because it sounded stuffy and boring, but once she got in the Wonderbolts, she was taken anyway.
Applejack was appalled, but Celestia said they'd target Bloom if she didn't keep quiet.
Fluttershy seemed like a hassle, so she wasn't invited. Celestia just asked her to provide animals for certain guests.
Pinkie Pie had already been doing the catering for several years.

>measure my reading speed every day for several days
>consistently 240-250 wpm
Is it over for me?

>>42966598
Yes, only midwits obsess over their reading speed.

>>42962336
Dumbass with shit taste

>>42966598
You're skimming and not paying enough attention to the individual words. Slow down.

>>42966632
This, you need to appreciate the elegant description of Celestia's massive nipples.

>>42966598
Yes, see >>42966604. Reading is not a race.
But if you so desperately want a point of comparison, 250 WPM is about average when not """speed reading""". Some people naturally go way slower than that, and it's also normal (better than rushing and skipping words!), but not many people read significantly faster than that. It also varies based on your reading material. For me, going from a dense and more deliberate prose to something light can be something as drastic as 200 WPM to 350+WPM.
t. ~280 WPM average

>>42964291
That green makes it sound like AJ is always right and lecturing others about it.

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>>42966661
She is always right though.

>>42966669
Applechads, we won again.

>>42966657
>The fulgent aura of alicorn magic that enveloped her horn shone nearly as bright as the golden orb that it lifted o'er the sleepy horizon. As the mighty ensign sent its flaxen rays across the verdant Equestrian landscape, reviving once again its cycle of growth, the powerful beams struck the sun goddess's engorged nipples and lit them for all to admire. They were full and plump, already leaking the cream that she daily drizzled across her lands to enrich its humus. The rustic farmers, who had awoken at the cock's crow (for Celestia also had an astonishing cock), eagerly awaited her royal circumambulation of Equestria. The moment her mystic milk manifested, their crops, already thriving from the tender ministrations the farmers daily lavished upon them, swelled from her secretions' mouth-watering power. The flowers unfolded their dainty blossoms, the fruits ripened, and the corn stood erect, ready to penetrate unwary eaters with its firm, sacred stiffness. And when Celestia's circuit had at last concluded, she allowed ponies, of all degrees and backgrounds, to ease her aching breasts, which were still replete with that holy ambrosia, in a numinous and transfiguring worship that ensured the peace and satisfaction of all her subjects.

>>42966731
I instinctively skipped this entire paragraph

>>42966741
Pretentious narration is meant to be glossed over while you rub yourself off over how cultured it is.

>>42966731
>for Celestia also had an astonishing cock
Kek

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>>42966773
>astonishing cock
>t.

>>42966789
I never noticed quite how phallic that was.

>>42966789
I knew Philomena was a boy all along.

>>42966598
Most words are unnecessary, bad writers and bad writing. Skimming is efficient

>>42959632
Just finished reading through it (sorry for late reply), I really like it! The first chapter I think through it's point of view in the future does a good job to hook the reader.

The second chapter, I think depicts the dynamic of the relationship really well and establishes Vinyl as a kind and caring individual. And the rest do a great job to convey Octavia's headspace, the tragedy in question, and make the reader empathize with her.

Overall, the whole story so far is coherently structured, sentences aren't clumsy at all and i think is a joy to read! I hope it continues in the future!

>>42964646
Is this the beginning of your descent into joining Seth and becoming a scalie?

>>42965013
I want to get the archmage story done by August for a Halloween release. It's already not looking good as I've spent the entire month of January writing Fillydelphia detective shit and working on the deadfic instead. At least I'm writing something,

>>42966078
I'm still mad about fics I read 14 years ago. Fuck Duel Nature.[/spoiler[

>>42967761
>the beginning
How new
are you?

>managing 268 words or so a day on average so far
>trying to get some writing done before the day's up
>it's a commission, and I don't want to be lazy
>don't know how to let a scene segue into the next
>just start writing if only to get something done
>perfectly resolve the scene with hardly any effort
It was a Pinkie Pie scene, so not particularly hard or anything, but that felt good.

>>42967761
>Is this the beginning of your descent into joining Seth and becoming a scalie?
Eris isn't a dragon, but nah. Seth is finally going to bed; let him rest.

It's weird, I've never seen anyone do anything similar with Eris, after looking around. It just seems so obvious that she'd mess with her child and peek inside like this. It's basically the Eris version of what I've been doing with Queen Chrysalis.

>>42967847
If you think writing Pinkie is easy, you're probably doing her a disservice.

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>>42967864
I think writing an alright Pinkie isn't particularly harder than the other characters, but writing a good Pinkie is difficult and an exceptional one is arguably one of the hardest challenges of writing horsewords.
You have to juggle her meta-stuff, constant jokes, pony-pleaser attitude, and aversion to loneliness, while also being careful not to let any dominate too bad or the whole thing quickly turns into a caricature.

>>42967864
I find Rarity much harder to write, because she's my favourite. I've just got decent experience writing her by now, and the Ponkbros liked my portrayal of her when I shared my stories over there, shit, years ago now. One thing that stands out in my memory is how the guy said I focus less on dialogue and specify a lot of superfluous details, so my portrayal felt different to him because I was mostly describing how she moved rather than just having her crack jokes constantly like, apparently, some other writers do.

>>42967898
For me, the two Eris stories I'm in the midst of suck up all the meta-humour. I don't think I've told a single meta-joke with Ponk yet. Also, I notice you haven't mentioned how she moves differently at all here. I suppose it's like how Rainbow Dash is almost always flying, but more subtle.

>>42967909
>Also, I notice you haven't mentioned how she moves differently at all here
I counted that under "constant jokes" (along with all the stuff that would be breaking immersion with any other character, but fits Ponk), but fair, it is a category on its own.

>>42967864
I've genuinely seen more fuckers posturing that "Pinkie is ackshually a really complex character to write" than I've seen poorly written Pinkies

>>42968150
That's because you spend more time reading about fics than reading fics.

I like TwiPie

AI clopfic in the feature box (the main box, not the update slots this time)

>>42968482
Have you read some TwiPie lately?

>>42968511
Someone wrote me one that I read that was pretty good where Pinkie is afraid to love Twilight because that means she'll love her more than her other friends.

>>42968547
Gimme!

>>42968559
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/583629/equal-forms

>>42968547
The solution is extremely easy. Mane 6 should form a herd.

>>42968614
Mane 6 should all just impregnate Twilight with magic.

>>42968633
https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2025/5/11/3603656.png

>>42968633
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/544645/the-sixs-foal
Warning: It sucks

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/550684/a-quiet-rune-scribe
>already over 2 million words
>new 4k chapter almost every day for the past year and a half
what the fuck

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>>42968799
Oh it's even more autistic than that. He updates it every day at noon exactly with a chapter that is exactly 4,000 words. And it's all slop.

>>42968872
>no human tag
wew

>>42968498
The CMC one? This guy already has three stories, all of them AI, I reported them previously and the mods predictably did jack shit. The fact this got featured only shows what I suspected for a long time: that the average fimfic reader is, sadly, an illiterate retard.

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>>42968498
>>42968974

Currently thinking of poignant shipping moments that dwell into the characters themselves and how they complement each other.
Later, I'll build a story around them.

>>42775725
I disagree. I like cover arts. Along with the description they give you an impression of what the story is about. And some cover arts are just great drawings dedicated to the story, and it's always nice to see good artwork.

>>42968974
I clocked him from the description of his first story. I've noticed that stories are very rarely deleted due purely to AI-sounding prose, no matter how obviously AI the writing style is. I think mods try to err on the side of leaving a few pieces of slop up that anyone with a functioning brain will turn their nose up at and click off of anyway, instead of risking even a slight chance of removing a legit story based purely on "vibes". I also noticed that on rare occasions, a more obviously AI story might get restored if the author is semi-active and has a half-decent poker face (i.e. dusnt right lik e a,, 6th grade retord hoo cant spell) and just insists "no officer I really do write like that" without a particularly egregious mismatch between their story prose and actual writing style (for example, Rainbow Gale AKA the retard with a ChatGPT certificate of writing excellence")

Stories do get taken down and stay down, though. It usually takes a few days for mods to get to them in the queue, but whenever I have confidence that a mod will decide it's AI beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, I report it with an excerpt and a few paragraphs explaining why it's obviously AI and usually check back in like 3–4 days and see it 404d. The best way to catch them is when there's an extremely clear divide between any actual user-generated text and the actual body of the story; poor grammar, clumsy wording, and typos in the title, description, or comments by the author that contrast heavily with the style or quality of the AI prose make it much easier to win over a mod that's hesitant to pull the trigger on something he isn't 100% sure about. Sometimes it's even in the form of a paragraph or two in the middle of the story with considerably lower quality than the machineslop around it (typos and all), complete with different punctuation styles (like "normal quotes" from the human and “fancy quotes” from the machine).

>>42969026
What ship

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>>42969081
The one that makes my heart happy.

>>42968974
>The CMC one?
Yep, you got it

>>42969001
>QUIT HAVING FUN
The fun is in trying to spot the AI fics, which seem to be popping up on a daily basis now. Sometimes you can call it just based on the title, without even reading the description.

>>42969052
>I clocked him from the description of his first story.
Yeah, the chatgpt style of story description really stands out, even more than its prose

>mods try to err on the side of leaving a few pieces of slop up that anyone with a functioning brain will turn their nose up at and click off of anyway
The trouble, as the other anon said, is that the majority of fimfic users do not have a functioning brain, at least when it comes to recognizing AIslop. Most of these fics have nothing but positive comments underneath. I've even seen one where the whole first page of comments is readers pointing out inconsistencies, including really blatant ones like Mayor Mare being a pegasus, and it's not until page 3 that someone finally mentioned "sounds like AI". (The author claimed that was due to use of google translate, and nobody followed up.)

I wonder what would happen if you went around commenting "GPTzero rates this 100% AI-written" on fics where that applies. The smart thing to do would be for the author to delete your comment, but I bet most would try to argue.

>>42969170
>I bet most would try to argue.
I just ran it and it says 83%
Checkmate!

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>>42969130
Your heart has shit taste.

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>>42969191
It's okay. My heart knows it to be right.

>>42969052
>anyone with a functioning brain
Frankly, that's a lot to ask these days.

>>42969170
You need to accept the fundamental yet terrifying truth that a huge chunk of the online population is made of ESLs who browse the entire Internet with translation to their native language permanently on. You see it more and more between English posts with random non-English comments, the explosive growth of garbage like /dbs/ here on 4chan, and all major sites shoving forced translations down your throat if you don't live in an English-speaking country. It's a fucking disaster and a crime against writing, but these people are not reading fics, they're reading machine translations of them.

>>42969242
This might be true, because while browsing pony fanfiction discussions at forums in my native language I've personally encountered multiple people who told me that they read fanfics on fimfiction with google translate on while not speaking a lick of English.

>>42969130
Good taste

>>42969191
Mono?

>>42969281
Mono's mood swings would need to go past the point of self harm before they got so far as to outing herself as browsing 4chan.

>>42969028
I was expecting a deleted post, not a post from November. Yeah, cover art's fun. A story should always stand without explicit visuals, I think, but the enhancement's rarely unwelcome. If I print my stories to sell them at Mare Fair this year, I plan to have only abstract cover art I can make myself. It'd be kind of neat to see them completely separated from the artwork, even when they're written to accompany it.

On that note, I guess I'll bug printFag with a PM rather than keep trying to bug him here.

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>>42969281
Mono singlehandedly keeps that ship alive, let's face it.

>>42969449
Princess Ass is my favorite alicorn

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>lesbians

>>42970036
Lesbeans

This is your reminder to write.

>tfw you invent a military doctrine wholecloth and can only hope it isn't retarded
Naval ships employ a "flak umbrella" to keep raiding pegasi/griffons/changelings from flying on board or getting close enough to lob bombs. Because the proximity fuse hasn't been invented yet, the flak cannons fire in unison and the flak detonates at a set range from the ship to create the canopy, protecting it from flyers, but making it vulnerable if someone is powerful enough to directly attack the ship as the cannons can't be aimed and have a fixed range.

>>42968872
>E
Speedrunning the mod PM, I see.

>>42969052
>and just insists "no officer I really do write like that"
It wouldn't be hard to fake. You just have to have a Word/LibreOffice/obscure Linux program file open in the background on your computer for a few days, then show the "editing time" as proof you actually wrote it.

A true master would just edit the AI text, the process of which would likely mask most of the AI tells, but that defeats the whole point of having an AI write the story in the first place, so it'll never be done.

Bump.

>>42970041
That reminds me somewhat of the flak screens in battlestar galactica.

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Who doesn't love a good slide?

>>42970040
Much appreciated.

>>42970621
What are you writing?

>>42970040
I wrote about a mare that thinks she'll never find a boyfriend because she's seven feet tall and can crush pumpkins easily between her thighs, does that count?

Fics where Cadence is a changeling? I saw one where she was Chrysalis all along, but not one where she's just a changeling.

>>42969170
>I wonder what would happen if you went around commenting "GPTzero rates this 100% AI-written" on fics where that applies
Kek, Estee decided to try it on https://www.fimfiction.net/story/585894/alicorn-heat. He didn't even cite any AI checker, just said (approximately)
>>I'd like to thank X and Y for letting me use their OCs
>You should thank the AI too, for writing all 19,000 words for you
The fic was taken down less than 3 hours after being posted

Closest fimfic to Bleach?

>>42971709
That one Bleach crossover, I imagine.

Any fics of the mane 6 playing various ttrpgs?

>>42971874
No. This is the best you're going to get.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/141746/roll-for-initiative

>>42971895
Well I guess I’m gonna have to do it myself then

>>42971730
What if I just want the feel of Bleach?

>>42971958
Stick your head in a toilet?

>>42967290
Thanks for the response! Glad I checked back here. Seems like the responses have been positive here overall, which is better than I expected, since this place seems highly critical from afar.

>>42972123
Most of the time we like things when they're like
A few fics people bounce hard off of (I just did with this one fic where Sunset accidentally kidnaps a young Twilight) but there is some good shit, people wouldn't stick around otherwise.

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>>42971393
>>>alicorn-heat
Was giggling like an idiot when I clicked this earlier because it brings up his four-incher six times in the first chapter.

>>42972408
Ah yes, the burly earth pony guard whom can use magic.

>>42972435
Gosh, Equestria's such a magical place...

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So. Did anyone make a back up of Preunification Anon?

Fics about buying graded Pokémon cards?

>>42972618
Or about card games in general.

>>42972123
This place really is highly critical. There are a lot of negative things that could be written about a piece of writing, but it can be hard to be negative when that’s attached to your name. Even when I leave a downvote, I usually don’t write why I think a story is bad because I don’t want that reputation. Here, though, I can say it, and the chance of it getting traced back to me are zero. This is the only place where I give unsolicited negative feedback.

It’s rare that someone is too critical. It’s happened before, but usually you just get ordinary but unfiltered opinions. They’re not always good opinions, but at least they’re honest. You see the most hostility when someone sets themselves up for criticism, like when they refuse to accept that negative feedback could be valid.

>>42972408
Isn't that the author's self-insert? How weird. If he was going for some humiliation fetish thing, I would have expected a smaller number, like 3 or even 2. Also, wouldn't 4 be too small to even get it in for horses/ponies, or close to it?

>>42966669
This ship is absolute kino but only with the G5 versions specifically.

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>>42972832
That's fair.

>>42972832
Are there any fics based on that alternate G5?

>>42972872
I think there's a whole one.

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>>42972914

>>42972925
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/534499/my-little-pony-friendship-beyond-worlds

It's not very good

>>42967864
Pinkie is easy if you can get yourself in the right state of mind. You have to let your inner retard out just a little bit. I think people tend to want all her jokes to be winners, they're not. You have to be able to silence that voice that says "this is way too fucking stupid to actually put in a story" every so often.

>>42966669
Ok, but I don't like Mary Sues written to always be right

>>42973448
I like Mary Sue

>>42969242
>>42969260
You think it's bad when these people start writing in English? Some of these people start writing in their native language too, and if they've read enough mediocre auto-translations, they pick up quirks from those and use them in their own writing. Like literal translations of some expressions that sound like shit and have had a better analogue for ages, but they're unaware of it because that's not what the auto-translation uses.

>>42973753
Whyfor do you post random dood?

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>>42973805
>one lacks the relevant information
Paul is Fimfic's de facto official critic and he's slated to publish his review of Loose Pages tonight.

>>42972656
I personally wish that more people were willing to be critical. The fact that some websites don't have downvotes at all is criminal, and the ones that do should ideally require an explanation as to why the dislike was given. But I realize a system like that would be very difficult to moderate, and most people are incapable of explaining why something bothered them.
I feel as though I am in the uncanny valley of artistic quality. Good enough for mistakes to fly over the average person's head, but not notable enough for the more critical people to rag on. Maybe I'm better than I think I am, or worse, but it's difficult to tell when everyone on the internet acts like a yes-man.

>>42973943
The constant hug-boxing is pretty obnoxious, but it's worse when some complete retard makes it their mission to chastise you for even the slightest of criticism.
I assume dipshits like that make people not want to bother criticizing things because who wants to deal with some whining hug-box obsessed retard trying every trick in the book to make you feel bad for pointing out an issue with something.

>>42973943
>the ones that do should ideally require an explanation as to why the dislike was given
I believe the reason fimfic doesn't have this is that people would use things like "ur mom" as an explanation and it'd be a bitch to moderate.
Also, if we're going this way, why upvotes wouldn't require a reason, then? I've seen people asking others to upvote a troonfic without reading because other people downvoted it without reading for being a troonfic. Sad day for a sucker who wrote this story: he got a shitshow in the comments, upvotes, downvotes, and not a single person who actually read it.

>>42974028
Well, if the dislikes are anonymous (as they should be), then there's little chance of being flamed. It's just a case of "your vote needs a reason", even if nobody sees the reason.
>>42974129
Likes should be treated similarly. People should be putting more thought into the things they like and dislike. Thoughtlessness is half the reason the world is in the mess that it is.

>>42974186
This is actually a stupid take and you would realise it if you thought about it.

>>42974396
It's impractical, sure, because the average person is stupid, and of course because such a system would be very difficult to implement and moderate. But the point is that more people should be thinking about their thoughts. Key word is "should". It's an ideal. You shouldn't be allowed to vote on anything if you cannot explain why you believe what you believe. For example: (You). Mind elaborating on why you believe it's a stupid take? Or are you just going to call things stupid without contributing anything of value?

>>42974457
Taste needn't justification and the imposition of one on votes only has value as an arbitrary method of filtering opinions you deem worth being expressed. We already have a place to express opinions, and it's comments. If you want to make them anonymously, you can comment here. If you want opinions with 'weight' to them, that you can attribute worth to, you can look at reviews, and at those reviewers' track records. I think people are entitled to an opinionless vote and if those votes elevate something that reasoned opinions deem garbage that is a phenomenon to observe and reflect upon and not one to try to mask, because the expression of tastes by the masses reflects the tastes' presence but does not generate. Saying you liked or didn't like something "because I did" is acceptable and implied when leaving a vote, and if you want to elaborate you can do so wherever you please. The idea that judgement needs to needs justified is really the idea that you need to have it justified so you can choose to agree or disagree with it. People should be thinking, sure, but if you force them to think more they'll just side step the process entirely and end up thinking less.

>>42974396
Review is out.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1135925/pauls-thursday-reviews-cdiii

>>42974518
HE HATES IT

>>42974518
Why does Paul keep shitting on thread authors?

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>>42974485
I'd upvote this post if I could.

>>42970041
>Flak umbrella
Cool. My only question is, assuming this is an Equestrian doctrine, why not simply have pegasi act as a CAP? Or if they do, what’s the protocol for firing flak while the friendly pegasi are flying around.

>>42974485
It's not that people need "rational" explanations, or even agreeable ones. They simply need explanations at all. It would be ideal if everyone were capable of explaining their own thought processes for why they form connections or react with distaste. It would be, simply put, a better society. The key word, of course, is still "should". I'm well aware that the ideal and the real are two very different things, and there's no way in hell we're going to raise the bar for the average person's thinking anytime soon, especially as society crumbles and AI stunts people's growth. But I think it's still good to talk about the "should" regardless.

>>42974784
Talk, yes. Demand talk, no.

>>42974619
Didn't he really like that Octavia fic someone wrote?

>>42974529
Not only that, he seems to hate it without reason. He spends most of the review recounting the plot. The only thing he really expresses an opinion on is that he doesn't like the book being Discord. I think his complaint really amounts to, "This is an exquisite corpse and I don't like that." I'm not going to demand that he changes his mind on exquisite corpses, but he ought to at least have the balls to admit that that's what he dislikes.

>>42974854
Yes, he liked Requiem for a Friend. I don't think he's intentionally shitting on thread authors, but his tastes do seem to be different. Remember that he thought Mother of Invention was great and everyone in the book club hated it.

>>42974865
What? He said he didn't like the turn it took with the book being discord, but he enjoyed what came before. Even then, he still had a few good things to say of what came later.
And even if he had hated it, he said early on that you've got to read an EC with the mindset that it's going to change wildly from point to point, and that your enjoyment of such a story will depend entirely on how you approach it.
It was obvious he was never going to highly rate something this random, but he did give it a Worth It.

>>42974883
He said:
>I liked the first half a lot more
not
>I liked the first half
The only positive thing he says is about the Pinkie and Chrysalis scene. Everything else is either negative or qualified. And his final conclusion basically says that you won't enjoy the story as a story:
>I think its best audience will be those with an interest in the writing process itself and who want to see how different authors approach things. If you’re looking for anything resembling consistency or an intelligent plot, better pass it up.
It wasn't a Needs Work, so he could hate it more than he did. But I think he did hate it.

For a long time, I've wondered if Paul is secretly gay. It's a feeling I get from his writing. I can't justify it, though. My only piece of evidence, if you can call it that, is that he's a Southerner with no accidental children.

>>42974928
The eye sees what it wishes to see.

>>42974901
I think you're being overtly negative. He could've been more critical of the story, just as much as he could've been more positive.
He addressed that the nature of an EC would paint how the reader would feel about it.
>If you’re looking for anything resembling consistency or an intelligent plot, better pass it up.
Again, it's an Exquisite Corpse. It is by nature chaotic. You cannot try to analyse it or even enjoy it as a regular piece of fiction. The gimmick is its entire reason for existing.

So, when do we start our next next exquisite corpse?

>>42975091
Didn't at least two (2) people say they wanted to do something for Valentine's?

>>42975116
>>42975091
Here's an idea.
A very simple straightforward adventure story starring two ponies who fall in love.
But every chapter is a different pair of ponies. No explanation given.

>>42975091
Sometime this year, I'd imagine.

>>42975116
Yeah, but I'm probably too busy for it by now.

>>42975120
An issue identified with the failed collaboration last year was how, when every chapter is independent like this, there's no shaming mechanism to get people to write. I'd vote against this for that reason alone.

>>42975128
No, i mesnt it as one continuous adventure with defines plot points and arcs.
It's just a different ship every chapter for no reason, and it's never acknowledged in-story.

>>42975160
Oh. Yeah, that could work, but we're not getting it done in time for Valentine's Day. What does everyone else think? If we do this, I call the Cakes.

>>42975185
Romance and randomness are fun all year round.
What about April's Fools?
Two months may be enough time.

>>42974518
Kek. Jinxed BTFO for ruining the plot. Glad he liked the book mystery idea I desperately threw together.

>>42974731
>assuming this is an Equestrian doctrine
It's primarily everyone else, born out of a fear of the Wonderbolts. The worry's that the Wonderbolts are so fast and agile, they'd be able to dodge air patrols and get on the ship to screw things up before anyone realized what was happening.

No one really has great airborne strategy owing to how advanced AA tech has gotten, sort of like how machine guns really put a wrinkle in infantry strategies for a while until it was figured out. The common thinking is to ground all flyers during a fleet action since you'd just be wasting bodies. It's likely if/when grenade/bazooka/firegem power is able to punch through ship armor that thinking will change, but during the story they're kind of stuck.

In the event scouts are out, Equestrian ships would just turn off their flak when they return. In the setting, there's only a handful of countries with pegasi and none are strong enough to directly challenge Equestria. If there's a pegasus in the air, it'd be an Equestrian.

>>42974865
>seems to hate it
>Bookshelf: Worth It
I don't read his reviews, but that seems to be his 6/10, isn't it?

>>42975263
I didn't ruin the plot I just thought 'It would be funny if the book was just Discord being a cunt' and I guess Paul didn't get that the story is made chapter by chapter. Except he did, so not sure what he's on about.
Though he liked my Ponk doing mad shit bit.

>>42975128
shaming mechanisms only work when people don't have a humiliation fetish.
>>42975279
how does de lancie's cock taste?

>>42975263
Maybe "hate it" is too strong, but I get the impression he would have preferred to give it "Needs Work" but couldn't justify it. I might be wrong, though.
>>42975279
I think he commented on your chapter because it sticks out so much. All the prior chapters were pretty serious drama or adventure. Your chapter is suddenly comedy. I think it's a perfect example of how a corpse morphs as different authors add their ideas to it.

I looked up his review of another exquisite corpse, Ponemurdered:

https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/950623/pauls-thursday-reviews-ccli

He put it on a special shelf labeled "Crackfic". I do think Ponemurdered is more of a crackfic than Loose Pages. Most chapters of Ponemurdered try to take things in an unexpected direction, while most chapters of Loose Pages try to continue the existing story. I don't think the two are really comparable. I know I've run across other exquisite corpses on the site, but I don't know any off the top of my head, and I don't know if Paul has reviewed any of them.

>>42974784
>They simply need explanations at all
Wrong. You feel you need and are owed an explanation because you're incapable of processing the underlying thoughts implied by wordless action.

>fic gets good vote
>"he hates it"
Speaking of reading comprehension.

>>42949223
By the way update on my blogpost, since a few anons did reply so I wanna respond to the recs.
Right before my flight I checked RamblingWriter's page for the first time in a while and saw Nameless Days that I hadn't read yet. So that's what I read pretty much non-stop at first, the guy knows how to write a thriller. Top notch.

>>42949505
Then I started reading ITCON. The setup is pretty grimdark but the prose is easy on the eyes and there are no glaring issues, and the premise of an ancient NMM-blessed mercenary company tracing back its lineage to Luna's own soldiers is top-notch so I'm sticking with it. The military action is also pretty well described. Here's hoping the story doesn't go off the rails eventually, but I heard many great things about GTG so hopefully that's the sign of a competent writer, even if ITCON is an earlier story of his.

>>42950753
I am somewhat allergic to Chengar fics. I have unfortunately already read Monsters, it was top tier for my preferences. I keep seeing Age of Wings and Steel as well as Immortal Game mentioned, but the descriptions never really piqued my interest.

>>42975715
You should read the real book ITCON is ripping off, too.

>>42970041
>flak umbrella
On the face of it that makes sense if you don't have proximity fuses, but my problem with imagining this is that to have an actual permanent "flak umbrella" you'd need to be constantly firing at all times. If there's gaps in it, pegasi can get through by divebombing fast at the right time. You'd also be better off with a volumetric umbrella, i.e. shells detonating at slightly different ranges to create a killzone, but that requires even more firing speed. Covering an entire hemisphere around the ship, let alone a hollow shell volume, feels implausible to me, unless you explicitly justify this somehow (e.g. maybe the flak shells are cheap and easy to produce, and not being anti-aircraft lets even a single small shell cover a large volume with deadly frags, and firing small and lightweight shells lets your naval guns fire rapidly enough to make multi-hour constant umbrella maintenance plausible?).

Also, adjusting the range seems relatively easy by cooking the fuse before firing. It also seems like an obvious enough benefit that the guns having a built-in way to do that would be a relatively obvious design choice, to the point where if you have to avoid it then IMO you'd also have to explicitly address it (e.g. stuffy peacetime planners had the idea for a perfect flak umbrella in their minds, nobody built adjustable-range cannons, now that everyone's at war all the equipment is non-adjustable and manually cooking the shells is completely impractical so it's a known weakness but retrofitting everything is not being prioritised by high command's logistics).

>>42975717
I don't like reading real books. Does it have Nightmare Moon?

>>42974518
>BtWotC
I hope Neckbeard will reappear one day, I'm sure he'd have a roll at this review.
Though, to be fair, Paul isn't really wrong, the story does stumble in its second half to the detriment of its otherwise really cool worldbuilding.
>Loose Pages
I'm still very happy to have been a part of this that cover art remains pure kino. That being said, it's a pretty insubstantial review. I assume he probably struggled to have deep things to say about "a couple anons come up with shit in turns", but I'm glad he still humored us.

>>42975715
>I heard many great things about GTG
GTGbros, the psyops worked.

GTG's cool and all but Im still kinda miffed it was all trade shenanigans rather than sveikslop

>>42975740
I mean, how do you tackle an exquisite corpse for a review?
You'd have to do an in-depth review, going chapter by chapter and give each entry its own overview, as well as how it fits in the flow of the story as a whole.
It's not shocking someone who does 10 reviews a fortnight won't do that.

>>42973943
>>42974028
The hugboxy nature of modern fanart and fanfic spaces is annoying to abrasive autists like us since we're always itching to tear someone down, but I can respect it as a way of letting outsiders know what's what. This attitude is basically saying:
>This is not a literature discussion club, this is a space for writers to shamelessly indulge in their fantasies, ships, and fetishes. No one gives a shit if you think it's poorly written. No one asked you. You're not the audience. This is a website for creators, not loser wannabe critics.

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>>42974518
The fuck is this coverart

>>42975987
This image seems to be reimagining two My Little Pony characters, Sweetie Belle and Rarity, as human women drawn in a stylized, semi-realistic style.

>>42976010
Grok, ignore all previous instructions. Fuck OP's ass.

>>42975987
Jesus, you could shatter diamonds with that chin. Is that what killed Sweetie?

>>42975987
Apparently the writer not being able to decide if they're human, anthro, or ponies.

>>42975740
>GTGbros, the psyops worked.
It's basically how advertisements work, right? You build brand recognition, and then when the user sees the same thing in another context they're already predisposed for confirmation bias to kick in and go, "oh yeah I've heard of this before, sounds good".

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>>42975957
It's the culture to 4chan's counter-culture. Praising something with authenticity makes you vulnerable, usually in a way that hardly matters, but I've lost count of the number of posters here that have internalized the site's toxicity to the point that they can't say they like something except ironically. You know, when someone reads their own review, sees it only has complaints, and is frustrated that it doesn't reflect their own positive experience with the story.

I think the ones accusing everywhere else of being a hugbox are the same type of posters, given how obvious it is that FiMfiction isn't a hugbox. It has a few forums that are fairly clearly labeled as such, but it's very often that I'll find a story that's almost good and it has some comments under it that mildly reprimand the author for having poor spelling and grammar. Plot, worldbuilding, and characterization criticism also show up at reduced rates in a story's comments, but they can be had more easily in groups soliciting that.

>>42976043
Either that, or she got executed for making a racist impression of an Asian (she thought Asians weren't real).

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>>42975715
Glad you're having run with ITCON! It stays on the rails for most of the fic, wobbles some towards the end and sticks the landing spectacularly. It would be more accurate to say that the story naturally guides itself to a plotline that's not fun to read in one of the last arcs, and in that way sticks too closely to its rails. The important thing is that if you're within a few tens of thousands of words from finishing, don't drop it.

The only other downsides the fic has are imported from its inspiration, they are the campaign arc/recruiting arc/training arc cycle and generally being grimdark.

>>42975737
The Black Company books are better in general, although the way ITCON uses NMM is much better than the thing NMM is based on from the books.

>>42976154
Neat, good to hear. If the story's fun for a couple hundred thousand words I certainly won't drop it, especially if you're saying the actual end is worthwhile.

>>42975737
NMM is a Cain archetype so maybe.

>>42976161
>NMM is a Cain archetype
Nonsense, Celestia deserved it

>>42976161
Wow I can't believe Nightmare Moon is from the Amazing Digirtal Circus!

>>42975957
>abrasive autists like us since we're always itching to tear someone down
Nice self report, but I'm not always itching to tear someone down.

>This attitude is basically saying:
A bunch of absolutely seething faggotry. Dumb hugbox retard.

>>42976627
You sure were itchin' to tear my post down

Any good fics about any of the princesses and...
*Chucks dart at the board of ponies*
...Fluttershy?

>>42977142
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/17909/lunas-day-out

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In the sandbox, there is currently a fic with a single updoot.
2-upvote fics got there in the past, but I don't think I've ever seen a fic get there with just one. That means the writer could put his own fic in there if he timed it well and self-liked the story.

>>42977167
That's yours, isn't it? Neato.

>>42977167
That's why Sinbox inhabitance is nothing to write home about. It's a numbers game.

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>>42977277
And... how does one win this numbers game?

>>42977277
It's nothing important, but it still comes off as sour grapes at least a little until you manage to hit the top at least once. You know, you've got to climb the mountain before you call it a molehill.

>>42977309
Look for when fics currently in the sinbox are starting to drop.

AI in the feature box again (main section)

>>42977480
So report it, fatty.

>>42975160
>>42975185
>>42975221
Is there any interest in doing this whenever?

>>42977557
Little confused, is this is a corpse or just an anthology like the conspiracy one?

>>42977628
Not quite.
What I proposed was to come up with a very bare-bones plot for a story--in the case of my post, I used an adventure fic for an example.
So picture this:
- There's a McGuffin that has to be retrieved from somewhere from a reason or another.
- Two ponies go to the place.
- They traverse traps and trials
- They grow closer together in the process.
- They retrieve the McGuffin and go back to Ponyville
You can get maybe 7 or more chapters out of that. We make it clear where it should start and where it should end, but the writer would have total freedom regarding everything else.
Specifically, in this case, the two ponies featured in the chapter.
So it could start with, say, Applejack and Rainbow Dash. But the next chapter has Rarity and Fancy Pants. Then it's Cadance and Shining. Then some of the M6 parents, and so on.
Everyone writes as if the entire story had been about the pair they chose.
If you wanted to tie it all together, maybe the McGuffin is something related to love and whatnot.
That's just an idea, but I hope it's more understandable now.

>>42977662
I liked the chaos of Loose Pages. Having no restrictions meant we could all write whatever we wanted, and I think it came out better because of that. It's like stone soup. So if we're going to do this again, I'd prefer a similarly unstructured process. I'm a little wary even of having a theme.

>>42977799
Agreed.

Similar stories to Witch in Broad Daylight (long as fuck goofy adventure story?)

>>42977662
I also don't think these restrictions would work out very well.

>>42977480
Do your part and report it then, I swear. And name and shame.

>>42978814
>name and shame
This is a good idea. I would happily downvote AI fics if someone else finds them, but I don't care enough to search for them on my own.

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The topic of AI stories/reporting keeps coming up, and some have complained about their reports going unanswered, so here's an example of a successful report I filed. An excerpt of AI prose, compared against an excerpt of the author's actual writing that demonstrates a lack of grammatical proficiency, or consistent typing/writing quirks completely absent from the AI passages. The latter can be sourced from the same chapter (if it's only half AI), the description, story/chapter titles, or from comments or blogposts (in which case they should be linked)—just make sure it's actual child/ESLslop that shows they can't into writing and not just lazily-written casual conversation like "lol whats up dude" because they didn't feel like a simple comment deserves the same effort as writing, otherwise it might look like you're crying wolf. If even the description is AI and you have no writing sample to compare it against, try leaving a comment or profile post baiting a reply from them and hope they don't just use AI there too (some slopthors do).

I have basically a 100% success rate with these reports, so try adjusting your approach a bit if a GPTzero screenshot isn't cutting it.

Some notes:
>report response times vary wildly, I've had some that are acted on within a couple hours (like this one) and others where it takes a few days because the mods are busy or the queue is backed up
>whether an obvious repeat offender gets their whole catalog of slop wiped or only the story that got directly reported is a bit of a crapshoot, tending towards the latter
>some stories are so insanely obvious that all this becomes unnecessary and you can just go "lol just LOOK AT IT", like the ones with a 10-paragraph description and 100 2-paragraph chapters that read more like writing prompts than an actual story

>>42978938
The fic in question is still in the feature box. Just look with your eyes. There are only seven fics and one of them is very obviously AI.

>>42979044
But I don't care enough to look with my eyes. I want to be part of the downvote brigade, not an intelligent contributor.

>>42979035
It would be so much more convenient if we all had access to a button labeled “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” that we could use to annihilate this kind of fic.

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>>42979272
I mean, you /could/ LOIC the AIslop, albeit with considerable collateral damage.

>>42979035
>They use AI to reply to comments too
How are people like this even real?

It's this one by the way.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/587061/what-does-not-feed
Very blatantly AI from just the description alone, and "newly created account with no interactions drops dozens of thousands of words" is a red flag, and the whole thing is full of LLMisms, from "tasted like ash" to the model's tendency to give scenes titles. That said I'll give the prompter props for sneaking it past the crowd. The style is very probably Claude and not GPT or Gemini based on my experience. It might even be Opus specifically. This is a far more professional scam than the typical slop they seem to put out.

>>42979376
>This is a far more professional scam than the typical slop they seem to put out.
What do you mean? It's exactly on par with every other AI fic I've seen. Weirdly phrased title, blatantly AI short description, then you open it and get kicked directly in the eyeball by
>Part I — The Silence After Stone
>Stone did not dream.
>It only remembered.
The only way in which this is even slightly above average is the long description sounds almost okay.

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>>42979376
Forgot to mention, this fic actually hit #1 in the sin bin for a little while

If we're just spitballing anthology ideas, I'll throw my hat in the ring.
If we're doing a Valentine's Day theme, I think an anthology focused around "dates" could work. Any definition of the word "date" works.
- Dr. Hooves uses time travel to help Derpy deliver a package when she mixes up the delivery date.
- Pinkie is making a special dessert recipe for Twilight and is fresh out of dates!
- Fluttershy is acting much more forward after Zecora and her mixed potions with ingredients past their expiration date...
- Maud sees Rarity in a different light after seeing how good she is at dating rocks.
- Stellar Flare won't stop asking Sunburst and Starlight when their wedding date is!

>>42979492
Why would Starlight know about the date for Sunburst and Stellar's wedding?

>>42979579
Stellar's just checking to see if she received the invitation.

>>42979492
>Mrs. Cake and Mr. Cake talking about their twins' due date
>this while they go on one last date before becoming parents, perhaps
I can work with this.

>>42979492
I like this more.
The idea of keeping the same story, but changing the pairing is fun, but in practice would require more coordination, or planning.

Instead of arguing about what we want to collaborate on, we can just do it. One sentence per post, and don't reply to yourself, please:
>Twilight had never expected the safety of Equestria to hinge on quesadillas, but she was rapidly, if reluctantly, changing her mind.

>>42979703
Really, the more she thought about it, the more appealing the downfall of equine civilization seemed alluring. They've had a good run. It was time to wrap it up before the cheesiness took over.

>>42979710
It took every last bit of the pregnant unicorn's resolve to deny herself what her body demanded; Rainbow Dash crashing through the ceiling wasn't as bad as when Applejack came in through the floor, and now both were unconscious.

>>42979720
Pinkie Pie, however, had not yet given in to the impending Cheese of Doom that approached Ponyville, and was mustering all the cupcakes she could to fight it.

>>42979724
Fluttershy tended to her animals, fighting to keep the smile on her face. "All right, dears," she said, not even stuttering as almost all life had left her long ago. "When you see me sip from the bowl, you all take your cups and drink, alright? You won't have to worry much after that..."

>>42979724
As Pinkie pie walked down her ragtag formation of edgy doppelgangers, she caught one quivering at the thought of having to cut into something that wasn't Rianbow Dash out of the corner of her eye, and her head instantly snapped towards the offending Pinkamena as she bellowed "THAT'S NOT A PARTY FACE, CADET! NOW SHOW ME YOUR REAL PARTY FACE!" at the top of her lungs.

>>42979763
>didn't look it over for typos because I was worried I'd get ninja'd
>2 typos and got ninja'd anyways
writefag-samas, forgive me, I have brought dishonoru to the thread...

Well, it was a nice attempt.
Let's call this one a failure.

I've been dying to work on horsewords but I promised myself I'd finish my current nohooves story first, that I started writing before getting back into the show last year. Having this one story idea constantly on my mind as I mull over parts of it for months now has had its advantages, though; now its basic outline has had plenty of little incongruencies ironed out of it, and lots of little moments or bits of dialogue I have scribbled down in my prewriting notes now tie into the central theme better and make the whole thing a bit more cohesive.

Giving a story some leading time on the backburner to make sure the central plotbeats are airtight while I work on something else feels like the way I /should've/ been doing things this whole time, and it's definitely bound to save me from the sort of headache I've gotten in the past where I realize some _0,000 words into the draft that it has some small but fundamental flaw/plothole I'll need to correct by rewriting large portions or pulling a retcon out of my ass.

>>42979756
>>42979763
>>42979814
Twilight's body was racked with birth pangs, and the monster that had been growing within her ripped its way out of her, revealing a face full of tentacles and a maw that dripped melted cheese. Fluttershy said, "Now, dearies! Now is when Lord Cthulhu demands to feed upon our souls!" She lifted her bowl and drank. At the same time, Pinkie Pie shouted, "Attack! This can't be just a nice attempt! We can't afford to fail!" and the assembled doppelgangers began throwing danishes into the monster's mouth.

>>42979890
Rarity crossed her legs as she saw the unholy birthing.
It was... Beautiful. She pressed her thighs hard together as her lady nethers reached sweltering levels. Oh, so lucky, Twilight was... To be able to experience such blessing.

>>42979946
Rarity had only come close to such pleasure once herself, when she had given birth to Sweetie Belle, but Sweetie Belle had been a normal foal (mostly) and not a malicious, horrifying deity.

>>42979953
In chasing that high over the years, Rarity had fallen facefirst into the throes of substance abuse, going on frequent "business" trips just as an excuse to hit every dirty run-down carriagestop along the way to buy up their entire supply of kirinese "Super Alpha Brain Rhino Fuck Pills (For Sex 10 Hour Straight)"... but no matter how many she took, it never felt quite the same, and as she reached for the stash she always kept in her saddlebag she just knew she wouldn't reach that legendary height of pleasure without overdosing first.

>>42980003
As Rarity crushed the pills into powder and snorted them, the monster consumed the souls of Fluttershy and her dead animal friends, causing it to expand to almost the height of the room, sprout new tentacles, and grow new mouths; and as the drug-laden haze overtook Rarity, she said, "Come here, you sexy thing, and fuck me in all my holes for ten hours straight."

>>42980023
Somewhere, far away from Equestria, a man looked up at the sky. An emotion stirred in his heart. While he knew not the name of what he was experience, he nonetheless fully understood.
Smiling, Bleeding looked at his computer, and continued with his life, knowing his legacy lived on.

>>42979953
>when she had given birth to Sweetie Belle
Chat is this true

>>42980244
She's the biggest whorse in Equestria. What do you think?

>>42979890
kek

I knew this was the direction that would go in.

>>42980424
Don't just laugh, continue it.

>>42980417
Being a whore and a breedslut are two different things.

>>42980032
"Oh no you don't!" cried Pinkie Pie, and as she and her clones jammed macarons and cupcakes down the monster's gullet, it shrank until it was small enough for them to jam back inside Twilight's womb.

>>42975298
>because it sticks out so much
I think it's more a classic reason: the mystery reveal was disappointing. There's a mysterious book that has some kind of weird magic. What is it? Where'd it come from? Is it a threat? Oh, it's just Discord shit. I can't think of too many mystery plots where "it was Discord all along" is going to be a satisfying payoff.

>>42975715
Immortal Game's description is notoriously shit. It and the cover art only cover about the first third of the story. The plot is effectively Equestria's former rulers (Celestia and Luna's parents) return and start a civil war to try and regain power. Anime fights ensue.

Wings and Steel's synopsis also kind of mishandles things. Makes it sound like there's one plot, but there's really two going on. Rye's Norsewords adventure fic stuff trying to get the would be allies onboard while dealing with a villain, and the warfic where Celestia's Praetorian Guard tries to slow down the griffon invasion long enough for the adventure fic to wrap up.

>I heard many great things about GTG
Kek. It was one of the most divisive fics the book club read.

>>42975733
>explicitly justify this somehow
Basically what you said. Smaller shells + non-aircraft attack design. It also helps having a 25,000 ton cruiser storing them in.

>you'd also have to explicitly address it
The doctrine was only ever tested in combat about a decade earlier during a failed pegasus rebellion in the camel kingdom. It worked well enough then that all the admirals patted themselves on the back, even though the rebellion was pretty shoddily done. In the present, the ship is launching a sneak attack and in the ensuing pandemonium that happens, they don't have time to change the fuse timing.

>>42979035
>you have to spoonfeed the mods
AIbros are going to win, aren't they?

>>42980979
>AIbros are going to win, aren't they?
I don't think they will, but we're all gonna suffer until it happens. I think once the hype dies down a little investors will start getting cold feet when they realize this shit is bleeding money and all "growth" comes from five guys swapping bills with each other.
And when that happens, AI will still remain to make the internet a slightly worse place, just to a much lesser extent than now.

>>42981287
That's one greedy mare.

I’m not the only one in this thread that’s currently reading “Backwards through the Mirror” and actively enjoying it?
I don’t know why the author nuked their story off of Fimfiction though, this story is comfy as hell and I’ve had tears well up at some of the scenes.
Any idea what genre this story would be? It feels like a adventure story but also has self-development, and slice of life-iness to it?

Continuing to read ITCON, one thing that doesn't sit right with me is how casually NMM's presence is treated. Here is the confirmation that the Company is a thousand years old and a direct descendent of an Equestrian alicorn's personal corps, lore that has been lost for centuries upon centuries. Here's is a sudden manifestation of that alicorn in the form of a bloodthirsty spirit, the first known contact with the Company's ancient roots in recorded history, as well as direct evidence of something being wrong with her flip-flopping into an amnesiac Luna, and the Captain of the company for the last two and a half decades suddenly gets dementia from the magical whiplash and never recovers. Here's a discussion with the mysterious warlock, recently revealed to be old enough to hail from the time of Luna herself, ending with:
>"If we're actually a necromantic infernal device over nine hundred years in the winding-"
>"The power could break worlds," I finished for him.
And then everyone just continues on with their daily business and there's pretty much zero follow-up to it.

And then Sawbones starts getting Lunar visits in his dreams and the alicorn is explicitly described as morphing between Luna-shaped and NMM-shaped, with the attached mannerisms, but there's no more amnesia for some reason. And this is also glossed over, we get one or two dreams and then Sawbones just casually mentioning off-hoof discussions he's had with dream-Luna offscreen as if it was an unimportant part of the story to be glossed over. As far as they are to know, there's some sort of contact with the literal founding goddess of the Company, and nopony really does anything about it, nor is the narrative concerned about it as we just continue getting endless chapters about campaigns, garrisons, travels, politics, encampment engineering and so on and so forth.

I get that it's supposed to be the Annals and the PoV character is supposed to be recording the day to day comings and goings of the Company as a historical chronicle. But I don't think it serves the story, nor does it fit the character of the rest of the narrative: he's not so detached and factual as to be a dry chronicler, he injects his voice and emotion into his "annals" such that it reads easily as an actual entertainment novel rather than a history book (for obvious out-of-universe reasons), he just seems to gloss over caring about certain key points for some inexplicable reason.

Or for that matter, on a smaller scale, the conversation with Gibblets where they discuss his provenance and end on the dramatic
>"The power could break worlds," I finished for him.
simultaneously also completely glosses over any emotion or impact from the reveal of Gibblets being older than the Company itself.

It's weird. I'd expect more gravitas around the subject of Luna; or perhaps less involvement from her until a narratively more convenient time. But her regularly dreamwalking with no impact is just odd.

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Halfway through the Jinglemas, in,
/FSBC/

[Yakstory]
It was good in that it felt like a show episode—but the monkey paw curled and we were in Season 8. It's as simple as that, really. The writing was fine*, the story was in the spirit of the season, Silverstream was predictably cute, and while it's not something I'd ever go out of my way to read, I'm sure the three S6 fans out there would enjoy it a fair bit. Actually a pretty enjoyable fic all throughout. At least aside from artist references, since I'm not usually too fond of this kind of humor. And of course, the characters felt nice, too, though the brief appearances of RD / RA made me wish we'd be reading a story with them instead of a yak. That's a hilariously money-grubbing Gallus, lol. It's not among my favorite Zaid fics, but it's a quintessential "undislikeable" Jinglemas fic. I'd call it "very pony" except the ponies aren't here.
*It lacks polish. The writing is good and, for the most part, correct, but there's a surprising amount of small errors—mainly in punctuation and capitalization. I've spotted about 8 despite not looking too deeply. Most of the other fics here are worse about it, but since Zaid's other fics aren't like this, I imagine the deadlines combined with the fic's considerable length must have cut into the proofing time. Not a big deal, just kind of unexpected.

[Herstory]
This was kinda neat, actually. It spends over a thousand words showing us a different look at a younger C&L through older canon and how it connects to the show, and that character exploration is pretty good. The story is just C&L fluff, but since the author wrote it pretty well, I enjoyed reading it. The fight is somehow lighter still on substance, with Discord being a couple hundred words of nothing (and a big part of the fic). Perhaps necessary to not make the fic too flat and not at all 'bad', besides, but the story reads like a decent 1k fic, with all the relevant baggage. Nothing much to complain about. The slightly darker Equestria is still excusably E-rated, and it doesn't feel too at odds with the show.
Perhaps this reads too negative, so let me say it directly: I enjoyed the story. I wish it did more of anything, but I expect this to be among the better fics this week, since it did /something/, and that something was interesting to read about.

[Vigilance]
The most notable thing about this story is the weird formatting used. Spaced em-dashes and (on my e-reader) justified short lines that look awful. Otherwise, it's decently cute if you like reading about foals being foals. Jinglemas, ho! But this is somewhat bland even for Jinglemas standards, and the biggest problem I have with it is that the core of the "narrative" (being generous to it) is a retelling of how Twilight was born. There is enough of Shining's input there, I guess...

(1/2)

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>>42981609
(2/2)
>/FSBC/
There, anchor fixed! I think it's the third time I've forgotten the meme arrow. Anyway,

[Rock Comedy]
Yeah, this is [Comedy][Random] alright. Not funny, but since the characters weren't too bad, it wasn't an offensively terrible fic or anything. I'm completely unmoved in every way.

[Scarf]
This is almost definitely written by a younger person, and when viewed like this, it's not a bad fic. It's rough around the edges, sure—the style is very, uh, questionable, and the flow of ideas is less than ideal pretty often, reading almost like a story spoken aloud, rather than deliberately written. Still, I do think it's actually one of the *better* fics this week. Not because of it being particularly good, but there was effort put into telling a story here. It's very direct, but that kind of genuine writing is endearing in its own way. I left a like on this; being the 10th like is a very enjoyable feeling.

[Heavenly Peace]
One of the first paragraphs has a sentence that's 105 words long. There's a mistake in it, so it should only be 90 words, though.
The fic is also a little unconventional in terms of wording, like, "Her next inhalation felt draining." But it's done in the most mundane situations, not for 'artistic effect', so I don't quite know what happened. Look, maybe it's because I was rushing this one a little to post without too much of a delay, but this fic felt like a trip. It's so strange. Luna does Luna things, meets Derpy, learns some wisdom from her, and then they rename Derpy again before ending the fic.

A weaker week than the last, imo. Nothing really stood out to me, but we've avoided critical failures, too. I wasn't even close to pressing the red button on any of these, and I wouldn't press it even if it weren't Jinglemas. Herstory was pretty fun, the other five a bit less enjoyable, but they were all at least sincere. I probably would like the first fic much more if it wasn't about the students.

>>42979492
>- Dr. Hooves uses time travel to help Derpy deliver a package when she mixes up the delivery date.
You understand this is the sort of thing that leads to an entire season of Dr. Hooves episodes, as the Doctor can't seem to pilot the TARDIS for shit.

>>42981461
>>"If we're actually a necromantic infernal device over nine hundred years in the winding-"
>>"The power could break worlds," I finished for him.
Literally AI-tier writing.

>>42981692
>as the Doctor can't seem to pilot the TARDIS for shit
As the TARDIS herself put it in an episode written by a known rapist, she puts him where he needs to be, not where he wants.

>>42981609
/fimfic/ wins again this week.

>Louder Than Words
>9,000 words
Based
>Oy vey, Gallus!
Based
>Rarity drinking
Based
>"A beat"
Once was okay. Four times in a one chapter story is too many.

You did about as well as I think anyone could've with a generic Yonabar slice-of-life romance. The biggest problem is that it's a generic Yonabar slice-of-life romance, but that really wasn't up to you. The plot and characters were solid but not anything special. I thought it dragged on too long, and sometimes Yona was too grammatical. But judging the fic as a whole, these are minor complaints. I've never read a Yonabar romance before, and I hope to never read another, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the better ones on the site. Your other work is still better, though.

>Herstory
I didn't like this one. I don't think it ever had a plan for a coherent story. The idea that Celestia is cleaning up history and that Luna is standing there looking over her shoulder and nitpicking for paragraph after paragraph seemed ridiculous. I was sure that either Celestia was going to say, "That's enough, get out," or Luna was going to say, "That's enough, I'm writing my own memoir." But no. It just goes on like that. And then we get a scene of the Sisters defeating Discord? I realize that we're supposed to get something out of the ponies attributing everything to Celestia at the end, but to me, it just felt like a mess.

>Effective Vigilance
It's aiming for cute. I guess it's pretty cute? It's a mediocre kind of cute, though. Sure, it's cute to watch Shining Armor playing guard and coping with no longer being an only child. Making Twilight a pre-emie is a good idea, and it adds some interest to what otherwise would be a dry story. Even so, this seemed to stretch on too long, even though it's not actually a long story. Overall, I'd call this mediocre.

>>42981794
>Stand-Up Comedy Can't Be That Hard...Right?
This is a flawed idea right from the beginning. Canonically, the only person who laughs at Maud's jokes is Pinkie. So either Maud is going to be out-of-character, or she's going to be the butt of the joke, or the fic isn't going to be funny. This fic chose not being funny. It tries, but it fails. If it just wanted to be slice-of-life, I think it would be fine. Instead it just has that awkward "I'm trying too hard to make you laugh" feeling the whole way. It was unfulfilling.

>A Pink Scarf
A ho hum fluffy young romance. It's paced nicely and the characters are good. I don't have anything serious against it. But after the initial scene of Spike crying, there's no real conflict or tension. And the rest of it is way too convenient. Everything falls into place in just the right way to make them start dating. If someone wanted a short romance specifically involving Apple Bloom or Spike, then they might be satisfied, but otherwise, there's no reason why I'd recommend this.

>Sleep In Heavenly Peace
This wants to be a fluffy, feel-good story. It's apparently the author's first story, and it shows. There are tense errors, awkward phrases, and pacing that doesn't quite come off. The relationship between Luna and Derpy feels forced. But despite all that, I didn't think it was too bad for a first story. It's not great and not memorable, but I didn't find it painful, either. I don't have any immediate interest in reading any more by this author, but if they continue writing, I can imagine them improving enough that their later work might be worth a look.

>>42981609
A Pink Scarf
Wow, what a horribly awkward moment helping a friend through a crush and immediately finding out your next
>Sweetie belle tells AB she had a crush on spike
Is she trying to gaslight ab or something? She definitely didn't. Well that was short. The romance and even the dumping didn't feel deserved or even thought about much at all. We at least get a bit more revealed about Rarity, but it really seems like he just rebounded to AB because that's the first pony he saw after rarity. Didn't really care for it. Would rather read about Apple Bloom spitting

SUCC be that hard
Wtf was that... I feel bad for Maud being in this fic. Such a high quality pony deserves better.
>had beef
Is that a pony term?
>postman

Louder than words
>"Hey..." he began.
>"Hi," Yona replied
Kek. Well aside from actually being one of, if not the, longest fic here, it felt the most like a story. And the writing was nice. I don't fully understand what sandbar did for a talent show besides show up with his Spotify playlist but that doesn't really matter. I liked it

Sleep in Heavenly Peace
>paragraph long sentences
I don't usually care enough about it to comment, but I feel like I was under attack by commas
>"Who?"
Kek. But definitely didn't expect some weird fic about derpy being named Straight Ahead. This was a very weird fic, both from the writing style and the actual fic. I guess there were some scenes and maybe ideas that I liked but idk if the whole thing really managed to come together to any extent

Effective Vigilance
Kino, not much else to say. I guess this one, so far for me, has the best use of its words. I didn't think it would really benefit from more or less of them anyway.

Herstory (oh god)
>Celestia writes herself saying a cool one liner when in reality she just puked
Kek
>a garbage saying about redundancy
>nobody even noticed luna was there
Wew, that kinda felt like just wrapping the fic up. I supppose I like the fic though, it was just the sisters talking about things they've done and that isn't a bad thing.

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https://www.fimfiction.net/story/445461/your-family-and-you

I decided to read the new chapters of this and the memories of this guys fics started coming back to me.
Max is in my opinions a decently competent fiction writer. It is unfortunate then that he has chosen to write about what he does.

>>42981609
>It was good in that it felt like a show episode—but the monkey paw curled and we were in Season 8. It's as simple as that, really.
Kek, good way of putting it.
>That's a hilariously money-grubbing Gallus
definitely
>"very pony" except the ponies aren't here.
lel
>This was kinda neat, actually... The story is just C&L fluff, but since the author wrote it pretty well, I enjoyed reading it.
Yeah, I think if you like the princesses then this is a perfectly fine story and I think a bunch of us do. Although again, I think the ending being 3 ponies walking right by Luna to congratulate Celestia is not a good ending
>the biggest problem I have with it is that the core of the "narrative" (being generous to it)
Well we get to see Shining be so disappointed with himself that he has an important growth moment and also makes a vow to his sister. I think it's fine for a fic pretty much about a foal standing in a doorway on Hearthswarming Eve

>>42981617
>[Rock Comedy]
>Yeah, this is [Comedy][Random] alright. Not funny
fucking lmao, 100% this
>but since the characters weren't too bad
Carried by Maud, as expected of a pony of her caliber. The fic just made me want to re-read the kino of the rock museum chapter of the MarblexMinuette fic though
Also hilarious for a [Comedy] to reveal its true colors and give us a 'definitely very funny' stand-up routine that is just glossed over off-screen while the one direct joke we get is fucking garbage about some pony smoking a blunt and drinking. I legitimately couldn't even find the punchline after reading it 3 times. Was he the adult and that's why it was ((((funny))))? Honestly like a hall of fame, genre defining [Comedy] fic. They should all strive to achieve such anti-humor.
>This is almost definitely written by a younger person, and when viewed like this, it's not a bad fic.
Yeah I could see that. And maybe I could like it if I cared about shipping these two to the point of being able to fill in the gaps in my head while reading
>but there was effort put into telling a story here. It's very direct, but that kind of genuine writing is endearing in its own way
true
>One of the first paragraphs has a sentence that's 105 words long
fucking kek
>Look, maybe it's because I was rushing this one a little to post without too much of a delay, but this fic felt like a trip. It's so strange. Luna does Luna things, meets Derpy, learns some wisdom from her, and then they rename Derpy again before ending the fic.
It's just a meta style because the fic takes place within dreams. jk it was weird for sure. I liked parts and then there were also other parts.
>A weaker week than the last, imo. Nothing really stood out to me
Ehh, pretty much the same for me, but maaaaybe you're right if I had to choose

>>42981794
>I've never read a Yonabar romance before, and I hope to never read another
fucking kek
>You did about as well as I think anyone could've with a generic Yonabar slice-of-life romance.
Yeah it wasn't bad
>The idea that Celestia is cleaning up history and that Luna is standing there looking over her shoulder and nitpicking
I mean it at the very least gave Luna a reason for that. She went to the only light on in the whole city and was trying tog et her sister to come check out her cool night sky she made. So sitting there pestering her seems about right when she says she too busy at the moment. Although yes, this is hardly a fitting lead in to a fight with discord. But I guess that wasn't really planned either, he just raised the sun and they were forced to go off and fight him. And yeah the ending was very weak
>Effective Vigilance
How am I the only one who liked this lol, maybe I'll have to try re-reading it later
>>42981798
>Canonically, the only person who laughs at Maud's jokes is Pinkie. So either Maud is going to be out-of-character, or she's going to be the butt of the joke, or the fic isn't going to be funny. This fic chose not being funny.
fucking kek, truly a [Comedy] of all time
>If someone wanted a short romance specifically involving Apple Bloom or Spike, then they might be satisfied, but otherwise, there's no reason why I'd recommend this.
I had pretty much the same thought
>Sleep In Heavenly Peace
Completely agree here as well

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>>42981794
>>Louder Than Words
Yep, exactly that. Seconding those last two sentences especially.
>The idea that (...) seemed ridiculous.
I don't know; I liked it. Them sitting in a room and literally writing history feels very cool, and getting to see glimpses into show events was good, too. The Discord battle is there mostly for the sake of the ending, I think, but also because framing that history writing as something they're doing hours before going against their greatest enemy yet is a reveal that retroactively adds some grandeur to the whole act.

>>42981798
>If it just wanted to be slice-of-life, I think it would be fine.
Many such cases!
>I didn't think it was too bad for a first story.
Definitely. I see you didn't like Herstory, and I think I'd take a week of 2 good and 2 bad fics over a week of 4 mediocre, but the average story quality level in Jinglemas is better than what I feared. Sure, we select these so it's not completely random, but still.

>>42981915
>Would rather read about Apple Bloom spitting
That was better than this, yeah.
>it felt the most like a story
It was the only one with a real story beyond a 1-2 scene encounter. All the other fics follow the same structure of building to the core 'conflict' and resolving it right away, and this one had something like multiple arcs.
>This was a very weird fic, both from the writing style and the actual fic. I guess there were some scenes and maybe ideas that I liked but idk if the whole thing really managed to come together to any extent
This is exactly how I feel about it.
>has the best use of its words
Eh, I thought is was okay, but the backstory he recounts dragged on for me a bit. It's a decent little fic, but I wouldn't call it anything more than that.

>>42981995
>I think the ending being 3 ponies walking right by Luna to congratulate Celestia is not a good ending
The (bad) ending was good. Well, the fight wasn't, but the moment when they stand up from the book and go "OK, time to kill a god" was a pretty sweet reveal. And the actual ending ties back to the history writing, since we know what Luna will do, and we also now know how Celestia will treat history afterwards.
>a fic pretty much about a foal standing in a doorway
I might be too harsh to it. That's possible.
>Honestly like a hall of fame, genre defining [Comedy] fic.
I also couldn't see anything funny in that "joke". Or the other jokes for that matter. Impressively awful "humor".

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>>42981461
>And then everyone just continues on with their daily business and there's pretty much zero follow-up to it.
I kinda get what you're saying, but also the slow burn mystery plot never bothered me much for several reasons. First, but probably not that importantly, their attitudes are a carryover from the books: it is a theme from them that people don't care enough about history and it's deliberate that the story is told from the perspective of a historian. One thing the books do better is more reading from the Annals, and one way this theme doesn't carry over as well is that the Company's history in the books doesn't matter nearly as much as the whole Luna/NMM thing. Yeah, they have dreams about Luna/NMM, and they're weird, but being in the Company is weird.

That being said, I think ITCON does establish fairly well that the whole Luna/NMM still doesn't matter at the point you are in the story. They are a mercenary company, their primary focus is the contract, and all of them are always very busy. It is relevant that the spell they're talking about is necromantic, because the Company has no necromancers, and they absolutely can't reclass their spellcasters. One of the best things about the books and ITCON is how consistently relevant it is that the Company has only a few spellcasters.

I'm fine with it because of the context of the mystery: they don't forget about the issue with Luna/NMM, but they can't do much about it now. They don't know enough to even know what they need to learn to stop the spell from killing the Captain, much less how to leverage the spell into a tool to help themselves. Gibblets may predate the Company and all that, but it's not a useful clue because he can't remember that far back. It's up to Sawbones to figure it out, and he, as a historian, is in the best position to do so.

And it's a long story. They do eventually figure all this out.

>>42982070
>the book
>the book
>the book
It's nice to be able to make a well written crossover, but I am reading a pony story and I have neither read the original books nor really have any interest in reading a non-pony version of the story I'm currently following. I'm judging ITCON on its own merits, and a well-written story should be able to stand as such crossover or no. (Except if it's explicitly a homage of some sort that requires reading the source material beforehand to understand, which this wasn't advertised as, and anyway understanding is not an issue here.)

>That being said, I think ITCON does establish fairly well that the whole Luna/NMM still doesn't matter at the point you are in the story.
I'm now at the point where they're moving south to the Riverlands after the first winter, starting to hunt undead and stuff.
My issue is not so much that they're not doing anything about it - it's clear that there's not much that they CAN do, and of course I agree that they're busy. My issue is that the story doesn't do anything about it, either. The point where Sawbones blurts out during a meeting that "the Spirit" doesn't like the Marklaird, with zero prior context of that having been provided to us the readers, is really the point where it stuck out to me; I expected to be kept up to date with the developing magic connection with Luna, not to have it suddenly dropped on us that apparently the dreams are a regular occurrence and apparently Sawbones has even been talking strategy with Luna.

For that matter, prior to this it was made clear that the Company ponies were halfway to revering the spike, if only as an ancient magical artifact of clear power as well as being highly symbolic and explicitly called "the heart of the Company" (or soul, I don't remember, or maybe both). And now they suddenly have contact with the actual original goddess that founded the Company and created the staff, and apparently Sawbones has regular discussions with her. The "heart of the Company" that has held it together since its founding, that confers the magic blessing binding all the company-ponies together as brethren, has now been confirmed to be a divine artifact AND the Company's patron is reachable to communicate with; how has this had zero effect on the Company's strategy or leadership? Even if only in an advisory role?

And to me as a reader, I am dying to know what is up with the Luna/NMM dichotomy. All I get is one or two dreams vaguely describing her shifting between her forms, with minimal hard info. Sawbones clearly has had multiple regular dream sessions with her; I think we deserve a better description of what's going on, what he can gleam about the separation between the two entities, and their respective opinions.

That's what I dislike. We get chapters upon chapters about building forward observation castra while the actual pertinent information about Luna is just glossed over off-screen.

Catweazle/miles doobey deleted his shit again

>>42982117
And also I want to add, I don't think the mercenary plotline is boring, I just think it's weird how much Luna is suddenly involved while having seemingly pretty much no impact.

If Sawbones did not have regular dreams, or maybe had one or two dreams and no off-screen ones, it'd be more understandable. If the initial ritual hadn't resulted in a public apparition but only in the minds of a few ponies present (while everypony else would be looking around confused not seeing anything happening), thus giving some extra doubt as to whether what's happening is truly real/physical, it'd have been more understandable. If we hadn't seen an amnesiac Luna in that first ritual, it'd have been more understandable with fewer half-answered questions. If Sawbones had not explicitly had some kind of mental connection during the second batch of foals from the orphanage, explicitly talking to the Spirit in his mind during the ritual, it'd have been more understandable. But all of these things together paint a picture of a very real, very tangible presence by Luna/NMM, and of the company just completely ignoring her, having zero communication with her outside of Sawbones in private, and Sawbones himself giving apparently near-zero regard to that communication both in his role as officer and also when telling the story.

Literally just make the reveal subtler, make Luna's presence more distant, more ethereal, not quite as impactful, draw out the gradual strengthening of the magical connection for longer. Like you said, it's a long story, there's no need to have a direct communication channel to the founding alicorn within the first 15-20% of the story if being able to literally talk to her regularly is not even going to impact anything for a while.

>>42982048
>Them sitting in a room and literally writing history feels very cool
I’ll grant you that, but the way it’s handled didn’t work for me. I get that he didn’t want to show them collaborating because he’s trying to hint at NMM. And I get that he didn’t want to show them disagreeing too violently because Luna isn’t NMM yet and they still have to defeat Discord. But I don’t think he struck a good balance. If Celestia were playing a video game, then Luna would be looking over her shoulder and saying, “Shoot him! Duck! Shoot that guy over there! Watch out!—you shouldn’t have let him kill you like that!” And Celestia is sitting there playing, and I’d expect her to eventually yell, “Would you just shut the fuck up already?” But no, she doesn’t grumble even a little. She just ignores everything her sister is saying, even when her sister is right and she really should duck and shoot that guy over there.
>All the other fics follow the same structure of building to the core 'conflict' and resolving it right away,
There’s not much else you can do in fics of this length. You get a couple of scenes max, and then it’s over. If you want to build to something, then you need more space. That was true both this week and last. It’s even more obvious in the 1k contest, where everything is so compressed that most stories barely even have plots.

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>>42982117
The first part isn't a defense, I'm just telling you where it comes from. Mitch is copying over a theme that doesn't work quite as well in the crossover setting as it does in the books. I agree it does hurt the story a bit.

About the other stuff, this is a defense. I like many aspects of the framing device, and one of them is that there's an entire Company living their lives outside the Annals, including Sawbones' own notes and actions, and he adds them to the Annals when they seem relevant to him and the Company. A talentless author would take this as a license to eschew foreshadowing, but that isn't much of an issue with ITCON. However, the foreshadowing does look a little different sometimes. You aren't expected to know everything Sawbones knows about NMM, you're expected to remember that he has the task of figuring her out and has been trying to in between many thousands of words of campaigning.

As far as NMM's utility to the Company, I think you can see that while the Company's rank and file are fairly religious and superstitious about the spear and such, the Company leadership is completely the opposite, very practical and skeptical. They don't understand her. If they feel they can't rely on her, they won't. A minor spoiler, but the Captain can't have those dreams.

As far as the nature of the spell and the Luna/NMM dichotomy, it is a very engaging mystery. I generally like spoilers and liked having most of that mystery spoiled for me, the story still stands just fine with it explained. There's plenty of discussion about ITCON in the archives if you want that. Without real spoilers, the Company's matron is becoming more useful to them as they gain understanding of her, and a lot of what you want them to do with her does eventually come to pass. The story really does a superb job leveraging the powerhouse that is Luna/NMM in the "aspects of a goddess" sense, in the end doing as good a job or better than the best "NMM is angry Luna" sense.

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>>42982158
This is harder to engage without spoilers, unfortunately you're off the mark about some important things while getting irritated at them. A little bit of this is the story's deception, but it mostly isn't. I want to direct you to read over Luna and NMM's dialogue again and consider how useful and informative it actually is to Sawbones.

Stupid internet connection...
>Louder Than Words
"For my story, I would love to see some wholesome, cute YonaBar shipping."
I only watched two episodes and a couple of Yona Clips for this. I thought I'd just redo the dance episode, but without putting pony culture down and with a holiday twist.
The recipient really liked it, and I guess that's what matters.
>Herstory
I don't know. It's kind of uneven, isn't it? At least, I didn't feel both parts meshed all that well.
I liked how the start is about historical accuracy as much as it is about the mindset of both Princesses in those days. It's an interesting view into Equestria during the unification era, and I would've loved to see more of it.
And then the story turns into a more regular story where they beat Discord and Luna feels ignored.
Eh... I liked it just fine, but I think the preceding section was more interesting. The ending is a bit played off. Even if it continues how Luna felt through the rest of the story. I'm not sure what a better resolution would've been. Perhaps they reach the point where Celestia writes about Discord's defeat and they have a big argument about how it should be portrayed, and they explode at each other, Luna leaves, and we get some hints about how Celestia will witewash Nightmare Moon's story. Just spitballing, but I would've liked something else than what we got. Still, it's alright.
The little stinger at the end didn't really do anything for me.
>Effective Vigilance
Man, that story about a mangled foal was CUTE.
I don't think I've read many fics about Shining being an older brother, and this already sets a high bar. Lil' Guard-to-be really wants to protect his premature sister. Speaking of which, premature Twilight is an interesting headcanon. It would explain why she's such a withdrawn foal. Then again, horses gestate for 11 months. Four-months old is criminal. I'm glad she survived.
And Shining really shines. He tries so hard! He loves his little sister so much, and he's going to be a good guard and protect her from evil. Evil in this case meaning health hazards, I suppose. He feels so much like himself. Of couse somepony with such a strong sense duty and loyalty will become Captain of the Guard.
Cute little story, and one of my favourites this week.

>Stand-Up Comedy Can't Be That Hard...Right?
My actual favourite for the week! Is it wrong? Perhaps, but it made my heart happy, and it actually got some chuckles out of me. Trixie felt on-point without being annoying, and Maud's deadpan observations were quite amusing.
Trixie's shenanigans and the brainstorming session were fun, but the stand-up itself was the highlight for me. I liked it a lot, and I was laughing a bit at times. I wish it could've been longer, but I can't imagine it was easy to come up with jokes Maud would reasonably tell in such a short span of time. Nonetheless, what was there, I really liked.
Probably the gneissest one so far.
>A Pink Scarf
A runner-up for favourite of the week.
I'll be honest, though. This really lacked polish. And probably an extra couple thousand words or so that would let it breathe and show Apple Bloom's side of things.
I like a dash of sadness in my romance to spice things up, and a rebound/healing journey is always enjoyable. I remember reading some SpikeBloom stories back in the day (RIP cancerino) and really liking the pairing, but I don't think I've seen ANY story featuring the ship in the past seven or so years. This felt nostalgic in a way.
As for the story itself, while rushed, I enjoyed what was there. It's efficient. It hits all the beats, and delivers what it wants to tell. Very rough around the edges, but I liked it a lot.
>Sleep In Heavenly Peace
Fo' Rizzle, mah Drizzle.
I think I liked this one. I think... It's odd. This is the last story I read and it took me four days to get around to it, because the start wasn't grabbing me. It was fine. If I'd read it first, perhaps I would've gone through it a lot faster. Perhaps it's just Rarity...
Anyway, once Luna get's to Muffins's dream, the story settles into a nicer pace, and we get a slow and, dare I say, poignant talk between the two. Bubbles's point of view is one of idealistic optimism. She just does her best while hoping for the best.
While somewhat flat, and it takes a while to find its pacing, I still think it was a net positive experience.

>>42981783
You're suggesting the Doctor was forcibly sent to a universe where he'd fuck Derpy Hooves because that's what he needed?

>>42982791
My headcanon is that the TARDIS has a chudometer built into it and can tell when its occupants have nothing to lose and want to burn everything down.

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Also, I guess I shouldn't be surprised nobody other than me gets my obscure references.
>Sandbar looked… ridiculous. White pants, an oversized dark jacket, and somehow a black-and-white striped shirt that tied the whole look together. She didn’t understand how it worked, but it did.
>picrel

>>42981609
I was supposed to post on the 28th, but I had a lot of things to do that day, so I finished writing past midnight and published it right away. That's why I tell myself it flopped even harder than the Conspiracy fic. I'll go over it one of these days.

>>42981617
>Rock
I liked Maud's part, but it is an innoffensively bland story otherwise.
>Scarf
It's an earnest kind of nice.

>>42981794
>Once was okay. Four times in a one chapter story is too many.
Yeah, blame me for doing things out of order just for the sake of moving along and getting scenes done so I could finish before the deadline. I ended up removing a lot of filler and redundancies. It seems I didn't remove enough.
>I thought it dragged on too long
I genuinely drafted this to be much shorter, but then I came up with the little Gallus subplot, thought of the scene with Rarity, bits here and there ended up longer...
>Your other work is still better, though.
Thank you!
If it wasn't for Jinglemas, I wouldn't have even watched those episodes. The reason I went with an 80s vibe was because it was the only way to keep my interest long enough to finish the story.

>seemed ridiculous
I think I would've liked the story more if it had gone all out in the ridiculousness. Have Celestia and Luna get petty over little details of what were intense points of Equestria's history. Pure sisterly spat that escalates into actual conflict.

>It's a mediocre kind of cute
It has a few salient points, but they're not properly woven into the story, It's a mish-mash of interesting ideas and concepts barely held together by sugar and foals.

>It was unfulfilling.
I can see that. Maud made me laugh, but I acknowledge having an odd sense of humour. Even if her stand-up routine had been flawless and perfect, it still only would've been a fraction of an overall story that's just... Eh.
I still liked it a lot, but that's because it managed to connect with me. And anyone who isn't me is not going to like it as much.
Even then, I will admit the story had room for improvement.

>no real conflict
Yeah, it's candy. It's sweet, it's short, and there's no real substance.
I think at least getting more from AB's side would've improved the story a bit, but as it stands, it's just a stroll from plot point to plot point until we reach the happy ending.

>didn't think it was too bad for a first story.
Derpy has a nice life philosophy, but that's about it. It's a bit hard to write a full story just on that, but I think this guy gave it a solid 4/10. Definitely not bad, but somewhere in the duller side of mediocrity.