The results from January’s write-off are in, and my story, Moments, took second place.

Before you click that link and read it, you should know I’m pretty sure I’m going to add three more chapters and publish it on the infection. I’ve figured out one way to make it a happier story. (By ‘happier’ I mean everypony will finally get to die in the end. No, wait, really; it’ll be sweet. Trust me. )

(My voice recognition software hears ‘fimfiction’ as ‘the infection’. I can’t argue with that.) [1]

If you want to look over just some of the competition stories, go to the discussion thread and read Pav Feira’s reviews. He’s good at highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of stories. (It’s a shame about that terrible accident he’s going to have before the next write-off. He keeps winning them, you see.)

Does placing second actually mean anything? Meh. It means something, but I see my favorite stories from the competition spread out all across the results, from “All of it, For Her” at the top to “The Ponies we Love” by new author Axis of Rotation (incomplete, but still more intriguing to me than any of the others--separate post on that later) at the bottom. The competition was tough enough that the final ranking was IMHO almost arbitrary, more noise and personal preferences than true quality.

And yet I realized, as 2AM approached, that I cared about my story’s ranking. I cared a lot. Why? I already have my opinion of it, and the opinions of some people whose judgement I trust more than voting results. And I don’t believe ranking comedies, slice-of-life, and tragedies against each other is meaningful. My opinion of my story wouldn’t change if it came in first or if it came in last. For some stories it would, but not this one.

So do I care because I want to know that other people like what I wrote? I don’t think so. How much of a warm fuzzy feeling (or deliciously cold and dark) I get from my stories isn’t affected by the thumb counts. That just affects my opinion of the general intelligence of the human race.

I guess I just like the acclaim. Hmm. Not very logical of me. Or else completely logical, if my mammalian brain is making me write fan-fiction to increase my reproductive success. (If so, it really shouldn’t let me write My Little Pony fan-fiction. I should start craving Twilight.)

[1] Ghost, do you see those things like ( and ) up above? They’re called ‘parentheses’. They’re like footnotes, but without the aggravation and wasted time.