>>119404

Hey, a new thread! So clean and fresh... Let's fix that, shall we?

So >>119138 led to >>119151 led to this tale. Just want to get a quick once-over before I send it on for Daffodil's enjoyment pain attention.

Title: The Late Twilight Sparkle

Tags: Well, that's up for discussion, actually...

Description: Fluttershy--that is to say, you--will have a hard time coping.

Link: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/51265/The-Late-Twilight-Sparkle

To whomever reviews this: please be Generous with the spoiler boxes when discussing the plot.

Aside from that: overall impressions, grammar tips, and in particular how well I maintained tense and POV are what I'm looking for.

Given his previous appraisal in the Synopsis Review Thread, this one's for Huh.

Dearest Billy.

It is with a heavy hand and heavy heart that I relay to you the news. He is dead, and passed away among his bees only a few days ago. I, too, am not long of this earth, and it falls to you to publish my final wish. The attached parcel is my tin box—you have ferried it to and fro before—and it was where notes from all our adventures, spanning two centuries, two wars and three monarchs had been safely kept. The remaining bundles within, however, we agreed some time ago to never publish, lest our reputations be shredded. However, with his passing heavy on my mind, I cannot forget such cases, so singular and impressive that they prove, without a doubt, that Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective London, Britannia, and worlds beyond even our farthest imaginations had ever known. Nor should the public, who have no doubt heard of the tragedy. These cases within will confuse you—and perhaps even tarnish your memories of us—but mark my words: They are as true and real as the paper on which you read this letter.


Faithfully Yours,
Dr John H.Watson M.D.

[crossover][human]

Case One: The Adventure of the Centurion's Helm
Part One
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tgE-epNlWI_gEvXhBADB4-43dz6BrCuZ_g7OwHSzgos/edit
(Part Two exists in some bastard form, and is connected at the bottom. While I should like for a review of that too, If Huh, or anyone else for that matter, does not wish to read an unfinished chapter, they are not being forced to)

So, things I'm looking for:
-Maintaining Victorian era prose and dialogue, especially for Part two's crossover sequence
-Creating interest in both Universes strong and early (As Baxil from r/mylittlefanfic most kindly pointed out)
-Grammar and flow, my old nemeses

Gentlemen, thank you for your time.

>>119218

I've been sitting twiddling my thumbs and wearing my f5 key down to a useless nub for most of a week now waiting on various stuff, so I guess I'll make myself useful.

I have a very fast turnaround time. Expect a review... as soon as I find a couple of hours. Tomorrow or the next day.

>>119412
Well now...

On the one hoof, I sort of said I'd hold off on claiming fics here until I put out my next chapter of Ponystar Celestia.

On the other hoof I'm really curious about this fic.

On the other other hoof I should really deliver that chapter, for my amazingly patient readers.

But then again, I'm sort of writer-blocked...

However, I've got some ideas cooking.

But I was asked for by name...

But I'm pretty green yet...

But I like to think I'm good with period pieces, like how I reviewed The Box...

But Minjask is more experienced than me and hated The Box...

Uh...

Hmmm...

Would you be willing to wait a bit for me to review it, Paper Mate?

I won't be offended if you say no.

Done. If there's anything else, or something needs to get fixed, lemme know through the reports.

>>119414
Good Lord, not at all.

I made Conchshellthegeek wait patiently for weeks, so please, by all means, take your time.

Indeed, I may even get that second Part finished.

Keep in touch with any developments.

Sincerest Regards.

>>119416
In that case, I hereby stake a delayed-action claim on "The Adventure of the Centurion's Helm", from Paper Mate Pony's The Secret Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

I would just like to say that Part 11 of my fic, "Not Exactly Green; No ODST Is" has been reviewed, and I acknowledge it.

An update on my current review of 'The Birth of Ardor': Sadly, my desktop's primary SSD has decided to stop working, taking my operating system, a number of important essays, and the draft of the review with it (to data hell, or wherever data goes when it's been naughty) and so it's going to be a little difficult to finish this by my originally announced deadline. The replacement is already en route, but I'm going to have to start again (with both my assignments and your review) so, again, this will probably take a little longer than originally anticipated.

Sorry about this, but it really is out of my hands. Thank you for your patience.

>>119158

>Please be as in-depth as possible.

AH HA HA HA HA HA! You will live to regret those words! From the drawer of detriment arises the footwear of your discontent! You shall drown in a sea of nit-picking, like a single sock in an otherwise empty washing machine!

Okay, moving on to the seriousness that is this review…

Overall Thoughts

You’ve got a good grasp of writing mechanics. Aside from a few problems which I’ll elaborate on, there wasn’t anything that particularly jumped out at me, and I’ve done my best to root out what errors you missed (more on that in a bit, as well). Your dialogue is pretty darn good, in fact—you do an excellent job of conveying character action through words alone.

The plot setup also, in my opinion, holds quite a bit of merit. Your synopsis certainly grabbed my attention—the whole idea of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” set in Equestria is hilarious. I also appreciated the little nods to film, like the scene in front of the schoolhouse and that bit with the telephone booth.

That said, however, the plot does have some issues. Though, the main problems with this fic are its tone and prose. The former is inconsistent while the latter has some prevalent missteps. I took the liberty of copying the fic into a Google Doc, the better to point out some of these problems along with typos and such. Here’s the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qz9p3gNhUEaBPLebRe8blUmOjjyObE--xKW8jPTj0lw/edit

Once you’ve had a look over my comments, allow me to explain a few things further. We’ll start from the tail end by discussing your prose, then work back up to plot.

Writing Concerns

And to kick it off, I’ll explain Lavender Unicorn Syndrome. “LUS” is the term given to unnecessary descriptions of the characters where a pronoun or proper noun would suffice. To demonstrate, let’s look at your first major paragraph:

>The violet unicorn's horn glowed brightly and she used her magic to take the stack of notes from Spike's small hands. Her mane was purple, cut in bangs at the front and highlighted with streaks of plum and magenta. She bore the image of a sparkling star on both flanks.

Take a look at the sections I’ve highlighted. The first one is a textbook example of LUS. The reader can reasonably be expected to know what Twilight looks like—they’re not going to reading this if they haven’t already seen the show, after all—so there is no need to dance around a simpler descriptor. A simple “she” or “her” is all you need.

The second part is LUS taken to an extreme. Again, the reader knows what Twilight looks like. Unless there’s something different about her appearance, there’s no need to waste words with physical description. You can cut this entire section and save the reader some trouble, along with many others throughout the fic.

I know it seems draconian in how there’s pretty much a zero-tolerance policy for this sort of thing, but that’s apparently been necessitated by how prevalent a problem it is with MLP fanfics. As I said in the comments, however, there are some instances where this is okay, but anything beyond that and you’ll have the EQD reviewers crying foul.


Next, we need to talk about your sentence structure. All too often, your descriptions of action boil down to “[subject] [verb] [predicate].” I pointed out some instances of this early on, but I’m afraid the problem is systemic. Here’s a good example:

>The crows squawked, then grabbed hold of the pie pan with their beaks and began to drag it off the windowsill. The mare grabbed it in her teeth and pulled back against them. The birds lit into the air, flapping their wings with all their might to pull the pastry away from her. The mare finally managed to yank it away from them. The birds gave up the fight and flew off. The mare sighed heavily and repositioned the pie on the windowsill.

You see how every sentence follows the same pattern? “The mare did this.” “The birds did that.” “The mare did this.” That gets dry and dull very quickly, I’m afraid. Instead of “X did Y,” try shaking things up a little more. Vary your tenses and appositives.


A word on your paragraph structure, as well. A lot of times you mix dialogue and action, creating very large walls of text that can get a little confusing at times. As a general rule, whenever the subject of the passage shifts or you trade dialogue for action, that’s when you indent. Example:

>Twilight burst out her front door and yelled at the crows. "Out! Now!” She could barely hear own voice above the din they made. She lit her horn and used a spell to amplify her voice to the level of a megaphone. “Birds out of the tree! Now!” The birds fell deathly silent again and fixed their eyes in her. Twilight was unmoved. “Oh no you don't! You're not getting rid of me that easily this time! I want you all off of my house! I can't sleep, I can't work, I can't eat, I can't think, I can't do anything! Are you listening to me?” The birds grew noisy again as if she wasn't there. Twilight stomped around in little circles. “Out, out, out, out, out, out!” When the birds continued to ignore her, she turned her back to her house and bucked it with her hind legs as hard as she could. The impact reverberated all the way to the very top branches, forcing the birds to hold on for dear life. She bucked the tree again and again. The crows suddenly launched from the tree and dove straight at Twilight. She stumbled back in fright as they swarmed her.

The words I’ve underlined mark those spots where an indent would help. Try it. When you break things up like this, it makes it much easier for the reader, which, in turn, will keep them reading.

Tone

Okay, now that I’ve touched on your prose, let’s discuss the tone of this piece. First off, the “Dark” label becomes applicable only to the latter half of the fic, which is kind of the whole problem in a nutshell. The fic seems kind of confused over whether it wants to play its concept for laughs or play it straight.

It starts off fairly comical, with the crows simply being a nuisance and engaging in some slapstick with our heroine. Then there’s that whole part where we jump into their perspective for a parody of the Occupy movement (which had me in stitches, by the way). After the scene at Sweet Apple Acres, though, it gets way too dark, way too fast.

Again, I appreciate the fact that you’re parodying “The Birds,” but that sudden shift from the crows as relatively harmless, if annoying, antagonists to vicious maniacs out for Ponyville’s blood is pretty jarring. The fact that they beat and clawed Rainbow Dash to the point of serious injury doesn’t help. The moment you started depicting that sort of thing, any comedic effect the birds had evaporated.

Now, you can certainly juxtapose comedy and horror, but it’s a fine balance. As it is, the sudden dip into horror doesn’t quite work. You need to decide exactly what sort of tone you’re trying to project with this, because as it is, it just comes off as confusing by the end.

Plot

And on that note, let’s talk about the plot, starting with how it concludes. It’s good that you grasp the concept of escalation, with each subsequent situation bringing bigger stakes to the table. Here’s the problem, though: generally a plot builds up to some sort of payoff. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, of course, but some closure on everything that happened is what the reader is expecting.

What does the reader get out of this story? Twilight feeling depressed, and asking questions to which she receives no answers. Then, we get a final scene involving the Princess which implies her involvement, but how involved she was, exactly, isn’t explained. Did she send the crows there from the beginning? Did she just organize all the other birds into one force? Did they maul her subjects on her own orders? To what end? What was the point?

This ties in with one of the other plot problems: the birds’ motivations are muddled. The “Occupy” segment seems to suggest they’re doing it for some combination of “sticking it to the man” and “for the lulz,” but then they’re shown as being after food. Then, their motive for revenge becomes clear, but again, it still seems disproportionate. Finally, the ending offers yet another explanation, further confusing the issue.

Furthermore, none of the characters ever raises the question of their motivation until near the end. For that matter, no one ponders where exactly they came from, or why they even want to settle in the library. One would think Twilight would be at least somewhat intrigued by the crows’ strangely coordinated behavior. Instead, they’re simply treated as an obstacle to be removed.

Conclusion

Well, I think I’ve run out of things to harp on. I hope I went “in-depth” enough for you; remember, you asked for it! In closing here are my final thoughts:

You have the makings of a good, solid story here. It just needs some work. Maintain your strengths, fix up your prose, and fill in a few niggling details, and I can easily see this passing muster at EQD. If you want to discuss anything contained in this review—or anything else, for that matter—feel free to send me an email.

Now, I must away to the deepest drawer of the darkest dresser. Good luck, and happy writing!

Oh yeah!

Relaxing Dragon, your review for Deep Vibrations is here. As well as in document.
>>119431

It seems we've become infested with little fics while I was working on my last one. On that subject, Hunt and Toll has been claimed by Tactical but hasn't been cleared from the queue. Shame, too. Looked the most interesting of the three sad-fics up, and I think Min wants Harmony's End.

Maybe it's finally time to continue work on Bountiful Rainbows.

>>119427

And I was already starting to get twitchy from having to wait!

Yeah that's fine though--when things happen, they happen.

New thread? Sweeeet. I'm gonna have to get off my ass and finish this review before I get too far behind the curve.

>>119432

Ah, thank you for pointing that out to me.

Giving it a look over... yeah, actually, you're pretty right about the story. Even as I uploaded it, I wasn't sitting right with me, because doing things as a copy/paste (which is more or less what I did) is most assuredly not the way to go for a crossover.

Gonna pretty much reboot this sucker from the ground up, though I will definitely do my best to learn from what you said. Thanks very much, and hopefully when I come back, it will make for a considerably more interesting read.

Owlor, in case you didn't see your review on the previous thread, here it is.

>>119409

>Starts picking up stories like mad
>Stories start flying in like mad
>Takes a break
>Queue slowly dwindles to four
>Picks up a story
>Stories start flying in like mad
That's it, I quit! I'm cursed I tell ya!

JK, not really leaving, but definitely no longer on a mission.

>>119447
And then Minjask was a thread.

Statistics
Unclaimed: 5
Reviews awaiting acknowledgment: 5
Reviews In Progress: 8

Overall:
Total reviews since spreadsheet began its use: 1034
Est. Total since founding: >1300

Unclaimed Stories
09/11/2012 ❖ Hunt and Toll by I_Post_Ponies (>>119218)
09/13/2012 ❖ Mi Amore by Another (>>119285)
09/13/2012 ❖ The Zeppo by Roy Hankins (>>119270)
09/14/2012 ❖ Harmony's End by JawJoe (>>119349)
09/15/2012 ❖ The Late Twilight Sparkle by InsufferableUnicorn (my FiMFic handle) (>>119408)

Reviews Awaiting Acknowledgment
Last Chance by The_Incredible_Blunderbolt (>>116191) submitted 08/14/2012 ❖ Reviewed by AzuNyan on 09/04/2012 (>>118557)
Starlight, O' Starlight by Star Swift (>>117005) submitted 08/21/2012 ❖ Reviewed by Bronius Maximus on 08/22/2012 (>>117119)
A Really Bad Fanfic by Anonymous (>>118778) submitted 09/07/2012 ❖ Reviewed by Shoeblock on 09/07/2012 (>>118796)
Overshadowed by Walker "Ink Blotch" Holden (>>118873) submitted 09/08/2012 ❖ Reviewed by Casca on 09/09/2012 (>>118925)
Twilight vs. The Birds by Hepcat (>>119158) submitted 09/11/2012 ❖ Reviewed by Belligerent Sock on 09/15/2012 (>>119429)

Reviews in Progress
Dromer: reviewing Into the Night by TheDamnedScribe (>>115811) submitted 08/12/2012
Minjask: reviewing Regina et Equi Nox by NejinOniwa (>>116825) submitted 08/22/2012
alexmagnet: reviewing Persona: Harmony by Sorakun555 (>>118246) submitted 08/31/2012
Owlor: reviewing The Study of a Winning Pony by Ponibius (>>118617) submitted 09/05/2012
AzuNyan: reviewing Under The Blue Skies by Pinkydash (>>118997) submitted 09/09/2012
Lychee: reviewing Myths and Legends (working title) by Tactical!Rainboom (>>119071) submitted 09/10/2012
Sparky: reviewing The Birth of Ardor (working title) by Tactical!rainboom (>>119226) submitted 09/12/2012
Huh?: reviewing The Secret Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Case One by Paper_mate_Pony (>>119412) submitted 09/15/2012

I think it would be a great idea to start pasting acknowledgment post permalinks into column D, and if acknowledgment was made in the IRC, put an X as before. Also, anyone notice that it's possible to leave doc-style comments in cells now? Awesome.

>>119455

I'm doing Hunt and Toll. As we speak, actually. It should be done by tonight, or stupid o'clock tomorrow morning for those of you not living in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Okay, your first chapter was far more readable and enjoyable than the prologue, but you’ve still got a few info dumps, and that doesn’t fly any better than Scootaloo, though it certainly gets an E for effort. Your story could also survive quite well without the odd profanity.

Your second chapter flew back into the territory of too much detail; I had to read several sections twice, because the point of the scene got lost in its description. You also conveniently have Luna just happen to have a ‘Bipedal Negotiations’ spell, Implying she had planned to one day meet humans, which she could have known nothing about as far as your story tells it.

You know, I think I might invent a new psychedelic drug, and I think I might just call it… your third chapter. Seriously man, talk about tripping major ball sack. The only thing that actually made sense, was the realization that none of it made any sense, although I suppose that’s what you get for telling the entire story inside Luna’s––and furthermore, Discord’s––mind

And then your ending: As things finally began to fit together, coherence began to slowly seep back into the stream of words I was surveying… it all abruptly stopped.

I do hope that wasn’t the ending.

Most of your grammatical errors were pointed out in Doc, and while your stylistic choice is questionable, it’s engaging enough that anypony willing to brave the bitter cold of your prelude will be justly rewarded on the other side. All in all, I’d give it a 8/10



>>119455
Um, I just thought I’d let you know: The review for “A Really Bad Fanfic” was acknowledged. See >>118802

Reposting in the new thread!

We have left a number of comments in thy document, but have only noted a few examples of each problem. Learn from these that thou mayest expunge the last vestiges of such from throughout thy fan-fiction!

We shall bestow upon thee our additional notes and overall impressions:

Thou shouldst not employ direct thoughts in first-person narration.

Should of/should have confusion inciteth our ire like few other bugbears. 'TWOULD BE MEET THAT THOU NO TEST OUR WRATH, CITIZEN!

*grumble*

We are frankly gobsmacked at some of the italic usage, and thy verb tenses become jumbled at times.

*SNORT*
>as a her eyes widened
We love thy impression of that silly Mario character! Surely thou hast perused our prior reviews and done this on purpose to gain our approval. We are not so easily distracted!

*wipes away tear*

But thou hast amused us. Good show.

Thou hast consistently missed placing commas for introductory phrases and participles.

Thy narration hath become decidedly flowery about half-way through, which is inconsistent with much of the story, However, since the narrator speaketh as Shining Armor, consider that he useth not fancy verbiage in his canon appearance.

Thou shouldst watch thy sentence structures. In places, thou employest too-frequent usage of "noun, verb" and "pronoun, verb" beginnings. Strivest thou for diversity!

In several places thou hast thy characters speak back and forth with little interruption. We have seen this described as "talking heads," and that term seemeth apt. Without action and minutiae of emotional evidence, 'tis more like listening to a movie from the next chamber and trying to divine how the characters behave.

Instances of blunt emotional information occureth intermittently. An example:
>Celestia’s expression of bemusement
Such things cause two problems. First, thou hast left it up to the reader to picture such an expression, which can be ambiguous, depending on how ubiquitous the emotion is. Second, readers are accustomed in real interactions to intuiting someone's emotion from his demeanor and appearance. It formeth a stronger connexion that way, and thou shouldst strive to impart emotions similarly. Giving us the cold, factual conclusion thyself circumventeth this connexion.

Finally, we have some plot advice, but do not wish to ruin the surprise for potential readers.
Thou hast done a good job of misleading us into thinking that Shining Armor loveth Celestia. 'Twas obvious that a twist lieth in store, and we had several possibilities in mind. One was close, but not spot on. However, thou hast yet a few loose ends. Doth Chrysalis love Shining Armor as well? It seemeth not, but what other use could she have for him now? She seemeth to have him mesmerised still, but what use is he as a pawn? Perhaps just a thorn under Twilight's flesh, but she was not a notable adversary. Mayhap revenge on Cadance? We suppose that is the most plausible explanation. However, if so, would he not have been coerced to break off his marriage in a much more painful manner, just to stab at Cadance all the harder? Celestia should have immediately suspected that magic was at play, however, yet did nothing to verify it or spy on him to make sure? Since Celestia is aware, Chrysalis would not be able to use him for infiltration anymore.

One final suggestion. Cadance is the one who stands to be hurt the most by this eventuality. However, within the confines of the story, she never understandeth exactly what has happened. It can be awkward to snap into another character's perspective at the end of a story when we have spent the entire time with another, but it can be done well if handled carefully. 'Twould heighten the emotional impact, and mayhap solidify Chrysalis's motivation, if that indeed was the intended interpretation. Consider it.

A largely well-written story. Thou hast entertained us, and we will look kindly down upon thee from amongst the stars.

Final mood: guarded satisfaction with room for improvement

Write thee onward, citizen!

>>119455
>Also, anyone notice that it's possible to leave doc-style comments in cells now?
Yes, and the type we used to use are still available, as "notes." Which would you prefer we use? I'd prefer the notes in most instances, because only the person who made a comment can delete it, while anyone can delete a note. A lot of the types of comments we leave are things like "fic dropped by..." or some such that are handy to edit and delete. With a comment, all I can do with someone else's is mark it as resolved, which sends it to the comments stream, and over time that'd get full enough to have bad load times. Suggest notes for queue happenings and comments for the more behind-the-scenes stuff like how things are run and issues with the spreadsheet itself?

>>119463
> Which would you prefer we use?
Well...depends on circumstances/context. For example, if one needs to add a permalink to a cell for informational purposes, without altering cell contents, comments would be better since URLs would be automatically transformed into links (and thus easier for people using the spreadsheet to find something). Also, for information that needs to be updated frequently, and where a display of who updated it would be useful, comments are a must. Furthermore, even though one cannot modify comments, adding comments instead of re-writing information in notes provides a display of the history of the status of a queue object.

On the other hand, for information that doesn't need to be updated very often, and where it isn't important to know who wrote it, i.e. the meaning/proper usage of a column, notes are more useful and practical.

The bottom line, I think, is Don't Be a Primitive Pete. Use the right tool for the right job.

>>119462

Thank thank you soo much. I'm new to writing and I will make sure I implement all the tips you gave me. But if it isnt to much to ask, can you go out of character for a moment and give me a translation of your review, lol. It was kidna hard to understand.

Thank you

This is actually a second chapter to a previous story I sent through here, but after writing it, I realized that you can read it by itself and it will still make sense. So, here it is, by itself.

Title: Filly Flower
Author: Bleeding Raindrops
Email: email field
Tags: Normal, Sad
Word count: 6139
Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12HUz_DvHTiu8AOc7WxdScCsa4xsJFnqATQGt3MtW0O8/edit
Synopsis: Sarf had never fully recovered from the loss of his daughter, Dawn Flower. Life was dull and meaningless, until he met one very special, little filly.



>>119349
I don’t know if you’re tasty or revolting, but you smell delicious. Come to me!
Claiming: Harmony’s End

Tags: Slice of Life, Comedy

Synopsis: The Cutie Mark Crusaders decide to play a new game in an attempt to gain their cutie marks.

Links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wudgWIcv9XwhQRQa-ZIhxc702e0CiXAmK1yOXXMdjSo/edit

Comments: I'm concerned that the dialog might be too sophisticated for the young girls, so checking that over when reviewing would help.

Thank you for any help!

>>119468
'Twould be... difficult to step from behind the mask in this particular forum. Shouldst thou desire, thou canst contact us via email (hover thy mouse over our name to see the address) with questions. Alternatively, thou couldst use email or venture into our IRC channel to ask after us and arrange a time to chat in IRC, Gchat, or thy document.

Okay, so this is interesting. I like certain things about it, and dislike others. It reads very much like a draft, the sort of story brought on by inspiration and that mad ‘I have to get this down before I lose it’ sort of rush. Which is fine. But we have work to do.

Plot

This is an interesting premise. The idea of an ancient adversary of Starswirl the Bearded coming back and confusing Twilight as her nemesis is both comical and pretty cool. The play at the beginning is a nice idea, and it has the potential to transition well into what you have happening later in the story. The problem right now is that it doesn’t.

I like the idea of the plot device you are trying to implement in the last scene, but it really requires a bit more characterization than you gave your villain for me to care much. As it is, it isn’t worth having the final scene at all just for that.

Pace

This is probably the biggest problem in your story. The scenes feel incredibly disjointed at times. You start off with a play about Starswirl, and everything is flowing well. We have all the characters running around doing things that make sense for them to be doing, or not being present at all if necessary (I appreciate you not trying to cram all of them into the opening at once). Everything makes sense, and proceeds logically.

Of course, then comes act two of your story, and things start to go awry. I read the middle section quite eagerly, though I have to say it was mostly because I kept waiting for it to make sense. I wanted a reason, any explanation at all as to why things were happening the way they were.

To use an example, let’s take a look at the three main villains we’ve seen in the show: Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Chrysalis. Each of them was set up in some way before they appeared. Nightmare Moon’s return was prophesized, and we have the scene where Twilight watches the stars free her from the moon; the cutie mark crusaders bicker in front of Discord’s statue and he breaks loose; Chrysalis impersonates Cadance, and then imprisons Twilgiht.

Now, I do like the idea of having your villain crash the party, so to speak, but it comes out of nowhere. There’s no foreshadowing, no hint that she might still be alive, nothing. It’s a big problem, and it was disorienting enough that I was on the back foot for the rest of the story.

I think something as simple as having Twilight, say that she was banished to the wastelands x number of years ago, and never heard from again, could be a good setup. The tiniest bit of exposition on what she had been doing for however long she had been away wouldn’t hurt either.

Also, the last scene felt really unnecessary and tacked on. I’m not saying you should cut it completely, but as it is it just doesn’t do anything for you, and it would take some work to make it worthwhile. The character you’ve established as something of a badass, a pony with incredible power that has been clinging to life for hundreds of years, is now just sort of moping about, waiting to die. That doesn’t seem like the character you had terrorizing Twilight a few pages ago.

Mechanics

I was generally impressed with your mechanics. Small number of punctuation and spelling. You do misspell your villain’s name a few times, and I don’t think I caught them all, so look for that.

You have a bit of a tendency to use names repeatedly in a paragraph. In most cases, you only need to use the name once, so the reader knows who you are talking about, and anytime you switch to another character. In other cases, a pronoun will do just as well, and improve the readability of your story.

You also lean towards passive voice at times. Unfortunately, this seems to pop up most often in your action scenes, which really takes the oomph out of them. This is a shame, because I feel like I can see your style in this, and I like it, but the passive voice kills it just when it’s getting interesting.

Characterization

You do a pretty good job of keeping the canon characters in character. I think there’s a little more tension between Dash and Twilight than seems necessary, but that’s your call. I do appreciate you keeping to their canon personalities as closely as you did during their argument. They both ignore compromise in favor of the way they think it should be done. Rainbow Dash is way too intent on making it a big, flashy production, while Twilight is completely oblivious to the fact that the words ‘interesting’ and ‘historically accurate’ are not necessarily synonymous. Good job on that part.

My concern comes a little later in the story, during Twilight’s fight with your villain. I’m honestly not sure if Twilight was acting OOC, or if I just had no clue what was going on, but that section is where it really started to fall apart for me. Everything is just sort of clustered together, and the violence is really jarring, though not in a good way.

I would try to make sure Twilight is kept consistent throughout the story, but I don’t think you have to worry too much about that. You displayed a good understanding of how she should behave, and I think if you clean up the middle section a bit, she’ll come out the better for it.

As for Uldavrazen (the one and only time I’m willing to type that name. I don’t know how you did it so many times), I’m torn. She’s a cool character, and you have no idea how thankful I am that you didn’t make her an alicorn, but she feels sort of shallow. Her introduction is really abrupt, and while you hint at some deeper character traits a few times, there’s never really any payoff. I would like to see you do a little more with her. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Have her talk about herself a little more, or have Twilight do it. There’s a lot of potential in her. Again, I have to point out that the last scene does her no favors. You really neuter her character there, and it makes me sad.

Tone

This was the other area that I was most concerned about. The problem here is that the tone was sort of all over the place. From your synopsis and the first scene, I was expecting something lighthearted and episodic. Then, a quarter of the way into the story, you turn around and introduce some crazy villain. Okay, I can dig it. Then the violence, and it feels really weird. These two sections are incompatible, and it’ll take a bit of work to mesh them together in a way that achieves what you’re going for, at least so far as I understand it.

Your first option would be to create a grittier opening. This would be a lot of work, as I don’t know if you could keep a lot of what is going on right now, and it would be very reliant on you being able to set a mood, which can be really challenging. Plus, I really like the opening as it is now.

Your second option, and the one I like better, is to ease back on the violence and handle your villain more like the show handles them. The villains in the show are cool, and still do dastardly, devious things, without graphic violence. You could work the spiritual exhaustion angle you had with Twilight a bit more to keep the tension in there, but the violence really clashes with the pleasant atmosphere you set at the start.

- - -

So, in closing, it needs work. But I like it overall. It’s a fun idea, you handle the canon characters well, and your villain is interesting and has a lot of potential. There are definitely things that need attention, but I think you’ve shown that you are a good enough writer that you can address them, as long as you are willing to.

I tried to address most of the things I found in doc. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I can join you in doc if you like, or you can just ask here. Hope this helps!

>>119493

>reads like it was blasted out in a rush of inspiration
You caught me; this was my "Misconceptions" entry. The only changes it got before I handed it to you were a different climax/ending to the fight scene (it made even LESS sense when it was submitted) and a quick sweep for technicals and flow.

>dark themes
Yes, I realized I had done that literally the moment I did it. I tried to roll with it, which apparently was a mistake.

There's no way I'm changing the goofiness of the intro. It was inspired by a literary device invented by Saxton Hale, called "explosition." Pic related.

I do want to preserve a few things while transitioning over to a conflict more befitting the show:

1) I want the angle of Starswirl being different from how Twilight thought it was

2) it would be rather out of character for the other m6 to be written out of the picture any other way aside from actually teleporting them away like in the pilot

3) I want the angle of the background ponies saving the day. The Countess all but references the Protomen with her talk about heroes and statues and such.

There is an angle to this bit that I think is clever and sneaky, but it probably needs to be written out, because the climax of the fight makes more sense this way and most readers probably won't get it. Starswirl has power over time, right? Twilight gets possessed by Starswirl, but then the power suddenly disappears, right? And then she gets saved. So who are the first three background ponies through the door?

>dropping the villain without warning
Point taken that just a little thing like "and nopony every found out what happened to her" would be sufficient. Things like this are why I'm glad for astute reviewers like yourself.

>the last scene would be better if the villain was characterized
The concept here was for her to basically be just as obviously and unambiguously evil as the comic book version. The whole idea of her contempt for the cowardice of the background ponies came out because 1) I wanted the Protomen reference, and 2) I wanted to segue into that ending and give it a nice little moral.

What kind of "payoff" would you want from her? What about her needs to be "concluded?" I suppose you just thought she was cool so it was lame for her to do that passive act at the end.

I think a lot of the fight can be preserved while toning the violence down. The question is what episode-esque shenanigans to add to the fight. The Countess is much more closer to the other two villains than she is to Discord, so it's an odd thing to think about.

I realize that this does have some fun potential so I suppose I'll be replying to your comments in-doc and doing edits here. Fool that I am, I already sent it into EQD thinking to edit it during the long wait... I didn't think I would be motivated to do such extensive changes. Ah, well. Perhaps I'll be handed back a "strike" and I'll be able to show them your review when I send it back in. More troubling is that I sent this into Fimfic already because that way I would have a Fimfic link for EQD. And then the damn thing got put on the front page at stupid o'clock in the morning, bumped off the front page before most of the US was even awake.

Well, I'd better get to work. I've got a bunch of fun fanfic things I'm juggling...

>>119498
Oh yeah one more thing.

Almost everypony else said Pinkie was way out of character. It's interesting that you were so interested in Twilight but you didn't notice whatever the others didn't like.

Pah! Finished this, forgot to make this post.

As promised, the review is finished, except it's stupid o'clock AM for me, and morning for you.

I've written full comments, including a cursory kind of wrap-up comment, in your doc.

Do feel free to comment on the comments, I'll totally talk to you about stuff.

>>119457
Thanks for doing this review.

First, I have to say, 8/10 with those words seems a bit...off balance. I welcome the praise, but it'd be a lot better for me as an author if I can see some of the things I actually did well highlighted. You're leaving me in the dark there.

In any case, I fixed and responded to the grammer issues.
I know the beginning is heavy on dumps, but that's what I get for trying to introduce the reader to both vikings, weird pony magicks and a slightly modded 17th century Europe at the same time, no? Not much else to do for me, i fear.

As was explained, Luna served a long time the role of ambassador of Equestria to the foreign realms. In ancient Equestria and the planet it's situated on, that often meant entirely different species. Besides, diamond dogs are at least part bipedal. Bipedal doesn't mean human, or even humanoid. Humans aren't the first bipedal race she's encountered, or the first race to react as they did. She's done this many times before, so it's no wonder she's got a spell for it.

Major tripping ballsack indeed. The third chapter is...pretty strange. It makes sense to me, if that's of any comfort. (I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING HERP)

And no, this is by no means the ending. It might take some time (and more confusion) before we get back to Earth, however. After all, we can't leave Equestria hanging, what with the whole Pinkie Pie and Loki loose in an Equestria without princesses, Humans barging in, Discord being half-free and who knows what evils of tartarus about to rise up against against the ponies and all.

There's a LOT more coming. Again, thanks for doing the review.

>>119506
If it seems unbalanced that might be due to me watching too much Nostalgia Critic. That guy has a way of critiquing the living daylights out of something, and then selling it off as good anyway. Kind of what happened here. There was a lot of your story I didn’t like, but as a whole it was kind of enjoyable. If I had to put my hoof on it, I’d say it’s that you’ve captured the nature of a page turner. Your writing style is eh, but good enough to be enjoyable. Your storyline isn’t the greatest, but I’ve seen far worse. What really keeps the pages turning is your open questions that you leave all over the place. Questions in writing are good, actually, as long as they’re answered at some point. Even if your writing is bad, the unanswered questions pull on the reader’s curiosity, and force them to read to get the answer.

Let’s do a little math here: I can normally read about 20k words in an hour, if I’m reading for enjoyment, so your story, being 26k would have taken me about an hour and a quarter. When I review, I’m looking for mistakes, so it takes about three times as long, so about 10 minutes per 1000 words, and that’s if there are few errors. What that means is that it would have taken me a little over four hours to read your story if it was good, and that’s exactly how long it took for the review: a little over four hours, which means that your story as a whole was a good one, there’s just a few minor tweaks you need to fix.

Don’t believe me? Check out the Doc. How many comments do you see? And that’s over the course of 26k words. As a reviewer my job ought to be to read and rate your story, but really what we end up doing on this board is pointing out and highlighting mistakes. As a result, it becomes difficult to highlight the good parts of the story, because we’ve grown accustomed to saying “this is good, leave it”, whenever we see something done right. Your imagery was very nice. I imagine Luna’s mind like something akin to that of the null void, but a little more star–themed. Descriptions are done well, although slightly bogged down with detail.

Hope that helps.

>>119414
If it's any consolation, the only problem I had with the box is that it lacked originality; I had heard the story far too many times to be impressed by it again. Keep that in mind when you consider my review of it.
Taking into account the fact that Alexmagnet only accidentally copied, it--having not seen or heard of it before--it was actually quite good, and I might have enjoyed it if I hadn't recognized it.

Well, I can certainly say I don’t often get to write a review quite like this one.

I would compare your story to that of the infamous ‘ghost chili pepper’. When someone bites into one, they feel no heat at all: ‘How could this be the world’s hottest pepper? It’s not even hot.’ But then it grows, and it grows, and before long the heat is so intense that the victim tries to eject it from their mouth, but it is too late, it has already seeped into their tongue, and they must now bear the pain for the next few hours. Your story takes it’s time to grow. When I first picked it up, it felt very boring, but the further I read, the more I began to realize, I was hooked, and I had to continue reading.

You’ve done a wonderful job of keeping the questions coming. You opened with a question, and made sure to leave more before answering the first. And, oh Celestia be damned, you haven’t finished it. Well it was a good read while it lasted. It was a tasteful appetizer, but I’ll be sticking around for the main course if you ever get it off the grill. Nicely done, sir.

I forgot to log in when I opened it up, so all of my comments are under Anonymous.

Eh, I'm bored, and I wasn't planning on writing 'till later anyway. Plus it's short. I should be back in an hour.


If anypony caught my last post before I deleted it, disregard it. I changed my mind last second.

>>119540
>>119408
My my, I thought I’d seen everything when Mr. Nonsanity sent me a story in present tense, but now you’ve gone a step further. I can honestly say that I have never seen–– or even heard of, for that matter––a story told in future tense, but by golly you’ve done it. I shall salute you, but there are just a few minor errors I need to point out first.

Is there a reason this is justified? I do recall seeing the same thing in Ponystar Celestia, but you’re the only author I’ve seen do this.

> Opening doors will have always been hard for you—after all anypony could be on the other side, or anything—and this time will be no different.
I can see why you thought this would work, but it ought to be ‘Opening doors has always been hard for you’ because even if the foreseeable event is in the future, the past is still the past.

> Mind if Ah come in and set a spell?
Even for Applejack, that’s too strong an accent. Use ‘sit’.

You even prodded my curiosity enough times that I read this with more fervor than I should have for a review. You’ve got a real page turner here… and your concept almost failed you. Almost. It’s rare to see a story in which the last line ties it all together, but this is one of them. The entire story––being written in future tense––would fall apart if not for that last line, for which I must both applaud you, and caution you. I read the comments, so I see that this was a dare from an EQD Prereader, but you need to be very careful when writing like this, because your entire story depends on that last line to justify itself.

Overall, however, this was well done, and I salute you.


Addendum:
I had forgotten the title of your story, so I must add one more thing: While it is a clever trick that you played on your reader, you gave it away with Rainbow Dash’s line concerning Twilight’s new home, making it a real place in Ponyville, and not Heaven, or whichever afterlife you believe in, if any at all. You should fix that too.

Egh, still bored. This one's short too. It's a comedy. That's something I haven't done in a while. You're up next >>119270

I'm not even sure I should have made this post, as it makes my last claim40 minutes ago redundant, but whatever.

>>119536
Ah, that's good to hear. I was thrown for a loop--both regarding myself and Mr. Magnet--but this clears things up nicely. Thank you!

>>119542
I have no real justification for my justification ...heavens that was lame. In fact, I don't do it a-purpose, though I like the effect that resulted in Night 1 Act 4 of PSC. I guess it's a weird side effect of bouncing my fics from my work computer--yeah, I admit that I'm kind of a bad pony... though to be fair it staves off the madness--to my phone to FiMFic.

Thanks for clearing up the door thing; I wrote that four different ways and was never happy with it.

The "set a spell" thing, though... I swear to Celestia, I've only ever heard "set a spell" or just "sit", never "sit a spell". Still, Ah ain't too attached to it, so Ah'll let it drop.

Heh, that last line was thrown in at the last second, but once I saw it I knew it fit. Maybe Luna guided my horn--wow that sounds dirty--or something; I dunno.

The Dash bit gave it away? Weird... I was intending for her to come off as referring to Twilight's burial plot or where they scattered her ashes or whatnot. Hmmm...

Anyway, thank you for the salute! I'll fix 'er up when I'm able and then inflict 'er on EQD.

Maybe it's a side effect from drinking way too much apple juice and the subsequent sugar high, but your post pic makes me raise an eyebrow. I'm glad you found my fic mmmmmmsatisfying. [Waggles eyebrows.]

>>119543
I have to laugh, because I actually typed out my own surname when I entered this into my seed queue on my PC. It’s an odd coincidence that yours is the first seven letters of mine. My skills aren’t as well suited to comedy as they are to sad or dark, but the queue is incredibly small at the moment, so I’ll do my best.

> Please don't say such thing's Rose
There should be a comma before a proper noun in a sentence. In this case: Rose.

> "Archers? Where in Tarturus did they come from?" she asked her roommate angrily.
Two things here: One, that’s LUS. Even if it doesn’t describe the color or the pony, we still need to know that Octavia and Vinyl are roommates to make that jump and that’s actually a bigger jump than orange earth pony. Two, I side with Vinyl on this one. Ponies can’t hold a bow, or pull an arrow, so how would pony archers even work?

> As Vinyl's face became redder, Octavia smirk widened slightly.
Octavia’s*

> Maybe if you didn't respond to every obstacle with 'I levitate.' maybe this wouldn't have happened."
Maybe you should maybe just visit the department of redundancy department.

> "Alright girls, allons-y!" He trotted towards to reading.
I never saw much of Doctor Who––sadly––so I have to ask: is that a catchphrase of The Doctor’s, or is there some other reason for this? I can see the girls are wondering the same thing, actually.

And then… nothing. Your story just ends, so abruptly, without a single funny joke. When I picked this up, I saw the tag: Comedy. So I was expecting to laugh, but the only laugh I got in was the realization that we have a similar surname. Other than that, this story disappoints in every way that a falsely labeled story can. I don’t even know what to label this as; it’s not even worthy of the adventure tag, or normal for that matter. It’s just… a story, and nothing else. It’s not heartwarming, it’s not funny, it’s not sad; it’s not dark or ominous. It’s not even poorly written. What it is is lukewarm.

It’s disgustingly unflavorful and bland to the point that I hate it. I wish it were sad so that I could cry over it. I wish it were dark so that I could run away in fear. I wish it were heartwarming so that I could smile. I wish it were funny so that I could laugh. I wish it were poorly written so that I could correct it. But it is none of these things, it is empty, a hollow shell, and I cannot enjoy it.

>>119556
"Allons-y" is in fact a catchphrase of the tenth doctor, who is most closely associated with our Doctor Hooves. It's french for "let's go", or something to that effect.

>>119553
I read it over, and I can see where you were going. Maybe I'm just too smart or something. Yeah I'm allowing a little narcissism into my words, sue me. You could try, "We picked out a nice little spot, up top of a cliff by the ocean" making it sound as if Twilight wasn't there to pick, because she was 'dead', when really she was there to help them out, and was part of the 'we'.

>>119558
Thanks. I did know the origin and the meaning of the phrase, though.
^_^

>>119472
I'm also going to snag you up, while I'm here. I could really use a laugh after what I just read, so let's hope you fit the bill. See you in a few hours.

>>119498
>>119501

I'm glad to hear you want to keep the opening the same, as it was my favorite part of the whole story. I'll be interested to see what you do to make the rest of it mesh better, if that's the route you choose to take.

>it would be rather out of character for the other m6 to be written out of the picture any other way aside from actually teleporting them away like in the pilot

I think that the way you have that is fine. It's not like ponies aren't allowed to get hurt. It's a little later that it really started to get worrisome, but you already know the scene I'm talking about.

>What kind of "payoff" would you want from her? What about her needs to be "concluded?" I suppose you just thought she was cool so it was lame for her to do that passive act at the end.

The only real problem I had was that the character you presented at the end was so different from the character I saw in the rest of the story. If you work on the ending to make her character a little more consistent, you should be good.

>3) I want the angle of the background ponies saving the day. The Countess all but references the Protomen with her talk about heroes and statues and such.

Afraid I don't know a damn thing about the Protomen, but if your aim is to have the background ponies saving the day, let them come to the foreground a little more. Giving them a few more lines wouldn't hurt.

As for Pinkie, I didn't really have any problems with her. She didn't seem out of character. In tense situations, she usually tries to diffuse the situation, or is ignorant of the problem. In this case, the problem is obvious, and she's trying to make everypony happy. That's very much something she would do. Was there something specific that your other reviewer thought made her seem out of character?

>>119559

Hmm, well I guess that just leaves... oh. I assume you aren't gonna tackle that last one then?

You know, I'f be inclined to give it a shot if I weren't so intimidated by your prolific reviewing.

>>119559
Ah, yes! That should help nicely!

As for the narcissism... well, I must be catching.

>>119565
Hehe, I don't mean to be intimidating, I'm just bored, and reviewing is fun, usually. I enjoy helping, and when I see a story on EQD or Fimfiction's Feature box, and I know it's got my hoofprint on it... well, I can't even describe the feeling, but it's... nice. It's funny, though.

>I had a dream last night that the queue hit zero just as the thread autosaged, so when somepony tried to post a new story, there was no thread to put it in. I have strange dreams.

>>119568

I think I just need to be less timid. I've been enjoying the reviewing process so far, though I take a long time to do it. I'm impressed at how quickly you put out quality reviews.

I have much to learn it seems.

>>119556
Thank you for the review! I'm working on fixing it up, but for some reason this was filed under oneshot. It is not one of those, it's the first chapter of an at least 7 chapter story. It's my first time using this thread, so I must have goofed. Off the the editting room!

>>119472
Well, if you were looking for comedy, you’ve done it, and there’s nopony better to emphasize a ridiculous notion than the famed trio themselves. Other than Pinkie Pie of course. I don’t even know why some of these jokes are funny, they just are. I left comments in the Doc about what mistakes I found, so here’s a thought by thought review.

> “Oh, come on!”
Only Sweetie Belle could deliver that line and have it be that funny. Excellent choice.

I swear, this has got to be one of the most ludicrous gold courses I’ve ever heard of. But then again, this is comedy is it not? Misfortune and torturously harmless, unfair events are like diamonds in this game.

Okay, I was wrong. Discord was the perfect pony to wrap this up. I swear, his sarcastic attitude made half of the closing act, and it was funny to boot.

And your final joke concerning Cheerilee’s grading system got a nice chuckle. I’m rather undecided as to the exact score for this, but I would give it a birdie.



>>119574
Well, that certainly makes much more sense, but I stand by what I said. Good luck with your story.


And that means that the queue has been reduced to… almost nothing. Well, if it weren’t my story I’d pick up, but I’ll just look it over for editing while I wait.

>>119578
Cool! Glad you liked it and got a chuckle here and there. Comedy is one of those things that if it isn't set up right, it won't work. And, after I read over my work a half-dozen times for errors, I find my jokes painfully unfunny so I need a fresh perspective to see if I did it right or not.

Thanks a lot for going over it!

>>119515
That seems reasonable. And thank you for the kind words, as well. After all work I've done on this fic, heavens know I need them -_-

In any case, what you say reaffirms most of my previous suspicions about my works, while also affirming my previously not-so-firm confidence in them. As you may have come to understand, I'm Swedish (thus the vikings and all that), so English is a second language to me, albeit one I know very well. I'm definitely confident enough in my English skills enough to write stories, and I've done so a while now.
But while my Swedish writings are very varied in subject, they also seem to me to have a much more unified style. Whereas my English works are varied in subject (though with a higher ratio of prose vs poetry), I don't think I've ever managed to properly crystallize a single style for them. And as you might notice, a good number of things tend to drift over from my native tongue. Odd word forms and sentences that still work, but sound strange. Simple things that I think of as simpler in one way, since I don't know the norm. I've never lived abroad, unlike most of my clan, so I've never had opportunity to properly solidify most parts of my day-to-day speech in English. For example, I have a great amount of words that I pronounce wrong, simply because I've never heard them spoken, but read so many times as to build a familiarity with them and so dare use them myself.

It tends to get silly, and the fact that my accent slips randomly from British to Texan to Russian to hell knows what else doesn't help either.

But, enough blogging (lol). Thanks for your critique. Would you be up for a single-chapter review for chapter 5 when it comes up? Would simplify the process a lot for me.

Okay, I'm just gonna go ahead and claim this. It's the only story in the queue, and having that thing empty would be super cool.

So, let's see what I can do for you.

>>119588
Thanks, I can't wait. ^_^
>Screencapped

In the meantime... THE QUEUE IS EMPTY, LET US PARTY!

>>119583
Sure, Wynaut?

Whoa.

Definitely time to write.

>>119503
I suppose I should go ahead and acknowledge this review. I'll certainly have questions for you, I just want to get my thoughts nailed down and hit you with them all in one post.

Thanks for the review!

>>119594

DAYYYUMMMM! Whoa, good job people.

Minjask, you never cease to amaze me. You got any tips for me on how not to sound like a D-bag when I review? I've looked at my last one and I'm starting to feel bad.

This was a fun fic to read. I liked the characters, and the story was nicely contained. Since there weren't huge issues to deal with, I'm not going to bother with dividing this into a bunch of sub-sections. So, away!

The flashback seemed really cliche. I guess you wanted to go with the stereotypical angry teenager runs away thing, but this is just the exact same scene that’s been in sitcoms and bad movies since the beginning of time. Based on the rest of the fic, I feel like you can do a lot better than that with it.

Also, this is your one chance to make us care about Dawn Flower as something other than an extension of her father. It’s a chance to develop her character a bit, and by extension Sarf’s. Instead, she comes across as a raging bitch. I spent the entire rest of the story wondering why he was spending his days agonizing over her departure. Sure, she’s his daughter and all, but the fact that she was so unreasonable made it seem like you were leaning on that being the reason we should care about his grief.

Instead, you could have their argument be a bit less one sided. If Sarf was a bit of a dick, or was himself being unreasonable, then his regrets throughout the story would seem a lot more justified.

There was a good amount of lingering on the way Trixie looked like Dawn, but the decision to take her as his assistant seemed really sudden. I feel like that scene could be handled one of two ways: either play up his desperation and longing for his daughter a little more, thus explaining the rash decision; or have him struggle with the idea of taking her on as his assistant at least a little bit.

The whole Sarf-adopts-Trixie scene feels like it progresses too quickly. You introduced Trixie as this initially shy and cautious filly, but she adapts to her situation with ease, and Sarf is just sort of like ‘Hey wanna be my daughter or something? I can teach you some sweet magic.’ and that’s that. I was looking forward to watching Sarf try to pull Trixie out of her shell a little bit. An abandoned filly in a city as big as Manehatten would have had to have learned to be at least a little wary of strangers. Also, Sarf’s thought process as he’s deciding to take her as his assistant feels rushed, and comes off as a little forced.

I like the way it ends, and you did a good job of foreshadowing Sarf’s death. If you wanted, you could start that process a lot earlier by mentioning how the wagon isn’t as light as it used to be, or he was starting to notice getting older. You do it once that I notice, but you could sprinkle it in a little more. It’s not a necessity by any means, but it’s something you could do.

There were a few typos here and there, and a few strange word choices, but overall nothing serious. You were also a little inconsistent in the way you punctuated your dialogue. I think I caught most of it in doc, but you should probably take another look at it.

The story starts well, and ends strong. I don’t think there are too many mechanical issues to deal with, and overall the setting and tone are good. My only advice would be to flesh out a few of the middle sections a little more, and give Trixie a little more character in her introduction. You do a good job with her later in the story, it’s just that first scene she’s in that bugs me.

Some of my comments in doc are pretty nitpicky, so take from them what you will. Overall, I really liked this. It’s the kind of story I really like, with good OCs and good character development. Hopefully this helps you push it to even greater heights.

>>119607
Well, thank you.

>The flashback seemed really cliche.
Now that you mention it, the flashback of Dawn Flower does come off as a bit rushed. I could try to play him down a bit. My struggle with Sarf is trying to project him as a good father figure without making him sound like a Sue. I'll give your suggestion some thought.

> the decision to take her as his assistant seemed really sudden.
Thanks for that. I'll try to fix that too. Of course, that particular scene is a flashback in a previous chapter, so the two actually have to correlate, which means I actually have to rewrite two stories now. *Sigh* I knew it was bound to happen eventually.

>Foreshadowing could be better
If you knew how many times I rewrote all those little hints... I'll look into that as well.

I guess I'll have to get to work then. the previous chapter has already been sent to EQD, so hopefully I can fix it before they get to it. Eek!

>>119572
Ain’t nothing wrong with timidity. Go at your own speed, you’ll pick it up eventually. I take great pride in my mental stamina, and my critical eye as well, although I don’t claim to be anywhere near the best. If you do this long enough––just like with any trade––you begin to notice the same mistakes over and over again, and more easily. And you also begin to notice that the answer is often similar. This makes pointing out errors simple and easy, which is why I can do it so quickly. Solving puzzles as a hobby doesn’t hurt either As for the quality, I’m just going to have to take your word on that, because my friends always tell me I’m too hard on myself, and I only wish I could give a review with the same quality as Seattle Lite or NickNack.

Speaking of which…
>>119605
Have you ever seen one of Nick!Nack’s reviews? You’re a kitten compared to him, but he gave the best reviews this side of the fandom as far as I could tell. Seattle_Lite shared a thread with him not too long ago, and while he was a bit kinder, he didn’t pull any punches either. I really recommend checking out their thread(>>103290) it’s actually quite entertaining; I always get a laugh out of reading Nick’s reviews, he put such style and character into them.

Anyway, as to how to not sound like a D-bag… I really can’t say. It’s not like being a nice guy––or a D-bag for that matter––is a prerequisite to reviewing, it’s just how you do reviews, and how much personality you choose to put into them. I like to sprinkle mine with a bit of seasoning when I feel it’s appropriate, but if the story is bad, the story is bad, and your review will reflect that in both nature and attitude. When you read a really bad story, do you feel happy, or upset? When I read a really good story, I have nothing but praise for it, and I sound like a saint. When I read a really bad story or one that I think is really bad I come off as a little pissy. The Box

After reading your last review, I can see what your problem was, however. You gave a good review, but you were focused on rage at the story itself, and added a little extra oomph to the way you pointed out mistakes, as a result. What you could have done––if you really want my opinion, which, clearly you do––would be, instead of saying ‘why did you make this mistake?, how did you miss this?’ use more passive tones such as ‘you forgot to do this’ or ‘you could have done this’.

Or, you could, take a break. Your review was––frankly––mostly whining about how bad the story was, rather than merely highlighting mistakes. A trait that ran rampant in my own reviews just before I took a break a few weeks back. Your mental stamina could have something to do with it; we are always more patient, and less irritable when we are mentally fresh. I constantly play puzzle games such as Sudoku and strategy games such as Go and Shogi, to strengthen my mind. As a result, I can handle a lot more before I snap, or grow weary. My nonstop reviewing managed to run me into the ground, though.

My advice would be to take a step back, put the metaphorical quill down, and spend some time meditating. Meditating here having the meaning of simply sitting and thinking about things, which is actually what those monks do, although on a different level, so to speak. Take a break, in other words. Who knows, you might just need it.

>>119609

Eh thanks for that, boss. I probably won't take a complete break, but I will sit back and relax a little seeing how these other peeps are doing a fine job themselves. You guys are probably gonna keep the queue at bay as far as I know anyways. Especially, you XD

Eh, with all these new things I learned, I might just try to write something decent myself.

Call me when you guys need a hero.

>Minjask and Lychee and everyone who cleared the queue
EMPTY QUEUE DANCE PARTY FOR U

>>119613

>>119613

>>119613
>Sneaks in and snarfs down a piece of the celebratory cake before slinking back into the shadows

OKAY, ENOUGH RESTING FOR YOU PEOPLE

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kWONAYe6clL8GsUMCbTU76PSJ18NyYFhsB83u43-mjY/edit?pli=1
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/51801/Twilight-Sparkle-in%3A-The-Late-Clock

This story is so fresh the fimfiction submission has probably not even gone through yet. I wrote it in like 3 hours straight this morning, and it made me miss an entire day of school. SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

NAME: Twilight Sparkle in: The Late Clock
TAGS: [Dark]
SUMMARY: A strange set of bones is discovered by Twilight, right in the ditch under the Ponyville Clock Tower. While she is determined to investigate it, she has an important conference to prepare and host, and so it is soon forgotten and left to its own devices for far longer than she'd intended. The outcome of this is something nopony could have ever anticipated, for within the bones lies an ageless timepiece

with a mind and agenda of its own - and powers that nopony can truly understand.

Naturally, this sparks Twilight's interest even further, for there is no greater pleasure to her than that of a mystery of the world solved.

In time, Twilight shall know the secrets held within the Late Clock. The only question is, what pleasure will she take from solving a mystery not of this world?

In time, she shall know.
But whose time?

---

This is the first chapter of idk how many to come, but The Late Clock was an old story of mine. I will attempt to keep its style somewhat, while also adapting it to Equestria itself. Yes, the bones are human. No, we won't be having any in this fic. Just so you know.

Anyway, FIRST IN THE QUEUE WOOT WOOT

>>119537
Well you didn't leave a whole lot of comments.. that's a good thing, right? I take it you liked it. :yay:

I have a few questions, though. I've had another guy (a novice writer/reader like myself) review these same chapters as well. He liked it too, but he does keep bringing up one issue: the characters being OOC. He says it works alright for Twilight, but for example Applejack felt strange to him. He told me that there wasn't anything wrong with "what" they are saying, it's just "how" they say it. Did that occour to you?

Also, from that other reviewer, he said that AJ's transition into the mindless beast was really sudden. Did you feel the same way?

At any rate, if you really did like it, I have good news for you: the whole fic will be 13 chapters long in total, of varying lengths between ~2k words and ~6k words. And I'm already 10 chapters in, with the last 3 coming up. I just didn't want to submit all of that at once. So if you say that you'll personally go through them one by one, well, I'd be more than glad.

>>119623
It was fun while it lasted, and I still have that screencap. But your story isn’t quite in the queue yet; You still need to fill out the submission form

>>119625
If one were so inclined, yes, they could say that Applejack changed too quickly. Let me tell you why *I* didn't: If what Celestia said is true, Applejack had about two weeks for the curse to fester; Twilight simply had to wake it up. Furthermore, you have Applejack not feel herself for most of the conversation, and you don't suddenly drop the bombshell; Twilight is hesitant to tell Applejack what's up, and once she does, Applejack reacts normally at first, and the curse slowly and steadily grows in her until she becomes the feral beast she truly is at that point. It progresses swiftly, but naturally given the incubation period. It was certainly OOC, but that was the point as far as I could tell.

I would be happy to go through them, but I'll not be as swift as I've been these past few weeks. Now that I've accomplished my goal of reducing the queue to zero With a bit of karma trickery on my part. I knew that would work. I would like to slow down a bit, write my own stories, and send them back through here. I might even ask to be a queue maintainer, I’ve been thinking about that for a while now. So that's a yes, but it may take some time.

>>119623
>A strange set of bones is discovered by Twilight,
Making your main character the object rather than the subject in the first line your readers read is weak

>right in the ditch under the Ponyville Clock Tower.
"right" is redundant

>The outcome of this is something nopony could have ever anticipated, for within the bones lies an ageless timepiece
>with a mind and agenda of its own - and powers that nopony can truly understand.
Random new paragraph is random and extends to Fimfic. You may want to get that looked at.

>Naturally, this sparks Twilight's interest even further, for there is no greater pleasure to her than that of a mystery of the world solved.
>soon forgetting about it
But you implied that she didn't care anymore due to work. Contradictory

>In time, Twilight shall know the secrets held within the Late Clock. The only question is, what pleasure will she take from solving a mystery not of this world?
>In time, she shall know.
>But whose time?
Repetition used to okay effect, but two rhetorical questions? Mr. Sturm will probably want a word with you.

That second part, "In time, she shall know. But whose time?" feels more tagged on than natural, and your synopsis would probably read more complete without it, since the first rhetorical question at least leads into the story properly - by being attributed to the main character, which most of your synopsis focuses on. The second rhetorical question introduces the vague-in-a-bad-way concept of "someone else's time", this someone whom we do not know and, with caution, do not care much for.

>While she is determined to investigate it, she has an important conference to prepare and host, and so it is soon forgotten and left to its own devices for far longer than she'd intended. The outcome of this is something nopony could have ever anticipated
Personally, this line told me two things:

1) Not even the main character cared enough for it to spare it some time. Why should I?
1b) the words in your synopsis would be better spent on introducing the conflict of the story rather than what seems to be exposition (Twilight waiting a while resulting in an incident)
2) So the outcome was so conveniently timed as to activate some time after its unearthing? Huh. I'm usually skeptical about this sort of coincidence, so drawing my attention to it doesn't really help your story.

Just a couple of things you may want to mull over.

>>119636
>submission form
CUUURSE YOOOU MINJAAASK DOOOOOOO

>>119643
Gee wiz, can't a man write a synopsis at 6am without being swarmed by buzzflies anymore? Eek.

Anyway, submission done and all, and IDK how to edit those random paragraphs (or where they came from, but I suspect tire), so they'll remain for now.

Man, what sort of pre-review is this anyway? Lol
Oh wait, you guys have nothing else to do. Carry on.

>>119636
You know what the requirements are for being a maintainer?

This is not an exclusive club. All we ask is that you sweep the queue when you're going to enter something. Don't be one of the douches that only edits his own stuff.

>>119623
Short. I'll knock this out in a time proportional to its goodness.

>>119687
>>119623
Congrats. All your dirty laundry goes here.

Synopsis:
>The outcome of this is something nopony could have ever anticipated, for within the bones lies an ageless timepiece with a mind and agenda of its own - and powers that nopony can truly understand.
Use of a demonstrative (this) all by itself is weak. Find an appropriate noun to place after it, or it has a vague antecedent that is a chunk of narration, making it self-referential. You also need to use proper, unspaced em dashes for interruptions and asides. Alt+0151 will produce one.

>Naturally, this sparks Twilight's interest even further
Another weak demonstrative.

>The only question is, what pleasure will she take from solving a mystery not of this world?
That comma is badly used. Try a colon here. Asking questions in a synopsis is bad form, particularly when they're rhetorical and/or you don't answer them in the synopsis.

>In time, she will know.
Your line break is inconsistent after this paragraph.

>But whose time?
See previous point about questions in a synopsis.

There. We're through the synopsis. Seven sentences down! Still having fun? Good!

Story:
>The only thing left were the bones.
Number disagreement: thing (singular) -> were (plural). Yo have another inconsistent paragraph break here.

>In this, they were not remarkable.
Weak demonstrative. See how easy they are to fix? Just put "respect" after it. Voila! You can owe me later.

>Bones did not – unless under the influence of terrible, forbidden magic – move on their own.
Unspaced em dashes

>All else seemed... wrong.
You're free to break whatever rules you like. But realize what you're doing and make sure you mean it. In this case, the narrator is expressing an opinion. We have no characters yet, so the narrator isn't telling us that this "seeming" is someone's perspective. It is his own opinion. There really are only a couple types of narrator that can do this: first-person, or third-person limited. You haven't established either one of these yet, and it appears you're going more for an omniscient narrator, so there are some things you generally shouldn't do: ask questions, trail off, express opinions, for example.

>First. They had not been there yesterday.
You can make these enumerations part of their following sentences.

>She knew this for a fact.
Demonstratives. Since people do talk this way, it's excusable in speech or in indirect thought that a limited or first-person narrator might relate. However, it still feels like you're using an omniscient narrator. How did she know it for a fact? You never address it. Does she pass by there every day? Is it in such an open and public place that there's no way they'd go undetected for any length of time?

>Despite this
I give up. Find these things yourself.

>carrion eater
hyphenate

>the magic field of ponies
Unnecessarily indirect. Consider using "a pony's magic field" or "ponies' magic fields."

>more than well learned
well-learned. And I believe you're missing an "enough."

>Definitely not equine, and no wing structure or hollowed bones, so it's obviously not an aerial creature. Stars, I don't even think it's a quadruped. It looks too, too...
By quoting direct thought, you're definitely in the realm where an omniscient narrator is preferred. That will make indirect thoughts feel a bit incongruous, as you're communicating both from inside and outside your character's head.

>Right, was the word she finally settled for.
If you're presenting that word as an abstraction, then put it in quotes and lose the italics and comma. If it's a direct thought, you need a speaking verb.

>While diamond dogs normally held a biped posture
When an introductory phrase is immediately followed by the subject, you need a comma.

>They were – are still – quadruped in nature, they simply have adapted to a biped posture in light of cultural changes.
That'd be a comma splice. You have two independent clauses joined by a comma. Punctuate it differently (dash or semicolon), add a conjunction, or split it into two sentences.

>She did not know of a single species, dead or living, that had a posture as upright as this.
Et tu, Iron Will?

>made for hurting
Not a very scientific term...

>couldn't be able to run very fast
Awkward phrasing. Typically "wouldn't be able to run" or "couldn't run."

>Yet,
You use this word as an intro a LOT. Note that there are specific circumstances under which it is valid to use a comma after a conjunction. None are present in any of your instances.

>She would-
Interruptions use em dashes.

>She had done the discovery
"Do a discovery?" That's an awkward phrasing if ever I heard one.

>She took the small tablecloth they'd used as a picnic table, and spread it out above the skeleton.
The comma is unnecessary. You don't need one to separate a compound verb, unless the first part of the compound gets so complex that the reader needs it for organization.

>Attention would be drawn to it and it would be investigated officially.
Unnecessarily passive voice.

>in her own pace and way
Beware how your compound wording flows. These expressions don't use the same prepositions. It's "at her own pace" and "in her own way."

>near perfect
Hyphenate compound descriptors.

>She lowered it, and allowed herself a smile at her work.
Another unneeded comma for a compound verb.

>She was almost tempted
She either was or wasn't tempted. There is no almost.

>She smiled again, and turned about.
Another one of those commas. Strike three. I'm through marking them.

>sleeping efforts
What, pray tell, is a sleeping effort?

>Sung every hour like a soloist singing the chorus against the clock's choir of ticking.
Here's a great example of why many writers don't create realistic direct thoughts. Who would actually think this sentence word for word? People think mostly in informal fragments, not complete sentences with flowery prose.

>-/-/-/
I take it this is a scene break? At least center it, but use something more conventional, like a horizontal line or a row of asterisks.

>Still, in the absence of the heavy toll of the bells
Note how plodding these indirect possessions sound, particularly when you stack multiple ones. See how much more smoothly something like this flows: "Still, absent the bells' heavy tolling..."

>Far beneath the heights that the clockwork and bells of the tower itself were situated, came an echo.
Syntax is bad here. Look at your noun clause: "that the clockwork and bells of the tower itself were situated." You need something more like "on which" instead of "that." Note also that your long introductory phrase leads into the verb instead of the subject here. In this case, no comma is needed.

>As if something was holding it back
Hypothetical statements use subjunctive mood. "As if something were holding it back"

>it seemed to forever stand
Seemed to whom? You're not speaking from any character's perspective. And you have a split infinitive. I hate them. Your mileage may vary.

>on the precipice, that one first step on the staircase to a long climb.
Likening a drop to an ascent feels... dissonant.

>Finally, it built up enough of strength to jump
Read that. Then fix it.

>T.............................................i.......c...k.
I can allow you some artistic license here, but I have to say I think you could convey what is happening here much more powerfully with some good description.

>“tock”?
Punctuation goes inside the quotes, unless... are you using British conventions? Might explain the spaced en dashes.

>Now that is just silly.
This whole exchange just killed any sense of foreboding you'd been trying to build up. Since [Dark] is the only tag you've selected, doing so was not a wise choice.

>as she looked herself in the mirror
Missing word. You can look yourself in the eye, but you look at yourself in the mirror.

>to at least make
'Nother split infinitive.

>still dozing
hyphenate

>element of magic
I usually see this term capitalized.

I see no reason for the picture you've inserted at the end of the chapter. Is it supposed to mean something? All you got from me is a "wtf?"

And now overall impressions. With so little written so far, there won't be much to say, however.
Mechanics:
Repeated problems include inconsistent paragraph breaks, failure to use unspaced em dashes, comma abuse, and weak demonstratives.

Yet, it gets really annoying to see that construct yet, again.

Style:
You nararative voice is skipping all over the place. Some shifting is okay, but you've gone through three different perspectives, and continually waver between an omniscient and a limited feel. There's also a lack of showing. The bulk of the narrative focuses on Twilight's excavation, and we get zero emotional involvement from her. It's a barrage of facts and figures, and reads like an essay. And essays aren't particularly entertaining or dark. Only in the closing scene do we get any sense that Twilight is something more than a statue, and even then, only minimally.

Character/Plot:
I'll combine these, since there's precious little of either one. Twilight acts reasonably like Twilight, in that she's studious and scientific. Unfortunately, she also acts like Twilight. As in Kristen Stewart. A facial expression, body language, or trace of emotion would make her more interesting. Plot-wise, very little happens. What's going to interest a reader in the exposition dump that is this chapter? We have a potential antagonist introduced, maybe? I can't tell yet. All need not be revealed up front, but give us something. Who he is? What his motivation is? Why I should be scared of him? And given that there's no apparent link between him and the skeleton, much of what does happen smacks of an extraneous plot thread. Make it matter or cut it.

You are thankfully free of the most common and rankling mechanical errors, and your writing and word choice are generally good. Tighten this up and make it... well, interesting.

Keep writing, and have fun with it!

Review-to-fic word count ratio: 97%.

>>119690
I was being facetious. The requirements are that you've done at least five reviews, you ask to be a maintainer, and you actually maintain once in a while. This isn't rocket science.

>>119694
Welcome to being a maintainer. Just don't burn yourself out, 'kay? Organizing and updating stuff is more addictive than it seems, and that's part of why this Mega spreadsheet has been so successful despite how it's an awful kluge that runs on human souls effort.

Oh, and congrats too you and all else who cleared out the queue. That is the first time it has ever happened without help from Nicknack or a queue closure to encourage people to review more.

Hey, SoraKun. What's up? How are you feeling? Did you have a good day at school?I assume you're still in school

Anyway, I wanted you to know that I haven't forgot about you. I'm working away at your, rather tedious, story. That's not to say that it's bad, but I've got a lot to say about it. I've got about 2k written so far for your review and I'm only halfway through the first chapter if that's any indication. There are some good things and some bad things, but nothing that made me want to gouge my eyes out, so that's good. I will say this for you: what I've read so far is better than what I expectedI wasn't expecting much to be honest, but it needs some work. I should be able to have your review for you tomorrow, or the next day at the latest.

I'll leave you with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0AiN8vrn9Y

Fervently working to give someone something to do here. Putting the finishing touches on the rewrite of my first chapter right now.

Also, I think I might like to become a maintainer, as well. With minjask's suggestion of that updater application, I'm in here a lot, even if I'm not doing anything. There's nothing to do at the moment. I think I'd want to put a few more reviews under my belt before committing to that, though.

Which means I have to keep lurking, since minjask went and ate everything. A rather impressive feat to have beheld.

>>119710
Am I the only getting the feeling this place will now become a ghost town? Cause I getting those vibes for some reason.

>>119712
Nah, it'll pick up before long. I'm just glad it's reset to zero.
It's like credit card debt: It's a lot easier to ]keep it at bay when it's at zero, than when it's at $63,000.

Sure is fun in the meantime, though.

>>119691
I wrote this at 5am in the morning and no edits were done, sue me!

But yeah, I'm going to take this thing down the driveway and see what I can shove up its throat. You know how they say that being awake for 24 hours is equivalent to a 1 promille blood alcohol value? I can tell while reading through this that most of the things that seemed very good then, weren't.

And obviously, the whole NO EDITING does its part.
Anyway, this was a rough draft of something that's gonna become a side project for when I can't bother myself to write on Regina et Equi Nox. The Late Clock is an interesting, well, device. I wanted to use it, so I did. Next time I bring this here, I promise I'll have some actual plot to go with it - I mainly wanted to try my hand at introducing it into Equestria, and how things would react.

The jumpy perspective of the narration is due to the fact that at some point I was editing parts of it into first person Twilight. And then redacted. Most of it. And screwed up in my head. You know the deal.

Anyway, enough rambling on. I'll edit this, lengthen it and throw it back someday when I feel like it.

The image is my watermark/signature/personal sigil/whatevs, and it's in the document template by default. Sue me.

>>119608
>>119609

Dude. You're freakin' me out with your voodoo.

>>119730
What, the two names? It's just a thing I do. Don't worry about it.
>Ought to have saged that. This thread isn't for idle chat, although the thread itself is--admittedly--quite idle right now.

>>119726
Well, that's good to know for future use. I'll keep it in mind.

Do you just sit there refreshing the page constantly to always see new posts on TTG? I mean, that post was there for less than a minute and you somehow responded to it. I'm not sure whether I should be scared or impressed.

Oh, by the way, Sorakun, I've made some more progress on Persona: Harmony. The more I read the more I'm seeing similarities between your writing and some of mine. Finding flaws in your fic is actually helping me as well, so that's kinda cool. There's nothing exceedingly glaring, but a bunch of little things, mostly just awkward phrasing and such.

At least I now have a tripcode like all the cool kids... Sageing as well due to irrelevancy

>>119738
>is secretly a wizard
Ponychan X auto updates the thread if I have it open, and I keep this thread open in a separate tab anytime I'm online. Kinda simple really. You should invest. https://github.com/milkytiptoe/ponychan-x

>>119734

Sorry about that. My dirty secret is that I don't actually have any idea how to use this site. I had to go look up what sage meant.

Also, sorry about the idle chatter. I'm bored though, and there's not a whole lot going on here at the moment. I will simply ave to try harder to maintain a professional attitude.

>>119743
Not a problem. And don't worry, nopony's going to harp on you for making a mistake if you're new. Well, Ion might, but that's beside the point. You'll pick it up before long. Visiting this page should help: http://www.ponychan.net/chan/?p=faq give it a look over, or scroll down to the first heading. "An Imageboard Primer"

>>119743
http://derpy.me/ttgirc
There
is a place
where the chatter is really idle
Take
it all there
if you want to avoid autosage

IRC, it's really kinda magical
>etc...

Title: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Changeling

Author: Chris

E-mail: see name

Tags: see below

Synopsis: A series of notes sent to a young changeling in the field by her superior, and a glimpse into the minds of a race whose views on friendship and love are at once totally alien and disturbingly easy to recognize in ourselves and those around us.

Link to the story: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yGrGgzB9ED7hFhfkjKL7ayoraV5r8xabpaGNHSWtt9Y/edit

Length: apx. 9k words

Pascoite had previously offered to help me with my writing, so... PASCOITE! GET OVER HERE!

Ahem.

Whenever you’ve got the time, I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at this. It’s near the point where I’d normally submit it to the public at large, so it should (yeah, “should”) be in pretty good shape, editing-wise. I don’t doubt there are still a lot of awkward sentences to work out, especially considering how much effort I’ve had to put into trying to maintain the particular voice I was striving for in the letters. I have a few specific questions, but I don’t want to color your reviewing, so I’ll hold off and assume that you’ll address them without my pestering you in advance. And if you don’t and I’m still at a loss, I’ll just ask later.

One difficulty I will bring up now, though: I have no idea how to “tag” this story. Its structure is based on C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, but it’s not really a crossover. It’s certainly told from a very cynical perspective, but I wouldn’t call it “grimdark.” Although there’s shipping in the story, to tag it as such would be the height of missing the point. Frankly I’m stumped, and if you could give me some clue how to label this correctly, I’d appreciate it. That, and tell me everything else I’m doing wrong, if you please.

>>119776
Well, well, well, I have to say that I was quite impressed when I briefly skimmed this. The story was excellent and compelling. I didn't have time to read the whole thing now, but I'll probably go back and properly read it later. I have, unfortunately, not read C.S. Lewis' work you based this off of, but I have no doubt that your emulation was accurate. Even if it wasn't though I would still say that it stands very well on its own merits. You'll have to wait to hear from Pascoite to get the opinion of someone who actually knows what they're talking about, but I would say you get a thumbs-up from me.

Damn... reading that made me feel like I suck at writing. Which I kind of do Oh well, time to go practice some more I guess.

Hello everypony!

As I've said in my previous post, my fic Harmony's End is at 10 chapters in right now (out of the total 13) and I'm in the middle of writing the remaining ones. Chapters 1 and 2 have been reviewed by Minjask, and I'm here to add to his.. her?.. workload with the next two.

Hear that? This one's for you, Minjask.

Chapter 3 (~4700 words): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qxAQiJHTH1INztR3PK5MwGYCK0xW_s3Bca60B77davo/edit
Chapter 4 (~3600 words): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IaFUwVcDcFct7Xt6Ot2M2RG_C57OpZZ_TBL3r3hESFk/edit

Basically, chapters 1 through 4 have gone through a lot of revisions and "corrections" in the past, and as such I'm pretty happy with them. Unless some huge, glaring problem is pointed out, I don't expect that they'll need any big changes or rewrites. Then, chapters 5 through 8 are... eh. They're shorter than the others, and while a lot of important stuff happens, I'm not sure how well I handled them. I'm really eager to see what to see what you think of those. But that's a story for another time, innit?..

So there. You said you won't be as quick as you were with the last two, and that's fine. Take your time, just don't forget about me completely. It's hard to find someone to go through this whole thing.

>>119776
Been a while, Chris.

Upon noticing ( >>119779 )'s comment, I decided to take a look at it myself, and I must say I'm not disappointed by my decision. While you seem dead-set on getting Pascoite to help you, I though I would just point out the few errors I noticed.

>our mother should have smothered you in your cradle and spared us all your idiocy, and and that fat fool of an instructor, Phanaeus, ought to be tossed to the Sirens for allowing such rank incompetence among those he was supposed to vet and instruct.
>and and that fat fool of an instructor
Two "and"'s there.

>But lest you doubt the power of love, remember this: it was by the power of love that our very race came to be . . .
In a single paragraph you establish a thought-provoking and imaginative origin for the Changling race. I am very impressed and must also profess my despondency that I could not manage to do half as much with the page of key notes I made for my own origin theory.

>When seducing a coward, a healthy amount of fear will work wonders. But for ponies made of sterner stuff, the opposite approach is often more fruitful.
More nit-picky, but I felt like mentioning this anyways. Starting a sentence with "but" or another conjunction is considered poor form and, while you can get away with it in speech (which these letters could be construed as being, in a way), their formal nature does not lend itself to this. Substituting "however" for "but" would achieve the same effect. Also-- and this is completely my personal opinion--"sterner stuff" doesn't sound quite in line with Aunt's writing style. Finally, I just noticed you're putting two spaces after periods, a technique that may have been necessary when using a typewriter but is rather old-fashioned in this day and age.

Simply phenomenal. I'm tempted to throw it into MSWORD and run a word replace to remove pony references so that I can show it to my less equine-infatuated friends.

>>119788
Fancy that. I didn't expect you to have it ready so quickly. As promised, I'll pick this up, and have it back within the week. To keep myself from procrastinating, however, I'm going to set a goal return time of 60 hours or less. See you then.

>>119429
Thank you for reviewing Twilight vs. The Birds and thank you for being in-depth (even considering how much I wanted to pull all my hair out reading through your comments in the gdoc). I greatly appreciate all your help and advice.

However you neglected to comment on the statements by the EQD prereader. Do his statements ring true to you? He seemed to indicate both boredom and frustration with the plot. You may have touched on his sentiments in your review but I'm wondering if you can speak any further to his comments.

Other than that, there are a number of edits to the fic and plot concepts that I would like to discuss with you in further detail by email. Since you offered. :)

Thanks.

So I thought I'd ask what's up with the fella who said he was having to re-do my review due to a hard drive failure. It's been a while and I just thought I'd send a friendly nudge. You can drop it if it's becoming a big commitment for you.

>>119791

It has indeed been a while. Thanks for the praise (which I assure you has gone straight to my head) and the corrections--I went back and deleted the extraneous "and," and once I'm ready to do some phrase-related revisions I'll look at the other line you mentioned. I didn't mean to FORBID anyone from offering advice, but Pascoite did offer to give me a hand, so I figured I'd take him up on the offer.

>>119779

And thanks to you as well! It's good to hear that you think it stands on its own merits.

>>119816
I mostly used the "You want Pasc" line to justify me not actually finding much to whine complain about. I really just specialize in dismantling poor-to-passable stories; when I reach work on the level of yours I don't actually feel comfortable levelling criticisms at it since it feels more like I'm just impressing my style preferences on your writing. Simply put, critiquing this in a manner that would improve it is beyond my meagre skill.

>>119805
Due to having to start the whole thing over again along with a handful of essays due at varying times this week, and having full time education commitments, things aren't moving as fast as I'd like. However, I have most of a review done and I just want to read through the story a final time and try to catch anything I missed.

And I'm doing this from one of these fossils from a by-gone age called a 'netbook' which probably runs on something like a few calculators taped together and powered by a small, badly-cooled fission reactor. At least, that's the only explanation that I can come up with for all this heat and sluggish performance.

I don't take these reviews lightly. Patience pays off.

>>119745

I read the linked info, thanks for that. It didn't stick very well, but it helps. I must continue my quest to become a savvy forum user.

Also, I remembered that you said that story of yours I looked at was chapter two of something. I read it as a stand alone story, and at the time I didn't remember it was supposed to be a part of anything else. Is chapter one up somewhere? I wanna read it.

>>119828

I'm glad to hear that you're doing such a thorough job! I'm looking forward to your review.

>>119776
Happy to claim this one. I read carefully while reviewing, so a fic of this length will probably take me 2-3 days. I'll have something for you by the weekend.

>>119832
Sure. Chapter one, right here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17XJeELnpIFBDyouSpbaTrbTq4V2oWi76hb2LYSpQsAo/edit

Round two!

Title: Bountiful Rainbows -- A Harvest Moon Tale
Author: Dawning Ark (aka morning_angles)
Tags: [Crossover], with the additional flags of [Slice-of-Life], and possibly [Adventure] in the future.

Synopsis: With the seasons slowly descending into stagnation around the sleepy farming village of Marelot, it falls to the heir of Clan Everspring to set things right. But can Sunny Blossom – a landscaper from Manehattan – uproot her life to start over in Marelot, with new friends and new family, and put the seasons back into their proper flow? /…/ More so, can a unicorn really be trusted to do the work of an earth pony, and revitalize a neglected farm?

Chapters to review: Just one up at the moment. "Chapter One: Deference".
Word count: 6664

Additional comments: This is nearly a complete rewrite of the first chapter I posted before. There was so much wrong with the original work. Hopefully this one will be much better. I've taken into consideration the plot comments from my first draft, as well as attempted to apply the grammatical skills I've been refining from reviews. Unfortunately, the grammar comments from the original are largely useless for this second draft, other than pointing out mistakes I tend to make.

In particular, though, I'm looking for a gauge of interest, plot inconsistencies, and general flow, to combat my biggest weakness with the original -- it was a boring textdump. I certainly won't turn down any grammatical or technical advice, though. My eyes only see so much.

The hub page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V9cP9FZAwdvB37xTyj-Be3ipyGaYdwEk-o-l-BCZMKk/edit
Chapter 1 (for comment purposes): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qvc3V6F29ht5ZrbeRLz8xidRhIu1juaUzrCT9NhMM68/edit

Don't be gentle, but don't be crass. Thanks in advance to whoever scrambles for this picks this up.

>hope this didn't double-post. rassafrassa server crashes.

>>119838
...should have given this one last sweep before submitting. Jumped the gun a bit. Doing that right now. Literally, right now. Hopefully before anyone snags it.

Looks like I'll need to split this into two parts.
Let's see, where do I start?
Okay, I'll do this: address plot, characters, setting, and mechanics (probably all fairly briefly) then I'll leave you with the metric ****load of comments I made.
First let me temper my review by saying that I am just an amateur myself and I still have a lot to learn. That being said, I still feel that I'm competent enough to review this fairly and accurately. Okey dokey then... Captain Tenneal, I'll defer to you.
http://youtu.be/sWghNd1lpQE?t=2m38s

Plot
I read some of the comments made on the fimfic page for this story and I saw a few people say that they thought the story was “deep”. Now, I would argue with that, saying that it is actually intensely boring. In the entire first chapter Twilight does exactly two important things. First: She meets Igor and... ugh... Derpy. Second: She gets her Persona. The entire rest of the chapter is filled with useless crap. You could argue that her drinking tea with her mom and eating lunch with Rarity and Fluttershy builds her character, but you'd be wrong. Those things happen simply to advance the plot forward without providing any real development. Not to mention, they are all boring and not fun to read at all. I have to admit, it was a real chore to work my way through this and I doubt I'll bother to review the next two chapters. I feel that I can safely assume that they have the same problems as this chapter. I mean, maybe the next chapters are mind-blowing and I'm missing out by not reading them. But, you've convinced me that I shouldn't because you're first chapter was so filled with fluff that I felt like I was at a Build-a-Bear Workshop. This could have been condensed to half the word-count without really taking away from the plot development. That's not a good thing.

Characters
Not much to speak of here. Twilight gets slightly OOC at times, and is otherwise boring. The other characters show up so briefly that it's hard to say they developed at all. All right, I've got nothing else to say here. Characters are not my strong suit.

Setting
Your scene description was decent, but it leaves something to be desired. Like most everything else in this fic, it was boring. I didn't feel immersed at all. I will say that you didn't have “talking head syndrome”, so that's good. Sorry, that's all I got for this section too.

Mechanics
Oh boy, you've got a lot of work to do here. You frequently forget to tag dialogue, or use things that aren't tags to tag. You'll see some examples of this in my comments. Semi-colons are used to link two independent clauses, that are related, together. You seem to misuse them quite frequently. I would suggest avoiding them until you know how to use them properly. Let it be known that I too, suffer from misused semi-colon syndrome. They're tricky little bastards, so it's understandable that you would misuse them. All right... ellipses. When using ellipses it's important to remember a few things: only use three dots and don't put spaces after each dot. Simple enough rules, no? Moving on to your biggest problem: awkward phrasing. This story is fraught with awkward phrases. I pointed out just a fraction of examples in my comments. If I were to point out every instance I would drive myself insane, so I won't. The next best thing I can do is point out a few examples and then encourage you to read everything aloud and see what sounds weird to you. I can't think of anything else to say here. I feel like my brain is fried at this point.

I'm sorry if I'm not being very helpful, but I honestly don't know what else to tell you besides what I already have. Well, I'll leave you with my comments now and one more thing: seek out a second review. I always suggest getting more than review, especially when I'm the first review.
Anyway, here you go:

>*Monday, 8/14*
Personally, I'd just italicize all of these instances and anything with asterisks around it.

>However, she had gotten there quite early due to anxiety at getting the summons. She had already been there ten minutes waiting for the appointed meeting time to finally come around so as not to seem disrespectful of the Princess’s wishes.
These sentences seem redundant. I would say just remove the first.

>Sometimes it would be just to review what she had learned; sometimes she was invited to just hang out.
The first—I can see that. The second—that doesn't really seem like something Celestia would do.

>something big was happening, or has happened.
had happened.

>but even the most casual visits to the throne room ended with a heavy burden on anypony involved.
Seems heavy-handed to me. Celestia had Shining Armor and Cadance's wedding in the throne room, no? Besides the burden of marriage I would say that everyone left without any real heavy burdens.

>Something huge was about to happen to her today and she wasn't sure if she was prepared.
Fairly telly sentence there. The preceding paragraph makes this unnecessary.

>Twilight double checked the time, noticing that it was finally noon.
Double-checked how? You said she looked at the sun's position to determine the time. Did she look at again and see some minute difference? I'm being pretty nitpicky here, so feel free to disregard this

>throne atop of a dais
atop makes of unnecessary

>The dais was a few inches high atop a small set of steps; it forced the Princess’s audience to look up at her with their undivided attention.
Unless it also emits some kind of mind-control ray I don't see how it would force ponies to give her their undivided attention. I realize that it would force them to look up to her, literally, but it would not force them to keep their attention on her.

>The Princess returned the bow
As an American I'm fairly ignorant of monarchical practices, but why would a Princess be bowing to her student? Actually, wouldn't it be a diarchy because of Luna? Is diarchy even a word? I don't think so. Wait, is that what an oligarchy is? It's been a few years since high school I can't be expected to remember every form of government...

>It was only in this room that Celestia's elegance was shown off to its fullest, even though Twilight couldn't believe that the princess could be more elegant than she already was.
Comma splice, also sort of awkward sentence.

>Celestia's soft yet confident voice echoed through the hall
I'm not a 100%, but I think there should be commas around 'yet confident'

>It involves your studies.
Incomplete sentence. I would replace the period from the previous sentence with an em dash.

>"Yes, Princess," Twilight's eyes showed confidence and anticipation
There is no dialogue tag here. You either need to add one, or put a period after Princess. Also, the rest of the sentence is telly.

>"Yes, Twilight Sparkle," Celestia giggled a little despite Twilight's obviously hurt face,
Canonically, Celestia seems to only call Twilight by her full name when she's reprimanding her. Also, it's generally advisable to avoid using 'obviously' in narration. It implies that the reader doesn't know what ever it is you are saying is obvious. This instance isn't particularly egregious, but still, I would avoid it.

>"I hereby send you to Ponyville to learn about the magic of friendship!"
I don't really care if you want to change the canon, as long as it's for a good reason, but others might.

>The unicorn followed her teacher with her eyes as she looked out one of the windows through one of the clear pieces used as a border for its design.
This gets real wordy near the end. I'd take some of it out.

>It's a small, quaint town where practically everypony knows everypony.
Seems rather informal for a princess.

>"But Princess,
Comma before Princess since she's being directly addressed.

>Now go pack your things, you leave first thing tomorrow morning. You are dismissed."
Celestia was being all warm and lovey before, then she gets cold and just throws Twilight out suddenly.

>Twilight [...] autopilot.
Almost every sentence in this paragraph follows the same pattern. [Independent Clause] , [Coordinating Conjunction] [Dependent Clause]. It's not the most distracting lack of variety ever, but I did notice it. All you really need to do is make like two or three of them separate sentences and you should be fine. Keep in mind that I'm by no means an expert writer. I could be wrong about this, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me all too much.

>"Twilight, dear!" Twilight's mother, Moondancer, opened the door to be pleasantly surprised by her daughter's unannounced arrival.
Random switch to future tense... at least, I think that's what that is. Either way, just take out 'to be' and add a comma.

>flying over to the faucet for water and setting itself down on the already hot burner
already-hot needs to hyphenated since 'already' is modifying 'hot'

>Then the hot tea hit her tongue she yelped in pain, and then tasted one of the bitter flavors of her childhood. It was an old remedy in her family for life-changing events: tea filled with some of the bitterest herbs you can find in a grocery store.
Awkward phrasing as well as heavy-handedness. I'm supposed to believe that Twilight's family has a “remedy” for life-changing events? You can't fix life-changing events. That's why they're life-changing. Also, Moondancer just happened to have this life-altering-event-fixing tea already brewing before she had any way of knowing what Twilight was going through?

>“It feels like a slap in the face!”
That seems like a bit of a leap for Twilight to make. Celestia is sending her away on what is basically vacation and Twilight feels like she's been slapped in the face?

>Twilight took another sip of tea, the bitterness working its magic again, and sighed.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with this sentence, but I would suggest replacing the commas around the parenthetical element with em dashes. It reads better that way.

>Moondancer giggled to herself, knowing full well that it was upsetting her daughter.
Bitch... I don't have a problem with this; I just thought it was funny

>”Just as I think you’ve done everything impossible, you manage to actually stump my daughter this hard!”
Oy, this sentence is really awkward. I would start by replacing 'as' with 'when' and change the rest of the sentence to past tense—it'll sound better that way, I promise. Also, change impossible to something else.

>spoke her voice
No...

>“Your teacher is a marvelous pony. Her duties and responsibilities keep her busy all hours of the day and yet she still manages to make the time to teach but one pony herself.”
Couple things: First, it seems disrespectful of Moondancer to refer to the Goddess of the Sun as just a teacher. I mean, she is Twi's teacher, but I feel like she would still call her 'the princess' or something. Second, duties and responsibilities are pretty much the same thing. It's redundant to use both. Finally, take out the 'but'.

>She turned back to her mother and gave her a hug, the best one she could manage through her still crowded mind.
Comma splice...

>She could practically feel an aura of calm as she held her, spreading all around her until she wore her first smile that day.
Too many 'hers' in one sentence; also, that's untrue. Twilight smiled earlier when she was reminiscing. Nitpicky? Yes. True? Also yes.

>“We have an entire day of planning and preparation to do! I can’t wait! We need to get. . . .”
I know what you're trying to do here. You're basically attempting a textual fade-out. I can see it working, but you need to give a bit more info before just ellipses-ing out. As it stands now, it comes off as very abrupt.

>Not a single book, however, but even with that it turned out to be a great day.
An incomplete, albeit longish, sentence.

>mfw the character count on this review is so high that I needed to make two parts.

>It was a perfect goodbye.
Damn, you've been pretty decent about show vs. tell, but this—this is telly... and dumb.

>setting it aside her now packed suitcase.
Beside...

>button eyes hanging loosely
button-eyes hanging loose.

>She brought it over to her and her eyes filled with tears as memories of her foalhood surfaced in her mind; her and her Smarty Pants doll conquering the many monsters of the night and their endless hours of studying together.
Okay, lots of hers again. I suggest restructuring your sentence to fix this. Also, improper semi-colon usage. The second sentence is not an independent clause.

>She'd forgotten how much she really loved this doll.
That was implied by the previous sentences, and thus, is unnecessary—also telly.

>old self
hyphenate

>Old Twilight
Random Captilization Of Old Is Random. Also, there's a comma splice right after this

>She snuggled herself under the covers and held Smarty Pants tightly in her hooves, as if securing the last piece of her old self from any harm.
The second half is rather telly.

>Everything was blue; the sofa, the china cabinet and the china in it, the lamp above her, the chair she sat in, the table in front of her, the floor and rugs, everything was blue.
Everything was blue: the sofa, the china cabinet, the china in the cabinet, the lamp, the chair she sat it, the table in front of her, the floor, the rugs—everything.

>A balding, grey stallion with a long nose and white mane was chuckling in a raspy voice into his hooves, keeping them together as if he was plotting something.
I have to admit, I was disappointed you made him a pony. It's not really necessary and the fact that he has a grotesquely long nose doesn't really work with him as pony since all ponies have long noses. I realize that you want to, probably, avoid the dreaded Human in Equestria Yes, I realize they aren't all bad, but a lot of them are, but this is one instance where I think it would be better.

>black dots in a sea of white and red veins.
It sounds like you're saying he had white and red veins... which wouldn't make sense.

>a sort of gravity filling is words with a sense of foreboding.
Okay, random switch to present tense.

>"This is my assistant, Derpy Hooves.
*Sigh* Disappointed again, sorry. Part of the appeal for Elizabeth was how awkward, yet cool, she was. Okay, maybe awkward wasn't the best word, but you know what I mean. At this point you're three chapters in and it would take major re-writes to remove Derpy, so I wouldn't necessarily suggest it. I will say that the idea of Derpy as an assistant, of any kind, is rather overplayed. That's not to say that you can't do it, but it seems cliché to me. But, I'll withhold judgment until I read the rest of the story.

>"I see," Igor paused,
paused is not a dialogue tag, so you need to replace the comma with a period.

>fate of those around you hang in the balance.
Hangs

>Normally this would disappoint Twilight, making her feel like she had been downgraded in class, but that was the old Twilight.
Somehow, I don't see Twilight being bothered by things like class, or wealth, even old-Twi.

>Twilight had to admit, for such a small town there sure was a lot of variety to it. Nothing like what you'd find at Canterlot.
I find it hard to believe that Canterlot would lack variety. It was a huge city hanging on the edge of a mountain.

>Looking picked up her bag of bits and counted her money.
I'll let you figure out what's wrong here...

>She had enough for some local dining and then some grocery shopping, but not much more.
Really unnecessary sentence. It adds nothing to the plot nor does it develop any characters. This is a problem that is pervasive through the whole story.

>Convenience immediately hit Twilight when she...
I don't really see how 'convenience' can hit someone.

>I must thank you for taking care of not only Opalescence, but of Sweetie Belle as well.
This is how it would read non-concatenated: I must thank you for taking care of not only Opalescence, but of taking care of Sweetie Belle as well.
By adding the extra 'of' in there the sentence becomes very awkward.

>"Oh my. . . .
No... Ellipses only have three dots, not four. Also, don't put a space after each one.

>Twilight watched as the two ponies began to walk away. Before she could stop herself, an impulse took over her.
>"Hey!"
All right, I can take you changing the canon story, but now you're changing canon Twilight. When we first see her in MLP she doesn't engage random ponies in conversation. I know that you need them to talk, but perhaps you could have Rarity talk to Twilight first instead of the other way around.

>Well, that's very kind of you, . . . umm. . . "
Well, these ellipses are correct, but you don't put other punctuation before ellipses: like a comma for instance. Also, stop putting spaces in.

>My name is Rarity and this is my best friend Fluttershy.
I find it difficult to believe that Rarity would introduce Fluttershy as her 'best-friend' (which should be hyphenated by the way). It seems OOC for her.

>"I'm new here, from Canterlot."
I think this sentence would be better served by an em dash, or perhaps just this: “I'm from Canterlot.” It's short, sweet, and to the point.

>She felt like she had a status symbol placed on her when she said "Canterlot", especially when Rarity gawked at her.
>especially when Rarity gawked at her.
This implies that this isn't the first time that Rarity has gawked at Twilight over the mention of the word “Canterlot.”

>"it's not all that different from here. . ."
I feel like this was most likely a typo. Hint: always capitalize the first word of a sentence

>My parents' house is considered low class there, but here I'd be the fanciest pony around!
It sounds like Twilight is gloating, which she isn't really... but it comes off like that. This paragraph uses too many exclamation marks as well. When you put a lot of them in one place—when you put a lot of them anywhere really—they lose their impact. Twilight isn't the type of pony to shout all the time, so having a lot of exclamatory statements is a little OOC. OOC = Out Of Character, just in case you didn't know

>"Oh, I didn't mean to make this my life's story. I'm not begging you or anything to---”
>"We'll be your friends."
Well that escalated quickly...
Twilight is just spewing words at Rarity and Fluttershy then they just decide: “Herpity derp. We'll be your friends!” Wut... It comes out of nowhere and feels really forced. I realize that Equestria is the land of sunshine and Oreos™, but really? I don't know. This just struck me as odd.
And then right after that:
>Twilight felt a little off making friends this way, but at least she was getting what she wanted.
It sounds like Twilight is just using them. Which, maybe she is, but that doesn't fit her character.

>"Of course!" Rarity seemed more than happy about this,
Excuse me but, how the **** do you know that? So far the story has been presented in third-person limited—so we only know Twilight's thoughts—but somehow the narrator knows what Rarity is thinking as well? You need to be consistent in your narration. Keep it either third-person limited, limited to Twilight that is, or just go ahead and make it third-person omniscient.

>But there were so many different carts and each one sold a different thing. One sold all different kinds of vegetables, one sold different fruits. Another sold flowers, one was a lemonade stand, another was a juice vendor, and another sold just apples.
I almost stopped reading right here. These sentences are so mind-numbingly boring that I can't even begin to describe it. Just take it out... please.

>Soon, her bags were getting full and her coin purse thinner, but she was doing it.
Doing what? Purchasing items? Whoop-de-doo. Congratulations, Twilight. You're a normal pony...
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm getting meaner with my comments, but it's getting late and this story is really dragging its feet. The only interesting thing to happen so far was also the shortest—The Velvet Room. Unfortunately this is just maddeningly boring...

>Sorry fer getting' ya down wit' mah troubles
You went full-southern... never go full-southern.

>Giving up, Twilight opened her lazy eyes- why were her eyes so lazy if her body wanted her awake?
Why are you asking us questions? This isn't a quiz. I hope

>“My name is Spike.” “Spike” crossed his arms and eyed Twilight with annoyance.
Alrighty now, if you're going to use quotation marks to emphasize Spike's name, then you can't do it right after someone speaks. It just looks sloppy, not to mention confusing.

>I've never even seen anything like you before!
Spike's never seen a pony? Really?

>Spike suddenly got all tense and looked around quickly.
Ughhhh. This is what this sentence reads like to me: Spike suddenly got all tense and **** and looked around real quick-like.
It just comes off as really amateurish. Perhaps changing it to, Spike suddenly tensed and began looking around furtively, would be better.

>“They're here!"
>"What's here?"
I think you mean: “Who's here?”

>Just follow me if you want to live!
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Forced melodrama is forced, and, lame reference is lame.

>“Do you want to die? Get moving!”
I can figure out Spike is speaking here because I'm not an idiot, but you give no indication that he is the speaker. Dialogue tags are your friends.

>Twilight attempted to stand and run until a shot of pain ran through her leg, the same leg the horse head landed on.
I think we can safely assume that the leg that is hurting is the leg that was injured.

>"Per . . . so . . ." Twilight felt her energy rise, "Persona!"
Yes! Something interesting is happening!

>Spike started jumping and screaming around Twilight, his excitement more than obvious.
Yes... it was obvious. Why did you need to tell me that?

>With no resistance, Twilight allowed her vision to disappear and slipped away from consciousness.
Haha! I've reached the end! This sentence is awkward by the way. I can't really tell you how best to fix it other than to just make up something new. It just sounds really weird.

>>119838
I was about to claim Bountiful Rainbows until I skimmed it and realized that it's actually good. I don't feel that I can really provide any useful criticism without it coming off as me trying to change your style. From what I read the story seems to be rather interesting and your mechanics seem to be very solid. I'm sorry to not be of any real help, but I liked your fic if that's any consolation.

Here are some things that I noted however:
> Sundance Blossom – Sunny to her family and friends, and also of the family Rosely – stretched in her cabin’s bed,
I realize you're using en dashes here and so spaces are somewhat acceptable, but it would be preferable to use em dashes without spaces. They are superior in every way, and ******* awesome.

>remove it from her carnelian red eyes.
I believe you are correct: carnelian-red should most likely be hyphenated.

>Eternity’s Sea
I love this name. Bravo.

That's all I really got for now. Sorry, man.

>>119851
That's actually really encouraging. My first draft got rainbow nuked from orbit and rightly so. Glad to see this one has more solid foundations.

And those pesky dashes. I'm still on the fence on how exactly to use them, having only discovered them over plain dashes less than two months ago. Ens seem to me to be more for tangential information, while Ems strike me as just breaking the thought outright, with no intent to return to it.

Also, yeah, fairly sure most my colors are going to be compounded adjectives. I have a strong distaste for the usual chromatic spectrum, and like to put as much detail as I can into a scene and into a pony. With as many characters as I plan to have walking around in this one, the small differentiation could make all the difference. This way I don't end up with twelve red ponies, eight green ones, five blue ones, etc etc.

I think I mistakenly called these something else in my own comments for consideration to whoever picks this up. Better go check that.

>>119855
>>119851
In my experience, spaced en and unspaced em are completely interchangeable – they're just different typographical marks for the same punctuation mark (the versatile dash, which can be used as a more dramatic comma/ semicolon or as a way of indicating speech being cut off). I recommend using whichever one you prefer, or whichever one your style guide recommends.

A note though: when you use an en dash to indicate speech getting cut off, space it according to how the speech was cut off.

"I love –"
"I love da–"

I've heard of cases where folk use unspaced em dashes to indicate that speech cut off thing while they're using en dashes as the punctuation dash mark, though. You probably shouldn't use them in conjunction unless you're doing that.

>>119858
That's pretty much exactly what I'm doing. I think. I did not know, however, about the grammatical flow of the break. That is useful information. To the best of my knowledge, though, I think I always break mid-word. Still, good to know.

>>119847
alexmagnet, I hate to pick on you further, but I just noticed some stuff.
>>She turned back to her mother and gave her a hug, the best one she could manage through her still crowded mind.
>Comma splice...
>>It was only in this room that Celestia's elegance was shown off to its fullest, even though Twilight couldn't believe that the princess could be more elegant than she already was.
>Comma splice, also sort of awkward sentence.
Those aren't comma splices. In the first case, the second clause is dependent, and in the second the two independent clauses are joined by the conjunction "even though".

>>119876
Derp...
Oh well, I was ready to be corrected anyway. At least you pointed it out, even though I get the feeling that Sorakun might not ever see his review. Thanks anyways.

Title: Twilight's Odyssey

Tags: [Alternate Universe][Adventure]

Synopsis: In an Equestria where Discord never was, and the Pony Princesses never came to power, a young Twilight Sparkle loses her family in a crowd during the Summer Sun Celebration. Little does she know that her very existence is about to set a series of events into motion that won't just take her further beyond the borders of Equestria than anypony before her, but will also change the fates of both the nation and her life, forever.

Link to prologue: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SvClLB2TjC8z-zjNa8hv-amx19j04NThGbTHlEB2GMM/edit

Link to Chapter 1: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vdtKNsocxGSyOvYDhbFaQnRF0Pt2a6oYW2CgbyhibK0/edit

Comment: I've already run this through EQD once, and this is what they had to say:

"Dear author,

I am currently unable to recommend your work for publication on Equestria Daily. Please see below for details. Note that the character > denotes a quote from your work.


Specific Issues:

Em dash mistakes.
Dialogue tagging mistakes.
>looking around confusedly // This is one example of incredibly awkward phrasing, also indicative of serious show vs tell issues.
Avoid question marks in 3rd person omniscient narration. Attribute these directly to a character, and italicize accordingly.
Keep punctuation within quotation marks.
Ellipses mistakes.
Capitalization errors, especially with titles.
Compound hyphenation mistakes.
Avoid parenthesis; stick with commas or em dashes for appositive construction.
>On queue // Homophone confusion.

-----

Well, you’re working an interesting premise here, but you’ve got some work to do to bring the execution up to par that the tale you’re trying to weave deserves. I suggest you get yourself some reviews and an editor to help you work through things. This is strike one of three.

Check out EQD’s Editor’s Omnibus if you are unfamiliar with any of the noted issues.


Best Regards,

Pre-reader ********"

So, yeah, I'd appreciate it if someone (maybe an active user?) with the necessary know-how to help would review Twilight's Odyssey.

If you would also suggest maybe someway to make, for example, the award phrases less awkward or tell-y, that would be greatly appreciated, but to identify them is what is most important.

Thank you in advance,
DemPonies.

>>119884
I remember this one. Sorry my review wasn't enough to get you on Equestria Daily. Next time I'll try to remember to add that * to my review so people can look over what I said as well.

By the way, have you written any new chapters, or have you just been focused on editing?

>>119885
>>119884

No fault of yours, your review helped me quite a bit, and for that I'm grateful. I'm just glad most of his points had to do with grammar and/or phrasing and not something less easily fixed.

I don't know if the pre-reader in question would object to me putting his name out there or not, but better safe than sorry.

Actually, I already had a few chapters that were pretty much done when I asked for a review of the two first here. Unfortunately, they have to go through major revisions before they even deserve to be reviewed.

So, apart from editing the Prologue and Chapter 1, I have begun revising Chapter 2 and added a new scene of about a thousand words.

tl;dr does anyone have ideas for a cool DBZ-style magic battle?

As I mentioned, Myths and Legends (proper title: Starswirl Walked Through Time) was submitted before the review on it was finished, for a few reasons. Impatience mostly, because I assumed the review would be done soon and that I would have time to edit before the PR read it, or at least before the story appeared on EQD.

It was handed a strike, but the PR also said that they liked it.

Along with minute issues like passive tense and one glaring typo, "Prereader E" said there were a couple things that could use improvement:

>You should emphasize the shift in the nature of Twilight's magic more, in my opinion. It was a bit too subtle for me to get quickly, and it's something that the reader needs to understand for most of the rest of the story to make sense.

> I'd suggest getting a review on Ponychan from a reviewer that feels confident making suggestions for improvements to action scenes.

Note that the PR said nothing about the tone shift. Not that that's going to stop me from fixing said tone shift, of course.

Reading this again, I still like the brief spot of graphic violence that I wrote in. First off, the actual description is great, and second, it really emphasizes the fact that something weird's going on in Twilight's head. Unfortunately, making everything else less dark but leaving this bit alone might make matters worse.

I'm not going to put this in the TTG queue, but as long as I'm going through and trying to make the battle more kid-friendly, I would like advice on how I could also make it cooler and more exciting.

Anyone ever done something like this? Where's the brony who wrote "Sweet Escape?" ...Never mind, that's not really what I want, but you get the idea.

Finally done, even with my desktop out of commission. I hope this was worth the wait.

---

A solid story with an interesting idea, but marred by overly hasty telling and a disorienting mish-mash of scenes.

It's kind of difficult to determine what this is meant to be at first. It kind of reads like a diary but it's also sprinkled with these distracting asides like the dream it begins with (and, I think, keeps returning to every so often throughout the story) and they don't seem to serve much purpose. This third alicorn OC 'Ardor' is introduced as soon as you begin reading, in the dream sequence, which was also mildly detracting, especially as it is in media res. In media res is a great tool to employ for a good hook, but when you're encroaching on hardline fannon rules ("There are only two full goddesses/princesses, Luna and Celestia") you can't just jump into it like that; it leaves a bad taste in the mouth and confusion in the brain. You need to ease readers into something like that for them to accept a third sister.

A good analogy (although a strange one, too) is a cancerous tumor. Your OC is cancerous tumor (and I mean that in the most respectful way possible,) that is trying to grow in the cherished, unspoiled body of the beautiful fair maiden called, 'Estalished Fannon'. Your OC is a small spot of tumor trying to grow in a speck of melanin on her nose. To get Established Fannon's admirers to not want to get your OC-turned-tumor surgically removed, you have to ensure that your OC grows slowly, so slowly that they don't even notice it. Soon, your tumor OC is quite a horrible blemish on her otherwise beautiful face, but they don't remove it because that's just the way its always been, and they like her just the way she is. (Until they find out that you're going to metastasize and they lop you off anyway.)

See, if Ardor were a minor character (like a speck growing on her back or wherever,) then they wouldn't care from the beginning. But because you're meddling with such a core part of the established fannon, your readers will care. So in media res with Ardor is not recommended.

(No, you can’t have what I’m smoking.)

Anyway, about the name Ardor, I'm indifferent towards it. As soon as I heard it I was thinking 'Goddess of Steamy Sex' and that whole thing about wanting to nuzzle her one last time didn't help. But yeah, it's not a bad name. ‘Ardor’ also echoes ‘Adore’ for me, so it reinforces that god of love thing. I'm more interested in the lore of it, how come there are goddesses of the sun and moon and then also love? Shouldn't there be other goddesses of other emotions then? It is a plausible and interesting explanation of how Cadence can be an alicorn though, I'll give you that.

And then we get down to the crux of the whole story.

My main problem with this story is that it doesn't feel very much like a story at all; it just feels like a piece of proposed fannon. A story would be more about Celestia, Luna and Ardor, their relationships and how Ardor came to do such a drastic thing to feel love again. Instead, this story felt more focused on simply providing an excuse for Candence's alicorny-ness and telling a story simply being a little extra on the side. I think it just felt lacking; that the story you're trying to tell can't be told in so few words. It felt much more focused on the actual events than the characters, restricting the growth of an audience-character relationship, so it reads more like a Shakespearean comedy.

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it needs a little... more.

But it’s not all criticism. The ending was quite sublime. You're good with the imagery thing and-- although at times overly verbose and cliched-- I really liked some of the more poetic parts. I would just recommend trying to rein that in a little (teehee) because it can get quite arduous to read at points (teeheehee). I think the main problem is that this story has no relief; it’s all full of parts which do require such flowery description from beginning to end, so it starts to feel a little grating by the time you get to Cadence’s big reveal. It needs some sort of breather, through comedy, mundane or otherwise.

I also want to note that the clever reveal sailed straight over my head the first time I read this. The flashback/forward/whatever was weirdly placed, so weirdly that as it starts with ‘When my niece spoke...’ I thought it was just a continuation of Revel’s birth scene, just from the perspective of the stallion who’d just shown Luna and Celestia in. And then none of it made sense and I was scratching my head. (It’s not impossible that I’m just a little thick and can’t into reading properly but my face-saving protocols dictate that I must also blame your strange scene change and disorientating narration.)

Another problem:
“Do not be tempted to use a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.”
A few examples:
>“modest single-story abode...”
>“...arrogant, impulsive, and callous.” (‘Callous’ in speech was acceptable, but using it again here just edges the line a little.)
>“...the pungent realities”
>“...felt for her was demeaning in some ways”
>“about her peculiar nature”
>“was already emblazoned in full”
>"...but they rose anew."
>"...was an iridescent scar on the night sky."
>"...from the all-encompassing luminescence that was my domain."
>"This, indeed, was the entire reason for the chariot's existence." (What is that 'indeed' even doing in this sentence? It's just fluff!)
>"...anywhere in Equestria instantaneously." (Because 'instantly' is too mainstream these days.)
(Not saying these should all be replaced, just pointing out what to look out for.)

I know this is meant to be a kind of diary from Celestia POV, but I still don’t like it. If it was from, say, Fancy Pants’ POV, fine. But Celestia (in the show) doesn’t really talk like that, she’s more soft and speaks in an uncannily accessible way for an immortal goddess, despite probably having had hundreds of years to perfect her language. In fact, that’s probably the reason why; she probably speaks like that on purpose to appear more ‘normal’. And since this whole story is basically about rationalizing the show’s breach of established fannon, it would be hypocritical to only selectively apply canonical aspects. This story has a duty to try as be as accurate as possible.

I had few quibbles with the prose itself, though. I leave it to more intelligent folk than me to point out that stuff; it was readable, I understood what you were saying, and (for the most part) it was easy enough to glean the meaning from your writing. It serves its purpose. (But it could do with some trimming and grooming in spots.) The little things I did see:
>"The scroll was secured with a simple red ribbon; no wax and no seal."
Semicolon is for two independent clauses.
>“Yes, Princess,” he said, straightening.
'Straightening' on its own sounds a little strange. I would tack an 'up' on the end of it.
>herself over to the awesome power of the magic...
The colloquial use of the word 'awesome' has basically changed its meaning (or at least its subconscious connotations) for anyone who has had the slightest part of contact with American pop-culture. I would use a different adjective here for this reason.

Also, I'm not Christian, but it was difficult to read Revel's birth scene without mentally drawing parallels to Jesus' birth. Not really a good or a bad thing, just something that might not have occurred to you. Maybe you could capitalize on that, I don't know.

To conclude: It basically just needs to be a little longer and fleshed-out. Currently it’s a relentless stream of dramatic events which gets a little grating by the end, which lessens the impact of the big reveal. The final scene change is too disorientating and needs revision. The scene changes in general are disorientating (are they dreams? Memories? Abstract nightmares?) and need restructuring. Some of the language is too flowery/strange, and does not fit Celestia’s narrative tone set in the show. The underlying concept of a third alicorn goddess is good, but brings with it more questions. (It feels a little arbitrary to have goddesses for the sun, moon and then an emotion.) The introduction of Ardor could be done more powerfully and doesn’t serve as a very interesting hook as we don’t even know who she is and she’s already arguing with Celestia and Luna (lots of extra OC Donut Steel points there too) so that also needs revision.

On the plus side: it’s an pretty cool story and doesn’t afraid of anything, it offers an interesting (although in need of a little waterproofing) theory as to how Candence could also be an alicorn, there are some quite pretty, poetic moments which were done with nice panache (although they need to be broken up a little more in between climaxes) and I had no passing quibbles on your grammar with two pass-throughs.

So it needs work, sure, like any story. The easiest way to start would probably be to simply write more and then go to snipping and polishing. There’s a good foundation to work off of here, just keep at it.

Namaste, and good luck.

pic unrelated but ballin

>>119901

This is, perhaps, the best review I could hope for. It hits everything I was thinking about and wondering about, gives a clear picture of what's wrong and why, and even picks out minutiae in flow and word choice. My mechanics are solid, so people often glaze things like . I'm very, very glad I got you as a reviewer.

Point very much taken about the final scene change. To my eye, the weak transition meant readers would assume it was Revel's deathbed, but the way you interpreted it was infinitely worse. To me, the description of how the room smelled gave the impression that I was setting up a new scene. Perhaps if I were to go on and describe some kind of richly adorned, Princessly bedchamber, it would help. I'm not sure how I would turn that into a really hard scene break.

Both flashbacks except the dream in the beginning are real memories. Troubling that that's unclear.

Unfortunately this one also got submitted to EQD thinking I could make quick edits in the time between submission and PR evaluation, or the time between approval and posting to EQD.

I COULD try to change a lot of these issues with minor changes, but some things, like introducing Ardor in a more benign (hurr) way will take work. I worry that my framing device (flashbacks after receiving the actual news) makes things like this tough. I already thought about maybe cramming in one more flashback, but there isn't really space for it.

Changing the framing device would be a radical change that would probably involve pulling it from the EQD queue. Which I would HATE, because I've been holding it back from Fimfiction waiting for it to hit EQD. I dunno... you think Ardor can be crammed into this framing device?

Funny thing about Ardor being a random goddess--after I wrote this, I realized that a whole pantheon of alicorns made perfect sense, except I didn't imply the existence of one. I chose not to talk about one because it would be distracting. Funny that I felt like justifying Ardor would be more distracting than talking about her. Then I thought about how that might mean the rest of the gods don't normally interact with Celestia and Luna, and Ardor was the last one still close to them. So then I thought I'd write a quartet of fics- here's Fire/Passion, so I've still got Earth/Seasons, Water/Knowledge, and finally Air/Day&Night. Anyway, that was off-topic.

The point is... I do want there to be an entire pantheon of gods, but I thought it would be distracting to mention one. Slinging an alicorn OC is one thing; bringing in my headcanon structure seems worse. Should I? Argh.

Funny you call it a "big reveal." I felt like it was practically given away in the synopsis. Originally the synopsis said it was the birth of an alicorn, because I didn't think it was such a surprise. Currently it's not a big shocker but at least the audience figures it out for themselves.

So many things for me to think about. Big questions, major revisions, and a lot of them are maybe questions for me alone. I need help. I don't know if there is a way to help me, but opinions would be nice I guess.

Name: pludrpladr
E-Mail: [email protected]
Tags: [Normal][Will-be Grimdark][Will-be Sad]
Synopsis: When Discords escapes his stone prison again, aided by supporters of his cause, he rethinks his plan and comes up with something even more sinister... Corrupt Celestia.
Will Equestria survive this plan, or will it burn to the ground, collapsing in it's own disharmony?
Links: Prologue: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I31q2WA35FHLoWDCx2HzYCaFarTrrLmm82b5wCZL2Dg/edit
Chapters to be reviewed: Prologue.
Comments: It has been reviewed before, but I had sort of put it on hiatus for a long time. To refresh my memory and start again, I'd like it reviewed to see what there is to change.

>>119902
You silly goose, apparently you didn't notice the NEW THREAD post by Pascoite. Oh well, I'll go ahead and claim this because it seems like something I can handle. I'll focus on your first chapter, like you asked, but if I find it sufficiently interesting I'll review the rest while I'm at it.

Look to my coming on the first light of the third day.
I may have screwed that quote up somewhat, but meh. I'll have your review in a few days, assuming all goes swimmingly.

>>119925

Hmm... short and to the point. I think I might be able to help with this one. It'll also give me a chance to try speed-reviewing. See you in a couple hours, probably less.

>>119913
You aren't the only one with an alicorn head canon. My story has one of its own to explain the existence, importance, and purpose of a particular character, and a rather extensive background planned to bring the reader in. I'm not sure if I'll actually make the background part of the story proper or into a sort of side story. It's still up in the air.

But the idea of multiple alicorns does tend to run contrary to most folks' head canon. If you plan to include the idea of a pantheon of alicorns, the reader needs to be eased into it. It also needs to be done inclusively, covering things in a way that makes sense, like sparky said, and like you said. Gods and goddesses always tended to come in sets and groups, and the need for more is exponentially related to how many you already have.

Remember most of all, though, that this is fanfiction, and not everything has to agree with everything else. There's even discontinuity between my own works. The story I'm currently writing has a need for sort of a pantheon -- six alicorns -- so it has them. Another story I'm writing doesn't need alicorns as god figures at all, so it doesn't have a pantheon associated with it. There are alicorns in the story, but not in the same way as the story I'm currently writing. Just make it make sense, and work with the canon, rather than against it.

Just my two bits.

Looks like two hours was a good estimate. Here's your review, good sir. Brace yourself for nit-pickery!

First point: fix up your synopsis. It gets its message across well enough, but the grammatical errors, few they may be, are unacceptable. If nothing else, get rid of the “s” on that second word, change the ellipsis to a colon (lowercasing the following word), and remedy the improper use of “it’s” near the end. This is the first bit of your writing your readers are going to see, so it is imperative that you have a clean opener.

Second point: I’ve left a bunch of comments in the Google Doc you linked. They’re strictly stream-of-consciousness, written as I was reading, so I apologize if they come off as condescending or anything—that was not my intent, I assure you. I hope they will be of help.

Third point: the actual review.

Not too shabby, all things considered. Your mechanics are pretty sound, apart from a few things I pointed out in the doc. There are some issues which I’ll summarize here, however.

What you need to work on are these OC’s of yours. We don’t get to spend much time with them, but we should still be left with a good sense of their motivations, goals, and personalities. Aside from a lot of rage and hate, there doesn’t seem to be much depth to either of them. One thing I could suggest to remedy this would be to keep the perspective firmly locked in Sky Shield’s viewpoint, instead of jumping back and forth between the two. That would allow you to express his thoughts a bit more, and would make Trickster more mysterious by virtue of having her thoughts closed to the reader.

Also, the overall situation, as presented, is confusing. First the two are talking about an associate, who may or may not have been taken into custody, then they’re arguing, then they’re laying new plans… and the reader has no idea what’s really going on. Now, I’m not saying you need to spell out the entire plot right there in the prologue, but as it is, it doesn’t really set the stage well. A few more details will actually draw the reader in more, as it will add to the mystery. This also ties in with the development of your OC’s—give some hints as to their motivations other than “we hate the Princesses and are angry.”

Finally, establish the scene. You start off with a little bit of description, which forces the reader to concoct their own picture, but then near the end, you start adding more details which inevitably jar the reader out of that. Simply having your characters interact with their environment would be enough.

In conclusion, it seems you’ve got a story to tell here, but this opener needs some refinement. Again, I hope my thoughts will be of service in this endeavor, and I wish you the best of luck in your writing. If you have any questions or want to discuss things, feel free to send me an email.

>>119884
Author: DemPonies
Posted: 9/19

Took a peek. Look's interesting. Very confused about the formatting marks, but I'll ignore them. So, let's see what you have. Feel free to chat me up in the document if you happen to see me.

>>119503
>>119603
Okay, finally got my thoughts together.

>what the hay why are you saying it like that
I don't know why, but this tickled me. I giggled like a little girl when I read it.

>Kill the parenthesis with fire
You have something against parenthesis? What did they ever do to you? [I removed them]

>Did Silken do ANYTHING? Is he just here to talk to her? I thought he was pony Manny Calavera.
Think more Georgia Lass from Dead Like Me. I was wondering what I did to make you think along that line so I can avoid it or adjust it.

>Insert obnoxious comment comparing you to SSnE here.
I knew this was inevitable... I'm hoping my story can speak for itself here as to why it isn't a ripoff.

>Bad phrasing. You've forced yourself to use stuff like "doing so" and used "everyone" when you meant "nobody" and whatever. Consider "Nopony else has a problem with that."
How much are you seeing this pop up? Is it sparse or is it bugging you quite a bit?

>and we don't know what he looks like
Is his description that important right here? I almost introduced him as "the yellow-coated unicorn" because I really didn't want to clutter the flashback up with a description, but if you think it's important enough, I'll add it.

>"dither" - for fuck's sake
lol

Okay, so you didn't like how I phrased a lot of my sentences, mostly the [action] as [action] and some instances of [clause with gerund verb], [main clause]. I mostly do these to keep all of my sentences from starting with "I + verb" because that's really easy to overdo in a first-person tale. I'm just wondering how important it is to avoid doing that. Maybe I'm being too cautious and my sentence structure is suffering for it, or maybe I'm being appropriately cautious, but just screwing up the execution.

>This is a very good idea, but presenting it with just the flashbacks like this isn't good. Same reason you shouldn't throw in thoughts like I pointed out.
I'm wondering how to go about doing this part. I thought the flashback idea was cool, since it allowed the reader to pick up on those nuggets of information and finally put them together along with Silk. However, I'm going to trust you on this... I just don't know how else to do it such that it retains the effect I'm going for.

Last thing: I hacked and slashed as much as I felt I was capable of cutting. I completely removed the exposition speeches that Light had early on and I'll be moving those to the next chapter (was planning a flashback anyways). I feel like you might want me to cut even more, but I can't really accomplish my goals in the last chapter if I don't keep this stuff in.

Anywho, thanks again for the review and your thoughts.

>>119965

I'm on my phone so I might have more to say later, but I want to get my thoughts out.

Regarding Pony Manny Calavera: All we know at that point is that they Guide dying ponies--in fact, up to this point I was assuming that, like Manny, they only interacted with individuals that were already dead. Being physically by the bedside isn't really what I expected.

Now that I think about it, the whole angle of having to be sneaky is a little strange, considering the fact that, like Lyra, nopony can ever remember him.

Regarding "yellow-coated stallion": That character is quite important, and it's okay for a while that Silk runs along without "looking at" him, but he definitely deserves a quick description dump. With careful precision, one or two sentences of physical description can flow. You could even do those two sentences at different points in the bit, I dunno.

You are right to be worried about repetitive structures. My issue there is exactly what I said and no more or less: that structure implies that the two events are truly SIMULTANEOUS, so I don't like when they aren't. This may just be my opinion.

Regarding Silk piecing things together: the actual *moment* that you create there is actually really nice. The way Silk figures it out for himself and then "shows" the audience is actually quite beautiful. I just don't like the framing, or rather the lack thereof. Find a way to write about Silk thinking about it while keeping that framing streamlined and minimal so as to mostly show off the flashback aspect, like how it is now.

I'd give it a shot myself but I've gotta get going.

Good luck with this.

Well, here we go, another monster review—by my standards—coming to a TTG thread near you.
Sweet pony-Jesus I can't believe there's going to be two parts again. I suppose I'll ask for a review of my review to see if my reviews are less **** now.
And we now turn to Captain Tenneal to get us started:
http://youtu.be/e_QXK-cz9vg?t=1m25s

>Hey, nopony wants to start working on an empty stomach!
Two things here:
1. Don't use exclamation marks in narration. Leave them in dialogue where they belong.
2. This bit of narration adds absolutely nothing to the story. It's not even mildly amusing.

>Slowly, the unicorn crawled out of her bed
>The unicorn scholar eagerly headed downstairs
>encircling the mare in their wisdom and comfort
These are just a few examples of LUS I pulled from the first few hundred words. LUS, in case you don't know, is Lavender Unicorn Syndrome. It is where, in lieu of actual pronouns, you refer to characters simply by descriptors. This is generally regarded as amateurish and is something that the majority of the community has very little tolerance for. I suggest reading this: http://eznwords.tumblr.com/post/21010451863/ellyewess
Ezn is an amazing guy and his explanation of why you should avoid LUS is excellent. Just read this and I'm sure you'll understand why LUS should be avoided.

>The sneaky dragon wouldn't tell; it was either because he was too embarrassed or maybe even too pleased with himself, who knows?
While not technically incorrect, I would still suggest avoiding questions in narrative. That's not to say that you can't use them, but you shouldn't use them to ask inane questions like this. I would also suggest changing the wording of the sentence to something like this:
>The sneaky dragon wouldn't tell, either because he was too embarrassed or too pleased with himself to say anything.
This is merely a suggestion. You can change the sentence to anything you want, so long as it's grammatically correct, but the current version is a little clunky. Also, referring to Spike as “the sneaky dragon” is a minor case of LUS. It is excusable however, since it actually is relevant to what was said directly before this.

>There came a knock-knock at Fluttershy's cottage door
One knock will be fine, thank you very much.

>Pinkie looked back to Fluttershy who, used to this by now, simply sat there
Technically correct, but I would suggest replacing the commas with em dashes. It's a harder pause, as opposed to the soft pause provided by commas, and in this case is more appropriate. You can generate em dashes by pressing Alt+0151.

>Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make another batch of punch with not... too... much... sssshhhhhhhuuuuuhhhhhhhflpthplbb.”  Another raspberry.
Okay, well, it's not coming through when I copy/paste from the fimfic page, but you have roughly 9 billion spaces between each word in this sentence. I realize what you're going for here, but you would be better served just adding some description into your narrative rather than try to awkwardly space things out for emphasis. Really, something as simple as “[Pinkie dialogue], said Pinkie, carefully pausing after each word” would provide a similar feeling without all the annoyance of having to see all the words spaced out like that.

>With this, Pinkie turned and began her usual bounce-hopping back into town, her face lit up with a happy smile that radiated its own light.
Lose the “With this” and also remove the comma after “town” and replace it with a period. This sentence is a good example of comma splicing: a problem that occurs several times throughout your story. Comma splicing is when you combine two independent clauses with a comma. For example: Twilight walked from Ponyville to Canterlot, it took her nearly three hours to make the journey.I'm pretty sure I'm right this time, Ezn. God I hope I'm right. I don't want to look like a fool a second time.

Huh, I've just realized you are putting two spaces after each period. Again, this is something that I don't think is technically incorrect, but it is rather archaic. I don't think people really do this anymore, but I also don't think anyone will complain if you do, so long as you're consistent.

>She looked around but saw nothing except the sun shining down on the green fields around her cottage.
Ah, and here's an example of the opposite of comma splicing: no comma. When you have co-ordinating conjunctions like, but, or so, you need to have a comma placed before them like so: She looked around, but saw nothing...

>At this, Angel smiled as he hopped onto Fluttershy's back and gave her neck a warm, bunny-hug.
Take out “At this”
There are a few instances where you use, at this, or with that, or something along those lines. You should avoid using those since it's obvious—or it should be—that the character is reacting to something that happened, or was said.
Also, I should note that I thought Angel acted rather OOC here. Whenever we see him it's apparent that he is not the type to be warm and loving, so to see him hug Fluttershy is a little odd.

>He looked up and was clearly excited to see her.
This is the most obvious example of show vs. tell that I've come across in your fic so far, so it'll be a great place to bring show vs. tell up.
What is show vs. tell? Well, let me try to explain it to you as best I can, and by explain I mean, show you examples I stole from a blog since I'm not good at explaining.
>The little girl looked so tired, she clearly needed a nap.
This sentence is boring as all hell, but it gets right to the point. It tells the reader exactly what they need to know, but does it in the most unimaginative and least interesting way possible.
>The brown-eyed little girl wore a plastic Viking cap, and her mouth was sticky from candy. Standing there in her dress-up clothes, she looked more tired than I had ever seen a child look. But she was so very stubborn, I saw we were headed for a battle.
This is better. It shows the reader that the girl is tired, but it still is fairly blunt about it. The random details add bits and pieces to the reader's understanding of the situation, but not enough to be very meaningful.
>Her sleepy brown eyes hardened into red-rimmed slits. She cocked her plastic Viking helmet aggressively, the horns sticking out only a little more than her curls. One fist clutched a decapitated lollipop, the other a cardboard sword. She leveled the point at my chest. “You mean dragon!” she growled. “You’ll never make me nap!”
Look how far we've come from a simple “The girl was tired. She needed a nap.” By adding in these details we can change how the reader views the situation, and how they feel about the characters in them. It adds much greater depth and makes for far more interesting reading. Yes, it will take much more work, but you won't be successful with such wooden narration. Even if you did become successful it would be a very hollow success.
Anyway, just go read this blog: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/showing/. It does a great job of explaining why showing is important, and it has a bunch of great examples. It also is good about explaining why telling can also be important and why you should “Show, don't just tell” as opposed to a flat-out “Show, don't tell.”
Also check out: http://www.ponyfictionarchive.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=746 while you're at it. This thread, which includes some stuff by Ezn, who, again, I have a lot of respect for, also does a great job of explaining why you should “Show, don't just tell.”
I know there's a pony specific version of the whole 'show vs. tell' thing floating around the internet somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. The two links I gave you should be plenty though.

Moving on...

>”I'll let ya know, though.” Dash spoke in a quizzical tone.
You need to place a comma after 'though' otherwise 'Dash spoke in a quizzical tone.' is an incomplete sentence. Noticed this a couple times, but this is just one example.

>“Which is it?!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ozzsURtdUI
While having both an exclamation and a question mark is acceptable, it is not acceptable to use two question marks. It should like simply like this: !?
And while I'm at it, you've been using quite a few exclamation marks in your dialogue, specifically with Twilight. It's okay to use exclamation marks now and again, but you've been using them far too frequently, especially when you consider that Twilight doesn't shout very often. When you use them all the time they start to lose their impact; it is far more meaningful when a character who rarely shouts suddenly has a line where they do shout. It shows the reader that whatever the characters is shouting about is important and that we, as readers, should pay attention. On the flip side, when a character has exclamations at the end of every sentence it's hard to tell when something shout-worthy is actually being said.

>You contain completely exaggerated story elements and not-real locations set in the Pre-Classical Era of knights and peasants, so you should be considered fiction.  However, you also include other locations and notable figures and events that have been documented as historically correct and accurate, meaning you are also non-fiction!
Okay, this is just me being nitpicky.
Just because a story includes historically accurate elements that does not make it non-fiction. Go read A Zombie's History of the United States: From the Massacre at Plymouth Rock to the CIA's Secret War on the Undead by the ever-talented, and wonderfully hilarious, Dr. Worm Miller—of SomethingAwful fame—and tell me that book is non-fiction. I dare you.
But seriously, you can leave Twilight's rant in the way it is. I just wanted to point out that “historically accurate” does not necessarily mean “non-fiction.”
Also this:
>But then, you have the nerve to start talking about space exploration and encountering other lifeforms in your later chapters, going into the genre of science-fiction!
Despite what you may see in Border's or Books-A-Million, science-fiction is not a genre all of it's own—at least it shouldn't be. It is exactly what it says it is: science-fiction—a sub-genre of fiction.
Again, nitpicky, but I wanted to point it out for fun... I guess...

Moving on... again...

>The cyan pony looked down at Spike, now fully understanding what he was asking for, a reason to leave and let Twilight be alone for a little bit.
The second comma should be replaced by a colon... also LUS.

>>119976
I'll put the asterisk on this part since I derped and forgot to put it on the first part.

>“Here, Spike, let me lend you a hoof here,”
Kill the second 'here'.

>“Oh, OK!  I understand what you mean.  That is a good idea!
Just another example of overused exclamations. Try this: shout these two lines and see if it doesn't feel like too much.

>The magical mare opened her eyes as the spell finished it's casting.
One of the more hilarious examples of LUS. The alliteration of 'm' had me giggling a bit, which is not a good thing since that's distracting to the reader: me.
On another note, saying 'the spell finished it's casting' is two things: the wrong 'it's' (should be 'its' since it's possessive) and also misleading. Saying 'its' makes it seem like the spell is casting itself—which I'm assuming it's not.

>“Just once every two weeks, I'll need to recharge the spell, it won't last forever.  So either you can bring it back down here, or, maybe even easier would be for me to come up there.  I'll just need a helping hoof actually getting up there, or I guess a helping wing actually.”  
How the **** would it be easier for Twilight to fly to Rainbow's house—which is floating in the sky I might add—than for Rainbow to bring Tank to her?
Not trying to be mean here, just asking a legitimate question.

>Suddenly, the faithful student exploded with delight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_RmSJxtUE

>Rarity opened the door looking just slightly worn out and her hair just barely hinted at the smallest amount of being disheveled.
There you go. This is a decent example of showing. It could be fleshed out a bit more, but is otherwise much better than saying “Rarity looked tired.”

>“So why is it you've stopped by, can I help you with anything?”
Comma splice. The first sentence should end with a question mark after 'by'.

>I just cannot for the life of me find that one special outfit that simply screams 'Me, Rarity! I'm the fabulous dress you're looking for!'.”  
Nothing wrong here except for possibly the end. I'm not sure if that quadruple punctuation explosion is correct. I think that the period may need to be removed at least. Anyway, the real reason I pointed this out was because the first thing I thought of when I read 'Me, Rarity!' was Rarity saying “Me Rarity, ugh ugh” while beating her chest like a monkey. Again, nothing actually wrong, just something that made me laugh.

>The two mares had walked up the stairs into Rarity's room.
They're suddenly in Rarity's room? A little warning would have been nice. Maybe in some of the previous lines of dialogue mention something about them beginning to head that way, so it doesn't seem like they just suddenly showed up there.

>After all, green is the color of the turtle and–”
>“Tortoise,” corrected Applejack.
All right, I'll give you that. That was a nice, subtle way to reference that joke. Good work.

> Feel... yes, she could feel something.
Bit heavy-handed, but sure, I can accept this. I would replace the ellipsis with an em dash though.

>The party was a great success.  Everypony had a good time.
I swear to god, it's like a joke how textbook telly these sentences are. Not to make fun of you, since that's not my intention, but I hope from my previous examples you see why this is not really something you should be doing.

>After cake was eaten (the party pony even went so far as to make reduced-sugar cake for the tortoise) presents were given for unwrapping. 
In general, you should avoid using parentheses in narration. Use em/en dashes instead. Hint: use em dashes because they are awesome

> “Hey, Twilight.  Have a good time at the party?”
Wait a second; Spike wasn't invited to the party? Why?
>“Nah.  You girls get together and I just feel out of place.
Oh wait... nevermind.

>Probably some no-good thief lookin' to get a few free samples!
Okay—hold on a minute. You're telling me this story is going to be about Applejack? Coulda fooled me. I realize this story is about Applejack—given the title/synopsis that much was obvious—but I'm about to make a major point in my review, so just let me do this.
See, I say this because Applejack has been singularly unimportant throughout this entire chapter. She says like three lines to Rarity and then is barely even mentioned during the party “scene”. The quotation marks are there because I can hardly call one paragraph a scene. If I didn't have the synopsis and the title to fall back on I would've assumed this story's hero was going to be Twilight since she gets the most screen time. This is a major problem because in the entirety of the first chapter you made Applejack seem like the most unimportant pony—outside that one brief instance where she “feels” something—which, if you take away the last four paragraphs of the chapter (about 300ish words), “feels” wildly irrelevant. Applejack “feels” something, someone watching her I assume given what happens at the end, and I, the reader, am supposed to care, or even notice? Then, after a lot of really irrelevant stuff—irrelevant to the actual plot that isI say that because it feels more like this is a story about a birthday party for Tank than anything at this point—happens, I'm supposed to be like, “Oh yeah! Applejack's getting that “feeling” again. I guess ****'s about to go down.” and then just carry on reading like the whole party, and everything else, didn't happen? I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm being harsh, but I want to be honest and say that, while your writing was fairly solid, I was not interested at all to see what happens in the next chapter. Spoiler: It's Discord-ed Applejack

Here are my suggestions for how to improve this:
Focus much more heavily on Applejack. Have the story start from, and stay in, her perspective. Right now you seem to be writing in third-person omniscient. I would recommend writing instead in third-person limited, limited to Applejack that is. This will, hopefully, make the story much more enjoyable since we'll see what Applejack is thinking, more so than we do now, when this mysterious pony Discord-ed Applejack shows up. Also, you can have the scene with the party for Tank and all that, but I would suggest making it longer, and more focused on Applejack and what she's thinking during it. Maybe she sees, or thinks she sees, the mysterious pony D Applejack through the window and starts getting worried or something, I dunno. I've just now realized that you already did this with Fluttershy. The problem is just that though: I've just now realized it. That scene felt so weird to me when I read it, and now I know why: it should've happened later, and from Applejack's perspective. Also, speaking of that, Fluttershy glosses over that whole incident rather quickly if you ask me. Anyway, back to the review.

The point is: you need to make the first chapter more about Applejack and less about Tank. You need to work on making your scenes more aesthetically pleasing, and your actions as well. Right now it just feels like 90% of the conversations take place in a vacuum. Here, go read this: http://www.coloradospringsfictionwritersgroup.org/archive/2002-03_article-talking_head_syndrome.pdf
That should help you understand why having your characters perform actions while speaking makes for more interesting reading.
Let's see, what else?
I touched on LUS, and Show vs. Tell. Hmm, I can't think of anything else right now. Well, I'm sure I've given you plenty to work on for now, and, as always, I suggest getting more than just my opinion. I'm just one dude, one somewhat decent writer and one not quite stellar critic. The more people that you have look at your work the more it can, usually, be improved. In any case, I hope my godawful review was in some way useful to you, and that you can take something away from it. Oh, real quick, I do want to say that it may seem like I hated your story, but that is not the case. I actually like the idea you presented and I want to see you succeed. That's why I was so harsh in my reviewing of it. Anyway, that's all I got. I kinda lost where I was going, whoops. Good luck, by the way.

>>119945
I shall thank you kindly, good sir.

The synopsis had been commented before, and I had changed it, yet it seems I had gotten hold of an old version.

Apart from that, I will look it over some time in the future. If you could re-review when that is needed, I would be most thankful.

>>119976
>With this, Pinkie turned and began her usual bounce-hopping back into town, her face lit up with a happy smile that radiated its own light.
Lose the “With this” and also remove the comma after “town” and replace it with a period. This sentence is a good example of comma splicing
>pic
>jk
Not quite. For "her face lit up", the "lit up" is an adverb (adjective verb, right? Uhh), not an action. So the phrase after the comma is not independent. Thus the comma in question is not a splice.

>obnoxious spaces and dat onomatopoeia
>Huh, I've just realized you are putting two spaces after each period.
Two spaces after each period sounds more pretentious than mere artistic license. Actually, it just sounds wrong, but as long as it didn't distract you or come off as an eyesore, and he's consistent, then, yeah, I suppose...

>When you have co-ordinating conjunctions like, but, or so, you need to have a comma placed before them like so: She looked around, but saw nothing...
Actually not incorrect, imo, but putting the comma would make it a lot more readable. So yes, good suggestion.

>The second comma should be replaced by a colon... also LUS.
Not sure why colon, since the comma is fine, although looking at your greentext examples, perhaps the author should pay some attention to sentence structure repetition. Seems like [subject],[action],[action] pops out in high frequencies.

>Rarity opened the door looking just slightly worn out and her hair just barely hinted at the smallest amount of being disheveled.
Author should probably look for missing commas himself, but I guess I'll point out that this sentence could really do with some. Specifically, after "door", and then start a new sentence at "her hair" because long sentence is long and repetitive sentence structure is repetitive (gotta love the irony in this).

>everything else
Sounds about right. Nice work. =P

>>119978
Time to break out the word processor.

You're well informed in matters of grammatical expertise, and you pull from a wide variety of source information. All I have is my little green book, Google, and my admittedly flawed instinct to spot errors. You not only point out the errors, but, for the most part, you also explain how to fix them. On occasion, you even point out why they're wrong.

Everything is set up chronologically, I would assume, each error being explained in sequence. Given the size of the review, it looks like you hit everything, or at least tried to. Normally I would criticize this style of review, but I just now noticed that this was a FiMfiction orientated review, so chronological ordering really is the way to go. Generally I prefer categorical, letting in-doc comments mark everything chronologically. But that would be rather impossible here.

I'm siding with you on your spoiled Ezn freak-out. That's a comma splice alright. However, “Dash spoke in a quizzical tone.” is actually a complete sentence. Subject proper noun, verb, preposition, adjective, adjective, noun. Putting the comma in as suggested would actually turn this into a comma splice, as the dialogue is perfectly capable of standing on its own, as well. Had it been “said” instead of “spoke”, it would be a matter of a fragmented phrase, and need to pulled into a nearby sentence to stand.

You maintain a decent sense of humor throughout the entire review, and attempt to remain objective. It begins to run out toward the end, and you slip a little into sardonic. But you keep a consistent stance and attitude throughout. I'm admittedly not a fan of the youtube links once the review has actually started, finding them a tad distracting and not a little condescending, but that's just a personal opinion. You make good use of your outside sources, as I've said before.

8 out of 10

>>119986
While I'm on the subject, though, I call shenanigans. Lit: verb; a past tense and a past participle of “light”. As part of the phrasal verb “light up” it means to become animated or cheerful. “Her face” being the subject, this phrase can stand on its own as an independent clause, and therefor is, in fact, a comma splice.

>>119991
> Given the size of the review, it looks like you hit everything, or at least tried to.
...everything in the first chapter

> I just now noticed that this was a FiMfiction orientated review, so chronological ordering really is the way to go. Generally I prefer categorical, letting in-doc comments mark everything chronologically. But that would be rather impossible here.
Yep, same here. I would say that I hate doing FiMfic reviews, but I don't really. I prefer gdocs, as it is superior—at least for easy reviewing that is—and it I would normally just comment on everything I pointed out. In fact, I probably would've pointed out a lot more if I could comment in gdocs as well. I tried to give a lot of examples of problems that were pervasive throughout the fic, so that the author would feel confident enough to find the other problems him/herself.

>However, “Dash spoke in a quizzical tone.” is actually a complete sentence.
Yeahhhhhh. I realized this not long after posting my review, but I didn't want to make another post just to correct that one thing. I'm glad you pointed it out though.

> It begins to run out toward the end, and you slip a little into sardonic.
Which I'll admit, is kind of bad, but I hope it doesn't detract from my review all too much.

>I'm admittedly not a fan of the youtube links once the review has actually started, finding them a tad distracting and not a little condescending, but that's just a personal opinion.
Fair enough, I can see that. If they came off as condescending then I'm sorry. That was not my intention. I put them in just to keep the review from becoming too serious, or something, I dunno. I like to inject humor into my reviews because, to me, that makes them easier to take. To be totally honest though, I think I do it to sort of cover myself in a way. What I mean is that my reviews are not the greatest I'll admit, so I use jokes, and youtube clips to distract from my lack of knowledge in certain areas. Also, I just think they're funny, but, like you said, that's just a personal opinion.

Also this:
>You're well informed in matters of grammatical expertise
Haha, well if I am it is only because of the textual smackdown I've received in reviews of my own work. I am, by no means, infallible, and I frequently make mistakes. However, when those mistakes are pointed out, I make it my duty to study up on those mistakes so that I may avoid making them again.

Anyway, thanks for the review review. It's good to know that I've improved somewhat. Now I just need to get back to my own writing, which I've been neglecting over and over again recently.

Does The Training Grounds have any policy against/for "mature" stories? In this case, for the story I'm trying to get help with, it's mature for language (if that's still a thing) and gore later in the story.

The funny thing about it is, I'm looking for help making a "less mature" version, so that it'd possibly appeal to a wider audience and/or EqD so I might get something on there I'm actually happy with.

Sudden reinterest in fixing this story up may or may not have to do with that Horror Stories thread going around, and therefore Halloween coming up.

>>120015
I think that's where the entire thread went. Myself included, for the most part. Queue's cleared out so now all the reviewers are working on their own stories.

Also
> if I am it is only because of the textual smackdown I've received in reviews of my own work.
You and me both.

>>120016
Ponychan has a policy against mature content.
http://www.ponychan.net/chan/?p=rules

>>120016
I want to say that TTG will take anything that can be posted on ponychan. Which is to say, no blatant clop or gratuitous gore. There are some pretty dark stories out there, and TTG has seen its fair share of that tag.

>>120016

As far as I can tell, pretty much anything goes here. It's more a matter of whether or not a reviewer is willing to look over your stuff, and whether or not it's too "mature" for any hosting sites like fimfiction or EqD.

That said, if this is that "theoretical sequel" you once mentioned, consider this a preemptive claim.

>>120018
Well... as far as I have seen, as long as it isn't outright pornography, anything goes.

>>120018
I get that, and it's not like I'd post anything directly from the story on the site. The policies for linking to stuff seem ambiguous, however, especially if the other end of the link is restricted based on mature content anyway. Or based on something more specific, such as letting only a certain email through for viewing/commenting on Google Docs.

For example, if allowed by the thread managers, theoretically I could provide a link to the collection (of chapters) via the queue submission form, omit that directly from the site, and still restrict access until someone specifically requests/want to take on the review.

If that's still a problem, I can seek help elsewhere. I just know that other, more specific reviewers/review threads will take mature content on occasion, so long as access/links are kept off-site for reasons of site rules. Which is why I'm basically asking if there's any way to do something similar with The Training Grounds' thread.

>>120019
>>120021
The story itself is within "Mature" category on FiMfic, but it was approved there without any complaints/warnings. Do the two sites have similar enough standards for that though?

>>120021
Actually, this is the one that comes before that hypothetical sequel, which I did in fact start writing but am nowhere close to finishing.

Still, if you're claiming already, that'd be awesome. And worst case scenario, I have your email that I could circumvent The Training Grounds' system for review, although I'd prefer the formalities for some reason. I don't know quite why.

>>120025
Well, isn't the training ground held within a spreadsheet in google docs? So it wouldn't really matter if you post it here?

Here is a thought:

Why not just add it there, say you have it there with a post here and not link it?

>>120025
They have similar schemes from my experience, but not similar standards. FimFiction also has a mature content filter, of which nothing contained within would be permitted on EqD. It's generally where the clop ends up.

The following won't violate ponychan's guidelines on violence (thanks to anon for the link):
some blood
general creepy
battle wounds [that don't get too graphic]
accidents
minor injuries

If it's something more than that, it'll probably get you in trouble. I don't think there's any restrictions on foul language, though. So long as it isn't depicting something on the banhammer list.

>>119986
Derp.
Just realized this was also a review of my review.

>Not quite. For "her face lit up", the "lit up" is an adverb (adjective verb, right? Uhh), not an action. So the phrase after the comma is not independent. Thus the comma in question is not a splice.
I'm not so sure. "Lit up" is a verb and a preposition, not an adverb. I think... I could be wrong
To be sure, I ran this sentence through a grammar checker:
Her face lit up with a happy smile that radiated its own light.
and it is a complete sentence. 'Her' being the independent subject, and 'lit' being the verb, albeit a past tense verb. So, I'll have to respectfully disagree with this statement. But, I am fully willing to admit I'm wrong if that turns out to be the case.

>Two spaces after each period [...] as long as it didn't distract you or come off as an eyesore
Ehhhh, actually it was kind of annoying. But, I don't really have a major problem with it if the author wants to keep it.

>>The second comma should be replaced by a colon... also LUS.
>Not sure why colon, since the comma is fine, although looking at your greentext examples, perhaps the author should pay some attention to sentence structure repetition. Seems like [subject],[action],[action] pops out in high frequencies.
I said colon because it makes the most sense, at least to me. But, a comma would also be acceptable I suppose.
As for the sentence structure, yeah, I meant to bring that up, but I kinda forgot... my bad. It gets very repetitive, which is really indicative of the entire fic. It's filled with dry, wooden narration that is not particularly interesting to read, nor easy to fix. This is something that I can tell the author how to fix, other than to say that he/she should read their work aloud and do their best to spice up the narration and vary their sentence structure much more. I realize that I could probably give better suggestions than this, but fixing things that aren't just grammatical errors is my biggest weakness.

>Author should probably look for missing commas himself, but I guess I'll point out that this sentence could really do with some. Specifically, after "door", and then start a new sentence at "her hair" because long sentence is long and repetitive sentence structure is repetitive
Yeah, I saw that too—and I probably should've pointed it out—but I didn't mention it because I wanted to focus on what I thought he/she did right for that sentence without marring my compliments with the errors I found. Eh, maybe not the best way to go about it, but meh.

Anyway, thanks for the review. Like I said to >>119991 it's nice to see that I've improved, even if it's only slightly. Guess this means I can keep reviewing without feeling like I'm just holding authors back. On to more reviews I suppose... or my own writing. I'm sorry I'm ignoring you On the Shores of Demilune Lake! I'll start working on you again in a bit.

>>120027
Eh... Kind of.

My main fic is in the "Mature" category on FiMFic with the gore tag, but my pre-reader said that I was presently juuuuuust within the acceptable zone of gore for EQD.

The goriest thing in my story is Shining Armor crushing the neck of a presumed corpse, hard enough to sever the head and send it skating across the floor

That or a "camera pan" around a room full of ponies who have died, the most graphic of whom had blood coming out of every hole on his head.

At time of submission my fic walked the absolute razor's edge of acceptable goriness with those scenes, and the rest of it is low-gore.

So yeah...

(Pic unrelated.)

>>120030
Aaaaaand I just realized y'all were talking about Ponychan's limits, not EQD's...

Again, why bother with Ponychan rules anyway? As long as you don't link it here, you can talk about anything as long as you don't give a how to manual.

Adding mature stories should simply be an issue of using the submission form, and making a post just like the others but without any link. Give a warning and everyone knows they'll encounter nazi-ninja-werewolf-pony gore porn in page nine, so they can only blame themselves.

>>120025
Y'know, giving us more details (not descriptive, but an overview of what's in it) would help, seeing as it's pretty case-by-case. But the rules are there, courtesy of Anon-Do-Well: http://www.ponychan.net/chan/?p=rules. Scroll a little further down and you'll get:

>What's Not Okay
> visible genitalia
> description, allusion, or depiction of sexual acts in dialogue, text, or images
> underage sexualization of any kind
> impending, implied, or visual rape
> bondage/other kinks
> toys, aids, and devices
> excessive saliva
> tongue play, horn play, or wing play
> breastfeeding
> visible organs
> copious amounts of blood
> overly suggestive or implied gore
> torture/abuse
> mutilation, even if self inflicted
> murder/suicide (funny, that - don't think this is quite the case, since murder is the soul of Grimdark and suicides are usually the soul of BiE...)

No linking in posts to mature content. That means no linking to mature fics. Which is why reviewer threads usually have the line "Email me if you want me to review your mature stuff", rather than "Post it". Of course, if it falls within acceptable lines, i.e. people won't complain/report it, then you wouldn't need to bother with the kerfuffle of emailing. So, tl;dr, give us details so that we can see if you can take the easy path.

>>120033
Or, pretty much this.

>>120034
Oh.. my.

I, uh, I know I'm not technically part of this discussion, but I linked to G-docs of my fic up there somewhere, and well, it does have plenty of murder in it. And an increasing amount of gore as the story goes on. It's not the "point" of the fic, as I myself hate "gore-porn," but there is some of it, you know, for the tension and shock value and stuff. That's why I even posted here in the first place, because while its atmosphere is meant to be rather dark, I didn't think it'd be over the line. Could it be over the line? Oh my. I won't get in trouble for that will I?

>>119976
>>119986
>>120028
>With this, Pinkie turned and began her usual bounce-hopping back into town, her face lit up with a happy smile that radiated its own light.

When attempting any kind of grammatical deconstruction, the simplest method is to try rewriting the sentence while keeping its structure in tact. You can do this by moving phrases around, or by substituting grammatically identical words into the sentence. In this case a simple reorganisation of the sentence does well enough:

>With this, Pinkie, her face lit up with a happy smile that radiated its own light, turned and began her usual bounce-hopping back into town.

So back to the original sentence: With a full stop, the verb is simple past tense, making it an independent clause (and complete sentence), so you are correct on that count. But with the comma, the verb is a non-finite past participle (taking the form of an adjective), making the clause a nominative absolute (and hence not a comma splice).

In other words, both forms are correct!

That said, I don't think the author intended it to read that way. Even if it were intended, most people would mistake it as a mistake. (And the last thing you want is your reader to lose confidence in your editorial diligence, right?)

It's at this point we realise that all too much time and words and brain were spent on a single sentence that, in all likelihood, ought to be rewritten anyway.

Late reply because sudden appointment. Sorry.

>>120030
>>120031
To be fair, I'm eventually shooting for EqD with this because the only story I have there now makes me groan. That is, possibly with a dumbed-down version. Definitely a watered-down version if your story is "on the edge" of their limits.

>>120027
>>120034
Okay, given the story eventually crosses the line on 3-5 of those points, namely possibly lots of blood and visible organs (blame the undead and the scientific mind of the narrator), implications of such, mutilation, and "just off-screen" suicide in a later chapter, I'm pretty damn sure it's off-limits for any direct linking.

So...

>>120026
>>120033
With no objections, I think I'll just take this route here.

>>120038
>With a full stop, the verb is simple past tense, making it an independent clause (and complete sentence), so you are correct on that count. But with the comma, the verb is a non-finite past participle (taking the form of an adjective), making the clause a nominative absolute (and hence not a comma splice).
>In other words, both forms are correct!
English... how does it work?
Well, I guess you learn something new everyday. I really should go work on my grammar knowledge some more; it's rather lacking right now. Anyway, I'm glad someone cleared this up for me, and the author too I guess. It's good to know that I wasn't wrong (technically), but that there was more than one possibility (which, I suppose, there always is).

>It's at this point we realise that all too much time and words and brain were spent on a single sentence that, in all likelihood, ought to be rewritten anyway.
Pretty much...

>>120034

>That feel when--by pure luck--all three of the ponies who've reviewed your fic were cool with it.

Applejinx, MintyRest, Bleeding "Minjask" Raindrops: thank you!

>>120039
Just for the sake of argument:

1.) The rules say you can mention adult stuff but not link or describe them, and the training grounds is open to anyone who wants a review and can find someone to review it.

2.) The spreadsheet exists outside of Ponychan and therefore gives two fucks about the rules of the website as long as it is kept there.

3.) You can make a post here saying that you made a 100k word epic about your OC becoming the worse father in history to see if anyone wants to take the plunge.

Does this mean that, now, the training ground is open to clopfics and gore stories? As long as you don't link them and just provide the link by some other way (points at spreadsheet), you can post that it exists and that you want a review, so I think it follows from that.

>>120037
It's all in the execution as well as personal principles. Plenty subjective, so don't fret =) As long as it doesn't offend the sensibilities of someone enough to report you, which can be achieved with a simple warning, nothing should go wrong. And considering that the people here read fanfiction for leisure to some extent, you can count on most having a fair bit of steel in their stomach.

>>120038
I wasn't banking on you and your superior knowledge of grammar rules coming in to describe with proper terms what I know merely as writing instinct. Oh, no. Not at all. Never even crossed my mind. /liarjackSeriously, though, it's been, what, the second time? It's like winning a $10 lottery with a ticket you picked up from the floor. Heh.

>>120039
>blood, organs, mutilation, off-screen suicide
Again, execution, depends on where you want your line to be. I mean, there's a lot you can pull off without mentioning any details - via bodily reaction, rather than scenic description. I'm no expert, but from personal experience, smell and touch and gag reflex are neat ways to describe the repulsiveness of a situation without any of the offense visual description results in. That and the convenient lack of mention of smell in the rules... but I'll shut up and leave the rest to whoever reviews you. >_>

>>120037
I'm doin your's aren't I? Sorry to say I haven't actually opened it yet, (haven't had the time thanks to lots of homework) but if you'd like to take it off sit just to be safe, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with pretty much any content, so I won't drop it or anything, but I do still respect the rules. It's your call.

>No pic because left laptop in classroom during lunch

>>120045
Yeah, that's you. And don't worry about being late. I understand that real life must come before ponies. That is the sad reality in which we must all live.

As for taking things off site, I can't do much with what's already been posted, can I? For any future chapters, I think I'll stick with just using the submission form, all the while notifying you about the update here in the actual thread (without linking anything). That should be fine, right?

Anyone who knows me will say that I am the LAST person who should be looked to as a judge of what's over the line and what's not, but I wanted to weigh in anyway because I have a personal and moral investment in this matter.

In practice, "what's not okay" is basically "what offends someone." Images depicting nasty stuff offend people easily, but for you to be reported for a fanfic, someone's got to read what you wrote and then hate you so much for it that they report you instead of telling you about it and recommending that you delete it.

I think the best rule of thumb is the (completely full-of-shit but in this case useful) US definition of obscenity: Would a reasonable person find it offensive?

Rules are bullshit. Censorship is the BIGGEST bullshit. Don't worry about not posting what's against the rules; do keep in mind the sensibilities of those around you. Even at that, don't let sensitivity to others stifle you--just use content warnings and such. We know you aren't writing another Cupcakes. If anyone's judgement is that poor they will be out of here quickly; everyone else is probably okay.

Title: Uprising

Tags: [Adventure] [Semi-Dark]

Synopsis: 1 event...12 perspectives...

When Princess Celestia and Princess Luna disappear mysteriously, Equestria enters a period of political tension and fear, culminating in an event that changed everything.

This story follows 12 ponies and the decisions they made before, during and after the event. In a time of such turmoil, can things such as love, friendship and honour be maintained?

Chapter 1: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4tzxuanlalWcjFHNlA0bWkyTjg/edit

Basically, would love to have a review of this first chapter of a fic I've been thinking up recently. The idea is that there are 12 chapters, each following the perspectives of a single pony who had a large role to play in the events before, after and during an uprising. Future chapters will explain the actions of other ponies, and they all intermingle, so I attempted, with the first chapter, to try and hint at enough to give an idea of whats going on, without detracting from the action that occurs in it. In some ways, its more of a prologue-esque chapter.

If anyone was to review it, I would love them to go into as much detail, but to also focus on whether it was gripping, and whether it made you want to read more. This is meant to be a frantic chapter, whilst the others more fleshed out. Ultimately, I would like to know whether it is worth pursuing or whether its a doomed idea haha.

Also, its my first fic, so go easy! lol, jk.

Thanks =)

>>120055
You sneaky devil. I was going to skim this a bit to see if it was something that I would be interested in, but you've got it set to private. Well, you got my attention. I'll go ahead and claim this, but I'll need you to go ahead and make it so that anyone with the link can view it (or, I suppose if you wanted to, you could just give me permission to access it.)

>If anyone was to review it, I would love them to go into as much detail,
>into as much detail
>as much detail
>detail
Oh I'll have you regretting that by the time I'm done. Muhahahahaha!

Seriously though, this sounds interesting enough and I'm curious to see what you do with it. But first—enable commenting!
Depending on when you allow me to view this, and how long it is (please, god, be short) I should have a review for you in a few days tops.

>>120058

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4tzxuanlalWcjFHNlA0bWkyTjg

there is the link again, with comments allowed =) and thanks for giving your time to review this! :D

>>119945
And hello again!

I read over your comments and changed all I could as I found it fitting. If there's something I missed, it's because it's almost midnight and the bed calls to me louder and louder with time.

There's still a few (4) comments in the document I wanted to discuss. They're simply 1-4 from top downwards.

Number 1: Though it may be a Mary Sue alert, those were the colors I had hoped to take, as is pretty standard colors for a jester. (See pic but imagine with less horror-smile.)

Number 2: Oh god, I'm stuck here. Maybe I just need to look at it again tomorrow, but I've slammed myself on a roadblock here and don't know what to put instead of what is already there. Any inspiration would be appreciated but not necessary.

Number 3: I was thinking something along the lines of what follows. Good/bad/meh?

Number 4: Again, here I'm stuck and/or confused by the comment. You want me to put in a physical description of Trickster, right?

Apart from that, if you would look it over again, I would be most grateful.

>>120060
Am I going insane or it there something wrong with this gdocs file. It's acting like a picture or something. I can't grab individual lines to comment on, which is actually more annoying than just reading it on fimfic. Well, whatever the case, for convenience's sake I've taken the liberty of copy/pasting the whole fic into a new gdocs file. I'll give you the link here and this is where I'll make all the comments. Trust me, it'll be much easier this way.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VvoByd1mdjrs5LFoHyxrrZCYZCiI3llH7mt3eIiRGhE/edit

If you have any questions, or you fixed your document so it isn't weird, let me know. For now, I'll go ahead and work on your fic a bit before I gotta leave.

mfw I finally get to do a review in gdocs and the document is being a dick

>>120063

>>120063

I have no idea o_O I put it so that people can comment on the fic if they have the link...should I make it more available? I'll use the other link for now =) thanks for taking the time to take a look at it :D

>>120061

I had a look over it again; it has definitely improved. Comments in-doc!

Finally gonna just get this done and up here.

Title: Fragility
Tags: [Grimdark] [Sad]
Synopsis: The only possible evidence of Twilight's innocence lies in an old children's book from Zecora's homeland. This isn't some random children's book, however; It is a journal, ages old, written in a language that never existed. Now Twilight must read the forgotten text in the only hope of discovering how to fix the very horrors she's been accused of.

----

"Frankly this city is cursed to me anyway. That at least one pony lies dead within the foundation is proof enough of that for me."
—Crystal Shard, A Scientific Journal, Royal University of the Moon

Link: Not available on Ponychan due to site rules. See submission queue.
Chapters to Review: All (Prologue through Epilogue, or 9 chapters total)
Word Count: 32,549 (by Google Docs) 4079 + 2884 + 2999 + 3701 + 5293 + 4613 + 1914 + 3325 + 3741, by chapter in chapter order
Notes: Graphic content, while not inherently the focus, does show up as early as the Prologue. Just a forewarning to reviewers. That being said, that the graphic content is not the focus is my intent; to whomever claims this, please let me know if it ever seems to take focus.

My goal with this is not only to refine it to the best it can be, but also to look into a way to limit the graphic/questionable content to within more acceptable limits, such as those imposed by EqD. I have no idea how close it is, but I'd rather not waste a strike just to find that out.

>>119976
>>119978
Did somepony request a review review? Ooh, it’s a long one. Well then, here we go.

Evaluation of the story
You’ve definitely read the story. Nopony can deny that. You’ve gone through and pointed out several mechanical errors––and a few plot holes––and clearly explained the solution, as well as why it should be that way. 20/20
…Yeah, I think you’ve got a 20 here.
Grammar/Punctuation
My eyes aren’t the best for this, but I didn’t spot anything, so I can’t doc points.10/10

Praise/Criticism/Advice
Well, there isn’t too much in the way of praise, but sometimes there isn’t anything to give praise for. There’s a lot of criticism, but adequate advice to back it up. 9/10
Make sure to give credit when and where it’s due. You don’t want the author thinking their story is terrible if it’s not, and it’s always nice to hear that that joke you spent an hour coming up with went over well.
Format
Mostly line by line, but it’s well organized; The author should be able to figure out where everything is without too much trouble4/5
Everypony’s different. As long as the author knows what you’re referring to, that’s what’s important.
Style
Greentext, spoilers; a snarky comment here, a very relevant video there. Oh yeah, you’ve got style5/5
It’s always nice to see some personality in a good review.
Overall rating
Nice job. I sure hope you get a thank you out of this, because you deserve it.48/50

>>120069

Ha ha! Time to return a favor!

I'm going to need all weekend, probably more, to finish this review, but I will get it done. See you on the other side, my friend!

>>120071
>Style
Greentext, spoilers; a snarky comment here, a very relevant video there. Oh yeah, you’ve got style5/5
It’s always nice to see some personality in a good review.
>Oh yeah, you've got style
>mfw
I was worried that the humor/snarkyness wouldn't go over well, but I'm glad to see that it was actually funny. at least to someone that is

I've always thought you had pretty damn good reviews, so to hear that you thought my review was good makes me think that I may not be completely terrible at this. Hopefully I don't disappoint Scootisaspy by writing a terrible review or something. That would be embarrassing.

Speaking of that:
>>120065
>should I make it more available?
I don't really know how you would do that. For now, just don't worry about it. You can use the gdoc file I created as a reference when going back to your file to correct things.

>>120076
>I was worried that the humor/snarkyness wouldn't go over well, but I'm glad to see that it was actually funny.
It's not so much that you use the sarcasm—honestly, style is entirely subjective, and isn't actually important to the review at all, which is why I weight it at five—as it is that it's useful for helping the author understand the point, instead of just saying "This is wrong". That's why we have the copy/pasta sheet. A robot wouldn't say this: Stuff is quite possibly the most generic phrase in existence. It takes my imagination out behind the shed and makes it sit in a corner for several days, without food or water, and then mildly asks it to go on a nice vacation to the Sahara desert where it can appreciate true scenery. ~ Uma

If you think the author has the hide for it, then have at it, just make sure you have a purpose for it, and aren't just being snarky for the sake of snarkiness.

And hey, don't get all worked up over the quality of your review. I still think my reviews could be a lot better, as much as everypony likes to tell me they're good. Just focus on helping the author improve the story, and the quality should provide itself, your latest review being proof of that.

Title: The Dragon's Notebook
Tags: [ROMANCE][TRAGEDY][DARK][CROSSOVER]
Description:
"Spike was tired of hearing the tales of Rarity's coltfriends, and how they amaze her. Going home sad and broken, he found a black notebook that granted him the power to kill anypony as long as he had their name and face. He made a steely resolve to protect Rarity... at any cost."
Link: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/44879/The-Dragon%27s-Notebook

Let's see... my main issue is whether or not the story is contradictory, or forgets certain setups and events in its runtime. The grammar, I still have my editor picking away at it (he's working on chapter 5) so I totally expect some (maybe many) issues with grammar later on.

Thanks for your time,
Arby Works.

>>120071

Wish I'd known you could have people review your review's, Xzibit style, before I jumped in here. I assume that's another thing I could have learned by paying a little closer attention to the thread. Oh well, you live and you learn. In that vein, I'm totally going to elicit your services the next time I do a review. Hopefully, that'll be soon.

Oh yeah, forgot to tell you I read that chapter I asked you to post. It was weird to see flashbacks of the other chapter after having read that one first. Not sure why, just was. I liked it though. I'm always up for a Trixie fic, though I have to admit I liked the second chapter better. Might just be because I spent more time with it.

>>120087
As it says in the OP: If you would like somepony to rate your review, simply put a * in the subject line when you post.
Reading is fun, but also informative, you should read more

Glad you liked it. Yeah, Even I have to admit the second chapter is better, but I know why. The first chapter is a run-of-the-mill Trixie fic, with inconsistent characterization and all sorts of errors in it that I still need to fix. The second chapter was written when I had just a little bit more skill, and I had picked up a few pointers from reading Background Pony as I wrote that.

>>120093

I feel very silly. I've read through the OP more times than I care to count. There was a time I read it every time I made a post, in order to avoid sounding like a fool. I even read most of the linked documents in an attempt to actually have some idea of what I was talking about.

However, as it turns out, I have never once read anything above that first horizontal line.

You know now that I think about it, there are a lot fewer Trixie origin fics than I would expect. I guess almost everyone that would write them just decides to write a Trixie redemption fic instead. That's a shame, as I think she has a ton of potential in the back story department.

>>120052
Wow. Okay, um… yeah, you might want to take this off site. There’s a lot more in here than I thought there would be. I’m okay with it, but this is very clearly over the line. In fact, if it was anypony but me, it might even be a little too dark. The scene with Applejack was fine but Fluttershy was definitely crossing the line, and that doesn’t even come close to Rarity’s pantry. It’s a good story, don’t get me wrong––In fact it’s a real shame, because this is some of the best dark fiction I’ve seen in a long time––but it’s definitely not within the content guidelines of Ponychan, not by a long shot.

Your phrasing for Twilight is all whack. It sounds like somepony completely different:

I shall; with all due respect; one such; etc… I know this is dark but, stay casual, try saying some of these things out loud, and imagine them in Twilight’s voice. Unless for some reason Twilight is also being corrupted, these are very OOC.

>>120080
>A robot wouldn't say this:
Racist.

>>120109
I don't think racism means what you think it means...

>>120107
>Leaving my email in this post.

Here's a couple of links to help clean up your story. email me if you have any questions regarding the non-site-worthy stuff.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uNpDzdWClJakoF-gPOquS8vJixHZlsmZJPDPAC7Ri-g/edit?hl=en_US
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier

>>120110
Racist
Function: noun
1 : one who practices racism

Racism
Function: noun
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

Prejudice
Function: noun
2 : a (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge b : an instance of such judgment or opinion

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

Problem, biological?

>>120115
And knowing is half the battle.

>>120042
The spreadsheet operates by the same rules as Ponychan. If you can't post it here, you can't post it there.

>>120116
Wrong cartoon, dude. It's:
I have the POWERRRRRRRRRRR!

>>120117
And with our obscure references combined, we are CAPTAIN SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON!