I've been looking at this for a week, and I just can't do it.

> ten hundred fifteen.
Made me spin off, looking for notation for how military time would read it, and after distracting me for about an hour:
Your meeting is at 1812 [Eighteen-Twelve] hours.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35006/how-should-one-say-times-aloud-in-24-hour-notation

Which still doesn't entirely make sense, except that your notation says that the time is 1000 15, which is entirely wrong (Ten hundred being 10 o'clock, so 1015 would still be ten fifteen).

If I get that distracted, there's something seriously lacking.

> It was as if he had multiple personality disorder and could call on it like a unicorn calls on magic.
Hrmm... Okay. I'm going to close that emotional closet for you. Because I'm not going to flip out today.

> Flash was immensely proud of his blemish-free record.

The problem is, that this is a fundamentally well written piece, with a very small target audience.
You're looking for people who want to read Slice of Life stories staring Flash Sentry, who's not in the process of sticking it to Princess Twilight Sparkle.

It's silly, I like the OCs, but you don't advertise any of that anywhere on the packaging. Reading the cover it's a buddy cop movie with Flash and Blueblood.
What I seem to have gotten is a slice of life about guard life.

And you didn't even mark it as SoL. You marked it as adventure. Finishing your first chapter, I don't think there will be any sort of adventure. Comedy is fundamentally subjective, but I get the feeling that Rose is a more interesting character overall, and Flash is a pastiche of other characters slapped together under the heading of compartmentalized thinking.

That means that Flash either spends a lot of time in his head, or that he's 'tempestuous'. Which means I threw a tarp over OOC moments by saying he's a bunch of characters at once.
It's not a fair statement, but I'm not a fair reviewer anyways.

You don't really address how he would live for a thousand years without being affected by the crystal empire, you don't really define the guard ponies that he interacts with, and your descriptions are dry and expositional.

It's dry and functional. I can tell you wanted to write a story about the royal guard, via Flash; but I don't know why you picked Flash.
He's really a dull character. Perfect and polite, but wacky and free spirited. It's such a range of characters that he comes off tasteless and watered down in the first chapter.

I don't have to read any other chapters, so your first 500 words are where I decide how much I'm going to read.

You spend the first three paragraphs talking about how the Crystal Empire (which we are not seeing), is different than Canterlot (which you describe in building materials). Which would be interesting if this story was about a crystal architect relocating to Canterlot for a refresher course.
Note to future self...

>>132124
Ah. I almost lost hope for this thread.

Let me start with the "in my defense..." stuff
>I really screwed up the military time line, and have no excuse

>It's the job of a guard to be quiet, still, and vigilant all day. That being said, guards can't be all Robocop when they're not guarding anything. The point I was trying to make is that he was trained to suppress his personality while on duty, and he was good at it.

>The first chapter is indeed SoL, but it progressively picks up into an adventure, eventually going the worldbuilding route when the Maretonia arc begins. In the long run, adding the Slice tag for just one or two chapters would be pointless.

>You don't really address how he would live for a thousand years without being affected by the crystal empire

Affected how? Mentally? Because I though this bit explained it well
>"And it's not like "here one moment, there the next" kind of deal." The pegasus went on. "We could walk and talk just like any other day in Equestria, but time just refused to flow. The sun never set, the grass never grew, we never got tired, hungry, or old. Nopony was born, nopony died. Life was just on pause for a while. After the first, I don't know, two hundred years or something we got used to it. I became a hell of a whiz at poker..."

Anyhoo, thank you for your time and your honesty. You do raise some valid points that I'll take into consideration.