Fair warning: this was already posted to the Training Grounds but hasn't been claimed in the two days it's been posted. If that's a problem for you, let me know. And to answer your question, the board kinda died and most of the bigger "personalities" that could do their own threads left to do other things. Some focused on their own writing, some left to be pre-readers for Equestria Daily, some just stopped being into MLP

Title: Plans
Summary: Twilight Sparkle is coming to visit the human world this weekend! Sunset Shimmer is determined to make it one she won't forget, but at every turn, things aren't working. What path will Sunset and Twilight take as things go wrong in the best possible ways?
Tags: [Romance][Slice of Life]

Link: (Chapter One) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gKLjzagKaQ2OeAKIH9oRSzjrgiOraCFozSzUDBIIzNQ/edit?usp=sharing
So far, we're looking at just chapter one of a pretty long story, I expect. For right now, I'm just looking for some basic feedback in two key areas: one, does this work as a compelling introduction to a Sunset Sparkle shipfic? Two, is the prose clean? Did I miss words, did I spell everything correctly? (Before you chime in with "I don't do line-by-line editing!" this is almost error free. I just miss things and want to catch 'em before it goes to print, as it were.)
Length: 2.3k words

Last edited at Sun, Mar 15th, 2015 18:18

>>132132
>What happened here? Did private reviewer threads go out of style or something?

Population dropped due to the board split with mlpchan. Everything went to hell. FiMfic is designed in such a way that fics can become popular without EqD. No prereaders shoveling fics this way plus multiple simultaneous outlets with no quality control results in a /fic/ that is slow and empty.

Slow and empty places don't do well on the internet, and now we're on the brink of being merged with /Art/ and /Collab/.

Combine with the normal burnout cycles, and what you see is what you get.

>>132134

>Population dropped due to the board split with mlpchan.

Gee, I'd sure feel bad about supporting that split if I had had any real clout in the decision.

Whatever, slow suits me just fine.

>>132133

>pic

>>132135
Is that a yes? Is that just the review? Where are we at here?

>>132136

Yeah, sorry, that was a bit ambiguous.

That's "Request received, gimme a couple hours or so."

>>132133

>Two, is the prose clean? Did I miss words, did I spell everything correctly?
I didn’t find many editing issues and what few I did find, I commented about in the doc.

>one, does this work as a compelling introduction to a Sunset Sparkle shipfic?

I have a number of problems with it.

The biggest is probably the lack of tension. In a number of places you hint that absolutely no one will be available to hang out with Twilight and Sunset when Twilight crosses over, but you go ahead and make Sunset go through with the motions of confirming that yes, in fact, those hints are correct. You give the reader little to no reason to think that these efforts might succeed; even where you bring it up as a possibility, it sounds more theoretical than like an actually attainable goal. Because of this, what you have here so far does not have the interesting properties that a story about shattered expectations would have; rather, so far, it is a straightforward narration of fulfilled expectations. No tension, no hook. So, because of that failing alone, I think it does not do a great job as a story opener.

However, I have other gripes. The progress of the plot, but more importantly, that of the emotional dynamics of the conversations between the characters, feels like it’s on rails. The conversation with Rarity and Fluttershy, especially, feels like the fiction equivalent of the I-V-vi-IV chord progression. I also think your shipping goggles are showing in your characterization. It simply doesn’t make logical sense for someone like Rarity or Pinkie to assume a romantic interest in a same-sex character on, like, no basis whatsoever, or at least not one that we’re shown onscreen. Also it really irked me that you had Rarity tease Sunset in front of Fluttershy--I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be more discreet and cosmopolitan about that sort of thing. But going back to the weird thing I said, that it felt like the emotions were on rails: one way to see what I mean is to look at just how casual and uncompromising they all are. They just can’t do what Sunset wants, period, and that’s that. Maybe it’s just me but anyone I know would at least take a second and think about it, think if they could maybe get out of their other obligations somehow or work around them or work the new suggestion into them or at any rate find some way to make a compromise. If after thoughtful consideration they still couldn’t find a way to compromise, they would then proceed to decline with heartfelt apologies etc. But your characters skip over this intermediate step. The overall feeling is that you’re structuring your dialogues just to sort of “hit all the bases” as it were, rather than to try and make them interesting and realistic.

There’s also the point that, aside from what I already pointed out about how you announce the results of Sunset’s recruitment trip ahead of time, the plot so far has a very linear A-then-B-then-C structure. I mean, you actually have her doing the same exact thing four times in a row. It might be realistic (though I would think modern girls would just use their smartphones) but I would try and find another way to convey the whole thing in, like, a single scene, and work in some velociraptors on the side or something. Besides the monotony of the plot structure, I also--and maybe this is just idiosyncratic to me--but I really dislike it when writers just copy and paste show assets into their stories. “Smitten kitten,” Rainbow Dash bouncing a soccer ball on her knee, all that sort of stuff just comes off lazy. Hell, it’d still be lazy if it was canon itself doing the recycling, so I’m not inclined to give fanfic writers a lot of slack on that sort of thing.

One more thing contributes to putting your story so far on the sleepy side: it uses dialogue to expodump but doesn’t have much action to hold interest. I mean, there are a few little skits but they just aren’t involved enough. The part with Rainbow and the soccer ball, or the part with Rarity and the pins--those could conceivably hold a lot of interest, but only if they were structured more like little mini-stories with their own conflict, tension, ups and downs, all heading toward a final satisfying resolution. Otherwise they’re just filling space and levying a tax on the reader.

In sum: clean prose; not an effective hook; uninteresting plot structure; expodumpy dialogue; little tension; forced character interactions; lack of creative ideas.

Feel free to follow up with any questions, comments, or rebuttals.

Last edited at Sun, Mar 15th, 2015 20:44

>>132138

Title: Cutie Mark Crusader Dreamwalkers, Yay!
Tags: [Adventure]
Synopsis: Princess Luna has served as Guardian of the Dreamscape for millennia, patrolling dreams, destroying nightmares, and generally making sure that nopony ever has to be scared of the monsters in their closet. For just as many years, she's managed to perform her role without incident. However, during a routine dream patrol, she comes across a group of intruders: the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who have entered the Dreamscape to find their cutie marks.
Unfortunately for them, the Dreamscape doesn't take kindly to outsiders.
Now, Luna must find and return the fillies to Equestria, or else the Dreamscape—and the universe itself—will fall apart by the seams.

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/242001/cutie-mark-crusader-dreamwalkers-yay

It's already been edited a few times, and it's currently in the pipe for EqD pre-reading. At this point, I'm mostly looking for comments on my prose.

>>132138
>assume a romantic interest in a same-sex character on, like, no basis whatsoever
So what's the real issue here? The "no basis whatsoever" or the "same-sex character"? Because one is a difference of opinion in approaching character's romantic interests and the other is something that can be addressed in story.

>casual and uncompromising
>proceed to decline with heartfelt apologies etc.
That's something I can work in. Change how the refusal is delivered and dealt with.

>copy and paste show assets
"Smitten kitten" is not as easy to defend, so I'll chalk it up to a catchphrase of Rarity's when dealing with other's crushes. The "Rainbow Dash bouncing a soccer ball" thing is more of a character trait, same as if the pony version was, say, napping in a cloud or doing tricks. I notice you didn't pick on Rarity's designing dresses or Pinkie's being with the Cakes and baking treats. Those could both be examples of "copy and past(ing) show assets." Why, then, the focus on things specific to Equestria Girls?
Point there, then, is that it's less copying out of laziness and more establishing that this is the character and what they do, why they're in a given place, how they handle a situation. It's a bit of shorthand to say that yes, (on the surface at the very least) this is Character X because they're doing or saying what Character X does or says.

>No tension, no hook. So, because of that failing alone...
Problematic, then. It sounds like some relatively minor adjustments to how the story builds up each interaction could help address that.

>uninteresting plot structure; expodumpy dialogue; little tension; forced character interactions; lack of creative ideas.
OK, I have an issue with your conclusion here. Uninteresting plot structure you explained. I don't disagree, but I see it as less of a problem. More variety in scenes would be a good thing, and probably related to some of the above fixes.
The "expodumpy dialogue" you don't explain at all. I get the concept of an expodump. I get where you were saying there should be more action. I had a conversation earlier with a friend regarding his thoughts that amounts to something similar. A difference between balancing the pace of the chapter by excluding some more description and narration and including more detail to flesh some things out. So I guess my concern here is one of clarity. Are you saying that I should break up parts of the dialogue, slowing the pace, in order to convey more action in each scene? Is the dialogue itself the problem, and it should be cut down while keeping other parts the same? Or should it go so far as to cut down the dialogue and focus more on the action?
Also unsure on the "forced character interactions" bit. Is it the "railroading" of the plot that forces characters together to interact, or is it the "shipping goggles" of characterization that mean some characters are doing things unexpectedly?
The last one is the one I have the most issue with. The "lack of creative ideas" criticism comes from where, exactly? What is it based on? As best as I can understand from the review, that fits the "copy and paste of show assets" thing you mentioned. Which, aside from one line of dialogue and a character trait, nothing else is mentioned.

I guess I then have just one last comment and one last question. We'll start with the question. If the rest of the story were finished or least in such a state as to have more material to read, would you continue reading for pleasure?
The second is a comment more of... I don't have a gauge for how you feel about shipping. I've got a couple of other stories that I feel this one is going to be in league with. They've done well, in terms of feedback from people who I consider to be good at looking at a story and helping me to polish it up. With something like this, though, I don't want to be limited to my usual "bubble" of feedback, which is why I'm seeking some outside help. My concern, though, is the help being too "outside" what I'm aiming for. It does me no good to have feedback from someone who's preferred genre is horror, for instance, or someone who militantly ships Twilight and Rainbow Dash or Twilight and Flash Sentry.
Not that your feedback isn't valuable, I do thank you for your time and attention, but to what degree do I need to take that feedback with a grain of salt, you know?

>>132141

Might start waxing rambly here, so apologies in advance.

>So what's the real issue here? The "no basis whatsoever" or the "same-sex character"? Because one is a difference of opinion in approaching character's romantic interests and the other is something that can be addressed in story.
Thinking about it, I guess the answer is both, for different reasons. If I'm reading shipping, generally I want to be shown the romantic interest blooming first, before everyone else knows about it or talks about it. It's a private thing and how a character responds to the realization that they're developing a crush depends on the character. So when I complain about "no basis" what I mean is, on the one hand, that I haven't yet seen any kind of behavior out of Sunset that would lead me to believe, on the basis of an objective consideration of the events, that she actually has a crush on Twilight. But on the other hand, neither have the other characters in the story, at least as far as I can know so far from what you've written. To the extent that you are making the other characters take Sunset's slightly over-enthusiastic concern over Twilight's visit as evidence for it, I simply don't buy that as being something that someone could realistically consider evidence of a crush. The problem with it being a same-sex romance is that, at least in a universe where most people are heterosexual, there seems to be even less reason to assume romantic interest on the basis of such an ambiguous gesture which would not necessarily imply a romantic interest even if it were toward someone of the opposite sex. On the other other hand, I suppose that might have been your way of implying that Sunset Shimmer (and maybe Twilight Sparkle as well?) is actually already out of the closet prior to the time the story begins and that her attraction to girls is something that the others already take for granted. In that case I can only protest that my pre-existing headcanon must have led me to make certain assumptions that confused me.

>The "Rainbow Dash bouncing a soccer ball" thing is more of a character trait, same as if the pony version was, say, napping in a cloud or doing tricks.
I also don't like those kinds of things. They always feel perfunctory and uninteresting to me.

>I notice you didn't pick on Rarity's designing dresses or Pinkie's being with the Cakes and baking treats. Those could both be examples of "copy and past(ing) show assets." Why, then, the focus on things specific to Equestria Girls?
I could and maybe should have included those as examples, but I don't have a lot of patience for multiplying examples once I think I've already made my point clear enough. So, the answer to the question at the end is: no reason.

>Point there, then, is that it's less copying out of laziness and more establishing that this is the character and what they do, why they're in a given place, how they handle a situation. It's a bit of shorthand to say that yes, (on the surface at the very least) this is Character X because they're doing or saying what Character X does or says.
Okay, I understand the goal now, but I still dislike the means you chose to attain it. Though that kind of thing does serve the higher goal you described, it's not interesting in itself. I realize "interesting" is pretty subjective, so you're free to disagree with me, but just as a thought experiment, try to think of something--other than nothing at all--that you could have had those characters doing that would be less interesting than what you actually had them doing.

>The "expodumpy dialogue" you don't explain at all.
I probably latched onto this criticism because it was most prominent in the very first scene and thus stuck in my memory. I could point out a few examples if it's not already obvious what I'm talking about, but probably I overemphasized this criticism in my first post. Probably also the effect was amplified because expodumping is essentially a flaw of pacing and I was seeing pacing problems everywhere.

More generally, expodumps have their place. Their place is in a natural lull in the overall pacing of the scene. I assume you know how pacing works: generally the highest action comes at points of resolving tension, but tension is what keeps the reader turning the page, so you put your necessary exposition at points where tension is already high, or else use the exposition itself in such a way as to raise the tension. The bit in the first scene--which was what stuck in my mind initially--with Sunset explaining about the Race and about how Twilight is coming, and Applejack responding with an essay on her family's collective unconscious... besides the fact that it's kind of weird to imagine those exact sets of words coming out of the mouths of those characters at that time, there's the fact that this is how the story starts, so the excitement, the hook is just not there.

>Also unsure on the "forced character interactions" bit. Is it the "railroading" of the plot that forces characters together to interact, or is it the "shipping goggles" of characterization that mean some characters are doing things unexpectedly?
It's partly the unexpected/unrealistic actions, but more it's the sense that you had a predetermined course for each of these conversations, that this course was conventional and popular and contained no surprises (hence my reference to pop chord structures), and that while the actions of the characters in them were on one level plausible, on another they just didn't feel authentic.

>The "lack of creative ideas" criticism comes from where, exactly? What is it based on?
It's based on the fact that I wasn't surprised by anything that was important to the story. But let me take a look: I'll look through again and write down anything that strikes me as though it couldn't have been lifted from the show or from a "standard generic EQG fic" and then we'll see what we've got.
- Semi-Annual Seasons Race for the City
- Rake Up Canterlot
- animal shelter’s parade float for the Summer
Solstice Celebration parade
- "Fluttershy is the lead..."
- Rainbow's camera with the big memory card
- Mrs. Cake's wine
That's about it. It's only 2300 words so the number of the ideas is not the issue. The real problem is that these ideas are just extraneous side material that add flavor to the story but don't affect it substantively. The story itself, so far, is entirely straightlaced and vanilla.

EDIT: Thinking about it a little more, maybe some of these things are going to become important later? I don't want you to get the idea that I'm criticizing parts of your story that I haven't seen yet; when I say these things are extraneous, I only mean that that's what they appear to be as of now. Also, by how "important" a given element is to a story, I mean something roughly like a measure of how easily that element could be replaced with something different without affecting the rest of the story very much. And so I just want to stress again that up to this point, considering the 2.3K introduction as a whole, that any of these elements could be fairly easily replaced with others without substantially affecting what you have. So, all that just to clarify what I mean by saying those things are unimportant. /EDIT

>If the rest of the story were finished or least in such a state as to have more material to read, would you continue reading for pleasure?
The answer is no, but on the other hand I scarcely read any ponyfic for pleasure anymore, and when I do my taste is really weird and idiosyncratic, so the test of whether I would read a story for pleasure or not is really not a useful one to apply for most purposes.

>I don't have a gauge for how you feel about shipping.
I can be moved by shipping. I think anyone who says Dear Esther was better than Gone Home, for example, needs to put down the bong. I don't like most shipfics because they tend to cop out with sex appeal, or move too fast, or not play the tension right, or betray the realism of the relationship dynamics, or break the magic circle. However, I have to question why my opinion of shipping should matter with regard to the introductory piece you submitted to me. Your piece may be setting the ground for future shipping, but in itself it contains very little by way of the things that appeal to me in a shipfic qua romance. None of the giddy feelings, none of the uncertainties and imagined terrors, none of the passion or regret or shifted paradigms or even physical pleasures, none of any of that is present in what you've shown me so far. There's only, if you'll pardon the expression, Rarity singing "Sunset and Twilight sitting in a tree," and Sunset saying "Nuh-uh! Shut up!" But I'm well past the age where liking girls is something I'd be embarrassed to have someone else find out about, so I really can't relate to that emotion.

So, to answer your question more directly, I like what I consider good shipping but I dislike most shipping. So I'm not sure what that means about how I feel towards shipping as a whole.

Last edited at Mon, Mar 16th, 2015 01:55

>>132142
I appreciate the clarification, it helps. I read your post before you made the edits about the creative ideas. Some of those are going to be cropping up later. That's a poor excuse, but there are a number of actions that happen that will set up things later. In particular, Sunset's relationship with Applejack is significant for the first half of the story. Other things, like the joke about wine, are just there for flavor. Such things are a signature, of sorts.

And in particular with the shipping and Sunset's interaction with Rarity, that gets explored further. And the romance does happen to much greater effect. Again, bit of a cop-out in saying that without having it be part of the story now, but it happens.

And as far as the same-sex attraction bit goes... http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsBi applies to basically anything I write, so you and I disagree on the fundamentals of hetero vs non-heterosexuality. I tend to avoid the tropes of LGBT angst and drama. The other part, the Sunset not showing interest but other characters "seeing" it comes from a place of Sunset being (willfully) ignorant of her developing feelings. Once again, fair criticism since you don't have other material in front of you to use. But there is a specific story purpose for her denying it: she's not yet aware of it.

Also, stick around IRC for a little longer than 15 minutes next time. I don't check #fic as often as other channels

>>132139

Since you specified it, I stuck to notes on prose this time around. If you want story critique too, let me know and I’ll give you my more standard treatment. Unfortunately I don’t have the attention span required to catch all or even most important prose-related issue in a 7K story, so I’ll just read through once or twice and point out anything that sticks out to me.

First paragraph and I see some verb tense issues. “Many ponies had tried” (past perfect) but “Some suggested” (past). “Princess Luna had found” but “as hard as you can”.

My ear is telling me “hit them as hard as you can with whatever you can” is probably poor for another reason besides the tense of “can”. I think it’s this: because you wrote “one solution to work consistently”, I really want it to read “to hit them as hard as you could etc.” I don’t have an explanation for this, it just sounds better to me.

>come up with their own solutions to
>was looking to put into use
>The city itself looked to be some twisted version
These are slightly wordy. Tighter prose would probably use phrases like “solve the problem of,” “tried to employ,” and “The city was a twisted version”.

>As much as she hated the cliché, the sky couldn't be described as anything other than dark and stormy.
I don’t generally like lampshading, but I can’t really tell you that this particular use of it doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the scene.

The second paragraph is full of similar sentence structures.

>overload their senses and obliterate them
Since it’s magic and all I guess it’s too much to ask for things to make sense, but I’ve never heard of someone dying from a sense overload.

>It was her burden alone.
It’s the blue pony’s burden, then, eh? Scrap this, it sounds pretentious and anachronistic. And speaking of pretentious:
>Only Luna, the chosen Guardian
Why chosen? Chosen by whom? That’s a weak word that’s been eviscerated by lolsoepic Tolkien wannabes, and more to the point it conveys a sombre rather than a humorous tone.

>For example:
You can delete this.

>Luna could only smirk
Another wordy phrase. Why not “Luna smirked?”

>an oversized bottle of shampoo trample down one of the streets
First, is “oversized” really a strong enough adjective? Second, though I like the effort, “trample” generally denotes inflicting some injury. I think you mean “tromp” or something like that.

>That explains why this dream looks like Manehattan, she thought.
I don’t like the sudden shift to italics for thoughts. I’d rather you had either started using the italics from the start or stuck with the third-person narration.

>For all intents and purposes
Delete.

>The literal Laws of Reality
>the literal embodiment of chaos
I’m complaining about this on two counts. First, that you used “literal” twice in a short space, and second, that using “literal” for emphasis is a pretty modern innovation, which makes me doubt that Luna would employ it in her speech or thought.

>Luna rolled her eyes
Not sure if I’d call this a prose issue but rolling eyes and blushing have to be the two most overused actions in ponyfic. (Smirking is third.)

>Pieces of gray brick melded
>When her spell touched the melting bricks
Those aren’t the same word. They aren’t even synonyms.

>That was the reasoning that Apple Bloom came to as she walked through the orchard she had found.
Randomly pointing out another wordy sentence.

>Unfortunately, it seemed like it was winter in Backbeat's mind
That seems like a POV violation. How would Apple Bloom know who Backbeat is?

>The dead, jagged trees she had passed had risen from the earth and grown branches for limbs.
Yes, that is what trees do, heh. Find a clearer way to convey what you mean.

>Indeed, it was a hairbrush, its bristles were topped with glinting steel spikes.
Comma splice.

>a massive bottle of shampoo towered over the crowd, goo inside of it bubbling.
the goo?

>Backbeat
Okay, I’ve finished the story by this point and I’ve got to say I don’t think the name “Backbeat” really sounds very ponyish or fits the tone at all. Maybe it’s an OC of yours or someone you know? Because if not, I would definitely change it to something more, eh, you know what I mean.

>her pegasi instincts
Her pegasus instincts. By way of comparison, my own instincts are human instincts, not humans instincts or humanity instincts.

>Luna had just been sent to the ground for the third time
I think this is a run-on paragraph.

>Her speed didn't matter when it came to accuracy
That’s awkward. Maybe “Her speed didn’t affect her accuracy”?

>splitting straight through every creature she saw
Not including the Crusaders, I hope.

And that’s all you’ll get from me. Sorry I can’t be more help, but I just don’t have the wherewithal to examine stories on the line-by-line level. I've tried before, and it always ends in insanity and burnout.

Overall I’d say the level of your prose is about average for fanfic writers who actually know what they’re doing and can tell an entertaining story. I was never amazed by it, but neither did it ever make me sigh or cringe. It’s wordy in some spots but not distractingly so. Your descriptions and metaphors are inexact by being simplistic and exaggerated, which gives a cartoony feel to the story. The attempts at humor were spotty and I suspect that has something to do with pacing, setups, and so forth, but just to give you an idea of what I mean, I’d compare the humor value of this story to the heat value of a microwaved piece of leftover lasagna. On the whole it’s hot, definitely, but it’s not hot all through, just in spots, and while you’re eating it you can’t really get a grip on whether to classify it as hot or cold or warm in your mind... wow, I’ve dissolved into incoherence already.

Good luck with publication.

Last edited at Tue, Mar 17th, 2015 00:09

>>132149
Thanks, sweetie pie :)

Sorry about the long length--I very rarely write fics that are less than 7k words.

http://writeoff.me/fic/746-Lunnas-Ache

2001 words

To enlighten you.

>>132155

Haha, what? A quick glance tells me this story must be inspired by Finnegans Wake.

For the sake of the Auld Lunar Princess, I'll see what I can do.

>>132155

First of all: I wish your statement of purpose had been more detailed and/or useful. You might not want to air all your mysteries to your readers, but since I’m trying to give you some kind of intelligent feedback on your story, it wouldn’t hurt you to crack open the darkroom a little and let me see what’s going on in your head.

Now then. On a first reading, I tried to follow the events of the story--working on the assumption that the story actually had events--and found I was completely unable to.

On a second reading, I think I can discern a character called Darling in the opening and the concept that she’s in bed with him. The theme of sex is conveyed by phrases like “soft rousings powdowned her neithers”, “Loveylosey, have a floozy”, “beside” (bedside), and “Clitted and cracked, she rode the bedozing gray and brown cuddlumpus down” which incidentally gave a clue to the identity of “Darling”.

I took a few years of Latin but I have no clue what “Tenumbria” could be referencing. I could only think of the word penumbra.

Once “A cottage crossed the threshold” I lose all sense of space. I can’t tell at all if this is supposed to be in a dream Luna’s journeying through or what. I did recognize the fragments from the first hundred letter word in Finnegans Wake which supposedly represents the Fall, but I don’t see the relevance.

Next Twilight enters somehow, and also Duckytoy. I don’t understand what’s going on, all I’m understanding is a few references to events from the show, and I also can’t shake the suspicion that if I had watched some of the episodes more than once or twice I would recognize more.

Now we have a more definite reference to Discord, namely the juxtaposition of “Disco” and “hung up by the cord in the rafters”. I don’t understand the phone call, the apoplexy, Groping Oats. Maybe the apoplexy is Applejack somehow.

Now a hundred letter word. Entirely unintelligible to me except for some words that are spelled a bit like “apple” and “pinkie”.

Brillig borogroves I recognize, even though in Carroll’s poem they are borogoves (and they are mimsy). But with a story like this it’s impossible to tell whether you’ve misspelled anything.

At any rate I think this part is set in nature? There are plenty of animal actions and sounds. Now there is Lazarus and blasphemy juxtaposed. Huh.

Next is a completely unintelligible paragraph. I think I see Odysseus in there. Is it about sex again? Are all those “h” words jumbles of Greek words that start with aspirations? Who knows.

“Fleece the golden Celery” okay so I know there was a thing called the golden fleece in legend. Now I see radar and MIG together. Vegetables. I don’t know what they mean.

No clue at all about the next three paragraphs. You’ll notice I’ve been completely lost for like ten paragraphs now and I’m just playing word-association.

Now we see Luna again and it looks like she’s washed up on a riverside in a pile of flowers. Or something, who knows. Now she’s being penetrated. “Mortal” twice but I don’t know what it means.

Will the moon fall afloor? Maybe she’s prolonging the night? Something that is apparently a reference to Shakespeare.

Morse Code for “chaos”.

And now a computer terminal. Maybe this was supposed to be the part where the story gets more readable, since obviously everyone knows how to code, but I’m one of the rare exceptions who don’t so this is another ordeal for me.

“discord - an interface to the spirit of chaos” -- I’m latching on to this and thinking maybe it’s supposed to be incredibly important since it’s written so plainly. Like, he’s not himself the spirit of chaos, he’s an avatar of it, an “interface” to it, which somehow justifies the use of code. So maybe the actions in the computer sequence here are representative of Luna trying to interact with Discord. “unless overridden by seductions; see: /etc/heart.config.” Hmm.

Now the phone comes back. Wonder if there’s a relation there. “8 Systemic adrimmistr (usually only for yellow tree roots)” clearly (for a given definition of “clearly” I suppose) refers to Fluttershy. Synapsis is a thing that occurs during meiosis, so there’s the sex thing again rearing its head. “coulored text” -- wonder if that’s a typo.

Howth Castle and ENVIRONS. A commodius vicus of recirculation. Grace B. Eating, oh I get it now, grace before eating. That also showed up earlier. I’m surprised I haven’t seen HCE or ALP yet though.

I want to think this contributor history is somehow important. I can’t make heads or tails of it though.

More lovey stuff, and the morse code for SOS.

Now Luna’s apparently on a shore again. Bellystains? Um... how about that. I don’t understand the play at all. I had to google “ghoti” to get the reference, which I had heard before but forgotten.

Dis I think is an old greek god, and Cor means heart. John 1:1 for some reason in two languages, rewritten with Chaos instead of deum/θεόν and Discord instead of deus/θεός.

Dilation and shrinking. More desire. Oh, don’t ask why. [www.youtube.com] Coeur de lion. Phallus, also the Fall.

Unumbrious, so, opposed to Luna. Rest of the paragraph is impenetrable.

All I caught was “rimming”.

What’s this, a plain sentence? “His lonely pacing across these dreams, and always his harshest touch I can’t abhor.” What do you do with a drunken sailor. Mumblings of murder. “Hell Sun”? Seems significant.

Orgasm sounds, I assume.

“I understood nothing less,” yeah fuck you too buddy. Now it seems like Luna and Discord are talking. I don’t understand German, but google translate suggests it has to do with the coming light. “Downfall. This is the fight of day and night.” Now the German for “I’m dying”.

Oh okay, I didn’t get “Rather just the opposite” before but I guess I do now. If Luna was searching Discord’s dream then it would be the opposite. Still, wouldn’t it be stupid if Luna got banished to the moon because she didn’t want to end the night because she was having a fling with Discord and wanted it to last longer? How weird would that be, huh.

I have now read the story twice, once in about ten minutes and the second time in about an hour, taking notes.

I don’t know what you expected me to be able to say about this thing. I think it’s enjoyable in a perversely intellectual, masochistic sense, but it’s not at all enjoyable in the way that stories are enjoyable. I think there is actually no narrative here, only a collection of connotated themes. At any rate if the story had concrete events there were none I could discern. On the other hand this is about as close as you can get to representing chaos in literary form. Any more chaotic and you would just be producing harsh noise. The difference is that this story is like switching channels on the television really quickly whereas harsh noise is like watching a single channel that’s nothing but static.

It is utterly impossible for me to give any suggestions for “improving” a story that is not even a story. So having read the story a second time and recorded my impressions, I wash my hands of the thing and wish you luck. Overall I think you were at least half trolling me by submitting this to my thread.

>>132162
>Overall I think you were at least half trolling me by submitting this to my thread.
I will admit that Lunnas Ache was an attempt to surpass both Hot Shot and Hugh Jelly in JaAm Adventures [writeoff.me] and A Basilisk For One [writeoff.me] in terms of sheer brain-breakage.

>I took a few years of Latin but I have no clue what “Tenumbria” could be referencing.
tenebrous + umbra

It's very shadowy, okay.

>Now a hundred letter word. Entirely unintelligible to me except for some words that are spelled a bit like “apple” and “pinkie”.
Actually a direct quote from the Wake. Finnegansweb describes it as "applause terms".

>I don’t know what you expected me to be able to say about this thing.
I expect you to die, mr bond.

(Only joking.)

I wanted someone to take a fresh read of it and give me a bit of feedback. I have a revision in the works that will put the total wordcount far higher than the initial 2001 words, but I didn't really want to bog you down with too much nonsense. I did change around some of the scenes with certain questionable interpretations, however, e.g.:

She was in dratters. Surveying the shattered housing prodowned her heathers.

All busies preturned the cordicos crossing to her south. Apt. Living hazy, have a daisy. Derelected dandy hides the hillside.

Apt.

Thraughts wended which way and the other. Lackuracy strofe her but a little. Scandles of levity tore her down. Devest tore her now till she was broken and holy.

Clocked and cracked, she rose with the dedraggling gray and brown caddolympus hound.

Hound.

Apt, that.

Hound.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.

If you want to see a sort-of-decoded version, you can check out this document [docs.google.com].

Last edited at Sun, Mar 29th, 2015 00:49

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