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silver medalist in the retard olympics ♪~ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
I've only ever written a handful of pieces over 2,000 words long. Let's see how well this goes.
This was a very enjoyable read. Dash felt completely in character, as did Twilight. AJ was half and half; her main purpose was mostly just reacting to Dash.
Overall, it was sweet and bitter in all the right ways. I just feel this kind of story would benefit greatly from having a bit more to it. This could easily be hammered out into 20-30k words, which would immensely help the romance aspect not feel as sudden.
A few errors are easy to skip over, but Dash counting on her “fingers” really stood out for me. I think you were going for feathers and just forgot. There was also a weird typo where you misspelled Sugar Belle, making it seem like Fluttermac was a thing. How silly.
Overall, it was sweet and bitter in all the right ways. I just feel this kind of story would benefit greatly from having a bit more to it. This could easily be hammered out into 20-30k words, which would immensely help the romance aspect not feel as sudden.
A few errors are easy to skip over, but Dash counting on her “fingers” really stood out for me. I think you were going for feathers and just forgot. There was also a weird typo where you misspelled Sugar Belle, making it seem like Fluttermac was a thing. How silly.
It started out weird(surely intentional), got *really* interesting as more was revealed, but then it kinda fell off at the end. Not to say the end was bad story-wise; it just seems like it was written with a solid idea of what you wanted, but with only 15 minutes left to execute.
Overall, it was well-written and very enjoyable. I don’t normally like to make predictions, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this makes top 36 easily.
Overall, it was well-written and very enjoyable. I don’t normally like to make predictions, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this makes top 36 easily.
>>AndrewRogue
You made a point about there being no real progression, but I would argue that’s the point. Sunset can’t move on. She’s stuck in a spiral of emptiness, unable to progress to the next stage of her life. Since this takes place over such a short time frame, a large amount of change isn’t expected. As far as story goes, you’re right that there isn’t a whole lot, but I see this more as a peek into the mind of someone who’s lost their everything, rather than a tale of self-betterment or what have you.
You made a point about there being no real progression, but I would argue that’s the point. Sunset can’t move on. She’s stuck in a spiral of emptiness, unable to progress to the next stage of her life. Since this takes place over such a short time frame, a large amount of change isn’t expected. As far as story goes, you’re right that there isn’t a whole lot, but I see this more as a peek into the mind of someone who’s lost their everything, rather than a tale of self-betterment or what have you.
I’ll be upfront and say this is one of the ones I least enjoyed, though I initially found it difficult to put into words exactly why. The writing is mostly sound on a technical level, and barring two instances I’ll get to later, there weren’t any glaring mistakes, per se. It might sound odd, and this is just my opinion, but trying to make your characterization of Starlight more rounded seems to be detrimental to the kind of comedy you’re going for, especially when confined to such a small word count. I hope I can do a decent job explaining my reasoning for this.
After my first read through, I initially thought it might be a Starlight bash fic even though I’m 100% positive it isn’t. Her logic for putting the painting in the museum makes enough sense, but her attitude towards it makes it seem like she cares more about her reputation than the ponies she may have hurt. I understand you were trying to play this for comedy—which is exactly what you should do—but it fell short because you didn’t fully embrace the absurdity of the situation. For example, it would have been better to give Twilight and Starlight completely opposite attitudes from the beginning, such as by having Twilight only care about the ponies while Starlight only cares about getting her art into a museum with no concern at all for those she trapped. Or you could go even further and have neither one care about the ponies and spend more time arguing with each other about artistic merit. Instead, Starlight is shown to care just enough about the ponies to make her apparent lackadaisical attitude towards them feel more like the actions of a caricature one might see in a bash fic (which isn’t helped by the sentence: “So, I found a few willing and consenting friends--” she shot the frozen crowd a withering glare). Looking at the word count, I think this could just be the result of you having to trim and compress quite a bit, and might not be what appears in your average writing.
The ending is also sudden, which seems to be a common side-effect of the word limit for most of these stories. That’s not to say the ending is bad; I actually think the last line is a good one to end on. However, the preceding paragraphs don’t feel at all like they’re leading to an ending, which gives the impression of dropping off a cliff before driving the last couple feet to the finish. Again, I think this is the result of the word limitation, so I’m fairly confident this isn’t a normal problem in your writing.
As for the two instances I mentioned above: The first one was Starlight throwing her “arms” around Twilight, which is a simple mistake with a simple fix. The second was the inconsistency with how the 3D ponies were frozen. At first, they were locked in place by magic, unable to move their jaws. Later, they can speak, but are holding their poses? Later again, they’re back to being locked in place before Starlight unfreezes them. Nothing too major.
There were things I did like about this story. I like the happy little repetition, and I really like the overall concept. Starlight accidentally makes living copies of ponies and traps them in a pocket dimension because she wanted her lines to be straight. It’s wonderfully absurd, which is right up my alley. I just don’t think the absurdity is given the treatment it deserves.
After my first read through, I initially thought it might be a Starlight bash fic even though I’m 100% positive it isn’t. Her logic for putting the painting in the museum makes enough sense, but her attitude towards it makes it seem like she cares more about her reputation than the ponies she may have hurt. I understand you were trying to play this for comedy—which is exactly what you should do—but it fell short because you didn’t fully embrace the absurdity of the situation. For example, it would have been better to give Twilight and Starlight completely opposite attitudes from the beginning, such as by having Twilight only care about the ponies while Starlight only cares about getting her art into a museum with no concern at all for those she trapped. Or you could go even further and have neither one care about the ponies and spend more time arguing with each other about artistic merit. Instead, Starlight is shown to care just enough about the ponies to make her apparent lackadaisical attitude towards them feel more like the actions of a caricature one might see in a bash fic (which isn’t helped by the sentence: “So, I found a few willing and consenting friends--” she shot the frozen crowd a withering glare). Looking at the word count, I think this could just be the result of you having to trim and compress quite a bit, and might not be what appears in your average writing.
The ending is also sudden, which seems to be a common side-effect of the word limit for most of these stories. That’s not to say the ending is bad; I actually think the last line is a good one to end on. However, the preceding paragraphs don’t feel at all like they’re leading to an ending, which gives the impression of dropping off a cliff before driving the last couple feet to the finish. Again, I think this is the result of the word limitation, so I’m fairly confident this isn’t a normal problem in your writing.
As for the two instances I mentioned above: The first one was Starlight throwing her “arms” around Twilight, which is a simple mistake with a simple fix. The second was the inconsistency with how the 3D ponies were frozen. At first, they were locked in place by magic, unable to move their jaws. Later, they can speak, but are holding their poses? Later again, they’re back to being locked in place before Starlight unfreezes them. Nothing too major.
There were things I did like about this story. I like the happy little repetition, and I really like the overall concept. Starlight accidentally makes living copies of ponies and traps them in a pocket dimension because she wanted her lines to be straight. It’s wonderfully absurd, which is right up my alley. I just don’t think the absurdity is given the treatment it deserves.
I think the biggest thing to focus on tweaking would be the characters.
Scarlet, despite being the main protagonist, is very inconsistent with his characterization. He hits Jester for the first disrespectful remark, then acts completely unaffected by the following (more serious) one. He's made to be obsessive about fighting for freedom, but then is suddenly cool and detached while giving a rallying speech about that same subject to Jester, then back to passionate when giving a similar speech to rest of the troops.
Silver and Midnight feel shoehorned in. They show up midway through, then are given the same level of importance as Jester and Scarlet despite having no prior relevance. We're given almost no information about them, but they still end up having more fleshed out personalities than Jester. Silver is given less "screen time" than anyone else, but is then played to be a tragic loss. I found it very difficult to empathize with that.
Jester's betrayal was completely out of left field and seemed illogical. If he was on Sombra's side the entire time, he would've done more to undermine the rebellion by remaining undercover and continuing to spread misinformation or relaying plans to Sombra's forces. At first he seems to place a lot of value on his own survival, but then he kills himself for... what? The dialogue implies the battle was already heavily in the favor of Sombra's forces, so killing himself didn't change the outcome, it just made it quicker.
The end is clearly intended to be tragic, but it relies on the audience empathizing with the characters. There's so little time to connect with anyone that it falls flat in my opinion. If the story were longer, there would be more time for the audience to develop an attachment.
The overall idea is good, but executing it with a limited number of words is very difficult, so don't let this discourage you.
Scarlet, despite being the main protagonist, is very inconsistent with his characterization. He hits Jester for the first disrespectful remark, then acts completely unaffected by the following (more serious) one. He's made to be obsessive about fighting for freedom, but then is suddenly cool and detached while giving a rallying speech about that same subject to Jester, then back to passionate when giving a similar speech to rest of the troops.
Silver and Midnight feel shoehorned in. They show up midway through, then are given the same level of importance as Jester and Scarlet despite having no prior relevance. We're given almost no information about them, but they still end up having more fleshed out personalities than Jester. Silver is given less "screen time" than anyone else, but is then played to be a tragic loss. I found it very difficult to empathize with that.
Jester's betrayal was completely out of left field and seemed illogical. If he was on Sombra's side the entire time, he would've done more to undermine the rebellion by remaining undercover and continuing to spread misinformation or relaying plans to Sombra's forces. At first he seems to place a lot of value on his own survival, but then he kills himself for... what? The dialogue implies the battle was already heavily in the favor of Sombra's forces, so killing himself didn't change the outcome, it just made it quicker.
The end is clearly intended to be tragic, but it relies on the audience empathizing with the characters. There's so little time to connect with anyone that it falls flat in my opinion. If the story were longer, there would be more time for the audience to develop an attachment.
The overall idea is good, but executing it with a limited number of words is very difficult, so don't let this discourage you.