Another technically accomplished story in terms of prose and presentation. Once again, however, I can make a clear comparison between the story I just read (Childhood's End) and the one I am currently reading. Whereas Childhood's End was a story that had a bit too much fat hanging off it, this story is thin to the point of being almost skeletal, which doesn't give much room to explain the idiosyncrasies of its plot.

>>Xepher
>>Bad Horse

I did not read the council members as particularly antagonist, more along the lines of simply dispassionately bureaucratic and concerned for their own positions. I think the main conflict with the story is between Celestia and herself of doing what is right for her in an emotional sense and not a practical one, but the set up doesn't facilitate that idea well enough to distinguish what the subtleties of these differences are and instead reads as a more polemic argument than likely the author intended. However, there is not enough content to support that tension, and for all the nice imagery used, the story is set-up to have a predetermined resolution in which the reader is already aware of the outcome.

I politely disagree with the majority of Bad Horse's assertions on the issues of the presentation, and I agree with Wyvern's assessment on the emotive element of the story as the place where the author should work at. Increasing the punch is necessary, but it needs to be subtle otherwise it will come across as melodramatic.

Opinion: Above Average, with the understanding that it is mainly supported on the composition side of it but would otherwise be placed in "Okay."

>>MrNumbers

It's simple; Because that's not established in-story. Your critique is valid.

See, that's where I disagree. Having to establish symbolism in-story makes them kinda useless.

Also, I like stories that exploit the ponyverse for exploring real-world dynamics, therefore "un-pony" was never a valid criticism for me. You can use the toolbox that is MLP:FiM to tell stories for children, but it says nowhere in the rulebook that you cannot use it to tell real-world stories.

I cannot find fault with this story. I agree with >>Bad Horse on all the points he made, with the only distinction that I didn't like the story one bit.

Fun Early Modern English fact:

Both thy and thine can be correct, depending on the context. The rule is simple:

"Thy" (and "my") are the normal, default forms for possessives. "Thy sword", "my queen", etc.

"Thine" (and "mine") are used BEFORE A WORD STARTING WITH A VOWEL. "Mine eyes", "thine own pleasure" (as the story accidentally correctly uses), etc.

Also, as a nitpick, I've never heard "thou werest"; I'm pretty sure it's the irregular conjugation "wert", but "thou were" also seems commonly used, perhaps depending on era. I'd have to do some research before I felt confident on that one. But on the whole, >>Monokeras is correct.

>>MrNumbers
>>Bad Horse
>>wYvern


Again I find myself at odds with Bad Horse (nothing personal to you chap!). I think MrNumbers has the right perspective on how the motivation was explained within the narrative. But, I also somewhat agree with Bad Horse that the motivation (if formatted like a fairy tale) would essentially be irrelevant in the story as written regardless. If it is the author's intention for this story to be parabolic, the motivations shouldn't matter. But if a more fairy tale atmosphere was intended, it did not succeed.

The primary problem I have with this story is that it doesn't build to anything in particular, and as Wyvern describes, it seems to be a story solely about a wry (and wicked) businessman taking advantage of an innocent person. The metaphor I think of being in debt "time" rather than money is a fairly cut and dry parallel that is interestingly presented, but ultimately doesn't make any grand statement to it. In other words, I think the metaphor is squandered.

As MrNumbers has said, you have an interesting concept, but you haven't done anything particularly interesting with it or given the reader any definitive take away. What I am supposed to think of Fluttershy, the God of Time, or what transpired other than: well that was a bad thing that happened, what a bad man he is?

I disagree with anyone that is trying to say that the ending is a "twist" or somehow unfitting in the sense of plot progression. The whole ordeal from the beginning of taking out a loan communicates the idea of a "Monkey's Paw" to this whole arrangement with the God of Time that essentially drains the tension out of the conclusion, because as the reader is aware, taking on a series of increasingly outrageous deals only leads to a bad end. This is blatantly foreshadowed with the dying plants.

I do agree, however, that this is a bit of an inappropriate tonal shift given the nature of dialogue and previous characterization of the God of Time, who, prior to his long-winded villainous monologue, and a Flim-Flam-esque mischievousness, but not malicious con-man who made quick quips. His sudden descent into outright villainy is a bit inappropriate considering the nature of his dialogue.

Your knack for prose and narrative voice is well-noted, however. Strong piece in regards to presentation, just lacking as a story with a cohesive thesis.

Opinion: Above Average

Since I'm new here, I want to ask: What's considered an appropriate number of stories to read and comment on? Is it left to individual discretion? Is there an etiquette related to the number of stories you can read and vote on?

I exhausted the original set of stories on my slate a while ago, and it occurred to me that I might be violating some kind of tacit rule..

Oh hey, another story I can make a comparison with the story I just read. Where The Day the God of Time Stopped by for Tea didn't seek to do much with the metaphor it presented, this story's set-up tries to fully examine the situations of the premise reflect the real world and detail how those cultural walls that separate us can be broken down. Perhaps I am reaching a bit here, but the latter half of this story seems to be a veiled commentary on the Middle East or at the very least, political isolationism and the clashing of two cultures, one that does not accept the other, which I think is interesting and effective.

Nonetheless, I feel we spend far too much time with the immensely hostile council and the longevity and intensity of their animosity is pounded into our brains that by the conclusion, it doesn't feel earned that Pinkie wins over Blade so easily.

The opening line had me rolling my eyes, but the depth of the prose and characterization of the Stratospheric pegasi was enough to sell my on the author's style. Nicely constructed prose and some subtle moments and oddly enough, the only point where the story seems to drag is when the Stratospheric Council is further concreting the nature of their fanatical racism.

Some minor issues about Twilight's immediate responses, the decision to take only Pinkie and Rainbow, the reasoning behind their inclusion, and straightforward exposition take away from the story, but not terribly in any regard.

Opinion: Above Average, with expansion and some cutting back on some redundancy, could be Excellent

>>Posh
You can review as many stories as you want.

>>Syeekoh Bitchin'.

I would ignore the comments asking why Discord GoT wants money, or why he wants payment back in time. This kind of story is not that literal. This is a pseudo-fairy tale. Story elements are, let's say, symbolic.

now I have to drop the act and clarify my earlier comment >>Haze

don't take my suggestions too literally. I got that it's a fairy tale; it had me spellbound the whole way. and that ending is devastating, like a clean chop through the heart.

but I asked those silly questions to suggest that, at the end, something about the GoT's development was too distracting. maybe it's his monologue, or something else, that suddenly turns him into the most interesting character, rather than a mysterious, uncaring force of the universe. he loses his Symbolic Power, and transforms into a standard fantasy being (much like Discord, which he already resembles a little too much). and at that point I start thinking it's his story rather than Fluttershy's... but that interpretation leads to a weaker & incomplete story.

I don't know that much about fairy tales, and I don't entirely understand the "trickster devil" trope either. so I don't know how to suggest fixing this. I just know I had this reaction, and sensed that it was not the author's intent.

This is an interesting story, but I felt it was a bit too jarring at times. And I didn't really get as strong a feel for the characters as I felt I needed to.

It also felt far shorter than expected. Usually McGuffin quests have more than just the one hazard to overcome before reaching the objective (more hazards == more character development and more tension!).

And the ending felt, well, not complete. What was the significance of the glow? What are the consequences of finding the clock? These seem like questions that really should be answered and yet we're not really given an inkling.

My guess is the time limit didn't do you any favours. Maybe you didn't have enough time to write the full story for one reason or another. But I think that, given no hard time limit, you could polish thisinto something pretty great. As is, though...

Verdict: Needs more time and care.

This story is fantastic, and I will be disappointed if it does not medal.

My only nitpick is that I don't understand how they were able to avoid the shockwave. Did they just get out of its range?

>>Bad Horse

The implication of such a precise measurement is that Twilight is now an artificial intelligence, as only an AI could make use of such precision. Either that, or their user interface technology is both highly advanced and stupid.

I was under the impression that Twilight isn't an AI, but she does have a lot of cybernetic add-ons of some sort, and her brain at the very least interfaces directly with a computer.

This allows you to build a free energy pump. In other words, it breaks the universe. It would be better not to mention this speed-up method.

That's only because you don't understand how the "magic" part of physics works. As far as we can tell, the magic in the show already seems to create free energy.

So, I'm going to slightly disagree with the previous commentors in that I found the story to be hilarious! Mostly because of exactly what everyone else said was wrong about the story, actually. Everything about it is absurd. From the notion of a butler reading Celestia a bedtime story, to the idea that Twilight would plagerize, to Twilight's reactions to being found out, to the actual consequences of her actions being precisely what she envisioned them to be. It's all just so stupid! And I love it! This just struck my funny bone perfectly.

Now, this all comes to a screeching halt in the last scene which is played way too straight for my liking. It's like it forgot to be absurd all of a sudden and had to remind us "oh, no, everything is going to be alright eventually." I think it would have been way better if it was taken even extremer.

Celestia: Also, as you are no longer the Princess of Friendship, I will be relieving you of your friends. Henceforth, they will be Princess Cadance's friends.

Twilight: But, you can't do that!

Applejack: Sorry, Twi. Official orders. I'd ask you to help me in the moving of Sweet Apple Acres from Ponyville to the Crystal Empire, but I'm not allowed to talk to you anymore.

Twilight: Applejack? When did you get here.

Rainbow Dash: Well, this isn't so bad. I hear Princess Cadance is just got into the Daring Do books. We'll be able to gush about them together in no time!

Twilight: But that's what we used to do together...

And so on and so forth. You get the picture.

So yeah. This was a pretty flawed story (for the reasons others mentioned), but for me the flaws made it more enjoyable, not less.

Verdict: Delightfully stupid (and I mean that in the best possible way).

>>Monokeras Actually thou wert, not thou werest.

Examples from Shakespeare:

TIMON_0: Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
TITUS_0: I am not bid to wait upon this bride. Titus, when wert thou wont to walk alone, Dishonoured thus, and challenged of wrongs?
TOUCHSTONE_0: I do, truly, for thou swear'st to me thou art honest; now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign.
TOUCHSTONE_0: No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favour'd; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.
TRANIO_0: Then thou wert best say that I am not Lucentio.
TRINCULO_0: Thou wert but a lost monster.
TROILUS_0: Wert thou the devil and wor'st it on thy horn, It should be challeng'd.


Thine before a word starting with a vowel sound. Sound, not spelling, matters. Also, 'thine' when the object is left unstated or is moved away from after the 'thy', including anytime 'thine' appears at the end of a sentence. Always 'thyself', never 'thine self' unless there is an adjective starting with a vowel sound in between, e.g., "to thine own self be true".

WARWICK_0: Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears.
WARWICK_0: Possess it, York; For this is thine, and not King Henry's heirs'.
WARWICK_0: Then 'twas my turn to fly, and now 'tis thine.
YORK_0: Upon thine honour, is he prisoner? [the 'h' in 'honour' is silent]
YORK_RICHARD_0: It was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down. [the 'h' in 'hand' is pronounced]


Also, in Elizabethan, use "shall" where moderns use "will", and "will" where moderns say "want to".

Also, use "thou" only when talking to social inferiors, family members, or people you want to insult. Otherwise, "you". Don't use the King James Bible as a model of Elizabethan grammar. It uses thou and you to indicate word choice in the original languages.

>>Posh
Oh dear sweet yes, what >>Syeekoh said. The slate is simply provided as a gentle minimum suggestion for reading and ranking, in order to get enough data to sort finalist and non-finalist stories out. You can always keep clicking "Add Another" to keep plowing through stories until you run out or get tired, and we'll love you for it.

Readers willing to provide feedback on lots and lots of entries are precious gems to be nurtured and praised.

>>horizon
>>Bad Horse
Thanks to both for ‘wert’!

Yeah, I know for ‘thine’ before vowel, but in the text there are multiples examples of ‘thine’ used instead of ‘thy’ before a consonant.

Interesting the semantic shift between ‘shall’, ‘will’ and ‘want’.

Unfortunately, author, my overall takeaway here is that this is a story with some major issues that need ironing out. You've gotten some excellent suggestions, though, especially >>wYvern, and rather than jumping on the critique bandwagon I'd like to talk a little bit about the parts here I thought were stronger. Because you did do some things right! Writeoff reviews tend to focus strongly on ways to improve your work, but it's also good to establish the other side of that coin — honoring the sort of prose you're already capable of — to give you a glimpse of why it's worth fixing the flaws.

You introduce two OCs here (Burnished and Stalwart) that are established well in the first half of the story. I like their banter! And they seem like genuinely cool dudes.

Today was a morning out of a fairy tale, the sun slowly rising over the horizon, providing a picturesque view of an Equestrian sunrise over the magnificent city. The tips of the roofs glistened, giving the appearance that the whole city was glowing.

I don't know if everyone here will agree, but I genuinely liked this description — in wording and also in placement. Not only was the detail about the glistening rooftops a lovely image, but it actually provided an interesting pacing element in the story. A lot of authors would use this sort of weather detail as an establishing shot, and oh my god that bothers me so much to try to hook readers with the weather, but to insert it into the middle like this is unusual in a good way: it draws the focus outward as a specific narrative and tonal element, telling us that at this exact moment it is important that the city is calm and beautiful, and that really reinforces what you were going for in the surrounding text. It's not subtle, but it's showy, and appropriate.

So, yeah. There are glimmers of greatness here. Get to editing on it, but don't lose heart.

Tier: Needs Work

This was a pleasant read. It maintained good conflict throughout and good progression on DT’s end. The high points were her and Cheerilee’s interactions. It was full of many sweet moments, and you did well to mix them with uncertainty and negative feelings as well, though I do think it spent a little too much time on the sweet moments. It was a great story, though, and I enjoyed it.

Small issues I had:

--The beginning felt somewhat infodumpy in telling Cheerilee’s moving plans.

--The few jokes that were told here were either kinda so-so ["Maybe not the best. But top ten material? Definitely."] or overplayed ["I can smell colors!"]. Very few worked for me.

--The –ly adverbs got a bit annoying [Apple Bloom said casually.], as did the non-said said tags ["Probably not," Cheerilee agreed.]. They’re both style issues, but in my opinion, these things are better shown than told most of the time.

--Slightly overplaying the emotions--some of the sad moments and also DT's laughter at the end.

Okay, I absolutely loved this one. But let's start off with a negative.

First, way too much jargon in the opening few paragraphs. We get it, it's the future! We don't have to see a fancy phrase for every bathroom gadget. Also, how do you blink "vector shift" out of your eyes? I thought that was some weird term for sleep-pod induced eye crud until later, when I realized it was a teleport. Super precise numbers are also amiss. Precision is important when it matters, not when it's not. All our computers can go dozens of decimal places on every calculation, but we code our software to round that down to only a few digits, as the rest is unimportant. The narrator and/or Twilight should know to do the same.

It smooths out after that, and the story does a great job of leading us forward with curious reveals about the time, place, and situation. The dark sky, the shard of a sun, aged celestia... all these things are wonderfully exciting hooks. The visuals could use a bit of work though. The long shadows, and the shadows being "dimmer" are hard to visualize. Knowing what comes later, I can re-read it and it makes no sense, but be careful about description of things new to the reader, and that you don't assume they know more than they can at a give point.

I have very few complaints all through the bulk of the story. It's really a fantastic read, and I love so many of the little details. That the Zebras stayed awake, and thus evolved is awesome. Flurry heart being some weird cyber-punk media princess is fantastic as well. The pacing also kind of echos the slow-waking of the world itself.

The explanations of how they moved the planet are fun as well, though, as someone who also wrote stories about moving Equestria into a natural solar orbit by manipulating the moon and gravity... I think I probably "got it" too quickly. My main gripe there is just that you spent too much time on the details, trying to get every corner of it, rather than giving broader strokes the reader can fill in. Well, that and after all the made up terms and words in the opening, you still called something "Unicornium" :-P I mean, I think it was pretty clever to use a shard of it as a planetary scale Mach-Lorentz thruster, but... I already GOT that from the basic description. The details didn't improve the story (only left me more to nitpick) and I suspect may be lost entirely as jargon on someone less into hard sci-fi.

But then we come to my final issue. You tease and reveal the world slowly, and it makes it great. Then there's some flash back, which explains away the rest. The problem is the story doesn't go forward from there. They arrive, and instead of finding out the last mystery, of how the aliens of Hope were able to see into the past/future far enough to give a message 2.5 million light years away... That's set up through out the story as the big mystery, yet it's never resolved. Instead, it's just an empty planet.

Yes, I do realize that it's subtely hinted that this is the Milky Way galaxy, and perhaps this is a long-abandoned Earth, but subtle hints like that don't make up for not giving a proper resolution to a central question.


All that said, I still enjoyed this immensely, and I criticize because when I see good things I want them to be even better. This is the top of my slate, and as such, brings me to my last complaint. I now realize I'm going to lose this contest. :-)

I think I appreciated this more than some of of the other commentators, and have to admit I really loved the style of prose, even if it (as was pointed out) doesn't really sound like Twilight. The emotions in the early part worked, and I started to get a little misty eyed even, so great job there.

The issues others said all hold true though... most notably for me, the hyper violence of the first tortures completely eclipses the rest of the story. More importantly, the story doesn't really go anywhere after that first night. It's just more of the same, leading to the inevitable conclusion. There's no subversion, no twist, no surprise, just suffering. It's well written, and conveys that suffering pretty well (save the order of operations) but it really needs a plot. I respect the attempt at giving a saving grace with the epilogue, but that's a bit weak, more like turning on the lights after a ghost story is over to say "see, it's okay, it's not that bad."

First off...

It's McIntosh not Macintosh.
He's named after the apple, not the computer. http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Big_McIntosh

As a comedy, a lot of the technical stuff gets to slide, so I can easily gloss over that, as well as the various arguments others already made about the archaic speech stuff. As such, I have to say I found this rather amusing. I thought I was in for a typical crackfic style, but it actually worked rather well, though there are some rough spots. The main issue, as Horizon pointed out, is how the story oscillates in tone between farcical comedy and genuine relationship building. I would've liked to see an arc from one, leading to the other, but that would require Luna being a little less... dense. I think that may be the crux of the issue. Her personality is too much in flux, from calling the Apples "common rabble" one moment, to being genuinely pleased at their reactions later. Her growth should be more linear, from "aloof" to "personable" or something like it.

Still, a fun read, and like >>Posh I loved the Granny Smith bit. :-)

I think most of the technical problems have been pointed out already, so I won't rehash them. Suffice to say, it needs some work.

Overall, I like the concept very much. The trope of having one's inner voices actually manifest in a tangible way is one I've always found quite interesting, and have done several stories on it myself. When that happened here, I was excited to see what became of it. The opening setting, of some haunted(ish) village, with one happy pony (who's name actually means bloody) in the midst of it was intriguing. I think the macabre doesn't get enough of a shake in Pony, so liked this glimpse of it.

Unfortunately, the story itself falls a bit short on plot. It follows a very predictable path of simply showing her turn evil (or turn to her evil side anyway.) What's missing is the struggle and conflict... what drives her to actually accept the control of Vengeance needs to be shown much, much more clearly.

I read the story and liked it a lot. I think an ideal reader--one raised in a different civilization that didn't have 2000 years of Christianity--wouldn't see a comically sexual introductory section, and a common-folk homespun conclusion, as contradictory.

Very well written. It's pitch-perfect modern fable, and I was absolutely loving the magic realism for the first third or so. Pony doesn't get much magic realism because (ironically) magic is real in this world. So seeing a god just waltz around like a salesman was great.

Where it turned for me was when he specifically brought up MasterCard. I already knew this was going to dark places (slicked-back dark hair and a suit? of course he's evil!) so this was just out of place and unneeded. When the scene continued with all the other add-on purchases, my enjoyment just checked out. It wasn't done in a way that was humorous, and it dragged on far too long, bringing the fairy-tale like nature of the story to a grinding halt.

The scene with the debt-collection also falls flat. There's no "shock" or "surprise" at all in the "twist." Just a heavy-handed, anvilicious message about how credit card companies are jerks. GoT just shows up, says you own lots of time/money, and then takes it. There's no lesson learned, no moral given, none of the purposes a grim ending is typically supposed to accomplish in a fairy tale.

So, while I applaud the excellent style of writing at the start, the story itself left me rather disappointed.

>>Haze

but I asked those silly questions to suggest that, at the end, something about the GoT's development was too distracting. maybe it's his monologue, or something else, that suddenly turns him into the most interesting character, rather than a mysterious, uncaring force of the universe. he loses his Symbolic Power, and transforms into a standard fantasy being (much like Discord, which he already resembles a little too much). and at that point I start thinking it's his story rather than Fluttershy's... but that interpretation leads to a weaker & incomplete story.

Good point!

>>ShortNSweet ... who are you, you mysterious, erudite, and probably British stranger?

>>Xepher Seriously?! Damn.

Well, Ctrl.+F, old buddy, we're gonna be seeing a lot more of one another. Meet me over on FIMfic.

The dialogue and character interactions are the strongest things about this story, which is good, because the story's mostly dialogue and character interaction. It's light on narration, and what narration is in here can be stilted and repetitive at times. But the characters speak to and play off of one another in amusing ways, although I agree with >>FrontSevens that not all of the designated "laugh lines" hit home (Scootaloo's line is at least well-timed, though).

My biggest problems are (again to reference >>FrontSevens) that the infodump at the beginning is an inelegant, expository way of setting up the story's premise, and the story's premise itself stretches credibility. The former can be allowed a little leeway, though, since you were running out of space and probably had to condense in order to get the story done in time. But the latter's harder to swallow. Cheerilee is able to move all of her possessions and furniture out of Ponyville and sell her house without anyone except a handful of characters catching on until the day before she's supposed to leave? She kept this under her hat for how many months? That's a hell of a secret to keep, and it strains suspension of disbelief.

I could see this working better in an expanded timeframe--Cheerilee gets her letter of acceptance and immediately announces it to the class, and spends the rest of the year making arrangements. It would give you the chance to add a little bit more variety to the specific scenes and scenarios, too, rather than just having FEELSFEELSFEELSFEELSFEELS sad sad FEELSFEELSFEELSFEELSFEELS sad FEELS in rapid succession.

Overall, not bad. Above average, even, I'd say. But I'm giving it a zero on my ballot because it does not contain any CheeriMac. Shame on you. D:<

This story has some interesting worldbuilding going for it, and the characters have potential. I like the tone, I like the prose, and I like the flow. However, there were significant problems I had with this story.

First problem is the multitude of characters. There are many characters. Scene 2 introduces and describes four characters. Scene 3 introduces and describes four more characters. It’s just too much at once for me to get a feel for these characters, given the relatively short length of the story. The characters became nothing but names after a while, and I had a hard time distinguishing who was who, and this was especially confusing in discussions involving six characters. A solution to this is either cutting the cast to only the characters that are necessary (and/or combining roles if it makes sense--perhaps Shady Patch and Presto, for instance?) (for an example of characters to cut--perhaps Radiant Beam's son?), or introducing characters more slowly, taking time to let the reader get to know them. The more the character appears in the story, the more time we should spend getting to know them, as a general rule of thumb (for instance, I think describing Radiant Beam's son was unnecessary as he's barely present, especially considering three other characters were also being introduced in that scene).

Second problem is the protagonist. He doesn’t seem to be very active at all. All he’s done in this story is accepted a quest. The rest seems to be him just tagging along. He doesn’t seem to be the one pushing forward, everyone else is. And really, all his motivation seems to be is that he’s interested in the clock, partly because his character mark is a clock. I’d recommend either making another character the protagonist / POV character, or making Quiet more active and have a stronger motivation to push forward in his quest. I feel like Quiet Time was intentionally written as a quiet character, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be an active character or have strong opinions on things happening around him, especially since he’s the POV character and we (the reader) can get his opinions from the narration and not just action & dialogue.

Third problem is the transition into the last scene. I was fine with the other scene transitions, though they were slightly jarring and the scenes in between a tad too brief. However, leading into the last scene, the argument between the characters about where to go feels sudden and very fast, and then the last scene happens where all the other characters have mysteriously disappeared except for Quiet, who has conveniently reached the story goal of finding the clock. Everything up until the last scene felt like the beginning of a longer story. The last scene felt like a climax. This threw the pacing way off and was very jarring for me. Then it ends with a cliffhanger, which means the climax is sort of a mini-climax, a moment just before something supposedly goes very wrong, but the story’s over already. This leaves the entry feeling like pieces of a story rather than a complete story.

The last thing I'll point out here is a smaller (but important) issue: dialogue attribution. >>wYvern already pointed it out. The more characters you have in a scene, the more important it is to make it clear which character is speaking. Really, it's more important for any character count greater than 2. There are more examples than Wyvern pointed out [“The Harmonious Clock? You found it?”] [“It ain’t natural. They were right to seal it up.”]. And with those examples specifically, a single line of dialogue can be an interesting way to open up the scene, but you need to make it clear who's speaking right away. Otherwise, it hurts my immersion to read a line of dialogue, wait a sentence or two to figure out who was speaking it, and then read it again knowing that "oh, okay, that's the character who was talking."

The core idea here could be strong, but I think it needs quite a bit more work from here to be great.

I'm generally not a fan of grimdark stories like this, but this one didn't bother be as much as most do. It's possible that that's at least partially because there's not actually a whole lot that connects this to ponies. Should you be so inclined, you could easily file off the serial numbers, make everyone human, and turn this into an original piece. But if you want to keep it a ponyfic, that's fine too. But if you do, you should probably try to build off of the setting of MLP more.

But that's all just incidental. My real problem with this story is that there isn't really a character arc. Yes, Sanguine changes from the beginning to the end of the story, but it all happens at once. There needs to be more conflict between Vengeance and Goodwill. She needs to either struggle between the two sides before giving in, or the story needs to continue after this point and let her try to redeem herself.

Disclaimer: I am a person. Therefore, I have biases. I try to look at things objectively, but that does not mean I always succeed. Furthermore, I'm not an authority. If any of my critique does not make sense on its own, poke me to convey my reasoning, and upon hearing it, decide for yourself if it has validity or not. Also, all exaggerations and comparisons made are not to ridicule, but to better convey the essence of my critique. My reviews contain unmarked spoilers, although I may use the [.spoiler] command occasionally.

Although I see absolutely no connection with the prompt in this story, I like the concept a lot, but in my opinion, the execution needs work. Some things I see are easily fixed and rather obvious, other things are gonna be hard, because I think doing your concept justice won't be an easy feat.

1. "It was a dark and stormy night..." oh wait, no. "Frigid, merciless wind." Still, what you did here is fall into one of my most loathed clichees: trying to hook with the weather. Honestly, if I'd had a bad day and this wasn't a writeoff, I might've dropped your story right there.

What you want your first line of a story to do is make a reader want to find out what's going on in the next one. Things to hint at therefore are: conflict, character, mystery. You don't need to hint at all of these, but you can. An example shamelessly taken from one of my own stories:

Angry hoof steps next door. The tension makes me giddy. Dinner’s ready.

There's a hint at conflict (angry hoofsteps), a hint at character (who'd feel giddy because of angry hoofsteps?), and mystery (what's that all got to do with dinner?). One of the reviewers already correctly deduced from there that we're inside the head of a creature that feeds on negative emotion.

You can worry about introducing the setting once the reader wants to know. Setting alone just isn't intriguing.

2. You have a weird mix of tenses going on. I was kinda just confused about the switching between present tense and past tense until I noticed that you seemed to use present tense for your protagonist, and past tense for Chrysalis.

I turn my head and snarl immediately. There stood Quee—no, just Chrysalis, wearing that most poisonous smile and adorned in furs. In her hoof she held another, smaller, patch of fur, though I know not for what purpose

I then thought there was either something weird up with time, or you were just making a recurring mistake. Well, turns out I was right... on both accounts, though, because this bleeds right into my biggest criticism of this story...

3. You write in first person, but you don't employ it. I think you did indeed do these tense shifts to hint at the time thing, but it bears testimony to the fact that you don't seem to realize that this is narrated from inside your protagonists head. There should be no representation of the time mismatch because he (?) cannot perceive that.

This is going to be the hard part to fix, because I see this throughout the whole story. You're breaking this necessary connection to the protagonists perception with:

A: Telling

I’m riding a fine line between terror and resolve

You know, I can't really tell you when I last had that mix of emotions going on in my brain, but when I did, I sure as hell wasn't thinking "Oh, look at that, I'm riding a fine line between terror and resolve. How very unpleasant." You need to show us that ride, because in first person, we're at the front seat of that. Telling the reader about it results in what >>Xepher said about sock puppets trying to act out a play that was supposed to have feeling.

B: Showing.

You always hear them say it. Heck, every writer probably mumbled it in their sleep at some point: "Show, don't tell!", but in your story, the showing you do sometimes only increases the disassociation with the POV.

“It is, isn’t it?” she said in a most cloying tone which causes my muzzle to scrunch.

I exhale, the wind whipping around me and causing a slight shiver to possess my body.

Why do you describe actions of the protagonists body as though he were a neutral observer? You even disassociate it from the emotion. You need to treat emotional exposition like an inner monologue to show the emotions, not the actions. I think it's actually a bit unnatural to narrate the actions.

I raise an eyebrow. “What are you—”

The raised eyebrow is something you see in many stories, and I think it's a viable tool to convey that someone is unsure or sceptical... if we don't have a direct line to the persons thoughts, which we do in this case. Why not write:

Wait... why is she laughing like that? "What are you--"

What I did here is replace the action of raising an eyebrow with the thought process that might have lead to your protagonist raising an eyebrow (the real reason only you know). This communicates the uncertainty the protagonist feels, and the reader might imagine raising an eyebrow. Or furrowing his forehead. Or gawking open mouthed. The action itself does not matter, because this is first person and there is no mirror.

4. This is not really a separate point of criticism, but rather what I think this story would need to really shine and what you might consider working in if you choose to edit this for publication. If you accept my argument that all emotional exposition should sound like inner monologue, you will accept that your character will need a distinct voice of his own at all the times that he is an individual. Given the concept of this story, that voice should break. Gradually. I also had to think of those valar morghulis guys from GoT with the "One" pronoun, but I think it's a fine choice, and I think this is what your protagonists unique voice should shift towards during Chrysalis' questioning of his identity.

Concluding remarks:
I think there is a great concept here, but the execution does not do it justice. I would love to see this reworked, and, although my critique might read harsh at some points, I hope my review has more en- then discouraged the author to do so.

This story is a perfect example of trying to cram too much story into too little space. You really should have used the 4000 words you had to spare, though I imagine you probably ran out of time.

The worst part for me was the characters. There are too many of them, and none of them had the chance to define themselves. By the end of the story, I had given up on keeping track of who each character was, because it really didn't matter. You need to either cut this down to just two or three main characters, or just give it a rather large expansion. Preferably the latter, because this really feels more like the beginning of a story than a complete story.

I do think that the mythology at the beginning was pretty good, though it would be nice if it factored into the rest of the story more.

>>Bugle
Your alternate ending is hilarious, and if the entire story had been written like that, it would be near the top of my ballot. But to me, the story wasn't absurd, or it at least didn't act like it was trying to be absurd. It seemed like it was playing itself straight the entire time, with some bits that were odd, but not so intentionally odd that they were funny. I think the only part that I thought was at all funny was Spike's reaction when he learned what plagiarism is.
This could just be a case of different tastes, which is always a risk when writing comedy. But I feel like I can almost always tell when someone is at least trying to be funny, even if I don't think that they are. And this story did not look like it was trying to be a comedy at all to me.
But hey, I could be wrong.

Others have pointed out most of my problems with this story, but there are still a few left for me to bring up.

Just as I felt it couldn’t get any more emotionally charged, a chant began rolling around the hall. “Best friends forever. Best friends forever.”

That is way too cheesy, even for My Little Pony.

The bits about Sunset's cutie mark didn't really work for me. I think I can see what you were going for, but I just kept thinking "Why is that happening. That's not supposed to happen." But if you really want to do something with her cutie mark, I would like to point out that Sunset's new main Friendship Games outfit doesn't include her cutie mark, and you can probably find a way to work that in. (The other outfits she wore in the movie did have it though.)

On the whole, I think this story is okay. It has plenty of room to improve, but it's not bad.

My first impression of this story was that it really didn't make any sense. You combine Power Ponies, Equestria, and humans all together for no reason, and then make them anthro for no reason. The bits about Equestria added nothing, and bits about humans only added a half-baked commentary on current events that you don't actually do anything with. You should have just cut out the humans and the references to the real Equestria and made this a Power Ponies story. That also would have let you cut out the opening news broadcast, which was easily the weakest part of the entire story. I admit that it's been a while since I actually watched the news, but I'm pretty sure that actual news anchors don't sound anything like that.

And then I read the other comments and learned that this story is largely an Overwatch trailer with a new paintjob. If I had liked this story, I would have felt cheated. As it was, I mostly just felt disappointed. There's nothing wrong with writing crossovers or with the idea behind a story being "X, but with ponies." A large chunk of my ideas have come from me seeing a thing and wondering what it would be like if ponies were involved. But you can't just take a story you like and change the characters to ponies. A good crossover involves more than that. You need to take the things that make each source material special and combine them. For example, if I was going to ponify that trailer, I might have had Scootaloo take the girl's role and Rainbow Dash take Soldier 76's role, and instead of saving the girl from a gang, Rainbow would save Scoots from some monsters in the Everfree, and at the end we would learn that this is where Scootaloo's hero-worship of Rainbow Dash started.
Or something. That's just the first idea that came to my mind.

I do like the reveal in the last two paragraphs though. That is an idea that you could do a lot with.

Not a bad story, but it does have some flaws.

First of all, why do all these mares have a thing for Firecracker? I understand Twilight, as long as you're only using it as a joke with her, but it seems weird that the CMC all apparently suddenly like him too. But the biggest problem with it is that you keep bringing it up, but don't actually do anything with it.

I also don't see how the dream gave him his cutie mark. To me, it just came across as a plot device to give him a cutie mark that he'd have to investigate, and it doesn't really hold up when you think too much about it.

Finally, just what is his special talent supposed to be? Learning that you were adopted isn't exactly a talent. Maybe something about loving his family?
Speaking of which, you'd think his parents would have told him that he was adopted at some point, especially since they (quite obviously) adopted his sister. But I think that is a thing that happens in real life sometimes?

You do get points for including a griffon cub, because I know that she is adorable even though I can't see her.

Overall, I think that this story is decent, and with a bit of work, it could easily become rather good.

>>The_Letter_J

First of all, why do all these mares have a thing for Firecracker? I understand Twilight, as long as you're only using it as a joke with her, but it seems weird that the CMC all apparently suddenly like him too. But the biggest problem with it is that you keep bringing it up, but don't actually do anything with it.

I joked about BAD TOUCH in my review, but in all seriousness, I agree that this felt kind of weird. The narration goes out of its way to point out Scootaloo's intimate contact with Firecracker more than once, and his mom seems to be worried that the CMC are going to try and, like... have a foursome with him?

I know they're only a couple of years older than him, but it did feel awkward reading all these little clues about the potential for love between a teenager and what I'm assuming is a pre-adolescent boy.

I still loved it, but...

>>Bad Horse

Fight me.

No but for real, there's a lot more for me to work off here than just flailing against the story-proper, so thanks for giving me, wittingly or not, the ability to do so.

I would ignore the comments asking why Discord GoT wants money, or why he wants payment back in time. This kind of story is not that literal. This is a pseudo-fairy tale. Story elements are, let's say, symbolic.

I disagree with this very specifically, and here's why:

His motivations are scrutable, but illogical.

Now, had the same character been inscrutable I wouldn't have questioned the logic so much. My approach, then, was thinking of ways to make his approach more logical when you've provided me a very similar but opposed school of thought

Why not, instead, make him more inscrutable? His motives are too mundane, which is why I looked at it with the lens I did and found it wanting.

I'm undecided on how much of a problem the wall-o-text is which MrNumbers commented on. It is a wall of dialogue, but it's great dialogue, and it's supposed to come out in an overpowering rush. It is hostile. Maybe break it in two & insert a response from Flutters before "So I waited".

There's a reason I commented only on its length and not its contents. I'd break it into half at least, and maybe have some visual or other sensoral input to prevent it feeling too overwhelmingly talky.

>>ShortNSweet

Ditto, thanks for helping me summarize my own thoughts and argument largely better than I did.

I think you've rounded up enough advice from people way over my own level of competence. I will just pile on add some small elements about your prose, because I found it painful to read in places: many run-on sentences, and/or comma splices. I found myself often plodding through the text.

At that, there’s a lot of redundancy in what you write, as if you were trying to pad the story to get it over the 2,000 words limit. For example:

Something inside Sanguine splintered in that moment, the moment her entire world was taken away from her. Never had she believed that such evil could exist, that anypony was capable of such acts of depravity and so her mind fractured. The trauma breaking her mind into hundreds of shards.

All the underlined phrases/sentences are redundant. They said exactly the same thing. They are also ungraceful repetitions:

…through the cloud cover that covered the small town…

…sudden sleep when they suddenly…

But that's enough for now. There’s a lot of potential here, and I’m sure you’ll soon be able to mingle with the best writers around here! 😉

Oh my. Don’t think I’ve seen a dark spin on Rainbow Dash’s mother before. Neglectful, yes, but not abusive.

Well, at least Dash is using her vocabulary words.

This was certainly an interesting spin on human Dash’s family situation. Dash herself comes across as hostile, irrational, and generally unsympathetic, which just means she’s a teenager. And Rainbow Dash. Girl can hold a grudge.

Still, this feels more like a first chapter than a complete story. The conflict between Dash and Crystal Waters hasn’t been resolved, merely avoided. Dash’s discomfort with her new home and impending greater responsibilities both loom over her, but you never do anything with them. I’d love to see this expanded, but for now, I’m left unsatisfied.

Also, even after reading the other comments, I think that was more of a flashback than a dream sequence, though I suppose memory-dreams count as both.

This is smashing. The story is not unheard of (very close to the thesis developed by Van Vogt in The Pawns of Ā about humans fleeing a galactic doom in a fleet of spacecraft while in hibernation; I can also detect tinges of Scott’s Prometheus or maybe Clarke’s 2001), but it’s exquisitely executed. Truly, you've pulled off a story which should be an inspiration to most of us here (and especially me). Top notch.

Some nitpicks though:

At the beginning :

She took a few minutes to let her heart beat life back into her veins, moved her hoof through "6:35 AM" to touch it,…

That sentence was a bit jarring, because to me, the “it” refers to the heart, not the hologram!

with agonizing slowness

arc-second by agonizing arc-second

You like agonising, eh?

"We've five minutes past aphelion," she said. "I'm letting the moment linger—for you, and for everyone. But I shouldn't delay sunrise much longer."

What do you mean by "aphelion"? Aphelion is traditionally reserved for the Sun, while apogee is for the Earth (apoapsis is the generic term, maybe you should've used this one in this context?) but what I don't reckon is the implied relation between the motion along the orbit and the sunrise, which is determined by the planet's rotation alone.

The technobabble is subdued and was fine, but I found myself skimming over the passage describing the slingshot. It is a bit bloated, as if you had decided to indulge in a very long-winded and convoluted screed to reconcile Albert Einstein with Lauren Faust. It just waylays the reader and finally doesn't add much. You should cut through it or drizzle droplets of it all around rather than corralling all the physics in one big chunk.

But other than that, it’s simply fantastic. It’s a clear winner. Out and away.

Congrats on another gold, Horizon.

Hmm. On the one hand, it seems like Celestia should be aware of the various roles her sister served in the Equestrian government. On the other, it’s clear that she’s focused on her grief. And on one of the feet, Luna having so many roles, including direct rule over some regions, makes it feel especially odd that she felt unappreciated.

Wouldn’t Luna’s holdings default to Celestia anyway? Someone has to have them. Indeed, why didn’t the sisters hold their lands collectively?

As others have noted, Princess Luna was banished yesterday. Barring further information about her recent history and the timescale of the Nightmare Moon crisis, this makes those young advisors look either laughably incompetent or transparently conniving.

The ending feels hollow. Not only does the conflict not make sense, by the time Luna does return, she has been all but forgotten, to the point where she literally asks, “Does my crown no longer count now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years?” In short, this one needs a fair amount of work. It won’t be enough to just set it a few decades later; a lot of the issues raised here need to be addressed immediately. Still, it can potentially work.

Hmm. After all of the monumental evils that Celestia only told Twilight about as they were attacking, I’d expect her to realize that just because she’s never heard of a great power doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And that’s saying nothing of the lesson of Pinkie Sense. She can be a straw skeptic at times, but this feels off. (Granted, I’m not sure when this is taking place.)

Okay, you lost me with the signup benefits. This was a very interesting and tense story, but now it’s become a farce. (How does Fluttershy even have a phone number, much less an e-mail address?) And by the end, it’s just bad taste. This god isn’t interesting. He’s petty, annoying, pushy, and is in for some very interesting times himself. Heck, he’s not even a very good scammer. Any parasite that kills its host is doing it wrong. This story just feels like a big lump of wasted potential.

Well, that’s certainly one way to hook the reader in. The second paragraph, however, is clunkier than the Flintstones’ car. You don’t need to introduce the characters. It’s safe to assume that all readers are familiar with Friendship is Magic. You especially don’t need to introduce Apple Bloom twice in the exact same way.

Okay, you’re clearly going for some sort of historical/scientific/journalistic voice and it flat-out is not working. The continual references to later testimony and persistent passive voice frequently interfere with the narrative while adding nothing to it.

I find it very hard to imagine Cloudy Quartz delivering any kind of joke. Laughing at Pinkie’s, possibly, but not making any, with the possible exception of a very droll one about rocks. (“Hast thou e’er noticed that the manner in which limestone erodes is like unto this, whereas feldspar erodes like unto this?”)

I still don’t like the narrator’s voice, but I will concede that “earwitnesses” is pretty amusing. Likewise Celestia playing along with Pinkie’s title spam. The conceit actually does grow on me during the Day Court scene; your usage of it is wittier and much less obtrusive. I suspect some of that is the way it’s diluted with good dialogue.

The entire story improves with time. Ease back on the early officiousness and you’ll have something fantastic. Though I will note that in a heliocentric solar system, the planet is the one that has an orbit. For the most part. There is a little circular oscillation on the part of the star, but it’s negligible.

The missing comma in the title bothers me more than it probably should.

As others have noted, your command of Early Modern English leaves much to be desired. Research on the subject would be greatly helpful.

While the EME is way off, I do love your description of the Apples’ kitchen.

Okay, there is no excuse for Luna slipping into modern vernacular during a moment of vulnerability. If anything, the opposite should happen, falling back on old linguistic habits when not thinking about her diction.

I’m pretty sure thouing a princess is grounds for a smiting.

Luna’s description of the moon made me laugh out loud. Nice work there.

Aside from the linguistic quibbles, this was a great character piece for both parties. Big Mac shines in his quiet wisdom, while Luna slipped some humility in the lemon chiffon pie. It needs polishing in places, but there are spots where it already shines. I look forward to seeing it on Fimfiction.

Wow. Opening with a run-on. Not the strongest first impression.

You know, this assertion of Celestia’s waning political might would be a lot more believable if you actually told us how the Mane Six died, especially since you made a point how even Celestia couldn’t have prevented it. Really, this whole first section feels more like a description than the start of the actual story; not an advisable method.

Mothers and fathers slaughtered in front of their children before they were killed next.

The thing about the verb “slaughter” is that the subject is the slaughterer, not the slaughtered, as opposed to if they were slaughtered. As such, this phrasing indicates that children witnessed their parents murder before those parents were slain in turn.
Also, this bloodbath would probably have a lot more impact if I had any sense of who these ponies were.

This is the most erudite psychological fragmentation I’ve ever seen.

Yeah, nothing more to add. Others have covered the story’s issues in exhaustive detail. Still, you definitely have something worth working with here. Better integrate the details of the alternate universe into the story (the lack of details is far more permissible if the information’s coming from Sanguine or the Prince than an omniscient narrator.) Make the audience care more about Sanguine and her pain. Throw in some scenes along the way that further demonstrate her psychological degradation rather than just assuring us it’s happening. This needs work, but it will be worth it.

I can't decide which side to join here :3

On the issue of there being other ways he could earn money, I'm not sure that's the point. The impression I got is he's not trying to earn money; he's trying to spite Fluttershy in any way he can, and he takes all her money to score points against her in his head. This is a story about a twisted, petty, greasy, spitting ball of hate lashing out at everyone around him at some percieved injustice, much like some petty asshat who ends up serial-killing women because one or two said 'no' to him and therefore they're all lying sluts. In that respect, it does a fine job of raising emotional hackles.

I agree it was rather too easy to see coming, though, and I was particularly puzzled by this line:

Fluttershy may not have been as smart as Twilight, but if a life spent caring for animals had taught her anything, it was the game of predator and prey.

Surely this means Fluttershy, more than anyone else, should have seen the spiderweb she was walking into, but she spends the entire thing oblivious. It's an especially weird line because it comes in the middle of a segment where Fluttershy blithely insists he's trustworthy, but doesn't go anywhere with the assertion. It makes more sense if it's an actual thought Fluttershy's having - like "Fluttershy knew the game of predator and prey, and she could tell this pony wasn't a predator" - but as it's phrased, it sounds like an objective fact from the narration, that she is better at spotting these things, and so it's weird that she manifestly doesn't.

This is an interesting take on G1 Firefly and how she and Megan would be doing now, but I think it needs some work.

It was raining when it first happened.

This is a bad opening line for several reasons:
--Weather is a clichéd topic to start a story on (e.g. it was a dark and stormy night). It’s often uninteresting as an opening line.
--[It was raining] is passive voice. Passive voice is not as interesting as active voice, and it should be avoided if possible and if appropriate, which is most of the time when it comes to fiction (note: I now realize that usually passive voice is okay when describing weather, but I think the problem is that the very first line is in passive voice).
--[when it first happened] is intentionally vague. In this context, I’m not terribly interested to find out what “it” is. If the rest of the sentence was more interesting, sure, but here, not really.

I don’t know what the purpose of cutting to the villagers is, other than establish that this is the human world, which it does poorly—nothing hints that these are humans except the word “people”. MLP has used “people” before within the show, so I was still under the impression these were ponies (since this was written for an MLP writeoff). I wondered if the technology meant that this was a future Equestria that caught up to our tech. The moment I realized it was the human world was when Firefly said “people could see her again”, which wouldn’t really be a concern in Equestria and is often a concern for PoE stories.

I don’t know why Firefly visited Megan. Firefly didn’t learn anything new from visiting her. She didn’t need anything from Megan (except food—but she hadn’t seen Megan in months, so she must’ve been doing fine without her). She didn’t say goodbye to Megan before trying to get to Equestria again. It just felt unnecessary.

I think the plot derails at the part where Rainbow Dash shows up. Firefly has expressed that she wants to go home, and she tries to hunt down that rainbow in order to ride it. However, when she almost reaches the rainbow in the last scene and bumps into Rainbow Dash, their conversation does not immediately focus on the rainboom, but instead they have a surface-level conversation about stallions and the clouds and the differences between Equestria and pony land. This feels out of character for Firefly the way you’ve written her.

There’s another issue with that scene. Rainbow appears, trying to figure out how she got there, but never reaches that moment of realization that the sonic rainboom is what teleported her to Earth. Firefly would never know what caused the rainboom—only that she’s seen it now and again and it feels like pony magic. However, both of them somehow independently and wordlessly reach the conclusion that a sonic rainboom will take them back to Equestria, and then they go there. It just didn’t follow a logical progression to me.

There are several typos and some instances of awkward phrasing. The jokes don’t land. There were instances of telling unnecessarily, as opposed to showing ["Mmm, so gooood!" Closed her eyes with a satisfied grin.] [It was obvious she didn't know how to start the conversation either. Just like Megan she was beating around the bush, focusing on trivial topics.] ["Who're you calling a newbie?!" The rainbow-maned pony got incredibly agitated. "I'm a Wonderbolt!"]. The conversations don’t flow well at some points.

I think this needs some more work, because it doesn’t feel like a story, but more like simply nostalgia for G1.

I wrote a blog post yesterday on the difference between interesting & uninteresting ideas. The great writing in this story may distract people from noticing how great the opening idea is: A foal gets his cutie mark in a dream, but can't remember what it was. That's a compelling idea.

>>Posh I think the author's intent is that getting a cutie mark is a sudden transition into or thru adolescence. Firecracker seems to be very suddenly aware of mares, as if the cutie mark switched on his hormones. And that's not an unreasonable head-canon. This is a coming-of-age story, and in it, adolescence gets compressed into one day by the abruptness of getting a cutie mark.

I think, though, this story wants to be a lot longer. The story covers FC's anxiety about his identity, purpose, & sexuality, and then in the last 2 scenes it switches to being a story about his parentage. I don't see how those things are related. Adoption isn't a coming-of-age issue, so it doesn't fit with the rest of the story, and it gets just a glancing treatment. And the original compelling idea, of FC not remembering his dream, never gets used. We don't get any payoff from that angst. I think CiG needed more time to figure out how to make use of it. This feels to me like three pieces (dream anxiety, adolescence, parentage) of a larger story, which aren't yet integrated.

I personally am not in favor of Scootaloo ever flying, but that's just an opinion.

This story presents interesting characterization for Spitfire.

I like the opening, though the transition from the opening idea to [When Spitfire opened her eyes] is sudden and jarring.

The main conflict here is that Spitfire wants to appear strong in order to maintain her image as a leader, so she represses her sadness. However, this is reiterated and made clear many times, to a point where it’s no longer interesting. It just feels too simple and not all that deep of an emotion when it’s talked about so much and not just shown.

The plot is fairly predictable. It’s kind of obvious that once Spitfire can’t fly anymore, somepony else would be captain and Spitfire would leave with some sort of goodbye from the team. I had a feeling from the start that this broken-wing Spitfire story would be a sadfic, and it just didn’t really become more than that.

It seems that the last 40% of the story is all just goodbyes to Spitfire. It feels too long to have an emotional impact on me. It also feels like the characters are shedding too many tears for how long the story is.

"Heya, Spitfire," Soarin said, approaching the table. "What's with all the dramatics? The only time I ever see you at a bar is to celebrate."

"What? I can't go to a bar every now and then?" she snapped back. "Anyway, I didn't call you here to hear your jokes. We have business to attend to."

That was a joke?

"I'm resigning as Wonderbolt captain," Spitfire says, more to the drink in front of her than to Soarin. "You'll be acting captain now."

Silence filled the space in-between the two Wonderbolts. Spitfire picked up her glass of whiskey and downed it in one gulp. It burned her way down her throat, cleansing her palate of the poisonous words that cut her mouth on the way out.

Those words were poisonous? I’m pointing these out because it was moments like these that made me feel something was off with this story.

I don’t think single quotation marks are used for thoughts. Thoughts are often shown in italics. You could also switch the thoughts from first person to third person and make them part of the narration, since it’s already third limited POV.

I think the plot is too predictable and the story spends too much time talking about feels to invoke feels in me as a reader.

>>Cassius Well, I'm just guessing, too.

A very interesting concept. I love the twist that what he was experiencing was just what he was allowed to experience by Chrysalis. It’s depressing but it’s great. I like how Chrysalis challenges his individuality and how that fits in with the worldbuilding presented concerning changelings.

I do feel a little lost, though. I’m trying to see if I missed something. The scene from Chrysalis’ perspective throws me off. I don’t know why this will provide proof that he can’t assimilate into pony society. It doesn’t prove he’s not an individual; all it seems to prove is that they share minds, which was already established. With that in mind, I don’t know why seeing things from Chrysalis’ perspective is too much for him. I feel like I shouldn’t have to keep rereading to try and figure out what this means.

This had a great tone and presented a great idea, but it just lost me towards the end there.

"It happened," Firefly was quick to answer, here eyes sparkling with joy and wonder. "Twice."

"You saw what?"

Editing mishap? To be blunt, the editing in this piece is pretty sloppy all around. Another pass or two over it to proofread would have done wonders.

I liked parts of this, but was let down by others. The interplay between Megan and Firefly, the way the first scene built tension and set up Firefly's conundrum, were both executed well.

But I was sorry to see that it didn't go anywhere particularly interesting with its premise. The meeting between Dash and Firefly is pretty humdrum; Firefly's reaction to Equestria not being the same home that she remembered is to casually accept it, as opposed to being further convinced that she'll never go to her real home or see her friends again, and their whole conversation is too light and insubstantial considering the context. Two individuals with very similar personalities from two different universes are meeting in a third which is alien to them both, and they treat that fact like a simple conversation piece.

With work, and a little bit of extension, you could probably round this out into a more complete story.

Disclaimer: I am a person. Therefore, I have biases. I try to look at things objectively, but that does not mean I always succeed. Furthermore, I'm not an authority. If any of my critique does not make sense on its own, poke me to convey my reasoning, and upon hearing it, decide for yourself if it has validity or not. Also, all exaggerations and comparisons made are not to ridicule, but to better convey the essence of my critique. My reviews contain unmarked spoilers, although I may use the [.spoiler] command occasionally.

I was going to write about sentence composition, repetitiveness, and tense shifts, but I see all these covered in previous reviews already.

Instead, I'd like to point out that you might want to consider making your protagonist a bit less powerful and a bit more afraid. Having a juvenile, lone unicorn that presumably has never fought before walk into the head quarter of a murdering gang of adults with no worry in the world but whether killing them all would be an evil thing to do is sure to break immersion in most readers, even if you fix all the technical issues of your story. Her succeeding without a scratch will break immersion in almost all of them.

Concluding remarks:
This won't rank high with me because of its multitude of issues. Also because it's revenge porn. Still, good luck on your writing journey, dear author!

>>Bad Horse

I think the author's intent is that getting a cutie mark is a sudden transition into or thru adolescence. Firecracker seems to be very suddenly aware of mares, as if the cutie mark switched on his hormones. And that's not an unreasonable head-canon. This is a coming-of-age story, and in it, adolescence gets compressed into one day by the abruptness of getting a cutie mark.

Yeah? Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. It's not so much that the mares are interested in him so much as he's noticing them in ways that he hadn't before.

So it's not that Scootaloo's heart doki-dokis for him. Okie-dokie-dokie-lokie.

There are lots of nice things here, like:

"Come on, Twilight, the other princesses have all been on your case to have some kind of guard. Especially Luna." Spike shuddered. "I really don’t want to burp out another epic poem on the subject."

Very clever of you to note Link-pony's cutie-heart is part-empty and interpret that as a need for danger.

I'll agree with >>Haze : the story alternates between funny and serious, and Brave Heart doesn't seem to know what he's doing or have much agency. I gather he's been decommissioned & needs to find a new job? That probably needs to be made clearer.

"Gen's said nothing, her smile not shifting as her eyes narrowed." -- I thought this meant she was angry at him, so I didn't understand why he was with the CMC in the next scene. I agree with Haze that there are probably too many underdeveloped characters for you to use the CMC. We need some time with Button & other background ponies that matter to BH, because we need some emotional interaction important to BH to make the story important to us. That can't happen while he's going about town with the CMC.

I'm confused that Sweetie Drops is apparently Bon-Bon, even though the sign on her shop says Bon-Bon. Sweetie Drops is a Hasbro toy name, not her real name. :P I had to look it up because I've never seen anybody use it before in a story. When in fandom, do as the fans do. It's also confusing because there's another Sweetie in the story, and you call them both "Sweetie".

I guess my main problem is that the resolution doesn't feel like it would make BH happy. Being Twi's guard sounds pretty boring compared to his former work, especially since she doesn't feel the need for a guard (and doesn't need one, being the local big bad herself).

Come to think of it, I'd rather see this combined with the Luna's Concubine story. Being Luna's concubine--now that could be a hazardous job.

>>Bad Horse

I'm confused that Sweetie Drops is apparently Bon-Bon, even though the sign on her shop says Bon-Bon. Sweetie Drops is a Hasbro toy name, not her real name. :P I had to look it up because I've never seen anybody use it before in a story. When in fandom, do as the fans do. It's also confusing because there's another Sweetie in the story, and you call them both "Sweetie".

It's a show reference. In the 100th episode, Bon-Bon reveals to her girlfriend wife best friend Lyra that she's a deep-cover secret agent for a decommissioned spy agency, and that her real name is Sweetie Drops.

So that's worked into the premise for this story.

Disclaimer: I am a person. Therefore, I have biases. I try to look at things objectively, but that does not mean I always succeed. Furthermore, I'm not an authority. If any of my critique does not make sense on its own, poke me to convey my reasoning, and upon hearing it, decide for yourself if it has validity or not. Also, all exaggerations and comparisons made are not to ridicule, but to better convey the essence of my critique. My reviews contain unmarked spoilers, although I may use the [.spoiler] command occasionally.

This was carefully crafted, but did I enjoy it? Yes, I think I did. It took a while though... I don't know if I would've read through the quantum physics and the introduction of the characters if this were a fimfic publication. The introduction of the characters is certainly powerful, though... telling, but telling at its best.

And of course it was all right with him. He didn't care about the tickets. He didn't suggest they could talk with Blynken after the show. He tore those fucking tickets into pieces and threw them in the trash, even though they cost 60 bits each and it was the last performance of the year, because you put your friends above your own pleasure in Equestria.

This is where I started actually thinking there was a purpose to this story. I would suggest moving that further to the start of the story to not lose the interest of readers, but I guess part of the impact of it also comes from not being advertised, because that would sound like "read this story in which things that suck in our world are contrasted with Equestria". Not all-too compelling.

It comes down to trusting the author, I guess. You build a lot of trust with the quality of language and skillfull narration, but is it enough for most readers to trust you up to this point? You decide.

This story, and its message, would be quite trite without the final paragraph, though.

And that's what happened to Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in Equestria. Shut up. Shut up. I swear that's how it all happened in the magical kingdom of Equestria.

This is what turns what up till then could have been a simple "if we'd all join hands this world could be like Equestria" message into something much more powerful. The narrator does not simply tell a story, or a fairy tale, no... the narrator needs this to be real. He also knows that it's utterly unrealistic, though, so he preventively shuts down any objections with his "Shut up", protecting his escapist bubble.

This is a twist, right at the end. It turns the "the world could be wonderful, if only..." into a "I know this is all unrealistic a.f., but please let me keep on pretending."

Maybe this hits so close to home because escapism is what brought me to MLP:FiM. I was stressed and unhappy during S1 and S2, but being able to look forward to a new 30 minute snippet of a colourful world in which friendship was literally magic at the end of every week made life easier.

Concluding remarks:
Well crafted (LOOK, I stayed clear of the accursed adjective!) story with a powerful message that will stay with me for a while. The only weakness I can see is that it takes a long time to take off.

I have mixed feelings about this. And I fear I'm mostly going to parrot the above.

First off, a disclaimer. I'm not really into mythoses that are along the lines of "Equestria is really Earth post some massive event". And while this is not literally that, it's close enough that it triggers the same responses from me.

That being said, if I ignore my distaste for that particular premise, it's still enjoyable. And it certainly does answer a very simple (and entertaining!) question. In fact, the first scene of the story is easily my favourite (I'd say "easily the best", but the stance in my disclaimer may be skewing that).

But there are still logistical flaws, many of which others pointed out. But the most important one to me is, you guessed it, H.G. Wells. Why? Well, did you ever read "Fans!"? No? Well, there was a storyline in there where they had to rescue H.G. Wells (there's a very good reason for it which I won't spoil) and they propose doing so by sending him a personal forcefield. Which, if he picks up, will allow them to better defend him. Someone else asks the leader why he thinks Wells would even consider touching such a strange and foreign device. The answer?

Because he's H.G. Wells.

My point here is I don't think he's reacting like I'd expect Mr. Wells to react to a talking pony, at least not initially. He already knows a) they're in a different REALITY and b) magic of some sort exists here (they met a real pegasus! Who else could a horse fly but with magic?). So while there might be a brief moment where he's very surprised, I don't think he'd ever be scared. He'd be fascinated. Intrigued. Want to learn more.

Because he is H.G. Wells.

So, yeah, sorry, I found that very distracting as I just couldn't buy it. Oh, I went along with it because the rest of the story was fairly interesting (though, again, flawed), but it still nagged me the entire rest of the time. ENough so that I had to write, well, this very rant about it.

I'd suggest either not having him be Wells since, as others pointed out, it's not necessary for him to be. Or make him a lot more Wellsy.

Anyway, this is getting long so I'll wrap up. I'll stress again that the Twilight and Celestia interactions are pretty great (though I wish we either only had Twilight's PoV or only Celestia's, but that's a minor nitpick), and I do think this is a pretty solid story even if not normally one I'd seek out. I do love me some world building! Even if I really hate the foundation you're building from.

Verdict: Flawed but enjoyable.

Georg’s first Round Micro Reviews for the new stories on my slate End Of An Era: Scores are letter grades for Plot, Technical Work, and Characterization mushed together, with an E for stories I find particularly Enjoyable. Ranked by how I like them, not necessarily how perfect they are on the score. (and posted all at once, from top to bottom so they line up on the chat.) It’s the last minute (again), so I need to get reading. (Darned real world)

Enjoy - Bonitatem Doce Me — A+ — Well, according to comic canon, Cheerilee was valedictorian of the Canterlot school, so going on to a doctorate is not a stretch. Very smooth and engaging writing. Nice touch with Diamond Tiara being the last one out of the classroom. Spoiled Rotten was written *perfectly* right down to the college major. Sawing back and forth just like a saw across the jugular vein. Top tier

Enjoy - Opal, Gemstones, etc… — A+ — Even and smooth, although for a few moments there I thought Fluttershy had been turned into a weeping willow. Nice transitions, engaging descriptions, and a good job making it go from the beginning to the end without the urge to skip forward.

Enjoy - Gotta Catch at Least One — A — Silly fic about Celestia and Luna doing silly things. I enjoyed this entirely too much. And yes, there are libraries in the US with live-in staff.

Fairy Tales - A- - First reaction - I have to admit I was also mentally saying “Get to the point” along with Twilight. A couple of little hiccups like Sol Invictus when it should be Sol Invicta (female ending, or so one of my editors schooled me). On second reading, a little rough with the story telling, somewhat difficult to get a good suspension of disbelief going. In short, things just ‘happen’ so instead of a chain of events, you just have a lot of iron links laying around. It reads a little like a bulleted list instead of a story, but it *is* an interesting one.

Heartbreak — B+ — Somewhat disjointed at the beginning with an awful lot of setup speeches. Talk, talk, talk to set up the actions, then talk some more. It just didn’t gell as it went forward.

Shut Up - B- - First Reaction - Um. What? Second reading - Okay, bits and pieces of this are making more sense, but still, what? A highly-complex story that just lost me. Maybe it’s because of my poor math and science scores in college.

The Last Days - Honestly, I couldn’t get through this one so I just marked it ‘Abstain’ and went on.

Not on my slate, and a little glad of it. Suffers from Mood Whiplash badly. Goes from Clever Quirky Little Thing to Silly Comedy to Grim Dark murder. Pick one, please.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did.

Don't die.

I find this premise fascinating, but in execution it feels rough around the edges. >>FrontSevens and >>FanOfMostEverything nailed much of this, but I also want to add that I'm unclear as to how much time has passed between the start of this war and the setting of the story. Part of that is due to the fact that characters discuss options that would logically be brought up at the start of a defensive campaign rather than the final battle.

I also wish that we'd seen more of the war than you described. I get that you want to keep the focus on Twilight, but it wouldn't have been that difficult to have her chatting with Applejack from a position to the rear of the front lines, or to have someone run in and send her an update about how Shining Armor is currently kicking their collective horse asses. Or something, whatever.

Point is, the story feels like it has the potential to be an epic. Hammer something grander out of it once this is all said and done, and I'll gladly read it.

Right, lets get to some reviews before the preliminaries end. As usual, all reviews are intended as constructive criticism and given in the spirit of collaboration. Reviews contain some small parts that may prove a choking risk in small children.


Now, Childhood's End (dude, apostrophe!) is the story of a little colt growing up, his gryphon sister and a mysterious cutie-mark. Also how he gets all the mares according to the comments section, though I didn't get that vibe beyond Twilight's librarian fetish. I didn't find myself very drawn into the story and the characters to be honest. Firecracker is a very generic colt, beyond his unusual family arrangements, and that makes it very hard to care about the wider story. He doesn't seem to have any interests, or goals, or much of anything to make him stand out, which is a shame considering the cannon supporting cast seem to get far more love than the lead.

I suppose that leads into my broader criticism of the story which is that there's not much driving the plot. The cutie-mark thing starts it up, but its either never resolved or passed clean over my head, and there's no real conflict pulling the story along. Some antagonism or crisis would have been nice to keep the reader engaged and give Firecracker to define himself against, but that's lacking and as such the story ends with a mildly heartwarming whimper.

I have to say moment to moment the prose is quite readable with some good character moments. However, a strong plot and character development is my personal focus and this really doesn't clear either bar.

A really strong comedy story that hits a really flat note at the end, Gotta' Catch At Least One details Principal Celestia's vain search for a replacement deputy principal. Spoiler: they're all terrible choices. Maud's section in particular is probably one of the funniest things I've read in the Write-Off for a good long while and is an excellent use of a callback joke.

Ultimately the search falls apart with Luna's return and final scene is the weakest part of a very strong story. This is IMO, but straight man comedy relies on the sensible character being bombarded with madness until they succumb and end up as bad as everyone else. This doesn't happen, which is why the last line isn't really funny. I'm going to commit a little bit of a Write-off sin and rewrite the final joke, but more as a way of illustrating what tone this kind of comedic back and forth needs, rather than saying this is what should have happened.

“Sister!” Luna bellowed as she once again entered the office. “I have made another decision!”

"Really?" Celestia said, not looking up from her papers. "Have you decided to stay?"

“Indeed I have. For I have discovered that the servers are down far too often to make traveling across the world to catch Pokémon worth it.”

Celestia resisted rolling her eyes. "Well, that might be a problem. You see, sister, I already hired a replacement."

"A replacement!" Luna exclaimed. "How? Who?" Her eyes narrowed. "They're not Team Instinct, are they?"

"Oh, it was a difficult choice. But I'm confident I made the right decision."

---

Sat on the vice-principal's desk Gummy blinked once. No one was quite sure where he'd gotten the tie.

This was a good laugh, but it feels incomplete since it doesn't feature Mrs. Harshwhinney coming out of Equestria to fill the position. Maybe you could've added Fluttershy's brother too, just applying to spent his days in a hammock. CMC and Spike are the weakest parts, and maybe you should think about replacing them by something else.

“I see. Didn't you get a degree studying rocks?”

That's called geology. :P

Well this was a fun read. Not often you get a hard sci-fi story in the pony-verse, though that there's any at all is always a bit of a surprise. Reminds me to get on with my Honor Harrington crossover one of these days. But, I digress.

Slightshot is a story of Equestria fleeing an indescribable extinction event. Yes, the planet. Its an audacious plan for an audacious story and there's a wonderful blend of modern and ancient in the story where Equestria has almost vanished in an attempt to escape its fate. The few surviving characters from the show are all ancient relics or so far changed by the journey to be unrecognizable. Hope and tragedy play off each other throughout in a very touching tale of a journey through the stars. I've a few complaints, the technobabble takes itself far, far too seriously and Bad Horse pointed out the immersion breaking excessive accuracy, but these are fairly minor.

It's just a shame nothing happens.

Sorry, that was definitely a shock value line there. In all seriousness though, Slingshot runs headfirst into the hard sci-fi trap of a wonderful world that consumes the text at the expense of the story. The plot line is, Twilight wakes up, visits her friends (mostly still asleep) and doesn't find aliens. In the meantime we're introduced to this wonderful world filled with the aftereffects of agonizing choices, but nothing really happens in the time we're there beyond the arrival, which is a fairly minor event in the grand scheme of things and one Twilight has zero control over or impact on (within the time-frame of the story).

Again, I love this world and it is a great backdrop for an epic, but that epic isn't on the screen. It's alluded to, hinted at and tantalisingly close at some points, but not there. Give me Luna's struggle to communicate the end the world. Give me Twilight vainly trying to avert a problem friendship can't fix. Heck, give me the zebra trying to understand their long lost kin. Not just the backdrop.

This all probably sounds really negative to you, author. Don't take it that way. This story definitely deserves a medal for the background alone, there's just so much more potential.

>>FrontSevens

My hooffalls grace the snow. After a pause, the changeling turns its head and snarls.

I reach out to touch their head, my hoof hovering and waiting for them to react. They smack away my leg.

After a few moments, they slowly sit down next to me

“It is, isn’t it?” I utter in dulcet tones designed to assuage. Eventually, his muzzle scrunches.

I wait for them to process that I spoke, after which point they exhale—

Some of these might look like cluncky connectors, but I think they're deliberately peppered in to show that in relation to Chrysalis, the protagonist is operating with lag / a 500 ms ping.

By asserting individuality as a common changeling, it requires one to use up processes like reasoning and a proper perception of time to do so.”

That is what Chrysalis said before her POV starts, implying that the changeling does not have the processing power / RAM to be an individual and handle reasoning and perception of time at the same time.

I do agree though that the supposed highlighting of this in the Chrysalis POV is too subtle.

>>Bad Horse

Xepher reminded me the word I was looking for wa "Jargon" I didn't have it at the tip of my tongue, so went for the closest thing I could think of (which wound up being wrong).

>>Posh Oh, right. I remember that now. :P

>>The_Letter_J

You're probably right that it wasn't intended, the more I think of it. But I think it could be shaped that way with little effort.

>>wYvern
Oh, now I get it.

I don't know if I can hold that against the story, now. Personally, it was too subtle for me, but I feel like that'd be enough for people more perceptive than I. However, I give points for accessibility in stories.

Side note, I'm thinking that even if one can't be an individual at the expense of perceiving time, they could still be an individual--they'd just process everything slower. It wasn't that the changeling couldn't perceive time at all, or couldn't reason--it just took him longer. They're not shown to be entirely mutually exclusive here, yet he feels like they are?

I wish I could process the idea this fic is presenting.

Entry number 14, File Code name, One

Though this story has some interesting moments the dialogue didn't feel like it gave enough punch. There was different times where I wasn't sure which dialogue to follow and it came off wired to me. In the end the story had a few interesting points such as how Queen Chrysalis is tricking her drone into a false sense of security and whatnot but I think with a bit of extra work it would make for an interesting fic.

Entry number 16, File Code Name, Harmony is Clockwork.

This story starts a little differently then normal but I do enjoy reading the ending bit. It takes place in the mythos of Equus's past and delves into some mysteries surrounding the elements of Harmony. Despite some of the dialogue I did enjoy reading about how this all came to be. Maybe having more tone and detail surrounding the mythos of these characters will add rich story elements to it.

>>FrontSevens

Side note, I'm thinking that even if one can't be an individual at the expense of perceiving time, they could still be an individual--they'd just process everything slower. It wasn't that the changeling couldn't perceive time at all, or couldn't reason--it just took him longer. They're not shown to be entirely mutually exclusive here, yet he feels like they are?

Hmm I see what you mean. Continuing my Computer/Brain analogy, I think what we see is one process getting put on the backburner for the other. While the changeling can perceive time normally without personality, and can be a normal individual when not fussed about time, he performs sub-standard in both when they have to run at the same time since he has to split resources.

While that does not seem like a that big of a deal in a vacuum, this would be a real problem when trying to fit into a society of ponies that do not have those limitations. Ponies would get pissed off because they'd have to wait 2 seconds for you to respond every time, and you'd not be able to parttake in games or sports, and you'd probably die crossing the street.

What might still work best though is giving up reasoning power... then, the changeling could fit in as a mentally challenged pony with individuality and propper perception of time. Despite including reasoning as one of the processes eating up resources, the fic does not explore this possibility.

Entry number 6, File Code Name, The Day the God of Time Stopped by for Tea

I was very skeptical about this one. Turns out I was more confused at the end at what this story was or how it came about. It jumbled from place to place and it really didn't make sense to me in some places. The killer mood for me, literately, was at the end. I won't say that you caused a few raised eyebrows, dear writer, but to me, I just don't like seeing something that ghastly to a beloved character.

Entry number 28, File Code Name, The Yo Mama Mandate

Now this was a funny story to read. It had it's funny moments and bits that would seem outlandish but with Pinkie Pie in the midst it did lead to a fun trip throughout the story. The ending felt a little weak and it should have hit on a high note. Other than that I say the story turned out well.

Entry number 2, File Code Name, Writer's Sin

I don't know why people assume this story to be bad, in fact, I really enjoyed it. The whole thing kind of reminds me of a certain episode from the series and it even strikes on par with friendship lessons. I do enjoy the subtle moments between both Celesita and Twilight, they do act as if they were mother and child.

Entry Number 13, File Code Name Slingshot

This story didn't seem to fit with me. I get it that it is on a whole idle of sci-fy and heavily on travel in the galaxy deal, and with the fact that Twilight and her Immortal status along with the other princesses. But it just didn't settle with me compared to the other stories that I have read. Don't get me wrong it was an interesting read, just didn't suit me is all.

Entry Number 25, File Code Name, Saved by the Bell

This story was really good, one of my favorites out of all of the entries. Taking place with Sunset moving on from Graduation and deciding what she can do in the future, but both Princess Celestia and their counterparts in the human world, are together and guide her through this and help her discover what she can do in the future. I really enjoy this the most and I know people may disagree but I did enjoy reading this work.

And with that that comes to the end of my entries. I hope they were fair and balanced and that everyone understood what I had said. I hope my story gets the same common courtesy and gets reviewed based on content and story instead of the critical grammar issues within. I believe I did well with my work and actually writing more into my own draft from the suggestions that have been made and I hope it gets up there in the polls.

Otherwise, if it doesn't, I can still send it to anyone who is an editor here and can dissect it and cross stitch it back up and make it better once again.

Good luck to the rest of you and I can't wait for the end result. :)

This was a good, episode-like slice of life story. For the most part, I enjoyed it. It made for an interesting lesson and a nice end there.

I think the author’s decision not to involve the entire main six is a good one. Rainbow Dash was a skeptical voice and Pinkie was an optimistic voice, and both contributed to the plot. Any more and I think the story would’ve lacked focus. Sometimes the show writers don’t realize they’re just dragging the main six along in some episodes for no reason but the sake of having everyone present.

I do think the hostility and contempt of the tribe was beaten in too much, as >>ShortNSweet points out. I think it could stand to be cut back a bit, perhaps in the middle of the story. There were typos as well and some missing commas, and the jokes are a bit meh sometimes. Otherwise, this was aight. Not great but not bad either.

Writer’s Sin - Good quality, if a little preachy. If published, I have to add this Never The Final Word.


The day was over, the offense of her beloved student dealt with, but as Celestia glided down the hallways of her Canterlot home toward her bedroom, something still bothered her. It was not necessarily the plagiarism, as Celestia herself had made special mental note of thousands of little turns of phrase or interesting word plays over her long and diverse reign. Still, she had learned to trust her instincts, and after a brief shower and brisk drying, she turned to her bedroom library and let her mind wander.

Eventually, she withdrew an older Daring Do book, one which had come out near the beginning of the series when the writer was still getting her hooves underneath her, so to speak. Celestia paged through it at random, and finally stopped at the page she vaguely remembered.

Daring Do bowed her head as she faced the Museum Review Board, who had just delivered a devastating slap at the proud pegasus’ technique in artifact recovery. She took a deep breath, trying to at least sound repentant before addressing the old fuddy-duddies who had never set hoof outside of their own museums in decades, if ever.

“Everypony makes mistakes. Sometimes, those mistakes have life-altering consequences. I’ve learned through my own mistakes the value of maintaining my professional integrity…

Celestia placed the book down, picked up a scroll and a pen, and wrote three words, using her magic to send the resulting message to Spike with enough force that it might actually knock him on his rear when the scroll emerged, which was just fine for the solar diarch.

She walked over to her chair and took a seat with the book in front of her to read while she waited.

She did not expect to be waiting long.

Sparkle
Canterlot
NOW!

E! - Slingshot - Fun, fun story. Not on my slate, but still well worth the read.

Note: The drive is much like Alan Dean Foster's Kurita-Kinoshita drive (KK drive) done up to planetary scale, which is cool squared.

I'm gonna at least agree that Peridot was far more altruistic than she should have been (maybe make her less accepting of her son's biracial child at first and have her change her mind by the end of the story?). And I'm a little confused on whether or not the unnamed pegasus officer was supposed to be Hurricane. I want to say it was, but unless I'm missing something, Hurricane wasn't a dude...

Anyway, all that aside, I liked this story tremendously. Easily one of my favorites so far.

I like the action in this one, I like the tone, I like the characters. The atmosphere feels rich and the story pulled me in. I liked this. Good job. :>

My biggest gripe with the story is the large infodump in the beginning. It’s still technically story, but it keeps describing things that had happened, and for me, it was distracting bouncing back and forth to Peridot.

It also feels like I joined mid-story. It was sort of a mini-arc, fighting the dragons, Peridot thinking she’d lost her daughter, and hoping she’d find her alive. So there was an arc, but I feel like I’m watching a passing train instead of riding it from start to finish. Which, maybe this story is better-suited in long form, and maybe the word limit was too short, but the large infodump and the lack of closure didn’t make this story feel complete as it is.

>>Posh
Hurricane and all the other ponies in the Hearth’s Warming play were played by the main six, who happen to be female. I don’t think any of the historical figures were explicitly said by the show to be female, with the exception of Princess Platinum, where it’s sort of implied. They could be either gender, you misogynist scum :v :v :v Or, like, the male equivalent of a misogynist >.>

I am a fan of weird and unexpected ships, and this one certainly fits the bill. Somewhat surprisingly, it actually works pretty well too. I think that maybe you should have tried to do a bit more with Harshwhinny to make her more distinctively her, as she did come off as a bit generic to me. But I'm not entirely sure how you would do that without using the word "professionalism," and that wouldn't exactly fit the tone of the story.

Well done.

>>FrontSevens

Hurricane and all the other ponies in the Hearth’s Warming play were played by the main six, who happen to be female. I don’t think any of the historical figures were explicitly said by the show to be female, with the exception of Princess Platinum, where it’s sort of implied. They could be either gender, you misogynist scum :v :v :v Or, like, the male equivalent of a misogynist >.>

I am filth. D:

I really don't like all those "Equestria is a post apocalyptic Earth" stories, and I was afraid that this story was going to go in that direction. I'm glad it didn't, and I actually found myself enjoying this story.
The parts about ages just doesn't work in my mind though. Luna would have had to have been gone for at least a few hundred years for everyone to have completely forgotten about her. (Though a story where only the ponies under 40 didn't remember Luna could be amusing.) This story also offers no explanation as to where Luna came from.
I do think the ending was quite good though.

I'm pretty sure I understand what you did here, but it just didn't work for me. There were some very good bits, but on the whole I didn't find it particularly enjoyable. But I can see why some people might.

This is simply a lovely story. I praised Slingshot, but that one holds its own, even w/r to a clear medalist.

There's really little I can say. It was both entertaining and suitably dark. I simply regret that the story sort of ends abruptly, without clear resolution. It picks up midway and, as BH points out, the psychological evolution of Peridot cannot be a satisfactory conclusion, because she already evolved before the story begins. So all we're left with is an unfinished voyage.

Thus, this story badly needs a sequel, or an expansion. But I bet it will medal nonetheless (even if it is not on my slate). Congrats, author, for your obvious skill and richness of imagination that I envy you.

>>Broman
Don't forget, you can review more than just what's on your initial slate.

On that note, with the weekend upon us, let's break down the least reviewed stories:

Historical Gaps (#8), Permission to Land (#20), and The Next Dawn (#27) each have only three comments.

A New Home (#9), Bonitatem Doce Me (#15), and The Rainbow Crossing (#19) each have only four comments, and A New Home has only three unique commenters.

Remember, authors can't improve if they don't know what they did wrong, and they won't know what parts worked best without an outside perspective.

>>FanOfMostEverything
On this note, I would also like to point out Fire in the Promised Land (#26), which only has four unique commenters.

Let's bring 'em all up to five, everybody! :o :>

I apologise that I didn't engage with this story: warfare in ponyfic does nothing for me, so my biases were coming out to play from the get-go. But more than that: perhaps the point was that the generals are similar, but I found them bland and interchangeable. I felt as though they had no feelings, measured and detached from the action they were supposedly part of. I hate to use the phrase 'show vs tell' because I don't really agree with it, but I did feel the descriptions were, for lack of an ability to think of a better term, tell-y:

Screams behind me indicate that somepony hath been hit. Poor soul. I mourn him for as long as I can before moving down the hill and teleporting to the front lines.

This feels completely empty to me. The general tells me what happened, very matter of fact, without reacting in any real depth, as if this is an account of something in the past rather than something he's actually involved with right now. I would have found it more engaging if it was more immediate, and actions had consequences:

"Someone screams behind me, a sound that pierces my heart. I want to take a moment, mourn him, I do, but I can't. There's no time. I have to get to the front. I concentrate. In a flash of hot light, I'm there at the front. Shouts and screams make me flinch; I close my ears, to no avail. The screams keep getting inside my head, like the bolt smashing into that poor soul before..."

Of course, maybe he wasn't that emotionally invested. But without his emotional investment, I'm not invested either.

I think this has potential, and I'm a sucker for stories about archaeology and Lovecraftian nonsense and all that. And I don't mind the cliche about Celestia keeping a tight grip on historical records for her own purposes, partly because, as said before, there's evidence enough for it in canon (also because I might be guilty of using that cliche myself). No, this was an interesting concept, and a good character study of good ol' Indiana Pones.

But structurally, I found it lacking; I thought that some of the interludes between Daring Do and Twilight were repetitive and broke up the narrative flow. I also didn't especially like how Twilight was characterized; she seemed far too naive and trusting for the point in the series that this is set in. She should probably be more perceptive than she is, even if she's distracted by her "fan-fillying" (on a sidenote, this might be just my personal preference, but "girl" instead of "filly" might sound better in this context; they do say "girl" plenty of times in the show, after all). At least with regards to Celestia's selective memory. That seems the sort of thing Purplesmart would pick up on, even if she does love and trust Celestia with her life.

Anyway, one last note:

Nopony went out digging around in the dirt! That wasn’t what archeology was all about! Instead a true archeologist dug through books! Searched through libraries, compared bibliographies, and cross-referenced citations. Anything you really needed to know about the past had already been catalogued, written about, and filed away after all. So why bother sullying your hooves?

I was gonna complain about this being, y'know, not archaeology... but then I finished reading and realized that it was the entire point of the story that discovery (and even the search for discovery) is being suppressed. So, hey, good for you pal. :)