Wednesday, December 21, 2011

My Little Pony: Prime (Update Parts 4, 5, and 6)

[Grimdark] [Crossover] [Shipping] [Adventure]


Author: Brony Tom

Description: After a blue meteor crashes into the Everfree Forest, an insidious poison spreads throughout Equestria, corrupting ponies that it ensnares. Ponies everywhere must fight their neighbors, their friends, and even themselves...

Part 1 - Impact
Part 2 - Sparks
Part 3 - Unwelcome Guests
Part 4 - Precursor
Part 5 - Sowing Seeds
Part 6 - Stirring

Additional Tags: Metroid, Phazon, Corruption, Long, Adventure

5 comments:

  1. Part 1

    Plot: You definitely made some intriguing plot points here and it made me want to go straight to the next chapter so no problems here.

    Characterization: I love the scenes between Celestia and Luna, they have good interactions and the way you've formed their relationship is very interesting, though I can say that Celestia seems to be missing a certain regal quality about her, but that could just be my interpretation of her character. All the other characters seem fine and proper to me.

    Small note on the dialogue: the flow seems a bit off in spots. At times it was entirely fine and engaging but at others it seemed, hmm, stilted? I'm not sure if that's the right word but hopefully you get the idea I'm trying to convey. Flow is something that's hard to actively work on, though, in my opinion. I think that just comes with lots of practice.

    Prose: Excellent word choices throughout. They invoke great imagery.

    Grammar: Grammar was fine apart from the dialogue. You end a spoken line with a comma if you proceed to describe who just said it. Like so: "There's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out," said Arthur.
    ^Comma

    Part 2

    Plot: The scenes involving Luna and Celestia are still as interesting as ever. Trixie! Her role is suiting. I'm assuming Flare is going to be an important character? The time spent explaining his and Rainbow Dash's incident, though hardly boring, wasn't quite on the same level as everything else. However, if Flare is to be important later on then this hardly matters.

    Characterization: The looks into Luna's character were great. Internal conflict is always fascinating. Though Fluttershy suddenly taking charge to help heal Flare is believable, the way it was written seemed a bit deus ex machina. You probably could have just left it with Twilight's efforts being all that was needed. Spike seems a bit... off, but he's not the most multi-faceted character ever, so once again, could just be my own interpretation.

    Prose: Twilight's dream was EXCELLENTLY done. You get bonus points for the use of "lackadaisically" and "inexorable." The rest of the chapter was also quality stuff.

    Grammar: No real problems here (other than the dialogue problem mentioned before).

    I haven't played a single Metroid game (something which I should probably remedy) but I’m quite interested to see where this going. Hopefully that says something!

    And hopefully this post wasn't too long...

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  2. I... Oh my Celestia. That was, like... AWESOME. I love such feedback! ;)

    Anyways, which parts seemed kind of rough? I know I'm not the best with flow and such, perhaps you could point out some of the more flagrant ones?

    There is a reason for Celestia's seeming lack of regality; I'm going to be building up to it, so it might be a while before the reveal.

    And thanks for the tip about the commas in dialogue. I was always wondering, because neither looked right when I typed it. >_>

    Characterization was one of the things that I was most concerned about, because I tend to force characters towards unlikely decisions unless I really focus on avoiding it. I appreciate the note about Spike, I'll work on his behavior.

    Was there anything in particular that made Flare's intro less exciting? He is going to be a big player, so... yeah.

    Thank you sooo much.

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  3. Examples? (Preface: Having looked back over this, I realize that it is terribly nitpicky. I can be such a stickler for word logistics…)

    >> Aha! That's what it was!” Twilight shouted in triumph. “I found the discrepancy!”
    “Twilight! I'm trying to sleep, can you keep it down?” complained Spike.
    “Oops, sorry Spike.” Twilight apologized. <<

    In the rest of scene, Spike doesn’t appear. Though it’s realistic that Spike would of course still be sleeping in the library and Twilight’s shouting would wake him, it makes for jagged flow when a character pops in with a trivial piece of dialogue and then doesn’t contribute in any meaningful way for the rest of the scene.

    >> “I... I don't know, Princess.” Twilight replied uncertainly. “What does your spell do?”
    “Well, Twilight, the first part rearranged the telescope to be a repository of magical energy. The second part allows the telescope to release the energy in a concentrated beam that will destroy the asteroid.” <<

    The narrative paragraph just prior to this one pretty much told us everything we needed to know about the spell. Here we’re almost being re-told the same information. In order to keep flow, I would condense it so that the full explanation of the spell is left to either dialogue or narrative explanation.

    I hope those examples give an idea of what I'm talking about.

    Ah, so her lack of regality was meant to be obvious… Clever. Now I am even more intrigued. ;)

    Yeah, dialogue rules were something I had to constantly look up when I started writing.

    Characters are tricky things. You want to keep their behavior realistic and canon but yet you want to make sure their behaviors are tools to advance the plot the way you’ve envisioned. It’s a tough balance.

    Well the crashing through the window was interesting. That part was fine. It was Rainbow Dash’s explanation of the events that led up to it that was sub-par in my opinion. As soon as I read that Rainbow Dash and Flare had a competitive streak I knew exactly where everything was going-- through some sort of race they were going to end up crashing through said previous window. Given this predictability, it kind of stretched on longer than was interesting. However, if Flare is going to be a key character than this isn’t near as big of a deal. Then it’s a more a setup of his character than an isolated series of events put in to try to keep the story interesting.

    You’re quite welcome, it was my pleasure!

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  4. Part 3

    Plot:
    The intrigue has been doubled (yes I have been waiting forever to use that line, shush)! Trixie finally making her move, mysteriously affected nature, Spitfire being Flare’s brother, Lunacide, Cranklestia, and a new gray mare (who I have no idea is related to Metroid or not because I haven’t played them yet…)? Complaints? Won’t hear any from me. More please.

    Characterization:
    All of it was great and worked expertly. At first I was unsure about Fluttershy being into Shakespeare but after rethinking it I can dig it.

    Prose:
    Quite excellent and fluid.

    One thing, you wrote “Firework” when referring to Flare. Was this intentional and I just missed something?

    Grammar:
    Complaint Department: 0


    In conclusion, this is quite a shining chapter, my fellow writer. Keep up the superb work.

    (Man, short review is short.)

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  5. The gray mare isn't related to Metroid, just an OC that I thought would fit well in the story. :)

    The Fluttershy part was one that I wasn't sure whether it fitted, but I liked it and it was a good opportunity for some foreshadowing, so I kept it. Guess it came out alright. ^_^

    'Firework' is indeed referring to Flare; his full name is Firework Flare.

    Thanks a bunch for the detail in that review! You remind me of what attracted me to this blog in the first place.

    ReplyDelete