Personally, Kuroi, I think Bridle Gossip and Winter Wrapup are your best bets. Bridle Gossip's funny, fairly introductory of the characters, humorous with the curses, and eventually ends with a good message. And Winter Wrapup has the giant musical number...

Dashface emoticon: /)^3^( Source.

Try as I might I cannot get the backslash to work...

edited 23rd May '11 7:45:16 PM by Runic

Awww, the other two guys got concrit for their fics, but not me?

D: Be a happy pony! *Hugs Pinkie*

I'll be happy as soon as I get some constructive criticisification.

@Cheese: Experiences, dear boy (or girl). Could be yours, could be someone else's. Did you ever have a world-shattering truth revealed to you? How did you feel? If not, do you know someone else who's had that experience? The "Five Stages of Grief" might help to make sense of what's going on.

Also, take time to expand on the details. As it is, you just seemed to skim through the sequence of events, like this is supposed to be a summary. You should give the readers time to immerse themselves in the story, in the minds of the characters involved. Don't be afraid of ending up Wangsty, this is a heavy subject to begin with, and some drama is to be expected. Especially when it involves a little kid, and all the lack of maturity that comes with being that age.

My friend drew this◊

Don't worry Moe, I'll take a look at yours!

In the mean time, why don't I just leave this here...

Alrighty, well! I can honestly say I hadn't expected you to keep up the RPG elements in a story version if it. It's actually kinda funny to read, and it's an interesting twist. I also like the idea of Spike being an Unreliable Narrator, and I think you could stand to to a bit more with it. On that note, you seem to have a pretty good handle for Spike's voice, but you seem to be struggling a bit with the other ponies. Part of it is the language you choose, which is something you really need to be careful with, since the character personalities affect their speech patterns, but I think there's also a bit of issue with narrating the dialog in general...But that might just be me, I don't know.

As it stands, though, I think your biggest issue is pacing. It's easy to tell, right from the get-go, that this story is BIG. Like, really, really big, and it feels like you're rushing through it, do the degree that it reads nealry frantically in spots. It's all extremely tight, the character go, do what they need to do to move the plot along, and then just keep going. You need to add a little fluff in some spots, like when Twilight is going around town gathering the other ponies. Yes, she's moving as fast as she can, but other ponies would try and stop her to ask her questions. Of course, in that situation you could be forgiven for it feeling rushed, since the issue would feel rushed to the narrator, but I noticed a few spots in particular that it really, really hurt the story. The first of these was explaining the black waters. This is your antagonist here, take some time out to elaborate on it, and make us feel threatened by it. Tell us what happened to Canterlot, tell us how it felt to get infected, weave the scene for us. The second issue was the legend of the Mother pony - you said you made a long story short there, and I think that's a huge mistake. This is a serious piece of world building, which is enormously important in an epic adventure story like this. I'd actually take some time to recount the legend in full - have one of the ponies not know about it, or something, to give you an excuse to exposit. The third issue, though, it think is even bigger than the first two combined, and that's when they go to the human world. Even if we can ignore the fact that they just found a rock that has a portal on one side, that they unceremoniously walked through, they are now in a world populated by creatures they have never, ever seen before. They would all be just as scared as the people. That would be a reasonable place for the quest to completely grind to halt for a good chapter or two, even before the cops get called out on them.

The pacing issue aside, though, it does show promise, and it has quite a few funny moments. Just remember that despite how much people can complain about it, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of padding - it's a wonderful place to develop the characters, and their relationships with one another.

edited 23rd May '11 9:15:37 PM by kegisak

You guys think this show will decay now that luren isn't in charge anymore?

edited 23rd May '11 9:40:08 PM by FallenLegend

Not really.

Yeah, there was a big discussion when the news came out, but It turns out that she still had a good bit of say in the planning stages, and it looks like she's handed the reigns to someone who she trusts a lot. No word on who it is, for the time being my guess is Amy Keating Rogers, since she worked on an episode or two with Faust, but who knows? I guess all we can do is just wait and see how the new season turns out.

Considering she still wrote most of the pre-production scripts and that most of her old coworkers (she didn't make the show amazing on her own) are still there I think season 2 will be safe.

To add to the above (x5):

• I don't think there's many times in the show where Spike refers to Twilight by her full name and as such, constantly seeing him call her Twilight Sparkle feels a bit jarring
• The part where Rainbow falls down into the lab feels a bit long winded. I almost felt like I needed to take a deep breath after reading those sentences.
• Spike sure seems nonchalent about the humans. It kind of feels like he's aware that the reader is human. If he's supposed to be in universe narrating to a pony/ponies, then he definitely needs to stop to elaborate to them.
• The RPG elements felt a little jarring at first, even if they make me grin. Toward the end, it felt like the story was implying that the ponies had somehow been sucked into someone's RPG version of the real world. If that's what you're going for, then nevermind. However, if you're going for something closer to the actual real world, I would advise reconsidering the RPG elements.

EDIT: Formatting.

edited 23rd May '11 9:55:45 PM by KuroiTsubasaTenshi

Does anyone ever wonder if some nutter will come along and start demanding that the programme make a bigger effort to appeal to it's "true, obvious target audience" of guys in the 18-25 age range? I mean, it could happen, couldn't it?

The target audience is people who buy toys.

RPG elements in a story? Well, Homestuck and Scott Pilgrim do it well, so I guess it's worth a try.

I CAME.

Woah.

Winter Wrap Up + At the Gala = AWESOME apparently.

After learning that it was a mashup made me want to check it out, but the way it was remix turned me off after the first couple seconds. It's just not for me, I'm afraid.

I've just read Better Living Through Science and Ponies. Pretty good, though there's a disconcerting amount of Rouge Angles of Satin (i.e. there is some) and I've completely spoiled myself on Portal 2 in the process. The highlight has to be the side fic where Celestia puts Glados in her place with logic.

Dangit, comparing Applejack and Abraham Lincoln shouldn't take this long.

So can I hypothetically request an avatar from you now using "Applejack" instead of the usual? (kidding)

I wonder when Fluttershy stopped being my favorite character.

No, that wasn't supposed to be related.

Funny, comparing Fluttershy and Ulysses S. Grant was alot easier.

I'm not going to ask. O_o

Hey, it can work!

Hey guys, remember that Derpy Hooves flash-game-storyline-contest?

Guess what? I WON! I FREAKING WON! I'VE FINALLY COME FIRST IN A CONTEST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE....

And now, because I used my dad's email adress, the whole family knows I like ponies. Bugger.

But still, I WON!