Of Time Lords and Ponies Review by Kritten (Response) · 8:58pm Aug 28th, 2014
Dear Kritten.
Wow... What an eye opener.
First let me start off by saying that it is fantastic to finally have another point of view to go off of. Thanks Kritten for that. I am relatively new to the whole FimFic writing myself, but I am not a stranger to good literature. I do enjoy my Steinbeck, J.K Rowling, Shakespeare and the like. But there I go again on useless tangents. I will admit that the short unnecessary tid-bits of information was mostly my doing.
Also, I will say that I am absolutely terrible with grammar and I deeply apologize for not being able to find most of our errors at first glance. I guess that explains my 420 writing SAT score. 
Thirdly, I agree for any non-whovian, this story is a bit difficult to read. I guess that Funnybunny514 and I got so worked up in exitement when writing, we didn't really stop to explain those very important aspects. After a first read we toyed around with a few ideas of how to represent the different aspects of Dr. Who, but i guess that conversation fell between the cracks.
Now onto the tagging. The Romance tag was completely my doing. Maybe it was wrong to put that in there, I dunno. But, the reasoning for the romance tag is purely due to the fact that I believed that there was a possibility that we might take a few chapters to develop the Doctor Twilight relationship. And that can mean a few things that I won't get into just yet.
Let's now move onto the critique of the character portrayal. Thank you so much for the great advice. From now on, I think that both of us will try to watch a few episodes before writing sessions. But I think that you did take a few points that we tried to make in the wrong direction.
Personally, despite you're assumption, I love Pinkie Pie. Her funny, random, and quirky personality make her a fantastic addition to the show. On the other hand, I do not know how to accurately portray her in the form of writing. Her lack of lines is solely due to the fact that I believe that the majority of her lines would end up feeling like constant ramblings of no importance to the story. You compared Pinkie to Fluttershy when it came to number of lines. But, I think you could agree that even though that Pinkie may talk a whole lot more than Flutters, Fluttershy's diologue would contain a lot more meaningful points.
And lastly, Thank you for your input on the emphasis of the Tardis. I agree completely that having the name of the time machine in all caps is a bit annoying, and I will personally try my hardest to keep myself from that habit. I will also keep in mind your criticism about the sonic screwdriver detecting magic. But the whole idea of the Doctor being able to detect teleportation had nothing to do with the Doctor knowing that it was Starswirled the Bearded's spell. That was just brought about by the Doctor's knowledge of Equestria's history. At this point in our very incorrect timeline, Starswirl would still be the only pony in existence that is experimenting with the idea of teleportation magic. The sonic screwdriver didn't come to that conclusion, it was the Doctor and his deductive reasoning.
I will leave off on this note: Although I do appreciate the review, I believe that some of you're critiques came off as just being straight up rude and hurtful. You mainly focused on the faults, so I have no idea what we did right if anything. I do understand that it may not have been your intention, but that is how it came across. Nevertheless I am grateful for the extra criticism, and I will do my best to keep the point's you brought up.
Sincerely,
Arched Lightning
Thanks for the rebuff, I always like a good counter-argument from an author to explain on why they did some of the things they did. I may be a critic, but I will still make some mistakes – as I am still human – in my critiques time from time.
Apart from the note at the end, I would have to completely agree on the points that you've brought up to defend your story. As for the note, I really think it's always required for me to explain why I do the things I do in critiques to the people I critique when they ask on why I said some of the things I said. When I am trying to force the tone I use in the critiques, it's normally because of a vast majority of reasons.
I don't mean it as to be mean or rude to the author that I'm critiquing to insult their intelligence or something like that, I normally do it because I just don't like sugarcoating some things. Normally, when I would do First Impression Critiques, from the start of me doing them, I would normally like to put my own thoughts of the story that I'm critiquing into the critique themselves, as that's generally the easiest way for the author to understand what the first kind of reaction that would be coming off of something that they did in the story.
The reason why I normally don't go over what was done good in the story as well would be because of the same reason: I just simply don't like sugarcoating things when I'm doing critiques. Praising an author for doing something right, to me, would be something that would be viewed in a full-story review, as in where you're reviewing a story to give a good vibe for the viewer or reader so then they will either watch/read what you like or the opposite for what you don't like when you're reviewing. I never really started these critiques to get publicity from the community, I just personally wanted to help the large number of failing new writers because they just simply didn't know what they were doing wrong in their stories, and when I work for people I genuinely want to help, I don't think it's good to start complimenting them and making them feel good until they have everything bad out of the way.
The biggest reason on why I normally force the tone put onto the critique would be so then the new writer I'm critiquing can remember what needs to be worked on the most, as that was the most emphasized topic put onto the critique. Doing so will most likely assure that they are to put their hardest effort into fixing it. Generally, if I go about and compliment on everything that they had done right, then I simply believe that there are going to be some people who would, over time, care less and less on what they're doing wrong and focus completely on what they're doing right. For an example of this, take someone who is doing bad in school, but really good at hanging out with their friends. If their friends make them feel good, then most likely they are going to hang around their friends more rather than caring about school. I try to make sure that they focus on what's really important before telling them that they're doing extremely good in something, so that they won't get too cocky.
Is everyone in that example like that? Obviously no. Do I know all author's personal life as I'm doing their critique? Obviously no. If I believed that I knew the personal life of the person I'm critiquing enough that they don't fit the description, then I'd go ahead and create a T-chart on what they're doing bad in and what they're good in. Since this is the internet, I'd just rather not go through that.
The secondary reason in which I may sound mean or rude during my critiques would be because I don't even notice it. Normally, when I try pumping out 4k words out as fast as I possibly can for a critique someone asked for/one I wanted to do, running across multiple errors can sometimes rustle my jimmies a bit, and if I sound as if I'm being mean without an actual reason behind it, then I would have to apologize for it.
The third reason would be because I'm trying to pull off a joke and forgetting that I'm not funny. You won't see any 'Comedy' tagged stories from me any time soon, heh heh.
Other than that, keep working on your story, as I'm pretty sure you guys will be extremely capable of writing a fantastic story, or even making this one fantastic in the future if you work hard enough on your writing.
