Titanium Dragon Reviews! · 6:33am Jan 18th, 2015
I've had the privilege of having my story reviewed by someone who is, to my understanding, one of the top critics on fimfiction. This is a pretty big deal for a startup writer like myself as I didn't actually expect to get this type of public review for quite some time. You can find the review here.
So, let's take a look at what we've got here.
First, although the review's conclusion was "not recommended" I don't view this as any sort of condemnation because all it means is that I now know what aspects of the story need improving. And since the story is just starting out there is a tremendous opportunity for me to take the feedback in this review and use it to make the story that much better. What this means for you the fans is that now you'll get an even better Nyx story because of it.
Another thing that I'm humbled and honored by is that despite this review clearly holding the story up against against extremely high standards, it didn't actually trash the story or say anything irredeemable regarding it. Phrases like "surprisingly not awful" may seem like the story isn't worth reading, but we need to keep perspective here. This was a top tier review and like anything in life, there are hundreds of gradients in quality. Take anything like Master Chef, or other popular talent shows for performers of all types, and you realize that what we everyday people produce is so far below their standards of quality that it usually doesn't even show up on their radar. Fimfiction has the interesting quality of attracting a whole lot of startup writers and has the tools which let us publish our works very easily and get them exposed to a large number of people who also have fairly low standards compared to the pros.
Let's dig in.
Objectionable Content Warning: Involves zebras being burned to death while still alive, and zebras trying to murder children. Also, Nyx and Fallout: Equestria.
Just a quick comment here about how this made me laugh that "Nyx and Fallout: Equestria" is listed under Objectional Content. The fact that this is even a thing is both tragic and hilarious. I can't really add anything further without making it less funny, so I'll just leave it at that.
the first chapter covers Nyx’s lingering fears about her own nature, and whether or not someone can force her to become the evil Nightmare Moon once more, then proceeds to show some zebra soldiers getting ready to murder kids on a playground and Nyx and her companions trying to stop them.
I'm going to take a moment to clarify a couple aspects of the story for everyone's benefit, since they seemed to cause a degree of confusion in the reviewer. Reading this comment at face value produces a mental image that is very inaccurate in terms of what's going on in the story. I was a little disappointed in that these two aspects were mentioned back to back, since they are entirely unrelated and on opposite ends of a 7800 word chapter.
It is true that Nyx's identity fears are a major part of the first half of the chapter; it is important to remember that we are catching up with Nyx fifteen years after Past Sins. The events which occurred in that book leave Nyx with some pretty heavy baggage to deal with, and I felt that it was important to establish her current struggles and frame of mind to set the premise for the rest of the story, which explores her journey from insecure overburdened young mare to a genuine hero. This is the purpose of the story, really, to allow us to witness this transformation and fulfillment of her role as protector of ponies.
The action sequence with the zebras is an event which becomes relevant later in the story, and also gives us a chance to see our fireteam in action. Nyx and her two companions have been operating as independent guerrilla style combatants during this decades-long war against the zebras for about three years. The premise built here is that they go out regularly to contribute to the war effort. They are also prototype equipment testers for StableTec - the company founded by the CMC which invents a fair bit of the technology found in the Fallout: Equestria story. The presence of a tactical team of zebras infiltrating all the way to central Equestria to try and kill one specific colt is something which will be explained as the story progresses. As the story showed, this was a very unexpected assault and our heroes were lucky to come across it before the child would have been killed.
This is a recursive fanfic, and I have to admit that I haven’t read enough of Past Sins to know whether Rumble, her lover, and Flitter, a changeling who apparently used to be her babysitter, is some aspect of Past Sins or something entirely new.
Entirely new. One of the things I'm rather proud of, but which also is a double edged sword, is the fact that the story blends multiple things together so well that a new person coming in cannot distinguish which items are invented by me, or by Pen Stroke, or by Kkat. The down side to this is that it could easily be assumed that (for example) Flitter's character was a part of Past Sins and should be attributed to Pen Stoke, when in fact, her character is 100% my own invention, and I assigned it to the canon MLP background pony of the same name. She's even Rumble's canon foalsitter, which I found rather convenient.
As for Rumble, well just about everyone knows who he is. This is another example of a background pony who an author can feel free to assign any personality they want to and ship with whomever they wish. And of course, Nyx isn't shipped with anyone in Past Sins. She's just a filly there after all.
This convention is used in a few places in my story. I rather enjoy taking MLP background ponies and including them in the story, giving them entirely new personalities and roles. I've got Dinky, Derpy, Daisy and Archer in future chapters as well. There are plenty of OC's too of course.
So yes, Rumble and Flitter here are the current two examples of MLP background ponies which I've gone and made up personalities for. Flitter in particular has been extremely interesting and satisfying to work with, because I haven't just given her a personality, I've made her a changeling as well. This has proven to make her one of the most dynamic characters in the story so far, with her unique traits and abilities.
I would say I was a bit lost coming into this, but honestly, it wasn’t actually that confusing; for making so many up-front assumptions, the story was mostly remarkably clear, save for the motivations of the zebras, which made no sense at all and were never explained by the story.
I find this refreshing to hear that the story is not confusing to a new reader unfamiliar with the source material. One of my objectives is to make this story (and any future stories that might take place in the same universe) fully accessible to people who have not read Past Sins or Fallout: Equestria. As I said in the story's FAQ, it's not necessary to read them but it will dramatically increase your enjoyment of my story if you are at least familiar with them. It is good to see also that this reviewer was able to follow along with what was happening and had a clear mental image of the situation.
Regarding making "up-front assumptions" that is a very good point. This story does make a tremendous amount of up-front assumptions, and one of the big things to overcome when I began this project was in finding creative ways of overcoming this barrier of familiarity. How to convey such a complex premise to the reader, without necessarily presuming that they are familiar with the source material! If I simply had said "Fo:E and Past Sins are required reading before reading this" that would have been easy and everyone would be on the same page. But both of these stories are incredibly dense conceptually, and just picking up chapter one with an in-progress wartime situation involving characters and scenarios from both stories has been phenomenally challenging. I'm just glad I was able to pull it off at all!
Regarding the zebras and their motivations: I do think one other person has mentioned this in the past, that I don't explain why the zebras are attacking. This is true, and perhaps is a fault of assuming at least a minimum amount of familiarity with Fallout: Equestria. Honestly, I never considered it necessary to explain why the zebra war is a thing at the start of my story. Anyone at all can take a few minutes and watch a youtube video or read a Fo:E review or even do a Google image search about Fallout: Equestria to see that there's a zebra war going on against the ponies. Plus, I did include in the description of the story the fact that this takes place during the great zebra war.
So I'm not sure if I should include some sort of backstory description of the zebra war or not in chapter one. I'm inclined to leave it as-is, but if I find that more people are getting confused by this, then I may go in and change it. I do appreciate the comment though, that this might confuse some people.
It may have beaten the reader over the head a bit too much with the fact that their underground bunker is later going to become a fallout shelter
Technically it's not - the Stables are massive underground shelters housing hundreds of ponies each. The Underground Hideout in this story is meant to sustain a half dozen maybe.
The heroes live in a prototype underground shelter which is actually based on the "Underground Hideout" mod for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. When playing the game, this mod provides you with an advanced base of operations. In the story, I've made this a sort of experiment by StableTec which of course is the CMC's corporation responsible for building the Stables prior to the apocalypse. I'm not sure what "beaten the reader over the head" means here, but I did go into length describing their home base as exposition supporting the rest of the story in the future.
the text in general is telly, with bits of excessive telling here and there about character emotions sprinkled throughout the text – especially in situations where it was unnecessary, or could have been shown via dialogue, action, and other things (or indeed, was, and was just redundant).
As a brand new writer, this has been one of my biggest obstacles to overcome. If this review had been made one month ago, it would have used words like ridiculously telly and unbelievably excessive telling everywhere. So I will take this bit of criticism standing up, and say that this is an area which I will continue to improve in as I progress through the story. I do appreciate getting this feedback though, because it confirms the areas which still need improving!
Still, for a story with a premise like that, it was surprisingly non-awful. It wasn’t great, and I wouldn’t recommend it, but it was competent and probably almost exactly what you would expect a story with that premise to be.
From a critic of this caliber, I can take this as pretty significant praise. Especially for someone who hasn't written one thing ever prior to four months ago. I'm pretty tickled that after just starting out I can get a "surprisingly non-awful" and "competent" assessment in a review such as this. I suppose this just goes to show how many stories truly are awful, especially on a site where literally anyone can make a story. I understand my competition is fierce, and that I have not earned any right to have my story called "great" yet. I also know I'll be getting a lot better before the story's finished. But just having this be said (given the context) makes my day.
However, it feels more like a war story than a pony story, and doesn’t make much use of the pony setting thus far.
Yes, this is something which is very likely true, especially considering how chapter one just barely scratches the surface of this story. The ponification is coming, trust me. Especially when we get to the deeper workings of alicorns and all the implications specifically having to do with them. This is all custom stuff not related to Fallout: Equestria or Past Sins. It's an underlying framework beneath this story's main arc which definitely does qualify as a "pony story" and not merely a war story. For the intro chapter though, yes it's not anything that couldn't be directly translated to a human war story (with the exception of the flying around).
The story isn’t finished yet, and by the looks of things is likely to end up novel-length
The story's current length is 76,000 words and I'm about 20,000 words short of finishing Act One. I anticipate the total length to be somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 words. So yeah, it's already twice novel-length. If you like what you've seen so far, just get ready because this just scratches the surface. The main story's plot isn't even introduced in this chapter. All you've seen so far is premise and some exposition about the main cast.
I can’t really recommend it, but I’m sure some of you will be curious anyway and wonder what that level of recursive fanfiction would look like.
Maybe later, then. I can't be expecting to win any writing awards this early in my writing career, right? I mean, this type of thing takes time and needs to be earned. But I'm just happy that I seem to be on my way to being able to make a good story!
It also has the almost unique feature of having gotten him more followers than people who have upvoted the story (59 upvotes vs 60 followers when I looked)
I wager that there are a lot of people who would really like to see this particular story told. Even badly told. The whole reason I began this project was because nobody else did it. I wanted to see Nyx's character arc completed. She pledged her life to being a protector. Then Past Sins left her a filly and ended the book. I found that anticlimactic enough that it motivated me to actually start writing at all. It's been life changing. And yes, I have made a few good friends through the process and gained forty-something new followers since the story's publishing five days ago. The story also has one of the highest like/view ratios I have seen on fimfiction. Twenty likes per hundred views! That's phenomenal. What that tells me is that this story does appeal to many, and a whole lot of people are likely to enjoy it.
and has gotten over 30 downvotes, likely due to the premise alone.
Yes, there is a vocal crowd of Nyx haters (and Fo:E haters) and I seem to have tripped all the hate wires the day I published. That's okay though. It was inevitable and now we're beyond that, and on the way to telling a fantastic adventure!
Overall, I think the key thing to remember with this review is that it may have been a bit premature given the fact that some of the plot related criticisms are abundantly resolved in future chapters. I do honestly appreciate the feedback about the prose of course, as I will continue to strive to improve this. The premise itself, well, some people are just going to hate that and there's nothing I can do about it. There are plenty of stories on fimfiction whose premise I personally hate, but that doesn't mean I am forced to read them. Every story has its audience.
I'm super excited about this, and I hope you all are too!
Always room to improve. I'll keep trying, too.
"Surprisingly"
Really?
This just shows how much people just hate this premise. It's an almost instantaneous reaction, and completely not fair, especially for a reviewer, who are meant to be unbiased.
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I think the fact that he listed "Nyx and Fo:E" under "Objectional Content" is the most telling thing in this regard that I've ever seen.
I'm at a loss for words. It's one of those things that makes you laugh and cry for how absurd it is.
What I don't think the Nyx haters are comprehending is that they are participating in the exact same flavor of irrational hatred of a loved fiction that MLP haters / antibronies are participating in with their irrational hatred toward MLP itself. Seriously, it does not take much searching out in the world to locate some pretty volatile MLP hate. They complain that we are ponifying everything. Just about any online community has at least one brony in it with his or her avatar showing a pony. This makes the MLP haters just fume with anger.
So then, why can't the Nyx haters see that they are, in fact, doing the same thing? They complain about how tired they are of Nyx even though she really doesn't show up all over the place like MLP does. You do usually need to deliberately search for Nyx in order to run across anything Nyx related. Still, whether it's everywhere or not is irrelevant. Any brony (Nyx hater or not) ought to be sensitive to participating in the same style of hatred that the antibronies are doing. Do unto others, you know?
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Issues with Past Sins aside, crossovers are generally considered the cheap way of making a story interesting, and for good reason. I know; my most popular story is also a crossover. Literature can only thrive on new content, and none is more new than putting one particular premise or setting and putting it into another. It's not only easy to handwave, but even then that very idea becomes cliche and boring. It's a cheap way to gain interest because it often heavily relies on tension due to two cultures clashing as a form of tension, or having that tension stemming from extra baggage they've brought along.
I have yet to finish reading Fallout: Equestria, so I can't speak for that. Past Sins however comes with the additional problem of having a weak main character. Titanium likely put Nyx under objectionable content not only because she is a popular OC and is thus subject to hate by contrarians, she's mainly defined by one trait: is she or is she not going to follow in Nightmare Moon's footsteps? She's boring.
Regardless, I might get around to actually reading this.
Someday...
Maybe...
There's a spider near the door.
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Trust me, there's plenty of "new content" in my story. I'm standing on the backs of two giants to bridge them together in a meaningful way and also to give the story a complex, unique premise so that I can put my efforts into the actual meat of my story rather than reinventing the wheel. Really though, it does read like its own story, and definitely not just "let's toss these together and pat ourselves on the back for how clever we are".
Some kinds of crossovers are "easy" and some (like this one) are definitely not.
I think there are several flavors of "crossover". Some are just retellings of another story with a new set of characters. Like, let's retell the plot of the 1986 movie Aliens with ponies. That's a rewrite crossover. There's also the "insert character into the other universe" crossover (like your Minecraft story). That takes a bit of creative thought because of all the implications of how the character would respond in that universe, etc.
My story is taking the "universe blending" approach. It takes the universe of Past Sins and then proceeds to make the events from Fallout: Equestria happen as normal. Nyx grows up in the pre-war environment, and responds to it in a way that makes sense for her character. Then my story picks up half-way through the great war with Nyx as a 25 year old alicorn. She's got two very close friends she lives with and they have a job to do, participating in the wartime events. This is where the story picks up. So as a crossover, it's really not at all like typical crossovers in terms of storytelling or creative content. This is, in nearly every respect, an original story as much as any other MLP fanfiction is an original story. Every story on this site takes existing characters in the fictitious MLP universe and gives them brand-new unique adventures. That's precisely what I'm doing.
The only difference is that Nyx isn't a Hasbro character.
Haha. My Nyx isn't boring.
Fifteen years and a hell of a lot of stressful experiences has stretched and matured this pony quite a bit. I get a chance to take the character places the original story hadn't even begun to touch on. This is definitely not about "will she become Nightmare Moon again or not". Of course she won't. The struggle Nyx faces in this story is a lot like the struggle of Luke Skywalker. Their story arcs are extremely similar and I only just realized that a couple weeks ago. And nobody suggests Luke is boring. I mean, sure you could reduce him to "Will he follow the Emperor or not?" but that's not the meat of the story, is it? That's just one of his challenges. One of his temptations.
Hehe. I encourage you to give the first two chapters a shot. It's not terribly long at this point, and an easy read at just under 8k words. Chapter two is coming in just over a day, and that is almost the same size as chapter one. Of course, it's going to get very large eventually, but that's going to take a while to write.