) and I've put it off many times, so, I'm putting it out to all of you.Another Rewrite · 1:49am Oct 15th, 2015
After much consideration and several words from a reader, Living Nightmare will be going through another rewrite. This time, Stellar will not be put through what she was before and i will try delving into what i originally had planned, but decided to skip due to nerves and wanting to get to the end.
My final verdict? Unsatisfying.
Rather than properly exploring the process of Stellar coming to grips with her new reality, you simply distracted her and the readers from the natural conflicts already present with something so horrible that she latches onto status quo as acceptable without showing the reader the fullness of her journey.
(Like politicians using terrorism to distract from real problems which aren't going away like homelessness, unemployment, etc.)
I also notice that you seem to be attempting to downplay the tragedy in Stellar's life by surrounding it with much more tragedy, callousness, and cruelty (eg. Diamond Tiara's story). The problem is, it doesn't work as you wrote it. Rather than making events surrounding Stellar's seem more plausible, it just makes the greater story as a whole more unbelievable.
Given what we've seen of Equestria, the odds of all this cruelty coming together in one place feel ridiculously low. It takes skill you seem to lack in order to justify that to the reader's intuition. As is, it just comes across as a non-Equestria universe that you've varnished with Equestrian details. (Another staple of bad authorship. When it gets really serious, I call it the "Why did you use familiar names for your obviously original setting and characters?" problem.)
I suppose the simplest way to summarize the flaws here is: Where bad authors add tragedy and conflict from outside, good authors dig deeper to find the potential for tragedy and conflict that lie in what they already have. (Which is why a film like 12 Angry Men is such a brilliant classic despite being just 12 guys in a single room, talking.)
That's why bad writing has a "water water everywhere and not a drop to drink" quality about it. The story doesn't satisfy because you don't spend enough time exploring what you already have, and you try to fix it by piling more "excitement" on, which also needs to be properly explored to do its job. (Like a bad gardener, who doesn't realize that the plants are wilting because they have too much water.)
Just the backstory and redemption arc you gave Diamond Tiara would be something a really good author would dedicate an entire story to. Same with Pinkamena being split out from Pinkie. (Heck, good authors have dedicated entire stories to Pinkamena being split out.)
(Or to put it another way, when there's extreme tragedy everywhere, it becomes cheap and worthless... and we, as readers, know tragedy isn't meant to be cheap and worthless, so we take offense at the author's seeming callous disregard for humanity on some level and distance ourselves from the story to keep a proper respect for tragic happenings rather than becoming numb to them.)
Hurtful as reading some of these statements were, they rang out to me in ways i think others have tried to point it out, but failed to actually do so in a way i'd understand what they really meant.
However, now that i can see things in a new light i will (attempt) to portray this story correctly. For starters, Stellar's time after learning the truth about her now going home will be further explored, so look forward to that
So you are taking out more of what happened to her with the Blueblood imposter again? You already chopped stuff out before. I better go download it now then.
If so, well I thought that was an integral part to the later stuff in the story.
cool story bro.
3470937 agreed the story is fine as is. Yes some will think it could be better. There will always be those people.
I rather see a sequel then a rewrite.
3470937 aside from the mutilation being removed, he will still hold a key role
Not that my opinion is worth much, but I'd like to see some completed stories one day to be honest.
That's all I can hope for when I write these sorts of things. (And, as brutally honest as I can be at times, elaborating on why I give a thumbs up/down is the best way I can think of to thank authors for the free entertainment.)
Anyway, most of what I noticed was stuff that just didn't have enough time spent on it and the story is only 78K words now, so I'd recommend trying to flesh it out before you decide where cutting is needed. (You've got plenty of room to grow. Professional editors require stories from first-time authors to be in the 80K to 120K range since that's where it's easiest to give everything enough attention without the story dragging on.)
Personally, I think you need more scenes that just give Stellar more on-camera time to come to terms with what she's become and settle into her new life (ie. Slice-of-life scenes that serve a greater purpose), but I'll leave it up to you to decide how, what, when, and where. Instead, here are more concrete examples of fleshing things out to improve them:
First, I mentioned that events around the end of Alchemist's efforts were one big string of things that felt like they came out of nowhere. Whether or not Stellar gets tortured and mutilated, it's easy to imagine situations where Nightmare Moon might have to sacrifice herself for Stellar, which makes it a good candidate for fixing... and all it takes to fix that is giving Nightmare Moon more screen time so you can more clearly show the process of her going from "I'll break her mind to escape" to "I'll sacrifice myself to save her". (Nightmare's running commentary on Diamond Tiara is one such example. It shows her being evil, but it also shows her "on Stellar's side". You just need to keep doing things like that where you incrementally trade the "evil" for the "on her side" until Nightmare Moon finally decides to sacrifice herself. Tada! You've got a redemption arc!)
The alicorn healing revelation is more difficult to justify (especially given that we don't know how much darkness you have room to justify before you hit 120K words) but, if you really want to keep maiming as a reason for Nightmare Moon needing to sacrifice herself, I'd suggest having one of the other alicorns get maimed in an accident or fight in the Everfree (ie. by something incapable of cruelty) to introduce the concept. Ideally, Luna or Celestia since it'd feel more believable for millennia-old rulers to wave off the panicked concerns of the ponies around them by explaining that, while painful, this has happened to them before. That way, it'd be a comfortably established fact by the time Stellar needs to take advantage of it. I'd go with Luna, since it could serve as a "grand gesture" to demonstrate to Stellar that, yes, Luna truly does think of her as her daughter.)
(Of course, then you've got the potential problem of justifying them being in situations causing maiming twice in a single fic when, after the first one, any sane individual is going to try very hard to prevent similar things from happening again. A possible workaround being to make the causes and/or types of injury sufficiently different that the only major commonality is that they both rely on the same amped-up healing ability. Then, the first time could be something like "'tis but a scratch. Why, in times long past, we've been forced to regrow entire limbs." which would then also serve as potential foreshadowing.)
Dunno, I liked this story as it were.
So, if you plan on rewrite, are you going to pull the old one out our create separate story?
I liked this story as it is myself, i mean i almost didn't make it through the last time something was changed witch sucked because i love this story.
But it's your story so here's hoping
also will it be a different story or will you be updating this one?
stayclassy