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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Adding it to favourites for now (So I can actually read it, as Read later lish has some problems on my phone) I'll edit this comment when I'll get to read it.
Favorited so I can keep tabs on it for now but I am sure it will be staying there if the Bob likes it!
Like the other two guys below me, I'll add this to my favs to read soon. (Sorry. ) I promise I'll comment about what I think once I'm done though. :D
This is Good, dude!
Holy crap, literally three chapters in and that hit me harder than the climax f most stories... I literally have no idea why this has any dislikes? Must be pegasi haters. Bigots, eh?
Anyway, I really am enjoying this story and to tell you the truth, I'd like to give you critique but I haven't spotted anything wrong yet.
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Glad you're interested. Hope you like it :)
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Thanks, good to hear.
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That means a lot to me, really. I was... well, a big part of why this took as long as it did to get published was because I was trying to make a connection with certain characters and really, really didn't have long to do it. I never could get a good sense of if I'd managed to convey that or not. I'm really glad to hear I succeeded. Well, glad, and... yeah. That was a thing.
A lack of having found things to critique is good to know as well. Wonder if I can keep it up, eh.
I have to thank theBobulator for introducing me to this great story. I can't wait for more
I would like to thank you for posting this. Really, I would.
bobulater has sent me, fucking good story though, you've earned a follower
So far so good. Of course, as with almost all FoE I am never happy with the ratio of life to death and particularly who dies and who doesn't.
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My pleasure. More to come, hopefully without too much wait.
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I really do owe him a beer at this point. Glad you guys like it!
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The scenario I had in mind was that the sim they were running is a "what if" sort of thing for if the Zebras had somehow managed to infiltrate a force of substantial size into the Everfree forest, and were in the process of making their way towards Ponyville, with the implication that they would be in position to attack by roughly dawn. In response, the Equestrians send out teams of scouts to figure out what they are up against, then report back. In their case, due to Snap's... misfortune... they end up decisively engaged with one of the vanguard squads, a decently-sized group, but of little-to-no consequence to the overall plan. So despite winning the fight, their flight was discovered and gets forced to make the choice they do.
So, in short form, the group they end up fighting is essentially one of many groups sent ahead of the main formation of Zebras. Of no real intelligence value (if there are zebras there at all, there will be at least several groups such as those - they lost more than they gained from fighting them at all), so the choice she makes is in full knowledge that their mission isn't complete.
Whether or not I succeeded at that... Ech, I'll try and make future combat scenes a little more clear as to what's happening. I'm glad you're sticking with it!
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Well, the fatality rate is pretty much 100% over a long enough timeline, right? Kidding aside, I'm not entirely sure I follow your meaning.
Oh, and as a general comment... yeah, I encourage spoilers in the comments. Just my stance on that, I suppose.
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Yeah, in fact with some certainty it is 100% unless you happen to get ghoulified or turned into an alicorn. The former is nothing you'd want to have happen to you and the latter isn't exactly good for the mind/soul although your longevity becomes uncertain instead of obviously finite.
I just dislike that everybody takes the trope-esque approach of exceedingly tragic circumstances in FoE. It doesn't seem fair or reasonable at times for their entire group of friends to be slaughtered (from the reader's perspective) either all at once or systematically over time. They just seem to be grimmer than they need to be a times. I get that it's the Equestrian Wasteland, but horrors of balefire, etc, etc it's not generally a sentient environment that's out to get you. It's mostly the baser nature of ponies and other species combined with bad luck, general anarchy, and so on. -- It's hard to put in words, but after you've read enough FoE fanfic they can seem a little repetitive at times.
It's okay if you don't understand what I'm getting at...
This is... surprisingly fantastic. It draws me in, yet another good FoE story for me to wait for chapters of.
No regrets.
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PRAISE YOUR OMNIPOTENT GOD. But yeah, this is a great story.
4702731 Isn't the alicorn sick with a nasty case of "plasma-to-the-face" right now? Anyways, add one more mark to the "Bobulator referral" tally.
Also, in the chapter two Author's Note, was it supposed to say that frosty had more brain damage before being stranded? Or am I misinterpreting the wording? FoE: Memories Even with the chapter where Frosty is seen as a drone-soldier-pony of some sort, (...There has to be a better term for that than 'drone-soldier-pony') I would expect it to get worse, not better. Near death experiences tend to make things worse, no?
And as to building an emotional connection, it 'a really too early to tell. Its equal parts longevity and how the character is portrayed. I've had my heart ripped out and smashed to bits by cruel, evil, and sadistic author ponies quite a few times. Ok, maybe more than just a few.
On a more serious note, if you need an editor, I recently hammered my schedule back to give me some free time. Which I promptly filled with a can of Byzantine colored paint and a map of Europe (Plus North Africa, the Middle East, India, and a swath of Siberia reaching about as Far East as the edge of India), courtesy of Steam and all the Crusader Kings 2 I've been playing. I'm at like 350 hours of Crusader Kings alone (Plenty of World of Tanks is in there too), and it's only month five. Somepony save me!
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Oh no, I was referring to the story as a whole including more brain damage than usual... and now that doesn't sound right when I say it. Ech, you know what I mean.
And on the note about editing, absolutely. I'll hit you up with a private message some time tonight. There are indeed things behind the curtains, welcome aboard.
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praise be to thebobulator, what is thy bidding
First off, the technical side of the writing is excellent, so well done on that front!
Some non-spoilery notes:
It's odd to go for a description of how dark it is followed immediately by noting how the point of view character is wearing a night vision eyepiece.
Sometimes, especially when you switch from description to a dialogue, you repeat the same adjective within a short interval. It's not distracting, just noticeable.
There are random capitalization errors, especially after colons and semicolons. I only found one typo, though, which is good.
Now all the SPOILER bits. I have no idea how it's done over here, so I just spoilered everything:
I just have to get this out of the way. Don't do surprise VR segments unless you have a real good reason for it within a well established sequence of events, because few things compare to the feeling of letdown and "cheatedness" a reader feels when you tell them that they got excited or involved over nothing, especially in the beginning when the reader willfully suspends his disbelief, and you tell him after a chapter that what he's been reading has no bearing whatsoever.
A saving grace here is that it's in the beginning and likely has no consequences, making it easy to forget about. Edit: so half a day has passed and to reevaluate, this isn't as perplexing as I made it sound before. Since we go in knowing it's a wasteland story, we know that these events are either 1) from the past and largely irrelevant now 2) something the protagonist imagines or dreams 3) or what happened here, VR, so it's not much of a shock that it had little weight in the narrative.
I'm still curious what the purpose behind this intro chapter was, other than having a very restricted peek at the characters before the events of the story begin. Unless VR is something you felt needed to be established (which I personally hope it wasn't because it often has more real alternatives that don't require extreme technology), you might as well have had them play a game of paintball. Well, almost.
There is one thing that benefitted from this, and that's the death of Nosedive. This deus ex introduction of death through VR, and the fact that side characters were killed upon landing in chapter 2 set us up to not expect one of the main cast dying anytime soon. In my opinion, the sudden escalation leading up to his death was executed very well in big part because it was unexpected.
What I also really liked is the loving attention to detail you paid to worldbuilding - things like clouds being used as sponges and showers, to the whole description of pegasus fun time really sold the world, and helped establish the characters as more than just cutouts.
It's funny how no one cares about everyone getting drunk the night before their mission.
I'm on the edge about Snap Roll. She's introduced as Maverick from Top Gun, and while she gains character after our initial meeting with her, I'm a bit worried that she might end up in the "typical FoE heroine" stereotype, especially with Nosedive gone. I might be projecting, but this often comes up in FoE sidefics.
Tailwind's name really says it all - the moment I saw that name I imagined a cheeky, teasing action girl, so that's a well-picked name there, although I have a feeling she'll change after the chapter's happenings. Nosedive was a fine pony as well, he felt like he had substance, he didn't feel to exist for the sole purpose of X or Y.
I liked the dynamic the three of them had, their rollicking was quite intense but it helped us to learn more about the nature of their bond. I'm a bit sad to know I most likely won't be seeing more of them.
And here's a question, chapter 2. If reception was so bad within the storm that they couldn't call headquarters, why couldn't Snap just fly out of the storm, say, above the cloud surface and call from there? I suppose it could be explained away that the storm was too strong to take flight, but I felt it odd that not one character considered it before ditching the idea.
I hope I didn't come off as aggressively critical, it wasn't my intention.
To conclude, I'm really looking forward to what direction the story will take and the way characters/their relationships will develop after the previous events - I really can't help but wonder.
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Firstly, wow, thanks for the review. No, you didn't come off as aggressively critical at all. I've got a rather thick skin when it comes to such things.
Yeah, I get what you're saying with the adjectives. Hopefully that lessens with practice.
On the capitalization note, if you could PM me, I honestly have no idea how capitals work in regards to colons and semicolons. At some point I actually noticed that there were multiple ways I was doing it, and tried to at least standardize that, but it was... a lesser goal, to be completely honest. See what I did there? I have no idea if that's right or not.
On to the spoilery bits *aviators* Be warned, a lot of this is spoilers in the how-the-author-thinks type of thing. Kinda like TVtropes, once you go there you never really leave. Just a heads up. (You're clearly past that point, but for other readers)
Ok, for the VR most of your points actually were pretty much on the money. For one, I needed to establish the combat competency of Falcon flight, and given how chapter two plays out, the reader never gets a chance to properly see that in that segment of the narrative. I needed to establish that, despite all the goofing off that occurs, they are completely competent as a team. A side point of that is that, as an author, I wanted to establish my own style of writing combat. Again, given how chapter 2 pans out I think it's quite obvious that they won't exactly be participating in force-on-force anytime soon, so proper combat is a ways down the road.
Second point, and your main focus, was Nosedive. It isn't much of a spoiler to say that his death has echoes throughout the fic, and I needed to establish him as a character (A likeable, even dynamic one) before ultimately killing him off. Those of us who have read it will recall a certain mare that dies quite early in Heroes. I don't know about you, but I found myself unable to properly feel bad about her death, even when it was expanded on, despite getting the impression that the author wanted me to. I wanted to avoid that, and took great lengths to do so. It seems I was largely successful.
Third point, I needed to give Snap an understanding, at least in passing, of how memory orbs work. For Reasons. She isn't a unicorn, and as such I have no easy way to establish those early on, and it is far too early to introduce the concept of a recollector, or give her one. It wouldn't serve any purpose this early, and needlessly complicate the things Snap carries around with her. Thus it was far easier to segue that knowledge while accomplishing other things. And I also needed to show an example of the sort of "combat experience" she has, because it is an invaluable training aid, and simply alluding to it would feel awkward for the reader.
Also, as a side note, my initial impetus to create chapters P and 01 was to ease the reader into caring for nosedive. In the end, if that was successful, I'm super happy.
I'm glad you liked the worldbuilding. I had to continuously check with pre-readers if I was laying the worldbuilding on a little too thick or not. A couple things actually got cut, in the end.
Especially on the kind of missions that garrison life in the Enclave would produce, shit like what they did the night before would be frowned upon no doubt (if it wasn't, order would deteriorate), but nothing would be done about it unless it hindered actual mission readiness (thus, morale isn't really impacted). Hangovers don't count. Being still drunk when ON the mission would be... probably at least an arrestable offense, possibly discharge.
Heh. Hehe. It truly pleases me that you called out the character basis, as that was exactly what I was going for. In fact, I'll give you a story hint: One of the things that got cut from worldbuilding was a mention that Top Wing is a thing in this setting. Spitfire and Soarin co-star (it's that old. Not too many new movies these days), and its just as cheesy as it is in our world. For my part, I know what you're getting at with the Standard Wasteland Protagonist, and truly hope I avoid that. Time will tell in that regard.
I hope you continue to like Tailwind. Fun things are in store. Not gonna elaborate on that one, it'll happen as it happens. I hope I don't disappoint.
Here's an answer. In chapter two, I do believe I missed my chance to elaborate on it, but as far as pony flight was concerned at the time, 100m is about the limit a pony (even a good flier like Snap) can attain in that weather. I admit I kinda missed that one, but it was there. It is a really, really bad storm. The kind that lasts for days.
I loved responding to that review. I appreciate that so much words can't really explain. The thought that my story inspired such a USABLE, USEFUL response makes me feel all bubbly inside, to use a phrase from Jetwave.
Hope you continue to enjoy!
Well at least nosedive went out like a badass
A good chapter. The Enclave mentality Snap showed when dealing with the surface ponies that attacked them irked me a bit, though it's fun to get the feeling that the story is self-aware of it.
Nosedive could've lived for another chapter to further make his sacrifice more painful, but it's honestly fine.
I did notice that there was a word that needed to be capitalized:
Otherwise I can't wait to read more.