Worlds Intertwined
By Wannabe Scholar

Reviewed by Asilin

So, in the continuing attempt to clear out the Crossover folder of its oldest submissions, we’re back to another story by this author. Like the first story I reviewed, this story is also a Star Wars/MLP crossover.

And we have two more chapters to read through this time! So let’s get to it.

The story begins with a Prelude and a Prologue. I’ll talk later about why this isn’t a necessarily good idea, but how to make it work properly in this context since I understand why this it’s being done this way.

But the Prelude takes place 1000 years ago, where we meet the Princesses Lulu and Tia (obvious even to me as Luna and Celestia) as they discuss a person whom Lulu is worried about. Tia reminds her that this person has other evils to fight as they head inside and that they will surely see him again. As they head inside, she’s the one who gets to see a spacecraft leave, and she smiles in relief.

We then flip to the point of view of the person flying the spacecraft, contemplating the fact he’s leaving an amazing place. And it’s here that we get my first major objection: he’s described as a “creature of flesh” or a “biped”. The narration has a certain omniscient feel to it (I’m giving a small benefit of a doubt here and not calling it head hopping), but this particular scene is focused solely on the pilot of the craft. It feels very unnatural from an all-knowing perspective or from a third limited perspective to act like this is something completely unknown. Just call him human? Or a Jedi? I wouldn’t object if this were from a pony’s POV as they’re trying to comprehend what they’re seeing, but that’s not our POV here.

This is even more an issue when we reach the Prologue. The entire first half is from the pilot’s POV (a new one since we’re now in modern times), and we, again, are treated to descriptions that are trying to make this guy seem more mysterious than he is. Seriously, here’s a description:

Grabbing the controls with both hands, the pilot tried to regain control of his craft. He flexed the small appendages on his hands, his fingers, around and guided himself through the space he traveled.

This is just honestly awkward description, particularly for a character who won’t be interacting with the rest of the cast anyway! It also disconnects us from the action because we have to read around the descriptions. To take the previous lines, how much more immediate would it be if we had instead:

Grabbing the controls with both hands, the pilot tried to regain control of his craft. Flexing his fingers around the tiller, he steered himself through the space he traveled.

Now we don’t have to think about small appendages or ask if maybe he’s an alien race, it’s a straightforward trigger for the actions our human pilot is going through. We can easily visualize it and get into the action.

Anyway, the pilot crashes, and we jump to Celestia and her response to the crash. Which basically boils down to “send the Elements of Harmony!” Because, of course, she does. Yes, it makes sense as they are closer, but it’s still a bit clichéd.

Now, let’s talk a moment about why doubling up on the Prelude and Prologue in this manner may not be the best idea. For one, a prelude is a musical term. It’s the opening piece to a concert, a longer musical number, etc. So it’s use here is incorrect. Second, a prologue in a story is supposed to be an introduction which establishes setting, plot, and/or character details that are 1) relevant to the story and 2) usually can’t be shown within the story in another way. So, to take a popular example, Robert Jordan uses prologues well. His often show events that aren’t from any of the main POV characters’ POVs and often deal with events that are occurring well away in both time and distance from the current plot lines, yet still affect them greatly. I don’t always agree with what he chooses to show, but he does utilize the prologues to good effect.

In this case, we’ve got a number of issues. First, while it’s nice to see that Luna and Celestia have encountered Jedi before, this is information that could be revealed any number of ways, particularly in dialogue (you can’t tell me that Luna and Celestia won’t actually talk about previous events in light of the new event or that she won’t eventually tell Twilight). Also, by hiding this information for a bit, this would add some tension as Celestia and Luna react to the current crisis as if they know what’s going on. This would make us, the readers, curious about the previous events and keep us invested. Here, you’ve already played that card, so now we just have to wonder (and possibly get irritated about) how long they’re going to hide that information from the others.

Second, the actual prologue is split between the events that are happening in the outside POV (the pilot) and the actual POV (the ponies). This means it bleeds into what is now the first chapter. The events of the first chapter and the prologue can overlap, but there needs to be a clear division. So, in this case, the prologue should focus on the pilot and his crash, along with the later scene of him dying and leaving the artifacts behind. This is a sufficiently closed event that shows us what the crisis is and where it came from, while establishing it as a non-normal POV. Then we’d start the first chapter with Celestia having her normal day but being interrupted by the sense of impending doom and the crash.

Third, and this is highly important, the hook is lost. What do I mean by hook? It’s the phrase, sentence, idea that grabs us and draws us into the story. It’s why it’s often said that your first line is so important; that’s part of the initial grab. Most readers will give a few paragraphs to a page for you to fully flesh your hook out. When you include a prologue, you now have to create two hooks, one for the prologue, and one for your actual story. Here, we have three starting points, and only one decent hook, the crashing ship. The first chapter doesn’t have one as it blends in with the events of the prologue, and the prelude’s is just rather uninteresting since it takes place too long ago.

Anyway, I’ll just sum up Chapter One and Chapter Two in brief. Twilight and the rest of the gang head out to find the crash site per instructions from Celestia. They find the spaceship just after the pilot dies and fades into the Force, leaving all of his artifacts behind, which the gang collects. After the Royal Guard relieves them, they take the artifacts back to Twilight’s place, where she begins trying to figure them out. One of the items is a small red pyramid. Twilight pours her magic into it, eventually activating it and calling forth a figure from it, a person who identifies himself as Darth Bane. Meanwhile, Celestia is now racing to Ponyville after finding out that Twilight has these artifacts.

By the way, this is the only time so far where the “biped” description actually makes sense since we’re from the ponies’ POV.

Beyond my issues with the “prelude” and “prologue”, overall the story does have a decent setting background, plot, and pacing. Since there’s only two “real” chapters, the plot hasn’t been fully developed so I’m not sure if it’s going to be “X pony (probably Twilight) gets turned to the Dark Side” or if it’s going to be a “Celestia’s trying to be secretive and Twilight figures things out anyway” sort of plot or maybe both. Or something else.

There are a few grammar issues:

Night already fell and most the ponies inside were fast asleep

Should be “Night had already fallen”.

She was an alicorn, as any could tell from her horn and the wings folded against her shining blue coat

“As anyone could”.

Her cutie mark was, quite curious, a crescent moon against a night background.

“Quite curiously”

she answered it a quiet voice.

“Answered in”

She was greeted with an object rising from the Everfree Forest.
Despite the object being so far away, Tia recognized it immediately.

This one is a redundancy. We have the word “object” in close proximity to one another in order to reference the same thing. The second “object” could easily be changed to “it” without losing coherency and would eliminate close word repetition. This happens several times throughout the fic as well.

My biggest tip is to rearrange the prologue and just outright eliminate the prelude. This would streamline your story, eliminate some POV changes within the story, and keep some of the secrets an actual mystery to the readers to figure out.

While the story hasn’t been fully developed, there’s a lot of potential here for a pretty decent story. I’m curious as to what Twilight’s going to find out from the holocron, and how it’s going to affect Equestria as a whole. And while the flaws I’ve pointed out bug me, they’re not that egregious to necessarily prevent others from getting into this tale. So this story gets an

Enjoyable.

3620849 Thank you for the review. I really appreciate your honesty and pointing out its flaws. Personally, I felt something was off with my story. I plan to rewrite the story to improve on those mistakes.

First, there's the prelude. I originally had that as a prologue, but one reviewer said it felt more like an epilogue. At the time, I thought he was right (he kind of was, seeing what ideas he was getting from it) so I decided to have it in the story as a small excerpt (boy, was I wrong about that).

Also, there's the story. I admit, some of the scenes were out of place and the grammar needs work, which I hopefully will fix that in the rewrite. That and there's the fact that the plot in chapters 1 and 2 was overstretched and could be condensed into one chapter.

Again, thanks for your review. I really, really appreciate your criticism and I hope to use that when writing the story. Be safe and have fun with your kid!

-W.S.