[Review] Beating An Undead Pony by PonyMeat

Bweh! It's almost Halloween—my favorite day EVER!—so naturally I've got a spooky story for you all. Here's Beating an Undead Pony by PonyMeat!

Wow. With a story and author name like that, I admit I didn't know what to expect. But, it's a Walking Dead inspired Adventure fic, mostly starring the Mane 6. Here's the synopsadoodle:

“Equestria as we knew it is gone. The pony nation has been replaced by a land of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the world, causing the dead to rise and feed on the flesh of the living, stallion, mare and foal alike. In a matter of months society is gone, no books, no apples, no fashion, no parties, no Wonderbolts, no cute little animals. In an Equestria ruled by dead, the survivors are forced to finally be friends.”

Alright! Well, this looks neat! While I admit I never really became too engrossed in the whole Walking Dead storm, I have seen a few episodes in the past and I definitely understand the appeal. I remember immediately taking a liking to many of the characters, and feeling great dread when they were in peril, which I imagine is the main motivation of the writers. Apply that psychology to MLP, where once again the main focus is on the beloved characters, and it seems like a cool little crossover idea.

PLOT

I thought it was pretty interesting, and I liked the way the story had several main character groups that it alternated between with each chapter as the story progressed. The pacing was kinda strange though, every thing seemed like it was happening in a bit of a fever dream. Things happened very swiftly, and there were a lot of scene breaks. Like, one every 500 words. As a result, things sometimes felt rushed, and the descriptions were sometimes nonexistent. If you're going to have that gore tag there, don't be afraid to go all Stephen King during key moments for emotional impact. Just don't go overboard.

The plot mostly consisted of “Let's go here!” “Oh no! There's a dangerous situation here! Let's go somewhere else!” and you know what? I'm alright with that. Mad Max: Fury Road and Gravity were like that, and damn if I don't love me some creatively portrayed action and compelling characters. And that's really what the approach here was, too. The focus was more on the characters then weaving some complex narrative full of twists and turns, and that's fine.

But for this to work, they need to be DAMN good. So let's move forward to the story's...

CHARACTERS!

Alright, let me get my biggest complaint out of the way.

“Agreed. Ah hope Big McIntosh, Granny Smith and Applebloom are alright.” She said, referring to her family. ”

Oh, 'her family?' I'm gonna, ah, just say it bluntly...

We KNOW who these characters are. We wouldn't be reading fanfiction if we didn't! When you are writing fanfiction, you don't have to introduce the central characters unless they are OCs. You don't have to tell me their coat and eye color or describe to me their personalities or give me their mother's maiden name and present photo ID—introduce them by using their names, and then be done with it.

And this isn't a one-off example. This happens every time a new character enters the narrative or is mentioned in passing. Every. Single. Time. And never does it fail to bring the story to a grinding halt.

Besides, even if you were introducing OCs we know nothing about, it looks bland when you just flat-out tell me what their appearance and personalities are. Real people can't be whittled down to tropes and brief sentences, and your characters shouldn't be either. Nopony should just be a “timid earth pony” or a “cocky unicorn.” It's classic telling instead of showing, but I'll come back to this point later on.

The characterization wasn't anything to write home about. That is to say, it wasn't terrible but there was still room for improvement. Everypony acted like the basics of their personality traits, and didn't really develop according to the world around them. What's worse, characters appear and disappear from the scenes as their necessity comes and goes. Suddenly, bam! Trixie is there, in Ponyville, with no explanation, and when her dialogue is done BAM! She's gone again!

If felt like the author was trying to fit in as many characters just to have them in there, even if it made no logical sense to do so and added nothing of value. If you want Trixie in the story, that's fine, but have some lead in to it! Have Twilight notice a tattered poster advertising her “Great and Triumphant Return to Ponyville! Burlesque AND Magic! Free Admission, One Night Only!”

Also, Applejack sometimes talked like a pirate.

Grammar and Mechanics

Grammatically, it's mostly good, there were a few flaws that I'll list but again nothing too bad. But as I said before, telling instead of showing was a pretty big problem. I'm gonna steal a quote from an EQD pre-reader who tore MY first fanfic to shreds: “For a story that relies so heavily on actions, you didn't do a very good job letting me know how the characters actually felt about those actions.”

I realized he was right, and now looking back I can't believe how much I've improved because of that one beautiful sentence.

And it's not enough to just state how they are reacting. Rainbow can't just say stuff “proudly” and the ponies shouldn't be standing “defiantly.”

Remember: adverbs are NOT your friend. Sure, they might seem like it, and act like it, but before you know it you're standing alone at the high-school prom and you're covered in beaver semen and everybody's laughing and you realize that their entire friendship was a bitter lie and every “joke” they played on you for four years was sick and disgusting and cruel, and you were too desperate for approval to call them out on their blatant assholyness—

Ahem. Sorry. Had a...personal moment there…

Anyways, showing vs. telling. I'm not gonna be that guy who tells people not to tell people, so I'll offer a strategy that has helped me through the exact same problem:

Write down your dialogue with all the adverbs you want, and then read it out. Have a picture of the scene in your head and let it play out as though it were a movie as you read, and then write exactly what you imagined. Imagine what Twilight is doing as she speaks “angrily.” Then write that, and tell the adverbs they've been crappy friends and you don't need their beaver-semen-companionship.

And don't be afraid to take liberties, either. Sure, ponies don't have the same anatomy as humans, but you can exaggerate some of their movements in a similar fashion. Here's an example of when the author seemed to imply he didn't want to do that:

“Twilight wasn’t quite sure how that was possible since ponies couldn’t puke.”

I mean, even if this was true, you can afford yourself SOME artistic liberties. I mean, golly, I make ponies puke all the time. Practically every story I write has a gratuitous puking scene. Readers love em'.

“Oh I used one of my party cannons to go flying. ”

In...in a story tagged as Sad, Gore, and Dark? Didn't I address this problem last time? Do I really have to do it again?

Argh, fine. Ahem…

When you're writing a horror story, stay true to the tropes of horror, PLEASE!

I'm gonna plug a random example of a personal favorite of mine, Into the Depths by PenStroke. That's a stellar story, and plenty disturbing, and y'know why? Because he establishes his mood and atmosphere within the first thousand words, and he sticks with it for the whole story (and then ruins it with a disappointing ending). And sure, there are funny bits, (hell, it actually has some of my favorite jokes in a fanfic), but it's humor that is as dry and morbid as the rest of the story so it feels natural.

(Yeah, it's a psychological horror and not a gore-based zombie horror, but work with me here)

Using canon's humor? That completely breaks the immersion. I'm not saying you should make your story a bland wall of edginess with nary a joke nor patch of light to be seen—in fact definitely don't do that—but you really need to find a balance in order to make it feel natural.

Finally, the scenes were much too short. There were line-breaks everywhere. Try to keep those to, like, five a chapter. It's jarring when the narrative keeps jumping forwards or elsewhere with no explanation.

Oh, right, I said I would list a few of the minor grammatical issues. I'll just bullet-point this Bessie.

- Capitalization of words directly after dialogue ("This review blows," the group collectively sighed.)
- Every time you see one of these —> [."] it should be [,"] if a character continues talking after your description.
- Titles like Your Majesty should be capitalized. (His Majesty NorrisThePony was the most beloved commentator in all the land of PCaRGaria)
- It's Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle. Don't forget that they're two words.

Yeah, like I said, the grammar was mostly fine.

Setting and Worldbuilding!

Definitely my favorite part of this story. While it starts off in Ponyville, it doesn't take long for the ponies to peace off and start fleeing across Equestria. This means we get to see and hear of all kinds of places. The Everfree Forest, Appaloosa, Dodge Junction. It's a globe-trotting adventure! Get it? Trotting?

And I think it's neat the way each of these locations is affected by the epidemic, each differently in their respective right. I thought that was quite cool. Equestria is essentially put into a terrifying position and by far the most effective way of showing how it is affecting ponies is by using the setting. There was a pretty rich amount of traveling in this story, pushing that Adventure tag to the max. That's always good to see, I love seeing places other than just Ponyville in my fanfics.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts!

Originality: It lacked any real resonance for me to consider it very original. It's kinda just ponies in a zombie infested world.

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Plot, Characters, Setting: Characterization felt kinda weak, and they simply spoke without giving any real visible emotion while doing so. There were also way too many characters, who had no real reason to be there.

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Grammar: A couple little grammatical blips, but Showing vs. Telling was the main, fatal flaw here. The writing, despite being relatively grammatically strong, felt emotionless and bland.

In conclusion, I felt that the pacing and descriptions came much too swiftly, and I didn't feel like I was being given enough time or information to fully digest the severity of every scene. Events just sorta happened and the characters sorta acted surprised or frightened. It was, however, very interesting seeing many locations and how they were affected by the zombie invasion, but the rest of the story mostly felt bland by comparison. For what it's worth I enjoyed what I read even if it's a genre of horror I have no interest in, but I'm afraid that this story was a little too flawed for me to recommend it. With some work, it could be an interesting piece.

FINAL RATING: Needs Work.

Thanks for posting your story, and I wish you luck in your future writing endeavors! Happy Halloween, everybody!

4790071

I look back at some of the early chapters, and I can't help but cringe myself. I thought I knew better, but apparently not. So many amateur mistakes that I would notice right away if somebody else wrote it. I don't know if I should be embarrassed or ashamed. Or both.

That being said, I was expecting the story to be torn to shreds. I expected a lot of venom towards all that has happened to Applejack, both in Dodge Junction and her past with Rarity, Twilight's relationship with Rainbow Dad, Zecora and Trixie's speech patterns, and all the other things I've heard since I started writing this story. But no, you were a lot nicer on this than I thought. I'm glad you like the world building so much. At least I did something right in this department.

So my attempts to emulate Applejack's accent makes her sound like a pirate instead of a southern farmer eh? Well I tried. Blending both the show's tone and The Walking Dead's however? Yeah funny story. Despite how....dark a zombie apocalypse would be, I was still trying to emulate the tone of the show, mostly with Pinkie. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

Really though, I appreciate the feed back. If Beating An Undead Pony is going to become a story of any level of quality, I need to really reconsider what I've done up to this point. I'm not sure how good of an idea going back and rewriting past chapters is considering how far in I am, but I definitely hope this story improves, and doesn't become a laughing stock of the whole website. In the mean time though, I was wondering a couple specifics. What are the best/worst chapters? Most accurate/least accurate character portrayals? Best/worst plot developments? Which characters and events do you find critical/superfluous? Thanks again.

4790732
A bit of advice: don't bother with phonetic accents.

You're better off just aiming to recreate their speech patterns and word choice than playing with spelling, and maybe throw in an easily-recognized word or turn of phrase every so often. I recently had Pipsqueak as a major character in a story, and I started out trying to emulate his Cockney accent phonetically, but quickly abandoned that. Instead, he just has a very casual way of speaking (lots of "ain't", etc) with a tendency to run his sentences together, and words like "posh" and "mum" show up a few times. Anyone who knows the character will get it, and when you're talking about the Mane Six, we're all going to know them. I might have pointed out something like "he said in his peculiar Trottingham accent" if it was a longer work, but at just 2500 words I wasn't going to worry about it.

4790732

I don't know if I should be embarrassed or ashamed. Or both.

Neither! That's silly! It's a learning experience, and we all need to start somewhere!

I expected a lot of venom towards...Applejack, both in Dodge Junction and her past with Rarity, Twilight's relationship with Rainbow Dash, Zecora and Trixie's speech patterns

It's like I said earlier. A story like this one places a heavy emphasis on the characters. If you have to create a richer backstory for them, then I can hardly fault you for doing so, as long as it makes measures of sense. Which it did. In fact I went back to reread it and I think it's one of the stronger points of the story.

As for Zecora, I've only ever had to write her once before (in a horror story, no less) and I confess it was hell. The best I can do on her end is offer you this.

And I was actually going to say exactly what Rinnaul said about Applejack's accent. When you write her phonetically, it can be somewhat distracting and stick out a lot more than it should. Writing her dialogue naturally, with the occasional apostrophe where a 'g' should go at the end of a sentence should honestly suffice. It's a lot more invisible to the readers.

Despite how....dark a zombie apocalypse would be, I was still trying to emulate the tone of the show, mostly with Pinkie. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

By no means should you abandon the tone of the show completely, but I find it to be very jarring when a story shifts between moods so frequently. It's possible some people see the issue differently from me (because this is twice in a row I've bitched about it on two consecutive reviews), but let's be honest with ourselves here.

I'm not sure how good of an idea going back and rewriting past chapters is considering how far in I am, but I definitely hope this story improves, and doesn't become a laughing stock of the whole website.

Trust me, I feel the same about my first story. Looking back, I realize how bland and crappy my writing was then. I've been toying with rewriting that story for a long time, but I just never seem to have the motivation to do so, especially when I can instead move forwards to bigger and better ideas. This website is more or less a platform for mature people who offer fairly concise criticism, instead of pointing and laughing. Unless you're writing a comedy, chances are the story won't be a laughing stock.

Unless it's like, Nightmare Star's Revenge.

Anyways this reply is getting to be as long as my damn review. Good luck, and once again thanks for submitting!