The Beckoning of Nature
By Kitasatina Mestina

Reviewed by Asilin

So welcome to the great experiment in which a non-brony attempts to read brony fanfic. My knowledge comes mostly from my husband, Rinnaul, and the bits and pieces I’ve seen off Netflix and Friendship is Dragons. Chances are I’ll know the crossover material better than the pony.

This is not one of those cases.

This is 1) a sequel to another story and 2) based off a Japanese game I can’t find any information for. Seriously. Beyond a few repetitive screen shots and this description ”A modern time adventure game where the main character can upgrade to immense weapons of mass destruction. Thus, the name Little Buster,” I can’t find anything about this game. If anybody can find me a link to a basic plotline of this game, you get internet cookies. I think they’re chocolate chip.

Basic premise of the story: Set 10 years after the events in first story, Band of Five Attributes, an apparently new terror has arisen in Equestria, destroying the Gryphon Nation, Changeling Hives, and the Crystal Kingdom all in one night. The survivors flee to the palace of the Elements of Nature, seeking asylum and help. The Elements of Nature—alicorns with power over the elements Wind, Water, Fire, Earth, and Lightning (what no Heart?)—must deal with the new threat and discover from whence it came.

If you enjoyed the first fic in this series, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well; new readers will like this if you enjoy the standard JRPG plot.

Let me start off with this first: while labelled a crossover, very little of the other source material is actually present. The major protagonists come from the game, as do the weapons they use later on in a few fight scenes, but, for the most part, the characters have the look of the pony setting, use the same magic, and have also been here for 10 years already. So it feels less like a crossover and more like an AU. Personally, I like to see equal reference to both settings in a crossover, or at least enough to remind me of the other source material.

Anyway, I’ll focus on just the first few chapters for commentary, so as to not give away too many plot points.

Chapter 1 establishes our initial problem. Three kingdoms have been destroyed in rather short order, and the refugees are all fleeing to the Palace of Nature, which seems to be conveniently located between all of these kingdoms and Equestria. The thing that attacked the kingdoms is only described as a “monstrous thing from nowhere”. In fact, this is repeated twice in the opening paragraph.
We’re also treated to four point of view shifts in 13 paragraphs. While this gives a lot of facts about the story, it also ruins any chance of our connecting to a specific character or group of characters. I’ll address this a bit more in depth later, but this is one of the reasons why sticking to a viewpoint character is a good thing.

Coming back to the idea of all three groups fleeing to the same palace, why is this being done in the first place? Gilda’s decision seems to be supported by the fact that she later states that she knows who lives there, or at least knows of them (them being the Elements of Nature), and the changelings seem to have the reason of not being wanted in Canterlot. But I seem to recall that Cadence and Shining Armor are related or close friends with Celestia. Why wouldn’t they default to going to Canterlot in the first place? Particularly when you have Shining Armor suggesting that he doesn’t know who lives in this palace?

As a side note, why are the ponies surprised to see the changelings show up? The ponies saw them heading that way before the ponies decided to head to the castle themselves.

We’re now being introduced to the owners of the castle. Through description only. I realize this is a sequel, but characters should still be properly identified. We don’t technically learn any of the names of the Elements of Nature in this story until the end of Chapter 2, and then only two are identified (Koto and Rekka, blue and red, respectively). The last three names are given in Chapter 3, and only one of them is matched to his color (that would be Tenmei, who’s tan). The other names are just dropped and left to the reader to figure out to which pony it belongs (Yuuki and Nagare, who I came to realize were the purple and green).

Chapter 2 shows us the various groups turning in for the evening. That’s really all that happens in six different scenes. Brief discussions, nothing resolved or fleshed out, and then a good night. This would be a great chapter for some characterization if the characters were to do anything besides just talk to one another. Otherwise, this entire chapter could be cut with no real loss to the story.

Chapter 3 has our protagonists going back to search for any survivors they may have missed in their flight. After establishing that they’re heading out, we start in Gryphon Kingdom. Where the carnage is so great Rekka and Gilda have to do “everything in their power to avoid throwing up”. However, our only description of said carnage is that buildings were destroyed, with bodies scattered everywhere, and that some “were bloodied, others flat-out squashed.” Beyond a comedic view of the situation (squashed just makes me think of Looney Tunes, honestly), the description is so vague, I can’t connect to the idea that this would cause nausea, let alone a need to physically vomit.

We then switch to the Crystal Palace, where Cadence and Rekka find a filly alive. Said filly is described to be scared to death, and then shouts the fact that she hurts. A child who is that scared is hard to imagine as shouting. Whimpering, whispering, or even saying quietly would fit here, but not a forceful shout.

Just as quickly, we switch to the Hives. It’s here that Tenmei is properly introduced and then he and Chrysalis begin their search. Which leads us right back to the Gryphon Palace and the two there continuing their search. And then back to the Crystal Kingdom where they can’t find anybody else, so decide to go back to the Nature Palace. Then back again to the Hives where they found a changeling baby off screen, so hey, they get to go back too.

Arriving back at the Palace of Nature, we get a description of the monstrosity, but it’s a shadow. And one that’s unaffected by magic to boot. Chrysalis also apparently has a change of heart about the destruction of her kingdom and children, going from sobbing her head off in the first couple chapters to "Most of my babies, your siblings, were splattered so much the ceiling was dripping."
We switch back to the Gryphon Palace in time to see Gilda rescue a child, her and Rekka flee from the burning building, and the palace then transform into a wyvern. I’ll admit, that transformation and later the one described by Kelpie is a very neat idea. The fact that the bad guys were reborn into elementals via the destruction of these kingdoms is a brilliant premise. Just nothing was ever really done with it.

Of other particular note, later in the story we get to see the Elements of Nature fight against the bad guys. However, this is presented in typical JRPG style with the good guys lined against the bad guy and each taking a hit in their turn. While this works great in traditional JRPGs, when it is presented as the entirety of a fight in literature, it reads unrealistically and, more importantly, trite. The ease by which the fights are handled and won make them seem unimportant since nothing is invested into the fight.
Also, the in-fight banter was uninspired. I don’t know if some of those are actual lines from the game (if so, fair enough) but quoting Monty Python as a serious insult just doesn’t work.

•Point of View:
The POV seems to be third person objective mainly, but also seems to pick and choose different characters to focus on to the extent that we get their thoughts only throughout the scene. And sometimes we get the figurative camera focused that intensely on multiple characters that way in the same scene. A good example of this type of jump is in the end of the first chapter where we have a focus on Shining Armor, who is wondering who the Elements of Nature are, before we jump suddenly to Nagare’s point of view as he wonders what’s going on.

Honestly, I’d love to see this story switch to either pure omniscient POV (where we consistently get all the characters’ thoughts) or choose 2-3 characters to focus on. Perhaps Shining Armor, Koto, and Rekka? Choose whoever has the most involvement in the story and run with them.

•Overall Style
There’s really no environment or atmosphere to speak of. We’re told where we are and given the vaguest descriptions of what we see there possible. I can’t tell you a single difference between the Crystal Palace, Gryphon Palace, and Palace of Nature beyond the fact that one is completely intact, one is in ruins, and the last was on fire. Characters are treated much the same. I can’t tell you anything about any of these characters from the story beyond the colors of the Elements of Nature, their respective elements, and what weapons they use. Even then, they, like the rest of the cast feel like they could be interchanged at any time with no real loss to the story.

•Flow
On the plus side, the story was very fast paced and was written well enough grammatically to make it a smooth read. Being mostly focused on dialogue, as long as you can keep track of who’s talking when—which is generally easy thanks to the constant use of dialogue tags—this reads quite easily.

The mood seemed to be trying for a dark epic feel, the heroes against impossible odds. However, this mood was never really achieved. As it stands, there’s really no mood at all. Things just seem to happen. People cry, and then start shouting. They shriek and then speak as calmly as ever. Scenes are presented and then left just as quickly. There’s no consistency in the emotions presented.

As an example, in the first chapter, after arriving at the Nature Palace, Gilda goes from being remorseful ("I hope this egg isn't a dud. I'd like to see all these kids here have a bright future, not the current trash we ended up with." Gilda said remorsefully) to shouting ("Hey, whoa! Calm down! We're here because this thing wrecked our homes!" Gilda shouted) to crying ("Yeah.......it......killed almost everyone in the Gryphon Kingdom. I managed to save these kids and this egg." Gilda sighed, trying to hold back tears) to being ticked ("Um, earth to dweebs?! Ever hear about the Elements of Nature?!" Gilda asked, getting ticked) over 17 paragraphs, with each one of those being her responses to the current conversation, in order. This type of fluctuation happens constantly with all the characters, making it very hard to believe any emotion any are feeling at any given time.

Overall, I’d give this story a B for grammar. There were a few instances of the wrong word choice (the burning building “ganging” on them instead of “gaining”, Celestia staring at the bearers of the Elements of Harmony “scornfully” instead of “solemnly” and the use of “caterwauling” as a dialogue tag instead of a descriptor). The biggest distraction for me was the consistent capitalization of the dialogue tags. As a note, unless the word that follows a bit of dialogue is a proper noun or is the start of a whole new sentence, the word following the punctuation is not capitalized.

So “Let’s go to the park,” said Tim is correct, while “Let’s go to the park.” Said Tim is not.

Overall, you have a good basis for a plot (monsters trying to take over the world, heroes have to stop them) and you have an interesting mechanic for the monsters (ancient enemies being reborn through the destruction of the kingdoms). However, this plot never really came to anything since your characters just existed to be talking points. The story was told by them but never really experienced by them, and therefore, I, as the reader, could never really see what was happening.

First major tip, therefore, is to make your characters individuals. Assigning them different colors and elements and weapons isn’t enough: those are just descriptors. I need to know who the emotional one is, who the feisty one is, who cracks under pressure, and who rises to the occasion. Who tends to be soft spoken? Who laughs too much? Give them easily identifiable traits, quirks, ticks; these things make the characters feel more alive and therefore believable. It also makes us care about what happens to the characters more.

Next major tip, as I mentioned before, your POV felt a bit all over the place. I’d highly recommend, given the number of different places you want to go and show, on dedicating your POV to 2-3 different characters (I’d personally stick with 2) and show the story through their eyes only. Even if you don’t decide to go with that, I’d highly recommend dropping any instances where you focus on the villains’ POVs. One, this destroys any tension you might build. Two, given Koto’s precognition ability, you end up repeating information. This drags the story down.

Finally, give your characters consequences. I seriously rejoiced when Koto was injured so severely as to be out of the fight. When you immediately fixed this, it ruined any sort of potential struggle your characters may have had in the upcoming fight. Frankly, the fact that three of the four villains didn’t get a hit in before being defeated was disappointing. Even in the most basic JRPG, the major boss fights should cause you to have to use some healing items!

Needs work
The plot’s a standard JRPG plot, and that’s all that’s really here. The conflict is minimal to the point of being nonexistent with how easy the heroes brush issues aside, the characters are barely indistinguishable from one another, and they might as well be operating in a white space for the amount of description that’s given. It is salvageable, though, and I’d love to read a rewrite where I can actually connect to the characters.

2975416 Welcome to the herd?

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...not really, and you know it. :P

2975416 Hey, I'd like to make it known an ongoing re-write of this story's now available. But I can't post it in the folders until they're cleaned out, so...

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