A Rather Large Adventure by BradyBunch (review 1: ch.1-11)

[Well, here we finally are. I’m finally covering a story I put in my review folder almost a month ago (if not more). As you can tell from the title, this story will be reviewed in parts and will be the first of several stories to be given this treatment. In the future, all stories 100K+ words will be reviewed in parts, either in 50K intervals or by plotlines, whichever comes first. This first review covers the first plotline of the story.]

I don't think I’ve ever read a story based on the idea of an elite unit of pony spec-ops that haven’t involved humans in some manner. So this story doing just that was definitely a breath of fresh air. One thing good that can be said for the story is it dumps the reader straight into the action. While this is not how I would have handled it, I have received criticism for writing a story with a very slow, exposision heavy introduction, so my preference is just that, a preference. These first few chapters are also very action packed, leading to each chapter containing come kind of conflict/fight. It was also rather nice seeing the portrayal of military personnel as more accurate to real military persons rather than the default humorless mass of emotionless efficiency we usually get (while this is far from what actual military persons are like, it's nice to see something other than “hardened vet” in a story). Finally, I liked the removal of magic from this plotline. It may not seem like much, but going by personal experience and reading stories from the fandom, magic is 90% deus ex machina with how open it is. By not allowing magic to be used, the story is permitted to progress without the permanent question of; “why not magic?” looming over the story like the sword of Damocles.

Now to start with the criticisms. First up, the story structure. This… was rough, not due to the story being written incomprehensibly but due to a lot of the descriptions being written in a way that just doesn't read right. I understood what the author was trying to say but the way it was presented didn't do the story any favors. For context, here is an excerpt from chapter two;

“She was in a large, sparsely lit room at one end of it, lashed by frayed hard ropes to a wooden post.”

And here is how it most likely should read:

“She was in a large, sparsely lit room, lashed to a wooden post along one of the walls by hard, frayed ropes.”

It's simple fixes like this that was driving me up a wall while I was reading the chapters. The next bit of critique comes from the characters suffering from stage three MCS, or Main Character Syndrome. Symptoms include, but are not limited to; the inability it actually lose, powers/abilities/gadgets coming out of nowhere, incompetent/easily defeated enemies, and the use of illogical actions that somehow don't come back to bite one in the ass. In other words, there isn't any narrative tension. There is so little that is introduced that actually poses a threat, and when there is, invariably, something new is introduced to solve the problem. I didn’t feel invested in the character's struggles because I never actually see them struggle. While they run into hardships, these are never elevated past ‘minor inconvenience’ as the story never introduces a problem that truly puts the characters at a disadvantage. Now for my final criticism, the story happened a little too fast for my tastes. Simply put, in literally the first two chapters we are given the totality of the main antagonists motivations as “try to take over the world” with a huge amount of action occuring in the next 9 chapters. While this can be fine, it did little to invest me in the actual antagonists, which is a shame as the author seemed to have invested a large amount of time in (partially) fleshing out an entirely new species, including their culture/biology. But other than their different method of dying, I really don't see a reason for their inclusion as there is little about them that is special and would warrant their use over other creatures.

Final scores:

Pacing; 9/10, This is the type of pacing I love in stories. While it might be a little slow for some people, I quite enjoy the restricted progression of stories like this. The point was mostly removed due to the set up for the arc just dumping the reader straight into the middle of things and rushing to the fighting with little explanation for what is going on.

Characters; 9/10, These were quite enjoyable to read. As far as OC’s go, each of them had a distinct personality that played off the others and allowed for interesting story progression.

Tension; 3/10, I can not stress this enough for authors (and I will not pretend I am not guilty of this as well), do not make any of your characters immune to failure. I may just be used to reading Lovecraft, or tragic stories in general, where there isn't a single character that isn't put through a metaphorical meat grinder composed of sadness and trauma, but I never really felt that the protagonists in the story earned their victory.

Premice; 7/10 I really like the idea of having an elite force of ponies protecting Equestria from the shadows. My only problem comes for just how alien this feels for FiM. With how blasé the OCs are about killing, and their general prowess at doing so, it just doesn't seem to fit. While I have read plenty of stories with similar concepts and found little to gripe about, the general light tone of this story and fact the level of darkness was not established a little earlier on was causing me to feel a little tonal dissonance.

Total score: 28/40 or 7/10: Overall this was good story I found fairly enjoyable. My main issues being the lack of any actual struggles faced by the main cast, a sense of conflicting tones, and writing that could use a little work to make really shine.

6751772
I think your points are fair and deserve the attention you brought up. I also liked the praise you put on it as well. I do need to work on actually making a hopeless situation feel hopeless, don't I?

Also, thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy more in the future. I will warn you, though, that there's a slightly-tedious slice-of-life portion coming up that I'm not too proud of. This was also my first story on the site, so I hope those minor issues you talked about can be easily forgiven.

6751827
When I look at the story again, a large reason for the problem I had with the lack of tension comes from how casual all of the guardians of the sun are towards the danger and how unbeatable they are. The problem is that you are trying to make a situation comedic but also tense. You can't do that. Comedy is used to alleviate tension, so trying to combine the two doesn't work.

Additionally, I noticed that you were trying to increase the tension, particularly around the catapult, in several sections near the end. While those parts were done well and would be what I would suggest one should write to have high tension, the characters are the problem. The problem is, the sections only work, as far as I know, IF the audience thinks they could fail. We aren't given a glimpse of them properly failing, as every fight they win, and each setback costs them nothing to overcome. To do tense scenes right, ask yourself; is the danger they are facing an actual threat to them, and have I established that there is the potential for failure, or at least significant loss? If the audience can't reasonably think of a scenario whereby the characters lose, they won't find the situation as having high stakes, and tension will suffer.

A piece of advice I have would be to remember the good old phrase "if it bleeds, we can kill it". So ask yourself when examining a story, do my characters bleed, and if so, how much? The more they bleed, the more vulnerable they are, the more vulnerable they are, the tenser each scene becomes.

6751864
I get it. Make them weak so that they can become strong again later. I also shouldn't go overboard with the blood. If I turn it into a bloodbath every single chapter, my audience will begin to question if these characters will actually die instead of just bleeding all over the place.

6751877
Yeah. If you go down that route the entire theme of your story changes to a darker version of itself. When you put forth the possibility of everyone being on the chopping block, every scene has the audience on the edge of their seat, but that level of darkness is a genre unto itself, and not for everyone.

If you ever want to try your hand at one of those types of stories I'm almost always available to help as that genre is my wheelhouse and something I have been studying for a while now on how to do right.

6751888
The story does get darker later on, imma tell you. People do die, and people do get trapped, bleed, and get decieved. And I'm in the process of doing it even now, so the advice you're giving is much appreciated.