Rough Sketch, famous Enclave cartoonist, lives a life of luxury in the clouds. Extra rations, countless mares, and an easy job. His next assignment is the same thing he has done everyday, Enclave propaganda. However, Rough is this time presented with the opportunity to see real Enclave soldiers in action. The assignment is nothing new, clearing three raiders out of a building. Airdropped into an occupied building, the fearsome Enclave soldiers are ferocious in battle. That is, until swarms of raiders pour out, overwhelming the small force. Trapped in the world of dirt-dwellers, Rough must now journey through the wasteland in search of a Single Pegasus Project Tower for extraction.
I don't own MLP, Fallout, or the cover art, so please don't sue me
I would recommend reading the original here
Looks good so far
3052233
Thanks
I wish you good luck- looks good so far.
I love Sketch's deluded view of himself as some super-pony.
Though I really think you should have started with the story of how he ended up on that rooftop instead of just mentioning it in the synopsis.
3067856 Thanks!
3067876 Duly noted, thanks for the feedback!
Ohh I like where this is going hopefully though he is saved by the freed slaves
3137248 Possibly
Salutations! I'm going to be your reviewer from WRITE (I've kinda become the unofficial FO:E specialist in the group), so you can hopefully expect that to pop up within the next couple days
If you don't mind me asking, how did you come across our little group? Don't worry, it's nothing too serious. Just personal curiosity, is all. I'd like to know more about how people are finding us
3185800 I read about it in a forum here. Thanks!
Well. I found this review a lot harder than its word-count would've suggested. And honestly, I have no idea why
Still, better late than never, I suppose. Hope it'll be worth your while
IT'S REVIEWIN' TIME
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw8243-43b.gif
The Bit with the Story and Stuff
Now, not an awful lot's happened in the story so far, but I have a feeling that your readers would be extremely lost if they hadn't read the description. Hell, I know I would've been. You're two chapters in, and you haven't actually explained why he was in the wasteland outside of the description. It's supposed to be there to entice the reader, encouraging them to read your fic, not give them the backstory. This is something that desperately needs addressing.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw1436.jpg
Otherwise, as I said, not much has actually occurred. He's escaped raiders, slept the night, and been knocked out by a slaver. I can't really say much about this unless I see more, really.
Characters and Other Thingamabobs
Rough Sketch, as an idea, is really quite an excellent one. The idea of a civilian pegasus being dragged down into the Wasteland isn't entirely unique (though no less interesting for it), but he's the first character I've seen who's something so unrelated to surviving in the Wasteland (the only other civilian I can think of is Morning Glory, from Project Horizons, and even she was a medic who had a course on combat training).
However, he's not perfect. Probably my biggest gripe with him is how his character seems to flip rather rapidly. The story opens with him shooting a raider in the face, kicking his friend off a building (while being threatened with a revolver), then soaring away, screaming the pony equivalent of "Eat my dust!"
A few paragraphs later, he's running from a radroach, screaming at the top of his lungs. To say his character is inconsistent would be putting it mildly
A general tip when writing a story is to ask yourself: What would X do in this situation?
If the answer's not what you're writing, you should probably see about changing that.
One thing I do like about Sketch is his disdain for the "mucksuckers" of the wasteland actual. Makes sense that someone who grew up with two hundred-year-old prejudice would be at least slightly prejudiced himself. Nice touch.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw8396.gif
General Doohickeys
Right. I suppose I'd better talk about the opening paragraph. I know what you were going for there, I just don't think you quite pulled it off properly. You wanted to plunge the reader into the middle of a conflict right off the bat, hooking them in with a mix of action and unanswered questions, such as "Who are these guys?" and "What did they do to deserve that? Did they even deserve it at all?"
Unfortunately, the wording was really rather clunky, and what you chose to focus on wasn't all that remarkable. Explaining that pulling a trigger makes some lead go really fast is hardly rip-roaring action, after all.
Another problem is that while you did say a bit about what happened as a result of the shooting, you didn't paint much of a mental image. I couldn't tell if this was indoors, outdoors, in the clouds, on the ground, if the guy was alone, big, small, hairy, whatever.
I'd recommend you rewrite this little bit, focussing instead more on what happened because the gun was fired. You know, blood spurting, a body hitting the floor, etc. Should give you the chance to expand on the scene, too.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw2573.png
Okay, I'll admit, I chuckled at that bit
I feel some congratulations are in order, as this is the only FO:E story that's been able to make me crack a smile. There's no denying that other examples of the genre have the occasional bit of humour, or the odd slapstick gag, but your first chapter did tickle my funny bone on more than one occasion.
That leads onto one of my big criticism, however, and it's that you do go overboard with the comedy. The occasional joke's fine—even in a story like this one, which most would expect to be dark, grim and depressing—but when pretty much every line contains either a reference (like his code spelling out HELP ME), or the whole incident with the Radroach (as I mentioned earlier), then it really starts to drag.
Edit from future Plum: It occurred to me while writing this review that the over-use of comedy might be intentional, seeing as the main character is a cartoonist. Not sure how I feel about that, assuming it's true.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw1330.jpg
Now, this I can't approve of. I know it's a big thing in a lot of ponyfics to swap out swear-words for similar-sounding pony words, but unless your character meant to shout fuckdamnit, then that seems a bit daft. And if he was shouting fuckdamnit, then he's a bit daft.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the original FO:E features rather explicit swearing. Often involving Luna's horn and Celestia's flanks, if I remember rightly. Maybe it's his more civilised upbringing that leads him to swear less, but you'd think a propaganda cartoonist might pick up the occasional dirty curse from those he spends time with. Meh.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw1156.jpg
Sketch seems completely unfazed by the presence of (what he'd consider) a living goddess and what I assume is a horrifying smorgasbord of various pony parts stuck together with glue.
Uh, foal's the word for a baby pony. I think you may have meant "a filly, no older than a foal" or something similar
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw198.jpg
Technical Stuff and Things
First thing's first, you seem to have a great love-affair with really short, abrupt sentences. Shot sentences certainly have their place in stories, particularly in action sequences where you want to emphasise the proceedings, but using them all the time can cause problems. Periods aren't always good. They can hurt flow. Each indicates a pause. Makes dialogue robotic. Makes actions chunky. Makes the story sluggish. Slows it down. Just like this. Not great.
I'd do some jiggery-pokery, and try to merge some of them together to break up the monotony a bit. An awful lot of them could be swapped out for commas, and you could leave it at that (sorting out capitalisations, of course).
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw2023.jpg
Ouch. Just be glad, I took this story, and it wasn't handed over to someone like Kalash. He'd probably burn you at the stake for saying such things.
You need to work on your weapon/military terminology a bit. Might seem like a little thing, but it can make-or-break a story for someone who knows what they're talking about. First thing's first, only shotguns and artillery pieces fire shells. You probably mean casing, if you mean the bit that gets ejected from pistols, rifles, etc. Also,
gunenthusiastspeaks.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/clip_mag_lesson.jpg
This bit's a problem, as rockets is present tense while the rest of the story's in the past. If you want to use that word, shifting it to rocketed should be simple enough.
One thing I'd recommend is the use of a thesaurus. While you do certainly have interesting things going on in your story, you do use rather bland or boring words to describe them when not careful. "He looked around and spotted a guard" will forever be less interesting than "He peeked around the corner, stealing a furtive glance at the guard patrolling down the length of the hall".
Uh, you do know you can do page-breaks, right? Just type [ hr ] (without spaces). It's what I do
On a more positive note, your spelling seems to be spot-on. I don't think I found a single error of that kind through either chapter. Well done.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw502.png
Overall Hoojamaflips
You've certainly got some damn good ideas in your head, I'm just not sure you know how to express them. Now, where to go from here depends on whether or not you have editors, and whether or not you want to keep on with this story. If so, I'd go through the story, focussing on keeping Sketch's character more consistent and merging those abrupt sentences together. If you don't have any, you could probably grab a handful from the various Fallout-related ones (here and here), Looking for Editors, Authors Helping Authors, Struggling Authors or countless others around the site.
That's assuming you want to continue this thing, of course. I have a feeling the mistakes you've made in this story are more due to inexperience with writing, more than anything else, so as long as you're putting pen to paper (so to speak) then you'll be good to go. Just try to keep what I said in mind, and you should be fine.
Best of luck to ya
~Professor Plum, WRITE’s Drunk Demoman
dashie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw2789.png
3212113
Given what you've pointed out, I'd probably find many other and better reasons to burn him at the stake. If it weren't for the facts that it's almost 2AM and I have class at 830AM, I'd give this thing a skim and some feedback. Oh well, such things can wait.
I'm back, and with the promised mauling over mistakes made concerning firearms.
Oh dear, author, it's your first paragraph and I already see some epic fail.
Now to be more precise.
Your initial sentence leads one to believe that the character is using a muzzle loader with an external, black powder, ignition system. The end of the paragraph reveals this to not be the case, mentioning an empty shell and ejection. Metallic cartridges do NOT work by means of a 'spark' as you're envisioning it. The firing pin strikes the primer, which sets off the main powder charge. Now, unless the character is using an old weapon chambered for an old cartridge that was originally a black powder round, and using such extremely old and scarce black powder ammunition, which was often supplanted in the same caliber by smokeless powder loadings, then saying that gunpowder is ignited is incorrect. You should say smokeless powder (just powder for short), or propellant, or charge.
Change to rocketed in order to fix tense confusion; the rest is in past tense, but this is in present tense.
All modern rifles and pistol cartridges, as well as shotgun slug cartridges, are typically shaped aerodynamically. Also, due to the problems with raw lead projectiles being destroyed by the greater power and higher velocities afforded by smokeless powder, they typically have a copper jacket, except in the case of most shotgun slugs. All traditional shotgun ammunition types can be raw lead.
That is not how bullets work. Bullet wounds are often like puncture wounds and tend to collapse once the bullet passes through. Also, exit wounds are always bigger than entry wounds and have marks reminiscent of tearing.
It's called a magazine -- not a clip! The two are NOT interchangeable. Clips are always used to load other ammunition storage devices, from which the ammunition is fed to the action to be fired. Clips cannot be used to directly feed ammunition into the action of a weapon for firing. Magazines are the things either integral to the gun, or that can be attached to a gun, that hold ammunition and feed it into the action. Clips, in the case of rifles, shotguns, and pistols, ALWAYS feed into a magazine. In the case of revolvers, clip feed into the chambers of the wheel, which is practically the magazine of a revolver. Also, you might want to decided whether or not the rifle ejects automatically, or is dependent upon manual action for ejection and loading the next cartridge
What? This makes no sense. Also, what kind of nine millimeter? Nah, I won't be that harsh.
The correct NATO phonetic for H is Hotel.
Piercing scream? Bullets and gunshots do not sound like that whatsoever. What caused the 'click'? Was it a malfunction, not having any ammuniton? What?
Seven seconds? For a "hunting rifle" What, is it six feet long and primarily made of Osmium?
3212113
3212227
3214357
Well, back to the drawing board. The reviews, criticism, and corrections about firearms are very helpful. Nothing quite like having two reviews for one, so thanks!