Expedition No. 5
Begin report:
Ventured into Ponyville today. Not much left of town. Most locals remain docile, but ran into a few hostiles. Had to take necessary precautions to avoid contamination. Checked locations of interest as ordered. Found nothing new. There was no sign of the subject. Disturbing news to take back to Canterlot.
Followed trail to just outside of the old Apple’s farm. Found signs of a struggle and pieces of a destroyed MKII hazmat suit. Tracks lead to the Everfree Forest. Recommending a larger expedition force to search for the subject. Diary found near location of the struggle. Looks to be mostly undamaged. There are a lot of fresh hoofprints on the ground.
The following is the full extent of the written material found. Perhaps it can shed light on what transpired here, and what became of the subject.
End Report
---------------------------------
Hey folks, let me know what you think of this story. Comment, and let me know if you want me to continue it, because I have some ideas on how to do so.
That was a great read, I really enjoyed it. If you do decide to continue it that would be awesome. I like the fact that you've turned the diary into evidence into what happened at Ponyville, and it's kinda sad that if Pinkie hadn't gone to see AJ she'd have probably been found and safe. I'd love to see where you can take this.
Also noticed one little error:
Wrong use of whether
Also I'm gonna apologize for not really saying more, I suck at commenting/expressing myself. x|
3141066
Thanks for the head's up. Fixed.
Glad you liked it. Really, Thank you for the comment
It's here.
Let me see if I can pull a few strings to boost this...
What the... HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK.
This reminds me A LOT of the Resident Evil novels... Just...
Wow. Well done. Well done indeed.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Continue it.
Nao.
It's so beautiful, but it's so sad!
What more can I say that I haven't? This is a very nicely-crafted piece which does subversion oh so well. The way Pinkie is kept so true to herself as the world around her crumbles, all the tools of subtlety played well, the clever plotting... I'm glad I got to read the early version, and this one feels more fleshed out - a nice rounding up of it. This is good work.
3141816
Well, guess you will want me to continue this then, huh?
3142053
That's two votes for continue. Anyone else want me to keep going?
3142856
Sadness can be a beautiful thing friend. That was the plan all along; create a piece that was sad, but also unsettling. Glad you enjoyed it friend.
3144233
Thanks for the endorsement and mini-review. Always makes my day when I know someone has liked one of my pieces.
3148037
Thanks for the comment, and yes, this is now three votes for continuing. Just two more, common people, two more!
If that was a deliberate Game Grumps reference:
myfacewhen.net/uploads/3923-jontron-success.gif
3151882
Hmmm. While this is solid on it's own... You could indeed do more with it.
Why not make a separate fic? Or if you DO do another chapter, do a similar style with one of the other Mane 6.
~Skeeter The Lurker
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The plan was to have another diary entry, but this one belonging to Twilight. It would be far more scientific in nature, and would go into detail as to what was happening, and why Pinkie was so important. Finally, there would be an entry by Dash taking place in the aftermath of the outbreak. It would finally touch on the fates of Pinkie and AJ, while also furthering the world narration.
That's the plan so far.
3151967
3152033
That was... unholy.
You did a good job.
3153303
Always nice to get praise from a fellow Eldritch Being. Glad you enjoyed the story.
BTW, who gave this story another freaking thumbs down?! Can you at lest have the decency to explain why you're giving me a thumbs down!?
Oh my god. I am so glad I gave this a chance. Thumbs up, fav, and follow.
PLEASE continue!
3153486 there are really not enough of us here, are there?
3153653
you know, I only need one more "continue" and I shall. Oh, I shall.
3151996
I'd really like to see you flesh this out more. While the premise is pretty cool (kind of a Last of Us sort of infection, I'm assuming), seeing it from Pinkie's limited perspective means we really didn't get any answers at all. On top of that, while creepy throughout, there was never a real scare.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it. We need more solid horror stories around here; I just wish this one wasn't quite so... bare-boned. It could be so much more if you decide to continue.
3156228
No there are not. Wish there were more of us, maybe then we could rule this place as the prophecies have long foretold. To think that we once ruled it all, only to be stricken low by our own pride. Gives new meaning to the term "behold our work ye mighty and despair."
3165143>>3165141 HAHA! The kind man has asked you to continue! He said it would be awesome if you did! That is another one! You MUST do so now! You have no choice! AHA!
3165689
Heh, can't argue with the masses I guess.
Howdy there, Garnot. B_P from WRITE here, responding to your request for a review. Let’s get right to it. Bear with me through most of this; it’s almost purely me bringing up flaws that I found until I get down to the part where I start concluding things.
Mechanics:
When one character speaks directly to another in this manner (direct address, it’s called), the name of the character being spoken to has to be offset by commas. Click here for some good examples of direct address. There was also at least one point at which you had sort of the opposite problem, and you had something punctuated like a direct address that really shouldn’t have been:
That comma should really be a question mark. Say it out loud to yourself, and I’m sure the intonation and pause that feels natural will make it clear that something bigger than a comma needs to be there.
There are some other issues with your punctuation; specifically, your usage of semicolons is flawed.
That first example also has a comma that I think you meant to have be a period. In all of them, though, you have semicolons that are followed by fragments, when semicolons are only supposed to be used to connect whole independent clauses (i.e. clauses that could stand on their own as valid individual sentences). What you would actually want in these places is an em dash, one of the uses of which is to rapidly cut from one thought to another, fragment or not. Another option is to use commas and work the second clause so that it becomes dependent on the first, though that doesn’t really work in every case.
This next one you only did a few times, but it’s still something to look out for.
These are breaks in paragraphs that you failed to insert a blank line between.
You have some issues in regards to possessives.
Click here for some rules about and examples of possessives.
This one’s pretty simple. Your usage of “o’clock” is incorrect.
All you have to do is remove the space you put between “o’” and “clock”.
There’s a great many one-off typos on top of it all.
This is just a small sampling of them. You need to find yourself a good proofreader/editor or two, no question.
Characterization and Style:
There was something that bothered me a good deal about your characterization of Pinkie as I read. Namely, you had her using words and phrases that just felt out of character for her. See the following examples:
That’s a very short list for a very widespread issue. It just wasn’t necessary most times, either—you used the phrase “at any rate” to start off sentences more often than you used the more simplistic “anyway”, for example. It really could have helped her characterization if you’d have stuck to a bit simpler of a vocabulary except where necessary.
Speaking of Pinkie’s characterization, I have to say that I was really bothered by how distant everything felt. I know that this is just a diary, but you saw fit to eschew the format and stick in direct dialogue, so I have to think that more emotional involvement can’t have been too much to ask for. No feeling she ever seems to convey in this is more complex than “She was being mean” or “I was sad.” Emotion-conveying actions are limited to mentions of characters crying or screaming, too. Throughout it all, Pinkie seems to have the emotional intelligence of a small child, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bother me—yes, she can act childish, but I’ve always felt that she was very emotionally aware. Even if you disagree with me on that front, I still stand by my opinion that her general lack of emotional involvement in everything that was happening really left me more disconnected from the story than I might otherwise have been.
There are points where the wording makes statements sound illogical.
How does she know how much fun she “had” writing something she hasn’t written yet? Like, it’s Pinkie, but still. It was jarring.
Weirdly delivered reasoning. It comes off like you’re saying that she’s busy because she’s been telling everpony about the threat, rather than that dealing with/studying the threat itself is what she’s busy with.
You say this like the time earlier when the meteor shower was mentioned didn’t already cover the fact that the threat appeared right after it.
Excessive telling (i.e. giving me facts about something instead of letting me work them out for myself from evidence), even for first person. You do this specific sort of telling a couple of times, just saying that something is the way it is because that’s how ponies are. If that’s how ponies are, then Pinkie shouldn’t even think to mention it, really—if you were writing a diary of your own, would you feel the need to cut away and say that humans tend to fight a lot of wars, or something? In this particular example, you could have taken out everything after the word “lively”, and I would have picked up in her meaning as well as the fact that she was uncomfortable with the word “dead”, all without having to be told outright. That actually would have been what I would label to be a strong bit of characterization, for its subtlety.
There were points where you got a bit repetitive with your meanings. Like, you’d say something and then say it again a different way.
In that one, I’m talking specifically about Pinkie essentially saying twice that she was the one who’d been brought.
You got a bit repetitive with words themselves sometimes, as well.
In that one… I really feel as though it wasn’t worth the reference. But I just plain hate needless referential humor, personally.
Awkward emphasis—why is it on “want” instead of “really”? I’m not sure if this is the only instance of this issue, but it’s the only one I noticed.
The last style gripe I have is just a silly one.
Why does she write an em dash instead of just stopping?
Plot:
I’m not sure if this is the only plot point that was brought up and never went anywhere at all, but yeah. Trixie never appeared, so why mention her?
There were a number of plot holes throughout the piece, and I’ll ask you to forgive me for dumping them all on you as I’m about to do: If Twilight had “called” for Fluttershy, how did the guards at the encampment not know what she was doing there? Why did Twilight say she needed Fluttershy’s help to feed the manticores when she clearly didn’t and probably knew it would just upset her? How did Twilight actually know Zecora’s metamorphosed self would be contagious (as it seemed like nobody had actually been infected by her yet)? How did Pinkie get scratched by the manticores when they were all contained in Shining Armor’s barrier? Why did Fluttershy and Twilight take Pinkie back to Sugarcube Corner with no sort of tests or treatment given to her first (and moreover, why did Twilight hug her) after she’d been scratched by manticores that Twilight had already stated to be contagious with this apparently fast-acting and fast-spreading disease? In relation to that last one, I’m forced to assume that the Cakes left after Pinkie had already been brought back, because it’s a tough pill to swallow that they left in that short few hours that she’d been gone. How did the CMC get infected? How is anyone getting infected, if the disease is just being spread by manticores and those they’ve infected already? How did Fluttershy “disappear into the forest with Zecora in tow” if Zecora—who is some mass of hideous hulking flesh in my brain because I was never given a description of her—was already being contained someplace?
Actually, looking back at through the story, that Pinkie-getting-scratched one is an even bigger plot hole than I thought. Look at this:
This sequence of events makes absolutely no sense.
Conclusion:
To start summing this all up, I’ve got to say that your technical skills aren’t particularly strong. There wasn’t really a point where I was too confused by errors to get your meaning, but I was still distracted by them constantly. Something I want you to keep in mind is that in most places where I provided examples, I haven’t given you every single instance I found, and that you should go through your story again with someone who really knows what they’re doing if you want to catch everything. Failing that, just keep this all in mind the next time you write something. Do get editors for future stuff, though.
As far as the characterization went, I couldn’t say you were particularly strong in that department either. Fluttershy was fine, but rare were the times when Twilight actually felt like all that much like Twilight. Like, I get that she’s taking the whole situation seriously, but I was never really given a tether of familiar and well-liked personality to hold on to during all the times when she was being a jackass. As for Pinkie, I’ll say that (apart from the weirdly wordy vocabulary) her characterization, like Fluttershy’s, was fine. That’s not actually a great thing, though; while it isn’t too important for Fluttershy to come across as strongly characterized, Pinkie is the main character. Points where you had her make references to show events out of the blue (like when she talked about forming a one-pony band to herd parasprites) felt like weak grabs at cheap characterization. On top of that, having her ramble and go off on tangents so much only started to feel annoying after a while, at least to me. You didn’t actually give her all that much in the way of unique actions for me to consider, and that really made it hard to connect her with her show counterpart instead of just seeing her as some dim, talkative voice.
That goes into something of a larger problem: this story was a bit lacking in action. The spread of the infection and Pinkie’s part in it all just seemed to happen. You could have had the manticores break out somehow and attack Pinkie before being subdued. You could have had her really have to deal with the ponies in town reacting to her with disgust and fear because of her status as infected. You could have had tearful goodbyes. You could have had Pinkie’s encroaching memory loss affect her in more ways than just making her forget what she’d wanted to write or what words meant. What it comes down to is that this story was almost all whisper and no bang.
It’s worth saying, though, that apart from all of the weirdness and plot holes in and around the story’s turning point, I actually liked a lot of the plot (especially the later stuff) a good deal. Though I certainly think you could have polished the delivery more, seeing the ways in which Ponyville changes as a result of this outbreak was intriguing. In fact, I daresay you can put me on the list of people who would want you to continue this, if only to see what else this new setting that crops up at the end of the story has to offer. I think it might be better for you to tackle it in a different format, though—third person or true first person—as I don’t think that this piece was actually very successful as a diary, executed in the manner it was. Too much emotion and description was lost, really.
As a final note, I deeply apologize for how overwhelmingly negative this review wound up being. I assure you I didn’t dislike the story as much as it probably seems like I did. I wouldn’t call it great, but it certainly wasn’t a bad read.
Good luck with your future work.
fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/301/e/9/bpadminlogolongver11_01_by_burrakupansa-d6s41nf.png
-- Burraku_Pansa, WRITE's Trainer Admin and Resident Namesmith
3410794
To start, I would like to thank you B_P and the folks at WRITE for getting to this so quickly. I honestly wasn't expecting a review of this magnitude till later in the week, maybe even the weekend. Not that I'm saying it takes your folks that long to actually get to reviews. This is the busy seasons for many.
Now, then, this is the part where I make some kind of excuse and whine about the review...
Heh, I have nothing.
Honestly, I fully agree with your assessment of the piece. Truth be told, I wasn't really giving the finer details of grammar much attention as this piece was written. The for this blatant violation of the written word was due to a self-imposed challenge: a "story every two weeks" challenge. This was done in order to aid me recover my writing flow, which was recently damaged by a rather long absence from any written word. Due to that fact, this story did not see a formal editor of any kind, so the errors you have spotted were expected—even welcomed (though they are still somewhat unsettling to see pop up in my writings. I have gotten rather rusty). I will make a list of the errors brought up by you and will catalog them so they are less likely to appear in the future.
Now, your assessment of the plot has shed new light on an issue I had not fully foreseen at the time this was written. The plot is indeed broken to a degree. It can be remedied thanks to your input, for which I am very grateful. One of the issues that is at play in this story—aside from my rusty nature—is the fact that I tried to keep things too "vague" and "simple." I wanted certain details to be present more in the background rather than the foreground in order to provide readers something they could think about long after the story was finished. That is one of the reasons I picked a diary format, though I am now well aware that such a style is inadequate to really deliver the necessary "pow" the story needs to really be great. You are correct in the belief that the next part of this story is not only in a format other than the diary one (it's true first-person if you are wondering), but also takes place with a new protagonists, one that will allow a greater range of "showing" rather than "telling."
One thing I should mention is that you're the first reviewer who has suggested I use em-dashes rather than semicolons. In fact, I prefer using em-dashes. However, past reviews have bashed me for using them instead of commas or semicolons. That's why you see them in this piece. I will remedy the issue as soon as possible.
This piece has, for the most part, been a success, for it has gotten me writing once more. I will not deny that it needs repairs—which I will be done ASAP. Again, I thank you for your input B_P. I am glad to hear you are among the ones who wish to see the continuation of this story, and that despite the flaws, you still somewhat enjoyed the tale. Again, your review has been cataloged for further study.
-Garnot
3413079
Semicolons and commas just have strict rules about their usage, is the thing; em dashes are far less restrictive. You just have to better familiarize yourself with those rules, as the areas I brought up were all technically invalid (in other places like "Also, they are rocks; they are very heavy." a semicolon is perfectly fine, though).
Also, sad to hear Pinkie won't be the main character of the continuation. I hope the cliffhanger will be resolved, at least—I'm assuming she isn't dead because that would have been a real cop out.
3413153
I hear you well on the semicolons front. Semicolons just can be such a drag at times.
Now, far as Pinkie goes, she's not dead. Her story's not yet over, but the sequel doesn't have her be the protagonist. Rather, we take on a new viewpoint that will allow us to see events play out in a more complete form.
We will see her again. We just may not like what we see.
UPDATE
A small update has been given to the story. A greater update will be applies in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for that.
Perhaps it can shed light on what transpired here, and what became of the subject.
Bleak.
Well done!
Added to the Group.
9393732
I was not expecting this. Thanks. I have been gone from the writing scene here so long, that I had forgotten what joy is.