A stallion talks to his phoenix-friend over the ol' campfire.
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- Member Since 8th Jun, 2012
- offline last seen Feb 1st, 2018
The Apologetic Pony
It's all about diabolical calculations of empathy, yo.
The Apologetic Pony
Joined 8th Jun, 2012 ·
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u wot m8
Wow. I don't even know how you crammed that much into so little.
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He has something called "Magic" - A science we do not understand.
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Da Magicks!
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I try.
Hey there, the name’s alexmagnet, from WRITE, and I’m here to give you a review. Now, seeing as you’re very likely unfamiliar with how I do things (unless you were around ponychan or mlpchan about a year ago), I’ll break it down for you. First, I’ll cover grammar issues since those are usually the easiest and most simple to get out of the way. Then, I’ll move on to style which is a bit more complicated. And finally, I’ll talk about the actual content of the story itself. The “meat and potatoes” if you will.
In the immortal words of Captain Tenneal, “Llllllllllllllllllllet’s go!”
GRAMMAR
All right, so the good news with the grammar section is that it’ll be relatively short, the bad news is that I still have to use it. The order in which the errors are listed is basically however I felt like doing it at the time, so don’t expect them to follow a specific pattern.
Comma Splices
>I think you might want to know more about me, I mean
>Don’t look at me like that, it was a long time ago, okay?
>I’ve given up trying to shove you away proper though, you’re definitely too stubborn.
Comma splices occur when you split two independent clauses (complete sentences) with a comma. They’re easy to spot and even easier to fix. The two examples can be fixed thusly:
>I think you might want to know more about me. I mean
>Don’t look at me like that. It was a long time ago, okay?
>I’ve given up trying to shove you away proper though. You’re definitely too stubborn.
The other option is to keep the two clauses as a single sentence and separate them with a conjunction. For example:
>Don’t look at me like that, because it was a long time ago, okay?
Obviously this just sounds weird, so I wouldn’t recommend it in this case, but it is an option.
Hyphenated Words
>to-together
>phoenix-friends
>on-and-off
>asking-around
>butt-tattoo
All right, so hyphens are a bit more complicated than commas. The quick and dirty rules behind hyphens are as follows: Hyphens are used to join two or more words into a single adjective before a noun (but not after), make compound numbers, avoid confusion, and with prefixes (they can also be used when splitting a word across lines, but that’s not important for this purpose). So now that we know that, let’s look at the examples I pulled and decide whether they need a hyphen or not.
>to-together
This one should be pretty obvious. I’m somewhat inclined to believe this is a typo, but that seems unlikely. “to-together” is not a word, and thus should not be hyphenated. Even if you were just trying to make “together”, it’s still not a hyphenated word.
>phoenix-friends
Since this comes before a pronoun (you), and not a noun, it should not be hyphenated.
>on-and-off
This falls under none of the rules for using hyphens, and as such should not be hyphenated.
>asking-around
A verb and an adjective should never be joined by a hyphen.
>butt-tattoo
This one would technically be correct, if it preceded a noun, but seeing as it doesn’t, it should not be hyphenated.
Parenthetical Elements
>As much I as I want to believe you at least to some degree understand me, and I understand you, I just don’t know.
>I got our little prepubescent gang together and after some asking-around, we found it.
>It’s er, kinda important.
Parenthetical elements, being one of the sexier uses for commas, are interesting in that you can completely remove them from a sentence, and it will still make sense. Like in the sentence I just removed, you can take out “being one of the sexier uses for commas”, and the sentence would still be complete. So, knowing that, you can look at the examples I pulled above and decide where you need to add commas.
>As much (you have an extra I here) as I want to believe you, at least to some degree, understand me, and I understand you, I just don’t know.
See, in this sentence, you actually have two parenthetical elements. You were just missing a comma before “at least to some degree”.
>I got our little prepubescent gang together and, after some asking around, we found it.
As a side note, you can actually hyphenate “pre-pubescent” as it precedes a noun, and “pre” is a prefix.
>It’s, er, kinda important.
Er, while a less intense break in the sentence, is nonetheless, a parenthetical, and as such, should be set off by commas. Also, as I will talk about in the next section, you can separate parentheticals with commas, parentheses, or dashes, depending upon what kind of break you want to create/intensity of the break.
Em/En Dashes
>Have you grown to love the world - are you sick of loss - doesn’t it bother you anymore?
>He must be a teenager himself by now - stronger than me.
Okay, so this is a major pet peeve of mine, but when you’re setting apart parentheticals with dashes, YOU DO NOT USE HYPHENS. Hyphens are only to be used in the scenarios described above in the “Hyphens” section. Parentheticals can be set apart with either em dashes (—) or en dashes (–), but not mother-grabbing hyphens. You can generate em and en dashes by pressing Alt+0151 and Alt+0150, respectively. So please, for the love of grammar, don’t use hyphens instead of dashes. Also, that first example is actually wrong. It should be three separate questions, not one long one, like so:
>Have you grown to love the world? Are you sick of loss? Doesn’t it bother you anymore?
The second one, however, is correct (y’know, minus the hyphen v. dash bit).
>He must be a teenager himself by now—stronger than me.
Em dashes don’t have spaces on either side. Alternatively, you can use an en dash flanked by spaces. Whichever you choose, be consistent within the story. Don’t flip flop between em and en. Pick one and stick with it.
>He must be a teenager himself by now – stronger than me.
But again, NEVER use hyphens…. EVER.
Its and It’s Confusion
>its not like anypony’s going to hear you in the middle of the woods!
>its been like that for longer than not.
>Its not very nice…
>Maybe I should tell you what its like being mortal
>I mean, I get it, its difficult,
Okey dokey, so its and it’s, man… let’s talk about them, m’kay? A lot of people seem to have trouble with this, but it’s actually quite simple. It’s, with an apostrophe, is the compound form of it and is. Its, without an apostrophe, is the possessive form of it. That’s it. They never ever ever ever ever switch. Pretty simple, right? With that in mind, let’s fix those examples.
>it’s not like anypony’s going to hear you in the middle of the woods!
>it’s been like that for longer than not.
>It’s not very nice.
>Maybe I should tell you what it’s like being mortal.
>I mean, I get it, it’s difficult,
Semicolons
>just a butt-tattoo now; its been like that for longer than not.
>I was; am a real coward.
Semi-colons are a weird little bit of punctuation that seem to confuse the hell outta everyone, and for good reason. Semicolons are ****ing weird. You can only use them in very specific instances. They’re actually fairly rare in most contemporary writing. So here are the rules: Use a semicolon to separate two independent, but related, clauses where the conjunction has been left out. Use a semicolon to separate units in a series when one or more units has a comma. Use a semicolon with a coordinating conjunction where the first clause has one or more commas. Keep in mind, even those these are the rules for semicolons, not every sentence that is within these rules needs a semicolon. They should be used sparingly, and only when the two sentences they are connecting are directly related. Imagine it like you’re tacking on extra information to a sentence. Information that doesn’t need to be there to make it complete, but enhances your understanding of the sentence. So, knowing that, let’s look at those examples, shall we?
>just a butt tattoo now; it’s been that for longer than not.
This is actually a correct use of a semicolon, and I only pointed it out so I could show you that you did use it correctly, at least once.
>I was—am a real coward.
In this example, you used a semicolon where the correct punctuation would’ve been a dash. See, dashes, in addition to being used to set apart parentheticals, are also used to create breaks in the sentences; i.e. interruptions. Like, if someone were speaking, and they were interrupted, you would show that with a dash.
Random Stuff That Doesn’t Have Its Own Section
>Sometimes I wonder that, if I could hear you, if I could understand you.
I can’t figure out exactly what’s wrong with this sentence, but I know that it’s wrong. Something about it just doesn’t parse properly. I’d recommend revising it to sound less weird. Here are some possible examples:
>I wonder, if I could hear you, if I could understand you, would things be different?
>Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if I could hear you, or understand you.
Alternatively:
>Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if I could hear you, understand you.
etc. etc.
>I guess you do, huh?
Uhh… do what? Given the sentence that precedes this, the question makes no sense.
>I mean, there’s no better way than to use a Cutiemark altruistically,
You capitalize “cutiemark” several times, and I don’t know why. I suppose you could make an argument for capitalizing it, as it could technically be a proper noun, but I think the generally accepted form is lowercase.
>Boring as tartarus.
First off, not a complete sentence. It’s missing a subject. Secondly, “Tartarus” should be capitalized since it’s a proper noun.
>You fell of your tree!
You fell off of your tree! Just missing a word here is all.
Okay, that about wraps up the grammar portion of this review (yes, there’s more to come). Without further faffery, we will move on to the style portion.
STYLE
All right, so this section is pretty short since your style seems to be pretty consistent and not half bad. There’s just a few things I want to talk about.
Use of Italics
So, generally you use italics to indicate emphasis on a word or phrase, or to differentiate thoughts from narration. However, the way you used it here is somewhat ambiguous. It seems like you’re using to show that the narrator is (possibly) insane and talking to himself. However, it could also be read like he’s saying that stuff in his head. If I’m being honest, I don’t have a particular problem with this in terms of style, but it makes the story a little bit weirder, but I’ll talk about that in the story section of the review.
Names
Okay, so I’m not a big fan of the names you used simply because they’re just human names. Generally pony names have something to do with their talent, or perhaps some pun, but they aren’t things like “Charlie” or “Jacob”. It’s a small complaint, but since this is ponyfics we’re talking about, it’s a valid one.
First-person Narration
Okay, so this is more of a personal issue, but I’m not a big fan of first-person narration. It’s kind of hard to use correctly, and, more often than not, just doesn’t work. I think this story would be much better served as third-person narration. That way, you could show the narrator and the phoenix interacting. I think it’d add a lot more depth to the story, but that’s just my opinion.
All right, that’s it for style. Time to move on the fun stuff… story.
STORY
This portion of the review won’t be divided into sections. Instead, I’ll just talk about my thoughts on the story, maybe pick out a few bits to discuss, and for the most part just ramble on. So, with that being said, let’s get started.
Okay, so my overall impression after reading this story (several times) is, so what? I mean, a whole lot of nothing happens for 1600 words, and it just kinda ends. There’s conflict, I suppose, what with his angst regarding his wife and kid, but no resolution or character development. You can have a really short story and still have those things. I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all was. It feels more like an excerpt from a longer fic than a standalone piece. I think this whole thing would work better if it was longer. I mean, you’ve got some interesting things going on here, but none of them have any time to really go anywhere because it just ends too quickly. Given that it’s marked “complete”, I assume you didn’t have anything else planned for this fic, which is a shame given that I think it has some potential to be a very interesting story.
My other major complaint, which I touched on briefly in the style section, is that this hardly feels like a ponyfic. I mean, the tie is tenuous at best, and the fact that the narrator is a pony is completely incidental. This could be told the exact same way as original fiction, and it would work the same. The point of writing fanfiction is that takes place within an established world, but that doesn’t really matter in this case. Yes, there is the bit about cutiemarks, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, and matters very little to the story. I mean, he’s good at investigating…. and? That doesn’t affect the story in any way whatsoever.
All right, so now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, lemme pull some things to talk about.
>They’re just so superior, darling…
Sounds like he’s quoting Rarity, given the “darling”, and, again, his investigative skills are apparently completely unimportant. In fact, all the italicized bits, like I mentioned before, come across weird. It feels like he’s potentially insane, which could be interesting, but, again, isn’t explored enough to really go anywhere. It ends up feeling like a mechanic that was only half-implemented rather than used to its full potential.
>Fucking spit it out Charlie,
Okay, random use of “fuck” is random. I’m not sure why this is here. With what little character the narrator is given, it feels, well, out of character. I assume this points, again, to some level of instability, but, again again, isn’t explored enough to really feel fleshed out. Like I said earlier, there’s a lot of potential here, but none it is realized.
>but I wasn’t brave enough to dip my hoof into heavier stuff.
>I got into drinking in my teenage years,
What… why? What’s the point in making the narrator an alcoholic? Also, why are there drugs in Equestria? This all feels like you’re trying to create a really dark atmosphere for a story that isn’t particularly dark. It just feels odd.
>I er... I like um... love…
Is he… is he in love with the phoenix? (who I assume is Philomena)
>I haven’t given you a name.
They’ve been travelling, evidently, for quite some time… and he’s never given a name to the phoenix? That… seems odd. Also, this little promise:
>I’m not going to give you a name now but I will before I die.
means almost nothing given that this story is complete and we’ll never see him die or the phoenix be named.
>Did your mother and father leave you as soon as you’d hatched?
Not only do birds in real life not do this, the phoenixes in show-canon don’t do this.
>Its like trying to imagine what it looks like outside a fishbowl, when you’ve been inside the fishbowl forever.
This whole fishbowl metaphor doesn't really work since fishbowls are usually made of glass, and thus you can still see the outside world.
All right, well that’s everything. This review ended up being quite a bit longer than I thought it’d be, but that’s how it goes I suppose. Especially when you get me as a reviewer, heh. Shoulda seen me back in my heyday on /fic/. I was posting 3k word reviews every other day. Anyway, I hope this helped you out some, and thanks for choosing WRITE for your reviewing needs. I may be new there, but I’m not new to the reviewing game, and I like to do what I can to help people, so hopefully I accomplished that. Welp, I guess that about wraps up this review.
~alexmagnet, WRITE’s resident Trixie fanboy
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First of all, thank you so much for putting so much effort into your review! Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner, been having quite a hectic week. There's just a few points I'd like to try to justify.
Regarding names, I think it's a bit silly to be saying they're not 'pony' names. The epoch of Equestria is not defined in the story, so we are left to think that it could be any. While it could be assumed that it is set at the same time of the show, this would be a bit unfair especially considering it has no canon characters or events referenced in it (besides parasprites I suppose). Surely in all of imagination, there could be a time in Equestria where a pony could be called Charlie.
You say that there's no character development and you can't help but wonder what the point of it was. I think the point of it was to be a snapshot at one moment in the life of a character. Is a story with character development better than one that does not aim for character development in the first place and hence has none? Same thing with resolution.
As for it hardly being a ponyfic, does it matter? Would it be a better story if the ties between it and canon were less tenuous? I don't see how it would be, nor do I see how it would lessen the story either. Why would making a story (fanfiction as it may be) seem more like a fanfiction make it a better story? Does the fact that we are given information that leads us nowhere make it an inferior story? I wouldn't think so for now.
How would the narrator know this?
Yeah, I see what you mean here. The reason I did this was that I wanted to show the honesty of the narrator, but perhaps I could have done it in another way. I didn't mean for his confession to be particularly dark, just factual.
Ah, I thought you'd get some distortion from the water and spherical glass. Maybe not.
I agree with you on all the grammar points. Don't know how I managed to not notice the different lengthed lines in all the books I read!
I think you'll be reviewing more of my stuff in the future and I'm looking forward to it!
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Hey man, I'm just doing what I do. Anyway, thank you for actually defending yourself. It's always good to see people who are willing to take criticism, but not blindly. It's a good quality as a writer to be able to defend yourself should the need arise. But I digress. I'll address your counterpoints in order.
While I can see where you're coming from, I'd argue that, in all likelihood, pony names have always been, well, pony regardless of the time period, as evidenced by the Hearth's Warming Eve play. But, I'll grant that it is possible to use "non-pony" names in a fic, I just rarely see it, which is why I pointed it out. It wasn't something that I really felt "needed" to be changed, per se, just thought it was odd is all.
Well yes, that was my main problem, that this is just a snapshot and not a fully coherent story, but fair enough. That was all it was meant to be.
Well, it matters inasmuch as this is a site dedicated to horsewords, so to take the horses out of the words, in my opinion, sort of defeats the purpose. You misunderstand me though. I'm not saying this lessens the quality of the story, just lessens its need to be on this specific website.
I thought it was fairly common knowledge that baby birds aren't abandoned the second they're born, but that's just me. To be fair, it's not really a major point of contention, just a minor issue that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Honesty is a good thing, but adding drugs and alcohol in for no reason is not. So, your intentions were good, you just suffered a bit in the execution department.
Ah, now if you had gone with the "distorted world view" angle, THAT I could've bought. Plus, it would make for a much more interesting metaphor, though it would take more work to fit in the story properly.
To be fair, an incredibly large amount of people don't use proper punctuation when it comes to dashes, so you are from the first I've come across to use hyphens. Now that you know, however, I hope you'll start using dashes correctly, that way I can point to you as one of the "good ones". Every time I see someone use an em dash correctly, it makes my heart flutter a bit.
I'm glad you were pleased with my review. It's always nice to hear that your work is appreciated, and I hope that I can be of assistance again in the future, especially since you seem to be quite capable of taking criticism, a trait that is, unfortunately, all too rare.