I like it so far, but there's one huge problem: The protagonist's no pegas...wait a second...
Pegasus protagonist!, that's cool, I like the winged ones. Although I can't really imagine a small pegasus with a melee-battle-specialization being a town guard, I think some firearms would be better somehow (but I'm no expert and it's just my liking)
4075076 Thanks for the critique! I always like a good second opinion on my writings (I don't have an editor/proofreader yet), and thanks especially for writing such an in depth analysis too. However I have a bone to pick with some of it.
They had been fighting off raiders, slavers, and 4 other gangs, single hoofedly and when a mare starts getting pushed around at a bar suddenly they're powerless to do anything.
Also, is Updraft the only kind of military/police force this town has?
Actually the whole idea regarding the way I built this town, was very similar to in Heroes. Desert Springs wasn't holding off such large gangs, but being protected by them. They provided the gangs with fresh, clean water, (a rare commodity in the wasteland, I might add) and in return the gangs keep the raiders and slavers away. (I believe I mentioned that the occasional raider did make into town despite this) I meant to convey in the premise that Updraft and Sandy are the only two town guards, so I'm probably going to rewrite it a little bit to better show that. That's the biggest problem with the town (which will come in to play later I promise) is that they never had to deal with any serious threats, as they have nearly always been protected by the gangs since the town's founding. So when the two drunk gangers start harassing Lily, almost no one in the town even has the fighting experience to do anything about it, and are all pretty much too scared anyways.
it says something about the sun beating down on her head should not exist.
Not sure where you found that, unless you meant this:
it was pretty much as sunny as the wasteland got, a nice breeze to keep you cool, and even the cloud cover was breaking in a few places to give us a glimpse of that beautiful blue sky.
The thing is (and I'll go into more detail about this in chapter three) that Desert Springs is located on the very edge of Equestria, it used to be a border town between Equestria and the Buffalo Plains. It's even farther west than Appleloosa, so the Enclave Pegasi aren't too concerned with keeping the cloud cover perfect that far out since it's so far away from any of their cloud cities. ('m also going to give a better context of when exactly this is taking place in comparison to the original pretty soon.) But in regards to the fight, well I gotta defer to some personal experience there. See Updraft kinda sees Lily as like a little sister, or pretty close to it. Now when some jerks were harassing my little sister awhile back, I got a little upset. They absolutely refused to leave her alone, so after one of em threw a punch at me, I (being the 5'3", 18 year old, 103 lb. kid that I was...) threw a guy nearly twice my size almost completely over a picnic table. You'd be surprised what you can do when you're angry and running on adrenaline And honestly the whole point in that fight was not to show you how good/bad Updraft is in a fight, (that's mostly shown in chapter 2) it was to show that she does have ponies she cares about in Desert Springs, which is going to be important later on in the 4th arc of the story. (and will be brought up in a few places sooner than that.) That's one of the reasons why she wasn't using her wingblades, or even an actual knife during the fight. She is a town guard, but she's never killed anypony before. She's always been able to avoid needing a serious weapon by simply being faster than anyone that tried to fight her. Not sure if you've read the second chapter or not, but as you can imagine being out in the wasteland away from the protection of Desert Springs is quite a wake up call. But anyways thanks for the compliment! I spend a lot of time on each sentence (far more than I should honestly), and I usually end up with three drafts of everything I write (I hand-write it, then type it up on GDoc's, then I edit it again when I put it on here) so I hope it's at least readable
4076304 Yeah I thought of making Updraft a bit more violent, wielding a dual Gatling gun battle saddle instead of knives... but I decided to do something pretty much no one has done before. But hey if you want to see a Pegasus who wields some pretty serious firepower, if you'll stick with the story for awhile I'm going to introduce a character (in the 4th arc, so it'll be a ways off) that uses a lot of bullets... like more than Steelhooves ever imagined using...
4078739 I'm not saying I don't like Updraft the way she is, she doesn't need to be more violent or has to change her way of fighting (that's not what I meant with my previous comment). I'm planning to give my pegasus OC a little bit of a special hoof-to-hoof combat ability too, even if she's weak in melee-combat, but that's not the point.
I just wanted to say that I can hardly imagine a town guard with no expertice in firearms. Remember the two town guards, standing on top of the Megaton gate? That's how I imagine a town guard. But on the other hand, Updraft's a pegasus, so she's not bound to one position, making her more agile and...yeah, that works out.
4078971 true. Also, it's not like Desert Springs has a lot of outside trouble since it's protected on all sides by rather large gangs, so Updraft's main job was just to keep peace among the townponies.
This was my first story to critique, and I intend to keep with it.
First half of chapter. Sweet Celestia that was some of the best writing I've ever seen!
I had one nitpick with the beggining. The raider with the flamethrower. Raiders, depicted in the original Fo:E, and by extent in the game itself, are incredibly dumb. This raider doesn't only know how to work a flamethrower, but also had a pretty diverse vocabulary, and talked quite a bit. (For a raider, anyway.)
Headcanon time! The raiders here arn't as 'affected' ( I tend to go with Project Horizons's canon here and like to think of it as a disease ). They weren't really raiders, just a smart pony disgused as one, and is tricking the raiders. Which probably means we're getting a return of those 2 raiders. Further proved by the point that these raiders weren't eating other ponies, but real food.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Your narration is P H E N O M A N A L
Once I started reading the second half, my opionon did the same thing sound frequency does. It went up and down. Why? Well, I'll start with my minor nitpick. I believe I mentioned this a bit in my last one, Updraft is a tad Mary Sue. I say this lightly, don't worry. Still indescive about this point, but the fight scene at the end... I know it isn't hard to know 'pointy end kills ponies', but she seems really skilled with this knife. I realize in the last chapter's review I said that the town fought the 4 gangs, thanks for correcting me on that. But it still works against you, even more so. If the town is so envolped in peace, why is Updraft so damn good?
M A J O R P R O B L E M. This was a paragraph about character morales, but now I realize your character is going to need a bit more work than that.. I can't speak for you, but I assume you knew someone was going to point this out and you probably already have an argument against this, but I still want to throw my hat into the ring. In the beginning, when her life was being threatened by a vicisious monster, she has a problem with killing him. The raider even had motives of rape and tourture, and she still won't kill him. But, when faced with 3 Slavers, who are in fact, completely living and not bloodthirsty, she goes all ninja and wipes the floor with them. Stabbing them in cold blood, and her life wasn't in danger! Slavers actually take care of the slaves or no bodies going to buy them. Sure, she probably wouldn't be much of a virgin anymore, but the raider had the same intentions! Also, after one encounter with some raiders, she knows what's good and what's bad. *EDIT* nevermind, I was over reacting on this point. Urf, I also didn't like how you handeled the meeting of the slavers. She doesn't want them to find her, so she jumps down, fully geared and basiacaly tells them - "I killed those raiders so leave now." This is like playing Marco Polo, but Updraft is that one ballzy kid who screams Polo at the kid's face so he gets confused. Risky, and an unescarry risk.
Another major one. Your two chapters arn't related at all. In Chapter 1 we see her being taken away to get forcefully married to Red Baron, and like in my last chapter review, I pointed out it was an amazing plot arc. Then I read this chapter... You could literally read the two chapters seperate and rename the OC in one of them, and any normal person would say they're two diferent stories. The plot arc of the first chapter is completely dropped, and isn't even mentioned.
I loved how in the first half she fought like a pegasus, by lightly beating down the raider until she could escape. I loved this, a lot.
World building is as great as ever
Your narration. So beatiful it nearly brings to tears.
As harsh as I'm being with this story, it's one of my favorite stories.
4141127 As always thanks for the critique! I'll keep every bit of that in mind.
The reason why Updraft is so good with her blades, is that she's had a ridiculous amount of down time to get used to them. Seeing as she had almost nothing to actually guard against, she spent a large majority of her time practicing with her knives and wing blades. True this doesn't exactly translate over to battle experience, she has had plenty of experience fighting other ponies (as shown in chapter one with the two gangers) even if not to any kind of lethality.
But, when faced with 3 Slavers, who are in fact, completely living and not bloodthirsty, she goes all ninja and wipes the floor with them. Stabbing them in cold blood, and her life wasn't in danger! Slavers actually take care of the slaves or no bodies going to buy them.
True most ponies/people would see raiders as being far worse than slavers any day, but Updraft has a very different view of things that I'm going to continue to bring up in later chapters. Though raiders are horrible, murderous, and downright sick, they always kill their victims, usually outright. Slavers however torture their victims and sell them to an entire lifetime, however short that may be, of serving others. They treat other ponies like they're actually worth less than caps, drugs or booze, so Updraft has absolutely no respect for them. Also in the next chapter (which should be posted as of now) I made sure to bring that up.
Gangers always liked to cause trouble, I never did much care for them. Raiders were monsters who took whatever they wanted without remorse, but I've met a few ponies who've turned from those ways and tried to do better. But slavers? I had no respect for anypony who oppressed, hurt, and treated another pony like they were less valuable than a few caps or a bottle of booze.
In regards to her just showing up instead of running (which I also mention in chapter three), I will defer to the fact that Updraft is not a very street smart kind of pony who previously walked up to a group of raiders and asked for food...
Your two chapters arn't related at all.
Aha! but you see I'm trying a very unusual writing style here. I actually never intended for anything in the first chapter to dictate the first arc of the story. All the plot points in the first chapter are simply foreshadowing a much later arc. The current story arc actually started halfway through chapter two when the slavers show up.
Well here's chapter two! Please let me know if you see any spelling/grammar errors.
Looks good so far
I like it so far, but there's one huge problem:
The protagonist's no pegas...wait a second...
Pegasus protagonist!, that's cool, I like the winged ones.
Although I can't really imagine a small pegasus with a melee-battle-specialization being a town guard, I think some firearms would be better somehow (but I'm no expert and it's just my liking)
4075076 I follow you with what you wrote
4075076 Thanks for the critique! I always like a good second opinion on my writings (I don't have an editor/proofreader yet), and thanks especially for writing such an in depth analysis too. However I have a bone to pick with some of it.
Actually the whole idea regarding the way I built this town, was very similar to in Heroes. Desert Springs wasn't holding off such large gangs, but being protected by them. They provided the gangs with fresh, clean water, (a rare commodity in the wasteland, I might add) and in return the gangs keep the raiders and slavers away. (I believe I mentioned that the occasional raider did make into town despite this) I meant to convey in the premise that Updraft and Sandy are the only two town guards, so I'm probably going to rewrite it a little bit to better show that. That's the biggest problem with the town (which will come in to play later I promise) is that they never had to deal with any serious threats, as they have nearly always been protected by the gangs since the town's founding. So when the two drunk gangers start harassing Lily, almost no one in the town even has the fighting experience to do anything about it, and are all pretty much too scared anyways.
Not sure where you found that, unless you meant this:
The thing is (and I'll go into more detail about this in chapter three) that Desert Springs is located on the very edge of Equestria, it used to be a border town between Equestria and the Buffalo Plains. It's even farther west than Appleloosa, so the Enclave Pegasi aren't too concerned with keeping the cloud cover perfect that far out since it's so far away from any of their cloud cities. ('m also going to give a better context of when exactly this is taking place in comparison to the original pretty soon.)
But in regards to the fight, well I gotta defer to some personal experience there. See Updraft kinda sees Lily as like a little sister, or pretty close to it. Now when some jerks were harassing my little sister awhile back, I got a little upset. They absolutely refused to leave her alone, so after one of em threw a punch at me, I (being the 5'3", 18 year old, 103 lb. kid that I was...) threw a guy nearly twice my size almost completely over a picnic table. You'd be surprised what you can do when you're angry and running on adrenaline
And honestly the whole point in that fight was not to show you how good/bad Updraft is in a fight, (that's mostly shown in chapter 2) it was to show that she does have ponies she cares about in Desert Springs, which is going to be important later on in the 4th arc of the story. (and will be brought up in a few places sooner than that.) That's one of the reasons why she wasn't using her wingblades, or even an actual knife during the fight. She is a town guard, but she's never killed anypony before. She's always been able to avoid needing a serious weapon by simply being faster than anyone that tried to fight her. Not sure if you've read the second chapter or not, but as you can imagine being out in the wasteland away from the protection of Desert Springs is quite a wake up call.
But anyways thanks for the compliment! I spend a lot of time on each sentence (far more than I should honestly), and I usually end up with three drafts of everything I write (I hand-write it, then type it up on GDoc's, then I edit it again when I put it on here) so I hope it's at least readable
4076304 Yeah I thought of making Updraft a bit more violent, wielding a dual Gatling gun battle saddle instead of knives... but I decided to do something pretty much no one has done before. But hey if you want to see a Pegasus who wields some pretty serious firepower, if you'll stick with the story for awhile I'm going to introduce a character (in the 4th arc, so it'll be a ways off) that uses a lot of bullets... like more than Steelhooves ever imagined using...
4078739
I'm not saying I don't like Updraft the way she is, she doesn't need to be more violent or has to change her way of fighting (that's not what I meant with my previous comment). I'm planning to give my pegasus OC a little bit of a special hoof-to-hoof combat ability too, even if she's weak in melee-combat, but that's not the point.
I just wanted to say that I can hardly imagine a town guard with no expertice in firearms.
Remember the two town guards, standing on top of the Megaton gate? That's how I imagine a town guard. But on the other hand, Updraft's a pegasus, so she's not bound to one position, making her more agile and...yeah, that works out.
4078971 true. Also, it's not like Desert Springs has a lot of outside trouble since it's protected on all sides by rather large gangs, so Updraft's main job was just to keep peace among the townponies.
This was my first story to critique, and I intend to keep with it.
First half of chapter.
Sweet Celestia that was some of the best writing I've ever seen!
I had one nitpick with the beggining. The raider with the flamethrower. Raiders, depicted in the original Fo:E, and by extent in the game itself, are incredibly dumb.
This raider doesn't only know how to work a flamethrower, but also had a pretty diverse vocabulary, and talked quite a bit. (For a raider, anyway.)
Headcanon time!
The raiders here arn't as 'affected' ( I tend to go with Project Horizons's canon here and like to think of it as a disease ).
They weren't really raiders, just a smart pony disgused as one, and is tricking the raiders. Which probably means we're getting a return of those 2 raiders. Further proved by the point that these raiders weren't eating other ponies, but real food.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Your narration is
P H E N O M A N A L
Once I started reading the second half, my opionon did the same thing sound frequency does.
It went up and down.
Why?
Well, I'll start with my minor nitpick. I believe I mentioned this a bit in my last one, Updraft is a tad Mary Sue. I say this lightly, don't worry. Still indescive about this point, but the fight scene at the end... I know it isn't hard to know 'pointy end kills ponies', but she seems really skilled with this knife. I realize in the last chapter's review I said that the town fought the 4 gangs, thanks for correcting me on that. But it still works against you, even more so. If the town is so envolped in peace, why is Updraft so damn good?
M A J O R P R O B L E M.
This was a paragraph about character morales, but now I realize your character is going to need a bit more work than that.. I can't speak for you, but I assume you knew someone was going to point this out and you probably already have an argument against this, but I still want to throw my hat into the ring. In the beginning, when her life was being threatened by a vicisious monster, she has a problem with killing him. The raider even had motives of rape and tourture, and she still won't kill him. But, when faced with 3 Slavers, who are in fact, completely living and not bloodthirsty, she goes all ninja and wipes the floor with them. Stabbing them in cold blood, and her life wasn't in danger! Slavers actually take care of the slaves or no bodies going to buy them. Sure, she probably wouldn't be much of a virgin anymore, but the raider had the same intentions! Also, after one encounter with some raiders, she knows what's good and what's bad. *EDIT* nevermind, I was over reacting on this point.
Urf, I also didn't like how you handeled the meeting of the slavers. She doesn't want them to find her, so she jumps down, fully geared and basiacaly tells them - "I killed those raiders so leave now." This is like playing Marco Polo, but Updraft is that one ballzy kid who screams Polo at the kid's face so he gets confused. Risky, and an unescarry risk.
Another major one.
Your two chapters arn't related at all. In Chapter 1 we see her being taken away to get forcefully married to Red Baron, and like in my last chapter review, I pointed out it was an amazing plot arc. Then I read this chapter... You could literally read the two chapters seperate and rename the OC in one of them, and any normal person would say they're two diferent stories. The plot arc of the first chapter is completely dropped, and isn't even mentioned.
I loved how in the first half she fought like a pegasus, by lightly beating down the raider until she could escape. I loved this, a lot.
World building is as great as ever
Your narration. So beatiful it nearly brings to tears.
As harsh as I'm being with this story, it's one of my favorite stories.
In other words, MOAR!
4141127 As always thanks for the critique! I'll keep every bit of that in mind.
The reason why Updraft is so good with her blades, is that she's had a ridiculous amount of down time to get used to them. Seeing as she had almost nothing to actually guard against, she spent a large majority of her time practicing with her knives and wing blades. True this doesn't exactly translate over to battle experience, she has had plenty of experience fighting other ponies (as shown in chapter one with the two gangers) even if not to any kind of lethality.
True most ponies/people would see raiders as being far worse than slavers any day, but Updraft has a very different view of things that I'm going to continue to bring up in later chapters. Though raiders are horrible, murderous, and downright sick, they always kill their victims, usually outright. Slavers however torture their victims and sell them to an entire lifetime, however short that may be, of serving others. They treat other ponies like they're actually worth less than caps, drugs or booze, so Updraft has absolutely no respect for them. Also in the next chapter (which should be posted as of now) I made sure to bring that up.
In regards to her just showing up instead of running (which I also mention in chapter three), I will defer to the fact that Updraft is not a very street smart kind of pony who previously walked up to a group of raiders and asked for food...
Aha! but you see I'm trying a very unusual writing style here. I actually never intended for anything in the first chapter to dictate the first arc of the story. All the plot points in the first chapter are simply foreshadowing a much later arc. The current story arc actually started halfway through chapter two when the slavers show up.