Being friendly is more boring than Discord expected, so he goes looking for some occupation, something to entertain him.
After his previous attempts result in amusing (for him) disasters (for everypony else), Discord decides to try his paw at creating comics.
Rated Teen because it suggests the existence of "mature" comics.
Created for the Equestria Daily Writer's Training Grounds #005: "Three's a Crowd"
Feel free to point any flaws; it's why I'm taking part in the Writer's Training Grounds, after all.
Chapters (4)
I found it interesting how you also stated how Discord enjoyed the reactions of ponies, not the actual chaos. I guess that's the widely accepted belief. :) Good prologue!
XD Well, now we know where Spike got that enchanted comic book. What if this was an actual reason for Spike getting his hands on the enchanted book? Anyways, the funniest part was "the mature comics", and also where Celestia reveals who actually created the protection spells. XD
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Thanks
As for the chaos thing, I'm not sure if that is such a widespread belief; but, the way I see it, if all he wanted was chaos he could easily create a personal island somewhere far away and enjoy his own chaos without ponies to hinder him, so I don't think this would be his motivation. The intro is in part Discord finding this out for himself, since it was the first time he was free but couldn't openly target ponies with his chaos.
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I had the idea of Discord being involved in creating those comics from the moment I saw the episode, and his prank on Luna shortly after; the whole fic is preparation for that scene, in a sense
As for the protection spell, I had created a bit more back-story on it, but couldn't fit it in the fic without breaking the flow. The way I see it, Celestia created the spell to use on the elements in Keep Calm and Flutter On; after the episode, the "reformed" Discord started pranking Celestia and Luna, but lost interest in pranking Celestia because of her near perfect poker face. Luna started getting frustrated with the pranks, so Celestia taught her the spell, the mailbox - something that, if it was destroyed by the spell, wouldn't be missed - being Luna's first successful attempt at casting it, and the conference room marking when Luna managed to improve the spell.
I also envision the spell as being exceedingly hard to cast, otherwise Discord wouldn't be an issue anymore. Fragile things, in special, are something that I imagine being specially prone to just exploding in the caster's face if she doesn't get the spell just right
3879725 Exploding pie! XD. This comes to mind when I read the story.
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It's why I was intentionally vague in last chapter's comment
(and a good indication on how committed to getting back at Discord I imagined Luna
I really liked the bonus chapter.
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Glad you liked it
Discord was responsible for that comic? Suddenly everything makes sense. (No, seriously, it does.)
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Thanks, I hope it was the good kind of random
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Discord: Making the illogical logical™
Now, if you are into shipping, try to read one of those fics where the characters have to do something intimate to leave the comic while thinking about Discord having created them, and on top of that watching the whole thing as it happens. I don't actually enjoy shipping, and still the mental image had me rolling with laughter
3949658 ...I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you said in the second paragraph. My mind's a little ERROR 404 BRAIN NOT FOUND today.
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I was a bit confusing and my sarcasm detector is busted, so...
Keep in your mind the idea that Discord created the comics and can watch inside them at will. Then read the synopsis of this fic.
When it happened to me, I needed quite a bit of time to stop laughing
3950271 Okay yeah, that IS funny. Especially when Discord lends himself SO nicely to those "NOW KISS" memes.
Should be:
There may be other errors, but I'm reading more for pleasure at the moment. Those two lines just happened to jump out at me
No offense intended, but is English your native tongue? More than once, you used "she" instead of "her", a common mistake made by those for whom English is a secondary language. You otherwise seem to be doing a fair job with it, so kudos on learning English if I'm correct in my assessment!
If I'm wrong, then this is extremely embarrassing and I apologize for my error
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Yep, you are right; my native tongue is Brazilian Portuguese. With one additional caveat: my English is mostly self-taught from reading books (novels and RPG manuals mostly), with very few formal lessons, few conversations, and almost all of my previous writings in English consisting of forum posts. As far as I can tell, my accent is atrocious
I've been at it since I was a child and, if one considers just reading skill, I'm roughly as proficient in English as in my native tongue.)
(It was an awfully large number of books, though, counted in the high hundreds nowadays.
So, thanks for the tip, I really need those to improve
(Would you mind pointing a couple places where I've used the wrong word? It would help me lock into the pattern I'm getting wrong, so I can correct it here and try to avoid making the same errors afterward.)
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Thanks, fixed.
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Sure thing! I'll just highlight the incorrect word in each passage
In the epilogue:
Towards the end of the bonus chapter:
Well, since you put this up looking for advice, I'll leave a little.
If you've just started writing, you're off to a good start, but you've got your work cut out for you. This story suffers from fast pacing and telling, that throw off the flow of the narrative. You voiced Discord well, but the other characters could use some work. But I say you've started at a good place, because these problems will only lessen with practice, as you grow more comfortable with writing, for the show in particular. Best of luck. :)
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Thanks!
Fixed the two you pointed, and now that I know what to look for, I will take a look at the rest of the fic (and my other fics) for similar issues when I get some free time.
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Thanks for your comment and hints!
The excessive telling in the epilogue was partially intentional, though I agree that I didn't pull it off well and that I should have mixed more showing in my intentionally telly parts. When narrating the conversation with Derpy I wanted to give the impression that Discord wasn't paying attention, and for the following part, I didn't want to repeat Power Ponies inside my fic, but I needed to show some key parts.
For the rest of the fic I don't have any excuse, though
I believe part of my issue with fast pacing is due to my writing being somewhat close to brown prose. I need to get more practice in adding meaningful details. Well, this and the fact this fic had a limit of 7K words, though I could have slowed it a fair bit with a thousand additional words and still remained below the size limit.
(This one is my third fiction piece that wasn't a school assignment, BTW, and the last one of those I did was back in High School. A lot to learn yet
)
I'll have the reviews up of all the Luna stories up on my blog tomorrow, but I wanted to come over here and make a few observations about this story--some of the things I liked and some of the things I might have done differently, which didn't really fit into the context of a reader-oriented review.
First off, characterization: you did some nice things with Discord, especially in the early going, but I found him less and less interesting as the fic progressed. A lot of that had to with the fact that, in the early going, Discord (and his powers) were much more active, and less plot-oriented, than in the later going. As a being of chaos, keeping a fair bit of maniac-ness about him (the opening with the flamingo, yoyo tree, etc. was a great example) is really necessary. Later, he becomes a much more static force (even when the anti-chaos fields aren't holding him back), which is unfortunate.
The princesses I was less impressed with. They seem to mostly be story-advancing vehicles, and their role in the story is entirely reactionary--even the anti-chaos stuff seems to come into play mostly so that Discord can gripe about it, rather than as part of a cohesive characterization of either princess.
Now, the concept here was great, insofar as the interactive comics stuff went... but there was a serious lack of focus. Looking just at the story proper (the bonus chapter doesn't really count, when we're talking about "focus"), we spend more than half the fic setting up the concept, then go on to the prank revelation (aside: ew. Funny, but eeewwww), before moving on to a retelling of canon events from a different perspective, then ends on a note not obviously related to any of the above with Derpy and Dinky and learning to be a good pony/draconequus. There events hold together fine, but I had trouble finding a coherent theme to the whole thing; it felt less like a single story than a series of anecdotes connected only in the sense that they involved the same characters and timeline. Now again, the idea here was good--I just think more could've been done to turn that idea into a cohesive narrative.
As far as language, I can see a few other commenters have already mentioned it, so I won't belabor the point. As Oats noted, you make a lot of typical non-native speaker mistakes (e.g. using "which" to describe intelligent creatures (use "who" instead), trouble with conditionals ("If it was any of the others Discord wouldn't mind" should be "If it were any of the others, Discord wouldn't have minded")), but honestly? Your editing is still better than at least half the stories that get posted here every day, so don't get down about that.
Heck, don't get down about anything. There's plenty of room for growth here, but you've got a good feel for how to write humor suited to your medium, you have a good sense for what ideas will and won't work in a story, and despite what issues I did take, I still enjoyed this; it was definitely a worthy addition to the contest.
I hope that helps you going forward with your writing. Keep at it!
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Thanks! I will try to keep what you said in mind for my future stories. I just wish I had gotten comments like this back when I first posted this story, it has taken nine stories (eight posted here) for the first actually critical comment (apart from pointing grammatical errors) to appear, and your own came only after I had written ten stories (but then, I'm taking part in every EQD Writers Training Ground since #003, so I post at least one story per week
Incidentally:
- The prank was intentionally left vague because I was certain the readers would imagine something far worse than I could ever write. Heck, from your reaction I would bet you imagined something far worse than what I myself had in mind
(For reference, my own mental image is something steamy, not cloppy, but with the volunteer being Luna's own maid. I guess in hindsight it would have been more fun to make the who explicit while still leaving the what vague, it would reinforce why Luna is so disturbed at the sight.)
- The story behind the plot was supposed to show how Discord needs interaction with other ponies, both friendly and competitive, to be happy. He is supposed to be ultimately happy about being in a prank war with Luna, even - to his surprise - when he is losing, despite becoming frustrated from time to time, though I don't think I was able to convey this. I completely agree that I lost focus.
- The extra chapter was originally the ending, but I couldn't find a way to have both it, and Luna's most recent answer to Discord's prank, in a coherent way. I believe it ties better into what I wanted to show than the current ending.
...I want all of those comic books. I have a fantastic imagination, which I like to tell myself is way better than being stuck in the kind of situations super/anti-heroes in comic books are, but still. I'd need the spell to put on comics I've already read, then it would be glorious lol. I don't want to end up in Waller's suicide squad or the x-men, it's just asking for a death cameo. Unless you can pick your character going in, then that's a different game altogether... Hm. I mean I love the idea, great work!