I write MLP: FiM fan fiction in my spare time, which is approx. once a month due to my current schedule. I don't put out much, but what I do put out hopefully will be good, if not now then later.
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Dustbowl wants to live a quiet life. However, he became an alicorn at an early age, and the pressure to be as good or better than the other alicorns in Equestria was too much for him. When your talent is cleaning up stuff, being told that you needed to tame a manticore is a bit of a tall order. Thus, he has to hide his secret from the world, or face the consequences of his nature.
One day, his life changes forever.
For this contest: The Most Dangerous Game Contest.
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I give it two meh's and a disgruntled huff of approval
4600076
Understood. Out of curiosity, can you elaborate?
4600092 In short I like it
4600172
Mmkay.
4600175 hey you can't be picky with likes not yet anyway
4600180
Very true
Much better then the average new alicorn story.
Seems like it would fit in RealityCheck's story very well.
4600222
This story was written for a contest to write good stories with traditionally bad concepts. Link is in the description, go check it out.
Glad you liked it! I'll let the author of that story contact me if he is interested. Don't want to impinge on whatever concept he's got
Well… it’s not bad, but it’s not great, either.
It’s good as far as grammar goes. A few said tag mishaps, and writing words IN ALL CAPS (which is something that I personally hate, especially with overuse, but not everyone minds it, I guess). Overall, though, it’s better than a majority of fics on this site in that regard.
I think the main problem I have with this fic is that it’s too short for the amount of story it’s telling. The beginning sets a good pace, and then, at around the halfway point, things start to speed up. Custard gets mad, then she and Dustbowl make up, then he’s visited by the princesses, he passes their “test”, and so on, all a little too quickly for me.
The result of this is that things start to feel overdramatic. I’m surprised at these characters, who go through such emotions so rapidly and learn things so quickly. It’s jarring, and I feel like a lot of it needed more buildup. More words filling in the scenes to draw them out a little, slower exploration of the characters, etc.
There were also a few smaller issues and things that just personally bothered me. The dialogue didn’t feel natural in places, like the last three lines of dialogue, for instance. And speaking of that, the last scene between Custard and Dustbowl has only dialogue and no narrative, so it feels like a transcript. Also, ripping out an IV twice without any second thoughts wasn’t believable to me, personally. There were a few other things, I think.
However, it’s a unique take on an overdone concept, so kudos to you. You gave Dustbowl depth and a good backstory. The fast pacing made for melodrama, but overall, this story is all right. :)
PIN number. PIN number. Schizo tech issues aside, are you sure she wasn't entering it into an ATM machine?
And it's the schizo tech, along with the other setting pieces, that really ruin this story for me. It doesn't feel pony. At all. The credit cards and firearms I could forgive if you'd added an Alternate Universe tag, or if you had established that this takes place at some point in the future, or even if you just hadn't mentioned coaches at the beginning. It feels like you somehow forgot you were writing a pony story early on despite the alicorn OC.
I admit, I stopped reading after Dustbowl told himself to "Go apologize, for fuck’s sake." My suspension of disbelief was completely gone by that point. Sorry, but I can't like this one.
4600654
Thanks for commenting! I'm glad you liked parts of it, and I understand if there are bad parts in this story. It takes me a bit to perfect a story, and I only had a couple of weeks to get it ready. To put things in perspective, my currently 35k word story has been worked on for two years. Two. Years.
And even THAT isn't perfect.
ALL CAPS signifies volume of speech while in the middle of speaking, i.e. if I ALL OF A SUDDEN did all-caps, that signifies that I raised my voice for the part I all-caps'd. Italics conveys intensity rather than volume. It's a trick I use to vary conversations somewhat, and it at times helps convey emotions. At least, that's why I do it, and I try to use it sparingly.
You are right, it is too short. I aim high, and sometimes have to write a lot to meet that lofty aim. I tried to slim the story down too much to meet the contest constraints, and ended up cutting more than I perhaps should have.
The dialogue near the end was hard to write, because I was trying to get all those interactions in together. Perhaps I crammed too much in. If I had time and space, I would have been able to develop that Dustbowl and Custard do in fact talk that dryly to each other whenever they are sharing an intimate moment, and it would have augmented their characters rather than stunted it. At least, that was the reasoning that ran through my mind.
4600722
Debit cards require entering PINs into the keypad at checkout. Perhaps calling it a PIN Number ("number" is used twice, once in "PIN" and again in "number") instead of just PIN may have eased that schizo tech issue a bit... or it may not have.
I based that beginning part of the story on things I remembered when I worked the night shift at a grocery store. As a result, more "human" things entered into the story, and I didn't have the patience to try and "ponify" everything. I wasn't too concerned if the story didn't come off as "pony" enough, because that can be a subjective thing. For example, Fallout: Equestria wasn't very "pony" either IMHO; it was Fallout 3 mixed with "pony" characters, who would have been just as compelling and interesting if they were human beings rather than ponies. At least, that's why it didn't bother me, and I do apologize for it bothering you.
I focus more on character development rather than setting with my writing. After all, what's the point of the setting? To establish where the characters are in relation to the plot, and to give an ambience/environment to a story. This means that I tend to either overdo the setting because of being conscious of my bias, or under-do the setting and focus too much on characterization. It's my most crippling weakness, and one that I still struggle with to this day.
Why did that line of dialogue suspend your disbelief? Can't someone berate themselves once they realized they screwed up with something? What am I saying, of course they can! The issue is, why did that dialogue fail to convey that to you? That's what I'm worried about, because it was supposed to establish that Dustbowl does try to be a responsible type of character by owning up to his perceived mistakes. If you didn't get that from the dialogue, then I probably did something wrong. Simply saying that the story lost you there doesn't help me correct the mistake I made, or pinpoint what is it that made the mistake in the first place.
You don't have to like the story. I apologize if it did not entertain.
Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
Sincerely,
Mr. Album
4601779
"PIN number" and similar instances of repeating the last word of an acronym are just a pet peeve of mine. It was a petty grievance more than anything.
The difference between your story and Fallout: Equestria is that FOE justifies the technological discrepancy. It's set two hundred years in the future and through flashbacks, we see the various technologies getting developed as the war effort escalated. Here, there are debit cards (which somehow hoof-compatible) and firearms with no attempt at explanation or justification, including any indication of a timeframe after that of the show.
As for the dialogue, I'm not Puritanical about pony vulgarity, but after all of the other issues I have with the story, it just edged me over the point of no continuation. Setting is kind of a big deal in fan fiction. It can be twisted six ways to Sunday, but here, it just felt like you abandoned it completely. This is not Equestria. These ponies don't think like Equestrians. It gave an air of not putting in the effort needed to establish the needed connection to canon, and as a result, made it feel like you didn't care about this story. And if the author doesn't care, why should I?
Of course, the above paragraph is entirely my opinion, and should not be held sacrosanct. But you wanted to know why you lost me, and as you noted, my previous comment was less than helpful in that regard. I hope this one was of greater assistance.
4602459
Thanks for explaining. What follows are merely my thoughts on your comment. I do not expect you to change your mind if you read it; your mind is your own.
I do have the view that the Equestria we see in the show isn't the full reality of Equestria. It's how Twilight and friends see and experience it. This means that different characters in the same setting will perceive that setting differently, and will describe it differently. Thus, you will find ponies who swear or who may not see Equestria as the bright, happy place the show describes it as.
I am a tad miffed at the argument "The author doesn't care, why should I?" because the fact is that I made a stylistic choice to base the setting on some personal experiences and observations, and I am willing to accept the consequences of that decision. I could have "ponified" it more; maybe the customer could have dropped some coins accidentally all over the floor, rather than struggle to use a debit card. Maybe the gun could have been a bow-and-arrow with a quiver, or a sword, or some other kind of penetrating projectile weapon. Throwing knives, maybe?
Then again, think of the level of technology that is in the show. There are cameras, electric lights, sound systems, DJ stations (Vinyl Scratch, anyone?) That's pretty advanced technology. It would not be much of a leap to suggest that banks have invented debit cards so customers don't have to lug around huge bags of coins whenever they go shopping, or for the military to develop firearms.
Just because X isn't in the show does not mean it COULDN'T be in the show. At the extreme least, it is plausible.
Think of the show as one slice of Equestria. Fan fiction finds other slices of Equestria and shows them to the world. These other slices can reveal something similar to the first slice, or can reveal something new that may not have been seen before. All slices, when plausible, are valid IMHO.
Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
Sincerely,
Mr. Album
Well... in the end, you guys were right: the technology didn't match the setting, and its inclusion wasn't justified enough to have it be present.
So I decided to change those things around. The gun and debit card are gone, replaced by coins and throwing knives. I left a disclaimer in the Author's Notes, stating what got changed and where.
Thanks for bearing with me, folks. I can have a thick head sometimes, and I needed a cacophony of voices shouting at me before I really understood what you all were getting at.
Artistic vision is one thing. How the audience perceives the vision is something else. Those technology bits were, quite simply, tripping up too many people. So I decided to make those switches. It may not "ponify" the story enough for some folks, but at least the technology is more consistent. Thanks for helping me out, and I apologize for being a stubborn goat about it
Sincerely,
Mr. Album
P.S. I wanted to thank the following folks:
FanOfMostEverything (good luck in the contest dude! May the best story win! And thanks for starting this discussion
)
Syeekoh (Thanks for being considerate in the thread, it helped keep it focused!)
Oroboro (I needed a bit of a wake-up call, and you were level-headed enough to give it to me!)
DH7 (Thanks for contributing in the thread, it gave me a lot to think about!)
Car Cloth (Thanks for pointing out the clincher, that knowing your audience and writing to that audience is the other side of writing that I was blind to!)
Jordan179 (Thanks for that amazing factoid, I would never have known that credit cards used to be done with paper in the early twentieth century!)
And, last but not least, thanks for all the folks who have commented on the story!
4600076
4600222
4600654
4602459
Thank you one and all!
Sincerely,
Mr. Album