Please note, as of the date 3/3/2015, this story has undergone a mass edit/rewrite. It's much better now!
A thief from a parallel dimension has stolen the Alicorn Amulet. Now Twilight and her friends, as well as a few tag-alongs, are thrown into a bizarre new world, where they struggle to hold onto the values of friendship and harmony. But this dystopia may be more than the gang can handle, with evil emperors, sinister betrayals, and a dark past behind every pony they meet.
Takes place ten years after season four. all season 5 content will be ingored.
Chapters (10)
Okay, it just isn't fair for this to have gotten so many downvotes with no explanation. It has been a bit slow so far, but I'm really liking the world you're building, and I would like to see what happens next. I'm not sure what it was like before the re-write, but I don't think its nearly as bad as the number of downvotes implies.
In short, if you feel like writing more, I would love to see you continue.
5889905 Thank you so much for the kind words! But I promise, it was terrible before the rewrite. Stilted dialogue, plot holes galore, and vague(at best) visual description... it just wasn't very good.
If the like-dislike ratio is any indication, then the story has undergone a huge change!
Not so many gripes about the content or the premise - I've read more crazy things in the time I spent browsing Star Wars's expanded universe. I vaguely remember something about Palpatine clones, a paedophilic princess, grandchildren with unoriginal names when compared to other cast members, a whole thing with Mace Windu on a tribal planet...it was a train wreck.
Most of my complaints are concerned with style and presentation: word choice, sentence structure, et cetera. Those are below. Though I feel you're more level-headed than most around here (the site), I still want to make it clear that everything below this line should be taken with a grain of salt. This one, right here. Below there. Salt. Also, general commentary.
Personally, I try to avoid using 'and' twice in the same sentence. She might have been a "Smallish unicorn, with a pale white coat and a pink-slashed purple mane." I'unno, this kind of introduction seems more like a cast lineup than organic storytelling.
Minor grammar stuffs. I'd advise you to avoid "Lavender Unicorn Syndrome", as it's quite contagious and can infect a story in mere minutes. ("LUS" is the tendency to replace names and honoraries with brief descriptions. Eg: "Pinkie," said the lavender alicorn, "We don't have time for cupcakes!")
You can usually get away with a few bits of LUS, but it's comparable to injecting your story with ninjitsu: there's only so much of it that can be used before people start calling foul.
One capitalization error, and one...style error? The comma wasn't strictly erroneous, but I just felt a colon was more appropriate. If you wanted to maintain it as a whole sentence, that is what I would use: again, not strictly necessary, but recommended. At the end of the day, I'm just another high-school alumnus that thinks he's qualified to teach random people grammar over the internet. While listening to Vivaldi. (Holy what, autumn already!?)
Dat snideness tho. Also, unless "Everypony" is the name of a pony, it would be lowercase.
While I'm all for flavor text, this sounds a bit too much like political agenda. Maybe have
CelestiaTwilight (?) shift awkwardly at the display, or cough loudly as things start to get a little...heated.There are plenty of ways that a person can respond to an uncomfortable situation, but none are actually presenthere.Oops. Skimming. Errors. Self-loathing.This is why beginning your story with "the alicorn and her students" can lend itself to confusion. But now I have a continuity question: if it's Twilight that gets uneasy around homosexuals, then how does Twixie work?
Ah, the difference between telling Sweetie Belle to simmer down, and telling someone that Sweetie Belle is 'easy'. "Let's eat Grandma!" and "Let's eat, Grandma!" Gypsy, if you address someone at any point in the sentence, you need to use a comma. Typically, Gypsy, this is so people know who you're addressing in dialogue. It can even occur near the end of a sentence, Gypsy: the possibilities are endless!
Princes: not a singular princess. It'd be awkward, methinks, for her to suddenly be surrounded by concerned princes.
There's a lot here that I feel could be covered better, if given more space. I'm not saying it needs to be longer: this is like a giant clump of peanut-butter, and the story is the sandwich. Unless you like a sometimes-peanut-butter sandwich, you might want to spread it a little more, yeah?
dkvine.com/layout/wigglytuff/called_it.jpg
I love being right, especially when being right is so good!
Somewhere in the original wall of text, it goes from a description of Rarity's appearance to mentioning an assassination attempt. I divided the paragraph into two, more manageable pieces, with astounding results.
Also, sounds like fashion is a...cutthroat business.
Uhm...
i.imgur.com/ElqfG72.gif
Pinkie, I can forgive. She'd probably give you a pet name, even if she wasn't involved. I don't know about Fluttershy. Minor gripe, but I figured anything that broke my willing suspension of disbelief should be brought to your attention. (Well, not "break". Cracked, maybe.)
Minor grammatical hiccup. I just wanted to say that walls of text are never good: I didn't even copy-paste it here because I thought my comment was drawn out already without 'more padded' padding. Also, there's more forced political commentary. I'm not against LGBT ponies - shit, with a population dynamic the way Ponyville's is, I'd expect more mare-mare partnerships - but there's no need to harp on about this one issue. I don't really expect it to come up as frequently in subsequent chapters, but it was enough of a distraction to warrant two rather lengthy sentences.
Jus' a little spit n' polish, gov'na. Diction was good, but I fink it got bett'r af'r a quick tweak. Just...how is a slightly open door indicative of an earth pony? I'll bet the Apple house gets pretty breezy at night.
Well, she is the Element of Honesty.
I feel a pause at the discovery of blood would be appropriate. I'm not sure how that gap would be filled; maybe you have some ideas. You probably do, now that I'm thinking about it.
This is better than any surveillance system we have today. Eat your heart out, zoom and enhance! We have magic. Just don't rettcon this two chapters in; Sweetie Belle has magic VCR abilities, which apparently surpass Twilight's (lest why would she be at the crime scene? Where all the blood is?). That has to be a tool at her disposal, unless there's a magical 'forget magic' spell.
Oooooh, someone's in trooooouuble!
I'm surprised they thought to comment on the jacket, but not the creature's other bits of apparel. Presuming it is a human, and that it was clothed. "Feels good, man."
Overall, it's interesting enough to keep my attention, which is saying a lot. I'm going to keep reading, but I think I'll save my fine-tooth comb for later.
"I never asked for this." Stronghoof is now voiced by the same man behind Adam Jensen.
Also, muchly improved from the first chapter's quibbles. You've earned another like.
EDIT
You forgot the quotation mark before "Not".
Should read "idea of," and "did you see the way he climbed up the"...did you mean "wall"? He didn't exactly run up the door, but whatever.
6250045 Thanks for the feedback! and for pointing out all those mistakes. woomf. there are... a lot. Also, the attempt on Rarity's life would make much more sense if you read the Back Stories chapter. I revoked EF: BS for some major revisions. As for the bronze door thing, it's heavy. It's a castle door, made of bronze. Iron Will would have trouble opening it. Now, Sweetie's after image spell: It doesn't surpass Twilight's. Twilight is the type to constantly test her star pupil. Sweetie's seen a crap ton of scary stuff under Twilight's tutelage, and that comes to play much later in the story, in parts I haven't even written yet... no spoilers.
You make a lot of good points, but one thing...
You are a smart ass, Mr. White. But, Mr. White, I can appreciate that in a review. I'll get these mistakes fixed as soon as I can, Mr. White.
And one more thing:
Quite ironic, considering the bionic thing going on here.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I very much appreciate the review.
It's rarely a good sign when a writer can't even get through the story's description without errors. Readers (myself included) tend not to bother reading any further.
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Not sure who you mean. Are "unoriginal" names a sign of poor quality? I thought overly "original" names (Ebony Dark'ness Dementia...) were widely considered a red flag for Sueism.
Here I thought Shatterpoint (along with Stover's other works) was near-unanimously considered a masterpiece amid the EU crapscape.
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I'm not sure who I meant, either. Twenty-nine weeks is...what, about 210 days? I can't even remember what I ate last night. :ponyshrug:
As for character names, I see it as a horseshoe-shaped gradient, where overly-original names and unoriginal names are on-par with each other. If your story is about a man named "Greg" or "Bill", the reader knows to expect an everyman: the character itself isn't really interesting, but the interest comes in putting this John Doe into weird situations. Every story is different, but I don't know how many "Random Joe goes to Equestria" stories exist on-site, and the premise for all of them is the same. I don't think I've seen one story full-heartedly embrace the humdrum lifestyle the protagonist came from. I mean, there could still be some fantastical elements to the story - you are in Magical Pony World (TM) after all - but I'd love to see a cynical analysis of mundane pony stuff. (Then again, if that happened, I guess it could be done from Spike's perspective.)
On the other hand, you can have a character named "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia", and you sort-of expect a Sue. If you do it ironically, a Sue doesn't have to be a poorly-written character. However, I've noticed that a lot of fan-fiction authors default to going over the top, especially early in their careers, and they don't know how to do it tastefully. Case in point: my first fan-fic. It isn't on-site anymore, but I remember one scene where I had Trixie lecturing Twilight on the obligatory extra-dimensional threat. At one point during the lecture, Twilight was magic'd into a schoolgirl uniform. It didn't serve any real purpose, it just kind of happened.
But yeah, the Sue. If you lampshade the Sue character, you could play it for laughs. Really, having a name like "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia" tells me that the character is...like a bucket full of rusty razor blades: shallow and edgy as fhah. The name's original, but it's about as conducive to reading as the name "Greg".
I actually loved Shatterpoint. I was just lampooning the EU "crapscape", as you so generously described it.