My entry to the MLP Fan Club!!!!'s Heart's Warming Eve-Warming Contest
It's been six months since Icing Blaze's family moved to the crystal empire, and Daffodil misses her friend very much. Therefor, when Daffodil is invited by her friend to join her at a special celebration in the Crystal Empire, she immediately asked her parents for permission to go. This special holiday it self is centred around the bringest of light, St. Lucy, and the wonder she brought with her to the frozen lands of north oh so long ago.
Cover art by Thresha8
Chapters (1)
Very sweet. I love your world building, and how you incorporate St. Lucy's day into the Equestrian mythos. Well done. I think I'll add this to my headcanon.
St. Lucy's day is not celebrated in the USA, but I did enjoy a virtual St. Lucy's day once, one a roll playing site. A participant from Sweden lead us through the holiday, and I remember that fondly.
That was a sweet little story
5393549
Yay! You will add it to your HEADCANON?!?! I'm honoured! Though I must confess the thing with the heart, cross and anchor is actualy a Finnish tradition. I'm going to add that to the A/N.
I know that. Sounds like a lot of fun, really.
5394047
I-it's you. Oh. My. Gosh. It's you!!! And you liked my story!!! AHHH!!!
*freaks out because I'm so happy*
5394216
Aw schucks, I'm nobody special
5394232
Of course you are. You have two EQD approved stories and I absolutely adore your writing!
5394252
Well, thanks, I'm glad you like them. Sorry they're so slow to update though :P
A very nice story you made with this Swedish tradition.
As I read you had a blast writing it. We would like to thank you for entering it to our hearts warming contest.
And a great day to you
Dragon san
5394367
I don't mind, especially not when the chapter are as good as the last few chapters was!
5394746
Yes, for me, St. Lucy's Day is a very important tradition, and I greatly enjoyed the idea of being able to share it with people from all over the world. I decided to use the Crystal Empire since it is closest to Sweden in climate, plus that I could introduce it to the reader through introducing it to my OC. Then my friend (who's not even into MLP) send me a picture of the pony OC she made simply because I inspired her to do a OC, and I decided to use it.
Thank all of you for hosting this competition. I don't think there would've been a heart's Warmign Eve fanfic from my side without it! ^^
5396234
Aw shucks. We're just making little contests and hope them to be enjoyable for all those who like to write and read. Nothing better than some words to get the spirits up.
Dragon san
5396522
Well, it got me to write this at least, so it's worth something! ^^
5396530
That's right. Thanks for the kind words.
Dragon san
5396715
No problem, thanks for enjoying my story.
5396730
My pleasure. Literally.
Dragon san
5396794
Yay! :)
This story is very sweet :D And you did a good job depicting the ceremony! I also love how Faust is a part of this story :D Overall, well done!
5410804
Glad you liked it! I mostly added Faust and stuff to tie it closer to the MLP universe...
5411715 That'll do it :D
The layout is weird now
5412306
Yep! :)
I know
5412308 So do you know when we'll hear the contest results?
5416307 no, but your likely the winner.
5416317 Debatable, I don't think I'll get any points for originality, I basically just took MLP and Star Wars and retold how the Grinch Stole Christmas XD
5416321 true, but still...originality points would probably go to me for this fanfic...
5416336 I completely agree :D I don't think anyone has done an MLP meets St. Lucy's Day story before!
541633
I don't think anyone have made a MLP meets Scandinavian Holiday fanfic before, no matter which holiday! ;)
5416347 Well there you go :D You really get originality points on this one!
5416360
=3
Greetings, keam! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE!
I see that you'd rather the focus be on the more abstract things like character and plot than mechanics. So I'll just briefly give you a bit of mechanics info up front and leave it at that.
Yes, this story needs quite a bit of editing help. Some readers are willing to look past that than others, but it does show that you put care into your work. When I'm presented with a synopsis that misspells "therefore" and "itself," and inconsistently capitalizes "Crystal Empire," it doesn't bode well for the rest of the story. There are groups that can help you with this kind of editing. In a normal review, I'd at least point out each kind of error I saw, but only mark one or two instances of each, explain what the error is, and say how to fix it, then leave you to find the rest. So full-on editing is beyond the scope of this review, but I'm going to skip it.
Now, this will sound like mechanical advice, but it's actually stylistic. Already in the early description, I'm seeing a lot of "to be" verbs. These verbs are inherently boring, as nothing happens. It's impractical to get rid of all of them, but you really should try to use more active verbs where possible. Take this:
If you instead phrased it as "Colorful Hearth's Warming banners, wreaths, and bouquets of mistletoe hung across the streets," it's a more active structure and more interesting to read.
This phrase is placed so far from what it describes that it creates an odd feeling. It would appear to describe "streets," which obviously doesn't make sense, but it takes long enough to sort it out that it causes a hiccup and just sounds odd.
I see there's religious imagery in here. That, on its own, isn't a problem. It's certainly common for MLP fanfics to treat Celestia and Luna as religious figures, though it's rarer to import Earth religion. Even in that case, it's not something inherently problematic, as long as it's given proper context. That's the issue here. We have the cross as a symbol, and though I haven't encountered her yet, the title makes mention of a saint. Yet there's no explanation of what these things mean in Equestria. I mean, I know you defined the cross as "believe," but the rest of the symbols make sense on their own, yet this one doesn't without assuming the Christian meaning, since no other one is presented, so there's a big piece of world building missing there, and one that may considerably bog the story down to include, unless you want to make all that part of the story, like, say, someone struggling with her beliefs.
I gather that there's a real St. Lucy's Day, but it's not celebrated that widely, so it's going to be lost on me or other readers if we're supposed to get any more out of it than you've presented here.
That's a little bit of a clumsy way to wedge in a description of the character. Maybe mention each of these things on its own and say what Daffodil likes about each or something.
It's obvious this would happen. You don't need to say so.
Again, a pretty cumbersome way of working the description in. It feels like you're pausing from the important action to put something there that doesn't belong. Add those things as it becomes natural to do so. For instance, if Daffodil pats the filly on the head, then's a good time to bring up her mane color since the focus is there anyway.
Now, we do get a little explanation of what St. Lucy did, but still nothing about what the title of saint means in Equestria or why this action was significant. St. Lucy brought light. The ponies there didn't have a way of creating it before then? Or there was some kind of crisis going on that she solved? We don't know, so it doesn't mean anything to me.
I'm hitting some dialogue for the first time, so I'll just say you're punctuating and capitalizing it wrong. If an attribution follows the quote, you don't capitalize it (unless it starts with something like a name, which has to be anyway), and you replace a period at the end of the dialogue with a comma. So:
becomes:
A few things about the end of your first scene. Once you start using dialogue, notice how there's not much narration. There's not enough speech here to call it a problem, so I'm just flagging it in case it becomes one and to get you thinking about it. Much of a conversation is nonverbal, and even if they're not using body language or facial expressions to facilitate what they're saying, they'd still be doing things as they talk. So if you skimp on the narration, it fails to paint a realistic visual scene, and it doesn't carry as much emotional content as it could.
The second issue is that you're relating character emotions very bluntly around here. Think of how you can tell that someone you see in public is happy. It's not because he says he is. It's because of how he looks and acts. He might have a spring in his step and a big smile. He might chatter on about what happened to him that day. That's how we naturally perceive each other's moods, so it's more effective to do so from written characters as well. The big three to avoid are directly naming an emotion (happy), using one as an adverb (sadly), or using one in a prepositional phrase (in excitement). There are other ways, too, but these are the chief ones.
And third, you're blazing through this interaction. We've just met both characters, and Blaze is apparently soneone important to Daffodil, but then it's completely summarized as to how they go through the house. Let me see what they do as they walk around, how they interact with each other, and what Daffodil thinks about the place. You're still in the first scene, and you need to be establishing who these charactes are and why we should care about them, but you're glossing all that over.
These statements are told from Daffodil's perspective.
Then this is from Blaze's. You don't want to jerk the reader around on perspective like this. You can jump around to different characters more easily in an omniscient narration, but you seem to be taking a more limited voice, where the narrator sometimes speaks the characters' thoughts for them and may take a conversational tone. If that's the voice you want, then you need to stay with a character longer than this. You still can switch from one to the other, but it has to be kept to a minimum and carefully considered whether doing so is actually necessary. And then when you do, it has to happen smoothly. Imagine a camera zooming out of one character, going back to an omniscient viewpoint, then zooming back in on another. While in a single character's perspective, you have to limit the narration to things that character could reasonably know or perceive.
Now the description of the ceremony. It's very factual, which equates to pretty boring. You've got Daffodil, experiencing this for the first time. What does she think about it? Is it pretty? Is she nervous? Is she cold? There's a whole lot going on here, but she's not reacting to it. If you do want a limited narrator, this is certainly the time to use it to good effect to get across her sense of wonder (or whatever). Even in an omniscient narration, you'd need to do something like that, but you have to go about it in different ways, focusing more on her body language and having to present her thoughts directly (i.e., as quotes) instead of letting the narrator adopt them. Bottom line, really think about how this experience feels for Daffodil, and get me to feel the same way as I experience it with her.
In the song lyrics, you're missing some spaces. It's also sticking out to me that there's no regular meter to them, which of course there doesn't have to be, but that'd be the default expectation, so it might take some language (perhaps an observation on Daffodil's behalf?) to prepare the reader for that.
Okay. If you really want to do this, I can't stop you. But be aware that very few readers will take you seriously at this point. For one, it's horribly cliched, and for another it really takes away the fantasy feel of the story to reference a real-life thing like this.
You're summarizing again. This is an important emotional moment in the story, and yet you don't go through character reactions. Note that this is handled in an omniscient manner here. You have to get me into the characters' heads and put on display what a powerful experience this was. You're making me take the narrator's word for it instead of showing me what it's like for the characters.
This sounds like it surprises Daffodil, but she already saw Blaze's dad. He was waiting for them, so how did she lose sight of him?
And how does this make Daffodil feel? You did go into her feelings a little upon seeing the family, so don't skimp on them now.
And then Daffodil goes right back home? She made this trip just to witness the ceremony? She didn't seem that excited to see it, so it's hard to imagine it was worth that much trouble to her. And it occurs that far before Hearth's Warming? Are the two related in some way? It seems so, but the connection isn't clear.
I'm not sure what happened at the end. I get that they exchanged identical glass angels, but I don't understand what the other present that Daffodil opened was about.
Also watch the close repetition of words. For instance, you use "cradling" three times in just two paragraphs.
So, bottom line: The story's built around this ceremony, which is a pretty neat thing. It just lacks that connection to the world at large, though. It's never really explained what it means, how it's related to Hearth's Warming, and most importantly, what emotional effect this whole experience has on the characters. Primarily because of that, it doesn't make a point, either. The story's not really set up to produce and resolve a conflict, so it's more about character growth. So what do we learn about one or more of the characters? What's different about them as a result of the story's events? These are the kinds of things that differentiate a story from a series of scenes. What message do you want the reader to take away from this? That these fillies are good friends? They already were at the beginning of the story. Is their friendship changed somehow? If so, make that the focus. Show me what's changed.
Keep writing and have fun with it!
fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/349/4/b/reviewer_logo_longver03_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o60h2.png
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
5599706
Thanks for this review. This hole story was, as implied, based of a real life tradition, celebrated in Northen Europe primarily.The song was hard to get right, mainoy because it had to be translated into English. I will probably go back working on this, now that there is no stress anymore. I will also see if I can bring in a new editor.
Again, thank you.