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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Lapdog's definition of Twilight is very accurate.
Good to see Flare finally die.
So all that's left is giving Celestia a beatdown, because miss high and mighty deserves it.
It may just be me, but the Commander felt weaker than she had been in the past for this battle. I mean this both magically and mentally. I may not be recalling this correctly, but alicorns tend to increase in power as they age. Now I recall an estimate of the Commander's power upon returning to Equestria in Soldier of Magic to be either around Luna's or a young Alicorn's. Seeing as this was prior to her accession, and magical capabilities dramatically increase upon accession, which makes me think it would be highly unlikely for the Commander to be even close to being low on magic from raiding a single compound and taking on a fairly powerful unicorn.
As for the mental strength, the Commander doesn't seem to be the type of mare to struggle with temptation from dark magic. What would she even have to be tempted with for that matter? She has a loving mate, a personal army, an adorable filly, and multiple pets. If it were to be to be giving up on life it would be quite sudden as far as I can tell she has shown signs of depression so far. (I exclude the events surrounding Shining Armor in The Princess and the Soldier due to it being from a death of a close relative and the amount of time since the event.) For the Commander to act like that out of nowhere was quite jolting and felt very unlike her.
My last issue is with Meadow and how she's both changed and gotten immensely more powerful over the time between two chapters. She went from a meek and affection starved mare to a Cortana level A.I. during a single night that apparently lasted years without a peep about it before or during. It is unbelievably jarring to have a character change that much in such a short time. The help she ended up giving the Commander during the fight felt like a shoehorned upgrade for the Commander's cybernetics that felt a bit unnecessary. Now I'm no soldier, but I'm assuming that over time soldiers develop something akin to "game sense" on the battlefield after extended combat experience in order to stay alive. Now with the Commander having at least decades of combat experience I would assume that she would either have developed highly tuned instincts for the battlefield and/or a well refined "game sense". That as a result would have made Meadow's help redundant except in specific circumstances. As another thought, why would she train with Reaper rather than Soldier? Soldier was Twilight's combat aspect if memory serves me right, and Reaper was her dark half that was somewhat suppressed normally.
Overall I felt the battle was underwhelming with the lack of details regarding the fight with Flare. He ended up feeling more like just an unusually powerful goon than a Big Bad. I adore your previous CTS stories Scorch, but this one doesn't quite feel like a story about her and her family, but instead about Dawn, who was just sorta there as an Alicorn at the beginning. I tried giving her a chance despite her unexplained Alicornhood at the story's beginning and she did grow on me a bit. However it doesn't really fix how she came out left field. This story just doesn't really hold up yo your previous work, and I'm not able to hold it up in the same regard as a result.
Regards,
Ceri
9366867
You know what, you're right on several things. I had to take a moment and separate myself from the story to recognize you are trying to help us be better at storytelling because you want it to be better and enjoy it more.
I cannot speak for much of scorch's things here, his character's history and so on (I've shown him my response and he's hoping to tackle it after work). I have grown to work with him a great deal from an unlikely meeting and we helped each other. Him with his hardships, me with my desire to tell a story.
To answer your critiques, I agree that a lot of changes and events didn't have as much oomph as we had wanted. This project started more as something to take up our time, give us something to do. I want to say this was right around fall/winter of 2016 that we first got together. What started off as a 'what if our two worlds met' idea became a long story that we enjoyed going back and forth on. Admittedly I was the one that more or less pushed for working together on putting this out, and after I had managed to rework several bits of our history together, he liked it and we agreed to put it forward.
Now, to make a long story short, I've learned at least that when telling a story, we need to have more focus and connect the dots better, that we need to avoid having things 'just because' (like some of my world's things). I am still proud I've gotten a writing project finally finished for once, and am glad you spoke up so we can know where you stand. I am taking what I've learned from this story, it's failings, it's successes, it's in-betweens, and hoping that I can do a better job later. I have a hope/dream to eventually write my own work to be published that has grown over time since high school, and each bump in the road like the ones you're pointing out will help along that path.
So thank you. Thank you for pointing out what we didn't do when we should have, or what we did do what we shouldn't have, and enjoy whatever ventures you choose to moving forward.
9366867
Okay, off work so am abble to address.
The first point about the Commanders Power is fully on me, yes in my work Alicorns slowly gain power as they age and the commander is powerful but in all honestly I never thought this would become a series and.....her power at the end of SoM was at a level that i realized i couldnt really make an antogonist that could be a threat without being kind of more powerful and then i run into the issue of antagonists becoming never ending levels up to where no other characters could do anything and just be there to die and....yeah i don't want that as i want challanges for the characters. So.....i semi nerfed her to be able to make stories a little more balanced though i may have done a bit far down.
As for the Dark Magic, every one has something they desire, i probabaly should have expanded that section to include them but for Twilight. she wants her friends back, he brother, parents, control and to protect others. and dark magic can give her it all.....or at least make ehr believe it can. it might even be able to give her some semblance, the people whould be just shadows, puppets without any substance. protect others would be turned to oppression and control....well dont need to explain that.
the point is there are things it can tempt her with and the more its used the stronger it gets, its why its banned because the more your exposed to it the stronger its hold and even the best will fall eventurally and get all they want in a twisted way. and since its fueled by your dark emotions, hate, anger, fear, these are all powerful emotions and Twilight has them in spades giving the Dark Magic a lot to power it and feed on as it promises her her deepest desires
As for Meadow, she had the potential to be this powerful, but her lack of confidence and training is what held her back since magic is effeced by your emotions. the time laps, well, in realife dreams only last a couple of minutes no matte rhow long the dream seems to last, you can have years pass in a dream for a second in the rel world without you knowing. time doesnt have much meaning in a dream world. and in all honesty, was my idea going with the rule of cool with it, which was why she became an AI. The Reaper part was based more on the fact as Reaper would focus more on magic where Soldier would focus more on the physical combat which which....wouldnt help too much with Meadow plus exploring Reaper whch ive been wanting to do for a while.
The battle.....yeah i admit it was underwhelming with Fare me and Dawn agreed but depsite working on it for a while we couldnt really think of a way to expand it outside of him escaping which would jsut extend the fic past when it should have ended. Not my first time i set up and antagonist and flub the ending of them and i hate to say it but i know it wont be the last. we did our best but it did come up short.
It is unfortate that the fic doesnt stack up but still i do thank you for reading.
9367531
One problem with the antagonists was how Xenti was anti-pony due to his belief the ponykind didn't deserve their magical abilities and frequently put in the spotlight, making him seem like the main villain while Flare did was plot on how to improve Ponykind/overthrow the government in the shadows and have others do his work for him.
As for future antagonists/stories, might i suggest the following;
I really hope meadow can kick Svik out of her body now that she is trained in magical arts
9367712
Down side to a character who is a Mastermine type is that they tend to stay in the shadows, so i found it more interesting to follow Xenti since he ws more active in what he did nd was Flare's go to problem solver.
And i can think on the suggestions though i do have the next couple fics planned out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeMAxFWnaAc seems to work pretty well for some parts of this chapter. :-)
9371291
I have a pretty good idea what parts made you think of that song and it fits so well.
Do you plan on making this story canon to the Soldier series? If so, do you plan to rewrite Soldier and Empress to incorporate elements from this story depending on how this story ends up?
9378040
Yes this story is canon and yes Empress will undergo some rewrites.
Jesus, I turn my back for half a year cause I'm so burried in stories I need to catch up on and you were a relatively slow updater during Empress so I figured I'd wait a bit for the story to fill out while I get caught up and half a year later you're 40 chapters in with 479,430 words. Seems someone found their muse.
9379107
What can i say except youre welcome.
9379107
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this grand new adventure as we explor a new world and new parts of our favorite military mainiac mare.
9379156
MOANA
dark Twilight is out right scary.
Well, Flare's death was a bit anticlimactic, but Xenti's fight felt good.
"Join us, Twilight, together we'll rid the world of quesadillas." "... Deal."
Huh, that soldier survived.
'Sergeant, will you be alight' - alright
'L-L-Labratory' - L-L-Laboratory
'normally only removed for one person' - reserved