• Member Since 2nd Dec, 2011
  • offline last seen March 5th

JarOfHearts


T
Source

A young man lost in the hilly embrace of a mountain sleeps the night away under a knot of tree roots. When he wakes he will find himself thrust into a strange new environment, the Everfree Forest. With only his pack and his experience as a Boy Scout to aid him, he must survive, make sense of his surroundings and with some luck, ultimately find his way home. What does one do after wandering beyond the edge of the map? And better yet...

What if you are not alone?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have been reading fan fiction here for a while and wanted to give something back.
My first fiction ever so constructive criticism is welcome. Fair warning, it takes a while for me to write a chapter so expect gaps between updates.

[Hiatus notice: As of 10/1/2022 this fiction is on hiatus so I may focus on other projects and items, will resume at a later date.]

Rated teen for strong language

Awesome cover art by Carnelian. Seriously, the guy has major skills with how fast he drew this up.

and of course ALL CHARACTERS / REFERENCES BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. “MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC” IS OWNED BY HASBRO

NO PROFIT WAS MADE IN THE CREATION / DISTRIBUTION PLEASE DONT SUE ME OR ANY PARTY THAT DISTRIBUTES THIS WORK (unless they try to sell it, then by all means go nuts)

Chapters (15)
Comments ( 2394 )

This was absolutely, without a doubt, hilarious. You have the wonderful talent of narrating a story AND giving the character's inner thoughts. It's believeable (well, ok, as believeable as you'll get by wandering into the land of Equestria, but I digress) without being over the top. Well written and definitely worth the read.

However, I cannot stress enough that you need to have someone(somepony?) look over this for an error check. It's very jarring to a person (pony?) when you're interested in a tale and you spot a mistake. From basic punctuation to capitalization, you have quite a few errors lodged here. If you fix that, then this story will shine at it's full potential! If you'd really like, I could go through for you and point out all the mistakes I found. I'd be more than happy to for a story this funny (heh, honestly I'd do it anyways).

Cheers
~Cosmic

I DEMAND MOAR OF THIS!!! NAO!!! :flutterrage:

500 meter run like a bitch made me:rainbowlaugh:
good work

Me thinks this has MUCH promise as a fic. The character is very good. He acts just like any normal person would, and it's VERY believable. I am enjoying this... And so I shall track it.

81459

Thanks, I would really appreciate that. :pinkiehappy:

I actually tried to get a few people to look at it, but they never had time, so I went through it myself the best I could myself. Did some spellchecking and made a lot of corrections.

I did some short stories in the past so I'm confident in my writing skills, it's just the grammar slips the cracks sometimes. :applejackconfused:

81709

"so I went through it myself the best I could myself"

See what i mean:twilightblush:

Better than mine.

I will track this.

Track on. Please moar!

Woo! :pinkiehappy:(Looking at the top line).

Definitely worth going over, this reads MUCH better and looks much more professional. Are there still a few errors I missed previously...admittedly yes:applejackunsure: but it's fair to say this went from "freaking awesome:twilightsmile:" to "HOLY MOTHER OF CELESTIA!!!:yay:" Can't wait for the next chapter, and it would appear a select few can't wait either :raritywink:

Flippin' hilarious!! LOVE it!!!

How do track without account? :rainbowhuh:

I'm quite happy with this fic....but to be honest my opinion doesn't matter that much.

Good Job!!!

Huzzah! It updates! I have high hopes for this story.

Wonderful chapter. I wonder how and when they can finally understand each other. I guess ill see.

Yeah... I'm gonna have to ask you to MOAR! :flutterrage:

The best part (besides ALL of it) was the intimidating first encounter from Apple Blooms perspective. It reminded me of a certain hocky mask wearing sycopath. That's a good thing for me.:pinkiehappy: So all in all...NICE!

One of THE BEST openings to a H.I.E. story I have ever read!!!! It is hilarious and has one of the most likely responses from Troy that I have seen, I especially enjoy how you didn't just go "meh, they all speak english", i personally enjoy stories were the characters have to get past a communication gap. I shall impatienly wait for.. MOARRR!!!!!!

Still great!!! And I can sympathize with you school pains, ever since it startd back up i've had less then a third the time i used to to read these stories. :fluttercry: Keep up the good work!!! MOAR!!

131724

Glad you enjoy Friday the Thirteenth as much as I do.:pinkiehappy:
while I wasn't exactly trying to make Troy look like a psycho killer, I wanted him to be intimidating so I guess that works fine.:pinkiecrazy:

and please, tell me what you liked. I love hearing about what all of you think.
(Plus, ego stroking is the best way to get a writer to work faster)

the new chapter is on the way and I already have a word count of 1,288.
so I'm either 1/5 of the way (I try to shoot for 5k minimum)
or 1/8 of the way (If its as long as this chapter)
or 1/10 of the way (if my chapters keep growing)
:pinkiesick:

Back to work then!:rainbowdetermined2:

Eeyup, I like this fanfic. I also like how Troy isn't able to read/understand equine....

nice quote at te end there

This is the kind of stuff the internet was made for :eeyup:

You sir are beyond the boundries of awesome. Proceed.

Really good. Very well thought out approach to a hie scenario. Hoping for moar lol.
5/5 :pinkiehappy:

this story is freaking awesome

also, 5 stars:pinkiehappy:

Update soon! I look forward to the trio's thoughts on the strange "monster." Can we expect an update anytime soon? :twilightsheepish:

226674

I would expect an update before the month is out. I'm currently attending college so I have to focus on my studies. I can only really work on this in the wee hours of the morning if I dont particurally feel like sleeping.:fluttercry:

But never fear. current word count is at 5,700. soon my friends. SOON.:pinkiecrazy:

Ponies in the new chapter. Give dem two meee.

Yes, the impossible has happened, I actually updated again.:pinkiegasp:

I apologise for the update gaps, but these take a LONG time to write.

Hope you like it!:pinkiehappy:

Yay, an update! :)

Broke the 4th wall.
Broke the 5th wall.
Broke the nth wall.
Built a new wall, and promptly destroyed it.
All in one chapter.

Yeah, Pinkie Pie's work. :pinkiecrazy:

yay. please Sr//Madam may i have some more :fluttercry: :applecry: .

See? Now this is why we have Fan-Fiction. :ajsmug:

The Pinkie bit I had to skip completely. Comes out of nowhere, and doesn't fit the story at all, sorry.

Everything else was quality.

294258
Since when has Pinkie ever been predictable? That in itself would be ridiculous! she's appeared out of masonry, mirrors and sponge baskets so of course she's going to come in at the least expected angle.

Still, sorry you don't like particular flavor of Pinkie Pie. hope you enjoyed the rest of it at least.

And as for not fitting the story, I have a recurring character that is a squirrel named DAVE. I don't think this is too odd. and even if it was it's a good thing.

The second something becomes predictable it gets boring.:pinkiehappy:

294277

I like Pinkie's antics, but this one just didn't do it for me.

Everything else is going good though.

294281

Thats to bad then.:ajsleepy:

Well, there always NEXT TIME!:pinkiecrazy:

glad you enjoyed the rest of it:pinkiehappy:

You know, Pinkie's 4th wall breakage works well in random comedy fics and things that sorta FOCUS on that kinda thing... but in fics like this it's really just intrusive.

Don't get me wrong as far as the whole Pinkie Pie, "there is no fourth wall," ...THING... this isn't too poorly written. It looks like you could probably write a pretty good anti-fourth wall story if you wanted to. But in the context of this larger tale that has so far focused more on serious aspects like wilderness survival and the terrifying concept of being utterly and hopelessly lost, it just really butts into the story and breaks the flow. It doesn't fit with the mood and it makes the whole sections where that happens incredibly jarring.

You've used the line 'since when has Pinkie ever been predictable' in a previous comment. Well... she hasn't, no... but she's never gone out of her way to basically jump out of the show and wander into the Studio B headquarters and then chat over cookies and milk with Lauren Faust and Jayson Thiessen. While that might make a cool episode in and of itself (though it certainly wouldn't fit very well with the tone and formula of the other episodes), it would probably very much NOT WORK WELL if it were just tossed right into the middle of an episode, like, say, Dragonshy, or even a Pinkie based episode like Baby Cakes. That's the problem here. Pinkie can be unpredictable and funny and crazy and silly and random... without going incredibly and completely overboard with it.

Consider Pinkie's actions in other fanfictions, like crossovers. There was one crossover with Dungeons and Dragons where some D&D characters were zapped to Equestria and turned into ponies. Standard stuff. Pinkie mixed things up by throwing in references to things like Perception checks, rolling initiative, D20's, and other Dungeons and Dragons related metagame stuff. This is the sort of thing that makes really good Pinkie writing. Knowledge that just maybe she shouldn't have... showing up at just the right intervals and nodding to how convenient her timing is or something... being particularly genre savvy while also remaining silly and semi-naiive... All good things to do with Pinkie. And as I said, Fourth wall obliteration can work on its own, but it just seriously derails the story and quickly becomes annoying and frustrating when thrown into the middle of a larger story setup with no rhyme, reason, or purpose.

The rest of the story is shaping up to be really nice. I love it when we have the 'two cultures that cannot possibly understand each other' meeting and it's made even more compelling in this case by the simple addition of a language barrier. You have a really good setup here, but I would strongly recommend that you sorta... not... go into another off track tangent with Pinkie again... It's just too jarring and too frustrating.

294404

Point well made, If I get the chance I'll make an Alternate chapter with a more normal intro for pinkie.
Remember, this is my first fan fiction and I have little to no planning done when I go into a chapter. I literally do not know what I am going to write when I start one. Cosmic warned me about this being risky, but I chose to take the gamble.

Well, live and learn.

I definitely do like this story. It does the -human meets pony- thing in a really interesting way.

But that one section ...
should go.

You could cut it out without affecting the story at all.
I highly, highly recommend it.

DF

Well, while I do agree with previous comments that the Pinkie section did come out of nowhere and was rather jarring, I kind of got the impression that was the effect that was intended, I personally liked it. As said however, it is very jarring and it does break the flow of the piece.

*shrug* YMMV

Anyway, Troy "feels" very much like a real dude dumped into that situation. I would say that he swears a bit too much to be believable, however, I happen to have a brother who swears just as much, though he adds in a lot more incoherent screaming if he hurts himself.

Good read, thumb up, tracking.

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