It's like going through shit hoping to find a nugget. A gold nugget.
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Phineas Startrot was a pony who had his fare of hardship, but pressed on in spite of the troubles of his life. With pride and determination, he dreamed of exploring the far-flung corners of the universe.
One should take care in what they wish for.
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First things first, you misspelled Ascension, unless it's spelled differently wherever you're from. Second, there were a number of mechanical mistakes: missing commas, incorrectly done dialogue, things like that. One or two minor spelling mistakes. I think you misspelled fitting somewhere as fititng or something. Reading the dialogue rules here might help: http://pastebin.com/bnMmZ2T3
Second, the plot. It reads sort of like a Star Trek thing. I'm fairly certain this was at least partially on purpose. I have a feeling something big will happen in the next chapter or two that will put the main character in charge of the ship where he'll prove himself and end up the permanent captain. That seems like where it's going.
Third, some things you might have missed or not thought about. Why would a pony make a good kind of engineer, unless that pony was unicorn? Handling the tools would be a pain in the ass, though it's not like a chief engineer would really be messing around with that kind of gear anyway. A minotaur or diamond dog would be much better, since they have fingers or finger-like things. Maybe a young dragon or a griffon. And why would the status of 'chief' engineer be given to a cadet that has only ever proven himself in the academy? Why not make him second engineer and give the status of chief engineer to someone that's more experienced and more in control of himself? That outburst the guy had would make me as a principal of the academy very wary to give him any kind of leadership position, no matter what kind of emergency might be on hand. It's more important that the leader of engineers be good at leading and staying in control rather than being good at engineering. That's what the scrubs under the chief are for.
Overall though, it seems like an interesting concept, even if it's something I'm not personally not that much a fan of.
1849187
Thank you for the in depth comment, and many of the things you have brought up I have taken into consideration. As for the plot, well let's just say it's far from that clear cut.
Also, ponies tend to have magnetic hooves in the show, sometimes prehensile. I don't think handling tools will be an issue.
Wow, I'm really liking this. There's not enough Science Fiction on this website, it's refreshing to see someone making a good effort, and quite an effort with all the words invested.
But I will make some suggestions.
Like, for instance, have you outlined somewhere how the rankings work, the reasons for going into space, the reason the ship has such a non-English name and why, and general design choices? They weren't immediately clear to me, and I've seen a lot of Star Trek, so I'm not sure everyone can follow.
Also, character dynamics are there and well, but they are breezy. A new character is introduced in a chapter, and they aren't exactly reviewed. Extending those dynamics would be good, as is the burden of Science Fiction where new concepts have to be explained for the common man, giving them time to breathe and not explaining why a new character is valuable to Phineas or anyone else is a real benefit. If you create an atmosphere where characters can be characters for a bit, the story becomes more relatable and more enjoyable.
Definitely looking forward to more updates, you certainly have my attention
1869819
Thank you very much for the input. I will try to take your suggestions in consideration for the rest of the story.
Okay. This story's description doesn't particularly need a bag of grammar thrown at it, so I will put it on my read later list and read it when I am more than half-awake.
Wow, sucks to be Phineas.
This story is reminding me of Elite or the X series of games, but with more of a combat focus. Maybe more like Freelancer or Wing Commander, ? (Never playes those ones.) Anyway, the space RPG feel is well emulated and the Star Terrors are sounding more and more like Mass Effect's Reapers. The combination of factors is interesting, so I will be continuing to follow this story.
2062865
Thank you very much for the kind words. Here, have some music.
"Ponies were never meant to go far..."
Do I smell Lovecraftianism?
2067804
It starts off as such, but gradually transitions to a more action oriented story rather than mystery and suspense.
Thinking back to my previous comment, the boarding action adds a touch of the game 'FTL' to the feel of this story. So, what's next? Lightsabres?
2068080
Pretty sure the energy tail blade counts.
The use of 'they' as the personal pronoun for the dragon is quite confusing. I'd just go with 'he' and if the dragon proves to be female, Phineas can have a flustered moment as his preconceptions bite him in the arse.
The space station description reminds me of a Star Trek Federation Starbase, a Masters of Orion II Star Fortress, and the Forest Arco from SimCity 2000.
2069881
Sorry about the confusion there. Altered and noted for future chapters. Thanks for the feedback.
2070016
You're quite welcome. I'm glad to be of assistance.
What?! That's it?! Noooooooo!
Honestly, I hope you have a sequel in the works for this, because it was just starting to heat up, if you look at it from the perspective of computer game storylines.
When referring to a single Hoof-Talon of indeterminate gender, I think it would be less confusing if you used the pronoun 'it' instead of the accepted gender-neutral of 'they'. You go from referring to many Hoof-Talons to one Hoof-Talon within the same paragraph and it confuses me when you use 'they' in both cases.
When you introduced the Heavy Ballistics ship and the Support Ships, it reminded me of a space RTS like Masters of Orion II or Galactic Civilizations II, of which I have played both. The fight inside the ship could easily be compared to most FPS games, but the use of the blade for melee in the cockpit makes me think of Mass Effect or Dead Space.
Oh, one more quick point. Phineas will probably notice that the Marauder smashing into an asteroid will neatly cover his tracks. After all, it's hard to tell that the nav computer has been stolen when the whole cockpit has been flattened by a million tonnes of rock.
2083806
Whoops. <.>
Rectified that little problem there
Pretty cool story overall, and not a bad ending. I can see side stories among other things sprouting from this over time if it gets popular enough.
Good work!
2088301
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. :>
Not a bad ending at all, but I'm still sad to see it go. I would very much enjoy it if you decided to write a sequel, for instance 'The Return of Phineas Startrot".
One small nit-pick: This sentence fragment 'evolving into even worse of a threat' is rather awkward. Might I suggest using 'evolving into an even worse threat'?
2088822
As always your suggestions are extremely useful and I am happy to receive them. If I ever do write a sequel, these notes I've taken based on your input will surely make it a better story. :>
Thank you once more for reading through and I hope to have you back some day.
My extensive review over chapters 1-3:
I walked into this story expecting some wonky, broken sci-fi fiction. I will state right here that I was pleasantly surprised and will definitely finish this story at a later date, as well as finish a longer and more organized review for this when I have time to permit doing so. However, for the time being, here is my personal review of chapter 1-3 of Forlorn Ascension. Please note that all of my opinions and notes here are completely personal and that anyone has the right to disagree either partly or fully to what I have found.
Right from the get-go, I was pleased with the grammar and general writing style. However, while the writing has a healthy taste of description and is plenty romantic, it lacks the fluidity I would expect of this style of writing. It feels a little clunky and strained at times, however these times are rare and far between enough that this did not break the story in the least.
Now, as for the character. I want to like this character, I really do. You gave us plenty effort to try and get us to empathize with Phineas, but his character itself is what shakes me from him. He seems to be trying to fill multiple character roles, notably both the brash egotistic leader-type while also trying to be the understanding student willing to learn. These are two character types that, while possible to co-exist, are difficult to mend together, which you reasonably have trouble doing. However, his underlying morals and virtues are pure enough to give me the impression of greater character growth, which gives me hope.
From there, however, there is slight contradictions between the story and the character himself. You write that he refrains from boasting about his superiority to his other fellow cadets, but then go on to state that he lacks personal discipline. This is slightly contradictory. You attempt to clean this up by having Phineas accept this, which is done well and shifts decently enough, however as I earlier stated, it reads clunky and feels too loose, almost as if you wanted to write more but are trying too hard to stretch out the character development. This is by no means a bad thing, however it does create a small difficulty in understanding the character.
Given these points, you do a good job at keeping the story interesting; you did a good job at hooking me in and wanting to see what happens.
One part that made me raise an eyebrow, however, is him suddenly shift from the egotistical challenge to being a flirt, which was out of the blue and almost went opposite what you'd displayed with Phineas. This was neither good nor bad in the sense of effecting the story, however it was definitely... unexpected.
At this point, it seems like you're having trouble pinning down what his character wants to be. What you seem to want your character to be seen as is visible, however you seem to have difficulty in nailing these aspects down. He goes from being brash and assertive to trying (in a somewhat unbelievable and insincere manner) to be empathetic and understanding. Again, the points are there, but they just didn't connect as well as I was expecting.
As well as the character are when you attempt character progression. This wasn't bad, persay, but the timing and location seem a little- okay, considerably strained, as if you weren't sure when or where you wanted this part to be. You seemed to have it planned out well enough, but actually pulling it off was a little rougher than I would have preferred. It was a sudden and decisive hack in Phineas's aforementioned character, and kind of tried (again) to have him play all of the character roles he hadn't shown any concern. Following this, the attempts at comedy are present but muddled by the general down-playing of the over-all mood.
What I liked: 1The hook in this is, contrary to what others might say, your strongest point. I loved it. I wanted to read more, I wanted to learn more about what was going on. 2The grammar and spelling was up to par, and you have a nice growth in plot and story. 3I liked how diverse you presented the potential character growth and the destination of the story.
What I felt could have been worked on: 1Really, the only thing I had difficulty with was your OC, namely his individual character. He seems to try and fill multiple character types that go against each other, and while you provide reasonable explanations for this (at least ones that can be reached after some thought), they have trouble fitting together. Also, the only thing that truly erks me is that you place him in a "Respectable Leadership Position", but he shows the exact opposite of what could be leadership traits, such as lack of discipline (which is possibly the most important leadership trait out there). This ties in with his character flaws; they aren't huge, but they argue with the story as a whole.
My final verdict on this story: I enjoyed the beginning to what looks to be a promising and quite epic tale. I hope to see what Phineas will become, and where he will go. I want to see more. To that, I say bravo. You have one more reader
Rating:
9.25/10
2105426
Thank you so very much for this review. While I am sure the drifting nature of Phineas' "character compass" so to speak is indeed an issue, some of his behaviors make a lot more sense when given context later in the story. Thank you very much once again and I hope the ending is up to snuff with what you're used to reading.
2105579
I'm sure it will be
Nice to see Phineas back in the saddle (hee hee).
god damn that was awesome, is there gonna be a sequel?
2442179
Rise and shine, Mr.Startrot.
Rise and shine.
You posted on AHA that you still have yet to receive three reviews. I'm going to review this story soon. Give it a while; I have to read it first and do some real life stuff. Don't worry, I'll get it done.
2502738
I appreciate the effort, and thanks for the favorite. :>
This is Kalash93 of Authors Helping Authors with a review for your story, Forlorn Ascension.
Grammatik: 6. Your grammar was oftentimes strange early on. You used far too many dashes as subsititutes for commas.
Pros:
1. The story is entertaining.
2. The protagonist is interesting.
3. The fandom desperately needs scifi.
Cons
1. You jump around far too much.
2. You leave far too much blank.
3. You turned your protagonist into a Sue.
Comments:
I must have to say that this story is highly entertaining. I went through all 85716K words of it in approximately 6 hours. You did a very good job of keeping me entertained the whole way through. You seldom have anything drag on. You manage to make everything interesting enough to hold our attnetion. The protagonist is fairly well done. He had a personality. He was complex. He changed over time while still remaining the same character at heart. His struggles and peculiarities were my favorite parts of the story. He was definitely the strongest part of the story. The brony fandom desperately needs more science fiction works. Pieces like yours are very welcome. I was fairly pleased how you left humans out of it and instead opted to do world building. The magitech was something I like, using a force from the show in new and interesting ways. You did jump around far too much. The middle part of the story was where this became especially grating. You would do it several times per chapter, often right in the middle of very interesting conversations and events. You would just suddenly throw us into battle scenes without any explanation. It just screams laziness. It was often very confusing, and I felt cheated out of a lot of great moments. The audience is not going to run away from you if you are keeping them entertained. The contrast between fast and slow scenes are how you get the greatest benefit out of both. As your story went on, it became naught but action, action, and more action. It all became an unexciting grey mass of words and explosions. You had many scenes and plot threads that went nowhere. That's extremely annoying! At least you ended your story rather than ramble on endlessly. My second problem is that a lot is left blank. The fight scenes happen almost in a vacuum. This wouldn't be such a problem if you didn't have so many similar scenes; they all blur together! You need to work on describing backgrounds and locations in the scenes that happen there. Also, did they have aritificial gravity aboard the ships, or did everybody just float around all the time? I could never tell because it seemed like you couldn't decide which you wanted. Lastly, you turned your protagonist into a God Mode Sue. You made them always right, overpowered, and unstoppable. That sucked practically all the suspense and tension out of the fights. I was honestly quite disappointed, because you had such a fallible, relatable character who was completely lost and vulnerable in an amoral, uncaring world. Turning him into a roving dispenserary of ownage and insight stretched credbility way too far. It felt shockingly out of place in your otherwise charmingly bleak world.
Summary:
Overall, the front half of your story was the strongest part. I could not put it down. The first half was definitely a stellar experience. However, it is brought down by the lackluster second half. You win a respectable 6/10 flutteryays. The average is 5/5.
I hope you enjoyed your review. Would you please write up a review for my series, Racer And The Geek?
2508356
Thank you for the review, and I will gladly take a look at your story. :)
once again it begins again
I agree with Kalash's review of your story: It started out good (though I thought it very similar in may aspects to the new Star Trek), but about half way through petered out. Just before Startrot starts to truly fight against the Hoof-Talons, the writing becomes rushed and lots of details that were explained better before are left to summaries. It seems like you lost interest about then, or wanted to get that part of the story over with so that you could go on to write other parts of it. For example, the fight with the Chimera was pretty good in comparison with the preceding chapters. There were also quite a few subplots that you seemed to abandon, though you might not have written about them yet. The... Monster, whatsitsname, was pretty much abandoned even though it seemed pretty important.
Anyway, the story was pretty good overall, though a bit disappointing near the end. This fandom does need the scifi, so I say good effort.
A side note: If the chapters after Forlorn Ascension 2: Rites of Dominion are meant to be a sequel, I suggest making them a separate story on FimFiction.
2784741
Thank you for the comment and favorite. The reason the sequel is part of the first story is because I've found that it cuts down on the amount of searching new readers have to do to find out the chronological order of things in past experience.
Ooh, new chapters! I'll enjoy these. Also, isn't there something you're supposed to be doing for me? You can do just one review for the thing as a whole and save yourself the effort of doing it one chapter at a time. Just please, get it done. If you're dreading a slog through a romcom, don't worry about it; romance gets thrown out mostly out the window once chapter 3 arrives and makes characterization and world building the point of the story. In those first two chapters, there is enough foreshadowing that it is thick enough to choke a basking shark.
another end to another epic arc, im hoping that in the future you will have the pony race come together again though, maybe have another pony join Startrot in his adventures
3086398
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate them.