Thanks for the catch. I normally spellcheck the old fashioned way with FIMfics because all the pony-puns make spellcheckers throw their hooves up in disgust, but there's always some words like that that I just miss entirely...
huh ... well this is ... this is different ... different, odd and ... and surprisingly good for as easily as one could have botched it ... definitely worth faving
Now slap me with a sandbag and call me dusty, I liked this one! Intriguing story, character-driven, and so on and forth. In allez, I liked it. Follow + Like!
You know, I love how you made the entire set-up apply to an outside reason, yet made it work in the mature segment of this chapter. I could totally see Vinyl and Octavia doing this.
I haven't even read chapter two and I know I'll love it. -SoI
Odd as buck to see a mare change into a stallion, hopefully it does not last though. Impressive that's for sure and seriously well written, I enjoyed this and you have a very great pairing here....love it
I want to like this, I really do. But chapter one just leaves some many niggling strands that I'm not sure why what is happening is actually happening.
Let's start with the build up. The concept of gender swapping is always rife with potentially interesting uses, and I rarely run into gender-bent Vinyl, so you start off with a neat little novelty. The reasoning for the swap is actually reasonable, though the method is effectively hand-waved. Just glazing over it so casually has certain implications, but you seem to want to avoid that little tangled web at first glance. As a fan of world building I'm curious about delving into that web of questions but, that isn't quite relevant for now.
Moving on we encounter the standard versions of Vinyl and Octavia: the semi-dorky, fun loving DJ and the reserved, cellist whose main role is to play the straight-man and foil to Vinyl. They also live together with an unstated relationship. This is the first dangling thread, the utter ambiguity of their relationship. All we can gather is that they are at least friends who have known each other for a few years. With nothing else about them being readily explained, the situation they are in is left very cloudy. You mention rent a few times, hinting at possible financial struggles, but that only serves to lead into the reasoning for the gender swap. You then really tried to play up the financial angle by hinting at Octavia's 'dry months' but then promptly drop the subject soon after, making for a bit of an unexpected tone shift. The little flashbacks were cute and funny, though.
Switching gears, we have a scene cut that skips several weeks of time, coinciding with the lack of the slice of life tag. Skipping the mundane is fine, but I feel like little snippets of interaction over the skipped weeks might have been better for communicating that Vinyl was really working hard on something. Condensing several weeks into a single paragraph just feels like I'm missing out on the story and any real chance to connect with the characters during what should have been a time of tension. Instead of all that we get almost nothing.
A minor note I'd like to make: When introducing something like a musical style with a customized name, "Cantercore" in this case, it would be a huge favor to the readers to actually explain what that style is. While it is obviously a pun on something, with the myriad of musical styles and genres out there, I can't imagine that I'm the only one who wasn't able to immediately connect what type of music this "Cantercore" is supposed to be. Little details like that help draw readers into your story and immerse them in the world you are building as well as keeping us from feeling lost or confused because we don't know what is being talked about. Just something to keep in mind.
Following the weeks-long paragraph, we get the standard "Character A is locked in their room, hard at work, while Character B just wants to know what's going on since A has been in there for a while" scene. This was done very stock-standard, but fits the established personalities. Having Vinyl nab the food with her magic was a nice touch. Still, this bit feels very clunky with the descriptions.
It had been days since she last saw Vinyl, who had grown ever more secretive - and was firmly.
This is clearly missing something. Might wanna fix that.
There was a sudden clatter, and the door fell back against Octavia, banging her hoof. By the deep thud that followed, it sounded as if Vinyl had launched herself bodily against the door. Octavia yelped and drew her hoof up, shaking it from side to side to try to get some blood into the stubbed hoof.
I really have a hard time visualizing how Vinyl slamming herself into the door from inside her room gave Octavia a stubbed hoof. And what is "the door fell back against Octavia" trying to communicate? It sounds like the door got slammed off it's hinges and fell on her, but that's clearly not what happened. I think it's mostly an issue of mixed up descriptors, but I don't know what you were aiming for exactly so I can't really make suggestions at this point.
You retread the finances thing a bit here, but really the rest of the scene just goes by in a blur with nothing meaningful actually happening, leaving the whole thing feeling like wasted space. Top it off with another time-skip scene cut, and we are finally off the part everyone's been waiting for.
Here we finally hit the core attraction, the actual gender swap. We also run into the hand waving of the process here, which is mildly annoying. Several questions get raised about the actual swap, but are promptly ignored with a simple "It's harmless" comment, which raises other questions that I have a feeling won't get answered. The main issue that comes back to bite later is that you spend very little time focusing on Octavia's reaction. She gets over her surprise very quickly and just immediately goes back to normal as if the status quo has been restored because "It's safe." As reserved as her character supposedly is, why is she so quick to accept the gender swap? Why does she spend zero time thinking about the ramifications of her friend now being male for a few days? Why does she not seriously question the safety of the transformation?
Once more you introduce a new element, the "spell matrix," with zero description. If this news is so comforting to Octavia, as a reader I want to know why. What is a spell matrix? Why is it considered safe? Why does it only last a few days? Vinyl mentions "when my own overrides it," but what does that even mean? You've made what amounts to a black box (an unknown, unexplained element) a central part of how your story takes place, and that makes the whole scene feel sloppy and confusing.
The details on the sign paragraph felt unnecessary. You spent a rather large amount of words just to establish Vinyl's male stage name and that she sucks at making signs. Not to say the descriptions were bad; they were well done. It just felt like wasted words when you could have mixed some character interaction in there instead of just a big block of descriptive fluff.
Next up, another big time skip. I'm starting to see a pattern...
So, the big party happens entirely off screen... Alright, not slice of life, so it's understandable you'd want to skip certain things. Still, this is Vinyl's first big social outing as a male, and we miss the whole thing. Please excuse me while I brush away this nagging feeling that I missed something awesome... (Just teasing a bit, btw.)
Now, moving on. So Vinyl finally gets home and we see the finances briefly resurface before being dropped into the aether once more. Then a bit of alcohol, exact amounts consumed seem to slip under my radar though. Finally, we move to the strange stuff. Apparently, all the 'worker fillies' at the party have interesting proclivities as they make a point to flirt with the girl-turned-guy after finding out he's actually a she with a gender swap spell on. Not entirely sure what conclusions were supposed to be drawn from that, or if it was intended to serve a purpose. Either way it really stood out and made me stop to reread that line again. Still not sure if I have an opinion on that.
After that, you move straight into the hereto unmentioned sexual tension between Octavia and Vinyl. You make mention that Vinyl is very attractive and start hinting at the point for having that 'sex' tag on the story. And then they dance. This scene was long and I'm not entirely sure why. As far as I could tell, nothing really happened for most of it. Cute implications, certainly, but to jump from hinting at sex to dancing in a mostly non-sexual manner (save for a bit of unintended bumping) only to switch back to dealing with sex just felt like a huge tease. Again, you showed your ability to describe things is pretty good. Your descriptions of the music were quite creative and the analogy of the pegasus in flight for Octavia's mental interpretation of the music was very flavorful. My main issue with the scene is that very little actually happens during the dancing that has a big influence on the characters. You tried to condense the time-honored story of Octavia learning to appreciate Vinyl's music into a single scene when there have been entire stories dedicated to that very notion and it just didn't come across as anything important to either character. They went through all the motions, but there was no description of any emotions or personal revelations going on. It's like you spent so much effort on describing the actual dancing, that you didn't describe the characters or their feelings through most of the scene which left it feeling a bit flat. Vinyl is just giving basic dance instruction and the whole time Octavia is just silently obeying him. There was no sign of Octavia's common sarcasm or snappy wit, no hint of her even commenting or making remarks about anything past the initial mental description of the pegasus dodging rocks. At the same time there was no trace of Vinyl being a fun-loving teaser. All Vinyl does is kindly encourage Octavia without much hint of being her crazy, energetic self. Granted, she was already at a party for a while, but if she's up for dancing, she's still got energy to spare.
Then with all that effort Vinyl was supposedly going through to get Octavia to dance, Octy just settled right in and started enjoying herself. No pushing, no complaints, no teasing, no reluctance, no effort. She was supposedly not exactly enjoying the song, but then is suddenly having fun just by learning a basic dance move or two. I have trouble believing that one. Aside from the couple of minor "they almost touched" and "they barely touched and it was supposed to be awkward" moments, the dancing goes by without a hitch.
Now, we get to the big offender. This scene transition bothers the heck out of me. You have a scene break right as he says something sweet, then the next scene picks up as if Vinyl totally screwed the pooch and I was left wondering what I missed. Was he regretting the line from the last scene or from something we didn't see? If the former, then there was no reason to break the scene. If the latter, there was still no reason to break the scene as we missed something important between scenes. This only gets worse as the scene goes on.
You almost immediately lead in with all the emotional build up that should have been happening before this scene. Professional facade? This just came right out of the blue. What facade? Everything up til now looked like two friends celebrating a massive stroke of good luck and timing. At no point previously have you mentioned burgeoning romantic or lustful feelings between Vinyl and Octavia, save for a couple of teasing moments that looked like pieces of comic relief instead of important character development. So, suddenly, Vinyl falls in love and we missed the entire transitory period and emotional build up to that point. Dancing and having fun while being a bit drunk is not a convincing transition from "good friend" to "I'm in love with her." Aside form preconceived notions carried over from known fannon of these two, we've had almost no time to get to know them. We know nothing about their past, their relationship, or really even them as characters. The 'suddenly I'm in love' plot doesn't work without build up, reasoning, and time.Without any of that, Vinyl looks to be just confusing love for his new found male lust, but then you go and play the damn 'good guy card' and muss that up too.
So after Vinyl mysteriously falls in love after a few minutes of dancing with her, Octavia turns right around and starts asking for sex. You go out of your way to describe her as being reserved to the point of being kind of prudish and very protective of herself sexually, then throw it out the window. Same as with Vinyl, where did these sudden feelings come from? There was no build up of emotions, no conflict over falling in love with/lusting over a male version of her female friend, no concern for the potential consequences of them having sex, and overall no real believability. You tell us she trusts Vinyl, but don't ever really show it. You tell us, she wants to sex things up with her gender bent friend, but offered no reason why. They certainly did not seem very drunk during any of this, so I won't buy that excuse. The more I pour over it, the more I just can't find why they suddenly want to fuck. The only thing that stands out is the "Oct isn't gay" line, but that would still require preexisting feelings and desires that were not mentioned and would have made things awkward much sooner.
That's my take on chapter one, for whatever worth you choose to assign it.
2103292 Well, Blueblood had been expecting a female DJ who'd shake her plot on stage. The actual words he used game Vinyl another option, and she took it.
2105452 You do realize DJ COL-7 is a stage name, right?
(Also, for a canon perspective, Cadence and Shining were pronounced "Mare and Colt" at their wedding.)
But on a serious note, this is very well done . It was quite a lot of fun seeing Vinyl teach Octy how to club dance (well, that and see Octy actually manage to do it, because with my sense of rhythm I know I sure as Hell can't ).
definitely
Wow. This was pretty damn good! Both characters were believable, and the dialogue was nice.
I really like the way Vinyl still reads to me as a mare, but she's a stallion. It's really an interesting little thing that I'm really liking so far.
I am going to watch this. You wrote this whole part very nicely and gave a great setup. I really am anxious to see what you do with the juicier parts.
Oh, fuck you, you tremendous tease.
2098643
Thanks for the catch. I normally spellcheck the old fashioned way with FIMfics because all the pony-puns make spellcheckers throw their hooves up in disgust, but there's always some words like that that I just miss entirely...
2098764 Why, WHY! WHY DO YOU MAKE GOOD STORIES THAT MAKE ME FEEL HAPPY!
Interest piqued. I'll keep an eye on this.
huh ... well this is ... this is different ... different, odd and ... and surprisingly good for as easily as one could have botched it ... definitely worth faving
This is awesome! I can't wait for the next.
Oh, and fyi: having the 63 spell put on Octavia would make an even more awesome epilogue!
You tease.....
(Joke) Alt. Title: DJ Rul-3 $!x7y 7hr33: Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik
You're featured. Here's a song to "celebrate" it:
It's depressing to know that I'm the only one on this whole website who knows who The Rutles or Beatallica are. Le sigh or something.
Oh, you tease. This is quite good. I am eager for more.
WHERE IS CHAPTER 2?!?!?!
2102628 THATS MY PROFILE PICTURE RAAAGGEEEEE
2102747 i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/496/524/827.jpg
2102747 Oh, shit just got real now.
2102876 2102747
Come, now. Best Ponies shouldn't fight.
2102902 THEY STOLE MY AVATAR.
(Your story is fantastic, btw. Please continue or I will die!)
2103087 There, i like this one better anyways, and yes, this story is fantastic, please keep it up!
If Blueblood is the kind of pony who would make the DJ at his bachelor party get a sex change, I feel sorry for whomever he marries.
Spell 63... oh the possibilities!
Actually, this is probably the best possible use...
And then the spell wears off.
how soon do you think you'll have the sext part, if your doing it of corse. please do..
Now slap me with a sandbag and call me dusty, I liked this one! Intriguing story, character-driven, and so on and forth. In allez, I liked it. Follow + Like!
MOAR!
Overall pretty good.
You tease! Please make an epilogue or chapter 2 or something.
You know, I love how you made the entire set-up apply to an outside reason, yet made it work in the mature segment of this chapter. I could totally see Vinyl and Octavia doing this.
I haven't even read chapter two and I know I'll love it.
-SoI
You do realize a colt is a child male pony and a stallion is an adult pony, right?
I wish I could find more orchestral techno. Yours sounds like a great listen.
Now I have the happy face!
Your interpretation of Vinyl is spot on, being dorky when not on duty, but should she be on duty, she's on another level of reality. Brilliant.
I did catch a few spots of redundancy in your vocabulary but other than that, it was well done. I'm moving on to chapter 2.
Odd as buck to see a mare change into a stallion, hopefully it does not last though. Impressive that's for sure and seriously well written, I enjoyed this and you have a very great pairing here....love it
I want to like this, I really do. But chapter one just leaves some many niggling strands that I'm not sure why what is happening is actually happening.
Let's start with the build up. The concept of gender swapping is always rife with potentially interesting uses, and I rarely run into gender-bent Vinyl, so you start off with a neat little novelty. The reasoning for the swap is actually reasonable, though the method is effectively hand-waved. Just glazing over it so casually has certain implications, but you seem to want to avoid that little tangled web at first glance. As a fan of world building I'm curious about delving into that web of questions but, that isn't quite relevant for now.
Moving on we encounter the standard versions of Vinyl and Octavia: the semi-dorky, fun loving DJ and the reserved, cellist whose main role is to play the straight-man and foil to Vinyl. They also live together with an unstated relationship. This is the first dangling thread, the utter ambiguity of their relationship. All we can gather is that they are at least friends who have known each other for a few years. With nothing else about them being readily explained, the situation they are in is left very cloudy. You mention rent a few times, hinting at possible financial struggles, but that only serves to lead into the reasoning for the gender swap. You then really tried to play up the financial angle by hinting at Octavia's 'dry months' but then promptly drop the subject soon after, making for a bit of an unexpected tone shift. The little flashbacks were cute and funny, though.
Switching gears, we have a scene cut that skips several weeks of time, coinciding with the lack of the slice of life tag. Skipping the mundane is fine, but I feel like little snippets of interaction over the skipped weeks might have been better for communicating that Vinyl was really working hard on something. Condensing several weeks into a single paragraph just feels like I'm missing out on the story and any real chance to connect with the characters during what should have been a time of tension. Instead of all that we get almost nothing.
A minor note I'd like to make: When introducing something like a musical style with a customized name, "Cantercore" in this case, it would be a huge favor to the readers to actually explain what that style is. While it is obviously a pun on something, with the myriad of musical styles and genres out there, I can't imagine that I'm the only one who wasn't able to immediately connect what type of music this "Cantercore" is supposed to be. Little details like that help draw readers into your story and immerse them in the world you are building as well as keeping us from feeling lost or confused because we don't know what is being talked about. Just something to keep in mind.
Following the weeks-long paragraph, we get the standard "Character A is locked in their room, hard at work, while Character B just wants to know what's going on since A has been in there for a while" scene. This was done very stock-standard, but fits the established personalities. Having Vinyl nab the food with her magic was a nice touch. Still, this bit feels very clunky with the descriptions.
This is clearly missing something. Might wanna fix that.
I really have a hard time visualizing how Vinyl slamming herself into the door from inside her room gave Octavia a stubbed hoof. And what is "the door fell back against Octavia" trying to communicate? It sounds like the door got slammed off it's hinges and fell on her, but that's clearly not what happened. I think it's mostly an issue of mixed up descriptors, but I don't know what you were aiming for exactly so I can't really make suggestions at this point.
You retread the finances thing a bit here, but really the rest of the scene just goes by in a blur with nothing meaningful actually happening, leaving the whole thing feeling like wasted space. Top it off with another time-skip scene cut, and we are finally off the part everyone's been waiting for.
Here we finally hit the core attraction, the actual gender swap. We also run into the hand waving of the process here, which is mildly annoying. Several questions get raised about the actual swap, but are promptly ignored with a simple "It's harmless" comment, which raises other questions that I have a feeling won't get answered. The main issue that comes back to bite later is that you spend very little time focusing on Octavia's reaction. She gets over her surprise very quickly and just immediately goes back to normal as if the status quo has been restored because "It's safe." As reserved as her character supposedly is, why is she so quick to accept the gender swap? Why does she spend zero time thinking about the ramifications of her friend now being male for a few days? Why does she not seriously question the safety of the transformation?
Once more you introduce a new element, the "spell matrix," with zero description. If this news is so comforting to Octavia, as a reader I want to know why. What is a spell matrix? Why is it considered safe? Why does it only last a few days? Vinyl mentions "when my own overrides it," but what does that even mean? You've made what amounts to a black box (an unknown, unexplained element) a central part of how your story takes place, and that makes the whole scene feel sloppy and confusing.
The details on the sign paragraph felt unnecessary. You spent a rather large amount of words just to establish Vinyl's male stage name and that she sucks at making signs. Not to say the descriptions were bad; they were well done. It just felt like wasted words when you could have mixed some character interaction in there instead of just a big block of descriptive fluff.
Next up, another big time skip. I'm starting to see a pattern...
So, the big party happens entirely off screen... Alright, not slice of life, so it's understandable you'd want to skip certain things. Still, this is Vinyl's first big social outing as a male, and we miss the whole thing. Please excuse me while I brush away this nagging feeling that I missed something awesome... (Just teasing a bit, btw.)
Now, moving on. So Vinyl finally gets home and we see the finances briefly resurface before being dropped into the aether once more. Then a bit of alcohol, exact amounts consumed seem to slip under my radar though. Finally, we move to the strange stuff. Apparently, all the 'worker fillies' at the party have interesting proclivities as they make a point to flirt with the girl-turned-guy after finding out he's actually a she with a gender swap spell on. Not entirely sure what conclusions were supposed to be drawn from that, or if it was intended to serve a purpose. Either way it really stood out and made me stop to reread that line again. Still not sure if I have an opinion on that.
After that, you move straight into the hereto unmentioned sexual tension between Octavia and Vinyl. You make mention that Vinyl is very attractive and start hinting at the point for having that 'sex' tag on the story. And then they dance. This scene was long and I'm not entirely sure why. As far as I could tell, nothing really happened for most of it. Cute implications, certainly, but to jump from hinting at sex to dancing in a mostly non-sexual manner (save for a bit of unintended bumping) only to switch back to dealing with sex just felt like a huge tease. Again, you showed your ability to describe things is pretty good. Your descriptions of the music were quite creative and the analogy of the pegasus in flight for Octavia's mental interpretation of the music was very flavorful. My main issue with the scene is that very little actually happens during the dancing that has a big influence on the characters. You tried to condense the time-honored story of Octavia learning to appreciate Vinyl's music into a single scene when there have been entire stories dedicated to that very notion and it just didn't come across as anything important to either character. They went through all the motions, but there was no description of any emotions or personal revelations going on. It's like you spent so much effort on describing the actual dancing, that you didn't describe the characters or their feelings through most of the scene which left it feeling a bit flat. Vinyl is just giving basic dance instruction and the whole time Octavia is just silently obeying him. There was no sign of Octavia's common sarcasm or snappy wit, no hint of her even commenting or making remarks about anything past the initial mental description of the pegasus dodging rocks. At the same time there was no trace of Vinyl being a fun-loving teaser. All Vinyl does is kindly encourage Octavia without much hint of being her crazy, energetic self. Granted, she was already at a party for a while, but if she's up for dancing, she's still got energy to spare.
Then with all that effort Vinyl was supposedly going through to get Octavia to dance, Octy just settled right in and started enjoying herself. No pushing, no complaints, no teasing, no reluctance, no effort. She was supposedly not exactly enjoying the song, but then is suddenly having fun just by learning a basic dance move or two. I have trouble believing that one. Aside from the couple of minor "they almost touched" and "they barely touched and it was supposed to be awkward" moments, the dancing goes by without a hitch.
Now, we get to the big offender. This scene transition bothers the heck out of me. You have a scene break right as he says something sweet, then the next scene picks up as if Vinyl totally screwed the pooch and I was left wondering what I missed. Was he regretting the line from the last scene or from something we didn't see? If the former, then there was no reason to break the scene. If the latter, there was still no reason to break the scene as we missed something important between scenes. This only gets worse as the scene goes on.
You almost immediately lead in with all the emotional build up that should have been happening before this scene. Professional facade? This just came right out of the blue. What facade? Everything up til now looked like two friends celebrating a massive stroke of good luck and timing. At no point previously have you mentioned burgeoning romantic or lustful feelings between Vinyl and Octavia, save for a couple of teasing moments that looked like pieces of comic relief instead of important character development. So, suddenly, Vinyl falls in love and we missed the entire transitory period and emotional build up to that point. Dancing and having fun while being a bit drunk is not a convincing transition from "good friend" to "I'm in love with her." Aside form preconceived notions carried over from known fannon of these two, we've had almost no time to get to know them. We know nothing about their past, their relationship, or really even them as characters. The 'suddenly I'm in love' plot doesn't work without build up, reasoning, and time.Without any of that, Vinyl looks to be just confusing love for his new found male lust, but then you go and play the damn 'good guy card' and muss that up too.
So after Vinyl mysteriously falls in love after a few minutes of dancing with her, Octavia turns right around and starts asking for sex. You go out of your way to describe her as being reserved to the point of being kind of prudish and very protective of herself sexually, then throw it out the window. Same as with Vinyl, where did these sudden feelings come from? There was no build up of emotions, no conflict over falling in love with/lusting over a male version of her female friend, no concern for the potential consequences of them having sex, and overall no real believability. You tell us she trusts Vinyl, but don't ever really show it. You tell us, she wants to sex things up with her gender bent friend, but offered no reason why. They certainly did not seem very drunk during any of this, so I won't buy that excuse. The more I pour over it, the more I just can't find why they suddenly want to fuck. The only thing that stands out is the "Oct isn't gay" line, but that would still require preexisting feelings and desires that were not mentioned and would have made things awkward much sooner.
That's my take on chapter one, for whatever worth you choose to assign it.
2103292
Well, Blueblood had been expecting a female DJ who'd shake her plot on stage. The actual words he used game Vinyl another option, and she took it.
2105452
You do realize DJ COL-7 is a stage name, right?
(Also, for a canon perspective, Cadence and Shining were pronounced "Mare and Colt" at their wedding.)
And then there was snu-snu.
But on a serious note, this is very well done . It was quite a lot of fun seeing Vinyl teach Octy how to club dance (well, that and see Octy actually manage to do it, because with my sense of rhythm I know I sure as Hell can't ).
Yep.