Another winter had come to Ponyville, bringing promises of another joyous Hearths Warming. The cheer and good will was infectious and abundant, ready to be celebrated. However, after a strange cast of lights ripped across the sky over Everfree Forest's horizon, something changed. The winter became foreboding. The atmosphere gained an ominous presence.
Determined to combat the ill feelings, the citizens attempted to ignore the feeling of dread... that was, until, ponies found out Fluttershy had disappeared around that time.
Chapters (3)
Oomph. That’s really neat writing here. And the plot is intriguing enough.
11102302
Well, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.
I have mixed feelings about this story. It's a very good horror story for about 90% of it, with excellent prose, appropriately eerie atmosphere, and good pacing. That being said, your decision to end it the way you did really undercuts everything you built up prior to that point. Having a silly, fourth-wall breaking ending after a disturbing monster story makes for some serious tonal whiplash. I get that you were trying to write a happy ending for the sake of the holiday theme, but I really think that it could have been done better. There's nothing wrong with writing a horror-comedy story, and there are many good examples of that, but those stories normally have a more consistent tone throughout, rather than going from zero to sixty right at the end, which is how this story felt. Also, a nitpick: you wrote out Applejack's accented pronunciation of words. Please don't do this; it's always awkward, no matter how many writers may do it.
11764717
About the ending... yeah, I totally get it. Honestly, the original ending was VERY grim. Very "The Thing" like, However, when I was doing the final chapter, I was having second thoughts. Not that I wouldn't have been able to pull it off, but more in that I just didn't feel up to murdering the cast for the ending. It really was a last minute choice, and I was ultimately happier with the final result, despite the mood whiplash.
As for Applejack's country-isms and accent... I dunno, I feel using phonetic pronunciations in regards to how some people speak is sometimes necessary to get an authentic enough feel of the character. I apologize it didn't jive well with you.
My Little Reviews & Feedback review in 2023.
Very spooky, and somehow also very festive. Another good story in the series.
11764799
I think that a big reason why AJ’s written-out accent draws critique is that it makes it difficult to read for anyone who doesn’t have English as a first language. Take whatever language you learned in highschool, with all the conjugations and other rules then imagine someone purposefully spelling things just slightly off from how you learned it. It also works surprisingly poorly with text to speech, making nonsense words. Just a thought.
11914971
I understand that to an extent, but there are a few things about it that has me argue against it.
The first is that accents (if they exist for the character) help add to the personality of the character that's being written. It can tell you a fair bit of who they are and what kind of background they come from or what they like to present themselves as before their peers. This is the same reason why I utilize other languages when the individual is speaking in another language (Spanish, French, Old/Elizabethan/Renaissance English, Russian, Enochian, just to name a few examples I've used in stories). It's part of their character and probably part of their personality. The alternative to this is to write speech patterns as flatly and uniformly as possible across all characters, only ever really describing how they sound in a line or two in their introduction, and not only is that boring, but its lazy as all hell in my eyes. That, and it would absolutely kill immersion.
The second thing is... I'm a native English speaker. The site is largely natively English speaking/reading. I'm pretty much expecting to cater to a largely natively English speaking audience. I always think it's fantastic when someone learns a second/third/fourth/etc language, and I 100% believe that the English language is honestly a train wreck in terms of accessibility (as it has so many rules, contradictions, exceptions, quirks, and other such nonsense attached to it. I still mix up and flub certain things once in a while), so when the second language of the potential reader is English, hey, more power to that person. But if they're having a tough time reading the phonetic words spoken by the accented characters, I'm sorry but tough luck. However, I'd expect the exact same "tough luck" if the roles were reversed and I were to read something in another language and were given phonetic dialogue of a differing accent than what the author normally writes to suit the character. If I can't hash it, it's tough luck on me. Simple as.
There isn't much I can argue when it comes to TTS though. It's a great tool and very useful, but it can be a bit of a crapshoot sometimes, even flubbing properly spelled words, nevermind phonetics. I wouldn't rely on it for seriously reading a story unless you absolutely have to.