Survey Results, and Review #63 - Pinkie Turns Invisible, PLEASE Sign Here, Piercing The Heavens: Past Mistakes · 1:43am Feb 27th, 2017
So, that little test survey I put out got some responses... I will now list the question and the responses to it.
Who is your favorite author?
-Cold in Gardez
-GhostOfHeraclitus
-iisaw
-Sir Lancelot of Camelot
-Randy Alcorn
-Calm wind
-Me [Whoever put this here, please elaborate.]
-Pen Stroke
What is your favorite story?
-It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door
-Whom the Princesses Would Destroy...
-The Luna Cypher [Whoever put this here, nice...]
-To seek the Holy Grail
-Deception by Randy Alcorn
-Piercing the heavens
-Twilight Sparkle Lays an Egg
-Past Sins
What is your favorite genre of story?
-Comedy (2)
-Using FiMFic tags? Anything but Anthro, 2nd Person, and EqG
-Adventure / Romance
-Blue... no! RED! [I sigh at you]
-I don't have a preference
-Action and/or romance
-Dark
Who is your favorite reviewer? (Two people did not reply.)
-Myself :) [Wait, was this Loganberry?]
NA
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.... [Come now, must you mess with my data like this? I didn't even make this a required question.]
Mlpmatthew419 [Hooray!]
Present Perfect
Titanium Dragon [Me too, fam. He actually inspired me to start reviewing.]
Back to the reviews:
Pinkie Turns Invisible by Carts Before Horses
PLEASE Sign Here by Leoshi
Piercing The Heavens: Past Mistakes by Thunder-Bolt
As always, I will put down my recommendations, but I truly hope that you to make the choice on whether to read a fic or not yourself.
Pinkie Turns Invisible by CartsBeforeHorses
(Comedy, Random, Slice of Life)
While helping Twilight with an invisibility spell, the spell misfires and hits Pinkie instead. Now, she decides to have a little fun at other ponies' expense.
Review
So, this one is more of a random slice of life than a comedy. There is still some comedy in it, but not enough to even crack a smile. I feel like talking about Pinkie first. Pinkie in this one is the silly, random version of Pinkie. However, it feels like the author was trying too hard with her, which leaves us with sub-par characterization. Twilight really should have known better and is only really a plot device. Everyone else seems like the Season 1 version of themselves, but that makes sense considering how ancient this is. In conclusion, all the characters just seem below average quality, and while I can understand the age issue, it is possible to get characters that will never diminish or feel old.
The greatest weakness for this has to be the characterization. I just can't see Pinkie doing this, nor can I see her friends having those reactions. Also, author's words, only slightly out of context:
"it was mostly situational and slapstick humor... " "This one, in my own opinion, isn't as funny."
Recommendation: Not Recommended. (I happen to like the idea of this, just not the execution.)
PLEASE Sign Here by Leoshi
(Comedy)
Twilight Sparkle never received the package containing Starswirl the Bearded's spell journal. And Celestia is not happy about it.
Review
This one, while it has a fair amount of comedy, has a large portion of some slice of life. Celestia, because I can talk about her first if I want to, has a glorious reaction in my opinion. It's not really funny at all, but it's still a nice reaction. I'm not really sure how to talk about OCs, but as far as I can tell the Mailponies are the type that gets fed up with other's stupidity, and hold grudges. That, or they are drunk 89% of the time. That's... that's about all I have to talk about...
So, I think the greatest weakness of this one is what you expect, versus what you get. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I went into this, but I know it wasn't something this slice of life-y. This just makes everything else seems worse than it should/ is.
Recommendation: Intermediate. (I, again, like the concept, but not the execution. Also, the tag is really misleading.)
Piercing The Heavens: Past Mistakes by Thunder-Bolt
(Alternate Universe, Dark, Sad)
We all know that Rapidfire can be a jerk. He gets what he wants through deception and playing dirty. But why? Why does he do all of these things? Does he just do for his own pleasure, or is there more depth to his decisions? This story takes place before the capture of Wave Chill. If you haven't read Piercing the Heavens by Calm Wind, don't read this story. You won't know what's going on.
Review
This isn't so much a sad story, as it is a deep one. Yes, they are often the same, but they are not synonyms to one another, nor is a sad story required to be deep, and vice-versa. Anyways, I want to talk about Rapidfire. You are still meant to hate his guts in this fic, but it does provide a deeper insight as to WHY he left the Wonderbolts. This insight, while it could have been written better, actually made me hate him slightly less (from a 12 to a 10/10 on the hate scale). And then, then there is this unnamed engineer, at least, I think he's unnamed... I couldn't find one. Anywho, this engineer is calm, collective, peaceful... you know, like a good "voice of reason to the protagonist" should be.
The greatest weakness of this one... may seem like a bit of a stretch, but... it's the wording in some areas. This makes some areas seem clunky, disjointed, and takes you out of the story a bit.
Recommendation: Recommended/ Highly Recommended, but you NEED to read at least Head in the Clouds, Flying Sky-High, and roughly 120 chapters of Piercing the Heavens to understand what on earth is happening. (Recommended because, well, it's actually a better backstory-story then what Calm Wind, the original author of this universe, had for his backstory-story.)
Random Snippet Unrelated To This Blog: I discovered a survey by way of EQD... find the info HERE.
I must confess and apologize for Monty Pythoning your survey!
I thought you were testing the system, not going for actual data!
And... gee, thanks, Random Survey Stranger, for the vote!
4437773 Hey, if you're going to bollocks up a survey, at least you have good taste
4437773
Yeah, no... it's fine. I was mostly trying to discover if I set up the survey correctly, and your response did give me a bit of a laugh.
How do you think I should improve the story?
4437973
Mostly just read it over and see if there is anything you can fix for wording, such as starting with "Rapidfire" 4 times in 7 paragraphs.
Other than that, it's pretty darn good as it is.
4437979 Okay then, thanks!
Heh, not in a million years. Tbh I forgot about this survey, which is annoying as I wanted to do it. But my favourite reviewer? I'd probably vote for Chris.
4439068
Lol. Chris is pretty good, but not my favorite.
4439084
4441044
Hey, I still said you were pretty good...
4441137
I know, I know. I just couldn't resist a chance to break out the ol' "crying Fluttershy."
As long as I'm commenting, though, let me mention that I really like the new review format! A less restrictive setup seems to suit you; at least, I'm finding your reviews more enlightening recently.
4441189
I like the new format too, even though it does take a little longer to write.
And all
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blamethanks goes to horizon and Mocha Star for itRandom thought, is there even a difference between Twilight-sheepish and Twilight-blush?