Okay! Now that we have more than one reviewer, I'm going to make a thread where all the reviews can be compiled, checked, and seen by all. This will help authors to recognize mistakes, as well as promote stories (so long as the review is good) and generally let me keep an eye on things.

If you want to post reviews elsewhere, that's fine... but again, I can keep an eye on them here. It's also less cluttered.

Here's a list of our current reviewers:

-BlackFireGallop
-Riot

Anyone else want to become a regular reviewer? Post a thread, I'll sticky it, and add your name to this list. I'd be on there myself, but frankly, I'm not regular.

Here is the first review I made, on The Mare Who Walked into the Cold. It can also be found here, in its seperate thread :

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/205954/harmonists/thread/152266/review-the-mare-who-went-into-the-cold-by-frogmyre-incomplete

Good day to everyone. This is the first of my public review. Hype much .

The Mare Who Went into the Cold

First, a quick recap of the story :

Octavia Phillharmonica, a brilliant musician, is invited to Stalliongrad by a mysterious host who seems to know an awful lot about her. In less time than YOU thought possible, she will be plundged into a Political Plot that may well threaten the life of the most important ponies in the kingdom...

So, what to think of this story ?

First, let's talk about style and grammar.

Overall, it's very good. I saw very few mistakes in there. Grammar is good, spelling is good. However, some sentences are a bit weird, with misplaced commas and other ill-used ponctuation signs.

As a personnal point, I would however would like to point out that you're on of the rare writers who can use ";" effectively. Big kudos for it.

Another thing to point out is the use of some hyper-sophisticated words (indescribable, for example, made me pause and dig up my dictionnary-can you believe that ? I know, right ? I have a hard time believing it myself !).

Whilst this would normally be a thing I approve of, in this special case, seeing how fast paced the story and the plot is (but I'll come back to that later on), it can be annoying to pause and think about what those words means. They break the rythm of the story. Otherwise, good work on the vocabulary. (You gain points with me when you use overly complicated sentences. 'cause I like em )

In any case, to conclude this part : writing is good, and the editing work done over it is very good as well. Good use of ponctuation is a hard thing. A good amount of training and experience is required before being able to do what you want with it and keeping it nice and working as well, so do NOT let that point stop you from looking at this story (heh, point. It's a joke. Geddit ? Because a point in math is a dot in writing ? It's the same sign ?....nevermind...). Also, over the top vocabulary...like it or not, but it's there.

Second part, plot and characters.

The plot in itself is reminiscent of those funny quiproquo films. It doesn't feel serious, and it doesn't need to be. It's fairly entertaining, and it got me to spit out a few laughs. Some of the situations are utterly ridiculous (in the positive sense of the word-as a comedic/plot device, I mean) and I sincerely asked myself what the heck is happening more than once. Again, in a positive way. You are as lost as the main character, Octavia, and you basically let yourself be caried by over the top situations and characters.

Speaking of Octavia, she is the usual persona the fandom made up for her. Refined, almost poncy, but one heck of a music lover, she will provide her usual dose of wonky and uncomfortable situations thanks to her attitude.
Vinyl is also present, and more or less follows her tropes as well.

I would say that this is both a good and a bad thing.

It is a good thing because those tropes are evidently mastered, and they are used to power up the story and the events. They are well used, and likeable like one would like the usual over the top manly action Hero of many a movie.

it is a bad thing because it's not very original. Octavia is a softy, Vinyl is a toughy. One other character is, however, completly outside her tropes. I will not reveal who it is to avoid spoilers, but it really put me off. I felt out of my comfort zone, dragged violently out of it, even. I didn't like it, and it made this specific character far less enjoyable than it should otherwise have been.

Third part : the Story as a whole.

I'll say it straight out.

It goes far too fast. Plot feels rushed, characters feel rushed, events feel rushed. In my opinion, there is not enough development. It gets critical in the second chapter. I sincerely lost track of what was happening because the story was running too fast. It's not just the chain of events I am speaking about here, but the whole of the story. The dialogs are rushed, and they basically loose the reader. I still have a hard time understanding where all this is going. Well, I exagerate a bit, but most of the more interesting details of the events are lost to me.

When there are big explanation scenes with a lot more dialogs than usual (the story works on the usual exposition/event scenes followed by big dialog/explaining/plot development scenes plan) I find myself even more lost than before. We have a hard time following what's happening in Octavia's mind. Whereas it could be said that she is confused, in terms of writing, confusion still lets the reader knows what the character is thinking and explaining to himself. It's an effy thing to describe, but in short you still understand the story.

To be more specific, the two dialogues between Octavia and Vinyl are exactly what I'm referring to. They are confusing, ill explained and developped, and they frankly draw the story backwards. It's the main downpoint I have against "The Mare Who Went into the Cold".

Finally, my overall opinion.

I recommend this story to anyone who likes to have a good laugh and try to figure out some little mysteries and events. It's like a cool film in the evening.
It's simple, funny, and a real pleasure to read. When it's not rushing like hell, it's fairly enjoyable to follow, actually, The pacing is excellent and the alternation between the scenes is very good as well. The plot, whislt I repeat is simple, will surprise you more than once. Basically, the story balances its downpoints with excellent story telling and likeable characters. It's easy, once you're in the flow of it, to overlook the little problems it has.
Except the rushing. Because personally I hate that. But you should still totally read it.

One last thing : the author only released two chapters so far. It should be four chapters long in total, and personally, I am really looking forward to the rest of it. It was a good read, that made me tick more than once, but it was still a good moment.

Well, that concludes this first review.

Next on the list is An Apple for Ya Trouble, by ellie_ .

Goodbye everyone, and see you soon for the next review.

4031041 How are reviewers judged/chosen?

4031198 I don't choose reviewers so much as I allow them. They want to review something? I let them.

They turn out to be bad reviewers, insult people, that sort of thing? I stop letting them.

It's quite simple, you see.

Story: The Necromantic Adventures of Lyra Heartstrings
Author: SaintAbsol
Reviewer: Seventh Pony (Riot)
Genres: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Comedy, Dark, Gore
Rating: Teen
Status: Incomplete
Current Chapter Count: 3
Current Word Count: 22,216
Grammar: Great
The story is interesting, but rough around the edges. Almost nothing is explained about the universe, which is always a problem when it happens in AU stories. Explain your Earth Pony warlocks , your paladins, and your druids! Don't expect that just because they're common fantasy archetypes, that you don't have to explain how they fit into the world. At times, this leads to the world no longer feeling like Equestria. How does an Equestrian Paladin work? How do they wield weapons?
And is Celestia supposed to be some sort of god in this fic? I'm kind of confused. This fic has a ton of creative ideas; I just wish it would explain them aside from a few vague mentions of abilities.
The characterization is pretty solid, especially with Bonbon. Her inner turmoil is handled well. The action sequences are generic (It's rather hard to write a non-generic action sequence, so this is not much of a problem. Just try to build up the mood of the scenes more.) and the comedy is too infrequent for me to consider the tag a necessity.

★★★★☆ Above Average

My second review is online ! It can be found here :

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/205954/harmonists/thread/152959/review-an-apple-for-ya-trouble-by-ellie

Bonjour, everyone, and welcome to my second review !

An Apple for Ya Trouble, Romance, Slice of Life, Human, Rated E

Well, well, that's quite the piece we have here. Let's start by a quick resume, shall we ?

Rarity, a young and refined girl, passionate about Fashion, goes with her mother to visit Ponyville. This beautiful sunday will mark a great change in her life when she meets another girl by the name of Applejack...

So, style and grammar time !

Not much to say, for one reason : it's excellent. Spelling and grammar are top notch. Punctuation is very well handled, too. I can say, the author knows how to use those tools as best as possible. No need to make this part last for very long, there isn't much else to say. Oh, one thing.
The style is also quite fabulous. Rarity and Applejack are extremely well handled in their behaviour and speeches. The descriptions are flawless, dynamic, and stay true to the first person view of Rarity, with her....very special view of everything. Adjectives are all very well chosen indeed. The only downside I can find are the dialogs, which lack a bit of characterization and may feel robotic. Thankfully, there are very few of them, so it is in no way distracting, and it's much less of an issue than what I make it sound like. In short, I'm being picky, but that's what reviewer do.

(Personal Kudos on doing Rarity like this. It was simply exhilarating.)

Plots and Characters.

Rarity is obviously the star of this story. She is introduced in a mostly unusual way through first person view, combined with clear and interesting explanations of her vision of the world. And when I mean explanations, I in fact mean descriptions and situations where we witness her reactions first hand. The way this is handled feels very natural, and you very easely assimilate how Rarity feels and works. It was a personal delight for me to experience Rarity like this. Fabulous, poncy, refined, she is truly at her best in this story.

Applejack has much less love, for two reasons : firstly, she isn't introduced before the end. Secondly, seeing this is a first person view (from Rarity), we do not get as much insight as we do with our main character.
However, the author very cleverly constructed the dialogs between Rarity and Applejack, in such a way that we actually understand fairly well what type of individual AJ is, AND at the same time, we do not really know her, much like how Rarity is feeling when they meet each other.
(Another personal note : I am not a fan of love at first sight in story, at all. I gotta say it's very well done here, but it remains a downpoint for me. A very minor one, though.)

In term of "plot", here it is very, very minimalistic. To be honest, I'm a bit forced to consider this a bad thing, because in all fairness, almost nothing happens, the story is very short, and the end situation feels very rushed. It's supposed to be a small thing, yes, but it would have benefited so much from more development, more chapters, or simply a longer treatment. In its current state, it's like a pill of written goodness that flies in a matter of minutes, leaving wanting for more, sad that it is so short.

However, for its format, it's extremely well done, and it does its job in a top notch manner. What I pointed out before are, in my opinion, things that come with the format, and cannot really be changed unless the story is expanded.

The story as a whole.

I'll keep it short, seeing I more or less said everything important in the preceding parts. The story works perfectly well. Clear beginning, clear ending. Good development. Short, but excellent. Unorthodox, yet one of the best read I've come across.

My personnal opinion ? Gosh, I simply love this story. It's such a pleasure to come across a gem like this. It didn't last long, but oh, it was good. You should read this. You should really, really read this. Just to experience such an excellent piece and enjoy a few words that instantly transport you into the sunny, sunday-y atmosphere of Ponyville. It struck a bit of nostalgia onto me, reminding of my days as a kid when I would go out in town with my parents. Good nostalgia. It sort of made those memories more precious. And isn't Rarity about precious ?

That's it for me for today. Next in line, Sweetie Belle Discovers Rarity's Greatest Secret, by Frogmyre.

Have a good day, all of you.

Okay hey it's me again, you may remember me from one I had you review a WHILE ago or just from me asking you something like 30 minutes ago.

One thing I want you to review is something you did before, from which I've gone through some editing, revision and new chapters. Sadly my editor dissapeared halfway through us editing the fic so some chapter remain unedited, since no-one else has offered/said yes to helping edit it. None the less it remains one of my main projects and I keep working on it regardless of my editor being AWOL and as such I want to see if you think anything has gotten better/worse since then. Here's a link to the original review since I don't see it in the thread. Prototype: Equestrian Menace

The other is one that has grown more popular then my original fic and apparentely it's because its a new take on the subject? The Conversion Bureau: Gentek's Solution. Mainly I want somebody to analyze why it's more popular with only four chapters to it, and nitpick at it without ripping it to shreds.

As you said I'll link via PM.

4313335 Well, it's been a while since we've actually had active reviewers, so allow me to dust off the ole' procedure.

Each reviewer who says they want to do stuff makes a thread. They can be contacted on that thread, or PM'd. Reviews get hosted on said thread.

It's a bit 'play it by ear' but considering this is hardly a very structured group at the best of times, flexible tends to be best.

4313702 Maybe you're not doing it hard enough? Wait you're a reviewer?

Okay I need someone to help me with something here. I'm writing a new story and I wanna know if someone can help me rephrase my description because my descriptions can use a bit of tweeking. Especially this one. So if someone wants to help me just message me and I'll send what I wrote down thru PMs.

I somehow tricked/convinced HapHazred to let me post reviews here. Huzzah!
..Of course, I'm not sure that what I do "counts" as reviews; they really are more like commentaries. Still, here is a recent one I did, for the story of a member of this group. If you enjoy it, let me know and I'll continue posting reviews here as I make them, and be sure to check out my blog on this site for more reviews, headcanons, and random thoughts.

Diamond Do and the love of a sister is tagged:
Slice of Life

It features the character tags:
OC, Daring Do

'Diamond Do and the love of a sister' was written by Keam, and can be found here. Full story spoilers below the line.

Daring Do is one of my favorite side-characters of MLP, which is what attracted me to this story to begin with. Despite Dash and Twilight's back-and-forth recap of Daring's continuity, we don't really know very much about Daring; we don't know how much of her accounts are fictionalised, what her role in Equestria is, who her family are, etcetera. These are questions which interest me, and I always like reading stories which attempt to flesh out those aspects of her character.

This story in particular addresses two of those points; we get a little bit of insight into Daring's family, via her sister, and provides a "Cutie Mark Chronicles" style flash back to explain how Daring got her cutie mark.

First thing is first; anyone who reads this story needs to be aware that there are more than a few spelling and grammatical errors; the title of the chapter, for instance, reads "Not all can be find in the Daring Do books", when it should read as "found". This is a recurring issue throughout the piece, a result (by her admission) of the author not being a native English-speaker. Ordinarily, I wouldn't point it out- there are more than enough typos in my own work for that- but it is a consistent issue throughout the story, so it's something which I feel needs to be addressed.

As for the story itself, it's focused primarily around the characters of Daring and Diamond, so analysing them seems like the best place to start.

Daring is characterized pretty well, albeit it a bit more emotionally than I usually like (a necessary change, due to Diamond). Even so,it's good to see her still acting largely based off of impulse (as when she hugs her sister), and off instinct, both as a child and when she completes Diamond's verse of the song.

By contrast, Diamond is presented as more restrained and intellectual, possibly even a little jaded. Where Daring still has a love for "real" adventures, Diamond has reached the point where, as she puts it, the world no longer impresses her.

It's interesting to view both these characters in light of the revelations about A.K Yearling. This story was written after the reveal that Daring Do and A.K Yearling are the same person; in fact Kaem works that in as an aspect of the story, mentioning that Daring and Diamond haven't seen each other in some time in part because Daring's time is taken up with her adventures and her book writing.
Even so, I can't help but read this as a story about Daring Do trying to reconcile those disparate sides of her; the young adventurer, working off of gut instinct, and the intellectual, who is more at home decoding ancient maps and reading (or perhaps inventing) stories about adventures in far-off dusty tombs.

This reading might not be what the author intended... but then, once something is published, how it is interpreted by the audience is really beyond the writer's control, and it might be significant that, though Diamond mentions their father, he never makes an apperance. The entirety of the story is told as two incidents involving Daring and Diamond, and only Daring and Diamond; a Fight Club, Tyler Dyrden style physiological reading isn't particularly discouraged by the text itself; and may in fact by encouraged by the fact that Diamond's home- a "small house"- might be mistaken for Yearling' cottage from Daring Don't.
It would also explain how Daring is able to complete her sister's rhyme so quickly and fluidly... though this might also simply be an aspect of her near-supernatural instincts knowing what to do.

As for the content... for the most part, it's fine. There are some odd sentence constructions- one early line describing Daring and Diamond hugging from Diamond's perspective describes Daring's feathers in a way that seems more appropriate of a romance fiction in my mind- but aside from the grammar and spelling errors, it's functionally fine.
My only complaint from the content is from the conclusion to the flashback; while the conflict is resolved by Daring recieving her cutie mark, it feels a little... unnatural. Daring jumping from sad and shouting at her sister to her glee at having gotten her compass cutie mark feels like too sudden a mood whiplash; the first time I read it, it created the impression that Daring got her cutie mark for hating Diamond.

(Of course, if this story is interpreted as being about the conflict between Daring Do and A.K Yearling, that might be acceptable).

By contrast, the beginning of the flashback- featuring a young Daring on an adventure- and the ending with the two sister's making up is well done, with the latter only spoiled somewhat by being a repeat of the flashback; perhaps it would have been better to cut out the reconciliation between the sisters in the past, ending that segment on the realization that Daring has her cutie mark, so that the ending reunion is more sweet.

Overall, while I think I would prefer this to be a bit longer with a more sedate pace to build up the relationship between the two sisters, I feel the main issue with this is the aforementioned spelling and grammar. Besides that, it's an interesting story which I just wish was a bit more expanded; since Diamond is an original character inserted into Daring's life, I want to get to know her- her adventures and her perspective on things- a little more.