TSecrets in The Stars

• MLP: FiM
• Adventure
• Sci-Fi

Technology is increasing and ponies ply the stars for their secrets. But some secrets shouldn't be uncovered.

• Violence
• Death
• Profanity
• Alt. Universe
• OC

CommissarVulpin · 81k words  ·  22  1 · 582 views

Secrets in the Stars

by CommissarVulpin

Summary

When Spring Bloom's lunar cruise is interrupted by a devastating accident, she suddenly finds herself thrust a century and a half into the future, into the midst of a conspiracy, and under the gaze of an ancient, vengeful spirit.

Initial Thoughts

I approached this story with a lot of trepidation. A bunch of red tags usually isn’t a good sign I’ll ne enjoying myself with a story. Plus, it’s a sci-fi. I like sci-fi, but it feels so bizarre to combine that with ponies, for me. Combine that with being an OC story… and I’m not feeling so confident about this one.

Guess we’ll find out if my gut was right about this.

My General Reaction

Fair warning: this story is still incomplete. In fact, it’s only just finished up what I feel was its First Act. Maybe Second, but the author has made it clear that there’s approximately 2/3rds of a story left to tell, even though Secrets is on its seventh chapter and over 60-thousand words long. My feelings towards the story will change as it continues, so consider this a review of the story’s initial setup.

And, honestly? I wasn’t expecting to like this so much. There’s a lot of things in it that I don’t like, and that should get it a lower grade, in any other case. But I have to say, Secrets in the Stars is a very, very well-presented mess.

Right, so as the description says, the story follows Spring Bloom, a mare who gets flung into the future after a space accident. Except it’s not. Not really. Kinda.

See, the story begins with Spring Bloom (or Spring Boom, as the first time we see her name is spelled), but after two chapters following her story and getting really invested in her… she basically disappears from the plot for what feels like more than half the current wordcount. This is, in fact, an ensemble piece. Slowly – and I DO mean SLOOOOWLY – we get introduced to a whole host of new characters. In fact, a veritable army of new characters march their way into the story from here on, and it becomes all but impossible to keep track of them all.

Partly, this is because the author has chosen to forgo describing creatures all that much. I don’t believe Spring Bloom got a proper description until chapter three. Instead, most of Secrets’ description is saved for the space flight scenes. These scenes are really one of the highlights of the story, since they appear to be meticulously researched, and show that the author has a real passion for realistic space flight. As a sort-of-fan of hard sci-fi and certain space-sim video games, I was quite familiar with the endless jargon thrown into the story, but even I began to roll my eyes a little at the sheer density of technical descriptions. It all got to be too much!

Which hurts the story in the long run, since the characters are pretty dang good. Spring Bloom is an interesting viewpoint character to have, but she keeps getting sidelined by technical jargon, a cavalcade of new characters every chapter, and a severe lack of emotional weight to some of her scenes. I mean, in one short sequence, she meets the flight director under whom her astronaut husband died… and they treat their meeting as an idle curiosity. It’s just one of several frustratingly emotionless scenes where real depth and character could have been on display, and was missed.

The story is also hurt by its lack of character focus. With such a huge cast vying for space, it’s hard to really care for every single one of them. Partly this is because the first couple thousand words of the story were squarely in Spring Bloom’s perspective, making her seem more important than she’s ended up being so far. It makes me feel like I’m reading two or three different stories stitched together, and while I’m fascinated by the tale of a time-displaced mare trying to make sense of her life, I’m then repeatedly interrupted by some plot about Luna cultists. The fact that the story only starts dumping swearing and killing into itself when they come around reinforces this bizarre feeling of separation between the plots.

And yet… I enjoyed it. Despite there being way too damn many characters, they’re all quite distinct in characterization (except the hacker-mercenaries, who I couldn’t tell apart if you put a gun to my head), and a number of them are even hilarious to read. It’s honestly the characters who save the story, though tragically we don’t get the best character until just before the end of what’s there so far.

There seems to be a lot of setup for… something. I can’t rightfully say what, but I have my guesses. Sure, my first guess or three were wrong. But as of writing, there’s a very, very distinct possibility of a plot here, and it’s intriguing enough to make me want to keep reading.

Oh. And as another fair warning, there are a lot of references in this story to other works of science fiction. Some can get a little groan-worthy, if that’s not your thing. For me, personally, I enjoyed the Cheese-factor of seeing characters referencing famous movies and books of the genre. Still waiting on a Dune reference, but the fact that we got stuff like a Han Solo style “We’re fine here… how are you?” conversation at one part tickled me good.

And because it seems like the thing to do these days, I will also provide my actual written notes as I went through the story, chapter by chapter. This is so that one can see my brain’s process (or lack of one) at work, and so that all of my little observations can be catalogued for the author’s enjoyment/understanding.

Beware, more SPOILERS may lie ahead.

Chapter 1

Some paragraph structure issues, and it feels long. Really fun for anyone who like space or has played KSP. Starshine dies, which is very sad. Spring Bloom (not Boom) seems nice. Odd tech level. Oh wait, it’s Apollo 13. Huh.

Chapter 2

TELL, not show. 15 year time skip suffers massively from this. “Horizon Space Station” must be a reference. Maybe too many details? Could cut down on unimportant scenes, but at same time these scenes do work well if you’re into the technical stuff. Flight director talk feels way too quick and impersonal. Why wouldn’t they have met before?
Finally get a date for setting (150years after show). Technical stuff part of the allure, I guess. Who tf are the two flower-print ponies? No info on them. Celestia and Luna still rule? AU tag justified.

Chapter 3

Now we’re getting somewhere. Wish the story had started here, actually, right in the action. Unfortunately, the padding is real. I can tell this would be spectacular to a space-fan or someone who’s into the whole procedural thing, but it definitely kills the pacing.
Oh cool! Twilight and Flurry still around. So why isn’t she running Equestria?
Use of “person” and “someone” instead of “pony” and “somepony”. This story is dead to me.

Chapter 4

FOR FUCK SAKE. Why is it always black cloaks? Why the evil cult? Just why? Is that the faux-latin used in “The Moon Rises”? Very nice. Wait, now it’s Solo? Profanity starts here. Seems like a rather sudden tonal shift for such a slow story.
Gurren Lagan? Also nice. Still, this feels like two different stories squished together so far. Hard-to-pronounce villain name. I’mma call him Ziggy.

Chapter 5

And a new character. Seems like a lot of them. I’m beginning to think story has a focus issue. Too much detail, again, during procedures. This feels more like an RP between Windows Flight Sim players.
Even more new characters. Problem is they come and go so fast I just can’t bring myself to care about any of them. And five chapters in, something like 35k words, we finally get a description of Spring Bloom. Wow.

Chapter 6

“Purple Smart”, ha. Plot lines are finally meeting up, but I still can’t bring myself to care about most of them. The Rosette thing is neat, but also very concerning from a lore perspective. Wait… is Needle Prick not a pony? Did I miss something?
Oh, and I guess that’s the end of the “Rosette vs Spring” plotline. Maybe this will turn into Die Hard soon? Been a couple different movies so far.

Chapter 7

Four chapters later, and we finally get Spring Bloom back as a narrator. Huzzah! Wait, the robot thing is finally back? Neat. A very silly, cartoon robot, it would seem. Much like… Pinkie. Huh… there’s now five main characters hanging about, and the prophecy from chapter four made a thing about “BEWARE THE SIX”. So. Elements of Harmony?
They really trust this robot fast, but then again, they probably all watched Treasure Planet. The fact that Clip didn’t make a Keanu “Whoa” joke is disappointing. The “we’re fine” Han Solo bit makes up for it, though.
AHA! Azure makes six!!! And a solid Portal 2 joke. Nice.
And I finally just realized that the author was asking for help with some of this dialogue a few… months back? Huh. Interesting to see the process at work.
Well. I can see red pony lady is completely sane. Yup. Not crazy at all.
MAC gun. Awesome.

Grammar and Word Things

4/5 – Some minor errors in the early chapters
It gave me a lot of early anxiety when reading to find the first chapter so marred by paragraphs colliding and the main character’s name misspelled. The fact that the errors… just sort of disappear after this point is bizarre. Not bad-bizarre, but still strange to see.

Story/Plot/Pacing

3/5 – Too much detail, too much that’s unimportant, and too little focus
Honestly, the entire first and second chapters could be cut or reduced to later flashbacks, and the story would be massively improved. Slash the fourth into ribbons, and it’d be more so. In general, the story needed an editor to remind CommissarVulpin they were writing a story, not a tech manual or Silmarillion-style history text.

Characters

4/5 – A fine ensemble, who all work together IN HARMONY WINK WINK
There are too many potential moments for the characters that are wasted. Moments like Spring Bloom reacting to, well, being time traveled. Or losing her husband. Or… anything, really. She seems always on the verge of becoming a more interesting character, and then coming up short. But she’s just intriguing enough, and surrounded by enough equally-interesting characters and setting that I can overlook that.

But Clip is Best Boy. No doubt in my mind.

Final Word and Rating

Secrets in the Stars is an intriguing, action-packed, character-driven look into the world of hard science fiction… through the eyes of adorable marshmallow equines. It’s an odd duck, padded to Tartarus and back, and somewhat lacking narrative focus, but its simple charm, humor, and snappy writing makes it feel more like a classic (read: Good) Star Wars film, or one of the better Marvel movies. It’s certainly worth your time.

To the author: Padding. So much padding. As I said up above, a ton of material could be cut from this story and leave it essentially undamaged or much improved. I’d hesitate to cut too many of the technical scenes later on, since a lot of your sincerity and heart is shown by the attention to detail you show there, but there’s a lot that should be cut down on or removed entirely. Legit, starting the story at Chapter 2’s ending, with Spring Bloom entering the mining hulk mysteriously, would be a fantastic starting point if you were to recut this story. Having her flashback after that to her backstory would also let you cut a lot of tedious details from the first two chapters as well.

Essentially, your story is good. Very good, even. But it could be great with more efficiency. Removal of unimportant details. The inclusion of more tactile ones. And allowing more character moments for some characters like Spring Bloom. I guess I harp on that a lot, but it’s only because I feel like you set her up as the main character, but then… don’t follow through on that. Otherwise, this was an immensely fun story to read. Blasted through it, in fact. Can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes: 7.2/10>

Ninja,
First of all I want to thank you for taking the time to review this. Your feedback as to what is lacking in the story is invaluable, especially since I’ve been having a difficult time finding editors and prereaders.

I don’t intend for my following responses to your points to come off as excuses; rather, I want to explain my thought process and why the story ended up the way it has.

First, the elephant in the room: the main character’s misspelled name. I read over the first chapter I-don’t-know-how-many times, and it was looked at by two prereaders. I have NO IDEA how that slipped by.

Most of the problems with the story, I think, can be distilled down to three main causes: My writing method, my fatal obsession with worldbuilding, and my own idiosyncrasies and weaknesses as far as storytelling in general.

Method:
My writing method can best be described as how a snake eats: massive bites with months between them. I wrote what would become the first chapter YEARS ago, but didn’t publish it until I was confident I could follow it up with a fleshed-out story. A lot of my ideas have changed since then, and even from one chapter to the next. Piper was originally meant to be a member of the main group and a love interest for Hex Key, but she was relegated to a side character after coming up with better character ideas and deciding against a romantic sub-plot.
When I was outlining the story, I would randomly come up with an idea for a scene that I just HAD to write, then I would try to bend the plot to incorporate it. The train heist and mass driver scenes were written this way, long before their respective chapters were written. In fact, the entirety of chapter 4, in retrospect, is a loosely strung-together necklace of idea beads. There are yet more scenes like this still waiting to be slotted into the story.

Worldbuilding:
I have an irresistible Call of The Void when it comes to worldbuilding. I have come up with an entire timeline for my AU’s history of Equestria, including major technological advancements, just so I could have date stamps that made sense. And it’s reared its ugly head in the body of the story, where I have evidently regurgitated textbook levels of exposition in an attempt to share my own mental picture of this world with my readers. And the air traffic control scenes…ugh. Are they a nudge nudge to someone who might be in the industry? Maybe. But your review has made me go back over them with a more critical eye and realize that they add NOTHING to the story.

Idiosyncrasies:
And my own little quirks and weaknesses have made their way into the story as well. I have gone to great lengths to avoid Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and it’s a personal pet peeve of mine when stories derail the introduction of a new character to describe their fur, mane, eyes, and cutie mark as if they’re reading a driver’s license. And worse is when a character describes themselves. So I had to wait for a point in the story for someone else to describe Spring in a more natural way. I realize that this has, in some cases, led to me eschewing a character’s description at all.
I have a known weakness in the form of emotional weight. I can write outbursts and breakdowns with some competency, but I’m awful at the more subtle stuff. I was never satisfied with the flight director meeting; it was intended to be a way to show that Spring is perhaps beginning to move on from her husband’s death, but it falls on its face.
This links back to the world building segment, but I get really attached to my characters. I hate introducing them and giving them personalities, only to abandon them and never see them again. Rosette was originally meant to just appear during the tour, but I decided to give her a little more of a role. The group of burglars I introduced in chapter 4 grew on me so much that they’re going to have a vital plot contribution later on. Add them to the six main characters, and that’s TEN. And I want to explore them all, their backstories, their motivations, what makes them tick. That’s why the story’s perspective jumps around so much, even though Spring is supposed to be the central character: I want the readers to get to know the characters and get attached to them.

Minor points:
I tend to use person/someone when referring to characters besides ponies, because saying creature/somecreature just feels awkward.
And the references…it takes me weeks to write a chapter so I think they’re spaced reasonably far apart. But it takes just minutes to read, and I realize now that the story is just overflowing with them. I know you like them, but I can’t help but feel like it cheapens the dialogue.
Your idea of starting the story at the end of chapter 2 and telling Spring’s story through flashbacks is an intriguing one, and I may just use that idea. The story needs a major rewrite as it is, but I’m not sure whether to do that now or wait until it’s finished.

First, the elephant in the room: the main character’s misspelled name. I read over the first chapter I-don’t-know-how-many times, and it was looked at by two prereaders. I have NO IDEA how that slipped by.

Hey, it happens! I think I still get people in the comments catching my mistakes like that two years after a story's been published.

In fact, the entirety of chapter 4, in retrospect, is a loosely strung-together necklace of idea beads.

That is how it came across, yes. And as I said before, cutting most of it would improve the flow.

But your review has made me go back over them with a more critical eye and realize that they add NOTHING to the story.

I wouldn't say nothing. But most of them could be cut, yes. If I were your editor, I'd say keep one or two of the most... important? Personally important ones. And cut the rest.

I have gone to great lengths to avoid Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and it’s a personal pet peeve of mine when stories derail the introduction of a new character to describe their fur, mane, eyes, and cutie mark as if they’re reading a driver’s license.

That is a weakness of this medium, yeah. But any sort of visual is better than none.

I was never satisfied with the flight director meeting; it was intended to be a way to show that Spring is perhaps beginning to move on from her husband’s death, but it falls on its face.

I mean, yeah. This is the guy who was on-task when her husband "died" cuz we both know that isn't sticking ;). Those people in RL have a very close working relationship. The Director should be more like a friend than another guy in the building. And having him just be like "oh yeah" felt so disingenuous to the situation. I think there's better ways of Spring moving past her trauma, but that wasn't it.

This links back to the world building segment, but I get really attached to my characters. I hate introducing them and giving them personalities, only to abandon them and never see them again. Rosette was originally meant to just appear during the tour, but I decided to give her a little more of a role. The group of burglars I introduced in chapter 4 grew on me so much that they’re going to have a vital plot contribution later on. Add them to the six main characters, and that’s TEN. And I want to explore them all, their backstories, their motivations, what makes them tick. That’s why the story’s perspective jumps around so much, even though Spring is supposed to be the central character: I want the readers to get to know the characters and get attached to them.

Unfortunately, I think this is a case of "Kill your Darlings". The story must come first, even if that means cutting characters or accepting that they're incredibly in-depth world won't make it to print.

Was there anything else I could help with? More detail on some point? My thoughts on X?