"This is the scanner ship Verne of the research ship Romulus, requesting assistance. My ship is damaged and unable to fly. My coordinates are as follows: 17 hours, 45 minutes, 40 seconds right ascension, negative 29 degrees, zero minutes, 30 seconds declination.
The planet is uncolonized but populated by intelligent quadrapedal creatures. I have limited my contact with them as much as possible, but they are curious and some technological contamination was unavoidable.
There's something strange about this little planet, but I can't quite put my finger on it."
Chapters (5)
This brilliant! For someone reason I wasn't looking forward to reading it but did so anyway. Better learn not to make assumptions from now on...
Not bad. I'm curious for the next chapter.
Loving it so far.
awesome
6534
Yeah, for some reason the summary makes it sound kind of unappealing. But it seems fun so far.
Like that other guy said the description is a little off putting but the story itself is very amusing.
7110
Hm....I'll work on the description then.
let's see where this goes shell we
ah, the enigmatic Mr. Johnson. now who might this be, i wonder?
good story. unnapealing summary. i cant wait for the next chapter
This is why you keep your helmet on at all times.
I have been waiting for an update for this story for so long. Lookning great so far!
Ohh, now we're getting to the meat of the story!
Celestia becoming going slightly insane? I like it.
Spoilers below.
Hokeydokey. Time for some comments! Warnings about the coming Wall Of Text.
Now, this sounds like a very nice idea for a story all in all, but I have some concerns about the pacing. For pretty much all of these chapters it feels like you're trying to rush through events, it's like you're trying to go towards one big revelation after the other, but giving little to no time to make the reader familiar with the environment and the characters.
I try to rationalize this as being because of your chosen perspective. With the first person perspective we only get to see what your human sees and experiences, but even then it never carries as much impact as it could have done. I acknowledge that your main character is probably stressed right now, but even then he seems to be spectacularly good at not really looking at anything. Yeah, we as the reader already know what the mane six looks like, we know everything about their world. But it would have been nice to see how your character experiences the world as well. Describe what he sees from his point of view, show us his thoughts and feelings a bit more thoroughly. I know nothing about his world for the matter, I'm entirely unfamiliar with the universe you're basing the crossover on, so it'd be nice to see him making comparisons to "conventional" aliens. Are aliens where he come from generally humanish? If so, shouldn't he be reacting with more surprise at finding non-humanish aliens? Even if aliens around him usually are weird, it's human nature to compare the unknown with what is known before. Throw in some hints as to the world he comes from as well. A good crossover takes every opportunity to merge the worlds, but right now I know nothing of his. So far, you haven't even described how his ship looks like, yet the past few chapters it has had a pretty big part of the story.
I believe I can condense that wall of text into: You need more descriptions. But that's a bit crude. What you have is well written, but it seems singularly focused on ploughing ahead through events, giving no time at all to build the world around it.
Characterization is also a big point in a story, and you're building up a decent basis for your human. He does come off a bit single minded however. Sure, he's stressed out and probably suffers from some kind of trauma and pain from the crash, but he still seems to act mostly like an inconsiderate rear end. Some more hints as to Why he acts this way would be nice. Is he some kind of space loner? That's been the only reasonable explanation I have found, considering he had never even been on a planet before. (Even if there is a policy regarding not interfering with 'uneducated races' that doesn't mean you have to be rude about it. And so far, that's been his modus operandi.)
Now, about the equestrians. So far, I haven't been terribly impressed with how you're portraying Celestia, Luna and Twilight. Starting with Twilight: She's a highly intelligent unicorn, and yet she asks your human "What's a ship?". Seriously, that's an unbelievably stupid question. It could probably be changed pretty easily though. Instead of making her seem like a foal who don't know what a ship is, she ought to just be surprised that he would call his metal contraption a "ship". Of course, after this I can't see how she'd stumble around the concept of a spaceship for very long. She already have the facts and needs to just connect the dots, and Twilight is very good at doing that. (Also. When she sees that Pinkie is injured Twilight... Pokes at her? Seriously?)
Celestia doesn't really feel believable either. The only thing I could think would rationalize her behaviour through this fic, is if she has been created with a built in reverence for humans. But even then, Luna seems to be rather contrary to that. Celestia has had more than 1000 confirmed years of taking care of an entire kingdom. Even if it is a good one, I can't imagine that she'd ever act so hurriedly as she's shown to do here, especially not if one of her subjects have been injured. (Unless she was actually fearful of humans, but that doesn't seem to be how you have portrayed her either.)
Also, is this just how the human interprets it, or are Luna and Celestia seriously pointing their horns at each other in a charging motion? Yeah, they showed Twilight and Nightmare Moon do that in the first episodes, but even there Nightmare Moon was incredulous at Twilights attempt and seemed to follow along just because she thought it was a joke. This really made your scenes attempt at being serious seem rather odd. A subtle build-up of magic in their horns and the humans bafflement at the tension and meaning of it could have built a better foundation for that scene.
Anyway, I have rambled on way more than I had intended. I could probably go on a bit on more "technical" parts as well, such as how language evolves on its own and how the equestrian version of common would likely be almost incomprehensible to your character as well, but no matter. Maybe some other time :).
Have fun with your story!
Does our pilot traveled in the past? Would explain a lot. Sort of anyway, i sense dimensional mess here. Occam's razor? HA!
I like where this is going.
What is this a crossover with?
19384
It's not a crossover, although a lot of the names and places are pulled from random sources so that I wouldn't dwell too long on finding a name and not writing.
19251
Thanks you for your detailed review.
I know that the story is rather rushed. There are several factors at play here, which doesn't necessarily excuse the fact, but it's hard to describe the why without long chapter notes. (I also feel that they'd get ignored anyway.)
First, aside from the first few chapters, it's been released a chapter at a time. I feel that if my story doesn't have things happening in it every chapter, then people might get bored. There's also that I might get bored with the story, which happens a lot. It's always "Okay, we just have to get through the romantic tension scenes, then we can go write the epic dragon warriors vs. wizards battle."
Second (related to the first), is that I never intended for this to be a long story. I'd love to go back when it's finished and re-write it into the genre-crushing epic I imagined it to be, but if I don't get this to happen first, then I'm just not going to go back.
Also, you're totally right about the descriptions, I need much, much more of them.
About the language: that was a total screw-up. I always intended that the ponies would speak Common and that the human would understand them without much of a problem. Somewhere around the middle of writing Chapter 3 I was like "Oh, snap. I totally forgot about how language changes over time!" Then, I figured I'd just go up in my Word file and work around it until it made sense, before realizing that Chapter 1 and 2 were already published and had been for a while.
The ret-con answer is this: Common is an unchanging language. If you've got hundreds or potentially thousands of worlds that need to communicate then you need a common language. Universal translators are not only the easy way out: they just just don't make any sense. Each space-faring species would have evolved language in its own way in a unique situation, which means that there would be plenty of concepts that could just not translate.
Also, if a species or group drops out of contact with the rest of the universe for a while (like with Equestria), then you don't have to re-learn an entire language to communicate. Language drifts anyway, so when you're away from your home group (like in real life, when you go to college or camp or something else long-term) your language shifts and melds with that of the new group and situation. Something like that couldn't be handled on a large scale, so the creation of a common, unchanging language would be necessary.
The Celestia and Luna things are planning to be addressed in-story, so hopefully it will make sense. If not, then please tell me.
I'll try to write a tied-in blog post about the particular world and things (and the sources of all of the random names), when the story is finished.
Well, nuts. I had my tags wrong. That's why everyone thought it was a crossover.
he...hit...Pinkie
He...HIT....Pinkie Pie
HE HIT PINKIE!!!!!
*dive tackles the pilot in a fit of rage... gets up after mauling him*
Picard would be disappointed. Prime Directive or No.
Ahem...
I have a BAAAADDDDD Feeling about this.
great, another story that I burned through in an hour or less, btw, the pace is too fast, this story reminds me of Halo and gmod spacebuild, I hope you update fast, and last and least, give more details on the ship!
every fic the main character has to be knocked out