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Brought to Equestria as a child, he wanted only to protect those he loved. Now war threatens, and he must make a choice; guard Equestria, or those he cares for?
Looking for proofreaders! I know you're out there.
First fic, so comment, critique, give death threats. Going for a long haul here, so hopefully if it starts bad it well get better. Aiming to update every couple of weeks if I can. Hopefully it won't be longer than a month.
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The time skips were fine here in the beginning. But in the future chapters, I hope you'll go a bit more in debt.
I look forward to reading more, though Micheal's character could use a bit of background, but I realize that this just setting up the story.
2986597
There aren't any time skips of the 'suddenly, x time later' variety in the next few chapters. Not in my plans for them, anyway. More of the, 'a few minutes later, blah happened'.
2986610 That I can deal with that
Btw I faved the story and I am looking forward to where you take this.
Why the fuck can't I favorite this!
2986604
You learn a little bit about Michael's history in the next chapter. Emphasis on little. He doesn't like to talk about it much.
2986748
I don't know. This is clearly some sort of conspiracy against me.
Seriously though, I don't know. I want to tell you to turn it off and on again, but I don't think that applies here. Try a different web-browser maybe? Is it just this story, or others as well?
2986780 there we go, it's fixed, I tried to do it on my IPhone
2986810
You can't favourite things on mobile? Huh, learn something new every day.
Also, thanks for the favourite! I really appreciate it.
2986610 it's Probaly being stupid
looks intredasting
Should've snapped it off
Not a bad story, but you need to work a bit more on the points of view. I saw many instances in which you first used I and then His, like "I was putting his clothes back on." for example...
3022193 that bothered me to no end
and then... they banged
3022346 At least now he knows of it and he'll probably change it in the next chapters.
yay update
3022193
Oh, damn. I have some trouble with switching between them, but I thought I got 'em all.
Edit: Had a quick look through, think I got most of them. If I missed anything like that, let me know.
3022665
I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Wait, so this story, is an alternate universe where Spike is replaced with Micheal am I right?
3023418
Sort of. Spike isn't Twilight's assistant, but he is still around. I have plans for him, and he'll be appearing briefly in a few chapters. I doubt he'll be around much, but you never know.
Aww yeah! New story! *fist pumps*
This chapter was the best so far. I can't wait to see how will Michael deal with Discord... I hope you reach that point soon.
3084264 I'm glad you enjoyed it, though I'm afraid it'll probably be two weeks to the next chapter, as I'm having trouble with it, so Discord won't be a for a bit. Maybe. Might move him up.
What didn't you like about the chapter, though? Anything you saw I need to do better?
3084273
Well, I didn't exactly like that you skipped the other obstacles like that. But otherwise I can't think of anything else.
nice chapter looking forward to more
Wait... So Spike is a spy... Awesome! *fist pumps till hand explodes* Worth it!
3098693
Glad you enjoy it. As I said, next chapter will probably be two weeks, barring a huge surge of inspiration or an interlude chapter of some sort.
3098934
No, no, he just happens to pass on to Celestia what he hears around the Castle. Is it his fault ponies seem to think the Library is a good place to have cladenstine discussions? [/sarcasm]
In all seriousness, though he operates entirely within Canterlot at the time being. He is ten years old.
Another chapter! *another fist pump*
Another good chapter
but you named it chapter 6 instead of 5
3169691
Oh. Oops. Well, glad you enjoyed it.
Fixed.
Ten stone? You mean ten stones?
3204709
When talking about weights, I keep it singular, and so does everyone in my family, but that could just be us being weird. So I checked Wikipedia, which gives the plural of 'stone' when the word is used as a weight. But it should probably be 'stones'. If it bothers you, I'll change it, but it seems for weight, the plural of 'stone' is 'stone'.
Also, I just spent the last minute muttering about weights like a madman. I hope your happy
3204847 i am happyI
Pretty good, I don't see how this is NOT in the feature box yet.
3270559
Dude. Thank you. Really. Theres no feeling quite like knowing someone else enjoys your work. Its a sort of warm, bubbly feeling. Kinda tickles.
3270568 I do my best to make a good turn daily(boy scout motto), it's also why I'm a good driver! *crashes into tree*
Yay! Novel Length!
3336575
Yeah, I'm happy about it as well. Now to get it novel quality, and then comes the money and the power.
Hey there! I’m La Barata, and welcome to…
i.imgur.com/8Vxze64.png
I’m your assigned W.R.I.T.E. Reviewer, and here’s how things are gonna work. There are going to be three sections to this review, three main areas: Literary, Technical and a summary with some notes.
Literary will be your basic story elements. We’re gonna talk plot, setting, characters, all the things that make your story a story. I’m not gonna try to talk about the story you’ve written, I’m gonna talk about the story you’re TRYING to write, if that makes any sense.
The technical section is where I’m gonna focus on your spelling, grammar, formatting and all those tricky little things that lots of folks seem to have an issue with, all the little things that
my third grade teacher beat me for messing upyou need to know to make your story technically great.The last section is where I summarize what I’ve already told you. Basically, it’s gonna be a quick reference guide for you, easily accessible when you’re reworking chapters and rewriting sections. In addition, it’s where I’m going to put some personal notes. It’ll be stuff like my overall impressions of the story, personal opinions and
SCP-1098other little things, in addition to other notes that I don’t really think fit in the other sections.SO! Let’s take a look, shall we?
First and foremost, let’s talk characters. Let’s go over those in the first few chapters: The Mane 6, The Princesses and Michael. For starters, I really like how you’ve done Celestia. She really does have the feel of an ancient, almost tired ruler, pondering how best to care for the ponies she needs to protect. She’s got a bit of the manipulator in her, and we get a clear view of her playing a long game with Twilight and Michael. You can tell that she really does care for both of them, and that she’s really trying to look out for their best interests, despite how difficult Michael makes it for her sometimes. There’s a little bit of enmity between them which you make pretty clear, but we can tell that despite all that, they do care for each other on some level.
Now, let’s take a look at the Mane 6. You did a pretty decent job of characterizing them, I think, but it’s a little weak. You got their characters down decently, but they’re really sort of one dimensional. This IS, though, something you improve upon in later chapters, and you’re starting to get better at it. One point I particularly liked for characterization, though, was Michael’s sparring match with Dash. I can honestly see her losing her cool and starting to get a good bit more violent once she starts losing, simply out of pure frustration. You did a good job there.
Finally, I’d like to look at Twilight and Michael together. You’ve created an interesting dynamic between these two, and truthfully, it’s one I’m fond of. They obviously care about each other a lot, and you manage to carry the message across rather well. They’ve grown up together, and it shows. You don’t tell us that he cares about her, you SHOW us. This isn’t some sort of Mario Bros. romance in which we’re told THIS IS YOUR WOMAN YOU LOVE HER GO SAVE HER, to blatantly steal from a critic far better than myself (And yes, I know it’s not actually a romance but it still fits).
Next, let’s look at the story. Alright, gonna take a moment here and be a little candid. I’ll admit it. When I got sent a HiE fic, I rolled my eyes. “Oh, bloody hell. Not another one of these ones”, I said to myself. “Well, I’ll just bite the bullet and read a chapter or two, then I’ll review it and be done with it”. And so I read a chapter. And then another. And another and another and another. And then four more. I’ve gotta say, you really impressed me with this. You can count it favourited once this review’s posted. You’ve come up with something rather clever, and you’ve executed it beautifully. You’ve created a great story here, and you do something that I absolutely LOVE:
THE PRACTICAL THING.
Nightmare Moon shows up? Let’s use the purple talking unicorn as a distraction while we BEAT HER ASS.
piclair.com/data/y6pxx.jpg
It’s one thing you do that I really do find refreshing. You take the simple, uncomplicated route, which so few people do.
Everything that happens is completely believable. Everything that happens to these characters in this setting is entirely believable, in that I can totally see it happening. The characters being beautifully in character helps to make just about everything that happens perfectly believable, and it’s honestly quite the fun story to read. I’m not sure if there’s much more I can say on this one. I won’t say it’s perfect, because that’s unfair to both you and to anyone reading this review, but I WILL say that it’s VERY good.
However, as I said, it’s not perfect, and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone to say it is. There are a few things I might change throughout, starting with the prologue.
In the prologue, the first five paragraphs, you explain to us something that happened. Something that could have been absolutely fucking metal if we watched it happen. We join up with Celestia, who’s sitting here across from Michael and next to Twilight, and we’re told how he straight up threw down on several guards, putting one of them in the hospital. We’re told of how he saved Twilight and Spike from the collapsing tower. The problem here, though, is the word told. You TELL us about this awesome fight with guards and daring rescue from a tower, followed by an enforced quarantine. How cool would it have been for you to show it to us?
Another similar issue a bit later on. We’re basically just TOLD that ‘Oh, he became a guard’. SHOW us some bits of his training. Show us how he got where he is, where he might have learned some of his ideals, his morals, a few little things he might’ve overcome that made him a better person and who he is today.
---
Alright, now that we’ve gotten the literary aspect out of the way, it’s time to move onto the more technical areas. Unfortunately, there ARE some issues, but at the same time, the reason I’m writing this is so that you can improve.
For starters, you seem to have issues in places with the contractions, its vs. it’s, your vs. you’re, that sort of thing.
As I tell everyone who asks, the best way I’ve found to differentiate between the ones that use apostrophes and the ones that don’t is to simply remember that the apostrophe is there to squeeze two words together. You’re is a contraction of ‘you’ and ‘are’, while it’s is a contraction of ‘it’ and ‘is’. Just say the sentence out to yourself robotically, like you’re the borg. If it ends up being ‘it is’, then use an apostrophe. Make any sense? An even simpler way to remember: In the case of your and its, If it’s a possessive, there’s no apostrophe.
In addition to that, you tend to forget to use apostrophes with other possessives. Twilight's, Rainbow Dash's, Fluttershy's, Applejack's, Pinkie Pie's, Rarity's. If it belongs to someone, it's 's.
There are a few minor sentence structure and paragraph formatting issues near the beginning, but honestly? You steadily improve as the fic continues, and there’s really not all that much for me to say on this front besides what I’ve already said that wouldn’t be simply nitpicking at various little errors.
---
Finally, we’re gonna get to section 3. Summary and a few notes.
LITERARY ASPECT
1. You tend to hide some of the better scenes, only telling us what’s happened after the fact. Try to keep us in the action, that’s where the best parts lie.
2. The mane 6 are a bit one dimensional. Try fleshing them out a bit more.
TECHNICAL ASPECT
1. Your apostrophes need work in places, especially in your possessives
2. You might want to tighten up your paragraph formatting and sentence structure.
And that’s it, really. Seriously, this is one of the best fics I’ve ever reviewed. You’re pretty solid technically, you’re a great character writer and you’ve come up with an interesting take on their world. You’ve done a damn good job of this, and you should be pretty damn proud of it.
Keep up the good work,
~La Barata, W.R.I.T.E.’s Drunken Scottish Priest.
3355124
First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to review my story, especially so in depth.
Now, on to the content of your reply.
My plan at first was to show the whole magic accident, and you're right, it could have been amazing. It really could have. It's just, at the time I didn't think I was a good enough writer to do it justice. I have trouble with descriptions, being very literal minded, and that would need some good descriptions. I'm a bit more confident now, but I'll want some more practice before I try anything too epic.
As for the becoming a guard thing, yeah, I probably should have shown more of that. I've got some spare writing time during the week now, so I might do an out-take sort of thing. A rough structure for it has been floating around my head for a while, but I want to focus on the main story before doing anything else. Also got a few ideas for between his arrival and him joining the Guard.
As for doing the practical thing, see above re: literal mindedness.
For the technical aspect, my excuse is I didn't have time to do much editing on a chapter-a-week schedule. I don't have an editor or proofreader, it's just me. It should improve now I've changed it to two-a-week, but no promises.
Finally, thanks for the favourite and the praise. It really does mean a lot, especially the part about Celestia, as that was what I was aiming for with her, and wasn't sure if I had hit the mark. I'll do my best to work on the points you mentioned.
P.S.
<-- that was my face after reading your review.
3356259 At any rate, you did a pretty damn good job.
Keep up the good work!
Wow Celestia, you suck!
I hope that you make the meeting between Michael and Celestia end in conflict. It almost sounds like Celestia wanted him gone. And since when does a Captain go on missions like that. Anyway, it almost seems as if his life means nothing towards them :/.
The dogs made tunnels below the ground so how hard is it to dig them up and follow the trail back.
Ah well, I'll be waiting for the next chapter.
3403039
You're assuming they've only dug one set of tunnels.
Why do I get the feeling that both Sun Butt and Shining are in on Micheal's "death"
You almost make me want to drop this story :/.
Luna is possive of him. And Celestia is acting like a total bitch.
You are right though. It would be for the best that you give us some explanations about their stupid behaviour.
Interesting turn of events. Your portrayal of Celestia seems to bounce around but then again how do you portray a benevolent tyrant? At the end of the last chapter I fully expected him to tear into Celestia, I expected Celestia to want him dead. I did not expect the politics and everything else to go with this. I will try to read more without jumping to conclusions as it seems that this will not be an easy story to predict.
3464847
I like to think of my portrayal of Celestia as consistently inconsistent. And yeah, writing her can be hard.
Damn! Bestiality always makes me laugh!
This review is brought to you by Zero Punctuation Reviews
This week on “reviewing stories that seem to carry huge ‘THIS IS SHITE’ signs at first glance”, I am going to tackle a HiE story.
Now I have to stress that I most certainly did not bring myself to do this simply to clear the backlog of the group enough to get the others to review one of my own stories, and while the very idea of reviewing a representative of said genre did drive me to write a suicide note (just in case), you may take comfort in the fact that I will not shy away from any kind of bullshit that you “aspiring authors” are capable of spewing out, if for no other reason but to make you regret ever choosing to submit your garbage to the rest of the world.
All that said, since this had been a rather busy week for me, right from the start I decided not to read the whole thing before reviewing it, because over sixty thousand words are about fifty-five thousand more than I was willing to drag myself through, especially if it all turned out to be a giant mountain of putrefying sewage. The description wasn’t very helpful either. While it did not actually insult my intelligence, I most certainly cannot say that it could ever have drawn me in if I were to just stumble across it while browsing the site. “To the point” maybe, but it is also much too short and cliched to inspire any curiosity, not to mention a bit disjointed as well. And once your attention lands on the genre tags, you are most certainly not going to become interested, unless HiE happens to be your recipe for arousal.
It was with this generous amount of negative prejudice that I dove into the first couple of chapters of this story, so it was a pleasant surprise to conclude after a few paragraphs that the author can, at the very least, employ proper grammar. The content itself turned out to be genuinely intriguing as well, despite being a bit “wonky”, for lack of a better word. There is never too much or not enough, but the actual arrangement of the information that we get -- and sometimes even the sentences themselves -- felt a bit disjointed. Still, I actually found myself curious about where this story was going to take me. My curiosity, however, turned out to have been misplaced.
I must point out that I personally tend to dislike stories that try to “insert themselves” into the canon storyline. That is: instead of taking place before or after the events we see in the show, we get the kind of “alternate universe” where the same series of events take place, but with an “extra element” added to them (in this case: Twilight makes her first appearance in Ponyville, but this time with a human following her around). This, combined with my dislike toward most HiE (for rehashing the same formula and the same tropes over and over again), meant that this story would face a really tough crowd in my case. Don’t get me wrong, I am willing to dive into anything if it turns out to be well-written, but certain genre choices will make it that much more difficult to impress me.
This was especially unfortunate for this story during its second (well, officially the first) chapter, where the writing simply begins to fall apart. For one thing, the fact that the human character practically replaces Twilight in the story, taking the initiative in every scenario where we remember her doing so, was rather annoying, to say the least. Wait, scratch that… (SPOILER ALERT, in case you actually plan to read this:) he replaces Spike, then does everything instead of Twilight as well.
You know, if you want to have the type of character in your story like the one you were going for (i.e “overprotective tough guy”), the least of all that you could have done was make their characters equal, instead of Twilight basically being a plaything in this guy’s hands while he does everything important. It entirely defeats the purpose of the setting, since she is a far too well established character to suddenly be relegated to such a pathetic role. In fact, pretty much everypony becomes this guy’s lackey by the start of the third (“second”) chapter. They all run around like sodding headless chickens, while he is the only one to keep his cool and spring to action whenever it is necessary. And you know where this is going. That’s right: Mary Sue territory. Well... rather: Gary Stu territory, but whatever you call it, the point is that it’s fucking atrocious in a story that otherwise attempts to take itself seriously.
I had to stop reading about four chapters in, no matter what fantastic adventures would have awaited me later on. It was simply too aggravating to read a story that practically defecates all over the events that happen in the show for no adequately explained reason. That, and I just couldn’t get into the human’s character. If he were toned down a little, and I was stuck on a deserted island with just a copy of this story as my only possession of human literature, then maybe I could bring myself to continue. Though I would probably have to find a way to get myself really drunk as well...
To be perfectly honest, the most positive thing I can point out about this story was the bit where it’s revealed that the guy is from Glasgow, because, when combined with some of his behavior, it reminded me of Frankie Boyle’s depiction of Scotland. Other than that, while it has decent grammar, more or less solid writing, and what might even turn out to be an interesting plot, the characters alone ruined it for me. I don’t usually recommend this to a story that is well underway, but I think this one could use a decent rewrite.
PS: I really did not need to fucking know about how Twilight’s first heat affected their relationship. My suicide note will be stickied in the group forums later today, along with the approximate coordinates of my corpse.