Politicians prey on the vulnerable, the disadvantaged and those with an infantile sense of pride in a romanticised national identity which was fabricated by a small to mid-sized advertising agency.
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Flightlessness? Changing friendships? Booze and boys and beats?
Growing up sucks, and staying a filly while the world moves on around you is even less fun. But Scootaloo is determined not to let any of that get in the way of having fun and being the pony she wants to be.
Pre-read by Blue_Paladin42 and jlm123hi.
Cover art vector by ~tgolyi
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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By the way -- If anyone is worried about clumsy OC romances or boo-hoo-woe-is-Scootaloo mawkishness, allow me to direct your attention to the lack of [Romance] and [Sad] tags above.
3130003 This comment earned this story a like without me even reading the story.
In fairness, I thought 2 was a pretty good one two.
Oh Scoots, only you would think poor impulse control proves maturity. And I am not including RD in this because I am pretty sure RD has no illusions about her own maturity.
3130003 Please just do comedy romances then XD
Also,
Scoots: Well damn. Couldn't I have known this when I was five so I could get them removed and a horn surgically implanted?
(We need more Scootmotions :/)
Well let us see what Rainbow's reaction will be. If Scoots even gets around to telling her.
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SCOOTALOO IS WORST PONY
3130438
Cheers! (I think)
3130553
Maturity? That another word for not awesome?
3130584
I got that message trying to add this to groups before it passed moderation. Added to my user experience no end, I tell you.
3130681
Agreed on the scootemoticons. Also, I'm pretty sure if I ever tried to do a romantic comedy it was devolve into existential navel gazing with sex jokes pretty much immediately.
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If indeed.
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3134053
Thanks!
3135245
You gone done trolled us good. Oh, you troll, you.
What's tail-popping?
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Elevating the tail. It's something mares in heat do. In pony society, it's probably one of those awkward going-through-puberty moments for young mares.
Poor Scoots.
Rainbow would understand!
The mead is a nice touch. Honey booze!
Oh Scoots, you little delinquent you. 
I like it so far. I adored the use of one of my favorite words "traipse".
I'm getting ready to write an aged up Scoots story myself so I need to see what is out there so I don't inadvertently tread old ground.
Poor Scoots. Hopefully she can get her act together. She just seems to be drifting aimlessly right now.
Ok ... what is Scootaloo's Cutie Mark? I must have missed it, but I am wondering what the heck it's supposed to be
have her go home with her date
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Scootaloo is best bad influence? Almost certainly.
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Cheers! If you're interested in finding more, I read Black Celebration and Best Young Flyer as my research for this fic.
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So long as it's just Scoots and not the story itself, that's all good.
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I have no idea. So don't worry, you didn't miss it. Maybe this needs explanation? Nearly every story that features a grown filly (or an original character) goes to the trouble of detailing their cutie mark. I almost never do that, because I don't think it adds too much, and I like being a contrary git.
tl'dr version: You can choose whatever headcanon cutie mark you like for her.
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Then the story becomes really awkward pornography?
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Would not surprise me if RD did the exact same thing at Scoot's age, and has told her all about it.
Hmm, I think Rainbow is probably the best bad influence.
You are now picturing Rainbow Dash giggling at a now bit more than tipsy Fluttershy while holding a mead bottle.
Greetings, Scramblers and Shadows! Here is the review you requested from WRITE:
Unless that’s a weird hybrid fetlock/buttock body part, you have a good old-fashioned typo there.
Watch your telly language. The worst offenders are directly naming emotions (sad), using them in -ly adverb form (happily), or in prepositional phrase form (in excitement). The gist of it is that such words don’t paint a picture for me. They get me to invent the picture for you. That’s your job. You paint the picture and get me to infer the emotions you want from it. This makes the reader think about your character and identify with him more, and it’s a more natural way to interpret emotion. What about her sigh would lead you to conclude it was dramatic if you were there to witness it? That’s what you need to show me. Now, you don’t always have to show, if the situation is unimportant, but it makes for a more engaging read, and that’s really what you need up front where you’re trying to hook the reader.
You have a number mismatch here. “That sort of gesture” or “those sorts of gestures.”
Here, I’ll cut in to say that your sentences structures are already repetitive after one paragraph. The simple subject-verb-maybe-object will often be a writer’s go-to arrangement but you have to toss in enough other ones to mix it up, or it gets into a rut. Even throwing a prepositional phrase, adverb, participle, absolute phrase, etc. will spice up this structure. You have 9 sentences in the first paragraph. 8 have a subject, and all 8 begin with it. 6 of those subjects are “she” or “Scootaloo.”
You’re telling again. What does this look like? If it’s my conclusion, I’ve made a connection with the character to deduce that. If it’s the narrator’s conclusion, it’s a cold fact.
I believe you’d do better using “with.” “By” suggests that the posters did the painting, carpet, feng shui…
I believe you’re severely short-changing her attitude. Without any evidence why, this is pretty sterile. Even a couple of one-sentence anecdotes or a short list of her qualities that Scootaloo likes would go a long way.
As a noun, it’s preferred to capitalize it as “X-ray.”
“Last time” is a “when,” not a “where.”
Unless you do something to make repeating this meaningful, it just comes across as an oversight.
You’ve done this (see what I did there?) a number of times already. It’s weak to use a demonstrative as a pronoun in narration, as it has a vague antecedent that’s often a broad piece of text. Find a noun to stick after it, like “this new information.”
Set off the dependent clause with a comma.
And herein lies the main problem. I don’t know how she feels, either, and that’s the crux of your story. It’s not going to draw me in if she’s unreadable. Having conflicting emotions is great; having no emotions isn’t.
Note that modifiers like to latch onto the closest possible object, so the word placement here suggests it’s Scootaloo who is sympathetic and implacable. And the doctor seemed rather calm. Implacable doesn’t make sense here.
Why is this capitalized?
The only thing to visualize here is the smile. You’re putting far too much of your responsibility onto the reader.
Don’t capitalize “Family.”
That sentence doesn’t parse. Not sure what you were trying to say.
Missing your dialogue punctuation. A comma, unless you wanted an exclamation mark there.
Comma splice. You’ve tacked together two complete sentences with a comma.
You don’t need to capitalize after an ellipsis if it makes syntactic sense as a continuous sentence.
In the past ten paragraphs, there’s only been one non-speaking action, and it was an unadorned sigh. If I don’t know what these characters are doing as they talk, they might as well be statues. Half of a conversation is nonverbal. Don’t short me that. How do they look, how do they react, what’s their body language?
Again, comma between the clauses.
When referring to her specifically like this, capitalize “Mom,” versus leaving it lower case for a generic reference that isn’t using it for a name, like “my mom.”
Another misplaced modifier, and participles are a common one for that. It sounds like Scootaloo is the one looking back.
Homonym confusion. You want “principal.”
Double word.
Verb tense.
Sweet Celestia, is that ungainly. First off, it’s a huge change from the narrative voice you’ve struck so far. Second, phrases like “at this point” are horribly self-referential to the narration. Lose the italics, lose the parentheses, lose the “at this point,” and this will work.
You’ve been inconsistent about using a comma with “too.” While it’s easier to always use one or never use one, there is a school of thought that differentiates instances, but your usage doesn’t match that, either. That method uses a comma when “too” refers to the subject (I went to college there, too.) and goes without when it refers to an item in a list (I had some toast, and I tried the eggs too.) It’s often simpler to go with the all-or nothing approach, unless you feel like putting a lot of thought into it.
Odd (and probably unintentional) word choice, given that she’s also holding a stuffed bat.
More repetitive sentence structure. These all start with the subject, are all simple sentences, and are all about the same length. That all converges to give this a very plodding feel, like it’s a list.
Does not compute. How would simply thinking confuse her? Maybe the subject matter would, but that’s not what this says.
Lose that second “of.” You already took care of it.
Typo.
Missing comma for direct address.
Give me some context to know what this means. An uncomfortable silence? One of them is watching a birdie out the window. Taking a drag on a cigarette? And this is the third time in the chapter where you have a sentence that’s just “a pause” or “there was a pause.” It stands out as repetitive.
Again, you’re totally disarming any emotional conflict here.
I don’t buy this, and it’s very cliche.
Hyphenate your compound descriptors.
Extraneous space.
Take me through some of this. I need to see it happen, not just have the narrator’s assurance that it did.
I don’t understand her purpose in doing this within the context of the class. It’s meant to help her remember their names, but she already knows Diamond Tiara and probably already had names for her.
Be consistent with using a period with this.
Missing a word in there.
Another missing word, and I have to take issue with your simile. A factory implies mass manufacturing and something that’s not particularly old, neither of which really meshes with being priceless. Maybe you should go for a museum or art gallery.
And this (for the second time in the last two paragraphs) is sticking out with those previous instances of “a pause.” One or two times in a story is fine. What you have here is an unfortunate tic.
Alright, let me throw a whole paragraph at you, because this exemplifies a lot of your problems. All but one of these sentences start with the subject. They’re all about the same length, have a similar rhythm, and have a downward inflection. And aside from the deep breath, they’re all treating how she feels as a series of cold facts to toss at the reader.
It’s the difference between:
Paul was mad. His boss had taken credit for his idea. The CEO was so impressed that he took the presentation straight to the board. It didn’t have Paul’s name on it, of course. Everything that could have gone wrong did. The whole day had been like that.
and:
He seethed in the corner and nearly bit through the already well-chewed pencil clenched in his teeth. Not a moment before, that lazy manager of his had claimed the new advertising pitch as his own, right in front of Paul. Did he think Paul wouldn’t notice, or was he just that immune to ethics? And then the CEO carried that pitch—Paul’s pitch—straight up to the board. After a cold cup of coffee, the third traffic jam in as many days, and… yeah, just another perfect day.
What’s with the scene marker at the end of chapter 1?
First off, pony names generally make sense. I’m trying to decide how much of this was intentional. That’s a very obtrusively long name. At least I get that Tango and Foxtrot have to do with her career, but Whiskey? I haven’t seen a use for it… except that in the NATO phonetic alphabet, she’s WTF, which is a groan-inducing hidden joke that awfully undercuts the tone of your story and that character’s role in it. This is exactly the kind of thing that writers think is exceedingly clever and refuse to rethink, but I’ll go ahead and tell you it absolutely doesn’t fit the story.
On to chapter two, then. Mostly, I’m seeing the same things as in the last chapter, so I’m going to blow through this one more quickly.
It’s unclear here whether “her” refers to Scoot or Dash, and this whole thing comes out of nowhere. What friends? What lovers? Get in the way of what? There’s been zero reference to any of this, and now it’s thrown out as if it should be self-evident.
If it’s that windy, why didn’t it affect her journey up to Dash’s house? Seems odd that it wouldn’t come into play until now.
Also, I’m already getting a very different narrative voice in this chapter. It’s anchored deeper in Scoot’s perspective, which is a welcome change; in the last chapter, the narrator was chiefly objective.
You didn’t hyphenate this in the last chapter.
You’ve attributed the quote twice in one sentence.
Another missing word.
Missing end punctuation.
Extraneous apostrophe.
This is the hugest let-down. Show me what she does! How the small talk winds down, Dash is just oblivious to the lull, Scoot turning over her thoughts, deciding whether to tell Dash what she wanted, then keeping silent and hastily making an exit. There is so much rich ground to mine here. Now, I appreciate subtlety and understatement, but you’re just skipping over one of the emotional high points of the story. No, don’t make it all melodramatic. Subtlety still works, but you have to say something before you can do the soft sell, ad I have to have some emotional connection to Scootaloo if I’m going to care what happens to her.
Dialogue capitalization.
Extraneous space, missing comma.
Another missing word, and this word choice is really at odds with the decidedly Scootaloo-like voice he’s been taking so far in this chapter.
You need another dot in your ellipsis, and are you sure you didn’t mean “sibilance”?
Typo
Another extraneous space.
C’mon. GDocs, Word, and many other programs point these things out.
Either an unneeded comma or a wrong verb form.
Wait, Derpy was doing this outside before. What floor is this?
Dialogue punctuation.
And again with the scene break marker at the end of a chapter…
Okay, summing up time.
Mechanics:
Quite a few editing problems of various types. I marked quite a few examples, but there are many more. It’s up to you to find them. I’ve probably already done too much of that, as we aren’t an editing service.
Really, any problems were so intermittent that I couldn’t tell whether you know what you’re doing and had a few lapses or don’t know what you’re doing and got lucky a lot. I’m not going to guess, so rather than go into a bunch of explanations, I’ll just say that if you don’t understand any of the mechanical points I made, go look up some info on the subject.
Style:
Here’s really where this story needs help. I’ll reiterate the issues I repeatedly pointed out above: show-versus-tell, talking heads, disconnect in narrative voice between the chapters and even within chapter 1, some narration that doesn’t sound like Scootaloo, repetitive sentence structures.
In addition to the telly language, they story constantly missed opportunities to delve into Scoot’s emotions, opting instead to give me a blow-by-blow account of what happens at the expense of showing me how she feels about any of it, except when it does so bluntly and without finesse.
In addition to repetitive sentence feel, take a look at these word counts, totaled over both chapters:
start/began: only 9. But these verbs are often used when they really didn’t need to be. Every action begins. That’s a given. It’s only worth mentioning when that beginning is noteworthy because it’s a significant/abrupt change or because the action never finishes.
said: 97. There’s a spectrum of such words. Many people had it drilled into them in grade school to avoid this word at all costs, but that’s more of an effort to foster creativity than good writing. But going with only this is just as extreme. At least you worked a pretty good balance between using “said” and going with no speaking action, but it’s okay to work in a few different ones here and there for variety. What constitutes a good balance will vary from reader to reader, but the point is that your choice of speaking verbs should blend in well enough that the reader doesn’t find them noteworthy; at that point, it’s drawing focus away from the important things, like the dialogue itself. And I found myself very aware that you used only “said.”
is/was: 129. There are many other forms of this verb, some of which are pretty difficult to tease out in a search, so there will be more. That seems like a very high number to me for this word count. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem, but you’ll have to look at each instance and see if it’s really necessary. Beyond simple word repetition, which isn’t so much of an issue for such a ubiquitous word, this indicates that you may be overusing passive voice (I didn’t notice anything problematic here), or you need to be using more active verbs (bingo). It’s much more interesting to read about what happens, not what simply is. There are certainly times that eschewing “to be” verbs becomes unwieldy, but for the most part, it’s entirely possible to use more active language. Take “His mane was red” versus “A red mane graced his head.” They say the same thing, but one is active, vivid, and interesting.
Characterization:
All of this seemed fine, in that your characters didn’t act in a way that was inconsistent with how you’d developed them. But insofar as our perception of a character is colored by our emotional connection with her, I will say again that the predominance of telly language kept me from getting to know your Scootaloo. That’s all I have to say here.
Plot:
Nothing wrong here, either. I didn’t see any big inconsistencies in what happens or logical fallacies in how everything plays out. So good job there.
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
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3365358 why not ???????????????
3367284
Thank you. That was tremendously helpful. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but mostly it was spot on, and in any case, the perspective is very welcome.
Also, I feel I should apologise for requesting an enumeration of mechanical errors. There are rather more than I thought there'd be. So, sorry about that.
3421144
You shouldn't agree with everything I say. If you did, you'd end up with a story that was tailored for my tastes. The point is to look at everything with an objective eye, consider the critique, and decide what will actually make your story better.
Leading Marble on is a mistake.
Sweetie Belle.
I am disappoint.
That does not mean you are off the hook either Scoots, but jeez Sweetie.
3138795
What is Scootaloo's Cutie Mark?
Ok ... so three problems. And those problems are the time jumps. What happened when Scoots whent to Marbles and got Mead? That's important stuff to know. How long was between that and the club scene, and how in the hell did we get from going to Marbles (and a missed out drinking scene between Scoots and Marbles which we should've seen) to a club that had no lead up to it? That was confusing. And what in the heck led up to the Practice? Why was she out of breathe? Was it the next day, week, month? We have no reference or anything to lead us into those jumps. No transition. They were chaotic and kinda threw me.
Yes the content was good, but the execution was jumpy and not so smooth as the last two chapters. And since when did Sweets become such a B?
Each time I read it, I marvel at how much of a colossal...well bitch that Violet is. Sheesh.
Hmmm. Did Violet just use reverse psychology on Sweetie Belle?
needs beginning " marks.
_________________
needs end " marks.
______________________
Still say that you have to fix last chapters choppy, and messed up time jumps. But this chapter was a good one.
we're not going to see this completed are we.....
Please finish it? 