I am an average everyday brony. I like to let my creative juices flow and create things. I'm always striving to improve, so I hope you enjoy my stories.
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Button Mash has been into gaming ever since he first got that Joyboy. When he plays a particularly adrenaline filled game, he gets so engrossed in the experience that he feels the need to ask his mother about how games used to be.
A/N: A prompt given to me by my friend Atlas Nebula. Written within a two hour time limit. Hope you enjoy!
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HU-FUCKING-RAH! glad to see an increase in button fics that aren't hamfisted attempts at sex.
that said, the story itself is really great! loved it, electreX man. Also,
You horrible punny man, you.
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Hopefully you'll enjoy more of my works in the future!
I'm so glad you liked it!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these kinds of fics actually exist.
You know, the nonclop/nonparody Button Mash fics.
Brings a manly tear to my eye.
Wait. A story about Button Mash? That doesn't have any clop?
But seriously, this was pretty good.
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9ph3jNzg51r9t6jso1_500.gif
D'aww.
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I don't get it :/
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Here.
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Or if you're like me and don't always have the patience for videos, you can read about it here.
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Here's a let's play of the Sega version and the Nintendo version
Retro gaming at its best.
What are "toes"?
Seriously though, good story. It's been said already, but I'm not a fan of those Button clopfics either.
Also, regarding game puns; My favorite is Button's Spike-ro figurine in the video.
3091678 i know man i know! !
Games used to be total balls.
Cool, Not a bad Flick.
I brings up a lot of old school ideas about video games and the fun people have playing them.
You did a lot better writing as prompted story in two hours then I did.
If there is a Button's group they should get this story.
Well got luck and best wish.
This is the first Button Mash fic I've read and it's a great one! Gamers back then were the elite in my opion!
Now this is more like it, Electre. You're actually getting some fucking attention.
Well done, fella! Haven't read yet... but I know your quality of writing, plus there wouldn't be so many upvotes if it wasn't good.
Nice to see a fic like this. And indeed good graphics alone don't always make for a good game. What's most important is how you use the graphics to present your story and engage the player.
That was a very nice little story.
You got me thinking of my mom now
She was a master at Pacman
god rest her soul
The first Action 52 refernce I have ever heard. You either played the game, or watched the Angry Video Game Nerd.
Greetings, electreXcessive! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE:
Lay/lie confusion. A common problem.
Verb form error. I have no idea what eyesight flickering "inwards and outwards" is supposed to mean. And you just mentioned two sentences ago that it was a "slightly dark screen," so this is at once repetitive and contradictory.
I suppose that's better than audible droplets of sweat... Srsly, that word accomplishes nothing.
Don't forget to separate your clauses with a comma. You have separate subject verb pairs (Pixelated rain ... , and ... thunder rang ...) And hyphenate your compound modifiers (pseudo-thunder). Though it's odd to describe it as such; the game may well use a real sound sample of thunder.
You've already pretty bluntly told me a couple of times how he feels. It's a little lacking in subtlety. This is also the 4th instance of some form of "final" in your first 2 paragraphs. Watch the word repetition.
Missing the comma to end your quote, and missing a comma for direct address. When one character address another by name, title, or reference, it's separated with one or two commas.
Yeah, that's telly. Here's my tasty copypasta on the subject:
It’s better to imply emotional context than to state it outright. Telling can be likened to reading the script instead of watching the play. Showing gets the reader to identify with the character and deduce the emotion for himself, which necessarily forms a connection between them. If the emotion is stated plainly, it’s a cold fact with little meaning to the reader. Consider an actor. Does he simply walk out on stage and declare, “I’m sad”? That would give you the information you need, but it’s not very interesting. Instead, he might slump his shoulders, have bloodshot eyes, fidget, get distracted easily, etc. We’re already hardwired to perceive others’ emotion that way, so doing it in writing makes it more natural. By getting the reader to interpret these signs, the author has made him put himself in the character’s mindset, which creates a connection between them. This includes any sort of conclusion the narrator might make for the reader, including use of such words as “obvious,” “clear,” “surprising,” etc., depending on the situation, of course. The author should place himself as an observer in the scene and present only what he can perceive; we want the evidence, not the judgment. Of course, there are times that telling can be acceptable or even good. Showing is more crucial during scenes that are critical to the plot or when emotions run high, but in an out-of-the-way remark of little importance, it wouldn’t do much harm. It’s up to the author to determine whether it’s an instance where the information is enough, or whether he wants the reader to feel something along with the character. Another good use is when writing something that is supposed to sound like children’s literature. The biggest red flags for telling are outright naming of emotions (sad), -ly adverb form (happily), and prepositional phrase form (in excitement). The last one in particular is almost always redundant with an action it follows and can often be cut without harming anything. Tools for showing include body language, dialogue, thoughts, reactions, facial expression, and actions, and a good mix should be used to avoid relying too much on any one of them.
Watch the placement of participles. If they open a clause, they're presumed to refer to the subject; otherwise, they like to modify the nearest object. Thus, it appears that the Joyboy is totally engrossed. We can apply a bit of logic to sort things out, and in some cases, that's good enough, but it's worth keeping in mind, because inattention will eventually lead to ambiguity or outright misdirection.
Unnecessary comma, and another verb form error.
The telling... It hurts...
Note that this is information only his mom could know. It's told from her perspective. You'd been in Button's POV, so why the shift to her? You can change perspectives, but it has to be done smoothly, and only when necessary. Is this vital information? Is her POV the only way to relate it? Could you instead extract the same information through his perception of her appearance and actions?
Usually spelled "uh-huh," and you have an odd habit of capitalizing after ellipses when a new sentence isn't required.
Use a proper em-dash (Alt+0151 = —), and your spacing around dashes is inconsistent here. With an em dash, don't use any. And, oh boy, another instance of "final."
Passive voice is an especially bad choice for an action scene, and it's clunky to have two like constructs in the same sentence, as in your two "as" clauses.
Ugh. I hope that's not really something you're borrowing from an existing game. A Claymore is a specific sword—there wouldn't be variations on it.
More repetition.
Missing apostrophe.
Okay, I'm finding a lot of the same things. It's up to you to find the rest. I'm only going to point out new issues from here on.
When using it as a term of address, capitalize Mom.
Typo
Phrases like this and "at that point" are horribly self-referential to the narration.
I'm pretty sure you meant "surface."
Srsly?
toothbrush
absentmindedly. C'mon. Enough with the typos.
I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
Mechanics:
I have no pearls of wisdom to offer here, because there aren't really any subtleties of language to discuss. This is simple and straightforward: All of those things that I mentioned multiple times above? Those are your consistent problems.
A bit more on word repetition though—have some word counts:
begin/began/start: 8. Doesn't seem like much, huh? The problem here is that any action begins. It's implied. The only reason to call attention to it is if the beginning is abrupt or the action never finishes for some reason.
just: 10. I'm actually impressed it's that low. Good job.
Various forms of "to be": Upwards of 50. That's not awful. But it's not great, either. They may all be benign, but it can indicate that you use too much passive voice (I did find a couple of obtrusive examples) or you're not choosing enough active verbs (this was an issue). These verbs are inherently boring. Sometimes you can't help using them, or the alternative is awkward. But you should strive to minimize these. It's much more interesting to read about what happens, not what merely is.
Style and Characterization:
Normally, I'll tackle these topics separately, but they're rather intertwined here. The characters themselves are fine, insofar as there isn't an established personality for either that you need to emulate. That said, I didn't get much from either one, and that's mostly a result of the overly telly language. Showing forces me into a character's viewpoint and makes me feel what he feels. It makes me understand the character and care about him. Without that, all I have is a slate that remains blank. This is especially important in a story this short, where we have such little time to get to know your characters. It needs to be more than "things happened." Though I haven't said much, this is actually a tall order.
Plot:
Here's where there's some more meat. Let's summarize what happens: Button plays a game, his mom feels a little guilty about making him stop, for some reason we get a brief ponified history of early gaming systems, and she plays a game while he goes to sleep. Not a bad slice-of-life moment, but that's not a story. It's a scene. A story needs to have a driving force behind it, typically some sort of conflict or process of character discovery. Conflict is much more common, and the easier one to do. There needs to be something at stake. What's eating at one or more of the characters? What are they going to do about it? What will happen if they fail? Or on the character development side, what challenge does the character face? How does he deal with it, and how is he changed by the experience? What has he learned about himself? There's really neither present here, and coming up with some way of including one or both will necessarily involve significantly rethinking the story. It really comes down to what you want this story to be. A light moment without any teeth to it? Yeah, fix this up, and you'll have that. A complete story that makes a point and draws an emotional response from the reader? It's going to take some work to get it there.
Overall:
First, I have to question why you'd submit a story to Equestria Daily before getting it reviewed. Asking for the review at all hints at a very different confidence level than risking a strike, so not sure what you were thinking there.
I didn't trip up on odd word choices and clumsy phrasings, so kudos on missing those common pitfalls. Just learn to fix up the telling and the consistent mechanical issues you had, and finally decide what you want this to be: a light moment or a story that says something. Be aware that Equestria Daily is very unlikely to accept the former.
Keep writing and have fun with it!
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
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I submitted it to EqD because why the hell not. I'm not going to submit it more than once anyway. Thanks for the review though.
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localriding.com/image-files/horse-hoof-2.gif
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So horses have toes, but Wikipedia still can't provide a general term for the time between "foal" and "adult pony"? You know, a word to use if you have a group of both colts and fillies. Got anything for that, too?
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I do believe the filly/colt catchall is "yearling", indicating at least one year of life.
After three years, the designation becomes either "mare" or "stallion".
Keep in mind that the choice of more familiar wordings like "she handed him the remote" over a ponyism like "she hoofed him the remote" is often made for the sake of the reader. The reader, presumably human, has a smoother reading experience when spared from having to process these "translations". So, accurate anatomical nomenclature is often sacrificed for ease of acceptance by as large an audience as possible.
I cannot recall having ever seen the word "yearling" in a pony fic outside of in-universe medical or academic excerpts, perhaps for this reason.
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I read Wikipedia ("yearling" does indeed refer only to their first year of life), and with what I assume to be near-human lifespans, I will not call a four year old pony "mare" or "stallion".
I've avoided the problem so far, or just used "kids" instead, but it still feels a little weird to use that word if you replace everything else with "colt", "filly" or "somepony"
Still, thank you for trying to help.
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I've always used foal.