In a box under the stairs.
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When Twilight storms into Celestia's and Luna's evening meal, Luna comes up with a unique way to calm her down.
A big thanks to Cerulean Voice and Hopeless Appraisal for their prereading and excellent suggestions!
A particularly big thanks to Lannakitty for her weeks of editing help!
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Me....LIKE! It was a good story
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Thanks! If you want to stay up to date with what stories I'm gonna post next, you can join my fanpage here. I created it mainly to house a thread that keeps anyone curious up-to-date on what I'm doing FiMFiction-wise.
Just curious. Why would you put up the first chapter of a new story only to put it on hiatus instantly?
I'm so confused.
// Sphex
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Read the Author's Note.
EDIT: Actually, I'll go ahead and append it to the description.
More, please.......
NAO!...I mean...if that's all right with you...
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Gonna have to wait a bit, I'm afraid. This is one of four ongoing stories I need to update. However, if you feel like watching my progress, you can check out this thread. I update it regularly.
If you liked this, you might also like Lunar Gravity.
This is smart story-telling. No misprints, great descriptions of actions, reactions and so on. Very professionally done.
I love the dialog, too. One line, among many, sticks out for me. "When we are dealing with the unknown, it is natural to assume the worst so that one is prepared." Yeah, that applies to me. Sometimes I can be too cynical about people sometimes, although not without reason. When you are stabbed in the heart enough times, you tend to assume the worst about others, when the worst is all you get.
Eesh. Enough kvetching from me. I like this story a lot, so it gets an upvote and a fave from me. Well done!
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It's good to hear that my story related to someone's life.
I'm glad you liked it!
That was a cute story, for sure. Can see you went out of your way to see Luna was characterized by all available source material.
I liek.☺
I like the story man. Very nicely done.
Greetings, ChromeMyriad! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE.
Let's start with that synopsis. It doesn't suffer from the common pitfalls, but then there's not much to it, is there? It doesn't promise much in the way of interest. Is the advice unsolicited? Has Twilight been wrestling with the subject? It's nice to get at least a hint of what the story's main conflict might be. It's not that the synopsis is bad; it just isn't very enticing. Unless I was a fan of the particular characters, I might well pass it over.
It's generally preferred to keep sound effects out of narration. Better to describe the sound and be more evocative of it, even link it to a character emotion.
There is a time and a place for passive voice, but this isn't it. For one thing, it's not an active construct, and active constructs are much more interesting to read. Add to that the fact that you want to grab the reader's interest right away, and passivity rarely works well at the beginning of a story. Like I said, there is a use for such things, but typically when you need to emphasize the object over the action or emphasize what's acted upon rather than what's doing the action. So what emphasis do the pineapple and fork warrant? They're not some sort of symbol or thematic element you're carrying along. Maybe you do later in the story, and then it could work there, but it's not established yet, and I'm betting they don't get used that way.
Now it feels like I'm getting bounced around on perspective. An omniscient narrator can get away with this to some degree, but you're taking on a more limited voice here. This statement is told from Luna's perspective, but only a few sentences prior, you had an interruption of the narration that suits Celestia's viewpoint more, unless Luna is very intent on watching her sister eat for some reason. Even a limited narrator can shift perspectives, but it has to be done smoothly, unless you make the shift across a scene break. Imagine zooming the camera out of one character, making the narrator speak more neutrally, then slowly back into another character. But then you have to consider whether the shift is even necessary. Is the information vital? Is there an effective way of relating it from the previous perspective without changing to the new character? Is there enough you can do from the new character's perspective to stay there for a while? Rapid and frequent shifts jerk the reader around and don't let him get settled into, i.e., identify with, the character.
And within the same paragraph, you're back to Celestia's perspective. That's definitely a no-no. Now, it's possible you intended the entire paragraph to be from Celestia's perspective, but that requires that Celestia really notice the smell of Luna's drink and somehow read her actions as ignoring the sound. Both are certainly possible, but I can't tell that from the wording. You could explicitly say Celestia smelled the drink, or that it evokes an anecdote from her past. You could show me the body language Celestia uses to interpret Luna as ignoring the sound, or you could explicitly state that she thinks that's what Luna is doing. There are lots of possibilities, but you need to be wary of how you write so that the perspective is obvious and consistent.
What exactly is causing them some difficulty? You don't suggest anything, so I'm left wondering why this is a detail that needed including. Now is also when I'll bring up an issue of sentence structures. Aside from the two sound-effect paragraphs, every single sentence begins with the subject. You do mix up a few forms with that, but the beginnings of sentences need some love, too. It keeps your writing from feeling more like a list of actions than a flowing narrative. After this paragraph, you get to some dialogue, which tends to break that up, but the damage is done. Yes, this is a very common sentence structure, and it's probably going to do the heavy lifting in the story. That's fine, but you need to include a bit of variety here and there to keep it from getting monotonous. After this paragraph, you have another sound-effect one (boo!). Then look at the first word of the next five. See the structural repetition again? I’d also use "guardsponies" as in "guardsmen."
Hyphenate multi-word descriptors (except two-word ones where the first is an -ly adverb).
Ah, my old friend, show versus tell. It's a lot more effective to let me see what evidence would have led to the conclusions of "disgust" and "mock surprise" rather than draw them for me. I want to see Celestia's curled lip, the fire in her eyes, Luna's too-natural smile, the hoof held to her chest. This gets me into the characters' heads and makes me think about them. That's how you engage a reader. You don't have to do this all the time, but you should when it's an emotion you want the reader to feel along with the character. Like the active structures, it's also a good idea early in the story. If I'm just as irritated with the sound as Celestia and annoyed at the obvious pleasure Luna is taking in my frustration, it makes the story much more relatable than if I'm just fed the fact that Celestia is peeved.
First off, you can leave this sentence as is. But I want to use it to illustrate a point. Participles like to modify the nearest prior object, unless they begin a clause, where they like to modify the subject. So by grammatical convention, the cup is noticing the emblem. However that doesn't make logical sense, and it's easy to sort out what you mean. You just have to be careful with how you place participles, or you will eventually use one in an ambiguous or misleading manner. Say that instead of a cup, you had Luna there in the sentence. I couldn't be sure which one you meant to notice the emblem, thought the default assumption is Luna, which might not be what you intended. So while this instance is fine, be careful.
And we finally get to a non-dialogue sentence that doesn't begin with the subject. See how long that took?
Another form of telling. I think you don't need the "mischievously" at all, since the "twinkled" pretty much gets at her mood nicely on its own. The main structures to be wary of are directly citing an emotion (sad), -ly adverb form (happily), and prepositional phrase form (in excitement). The last one is almost always redundant with an action it follows, and can often simply be cut.
As an honorific, this would normally be capitalized. It's possible she's making a point of using it in the lower case, but there's no way to assume that from the spoken words themselves. You'd have to indicate the tone of voice or body language that makes the implication, and even in that case, it's unlikely a reader would pick up on your choice of lower case as being meaningful versus a mistake.
And it's happened. This is not only ambiguous or misleading, but a genuine dangling participle. "Unfurling the scroll" describes Celestia, but she doesn't appear in the clause. Only her eyes do. You're explicitly saying that her eyes unfurled the scroll.
Using an ellipsis in the narration definitely brings it within the realm of a limited narrator. So you're back in Luna's head again.
There are some exceptions, but you have separate subject-verb pairs here ([understood you]->get going, I->catch), so put a comma between the clauses.
Another inopportune place for passive voice. Having the doors whip open and create a loud sound is a very active thing. By phrasing it passively, you steal that action from it.
Here's a case where you don't need a comma. There's only a single subject with a compound verb.
You just used pretty much the same action for her three short paragraphs ago. Watch the repetition.
And again, nearly identical to an action she took just two paragraphs ago.
Not sure why this would be capitalized. She referring to it in a generic sense, so it doesn't sound like a title.
Maneuver the sentence to the bottom of the screen. Now look back up at the first word of each paragraph you can see.
At this point in the story, you're using quite a lot of participles. Five of the last six pieces of narration use one. It's a structure that inexperienced authors often lean on, and besides getting in a structural rut, they have their own attendant problems, like the misplaced modifiers and dangling participles I've already noted. We'll see if you hit the trifecta.
There are a few things that break smart quotes, including dashes and leading apostrophes. These are backward. Add a set after them, then delete the first, and that will fix it.
In a sing-song what?
Italics are preferred over all caps or bold font for emphasis.
Dialogue punctuation, but you've been getting it right, so it's probably just an oversight.
At least it's been a little while, but this is the exact pairing you used before. It's thesaurus time.
The "exclaimed" really feels like it goes with the first quote, but the way you've punctuated it, it goes with the second. It feels awkward.
The way you've punctuated this one, both parts of the quote would be a single sentence: "Actually, I have a better idea, I think I have just the thing for our budding princess here."
But that's a comma splice.
Typo
Just because she's mouthing it doesn't mean it isn't a quote. Use the double quotation marks.
Except in the case of a first-person narrator who is aware of the narration, using phrases like this that reference the writing itself are immersion-breaking.
More broken smart quotes. You'll just have to scan through for these on your own.
And here is the third danger of participles I alluded to. They imply simultaneous action, but she wouldn't lead Twilight down the path until after she turned, not at the same time.
You already said it was tiled a few sentences ago.
knickknacks
Another ungainly self-reference in narration. It's a common issue when demonstratives (this, that, these, those) are used as pronouns. Make it a modifier instead by sticking an appropriate noun after it, and the problem goes away. Of course, rephrasing is also an option.
You've actually been quote good about holding to Twilight's perspective in this scene, but this phrasing suggests Luna's internal attitude more than Twilight's interpretation.
How is this the kind of thing she wouldn't notice until she saw it? A slight shiver, maybe but uncontrollable shaking? That's pretty extreme.
Unless it's something that has to be capitalized anyway, only do so with the first instance in a stutter.
Just like she noticed she was shaking? Besides being repetitive, it's another instance of something that it's hard to believe she just noe notices. Both do things to your body that are awfully hard to be oblivious to.
Here's another instance where the participle synchronizes something that would actually happen in sequence.
You were doing well, but this is blatantly in Luna's perspective.
Missing a comma for direct address.
You have a hyphen where you need a dash.
Not sure if you meant all that this implies, especially since a simple "here" would do fine.
Now I'm confused. Twilight spoke of Luna seeming to walk on air, so how does she even perceive the floor? I realize that it's actually stone, but it's unclear whether anything beyond its solidity gets to where they are. And for that matter, this smacks of being in Luna's perspective. Twilight hasn't touched the floor with anything but hooves. How would she know it was cold?
"Wha—" would work better, since it's the actual word she meant. And don't put space after an em dash.
Out of her perspective again. How would she know it was visible? She can't see it, but she should be able to feel it.
And back into Luna's head.
You've referenced the blush in three straight paragraphs now.
Another missing comma for direct address.
Another compound modifier that needs a hyphen.
She pretty much already had it figured out. Luna explained it to her. What's she still confused about?
First off, the obvious stuff.
There is a lot of telly language in here. I've already been over the common red flags for it and the rationale behind avoiding it, so I'll just leave it at putting a reminder here to go back through and fix all that. This was one of the main things that I only pointed out a few isolated instances of, even though it turned up a lot. I'm not going to clog up your comments section with every time I noted one.
The perspective jumps all over. You really need to decide for each scene who you want to hold the perspective, then examine for each sentence whether it's consistent in staying with your choice. If you do decide you need to change perspective in the middle of a scene, consider whether you shouldn't rewrite it from that other perspective. If both are required, then stay with each long enough to have a meaningful connection with the reader and make a smooth transition.
There was a lot of repetition, from individual words and phrases to use of participle elements to sentence structure to paragraph structure. One I didn't point out in an excerpt but was still present was the tendency to have paragraph after paragraph during a conversation go:
Short action sentence. "Dialogue." And as for the dialogue... I'm not going to level an accusation of saidisms at you, since I didn't come away from the story with a sense that you'd used a lot of exotic speaking verbs. Mostly, it seems like you went without attributions at all. But I did note that very few instances of "said"—only 10 of them in what I estimate is around 120 quotes. Another bit of repetition is the use of "to be" verbs. They're not horrible, and they have their uses, but they're also inherently boring. You should strive to choose active verbs where you can. They're much more interesting to read. Of the easier forms to search (contractions of "is" are particularly hard to do anything but hand count, as an apostrophe-s often signifies possession or a contraction of "has"), I found 173, which is nearly one every other sentence. That's how often something isn't happening. A few other words you may want to keep an eye on: look, turn, just. They're also commonly repeated ones. You didn't have a ton of any of these, but there was a moderate amount for this word count.
The last point I want to make is one regarding the plot. The argument that Luna wants to make isn't a difficult one. It's pretty simple to explain, "Don't assume bad motives from everyone, because you might see things differently if you consider their viewpoints." And yet Twilight somehow has trouble grasping it without a pretty abstract demonstration of the concept. It seems pretty over-the-top that Twilight needs this whole session to drill it into her skull. I think it would carry more power if: 1) We saw some concrete examples of the lesson learned, as in Twilight figures out what one of the nobles' motivations was and now doesn't think he's so bad, and 2) Luna has a more valid reason for going through this whole rigmarole than teaching Twilight a lesson that really shouldn't have required that much trouble. You kind of already have one—that Twilight needs to learn to take some alone time to insulate her from her stress, since Luna's demonstration is certainly a more effective example of isolation than any Twilight could find on her own. All the better if you can invent an additional reason.
Keep writing and have fun with it!
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
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Thank you for your insight, Pascoite. I had no idea how many mistakes I was making. I deeply appreciate you taking the time to look through the story and note the errors. I'll be working through them steadily.
I particularly appreciate the perspective confusion notes. They slipped completely beneath my radar. I'll take your advice to heart.
This story started out silly and then got pretty deep in the philosophical department, pretty well done all around.
Also, the first bit, with Luna bothering Celestia simply by making slurping noises reminded me of how my brother and I annoy one another. Nice touch with that!
As Twilight trotted off to bed ,Luna called out " Thou shall tell your Dragon to worry not, His lady mare shall agree to his invitation on Hearts & Hooves day"
"And another thing" Luna Continued " It is not polite or in good taste to peek through thou mares bedroom window !"
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Thanks, man. I wasn't sure how writing out the sounds would go over, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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"Oh, don't worry, Luna. He's been sleeping in my room for years. I know all about it!"
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Damn, that's one of the best lines I've read in a while.
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Logic Luna is Best Luna.
Oh, I remember this. Nice job snagging EqD finally
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Thanks, m80.
Yaaaay! I get back into town and see you got snagged by EqD! Congrats!
The punishment for sexual assault in Equestria is "entertaining" to the Princess of the Night? Given her archaic views on some things, I shudder to think what that means.
An amazing story, very will written.
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Hey, Lanna. Good of you to stop by! Thanks for all the work you did helping me get it ready.
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>implications
mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/luna_sleepless-690x388.png
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I'm glad you enjoyed it.
4827170 Thank you for writing it.
You reminded me of the fact that dark magic is not evil. It depends on how it is used.
4827170 Implications, indeed.
Nice story, I quite enjoyed Luna's insight about the distinction between dark and evil.
All hail the GLOW CLOUD!
Stone? Hard time? *rimshot*
Thoroughly enjoyable.
4822709 It's pronounced
"yay!"
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I completely agree
Her expression softening, Luna put a wing around Twilight and drew her closer. “Twilight, I understand where you got those ideas from. Everypony assumes that when shadows hide something, it must be dangerous in some way. It’s only natural. I’m just frustrated because nopony ever bothers to learn the truth.”
Sniffling, Twilight blinked back her tears.
Luna hugged her tighter. “I’m not angry at you,” Luna paused, breathing a sigh. “It’s a touchy subject for me.”
me:DAWWWWWWWWW
Don't get me wrong, I freaking loved this story; but the world-building/lore condenses itself. Whenever there's some new type of magic or newly-written lore in a fic, I always love to know everything about it. The problem for me is, well, you didn't really touch up on Void's Well or Star Swirl's magic all that much. Sure, you gave adequate descriptions on what this stuff was so the readers can understand the plot, but I feel as if there's still a lot more you could have talked about.
Also, there were several instances where, when you used a said tag after dialogue, you used a period and not a comma. For example:
and
This happened quite often in your fic.
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I'm sorry you thought the world-building didn't have enough detail. I felt like explaining everything about my headcanon would clog up the interaction that was the original goal of the fic. I can see how the way I approached it might leave some questions unanswered.
On the period thing, you did catch a couple of the places it was grammatically incorrect—I have gone through and fixed the errors—but when a quotation ends with a period, it's grammatically correct for the quote to be followed by an action rather than a dialogue tag. I don't use 'said' very often and I realize that's a problem. I'll be trying to use them more in future writing.
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Well, saying 'said' is usually invisible to readers, much more so than to the actual author. When I write, I try to say 'said' as much as I can—without getting repetitive with it, of course.
Hello! I've made an audiobook for your excellent story for my next project. You can find it here:
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your voice!
Wow. Excellently done. I'm glad you enjoyed the story and I
Out of curiosity, I was wondering what some of the things you disagreed with were.
5257513 Thank you!
As for what I disagreed with, I thought that everyone, especially Celestia, was a little dismissive of how Twilight felt. Even though Luna did balance the issue nicely by pointing out that inappropriate behavior does need to be addressed, it didn't seem to seriously concern anyone other than Twilight, which is odd considering the high standards guards might be held to. And since it's pretty vague what the guard(s) did other than that one may have had a bit too lingering of a physical contact, I wasn't sure Twilight should be apologizing for feeling intruded upon at the end.
But, none of that was the focus of the story, and those elements were more amusing in most parts than they were worrisome. On the whole, I still think this is a fantastic story, and I meant it when I said this demonstrates a really advanced level of abstraction and story-building techniques. I especially appreciated that Twilight was able to see possible good applications for even Sombra's dark powers. She and Luna are perfectly in-character, and I think everyone else has commented on how great the balance is between the humorous and serious moments. It was a lot of fun to read!
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Hmm, that's fair. I won't say what I meant by any of that since the possibility of discussion is more important than the clarity of message, but I'm glad you found parts meaningful regardless. Hopefully, I'll be coming out with more work soon.
Happy reading and thanks for the comment!
This was an interesting, if somewhat thorough, look at magic, but I have to say, I felt it got a little off track toward the end with the "boys will be boys" nonsense directed at the guards. That wasn't really something I was expecting. Overall, I still enjoyed the piece, though.
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I wanted to address the concerns brought up at the start of the fic, so I thought I should talk about the guards again toward the end.
Nevertheless, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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Yeah, I kinda figured something like that. :)
I listened to Thornquill's reading, and I thought he did an excellent job with it. The story was nothing at all like what I expected, but I loved it nonetheless. I wouldn't change a thing.
Keep up the good work!
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Thanks for the feedback man. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
i got a bit of a nightvale vibe with the void and glow cloud XD
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ALL HAIL!
Well done! Entertaining and unique. A good reminder to look for the light parts of life. Not at all what I was expecting, but Twilight's awkward sputtering was utterly wonderful. Nothing like the Adorkable Bookhorse to get you through the day.
Really interesting an unusual story.
Keep up the good work!
This was awesome. The writing and philosophy on display speaks to your ability to channel the show itself. I love me some Twilight-Luna teachable moments.