A group of powered friends, Mary: Mistress of Magic, Hunter: Aura Master, Drake: Anger Archer, Sam: The Brains, Ian: The black cat, and Jacob: The dog of a man, are forced through a portal into a new world, where there faced with new dangers and new.... responsibilities?.
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Hey there, I’m alexmagnet, your friendly neighborhood… uhh, review… guy, person. Anyway, I’m here because you requested a review from WRITE, and I’m the one who’s gonna give it to you. Now, here’s how things are gonna work from here on in. Normally I would break the review up into sections and talk about stuff in subsections, but on the rare occasion that I feel a fic is either too good or too bad for that, I go a different route. I’m just going to go in order and talk about things as I see them since this is relatively short. By the way, I’ll be using examples from your fic, and just ones I make up as I go. Unless otherwise stated, red=incorrect and green=correct.
(by the way, sorry this is so late…)
Anywho, let’s get started.
>Superheroes, people who use their powers to help the world for the greater good. Supervillains, powered men and women who use their powers for personal gain completely uncaring to who they harm to get what they want.
All right, so right off the bat we’ve already got an issue here with how you’ve started the story. I don’t know exactly how other people read stories, but for me, if I’m not given a reason to keep reading after, say, the first 300 words or so, I’m done. Starting a fic off with your version of a definition of the fic’s main focus is a good way to make me lower that 300 words to 50. The first sentence of a story is massively important, and can make or break your success with a person. The first sentence should give us an idea of the tone of the story, maybe even be a line of dialogue that gives us an idea of the atmosphere, or whatever. But when you open up with a definition, it sounds like you’re starting an essay… and I can tell you right now I don’t want to read an essay. An easy fix would be to just cut the first paragraph completely and start with the dialogue.
>her powered friends
You keep using this phrase “powered”, and it’s such a weird word to use. I can’t think of anyone who refers to someone like Superman as being “powered”. It’s just an odd way to refer to people with superpowers.
>They are neither of the before mentioned types of people, as they frankly don’t give a shit.
Oh wow, so edgy…
>These are our “heroes” the Slacker Six, and they’re about to face a challenge they’ve never faced before.
Couple things here. First off, after “heroes”, you need a comma before “the Slacker Six” because it’s a parenthetical element. Parentheticals are basically bits of information that aren’t necessary for understanding of the sentence, or for it to be a complete sentence. For example:
Trixie a unicorn with lots of magical talent, is way cooler than stupid, dumb Twilight.
Trixie, a unicorn with lots of magical talent, is way cooler than stupid, dumb Twilight. (a unicorn with lots of magical talent is the parenthetical)
But beyond that, there’s a larger issue here with the sort of tone you’re establishing. Calling your heroes the “Slacker Six” makes it sound like they’re a bunch of high-school dropouts who are “2kool4skool”, a trait that will turn off just about every reader who isn’t 11.
>“What could they want with you after all these months Sensei?”
Two things here. One, unless your story is set in Japan, for the love of god, don’t refer to anyone as “sensei”. I know you probably think it sounds cool, but it just makes you sound like someone who watches too much anime. Two, “Sensei” needs a comma before it since it’s a direct address. Direct address is just like how it sounds; it’s when someone is directly addressing someone else. In these cases, the person being addressed is surrounded by commas. For example:
”Hey, Trixie,” said Twilight. “What are you doing?”
”It’s none of your business, Twilight, what I do,” replied Trixie.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, Trixie.”
See how both Trixie and Twilight’s names have commas when they’re being directly addressed? Well, it also works with non-proper nouns as well.
”Oh, man,” sighed Rainbow Dash. “I was just getting the hang of it too.”
>asked a young teen with blond hair and blue eyes in brown robes facing his Sensei, Jacob a tall teen with light brown hair and grey eyes who is known simply as Jacob.
Everything about this… just… no. If you feel the need to describe your characters’ appearances, which is a perfectly natural need, then you should do it more organically than just tossing in some half-assed, “Oh, well, she had, like, blue eyes and brown hair, and wore a white cloak or something.” Framing it with such simplistic colors and words makes the whole thing rather boring. I’m not, on the other hand, saying that you should instead get all flowery with your descriptions, but you can add a bit here and there to spice things up a bit. Just look at the difference between this:
>asked a young teen with blond hair and blue eyes in brown robes facing his Sensei, Jacob, a tall teen with light brown hair and grey eyes who is known simply as Jacob.
and this:
>asked a teenage boy whose blond hair was cut short and tight. Loose-fitting brown robes, which dragged behind him as we walked, hung off his shoulders as his cold blue eyes followed Jacob, who himself was also a teenager, though quite a bit taller. Jacob’s light brown hair framed his grey eyes.
I mean, even what I wrote there is really terrible, but it’s at least slightly more interesting than the bare bones approach you had. It paints a better picture since it gives a few more details about the characters that allows you to form ideas of them in your head. Like I said though, this is not an invitation to go off on long tangents describing how your characters look. Keep it brief, and only elaborate if it’s actually necessary.
>(Not heroes remember?)
Yeah… I remember. Don’t do this when you’re writing. It’s not clever or funny to throw in little asides by the narrator in the story, not unless that’s the point, which this isn’t.
>“Well I’m not really sure Tim, but hey they can’t have a reunion without king goofball can they?”
”Well, I’m not really sure, Tim, but, hey. They can’t have a reunion without king goofball, can they?”
Also, “king goofball” just makes me want to punch this guy in the throat.
>replied Jacob with a knock on the door.
Excuse me, what? Is he replying… by knocking on the door? If you’re trying to say he’s doing both at the same time, or one then the other, then you’d be better off with, “replied Jacob as he knocked on the door” or, “replied Jacob before he knocked on the door”
>The door swung open with a creek revealing the inside of the old mansion that appeared to be abandoned.
Okay, apparently they’re at a mansion now. I would’ve known that if you’d told me anything about where they were before, but you didn’t. For all I knew, they were floating in the void of space. Oh, and “creak” not “creek” unless it opened with a small river.
>“Creepy, does Mary actually live here Sensei?” asked the young Tim.
Creepy. Does Mary actually live here, Sensei?” asked Tim.
Because I don’t know why you specified “the young Tim” unless there’s also an “old Tim”. Also, I’m only going to point out the lack of direct address commas once more, then you’re on your own finding the rest of them since it seems this is a systemic error. And I should also mention that using “Sensei” when there’s no real reason for it just silly. It makes it feel like you’re trying to be an anime… which doesn’t really work well in MLP fanfiction.
>Yeah she does Tim, she loves being as creepy as possible
Yeah, she does, Tim. She loves being as creepy as possible
I should’ve mentioned this the last time since it was an error there too, but you’ve got some comma spliceage going on here. Comma splices, in case you don’t know, are when you separate two independent clauses with a comma. For example:
Twilight likes books, Trixie likes books about Twilight.
Twilight likes books. Trixie likes books about Twilight.
See, these two clauses are both independent, so unless you combine them with a conjunction of some kind:
Twilight likes books, but Trixie likes books about Twilight.
Then you need to put a period in there to separate them.
>though trust me she is about as harmless as any of us,”
“trust me” is a parenthetical element, and as such it should be separated by commas.
though, trust me, she is about as harmless as any of us,”
Also… harmless? Are they not “powered men and women”? How harmless can they be?
>They walk in heading towards a back room where a pale light was coming from.
Ahoy, Cap’n! Random tense switch off the starboard bow! (yeah, don’t switch tenses like this, and I mean both that you started this fic in past, then switched to present, but also that within this one sentence you have two different tenses)
>“But you massacred a herd of charging bulls single handedly….”
“single-handedly” should be hyphenated since it is a compound adjective. Also, massacre bulls does not seem like something a “superhero” would do, even accepting that these people aren’t “heroes”, as you often like to remind us. It’s just straight up dickish to kill a bunch of animals for no reason. Also, ellipses only ever have three periods, never more, and never less.
>“Like I said she’s as harmless as any of us.”
”Like I said. She’s as harmless as any of us.”
This line is also not very funny by the way. It just makes it seem like Jacob is a complete asshole.
>Bursting through the door Jacob
Here we’ve got an introductory clause that requires a comma. The introductory clause, by the way, is “Bursting through the door”. So it should read, “Bursting through the door, Jacob [...]”
>Which got him looks from the three people already in the room.
Since this is still technically part of the previous sentence, it needs to be lower case.
>“Hey Jacob god to see you,”
God will see you in room 3, please.
>said Hunter, was oldest of the group at 19, with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and glasses, a katana strapped to his back,
Again, same thing as with the other descriptions… very bad. Also:
said Hunter who was the oldest of the group at 19. He had [blah blah blah]
>“how is it you are the only person who my hyper intuition doesn’t warn me when you’re about to do something?”
Probably because he’s so damn edgy. Also, should be capitalized since this should be a new sentence. By the way, “hyper intuition” is a lame superpower.
>Jacob replied, “Told you before, must be ‘cause I’m so random.
I fucking hate this guy.
>Drake was sitting in the corner [...] dagger hangs off of his hip.
This whole section is just… ugh. I mean, could these characters be anymore cliched? I realize that in your description you describe this as a self-insert, but that’s no excuse for just writing shitty wish-fulfillment. I sure hope the friends these are based off aren’t this boring in real life.
>He spoke in with a monotone seeming youthful and old at the same time as he said
…
>“I’m doing as good as usual, good to see you, any idea why we’re here?”
There are three different sentences here, and you’ve mashed them all into one.
>Just the Jacob is hugged from behind.
Just the Jacob? Not the Tim, or the Hunter? Also, you keep switching tenses, and it’s extremely noticeable. Pick one tense and stick with it.
>Sam, a shorter girl with brown hair and eyes and bronze skin was looking at Jacob as he turned around her glasses glinting in the light.
Oh, man. I hope that just because she has glasses doesn’t mean she’s, like, super smar—
>“I'm doing good, been working on a way to cure cancer,
SON OF A BITCH. Also, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to cure cancer, but I figured I’d put that on hold for what is likely the most important meeting the whole world because I did STOP TRYING TO CURE CANCER SO I COULD BE HERE.”
>“Wow, you really are an overachiever, not to mention genius,” Jacob said
Jacob is maybe the biggest dickbag I’ve ever seen. He calls Sam an “overachiever” because she’s trying to cure cancer? Excuse me, but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
>Just then Mary walked in from the next room
Oh boy, this is the Mary we’ve heard so much about. I’m so excited to meet her.
Just then, Mary walked in from the next room
>Tim walked in after he saw her come in from the other side and remained quiet.
This sentence comes at the end of a paragraph about Mary, so it’s fucking weird to see the focus shift to Tim at the end. Also it’s just a poorly constructed sentence to begin with.
>“Guys meet Tim, he’s my new apprentice.”
”Guys, meet Tim. He’s my new apprentice.
This is the last comma splice I’m pointing out, otherwise I’m gonna have like 8 pages of just pointing out comma splice errors.
>“I taught him Scrolls A, C, H, and N under division 4.” “Those are very dangerous scrolls Jacob; you better know what you’re doing,”
As far as I can tell, these are two different speakers, and yet they’re on the same line. As a general rule: New speaker? New paragraph. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions.
>He was wearing a blue jacket and leather pants with shoulder length black hair and purple eyes.
Watch you don’t cut yourself on those edges.
>He finishes yawning and sits down as Jacob groans loudly.
This is the last tense shift I’m pointing out.
>Drake asked, “You gonna tell us what we’re doing now miss magic?”
Again, new speaker, new paragraph. EVERY. TIME.
>The magic is at such a high concentration it would... uh... kill any normal person.”
And so she’s willing to assume that her friends won’t die because they’re “powered”? Seems like a dick move to me. She probably didn’t even do any tests or research to test this.
>“So you using us expecting our powers to keep us safe, actually pretty smart,” said Hunter.
No… no it’s really not.
>“You guys forgetting that I'm only resistant to a human degree right?” Drake pointed out.
“Unless we piss you off, and I’d say the pain would do that,” said Sam.
Oh boy, he’s the Hulk. How exciting and original.
>While the rest sat on a corner Drake faced Mary
Sat on a corner? I think you may be using the wrong preposition here. Also, you’ve got an introductory clause here that needs a comma, namely, “While the rest sat [in] a corner, Drake faced Mary”. For ease of explanation, and so I don’t have to keep pointing these out, here’s a list of words that generally indicate an introductory clause: however, still, furthermore, while/meanwhile.
>“And if we refuse?”
Suddenly Mary’s eyes glowed red and in a demonic voiced answered, “I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL!” then she giggled and stood in the middle of the pentagram as Drake shrugged and sat down.
How funny… she acts all cute after getting a demon voice… how original and not at all grating or annoying. Yeah, don’t do things like this. It’s not only incredibly annoying, but doesn’t really make me want to like the characters. There are far better ways to show that she’s playfully evil, or whatever you want to call it.
>MOVERTUS UNIM!
If I recall correctly from my high school Latin class “unim” is unite, and, well… movertus isn’t a word. “Vertus” is host, sure, but movertus? I don’t think that’s a word in Latin, and a quick google search just now confirms my beliefs. Soooooooo… dunno what you’re going for here. You’ve got a half-Latin phrase here, which makes me think you were going for Latin, but maybe you misspelled the word or something, I’unno. Either way, don’t put dialogue (or really any text for that matter) in all caps. It looks amateurish and silly. If you want to show someone yelling something, describe them yelling, don’t take the lazy way out and put it in capslock.
>Mary exclaimed as a green energy began encircling them all as they began to react each with their own abilities.
You repeated “began” here, and it makes the sentence difficult to parse. Either rephrase it or make it two separate sentences, though don’t repeat “began” either way. Oh, and the sentences following this should be their own paragraph since we’ve moved on to a different subject.
>Drake was gasping and groaning as he began looking grim and his eyes got red and strained.
Dunno if the ‘g’ sound repetition is intentional, but it’s sure as hell noticeable.
>Ian’s eyes began glowing
>Sam was groaning and grimacing with pain
My god, what is with all the ‘g’ words? Surely there are other adjectives you could use to describe them?
>“SENSEI!” yelled Tim as he saw them get sucked through as he jumped through the purple vortex
Two things. The paragraph starts off from Sam’s perspective, then we see Tim speak. They should be two separate paragraphs. Second thing is that I think you must have accidentally left something in here, because you say he was both sucked and jumped into the portal, which doesn’t seem possible. It should be one or the other.
>Ian was falling rapidly towards trees when with a purple energy surrounding him he kicked off the top of a tree then jumped across the treetops until he slowed down enough to jump down.
What the fuck just happened?
>He leaned against a tree and drifted to sleep to rest for a bit, having used a ton of energy.
WHAT!? He just teleported to a completely strange and new world, and the first thing he does is take a fucking nap? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?
>Mary was falling, while laughing maniacally. She slammed hard into the ground, and with and oomph quietly giggled, “Oops.”
I don’t know what kind of characterization you’re going for with Mary, but she is… she is awful. Like, is she supposed to be some kind of super powerful character that is also… cute? I don’t get it.
>Hunter was falling towards a lake when he quickly pulled out his katana and began spinning at high speeds slowing himself, hitting the lake like he merely jumped in.
He just helicoptered himself into the lake, didn’t he? Oi… look, if you’re going for a serious tone, as you sort of appear to be early on, then don’t do really outlandish and physically impossible stuff like this. Yes, you can crack jokes and make the characters do silly things, but there are limits to the bounds of reason. You can only bend physics so far before they might as well exists in Looney Toons land.
>He turned west to see a gray aura apparently inside a mountain.
Excuse me, what? He’s inside a mountain? Okay, one thing I’m really not getting here is how did they all get separated by so much? And further, why is it that some people ended up together, almost conveniently so, but others are alone? It sorta feels like you’re just doing this because that’s what you wanted to happen, not because that’s what would’ve happened.
>Sam was falling high speed when a purple magic surrounded her and she was stopped just above the ground.
So lemme get this straight, you expect me to believe that everyone else fell from the sky, crashed into the ground, and was fine, but Sam needed to be saved by Twilight? Uhh… sure.
>You’re in Ponyville,” said a purple unicorn standing next to a pink pony and an orange one.
How wonderfully convenient that they all happened to be standing around just in time to catch Sam as she fell. That doesn’t seem contrived at all! Also, is that really the first thing Twilight would say to a completely different creature she’s literally never even seen the likes of before? Doesn’t it seem like a more prudent question would be “JESUS CHRIST, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!? HOLY SHIT, IT JUST TALKED! WHAT ARE YOU?” not, “Oh, hey, you’re in Ponyville, and this is a totally normal situation.”
>“Hi! I’m Pinkie-Pie you look hurt are you okay? What are you? Heywhoareyouidontknowthatmeansyouranewfriendyayijustlovemeetinganewpersonyaaaaywegottathrowapartydoyoulikepartiesiloveparties!”
No. Just, no. Don’t ever ever ever ever ever do this… ever. Not only is massively annoying to read, but it’s just so damn insulting to the reader. You’re basically implying that you don’t think they’ll understand what you’re doing if you say Pinkie something like “said Pinkie breathlessly” with all that stuff above but spelled out normally. Seriously, don’t ever do this. I’ve seen many many many people do this same kinda thing with Pinkie Pie, and it’s never not aggravating.
>An ahm Applejack,”
Couple things here. One, again, I can’t help but find myself questioning why these are the things they’d be saying to some weird creature that stands on two legs and is holding a weapon. You’d think they might be a tad concerned, but no, apparently they just want to introduce themselves, because fuck you, that’s why. Two, while I personally would not recommend using “Ah” and the like to show AJ’s accent, since I think there are better (and less annoying) ways of doing it, I know that it’s commonly accepted vernacular, and even some of my friends do it, however, that being said, “ah” should be capitalized since it’s replacing “I” and likewise it should also have an apostrophe still, “Ah’m”.
Okay, so seeing as this review is already nearly 4k words, I think it’s time I go ahead and fast-forward to the end. I’ll give the rest of the fic a quick read and make some general comments at the end, but given what I’ve seen thus far, I think a lot of my complaints about the first chapter will be systemic throughout the rest of the fic, and so there wouldn’t be much point in saying the same stuff over and over again. To that end, let’s skip right to the end of this review where I talk about story structure and stuff like that, but also maybe little things I noticed in the other chapters.
>“Bought time you woke up,” said Mary.
‘bout, unless she bought time for him.
>“Because all of us other than you have the common sense to head towards civilization to meet each other, since it’s the only obvious point we’d all think of.”
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that while hurtling through the air at terminal velocity they all had time to notice that there was a town nearby, and that it’s obviously friendly because the plot needs it to be.
>“Well yes, it was black magic, but it wasn’t dangerous or evil, my friend Mary practices black magic but she isn’t evil, speaking of which, where’s the others?”
“Don’t worry. My friend isn’t evil even though she used what you consider evil magic, oh, and she’s also not evil. Promise.”
and then Twilight responds, “Doh-kay!”
…
>that’s Jacob going dog
Infinitely less badass than “going wolf”.
>Have you ever seen that movie with Liam Neeson where he fights a bunch of wolves? If you haven’t, don’t it sucks.
What the fuck is this? Why is this here? Are you.. are you speaking directly to the readers? What is wrong with you? Who does this? And, by the way, you’re wrong. The Grey is one the best Liam Neeson movies since Schindler’s List. I mean, seriously, that plane crash scene? Fuck you, that shit was amazing. The best damn plane crash I’ve ever seen in film.
>“Wait... *gasp* Sensei… *gasp* can’t… *gasp*run… *gasp* that fast *gasp*,” Tim calls trailing behind.
“This… *gasp* is not… *gasp* how… *gasp* you… *gasp* write… *gasp* dialogue!”
See how annoying that is to read? Yeah, don’t do that. Just say “he said between gasping breaths.”
>When we last saw Ash and his friends… wait… wrong fandom.
Just… fuck you.
All right, that’s about everything for the rest of the chapters that I felt needed to be pointed out. So let’s talk about the story then, okay?
See, I didn’t realize until like the fourth chapter that all these stupid assholes were supposed to be, like, analogues of Twi. and Co., and I only realized it because you flat out said that they were very similar, which no they’re not. Not one of these unlikable douchebags is anything like any of the ponies. They all come off as being exactly like each other. They’re supposedly 17-20, but they read like whiny 13 year old boys… all of them. They all talk the same, have the same stupid snarkiness that comes across as immature and childish and not the least bit endearing. The dialogue is stilted and boring, and sounds like what a kid thinks cool action dialogue sounds like. But worst of all, I couldn’t even bring myself to like the ponies in this story. They end feeling like the most real characters, and yet are still wholly unbelievable. They’re all like shitty caricatures of themselves.
However, all that being said, to your credit there are some legitimately cool moments in this, but they’re unfortunately brief and poorly-written, so my imagination of what would have happened is far cooler than what did happen. For example, you have this dude fight some timberwolves in the second chapter. That’s fucking awesome… or it should be, but it lasts five seconds and the writing is very much “And then Jacob punched them and then they died”-level of boringness. Everything is written very dryly, and for some inexplicable reason you constantly switch back and forth between present and past tense. I can only assume this is because when you’re writing “action” sequences, present tense comes more naturally to you, and that’s perfectly fine, but then the rest of the fic needs to be in present tense as well. You pick one tense and you stick with it. You can’t switch around whenever you want. It’s jarring to your readers and makes the whole thing make no sense .
Anyway, I think it’s rather obvious that I didn’t particularly care for this story, but I don’t necessarily think it’s unsalvageable. You’ve got a semi-decent foundation, albeit a rather tired and overused one, but that’s okay. You’ve got potential for cool action scenes, and you’ve got potential for cool characters. What you need to do is completely scrap this thing and start over. It’s so far gone at this point that attempting to fix it would take far more work than just rewriting it wholesale. Here’s a couple things you should do if you do rewrite it.
1. Make the characters more relatable. Nearly all of them appear to be flawless and “2kool4skool” That makes for boring characters that no one wants to read about. It may be wish-fulfillment for you, but it’s like downing a bottle of Ambion to me.
2. The story needs to actually make sense. There’s this whole shit about dark magic and junk in the beginning, and then it completely disappears by the fifth chapter. I’d say just cut it out entirely, since it’s pointless, and just get them to Equestria in one of a billion other ways.
3. Character actions need to make sense. I suppose you could argue that since all the characters are stupid assholes, it makes sense that they do stupid asshole things, but if take my suggestion and make them not that, then they’ll need to start doing more reasonable things. People should ask reasonable questions, say reasonable things, and do reasonable actions, not just do whatever is the “coolest”. The best way I can describe writing is like this: You’re not so much writing a story as you are allowing it to be told through the medium of your words. Dialogue and actions should flow naturally, not feel like they were designed to be a certain way. That’s not to say you can’t design them, since that is the point of atmosphere and such, but it shouldn’t feel that way. It should always feel natural, which of course is easier said than done.
Well, there you go. I don’t think I can really give you any more advice than I’ve already given you, except perhaps that you should probably get a proofreader, or at the very least run a spellcheck or something, because there are a lot of typos and misplaced words and shit like that. Oh, by the way, though my review may appear to be angry or furious or rage-filled or any other negative adjective, don’t take it personally. I’ve got nothing against you or your story, I’m just not going to sugarcoat how I feel about it.
Hope this massive thing helps somewhat.
~lalexmagnet, WRITE’s Resident Trixie Fanboy
4642313
Holy shit! How long did it take you to make this review?
4644673
This is about average length for my reviews. I feel like If I'm going to bother to take the time to review site thing, I better be giving it my fucking all. I don't half ass shit. Dunno how long it took. Probably looking at a week or two when all was said and done.