• Member Since 29th Dec, 2013
  • offline last seen 1 hour ago

Darth Redbeard


Readying for the Polar Express

Sequels1

T

This story is a sequel to Trouble Begins.


Luna managed to find the Imperial Empire and they've agreed to help them. The 2nd Imperial Lennex War will test the courage and strength of Equestria and it's people. Will Spike also be rescued from the Lennex Empire's plans? The time has come for the Battle of Equestria.

Chapters (7)
Comments ( 42 )

I like the way you think dude. ;)

4004880 With the way your making this SpikeBelle shipping. I just love it.

4004887 Trust me, besides that, expect a lot of fighting every so often. It's high time I made myself known in these stories.

At first glance my mind thought "Eh? Imperial Empire? Which?", I don't have time to read it now but let me ask. Is this crossed over with Warhammer? If it is than that would be so awesome!

This is very... telly, for lack of a better word. You tell a lot, rather than showing, and if you're unsure of what that means, google 'show vs tell'. Things also feel very rushed indeed, probably because you never show anything, and that makes it very difficult for the writing to evoke any kind of emotion in me. It reads like a wikipedia synopsis of the events, pretty much. It's a list of 'X did Y' sentences, and it's not awfully compelling. But, as I'm sure you've noticed, people will pretty much read anything, and if that doesn't scare the pants off of you as an author, I don't know what will. It's just so easy to stagnate on sites like this, because pretty much no matter what you do, the vast majority of people will praise you regardless. I'm getting sidetracked. Anyway, fix yo shit, and write a story about characters, rather than list items, 'kay?

Edit: I'm not sure what the crossover element actually is, but isn't 'Imperial Empire' a tautology?

4005470 This was more of a write and didn't have time to find an editor. I'm looking for one.

And the crossover hints would be the Imperial Admiral, The Imperial second-in-command, his wife, and the guy with white armor.

4005470 Next chapter, I'll try to give more detail.

4005440 sorry. I'm not a big Warhammer fan.

4005802
No, edit the existing chapters. The damage is already done, because most people will judge your fic by the first chapter alone. The chapters are so short that they zip by in a flash. Aim for maybe 2k words per chapter, and you should get a decent pace to this. You know, with actual emotions and stuff rather than mannequins getting shoved around a landscape with little smiley/angry faces taped to them.

4006174 I'm in the process of looking for an editor. If you would like to help, I would appreciate it. Send me a PM on ideas. :eeyup:

4006174 Just thought I'd let you know, I'm editing the first chapter. I'll take the extra part of the title off when it's finished. Check in every so often and let me know what you think. :pinkiehappy:

4004876
4005440
4005470
The first chapter is still under editing, but I would like your all's opinion please. First chapter only, and leave a review or send me a PM on ideas where to improve for this one. I already know to had more thoughts and feelings. I'm hoping for some ideas from you guys.

Oookay, I just read the first chapter, but I can barely take anymore.

The story starts in medias res, so a lot of stuff has happened. Too much to assimilate but nothing is explained. We're thrown butt-first in the middle of a huge clusterfuck and we're all out of lube. You know this is going to hurt.

Okay, there's a lot that needs to be explained, as I said; stuff that you, as the author, know, but the readers have no idea about. So Luna is going with Sweetie Belle to the Imperial Empire of Redundant Redundancies because Spike has been kidnapped. We don't know why, we don't know what they want from it.But Luna and Sweetie Belle are going together. With noone else. Okay, you can assume Sweetie is just a nobody;the younger sister of a dressmaker (and Element of Generosity, but nopony calls her that).But Luna is one of the four rulers of Equestria. Why isn't there a squadron of Royal Guards escorting her? Or why are those two on their own, for that matter? No trace of the Mane Six for now, and Twilight being one of the four Princesses... there seem to be a lot of unsolved parts here.

Anyways, another thing I noticed was the huge army that apparently was sent to Equestria. 27 million infantry, thousands of cavalry, 20 thousand tanks, heavy artillery... I'm surprised you didn't throw some T-Rexes with mounted laser cannons just for the hell of it. What I'm trying to say is that it's all extremely overkill. Also, they also brought supplies. Do you have any idea how much food would you need to feed an army the size of the average European country during several days? Also, cavalry and tanks are a bad combination. You know how easy is to scare a horse? I do, because I've been to horseriding classes for a few years. You know what makes enough noise to scare the hell out of a cavalry charge and throw them into an uncontrolled frenzy of running everywhere? A firing tank.

But even before that, we have this argument with Celestia and Luna that was apparently about to ruin Equestria. We don't now what it was about (maybe Luna put on Celestia's panties without her permission? Celestia turned off Luna's console in the middle of the final boss fight? Unless you tell me specific details, I'm gonna fill the gaps with whatever I feel like the most. Sometimes crazy stuff).

... Okay, and then we go to the part where the Knights gave Spike "Dragon DNA". This is Humanised story, so Spike is a human. I can live with that. I could even believe the part that he had dragon ancestry or something (like the Dragon Disciples in D&D). But then I find out that THIS organization we have no idea of IS the one responsible for having Spike having dragon blood.

And THEN, just to slap me in the face for the last time, we have, STILL in the story, a fourth wall shattering with a link to a dA pic of a humanized Luna and a link to a music. Author, we all know how Luna is, and most artists draw her similarly in each of her forms. Sure, some draw them with huge tits and sometimes with imposing penises (yes, that's plural), but the core is mostly the same.

With that, I can say that you should keep improving the story, polishing the story and check those missing commas (Because when I read "Let's go outside Sweetie Belle" I laughed at the idea of talking chestbursters bursting their way outside our beloved Sweetie Belle. A tragic ending indeed).

4015789 Sorry for some of the confusion. Another reviewer has been helping me fix different parts to this story.

This story takes place after Trouble Begins. So that will explain some things on how part of this started. And I know Trouble Begins is not a great story. I've been taking some stories down and rewriting them.

The Tanks and Cav. work in different areas of the field so the Cav. will only be used when the tanks are elsewhere. And the food is rationed.

The other Empires will be explained in later chapters just like the argument between Celestia and Luna.

I'm going to take some of the video's off. I'm keeping one of them on. The picture was so people could see where I got the idea for Luna in the story.

Anyway, I would like to thank you for the review. I can tell that you did go with the thumbs down button, but you gave me some advice on how to fix it. You are one out of two that didn't really like it that gave me a review on how to improve it.

Stop by anytime and let me know of any ideas you have. Or send me a PM on ideas.

4016233

Hmm I'll probably read that one now. What I notice, however, is that what we have here is basically separate entries, but the same story. In my opinion (which doesn't necessarily mean I'm right, mind you), I would've had all these stories as chapters of a particular story. It would be easier for readers to read through all the "parts". You can also edit the story so it mentions that this story is a sequel of Equestria Under Attack. It's a new feature, so it should be around there somewhere.

4016306 Didn't really think about that. Thanks. Like I said, that story is not the best and I'm still rewriting the first story I did. That one won't be rewritten until much later, but it gives a small explanation to how part of this started. Let me know if there is anything on that one besides the Fourth Wall thing that needs to be worked on.

4016315

Alrighty. For now, I'm going to help you with the "assigning prequel" thing:

When you click "Edit" in the story, the second line in Basic Information is "Prequel Story ID". When you create a story (whether it gets accepted or not), an ID is automatically assigned. As you can see in the browser. Imperial Liberation of Equestria has the assigned ID of 171697. But that's not the important one.

Trouble begins has the assigned ID of 156384. By typing "156384" in this story's "Prequel Story ID" section, you'll get a new subsection on the right of the story, specifying that this is a sequel of Trouble Begins. You can do the same thing with the other stories, marking each story as sequels and prequels of each other, to allow readers to know what they have to read first in order to understand what's going on. If there's nothing to tell if this is a sequel of anything, we get into a confusing "in medias res" that came out of nowhere.

4016328 I've done more editing on the first chapter. Some places might still need some work, and I've tried to find an editor. Still having some issues. Anyway, would you be so kind to take a look and see what places need fixing in that chapter? Thanks.

Alright, originally here to help with an idea for the music, yet I feel in need to say se things. The start of this chapter is a little too fast, and if I had stopped in the middle, I wouldn't have kept on reading. The ending is another thing entirely, though. That caught my attention a lot. Great you told things would be explained in the future, or else I'd be completely lost =P Still, by reading this chapter I liked the story and will keep on reading XD

(I'll send you my ideas for music via PM's)

“That’s my way of saying thanks for listening”.

The period should be inside the quotes.

Comment posted by Darth Redbeard deleted May 11th, 2015

ignore the last comment I posted.

Don't know why I posted that. I need to relax my brain for a few days.

Hey, where's the rest of this story?

6075045 what I had was taken down. Mostly got to Applelossa Part 3 done and decided to rewrite what I had. Redoing Appleloosa Part 1 right now.

I Finally got to this book and I was excited to read this one. Very good book.

Did I list my OC for you to use?

Clones with muskets and rifles along with cannons and tanks and machine guns ?

GENIUS

6514811

Neat thing
Imperial = rifled muskets
Lennex = brown bess

6516274 and equestria= matchlock

6524399 yeah I'd rather have a sword or spear then a shity matchlock

6524433 don't worry. They eventually get Imperial rifled muskets as the war goes on. They just have their own way of using them as well.

6524442 when that happens page will definitely take one

6524447 let's see if he'll survive the training first.

6524454 dont worry sir,I'm a stuborn and tough sonabitch

First, can I just say that “A Great Day” felt incredibly rushed. Details were skimmed over or just told to us, such as, “The Princess explained everything a bit more”. This might be something to consider in your editing.

“A SpikeBelle Date” was pretty cute. Some of it felt a little amateurish—namely the part where Twilight squealed—but it was fairly cute. Sweetie could probably have been more surprised at the dragon DNA revelation though, she felt a little too close to the ‘generic love-struck girl’.

The sudden jump into war between “A SpikeBelle Date” and “Trouble Begins” was incredibly off-putting. There was no explanation for the sudden war and it almost felt as if it would be a spin off from the series as opposed to an actual part. Also, the date and Pokey’s hitting on Pinkie was just a day before? This war feels like it’s going to be over after a few days, to be honest… But still, the final cliffhanger was quite cute.

“Imperial Liberation of Equestria” was much better than the previous ones, though, at least quality wise. Where the others had quite a few little errors here and there, this one was pretty well done. The quality of the action was better, too.

All in all, there’s a lot of work needed here. The characters felt especially flat in the first few parts, but things definitely improved in the last part and it’s a much more enjoyable read now. Honestly, though, it could easily have been a set of standalone fics rather than a series—in fact, it might’ve actually flowed better that way.

7220593 A Great Day was an experiment, but looking back it was rushed.
The Date story, that also had some issues. As you pointed out the "Generic Love Struck Girl". I'll have to look over that in the rewrite. :pinkiesmile:

Trouble Begins: That would be my second rewrite of it. original, makes me want the rewrite more and more. The sudden jump could've been different, that I agree.

For this one, gives me more time to work on canon characters and the OC's. Get to experiment with action more. That and this one does show that the war won't be over in a matter of days :ajsmug:


Thanks for the review.

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