"No one had told us victory was like this."
Equestria was a peaceful land, free of strife and violence. Then the war came and shattered that peace. Homes were destroyed, families were split in half, and thousands were killed.
A group of soldiers come to a small village to inspect the damage they have caused and ensure the village won't cause any more trouble.
What they find will change their minds forever...
Based on the poem Conquerors by Henry Treece. This was written as practice for capturing the melancholy atmosphere of war, for a collab I'm writing in.
Chapters (1)
Very good. Very good, indeed.
That better not be cowardice or doubt I hear Macintosh.
forgeworld.co.uk/Images/Product/DefaultFW/xlarge/comtc.jpg
Ehh.. Stap it
God damn... just... whoa. That was one huge twist, especially finding out it was Ponyville and Big Mac!
This was a nice sad little fic (the good kind of sad). The only problem I see with it is your fragment sentences.
As my editor once put it: "War, in all its splendor..."
First, the technical stuff: the grammar is good, I spotted only a few typos, like:
Should be "Equestria" and "Through".
Good choice of the narration – present tense works well, as it makes the reader discover things at the same moment as the character, thus making them easier to relate to. It especially works in fics like this one.
Well, now to the best part – the plot. Generally, while I write warfics myself, I rarely read them – usually everything in them is black and white, we have heroes and villains, while the war is mostly about good guys doing bad things. Here we have that moment of reflection. The plot is simple – soldiers scouting the village, finding a dead bird, a dying dog, and a dead filly. But in terms of symbolism, there's much more than that. Abandoned animals show what war takes away from us – the joys of everyday life, our sensitivity... And of course, something I also explore – children, the innocent ones, who are supposed to be the future of the nation – they're the first victims.
What's interesting in this story is how universal it is (note, how easy for me was to switch to "us", "our" etc. in the previous paragraph). As it is a one-shot, there's no information about the war itself, so it's open to interpretation. There are, however, some hints, like mentions about the rebeliants, or the appearance of the dead filly – she's a bat pony, which makes me thinks of racism and prejudice as the cause of the rebellion (or maybe I'm just influenced by my story).
Of course, it'd all be for nothing without the proper atmosphere. The way of achieving it is interesting: there's almost no dialogue (the only line is said by the commander), and what's easily noticeable is the overwhelming silence. There are some background noises, but generally everything happens in a completely quiet environment. It's easy to imagine what happened in Ponyville before the soldiers' visit (and it's good that it's left to imagination – any description of explosions and fight isn't as good as what the reader's imagination conjures). We also know that town from the show, how lively it is, so seeing it desolated like that only strengthtens the effect.
To sum up, I really enjoyed that story. Though, maybe 'enjoyed' isn't the right word. More like 'that story made me think; it tug at my heartstrings and moved some rusty gears in my head'. Which is also a form of entertainment, after all. Definitely it's worth to read it.
4395434 I thought I fixed the second typo
Anyway, thanks for that. I appreciate it.
This story was a nicely written piece that set a strong atmosphere for despair and misery, which is what war is known to do. How you did it is very gripping and your attention to detail easily painted the mental picture for me to follow and enjoy/cringe at. I can see any individual who has served or been part of war can relate to the setting of your story. I can almost feel the misery of those who once inhabited the village they are scouring through. I also enjoyed that you kept the identity of the soldier a secret until the very end.
My only thought is that his dialect, even in his head, is un-accented; but that would be hard to pull off with just the one line, so it is acceptable.
I am not the best judge of grammar so I cannot make any real comments about it, but what little I do know I saw no mistakes.
Overall this story was a very thoughtful and moving piece; one I would suggest to others to read if they enjoy this sort of story. Have a thumbs up sir.
Okay, so, um, going in to read it the first time, I accidentally spoiled the ending for myself (my phone scrolled down too fast, and I saw the comments)
Anyway, it's a brilliant piece. I love how you described the deadness of the village through the bird, the dog, the water, the filly. The other comments said it better, and I agree with them in that this really captures how there are no winners in war.
Now this next part is just me being nitpicky:
My unit and I (?)
The dog must have sought out (?) or The dog must have been seeking (?)
I know it's correct, but it still strikes me as... odd.
Kinda redundant.
I keep going back to reread this sentence 'cause I can't seem to parse what it's trying to say. But that might be just me.
A bit redundant, considering the previous paragraph.
Now I'm curious how it would read in 600-or-so words.
Hi. I'm Starman Ghost, and I'm here to review your fic on behalf of WRITE.
FORMATTING AND GRAMMAR
No problems here. At least, none that I saw. Your sentences are composed correctly, you didn't misspell any words, and the formatting is perfectly readable. Good job.
NARRATION
Let's talk about word choice. You describe homes having "huge holes ripped in their walls." The word "ripped" seems like an odd one to use here. I don't know what the houses are made of, but ripping makes me think of paper or fabric. You mentioned they used firebombs, meaning they have explosives, so I think it'd make more sense to say "huge holes blown in the walls."
There's a later paragraph about a dog, and you use the word "dog" multiple times when describing it. It feels strangely redundant. Once you've established that it's a dog, you should just be able to refer to it as "it." Readers will know what you're talking about.
Next subject, being overly wordy. I realize that at least part of this was probably from the need to pad the story out as you mentioned, but it's still worth talking about. For example, at the part with a dead bird, the story says: "It did not die from the fire. Without ponies to feed it, the bird starved to death."
This line is offset for added impact, which is a good technique, but the description is overlong, which drags it out and reduces its effectiveness. You've established that the bird is dead in the previous paragraph, so you don't need to say "[it] starved to death" when you can just say "[it] starved." Furthermore, you can remove "without ponies to feed it," because the reader should have a pretty good guess why it starved. Given that this story's all about the devastation of war, nobody's going to think that this is some random aside about its owner being cruel or negligent. When a character finds a caged bird that died of starvation and the entire scene up until that point has been describing how the town is desolate and everyone in it is dead, they're going to have a pretty good idea how it died.
In fact, I would argue that you could chop off the second sentence entirely and just leave the line with "The bird did not die from the fire." The bird is thin, it's caged (preventing it from getting its own food), and everyone who might have fed it is dead. When the reader realization of the significance of the dead bird is their own, the scene makes more of an impression.
The reveal of the narrator's identity is also well-executed, but on the whole, it brings the story down by being there. It worked much better when he was an anonymous young stallion. The whole story is spent setting the mood of this ruined town, but that's promptly forgotten when I hit this and I'm left wondering "Oh, wait, it's Big Macintosh? Come to think of it, is he the type to join the royal guard? I mean, when you think about it..." Overall, it's a needless distraction that pulls the reader's attention away from the atmosphere rather than enhancing it.
I do like the technique of having one of the soldiers seeing something terrible that the narrator doesn't, though. Lets the reader's mind start to work on all kinds of awful things.
PLOT AND CHARACTERS
I've split this into two subsections.
The characters we see
Even though it isn't explicitly stated, we can infer from their shock and dismay that the soldiers present are green troops, who haven't really had a chance to get accustomed to what happens in war. That's good.
However, I have to wonder about the commander. I would expect that he'd be paying attention to his soldiers' morale, and would be trying to do something to rationalize to them why it had to happen and restore their faith in the cause. I'd think even an inexperienced, incompetent commander would belt out an empty platitude or two.
The ones we don't
I kept having a lingering thought throughout this story, one that made me question the whole scene in a way that distracted from the atmosphere you were building:
Why is Celestia apparently okay with ponies who are supposed to be serving her, carpet-bombing villages in her own damn country?
I mean, that just doesn't make sense. Celestia's over a thousand years old. She has to know that the "level the place and deal with the survivors if there are any" is going to kill a lot of innocent ponies, including - as the story establishes - children. Beyond that, she apparently encourages ponies to fight by saying they "would be hailed as heroes." That seems to me that Celestia herself is involved in pushing this false narrative of glorious war. I would think Celestia would be more likely to gain support by emphasizing the necessity of the war by saying that it would save more lives in the long run, rather than appealing to ponies' desire for personal glory.
Anyway, the Celestia you have here is... not the Celestia I saw in the show, and since this isn't marked as an AU, I think it's a fair complaint to say this feels grossly out-of-character for her. Even if you subscribe to the Tyrant Celestia meme and that's what you're going for, it's an unnecessary angle that alienates readers who might otherwise have enjoyed the story.
CONCLUSION
Overall, it's kind of hard to judge this story. You've admitted you had to pad it out to far longer than you would've liked, which must have made the quality suffer. I recommend that you write a shorter version (if you haven't already done so), upload it as a blog post, and get critique on that.
Starman Ghost, WRITE's Unpaid Intern
As a story I think this falls a little flat, giving us "war is terrible" in the most simplistic terms possible. However, I see that you were going for atmosphere more than story, and in that regard this is a rousing success. :D
6259506 My intention was more to capture the atmosphere than to come up with a plot, so I'm glad that succeeded.
jeez. Listened to Solar Pony's reading of this and... man. That's just... man.
Nothing I can say to this that hasn't already been said, but I'm surprised you didn't use this to make your story's picture
Poor Big Mac...