The Leatherbound Journal

Source

A mysterious journal of unknown origins, containing short entries that may help the Crystal Empire comprehend the true identity of the tyrannical king that once ruled over them, is discovered.

The surviving pages have been restored and made available for public viewing by the Crystal Empire Historical Society. Take your time and enjoy, but please keep your hooves off the parchment, or you will be escorted from the premises.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 7 )

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sgtnolisten

sgtnolisten #1 · Aug 8th, 2014 · 2 · ·

"Takes more than a couple blows to shatter crystals..."

...no...

0_0

Mixolydian Grey

Mixolydian Grey #2 · Aug 9th, 2014 · 2 · ·

I'm going to assume that you're open to review/critiques/commentary. If that assumption is incorrect, disregard all but the first and last paragraphs of my comment.

This comment contains spoilers, if you're worried about that sort of thing.

The main idea is entertaining. The execution would benefit from polish. And when I say that, what I really mean is that it has flaws which can be fixed without completely tearing the thing apart.

One major flaw is a series of excessively byzantine sentences in the "academic" sections. Perhaps leaning in that direction fits the piece, but if you go too far in that direction, it becomes difficult to read and understand. There were sentences there that broke off halfway through to give a multiple line description before going back and finishing the original sentence. To give a concise recommendation for fixing this, I would present the following idea: There is great power in subtlety. A few "academic" word choices would give the impression, without needing a whole labyrinth of sentences. Note Rarity's speech in the show... it's not all that fancy. It's just her use of "darling" and a few other phrases that give that impression, and people perceive it as fancier than it really is. I guess human psychology exaggerates differences.

A second flaw, which you may or may not even consider as such, is that it's rather obvious where the story is going. Maybe that's of no consequence to you. I didn't mind so much, even knowing very early on where it was going. Maybe that was intentional. If so, you accomplished that. If you want it to be less obvious, I would suggest the obvious: take a look at the hints you're dropping. An ancient pony named "Sta---" can only be Starswirl. If you want to be more subtle... maybe Starswirl was a nickname, not his real name. Maybe he signed it differently. Let the mention of his beard melting away be the hint at his identity... the reader is already preoccupied with thinking about the crystals at that time. The name at the end of an entry is pretty plain... it isn't hidden in other details like the beard thing. A second example: when you're talking about the ancient Crystal Empire, and then you show descending numbers with "SR," the first guess it that they're dates measured backwards from Sombra's Reign. Would Sombra really be that egotistical as to use a dating system with his own name in it? Maybe, but maybe there are alternatives that are less obvious... Using a date like "-1.280 CE" (Crystal Empire) is subtly more distant from "Sombra," especially if you also play around with the paragraph explaining about Crystalton/The Empire. Those are just some ideas I'm throwing out there, in case you find them useful.

First person journal entry stories are pretty hit-or-miss for me. I liked this one... though I could be biased. I sorta have the feeling that I would have liked one or two more short entries. Perhaps one about the work/magic/science/experiments and one about surviving in the cave, to add further immersion and maybe distract from the hints a bit more.

In my opinion, the mix of journal entries with academic commentary was interesting and effective in most cases. While they both could use polish, as mentioned earlier, I felt that they supported each other (aside from a handful of cases) rather than distracting from each other.

I'm glad to see you finally post something, Tommy.