• Member Since 30th Dec, 2014
  • offline last seen 2 hours ago

ActivistVictor


Back, but for reasons I won't share.

Sequels1

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This story has been cancelled as a reboot involving many plot and character changes is replacing it. Link here: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/462928/tales-of-troubled-teens-reboot

(Alternate universe set before any of the events of the Equestria Girls movies.)



Meet Pocket Pair, a teenager high school student with an obsession over playing poker. One thing about him you may want to know about him, among the many other things there are to know, is the fact that he has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Among other things, this means that certain things, such as socialization, do not come nearly as easily to him as they do to most people, and as a result of this he has had great trouble making friends for a vast majority of his life, even up until his senior year of high school. Granted, he does have two people who call themselves his friends named Applejack and Ralph, and he sits with them every day at lunch. However, he does not believe they are really his friends since they very rarely talk to him outside of school and never actually invite him to do anything. Feeling bitter, upset, depressed, alone, and oh so desperate for change after a lifetime of not feeling he has friends, on the eve of his senior year, he makes a plan to make things better before he graduates. The plan is simple, get a girl, woo her, and then the love from the relationship should make things better… I mean after all, it works in all the Hollywood romances he watches after all…. Unfortunately, when he shares his plan with his table mates Ralph in particular takes offense to it, feeling it is just a pathetic attempt by him to get them to feel pity for him and give him attention, even though Applejack feels otherwise. Pocket Pair, fed up with Ralph’s failure to meet the standards he feels he should, tells him to put his money where his mouth and demands he make a bet with him on this or shut up for good about it, even offering to give him a choice to say who he needs to ask out with it. Unfortunately for him, this was a HORRIBLE mistake, because Ralph is so fed up with his “attention ploys” he’s going to make dead sure, he never makes another one And how will he do that? By making Pocket Pair ask out the girl who is BY FAR the meanest in the entire school … SUNSET SHIMMER!!!!

Chapters (10)
Comments ( 25 )
Comment posted by RichardTCMcdonald deleted Nov 27th, 2016
Comment posted by ActivistVictor deleted Nov 27th, 2016
Comment posted by RichardTCMcdonald deleted Nov 27th, 2016
Comment posted by ActivistVictor deleted Nov 27th, 2016
Comment posted by RichardTCMcdonald deleted Nov 27th, 2016
Comment posted by ActivistVictor deleted Nov 27th, 2016

So far it's decent 6/10

Okay. Not giving you a downvote, because I don't do that unless a story actively offends me, and I think I've only downvoted like five times in two years. But I will give you some constructive criticism, because after reading 2 chapters I think I have some idea why people are downvoting.

Firstly, in your first two chapters Pocket Pair is totally unlikeable. I have a suspicion some of that is intentional on your part, but he goes above and beyond the call of douchebaggery. He ignores the fact that he has two friends to insist that he has no friends, just people he hangs out with at lunch, despite the fact that he texts them in the middle of the night (Oh, and he texts them in the middle of the night and then refuses to explain until lunch the next day, leaving poor Applejack to stew on being afraid for him.) His "plan" to get a girlfriend depends on such outrageously bad information I can't tell if you intended that to show how clueless he is, or not (his plan seems very close to pickup-artist land, and as soon as he gets close to something that would actually be helpful, like "be supportive", he then veers off into stupid land with "always pretend she's right". Quite aside from reducing women to prizes you win in a video game for hitting the right buttons, they aren't even the real-life buttons that would work.) He's a jerk to his parents, and while the narrative seems to be implying that he is in the right, the very fact that he's gratuitously being a jerk makes him seem wrong.

The degree of poker jargon is waaay beyond what you need to tell a humanized My Little Pony story about a dude who goes out with Sunset Shimmer. If I'm writing a romance between two doctors, I don't need to spend an entire chapter lingering on a blow-by-blow description of one of them performing an operation with all the attendant medical lingo. We should know Pocket Pair is good at poker, but not the best, and that he has a really short temper and handles losing badly (that is what you were trying to convey, right?) We don't need to know as much about poker as he does. Also, what's up with the confusion with his name? Pocket Pair is a perfectly good Equestria Girls name, since the EG characters use the same kinds of names ponies do; why is his real name suddenly Victor? (Which could also be a decent pony name, given that it means Winner and he wins a lot at poker, but what does he need two unrelated names for?)

Discord is out of character. The messing with the kid, that's right, but the sudden "Wow, you're awesome at poker" really isn't. Even if Discord thinks the kid is really good, he probably wouldn't tell him so, or hint at it. Discord's own ego is approximately the size of Mount Everest; he'd play it cool and be all like, "You're not bad, kid; maybe I'll give you a few tips", even if he thinks Pocket Pair is better than he is. (Maybe especially then.)

You have Pocket Pair monologue a lot. When paragraph after paragraph is him speaking, and there's no one he's talking to... is he a supervillain? Does he deliver lengthy monologues? Keep more of that in thoughts rather than speech; people do talk to themselves, but they don't monologue out loud extensively (and if they do, other people call them weird for it.)

Finally... shorten your long description. You've basically given away the plot of the first three chapters or so. This is unnecessary. The summary is supposed to be a description that makes people want to read the story, not a description that makes them think they already have. The short description or the description from Fanfiction.net would be better.

6746185 ok, I've revised the first chapter and will be working on the second one as well as the description

Comment posted by Sakinah Mlpfan deleted Jun 5th, 2019

Are u kidding people? ??:flutterrage:

Why so many dislikes? ???!!!!!
THIS IS AWESOME! !

7115679 thanks, glad someone likes this. If you don't mine me asking what in particular do you like about it?

7115816 Maybe they're just jealous? Idk, but whatever the reason i'm very disappointed with fimfiction. part of wonders if I should just pull the plug on this story and just continue it on fanfiction.net only.

Hey don't worry about all the likes and dislikes you story gets. I think you should write for yourself first and if you enjoy what your writing than the haters don't matter. And if it bothers you so much, the comments are the first place to look but don't let it make you bring you down.☺

7120934 I replied the answer on my user page.. and I think people just hate OC x Mane Six Human Shipping... or because it's Applekack?? ( you know, she's not very popular. .hmm??)

Comment posted by ActivistVictor deleted Jul 1st, 2017
Comment posted by ActivistVictor deleted Jul 13th, 2017

Okay, so here's what I think.

There's a few spelling errors. The people on this site seem to vote around here based on the grammar of the story, if not the content of the story itself.

The joke about the "stores for girls" comes off as sexist to me, but that's my opinion. Can't speak for anyone else.

It also looks to me like you're using this story as a platform for venting over real life problems. I could be wrong, but that's my perception.

Those are my 100% honest opinions on this chapter.

8965436
ok, i might go through and edit it again... eventually.

and yeah, your perception is fairly accurate.

Comment posted by RichardTCMcdonald deleted May 27th, 2019

Love how everyone who came from the linked reboot used the link as a means to smother this in dislikes too... how old are all of you again? Because when you act so passive aggressive i question whether you mental age is any higher than that pf MLP’s original target demographic, though i suppose it’s even worse because at least actual kids have the legitimate excuse of not knowing any better and having brains which haven't developed yet, which cannot be said of full grown men suffice to say

6746185
Honestly, calling this character unlikeable is pretty ignorant. I’m no psychologist but I know how to read between the lines and it’s quite obvious from reading this the main character in this story has been hurt before hence their apprehension.

I also infer based on later updates that they are likely on the spectrum, hence why they talk aloud, and frankly there isn’t anything wrong with that. Sure it’s unusual but if it isn’t hurting anyone no one should care, u less they are overly judgmental, but that’s a reader issue if anything.


And who cares if someone’s a bit out of character tbh? If that’s someone’s biggest gripe they need bet Yee r things to fill their time, especially since it was clear the person writing this was hurting a lot and shouldn’t have had to deal with semantics just to get acceptance

11533848
Glad someone actually gets it. Apparently people on here can’t read between the lines, which is ironic considering the whole point of this site

11705899
I suspected as much, people here be so ignorant

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