Saphroneth
Joined 19th Feb, 2012 ·
Offline
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Saphroneth · 18k words · 108 6 · 3.4k views
- Charles Rocketboy · 2k words · 83 0 · 1.5k views
- Masem · 27k words · 111 3 · 1.8k views
- Plonq · 10k words · 88 4 · 2.2k views
Join our SubscribeStar to remove these adverts!
Join our SubscribeStar to remove these adverts!
Stats
Page generated in 0.243 seconds
Total duration
625 users online
1,048,359 hits today, 2,814,898 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
"And what should a guard do, when his background has secrets buried within?"
BUTTSECKS!
I like this story.
698435
Not that kind of secrets...
And thanks. I tend to go for action and humour, so I thought I'd try something subdued for once.
Good enough, but not really anything noteworthy.
I guess it could be an interesting starting point.
714908 Fair enough. I was doing it as a sort of experiment, to see if I could do something entirely character driven.
I might go on to do more of Mirror/ed shield's duties.
Finally had a bit of time to have a look. Let's see.
In your favour is the fact that you didn't go with changeling shipping *shudder*. It feels like a redemption fic on the right track, and the relevance of the changeling race's abilities, specifically the point about camaraderie, were novel although the structure of the story and the writing itself hurt the flow. The punch of the middle, the exposition, the reveal so to say, was hindered by Mirror's broken speech patterns. The stilted writing and many instances of starting sentences with prepositions - the latter not a bad thing unless done in excess, which I felt was the case - was a bit of a hard swallow, and a lot of the ellipses and dashes could have been done away with some way or another. They do break the flow of the story, the dashes more so, and the frequency of them was off-putting, sort of like adding too much pepper to a fish fillet.
An instance of stilted writing is:
>“Trusted.” Mirror replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, then steadied himself visibly and began to explain in more detail.
>“It was easy, to start. Come into Canterlot. Shape of pegasus. Made up pegasus, with similar name. Makes it easier.”
I would have not started a new paragraph for the second line of dialogue. "He closed his eyes..." acts fine by itself as a way of showing pause in the scene. The breaking of the one-paragraph-per-speaker guideline is rather prevalent from start to finish. Of course, I think I've seen it done in books before, just saying that personally, this was a hindrance.
And, uh, that's what I thought of it.
730013 Heh. Thanks for being honest.
The reason I went with broken/stilted speech there was basically to emphasize how, now, he's leaving that behind in place of being Shield and it's almost unsettling to remember. His thoughts about it aren't all that coherent, whether from how he's forgetting or from the fact that he's right next to a stern deity.
Hence why, when he gets back onto a more comfortable topic, he's able to speak more naturally.
I know I kept doing new paragraph for same speaker, but my understanding of that grammatical rule is that it's "no two speakers on the same paragraph" and that the above version can be done for stylistic reasons - whether a break in the topic or in the style of speech.
And I know I overuse dashes and ellipsis a bit, but that's because I prefer to show pauses or strained speech with representation in the text.
Now, story-wise... the idea for this came from looking at the number of changeling fics around, and noticing how their most common thread was that the events of Canterlot Wedding were what set them off - so whether it's because of being lost or injured, their only choice was to be "nice" for a little.
Which can work, and work well, but I wondered if you could have a Changeling who was already on the straight and narrow beforehand.
Oh, and of course I wanted to explore the ability-set of Changelings, and how it could be used for long term infiltration as opposed to short term replacement. (Mirrored Shield's supposed special talent is to avoid being hurt by attacks, for example - what he's actually doing is shifting into an uninjured version of his body.)
Very good story. I was driving myself mad(
) trying to find it in my favorites earlier, and couldn't. Come to find out, I'd read it on fanfiction.net. 
I had a bit of an ah-HA moment as I reread it. Don't know why the recruit asking Celestia for permission to date her niece didn't click as Shining Armor before that.
The plot is interesting, and a nice deviation from the usual "oh I'm hurt and can't get away" type of thing happening in most changeling fics.
I really hope that you write more about Mirror, cause he was a very interesting character, and it would be interesting to see what reactions other main characters would have, like say, Shining Armor(as captain of the guard) or the other princesses. Or the Mane 6. Anyway, enough or my rambling. Hope to see more soon.
735193 Thanks for your comment. Yeah, that was sort of what I was going for - something a little original, and more voluntary.
I think I might have him carry around an official letter from Celestia saying "Yes, I know he's a Changeling, it's not a danger."
And I believe I have a potential plan to get him in the same place as some of the 6...
Mind, it's dependent on my attention deficit creator disorder.
As good or better than the first chapter! I like where this is going.
1070778 Is it me, or have I accidentally created James Bond pony?
1072449 Its not just you. Now you need to give Celestia the codename Q for when he has to contact her secretly, and have a quirky inventor...
1073363
That does sound funny.
Options:
Discord.
"I think you'll like this one. It's a glass of milk. The glass explodes, very handy for those tight spots. Careful with it."
Luna.
"What did you think I've been doing for the last six months? Now, this is your new chariot."
Derpy.
"And this one is a sour muffin. Tasty, and it can melt through walls. And this is a muffin full of caffeine. Short range explosive. Ooh, and this is a capascin muffin. It allows you to be a flamethrower!"
I'm sure Mirror gets bonus Bond points for his earth-pony persona being an avid gambler.
1073490 Whoops! Wrong letter it was M that was the head of MI6... Make that P (for princess), for the princess' codename.
For some reason, I like Luna the best for the inventor position... She has always seemed a bit eccentric to me. Not sure why. I can totally see her coming up with all sorts of crazy gadgets in her free time.dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Luna_apple.png She could be L...
And yes, Mirror would get bonus Bond points for gambling. Though I think he would need to tweak his Earth pony disguise. He might run into somebody who knows the Oranges, and that would cause problems. If it wouldn't be so obvious, I'd say something like Change Ling. "The names Ling... Change Ling." Anyway, enough of my rambling.
1073539
He can pass the name off as a coincidence if need be. I mainly had him wanting a reason to travel to Manehattan - if he instead builds up a perception of the alibi turning up places occasionally, then it becomes more "Oh, someone told me about you, yes."
Though I'm planning on any future stories only delving into Bond tropes where necessary, and not just for the sake of it. Subtle reference works better than outright parody, here.
I did also consider Trixie as the R&D pony for parody purposes. But in this setting she's (subtly implied to be) a Guard magic specialist trainee.
1072449 you have my attention
and maybe my thumb
1073587
Ohhhhh so that was Trixie...makes sense.
1076248 Yeah, I think she'd do fairly well in the Guard. She has the power, and her misdirection and so on would work just as well against an enemy.
Discipline, on the other hand, WOULD be a problem. But get that sorted, and, well...
fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/282/0/e/captain_trixie_by_equestria_prevails-d4c9qqk.jpg
1077971
Hey make her a special ops guard, like a Mass Effect spectre. Give task, she completes it as she see's necessary...within reason.
1079046 "Okay, I've assigned Lt. Trixie to the Smooze problem. This won't make the problem go away, but it will turn it into a large number of property damage lawsuits rather than an evil being made of purest hate."
1079061
I think Celestia would be ok with that
And oddly enough, the first thing that came to mind after reading your comment was King Théoden's line about how crops could be resown and homes rebuilt...oh and a giant slime monster with a thousand faces.
1079086 It all reminds me of how a more sensible interpretation of Mr. Bond in the films is that he's a wet-works operative.
By this analogy, if Mirror is a wet-works guy, then Trixie would be his standby nuclear-armed submarine...
1079135
...well at least it's his submarine, otherwise he'd end up in space shooting missiles with a laser gun...and failing...over...and over...and over...I hated that level, don't think I ever actually beat it either...
1079153
Not played that particular game.
The reason I mention it is because of a James Bond-style book wherein the operative is quietly informed that HMS Vanguard is "open for a direct line of credit" in case things go south. And the fact that Vanguard is a Trident-armed nuclear submarine makes it very, very clear how serious things are.
Nice short story I must say.
It is not realy a great story, but I m sure it deserve more ppularity than it received.
1254420 I'll take that as a compliment...
I'd try Equestria Daily, but I've been burned by them a couple of times in the past. So it's just adding it to what groups I can find for now. Any suggestions, actually?
1254637
Well, your story is short and good, it is just not great.
A bit to short, not detailed enoght, and a bit to rushed, everythink happen to fast.
I honestly do not know why it have so little reviews and so low number of comments, I think it deserve more than that, anyway there are some long and good stories about changelings what have a very high popularity, meaby you can get some inspiration from tham.
I can not give you recipte about how to make your story realy good and popular, but I quess making it longer, with more character development and puting some interesting image on the story may help, basicaly do not rush, give characters more time to develop, for example, in this story Celestia start to trust her changeling soldier far to fast, there is alot of ways you could add alot scenes when he slowly gain trust of the princess, can not realy think anythink out at the moment.
1254903
It had originally been planned to be a short one shot. Like all my stories start except for Ponies in Space and Ashes of the Past, it seems like...
I know it moves a little fast, but I thought I'd let it stand on the grounds that, yes, Celestia IS the kind of person who could judge the trustworthiness of an oath-sworn member of her guard at a glance. She's got thousands of years of experience, and there'd be no benefit to him NOT revealing himself at the wedding but voluntarily doing so mere weeks later.
Or, rather, she's not showing perceptible doubt. Make no mistake, she's still going to be following him - but her level of trust is enough that she'll let him go on missions and fulfil his duties. In effect, nothing about him has changed, except that he is now being more honest than before about his abilities.
1255049
I understand.
But like I said, I m not sure why this story have so little reviews and popularity.
It is not a great story like some of what I read so far, but it is still a good one.
1255060 Thanks.
Had a look at any of my others?
Ponies in Space is a long-form story that's basically a military sci fi novella; Another Kind of Magic is the canon but with more Trixie, and is basically an excuse for writing banter; A Night at the Shady Trough is a character piece derived from a picture, and is about the bar the Night Guard go out drinking.
1255077
Yes, I read the story with the guards as well but only in parts because I m low on time, I wonder where you got the picture from.
Anyway I m now rather checking up the changeling stories and not want to get to distracted, sorry, to many stories opened at once may get confusing.
1255116
The picture is from Equestria-Prevails on Deviantart (click the "source" link below it). While I don't have explicit permission for it - because he hardly ever replies to messages - he has said that any use is fine so long as he has credit.
So is this dead or what? I really like this and i will fav it but i wanna know if there will be more?
2974123
Back burner. Not certain I'm done, but I've got a combination of fics which are much more easy to write right now (MLP Loops) and the ripple effect of having a job.
Well. That was rather awesome.
Moar? :P
Are there any plans to complete this story? I ask because I am going to favorite this because the plot behind it sounds interesting. HOWEVER, until it is completed, I am going to give it a thumbs down. Because while I may approve of the plot behind the story, I DO NOT approve of the fact that it has been 2 years, 4 months, and 29 days since the last update. I mean, I understand that greatness can't be rushed, but needing 852 days in order to update the next chapter means one of three things. A: You've given up on the book (this is the most likely scenario). B: You’re too busy to write any more (this is understandable, even if highly annoying). ). Or C: You're dead (this is a scenario with a 50% probability chance, seeing as how people die every day.) If option C makes you feel uncomfortable than that means two things. You are obviously not dead, and I am sorry for having that as one of the three possibilities. Also, don’t give up! Your fans deserve better! I, of course, meant that in the best and most encouraging possible way.
5483697
I do have vague plans to eventually continue this, though it is most certainly not a priority.
Other fics are. For example, since the start of the month of October 2014 I have written a little over a hundred and seventy thousand words of my Pokemon fic, Ashes of the Past.
(Also, not dead.)
5484099
It is good to know that you do have vague plans to continue this, however. 
It is the
Oh. Well, as you said it was a Pokémon Fic, I am going to guess and say that it is not a My Little Pony Fic (unless it is a crossover Fic) and as that is the case, then I say good luck to you with that Fic.
part that worries me, though.
This fic. I keep re-reading it. Or parts of it. Or the whole thing.
Shapeshifting as a healing method is also theorized as how Discord does it, since he does not have normal magic.
if this ever continues it'd be nice.