Barbelle, the biggest little pony in Ponyville, thinks she's got her life all figured out. But meeting Twilight Sparkle, the new unicorn in town, makes her start wondering.
I began this Ponyfic in February 2011 on the day after my 46th birthday, finished the three acts of it at the end of that month, and submitted it to Sethisto at Equestria Daily--this was back in the days before pre-readers. He said he liked it, but since he got grumbles every time he posted a story starring an OC Pony, he was gonna pass. So I figured I'd try a story focusing on the actual characters next and began work on Half the Day is Night.
Still, this was my first Pony story, so I figured I should post it first now that I've managed to get myself an account here. And maybe it'll goad me into gathering my notes to write up Belle's next adventure...
Mike
Oh lawdy lawdy dat pic
I don't have anything against Sethisto as a person (besides his irritating-as-hell Trixie obsession), but I hate how authors, pre-readers, etc. say "Sethisto likes X" or "Sethisto likes Y" as if one single human being's opinion somehow determines everything w.r.t Merit-- as if he was 'Emperor of the Bronies' and his word was the unbreakable bond of a God.
SO UGLY!!!!
Well, anyways, to the story... I... it's not bad. I didn't really like it, but I suppose it wasn't meant for me.
One first thing: you should be careful about intermingling thoughts, dialogue, actions, and observations.
You know, like look at:
He felt pretty tired. Where the hay is Twilight going to race to next? He marched up the stairs. That's what I do, after all, as a 'retriever pony'. He came upon the huge, dark brown door and thrust it open. "Wake up. It's time to die," he declared. Why? Would they ever know? He had such weird feelings flow through about his mission, but the pink unicorn's skull just had to be sitting on his employers desk by tomorrow.
Which is how a lot of your story flows, and it's confusing. Instead, you could set up a style something like:
He felt pretty tired. Where the hay is Twilight going to race to next? He marched up the stairs. That's what I do, after all, as a 'retriever pony'. He came upon the huge, dark brown door and thrust it open.
"Wake up. It's time to die," he declared. Why? Would they ever know? He had such weird feelings flow through about his mission, but the pink unicorn's skull just had to be sitting on his employers desk by tomorrow.
You know, try to disentangle those things-- thoughts, dialogue, actions, and observations.
Another thing, try to avoid going stuff like "Oh, Twilight!!" or "Oh, Spike, I need that-..." or "Hey, Dashie??" Double-punctuation is really annoying.
A third thing, it really felt iff for Twilight and Barb to have their little conversation about what the worth of muscles are and then 'BAM!'-- just a few seconds later, we see Derpy show up to illustrate that point visually. It seemed to fall pretty flat.
A forth thing, Barb... well... really has a Mary Sue-ish vibe. She has nothing to be other than a)she's strong and b)she's not sure what to do in life. That's it. I would really much rather see some complexity in there.
Who are her closest friends? What's her relationship to her family? Does she date stallions with her own body type? Does she dream about finding a nice stallion and being married? What's her opinion about her physical appearance-- does she still try to 'look nice' by doing her hair and so on? Does she have life's passions outside of fitness-- like art, music, or similar such things? And so on...
Just trying to be helpful here.
Fluttershy's lines were awesome.
This was a solid slice-of-life story with a really great OC. Belle is awesome, and your writing is very good. (The ending bothered me a little bit because I felt like Sal kind of came out of nowhere to suddenly give purpose to Belle's life and tie the story up neatly.) So a fantasy/sci-fi writer...hope you write some science fiction pony stories. The poniverse needs some more speculative fiction to keep up with all the shipping stories.
I remember seeing this story a long time ago, but I'd never finished it.
And now that I have, it was pretty good -- and unique.
An interesting little episode that I'm happy I was finally able to read.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I can hardly believe it's been a year and a quarter since I put this thing together.
Like all my stories, I think I learned some things from writing it--and from reading the reactions to it.
Mike
Ive read this somewhe else...
good to see it here too.
Snowflake and Barbelle should marry each other and start a gym. They could make a fortune off personal training.
2781547
I can just see:
Belle rolling her eyes every time Snowflake gives off his trademark, "Yeah!"
Mike