• Member Since 6th Jul, 2012
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Alabenson


Sequels2

T

After Starlight Glimmer’s attempt at revenge, Twilight Sparkle finds herself now assigned a bodyguard; an old acquaintance of her brother’s named Captain Moonwhisper. Twilight and her friends do their best to get along with the stallion, but Moonwhisper proves to be a difficult pony to make friends with. Who exactly Is Captain Moonwhisper, and is his antisocial demeanor just a personal quirk or something more?

Chapters (8)
Comments ( 21 )

Will this story have romance in it?

7612936 I am planning for there to be some shipping towards the end, yes.

this story is great! i will be keeping a close eye on this nice job

That avatar of yours, is it a sprite? Did you make it?

7850935 My avatar is an OC of mine that I created with an old online ponymaker.

Great chapter. Loved that final scene.

If Captain Moonwhisper was voiced, what would he sound like?

“Flash who?” Shining Armor asked. “Wait, pegasi guard, orange coat, dark blue mane, right? Twily, Flash Sentry’s a rookie private who isn’t even a full year out of basic training yet. He might be a decent guard, but he’s just not qualified for an assignment like this. Besides, I’m not even sure he’d be interested in accepting the assignment.” Shining Armor turned to Cadence. “Isn’t Flash Sentry the one who started dating one of the local librarians? I think her name was Amethyst something or other.”
“Amethyst Shine. I think they met during our last Hearth’s Warming Eve ball.”
“Oh, I see…” Twilight felt a twinge of sadness at the news, although after taking a moment to think about it, it occurred to her that she wasn’t nearly as upset as would have expected. After all, Twilight realized, it had actually been Flash Sentry’s human counterpart that she had bonded with; Twilight couldn’t even recall if she had even spoken more than five sentences to her own universe’s Flash Sentry.

Thank goodness.

I like this, it should be audio narrated, PM me if you're interested because I have Zero exp. in it (but I'm more than happy, ready, and willing to learn).

“I don’t think you’re his type, Minuet.” Twilight stated, heading off the impending argument. “To be honest, I’m not sure Moonwhisper even has a type.”

Twilight, don't be ridiculous and silly, everyone, I mean, everypony, sorry, EVERY THING has a type.

Would be much easier to read if you paragraphed like I did.

Review:
10/10
Good enough story, great dialogue, only complaint is too much chunky paragraphing.
While 'tab' text is an effective way to paragraph eventually the eyes just stop and don't want to read.
A repetitive use of this means poorly on your script.

Taking a space, line break, page break, etc. is more effective and gives the readers a chance to absorb it rather than see a blob instead.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this story, and it should definitely be audio read aloud.

Hi, Alabenson!

Thank you for submitting your story, Guarded Emotions, to First Glance Reviews! I've put together this review based on the first ~1,700 words of Chapter 1—up to your first scene break.

I'm really glad you've submitted this story, Alabenson, because I get the feeling from what I've seen of the plot so far that you have a good thing going here—you're not rushing, you've invented some unique characters, and you've clearly put time and dedication into putting this out there. That being said, if I'm being flat honest with you, I think your introduction is selling you short, and I'm going to spend these next few hundred words explaining why I feel that way, and identifying things that could have helped me get more into it.

But let's start with your summary. It's quick, painless, and gives us a clear idea of who the main players are and what they'll be doing for the next 60,000 words or so. But I have to admit, after I read the summary and took a quick glance at the word counts, I became a little worried.

If I could put it into a word, I would pick 'vanilla'. Vanilla is great! People like vanilla. It's quick, painless, and usually the first pick when people are looking for an ice cream flavour to feed a large group of people. Because everybody likes vanilla, but the problem is that not many people really love vanilla. And it's a lot easier to turn your nose up at a story you don't love than a bowl of ice cream.

Here, I'll drop the metaphor and try to explain what I mean.

Your story starts with a weather report. It's one of the better weather reports I've seen, because it's relevant to the scenes to come, and it immediately establishes a setting. But it's still a weather report, and those have been done before. That said, whether or not you want "what's been done before" to factor into your writing is completely up to you. I just want you to know that it can be a turn-off sometimes, and if you ask me, starting your story off like that is a huge missed opportunity to do something more unique—something that's less good and more great.

Now, what I'm going to do here is point out three issues that I think are hampering your story's first impressions and explain them as best I can. In order, those issues are: verbosity, punctuality, and show-and-tell.

First off, verbosity, or, using more words than needed. Let's look at your first sentence for instance, where I've done a quick markup:

It was early spring in Equestria, a few short weeks after winter had officially been completely wrapped up, and the initial snow-melting sunlight had given way to slate grey skies and cascading rain.

Now, it isn't like those crossed-out words shouldn't be there, but the question you need to be asking is, do they have to be? Do they add anything? Have a read-through of some of your writing and try to pick out extra words that don't really contribute. It may not look like much here, but it can really add up, and trimming the excess verbiage off your story is a great way to get the reader into the thick of things quicker.

On to punctuality. And what I mean by that is how long it takes certain aspects of your story to show up. And I think the best way to demonstrate this is with the below paragraph:

As the four headed off to Canterlot Castle, Twilight tried to take stock of the pair marching in front of her. Their armor, nearly identical to her brother’s aside from the fact that the enamel was light blue instead of violet, clearly marked them as lieutenants of the Equestrian Royal Guard. Apart from their armor, however, neither pony possessed the uniform look that most ponies typically associated with members of the royal guard. Lieutenant Silverstreak, for example, was the first guardsmare that Twilight Sparkle could ever recall meeting. That said, Twilight had to admit that Lieutenant Silverstreak certainly looked the part. The dark-maned, silver-coated pegasi had a physique like a Wonderbolt, and she carried herself with the same stern bearing that most ponies associated with members of the Royal Guard. While Lieutenant Silverstreak may have seemed like something of an oddity on account of her gender, Lieutenant Sharpshooter was an oddity on account of almost everything else about him. Sharpshooter was a decidedly averagely built stallion with a navy blue coat and an unfortunate pea soup green colored mane. Moreover, the stallion seemed far more comfortable to be in the presence of an alicorn princess than virtually any guard Twilight had ever met. It was Sharpshooter’s face, however, that truly captured Twilight’s attention. A set of three parallel scars, each roughly the width of the tip of Twilight’s horn, stretched from the center of Sharpshooter’s forehead just below his horn, under an eye-patch covering his left eye, and terminating at the base of the stallion’s jaw.

I'm going to be completely honest with you again, Alabenson: This paragraph is a problem. It's a tremendous info-dump, and without breaking it up—either by moving its pieces around or even using simple line-breaks—I'm worried a lot of eyes are going to glaze over. I haven't even quoted the whole thing!

Now, I don't want you to think the info here doesn't belong. It absolutely does. It describes your characters, who I understand are important players in this story, so this info needs to be somewhere. However, it has showed up a touch too late in the story, and is packed way too close together. Can we not split these character traits up, and scatter them around earlier? What if we described Silverstreak and Sharpshooter's traits and appearances as they're first talking to Twilight and Spike? That way, we don't have to wait a full conversation before we get to know what they look like. Try to put yourself in Twilight's (horse)shoes and write about what she would notice first as she's talking to them, or even as she first sees them trotting towards her. The first thing I would notice, personally, would be that eyepatch!

Lastly, show-and-tell. Specifically, what I noted a lot of is a conflict between showing and telling narration. Not only is there a lot of jumping inside Twilight's head and telling us what she's feeling or thinking, but in a few instances, you don't even have to be doing it, because you had just finished showing it to us already. Here's an example:

“I…um…thank you?” Twilight stammered, taken somewhat aback by this unexpected display of overt deference.

That statement I've bolded up there is one that could probably be taken away. You don't need to tell us that she was taken aback—we saw it when she stammered!

I don't want to paint tell-y narration as some kind of sin, because it can be really useful if there's an emotion you want to tell us right quick, or an important thought that can't really be conveyed in action or dialogue. But there are a few opportunities I noticed where you could be showing us how Twilight is feeling and allowing us to make the connection ourselves.

By the way, before I sign off, I wanted to point out that your story is mechanically very good. Stellar, even, grammatically speaking. That said, they could just use some trimming.

I hope this review has been helpful to you, Alabenson, and thanks again for submitting your story to First Glance Reviews. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply here or send me a PM.

Best Regards,

Miller

7922716
In my mind, he sounds a lot like Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic.

It can take a while, but stories I put on ym read later list do get gotten to eventually.

I think my main thing with this was that "Moonwhisper" happens to be the name of my current Rowlet, which lead to some hilarious imagery.

Actual useful commentary:

Despite some early concerns about where you were going with Moonwhisper's combat ability (and his father), making this just be about him getting help worked very well.

The only thing I can usefully say is: paragraphs. As folk have noted: smaller paragraphs, more line breaks. I don't think you even need to change the text.

If you will permit me an example?

Ever since he had woken up that morning on the floor of Princess Twilight’s castle, with the princess’s hooves wrapped around him no less, Moonwhisper had felt, for the lack of a better term, good. Truthfully it was something a novel experience for him. If somepony had forced him to put how he felt to words, Moonwhisper would have described it as a feeling of lightness. It felt to Moonwhisper as though a massive weight that he had carried for all his life had been suddenly whisked away. The one downside that Moonwhisper found was that his newfound mood made it difficult for him to maintain what he felt was the properly dignified demeanor of a Captain of the Equestrian Guard. While Moonwhisper could have tolerated the fact that he couldn’t keep himself from grinning like a loon, his inability to stop skipping around like a schoolfilly was too much. Eventually Moonwhisper was able to restrain himself to something between a prance and a collected trot, but he still felt ridiculous. Any irritation Moonwhisper felt, however, was vastly eclipsed by the sheer elevation he felt at the recent developments between himself and Twilight.

(Using a shorter example so as not to clog things up) this could benefit from changing to:

Ever since he had woken up that morning on the floor of Princess Twilight’s castle, with the princess’s hooves wrapped around him no less, Moonwhisper had felt, for the lack of a better term, good. Truthfully it was something a novel experience for him. If somepony had forced him to put how he felt to words, Moonwhisper would have described it as a feeling of lightness. It felt to Moonwhisper as though a massive weight that he had carried for all his life had been suddenly whisked away.

The one downside that Moonwhisper found was that his newfound mood made it difficult for him to maintain what he felt was the properly dignified demeanor of a Captain of the Equestrian Guard. While Moonwhisper could have tolerated the fact that he couldn’t keep himself from grinning like a loon, his inability to stop skipping around like a schoolfilly was too much. Eventually Moonwhisper was able to restrain himself to something between a prance and a collected trot, but he still felt ridiculous. Any irritation Moonwhisper felt, however, was vastly eclipsed by the sheer elevation he felt at the recent developments between himself and Twilight.

For example.

Overall, very good job.

Comment posted by manacar deleted Mar 3rd, 2018

Hello, I have reviewed your story for the Reviewer's Cafe! As always, thank you for the hard work and effort you put into this story. I hope my opinions on it help you out in some small way. I certainly enjoyed reading it as well as reviewing it. :pinkiehappy:

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/211585/reviewers-cafe/thread/385186/review-guarded-emotions

Really liking the story, but there seems to be words missing or the wrong words in there place. Such as the part about “Mmhmm.” Twilight replied, pushing the found around on her plate with a levitating fork."
Other than that I'm enjoying it

Very cool story, I greatly enjoyed it

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