Eclipse, a freelance Necromancer, Hot Shot, a retired wandering day guard, and Crescent Blade, a bat-pony night guard, get caught up in a cult's plan after a small mix up in a bar. They don't trust the cult, but help them on their goals. As they start to do more missions, and spend time with more friends, they slowly learn about the cult's true goals. They decide to fight the cult but what happens when friendship get’s in the way? Join the three unlikely heroes as they meet new allies, follow the cult's plan and learn about the cult's true goals. That is, if they can actually get along with one another.
This is a major group collab done by the Advertisements group.
Thanks to:
For coming up with the idea of having a collab:
The Corn
Ideas:
Typervader
Caiustheshadowpony
Kamen writer Nocturnis
Darth_Pinkie
Art:
Barnside
For helping to advertise the collab:
Typervader
The Corn
Writers:
Thunderbolt Sentinel
Typervader
Darth_Pinkie
Kamen writer Nocturnis
Zyrah
Editors:
The Corn
NightLord
Jarvy Jared
Dillon S
Thunderbolt Sentinel
For creating the canon character poll:
Typervader
For judging the OC contest:
Magical Shield
OC's used and their owners (some still yet to be used):
Eclipse - Typervader
Crescent Blade - Kamen writer Nocturnis
Hot Shot - Darth_Pinkie
Cactus Jack - Caiustheshadowpony
Thunderbolt Sentinel- Thunderbolt Sentinel
Silver Screen - Hudson Hawk
Pea Gravel - Barnside
Val - Maskinos
Bleu Celeste (Blue) - Aeluna
Crescent Quartz - SilverBlaze0ne
Nice start. I guess its to late for other OC's to be added.
7326994 Yea, we did a vote for them sadly.
That's a valid excuse
Wait you already published this!
7327033
Why do I envision the armors equipping themselves the same way as a Makai Knight's armor from Garo?
7328433 Hahaha, they sorta do.
7328433 That's where a certain writer got them actually. I hate they way they look, but a cult using dark magic made sense.
Sentinel is not that yellow! That's like mustard!
7328642 Sorry, Barnside didn't have good color choices to look at.
7328666 Didn't he have the previous picture?
7328673 It wasn't colored. He did the coloring last night when he asked me, and well, I couldn't because I was alsleep. Let him know, he might fix it!
7328676 I know that I had to give someone the picture of Sentinel, oh well. I'll talk to him.
7328666 and what's up with the helmets it suppose to look like wolf heads
7328433 and yes a another garo fan! it's where the idea for the amors and their appearances came from but they're gonna work a bit differently revealed in chapter 2!
7332199 Thats what both me and Barnside thought it looked like. Ask him about it.
Well I'm hooked.
7332199
7346874
Firstly, your writing mechanics are pretty solid, I don’t have to get on you for any tense shifts or chopped-to-bits sentences. That’s the main issue with most of the fan-fiction I’ve encountered. While it doesn’t hurt the story plot wise, such issues make extracting the plot an ordeal that is nearly never worth it.
There is however, a perspective shift here:
We go from Crescent Blade to Eclipse with no line break to indicate the change in viewpoint. The few paragraphs previous is written in third person limited form. We are experiencing the world from Crescent’s shoulders and then we are suddenly shunted on to Eclipse’s. When you weave more than one viewpoint together like this (third person omniscient) you should establish that you are doing so in the first few paragraphs as to not make the point where other perspectives show up jarring. It’s not a large issue, as it only pings the “whut?” radar once and never again, but it makes your beginning stronger.
The bar scene seems a bit… odd. Not in its content, as it does an excellent job of establishing your characters’ personalities a smidgen. Rather, the reason for the scene’s existence itself. Military and police forces would not take the prisoner they are trying to escort to a bar under normal circumstances for the very reason Eclipse was smart enough to attempt to exploit. Bars are loud, full of people that may or may not have a hate-on for authority figures, and have many many items that can be used as improvised weapons to aid in an escape attempt. Standard procedure for detaining people (unless Crescent is some kind of specialist rather than just being renowned) is to bring multiple people to secure the prisoner before moving them immediately to a containment facility, or to lock the area down and wait for reinforcements to help with the former action. Said reinforcements would know of the operation beforehand, and come fully prepared for a fast method of prisoner transport. (You did do that, by the way, even if they did select a bar as the rendezvous point. Military personnel not holding the idiot ball is very refreshing, have some props.). Situations where an operator has to keep another person held against their will, rather than simply killing them, are precarious. Even when the prisoner is bound or incapacitated, it is implausible for a trained expert to take risks like that. The exceptions are: new officers with little practical expertise, militia, saboteurs, and stereotypical bounty hunters, who seem to not like living for very long.
A more believable instance would have Crescent detain Eclipse inside of the bar, or at least have the fight end there (which would give Hot-Shot a very valid reason to start a brawl. “Damn Night Guard ruining my day with his ruckus!” in addition to being drunk.)
Speaking of the fight to detain Eclipse, such a scene would be a very nice action opening that would allow for slower pacing down the line with heavy dialogue.
This is my biggest gripe with your fic. It breaks the “show not tell” guideline. You not only sell your reader short of all but the most bear-bones of descriptions, but you also deprive yourself of a way to show what makes your character unique. What does Crescent do when he gets angry? Does he glower? Hit stuff? Curse? Imagine the offending person/object in a terrifying and painful implement of torture with Crescent at the controls? These little things turn “generic protagonist #601” into “Crescent Blade”, the guy I know and sympathize with.
This sentence is missing something
This sentence is missing something
This breaks character consistency. You say that Eclipse has literally no emotions, but then you have her show them, and then not show them when it’s more convenient(?). You can’t go back and forward like that, which is why emotionless characters are very hard to write. The only successful instances I can bring up from the top of my head are Rei (Evangilon), Kanade (Angel Beats!), and Ruri (Martian Successor Nedesco), and even they show emotion after a significant event changes them. This is, of course, the entire reason for the emotionless archetype to exist. It’s a fast track, dramatic character development milestone; a clear marker of developed interpersonal relationships that is generally used to cement viewer/reader investment in a set of characters.
You can keep her as is, if you simply describe her as eccentric. Some social mores and norms will go over her head, while seemingly insignificant things will seem large to her. Doing so establishes Eclipse as the “weird cute” kind of girl while not confining you to the emotionless archetype.
The overall content seems much better put together than the description, which is lacking a bit. It's a little generic.
On a side note, I have read your portrayal of Eclipse. I like her, you haven’t made her stand out too much from her archetype, but you also haven’t ruined her with edginess, great work.
I will be watching this.
7462141 Thanks. Keep in my there was 5 of us writing this, so things got a bit crazy.
7462574
I see. Collab can be a bit hectic, though if you get a very good group, the small issues will be almost nonexistant due to multiple editing sweeps. Are you going to continue this?
7462622 Yea, it's been slow however
7462141 Sorry about the errors. It's like my pal said though, with so many of us writing (usually), it can get hectic, and a couple of them write differently. We try to fix things without really changing what they wrote too much, but I understand.
This review is brought to you by Twilight's Reviews (if that makes any sense
)
Before I begin, This won't be a complete review since the story itself isn't complete so this will be re-reviewed once it's complete. Now on to the review(part of it anyways)
To start off, your writing are pretty solid, pretty spot on actually. I don’t need to get into much detail more then need be. Plot wise, it's good. That's all I need to add there. However, there is something worth pointing out:
Yea, it's strange but maybe I just don't get it. Side note, Shouldn't it be rated M since the F bomb is in it or not? It goes from Crescent Blade to Eclipse with no line break to indicate the change in viewpoint. That's where I got lost. The few paragraphs previous are written in third person limited form witch is why I got lost. We are experiencing the world from Crescent’s shoulders and then we are suddenly shunted on to Eclipse’s. When you weave more than one viewpoint together like this (in third person), you should establish that you are doing so in the first few paragraphs as to not make the point where other perspectives show up jarring. It's not to fatal since it only happens and never again.
Now the bar scene is a bit strange. In terms of content, it's fine as it does an excellent job of establishing your characters’ personalities a smidgen. But... the reason for the scene’s existence itself. Of course, maybe I'm just missing the point. Also, from what I understand, the Military and police forces would not take the prisoner they are trying to escort to a bar under normal circumstances as the reason Eclipse was smart enough to attempt to exploit. Bars are loud, full of people(ponies) that may (or may not) hate for authority figures, and have a lot of items that can be used as improvised weapons to aid in an escape attempt. Standard procedure for detaining people(ponies) is to bring multiple people to secure the prisoner before moving them immediately to a containment facility, or to lock the area down and wait for reinforcements to help with the former action to said reinforcements would know of the operation beforehand, and come fully prepared for a fast method and/of prisoner transport. (It is possible btw, even if they did select a bar as the rendezvous point. Military personnel not holding the idiot ball is new to me. Props to you). Situations where an operator has to keep another person held against their will, rather than simply killing them, are precarious. Even when the prisoner is bound or incapacitated, it is implausible for a trained expert to take risks like that. There are a few exceptions to this. Examples are new officers, expertise, militia, saboteurs, and stereotypical bounty hunters(That I'm aware of).
It would have been more believable if Crescent detain Eclipse inside of the bar, or at least have the fight end there (which would give Hot-Shot a valid reason to start a fight. “Damn Night Guard ruining my day with his ruckus!” in addition to being drunk.) Speaking of witch, fight to detain Eclipse, such a scene would been prefect opening that would allow for slower pacing down the line with heavy dialogue.
Now for my least favorite part of reviewing(constrictive criticism) This line-
This line breaks the “show not tell” guideline. Not only are you selling your reader(s) short of all but wit bare minimum of a description, but it also hurts yourself in making your character unique. What does Crescent do when he gets angry? Does he swear? break stuff? That type of thing. Now imagine the offending person/object in a terrifying and painful implement of torture with Crescent at the controls? These little things turn “generic protagonist” into “Crescent Blade”(witch can either help or hurt depending on how you looking at it).
Also, these lines are missing something.
Also-
These lines are inconsistent with Eclipse's character. First, you say that Eclipse has literally no emotions, but then you have her show them, and then not show them when it’s more convenient(?). You can’t go back and forward like that, which is why emotionless characters are very hard to write. Only a handful of characters(Maud Pie) can get away with this type of thing.
Overall, it's a nice start and I hope to see more. Once it's complete, I will re-review it. Thank you for you time.
7530048 You know whats funny about this review? Our editors have said the same things you brought up and even others have told me the same thing, just look at the review a few comments down.
One thing to keep in mind, we have about 5 writers on this, so things do tend to get messy and lost.
We have less writers so things might go better, and and I more then likly not going to fix it due to how much work that would bring, but thanks for the info. I will bring it up to the main other writers and we can work to improve later.
7530059 Huh... So they do. I found the same problems so I brought them up. I didn't intent to repeat something someone already said. I went at this without looking at other comments so I should have expect this. In either event, its a nice start.
7530075 Yea its fine, that just means that its easier to fix those problems from more people, which means it has less :)
Awesome characters, plot and your grammar and mechanics are fine. I love the story line and I am very attached to the characters already, I applaud your entire writing team and ideas team, beautiful story. I can't wait for more!
7558279 But didn't you write it?
7558286 Shhhhh, just go with it.
7558302 Ok
Something tells me whatever was in the vault cannot be good.
So the story is going well? That's good to hear
7799553 Sorta, progress has kinda halted
7799988 Aw, that sucks. Is there something wrong with the way the collab works?
7800060 People just stopped wrting