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Almost a hundred years since Twilight has made her friends in Ponyville, she once again returns there with a heavy heart, unclear mission and a single friend. Things have changed a lot since then, and the very town is unfamiliar to her.
But maybe an old friend from the past would help her see that even though everything changes, perhaps nothing is truly lost.
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Well...huh
I think you had a neat idea here but I think a couple of key problems are hurting the story.
1. You need to keep your tenses straight. You should not change tense in the middle of a sentence especially with no reason.
2. You clearly were leading up to that reveal in the ending but we had so many questions that we are too confused to get the right reaction from it. There are a number of questions that need to be answered so that we can get the full impact of the ending.
That being said I thought that you had some really good ideas here and it is close to working but you can't leave that much mystery for us.
7323621
7323997
Sorry, guys, I guess the confusion is because I marked the story "Complete" but didn't publish everything.
There are some last minute fixes on the last chapter, so there will be three in total.
Hopefully then it will make slightly more sense )
Hey sorry to bother you... But I see grammar mistake on this front page. It is not "firends" it is "friends" Hope it helps.
Sorry, I found another one. "perhaps nothing is truly lost ." There is a space between that period. It should be like this. "perhaps nothing is truly lost."
7327910
Thanks for pointing it out.
Fixed both.
7327964 No problem.
Alright. We did a review exchange; this is mine.
Let me clarify right away that I did not like this story. At all. Everything I have to say about it is negative - just as a warning.
The biggest problem is of course the packaging. This story is flooded with grammar errors that make it neigh-unreadable, the most frequent of which involving different times.
I was unsure how to explain this best, since there are too many to point out all of them. I decided to take a small section and do that one thoroughly. Here goes (this is from the second chapter). I put little blue notes at the corresponding places in the quote and explained them below. This covers grammar and writing style, and is in-part subjective.
[1]: It should probably he 'had never lost'. The way you wrote it is not grammatically incorrect, but it has a different meaning. She never lost... phrases it as a recurring thing, i.e. "that never happens". She had never lost would mean that it has never happened so far, which is clearly the intended meaning in this case.
[2] this is the exact grammar error that is so frequent, particularly in chapter 1.
Think of it like this: you start by writing in the present or in the past. If you write in the present you say "Twilight's brother is having a concert, Twilight is jealous and blows the thing up". If you're writing in the past, you say "Twilight's brother was having a concert. Twilight was jealous and blew the thing up."
Then, you can write about things that have already happened in your time line. If you do that, you use the past version of whatever time line you're in; you use "has XX" for past in present, and "had XX" for past in past. So if, in our example, you tell the story about how Twilight has been sent to Ponyville, which happened in the past of your time line, it is either.
"Twilight's brother has been having a concert. Twilight has been jealous and has blown the thing up"
or
"Twilight's brother had been having a concert. Twiligth had been jealous and had blown the thing up".
It's not that complicated. Stick to those and you should almost always get it right.
In this case, you're obviously writing in the past, so if you're talking about things that have happened in the past of your current timeline, it is "had XX". Here: it had been almost a hudnred years ...
[3]: The sentence construction is off-putting. There are two issues. The first is that 'since' has to reference a certain event, so it would make more sense to say "since she had become Celestia's equal;" otherwise you could use for, and say something like "she had been Celestia's equal for a hundred years". The second issue is that "she had been her equal as a princess" sounds odd, probably because the framing implies correlation when it is actually causation. Something like "It had been almost a hundred years since she had become a princess, and, as such, an equal to her former teacher." would have read more smoothly to me.
[4]: The ' after years is incorrect. There is no reason for it to be there.
[5]: [Subjective]: The repetition of the word 'teacher' is off-putting. The sentence would read more smoothly if it was just 'she had already started to see her differently'. It'd be clear whom you're talking about
[6]: [Subjective]: "powerful and wise and graceful beyond measure" sounds fine, but then with "and most of all, almost infinitely kind," it no longer does. I think it is because I am expecting an end to the sentence; so it could either have ended there, or you could have cut the second quoted pat -> "powerful and wise and graceful beyond measure, but she no longer ...". Also, semiclons before a 'but' part of a sentence are eh.
[7]: Back to what I said above. You're talking about something in the past of your timeline, and you're telling a story in the past. It has to be "she had once been to her student". Also the 'she' is simply missing. Also the 'faithful' kills the flow in that sentence.
[8]: Same thing, a bit more tricky packaged. "She had to deal with it" implies that she sometimes has to, as in occasionally, maybe once per decade. "She had had to" would be a specific instance, which is what you meant here. Since you added the "once or twice" thing you close the door to alternative one. It has to be "had had" here.
[9]: Same thing. It has to be 'had seen'. "Has seen" never correct during narration in the past tense. It could only appear in direct speech or as a quote.
[10]: You are missing a 'the'
[11] Though I have never used the word 'privy', I'm still pretty sure that it is meant to reference her presence at those moments, not the moments themselves, as it does here
[12]: [Subjective]: "had turned almost imperceptibly" reads strange if it is not the end of a sentence. At the very least, there should be commas around 'almost imperceptibly; better yet it should be after had, like: "when fatigue or despair had, almost imperceptibly, turned a ..."
[13]: into
[14]: That is a hyphen. You previously used en-dashes for those err things, which I much prefer, but keep it consistent. You can find them all with CTRL + F before publishing a chapter.
------------------------------------------------------
Alright. I initially corrected further grammar erorrs while reading, skipping those that occur too frequently. I got drained after chapter 1 and did it less thoroughly for 2 and 3. I put the section in red if it's a grammar error, blue if it's a formatting error and green if it's a logical error, and the correct version below. If I don't just correct but make a comment, I put it in [].
##Chapter 1
it's rays glinting
its rays glinting
an unexpected, yet familiar, sight of Pinkie Pie
an unexpected yet familiar sight of Pinkie Pie
of Princess of Celestia: Once, a long
of Princess Celestia: once, a long
Taking her eyes off the window, she has turned to look in the silver mirror.
Her once lavender coat
[Avoid line breaks without paragraph breaks. This is too frequent, so I won't point out further instances]
As a Princess of Equestria
As a princess of Equsetria
[You can write Princess with a capital 'P' when it is used as a title, but not if you say 'a princess']
and it’s destination.
and its destination
The sound of the cannon fired was still echoing through Ponyville,
[I don't think this is possible. The sound would last for about a second.]
"Wht, whft?", stepping back to free her muzzle Twilight repeated herself, "what?"
"Wht, whft?" Stepping back to free her muzzle, Twilight repeated herself, "what?"
[there is no such thing as ?",]
ain't’ I?
ain't I? [Though I don't think Pinkie says ain't at all]
cutie marks?”, she drew a huge breath, “and I
cutie marks?" She drew a huge breath. "And I
[aside from the ?", thing, you also should start sentences within two parts of speech capital if they are full sentences - which they are in this case. Won't point out further instances of this.]
the thrill of the flight
the thrill of flight
They spent a lot of effort – she and Fluttershy, back then, to save
They spent a lot of effort – she and Fluttershy, back then – to save
it’s sides barren
its sides barren
covering it’s bare rock, and a rare tree, that once stood proudly, with it’s branches
[Same thing again (twice). This is also getting too frequent (although there are also a couple of instances where you got it right), so I'll stop pointing out every case. It's pretty simple of a rule: replace It()s with it is or it has. If either makes sense, it is it's, otherwise, it is its.]
noticed.Some
noticed. Some
## Chapter 2
eighty nine years,
eighty-nine years [all numbers are spelled with hyphoes between digits]
hair's’ breadth
hair's breath
of the Dreaming
[I'm not sure what this is meant as, but if it's as 'the ponies who dream' then it has to be non-capital. Otherwise you could say 'dreamscape' or something to that effect]
## Chapter 3
"“Me, me, me”
"Me, me, me"
by the Fluttershy’s
by Fluttershy's
Princess looked ahead
[not sure what you meant to say here, but simply 'princess' is not a valid abbreviation, like 'she' or 'Twilight'. If anything, it has to be "the Princess," though that would sound rather weird too in that context]
Pinkie, the party
[Too many white spaces here]
“Souvenirs, neat-o.”
[There is no such thing as a dot at the end of direct speech. You can have , ! ? but never.]## Edit: not true the way I said it. Correction: there is no dot at the end of speech if it is followed by a partial sentence, e.g. Twilight said. It can be a dot if it is followed by a full sentence which only implicitly states who has been speaking.---------------------------------
Okay. For the rest of the review, I will try to forget packaging as best as I can and focus solely on story and plot construction.
The premise of this story is ... not interesting, to say the least. That could be due to having been in the fandom and generally being someone who has refined views about philosophy, but Twilight dealing with her immortality is probably the single most overdone idea on fimfiction. Which does not mean that it can't still be great. It absolutely can. Premise is a negligible compared to most other things.
Unfortunately, the story did nothing to spark my interest. It starts with 100-year old Twilight going to Ponyville and you already broke my suspension of disbelief.
- Twilight is at the emotional level of, let's say, a 25 year old person. She is a hundred years old. She's had a hundred years to contemplate life, death, mortality, and all of that stuff. One of the ways this could have been interesting is if she actually deals with it just fine. And what about Celestia and Luna? They are way older. They must have figured it out.
- If you don't want your friends to die, then there is an obvious solution to that.
Try to stop them from dying.
This is very likely to be possible given what kind of world MLP is, although one could have made up reasons why she didn't do it. First one I can think of is that Celestia/Luna have forbidden it. However, not mentioning it leaves a giant hole.
In a way, attempting to write a fictional story is inherently an incredibly arrogant thing, because you are claiming to know how numerous characters would act. Why? This is a prevelant position, and often I find that authors fail (again, not restricted to fimfiction). Particularly when you try to write about a character who is smarter than yourself, which is almost a given with a hundred-year old Twilight. Which is why it is so hard to do just that.
That said, I think the portrayal of Celestia in the show (barring some plot holes) is surprisingly good. Wise, calm, very practical, that is how I could imagine a really old person being. Twilight is not remotely like that. And it stands out so much more because of all the internal stuff that's portrayed here. She should already be done with all of that! The fact that she is thinking about any of it is just dumb. And her back and forth with Discord... the only way I could have been sold on that is if it was implied that they're keeping this up as a sort of game. But it's not like that. Twilight just thinks "I probably shouldn't be putting up with this" and then she puts up with it.
Then time travel happens.
I think a general principle for how I approach stories intuitively is that there is a degree of respect I have for it and a degree of respect I need to buy into certain things. it is sort of like suspension of disbelief but not quite the same. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example. If Game of Thrones does something like ressurection, it's friggin awesome, because why wouldn't it be. I'm so invested in the story that such a concept can unfold its full potential.
When they did time travel, it was a stretch, even for that show. Becuse time travel is easily the most problematic concept (that's somehwat common) one can attempt. There is barely any way to establish mechanics which do not cause paradoxes, and it's just such a huge thing that a lot of thought needs to be put into it to do it somewhat acceptably.
Of course, in this case, the mechanics weren't established at all, and as a result, I was not remotely able to take it seriously.
There is another issue... probably the most common criticism I have in written art is that author's tend to make their characters be idiots-- and what I mean by that is that they just stumble through the story without every halting and going ... okay, what is the best thing to do now? I should probably do that. Why yes! You should!
If you want to make me hate something, have a character try to tell something to another character and be unable to get a word in. This does not happen. You simply go "HOLD ON I have to tell you something" and then you say it. The sensible reaction to seeing Pinkie be there from the past is probably to call off the event, contact the princesses, and figure things out immediately. You wanted to keep your friends from dying, right? Here is a way to do that.
This all makes the characters feel like written characters and not like real characters, and this story is enormously guilty of that.
Then there'S the twist. Which, I don't know if you were supposed to see it coming, but I did. And... it's about as cliché as you can have.
Like, come on! Were we really supposed to be shocked? Really?
There is also this particular sentence that I have to comment on:
Because it frankly feels like the story isn't taking itself seriously anymore.
I have little to say about the rest, because it was more time travel shenanigans which is just so very far exceeding the story's reach. The moral is likewise exactly what I thought it would be, and I can only repeat that Twilight is 100 years old. Young Pinkie Pie would have nothing to teach to her. It doesn't compute.
And then DIscord... that's yet another highly problematic inclusion, because you're having someone who, for all we know, is close to being omnipotent. It immediately raises more problems, such as why is Fluttershy even dead.
So... yup!
7540408
Ouch. That physically hurt.
Still, few counterpoints. To the more factual statements, at least:
"Dreaming" is, like the ending to the story itself, a reference to The Sandman.
That was mentioned and explained in the fic.
They were rather clearly implied, I believe.
Also, thanks for the grammar pointers, even if not all of them actually correct. Everything that needed fixing is now fixed.
Well, here to review as promised. I'll take a look at the second chapter in a little bit, but here are my thoughts on the first.
You've got some tense changes here and there, which can be quite jarring.
I'm really bad at naming tenses, but there's a slight tense difference between the two. 'Then there would be' is how it should go, if it's to match the tense of the rest of the story.
You're missing an enter in some lines as well, meaning that some paragraphs run together like this.
Aside from that, there's one major issue so far. The whole deal with time travel isn't very well explained. The best I can gather is that anything that changes the past causes time guardians to appear and eat stuff. But that doesn't really make all that much sense. Especially given Pinkie's earlier reference to a tan-colored pony with an hourglass, who I can only assume to be the doctor. It's mostly confusing as opposed to anything else, and given how central it is the whole story, it doesn't really make me all that interested in what's going.
If how it actually works were better explained, even in a singe paragraph or over a handful of sentences, it'd definitely help with my understanding of what's going on.
Since this fic is apparently an acceptable target for blunt criticism, I'll just go ahead. My apologies to ChudoJogurt, but this story's most obvious issue is that the translator isn't a writer. ChudoJogurt lacks the ability to do this story justice.
However many blatant errors others have pointed out and had corrected, a wrongness still pervades every sentence. There are subtle problems with word choice, flow, and dialogue, mixed in with poetic sentiments here and there.
Perhaps it simply can't be done. Every language is different on a fundamental level. When I listen to a Mandarin Chinese speaker, I hear a logic and order of thought that differs entirely from English. Perhaps only those who can read Russian will ever know what this story was meant to be.
7892906
All my fics are acceptable targets of blunt criticism.
Could you perhaps give an example of sentences that seemed wrong to you?
7893051
My apologies. When reading that this story was written by a friend, and after seeing all the errors pointed out in the comments, I assumed you didn't write anything yourself. If you want to know what threw me off, I'll gladly provide.
You may find me overly picky, however.
The very first two paragraphs. Someone else has already noted all the verb tense errors, so I'll autocorrect those.
The way certain objects are referred to.
I made four edits here, but refrained from removing the highlighted "the". I still want to. I think repeating "the" within three words breaks up the flow this sentence should have.
...
What should we be focusing on? What am I supposed to imagine? Brass and copper cogs and wheels? Or cogs and wheels in clockwork? What old clockwork is this? Is it a clock, or are we talking about the more general use of clockwork?
This revised sentence feels slightly less vivid to me, but I can't be bothered to improve that as well.
...
I can't help you here. This shouldn't be one sentence, or it needs to re-proportioned, because Pinkie Pie's appearance is weighted far too lightly by the pacing here. No dramatic pause, no slowing down. There may be translation issues here—I dunno. But for now, just remove the modifiers and read it again.
I haven't changed the meaning of this sentence. You see the problem?
...
The logic here is alien to me. Did she take two small jumps and stop? Did she cover the distance between them? There are three halves to this sentence.
...
I did take a quick look at the fics you wrote yourself. I see the same problems.
Holy cow, this is vicious, but I don't know how to phrase it politely.
7895517
This is rather polite, so no need for apologies. I will most definitely look into the things you mentioned.
However are you sure about
?
Does this not need the "has" for the past perfect?
P.S.
Could I interest you in editing my next fic by qny chance?
7895539
Oh. You'll want 'had', in that case. I assumed a transition from the recent past to the present. The difference between past and present gets wonky when writing fiction, so I don't think too hard about things like that.
7895539
Oh right. A response to your request.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough free time for dedicated editing. I spent long enough thinking about a short paragraph's worth of writing, and I'm still in college. In fact, I should be writing an essay right now. I'll have to turn you down, sorry.
nice first chapter I liked it a lot. pretty much everyone else said what I had to say in terms of problems. Then again it's not like I have any room to say anything. great job, can’t wait to read the rest.
8510257
You do know that there are two more chapters right there, right?
8510355
lol I’m getting there!
Interesting story, nice writing up the atmosphere, it’s perfect, but I’ll need to continue to find out if I should add this to my favorites.
I see all these comments criticizing this fic, and I am sitting here dumbfounded because I thought this was half-decent. I’m not adding it to my favorites, this story had a good concept, but I think it’d work better as a one-shot with no time-travel.
I’m just not a guy that hates things... so yeah.
That was a good story.