Apocryphal thoughts

by Shadowboltwriter

Realizing your more

Wordplay and viola wasted no time in working to reunite the group. To their relief the controls to several devices in the building that the anonymous mare had been using were running on a different system, such as the gates.

Wordplay had told the group over the speakers what they had done and to try and look for the anonymous mare. After nearly thirty minutes of searching everywhere simply couldn't find a trace of her. Afterwards wordplay and viola simply guided the group back outside before heading there themselves. They were met with relief when the rest of the group saw them.

"Oh it's wonderful to see you two again. Are you alright?" Pixel asked.

"We're fine pixel." Wordplay said, trying to assure pixel.

The group was quiet for a moment before viridian spoke up "so what should we do now?" Viridian asked.

Most of the group looked toward pixel to see what she had to say "well I for one believe that we've resolved a crisis today." Pixel announced "even though the anonymous mare disappeared from us, I don't believe they will be trying anything else after this incident, and even if they do viola destroyed their computer that they were using and I have the feeling that it was all they could use." Pixel said.

"I took an extra step and thoroughly wrecked the room before leaving." Viola added.

Pixel gave a quick smile "so I believe that this crisis has been resolved. You've all helped equestria today." Pixel said "let's go back to the lab for a while. Everypony get close to me." Pixel added. Everypony got close to pixel and once again her horn glowed before they all disappeared in a flash of light.

...

Shortly after the whole group reappeared in the presence of pixel's lab once again. Everypony quickly responded with words of celebration.

"Does anypony want anything now that we don't have a crisis on our hoofs?" Nova asked. Everypony kindly declined the offer. After a few minutes with everypony socializing, pixel noticed wordplay didn't seem as enthusiastic as everypony else.

"Is something on your mind wordplay? You don't seem happy as everypony else is." Pixel said while walking over to wordplay, who had moved himself away from the group.

"Oh, I'm fine pixel, everypony did a great job today." Wordplay said.

"Including you, don't forget that." Pixel said.

"Really? I don't feel like I did that much..." Wordplay admitted.

This caught the attention of everypony else "what!? Are you joking? You did awesome wordplay!" Azura exclaimed.

"You really think so?" Wordplay asked shyly.

"Of course you did wordplay, just think about it. When we all first came together and started this adventure, you proposed such a creative idea that set all of us on our path. I wouldn't have ever thought of such a creative idea like you did." Pixel said.

"Well I have always been creative when I write." Wordplay said.

"Oh come on wordplay, you're creative in plenty more than you're writing." Pixel said. Wordplay thought about it, maybe pixel was right about that.

"And you're plenty more than creative!" Buffy said.

"Yeah, like when we were at that facility, you were telling me about how you had done all that research about pixel's tech and all that. You're a pretty smart pony when it comes to... well tons of things." Azura said.

"I guess you're right about that." Wordplay said.

"Yeah I am." Azura added.

Viola decided to add her input "I must admit, the way you spoke to the anonymous mare while we were prying that gate open, I never realized you had such a sharp tongue." Viola said.

"I guess I do, I just never have to talk like that." Wordplay said.

"During that time you also spoke to us in a very motivating way, have you ever taken a class or anything for that?" Pixel asked.

"I haven't." Wordplay replied.

Wordplay then noticed all the kind and supportive reactions he was getting "wordplay, you're all sorts of things, you're creative, you're smart, and brave, you're smart about what you say, and so much more, maybe until now you just never realized any of it." Pixel explained.

Wordplay thought about it, pixel sounded right about everything she told him. Not to mention her words sounded similar to something somepony else had told him not so long ago "yeah... I guess I am pretty great." Wordplay said.

Buffy suddenly decided to make herself heard in the moment "yay! Everypony get together for a group hug!" Buffy exclaimed.

Wordplay, and everypony for that matter, decided not to fight buffy on the matter, it was a happy moment anyways. Buffy quickly grabbed everypony she could and pulled them into a group hug around wordplay. Everypony she couldn't grab physically she simply used her words "come on, get in her!" Buffy encouraged. Everypony would have joined in eventually even if Buffy hadn't made them.

"You all are wonderful friends." Wordplay said under the swarm of hoofs over him.

...

Road map watched as his younger brother continued his writing from their living room rather than his room "what's gotten into you? You normally do that from your room." Road map said to wordplay.

Wordplay looked up from his notebook "I just felt like being down here today." Wordplay said.

Road map noticed his brothers great change in mood when he came back home "you're awfully happy." Road map commented.

"I definitely am." Wordplay replied.

"I guess that little adventure with pixel was just what you needed, huh?" Road map asked.

"It definitely was. I feel great about myself now." Wordplay said.

Road map smiled at his sibling. It was great to see him being so happy now.

Author's Note:

Little bit of a short chapter, but a nice one nonetheless

And that marks the end of this story, wordplay sees just what he can do and is happy about it, and his siblings are too. I had a lot of fun writing this, hopefully you all had a nice time reading too.

Comments

[Taialin]

Whoo! Wordplay! Precious few of those stories we've read about in these contests. You are, to my knowledge, the only Wordplay entry in this contest. It makes the actual review and judging process kind of odd and nonstandard, but considering how much work you put into writing canon for our Poniverse mascots, I'd be remiss in not honoring that work and giving your story a full read-through and review. Not to mention you haven't received any comments to date, and that is just so sad. Let's get started.

---

(-) Be very, very careful with your first impressions. I don't normally start reviews with a minus point, but I will if it's the first thing I see. The plot that you've established in your story description is engaging and entices me to read more . . . but your grammar and capitalization makes me want to run for the hills instead. The average attention span of an internet user is astonishingly low: not more than a few seconds, by my guess. Those few seconds are what determine whether a reader will spend the next 20 minutes on your story or not. And the fact that "Pixel Wavelength" and "Poniverse" aren't capitalized suggests to me that I should spend my 20 minutes elsewhere.

(+) Engaging conflict is key to an engaging story, and I'm happy to say that your story has plenty of that. You waste no time in establishing Wordplay's personal conflict regarding personal worth and talent as well as Pixel's greater conflict regarding a virus that needs to be resolved. Both of those are gripping and effective storylines that I want to read to resolve, and they're the primary force that keeps me reading through your chapters. The definition of a page-turner.

(0) You use a very classic story structure, much like MLP's pilot episode. Character with personal problem plus greater problem equals big quest with lots of friends. It worked there, and it . . . sort of works here.

MLP's pilot episode had a difficult task to achieve: establish the premise of an entire cartoon franchise and introduce no less than six different main characters with distinct personalities. I still, to this day, don't know how Lauren Faust pulled it off. You do much better than I was expecting you would: Wordplay, Buffy, and Pixel are fleshed out quite well. But a few characters are pushed to the wayside, receiving little to no development: Viola and Viridian come to mind. Perhaps the story would be better served if you spent more time developing everypony's personality, or if you established some characters at the outset as side characters.

(-) This is a problem I myself continue to struggle with, and it involves Wordplay's personal problems. You establish his insecurities about where his strengths lie at the beginning of the story, and to be clear, the way you solve it through the story is wonderful and complete. (And that is a very strong plus, don't get me wrong.) But the way it's revealed to Wordplay is rather disappointing. See, this conflict line seems to disappear through most of the story until the very end, where it comes back up and his friends have to remind him that he's better than just a writer. It casts him in overall a more pitiful light than I think he deserves. Don't you think that through his adventure, he would have realized these facts for himself? Overall, readers are more impressed with a character that digs himself out of his own hole than one who needs others to point out where to climb. Case in point, Twilight Sparkle—she learns friendship and realizes it for herself. I think Wordplay deserves the same.

(-) The best thing grammar can do is do nothing—that is, be unobtrusive and unexceptional. Commenting on grammar is not normally a good thing, and I have to comment on yours, unfortunately. I'm really not sure why so many proper nouns aren't capitalized in your story (Wordplay, Fair Dice, Pixel Wavelength). To add to that, many lines of dialogue in your story are mis-punctuated. In particular, the sentences before a line of dialogue normally end with either a period or a comma, depending on whether a dialogue tag is used or not. You tend to use no punctuation at all.

This might seem minor (and it actually is to fix), but poor grammar can significantly distract from the storyline itself, making it harder to read than it has to. Words themselves should be quiet, in the way that they don't make themselves known and allow the story to shine through. Yours are louder than they ought to be. On my part, I had to fight through this grammar for the entire story to actually get at the story. This is what I would believe to be the most significant issue with your story. But you're lucky in the way that poor grammar can be fixed by adherence to a few simple rules; the same can't be said of most other problems in writing. If you need some help with that, my user profile actually contains a compendium of grammar tips (not to blow my own horn or anything).

(-) This is a more minor point, but I was intrigued by your story title when I started reading, but upon finishing, I'm just confused. See, "apocryphal" normally refers to rumors that are widely believed to be true but of doubtful authenticity. The Illuminati and Loch Ness Monster come to mind (among the right circles). I'm not entirely sure what this word has to do with . . . well, pretty much anything in this story. Because Wordplay's self-deprecating thoughts are not what I would describe as apocryphal; "misconstrued" might be a better descriptor.

---

Whoo. There is potential here, most definitely. The story you've weaved is engaging and ripe for a sequel, actually, and your storytelling itself is very good. But the poor grammar makes it more difficult to uncover than it ought to be. Even if a story is incredible, you're unlikely to get many readers or rosy comments if people have to dig to get at it. Just do the digging for them, first!

Good luck in the contest!

~Tai

[Shadowboltwriter]

7520248 Great to hear that you liked it

Regaurding grammar, I consider my own grammar to be very good, but when i type these up onto the site I have a tendency to make errors. I tend to use my phone to type my stories instead of a computer so I'm bound to make errors. Now that I think of it there's probably more in there than I'm aware of. I'll get around to fix that at some point.

As for capitalization, I have a bad habit of not capitalizing names and such when they don't appear at the start of a sentence. Something I should change I guess. Same with me not putting punctuation before dialogue, I've just never done it that way.

I did not even realize quite how similar of a structure this had to the pilot episode

You have a good point about wordplay realizing his problems on his own. When I was working to finish the story the idea just didn't quite occur to me. Sounds like it would work better though.

As for the title, when I was in the process of writing the first chapter I had no idea what the title should be so I took my search to the Internet. I started looking for synonyms of certain words and eventually found the word apocryphal. The reason I feel like it fits is that wordplay is believing false ideas of himself, or something along those lines.

Overall very constructive feedback, thanks!

P. S. An idea for a sequel actually did pop into my head a few days after finishing, so there's a good chance of that.

[Taialin]

7521188
I don't like to play the elitist card, but I think there's a lot more to good grammar than I think you've been made aware of. Fimfiction is a community of writers, and as such, grammar is held in much higher regard than in other places. Grammar Nazis come in greater numbers here than almost any other place on the internet. Not only that, but well-founded Grammar Nazis who know what they're doing. On their standards, proper noun capitalization and dialogue punctuation should be a given. There is a right and a wrong way to it. The Fimfiction Writing Guide (yes, Fimfiction does have one) is actually a stupendous resource that covers the grammatical rules that are of most relevance to a writer. I'd certainly recommend giving it a skim.

See, the title of your story is why thesauruses should be used with caution: just because a word has the same definition on paper doesn't mean it's interchangeable with another word with that definition. The words "pigheadedness" and "tenacity" have similar definitions, but they are certainly not interchangeable, for instance, having distinct connotations and use cases.

[Shadowboltwriter]

7521955 Thanks for the advice

Also, did you just make up the term 'grammar nazi' or did you hear someone else say it?

[Taialin]

7522185
Nope, Grammar Nazi is most definitely a thing, generally referring to somebody who adheres to and preaches about grammar rules much more fastidiously than the average person does. They're the annoying people that fix your your/you're errors. On Fimfiction, they're the people who point out esoteric grammar rules you might have never heard about. Kind of like me.

[Shadowboltwriter]

7522319 Got it.