Josh was just trying to do his job. But as usual, they showed up. He had to get out of there. He didn't care where, just anywhere else.
That anywhere else. Is Equestria. A Country on the planet of Terra sapientes. In a galaxy far different from the rest. A galaxy that has never been discovered before.
And honestly? He's seen weirder stuff.
But as peaceful and harmonic it seems, it won't stay that way for long.
On hiatus because I have no idea what to do.
Chapter 3 is being re evaluated.
You can expect this to be a slow updating story. All chapters are currently self-edited.
Chapters (5)
hmm this seems good
Interesting. I'll keep an eye on this one...
OK, first impressions.
The story has potential, but it does feel like your writing style could use polish. (At times, it feels like you're in too much of a hurry to get to something you value and, as such, you gloss over details which you may or may not come back to later. (That, in turn, leads the storytelling to suffer when the readers' uncertainty or incorrect assumptions interfere with the process of building an appropriate impression.)
For example, it's hard to enjoy the story fully when I'm still plagued by a nagging sense of uncertainty over why Luna felt such a great deal of urgency and I spent almost an entire chapter refusing to get into the story because it seemed so likely that this was going to be one of those "Equestrian = English and it's never explained" stories and I didn't want to let myself get disappointed when other "too convenient for the author" details started popping up.
(I also think that, while the idea of Luna controlling the night sky because Equestria is in a special galaxy is a novel one, it's not necessarily a good one. Again, it's just too author-convenient to suspend disbelief. A whole galaxy controlled by one mare on one world in an otherwise realistic universe? Why!? Who set all of this implausibility up? Why, the author of course! (Which shatters the illusion of a living universe that needs to be established for a story to really satisfy.)
Also, your title is poorly chosen, because a title is supposed to be a micro-summary of "what the story is about"... I seriously doubt the inhabitants of Equestria will allow it to be scavenged while they're still alive and using it.
8049808 You're probably right on the terms of the title. I specifically made it clear in the description that Equestria wasn't the name of the planet as a whole so he will most likely be scavenging elsewhere.
On the topic of convenience? I'm glad you informed me about that because I never intended to skip over so many things but Now i fear I will.
8050787
For future reference, there are various tricks that can be used to find a title. For example,
1. Make the title both descriptive and a reference. (For example, if your story carries similar themes to Disney's A Kid in King Arthur's Court or Mark Twain's original A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, you could name it "A Scavenger in Princess Celestia's Court")
2. Name the story after some significant phrase... ideally one which, when it appears in the story, will cause the reader to reinterpret the meaning of the title in a significant enough way to cast the whole story in a new light. (While I'm having trouble remembering a perfect example, a good enough one that comes to mind is a fun Harry Potter fic I've re-read multiple times called The Lie I've Lived.)
3. Just find an unassuming phrase that sums up what your story is about. Most of the 1000+ books stacked two layers deep above and behind my monitor have fairly mundane titles like Blue Adept, Nightfall, Powers That Be, 1632, and Airframe.
To be honest, the dialogue still feels like a bunch of newspaper clippings slapped together, rather than a coherent work.
...primarily because the characters ping-pong between different moods so suddenly that it feels like they have no emotional investment in what they're saying. Real human and human-like minds have inertia. Our emotions and beliefs resist change.
Your Twilight's behaviour also feels especially wrong within the first two screenfuls ... are you sure she's not a Changeling who flunked out of infiltration?
Here's a particularly concise example:
That last line feels like it came out of nowhere. It actually reminds me of a moment in the Nostalgia Critic's review of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.
Is this based of something? Seems familiar for some reason.
You have trains, ovens, heavy machinery, rudimentary computers, and to top it all off books, yet you claim technology doesn't exist?
...Twilight is Skwisgaar confirmed.
8079444 Technology to them is magic to us. We see things that look like magic, but they're still technology. Ponies see the reverse.
But yeah, Twilight is totally Skwisgaar.
8079463 But that doesn't make sense considering that they do have technology, even if it's not quite as advanced as ours. Her saying technology doesn't exist isn't like us saying magic doesn't exist, because whereas we have absolutely no verifiable evidence of magic in our world, they use technology in addition to magic on a daily basis.
Also, just to emphasize my point from the previous comment... BOOKS are technically a form of technology. Twilight lives/lived in a library. Twilight loves books. Like, she reeeally loves books. No, seriously, I don't think you underst- okay, I'll stop now.
Not only that, but she owns an old-school computer (Feeling Pinkie Keen), she acknowledges the fact that not everything that happens is magic (Winter Wrap Up), and she also fancies herself something of a scientist (all the episodes).
8079586 you're kind of right. But would books be enough to make Technology valid?
8079625 It'd be enough to prove it's a thing. Although my point was more that the whole "technology doesn't exist" idea wouldn't make any sense even before he got there. It's so obvious that technology is a thing there that she should never have thought it wasn't in the first place.
Heck, you can literally point at some random thing in Ponyville and go "that's technology", thus my comparison to the clip from earlier.
8080112 That's kind of a good point. Twilight's whole life is Unicorn biased.
I'm thinking of rewriting the chapter to get rid of the idea that Technology never existed at all.
8080152 That's probably for the best, though you could probably just tone it down from "doesn't exist" to "is nowhere near that powerful". Because not only did she have a unicorn upbringing as you said, she also bears the Element of Magic, so she'd likely be skeptical of claims that something like intergalactic travel could be accomplished without using any magic at all.
*sigh* ...Fare the well Twisgaar.
8080175
You could always say that 'Technology' isn't the term they use for scientific discoveries, or the applications thereof. It's been used to describe something they consider mythical, and that the term might need to be 'reassigned' once they discover true technology. Twilight would agree with this explanation, I'm betting.
This was an overall pretty good story - it's a bit too violet for my usual cup of tea, but its written pretty well. Nice work!
aah yis new chapter :D
We will remember you Ben.
Pinkie: Never doubt me.
Narration: Half of what Pinkie says is true.
Me: Just automatically trust someone who is only right half the time with the crazy shit she says? Maybe if I was a fucking idiot.
Irrational act protagonist