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My Brain: "Johnson"
Me: "..... damn it that was good."
Mixed review here. The story itself is very well written, although there are a few minor typos in it. Normally I would quote those sentences here, so you could correct them.
This is well written and I loved the discovery and anthropology / archeology parts of the story. They are fun to read as the characters try to work out what human appliances do.
HOWEVER, (You knew one was coming.) You write very much like Steven King. Very long winded. You could tear the unimportant sections of a SK novel out and you would have a book 1/3 its original size. Kings books are full of scenes like this: A man brushing his teeth in his bathroom stares into the mirror and notices the handle of his toothbrush. Thus begins a flashback showing himself as a young boy standing in a store isle pondering on what color toothbrush to choose. Unnecessary to the plot. Billions of people love his books, so who am I to talk.
This story is very similar, I found myself scrolling/fast forwarding through pages looking for the point where it gets back on track. I found myself doing that quite often.
Again, don't get me wrong, its a good story, I just think your excessively wordy
The Monk
8897438
Thanks for the critique. That's really interesting that you make the comparison to Stephen King, and I'm flattered. I mention it being interesting because I've tried on several occasions to enjoy his work, and although on each attempt I can tell his writing is very well done, I just can't get immersed in it. And for almost the same reasons you put forth about my writing.
Generally, I try to keep the pace of my writing parallel with how long a mental image of the scene takes to view, so to speak. Long, flowery prose I attempt to hold back from scenes of dialogue, because I want the reader to be able to 'hear' the conversation naturally; that is, without long breaks between lines. Just as well, I think that running a lot of dialogue together without pause is best reserved for scenes of wit, or high emotion. This part in particular I've struggled with in the past. I personally think the original Surge reads more like a script, than an actual novel.
Suffice it to say, scenes dragging on for too long is not a criticism I expected to hear of my writing. Which is good; I may have oversteered a bit to fix the short, lifeless prose of my old stories, and could now be facing the opposite problem. In any case, I'm glad you've pointed this out, and I hope you stick around to see where the story ends up.
Oh and by the way, like I mentioned in the notes on chapter two, the only editing that's happening is me just re-reading the chapter when I'm finished with it. I apologize for the pile of typos that are likely left because of that, and wouldn't mind at all getting grilled about it in the comments; so long as it means they get fixed.
...You're going to finish this story, right?
8909011
I think so. I know that last chapter especially I really dragged my feet on, but--to my credit, Resurgence is already longer than the original story it's based on.
Sorry, I could have swore I thumbs up'd this story.
Im starting to think some of my older Thumbs are disappearing
The Monk
I'm guessing they kissed and fell asleep in the bed soon after?
9101147
Well they were certainly in a bed, but I don't know if there was much sleeping going on, am I right? Ayyyyy
9102671
Why didn't you put in a lemon between Twilight and Lyra in the chapter then?
9102770
A what?
9102842
A scene in a story that involves intercourse between characters.
9103413
Oh—yeah I guess it just didn't feel crucial to the plot. I want the story to be a drama first and foremost, and although I certainly have no aversions to writing an explicit sex scene, I don't want readers to get the wrong idea about what this story is—and, perhaps more importantly—what it isn't.
I don't know, I wish I had more of an explanation for you. Generally, it's just what 'feels right' to me that dictates the writing, for better or for worse. And I suppose I felt a detailed sex scene between these two characters sort of betrayed the innocent, almost juvenile optimism that they've shared. This is especially contrasted against some of the other cast (most notably Cave and Moon Dust), who seem to only delve deeper into the worst this realm has to offer.
In any case, thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate all feedback.
When I saw the synopsis, I wasn't quite expecting it to be humans that was the precursor civilisation. Especially because it's not actually tagged on the story. Did you run out of room for tags or something?
I'm not quite certain why Twilight's words about learning from the stuff left behind by humans is so controversial. Celestia herself says in the opera hall or whatever it was at the beginning that humans created ponies. I'm not certain if that's meant to be literal or metaphorical, but when one civilisation creates another, usually the first civilisation is more intelligent and advanced than the one it created.
Once we got into the intermissions with the guard pony and the diamond dog he was guarding, I had a pretty good feeling what was going to happen in the end as soon as Looking Glass dropped his guard and started talking with Cave. Though I was more expecting Cave to finally kill him when they were playing the card game and he had the last card that was dropped in his paw, but instead he waited a little while longer. I'm going to guess the 'feeling' he was talking about is something related to the humans, and he didn't feel the need to escape until after Twilight's controversial words.
It feels weird having several disparate viewpoints like this, inasfar as that they don't actually seem to quite line up. I'm pretty confident they'll be converging sooner than later though. I suppose the thing that really feels odd is that for a brand new discovery that will change things, they're pairing dinners and music with announcements about whatever they've retrieved from their archaeology, though I guess in the latter case it was to show off the American flag song.
The dragon seer character, Dominus, likely knows what's going to happen in the future, however sinister it is. If he's truly a good guy, then that means the future will probably pan out at least for the better, even if there's bloodshed and war and death and so on, because he would probably at least interfere if it was going to be an apocalyptic ending without his interference. If he's not a good guy, then anything goes.
I at first thought the thing Cave wanted was something like an airship, given the unicorn was looking at the sky after Cave mentioned where he wanted to go didn't have trains going. But I guess it was a car or something instead.
>Lyra Heartstrings
Oh yeah!
I've noticed that for whatever reason, whenever you're writing Cave's segments, you seem to use the term 'man' a lot. I can't help but feel between that, and his father's name and career in the railways, that he's probably largely connected to humans, if not somehow being a human-turned-Diamond-Dog himself. That, and he definitely doesn't show much interest in either gems as normal Dogs were. Of course, it could just be that your headcanon of Equestria has Diamond Dogs a lot more involved in Equestrian society and industry than the show itself has.
Senator Peach seems...very enthusiastic about the technology. I'm beginning to wonder who the unicorn was who offered Cave blueprints from last chapter was, and if he's related to one of the councilmembers or just someone on the team Twilight was talking about that was put together for investigating the Vault.
I'm surprised we didn't have a scene about Twilight making a pig of herself while eating!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/2/22/559207.gif
Obviously, things are picking up to a pitch, now that we've got a cult who kills one councillor pony, while Celestia drummed out another one. And Sterling was rather foolish, letting his ego get the best of him and lusting after somepony who was high enough up that all Penny Luck needed was one opportune moment with Celestia and a bit of bravery for him to be imprisoned. On that note, I do have a little difficulty believing Councilor Peach fell to her death like that. Nobody thought to swoop in and catch her or use her magic to keep her from falling?...then again, they are ponies. They were probably shocked merely by her being pushed off and falling to have time to think about saving her. Meanwhile, Cave's finally got his blueprints. A Jeep specifically, eh? I mean, Jeep the company actually makes a small variety of vehicles now, but I assume it's the actual Jeep Jeep that the blueprints are for.
So far, this story is...happening? The prose is decent, but I feel like it's meandering a lot and it hasn't really moved anywhere yet. Outside of Councilor Peach, who was here and gone in a flash, the story hasn't really done much yet. There needs to be some fast-paced moments to break up the slower pace of the rest of the story.
9433180
In a way, I feel like Resurgence is a response to my earlier works. I've spoken briefly about this earlier in the comments, but basically, the two 'big' stories that I've written before this were (in my opinion) too obsessed with surprising / shocking the reader. And like I also spoke about earlier down in the comments, this may have led me to oversteering in the opposite direction for Resurgence.
At its heart, I want the book to be about a diverse group of characters who are affected by the shocking news in a wide manner of ways. Surge—which this story is a rewrite of—personally felt more like a railroad that shot Twilight through a handful of insane, hardly believable 'twists'. This led me to two primary objectives with Resurgence: one, to shift the focus onto a full cast of characters, instead of one that bumps into others when it's convenient for her development. And two, to make these characters feel like they have lives outside of the pages. I want Resurgence to feel more grounded, I want it to feel like not everything means something—if that makes any sense.
Now having said that, I have delayed for way too long on the next chapter. The book should practically be finished by now. I have roughly 6,000 of the next chapter written, and if it's any condolence, I think it'll be a pretty significant turning point for several characters. I'll try my best to get the aptly named 'Maelstrom' out in the next couple of weeks, and I look forward to getting your perspective on it.
9433023
what if he was raised by a human turned diamond dog?
How many chapters long will this story be?
10146220
Ten. I'm positive of that.
9432680
Okay, sorry I took over a year to respond to your comments, but a lot of it I felt like I couldn't really get into without spoiling something. Now that the story is done, this is no longer an issue, but—obviously anything I put in spoiler text I still wouldn't advise viewing until you've read the whole thing.
The reason why I didn't include the 'human' tag is actually simple, I should've responded to this more immediately. But technically, there are no humans in this story. No living humans, anyway; I kind of assumed that tag is for humans in Equestria and ponies on Earth stories, where human and pony characters interact. I just didn't want to disappoint anyone who came into the story looking for that dynamic.
As Luna mentioned, the press were just especially hungry for good stories during that time, and were leaping at the first opportunity given to them. But, the more pessimistic implication is that Celestia's 'perfect society' she talks about a lot has lead to Equestrians having an exaggerated sense of worth. That all the land and magic in the world was always destined to be in their hooves (cutie marks are a good example of this sort of 'destiny entitlement'), and Twilight boasting about how far in the shadow of another species Equestrians are, may not sit well with a lot of them. Especially when a lot of citizens probably don't even yet believe in humans.
Yeah with Cave, I really wanted to show how calculated and patient he is. He probably would've had a good chance to kill Looking Glass during the card game, and Glass probably knew that. It was Cave's 5D chess match move to gain that last little bit of trust (And in a way, him trying to gain the reader's trust). He also probably threw his card game. Also, your final guess has pretty much been covered by the ending. Like Celestia, Cave has a vision for Equestria too, and the display Twilight showed at the Summer Sun Celebration—proving her to be a more open-minded, and honest leader—gives Cave reason to believe she was the one destined to come with him on his little road trip. They probably would've gotten along, too, if Cave wasn't a violent murderer.
9432904
Okay, this first point is kind of a big one, and I sort of already touched on it in one of my other comments. But basically, the core of Resurgence is the cast's reaction and interaction with The Vault. For some characters like Twilight and Lyra, it's a point of obsession. It's a call to action to The Equestrians (the cult), and it's a headache to a lot of the higher-ups at Canterlot. Even Applejack's total non-reaction to the announcement, in a way, is part of those range of reactions. With the original thought for this story, I was really just curious to guess as to how these characters would've dealt with something like this. And I just couldn't imagine being able to do that from only one character's point of view. I'm willing to admit that that probably led to some bizarre fragmentation, and some story lines being dryer than others. I'd definitely be down to hearing which of those plots worked for readers, and which didn't, actually.
Dominus is an interesting guy. I mean, he's essentially a living trolley problem, and you're right, you'd think that that would carry a tremendous moral weight on his shoulders. So why wouldn't he intervene more often? Well, for one, he does tell that little story in chapter seven about another creature like him who ended up driving himself mad. A cautionary tale—whether it's true or not. But I think that even ignoring the possibility of driving himself insane, he has other, more personal reasons to abstain. For one, he probably doesn't want to risk being corrupted by that power. He mentions something like this in his very first scene actually. Second, what happens exactly if he does use it to change something, and then one of his 'vision memories' is suddenly invalidated? We can't really just remove select memories, and Dominus probably can't either. And I imagine it would be dangerous for a creature to intervene too much when his mind is possibly swimming with false timelines. Also not intervening is probably why Celestia trusts him so much, she likely sees that sort of resolve as a great leadership quality. Long story short, Dominus would definitely not pull the lever.
9433023
This is just a fuck-up on my behalf. I used the expression 'man' a lot during his segments because I was looking for a word to replace 'stallion'. My justification at the time was that ponies still occasionally use human slang, and 'man' could've just been a lingering vestige of our language. But after seeing your confusion, I actually went back and replaced all instances of the term lol. Maybe not a clean fix, but it really was never meant to mean anything. Since then, I think I've used the word 'mare' a few times as an evolution of 'man'—like, someone saying "What the hell, mare?". As for the diamond dogs on the show, yeah, that was just me getting carried away with lore. I didn't like the idea of any species being super one-note like that, and to be fair: the ones we saw in the show may have just been a really bad bunch to represent their species. Honestly, they just got fucked over in FiM. Probably part of the reason why I wanted to highlight a creature like that.
The Retriever? He was basically just a mole that worked inside Canterlot. Way I saw him, he wasn't really on anyone's side but his own, and would sell anything to anyone. Well—except to Cave after he found out he was a murderer, apparently. So I guess he did have some kind of moral compass, at least.
9433108
Where did you acquire this slanderous photo of my wife
Yeah Councilman Sterling was an idiot, and honestly kind of just an excuse for me to flex Celestia's power to the reader (As in, how she sends him to jail without trial). Again, it circles back to her 'perfect' little society idea. And yeah, ponies probably aren't used to seeing something as horrific as that, and as Celestia's law about hiding things from the press later implies, they're not used to even hearing about it.
The 'Jeep' on the first page of the book was just their logo, yeah. I was intentionally being coy about the specific model because didn't want the reader to question the details I may have inaccurately described about it (lol), but if you want to lift the veil, I used the CJ5 as a source.
I was left unsatisfied with ending. Whole story instill feeling that there is something building, everypony feels that there is something looming on the horizon. And in the end we and Twilight only see the not so warm side of Celestia. And others involved do not see even that.
Also seems like Starlight, Lyra, Moon, AB are irrelevant and can be exchanged for anyone else or erased with no consequenses for plot. RD with stallion trauma, break-up with Bon-Bon, eternal service to Celestia, irreleveant.
Characters presented to us as product of some obscure personal events. There is just no character development to connect with them. Only Twilight changes can be seen that occur after death of Spike and murdering Cave with cold-blooded Celestia.
As examle of relationship and character develepment is Austraeoh, stories cannot compare starting with size but you get my point.
And as drama it is "The Secret Life of Rarity" stories and especially "Broken Blosson" if i remember correctly. That was tragedy that left me in tears.
I hope i do not look like dick as i honestly want to help.
10369001
No worries man, I appreciate the criticism.
Yeah I was worried pretty much the whole time about how the ending would be received. I've watched my feedback closely, and according to the reception of my other stories, I do not know how to end a book. I'm probably gonna take a break from writing and do some more reading now that this one's done.
It's funny, the strange love triangle between Twi, Starlight and Lyra wasn't actually originally intended, I had only written Starlight in with a flowering interest in her friend. Then I decided I couldn't miss the opportunity to include Lyra, given the fandom's human association with her, and that just led to a dick-ish poaching of Twilight right in front of Starlight. But I had never actually written romantic shit at that point, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace from all the brooding crime stuff.
Speaking of... yeah, Moon Dust. I know that it's strange that she never actually directly interacts with what could probably be considered the protagonist of the story. But from a narrative angle, she's used as a more direct personification of Celestia's cold, calculative side. She's also a foil for Rainbow Dash, who similarly cares about justice, but wouldn't do anything to see it delivered. Seeing Moon Dust's twisted methods get results faster than the 'right way' also probably adds to her growing insecurities, which culminates in her meltdown with Dominus. And yeah, there's a point near the end there where even Moon Dust worries Celestia's in too deep, Lyra having softened her just a touch so that she can have that perspective.
A.B. I'll give you, that plot is basically useless lol. I mean I could make a stretch, and say that she's there to show Applejack's strength as a character—but even then, the line kind of dies right there. Applejack doesn't interact much at all with the rest of the cast, or their story lines. I fucked that up. My bad.
I wouldn't say there's no character development, though. Yeah, Twilight's is the most dramatic, but Starlight also breaks herself off from her obsession, and decides to do something for herself, for a change (While also acknowledging and facing the past that's haunted her for so long). Princess Luna, while initially skeptical and disappointed in Dominus's use of power, forms a close bond with the creature, and builds up the courage to confront Celestia in a mature manner. Rainbow Dash, who has perhaps one of the more tragic developments, grows increasingly plagued by insecurities and guilt, breaks down in the courtyard and then has nothing left but apathy for the one thing in her life that was supposed to matter. Even Trixie became a little better of a friend, in the three scenes she was in lol.
Thank you for the recommendations though; like I said, I'll probably be taking a break to get some reading done, and I think that can provide me with a lot of perspective. Also I have heard about 'Austraeoh' for what seems like forever now, so I guess that's a sign that it's finally time to read it.
Anyway, thanks again for the constructive criticism, and thanks for reading.