• Member Since 14th Aug, 2017
  • offline last seen Last Wednesday

The Ironclad Knight


Tally ho! I understand my accounts name & appearance has seemingly little to do with My Little Pony, but understand that this is merely an account I use to read stories on, thanks for reading this!

Comments ( 56 )

it seems interesting, make more.

Allow me to point out the mistakes of the story thus far.

  • Your description is too long. It's practically a highschool essay. Limit your description to maybe two paragraphs.
  • Your story itself is full of walls of text. The enter key is not your enemy, make smaller paragraphs.
  • I'll recommend against writing in the first person. Most people can't do it correctly. It requires more "skill" than third person.
  • Don't use caps for shouting. That's why we have exclamation points and the word "shouted."
  • Grammar mistakes. Specifically, right at the end, you forgot to capitalize an i. There are a multitude of others. Get an editor and fix them.

This is a personal opinion, but don't write HiE. It's over saturated. It's been done a thousand times. This story has been done a thousand times. You will add nothing to it. Write something of more value. Please.

Lets see where this goes, *hits tracking button*

8886364

Well thank you kindly sir/miss (I don’t wanna assume)! I appreciate the honesty in your words & will take them to heart as best I can. Although I’ll admit my grammatical mistakes may be numerous, I will add that I started this around 8:00 PM & finished roughly around 12:00... so I grew far too tired to do anymore.

As for an editor, have any suggestions? I’m far to nervous myself to simply outright ask someone...

8886567

I will add that I started this around 8:00 PM & finished roughly around 12:00

Unfortunately, this excuse doesn't stand up. You don't need to post this after writing it. You can refine and make it the best it can be. It's better to wait to publish than rushing a chapter out.

As for where to find an editor, there's a group on this site called Looking for Editors. If you go there and follow the rules when making your post, you should get an editor, especially as you have a good Like:Dislike ratio.

For other resources, I'd recommend the group School for New Writers (Yay shameless self promotion). It has plenty of "lectures" that can give advice, and a discord server for immediate answers.

As for any remaining advice, be sure to read plenty of good stories, not just fanfiction. Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss are among my favorites, but there are plenty of other good reading material out there.

Too long paragraphs, other than that I don't see anything harmful in your story.

8887247
Thank you greatly! im currently in the midst of finding an editor & proofreader, so hopefully I can fix these mistakes!


8887110
Aye, I know that, but im just trying to make myself feel better about wimping out at the end. :/
I've taken your advice and im currently in the midst of getting myself a proofreader, after that i'll see if I need an editor!



Gosh, im really enjoying this, I was worried at first that i'd have more issues than this! good to see my fears are, so far, unheard of!

8887270
I'm gonna level with you. HiE is judged using a different standard than the rest of the stories on this site. It's bar of adequacy is much, much, much lower. HiE's appeal to the lowest common denominator for likes, so, despite their flaws, people will upvote it as it makes them feel good. I can point you to plenty of stories that have hundreds of flaws with enough likes to hit the feature box that reach any good standard of quality. Meanwhile, I can point you to hundreds of well written, edited, good stories that never reach the feature box.

I mean not to detract from your work, writing is hard enough as it is. However, you likely won't receive any good, hard, constructive criticisms until you move out of that sphere. It's just a fact I've seen happen hundreds of times.

8887765

I know what you speak of, so many grand stories are seemingly forgotten by the giants.
I can only hope more people see my work for the quality that I strive to put in it, and in order to reach that quality I need people to help me reach my peak potential! People like yourself!
And for this you have my deepest gratitude, this site deserves more hardcore readers like yourself whom can truly sit down and discuss with the authors on how to improve their works!

But that’s just my opinion!

I have always loved these types of stories
That humanity came before equestria
dam shame there are very little stories on the subject
keep up the great work

8887885
Well I’m glad you enjoyed it! I always enjoyed the idea of seeing how a race, different from ours, would react upon seeing the remnants of our world!

I’m definitely planning on adding more soon, but for the time being I’m trying to get ahold of a proofreader & editor so that this can be at its peak perfect!

Another Equestria is Future Earth story, eh?

I wonder if this one will actually bother explaining how the hell a planet from our universe where magic is forbidden by physics... suddenly has magic.

You know, none have ever even managed to come up with an obvious sci-fi explanation: Our world falls through a giant wormhole. There we go.

The pacing seems a little fast, and more effort could be spent on a description of the scenery, But unless you wanted to add a melodramatic speech comparing the new and the old, It seems to be a good start. I cannot wait for more!

While it has some readability issues, overall it was a nice read. I am curious and will look forward to the next paragraph -- I'll see if I cant just edit out some of the issues with the grammar and use of characters when I am able for this chapter.

8887777
Take with a grain of salt please, but I do agree with a decent few good stories never seeing much daylight.

8886364
I agree with the first point, and a bit of that could have been moved into the top of the story with some modification, but it was still interesting to read.

Secondly, the paragraphs may be longer than most of what you've read, but they're split up within reason and are not all that long considering the content and context being setup, they feel long enough and not too long since this is a thematic introduction.

Thirdly, that is not criticism in full, but a spiteful poke at the author. You send no criticism with this statement without any concessions. This is how you discourage writing. Thirdly if you did not intend it to be spiteful, next time include specific issues and quotations where you saw 'issue'.

Fourthly, do not use caps is a formality rule that does not necessarily apply to fanfiction since it becomes a stylistic decision. While it should be used sparingly, once or twice in key sections can make so much more difference and eye catching and impactful as well as a mnemonic placeholder. I will also state that the use in this instance is a cliffhanger, which is an excellent place to use it, especially after so much description; it made the narrative stand out more.

Fifthly, you don't necessarily need an editor, just a bit of revision, or word processing software. Google Docs is a decent word processing software that is free that can catch the simple things you have listed. While it is a potentially nice idea to get out of your comfort zone, the way you worded it is more malicion.


Sixthly, while that is not a word, but I already committed to the format HiE is another genera that is popular. You might as well call romance and slice of life and adventure over-saturated because they make up over 50% of the tens of thousands of stories on this site. The author should write as they please, not discourage any ideas they might've had. Also if you call it pandering or just more of a guilty pleasure, people like and eat chocolate and create new recipies for it; just because it's kind of the same thing doesn't mean it's not good, but unique and interesting in its own right.



8887110
Firstly, rude -- take that as you will, no offense. Secondly, your advice really does not consider that this is his/her first story and were clearly have fun writing it. Also to that point, it made the publication cut, so whether or not you like it, please respect it for what it is. I do appreciate that you did list a place to get help, but it comes off as overbearing and sarcastic. To add to this, I would advise writers like Mythril Moth and other reviewers like Titanium Dragon and to read those reviews and breakdowns of stories to learn the working of effective and ineffective writing and what patterns it follows

8889660

but it was still interesting to read.

That's not the problem. It can be the most interesting essay of my life, but I won't read it, as will many others, simply by looking at it.

but they're split up within reason and are not all that long considering the content and context being setup, they feel long enough and not too long since this is a thematic introduction.

They are still too long. There may be a justification to it, but, no, that doesn't fully justify it. Long paragraphs can be cut down just as easily and find even better places to change. Shorter paragraphs are more aesthetically pleasing.

Thirdly, that is not criticism in full, but a spiteful poke at the author.

If this is a poke at the author, it's a poke at myself. I tell him this from experience. My first story I, foolishly, wrote in first person. It was bad and using the first person only hurt me. I should have used third and it would have been much stronger.

Thirdly if you did not intend it to be spiteful, next time include specific issues and quotations where you saw 'issue'.

You can't really do that when discussing third vs. first, but I suppose I could use the example that third gives more freedom. You don't have to stick to the point of view of your main character, you can go into the head of others and how they view him. If you stick with first person, you're getting a flawed account, which I don't believe is what the author is going for.

Fourthly, do not use caps is a formality rule that does not necessarily apply to fanfiction since it becomes a stylistic decision.

No. This is the hill I will die on. You cannot just wave away rules of writing and claim "It's fanfiction, so we don't have to follow it." This is not poetry. This is not prose. This is fictional writing. There are rules you have to follow, and this is one of them.

Not only that, but using caps is also an amateur mistake that looks bad to almost everyone who has written.

it made the narrative stand out more.

If you can't make dialogue pop out without making it drastically different from the rest of your writing, you're not writing correctly. I would criticize him if he put it neon green and made the background black to make it stand out more. Writing has rules. Follow them.

Fifthly, you don't necessarily need an editor, just a bit of revision, or word processing software.

Yes, it's not "required" but its much to his benefit. Editors help you improve at a much accelerated rate, find the mistakes you miss, and help refine your style, as well as providing creative hepl and support in general. Editors are more than just robots that look for grammar mistakes.

While it is a potentially nice idea to get out of your comfort zone, the way you worded it is more malicion.

I comment with criticisms to help the author improve as fast as possible. Editors are the best way to improve early on.

HiE is another genera that is popular.

Argumentum ad populum. I don't deny it's a popular genre, I argue it's not a good genre. The entire site could be full of HiE, and I can still call it bad for it's flaws. If you'd like, I can list them, though I wonder if we should take this to the PM's as to not drag the author's comment section into a debate. Though I have one stronger argument...

You might as well call romance and slice of life and adventure over-saturated because they make up over 50% of the tens of thousands of stories on this site.

See, I'd argree with you, if HiE was a genre. Which it isn't. It's a character and general story outline. HiE can be sad, romance, adventure, etc., while adventure is mainly, well, adventure. HiE requires a human character, they almost always meet the mane 6, they're so cool and awesome that they get a "marefriend", and, in the end, fight a villain, normally discord.

Now, there are flaws with this character and story set up, but I'll keep that if you take me up on my offer of listing.

The author should write as they please, not discourage any ideas they might've had.

I can't say I agree. If an idea is flawed at it's base, you should start over with a new idea.

just because it's kind of the same thing doesn't mean it's not good, but unique and interesting in its own right.

I've seen too many HiE that are always the exact same to believe that. I've seen too many edgelords and self inserts break the world on their back because of their own awesomeness. I can't enjoy HiE, and I don't know how anyone else can.

Of course, I recognize different tastes and all that, but I'll still try to argue my points.

Firstly, rude -- take that as you will, no offense.

Meh. I don't mind being called rude. I'm not the best speaker nor a grand orator. I prefer for my arguments to stand on their own.

Secondly, your advice really does not consider that this is his/her first story and were clearly have fun writing it.

Why should I take that into account? The author is subject to the same guidelines, rules and standards as anyone else. Why would I judge him by a different measurement?

Also to that point, it made the publication cut, so whether or not you like it, please respect it for what it is.

Yes, so does Edgy Sonic OC's, barely comprehensible english, and Evictus story. What's your point? There is a bare minimum which is english that can be read. I don't respect Evictus or Edgy Sonic OC's, so this argument falls on deaf ears.

Mythril Moth

Can't say I agree there. They have some huge flaws in their large stories, like Persona: EQ has wish fulfillment and harem ideas that make 0% sense for the characters.

Titanium Dragon and to read those reviews and breakdowns of stories to learn the working of effective and ineffective writing and what patterns it follows

Yes, that is a good source.

8889660

8889727

Well golly! It’s alright my friends! I felt no insults during your critical analysis, in fact I was ecstatic to find two diverse (and clearly experienced) individuals found it worth their time to give me a few pointers!

Here’s what I’ll try to do so I can appease both of your writing styles:
-Next chapter will be in 3rd, allowing for more detail in the writing & (in theory) allow me to make more paragraphs with it...
-Paragraphs, unfortunately, can’t be changed. I feel to comfortable with the lengths I give to them as I am an newbie & having long paragraphs makes me feel assured that there actually paragraphs & not sentences.
-No caps unless Celestia starts shouting, even then I’ll add bolding to make it more... ‘appealing’... if that makes any sense.

Truth be told, having you two bicker over my work kinda makes me feel inspired, because now I can try to appease both of your desires whilst also sticking to the original material as best I can!

I also just realized, 300 views already?! /)°0°(\
AWESOME! :D

8889813
Also: featured. Congratulations!

Also also, It seems really unclear in the begging: Is our main character mobile, or just a still suit trapped somewhere like cover image implies?

8889828

/)°0°(\

LE-GASP! FOR REALZ?!
AMAZING!


As for your question? No he isn’t a suit of armor, he’s very much alive, but his decades of sitting have left him neigh incapacitated.

Like imagine you’re sitting for a really long time, and when you eventually get up your joints crack painfully, if that’s ever happened to you... then imagine that for him...

8889843
that makes sense. You may want to make that more clear to the reader though. Maybe say something like "I'v lost track of how long I've been sitting here" or something along those lines. As long as this doesn't go full mary-sue, this fic has the potential to be amazing.

8889907
The only traits that will be remotely Sueish will be his apparent immortality, and even then that was achieved at a highly immoral price...

But next chapter will involve the first conversations between a pony & the king... only question is...

Who?
,’:3

in the endless decades

Eh, a bit underwhelming in the implied timescale. A decade is a mere 10 years. Even adding 'endless' to it doesn't have the impact another, much longer time period would. 'Endless eons' would be much more meaningful and grasp the scope.

8887885 Uhm... there are actually a crap-load of them. Not many have been written for a couple years, as they just stopped making any sense to anyone for the most part. They all tended to be REALLY lazy and never adequately explain how the heck any of this human-ruled past happened. Most just gloss over how our Earth managed to suddenly have magic and ignore the canon that is by now ABSOLUTELY CONFIRMED on multiple occasions that Celestia does in fact move the Sun, and that Equestria's Sun is many times smaller than ours. Even their moon is much smaller.

See, our world does not in any way fit Equestria's cosmic construction, and that MUST be taken into account.

They could do something as I mentioned already, with the whole of Earth falling through a portal or wormhole into a magic-permitting universe. Or perhaps Earth was drawn into a magical universe by a malicious entity looking for hapless mortals to torture, but humans managed to defeat the creature as they learned magic... but then became corrupt and drunk on the power, creating all manner of mythical beasts familiar to their mythology, as well as monsters out of their own imaginations (which would neatly explain a good many things in Equestria), until they tried creating an actual god... which was Discord. Then things REALLY went pear-shaped. As in, infant Discord turned most humans into pears... which the ponies unknowingly ate.

So dark... :fluttershbad:

8889801
Well, if we're flooding the comments we can leave if you feel.

My advice from reading a bunch of others authors comments is to not please the audience, but find critique in them; something about working for people killing the fun of writing

That said, if you find the lengths comfortable stick with them unless you have a valid reason to change. I'm only guessing that you're new to writing is all.

Don't overdo the formatting -- finding a style of emphasis is important to keep consistency. Most stylistic choices are forgivable to an audience as long as they are consistent.



8889727
1) Yes of course, but I added to the stipulation of modifications, however it could be condensed and left as an introduction, or moved into its entirely own prelude section, and yes, should not stay as it is, I was commenting that it was still a good part of the work so far

2) Aesthetic? Yes it could be condensed more, but overall descriptive phrases set the rest of the event and are allowed to be longer than normal; the usual tactic is to intersperse longer paragraphs with shorter description or narrative. Though I will admit after emulating a phone's screen, they appear longer than most. I think breaking them up would lead to a major restructuring of the chapter (a decent bit of work if you only want to write a story, and yes an editor would be nice for that, but not always accessible).

3) Just because you do it to yourself doesn't make it right.

4) I was not referring to the use of, but the actual work and places where you found err and not citing them

5) You're a traditionalist, okay. This is not a print novel from a few decades ago, digital consumption has made much print rules obsolete especially with justified fonts. Spaced ellipses, indention, double spaced word from end punctuation -- much has been removed or become author's choice. As for calling it amateur, again, it has its uses when used correctly. I will die on my hill sir, you can die on yours

6) Refer to 5

7) Not everyone has that luxury, or are plain shy. You make it sound like everyone has to have one, and while a second set of eyes is invaluable, not everyone has access.

8) Criticism without citation and explanation is worthless. Do what you did with my comment and it would be 10x more beneficial than what you sent without someone having to discern what you were thinking.

9) Good genera, bad genera, all opinions, don't force them onto other people if it makes them happy because it is literally your opinion, not a fact -- also there is benefit to reading these, if it's PM it's going to be a pissing match basically and nothing will come of it (doing this in short response form without markdown to save space)

10) Good ideas and bad ideas, but you base it off of opinion here (due to calling this a bad idea but not providing sourced or referenced material or proof of concept), so this is not a valid course of action unless the sentiment is shared

11) If you read the intro that is a baseless argument in the context because this is not yet a bad character. It is a thematic plot to describe a series of events. Also denoted by this

As for your question? No he isn’t a suit of armor, he’s very much alive, but his decades of sitting have left him neigh incapacitated.
Like imagine you’re sitting for a really long time, and when you eventually get up your joints crack painfully, if that’s ever happened to you... then imagine that for him...

12) Your arguments seem to be baseless opinion since you have no provided evidence or proofs of concepts -- stating this is jut a way to escape analysis to further your currently opinions; the proper way to evidence this as a bad story would be to provide examples of similar setups, but with only one chapter and a little over a thousand words, you are calling this too soon, even if you do have evidence to the contrary, but based on the essay intro and other comments, it does not seem to be going in that direction, I could be wrong

13) Writing fiction isn't a business to most, and I want people to enjoy and have fun in their free time, not be completely barred from their form of enjoyment. Also it passed inspection by a story approve, it has met rules and conditions, but you are applying more outside rules without the explicit goal to help the author but to state that you don't like most HiE. If you were applying criticism and validating it I wouldn't have issues.

14) From the previous statement, you can rail on the disposition of the story, but not attempting to further it when you have some investment is clearly a lost cause for you unless the end result is to completely kneecap and remove the story off the site. Also more in-depth with yours statement, edgy OC's and incomprehensible English are incomparable to this story. It might have a bit more than a few character and punctuation issues, but it was marginally readable compared to those stories. It has not even become an 'edge' story as of yet. yet

15) I don't read all of their work, I was pointing toward the blog posts more or less, and was just an example off the top of my head. I just found it marked as mature, and written four years ago and currently being written. I don't read mature fiction, but a product of four years is a large time frame to write yourself into corners and inconsistencies.

As a side note for the grammar issues, I feel like this might have been typed on a phone was my first guess.

This seems really interesting, i shall keep an eye on it.

8903955
Nah, he ain’t no vampire... that’d be silly!


8903965
Wot?

I let out a sigh before speaking again. Unfortunately for the young mare, my true nature would not be so easily revealed, some knowledge is best left for those who know how to process it... and those who do must be very wise on how to handle it. "I am ancient flesh, & I am made of ancient blood... if these do not satisfy then I can give you nothing more then my deepest apologies. But you are simply unprepared for knowing... as is everyone you bring with you..." My eyes swept across the room & gazed at each guard individually, some of them flinched from my cold gaze while others returned it with a gaze of their own, either way it was made clear that I saw none of these equine to be capable of understanding.

This is a place where you should use show don't tell. You explain earlier in the paragraph that he doesn't think anyone there is worthy of information, via his own words. Then you have a stare down with each guard. Then you explain that the state down was to show that he doesn't think them worthy. You don't need this second explanation at all. It's clear from earlier context that he is measuring them with his stare. There were a couple other spots like this, but I can't remember what they are.

Well, this is a thing, a thing that has caught my interest, you now have a 25/1 like/dislike ratio. Cheers mate.

Heya, certainly not trying to let this story die, but writers block is keeping me down hard...

But I’ll definitely try to keep it up!

Okay, I can see where you want to go with that title, but you actually made an easy but funny mistake in it: you used "bare" - as in unclothed or otherwise naked - in place of "bear" - as in to carry or bring forth. Homophones are nasty like that.

IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!! Well things have gotten interesting.

9470323
Your completely right! And thus I have fixed it! Thanks for pointing that out to me!

9470436
/)°0°(\

My very first, truly Offical Fan?!

It’s like my first birthday party all over again!

ok i am enjoying this. ok i am tracking this. ok my thumb just went up.

Well that escalated quickly.

And instant grimdark... :facehoof:

Really? Was that really necessary? All this time, and we just get a bunch of ponies splattered by golems?

9473320
I’m sorry if what this chapter did made you upset, truly I am, and I can’t say if this’ll be a more common occurrence or not but do know that I did this simply to portray just how dangerous the city is. Even after all it’s inhabitants have gone...

Hopefully my following chapters will be more of what you wanna see, but I understand if you’ve lost interest because of this, some stories are just not fulfilling to some people. And I respect that!

Right, sudden gore and violence. Whether it's a onetime occurence or not, that Everyone rating seems woefully inaccurate right now.

9474080
You’re absolutely correct, and I’ve quickly corrected that mistake of mine! Thank you for bringing that to my attention! I hope I can chalk that error up to this being my first attempt at a story!

And again I must apologize to anyone whose upset by the direction this story took, if it upsets you then I’m sorry.
But I did what I thought was right and in tune with what I’d established so far in the story.
And, in tune with what I’ve said before in reference to criticism, I will learn from your words & do my duty to avoid such gore-filled chapters in the future!

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