My entry into FanOfMostEverything's Villain Exchange Program contest. The limitation is Write a story with a pony villain in the human world, or vice versa.
So at the castle of the Two Sister's Nightmare Moon attempts to defeat Celestia and take over Equestria, a classic story. However, when Celestia turns the battle in her favour, instead of locking Luna in the moon, for some reason she ends up in a world populated by humans.
This is set a few months after that, part way through her travels, and instead of being the entire story, we simply see a small slice of the adventure.
After all, what kind of person would I be if you got the entire story? XD
Chapters (1)
It's a fascinating concept—a bunch of disempowered drifters wandering a magicless planet, a family of circumstance with tight bonds nonetheless—but you don't do much with it. Much of the text is taken up by exposition and Luna's introspection, and while you have something of a character arc for her, most of it is resolved in a few paragraphs. I would've loved to have seen more of the drifters, who they all are, who they were, where they're going and why, how new members adapt. You have a lot of potential here. A sequel would not be amiss.
Still, thank you for the submission. As I said, there's a lot of promise here. (And if that's the Guldan I think it is, some very interesting directions and character interaction you could do with it.)
9233007
Introspection is generally my intent with stories like these. I love delving into the minds of characters. Putting them in different situations and just sort of seeing what they think of them. Thanks for reading, and as well, thanks for the contest as an excuse to do some writing again.
I, uh... You'd be the kind of person who'd get a whole comment, rather than just the first line of it
9233318
Heh, touché
In all seriousness though, I like exploring concepts more than fully formed stories, which is why this isn't too long.
I do like folk who explore villains motivations past the 'oh they are nuts' or 'they are power hungry'. Moon's a good one for that. I like that her being un-magicked via moved to a new world did something like what getting harmony blasted in the show did. I can imagine S1 filly-Luna feeling these feelings in the immediate aftermath of coming down from their magical high.
For the rest, I do like the cafe-at-the-end-of-the-world kind of story where you can get a bunch of interesting types show up all brought by different circumstances. Fangorn here even acts as a metaphorical bartender, polishing his glass and helping the sorrowful Moon.
Though I do have trouble with the cross-over part of the story. You didn't tag this as a cross-over which made the sudden litany of not-pony and not-eqg names make me scratch my head. 'Oh are these OCs?' 'Should I know these people?' It wasn't until I saw Gul'dan who I've personally thrown plenty of frostbolts at as a pandaren made me go 'OH!'
It illustrates the trouble with cross-over, it's like telling an inside joke that only people familiar will get. The benefit is seeing how they interact with your favorite characters, but here we don't really get much of the others aside from a brief name drop. Even when Fangorn describes them, it's in fairly generic terms. “Young ___ has had a very difficult time in this world” or “And ___ doesn't think he'll ever find his way home.” You could write in anyone in those spots.
I think you'd have been better served by putting a bit more interaction with the crossovers, or if not changing them to pony (ex)villains who are also along in this quirky human-world purgatory. Fangon could have been a mellowed out Gorgar or Sombra for instance which might explain why he's so insightful to Moon's psyche and a shock to Moon who is dealing with the idea of changing herself if she saw someone she already knew / heard about in a new light.
Your ability to write a story is perfectly fine! I hope you keep plenty of confidence to keep making entries and writing in general. The emotions in the fic work well as well as the mood so isn't not that you can't write and even my criticism boils down to 'write more'.
9234610
The thing about this story is that the crossover isn't the important part, maybe for other wrtiters it would be, but my primary focus was Lunas introspection I originally didn't want to name any of them, but when I got to that part of the story I decided to roll with it. It was always the plan that the human world sucked in fantasy characters from other fiction, and that for (unexplored reason) they met up and helped each other. But overall it was a cliffnote on the best of days.
in case you are curious, here's what each of them are based on.
Fangorn - Ent - Lord of the Rings
Quaranir - Elf - Elven name generator
Guldan - Orc - WoW
Willow - Will-o'-the-wisp - General folklore
I didn't spend more than probably 20 total minutes on the collection of them. I just needed characters to fill. A kind older woman, one that was about to go home, a wise-sagely one, and another one to fill in the space so that the team didn't feel empty.
The reason i didn't want to use other MLP ex-villains is because I wanted to go for a fish out of water story, which is more difficult to pull off when Luna knows any of them from before being banished. I suppose I could have done a "Ex-villain pit" sort of story, but it'd be absolutely nowhere close to my sombre train ride motif.
In the end, what I wanted to do is what I accomplsihed, I wanted to look a small portion of Luna's adventure in an AU where she gets banished to Earth instead of the Moon. I specifically didn't want to tell the same story of just waking up in a new world and adjusting, since that's been done pretty much to death, instead I wanted a bit of time after that. Where she's used to things and the shock value has receded, but before she fully accepts herself for what she is. Phase 2.