A Sister's Helping Hoof

This story has been marked as having adult content. Please click below to confirm you are of legal age to view adult material in your country.

Confirm

Comments ( 7 )

Viewing 1 - 50 of 7
- Newest First
- Oldest First

Shenzy

Shenzy #1 · Apr 20th, 2019 · · ·

Hm i think i like Limestone a little more. Bittersweet, so to speak.

Comment posted by Rottie deleted Apr 20th, 2019

Rottie

Rottie #3 · Apr 20th, 2019 · · ·

9577659

I know! I made my username specifically so that the C looks like an O! Thank you for your comment!!

clipclopurpornisaflop

clipclopurpornisaflop #4 · Apr 20th, 2019 · · ·

Sounds like it's gonna be a fun party...

xRei

xRei #5 · May 3rd, 2019 · 1 · 1 ·

Contest judge chiming in with some thoughts.

Let's get the 'constructive feedback' part out of the way first:

Your writing is generally good, but I think there are two things you may consider working on. First is usage of filtering words. I saw more than a few. For reference...

Marble could smell her sister's heat scent, and it made her nose twitch and her face heat up even more.

It can often be more evocative if instead of explaining that a character smells, sees, hears or whatevers a thing, you instead describe the sensation. Those words are just getting between me and the scene.

The thick, sweet scent of Pinkie's heat—like summer candy canes and delicious treats—was heavy in the room.

There are many other ways you could write this sentence, but they will all feel punchier if you avoid telling me Marble is experiencing it and instead draw me into the experience itself. Easier said than done of course.

The other thing was some overly verbose sentences a bit too heavy in the telling. Ex:

Okay!" She exclaimed, voice strong with determination. It was actually much softer than a normal pony's voice but, for Marble, it was as strong as could be.

This line is rather clunky. It's also explaining something which could potentially be shown more effectively.

Marble pumped her hoof "Okay," she said with a determined squeak.
"Whoa!" Pinkie exclaimed, "You're really excited about this!"
"Mhm!"

This may not be the perfect revision, but the idea is that instead of telling us that Marble's apparent excitement is greater than usual, we infer that from Pinkie's reaction instead.

So anyway, all that aside, what about the rest?
Characterization.. was pretty darn good. It felt like Pinkie. It felt like Marble, and what little we got, Limestone. I would have really enjoyed seeing more of these characters in a longer, larger fic to be honest. But with what we got here, I was still enjoying myself.

The heat... I'll be honest, I roast other writers about using heat in stories in ways that don't accomplish anything. But you avoided the number one gripe I have with it: using it as a cheap means of altering normal behavior. Maybe there was some of that here, but if so it was most unnoticed. Rather, you used the heat as more of a talking point and a way to encourage Pinkie to take on a mentor role. You also came close to really nailing it by actually having the characters discuss the social impact of heat.. though you fell just short of truly knocking it out of the park for me there. The conversation cut just a bit short...

Still, it balanced out for me.

Other than that, the story is relatively simple. It really was the characterization that elevated this up for me.

Thanks for the submission.

ThatBadGuy