Princess Celestia commissions a sculptor to create a work of art in the Royal Canterlot Gardens commemorating the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. But how will a pony with no knowledge of friendship capture their true natures?
Category: Slice-of-Cake
Caution: Contains nuts, bananas, apples and friendship. Open at once and share.
Editing assistance by The Music Man , Bad Horse , and an EqD editor. I appreciate the work they did on turning this mess of mangled kitchen products into the fine frosted cake of delicious words it is now. Dig in and share with a friend.
Chapters (2)
I approve, despite the appalling lack of murder of any sort.
"He took another sip, seriously considering consigning the accursed flowery scroll into the flames" - This makes no sense; he is interested in social climbing and money, and should value a commission from the princesses above all else.
This made me burst out laughing: "Twilight went out in royal style with a flurry of raising that ended in her producing a Tenance. Then there was a great deal of flipping frantically through the book only to find she had somehow wound up on the Whist page instead of the Poker page."
I could use a little more convincing that Chisel's heart could change so quickly. Perhaps by more setup in the first chapter hinting at his discontent with himself.
I liked it, a nice heartwarming little story. Good job.
1107503 It's a hard balance, I need him to be contemptible in Ch.1, but not un-redeemable. The last thing I want is the reader to get to the end of Ch.1 and say "Ok, just let him die already." (although that would have been an interesting way to make Chapter 2. "At the funeral, Rarity gave a stirring speech about Cold Chisel's life and untimely death..."
)
1107788 I don't mean he should be better or worse in chapter 1. We could see more hints that he's discontented with himself.
In one chapter, the six of them managed to break this poor, poor Stallion.
As I said before, who are the real villains?
Aw, It's over?
Well I can't say I'm disappointed, it's seems your latest work was quite a good indicator of what to expect. Once again, I enjoyed every line of this story.
Though I'd have to say personally its a tie between.
And
1113962 They didn't do it individually. They ganged up on him. Remember, "Les Amies c'est Magique"
I usually frown at links to pictures, music or videos in stories. If the story can not create enough atmosphere on it's own, ah, the heck with it.
But this one worked quite well.
I kind of expected the girls to strip him down to his hooves when he joined the game.
My favorite line was
Luna:Yes Chocolate...I mean Celly?
I came here from "In Celestia We Trust", which was ridiculously brilliant. Glad I did, because this one's charming on its own.
1150344 If you liked this one, I'd advise you go read A Blank Canvas , Bardsworth Broney has done some amazing things with his OC, and its the story that inspired me to write this one.
Updated with final typo fixing, and submitted to EQD. Many thanks to Bad Horse and The Music Man for their excellent editing and suggestions. Everytime I looked back and told myself it was perfect, they were right there to point out the flaws in my creation and suggest improvements. The end result is far better than I had ever hoped, and I owe them bigtime.
May EQD have mercy upon my creation.
1107503 I approve, despite the appalling lack of murder of any sort.
That is where you're not looking at it in the right context. You could say that they murdered the cake.
1556400 The cake is obviously Justifiable Cakeicide (it was asking for it) EqD edits are still being made. Expect an update soon.
(Edit): 12/8/2012 Resubmitting today with final edits. I really like it much better now, every time I argue with BH over edits, I *always* seem to wind up agreeing with him.
(edit): Updated with *amazing* artwork by Elenafreckle at Deviantart.
Only half done and I'm already rolling with laughter.
"chicken-spider" that nearly killed me.
I love it! You sir are a genius!
Also I love the fact that you called the language of Prance "Fancy," that was brilliant.
Too much funny to list
Thank you for sharing this with us.
I quite enjoyed this, but might I suggest "L'Amitié est Magique"? You've got "Friends is Magic" as it stands.
This is what I get for going through an immersion language program.
1918821 Fixed! Heck, I don't do English well, let alone Fancy. Thanks!
1895091 'Fancy' is pseudo-canon for French, due to the (I think) Call of the Cutie episode where Applebloom is talking "all Fancy like", so I can't take credit. (but I can use it
1918919
Yes, that is what made it awesome. I was brought right back to that episode and nearly died laughing.
Aww, poor Chisel, don't worry, we have a nice white jacket for you.
This literally made my day.
Hmm. Fair's fair - I can't call this evaluation objective or unbiased, because a lot of this is really personal preferences.
I can't fault the writing too much. The style is verbose and seems a bit shaky - there's just this... small vein of anti-grasp of the language, and I have read a large enough handful of stories that did show complete grasp of the style they're grappling; I'm sorry I can't be more explanatory beyond that - but is otherwise quite well-done. Perhaps it's the imagery - less of it than expected for the quantity of words there, but the style meshes enough to feel seamless. Can't fault your vocabulary nor sentence structure, which reads solid enough to convey the atmosphere that I believe you're trying to convey.
Just one thing - why are the Mane 6 (well, the three of them that I read up until) so tolerant of letting some completely random stranger boss them around? Because if they were, say, less tolerant of letting Mr. Unlikeable yell at them - and I doubt that it's in anypony's personality to let an unannounced - story-wise - stranger barge in and shout at them in a condescending manner, the story would twist in a much more different direction than how it's going.
This is what tripped me up, because I just can't suspend my disbelief for it. Why is this unlikeable, unfunny OC yelling at characters I care more for and getting away with it (and I have a fair tolerance for unlikeable unfunny OCs, as long as they're interesting)? Because Convenience? Why am I not reading the story that has a natural flow, but instead requires this blind spot in the Mane 6's personality to proceed? You would find of course that many readers wouldn't have this problem. But I did, and it's stopping me from putting in the effort to proceed. I can't see that this will go in a way that brings satisfaction for the amount of investment I put in as a reader. Note the subjective quality "satisfaction".
I can't fault your grammar up to the point where Pinkie shows up, at least. If I had to predict criticism on the basic side of style, it'd be that your sentences are more or less the same length; while it keeps readers in, it also makes it harder for them to start. I'm pretty sure you could retain the tone without having as many med-long and long sentences, or just punctuating the lengths with shorter ones, so as to aid reading, but it's not terribly broken, so it's not as much a fix as a tweak imo.
Something else which bothers me is that this is, in fact, a "OC goes to Ponyville and meets with Mane 6" story, except with better writing. The depth to the interactions are shallow at first as expected - but why do you think it's such a turn-off, aside from the reeking of self-insert (which, thankfully, is not present here)? I'd suggest it's because there doesn't seem to be anything better in sight. I'd go as far as to extrapolate a bit more - you're not giving us a reason to stay with you until too late, which is further down chapter 2. One whole chapter of decent writing but unfortunately little in the way of something interesting happening - there's no interaction, for goodness' sake, it's one-way one-way - isn't a hook. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and think that you probably do have a good story, but to get to it we need to invest too much that yields too little. Perhaps I just don't have the patience, but there are stories out there, meandering ones, that have setups interesting enough to lead to the good part of the story.
So, yes - here's some unsolicited critique, and I hope it helps somehow. I am just one reader after all. Whatever you do with it is completely up to you; you seem experienced enough with criticism to know what to do with it.
Wonder what he'd make of Applepplosa?
2724420
Perhaps it's because the princess said so? She sent the sculptor to Ponyville, after all.
If -insert ruling body of your country here- sent someone for the express purpose of sketching you, and if in the process they yelled at you to quit moving, would you tell them off?
1346536
Do they even know that word?
i have been slowly reading through your stories and so far i have really been enjoying them(have not reached the sad ones yet though and those are very hit or miss for me)
This seemed familiar when I read it:
All six of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony crafted in colorful stone stood perfectly in reduced scale and exact color, each with their respective Element worn proudly. Applejack and Pinkie Pie in the back, each seemingly glowing with power. Rainbow Dash with her chest out and wings outstretched, Rarity with her beautiful eyes closed in concentration, Fluttershy as delicate as a newborn foal but as strong as steel. And in the center, her faithful student Twilight Sparkle, looking straight ahead with such intensity it seemed as if she would transform her entire body into energy at any moment.
So I watched the last few minutes of Season 1 Episode 2 again... Yep. ISWYDT. You're describing the last thing Nightmare Moon saw.
You know, somehow I'd never noticed it before, but Nightmare Moon was wrapped in that rainbow whirlwind thing for several seconds before Twilight went "Whiteout" on her. Now I wonder which of the two effects purified Luna. Maybe the rainbow was just holding her target in place while Twilight's Harmony-gun was charging.