Alphabittle has said a lot of mean things about Thunder and his mother. Now it is time to apologize.
In the meantime, Sprout wonders why he has to give up. Tyrannic dictators (not that Sprout would ever call himself that) never give up, so why would he? He still had a shot at this and once he stole their magic again, he would hide and think of a plan to take down those unicorns and pegasi once and for all.
But things aren't as easy as they seem. Alphabittle and Thunder stand in his way and a new friendship in the making could bring an early end to his new, villainous plan.
A story for the Generation 5 Bingo Writing Contest. Check out the cover picture to see the prompt I got assigned.
Chapters (1)
By the gods, why would you put this here!?
I decided, by my own will, that I would read this fic. The title and the first part of the chapter intrigued me. I got distracted by your author's note (was making this comment). My gods, not only is it telling me not to read the fic, but it is also spoiling the chapter!
MY. GODS.
You know what? I legitimately like this fic. I'm going to read it and like it to spite you.
I love this filly singlehoofedly rebuking Alphabittle back into the room.
Hobbits!
First of all, this line amuses me for some reason. Second of all, I was under the impression that this room was actually quite large. This is actually pretty clever though: leading the reader into the scene with blinders so that when the environment is actually revealed it feels thematically relevant. Like, here the room can feel big because of the distance between Alphabittle and Thunder interpersonally. But then you reveal it's tiny when the distance closes! *Taps head,* smart.
This got a chuckle out of me.
I like how Thunder refers to Zipp as "Storm."
Honestly, I feel like in media these days, more emphasis is put on fight scenes. Fights scenes (IMO) are kind of lame. I think there is not enough attention put to the swift lethality of a short fall. Or the brutal repercussions of a rock moving at 15 miles an hour towards your face. Or harrowing trip to the ER after cutting through a zip tie and into your hand.
Also, frankly, this exactly how things should've turned out. A fight scene would've felt silly. Alphabittle runs a bar, is strong, and big, and has probably been in brawls himself (especially if you he behaves like that every time he drinks). Thunder (while cowardly), is a trained guard who has probably trained to fight. Against both drunkards, Sprout probably wouldn't have been able to fight in the first place.
Oh, I get it now, Alphabittle and Thunder are both drunk. Honestly, at the beginning of the chapter I thought they were both sober.
Nice. I enjoyed this ending.
Though admittedly I was expecting another chapter. I guess I came to this fic after trying to read the one fic that starts with Haven's carriage going over a bump, and that one has three chapters. So somewhere the wires got crossed in my brain.
I realize that you probably shouldn't edit this until the contest is over, but I am habitually unable to read a story with this problem and not point it out.
So the transition here is pretty smooth. So smooth that I forgot that there was a transition at all.
Whenever you transition between character perspectives, the common shorthand for that is the double paragraph break, like this:
It is a clear break that indicates a short time, or perspective change had occurred. Believe me your readers will thank you.
Edit: Added some things.
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I'm just being honest. I love to celebrate my successes, but I also need to acknowledge my fails. And this story sucks so much that I just had to admit it in the Author's Notes, for the sake of my author reputation.
The Author's Notes are at the very bottom of the story.
How could it spoiler you, though?
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I love her, too. She is special, you see how special she is when watching the movie, so I am glad that I could write about her in this story and give her a meaningful role in it, as well as describe her personality and what she and Thunder have in common. Like I said, the first half of the story is much better than the second half.
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Now that you mention it..... Not intentional, but this paragraph sounds a lot like it could be part of a pony version of "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings".
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I wish it were as clever as you make it sound here. But, unfortunately, I have to tell you it's not. Already the very first sentence of the story establishes the room as "tiny". This sounds like something that could have worked if I would have had more time left to write this story, if I didn't have to wing it so much by writing it in the last few hours before the deadline of the contest.
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Yeah, this also looked very funny in my head.
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He's actually not talking about Zipp, but another pony. Thunder's guard partner is called Storm, he is the guard who put the tennis ball on Izzy's horn. He is not mentioned by name in the movie, but his name is in the credits.
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I understand what you mean, the value of a fast and brutal defeat has something going for it. If it's written correctly. But I failed with this, even if the defeat of a villain (or more like antagonist in Sprout's case, he doesn't have what it takes to be a villain) happens swiftly with just one move, or rather especially then, it should be descriptive and detailed, in-depth; how did the hit by Thunder feel to Sprout exactly, what did Sprout think after it happened, how did he perceive falling to the ground? There is nothing of this, I just plainly wrote that Sprout got hit and fell and that was it.
The way I wrote it sounds very comedic, hence why I gave the story a comedy tag. But it was not my intent to make it comedic, it was supposed to be serious. I decided to add the comedy tag only later to salvage at least something and make the story look less embarrassing. No, I could have written this much better.
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No, only Alphabittle is drunk. Thunder is completely sober. An earlier part of the story has, albeit a little subtly, implied that Thunder doesn't like alcohol, for reasons that lie in his foalhood. But with how unintentionally comedic, if not to say cringy, the end of the story sounds, I can't blame you for thinking they are both drunk. I actually like this interpretation, it works better than what I was going for.
Maybe I could rewrite this story as a comedy on purpose one day.....
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That's something I am hearing for the first time. I have my story format settings on "Indented", so I see no space there. Normally I leave one spaced out line when there is such a change of perspective or scenery, but since I had to hurry so much with this story, I accidentally indented it and didn't notice that.
However, after playing around with the settings, I know that you should already see a spaced out line if you have your settings on "Double Spaced" and I can tell you have that setting since there is a space in the quote in your comment. If I add a space there, then I see one spaced out line with my settings and two spaced out lines with your settings.
I should have left an empty line there, but since you already see an empty line with your format settings, I wonder how it's possible that the line break didn't bring it across to you that there has been a transition. I don't see how two line breaks would add value to a scene transition or change of perspective and make it clearer. One line break suffices nicely to make clear that a transition happens.
That also brings me to question I would like to ask, why do you prefer "Double Spaced" as a format setting for stories? I always find it quite immersion-breaking and interrupting the reading flow of a story if each indent is displayed as a full line break between paragraphs.