Our main character is fed up with his current life inside of his hole and decides to venture out into the town of Ponyville.
The author wants you to know that this story is attempting to fulfill the "Include a bug" bonus and the "Main character's name and identity is never mentioned," bonus for the New Blood Contest. The author didn't say this part, but I want to say it... good luck to all the other participants creating wonderful stories for the contest!
The group for the New Blood Contest: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/215333/beans-writing-group
Chapters (1)
Great work!!!
Here's your New Blood Contest feedback!
This is one of those stories I liked but, to be honest, didn't score well. I more wanted to like it, and called it "bizarre in a great way" in my original notes. Looking back on it, I think that definitely holds up.
Technically speaking, the writing is perfunctory; it gets its point across but remains rough and awkward. Some text from the second paragraph is a good example:
First sentence should say "we walked" somewhere - either at the very end, or at the beginning like "Together we walked, me and the pony (...)". In the second sentence, "I didn't know with who[m]" is awkward since this whole paragraph has been describing who they're walking with - the pony with the dark blue mane and eyes. More pressing is why, perhaps, so you could say "I didn't know where to or why, but we did." or similar.
And an example from the very end of the story:
First should be "And so I arrive back where I began." In the second sentence, the order of the things this character lacks is messed up - should be "No body, no name, no shapeshifting, no way back" - or something like that.
Of course, there is the obvious typo, but there's also some priorities that don't really make sense. No shapeshifting for a couple months? Why? And how does that matter?
It doesn't, really.
If anything, giving the main character some biological reason why it can't shapeshift at the end is diluting the more important psychological reasons why it won't shapeshift any time soon: in the short time it was using the ability it only brought fear and hate to hundreds of ponies. This is recognized at the end, and it's powerful!
Though it was a bit hard to read, I could almost feel this story. The curiosity, elation, desperation, and despair all comes through really well, as does the strangeness and occasional comedy of a totally alien being trying to participate in conversations and broader society. The sentence "Like anyone would do in this situation, I pick a body and run away" is even funnier on a second reading.
I guess my main critique of this story is that it has a lot of great ideas that were poorly considered, integrated, and executed. Nevertheless, I like it, and I want to love it. The nature of identity is a really neat subject to read and write about. So, having the main character's true form be puddle of sludge? That's fucking awesome.
All criticism and praise aside, I'm very happy that you participated in our little contest. It's clear to me that you're writing interesting stuff with lots of potential, even if the technical quality isn't great. Well, that's the easiest part to improve! I hope you keep writing, and I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
11754470
Thank you so much for the critique! Throughout the year and a half or so I've been writing the technical/grammatical side of writing has always been my weakness, so for a long time I've just been focusing on improving everything around that. It's clear to me now and through the past few months that I should finally start getting better at this whole technical side of writing. I have many more ideas and stories to come and so much more practicing to do! Also just to throw this out there this character will be returning in a future fic of mine, but damn... it's going be a while before I get to that. Thanks again so much for the feedback!