This story is a sequel to No Heroes: Life of Pie
Five-year-old Keen Arrow loved her uncle's stories. He could tell them so well, always helping her escape from the bad ponies and the scary times. Wouldn't it be nice if she could be the one to tell him a story for once?
Unfortunately, telling a story doesn't come as naturally for her as it does for Uncle Fine.
Created based on a prompt from Darkevony, this might count as a commissioned piece, though I don't know how well it really fits said prompt. I suppose I'll let them be the judge.
The first chapter takes place during the events of No Heroes Part III - For Dreams, whereas all other chapters are set after the main No Heroes stories. The story makes nods towards the franchise, but doesn't rely on it to tell its story, so you shouldn't have to read anything from the main series to get what is happening here.
The No Heroes Series
Chronological from Top to Bottom:
Shadow Pony
Reddux the Tyrant
No Heroes Part I - The Roster
No Heroes Part II - The Journey Home
Lightning's Bolt
No Heroes Part III - For Dreams
No Heroes Part IV - The Crystal Empress
No Heroes: Beyond the Everfree
No Heroes: Life of Pie
No Heroes: Hot Chocolate at the Isekai
To My Uncle
I read this a few days ago, but held off on saying so because I thought you'd deserve a better very first comment than what I would provide. I am finding myself very confused as to why no one else has taken it up, or how you haven't gotten the necessary votes for the ratings to be displayed yet, so here I go against my regular nature.
It's been awhile since I read the No Heros series, so it was nice to visit Fine Crime again. And as you said I didn't need to remember most of the details, but it was nice to have them as context.
Overall it was a nice relaxing bit for what people/ponies go through as writers, and I'll need to reread this if I can ever get myself to pick up my own story again. Keen was fairly cute throughout, even as a young mare, and does a good job subbing in for the audience.
So have at least one confirmed thumbs up and shelved favorite from me.
I think it's just that No Heroes is an old series and not a lot of people on the site nowadays are familiar with it. Those who aren't see a story at the end of a series with no less than ten predecessors and it may cause them to balk, regardless of my reassurances. Eh, no matter, what little reception I have gotten is positive and I choose to be happy with that. Glad to finally get a comment to that point though, so thanks!
So true.
The list of previous stories, the strange and unexplained chapter names with so many numbers missing, and the author's note in the first chapter (titled "five") about necessary background from other stories, all made me think that the story was incomplete, or that I was reading it the wrong way, and was supposed to read other things first. I think that's turning readers away.
Hey! The ratings showed up when I clicked the green thumb! 10 up and 0 down. That was so satisfying.
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I can understand the many previous stories being an issue, and the author's note in the first chapter, but I don't get why the chapter names would imply an incomplete story when it is specifically labelled as completed. Then again, I've been alive long enough to realize that what feels obvious to me won't be obvious to others. Usually after the fact, but it is what it is.
Oh, I can has ratings? Sweet.
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It's common for chapter names to simply be the chapter numbers, so seeing the many missing numbers suggests there are missing chapters, particularly when the numbers are in sequence, and there's no explanation for what else the numbers could mean. It isn't obviously more likely that you intentionally wrote a story with weird and confusing chapter titles, than that you accidentally tagged it complete. And if you did intentionally use weird and confusing chapter titles, some people will guess you're trying to be artsy, and they don't want artsy.
Also, they might not be going away, but going to read the stories in sequence.
The view count graph on Shadow Pony is crazy! It isn't going down in number of views over time! It got twice as many views on May 19, 2021, as on any other day. Why do new people keep discovering this story?
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I suppose we can sum all of this up to "Paul thought he could be indirect when he couldn't. Again." I keep assuming readers will "get it" only to have it explained to me that, no, I should be a bit more direct. At least with chapter titles in this case.
Whelp, lesson reiterated (for the bajillionth time). I won't be fixing it either, because this will serve as a nice reminder for the future.
Do you really put hot sauce in your hot chocolate? Or are you trying to troll me into doing so?
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I didn't start doing it until recently, but yes, I now put a few drops of Tabasco sauce in my hot chocolate.
Pretty good job of writing a didactic story without making it, well, didactic. (The word has two senses.)
I'm ambivalent about Keen's obsession with finishing the story. Many wannabe writers spend many years on the same long story. Usually they don't finish it. If they do, they don't usually write anything else. It burns them out when they get to the end and realize it isn't any good. I always warn people against spending years on a single story unless they've already written lots of stories.
I'm also ambivalent about whether she "should" have tried so hard at something she (if we take her word for it) is incurably bad at, and doesn't plan to keep doing. Is this admirable persistence, or obsession?
I don't take her word for it; for me this story ends on a note of suspense: Is she really incurably bad? It's hard for anyone to ever know, whether they're ignored and unknown, or a best-selling author. Maybe she'll write another story, and another.
In any case, this story has what I think is the most-important quality in stories: it's real. This really happens to many people, and who am I to say what's right for them? Who knows what they got from writing their one story? I don't, because that's a story none of them have ever told, AFAIK. There are lots of stories about becoming a writer; very few about not becoming a writer.
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I totally missed this comment somehow when you first sent it. Now that I check though, you're right, it is strange. The only guess I have is that maybe it's because it's the first story in the series and relatively short so people migrate to it for a test run?
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I have my own opinions on whether Keen goes on to write more, but I think I'll keep them to myself for now. Nothing is canon until I've written it after all, so even if I said something now I could potentially change my mind later. If anything, I find your ambivalence and lack of faith in Keen's word to be good things. Considering the manner of the perspective, I would say that she's not the most reliable narrator, and even Darkevony (whom this story was technically written for) found the decisions by both Keen and Fine questionable (though much more the latter than the former). That fits wonderfully with the overall manner of No Heroes, or so I think.
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I posted a short blog post about "To My Uncle".
I agree. It's more realistic to end without certainty about what will happen after.
This is a good and personal story. Thank you for sharing these feelings