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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Don’t let Pinkie find out you skipped your birthday, Shade… unless she already knows. In which case, you have earned whatever it is coming to you.
Is that grey stallion changeling and Stone the same pony or are they different?
Okay, first off, I'd like to say that I'm actually enjoying the story quite a lot. I think the concept is great, and I really enjoy how you are making Shade able to use magic. It's entirely different from Unicorn magic and has most of the time held my interest quite well. That being said, I'm going to give a few critiques, and I have a lot of lead into them. I don't want you to take this as heavy criticism, because I really think this story has a lot of potential and is enjoyable. I just want to make sure I'm explaining myself well.
First, I know it's been said before, but you still have a number of grammatical issues. There are tense shifts, words misplaced with homonyms, and many run-on sentences. I do think this chapter is better in most ways that many of the previous and it's being worked on. But since there are still quite a few cases of grammar issues I should mention it in passing.
Second, and this might just be me, but it feels like you are sometimes spending far too much time talking about what Shade is cooking and how he is cooking it. I think it has gotten a lot better as the story has gone on. However, you have described Shade cooking quite often. Sometimes it is appropriate, but other times it doesn't feel like there is any purpose to describing it. For example, you have Shade cooking meat and that sets up a time later where Blaze comes and asks for help cooking a meat dish. I think that was a good lead-in, and it had purpose. However, there are multiple times his cooking is described without purpose. Again, that is my personal opinion. I really don't think it is a big issue, but it leads into my next point.
The biggest issue I find with the story is some of the characterizations. Characterizations feel inconsistent or arbitrary at a number of points. Shade himself is a good example. Jumping back to diet, here are a couple of descriptions of what is being eaten on a normal day:
At the orphanage:
At the library:
We have ponies like Daisy who tried meat a few times as a child because her grandsire was a bat-pony, and who doesn't have any issue with eating meat, that didn't eat meat for decades simply because that isn't part of a normal diet. Similarly, we have Blaze who is either already a grandsire himself or will soon be one. But when his daughter-in-law has a craving for meat because she's pregnant, neither he nor his son have any idea whatsoever about making a meat dish. Here are multiple generations that don't seem to have ever eaten meat.
In essence, most pony races are effectively vegetarians. Given this, I doubt Shade would have eaten meat even once in his life in Equestria prior to buying it himself. Additionally, the vast majority of the time Shade is frying just about everything he eats, which I gather is actually somewhat if not very rare when it comes to cooking in Equestria.
I'll be honest, when Shade got the fish with his very first paycheck, and then fried it, my expectation was that he was going to try the fish, not like it all that much and end up with a stomachache. Because he would be going from a completely vegetarian, low-fat diet, to a fried meat dish while in the body of a pony that is effectively an herbivore who has never eaten anything like that in his entire life.
I know this is quite a long explanation, but this is an example of what I mean when I say his characterization is sometimes arbitrary. The majority of the world building you've done both prior to and following Shade making that first meat dish suggests that Shade probably had never eaten meat in this life. Most likely, either he wouldn't like it all that much, or at least would find it unusual. Instead, he acts as if it's all business as normal and something that tastes very good. It feels like when his character was designed, one feature was 'likes fried meat dishes' regardless of anything else happening at the time. In fact, I could even say that goes against his character in some other ways too.
Shade can be effectively described as 'utterly disciplined' in his daily routine. Not unflappable but disciplined. He is very consistent and scheduled most of the time. One of the things he tries to do is stay in shape. Now, once again I'm going to link this back to the food. He eats fried food a lot. The majority of food he has cooked has been fried, and other than the run in the morning he does relatively minimal exercise. With the increase in calories and fat consumed, I keep thinking he would be gaining weight at this point. I'd actually like to see Stone Mace call him on that, and force him to get back in better physical shape.
At one point, Shade was described as an Earth Pony. That is, larger than the other breeds of pony, more physically strong, resistant, endurant, etc. That has kind of faded away. After that first description, when he was still physically lifting things in an effort to train his magic, he hasn't felt like an Earth Pony anymore. Instead, he has felt like an underpowered or unskilled Unicorn. He doesn't do anything terribly physical and instead uses telekinesis. It reads more like he has turned to runes because he wasn't good at practicing spells with his horn rather than being an Earth Pony that has a stronger grasp on magic than most Unicorns. I hope Stone Mace helps with that. I'd like to see the training focus on applying his magic at least somewhat in the way that an Earth Pony would find natural.
Once again, Shade's character in this feels kind of arbitrary. He is an Earth Pony, but I keep having to remind myself of that because he acts exactly like a Unicorn. If he had been described as a Unicorn from the beginning, I wouldn't bat an eye.
As for the last thing I'll note, I also have to keep reminding myself that Shade is still a minor. I think he's 11 now? But he acts like an adult. I don't actually have any issue with this whatsoever. He has his memories from his past life, and I think him acting more mature is actually very appropriate. The issue I run into, is that everypony else is treating him like he is an adult too. Sometimes Daisy treats him as if he is younger, but more often than not both Daisy and Blaze treat him like a coworker of similar age rather than a boss or senior worker and a new apprentice that would be similar to a 12-year-old in real life.
A good example of this is when Blaze asks for Shade's help cooking some meat. I could actually see this happening. But you only mention Blaze being a little pensive, but this is a grandsire going to a child because he's not sure how to cook. I wouldn't expect him to be a little pensive, I'd expect him to be downright embarrassed. This applies to a lesser extent to some others, especially background characters. But I think Shining Armor said it best:
If I'm seeing it right, this is about the same age that Twilight was just getting into magic school. Everypony should be looking at Shade and seeing a young colt, a child, not an adult stallion. It doesn't have to be all the time and you can use the fact that Shade was described as a similar size to an adult Pegasus to partly explain that. But Shade's age should probably come up more often rather than being ignored almost all the time. I'd actually really like to see Celestia push a bit more to get him into a more education or magic focused opportunity, even if Shade stays where he is in the library.
All of these points are a somewhat nebulous. But what it boils down to is that characters are being distorted a bit to fit into the narrative rather than acting as they actually would in some situations. It feels like you have a direction you are going with a lot of what you're writing, and I'd really like to see you get there. It's a pretty fun story and I really like the idea. I don't feel like the overarching plot has any big issues, but I do think some subtlety and focus on how the characters would approach the plot could make the story flow a lot better.
11848847
Thank you for the advice and reading the story so far, and ya I myself have seen a lot of theses problems thanks for the suggestions.
Thanks for the update!
bake
they
bake
things
by
cooked
eggs
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Thank you, and have a good day.
Stares*
Next conversation with celestia
Shade leaned back into the chair and exhaled
"I've been doing a lot of breeding, nonstop for the past week" he started
"About fifteen times a day too" he continued
"I've been putting a lot of buns in the oven as a result" he finished, casually
Celestia takes a careful sip of her tea
"That's very nice, Shade" she said, screaming internally