• Member Since 4th Apr, 2018
  • offline last seen 3 hours ago

Never-After-All-Readings


I do YouTube reading of Fanfictions, you can find me here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc6rOMPBjQDzV3iVEBBJsRA

T

This story is a sequel to Bankrupt Love


Two gods of old that walk the world in secret have found each other by accident. Now enemies of old will walk a world that no longer needs them together; will friendship take the place of a century-old rivalry, or will old memories and past grudges make that friendship a hardship? Either way, the world they live in waits for no pony, and time will continue on, with or without them.

Chapters (4)
Comments ( 33 )

Oh boy, can’t wait to read this one!

How very interesting, (in an everything is terrible kind of way) I'm sure Twilight is having a perfectly marvelous time.

I have a feeling that this Twinkle is Twilight but in disguise

I love this fanfic, I really like the atmosphere

I'm guessing because Chrysalis fed from the stallion he lost some empathy, that's why he know wants to stop funding the castle.

So the only thing I find hard to believe is that the princesses would be this level of broke Celestia had a thousand years plus to squirrel away bits. I don't know what happened with cadence so you at least have a good hundred or more years to put away her Easter eggs.

12084868
So my thought, when it comes to currency like that is all throughout history, A lot of times as a civilization moves on, it will change in currencies, making the one before it or worthless. now it does go different when they like how we think a bit is made of gold. And of course, that would have some value, later on in the story I'll explain why a lot of their vast wealth has disappeared completely. The next chapter explains why cadence is so broke as she is, but in the grand scheme of things currency over centuries in millennia will change. that's a fact of life, and no matter the amount of planning or storage that is built up, eventually it's either going to disappear or become irrelevant.

12084907
I understand that but things like land is always yours as long as you live and not so easily removed from people and I doubt they could just take land from what equivalently are gods. And again things like jewels gold platinum and other valuables are always going to be worth something a good example would be celestia 's golden apple tree. It's been a good thousand years and gold is still pretty much as value but as it was when it first started

12084907
I can see Cadance being broke - she is younger, less experienced, and so on.

But I do agree - I think Celestia, at least, definitely has caches of stuff. Things she squirreled away in case for example she needed to lead a rebellion should say, Sombra force her off the throne. A thousand years is a long time to do a LOT of preparing - and in a land of magic, that could be things as simple as 'Celestia has cottages under false names' to more complex 'She IS the Alicorn of the Sun and has a hidden fortress she enchanted and carved herself in some mountain somewhere'.

I can see Twilight being stuck dead end as well, but in more of a 'Fallen into depression at what ponies turned Equestria into' way.

The Sisters, though...it's hard for me to see unless we're talking multiple centuries of time at a minimum and even then it's a stretch to believe Celestia and Luna couldn't outplay some clearly corrupt individuals to at least preserve some of their own tiny peace (Or departed for greener pastures, I COULD see them both going fuckit and retiring to the wilderness in disgust)

Anyhoo, second comment - continuing to love all this, eager to see more

It totally caught me off guard to see a sequel of that story! I'll stay tuned!

I’m fond of the changing pov. Good work

So! First off - big fan of the story and the world. I want to SUPER emphasize that, because from your author's comment at the top of the page I am vibing that you want to improve this as much as possible - so my critique below is entirely for that point. I'm gonna be reading no matter what, but here is where I think you have opportunities for improvement:

1) Dual POVs - This is a cool idea, and I think you should keep it. The one tweak to make / keep making is to have the times only overlap a little - if you want to repeat some of the moments right at the end of the previous PoV, that can work. But in doing so, imo, the main reason should be 'So the audience can see the other perspective and get info they cant get otherwise'. Use it to expose info you don't want to remain hidden. In the previous chapter, we overlapped a lot in PoV, and I admit I was bored re-reading repeated dialogue and so on; Chrysalis's 'view' as it were didn't offer a lot of new material to complement the repeat - had it had a significantly different tone or vibe, something to make it feel truly different - solidly remixed rather than rehashed - I would feel different.

In this chapter, you did a better job with that! The Cadance-Chrysalis jump felt natural; we went back to just before the phone rang, were shown why Chrysalis is calling, and then went into the brand new phone convo - but as we'd just seen Cadance talk to Twilight, we could infer how she was feeling in the next scene. Well done there :)

2) Word Choice - Gonna pull out the old 'Show don't Tell' maxim here. I'll use this is an example of Tell-ey Language:

"Chrysalis found herself now asking herself what a pony would do, how would they comfort a friend in a time of need, she spent so much time hiding among them that you would think that she would have learned this by now, yet her mind could come up with anything. She thought back to the times when ponies accidentally cared, when friendship was what ruled the world; they just talked, didn’t they? They couldn’t just gloss over the problem, though; Chrysalis at least knew that wasn't healthy for any creature."

We have a lot of Tell here - just directly stating how she feels, what her questions are, etc. A "Show" viewpoint expressing the same info might look more like this :

"What would a pony even do here?" Chrysalis asked aloud while worrying at her lip. "Changelings do not share our problems." A Changeling always expected resilience, independence - you stood on your own four hooves, or you fell and were left behind. Ponies were different, of course - long ago, before the Council, food had been so much more plentiful. A smile at a stranger could elicit a snack. Now - well, her thin flanks showed the sustenance of a smile in the future. It was a strange line of thought to her. "Why am I worrying about food?" And yet...even Chrysalis new problems buried were problems that grew.

I banged the above out in a few minutes so apologies if it isn't very good - but if you notice, what I am trying to do there is use imagery to convey the same info, how 'The ponies used to care' might manifest in actions - that food is easy to come by - and showcasing it that way, letting my reader make the little leap to 'Equestria before was healthier and happier' because your reader making those jumps is satisfying and makes their reading experience more engaging.

3) Editing - You would def benefit from asking if someone is down to pre-read / edit. It's not a big deal, but there are times when a sentence feels just a teeny bit off, someone to just flag a few sentences and go 'Polish this a teeny bit more'.

Minor edit note on that - "Twilight sparkles glimmer TWINKLE" I think this should be "Twilight Sparkle's glimmer TWINKLE" assuming its meant to be DisguiseLight. I might also consider capitalizing Glimmer since it's not the typical term - that would be glamour or something like that - to indicate its the name of the Diguise magic.


Other notes -
Love you describing tea as 'hot leaf juice'. It is that and yet I love the stuff.

Love Flurry entering the story. She definitely makes sense as The One Who Wants Stuff to Change, and if you are interested in that type of tale - well, Chrysalis showing up provides a perfect catalyst for Flurry to start spreading that viewpoint to the others.

I'm a sucker for 'The alicorns agreed to hand over power, and the world went to shit, and now they are deciding to rise to power once again to fix it.' Cause if there's one thing I am sure of - it's that well-meaning capable people or ponies looking to change the world and do good /can/ win against the corrupt and greedy, without resorting to their methods. It will be hard, harder than if you just used the weapons of the enemy against them - but it's how you win without becoming a new version of your enemy in the process.

The enemy in this case being banal, corrupt politicians and businessponies of course.

Anyhow! Tons of words and hope they help. Again, really loving the story and here for the ride :)

12086760
While I agree with most of it your example of "show don't tell" was off. Instead you now have the character telling another character; nothing was actually fixed. Vary little showing in here but opens the door to more awkwardness. Would this new chrysalis monolog like that? Maybe... little early still.

The mare to her left was a dark blue with a black mane; most of her fur and mane, however, was covered by a red hoodie that she refused to take off, and a set of permanent dark bags hung from her eyes. She looked like the living dead, drinking from an entire pot of coffee the moment the photo was taken. The mare to the right had a bright white coat and an almost glowing yellow mane, to anyone that just looked way her in passing thought she was the brightest pony in the city, Cadence could see the forced slime however, and she too had bags under her eyes. In between them all, of course, was her.

I assume the word at the end of this paragraph is supposed to be Smile. I've highlighted the word in red.

12086868
Other than that thing. Loving what's happening, keep up the good work.

I almost had a heart attack when I saw that Flurry was the reporter and Twilight was the assistant or something.

Amazing job dear

I really love the worldbuilding you've got going on here. Will be exciting to see what this cabal of ancient gods gets up to. Looking forward to more.

12086774
I can agree Chrysalis may not monologue aloud - in my head she has or had a penchant for it, but that could easily be me - and re-reading it I think you are more on the nose than I would like about my example being Not Great. Ah well, I readily claim to have never been amazing at that bit of it myself, so I'll take the F on this one :>

Things just got real.

When you think about it, the writer is the villian in all stories. Who plots and creates just the situation to get the protagonist to their very lowest? Who sets the fire, makes the lover cheat, murders the parents? It was the dastardly writer, it was Them The Whole Time.
Anyways, I do worry when stories expand in scope like this. I'm not saying don't go for larger stakes, I just worry that you're making the tracks while the train is already running. That is a lot of stress to deliver a suddenly much more complex story. And from my own limited attempts at writing, that pressure always led to delays and overstressing on plotpoints and narrative outlines.
To be clear, I do want to see this banal, depressing Equestrian dystopia get a second chance. Selfishly, I don’t want you to make the story so ambitious you step away from it and it doesn't get finished. If you are confident you have it though, have fun with this. I want to see where this goes.

12084956
I just think Twilight would be too responsible with money for it to be gone in this sort of time. I can believe she was tricked out of it or it was stolen but not that she ran out

She took a breath. “This was due to the fact that the first prince of the late Crystal Empire is also buried on the castle grounds; it was the last wish of the late princess that his grave be respected for all that he did.” She turned and pointed a hoof at the council building. “For the last six hundred years, the council has upheld its agreement, until last night, when in a meeting the current council, known for its controversial policies, passed a bill to cut the funding.”

I'm going to be on this 600 years is a good run for a tomb The significant importance is understandable and if the upkeep was due to the funds given to the council by the former princess it's to stay up as long as the money last but because I did reach forward and understand what's happening here I would still probably agree with the council under certain circumstances.

She raised it a moment later. “I am here today to get the opinion of the councilors that pushed this bill through.” She turned and pointed a hoof at the brown-furred pony that looked like he was rushing to get away from the camera. “Here is one now.” Not today, Flurry Heart thought as she nearly tackled the pony blocking his path of escape as the camera got eyes on him.

I laughed when I read this because I imagine flurry heart a former princess trying to be out juped by a bureaucrat.

Flurry Heart smiled just a little. “Like I said, she always did take in strays.” She looked to a family photo on the wall; it was old, very old, and showed a picture of a happy family, two alicorns and a white unicorn, all standing in front of a crystal palace that shone in the summer sun. “they told me stories about you, how you ruined their wedding, tried to take over Canterlot.” She turned back to face Chrysalis, her hard eyes of stone glaring down. “I don’t have anything against you, but if you so much as look at Cadence wrong…” She leaned in close. “I. WILL. KILL. YOU.”

Personally I don't think Trisha list would have stayed for that kind of disrespect her personality this wouldn't allow it

I’ll be honest: I was hoping this wouldn’t turn into a thing. Not another random evil villain of the month situation. But no—he had to go with the “magic made me do it” excuse. It’s such a dumb reason it makes him an even worse version than pre-reform Starlight. And honestly, it’s baffling—if he’d ever bothered to read a Daring Do book, he’d have realized he could’ve done the same thing way cheaper just by heading to the Forbidden Forest.

12088246
So it's not all about magic. There is a few things I wanted to keep hidden for a bigger reveal. But I do see where you're coming from.He is kind of a villain of the week

12088271
I’d like to clarify that I enjoy the story and its natural flow. I like it so far, but I’d prefer if the evil stemmed from a desire for progress rather than just being a control freak or relying on the “magic made me do it” trope. It would be far more engaging if the conflict revolved around old ideas versus new concepts and evolution, rather than the usual “villain gets punched in the face or hit by a magic rainbow laser” resolution.

That said, I really appreciated the mention of the book questioning whether the princesses were the reason for the ponies’ stagnation. Let’s be honest—it’s been over a thousand years under their rule, and the most they’ve managed to come up with is the steam train. By this point in history, humans would’ve already gone through their second industrial revolution.

Plus it will allow you to introduce the worst villain that has ever happened in an MLP story a bureaucrat or the unspeakable evils of a politician.

I hope Royal Scroll trusts "Twinkle" enough to tell him what they will do and thus he will be worthless.

Well, this has gone in a bit of a Synthetic Bottled Sunlight direction now.

The one thing I would sorta keep in mind is C&L are not helpless damsels. If they are being kept unconscious, well - Luna is the dreamwalker that she is.

Or I could also see them just being quiescent out of despair; their own ponies did that to them, after all, past a certain point betrayals take away your desire to even act.

This guy just doesn't quite feel competent enough to be the sort to be leashing non-complacent demigoddesses and all that. Still curious for whats next~

This is a super interesting read already, i really can't wait to see how this pans out and what happened between cadence and flurry. This gonna be gooooood

12095332
Ngl I can see it, C&L are both pretty dumb when it comes to villains.

12095332
Synthetic Bottled Sunlight is such a good story, and this story having similar themes makes me very excited to see where it goes.

Glad to see a new chapter, but you need to do way more editing. Lots of words beginning sentences aren't capitalized, and dialogue should be on separate lines.

Maybe it's this me, but why didn't none of the princesses other than Twilight do anything on the council? Flurry heart is giving off I don't want to work for the machine vibes, so I can understand why she never joined the council, but cadence seemed like she would be perfect for it, and it seemed like there is no retirement or terms, she could quit being on the council forever. Celestia Luna was obvious they retired even before the council was in a thing, so their coming back has to be an emergency. The one thing I kind of don't understand when Fleury says love is dying is the meaning that metaphysically, or is love is magic and is disappearing way because I cannot imagine every country is having this problem, and I haven't heard of anything about the birth rates in the story yet.

Login or register to comment