Kick-ass mini-chapter 1 part 2
A Wall-eyed Wonder
The ponies were as wary of him as ever, but didn't scream and run when they saw Crunch as he wandered around town. Perhaps it was the fedora, but ponies were looking at him more with curiosity than fear. There were still scared ponies, skirting around him as he walked, but others simply watched as he passed by them. He took no notice of them, however. He just wanted to find that yellow-maned pegasus that was so interesting.
He had gotten into the habit of gently buzzing his wings as he walked, as if it would help them grow less lame than they were and make them usable. Still, as he buzzed around town, he too was being watched by the very pony he was looking for.
Derpy flew from rooftop to rooftop, following him. When she had seen him enter the town, she had become obsessed with finding out who he was. now that she had the chance, however, she was nervous. She didn't have any sort of attraction to him other than extreme curiosity. Why was he here? Why had they locked eyes from so far away? And why did he seem so similar to her as he wandered about?
Perhaps it was the way he walked, as if the world was pressing down on him. He was hunched over slightly, and looked kind of depressed. He had a smile on his face, even though it was plain to see that it was false. He looked like he was looking for something, but she couldn't tell what. She decided to stay on the rooftops until he found it.
He couldn't find a hint of her anywhere. He wanted to stop a pony and ask about her, but he was scared. Scared of the ponies scared of him. Life could be cruel in unusual ways.
He walked along, street after street, looking all around, until he just gave up.It had been an hour and he hadn't found her. He went over and sat n a park bench. As he sat, daydreaming about muffins (a food he particularly enjoyed and had been introduced to by Twilight as he read) he heard a ruffling above him. He looked up into a tree and saw two eyes staring back at him. Or rather, he saw two eyes staring kind of near him in different directions. He noticed a gray colored muzzle, and allowed himself to get his hopes up.
"Uh... hi." he said. "Why are you in a tree?"
"Shoot..." she muttered. "Well, there's no point in hiding now."
She struggled to get out of the tree and Crunch saw that she was indeed the pony he saw earlier. He blonde mane hung down and tickled his nose. He sneezed, startling her and causing her to fall from the tree. She on the ground in front of him. He stood and looked at her. She stared back. They moved, mirroring each other's movements unintentionally. He tilted his head, so did she. She lifte her hoof, so did he. They were very similar indeed if the outside was ignored.
"So... Hi, I suppose." Crunch finally said, nervously. "My name's Crunch."
She smiled. "Mine's Ditzy Doo, but everypony just calls me Derpy."
"Derpy?" Crunch asked curiously. "Well, why do they call you that?"
"Well, my eyes are one thing. They make me look, well, derpy. Foolish... Dumb." She said sadly. "Also because I'm kind of clumsy. I destroyed most of town hall by myself in a matter of minutes."
"Wow. That's harsh." Crunch said. "So why exactly were you in a tree?"
"Oh, I was, uh, following you." Derpy said. "I was kinda curious about you, I guess."
"Well, sine we're admitting things, I was looking for you. I just sat down when I gave up." Crunch said confidently.
"Looking for me?" Derpy said, confused. "Why were you looking for me?"
"for the same reason you were following me. I was curious." Crunch explained. "You see, I saw you from far away when I first entered Ponyville, right before I passed out. I saw you again while I was at Rarity's shop. I just had to find you."
"Well, i'm flattered. But why me?" She asked. "It's obvious I was curious about you because of your looks and all, but why me?"
"Well, you get treated like I do, as far as I can tell." Crunch said. "You get avoided slightly, ponies are nervous around you, and you always have a fake smile on your face."
"Fake smile..." Derpy said to herself. This was one of the things she had noticed on him.
"I also felt bad for you. I wanted to give you a real smile somehow." Crunch continued, blushing. "I've only had one real smile and it was awesome. I wanted to give a smile to a pony who needs it."
"Isn't that Pinkie's job?" Derpy asked, starting to smile.
"I can see I do my job well." Crunch said, amused at her expression. Derpy just laughed. Crunch's stomach growled, followed quickly by Derpy's.
"I could really use some muffins right now..." Crunch said. Derpy's ears perked up.
"Did you say... muffins?" Derpy asked. "I love muffins!"
She began bouncing up and down, chanting "Muffins for Derpy! Derpy loves them so!".
"Let's go get some!" She said, still bouncing. "I'll buy them!"
Crunch walked beside her as she bounced down the path.
How does she do that? Crunch asked. He tried bouncing, but only fell on his face. Derpy stopped bouncing and turned, but also fell. Her face was inches in front of his, but it was more hilarious than anything else. Both of them were sprawled on the ground with ponies staring at them.
"So, is this a date, or what?" Crunch asked. He wasn't hopeful, just confused.
"A date? No, no, no, no, no, no. No." Derpy said, furiously blushing. "We're just getting muffins."
"Sure thing." Crunch said, standing. He offered a hoof to Derpy and helped her up. She began bouncing again, her mane and tail bouncing around with her. Crunch had to jog to keep up with her this time. He just followed her until she turned and bounced into the door of a bakery Crunch saw was called Sugarcube Corner. She didn't open the door, however, and fell once more. This time, Crunch caught her from behind. She looked up at him as he held her up form beneath her arms.
"I told you I'm clumsy." She said. Crunch just chuckled and opened the door for her. As they entered, they heard a gasp. Crunch looked over and saw a bright pink pony with a poofy pink mane staring at him.
"Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! You must be that new pony Applejack was talking about!" she said, running over to him. "I was about to go look for you, but my Pinkie sense said that I would meet somepony new soon, so I waited! And here you are!"
"Crunch, this is Pinkie Pie." Derpy said. "Pinkie Pie, we just came to get some muffins. The usual mixed bag of every kind, please. But get two of them."
"No problem, Derpy!" Pinkie said, trotting over to the counter with muffins on it. She started putting them in a brown papaer bag but kept talking. "So, you know what we have to do now, right?"
"No, and I'm not sure I want to know." Crunch said.
"We have to throw you a party!" She said. Crunch paled, his entire body turning a light shade of gray. Parties meant he was going to forced to be around other ponies.
"I would rather-" Crunch started, but then looked at her and saw that she was o happy. He couldn't let her down. "I would love to."
"Great! Here's your muffins, Derpy!" She said, giving Derpy two paper bags. "No charge for bringing in a new friend!"
"Well, that was uncomfortable." Crunch said as they walked out.
"That's just Pinkie." Derpy said. She sat at a small table outside of the bakery and set the bags down. "Now be quiet and enjoy your muffins."
Well I think Derpy and crunch are having feelings for each other, and thanks for mentioning me, I feel honored, I give this chapter 3 mustaches out of 5.
1796839
Thanks so much. That means a small amount to me seeing as it's only 3/5. But I did say I would mention you, and I did. Also, FRONT PAGE, BABY! FEATURED! I owe you a lot of this. You are epic. I give you a free Big Mac.
NEW CHAPTAH YAY!!!
1796871
YAY!
1796862 I think you and I are going to get along just fine.
Hmm... almost 100 likes and no dislikes. I am tempted to read this, but I don't just read anything...
If I do read it and like it, consider yourself lucky. I'll also be whoring you out on my front page if I do.
1796953
You remind me of myself. I like you. I like you a lot. And I only say that to a few people very year. I limit myself to five people.
1796951
Yes we are, hamcon. Yes we are.
1796974 Just for that little bit of oddity, I think I'll be reading this.
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i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/239/JUST_AS_PLANNED.jpg
Lolz love the story
notice an error i think "Why had they locked eyes form so far away?"
shouldn't that be from
1797044
I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.
I kid, of course. I fixed it. Thanks for the help.
Awesome story
...100/0 score....
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I'll read ever it for you. I need the practice for English classes.
1797377
Well, thank ya' kindly, mister. I'll send you chapters as I finish them. It may be a while until the next chapter is out, though.
Aww, back off of the featured list. I'll help you get back on. Maybe.
Well, Nice chapter, glad i saw it in the Inbox tonight.
Okay, wow. This is getting good. It's a shame that his wings are useless... He could fly with Derpy and flirt or something. He should work them out or whatever with RD.
1797385 Easy enouh, it's not like I have a stack f video games to wait through the disaster of lck of chapters. I laugh at my own joke
LOVE It
LOVE IT
LOVE IT
1783674
I have finished my sketch of what you requested.
How should I relay the picture to you for scrutiny and/or approval to color and/or vector for your nefarious purposes?
1797574
Send it to me via message. I want to keep it secret form the others.
1797522
Ha ha. Ha. Teehee. Ha.
you sir are an amazing writer with this
1797663
Really? I'm flattered, but am I really that good?
1797667 no not really, you are a terrible writer I just wanted to get your hopes up
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MUFFINS!
1797767
I love failure!
1797774
I have to use that line now in the story. I HAVE TO.
Tracking, so I don't lose track of this... That's actually what most my "favorites" are, stories that are good and that I want to keep track of but aren't quite "favorites". Wish they would separate that so we could have a bit more definition there... And I'm rambling again, ignore me.
MY FEET ARE SWEATING FROM AWESOMENESS! Come to think of it, they never not sweated... BUM BUM BUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
1797858
I do the same thing. They really should fix that, have a following for stories by themselves.
1799023
Does that mean... GASP! You have warm shoes?!
I... uuh... I'm sorry but... no. It's a wonderful idea and premise. However... it fails to pull me into the world or get me excited about it and in the end I simply started skimming it. Sense you've got a lot of "Love it!" and other stuff I figured I might as well go all out on why I didn't like the story so that way you can hopefully learn something even if you and everyone else here feels like everything I say is just jealous mongering from a... jealous... monger...
Anyways...
I think one of the 1st things that grabbed my attention was the dialogue. Now I will say it did get better as you went along so keep plugging away and I think it'll keep getting better... it's just something to watch out for. Now what did I feel was wrong with it you might ask? Well... I'm not sure really how to explain it. It just felt off. I guess the best way to put it is I found it stiff and rather unnatural. Kinda robot like I guess. However, it did slowly get better as you went along so props for getting better there.
The next bit is your world building. In the 1st chapter you have your hero sass his mother and say:
Which implies that changlings CAN eat something else besides love... of course your use of the word "food" there doesn't really fit seeing as how to a changling love IS food... so that's something else that made me go
But back to the whole world building bit... it's generally considered cannon that changlings need love to survive. In some stories they can eat other food to help sustain their bodies for a time but in just about every other story love (love in it's purest form or in watered down affection) is needed for a changling to survive long term. However, your character's words seems to suggest otherwise in your world... which is fine. You just need to explain that it's different in your world. And sooner is better in this case... especially when it determines if your character needs to find someone to harvest love from in order to live of if he can just live forever without eating love... and then you need to point out how love is useful to changlings at all and why they seek it out.
The next reason as to why I didn't get into the story is because of the lack of depth the descriptions seem to have, and this ties in with the pacing of your story, and yes I do feel your pacing isn't doing to well either. Personally I feel like your story is going waaaaaay to fast! Hit the breaks! See the way I'm seeing it is your story is kinda like this: /start/fai-tur-exil-get ca-meet p/end/ when I think you meant it to look more like this /start/failure-turned in-exile-get caught-meet ponies/end/ (Obviosuly there's more to it than that... but I THINK that's a way to explain it) ...basically to me it felt like you were jumping ahead to the next thing before you'd finished the moment before... which is fine... if you stop and have a moment somewhere. Not all moments are created equal and some deserve more attention than others... however when none of them get any attention really it makes the whole thing rushed and hurried along. Take sometime to explore some moments, give some descriptions of the characters, their surroundings... you don't have to do this for every moment but it helps to paint a picture, draw the reader in, make it feel less rushed, and more interesting.
And this next bit in the description is really really REALLY important to me so I'm separating it from the 1st half.
Right... please please please PLEASE add in some description of what's going on in your character's mind. And by this I don't just mean their internal dialogue such as "ahhh shoot I forgot to turn off the stove, well my brother will be home in an hour so hopefully he'll turn it off then" but stuff like... mental notes, his mental state, his emotional state (He just got exiled and is the 1st in... how many years? ...a few hundred I think you said... how does this make him feel? What does he do in response to this?) you know... all those little things that go on in a persons body/brain everyday/every moment but we're often only partly aware of them. Of course you don't have to clock every moment (in fact it REALLY would be better if you didn't clock EVERY. LITTLE. DETIAL... buuut do get some of them in there. When you character was turned into the guard I personally felt like the hero was like "yeah yeah... lets just get this done so I can get my story going" and then he got exiled and sent away... you had him hyperventilate but asides from that... it just felt like "Ohshitohsh- alright I'm done doing that now." Take your time with these descriptions... your passing them by so quickly it kinda feels like their not even there at all.
Sooo... yeah hopefully I gave some helpful stuff as to why I couldn't get into your story and how they could be addressed... and even if I don't... well... I tried.
1800752
I have nothing but the deepest respect for you right now. you came out and took the time to write every excruciating thing that you thought was wrong, instead of simply disliking it. That, in my opinion, is more mature and much nicer than liking it and putting "Love it!". i have been working on these problems n chapter 4, which is in progress, and they will be fixed. You aren't the first to suggest slowing down, and I'm working on it. I did actually also plan on the next chapter being rather long and containing info on the anatomy and lifestyles of a changeling to clear up confusion among the ponies.
And as for the inward descriptions, I had forgot about those. I usually use them way too much, and I suppose I was overly conservative in this story. Thanks so much for taking the time to write out such a detailed argument for your dislike and finally taking the away the stress of not knowing when my story will be disliked. You rock.
1800851 You're watching me... I feel like I'm being stalked... and... err... your welcome?
1800978
Don't worry. It's a sign of respect. However... Nah, I'll let you figure that part out for yourself.
1800988 Oh god... oh god... and your my first... oh god
...well at least when I finally get something written down and posted you'll know about it.
>> Kira no... I am shoes
1801400
Actually, I had that song stuck in my head when I wrote it. That's quite the coincidence.
1801579
Well, Pedro am butterscotch waffles.
I've been following this for a couple chapters now and-. I'm afraid that your writing has degraded a bit. It seemed much better for the first few chapters until Crunch was caught by Rainbow Dash, but since then...
I think what happened, as another person pointed out, is that dialogue took the front seat where before there was lots more description. I've seen this problem before: where people have good descriptive ability up until their characters start speaking, then all that happens is dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. This probably contributes to the "robotic" feeling the other person mentioned.
Don't just "hear" the characters talking, but see what they're doing and why they're doing it as they talk.
Another thing that seems to be happening lately is very choppy sentences. "Derpy did this. Observed that. She thought this. etc." This is a more easy fix than people usually make it out to be: The ONLY thing you need to do to keep your writing from being stale is to vary sentence structure. All that really means is that you should take what you have and combine them with commas and various words like "but" "or" "then" "however" "by contrast"... so many that you can choose from, and most are so versatile!
But... for now, I'm going to give this a thumbs-down, but I'm still going to read this because I believe you can get better--I really want you to earn a thumbs-up because I like where this story is going, plot-wise, but right now you just aren't there...
1804987
Another good review from a dislike. How is it that the dislikes are giving me better reviews than the likes? Well, I (along with other readers) have noticed this. I'm fixing it in the next chapter, which will be much longer.
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Insta-fav and upvote.
Wow, I never noticed until now. This is the same changeling unable to change story that I put on my read later list days ago.