Long after a war between Dragons and Ponies is ended by Spike the Selfless, the Dragon King decides to tell Princess Celestia about the bits that she hadn't know about Spike's involvement in his quest for peace
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flutterdash1
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Nooo you killed Spike! Awww :(
Nah seriously a great little read, a selfless hero can sometimes turn the tides with his courage and empathy. I give you three moustaches for giving Spike the hero treatment.
P.S. Having Garble write about him just proves that Spike is the best!
2080816
Thankya Chaos ^.^ I've never really been to fond of Spike myself, but that's not why I killed him. I knew his death would be a real 'hit them at home' sort of twist and probably one of the few characters who could affect all of the Mane Six equally. I chose Garble cuz I like it when bullies realize they picked on their best friends =p
My story also involves a dragon, but it won't be about Spike. In fact its a bit of a surprise
Don't worry its completely different to your story though.
P.S. MLP needs more nice dragons, or at least some female dragons thrown in the mix
2081291
If they could throw in a nice female dragon Canon-wise I'd like that. I'm not overly fond of the OC's made for Spike =p
2081310 Yeh dragons get such a bad rep. Fluttershy proved that certain dragons are a tad sensitive lol Though who could resist The Stare
Very nice, and congrats on being second to finish!
A few weird bits here and there, but hey, that's what happens with quickly-written stories. Give it one or two go-overs, see if you can catch what I'm talking about.
My only major complaint is that it seems like, in the story, the Migration was happening every single year, while in the show, Twilight says it only happens "once in a generation" - but I suppose it's feasible that the Migration in the show was the start of a breeding "season", or something similar.
2081344
Pfff, I know I couldn't resist the stare
2082456
Yeah, I knew about the Migration thing but I decided to tweak it for my own purposes otherwise Spike's transition to joining his people would have been a little less seamless. Plus its the future, so maybe their migration patterns change due to some unknown cosmological effect that I have no idea what I'm talking about anymore
2083279
Sounds legit.
That was interesting. It sounds like there's a lot more story to tell, though.
Okay, so... Spike's story here is great. And so is Garble's, to be honest, even if it only goes as far as recognizing how extraordinary Spike is and was.
But I can't help getting stuck on one other thing.
The following is not a finished piece of writing. It's just an attempt to get this idea from my head to somewhere a little more permanent.
---
Braeburn's world was burning.
He'd been here when Appleloosa was founded. He hadn't helped with the first building, but he'd been here long before the town charter- before the salt pub or the orchard or even the train station. He'd have walked here on his own four hooves if he didn't have supplies to contribute- in the end he'd had to split the fare for a pegasus chariot with Red Delicious and Golden Delicious to get themselves and their provisions this far out in the desert. The twins hadn't stuck it out in the end; they'd decided they were needed back in Trottingham. But Braeburn had stayed. He'd grown up making annual visits to Ponyville to see Cousin Mac and Cousin AJ and Granny Smith, and always wanted to hear Granny's stories of the pioneer days, her parents staking their claim at the edge of the Everfree and working against all the odds, to make that patch of land something new, something worthwhile, something they could call home.
That was all he'd wanted. To make something worthwhile. To make something everypony would value. To be like Great-Grandpa Appleseed, striking out into the unknown and changing it with his own four hooves.
He hadn't let himself think about it until now. The fire had been spreading too fast and there were too many ponies who needed evacuating. It had gotten easier at some point- he'd looked around and seen others helping as well, and the work had gone faster after that- but he hadn't thought about that either, not until everypony was safe outside of town, away from the flames.
Now it was hitting him.
There weren't enough pegasi in Appleloosa to put together a weather brigade and try to quench the blaze, and even if there had been there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The orchard they'd worked so hard to plant had had to get by on earth pony magic alone- good healthy soil and love and hope. The orchard was burning too. By the morning there would be nothing here but ash.
"Braeburn?" Someone nudged him, gently, with a limb that was too small, more like being poked with a stick than patted by another pony.
He turned to look and saw one of the last faces he'd been expecting to see. "Strongheart? What're you doin'- I mean, it's not- ..." Words failed him. They rarely did, but it was that kind of night.
"We came when we saw the light from the fire," the young buffalo explained. "We thought that we could help, but it had spread too far and too fast, and it was all we could do to help the ponies who were trapped. Do you... do you think there is anything we can do?"
A tear welled up in his eye as he looked away from the flames, his uncertain expression meeting Strongheart's own. "I... I don't know..."
2403467
I like it =D
Poor Spike.
This made me shed liquid pride. Spike the Selfless is indeed a fitting name for the baby dragon who we all love. Beautifully done story, and I give credit to Garble for honoring the legacy of Spike.
A nice bit of world building. Well written and doesn't drag on. Quite a good little read.
Thanks for writing it.
Greetings, flutterdash1, I've been assigned the review you requested from WRITE. Sad stories are kind of my specialty, so let's see what we have here.
First, the synopsis. It's what will draw readers into your story, so you need it to be good, and they can be surprisingly difficult to do well.
I wouldn't recommend capitalizing the races, but that's a minor thing. Look at your passive voice. "a war... is ended by Spike the Selfless" Passive voice can be a useful way to shift focus, but in the vast majority of cases, it's just weak. You want your writing to be active, make things happen, not have the characters sit there while action goes on around them. You also have a verb form problem ("had know"), and you're missing end punctuation. The choice of "bits" creates a lighthearted mood where it should really be serious. The description itself isn't at all bad—it tells me what the story will be about while hinting at the details. I'd also recommend getting some cover art, even if it's just a screen cap from the show or a generic shot of a battlefield. It'd create a little more interest, though with FiMFiction's current posting rules, you're not going to hit the front page again without adding a chapter, so maybe that ship's already sailed.
Now, on to the story.
Italics. Boo! Italics are used to set something apart. It's common enough for authors to put articles of writing in italics to signify them as such, but again, that's done to set them apart from the rest of the story. Shorter excerpts are fine, but extended passages are better set off as a separate scene and left in normal font. You've got the extreme case here: the entire story is a letter. That's readily apparent from the format, so the italics aren't accomplishing anything. When everything stands out, nothing does. And it just gets annoying to read nonstop italics.
He's rambling on when he should be getting to the point. Does he really need to tell her not to think this letter to anyone else? Eyes are quite enough, and the "anything else" is at best a play for humor that's out of place with the letter's tone.
Seems contradictory, which may be the point, but he doesn't play it for any effect, so it comes across more as a missed opportunity.
Watch for redundant language. It can have a place, but that place is not here. The letter writer is clearly preoccupied with grave matters, and he's not going to be concerned with literary effect. He merely has a story to tell.
He's just finished exhorting Celestia to keep all of this secret, but now she can share it with Twilight? Keep your message consistent.
His need to be direct notwithstanding, you can still exert some word choice that lends a little more variety. Look at how many times you use "half" here. There are other ways you can phrase it. Mix things up a bit.
Watch your phrasing. You're kind of mixing two common ways of saying this. "a better Dragon than I" or "the better Dragon."
When speaking hypothetically or wishfully, use subjunctive mood. Fortunately, it's easy to use in its simple form here. Just use "were."
Phrasing again. Without a comma, it sounds like he's trying to listen for apathy (why in the world is that capitalized?)
Hyphenate multi-word modifiers (far-off). The word choice of "crush" here isn't the best. It's a little casual for the situation and signifies a new love. It ignores a lot of history.
A time is a when, not a where. This paragraph in particular is missing quite a few commas between clauses. For the most part, use one to separate the self-contained parts of the sentence that have their own subject and verb.
Watch your semicolon use. There aren't any independent clauses after it.
That's a odd turn of phrase. I assume you mean something like a battlefield hospital or a triage area. I'd advise you to look up a standard military term for such a thing. A little research can add much realism to a story.
Odd choice of tactics. What's the strategic importance of Ponyville, and from where are the dragons attacking that they can sweep past the other cities in their path? Not that you need to say so in the letter itself, but the author should always know much more behind-the-scenes information than is stated in the story, and it's not clear that you've planned it out to that level of detail.
Again, an odd word choice that doesn't really match the tone of the letter.
More phrasing issues. It starts as a question, but then wanders off.
Okay, now I see why you capitalized Apathy and Pride earlier, but why didn't you do so with greed?
Mechanics:
There were some consistent comma problems. First off, commas with conjunctions. For the most part, you use them to separate clauses, where there are multiple subjects, each with its own verb, but not when a single subject has multiple verbs or vice versa. Here are the most common types:
He performed this action and that action.
He and she performed this action.
He and she performed this action and that action.
He performed this action, and she performed that action.
Next, commas normally follow some sort of introductory element that leads into a clause's subject, like I did at the beginning of this sentence. This can be a single word, a phrase, a dependent clause, but if it precedes the main thought of the sentence, you'll often want a comma.
You only employed a couple of ellipses, but the standard spacings are like... this or ... this or . . . this. Similarly with dashes—you used hyphens where dashes were needed for an aside. Use an em dash with no spaces (Alt+0151 = —) or an en dash surrounded by spaces (Alt+0150 = –).
Characterization:
I'm going to defer the characterization issues to the writing style discussion, because they're inextricably linked in your story.
Plot:
Likewise with the plot, my issues extend more to how it was handled stylistically than what actual events transpired.
Style:
Letters are one of the toughest formats to pull off, because most writers don't stop to consider what would reasonably go into a letter. You've avoided one of the biggest pitfalls: wedging a standard narrative into a letter, complete with flashback-type narration and lengthy direct quotes. Nobody writes a letter like that. So good job on that front. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't other un-letter-like things that can crop up.
First, you wouldn't write a letter to someone and fill it with things you know they're already aware of, unless you want to walk him through your interpretation of those events and how they affected you. Your letter tells far more than it has to, and the only reason I know that is because you pointed it out to me. King Garble explicitly says that he's going to rehash things that Celestia already knows. Certainly, I could have inferred that she would have known about the broader aspects of the war, but I wouldn't have assumed any more knowledge on her part than that. If he's telling her, after all, he must have a reason. But you never give us that reason and take away the one that I would have assumed: that much of the information might be new to her. Falling back on that would make this a boring info dump, though, and you need to do more with it than that. King Garble is telling her everything because it means something to him. Make that come across. He's emotionally invested in what happened to Spike, and yet what we get from him:
is a cold listing of facts. On the one hand, he admits that he doesn't understand why a dragon would do this—the concept is alien to him—but on the other, he just accepts it as a noble act. We don't get to see his thought processes by which he mulls it over, makes sense of it, and draws meaning from it. This is the kind of character growth that makes a story. That or conflict, and there's no conflict in the story—it's already been resolved before the story begins, and we're left observing the aftermath. Make this mean something. I don't get the sense that Garble is doing anything more than paying lip service to what Spike did. So, don't admit that you're info-dumping; instead, take me through these events not as a history lesson, but as they frame Garble's evolving attitudes and feelings that he wants to relate to Celestia.
Second, but closely related to the first: Garble tells Celestia things that she probably doesn't know, but it's unclear why he's doing so.
Garble summarizes all of this without backing any of it up. Tell us about these memories, these conversations. Have Garble share some moments from their past, how they made him feel at the time, and how his attitudes have changed.
Here's a prime example. What did he get from discussing this with Spike? How did he struggle to understand it? How did he ultimately come to accept it? What does he think about it now? Granted, that's not necessarily something you'd find in a real letter, since it wanders off a bit from his core message, but neither would it be out of place in a letter. And that's the direction it needs to go. Sure, a bare-bones one that's merely informative might be even more realistic, but adding the emotional weight isn't out of the realm of possibility, and since the reader is privy to the letter, he's who you need to be making the connection with. Since no correspondence is presented, we can only assume Celestia would be affected as much as the reader. Bottom line: We need that emotional investment to put the reader in Garble's frame of mind, understand his emotions, feel his loss. Otherwise, it's only a list of events, and it loses its impact. And for us to understand what Spike's death means to Garble, we have to understand what his life meant, too. Building up their past interactions puts something at stake so that we care when it's gone. As it is, I didn't find Spike's death sad.
All in all, it's not a bad concept, but it doesn't invest enough in the premise. It seems to rely more on the default sadness of killing off a main character than to build its own emotional connection with the reader. And that's not an easy thing to do when it's a character we don't know at all, and through a letter format, to boot. You've bitten off quite a bit here, and you have a nice start.
Keep writing and have fun with it!
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/349/4/b/reviewer_logo_longver03_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o60h2.png
This is a very interesting story but I love the last part it's the best
Oh god why do you have to make me
but all in all this story was really good
And also this was hilarious PS: On your next visit I'm going to take you lava diving. I want to see if you're at least tough enough to match Spike's hatchling bellyflop record.
King Garble