This story is a sequel to The Conversion Bureau: The Warrior's Way
After the events of The Conversion Bureau: The Warrior's Way it seemed like life in Equestria was going to return to semi-normal. Relations between the four worlds was steady and growing. But when the Six are sent into a completely new Multiverse, things take a turn for the dangerous, as they must contend with a fourth Equestria, and an Earth suspicious of outsiders. And waiting in the wings is an enemy from the ancient past of the world on which the Six live....
A crossover sequel to both The Conversion Bureau: The Warrior's Way and Starman Ghost's critically acclaimed fic Not Alone (done with permission from Starman himself), the ponies of four worlds will learn that the legends of the past will be reborn as the enemies of all that currently seek to live in peace. Only the power of heroes past and present can save the future.....
Oddly, this fic has been mentioned on TVTropes.org, but has no page of it's own. Ah well. One can only hope.
Nice story keep it up.
Also glad to here that your other stories are getting updated
Heh. Yes, the other stories will be updated. I hope to get chapter five of The Shogun Six up by or before this weekend, actually.
Well your version of Equestria certainly gets around a lot doesn't it?
Remind me to check for any dimensional cracks or faults near it. . .
Huh. Reading this all the way through really makes me appreciate the fact that the Second True Magic lets me bypass all those trans-dimensional hazards.
On the other hand, I feel a bit cheated for not getting to experience the whole package.
. . .
Perhaps later, when I've recovered enough. To the point where using any of the other uses of the Second True Magic past Apprentice-Class doesn't cause me to experience being ripped apart on an atomic level and flung through the infinite multiverse. Again
The fact that my body went first only deprived me of the luxury of unconsciousness.
. . . Er. Anyways! Enough of my (IC) rantings.
Good chapter, interesting premise, I hope to see more of it in the future.
The only few problems I had were a few parts that felt a bit emotionally lacking, and the way you described the Six's appearances. If you streamlined that, it wouldn't break the flow of the story quite as much.
That's my two cents anyways.
~With regards, the Current Student of the Second True Magic
Okay, still mostly scatterbrained (that's what ten to eleven hours sleep at best over two days will get me
), but here's my two bits
As with your other works, your technical presentation is good, no major grammar issues I could see. My only criticism is your descriptions feel very flat, even forced in places. It's far too little show and more just "Character X looks like..." to feel very organic to me. I realize that you're doing this for people who've not read your previous work, but still, felt very dry and clinical to me. Other than that, keeping track of four different worlds and their copy/pastes of each other is making my sleep-deprivation/caffeine headache worse
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Take two dayquil, and call me in the mid-afternoon.
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Blegh, medicine is for the weak. I soldier through my pain like a true diamond dog
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Oh reaaaallly. Let me introduce you to someone.
Fangy, meet
2130901
Bah again, ponies weak. Ponies whine. Diamond dogs are strong (Rover, Fido and Spot don't count)
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Was more than just them, if you remember.
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*waves a paw dismissively*
Southern Packs all. Come visit the North or the West, they'll learn proper discipline and strength
Other than the massive spoilers for The Warrior's Way (I kinda guessed that they were brainwashed anyways), this was a decent story so far. Keep it up.
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Oh trust me, you haven't seen anything yet when it comes to The Warrior's Way.
Alright, making this comment since I've had more sleep than I'm used to (six hours is a lot
)
As my prior comment said, the descriptions of the characters felt very "tell" and not "show", which does bug me on a number of levels.
Now, into the plot. It does come off as very "Adventure-esque" which, while it works, also feels a little bland still to me. I'm curious to see what you do to differentiate it. On top of that, I realize it's part of your opinion on TCB, but I'll still reiterate that the "Solar Tyrant" comes across as very two-dimensional and generic "ebul" through author declaration as opposed to actually having genuine malice.
However, I will acknowledge that Warrior's Way/Shogun Six aren't done yet, so you could surprise me yet. Same goes for this one. I just hope to see something to make it step up from the sort of "generic" vibe the plot's giving me thus far.
Also, didn't mean this to come off as all negative, the effort you put into your enviroment and most of your characters clearly shows, but it's again down to "show vs tell"
This is very interesting.Keep it up.
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Glad you like.
The pieces are in motion, hmm?
Interesting, let's see where this takes us.
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This is one of two different sequels to Not Alone. This one just also happens to be connected to The Warrior's Way.
Well. It wasn't bad. I'm gonna say this right away. It's technically competent, and for that reason, and because I hate fun, I'm not gonna try to make this a 'funny' review. The grammar and sentence structure is nice, and easy to read for the most part. And a good number of my problems are still holdovers from the last story, so you should know what they are. With that out of the way though, let's get into the actual nail-biting criticism.
First off, it's dull. Like, incredibly dull to read. I spent an hour trying to read this because I could barely bring up the interest to, because it failed to capture my interest at all. The first few paragraphs are nothing but sterile descriptions of the main characters and shit that's not that relevant to the main story with nothing going on at all. Even throughout the second chapter, nothing really occurs save these assholes threatening some poor pony, and even then I don't really care because I don't know what they're doing. There's no threat yet, they don't really have a goal besides 'get out of this place we've gotten to' and they don't even seem to care about that that much. And we've already established these six can take on most if not all major threats against them, so the 'cliffhanger' in chapter 2 is hardly a cause for tension at all.
Second, characters. I couldn't tell the main characters apart, even if you had a gun on me and forced me to try. There's nothing distinguishing them save for the names and the clothing you generically describe right after their names appear, besides the 'lol so randumb' one. And I thought even he was another character until I reread the part he was in, and saw I accidentally read one of the other names as his, but I didn't notice it at all until I reread that part for this review. There's nothing really distinguishing the 'Shogun Six' at all from each other besides one exaggerated personality that almost feels like its there just to create a character with shallow writing tools instead of through dialogue and character actions. Plus the way you describe them is pretty bland in text format.
Now all you have to do is insert a name in front of every one of these descriptions, because that's how you use them for every introduction and description all at once. You don't describe them naturally, you just shove 'em onto the stage, type out a few words about how they look, and that's all I know about these people. Their personalities are completely unknown to me, despite this being a sequel, so each of them should have strong character traits by now that should shine through in their dialogue. But there's none of that here; it's just a few names I don't care about, along with generic descriptions that you copy-pasted their colors from a Pony Creator tool or something into text form, there's that little passion to it. Lack of passion is a good way to describe this in general, for it just reads like a slog.
Let's go back to the lack of character complaint; to use a comparison from the show, you can't switch say, Twilight and Rarity's dialogue without it coming off as wrong or badly written, but here you can switch any of their dialogue that doesn't mention names and I wouldn't know any better if its actually that character speaking it or not. It comes off as just six guys who don't really have much personality to them, with their only noticeable traits being supposed combat skills, which does not make for interesting reading.
Second, a lot the wording and sentences just feels... off to me. Like I can't use a better term than that, but while reading this I just felt like some of this was 'wrong' somehow in general. I can't think of what overall is the problem, but there's a lot of little things that bug me that might contribute to this problem. Let's list some examples:
I've only watched a bit of that show, and I have no idea what that is. And I don't give a shit what it is, you shouldn't fucking use a reference to something else as a description for an item or object in a story. Just say it's 'a remote control' or a 'handheld device' or anything along those lines, because if you can't use simple or easy to understand terms as descriptors than you should probably rethink what you're writing. Next, this goes back to the description thing:
That was the most jumbled and filled-in character introduction I've ever seen. You have like 4 things going on all in the same sentence, instead of keeping each thing to their own sentence. It comes off as just a mess of words all coming at me at once with no form or structure.
Why the fuck is Katana capitalized? I've noticed some weird capitalization issues throughout this, but this one stuck out to me.
So there's a lot just wrong with this to me. I can't really be assed to care about these people I care nothing about and know even less about, and the writing, while technically competent and an improvement from 'Shogun Six' admittedly, still feels passionless to me. I had to force myself to read this throughout an hour even, that's how uninteresting it was to read to me. Plus I'm very sketchy on this being a 'sequel' to Not Alone, considering Not Alone worked very well as it's own single thing, and the idea of a sequel, even a non-'canon' one, to that is very unappealing to me. Starman's okay with it, I know, but it makes me a tad edgy nonetheless. So I'm sorry I couldn't give you a 'funny' review, but I think giving you the genuine thoughts and responses to this from some hack on the internet will help you much more in the end than some stupid fucking jokes I pull out my ass.
Cliffhangers. Cliffhangers everywhere.