"How hard can rocket science be anyway?"
When an unknown ship appears off the coast of Baltimare three ponies are sent out to investigate. Things are not all as they seem aboard the vessel. When strange occurrences start happening They soon discover that there is far more to this ship then first expected.
My first Fic ever so please feel free to point and laugh.
Big thanks to Sorren for his help with this go check him out!
Page generated in 0.084 seconds
Total duration
998 users online
1,914,461 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I found it hard to get a clear picture in my head of what was going on through parts of this story. The beginning sort of skips setting the scene to get on to info dumping. I would have liked to know more about what the boat looked like. You give a lot of crucial information at the start to set up your characters, but it doesn't repeat often during the chapter. It was hard for me to keep track of them. I couldn't picture them in my mind, and it distanced me from what was going on. After going back to read again, I'm still not completely sure what they look like.
The action of the story begins with a half conversation, by ponies who know each other, but I don't really know them, so it was a bit strange to read. The conversation itself was also a bit dry. Giving the characters some better defining motives here would have helped me relate to them. They were just working on their job and fairly 'businesses as usual' about it, so the reader doesn't really get to know them. Without a good picture of their bodies, or personalities, it becomes very confusing. Upon close inspection of the story, you did make some effort at this, but I didn't pick it up naturally.
I think you had a strong idea of how this story was going to be in your head, but then you didn't fill it in clearly enough for other people to read. I'm finding it forgettable. Your writing structure is nice, but the events in the story are presented in a way that is hard to follow. If I can give any advice, it would be: work on building empathy with the characters. An easy way to do this is to explain some sort of problem, then have them find a solution for it that a reader can follow. It lets us inside their head. It seems that you are skipping the middle step of the thought process. Also, repeat what the ponies look like throughout the chapter more. It can be annoying if you do it too much, but right now, I think it's not enough.
2264748 thank you i'll try to keep that in mind for future chapters and stories constructive critisim is always appreciated
Pretty good, I thought.
Wow, creepy shit goin on in that vessal. Remind me to never board a dark ship like that without a few men and bright lanterns...
2281275 you and me both brother
The quality of writing is improving as the chapters go on. I disagree with killing Rose, as this pushed the story over the edge of simple horror and into grimdark, but you have an awesome grasp of nautical terminology, so I will continue to read.
2368260 you probably won't agree with some other chapters then... and as for the terms i was really struggling not to call the 'superstructure' the poop as it just sounds silly
Your writing got better as the story progressed. You're getting practiced, and if you write a second story you'll have even more practice. One thing that kept jumping out at me was inconsistant capitalization. For instance, you sometimes didn't capitalize both letters of a pony's name, like Rose Stem. Other times you would capitalize a random word in the middle of the sentence.
I don't suppose there's anything wrong with an everybody-dies scenario, but the reader might find it more satisfying if some solution had been found. Stories are about conflict, but more importantly, conflict resolution.
You're correct, though; there aren't enough scary stories on the site.
Write another story? Look me up-maybe I can help.
2445344 im about to start work on one and its going to be far more..shall we say epic? all im gonna say though is have you ever heard of Space battleship Yamato?
and i'd love for you to help out!
Very scary so far. I'd be really worried if the ships name was "USS CYCLOPS"...
2486400 or the mary celest but its always nice to see another Bermuda triangle inthusuast
*cough* death ship 1982
remind me just not to board the bitch and nuke it instead
That was a scary story in parts.
Although sometimes when you were mentioning rust inside the ship I was expecting one of the ponies to discover it wasn't rust but blood.
So how did Rose Stem die? I mean one moment she's running from the engine room covered in blood and guts and the next time she's mentioned her lifeless body is impaled on that loading cranes hook...........
Something else that seemed odd is that you have two unicorns in the story but it appears that neither of them used their magic, granted when their manipulating objects its okay not to describe that as the reader would just assume they were using their magic for that, but whenever they got to a dark area of the ship only for their flashlights to fail neither of them use their magic to conjure a source of light......just seems off to me. Though you could explain it away as them being too scared to concentrate on the right spell or even the sinister force acting to disrupt the spell with its own power or perhaps even draining their magic.
And the story just doesn't feel complete. Totallynotabrony made a good point about conflict resolution, here you have a story that appears to end with the last member of the salvage crew moments away from being sliced and diced by the cargo ship backing up, even if she dies (as opposed to....say....being saved by a pegasus that was sent out to check on them) there's still the matter of this large cargo vessel that may or may not still be drifting into the shipping channels and the matter of a missing salvage crew that never reported in. Even if the ship changes course its already known to the port authorities so somepony is going to find it or check it out again. Though with the matter of the missing salvage team (would any of their ships debris be found?) the follow up team is likely to be larger with more then a few guard escorts.
Who knows what they'll find.......or if they'll make it out alive.
Now granted you could just bring in one of the heavy hitters such as a Princess or the Elements of Harmony but that would rather detract from the horror aspect, unless the Princess or EoH uncovered the story behind the ship..........not sure if that would work though.
Another possibility is to bring in Chrysalis who for X reason has to act like X pony (Princess Cadence? Royal Guard? Investigator? ???) and in doing so gets roped into investigating the ship.
Hmm, I just remembered a sci-fi ghost ship story called "Ship of Fools" by Richard Paul Russo, though the Wikipedia article on it mentions the deserted ship being crewed/infested by aliens but the way the story read to me made it sound like they were monsters or even lesser parts of the ship....
2488449 I realize that i neglected to add any kind of resolution to this story but there's a very good reason for that. Horror is all about scaring the reader. and nothing is scarier than the Unknown. as soon as you explain something it loses all its mystery and thus becomes far less scary.
letting the readers imagination come up with all the scary ways Rose could have died is far more effective than anything i could ever write.
Who knows perhaps i might write a sequal. perhaps i might explain just what the Everfree is but in the mean time i'm content with leaving this as is.
m.img.brothersoft.com/iphone/745/335634745_screen2360x480.jpg
Very disturbing in the vein of a straight-to-video movie from the late 80s- early 90s called "Ghost Ship" (Not to be confused with the one from a few years ago that actually played in theaters) That one was a German ship the SS operated for "interrogations" and got lost during WW2. Whatever evil that took the ship has presumeably been killing anyone who found it for 50 years. I reccomend seeing that version for inspiration if you want to do a sequel or a prequel...
2283054 I would just blow it out of the water and call it a day. Did someone ask for 6" High Explosive rain? No? Well too bad, you're getting it anyway!
So is this the future? Because ponies shouldn't have anything but steam engines and oil/gas/magic lamps, not electrical flashlights and diesel engines.
2779073 eh the date isn't really important although i don't think Equestria is too far off of those things, after all they have cinemas, arcades and giant hairdryers.
2779227 I would agree they're not too far off, but still probably 50 years off. Being that their innovators are split between magic and tech it slows overall development down.
As to the story, your grammar needs some attending to, mainly capitalisation, but otherwise it was fairly good. Although I wish I could just hop into my computer and save Rose.
Although being that the character tags only say "OC" I assume this isn't the Rose from the show, correct? Her coat and mane seem like it's her, but "Rose Stem" isn't "Roseluck".
2780074 correct Rose Stem is a different pony from Roseluck. I didn't notice the similarities till now but yes they are different ponies
So this ship is a mobile version of Silent Hill eh?
The last names should be capitalized, or they should be one word.
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/190/373/131942790061.jpg
I'd be worried if the name was "Waratah", "Bannockburn", or "Edmund Fitzgerald."
The Bannockburn is known as the "Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes." Its ghostly profile, often coated with a layer of ice, has been seen many times on Lake Superior, silently gliding by other vessels, trying to reach a destination that has been out of its grasp for more than 100 years. The ship is seen mostly during the winter months, usually during bad weather.
The Fitzgerald's ghost has been seen several times. My uncle was on one of the Arthur M. Anderson a few years ago, and told me of seeing the unmistakable misty figure of a huge iron ship silently crossing the lake. Whereas most freighters make a lot of noise, this one made none...except for the occasional sound of a ship's bell. I have seen it myself now, when he took me with him last year on a run.
2281275 I think you forgot to include several assault rifles in that list.
3353735 i was seriously considering calling Rose Stem, Mary.
As in Mary Celeste
3354729 Were you inspired by the old movie Ghost Ship about the Nazi prison ship? Also, I just got back to reading this story. Very good. I'm adding this to my group "Equestrian Merchant Marine"
You know how you were going to do some SPC-type stories? This could be one of them! Definitely Keter-class
4048444
i have seen the movie ghost ship but I wasn't too fond of it, I wanted to write a horror where there was literally no escape. and SCP? Yeah I could see this as Keter
4048444
4048674
I haven't read it yet, but now you've incensed me into asking: why exactly are you classifying this as Keter?
4454598 intent to murder/goes out of it way to murder is the criteria for a Keter classification.
4454700 You got that wrong. What really classifies something as Safe, Euclid or Keter is the difficulty of containment.
• If you can toss it in a box and forget about it, it's Safe.
• If you can't lock it up as easily, and has to check up often on it, it's Euclid.
• Now, if the containment procedures have to be revised and checked on frequently to prevent break-ins or break-outs, it's Keter.
For example, SCP-122: the manifested shadows trying to break into the containment site make it extremely difficult to contain. It's firmly rooted into Keter grounds, yet it doesn't murder or go out of its way to murder (the deaths in the incident were combat-related, not deliberate attempts to take life).
4454724
didn't realize I was talking to an SCP aficionado. Regardless it doesn't really matter. SCP has nothing to do with this fic, that I personally dislike the most.
4454598 It's a ship with a mind of it's own. It can go to any port. Ships need a pilot to bring them into a harbor, so it can kill them, and the custom's inspector, and simply sail away. Plus, any ship that wander's into it's path will probably put a prize crew aboard. According to international maritime law, if you find a ship that has been abandoned AKA drifting or beached, you are able to claim salvage rights, which is usually a portion of the profits of the cargo and the insurance money for the cargo. That is, if I remember it correctly.