Stuck in bed with nothing else to do, Scootaloo gets a visit from her 'big sister' Rainbow Dash, bringing with her a book of adventure and high fantasy. A story contianing swords, magic, demons, monsters, kingdoms, and fighting for freedom. Lets listen with Scootaloo shall we as the little filly listens to a story containing some familar faces while Rainbow reads to her and helps her feel better
Based on the cover image, reading the princess bride novel, and a story that my mother used to tell me when I was a child.
Image belonging to Johnjoseco
Chapters (7)
One does not simply down vote that adorable picture
I kinda sat here thinking "hmmm is this gonna be a princess bride refere- There it is. Not bad, it hath piqued mine interest
“ Oh, well,this isn’t going to be one of those, ‘princess is too weak to be real and needs saving from a bland prince’ stories is it?”
“Naw,” With a smirk, Dash picked up the book and opened the first page, “There was once a beautiful princess.”
“Rainbow dash!!!!”
“Kidding, kidding,” Dash laughed as she looked at Scootaloo in her eyes, Rainbow Dash is TOTALLY like me.
One minor thing you fudged up the names a few times. Applesnack instead of Apple Juice. Other than that I liked this.
2313911
WHOOOPS! I thought I fixed that, I see Applesnack was the original name because I wanted to reference Fallout: Equestria, but then I changed my mind because I wanted to advoid trouble, thanks for telling me. I'll fix it
Mmmm.... I'll give it a try.
This story is.. Hilarious
[youtube=cerpmxQtxJs]
2314024
...
As soon as I figure out the meaning behind that video...I'll figure out if you liked the story or not.
*watches the video again, laughin bum off*
2314062 well considering I favourated it...
[youtube=lCkn5OTdAtw]
2314074
hmmmm...that might be a clue
2314101 clue to what?
2314155
the clue to you liking the story or not.
I was pointing out that the fact you faved it might have been a clue to me.
But still no clue to that first vid.
IT was...hilarious though. thank you
2314168 it's very obvious that I like it. Otherwise I wouldn't have faved it
2314177
Well, I knew that, I was just messing with you.
Its the video thats confusing me. WHO WAS THAT GUY! and why did his rat find things hilarious?
2314217 that guy is called iSekC and his rat is Yoshi, careful that rat will pop a cap in your ass if you mess with him
Not entirely sure if want, but it was amusing in some places so I guess I'll stick around.
2315248
Please stay, I have some homemade cookies
2315364
Tempting...
Can someone explain what this gold bar next to my name is?
Huh. I came here to tell you that you should capitalize your title! but this looks like it might be fun to read through later. Onto the list it goes!
"Story For a Sick Pony"
This is definately one of my favorite stories featuring Scootaloo out there! I applaud you for making such a great story within a story
I will favorite this as I am enjoying the story. Great job and keep writing
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Thank you so much and I will
I like it! And Dash definitely wouldn't be the one singing.
I Don't mean to complain... but I noticed a few incomplete words and thoughts...
2579189
No no, please complain...its the only way I can learn
2579242 Really? Are you sure? I mean... if you want me to I can, but I don't want to offend you in any way, shape or form... If you are sure that you want me too...
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One: I dont get offended easily. I take any type of critisim...AS LONG AS ITS CONSTRUCTIVE!!!!
Two: I really dont mind, you should see some of the critiques for some of my early work. So go ahead, I do want you to
2581192 if you insist on it, here are some things I found:
1. I noticed a lot of unfinished words
2. I noticed a few incomplete thoughts
3.( I would do more but I have a concert to get ready for) I noticed a lot of incomplete actions.
But I would suggest having about 5 people read it
2581192 If you dont mind me asking, how come this is tagged 'gore'?
2603496
Because I might get a little descriptive of certain wounds that the girls are going to have when they fight. Though with the way that the fights have been going lately, even though Rainbow has a sword on her leg I dont think it'll be as gory as I feared. I think I'll probably remove it until I am sure some gore is incoming.
This story is interesting and you put daring instead of darling
Added to Twilight's Library.
Did I see a Take that to the Care Bears in this chapter?
...
I loved it!!!
2717507
Yes, yes you did
Woah, nice Chapter :rainbowdetermined:!
Still, I have a few critisme and wishes
:
- Waaaay to few Rainbow
- Oh shit, I forgot about the rest... *looks at clock*
- It would be nice if... Forgotten too, sorry -_- ...
I think I rewrite this comment tomorrow :/ ...
2727070
Please rewrite it. I am really curious to what you are going to say so I can improve myself.
Woah, nice Chapter
! I especially like how ylu put those sweet scootadash scenes :flutteryay:!
And the ending ...
A few things, though:
!
- Too few Rainbow
- Too many other-than-rainbows ;)
2833832 dashing is so rainbow am I right
(Do you spot the reference)
Nice Chapter, like always!
Althoug I have a few critismepoints:
- Too few rainbow, too many others
- Twilight is totally overpowered (Lets make a stone wall in 1sec, its nothing)
- Rarity and pinkie are acting OOC, especially Rarity.
- The fight-behavior does not behave them very good, I had hoped dash would run the field and the others... well, dunno
- Rainbow is telling the story to scootaloo.. so isnt it a little bit to bloody :O?
Can't wait until the next chapter!
(Sorry for bad english, but its 2:00AM in my timezone ^^)
piclair.com/data/lkhhv.jpg
3276779
Mother of Celestia what is that thing?
3276917 A shaved baboon.
Simon o'Sullivan and Beard ready to review. Let's see what we have here.
… Confusion. A lot of it.
Dude, I'm not gonna lie to you. If you want to get this to EqD as you desire, you need to work on this.
First of all, let me tell you about the tags.
I'm going to leave Adventure there since... well, it's a book about adventures, so let's have that one. Now, we get to Alternate Universe. Why does this story require the Alternate Universe tag? Is it because Dash is reading something that's not Daring Do? Is it because Scootaloo actually has parents instead of being an orphan (I applaud you for that, though)? In the REAL story (not the one Dash is reading, but the one actually happening in the fic: Dash reading a book to Scootaloo) there's nothing that justifies the AU tag. This is actually a story being told inside the very story, so I don't really think you need the tag. Another tag wouldn't hurt, though. Is there a lot of comedy? Is it going to be a tragic story? Romance, maybe? As long as they take major parts on the story, the tag is appropriate. Suffice to say, that means that if you're just going to make a couple jokes per chapter at most, you don't need the Comedy tag.
With that said, let me tell you that, grammar wise, the story needs improvement. Most of the time you refuse to use question marks, probably under the assumption that something horrible will happen if you do, I'm not sure.
This requires a question mark at the end. You seem to miss most of them throughout the story.
Let's get to the previous line, though.
Comma there, before Celestia. It's called a “vocative comma”. It's used to show somepony's being “summoned” or “called”, so to speak. That's what makes “Hop on, Dash,” a cute invitation to hop onto something and “Hop on Dash”, on the other hand, is a brutal punishment somepony's making our favorite Wonderbolt aspirant go through.
Another important thing: unless you're using the Royal Canterlot Voice (and you better have a damn good reason for Scootaloo to be able to use it), you normally use italics to emphasize your words. Alternatively, if the whole line is written using italics, you should write the emphasized part without italics.
Though not a grammar issue per se, you certainly use a lot the “he/she said as he/she X”. Alternating between constructions is a good idea if you want to prevent readers from thinking you just copypasted everything, only changing the action in each sentence.
The same with the “She began to X”. You use it a lot and that kills the willingness to read. Exchange expressions every now and then to give variety to the story.
Too many exclamation marks. One is enough.
You have this issue a lot as well. You should end that first line with a period. Then, another period after “comfort” and finally capitalize “You” in the second speech line. If you don't do this, it feels like there's no pause between actions, which is obvious that there are. Probably Dash shows some boasting gestures as she speaks the first line, then hugs Scoots and says the second line while caressing her forehead.
The problem with most of the story is that you have the Talking Head Syndrome. Basically, you have a lot of characters speaking their lines without showing emotions of gestures of any kind. Try giving them some life. Gestures, interactions with the other speakers, whatever. Make sure they look alive.
Also, let me say that the presentation is... isshh, could be better. You press the Space key a few times and call it an indent, but they seldom match. If you don't want to use Tab because it doesn't work or whatever, at least press the Enter key a constant amount of times. EqD's gonna give you a strike without a second thought when they see that.
This sentence doesn't make any sense at all. It's incomplete. You should join the two sentences together, and add a few commas there. Also, remove “an even further than that.” It's... ugh. If you don't want to go with “Once upon a time” you can simply go for “A long time ago” and call it a day. Also, farmers don't create food out of nowhere. They grow it. And the last part of the sentence is... could be reworded to something less... awkward. So it should end up something like this.
“A long time ago, there was an apple farmer by the name of Abby Jack, who worked hard everyday to grow the food to sustain her town.
The way this is written, Abby Jack didn't know why she was shocked at the fact that suddenly her farm was barren.
These are only a few examples of your writing that need to be polished. I suggest you find a proofreader/editor to go through most of this. Check for those parts where you missed apostrophes (there's one missing in the very description of the fic that I can remember as I write this) and double spacing among other things.
More issues: Perspective (a.k.a. PoV)
For what we know, we're now inside the house with AJ (I'll talk about that later), so there's no way we could know who's talking. You could say “a deep voice from the other side of the door.” We have no way to know if it's a stallion from where we are (AJ's point of view). Unless you're using a third person omniscient narrator, in which case ignore this.
And now... we're going to talk about the part you might feel worse about touching: the story itself.
Look, I was only able to read the first three chapters before having to put it away. Believe me when I say that a pre-reader, if you send the fic as it is, won't even finish the first chapter. But concerning the plot of the story Dash's telling Scoots... well, things aren't pretty either.
First, I really have to understand why we have Abby Jack, the only original character, so to speak, while the others are the the rest of the Mane Six, plus Sweetie Belle. And then Abby Jack turns to AJ and, well, it's a story within a story. It's not necessarily bad, but we really need a reason as to why Dash decided to make up the original character and then said “screw it, I'm having US in the fic!”
More things:
It doesn't work that way. You might be unconscious for a while, but one does not simply lose their ability to speak and recover it after a few days.
One of the things that annoyed me about “AJ” is the Truth Sight. Yes, it might be part of the story your mom used to tell you or might be a reference to another story (one of many you have here), but the way it's introduced is laughable at best. You could have AJ believe the guy because, for once in her life, she has a clue about what the hell's going on there and where her siblings are. She could literally be gullible enough to believe even if that wasn't the case. He's a soldier that has been unconscious for days. But no, she believes him because she has the power to know if a pony is telling the truth or lying. That's cheap as a way to make the story go forward.
She goes to the castle totally unprepared to fight and says “Ahm, AJ. You foalnapped mah siblings. Prepare to die!” The Emperor laughs at her so hard that he chokes and dies. Happy ending! Haha, no.
And apparently she doesn't give a damn about her brother anymore.
Now, as the story moves on, this doesn't feel like a story: I feel like I'm reading a playthrough of an RPG. And a bad one. During the three first chapters, characters are introduced and the “witches” (I'm not going to spoil anything, but I think it's obvious enough for the reader) grant the ponies magical artifacts.
She apparently forgot about all the “emperor with god-like powers that defeated the THREE QUEENS without problems and is now the ultimate ruler of the land, who can apparently also steal powers and maybe can fart fireballs too” thing.
And then we find out that AJ is basically wandering around the land with no idea where to go. Yeah, this is not an average RPG. This sounds like a JRPG played in original Japanese by a guy who can't speak Japanese to save his life. “I have no idea what to do right now or where my target is, but I'll just walk around and ask random ponies to see who coughs up the answer. I'll do that until they give me something to stab!”
… Okay, apparently AJ's cousin is a bounty hunter. She should know what it consists on hunting ponies who have a bounty assigned. Mostly criminals. With weapons, and zero remorse. She's a farmer. With a lasso and the power of being the main character. Unless you give me something better, I'm expecting her head on a pike followed by a comically “wa wa wa waaaaaaaaa” background sound.
I'm trying to understand what's going on. Basically, what they're saying is that the Emperor made sure they cast a spell on the WHOLE CASTLE that TELEPORTS IT TO A RANDOM LOCATION EVERY TWO WEEKS! Aside from the hilarity of picturing the castle getting teleported in the middle of the ocean and having them all drown, picture the situation. Oh, he could also totally teleport in front of the rebel’s main headquarters; that would be hilarious. However, if this Emperor is as friggin' powerful as portrayed, he could basically point at a rebel and disintegrate him on the spot. He defeated the THREE QUEENS (there's no way I'll get tired of mentioning it), so he has enough power to destroy whoever poses a threat. He could be openly challenging whoever had the massive dalekanium balls to fight him, only to turn them inside out with a snap of his fingers.
As for the fight scene... ish. Everything happens too fast. And it's hard for me to believe that a farmer (who, remember, it's NOT Applejack, but Abby Jack), Rarity and SWEETIE BELLE would be able to win that fight WITHOUT TAKING A SINGLE DAMN SCRATCH, despite being greatly outnumbered. Rainbow Dash? Maybe, and even her would possible take a bruise or two with her. But I'm calling bullshit because the only difference between “before the fight” and “after the fight” is “we're a bit tired.” Not to mention that part is a bit of a wall of text and could use some splitting.
Blahblahblah, we fast-forward, dodging all those references dumped throughout the whole fic (really, you should make it less obvious. It gets really annoying after a while), and Sweetie Belle's song cures Rainbow Dash from her stone spell. So yeah, she's the group's cleric. Which apparently they totally forget about when they meet Twilight and Pinkie.
Also, a pause here, because I really need to point this out:
Aside from the fact that writing (hiccup) is incredibly lazy... really, author? REALLY?! This is how you're going to portray Pinkie throughout the story? First impressions are important as hell, and if the first interaction I have with Pinkie is Twilight scolding her because she almost committed vore suicide (which is the weirdest word combo I've ever seen — and I've read a lot of fics from Bronystories, so that's saying something) makes me want to close the window and pretend I spent the previous hour reading a fic what didn't portray Pinkie as a deplorable hyperbole of what she really is.
Okay, with that out of my system, let's continue with the previous point. Sweetie Belle can apparently use magic to heal and dispell ill effects. AND YET they totally forget about that unbelievably useful power. Instead, they go to a Celestia forsaken hippogriff temple to get a damn flower to brew the damn potion.
Also… was that part where the guards completely mistake the main character for some damn Care Bears? Why are they so stupid? Is it supposed to be a comedy scene? The guards supposedly KNOW who Dash and Fluttershy are (because they were basically part of the Queens’ Air Force), so it makes no sense that these guys find Care Bears and say “Hey, there they are! Kick some asses!”
… I will just mention that the following chapters need a LOT of polishing based on everything I mentioned before, and the fic becomes more and more unappealing to me as it goes on. But there's ONE thing I want to point out: the so-called Old Satyr language.
Let's ignore the fact that we've never seen a satyr in MLP before (this is a made-up story, after all, so hey, it can work). And while I would've expected a MUCH MORE threatening name than “Iron Hand” (dunno, something like Overlord Vyxaross the Hope Shatterer), I'll let you keep that one (but PLEASE, change some names. Perfect Teeth and Perfect Fang? THOSE are valid pony names to you?), but when I read the Old Satyr part... ishh... I couldn't take it.
You google translate'd the instructions to locate the castle from English to French and called it Old Satyr. I know you used Google Translate because I spotted English words there (such as “scrying” and “shadowfax”) among other things. Is it really necessary for you to show us that it's a poorly translated text? Because people who actually speak several languages (Hi!) notice these issues. Let me tell you what I would've done.
The mares find a wall with demonic-looking runes. Fluttershy turns her head away in sheer horror, unable to even look at those symbols through the corner of her eye. Except for Twilight, the other mares stare at each other with drooped ears, with Sweetie Belle even shrinking in fear and hiding under Rarity. They have no idea what the runes mean at all. However, the appearance of the symbols makes them think that, if translated, they would read every single torture the Emperor will force them go through when he finds them. Twilight calms them all down, explaining that it's actually Old Satyr, a long-lost language she had studied long time ago, hence why she isn't intimidated by the writing. She says that, despite knowing the language, she hasn't read anything in Old Satyr in years, and she might take awhile to translate the whole text.
See? You don't even have to write the text there at all! If you want to give the text a demonic appearance that matches the satyrs' lifestyle, do it! Have Twilight give them the translated version when she's done.
With that, I'm afraid I have to say that the story needs a lot of rewrite, if not a full one and start from scratch. If you want to go to Equestria Daily, they'll probably say exactly the same. You'll need to find an editor/proofreader. A much better one, I mean. Until you do, you'll probably get rejected from there. I'm being brutally honest here: the way this is right now? It won't get featured in EqD..
Good luck and keep improving.
Simon o’Sullivan and Beard, WRITE’s Manly Reviewers of Manly Fics
3286118
Okay, I admit it. I'm not the best editor, but thank you for showing me things I need to look out for when I edit. And you are also helping this author, thank you again.
Most of the time you refuse to use question marks, probably under the assumption that something horrible will happen if you do, I'm not sure.
Tell me about it. I know I missed a lot of them, but he does forget the question marks a lot for some reason.
I'm a little confused by your complaint about using the caps lock for a huge exclamation. I've seen other fics use caps for emphasis before.
You press the Space key a few times and call it an indent
You mean Tab key... Wait, what!? I'm going to have a talk with my brother later. I know I use the Tab key.
Thank you for this. It helps my older brother out a lot. And I also like the fact that this seemed to be the only negative comment I've seen, Also, I'm sorry for not being a good-enough editor to catch all the plot-holes.
\
One last thing: How do you do the box thing? You know, when you copy a part of something? I always wanted to know about that.
3320768
Oh, you mean quoting stuff? Just put whichever text you want between "quote" and "/quote" (with square brackets instead of quotation marks.
As for the story, as I mentioned, has some issues, and I replied in a way EqD prereaders would treat it. But you have a small fanbase that likes the "videogame style" the story has (or at least, that's the impression that left me). Also, I insist on the pop culture reference droppings. It's not a bad thing, but it gets really annoying. This is a story, not the meme equivalent of "Where's Waldo."
As for the all caps for screaming. Yes, a lot of people do it, but that doesn't mean that it's correct. You already have an exclamation mark to express that the character's already shouting, so you don't need further emphasis. If you still think you do (and some authors/reviewers/pre-readers might disgress on the fact that you need two different things to express it), you use italics. It's "cleaner", so to speak, and more widely accepted. Italics show emphasis in what you're saying. Instead of "You must NOT pull that lever", you usually go "You must not pull that lever." This isn't only limit to prevent lever-pulling, though. However, be careful not to overuse it. Unless it's a character trait (and even then, you should use it moderately), people don't emphasize a word every sentence.
Other than that, I can tell that, with a decent fanbase as you have, you must be something right. However, the guys at Equestria Daily might think differently.
You going to continue this story at all? It's been two years. I have to say it's pretty freaking good, and well executed.
Out of curiosity, is this based on something or is it just made up on the spot.
Great work either way.
Oh my Faust, please continue!!
Will this be continued anytime soon?