Equestria, Ho!

by Musleblast

Short Story 1

Rarity looked in awe at her reflection in the mirror. A hairbrush surrounded by an aura of magic carefully removed any knots lodged in the mare's mane. Each stroke of the brush allowed her hair to shape into that beautiful curl she was known for, while another hairbrush gently stroked through her tail, matching the elegance of her mane.

Satisfied with her mane, Rarity placed her brushed down and levitated a case of make-up towards her. With very gentle movements, she applied the eyeshadow around those gorgeous eyes, as a tube of lipstick left a divine shade of red over Rarity's perfect lips.

The unicorn mare couldn't help but admire herself in the mirror. She was downright fabulous in every way; every part of her body was literally shining, much like the diamonds she obsessed over. Satisfied with her appearance, Rarity gracefully trotted towards the door of Carousel Boutique. She was ready to make this day hers, and show everypony that she was the pony everypony should know.

As Rarity opened the door and started to trot forth into the town of Ponyville, Napalm suddenly emerged from a bush, holding the water hose from the side of the building. Napalm pressed the trigger, and a stream of cold water blasted into Rarity, drenching her mane and tail. The make-up dripped down her face as she held her hooves in front of her face and struggled to fight the water splashing against her. Napalm smiled and laughed like a maniac throughout the whole fiasco.

---

Five minutes later, Napalm exited the Boutique, hobbling away slowly while rubbing his sore flank.

"Geez, what a grouch."

Author's Note:

Oh, when will Calvin ever learn?

On a more serious note, I am trying to write the chapters for Equestria, Ho! and need to need to take care of some stuff in life, and after a couple of weeks, I will post the new chapters.

In the meantime, though, I will write a couple of short stories to satiate the hunger. This is the original short story from the first time this story was posted, aside from a few changes here and there.

Also, I desperately need a proofreader and an editor. If you happen to have the time, please PM me as soon as possible. I would appreciate posting the chapters as correctly as possible.

Comments

[FrostyDawn]

This is literally a pony-fied version of a Calvin and Hobbes comic. I love it!

[ClockworkMage]

Did you just add your own story to like half of the "Writing Gold" group?

[musicluvr1974]

Heh. Even in Equestria, outlandishly antsocial antics like that will not be tolerated... Go, Rarity!

[ShadowWing09]

Okay! I'm enjoying this so far, let's see where this takes us

[Starman Ghost]

Hi. I'm Starman Ghost, and I'm here to review your fic on behalf of WRITE.

I was rather excited about this assignment, I have to say. I absolutely loved Calvin & Hobbes growing up, and I looked forward to seeing how someone could put them in Equestria. With that, let's get started!

FORMATTING AND GRAMMAR

From what I can see, this is mostly fine. There aren't any major problems with it, but I did notice some nagging issues. For instance...

In some of the instances where you wanted to emphasize something, you underlined or bolded it. For example:

It was Friday, meaning that there was no school for two whole days.

When you want to emphasize something in the story, it's better to use italics instead of underlining or bolding it. The last 2 aren't standard style and tend to be visually distracting.

Another thing, though this only happened once:

"What's with you?" Hobbes asked. "First we forget to grab the salmon, and now you're excited about doing homework?"
"No, not that fish head!" Calvin replied, digging through his closet. "I've been working on something for weeks now, and it's finally finished! This will solve all our problems!"

You forgot to put a blank line and indent before starting this new paragraph

"Ok, what about our box? We could probably take off a part of the side to fix-"

"Okay" should be spelled out, rather than abbreviated. Or, if you absolutely must abbreviate it, use all capital letters to make it "OK."

Second thing about this passage is, you used a hyphen (-) to indicate that someone was cut off when speaking. This is a common mistake, but what you really want is an em-dash (—) in its place. Hyphens should only be used in compound words (such as "two-faced"). You also want an em-dash rather than a hyphen when offsetting asides in your sentences. Also, you'll want another hyphen at the end of the aside. For instance,

Calvin-uh, I mean, Napalm grabbed Hobbes.

should be

Calvin—uh, I mean, Napalm—grabbed Hobbes.

Next up, you've got a few missing commas. An example:

Well, of course you are, silly!

Unless Pinkie Pie's telling him he's silly, there should be a comma where I've placed one. Similar issue with...

"No, not that, fish head!"

Next, lists. When you're making a list, you don't need to offset the first item with a comma and you don't need to put an "and" or "or" between every item on the list; it just needs to go before the last one. Finally, you seem to have a bit of and/or confusion. So

pointed to different settings such as, "World of Goo," or, "Temple of Doom," or, "Home," or, oddly enough, "The TARDIS."

should be

...pointed to different settings such as "World of Goo," "Temple of Doom," "Home," and, oddly enough, "The TARDIS."

You use an "and" here because all of the items you listed are settings on the machine, not that one of them is a setting on it. Here's an example of a similar construction where you'd use "or":

Calvin could set the dial to a setting such as "World of Goo," "Temple of Doom," "Home," or, oddly enough, "The TARDIS."

This is very similar, since it's still listing places Calvin can go with the machine. The difference is that while those settings are all there on the machine, the dial can (presumably) only point to one thing at a time.

Those were the issues I noticed. I realized this section was a bit terse, but there's not really much to say about the rules of grammar and formatting. A lot of them are just there because they're the standards of style, convention, and syntax rules the language evolved with. For the most part, they are what they are

NARRATION

This was where I found your fic to be weakest. To deal with the easiest issue first, I noticed pretty heavy overuse of said-bookisms. I recommend checking out the link, it's a short read but it will tell you everything you need to know.

Next issue, showing vs. telling. I saw a bit too much telling and not quite enough showing in what I read. Said-bookisms are actually an example of this problem, but it manifests in other ways, too. For instance, take this passage...

"These trees look kind of odd, don't they?" said Hobbes as he studied one of the trees.

"Yeah, they do. They grow in a weird shape." Calvin replied.

And then you don't mention it again. You tell us the trees are weird, but we never actually have any description of what they look like or why they're weird. As it is, I'm afraid this passage falls a bit flat. Presumably you wrote it to help establish the scenery, but it doesn't really help me imagine the scene at all. In fact, it makes it that much harder because before I read it I could imagine what the trees were like, but that was broken when it told me the trees were weird and it didn't really leave me anything to fill the void with.

Also, from the same block, a bit of unnecessary repetition:

"These trees look kind of odd, don't they?" said Hobbes as he studied one of the trees them.

Hobbes just referred to the trees, so you don't have to refer to them specifically as what he studied. You can use a pronoun because there's no reason to think Hobbes could be studying anything but the trees.

Related:

Calvin's face went a darker shade of red with anger.

This is a similar problem: you're showing and then telling right afterward. Someone reading this passage will see that 1) Hobbes has just called Calvin a "little horsey," and 2) Calvin's face went red. It's fairly obvious that Calvin's angry, so telling us right afterward is just unnecessary clutter.

Next in the scene where Pinkie Pie is dragging Calvin around and showing him places, it feels rather abrupt. I recognize this is what you're going for to some degree, since he's being whisked from place to place impossibly fast. The problem is that the way you've executed it, there's really no feeling that Calvin's being yanked to and fro and is suddenly taking in a lot of new sights; it's just Pinkie talking about a bunch of stuff:

"Hey! What are you doing?" Calvin spit out as he suddenly realized what was going on.

"And over here is Twilight Sparkle's library! You can get all sorts of books here!"

Here's a way to write that section in a way that I feel captures the rapid nature of the events, but adds just enough description to make the reader feel like they're being pulled around without getting to see much.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Calvin spit out as he suddenly realized what was going on. He struggled to keep his balance as Pinkie Pie nearly pulled his front leg out of its socket. Then she jabbed her hoof at what looked like a house built into a tree, which Calvin knew hadn't been where they were just seconds ago because he definitely would've remembered it.

"And over here is Twilight Sparkle's library! You can get all sorts of books here!"

I won't try to claim this is perfect, but it should at least illustrate the point I'm getting at.

And one more thing that caught my eye, from the beginning of Short Story 1:

Rarity looked in awe at her reflection in the mirror.

Important lesson here. Like Mark Twain said, "the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug." Somehow, awe just doesn't feel like the right word here. It makes it sound like what she saw in her reflection was surprised or unexpected to her. I could see her looking in awe if, say, she'd just gotten a makeover and was seeing the results for the first time, but that's not what's happening. She's been methodically working on her appearance to make herself look beautiful, and she's seen what's been happening the whole time. Instead of "awe," I'd suggest something like "Rarity looked in concentration at her reflection" or "Rarity scrutinized her reflection."

PLOT AND CHARACTERS

Your plot works pretty well and is a nice, fitting way to introduce Calvin to Equestria. The kid's duplicated himself, traveled through time, fought an army of evil snowmen, and sold Earth to aliens to complete a school project, so using his cardboard box to travel to a fantasy world of talking magical ponies is hardly out of place for him.

I don't really have any complaints about the characters, either. I like how Calvin's first reaction to Equestria is "This is the kind of world Susie Derkins would go to!" because I can see him saying just that if he went there. I like, too, how he tries to think of a pony name on the spot, but it's a modern weapon that doesn't really fit for the world he's in. It's exactly the sort of goofy mistake he'd make under pressure.

I have to admit, though, that I'm rather confused about why he thought he needed to transmogrify himself into a pony.

I was briefly worried that Calvin might be acting a bit too nice for a bratty six-year-old, but my fears were calmed when I read Short Story 1

Hobbes is spot-on. He's calm and level-headed, but at the same time distractable and hedonistic. In particular, I got a kick out of him eating the salmon during the trip "in case we don't make it."

Haven't seen much of the ponies, but so far they seem accurately characterized.

CONCLUSION

I like where you're going with this. You've got a story of a fantastical land written for six-year-olds and a six-year-old with a wild imagination who dreams of fantastical lands are a match made in Heaven. You've got all the makings of a charming, lighthearted read here, and I can tell from your writing that you're recognizing that and taking advantage of it.

That's the good news; the bad news is that what you've written so far is rather rough around the edges. The narration, in particular, got rather clunky at times in ways that distracted me from the story you were trying to tell. I would say that you should go back and revise your existing chapters, keeping in mind the advice I've given you. You don't have to do them all over again, but it would help a lot if you were to correct examples of the problems I pointed out. It will also be important to think through your narration when you write future chapters.

Starman Ghost, WRITE's unpaid intern

[Kirb]

I demand more!

[Neoject]

I DEMAND MORE!!!!

[Everyday We Shufflin]

3584575 I also demand more!

[Black-Briar Memery]

fail.brm.sk/disappoint/mega-squint.jpg

[Thunder Quill]

I really hope this shall be updated eventually...

[Starlight Nova]

Have you stopped writing this story? If so, then why?

[Ash Bark]

This was disgustingly delightful to read. PLZ do more

[Kenshinryuu]

Given that Calvin was asking about Balloons at the end of the last chapter, I was expecting Rarity to get a water balloon to the face, not a hose blast.

[OmnipresentMicroorganism]

3786373

I third the MOAR!

[fractalman]

*pokes story mournfully*

[SilverStarApple]

Pretty neat, want me to make a better pic?

[Antiquarian]

I am sad this is appears to be a dead fic. It was quite amusing while it lasted.

[Ponydude23]

Ayo man you still working on this story?