In Loving Memory

manjack40

manjack40 #1 · Apr 17th, 2013 · · ·

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Looks to be promising. I'll re-edit when i've finnished reading.

Mr Anomalous

Mr Anomalous #2 · Apr 17th, 2013 · 1 · ·

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Feature-box Material, right here.

MLP-Lover

MLP-Lover #3 · Apr 17th, 2013 · · ·

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Shadow_Wolf

Shadow_Wolf #4 · Apr 18th, 2013 · · ·

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Just beautiful and so very sad....five stars

Fallen Prime

Fallen Prime #5 · Apr 18th, 2013 · 7 · ·

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See, THIS is how stories should handle the deaths of its characters. Excessive gore can suck it.

TrollyDash

TrollyDash #6 · Apr 18th, 2013 · 1 · ·

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My liquid pride is coming out.So much liquid pride.

The_Silent_Hero47

The_Silent_Hero47 #7 · May 12th, 2013 · · ·

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Best story I've seen on this site by far. The sheer beauty of it is not even in my dictionary. Thank you for showing me what the power of writing can do and what it can bring other people to do. I will send you the link of the Dramatic reading soon. Thank you for writing this beautiful story.

sarkodine

sarkodine #8 · Jun 10th, 2013 · · ·

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I have no Liquid Pride for this......what i do have....
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Comment posted by Prince Solstice deleted Jun 27th, 2013

Prince Solstice

Prince Solstice #10 · Jun 27th, 2013 · · ·

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Well Mr. Drak, I guess I could be nice enough to give you a review. Maybe one that'll make you laugh at least. Either way I must start these things out like I always do...

Howdy, names Solstice, infamous review person on a crusade across the site to point out the shitty flaws and errors most first timers make. That doesn't necessarily limit me to just shitty first time fics, but I tend to do better work on those. Anyways, do you like chains? Perhaps a little b-hole teasing? Well you asked the right guy to do just that. Auto-bots grease up for an oily gang bang marathon.

Derpy awoke with the rising sun.

There is a house in N'awlins after all...

She yawned as she stretched her legs and wings, her joints making popping sounds.

Rough nights of raping and pillaging often does that.

But today was a special day.

Meh, doesn't seem that special.

Hung on the wall was a picture of her and her daughter

Awe man... feels... er... I mean i'm gonna go fuck something random. Like this sandwich, mmm nothing like a cum sandwich

Derpy entered the kitchen and started boiling water for her morning oatmeal.

How am I supposed to make fun of something that doesn't even follow simple things, Derpy doesn't eat oatmeal, her diet consist of muffins God Dammit!

An hour later she still had found nothing interesting to read.

Man, Imma go get some chips... here is something to distract you while I'm gone.

i.imgur.com/BdWKZzK.gif

As she napped, her body slowly shut down, drifting off into an eternal slumber.

-munch munch- so... like she dies? -munch munch- heavy shit man. Kind of trying too hard to be sad.

Normally she came to Ponyville one weekend a month to spend time with her mother, but this was special.

Yeah instead of a month of fucking, there will be one hardcore incest marathon in a night.

Bleh sorry I can't do this anymore. It's such a depressing story and is striving too hard to make someone feel those sad feelings. The thoughts of Derpy dying as her daughter finds her is such a hrrngh! moment. Now given, this is fucking well written. By all means this deserves some fucking praise. However if you had just taken the time to rise into all of these feelings and given the time for the reader to connect with Derpy a little more, then her death would have had a bigger impact on the reader. To be fair, you tired to do that. I really love everything this story is offering, and if you had more of an exposition into the beginning scenes then maybe this would have effected the reader in the way you were striving to.

Seriously, if you were to add some flashback memories of Dinky and Derpy playing or something along those lines, then those forced feelings would have felt a lot less forced. There isn't any complaints as far as anything else. Good tracking, good plot, excellent idea and concept, I just felt like maybe you rushed into the feelings.

All in all, no I can't rip you a new one, as much as I would like to. You just didn't write anything for me to fucking be mad at. I try and be honest with my reviews, which I did my best to give you some pointers. Hopefully this helps, either way man this is pretty damn good.

kalash93

kalash93 #11 · Jun 29th, 2013 · 4 · ·

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Howdy, Drak. This is Kalash93 of WRITE here to write up that review you asked for.

The early part of this review is very blunt and rather harsh, but contains a lot of very useful advice, explaining what didn't work, why it did not work, and what could work better. Don't take it personally and feel free to talk to me about writing and stories. The latter part of this review talks about all the things you did well and also contains more advice, explaining what did work, why it worked, and pitfalls to avoid. This review ended up being a lot longer than I originally thought it would be. I originally thought that I'd maybe come up with a few pros and cons, as well as some advice and a verdict all within a few hundred words. But now, I think that this is probably the single longest review I have ever written for anything, coming out to more than four thousand words. Now onto the review!

Initial impressions were good. Unfortunately, it was gilded. I wanted to love this story, I really did. However, I could only bring myself to like it.

Criticism sledgehammer inbound!

The concept is a completely fine and easy relatable one for many readers. Somepony dear is dead, and now we have to cope with that. However, it's let down by the execution of the whole thing. I understand that you haven't yet written very much, so I'm not going to be too unduly harsh on you, as gratuitous abuse is not good instruction. I aim to provide you with helpful feedback so you can do even better on your next fic. I say that because this one is just alright, and I can see the potential in both it and you.

This story has two major problems. The biggest one is a classic case of trying too hard. Throughout the whole thing, the reader is just constantly bombarded with various reminders that 'Derpy was a good pony and it's sad that she's dead, so be sad!' I was actually rather taken in at first. Then, well, you turned it from an personal tragedy for Dinky, to a tragedy that befell the whole town. I found the scenes of the family to be poignant and emotional, but not very sad. That worked because it fit naturally. The first rule of writing for feels is that emotions develop from observing the story unfold in a natural progression. If you try to just suddenly force emotion, it won't be as strong as if it were built naturally over time. In fact, many readers will either feel indifferent or outright react negatively. You did alright at first. However, the forced sadness realy got bad later in the story, particularly during the funeral speeches. These had the potential to be real heartbreakers, but they fell far short. Why? Because they feel artificial. Minimal relationships are shown to have been established in the rising action between Derpy and those who gave speeches. As far as the reader is concerned, these characters lack any meaningful relationship with the deceased. It's as if Trace Adkins delivered a eulogy for Amy Winehouse; he has no business speaking at her funeral. It would have been much more fitting if the speeches you described were from the immediate family of Derpy. I was waiting for Dinky to say something along the lines of "You were the best mommy ever and I miss you so much!" Deeply personal, nearly universal sentiments like those are what really bring on the tears. Sad sories work on the principle that the audience can identify with the cast The speeches are more along the lines of how good Derpy was instead of how painful it is to be without her. These stories also work on the bond that the reader has with the characters. I personally recommend that you read a number of sad stories so that you may better understand how it is done.I absolutely recommend Centerpiece of My Collection. There are quite a few very good sadfics on the TvTropes MLP FiM fanfic recommendations page.

The problem is essentially this: There is no buildup; events just happen. There is no emotional rise and fall; there's a brief low point at the beginning, which is good, but then the rest of the story is told as if it's a great cathartic moment resulting from the fall of a tragic heroine who lost everything despite her heroic struggle. You need to properly pace and develop these things. All emotions, drama, tension, and plots must be paced properly. The beginning always needs some sort of slow low point. This gives the audience an emotional and dramatic baselines from which to reference everything else. You did a fair job at the begining with old Derpy, setting up a vaguely somber mood. But then, you crashed it by just stating at the end of it that she fell asleep and died with such little fanfare and significance that it might as well have been a lightbulb burning out. The same issue happened with the funeral. It came logically, but it just happened.

This leads me to the second major problem, which is your pacing, or to be more accurate, complete absence of pacing. This story jumps around more than three dozen startled kittens who've each had five shots of expresso and are on a trampoline attached to a trailer without any suspension being pulled by a truck at eighty miles an hour over the world's rockiest road being driven by a very drunk touring car driver. Your number of section breaks in this one story is several times greater than the sum total of all section breaks I've used in my entire fimfiction career. This jumping around completely throttles the scenes you create and prevents you from creating any effective atmosphere or mood. Each full stop effectively makes a reader's brain and experience come to a complete halt and isolate what they just read from whatever comes next. It's a bit like trying to watch a film you see in two minute chunks while you wait for Mythbusters to come back from an ad break. To sum all this up in one sentence: slow down. Here is some advice I very often give to inexperienced writers: Slow down; the audience will not run away if you are keeping them entertained. You're going for gold the moment you have completed just the barest minimum of setup for a scene. That's like trying to ski down a mountain the first time that the temperature hits freezing, or trying to make love by inserting the moment that the clothes are off without checking if she's ready, or even bothering with foreplay, or like trying to eat pasta ten seconds after you put it into the boilling water; sure, all the ingredients are there, but you have to give them time to cook first, otherwise, you're going to be eating cold, dry, raw noodles, and those always taste horrible. A guideline I have is to seldom make a scene that lasts for less than two hundred words, with most major scenes taking a bare minimum of five hundren if not a full one thousand words. This gives time for the reader to get into the story and the scenario. You're creating a mood and making a flow. Once those basic things are established, then you can really get around to tell you story. Honestly, I must tell you that your story feels rushed and far too short. For something like this to sink in properly, you need at least another two thousand words.

You also really need to create more segues between parts of the story, or at least tighten your focus and core cast. You threw in too many characters, many of whom did bugger all and ended up being distactions. All the jumping around makes it feel disjointed and spread way too thin. Sad stories work because they are intimate. They are also slower and tend to have much more methodical connections between things. Beign quick, darting around, and rapid action very easily break the fragile sadness, which is based around engineering confrontations between the readers and uncomfortable truths about loss and failure. Sad is loss. Tragedy is failure. Sadness demands patience. One thing I personally would have done at the beginning was not write Derpy's part at all. Instead, I would have focused on Dinky and everything going on with her, especially how excited she was to visit her mother and tell her about her pregnancy. I would have built up her anticipation and cheer, up until the part when she knocks on the door and gets no response. Then I would have kept the tension while replacing the eagerness with anxiety, bringing it to a sudden peak when she sees the body Next, I'd gradually replace anxiety with confusion, then horror, and finally grief as Dinky realizes that Derpy is dead. The reaction to call for help was quite a good one and made a lot of sense.

The tone does not seem to match the story properly. Tone can best be described as the attitude of a story as expressed through its writing. Your story is sad and has a sad mood. However, the tone is emotionally quite cold and almost alarmingly impersonal. It gives the feeling that Derpy's death is almost more of a highly conspicuous inconvenience than anything else. Your diction is often very unemotional and businesslike. If anything, I'd say that it's beige. Now, the reason why I say that the tone does not match the story is because there seems to be a serious disconnect between the tone and absolutely everything else. There is not much in the way of emotional resonance with what is going on in the story. Okay, the beginning with Derpy dying had the tone fit well enough. It seemed an ordinary enough day up until Derpy died. Then the story took a swan dive into blueness. I resisted the impulse to start singing sineva. Your tone, on the other hand, never seemed to have gotten the memo that it wasn't supposed to be detatched and businesslike. Instead, it was supposed to get up close and personal with the loss visited upon the characters. This creates the rather odd feeling of reading something more like a highly detailed report than a personal narrative. It's quite a lot like listening to a voice synthesizer recite a love poem; the words are sweet, but the voice might as well be reading the electric bill aloud for all the passion it has.

The last thing I have to coplain about is the writing style. There is so much beige prose and telling. Much of it feels very emotionally hollow, giving me the feeling that I stumbled into a hardboiled detective novel. Coincidentally, I feel as you'd be fairly good at writing those sorts of stories. Your style served you very well in Strange Dreams because it was perfect for the protagonist and the subject matter. It works fine for describing stories which are rather emotionally subdued, and definitely favors dark, brooding, cynics for protagonists. This story requires a different kind of touch. Your style there was a very austere almost Hemmingway or Elliot style. However, different types of stories aiming for different results require different styles. For example, The Descendant's On Pins and Needles, a rather melancholly examination of the relationship between Spike and Rarity, is written very differently from Dear Idiot, which is a lighthearted and humorous scathing letter written by Princess Celestia to Prince Blueblood after the Grand Galloping Gala. You can maintain the core features of your style, but the manner in which dinstinct pieces are written must change depending on what you are writing and trying to do. Two strongly contrasting examples from my own work are A Pleasant Surprise, a genuinely very sweet clopfic detailling the first time Fluttershy and her lover have sex, and Last One Standing, which details the death of Twilight Sparkle. The former uses a very deeply involved prose with lots of adjectives, adverbs, particibles, and is always focused on making everything in the moment as vividly real and intense as possible, thus matching the fervour and immediacy of the passion.The latter uses a much blander prose with fewer descriptors and often a near total absence of particibles. This makes the text much less involving, but also makes it more somber, thus befitting the fact that it is about death and not much is going on. Fear not, for you have plenty of time and potential to learn, practice, and improve.

The dialogue was just alright. It served the story. It was functional, if nothing else. The funeral speeches have the peculiar problem of sounding as if they were all written by the exact same committee. I never got the sense that it was Sweetie Bell, Pinkie Pie, or Rarity up on the podium. Rarity's speech sounded closest to her actual speaking style in the show. Getting canon characters exactly right can be tricky, and they are unusual circumstances, so I'm willing to give this a shrug and pass it. Something I feel like I ought to say nwo that I've read much of your work is that you don't use dialogue enough, and the same goes for choreography. Choreography is things like body language, facial expressions, sounds, movements, and such -- all things kinetic, visual and auditory. Work in characterization, plot, and other such details into dialogue. It's more interesting to have things demonstrated and discussed in the story by the characters than it is to just have the narrator tell us them. Using more and better dialogue and choreography will really allow you to focus on the characters and truly bring them to life. Finally, your environments and scenery are extremely minimalistic. It gives the reader the impression that everything takes place in a white void. A bit of spectacle certainly does not go amiss when telling an engaging tale. There definitely could have been a lot more detail concerning a large number of things. One more thing: it's just a personal stylistic matter of taste, but I think that you should always leave one blank line between paragraphs. I did appreciate that you bothered to indent. That gives it a more professional feel.

Deserved praise inbound!

Now that the harsh part is out of the way, I definitely have genuine praise for the many things you got right. The first thing you did well is pick your concept. I normally don't remark on this one, but I feel as if you deserve recognition for using a premise which is simultaneously very true to life, broadly relatable, and quite upsetting. Parental death, while not exactly a common topic for stories in pony fanfiction, is not unknown. However, you do two things differently from more stories. Firstly, the death happens at the beginning of the story. Secondly, the death is written from the point of view of the deceased. While reading this, I definitely felt some sympathy for Derpy, if only because I love my own mother and do not want to lose her.

You handled the topic quite well and realistically. The whole thing had a definite note of realism to it and it all feels honest, mature, and completely grounded. I like it when a slice of life piece is realistic. Many death fics either have the death happen at the end and that's it, or the death happened a long time ago and there's only a grave for the protagonist to mourn over. You went through the entire process, starting at dying and ending with the burial. It's also somewhat remarkable just how remarkable and ordinary Derpy's death was. Though making it weightier would have been welcome, I am also glad that you didn't push the levels of grief too high. One character dies and it effects those close to them, However, it's not overblown and the characters all cope with it in varying ways with varying degrees of success. However, they all live on and get better, or at least somewhat normalize or become numbed. You did not go on and on endlessly about how tragic the whole thing is, and how depressing it is that Derpy has died, and how nobody will ever be happy again, and they can't go on, and that losing Derpy will make all their lives completely suck forever. That certainly would have made me laugh, if not groan. Avoiding overblown melodrama is another thing which I quite like in fics, especially those that handle emotionally heavy subjects such as death, trauma, pain, loss, seperation, grief, healing, regret, and so on. It is quite commendable that you handled the story realistically, especially in terms of how it effects the community. You showed that Derpy did not die in vacuum and that her family does not grieve in one. There is an entire community -- a network of ponies who knew Derpy and liked her. Derpy also was not show nto have lived in a vacuum. For example, everyone you brought in was brought in because they had some connection to Derpy. Derpy also did a number of things with her life and was the sort of individual who would have a large number of mourners and attendees at their funeral. It is made clear to the reader why it is sad that Derpy died for reasons other than the inherent reason that death is sad, especially when it happens to someone very close to you, and also when the deceased happens to be a beloved character.

Another thing you did well was that you conveyed that there had been a passage of time and that it had influenced everybody. It was most effectively used during the funeral speeches, describing different ways in which Derpy had touched the lives of the speakers at various points. That actually created a rather effective sort of brief biography for Derpy Hooves. You see, many death fics do not actually create the sense of passage of time, and instead just say that it's been a long time without actually doing anything to show to reinforce that notion. This story actually makes one acutely away of time and its inevitable march. It reminded me of one of the reasons why I have developed a kind of avoidance of sad fics: dying of old age really brings out my existential dread, and you definitely managed to. You definitely made me feel the passage of time, which is more than most similar stories can claim. Regardless, I like and enjoy a story that can really get to me on a personal level and get some sort of genuine, meaningful, emotional response.

Characterization was well done, mostly. I felt as if the characters could be real people, since they were all written in a way that made them feel undeniably human, like they were actually people dealing with everything in their own unique ways. The levels of individuality were somewhat lacking and the depth of the characters definitely suffered because you threw in far too many. I like how they all had their own lives, connections to Derpy, reactions to her death, and motives. Even the most minor of them got at least some personality, a recognizable archetype, and some personal information about them. The funeral speeches were some excellent characterization for the deceased Derpy Hooves. Instead of just telling us that she was a good mare who will be sorely missed, you used dialogue from the characters to show what she had done and why she will be missed so. That is showing, which is better than telling, and is also an example of strong indirect and direct characterization. That demonstrates sophistication in writing; good writing utilizes both direct characterization, which is the stuff that a character says and does, as well as what the narrator states, and it also utilizes indirect characterization, which is how other characters react and speak concerning a character. Your style is very heavy on direct characterization; try more indirect characterization.

Your grammar and spelling were rather good, although a quick proofreading is never a bad thing. That is all I have to say about mechanics.

Now I talk about memorability and enjoyability. First question: Is this story memorable? Sorta. Second question: Is this story enjoyable: Sorta. I'm not trying to forget this story, but nothing about it really sticks out in the mind and stirs up any particularly strong memory. It's just average in both of these respects. It's nor forgettable, but neither is it memorable. It's not painful, but it's not something I'd recommend. I still gave it an upvote, which is something that I only do if I feel as if the story deserves it. These two things are both highly subjective, and it is obvious from the comments that I had a markedly less powerful response to your story than many others. Of course, be advised that I am one who found My Little Dashie to be painfuly overhyped and merely strongly bittersweet, as well as Half-Life 2 to be the most boring overrated game I have ever forced myself to play through, so be aware that my opinions and reactions may very well be somewhat anomalous.

The ending of your story was brilliant. It was effective. It was brief. It said everything that needed to be said. You built up to it and said just the perfect thing to summarize the entire fic: "In loving memory". It actually made me feel a strong spike of sadness, but also cathartic relief afterwards, because it was built up and it was properly developed and introduced, which put the audience in the right emotional state to have their hearts broken. It came at the end of a long, painful, emotional journey, just at the climax of sorrow, when everyone needs closure. And you delivered splendidly, bringing everything to a fitting, poignant, conclusive end -- full marks.

One last topic I need to bring up is the mood. Tone is different from the mood, in that mood is the underlying feel of a whole story, or at least is that way for a very significant part of it. Tone is attitude of the story as conveyed by the writing. You did a very good job of setting a somber mood early on in the story, and you kept it the whole way through. It definitely fit the story quite well. Not once did I get the feeling that the story was anything other than sad. You seem to have a gift for conveying mood very effectively in your stories, creating a solid emotional basis upon which the rest of the narrative is built.

In conclusion, your fic is merely alright. It has its highs and its lows. The sloppy pacing and clumsy execution keep it from achieving greatness. However, there are many good aspects to it, which actually makes it rather difficult to score. I found myself liking it more and more as I read it again and again. It certainly has real substance and depth to it, which is a lovely treat for those who can appreciate subtlety. It's a welcome break from the hordes of fics I read which are shallow or insubstantial, offering nothing intersting or insightful. Ultimately, I have to come to the conclusion that it feels rushed and disjointed -- far too short for all the extremely dense content you packed in there. The effort you made is apparent, and I extend props to Regidar and Fallen Prime for helping you with it. You show real potential to be quite good, and you would be much better in a hurry if you'd simply slow down, let the story tell itself, and pay attention to the whole package of what you are writing. Keep on practicing and writing, and you will improve. However, this fic's faults and merits balance it out rather evenly. You earn 5/10 flutteryays, which is exactly average.

I hope you enjoyed your review and learned something to make you an even better writer in the future.

Kalash93 -- WRITE's sarcastic gunman.

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Rainbooms

Rainbooms #12 · Jun 29th, 2013 · 3 · ·

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2793377
I don't think I've written that many words for a school essay....
But I agree with your review.

Sinful Pickle

Sinful Pickle #13 · Jul 3rd, 2013 · 1 · ·

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Who needs eyedrops when you could just read this?

starship55

starship55 #14 · Mar 16th, 2015 · · ·

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I will miss derpy, but im glad she lived a good life, and went peacefully. she deserved it. I know it will be hard for dinky, but thank goodness she has a family to give her support during this time of crisis. this is the first story ive read that deals with the end of derpys life. I am sad to see her go, and I will miss her a great deal, but im glad to have read such a beautiful story. thank you.

Princess LightningChaser