The Sandbox

by Rinnaul

Rating: everyone
Tags: Dark, Romance, Comedy, Tragedy, Human, Anthro
Length: 4576

This isn't even a story, it's just where I paste in or import forum posts to make sure they come out right.

This isn't even a story, it's just where I paste in or import forum posts to make sure they come out right.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2017-04-26 11:56:36 UTC

Moondancer & Human Critique

Never dismiss a prevalence of downvotes as just "haters" or "people being jerks". It's not particularly common in this community, unless you're one of those users who manages to attract a hatedom, or you're writing in a genre (like, say, Displaced) that has its own hatedom. You might be blinding yourself to the flaws of your work by doing this.

Now, as to the actual story... let's start with just the description.

Moondacer comes home one night after another attempt by her her friends to re-reintergrate her into society depressed and once she's home a human appears out of nowhere! What will she do? What will the human do? The human has no time to react properly before being thrown for a loop by Moondancer's recent happenings. And he won't be the only one thrown for a loop.

This story takes place during the events of Pinkie's Guardian Angel. So expect some references to It

"re-reintergrate" sounds redundant, and isn't the kind of word you want to be inventing here, never mind you misspelled "integrate".

"into society depressed" doesn't make any grammatical sense. I assume you mean Moondancer is depressed, but the wording makes this unclear.

"a human appears out of nowhere!" — This smacks of the worst kind of cliche HiE self-insert badfic. Even if the plot doesn't give any more reason for his appearance than that (and it really should), your description should try to indicate what makes your story different from or even better than that cliche.

As others have mentioned, the barrage of questions isn't the best way to introduce the story.

"thrown for a loop" is a rather lighthearted turn of phrase, and not the kind of description I associate with a dramatic tale. The second use just makes it severely repetitive.

"recent happenings" is another bit of odd phrasing.

Getting into the story itself, I'm not going to do this line-by-line, though I will call out some things in particular if they seem to need it. First up, the fact that this is a sequel means that readers coming in on this point won’t understand the full story. However, it’s never good for the story to be completely beyond the grasp of someone who skipped the earlier entries. As an example, let me go through my Favorites and pull up the first sequel I see:

Trinkets, by Pen Stroke, a sequel to Past Sins.

Now, Past Sins is a huge story, clocking in at about 200,000 words, and a lot of shit happened in it. You might think any reader coming in on Trinkets would be utterly lost without the context of Past Sins, but Pen Stroke includes enough details to give a new reader a rough idea of prior events that they can follow the shorter story.

Also, spoilers, but Past Sins is over three years old now, and has 120,000 views. There’s got to be some kind of statute of limitations on spoilers.

We see Ponyville rebuilding from an attack. They’re emptying out the castle, and references are made to it being the castle of Nightmare Moon. There’s a line about it belonging to Nyx. We meet Nyx and there’s a line about Luna taking back her magic.

Clearly, this is a story where Nightmare Moon returned, and was only recently defeated. We can further infer that Nyx was, in some fashion, Nightmare Moon in another form. There are more details, but I don’t want to linger overlong on this comparison. The point is, you can pick up enough casual details from the narrative to understand the sequel.

Now, granted, that isn’t always the case. There are different kinds of sequels.

Going to “real” literature as it offers me quicker examples, we have these, with most falling into the second category:

The Direct Sequel: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. In a direct sequel, events proceed directly from one story to the next, and the story is most likely broken up as a convenience for the readers. However, one can’t understand the later books if they skip the former, because the action proceeds directly from one to the next. Nothing in The Two Towers will make sense to someone who skipped The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Serial Sequel: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. In serial sequels, events take place in a defined chronological order, and the story builds on itself over time. However, the immediate conflict of each book is self-contained, and they may be read — up to a point — out of order. In this case, you can come in during the first five books or so easily enough. You might even be able to make sense of the first ten. But after Changes, the 12th book, simply too much has happened for a new reader to understand the plot.

The Series: Discworld by Terry Pratchett. In a series, events may be inter-related, and stories may take place in a defined order, but beyond a handful of references and character appearances (such as certain books about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch will take place before Sergeant Angua joined, and certain books will take place after), each plot is fully self-contained, and they may be read in virtually any order without any difficulty to the reader.

But I digress. The point is, a reader shouldn’t be at a loss within the first 300 words as to who your characters are and what they’re doing.

Moving on, your descriptions are vague yet repetitive, telling me nothing but “the usual” multiple times, and you have some major grammar issues in your dialogue. The action we open on, with Moondancer scaring Dash out of her wits (which itself feels out-of-character for both, and highly exaggerated) once again conflicts with the stated Drama/Romance tones of the story. In fact, Moondancer feels very off—far too comfortable with other ponies. I can only imagine this is a consequence of the previous story (again with be lost from the get-go), or you’re trying to do an in media res opening, with these events taking place after the story proper. I’m going to strongly recommend against that, as it’s confusing when paired with the sequel transition.

You have a bad habit of emotional telling:

Rainbow groaned aloud, bored out of her skull because of waiting.

Rainbow confessed rather loudly and annoyed.

feeling bad because she jumped to conclusions

It’s almost always better to let the character act out the feeling than explain it with your narration, though in some of these lines you’d be better off adding a bit more dialogue where the character just complains of waiting in Dash’s case, or starts to apologize for jumping to conclusions in Twilight’s.

"*sigh* Fine, yes I was scared only because I didn't expect it!"

Youtube Video

This isn’t an AIM Chat RP (or whatever you kids are using these days). Put actions in the narrative, not in action bubbles.

There are more problems with the first paragraph, but I won’t point them all out. They mostly focus on improper dialogue tagging, unfamiliar characters (presumably from the previous story), and known characters generally feeling OOC, though the dialogue is also a bit repetitive, almost always taking the form:

”Words words words.” Character said taking some action.

For the record, the grammar there is pretty off. Here’s how it should look:

”Words words words,” Character said, taking some action.

But on top of that, a bit of variety in structure would really help.

Going into the second chapter, I didn’t want to focus on things line by line, but…

Princess Celestia Is In Your Bed At The End Of All Things

You sit in bed, staring out into space.

Not that you have much else to do, aside from pondering the nature of things, or trying to achieve inner peace. You’d been at the last one for a while and, frankly, it was a rather dull endeavor. Which left pondering the nature of things, though sometimes that leads you to attempting to achieve inner peace again. The one just seems to follow from the other.

First on the list of things which are due to have their nature pondered: space. Particularly, the space you are staring into. Of prime importance was the question of whether or not one could even consider this space. Certainly, it didn’t seem to be outer space. After all, it isn’t cold and you aren’t suffocating. Also, there seems to be gravity around you.

But nothing else.

It also doesn’t qualify as outer space because there’s nothing to see. No sun. Not stars. No moon. Just you, your bed, and a vast, empty void that harrows the soul and leaves one with the sensation that they are truly insignificant, in the way that only the infinite can.

Which also leaves the question of whether it can be called not outer space, but space in any sense at all. Terms of distance and time seem meaningless in the face of endless nothingness.

It’s enough to make one feel downright philosophical.

You were just pondering what would happen if you got off of the bed, since there seems to be gravity but nothing beneath you, when you feel a faint warmth radiating against your back, and the sudden sensation that another presence had joined you.

Also the bed shifts with its weight.

But, to be honest, you were rather enjoying the solitude. It had been, perhaps, the most calm and pleasant Monday you’d had in weeks.

Some time passes, or maybe it doesn’t. You can’t tell in this place. But, eventually, your visitor gives a quiet cough and speaks.

“I do hope I’m not intruding upon any important thoughts,” she says, her voice feminine and very familiar.

You shake your head. “No. I think I was just seeking inner peace again.”

“I see,” she says, moving to sit beside you, and coming into your view in the process.

You were right about the voice. Princess Celestia has finally followed in the hoofsteps of many of her subjects and arrived, uninvited, in your bed. At one point, before certain violations of your privacy became commonplace, you’d have been thrilled at this. But now, you’d been hoping the ponies would stop when everything else had.

“And what is that like?” she asks, finally.

“Distressingly like boredom,” you reply.

You see a soft smile on her face from the corner of your eye.

“I’ve always found it a rather dull endeavor, myself,” she says. “Though, on the whole, you seem to be taking this rather well.”

“Any day I don’t have to get out of bed is a good day to me,” you say.

“Another sentiment we agree on, though, alas, royal duty often keeps me from such simple pleasures.” She turns her attention to the soul-crushing void surrounding you both. “How is the vast expanse of nothingness, by the way?”

“Mind-rending and unfathomable, like usual,” you say, shifting to prop your chin up on one hand.

A wizard's tale Review

A wizard’s tale

By Lord Despair

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Look, I know it’s beyond the purview of this review, but this…

I am hate, I am fear, I am sorrow, I am DESPAIR!!!!!!!!

…this is trying too hard.

I’m sorry, man, but someone had to let you know.

Also, apparently this is a resubmission. It was originally Aeluna’s first review for us. I’ll be doing a blind reaction before going back and re-reading the old review, though.

Quick Recommendation: I can see how this might eventually be worked into a solid Dark HiE story, but for now it’s unfocused and in dire need of spelling/grammar edits and POV correction.

Commentary + Review

(play music)

Make me.

Seriously, art and — particularly — video embeds are not a good idea in a story. In both cases, they are distracting and intrusive to the reading experience, cause the work to rely upon outside references rather than standing alone, and there’s no guarantee the reader will take from them what you intended.

Hone your craft until you can tell the story unaided, rather than relying on shortcuts like this.

Music links and story art belong in author notes and linked blogs as an addendum, not dropped in the middle of the narrative.

I’ve seen embedded images used well in fics maybe twice. Once was an EQG fic (that I reviewed in this group, and it remains one of the worst things I’ve ever read) where the images were intended to be cellphone screenshots of the characters’ text conversation. In the other, they were the maddened scrawls of a character in a horror fic as the darkness closed in on her.

But here, the image is just a way for you to show the characters without any effort on your part.

Youtube Video

Also my music is better anyway so there.

Set a fight to THIS.

Also, the names. I mean… I don’t expect you to change major character names at this point, but I think you need an example of what the first impression can be.

And when I see “Alkeyore”, all I can think of is the sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh.

Not that “Dark Wizard Eeyore” isn’t a hilarious mental image.

Also: Crossover waiting to happen, and you all know it. Make it happen.

(Photobucket)

''Don't play foolish games with me Teigue, I may have fallen for your tricks before, but they shan't aid you in this battle''

Punctuation! But more importantly, that “shan’t”. Archaic speech is all well and good, but you need to be consistent in its use, otherwise it’s jarring and out of place. Also…

I’m going to be straight with you, here. You need an editor. Not a spellchecker, a proofreader, or a copy editor, either, though there are many grammatical errors. I mean a proper content editor. Someone you can work with and bounce ideas off of, and who can help you improve your story in general. This can be a hard thing to do, but there are a few groups out there that can get you a start, at least, and you might join our Discord server and ask for help, too. Your best bet, though, is to find someone whose style you like and you have some mutual respect with, and then help each other. It’s really just a matter of two heads being better than one — that second perspective makes a world of difference.

I say this because, honestly, I see what you’re trying to do here, but you just don’t have the writing chops yet to pull it off. Yet. These are skills that can be learned, and they’re best learned through practice. If you can work out the editor thing, that will help. Though, this pretty much being a blind reading, you might improve significantly in later chapters — I haven’t seen that far.

Okay, with that out of the way, I think we’re far enough along for me to drop in a picture of Luna without it feeling like the images are getting spammy.

Relevant because discussion of archaic language.

I know this is the EQG one and she doesn’t do that.

Shut up.

(Derpibooru)

Now… these spells.

he released the spell of The Holy Fist

Alright, what’s that?

Using the Shadow Imprisonment

Alright, what’s that?

Okay, conceding that you do describe a little bit on the latter. But my point is, you can’t just throw spell names out and expect the reader to be able to visualize them. You need to describe things.

Writing that gave me this weird sense of deja vu, and I had to go digging. I think it’s because I’ve been telling people to show-not-tell their RPG attacks since reviewing Foxy’s crossovers back in 2014 — though the most recent iteration of that was more to call out the story on relying far too heavily on references in place of description.

The readers don’t know what you’re thinking, or how you picture the spell. You need to show them. What happens when he “releases the spell of the Holy Fist”? Is it something like “He threw a punch, though his foe was far outside of his reach. However, as he did, a ring of white light rushed down his arm, releasing from his hand in a fist-shaped blast of holy light that shot towards the other mage, only to miss by mere inches.”

I mean, that’s how I’d do it. That or just go all-out G Gundam madness.

Youtube Video

SHIIIIINIIIING FIIIIING—Okay I don’t even watch this show.

People think I’m a big mecha fan cause I like Gurren Lagann, but the only other mecha show I really ever watched was Gundam Wing.

Power Rangers doesn’t count.

Okay, as I read, this is coming back to my remarks about needing an editor and working to improve your writing. While the writing itself is a bit dry, the real problem here is the whole thing is just so cliche. I could probably quote this entire chapter and go through linking it, line by line, to the appropriate TVTropes entries. Granted, I could do that to a lot of stories, but there’s just a lack of finesse here that makes it more apparent than usual.

Oh, here’s something to highlight. Grammar lesson time!

Teigue then start to utter in the demon's tongue meanwhile his open hand starts to glow with the pure aura, and the other which held the key began to glow a sickly greenish red. A magic circle appeared under Alkeyore position, from him trying to form a spell to interrupt the mad wizard sickening hybrid spell.

This section displays a lot of the issues in the writing, so I wanted to give it a quick editing run just to demonstrate some ways you could improve the writing. I’ll highlight changes and include notes.

Teigue then *started** to utter in the demon's tongue while his open hand began to glow with a pure aura, and the other, holding the key, lit with a sickly * red. A magic circle appeared under Alkeyore* as he tried to form a spell to interrupt the mad wizard’s sickening hybrid spell.*

start > started — You’ve left the verb in the infinitive, when you want it in past tense to match the rest of your story.

meanwhile > while — “Meanwhile” should come after a longer pause — a period or a semicolon, for example. Since all of these things are happening as part of a single “action”, as it were, you should be using “while” to connect them.

starts > began — First, “starts” is in the present tense while you’ve been mostly using past. However, “started” twice in a row would be repetitive, so we’ll use “began” instead.

the > a — Using the definite article here suggests this is something we ought to recognize, such as the glow being present before this moment, which I don’t think it was. Use the indefinite to keep it general.

which held the key began to glow > , holding the key, lit — This is a larger edit because it accomplishes multiple things. First, it smooths the construction to make things easier to read. Second, it reduces repetition by culling another use of “began”. Third, it reduces another repetition point by avoiding a repeat of the word “glow.”

greenish > (removed) — Greenish-red is brown. “Sickly” works well enough on its own.

position > (removed) — This was grammatically incorrect in the first case, as it should have been “Alkeyore’s position”. However, the use of “position” is redundant anyway, since calling it “under” him has already determined its location, so it’s better just removed.

, from him trying > as he tried — This was very awkward construction, and shifts the action away from Alkeyore. Favor actions in the construction “he does” rather than rearranging things, and you’ll generally have stronger writing.

wizard > wizard’s — Just another missing possessive.

Still more could be done to improve this passage, but it’s a good start. In particular, the descriptions are still pretty weak, but that’s outside the scope of an editing pass — this is copy editing, that’s content editing.

Don’t have characters talk to themselves to deliver exposition. Just don’t. It’s a genre staple in comic books, more or less expected in some video game genres, and a hallmark of older anime series (though avoided in newer ones), but it winds up being very telly more often than not in literature. That’s not to say you can’t include an inner monologue. It’s when it becomes an inner dialogue that it becomes problematic.

Barring certain characters with unique perspectives…

(Derpibooru)

And that’s just the prologue. Now for Chapter One, Part One.

Another decision I don’t really agree with.

…Okay, I meant that, a bit tongue in cheek, in regards to the idea of splitting the chapters into multiple parts. But this is worse.

Luna’s pov

After raising the moon from the conformity of my chamber’s balcony I left the door of my chambers to meet my dearest big sister Celestia and also my good friend; now fellow princess, Twilight Sparkle for our friendly meeting.

Youtube Video

Let’s be honest, this doesn’t really merit Bardock Shaming. I just haven’t used him in a while.

The problem isn’t changing POVs. I have two alternating POVs in To Be The King and three in Legacy. The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson has 147. No, that is not a typo.

But the problem isn’t the switch of POV character, it’s the complete shift in POV style. The prologue is in third person omniscient (or possibly third limited on Alkeyore and head-hopping into Teague at times). Then we get into the story proper and suddenly it’s in first person. This is an incrediby jarring shift.

The spelling and grammar issues actually worsen considerably at this point, bordering on unreadable starting from the first paragraphs. I’m not even going to try to point out all the issues here, lest I find myself writing an entire English Grammar textbook.

Talk about beyond the scope of the review.

‘Aw horse-apples she'll take my actions much worse than the fact which the males ignore her’

Beyond the issues with the writing, this sounds nothing like Luna.

Okay but I’m trying to keep from ranting at you for bad shipping because that’s a matter of personal headcanon. Except SpiLight is just bad Famous back me up on this it is the only thing that will ever bridge our differences But quality of your ships aside, this feels like filler. The plot is about Alkeyore, isn’t it? Not setting up some Spike-Twilight-Celestia love triangle.

Also, brief shipping rant that consists of my own opinions and can’t be considered an objective judgement of the story in any way follows.

ShiningSparkle is less creepy than SpiLight. Twilight has had a sisterly relationship with Spike from episode one. Shining Armor came out of nowhere two full seasons into the show, and never really feels particularly connected to her. Spike feels more like her brother than Shining.

Plus Spike’s a little kid and Shining is a sexy beast who everyone wants.

(Derpibooru)

Shipping rant concludes.

Actually relevant to the review, nothing seems to connect the shipping to the main story. I can’t see any way they’ll build tension towards the same point, or how each could serve as an ongoing complication for the other. It feels like filler because we already have an idea of what the story is, and this adds nothing to that.

Also, really? Rarity, of all ponies, would be against pony-dragon relationships?

This running joke with the one guard being a foulmouthed PrenchFrenchman isn’t actually all that funny. It lacks subtlety.

Shut up, it’s dumb and if Fluttershy can say “French” then so can I.

the big group stallions staring at her with mouth agape and a few of them with a bit of drool falling to the floor, might the training be dammed but a wet mare was a wet mare after all.

It’s funny because everyone with a penis is a frustrated virgin manchild who can’t focus on actual life-threatening emergencies when there’s a chance he might see naked girls, even when everyone involved is a nudist horse.

Except it’s not funny. Not because it’s sexist and offensive, but just because it was already overdone back when Tex Avery was doing it in the 1940s. Worse, it’s totally out of tone for the rest of the scene and interrupts the action.

I was trying to see if Avery’s wolf character appeared anywhere on Derpibooru, but was unsuccessful. So have Rainbow Dash dressing in style instead.

(derpibooru)

Spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, word usage mistakes…

'' Methinks thy shake of thy earth thou in indeed has end''

Did Luna have a stroke?

And the start of Chapter One Part Three is… it’s just dumb. Sorry, man, but really. You set this up like some kind of epic adventure, but the past few scenes have been random comedy. Not good random comedy, either. The lolsorandom kind.

No… no… I must remain strong! - cuteness levels rising to  danger levels-enough to shatter of what remained of the weakened Celestia's will ''Oh sweet cakes Luna!!!”  Then she fell to the marble floor on her back as her frontal hooves covered her eyes  ‘The cuteness, the cuteness overwhelms us !!!!!!!’

With the threat gone Celestia thought to herself deeply embarrassed ‘An immortal who is over two thousand years, millennia of knowledge and centuries of combat experience…was defeated by the cuteness of a 22 year old new born Immoral… I must be … getting old…. Nononononononon… happy thought…Happy thoughts!.....that’s better’

Son, point to the “Comedy” and “Random” tags for me.

(Photobucket)

Anyway. The rest of the chapter is more of the same, and I also happened to hit 10k words during it. Though it manages to disappoint me once more. I was holding out hope that Teigue and Alkeyore were both sent to Equestria, and Teigue would be the ones the princesses met. Then he could use the expectation of Light Is Good to enlist their aid against his foe, the dangerous dark wizard Alkeyore…

But alas, it was not to be.

Tips

Multiple POVs can be a difficult thing to handle. I strongly suggest you rewrite to retain the original omniscient POV throughout. It would feel more consistent, and would probably help you clear up the tense switches, as well.

Consistent. Tone. We went from Dark Epic Adventure to Slice Of Life Random Comedy. It puts the chapters at cross-purposes.

While you need a content editor to help with dialogue, tone, and action, first you really need a solid proofreader/copy editor just to clear up the frequent spelling and grammar mistakes.

Don’t embed stuff in the text. It’s distracting.

Verdict

Having gone back and read Aeluna’s review, most of the original points still stand. The story’s tone is all over the place, the plot feels unfocused, point of view gets confusing, tenses change randomly, and spelling/grammar errors are nearly constant. This

Needs Work.

And Now… Your Moment Of Zen

Youtube Video