Note: I've read just about every word up to chapter 9-12 area, and skimmed some later passages.

Linkedy Link: Lateral Movement by Alzrius

What? No picture? Aww...
(Having read through, I'd say this story has quite a few memorable scenes that a bit of cover art could capitalise on)

First Impressions

Recently returned from the world of Everglow, Lex Legis, a brusque but brilliant unicorn, has finally achieved his dream...after a fashion. Convinced that he can govern Equestria better than the alicorn princesses, he and his new girlfriend, Sonata Dusk, have negotiated for rulership of the distant city of Vanhoover, devastated in the wake of the elemental chaos that has rocked Equestria.

But Vanhoover's problems go far beyond simple disaster-relief, and the pair soon come to learn that maintaining their dreams might be even more difficult - and more dangerous - than achieving them ever was.

^Interesting premise. It also fits with the tags (Adventure, Romance, Crossover, Drama)

Now, I was a bit confused when I saw that this was a crossover, so I look at the story this was written as a sequel for. And then I went back again. And... I think it's a crossover for Ponyfinder?
To be honest, with my lack of Ponyfinder completely lacking, I could only assume it was based on MLP, and is therefore... not much of a crossover.
Since it's a tabletop RPG (As I can only assume it found it's name from Pathfinder) I could also assume that this story is an adventure some players actually had while playing the RPG, which I find... interesting.
(Question to the author: Is ponyfinder any good? I've played DND 5th before, but currently don't have any groups to play any games with, so I wouldn't mind trying it out)

To be honest my first thoughts of what this fic would be about is a primarily tabletop-style story, chucked full of adventure, fighting, maybe a bit of politics? I like the idea of a character thinking they can do better, as the possibilities of threats that await them could be really sprawling.

Turning into the first chapter, I did notice something wrong, though.

Ticket Stub had always loved trains.

The hell is this? This ain't no fic about Ticket Stub! Or... is it?
On a bit further reading, no it's not. But please don't start like this. I don't care about Random NPC's obsession with trains.

Plot

After that odd opening, we get a general rundown of what's happening. MCs are going on a journey to Yanhoover, as described in the synopsis... but wait!
We got the wrong tickets! Now we're gonna have to walk 20 miles to get there!

On a side note, I do quite like these cliffhanger-endings to each chapter. They did make me want to read onward, since it always seemed that something had come up to change the previous status quo.

That said, I can't say I love the opening scene, being the train journey. It feels like it explains a lot of things, potentially... too much. In fact, I'd say if you skipped the entire train sequence, started up with

For a long moment, Lex simply stared at the twisted wreckage of the railroad track. Though he knew that the odds of this having anything to do with him personally were virtually nil, he couldn’t help but feel slighted. First Sonata had bought the wrong tickets, then Princess Cadance’s sending missionaries to upstage him before he’d even arrived, and now this. It was like the entire endeavor was cursed.

Then we'd be about as informed as we need to be to start this fic off, without all the unnecessary expo.

Moving on, we realise that our main characters are actually going to have to do a bit more walking, and potentially fight a dragon. Great start! We have our first sub-objective. So, they're walking through the woods... and they're walking through the woods... and...
Yeah. They're walking through the woods for around about the first 19 chapters.
Spoilers: They kill the dragon at chapter 34.
That's like, 50-60k worth of words to get through the first sub-objective... and don't ask me how long it takes to get them to Yanhoover.

Now, that sounds negative. And I think it was all based around one assumption; the synopsis.

But Vanhoover's problems go far beyond simple disaster-relief, and the pair soon come to learn that maintaining their dreams might be even more difficult - and more dangerous - than achieving them ever was.

Vanhoover's problems. Not Tall Tale's, not our good old chum Lex's. Vanhoover.

What I didn't realise is that the story is very properly tagged, but some tags are inherently more used than others. Romance and Drama is really the main plot of this story, from my understanding (More drama at the start,). The relationship between the two main characters is what most of the chapters consist of, and aside from some bits at the start where they're meticulously planning (which I very much enjoyed), we don't really pay as much attention to the goals that the story sets out AS the goals.

I did enjoy reading through from the first 8 or so chapters, but at about that point I realised that the pacing was exceptionally slow for what I wanted to see, so I dropped out. I was really quite surprised when I realised I would have had to read another 26 or so chapters to find the climax to what I assumed was the first subplot. I know this seems like quite a lot of hassle over one issue, but it really was the main issue I stopped reading. Pacing is super important.

(One other point I realised I didn't raise here: The main characters characterisation. I think they make a really nice duo, although I have to feel that Lex is a bit... too powerful/good at what he does, at times? Maybe it's expected due to where he comes from, but I found much more pro's to the guy than cons, and sometimes cons can make a character really interesting. Sonata, on the other hand, is bezzie)

Grammar

Not really a grammar issue, since I think it's pretty much all flawless here, but the issue I found that kept creeping up was unnecessary exposition.

While I enjoyed sections of the train sequence, it has a lot of spoken exposition, which is ultimately useless to the reader. I'd rather see this stuff in action than have it played out already before I get there.

Due to the long storied history between the two characters, there does seem to be a lot of backtracking, explaining points between the two characters which give reason for why they're acting now. This makes sense, but again, it's a lot of talking, and not as much dragon-hunting.

Conclusion

So, this fic is a shoe-in for enjoyable. Like, totes. I did enjoy the 8 or so chapters I read.

That said, I agree with Sonata here:

Stepping back, her usual excitement returned full-force. “Now let’s go slay us a dragon!”

'Now' being the key word here. This was said in chapter 5.
Now should be quicker.

Grade: 64/100
(Without the first 3 chapters, I'd give this a 66.)
Enjoyable

My score aside, if you're a fan of drama-romance, you should probably go check this out. It's written pretty well.

Thank you so much for your review! I think that you did a very good job, and wanted to make some general comments, ask a few questions, and answer those that you raised.

What? No picture? Aww...

(Having read through, I'd say this story has quite a few memorable scenes that a bit of cover art could capitalise on)

Yeah, that's been nagging at me for forever; I really need to get serious about either finding a quality artist who's willing to volunteer cover art, or simply set some funds aside to commission some. That said, I'm intensely curious as to what scenes you think would make for a good cover piece. Please let me know!

Now, I was a bit confused when I saw that this was a crossover, so I look at the story this was written as a sequel for. And then I went back again. And... I think it's a crossover for Ponyfinder?

To be honest, with my lack of Ponyfinder completely lacking, I could only assume it was based on MLP, and is therefore... not much of a crossover.

This is one of several very valid criticisms that you made, and which I fully expected that a sharp reviewer would zero in on.

The use of the crossover tag is partially an artifact of this story being a direct sequel to someone else's work. As both of the stories that this builds on use that tag, it seemed appropriate to use here also, since those tags are (at least somewhat) about how the story's universe is set up, rather than being all about the style and tone of the story the way that tags such as "drama" or "romance" are.

By itself, that's not a good enough reason to tag this as a crossover, but there was more to it than continuity with previous stories. Another aspect is that Everglow - the other world from the Ponyfinder campaign setting - has elements that are still very much important to the fabric of this story. Various items and creatures from that world are present in Equestria, and although the story hasn't had anypony actually going to Everglow (yet), having parts of it in Equestria is a major force underlying what's happening in this tale.

That, however, makes the crossover elements somewhat hard to recognize. It's not just that Ponyfinder is comparatively little-known, but that it inherits the major problem that D&D (its parent game, albeit somewhat by proxy) has in terms of marketing: it doesn't revolve around specific characters upon which major franchises can be built upon. While there are major characters in D&D lore, they haven't been exploited to the same degree that, say, comic book superheroes have been, and that's partially a fault of the individualistic nature of D&D as a game: it's about your heroes, not some NPCs who keep stepping in to save everyone (when you've been playing D&D for as many years as I have, you've heard story after story after story about groups that killed Elminster).

Throw in that Ponyfinder can't use D&D's Intellectual Property anyway (it can use its mechanics, thanks to the Open Game License, but it has to make up its own characters), and the long and short of it is that there's little here to directly signal that this is a crossover...though as I said, the fact that no one in Lateral Movement has gone to Everglow at this point has sort of compounded that issue.

All of that is why this doesn't feel like much of a crossover.

Since it's a tabletop RPG (As I can only assume it found it's name from Pathfinder) I could also assume that this story is an adventure some players actually had while playing the RPG, which I find... interesting.

Oh, how I wish that were so. No, unfortunately, my weekly gaming group has yet to give in to my cajoling that we should play a game of Ponyfinder...but I think that I'm starting to wear them down.

This fic is simply me mining Ponyfinder - and related Pathfinder/D&D-isms - for what I'm writing.

(Question to the author: Is ponyfinder any good? I've played DND 5th before, but currently don't have any groups to play any games with, so I wouldn't mind trying it out)

Here's the thing about Ponyfinder: it's not its own game, per se. Rather, it's a campaign setting that's meant to be used with either Pathfinder or D&D Fifth Edition (there's at least one product for using it with D&D Fourth Edition as well, but the specifics of licensed support for that game - and that it's no longer being supported - means that there's not likely to be any further material on that front).

As for whether it's any good, I quite enjoy the setting, though I still haven't gotten a chance to play in it. If you're a brony and a tabletop gamer, or even interested in tabletop games and want to bring ponies into them, then I'd recommend it.

To be honest my first thoughts of what this fic would be about is a primarily tabletop-style story, chucked full of adventure, fighting, maybe a bit of politics? I like the idea of a character thinking they can do better, as the possibilities of threats that await them could be really sprawling.

It is...or at least, it's intended to be. What you seem to be saying here is that you enjoy D&D-style adventures that also explore the wider ramifications of what the characters do, and in that regard I could not agree with you more. Politics is intended to be a core component of this story, it just...hasn't gotten there yet, as you pointedly note. That's particularly true as characters level up, which is why I wanted to try and start folding that in organically as the story progressed.

Turning into the first chapter, I did notice something wrong, though.

[...]

The hell is this? This ain't no fic about Ticket Stub! Or... is it?

On a bit further reading, no it's not. But please don't start like this. I don't care about Random NPC's obsession with trains.

I'm a little surprised by this, as I thought that what I was doing here was very quickly made obvious after the first couple of paragraphs. What's happening here is my answer to how to give this fic its cold open. Simply put, just having things start seemed too jarring to simply launch into, so I wanted a lead-in that could segue into the two main characters being on the train. To that end, having the story's point-of-view be "delivered" to them via following a minor character who has no other relevance seemed like a tried-but-true way to accomplish that. It's the literary equivalent of having a movie open with the camera following an extra who then walks up to the main character, rather than simply opening with a shot of the main character.

On a side note, I do quite like these cliffhanger-endings to each chapter. They did make me want to read onward, since it always seemed that something had come up to change the previous status quo.

Thanks for that!

I enjoy "ending on a high note," as it were, specifically for that reason, and I made sure to keep doing that over the first several chapters since I wanted to make an effort to draw new readers in until they were hooked.

Now, that sounds negative. And I think it was all based around one assumption; the synopsis.

You're right to criticize me for that. I wrote that synopsis before I'd written down a single word of this fic, and it shows. I honestly had no idea that the story would need roughly sixty chapters just to get to Vanhoover (with a "V," not a "Y," by the way), and while I do plan to eventually bring what the synopsis describes front-and-center, I can't deny that taking so long to get there does make the synopsis seem somewhat like a bait-and-switch.

All of this is part of the story's main weakness, which you identify later on...

What I didn't realise is that the story is very properly tagged, but some tags are inherently more used than others. Romance and Drama is really the main plot of this story, from my understanding (More drama at the start,). The relationship between the two main characters is what most of the chapters consist of, and aside from some bits at the start where they're meticulously planning (which I very much enjoyed), we don't really pay as much attention to the goals that the story sets out AS the goals.

This is an intriguing criticism, and one that I have several thoughts about.

Insofar as the beginning of the story is concerned, this is part of my feeling that the story needed a fair amount of opening exposition to describe who these characters were and why they were doing what they're doing. Although the story is a sequel of a sequel, and I'm expecting that most of the readers will be coming into it from those fics, I didn't want that to be a stone around the story's neck: telling people that they have to go read TWO fics with word counts that are six digits long before getting into this one is a pretty good way to kill off your potential audience's interest.

As such, I wanted to at least try and make this story somewhat accessible for newcomers, which meant that there needed to be some consideration given to what had gone before, since otherwise we're somewhat in medias res. Of course, your review seems to indicate that you haven't read the previous two stories, and still found these explanations to be cumbersome, suggests that I might have gone too far. Moreover, that's apparently not the only place where I seem to have done so...

I did enjoy reading through from the first 8 or so chapters, but at about that point I realised that the pacing was exceptionally slow for what I wanted to see, so I dropped out. I was really quite surprised when I realised I would have had to read another 26 or so chapters to find the climax to what I assumed was the first subplot. I know this seems like quite a lot of hassle over one issue, but it really was the main issue I stopped reading. Pacing is super important.

And here it is. The great big Achilles Hoof of Lateral Movement. I'm not at all surprised to see this being mentioned as the story's biggest weakness, because it is. I'm not responding to several other criticisms you raised because, in all honesty, they seem to mostly be a subset of this one, and that's entirely understandable. The story does move at a very slow pace.

The reason for this is quite simple: although I feel that the axiom "show, don't tell" is somewhat overused and quite often misapplied, I was still extremely cognizant of it when writing this fic...though I really shouldn't put that in the past tense, since it the story is ongoing and that's still true for how I'm writing it now.

Some personal background here: other than a chapter or two of a few anime-based bits of fanfiction, this is the first story I've ever written. That is to say, it's the first time I've ever tried to follow through on a story idea. To that end, I was (and still am) extremely nervous about what I felt was my greatest weakness as a writer: the temptation to just skip to "the good parts" and overlook the necessary buildup that's required to get there. To that end, I forced myself to write down all of the details and minor elements that were at all relevant to the story, rather than overlooking anything.

You (by which I mean you, enti0 the reviewer) see this most strongly at the beginning of the story. I'm intrigued, if a little puzzled, that you say that the first three chapters could have been eliminated, simply opening with Lex noting the latest disaster that their trip has suffered. Things like noting how the wrong tickets were bought, or that Cadance has dispatched acolytes to the city to which he's journeying, seem to me like exactly the sort of salient details that shouldn't be summarized so blithely, lest we run afoul of telling the audience things, rather than showing them happening.

The end result of this was a fic that, as you noted, starts to lay down bread-crumbs long before it begins to follow them...quite possibly too long. I'm of two minds about this, since I see an upside to fleshing things out so meticulously, but at the same time I'm not unaware of the story's downside; there's been plenty of times when even I want things to just hurry up...only to worry that I'm trying to speed through too many details that need to be dealt with.

In truth, all of this is caused by a single issue that's probably the real flaw with the story: there's no real plan for how it's developing. While I have outlines for several major plot-arcs in my head, this story has no firm outline of its overall progression, nor is there a concrete ending planned. I'm essentially making all of this up as I go, in other words. Each chapter is written in service to the idea of "okay, this is the current plot-arc...how would things likely progress from this point?" I'm convinced that the slow pacing stems, at least partially, from that lack of predetermined cohesion.

(One other point I realised I didn't raise here: The main characters characterisation. I think they make a really nice duo, although I have to feel that Lex is a bit... too powerful/good at what he does, at times? Maybe it's expected due to where he comes from, but I found much more pro's to the guy than cons, and sometimes cons can make a character really interesting. Sonata, on the other hand, is bezzie)

While I'm not sure if this is what you meant, the idea that the character has "much more pro's [...] than cons" is quite vindicating for me, since his appearances in both of the preceding stories had most of the commenters characterizing him as a villainous figure, rather than being a flawed protagonist.

To address the core of this criticism, though: Lex does come across as being more powerful than most of the ponies around him, simply because he is. In Pathfinder terms, he's a 9th-level character (a wizard, essentially) surrounded by 1st-level characters, and so that's going to create a notable disparity in terms of powers and abilities. I was quite cognizant of this, and so made a dedicated effort to play up his deficiencies, which were largely based around his antisocial personality. To that end, I'm not sure just how well I struck that balance...there's meant to be quite a few early scenes of him being awful to everyone around him because that's meant to create a contrast to how he's magically adept and skilled at problem-solving.

You do note that he has "much more" pros than cons, and so that means that you did see that the cons are there, which I like to think means that I'm on the right track. That said, his drawbacks are meant to color his strengths, rather than negate them altogether. I'd be interested in your further analysis of where you felt that he was "too powerful/good sometimes."

While I enjoyed sections of the train sequence, it has a lot of spoken exposition, which is ultimately useless to the reader. I'd rather see this stuff in action than have it played out already before I get there.

To that end, I'm not sure how much I could have done that, since as I noted, a lot of this has to do with the fact that I'm trying to bring new readers up to speed by communicating "no, really, you can still enjoy this if you haven't read the preceding stories." Of course, that might be somewhat futile, since they need to have already started reading it before that idea can be communicated to them in the first place.

'Now' being the key word here. This was said in chapter 5.

Now should be quicker.

Thanks again for all of your feedback! I'll do my best to keep this in mind going forward!

5713563

For a long moment, Lex simply stared at the twisted wreckage of the railroad track. Though he knew that the odds of this having anything to do with him personally were virtually nil, he couldn’t help but feel slighted. First Sonata had bought the wrong tickets, then Princess Cadance’s sending missionaries to upstage him before he’d even arrived, and now this. It was like the entire endeavor was cursed.

Mmm... now that I think about it again, This might be a bit of a fast way to introduce everything in the first chapter. It might work if there was some more explanation to the situation in the next paragraph. It's a lot to take in by itself.

The reason I'd say the train bit is unneeded, is because it's how I felt when I was reading it. I wasn't confused at the start, admittedly; I thought it'd be a quick cut, or maybe a small blurb on what happened during the ride over.
Then I saw "Different stop Tall Tale" and I thought "Ah, so the idea is to get us straight over to Tall Tale via a cut, then we start characterisation as we have the 20 mile walk over. Nice."
By the third chapter, I realised this wasn't the case. 100 miles is a bit long for a walk, and I suppose that gives credence to the amount of chapters.

I realised that nothing had really 'happened' in the story by the time chapter four had hit that could be capitalised by having a few extra chapters. A lot of it was news, which could similarly be brought to their conversations while they're hitting the road. (That said, they didn't really have a road to hit)
The third chapter is really just extra slower pacing that the story didn't need. Oh! The train's stopped? Why? Oh... the train track's gone. Well, guess that's that, then.
It's rather mundane, even though the reason for it is pretty interesting, and is commented on in the examination period in the later chapters. Now, if that mundane thing was merged in to a conversation while investigating the track... then it could be told in a fraction of the time.

Oh, I didn't mention this in the review either, but: The third chapter also brings to attention one key flaw with the train system- why don't they have a repair kit? I'd say it's not too much to ask for a train system that takes days to get from A to B, with practically no support along the way, to have some way to fix a track. Especially in a world with magic.
It's not too much of an issue with the story, either; they could still run out to investigate what did it, even if the train track is fixed and on the way over. (Although maybe there's something that happens in later chapters, which would be impossible if they had train service?)

5713759

Oh, I didn't mention this in the review either, but: The third chapter also brings to attention one key flaw with the train system- why don't they have a repair kit? I'd say it's not too much to ask for a train system that takes days to get from A to B, with practically no support along the way, to have some way to fix a track. Especially in a world with magic.

It's not too much of an issue with the story, either; they could still run out to investigate what did it, even if the train track is fixed and on the way over. (Although maybe there's something that happens in later chapters, which would be impossible if they had train service?)

I didn't mention that because the extent of the damage that was dealt to that section of track seemed self-evidently beyond what anything short of a specialized repair team could handle. I'll confess that I don't know much about "repair kits" for broken sections of track, but what was described in chapter four wasn't just a damaged section of rails. Rather, the rails were twisted and partially dissolved, the sleepers were scattered and broken, and even the ballast (that is, the raised section of ground that the tracks and sleepers were resting on) was deeply gouged and torn up. Even if they had new rails and sleepers, they'd need more than those to reset the ground that they were resting on, and that's not something that can be done casually; even a slight shift of that could throw the tracks off enough that the train could derail.

Insofar as the "world with magic" aspect goes...that really isn't the cure-all that a lot of the fandom seems to think that it is. There's a persistent perception that I've come across about how "unicorns are the master race" because they can cast spells. This always makes me grit my teeth, because that's doesn't match what we see in the show! While we do see exceptional unicorns like Twilight or Starlight who can work incredible feats of magic, it's no coincidence that they're unicorns who have cutie marks related to doing magic. Most unicorns don't, and not coincidentally, they can't do very much at all.

Rarity has a few spells related to tailoring and stylistic presentation, but that's about it. Shining Armor can raise powerful shields, but that's about the sum total of what he can do (or at least, do notably well)...another case of that being his special talent and that's it. Sunburst knows a lot about magic academically, but can't actually cast powerful magic. Sunset Shimmer is an exception, but in that regard she's essentially another Starlight Glimmer. Trixie is good at stage magic (as she herself admits when she befriends Starlight) but not the real deal. Moon Dancer is a proficient academic, but displays no great talent for spellcasting (just like Sunburst, really). And of course, infant unicorns don't have control over their powers, losing their innate surges as they grow.

When I wrote this fic, I used Pathfinder/D&D Third Edition as a baseline for a lot of how the world works, particularly with regards to magic, and the end result was pretty clear that only a couple of exceptional ponies have anything beyond the most minor of spellcasting abilities. I suppose a unicorn with a train-related cutie mark could have done something, but even that seems like a stretch here. Short of levitating new stretches of track around, which is functionally no different than just carrying them, I don't see how your ordinary unicorn pony could have done anything to repair that level of damage in anything that remotely resembles a timely fashion. And those are the ponies that can actually cast spells; earth ponies and pegasi are even less able to bring magic to bear to solve their problems. (One potential issue was having a pegasus fly ahead to survey the damage, but that was solved by that sequence happening at night, to say nothing of them having no reason to go and check for further breaks in the line.)

Starlight, Sunset, and maybe Shining Armor are unicorns that could bring not-inconsiderable amounts of magic to bear. But in D&D terms, everyone else is slinging around a couple of cantrips and that's it. Other than that, outside of areas of flight and strength/endurance, pegasi and earth ponies don't even deserve to be mentioned. All of that is notwithstanding their cutie marks, but even those have their limits, outside of unicorns whose special talent is spellcasting.

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that I don't think very much of the "world of magic" argument. It's a hand-wave that suggests that there should be a magical solution for whatever problems crop up without taking the time to examine the background assumptions that are being made. The fact is, based on what we see in the show, magic is highly prevalent in Equestria, but outside of a very small group of power-players, magic isn't very powerful. Those power-players just happen to be the stars and supporting cast members of the show, which tends to skew the perspective of just how common stronger forms of magic are in Equestria. You don't judge the average people of a world by what the local superheroes can accomplish.

It's because of things like this that I made sure to spend some time examining why the characters did what they did, and how, whenever they ran into a problem or other troublesome situation. For me, nothing ruins immersion in a story faster than thinking that the characters are ignoring plausible avenues of action purely because the plot wants them to do so. Since the show doesn't go out of its way to explain the background assumptions and details that explain how things like magic work, they need to be addressed when they come up in the story, so as to explain why magic – particularly when wielded by a main character of considerably above-average ability – isn't a panacea.

5713563 Oh yeah, and cover art recommondations:

Personally I can think of two of the top of my head. One being pretty obvious; dragon fight, though you may/may not want to use that for spoiler reasons.

The other would hark to the travel, where the group are walking, disheveled, through a forest with a train track right next door in the scene... maybe a look of fatigue on the bloke's face, and a strange optimism on sonata.
Or, another way you could do it with their expressions; they're both arguing. Something which looks energetic, rather than the feeling of exhaustion through travel, as the story DOES center on the two characters interactions with each other, and fatigue does seem less emphasized.

5723664 Thanks for your recommendations! Your thoughts match my own pretty closely, so hopefully I'll be able to find someone who can make a piece that does a good job representing the story.