I haven't seen this crossover done, and I'm sort of glad someone did... even if I am not a fan of crossovers!

Linkedy Link: The Unicorn and her Boy by ChudoJogurt

First Impressions
Is... is this a crossover with horse and his boy? Like, my favourite Narnia story out of the lot? For reals?!

Oh. No, it's not. Well, close enough. I'd recommend naming it something a bit more applicable to the whole Caspian plot.

For context, the only thing I know about the plot of Prince Caspian, having never seen the movie or read it, is a game I played on the 360 (which actually wasn't that bad), so excuse me if I have no idea about certain plot elements.

Sunset Shimmer is a monster. After the Fall Formal, everyone in the CHS knows this.

But it was not always so. Long before, Sunset Shimmer was a student of Celestia, a magical prodigy and a nice little filly. But the friendship lessons of the kind Princess of the Sun were not the only ones she has learned.

This is story is a tale of one of such lessons - a story of her furthest adventure, her first war and most importantly of all it is a story of her first friend.

So, first off, a bit weird that an experienced warrior would choose to then go to CHS. Like, why not do something more applicable with all that experienced warrior stuff you have learned?

Also, having read the story, the synopsis isn't entirely applicable. It's really the last sentence that has any bearing on the story. You should probably make sure all the synopsis is talking about what's gonna happen, or something like that, so as to get your readers prepped for it.

Cover art is very nice, although again, having read the story, it's not really applicable, and actually quite misleading. With it I could only assume we WOULD be doing some horse + boy antics, but realised quickly that we spend a lot of our time in forests rather than deserts.

Tags are totally applicable, I have no issue with them.

Plot

The fic starts with a theatre-style story-with-a-story premise, where Sunset's speaking to her friends. I have no issue with this, and it's kind of fun to see that sort of thing appear every now and then. It quickly gets to the story, too.

One issue was the.. over emphasizing of the potential risk? Saying 'the world' was in danger kind of hypes the story up to quite high levels, and I wouldn't want to be disappointed. After all, none of the crossover material... from my knowledge, includes the world potentially ending.

The next seen in the pub is also pretty quick, and... a bit weird for how it ends, although it gives a pretty interesting cliffhanger at the end. I would've like to know about the aesthetics of the pub, but it is a minor issue. For the most part, pacing like this is great. Already we're getting our main character getting shot at! Awesome!

Yeah, the first chapter as an introduction is very strong. I would definitely be interested to read more from that starting point.

While I enjoyed the pacing at the start, I quickly noticed that... the pacing is pretty fast. A bit too fast, as I soon got the understanding that the author is trying to retell a story with Sunset in it, and is skipping from main-point to main-point.

This, of course, leads to another issue. The main character is not really Sunset, in the story. She helps everynow and then, sure, but she's not leading the group. Most of it's being led by this Caspian bloke, and later the cast of Witch and the Wardrobe, and to be honest... I very definitely got the vibe that the story was just the crossover material, plus a pony, who's decisions may well have been someone else's in the original. Hoofbumps everynow and then don't make her that interesting.

This irks me, as there's actually no reason that Sunset should be here instead of any other unicorn. She doesn't really adapt much of a personality through the piece, and you don't get a lot of what she's feeling... since the story goes to the next plot point so quickly.

One thing I did like was this:

Two chapters remaining, which I think I'll publish over the weekend.

Which shows that the author pre-planned the story, something which is good for a longer story. However... you can kind of tell why the author was able to.

As I kept reading, I found that the story really seemed to be only driven by what I can only assume was the actual plot of the original.

Conclusion

Grammar was rarely incorrect.

Only the one their victim and I remained.

^Worded incorrectly

"AAAAAAHHHHHH! IT'S ON ME! IT'S ON ME! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF MEEEEE!"

^Over-exaggerated, try to make sure you have as little caps lock as possible

Stuff like this is not really a spelling error, so it's really about wording correctly. From my understanding the author is from a different country, and therefore this might be difficult to do 100% of the time.

“It is time for you to go, little ones.” Under Aslan’s heavy gaze a tree un-twisted itself into an arch, through which I could almost see the lush green of Equestria and the purple mountain of Canterlot. “You shall yet see each other again, in this world or the other.”
With a heavy heart, and the last wave of my hoof, I stepped through the portal home.

This was the last couple sentences of the fic. No reflection on what just happened, no feelings or thoughts, just... I stepped through the portal.

That kinda sums up the story for me. It doesn't matter what she thinks, it matters what the original story was.

I actually had a concrit which was about this exact same concept, and I think I'll repeat it:

I would recommend that in the next fic the author writes, they should.. try to think up an original plot. This is the most urgent issue with the fic at present.

From my memory this wasn't as bad of a case of "the story is led by the original story", due a lot in part because of that really decent starting chapter (the fighting was pretty good, usually a lot of writers I see don't pull that sort of stuff off well), but it trails off in the next chapters, as we zoom through the original plot.

To be honest, the advice I gave to that previous author isn't entirely correct for this fic. I think the biggest issue in this fic was characterisation. I didn't really feel like I was experiencing what another character was thinking most of the time, and that makes immersion difficult to play out for the reader.

Try practice on a short experimental-story, where you can just think about what one character is thinking in one scene. From thereon, you can develop what you've learned there to a larger story like this; the principle, when added, gives a lot more depth to the story.

Thanks for putting this into the concrit folder! If there are any questions that you'd like answered over some of the points I brought up, go ahead and ask in the comments below. Most of the stuff I wrote up here was done about a week ago (I prepared, look at me :p) so I may not have covered everything,

As for anyone else who wants to get some constructive criticism, I do have a folder for it under my name. The cap's 3 for me, but once you put it in (when the old folders are cleared) that means that they will be claimed, and i'll be able to direct attention to them as soon as possible!

5763853
Thanks for the criticism!
The big problem with the fic and the characterization, is that I m trying to do a huge 10-fic character development, but I don't exactly have patience to write the whole thing before I start posting. So the incomplete story does leave a bit of a wrong impression.

That being said, the story does need a rewrite, if Im to be fair to my own work.

5764443 To be honest if you want the quickest fix, you'd make the story 2nd person.
Since the character is a rather blank slate, it doesn't have to be sunset... it could be anyone. And 2nd person works very well for that.
You would probably need to still add some characterisation into it, but it doesn't have to be so forceful on the 'what you're thinking' scale, since you can allow the reader to think for themselves.

5764468
I hope that the next installment of the series will add more character and there you'd be able to see the gradual turn towards the Queen Bitch From Hell that Sunset Shimmer was supposed to be before EQG