Here, the Scrollmasters will write their reasons for rejecting a fic, along with any critiques they might offer, and why they didn't see the fic as something worthy of a heartfelt recommendation. Feel free to comment on the points of any of these rejections. We welcome discussion, but please keep it civil.

Please Note: Fics that are rejected are not necessarily bad (in fact a great majority of them are good). We are merely stating our reasons as to why we aren't giving heartfelt recommendations for them.

Quizzical by JMac is a decent story, but it has several problems right out of the gate. First and foremost of these is the rampant passive voice. The story suffers a great deal from this construction, making it feel more like a report to be glossed over rather than a story to be experienced. From an artistic standpoint, the passive voice could have been advantageous if it were used to narrate from the protagonist’s point of view, but since the narrator speaks in the third person omniscient, the concession can’t be made. The passiveness of the narration robs the story completely of the author’s voice.
The characters are well-grounded, however, and the dialogue, though suffering from poor punctuation and tagging, is pretty solid. This may be the first fic I have ever read in which the author suffered from lack of voice while his characters had strong voices of their own.
The formatting is a bit wonky which is easy to do, especially with fimfic’s weird tendency to interpret some tags oddly, but there are a lot of strange formatting artifacts in the text. It has nothing to do with the story, per se, but it is always good to present your work uniformly. To me, this shows a level of dedication for your work that makes me inclined to trust you. Also, fixing formatting errors almost always helps with clearing erroneous clutter from trifling typos to strange sentences to weird words. These errors were unfortunately numerous enough to detract from the experience of the story.
I see a lot of potential in this fic, so much so that I think if the author were to go back and address the technical shortcomings, it could very well go from being merely decent to extraordinary.

--Laichonious

What My Dark Half is Telling Me by Eskerata is an attempt at a short, sweet character piece that seems to be the goal of every other author on the site, sometimes. The only difference is that this one takes a more ambiguous approach to it, to the point where it took me a double-take to really get what the author meant. The good thing is that the story as a whole wasn't what I was expecting, and the bad thing is that suffered from style, narrative, and tone issues. There are obvious attempts to spice up the narrative with witty analogies, similes, and metaphors, but the passive voice that the majority of the writing carries makes them more annoyances than spice. It's like putting onion in a dish to add some flavor, except the onion is two months old.
The narrative, which there is a lot of for a dialogue-centric character piece had a strong telling style and a passive voice. This kills the narrative. Luckily, most of the narrative is contained to the first chunk of the story and the conclusion, and unluckily the two combined take up the majority of the story. What should be well-written quips simply fall flat, seemingly shoe-horned into the narrative in a last ditch effort to liven it up. While some of the better bits could've been hilarious or simply astoundingly good had the story been written by someone more skilled, or edited to ditch the telling style and passive voice, that isn't the current case, and potential unused is still unused potential.
The second major issue is the tone of the story, and this is where we get into more subjective grounds for the time being. While I understand that the majority of the people writing stories on fimfiction are human (There are, of course, some that are aliens and some that are AI, and probably a few horses. You can never tell on the internet.), it's of constant note that ponies /aren't/ human, and don't share human society or behavior.
It isn't so much sad as it is dark, and even the darkness is pale compared to what the tag intends. There isn't a "slightly" dark tag, however, so the only one I could suitably find for this story would be Slice-of-Life. Tone-wise, it's a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, and it hurts the story in the end. Ponies act slightly out of character and tend toward more human actions (In the case of MLP, darker), there's reference to murder, and typical pony words are removed from dialogue and replaced by more human slang, including things like "anyone" and "fricking". Other than the mentioning of hooves, manes, and tails, there's not a lot that ties this to MLP.
The story as a whole, with its flaws, does have promise. There's not so much a twist ending as there is a secondary meaning, and there's an interesting metaphor behind it that took me another read to figure out, if only because it was so outside the box that it wasn't readily apparent.
I read the description and thought to myself, "Oh boy, it's another Pinkamena fic. Here come the Cupcakes references and blatant disregard for canon on a story without the AU tag." While the references and disregard for canon are there, they're surprisingly small enough that even I can forgive them. In fact, a lot of what this story did sort of surprised me, and in a good way. It's unfortunate that the quality of the writing, the style, and the tone don't mesh together very well, because the idea behind the story is better than most. That said, this story doesn't fit the quality standards and must be denied.

Jokers Wild by: blowngasket is a story with a neat premise. Celestia's court jester ends up being forced into a vacation in Ponyville and thus forced to interact with the mane 6. Sadly, however, the story falls a little short of the mark on its immediate execution.

I'll be frank, I only read the first four chapters before I made the decision of rejecting this fic. I have a few reasons for this.

In these four chapters, the OC, Perry O'te, comes across as an amiable character with potential, but doesn't really show any depth beyond the clown who is already acquainted with Twilight and Spike. I was hoping for a little more depth to show through, as a sort of promise to keep me reading, but there was no real hook that had me wanting to know much more about him as a character.

For having the adventure tag, the story misses its mark (at least by the fourth chapter). And that's not too big of a deal for me, since I figure a Slice of Life—which is the vibe I certainly got from this story—would actually play better to the premise. I also admit that I didn't get far enough into the story to know how well the Romance element of the story is realized. And that there is one of the major issues for me as a reader. I wasn't engaged by the first four chapters of this story. We are reintroduced to the Mane 6, who, quite frankly, could be realized a bit better. It felt like they were there just for the sake of including them, and not because they had reason enough to be there. While there was also no sense of struggle in the story. The only struggle that was apparent from the get go was how our jester OC was going to interact with the Mane 6, but that proved to be an entirely underwhelming encounter.

The other issue, perhaps the most glaring issue that I had with this fic is that the characters are humanized for absolutely no purpose beyond the fact that the author can. Honestly, when I saw the initial premise, I thought it could be very delightful, especially with the ponies that we love, but making all of them humans... that throws me for a loop, because there are many implications that can't just be shrugged off. If they aren't ponies, they aren't the characters from the show, which undermines the investment that readers have in them. Much like with the rule 69 fic should necessarily change them from the characters we know (at least authors tend to have the decency to change the character's names for these fics), or an Alternate Universe fic should change the characters in some meaningful way.

But this humanization is done without reason, aside from that of the whimsical, and it isn't followed up by addressing how these changes influence who these characters are on a fundamental level.

So those two particular reasons (Lack of interesting struggle/characters, and humanization for no reason) are why I am not recommending this fic. Is the story bad? Well, it wasn't awful, and I was genuinely interested at the beginning, but I quickly became disengaged, and there were a few grammar errors that distracted me a bit.

Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle

2858880 I guess I can't fault you on becoming disinterested. Looking back, I guess it was kinda silly to hold off to getting to the major points of the character for so long. An early attempt at shock value, I suppose. I won't say the whole shtick about "going one more chapter" or anything like that. I do respect your opinion. I will not ask you to change your mind, or your verdict, or anything like that. Please read up to chapter 5's end, and just tell me in a PM what you think. If you don't feel like it, I will hold no ill will to you or your decision. Simply a request for your thoughts and possibly advise on how to better execute what I was going for.

Secondly, the humanized thing. I should probably explain myself a bit here. I have always been a 'why not' kinda guy. Because of this, as well as my admiration for another humanized story I have read here, I decided to take a chance and do this in said style. Definitely not something a first time story writer should do, unless you're attempting badly written clop, but not the point. I possibly would have been better off doing this in the normal style of the show. I don't believe it was beyond my capability. Honestly, I could guess doing it like this was much more difficult. Would I change it? Probably not. Compared to how this looked when it first came out, before I went through with a large chainsaw and cut away at the foolishness that was the beginning workings of my story, I am actually quite happy with it. There are people who have supported me since the beginning, and even today people jumping in as I continue to post chapters from the latest in the series. In the end, the humanized style works for some, not for others. Even so, I will continue to write it like so, because I enjoy it and because I know others enjoy it. Sometimes it is best to just have fun.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to look over my story. I do apologize that you didn't find it enjoyable. Anyways, have a great day.

Being Neighborly by: JMac it's a short first-person comedy adventure fic that has an entire OC cast in an original location in Equestria. This means that, inevitably, there needs to be world-building, and I'll admit that JMac does a very solid job on quickly presenting us with an strong original character and situation. Yes, the beginning was well done, and I was genuinely looking forward to how this story would play out.

What followed the opening scene wasn't really what I expected. Some decent bouts of dialogue which paint the town of Eutaw County pretty well and give the exposition needed to set up the conflict. The dialogue however is a problem in that it takes up a very large portion of the fic, and some of that time could—and in my opinion should—have been spent in making the main character a bit more relatable (drag us into that head space). Because heading into that final struggle, I wasn't feeling worried for our protagonist, but was much more focused on figuring out what was going on and expecting a twist which wasn't there. Though to be fair, expecting a twist and not getting it is very akin to running into a twist in the first place. In any case, I wasn't expecting the resolution to the conflict that I got.

I think this fic could have benefited from being made a bit longer and building up the protagonist to a bit more relatable before introducing the conflict and perhaps it would have given more context for the jokes and add to their humour.

I didn't find much comedy that I could laugh to in this fic. Perhaps because I felt distanced from the protagonist, I couldn't find myself really grinning at all at the things that were comical to the characters. And some of the narration which was supposed to be humorous in nature missed it's mark, as I started to feel as though there were some meta-context I was missing which was fueling half the comedy of the fic. Which is a shame. I like grinning while I read stories.

So, I am rejecting this fic because the protagonist wasn't engaging enough and the comedy just didn't work for me as a reader. Though the world-building is admirable for such a short fic (and in my opinion, it's also the biggest draw this fic has).

Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle

Background Pony by Shortskirtsandexplosions

Well. This is a beast of a story. I remember well my first encounter with the one-shot of the sad minty musician. Then... then it exploded. Background Pony (BGP henceforth) is a sprawling, dense, heavy, leviathan. It has but one purpose: to destroy you. That my come off as a bit overly dramatic but it is essentially the truth. SS&E started like so many of us do, small with a big idea. The original one-shot, or the first chapter, was one of the best on the site at the time. I was there from the beginning and got to watch as the story grew into the behemoth it now is, ending up in exactly the place you never expected yet knew all along.
BGP is the definition of ‘sadfic’, the purest and most savage of the breed. Through the long, heart wrenching journey with Lyra, the pony always forgotten, you watch as she struggles against an impossibly ancient mystery. I consider the first half of the story to be some truly fantastic writing. The themes are deep and the lessons cutting. You can’t help but connect and feel for the protagonist in her struggle. The character building in this story is superb. The worldbuilding is positively erratic but somehow solid in a haphazard way. The trials she endured were as monumental as any Greek hero or heroine, and each chapter lined in brambles of nettle and thorn, paved in tears and ice, had a morsel of good at the end.
The pain was worth the destination. The journey was justified with knowledge. At the end of every chapter, she got one step closer... to something. About midway, things started getting out of hoof. The pace accelerated to a mind-numbing speed. Mountains upon mountains of existential tidalwaves hammer into the protagonist and reader alike. Time falls apart. The universe begins to unravel. What started as a thought-provoking and relatable yet fantastic story, became a dark and imposing dungeon where masochists indulged in their favorite pastime. Gone were the tantalizing hints at deeper meaning to the pain. Gone were the rays of light at the end of the tunnel. Only darkness and despair held sway in this nightmarish hellscape of memories stolen.
The end of the story, awash in the mutterings of a madpony and hopeless cold, fell far short of the emotional payoff once promised by the beginning of the story. The lessons learned were dashed to pieces. The experience gained was counted as naught. It was relentless punishment with no hope of reward. So much energy was squandered at the end of the last chapter that is was like watching a mountain fall off of a bigger mountain, on the moon, to the earth and the impact was just a little paff.
BGP had the opportunity to be earth-shattering. The worldbuilding was some of the best I have seen, but it suffers greatly from its frantic creation. There are so many things so very wrong in the plot that many times I was left wondering who had stolen the story from the author to put in bits at the last minute. BGP is solid and grounded, but that only serves to grind its readers into dust, because dust is all you will be. As an experience, BGP is singular. As a story, BPG lacks a simple trait: hope.
Technically, the story was executed well, but the prose is so purple, there are times you feel the urge to stick your finger in its mouth to find out if it’s choking on an acorn and then perform CPR. In the middle and towards the end of the story, the prose becomes so distracting, half of the reader’s time is spent trying to decipher concepts that would have been easy to digest otherwise. The worldbuilding and character development become lost in a morass of fifty and ninety dollar words strung together by hideously long sentences chock full of philosophical drudgery. The protagonist becomes hopeless and destitute along with the plot, the meaning and the reader.
BGP does not inspire awe. Once the glow of its crushing mass has been looked over, the core of this story reveals itself to be nothing but a black pit. Thus, I have barred its inclusion in the archives. Read it if you dare.

--Laich

Cloud Fishin’ by Church is a short story about a young colt with an impossible dream. Sounds good for a premise, but execution fell short. The entire story is in the present tense, and while it was consistent, it was more of a pre-tense. I understand and appreciate the work that goes into writing in a character’s voice. I also appreciate the artistic implications of writing in a non-traditional tense like the present, but honestly, there is no reason to fix what isn’t broken. The character spoke in a colloquial drawl which seemed to mean only one thing: apostrophes, apostrophes everywhere. All I could take away was the overwhelming feeling of Forrest Gump without a movie to watch during the clipped and meandering dialogue.
Characterization was spot on, no complaints there. Each character featured was decently realized and represented, but the long stretches of drawling monologue between dialogue and character interaction quickly began to grind away my tolerance for artistic license. The story also seemed to try way too hard to push emotional buttons. The fact that it was written in the present tense automatically limited the author’s ability to dress the scenes properly in order to push those buttons. There was precious little setting given throughout the piece. That would be fine, if it were a movie. Setting the scene and invoking the proper mood, building the context and ambiance, all of these things are necessary to trigger emotional echoes.
The art of ‘sad’ is not to bludgeon your reader with expository lines engineered to get a rise. Explicitly stating the emotions of a character does not automatically result in echoes for the reader. If this story truly wished to be sad, all of the emotion would have been shown and the falling circumstances implied. This story did neither, in fact, it almost arrogantly assumes that after four thousand words of drawl and by-the-minute exposition we have endeared ourselves to this nameless character. The end showers the reader with overt button-pushing one right after another, after another, working, as it were, under the assumption that the reader is firmly in its clutches for no discernible reason.
In the end, this story felt incredibly empty. It was flat, full of words that didn’t really say much. If I had to compare it to a color, I would say that this story was not white, it was not grey, it was not black. It was beige.

--Laich

Love Will Set You Free by Ospero holds the tags "Romance" and "Adventure". I'm going to be frank. There are a lot of really, really bad stories out there. That's in part why we made this group. Luckily, this isn't one of them, but it's on the verge. It follows innumerable cliches in MLP fanfiction - so many that they're impossible to point out. The romance isn't romance, just shipping plain-and-pure. The writing is riddled with poor word choices and bad form, the style is heavily telling, and the plot feels like it trundles along in an awkward fashion. Maybe in a stroller on a cobblestone road.
The writing from the get-go isn't necessarily bad, but it possesses the dull qualities that ruin any work of fiction. I present a quote from the melodramatic and almost entirely random beginning.

He wanted to cry, to scream, but nothing came. He was beyond tears and beyond rage, lost in the darkness of despair.

Perhaps I can forgive the arbitrary nature of the start. In media res is a legitimate way of starting things off with a bang, except the "bang" in this case is just kind of a paff. It was a good attempt at an introduction, but it painted a bleak picture for the rest of the story. The style used in the beginning is, sadly, used throughout the entirety of the narrative. Dialogue isn't much better, and at times it's impossible to tell who's talking without a name applied to it. Everyone talks with the same monotone manner etched into the dialogue style. It's boring, and turned me off in a big way. When your narrative is bad, the dialogue can still pull through, but when both are bad, you lose. Everyone loses, really.
Speaking of winning and losing, let's discuss the adventure part. The plot itself is the bog standard "evil thing is picking off the elements one by one" that's prevailed since the Season 2 premiere episodes in stories like these, except this one comes with a twist… that is naturally in the first four chapters. If the picture from the cover isn't any indication, Spike, Apple Bloom, and two others are now Elements of… something. It's poorly explained through expository dialogue via Luna, who arrives and then disappears once the dialogue is given. The exposition and worldbuilding she created was extremely minimal, and I barely had any clue what was going on. If you want readers to be surprised by things, do it right. If you want to establish a world with rules, set the rules properly. Nobody likes "going with the expository flow" as it were.
Also, the romance isn't romance. It's shipping. AB likes Spike for no real reason and it seems to be more of a childish attempt at serious romance than anything else. Sure, they're kids, but they're also not capable of the high a level of romantic understanding they seem to show in the story. Maybe I'm reading too deep into it, but it felt off. Either way, the romance was poorly handled and tacked onto the story for the sake of kicking off the plot. Which never /makes/ sense in the first place since it just so happens to all hinge on Rarity randomly falling in love with Fancy Pants. It's never explained. It's just there as a source of conflict.
I'm not even going to discuss the ending or the climax, because by then I was just slogging through it, begging for it to stop. It was contrived. It didn't make sense even in the rules set by prior arbitrary worldbuilding, and was naturally won with the autowin button, the now more-accurately dubbed "Elements of Whatever the Heck You Want".
The songs were nice, though. Each chapter was apparently inspired by a specific song, most of them non-English in nature and lyric. It's both a bad thing and a good thing, and I'll leave it at that.
This story does not meet the standards of the Canterlot Archives and is hence denied. Shame on your family.

--Rets. Yea. I'm going to be that reviewer.

Stardust by Arad is one of the rare “good” crossovers on fimfiction, at least according to the many, many fans of it. The XCOM franchise has had a long, bumpy life, and it’s rare we get any crossovers with it, let alone good crossovers. With the fancy cover-art, the recommendation from somebody I trust, and a slight interest in and knowledge of the XCOM: EU game, a few months ago I happily dived in.
Which, in part, is why this fic is going straight from the submissions folder to the rejected folder. I am the only one in the current Scrollmaster lineup that’s read it all the way through, and I’m also one of the two that’s played XCOM. Maybe that introduces some bias into it, somewhere along the lines, but the bias would be for the fic, not against it. Unfortunately, even with the bias, the story doesn’t meet the requirements needed to be accepted.
The story is well written for a fanfiction, which is to say that it holds passable grammar and a readable style. There are a billion incorrect ellipses and a good deal of quirky dialogue-related grammatical errors, but most of them can be chocked up to simple errors. They’re forgivable. On those merits alone, coupled with a great story, Stardust could’ve easily made it in. It had a lot of perfect opportunities to do a lot of awesome things, and each and every one of them was either ignored or squandered.
When it comes to crossovers, the author treads the same ground that he does with regular fanfiction, but this time doubly so; canon adherence is either a religious text or an obstacle to get rid of, depending on who you are. I and the other Scrollmasters have agreed that in this case, canon should be adhered to. XCOM: EU (XCOM: EW does play into the story, but that will be discussed later) has its own unique canon to most of the other games in the series, but it also has a very open-ended way of presenting it.
It could be argued that if a canon is open-ended, the author has free reign to do “whatever they want”, but the true fact of the matter is that they don’t. It could also be argued that most of the inspiration comes from the original XCOM game, with larger scale battles, multiple Skyrangers, etc, but unfortunately this isn’t the original XCOM game, no matter how many people would like that.
Head-canon, or fic-canon as it were, should still fit into the rules of the already existing canon. XCOM: EU happens to be about managing relatively smaller, weaker resources and outwitting the opponent. Anyone who plays on the higher difficulties will know that outwitting the vastly superior aliens is the key to victory. In early game, when this story obviously takes place, you only get four men per “team”, which you only have one of. At maximum, you can have four Interceptors at each world region on the map. It’s you, your wits, and four unlucky bastards against an entire alien invasion.
This story obviously doesn’t like that. The skirmishes and covert-ops is gone, and with it the tenseness of being the inferior force. Sure, lots of XCOM soldiers die in both the game and the story, but last I checked XCOM never had thirty to fifty people going on missions, or multiple squadrons going up against massive alien fleets. The personal feeling of the XCOM combat is chucked into the distance for what are attempts at epic, large scale battles that don’t fit. For multiple reasons.
The primary reason is because the story sets itself up as a drama piece, which would’ve been cool. A sort of soap-opera going on inside of the XCOM base could have done the story well. Twilight engaging in discussions on the morality of violence, drama with Valhen (Who I’ll get to after this.) and the other pony-phobes, and even hunkering down and hoping the nicer of the XCOM soldiers make it back from the latest terror mission would’ve all been great boons to the story. Some of them are attempted, but it’s never followed through to the end.
Morality arguments, especially over violence and xenophobia, are mentioned repeatedly. Twilight even has nightmares that recur throughout the entire story. There’s a lot of buildup, and then it paffs to the sidelines. At best, it could be argued that it was solved with one of the characters shooting a bad guy and saying “He would’ve shot you first.”
Valhen. Tsk. Tsk. If you aren’t aware of the XCOM lore, Moira Valhen is the most sadistic, demure mad scientist you’ll ever meet. Even in the game, her little dialogue quips have had me shuddering in fear. In the game, other characters comment on the fact that she’s the aliens’ worst nightmare, and they’re all lucky she doesn’t know how to use a gun. So, naturally, I was looking forward to her interaction with Twilight. In the first few chapters, I wasn’t disappointed. Following the line of thought that the story was going to be an interpersonal-conflict-soap-opera of in-base drama, Valhen was blatantly going to be the villain, taking any steps she could to get authorization to probe Twilight to death. I’m not even kidding. The whole point of the story was for Twilight to prove that Friendship > Everything Else, so it was bright in my mind that the final climax was going to be between her and Valhen. It was going to be great.
And then it got solved with expository dialogue, a few weepy moments, and Twilight sharing the power of friendship via hug. In not even the middle of the story, at that point. It was such a wasted opportunity that I had a hard time reading the rest of the chapter. It also smashes canon to little, tiny itty bitty bits. Valhen does not get fixed with a hug and a bit of crying. That’s for sure.
Around that time was when the story started falling into chaos, literally. It began focusing a bit more on combat, showcasing sweeping battles and complete carnage between the absolutely gigantic XCOM force and the aliens, despite neither ever bringing more than one ship to a fight in canon. Upwards of thirty XCOM soldiers die every battle. Lots of stuff explodes. Skyrangers get shot down. It’s all very dramatic. It’s all very out of place.
The story also seems to want to get away from the author. For instance, in XCOM, it’s common to have your best-kept soldier get killed off by a completely BS shot and I /swear/ that alien shot through a wall, you stupid freaking glitch piece of…!
Anyways, a main character dies. Woop-de-doo, right? It’s in a climactic massive battle that marks a turning point in the story. Worries were shared. Tears were shed. It was a perfect twist in the plot and then Discord shows up and brings them back to life.
Wait, what?
Yeah. Discord does that. Multiple times. If you’ve ever written something, and I mean REALLY written something, at times it’s like the story writes itself. In this case, it was as if the author let the story write itself, then decided what the story wanted was dumb, so he inserted a Deus Ex Machina to get it back on track. NEVER. DO. THAT. Especially with Discord. He’s already the god-tier character you used to start off the plot. Let it be. His intervention was pointless.
There are more instances of things just falling apart. The “final battle” isn’t so much a battle as it is Twilight curb-stomping the entire alien invasion and then getting nailed by a marine (Spoilers, she doesn’t die!!!!! … obviously). It feels rushed, poorly executed, and in the end a source of dull conflict that was solved by a few sappy moments and Twilight OP Sparkle’s magic death rays.
Oh, and the sequel hook was dumb. There is a line of silliness that got crossed, and there is no coming back.
Bit of a rant, but I can’t help feel inclined to write something lengthy on a story I already sank meaningful amounts of time into, only to reel in horror as my time exploded into blah blah blah the story’s denied, okay?

--Rets. Where are your gods now?

Fallout: Equestria By Kkat is getting rejected because it does not comply with our rules. It is tagged as Mature and Gore. Simple as that.

~SilentBelle

A Pony's Sacrifice by Fantasia Archsage has been rejected due to being incomplete.

--Laich

The Moonstone Cup by: Cyanide is an adventure fic that primarily follows Twilight Sparkle as she ends up taking part in a magic tournament.

This story offers a good deal of world-building that was quite enjoyable to read, and the action it has is solid and keeps the reader engrossed for its duration. It was overall a fun story to read. It kept me engaged and looking forward to how it was going to conclude. I do not bemoan the time I spent reading it.

I, however, cannot give it a heartfelt recommendation for a few reasons.

While the portrayal of Twilight Sparkle was solidly enough taken from canon, I felt this story didn't add that much to her as a character. Her struggles felt distant for the most part, and only seemed particularly engaging when the action picked up. I think that if the story had expanded upon her a bit more (delved more into her fears, thoughts, and perceptions that the show hadn't touched upon thus far), and had her curious nature take a stronger hold of the narrative, then this story would have been that much stronger for it, and the non-action scenes would have had their moments to shine as well. As it was, I felt more as a spectator in the stands, looking forward toward the next action sequence than I was to discovering the 'why's of what was going on around those scenes.

The pacing of the story was quite fine, and the chapters were broken into small, easy-to-read chunks. At least, until it got to the end. Once we reach the final climax, the story supplies a fair amount of rushed exposition which only serves to distance the readers from Twilight in her final, large struggle, when what we really needed was to be pulled closer to her—to feel and understand, on a more fundamental level, just how important a struggle this is to her. I think if the author had spent a bit more time to explore the struggle and show what and how it affected Twilight, it would have drawn me in more as a reader, and I would have appreciated Twilight's struggle all the more for it. To me, the climactic scene was a neat light-show, but it didn't engage me as much as the rest of the action had in previous chapters. I wasn't as worried about Twilight as I should have been, which was a bit of a letdown for me, because I wanted to be worried for her.

And as the last point, Trixie has a few side-chapters. These are quite useful exposition-granting chapters and they give a fun and charming new angle to some of the events that unfolded. They are an enjoyable and small exploration of Trixie as a character, and showcase her character growth over the storyline. It was a fine treat to read these. This, however, also serves to highlight just how much that aspect is missing from Twilight Sparkle. Compared to Trixie, Twilight is much more static. For all the struggles that Twilight goes through, by then end, I feel as though Twilight hasn't really changed or grown from who she was at the beginning of the story—at least not as much as she should have, given the scale of the final climactic scene. Because of this, I feel almost as if Trixie is threatening to be the actual main protagonist of this story, even though she clearly is not. That dissonance made me wish that Twilight Sparkle was better realized and expanded upon, just that much more.

For a small nitpick I'll talk about the magic system used. It is apparent that the author had a decent idea for how the magic worked. Of course, centering a successful story around that premise makes that pretty much a given. However, the world-builder in me really wanted to see a bit more discussion, description, and application of this fiction's magical theory. Having a well-understood and explained magic system adds to the characters that interact with the magic, simply because we as readers will be able to better understand what it is they are doing, and for that matter, how hard what they are doing is. Magic left with little explanation to how it works, likewise diminishes the characters' struggles in the readers' eyes.

So, in summary, The Moonstone Cup was a good story. A solid read that I am glad to have gone through. If you are looking for a light read with some decent action and spell-flinging, then I would tell you to check it out. However, I will not be giving it my heartfelt recommendation for the reasons stated above.

Thanks for reading,

~SilentBelle

The Saber Saga by Blake is rejected and will be moved to the appropriate folder. It is an adventure story that follows the tale Saber, the dark grey-and-black-and-red alicorn, son of King Sombra and heir to the Black-thingy Kingdom. The mane six (and Spike... and two other ponies that don't matter.) are called back to the Crystal Empire after some sort of arbitrary research team is attacked in Sombra's old castle. Stuff happens.

The story suffers from myriad mechanical issues, most notably with weird narrative and dialogue combinations that jump from hard on the eyes to outright hilarity. The first "part" of the story prattled on with a rather long setup, mostly made up of fluff, and then suddenly took a dive into really creepy territory after Saber was introduced.

I like anti-heroes as much as the next guy, but we can all agree that there's good reason that the term "Alicorn OC" is dreaded for good reason by sensible fanfiction readers/authors. It's because it's nearly impossible to pull off, and while this story made a valiant effort by giving Saber the same era-skipping issues Luna had in the Nightmare Night episode, he still fell flat almost instantly. Good try on the author's part, but it didn't add up in the end.

With the complete lack of a showing style coupled with a jittery plot, awkwardly worded dialogue that never fits the character (Giving AJ "southern accent" apostrophes does not count), and just general poor quality, I have no other choice but to deny this.

-_-Retsamoreh

Cine à clef by Weird Alicorn is a Comedy that I found not to be funny. I recognize how very subjective that sounds (I’ll give more details further down to try and defend that viewpoint), but the execution of the humor in this story was truly one of its weakest points, though there were certainly others.

For starters, Cine à clef could use an editor/proofreader. For the most part, it was decent, mechanically, but there were a considerable number of one-off typos. As far as consistent errors went, most were stylistic: serious said bookism abuse (often in the redundant sort of vein of “greeted” being used to tag dialogue that consisted of a greeting), frequent pronoun confusion (where “he”/“him” or the like would mean one character at the start of a sentence or segment but another character by the end), a weak weather report hook, and a general tendency towards needless wordiness that left the whole piece feeling a lot blander and stuffier than it otherwise might have.

Larger aspects of the experience like the story’s plot and characterization suffered their own faults, namely that they felt underdeveloped: every character had one defining feature (if that) and very simplistic goals and personalities, and the plot was your standard “character wants x and doesn’t get it, but things turn out okay” type with very little that felt original on top of it (though the tie-in to One Bad Apple was interesting). I daresay both of those would normally be perfectly forgivable in a Comedy fic, but as I said, the humor wasn’t very strong in this story, so these other areas needed to be stronger to pick up the slack and at least make this a successful Slice of Life. Even just looking at the title—a reference to the term “Film à clef”, the type of film that tells a story of real life in the guise of fiction—I’d been expecting the story to go for a higher level of realism, with an execution that would tend towards “believable” or “true to life” beneath the outer skin of pony, so I was a bit let down.

Now comes the point where I complain in detail about the humor. Mind the subjectivity. First off, I feel as though Weird Alicorn couldn’t decide between the sort of comedy where the humor comes from jokes and the sort where it comes from the situation—not that having both isn’t valid, it’s just that the comedy here felt a bit jumpy and unfocused like that, neither sort coming into its own. When jokes happened, they would be strangely off-color; recall that I said I felt the prose was somewhat stilted and stuffy, so to then see jokes made about subjects like amputees was a very strange surprise. If the jokes weren’t that, they were referential—there was a whole segment that was just reference after reference as the main character passed a collection of movie posters, and it was all played straight to the extent that I wasn’t sure whether or not I was expected to laugh. The situational side of things wasn’t much better: the punchline of main situation (main in terms of which had the most buildup) was obvious to everyone but the main character from just a moment after the buildup began a scene or two previous, and said buildup also included a pace-killing, paragraph-long fourth wall breakage that the punchline didn’t even wind up using. Comedy tends to need a subversion of expectations to be successful, so when a punchline is purposefully made obvious, chances are it’s not going to be funny unless you wind up giving the audience a different punchline than you made them expect. Much of the situational humor felt similarly banal, just rote climaxes delivered after fairly uncreative buildups.

All in all, I felt like Cine à clef was a story not funny enough to be a great Comedy and not realistic or exploratory or even just engaging enough to be a great Slice of Life. It was too weak in too many areas for me to be able to admit it into the group.

— Burraku_Pansa

Visionary by Razorbeam, the story that almost made it. I honestly thought this was going to be the one, the Cinderella story. It had so much against it, stereotypes, prejudices and a high bar set by the description and tags that seemed impossible to attain. In the end, those lofty aspirations of an adventure-coming-of-age-budding-romance story were out of reach, if just barely. To his credit, Razorbeam flew farther and longer than I initially thought he would.
So, what does Visionary have going for it? Quite a few things. First and foremost is worldbuilding. The social structure, magic, and political atmosphere was dead-on, not just for the changelings, but also for the ponies. This story is top-tier, hooves down, in those categories. The conflict was especially compelling, for it arises from a world that lives and breathes and that has been doing so even before we come into the story itself. Razorbeam has a talent in this regard. The characters were nicely personified, with good, strong voices and developed presence. The protagonist was by far the most developed and played the part of the unwilling hero very well. The other original supporting characters were tailor-made for their parts and performed well in each, letting the cogs of this finely-crafted political conflict machine run smoothly and effectively. Motives were well founded, pawns well placed and events nicely orchestrated. The divergence and convergence of plotlines and ancillary events wove together in delightful miniature adventures in the longer, greater chord of the story. But all was not roses and chocolate, some thorns snuck in and a bit of grit fell in the mix.
The worldbuilding was indeed some of the best I have seen on this site, but the settings for this world were not treated as well as they could have been. So many opportunities for nice illustrating narrative were passed up, that many times I felt as if I were watching a play with finely-dressed actors on a stage with a white cloth as a backdrop with someone projecting fuzzy landscapes from the default Windows wallpapers on a travel-sized pico-projector. The first four chapters of the story are very rough, but they had their moments of polish, which leads me to believe that the author was not yet comfortable with his story and world. This is totally understandable, as most new stories have a bit of a slow going in the beginning. It took Visionary slightly longer than usual to get its bearings, but once it got in the groove, it jived right nice. Everything was going well for several chapters, but then the romance came in and the wheels got a discordant wobble in them.
The characterization of the mane six was a tad wonky, even a bit forced, most of the time. It wasn’t jarring but it wasn’t quite right either, much like one or two trumpets in a fanfare being off by two or three cents in a chord, noticeable but ultimately lost in the reverberations. When the time came for a duet, however, the off-kilter notes pushed the whole set-up over. It was a finely crafted moment, one that I knew was coming, that I knew had to come. It was the affirmation of the “Sacred Marriage,” a crucial step in the Classic Hero Cycle, and Razorbeam set it up nigh to perfection. The great moment arrived, the emotional highpoint of the second act, when all had gone to hell in a handbasket... and a single passive paragraph feebly attempted to carry it forward. It fell on its face with a soft, underwhelming paff.
At that point the entire apparatus imploded; my suspension of disbelief completely shattered. From there forward, the romantic aspect felt so hollow and forced that it was truly an ordeal to read about it. The rest of the story held together, to a point, but it hobbled along after losing a fairly important limb. Romance is a tricky thing to pull off, especially when it is meant to be one of the driving forces behind the hero’s quest. The particular pairing in this tale could have worked, it wasn’t necessarily the characters that fumbled on this one, but the circumstances, feelings and setting were not adequately explained, described or explored. For this type of romance to work, the reader needs to see more of their interactions, not just be told that the two spent that time openly pursuing a relationship. Telling just does not cut it here.
This all goes back to the idea that a good story is an experience, one that you have alongside the heroes and villains and everyone else in between. A proper romance does take a while to set up and execute; it requires a different kind of patience on the part of both parties, the writer and reader, but the payoff is pretty fantastic, when done right.
Visionary was a good story, I enjoyed it for the most part, something that doesn’t happen all too often in the realm of fanfiction, unfortunately. I cannot recommend it for the Archives just for being good. If the romance had worked, if the settings were more realized, if those first few chapters got a little TLC, then maybe, it would have a good chance. The shoe for this one didn’t fit. Better luck next time.

--Laich

Hard Reset by Eakin is a first-person, present-tense story that uses the familiar “Time-Loop” trope, as popularly seen in the movie Groundhog Day, as well as a few other stories that I have read. This story uses that premise well enough that it becomes a seamless part of the story that the reader can accept as a fairly plausible without much difficulty.

Hard Reset is, at its core, a fast-paced action story where Twilight gets to play the bad-ass and do some pretty awesome and quirky things that only a time-loop story can allow. It delivers a fun ride for the readers and it is very easy to be immersed by the premise and wonder how it's going to end.

For all of its general appeal, there were a few issues I had with this story which prevented me from giving it a heartfelt recommendation. I'll see if I can adequately put to words this gloomy feeling of dissatisfaction I had by the end of the story.

Twilight as the narrator, from the get-go, takes on a tone that is quite different from the show and made me wonder what changed Twilight so much. While this, in itself isn't a bad thing, it is something that should be adequately explained during the writing. It was as though she didn't take what she was telling us very seriously. She seemed to mainly be focusing on the amusing aspects of the otherwise very dark situation.

Now, this could have been spun very cleverly into the crux of the story, and it nearly was. Twilight skimming past the more gory details during her recollection of the events shows us how unwilling she is to share those disturbing memories with others. That is a really good setup for the PTSD theme of this story. However, as awesome as this could have been, it fell short of the mark in execution. When this theme is finally tackled, I was wondering why Twilight was as broken as she was. I mean I knew from a technical perspective—the story tells you why, quite simply. However, that just made me wish that the story showed me why Twilight was broken. I wanted to be broken alongside her. I wanted to feel her disgust, her anger, her despair, her struggle to pursue hope in an impossible situation. Because until we, as the readers—and by extension, the mane 6 (due to the narrative style of this story)—are shown how deeply Twilight has been deeply impacted, the story doesn't have nearly as much power as it could.

As it stands, the reader and the rest of the mane 6 are left as outsiders to the true experience that Twilight faced and struggled through during the course of the story. Which is a shame, because Twilight is the protagonist of this story, and all the themes run through her character, so for us to be able to explore those themes we would have to be right alongside Twilight and experience them with her.

This could have been fixed with more florid prose and a focus on slower, but no less important, events. I have to say, the prose in the piece is very well stream-lined. It's fast-paced, and the action scenes pass by quickly and enjoyable—perfect for the action scenes. However, the pace doesn't let up, and when we get to slower parts of the story: where Twilight was brooding, or she takes a break from the over-all clock-race she faces. Those are events we are told about in a few stray sentences here and there. We aren't shown how she sunk into despair, how she really struggled with her situation and herself—how she changed. Any of the deeper moments of reflection are told instead of shown.

This is why I cannot give it a heartfelt recommendation. Is it a good story? Yes. It's a fine action-filled story that doesn't go on too long. There are a few grammar issues with misplaced commas, but not enough to distract. While the premise is perfectly suited to immersion and is easily believable, leaving the reader eager to see how the story is going to end. The reader is then kept at a distance from the emotion of this piece, which just begs to be explored, but unfortunately remains somewhere in the recesses of narrator-Twilight's brain. I enjoyed the story for what I got, but just wish I got a deeper experience.

Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle

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Okay, I see what you're getting at there. I forgot, honestly, that the original doesn't do that. I'd recommend reading the sequel, it actually accomplishes the immersive feel that Hard Reset doesn't. That story gets you to feel right alongside Twilight, as she goes through the healing process, and gets dragged right back into the timey-wimey stuff. It also develops other characters quite a bit, allowing somepony else's actions to change Twilight for the first time since the time loop. I might have submitted A Stitch in Time to this group, but it would be weird if a story's sequel was here, but not the original. Then someone would feel like they have to slog though the original story to get to the good stuff.

Gather ‘round, and I shall tell you a tale,
of a fearsome tiger of the vale.
Of all the beasts he surely was king
and boasted he could eat anything.

Then one day, men came to the valley,
in making a home, they did not dally.
The tiger saw this invasion and swore
that soon the humans would be no more.

The tiger was strong and fearsome indeed
and many men fell to his claws and speed,
but the tiger with all his power and cunning
underestimated man’s tools for cutting.

As the men ran to and fro,
the blades did flash and almost glow.
Not once did they find their true mark
but the tiger grew weary as the sky turned dark.

The tiger was strong and through the whole day
he managed to keep the men at bay,
but the cuts and nicks soon took their toll
blood against his fur did roll.

Not any one man nor single blade
could send the strong tiger to his grave.
‘Twas carelessness and an untrained mind
that made him fall before mankind.

That little rhyme is for Equestria from Dust by Soundslikeponies for reasons that will be clear quite soon. I just have to resist the urge to keep rhyming.
Now, Equestria from Dust is a fantastic experiment in worldbuilding and very unique in terms of the perspective. From Celestia’s point of view, the world and all it is becomes so through her actions. The author wisely leaves many of the particulars about the actual beginning a mystery and instead focuses on the implications of a goddess (for all intents and purposes) awakening on an empty plane. Dust (as I shall refer to it from here onwards) addresses deep and provocative themes in morality, justice, pride and shame, all the while walking us through great swathes of history and time. It was a delight to read, a very refreshing change from the average story and generic narrative. the plot was solid, the worldbuilding imaginative. The prose was efficient, elegant and well-rounded, to the point where the narrator became nearly transparent. I have many good things to say about this piece, so it may be puzzling to see it here in the rejection thread. (Disregard the date of posting) This story’s rejection stems from the very rhyme above. Stay a while and listen...
The tiger in that little story was very strong, unquestioned in his prowess, but he suffered from a common flaw. When a writer sets out to write anything in English, he must doge any number of flashing blades in the dark as he tries to get to his destination. I refer to niggling little rules like punctuation, syntax, grammar in general, spelling, connotation and intent. To communicate in written English is to constantly battle this small army or rules and assumptions. It is not a task too hard to accomplish, if the writer pays attention and proceeds with care. While Dust was a marvelous story, it suffered from a little neglect and carelessness. There were numerous punctuation errors, that normally could be overlooked, but ultimately began to distract. Misspellings also appeared far too often for a story of this caliber, as well as some very odd word choices and abuse or misuse of conventions. The word choices fell due to the connotation of several key words that were not adequate or simply wrong in conveying the intent of a passage. I would almost call thesaurus poaching on it, but it wasn’t very passable poaching. The author did confess that his attention was divided across several projects at the time and it truly is a shame that this story suffered so much as a result.
Bottom line: Equestria from Dust would have been included in the Archives, and even still could be, if the numerous mechanical errors were addressed accordingly. This was a very strong story, impressive and even beautiful, but the accumulated cuts, nicks and scratches by those myriad knives in the half-light ultimately doomed it.

--Laich

The Fallen Warrior by Silver Scrolls seems to have fallen short. It's basic premise is...well...it's ok, but the story does not take it in the direction I guessed at based on the description.

When the story starts, it is terrifying (in a good way). The first few pages are a vivid, visceral description of wartorn Ponyville just after a huge conflict. The language is dark, with just a hint of prose, the characters' actions are sad, shocked, and despondent, and the overall theme is one of overarching darkness and misery. This is easily the best part of the story; it's actually scary in it's horrifyingly realistic view of a newly-destroyed Equestria!

Then, the first character speaks. From then on, the story starts to go downhill. The dialogue is long, drawn-out, overly dramatic, and filled with prose. Twilight sounds more like Celestia in her speech patterns, just even more...florid, I suppose. This problem persists throughout the story, and just gets worse, for example, during the memorial ceremony. That scene is when this really starts to come undone. The shock and despair that pervaded the atmosphere has worn off, and now every single character is just...sad. Just sad. Not shcoked, not despairing, not breaking down in tears (except Celestia), not angry, just grimly accepting of the...sadness. It's really boring, and not nearly as emotionally shocking as the first pages. Then Twilight starts singing. That...well...I couldn't help it. I laughed, at the absolute absurdity of the scene, and what was happening. It fit into the general mood so horribly, so cheesily, that it was absolutely hilarious.

Skip ahead one year, and the atmosphere of bland sadness remains. Though, at this point, it does at least fit. I wasn't expecting different reactions from different characters anymore, because it's been a year, and most everyone has moved on. And now, we move into what should have been the meat and potatoes of the story. Now, we see how the events of the previous sequence have affected Celestia and Twilight. One problem, though: I don't give a **** about the "mysterious creature" who gave his life to defend Equestria. He never had any lines, was dead when the story began, and apparently, never said a word for the twenty minutes or so that he was present. This is a textbook definition of a Mary Sue. I can't even suspend my disbelief enough to think that Celestia was really affected by this guy, so how can I feel anything as a reader?

Twilight's bit is a little better. In this scene, we finally get to see the conflict that was mentioned in the description, that is, she is struggling to cope with the fact that a complete stranger laid down his life to defend her ponies when she couldn't. That is a pretty rough moral struggle, that would have been fun to explore. Unfortunately, Twilight's incredibly dense, wordy dialogue makes this scene a real chore to slog through, and I found myself skipping over whole paragraphs just to get to the next part. In any case, she doesn't do much except reiterate that basic point, so I didn't miss much. Then that unnamed guard no one cares about shows up, has some acceptable lines with an adequate point, and swiftly leaves. And then, the story dies.

Okay, if you're writing about a character/characters mourning someone who is dead, having that persons ghost show up, let alone twice, is not sad. It's cheesy, contrived, and laughable. It takes all the tragedy out of their interactions, especially when the ghost sticks around. Yup, he stays right 'til the bitter end, and makes sure that Twilight and Celestia hook up. Hey, it's not pedophilia if it's consensual, right?

Sorry, I just really don't like Twilestia. Or even approve of it. But I digress, that's personal opinion. The real problem was that it was a very contrived thing to throw in, and had no purpose in the story; it only detracted from the main point. But by this point, I didn't even care; this story was not making it in.

So! A shaky premise, overly-wordy dialogue, out-of-character speech patterns, story elements that had no place, and contrived, conflict-breaking resurrection. At least the beginning was good!

-Dancing Mop

The Heart of Worlds by AlchemyStudent has been rejected due to the fact that it is incomplete. Please try again later!

Huh, been a while, hasn't it? We've all been busy, sorry, but with this next review off my chest I suppose things will get flowing - at least for me. Also, massive spoilers ahead. You have been warned

The Immortal Game by AestheticB is- oh God, don't shoot me!

Hear me out!

It'll be short. Painful, but short. Like pulling off a band-aid. I swear!

I'll begin by saying that if you are a fan of fight scenes, then I wholly recommend The Immortal Game. It's got some of the best-written fights you'll find in the fandom. If you're a fan of "Chessmaster-Celestia", as it were, then you'll also love this story, because it's got plenty of moments where Celestia goes full-on Chessmaster in ways that I'm absolutely positive you've never seen done in the fandom before. If you like Dragonball-Z style fights, you'll like this story. Sans the broken pacing in DZ.

The Immortal Game is, on its own, a really good story. Unfortunately, it isn't without sin. I actually finished it a bit over two weeks ago and I've spent up until now biding my time because I just wasn't sure if I'd deny it or not. Then I waited a week longer to see if the dreaded Story-Nostalgia set in. You know, the feeling where you forget all of the "minor" issues and favor the good parts. It did, and I immediately knew the answer because of it.

There are enough glaringly obvious things that, unfortunately, make it so I cannot allow this story into the Archives. I'll be brief, and I'll focus on the good stuff, because even if I can't say this story wowed me, I can say that for a normal stupid peasant like you-

... what, Plebeian? I can't call the readers stupid peasants?! What's the point of.... Oh, fine.

For a normal person who reads stories to enjoy them rather than a critic like me who is burdened with noticing flaws and remembering them like an elephant... you'll like it. Probably. It's got tons and tons of violence, and if you aren't fond of ponies getting boshed, tortured, oppressed, or generally put through enough pain that would make a normal human being beg for death, don't read it.

I will, however, commend AestheticB for managing to avoid the single greatest pitfall of "pony violence" in stories like this, and that is what I like to call Mass Cuddly Pony Death Syndrome. Or MCPDS for shorts and gigs. Sure, it's said lots of ponies die, but a good number of it is mentioned offhandedly in either the narrative or dialogue, as if the scale of the battle needs to be established, but it's the heroes we want to focus on, not the casualties. It's a personal tick of mine when an author just suddenly starts slaughtering hundreds of ponies for no other reason than "LOL LOOK MY VILLAIN IS EVIL DO YOU HATE HIM YET?!?!"

Yes, I hate him. And you. Because it's cheap.

Which brings me to a short bit. I'd like to commend Aesthetic on making villains I genuinely hate. Getting a rise out of me is easy, of course, because all you have to do is start kicking Celestia around (Or, you know, torture her as a plot arc.) and you've got a guy who hates the villains /and you/. It is, however, the nonchalance that the Big Bad goes about doing his thing, that makes it interesting. He doesn't even have to kill hundreds of ponies to prove he's evil when he enters. He just weathers the entire plot of the story as if it were as commonplace as a game of chess. Against a four year old with terminal cancer.

Alas, now we get to the bad part. I'll keep it short and in bullet form so nobody gets too mad. In no order of sorts, here we go...

1. You forgot Spike a wee bit. It actually took me a few chapters to notice, but unless he was put in some obscure sentence somewhere in the first chapters, he was just genuinely forgotten up until midway through the story, where a ton of needless drama happened in regards to him... and when he finally came back onto the stage, he just got brushed off.

2. The entire description doesn't really need to be there. I get that "Twilight is ebil, Celestia is missing, and things are bad" is a good hook, but none of them are really what the plot is about. Twilight gets rainbow'd pretty handily before the end of the sixth chapter and it's soon revealed Celestia is in the Big Bad's Dungeon of Doom, getting tortured. Which brings us to 2.5....

2.5. I hate to bring religious matters into this, but I had a heart-to-heart with God and he agreed you were going to hell for making an entire plot arc about the Big Bad's sidekick torturing Celestia. I will never forgive you for this.

3. You made everypony OP. I realize you kind of had to balance out the Mane 6 not really being super combat-orientated, and even put onto the level of OP-ness you put unicorns at... but the simple solution is to nerf unicorns, not give Applejack passive healing up the wazoo, among other things. Rarity's little bladecasting thing was neat, but still. It felt cheap. The Mane Six are special, yes, but they're also normal ponies who simply are special out of circumstance. Maybe it's more of a personal opinion vs alternate universe canon, but I felt making the M6 on par with the freak'n Avengers was a tad overkill. I also commend you for it because quite frankly it's annoying seeing stories where unicorns are the be-all-end-all of OPness.

4. Rarity didn't kill her dad. He missed an absolutely massive opportunity for a badass Luke v Darth Vader duel to the death, and he even built it up like a mofo. I was so ready for Rarity to fight daddy dearest and prove that something something friendship > evil, but instead he just had Twilight murder him almost as an afterthought while in OP-mode. I felt cheated and still do, and I personally think it ruined a good bit of the story for me.

4.5. Rarity's dad's sidekick had a better Last Fight Scene than he did. And he didn't even have a God-forsaken name! Gah!

5. Twilight stole the show during the Battle of Canterlot. I get that it was a prelude to her eventual alicornification and princesshood, but in my opinion, the entire battle was poorly done. Her five other friends had, for the entire previous bit of story, trained almost specifically for this moment. I was waiting for a badass Mane Six versus the bad guys, but instead we got Twilight OP Sparkle killing villains and solving stuff with massive amounts of OP magic blerg. Again, I felt cheated, and I think it could've been done better.

Let's put it into perspective. Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. Luke decides not to fight Darth Vader at the last second because he knows he'll just get killed. Lando then bops down to Endor and the Falcon does a Strafe Run on the Imp base, killing Vader in the crossfire in a massive bout of luck.

6. I don't like Titan. He was a chilly villain but (And it is of note I am very aware of Aesthetic's own thoughts on writing the Battle of Canterlot. I read the blogs.) he quite frankly fudged a really awesome climactic scene. It's the same reason the Big Bad in Eragon (And this comparison, it is also of note, was said by my friend. Who is called Plebeian and owns this group.) was so hated. If he's so freak'n powerful, why does he use unstable lackeys to fight legitimate threats?

And that's all I'm willing to whinge about for the moment. There are a lot of good things and a lot of bad things in the Immortal Game, but I will always respect AestheticB for sticking it out and finishing it, because I think despite it's flaws, it's worth reading if you're into it. Simultaneously, enough mistakes took from it that I can't give it a pass.

I tip my had to you, Aesthetic. You win some, you lose some. Personally, I'd say you've won this round, simply on the grounds that I could see a definite improvement in your writing by the end of the story, and no matter the flaws I see in a fic, if there's improvement by the end, the author did good in writing it.

Unless they torture Princess Celestia.

Then you go to Hell.

- Retsamoreh

Don't kill me.

4. Rarity didn't kill her dad. He missed an absolutely massive opportunity for a badass Luke v Darth Vader duel to the death, and he even built it up like a mofo. I was so ready for Rarity to fight daddy dearest and prove that something something friendship > evil, but instead he just had Twilight murder him almost as an afterthought while in OP-mode. I felt cheated and still do, and I personally think it ruined a good bit of the story for me.

Weird. I actually liked the way that played out. The alternative would have been utterly predictable. Blah, blah, blah, Rarity and Esteem fight, it looks like she's going to lose but then for some reason she doesn't. There's no way you could "prove something about friendship" to Esteem. He was just too vial and wrenched.

I think it was kind of neat the way it wasn't neat. Like war.

3273852

I'd argue that the story isn't actually about war. It's about gigantic forces so far above the "normal pleb" that the normal plebs' fighting doesn't actually matter. While it was originally called "Ponies Make War", it was renamed to its far more accurate current title. Personally, I think it's for the better.

It wasn't anything like real war. War isn't neat, sure, but even by the time of the Battle of Canterlot it didn't feel like a war story. It felt like a hero story, and a hero story is cheapened if a big fight you're expecting to happen... doesn't happen, and just gets brushed off.

And don't even start on the whole "too vile and wretched" thing. Two words. Darth Vader.

Personally, it's staying as a point of issue, though I acknowledge your opinion and respect it.

2887996
Having just read Stardust, I'm going to note my thoughts on your review.

I would really like to know the importance of adhering to canon would be within this story, particularly the game mechanics that you felt were important enough to merit two paragraphs. I'm trying to think of how the story would change if the operations were set to a smaller scale, and all I can think of is forty turns of overwatch and maybe a couple of flanks. At the rate soldiers die in XCOM, I don't think there's going to be much emotional investment within the characters regardless of the size of the operations. I'll accept that the large scale battles don't have a major effect on the themes of the story, but I fail to see how smaller scale operations would be better.
If you're suggesting that the operations shouldn't have existed at all within the story, I'd have to disagree, since they provide a measure for just how intense the human resistance is. Those death tolls may only be numbers, but the large numbers (largely due to the larger scale battles) illustrate the destructive nature of the battles, which further helps set up the humans' xenophobic behaviour.
I found Twilight's limited discussion on the morality of violence makes a lot of sense given how she was shielded from it. It's clear from the moment that Lana assaults the intruder that enters her enclosure that Twilight had no idea how terrible the war was. That's not to say that nothing was done in regards to this idea however. There's her nightmares over killing the Chryssalid and talks with her friends about why it was justifiable, along with her own rationalizations. I'm not sure what following it "through to the end" would exactly entail, beyond "He would've shot you first." I found it to be an adequate resolution, personally.
I'd say that Twilight "hoping the nicer of the XCOM soldiers make it back from the latest terror story" would be against her nature, assuming that you mean only the nicer soldiers (because she does make great attempts to keep the only soldiers she meets safe). Twilight reprimands herself when she briefly noted that she greatly preferred Shen over Zhang.
As for Vahlen, I just checked over her various dialogue pieces on the XCOM wiki, and I honestly found quite little that would support the image of a sadistic mad scientist, beyond Bradford's comment that she's an alien's worst nightmare and her apparent lack of concern for alien deaths. Here are some quotes that show that she does have some sense of morality:

"I've always thought of science as a way to improve our everyday lives, to answer the long-standing questions of scientific history. The aliens, though... it's obvious now that they consider science simply as a means to an end, using and discarding life as needed to reach their goal... whatever that may be."

"I have difficulty understanding how such an advanced species could show so little empathy for the lives of other sentient beings... It goes against everything we have ever imagined. The technology is there, but with it comes a callousness we would never have expected. What could have brought them to this..."

You can argue that it was a wasted opportunity, but you can't say that it ignores canon here. In fact, given the extent to which Vahlen absolutely hates non-humans, I'd argue that her development towards liking Twilight is done quite well: by Twilight showing her human qualities.
Your Deus Ex Machina argument is sound, from what I imagine would happen if they just let Lana die (maybe Gate of Babylon would occur more quickly? Nothing really, from a thematic perspective).
I think the final battle did a good job of portraying Twilight's loss of innocence, which felt like a much greater event than her simply blowing up an alien invasion. It was a major decision point between actively killing another living creature and allowing her friends to die, which could admittedly have had a little more focus, but I found it adequate.

Ultimately, I can accept this story being rejected purely on the grounds of the deux ex machina, but I find the other arguments to be unconvincing.

Rejecting: The Shy Warrior (Sister Slaves).

Does not comply with out "complete" criteria. When the story is completed, feel free to send it our way again.

3273436

Wow, I have finally found someone who had the same problems with TIG as me. For a while, I thought I was the only person who had any problems with Twi going god mode and rendering the rest of the cast obsolete. Though I will disagree with your reasoning on the balancing between the other mane 6; I think that the team of OP but equal heroes fit the feel of the story.

Gimme Shelter by zyr1987 is short, sweet, and unfortunately being denied.

I don't /like/ denying things, you know. I feel especially awful about something I had high hopes for, and doubly so because it's a shortfic.

In any case, bar spoilers, Gimme Shelter is an extremely short singular scene-fic about how Fleur met Fancypants. I didn't expect it to be a nobel-prize winner of a poetic masterpiece, but I was drawn to the short and rather interesting origin story topic.

Unfortunately, it was too short. The story's description is a straight up summary of the entire plot, including the ending, and after reading it I realized that it was very bare-bones. The writing is mediocre, unfortunately using a strong telling style that put me off quite a bit. I even caught myself skimming it.

In the end, it's a short, mediocre fic that you can quickly browse through. Not the worst, but nowhere near entry capability. Best luck with the writing, Zyr.

-Rets

I must currently reject Lines and Webs, by Airstream.

Lines and Webs, to me, seems like a story whose appeal comes almost entirely from an epic, far-reaching plotline. While it’s certainly important to have a good story to tell, there are some flaws in narration that should be attended to before we take a deeper look into the story.

In the first couple of chapters, there was a lot of information with very little development. For instance, the chapter one entails only a short introduction of the piece in which the grown-up Crusaders ask Twilight for some books, and Twilight tries a spell. While a couple of scenes could easily reach 4000 words under certain styling, the trouble here is that most of that verbiage is flat-out useless, such as re-introducing the idea of the Cutie Mark Crusaders to readers who should already understand who they are, or explaining in detail the entirety of the Ponyville library’s magical defenses. These massive paragraphs of information – infodumps, as they are informally called – distract from what the readers should be experiencing: the present. While I can understand some exposition here and there, the information has to be new, relevant, and preferably brief. Information about a new setting, such as an alternate universe, is best divulged by illustrating its individual points as they become relevant. Give the readers small bits of information over time, and they will be both more likely to remember it, as well as less likely to lose immersion in the current action or dialogue.

There were also an issue with having multiple lines of dialogue from different characters in the same paragraph, but that's a more minor flaw. The concept of the story is interesting, though, and I would be willing to give it another shot, should the author make some adjustments to his exposition techniques.

I got so excited when I saw Pinkie Pie Scares Discord by SpitFlame in the Submissions folder. A one-shot comedy in the Archives? I was hoping I'd see one sooner or later. Comedy can be a work of art just as much as a complex character piece or an epic adventure. In fact, it's probably the easiest kind of story to be judged by these particular standards. If the story makes you laugh, it has accomplished that deep connection that we are searching for with these stories, and it gets in.

This story doesn't, though. It starts with a boring opening line, and a flatter-than-flat exposition scene, and moves on to a shoddily constructed mess of a main body, with poor characterization, awkward lines, and a complete lack of description. This story exemplifies the "tell" side of the "show-vs-tell" idea. In tone, it sounds less like an immersive story into an alternate world, and more like a casual recounting of some mundane events told in the middle of a conversation.

A big issue with this story is the sense that the author just doesn't care. It's only a thousand words long, and the entire thing is summarized in the description. Literally. The author made a plot based on the cliche "X does something to X" model, made that the name of the story, found a picture online with a quick google search, and lazily threw down a few hundred words about the event, with a bit of "lead-up". Then, the story wasn't long enough for submission, so he (or she) threw in a joke they saw in a comic once. And then told everyone that they had. And left a link to the comic in the description. You know, in case you wanted to see it in a funny context. I'm pretty sure they spent no more than two hours on the project, and dismissed it from their mind immediately.

Oh, and it wasn't funny. That's a pretty simple measure for a comedy. If I didn't laugh, or even grin, while reading it, it didn't do the one thing it was meant for, and just sucked.

I'm blaming my extremely long reviewing time on the fact that this story is completely forgettable. Cause I forgot about it.

-Dancing Mop

P.S. Hmph. Now I'm all mad and stuff. Someone write something funny.

3369280
Hello there! As you can see, I am the author of this fic. Yes, I do agree with you on some level. This story was definitely one of my weakest, as well as the bad characterization. But the characterization is the only argument I agree with you as to why this fic is bad. Every other reason you gave were... eh, I have to argue against it.

You complained that the opening line is boring: "So, Discord, would you mind telling me what are we going to do once we get to town-hall, in Ponyville?" Sure, I see where your point comes in, but there's a problem. It starts off with two characters discussing plans for events. In this scenario, to go to Ponyville for Nightmare Night. But what baffles my mind is that you're complaining about something in which the show itself actually does.

Season 1, Episode 3, The Ticket Master. It starts off with opening dialogue between Applejack and Twilight. What are they discussing? Well, Applejack and Twilight were talking about getting back to the farm... and Twilight doesn't know why. It's only when Applejack explains that they're going there to deliver some apples to win some bet with Big Mac.

Yeah, and in my story, it's opening dialogue between Fluttershy and Discord. They're planning on going to Ponyville. But Fluttershy doesn't know why, and it's when Discord explains it's to get candy. See how similar those opening lines were. Oh, but I'm not done yet.

Season 1, Episode 7, Dragonshy. It starts off with Fluttershy feeding her animals... and all she does for the opening scene—or line, if this episode were written in fanfiction form—is feed her animals and talks about angel, her pet bunny, and why he should eat and such.

... if that was written in fanfiction form, that would be boring as hell. You complained about my opening being boring, yet we have loads of other boring starts.

Season 2, Episode 25, A Canterlot Wedding Part 1. It starts with a freaking picnic so girly it'd make any non-brony shoot themselves.

Season 1, Episode 9, Bridle Gossip. It starts off with a damn weather report and Twilight saying "Wow, what a gorgeous day!", and followed with Spike saying "Rainbow Dash must have gotten up early for once and cleared all the clouds away." And to make it worse, it's once again followed by Twilight saying "I bet all of Ponyville is going to be out enjoying the sunshine."

That's one of the worse introductions to a story. Having three pieces of dialogue starting with talking about the weather.

Season 1, Episode 10, Swarm of the Century. It starts off with Fluttershy collecting flowers with her animal friends. Then she discusses that they are for Celestia and to go to Ponyville next. Doesn't that sound somewhat similar to my story's opening? And even if you disagree, starting a fanfiction with Fluttershy picking flowers while talking to animals would be quite boring.

I'd name more episodes with boring openings—as well as some others being very similar to mine—but you get the point. The thing is: my opening is actually quite interesting compared with many of the show's openings. It's about Discord discussing plans for Nightmare Night! That would be awesome in an episode.

What about you complaint with the flat exposition scene! Here's mine: She (Fluttershy) wore a chicken costume—not to everypony's surprise—with a small, linen scarf and a straw baskets, carrying about a dozen plastic eggs. Discord, on the other hand, bore a simple tuxedo, black and white with a red shiny bow in the exact middle—and a thin, curly mustache which stretched from cheek to cheek.

Now here's the one from Season 2, Episode 11, Hearth's Warming Eve: It's about the main six getting ready with a bunch of uniforms... it's familiar, isn't it?

Yes, every episode is objectionable, but these complaints were so small and opinion-based that the show itself does it.

But then, you have to say the main body of the story was a mess. Excuse me, but it's a one-shot comedy where the only thing that's supposed to happen is a build up to Discord getting scared. If this story were a 100,000 word story with different characters and subplots, but it all built up to one character scaring another, yes, you can arguing against that. A story that complex would have a bad main body if it were only with one concept. But my story is strictly about one thing; it's 1,000 freaking words long and not meant to be taken very seriously.

For your show vs. tell argument, ahem... what are you talking about! I barely told anything. Sure, I had a little description of non-dialogue parts, in which I described Discord and Fluttershy going to Ponyville. But the story itself is extremely short and its main focus isn't a bunch of descriptions. It's a one-shot thing meant to revolve around dialogue which is meant to revolve around one concept.

What about the awkward lines you talked about? It was about Discord being awkward for he had never been to a Nightmare Night Festival. This can easily relate to the episode, Luna Eclipse, which was full of awkward moments, most of which were coming from Luna. And was it funny? Well, for me, no. Not at all; but it was interesting. And if you say that it was the other characters who were being awkward:

What about the Breezies Episode? At the end when Rainbow asked to be a Griffon or a Dragon? Or where Spike popped from no where and begged for forgiveness because he injured the breezies? Those pieces of dialogue were awkward as hell. And why were they awkward? For no reason! Rainbow asking to become a dragon or griffon had no reason to it. When the characters in my story seemed awkward—which I have to argue against because Discord was there and he insulted Celestia—they actually had a reason.

You're putting your standards above the show's standards. That seems counter-intuitive. If the show can get away with doing something, why can't fanfiction of the very same show?

Oh, and when you said that the story wasn't funny: that's objectionable. I had many people think it was funny, so unless I get another opinion saying it's not funny, I won't buy it.

Overall... I really don't care if you pass or fail my story. I just love to analyse things, and analyzing your review, to me, was very fun.

3419535

Was your reply longer than the story?

-Lumino

3419762
Yes, apparently it was. I sent the story here as a complete joke to see what would happen, and now I'm using the situation to see what I can make of it. By that, I mean to see how good of a debater I am.

3419535
I'm going to compare the opening lines--not line singular, since I don't believe that's fair--of your story with some other comedies within my favorites. Hopefully it will explain why I found your story's opening lines to be rather lackluster.

1. A Hell of a Time by Aragon:

Tartarus. The most terrible place on Equestria. Well, maybe not the most terrible place, because Canterlot’s public bathrooms had earned that reputation rightfully, but definitely top five. It was both a prison and… something.

The humour in this story starts early through subversion of expectations.

2. Princess Celestia Hates Tea by Skywriter:

"Tea, Highness?" said the tottery dun-colored unicorn mare, offering up one of the innumerable Royal Kettles for my approval.

...

"I so barking hate tea," I said, staring down at the dirt.

This time, the entire scene is set up to deliver the punchline, bolded in the quote above. The first lines aren't necessarily interesting, but they do serve a comedic purpose.

3. Certain Advantages by The Descendant

The air that hovered around Sweet Apple Acres was so thick with estrogen that it seemed to hang in the atmosphere with a visible pinkish haze.

So substantial was the presence of such an environmental hormone imbalance that even a stallion as manly and endued with excess testosterone as Big Macintosh could scarcely breathe without having the lingering urge to talk about his feelings and eat dark chocolate.

The comedic effect here is how over-the-top it is.

4. Naked Singularity by Cold in Gardez

The candles on Twilight Sparkle’s desktop guttered weakly. She had relied on them for light so long that they were burnt down nearly to nubs. Thin trickles of wax dripped down their sides and onto her desk, unnoticed, as she scribbled feverishly in her notebook.

Behind her, Spike mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, pulling his tiny blanket tight over his shoulders. She stopped writing and froze, her hooves covering the notebook, until she was sure he remained asleep. It wouldn’t do for Spike to read this. Oh no, this was definitely not for foals — or hatchlings, for that matter. She slowly straightened back up as his quiet snoring filled the room.

“Oh Evening Glimmer,” she whispered, uncovering the notebook. “You don’t care if anyone sees, do you?” She dashed off another sentence, the tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips. Another chapter done.

Through the window, she could see stars beginning to fade. The first light of dawn was still an hour or two away, and she had written all the night long. Again. Evening Glimmer’s story, her story, needed to be told.

Twilight is writing a saucy story, which is also a self-insert. The absurdity of the idea is what makes it funny.

5. Three Mares in a Boat by TheVulpineHero1

There were some questions that one simply did not ask Applejack and Rainbow Dash. These included, but were not limited to: 'why did you drop out of Flight School?', 'why can't you do math?', and most importantly, 'who started it?' A brief summary of every argument the two had ever been in would read as follows: somepony started it, they failed to finish it, feathers had been ruffled and lassos had been twirled, then suddenly there was massive amounts of property damage and nopony really knew who had caused what.

The quick escalation of events helps to set up the idea that this is a comedy.

In comparison:

"So, Discord, would you mind telling me what are we going to do once we get to town-hall, in Ponyville?" said Fluttershy, walking besides a certain draconequus, on their way to Ponyville. She wore a chicken costume—not to everypony's surprise—with a small, linen scarf and a straw baskets, carrying about a dozen plastic eggs. Discord, on the other hand, bore a simple tuxedo, black and white with a red shiny bow in the exact middle - and a thin, curly mustache which stretched from cheek to cheek.

"Why, going to get candy, dear Fluttershy," said Discord. "Since this is my very first Nightmare Night with you ponies, I thought I'd look formal."

"But Discord," said Fluttershy, "Nightmare Night means you have to dress up as something scary and be there. I don't see what you're supposed to be."

"Why," said Discord in shock, "I'm myself... in a suit. But, you have to dress up as something scary?" he asked as his eyebrows drooped low.

"Yes," she responded.

Discord held a claw to his chin and long beard. "Then why aren't you anything scary?"

"Oh, well, it doesn't have to be scary; but, think of it like a costume party."

Discord sighed and blew his tongue. "Well, at least I'm one to keep formality," he said while raising his neck high and tugging the red bow with a paw. "Besides, you said Nightmare Night is supposed to be scary. Too bad I'm un-scareable."

"What!" said Fluttershy. "But, surely there's something that can scare you. I mean: not anything that can scare me, like Dragons, or giant mountains, or black smoke, or shadows." As she spoke, her voice tone became lower, all the way to a whisper.

"Please, Fluttershy! I'm a Spirit of Disharmony, and there is nothing that can even make my eye twitch in terror. Let's just go over to meet your, bleh, friends, and get whatever candy you desire."

This opener is more along the lines of something you'd read in a slice-of-life story. You spend a great amount of detail describing the costumes Fluttershy and Discord are wearing, but that doesn't serve any comedic effect, it just tells us the setting of the story will be Nightmare Night. The only thing that might be funny about this would be Discord being proven wrong about being un-scareable, but it's simply build up without a punchline.

The thing about the show's openers is that Friendship is Magic is not a comedy. It may have comedic elements, but it's primarily a slice-of-life show. If you look at the openers in that mindset, they're acceptable introductions.

Your response towards the comment saying that the main body was a mess is an excuse. "It was never meant to be quality work" is not an argument that wins debates. If you could explain how the main body was not a mess, then you have the means to refute his claims.

I don't believe show vs. tell is the root of the issue, but dancing mop is correct in that it feels like the dialogue occurs in a vacuum. The lack of immersion is due to a plethora of other issues, such as its short length, the somewhat weak characterization and the fact that the scene is pretty much entirely build up which, accounting for the short length of the story, seriously weakens the "funniness"--and thus the immersion--of the story. Your description of the story as dialogue centered around one concept is apt, but that doesn't mean that his criticism is wrong, just that you did it intentionally. The awkward lines is probably because the dialogue feels stilted, which is largely the result of the issues I noted above. However weak the lines may be in the show, it rarely feels stilted in the same way.

I didn't find the story to be particularly funny. I would, however, say that the story ended on a higher note than its climax.

3437949
We'll consider this a tie.

3437949
Jesus.

You put that waaaay better than I did. And you kept a professional tone throughout, despite pointing out even more problems than I did. Nice job. In comparison, I sound like a prissy, opinionated asshole, with no real substance to back up my arguments, who was just beating up on a poor author who was trying to have some fun. I am ashamed.

3422606
But...how good of a writer are you?
I mean, you clearly do care, else you wouldn't have written up a defense of your story that was longer than the story itself. It just didn't show through, for reasons that Sypher just explained a lot better than I bothered to before.
Saaay...what if you submitted one of your serious fics? Or at least one of your better comedies? This group isn't about necessarily finding the best stories, just the ones that the author really loved to write, and just poured their heart and soul into. I don't mind a little not-to-be-taken-seriously jokefic, just...not in the Canterlot Archives.

Also, Grammar. I didn't point it out, as it's not a criteria we're supposed to put much weight into, but it needs some work. And I kiiinda mean all your stories. Just have someone proofread them real quick before posting. It doesn't take too long, and is totally worth it. I know I've written some real crap because I released a chapter too hastily before.

Yeah, that's all I really covered, wasn't it? Good thing Sypher was there to cover my @$$. His review was a heck of a lot more in-depth and helpful than mine. Sorry.

I still don't like the story, though.

Through the Eyes of the Hurricane, by: Impossible Numbers is a slice of life world-building story surrounding the events Commander Hurricane, before she became the commander. In essence, it's a first-person story that gives us insight into what makes a leader.

This story does a very good job of setting up the atmosphere and the setting. It's a solid display of world-building that works well with what little we know surrounding that canon event.

Unfortunately, with the way the story is told, the readers will find it hard to be immersed by the overall struggles with Hurricane's character. The story comes off as a bit too telly, and at times I began wondering where the story was going and why I should care about certain events.

The largest flaw in the story, I think, is that the execution of the two major characterizations and plotpoints of this story were a little flat. I liked the tempering of Hurricane's character--the point of this story--however, I wish that I, as a reader, got to experience that struggle as if it were my own, and this story falls a little short of helping me experience what the protagonist was going through. Had I been immersed by this character, I'd give it a heartfelt recommendation.

As it stands, I'm rejecting it, but I'll say that the atmosphere and world-building were very solid.

Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle

3446134

Thank you for the review. In hindsight, I'm not particularly surprised it had such flaws. "Telly" is probably how I'd describe a good chunk of it, though at the time I did it deliberately, thinking it was an atmospheric approach as if Hurricane were speaking to somebody and ironing out details. I wonder if part of the problem was the attempt to make her too impersonal or stoic, or whether the telly approach was a way of doing it that solved one problem but created another. Basically, it was how I imagined Hurricane would be to a degree. I know I've seen it pulled off somewhere...

Still, any criticism is potentially constructive. Next time I try something like this, I'll have to be cautious I don't confuse "stoic/impersonal" with "potentially distances the reader from enjoying the work". An effect is good if it doesn't interfere with the reader's ability to enjoy it.

I'm glad to see you liked and thought well of the atmosphere and worldbuilding, so I know I'm doing something right, too. Excellent.

Well, it's been a long wait, but worth it in the end. Thanks again for the review!

A King’s Duty by Flintlock is a good story. It really is. It just needs, in the simplest of terms, more. Sombra is explored in the story as a basically good guy who finds he needs to do many evil things for the good of his cause. Details about how he came to power are given, as well as some internal thoughts on his regrets, but not quite enough. As a reader, I just didn’t feel him. I can understand, basically, his plight, but it just doesn’t seem real to me. I need more background, and more moral conflict. Sombra seems very much set in his worldview, and only feels slightly wrong in the way he treats his people. Also, his people are shown to be very important to him, a far cry from the Sombra we know. An exploration of that change would have been better, perhaps.

As for the bit with his son...well, I just had a hard time caring. Slate is a very flat character, who really acts more like a moral obstacle for Sombra, rather than a character in his own right. Yes, Sombra feels bad about not spending more time with his son, but that’s about as far as that scene goes. Slate doesn’t seem to be very let down, and clearly harbors no hard feelings. Why not? It would make the scene much more interesting if Slate actually had a beef with his dad concerning his studies, Sombra’s royal duties, and the lack of father-son time they get as a result.

And then there’s the scene with the prisoner. This would be a good chance to give some background on, say, why the Princesses are preparing for war against Sombra, and not joining his side. Their motivations had not made sense in the story previously, and this scene could have cleared it up, with a forced-out confession from the prisoner. Also, I could tell this scene was meant to show Sombra’s bad side, but it could have gone even farther, and been used to showcase his descent into evil.

In short, the story was an interesting read, and fairly enjoyable, but it will need more before I approve of it’s acceptance into the Archives.

-Dancing Mop

“I Ain’t Your Sacrifice” will not be accepted into the Archives. Although Dragor does try to make a joke out of the black-red alicorn trope, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Like humans in Equestria, the black-red alicorn has been presented ironically and jokingly so many times that even the ironic portrayals come across as cliche. Although almost any cliche can be overcome with good execution, “I Ain’t Your Sacrifice” does not sufficiently redeem the trope it follows.
As per Obselescence’s challenge, “The Most Dangerous Game,” the story is bound not only by the base concept of the black-red alicorn, but also with the ridiculously dark mood and gross overconfidence of the protagonist that so often come with the trope. These are the key limiting factors of the story’s development. Without a dynamic tone or mood, Dragor is unable to bring very much literary complexity to the table. Although the story has several different little scenes, they all feel the same due to a combination of circumstances constantly growing darker and the protagonist constantly growing more confident in the face of certain doom. Although the executioners liven up the scenes a bit through comic relief and some relevant explanation, the black-red alicorn trope stands strong and manages to condemn the author’s best efforts. Although the reader may get some morbid enjoyment at the end from the sudden betrayal of the protagonist’s confidence, that enjoyment is hardly worth the restrictions that the dreaded trope put on the story.

- The Plebeian

MLP: Harmony Fallen by Dillyb0d will be rejected, because it is incomplete.

However, I don't like it's odds once it is complete. So far, there's one chapter, and it's just...boring. It starts out with a typical description of an idyllic Ponyville, that goes way too fast, and immediately jumps to Pinkie Pie's morning routine, which is not much more interesting. Starting a story with "A warm breeze blew through the town of Ponyville", or "The Sun was shining brightly on Ponyville", or something similar, while it seems like a good idea, is actually not. It's a trap I myself have fallen into. You should start with a paragraph that starts your story, not describes your setting. That can be done throughout the first chapter. The story needs to start with something interesting first.

Later in the chapter, it...stays boring. The whole thing is devoted to basically saying "This story takes place several years after the current arc, and diverges around season one or two". You could have done that in the description. I mean, I read a description about a dark sorceror, an epic war, and six heroes falling into madness, and I get...a routine day in Ponyville, that takes waaaay too long to tell me its seven or eight years later, and all the characters are of drinking age.

Also, speech patterns are a problem. I know it's really, really hard to nail down the way Applejack talks, but I'm pretty sure replacing "to" with "ter" is not the way to go about it. The way I deal with it is to just not write her, but that won't help here. Ummmm, do any other Scrollmasters know how to write Applejack? Help? Please? I'd say that the rest of the characters don't sound like themselves, but I guess most of them are drunk, anyway, so...yeah. Or was it just RD? I don't know, I was bored, so I just skimmed through the second half. Seriously; epic conflict, fall into madness, sounds good, write it!

And, my personal opinion is that a description should not so much describe a story, but sell it. This one could stand to see more prose-ey language, and flashy epic commentary. It's cool that you drew your own cover art, though. Points for trying.

Huh, I just wrote this directly to the author, not any other readers. That might be annoying for everyone else.

3622322 For AJ and AB I tend to replace "I" with "Ah" and cut short a few words such as and replace a few others, not as often though:
Running --> Runnin'
Of --> O' (which sounds like 'a' not "Oh")
You --> Ya
To --> Ta

I'd never recommend replacing all of them though. And if you aren't too sure why you are changing the writing to try and fit her accent, I highly recommend not doing it. It can be too distracting to readers to do so. Just change it enough to get the accent across if you are certain you know how you want the character to sound. I think what is more important than the accent is to make sure your word choice reflects AJ's character. You can have her talk perfectly, but use similes, metaphors, and oaths that reflect on her life as a farmer. I think it's word choice that really sells it, a decent portrayal of the accent is just the icing on top.

3191440 I just want to point out that after looking through things, I had no idea my story ever made it into the archives for rejection let alone to be read. I am not contesting you either, I liked my story but I never thought it archive material. In the future though, I noticed two of my other stories awaiting review, I would appreciate a warning that my story is going to be read by an archive appraiser. That is all, you may now all return to your regularly scheduled readings. Unless I submitted it which I don't think I did, I don't remember submitting it at least. hmm, well whatever.