EA Message From Nobody

• MLP: FiM
• Mystery

A strange object passes by the planet of Equiss. A group of ponies try to decide what it means.

• Twilight
• Celestia
• Luna
• Starlight Glimmer

Whirl Hoof · 7.5k words  ·  609  26 · 14k views

Picking up this work, I was immediately intrigued by both the premise and the description of the story. The fact that it was tagged as a mystery was exciting, coupled with the idea of an unknown, potentially dangerous object. I don’t know much about the pioneer probe, but it's clear the author does and has written this work as an homage to it. Fans of space and astronomy would like this fic.

That being said, I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed at the end. I can respect the intention of the author and found this to be an enjoyable read overall, but the ending specifically felt a little bit empty. I’ll talk about this in the plot section. 

The pacing of the story is nice and easy, and the plot contains enough detail and intrigue to keep me invested in the story until the very end. I was not able to guess what the object in question was without looking more into the pioneer probe, which can be a good and bad thing in a way, but more on that later.

There’s a few things I want to go over here. First of all, the actions of the characters as the plot moves forwards. The plot itself is straightforward and easy to follow: Twilight and Starlight notice a weird magical disturbance, and Celestia and Luna arrive to help them figure out what it is.

Now, the author manages to do a phenomenal job in laying out the logic and reasoning of each character as they attempt to decipher what exactly the plaque is depicting, and they do actually guess one aspect incorrectly, so I will give the author credit here. I am still having doubts that four non-astronomers are able to guess with relative accuracy the meaning of each symbol, but the author justifies it well. I don’t know, maybe readers should have a look at the Pioneer plaque and try to figure out the symbols without reading the descriptions first and letting me know.

The narration of the story seems to be told from an omniscient narrator, yet there is a bit of a discrepancy when the narrator makes strange sarcastic remarks. While amusing and added for comedic effect, the breaks don’t seem to match the rest of the story.

All in all, the plot remains intriguing and engaging. The unknowns of the satellite and the plaque drive the story forwards and make up a good portion of the story. The only thing I can think of saying is that I would have liked to see them analyze the probe itself a bit more and explore their interactions with an unknown technology. Other than that, the concept is very well thought out and the plot logical and well paced.

There really are only four characters in this story: Twilight, Celestia, Luna, and Starlight. 

Twilight maintains her typical sense of curiosity and desire for knowledge, although this seems to be carried to a strange extent. Specifically, at one point Twilight gives a specific, scientific answer that seems to stun everypony else. One of my main problems with this is how Celestia and Luna react, as they are typically viewed as highly intelligent ponies. Celestia here instead seems to be completely stunned by Twilight’s guess, saying “This, dear Twilight, is why you are the smart one.” I don’t know, to me this just doesn’t seem in character for her. Princess Celestia knows Twilight is very intelligent, I think that much is given. She can reasonably be surprised, but this phrase just doesn’t seem like something she’d say.

Princess Luna is written fairly well. She does begin the story with hints of her old voice, using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ for example, but this disappears by the end of the story and is fairly inconsistent in that sense. It doesn’t seem to detract from the story all that much, but is something worth considering. She does maintain a bit of childish behavior, which I found to be entertaining and strangely in character with her.

Starlight seems to waver between being terrified and being aggressive. For the purposes of this story I think it is fine, but her panic at the beginning of the story is sharply contrasted towards the end of the story, especially when she argues with the princesses and goes as far as to call them ‘stupid.’ I’m not sure if this dichotomy really adds to the story, and now that I think about it, I don’t know if she truly adds anything other than comic relief (given that the author does actually address this in the story).

There are a few grammatical things that I’ll note here, without going into editor-mode.

First, a minor thing. Line breaks. In case anyone doesn’t know, you can insert linebreaks into your stories in two ways, first by typing [ hr ] without the spaces, or by clicking the horizontal line in the text editor. They look like this:

I’d recommend doing this as it looks cleaner than lines of dashes, which look different when viewing on a desktop vs a phone.

Next, I would like to see a few more dialogue tags, especially in lines where there are about four or five lines in a row of dialogue, particularly towards the end of the story. For example, here is a quote:

"That's assuming that the males are the physically strong ones. Maybe they're like manticores where the females are stronger to take care of offspring."

"Who's to say they even have 'male' and 'female'? We're assuming they have genders at all. That might not be true. These could be genetic variants, or a slave race, or... well, literally anything."

"That's true, but it makes it easier on us. I'd rather not think of intimate relations with anything besides those two genders. I'm not judging, it's just hard to comprehend."

"Um, speaking of intimate relations... You think that the dangly thing and bulges are, uh... 'Equipment'?"

.

In this example, it is pretty much impossible to differentiate between which of the four characters is speaking, especially since the character’s don’t have unique speaking patterns like accents. This will also allow you to add actions to better reveal your characters and set the scene.

Congratulations on getting featured! After reading through this story I can say you deserved it. It’s a solidly done work, with a neat concept and great execution. There are a few grammar tidbits that I did point out in my reading notes but other than that I think this is a fine work.

I’d recommend this work to anyone who likes space, satellites, and technology. 

To the author, great work! Be proud of it, you’ve done a wonderful job. The only thing that stuck out to me were a few grammar points which I can gladly point out, but they don’t detract from the story all that much. Well done!

I do have my reading notes for your fic, if you would like to see them let me know.

Plot: 9/10
Characterization: 8/10
Grammar: 8/10

Average: 8.33

7173336

Thank you so very much for the review!

Going back now, I do regret adding little quips when the majority of the fic was fairly straightforward. I was still in the mindset of "if it's not comedy, people don't like it", which I now know is very wrong.

The aspect of exploring technology is one I considered, but eventually gave up. I didn't (and still don't) consider myself enough of a techie to get enough details right, and culture clash has always fascinated me more.

My logic for Celestia saying that is basically "she relies on Twilight for everything", which is both lazy and partially wrong.

I guess I dropped Ye Olde Ponish because I didn't feel it added anything, besides desperate pleas for laughs. Luna can talk perfectly fine in canon, so I was wrong on every level.

I don't recall Starlight calling anyone stupid, actually. I intended her to be a mix of comedy relief and audience surrogate: hopelessly confused in matters she knew nothing about.

Ah, thank you. I wasn't aware of the line breaks before; I'll be sure to use them in the future, and likely edit them in to the story.

The lack of dialogue tags was actually the one thing I did deliberately; it was meant to reflect the chaos and confusion of the situation, along with brainstorming. A meeting room disaster, if you get my drift. I can see how it'd be annoying though, I'll keep that in mind.

I'd love to see the notes! I really appreciate this review, especially when I'm so inexperienced and new to writing. I'll be sure to take what I learned here and apply it however I can (and getting an editor would be a good idea.)

7173386
You're very welcome! Keep up the good work!