The Elements of Harmony were long thought of by everypony as all-powerful and beyond doubt, including me. What I saw one afternoon would cast a heavy, almost unbearable light on that ideal.
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- Member Since 8th Apr, 2012
- offline last seen Jul 1st, 2014
Parcly Taxel
Princess of Science, vector artist, conlanger.
Parcly Taxel
Joined 8th Apr, 2012 ·
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Looks interesting. I'll read it when I get the time.
Right. After reading this, I can safely say: what?
I have no idea what happened. The writing style is okay and there weren't many errors, so no downvote, but I am utterly confused, so no upvote or favorite. Sorry.
4615827 This story spent a year in limbo before I picked it back up. So I had to adapt it to the current universe, change a few things here and there.
And you know, my art over on dA also gets a lot of weird reactions, even though I'm madly popular there. Even I think that this story is shaping to be a Finnegans Wake. Maybe you should follow my Twitter as well.
4615835 Why would I care about your DeviantArt? What does that have to do with my comment? I told you that your story is confusing as hell. It doesn't matter if it spent a year in limbo, because so did my Sixth King and it makes a marginal amount of sense. This needs to be rewritten fully, and please send it to a prereader or eight before submitting it again.
I think you were implying that I liked this story. I did not. A story should not leave a reader with no idea of what just happened and the sense that they wasted time. I do not want to see more writing in this style, nor do I want to see more inane things from you.
4615865 A year ago I left the fanfics department for the fanart department because I felt enraged by the snobbishness of casual readers. And sadly, this is still true today. People still insist on proper "characterisation", "grammar", "plot", "pacing", the like, and it's weeding out many potential stars; they receive so much criticism (like your comments here) and are discouraged and don't write anymore.
It is a universal, unquestionable tenet that language evolves and literature follows its evolution. Literature is also a commentary on society. Just as we have seen the experiments of Dada or Finnegans Wake, it is not a hard-and-fast rule that fanfiction must follow tried-and-tested rules. Indeed, such rigid adherence may cause the whole field to stagnate and decline.
This fanfic is my own commentary on the overall state of the brony fandom these days: save for a few pockets of true masterpieces, it's all meme-centred and glorifies isolated objects without any underpinning. The Rules of Fanfics are one of the products of this deficient fandom, and it's seriously outdated for this modern world. So I have to reject them right here.
4615931 Uh, what?
The point of art -- any art, be it a painting, a piece of writing, a video game, music, anything -- is to be enjoyable. This story was not enjoyable. I skipped that bit because I thought it'd be obvious. I dislike this story because it was impossible to get an idea of what was going on. I could not derive any enjoyment from the story because there were too many things going on at once, you jumped from one thing to another, you gave no explanations and it was all impossible to understand. I don't give two shits about characterization, plot, etc. except that.. Y'know, there's a reason they are held as the standard marks by which a story is graded. Very few stories without plot are enjoyable to read. Very few stories that don't characterize the characters are enjoyable to read. Sure, some may defy that, but the point of these rules is to make it easier to write well. They exist because they work.
That said, experienced authors can break them. They know how to write well. They can just write a description of an area and slip into it small details that make it still as enjoyable to read as Poe's "The Raven", which had no conflict, no real plot, very little characterization, almost no description, and yet is one of the greatest poems ever written.
Now, here's the catch: You are not an experienced author. Dare I say, you are not even inexperienced. You have written a bit, perhaps for school, and felt that it qualified you to write something that broke none of the rules except "be coherent". You are not. I am not, either. I can count on one hand the people on this site that I would consider able to so that, and those are tentative. It is a level which, if you fight criticism by saying "rules were meant to be broken", you will never achieve. Now rewrite this so it can be understood and isn't confusing to the point of dislike and it may be read.
4615988 I don't even find what I've written confusing at all. It makes perfect sense. And you say "too many things going on at once?" That's the whole point of the story, to actually confuse you, to put you in the shoes of the main character who is similarly confused, to make you think more critically to resolve the confusion. Readers are not stupid, as many believe. And I find stories without discernible plotlines or characterisation - such as the history of the Netherlands - really absorbing.
4615988 Yeah, and you should note that I have Asperger syndrome, so trying to reason with me may be quite hard. I am also a Situationist, which explains many of my weird ideas.
4616010 Why would I care about Asperger's? I hear voices in my head. We chat occasionally and they help me out. It makes me very odd to talk to.
The thing is, reason doesn't change. The beauty of logic is that it is fundamentally objective. B iff A, once proven, cannot be contested. It doesn't matter how your brain works, if you have Asperger's, anything, the statement "B iff A" is always true. Having Asperger's does not make you immune to logic. Nothing does.
4616007 That's because you're the author. Read this (by me). It makes perfect sense to me, because I know all of the knowledge that wasn't included in the text and I can piece it together. A reader, however, does not have that information. A reader is confused because I didn't add in everything I should have. It is not a good story. A good example of the writing style, perhaps, but a bad story overall. It's a bit like this, really. You know everything that goes into the story, including what isn't written into the story, but a reader does not.
4616034 I enjoyed the story really much, it got my brain firing on all cylinders.
And then I do not doubt logic. Back to this fanfic, I have not actually written the second part of this story which is mostly an explanation for the shock horror Cadance experiences at the end of the published chapter. And it will directly feature the Elements, no worries. Maybe that's why you're upset.
4616058 I'm glad you liked it! The thing is, it's apparently difficult to understand what's going on. The same thing is true here. You may like confusing things -- and if so, then I can see why you'd like Harmony -- but the vast majority of people don't.
I'm sorry for being rude earlier. I'm weirdly irritable today and I'm not sure why.
That said, this could definitely use a rewrite. Like I said, the rules exist for a reason, and you aren't yet a good enough writer to pull it off without them.
4616311 So what do I do? The overall plot in this first part is pretty simple, just Cadance strolling through the forest after an adventure in Saddle Arabia. And then she sees carnage.
I am thinking of interspersing a trip to the ruins of the old castle seen in the second ever episode, "exchanging" it for all the details of Cadance's experiences. I would describe my style of writing as surrealist or romantic, and indeed there was a Russian literary movement in the 1920s built around these principles called Zaum.
4616417 It's very jumpy. You start with a description of her... Locked in a magic bottle? Then wandering through the Everfree. Then at the castle, and you didn't describe enough for me to realize it was carnage, so she just flipped out for no reason while Cel and Lu were on lunch break or something.
Sorry, hit "post" early.
Make it more obvious. Telling is OK, as long as you don't tell the reader everything. Use the word carnage or death or something. I might have missed it, but be clear.
Other than that... Well, go through and fix your grammar. That's about it.