Hello everyone! Hope your week went well! Today we’re taking a look at this story:

TSamneo: The Earth Pony

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Mystery

It was a regular day, until a stallion named Sam, mysteriously showed up. He has no memory of where he was from, not even knowing what a Cutie Mark is! Soon Sam must discover who he is, and defeat the coming darkness that threatens Ponyville...

• Sex
• Twilight
• Rainbow Dash
• OC

Samuel-Neocros · 46k words  ·  9  4 · 2.1k views

Ooh, I’m not liking that like-dislike ratio.

Anyway, for those who might be interested, there's an old review that Drache made for the story. It was written when the story only had like, two chapters though, so it'll be missing a few things.

With that done, let’s get to it!

A quick summary…

One day, an earth pony crashes down into Ponyville from the sky. This is our protagonist, Samuel.

He wakes up with amnesia. The rest of the story follows him as he tries to remember his past, while he's being pursued by a team of… mysterious bad guys from the human world? Or something, the story doesn't really make things very clear. 

Review

Right, full disclosure, I've asked Samuel (that's the author Samuel, not the self-insert character. I’m just gonna call him SN from now on, to avoid confusion) about the story a little bit, so I do know some of the background around this story. If anyone thinks that my decision's gonna be influenced by that, though, it's not. 

Because this story is kinda a mess.

First off, this story is mechanically in need of some work. There're lots of typos and missing words, and pretty much every sentence is poorly structured or awkwardly phrased. Although the grammar’s not the worst, that’s little consolation when the writing is so awkward that reading it becomes a chore. Admittedly that might also be because I’m an editor and thus also a stickler for these kinds of things, but I found myself skimming over sentences rather than reading them word-by-word most of the time — which is never a good thing. 

The next thing you might notice if you actually decide to read this one is that the story proceeds at a breakneck pace. The narration switches from idea to idea with nothing so much as a transition in between. I'll run through the general gist of the introducing to demonstrate. First of all, here are the first three paragraphs:

Starlight Glimmer let out a sigh of relief as she took in the wonderful scenery of Ponyville. Smiling, she gently closed her eyes and basked in the warmth that Princess Celestia’s Sun brought her.

Suddenly there was a crash.

Starlight gave a yelp of surprise and stumbled back from the shock wave that was created nearby. After regaining her senses, Starlight peered through the dust that had been kicked up from the impact and saw a young stallion, who looked as if he was on the brink of death.

That’s Samuel, if you couldn’t figure it out from my description so far

What just happened here? There's like, a token effort to establish some setting, before the story just decides it's just not going to do that and just gets right to a random crash in the town.

After this the story cuts to Samuel lying in the care of all of the Mane 6.

...

Anyway.

At this point after so much action and plot progression without any explanation you’d think SN would give us some time to relax, maybe get to know some characters. But nope — the next chapter has one of the villains showing up to try and capture Samuel and the story goes almost immediately into this drawn-out action scene between these two ponies that we don't really care or know anything about. I'll note that SN's action scenes do feel like the parts of the story with the most thought put into them, but half the time I have no idea what's going on, so that does ruin them quite a lot.

The rest of the story progresses in much the same way. There’s no break, no interlude to actually get used to the characters in the face of uncountable action scenes and important plot moments and plot twists that come like a deluge down the storyline.

A problem that arises from that is that nothing is explained, and new information keeps coming at an unreasonably fast rate. SN just keeps throwing proper noun after new character after new power with no breaks for us to absorb the information. Take a glance through the story and you'll realise that there are many, many complicated ideas that don't get any exposition. In fact, take a look at this paragraph that comes near the end of the story. I feel that it sums up how it feels reading the story pretty nicely. 

“Rejoice! The reawakened Neocros rises again! Bio specs include; enhanced sight, customizable interface, and adaptable dorsal fins. Neocros The Water Dragon also is equip to face dangers ahead, with the Phase System! But you’ll have to grow with him in order to find out how that works. Anyways, Neocros’ origins are unknown, but can feel things they have seen before, and remember them. Neocros is also capable of doing great things--if you give him a chance--of course!” Silver explained. Although it wasn’t the best he could give, he felt as though he did something that was passable. Everypony were whispering to themselves, as Neocros stood there, slowly waving his hand.

Now, I'm sure that most of you won't understand what the paragraph is saying. Well, we're in the exact same boat, because I, someone who's actually read through the entire story, could not explain to you what the heck this is. What the heck is a Phase System? Why are we suddenly talking about "bio specs" and "customisable interfaces"? Who is even speaking and why's he talking like he's describing some game character?

I'unno. 

Speaking of character, that's also another area where the story is lacking. SN just tries to introduce too many characters who are all important in some way or another. How many characters? 

Well, there’s Samuel himself, and Neocros (some dragon spirit sharing Samuel’s body or something). There are the three villains introduced initially, Voss, Slaughter and Dark Samuel (yes, really), each of which have complex backstories or complicated powers. There are three more antagonists revealed near the end, all of whom are also related to Samuel somehow, and also have unique powers and backstories that are important to the story. Then there are also two more original characters who are introduced in the last chapter, who each have, again, some important backstory. And, of course, there is Spike, the Mane Six, and Starlight.

Am I missing any? Probably.

The point is, there’s so many characters, with so many important backstories, that they just kinda meld together by the end. SN doesn’t give time to explore character, or even explain them; everyone is a cardboard cutout.

Scores

Grammar and Use of Language
Not the worst grammar out there, but still bad enough and with an awkward enough writing style that I never got into the flow of reading. Definitely the story’s most immediately obvious flaw.

3/10

Characterisation and Characters
Characters have personalities that seem interesting enough, but no substance. Many feel flat, and they’re all forgettable because of the sheer size of the cast. All of the OCs have under-developed (or at least, under-explained) backstories. Non-original characters also feel like they’re there just for Samuel’s sake. SN even mentions it in dialogue about halfway through the story. Samuel feels like a Mary Sue, with no internal conflict or really tough external conflict that he doesn’t immediately solve or have magically work out for him in the end.

2/10

Story Structure and Flow

This story is not very well-structured, if you couldn’t tell from my review. The main conflict is not well-established. Characters don’t get the time they need to act. Pacing and transitions are the most important issues here, as SN skips from one scene to the next with little telegraphing or reason. The pace of revealing information is not controlled at all.

A lot of dialogue also feels unrealistic and breaks the flow totally. How unrealistic? Well, that quote about Neocros I put earlier in the review, for one. Also one of the characters just says “Nani?” in the middle of a tense action scene with no rhyme or reason.

1/10

In summary…

This story is, in short, both a self-insert story and also a playground for SN’s OCs. I mentioned contacting at the start of the review. He told me that the backstories for many of the characters were supposed to have taken place in a game he’d been working on, and that he lost interest in the story halfway through writing it. Apparently, he only stuck with it for the sake of writing his OCs, and you can really tell from reading the story. It was almost doomed from the start.

2/10 - What the heck is even going on in this thing?

Feedback for SN

The most important feedback I can give for this story?

Slow down. People don’t read stories just for the action scenes or the plot twists. All the stuff in between is what matters — all the exposition, and character moments, they’re what action scenes and plot twists are built on. If people don’t know who your characters are, they won’t care about any big set pieces. If people can’t follow what’s going on, they won’t care either. So slow down your narration. Take the time to describe the environment, or to let the characters interact. Don’t just launch into action scenes expecting people to follow along.

The most important feedback I can give for you, as a writer?

Take the time to plan things out. Never immediately launch into writing a multi-chapter story with no plan, because that’ll almost definitely end poorly. Plan out your story, and make sure you believe in the themes you’re writing about. No writer is going to be able to spend months of their lives writing a story that they find they don’t believe in or don't have a connection to, and come out with a brilliant work of art. Even if you enjoy the characters, that’s only half of the equation, or less. No matter how interesting your characters are, a story cannot survive without a well thought-out plot.

Whew! I think this one is my first actually negative review so far How’d it go? Any points you disagree with, or you think don’t make sense? Please feel free to leave a reply on this thread.

Until next time, have a great week ahead!