A thread to discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the tie-in media.
All of the usual forum rules
apply. In addition, please remember that the thread is discussing a kids' show, and it's primarily focused on the work itself, not the fanfic — in particular, we don't want to see lewdness creeping in.
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM
Coco didn't exactly seem like a rich pony to me.
The whole "Raricow" thing just got a lot more awkward.
http://rainbowpotato98.deviantart.com/art/I-Uh-Yeah-437910510
I bring up Blueblood because I remember reading The Best Night Ever, and that was pretty good at exploring him. I feel sorta bad for him; the fandom gives him kind of a hard time, where his worst offense is being a prick.
Plus I'm currently stuck on the idea of A Day in the Limelight focused on the guys in the Mane6's lives. Probably wouldn't fly because the target audience is girls. (Not that they couldn't shoehorn a girl into that episode.)
edited 12th Jul '14 4:01:07 PM by PrincessGwenevere
"I feel like I'm on a raft and surrounding me is an ocean of dumb."- Mr. SarkAre you writing your first draft? If that's the case, you need to lock up your inner critic, because they're only going to be a hindrance at that stage. At this point, you need to let the words come out as they are, even if it ends up being a load of crap. Because it is going to be a load of crap. But if you don't get something out in the first place, there won't be anything to revise and polish.
That's why my first (and second and third) draft mantra is "I can fix that in editing".
This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...Hey guys, just wanted to let you know i'm going to post my new drawing tomorrow. Right now, I'm into "A thing". OK, G'night!
It's an exposition problem. In my retelling setup of EQG, I'm not sure how much infodumping Celestia should do. From a character stanpoint it's something I'm portraying as letting go of a burden and letting her perceived failure to help Sunset color her speech. But it could give Twilight too much information to find her rather quickly. On the other hoof, I've not sketched out much beyond a tenuous string of ideas so it can be more organic, so maybe she should know as much as possible? But infodumping? bleh.
In my experience infodumps tend to be a lot better received, often even well-received, if there's a solid, tangible reason for them to be happening. So if the infodump is caused by Celestia wanting to get things off her chest, and maybe being a bit... bitter? Depressed? Disappointed? Then that would make sense within the context of the story. At that point, as long as it doesn't go on for like, five pages of non-stop dialogue, you should be fine.
Try and splice in some actions there - and not like, jumping through windows actions, just moving around, or even just moving while sitting down. Describing things like fiddling with hands, brushing back hair, shifting position, etc. not only helps to spread out the weight of exposition, it also provides a lot of subtle characterization for the character being described. Granted in Celestia's case we don't need that much, but you can still use it as contrast - given that she rarely moves at all aside from a gentle pat, if she's moving around a lot more it could be taken as a sign of just how bothered she is.
Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.Here's my take on it: just write the stuff. It's much easier to go back and cut out extra stuff than it is to realize you didn't include enough and try to work it into an existing scene. I'd say leave the infodump there, and then when you go back to edit it, you can decide when it's too large or doesn't have sufficient motivation.
Kegisak is right though that it's far easier to swallow if there's an in-universe reason for it.
Reaction Image RepositoryThe way I have it, the chapter's Twilight's pov, who herself is nervous and stressed over losing the crown. So when she explains to the princesses the glimpse of Sunset and vanishing in the mirror, she's urgent to know what they can do about it. In my take they didn't get to her in time, so they only got a glimpse of her form. This way it puts more pressure on Celestia to explain, and through Twi's stress over the situation I hope to show that Tia is equally as distressed just under a mask of stoicism. Also as a bit of a contrast with Twilight's inexperience and obvious signs of uncertainty, with Celestia's long experience.
Are you recapping this for the benefit of readers who didn't watch EQD, or are you establishing new information unique to the fic?
Also, time for me to sleep.

I kind of like there's some nice rich ponies in later seasons. Granted there's still plenty of jerks, but Fancypants, Saphire Shores, Coco, and Filthy Rich to an extentshow they're not all like Blueblood. IDK, just struck me kind of odd that Rarity is treated sympathetically from the get go and most at the Gala were stuffy at best.