/go/ - Golden Oaks

>>4291
>>4292
I doubt he'll delete it, his ego is too large to erase his masterwork, along with the two or three positive comments it got, which he probably reads over and over while masturbating. We could spend the next decade shitting on him and he still wouldn't admit that his story sucks. Still it's good to have this for posterity or "just in case".

>>4283
>Silver "o mighty Thor please pound me in the pooper" Star
>Silver "check it out lol I am now literally a flaming faggot" Star
>Silver "You know what to insert here by now so hurry up and do it" Star
>Silver "my cavernous punished rectum is a void from which even light cannot escape" Star
>Silver "it is literally impossible to rape me because I will never say no to anything you want to shove up my ass, but I'll still pretend not to like it if that's what you want" Star
>Silver "I can deepthroat an entire eggplant" Star
>Silver "pound my butt at the speed of light" Star
>Silver "somepony literally fist this character to death I'm not even joking anymore" Star
>Silver "cruising for an anal bruising" Star
Now this is quality writing.

>Silver "Semen Please Daddy" Star
>Silver "I don't care if your dick has Zebra shit on it I want it in my mouth" Star
>Silver "Help Me I Am Literally Drowning In Cum" Star
>Silver "genie of the weenie" Star
>Silver "hot cross my buns" Star
>Silver "Squeeze me I'm full of custard" Star
>Silver "You know what on second thought don't help me, just give me more cum" Star
>Silver "Mrrmphrrrgarblgarblgarbl that's the sound I make when choking on half-breed donkey cock" Star
>Silver "Mommy Dressed Me Like A Filly When I Was a Colt and This is How I Turned Out" Star
>Silver "Ho ho ho I am Santa Claus, get it? It's because there is semen all over my face and it looks like a beard" Star
>Silver "I'm not even going to give him a nickname this time as his real name is literally synonymous with sucking cock" Star
>Silver "Fuck My Ponut Until it Tears At The Seams, Resembling A Leaky Raspberry Jam Filled Donut that has been stepped on" Star
>Silver "I want you to pump my asshole like you've been wandering in the desert and just found one of those old timey water pumps and are desperately trying to get water out of it" Star
>Silver "seriously, I am a colossal faggot have you figured this out yet" Star
>Silver "I will suck your dick so hard you will literally turn inside out" Star
>Silver "pound my asshole until my hips break" Star
>Silver "I'm like a wine connoisseur but with penises instead of wine" Star
>Silver "Rock Out With Your Cock In My Ass" Star
>Silver "I came to kick ass and chew bubble gum and suck thousands of dicks and not do the first two things" Star
>Silver "fuck my throat until the choker breaks, then put it back on and fuck me again" Star
>Silver "can you please get this bowling pin out of my ass doctor I have to poop, put it back in when I'm done though please" Star
>Silver "can you get AIDS from French kissing a male camel's butthole? asking for a friend) Star
>Silver "grab me by my flanks and launch me into orbit, Rocket Man" Star
>Silver "fist me Daddy" Star and his Silver "there's ten of us now so let's make an equine centipede" Spares
>Silver "yummy cummy in my tummy" Star
>Silver "if this van's a rockin it's what I'm suckin cock in" Star
>Silver "just stick it in, the cum from the last guy is lube enough" Star
>Silver "fist my asshole and use me as a boxing glove to fight Antifa, it's literally all I'm good for" Star
>Silver "are people still laughing at these?" Star
(every fucking time)
>Silver "I'm so Reddit I drew a Pickle Rick face on my dick to surprise my dad" Star
>Silver "I'm not gay I just suck a lot of zebra dick" Star
>Silver "hot cross my buns" Star
>Silver "I swallow if I'm thirsty" Star
>Silver "my gaping, ruined anus can literally be used to play skeeball" Star
>Silver "Down on the Docks is Where I Hunt for Cocks" Star
>Silver "your scrotum is my lucky totem" Star
>Silver "I got an infection from that last beef injection" Star
>Silver "I can't resist throbbing beefy dong either though" Star
>Silver "I think Dan Harmon is actually a pretty great guy" Star
> Silver "put a saddle on me and ride me to the gay bar" Star
>Silver "Starpunch" Star
>Silver "I can fit a whole pineapple in my rectum wanna see?" Star
>Silver "I'm a mare trapped in a stallion's body" Star
>Silver "Self-insert? What's that? I dont care just insert it into me" Star
>Silver "oh shit I'm out of butt lube and the butt lube store is closed today this is the worst Christmas ever" Star
>Silver "Tell the Doc I crave the cock" Star
>Silver "does this dildo in my ass make my ass look fat?" Star
There should be a medal for these kinds of demigod-tier shitposts.

>>4283
I feel a bit sad you have reached the end of the chapter. I hope we get to hear what happens next (seen from your point of view).

>>4283
>>4111
>>4120
>>4222

9. Chapter 6 - Summation and Final Thoughts

Well, I have now officially read all 32,223 words of this particular selection, and am ready to offer my final verdict:

Put simply, this blows. The issues with this chapter alone, both in terms of its technical construction and its overall literary value, are so numerous I could probably devote twice as many posts to it as I already have and still not even scratch the surface of just how atrocious this story is. The narrative is clumsy and confusing, and reads like an unrevised first draft (which I assume is exactly what it is). You frequently contradict yourself, or randomly introduce new elements into the story without offering explanation. Characters enter and remove themselves from scenes for no reason other than to help move the story in a direction that you want it to go, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense. Most characters are just cardboard cutouts of themselves with no depth whatsoever.

For instance, you construct a scene in which Pinkie Pie throws a party for Twilight at Silver's behest, to which everypony is invited (summoned?). From the beginning of the scene, you never even make it clear whether or not Twilight is attending her own party, or how she got where she is, or what she's doing. You mention her not being there, then all of a sudden she's there, then all of a sudden she's not anymore. Why is she wandering in and out of this barn party? What are her reactions to the fragments of events she witnesses? You make it clear that she isn't present during the fight scene, but her location for most of the party is unclear. At one point we see her "smiling proudly" as she watches Silver and Glimmer apparently making nice after Silver, alarmingly, attacks her out of nowhere. She is not mentioned again until nearly the end of the fight scene, where you simply state that she "wasn't there."

Your handling of the crowd of townsponies during this scene is equally confusing. At one point you mention a spell being cast on them by Silver, but it's never clear just what he does. At one point it sounds as if the spell somehow amplifies their emotions and makes them angrier at Glimmer. However, in a later paragraph you mention the spell somehow holding back the other ponies and preventing them from interfering, implying they might want to. Which is it? The only thing that remains consistent is, no matter what your OC does, they always cheer him for it. The CMC are apparently playing Go Fish throughout this whole scene and ignoring it, making them, apart from Glimmer, probably the most sensible characters in your entire story.

I've already gone into pretty exhaustive detail about your insensitive handling of the show's main (mane?) cast, so I won't dwell too much on it here, but I do want to reinforce a couple of important points. You set up Twilight as Silver's love interest but also make it abundantly clear that Silver has almost no respect for her intelligence or judgement. The narrative basically reduces her to a tittering schoolfilly who spends her leisure time doodling Silver's name on her notebook over and over. Even though her official title in Equestria is Princess of Friendship, and she has assumed responsibility for Glimmer's reformation in that capacity, Silver apparently sees no issue with expelling Glimmer from the universe on the basis of her past crimes, dismissing Twilight's views as "naive" without bothering to even consult her about it. As far as I can tell, Silver basically sees Twilight as just a QT 3.14 with a nice plot I'm not saying she isn't mind you, but if that's all you're going to treat her as you might as well just write porn, and the lack of apparent awareness you write him with suggests that this is basically your view as well. It's interesting that in a story where you repeatedly exalt your own character's struggles and accomplishments, and seem to be pushing a moral that hard work is the only path to success, you have that same character behave so dismissively to the struggles and accomplishments of his love interest. At the absolute least he could have asked her if she even wanted a damn hot tub before he tore all the plumbing out of her house, Jesus Christ that is some next level autism.

To summarize, this fanfiction is basically just a bad story that is written badly. The whole thing is just a rambling, incoherent narrative that glorifies your OC and pays little attention to the universe and characters of the source material. Your handling of every scene is clumsy and insincere, and the text spends about two thirds of its length being a Reddit-tier political treatise that just rehashes the same basic points over and over. About the only thing you pay any serious attention to is your autistic world mechanics; magic and Extreme Gear and all that horse shit that Protip: nobody but you cares about. Learn to actually write these characters and this world before you go trying to add elements to it.

Anyway, I originally just wanted to troll you a little, write up a couple of snarky posts pointing out some of the more obvious defects in your writing, and move on with my life. However, as I stated earlier, I am now fascinated by this train wreck you call your body of work. Since you have repeatedly stated in these threads that it is not possible to give your magnum opus a fair ANALysis without having read the whole thing, that is precisely what I am going to do.

The overture has concluded. Join us next time, everypony, as we begin our true deconstruction of Silver Star Apple and the Search for More Money, Love, The Meaning of Life, and Magical Cards. And by all means, anyone with the interest to do so is free to also read the text and submit their own thoughts. I'd like it if we could turn this thread into sort of a book club/rountable discussion on writing, maybe even inspire each other to do some writefagging ourselves.

Before we get too far into Silver Apple Star and the Search For Rice Krispy Squares and Hard Sweaty Butt Sodomy, or whatever the title is, I want to provide some background on Nigel's overall body of work.

This is a list of all the stories Nigel has thus far published to FiMfiction along with their associated ratings by the community:

The Last Power Fantasy: Johnny Christie ruins his own story for everyone involved
13 upvotes / 26 downvotes (66% negative)

TCB: Rewrite of 1996
19 upvotes / 55 downvotes (74% negative)

Displaced: Human In Equestria but the Human becomes Twilight Sparkle only more, also Pokemon are there
29 upvotes / 94 downvotes (76% negative)

Coral The Phoenix and The Caged Bird
7 upvotes / 28 downvotes (80% negative)

And of course, the masterwork, Silver Star Apple and the Search for More Money, Love, The Meaning of Life, and Magical Cards. Ironically, this pile of dogshit is apparently Nigel's most popular work, racking up an impressive 41 upvotes, compared to a mere 44 downvotes (51% negative). Congratulations, Nigel, maybe one day you'll beat the spread.

Hilariously enough, Nigel is also a member of the following groups:
>The Decent Writers Club
>Parody of Overpowered OCs
>Why in the heck doesn't anypony appreciate OC's?
>Bronies With Blades
>Good OCs
>Undertale (every fucking time)
>Best Stories Ever
>Authors Against Harsh Critics

Oh, sweetie.

>>4302
This 100k word firewood is somehow listed as Romance, Slice of life and Comedy. Did anyone see anything funny in what he wrote like a completely series lecture over communism barely even letting Starlight have a word in before burying her in more long winded berating and that's even without the sadism. Even his attempts at humor falls on it's face, but political 'debates' (which gives him more credit than it's due because it wasnt a debate )is what I look for in a quality comedy.

It speaks volumes when Nigel only thinks the merit of good writing are just more to slog through for the reader when it's always been said the soul of wit is in brevity.

I'm sure the dislike ratio will drop through the floor after people read chapter 6. Maybe it could have avoided it's fate before hand and starting out at sea was all naive and wishful thinking before the Silver "I can fit that whole ice burg inside me" Star became nothing more than a mouthpiece for his own ego and sank this Titanic of a fimfic.

>>4301
I have in fact been thinking about posting a review thread on this site for a while now. I am almost done with my review that I thought I would post on it. The review is about the episode: "It's about time".
I also think that would be great anyway.

All the ocs that populated the rich land that was mlpol had gathered. The firstborn had returned, SilverFagot!Star

>>4301
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Chapter 1: The Silver Spire of Curved Monkey Penises

>His eyes drifted toward the other book, a fantasy novel, a trashy and derivative piece of genre fiction. He'd like to say he didn't know why he was still reading this trash, but he knew perfectly well. He wanted to know everything about this book, he wanted to read it all, and then he wanted to lock it away somewhere and never read it again. If he ran into any fans of this book, he wanted to be able to launch himself into a ten-minute rant about this book. He hated this book, but after seventeen chapters of garbage, simply giving up would be like... well, simply giving up.
Welcome to my world, Silver. Welcome to my world.

This story actually starts off somewhat promising, so clearly you need to add "tragedy" to your list of genre tags. We are immediately introduced to Coffee Grounds, a coffee-colored unicorn with a white mane and tail that resembles whipped cream. He is a somewhat lazy businesspony who owns an unsuccessful but well-situated coffee shop that he is trying to sell. His personality is that he basically enjoys making money but has little interest in his work; his talent is making coffee but he has never taken it particularly seriously. Most of the work gets delegated to subordinates, so the business has never taken off despite being in a prime location. However, he imagines that he can probably sell it at a good profit and coast on the money for a bit.

Congratulations, Nigel: you have just created your first decent character. His concept and design is silly, but not unintentionally so like with Silver "I have second degree burns inside my rectum because I was curious what would happen if I put a piping hot Arby's™ Jalapeno Popper up there" Star; he's just mildly silly in a way that would fit into the universe of the series. You clearly establish a personality and a basic motivation for him. His goals are believable and in sync with his character. He seems like the type of pony who has some bad habits and negative traits, but nothing so awful it would turn a reader against him immediately. He is a somewhat frivolous but likeable pony with room to improve. This is a well-made character; I would read a story about Coffee Grounds.

Sadly, it all goes downhill from there. After a brief scene in which there is some confusion over an appointment, we learn that the pony Coffee Grounds is going to try to sell his shop to is none other than Silver "forget about the second degree burns, if I don't get a cucumber in my rectum before noon I will literally start having panic attacks" Star. Naturally, our first introduction to Silver immediately paints him as a colossal douchebag. We find him in the penthouse office of his personal skyscraper, reading a book on magic (and also a trashy fantasy novel, his impressions of which are quoted above). We learn that he has apparently been reading for the last 17 hours, but only 6 have passed, due to his ability to slow down time or something.

There's some back and forth between Silver and his Griffon secretary about whether or not he may actually be too awesome for his own good, and the various types of ennui he's developing from his adversaries not being awesome enough to provide him a slight challenge before he vanquishes them anyway. He is introduced to us as a self-made billionaire and super genius who spends most of his time and energy on esoteric magical pursuits, and seems to enjoy grifting wealthy ponies whom he perceives as intellectually beneath him, which as far as I can tell is part of how he built his fortune (rather negating some of his later speeches about earning his fortune through hard work, imo). Basically, this character is introduced to us as Tony Stark without all of the things that make Tony Stark sympathetic. Also, he seems to have a habit of chugging some kind of magic-enhancing elixir that concerns his secretary.

Anyway, this is followed by a rather long and complicated sequence of events in which Silver "okay so the cucumber seems to have ruptured my burns and now I have an extremely painful infection up there, but if you think that will stop me from having butt sex you obviously don't know me very well" Star does a bunch of magical acrobatics to transport himself across the street to where his meeting is. I personally think this scene is a bit long and complicated, but you clearly want to demonstrate Silver's magic abilities and his cocky desire to show them off, so I guess it's kind of a judgement call whether to scale it back or not. As an action sequence it's not bad.

Well, to make a long story short he then crashes through the window and makes a rather theatrical entrance that annoys the ponies he's meeting with, apparently this is deliberate and meant to reinforce the fact that he's a complete douche. At least he repairs the window. The meeting is between himself and three ponies: Coffee Grounds, and two others whose names I have trouble remembering, Lemon Pledge and Comet™ Bathroom Cleaner With Bleach I think, or something to that effect. I'm assuming they're just throwaway characters anyway.

I'm assuming the meeting is a fairly important scene for this part of the story and will probably have numerous instances of supreme douchery from Silver "oh god I wasn't kidding about these infected rectal burns being painful but Jesus H. Christ do I ever enjoy sodomy" Star, that will need to be catalogued and memed, so I will save it for the next post.

Pic related is a character I've christened Onion Hulk as I don't know who he really is or why he exists; after Coffee Grounds he is my favorite character you have yet created.

>>4128
>>4111
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>>4222

Alright, so we're maybe about a third of the way into Chapter One and already we have a prime example of Silver "how many calories are in dog semen? asking for a friend" Star behaving like an utterly reprehensible douchebag. Apparently deciding that the three ponies he's kept waiting (he gave all three of them an appointment at the same time and then kept them all waiting for several hours) are not worth even this much of his time, he uses his magic to construct separate livestock pens for each one (not making this up), and then sends clones of himself in with each one to handle the actual meetings. He then sits down and continues to read his book, which I assume is some kind of instruction manual on how to become even more of an insufferable mongoloid, while conducting the meetings simultaneously via some form of telepathy (not making this up).

So anyway, it looks like we're dealing with Comet Ping Pong first. Apparently Comet is being blackmailed by somepony and wants Silver "literally shove patio furniture up my ass" Star to fix it for him. He offers money, which naturally Silver finds insulting. Silver brags about how rich he is for a while, taking the time to mention that he invests his money instead of just sitting on it, because apparently he's the first pony in Canterlot to have thought of that (wait, you can get rich by investing money? I thought you were just supposed to hoard it like a lake troll. teach me your ways, Alan Greenspan!). After that, he informs Comet Wang that his price is that he wants to literally own him, including his home, his inheritance, his title (apparently he's a Prince or something) and replace him with a clone of himself (or something).

Oh, this is rich:
>“You lost your right to call yourself a Prince when you did something even young foals know not to do. I've seen pictures of your wife, and she's adorable. She also doesn't seem like a legitimately terrible pony, so tell me, what possessed you to betray her trust – and betray her – like this?”
Apparently, the whole issue here is that Comet "betrayed" his wife by pawning her jewelry to buy collectible action figures, and the blackmailer is threatening to expose him. I'll admit that's actually a funny gag, so good job there, but the trouble is it's not really an evil enough act to justify how shitty Silver behaves. What I assume we're supposed to take away from this scene is that Silver is meant to be some type of Chaotic Good rogue-type character who enriches himself by scamming others, but it's okay because the people he scams are scoundrels themselves. We're all supposed to laugh at how clever he is and applaud his exploits, while taking satisfaction in the comeuppances he inflicts upon his marks. While this type of character is a time-tested and popular archetype, the challenge with it is you have to make your rogue likeable. Put simply, if you're going to have Silver behave like even more of an obnoxious douche than the people he scams, it doesn't work.

In any case, as we saw in our sneak peek at Chapter 6, Silver treats mares pretty badly himself, and is probably not a pony who is in any position to be whiteknighting. And yet he goes on:
>Relationships are about communication and mutual understanding. Not some foalish zero-sum game where whoever apologizes first loses and whoever has more power over the other and gets away with being terrible to the other more often wins!
And there you have it, folks. A lecture on how to build a successful marriage from a character who will eventually burglarize his girlfriend's house in order to make improvements to it that she didn't ask for, after sending a pony she'd adopted as a personal protege into another dimension without bothering to consult her about it. Moving on.

Anyway, Silver offers Comet a metaphorical deal with the devil, in which he can choose to either give up his cushy life in Canterlot and start a new life with his wife in alternate-timeline Manehattan, or take his chances with the blackmailer. We leave him pondering for a bit, and move on to Coffee Grounds' interview. We also get a short interlude paragraph in which Silver chuckles to himself about how stupid Coffee Grounds appears to be and gets annoyed with how his clones aren't performing quite as he'd like them to.

Oh, one small thing:
>It was irritating to note that the replica hadn't blinked once, the entire time, and it made Silver wonder if he remembered to have the other replicas blink. Like finding a typo in your work you had once failed to notice, it was irritating in a way nothing else could possibly match.
I would just like to mention that I have come across multiple typos in this work.

>>4308
>>4309
I don't know how much you have left to post, but it should be capped, for the sake of posterity. Other people should be made aware of Nigel's fuckups and your insight into them.

>>4045
I really liked your work, don't let hater sjw's tell you how to write man.

>>4309
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>"So as you can see, Mr Star... may I call you Silver?" Coffee asked with a wide grin.
>"You may not." Silver said flatly, staring at the businesspony with his barely-interested, unblinking ice-blue eyes that seemed far too old, cold and wise for his young-adult age.
>pic related
Daily reminder that if your fanfic OC is young, is described as having any sort of spiky anime hair, has stats maxed out in multiple areas significant to the world you're in, is capable of feats that would prove challenging or impossible to the most talented canonical characters, and is considered "wise beyond his years," you probably have a (G)(M)ary S(t)u(e) and should consider scrapping the story and heading back to the drawing board.

So anyway when we last left Silver "don't call me Silver my name is Lady Marmalade, the Eternal Chugger of Cum" Star, he had finally deigned to interview a much better-designed character by the name of Coffee Grounds, who is giving a presentation on his business that Silver is not even remotely interested in listening to, no doubt because he is too busy dreaming about creamy buttered mustang penises. The meeting is used briefly as a framing device for spoonfeeding the reader a large portion of Silver's backstory, in which we basically learn what we already knew about him: he's rich, suspiciously powerful, extremely lucky, and pretty much a cum gargling faggot. The spoonfeeding ends with a rant about how overpriced and poorly run CG's coffee shop is:
>...these fools, who had squandered such a great location with mediocre and VASTLY overpriced coffee that drove away anypony who didn't somehow convince themselves that the generic 'Black fancy chairs in one corner, wooden tables on the whole left wall, walled-off food counter with workers behind it and an easily-changeable chalkboard for prices, orange lighting with black and brown highlights on the room's colour scheme' ambiance was worth the outrageous prices... These fools were not worthy of owning a business.
I assume this suspiciously detailed description of a coffee shop is probably in here because some hipster coffee joint overcharged you for a latte or something IRL. Or, maybe you just hate coffee shops in general. Everything you write seems to either be a revenge fantasy or a regular fantasy that reads like one.

And oh God, you just won't stop with the unintentional irony:
>I once read a certain work of fiction, when I was bored, and it starred a supposedly intelligent protagonist. To make this supposed intelligence clear enough to the audience the writer expected his books to have, the writer decided to remind you how intelligent he considered this character every five lines. That's what it felt like, at least. To make matters worse, the character himself, as though constantly peacocking for an invisible audience, kept reminding every other character in the story what a 'Genius' he considered himself.
But holy shit you just keep going:
>Unfortunately, this character was stupid, and he only seemed intelligent because outside of a few rare puzzle-solving moments of ingenuity, he was only the smartest character in a world of idiots. He was boring to read, boring to watch, he was annoying, and he was utterly unlikable. There was never any tension, because this character would constantly get bailed out by pure dumb luck and conveniences upon conveniences if his own wit combined with the writer's wit couldn't hack it. He had no ponifying moments, beyond the obvious and stereotypical ones, and while fans may argue his unbearable personality was a front to cover his insecurities, the writer certaintly didn't seem to be going for that at the time, but I'm sure he'd happily accept the credit for such a great get-out-of-ponifying-characters-free card. He constantly wasted time trying to validate the chips on his shoulders, and his own stereotypical physical deficiencies by rubbing his supposed intelligence in the face of every character who'd let him, and it was just downright unpleasant to read. So I'll skip the part where I'd planned to do that on the way here, you'll skip the part where you'll make that necessary, and I'll get to the other two, who have far more interesting backstories.

This is all dialog spoken by Silver btw, and none of it is even relevant to the conversation at hand. He just blurts this out for no reason. It's like your subconscious is trying to force its way into your conscious mind and tell you something about what you're writing and why you probably shouldn't keep writing it.

Anyway, CG makes an offer that is probably a highball figure, but instead of negotiating in the normal way until a fair price is reached, Silver makes an insultingly low offer, which CG naturally has no choice but to accept because hey, it's not like any of the other moneyed elites in Canterlot are going to be interested in buying a piece of valuable real estate, amirite? Anyway, he sells his coffee shop for 25 bits (down from 2500) and is out of the story.

>>4313
>Silver makes an insultingly low offer, which CG naturally has no choice but to accept
>He sells his coffee shop for 25 bits (down from 2500) and is out of the story.
For some perspective on how much of an asshole move this is (and a reminder to research your material you're going to write for) 8 bits can buy a basket of apples from Applejack in Season 1. So Silver "I need all the bits for myself stacked up as a towering golden dildo for personal use" Star thinks an entire business shop is worth 3 baskets of apples. Insulting low offer is putting it too lightly, but everyone is a spineless doormat in this universe so the OC can shine over everyone else.

>>4313
>It's like your subconscious is trying to force its way into your conscious mind and tell you something about what you're writing and why you probably shouldn't keep writing it.
Kek
Nigel's subconscious is like: "WAKE ME UP INSIDE! I CAN'T WAKE UP!"

>>4313
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Next up is Lemon Bar, who apparently is one of any number of farmers who were swindled out of their family farms by Silver "it's not really grifting if you condescend to them and call them stupid also I suck cock lol" Star, who apparently bought up a fuckton of them and is now running some sort of Monsanto type factory-farming operation all across Equestria. Silver naturally justifies this by insulting Lemony Goodness and telling him that he sucks at business, basically because he and his family wanted to take weekends off and sell their products at prices below the level of extortion.

Before we go any further, I just want to once again say that this character is just awful. He's not just badly designed and badly written, he's a genuinely bad person (pony?). You seem to want him to be sympathetic and even heroic but it's almost as if you yourself are so lacking in basic decency that you don't even realize just how reprehensible his actions are, and expect everybody reading to chuckle along with you while Silver "oh yeah pound more shekels up my ass Mr. Shekelberg" Star just goes around cheating ponies and making fun of how stupid he thinks they are.

This character's whole backstory, as I understand it, is that he is supposed to be a self-made billionaire who started with nothing and rose quickly to the top on the strength of elbow grease and wits. You describe him as a cunning businesspony who uses his genius business acumen to cheat the ponies who deserve it and reap the profits as a reward, sort of an ethical rogue as I described earlier. However, thus far you haven't demonstrated that at all with him. So far we haven't seen him going after gangsters or shady businessponies or even low-level crooks. At this point in the story all we know about him for certain is that he performed some kind of hostile takeover on a family farm (which he justifies by calling the farmer lazy and stupid, and insisting that he didn't "deserve" to run his farm). We see him extort a pony who comes to him for help dealing with a blackmailer, essentially forcing him to trade his identity and his title in exchange for keeping a relatively minor transgression a secret. Moreover, Silver justifies this by acting like he's teaching him some kind of lesson about appreciating his wife and having a better relationship with her, however it would have been better for him to just go home, confess what he'd done and try to work out their differences. Nopony learned anything from that encounter yet Silver profited and acted like he did something noble.

Last we have Coffee Grounds, whose only real crime was being lazy and running his business poorly. However he was still the rightful owner of the property he was selling and deserved a fair price for it, how well he ran the business on it shouldn't have mattered. After all, Silver was basically buying the location and getting the shop for free, and it's pretty obvious that Silver has plenty of cash to throw around and will be able to turn a profit one way or the other.

So far, as much as we've heard about Silver's vaunted work ethic, as well as his heroic exploits fighting cattle rustlers and whatever the fuck else, we really haven't seen him do anything besides sit on his ass reading books while getting rich off the misfortunes of others, then berating them for being stupid. This really is one of the most unpleasant heroes I've ever encountered in any story, mostly because he's written without any level of irony or awareness on your part of how awful he truly is.

One of my all-time favorite stories is a comic written by Ed Brubaker called The Last of the Innocent. It's a story about a truly reprehensible protagonist. Basically, he abandons his hometown and his high school sweetheart to marry a rich girl and climb the social ladder. Then, when the marriage fails, he cooks up a scheme to murder his wife, get a huge pile of money out of her father through some fancy stock manipulations, then moves back to his hometown so he can just pick up where he left off with his old girlfriend whom he dumped. He does all kinds of horrible fucked up shit for completely selfish reasons, and gets away with all of it. The thing is though, it's told brilliantly. You see everything that happens through this golden haze of childhood nostalgia that serves as the protagonist's motivation. You see the place in his mind that he wants to get back to, the innocence of his youth that he threw away to go chase money and status. He discards his new life with the same carelessness and impulsiveness that he discarded the old one with. He learns absolutely nothing, and never atones for his transgressions. It has an ending that is happy for the evil protagonist, but to anyone reading is just plain fucked up. It's honestly one of the most brilliantly written things I've ever read.

In order to tell a story about an unlikable protagonist, you have to at a minimum be conscious of who the character you're writing is, and be willing to acknowledge him as an evil bastard while still presenting events the way he sees them. You don't want to pass judgement on him but you don't want to excuse him either, the trick is to just show him as both the way he sees himself and the way he really is. You can almost think of it as watching someone through a window when they think they're alone. Your problem is you have no idea who your character is, because his worldview is your worldview, and you assume it's the audience's view as well. His cruel and callous actions to you seem heroic, the things his creepy autism compels him to do you assume will be seen as lovable quirks. There's no law against writing characters that resemble or think like you, but in order to do so you have to be able to step back and look at yourself objectively and critically, which so far you seem unable to do.

Also, read Poe if you want more well-told stories about evil MCs.

Why are (((the subversive elements))) alternating between bumping this thread and the other one?

>>4317
Maybe read some of it, Nigel, you might learn something.

>>4318
>>4317

Nigel only has a high verbal IQ, otherwise he is dumb like a box of rocks, both in literacy and socially. The sheer ignorance of his narcing ego shield him from any objective improvement the review of his workbody could provide. This whole thread is just mental toiletpaper to him. If he were to admit to his failure his whole imagined writer career would come crashing down. He has more in common with an anti trump partisan than anything else. This whole Glimmernigger conspiracy is his personal "Muh Russian Hackers" tulpa.

>>4308
>>4309
>>4313
>>4316
Something tells me the first draft of this OC had him as a (((Griffon))).

>>4316
>>4111
>>4120
>>4222

Anyway, let's get back to this travesty. When last we left Lemon Shower, the poor asshole was trapped in a meeting with Silver "[insert gay joke here] or better yet just insert a galvanized metal tube into my rectum to expedite hamster ingress" Star, begging for his farm back, as far as I can tell from the rather convoluted dialog. Anyway Silver, in his infinite wisdom, apparently discerns that Lemony Snickett always wanted to be an artist, so he uses his limitless cosmic power to drill knowledge into his brain, so all of a sudden he knows how to art (not making this up). Lee Lemons is so pleased by this that he cries tears of joy, thanks Silver for showing him such magnanimity, and leaves, presumably with whatever deal regarding the farm he was trying to arrange concluded in Silver's favor.

I'll remind everyone that all three of these meetings are happening simultaneously and being conducted by Silver's clones, while Silver sits off by himself somewhere, stroking his knobby horse dong to Neighponese foal porn.

Anyway, the three ponies unsurprisingly all accept Silver's contracts and lick his heavenly balsamic nutsac as thank you for the opportunity to be in the same room with him. The meetings conclude with Silver being some tiny percentage wealthier than he was before, which he celebrates by going back to his fucking personal skyscraper and bouncing around the room singing to himself about how awesome he is (not making this up).

Quoth the mighty hero:
>EAT IT! EAT EVERYTHING! EAT! GRASS! GET ON MY LEVEL, CANTERLOT! AND EVERY LAST PONY IN IT! GET! ON! MY! LEVEL! I HAVE EVERYTHING YOU EVER HAD AND EVER WILL HAVE, AND THEN SOME!

Then, he becomes seized by some profound ennui, realizing perhaps for one brief microsecond that all the wealth in Canterlot can't make him any less of a gigantic chud. In a rare moment of self-reflection, he thinks back on the events of his recent past and wonders if maybe there's more to life than what he's been doing. Naturally, he uses his magic to conjure a self-amplified electric guitar shaped like his cutie mark (not making this up) and performs an impromptu emo ballad, with clones of himself summoned to sing harmony (not making this up). I really feel like it's in everyone's best interest to include the lyrics of the song verbatim:
>"Gold has lost its lustre, just as gems have lost their shine." Silver sang, starting with a melancholy chord, air solidified by his telekinetic grip serving as the pick.
>"I'm getting bored of victory, and making everything mine.
>I've fought hard to get where I am, and I have come so far.
>Aside from the sun, which doesn't count, I shine as the brightest star.
>I've reached heights I once dreamed of, just as I once fortold!
>So why is this starry void... so cold?
>Why do I still feel this way?
>What is this void inside my heart?
>I've reached the goal I've been aiming for,
>Since my journey's start.
>I've fought to build a throne,
>And claim it for my own
>And I've done it all alone.
>I've built a brighter future,
>I've left the past behind.
>My will is steel, so why is my heart a stone?
>I've travelled so far from where I began
>My life's gone according to my plan
>I used to break locked doors, now they open for me
>I used to be alone, and I still am,
>But now I see...
[clones of himself sing harmony]
>Now I see...
>I've reached heights I once dreamed of, just as I once fortold!
>So why is this starry void... so cold?"

Aw, poor fella. Anyway, his mopings were apparently seen by his Griffon secretary (((Aquilla))), whose widdle heart just bweaks to see her awesome boss so down in the dumps.

>She looked at him with concern. “Seeing you mope around like that was painful in ways you can't even begin to imagine.” She growled. ”I can almost feel my spleen organizing betting pools on when my other organs shut down. You are a train made of win, but it's spinning its wheels and crashing into a train made of suck, I want to look away and I easily could, but it wouldn't change the fact that you're moping around like a loser and it's annoying. Go get some friends already!”

And yes, that is actual dialog. Ms. Griffonstein then demands to know who the last mare he spoke to was, Silver whips out his little black book and immediately flips to a picture of a sexy stallion I'm too classy to even touch that one, and then there's a whole paragraph of spergy nonsensical bullshit about Spitfire and the Wonderbolts, which seems to be another aspect of the show you have some irrational hatred of that you feel like blathering about...some more spergy blathering about dubstep of all things...at this point I'm just skimming text again until it resumes coherence. I think the basic gist of this is that Silver doesn't date much and tends to fail at relationships (who would have guessed).

Eventually we get some more pseudo-depth from Silver:
>“I always feel nothing,” Silver said dramatically, looking off into the distance with a somber expression. “My soul is an ever-expanding void I can sate only with that which I hunger for. Though the emptiness within me is that which drives me on, seeking out greater challenges and new tastes and other forms of fulfilment, the emptiness erodes my will to continue on with each breath, like an animal gnawing at its bars. Yet without that hunger, I am no more than a satisfied Elder Dragon, sitting on his hoard and doing nothing with it. What does it mean to desire? What does it mean to have? Does life exist to eat, or does life exist to want to eat? Are you truly alive when searching for your next meal, or when consuming it?”

Jesus Fucking Christ dude. Anyway, long story short Ms. Talonberg tells Silver to quit being a faggot and go make some friends.

>>4321
>>4111
>>4120
>>4222

So basically, long story short is, Silver "my farts don't even make noise anymore" Star decides that what's missing in his life besides an understanding of basic decency is friends, a concept which he seems to define as "ponies who stroke your dick and tell you you're great because they want to, not because they have to." Of course, he arbitrarily chooses Ponyville from a list of thousands of towns in Equestria he could possibly vacation in, and teleports himself there because fuck taking the train like a poorfag. What could possibly go wrong?

So, naturally, Silver makes an appropriately douchey entrance by appearing over Ponyville, rocketing across the sky like a comet. His supersonic hearing, which he uses to listen in on conversations to make sure ponies he doesn't know aren't talking about him, tells him that Pinkie Pie mistook his coloring for grey, which naturally pisses him off.

His first impressions of the town:
>...looking at Ponyville, he noticed a completely out-of-place crystal castle monstrosity around all the nice, normal, thematically-fitting cottage houses. He’d have to be blind to not miss it, considering how the thing was a giant eyesore.
...says the guy who built a giant phallic silver skyscraper in the middle of fucking Canterlot. Oh, wait a minute:
>Then again, he lived in a giant silver and steel tower he’d built himself in a town filled with buildings made from marble, ivory, and stone, so what right did he have to tell strange ponies to get better taste in interior and exterior decorating?
Well, I'll be jizzed on by an orangutan, a glimmer :^) of self awareness from Silver "I keep a wine cork in my anus when nopony's using it because my sphincter doesn't really work very well at this point" Star. Maybe there's hope for this tale yet.
>This right, really, since his Steel Spire was awesome and thematically fitting while not fitting, while this big crystal temple just looked weird in an old-looking town like this.
Nope, never mind, he's back to being a colossal douche.
>Like someone had found a nice diorama of a city from a hundred moons ago, and slapped down a big pink gem where their megagem turbodream megaprincess hyperbeauty infinicastle would stand.
We get it, you don't like the fucking Princess Castle Playset™ in the middle of Ponyville™; let's move on. You don't need to take common complaints from the internet and dump them into your narrative, it comes across as bitchy and annoying. Plus, everyone reading knows what you're talking about and why you're bringing it up; it's borderline breaking the fourth wall and it kills the enjoyment of reading a story. Learn to filter your thoughts.

>He turned to look at the approaching Pegasus, noting her impressive speed. Which made sense, now that he looked at her beautifully lithe and toned aerodynamic body and the pure magnificence of her strong-looking wings. With wing muscles like those, she could probably crush multiple apples with her feathers alone. Her prismatic mane was odd, but cute, a rare mutation, and despite how 'rainbow' was a collection of colours and not a colour in its own right, it seemed to suit this mare perfectly.
Well, it looks like even Silver wants to cum inside Rainbow Dash. I mean, he's going to be disappointed when he finds out she's not a dude, but still, we can hardly fault his patrician taste. Anyway, I'll grant that you can visually describe things well when you want to, you should try to emphasize that and downplay the autistic rambling in future projects. +5 for that paragraph.

>"Hey, I've heard about you!" He said, realizing who she was. The information was already there in his mind, he just wasn't really paying attention. "You saved Equestria a bunch of times, right?"
>"Yeah, but my friends helped." Rainbow humble-bragged.
>"Cool. So, what can you tell me about The Light of Harmony, or as some call it, Rainbow Power?" Silver asked.
>"Uh... not much. We got six rainbow keys, and a big tree, and we got awesome new rainbow forms-" Rainbow said.
>"What in rainbow colouration?" Silver joked, to her confusion. "Nevermind, just a bad joke," He said, deciding to write that one down later.
Aaaaaaaaand -5 for the clumsily written cringe-inducing dialog that follows. I knew we'd break even eventually. You really need to learn how to write naturally flowing dialog. Nobody talks this way; not here, not in Equestria. Instead of just using dialog as a way to get information on the page or as a means for your character to brag about himself, try thinking about how actual conversations work and try to emulate them. A good exercise would be to put two characters into a random situation and give them something mundane to talk about. Make it a scene where very little else is going on and pretty much all that the characters can do is talk. Try to avoid anything huge or earth-shattering, just write the sort of casual conversation that two ponies would have if they were just hanging out shooting the shit. Think of the conversation from the perspective of each character and try to imagine what they would likely say to each other, eventually you'll just start writing better dialog without even needing to think about it. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about thinking harder about these characters. Who are they? What do they think and feel in various situations? How do they each respectively behave if X happens? You don't even have to write it down, just think about it while you're at work or wandering around grocery shopping or whatever.

>Opens thread expecting a ton of shit
Literally pages upon pages of Nigel getting shat on
Glim you are doing god's work take a (you)

>>4322
>>4111
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>>4222
So next, after slogging our way through some awkward and cringey proto-conversation between Rainbow Dash and Silver "ejaculate directly onto the bullseye I drew on my forehead and win a prize" Star, they talk about books for a while, in an exchange of what turns out to actually be slightly better dialog. Silver of course is still a massive autistic dong, but as it turns out, one of the few times where it's appropriate to behave like a massive autistic dong is when you're sperging out about books you enjoy (or don't enjoy, as the case may be :^)). For one brief shining moment, Nigel, you actually manage to create a dialog between two characters that somewhat resembles a natural conversation those two characters might have...

...and then you ruin it by veering off into another paragraph in which Silver begins bragging incessantly about stuff he owns. Oh well, it's not like anyone didn't see that coming. Anyway, this faggot has been in Ponyville for literally less than 30 minutes and he's already hitting on Rainbow Dash. Naturally, his way of going about it is to brag about himself, in this case by telling her that he not only owns all of the companies that publish the most significant Daring Do fanzines, but also that he contributes to them (anonymously of course, so he won't be shown favoritism, although it's kind of pointless since he already knows his submissions are the most awesome and will automatically win).

Anyway, he bets Rainbow Dash 9000 bits that she can't suck off an entire hockey team faster than he can, or maybe their contest has something to do with Daring Do books, idk I wasn't really paying attention. Anyway:
>“What, nine thousand?” Rainbow asked in surprise.
Okay, I'll admit that if that joke was intentional, it was pretty funny.

Oh, also the loser of the bet has to treat the winner to a meal. Yes, everyone, you read that correctly: Silver has just attempted the literal oldest trick in the book and Rainbow is about to fall for it.

>“Scared, Rainbow Dash?” Silver asked tauntingly.
>“You wish!” She declared. “You're on!”
>“Really, if one thousand is too much, I can make it ten. What I'm really after is the meal.”
(pretty sure you just said the bet was for 9,000 btw, don't know where you're getting these numbers from)
>“Oh, really?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.
>“Yeah. What's the best place to get something to eat in this town?” He wondered...

Well, as everypony knows, Silver, the best place to get something to eat in Ponyville is the Expensivest Restaurant in Ponyville, owned by a tough-as-nails old pony named Emerald Whiskers, famed throughout the land for his emerald whiskers. Be sure to try the expensivest meal, I hear it's the tops. Just try not to wreck up the place, you gigantic mong.

And then...oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ. I...I...I just...Jesus. Reading this is like watching a slow motion train wreck, but every time you think the train is finished being wrecked, it figures out a way to get even more wrecked than it was previously. This thing is no longer even recognizable as something that was ever a train.

So, apparently, in addition to being the publisher of all the Daring Do fanzines as well as the author of all the cool enchanted interactive puzzles contained in said fanzines, Semen Star is also secretly the world's most widely respected author of Daring Do fanfiction, Silver Fox. SF is naturally also Rainbow's favorite author besides A.K. Yearling herself, who I'm surprised Silver has not yet claimed as a long-lost daughter from another dimension or some shit. Jesus H. Christ Nigel, there's going over the top for the sake of lulz or exaggeration, and then there's just being downright retarded. How does this character find the time to do all this shit? Oh, right, his fucking time manipulation ability that he figured out while he was fistfighting Dracula and teaching Einstein the theory of relativity. That apparently allows him to churn out Daring Do fanfictions (which I hope to Christ are at least marginally less shitty than what I'm reading currently) at the speed of light while conducting thousands of stock transactions per second and hollowing out the Equestrian middle class through hostile takeovers of small businesses. At this point you should not be trying to write fanfiction, you should be talking to your doctor about adjusting your Adderall regimen.

And then...Jesus Christ, I'm just going to paste this next paragraph in.
>"That's right, I'm THE Silver Fox, creator of Silver Spiked Space, False Sense of Infinity, and Imperfect Suffervoid 9X!" The nerd announced with dark glee as the sky darkened and the camera zoomed in, as though the pony was a costumed supervillain announcing that HE was the one who dumped countless tonnes of pudding mix into the ocean and stole every puppy in the world. "He who made Rain Supreme herself, the best interactive comic tester in the business, spend two hours in one room, eight hours in the next room, and four days stuck in the next, only to find she'd wasted all that time on a dead end! He who made her break down in tears and use an emergency exit password for the first time in her life, and take a two-week vacation from all interactive comics before the next interactive puzzle on her list made her rediscover what she loved about puzzles and temples, an interactive puzzle I also created, under, a false, pseudonym!" He announced, gasping for air near the end. He took a deep breath, and calmed himself. "He who made the still-unbeaten A Special Silver Variety of Velocity! He who slakes his thirst with the tears of the unworthy and feasts upon the shattered hopes and dreams of the poor tortured souls that once knew what it was like to hope!"

Needless to say, Rainbow is impressed and probably horny.

And, believe it or not, that is how the first chapter ends. We still have 4 more chapters to go. God save us all.

>>4323
Also, I accept your (you) and say thankya. Have a Fluttershy being adorable in return.

>>4321
I'm pretty much positive that this impromptu emo ballad is Nigel's attempt to mimic the show verbatim. Since the show does random songs from every character under the sun, then it's OK too for his OC to do it. Like when Chrysalis sang even though it's out of character for her. Imitating the show on the surface without having a deeper understanding of the themes is a common occurrence in this train wreck fic. He does it all the way up until Chapter 5 and 6 with Silver "I'm making motions at the 'camera' because I'm ready for my money shot" Star and tries to break the 4th wall with stupid stuff that would only work if it had an actual audience on TV instead of an actual immersive world like most FIMfiction is written.

Also he's apparently bi polar schizophrenic with split personalities, always a bad sign when you cant even keep a consistent character. That last chunk sounds like some faggot goth lamenting about his emptiness and how other people just cant 'get it' its a jarring change from his cocky asshole attitude and just seems entirely forced for him to get a 'peptalk' from his adoring (((Griffon))) who lost all her cool and calm personality the moment she started fangirling about his speed and how proud she is of him doing stupid magic parkour that goes on for way longer than it needs to.

>>4324
>>4111
>>4120
>>4222
Well Nigel, we are officially finished with Chapter 1 of your glorious epic. Before moving on, I would like to take a moment to reflect on this chapter and give some final thoughts on it.

>>4326
This anon makes a good point:
>Imitating the show on the surface without having a deeper understanding of the themes is a common occurrence in this train wreck fic.

This is exactly what bothers me about the way you write. It goes back, again, to what I've said over and over: that before you start writing, you need to have an understanding of what you want to write and why you want to write it. This story is all over the fucking place. You don't understand how to write any of these characters at all. You have a superficial understanding of the world they live in and how it works, and a basic knowledge of their personalities, but it's all just an overlay. You understand them enough to know that Rainbow Dash uses words like "cool" and "awesome", or that Pinkie Pie is generally hyperactive and will speak and behave as such, and you think you can generate a believable fictional world just from that.

You can't just describe an episode of the series the way it looks in your head and expect everyone to love it. Text is a different medium than film or animation. Some visual elements of a cartoon don't translate well into a text-only story, in the same way that some novels don't translate well into film. You also have to be willing to explore your characters a little more, you can't get away with just relying on gags and action and the assumption that the reader already knows who these ponies are. The reader doesn't want to just read some autistic kid's fantasy, they want to be told a story; they want characters they can engage with and feel something for, and a story where shit that's interesting to them actually happens. You have to be willing to go a little deeper than just "Fluttershy is quiet and likes animals." Who is Fluttershy? What are her beliefs and convictions? What is the first thing she thinks about when she gets up in the morning? You have to use your imagination a little to accomplish this. Start with her base character and try to think from her perspective while writing her. Just describing things that might happen in the show the way they would probably happen isn't enough.

The other thing is that you have no idea how to build a story. Basically, you write like a high school kid. You just think up scenarios and events and scenes that you think would be cool in Ponyland, and just have them happen in sequence without trying to adhere to any sort of narrative structure. Chapters are basically as long as you feel like making them. You have a chapter that goes on for like 4,000 words, then you have another that goes on for 32,000 words. You're not telling a story, you're just narrating events in sequence to a reader.

"First I got up today, then I had breakfast, then I got in my car, then I drove to work, but I stopped at the gas station to get a soda. Then I remembered I forgot my badge so I had to drive back home. My roommate was home so I stopped to remind him that he still owes me like $20. Then I grabbed my badge and left. Traffic was bad so it took a while and I was late, then I got to work and my boss was mad because I was late..."

Would you read a novel that told the story like that? The story could actually be about something very exciting, like maybe the guy gets to work and terrorists attack his office or something. It wouldn't matter because the author is telling the story badly. That may be how events would happen if it was real, but in a story you have to assess what to describe and what to skip over. You have to set mood and tone, and build up to whatever the main event is. For instance with your story, was it really necessary to spend probably about two pages describing all the crazy flight tricks Silver does as he's trying to fly across the street? Is there some purpose to including that in the narrative, or did you just write it because you thought it was cool and wanted to write about it? You randomly interject all sorts of things into the story that don't need to be there. You could probably trim this story down to a reasonable length just by cutting out all of Silver's inner monologues and inappropriate rambling about his backstory. All the snide little cracks you throw in about your personal complaints regarding the show don't help either. Don't like Twilight's castle? Why even put it in the story? Just don't mention it. Unless it's going to be a significant location later, there's no reason to even mention that it's there.

The way you end this chapter is badly done too. It just sort of cuts off abruptly, like your microwave tendies were suddenly done cooking and you decided not to write any more. Here's how it ends (this is following the discussion about Daring Do books):
>"This just got interesting... " Rainbow said with a daring gleam in her eye, and it faded quickly as she noticed something. "Hey, wait a second... Where's Pinkie Pie?"

You end this like you're ending it on a cliffhanger, but you're not. Just ending a chapter with a question doesn't make it a cliffhanger. The reader isn't wondering where Pinkie Pie is. You barely mention Pinkie Pie to begin with. She doesn't have any speaking parts in the scene. The entire last section of text has been nothing but dialog between RD and Silver talking about Daring Do. The reader has probably forgotten that Pinkie Pie was ever even in this scene. The question is just jarring. It has nothing to do with anything that has happened up to this point and it wasn't on the reader's mind. The chapter doesn't really conclude, the text just sort of randomly stops

see how jarring that was? :^)

>>4327
>significance of Twily's castle
If he omitted it, where would he home invade to install a preposterous jaccuzi? We can't have discontinuity XD

>>4327
Chapter Two: Literally Thousands of Dicks in My Ass, an Autobiography; by Silver Star

We next find ourselves in the office of Mayor Mare, who apparently is mired in a chasm of existential angst because she feels that Twilight Sparkle's ascension to Princesshood has rendered her role as mayor irrelevant. There is some grumbling about the ostentatious crystal castle (of course, can't miss an opportunity to wedge that in somewhere), and a general sense that having Celestia's star pupil and Equestria's newest Princess residing in the town has pushed her aside and made her position ceremonial.

Since the inner workings of Equestrian politics aren't really addressed in the show, there is some room for creative interpretation here, and you have every right to explore this story angle if you would like. I would personally argue, though, that this is an unlikely way for events to play out. Equestria probably functions similarly to feudalism, in which the ruler technically has supreme power but is not involved in the nuts and bolts of local governments. Ponyville probably has some sort of town charter granted by Celestia which requires them to pay taxes or tithes, but grants the town the right to operate more or less as it sees fit. Also, Twilight's is technically a Princess, but her official title is Princess of Friendship. There may be some implication that she is destined to be Celestia's successor at some point, but I don't get the impression the title comes with much political power for now; I think her job is mostly just to teach ponies about friendship and occasionally fight monsters. In Ponyville she would probably be a local celebrity and not much else. Mayor Mare's office would probably still have the same authority it always had. Anyway, that's enough of my autism, let's get back to yours.

This small paragraph in which we get a glimpse into the Mayor's psyche is actually somewhat funny and decently written. It's good for the same reason your opening bit about Coffee Grounds was good. It gives you a small glimpse into the mind of an incidental character, and for a brief couple of paragraphs get a sense of who that pony is and what their lives are like before returning to the main story. In this case, you also poke fun at some of the many logical inconsistencies you can come up with when you take children's cartoons and overanalyze them, which usually results in some funny observations. This is actually a decent way to inject some light humor into your story and I would encourage you to do more of it; but again, just don't go overboard with it.

Unfortunately, like most of the small nuggets of gold scattered throughout the barren rocky wasteland of this text, the nice thing you manage to create for an instant is immediately buried in shit once the narrative returns to its main focus. Pinkie Pie enters the scene, out of breath and hyperactive as usual, to inform the Mayor that "Ehrmygurd, the most super awesome pony I've ever seen just arrived in Ponyville and I'm so excited!!" This seems to answer the burning question posed at the end of the last chapter, in which we are left to ponder the whereabouts of Ms. Pie. Actually, here is exactly what she says:

>I was out playing with Rainbow Dash but this new silver Unicorn showed up and he was flying and he looked super serious and fancy but I bet he's just really sad and lonely and he's never been in town before so I want to throw him a party because he probably doesn't have any friends in Ponyville yet!
This more or less reads like a line she would actually say despite its content, so good job there I guess. Although Pinkie is usually the easiest of the Mane 6 to write dialog for. Pretty much all you have to do is write a long, rambling run-on sentence and end it with an exclamation mark, and the reader will automatically read it in her voice. But I digress.

It seems we are now sadly back on track. Once again, the principle characters from the series are fawning all over your OC and rubbing his dick, and the Nigelverse is once more as it should be. Whew, for a second I thought I was going to have to keep saying nice things about this. In any event, the only thing we learn from this scene is that Pinkie Pie is just as excited as everypony else will eventually be to learn that Silver "my stool has been pushed so far up my ass by rectal penetration that I can't even fit dicks down my esophagus anymore, but damned if I'm not going to try" Star has come to Ponyville. Yippee.

>>4329
For reference, the term "Prince" or "Princess" is an abbreviation of the term "Principle" or sovereign in their area of application/expertise. So yes, Princess Twilight is the Principle of Friendship which is a not insignificant title pertaining to an area of magic and experience that is not unheard of to ponies, but the extent and gravity of which has yet to be determined. Having said - and as evidenced by the Movie - she's essentially powerless and a figurehead in matters *not* pertaining to friendship (including governance).

>>4329

Anyway, just like the last chapter, this one starts on a high note and goes down the shitter quickly. We get even more of your rambling, incoherent narrative style than usual. You know, I really have to say that this scene really is just a complete waste of potential. You go to all that trouble of setting up a scene in the mayor's office, and then we learn that all that is really happening is Pinkie wants to throw Silver a party and doesn't know where he lives. This probably has to do with the fact that he has been in Ponyville all of 30 minutes and hasn't had time to buy a house yet. It makes absolutely no sense. Then, you follow it with this clumsy sequence in which Pinkie tries to follow Silver around but can't sneak up on him, because of his rad ninja skills. The scene concludes with Pinkie deciding to have the party at Applejack's.

This all goes back to what I was saying in my previous post about how you just flat out have no fucking idea how to build a story. This narrative goes absolutely everywhere and nowhere. You just lay out sequences of events without bothering to filter which ones are important and which ones contribute nothing to the overall story. It's just long, rambling autism.

"Silver was sitting in his office in his skyscraper one day, when his assistant came in and told him that he had to go to a meeting. He was all like, I don't want to go, but then his assistant said he had to go. So he put on his rocket skis or whatever and flew all across the town for like fifteen minutes doing barrel rolls and loop de loops, until eventually he went in and had the meeting. He cheated three ponies out of their livelihoods and made himself slightly richer than he was already. Then, he decided he was bored so he went to Ponyville. When he got to Ponyville, he met Rainbow Dash and they talked about books, and also Pinkie Pie was there but she ran off somewhere. Then, the Mayor of Ponyville was sitting in her office contemplating the absurdity of existence when Pinkie Pie suddenly came in. She wanted to know where Silver Star lived but the Mayor didn't know, so she left. Then, she tried to follow Silver Star around town but Silver was too much of a ninja and she couldn't sneak up on him, so she decided to just have a party at Applejack's for him. Then she went back to work because she was on her break this whole time."

That is a literal, accurate synopsis of your story to this point. Literally what the fuck am I reading?!? We are thousands of words into this thing at this point and we don't even have a hint as to what it's ultimately about. I don't think even you know, or rather I think that it never occurred to you to make it about anything. It's just a long string of disconnected scenes and a general chronology of events which you are just going to keep writing until you decide to call it finished. You have no central theme, no structure, and no plot. Here's an assignment for you: read a novel some time. Pay attention to how the author lays it out. Notice how each thing that happens in the story is significant and each individual scene contributes to the telling of a greater story. Notice how characters don't just randomly spout nonsensical dialog that has nothing to do with the story. Notice how the author doesn't randomly dump personal opinions or long autistic descriptions of cool things the main character can do into long paragraphs that distract from the story. Notice how the entire work appears to have been planned to some extent.

That's not to say that there's anything necessarily wrong with just shooting from the hip; some writers methodically outline every scene, some just sort of wing it. Stephen King, from what I understand, just sort of pulls his stories out of his ass as he goes, and he seems to be doing well enough for himself. But I guarantee you he at least thinks about what his story will ultimately be about and what the general sequence of events is going to be before he starts writing.

Also:
>Mayor Mare shrugged, and went back to thinking of titles for the autobiography she'd get time to write some day. The Mayor of... Mayor... Mayor... Mayords? Maids? Mayor Mare 2: Mare Harder? The Autobiography of Unparallelled Mayorosity? No, those were terrible. 'The Mare Wearing the Mayorly Mask' was far better. Then again... Could she top that?

>Mayor... Revealed. Mayor Unmasked. Mayor Mare The Mayor and the Town That Needed A Mayor. Mayor Mare And The Night Of A Thousand Mayors. Mayor, Mayor, Mayor. Mayor, Mayor, I'm a Mayor, said Mayor Mayor I'm a Mayor. Mayor Unleashed. Crimson Mayor. Mayor of Mayors. Mayornnaise. Mayornado.

It's like you're just letting your cat walk around on your keyboard at this point. Although if that's the case maybe you should just let him finish the story for you.

>>4330
My understanding is that the term "Prince/Princess" derives from "Principate", which is what Augustus Caesar called his government to avoid proclaiming himself Emperor like Julius did. The idea is that most or all of the government's power rests in a principal individual. It was somewhat different from a monarch in that the power rested in the title rather than the man, and the role was not inherently hereditary. It would be similar to a President consolidating the powers of Congress and the Judiciary into the role of President and then using those powers to decree that the presidency could be held for life. I suspect words like "principle", "principality", and even "Principal (as in Principal Celestia)" all have their root in the same basic term, so your definition as "principle in their sovereign area of application/expertise" seems pretty spot on.

Threadly reminder Nigel is now spontaneously sperging out about random video game DLC in the other thread because he thought he got a positive response for once.

>>4331
>Mayor x100
Oh yeah, that orange gem parody is sure making sense now. I cant tell you how fucking annoying it is to read that tripe, like when does it end? The joke ended after the first 10 times of slightly different way to say or combine 'Mayor' with another word. Just makes me want to drop it and throttle the author not read further.

>>4334
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d9KVN4WfHHc
The one true Mayor

Op inspired me to start writing. Here's an excerpt:

The silo's just went up in flames, kabooooooom Katatatatatatataatatatatata. "INCOMING" The sarge exclaimed, then suddenly Nooooooo!. Nooooooo! SARGE!!!!, Jimmy cried as Sergeant Memphis fell to the ground, minus 1 head. "YOU BASTARDS" said Jimmy the red shirt wearing private as he ran towards the fire shooting in a blaze of glorious revenge. The insurgents shells,shot from Patria AMOS PT1s , were impacting left and right, but this did not stop Private Jimmy on his suicide mission to revenge his fallen and headless friend Sergeant Memphis. Whilst shooting 3 enemy combatants in the head he cried, "Fucking eat my lead" and "Game over, you terrorist Muslim scum". Then he reached for 3 hand grenades from his US navy Issue Grenade belt Model number 2332/A1. He pulled the pins and swallowed them in order to shit out the cause for his enemies death later on and with an elegant move he simultaneously ducked and throw the armed grenades towards the scared and cowardly towel-heads.

>>4336
Too low-effort for me. King Battlebrit did a great job of parodying OP, but that was just sort of...a badly choreographed CoD cutscene with bad grammar.

>>4337
You are wrong. This piece has stakes, ideology, conflict and goals, all while expressing character development. It is better than anything written in this thread.

>>4331
>>4111
>>4120
>>4222

No sooner does Pinkie Pie go off to plan her surprise party for Silver "I once shoved an entire bag of marbles up my ass because I wanted to rapid-fire shit them all into the toilet bowl at once to give my neighbor war flashbacks and also because I love putting things up my ass in general" Star, then who should appear in Mayor Mare's office but Silver "seriously one time I shoved an entire Subway™ Footlong Spicy Italian™ up there and that Jared guy stopped by later and fisted me but that was unrelated" Star. Wow, if only he'd made his dramatic entrance just a few minutes (seconds? hours? I really get no sense of time whatsoever from this narrative) earlier then they wouldn't have missed each other. Ha! Ha! Ha! What a zany comedy of errors this is turning out to be.

Anyway, then we get what is quite possibly the most underwhelming and pointless exchange in this entire narrative rife with underwhelming and pointless exchanges:
>“Hi, my name is Silver Star, I'm a businesspony from Canterlot, I'm rich, and I'd like to build a vacation home for myself here, while also setting up a wildly successful enchanted item store, vastly improving the local economy... If that's alright with you, of course.”
>“Okay,” She said. stunned.

Well, I'm glad we got that settled. I know that's how I usually get my building permits. Anyway, since obviously Silver can't be fucked to even stick around and sign his own paperwork, he summons some kind of magical blue bird thing to sign the documents. However, apparently the blue bird thing also can't be fucked to actually sign the documents, so she summons...you know what, I'll just quote it:
>From the growing blue void, a Silver Star emerged like a boyband emerging from the stage's floor, as if he'd been standing on an invisible elevator that slowly and dramatically rose. When he was through, the blue void vanished anticlimactically, the sound stopping instantly, white trails of energy fading away.
>“What just happened?” Mayor Mare asked.
>“I breached the boundaries of time and causality, and pulled into this reality a Silver that never was, but could have been. This is the Silver that will sign your documents, the Silver from the potential reality that chose to do so before leaving,” She explained, lying. She had actually used an overdramatic illusion spell, and then summoned a Silver replica from the building where he stored the ones that didn't fade away, burst, or get absorbed after completing their tasks. However, she could have performed the feat she described, if Silver desired it.

Jesus Fucking Christ Nigel. Where do you even come up with this stuff? See, here's the problem: this isn't funny enough to be considered humor, and it makes too little sense to be taken seriously. Not only do you waste space on the page writing long, intricate descriptions of events that are blatantly unnecessary for the scene you're writing, most of the time the scenes are themselves blatantly unnecessary. Forget all the confusing shit about the magical bird and the clone of Silver from another timeline or whatever the fuck happens; does your story even need this scene in the first place? Where literally all that happens is Silver signs some paperwork and gets a building permit from the Mayor? Why include that in the story? The only information this conveys is that Silver bought some land to build a house and a store on. Are you going to cover the construction of the house as well? How about a scene where Silver buys homeowner's insurance? Ooh, and I absolutely can't wait to read about his exciting trip to the hardware store to buy drywall paste!

You don't need to put mundane details like this into a story. Just because something happens doesn't mean you need to write about it. You could have just written a scene that covers anything important that happens on the day Silver arrives in Ponyville (protip: from what I've read this is basically nothing), then advance time about a week, and rejoin Silver in his new house, or his new shop. You wouldn't need to explain how Silver got his building permits; you can simply mention that time has passed and he has a house and a shop now. The reader can fit the rest of it together himself. And don't waste things like magical familiars and complex illusion spells on crap like this. I know you think it's cute or funny or something but it's just autistic. Trust me, nobody but you is laughing.

Incidentally, doing this would have made the previous scene involving Pinkie Pie less awkward. If I'm following the sequence of events correctly, first Silver makes his grand entrance in Ponyville. The first ponies he meets are Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Silver stops and chats with Dash for a bit. Pinkie wanders off at some point during their autistic conversation. This is where it gets confusing.

Apparently she flies directly to the Mayor's office to ask the Mayor where Silver lives. She just saw him arrive probably within the last hour, why would she assume he would even have a place to stay yet? Why would she assume the Mayor would know? Then she tries to follow him around for a bit, the timeline here is unclear because it seems to imply that he's no longer with RD. Then, he goes to the Mayor's office to apparently declare his intent to build a house. Why do that? Even if he's rich enough to just buy property the way anyone else would buy a sandwich, wouldn't it still make more sense for him to look around town to see if there's land for sale, instead of barging into the Mayor's office? Nothing about this scene makes sense. Now, if you just had Silver arrive in Ponyville, then skip a couple of weeks to where he's established, and then have Pinkie throw a welcome party for the new pony in town, that would make sense.

>>4339
This seems like as good a time as any to address your technique of description.

As I and several others have mentioned before, description is one of the few things you actually do well. Your problem is that you have no idea what to focus your powers of description on. Here, I'm going to give you a quick example of misuse of description:

The porcelain sink stood tall and majestic, towering above the black and white checkerboard pattern of the bathroom floor. Designed in 1925 by the Kohler corporation, this magnificent old pedestal sink rose gracefully from the floor in a fluted base, and then spread out gracefully like a tulip, collecting dripping water from its faucets as a real tulip would catch the morning dew. Separate hot and cold water spouts, a common feature of older sinks, reached out over the bowl like twin talons glinting in the light of the Possini lighting fixture mounted above. A total of four Philips head screws held the fixture in place, so that it remained attached to the ceiling, cascading warm and inviting light down onto the white porcelain of the sink below, like a cold winter sun shining wanly upon a field of fresh snow.

Next to the sink lay the dead body of Mrs. James, the house's current owner. Her throat had been cut.

You could probably say that the first paragraph is a good descriptive paragraph. It's phrased elegantly and paints a clear picture in the reader's mind of what it wants them to see. It even sets a mood; the line comparing the porcelain to snow and the light to a cold winter sun gives the reader the impression of a story set in winter. However, since presumably the story is going to be about the murder of Mrs. James, do I really need to spend that much time describing what the bathroom sink looked like? Or, alternatively, if I want to write about sinks, should I have even mentioned the body?

What if I were to be less of a cheeky bastard about this, and give as much description to the dead body as I do to the sink? Let's take a look:

The porcelain sink stood tall and majestic, towering above the black and white checkerboard pattern of the bathroom floor. Designed in 1925 by the Kohler corporation, this magnificent old pedestal sink rose gracefully from the floor in a fluted base, and then spread out gracefully like a tulip, collecting dripping water from its faucets as a real tulip would catch the morning dew. Separate hot and cold water spouts, a common feature of older sinks, reached out over the bowl like twin talons glinting in the light of the Possini lighting fixture mounted above. A total of four Philips head screws held the fixture in place, so that it remained attached to the ceiling, cascading warm and inviting light down onto the white porcelain of the sink below, like a cold winter sun shining wanly upon a field of fresh snow.

Near the base of the sink, a woman's outstretched hand, motionless and pale, pointed its fingers up towards the ceiling. The red paint on her fingernails stood in sharp contrast to the snow white of her icy skin, a cold and frozen wasteland spattered with sudden drops of crimson. Thick, viscous blood of a similar hue pooled on the floor around her, oozing slowly outward from the ragged gash in her neck.

Alright, I'm going to stop there because this example is veering quickly into edgelord territory. But you get the point; she's dead, and it's probably not natural causes. The second paragraph actually conveys less information than the single sentence from the first example, since we do not yet know her name or that she's the owner of the house. However, despite communicating less information, the second paragraph does a much better job of setting tone and drawing the reader into the narrative. However, we've still got some problems. Read the entire example, the bit about the sink as well as the bit about Mrs. James.

Both paragraphs are well written, evoke mood, and paint a vivid picture. However, they are sort of competing with each other for the reader's attention. One is about a body, one is about a sink. Which is more important to the story? Well, we can probably assume that we're not writing about sinks, so if we're going to trim from anything it should be the first paragraph. However, it still has some salvageable elements. The white porcelain, the bathroom light as a cold winter sun, these are good images for a murder scene.

So what do we get rid of? Well, the reader probably doesn't give a shit what year the sink was made, who built it, how many faucets it has, or how many screws are holding the fucking light in place, so all that shit can go. Simply mentioning that it's a pedestal sink is probably enough to give the reader an image, so we don't need to go into detail about how it flutes up gracefully or whatever the fuck. Plus, the analogy of the tulip collecting morning dew conflicts with our winter theme, so let's lose that bit as well. Now, we take what's left and work it into the paragraph about the dead body. In our next episode, we'll take a look at what our scene has become.

>>4340
The pristine pedestal sink rose like a headstone over the frigid expanse of black and white tile. An outstretched hand, equally pale and cold and devoid of life, clawed emptily toward the ceiling. The violent red paint on the fingernails stood in stark contrast to the white expanse of flesh and the tower of porcelain, as did the thick, viscous blood which pooled on tile and ran in warm rivulets down frozen skin. High above, the ceiling fixture cast a harsh light on the scene below, a cold winter sun shining mercilessly down on crimson-spattered snow.

</edge>

Anyway, apart from putting ourselves in the mood to listen to gloomy goth music with the lights out, what did we accomplish here? Well, basically we have learned how to take two vividly descriptive yet conflicting paragraphs and work them into harmony with each other, as well as learning how to selectively include and exclude elements from our narrative. In addition to the fact that we now have only one paragraph where we formerly had two, also note the economy of words. At it's absolute longest point, when we had two highly descriptive paragraphs, our narrative text was 213 words long. The final paragraph we wound up with is only 96. We more than halved the number of words we wrote, yet we doubled it's impact, all while removing much of the explicit description. The lengthy descriptions of the sink obviously are gone, but you'll notice that we also removed mention of the gash in the woman's neck and we never explicitly state that anyone is dead. However, nobody reading this paragraph could possibly mistake it for anything but a description of a murder scene.

What did we keep? Imagery. Anything related to snow, ice, winter, or coldness stayed in. Anything warm or pleasant was dropped. Not only does this convey our implied setting of literal winter, it also helps to reinforce the images of death and instill subconscious unease in the reader. Winter is the death of the year, and the season of winter is harsh and unforgiving. Things die in winter, and the winter sun, even at its brightest, provides little warmth. In Asian cultures, white is the color of death; in Western cultures black is. We have both black and white appearing in the bathroom tile, and there is an implied comparison of the tile floor to the cold, hard earth during winter. The comparison of the pedestal sink to a tombstone has already got the reader thinking of this scene as a grave. See how this shit works?

</edge>

Frankly, your subconscious does a lot of the work, so it's not like you need to spend hours sitting around thinking up color symbolism for all of your themes. I wasn't even thinking about the symbolic meaning of black or white or winter when I pulled this idea out of my ass, this idea pretty much just started as "I'm going to describe a murder scene in a bathroom, but focus on the bathroom fixtures instead of the dead body." I just arbitrarily made the floor tiles black and white because I instinctively felt that it would be a better choice than flower-printed 1970s linoleum. The shit about the bathroom light being a winter sun just randomly popped into my head and I added it because I liked it. Just practice doing shit like this and after a while you'll start doing it without even thinking. You can even generate story ideas this way, just sit down and write the first thing that pops into your head, then try to revise it into something worthwhile.

The important thing is to always go back over what you wrote, again and again. Look at each paragraph with a magnifying glass. Is this the best way to say what I want to say? Do I really need this sentence about water faucets? Is this 32,000 word ideological argument or this weird scene about a magical blue bird signing paperwork really essential to the story? What do I want to communicate with this text, and how can I make every word in it work to communicate it? That's what you should be thinking about. Even this example paragraph I wouldn't call quite done yet. It's better than what we started with, but it could still probably stand to be tweaked a little bit, I just don't personally feel like messing with it any further. Plus, it's starting to put me in kind of a gloomy mood. I might have to go watch some ponies. Anyway.

Read back over the first paragraph, the one about Kohler sinks and whatever. We started with a shitpost, and we wound up with something that could probably serve as a decent opening paragraph to a mystery novel, or at least a mystery novel for edgy goth teenagers. Granted, how to use winter as symbolism for death is probably not something that will come up much in My Little Pony fanfiction, but the same principles apply no matter what you're writing about.

When I tell you to trim your text down, Nigel, this is what I'm talking about. When I tell you to filter your ideas and thoughts, Nigel, this is what I'm talking about. Nigel? NIGEL? Are you listening Nigel?

>>4341
It's very purple...

>>4332
Your understanding is wrong. Princesse is the old French female version of prince.

>>4341
Another thing that the winter metaphors appeals to is the huwite man's innate sense of danger that's inherent to the life of a race of hunters and farmers whose lives are spent fending off predators in the dark forests and snowy landscapes. That is a huge cultural thing for us, influenced by the fact our blue eyes are more sensitive to light and our light skin is most comfortable in cool environments with less direct sunlight.

There's so much meaning that we western people apply to the winter metaphors because it appeals to our aesthetic focus and our history, both cultural and genetic, of being in such stark, quiet yet not safe situations. It has the potential to be beautiful.

>>4341
An apt metaphor for this thread is that you are the literary equivalent of Gordon Ramsey (well, you may not be that good, but bear with me) and Nigel is one of those horrible chefs he yells at. 90% of the time chefs don't care about the opinion of a Michelin-star, world-famous chef and instinctively defend their cooking, refusing to bear criticism.

To put Nigel's writing in culinary terms, the meat is raw, the seasoning is overwhelming and tasteless, the vegetables have been frozen and reheated and are disgusting, and everything is mushy, practically a slurry.