This is quite good. I like how you managed to make the ponytopia both extremely attractive and more than a little creepy at the same time. I feel like you presented the situation without trying to argue it was either good or bad, leaving that decision to the reader, and I quite like that approach.
From a storytelling perspective, I only had two real complaints. One is your beginning. There’s no conflict until halfway through the first chapter, when Lars and Hanna start arguing. You do a good job setting up the premise before then, but it still makes for a slow start, and I can easily imagine myself recommending this to people with a “no, really, it gets better, stick with it” disclaimer. The second is that there are lengthy stretches where the story consists only of talking heads, with no action or movement. Chapter 4 was the most notable example.
I also found myself wondering about the ethics of creating a sentient being like Butterscotch tailored specifically to the desires of someone else (assuming they weren’t lying about her sentience; I don’t know how you’d test that). I realize you can’t fit everything into the story, but I thought that might have been a cool topic. You made me think about the ethics in ways you didn’t directly discuss, so you’re clearly doing something right.
Grammar note: the possessive form of “Light Sparks” is “Light Sparks’s,” since his name is a singular noun.
Wonderful job with the MMO aspects of life in Equestria. After the “what the literal fuck” line, I had to step away from the computer for a minute to savor it before I could keep reading.
If/when you submit this to Equestria Daily, feel free to let me know. I’m one of the prereaders, and while I wouldn’t feel comfortable judging something I feel this philosophically invested in, I’d at least try to make sure it didn’t get discarded for lack of pony in the very beginning. (We receive, and reject, a fair number of stories that are about bronies rather than ponies. This is a borderline case, but the pony content increases as the story progresses, and I can tell people to look at the post-uploading chapters before deciding.)
One is your beginning. There’s no conflict until halfway through the first chapter, when Lars and Hanna start arguing. You do a good job setting up the premise before then, but it still makes for a slow start, and I can easily imagine myself recommending this to people with a “no, really, it gets better, stick with it” disclaimer.
So I just reworked the Prologue based off gwern’s suggestion of a bet between friends. Does this help with conflict?
I’d say it helps, but not enough. There’s a bit of a conflict, but it’s in the background and the stakes are low. I don’t actually care if Rebecca has to buy her friend a copy of the game. Maybe raise the stakes? As it is, the most interesting part was “The idea of Jennifer telling her that she told her so wasn’t appealing though.” (Aside: I’d consider reworking that sentence so you’re juggling fewer pronouns. I had to read it twice.) You might want to play up the social aspect of the bet. I’d go so far as to suggest putting Jennifer in the room with Rebecca.
As stated upthread, Friendship is Optimal is sort of leaking onto TVTropes so I feel my hand is sort of being forced.
So I’ve further reworked the prologue. (Multiple times actually.) I’m not entirely happy with it, but as per above, I feel like I’ve run out of time. Are there quick things that I can do to improve the quality of the Prologue from where it is now?
Also, given that people outside of LW are discussing this, do you think it would it be better if I post in chunks or post all at once?
The prologue looks much better. I don’t have anything to add except “good job.”
If you’re trying to maximize readers, I suspect that posting in chunks on a regular update schedule is probably the best way to do it, as each update is a chance for new readers to find the story. (That’s based on my intuition, not data; PhilGoetz has actually spent a little time analyzing readership data and might be able to tell you more.) You can remove the gdoc if you’re worried people will track it down, or leave it up for the small minority of people who care enough to search for it.
I’ll commit to reading this version by Saturday at the very latest, and hopefully sooner. In the meantime, rather than posting ahead of schedule, consider making the gdoc private except for readers you specifically allow. (If anyone’s posted a copy of the whole thing, I couldn’t find it with thirty seconds on Google.)
If you think it’s slow now, it was much worse before. There used another (long!) chapter between 1 and 2 which had some AI related speculation, but was really a six page Take That at Feeling Pinkie Keen. It got cut because it didn’t really advance the plot.
Also, I didn’t use to have a prologue. The current prologue used to be in what is now chapter 2 from the perspective of Hanna and company watching their alpha testers. I moved that scene into the prologue because a pre-reader in a previous round wondered if the way to make a brony audience buy into the story was to show some gameplay, though what I did differed a bit compared to his specific suggestion.
Do you think the current prologue’s benefits outweight the lack of conflict? Removing the prologue would get the reader into the main story quicker, but I worry about not having an immediate hook.
The prologue serves an important function, so I’d leave it in. Fittingly, you’ve got the same problem as the tutorial level in a video game: you establish a lot of important information, but it’s dull and low-stakes. It would help a lot if you rewrite the scene with a conflict. It could be in the game (you can surely have a more exciting tutorial than walking around looking at plants; maybe make the playtester settle an argument between NPCs or solve a puzzle), or better yet, in the real world (maybe the playtester is a corporate spy, or she’s there with a friend who she’s having a fight with, or something).
The conflict could actually really be easy: she’s trying to figure out whether it’s being run by AIs or not, which both explains her various musings & even lets her bring in the Turing test.
Why? Maybe a bet with a cynical geeky friend—“it couldn’t possibly be as good as they’re claiming; tech demos never are! It must be smoke and mirrors like an actress or really big scripts in the first level.”
Grammar note: the possessive form of “Light Sparks” is “Light Sparks’s,” since his name is a singular noun.
That’s debatable: a trailing apostrophe is almost universally used on some subset of names ending in “s” (Moses’, Jesus’, Socrates’, etc.), and some style manuals extend this rule to all such names.
It’s arguable whether those are actual ponies. In some philosophical sense. Urgh.
As for the Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue, I suggest you use the same tricks as the animators of the show did. Have the characters move around. Sit down. Get up. Interact with the environment. At the window or sitting on the stair. Blowing candles. Sipping coffee. Silhouetted. Glancing. Breathing lightly. Combing out their hair. Little ponies… are a wonder… At their mirrors. In the garden. Letter-writing. Flower-picking. Weather-watching. How they make a maaan siiing...
This is quite good. I like how you managed to make the ponytopia both extremely attractive and more than a little creepy at the same time. I feel like you presented the situation without trying to argue it was either good or bad, leaving that decision to the reader, and I quite like that approach.
From a storytelling perspective, I only had two real complaints. One is your beginning. There’s no conflict until halfway through the first chapter, when Lars and Hanna start arguing. You do a good job setting up the premise before then, but it still makes for a slow start, and I can easily imagine myself recommending this to people with a “no, really, it gets better, stick with it” disclaimer. The second is that there are lengthy stretches where the story consists only of talking heads, with no action or movement. Chapter 4 was the most notable example.
I also found myself wondering about the ethics of creating a sentient being like Butterscotch tailored specifically to the desires of someone else (assuming they weren’t lying about her sentience; I don’t know how you’d test that). I realize you can’t fit everything into the story, but I thought that might have been a cool topic. You made me think about the ethics in ways you didn’t directly discuss, so you’re clearly doing something right.
Grammar note: the possessive form of “Light Sparks” is “Light Sparks’s,” since his name is a singular noun.
Wonderful job with the MMO aspects of life in Equestria. After the “what the literal fuck” line, I had to step away from the computer for a minute to savor it before I could keep reading.
If/when you submit this to Equestria Daily, feel free to let me know. I’m one of the prereaders, and while I wouldn’t feel comfortable judging something I feel this philosophically invested in, I’d at least try to make sure it didn’t get discarded for lack of pony in the very beginning. (We receive, and reject, a fair number of stories that are about bronies rather than ponies. This is a borderline case, but the pony content increases as the story progresses, and I can tell people to look at the post-uploading chapters before deciding.)
So I just reworked the Prologue based off gwern’s suggestion of a bet between friends. Does this help with conflict?
I’d say it helps, but not enough. There’s a bit of a conflict, but it’s in the background and the stakes are low. I don’t actually care if Rebecca has to buy her friend a copy of the game. Maybe raise the stakes? As it is, the most interesting part was “The idea of Jennifer telling her that she told her so wasn’t appealing though.” (Aside: I’d consider reworking that sentence so you’re juggling fewer pronouns. I had to read it twice.) You might want to play up the social aspect of the bet. I’d go so far as to suggest putting Jennifer in the room with Rebecca.
As stated upthread, Friendship is Optimal is sort of leaking onto TVTropes so I feel my hand is sort of being forced.
So I’ve further reworked the prologue. (Multiple times actually.) I’m not entirely happy with it, but as per above, I feel like I’ve run out of time. Are there quick things that I can do to improve the quality of the Prologue from where it is now?
Also, given that people outside of LW are discussing this, do you think it would it be better if I post in chunks or post all at once?
The prologue looks much better. I don’t have anything to add except “good job.”
If you’re trying to maximize readers, I suspect that posting in chunks on a regular update schedule is probably the best way to do it, as each update is a chance for new readers to find the story. (That’s based on my intuition, not data; PhilGoetz has actually spent a little time analyzing readership data and might be able to tell you more.) You can remove the gdoc if you’re worried people will track it down, or leave it up for the small minority of people who care enough to search for it.
When are you posting this on EqD?
I’ll commit to reading this version by Saturday at the very latest, and hopefully sooner. In the meantime, rather than posting ahead of schedule, consider making the gdoc private except for readers you specifically allow. (If anyone’s posted a copy of the whole thing, I couldn’t find it with thirty seconds on Google.)
If you think it’s slow now, it was much worse before. There used another (long!) chapter between 1 and 2 which had some AI related speculation, but was really a six page Take That at Feeling Pinkie Keen. It got cut because it didn’t really advance the plot.
Also, I didn’t use to have a prologue. The current prologue used to be in what is now chapter 2 from the perspective of Hanna and company watching their alpha testers. I moved that scene into the prologue because a pre-reader in a previous round wondered if the way to make a brony audience buy into the story was to show some gameplay, though what I did differed a bit compared to his specific suggestion.
Do you think the current prologue’s benefits outweight the lack of conflict? Removing the prologue would get the reader into the main story quicker, but I worry about not having an immediate hook.
The prologue serves an important function, so I’d leave it in. Fittingly, you’ve got the same problem as the tutorial level in a video game: you establish a lot of important information, but it’s dull and low-stakes. It would help a lot if you rewrite the scene with a conflict. It could be in the game (you can surely have a more exciting tutorial than walking around looking at plants; maybe make the playtester settle an argument between NPCs or solve a puzzle), or better yet, in the real world (maybe the playtester is a corporate spy, or she’s there with a friend who she’s having a fight with, or something).
The conflict could actually really be easy: she’s trying to figure out whether it’s being run by AIs or not, which both explains her various musings & even lets her bring in the Turing test.
Why? Maybe a bet with a cynical geeky friend—“it couldn’t possibly be as good as they’re claiming; tech demos never are! It must be smoke and mirrors like an actress or really big scripts in the first level.”
That’s debatable: a trailing apostrophe is almost universally used on some subset of names ending in “s” (Moses’, Jesus’, Socrates’, etc.), and some style manuals extend this rule to all such names.
The question can be sidestepped by changing the name to “Light Spark” so that the possessive form is unambiguous.
It’s arguable whether those are actual ponies. In some philosophical sense. Urgh.
As for the Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue, I suggest you use the same tricks as the animators of the show did. Have the characters move around. Sit down. Get up. Interact with the environment. At the window or sitting on the stair. Blowing candles. Sipping coffee. Silhouetted. Glancing. Breathing lightly. Combing out their hair. Little ponies… are a wonder… At their mirrors. In the garden. Letter-writing. Flower-picking. Weather-watching. How they make a maaan siiing...