Some of the time-skipping confuses me (‘One Day AR’?); I liked Night Light as an expy of Diogenes; the first chapter seemed to copy a bit heavily from MoR but on reflection I’m not sure that’s a bad thing; the writing itself seems to flow at least as smoothly as Myou’ve or Friendship is Optimal. So it’s a slow start but good enough that I’d subscribe to it if Fimfiction.net didn’t seem to be somehow broken right now.
Random copyedit:
“You know,” Perry Pierce said, “we all swore on our magic to never reveal the secrets of the Moon’s Hand. She claimed to not use magic to hide her identity, but what if she had been a spy all this time, and is just leaving now because she thinks we’re beaten?”
What is the Moon’s Hand? Surely not the unknown mare in question?
That’s a reasonable guess… but if you read about a conspiracy meeting in a Star Wars context with a female member stomping out, and then them discussing the secrets of the Emperor’s Hand, would you infer that it refers to a secret society dedicated to facilitating the return of the Emperor or maybe that it refers to the female who just left or something else entirely?
In SW canon there is already a group of people (each) called the Emperors Hand, so perhaps not the best example.
(unless you already knew this and I just didn’t get your comment)
Yeah, maybe. But imagine it from the perspective of someone who isn’t aware of the EU retcons adding in additional Emperor’s Hands; ‘Emperor’s Hand’ actually sounds more like a single person (‘hand’ is singular) than a group.
Some of the time-skipping confuses me (‘One Day AR’?);
That one is a bit obscure; it gets explained in the chapter obliquely (it stands for “after return”). I’m never quite sure how much to tell people up front and how much to leave mysterious / explain along the way, and so it’s helpful to hear reactions either way.
the first chapter seemed to copy a bit heavily from MoR but on reflection I’m not sure that’s a bad thing
For quite some time, the first chapter was not the first chapter for that reason, but I ultimately ended up deciding that the end of The First Question was the best early hook that I had, and that it was better to choose chapters based on their hooks than to try to differentiate this from HPMoR.
And now that I’ve chosen that plan, other benefits are coming to mind: it smooths the transition from HP to MLP for any MoR fans that decide to give it a try, and it requires all readers to have at least some tolerance for Twilight’s personality and style, but presents it in a much warmer way than Celestia’s Request.
What is the Moon’s Hand?
A typo, thanks for catching it! If you see the word ‘hand’ or ‘foot’ or so on, it’s almost certainly a mistake on my part. (I should also note that I edited Deep Field’s earlier comment to fit with the terminology that I switched to; he became the Horn’s Tip, not the Horn.)
No no, my point was that I didn’t know what this was referring to. An arcane book of their secrets passed down from Nightmare Moon’s banishment? The secret society itself? The particular mare leaving (were all of them given names like ‘Moon’s X’?)? A particular responsibility she was in charge of? A suborganization of the society (sounds like black ops or intelligence gathering)? etc.
(I didn’t even notice that ‘hand’ is inappropriate in a MLP fic. I wonder if anyone has written a lint checker for human anatomical words for use in MLP fics.)
No no, my point was that I didn’t know what this was referring to.
Understood; I think that the confusion was at least in part because I had screwed up the terminology in other parts of the chapter. I went through several names for this particular group and its members, and apparently some old names snuck into the version that I uploaded; now that everything’s correct, I think it’s clearer. Is it?
Some of the time-skipping confuses me (‘One Day AR’?); I liked Night Light as an expy of Diogenes; the first chapter seemed to copy a bit heavily from MoR but on reflection I’m not sure that’s a bad thing; the writing itself seems to flow at least as smoothly as Myou’ve or Friendship is Optimal. So it’s a slow start but good enough that I’d subscribe to it if Fimfiction.net didn’t seem to be somehow broken right now.
Random copyedit:
What is the Moon’s Hand? Surely not the unknown mare in question?
Their secret society dedicated to facilitating the return of Nightmare Moon, of course.
That’s a reasonable guess… but if you read about a conspiracy meeting in a Star Wars context with a female member stomping out, and then them discussing the secrets of the Emperor’s Hand, would you infer that it refers to a secret society dedicated to facilitating the return of the Emperor or maybe that it refers to the female who just left or something else entirely?
Well, I DID read the complete chapter, and that was the interpretation that seemed obvious to me.
/me shrugs
In SW canon there is already a group of people (each) called the Emperors Hand, so perhaps not the best example. (unless you already knew this and I just didn’t get your comment)
Yeah, maybe. But imagine it from the perspective of someone who isn’t aware of the EU retcons adding in additional Emperor’s Hands; ‘Emperor’s Hand’ actually sounds more like a single person (‘hand’ is singular) than a group.
Thanks for the feedback!
That one is a bit obscure; it gets explained in the chapter obliquely (it stands for “after return”). I’m never quite sure how much to tell people up front and how much to leave mysterious / explain along the way, and so it’s helpful to hear reactions either way.
For quite some time, the first chapter was not the first chapter for that reason, but I ultimately ended up deciding that the end of The First Question was the best early hook that I had, and that it was better to choose chapters based on their hooks than to try to differentiate this from HPMoR.
And now that I’ve chosen that plan, other benefits are coming to mind: it smooths the transition from HP to MLP for any MoR fans that decide to give it a try, and it requires all readers to have at least some tolerance for Twilight’s personality and style, but presents it in a much warmer way than Celestia’s Request.
A typo, thanks for catching it! If you see the word ‘hand’ or ‘foot’ or so on, it’s almost certainly a mistake on my part. (I should also note that I edited Deep Field’s earlier comment to fit with the terminology that I switched to; he became the Horn’s Tip, not the Horn.)
No no, my point was that I didn’t know what this was referring to. An arcane book of their secrets passed down from Nightmare Moon’s banishment? The secret society itself? The particular mare leaving (were all of them given names like ‘Moon’s X’?)? A particular responsibility she was in charge of? A suborganization of the society (sounds like black ops or intelligence gathering)? etc.
(I didn’t even notice that ‘hand’ is inappropriate in a MLP fic. I wonder if anyone has written a
lintchecker for human anatomical words for use in MLP fics.)Understood; I think that the confusion was at least in part because I had screwed up the terminology in other parts of the chapter. I went through several names for this particular group and its members, and apparently some old names snuck into the version that I uploaded; now that everything’s correct, I think it’s clearer. Is it?
I wouldn’t know, now that I’ve already read it before.