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?
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.