'Magyck' By Legion Brony

Right. And seeing as the Book's back, that means that your Fan Fics are no-longer safe! Ahaahahahahaahahaaaa!

[size=+1]Magyck By Legion Brony[/size]​

Legion has managed to pack a great deal of something I already rather like into this one: Fantasy Theory. I like sitting down and pondering how exactly a spell should work and coming up with magical mechanics and rules almost as much as Legion appears to. While I'm likely to jabber on about Yokai and Chi and what-not given half a chance, Legion creates his own, underlying magical system that needs a much, much better way of being introduced. And needs more explanation. Still interesting though.

Either way, I've become increasingly interested as the Fan Fic progressed. The early chapters are where the most work is needed so I'll likely be talking almost entirely about them.

Right, plot! Human turns up in Equestria with no memory and discovers a knack for magic. Twilight trains him. He is then asked to hunt down some sort of evil by Princess Celestia.

And that's it so far. First things first, let's get this rather large and underlying problem out the way. It not just you Legion, in fact, all of us have slipped up on this golden rule at some stage:

[size=+1]~ Show, Don't Tell ~[/size]​

Through-out the Fan Fic, Legion is telling us all about these actions and conversations instead of actually writing them out. Somepony said this, somepony said that with a little bit of detail about how but when this happens, the narrative becomes numb. Discovering these things for ourselves by watching the events unfold are far more interesting and engaging than a dictation of the highlights of such things.

The biggest problem this causes is with characterisation. We get told about Brendon, our main character, rather than experience anything from his normal life. We're told he's a Brony and is ridiculed because of his Genius Father who is building a Teleporter. Notice the word 'told'. Keeping a certain distance from the by simply telling the reader about important details rather than taking the care of showing them to the reader creates an alienation as you have no real context to base this information on. There's no association created between character and attribute so gets forgotten. And event is more likely to stick in a readers mind, along with the actions and demeanour of the character, cementing those shown traits in the reader's idea of the character's demeanour.

However, a structure sort-out should change such a cool attitude towards the character's narration along with a group of extra benefits. How about we get to actually be see Brendon's life at the beginning of the story that could then lead into the rest of the events in Equestria. Show Brendon turning up at school. Show us him managing to keep his love of ponies away from every other student. Show us the teasing if it's such an important part of the character. We can gleam more information from seeing those encounters than hearing about the general details from the narrator. Things that would give Brendon more character than that which he currently has. Currently, Brendon appears to be intelligent but doesn't show any of it for around 9 chapters when his voice returns. More details and time to learn about those details relating to the character would greatly improve the appeal of Brendon for the rest of the story. Considering that the reader will be likely stuck with Brendon as a main character, it would be good to know more about him.

As an added bonus, we'd also get a greater juxtaposition between Earth and Equestria to drive the idea of Brendon's alienation further home. Being transported has greater weight as we're likely to know more about the character and even know more about him.

My next point concerned the introduction of Magyck. While I, as a fellow Fantasy nut, am perfectly happy to sit down and read an entire chapter devoted to the subject of magical theory and history, I don't know if everypony else would share our enthusiasm. It also throws off the structure and natural pacing of the story. Things happen, things happen then BANG! Your in Hogwarts learning about mages casting some important spell, then it's on with the show as normal. It's disjointed and sloppy to fact dump on the reader so suddenly. Typical fashion tends to be more inclined to trickle such information when there is a natural moment of pause to carry over one scene and the next. You could even present the scene with the Unicorns casting their spell as a prologue. This way, the information regarding the greater story doesn't feel like it's exploded from nowhere and that the reader has suddenly changed Fan Fic. These details are an important part of the story right from the beginning and can then start to become more and more important as the story progresses. This drip-feed approach also encourages further reading as it suggests that more bits of information are coming up, just keep reading to find out.

I know the reason for this too and it's a very very common problem. I'm guilty of this myself and it's the desire to skip ahead to all the good stuff. It's such a bad habit to get into as the 'good stuff' ultimately suffers from a lack of set-up. The best mentality I can think of ought to be something along the lines of "put the reader first". Try and make sure that you give him/her everything you possibly can to make all the 'good stuff' worth getting to.

Now onto more nitty-gritty bits.

I really like your portrayal of Twilight. Your version appears to focus predominantly on her as a kind of scientist and interlectual which is perfectly correct, as far as I know, and her portrayal accentuates this. I found it interesting to read, even remembering to slip in Twilight's idiosyncrasies. It's a good angle to take on the character, I thought.

Other characters had a few hiccups like Applejack missing her trademark accent and I wonder if Luna, at this point, would bother using her Canterlot Voice knowing about it's effects from when Twilight explained it's unintended effect but that's rather more picky and not worth worrying about. What's a bigger concern is whether Rainbow Dash really would dangle a helpless creature metres from the ground and extort information. Rainbow Dash might be impatient and impulsive but that appears over the top. I'd cut that for something less nuts.

Combat within the story was rather interesting, almost feeling like an Anime in the way that characters would temporarily distance themselves from the fight and dwell on things or mentally calculate the situation for the benefit of the audiences understanding. Next time you watch Bleach maybe, take note of how the editing cuts up the fight to show all the things that are going on while people are attacking people with swords. The best fights always have more than just people hitting each other (or in Bleach's case, explaining how they managed to pull yet another magic power out from nowhere) going on at their centre. In this case, it's Brandon trying to train with Twilight but also show how well he's learned everything. Nice work.

For the next few chapters, I wonder about the fact that Brendon is also supposed to be a Brony. Currently, he's got no clue about anything of his previous life but is happy as a larry, as they say. It will be interesting to see what is done with that as the aspect of the character was quickly swept out of the way the instant Brendon arrives in Equestria.

For my money...Wait...Fan Fics are free...I'm rusty. Let me try again. *ahem*

For me, Legion Brony appears to have created an interesting Fan Fic despite the reputation of the Human-In-Equestria genre this falls into. That would be because it's not the sole focus of the story. That story element is aided by an underlying fantasy plot that attempts to compliment the HIE element as best as it can, creating something that gets progressively better as more is revealed. I'm quite sure Legion has managed to stumble upon my weakness but I think he's done well enough so far to be proud of his work thus far.