Rarity has a dress shop, and for the longest time, she dreams of making it big in the fashion industry. However, Sweetie Bell living with Rarity on a more permanent basis has forced the unicorn to accept that she is learning just as much about the fashion world as she is about rearing fillies.
So when her little sister comes home one day and asks a most disturbing question regarding their unicorn parents, Rarity is intent on busting what she believes is a myth that has so long lingered regarding unicorns. After all, there was no need for everyone in Ponyville to think that unicorns commonly commit acts of incest when such was not true.
Right?
Chapters (2)
Eh... I'll squeak it by with an upvote because the grammar and mechanics were pretty good... but it never really lit my fire, so to speak.
There's nothing particularly surprising in the story... it's... well, boring.
It's not bad, but it fails to be good.
Pegacorn and Alicorn is the same.
I'm ambivalent about this story. It asks a question nobody cares about, and doesn't get around to answering it in any meaningful way. It's well written, but that doesn't mean much when it doesn't go anywhere. This story feels like it should be asking more groundbreaking things such as "Where and why does incest occur" and more meaningful things. As it is, it's just boring.
5304211
5304879
Well, I accomplished part of my objective; making a decent written story.
It does not seem I did so well in the comedy and/or interesting department though.
Any tips?
5304534
Canon, yeah I believe so, but not in this fanfic.
5305757
hmmm
Okay, for every question, you must have an answer. It must be a question we, the readers, haven't typically thought of, or have, but continually debate. It must be answered in a way that leaves us satisfied, or wanting for more.
You chose Incest in Unicorns. Typically this is thought of as Incest in Unicorn Nobility, however. Incest among the ruling class is a fact in European history, which unfortunately you did not bring up in the least. You instead brought up your own creations with no clear basis in canon. When you answered it, the question became an ongoing thing with no answer or progress. Twilight made leaps of logic that didn't correspond to what the reader knew and could think, and it ran away from us fast.
That was your first problem.
The second, and perhaps more heinous, problem, is that your fic had no direction. You popped between several different focus points we went on: misinformation in education and tribalism(fantastic racism relating to ponies), then you abandoned those and backpedaled into semantics, relative morality, and demographics.
You could have ended it there, but then you brought up that Unicorns might be incestuous after all.
Anyway, there is a third, minor, problem: logic. You're going off a basis that the tip-top of the upper class(literally the 0.1%ers) adopted an incestuous model to maintain a trait, and both the middle and lower class adopted this previous taboo. It just kind of breaks any suspension of disbelief I had left that they would do that... Even if near 100% of Canterlot has a horn, the people of the city wouldn't start breaking such a large(and possibly instinctual[Many species, especially mammals, avoid having sex with relatives. If you know another individual during childhood, you think of them "as a sibling", and therefor off-limits. Sometimes this goes to scent as well as sight.) taboo. And then after the possible reason for breaking the taboo disappears, cultural pressure from the outside should utterly destroy any outliers.
I hope this tells you why your fic doesn't work.
5306588
So, rather than leave it as it is, I need another chapter so that I can
A) Answer the question definitively
B) Tie up some of the around the head logic that makes more sense when you're idea popping than when you're actually setting a story
C) Make the other joke of the story a little more real, concerning the fact that this is even a question at all that is being asked.
The fic had indeed started out with only up to the Rarity-Cheerilie conversation. The rest came later, and perhaps that's why there seems to be a disconnect from the original direction of my fic (joking on a stereotype in class) and the new direction (why is there so much question in the answer of something that should have already been taught, as it clearly had been in Rarity before the discussion began).
If I add another chapter clearing up that second half, it might would make for a more satisfactory finish.
So what if it wouldn't be comedic? Write more anyway, I want to know how this goes.
This story is fucking weird. The first chapter was awkward but palatable. This second one just goes into way too much depth. I feel like it's trying to be funny but has gone past that and is trying for a serious note on a subject entirely irrelevant to not only the setting but society as well. This might be able to work if we could get some kind of better introduction to the idea of incest in unicorn society/pony society, but it just feels like a shoehorned in aspect, which is a terrible thing for the main subject of a story.
What does the writing in the icon for your avatar say? Have you ever considered submitting this story to Equestria Daily? You can find out how to do so here.
5316144
I'm not quite sure how to respond, other than to admit that I had to look up the word shoehorned in order to fully understand what your critique was.
The story was never intended to be serious, though the second chapter might have made it come off that way. As you said though, my error there was probably in how much thought I put into focusing the direction of the fic and coming up with a definitive answer to the question posed by the end of the first chapter.
I also noted that something to be desired was more of an introduction for the topic itself. If I may, could I get a little more detail by what you mean by that?
5320895
The problem is that the fic mostly seems to try and straddle the line of drama and comedy and ends up in some kind of nasty null space in between. The introduction of the idea that unicorns commit regular incest is done in way meant to be humorous, but the problem is that we as readers have no prior idea of what this means within this AU you've attempted to create.
The second half of the first chapter onwards basically seems to give up on the idea of comedy and try and focus on drama, but because the idea of incest has no gravitas with the reader at this point, all later attempts to bring a more serious tone to the prose fail utterly.
If I were to suggest anything, I would suggest that this story be rewritten entirely, because the comedy is never really present and drags down an already ailing fic. Writing comedy can be difficult, and you seem to be trying to do it through surreal/absurdist means, which do not work well with topics that are treated seriously elsewhere in your story.
The problem with the first chapter is that it conflates stereotypes with truth in an attempt at comedy, but comes off as simply obtuse and rather out of character/out of universe. The second chapter goes for a stronger dramatic appeal, but the interspersed and really awkward moments where Shining and Cadance are supposed to be joking come off more as if they're entirely serious and rather insane than playful.
5321267
So from most of your commentary, I get that comedy is probably not in my writing portfolio; if my characters come off as insane when they are supposed to be half playing and half serious, then I definitely screwed up with their conversation even moreso than the rest.
Something that I think I can at least work on is the lack of any pre-exposition. As the writer, I have a back-lined in mind when I'm writing, and I have a terrible habit of assuming that the reader will either be able to figure it out or already know from the get-go this back-line. That has not been the case in like, any of my writings, and it especially suffers here as the story by itself is more of a drama with some attempted comedy sprinkled (just based on comments and a brief review of my own work I come to that).
I might could remedy some of the connection issues by going back instead of forward. Setting up important background information first instead of just jumping right in. And I think I will scrap the idea of making a comedy, at least for now.
I probably should have started out with this; thanks for your detailed response.
5306588
And thank you as well for your detailed response.
Oh, Cadence gonna come to Ponyville and slap a filly!
I don't really think that Cheerily deserves to react as indignantly as she did; I can see why she did, but she was still wrong. From Rarity's point of view, her little sister blatantly asked whether their parents regularly commit a rather sever social taboo as a direct result of what Cheerily had said. Even if what Cheerily had said was intended to be a joke, it's her fault if her students don't understand that it was a joke. Plus, Cheerily clearly also considers incest to be at least somewhat taboo, so that would mean she intentionally made a very crass and probably rather insulting joke to a bunch of very naive and impressionable children.
8390948
In the canon show all three races live together in Ponyville, in fairly decent harmony at that. In the canon of this particular fanfiction, in talking about periods of history with racial tension, Cheeriliee's approach is to teach racial tensions by making light of the stereotypes that her particular audience, Ponyville foals, are likely (but clearly not definite as seen by Sweetie Belle) to know are false. She would almost guaranteed get more complaints if she taught that same lesson to a bunch of Canterlot students, or even students in Applesooa (I misspelled it I know).
It is unknown whether any other foals in the class had similar questions, as the focus of the story was on Rarity-Sweetie-Twilight, but the implication is that they did not, or if they did their parents/guardians either are unaware of it or both explained and did not find reason to talk to Cheerilie about it, which speaks volumes about the likely reactions of the rest of the class to the lecture. Cheeriliee even hints that part of the reason that Sweetie Belle even has the question is because she has not already been taught any better; a detail that Cheerilie would see as a failure at home, not in the classroom. That's Cheeriliee's point of view on the situation and why Rarity coming and all but accusing Cheeriliee of perpetuating stereotypes in a negative fashion mildly irritates her once she notices it.
8400475
I honestly didn't expect you to reply to my comment, with the story being as old as it is - a pleasant surprise, as I typically like getting replies to comments, so thank you.
While I am convinced that Cheerily is wrong, it is a very believable kind of wrong. I wouldn't be surprised is a decent amount of real teachers used that type of reasoning too. If I were to argue against Cheerily I would say that no sibling in their right mind (unless in a culture in which incest is common) would think that there would be any need to specify that their parents are not siblings. I would also point out that she really shouldn't expect Rarity to teach her sister about the culture of a city that they don't live in. The history of unicorns might be a bit of a different story, but the backstory you give seems to imply that anything relevant happened so long ago that Rarity would have to be very traditionalist to consider it worth teaching to her sister, which she doesn't seem to be. And even then, people regularly leave out the less pleasant parts of their history and heritage, so it stands to reason that ponies would be similar.
Still, my opinions no Cheerily's point of view don't reflect much on my opinion of the story. If anything, being able to write conflicting opinions realistically is a good thing.
Out of curiosity, since almost if not more than half of this fic consisted of whether incest should be socially and morality acceptable, what is your opinion on the topic?
8400517
That does not seem to really be against Cheerilee. If anything it helps her belief that no one in the class would take the stereotypes seriously.
The issue is less that Sweetie has not been taught about the long ago history of Canterlot and more that she has never had a discussion with anyone about the topic (Rarity takes the time out to give Sweetie some version "the talk" after their discussion with Twilight), nor does she know her own immediate family history. Just one of those two things prior to the lesson would have easily debunked any notion of her parents being siblings.
Thank you, I take it you at least enjoyed the story then? Even reading it again myself I find it kind of funny, but that's because I understand from the get-go the somewhat ridiculous premise that sets the story into motion.
"Should" is not what much of the fic was about, the meat of the fic was "is". The concept of "should" is with the petition idea at the end of chapter 2 and that was it.
My stance is very similar to Cadance's, mostly because I am willing to tolerate consensual orientations/preferences even if I do not personally agree with them. I do not believe in engaging in it myself, but similarly to my stance on other different sexual/romantic preferences, I do not believe I would pick on nor unfriend someone for that practice/preference alone.
8402088
Honestly, I didn't like the story. I don't really remember why I didn't like the story though. If you want to know why, I wouldn't really mind skimming through the story again to try and explain my reasoning in an at least somewhat comprehensive and analytical way, but I probably won't unless you actually ask me to since I am not that curious about my reasoning myself.
As for the Cheerily thing, I still think Cheerily was wrong in athat argument - or at least wrong about more things than Rarity was (again, I'd like to emphasize that this does not reflect on my opinions about you. You seem like a nice enough person at the very least and I appreciate your willingness to participate in a civil discussion). At this point I think that, were we to continue on the topic of that argument, it would never end: half because of differing opinions and half because of how this particular medium of communication makes making clear and complete arguments both very difficult and at least somewhat tedious (I pretty much exclusively use this website from my phone so the tedium might not extend to people who access this site from a computer, I don't know)
8404065
I am not that curious either, truth be told. Glad you went ahead and cleared that up though.
8410095
No problem. And thanks for responding to my comments at all. It was nice of you to bother replying to me despite the story almost being 3 years old.
Hm. A bit surprised Twilight in particular joins the rest of the cast in getting lost in historical and sociological concerns without ever grounding herself in the mathematical perspective. ...I'll leave any comments at that.