Burnished iodine: a review of TheBandBrony's Ticklish · 4:14am Mar 9th, 2013
I find it a bit strange how a great deal of people seem to have more trouble understanding my negative critiques about them than my positive ones. I’ve not found a rational explanation for this that I can’t explain without a heavy dose of sarcasm, and so I’ve decided to analyse the phenomenon from an academic feminist perspective:
The phallus oppresses all and the yoni suffers under few: while the penis of happiness sticks itself into everything wet and soft that it can find, the vagina of sadness must only accept the few and desperate, letting itself open to only the most simpering specimens of the species.
The only solution to critical myopia, therefore, is the castration of happiness.
(also, since it’s especially relevant for this particular essay, ‘he’ is usually the gender-neutral pronoun in my writing and also I wrote this at like 4 am in the morning and it sucks give me a break uugh)
TheBandBrony’s Ticklish: The chapter’s title lies
I have a fair sense of imagination.
Now, this may seem to be something a liberal arts major may say in a particularly sad attempt to draw people of the relevantly attractive gender(s) to his OKCupid profile; it is, but far more than that it is a great contributor to practical thought.
For example: I have recently bought a gunbrella.
Pictured: La Pistomrilla.As with all red-blooded human beings, I felt the urge at some point to get down on the ceramic floor and do the dinosaur—the ‘dinosaur’, of course, being a metaphor for the uselessness of cannon fodder infantry investment in the nuclear world—with it, and was about to do so before I realised my conundrum: I was bereft of both pants and insert-word-for-panties-here-that-is-nonspecific-but-remains-its-euphony.
Lo! My butt was unbuttered; my backside was unsided; my tush was unpushed.
I reasoned with myself, certainly, or tried. Surely it couldn’t possibly be that bad. Surely the hours of airconditioning had not yet turned it to waste—surely, as humanity be my witness, there should be some morsel of habitation left in the burnt cold of this icy desolation.
I then felt, as if from a great distance, the cold upon my gender-neutral bollocks—it was a warning, thus, an omen, and lo I did shudder, for I could already by then feel the frostbite creeping upon my genitals, rendering them forever destroyed. Lo and behold, thus, a great wash of common sense fell upon me and smote the trusting naivete of my gentle being, and I then moved forth and donned my gay apparel.
Then I thought that would be a great idea for a blog post, wrote this, lovingly staged a photograph of my gunbrella and rolled around tractionless upon the floor for a few short seconds before I realised I was both dumb and anorexic¹.
But then, a slight morsel of curiosity roused itself within me:
What if I had been wrong? What if the floor hadn’t been quite so cold after all? The question tore at me, and finally I decided to pull my pants off and test my hypothesis.
It was kind of cold, certainly, but my thighs felt it more than my gender-neutral lips² and the cold was actually kind of comforting more than it was any semblance of harsh.
It was, however, quite dusty³.
One might expect to find in TheBandBrony’s Ticklish a shameless exploitation of the paradigm of the nymphomanic ignoramus—a great case, that is to say, to call everyone on FIMFiction a paedophile—and it is for this reason I found myself quite thoroughly ignoring it for almost all the time it was in the feature box.
It is a sad fact that relatively recently have I found that that deceit of imagination had almost robbed me of more than just a dusty crotch.
What first strikes the reader is the metaphor.
It’s quite common for a writer to treat metaphor only once a story, as if it were some rare delicacy; it is a particular shame that only rarely does one come across the especially nurturing sort of writer who infuses metaphors and similes into every fragment of his prose—taking them lovingly from cradle to grave—and does so with the detectable trace of a smile.
Ticklish weaves metaphor into the fabric of its prose, the most trivial thing anthromorphised; wetsuits do not merely detach from hair: they lose fights with it. Fillies do not merely look like sea monsters: they are sea monsters.
Their executions, however, aren’t quite perfect: sentences like
Carried within it was the sound of fillyish laughter—a final warning for any remaining animals to leave now or suffer the consequences.
find themselves at odds with the rest of the prose, a strange chimaera of formal and informal that doesn’t quite click; this creates a slight sensation of antithematic pretence⁴ and on occasion breaks whatever tone it seems to attempting to achieve, at once explicating far more than is quite needed.
Opportunities are often squandered, and even the metaphor at times seems to find itself somewhat wounded by its relative retardation: if they are brought to cradle to grave, really, a great deal of them spend far too long in the womb. A great deal of the mundane narration outright bad, in fact; this is closely linked with the dialogue-tagging, which often finds itself somewhat overstuffed: lines of speech often interrupt themselves twice in a row, (not with action beats but with commas) lending an air of hesitation throughout. Constructions like
The thought of finally earning her badge of ponydom was too sweet an offer for Scootaloo to pass up. “Okay fine, I’m in.” Leaning in close and poking the earth pony in the chest, she added, “Just be sure we get those berries.” Rubbing her belly, she added, “I’m famished.”
are not content merely to be a fragment of the aforementioned prosaic imperfection but instead turn one person’s set of sentences into what sounds like three people talking in rambles.
If one chooses to move from the prose, still, a great deal of the dialogue gives off that impression: while it isn’t quite noticeable against the prose, it bears a certain layer of saccharine artificiality—what child says ‘famished’ if he’s not trying to sound intelligent?—they’re quite thematic. The story itself seems to be half of an episode, and I can’t help but find it fitting with its show-driven origins.
Well.
I guess you want me to talk the sexy now.
I’ll tell you straight up front: it’s pretty okay.
I actually don’t know if it’s okay from a functional perspective—I’ve got no idea who gets aroused at this⁵—but it is at this point the metaphor begins to age: a paragraph will restate the same thing thrice with different permutations of the very same fact, and it begins to become a bit tiresome. The explicit usage of the word ‘orgasm’ destroys quite a bit of the otherwise priorly pristine narration, and though the floridity might find its place elsewhere the short sentences that mark the story never quite move from its place.
I suppose that it can be afforded some measure of credit for not turning Sweetie Belle into a slavering bonersmithing cockmongler thereafter—the reaction to the orgasm is rather understandable, though fuck me if I can bring myself to conceive of the sort of child that wouldn’t start masturbating like a monkey given knowledge and the slightest opportunity—but this minor credit just isn’t quite enough to offset the similarly minor anti-credit of its occasionally tarnished pacing.
In short, for its limited technical merits it lacks dynamism; nothing shifts with the flow of the story, and it maintains its tip-tap rhythm three-sentences-per-three-line-paragraph sort of pacing throughout while failing to maintain the air of detachment that would justify it.
All in all, it’s not awful.
The problem is that it’s just not awful.
(Also, it’ll get your balls dusty or something. Fuck me if I know.)
9th of March 2013
Yishun, Singapore¹ 307.1 Anorexia Nervosa [...] Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight. —DSM-IV
² [insert rant here about how the evil patriarchy makes ‘gender-neutral lips’ sound a lot weirder than ‘gender-neutral bollocks’, rage rage rabble rabble]
³ My quivering loins continue to itch a little.
Goddamnit I’m dumb.
⁴ That’s just what she said.
⁵ The part where her legs twitched uncontrollably aroused a slight current of feeling in me, but that’s just because I imagined her headless body being strung about on an electric wire.
get it? iodine and silver's valence configuration? no?
okay then
I wonder what it would take for me to write something that Amit either loves or hates enough to write a review about.
Looking back, though, I sure did write at least one unforgivably fuck-awful thing.
I consider myself rather lucky she hasn't gotten me yet. Either way, nice review I enjoyed it.
I read, I don't know, maybe a thousand words in without finding out a single thing about the story allegedly being reviewed. Then I quit.
O never have any idea what your reviews mean, but I enjoy the prose.
901968
Three-hundred-eighty, actually. I think in English it's called a 'theme-setting anecdote'. Given that it's a metaphor for my experience with the story, I'd imagine it's not out of place.
My mental image of you has increased in strangeness at least tenfold. Where once you were androgynous, you are now all genders and no genders. Your skin/hair colors and your features sort of followed suit.
901842
The trick is to get into a nice, big argument, apparently.
902181
I think the term for that particular mental image is 'genderqueer', like Spike having a moustache.
take that, masculine identity of a member of the supporting cast of a children's television show
That's actually a way by which one may get my attention (besides, y'know, asking). I'm not going to review something unreadable or unremarkable just because it happens to have been written by someone I agree or disagree with, and I'd never heard of TheBandBrony before this point.
Why did the title pun make me so happy? Is it just the shout-out or just how clever it was? Oh, well, off to make a sequel to Tarnished Silver for every element on the periodic table.
"No, Radium Rhubarb! You are but a tiny, naive filly who glows in the dark! Don't go to Rarity's place! Your long-term master/slave relationship will surely turn carcinogenic!"
Genius.
Also, Bandbrony now has the perfect blurb for his user page.
-Amit (paraphrased)
I enjoyed this story. Your critique is pretty spot-on, but I generally liked the metaphorical writing style enough to mostly overlook the bigger problems. It gives the whole thing a unique whimsical feel that fits the CMC. The whole hornjob thing does nothing for me sexually, so it's a good thing the prose is generally amusing.
Well, sure, if someone's going to name her genitalia "the vagina of sadness," she can't really complain when no one wants to go in there. I guess she'd probably find a few emo guys to fool around with, but no one wants that.
902181
I was hoping I could find some sort of awesome image of a multi-gendered Queer Princess/Prince pony to post here, an alicorn who embodies not only all pony races but all possible combinations of sex and gender (somehow.) But all I could find was a bunch of pictures of Futashy.
So it was time well spent.
902325
The concept is actually brilliant; that's why it's so much more demoralising on the occasions it's found with its pants down.
but the patriarchy
I got to the gunbrella and all I can think about now is Amit's butt wiggling in the air.
It's funny how genderless the butt can be, isn't it? Frame it right and you just can't tell if it's male or female, regardless of any hair or pimple or cute little blemish. As the philosopher says, any port will do in a storm.
I'd go on, but (ahahaha) I don't want to fill this thread with a paean to the firm tight buttock as that might come across as weird.
Though, given the competition...
derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDIvMTMvMDRfMTVfMzNfNzM0XzI0MTc3MV9fVU5PUFRfX3NhZmVfdHdpbGlnaHRfc3BhcmtsZV9hbmltYXRlZF9wbG90X2VkaXRfc3R1Y2tfcmV0dXJuX29mX2hhcm1vbnlfYXJ0aXN0X2ZveGJlYXN0LmdpZi5naWYiXV0/241771__safe_twilight-sparkle_animated_plot_edit_hoofy-kicks_stuck_return-of-harmony_artist-foxbeast.gif.gif
I have no idea what I just read in this journal, but I nevertheless thoroughly entertained. And maybe a little weirded out.
Also, with a title like "Ticklish", this story makes me think of "Tickling Rainbow", which no story can ever top, so stop trying.
why do reading these make me so happy
902706
because you are a kind, beautiful person
no foolin'
Accurate representations of what happened to my mind after reading your review aside, I would like to thank you for this. I'm more than a little bit floored that someone is even willing to touch the metaphorical fhqwhgads that make up my prose, let alone have maybe-gay-but-maybe-not-gay relations with the floor over it. Your input is valid and much appreciated, and also I'm totally going to steal that paraphrased butt-scootching quote from HamGravy.
Specificity births forth quite a magnanimous number of interesting things.
901968
I'm pretty sure it was all intended as a metaphor for, like, whatever, but yeah ...
This was either your worst or best review so far.
Worst, because it was easily the most tiresome and left me with no feeling whatsoever. It was there, I guess. Some words, and a picture. I mean, I'm pretty sure there were words. I almost definitely probably remember reading some words. About something. I'll forget it soon enough.
Best, because it was apparently demonstrative of how you felt toward the story.
903222
I'd personally suggest the term 'scooting'.
That being said, though: if a butt scoots in the forest and there's no one there to call it gay, are snowcloned stock phrases or their subversions still funny the billionth time they've been used?
904140
No offence, but I don't think that's what 'magnanimous' means.
I meant it as "high-minded", but I concur - it actually was pretty ridiculous lol
You know, sometimes I'll read a story and not know what I feel about it afterwards. Like, all my feelings are just abstract notions that I just can't quite articulate. The feeling is there, but I just can't describe it.
The first three hundred words of this review? That is what my mind has failed to put words to. Now that you've done so in such great detail, I think I can understand why.
904935 Are you trying to argue that numbers can't be magnanimous? Why, they regularly pass on leftovers to other numbers, and they join together to become greater than themselves! When there is division they will give of themselves until nothing is left at all so that other numbers might live!
Except primes.
Selfish bastards.
i feel like if you had something to say in these 'reviews' you'd spend your time articulating in less abstract diction rather than dancing around the folly of your own syntactical arrangement like an errant and confused deer in a china shop filled with shelves of obfuscation
please see my emulation above
917629
I feel like if your emulation bore the slightest emulation of mine, it would be interesting enough that people might choose to read through it.
917702
zing
917705
don't worry i still love you we can have silly and nonsexual healing times together