Review: The Dread Chitin · 8:29pm Jun 22nd, 2013
Do you remember Riven? That game from the nineties where you wandered around a bunch of islands and solved some puzzles? Near the end, there was a moment where you discovered a linking book to this strange-looking age called Tay. The frontispiece was a giant tree that held an entire stone fortress in its branches, and you thought you were about to discover an entire new section of the game with new puzzles and wonderful art design. And then you actually get there and discover that the entirety of the area is one room, from which you can wistfully stare at all the things that could have been.
To an extent, that anecdote describes my experience with The Dread Chitin. Despite ostensibly being a fic about Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle attempting to survive on a strange and hostile planet, within a chapter or so of their arrival they find their way into a cosy bunker and then proceed to stay there for almost the entire duration of the story. Aside from isolated moments at the beginning or end, there's little feeling of danger involved at all, which is a damning flaw in something that seems to want to be an adventure story.
To be fair, it's understandable why Karazor decided to go this route. Whatever this fic is a crossover with, it's nasty, and he takes pains to make the story as accurate as possible a depiction of its gritty science fiction roots. There are times when he gets around to describing the wildlife where I took a little double-take at the sheer ridiculousness of the creatures populating the world. Chitin plating, swollen mandibles, insects the size of houses... There's not really room for ponies in a world like that, and triumphant fight scenes would've ruined my suspension of disbelief anyway. The conclusion is satisfying largely because it avoids such things.
In the absence of adventure, the story tries to compensate by putting the focus on its own unique interpretation of Rainbow Dash's character. Karazor's Dash is aggressive, intelligent, and even something of an aerodynamics geek. She quickly demonstrates her ability to defend herself and by the end is shooting carapaces with the best of them. It's very obviously the result of an adult male retooling a character designed for little girls, but it's a fun reinterpretation, and you can tell a lot of time and effort went into its conception. It's probably my favorite part of the fic, and most of the other people I've talked to about it agree.
Of course, a lot of time spent coming up with an idea means that a lot of time is spent explaining it, as well. A disproportionately-large amount of Dash's internal monologue in many of the early chapters is spent explaining these little quirks of characterization. Dash hung out with Gilda, so she's eaten meat before. Dash is obsessed with trick flying, so she studied hard for her fluid mechanics class in flight school. Dash (yet again) is not a lesbian, and she is sick of people insinuating that she is one. None of these have any real foundation in the show's characterization, but they wind up crowding out simple, relatable sentiments like, "I wish I were home with my friends." The lack of overt emotion or danger for much of the fic makes their entire predicament feel surprisingly boring, as though Dash and Twilight are just stranded in a foreign country as opposed to another planet.
There's some internal conflict, but even that feels a little artificial. I never got the impression that any of the characters were behaving oddly, but most of the disagreements wind up being resolved over the course of a single conversation without much fanfare. I'd have liked to see a lot more gradual development in most of the characters across the board. Dash seems a little too eager to embrace human culture, Twilight doesn't really do all that much aside from her purpose as a plot device, and Duran's most endearing moments are mentioned only in passing.
There are a number of issues with The Dread Chitin, but most of them are ignorable. As a crossover, it never feels like more than the sum of its component parts, but the writing is generally solid and it avoids most of the pitfalls with human-centric stories. I read this fic over the course of three or so hours while waiting at a train station, and it passed the time quite well.
Not a bad review at all. I really liked this story but I think I liked the sequel slightly better. I think I liked the sequel better simply because of a slight genre shift. More space opera than anything. It reminded me of those old StarControl games or Ascendancy.