Skyfall Saga: Treason · 9:26am Aug 15th, 2014
Well, third story down.
Spoilers obviously.
As the series progresses, the world of Skyfall Saga expands to neighboring lands and elaborates within. I expressed some disappointment over the lack of fleshing out the griffons got in the first story. While we did get a look into the horses of Saddle Arabia, it's truly here I can finally see the series play around with various cultures. We get thestrals, learsians, and changelings.
Thestral vs bat pony - We don't get much of the thestrals here. One thing that sticks to mind though that thestral and bat pony seems to be interchangeable here. I remember in various Dragonlance books where minotaurs hated being called bull men and would use "cow" to insult one another. The thestrals don't seem to have a problem referring to themselves as bat ponies or it could just be that Midnight Dasher doesn't mind given that she's the only named thestral in the story. Also interesting how she points out her love of peaches coming from being a bat (even though ponies like fruit too). That's something that's seldom brought up in stories with thestrals. The default always makes them vampire bats, but who says they can't be based on fruit bats? Kind of interested in seeing insectivorous thestrals now. Can you imagine the frequently sexy bat pony mare represntation of thestrals suddenly snagging a roach mid-flight and scarfing it down Nicolas Cage style? Overall though, not too fond of the thestral showing so far. Too close to the Midnight Blossom portrayal I've seen a lot of.
Changelings - the story shines when it comes to the changelings. The changelings are, perhaps, the most overexposed race in MLP fanfiction with countless "X is a changeling" stories and "Oh, Chrysalis is just a desperate mommy trying to keep her babies alive, it's the ponies that are evil" stories. We get little information on the changelings, but that actually helps build them up as a menace rather than leave them bland as it did with griffons. I like the detail on changeling venom and chitin. The little tidbits of what they can do makes me want to learn more. It adds fresh luster to a rather tired race to use.
Learsians - Learsians, really? That's even sillier than Saddle Arabia. Look, I've got no problems with drawing inspiration from real-life cultures. But the sdrawkcab name is just silly and works against the meaningful representation the story going for here, especially given how grim their background is. That doesn't mean that the Leasrians themselves suck though. The name just hurts them. I like the idea of a schism among ponies brought on by the princesses. It's a little confusing when they start talking about false gods though, because there hasn't been much indication that the alicorns are seen as gods. They pray to this "Great Alicorn" thing, which doesn't seem to be any of the princesses. They interact with the actual princesses as rulers rather than deities, but just going into this sort of conflict does a lot to explore Equestrian culture, not just Learsian.
So let's talk about Midnight Dasher a bit, because she occupies this rather weird position within the story.
Dasher as Veronica to Cadance's Betty - mischievous, brash, and feisty to Cadance's warm and affectionate. When Dasher first showed up, I was reminded of the adage that frequently went around sporkers about the hero who lost a hand in one chapter to make it appear that he was at a disadvantage only to acquire a magic silver hand by the next chapter which can not only work as a hand, but shoots fireballs too. It looked as if Fleethoof was moving on from Cadance, but hey now he can screw the sexy bat pony. But you know what, I figured that I'd remove my shipping goggles for this story. Kind of hard to do when...
Dasher as Catwoman to Fleethoof's Batman - she's flirty and casual, he's uptight and serious. She even breaks into his room and pokes through his stuff, that's about as Catwomanish as you can get. During the last chapter, I was worried that they were going to fuck, which I would not have liked as it still would have felt that it had gone too fast. It's difficult to get that kind of tension going between characters. Linkara tried and failed at it in his Lightbringer comic. Better to brew it slowly over more situations.
Dasher as a damsel in distress to Fleethoof's knight in shining armor
“Clear, Midnight,” he called out to her, smirking at the two disgruntled Marine. “Sorry, colts. You opened fire first.”
“Yeah, well, we almost had Dasher,” the one named Blunder Buss said, laughing as he tried in vain to wipe the paint off his uniform. “Good thing she had you, sir, or she’d be a goner.”
Ok, this is too much. She started out as this feisty soldier who could hold her own against Fleethoof for a bit, then in the span of 2 chapters he saves her twice, once from some angry trainees and again in this training exercise. And the marines outright rub the reader's nose in the fact. I'm getting flashbacks to Dan Brown's Da Vinci code, where the female lead muses how incredibly lucky she is that she has the amazing Doctor Langdon to educate her about all the super secret conspiracies going on around her. What a delight that a novel so high and mighty on goddess worship and female power features its lone female lead in the role of just sitting around awestruck while two men lecture her over and over.
Where was I? Oh, right. Then we have this scene where she visits a bar and inquires about Fleethoof and the barkeep helpfully recounts Griffon Wars: A Soldier's Memoirs to us. Unnecessary in my opinion and only serves to make Fleethoof appear mysterious. Fleethoof has had two stories to show how awesome he is. He doesn't need a girl to constantly save or impress.
Action - though this story does a lot more cultural elaboration and world-building, it's not at the expense of the action. Pretty spectacular fights intersped between tense investigating. Cupcake gets to blow up stuff this time.
Mechanics - some of the same problems crop up, not surprising as it's not like the author is required to immediately jump on his story because of my say so. I'm not going to keep harping on about them. Instead, I want to look at the the author's tendency to interpose character PoV during description. Now, what does that mean? Let's look at this line from chapter 2
Fleethoof felt a hoof strike his side from behind, and he crumpled, a dull ache shaking his legs. Midnight had struck a pressure point.
HOKUTO SHINKEN! Anyway other examples include...
Chapter 3
Fleethoof felt a wave of relief wash over him.
This one from Chapter 6
Fleethoof felt his blood run cold.
Sometimes it's not necessary to remind the reader who is experiencing something, especially when PoV has been establised, interposing the PoV dilutes the experience, making it less immediate and adding a few extra words. For these cases, I would suggest...
A hoof struck Fleethoof's side from behind, and he crumpled, a dull ache shaking his legs. Midnight had struck a pressure point.
A wave of relief washed over Fleethoof.
Fleethoof's blood ran cold.
The word here is "sometimes". Each time something like this shows up, the writer should consider carefully. The objective is to tighten description and make it more immediate, not to confuse the reader.
Overall: I'm having fun with this world. It's kind of distracting actually. I might be slowing down a bit because I spend more and more of my time reading, but it is a worthwhile read for me. So I'm off to the next.
i always wanted to see something that has the changelings sympathetic, even tragic, but only misunderstood by their origins and what drives them.
kinda what i am working with. tragedy of the changeling being less that they choose not to coexist, in that any attempt to is not gonna work even for changelings that WANT to. kinda take the definition of 'lacking love' with the changelings and more losing staiblity of mind and emotion.
know i 'talk' alot about it but talking about it gets the juices flowing.
.......... kay now i am gonna go and make sure i do not have Twilight's name stated twenty times in a sentence about Derpy screwing over her mail in a very serious situation.