Present Perfect vs. On a Cross and Arrow · 7:53pm Aug 27th, 2014
Audiobook review first!
I went into this story when I did because it was on Indubitably Ponified's channel. Unfortunately, I was dismayed to find that the narrator's voice was about five times softer than anyone else, and it was hard enough to hear without water running, let alone with. So in a panic, I searched YouTube and found another complete audiobook, read by aboredbrony, part 1 here. (Here's another, by Agent0Fluffy and a bunch of other people, part 1 here.)
Sadly, this wasn't a great reading. He stops and starts, interjects commentary continuously, and generally doesn't have very good reading technique. Worse, after chapter 4, the volume took a hit, and then it took a hit again. (It took me four days to get through chapter 9 because it was that quiet.) Needless to say, I won't be checking out any more of this guy's readings.
Now, I know I've been teasing this story for a while, but before I get into the thick of the review, I wanted to talk about R63 for a bit.
Rule 63 of the internet -- from the same list of rules that gives us rule 34, for the uninitiated -- states, in some terms, that if it exists, so does a gender-swapped version. Of course, they mean sex-swapped, but Western mores drive us to be squeamish about the word 'sex' in a biological context, so "gender-swapped" it is. Anyway, that's why a story like this is referred to as "R63".
But why the attraction to turning male characters female and vice-versa? I can think of a few reasons. If you're like me, you enjoy reimaginings of characters, and a male version of a female character certainly counts. There's the sexual angle of course, giving people leave to lust over characters they otherwise wouldn't be attracted to thanks to their canon sex. (I also fall into this boat, at times.) Narratively, though, the answers become murkier. Having two sets of characters who are essentially the same, aside from sex, interacting does present some interesting potential, but typically ends up with "then they had sex" as the goal. This is cheap both because it's predictable and also because it renders twice the usual number of characters as heterosexual-only.
So. Despite Alexstrazsa's The 63rd Rune having been published first, Conner Cogwork's On a Cross and Arrow has become the go-to name in R63 pony stories. Aaaand before I get into it, I'm going to rant about the ponies for a second.
The "official", fandom-approved R63 ponies were by a fellow named Trotsworth. You can see the first full-cast shot of his R63 ponies here, and the very first image of one of his characters, Butterscotch, can be found here, dated April 22, 2011. That, according to My Little Wiki, is the airdate for A Bird in the Hoof, so we're talking pretty dang early in the show's run, overall. Is that the first instance of someone R63'ing a pony? I don't care; all that matters is the names he used have stuck for the last three years, and I pretty much hate them all.
Rainbow Blitz is probably the best out of the six, in my opinion. "Blitz" seems a fairly random replacement to use for "Dash", but it does at least feel manlier, and keeping the "Rainbow" part helps keep a strong tie to the original character. Of course, this goes to a ridiculous extreme with Applejack. There's something fairly ironic about keeping the name of the mane cast member so often referred to as a background pony the same between versions. Then you get the synonyms. Dusk Shine is a pretty ridiculous name, all things considered. Honestly, it's the "Dusk" part that has always felt horribly contrived, barely even a name as far as I'm concerned. "Twilight Shine" would have done much better, and kept the same sort of setup as the Rainbows. Then there's Elusive. This is the worst, the absolute nadir, the epitome of sloppy naming. "Rarity" is a noun, a state of being. "Elusive" is an adjective, and suggests movement, even outright deceit, if you ask me. Just think about the line "Things are better when they're a rarity" (admittedly not spoken until recently in the show). Are things better when they're "an elusive"? If you make the sentence grammatically correct, does it still make sense? No. If things are elusive, then you're probably getting frustrated about your inability to find them. Elusive is stupid. >:(
And then there's Berry Bubble, or sometimes Bubble Berry. (By Trotsworth canon, it's the latter, though I think the fandom has adopted the former for the most part; note the "Berriswainer Davinci Bubble" tag on derpibooru. This story calls him Berry Bubble.) It has about as little to do with "Pinkie Pie" as you can get, sharing alliteration as a trait (not the same sound) and nothing else. As a name on its own, it means precisely nothing. I suppose it suggests both sweets and cheerfulness, but that's about it. It confuses me. Slightly better is Butterscotch, which is kind of adorable as names go. It works as a pony name all by itself, but though it shares a few letters and the general cadence of Fluttershy's name, the two really have nothing to do with each other, and it doesn't really describe him. (Though I'll say, out of all of them, I've always kind of been partial to B-scotch's design. He's like a timid pastel Kurt Cobain.)
Why do I mention any of this? I dunno. I've always had a strong opinion about the names of the "male cast" and now I have a platform to vent them. :V Could I do better? Of course I couldn't! These names have become ingrained in the fandom; coming up with new ones would be like trying to find a new job for Derpy. (Though some have made their own designs, the names tend to be reused. No, Rainbowscreen's name for Rarity is no better.) None of this has anything to do with the story, save that Conner Cogwork used the names.
So, time to actually talk about the story, what a surprise! The short version, since I'm sure you're tired of my prevaricating, is that this is Fallout: Equestria without the redeeming qualities, at least as far as my reaction to it goes.
This gets off to a bad start in two ways. First, the writing. I would like to think that the popularity this story has enjoyed explains why unnecessary referents and Lavender Unicorn Syndrome are such a prevalent ill in this fanfiction community. This is the poster child, the überfic, the ur-prime example of why referents can tank a narrative. Had it been limited to LUS, it would have been a blessing. The characters are hardly ever referred to by name, and when they are referred to, we get nonsensical things like "the student" for Twilight, or "the butter one" for Fluttershy. Look at that. The butter one. Not even "the butter-yellow pegasus", which is bad enough on its own, just "the one that was of butter". "One" is a horrible way to refer to a character. Never did it fit the narrative, and far too often, it came with a mane color ("the purple-maned one"). There are referents to color, tribe, occupation, and of course relationships in the course of describing the characters in a consistently coy, roundabout manner. At some points, I had to laugh, because the particular referent was so non-specific, it very well could have referred to a new character who had just entered the scene unannounced. Unfortunately, the rest of the time, it was just irritating. When I said in a previous journal that I wasn't enjoying On a Cross and Arrow, this was reason #1 why.
The second thing that killed this story's attempt to ingratiate itself was what I saw as contrived conflict. The mane cast get to genderswap world via that tried and true trope of Twilight fucking up a spell. (In this case, she mixes up parts of two spells that are right next to each other. Make of that what you will.) They run into Lyra and Bon-Bon (Harpsy and Babar; I assume all the non-mane-cast R63 names are Cogwork's own creation, but I don't know) and then the CMCs in short order, who they convince to hide them from their male counterparts. Then they settle in for a three-day wait while Twilight regains her magical strength. Maybe I'm just coming from a "played too much D&D" perspective, but a spell designed for general use shouldn't drain a unicorn's magic reserves for three days. A whole day I could buy, but I felt like that was just a convenient and fairly uninspired excuse to keep them around so they could have run-ins with their counterparts.
I have to aside for a moment. I don't write these reviews to tell authors how to do their jobs, I write them for people to decide whether or not a story is worth reading, assuming they value my opinion at all. It's not about how I could have done something better. But with that said, I cannot get the idea for how to un-contrive the conflict of this story out of my head, so I'm going to share it with you. Same setup; mane cast get hidden away where the stallions won't find them. Twilight has to recharge for a day, with a full night's sleep, because it was an intense spell to begin with and adding in the dimension-crossing misstep really took it out of her. In the meantime, they have to get supplies: food, mostly, but also the sunflower oil that's a major component of the spell. So they send out Fluttershy or whoever, and they get the supplies and come back, and by morning, R63 Ponyville is in an uproar, because some strange mare no one ever saw before paid for some stuff with counterfeit money. Think about it: the bits are going to be made of the same material, the same size and weight, and one face is going to be the same. But it would be a very simple thing to have the other bear the image and/or name of Celestia, and, well, just who is this "Celestia" person? And then you have a real reason for them to hide instead of just fear of the unknown. (More on that later.)
That makes a good segue into another major problem with this story. The "why" question of the R63 setting is never properly answered beyond the lowest-common-denominator reason I mentioned above. (This was published on EQD, so there's no sex, but you better believe it's discussed quite a lot.) Not much care was put into the conceptual stage of this world. It honestly doesn't make sense for a place like this to exist because of choices made in the past. That's ten-dimensional theory; this is a mirror universe where everything is the same, and the one thing that is different is different in the same way, consistently, for every living thing. And really, it shouldn't be the same, not if sex has anything to do with how characters act. Sadly, it tends not to. Gender roles are broken when necessary, and not when they aren't. (I was pleased to see the stallions being affectionate with each other the same way the mares do at the start, but little comes of that. I felt they either needed to be acting like mares, breaking gender roles, or acting like stallions, which would require a significant difference in the way the world works.) And there are a few spots where the R63 setting is actually used for the narrative. Sadly, it's not more than two or three, and the only one I can remember involves Rainbow Dash hearing Scootaroll gushing about how awesome Rainbow Blitz is, and how he wishes he could get trained by him. She realizes that her Scoot probably feels the same way about her. More of this would have made the story considerably better.
Characterization was another problem, specifically for Twilight and Rarity. The latter I'll get to in the character meetups section. As to the former, she's half the reason the conflict is so contrived. Twilight spends a significant portion of the story being bossy and rude to her friends, keeping them cooped up in their hiding place because she's afraid what might happen if they meet their counterparts: they'll explode; they'll fall in love; they'll irreparably damage the fabric of space-time and collapse both dimensions. Honestly, if she'd been less of an egghead, this wouldn't have been a problem, but it's mostly the way she acts toward her friends that set my teeth on edge. That said, it does set her up for learning the story's best lesson, but more on that in a few.
Because yes, that's right, it's time to talk about character meetups. That's the whole point of reading a story like this, right? You want to know what happens when Female Pony meets her Male Pony self. Unfortunately, I was not pleased with most of them; read on.
We start with Fluttershy and Butterscotch, who bump into each other while Fluttershy's out gathering supplies. (She actually is the first one out of all of them to make contact, but with Dusk Shine and Spines, while in disguise.) They look into each other's eyes and fall immediately into twitterpation. It's fucking adorable. And honestly, other than the fact that it leans heavily on Fluttershy's adorability to provoke an emotional response, it's the best scene out of the six because it doesn't find a way to sink itself with poor choices. They're just so cute together, and I found myself somewhat invested in their relationship throughout the story, though the irritating writing put a damper on that somewhat.
Next is Rainbow Dash and Rainbow Blitz. Dash goes out for more supplies, and decides to sneak into "her" house. (The key actually fits; again, more small touches like that would have taken this far.) After finding pretty much the same stuff as in her house -- an interdimensional bit that almost works happens when she finds a dirty magazine full of stallions in his dressed; she comments that he "must be a bi-curious as I am", and while revelatory in the right way, it has nothing at all to do with the story, not to mention being kind of pandery -- Blitz comes back and chases her out, setting off a story-long rivalry. This relationship honestly makes a lot of sense -- they're both the best flyers in their respective Equestrias, so it makes sense that they would butt heads -- but overall I didn't find the ways it was handled worked too well. Mostly, it's just because they find every chance they can to grouse about the "filly-faker" or the "colt-crudder" (was I hearing that right?). And then the whole thing implodes in the final scene before the epilogue, when they declare their undying love for each other. Because, y'know, Dash is way tsundere. :/ I was not amused.
Applejack and Applejack happen in there somewhere. She introduces herself to Applebuck, Apple Bloom's counterpart, as "cousin JJ" (it stands for something too long to remember "Jacqueline Jonagold" thank you, Starlight Shadow) and so of course she ends up meeting the other Applejack at some point because "hey big bro, meet our cousin!" Male!AJ is immediately suspicious of her, and they nearly come to blows before Rainbow Dash distracts everyone in town (with a Double Rainboom; I know it was years ago, but I facepalmed). They get a second scene, wherein they reconcile, Male!AJ apologizes, and they start getting on. Unfortunately, that scene is ruined by creepy incestuous undertones. I mean, maybe it was just me, but when they start stammering and blushing and avoiding each other's gaze, it's not just because they're too proud to apologize, not after everything that had been going on before. At least by the end, they work out pretty well as surrogate family members. The one question I had was what their crushes on the opposite-sex Rainbows meant for them in their own dimensions; that was never resolved.
Speaking of what had been going on before, we head out to see Rarity and Elusive. Theirs was one of the best chapters of the whole thing. The bad part came first, and ties back into what I said about Rarity's characterization: she goes out to get the sunflower oil, and some shampoo, and it turns out she timed her sojourn so that she would have to go to Carousel Boutique. This little deceit is meant to introduce her to her other self, with the hope that they'll fall in love. I can't say how very disappointed I was in this. This is a season one fic, yes, but it's obvious given what the characters talk about that it's post-season, and Rarity's character was fully established as "not just a prissy lovehound" by that point. Anyway, she and Elusive meet and they have an amazing and hilarious (and slightly drawn-out) whirlwind romance like something out of a bad novel. I was horribly amused by the whole thing; they deserved each other. If not for Rarity's deception, this would have been the best of the meetups.
Another of the "almost the best" meetups was Pinkie and Berry. Of course, this gets off to a bad start when Rainbow Dash pops a wingboner at seeing him, but I quickly forgot that because of what Berry and Pinkie do. No, not that they flounce off to get supplies for a super-party. They way they react to one another, it's as if two broken beings finally found the other half they had been searching for all their lives without knowing it. It wasn't familial. It wasn't even hardly romantic. They called each other friends, but their bond was something deeper and more profound than even that. And my heart was aching for them because the whole time, everyone else is going, "Oh no, we have to do something before they destroy everything!" And I was like, "Seriously? You're going to sit there and mock your friend because she's just found a way to be the happiest she's ever been in her entire life?" Maybe I got a little too into it, but even to the final scene, "Pinkie and Berry almost destroyed the world" continues to be a running joke. And why? What would they have done? It's a stupid contrivance that flies entirely in the face of a friendship theme, and I was absolutely aghast at the behavior of everypony else towards them.
Which leaves the final meetup, Twilight and Dusk Shine, again, an "almost the best one". The whole time, Twilight's saying, no, no, no, I can't go out, what if I meet him, and she holds back and she holds back, and then finally, she can't take it anymore. She realizes she needs her own help, Dusk's help, to cast the spell again, because trying it on her own fails. So she trudges to the library in the middle of the night and they pour out their souls to each other. Again, I got caught up in the scene. Despite the comedy tag, this was a very touching and emotional conversation, where they both talk about their fears, get to know one another, and then... And then Dusk asks if she wants to spend the night instead of going back to her friends and I couldn't take it. For starters, yes she should have gone back to her friends, she knew damn well they'd be missing her in the morning. For seconds, they were calling each other 'brother' and 'sister'. They went the familial route, and then they jumped feet-first into Creepy Incest Vibes Land. (This is later confirmed as a "yes, you should have been thinking about it" kind of thing.) "Don't you trust your brother" sounds like the title of a Twilight/Shining clopfic if I ever heard one. Don't get me started about incest, it's been bothering me a lot lately. Suffice to say, what was a great scene was utterly ruined by yet another poor choice.
So where does that leave us? They all get together, there's a lengthy chapter just of the twelve of them (and Spines; did I mention I kind of like "Barb" as a name for R63 Spike?) hanging out and enjoying each other's company, and we get the moral: don't let fear hold you back. Twilight realizes they could all have been hanging out and having fun the entire time they were there, if she'd only not given in to her fear. Unfortunately, this isn't the moral from the Dear Celestia letter at the end; I was miffed by that, because it's a good moral, shown well even if it doesn't really come into play until Twilight and Dusk finally meet. ("It's hard to know yourself" just doesn't have the same oomph, even if it's more in line with the overall theme of the story.) Honestly, it was a decent scene, if lengthy for a finale. It's the kind of thing you go into a story like this expecting. In some ways, it makes On a Cross and Arrow a story about how the story itself could have been better.
As for the writing itself, I just took a look at the final chapter, and I see all-caps and underlines used for emphasis, asterisks, tildes... I'm glad I wasn't reading this. I can't comment on anything else, though I will say that the author apparently has no idea how to use "t'ain't" and "t'were", because they showed up randomly in the Applejacks' speech. I want to comment on one thing, though: the title. That's pretty evocative for a comedy. What does it mean? It's got nothing to do with the story itself, that I can tell. The chapter titles were similarly evocative, though at least most of them obviously pertained to what was going on. (Even "In My Beautiful Balloon" brings to mind Pinkie's balloon, the balloons in her and Berry's cutie marks, and the lightness of being they feel in each other's presence.) It's just a weird thing I can't quite explain, it bothered me a little.
To sum up, I had been very much looking forward to this story, and I was horribly disappointed.
1.5/5
The narrative is plagued with poor choices, and the preponderance of unnecessary referents in the writing is annoying at best.
Go read The 63rd Rune instead if you prefer this kind of thing; it's far better, albeit a different animal entirely.
Just want to say, on the subject of names, I share your... anger? Grumpiness? Whatever it is, I share it. The names are dumb. And I'll be honest, in a show where very few of the names are even gendered, why bother changing them at all? Off the top of my head, the best example of this is Starswirl. G4 Starswirl is male. G3 Starswirl is female.
I guess I just don't see the point of the name changes...
Mental image.
Oh hey, I can take this off my read later list, not that I really planned on getting to it.
So wait. How is it that Butterscotch and Fluttershy falling for each other is adorable but Applejack/Applejack is creepy and insectuous? ls it just how it's written?
Except that that wasn't a spell designed for general use. It was the front of one spell stapled onto the back of another that managed to work anyway. It seems to me that Twilight was lucky that her horn didn't turn into a cauliflower.
That said, you make some very good points. You may have even helped me realize where I contracted my case of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, though I like to think I've recovered from it for the most part. I'm definitely going to need to think about some of this, given how much parallel timelines feature in some of my work. Thank you for that.
Oh wow. I never thought about just how mean it is that the fandom keeps joking about Pinkie Pie getting out of control. I may never be able to enjoy the "xk-class end of the world scenario" tag again.
Has anyone else ever called out a character for treating Pinkie Pie with fear because of her propensity for hijinks? I'll take either a reader's reaction or something inside a story itself.
I remember reading this a long time ago and not taking as much issue with it as you did. There were times when I groaned or cringed (especially the last-minute love between Dash and Blitz), but I forgot the quality of the prose pretty soon after. There was a sequel to this, but it stopped updating and I stopped caring soon after I moved to this site.
2406540
I've trained myself to use a character's name or a pronoun by default by now. Of course it gets tricky using pronouns when I'm describing scene between multiple people of the same sex, but I'm working on it.
Too bad there's no Rule 63 Corollary about the existence of good genderswapped material.
I think the title refers to the cross and arrow on the Venus/female and Mars/male symbols? In any case, yeah, intriguing title, interesting story concept, actual story meh. Oh well.
Sex and gender are synonyms; one of the definitions of gender is biological sex, and it is very frequently used in this manner.
You will find some SJW types get upset about this because they are crazy and don't understand the English language.
It's not gay if you're attracted to the R63 version of your waifu or husbando, really!
This is probably because Applejack is used as a male nickname in real life.
This, incidentally, is my favorite gender-swapped name for that very reason.
Incidentally, while I share your complaints about many of them, I actually like the name Elusive for a pony, though it doesn't really fit Rarity at all, seeing as Rarity is very much the opposite.
TBH I think Rainbow Dash would be a perfectly fine name for a R63ed Rainbow Dash.
I find Dusk to be a reasonable enough pony name, and it does sound more manly than Twilight, but unfortunately Dusk Shine sounds incredibly stupid. Of course, I suspect that Twilight Sparkle also sounds incredibly stupid but we're all just used to it.
2406521
Because the fact that they're related is brought up right off the bat, whereas Butterscotch x Fluttershy, Butterscotch has no idea and neither of them are really thinking about each other as relatives.
Though honestly I think the weirder thing is the incredible degree of narcissism, seeing as they only fall for themselves and not the altered versions of their friends. TBH it would have been a lot funnier if Rarity x Elusive was the ONLY pair who was like this, and everyone else made fun of Rarity for being such a narcissist.
Rarity x Mirror OTP.
If it takes you so long to find them, the victory tends to be sweeter. Least for me. (I kind of like the name Elusive.)
It stood for Jacqueline Jonagold.
All that and not a single plug of Unfinished? I am disappoint, Present. :(
2406521
Butterscotch isn't referring to Fluttershy as his cousin while they fall in adorable puppy love, that's how. :B
2406595
Oooh, that could be. :O
2406621
Well, when the fandom does it, it's one thing. When the characters do it... it's fandom memes leaking into fanfic, now that I think of it. :O And that's terrible.
2406653
The one art example I linked keeps Rainbow Dash's name intact. I like your Rarity/Elusive idea.
2406679
I swear that name sounded longer in the reading. :O
2406728
what is that
that is not a thing I know
Actually, I think Butterscotch is the worst of the R63 names, because it says absolutely nothing about the character and has no connection to the original name. I like Dusk and Blitz the most.
After seeing that many "the ______ one" names in a row, I started hearing them in Jack Sparrow's voice, and now I want to see a crossover that does that.
2406653
This is the best idea.
Actually, the whole thing should be an overly-complex romance chain.
Twilight has her eyes on Blitz, but Blitz is after Fluttershy, who's trying to work up the nerves to approach Dusk, who's interested in Pinkie... And then Rarity and Elusive are doing their nercissist thing, while both Applejacks are gay for their respective Rainbows.
2407009
It's only the story I'm most proud of!
Also features R63 and all those names that you hate, but I tried to put a new spin on things. I doubt anyone did a reading of it though.
I too support this non-opinion fact.
There was this other R63 story about Celestia creating R63 clones for herself, Luna, and the Mane 6 becayse of some crap about all element bearers being unable to find love outside their own kind, and since the first 2 are sisters and none of them are gay in this universe they get clones or nothing. Anyway, I like it more because the character interactions are really fun.
I can never remember what it is called tho. It's on EqD.
2407087
Is it finished? :O I don't blame anyone for using the names, much as I hate them. I'm even doing it.
2407179
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
2407287
What the absolute hell.
Did you mean Applebuck or Applejack? I've never read it, so I don't know their names, but you list both during the description of their run-in.
2407390
They're both named Applejack. Applebuck is Apple Bloom's double.
2407396 Ah. Thanks. Didn't notice that.
Dang you trashed that. I remember reading it a while back because I needed to suck it up and accept that Cross and Arrow would always be the more popular fic and nothing I would do would change that, especially avoiding it because I was jealous and petty.
I didn't think it was too awful, but it's been a while.
2407288
It's literally the only long fic I ever finished so far, which is partly why I'm so proud of it. Also I got to tout that I finished a fic called Unfinished.
2407754
Eventually... :B
2407287
2407288
Because I have nothing better to do at work, I found that story. Giving Love a Helping Hoof.
Equestria Daily Link
Fimfiction Link
2409160
And unlikely to be finished, I'd wager. :B Thank you for your effort!
2409160
2409189
Yeah it's probably abandoned. But the entire value of the fic is in the initial meetup.
What should have been an interesting look into cultural gender differences turned bullshit, especially with his obsession with people falling in love with their other selves.
2410026
Yeah, I completely forgot to mention the wasted potential along those lines. :(
2412009 It's grating until something goes boom and it's all over.
I disagree with you about the names. Aside from Butterscotch some of the problems you have with those names are problems I once had with the female names, but then I got used to 'em. Besides, if the all shared the same alternate naming convention (Keep one part of the name and change the other), That'd be dull. I like the variety.
As for the story itself, I pretty much agree on all points, and I like that un-contrivinciing thing you came up with. Still I did greatly enjoy reading this story as it came out. Despite the technical issues, there's something about the way Connor Cogwork wrote it, that's just... endearing, I suppose. But hey, even then I recognized that this story has its fair share of issues.
Sometime afterward, I saw some people praising The 63rd Rune so I checked it out and I thought that story sucked. Nothing against Alexstraza personally.
So are you going to start reviewing stories now? Is this some kind of new blog series called, "Present Perfect vs. X?"
2414793
Start?
Start?
Sir, I can tell you have not looked at my journals.
2415027
Err... I see, I guess. I just never have looked over your blogs and I've never seen you reviewing stories. Well, thanks for mentioning your, um, journals?
2415031
I do this every now and then. :) You can see the full list of stuff I've reviewed here.
2415268
Holy crap, that's a lot. And here I thought you were just starting.
2415274
Nope! :)
First, one really good reason for the names in story being at least partially different is so you can use them. Which is ironic in this story since now that I think of it you're totally right. This is why the male AJ should have a differnt name, becasue it's confusing otherwise. I went with Apple Whiskey. Sometimes you don't need to make things complicated. I too hate butterscotch and came up with Timid Cloud, like Fluttershy's name it describes his personality. It also let me do a fun little joke with Cloud Kicker. Pinkie is the entirely different Bubblegum, his real name being some pink stone to match up with marble and limestone, but I haven't actually done the research to pick something yet. I liked Blitz since I usually use just Dash for normal girl version. Elusive used to seem fairly clever, but after reading your blog I'm having second thoughts.
By the way you left out the name that drives me up the wall, though I'm not entirely sure it's in this fic, but I sure think it is. Namely Prince Artemis. It's a good thought in a way but it's also completely backwards. I use Prince Orion even though the name is only connected through Artemis, it at least doesn't scream the wrong gender to me. Then we get to Twilight and why Dusk Shine is now a fairly brilliant name that can be made more so. First off, Sunset is a name now, Dusk isn't any worse than that and even works as a synonym for Twilight. It's a little girly, but it's fine. The reason it's good is because Shining Armor is Twi's brother, we have a nice hint of certain words they like. Now the common name for R63 shining is Gleaming Shield, but Sparkling Shield makes a second connection and as I hinted earlier, makes Dusk Shine a more brilliant name.
2407030 I am literally writing that overly complex love chain fic. At the rate I'm going I'll never finish it, but I am writing it. I even have the Rarity and Elusive vanity thing, though they get over pretty quickly when they realize the obvious of how creepy the whole thing is, then focus on the rest of the alternate sex like they should have in the beginning. To really make it insane the mess starts when Twi (and Dusk) cast a love spell they got from Cadence that would find their one perfect love since they're really tired of insincere ponies trying to date them. It takes alicorn level power to cast, but gets mangled by either both of them casting it at once, or all five of their respective friends bothering them while they were casting. The result as Cadence confirms is there is some combination of perfect love among the twelve of them, but the red string of fate spell (Somebody just groaned, I know it) has become a tangled mess, and she can't tell anything more than that right now. The only way to figure it out is to date which should make the connections more clear. Oh and obviously this includes any viable same sex paring too since love does not discriminate.
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You know, I hadn't even thought about the incongruity of using Artemis as a name. Wow.
"Elusive" is an adjective, and suggests movement
Derpy is an adjective
Ditzy is an adjective
Shining is an adjective.
There are plenty of names containing adjectives, in some cases people even prefer to use the adjective instead of the whole name to address the characters.
Ditzy or Derpy is used generally without the Doo in many fics and situations.
I suppose Elusive is to address how unfathomable or astounding an item is, in a sense? If you argue on the 'motion' part, Shining Armor is his name and people generally call him by his pet name Shiny, which is a compromise but still an actual adjective, and if not they call him just Shining at times, because it's shorter and more casual speech, but unfortunately it's still just the verb then. Shining not only suggests motion, but outright displays it, by referring to a shine, the reflection of light on an object for example.
Despite Armor being a noun, it's his second name part, and sounds just plain dull if you use it alone.
"Hey Armor! Nice weather huh?"
Concluding here, everyone would have to think of Shining Armor being a bad name.
Elusive, while being a standalone adjective, still does have a ring of a noun to it, plus it doesn't even sound half as bad as Shining.
I don't know in case of native English speakers, but mine is German instead of English, therefore the sound of it just doesn't appear as appealing to me, not to mention that I don't even care if the word is an adjective or a noun, though as we can see in 'Shining's' example, the majority of people doesn't either.
Blame hasbro for his name, or not.
Besides, using this specific word has it's own charms.
While Rarity can only say:
"I am Rarity", where you'd miss a 'the' or 'a' in between, her male counterpart can actually exclaim: "I am Elusive", which is actually grammatically correct, aside from to uppercase E when written instead of spoken, in it's structure, expressing not only correctly his name, but also what he is or appears to be.
In addition it's just as short of a name.
Which would bring us to Dusk Shine.
I'm terribly sorry, but 'Twilight Shine' sounds to me, as a none native English speaker no less, even worse.
I suppose the point in Dusk Shine is that the name is shorter than Twilight, just like the character's hair is portrait shorter than Twilight's for example, you know boy and all. Dusk, with a sharp D, has something pointy to it, which makes it sound believably male.
Not to mention, had they named him also Twilight, you'd have to avoid using Twilight to refer to them, if both are topic of the discussion, which leads to using Sparkle and Shine instead...
Now who sounds more female Sparkle or Shine?
I can't tell, honestly.
If you wan't to give them pet names, Shiny is an obvious choice here, but that would conflict with yet HER real brother as it turns out some time later, so what do you use for Sparkle? Uh, Sparky? Sounds like my dogs name, and it doesn't have a 'female' ring to it either.
Additionally it's a matter of getting used to a name, as already mentioned by others, we are used to the name of a certain purple unicorn/alicorn being called Twilight Sparkle.
To outsiders, that name sounds as much as ridiculous, still it has a female ring to it being so elegantly drawn out.
The opposite is the case for Dusk Shine, being so short and quickly spoken.
In hindsight, it's also quite funny with him being called Shine, because he also trades a part name swap with Shining Armor now.
Rainbow's name couldn't have been made shorter because of his/her trademark, the rainbow, which is even engraved in his/her hair.
And 'Dash' is a word made of 4 letters.
Twilight and Dusk both describe the bridge between day and night, there is no such an accurate synonym for Rainbow though, that also sounds good.
Chromatic Blitz for example... plain weird, right?
Blitz is also easy to pick up on, because it's German for lightning, something that's on his mark and of course is associated with 'speed of light'.
("Blitzkrieg" is actually nothing else but "Fast War" in it's sense).
I do agree on the aspect that they could have let Rainbow Dash standing as it is, since it sounds pretty non gender specific.
But I suppose then Applejack sharing her name with the male mirror part, wouldn't have been a novelty and funny exception.
Apple Whiskey would just be a plain as possible pun now, with being an apple average (google 'Applejack Drink' as a reference). But would you really openly trade Applejack for a name that promotes a hard liquor obviously? A main cast member? Sorry that feels wrong on many levels.
Besides, what has whiskey to do with her talent? It's just too far off.
Applejack, while maybe not intentionally, also holds a distinct relation to Lumberjack.
You know, I'm partially glad that my native tongue isn't English, because that way many of those names in general sound less ridiculous to me, acoustically. They aren't much different for me than Superhero names for example.
(Green Lantern, Star Fire, Beast Boy, Green Arrow, Night Hawk, Venom). In trade for that of course I understand less, especially if someone speaks with accent.
So yeah I can't hop on the ridicule, or distaste the name's bus. Elusive and Dusk Shine both make sense to me.
As to everything else, I like the story because of it's simplicity, diving in to deep between the possibilities of differences in their society and behavior, since they are all male there, may have created a stereotyp-ish picture of their world and it's inhabitants.
"Boy's are more prone to war than girls", never mind it's face-palm potential, that may have offended some people *insert 'Sweetie shrug' here*.
The focus of the story simply lies solely on their meetings, the author tried to keep variety in their executions. He picked several character traits and edges so he can work with them, Rarity's behavior plus Twilight's bossiness etc.
And while slip ups like "I think I love you" made by Rainbow Dash feel like a little needle prick, it's nothing to fuss about and jump straight up to hit the doctor treating you in the face, to make his work look bad.
I still find the way this fic stands, it could have served as an episode/home video movie.
Good day ya'll.