Bradel Writes Reviews #2 · 7:43pm Nov 15th, 2014
This week:
"Maidens Day" by Bookplayer
"Sugar, Cubed" by BlazzingInferno
"Forever Young" by Hyperexponential
"Moments" by Bad Horse
"The Birds and the Bees" by theworstwriter
NB: "Maidens Day" is a |Mature| story, and as such I'm not allowed to link to it directly. The following links will go to a click-through page that should allow you to see the story if and only if you have Fimfiction set to display mature stories. In the future, this will be my solution for linking to all |Mature| stories.
"Maidens Day" by Bookplayer
[Romance] [Slice of Life] <Sex> |Mature|
What happens on Maidens Day is a closely guarded secret among pegasi and earth ponies. A celebration of culture, magic, and their parts in the natural order of Equestria. Unicorns haven't taken part for more than a thousand years, but now that Twilight is an alicorn, she's finally allowed to see what happens there. And when two of her friends are chosen to take part in the ritual at the center of the festival, there will be more than one lesson about the magic of Maidens Day.
Technical
In terms of writing, this story's a bit of a mixed bag. On the positive side, I think bookplayer does an excellent job with characterization and dialogue, which tend to be her biggest strengths. The prose is fairly transparent overall, though it could be improved in places. Bookplayer keeps the story focused, and every scene either builds character, establishes setting, or moves the plot forward (usually all three). This sort of multitasking is something I've talked about in my writing advice blogs, and it's worth paying attention to how she pulls it off.
On the negative side, she has a tendency to use emotionally loaded prose—for example, by explicitly stating character motivations alongside their actions. This can work well, if the writer stays very focused inside the perspective of a single character, but bookplayer is a bit too loose with the technique and it ends up costing the narrative some of its focus. There are also spots where the story gets a bit exposition-heavy, which can weigh down the story. Thankfully, the overall transparency helps to counteract that, and the story never buckles under the weight of the words. Bookplayer knows her strengths as a writer, and she does a good job taking advantage of them. In the end, good execution on the high-level stuff mostly makes up for the mid-level issues.
3.5/5
Creative
This is where "Maidens Day" really shines. Bookplayer has reconceptualized earth pony and pegasus magic, and created an entire festival to celebrate them and explore what magic means to both pony tribes. 27,000 words might seem like a lot, but it's frankly impressive how much worldbuilding she can manage to cram into this story—especially given that it's competing for space with a substantial plot and some good character work on five of the Mane Six. Bookplayer is also digging into the history between the three pony tribes and some of the present-day fallout from that history, which I really enjoy.
What she's doing with the characters shouldn't be overlooked, either. While this is unabashedly an AppleDash story by the end, Applejack and Rainbow Dash only share screen time in two of the story's six chapters. The majority of their time is given over to character exploration, and bookplayer does a very good job paying it off in the climax. This is the sort of across-the-board creativity I love to see in stories.
5/5
Satisfaction
Now, this one's a bit hard for me to evaluate. My own personal satisfaction with this story is tremendous, probably on the order of a 4.5 or 5 out of 5. In my opinion, this story does just about everything right, but I also know there are a lot of readers who will have more mixed feelings about "Maidens Day." Bookplayer makes a couple controversial decisions here, and while I agree with those decisions, they bear mentioning.
The first and most obvious point that will divide readers is the unabashedly mature nature of this story, which involves a very explicit sex scene toward the end. Readers who aren't comfortable with that would have a hard time with "Maidens Day"—and they'd have a hard time skipping past the scene in question, too, since it's the crux of the whole story. If you skip that scene, you're skipping the climax—and if I could say that better while avoiding the obvious double-entendre, I would, because this is a very serious point. There are few stories on this site, if any, that earn their right to an explicit sex scene more than "Maidens Day", but if you can't bring yourself to read that sort of thing, this is not your story.
The second point is the aforementioned tribal politics angle. A number of readers have been unhappy with how bookplayer deals with (or rather doesn't deal with) unicorns in this story. Personally, I think bookplayer does a very good job with the tribal issues here. She presents what I feel is an entirely believable scenario, and this is one of those areas I think pony fiction doesn't explore nearly enough. This story is by no means an Aesop, but there are some readers who may still be uncomfortable with the tribal divisions on display here.
3/5 (4.5/5)
Overall
Although the prose could use a bit of work in places, this is a dense, well-crafted, and deeply enjoyable story. But reading it might make you a little uncomfortable.
Recommended for: anyone willing to read stories with the |Mature| tag.
"Sugar, Cubed" by BlazzingInferno
[Sad] [Slice of Life]
Applejack’s talents extend far beyond her family’s namesake crop, and until now she’s been content to keep that a secret. Whoever heard of a farmer that used advanced math, anyway? Today that’s going to change. Today she’s showing the world the other fruit of her labors, no matter how much it hurts to remember planting the seeds.
Technical
Again, this one's a bit of a mixed bag on the technical side, but in a very different way. The prose here is tight, light and easy to read. It's also very active. BlazzingInferno does something I used to do a lot until I got more comfortable writing 'said': he uses action tags for almost all of his dialogue. This keeps the story moving well, and at 5000 words, this is a very quick read.
On the downside, the character voices are occasionally weak. There's a scene involving Applejack, Luna, and Maud Pie, three characters with extremely different voices, and those differences don't come through as much as they should. Filly Applejack in the first chapter is also a bit obtuse, leading to some belaboring of the narrative. And the overall story here is pretty weak. Not bad, mind—but "Sugar, Cubed" never quite decides whether it's an event story or a character story. More than that, Applejack doesn't actually do a lot in this story. She hangs out, gets characterized, and wears some active prose—and it's clear from the events presented in the story that she's done a lot behind the scenes—but she's not very active within the story itself.
I gave "Maidens Day" a solid score for good higher-level writing skills, even though the prose could have been better. Here, easy prose is the biggest strength, but the higher-level stuff needs some work.
2/5
Creative
Being only five thousand words, "Sugar, Cubed" runs into the scope problem. There's just not a whole lot of room to be creative or look at new ideas here. That said, the story offers a nice new spin on Applejack's character and puts a passel of ponies in a situation that the show would never dream of chronicling. It provides a bit of fun character building for Luna and Maud, deals with Applejack's father a bit, and brings some science into Equestria. All in all, the creativity here is pretty middle-of-the-road.
3/5
Satisfaction
Again, I'm going to be a bit biased with this one. I'm a statistician and an academic by training, so without question, this is my jam. BlazzingInferno also delivers a nice ending here, one that avoids the obvious choices in favor of a more honest resolution. That decision gives Applejack more opportunity to shine, and there's bittersweet flavor here that I'm fond of. Unfortunately, the ending is weakened by the story's indecision about whether to focus on characters or events, as well as Applejack's lack of activity within the narrative. The payoff feels like it hasn't really been earned. Between that and some weak focus in the flashback scenes, the story winds up feeling less satisfying than I'd like—even though I did quite enjoy it, myself.
2.5/5 (3.5/5)
Overall
This is a really likeable story with good prose and some fun ideas. In my (limited) experience, its weaknesses are very standard weaknesses for fanfiction, so this will probably play well for most readers.
Recommended for: fans of Applejack and fanfiction.
"Forever Young" by Hyperexponential
[Sad] [Slice of Life]
Nopony ever said the friendship between Fluttershy and Discord would be an easy one. The difference in their life expectancies doesn’t help, but that’s a problem Discord can fix with a snap of the talons—that is, until Fluttershy finds out. Discord isn’t one to give up easily, though. He’ll do anything to keep his one and only friend. Anything.
Technical
This is another story with some nice prose, at least in terms of transparency. More than that, "Forever Young" has one of the most classic depictions of Discord I've seen in pony fanfiction. Any time he's on screen, something odd is happening. It's a trick Hyperexponential executes very well. Characterization and voicing on Discord, Fluttershy, and Rarity is pretty good, up to a point I'll mention later.
Unfortunately, there are a couple technical areas where this story really falls down. One of those is intrusive narration. There are spots of very blatant exposition, and exposition that doesn't even matter to the plot. For example:
“Any other stunning revelations from your little get-together?” Discord said, referring to a meeting days before between Princess Celestia and the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.
In fact, as loath as I usually am to talk about showing versus telling, this story is a textbook case for what people mean when they talk about the problem, at least in terms of narrative structure. Descriptions here are generally good, but even excepting the exposition issue, we've got problems. Dialogue carries little emotional weight, instead laying out cold particulars (albeit with decent voicing). Characters' feelings are stated directly rather than portrayed through their actions. Overall, the combination of good writing and weak storytelling make "Forever Young" feel both pretty and dead.
2/5
Creative
Mortality stories are an overplayed fandom trope, and creatively there's nothing to set "Forever Young" apart from any of the other stories in that vein. It presents general arguments for and against immortality, without really exploring any of them. Fluttershy is the audience stand-in for this process, and she's deeply uncritical about these arguments—and the characters making the arguments never seem attached to them beyond passing intellectual curiosity. Some of this is due to the structure in which the question is posed to Rarity, but the fact that the author intentionally lowered the stakes is not a point in this story's favor.
I suppose one could argue that Discord comes up with an unusual solution here, but it's not a solution that feels in keeping with canon, and he's given no development in the story to explain his actions. Again, poor writing can hardly serve as a mark of creativity.
At some level, cliche or no, mortality is an interesting question that lies beyond the bounds of canon. Unfortunately, acknowledging the question is where the originality begins and ends in this story.
1/5
Satisfaction
This story hasn't aged particularly well in the wake of "Twilight's Kingdom", but I really don't think that should be held against it. For the time when it was written (During the Season 3 to Season 4 break), it's canon sensible. That said, I don't feel like this story earns any part of its ending. It's fairly well written, and it has an identifiable plot arc, but it feels dry and dusty in execution. "Forever Young" is tagged [Sad], but at no point in its 4000 words am I actually made to feel sad by what's happening—nor, really, to care in any way. I don't like to be this damning, but I can't find much to be satisfied about with this story. It didn't egregiously violate the promises it made, but it only paid them off in the loosest sense possible.
1/5
Overall
Far from the worst story on Fimfiction, which probably says something about my ratings scales. It's very readable, but it lacks creativity and heart.
Recommended for: prose nazis, people who really dig mortality stories.
"Moments" by Bad Horse
[Dark] [Adventure]
Practice makes perfect. And Princess Twilight wants everything to be perfect. Especially the end of the world.
Technical
Bad Horse knows how to write, or at least how to get out of the reader's way. Even on my second reading, looking for technical issues, the story still towed me under. And that's exactly how I think it should be—unless you're capable of writing prose so sparkling that it's a real joy to read, and I don't think I've seen that yet in pony fiction.
There's not a whole lot for me to say on the technical side. Bad Horse is one of pony fiction's legitimate professionals, and he can see the weaknesses in this story better than I can. 8000 words isn't all that long, but he's still complained about pacing issues on this story (as recently as yesterday). Even so, my fascination with the academic and philosophical sides of the story keep me hooked all the way through. I'm sure he'll be disappointed if I don't find something to complain about, though, and I do have to admit that Twilight's characterization feels a bit too academic to me (yes, to me). While canon Twilight is both brilliant and studious, she's always fairly grounded. Although she's under extreme and continuous pressure here, she just seems a little too detatched.
4.5/5
Creative
How do you talk about creativity on a story like this? The premise—a meteor destroys Equestria and life on the planet—is so far outside the show's comfort zone that it's hard to even think of them together. But what I really love here isn't the premise, it's the level of Show Your Work that Bad Horse delves into. This isn't Neal Stephenson, but it's a lot deeper than I expect to find anywhere else in pony fiction.
Unfortunately, "Moments" is a bit of a one-trick pony in this respect. It doesn't have much opportunity to develop characters other than Twilight, and it's so event-based that it can't even do much work with her. The conceit here is fantastic, but there's not a whole lot happening beyond it.
3.5/5
Satisfaction
This one's tough, too. I re-read this story last night for the review blog, and while I enjoyed it, the effect was much less pronounced than on my first reading. Originally, the novelty of seeing someone use von Neumann & Morgenstern, along with discussions of free will, was enough to provoke fits of intellectual ecstacy. Without that level of beatific surprise, though, the story isn't as powerful as I remember. It's still good, mind, but not brain-meltingly good. The first chapter makes a lot of promises, but only pays off a couple, and ends in a very dark place. If memory serves, that's how the story originally ended. The later, additional chapters build on the initial framework and create a solveable problem for Twilight, as well as a way for her and her friends to be heroic, even in the face of an impossible situation. This is some classic Bleak Horse in that respect, and when I get to the end, I feel a powerful sense of victory and an affirmation of life and nature in a way few other stories manage for me. That remains true on the second reading, though as I said, I find the effect notably diminished when I'm not caught up in the brain-twiddling bits.
4/5
Overall
Excellent craftsmanship and a novel premise, handled with honesty. It manages to be both terrible and uplifting at the same time, which is quite a feat.
Recommended for: bleak-tolerant readers and anyone that knows who von Neumann is.
"The Birds and the Bees" by theworstwriter
[Comedy]
Where DO foals come from? The Cutie Mark Crusaders don't know, but they intend to find out!
Technical
I'd never read this one before today, and had no idea what to expect going in. What struck me first were the weak hook and lack of character perspective. Beyond that point, the prose is serviceable and the character voices are intermittently good, though Apple Bloom can't quite settle on whether she's from Deadwood or The Sopranos. There's also some egregious repetition that should have been caught and dealt with in an early edit, like one stretch of dialgoue where four of five consecutive lines begin with "Oh," as well as a secondary sentence within one of those lines. There's also a decent chunk of characterization-by-cliche here. In some places, this helps with character voicing; in others, it makes the characters feel flat.
Pinkie is the lone stand-out here. She doesn't get a lot of screen time, but theworstwriter's focus on voice and cliche over character introspection makes her read very much like show-canon Pinkie. That, at least, is fun to read.
1/5
Creative
I'm tempted to call this stoy cliched, but is it? "The Birds and the Bees" was the 1983rd story created on Fimfiction (so probably about the 1000th one actually published). Today, we're at about 90,000 stories approved (and well over 200,000 created). In that case, it seems appropriate to ignore how the fandom has developed over the last three years in assessing the creativity here. Today, a zany antics CMC story about sexual misinformation would seem pretty overplayed. What about in October of 2011?
Well, my own experience with writing for other fandoms suggests that zany antics and sexual confusion are some pretty standard fanfiction tropes, regardless of your community. The particular application of those tropes with this setting and character collection doesn't show a whole lot of originality. And absent the central ideas, there's not much room for creativity here. In a sense, this plays like a show episode—but that's less a matter of the scenario and more about how much the author recycles directly from canon.
0/5
Satisfaction
Unfortunately, the humor in this story falls flat for me. I've never been a big antics fan. They can be done well—and I've even tried on occasion, myself—but zany antics run the risk of replacing actual character work, and that's what's happening here. I rarely feel attached to any of these characters or what they're doing. The exception is with Rainbow Dash, whose ignorance is both sweet and amusing, and theworstwriter does well to recognize this and use Rainbow as a focus of the story's climax. The one genuinely amusing bit in all this, for me, was when Applejack warned Rainbow against hurting her brother. It's a good use of character, and it's humor driven by mutual misunderstanding rather than antics. All in all, though, I don't feel like this story really holds up as a comedy. The bits with Rainbow Dash are the only bits that give me any sense of enjoyment.
1/5
Overall
This is probably more interesting as a "how far we've come" piece than as anything else. "The Birds and the Bees" enjoyed some pretty serious popularity in its day, and got very positive comments from a few folks you might recognize. I don't think it's very good by current pony fiction standards, but this is the sort of story I've seen often in other fandoms.
Recommended for: zany antics fans, readers interested in the history of pony fiction.
Bleh. I still haven't made any progress in writing the idea I had about a follow-up to Maidens Day (Twilight lets slip the secret of the day and decides to lobby for unicorn inclusion, stepping into a political hornet's nest, while Rarity toys with the idea of becoming the first Sun Maiden in centuries). I managed to hash it out with the author and Present Perfect a bit in the comments here: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/293398/fic-recs-march-2nd#comment/1890275
Wait, you already commented in that thread. Dunno if you read all of our ramblings, but I basically shelved the project since then because there were so many others I wanted to work on first.
Very nice. I really liked 'Moments' in a way that I could never put into words, and you did it.
Moments was great as a one-shot but it lost me in the rewrite. The "afterword" chapter was too gimmicky, and even though he later reversed it, Horse's briefly-posted Mature version was unnecessary. BH has blogged before that there is no such thing as "gratuitous clop" but this may have been the best example of it. He reverted it soon after, if I recall.
2597349
I suspect I never saw that version. I was late getting to the "Moments" party (even though he asked me to pre-read; I suck), and so I think I only ever read it in basically the form it has today.
2597356
Still a fine one-shot and a good premise.
Thanks for taking the time to review my story
2597466
Thanks for writing it! I really enjoyed it.
Interesting. I recognized Maiden's Day and Moments as already being on my to-read list due to either being by Bad Horse, or having received several similar recommendations. I'd read Forever Young, and unfortunately, seem to have neglected to comment upon it. (Which seems odd, as I'm sure I recall writing something about the overuse of extreme negative reactions to immortality. Then again, that probably just speaks to the prevalence of this theme as a trope in pony fiction.) I do, however, vaguely recall not being extremely impressed. I'm not sure whether I was as disappointed as you, but it certainly did seem a bit overdone and Discord's resolution seemed a bit extreme.
I'm actually sort of interested in just how common mortality explorations are in Ponyfic. It's interesting that such a lighthearted show would spawn so much of this sort of thing, though I suppose it's not really all that surprising, given the amount of characters implied to be either immortal or absurdly long-lived.
I also was going to mention that I've heard many recommendations regarding Maiden's Day, and it's always kind of put me off. I don't have anything against sex in ponyfic in principle, (indeed, the first thing I read of yours was borderline) and there's an almost surprising (but not really, on closer inspection, and given the show's theme) amount of what I'd describe as "emotion-porn" in circulation, which is something that I find vastly more satisfying than the regular kind, (and doesn't even have to involve actual sex) but when it comes to the synopsis of this particular fic, I always keep seeing the vague outline of sex as a cult ritual in the distance, and it sets off my NOPE alarms.
2600072
There are definitely people it's not for. I tried it out with the RCL crowd, which is maybe something I shouldn't say, but the reception was basically "I'm really annoyed that this story is explicit, because I really liked it, but I just can't get behind it because porn." I think my recommendation on that one is very legitimate. If you're not comfortable with mature fics, you're probably going to get turned off a lot by the end. But at the same time, I think it's a really great story and definitely deserves to be read by anyone who feels up for it.
In completely different news—and no, not the old Luna + CMC project we talked about; not quite yet—if you're looking for good things to read, I read something today that just blew me away. Don't know if I'll review it next week or not, because it's another DuncanR story and I just did one of his last week. This one, though, got me to follow him. I don't know how close your tastes run to mine, but "Appletheosis" is exactly the sort of thing I wish would happen more often in fanfiction. It's basically a crossover story, except that the crossover is Core Human Mythology.
Also, I'm hatching a plan to write you a Lyra story for your birthday next year, after the awesome avatar you got me. I have, like, no idea what I'll do with it. But I've got a little while to figure that out.
2600221 When you mentioned "Appletheosis" I initially hoped you meant this fic, which I enjoyed. I'll have to take a look at the other one too, I suppose.
2607773
There has been much confusion over this lately, and you're not alone!
It's not too surprising. It's a wonderful title. I immediately thought of the story you mentioned when I first heard about it, too. I haven't read that one yet, but I've been interested for a while. It's nice to have some good word of mouth to go along with it too.
2600221 So, I did actually read Maiden's Day, and as expected, I wasn't really bothered by the sex, but I was bothered by some other things, and while I found the story competent, I was not as super impressed with it as you were. Ah well.
I still need to catch up on reading your reviews, but chances are you'll convince me to read Appletheosis when I do.
Finally, I'm kind of excited now. Are you sure you should mention that this far in advance?
2653600
Probably not, but oh well!
Now I just need to remember that I had this idea for another half a year...