Bradel Writes Reviews #4 · 12:13am Nov 30th, 2014
So I saw a lot of good authors hitting the feature box this week, and I thought to myself: "Bradel, Old Bean, you ought to spend a week reviewing Feature Box stories!" Then I realized two of the stories I wanted to review were incomplete, and while I won't put a blanket ban on reviewing incomplete stories, I don't feel like this situation really calls for it. One earlier feature box story got dropped as a result, one subbed, and a late challenger added. So here you go: have four of this week's feature box stories, and one prequel to a feature box story.
This week:
"Collaborators" by AugieDog (writing as Baal Bunny)
"Toot Your Own Horn" by Hoopy McGee
"A War of Words – The Opening of the Guard" by Georg
"Friendly Correspondence" by Pascoite
"Going Anywhere" by Eakin
"Collaborators" by Baal Bunny (aka AugieDog)
[Slice of Life]
Ahuizotl threatens to sue A. K. Yearling for libel unless she stops writing the Daring Do books. She makes him a counter-offer.
Technical
"Collaborators" is a fantastic example of how to write a story. It's got a strong opening hook, very solid character voices and perspective, well organized narrative threads throughout the piece, a wealth of interesting situations the characters are thrown into, a few excellent spots of description through metaphor and multisensory imagery, and it's extremely readable.
My only criticism here is that some of the chapter breaks feel very abrupt, almost like AugieDog is trying to re-hook the story at the start of each chapter. My dislike of this technique may be fairly subjective, but I just feel like this doesn't flow well. It breaks me out of the story by making me re-establish my link to material I'm already engaged with. The end of Chapter 1 and the start of Chapter 3, in particular, feel overly abrupt. Other than that nit-pick, "Collaborators" shows excellent technique throughout.
5/5
Creative
At less than 10,000 words, "Collaborators" packs in more than most pony stories twice its length. The situation is novel, and AugieDog does some impressive character work on two minor series characters, to the point where they're both not just richer at the end, they're richer than they'd likely become if they had a full episode of the show dedicated to them. Ahuizotl's character voice, in particular, is stellar. It's an easier voice, like Princess Luna, but AugieDog loads it up with cultural background and personality.
The third chapter here is also a stand-out piece of meta-fiction—not for the fandom, but within the context of the story itself. The narrative in that chapter happens on two different levels, and watching the parallels unfold is very engaging.
I tend to be a little more hard-nosed on scoring for creativity, to give room at the top for stories which really dig into world-building and character development—and I would have to say I don't find the work here quite as creative as what bookplayer presents in "Maiden's Day"—but on this point I think AugieDog is doing everything that can reasonably be done in a story this short.
4.5/5
Satisfaction
Not only does "Collaborators" sell itself with a fun premise that's well-executed, by the end it's turned into a decent short-form character exploration and yet another argument for the magic of friendship. This is everything I want to see in a story, and I don't know what else to say about it—except that this one is going in a featured stories box on my user page.
5/5
Overall
This is the best piece of pony fiction I can remember reading in a long time.
Recommended for: just go read it, already.
"Toot Your Own Horn" by Hoopy McGee
[Comedy] [Random]
Twilight's got a pretty good life going in Ponyville. Her days are full of friendship, studying, and the studying of friendship. On top of that, she's a princess in a fancy crystal castle in Ponyville. Her life is as close to perfect as she can imagine it... Except for that weird noise that has suddenly started keeping her up at night.
Technical
Reading this was my first exposure to Hoopy McGee, and his writing reminds me a lot of Short Skirts & Explosions—generally serviceable, occasionally clunky, and with a lack of narrative focus in places. That latter bit makes for some nice scene-setting, but just as often it leaves me wondering why I'm being asked to read a particular passage.
Despite the weak hook, though, this is a solid story. Pretty standard characterization on the four princesses, but they all have distinct voices. And structurally, I found that this story seemed to improve as it went along—either from the writing getting better or Hoopy McGee managing to suck me into the narrative in spite of the (mild) weaknesses here. I wouldn't put this up as a goal to strive for technique-wise, but in the end it does everything it should.
3/5
Creative
"Toot Your Own Horn" is yet another single-concept story, though it's a fairly original concept / canon elaboration, and Hoopy McGee does a good job running through the implications of the concept. There's also some nice character work here—particularly with Luna, whose section of the story wound up being the real highlight for me and the place where the story's humor worked best. There isn't a whole lot of development on offer for characters or setting here, though, and the scene selection is about what you'd expect. The story doesn't offer a lot of surprises, but it delivers where it needs to.
3/5
Satisfaction
About 500 words into this 6200-word story, I was pretty much ready to write it off as another SS&E-type story, which tends to be high-normal for fanfiction but not something that I find especially interesting. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to have "Toot Your Own Horn" pull together as well as it did. I suppose this shouldn't be too surprising—Hoopy McGee wrote one of Fimfiction's perenially top-rated stories—but there are plenty of well-loved stories in pony fiction that I don't really care for. Having enjoyed this story as much as I did, I'm a lot more likely to read "The Keepers of Discord" now.
I'm still a bit hung up on the hook and some of the narrative looseness, but after the first 1000 words or so, I found this story very satisfying.
4/5
Overall
The prose and narrative could be a little tighter, but this is a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Recommended for: general audiences.
"A War of Words – The Opening of the Guard " by Georg
(Prequel to "The Night Guard – Night Mares")
[Comedy] [Slice of Life]
The history of war may be written by the winner, but the Royal Historian is the one who provides the notes and background to the writer. The recent events that some have called ‘Mare Wars’ or ‘The Invasion of the Barracks’ are no exception. The Royal Historian has painstakingly compiled this folder of notes and background material on what should more accurately be called, ‘The Opening of the Guard.’
Technical
This is one of the more stylistic pieces I've read in pony fiction, with most of the story structured as excerpts from "historical documents"—press clippings and discarded memos that the Royal Historian fished out of waste bins around Canterlot Castle, basically. Pacing is excellent here. Each excerpt is short, up to the story's climax, and Georg pulls the reader along very smoothly. Prose is good, and varied between documents of different provenances.
The only criticisms I have relate to the use of footnotes and narrative focus. For the first, I tend to be permissive toward footnotes, but: there's a cluster of three of them at the start of the story, requiring the reader to skip all the way to the end; none of the footnotes really add much to the story or the humor; and they're never used again after the opening section. For the second, opening the Royal Guard to mares is ostensibly the point of the story, but is largely ignored in favor of more humorous bits.
Other readers have mentioned (and disliked) a style transition at the climax—while most of the story is presented as document excerpts, one section toward the end is given as standard narrative from Shining Armor's perspective. The effect of the transition is a bit jarring, but the style switch allows for smooth delivery of some of the story's best moments and I feel like it would be difficult to preserve the (excellent) comic timing through this scene without presenting it directly, so I'm okay with the bit of narrative weirdness it causes.
4/5
Creative
"A War of Words" is a classic alicorn prank war story, but done exceptionally well. Georg references a lot of fandom tropes here, but it should be pointed out that this story dates back to December 2012, before many of these tropes were quite so overused. And it's also worth noting that he's delivering them very, very well. Still, that's most of what's on offer here. Not a lot of interesting character development or unusual action.
The central motivation here, bringing mares into the Royal Guard, is something I haven't seen discussed very often (though I remember Kobalstromo putting together a story about a mare in the guard as well). But as I mentioned earlier, this side of the story is largely passed over, despite the title. (One would guess that the story's sequel, "The Night Guard – Night Mares" probably keeps a tighter focus on that issue.)
2/5
Satisfaction
At 3700 words, this is a quick and enjoyable read, and the only sour point for me at the end is the realization that "A War of Words" never quite pays off its premise—which I didn't notice until halfway into writing this review, because the whole thing is so entertaining that it's easy to overlook. If you've ever had any interest in alicorn prank war stories, you owe it to yourself to read this. I've rarely seen the trope done better, and I enjoyed reading this story as much now as I did this spring, when I first checked it out.
4.5/5
Overall
Classic fandom tropes, but done exceedingly well.
Recommended for: general audiences.
"Friendly Correspondence" by Pascoite
[Slice of Life]
Twilight Sparkle always wrote to Princess Celestia about her lessons in friendship. Sometimes, Celestia wrote back. Even if Twilight didn't know it.
Technical
This story plays a lot like Skywriter's "Martial Bliss" that I looked at a couple weeks back. Pascoite knows how to write, and even though he's only using 2600 words here, he does a good job painting the background to a scene in the show. This is a two-character piece with Celestia and Philomena, both of whom have more personality here than they often have on the show. Solid hook, solid pacing, solid prose—basically, the technical stuff you'd expect.
I do think one particular issue here deserves highlighting, though, and that's the old idea of showing versus telling. The one place where this story bogs down for me is in the letter Celestia writes to Twilight. This letter involves a lot of direct expositing of Celestia's feelings, and it's not as compelling as the rest of the writing here. I can't say to what extent this is a conscious effort on Pascoite's part, and I do feel like it detracts a bit from the story's readability. On the other hand, Pascoite is good about using physical details in the narrative instead of direct statements of character attitude, and this makes for a much cleaner and more entertaining read. I think this deserves mention because of the juxtaposition, which you don't often get to see. "Friendly Correspondence" provides an uncommonly good chance for comparing different writing techniques and seeing which works better.
4.5/5
Creative
Again, I'm going to be guided by "Martial Bliss" on this one. There's not a lot of room for creativity in 2600 words, but Pascoite does good character work and a little world-building, with some elaboration of how Spike's dragonfire mail feature ability works. The plot is tied to an episode of the show—"Ticket Master" (S1E03)—and mostly provides some standard elaboration of the Twilight and Celestia relationship, but there are a couple fun bits of originality here as well.
2/5
Satisfaction
Let's just keep it going, shall we? I didn't think this was as entertaining as "Martial Bliss". It lacked the humor and pacing, and didn't give me much sense of resolution. It did provide a nice, small arc for character development, though. And it was a very enjoyable read, not overstaying its welcome. Given that I think "Martial Bliss" is one of the best short pieces on Fimfiction, not quite living up to that standard is, honestly, pretty high praise in my book.
4/5
Overall
Tight, well constructed, and very enjoyable.
Recommended for: general audiences.
"Going Anywhere" by Eakin
[Romance] [Slice of Life]
As a general rule, leaving your future bride at the altar and abandoning your entire family to flee the city of Canterlot is a bad idea. Then again, you never know just who you'll meet on the train to your new life.
Technical
Eakin executes a decent hook in the first couple paragraphs, and the character work is solid—putting together two OCs from scratch, and giving them decent personalities. There are some spots where the voicing falls down (said personalities aren't wholly distinct from one another), but I'd have to say 'Tinker' and 'Emma' are the high point of this story. Prose is serviceable, though it occasionally strays into some clunky constructions. Generally, though, this reads like work written by someone who's strung a lot of words together and knows how to make them sound right.
Unfortunately, there's also some real narrative laziness here. Elements are occasionally introduced exactly when needed, and in ways that are jarring (I'm looking at you, "the one other pony in the passenger cabin who nopony had paid any attention to until now"). And there's one glaring structural fault here, which basically sinks the whole story. Eakin has written a "big reveal" story, but the reveal is so obvious that every reader should have it figured out within the first 1000 words—and, in fact, he never even has a reveal beat, so I suspect a lot of people would claim that I'm in error calling this a "big reveal" story. The problem is, he's structured the story for a reveal, dropping a constant barrage of hints toward that reveal, but they all feel like wasted space since everyone (except the characters) sees the game coming from a mile away.
2.5/5
Creative
I always like good OC building, and this is an all-OC story. Better yet, the OCs aren't just cardboard cut-outs. They're not the most interesting ponies in Equestria, but they do have backgrounds, and attitudes, and there's some obvious budding romance here.
There's not a whole lot of creativity with the scenario, though: ponies running away from their own wedding, taking a train ride to another city. Everything here feels very contrived, and Eakin doesn't do any work to alleviate that, even when the work would have been relatively easy. This story doesn't have any surprises in it, which makes for fairly dull reading.
1.5/5
Satisfaction
The reveal structure and lack of any real focus ruin this story for me. This is a 3600-word story, and I was bored for more than 3000 of them. Stuffed Shirt was mildly relatable and likeable, Emerald Dream a bit less so. I really am a fan of character work, but there's just no way I come out of this story feeling like I haven't wasted my time.
0.5/5
Overall
This almost feels like troll-fic titling, because "Going Anywhere" doesn't go anywhere.
Recommended for: OC fans and people who are okay with author condescension.
So yeah, that actually turned out pretty well! Four of these stories were excellent, and wound up on my favorites list. This was wholly unexpected.
I've been wondering about something, though, and I wouldn't mind some input. Thus far, I've just been reveiwing stories on my own blog and assuming authors would notice that their stories were getting added to my "Bradel Writes Reviews" bookshelf. I know some folks leave comments linking to their reviews after writing them, but I've tried to avoid doing this since it feels like self-promotion. On the other hand, readers check out the comments on stories, too, and might be interested to see what people have to say about a story. Any thoughts about the permissibility of leaving review links in the comments to other peoples' stories?
Leaving a link makes a lot of sense if you think of the review as an extension of the same response that goes on in the comments. "Hey, I wrote up my response to this in my [link]latest set of reviews[/link]" is basically a #include of the review into the comments, and since the reviews are to some extent very long, structured comments, it's appropriate to include them -- more appropriate, arguably, than taking up a bunch of screen real estate in the comments.
I'm curious as to what remedy you'd think there would be for telling in a letter format. There are ways in which it can be done, but for the most part, letters are telly by their very nature. It would sound inauthentic for the writer to go on about her own body language and facial expression, for instance. In fact, that's one of the biggest things I take authors to task for, in letter-format stories in particular, but also for any story including one: they put things in letters that really don't belong there.
In a longer story, you'd see the development of little in-phrases that the correspondents use and references to intimate moments they've shared. That's a good way to show in a letter. But such things are very deliberate and planned, and something written in a rush like this wouldn't have that care put into it. Without the dialogue of replies, it wouldn't build up that rapport, either. Really, the point of a letter is to inform, not entertain. In a literary usage, they must do both, but I'd argue that doing much of the traditional showing in a letter quickly makes it lose its authenticity.
So YMMV, of course, but what's there is deliberate, and not from an "I want this letter to be telly" standpoint, more of an "I think this is what makes the letter sound natural."
I let the public bookshelf notifications take care of it for me. :B
Pretty much all the reviews of Eakin's Going Anywhere have found it thoroughly "meh". Huh. Even great authors don't bat a thousand.
"A War of Words" never quite pays off its premise..." A statement I can get totally behind, which is why I wrote the sequel. Night Mares is written in more standard style so it is easier to read and so I can do justice to about eight main characters. Looking forward to how you react to NM. So far it's taken fire from many sides
I really liked Going Anywhere, because I wrote a similar 'reveal' story with Diamond Tiara and I know how hard it is to keep it together. As an author, you never know just where the reader will *ding* to the trail of breadcrumbs, and as much as I wanted a grand reveal at the end here, I can see just why he cut it off just where he did.
As for Toot? I broke out laughing just about every time she blew her horn. It's on my favorite list now :)
twee-whernk!
Or authors could use the handy-dandy big master review list to see a mostly comprehensive coverage of who may have reviewed their stories.
About the switching styles in Opening of the Guard, I prefer switching to a in person scene more than trying to cram a scene like that into a letter. One of my only complaints about Yours Truly by Thanqol was one of the 'letters' in the middle was apparently written while a character was struggling through shoulder-high snow and succumbing to the cold. Kinda ruined the immersion.
2623981
Yeah, that's about what I expected—and you're right that it's natural for context. I'm over at a friend's for Saturday gaming, so I can't focus too much on the question right now, but my instinctive response is that I don't see much of a remedy, especially not in a story of the length of "Friendly Correspondence". Your suggestions for longer stories sound good, though I don't have enough experience writing in this form (or reading stories written as correspondence) to feel like I can really weigh in on those suggestions too well (especially when I have distractions in the immediate vicinity).
For me, its use here is a matter of "not all story concepts are created equal". I feel like, with the story you chose to tell, it's kind of inevitable that it'll need to bog down if it has any sizable correspondence in it. I do think you do a good job avoiding the bog-down, but like I was saying above, I think seeing your writing in both modes—and close together in this way—provides a nice opportunity for examining just how those modes affect the narrative flow in a story. Usually, level of showing vs. telling varies more from author to author than within a story, so examining it is necessarily confounded with writing style and quality.
I don't really feel comfortable leaving comments that link to my reviews--it feels too much like self-promotion to me. I was quite relieved when the bookshelves came along, as it gave me a way to "notify" authors passively.
I don't think I've commented on your reviews yet, by the way! I quite like the format, and have enjoyed reading the last few. Interesting selection this time around, in that every single story here was either one I'd read or was on my RiL list. Sadly, you didn't help me cull any; couldn't you have hated one or two of these?
2625006
I think I'm going to be guided by you and 2623990 on this one. I do kind of want to drop comments in the stories, (and I am still an unabashed follower-junkie) but you two are probably the two best fiction reviewers in the fandom, not to mention the whole joint RCL thing, and as a new reviewer I think it makes sense to be guided by what you guys do. (Also, I have no idea how you two manage to kick out so many reviews. Getting reviews written for five stories a week is really pushing me to my limit already.)
As for the stories I covered this week, well, I wasn't a big fan of "Going Anywhere"... But I really was shocked by the other four. I mean, I knew I liked Georg's story since I'd already read it (though I didn't remember how much—so even the re-read there was a bit of a surprise). I knew Pasco can write, but I was still pleasantly surprised by that piece. I knew nothing about Hoopy and was all ready to hate on him, but he really pulled it out and made me excited to read more of his stuff. And I don't think I've read too much AugieDog and wasn't totally sure what to expect there, but "Collaborators" is just monstrously good.
I mean, yeah, it'd be nice to whittle down your read-it-later list, but three of these are worth reading and one of them is, I think, one of the best pieces in this fandom.
Honestly? It's been a hard week, and I'm worried I'm just going soft. But I really did like these!
2625238
Obviously, if you want to get anywhere as a reviewer, you should start by reviewing my and Chris's fics. :V Dohoho!
No, but seriously, my secret to mass reviewing is unemployment. :B I dunno how Chris does it.
2625598
I'll have you know that I've got a whole Google Spreadsheet for "Review Candidates", with lots of things I should read and authors I know listed, and it's got "Dance 'Til We're High" listed on it for you, and for Chris...
...oh, crap. I knew something went wrong when I transferred from my .rtf to the Google spreadsheet...
2625668
You can thank me later
With cash V:
So I guess I'm following you now(you may blame Chris' latest blog post)
Anyways, I've been enjoying these reviews of yours so far, and it certainly helps that I find myself agreeing with you on many of them(makes it real easy to find good new stories to read, you see
)
2626400
Well, thank you for the follow!
(Also, your avatar is awesome.)
2627167
Hehe, thanks.
For reference, the image is, in case you are wondering, taken from the seventh Issue of the official MLP comics[1].
It is still one of my favorite issues, as it to this date is one of the few stories I've to really do something with Spike[2] ,and giving him some well deserved recognition
On a different note, I went ahead and read "Collaborators", and while I don't seem to appreciate it quite as much as you do, it was still a very pleasant experience, and got me on a roll reading more of AugieDog's wonderful fics[3]
[1] Part 3 of the Nightmarity arc
[2] The rest are probably all found in TD's stories list
[3] How the hell have I completely missed this guy so far?
I just stumbled across this review recently, and I wanted to thank you for taking the time to read and review "Toot your own horn". It's always good to hear about things that work and that don't, in order to improve as a writer.
I'm really glad you liked my take on Luna, here, since I really had a lot of fun writing her in this story. We all have older relatives who will occasionally say horrifically cringe-worthy and inappropriate things that were considered "okay" back when they were younger but are now socially unacceptable. I realized that Luna would be loaded with those kinds of sayings, and completely clueless as to their impact on modern society. So, it was a lot of fun to write her that way.
So, my take-away on this is to try tightening things up a bit, cutting out the irrelevant and focusing on what's most important to the story, which are all really good things to work on. Again, I appreciate the time you took to both read the story and to write your review.
2624315
That's how I found this review. By the way, thanks for making that! It's an impressive amount of work, and very useful for finding reviews on stories I'm curious about reading
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Always glad to know I helped someone out. That's what the list is here for.