Main Reviews #10: Princess Celestia: The Changeling Queen (part of the Million Words in January) (spoiler alert) · 4:23pm Jan 14th, 2015
I’m going to come out and say it: I don’t think I’ve ever been so apprehensive about posting a review before. This story has been sitting in the recesses of my mind for quite some time now. It’s a well-beloved story about deception, the bonds of family, and coming to love your enemy. It addresses themes like desperation, necessity, duty, honour, and most of all, love. It also happens to have been written by a pretty cool guy who I’m glad to call a friend here.
Which is exactly why I’m feeling just a tad nervous.
Welp, let’s get on with it. What happens when the leader of a nation for an entire millennium… isn’t who anyone thought they were at all? When a mask is forcibly torn away, how do you deal with the reality-shattering implications?
As it turns out, I have an answer for you. Catch my review of Princess Celestia: The Changeling Queen below the break.
Author: vren55
Synopsis:
At the Royal Wedding, Chrysalis and the Changelings were revealed to all of Equestria.But another mask was torn away that day. A mask born for a thousand years. A mask created on one promise. A mask that has become synonymous, fused, to its bearer.
A mask that when ripped off causes Twilight, her friends, and Luna to question everything they ever knew about the one pony, one very important pony.
At the Royal Wedding, the meaning of the phrase 'Princess Celestia' changes forever.
Current Length: 103,929 words over 22 chapters, averaging 4,724 words per chapter
Status: Incomplete
Review: Whew. Long have I planned to get to this story. Changeling fics are dime-a-dozen in this fandom, but there’s no denying that people love the little love buggers to death. ‘X pony is a changeling’ fics have been done to death, but it’s far easier to pull off with a smaller character, one who is rather less well-known and respected through the ages. We have great stories like The Irony of Applejack, Flitter, An Affliction of the Heart, Derplicity… I could go on. But what they all have in common is that, in reality, it would be quite easy to pull of such characters as being changelings. They live secluded lives; they have their own place in the world, and they stick to it. A slightly larger part of it is that they’re generally mortal.
But what happens when the very pony who has ruled an entire nation for a thousand years by herself is suddenly revealed to be a changeling? Well, there are some rather serious questions that need answering. “Who are you really?” “Where’s the real Princess Celestia?” “How could we have been ruled by a changeling for so long and not known about it?”
Huh. Well, that’s different. Care to explain, ‘Princess’?
Set briefly before, during, and directly after the events of A Canterlot Wedding, PC:TCQ strips ‘Celestia’ bare naked as a character and exposes her for what she truly is. For the record, Celestia is not Chrysalis. She is a completely different queen, an ancient changeling who goes by the name of Alternia.
There’s some interesting stuff clarified here that actually makes Queen Chrysalis out to not be such an idiot. It seems that, before the wedding of Cadance and Shining Armor (spelled Armour in this story because vren uses British English and is therefore superior to most of you 
), Alternia was able to use her changeling senses to anticipate something coming, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. Being cut off from other changelings for so long dulled her connection to others of her kind, but it was still a niggling enough feeling for her to suggest that Shining put up a shield. Too bad Chrysalis had already made it inside.
...
Look, this is all very interesting, and stuff, but will you please get to the part where we find out why Alternia is impersonating the princess? And where is Celestia herself?
If you are an impatient reader, you will be sorely disappointed. The reveal of Alternia’s true identity, prison and interrogation scenes, the mending of friendships and relationships, apologies, and enough exposition to bore a Phys. Ed. class to sleep all take precedence before we even find out Alternia’s connection to Celestia. For another five chapters after her reveal, the question hanging on everyone’s lips goes unanswered while the author continues to set Alternia up as this tragic figure who had a duty to her people. He brings up her back story, relationships to other hives, her and her sisters’ (including Chrysalis) violent history…
The thing is, I haven’t been made to care about Alternia yet. I don’t, and I won’t, until the connection between her and the real Celestia is revealed.
But when it does finally happen… whoa, man, is it good. It took its time, but by chapter eight—after slogging through a seemingly endless barrage of (to be blunt) rather horrendous grammar—we finally got to the meat of the story. And it’s a whopper of a reveal.
On the same night that Celestia fought with Nightmare Moon, Alternia had a duel to the death with her sister, Chrysalis, who led a coup against their race and usurped the throne of the major changeling hive in Everfree. Their mother was killed in the crossfire, and Alternia was also mortally wounded. After teleporting away, she found herself lying outside the old Everfree Castle, where she caught the last vestiges of the Battle of Two Sisters. Celestia, also mortally wounded in her fight with her own sister, offered Alternia a live-saving deal. Celestia has to go away for a thousand years to recover from her injuries, a process which will take longer than Nightmare Moon will be sealed. After pleading with Alternia to save her people, she bestows all the love of Equestria she has—as well as all of her memories—unto Alternia, who essentially takes her place.
“So much love… I bet if I were you I could easily raise the sun and the moon.”
That, my friends, is how you create a connection between two characters that sets the stage for the entirety of the rest of the story. A simple, seemingly throwaway line of dialogue.
Now you know. Now you have a reason to care about Alternia. It works, it’s a fantastic idea, we now actually give a damn why she’s kept up a facade for so long and held herself together. She has come to care for the ponies, not just because she receives love from all of Equestria every day, but because it is that love that supplies her with the power to move the sun and the moon by herself—something she did alone for so long before Luna returned.
So, what next?
Well, interrogations of other captured changelings for a start. The revelation that there were already other changelings inside Canterlot that even Alternia did not know about. Military talks and discussion about how Canterlot is going to react to the invasion next. The drafting of a peace offering between the two races. Quite a bit actually goes on before we see any real action. There’s a lot of unnecessary words to slog through, but among the chaff we see Alternia beating herself up a lot, Cadance forgiving her ‘aunt,’ Blueblood actually being portrayed as a smart and very likeable character, a whole bunch of OCs referencing real-world historical war figures (only two of whom I can actually remember the names of, much less the extravagant titles they get adorned with, or what they’re wearing)...
But we have a plan. Using information gleaned about the hive from the captured ’lings, Alternia and others set out to negotiate terms of peace with Chrysalis.
Now, although she had a very slow start, Alternia is a fantastically well-developed character. There is ever so much of the regal Celestia remaining in her, yet since she’s had her mask ripped away, she’s a lot more comfortable showing her un-’princesslike’ side. She can be quick to anger, she speaks far more bluntly to those around her than she ever did before, and she’s certainly not afraid to growl at those who displease her. This might seem a touch OoC (I can see how many might be iffy of her portrayal) but I think that being able to actually be herself around the others for the first time after keeping such a lengthy and guarded secret has earned her the right to lash out every now and then. She still feels she has to prove she is still very much the same princess that everypony has loved for so long, but at the same time, she has to be strong and resolute in the face of potential danger.
Let’s rattle off a short list of characters here.
•Alternia: Changeling Queen, Celestia impersonator, co-ruler of Equestria
•Chrysalis: Elder sister to Alternia, current Matriarch of the changeling hive
•Cyndra: Formerly known as “Cinder Hooves,” a maid in Canterlot castle, secretly Chrysalis’ exiled daughter
•Lamia: Another of Chrysalis’ daughters, still lives with her mother. Horribly maimed in a vicious attack
•Belladonna and… Simulacris(?), Alternia’s other sisters, who we really don’t see much of as of yet besides some quick backstory.
Each of them (barring the last two as of yet) are all incredibly unique and well thought out. Chrysalis is given extraordinary character depth while still retaining about 80% of her canon personality. At first we see her as a simple villain with selfish motives—which certainly lines up with canon well enough—then, when situations arise and develop, she is shown to be a rather reasonable character… so long as you don’t stand in her way. She loves her hive and her daughters, two of which are also quite unique.
Cyndra and Lamia are two very interesting specimens. Cyndra is the one who supplies Alternia with knowledge of the hives and how to deal with them in a peaceful manner, and so she is an important character. But we find that what drives almost the entire plot has to do with Chrysalis’ beloved, viciously maimed daughter, Lamia. When we learn about Lamia’s condition and how it helped trigger Chryssie’s attack on Canterlot, it really opens up the idea that she—specifically, what happened to her—has affected the entire world.
Tensions are constantly running high. For good reason too; the writing does a good job of keeping the situation tense, even when the scenes appear to be relaxed. Everyone is constantly on a knife edge around each other, silently judging each other. When things boil over, you bet it erupts into a storm of chaos that would make Discord proud (he’s still in stone, by the way, before you ask).
I’ve said all this cool stuff about these cool characters and their cool development and their not-so-cool relations with their somewhat-cool opponents. The plot in this story is highly engaging, and the characters are rather fascinating to read about. Not gonna lie: there were two scenes in the story that made me a little misty-eyed. There were many scenes that had me wondering who would be victorious in faceoffs and skirmishes, and there were even times where I thought that situations were beyond repair. The plot is a thrilling ride, at least once you get past chapter seven, which is only about 25k words. While that does seem a touch excessive, and I personally was just waiting for the story to hurry up and reveal Celestia, that does not mean the scenes before the action are useless. Yes, it all probably could have been condensed, but it’s all useful information, if slightly dragging.
This is where I shatter all illusions I might have conjured of giving the story a high score. Celestia knows I wanted to. I really did.
Unfortunately, I cannot.
This is one of vren’s earlier stories. As such, you expect the quality of a story written by a fimfic freshman to be somewhat sub-par. I know for a fact that his writing has improved a great deal in the over two years he’s been among us. I’m a great fan of his collaboration with Comet Burst, Of Swords and Hearts, which shows off this improvement greatly.
Oh, but I wasn’t expecting it to be anywhere near as far below the mark as it is.
From the very first chapter—a short note from the PoV of our main character—I could see what issues lay in wait to detract from my experience. Starting with this one.
The might of their love, allows me to move mountains.
Superfluous comma.
It is a mask that I am bound to wear out of duty and out of fear, for what they would do if they found out.
Superfluous comma. “for” could also be “of” but that’s optional.
Apart from that, it’s actually quite a nice intro. Short, sharp, to the point. Gives an air of mystery about itself (y’know, if the mystery wasn’t already spoiled by the story’s name). I especially like this line.
Still, there have been instances where chaos and darkness envelop the land, threatening to smash all that I have accomplished. Yet, they falter before the combined efforts of my greatest knights. They are honest, loyal, kind, funny, generous, and faithful; so very faithful.
so very faithful.
Still, the comma after “Yet” can and should go.
Okay, I thought at this point in time. So he’s a little rough on comma usage. I guess I can live with that.
How naive I was to think that. As it turns out, comma misuse was the least of my worries. From only chapter one, here is a list of extensively recurring errors.
One summer’s morning, I was sitting upon my golden throne and signing paperwork. The herald sounds and my guard opens to door to admit two ponies: Shining Armour, the captain of my Royal Guard, and my niece, Princess Cadance.
•Tense change from past to present
•Armour spelled with a ‘u’ (while some may argue the point, and fairly so if you do, his canon name is Shining Armor)
I smiled brightly as the pair entered the throne hall and set down my papers; thankful to have a distraction from my duties.
•Misused semicolon
Cadance was more a daughter to me than niece. I had presided over her parents’ marriage and had been at her birth. When they had died in a horrifying accident I had made her my ward and taken her under my wing.
While I could not have known this at the first time of reading, this will later be contradicted by Cadance telling us about her “canon” upbringing—namely, that of being raised by Earth Ponies and being found by Celestia upon defeating the witch, Prismia (those of you who have read the Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell novella will know this).
throne hall
throne room
Well, which is it? Pick one. Stop alternating between calling it one or the other.
I turned to Shining Armour. He was the brother to my dear protégé and one of the most dependable ponies I knew. The stallion
Oh, man. He’s going to be doing this all story, isn’t he?
“Captain Shining Armour, what makes you think I would let you wed Cadance?” I asked, giving the stallion a withering gaze. Cadance bit her lip and her wings clasped tighter to her sides. To his credit, Shining Armour stood firm against my glare, but then again I had hoofpicked him to be Captain of the Royal Guard.
•Needs new paragraph at “Cadance,” for change of subject.
•Also, he did it again.
hoofpicked
•Could you not have just said “personally chosen,” or something less ridiculous sounding than “hoofpicked?”
“But Auntie Celestia...” protested Cadance. Momentarily, I ignored my niece, much as it pained me to do so.
I’ve got a hat-trick here:
•But Auntie Celestia (comma before direct address needed)
•protested Cadance (oh, no. This is gonna happen all story, isn’t it?)
•Momentarily, I ignored my niece (Need a new paragraph for new subject)
“Well, captain?” I demanded.
•There it is again—the dreaded ‘saidism.’
•Dialogue tag itself is also redundant, as Celestia was the last subject addressed by the narrative; you don’t need to re-confirm to us that she is talking. If there has been no break between a character’s speech or actions, dialogue tags are mostly unnecessary.
I march to the ends of Equestria for her and do anything she commands of me,” the stallion’s head lowered, and I felt a little sorry for him as he continued, “I know I don’t deserve a wonderful mare like her, but I can’t imagine my life without her.”
•Should have been a period to close his first line of speech
•Which also means the next word should be capitalised
•Again with “the stallion.” Just use an adverb, please.
•
I felt a little sorry for him as he continued
We didn’t really need to know this. Telly.
•As it is, this whole sentence is not only grammatically incorrect, but a major run on.
I took a step back, confused at the princess’s reaction.
•Telly (confused at the princess’s reaction); information we can assume or perhaps even be shown by her forthcoming dialogue.
•“the princess’s” (Really? Would Celestia address her sister as ‘the princess’?) Why not just call her Luna, or use ‘her’
“You have a niece? Whom didst thou marry when we were gone?” demanded the Princess of the Night. I blinked, sighed in relief and shook my head. I knew Luna tended to take things rather literally at times.
•demanded (again with the saidisms…)
•the Princess of the Night (again, just call her ‘Luna’...)
•I blinked (There should have been a new paragraph there)
•I knew Luna tended to take things rather literally at times (unnecessary information, unless this is going to be incredibly important somehow later in the story)
“Sister, are you alright?”
•spelling error (‘alright’ is not a word; that should be ‘all right’)
…
Okay. I’m going to stop listing examples there. I already feel terrible enough.
The point is… this story has major grammatical, mechanical, and structural problems. Below I will lay out my grading table.
Uncommon errors will remain in normal font (these I’ll glance over but not care about too much)
More common errors will be represented by italic font (these I’ll notice, and frown upon)
Frequent errors will be represented in bold font (these make me facepalm)
Frequent poor style choices will be represented by both italic and bold font (these actually drive me up the wall)
•Tense changes (when not deliberate)
•Character name misspellings (thankfully this only appears to be in regards to Shining Armo(u)r, although I did spy a few “Armor”s further into the story
•Misused semicolons
•Variation for the sake of variation
•Lavender Unicorn Syndrome
•paragraph formatting (not giving new paragraph for new subject [you need to do it every time you change subject, not just when a new subject speaks])
•odd made-up word choice
•missing commas before direct address of a character
•saidisms
•redundant dialogue tags
•dialogue punctuation
•telly language telling me things I can easily work out for myself, giving me insights to a character’s thoughts I really should not have, or making the same point it already has before multiple times
•regular spelling errors
And all that from the first chapter. Is it any wonder I find the story painful to read?
It just sucks so much—so, so much—that a beautiful, lovingly crafted, original plot with extraordinarily well-fleshed-out characters must be marred by subpar grammar and overall presentation. Every chapter suffers from these errors, the most annoying ones unfortunately being the most rampant. I don’t want to be distracted from a character’s speech by a redundant dialogue tag featuring a word that calls attention to itself, like “queried” or “roared” or “rebutted”. I don’t need your expository vomit after your character’s dialogue to keep me up to date with how they’re feeling. I want to read about one subject per paragraph, not three of four.
Most of all, I want to know who is being addressed without having to think about it! Calling Celestia/Alternia “the changeling,” “the queen,” “the changeling queen,” “the alicorn,” “the changeling-in-disguise,” is a particularly bad choice, especially when there are other changelings present, and even more especially in fast-paced action scenes where such descriptions slow the reading down like flat tyres on a vehicle. You don’t need to keep calling Alternia “the changeling queen” or “the changeling-in-disguise.” I know what she is; you don’t have to keep reminding me every single time you address her! Either use a character’s name, or drop a simple pronoun like “she” or “her.” It’s really not that hard. It’s actually preferable to higher-level readers.
You are like a pilot, and your story is like a jet heading from one destination to another. Ideally, you would lift off, cruise, and descend at your destination. Sounds simple, right? Well, the plot is your jet’s fuel. You need enough fuel to get from origin to destination. But you don’t know exactly how much fuel you’re gonna need. So you top it up, doing the safe thing… or so you think. Not long after taking off, you decide you’re unsure of how much fuel you have left, because for some reason you cannot see the fuel gauge. So you take it down at the nearest airport and fill it up again… not that it takes very long, considering you still almost have a full tank.
Princess Celestia: The Changeling Queen is vren’s plane, and he is the pilot. It has huge amounts of fuel (the plotline), more than enough to get to his destination. Yet instead of cruising through with smoothly crafted language, fluid sentences and paragraphs, and character dialogue, he keeps landing his plane out of paranoia. Said paranoia manifests in the way he delivers excessive amounts of tell about a character’s feelings, most often immediately after their dialogue. Pro-tip: most of the time, we don’t need this. You need to learn to trust your audience to understand what you’re trying to communicate. Do it through your characters' dialogue, their reactions, their body language, your own use of italics on specific words… do it any other way than flat out telling us how a character is feeling. Stop landing your plane so frequently. You have enough fuel.
This sentence sums up how I feel you treat your readers when you dump your big blocks of tell on them:
“Here's another sentence explaining the previous sentence, just in case you didn't quite get it.”
Trust your readers more. Let them figure things out. And remember: pronouns are your friends; adverbs are scum and not to be trusted.
Phew. That took a while…
Now, to summarise: Princess Celestia: The Changeling Queen has a fantastic plot and unique, mostly-memorable characters. Story elements intertwine with each other almost flawlessly, and characters that you might start off hating have a habit of growing on you. It takes a lot to make an apparently psychotic, evil changeling queen bent on destruction into a character that you feel sorry for and sympathise with. vren has done a fantastic job fleshing out his story and his characters, and for that I applaud the story overall. I wish I could recommend it to everyone, but in its current form, if you are in any way bothered by the recurring errors and cannot see past them, this will be a major slog for you. The quality does pick up over time, but sifting and wading through the rampant grammar errors, LUS, and over-the-top-excessive amounts of tell will be painful for people who care about such things. It’s your call whether or not you force yourself through it to get to the (eventually awesome) story, but even if you do decide to pursue the story, you may not like the cost at which you have to do so.
This story could be executed so much better than it is currently.
•Brilliant concept/ideas/plotlines
•fully imagined, fleshed-out characters
•atrocious grammar all over the shop
•relentless telly language, saidisms, formatting errors, and other mechanical and stylistic issues
Final score: 5.5/10
Next Review: A batch of one-shots
Words read so far this January: 388747
Wow, I sorta just skimmed this thing and it sounds like a pain to read. 5.5/10? Ouch.
Still, if I can get through Silent Ponyville, I can probably slog through this. When it's finished, that is.
As much as I agree with your reasonings behind the number, I can't help but feel it's still just an arbitrary number. I find myself strongly preferring PP's recommendation methods.
Or I just find myself strongly disliking the number rating system. Either way.
2722286
Well, it is only my personal score to be fair. The story seems popular enough, so the majority of fans are clearly forgiving of its issues.
All of my other (single) reviews carry a personal score too.
2722305
Right, that's why I've been getting increasingly annoyed with arbitrary numbers.
Whew, reviews like these make me doubt my ability to proofread for GSP errors. I don't think I noticed half of them, and I also gave a short review of this fiction on one of the author's blog posts. Fair criticism all around for one of my favorite fictions on the site. I remember writing the words "unforgivable" myself due to its slow pacing and several chapters long exposition.
I give it a seven out of ten. I think the grammar nazi in you was just screaming nein! a bit too loudly.
Dude does need an editor, though.
2722572
It's actually not the grammar that I took most of the points off for. Notice what annoyed me the most down the bottom:
I hate distractions (the first two) and I hate being spoon-fed information because an author doesn't trust me to glean information from his words.
2722841 Good point.
I have been a reader of PCTCQ since it first started and, like you, I love the amount of thought and effort put into the story's plots and characters. After reading this review I found that I more or less agree with what you have written, however something has been bothering me since I first went through it. I think I finally figured it out. At first I thought it was personal bias and my enjoyment of vren's story that was nagging me about the (very) low score you gave it, but I think I actually agree somewhat with 2722286
The number (5.5/10) seems somewhat arbitrary. This story, at first, was receiving a glowing review from you - one that I have no doubt you would have given a reasonably high score. The problem is that once you looked at it objectively (as you should), your "number" dive-bombed right into the Grand Canyon.
Now, I know that you know what your intended message about this story was. I also understand, after reading the review, what you wanted to get across. It's all written right there in the summary. My issue is that instead of letting your readers rely on the pros and cons that you wrote down, you throw everything about the story - good, bad, mediocre, mind-blowingly awesome - into one nasty little objective number. Even with your praise of the plot, a 5.5 is going to instantly cause people to turn their noses up at the thought of reading this story.
Even though I enjoyed reading this and mostly agree with it, I think you would do a service to your readers to let them make their own decisions based off of your personal thoughts, not a number.
I remember cringing every other sentence when I first started reading it, but grinning the whole time because I wanted to keep reading anyway. Of course, that was back when I read anything that looked at all interesting. Since then I've raised the bar a bit, after I noticed how much the Read-Laters were piling up and how much I always seemed to be looking forward to reading the next one on the list. A lot of stories I just put down because it becomes a chore I have to finish just to move on to the next one. With PC:TCQ, I looked forward to plot progression so much I could read through anything. I think that makes up for whatever mistakes it has. It does get better as it goes on (and he picks up more editors, including me), so sticking with it is worth it, at least in my opinion.
Mechanics and grammar and punctuation and the rest can be fixed easily enough, and anyone can fix that. A story is made of its elements. The text is only a medium. It takes a good writer to craft a good story.
2723784
Well, actually, my number is not arbitrary at all.
I give a score out of ten for plot and characterisation, as well as a second score out of ten for spelling/grammar/mechanics/style.
I gave the story a 9/10 for the former, but only a 2/10 for the latter. Add them together and you get 11/20. Half them, and you get 5.5/10. (edit: I should probably make this grading style clear in my next review)
Simple, really. Of course elements like style are going to be mostly subjective, as with plot and characterisation. Grammar, mechanics, and structure, however, can be graded objectively.
There are those who say grammar etc is only a minor part of a story, but in my experience, that seems to be the attitude of people who don't actually know good grammar/how to pick apart mechanics themselves. All of those little things are important. They can be forgiven if they are few and far between, sure. But when a story is littered with the same recurring errors, I find myself cringing. And when the style of a story is to flat out tell me everything, I grow bored. I like thinking about stories and putting pieces together; such a telly manner saps the fun out of reading for me.
2724188
Well... okay. Though, If you remove the word "arbitrary" from my comment, I'd still stand by what I said. I just don't like scrunching it into a single number. I would even have preferred you have two different numbers if you did want to grade it. One for objective grammar, and one for your subjective review. This is, of course, my opinion.
2722286
Numbers aren't necessarily arbitrary; most scoring scales have some meanings.
For instance, you could break down my own scoring scale in the following way on a five point scale:
1-2 = Not Recommended.
3 = Worth Reading.
4 = Recommended.
5 = Highly Recommended.
I don't differentiate between 1s and 2s in my actual ratings (I lump them together under Not Recommended) but 1s would be stories I downvoted and 2s would be stories I gave a neutral vote on (i.e. neither upvoted nor downvoted).
As long as you understand what the numbers mean, it isn't a bad thing.
I just don't use numbers because they're less clear than my recommendations; "Worth Reading" and "Recommended" are better descriptions than "3/5" and "4/5" to me.
2723784
2724188
The main problem with grammar and spelling is that they're distractions. If grammar and spelling are poor enough that I notice them, then the writer has done something wrong. The same applies to pretty much every writing mistake; the reality is that what really matters is whether or not I'm engaged enough to overlook any issues in the story.
Ever think about how silly it is that they didn't just fly in towards the end of the trench in Star Wars? No? Why not?
Because the movie engaged you.
However, another movie could do the same thing and it would bother you immediately.
The thing is, any mistake you make makes it that much more likely that the reader will be pulled out of the story.
Different people care to different extents about grammar, and the more engaging a story is, the more likely it is that you'll overlook mistakes. It is that simple. That's why I don't break down my reviews of anything, score-wise, on things like that - the same applies to video games I review as well. In the end, how good any one aspect of the experience is doesn't matter, it is the experience as a whole which actually counts. It is easy to overlook issues in a really good story; it is hard to overlook them in a weaker one.
One of the hardest parts about editing, incidentally, is being able to look at the story on three separate levels simultaneously; the best editors can do this, but most cannot. Macro level issues - like the issue with fake!Celestia's characterization here at the start of the work - are the sort of systemic issues which good editors catch but most won't.
This is why having people who look at top-level issues read your stories is invaluable - I have one editor who does NOTHING but look at top-level issues in my stories. They don't bother with nitty-gritty details unless I specifically ask them for help with specific passages, but they DO let me know about overall issues with flow and dialogue and scenes feeling off or a story not working or not being funny enough or whatever.
It doesn't matter if your details are wrong if the big picture is flawed.
2724313
That's mostly what I mean. So many people use a number system to mean different things that going from one person to the next makes the system feels a bit arbitrary. When someone uses something closer to PP's system, I know exactly what their rating is telling me.
2724370 I'm confused, when did macro-level systematic characterization error come into play? I don't quite remember that being in this particular review.
2737260
The thing is, people overlook mistakes. It is when they don't overlook them that it gets to be problematic.
That's not to say they're not a problem otherwise, mind you, but the reality is that there are a lot of technically flawed stories which people end up liking in spite of their flaws because what else is in them shines so brightly.
When rough writing interferes with someone's ability to enjoy something, then it means that the problems outweigh their desire to be in the story.
2737262 ... That didn't answer my question at all. I understand your point about people noticing the issues depending on how readable or entertaining the story is, but right now, as the author of the story whose read the review and agreed on the points, you've suddenly brought up another issue that I want explained so I can improve/consider.
What EXACTLY is wrong with fake-Celestia's characterization?
2737300
Sorry, I haven't read the story in question. I was commenting generally based on what CV said.
Basically, what I was trying to get at was this:
Every story, there is tension between imperfections and the story itself.
If the imperfections are too great, it diminishes people's enjoyment of a story. But if a story really sucks people in, they're less likely to notice imperfections. There's tension there, and which one ends up winning out depends on where the balance for a particular story - and a particular reader - lies.
I wasn't talking about your story specifically, I was addressing the general point of why imperfections matter, but why people "get away" with it sometimes. Sorry for the confusion.
2737304 Ohhh, well that makes sense. I have noticed that with my story, people tend to... get very immersed into it. Not sure what I did correct in that aspect, probably something to do with the characterization and plotline+ premise, but I've noticed that with that immersion comes total blindness to problems with my story :P