On Trial: A World Without Kindness · 1:48pm Mar 3rd, 2015
So the More Most Dangerous Game, run by Obelisk The Tormentor, was finalised yesterday. I didn’t pay any attention to this one and figured I’d wait until the finalists were announced to look through some of the good ones. Unsure how many I’d feel inclined to read (and not wanting to cherry pick just the authors I trusted to write well), I figured I’d start at the winner and see how far I could work down. At worst, I could always cherry-pick some of those known authors after I got bored of the list.
I had… let’s say, a strong reaction to the winner. I figured I’d get a second opinion in case I was just being resentful and bitter. His response included the words, “I'd put it in a hall of shame.”
And with that, its fate was sealed.
Fanfiction On Trial:
A World Without Kindness
By billymorphThe war between Nightmare Moon and Princess Celestia has destroyed Equestria, leaving the few survivors to struggle to survive in a dying world of eternal twilight. Fluttershy, twisted by the war, now ekes out an existence in Everfree forest but even that life is under threat. Twilight Sparkle is coming, leading the last army of Dawn, and she will let nothing stop her from retrieving the Elements of Harmony and saving the world; not even old friends.
Prompt: -"In an Equestria devastated by an apocalyptic war, the few that remain try their best to survive or rebuild—however they can." (Fallout: Equestria)
So the aim to take the general concept of one of the fandom’s best-known titans and try and better it in fifteen thousand words (ish) or less. It’s fair to say that you probably can’t actually best FO:E at doing what FO:E does in that wordcount, but that’s the fun of a competition, right?
After all, Obelisk The Tormentor did say, “Don’t stay up and chew your fingernails off to make your story perfect. We want this to be a fun contest for everyone.” So it’s a harsh prompt with a potentially problematic size limit. That should be enough leeway to get me through, right?
Right?
Did you notice that misused semicolon in the blurb? No? Shame on you if you didn’t. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The opening volley is a good start: While I did notice that the first three sentences all revolve around an ‘and’ in the middle, the truth is that they are differently constructed enough that it’s pretty much invisible if your editor’s klaxon isn’t already blaring. It even boasts a correctly used semicolon, and it sets the scene very succinctly.
I was quite prepared to be enchanted with this story. The perspective is nice and tight on Fluttershy, colouring the facts about what is happening with the frame of the character living in a broken world. The second paragraph then connects the Fluttershy we know into the new, twisted one, in a way that makes perfect sense. It’s sort of a ‘you don’t know who you truly are until you’ve almost starved to death.’ – like the writings of Shan Yu (from Firefly, for those heathens among you).
And then there were two back-to-back misused semicolons and the crowbarring of ‘hush now, quiet now’ into the narrative and things drove off a fucking cliff.
I was trying – and I mean really, really trying – to ignore the use of sang as attribution; after all, it is explicitly a vocal action normally involving words, and it is mostly a physical description of how she is speaking, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it was so pointless. There was no need for attribution rather than description.
Still, all that 'trying to remain objective' stuff went right out of the window at the word thestrals. This is not a Harry – fucking – Potter crossover! Another misused semicolon and I decided that I was already going to hate the writing, but I could at least set that aside and concentrate on the story; clearly that is what had pushed this up to the top spot, right?
Specific errors aside, the actual art of constructing sentences and having them flow together was definitely present in spades, but the dialogue mechanics got worse as the story progressed. I’m not just talking said-isms here. I get that few are as remotely put off in the way that I am, and I can accept that, but we start getting into much more problematic territory when dialogue and description just don’t mesh:
“Just...” she stammered as I approached,
Ellipsis is trailing off, not stammering. And just after the author does it again:
“You won’t make it quick?” she stammered.
And
“The War,” I corrected,
Now we're into straight up attribution abuse. Sorry, but that is not going to cut it. Show don’t tell, kids. Show don’t tell. And worse, it’s horribly redundant if the dialogue itself is at least passable, which it was, for the most part.
And they got worse, still…
“Girls...” I tried to interject,
Tried to? Either you did or you didn’t. It’s bad enough to use negative descriptions (describing what doesn’t happen, rather than what does), but to use one that doesn’t even confirm whether a thing happened or not it pretty lame on its own, let alone when used as attribution.
There were some there issues in and around dialogue, too:
“That mare is a soldier, a killer, and ah got foals to look afta’.”
We can have a discussion about writing Applejack’s accent. That’s fine, but she doesn’t even speak like that!
“Why are we fighting Twilight?"
And this is the pièce de résistance. Here, let me correct it for you:
“Why are we fighting, Twilight?"
In the context of the story, it takes on literally the opposite meaning. The speaker, Rainbow Dash, is on Twilight’s side. It’s like the ultimate cliché used to explain the importance of punctuation. It is to commas as ‘help your uncle jack off a horse’ is to capitalisation. In fact, I think I’m going to keep this one around as an example of what not to do.
So… D for grammar, and F for dialogue mechanics. But there could still be an actual story here, right?
HA! Would I get this riled up if there was?
No, I had a bit of a twitch early on when Fluttershy saves Rarity’s life rather than killing her. Considering the story is called ‘A World Without Kindness’, this felt like a fairly blatant announcement about what path this story was going to take. Not too long after, Pinkie talks about how tomorrow is supposed to be sunshine and rainbows – in a world of eternal twilight and snow. It could be a 4th wall thing. It could be a premonition thing. It could just be Pinkie in abject denial and making a pain in the ass of herself by saying that every day.
The latter of those options was the one that would make a good story, so guess which option it wasn’t? No, after a promising start, what we actually have is a twisted retelling of the first episode of FiM, where six mares come back to the Everfree many years after, find the elements of harmony, and end the eternal… well, twilight in this case.
As an aside, I have always found the deification of the Princess the be exceptionally dull. I’m happy to accept that as personal preference, but even taking that into account, I have some issues with ‘the apocalypse’ being a result of Celestia and Luna’s power. It just strikes me as too quick and dirty to be an engaging backstory. Nightmare Moon comes back, brings eternal night, and wages war on Celestia in such a way as they demolish the country between them. It has a ‘no expense spent’ feel to it, but maybe even that is just me.
The story, for all its flaws, forged ahead with a strong buildup until we hit the crescendo, where friend fights against friend until friend recognises friend and they call the whole thing off and live happily ever after. I'm not even embellishing that much. That’s pretty much exactly what happens. Dash recognises Fluttershy and shouts “Stop!” in the middle of a pitched battle of around 100 ponies killing each other, and the whole fight stops instantly. An army that’s been fighting for years against the end of the world, in the middle of being viciously counter-assaulted, just stops dead at a single shout so that Rainbow Dash can have the most trope-laiden moment of clarity in badfic history. Immediately, our chain of causality is truncated to because the plot said so.
“Why are we fighting Twilight? Why are we fighting these ponies?” Dash sighed, her voice numb with grief.
“Why? They’re trying to kill us. They’re Dusk!”
Dash sighed. “No, they’re not. See that mare.” She pointed at the Captain who’d paused just about to deliver a coup de grass. “Her name is Applejack and she used to grow the sweetest apples I’ve ever tasted.” She continued through the frozen crowd. “And that’s Thunderlane, we used to be co-workers. Bon Bon, who single-hoofedly fed Pinkie Pie’s candy addiction. That other farmer whose name I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure had a massive crush on Applejack.”
And yes. It says ‘coup de grass’. I don’t even… Lord I hope that’s a typo; I love puns too much to forgive that.
So both sides just stop because plot demanded it one pony shouted. That pony sees an old friend and suddenly realises – apparently for the first time – that the ponies they’re fighting against are – shock horror – ponies. It’s as if she’d never fought someone she’d previously known for the entire war. There is nowhere near enough buildup to pull that off without feeling like contrivance.
What’s worse is the finale doesn’t actually build on the middle at all. It’s more like the climax happens in spite of the story, not because of it. There was one twist that I was rooting for that would actually restore some semblance of respectability to the story – that Fluttershy would refuse to play along – but even that hope went unanswered as the six mares picked up their respective elements of harmony (the fight was happening outside the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters) and brought sunshine and rainbows back to Equestria, just as Pinkie predicted.
It’s the most clichéd bollocks I’ve read for a long while. But what really confuses me is the title. It would make sense if Fluttershy’s character changed during the story, but it doesn’t. At the first opportunity, her old self surfaces, and it stays in view the whole time. There was kindness all the way through the story ‘A World Without Kindness’. That’s why I hoped Fluttershy was going to spurn them at the end.
That would have made for an ending, but as it is the plot just doesn’t hold together as anything more than a systematic abuse of contrivance and cliché. As much as I really dug bilymorph’s portrayal of Fluttershy, it was the only light in a vast sea of ‘WTF?’
Verdict: Highly Recommended as an example of how not to write a story.
All of which only leaves me to ponder whether this really fits the prompt at all. I guess it does: they do make the best of living in their own particular post-apocalypse. But really it's a story about being handed the best win available on a silver platter by the power of plot – hardly a spiritual successor to the theme that is Fallout.
EDIT: It should be noted that the epilogue was not present when I started reading, and was never a part of the competition submission.
Reading this took away my motivation to go check the contest winners. In fact, that last quote by itself could have replaced the entire review.
That is actually one of my pet peeves.
Between this and the horse kissing day contest, there seems to be a trend in contests not bringing out the best in fimfic anymore. I think most of the great authors are burned out on prompts.
2846109 I'll take the odds, you take the evens?
That gives you Pascoite and NorsePony at a minimum...
2846146 I guess we'll find out, because now I need to know. I'm hard pressed to imagine that Pascoite, Carabras, Aquaman, and Blueshift are even capable of writing a worse story than this.
To be fair, billymorph is new here, and he hasn't had much time to go through the improvement process displayed by a lot of people here over time. I hope he doesn't get scared off, because he seems like the sort of person who could become a decent writer.
But yes, I think mechanics should factor into contest entrants' scores. Otherwise, what sort of example are the judges setting?
2846265 I agree. I really wanted to like this because of some of the good flow that he has in his prose. More like that opening set of paragraphs and he'll have a real winner on his hands.
I suspect what he really needs is a good editor to steer him right; get the basics down so he can write without having to force his ideas onto metaphorical paper.
I could be uncharitable here, since two-thirds of your review is raging about grammar … but in both the case of the review and the story, I've learned to tamp down my editorial instincts and look at mechanics as part of the overall picture instead of a dealbreaker. (Plus, you're typing a blog post rather than a contest submission, so arguably the standards are different.) The sentence above doesn't invalidate your review, but for the same reason, the occasional misused semicolon doesn't destroy a story.
We'll have to agree to disagree on attributions. "Sang" is the perfect word to convey meaning quickly and unobtrusively, which is the entire point of using "said" in the first place. Replace it with "said" and suddenly in order to convey the same meaning you have to load that quote down with an unnecessary sentence of description. The worst thing I can say about "corrected" is that (in context) that quote would work without a dialogue tag, but I can't work up the umbrage to call that more than a nitpick.
This, on the other hand, is a significant critique. Some allowances should be made for pony psychology, but I suspect those same allowances would break the story, because I'd have an awful hard time squaring how ponies willing to stop fighting on a dime would have gone to war in the first place.
And that missing comma is really, really unfortunate.
2846422
I've seen a few people say something to this effect, but I've never really seen anyone explain what it means. I'm of the opinion that ponies are psychologically akin to humans because that's how you make a show that relates to little girl's lives. I'd be interested to know how others differ on that view.
15,000 word limit. Mind you, he did sneak in 730 extra words in there, but unless the judges open up on how they did their judging, we can't really know why the story got 86 something-points. There's a mention on the results page that talks about characters, setting, atmosphere, and bat ponies, so maybe there just weren't enough judges interested in grammar. Seriously, I may be one of those (disgusting) readers who either don't notice or don't mind most grammar errors, but it's really surprising to learn that for something put up on EqD, grammar wasn't apparently an important consideration. (Or at least not important enough to penalize stories).
2846527 Honestly, I don't really mind the grammar stuff that much. I think it always looks worse because it inherently tends to take up more physical space in a review, but it certainly wasn't a deal-breaker here. The dialogue mechanics are a bigger issue for me, personally, because they really flattens the kind of writing I enjoy the most. There is, for example, no way I can possible agree with Horizon's comment about 'corrected'. That will ever be a pox on writing (aimed at anyone over six, at least), but I can still accept that not everyone feels that way.
Many are the comments I've read with one popular author taking pot-shots at another author over attribution. That's an ongoing war and I have picked my side.
Now if we could just have a war over line-spacing...
I hope the others fair better. I'm proud of Bad Horse for clobbering his entry so quickly.
2846122 2846146
That's from the same month as both of the contests mentioned.
Honestly, I think that this is a specific problem rather than a symptom of something larger. The Writeoff Association's monthly competitions have been turning out some consistently cool stuff, and those are not only written to a prompt but also within a tight deadline. Here are the stories from last month which have been edited and published to FIMFic, and here's where you might recognize the names from.
As for what was going on with EqD's things …
The Hearts and Hooves Day one wasn't a contest, just a "fanfic event", which might have affected how seriously people took it. Also, shipping fics tend to have more problems connecting to a general audience; if you're not there to watch magical pastel ponies smooch, or if you don't ship the story's pair, you're probably not going to get much out of randomly popping in and picking a story to read (above and beyond the usual gamble on text quality).
The MMDGC … this is just my opinion, but I think the prompt was bad and constraining. The last one threw open the door to a wide-open sandbox, and explicitly encouraged ground-up worldbuilding of the sort that produced (say) Queen of Queens. This one was "Rewrite these stories, putting your spin on them but staying true to their core concept." (A good writer can still burst out of those walls and make something amazing, but that's like saying a good RPG gamemaster can run an adventure filled with deep, rich roleplaying even if they're stuck with a munchkin monster-hacking system like D&D4e; the fact that it's possible is faint praise when there are any number of alternatives which make the process easier and place more of the focus on it.) "Post-apocalyptic ponies" had some potential, but really, how do you write a "Cupcakes" homage — within a Teen rating, no less — or a "My Little Dashie" homage and still manage to say something vivid and new?
2846688
> I feel it is necessary to point out that InquisitorM didn't say it should be replaced with said. He said that the attribution was redundant.
That's pretty much the opposite of what I read.
2846471
Maybe psychology was the wrong word? I'm with you that they think in recognizably human ways, but their core values are foreign in ways that touch deeply on the issues I mentioned. Similarly, I think most of us here would cry foul if we read a (non-comedic, non-random) story in which Twilight Sparkle casually ate a steak.
2846175
Keep in mind that Soge ranks me as an average author. Not average within contest entries or any such other subset. Average over FiMFiction as a whole, and he's disliked the majority of my stories he's read. So you're not necessarily doing him any favors here.
2846175 I'll take that bet! I have an old Lovecraft parody that I left up for a week before unpublishing (but not deleting) it. You might find it an effective substitute for ipecac.
Srsly, the only other entry I read was NorsePony's, and while I had a couple of specific reservations about it, I don't think it was bad at all. I'm only two chapters in, though.
2847000
I think the original prompt set actually said not to try redoing the referenced stories, but to take the prompt as worded and go do something original. My story ended up mirroring the original's circumstances close enough that I asked the judges to make sure I wouldn't be disqualified for being too close. And now in his blog post, Burraku_Pansa says he specifically judged it as a plus if a story stayed on a close parallel with the original. So... I dunno. Maybe I'm remembering the original rule wrong, maybe it wasn't enforced, maybe they changed their minds.
2847081
And this is why I try to let the little grammatical things slide in stories, because the alternative is wasting my time on an internet pissing match over why the phrase "rather than description" that I explicitly highlighted, and which you omitted from your quote, directly contradicts your assertion that "the attribution is redundant."
Similarly, I could try to explain what I actually meant about how values are shaped by the confluence of biology and psychology, but I started with a stupid example and I don't feel like an uphill battle with someone who's already misinterpreting me. Game over, I concede, my point was dumb.
2847118
Just to complete the trifecta, I was wrong about that as well; I was misremembering "tone" as "core concept" from this original post on the rules.
Still, I think that still stands somewhat in support of my point, that if the tone is the same then you're writing a homage.Edit: Nah, my opinions are just full of shit today or something.
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw2526_small.jpg
2847000 2847081
Right, let me just clear that up before any real arguing breaks out.
What I meant to say, regardless of whether I managed to make it clear, is that while I didn't particularly like 'sang' as it was used, but that it was in no way technically incorrect. It is a facet of fanfiction that many things will get borrowed from the show, and that a certain amount of understanding is assumed along with those things, including that the words are from a song. In this instance, I found that the song didn't really need any attribution at all – in fact, letting the reader add that in for themselves probably enriches the experience – but the real point of mentioning it was as an example of a mere preference, as opposed to the latter, and actually incorrect, saidisms like 'corrected'.
I initially learned my view of attribution from Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Brown and King, but I have since found many, many more books, websites, and authors than espouse an almost identical set of values. For example, the top three [relevant] results of a Google search:
Joanna Bourne: When to use saidisms
Malcom Wood: Saidisms
The Writing Addict: Fifty Shades of Said
With only minor variance, they all suggest that there are better ways of writing than using non-standard saidisms (retorted, corrected, snarled, grumbled, chided, et. al.). In fact, there's aren't many writing sources that say otherwise any more. Plus, I have found that teaching newer authors to do it my way means that they're learning show vs tell at the same time, as well as efficiency of wording.
It's not just preference; there are reasons why the modern style is better, and most people appreciate the logical approach that explains why, not just says 'do it like this'. This is why I'm willing to get feisty over it, but I'm not trying to say that words like 'sang' are outright wrong, and I hope that it didn't come across that I was.
EDIT: Never mind. Too late!
2847157 I think as many stories ended up using the original story as a framework than went for something completely new, so there was a mixed bag all around. And at least one judge expressly wanted the stories to reflect the originals in a significant way, though I'm pretty sure there was some language in the rules about not just rewriting MLD to be better. So I think there ended up being a pretty even split on both entrants and judges as to whether that was desired or not. I can definitely see this type of prompt as being hard to work with both from a writer's and a reader's perspective. I found it a little easier than the first MDG, and my entry for that one was so lackluster that I was convinced I'd get about the same quality out of this one.
2847186
I'm sorry about stirring up dust in your comments section.
2847197
I acknowledge your post. tl,dr: bad day here, we're still talking past each other, and Scott has already stepped in. If you think there's anything more to say, I'm happy to take a deep breath and attempt to talk like an adult in PM. Otherwise, please continue on with as few hard feelings as possible.
2847217
Alright, new topic! We can do this.
> I found it a little easier than the first MDG, and my entry for that one was so lackluster that I was convinced I'd get about the same quality out of this one.
I didn't enter either of them due to awkward timing, but I really regret missing the first one; I had some fun ideas for it. My best MMDGC idea was going to be My Little Dashie, except that Dash is delivered to a brony geek's house, and a junkie (thinking it's a new computer) steals the box off of the doorstep in an attempt to sell the contents for drug money. Then when he opens up the box to find a pastel pony, it shocks him out of his downward spiral, and filly-Dash helps him detox and reconcile with his estranged wife and young daughter.
I gave it up when I realized that there was no way I could follow my muse and still keep it Teen.
2846175 Sounds like a fun idea.
2847118 Nah, I just think you are the average author I tend to read. Outside youtube readings, I am very selective.
2848034 Righty ho then. Bit of a rough day today, as my blog post will tell you, so I'll get started on 3rd place tomorrow.
2847118
I'll cite one of Obs' first descriptions of the contest: 'The Second Most Dangerous Game is about “Revamping The Classics”'. Also the guideline of
I wouldn't say I was out to give the most points specifically to stories which stayed on a close parallel with the originals, but more the ones that made the effort of improving and/or revamping them. And to improve upon and/or revamp a story, there's got to be some strong ties to the original, or else you're just making your own thing related to the original by boiled-down prompt alone.
I fully agree with 2847000 when he says that this was a less ideal, much more restrictive contest than the first one, and personally, my interpretation of the restrictions is roughly the same as what he puts forward in the afore-linked comment. If that guideline up above wasn't a thing, I would have been doing my judging quite differently, I think, but even so, it doesn't bother me that other judges didn't necessarily have the same ideas as me of what deserves a high score. The contest was interpreted multiple ways by the entrants, so it's probably for the best that the same was true for the judges, at least in that it helped keep some viable fics from being locked out of the contest just because the author's interpretation of the contest wasn't represented amongst the judges.
As to the actual blog post: I feel as though you're hitting the nail on the head in some parts of what you're saying, IM (can I call you "IM"? I don't think I've ever spoken a word to you before), but missing the mark elsewhere.
A World Without Kindness's mechanical problems were a big reason that I kept it firmly out of the top spot in my own scoring. While I don't get too strict about lower spots, for something to place first in a contest (or second, or third), I've definitely got a baseline somewhere in the area of "were the mechanical issues infrequent and/or minor enough that they bothered me no more than once or twice?" This story had me tripping up left and right, so yeah, I couldn't justify giving it a high relative score, no matter how many of and how much the other judges seemed to love it.
I'm also mostly on the same page with you regarding the ending, in that I thought it was rushed, somewhat contrived, and kind of underwhelming all around.
As for what of what you've said that I'm not feeling, a lot of it is in the area of
Firstly, you act as though Fluttershy's having saved Rarity, in contradiction with the story's title, is a problem. One of the story's major points is just how much Fluttershy knows that coldness is the right option—she drops the story title in her thoughts frequently enough for me to call it too blatant, in fact—but how she is unable to match her actions to the viewpoint. I recall at least one other character referencing it, even—why does it sound like you missed that? Any rate, Fluttershy has tried to change to match the world, but is too soft-hearted to do it completely. The story is named for the viewpoint she keeps trying to embody, and the reversal at the climax is that she allows herself to stop trying to embody that viewpoint. Not sure what you're on about with either.
Secondly, Pinkie's not that much of a focus, so making a big deal out of her tapping on the 4th wall or having a premonition (since were either outside of the realm of her character?), especially considering that the perspective character and everyone else just assumes she's in denial anyway, so it comes out to the same thing, for the most part—she could just be in denial and happen to be right, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference, unless I'm forgetting some big 4th wall break, or something. If I am, forgive me.
Third-and-sort-of-lastly, why is it a problem that the story is a pseudo-retelling of the first two episodes in an AU setting? That's how the author told the story, and it almost comes off as though your problem with that is simply that it's not how you would've done it, but you're wording it a little strongly for it to be that.
I want to call back to my first issue, though, the thing about your issue with the title and what you perceive to be a lack of a reversal for Fluttershy.
Stopping being kind is what Applejack told her she had to do, what the world dictated was common sense to better her chances of survival, and what she'd been trying to convince herself of throughout the story.
I mean, look at that last one. How freaking underwhelming would it be if there wasn't a happy ending, after a line like that? How can you call Fluttershy spurning kindness at the end a "twist you were rooting for" when, at every possible opportunity, the story was going on about how unkind the world was now? My criticism of the story goes in the opposite direction: I thought the repetition of the titular phrase was so frequent and tactless that to fulfill it would have been the most obvious, banal route possible. Mind, the happy ending given needed work, but the build-up to it was (excessively, in some ways) appropriate.
2849934
And that's where we clearly diverge. What was underwhelming for me was that this ending was playing to expectations, whereas the unhappy ending would have played against the norm to do the unexpected and actually make a point. That would have been a great ending because it wasn't the one that all the events pointed to with the subtlety of a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster™. This is my issue with the title vs. behaviour in the story. Right from the start, we have a character who has told herself that the world doesn't have any kindness in it, but her actions don't fit that description. That's what gave me the twitch: it was setting up an ending that would have been dull if it had followed through on it. Then you add in Pinkie's premonition and the fact that the pilot is playing out all over again, and they all point to the same place. Play against that order and you have something that could be interesting, but walk straight into the ending as-advertised and you don't have much of anything.
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. You understand that all of those lines you quoted were the reason that the happy ending was the obvious one, right? I mean, that's my whole point. That felt obvious the instant she found out it was Rarity and spared her; hence, I was hoping that it twisted the other way.
Maybe you don't understand people all that well, but I was actually giving the author some credit for understanding that dogma requires repetition – that which is evidently true rarely requires to be highlighted. She is repeating the essence of the title because she isn't comfortable with it and because it is against her nature, so there is no reason to think she wouldn't go the happy-ending route.
But, if you didn't pick up on the story heading that way, I can see how my reaction would be deeply confusing. I hope I have managed to bridge that perception gap for you.
My guess is that the author made the choice to make the ending obvious, but to make the journey there the engaging part, like in a romance or train-wreck comedy (as opposed to making it about the mystery of where it would end). Based on how well he wrote Fluttershy, I'd say he was on the right path, but that's also what made the battle-halting cliché as big a deal as it was. When your story is about how you get the ending you've been selling since the start, you don't really have room for contrivance unless it serves up greater conflicts in it's wake. Here, there contrivances flattened the agency of the characters involved by making it feel like something that was destined to happen (and hence why I disliked Pinkie's input so much).
Anyway, thanks for commenting!
-M
2851033
So, let me try and sort this out.
Your blog post had me thinking you were playing on level one, i.e. that you were taking the title and all of Fluttershy's moaning at face value, and then assuming that the ending would be that she'd live up to them just because the title and all wouldn't "make sense" otherwise.
In my response, I was putting forward a level two interpretation, i.e. that the title and Fluttershy's moaning were purposefully ironic, and that they were so heavy-handed as to imply that the ending couldn't possible be expected to fall in line with their face value. That an ending which had Fluttershy spurn the others would have to ignore Fluttershy's characterization up to that point.
But in reality, you were hoping the author was playing on level three? That the title and Fluttershy's moaning and all were what they were specifically to lead people into thinking on level two, so that the twist of Fluttershy actually spurning everyone else hits harder?
That doesn't really make sense to me in the context of either the story or your post.
Fluttershy fails to be cruel even when killing Twilight would save everyone else. So she'll succeed at being cruel when kindness is what will save everyone? Something more would've had to have happened in between, there—definitely something other than her getting a moment or two to bask in friendship from Rainbow Dash. All other things being equal, if she turned away at the end, it would have been out of character.
That's primarily why I don't understand your own gripe about the buildup. The story built up to the ending it had.
These two lines of thought aren't really compatible, in that the first has you saying the ending came out of left field, while the second has you saying that everything in the story actually pointed right to the ending that happened. Since I only had the first to go off of, you can see how I would assume you were ignoring the obvious, right?
What it smacked of to me was that the author wasn't aware how obvious they were making it. Also,
Ignoring (except to the extent that I'm acknowledging it by saying I'm ignoring it) your condescension regarding the repetition, yes, it's clear that she's repeating it because it's a mindset she hasn't actually adopted (and I said as much, no?), but the repetition got that across to me right around the start of the story—to continue repeating it up, down, left, and right was just excessive, no matter the final outcome.
2849934
Without having yet read the story in question here, that's exactly the kind of thing I like seeing (if it's done right). To put it more clearly, I vastly prefer stories where the author doesn't pull punches over ones where everything's tied up at the end with a neat little metaphorical bow on top. If the world's portrayed as having gone to hell, it's very difficult to justify an ending in which everything suddenly isn't hell. The best you can normally do, in my view, is present some faint glimmer of hope that things might improve eventually, but it's poor form to do something like negate a years-long conflict with a single spur-of-the-moment revelation (which, if that's indeed how this story concluded, admittedly does severely disappoint me).
2852210
I'm with you there. And again, I thought this story's ending felt rushed and/or contrived in a lot of ways. My point there was just that it was clearly the ending being built up to.
It wasn't quite that. And overall, the ending sort of fits what you said you'd want, in that the world is fixed, but not the characters; the "faint glimmer of hope" is that they might one day be okay with themselves and one another.
2851945
I was intentionally being evasive to avoid whatever spoilers I could, so I cop to any lack of clarity being a result of my writing.
But like I said, we diverge on what 'face value' means. To me, the end did fall in line with 'their face value'. There isn't so much a third 'level' so much as a difference of gut instinct on where the story was headed. Her repetition was so heavy handed that I assumed she was going to follow through with her instincts, where as I get the impression that you thought it meant she would follow through with her thinking. I didn't make any assumptions about what I was supposed to think (which is actually quite rare, for me) until after I had finished reading.
In the end, both ending were possible, based on the characterisation. I wanted the one that wasn't generic. That's all.
No, but then you seem to be taking them out of context. In one place I'm talking about the plot, and in the other I'm talking about Fluttershy's characterisation/drive. The plot points that lead to the situation at the castle were very contrived, but Fluttershy's characterisation wasn't.
Well, yes. That's probably true.
Well, yes, but... the whole point is that she is having that war with herself. Not to mention it would have been out of character.
In the end, I just don't think it's anything more than a difference in perspective over which was the obvious ending.
2852210 It's like you said was I was thinking, but in several thousand less words :P
To be fair, Burraku_Pansa's right: they don't all end up best chums or anything. But that cuts both ways. The more antagonistic they feel towards each other, the more contrived it feels that the Elements of Harmony even worked.
2852358
Ah. I took "at all" to include characterization and whatnot. Gotcha.
That in mind, I can accept just leaving it a difference of perspectives on the obvious. And like I said, I agree with a good deal of what you had to say. While I certainly don't think it's "the most clichéd bollocks I’ve read for a long while" (though some of the other entries I read might actually qualify), it does bother me that it won.
2852362
I'm confused, because it actually sounds like you agree with me, kind of. I was expecting a happy ending. A sad ending would have been preferable, but I didn't feel it was what was being built up to. What do you disagree with there?
The only one I'd considered oblivious (at first) was Inquisitor, in the sense that I'd taken the way he'd worded to blog to mean that he wasn't picking up on how Fluttershy's struggle with stopping being kind was a thing.
And I'd like to point out, in case you didn't catch it, that a number of judges had this as their first pick, whereas it didn't make my top five. Literally none of the judges scored it lower than I did.
Edit: Scratch that. One other scored it lower, and that happened to be the one judge that didn't give scores on the sheet I'd been looking at. Still, though.
2852773
I was making a point about how heavy-handedly the author was pounding in the whole "this world is unkind" thing.
Picture this: It's the final moment. The other Elements are waiting for Fluttershy to complete the pattern and save everything. But no, she turns away! The others call to her, but her mind is made up. After all, there's no kindness left in this world (#19).
That's the reversal I picture, with the state of the rest of the fic.
I wasn't saying that level three is bad; I'm all for it. Just that it wasn't supported within the story (hence "All other things being equal, if she turned away at the end, it would have been out of character."), and also that I didn't read that as IM's perspective from the blog (as opposed to in his responses to me).
Just wrote the sentence:
And thought of you.
Sometimes I think there's just no substitute. I need to economically note she's not meaning what she's saying, and describing a physical reaction at odds with her words would have taken me another full sentence that broke the pacing and drew the reader into the scene rather than the exchange.
2858020 One wonders why you need to inform the reader of this at all. Sounds like it's spoiling all the fun of reading.
Unless it's a 1st person narrative, or an extremely tight 3rd person limited; those break rules all the time.
2847186
I don't think there are. It's faddishness. At worst, speech tags are like adverbs: Often over-used, often unfairly persecuted.
Take that first essay you linked to:
Sure, it can be said differently. But there's no reason given, not in that essay, nor in any other I've read on the subject, why it should be. Information is information, whether it's in a speech tag, description, internal monologue, or actions. All those example "improvements" are worse than the original, IMHO.
The modern style nowadays isn't to use "said". Faulkner did that, and it sounded awful.
The modern style is to omit nearly all speech tags. It results in contemporary books having fewer scenes with more than 2 characters in them. Often, as in Cormac McCarthy's work, it results in passages you have to study and reread just to figure out who's saying what. This is the inevitable result of arbitrary hating on speech tags.
2859896
Well I couldn't condone letting any style dictate the actual structure of a story. That does sound remarkably daft, but I can't pretend I am surprised that people would do it. Since I have no reason to doubt you, sure, that's bullshit. I've read enough books where it works just fine to know that it can be done, though. I've certainly no desire to see it taken on board as some kind of dogma, rather than something to be understood and applied as appropriate. That's bad for everyone.
But so say there is no reason to do it one way rather than another is to discard the entirety of show vs tell as a concept. If what information and what format it is in makes no difference, then we may as well just tell everything – with adverbs for all, naturally. I hope that seems largely nonsensical to everyone.
We both know that every rule is open to being broken once you know why the rule exists, because only then can you know why you're breaking it. My problem is that the reasons for keeping weird-ass saidisms in prose (short of PoV purposes and narrative voice; even I used chided in The Boy Who Cried Wolf), is pretty much non-existent, and this is why so many people seem to get confused by it. The minimalistic method has been picked up quite quickly by learners because it's entirely logical and consistent with show-vs-tell theory in general.
And if I haven't been clear in general, I should say that I absolutely do not condone a 'it must be this and nothing else' approach. Nearly everyone is going to use the odd exception, and they're probably fine as long as they remain just that: the exception.
2860066
That is a good point. Maybe. But you're not saying "Show, don't tell" then; you're saying "Show instead of showing and telling." Using a non-said speech tag doesn't prevent you from also showing something. The speech tag doesn't take an extra word; you would've just used "said", which conveys strictly less information than any other speech tag.
Also, I'm not a huge fan of "show, don't tell." It's another of those rules that is right most of the time, but not all the time by a longshot, and is more directed at common mistakes of beginning writers than at competent writers (since beginning writers buy far more books on writing). I've written a bunch of posts about it. The first one has some examples of long telling passages from famous novels.
(Copy-pasted from my blog index.)
I might agree with you about how often to use speech tags, or adverbs, or to show vs. tell. I'm just touchy about all these things, from seeing them given as rules so often. I dislike frequent saidisms, but I think it's impossible for us to tell, after a hundred years of deliberately eliminating them, whether our feelings about them are objective or cultural.
2860210
Again, I am absolutely with you, there. It's wielded like the be-all and end-all of how to write, yet it explains fuck all in and of itself, and not many people take the time to truly make sense of it – probably because most of them are doing it by rote, themselves. That's what makes it so counter-productive.
What has really stuck for me is to always try to write in order of optimisation:
1. Try writing it without dialogue tags. If it doesn't work, make sure it isn't because your dialogue is flat or your procedure of events is unclear.
2. Can you add beats to clarify who is speaking?
3. Try writing it with said.
4. If said looks odd, try writing a context sensitive verb like asked, answered, replied, shouted, whispered, or even called out. These are practical and descriptive verbs that are completely in line with acceptable showing principles.
5. If you are writing with a strongly-coloured narrative voice, consider the use of something that might strengthen that voice, as this can be showing while telling if done carefully. Do not overuse it.
6. If you've gotten this far, the chances are the situation is simply outside your current writing skill. Don't sweat it; get some advice or go with anything that gets the job done.
Essentially, using verbs that directly tell the reader the emotional context of dialogue are exactly the kind of telling we generally try to avoid as writers. If it tries to tell me how to think of feel about something, then you're on cardinal sin territory. If it merely tells me something that I would rather have worked out for myself a-la show versus tell principles, then you're on shaky grounds, but hardly critical. Browne and King summed it up very succinctly in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: "R.U.E. Resist the Urge to Explain."
I also wrote my own treatise on what I've leaned and how I approach the subject: Dialogue Speaks for Itself. It has turned out to be a magnificent teaching tool.
In the end, I have yet to ever find a use of '(s)he lied' that didn't kill a scene. It is my cardinal sin of all cardinal sins. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but I will say that it is sufficiently unlikely that anyone still learning the basics would do well to steer clear of it.
I've been trying to avoid your reviews while I muddle my way through MMDGC, but I came back to this one.
Holy crap, I'm glad I'm not the only one disappointed in this story. :| I've read entries that didn't even make it to the finals that were better post-apocalypse! I probably wouldn't have felt this way had I gotten to it before the results were announced, but it still wouldn't have left a major mark on me.
2863324 Between Soge and me, everything from 2nd to 7th has gotten pretty stellar reviews. Only 9th is still awaiting review by me. I would very much like to hear what you made of Bad Horse's story, but I'm guessing a MMDGC mega-post is in the offing.
2863493
It is. I'm hoping by the end of the month. I have...
52 left ;_;
[sobbing intensifies]
2861944
Then you will find that I write, and will continue to write, stories that contain elements you identify as bad writing. I'm already prepared to agree to disagree, but I really had to speak up one last time because of something you mentioned in the writeup you linked:
This doesn't match my actual experience of the world. If printed dialogue was able to accurately capture people's emotions with no supporting prose, then smart people would be capable of communicating emotional subtext on the Internet (the world's biggest reserve of untagged dialogue).
That's simply not the case. Poe's Law is a thing.
2875180
That would be because you have misunderstood the passage: correlation does not equal causation.
Setting aside the fact that it opens with a certain amount of hedging meant to imply that it is not definitive, the opening line does not say that all prose must be good if it has no supporting prose – therein lies the fallacy. You have drawn an unwarranted conclusion from the text, which, frankly, is not my problem.
What the passage actually says is that from a limited perspective one could assume that the optimum dialogue is such that does not need description nor attribution.
Out of pure interest, what was your opinion on the epilogue?
3039199 I don't have much to say about it. It fees like a bit overwrought – and something of a crowbar after the ham-fisted climax – but in truth it's very hard to separate ill-will towards it from the fallout of the main story's issues. I suppose in the end, the main thing is that I don't really feel like it actually adds anything. The characters relationship is reasonably guessable, and the shift in the focus of the elements felt a lot more like fan-service than a plot-relevant or storytelling choice.