Paul's Monday Reviews X · 9:40pm Apr 27th, 2015
Ten weeks of reviews have now come and gone, which leads me to wonder: what do people think of my reviews? I tend not to get much feedback, so I want to know if people are even paying attention. I won't stop even if you all say no, though; I'm writing these as much for my benefit as anyone else's. I'd just like to know if there's anything I can do to improve this little section of my miniscule domain.
Onward! Good stuff coming this week.
Stories for This Week:
Off The Edge Of The Map by Daetrin
The Adventures of Sweetie_Belle.jpg by Dash the Stampede
Young Eyes by Lapis-Lazuli and Inky J
Everypony Cuddles, Sometimes by shortskirtsandexplosions
All of It, for Her by Pav Feira
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 1
Not Bad: 0
None: 0
A friend – I can’t recall who at the moment – recommended I read the story Apotheosis, but when I found that Off The Edge Of The Map came first, I threw it on my RiL instead. I was told that Daetrin was a skilled worldbuilder, so at the very least my curiosity was piqued.
Off The Edge Of The Map has Rainbow Dash attempting a new trick with Fluttershy watching. She inadvertently creates an ancient magical method of teleportation that drops them off in the middle of an ocean. The entire point of the story is, simply, their journey to get home. Along the way they meet an island spirit, journey on a magical ship, unintentionally become involved in a coup against a dragon king, get caught in a ghost city and end up in a tornado. Yeah, I know, that’s a lot of crap to go through in just 35k words.
Which is part of the problem.
Daetrin devotes precious little time to his main characters, instead focusing much more on the worldbuilding. The end result is a story with a vast, impressive world but a bland story. There was only one point where I became invested in Rainbow’s and Fluttershy’ situation, and that was in the ghost town of Cantrot. Other than that, nothing really seemed serious. That’s not to say serious things didn’t happen – our heroines nearly died on numerous occasions – it’s just that Daetrin failed to give them their due attention.
Let’s take Cantrot as an example. Daetrin spends a lot of time showing how Rainbow and Fluttershy are caught up in the illusions of the ghost town, to such a degree that you can really feel their unease. But then, when they get out, you discover that they’d gone two days without food or water and spend a few more just trying to recover physically and mentally. After devoting thousands of words to the main event, only 352 (yes, I counted) are devoted to the recovery time.
This is a tragic mistake. Daetrin goes through just enough trouble to inform us that Fluttershy is having horrible nightmares and Rainbow is still questioning what is or isn’t real. These are golden opportunities for character and relationship building, and we just blow right by. This happens throughout the entire story: all the best moments for character growth are practically ignored in favor of the big events. The end result is that neither Rainbow nor Fluttershy actually appear to have developed as characters, despite the fact that Daetrin clearly wants us to think otherwise.
There was a wide range of other mistakes, most of them minor. I did see a large number of these, particularly in the first chapter:
“I’m just worried about Angel Bunny and my chickens and birds and all my animals. Who will take care of them if we don’t get back soon?” Fluttershy’s ears drooped and Dash trotted over to put a hoof on her shoulder. “Hey, we’ve got plenty of friends in Ponyville. You know they’ll take care of things while we’re away. Spike’s done it before, remember?”
Two characters talking, one paragraph. Ouch. This really hurt the story in my eyes, but it looks like Daetrin learned their lesson early because it didn’t occur at all in the latter two chapters.
The formatting was also questionable. On many occasions, Daetrin inserted a “***” which was clearly meant to indicate a new section, only to have said new section start off exactly where the last one left off. This is a blatantly improper use of story breaks and I’m still scratching my head over it.
Another thing that bugged me was that every chapter contained tons of events; I feel like the story should have been divided up into smaller chapters (perhaps where the "***" were located?). For example, the third chapter included the ghost town of Cantrot, the tornado in the Everfree and their return to Ponyville. That should have been three chapters, four if you count the epilogue.
Combine all of these issues with weak dialogue and generally ‘meh’ treatment of any and all side characters and I found the story to be extremely lacking. Sometimes I felt like Daetrin was intentionally running past these parts because all he wanted was to worldbuild. The ending in particular suffered from this: it seemed as though Daetrin just wanted to move on to the sequel and do more worldbuilding, and so the emotions felt forced at best.
Now, having said all of that…
The worldbuilding is, indeed, excellent. The sheer creativity of it is almost inspiring. For that alone, this story earns some high marks, though not enough to negate the flaws and fall into my ‘good’ category. I am told Daetrin tries harder with the sequel to write an actual story, so I’m going to be looking forward to that.
Bookshelf: Worth It
You talk about ridiculous. The Adventures of Sweetie_Belle.jpg essentially takes everything we know about My Little Pony and reformats it into a life of code. The general idea is that, while going to school (Cheerilee’s_Classroom.exe), Sweetie_Belle.jpg witnesses the software undergoing a crash due to a corrupted Diamond_Tiara.png file and thus decides to fix the problem by leaving Princess.drive(Cel:) and entering the world wide web in search of a replacement Diamond_Tiara.png.
Is it weird?
You bet.
Is it stupid?
Kinda.
Do I care?
Nope.
Despite being a bit of a chore to read, The Adventures of Sweetie_Belle.jpg is an amusing and admittedly creative premise. I can understand why it’s so small, though; writing those alternate names had to be a pain to recall. Still, I had pointless fun, so I’ll be looking into the sequel (after checking out Swooty Bell Adventures). The fact that this is clearly a crackfic but didn’t summon my ire is impressive in its own right.
Bookshelf: Special Placement: Crackfics
Good goddess, people, I think I got diabetes from reading this story. I mean, I’ve always known I was going to get it, but not like this.
Young Eyes follows Dinky as she decides to stake out her room in search of the spirit or whatever that creates the rolls of dust and fur under her bed and behind her toy box. The entire story is written in this delightful way that makes it clear we’re seeing things through the eyes of a child, albeit a bright one. Dinky firmly believes in a wide variety of mysterious things that adults just don’t know about, from the Equestrian equivalent of Santa Claus to a spirit that maliciously steals foals’ homework. She’s convinced that she’ll someday earn her cutie mark for being able to find and meet these creatures.
And this time, she succeeds.
In finding a creature, not getting a cutie mark.
This well-written story was all kinds of adorable. There’s really nothing more to be said.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Yep, SS&E graces my blog yet again. At some point I’ll get past all the stories pre-RiLed, but that may be a while.
Apparently, today is the day of the cute story, because this one rivals Young Eyes for pure adorableness. In it, Twilight has devised a three-step test, supposedly for Princess Cadance, to test out scientific elements of nuzzling with other ponies, and decides to make Rainbow Dash her test subject. Dash is wholeheartedly opposed to this, but gives in when Twilight bribes her with cider while making a face that, to quote, “makes saying 'no' feel like kicking a puppy's teeth in.”
A lot of people consider SS&E’s prose to be overly flowery to the point of purple prose. This story is no exception, except that the ridiculous prose is all part of the charm and cuteness. One or two of the lines used were a bit over the top, I’ll admit, but it’s a small price to pay to see a (certainly not crushing) Twilight convince a (certainly not getting it) Rainbow to do a few cute things in the name of… er… ‘science.’
Yeah, science, sure, that’s right.
If you like cute, nonsensical stories, give this one a try. It’s great.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
When I saw that someone out there had actually written a story about Cranky Doodle, I had no choice but to add it to my RiL. A character that nobody writes about being the star of his own story? Yes, please. All of It, for Her is a ‘day-in-the-life’ story about Cranky’s last day in Fillydelphia before moving on to the next town in his cross-Equestria search for the love of his life.
I have to admit, Pav Feira did an excellent job channeling Cranky’s signature voice, complete with dripping sarcasm. We watch him go around the last unchecked part of the city, only this time he has one of those annoyingly cheery, well-meaning ponies following him around. Bunch of sentimental do-gooders. Cranky’s more than accustomed to dealing with her type, though, and (some grumbling aside) just rolls with it.
What I really enjoyed about this piece was the solid nature of Cranky’s conviction. No amount of kindness or sentimentality will draw him away from his goal of finding ‘her.’ On the one hand, I must admire his determination. On the other, one can’t help but wonder how many ponies he left behind after they grew so attached to this strangely likeable old fart.
The story is well written and, by extension, very easy to read. Pav Feira completes the whole thing with some snippets for the show that – if you’re paying attention – reveal how Cranky came by just a few of the trinkets in his massive collection. While he certainly lives up to his name, Cranky still somehow manages to show us that he’s a sensitive soul.
All of It, for Her is a nice little view into the past life of Cranky Doodle. It suffers from the curse of ‘nothing happens,’ but I’m okay with that. I’m happy just to see a story featuring him, and the quiet sense of curiosity it conjures about his journey. If I have any serious regrets, it’s that I really want to see a slice of life story of somepony retracing his steps, but know I’ll probably never get one.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Stories for Next Week
That Is A Friend Who Cares by obabscribbler
The Code's Apprentice by Lapis-Lazuli and Inky J
Music to His Ears by Lady Froey
Necro-Semantics by Wise Cracker
The Sticky showdown by ABagOVicodin
I think your reviews are pretty neat. Even if I normally don't read them all the way through. I tend to just skim to a reviewer's one-line recommendation-or-not, then read a review after to see how my opinion and theirs differed. But your reviews tend to be pretty good in both length and thoughtfulness, so bonus points for that.
Oh... well, I hope you like it more than I liked its side story. Given that I found you can read the side story without the main one comfortably enough, I'll note that not having read TCA affected me not in the slightest in terms of the side story's enjoyability.
Which is to say, even if I had read TCA, I would have still not enjoyed the side story. If you recall, I gave it a, uh, decent thrashing to put it lightly.
I'll be looking forward to this review next week.
On the other hand, for you to give an LLaIJ story a "Pretty Good" does indeed restore the hope I expressed in one of my deleted comments that they did in fact improve with time and experience.
So witch story is the crossover that isn't marked as a crossover?
I really like your reviews, there neat, have a unique rating system and really good in the length department, not too long so that it takes forever to read just one, but not too short either, plus five stories a week is just awesome. It gives me something to look forward to on Monday. Also I'm looking forward to next week's review of TCA, I loved that fic, and if I remember correctly I think I recommend that to you a while back.
I enjoy your reviews as well. They're informative and usually entertaining in their own right. I just enjoy hearing what other people think of stuff I guess.
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Wrong review set. It won't show for another two weeks.
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That's encouraging, thanks!
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I'll try to make it interesting for you, then.
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Ah, so you're the one to blame! The more you know.
It's good to know someone enjoys my reviews so much. thanks!
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Good to know.
I always find them interesting. I find reviews to be one of the quickest ways to dive into a person's tastes and mind. What they do and do not choose to review matters just as much as how they review them. Also, I like the pictures and opening paragraphs
Well this is rare; we're in complete agreement about a story. I'm referring to Off the Edge of the Map. For me, it was probably a little more irksome though, because I'm all about the characters. I only read Off the Edge because it was in the vaunted pony fiction vault, but I found it to be sorely lackluster. It was basically a safari of the author's headcanon surrounding the lands neighboring Equestria, but without any real substance behind it. Rainbow and Fluttershy had no real character arc to speak of, and the romance felt more akin to sexual tension than actual passion.
Apotheosis was better--but it doesn't solve the prequel problems, so much as repeat them to a lesser degree. Luna and Twilight actually have some shit of their own to get through, but the majority of the shit is on Luna's end, and Twilight is just kind of there as to solve Luna's problems for her. And whereas Off the Edge did decently well in setting up the scenario of Flutters and Rainbow being stranded in a faraway land, Apotheosis fails miserably at it.
Off the Edge offered a halfway decently plausible explanation as to why its protagonists suddenly found themselves where they did. Apotheosis does not. The reason we're given that Twilight and Luna suddenly find themselves in a dream world is that "the dragons are trying to teach her a lesson, I guess?
" It gives the whole scenario a sense virtual reality rather than unreality. Lending to the notion that Luna and Twilight are not actually in any danger. Honestly, by the time that I finished the second story, I was bored. The worlds that Daetrin crafts are detailed but ultimately without substance. They felt like taking a tour of Athens from the seat of a bus: we never go beyond the glass. I was wowed by what I saw when it was happening, but after it happened that was it. There was never really any hints of anything beyond the veil. I wouldn't say that they're bad stories, but to me, they were plain.
'Till next time.
I like reading your reviews because I like seeing how a skillful writer analyzes and critiques a story. I figure it provides indirect insight into the thought processes that go into skillful writing, since presumably one would be comparing it to the rubrics, techniques, and patterns that one would use (or avoid using) in one's own writing. I get that vicarious thrill of glimpsing inside a skillful person's head and seeing things how they see them. (I'm probably reading more into it that is really there, but I'll never know the difference and it keeps me happy.
)
Plus it give me more good things to add to my RiL lists, though since they're always overflowing anyway I suppose that's not the most important reason.
Ooh-ho-ho! This puts a smile on my face, considering my new neighbors in that folder have a fair bit of prestige. :D I'm glad you loved it, I was so scared. Finally earned a laugh or two perchance? I told you I'd be able to make it happen >:D
I've had a few adds from this today, so thanks for that :V Even if they're less-than-good rankings of shelves.. :/
You write pretty good reviews, and I actually look forward to reading them! Even if I don't plan on reading any of the stories themselves.
But I guess there's not much of substance I could say in a comment. Reviewing a review?
Maybe you could introduce a debate topic in these to drum up some discussion, if you really wanted.
or even worse: flashy gimmicks.
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Well, this is not encouraging. I'll still be reading Apotheosis, though. We shall see if I agree with your interpretation.
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I go through a few flaming hoops to get those pictures to look decent for my blog, so I rather appreciate that. I also think I've figured out why some of the old ones are glitching; hopefully that won't be a problem from now on.
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You are right, I tend to hold other stories to the same standards I hold myself to. Unless they're of a writing style/genre that I'm no good at, and then I just wing it.
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Sorry, but no. You're gonna have to work a bit harder to get an actual laugh outta me.
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Flashy gimmicks? And be a RainbowBob imitator? Yeah, don't think so. Conversation provokers, though? I could go for that.
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If I'm completely honest, I got lost in Apotheosis, but I still managed to enjoy it. But that was over two years ago, before I knew how to be a good writer (or reader for that matter).
My personal favourite of Daetrin's is Cartography of War. By God, that one takes everything he has already mastered in terms of world building, and also has possibly my all-time favourite slow-burning romance between characters in a fic. Characters, I might add, he has done exceptionally well with the complex development side of things.
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Cartography of War, eh? I'll have to keep that in mind.