Paul's Monday Reviews XI · 6:50pm May 4th, 2015
As many of you are aware, I used to only read stories when I was having a break at work. Now that I'm unemployed, I've had to make some changes. Don't worry none, I'm still reading, I'm simply more organized about it. Anywho, I've not much to say this week, so: to the reviews.
Stories for This 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
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 1
Worth It: 2
Not Bad: 1
None: 0
I’ll admit it, the cover art drew me in. I don’t care what anyone has to say, short hair is always better. Disagree and you’re a heathen fool that eats kittens and smells of elderberries… and you’re not a heathen fool that eats kittens and smells of elderberries, are you? 
That Is A Friend Who Cares is short and simple. Taking place in a Cloudsdale dormitory, we find Fluttershy locked in the bathroom having just cut her hair after some bullies dumped gum and birdseed all over her as a prank. Rainbow Dash finds her and, simply by showing her concern, manages to cheer Fluttershy up a bit.
In all honesty, this story didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t the writing – aside from a few blatantly obvious statements and a typo or two, it was well done. What bothered me is that the story didn’t feel very… clear. What was the point of this? I imagine obabscribbler is trying to teach some kind of lesson about ‘true friends,’ but really, nothing Rainbow does for Fluttershy is unusual, especially for her. I kept waiting for there to be some epiphany or perhaps a bit of subtext to give the story purpose, but it never came.
I suppose I’m okay with that, but in the end That Is A Friend Who Cares just fell flat.
Bookshelf: Not Bad
Let me just start off with an apology and a bit of explaining. When I first tried to write this review, I did so at my parents’ place where the internet is sketchy at best. GDocs was giving me hell, so I ended up having to write the whole thing in Word and emailing it to myself. When I got back to my apartment and opened up the file… the review was gone. All of it. When next I went home, I checked my parents’ computer only to find they’d deleted the file.
As you might imagine, I was frustrated, especially considering it was such a long review and took nearly two hours to write. In the end I waited some time to re-write the review. This is good because it lets me observe the story in a more objective light, but bad in that the story isn’t fresh in my mind anymore and I’m likely to forget a number of things. So my apologies to Lapis-Lazuli and Inky J if this ends up as a more lackluster review.
The Code’s Apprentice in an ambitious but flawed endeavor from a now-famous author that, at the time, was still learning the ropes. The story takes on an entirely new vision of Equestria where the world is divided into two different philosophies: the Way of Harmony and the Way of Dissonance. All of Equestria is ruled by Harmony due to Celestia and her eternal crusade to wipe out Dissonance, and Twilight is to be her final, ultimate weapon to keep Dissonance and its followers under total control forever.
Twilight is unaware of all this, of course, believing only that Dissonance is evil and she needs to obey her teacher. Yet, through the intervention of Chrysalis, Sombra and a few others, Twilight comes to learn about the philosophies of Dissonance. The story, then, is about Twilight’s understanding of what Dissonance really is and why it is not necessarily evil.
Having read a couple of LL&IJ’s more recent stories, I can only say that there’s a clear difference between how they write now and how they wrote The Code’s Apprentice. As such, I won’t harp too much on the major stylistic mistakes that litter this entire story because I know that they don’t exist in their more recent ones. For those of you who lose immersion and interest based on poor word choices, needless exposition and bad phrasing, it will probably be a big turnoff.
But what about the story? There’s the impression that LL&IJ were going for something controversial, and in that way they won big time. The Code’s Apprentice operates under the assumption that there is no true ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ only a great many shades of grey. Things that we all consider to be ‘bad’ are, in accordance with the philosophies of Dissonance, merely an alternative way of living. Via this explanation – which I have greatly simplified to save time – slavery, sexual irresponsibility, violence and even brainwashing (the greatest of all evils) is justifiable and even acceptable. While it is made clear that there is such a thing as ‘going too far,’ that bar is raised very high. Anyone with a sense of traditional morality will loathe it, while the more deviant readers will likely find it refreshing. For myself, I found many of the stances taken by Dissonance to be outright offensive, a fact that greatly hindered the sense of ‘shades of grey’ LL&IJ were trying to show.
I think my greatest problem here was that the reader is outright expected to sympathize and perhaps even accept the followers of Dissonance based almost entirely on the fact that they were arguably the ‘good guys’ of this story. It’s hard to put my finger on why this didn’t work – especially considering how long it’s been since I read the story. However, I didn’t feel like any really good arguments were made in the story. LL&IJ did provide some logical arguments, but they were too few, too short and too far in between. The majority of Twilight’s decisions were based on emotions, which simply isn’t convincing (especially considering half of those emotions were forced upon her while she was unawares).
I think the greatest flaw to the attempt to sway the reader was in how Twilight herself was swayed: she was forced. I don’t mean someone strapped her down and preached Dissonance to her day in and day out until she was brainwashed or anything like that. No, instead LL&IJ established a setting in which just using Dissonance magic once automatically triggers a rewiring of the brain so that the wielder begins behaving abnormally.
So, simply put, Dissonance corrupts by its very nature. That being the case, it’s hard to make an argument that Twilight went the rest of the way of her own volition. She may have taken the first step on her own out of innocent curiosity, but after that Dissonance steadily and rapidly began corrupting her so that she began to see things in a different way. As such, her decline seemed inevitable rather than a conscious decision. I don’t think this point would sway the author though, as it’s made abundantly clear from almost the very beginning that brainwashing is considered to be no big deal in this universe – even Celestia uses it to a certain degree, and happily so.
Here’s the redeeming point in all of this: Harmony isn’t exactly shown to be all roses and rainbows either. While the followers of Harmony are more traditionally ‘good,’ Celestia proves that it can be used for evil just as well as Dissonance can, and with all the same sense of self-righteousness displayed by Twilight as the tale moves on. If LL&IJ did nothing else wonderfully, it was a believable depiction of a righteous, condescending, bigoted and ‘end justifies the means’ Tyrant Celestia.
Getting back to the naturally corrupting nature of Dissonance, it did provide one advantage: it allowed the author to blast through the story at a lightning pace. That might sound odd considering the story’s a whopping 150,000 words long, but that’s only because of the poor stylistic choices of the author rather than a lot of actual time passing. This was another thing I didn’t care for: Twilight goes from the destined arbiter of Harmony to the most powerful Dissonance sorceress within less than a week. There are plausible reasons for that to happen. The problem is, we aren’t made privy to those reasons until late into the story. As a result, Twilight’s dramatic shift in personality comes off as OoC, unrealistic and rushed. If LL&IJ had found a way to clarify this mental manipulation (still perfectly okay, apparently) due to the very use of Dissonance from the beginning I would have had a much easier time choking it down.
Even then, there would be no and is not a good explanation for why all of Twilight’s friends (and her brother) literally went from bastions of Harmony to warriors of Dissonance literally overnight. That’s a bunch of OoC that no amount of finagling and quick thinking will fix, especially considering that they never used Dissonance magic themselves. Luna I could at least understand due to her background in this AU (even if seeing her happily grovelling at Twilight’s hooves left me wanting to vomit), but the rest turned traitor far too quickly to be realistic.
Having said all that, I’m betting you all think I didn’t like the story. On the contrary, it was a very interesting and ambitious prospect. I think the execution was badly fumbled and LL&IJ made a bunch of poor decisions, but I give kudos for the intent and theme of The Code’s Apprentice. I haven’t nearly touched upon everything I could about this story – both the positives and the negatives – due to a need to keep the review from growing too long and the fact that my memory is fuzzy about certain details.
Even so, if you can tolerate some poor writing style decisions and a hamfisted set of arguments in favor of moral depravity, I would recommend this story just for the experience of the concept. I think that, if LL&IJ were to try to write this story now instead of back then, it would have come out as a true classic of brony literature.
Bookshelf: Worth It
I don't know how it happened, folks. Somehow an incomplete story ended up on my RiL and I read it all the way without realizing it wasn't finished. Oops? Oh well, since I did read it, I might as well review what I read.
Music to His Ears is about Vinyl Scratch, who currently lives in Manehattan with her fiancee Octavia and working as a major artist for the Manehattan Record Company. Sounds good, right? Only one small problem: Vinyl is suffering from a case of sexual miss-identity. While physically a mare, Vinyl considers himself a stallion. This is something that Vinyl only just came to recognize about a year before the story starts, but now the pressure of an identity crisis is hitting hard. After coming out to his best friend and manager, Derpy, Vinyl finally informs Octavia of what's happening. To Octavia's credit, she is nothing but supportive.
Music to His Ears is about Vinyl's struggle for identity and happiness while facing a hard turn in his life. This is not a subject I've seen at all, except for pointless or unrealistic clop stories. To Lady Froey's credit, it feels incredibly real. I don't just mean Vinyl's mental struggle, either, but the world in which Vinyl lives. The everyday glum of watching his creativity brushed aside for the appeasement of a hard-nosed record company, the disinterest of a local doctor regarding the medical aspects of the situation, the fears of having to wait forever for some kind of 'treatment' that may or may not help; Lady Froey has shown something far more natural and down-to-earth than your usual fanfic fare, and I wholeheartedly approve.
The biggest issue I have is the writing style itself. Now don't get me wrong, the writing style isn't necessarily 'bad.' It is different though, and comes with both positives and negatives. On the positive side of things, the style is extremely direct: there's very little pause to bother with descriptions and feelings or a visual display. Instead, the author attempts to show emotions and the world via the actions and words of the characters. When worked properly it can really work wonders, because without ever telling you anything about a character's emotional state you can still see what the characters are feeling.
Then comes the caveat: it has to be worked properly. In some scenes, Lady Froey pulled things off, but there were more than a few spots in the story where a certain emotion was intended but got lost in the directness. A moment in the first chapter puts this problem on display quite clearly; when going to get a coffee from a local café, the clerk refers to Vinyl as a 'sir.' Later in the story, Vinyl mentions in the narrative that this moment brought him great joy because somepony finally 'got it right.' The problem is, none of that joy appeared in the moment itself, not a drop of it. Maybe a mild pleasure, but that's about it.
If Lady Froey can learn to master this writing style, we may have an awesome story on our hands. Granted, some might think that the subject material alone makes this story awesome, and I do give kudos for the concept. Yet I'm left with the impression that this story has barely started, and I can't make a judgement call just on what I've seen so far.
With an interesting subject, down-to-Earth issues and setting and a curious style, Music to His Ears has my attention. I just hope it doesn't take another two or three years to be finished (this is why I generally don't read incompletes).
When one specifies that their story is random, nine times out of ten that also means funny, and seven times out of ten it indicates a crackfic. In this case we get neither. Necro-Semantics involves Twilight coming to Celestia after Tirek's defeat to inquire about the nature of immortality. Celestia confirms that neither Twilight nor Cadance are immortal, and that the immortality of Celestia and Luna is something very different from anything Twilight might expect. After some long conversation in which Twilight struggles to logically define what Celestia is, the final answer is curious: Celestia is a lych, her immortality resulting only from her link to the sun.
So, Celestia is undead – or, as she pleasantly specifies, the 'trotting dead.' A zombie, as Twilight nervously deduces. The exact nature of this isn't clear; Wise Cracker gives us just enough information to clarify what Celestia and Luna are, but not how. Perhaps more curiously, there's the idea that Celestia is 'undead,' suggesting that she died once before, but this is something Twilight completely missed and it therefore goes unmentioned.
All in all, I liked this story. It gives a slightly different take on immortality, is generally well-written and only slides into comical elements once Discord shows up near the end, as is appropriate. Twilight was decidedly in-character throughout, as was Celestia, and aside from the occasional line of needless extrapolation I have nothing to complain about in terms of the writing itself. If you'd like to get a taste of some rather different headcanon, I would recommend this.
Oh, and Celestia outright says that Luna is her superior. Instant kudos from me, a worshipper of Best Pony. I'll grant that's totally biased, but only because everyone else is woefully ignorant. 
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
This story started off strong for me, but gradually lost its entertainment factor. There's nothing much to it in terms of plot, of course; Twilight decides to prank Luna one night, and Luna responds in kind. When the story began, there was plenty of amusement in the writing style and the ridiculousness was kept to believable levels. That made me happy, because I like that kind of funny.
Then Luna decided to pretend to be Nightmare Moon for her counter, with all the visuals that implies, and my amusement dropped precipitously. Creating a national emergency and scaring the shit out of the Ponyville locals is not my idea of funny. Quite the opposite, really. My annoyance was alleviated by Twilight's mention earlier that Equestria gets a national threat of this variety roughly every month, but it still struck me as ill-conceived. Worse was that Twilight treated NMM's return as nothing to write home about, despite the fact that she and Luna are apparently in a romantic relationship and Twilight thus should be extremely worried about this. The fact that she claims to have been worried without any visual indication of it only made things worse.
The good news? This is a silly story, and thus I know my complaints are not worth much. Simply put, this story wasn't my kind of funny. It started out that way, but 2/3 through it lost me. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of you will roll your eyes at my seriousness, read the story and die laughing. And by all means, do so.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Stories for Next Week
My Little Doubt by Knackerman
When the Stars Align by Borsuq
Be Mine by LightningBass94
Broken Gladiator by BronyWriter
Souvenir by TinCan
Oh well, I forgive you for being a short hair blasphemer because you understand who is Best Pony.
Well, this one's early. Benefits of unemployment, I suppose.
You know what else these could benefit from? A link to the previous round of reviews. I just recently learned from one of my more recent followers that the they decided to follow me because they saw my most recent FFF and ended up reading the lot of them because I put a link to the previous FFF at the bottom of each successive review.
I imagine that a lot of new followers would find that convenient, especially considering the number of blog posts you create.
But I digress. I've all but lost my taste for shorter stories at the moment; everything I see in the vaunted Feature Box is just so unappealing. The Code's Apprentice is a story that I've heard a lot about though, and I've added it to my RiL.
Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be with you!
Sounds like The Code's Apprentice isn't a fic for me. I can get past a lot if the writing is up to muster, but it sounds like here that this story would just end up pissing me off with out of character BS. Shame, too. I've been looking for some longer fics to occupy my time now that I've totally caught up on the Upheaval series.
Necro-Semantics sounds neat though. That certainly is a unique take on the immortality of the Princesses.
Argh fuckkk.
Literally the same week I came up with a story about transcolt Vinyl Scratch living in Manehattan with his marefriend Octavia, Music to His Ears comes out. That story has haunted me the entire time of its publication, because if I ever write my fic, people are going to accuse me of plagiarism over a case of convergent creativity. :(
3045430
And instead you keep bringing this up everywhere you go.
3045527
Instead of what?
3045430
We (speaking as part of Lady Froey's team) are not. It sounds (at the concept stage) that yours is pretty different in focus anyway.
Please, write more instead of complaining about my best friend every time this comes up?
You're a far more successful writer than any of us anyway, and are not in a very good position to complain.
3045625
I'm not talking about Lady Froey, I'm talking about everyone else.
Have I honestly posted about this more than twice? Cuz if I have, damn, I need to shut up a lot. :(
3044248
If I am blasphemous for understanding the superior beauty of shorter hair, then thou art a dirty heathen for not recognizing said superiority! But I shall forgive you, as we are at least in agreement as to whom Best Pony is, and she entreats me to be accepting of the flaws of others provided they share in the vision of her general and unquestionable supremacy.
3044262
That sounds like a good idea. I think I'll start doing that.
3045430
In your defense, I sorta know how you feel. I've had one or two story ideas stolen from me by pure coincidence. That said, if someone beat you to it, your only real solution is to write it anyway... and make it better. As I often think (but rarely openly say), "time to show these amateurs how it's done!"
3045527 3045625
^^No offense intended to Lady Froey's team, of course.
3045630
I don't think folks will say yours is plagiarism if they don't accuse literally everything that's been in the feature box of plagiarizing literally everything else that's ever been in the feature box. But okay.
Thanks again for the review, it means a lot.
3045630
I hope you get around to reading my fic sometime, I'd really appreciate it.
3045656
I'm tracking it, just waiting for it to finish! :D (Then it gets in line behind everything else I was tracking that finished that I haven't read. D: But that's not so bad, in the long run.) I'm very much looking forward to it.
3044262
Ah ha! So I'm not just absurdly over-thinking things by putting in the next/last links in my blogposts! Vindication!
3045674
Look forward later this summer then, I plan to finish it within the next few months.
Much obliged for the review!
3045687
Yep. I feels good.
Is the next chapter of Audience of One ready for prereading yet?
3050769
Dude have you not been getting my PMs? Audience of One ended this past weekend!