Paul's Monday Reviews XIV · 5:35pm Jun 1st, 2015
I think I'm going to start adding a note of just how much reading I do every week, in wordcount. Why? Because I do a lot and I want people to appreciate it, darn it! Especially considering the potential quality of some of those stories; I've had some real stinkers lately, and I almost feel guilty writing reviews for them.
But some of you don't care about that; you're here because you want to know why I tagged Frequency on a review post! Well this won't be the last time. As I mentioned before, Grand_Moff_Pony requested permission to write an epilogue to Frequency a few weeks back, and I gave him my full support (pre-reading included). This weekend, the story finally came out! So for those of you who want that extra bit of Flash and Vinyl, go here to give it a read. I've also added a link to the story in the last chapter of Frequency so that anyone new reading the story will be able to quickly locate it.
Also, I intend to review the epilogue as part of my Monday reviews. That one should be out on the 29th, so expect Frequency to be tagged again that week.
Okay, enough preening. To the reviews!
Stories for This Week:
The Queen and The Stray by Eden Eclipse
Dream by Cascadejackal
TEK: The Beginning by Jet Fly (Request)
Tea Party with a Dreconequus by Arcelia
Princess Twilight Sparkle's 500th Birthday by Autumnschild
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 2
Pretty Good: 0
Worth It: 0
Not Bad: 1
None: 1
I think someone may have recommended this to me, but I can’t be sure. That’s what happens when you only read stories in the order you added them to your RiL, I suppose. In the end, this story was a rough ride, and I mean that in the worst way. Yet I don’t want to be completely negative, so I’ll try to address the positives first. (Here’s your sign.)
When I first looked at the description, I assumed what I’m sure most do: that this is going to be about Chrysalis taking in an alicorn foal, there being a bunch of silly antics with no regards to actual child raising considered in the story, ultimately culminating with a cutesy-wootsie tale of Chrysalis learning to love and no longer being evil. Pardon me while I gag.
Fortunately, this isn’t what Eden Eclipse did. On the surface it starts out that way, but we soon come to learn that what Chrysalis has discovered is not an alicorn foal so much as a magical construct that is mentally unstable, incapable of understanding responsibility and so powerful that all of the mightiest beings in Equestria combined couldn’t hope to slow it down. Faced with the understanding that she’s got a small, godlike monster on her hooves, Chrysalis is eventually forced to turn to Celestia and Luna for help in taming the innocent but reckless filly.
In the end, this isn’t a story about Chrysalis, although she does play a major role. This is a story about Yucca, the filly who is struggling to understand what she is, how she came to be and what her purpose is. All in all, it’s actually not a bad concept. Put in the right hands, this could become a solid piece of literature. The potential for character growth from all involved is great and the consequences – good or bad – are fascinating.
Sadly, this concept was not put in the right hands.
Let’s start with character flaws, shall we? First of all, the one who created Yucca is Twilight Sparkle. No, that’s not a big reveal: it’s made obvious from the very first chapter. What makes this so bad is that not only did Twilight create Yucca using forbidden magic she knew better than to test out, she then promptly abandoned the newborn foal in the badlands. You read that right, Twilight Sparkle, paragon of responsibility, abandoned a foal (arguably hers) to almost certain death in a blasted, inhospitable land. Let’s also ignore that she knew this foal would be capable of phenomenal, godlike powers and may become vengeful with this treatment or might go on to cause havoc in other parts of the world. So right off the bat we have Twilight behaving so far beyond out of character that it falls into comparable lows with Luna’s behavior in 8686's Ecipse. It’s that bad.
That’s just the beginning. Eden Eclipse also ignores all character development of the Mane 6, Celestia and Luna. This is most apparent in Fluttershy who, despite the fact that we’re clearly past Season 3, still acts like a doormat and can’t seem to say anything for fear of actually being heard. To make matters worse, Eden Eclipse tries to instill some sense of character identification by clinging to outdated catchphrases from the first season like a child clings to a favorite blanket. A lesson to all of you: throwing in a random “It needs to be 20% cooler” (just as an example) does not make Rainbow Dash interesting.
Now let’s throw in the needless extra formatting. Eden Eclipse decided that subtly was for the weak and threw every nut and bolt possible into the text. We’ve got colored text, we’ve got all caps, we’ve got twenty exclamation marks in a row, we’ve got text at x5 size, we’ve got written out laughter and sobs. If it can be done wrong, Eden Eclipse tried it.
Next we’ve got monologuing, which is done by just about every character at some point or another, combined with huge walls of text. When a single paragraph is 250+ words long, you’re doing it wrong. Lots of those were indeed monologues.
Now let’s add some poor humor. How about Chrysalis and her changelings playing hide and seek with Yucca and acting like the ensuing punishment for failure – listening to Yucca read cute pony stories and wearing dresses – is a torture worthy of Tartarus? How about Celestia and Luna forced to dress in cardboard armor as an important part of the final fight with Yucca? This kind of thing is beyond dumb, especially when you consider they had to spend a week “training” with Chrysalis for this (only for us to learn that such training was pointless).
Oh, and that brings me to the horrible conclusion. After Yucca shows that she’s perfectly capable of turning Luna into a smear on the pavement, Celestia reveals that she just ignored everything Chrysalis taught her – as well as put to huge risk not only her sister but the entire Crystal Empire – without informing any of them, all in order to wield a magical Macguffin that somehow, miraculously and easily renders Yucca harmless. This goes beyond the typical Macguffin, though: we aren’t told what the spell is, how it works, where it came from, hell, we aren’t even given a name for the thing! It just… happens and it’s done.
But that’s not the end either. Not only is Celestia a conniving little chessmaster willing to potentially sacrifice an entire kingdom and her sister, but she immediately backs out of her deal with Chrysalis to not use Yucca as a weapon. At this point there’s some inane attempt by Eden Eclipse to justify everything Celestia is doing – which Luna somehow accepts despite the fact that she very obviously wouldn’t under these circumstances. It comes off as a blatant and hamfisted attempt to be deep and compelling when it really just makes Celestia look like a monster.
Oh, and don’t worry, Twilight wasn’t forgotten in this mess. No, she leads the Mane 6 in an initial fight against Yucca, which she wins through trickery. While Twilight shows remorse for her actions, she still doesn’t hesitate to banish what is effectively her daughter from Equestria and moves on from the whole situation like so much garbage. Worse, Celestia considers this normal.
And last but not least, Eden Eclipse really, really needs to work on their writing style. I’m just going to let these three quotes do all the talking:
Princess Yucca's eyes widened then as she puckered her lower lip and then lowered her head as her mane suddenly became straight and less full of fluff as she'd frowned.
And as quickly as she'd said that, the filly felt herself pulled in by a tight embrace as she just sat there stuck in that embrace as a hoof wrapped around her head.
Princess Cadence's brow twitched as she couldn't wrap her head around what Celestia was saying. She placed a hoof over her face for a moment before just looking back up to her.
Almost every sentence in the entire story is like this: cluttered with too much information over too long a span while often repeating itself. You people should be thanking me for going through it all so you don’t have to.
The Queen and The Stray is a mess. It’s one of those stories I’m glad to see closed and I assure you it won’t be showing up on any of my bookshelves.
Bookshelf: None
This story achieved so much fame, I was obligated to investigate and see what all the fuss was about. Would it be something legitimately awesome as everyone claimed, or was it just another pretender that managed to tug on the right strings like so many hits out there? If you ask me, it’s neither, although it certainly leans towards the former.
To give a proper summary without spoiling the entire story is tricky, so I’m not going to bother. I really enjoyed the story overall, despite the fact that it uses two fairly old concepts without any creative alterations to the ideas. A lot of people praised the story for its creativity, but in terms of subject matter that’s really not so. I also ended up rolling my eyes at a certain point at the very end, simply because it felt like a fawning and needless idolization of Celestia.
Yet the writing of the story? Holy wow.
Perhaps it was Cascadejackal’s intent all along, but the writing is so delightful as to make the bland beautiful and the annoying fascinating. Without a single word of dialogue and not a name to be had, this story is dripping with literary beauty. It’s a kind of narrative style many writers wish they could achieve, but many fail at horribly. Speaking in strict terms of writing style, this story is perfect: easy to read, no slipups and a delight to behold. This is a story that should be held up as a shining example for all, and it justly is so.
Yet I still question where to put it in my bookshelves. The narrative style strongly suggests it should be a favorite, yet the story suggests I should place it a spot lower. After much consideration, I’ve decided to give it top honors, for while any story can be named unoriginal through a little research, it takes true skill to make a story beautiful regardless of content.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
TEK: The Beginning
By Jet Fly
Request
Jet Fly contacted me a few weeks back and requested that I give him some tips for their story, TEK: The Beginning. Rather than go in blind, I thought I should read the story that exists first. So if you’re paying attention, Jet, this is for you. I won’t write this like my usual reviews, giving direct advice instead of just criticism. Bear in mind that I only read what material was already written at the time that I added the story to my schedule, i.e. up to Chapter 4: The Trials.
The very first thing I notice is that TEK has no hook whatsoever. The first chapter is nothing but the two main characters being born, without any indication at all that this is a momentous event other than the fact that two new foals are in the world. This is not a very good way to draw in the readers’ attention. The hook actually doesn’t appear until Chapter 3, which is far, far too long a wait.
The second major issue is the speed of the story and the exposition that dominates it. Jet Fly bothers to relay to us the life stories of both the main characters, from foalhood to scholastics to the present, and does so largely by explaining a vast number of things via exposition. This does not work at all. It’s not interesting, it doesn’t captivate the reader, and seems like a bunch of needless information.
Protip: we don’t need to know everything about these guys. We don’t need to know the names of their parents, their relationships with the Elements of Harmony as they grew up, or much of anything involving their pasts. This kind of information is better given through flashbacks or, far better, character conversations. Leave some mystery for the reader and save the details for when they are pertinent to the story. It’s more interesting this way and lets you jump right into the hook.
And on that note, exposition itself is a big problem in this story. An example:
Something obviously happened to him, and she had a feeling it was connected to the past events of his life, right before he appeared in Canterlot.
And my immediate thought: “No shit, Sherlock.” If “something obviously happened to him,” that automatically tells us that it had to have been in his past, and therefore “she had a feeling it was connected to the past events of his life, right before he appeared in Canterlot” is telling us we already know. My point: you need to think about your writing with a bit more logic. Check to make sure you’re not repeating yourself – something you do a lot.
For that matter, exposition is something that you should be avoiding in the first place. The more you discuss at length the events of the past, the less interesting your story is. Take, for example, that entire paragraph in the fourth chapter about Jet Fly (insert note here about blatant self-inserts being a horrible idea in every respect) learning how to use “Wind Blades.” We didn’t need to read any of that. The best way to let the readers know that this ability exists is to show it, not tell about it. In short, having Jet use the ability later in the story or just talking about using it is fine without all the explanation. At some point you can just have him and Shade explain their existence to another character. Or not. The point is, never tell us everything when you can show us. You tell us a whole lot. Stop telling and start showing.
Now let’s get into the plot. For the most part I feel like the ideas are okay, although having Jet Fly (cringing right now) be best friends with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy feels a bit forced. Why is it that every OC has to be linked in some way to the Mane 6? Those mares are not obligated to appear in every single story and know every single character that shows up. Jet’s departure from Ponyville didn’t have a tenth the emotional impact you were undoubtedly going for because not only did the scenes rush by, you haven’t really shown us anything to get the readers emotionally connected with Jet and his relationships. It’s not enough to just show us the characters are sad. Our heartstrings won’t be pulled until we are invested in these characters and their situation, and the speed of the story combined with the telly writing style makes that very hard to achieve.
There have also been a few flaws in plot logic. Take, for example, Shade’s flight from the Timberwolves. He’s in a cave, perfectly safe behind a boulder, and his thought is to run out there were the wolves can come at him? I think most unicorns would have waited to consider the situation and dealt with the wolves from safety rather than go running out into the danger. Then take Celestia inviting him to join her school purely on the basis that he used a teleportation spell. Let’s ignore that he just showed up out of nowhere while near death, and the possibility that he or those responsible for his injuries could be very dangerous. To think that Celestia would permit him to even leave custody without first forcing him to reveal what happened is absurd.
This tale is off to a rocky start. I’m five chapters in and we haven’t even gotten to the entire point of the story. You do win points for not having Gary Stues for main characters, but this is taking far too long for far too little payoff, and the vast amount of information is needless to the story itself. You also need an editor/prereader to look for typos and missing words. Were this a completed story, I’d have rated this in the “Not Bad” bookshelf, although that assumes the story would have evolved into something interesting – which I don’t know yet because nothing’s happened save setup.
I know this sounds like a lot to take in, and it may be. Just remember that nobody wrote a perfect story on their first try (arguably, nobody ever wrote a perfect story). With practice, diligence and hard work I’m sure you can create something great. The first batch of stories are all about learning the ropes, and that’s simply where you are right now.
Tea Party with a Draconequus is a short little story in which Rarity attends a tea party with Fluttershy only to find that Discord was also invited. Discord almost immediately moves in on Rarity, being a total ass and insulting her directly, over and over again, until she leaves the party in tears. Upon being lectured by Fluttershy, he then moves to make amends.
Poorly.
Aside from how quickly this story went, that’s the big thing I didn’t like about this story. I’m expected to believe that after offering enough insult to stay on Rarity’s shit list for years, Discord manages to recover almost instantly with a crown of flowers and a few dancing teapots. Even for a story featuring Discord, it was illogical beyond belief or acceptance. Discord has been known to make some poor decisions before, but his behavior towards Rarity was extreme at the least and the fact that both her and Fluttershy readily forgave him tests my patience.
I think this story would have gone far better if it had moved more slowly and had Discord actually do something worthy of repentance. As it is, this just feels like an excuse to write Discord into a story, and I am not impressed.
Bookshelf: Not Bad
I believe it was the second story in this series that first caught my attention, but how could I possibly start right in the middle? I had no idea what to expect with this story, which can always be counted on as either bad news or a delightful mystery. As it turns out, the story is about Princess Twilight Sparkle having a ‘quiet’ celebration of her 500th birthday with her earth pony apprentice, Smarty Pants… at two o’clock in the morning.
The first thing I should point out is that this story has me curious – always a good thing. There’s just a tiny hint of worldbuilding, but it’s enough to gather the appetite and make me want more. Autumnschild handled it nicely by keeping everything within the scope of a very believable conversation, and one can only question what’s really going on behind the scenes that Twilight doesn’t bother to tell her rambunctious seven-year-old apprentice.
Twilight is delightfully in-character. I add “delightfully” because where most people tend to forget certain aspects of it in favor of others, Autumnschild has caught Twilight damn-near perfectly. We didn’t get much of Cadance in this story, but there was enough to suggest that the author has her pegged as well. Above all else, the character of Smarty pants is well defined very early in the story. She’s cute, but she’s also very believably seven and shows all the elements of her roots just as well.
What? Oh, fine, I guess I’ll mention that as well: the story is cute. Like, sickeningly, sugary, close-your-mouth-before-the-d’awws-kill-you cute.
It’s pretty hard to get all of this right in a single story. Somehow, Princess Twilight Sparkle’s 500th Birthday manages to pull it off. There are a few small issues, most of them typos and Autumnschild’s continuous misspelling of Cadance's name; they don’t hinder the story at all. I will be adding the sequel to my RiL and eagerly awaiting it.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Stories for Next Week:
A Blooming Diamond: Even Diamonds Can be Broken by QuanarX
Ghost of a Rose by Noble Thought
Something Sweet to Bite by Knackerman (request)
Moonlight Palaver by Carabas
I.D. – That Indestructible Something by Chatoyance
Liked these reviews? Check out some others:
Paul's Monday Reviews V
Paul's Monday Reviews VI
Paul's Monday Reviews VII
Paul's Monday Reviews VIII
Paul's Monday Reviews IX
Paul's Monday Reviews X
Paul's Monday Reviews XI
Paul's Monday Reviews XII
Paul's Monday Reviews XIII
Paul's Tuesday Reviews I – "I'm Not Dead" Edition
I'm going to have so many freaking fics lined up to read during the Summer. (350+ as it stands currently)
Only two more finals to go. Let's do this!
Cadeianxe is a perfectly cromulent way to spell her name.
Thanks for the review, glad you liked it!
Thanks so much for the shout out!
So many good stories to read, so many notes and ideas, so little time.
Why does this sound familiar?
#CadenceMasterRace
Oh geez. Moonlight Palaver and I.D. are both fics I recomended. Next Monday is going to be very interesting. . .
PTS's 505th Bd is one of my favorite adventure stories.
3116401 #UsingCromulentinasentence
3117066
u w0t m8?
Seems like Eden Eclipse has fallen off the net. Kudos to you for managing to slog through their story; I immediately dropped it after reading those unsubtle hints at Twilight abandoning a foal.
3629852
Wow, I forgot all about that story. I guess it was so horrible I deleted it from my conscious mind the spare myself to trauma.