xjuggernaughtx's Top Down Review #5 - Yes, Apple Bloom, there *is* a Santa Hooves · 6:50pm Aug 3rd, 2015
Just posted this up only to have Fimfiction.net freeze on me. Good times as I do it all again...
I read this story last night, and by this morning, it had already dropped from the number one position. Things move quickly at the top. Good thing I finished it up when I did, since all the images that make up the story are blocked at my job. You can read the text transcript, but it’s not the same.
Spoiler free summary
This story combines strong characterization with a fun visual medium, but is held back somewhat by its sudden resolution.
I’ve been interested in reading some of Lucky Dream’s work for a while now. A lot of the review community had a collective freak out session about In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep, so his name has stayed with me. I’ve avoided that fic thus far because it’s written as a children’s story, and that doesn’t automatically appeal to me. It’s still sitting on my RIL list. Reading this gave me an opportunity to get some insight as to what I’d be in for.
Plot and Characterization
This is a very basic story that is told with style. It unfolds in a series of letters from several of Ponyville’s citizens to Santa Hooves and his North Pole Enterprises. It starts out innocently enough when Apple Bloom’s only Hearth’s Warming request is to have her cutie mark.
However, what she receives back is a curt form letter telling her that they can’t give her one. Some back and forth occurs, and Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Applejack all get in on the action as Apple Bloom grows more and more upset with her treatment. Things escalate until Santa Hooves himself steps in and calms things down.
First, let’s tackle the characters. Each of the voices comes through clearly and distinctly in the letters. It was interesting to get a visual characterization in a story. The fonts, paper choices, spelling, etc. all contributed in little ways to outlining who these ponies are. For example, Applejack has somewhat neat (but not fussy-neat) block capital hoofwriting. It implies no-nonsense, and works well with her straightforward speech. On the extreme other end, Sweetie Belle’s letter have the girliest, swirliest hoofwriting, and are adorned with pictures of hearts and liberally dusted with glitter. It was fun to see whatever choice came next.
The only hiccup to me was that the letters felt like they were from children younger than seven and three-quarters as Apple Bloom notes. I’m not around children of that age very often, though, so maybe I’m wrong, but nearly eight is around third grade here in the states. I seem to remember kids having much better spelling and overall written neatness by that point. Still, the characterization and voicing are generally great.
However, I wasn’t as enamored with the plot. It starts off strongly and progresses well until what ought to be the climax, but it seems to cut out the most vital section. North Pole Enterprises has a Public Relations officer name Gloomy Skies whose unfortunate job it seems to be to send back these form letters. As the letters from Ponyville get more heated, Gloomy stays the course, but opens up a little to Applejack in a secret note. More of this would have helped the story a lot.
See, the issue here is that the story is building and building, and then Santa Hooves just steps in all of a sudden and resolves things. It feels like a whole chapter was snipped out. Imagine that you are watching Star Wars, and the Rebels are approaching the Death Star. They move into the attack, then we suddenly cut to Luke loosing his proton torpedoes. The Death Star blows up and we go to the ceremony. No battle. The rebels just show up, win, and celebrate.
That’s how this felt to me. Everyone is getting mad at North Pole Enterprises for their stubborn refusal to right the situation, then Santa comes in and rights it, but we don’t see any of why he corrects things. Gloomy Skies drops a hint that North Pole Enterprises has been corporatized by bank manager types, so it seemed like Santa just wasn’t in control anymore, or at least far removed from the situation. He says in his letter that Gloomy nearly quit over the whole thing, so what happened exactly? Did Gloomy finally march up to the head office and confront the jaded Santa Hooves? Did he circumvent the system and get a message to the out of touch leader, risking termination by the bureaucrats that had slowly taken over? I don’t know because we weren’t told. All I see is that we were building to a confrontation than never happened.
Let me be clear here. I enjoyed this story. This issue does not take away from that, but it does hold it back from being a great story. All of a sudden Deus Ex Machina Santa Hooves just appeared and fixed everything, and I had to sit and wonder why he didn’t act in the first place. This is a story full of letters going back and forth. What about some internal memos that give us a look at Gloomy Skies trying to make a difference in what has become a cold, impersonal toy conglomerate? As it stands, Applejack pretty much says, “We’re coming up there to have a talk with you!” and all of a sudden Santa starts answering. It makes it seem like he’s just frightened of Applejack, to tell the truth.
Technical things
There’s not much to negatively critique here. Misspelling are intentional, and might happen with a greater frequency than I’d like, but it gets the job done. That’s really the only complaint I can think of.
That allows me to focus on what is good from a technical standpoint, which is the visual component.
The art here is very crisp. I’m not sure how it was put together, but it’s visually delightful. I particularly liked the paperclipped extra note that Applejack received. You can see the glitter that Sweetie Belle threw all over her letter. Scootaloo’s is decorated with Rainbow Dash cutie marks. It’s a fun way to read a story.
Are you the intended audience?
I’d say that this story would have pretty wide appeal. It’s not a mind-blowing story in and of itself, but it’s cute and the visual aspect of it is novel. The characters come through clearly, and the plot was progressing nicely until the final letters. If you don’t mind the sudden resolution, then you’ll probably like this one.
I give it:
Four Chres (We’ve decided that ‘Chres’ is the the plural of Chris)
I had a very difficult time scoring this one. I went back and forth five or six times. Ordinarily, this kind of a story would get Three Singularity Dreams from me because it has strong characters and a serviceable plot with but one minor problem. However, I decided that the effort that went into the visual storytelling merited more than a three. I’d be more comfortable with this rating if the resolution wasn’t so sudden, but it doesn’t spoil the whole story. This story was at least a 3.5, so I think rewarding Lucky Dreams for going above and beyond is deserved.
I think your problem with this tale derives from the limits of the medium being used. Our perspective is limited to the letters being sent back and forth between these ponies. That's all the information the author saw fit to give us. We don't know what happened behind the scenes that caused the resolution because, well, it was behind the scenes. No one wrote a letter about it.
Now, maybe Gloomy Skies could've sent Santa a letter of resignation to give more insight into the reasons for this change of heart; that much is true. But what exactly could he say in that letter that he didn't already say in his apology to Apple Bloom besides "I quit?" If the author couldn't think of anything, such a letter may come off as redundant. That's just my take on things, though.
3291780 But that limitation is entirely down to the author. He can show us as much or as little as he desires of the behind the scenes. It's pretty much going to come down to taste. I got a lot of flack for not actually having a chess match in Checkmates. Quite a few readers really thought it would be stronger with a real game going on. I disagree because it's a tale about how your friends drive you insane sometimes, not a tale about a chess match. To Lucky Dreams, maybe this all works beautifully because all he really wants is what is presented. I have no issue with that if it's the case, but it doesn't speak to me as strongly as I'd like, much like Checkmates doesn't grab some of my readers the way that they would like.
That's the curse of both writing and reviewing. It's very hard to divorce what I would have done from what is presented. I try to be objective about it, but I really think that we needed to know what happened to drive Santa Hooves to show up all of a sudden.
It's implied that Santa Hooves never saw, or replied to, any of the letters because they were being mitigated by 'corporate management busybody types' until Gloomy Skies took the letters, off-record, and showed them to Santa Hooves himself.
That is to say; none of the letters from "North Pole Enterprises LTD." were from Santa Hooves, they were written by the former bank employees.
3291867 Right, but that part of the story is pretty vital to the reader. At least, it was in my eyes. I got the implication, but it leaves the resolution weak. Problems solved off-screen are unsatisfying.
This is the first story you reviewed which I haven't read
3291913 Get to reading!
I really enjoyed this story. I like any story that is creatively presented. I think there is another story that tried the whole picture letters idea.
Records of an Academy Disaster
I thought it was pretty funny.
Boy, my avatar looks pretty angry when you see her pointing and yelling off to the right four times in a row...
Good review, and it touched on one something I often harp on authors about when I edit for them: choosing to use a limited format is great, but you must both be able to tell your story completely, and hold to the confines of your format. If you have to sacrifice one for the sake of the other, then you need to rethink the format, story, or both, so that they can work in harmony.
Anyway, I'm going to go back to pointing and yelling off to the right. Ta!
3294603 Mirror Pool Golden Harvest has replicated herself several times over. This way, she's confident that the gophers and moles infesting her garden will hear her clearly and distinctly this time when they are politely yet firmly asked to leave and not come back. Stupid complaining Fluttershy... "You can't simply club them! Moles are nearly deaf... grumble, grumble..."
That's actually one of my main issues with the show. A significant number of the episodes suffer from too much plot crammed into too little space. People say things like, "Well, they only have twenty-two minutes, so of course it's rushed." My answer to that is that they shouldn't write an episode that needs forty-four minutes when you only have twenty-two. Fics have less of an excuse to me, though. At least writers have deadlines and producers and such to work around. People writing fanfiction generally can put something out whenever they want. There's no real reason to rush something, though controlling yourself when you are eager to release a story is something I still struggle with to this day.