Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVII · 10:06pm Jun 15th, 2017
Whelp, it's been a week since I decided to start my whole wordcount thing, and thus far I've successfully maintained an average of 1,500 words a day. Let's see if it can survive a weekend at my parents'.
So, serious question time. My original plan with Bulletproof Heart was to hold onto it until the entire first book is written, edited and generally made as good as it can be. But I'm looking at my schedule, and even if we assume I meet every deadline in my new release schedule, that still doesn't put the rough draft being done until May of next year. The rough draft, not the released version.
I'm not fond of keeping things to myself like that, partially because it makes me look unproductive on the surface. Also, 'cause I want to get some public reaction and see if I'm on a good track or not. But at the same time, I don't want to have chapters releasing two to four weeks apart from one another. What to do, what to do?
I turn to you, dear readers. What's better: finishing the story entirely and releasing it in a quick schedule once it's all done, or releasing it bit by bit? I was thinking an alternative might be to polish off and release 4-5 chapters at a time in stages. Obviously there's no right or wrong answer to this, I'm just looking for general opinions. Of course, seeing as of how I'm done with the first three chapters at this point, choosing to release in stages would rapidly accelerate my search for a trio of high quality pre-readers.
Enough of my story-based conundrums. Reviews!
Stories for This Week:
I'll Kill You With My Tea Cup by Cloud Hop
Because Ponies are the Size of Cats and They Love to Snuggle by shortskirtsandexplosions
"I want to be an aunt... Pretty please." by Dr Atlas
The Weak by Wisdom Thumbs
Slouching Towards Canterlot by EbonQuill
Gloria Celestia by Regocomics
Total Word Count: 72,797
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 2
Worth It: 3
Needs Work: 1
None: 0
I'll Kill You With My Tea Cup
1,627 Words
By Cloud Hop
The instant I saw this story existed – which was right after it was written – I knew I had to read it. Anyone who has seen The Chronicles of Riddick would understand why.
Taking place 500 years in the past, we learn that the griffons have invaded Equestria, swiftly tearing apart its defenses and swarming into the peaceful herdlands. Celestia’s immediate response is to go to the armies and let herself be captured, just so that she can… ‘have tea’ with the Griffon Emperor.
This story is everything I expected it to be, and as such I am quite entertained. It’s not a good story, per se, but in its defense, it isn’t trying to be. Just a short little piece wrapped around a single parody scene. I’m sure anyone who has seen the reference material will at least get a smile out of it. The last line, while certainly gimmicky, was a nice cherry on top.
Riddick fans will likely get something out of this. The rest of you… eh, hit or miss.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Because Ponies are the Size of Cats and They Love to Snuggle
48,781 Words (Incomplete)
By shortskirtsandexplosions
Get ready for an assault on your cute detectors, because this story is designed to achieve maximum adorableness. I rediscovered it when I started going through my Incompletes list looking to weed out stories that almost certainly wouldn’t be completed. But this? Like I was going to just let it by without giving it a go? Pfft, yeah, right.
The story is exactly as the description suggests: its centuries (perhaps over a millennium?) in our future, and a scientist has invented a way for ponies to come to our world through transdimensional hoodies. The catch? They come here tiny, like sit-on-your-lap tiny. Turns out this is more endearing than anything. The story, which has no real purpose other than buckets of cuteness, follows the unnamed protagonist as he enjoys using the prototype suit, which brings Applejack to him for some pleasant company.
There’s really not much more to say. The story meanders from scene to scene, topic to topic. It shows how the protagonist feels more fulfilled in life thanks to Applejack’s adorable presence, and Applejack gets some character growth in there as well. But really? This story exists so that farmpone can be cute and ridiculous and snuggle a lot.
There are a couple silly moments that don’t make sense. For example, in one scene AJ is shown chasing after a ball in the exact same manner as a dog would chase one, somehow failing to recognize that it is not, in fact, a living entity trying to cause trouble but is just an inanimate object being thrown by the protagonist. She’s clearly not this stupid in most of the story, but for one scene, she is. Or the scene where the lead character has no idea what sound a rooster makes, despite the fact that he indulges himself with 21st century films – surely there’s a chicken making an appearance in at least one of those things, right?
But who cares? Adorapone. Soft, fluffy snugglies with tiny pone. Why fret over anything else?
This may not be the most amazing thing ever, but it’s great if you’re just in the mood for fluffy cuddly adorableness. Read it when you’re having a downer day. You won’t regret it.
Also: the human names amused the heck out of me from beginning to end.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
"I want to be an aunt... Pretty please."
2,290 Words
By Dr Atlas
It’s been ages since I read the first story in this series, "I want to be an uncle... THAT'S AN ORDER, PRIVATE!". So long, in fact, that it was before I was shortlisting sequels, otherwise I’d have gotten to this ages ago. The premise is pretty obvious: after Shining Armor literally orders Flash Sentry to bang his little sister in the prior story (because he wants a kid but not the responsibility of raising one), Flash goes to Princess Cadance in hopes that she’ll see reason. What he gets instead is love advice, both in the nature of wooing a mare and the act of lovemaking itself. Flash’s conclusion: his bosses are crazy.
To be frank (ugh, pun not intended), this wasn’t half as good as the original. In that one, Shining Armor felt like an over-the-top version of his character, but it was still his character in a very general sense. This Cadance, on the other hand, doesn’t sound even remotely like her character from the show. That alone makes this come off as weak. Even the title of the story knows how Cadance should sound, so why doesn’t the story itself?
The effect of this changeling-going-by-the-name-of Cadance is to make the weak writing of the story all the more glaring. I was willing to forgive the simple, somewhat weak style of the last one because it worked well enough under the premise and attitude of the story. This, however, felt like more of the same with less skill, so the poor writing really stands out now.
That said, Flash’s overall response to the craziness of Twilight’s family is still great on the whole, and I’m more than willing to forgive the writer for doing something like this ‘just because’. Plenty of authors do that, even the site’s better ones, so I’ll shrug it off this time. And to be honest, I still want to see where this goes with Twilight in the sequel. The concept is still more interesting than it has a right to be.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
The Weak
8,341 Words
By Wisdom Thumbs
Recommended by Pascoite
Taking place in what I can only assume is millennia before the founding of Equestria, The Weak is set in a time when deer rule the world and are engaged in a long, vicious war against their own kind. Bismuth is a minotaur warrior currently on patrol with a band of deer and minotaur when tragedy strikes, and he comes to an epiphany about the nature of war.
I don’t quite agree with the message this story is trying to present. That being said, the delivery for it is so good that I see no reason to let that little niggle get in the way. This story combines a great many literary elements into one impressive picture: atmosphere, worldbuilding, characters, setting and timing and theme. Make no mistake, Wisdom Thumbs knows what they’re doing.
You’ll have to accept a few things, such as the idea that minotaurs are immortal (and perhaps deer too?) and you’ll never learn half as much as you may want to in regards to the world this story introduces us to. As long as you can accept such things, I can see no reason for anyone not to read this. It’s a riveting piece about one individual’s comprehension of the world in a time of bloodshed, misery and racial tension, and it was well worth the time invested.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Slouching Towards Canterlot
6,150 Words
By EbonQuill
Requested by EbonQuill
The first thing I thought when I read the description of this story was: “That wordcounts looks way too low for something like this.” And now that it’s over? The last thing I thought was: “That wordcount was way too low for something like this.”
This story is set in Equestria’s distant future (about 1,000 years if EbonQuill’s headcanon meshes with my own), in an age where it seems that Twilight is the only princess left. Flying cars, space colonies and cyborgs are commonplace, although the latter appear to be banned. The story follows Detective Bon Chance, who has been assigned to track a foalnapping cyborg.
The potential in this story – in so many ways – is incredible. There’s tons of worldbuilding to be done, interesting new characters to meet, legacies to be recorded! But EbonQuill decided to take the more direct approach, dropping us directly into the mystery and solving it with a speed bordering on that of bad news. We are given no time at all to get to know Bon Chance or the other characters, nor are we given any opportunity to understand the story’s villain, her purpose and reasoning. Simply put, this is not the kind of story you want to see finished within the time it takes to eat lunch.
EbonQuill tries to make up for the story’s breakneck pacing with characterization, and if I can applaud anything, it’s that. The author did a decent job of giving Bon Chance and the others a clear voice and personality, if not necessarily a likeable one. And the story is also well written, with minimal issues that I can detect as far as grammar, style, dialogue and narration. The story is certainly polished.
But that doesn’t make up for the lack of story in this story. The author traded what could have been a vibrant and fascinating universe for a potentially confusing ‘chase’ where none of the characters’ motivations or interests or intricacies have time to be recognized or understood. The ending itself is also unclear, since there’s no indication of why the villains ultimate goal is, in fact, a bad thing, or what it would mean for Equestria if she succeeded. I’m all for open endings, but this felt more like open everything.
This story could have been so much more. It’s not bad as it stands but, without the treatment it deserves, it’s not standout either. An ambitious concept, to be sure, but the delivery is much less so.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Gloria Celestia
5,680 Words
By Regocomics
Sequel to Forbidden Melodies
In Forbidden Melodies, we learn that Celestia’s most hated song is the Equestrian national anthem, which was originated by a student of hers 800 years ago. The song calls for the destruction of all things related to the night and begs for Celestia to murder her sister, so the reaction is understandable. Gloria Celestia takes us back to that student, Glissando, and shows his hatred for the night and what Celestia did about it in order to quell such venom from her little ponies.
This story follows a recognizable thread, namely that in the immediate aftermath of Luna’s defeat Equestrians developed a violent hatred for everything she represented. It only makes sense that Celestia would try to squash such sentiment, and I like the method she tries for it. She falters in two ways: first, by waiting two hundred years to try, and second, by failing to teach Glissando… well, much at all about Luna. We are shown the moment when she assigns him the task of traversing Equestria and spreading the tenets of Harmony, and it is painfully obvious that at that point he’s already filled with all the hate she’s trying to stamp out. Which, of course, begs the question: what she’s been doing with him such that he doesn’t get her intentions at all?
I can’t figure out if this blatant incompetence is Regocomics depiction of Celestia (in which case it would make her perfectly in character) or their own mistake in planning the story and characters out. Either way, I was not pleased.
That’s not to say the story is bad. On the contrary, the author does a decent job of depicting a cult of self-righteous hatred and evil in the name of good. I question the method of jumping timelines so flippantly, and there are a number of stylistic issues (such as using self-contradicting phrases), but otherwise I think the story itself is fine. Perhaps a little too ‘woe-is-Celestia’ for my tastes, but not bad as a story.
I’m just annoyed by Celestia’s trademark incompetence on display.
Bookshelf: Worth It
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In "The Weak," I never did get that much of a sense of the time span involved. Definitely that it takes place long ago, but I took the kind of framing device it goes to at the end as not that long after. Much of a lifetime, that is, but still a normal lifetime. Maybe I just missed the signs that significantly longer than that had passed, but I did feel like the main character was old at the end, which likely means he isn't immortal.
But this story was wonderful at creating atmosphere, and it does a lot of world-building through implication instead of direct exposition, which is always nice to see. I can't stress how much an improvement this story is over the previous one I'd read by the same author. He's come a long way.
I pretty much agree with you on Slouching Towards Canterlot. Like, I just had to follow the author because I wanted more so badly.
As far as your question concerning releasing new work goes, personally I find it's better to finish something before releasing it. Then you can edit it, make changes, etc, without worrying about current readers. Nothing damages a fic's readers like being told "By the way, I screwed up with some foreshadowing four chapters ago, so I rewrote that chapter; you'll need to go back and reread that." If you wait, yes, everyone has to wait, but they get a finished product that won't need those changes.
You also can ease their minds by being able to say up front that they will see the completed story, and it won't die halfway through. A lot of readers on fimfic are hesitant to even start unfinished stories.
4572403
Oh, no, there is no going back for me. One of my golden rules is that once a story/chapter is published, it is stuck as is. I might go back and fix a typo or something like that, but the content is set and I refuse to make changes, even if that saddles me with a plot error or something similar. My personal stance on these things is to leave the mistakes as lessons to be learned – and, since they never go away, to be remembered. If I didn't have this viewpoint, I'd have gone back and reworked the first four books of No Heroes in a number of ways by now.
This is exactly why I had originally planned on waiting until Bulletproof Heart was released; if any errors were made, I could go back and fix them instead of being trapped by my own 'published in stone' rule. I guess it's more of a question of whether I have the willpower to wait more than a year for the finished product to be released. But it's also a battle of ambition, because I want this story to be one of my better works from start to finish.
Ugh... decisions, decisions...
4572434
Then I would definitely say wait until you're finished. Part of learning from mistakes is learning how to fix said mistakes. Editing is a good way to both catch mistakes, but also to learn how to fix them so that the next time you run into the same issue, you know what to do without spending pages upon pages trying to make things work. If you only catch it in hindsight but aren't able to fix it, then you may not know how to fix it when next you do encounter the same issue, or if your theorized fix will even work.
So yeah, I'd say wait until you're done and give yourself a chance to rework anything that needs it.
Thanks for your input as usual. I am surprised you found Celestia to be incompetent though. This is the second time you've seemed to read the princesses differently than I do when writing. The only point I'd take with this though is racism being seen so simply as a black and white issue in this case. I wrote it with the mindset it was more a fact of life in that era than something out of pure malice. Sure it turned into that with the sun worship later, but hoping that her student will learn and grow from experiences outside of Canterlot is where that came from, much like in my real life, my worldview and perspective shifted when going abroad for a year.
I do agree with the oh-woe-is-Celestia remark though. It all depends if it works or not in the story, which the reader is the judge of that.
4572189
I fail to see how immortality and extreme amounts of time can't be viewed as a factor. At the end of the story, the main character encounters a deer and notes how said deer has apparently gone feral, and how that seems to have become the fate of deer in general. If that's the case, it's more than a matter of the mind snapping from constant war and failure; it's an evolution, and that doesn't happen in under a generation. At least, not without some sort of magical/scientific intervention, which I'm reasonably sure even the new version of the main character would have heard about.
But you're right, the world building was solid and the atmosphere praise-worthy.
4572630
A fact of life? Perhaps... if Celestia actively chooses to go two hundred years without bothering to put down the rampant racism spawned by her sister's war. And you can't tell me she didn't know it was happening all that time. Nor do we have any evidence that the racism existed before the war, which might have helped to fix the interpretation I have of Celestia's character here.
4572498
Ugh. All arguments I've made against myself. I guess I was just hoping for someone to help me talk myself out of the better choice. I really don't like going so long without something to publish. Guess I'll settle for Order of Shadows and its four week intervals.
But really, thanks for not talking me out of it. I knew what the 'right' choice was, I just didn't want to go with it. Now it's just a matter of maintaining my willpower.
4572701
I just took that one deer as someone who'd been displaced by the war. You know, like how orphaned children in war zones go scrounging about for whatever they can forage and never get an education. Something like that could happen in less than a generation, and who knows how long the war's been going on by that point. It could be part of some citizenry who'd been displaced for decades. Point is, the pertinence lies in the deer's condition. It doesn't matter that much how long it's been, because it doesn't change the story's message.
You do realize that the majority of "Slouching Toward Canterlot" is a blatant ripoff of "Blade Runner," right? I don't even mean it shares some thematic commonality or is a bit of a tribute. I mean chapter 2 is a direct drag-and-drop of one of the movie's scenes, and that's not the only spot in the story that does so. I'm really hoping the EFNW judges just aren't familiar with the movie, because I can't imagine them condoning this.
4587283
As a matter of fact, I didn't know that, having never seen the movie. only know the most basic elements of it, so the greatest connection I made was the theme. If I had known that ahead of time, however, I can assure you my opinion would have been more harsh.
4587396
It's a great movie, well worth watching, unless the dark-ish sci-fi setting just does not appeal to you.
But here are all the similarities:
-It takes place in the future and adopts a dark, gritty atmosphere.
-The existence of spiros ("Blade Runner" calls them replicants), their function, how they work, and that they have a fixed maximum lifespan.
-The detective gets involved because of a series of crimes perpetrated by a spiro.
-A spiro can be detected by checking them for certain memories or evaluating their emotional responses in something called an "empathy test." The description of what responses the test measures is pretty much the same, too.
-Most of chapter 2 is a scene from the movie, right down to many of the details. Seriously. Look up the movie scene that has the owl in it, which takes place in the corporate office, and then read chapter 2 again.
-Everything culminates in a rooftop/upper-story battle.
-The sentiment of letting someone go at the end and hoping she would live to her expiration date.
The major differences:
-Twilight has a completely different attitude than the character whose role she takes, and she's actively involved in the investigation. Because of this, the very end of chapter 2 is different from the scene it copies.
-Skysign Glimmer fulfills the assistant's role in function only, as the part of the plot that revolves around that character shifts to Damask Rose, so Rose assumes essentially two roles, and Skysign's importance is greatly diminished.
-While replicants are meant to operate more or less autonomously, I get the feel that spiros are supposed to be more of an Avatar-style puppet.
-What Rose wants to accomplish is similar in many ways, but replicants were never seeking to be anything more than human; they just didn't want to be limited by their fixed lifespans or hunted as criminals.
-The firebird takes Chance's hat and serves tea, while in the movie, the owl only does things a real owl could. Though given what phoenixes are capable of in canon, this may not be a difference after all.
-And obviously, this story had to skip a lot of stuff that was in the movie, or it never would have gotten under the word count limit.