Fanfiction Reading Update #173 · 12:43am Oct 21st, 2017
Advisory: contains unmarked spoilers to The Umbral Shard.
Those of you who read The Devil’s Trick might recognize this scene.
Can you believe it? Two fanfic reading updates in one month! At this rate, I might actually post a new comedy oneshot sometime within the next three years. I must confess the dreaded Winningverse played a large role in grabbing me by the ankles and pulling my terrified form back into the murky lake that is Fimfiction.
The Lunar Rebellion updates and appears to be nearing its conclusion with a metaphorical nuke being deployed to crush the main army responsible for the titular rebellion.
I catch up a little bit with Legacy of the Pegasi and things are starting to mirror Lunar Rebellion. Somehow, I don't think Cloudsdale declaring independence is going to lead to a 400,000 word long civil war, but who knows? I'm still wishing there'd be a solid reason given for why the hetairoiWonderbolts are all pissy about Celestia and Luna.
There are many genres of fanfics. 500,000 word “epic adventure” stories, oneshot comedies, edgy grimdark tales, episode rehashes—the list could go on for an entire blog post. One of the ones I've had a growing fondness for over the years are the shorter show-like adventure fics. The 20-50k long tales that have a fairly straightforward premise—there's a threat, the protags encounter the threat, deal with a few challenges along the way, then take care of threat and everything's resolved with a nice bow at the end.
I call them show-like both because of their simpler nature compared to the worldbuilding heavy “epic adventures” and because of their somewhat fluffy, comfy feel. Yeah, there's a threat, but seldom is there the implication that it might lead to a gutpunch grimdark ending or that anyone's going to die. Some might consider that a bad thing. There's no tension, no suspense when you know where things are headed and that there would be a major risk to the protags. But in a world filled with grimdark fics, where characters drop like flies in a hot car, its nice to just sit back and read something that carries no apprehension or fear—just basic solid adventure and action.
There is a certain irony to it all, though. Most of these style stories—this one included—orbit the super massive black hole that is the Winningverse and while I've still yet to read the original Winning fanfic that started it all (or should I say the Dense Mind of Rainbow Dash since that's actually the original?), I'm quite familiar with the distant prequel The Lunar Rebellion--a story filled with all those gutpunches and death this genre so avoids. Rebellion was, in fact, my introduction to this galactic cluster and yet from everything I've seen, it appears to be in a vastly different genre from all the others.
That's what makes this genre so nice. I can rinse my mouth out from watching an important character die a slow death from an accidental intestinal blockage caused by the protagonist, to watching a fluffy adventure story about Twilight and her guards. It is escaping one fanfic for another. In a sense, an escapism from the escapism.
And that leads to The Umbral Shard. Well, not really. I haven't actually read any grimdark fics and Rebellion hasn't had that many gutpunches recently. I was just in the mood for a short fluffy adventure and found it in my RL list. But those preceding few paragraphs are a nice thought, aren't they?
The story kicks off with an introduction to our characters. Twilight, Storm Kicker and her Rebellion armor (thus ensnaring the story in the black hole's orbit), Twinkleshine, Speedy Tracker , and Masked Inquiry and then the threat—the titular shard—is introduced. Then the adventure ramps up.
It's here that perhaps the largest criticism could be leveled at the story. Storm and the other guards have very little setup. As they're all OCs (well, Twinkleshine technically isn't, but she's a background pony so she might as well be), it's entirely up to the story to fill their personalities and interactions and it's also here that perhaps the greatest flaw of the Winningverse and all “-verses” in general also becomes apparent: much like a super massive black hole, there's a lot of shit orbiting it.
Winningverse has no less than eighteen stories in its orbit—and those are just the ones that I can confirm are “canon” to it as they're written by the original author. Including every fanfic set in the -verse bumps that number to well over a hundred. Some are tightly interconnected—The Umbral Shard and another fic, The Study of a Winning Pony are explicitly “canonized” due to be referenced in one of the eighteen—while others will forever remain in an ether, never to be tied to the main verse.
This has created a convoluted mess typical of a -verse. There's continuity errors (don't ask who found Storm after her fight with Tirek), complaints when less than well received stories are “canonized” like they're an IDW comic, and lockout—the problem in The Umbral Shard. Lockout happens when the author places information/plot points/characters in a story with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with said stuff because of its use in a prior story. There's an unwritten assumption you've already read the four fics featuring Storm Kicker (totaling 73,000 words) and know her character and backstory.
This isn't an issue when dealing with sequels. You know right away where things stand when “This is a sequel to X” is in the description, but, like most stories in a -verse, Shard lacks any indication of this. It assumes you're already well versed on the Winningverse and know the context of things and that's really bizarre given it gives no indication it's actually part of said -verse. In fact, it wasn't until the armor that plays such a prominent role in Lunar Rebellion was referenced in chapter 2 that I realized this story was even connected—and this was after I had read those four stories featuring Storm Kicker. I had simply forgotten about her as I usually do two years after reading a story.
Such is the major flaw of the -verse. The reader just can't keep up. Whether it's stories that have taken years to finish—like Rebellion—or small oneshots that are forgotten days or weeks after being read—like the Storm stories so satisfyingly saturated with alliterations—information's forgotten, characters are mis-remembered, and the convoluted mess just becomes even moreso.
Shard feels like it's fighting two battles—one against those intimately familiar with the Winningverse, where it must weave itself into the canon and preexisting characterization—and one against new readers, who have to be introduced to new characters and thousand year old lich armor as if they didn't read the 600,000 word long warfic prequel.
What I'm saying is, Shard needed to pick a side. It needed to either proudly show itself as a Winningverse fic and go into things with the full understanding you already know what's going on and where it sits in the super massive black hole's orbit (approximately halfway through New Life of a Winning Pony, as it stands today), or cut ties and spend a chapter or two developing these characters who most readers have likely never encountered before.
The observant among you may note that I've only been mentioning Storm Kicker. What about the other OCs? The truth is, I have no idea who any of them are. Perhaps they made their appearance and were fully fleshed out in one of the dozens of other fics. Maybe they played prominent roles in that one 100,000 word long spin-off about Sunset moving to a shithole to start a new life. Or one of that spin-off's four sequels.
You might be starting to understand the problem large, sprawling -verses can have. Made even worse by the fact that none of these stories indicate they're interconnected. Instead of an author note saying “hey, read this if you want to know about Storm getting the armor or this if you want to know about the armor itself” the information's just plopped into your lap, most of the time without you even knowing it's covered more in depth in another story.
It feels like this is intentional. Sequels tend to have diminishing returns—just look at the views and upvotes on Winning Pony and New Life. And even moreso for side stories and spinoffs. It's tempting to try and obfuscate a connection, so potential readers aren't turned off from feeling like they need to read a story nearly as long as the Old Testament (and about as bloody) just to know what the armor one of the OCs has on is all about.
But if that's the case, why even have a Winningverse? Isn't the whole point of a -verse to provide a setting filled with tightly interconnected stories so multiple plots and characters can be weaved together to create a feeling of grand scope and scale? If you're going to hide that and try and make the story stand on its own, it not only weakens the -verse (it's a lot easier for continuity errors to pop up if a story's barely connected) itself, it weakens the key strength of the story—to weave one more plot into the whole thing to make it that much more grand.
Still, this isn't usually a massive problem—even in Shard there's still enough to flesh Storm out a little—but it's more annoying than anything, especially when the author's notes are almost specifically there for just this purpose: giving context to a chapter with supplemental information. I'll just reiterate it really baffles me that you'd go through the trouble of making 1,000,000+ words of interconnected stories, but not actually tell readers about where that connection happens.
I could continue to rant about -verses, their flaws, why I like TwiStorm, the lack of an editor to provide tight continuity among the stories—but this is supposed to be about Shard, not the Winningverse as a whole, so let's get back on track, shall we?
If the OCs have been fleshed out elsewhere, like with Storm, it doesn't count here. You don't get credit for what's not in your story, even if that story orbits a super massive black hole. This causes a classic problem seen in shorter stories where the characters are given basic personality traits (one's a dashing rouge with a loose mouth, one's a quiet and restrained intelligence officer, and one's a sort of “standard” character. You know the kind. They're pleasant, social, have a sense of humor with a touch of smariness. That sort of thing.) but aren't really given time to flesh those traits out beyond their basic implementation.
Perhaps one reason I spent ten paragraphs ranting about the Winningverse is because there's really not a whole lot else to say about Shard. As I said at the start, the plot's very straightforward and basic. That could be considered a negative to many, but it's what I wanted going in and the word count and synopsis made things pretty clear that's what I was going to get. That escapism from the escapism.
They arrive at the location (perhaps changing it from a town on the edge of a forest to someplace more exotic like a desert or the outskirts of a major city could have increased the depth of things), fight a few monsters (the intelligence officer seemed like he didn't really do anything worth while and probably could have been cut), then take out the guy being corrupted in a big showdown (for a terrifying moment, I thought it was going to have the horrid “go into a character's head and have the fight” plot point when Storm started to fall to the shard. Then again, it could have dove into Storm's repressed desires for Twilight, a la Eternal), then you have the cooldown scene at the end to tie everything up—like I said, straightforward.
It didn't have the grandest plot, I honestly likely won't remember it in a few weeks, and it briefly showed off some of the larger flaws the Winningverse as a whole has, but it was still a relaxing, comfy, short adventure story that provided the perfect escape from all the high strung death and despair that can be so common in fanfics.
The Umbral Shard receives...
...moustaches out of five and is upvoted.
Ah! Possible Trackings, you scared me!
As I continue to be ensnared in the super massive black hole's orbit, I use its time dilation effects to burn through the entirety of The New Life of a Winning Pony and track it to see what happens next. I did it solely to acquire more of the Twilight/Storm Kicker shipdynamic and actually have little interest in Cloud Kicker, her mommy issues, or her commitment problems. At this point, I probably don't even need to read Winning given I know pretty much all the plot points by now.
I can't help but feel worried about Storm, though. She's got the cursed “everyone who uses it dies in it” armor, is in line to lead her family while Cloud Kicker really doesn't want to (wouldn't that add a lot of drama to the mix if something happened to Storm), the ship with Twilight's getting ready to leave port (all those feels if something were to happen), and everything's going pretty well for her. The last time everything was going pretty well for a pony in this setting, they got an intestinal blockage and died a slow, agonizing death that prolonged a civil war which killed thousands.
Pony Predators of Equestria is cut after fifteen chapters. It initially drew me in with a very well done intro chapter, but the resulting chapters were bloated with filler that had little to do with the main story. But the final nail is the main story seemed to sag as things went on. It went from an interesting fic about vamponies and their culture, to one about Twilight and friends dealing with another threat, and that's just not what it sold itself as originally.
After much debate and him hawing, Freedom Shall Ring is cut after seven chapters. What I initially thought would be a total AU with Twilight working from within to deal with the dark AU stuff, turned into a fic very similar to Her Destiny, only with a much more standard “rebellion” plot. While there's nothing wrong with that, it just wasn't what I was really interested in and it would have likely joined the hundreds of other fics I've followed but will never actually finish.
The First Law of Magic is cut for very similar reasons to Freedom Shall Ring. I just have enough rebellion genre stories to read and aren't really interested in more of them—especially when you have to spend what looks like a dozen chapters actually setting the rebellion up.
And, after that, no one ever saw Oneshots again.
The trot through the black hole's orbit continues with Winning Pony: Road Not Taken, an AU oneshot about Rarity and Dash babysitting Cloud Kicker's daughter. As others have said, the babysitting angle which takes up most of the story leaves a lot of what makes AU fics enjoyable—all the different relationships, plots, characterizations—by the wayside in favor of, well, babysitting. It's a nice idea, a SoL in a complete AU, but it's always better to set that AU up first so everyone's not distracted by the bigger questions and curiosities. Like who Storm's being shipped with.
And continues still with Freeport Venture: Shimmer-Mare's Birthday!!!. Yes, I read a sequel to the 100,000 word spinoff about Sunset and the shithole without reading the actual spinoff and no, I don't care most of the plot points likely flew right over my head. It was okay. The changeling's unique style of talking was original, but did get a little annoying after a while. It also felt more at home as a “Twilight freaks out over getting Celestia a present” comedy than it did as a “sequel to a horror fic where said changeling is hunted down and nearly murdered and watches in horror as her sister slips down the slippery slope” comedy.
Articulate Arguments About Augmenting Ancient Ancestral Armor continues the march around the black hole. This time with one of the Storm Kicker alliteration stories that so succulently summarize side escapades. I must confess, though, there’s not nearly as much arguing or drama as the title or especially the cover art suggests and that seems like lost potential. It also runs into some continuity kerfluffles with the other Winningverse stories. Still, it’s nice enough.
A rouge asteroid named 1374 Sleeping Habits breaks me free of the black hole's orbit and tells some nice SoL about Rainbow Dash, her weather job, and as the title infers, her sleep schedule. A really good take on the “life in Ponyville” style of slice of life.
In keeping with my annual(?) Halloween tradition, I read a dark-tagged oneshot, Behind Closed Doors, without checking the ending first to see if it has a gutpunch. Unlike that one story where the evil pumpkin murdered everyone and trapped Luna for eternity in lonely darkness, this one builds up the spoopiness, only for it all to deflate when the final line reads more like a punchline to a story-long joke than it does a horrifying ending that leaves you unsettled.
This Isn't War mines the grimdark Crystal War AU in a completely different way from most, by briefly tapping into just what a soldier would go through after fighting a vicious total war scenario and winning. A very nice oneshot that cuts through all the darkness and war to get to the character hidden within.
Guilty opens the door to the glut of post-movie fics that will be popping up over the coming weeks with a fairly short take on Equestria's quite merciful justice system. It was decent and had some undertones of a comedy oneshot that probably could have been mined a little more, but wasn't anything special.
And that's all I read for the yearweek.
# of story updates remaining: 611.
# of “Read Later” stories remaining: 1,191.
