Present Perfect vs. Antipodes · 12:27pm May 22nd, 2018
Something I tasked myself with way back when I first started doing story reviews was to review one fic for every person I was following on Fimfiction. For a long time, PK's classic adventure Antipodes was the sole holdout; no longer. (Actually, now it's ScarletWeather's story, but that will be for another time.)
The reason it took me so long to get to Against the Podes was that every review I have ever seen of it, not to mention numerous reactions from writer friends, was resoundingly negative, and I didn't want to be yet another voice dumping on the poor guy. But, well, all things come to pass with time.
Let's see what's so bad about those podes, shall we? ffs literally everyone has already made this joke
Why does everyone rag on Antipodes so much? Well, it probably has something to do with literally every editing mistake known to mankind showing up in its pages.
I'm not kidding. Spelling errors, word confusion, word misuse, lots and lots of close repetition, runons, fast pacing, you name it, it's here, and it's here in spades. The first twenty or so chapters — two-thirds of the chapter count and half the word count — are really, really dire and in terrible need of a proofreading.
And while the writing absolutely gets better with time, it never quite escapes that veneer of being written by an amateur with more enthusiasm than patience. All PK needed to do was get someone knowledgeable to look over the chapters, and a lot of the issues would have been avoided easily. I could have stopped this
Because if Antipodes represents anything, it's a young writer discovering themselves through writing. Note what I said about the first twenty chapters up there, in terms of percentage of story; as things progress, they get better paced, with stronger descriptions and character building moments. The culminating scene, to my mind, comes in the very final chapter, when the characters reach Ponyville; the giant tree is never described as being Golden Oaks Library. It's never mentioned that Twilight or any of her friends had a connection to it, not by name. All we see is a tree with a telescope sticking out one side, along with Luna's assertion that it's hollow and the image of an ancient library within. That's good showing, and it's not something the PK who wrote chapter one of this story likely would have even conceived of.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Antipodes is a post-apocalyptic adventure taking place not two hundred, but ten thousand years in the future. Pony society progressed to something like our modern world in terms of technology, then there was a big war, the princesses disappeared, and so the sun and moon hang motionless at opposite sides of the planet, with a narrow strip of habitable zone in the middle.
That's a really fucking good setting.
Like, seriously, writing issues aside, the concept of Antipodes is stellar; it's no wonder it attracted so much attention back when Fallout: Equestria hadn't even been written yet. (Indeed, FoE at least wasn't posted to Equestria Daily until the following month!) It's one part Reach, one part My Little Metro, with our main characters living in an underground society, kind of just barely hanging on to survival thanks to ten-thousand-year-old machinery supporting them, but still definitely civilized. The setting might just be my favorite thing about the whole story.
So let's talk characters. Our main cast is Jigsaw, Tiptoe and, eventually, Incendia; she's the one with all the fanart, y'know. But oh my god, can I just talk about what a good fucking name "Tiptoe" is for a pony? A lot has been said about how one should name characters in MLP fanfic, and the instant you meet her, just hearing Tiptoe's name tells you a ton about her character. Jigsaw at least is in the same boat, but I was absolutely floored by Tiptoe. I can't even fully explain why. However, this is undercut somewhat by the fact that this is one of those stories — and likely, this is a function of its age — where special talents are basically superpowers, and our heroes' talents are "figuring out how things work", "stealth" (stealth, come the fuck on!) and "fire, I guess".
It is here where I will impart upon you something that may or may not enhance your Antipodes experience: It is useful to think of the characters as belonging to a roleplaying group. Once you get to know them, you can see the entire chronicle unfolding.
Jigsaw, our Mary Sue protagonist whose power is "just know stuff", is the character of the Powergamer, the one who isn't happy unless their character is not only min-maxed out the wazoo, but also the central focus of the story. This leads to Jigsaw's Chosen One archetype and heroic sacrifice at the end; he's gonna make damn sure everyone remembers his character for years to come.
Tiptoe, then, is the creation of the Significant Other, who's just there to have fun and whose version of fun comes more from telling a good story than winning every challenge. Tiptoe of course needs to be min-maxed at least somewhat — the SO knows this from having gamed previously with the Powergamer: if you're not on PG's level, you're not going to enjoy yourself — and has wisely chosen an ability to keeps their character in the background so Jigsaw can shine more.
Where this gets somewhat tongue-in-cheek is with Incendia. She's is almost assuredly the character of the GM's SO, or at least good friend, and a cameo from a previous game session. The GM ran another group through this whole Stalliongrad action/subterfuge game, and, deciding to dust it off for the two new players to experience, brought Incendia's player back to show them the ropes. So she shows up for one game, gets the heroes out of trouble, shows off how badass she is (cuz, y'know, she's like twelve levels above them), and then shit hits the fan and it can be the heroes' story again. Except, y'know, they really liked the character and/or the player, and after a week's downtime when the player couldn't make it to the session, Incendia returns, minus her teleportation powers and likely de-leveled to a more even playing field, and so the duo becomes a trio.
Like, seriously, if you follow the plot, it makes perfect sense.
But for all that I will definitely rag on them for being silly and overpowered, they're not bad characters. Like I hinted at previously, there are plenty of chapters of downtime where the three of them can sit around and get to know one another better. Of course, the romance subplots — both of them — are somewhat needlessly shoved in, but the story slowly justifies them as it progresses.
So let's talk plot. Again, the opening is really fast, as we go from Jigsaw and Tiptoe — water maintenance ponies for their underground civilization — trying and failing to fix a pressure issue thanks to a rogue sea serpent to them riding a subway train out into the sun. This takes three days, most of which pass in a single chapter, in case you were doubting my assessment of the pacing.
But oh, the sun! The harsh, burning glare that kills on contact! Some good world-building comes into play as they encounter it for the first time, find out it isn't instantly lethal, and step out under the sky for the first time in their lives. This scene matches similar ones from Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons, and My Little Metro: I will never get tired of seeing people witness the sky for the first time. And what makes it even better is Tiptoe's reaction; pegasi aren't exactly super-useful underground, and they get a little stir-crazy with so much keeping them ground-bound.
From here, they wander into the cave of a dragon, which is not a great place to end up. The dragon, Tantalus, is menacing but all right with them being there, enlisting them to go to a nearby city and kill his 'nemesis', with a promise to help them find their way home afterward. Said dragon, as it turns out (with another decent bout of showing), is actually Spike, though why he's changed both his name and his coloring suggests that maybe that's not all there is to him.
So we go to Stalliongrad, via plot convenience — the early portions of this story are marked by Jigsaw and Tiptoe constantly getting sucked into things to move the plot along — where we discover that, yes, there is still pony civilization, at or even beyond what they had achieved ten thousand years ago. Granted, that civilization lives in a bubble and, as we soon discover, not all is well.
That aforementioned 'nemesis', Rubidium, is the ten-millennium-old, cartoonishly evil tyrant of the city. We're treated to a scene of him laughing while draining the life force out of a pony, for instance, which throws into doubt the doubts he has already thrown on Tantalus's story. This is also where we meet Incendia for the first time, as Jigsaw and Tiptoe escape Rubidium's inner sanctum before Jigsaw is turned into some kind of living battery, and they end up needing a little help from the leader of the local resistance to also escape his goon squad. If nothing else, when Incendia is introduced, and all these burly toughs take a step back and it's obvious she's some kind of local vigilante, a legend feared by the forces of evil, it's a pretty cool way to get to know a character.
All of this culminates in the destruction of Stalliongrad at the hands of Tantalus, and the possession by Jigsaw of a magical orb that was powering the city. Said orb is their actual quest, as it turns out: a fragment of Celestia, and there are six of them, three of Celestia and three of Luna, that they need to find and reunite before Tantalus does… something.
I'm not going to blow-by-blow the rest of it, but I do want to get back to that RPG metaphor from earlier. Round about chapter 26, I realized there were five chapters to go and they were halfway through the quest, which meant either the story was unfinished (bad, since its sequel, Lodestone, was abandoned three years ago) or the ending was rushed.
"Rushed" isn't the word for it; the pacing is fine, but acceleration was nevertheless necessary. To that end, they find an airship, and that was the point at which I could not shake the "this is a JRPG" feeling. The first fragment they stumbled into by accident after being pointed to its vicinity but not told about it. The next two -- three actually -- they wander into, again more or less by accident, guided by Jigsaw's vague Plot Sense as the goddesses take up more and more of his brain space. So to place the last fragments at believable positions while not letting the story drag on, they needed a way to travel faster, and we got a damn airship. Which they also stumbled upon more or less by accident and Jigsaw being the Chosen One.
It sure doesn't help that Incendia comments on the fourth fragment just appearing before them after a very trying time, once again making the macguffins look like quest rewards more than anything else. I will say, that trying time? The three go back to Jigsaw and Tiptoe's home, which has descended into chaos because of that whole "broke the water system worse" thing from the start of the story. It's estimated that over three-quarters of their people are dead, by their own hooves if not thirst or starvation; it's a real hard blow to take. What makes it worse is, after the trio go kill the sea serpent and get the water flowing again, they get kicked out for good, taking the less bad half of an "exile or death" choice. I mentally compared the sequence to Blackjack gassing her Stable in Project Horizons, but I think this might actually have been worse for the characters; to be sure, Jigsaw kind of loses his mind shortly afterward, not helped by having two-thirds of two other ponies in there with him. Definitely a highlight of the story, for all that it's a low point for the characters.
One more thing I want to touch on is the romance. We start with Jigsaw and Tiptoe kind of falling for each other just because. He tries to keep his distance because the last time he got close to someone, also his apprentice at the water works, she died. But eventually, a sense of "we're the only ponies we have" takes over and they smooch a lot. :B
That said, Jigsaw's tragic backstory is given to us in the most haphazard way possible, and I really want to impress upon you how poorly this turned out. We're told at first that his greatest regret was wimping out on this mare and letting her get killed. This turns into an honestly decent character arc for him by the end of the story; he absolutely redeems himself for this one act of cowardice. But the first time we're told this story, I just took it as "he chickened out on his girlfriend"; no, she was his wife, which makes it way worse. It may have just been me misinterpreting the connotation of "mate", but finding out that last bit of info was a real blow, not to mention something I felt should have been made a little clearer from the outset.
And speaking of things just dropped on us, the romance subplot doesn't just end with Tipsaw. You see, Incendia is gay. Like, really, really gay. Like, maybe the only lesbian in Equestria gay. (See also Littlepip at the start of Fallout: Equestria.) And she falls hard for Tiptoe, which made me wonder if Tiptoe wasn't just the most attractive mare alive or something. <.< This is, of course, very unfortunate for Incendia, since Tiptoe's in a relationship by the time they meet, but she never passes up an opportunity to ogle her and then angst about how she'll never have her. I think they're still just friends by the epilogue, even, which was odd, considering how things progressed and how frequently the story liked to stop and check in on how everyone's feelings were holding up. Also with how much Tiptoe leads her on. <.< Like, c'mon, geez.
By the end of Antipodes, everything's honestly in pretty good shape (except, perhaps, Tantalus's true identity; maybe it's a function of when this was written, but I could not accept that). We get a climactic final fight starring the Princesses, there's the aforementioned heroic sacrifice, and Equestria is finally allowed to have a sunset for the first time in millennia. The writing shapes up, the characters feel like people you've gotten to know, and my overall feeling about it is considerably more positive than it was at the outset.
Still, you can't read Antipodes and ignore the glaring flaws, flaws which persist even into the better written chapters. Since PK kept writing for a while after finishing Antipodes, one has to wonder what kept him from getting help to clean up the first half especially. What we're left with is an "it is what it is" situation, and what it is is something that's going to be hard to get into unless you're really forgiving or really into post-apocalypse stories like me.
2.5/5
Decent, but it could have been so much more.
(Also, this is obviously the best part.)
Tomorrow, Vs. Week comes to a close, so I'll leave the final story a surprise. You won't have to wait long...
I should write an unauthorized parody called "Antipodiatrist" about three ponies who really hate
foothoof doctors.For the longest time (when we still had banners) it was one of a handful of fics to get custom banners.
0/10 nopony attacks anyone with Antipode
Seriously though, I didn't recognize the name, but as soon as you mentioned Jigsaw, Tiptoe, and Incendia, I went "oh yeah, this is that fic." So that probably says something.
4866909
Yeah, I remember that being a thing.
I remember reading this in google docs and thinking it was really slow. Thanks for doing the archeology for us.
I reviewed this a long time ago myself. I quite enjoyed it because I went in knowing that the author was throwing out his first real big piece of art to the literary world and I, like you, found the setting incredible. It really harkens back to the halcyon days of this fandom when all we wanted were massive, sprawling adventures instead of lol this pony does a dumb this probably won't end well
Okay, that setting does sound awesome. Also, it's worth noting that the main cast's names are excellent. (And you mention it two sentences later. :D )
It's the anti-Project Horizons. :P "there's literally zero downtime between major events"
Too bad it's never been cleaned up, but then, fanfic. For all that I'll probably never read it, it is good to hear that it finished, rather than doing the not-ending-into-abandoned-sequel move. Nobody likes that move. :(
I read it!
Dang, thanks for digging so deep into my silly story. It was literally the first bit of creative writing I ever undertook in my whole-ass life, and I was 17 years old to boot. It *sucks out loud*. I do think there are still one or two good bits hiding in there, and the bones of the story I think are okay still, but yeah, on the whole, I can’t disagree with any of this because it’s easily the worst thing I’ve ever written, haha
4904415
More than I ever wrote in one go when I was 17. :V
4904514
I have very mixed feelings on it now because on the one hand, holy shot! I wrote an actual, complete, long form story! That’s more than a lot of people ever manage.
On the other hand, it’s very bad and I can’t stand to actually read it, so... I’m proud that I did it but I also kind of want to lock it away in a vault where nobody ever has to see it again
4866905
The Prophesy has been fulfilled
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
- Random
Join Jigsaw, Tiptoe, and Incendia as they set out to rid their broken world of podiatrists and restore harmony to Equestria! A parody of Antipodes by PK5193345
I'm so pleased :3
5193480
My strategy for getting free reviews from you is to just write weird stuff that interests you.
5193678
The catch is, you expend the effort of writing them! They're not free at all! MUWAHAHAA!
4904518
Please, don't do that!😨