CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #33 — Fang and Flame · 11:21pm Dec 21st, 2019
Some months back, I mentioned that I had become a judge for FanOfMostEverything’s Imposing Sovereigns II contest. Naturally, the reason judging took so long was because I kept detailed notes on every story I read, singlehandedly causing the process to take an extra month.
The net gain of this, however, is that I intend to review as many of the stories involved as possible. As part of horizon’s prize (?), he is first in my crosshairs. With that context out of the way, let’s begin.
Title: Fang and Flame
Author: horizon
Found via: That contest what I judged.
Short summary: The Ember from the Equestria Girls universe comes through the portal. In her possession is the lost twin of the Bloodstone Scepter; a crown that manipulates instinct.
Genre(s): Character Piece, Thriller, Art Piece
The Title/Description: The title and description are very functional. They describe the story and its contents in a very straightforward way. This is unfortunate, however, because neither the title nor the description hint at what makes the story special. And I must include my standard criticism about the review quotes and whatnot being longer than the actual description.
What does this story do well?: The first point—and perhaps the most important—is very simple. The prose on display here is beautiful. Almost every paragraph, every sentence, is constructed in such a way to be artful and engaging. Despite the purpleness of this prose, however, it only rarely strays into obtuse or confusing territory. It is a balancing act that most prose fails to hold; prettiness and clarity. While the scale can occasionally tip into awkward territory (as I’ll discuss later), the story is for the most part a joy to read.
This is particularly apparent in the story’s use of show over tell. Not only does the story take great care in how it presents details, but the reader is given just enough to ensure that they are working through all the details themselves. Very little is explicitly told to the reader. The only spot I marked as being intrusively tell-y was the introduction of Spike and Ember. And given the importance of that detail to the narrative, it’s justified.
The perspective of the story—an alien version of Ember—means that this showing and prose are on full display. And this perspective ties wonderfully into the plot as well. The sister artifact that the story centers on is an excellent metaphor for EQG Ember herself. She is in many ways a foil to her dragon counterpart. But like any good mirror archetype, there’s quite a few similarities as well.
All these points combine to make the story flow wonderfully, with only minimal hiccups and awkward bits of prose. The mere act of reading it is akin to slowly digesting a filling meal.
Where could this story improve?: This beauteous prose, however, has one major flaw. The central third of the story revolves around a prolonged action scene, involving several characters and spanning multiple chapters. This action scene, however, is ill-suited to the prose used to describe it. While the prose never stops being pretty, it strains horribly under the effort of showing during a fight sequence, of trying to maintain that beauty during complicated flurries of motion and effort and combat.
The fight scene(s) makes the classic mistake of many fight scenes in prose: all stage directions, no emotion. Prose is bad at explicit descriptions of movement; what I call “stage directions”. It does better in vagaries. Sometimes the fight scenes do focus on this, to their betterment, and other times they don’t and fall flat.
Let’s take a look at a few examples;
The stallion struggles to his hooves and glances up halfway through my leap. All he can do is rear, throwing the sharp edge of his forehooves in my path. I howl and whip my arm down — battering his legs out of line — then ram him, bearing us both down to the stony soil. He wedges a leg in the crook of my neck and heaves, rolling us over to reverse my pin. I grip his shoulder — he winces as the claws dig in — and slam him into the ground alongside me, sending up an explosion of dust.
This paragraph is an unbroken string of telling. The impressive descriptors from the other parts of the story try to worm their way in, and the rich vocabulary is still on full display. The sentence structure, however, consists solely of the same repetitious “character did X, then the other character did Y.”
My teeth sink into her shoulder, leaving dents in the scales. She wraps her hands around my throat and squeezes. I slash with four limbs' worth of claws — which does little until a flailing arm gets within an inch of an eye, making her flinch and jerk her arms back. I release my jaw-grip, dropping below a clumsy grab attempt and headbutting her stomach with my horns. When she doubles over onto my back I wrap my arms around her leg and push the wrong way. She stiffens and brings an elbow down hard on my back; I howl as stars burst into my vision. I put my full strength into the leg hold, and she screams as her knee pops out of joint.
This first sentence is actually a good example of how to mix in flavorful and engaging description into a fight scene. The first clause is the same bland sentence structure, sure. But that second clause is great; it shows something, implies things, and is a fantastic visual. Unfortunately, after this, we are back to the same old dull sentence structure and reams of tell-y prose.
Normally I don’t dive this deep into prose structure and form in these critiques. It is because the story is so good in so many ways, however, that this failing is so pronounced.
The only other major criticism I have is that the final reveal about EQG Ember’s character is what. I tried to find a more diplomatic way to say it, but that’s all I came up with; a flat “what”, unadorned even by a question mark. It broke my willing suspension of disbelief. It makes no sense. It is foreshadowed slightly in chapter one, but the logistics and backstory of it simply collapse under the weight of it. It’s even more frustrating, because the story would have worked completely fine if EQG Ember was a wolf instead of a human. Making her a human perhaps even detracts from the themes the story is trying at; the power of instinct, the contrasts between the two versions of Ember, the dangers of loyalty and power. Yes, yes, “humans are animals” is a well-travelled theme. But it is horribly miscast here.
In a single sentence: A fantastic story, whose issues are only so noticeable because they contrast with the good parts everywhere else.
Verdict: Upvote. Yes, I spent twice as many words discussing the story’s areas of improvement compared to its strengths. And people (especially on the internet) often mistake that sort of thing as shorthand for “I didn’t like it”. In this case, it is quite the opposite; I liked this story a lot. It’s strengths were so strong, that it made the flaws seem larger than they were by comparison. And considering how many people marked the action scenes as a positive, I’m clearly in the minority on that point. Regardless, this is still an artfully written story that is well worth your time. In the announcement for the winners of the contest, I compared this story to a painting, but crafted from letters instead of colors. I meant every word.
I definitely need to get around to reading this; I'm a sucker for some good purple prose. I've put it off because the concept sounded so weird to me and I'm not all that interested in Ember as a character to begin with, but I guess that's why they say not to judge a book by its cover.
Thanks for doing this! Literary analysis is always a good time. Looking forward to more!
5173082 This is definitely one of those stories that is more about the telling than the plot. Admittedly, if I was judging it solely on its plot and themes it would still have been an alright story (excluding the what moment I mentioned above). But it is the journey, not the destination that really sold this story for me.
I'm not really big on Ember either—I stopped watching the show well before she showed up. The stories representing her in the contest, however, were both excellent.
And thank you for reading! I'm an over-analyzer at heart, but this fandom (and even just the contest) has no shortage of stories worth analyzing.