Paul's Thursday Reviews CCLVIII · 8:16pm Jul 22nd, 2021
Sticking with my topic of video games for the time being: earlier this week I beat an indie game called The Void. It was a highly unusual experience and I figure that most people have never heard of it. This in mind, I was thinking about writing a review for it. Check that, I already wrote one, but it was intended for Steam.
So now I’m curious about whether anyone would be interested if I posted such non-pony things here on FIMFiction. Just as an aside, since I’m playing the things anyway.
That’s all I got for today. Slow week and all that. Shall we get to the reviews?
Stories for This Week:
Necromancy For Foals by Queen Sanguine Dreams
Sunset Shimmer's Sick Day by CapNTilfy
Co-Incidence by Bradel
Sparks Catch by Tale Swapper
One and All by TheEveryDaySparkle
Total Word Count: 182,184
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 1
Worth It: 3
Needs Work: 1
None: 0
Necromancy For Foals
112,404 Words
By Queen Sanguine Dreams
Things are rough for twelve-year-old Bone Marrow right now. With the royal guard gone to help deal with an insurrection, his hometown has been taken over by Diamond Dog bandits who have enslaved all the adults into working the mines. Things are about to change though. Bone has a cutie mark, and it allows him some… creepy gifts. A shame nopony else seems to be so happy about it.
In this tale we get to watch as a colt develops the powers of a necromancer, powers he barely understands and which mark him as inevitably evil and villainous to the eyes of all others. I must admit, the first time I saw the royal guard react to his presence, I was shocked; does the fact that he’s clearly a frightened child not even register in their minds?
Apparently not. Bone is a necromancer. That makes him evil regardless of his actual nature or apparent age, and he will be hunted for the rest of his life. So speaketh Celestia. Right away, you can see that this isn’t going to be a pleasant story.
What I like about it is that the story leads us to believe certain things and gradually removes those expectations one by one. Right after establishing that nobody would want anything to do with a necromancer outside of killing it, Bone runs into a few ponies who are perfectly willing to be his friends. Just when you think Bone can’t possibly be killed (well, permanently), a few new rules pop up. Even as you’re suspecting Celestia of being a hardened tyrant driven mad by the very recent banishment of her sister (oh, right, this is set immediately after Luna’s banishment), we find a pained princess struggling to figure out where she’s gone wrong. We’re constantly learning new things, and that is something I wholly approve of.
I also like that nopony is depicted as being wholly evil. The Bright Moon, rebels engaged in a fierce civil war over Luna’s banishment, are regular antagonists and yet their actions are based upon the past mistakes of Celestia, not some corrupt desire for power. The true villain is obsessed with wiping out ‘evil’ such as Bone Marrow, yet all his actions felt justified to him because Celestia had his back for so long. Even Bone Marrow isn’t portrayed as a perfect good guy colt, showing a distinct vicious streak. It paints every character with greater nuance and I can’t possibly complain about that.
As a side note, I should mention that I love the trick involving Obscenely Rich. He wears armor that, according to him, is enchanted such that anyone who damages it will lose a relative amount of their own wealth to repair it. At first I couldn’t tell if this was a bluff, a practical statement to how expensive the armor had been to craft, or a literal enchantment that somehow robs ponies of their bits upon damage to heal itself. This is never expressly clarified, but the hints throughout the story strongly suggest it’s that last one. If so, consider me entertained; that’s one creative and potentially lucrative piece of armor! Considering he is first encountered taunting bandits into trying to damage his armor, I can’t help but wonder if he found a way to use this to gain his own wealth and if, in turn, it’s the only reason he’s the wealthiest pony in Equestria.
The one part I didn’t like was the gimmicky work by the author in terms of characters. Queen Sanguine Dreams went out of the way to have the ancestors of each of the Mane 6 and Spike show up in ways that were far too convenient and felt more like fan wankery than anything of any worth to the story. One or two, okay, but all of them? And then they go and write their characters in such a way as to make sure that there’s no doubt who these characters are, to the point it feels downright cheap.
Still annoying but far less problematic is the complete revision of established history. Ponyville gets founded nearly a millennia earlier than canon for entirely different reasons and Granny Smith – yes, that Granny Smith – makes a cameo that defies disbelief. At least there’s something resembling an excuse for Granny’s ridiculous longevity, even if it doesn’t line up at all with evidence shown in the rest of the story. Still, there is an AU tag, so whether it’s truly a bad thing or not will come down to personal taste.
Bone Marrow himself is a peculiar character. At the beginning of the story I viewed him as extremely young. Possibly no more than seven or eight. His behavior really matched that to me. As the story goes on he matures a lot and very quickly. That’s partially understandable given the shit that’s happening to him, but at the same time it felt too fast, and I began questioning his actual age. When it finally comes out that he’s twelve, I was… concerned. For the majority of the story, I think that age fits with his given behavior and maturity level. But what was the deal with the beginning of the story when it felt like he was half that age? Is it intended to indicate the carefree life he had before vs. now? Did the author just not know how to handle his character when the story began? I can’t say for sure. Still, it’s only an issue at the start of the story, so I guess it’s not that big a deal.
Overall, I enjoyed this. The action is heavy, Bone Marrow’s journey is deeply personal for him, and the characters are just interesting enough to keep things from getting stale. I like the pacing, the atmosphere, and the worldbuilding. Bone Marrow (and his friends) never fails to remind you that he’s just a child, with more than a few amusing “from the mouths of children” moments. I appreciate that the conclusion isn’t all sunshine and rainbows but instead leaves huge holes with promises to address them in the sequel (which I have every intention of reading if the author can find it within themselves to finish it). I particularly hope we’ll get to find out what happened to Bone’s village, which is the primary elephant in the room for me.
A solid story all around. Looking forward to what comes next!
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Sunset Shimmer's Sick Day
12,112 Words
By CapNTilfy
Alternative Title: Sunset Shimmer is the Most Patient Person in the World
Sunset Shimmer falls ill. Her friends decide to visit her over the course of the day. She is, shockingly, okay with this. Oh, and nonsense dream shenanigans.
Apparently this is supposed to be the starting story in which Sunset goes on some great “journey of destiny” or some such. If that’s the case, CapNTilfy has a really weird idea of how these things should happen. The first chapter has nothing to do with anything the story is supposed to be about. The majority of the other chapters involve each of the rest of the Humane 7 coming to visit her one at a time. And with literally every visit she tries to get some sleep and they wake her up, sometimes repeatedly.
I can’t imagine anything more annoying than trying to get some much needed rest while sick and having to be woken up every twenty minutes. Seeing this story makes me question if CapNTilfy has ever been sick in their entire life, considering that Sunset is depicted as appreciating being woken up over and over and over and over and over and over.
Even stranger is that Sunset has a dream that keeps building off itself every time she falls asleep, and this dream is apparently supposed to be all her friends from the human world and Equestria informing her that she’s going to have to go on some big life-defining journey soon. So Sunset… just… decides it’s real? Yeah. That’s what she does. Without bothering to contact Equestria for confirmation, she gathers all her friends together the next day and says she’s leaving, because this is a perfectly normal and rational thing for someone to do because of a dream. Let’s just ignore the fact that all her human friends were also in the dream and have no idea what she’s talking about; they were in the dream, they were talking to her, and it’s real.
Couple all that with a painfully direct writing style and no attempt at generating atmosphere and you’ve got a bit of a dud. Add on Sunset robotically relating her entire history, plus her relationships with each of her friends, much of which is already well known by the reader anyway. I was more exasperated than anything.
It’s a shame. I read this one because I was curious to read a story later in this series, but now I don’t feel inclined to continue. I checked the other stories and saw that CapNTilfy released them as if firing them from a shotgun, with many stories in the series released within the same month. Kudos for writing speed and all, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in a potential quality uptick. Quite the opposite, really.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Co-Incidence
2,534 Words
By Bradel
Alternative Title: Twilight Sparkle is a Silly Pony
The Winter Solstice and the New Moon are happening at the same time. Precisely the same time, down to the millisecond. Which means both Celestia and Luna will be at their weakest state. Twilight Sparkle has been around long enough to know that this is the time when terrible, terrible things happen.
This is, essentially, Twilight Twilighting and being paranoid. If you like seeing Twilight panicking for what everyone assures her is no reason at all, then this may do it for you. I was certainly amused. The ending was a nice bit of icing on the cake, and I can’t help wondering if the whole thing wasn’t planned by the Royal Siblings from the start.
My only concern is how this story flies in the face of Lesson Zero. I get that it’s obvious Twilight is overreacting, but at the same time wasn’t there this whole thing about not being dismissive and flippant regarding other ponies’ fears and concerns? And wasn’t it Spike who most adhered to this lesson in the first place?
Eh, it’s a minor complaint. Had the episode not come to mind, I probably wouldn’t have cared and even found the whole thing far more amusing. I enjoyed it for what it was, and what it was was a quick short at Twilight’s expense. If that sounds like something you’d like to see, then give it a go.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Purple Prose, or A Night at the Clopera — Pretty Good
The Curious Incident of the (Robot) Dog in the Night-time — Pretty Good
Twilight Sparkle Investigates — Pretty Good
Sparks Catch
54,118 Words
By Tale Swapper
Sequel to Myriad Thoughts
In the prior story, we get to see a surprisingly, pleasantly deep rendition of the whole Anon-A-Miss fiasco, this time with the Mane 6 realizing how stupid they were and coming to terms with their relationship with Sunset. It ended with Sunny moving in with the Apple clan and becoming AJ’s adopted sister.
Sparks Catch takes a completely different slant, instead focusing on a new magic forming in the human world and causing all sorts of problems, most notably letting random people have magical powers. The story ultimately acts as a revision of Sci-Twi’s introduction to CHS, having her going to study the ‘phenomenon’ known as magic well before the Friendship Games.
For starters, I really like the intent behind this story. Just like they did with Anon-A-Miss, Tale Swapper takes an established concept and tries to make a deeper, more interesting version of it. Along the way we get political intrigue (turns out Celestia’s entire family is comprised of powerful politicians and business types), an entirely different “magic makes a student go haywire” situation, and maintains the whole “Cinch is a manipulative witch” element, but does it all in a way that feels new and interesting. I won’t say which student ended up getting superpowers that (once again) nearly levelled Canterlot High, but I will note that I did not see it coming.
As much as I like the ideas behind the story, I feel like the delivery could use some tweaks. Tale Swapper has trouble focusing on any one protagonist or even subject. With practically every scene we’re jumping to completely different characters focusing on completely different things. And while it’s all related in some way, there’s no sense of flow within the story itself. Or to put it another way, a lot of the subjects that came up feel like they could have been resolved in their own separate stories rather than tacked onto this one.
Why is EqG Discord here? Why is the author treating this character who we’ve never seen before as if he was always a valued and beloved and established individual that we’ll all instantly care about? Why are we getting these scenes with Big McIntosh as if he was ever an important player in any of these events? Why do we need these two scenes involving Rarity trying to make proper amends with Sunset Shimmer, the entire topic of which has nothing to do with the ongoing story?
In short, it feels like Tale Swapper is trying to do far too much. The big climactic moment of the entire story is set in the middle instead of, you know, the conclusion, because the author just couldn’t close out all the threads in a single chapter. Heck, they even felt the need to write three epilogues. They need to learn to narrow their focus. We’ve got the Humane 7 plus Princess Twilight. That’s more than enough characters to juggle for a story without adding twenty more.
Tale Swapper still needs to figure out what proofreading is, but aside from that I have no further complaints. Oh, except that they might have blatantly stolen another author’s OC. Unless Tale Swapper is the alt username of the owner of said character. Unless they just happened to create a character with the same name, general look, and general profession of the other author. I dunno, it seems like too many coincidences. Then again nobody complains if, as a random example, Littlepip appears in a story, and they certainly didn’t get permission to use her from Kkat, so I guess this could just be considered business as usual.
So again, I liked the story on the whole, but feel it could have been far better with a refined focus on the main plot and characters rather than trying to jam fifty of each in there. If you’re willing to forgive that, I see no reason not to recommend it.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Myriad Thoughts — Pretty Good
One and All
1,016 Words
By TheEveryDaySparkle
Sequel to Royalty Forgotten
Princess Twilight has just been… reminded of exactly what it means to be an alicorn.
For lack of a better term, I’ll call this one more ‘tame’ than the others in this series. The collection of stories basically reveals these huge secrets for the characters involved, such as Rainbow Dash being a cultured and regal princess or Fluttershy being literally a goddess. Yeah, those are big deals and they’ll require you to stretch your imagination and sense of disbelief to their absolute limits. By comparison, Twilight’s earns little more than a “huh, that’s neat.” That’s not to say it isn’t a big deal in general, but when set against many of the things I’ve seen associated with Twilight – I reviewed Myths and Birthrights immediately before writing this, for example – her being a global magical conduit is sort of yawn-inducing.
That said, the potential consequences are fascinating. Someone with a good bit of creativity could take the apparent implications and make a proper epic out of it. Alas, TheEveryDaySparkle’s more interested in the “this is a fact, moving on” class of story. Such a shame.
The only real criticism I have for this one is why the heck the author thought it was a good idea to write the entire second part of the story in a steady stream of quotation marks. For starters, we don’t need them at all if we’ve already established that Twilight is (presumably) dictating the entire scene. Second, it’s grammatically incorrect to close the quotation when a character is still talking from the end of one paragraph to the start of another. Either way it is wrong and either way it is annoying. Still, it’s a nitpick regarding a rule that a lot of people seem to be unaware of, so I won’t hold it too heavily against the author.
This is easily the best-presented story of the series so far, and so earns at least a nod of appreciation for giving us a reasonable explanation for why Twilight is saying all this. It also doesn’t stretch the very limitations of believability with its revelation. As such, I think it’s one of the better entries in the collection.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Hidden Goddess — Worth It
Royalty Forgotten — Worth It
The Order of The Rainbow — Needs Work
Stories for Next Week:
Lez Ponies by FrozenPegasus
The way she moved by BlueSupernova
The Mage and the Filly Fair by Fahrenheit
The Farmer & The Mermaid by TheOneAJ
Manehattan Blues by Samey90
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Paul's Thursday Reviews CCLXIII
You have a way of writing reviews that is exceptionally engaging. They’re always a fine balance of honesty and rationalism, and you generally acknowledge any biases you have if they are relevant. I think reviews of video games on here would be just as entertaining as reviews of stories.
You should check out Dark Souls. It’s arguably the most influential game of the past 10 years.
I'd say it couldn't hurt to try with the videogame reviews. I've been considering posting my next rambly essay here even though it's not pony-related and continuing to do so from here on out, just because I don't see myself thinking of another pony thing to ramble about any time soon.
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Shtahp, you're makin' me
5558823
Is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice close enough? It's on my wishlist.
5558879
I've seen that plenty of people do that. Heck, there's someone out there who does reviews of animated movies (I only noticed because they did a Prince of Egypt review).
5558965
Sekiro is ok, but it's nothing compared to Dark Souls imo.
5558965
Sekiro looks quite different from Dark Souls, from what I've seen of it. At least in terms of gameplay. Dark Souls has a fairly bare-bones combat system where even though there's different ways to build a character it all comes down to a very similar gameplay loop of dodging the attack and attacking back when it's safe. Sekiro has more mechanics and requires a stricter application of them--in Dark Souls there's one dodge button that works on every attack, whereas Sekiro has specific attacks that require you to jump instead of dodge, or specifically dodge forwards instead of away, that kind of thing.
Looks very fun, there's a lot of cool stuff in it, I'd say absolutely give it a shot, but if you specifically want Dark Souls you can get a lot closer to it than Sekiro, from what I gather.
Hmm, your review of Necromancy for Foals was a lot more positive than I'd anticipated.
Maybe my enjoyment of the story was more strongly affected by my pet peeves than I remember. It had a substantial prevalence of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome (LUS) and redundant prose which frequently took me out of the experience.
I did comment on it, which led to a rather interesting series of responses...
The author did attempt to address the issues I'd pointed out, and it apparently resulted in the next chapter being delayed because it had thrown her for a loop. LUS is a symptom of repetitive sentence structure, which naturally became obvious once she attempted to fix it by swapping all instances of it back to character names. In the end, it seems that the author did not identify the underlying issue and simply declared that it (LUS) was part of her writing style and therefore didn't need to be changed.
I think the main reason why this story really sticks out in my memory is less due to the quality of the story itself and more of the circumstances surrounding it. I was surprised by the amount of downvotes I got for that comment, and outright dismissal from one other reader. It gave me the impression that the author might've been a victim of her own success when she had a Discord server filled with fans insulating her from criticism and any potential improvements.
I've been more careful about trying to give constructive criticism ever since.
Anyway, just thought I'd share this because I suspect it's something that reviewers bump into every now and then.
5558965
Coincidentally, I myself did write an essay about Joseph: King of Dreams with some tangential discussion of Prince of Egypt.
When you play Sekiro you can very obviously tell it's from the same people who made Dark Souls, the base melee combat and game systems are more or less identical, to say nothing of the design and the tone and themes of the story, but there are some significant key differences in the details. Sekiro is much faster-paced and has a heavier emphasis on stealth and platforming, levels are very big and very open with opportunities to sneak up on opponents, but there are just as many opportunities for you to be caught unawares if you aren't careful. A big element of combat is not just the enemy's health but their "posture", the depletion of which allows you to get in a finisher, so the majority of battles with non-mook enemies are about a war of attrition as you wear your opponent down. Combat in effect is almost like a rhythm game, you have to get just the right timing for how to parry or dodge enemies' attacks while getting your own hits at the same time. While there are various upgrades that you get throughout the game, you are basically playing the same way through the whole game on every playthrough--in Dark Souls you create a character and level up stats which determine what weapons and spells and other things you can equip; in Sekiro you play a set character, you always have the same main weapon, your choices are limited to what upgrades you want to put on your shinobi tools and what combat techniques you choose to learn, and there are a few set upgrades for your health and damage throughout the game, it's a bit of a case of quality over quantity with this one skillset being extremely diverse but it can still feel stifling at times and it limits replayability somewhat. It's also, in my opinion, a whole lot more unforgiving in its difficulty, the beginning in particular has an extremely steep difficulty curve, and that lack of customization means there isn't a whole lot you can do aside from throwing yourself into the fire repeatedly until you get the mechanics right. It's also got some ludicrously obscure things, and FromSoft is already known for doing obscure things in their games; in particular there's a secret boss fight that can only be accessed if you do some very specific actions, I seemingly missed it in my playthrough and that was what got me fed up enough to stop playing. It might do you some good to approach it with a fresh mind unburdened by prior experience with the Dark Souls formula, but I can see this being a very rough choice for one's first FromSoft game.
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TBH what got me were the occasional moments when the characters took a cliche or plot-driven turn. Overall the author seemed to have a relatively -- how do I even describe this? -- 'uncareful' style? Even so, this didn't really knock me off the wagon until the sequel, when our necromancer, having recently (to him) experienced the unhappy end of the last story, seemed to get over it in a matter of minutes with no accompanying explanation. (I read it a while ago so be aware that I don't perfectly recall all the specifics.)
My take away was that premise seems to bring popularity more than quality does, even if it wasn't truly a bad story.
Edit:
Ah, yes, another example of why I don't think large public Discord servers do nearly as much good as people seem to commonly believe.
5559000
Now that you bring it up, I do recall there being too much LUS present in the story. Perhaps it got lost amongst all the other things I wanted to comment on.
It's understandable that the author's stance and that of their defenders would frustrate you. I encountered something nearly identical in an author who outright blocked me because I was too "narrow minded" to accept that using LUS every second sentence was part of his unique author's voice.
I suppose in this case it just didn't grab my attention as much as everything else in the story did.
5559002
Everything you said here only makes me want to play Sekiro more.
5559017
I think I get what you mean, especially concerning the sequel.
I noticed quite a few comments questioning the creativity or contrivance of certain plot points, and it didn't help that they were often met with responses along the lines of, "If you don't like it, go write your own story."
It's a wonderful tool for authors to engage with their audiences, especially if they have the maturity and self-awareness to avoid the potential pitfall of being surrounded by yes-men. (Don't rely on your fans to proofread or edit your work!) Experienced authors like Estee and Starscribe have made great use of Discord, I think.
Also, it probably helps if you produce content that attracts more discerning fans. You're more likely to have an uphill battle if your Fimfic career was built on Anon or Displaced fics...
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I'm usually not too bothered if an author is unreceptive to criticism. It's often unsolicited advice, after all, and it's easy enough to step back and leave them alone once it's clear that they don't want that kind of feedback.
What bugs me more is when there are dedicated readers defending unsound writing practices, because they're an additional barrier to growth that authors may find addictive. Whenever I get harsh but fair criticism, my first instinct is to seek out supportive comments instead of listening.
Fair enough. It's nice that you were able to enjoy it.