Collision Zone

by

Lord Sunder

The description is rather vague and verbose. The vagueness is nice and inspires curiosity about the story. The purple prose, not so much.

It seems to imply that the story will be about the troubles of the princesses as they face normal everyday life. Luna will have trouble reintegrating into society, Celestia will begin to show the years of stress she’s been under, and Twilight will be visited by an alien in her dreams.

...Wait, what?

NOTE: This section of the review contains a summary of what I read and, thus, SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk.

We open in an unknown location on a distant planet being told the worries of an ancient, tentacle-y alien life form as it makes its way to Equestrian space. It needs to form some manner of union with a mortal who has an affinity with magic. What better candidate than the Element of Magic herself?

Enter Twilight Sparkle who, being tired from writing reports all day, is blissfully asleep. She's disturbed by the alien consciousness and, after a bit of banter, decides she's just having a weird dream and agrees to enter into a vaguely-defined pact with the being.

She realizes just how deeply she is mistaken, of course, when she wakes up with black-as-the-deepest-night ethereal hair and an extra voice in her head. The hair has a mind of its own—a mind entirely preoccupied with suggestive sexual overtures and rage—and the voice seems to want to be Twily's new mum.

After a bit of the two new headmates getting to know each other, we cut to an ivory mare of significantly greater age as she butters her toast. Don't let her bright exterior, elder maturity or apparent peacefulness fool you, however, for Celestia is in the throes of the deepest, most soul-crushing maelstrom of angst and depression ever known to pony kind. She incinerates her toast and flies off to meet Princess Luna.

Luna is also depressed, but has taken the slightly less destructive route of isolating herself from everypony except Celestia. They have a conversation about how terribly sad they are and we cut back to Twilight.

Twilight is told by her new alien companion that she needs to perform a ritual to give them sustenance. Twilight agrees and she is guided to a leyline out in the woods. She absorbs the magic of the leyline—rather enthusiastically, I might add—which helps her further adapt to the alien's presence.

Twilight awakens smelling of sex and charged with magic. After taking a shower, she learns she has been invited to an event as Celestia's guest. Cue Lesson Zero-style panic as Twilight tries to find a way to hide her new passenger from an immortal who also happens to be her teacher.

It seems Fate conspires against our heroes because Celestia happened to invite Twilight to dinner on the same night a couple of assassins make their move. Twilight gets caught in the crossfire and is close to death. Good thing an alien with magical knowledge that dwarfs ponykind just happens to be hitchhiking on Twilight's consciousness!

Twilight survives. Celestia feels guilty for putting Twilight in that situation. Celestia discovers there's an alien squatting in Twi's head. Celestia lets them stay as long as they make a magical promise not to hurt anypony. Celestia puts Twilight up in the castle and smashes a dish the next time she eats breakfast.

I stopped reading about halfway through chapter eight.

The prose in this story, while not impenetrable, is incredibly purple and difficult to get through. There were only a few places I couldn't understand what it meant, but I often found myself skipping over paragraphs that contained little more than verbose scene description. Some of the imagery works despite the miring exposition, but it does significant damage to the audience's immersion because it feels like a chore to read.

The pacing in this story also hurts it. The verbose nature of the story contributes to this, but the story meanders through so much world-building and scene description that entire chapters ooze by and all we've done is had two characters meet one another. I stopped reading halfway through the story mostly because it didn't feel like my curiosity would be worth the time it would take to reach the ending.

Another drag on the story's already slow tone is Celestia's interpretation as a brooding, depressed, self-hating martyr. I noticed exactly one bit of levity in the entirety of her contribution to the story. The rest of her dialogue, particularly her inner thoughts, is absolutely saturated with angst. That's not to say it's necessarily poor characterization—the interpretation is certainly valid—but it's hard to sympathize with a character who sees everything as a negative reflection on themselves. Celestia's breakfast scenes are meant to establish how much pain she's in, but breaking plates and destroying toast just makes it seem like she's throwing a tantrum. She comes off as incredibly selfish and immature.

This would be fine, except it seems we're meant to sympathize with her and actually root for her and Twilight getting together. She just isn't relatable. On top of that, her self-pity takes up ages of the reader's time with no real reward.

Oh, and this fic also has sex in it. The sexual stuff in this fic feels like something of an afterthought next to the mountains of scene description and other things that take up wordspace. By the middle of the eighth chapter, we had one paragraph of Twilight cumming from being infused with leyline-magic and one somewhat lengthy masturbation scene.

The sex scenes just feel kind of odd. It's as if the author felt he had to insert them, so Twilight just kinda gets horny at random times. The sexy stuff gets in the way of the plot and the plot pads out the interval between sex scenes. The overall effect is to slow down the story even further.

In conclusion, the story just feels like it can't get where it wants to go. Some of the imagery works and the interplay between Celestia and Twilight can be funny at times, but there are too many things weighing it down. The prose is purple, the world-building gets bogged down in magical techno-babble, the characters prattle endlessly about things already established, the sex feels like an afterthought and the whole thing is overshadowed by Celestia crawling in her skin. There just isn't enough here for how much time it takes to get through it.

This tale feels like it needs to focus. It's trying to be sexy, deep, complex, mysterious and emotional, but it spends too much time on everything. A reader usually comes to a story for a few things. Maybe they want some world-building with a bit of character and comedy. Maybe they want porn with a little plot. This story chooses not to concentrate on any one aspect and instead tries to encompass many of them. Specks of light shine through occasionally, but it just feels like the story is getting in its own way.

The prose could also use an overhaul. Primarily, it would be good to do away with any scene description that the plot doesn't need. A story trying to do so many things doesn't need the extra baggage.

Secondarily, it's important to realize when something has been established so that you don't spend time re-establishing it. For example:

A Celestia from three millenia ago would have laughed at the idea, but to this one, it merely filled her with sadness. A nagging pain in her stomach. Luna, my sister... where did I go wrong?

Celestia Feels Sad about Luna: the First.

Celestia sighed, walking the winding stairs up to Luna's redoubt. Perhaps it would have been easier if she had turned me away, like the rest...

The Second.

The ghosts of the past hung thickly around her with every step, echoes of a time both sought to forget. Nightmare Moon. The name still evoked bitter anger in her, despite her attempts to cool the temper that had caused the problem to begin with. Celestia snorted derisively. Problem. That would be the understatement of the millennium.

The Third.

Any one of these instances would've been enough to establish how Celestia feels and about whom. Repeating what we already know only slows the story down. This is a constant problem and the story suffers mightily for it.

The characters also need some work. As mentioned previously, Celestia is a drag, if a passably-characterized one. Terminus, on the other hand, is a bit of a Sue. She's able to give Twilight the knowledge and power to do anything the author wants. Any conflicts she has with the characters are glanced over and get lost in her aloof curiosity. We get hints that maybe Terminus has a devious plan or is hiding something, but the intrigue isn't enough to carry the story. If we had a clearer case for her being manipulative or firmer reason to believe her secrets will create conflict, she would be much stronger as a character.

Lastly, the telly language in this fic is fairly prevalent. A scan for modifiers with -ly on the end of the word would find a lot of the telliness.

While I personally didn't enjoy this story, I feel like others might find enjoyment. Some of Terminus' intrigue might draw readers on and the Twilestia chemistry can be decent at times. Despite this, I have to be honest about how I felt.

Verdict: Needs Work

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Was the author trying to emulate J.R.R. Tolkien's writing with his over-the-top purple descriptions? I feel as if the author was just throwing in fancy words based on definition alone and not connotation or how they fit with the narrative voice.

Err, maybe I'm wrong—but when reading the story I was more cross with the writing than actually enjoying it.