Well, I did have a preamble written already, but now I’ve finished reading, I find myself in a very unexpected position. I really wanted to have the review for this story because I’ve had some strong views on the other winners in the More Most Dangerous Game Competition, and because the positive comments both Soge and PresentPerfect had about it intrigued me.

Take two horrible characters and make an excellent MLD remake out of them? It seems preposterous, but the only thing I know Patchwork Poltergeist for is that Somewhere Only We Know was just a damned good idea. Technically very mediocre, but stories that make me think ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ will usually stay with me a long time.

Now, I find myself wanting to provide Patchy with the best feedback I can, and I have decided that my usual framework (or the rubric for the group) is not the best way to handle this. No, today you should just grab one of your preferred beverages and hang around while I cobble together my opinions on what this story is, and perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t.

A Diamond and a Tether

By Patchwork Poltergeist

Heiress Lucy Burdock knows life has a way of surprising you.

For example, she wasn't expecting a little pink pony for her birthday. She certainly didn't expect it to start talking, either. It was cute at first, but it kinda feels more like taking care of a little kid than a pony. Lucy's never really been great with kids... but she can make it work!

Can't she?

Aside from a few spaces at the start of lines and a couple of missed linespaces (all of which have probably been corrected by now), the story was essentially perfect on the grammar front. I would suggest that ellipses really ought to have a space after them, but I’ve seen all sorts in published media, so that’s negligible.

More importantly, no semicolons were abused in the writing of this story. You may have an A and a cookie,  and we shall speak no more of it.

I would, however, like to point out that I think single line ‘gapping’ in a work already using linespaces for formatting are just a horrible idea. The moment I have to stop and work out if it’s an error or an intentional pause, you have failed to adequately represent your meaning.

So, A Diamond and a Tether. Let’s kick off with a mechanical look at how this story is constructed. It is written in present-tense, using a true omnipotent narrator, and a journal-entry format. It is very minimalist when it comes to the prose. All of these choices are absolutely vital.

A genuinely omnipotent narrator is a tricky thing to use. Most people who use it without really understanding it will end up giving their readers some degree of PoV-whiplash. It’s very hard to hear the perspectives and thoughts of multiple characters without some kind of negative reaction; sometimes it flattens the tentson to touch on both sides of a conflict, and sometimes it’s just disturbing to try and keep more than one perspective in your head at once. What Patchwork Poltergeist does here is to use that ultra-light style of minimalist prose to offset his very flexible PoV. He never inhabits a character’s perspective exactly, he just tells you what details you need to know to understand the story that is unfolding, and he doesn’t balk at colouring that prose with whatever character’s perspective is relevant at the time. It works because he does it as such a pace that you just absorb the information as it is given to you.

Further, he knows when to do it. When the pace is muted, we get longer excerpts from the characters’ lives and direct perspectives aren’t necessary. Everything you need to know is carried by description or dialogue, but when the pace speeds up, the reader is occasionally given a direct thought or two two speed things along. Perfectly aligning the directness – almost bullishness – of the prose with the requirements of the story means that these moments remain virtually invisible. Even that it further bolstered by the fact that the format of the story is a series of events, not an actual journal, so each scene is written from whatever perspective pushes the story best.

And they all push the story, which is the point. Even when the pace is ostensibly slow, the prose reads very quickly, cleanly, and constantly offers you new things to think about. Everything about this story is like being on train tracks towards it’s destination – even the ludicrous degree of detail that goes into discussions of fashion and the finer points of accessorising. While it is not abnormal for the details of a story to all be pointing towards a single destination, this is a superb example of every style choice doing exactly that as well. Perhaps it was a necessity because it is a retelling of a story that we all know the ending to, but that is far less relevant than simple fact that it works.

So, the pace, format, perspective, and style all come together to stop the retelling of an infamous story from becoming stale, and writing it in present-tense seals that all up much more harmoniously that I imagined it would at the outset. You’re not being told a story, and you’re not being offered one character’s perspective; A Diamond and a Tether is a visceral experience – the story is what happens to you.

I’m not sure how any one of those individual choices could have come together without the others. On its own, the choice to write in a journal style doesn’t make a lot of sense. Without the pace and the attention to just the right details, the minimalism would get old very quickly. Overall, it’s like that moment when a few seemingly arbitrary marks on some paper suddenly become a wonderful painting and you realise that the painter could see the entire thing in their mind from the outset.

It is in that sense that I absolutely endorse this story as being more or less the best it could be at what it is doing, but I also find myself drawn to analysing what it isn’t. It seems timely that I wrote a guest post recently on separating out the skills, concepts, and practices of being an author from being a writer; Patchwork Poltergeist is undoubtedly a skilled author, but I see very little here to suggest more than core strengths in grammar and not waffling on like a noob.

I don’t say that as a negative. It isn’t a criticism. It’s not a problem in any way, but if I’m going to give the story such a high rating, I think it’s okay to just tell it like it is. This is not a masterpiece of prosaic bliss. In fact, as far as writing goes, it’s really not an exemplar for much more than writing concisely. The journal format certainly has it’s detractors, and while I don’t usually agree with them, it certainly isn’t because I think they lack any good points. In fact, the story uses a number of cheap tricks that would go down like a lead balloon anywhere else, and most of them are the very things that make it work.

The journal style isn’t really a journal style because it isn’t actually anyone’s journal – or letters, or recollections. It’s just quick and dirty headers to show the passing of time. The prose is sparse to the point that it would be underwhelming if the characters don’t keep the reader engaged. The present tense would be a rather bland gimmick if everything else wasn’t just so, and using a small font for reduced volume will draw the ire of many editors and critics alike.

In short, my advice to other authors would be not to copy anything in this story: it’s a pile of seemingly-bad ideas cobbled together. It shouldn’t work, and frankly, it’s not for me to judge whether you got lucky or you’re a genius. I don’t even think it matters.

So if it’s such a pile of improbable ideas strung together with confidence and gaffa-tape, why does it work? Well, that’s the easy bit: the characters.

I’ve seen folks comment on how the author managed to make a canonical backstory for the Diamond Tiara in the show. I think that’s some fairly ridiculous reaching. No, I think Patchy just took the character he wanted and built towards it because it fitted with that minimalist style. And again, I don’t mean that as a negative – no sense reinventing the wheel when you don’t have to. What matters is that he gives a completely believeable framework how how that character comes about as a result of the events in the story.

It is totally the Diamond Tiara from the show, but it’s totally not the Diamond Tiara from the show. The fact that he’s abusing the shortcuts available to fanfic writers is neither here nor there.

The characters may become attached – and pretty co-dependent – for a host of really bad reasons, but you can’t help but feel just how positive the experience of coming into each other’s life feels. Even more than that, though, is that Patchwork Poltergeist recognises and repairs the biggest flaw in MLD: the conflict has to be more that just that infamous ending. Here, the superficially wonderful relationship is in tatters well before the inevitable happens. This way, the whole middle of the story continues to be engaging in spite of knowing where the story must, inevitably, end.

In doing so, the human protagonist also goes from being some vapid rich-kid without a soul to someone who is hurting in a way that pretty much everyone can understand. You don’t know anything about where she has come from, but you can’t not realise she is powerless to have the thing she wants most, and it makes for an extremely compelling situation. When the end does come, she absolutely knows that she has already screwed everything up and has no way out other than to do the right thing. What makes this all the more powerful is that the story doesn’t actually say more than the occasional hint towards her motives at the end – it is intuitive.

At the end of chapter two, Diamond Tiara said, ‘You could have just said no’ and it felt like a gut-punch. But at the end, I felt even worse for the human that had started out so completely unlikeable. She might not have even been readable if the pacing didn’t carried you along it at a clip. She doesn’t come to grow as a human being because of their relationship; she only grows because she comes to see that she has fouled everything up. The redemption comes with a worthy price, and that makes the finale all the sweeter.

In this way, A Diamond and a Tether truly shines.

But would it have been worth looking at without those characters? Part of me is glad that I don’t have to have an answer for that question. It does work, and that’s all I have to review. It is successful in all it set out to do. In the end, though, it does it without having to be a good piece of literature. It’s a good fanfiction, with all the caveats and subjective biases that apply.

In the end, there is no correct answer to whether there is more art in a highly detailed oil painting or making simple shapes come together to be something altogether different. One is technical, the other is more conceptual. Both are art, and so is this.

Must Read

My Little Dashie done right. No wish fulfilment here, just a train wreck in slow motion – and a few gimmicks that work despite themselves.

I really hope that is been of some use to the author, as this was an exceptionally difficult story to have anything other than a unabashed positivity towards.

I also hope I haven't leaned too heavily on they fellow contributor's tolerance with my wanton disregard for the usual format.

I also also hope that my sore throat goes away soon. It's damned inconvenient.

-M

I also hope I haven't leaned too heavily on they fellow contributor's tolerance with my wanton disregard for the usual format.

The format is more like guidelines, anyway.

The only actual issue is that Masterpiece status is given by an admin vote. This is "Must-Read" until we do that. Though I have enough faith in your standards to expect this to at least be a strong contender for MP, even if it doesn't sound like something I'd normally read myself.

4221260 Ahh. Understood and altered.

In retrospect, I'm glad the contest restrictions forced me into a minimalist style for the sake of word count and pacing. I needed to re-learn how to be concise after meandering with florid prose for two years with "Last Human." A brisk walk instead of a long stroll.

I really hope that is been of some use to the author, as this was an exceptionally difficult story to have anything other than a unabashed positivity towards.

It certainly was! Even if I didn't do a lot of things wrong, it's equally helpful to know what exactly I did right and what worked. If for nothing else, it convinces that it wasn't a mystical fluke and I maybe know what the heck I'm doing.
Though I must gently point out that I'm a lady and not a gentleman. c:

I, too, hope your sore throat goes away soon. Those are terrible.

4223134

I needed to re-learn how to be concise after meandering with florid prose for two years with "Last Human."

I did wonder about that. I had a quick poke around when writing the preamble that got deleted and noted the numbers on The Last Human with some degree of scepticism. 12k views on a 200k story is obviously very impressive, but then I saw the half life was only chapter 6 out of 23. Not that having 3k views at the end of 200k words (as well as passing the Royal Guard standards) isn't solid work, but having only the numbers to work on, it at least made me intrigued as to what hadn't held up – especially since a brief skim over the first chapter showed the base competency was well above average.

But then, I can't help but search for patterns in everything. That's just me.

If for nothing else, it convinces that it wasn't a mystical fluke and I maybe know what the heck I'm doing.

Heh. I got a rough enough ride during Outside Insight last year to stop worrying about such things. You can write the perfect story for one person and draw little but confusion and ire from a dozen others (I have that story in the pool for this group for what I imagine is the same reason you put this here). What I can say for sure, is that when Present Perfect and I both agree that a story is good, you can take that to the bank. It doesn't happen often!

Though I must gently point out that I'm a lady and not a gentleman.

I prefer to assume you're all brains in jars until proven otherwise. It just makes internet life easier...

Anyway, glad it helped. If you have any further questions, feel free to toss them my way.

4226707

I had a quick poke around when writing the preamble that got deleted and noted the numbers on The Last Human with some degree of scepticism. 12k views on a 200k story is obviously very impressive, but then I saw the half life was only chapter 6 out of 23.

I keep seeing a lot of people put a lot of stock in reader retention numbers. And while I do think they're interesting and perhaps even important, I also feel that they're very misleading.

There are many reasons people don't finish stories, and many of them have nothing to do with story quality. Sometimes you're waiting for the author to finish the story. Sometimes you're really busy and you fall behind and the number of chapters you're behind is intimidating. Sometimes you feel like doing things other than reading. Those things happen quite often. I mean, I'm pretty confident in saying my favorite hobby is reading, but I haven't done much reading the past couple months, and there was a good nearly two year period where I also didn't read much.

So sure, reader retention numbers are interesting, but it's hard to tell if it's because people lose interest in the story itself, or if there is some other reason that they're not reading. As such, I'm reluctant to look at a story, note that it lost a lot of readers halfway, and find myself hesitant to read the story as a result. There are just too many other variables for me to reasonably correlate those ideas.

4221463
It's been a long time coming, but Jack has been bringing attention to the backlog in the Skype chats, and so I finally read this one.

I've always thought I was more forgiving of Diamond Tiara than most. After all, cruel or not, she's still a child. But actually feeling sympathy for her is another matter entirely. This story pulled it off. The same goes for Lucy, who I hated early on, but genuinely felt sorry for by the end.

No official rating change yet, but you have my vote.

4781813 On this matter, you might find my latest blog post interesting.

4781830
I think you'll be happy to know that this story has been now deemed a Masterpiece. ^_^

4223134
Congratulations on the Masterpiece rating!

4781867 I am indeed. Thank you :)