Eternal by: device heretic. It's a pretty long story, which I have quite a bit to say about. I'll have to note that this story had crossed the threshold of recommendation and rejection numerous times as I read it, and I'll talk about that, but first I'll write about what the story is, without spoiling it, of course.

Eternal is a story about immortality and what it entails, as the name is quick to suggest. That's what the story focuses upon, and device heretic does an absolutely fine job of focusing on, and exploring that particular avenue in its myriad ways. Although it is tagged as an Adventure story, I find it reads much more as a slice of life story, because its purpose is pretty definite from beginning to end, and it doesn't shy away from that particular plot point. It has that goal, sets out and completes it, so very thoroughly, I might add. In this manner, the Adventure tag let me down, because I was honestly expecting a bit more of... well, an Adventure. I kept thinking, It's a slice of life story, this was tagged wrong. But eventually I decided that I'd make the final judgment on that once I finished the story, and it does deserve the Adventure tag, if only just, but I'll get into that later. Just as with the sad tag, you have to read the whole thing to figure out if it built up to the proper feeling bittersweet or heart-wrenching sadness that I do oh so adore. Here's a hint, the Sad tag is very much deserved, more so than Adventure.

When I started reading Eternal, one of the first things I realized was the pacing of this story. It's slow. It moves forward at a calm walk, giving us a narrative from the perspective of whichever character that particular section is about. It slowly reveals a story that I felt very much removed from at the beginning, through a musing and whimsical tone that one might expect from an immortal's perspective. As such, it didn't quite offer me any particular narrative hook that made me want to keep reading. After the first 10K words, I knew if I had decided to pick this story up just of my own volition, I'd have set it down. Not that I was bored, per se, but there wasn't really anything that snared my attention.

The narrative does not provide a gilded hook for us to admire and chomp down upon to lead us through this maze of character struggles. No, the narrative slowly builds us a steady staircase that leads us down into the depths of an unknown chamber, and it takes us there one step at a time, with slow and sure world-building, and well-realized characters. It made me ask, by the end of the first chapter, Where is the struggle here? Where is my hook? And in retrospect, those very questions set up the whole premise and tone to this story very well, and it is a struggle with a similar sort of dissonance that is reflected in the characters.

So, then, I'll now talk about what was good about this story. Eternal has some very solid extensions of the show's characters. Each of the Mane 6 (minus Twilight) are indeed who they are from the show, and built upon in a manner that works well enough for them to be the supporting roll that they play here. The tone is well set and used well to set the reader up for the inevitable struggle, helping the reader get to understand immortal characters and know just how important a struggle dealing with immortality can be, when it's all too easy to not fully comprehend the magnitude of such characters. And the pacing itself is spot on, and never lets up its slow crawl, like the sun slowly setting to reveal the night sky.

I should also mention that the emotional impact is strong. While you see it coming, it is no less powerful. The first two thirds of the story are built to create that potent dose of emotion as Celestia and Twilight struggle with and against each other. I'll admit I shed tears on this story, (I do consider myself an easy crier) and after over 80K words without getting so much as a laugh or sniff from me, and maybe I offered a couple tweaked eyebrows at certain points, but the emotion with which I had invested in the story legitimately caught me off guard. And I was happy for it. I suddenly realized that the story did in fact succeed, and it did it well. Like a row of dominoes set up to fall, so did my tears come. And that marks it as a successful Sad story.

Now what did Eternal have that was great? Eternal has one of the best characterizations of the princesses Luna, and Celestia that I have ever seen. Especially Luna, she was so fantastic in this story. And why is this? Because this story has one of the best displays of world-building out there (and is why, technically, the Adventure tag applies). Seriously, this story's world-building is a wonder to behold. It's expansive and gives so much validation and reason to Luna's and Celestia's existence. Keeping in mind of course when this story was written, it has a nearly flawless world that's built upon midway through season 2 canon of the show (needless to say, the season 4 canon hasn't been kind to this world-building. But that doesn't matter when you read it through the context of when it was written). I deeply admire the amount of time and effort building this world must have taken, and I encourage anyone who wants to see a prime example of world-building to give this a read.

Also, the last bit in the epilogue ties it all together splendidly. It was beautiful and very much worth reading through the words to reach.

Now for some issues and nitpicks that I had with the story. And there's a fair number of these. Okay, first is the style with which it is written. This story has a lot of ellipsis use and many m-dashes used throughout, which made the reading very verbose and a tad repetitive at times. It had me doing a double-take here and there. While this did lend itself well to the characters that it was focusing on (Immortal characters have no reason to be rushing after all), it also came across as jarring. And I think this style made any scenes with the Mane 6 (minus Twi) suffer slightly for it, simply because the style feels dissonant to the mortal and more immediate-minded characters. I think overall, the story could have used a bit more trimming, I very nearly stopped reading because of the slow pace this style caused.

I had an issue with the narration. There were times when the narrator becomes the character, so to speak. And there was also one scene where the narration switched from Celestia to Rarity very suddenly (though I'll admit that it served a point, and was rather subtle if you don't have an eye to catch it). This problem could have easily been solved by placing the character thoughts in italics (as is a standard fantasy writing convention), or by otherwise indicating that the character was thinking it with single quotes or something similar. Aside from that, the narrator of this story is not as passive as I am used to (and this is more of a personal nit-pick but I feel it's worth mentioning) and it took a little while for me to get used to it as a reader. Also, I'd be remiss if I did not talk a bit about how the scene jumping takes a while to get used to. The narrative will jump from one scene to another, from character to character, and it's not always in a (temporally) linear manner, though I admit that every scene has something to add to the story, it can be very much jostling to the reader.

Along with the character thoughts, I'll mention that there is a ton of musing from each character's point of view, and perhaps not too much action (dialogue or otherwise) to be engaged by at times. So if you're a person that doesn't find the inner workings of character's minds as compelling, well this would be a tough read for you.

The use of the Mane 6 (minus Twi, but plus Spike) seemed a little botched to me. They have a bit of a side-story going for them, but I didn't feel it was entirely engaging. It's where the majority of the comedy was, but the jokes just didn't work for me. And it often tended to be the same joke at Rainbow Dash's expense. Perhaps it was the style which, as I said earlier, doesn't lend itself particularly well to their struggles as characters, or perhaps it was that the Princesses' and Twilight's struggle was just much more compelling, but I found, more often than not, if a Princess or Twi wasn't the PoV for that particular scene, I began growing mildly disinterested. Which in turn allowed me to think why the author would include these scene, and I figured it's because the characters needed to be there for an eventual struggle in the plot. And indeed they were used.

The Sad tag. Yes I've already said that it was very good. But the issue I had was after the initial, big, sad moment—pretty much the crux of the story—it plays at the waterworks for a longer time than I was comfortable with. I began to feel as though my tears were being turned into a cheap currency due to the length of which I was crying. I'd honestly rather be crying simply because I care about the characters and the struggle they are going through, yet this story takes that same sadness revisits it a dozen times again before it ends. I get that the sadness is very much an eternal thing, but it felt kind of like a cheap blow to the reader at that point, and it doesn't really let up until the end of the epilogue, and when you get your reader wondering how many words are left, just so that they know when they are going to stop being handled in this manner--that's not necessarily a good thing.

Also, I feel as though after the first big emotional blast is fully and very much aptly explored, there's a bit of a twist which kind of undermines the whole experience. I think this twist could have been handled in a manner that, instead of making me feel like I was swindled into shedding my tears (hah, look you cried for no reason), it would have instead made me feel as if my sadness—and by extension the sadness of the whole cast of characters—was vindictive in nature and won a victory of happiness. I know it is explained as such in the story, quite blatantly, but the effectiveness that comes with showing us as readers that it was a vindictive sadness, was in my opinion, squandered and made me cringe at the wonderful execution that could have taken place. And all that had to be done to achieve it was to move a small bit of the story to a later part, after the miraculous event in question was experience by the readers alongside Celestia herself. Such is the nature of story-telling, the order in which events are explored matters very much, and in this case, having the readers not be privy to the miracle until it was actually in front of them would have made a huge difference in my eyes.

So yeah, that's my review of Eternal. Even with these numerous complaints, I wholeheartedly recommend it, the world-building, characterizations of the princesses, and the final hundred words of the epilogue are a treasure to behold.

Thanks for reading,

~SilentBelle

2852103
I'm really pleased you found one of my favourite stories worthy. You identified a lot of nitpicks, and I do agree with them. Interestingly, Device once posted a blog post analysing what he thought was wrong with Eternal and your list of nitpicks and his actually match up nearly point for point. The scenes with the rest of the mane six probably shouldn't have been there because they weren't the focus, the bit you mention going on too long went on too long... these were all things brought up.

(Though he defended his ellipsis... he was a man who loved his ellipses)

It also turned out the first two chapters of Eternal are actually from a completely different story that never got finished. If you can believe it, it was some sort of Celestia-Luna-Twilight love triangle . Device realised he was fast writing himself into a corner and changed track. The rest of the story is one of the most amazing Author's Saving Throws I have seen. Go figure.

I'm afraid I actually quite liked the narrative style with the very active narrator. Sure, it's not very fashionable , but I liked it nonetheless.

I made the recommendation because you asked for inspirational stories, and for me Eternal is that. Everything that is wrong could be fixed by a good editor but I can forgive the flaws and slow pacing because underneath is something that is very beautiful and very un-cynical.

Strange that Device himself was a very pessimistic and world-weary individual. It's made me wonder if only a cynical soul could write something so un-cynical and pull it off because anyone naive would trip over their on nativity.

2852842 Oh, I enjoyed the narrative style after a fashion. It was refreshing, and it worked very well in giving the story a unique feel that accentuated the tone of the whole piece. A tone that worked exceptionally well at delivering the princesses and Twilight as characters, but couldn't achieve the same with the remaining 6 characters. Though it did take a while and a small bit of effort on my part to get used to it.

I'm quite glad that you did choose to submit Eternal, I definitely don't bemoan the time I spent reading it.

2852103

The narrative does not provide a gilded hook for us to admire and chomp down upon to lead us through this maze of character struggles.

The lack of a good hook seems to be something I come across a lot, even in published works.

It could be worse, though. I cringe whenever someone uses a prologue or in-medias-res—structures that are specifically for delivering hooks—to the opposite effect. Just say "no" to boring or mysterious prologues

This story has a lot of ellipsis use and many m-dashes used throughout, which made the reading very verbose and a tad repetitive at times.

VIVA LA EM-DASH

instead of making feel like I was

Missing me.

2853728 Thanks for pointing that out. A 2K word review is bound to have a few slip-ups in it.

As for the hooks, yeah, it would be worse if the hook was there and just failed miserably.