TReturning Home

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Maud has to return home after a rash decision and face the choosing stone. Will the rock help her or betray her?

• Sex
• Death
• Maud Pie
• Starlight Glimmer
• Limestone Pie
• Marble Pie
• Cloudy

Short-tale · 18k words  ·  11  1 · 215 views

Hello, everyone! Since this is my first time creating a review for this group, my formatting may be subject to change - as might my tone and, frankly, everything else. My goal is to provide a thorough and insightful review of the story at hand while keeping relatively concise; hopefully, what I have to bring to the table will prove useful to writers curious about a more formal sort of feedback to their story/stories.

So let’s see what we have today:

(Teen, Romance/Drama/Slice of Life; Maud Pie, Starlight Glimmer and Limestone/Marble Pie.)

Starlight and Maud get engaged but didn’t visit the choosing stone first. It was against Pie tradition and Ma isn’t going to forget that. The couple has to go to the farm and make amends. Will it lead to a happy married life or the end of their relationship? Maud isn’t sure. It’s a rock based decision.

Forewarning: unmarked spoilers ahead.

Starting Score: 0/10 points.

Ahh, StarMaud shipping. Not the most common ship out there, but certainly one I’m familiar with, alongside the sort of dynamic that’s to be expected from that sort of thing. One thing I want to stress, though, is that just because a pairing is conventional doesn’t make it a bad thing. It might have to work a little harder to stand out from its peers, sure, but quality of writing always shines through in the end.

Only one way to find out if the quality buoys the story towards a high score, isn’t there?

Originality: +1 (out of +1.5) points

Immediately, of course, I sound like I’m off of my gourd. Not undeservedly, of course; here I’ve gone, talking about how StarMaud is a semi-conventional shipping, and then I give the story relatively high marks for Originality.

Lesson #1 to take from this, folks: A story doesn’t have to be completely unique to bring something fresh to the table. And Returning Home, quite simply, brings just that.

One of the great strengths of fanfiction is in its ability to mythologize. One of the greatest gifts that a fan of someone else’s creative work can give to said work is by expanding on it, filling in gaps that may have existed or using unconstructed foundations to build grand monuments to the setting’s name. It isn’t the only way, of course, to write a good story, but it’s certainly a way to create something refreshing out of something inherently familiar, and it’s a fitting tribute to the work of someone or something that the fanfiction author clearly admired.

This is one of the story’s strengths, namely in the form of the Choosing Stone. It fits very naturally in with the rest of the Pie family traditions, all the way up there with Holder’s Boulder and the staunch traditionalism of the pie family. Other touches, such as the Cave of Couples and Maud’s application of her petrological studies to unexpected professions, help round out what feels like a genuine expansion to the overall pie-family story; if you want a good example of how to build on the foundations of a setting to help it grow into something greater, then i can think of worse examples to pick than this story.

Execution: +0.5 (out of +1.5) points

A possible, though not insurmountable, stumble the story makes is in the text itself. The narration of events, actions and the overall plot aren’t bad; they’re serviceable, but that’s as much as I can really say about it. It does its job, and the story largely speaks for itself and doesn’t need an author’s unique tone to it, but I was left with the feeling that most sufficiently competent writers could have written it.

Is this a condemnation of the story? Nothing of the sort - spoiler alert, I enjoyed the story overall. That said, what carried through in the story wasn’t the author’s voice, but the tale they told. And hey, if every story had a standout voice, none of them would have one.

(That’s how Syndrome logic from The Incredibles works, right?)

Pacing: +1 (out of +1) points

No issues for me here. Moving on.

Good use of characters: +1 (out of +1.5) points

Generally a good job, though not flawless. The pies were adequately done, giving the personalities that they needed to give to keep the story chugging along. Starlight Glimmer felt a bit uncharacteristically clingy and romantic, but given the plot, that was sort of necessary - you can’t have romance without somepony feeling romantic, even if it feels mildly out of place. Normally, I’d give this sort of thing +0.5…

…but honestly, Cloudy Quartz - or “Ma” Pie - is worth a half-point all on her own. She is, more or less, the soul of the story: A rock-ribbed traditionalist ashamed of her daughter having the audacity to move on from a traditional life and find a new partner and vocation. Her own life’s clearly affected her as much as Maud’s life has affected her own, with both of their divergent reactions to a couple of notable events setting the characters - and the conflict - in motion. The way she, Maud and (to a lesser extent) Starlight play off of each other is as core to the story as the worldbuilding is, and she’s a great example of an antagonist who isn’t a villain. Cloudy Quartz, for better or for worse, is who she is, and seeing who she’s become in light of time’s inevitable passage elevates the story as much as - if not more - than anything else.

(Her speech is a wee bit archaic, though. Didn’t distract me much from her actual sentiments, but it’s noticeable enough to warrant commenting on.)

Good visuals: +0 (out of +1) points

This is largely an all-or-nothing, but nothing really stuck out at me here, sorry.

Memorable lines: +1 (out of +1) points

Another all-or-nothing category, but there’s enough that stand out for me that it earns the point. Pinkie being, y’know, herself is almost automatically a standout:

“Starlight! Welcome! You will make the best-unicorn-sister-in-law-that-married-by-favorite-sister-that-isn’t-my-twin-or-the-oldest ever!”

Cloudy gets a couple, too, such as:

“Oh. The family hath moved down the mountain a ways. Your mate might be destined and a very warm unicorn, but she sounds like a burrowing rock bear when she sleeps. The cave made it worse.”

And

“Dost thou need to talk to eat?”

My personal favorite, though, comes from Limestone Pie:

“Aaargh, foals sound like cancer.”

Big mood, Limestone.

Emotional Impact: +1.5 (out of +2.5) points

This is, I’ll admit, the most subjective part of the review—the takeaway, the oomph factor, that which will keep it stuck in my head. And, again, I think it all ultimately boils down to the clash between Maud and Cloudy: of virtues, of attitudes, of strokes of misfortune. They compliment each other very well, and it’s this complimentary dance—centered around the choosing stone, another lovely addition to setting as a whole—that shines through. Without that dynamic, the whole story might have been stale or fallen flat, but who cares about hypotheticals in this case? The story worked just fine, and I had a good time from beginning to end, and that’s my ultimate takeaway: A nice, concrete (heh) standalone piece that highlights some of the strengths of fanfiction as a whole.

Final Score: 6/10

Final Thoughts/Comments for the Author: I’m not really sure what I could directly say would benefit from touching up, apart from cutting down on all the “thee”s and “thou”s a bit. The quirk aside, though, consider what you did when characterizing Cloudy Quartz, when writing her dialogue and working her into the story. It’s definitely a case of something you did well in the story, so if you can take the techniques you used for writing her and apply them to characters in future stories (I do hope you keep writing stories!), then I think they’ll turn out all the stronger for it.

I will indeed keep writing. I can’t stop. It’s addicting. This one was sitting around my phone hard drive for many moons. It was a slug fest at times to get it out but ultimately I was satisfied with the result and showed the culmination of all my Pies in love stories so far. Poor Pinkie hasn’t gotten a story yet but she has Cheese… for now. Still I hope to expand Limefire and Virble a lot more. And these two. There is a little foal that could be considered for these two…