The Random Review [No. 1]: Big City, Big Dreams (_Undefined_) · 10:58am Jul 13th, 2023
The One-Sentence Summary
The Substance
We've got two cheerleaders who love dancing and want to get big. The others are a fast-laner who says her cliché and a couple of big-shots who meet the fans. Each behaves exactly as you'd expect them to. It's all pretty one-dimensional, but why wouldn't it be? 3,000 words and a pair of background background ponies. I wasn't expecting a deep insight into any of them.
I say get rid of Quick Step. How about Lighthoof and Shimmy Shake running straight into Deft? That way, you save their disappointment for a climax instead of starting with it and thus diluting it. The conflict as it stands is their getting told the difficulties of becoming Buckettes. That's fine in itself, and you can build up to one of the main characters losing heart (and maybe even crying) at the realisation of how much slog there is in this business. The denouement – getting to see the stage – has more meaning that way: it's a way to restore the passion rather than just a treat. It's just a tad soft as is. The mild conflict dissipates, and I'd rather it led to something.
The Skill
When you read 'for whom', you know you're in another grammar lair. That's a virtue. I do like to see a professional-looking story. Sure enough, the commas sat in position and syntax was a joy.
Until it wasn't, hah. This is the thing with the good-old grammar lot. Painstaking piecing-together of sentences can come at the price of flow.
The presence of the tall buildings affected the motion of the wind, creating downdrafts that had their own effect on the elements.
My god, the embedding could give me a headache, although I salute the effort. I'll just say that substance over prose is one of the most helpful pieces of advice I've ever heard.
The pegasi took advantage of that by scheduling nightly flurries, allowing the snowflakes to dance through the air while being illuminated by the light coming out of skyscraper windows and lanterns lining the city streets.
However enticing to the sentence-lover, this is a weather-report opening, which no amount of word-fun can hide. Again, loving your sentences is a virtue. Just love your story more.
Maybe that's why the pacing is a bit of a drag. 47% of the story is exposition. Too much emphasis is on the concert and dancing and blah. If the exposition is bloated, the story's going to feel imbalanced – slow at first and then fast because you've got to cram everything else into the second half. Again, the conflict suffers. People read fiction to see not-their-problems appear, get worse and get solved (or get even worse); you get an in-body drug hit of excitement without any of the personal risks. When you've stuck most of the focus on the trundling buildup, it's like eating a kilo of cheesy pasta with a finger's breadth of cheese. Once the dialogue gets going here, things even out. But it's a long wait.
The dialogue is good – natural and engaging for the most part. There are moments of 'writer's dialogue', where characters go through the motions and the tropes. 'Ugh's and 'totally's and 'oh, that's where I know you from's. Otherwise, it's the saving grace and does all the lifting for character-building.
The Gestalt
Overall, it's an enjoyable little story. It's sweet and relatable – sweet because the ponies in power and influence remember themselves as wide-eyed wannabes and do all they can to keep the enthusiasm alive without giving out any bullshit. They make the fans aware of the long, hard slog. So, despite a fat exposition and a shortage of conflict, there's a nice feeling in here somewhere. Because ponies who don't need to be nice at all are being nice.
The Lowdown
6/10
A capable story with little in the conflict department but enough substance, skill and sentiment to constitute a fun read.
