Present Perfect vs. Past Sins · 10:38pm Jul 30th, 2013
Before I even get started talking about the story, I first have to talk about the reading by Illya Leonov. I hope you all are familiar with Mr. Leonov and his dulcet voice, allow me to refresh your memories.
Illya Leonov is one of our best fic readers. He has a perfect reading pace and a naturally rich voice that makes pretty much anything sound awesome. I say "pretty much" because his Southern accent is slightly atrocious (he's learning), and his Twist impression leaves a lot to be desired. But with that said, this is by far his best reading. He really pulled out all the stops. The chapters are bookended by snippets of a fanmade Past Sins soundtrack, and along with his typically excellent reading are sound effects. Some of them were great: thunder crashes, door squeaks. Some, not so great (tongue-clicks as knocking and a certain over-long monster roar come to mind). But the point is, it all works, and this is a great way to experience an extremely popular piece of fanfiction.
(There's another, by Nightfire5150. And another, by Voz de Suenos. Another, by BigAshRandomVids. Another, by Plagen Shiki.)
Which leads me to my next introductory segue (kinda like FoE): you can't talk about Past Sins without first talking about versions. My understanding of them goes like this: When it was released, Past Sins was desperately in need of editing. A team of editors set about doing just that, and eventually it was within tolerances, to some extent. Beyond that, Pen Stroke has spent a lot of time incorporating events from season 2 into the storyline. Now, while that was definitely the case with what I read, I can't speak beyond that to what version this is. It definitely sits post-S2 in canon, but that's about all I can say. My point is, the Past Sins I read may not be the Past Sins you read, or the one you will read.
So with that said, let me give you my thesis and tl;dr: Past Sins is a somewhat irritating, decently written fanfiction that does not really deserve the level of popularity it has gained in the fandom. Discussion of plot elements will take place, so spoiler warning.
Let me start with the annoying parts by way of a small anecdote. In various pre-reader-related threads, the group as a whole has taken some flack for promoting the "show, don't tell" mantra. Now, I don't think anyone can really argue that a told story is better than a shown one: just look at any given side-by-side comparison on the internet and you'll see where showing can really enliven dull prose. However, I will give our detractors this: it is possible to show too much. Past Sins is a good example of how that can be.
My internal (and often quite external) monologue while listening to this story consisted of phrases like "Get on with it!" and "Oh god, are you really telling us this?" and "Who the fuck cares, seriously?" Early in the story, I described the feeling of reading Pen Stroke's writing as having the author breathing over your shoulder, ready to gleefully explain everything you just read so that there's no chance you may have misinterpreted it. Scenes, chapters and yes, even the story itself dragged on interminably past where they should have ended. (I will point to chapter 18, the monster attack. Though it ends up being somewhat important, there were loads of ways to get from "Nightmare Moon quits being Queen" to "Nyx realizes who she is". Going into it, it really felt like needless extension of the plot, and I won't argue that it wasn't.) I like figuring things out on my own, but this author wouldn't let me. I also like stories that decently paced, and this was anything but. If it wasn't too slow, it was just right, but more often than not, it was too slow.
Another problem I'd like to address is the season 2 integration. It is incredibly, sometimes painfully obvious that season 2 elements were added later on. Just look at the attention given to Twist. No one writes about her anymore; she was a season 1 construct, despite a cameo in Return of Harmony, and her presence marks this as a season 1 fic through and through. The flip-side of this would be Peewee, who has absolutely no role beyond marking the events as having taken place post-Dragon Quest and, given he was written out of the series in season 3, really no place in anything that doesn't center on him. The inclusion of Cadence and Shining Armor (as background characters with dubious roles, admittedly) does at least feel more natural, but only because they would have been mentioned in season one had they existed. Really, the only part that makes any sense is the timeframe: it's two years after the fateful Summer Sun Celebration, and a story that resurrected Nightmare Moon with that complex a spell in anything less would have been harder to believe. But, that could have always been the timeframe, in which case 'updating' the story to be season two compatible seems a silly thing to do.
Speaking of silly things, let's move on to the elephant in the room: What did Present think of Nyx? It's not an easy question to answer. First, we need to define a term. A Mary Sue, as I understand it, is a story character who is too good and too well liked. Anyone who hates them is evil; anything they cannot do is generally a single task. They are the epitome of self-insertion characters, though not always. In fantasy stories, they can often be identified by extreme power levels, or by the fact that they have skill sets and not characters. If magical creatures are involved, they are generally descended from, related to, comprised of, or masters of the most elusive and/or powerful. In pony fiction specifically, they have a tendency to meet the entire mane case and make friends with them in the course of a story. Often, Twilight and company will fall in love with the Mary Sue.
Well, except that last one (at least, for a definition of 'love'), Nyx definitely fits the criteria: she's super-good with magic, she makes friends with the CMCs (stand-ins for the mane cast criterion when dealing with foal characters), Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon hate her, she's an alicorn and she has a tragic past. Oh yeah, I forgot the tragic past part, that's important too. Yet, quite a lot of this can be forgiven with three words: she's Nightmare Moon. You would expect at least the overpowered alicorn bit from Nightmare Moon, and for that, I can forgive her. Of course, she's still got the friends and enemies thing going on.
Less forgivable is her status as a Sympathy Sue, designed to elicit feels from the reader. Her timidity, overwhelming desire to be loved, and the fact that she has all of those, yes, past sins hanging over her despite being just a little filly, scream out, "Hey reader! You better pity this poor filly!" Just look at the scene where Celestia takes her away; all the screaming and crying and the scene ending in "MOMMY!" just feels too well planned to be taken seriously. Worse, she's a Cute Sue, something I am rather familiar with, with her adorable nerdy glasses and tiny voice and being afraid of everything including herself and OH GOD I JUST WANT TO HUG HER. I WANT TO HUG NYX. I'M ONLY HUMAN, OKAY?
:|
Anyway. Yes, Nyx is not really a great character. But sad to say, by the end of the story, I actually wanted to see more about her. I keep seeing that "Nyx's Family" story on the front page, and it's like... Given the reaction Shining Armor was supposed to have had to her at the end (and a lot of his other bits in the story, most of which I found thoroughly confusing), how's that meeting going to go? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let's talk about what did work. Scenery is a strength, definitely. Everyone from the show felt in-character, or at least I didn't notice any slips (aside from the CMCs caring about Twist, I guess). chapter 18 aside, the plot worked out fairly well, though I was bored by a lot of the early, extremely slice of life bits after Nyx is brought to Ponyville (I honestly kept perking up whenever the story moved to Spell Nexus or someone else). But that's my bias, of course. It definitely kept me guessing; I don't think there were a lot of instances of me figuring out what was going to happen ahead of time. (An aside: the one problem with Illya Leonov's reading is that he used a slideshow of Past Sins fanart as the video portion, meaning that some plot points, like Filthy Rich being a Child of Nightmare and Nyx's cutie mark, appeared well ahead of time, though that doesn't actually count as me "figuring it out".)
Somewhere in there, I mentioned characters. There are very few original characters, but two stand out. The first is Nyx post-Nightmare Moon, essentially the timid little filly with random memories of being an adult but no powerful magic. This is really where she falls flattest, because after she stops being Nightmare Moon, she stops having a reason to be forgiven for being a poor character, and she is. A cutie mark for "protecting other ponies" really isn't all that great, when you get right down to it, and given that cutie marks are your window into a pony character, well...
The other would be Spell Nexus. First off, that's a really dumb name for a character, I'm just sayin'. As a villain he was pat and trite, the eightiesest of eighties bad guys. He laughed maniacally, swirled wine orange juice (why?)in a glass while talking to himself, and had absolutely zero motivation for anything he was doing. Of course, finding out that he was corrupted by the Nightmare helped with that, but it left us with, frankly, not much. I was pleased to see that he wasn't just completely forgotten in the final chapter, but I also didn't notice anyone clamoring for him to be punished for his actions. Well, aside from himself. He was, overall, a very flat character with a fairly lackluster cover for his flatness (treating the Nightmare in that fashion caused problems for Nyx as well), and though he served a necessary role in the story, that's about all I can say for him.
I may have lost track, but I think I've covered all the bases. Let's talk about popularity then. Honestly, I don't know why this got as popular as it did. It must have just been in the right place at the right time, striking a chord with readers. I don't know when it was first published, during or after season 1, but if it was the latter, that could certainly go a ways toward explaining it. This just doesn't seem to hit the wish-fulfillment vibe like MLD does, unless people really identify with Twilight and really want to raise a filly of their own, even if it's Nightmare Moon, but that seems a stretch. Really, I can't help but think how many other, slightly better "epic slice of life" stories there are out there, not to mention stories about Nightmare Moon. (As an aside, I'm slightly bent that my Nightmare Moon fic, should I ever finish it, is going to be hard to sell without Past Sins comparisons.) FoE I think I can explain; MLD I can explain if I'm willing to view the fandom in a really negative light. But Past Sins? I just have no idea.
3.5/5
Pretty decent, but not worth the hype.
So, that brings us to a conclusion: How do I rank the Big Three?
Well, My Little Dashie is right out. :| But you should know that by now. So really it's down to Past Sins and Fallout: Equestria. And what can I say? They're both good in their own ways, and both so flawed in such different ways that it's hard to compare them. FoE has the better original characters and I found it overall more compelling, but Past Sins is written far better. I suppose I would have to grudgingly give Past Sins the nod as the "winner" of the fandom, if we have only these three stories to choose from. (It's certainly not the best, that much should be clear.) I still would say that I like FoE more, but only because I'm willing to continue the story on myself (though given my comment above about Nyx's Family... EDIT: I've been informed Nyx's Family wasn't written my Pen Stroke. I might look up the sequels instead.)
So there we go! I leave for Bronycon sometime tomorrow (I wish I knew when!), so I won't be heading into anything new in the intervening time. I'll announce stuff when I have stuff to announce!
"Nyx's Family" is actually an AU kind of spinoff, written by Reality Check. Pen Stroke's already written sequels that render considering them alternate universes absolutely necessary.
I argue that Reality Check writes Nyx better than Pen Stroke does.
*cough cough* Past Sins is best fanfic ever *cough cough*
If it had Cadance and Shining Armor in it (and it sounds like it did since you said it was post-S2), it's the final rewrite that Pen posted here as well as the version being printed.
And there's the mention of C & SA, so yeah it was the "final" version.
As an aside, that Nyx's Family story is one of a series by a separate author, so they're not explicitly more of the same story. On the other hand, there are two or three one shots as well as a larger follow up called Winter Bells that were written by Pen Stroke.
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FWIW, I liked the story up until Fluttertree. That was the turning point where it got dumb.
But let's have a talk about something that I've though too much about. A character with magic to sunder the world is only a Sue is they use it. Twilight is, under some people's rules, a Sue. However, her vast magical powers are not usually the thing that Saves the Day. So it doesn't matter what her power level is in most episodes because that's not what the solution is. In Boast Busters, of course, it does matter that she has strong magic, but that's *still* not the solution. In fact, it's half of the problem.
I say this because Nyx doesn't press my Sue buttons (early on) for her power level. It's pretty irrelevant.
I read the initial version, so maybe all that changed?
1250310
^^^^^^
Literally this.
Acceptable.
You live another day.
It's taken like five rewrites for Past Sins to get to the quality it's at now, and each rewrite has, in my opinion, significantly improved it. I say good on Pen Stroke for putting in the effort to make the story the best it can be.
It makes me desperately want to see a FO:E rewrite, with all criticism taken into account. But no, even the spelling mistakes must be preserved forever, even in the printed books.
Yeah, to me, Past Sins is really sad. Not the story itself, but the story of its author, Pen Stroke.
Looking at his story stats, there's a big divide between Past Sins and its sequels, and his other stories. Though I will admit that Drop of Moonshine has gotten closer since I first realized this. But then we have Into the Depths, which isn't even in the five digit view range. Sure, to a newer author it has a lot, but this is one of our fandom's earliest fanfic writers. There's a reason why he keeps writing sequels to Past Sins instead of writing something new.
But this is all speculation, really. He's never written shipping before, which I could say shows that he's too cowardly, and he doesn't want to lose followers over it. But, honestly, I don't know.
So, yeah, it's really sad that he can't seem to escape this story. Sort of like it's his own "past sins." Ironic, huh?
tl;dr:
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1250355
nines tempest and pen stroke were partners in the first LOEG post. Nines' ship fic was posted under Pen's account. No one seemed to have flipped their shit. FWIW.
1250628
Haha.
Also, not viewing the fandom negatively? You're fired, PP.
1250721
What about silently un-following him? Though I suppose that would be much harder to find out.
1250310
She turned Fluttershy into a tree, silly. :P That was presented as being indicative of extreme magical talent, what with the mantra of "We'll just say that magic talents run in Twilight's family and no one will question it, ha-ha." Most of her really extreme magic is done under the guise of Nightmare Moon proper, at which point it's really not an issue, but it exists nevertheless.
1250345
FoE just needs an editing pass at the very least. I fault Pen Stroke for continual rewrites (and putting out a severely flawed product in the first place), but I fault Kkat for not rewriting at all. Middle ground!
1250355
1250721
I dislike viewing the entire fandom negatively. :B It just seems mean-spirited. Despite the aforementioned idiots. Who aren't actually idiots but people with low life experience. Essentially children who don't know better.
1250826
Kristen Schaal is VA master race.
1250826
You're not hating hard enough PP
I'm going to steal/plagiarise your definition of Mary Sue. By far that is the best definition I have ever seen, and so easy to understand!
I've kind of stopped using the term Mary Sue myself, partially because it's been pointed out to me that its origins come off as a bit sexist (yeah, I'm one of those people, deal with it), but mostly because when used on its own without elaboration it could refer to quite a few kinds of badly-written characters. It could refer to characters who are so powerful that nothing fazes them, sucking tension and drama out of the story. It could refer to characters with an unnatural ability to make others care about them all the time ("Whenever Poochie's not onscreen, everyone should ask, 'Where's Poochie?'"). It could refer to characters with no flaws who are always in the right. It could refer to characters who are assholes and yet the other characters and the text itself never calls them out on it. I could go on. Thanks for clarifying the kind of Sue you mean, PP.
Also, I haven't read Past Sins yet, but the concept of a fic author revising his work so extensively is curious to me. It reminds me of another series I did read on Deviantart, the Reharmonization POV series (dumb title, I know), which wrote a backstory about Diamond Tiara's family which obviously contradicts what we learn when Filthy Rich finally showed up in the show. Well, the author actually changed the fic to reflect that, and I'm just curious enough to see what happened to not feel compelled to read it again immediately.
1251332
It's slightly off what's presented on, say, wikipedia, but it's what I tend to think of Mary Sues as, cobbled together from various definitions I've encountered in my life.
1251644
My opinion on it is, unless you find something in new canon that can really add to your story, you're better off just letting it go from the point it's written from. So if you started a long fic in season 2 and season 3 contradicts something it, just ignore it, slap an AU tag on it if need be, and keep going. People will understand.
1252056
While this is the easy way out, it's also probably the right way, saving a lot of confusion. For instance, Twilight's alicorn transformation is pretty much incompatible with her subplot in Fallout Equestria, so the fandom has pretty much accepted that they're mutually exclusive, as far as I can tell.
>saying everypony in-character
>horrible characterization rape of Twilight Sparkle
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1252433
Oh, oops, you're actually right about that. :B Well, I wouldn't say it was character rape per se, but picking her as a mother figure was weird. She kinda grows into it, but after reading Desc's evaluation of her in his interview with amacita, I have to agree: she's crap as a mother, at least as she is right now. I think her initial desire to mother Nyx just goes to show what a poor character Nyx is: not even other characters are immune to her charms.
1253348
Sounds reasonable.