Present Perfect vs. University Days · 9:20pm Feb 4th, 2014
As it happens, this story was read by none other than Cherax Destructor, so I'll talk about him really quick first. (Second reading by Astro-Brony. Third reading by Savrin Drake.)
Most likely, if you've heard this guy's name, it's in the context of his music, which is pretty good, but that discussion is best left for another format. Suffice to say, his fic reading skills are top-notch. He's got a calm voice, a wonderful Aussie (?) accent, perfect pacing, decent character voice and a knack for making dialogue sound natural. He also used just a handful of sound effects in this reading, and they worked well. The only thing I can say against him is he occasionally got a little too calm, but again that's not gonna be an issue for anyone but myself, generally. And it's possible my volume was just down too low anyway. I watched his channel just for the music, but you'll definitely be hearing more from him in the future! On to the story review.
I've reviewed a number of DawnFade's stories before, and highly recommended two of them, but Vinyl and Octavia: University Days is undoubtedly the story that put them on the map, so to speak. It is insanely popular, and forms part of what I would call the Big Three of Scratchtavia fics, the others being Alegrezza and The Vinyl Scratch Tapes. So, here we are.
Let's start by talking Scratch and Tavi. Anyone whose read most likely any of my journals will know that I am not a fan of this ship. No doubt many wonder why; I'd wager it's one of, if not the most popular ships in the fandom. Being entirely a matter of personal preference, there's likely no adequate explanation. As it is, the explanation I'm about to give is very silly, couched as it is in fanon. It just so happens that I was discussing fanon portrayals of Vinyl Scratch on Skype last night, so I'm feeling pretty up for this.
The generally accepted personalities for Vinyl and Octavia are, respectively, the boisterous and carefree partygoing DJ, and the uptight, snooty classical musician. Vinyl plays dubstep and is into alcohol and/or drugs. Octavia, more canonically, plays the cello, is from high society, and had a strict upbringing. There are variations of course, but these are what the fandom generally seems to expect when it comes to these two.
Why? Laziness, I should think. As of right the heck now, both have had two appearances in the show (three for Vinyl if you count EQG), yet we know precisely jack squat about either of them. Vinyl's name isn't even canonically Vinyl Scratch, it's DJ Pon-3. All we can say for sure about them is that one's an earth pony, one's a unicorn, one can play the cello (and yes, it is a cello), and the other has deejayed certain events around Equestria. That's it. So of course, because both of these background, initially one-note characters were for whatever reason really beloved by fans, we needed stories for them, and the ones that first came to mind are the ones that stuck.
That these personalities pervade to today honestly speaks to nothing, in my mind, so much as complacency. These archetypes are good enough, so why change them? I will admit to being somewhat in that camp, though really it's more like "I'm cool with whatever's good for you". I can weather the ups and downs and minor variations on the themes so long as they come in good stories (though it sure seems wrong by this point if any animation with Vinyl doesn't feature Nowacking).
So before I get too far off course, the point I'm trying to make is, taking these two clashing personalities into account, I much prefer seeing how they butt heads as friends, roommates, rivals, what have you, than as romantic interests. Truth be told, I can't even see them getting together, not to mention there's precisely no reason to ship them in the first place beyond "ship all the ponies". Obviously, that's just me; it baffles me utterly that this pairing is so popular. It also makes me somewhat frustrated and angry when authors just slap them together, whether because "everyone does it" or just to try and garner views. I got angry at University Days around chapter 5 or so when the shippy overtones started making headway and I went to the story page to see if it had a Romance tag. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I also want to talk about romance and shipping for just a moment, because any recommendation for or against this story is going to have to take into account the fact that some people just do not give two shits about romance, be it pony or otherwise. And I wonder why, sometimes. The one argument I can't really find fault with is a desire not to see ponies/characters from a cartoon show in romantic situations. That's fine, I've also seen it applied to R34, I've felt the same way about characters in other franchises myself.
So what about everyone else? I always have to wonder; there can't be that many people that feel this way, right? Romance and love are important aspects of the human experience, and as "pony stories are human stories", should be in any extra-canon story. Of course, that's not to say a story which centers around a romance as the entire plot is going to appeal to everyone, and if it doesn't appeal to you, no need to feel bad. But I do know there are a lot of people who won't touch a story with a romance tag, and frankly don't get it. (Though I suspect I will have an earful of explanations after this blog is posted.) Ponies are capable of romantic feelings, and as those feelings tend to make people happy, and I want to see characters I like feeling happy, I want to read pony romances. Maybe that's just me. Either way, I do hope it's not because a significant portion of the internet has been so burned on personal romance that they believe that such things do not exist, because I feel sorry for those people. I have definitely been in love, and though I had to give it up for reasons beyond my control, I would do anything to get those feelings back.
So, let's answer a few questions. If you don't like stories that center around romance as the be-all and end-all of the plot, will you like University Days?
Probably not.
If you don't give a damn about ScratchTavia as a ship, will this story convince you otherwise?
Possibly yes.
Yes, believe it or not, I enjoyed this story, and I have a lot of good things to say about it, so let's get started!
Though UV undoubtedly revolves around the central romance, it does a number of things right that many other shipfics do not. For starters, we begin when Vinyl and Octavia meet for the first time. They don't get off on the right hoof. Through some (rather contrived) circumstances, however, they quickly find out that they have a lot in common and become friends. This friendship is thus the starting point for a romance that, again, happens fairly quickly, but the point is, it is a building block. One complaint I hear about shipfics is "I'm just expected to accept that these characters are in love? You've gotta show it to me first." And that's valid. (Of course, I hear the same people complain about stories that are entirely buildup, ending in a declaration of love and/or kiss, that there's no plot. This is why I think some people just don't like romance, and they need to be able to admit that to themselves instead of complaining circles around stories, but I digress.)
Not only does this show us the lead-up to smoochin', that climactic first kiss happens at the halfway point in the story. So not only does this show us how the characters get into their relationship, but getting into that relationship is not the end of the story. There's more to be had, and it revolves, at least in part, around hanging on to that relationship in the midst of adversity.
Again, there's not much to the plot besides the two characters falling in love and sticking together through thick and thin, but there is something, and most of it comes in the form of background characters. Lyra and Bon-Bon play an ever-increasing role in the story, and their characters arc just as much as the protagonists. They start off as your standard Mean Girl antagonists, and then little by little, we see their drama enacted in snatches behind the scenes. I was absolutely floored by the climax of their relationship, the way it's revealed to us and how little is actually said about it. After that, they start becoming friends with Vinyl and Octavia, and have an effect on Vinyl's character especially. There's also a side arc involving a psychology professor who is quite the memorable OC. A significant portion of my enjoyment of this story was due to wonderful character moments and banter. Oh, the banter!
(An aside: I don't know where DawnFade is from, but I will say that some of the terminology caught me off guard. I consider myself fairly well-versed in non-American English, but it took a few times hearing "tutor" before I understood it to mean "instructor". I'm still not sure what the difference between a lecture and a tutorial is.)
So, good points: full-scale romance instead of jumping in or ending with a kiss, good characters, strong character development over the course of the story, banter. Now on to the bad.
Let's start with the writing. The first chapter makes a poor impression by describing both Vinyl and Octavia in "character sheet" style: this is what they look like, these are their names, here are what they're studying and how they act. The last part was especially egregious, as by the end of chapter 2, we have a solid handle on their personalities. It irritated me somewhat to see such awful telling. The author does make an attempt to redeem themselves by repeating this process in the epilogue, and while as a narrative trick, it serves to bookend the story and explicitly roadmap their character development, in hindsight it just feels like ass-covering.
Telling is a definite problem in University Days. While it gets better as the story progresses (this took two years to finish; no doubt DawnFade learned something along the way), the first half is marked by Pen Stroke-style explanations: this just happened, now let me tell you what it means. Lavender Unicorn Syndrome is a big problem. In 71k words, 175 of those are "cellist" and 188 "DJ", though in the latter instance, at least a few of those are followed by "Pon-3". There's a lot of "her friend", "her roommate", "her fillyfriend", "her lover" as the relationship progresses. And these markers can be useful when a relationship is progressing (the sudden realization of, "oh my god, we're fillyfriends now", for instance), but as matter-of-course referents, they got annoying quickly.
Let's talk setting for a second. Sticklers for show-accurate Equestria will be let down by this story. Though it takes place in Manehattan (which hindsight shows us is definitely a lot like a modern city), the setting is somewhat removed from the show. The ponies drink, they swear, Vinyl especially, they live lives very similar to ours. Most damning of all: they have computers and cell phones. Well, Vinyl has a computer anyway, which she uses to mix music; there's no indication how prevalent they are. But the cell phones are prevalent, and rather important to the plot, but I just had to wonder about their inclusion. Removing them would require significant changes; it just seems an odd thing to have included in the first place. Lastly, POV is played very loosely, though again, listening to an audiobook, I'm limited in knowing exactly when scenes change, though I don't think it was that often.
But that's all window dressing, honestly. What really gets me about this story is the setup. I praised it for building up to a romance, but the ways it does so are not terribly convincing. This takes two paths.
First, the "rather contrived circumstances" I mentioned above consist of Octavia and Vinyl having a verbal war their first day of psychology class and the teacher taking an interest in this and encouraging them to continue. He goes so far as to assign them to spend time together over the weekend so the class can "compare notes" about how their behavior changes or doesn't change come Monday. Now, this sets up the first part of the story that I actually did enjoy, namely the two of them ganging up to turn this around on the professor, but it did not sit well with me. I even went so far as to consult a psychologist friend of mine, who agreed that such a less-than-ethical experiment, were it found out, would likely cost the professor his job.
This got worse when the professor was revealed to also be a school psychologist, whom Octavia sees at one point to deal with her sudden feelings for Vinyl. The scenes featuring this character had me laughing, no doubt, but at the same time I was going, "This guy needs to be fired."
The other place where the setup falls down is in pacing. They go from bitter enemies to friends over the course of one chapter. Two more and they're BFFs. It's not much farther after that that they get the hots for each other. In Vinyl's case, this is lampshaded somewhat by Octavia being described as beautiful and highly desirable, so attraction is understandable. However, even after they're together, Octavia's reasons for being attracted to Vinyl are never really explained.
It doesn't help that their friendship, and thus their romance, is derived from a mutual loneliness and desperation for company. That is not a good foundation for love. Octavia's harsh upbringing, of course, kept her cut off from ponies her age, since her mother is an absolute monster and thinks friendship is for sissies or something. Vinyl meanwhile is still her usual boisterous self, but having dropped out of school a year before graduation, she's left without any friends at the university, and is often racked by self-doubt despite the outgoing facade (Aquaman, take note). So, while I'll say this story convinced me that ScratchTavia can happen, it honestly didn't do a very good job of it, and most of the early parts, at least, rely far too much on telling to get the message across.
Lastly, the plot. This is very much a slice of life story, though despite that, I actually found myself enjoying a lot of the college-year interpersonal drama. The problem is, all the conflicts are soft conflicts, and some of them are over almost before we're even aware they exist.
Lyra and Vinyl's relationship is stormy as hell, an Alpha Female power struggle for the ages, but thanks to outside influences (Bon-Bon), Lyra chills the fuck out two-thirds of the way through and that conflict goes by the wayside. Vinyl and Octavia's relationship is easy as hell, any conflicts consisting solely of internalized doubts or misunderstandings that are cleared up by communication. (Side note: good communication is key to any relationship for smoothing over conflicts. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for a very interesting story.) I definitely would have loved to see them fit together a little less perfectly, as accepting them as a couple definitely required suspension of disbelief. Finally, the "main" conflict doesn't rear its head until the last three or four chapters, and resolves itself in half of one, after a bizarrely overlong scene in which the Mane Four (herp) plan out every last little detail of how Octavia can survive after her mother cuts her off.
Also Lyra and Bon-Bon are just friends why is there no romance what are you doing to my OTP author
I don't want to praise this story overly much. "Does better things that other stories do poorly" does not exactly make for high literature. But credit where credit is due: this is how you write character arcs. And given that I usually have to answer the question, "Does this story deserve its immense fame and popularity?", I'll say... Well, I've definitely seen worse. And I'd rather people read something like this than a lot of the other dreck that clogs the featured box.
3/5
Though my appreciation for University Days never went beneath the surface, I credit living, breathing characters for helping turn a half-cocked romance into an enjoyable read.
Addendum: There are a pair of clop chapters collectively entitled "University Nights" that I just read. They're marked incomplete, but there's no suggestion that there will be more, so I wanted to comment on them.
While not the sexiest sex scenes I've ever seen, per se, I want to give the author a whole crapload of credit for making them very... Well, their first time is realistically less than sexy. They negotiate. They each take a turn across the two chapters, and Octavia deals with never having done anything sexual, least of all to herself, and thus figuring out just what is permissible. It's realistic. I just reread an article about realistic sex expectations (sexpectations?) and these two thousand or so words fit them perfectly. Not a lot of people are willing to do that.
That said, they don't add a whole lot to the story beyond filling in the time wipes when we know damn well they're having sex. (The first one is very explicitly bookended in the main story with an "Are we going to have sex now?" talk.) Nor, should I add, do they fit particularly well. The segue on the second one feels entirely artificial. But, again, credit where credit is due.
3/5
Totally optional.
Also a quick note: I've passed 400 followers. :D Thank you all!
Didn't Tavi have two appearances? Gala and Garden Party?
1796205
Oh, you're right! Amended. Also, check the end again, I added something.
Yeah TaviScratch in particular fell into a trap of the stories all being guilty of the same sins for quite a long time. I'm totally not invested in the matter at all, though... [insert needed liarjack smiley here]
Even though UD does at least try to do more of the lead-up, it still felt quite a bit forced and unrealistic at the end of the day to me.
This is totally unrelated to the fact that I just passed 400 alts.
I'd swear I heard a record screech to a stop and silence fall when I got to that line.
Wow. Long review of a fic I care nothing about with a pairing I care nothing about.
However, your analysis of why you dislike OctaScratch is pretty much the exact same reason I dislike it. And all shipping for that matter.
I personally have no problem with romance in a carton show. It was one of the best things about Avatar: The Last Airbender. But that is because it was done by the show writers.
I have no problem with people developing their own preferred pairings among characters they like, regardless of how romantically eligible said pairing is. That is a personal fantasy and everyone is entitled to their own.
I don't like shipping, myself.
I do not pair characters.
I do not "reject" canon romantic pairings because I do not prefer them.
This is the thing that shippers tend to fail miserably at understanding. The simple fact that shipping is purely personal and many people do not have any interest in it.
I don't dislike FiM shipping because it is a kids' show, or because it is a cartoon, or because it has no romance (it does), or because I am anti-gay (I sure as hell am not). I simply dislike it because it's not canon. That is my personal criteria for enjoyment. That is my personal pleasure.
And that is why fics that are not romantic shipfics that randomly ship fandom-popular pairings for no reason ENRAGE ME SO.
I think you've forgotten Two's Company, Three's a Crowd.
Interesting analysis, and you make several great points. The last several chapters felt so very, very weak, which frustrates me to no end because DawnFade is a great writer!
Nope, the trading cards say her name is Vinyl Scratch.
Wow, thanks for such an in-depth review! It really means a lot that you took the time to do that.
I don't want to be that writer who gets all flustered and writes a gazillion word reply to a fair critique, so I'll just say that University Days was a learning experience and despite the flaws that come with piecing a story together a little bit at a time over two years, I hope you still had a fun time reading it.
Thanks again!
1796758
Never heard of it. :B
1796988
>trading cards
There's too much fucking toy canon to keep track of. :|
1797076
I did! :D
1797423
Really? I've been told it was hogging the feature box at the same time as University Days.
1797436
I don't actually remember UD being in the featured box. :B
1797423 Not really. The trick to not bother keeping track of it. The MLP wiki has up-to-date information on the entire world of canon, with citations. It's impossible to remember everything otherwise.
... I'm very confused. Non-american?
You've never heard of a tutor? Am I misunderstanding something here?
1797436 No it hogged the featured box since way before UD was a thing. Back in the dawn of Fimfiction when updates went into the 5 slot featured box TCTC ruled that damned box. It stopped updating shortly after it was changed so that updates don't go up there, incidentally.
1798163
Oh. Still. It hogged the feature box at one point.
1797597
The only way I have ever heard the word "tutor" used is in the context of private lessons, usually one on one. I'd imagine Octavia had a tutor to help her learn to play the cello, for instance. Vinyl Scratch might have needed a tutor to help with her after hours with her regular studies. Tutors are for supplementation and out of school learning.
But a single person at the head of a group of dozens of students? That's not a tutor, that's a teacher. Psych in this story is an instructor. He might be an adjunct or something, since he's also a counselor, but the only definition I know of for "tutorial" is "set of instructions for doing something", i.e., SAI tutorials you can find online.
Given that "uni" is often used in this story, I have to assume DawnFade is either British or Australian. These just aren't words we use in America. :B