Bradel Writes Reviews #1 · 2:11am Nov 9th, 2014
This week:
"Martial Bliss" by Skywriter
"The Numbers Don't Lie" by shortskirtsandexplosions
"Bittersweet Music" by DuncanR
"Fugue State" by Horizon
"Racing Thoughts" by ambion
"Martial Bliss" by Skywriter
[Comedy] [Random]
Shining Armor learns the most important tactical lesson of his life.
Technical
This is classic Skywriter—not just technically proficient, but showing an expert level of craftsmanship. It's easy to forget how good he is. The hook is well executed (something I've long said is a particular talent of Skywriter's). The characters are made very distinct. Skywriter shows good economy of words, keeping the prose tight and staying focused on what's important in this story. Voicing is good throughout. Dialogue and description are well balanced. The only two criticisms I can think to make are (1) that said bookisms are frequent and (2) that there's not much sign of using the 3rd limited viewpoint to enhance Shining's characterization. On the other hand, (1) significantly boosts the comedy factor for me and (2) really isn't necessary in this particular story, so neither criticism rises above the level of quibbling. This is professional-caliber writing, and I love it.
5/5
Creative
Although this story is a lot of fun, at 1500 words it doesn't have the space to set a very high bar. It's a clever bit of backfilling for one of Season 3's more amusing scenes, but it doesn't provide any real character development or offer much in the way of story. That said, the idea at the core is entertaining and novel. Interactions between officers and enlistedponies aren't things you expect to see much in this fandom. This is basically fandom fluff—but very good fandom fluff.
2/5
Satisfaction
For a 1500-word story tagged [Comedy] and [Random], this does exactly what I want it to. It makes me laugh, quite a few times, and it ends on a nicely dramatic note. "Martial Bliss" basically co-opts a throw-away scene from "The Crystal Empire" (S3E02) and turns it into an important moment in the life of Shining Armor. And does it with a lot of humor. Skywriter isn't making a whole lot of promises to the reader here—the story is a short one—but he's delivering on all of them, and I find myself very satisfied with the payoff.
5/5
Overall
Fun, light, well-executed, and not needing much attention span to enjoy.
Recommended for: general audiences.
"The Numbers Don't Lie" by shortskirtsandexplosions
[Slice of Life]
When the Cutie Mark Crusaders dig up an ancient magical artifact, they unleash a spell on the town that allows everypony to see a "lie meter" floating above each other's heads. While attempting to solve the mystery, Twilight Sparkle has to analyze the tenuous balance between friendship and honesty. She doesn't like what she finds.
Technical
While I like the meat of this story, ss&e doesn't really hook me into it and the prose here has a tendency to drift off into irrelevant detail as often as not. Although there are a few puddles of deep purple, the story mostly manages to avoid that, at least. Despite a few editing issues and usage mistakes, this stays pretty readable, though. Characterizations are decent for most ponies, though everypony seems to be a bit slow on the uptake initially and I've got some issues with how Twilight and Applejack are presented, especially in Chapter 4. Overall, I think this story is pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of technical quality. There are certainly much, much worse stories on Fimfiction—but there's a lot of room for improvement here, too.
2.5/5
Creative
Probably the biggest strength of this story is the central concept described in the story blurb. It's natural to the setting, but very different from what the show has offered. The story makes a real effort to delve into the characters by exploring this concept, and while I don't necessarily agree with ss&e's conclusions, I think his attempt at character development deserves to be recognized. Unfortunately, the ending doesn't really live up to the premise and I think the story misses some fun avenues of exploration that it could have gone down. All in all, though, creativity is a strong point here.
4/5
Satisfaction
Between the slow opening, the weak ending, and a long middle where characters are explored but not a whole lot happens, I didn't come away from this story feeling especially satisfied. The central concept and the character exploration were what I enjoyed here, and I definitely did enjoy them, but at 20,000 words, this story feels weighed down by the lack of a stronger central narrative. I also have some issues with the moral of the story, which feels a little muddy. In most stories, I wouldn't worry too much, but with the particular premise and all the character exploration, this really feels like it should have a moral center to it about the proper role of honesty, and I don't feel like it quite hit it's mark on that point. I definitely enjoyed parts of this, but just as surely it left me wanting more.
2/5
Overall
A very fun premise with some interesting character work, weighed down by too many words and not enough direction.
Recommended for: readers who dont mind a little meandering.
"Bittersweet Music" by DuncanR
[Comedy] [Slice of Life]
Fancypants has always relied on his legendary wit and charm to endure tedious high-society events, but there's one pony he can't fool: his lovely wife. Fleur de Lis has chosen Ponyville as the venue for a major talent show, and as her supportive and obedient husband it's his duty to attend. But there's a mischievous streak behind that dazzling smile, and a poignant heart-to-heart with an unlikely kindred spirit brings it out in full force. A story about how important it is to love, cherish, and... there was something else, I'm sure of it. Oh, never-mind: the show must go on!
Technical
Probably nit-picky on my part, but I'm just not a fan of the way this opens—starting in a fully external perspective and giving physical details about the characters as it zooms in, instead of just locating itself in Fancy Pants' head from the get-go. DuncanR really seems to want to avoid standard 3rd Limited perspective, though. He uses more of what Orson Scott Card calls "3rd Person Cinematic", and that makes the intro a little more understandable, at least. The prose here is uniformly solid. Characterizations are generally good (the CMC are a real highlight), and where they're different from what I expect, they're at least internally consistent, which really helps sell them. Two character-related issues stuck with me on this story, though. The first relates to a very show-style scene mid-way through between the Mane Six that ends with them acting overly protective toward Spike in a way that's both ugly and that feels out of place to me after episodes like "Dragon Quest" (S2E21) and "Spike at Your Service" (S3E09). The second is the main character, Fancy Pants himself, who I feel plays a bit like a Marty Stu here. On the technical side, this is solid to good in most places, with a couple higher-level issues that nag at me a bit.
3.5/5
Creative
Although the core scenario is very show-natural, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this story. DuncanR gives some worldbuilding through Fancy Pants (even if it does contribute to my Marty Stu feeling), and Spike's nature is explored a little. There's some Sparity going on here, but it's handled better than I've seen elsewhere and I feel like the author deserves some points for finding a good way to develop that side of Spike. This story isn't going to knock your socks off with its creativity, but it presents some solid new ideas, provides character development for Spike, and fleshes out Fancy Pants and Fleur du Lis nicely.
3.5/5
Satisfaction
I liked this story. It's nice and show-flavored, and it has the vague shape of an unfilmed episode. There are some really, really wonderful moments here, in particular a scene between Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Fancy Pants that I think is worth the price of admission by itself. There's also some very classic Spike action (along with some Spike stuff that's a little odder, but like I said above, I feel like it's at least internally consistent and thus unproblematic). I do have a bit of an issue with what the story says about talent versus hard work, though—and as an amateur singer myself, I find it a bit hard to suspend my disbelief for the climax of the story. DuncanR also doesn't keep a very tight focus on the plot here, and while he pays off his two big promises, the events happening on the periphery feel a little scattershot by comparison. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, satisfaction-wise, but there are some real nuggets of gold in this story.
3.5/5
Overall
Good overall—and great in spots—though with a bit of an iffy message.
Recommended for: Spike fans and anyone who's not pressed for time.
"Fugue State" by Horizon
[Romance]
Ponyville has a problem: Twilight's friends all switched Cutie Marks, and the musical numbers are flying thick and fast. Lyra has a problem: She can't handle the way musical numbers get into your head and take you over. Bon Bon has a problem with that.
Technical
I really am a sucker for a good hook. Horizon does a masterful job stringing along the reader with this story, right from the get-go (though it helps that the conceit here is so compelling). Character voices for Lyra and Bon Bon are strong, though there's not a whole lot of canon to stay true to. Perspective is handled well. The prose occasionally dips toward lilac, but never too badly. This isn't a non-stop parade of technical excellence, but it's extremely good stuff. And tight—the whole story clocks in at barely over 7000 words.
4.5/5
Creative
"Fugue State" has one of the most compelling conceits I've seen in pony fiction. Season 4 of the show has started to do a bit of meta-humor on the musical numbers, too, but nothing like what's on display here. More than that, Horizon does some excellent character development with Lyra and Bon Bon and creates a real, solid story for them to inhabit—inside the structure of an actual show episode. I just can't find words for how much I enjoy the ideas on display here. The only downside, and I suppose it is a legitimate downside, is that the story doesn't have a whole lot of scope. That's not necessarily bad, but it does limit the amount of creativity that can be put on display here.
4.5/5
Satisfaction
This story pays out like a Dutch book bet against a philosopher without coherent beliefs. Maybe I'm getting a little loopy from writing so many of these. Horizon doesn't make a whole lot of promises here, just a core group of them, but he fulfills them in spades, or in mixed metaphors, or whatever. There aren't a lot of times I come out of a pony fanfic and just want to find something else and keep reading, but this is one of those times.
5/5
Overall
I didn't expect to be rating something this highly, this quickly. I'd forgotten how much I liked this story.
Recommended for: seriously, just go read it.
"Racing Thoughts" by ambion
[Romance] [Random] <Sex>
In a fantastical universe the bastard love-child of Edgar Allen Poe and T.S. Elliot got hooked on ponies. The resulting poem, pulled through the void, is presented for your reading pleasure. A (loosely) iambic tetrametric narrative of Twilight Sparkle struggling to understand, accept, and ultimately express, her love for Rainbow Dash.
BN: Just to be clear, I'm only looking at the first poem in the eponymous collection.
Technical
The beginning here is a bit choppy—in many ways reminiscent of someone sitting down to write out a love poem and not knowing where to get started, which is perfectly appropriate in context though not quite as snappy stylistically. It floats around a bit, playing with some unstructured rhyme and alliteration before settling into long stretches of lilting iambic tetrameter. There are a couple spots where character voicing suffers at the expense of rhyme, but overall this makes for some very good pony poetry. And pony poetry is hard to do, and harder to do well, so I really respect the work ambion has put into this, even if it's not perfect.
4/5
Creative
This is some pretty standard TwiDash here, without a lot to set it apart from a hundred other bits of TwiDash except for being poetry. I don't really know where to mention this, but the author also dips into a bit of Twilight fantasizing (thus the <Sex> tag). It's light, and I found it very endearing, but in talking to other readers it seems to be a big YMMV point. I mention it here because, while it's certainly not out of the ordinary for TwiDash fiction, it provides a few welcome twists in the flow of the poem. So not a whole lot new here, except in style of presentation—but that style of presentation is itself worth a couple creativity points.
2/5
Satisfaction
Where poetry is concerned, a lot of my satisfaction depends on the technical execution. The poem does a good job focusing on Twilight's thoughts. It has some nice wordplay, and when it hits its rhythm, it dances in your head, almost reading itself aloud. Unfortunately, there are a couple spots where I feel like the rhythm stumbles unnecessarily, and the focus on Twilight's internal state doesn't leave as much room for imagery as I'd personally like to see in poetry.
3/5
Overall
Not perfect, but very worthwhile. The author's hard work really shows here.
Recommended for: anyone with even the smallest interest in pony poetry.
Suggestion: Put a nice bolded total score for each story somewhere. :B I can't add all them decimals!
I'm kind of pressed for time but my Read it Later list never is.
I've read three out of the five stories here, and based on them, your selection of stories to review is a pretty strong endorsement all by itself. I'd probably rank them about the same, too, so I guess your reviews are worth keeping a close eye on.
I like this format. It's clear and informative, while remaining relatively concise. I'm looking forward to more.
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Actually, my thought was to try to avoid "total scores". People can add them up if they want, but I don't think that a story's quality is necessarily the same as the sum of the three scores I'm giving. Also, I'm not super comfortable with the idea of assigning overall grades. I want to give people nice summary information, but not reduce everything to one number in the end. That's why I'm going with summary scoring on technical, creative, and satisfaction aspects—but then giving an overall text recommendation to sum up.
Maybe I'm just being weird, but this seemed a bit less adversarial and a bit more generally useful to me.
I'm going to take this as an excuse to reread Martial Bliss. Thank you for that.
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I think I'm a little more comfortable with scores than some people, but I very much take your point. To me, though, technical skill, creativity, and satisfaction seem like they're probably three of the big things readers look for in stories here—and I suspect different people have very different priorities where those three are concerned. So it seemed like legitimately useful information.
...though capitalism-me has to admit that part of the thought process, too, was: "What can I do that other people aren't doing, so I'm not just providing more of the same without creating a niche for my product." And I think most reviewers are with you about disliking summary scores, so there's an element of me just trying to be a little different. In a way that I still don't find too distasteful—because you do have a very valid point.
Heh. "Throw-away scene." I'm not sure if that's intentional or not.
In any case, an excellent first outing. More serious than John or Bob's work, but that's not at all a bad thing.
...and I'm reviewing your reviews. I'm just going to stop here before the universe collapses in on itself.
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Yes. That was, um, totally intentional. I swear. I absolutely noticed that pun when I wrote it.
Absolutely.
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Numerical scores are also very prone to being misinterpreted. Some people expect scores to work like school grades (US version: 60% or lower is an utter failure, the lowest 'decent' score would be around 80%), others think anything lower than 8.9 is an insult to the creators, others think that an average score should be 50%. It should be obvious that these are mutually exclusive expectations, so someone is going to be mislead by a score no matter how you choose to assign them. I seem to remember some gaming review source (tempted to say it was PC Gamer?) publishing an article saying that they changed their scale to make 50% is an average, and snarkily adding that all previous scores have been retroactively redistributed to lie on that scale.
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Yup. It's things like this that kept me from doing a review post two days ago. I finally settled on a 0-5 scale because I figured that was less close to percentage grades, which I wanted to steer clear of (especially because I'm of the "center scores in the middle" school, though I doubt I'll review many things that I'll want to give 0's or 1's to).
It turns out, though, that some countries use 0-5 grading, and so I had a bit of back and forth with some friends about even doing this, since my "avoid making these look like grades" strategy just made them look like grades to different people.
Target acquired. You will be assimilated. The list sees all.
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I just like numbers. I suppose this is still more straightforward and intuitive than horizon's H.O.R.S.E. or whatever method. :B
Horizon's Fugue state is indeed excellent. Inspired me to write a similar story except for a pony that can hear and interpret background music especially clearly. Except I haven't actually written it yet
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Has Horizon been reviewing stuff without me noticing? And here I was giving him grief in the other blog for not reviewing...
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He reviews all the Writeoff stories from every writeoff competition.
So, 35-50 stories for the last several rounds.
I dunno if he'll keep doing so, but he has been.
I've read 3/5 of these, so this should be an interesting opportunity to see how our tastes align (or don't) while getting a couple potential recommendataions. Let's see.
Yes.. I think we can all agree Skywriter is freakishly awesome. He's also literally a professional writer, so it's a little amusing to see his ponyfic called "professional-caliber".
I'm actually really curious where you think this story could have gone that it didn't. It explored pretty much everyone in Ponyville's reaction to The Meter, which seems to me to cover pretty much all the ground the premise creates, short of making it semi-permanent and examining more long term societal effects, which would get very speculative very fast.
Also, I've found "characterization" can be a lot more subjective than it first appears.
Skirt's stories, (the ones that I've read, which is a fairly small fraction of what he's written because holy shit he's written a lot) seem to have a bit of a trend of involving really interesting concepts that touch on our conception of morality, but don't exactly define it. I rather like the approach, even if (or because) it's rather at odds with the show's habit of trying to hammer out the One True Moral in a letter (or journal) at the end.
Bittersweet Music is one I hadn't heard of before, and I think I'll have to check it out, by which I mean I'll have to chuck it onto my enormous RIL pile and maybe think about in a few months. That's still above most of what's in there though.
I'm gonna have to take issue with the constant references to "purple prose" though. Not only am I rarely bothered by what others often refer to as "purple", but I see it brought up in reviews with alarming frequency as a general response to authors trying too hard to be cool. That's not neccessarily a bad thing folks, and even when it is egregious, it's generally unhelpful as far as writing advice goes, since being as apparently subjective as it is, it doesn't offer much as far as specifying a correctable problem. Heck, it's purplish to refer to prose as "lilac" as an overly clever way of saying it's only slightly too ornate for your tastes. I'm not saying the criticism is neccessarily invalid, merely that the delivery is highly overused, and I'm starting to see it as a critical cop-out.
Poetry has never been particularly interesting to me. While I can enjoy it, it's usually not a result of it's construction, but rather that it also happens to have interesting content. The content of this doesn't particularly grab me, (like Syhlex did) but it is a bit of a rarity, so I may end up giving it a look. (On to the pile with you)
2583651
I think the thing I would have most liked on "Numbers"—and I'm aware this is horribly subjective, but so is reviewing in general, really—would have been a slight tweaking of the original premise. The chapter four scene between Twilight and Applejack really, really rubbed me wrong. I find it completely unbelievable that AJ can stay lie-free for, what was it at that point, a couple days? But then as soon as Twilight comes around, her liedometer starts ticking over like crazy. I know ss&e tries to justify it, but it still feels painfully out of character. And it prompts two big reactions from me:
(1) This story could probably do with less focus on Twilight. Yes, it briefly considers what happens to other ponies, but it's very incidental. The driving force here is just what this all means to Twilight. If AJ is going to suddenly start acting very OOC, I need to know what this means to her as well.
(2) The premise here would have probably been much more interesting if, instead of measuring how many lies ponies said, the meter measured how often other ponies thought the speakers were lying. How often trust was lost. That creates a much more interesting dynamic for Twilight, and refocuses the story in a spot where I think it'd have an easier time finding a moral resolution in the end. I didn't find the wrap-up all that satisfying here; I didn't feel like Twilight ever really learned a lesson regarding honesty. Questions were asked, but I didn't feel like answers were really explored all that well. Sure, there's some of that, like with Cheerilee's class, but the story focuses on Twilight and I wanted more from her particularly about what she learned from the whole thing. It sounds, from you, like this is pretty standard ss&e, and like it's something you appreciate in his work. To me, it just feels a bit like loose plotting. I'm not saying I need to know the answer in the end, but here Twilight has been struggling with the situation for a long time, and I feel like she really ought to be able to provide an answer.
As for purple, I was reading chunks of Three Nights last night, and I have to admit it's a problem I definitely suffer from as well. When I say somebody's being purple, I have to admit I'm not using the term precisely the way it's meant to be used, and so maybe I should change what I'm saying. Properly, purple is just a comment about authors trying to hard for fancy descriptions. I tend to use it as a shorthand, though, for "Author is being pointlessly wordy." That generally happens on two levels: the author may be using weak prose (I've got a tendency to use phrases like "a little" a lot), or the author may be meandering through the narrative instead of staying focused on the story s/he wants to tell. Actual purple prose is a subset of weak prose. And yes, people's tolerances for it can vary. There's plenty of published lit that contains egregiously purple prose. From my standpoint, though, anything that interferes with reader engagement is a technical no-no, so writers should either try to avoid making their sentences noticeable (your standard transparent prose position) or have such phenomenal prose that readers actually want to see the words.
I'll admit that as a reader, I don't generally get the whole "beautiful prose" thing and opt more for reading transparent prose, and that's personal preference. I think it's very hard to do beautiful prose well, though, and I think most people who try to go that route are going to fall flat at the fanfic skill level. I know, that's a bit prejudiced of me—but to provide an out-of-domain example, I have a ton of respect for Brandon Sanderson as a writer, and he doesn't seem to be able to do beautiful prose to save his life. I've heard him discuss various places he's tried to use it in his books, and reading those spots myself, I just feel like he's wallowing in bad imagery. That's not to say "If he can't do it, no one here can"—I suspect this is a particular area of lack-of-talent for him. But I do think it makes the point that writing for beauty isn't easy, and when you're not hitting that bar, the extra words are mostly just distracting.
But your point seemed to be more about phrasing, so I'm probably ranting uselessly here. I'll keep what you said in mind.
2583380
He's done maybe two review journals. :B Also, you should check out what City of Doors had to say about your reviewing. Advice has been offered! :D
Pleased and flattered to be part of your first round of reviews! Thanks!
2583866
The Official Pseudointellectual Term for this is 'prolix', IIRC.
2584439
Aagh! That things so close to an autological word, but it just falls short. It's not long. Why couldn't somebody have made that word twice as long!?
Cool to see these go up! This is a lot more depth than I expected to see when I heard you were starting these up — I hope the workload for it stays reasonable. I'm also honored to be included. The glowing recommendation is just the thick icing on the tasty, tasty cake.
2583070
I note with approval your review of Bradel's reviews based on comparisons to other reviewers, since that sort of contrast offers rich opportunities for AAAAAUUUGGHH I STUMBLED INSIDE THE EVENT HORIZON IT'S METAREVIEWS ALL THE WAY DOWN
SAVE YOURSELVES
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I gave my HITEC system a test drive with my feedback on the previous writeoff rounds. I don't really count those as reviews, because the writeoff stories are more like a writing workshop than a true competition — due to the tight time limit, they're sort of prereader notes, and often the authors revise based on that sort of feedback and the commentary doesn't necessarily apply to the final story.
If I ever find an eighth day of the week under my couch cushions, I might do occasional reviews of frontpage stories (take a snapshot the same way JP did for his Suffer series, and walk down everything that was posted within a given half-hour), but if I did it would be in that style of concrit + HITEC score. HITEC is specifically normalized to avoid authors freaking out over how their numbers stack up; and if I wanted to summarize my overall impression of a story, I would probably crib something similar to PP's HR/R/C/V/N system, because "Not Recommended" is a lot softer dismissal of a poor story than giving it a harsh score. A huge concern of frontpage reviews would be harshing on new authors and ruining their enthusiasm before they can improve and create something awesome.
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If you do, let me know!
2585533 well, I plan on asking you to preread it when I do, so I will. It'll be something to the effect of a pony becomes a hospice worker after he learns the hard way he can interpret melodramatic high strings and other bits of background music.
Unrelated to anything: I love how the pic that shows up in the sidebar for this blog post is Shining Armor throwing his wife off of a balcony. It does sort of encapsulate the whole "review launch" thing.
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One of the few bits that wasn't stage managed. I forgot how blogs displayed in the sidebar. I'm pretty pleased with the result myself, though.
This is probably going to have a rather big impact on which stories I put first in my future review posts, though.
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You really need to rework that system so the acronym is HORSE. :B I mean, you've already got two of the letters there! Just sayin'.
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"Idea" could easily be re-dubbed "Originality".
More circuitously, you could flip "Execution" for my "Satisfaction" and then change "Consistency" to "Evenness" (I couldn't find a good synonym for consistency that started with 'S', and I like the fact that it's positioned at the end anyway).
And "Technical" could get flipped out for "Readability", thus completing the transition!
Though you could just do the simpler thing, take a step down the path to the dark side. Do the "Technical" for "Readability" flip, and then switch "Hook" out for... um... I dunno, "Theme"?
Or you could keep it the way it is, because that works pretty well. Also, I still want to punch Orson Scott Card for talking about "milieu" just so he could get his story concepts acronym to come out to "MICE".
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Just noting that I've been pondering over the idea. The writeoff sort of drove it off my front burner, but the acronym is appealing. I do need to tweak HITEC a bit to see if there's something better I can use than "Consistency", anyway, which ends up being sort of a dump stat.
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Were I to redo my reviewing system (which I don't think I ever will, but still), things I would arrange something like "What is it trying to do?" "Does it pull it off?" "Does anything get in the way?" i.e., what do I see as the purpose, is it reached, and are there any side issues, extra plots that go nowhere, writing problems, etc. The purpose/success metric is what tickles my mind as a rubric entry. Just throwing that out there.