Cerulean's Voice On The Matter #14 · 3:28pm Mar 23rd, 2015
Well, I was going to review Ocalhoun’s One In A Million this time around, but fate intervened when I received a reminder that I’d promised to read someone else’s one-shot first. Guess you know what to expect below, huh? A number of contest entries here.
Get three more one-shots from my RL below! Some real gems in here today (figuratively and literally). After this, I have three more one-shots, and then it’s all about the longer ones.
Story: A Brush with Beauty
Author: Burraku Pansa
Synopsis:
Paul Matthews is a young man of average height and average weight and fairly average disposition. He is normal, and abnormally so. That rarely seen kind of person who, even in their early years, gives off the impression that they are destined for a moderately successful career in middle management at some cold, gray corporation.
Paul Matthews is about to come very close to something that few people do.
Length: 6,415 words (one-shot)
Status: Complete
Review: You know what? I’ve decided I really like present tense. After reading More Than You Know the day before and loving how it was used to great effect in the limited third person, today I finally decided to read this one, and… I just had my own brush with beauty. Many of the story’s tiny details would probably feel mundane and irrelevant in the hands of a lesser writer, but the way they’re all thrown in so elegantly really help bring the scenes and settings to life. We meet a human, go through the motions of his daily life with him for a bit, learning exactly what attitude he brings to it. You get the feeling that it’s all very grey and mediocre, certainly not ideal. Which of course is smashed to pieces as he finds himself in Equestria, though how exactly is never made perfectly clear. In fact, there’s a whole lot about the story that feels vague or unclear, although this doesn’t feel like an accident like you might expect. Paul’s take on Equestria and living there included a lot of ideas I’ve never seen before, like his perception of taste and all the colours, and his money being worth enough to buy a house—that was a cool little thing—to the point where he could actually afford to be somewhat reclusive. There’s a tonne of underlying subtext in there, with the title representing a number of things. You won’t find an error in there now, either. The “therapist visit” framing device works well, too. I can’t think of a reason why anybody shouldn’t read this. Whether you get some of the more subtle subtext or not, this is still a fantastic read, and you might find yourself connecting with Paul in unanticipated ways.
Story: Daring Do & The Rookie Editor
Author: Naughty_Ranko
Synopsis:
Twilight Velvet, acclaimed author and proud mother of two, has been given a new task by her publisher. But her first assignment as editor for a fresh, young writer may prove to be more than she bargained for, as it turns out the submission isn't as fictional as she thought.
A chance encounter that will lead to the team-up of two dream authors, the creation of the most beloved adventure series in Equestrian literature and the beginning of a life-long friendship.
Length: 2,952 words (one-shot)
Status: Complete
Review: Here’s an entrant into Everfree Northwest’s 2015 fanfic writing competition, and I gotta say it appears to be a very strong contender. Apart from a couple of comma splices, it has solid proofing throughout and looks very polished. Flowed easily, consistently paced, barely any style issues that I could notice. The only thing going against it was the word limit for the contest; I feel this could have gone a little deeper into the character study between two very underwritten ponies, even with just a few hundred more words. Alas, it barely snuck in under the word limit, although what you do get is quite the enjoyable romp with Velvet and Miss Yearling. Everything is established well to begin, although the beginning took just a touch longer than would be preferable to get to the meat of the story. The dialogue between the pair feels perfectly natural; with each mare being a much younger version of themselves, Velvet is inexperienced and Yearling feel exactly like Rainbow Dash. The action felt very show too, which is a plus for me. I’d like to say that I found a new headcanon in this story, but that’s not entirely true—rather I already had this headcanon and the story serves only to reinforce it. Anyone who likes Daring Do will like this. One final thing: the author is rather out of their comfort zone with this, apparently a well-liked clop writer. After 21 fics, this is Ranko’s first that’s E-rated. Oh, and please don’t be put off by the cover art.
Story: Beneath your Feet, what Treasures
Author: TheJediMasterEd
Synopsis:
Spike has a hoard nopony knows about, something he's been using to do a dragonish thing in a ponyish way.
But now it's the other way 'round.
Length: 1,444 words (one-shot)
Status: Complete
Review: Usually, I try to get rid of stories from my RL that have been sitting there for a long time before more recent ones. It’s only fair, after all. But since this one came Highly Recommended to me from Titanium Dragon of all people, I knew I’d have to get to it sooner rather than later. So, I read it, and… I mean, it’s very well written with just a few missing commas… it uses heavy metaphor… Iiiiiiii just can’t see the point. I get what the story’s going for, and I can appreciate the somewhat jerky nature of the writing itself, I suppose, but… it’s stories like these that make me question whether I even know how to pick out quality. It’s getting such good comments from a lot of highly respected people, and yet it didn’t really do anything for me. I must be incapable of reading on a deeper level, because a lot of what’s been talked about in the comments went right over my head. I dunno. It gets a like from me, but no more than that. Still, if you want a short and swift Spike-centric character piece, you can do far worse than this. Grab it while it’s hot, if it interests you.
Having a broken foot sucks. Knowing I have the next two weeks off work still (minimum) to get some writing done but not feeling motivation to do so sucks even harder. Hope you’re all doing better than I.
Adren
I think getting into one of these should eventually go on my "Fimfiction Bucket List"...
I read this too, because it was realllly short enough for me to scan through, and my experiences with it were somewhat similar. It's good, and I really like the prose, and I actually do really like slice of life stories, but it felt to me like a regular story in more ways than was suggested.
I think it's more artistic than anything else, but perhaps the artistry forced the author to overlook certain other things that maybe are necessary for a story. Not to say that it's bad in any way, but I think the prose needed to have propped up the rest of the story and it just didn't as much as I would have preferred.
Also, you gotta turn your TD filter on, man. Otherwise you'll always be confused when it comes to his recommendations. TD's a great reviewer... as long as you're willing to abandon some of his final verdicts. ;)
Glad I'm not the only person who came away from 'Beneath' feeling very underwhelmed. Given the folks who were falling over themselves to recommend it, I was expecting a lot more. Granted, it was well constructed, and I got the basic idea at its core (Spike self-rationalizing that Rarity loves Mac).
But, there wasn't much of anything there. I understand that character pieces don't need as much world-building as other story types, but this felt like a small, small piece of a larger tale. It almost sits in a vacuum of its own creation.
I'm noticing this as an emerging pattern as of late. Between the Writeoff group and other one-offs like 'Beneath', there's been a deluge of 'deep' stories that are relatively abstract in nature, or that reflect a heavy influence from obscure/high-minded works (such as Dickens). And though they are well-written and imagined, they all seem to follow the same song/dance: It gets high praise from a select group, but flies over the head of most everyone else, myself included. << (which in some cases, leads some in the former group to wring their hands over the latter group 'just not getting it')
2902474
See, I didn't even get that.
I thought it was about Spike being Mac's friend or something. And I failed to see what Maud had any use for in the fic either. She did nothing of significance by my (clearly limited) reckoning.
Thanks for the review. Glad you liked my story.
That story royally pissed me off.
... Not because there was anything wrong with it though. Quite the opposite - I got too invested in Scootaloo as a character.
Testament to the writing.
2902345
I may be a little overenthusiastic about that story. I'll have to wait a few days and take a look back at it to be sure.
I think it may also just be that I was too wrapped up in the central conceit of the story.
That being said, in my defense, Bad Horse and Ghost of Heraclitus also really liked it.
2902474
I think you're also missing another important clue here, which is that we all are happy that someone finally managed to get Ed to publish something. They didn't just want his story to go out into the void and be unrecognized, doubly so as it was the sort of piece that appealed to them.
Ed is a good writer, and a smart guy, and, well, what better encouragement than to get a bunch of people to read his stuff?
It also kind of proves that the literati community can, via concerted effort, get a story featured even if it is something like that.
2902345
Statistically speaking, I suspect that my "highly recommended" and "recommended" stories are not different in quality; it probably strongly reflects personal preference rather than highly recommended stories actually being better on average.
That being said, I do think my recommended/highly recommended stories really are better, on average, than my upvoted stories, and by a fairly wide margin.
However, my opinion on stories is hardly the final word on them, and indeed, the rest of the review exists so that you can evaluate the basis of my opinion and make a choice about whether or not to read something on your own.
2902514
See, you're... pretty much missing the entire story, then.
First off, the stone was produced by a volcano; Spike uses this fact to find the stone. Maud is used as a vehicle both for explaining the rock to us, as well as for explaining that it is of volcanic origin, which is why Spike can smell/taste it from a distance.
The stone represents Big Mac.
Every gem in Spike's secret little dragon hoard represents one of his friends; by adding Big Mac to it, he is symbolically indicating that he is friends with Big Mac now, and wants Big Mac to be a part of his life - but it is really the other way around.
And he is rationalizing that, by being friends with Big Mac, Spike isn't really losing Rarity to Big Mac (hence him talking to the diamond and the stone representing Big Mac, noting that Rarity belongs to him now) because both of them still belong to him.
He is using his draconicity to work through his personal issues symbolically.
2903479
Yeeeah, I got none of that. Just like I didn't pick up on anything that others did about the Mansions minific until I saw the comments; all I got from that one was Big Mac preferring to see Luna over Celestia, and even that only came to mind because the canon romantic interaction between Luna and Mac in the comics made it believable to me.
I'm simply not good at picking up the vague, the metaphorical, the artistic. If you have a story to tell me, tell me the story. Don't try to make me manufacture it myself.
This must be where my lack of tertiary education really rears its ugly head, and it had me pondering for a while if I should even continue doing reviews if I can't measure the quality of someone's work, especially when that someone's first ever story is clearly in a league surpassing my own. Good for them. They deserve the praise.
2902474
Ah, the Literati.
I think there's a few things at work here.
First off, there are stories which are entirely dependent on subtext, and the subtext is what makes the story awesome. When you look at a story like, say, Bad Horse's The Sea Pony, the story has to be the way it is - the story is pretty transparent in its symbolism, and the whole story is about the narrator himself. Either you see that, or you don't. If you don't recognize that the story is about the narrator, and is symbolic in nature, then you aren't going to get the story at all.
If you do see the subtext, though, you get quite a bit out of the story, and the fact that he can't say what happened to him straight out tells you something about the character - as well as the fact that he is telling the kids about it, like he wants to get it off his chest, but he also wants to protect the kids from the realities of his life at the same time.
There's a lot of subtext that goes into that story, and it is precisely that subtext that makes it awesome.
This all comes back to a central point which I think most of these stories have in common: dense stories are appealing to people who are capable of enjoying them because you get more enjoyment out of less space. If you can write the same story in a thousand words that would take other people two thousand words, the thousand word version is better. The catch is that when you have to rely on things like symbolism, subtext, and the reader actually being able to figure out the story - even if it seems pretty obvious - you lose readers. The denser a work is, the more impenetrable it is, the more readers you lose.
But the advantage of works being like this - works that force the reader to think - is that not only are they very engaging for the readers who have to actually think about them, because forcing the reader to think about the story makes them engage with it, but it also means that you can tell more story in less space. The more subtext you can force into the text, the less actual text you need to tell your story. This is why "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" is considered to be a six word story: the single sentence implies a tragic tale which takes place entirely in the reader's head.
A defect in this, incidentally, is stories like Finnegan's Wake, which is impenetrable without actually being very dense. If you spend the enormous amount of time necessary to decipher the story, you're not actually left with something which was worth the time and effort spent doing it, but it gives some folks a false sense of accomplishment when they decipher the story, as they have done something which is very difficult and therefore feel that it must, therefore, be rewarding. If you actually read a plot summary of what Finnegan's Wake is about, you'll see that the story it is telling isn't anythign tremendously special. The story exists, fundamentally, to make people feel clever for solving it, but the payoff is almost entirely in said solving - the solution isn't worth the effort necessary to find it.
To me, stories like Finnegan's Wake are interesting as puzzles, but aren't very interesting as stories, because they're entirely about being clever for the sake of cleverness, rather than for the sake of actually making something good.
But when a story is dependent on the reader unpacking it, it makes the story more powerful.
The other thing is when a story makes use of symbolism to reinforce its themes - I used the journey from garden to the great hall to the secret room in The Butterfly's Burden to reinforce the idea of isolation, of being apart from the world but having to deal with it, and, at the end, to have Fluttershy carry a bit of that deeper level of responsibility with her back into the world she came from. It was meant to reinforce the thrust of the story, the burden that Fluttershy was carrying of having to deal with Discord, and her guilt over whether or not she was really Discord's friend because she had to be his friend and was also keeping an eye on him on behalf of all of Equestria.
Stories where the ending changes everything are probably the simplest way of doing this; Trust is a great example of this, but movies like The Sixth Sense rely on the same thing. The first time you read them or watch them, you get one story; the second time you read or watch them, you are reading a different story using the exact same text or video, but because you understand what is going on now, there is a whole new layer of meaning to the story. This makes these stories effectively twice as "dense", and has the added advantage of making for a powerful ending as the reveal tends to be very punchy. I like stories like this, which is why I write stories like Ruin Value and Through Glass. Indeed, this is one of the easiest ways of writing a dense story, as the ending will essentially double the "length" of the story by giving the recontextualized parts of the story a new double meaning.
So when we look at Beneath Your Feet, What Treasures, what we're getting is a fair bit of subtext in Spike's feelings towards others. We get glimpses of what being a dragon actually means for Spike, as well as how Spike is recontextualizing his existence through the lens of being a dragon, and vice-versa. Spike is a person who happens to be a dragon, and the story makes use of that fact. And I think that is what makes it so appealing; objects symbolizing people is hardly anything new, but he put a new twist on it by making it specifically relevant to Spike being a dragon.
2903523
The audience is always forced to manufacture the story to some extent; understanding all stories requires different levels of audience engagement. The advantage of asking more of the reader is manyfold:
1) It engages the reader more, because they're not just being told a story, but are forced to actually think about it. This is the real reason why showing is better than telling: the reader can get the exact same information out of it, but by forcing the reader to engage with the story by unpacking it mentally, you are increasing reader engagement.
2) It improves emotional engagement as well, as the reader is forced to think about how the characters are feeling or why they are acting the way they are acting.
3) It makes the reader feel smart because they figured something out. This makes the audience more positively disposed towards the story.
4) You can do more with less. A denser story can be read more quickly, which means that people have to spend less time on it. The denser an experience is, the more concentrated your joy. Concentrated experiences in general tend to be more engaging and to make people happier.
5) It lets you express a lot of more mixed-emotions in less telly ways, which I think helps the audience better grok characters and see them as people rather than as narrative vehicles.
Cold in Gardez's Lost Cities are in part so engaging because, despite the fact that there are no characters on-screen in the stories at all, nothing but a description of a dead place, there still are characters and events in the stories, implied by the architecture and the damage done to the ruins and little facts like "History records precisely one visit by Luna and Celestia to the Heartspire" which says a great deal in just a single sentence.
It isn't lack of education; it is a manner of thinking.
2903354 Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see anyone rustle up the courage to publish something, especially for the first time. I had no idea who the author was before now, but I only wish him all the success in the world. This specific story didn't do much for me, but I'll gladly read whatever he writes next; he clearly has talent.
2903611
Ah, I think I ended up responding more to CV in that post than I really was to you; I got kind of side-tracked.
I think that these dense stories with lots of subtext and symbolism are inherently appealing to these folks precisely because of their nature; basically, there is a subgroup of people who really like unpacking stories like this.
I have to admit that it holds some appeal for me as well.
The thing is, we're likely to overrate them because they appeal to a specific thing that we like doing - namely, unpacking these stories. If unpacking stories itself isn't intrinsically appealing to you in and of itself, that extra layer of appeal tends to be lost, and your estimation of the story is likely to be based on other factors. I don't get as much out of unpacking stories as other people do, and as such, I dislike things like FInnegan's Wake and Lunna's Ache because I want whatever the end result is to actually be worthwhile. If there's something hidden under there, and what it is is personally disappointing, I'm likely to dislike the story.
There is some joy in the unpacking for me, but if at the end I'm left with a booby prize, I feel gypped and it negatively impacts my view of the story. Such was the case with Lunna's Ache; if there had been something very clever underneath it all, I likely would have enjoyed it more than I did.
I suspect that the less the underlying story appeals to you/the less unpacking appeals to you, the more offputting these folks cheering about these stories feels.
I probably shouldn't have highly recommended Beneath Your Feet, What Treasures; I suspect I was somewhat swept up in promoting the story, rather than simply viewing the story as-is. It probably didn't help that I had been editing the highly-dependent-on-intellectual-humor The Symposium at the same time Beneath Your Feet, What Treasures came out. I ended up amending its score to a "recommended" after comparing it to some other stories.
2903523
2903638
Well, this conversation has been... going on, I see.
With respects to mr. JediMasterEd, whom, I will agree is a good writer, I will just leave off on this:
I did get the depth of it, and in fact, the only part I DID find rather clever was the approach to the 'simple problem solved creatively'.
To boil it down, I simply feel that the story would have been a bit more effective if the prose didn't get in the way. I think it was about what kind of story it was and its presentation -- both good, both appealing, but maybe not so much together. It's like opening a finely-wrapped Victorian box to find an unwrapped garlic-butter steak inside. It's not quite what you'd expect, although all elements are just fine by themselves.
And not to say I'm not a reader who doesn't enjoy subtext, either. I mean, heck, most of my 'denser' stories are pretty much written that way, and exactly as TD said, it's not something easily penetrable, and therefore not read as much. I absolutely enjoy it, but again, prose got in the way, which makes me wonder if some or most of the OTHER people who enjoy it aren't just enjoying it for that facet only and also having the subtext plot completely go over their heads.
And if so, then it's something to take note of within the text itself, not the readers.
Respecting him for actually going ahead with writing and for his foray into this world is a COMPLETELY different matter. I do respect him for that, and I can see his ability. However, part of that respect is to judge him on the same level as I judge anything else, and hope for him to improve based on his skill alone, and not what context that skill is found. I genuinely hope he continues writing and fine-tuning his voice. It's an interesting one, to say the least, and I rarely find anything interesting because I'm a dirty old sour-puss.
And -> Cerulean, as for questioning yourself, I really think that's kinda going a bit off. The point of different reviewers IS to have different opinions of the same one thing. The point is to challenge the reader's point of view, and open them up to the POTENTIAL of seeing something in a new way.
I don't exactly read TD's reviews because our tastes match up. The reality is, it's quite the opposite most of the time. In fact, the stories he likes of MINE aren't what I consider my own best. But still, I read him, because he has a nice way of putting across points of view that are parallel to my own, and that's always a great thing.
Continue to have your own opinion. But always be ready to back up your thoughts, and be flexible and polite, just like TD here is, and that will keep you one of the more respectable and better reviewers.
2903591
I read that one, and I didn't understand it either. Again, not until I read any of the comments did I realise it was about the mafia (or equivalent). I just thought it was a fairytale being told by the narrator to his grandfoals, and I wondered what the point of it was since I had no investment in the characters (them being OCs or insert-other-random-character-here).
Guess these kinds of stories just aren't for me. By extension, guess I'll never be as good as others in this department either. I can be subtle, but not to this level of extreme subtext.
2903962
I didn't mean to imply that the only reason someone wouldn't like the story was because they didn't get it.
Possibly. Hard to say for sure, but I'm sure at least some of them did.
On the other hand, the story has a pretty mediocre ratio (10:1 upvotes:downvotes), which suggests a lot of people don't get it or don't like it.
Having multiple points of view on something is also helpful for getting a more complete picture of it, seeing what you missed, and possibly making better decisions about your reading, as well as improve yourself as a writer by seeing more takes on more things.
I read a bunch of reviews and I think it helps me get a more complete picture of things, as well as getting a spectrum of reactions - if I dislike something that Present Perfect likes, or vice-versa, that can tell me something about how to target people like him (or what loses people like him).
Also, I still haven't read The Incadescent Brilliance and Twilight, There's a Ghost in your Basement. I really need to get around to that.
Let's be honest here, the reason I originally started reading your stuff is because you wrote RariJack, and only later did I realize you wrote other good stuff as well.
2904335
What he said, Cerulean. Wat he sed.
You're probably not going to like them, haha. I hope you won't, but based on what you like or don't like about my writing so far, it seems like mebbie those aren't gonna be your cup of tea. You MIGHT like Dust and Harmony. You might like Tarnish, since you like those brief character introspective layered fics. All I can say with 100% certainty is that everytime you don't like one of my stories, a kitten dies.
Because I strangle it in sadness and grief.
Honestly, I can't take that in a bad way. I'm a bit of a deep-swimming fish here on Fimfic, and I'm happy anytime one of my things bobs to the surface.
2904809
I've read Tarnish; it is on my recommended stories list, but it predates my doing reviews. I may eventually go back and review it, though, in one of my recommended stories reviews posts.
You were right about my not liking The Incandescent Brilliance, though. Yes, I just read it in the middle of making this blog post, just because...
That kitten had it coming.
For reference, of your stuff that I've read, I liked Home, Tarnish, Chess, and Barrelled Up; Barrelled Up is a HR-calibur story, while Tarnish got a recommended from me and the other two got upvotes. Collide is okay and also got an upvote, but I'm not enthusiastic about it, I guess - I remember what it is, and what it was about, but it is kind of just on the cusp for me.
I didn't really like Table for Two or Two Tiny Talks. The Incandescent Brilliance fell in-between those and Collide for me.
My review will be in Read It Later Reviews #13, most likely.