Post-publishing Review of Background Pony Chapter XII - What Sound a Stone Makes

I only read the tiniest portion of the chapter when I was given access to the draft. My contributions were minor, and yet were enough for Shortskirtsandexplosions to add my name to the thanks section yet again. However, now that I've had the chance to actually read the finished product I am once again reminded why Shortskirtsandexplosions needs editors like myself and the rest of those involved (the clique of Spanish tables that announce his work first) in really making his work shine. The chapter is by no means bad, but it has far too many of those little extra bits that SS&E tends to use during the process of extracting the thought of a story into words. And without further ado, I'll share the couple of notes I made on the chapter as I read:

The biggest issue was that the prose seemed unusually pretentious. Lyra's description, already established as a tad abnormally formal and pseudo-philosophic, (a hallmark of SS&E's characters as far as I can tell) was more dense than usual, and, in my opinion, not in a good way. Even her dialog seemed awkward in that nobody-really-talks-like-this kind of way.

The first bowling scene felt abridged in a way that didn't fit the rest of the chapter. I remember something about the scene being shortened, or at least changed substantially. Most importantly, AJ's jibe about RD's Wonderbolt dreams isn't there anymore, and AJ just seems to the shafted without getting her chance to hit back. When Twilight responds to Fluttershy's reaction to Rarity not wanting to wear the shoes, it's tagged ambiguously in a way that I first thought it was Rarity speaking again--until Twilight said, "Rarity" in the line. Apart from that, Pinkie seems utterly absent from the first half of the scene. I seem to remember her returning from getting drinks around the same time Rarity arrived in the draft, but it's unclear when Pinkie enters or that she ever actually left to get the drinks she passes out to everypony.

Next up is the chess. Something about the description there feels just a bit... off, especially where Lyra is considering her own moves. (For instance, when she ponders taking Granite's queen or saving her own Knight, it's not even a question. Losing a Knight, unless you're in position to checkmate with it soon, is well worth the capture of a queen.) Now, this is really nit-picky, but I've been playing a fair bit of chess over the last couple months, so it's been on my mind.

I'm a bit confused about the Zebraharan war. It's a kind of nod towards the End of Ponies conflict that gets mentioned, but it feels different. The impression I got from EoP was that the ponies were at war with the Zebras, not assisting them against invaders. Now, if that's a purposeful change based on making the BP universe more in-line with show canon, that makes sense, but it bugged me a bit that it conflicted with what little I thought I knew about it. The timeframe also seems different from the EoP war, unless Quarrington Pie is older than I initially thought.

Apart from a couple other minor mistakes: one, "her" that should have been colored; a passage that says, "phantoms of the path" where you mean past; saying, "speak her peace" where it should be piece; "an realm" a; most of the rest of the chapter seems to be in order.

Now for some notes on what SS&E did well:

I'm glad Lyra's efforts to break the amnesiac effect failed. Should she have succeeded, I think the pacing would be messed up; the finished product is supposed to be 18-20 chapters, right? Teasing us with so many mentions of parasprites, even the word itself in other context is purple? Do the things even truly exist? Granite Shuffle was killed pretty well, no deus-ex-machina family changes, and the song sticking in his head was a good way to bypass the whole memory thing. It's important (despite some comments calling for a happy ending "nao" etc.) that the tone stays the way it has been going. The river can shift directions, but it can't hop continents or people will get very confused until you just say, "It's magic; I don't have to explain marsupial bowel movements." And even that would rightfully leave some people mad. Of course, now I've gone off track, so I'll finish off by saying that I'm looking forward to the next chapter.