Fic Feedback #3 – A Year of Seasons · 1:53am Jul 20th, 2015
Last fall, the FlutterDash group ran a contest for stories about FlutterDash and the four seasons.
It only had one entry (though HoofBitingActionOverload eventually finished his entry as well.
I had agreed to go over the winning entry and give the author feedback.
I never did, even though I put it on my “to do” list.
That ends today!
A Year of Seasons
by The Rising Tide of Night
Sex, Romance, Sad, Slice of Life
30,044 wordsA year is made up of four seasons, each with its own identity and experiences. These same four seasons can be said to describe the life of a relationship. The relationship between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash rises and falls with time, but through sadness, hardship, joy, and laughter, they both love each other with a depth that cannot be fathomed.
This is but a glimpse into the life of that love, told over the course of a year – a year of four very different seasons that span a lifetime.
Review
This story is really sort of four interrelated stories stuck together, with each story exploring a different season and a different point in the relationship between Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.
The first story – spring – features a long, drawn-out scene where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash act awkward towards each other. Both obviously want to confess, but Fluttershy is too scared and Rainbow Dash keeps chickening out. In the end, when Rainbow Dash finally does fess up at Rarity’s urging, Fluttershy freaks out and runs into the Everfree forest, forcing her friends to follow her.
The second story – summer – is set after a time skip, years later, with the couple already having gotten married. Rainbow Dash returns to Ponyville, only to find out there were rumors of her cheating on Fluttershy with Captain Spitfire, and Fluttershy thinks that Rainbow Dash wants to leave her. But Rainbow Dash has no such intentions, and indeed, may be Captain Rainbow Dash someday soon…
The third story – fall – is set as Rainbow Dash retires from the Wonderbolts, the pair being confronted by a dragon in the Whitetail Woods, leaving Rainbow Dash greviously injured as Fluttershy has to take care of her.
The final story – winter – deals with Rainbow Dash coping with the aftermath of Fluttershy’s decline into senility and eventual death.
The single largest thing that bothered me about this story was its kind of generic feeling. I’ve read confession stories before, and the second story – set in the summer – reminded me of Wet Feathers in its setup, but the execution just wasn’t as good as that of bookplayer’s story. The second half of summer also involved quite a bit of off-screen makeup sex, as well as eyebrow waggling at the fact that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were having sex amongst their friends, despite the fact that the story suggested that they’d been together for a decade at that point.
Pacing was another major issue. Ponies waffling about always feels weird, especially with Rainbow Dash, and reading 15,000 words of ponies waffling following by 5,000 words of them having sex off-screen just didn’t excite me for the ending of this story, and I would have stopped reading in chapter 1 had I not promised to keep reading all the way through.
The last two stories are much more engaging than the first two stories; they’re shorter and much faster paced, and they also were just more interesting, even if the dragon attack in the fall chapter felt kind of random. Everything after that had a lot more genuine emotional feeling, and the last chapter-and-a-half or so was much stronger than the rest of it. While Rainbow Dash looking back on Fluttershy’s death after the fact wasn’t anything terribly novel, the story here gave it some real resonance and made it interesting to read, and there was some real reader engagement there – the first half of the final chapter was outright good.
However, I never would have gotten there ordinarily because the first four chapters of the story just didn’t interest me very much; it just wasn’t worth going through the rest of the story just for the ending.
I noticed a few issues with the prose, and I took a small sample of the story out to specifically call out some things I noticed in the writing. I hope this is helpful to both the author and to other folks.
“Carnsarnit, Pinkie, you know dang well why she’s down there,” came a frustrated drawl from out of Fluttershy’s vision. “Ah swear, some ponies got no respect for others…” The drawl grew louder even as it drifted off into mumbling, and Fluttershy felt strong legs under her shoulders, gently lifting her into an upright position. She looked up at the pony helping her up, only to see Applejack’s kindly smile. “You ok there, Sugarcube?” she asked as she got Fluttershy on her hooves.
Shaking her head to dispel the ringing, she nodded to Applejack while looking around apprehensively. “Y-yes, I think so,” she replied. “What happened?”
Applejack gave Pinkie a glare, the party pony just letting it wash over her obliviously. “Some ponies need ta learn when to check to see who’s at the door afore surprising them,” she said with an air of disapproval.
Pinkie giggled, and gave Fluttershy a big smile. “Sorry there, Fluttershy. I coulda sworn Dashie was gonna be the next one here! I guess I got a little mixed up.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, Pinkie,” Fluttershy replied. “I didn’t mean to ruin your surprise like that.”
“Nah, it’s alright. I always keep a spare party cannon around anyway.” Pinkie reached behind a nearby pillar and pulled out another cannon. In her excitement, she quickly pulled the trigger string, setting off another loud explosion of color and sound, and Fluttershy found herself inspecting the ceiling once more, the ringing now in her right ear.
A moment later, Fluttershy had once again been helped up by a disapproving Applejack while Rarity gave Pinkie a stern lecture. Looking suitably guilty, Pinkie apologized to Fluttershy once more, and the four of them made their way into Twilight’s room where they found the bookworm princess hard at work setting things up for the night.
To drawl is to speak in a slow, lazy way with prolonged vowel sounds; this is rather the opposite of what happens when you’re frustrated, as your speech tends to speed up. Saying that a “drawl” is getting closer is also an awkward bit of word choice. It is also an awkward word to repeat; drawl is an unusual word, and repeating it twice in a paragraph should only be done with good reason, because otherwise, it draws attention to the repetition of an odd word without much benefit, as you’re spending the mental effort on noting a strange word being repeated when it isn’t really important.
The italicized sections – looking around apprehensively and letting it wash over her obliviously – are kind of telly, but they’re not actually bad per se. Here, however, we get two of them at the end of the first sentence of two sequential paragraphs; this is again an issue with repetition, this time of sentence structure and of something which should be used in moderation. Having characters look around apprehensively or have something wash over them and them remain oblivious to it aren’t bad in and of themselves, but pointing it out too much in too small a space ends up making your story feel too telly. The air of disapproval bit afterwards didn’t help much, either, but it was more explicitly telly.
The bolded sections below – “in her excitement” and “by a disapproving” – are both classical examples of telling, and indeed, the story moves into a bit of outright telling there as the scene moves from the front hallway to the library. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the story then immediately lapses back into normal prose, and the whole section ends up feeling a bit disconnected, added to all the more by the “bookworm princess”, which is an awkward example of describing a character with their traits rather than using their name.
I hope this was useful to The Rising Tide of Night. I’m sorry it took me so long to get this written up and posted. Hopefully, with the new, more productive TD, this sort of thing will be a thing of the past.
