xjuggernaughtx's Top Down Review #4 - The Battle of Fort Book · 4:39pm Jul 31st, 2015
The Battle of Fort Book
Spoiler free summary
While certainly on the light ’n’ fluffy side, content-wise, this story is general pleasant. It has solid characters with a gentle, entertaining plot, but has some minor technical issues.
A-ha! I got to skip one because Sunny Skies All Day Long is back at number one. This is currently number two.
For such a short story, I had to sit and think about this one for a while. I enjoyed it, but it’s almost impossible not to. There’s so little going on, but what is there is pretty cute. It would be like not enjoying your time with a very young puppy. It’s not moving around very much—probably just sleeping and occasionally yawning—but you still find yourself smiling a lot.
In The Battle of Fort Book, we follow the General Twilight as she prepares the defense of Fort Book from invasion by forces from Armor, the neighboring land ruled by her big brother. She’s assisted by Captain Smarty Pants and a somewhat slipshod private named Cadence.
Orders are executed, and observations on both Fort Book and the captain of the invasionary force are given. Cadence is disciplined quite often for the non-regulatory smile she keeps adopting.
Then the invasion happens and Captain Shining Armor faces the full wrath of the Fort Book pillow cannons.
As an aside, it was difficult for me to type ‘cannons’, rather than ‘canons.’ I had to go back and do it four times before I got it right. I’ve been in this fandom too long. Also, I keep want to call this story The Battle of Book Fort for some reason. Stupid fingers…
So that’s literally all there is to this story, but what’s there is generally pleasant to read. Twilight’s filly character comes through, and while I think of her as a much more serious kind of a filly, I don’t really have much difficulty going with this interpretation of her. Cadence and Shining Armor play the standard ‘adults caring for a precocious child’ role. They pretty much just follow her lead and try not to break character with the cute hits them.
It’s hard to talk about the plot in something like this. The story is so basic that there’s almost nothing you could complain about unless you just really didn’t like this kind of a tale. Unexplained elements within a plot really bug me, and this story doesn’t have any. It would be like messing up buttered toast. There’s not too many ways that you could not make it tasty besides just burning it.
The make or break for something like this is whether you think filly Twilight is adorable or not. I think she’s reasonably cute in this, though there were a few times that she felt a little generic to me. While I don’t have a big issue with her characterization, I do think it could be stronger. For example:
It was made to look like it was made of books, but it was actually made of rocks so that evil invaders wouldn't get in. It had another rock wall protecting it, and a moat, because moats are cool.
The part about moats being cool definitely sounds like something a child would think and say, but I’m not sold that filly Twilight would have said it. Seems more likely that she would know about a famous fort in history and want a moat because of that. Rainbow Dash or Pinkie might want a moat because it was cool or fun to have one. Twilight seems like she’d have a concrete reason.
Technical things
While very short, this story could still use another editing pass. The issues are pretty minor, but when you’re only at a thousand words, it seems silly not to tighten things up when you can.
Most of the issues are just sentences that could be reworked to sound a little better. Repetitive wording is a bit of an issue. Consider the opening paragraph:
Private Cadence seemed not to hear the orders that Captain Smartypants had given her. Of course, this wasn't unusual, Private Cadence was a great soldier, but for some reason I had to translate all the orders the Captain gave her.
or two paragraphs down
I'd read that in the book I read about military rankings.
Also, there are one or two places where I raised my eyebrow at the phrasing.
She seemed confused by my glare for a few minutes until she remembered protocol and saluted.
A few minutes is a long time to stand there and look at each other.
Finally, this story has some very aggressive exclamation point use, with “!!” and “!!!” happening from time to time. I’m pretty tolerant of exclamation points, but that seems a bit excessive.
Are you the intended audience
It’s hard not to be, really, unless you dislike cute, fluffy stories. Anyone looking for weight or deep meaning need not apply, but at just over one thousand words, this is an entertaining enough way to spend a few minutes. It could use another editing pass, so if you really want tight prose, this might turn you off, but if you’re just in the market for an easy, cute read about bonding, this serves that need. It’s vanilla pudding. A little bland, but still sweet and satisfying for what it is.
I give it:
Three Singularity Dreams
Sometimes the best stuff is the simplest. Read this story before. Like you said, not much too it, but it doesn't need much. It was a cute little idea, it was executed well enough, and more importantly, it was fun.
This is the highest story you've ranked thus far. Congrats to the story. And, as always, I look forward to seeing more from you.
Well, if Star is any indication...
3284548 She's cutest when she's sleeping. She was a very adorable unconscious puppy. Awake, she's still pretty cute, but definitely not as.
Friggin' pain in the ass dog. She's lucky she's cute.
Actually, she's been a lot more mellow recently because she hurt her shoulder. She hasn't wanted to be a huge spaz because of it.
3284531 I feel a bit bad about giving this story my highest rating because it's the least ambitious of the stories I've read. However, I kind of see it like a bake-off. If one person makes simple, tasty cupcakes, and the other tries to make a complex dessert soufflé, but it falls and it kind of burnt on one side, I can't really declare the latter the winner. I acknowledge that they were trying for something much more difficult, but in the end, they just didn't executed as well. But that reach and failure is still good growth material. Hopefully it helped them get better and really hit the mark the next time.
Finally, one I've read!
I have to say I liked this one, but I liked it in the same way you like cotton candy. It was a pretty, tasty, inoffensive novelty. It's a good story, very cute little Twiley content, but I can't help but shake the feeling that it hovers near the top of the pile more because it's difficult to dislike than due to it's enduring quality. This leads to a long discussion of how the "Top Rating" system, as it stands, puts incredible weight on a single downvote when you're close to the top, and the stories that tend to stay afloat are the ones that can avoid being disliked as opposed to those that can attract likes.
3284566 That's all any reviewer can ever hope for.
3284601 That's exactly how Apple Ninjas and Other Concerns ended up as a top five story. It's my cutest, least offensive story, so it remained without a downvote for a long, long time. There's nothing much really going on in that story, but it's so unobjectionable that people just didn't see a reason to downvote it. Of course, the higher in the rankings a story goes, the more likely that you'll get a "Well, it's good but not that good" downvote, which I did eventually receive.
But it says a lot about what fans here really want. They like easy to understand stories that give them exactly what they were looking for. They are very highly rewarded in this fandom, and I guess in society at large. There's a reason simple pop songs make a ton of money while someone's incredibly complex lyrical wonder-work barely gets five thousands views on YouTube.
That a little upsetting on one hand, but from a reader perspective, this is often escapism. A lot of times you just want something predictably pleasant to take your mind away for a little while. Stories that do that reap the rewards.
3284612 It's that difference between 'good' and 'popular' that seems to drive the creative people into a frenzy. When the two interesect, you get the Beatles. Where they don't, you get One Hit Wonder Songs From The 70's, On Sale This Week At Boarders Bookstore.
Ooh, one I've read! I'm a bit of a sucker for filly Twilight being adorable, so this one got a four from me. My own cynicism was worn down by the cuteness, despite the story's undeniable technical problems, but that's a good and fair point about Twi's voice not always feeling spot on.
3285434 That's how I am with comedy. If you can make me laugh, I'm willing to forgive a lot more than most other things. We all have our biases, and that one is mine. There will probably be several stories I'll encounter that won't be as well written as they ought to be but will get decent scores just because they are funny.