Review: Monsters, by JawJoe · 10:27pm Aug 3rd, 2015
I may have mentioned, but I don't read much.
Which is weird, because I believe that one of the most important bits of advice a writer can follow is this: read everything. Read what you like. Read what you hate. Read what you're indifferent to. Read the good, the bad, the mediocre. Read every genre, from every publisher, from every writer. The more you read, the more you absorb.
I used to be a huge bookworm back in high school, but I've since fallen out of the habit. I've lately been struggling to fix my lackluster appetite for the books and stories of others, and to my surprise, the simple act of reading now feels like a chore to me. This isn't a commentary on the quality of the stories... I sometimes find my own stories, some I'm very proud of, to be insufferable and intolerable to sit through. Perhaps for other reasons.
So when I sit and read a book, I measure it by one simple standard: Did I finish it?
Not "Did I like it?" or "Was it compelling and well crafted?" The judgemental part of my brain grades by attendance only. If I was able to read the whole thing, then it must be doing something right.
I just finished reading Monsters, by JawJoe. I never read Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift. I probably won't. I'm not a big fan of Dark fics, and I (for the time being, at least) see no real point to the Gore tag. None whatsoever. Forgive me, ObabScribbler, Our Lady of Organic Pinatas, for I have sinned.
So why would I dive into this?
I trust my friends role models whom I admire from afar, much as man admires the gods. The ever impressive Cold In Gardez posted an emergency signal boost on his blog, and I hold his opinions in higher regard than I do my own. Also, it's just the one chapter for now: A short read, and a chance to get in on the ground floor. Perhaps if I inject a slow, steady trickle of Dark/Gore into my veins over a longer period, my body will build up an immunity to it. Of course, you have to stuff the gibbets of bloody flesh into a blender and hit frappe, or they won't fit in the hypodermic needle.
...Moving on.
By JawJoe
So what did I think of the story?
I finished reading it. There! Review over!
Fine, fine. I actually rather liked it. While I was actually reading it, I found myself oddly frustrated. But after I'd finished it and was able to look back at the whole thing, I was generally satisfied by the characters and events, and remained intrigued by the premise. I genuinely want to know what happens next.
What premise is that? Simply put, Nightmare Moon's relatively recent defeat has left behind more than a few loose ends, and Celestia has assembled a special task force to tie them up... a force with a very worrisome history. Even after their victory over the darkness, the ponies of Equestria sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough ponies stand ready to do violence on their behalf. This story, or at least the single chapter thus far released, follows the story of several such rough ponies.
One fragment of a phrase comes immediately to mind: Those who fight monsters. And that's the theme that kept running through my head throughout. Certainly, our protagonists are doing important work. They're saving lives. They're securing the future. But they've been doing violence for some time now, in one form or another, and though they may not actually enjoy it, its starting to seem like they've convinced themselves they do. Their only satisfaction is the feeling of a cleated horseshoe stamping on somepony else's face. Forever. We see the bitterness and hatred they have for the servants of darkness and madness. But we also see the contempt between them and the fine, upstanding stallions of the Royal Guard, with their fancy armor and shiny rules. We even see conflict within the group, as the veteran members have a very poor opinion of the new recruits. Even the simple laborers, medics, and forensics investigators they work with recieve only grudging respect, if that. Heavens forbid you mention the nobility in their presence, and their selfish, vain, cowardly conspiracies to seize what petty power they can from the throne.
Nopony in this story actually likes anypony else. Nopony trusts. Nopony tries to understand, or show a trace of compassion or sympathy. The only true loyalties we see are between the protagonists, and even this is strictly limited to the tightly knit group of hardened veterans. Why are they together? Because they've all seen--and done--horrible things together. And, of course, there is their unwavering loyalty to Princess Celestia: a pony whose unconditional sense of love and forgiveness probably conflicts with their activities more than anything else. She'll never admit they even exist, let alone praise them for their highly disciplined thuggery.
But such is life. This is an Equestria reeling from war, still shrouded with paranoia and mistrust. I remember watching X-Files as a kid, and being totally drawn in to the world of conspiracies and supernatural horrors... turn Mulder and Scully into a swat team with riot gear and assault shotguns, and you're starting to get the idea. I'm sure this story has been done a million times before. But I don't actively seek out such stories, so this is my first exposure to the notion.
The characters are all monstrous in some way and I disagree with them vehemently... but in a very good way. I despise their use of violence to counter violence. But I believe it has to be done. And that's a big part of why I find them so interesting and compelling. I don't really care if they defeat the bad guys: I care if they become the bad guys. Or did they start out as bad guys, and now have a chance at redemption? Will the opportunity be squandered in their revelry of violence and vengance? If that's the case, Nightmare Moon may have won in some petty, selfish way. She dragged them down to her level.
And that, sir or madam, is the essence of a Dark fic: Hopelessness. Not violence or blood or death. Merely bleak emptiness, followed up with a dash of ruined hope.
How will this story end? No idea. But I'd like to know.
I do have a couple problems with this story.
Good. If an author hasn't pissed someone off, they're not doing their job. I'll try and be brief about this.
Firstly. There were a few too many quippy one-liners in the first half. This sort of ruins the tension. It makes me feel like the protagonists are a little too sure of themselves. If your character is delivering snappy one-liners, they're either confident in their victory, or they're delusional about the hopelessness of their current situation. The former undermines the bleakness so critical to the Dark tag, and there was no implicit hint about the latter. It's entirely possible they are delusional: they've seen so many horrors, they're numb to it all. I can certainly believe it, but the dialogue and narrative never pointed at the possibility, explicitly or subtly.
Secondly. Too much exposition at the start. This sort of ruins the sense of intrigue and mystery. The segment where the special forces team are all riding in the wagon together, brooding among themselves, was a good way to introduce the characters while also building tension and mood. But the description of how the organization came to be, and the summary of the current state of affairs in Canterlot, was a draggy way to start things out. I would have preferred a minimalist approach: just a couple rough ponies, wearing armor, riding in a spooky wagon. You need to build tension and atmosphere as discreetly as possible, and then kick that door right off its hinges with a bang! I happily admit that the exposition in the last third of the chapter was much more enjoyable, since it has context: We're surveying a crime scene and noticing some very disturbing props, so we're in an analytical frame of mind. I think if you stripped out the early exposition, delivered it through subtle hints and dialogue, or simply moved it after the big action scene, the atmosphere alone would still tell us everything we need to know.
There's plenty of internal monologue, but the dialogue is minimal. To my surprise, this turned out to be a wonderful thing. I got the feeling that these characters have Seen It All Before. There's little need for them to talk to each other aloud: A grunt and a nod speaks volumes. And once they dive out of the wagon and kick the door off its hinges, the story picks up marvelously.
Technical Issues
I do feel compelled to whine about sentence structure. Here's the first few paragraphs of the story:
The thing about the secret service is that everypony knows it exists.
The Equestrian Bureau for State Security listened for the conspiratorial whispers of plans to overthrow Princess Celestia. We scanned the shadows that the light of the Sun could not touch to find those who would have seen our nation crumble. Where the rest of the Royal Guard had no grounds to act, we would go in their place. Where their hooves could no longer reach, ours were there. We were the elite of the elite: the Princess' most trusted, Equestria's first and last line of defence.
The way I saw it, our job was to hunt monsters. Tonight, we had three of them to catch.
The cart drove over a pothole, shaking the cabin. The lone lantern that hung from the ceiling swung erratically, and shadows danced on our black suits of armour.
The first two paragraphs are fine. But look at this:
Where the rest of the Royal Guard had no grounds to act, we would go in their place.
Here's how it breaks down:
Words words words comma, words words words period.
A lot of these sentences have the exact same structure. I can gladly forgive the second paragraph, because there's an almost poetic cadence to it: If this, then that. If this, then that. Cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon in front of them! Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell, rode the six hundred! But it drags on a bit later on. Words comma, words period. Words comma, words period. Words comma, words period...
The thing about the secret service is that everypony knows it exists.
The Equestrian Bureau for State Security listened for the conspiratorial whispers of plans to overthrow Princess Celestia. We scanned the shadows that the light of the Sun could not touch to find those who would have seen our nation crumble. Where the rest of the Royal Guard had no grounds to act, we would go in their place. Where their hooves could no longer reach, ours were there. We were the elite of the elite: the Princess' most trusted, Equestria's first and last line of defence.
The way I saw it, our job was to hunt monsters. Tonight, we had three of them to catch.
The cart drove over a pothole, shaking the cabin. The lone lantern that hung from the ceiling swung erratically, and shadows danced on our black suits of armour.
Do you see it? I dunno. I see it. Mostly because I worry that I have the exact same problem myself, and It drives me up the friggin' wall whenever I realize I'm doing it. There's a good chance that this only bothers me because of my own experiences. But there it is. Every once in a while, I'd read a passage and notice repetitive sentence structure.
The only other technical problem I can think of is the combat scene: The description of the action got a little bit bland and repetitive, again in terms of sentence structure. At one point, each individual action was on a separate line, all by themselves:
He caught the knife's handle between his teeth and turned to rush up the stairs; River Flow bolted after him.
In the same moment, Nichts' magic yanked his sister to the left before she bolted the same way – straight towards Twilit Grotto, who set his hooves in the doorway of the dining room.
Lullaby and I lunged after Nichts and the mare.
Nichts ran ahead, magic pulling the frightened mare behind her, and they refused to stop.
Grotto pointed his horn forward as he braced for impact.
Nichts' flashed her horn and jerked her head. The door slammed into Grotto, breaking in two at the impact and knocking him off balance.
Why the separation? Why not blend it all into one paragraph of continuous action? As it is, it feels a little bit like we're checking off items on a grocery list. Action should be rapid and seamless: all at once, all a blur.
The Final Verdict
I finished reading a story tagged with Gore, my second-least favorite tag after Romance. What more could you ask for? In spite of my personal quibbles and complains, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I loved the gloomy mood and atmosphere, I loved the beleaguered interactions between the various groups, and I loved the pervading sense of paranoia that seems to have settled over the world. And, despite my peaceful sun-loving ways, I enjoyed the simple pleasure of a bunch of rough ponies kicking down a door. When is violence justified? When, if ever, should we set aside due process? What happens when you fight monsters?
Good questions.
And a good story. Read it, like it, follow the author, and watch for future chapters. I am a teeny-tiny bit worried that future chapters will descend into tired cliche and hollow violence... but I suppose we'll see, won't we?
First off, great review! I like how you hit a set of very well rounded points – every one seemed to be just as important as the next – and I really like reading your thoughts about each one. Your allusions were fun to think about and your personal humor made for little, pleasant pauses in reading the review.
I like you pointing this out, as I think that was a pretty big worry, whether or not readers would lose interest.
One thing that JawJoe told me to specifically look out for is sentence structure and his tendency to follow his set favorites. I'm not sure if I can say the editing process removed a substantial amount of the monotony, but I'd like to think it did something. That aside, I'm happy to see you mentioned that poem. Though I can't remember its name, I remember the very solid cadence at which you could read the lines.
About the point referring to paragraph breaks being too abrupt, I agree.
To address your last point, I have to say that I don't personally believe that it gets too bad with the violence. Like, I think all the action in the story is somewhat effective. If you look at Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift (which I see that you've never read) most of the violence helped to progress the story in a positive way, and rarely was there violence to serve as a dash of excitement. In that story, I found Twilight Sparkle to be the highlight of what kept me reading. In this story, I would say that it's character driven in a similar way. I also believe that JawJoe uses gore in a similar way. Never is there gore just to be there. I believe he mentioned that there was no more gore as there was in Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift.
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This was only a problem right near the beginning. Fortunately, the rest of the story still caught my interest once it started to pick up steam. I only dwelled on this issue for as long as I did because the first page and a half of your story is by far the most important. It's worth whatever extra polish you can muster!
In truth, it wasn't even the length of the exposition that necessarily turned me off. It certainly wasn't long winded or poorly written. The problem was more like... hm. Like I was being given answers before I even had a chance to ask questions. Remember the opening scene in the first Matrix movie? Actually, A better example might be the first Men In Black movie: We find out what's going on fairly soon, but still have that one first scene to tantalize us.
And just to reinforce, the exposition that occurs later on in the story didn't bother me in the slightest. That was quite well done, and an enjoyable read.
This was my only real technical problem with the story. When it happened, it bothered me. But there were also long stretches where I didn't notice anything. We can assume those stretches were well written.
Oh yes, I completely agree with this! I hope I didn't give the impression that this particular story was over-violent or unnecessarily explicit. I only mentioned my dislike of the Gore tag because I disapprove of gore for the sake of gore: pure shock factor.
I may have personal issues with the tag in general, but this particularly story used it very effectively. I am always glad to have my opinions proven wrong.
Thank you for this. That was rather informative. I'm glad to see that, on the whole, the story is working so far.
>Early exposition
I figured this would be a problem, though I tried to mitigate it. A large chunk of it was moved from the beginning to the end of the chapter in editing; I thought that what remained at the start was a better fit there. It was simply easier to address some things as they came up rather than retroactively explain them later (eg. it felt right to explain the "old dog"/"puppy" difference as Swift was looking through his comrades right at the start). The thing about this story is that it requires a massive amount of exposition (about Celestia, NMM, the Longest Night, the EBSS, the Night Guards, the cult, ...) to work, so I attempted to spread it all roughly evenly across all the chapters. This was chapter one's share. I also prefer to err on the side of caution and make some things more obvious for the less observant readers. That's not an insult; it's MLP fanfiction and I can't expect the majority of readers to really dig in and dissect it (har har).
>Repetitive sentence structure
Guilty as charged. This has always been a problem for me, and I'm really trying to improve, but you know how it is. You just don't see it until someone points it out.
>constant paranoia
>"When is violence justified? When, if ever, should we set aside due process? What happens when you fight monsters?"
That's exactly what I was going for, so it's nice to see that I did well. The big question for the story is, I think, "what measure is a Monster?" Or perhaps a better one would be, "even in the magical land of Equestria, do Monsters really exist?" But I don't want to give too much away.
>"I am a teeny-tiny bit worried that future chapters will descend into tired cliche and hollow violence"
I wanted to kick the story off with a bang (har har), and there will certainly be violence aplenty, but never without meaning. Almost everything I write has blood and violence, but I always try to make it worthwhile; it's never gore for gore's sake. That's even more pronounced with this story, I think: there will actually be a lot more character drama than action, despite the first chapter. Combine all that with the massive amounts of exposition I mentioned earlier. This story is a slow burner; it'll take several chapters for everything to really come to light and unfold.
I hope you'll stick with it to the end. So far everyone who's read the whole story (the editors I credit in the story's description) have all praised it highly.
EDIT: oh, and
>Monsters, by JoeJaw
i.imgur.com/gp9H5cU.jpg
JawJoe.
Good review. (I think. Haven't read the story.) Summarizes the story's voice; explains its technical problems. Thanks!
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I'm so glad to hear this! I feel like many of my reviews end up being big long lists of boring technical issues. This one was a specific attempt to avoid going overboard.
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And thank you for writing the story. :)
Certainly, some exposition needs to be given up front. But I believe it should usually be given via subtle little hints whenever reasonably possible. Or, alternately, a chunk of exposition should also serve some secondary function: A character is talking about the events of a big party they went to yesterday, but they're really thinking about how they cheated on their girlfriend and now suffer crippling pangs of regret and guilt.
As an example: instead of simply saying the nobility are selfish, shortsighted jerks, you could have a member of the nobility show up briefly in the story. He's the guy who owns the building the cultists were using, and he genuinely had no idea what they were up to. He's trying to play it cool, but he's obviously very nervous... but it turns out he doesn't care about what the cultists were doing. He keeps talking about what this will do to the property value of the building, or how it might tarnish his good name, or how the other nobles will start spreading rumors that he's a collaborator. As soon as the protagonist shows up, he starts spouting insincere accolades in support of Celestia and the Royal guards... which will only further infuriate the protagonist.
This noble doesn't even care that a pony was murdered on his property. He's too busy trying to maintain his image and influence. Then have one of the Old Dogs grumble about the nobles being "all the same." Swift Sweep orders them to cut the chit-chat in front of the civilians... but he's thinkin' the same thing himself.
EDIT: Honestly, the noble is probably right to worry about all this. If he's accused of collaborating with cultists, he could be executed for treason... or just strung up by an angry mob of common rabble! But even though he might have good reasons to be afraid, the protagonists still think he's a selfish child. This is real life, buddy... you don't always get your marbles back when the game is over.
Blaah... now I'm just babbling. But you get the idea. Backstory doesn't always have to be subtle, mind. But it can help.
One of my favorite questions.
*taps his forehead*
Here. This is where monsters live.
Always an excellent approach! I'll probably write a follow-up review after the story is done, to talk about where the plot went and how it was handled, compared to my expectations. Should be interesting.
Wow. It was right in the title and everything.
That's impressive, even for me. Burraku_Pantsa would be proud.
I mean... Burraku_Pansa.
Move along, citizen.