Present Perfect vs. Project Sunflower · 7:29pm Aug 23rd, 2015
When the subject of "good HiE's" is brought up, there are two titles that I hear again and again: Ether Echoes' The Well of Pirene, and Project Sunflower by Hoopy McGee. This journal is about the latter, if you weren't sure.
One part comedic HiE, one part near-apocalyptic science fiction, and one part multidimenisional adventure, Project Sunflower is quite a beast, clocking in at over one-third Fallouts: Equestria. But is it any good? The short answer is, yeah! The long answer is, I have 8 pages of notes I have to condense into a semi-coherent blog post. Let's get to it! :V The review will contain frank discussion of the story's plot, fyi, so be warned of spoilers!
(This review brought to you by VisualPony!)
As a story reviewer, I try very hard to be aware of my biases while not discounting objectivity as a legitimate review method. But when I come across stories like this, I have to stop and wonder, sometimes. Without spoiling too much too soon, I got really hooked on this story, in ways that fanfiction hasn't hooked me since... possibly ever. And yet I kept asking myself, "What is it about this 'TCB done right' fanfic that is so appealing to me?" Was it actually a good story, or was it more giving me the right combination of things I needed at the time I needed them?
Given that I've never been a huge fan of HiE's, this bothered me. Had I finally gone full escapism? Would I while away my hours wishing I was in Equestria while loathing the horrors of this Earth upon which I was stuck? Thankfully, I don't think that's the case. But it does mean that Project Sunflower is really, really good... To a point. And with caveats. Let's take a look at those, shall we?
The basic premise is this: Earth is undergoing a grey goo scenario. It's been going on for a while, eating large sections of China and India, and there's at least three years left for humanity, but life is going to get worse and worse, and since we can't stop the nanomachines, known as the Black Tide, we need to find a way to GTFO Earth and find somewhere else to live. Enter Project Harmonics, a soft sci-fi entity that figures out how to open 'windows' to other dimensions. As we begin the story, it's being announced that the very first Earth-like world (Equestria) has been discovered, and volunteers are needed to explore it and gather data, since the world is inhabited and we need to be sure we'll be able to get along with the ponies before we move there.
Enter our heroine, Erin Olsen. I credit her with a large portion of why this story so caught my attention. Again and again, I've read about human OCs being turned into ponies and just rolled my eyes. But she's such a strong character. She doesn't always do as told; she has motives of her own, especially when she realizes that if we can't make nice with the ponies, humanity will invade Equestria. She gets caught up in the "OH MY GOD PONIES" excitement of the other Harmonics interns, but also approaches the idea of being turned into one and travelling to another dimension seriously. It's not an easy decision for her in the least. And this, I think, is what pulls the plot completely away from any notion of wish-fulfillment and into the realm of "honest fiction", if you will.
So we go from Erin being trained, to being ponified, to going to Ponyville and starting to try to fit in. All of this was awesome. I was on the edge of my seat for her to discover new things and come to horrendously wrong conclusions about them. (The best part about that was Twilight coming to her own wrong conclusions about Erin at the same time.) For once, I didn't mind "Mane Cast Syndrome", i.e., an OC going to Ponyville and making friends with the mane six. Erin is affable, she ends up in Sweet Apple Acres first off, and of course Pinkie shows up, but the others are doled out bit by bit, in ways for her to make friends with them naturally.
But none is more important than Twilight. I cared so much about Twilight and Erin's friendship, I can't even describe it. The fact that Twilight notices something off about her at first, and that, as they go through the story, it's the two of them constantly butting heads and reconciling... That just really became the most important facet of the story for me. I was on the edge of my seat with every beat of the human drama playing out between them as Erin wrestled with guilt over not being able to come clean with her mission, and Twilight again and again showed strength of characterization far above what I ever expected from her.
It was a huge bubble of sometimes funny slice-of-life drama surrounded by a thin veneer of HiE and sci-fi, and I loved it.
Things didn't get any less interesting when our 'villain' is introduced, first as an amorphous "Swarm" trapped in the Everfree, eventually revealed to be an 800 year old student of Celestia's who possessed a swarm of extradimensional magical creatures and accidentally locked himself in that cave. Malachite was one of the most intriguing characters I've read in a while. He comes off at first as your standard "completely insane" villain, which is understandable, given his circumstances. But after he attacks Erin, he starts to feel remorse, and that's where his character really grows. By the end of the story, he's hailed as a hero and his legacy lives on. (Of course, given the chance to create a new body for himself, he immediately goes for the alicorn OC mold, which is how you know he's really evil. :V)
The one thing I found odd about him: Traditionally, when someone creates an OC to put into a story, they want that character to be the center of attention. That's why you get Mane Cast Syndrome and Mary Sues and characters who can do no wrong. But Malachite was almost the opposite. He was a strongly-written character who ultimately makes a sacrifice for maybe the wrong reasons, but the story seems to be doing its best to convince the reader that he is, in fact, a monster. From his attack on Erin to his neglect causing the death of a man in China, his character arc is packed full of villainous acts that somehow don't define him, save in the minds of the characters. It's really an odd situation, one that I've never seen before, that I'm not sure how to react to.
Other strong characters include the human doctors -- Velchiek, Edwards and Hanson especially -- Erin's parents, whose role is mostly limited to the third act, but who really made an impression on me, and Celestia and Luna. The latter two have a number of scenes I really appreciated, where they get to act like sisters away from prying eyes, and I just eat that shit up. :D Celestia's relationship with Malachite also proved to be conveyed well, and injected a lot of heart into the story.
I suppose here I can address my first criticism. There are a number of characters in this story with nothing to do, and most of them are in the mane six. Given that the author is able to make one-shot characters like the bookstore owner leap off the page, with long backstories of their own, it's an absolute travesty that I have to look at his portrayals of Fluttershy and Rarity and think, "Yeah, they were Flanderized." They have no role in the story beyond "Oh yeah, they're Element Bearers and friends of Twilight's". Rainbow Dash has very little to do. Applejack has no import whatsoever, after Erin gets acclimated to life in Ponyville. I'm trying to think of human characters who suffer from this, but none come to mind, and there's probably a reason for that. I suppose I could consider Robot Thompson (ask me about that) to be little more than a talking plot device, but at least he had a few humanizing scenes. Of course, no one is worse than Shining Armor and Cadence. I haven't seen them shoehorned so poorly into a story since Past Sins. It was obvious that they had just become a Thing and the author both felt the need to include them, and had no idea what to do with them. It was a little embarrassing.
The big problem with this story, though, is that at around the two-thirds mark, I realized that I had lost all that initial excitement. Oh sure, I was still interested in what was going on -- How would they defeat the Tide? How long would Erin have to remain a pony? What was Malachite's real plan? -- but no longer was I aching to hear just one more word. The story slows way, way down, drawing out what had become the main plot -- Malachite's gone to Earth and wants to destroy the Tide -- while injecting little bits and pieces of Erin's dealings that drove home one point:
Erin had run out of things to do in her own story.
At some point, she even says that her mission is officially at an end, and they're just kind of keeping her around because she's a hero. She introduces the mane six to Earth technology. She makes friends with Lyra. (Sidenote: Lyra was a really bad idea to include in this story. She gets a purpose by the end, but the way she's introduced is very Fanon Trope-y, and I say this as someone who's always liked Lyra Likes Humans. It was a bad decision on the author's part, but at least it didn't ruin the story.) There's a new plotline about her parents raising a fuss wanting to see her. But that's it. She becomes the B-story while the A-story stretches on and on across six chapters, and even at the story's climax, she has nothing whatsoever to do, no reason to be there, her purpose fulfilled.
I guess I can address the writing here. If you didn't notice, Project Sunflower has a four-digit story number. It's old. The writing is full of close repetitions, LUS, POV shifts (it didn't help that the first 9 chapters are entirely from Erin's POV before we get our first 'real' change), overreliance on adverbs and lots of explaining character feelings and motivations. By the end of the story, these felt less problematic, but only the POV shifts went completely away. The repetition actually gets so bad that large portions of the third act are just one character summarizing previous portions of the story to another. The writing could definitely be improved, is what I'm saying.
But worst of all, that climax? It felt anticlimactic. Partially, it was because the previous chapter had been about an eight-pony shopping trip on Earth, the kind of thing that was amusing, but would have been better served as a side story. (n.b.: I will be reading the side stories, and the sequel, just as soon as I chew through more pressing concerns.) Partially, it was because it got a really cool satellite-image description that lasted for maybe a paragraph. But mostly, it was because it wasn't even the 'real' end. And I don't just mean that the story dragged itself on for two more chapters, I mean that Malachite didn't kill the Tide, the Elements didn't kill the Tide, Celestia didn't even kill the Tide. It's still kicking around, albeit inert and not much of a threat, by the end of the story. It wasn't satisfying in the least.
Instead, what we get is a lengthy demonstration that, yes, the author had put a great deal of thought into the consequences of everything that happened. This really was not a good thing to include in the story, at least in this much detail. Again, I found myself interested, but not excited. There is, however, a silver lining toward the end, another scene that got me excited once more (I suspect it's more or less a lead-in to the sequel), which leads me to this conclusion:
Yeah, Project Sunflower really is that good.
It just has the misfortune of being very top-heavy with the really awesome stuff. But the fact is, I was excited about exploring Ponyville and Equestria through a human's eyes, I was excited about two cultures meeting, I was excited about a human OC discovering the magic of friendship. That is some pretty powerful shit right there! And that's why I think this story is worth reading.
Before I wrap up, though, let me check my notes and see if there's anything I forgot, coherence be damned:
-Starting off a story with a character being bored is never a good idea. Except in this case, where the things she's bored of are really interesting to us.
-This is some of the best sci-fi I've read since Friendship Is Optimal. Like that story, this would work as excellent gateway fic to get someone interested in reading ponies.
-I kept reflexively checking the story to see if a Romance tag had appeared. The A/N explains that a number of romance subplots had been planned, but were cut mid-writing, which explains why I kept getting shipping vibes that were never fulfilled. Let me tell you, I hate pony/human romance, but was really interested in somepony getting interested in Erin, and I was sad that Lucky never asked her out.
-Compared to The Conversion Bureau, this story makes a good decision in having the ponification process be lengthy and traumatic. Also, I like that the male volunteers' rejection of the process wasn't because "ponies are girly" (what one might expect) but "it's mad science reverse engineered from the stuff trying to kill us".
-I really do love that the human characters get caught up in the adorableness of ponies. It goes to show you can do HiE like that without a single brony character.
-The design of Erin's body is a hilarious subversion of Mary Sue tropes. She's designed to be faster, tougher and stronger than any Earth pony, but the first thing she does is not win a race against Rainbow and Applejack. The Earth scientists miscalculated! This is further compounded by the fact that she can't do anything right (and the reason why is great!)
-There's a subplot about the ponies Erin is staying with in Ponyville. (Sidenote to a sidenote: The way Ponyville works in this story is just great, and the little details allow exploration of things like the value of a bit without delving into headcanon dumps.) She makes friends with Meadowlark, and then with her filly, Marigold, only to have a falling out with them once her true identity is revealed. I was sad to see that that thread was never fully, at least to my satisfaction, resolved by the end.
-Another thread that felt unresolved involved Erin realizing that there was a series of coincidences, like meeting Applejack right away, that seemed to be guiding her along her path in Equestria. I really wanted that observation to amount to something.
-The whole subplot about Twilight trying to figure out what's wrong with Sunflower (oh, that's Erin's pony name, btw) was one of the most tense and exciting parts of the second act.
-Erin saving the CMCs from a pre-season-4 chimera felt like a silly way of endearing her to the populace.
-When Malachite is just "the entity", his POV scenes allow for some really cool narrative techniques.
-I foresaw the major Earth-side betrayal, but it didn't take the shape I expected it to. :D On that note, and I really don't want to give this away, I really liked Dr. Velchiek and his paternal interest in Erin, which only made things harder.
-The whole backstory behind "fae swarms" was really creative and unique.
-There's a really good fourth wall joke with Pinkie. Those are precious and rare, trust me on this.
-One revelation I really appreciated was that ponies wouldn't just be rolled if humans decided to invade. Magic gave them a way to fight back and nip any potential invasion in the bud.
-If there's one HiE trope I felt this played on a little too much, it's the meat thing. :B
-There's a side story around chapter 23 that focuses on Malachite's background. I don't know why it wasn't made its own thing, but oddly, I felt the writing was considerably better than in the rest of PS.
-One dumb thing Malachite does: go to Earth to hide, then make himself a highly visible alicorn body. :|
-I present this note without context: "I love this scene after Celestia wakes up; you KNOW she’s rimmed a camel in the last thousand years."
-Malachite's quest for immortality creates a very intriguing thematic counter to the human race's desire for pure survival. I was proud of myself for noticing that. :D
-Can I just reiterate how great Erin's parents are? For all that they're usually on the receiving end of the lengthy "summarize what's happened so far" scenes, they shake up so much of the last third of the story. Plus, Erin's mom all but compulsively braiding ponies' mane is just great.
-Using Thanksgiving at the end as a way to bring everyone together was a really weird decision. I mean, it's called "the first multidimensional Thanksgiving", but... Thanksgiving is an American holiday. Like, it's celebrated in Canada, and a couple other places, but not at the same time. It's almost as bad as Independence Day that way.
-I'm really, really not sure I like what ultimately happened to Malachite. Though it does give Luna a really great chance to rib Celestia.
4/5
Inconsistently exciting, but still one of the best long-form HiE's you could ask to read.
One of the first ever pony fics I read was Pirene. I'll have to try and tackle this other one as soon as I can devote the time for a proper read.
One other HiE that I really like is, The Humans in Equestria Club by billymorph.
Aww~
And here I was getting excited!
I hope to read this sometime. I'm working towards it, especially since Hoopy was kind enough to read Pirene and liked it.
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Oh? How did you like it?
You may have commented on the story, but if so it's slipping my mind.
Great review. I can't comment on the writing issues as it's simply been long enough since I read it that I don't really remember, but this definitely matches up with my nostalgic memories of really really enjoying this story.
What about Admiral Tigerclaw's Arrow 18 Mission Logs?
This has been on my top fave list since forever. Weirdly enough, I haven't yet read Pirene, though I see it's in my download folder. I'll have to bump it up to the top of my TBR list.
Not Arrow 18 Mission Logs? :V
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That one wasn't on my mind at the time. :V
Though if TD is asking about it, I can only assume it's good. I am 60% sure it's on my audiobook list, but I dunno. I've never been interested in it myself, and that's likely the only way I'll read it.
Ooooo, good points about Arrow 18.
There's also Stranger Among the Voices/Voice Among the Strangers, though of that paring one is incomplete and hasn't been updated for a fair while now.
I do intend to read this fic at some point, though I'll continue to sit in my little corner with my TCB stories
I'd like to see a review of the side stories, once you get the chance to read them. Also, it'd probably be a good idea to read those before moving on to the sequel, both because they're more tied-in to the first story and because some of the stuff that happens in them appears in the sequel.
Semi-spoiler note on the sequel: the pacing is a bit off at the start because Hoopy tried to incorporate some extra stuff into the main story, rather than starting a side story collection for a story that was only a few chapters long. Once it became apparent that wasn't working out as well, he bit the bullet and gave the extra material its own collection, which let him do a better job with both it and the main story.
More comments on the review proper once I have some uninterrupted time to work with.
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TD did, in fact, review and recommend it. Since you liked Sunflower, I'd say there's a fair chance you'd like Arrow 18 too.
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Lucky for you, that's precisely what I plan to do, and will most likely make an edition post out of it. :B
And oh yeah, that must be the review that made me put Arrow 18 back on my RIL. :B
Thanks for the review! I'm glad you (mostly) liked it
Yeah, I know what you mean about Erin meandering in the last third of the story. I had some other plans for her that didn't quite work out... but, yeah, in retrospect I should have cut the ending chapters way down. In fact, if I were to scrap Project Sunflower and write it from scratch today, it would look incredibly different. Every once in a while I get tempted to re-write the whole thing, but I feel that would be unfair to those that have read and enjoyed it as-is. I just have to accept it as it is, warts and all
As for Malachite's side story, I was actually toying around with making that its own independent story. That's still something I would like to get to, one day. Granite Heart is one of my favorite unwritten characters, along with Starlight Symphony (a distant ancestor of Twilight Sparkle, perhaps? :D ). I can see how those ponies would interact so clearly in my mind. Plus, a chance to write a much younger and still-grieving Celestia? Oh, my, yes!
For some of the things I left unresolved, I did that intentionally. Whether that was a good idea or not... Well, some people seem to like it, many seem to dislike it. Would I do that again? Probably, though not to the same extent. I always appreciated stories where not everything is neatly wrapped up by the end, but I feel now that I overdid it.
Yeah, I shoehorned Candy and Shiny in... I really didn't want to, but I felt I had to, in order to keep current with the canon. Again, if I had to do it over again, I would have just slapped on an AU tag and let that be that. Brother? What brother? Twily's an only child! These days, I'm far more accepting of the fact that the canon can change mid-writing.
As for other HiE fics:
I agree, Well of Pirene is excellent. I'd say it's the best epic-length HiE out there. I feel that it's much better than Sunflower, honestly. Kinda made me feel like a hack while reading it, though
Arrow 18 is one of my all-time faves. It's short enough that I will sometimes go back and re-read some of my favorite bits from time to time. I like Sparkle's Notes even more, and I really hope to see that wrap up one day.
I was really digging Quantum Castaways, in spite of a few jarring moments. Here's another one that I really hope to see completed some day.
Stardust is another good really HiE (actually, it's more Pony on Earth), with some really great moments of Twilight Sparkle being an adorkable little bookworm. A little bit more dark and gruesome than I usually like my pony fics, but Twilight's moments in this story made it worth it to me.
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to write up this review!
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I didn't like it, I loved it. Awesome work, there!
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Not only did I love the story, but it also gave me a great appreciation for first person perspective. I had only written in 3rd up until I read it, and now I can't stop writing first.
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All what follows is my not-so-H-IMO...
Arrow 18 (which I read based on TD's thorough—and positive—review) is good...up there in my mind with PaulAsaran's H-not-quite-IE Frequency...but (no offense to the aforementioned authors) Pirene is on a whole different level from these fics. It has a massive universe that extends far beyond just what we know of Earth and Equestria, an extensive mythology, and thoroughly immersive settings and character arcs.
It's a must-read, in my opinion, one of few [MLP fan]fics that I'd consider essential reading and one that might even be able to stand on it's own outside of the MLP franchise.
With that said, based on your review, I'll have to add Sunflower to my short list (oh, I don't have one of those....well, time to make one!)
Thank you for reviewing this one PP. I know you are not a big HIE fan and so this must have been a point of inertia going in. I love HIE when it is done well (and sometimes not) so it is good to see a review from a non-genre-loving perspective. I love your reviews in general (something about your voice) and so something like this can help me sort out my feelings on a particular story.
This one was on a my read-list a couple years before I got down to reading it and I enjoyed it a great deal but felt that I might have developed a concentration problem somewhere in the middle because I too became less interested in there somewhere and could not really understand why. But then the story would sorta yank me back in with some gem or other. Mostly I think, I just really cared about Erin and THAT is good story telling.
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Yes, do.
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*hrk*
*falls over dead*
That is some amazing praise, Hoopy. Thank you. I promise I'll give Sunflower a look and a proper shakedown soon - kicking it up on my reading list.
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Aww, I'm infectious.
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You're so next!
Yeah, Project Sunflower is one of the strongest examples of a really enjoyable story despite lots of technical problems. Reading it is just a lot of fun. I've read it at least a second time, and maybe a third? And it's nearly as good after the first one.
I have a lot to say about this story, and I'm going to write up a full review shortly, but a few highlights ....
I agree with you: for a story this flawed, it's still really good, even gripping.
Most of that comes from Erin, who charmed me from the start, but other strong characters abounded.
I would have cut the entire mane cast aside from Twilight as a lasting presence.
I'm not so fond of Malachite because he basically steals the narrative. Celestia does, too, but she's a joy to follow, while Malachite is kind of a dick until he suddenly isn't, and his flashes of regret are rare and condescending. In a way, they become the new main characters.
On that note, interesting thing you might want to think about that you only kind of brushed on:
Who in this novel has agency?
It's a question that changes a lot, but who has agency at any given moment in the narrative says a lot - and I can't think of many moments where Erin had agency outside of narrow bits in Ponyville.
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I don't think she was ever really meant to, but if she'd mared the fuck up and done something, it might have saved the last third from being a bit of a drag.
Nice review!
Thought I'd share that I am working on a printing of this story at the moment. If you're interested in a physical copy of Project: Sunflower, keep an eye here: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/1563/project-harmonics/thread/326742/project-sunflower-book
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Thanks! I might just be! :D
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...Oh god, those prices are insane. @_@ I'm going to have to sit this out.