Present Perfect vs. Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift · 5:27pm Oct 7th, 2015
I first became aware of JawJoe after reading his marvelous Outside Insight entry, Queen of Queens. Yet, long before that contest happened, he had a more well-known claim to fame with Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift. It’s a dark AU fic featuring a no-nonsense, get-shit-dun Twilight who’s part of a secret organization dedicated to protecting Equestria from the things that go bump in the night.
I’m telling you all of this because in the course of this analysis, I’m going to spoiling a lot of major plot points. If you’re willing to take my word at face value, know that this story is totally worth reading; you can come back and find out what I thought about it once you’re done.
(This review brought to you by VisualPony.)
The story begins in a rather unusual place: a cold open featuring Twilight Sparkle beating up Vinyl Scratch, who, it turns out, is a vampire. I have danced this dance before, but suffice to say, Night Shift is everything My Roommate Is a Vampire wanted to be (werewolf Octavia included). This first chapter does a very good job of establishing things: the cool-yet-grimdark tone, this very no-nonsense version of Twilight, the concept of an Equestria with darkness bubbling just beneath its surface, putting this well into the dark supernatural genre of fiction.
To my horror, I found myself enthralled by the prospect of Twilight torturing Vinyl. I could have read a whole story about nothing but that. Vinyl Scratch ended up being my favorite part of this story, a loud-mouthed, self-centered, simpering, tweaky coward who gets a couple of really good heroic turns and shines in every scene she appears. Her eventual comradeship with a newly-turned-vampire Octavia displays all the things I love about their fanonical rivalry without delving into shipping territory. (Shippers be warned: this story enjoys teasing you and then turning its back. Twixie and LyraBon especially.)
From there, we slowly get to piece together what’s happened in the five years since season two, intervening seasons need not apply. Twilight’s a hardass because her parents died in what was reported as a murder-suicide, but that she believes is murder. Her relationship with her brother is strained for the same reason. Luna started Night Shift after returning from exile out of a considerable amount of Nightmare Moon angst because that’s how all the vampires and whatnot came to be in the first place. (I was very pleased to learn that Equestria was beset by far more than just vampires.) And for the first few chapters, the story progresses as a series of “monster of the day” arcs, one or two chapters at a time, as we learn more about the world, Twilight’s allies and her backstory.
Then around the halfway point, Princess Cadence is introduced and the story takes a major shift. At some point, I found myself thinking of the whole thing as two stories placed together. Once the arcs are done, we move into one continuous arc, and though the events of the first half of the story have a bearing on the latter half, I kind of couldn’t get over how differently they’re structured.
Still, this is a really good example of how to write a compelling mystery. Twilight stumbles across a number of Nightmare cults and other things that suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Nightmare wasn’t sealed away properly, and/or Princess Luna isn’t quite on the up and up. The pieces fall together well — a scene in a mansion in Cloudsdale filled with plot-relevant books had its clues drawn in such a way that they really felt like the crazed scribblings of a cultist, and not just “Here’s what’s going on now” — and when Cadence starts to get involved, things get even more compelling.
I should take this opportunity to note that I could never quite put my finger on Twilight’s relationship with Luna. At the start, she’s writing letters to her in her capacity as a Night Shift agent, like she would to Celestia. Maybe I just extrapolated that their relationship was very Celestia-like, but it sure seemed like Twilight turned on Luna pretty easily, or at least pretty completely. After that happens, Twilight never treats her with anything beyond suspicion and contempt for the rest of the story, and it was strange.
But characterization was a strong point in this piece. Twilight doesn’t sound like herself from the show, and that may turn some readers off in the early going, but her character makes sense as details are revealed, and she’s very consistent throughout (though sadly reduced to an observer role more often than not toward the end). There’s a scene in the middle with her, Cadence and Shining Armor that also demonstrates that she can act like her old self with other ponies, and I thought that was a very important episode. Luna is marvelously complex, acting as she does out of guilt and a sense of responsibility, seeing herself in Cadence. Cadence too is surprisingly complex, suffering as she does from something of a Cadence of Cloudsdale affliction. (Sadly, this story would never have happened had it been in line with season 3 canon.) Vinyl, Octavia and Trixie are excellent support characters, and while Omen takes the role of “powerful old dude who knows everything”, his general motivation seems to be “wants to have fun”, and that made him enjoyable.
Now, I mentioned something in there about Cadence, and this is where I want to reiterate: If you skipped my spoiler warning above, do not move forward until you’ve read the story. You’ll enjoy it a lot more if you don’t know what’s coming.
Because this is a Nightmare Cadence fic.
I could not have been happier, for all that I gave the author crap for the name “Decadence”. I mean, yeah, my name for her is probably sillier; I just wanted something more along the lines of “Nightmare Moon”. But for all that she has a goofy name, she’s a fantastic villain. Again, her motivations are strong, built out of Cadence’s fears and self-doubts (for all that I was a smidge disappointed “can’t have children” was one of them). She’s got a phenomenal presence, thanks to a cherry-tree motif and the mind-control puppetry of ponies. Most of all, she’s great because she’s got serious personal beef with Twilight, and so everything she does carries a hint of “you drove me to this” that Twilight absolutely picks up on.
That said, for all that I appreciated the quiet, deeply personal final confrontation between the two, I felt like the ending was a bit of a letdown. It seemed anticlimactic, possibly because I was so focused on the conspiracies and awesome action scenes that I neglected to notice this was really a story about Twilight putting her family back together after a tragedy. Subtlety was definitely an issue here (though not the most egregious example, the detail of a file appearing in chapter four is never given significance until after the finale). This is a story that demands you pay attention to everything. Other issues included some close repetition and the occasional instance of Twilight talking to the reader, though as the story progressed, I gathered that she was actually telling this story to someone. Granted, it’s never revealed who, and so the effect rankled on me.
The only other major complaint I had involved Trixie. She was, as I said, a great character, presented as competent and capable, the boastful showmare being an act though she’s not above taking jabs at Twilight. I loved her everywhere she showed up. But early on, it’s revealed that she’s missing a good two years of memory thanks to Luna’s “mind blank” spell (used on ex-Agents or ponies who know too much about Night Shift). This again fell victim to the “must pay attention to everything” issue when it was later highly suggested that Trixie had caused the death of a minor character’s child, and that event was what she had begged Luna to remove from her mind. It might be the fact that this detail was put in place simply to explain why this other character was immune to the mind-control, but at the time, in the moment, I felt like it was merely a contrivance meant to increase the interpersonal drama levels, not to mention it removed a lot of the innocence from the Equestria we know, the world they’re trying to protect, and I greatly disliked that. Certainly, nothing ever comes of the revelation; Twilight tries to talk to Trixie about it, but gets blown off.
Okay, and I was a little miffed by some of the more pop-culture-referency chapter titles, especially the one that ended with a Monty Python joke. And I also thought that placing an SCP Foundation-like containment center directly below the seat of Equestrian government was a really bad idea. :|
But for all that the ending wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been, I really don’t have many complaints about this story. The descriptions are strong, the voicing is strong, the early atmosphere is tense and creepy, long asides to fill in details are never boring, and the action scenes, as I said, are paced remarkably well. It’s obvious that JawJoe has been a strong writer from the get-go.
I honestly can’t include everything that was great about this piece, but it was great. Seriously, this story features Lovecraftian Smooze cultists and that is just the best thing ever. :V This is definitely the kind of story that the parts of the fandom that made things like those various dark ScratchTavia fics would love, and it’s that kind of story done absolutely right.
4/5
A tense and fantastic supernatural grimdark AU.
So that's one big audiobook done. Unfortunately, another from someone else just finished up, so after about ten more short videos, I'll be starting that. The ride never ends! D:
The Lovecraftian Smooze cultists alone are enough to make this fun.
It's kind of odd, though. I remember really enjoying this as it was written, but with the addition of months past having finished it I'm mostly just sad about what happened to Cadance. There really are no happy endings here, and that alone was enough to make me give the recent prequel at least a temporary pass.
I do disagree about Decadence, PP, that's a wonderful Nightmare name for Cadance.
Haven't read the review, except for the first paragraph which is pertinent, because spoilers. I once read a few chapters of this, and I found myself seriously disliking Twilight's characterization, especially when she tortures Vinyl in the first or second chapter. I just can't seem to rationalize that action, even given the AU tag. It's like... Well, it felt like Twilight from Hard Reset, but not from the actual story, but from the grimdark alternate ending, where she's a cold, heartless bitch.
However, given your 4/5 rating, I might have found my audiobook for my next cross-country drive. Can you explain how the Princess of Friendship can torture someone and not be OoC? Yeah, I know she's not a princess in this fic, but still. If she has no connection to the canon Twilight, has none of her background or experiences, and shares little more than a few dangling traits with canon... how is it not an OC with Twilight's colors slapped on and a few little nods to canon actions?
I thoroughly enjoyed Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift's atmosphere and mystery. But the plotholes... Oh, sweet Luna, the plotholes! My continuous scathing criticisms of the story actually won me a place as JawJoe's pre-reader for several stories after that, including the soon-to-be-finished Monsters.
I can't wait till I re-read the story and get to do my own full review.
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Relevant:
P.S. I love that Alex Webster-style (Cannibal Corpse) bass line at 0:35
P.P.S. This is in my top 5 fandom songs of all time
Oh, this is nice. It's me, the author. Hello everyone!
3450044
>that's a wonderful Nightmare name for Cadance.
I know, right? That's what I told PP as well. As for the prequel, I'll let it slip that it does have a... better ending. You could even call it a happy one. Maybe. It's a vastly different story from Night Shift both in central themes and the way it's told, plus the years between the two fics mean I grew a lot as a writer by the time I got to Monsters. You should give Monsters a shot, I think.
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PP calls the fic an AU, but it isn't really, technically an AU. It's just a grimdark fic written before season 3. I used Twilight's sarcastic know-it-all side and slapped on the death of her parents as a catalyst to turn it up to 11. NS!Twilight is, essentially, damaged goods. Plus, Vinyl is a vampire. She doesn't feel pain like normal ponies, and is practically unkillable. Getting her head cut off is about as hindering to her as a hangover to a normal pony -- and Twilight knows this. And Vinyl did just (almost) kill someone. Whether all that is justification enough, I'll leave for you to decide.
@PP: Now that you're done with this, you need to start reading my you-know-what. Same for you, 3450080. Don't leave me hanging.
The goofy chapter titles are there because I never for one moment took Night Shift seriously. I've always considered it a parody (even if you don't agree, Paul!), and the titles were pretty much there to tell the reader not to take it too seriously either. This is a story that stars Twilight Sparkle, the magical unicorn, as a cold-blooded vampire hunter, for crying out loud. Chillax. (Vinyl's multiple beheadings notwithstanding. My headcanon has always been that she secretly enjoyed it every time.)
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Not only is she worst Princess with worst Nightmare name, she inspires awful music, too! :D
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Your I-know-what? :O
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colourbox.com/preview/3873871-blue-broken-heart-unrequited-love.jpg
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Aww, look at him all in denial.
*pats cheek*
It's okay, JJ. It's not an AU if you say it's not.
Those sort of things, and what 3450055 said, are why I never got into it. I had to quit reading after the first few chapters because I just could never buy that these were the characters from canon. At all.
I actually had someone suggest to me that I read it while assuming they were OCs who happened to share names and some traits with the canon characters.
Also, I'm not sure if it's what 3450080 meant with the plot holes, but... when Rarity learns too much about Night Shift early on, Luna was ready to mind blank her and ship her off to Manehattan. Isn't that a terrible idea, though? By wiping her memories and putting her on a bus, you'd be removing one of the Elements of Harmony and thus disabling the single strongest defensive force available to Equestria at that point. Plus, as one of the Elements herself, why shouldn't she know? I mean, she already fought Nightmare Moon and Discord (and possibly changelings — I forget when, exactly, the fic was set), among their other adventures. It's not like she doesn't already have a pretty good idea that there's a dark side to Equestria.
I dunno. A lot of people loved it and told me to read it, but I couldn't get over my issues with the characters and their actions.
Welp, I read all the spoilers, but due to the fact that this is in my Infinite Pile of longer stories, I'll probably have forgotten everything by the time I actually read it. This sounds okay.
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That's just one example. If you go through the chapters you will find all the comments I left with plenty more. I was most bugged by Twilight's tendency to make terrible, terrible decisions and conclusions in complete defiance of her character on a regular basis, often with disastrous and avoidable consequences.