For Those That Yearn for Adventure #6 (11/4)—Wing Nut's "Stop Me" · 6:19am Nov 5th, 2015
No feedback yet, but I'll still go on with it.
Continuing on with my November adventure reviews, here's a story dealing with romantic notions in a bizarre world, made sense of by two characters who may be best suited for it. It's a bit of a slideshow story in the way it's set up, with many crazy things happening, while still keeping a coherent narrative. Ladies and gentlemen, fillies and gentlecolts, this is
Stop Me
by Wing Nut
Tags: Adventure and Romance
Word Count: 3,430
Toward the tail end of the wrap-up for Rainbow Dash's birth-iversary, Pinkie Pie is about ready to dive-bomb into bed and forget all about the day's emotional roller-coaster.
She finds Cheese Sandwich's rubber chicken friend amidst the clean-up chaos, and a tight hug unexpectedly forces Boneless to upchuck a tiny note ... addressed to her. It's not exactly the kind of note she'd expect from him.
What does the note say? And on what adventure shall it lead Pinkie Pie towards?
Before I begin, I would like to say that my review is not meant to be belittling, discouraging or insulting. It is simply my observations as I read it. Please take what I say with a grain of salt; I'm not particularly bright, so I may miss or misinterpret something.
Review Commences Here
The things you read in the summary of the story don't actually happen during the story; in fact, the story actually begins immediately after the note is coughed up from Boneless. Just keep that in mind.
Since this is a romantic adventure, I think it's worthwhile to begin talking about the characters involved. Pinkie and Cheese are, in my opinion, really well-written in this story. Pinkie Pie, especially, is written as both her zany self and as a caring pony who has a moment of reflection, revelation, and interrogation. Her dialogue sounds natural—except in a place where the story seems to be garbled—and it provides for good comedy and tension. I'll admit that I have a problem with Pinkie Pie in fanfiction usually, because she's made out to be omnipotent and omniscient, but she's written really well here.
Cheese Sandwich is also written well, though his introduction
Pinkie’s hooves clip-clopped their way over the stonework, taking her straight to the chef working behind another, different mask: a big ol’ smile.
Pinkie waved between hops. “Heya, Cheese!”
“Pinkie Pie?” Cheese Sandwich blinked once or twice, and grinned his fullest grin. His chef’s hat hopped on his curly head when he bounced over to meet her.
is lacking in body language, and makes an odd transition. Still, he's less zany than Pinkie Pie, but still has a bubbly, fun-loving personality. There seems to be a conflict going on with him, and I think the story does an okay job of showing that he's trying to avoid it. He's having so much fun, and he doesn't want to deal with the conflict, at least from what I've read. I do think that the story is lacking in character development and conflict development, so I don't think Cheese's internal conflict (if he has one, and I read that he does) isn't as strong as it could be. I'll talk about that with the conflict section.
The character interaction between Pinkie and Cheese is really good, in my opinion. The story is a tad muddled, making their interactions brief and confusing, but their dialogue and interactions with each other are really nice. They just go so well together, and I think Wing Nut does a good job of playing with them together in terms of dialogue. There is apparently a strong romantic bond between them in this story, and for what it's worth, I can see how one would come to that conclusion. I say apparently, because I didn't really get into it, but people in the comments seem to.
Gummy in this story is Gummy, and at the beginning, he and Pinkie Pie have a relationship akin to that of the show. I must confess that I was unnerved that Gummy was forgotten when the mirror game happened; it would've been nice at least seeing if he went along or if he was left behind.
I did say that I didn't get into the romance all that much, and I must chalk that up to the story's pacing. I have made note that this story was written under a time constraint, so I can accept that the story was rushed. These next few parts are going to be a discussion of where I think the story was rushed to a noticeable degree, and what can be gleaned from that.
In terms of the romance, it was supposed to be built through this mirror game where Cheese and Pinkie enter parallel universe mirrors where they dress up and see what they would be like "in costume," which is more like in character. It is a neat idea, to imagine these two zany characters who love entertaining others, to do something this crazy. The variety that's in the story is very nice as well, and I think the progression of the story at times is really really good. For example:
Cheese already jumped through to the next version, the next universe, the next life. She sighed, and became Cheese Sandwich’s bride for a brief moment, then a cowpony, then a mad scientist, and yeah, the longer things went on, the easier it was to smile and laugh about all the funny different costumes and ponysonas, but … her chest stayed tight, and her tummy wouldn’t settle.
I liked how at this moment, instead of savoring the game like it had, it became a blur. This was a stand-out paragraph to me.
But then there were things that stuck out that I didn't take to. In regards to worldbuilding, I didn't like how it was just a dress-up game. Cheese Sandwich says that they are in parallel universes, and yet we get so little on the worlds, or even the rooms that they enter. There's nothing indicative of the time period, or where they're apparently working or relaxing or whatnot. As far as I can tell, it's just them in like a photo booth looking at themselves in costume. It makes the story feel more like a slide show than an adventure, and it forces me to think that the story's less immersive than it could've been.
Romance-wise, the game just jumps about too quickly, and though Pinkie Pie quests about the letter, she doesn't seem to take the time to admire Cheese for his personality, nor did I feel that Cheese really took Pinkie's persona into account until the end. They just seemed to go hopping from one world to the next, seeing each other as caricatures, but hardly as characters. This brings up another point: when they do bring up the letter, it's not like they're trying to understand each other through this personal situation, and more like they're just trying to understand this message. I think that if there were more time with them actually interacting, instead of just jumping around from universe to universe, then the last scene where Pinkie says that Cheese should try relaxing from time to time, especially with her would've been stronger and more relevant.
I've already glanced over it in the previous paragraph, but here I'll address the flaw in the conflict: it's too much jumping around and not enough character interaction. The mystery of what the letter means appears to be a character-heavy one, relying on Pinkie and Cheese interacting with each other. There's little of that, though, I feel. The story focuses a lot on the costumery, but it doesn't seem to give an equal amount of time to the character development. Pinkie doesn't have a good chance to understand Cheese, and because of this, Cheese's own internal conflict—again, if there is one—doesn't have the chance to be explored. It may be odd that for a story about such fun with such fun characters, I was hoping for it to be more grounded. I guess I was just left wanting more character interaction; with how vague the story is, it feels like it's not going anywhere while bounding around like an electron around a nucleus.
Although I do like the character interactions, and the variety the story has, and the progression of the story, the biggest problem I have with it is that it doesn't give the characters the chance to grow. I feel that if the story actually elaborated at places, and let this mystery of the note get some more focus, then I feel that the message at the end would've been more warranted, the story would've been more vivid and more fun for it, and the character relationships would've been a lot stronger.
But that may just be me. What do I know?
Finally, the technicals. There was a part of the story where I got confused about what was happening in terms of character attitude:
He laughed and ran into the next mirror, but Pinkie frowned at the floor. She walked after the Cheese now wearing lieder-hoisin, and admiring the shiny buttons, and stretching out his hooves. “Oo, I like this one!”
But reading it over again, I can say it was the ands that made me question who was doing the admiring, and who was speaking, actually. This is probably because I'm an idiot. Anyway, the only other things I noticed were a mix-up of lead and led (first one present tense, second one past tense), and an odd article usage: "“What if it’s something super-duper serious and totally unsilly,” Pinkie paced the plush ring of a rug, (It's the rug in her room, right? Why not use the then?) prancing uneasily around the fringed racing track.Other than that, it was smooth reading. I particularly think the use of sexual innuendo at a part was pretty clever, especially for these tow characters.
So overall, Stop Me is a sweet bizarre tale about Pinkie and Cheese, that probably could've used some slowing down. The dialogue is show-like, the progression is cool, and the idea and variety are pretty neat. There is, however, not enough worldbuilding for me to really get into the zaniness of it, and the story moved too quickly for me to really feel the characterization, making the story feel disjointed at the end. I recommend it because it's PinkieSandwich, and because it's got some neat ideas and good dialogue and progression; I'll just warn that it is too vague and quick for its own good.
Four down, 26 to go. Wing Nut, if you read this, the criticisms in this review are not meant to belittle, discourage or insult you in any way. They are just my honest opinions on what I thought about your story. I praise you for writing it, and wish you continued success in the future.
NaNoWriMo reviewing challenge
November 1st: Words Failed Her by Nonsanity
November 2nd: Great Big Sky by shortskirtsandexplosions
November 3rd: 30,000 Feet by the Grey Pegasus
I agree with you on a lot of fronts! It's been so long since I wrote it, but I've gotta say even at the time it was hard to place my problems with it. Maybe in part because it was under a time-limit, but definitely because I could've used some proper advice on it, being as amateur as I am. But, it's actually rather touching that someone would take the time to review a story as muddled as that one, so thanks for your time!