For Those That Yearn for Adventure #8 (11/6)—Wanderer D's "The Three Sisters" · 7:20am Nov 7th, 2015
Almost 20% of the way through this month; doing okay, as far as consistency goes, though whether I have any quality to my reviews remains to be seen.
The implications of ponies being changelings is one that I've seen explored a few times. kits' Who We Are had an outstanding amount of mystery and ambiguity to it. shortskirtsandexplosions's Gift has a very nice implication of what changelings can do as ponies, in a heartbreaking story. And the recent Would It Matter If I Was? by GaPJaxie questions the condemnation of the changelings because of the actions of a few (or one, even), posed in a question about if Fluttershy's being a changeling would make Twilight hate her. There's been a lot of ground covered in that area.
The story reviewed here may be the most famous of the pony-changeling stories that are out there, and it takes on both the role of questioning a pony's identity, as well as delving into the history of three sisters and a particular incident that happened many years ago. Ladies and gentlemen, fillies and gentlecolts, this is
The Three Sisters
by Wanderer D
Tags: Adventure, Dark and Sad
Word Count: 6,388
Shining Armor and Cadence's spell reveals something completely unexpected as it expels Chrysalis and her changelings out of Canterlot: A secret kept from everypony for several years...
What is the big secret that is revealed? Who does the secret pertain to? And what event led to this fateful moment so long ago? Read the story to find out!
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. Please take what I say with a grain of salt, as I'm still trying to figure out how to review with giving the author and story their due while pointing out what could be better with it.
Review Commences Now
I'm just going to warn you now, massive spoilers below. Read at your own risk.
In a story such as this, I think the centerpiece of it would be the characters, how they are and how they react to and interact with each other. Rarity turns out to be a changeling, and her backstory is actually very well told. Pupa's story is tragic, heartbreaking, sinister and, of course, dictatorial. It also has a relatability to it from the younger sister angle, and I found it very striking how this hierarchical relationship is both very proper and restricting and very relatable. The story's conflict doesn't shy away from her conflict, and I think that with how pressing the conflict was, her characterization—her trying to impress her sisters, her being frightened and mitigated, her friendliness towards the pony she meets in the flashback—all really come alive. I think her vivid liveliness comes out even more so with very good dialogue and worldbuilding; both are well-written, and both help Pupa come alive.
Rarity herself is also really nicely written—the present-day one, not the past one. She responds well to her situation, her grief and the hope that she can still save her friendship. I went into this worried that upon interrogating her, Twilight would be too interrogative about Rarity's change, and not angry enough that her friend was missing. Thankfully, that scene was as tense as it needed to be. Rarity was characterized great throughout, although there was one point where I thought the dialogue didn't match the tone of the story, but I'll get to that in a little bit.
The past pony was characterized nicely as well, although I actually felt like she was very mature, perhaps too mature for this time. At the beginning, I think she responded well to the predicament in the beginning, and she does seem to handle the situation with an aplomb that matches the modern-day pony, but when this came up:
Warning: Massive Spoilers
Rarity didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up. But when she did, she couldn’t feel anything. At all. She tried to push herself up, but couldn’t. She looked over her shoulder and gulped in horror. Several rocks had buried half her body behind her. She coughed, spitting some blood onto the hard stone floor under her.“How... why am I still alive?” she groaned. She could feel her heart pumping fast as she began to hyperventilate. Slowly feeling was returning to her and it felt like she was burning... up to the rocks.
Another groan made her look up. Cocoon stood over her sister’s barely breathing body, barely holding several large rocks in place as their weight threatened to crush her. Slowly, before Rarity’s eyes, Cocoon’’s legs started to buckle. The princess was looking at Rarity in surprise and pity.
“I’m sorry, little filly, it seems this is it for us...” Cocoon smiled and Rarity noticed a trickle of blood on the side of her mouth. “I protected Pupa from the falling rocks... my body is almost completely destroyed inside... I have little time to live...”
Rarity coughed more blood. “C-can we do something for Pupa?"
Cocoon chuckled in surprise. “Oh, little pony... if you two had only met under better circumstances...” She closed her eyes as a thought crossed her mind. She looked at Rarity, who would undoubtedly die here as well. She looked up as the cave shook again. “We might not have enough time, but... there is something we could do...” She looked down at Pupa. “I can use my gems to meld your life force to hers... you both would survive... and not.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Rarity asked, her vision starting to fade.
“You would both be turned into a new being, sharing both set of memories...” She paused. “You would have to choose which world to go back to...”
Rarity nodded sleepily. “If... if it helps... Pu... pa...” She drifted off to sleep.
Something like that seems very noble for an older pony, but for somepony of her age, it may be stretching it. I think it's more that she seems to serene, rather than she seems too mature; she handles everything with calmness, which seems odd considering what has just happened and what's happening. Maybe the characterization is legitimate here, and I'm just missing something, but I read her part here as being too accepting of everything that was happening.
That's not to say that her parts aren't good; the story does an excellent job of tying together this tragedy with one of the show's episodes, giving it a dark spin on it. Her dialogue is a bit mature, yes, but it does reflect well on the situation, and I could imagine her saying these things in a situation like this. The timing and body language of her part is written really nicely, and she is really well written overall.
The titular three sisters are amazing. The relationship between Chrysalis and Cocoon is very tense, the one between Cocoon and Pupa is very cold, and the one between Pupa and Chrysalis is a joke (in a good way). There's an odd family dynamic that is challenged with social and royal traditions, and I would say this is a great story to go to if you want to see a living family dynamic that responds to where characters are, who they themselves are, and how they get along with the others. I don't think I could highly enough praise the dynamic between the three, especially at the end (for two of them). I'd recommend it for that reason alone; it blew me away.
As for the rest of the characters, I felt like they were written well enough to play their parts, with the exception of two of them. Most of them have fitting dialogue for both their character and the situation, and they don't eat up too much time. The two characters that did bother me, though, were Applejack and Chrysalis. This may be nitpicking, but with the little dialogue that Applejack asks, I have to question why she's so surprised by the concept of empathy gems. She seems utterly *wowed* over it, and I just don't believe it fits the situation, especially when she's no doubt skeptical about the story in the first place. That may be a nitpick, but I couldn't get a bead on Chrysalis for some parts. I think she's written well in terms of her ambitions, but I can't understand why she stayed behind to plan out her mission with the two changelings she was supposed to fight, and the very last two paragraphs of the story, where she's the focus, there's two great tonal shift that was hard for me to grasp. That may also be nitpicking, and like I said, take what I say with a grain of salt, but with Chrysalis's part, I'm not sure if her true emotions really shined through.
But that may just be me. Maybe there's more to her characterization that I just missed.
The other complaints I had with characterization would more likely than not be nitpicking. Why didn't the newly-conscious Pupa ask where her sisters were after climbing out of the pit? Why wasn't there more deliberation on why she hated her life? Was there any part of Pupa that survived that Rarity would've liked to have shared? What about the other changelings that she left behind? These things may be chalked up to that 90% iceberg analogy that Hemingway made, so that's why I denote them to nitpicking: because I wanted to know more about the newly-fused being that came out of this.
The worldbuilding and conflict are both well-written, with the former being vibrant and fluid and ever-changing, even with how little focus each place receives; and the latter being unflinching, stake-wielding and character-testing to a great degree. I think these two things, as well as the characterization, are helped along the way by the brilliant pacing. Moving from present-day to flashback mode is very fluid, both the brief parts and the extended parts move along at an excellent pace. I did think that it moved too quickly at the end of her tale, because, like I said earlier, everything was a bit too serene at the end, but everything else, including the epilogue, just let the tale be there for how long it needed to be, and it left when it needed to (I think). It was simply brilliant.
I think I've talked about the important points of this story: mostly the characterization, with some mention of worldbuilding and conflict, and pacing as well, so I'll get to the technicals. The story is grammatically sound, and I can't remember any spelling errors or odd word usage. The use of flashbacks actually seem masterful, as it gives a fitting part of the story that develops the world, characters and conflict, and it's short when it needs to be, and lengthy when it needs to be. There was a use of the ellipses that I found odd, here:
She trotted away, pausing to pick up several gems for her school project. She did not want to think about what had happened. She didn’t want to consider... her loss.
It seemed like one of those usages that tried to be, for lack of better word (because I'm a nitwit) edgy, and it seems to deliberate on something that doesn't need to be deliberated upon. She doesn't want to think of her loss, that's it. I don't understand what the ellipses accomplishes here.
This is a good story to actually talk about point of view, because that dictates an important part of the story. It is Rarity's story, but the flashbacks go out of her point of view into three other's at this time. One could say that this takes away from Rarity story, since she doesn't experience the discovery of certain things for herself (like how the past pony got into that predicament in the pits), nor are certain questions left to either be shown through other means (for example, Cocoon's love for Pupa shown through last-minute dialogue or body language, a nuzzle, if you will, or left as a mystery. If you're reading it looking strictly for a third-person-limited story, then you may gripe about these things taking the focus away from her, and the mystery away as well. If you go into it looking for—besides any story—a third-person-omniscient story, then I think you'll find a story that balances a lot of conflicts and paths to create a rich lore and tragic story. This is particularly true of the "epilogue" where we look into the mind of Cocoon. Her thoughts are heartbreaking, but given whom the story focuses on, and what Twilight says at the end of her story, I wonder if the epilogue would've been better as a part of the climax, where it all happened, or sprinkled into the story. I also wonder if Chrysalis's part at the end could've been worked in some other way. I ask this because of authorial intention; why take away the mystery of why certain things happened? There may be a good reason, and this is one time where I can't think of an answer for it.
That's enough of me trying to talk about story elements.
Overall, The Three Sisters struck me as far more entertaining than I was expecting. It has outstanding characterization, a gripping conflict, great pacing, great worldbuilding, and great use of flashback. It created an intriguing and intelligent lore in less than 10,000 words by using fitting details that built on everything, and the character relationships helped drive the conflict and resolution home. I do think certain characters were written off at times, and the epilogue is something that puzzles me, but those are small things to the rest of the story. For what it is, I would highly recommend it.
20% through my NaNoReView goal, 24 more days to go. Wanderer D, 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
November 4th: Stop Me by Wing Nut
November 5th: Yearbook January by Regidar
No worries at all! I really appreciate the time and effort that went into reviewing my story. Thank you very much for that!
So, to answer a bit of confusion, the reason (in my mind) that Rarity was so calm was that she was so close to death she didn't have the energy to really spend on panicking. She felt tired and felt herself fading, so her thoughts were less about action and more about what was drawing her attention, which was Cocoon's words and dilemma.
Of course I could have been clearer on that point
Thanks again!
3528296 I thank you, both for reading this and for offering that insight into your story. It is a sensible explanation, in my eyes.