CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #18 — Bitter-Sweetie · 7:41am Jan 25th, 2016
Title: Bitter-Sweetie
Author: Inquisitor M
Found via: Requested review
Short summary: Twilight is about to die, and so Celestia comes to ask one final thing of her: to teach her a final lesson.
Celestia reveals her origin story; she is a sort of magical amalgamation of many ponies, and wants Twilight to be her next host.
The Title/Description: The corniness of the title doesn’t match the tone of the story.
The title and description place excessive emphasis on Sweetie Belle, even though her part in the story is ultimately minor. It makes the goal and plot of the story impossible to discern from the description alone.
Also, half the description is taken up by a recommendation quote 
Genre(s): Slice of Life, Headcanon Delivery, Origin Story
What does this story do well?: One difficult thing about storytelling is making your story engaging. This is harder in some genres and plotlines than others.
This story is mostly concerned with explaining something. The thrust of the story is a prolonged explanation of something. This type of story is incredibly hard to do well, because it lacks so many of the aspects of conventional narratives. I think this story’s first strength is that it makes an attempt to give the story an arc. The explanation gradually builds to a reveal, and it helps to keep the reader interested in the story. Given some of my criticisms, one could argue that the story might have worked better if it did not follow this model, but that is hard to judge.
The story’s next strength is in some of its descriptions. Some of the descriptions in the story are evocative and witty, while still being succinct enough not to lose impact. I think my favorite was
“Good morning, Sweetie,” she said, her voice creaking like an old door hinge.
Finally, I think this story puts a reasonable spin on a fandom cliché. At the time it was written (Three years ago), the idea of Celestia’s origins had already been given countless pontificates and explorations. The broad ideas are all familiar enough (lich, windigo, time traveler, demi/god, amalgam, personification, ad infinitum), and thus it falls to the fine details to make the reveal interesting. This story uses some ideas and imagery that are offbeat and unorthodox, but that helps to make the incredibly tired scenario somewhat less so.
Where could this story improve?: As mentioned, this story consists almost exclusively of exposition. While there is some attempt made to give the story an arc (as mentioned above), there is very little to be done about the sheer volume of information thrown at the reader.
This could be fine, but the story uses extremely obtuse language. It uses a combination of purple prose and roundabout descriptors at almost every turn. This would be bad enough, but the story also has a lot of poorly constructed sentences; things like changing subjects awkwardly or having lots of clauses are very common. There is also many instances where the dialogue is hard to follow because it is unclear who is speaking. Some examples:
Up here, the purest rays of the sun warmed the thick marble walls so iconic to Canterlot, and each morning they swept across the huge bed and its single occupant.
The time and affection of that wonderful mare came as easily as returning it in kind, and Twilight Sparkle knew that she had it easy.
A thousand blades cut into her legs while an icy wind slashed at her skin and filled her ears with a howl that stung her brain like ten thousand angry wasps.
There was also one point where the story introduced a “cobalt-blue pegasus” and I didn’t realize it was not Rainbow Dash until well after the fact. There’s a lot of “purple unicorns” and “golden earth ponies” and so forth in here, and these descriptors are often used in place of actual names.
The scenario is not explained well. Celestia’s nature is covered in very loose, dreamy terms. Luna’s nature is skimmed over in a paragraph or two. The relationships between the characters and the context of the story (like it’s timeframe and other important details) are completely ignored.
About the only thing that gets a reasonably explicit explanation is Sweetie’s inclusion in the story, and that is handled in a rather uncomfortable way. After Twilight fuses with Celestia, she tries to set up Sweetie to be friends with Luna. That way, eventually Luna will fuse with Sweetie, and Twilight and Sweetie can be BFFs for all eternity. It’s like all the problems with Twilestia taken to an even more fantastical extreme. If it was supposed to be the heartwarming climax that all this built up to, it absolutely failed for me.
I had to reread many sections in order to understand what the story was trying to say. Even after all that, the story offers very poor explanations for most of its conceits and events. These factors all combine to make a story that is difficult to read and doesn’t offer enough to make the effort worth it.
In a single sentence: An explanation story that has trouble explaining itself, be it the characters, context, or scenario.
Verdict: Downvote. I had trouble deciding how to rate this story; it was on that cusp between being a qualified recommendation and a dismissal. I had to mull it over quite a bit.
Ultimately, I don’t think this story is worth anyone’s time. It doesn’t just have a lot of flaws; it fails at all the things it sets out to do. The characters are not presented well enough to attach to, and the scenario is explained in dull and vague terms. The story is difficult to parse. Others may find something to enjoy here, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it.
Aha! Thank you very much, Cleverpun!
Yeah, it definitely smacks of exposition – can't argue with that. But, I hope you don't mind if I have some questions; quite a few of your raised issues didn't make much sense to me (which would seem to be rather the point of getting feedback, I would think!).
What corniness?
I'm not sure what you mean by obtuse, here. Could you give me any examples?
Any chance you could provide some examples of these, too? I'm not sure I understand why 'having lots of clauses' appears to be conflated with 'poorly constructed sentence'.
I think I'm missing your meaning here. There are five adjective-noun pairings that I can find in the story, and three of them are in the same line, detailing three completely new characters who aren't given names at all. So it's either not true that there are a lot of them, or I have failed to grasp the breadth of things you might possibly mean by this. naturally, I assume it is the latter.
What else would want explained?
It wasn't. Some people say it as beautiful. Some people saw it as dark and unsettling.
I've read a lot of stories where it is just assumed that I will think of X and good as Y as bad, and it almost always frustrates me, so I wanted to write it so that a reader could freely see it either way without the prose trying to make them out as wrong. In terms of overall feedback, I'd say I've had at least 60% firmly in the dark camp, and I have come to attribute this to the fact that most people have such a strong fear of death that they have a hard time seeing it positively. I've never felt afraid of death, and this story was surprisingly useful for getting people to talk about it.
3711124 The title is a pun. Puns are inherently corny :P
I provided some examples of obtuse language use and difficult-to-parse constructions in the blog. I'll try and explain why I used them as examples, along with some others I noted.
This sentence has a large number of subjects and objects. I had to read it several times to understand what was acting on which. It also introduces subjects at the same time they are acted on, which makes the scene harder to picture. The reader must develop the action before knowing all the details and it breaks flow.
This sentence has a large number of subjects and objects. It's also a bit of a comma splice, since the second clause introduces a new subject and new object. You use a lot of comma-followed-by-and constructions that make sentences more difficult to parse.
It is not clear who is saying this, either from the content or the punctuation.
This sentence has a large number of subjects and objects. The dash is splicing the sentence.
This sentence has a large number of subjects and objects. This represents a common amateur technique I see: using lots of small clauses connected by and to represent immediacy and actions happening in rapid succession. The problem is that using this technique has the opposite effect; it makes the sentence take longer to read and thus longer to parse. Clumping a bunch of individual elements together like this makes each one harder to follow and less impactful.
I have a lot of trouble following what is going on here. Not only are there a lot of actions taking place, but they are described strangely. What does "head pulled back tight above her shoulders" mean? Why does the direction of Twilight's eyes matter if her eyes are closed? Or are her eyelids only lowering partway? Isn't the fact her heart is "soaring" implied by the fact it's full of bliss? There's also a disconnect between metaphors; the lips are first "incinerating" and then "life-bringing", and waves don't incinerate things. There's a lot going on here and it's a mess to follow and picture.
The “purple unicorns” and “golden earth ponies” were merely examples (hence the "so forth" afterwards). Some other descriptors I noticed included; "demure unicorn", "night-blue unicorn", "mauve unicorn" x2, and "pristine white pony".
East Wind alone is referred to as "the pegasus" nine times before her name is mentioned and two times after it is mentioned.
I understand part of this is intentional, to help sell the mystery of the narrative. But actively avoiding using names for such a large portion of the story makes it even harder to follow. It makes it difficult to properly identify the characters, and it makes the token physical descriptions stick out.
As I mentioned in the review, major plot elements are not explained adequately. Both in the information presented in the story, and in the way that information is presented (see above). Celestia's origin is sort of explained, but only in extremely vague terms. Luna's origin is hinted at (Celestia made her?) but is given no additional detailing at all. Again, this might be excusable as part of the story's theming. If details are crucial to the functioning of the story, however, then they need to be explained in some terms. The biggest expression of this is the story's timeline and the pre-existing relationships between the characters. We are told Rarity died, but there is no explanation of where everyone else is. What about the rest of the main six? What about Spike? What about all those jerks Twilight helped in her adventures? Why is Sweetie Twilight's closest confidant all of a sudden? How long is this from the timeline of the show?
I don't have a problem with the ending because it relates to death. I have a problem with it because it portrays Celestia as manipulative and selfish. There's no indication that her actions are meant to help Sweetie or take her feelings into account, they're only there to benefit herself. At least with Twilight she explained it to her (sorta kinda), after she roped her into it. But then, her actions with Sweetie could cast that emotional abuse specter on her relationship with Twilight as well.
This story lacks context, which is ironic given it spends most of its wordcount on exposition. There's a very fine line between being open to interpretation and vague. I've learned that lesson from several of my own stories, as a matter of fact.
A story can pose questions to readers, can set them up to take a stance on an issue. To do that effectively, however, it must first properly explain the situation. It must then give all sides equal ammunition.
I don't feel this gives adequate context for the relationship between Twilight and Sweetie. I don't feel it adequately explains the nature of Celestia and Luna, or their origins. I don't feel it gives the ending scene adequate context, nor does it give all interpretations equivalent ammunition. It's messy and haphazard. It left me feeling bored and annoyed rather than contemplative.
Naturally, if any of these clarifications require clarification, don't be afraid to ask
3711139 No, no. That explains everything just perfectly, thank you.
To hell with you, sir!
Anyway, I think the biggest things is that the things you pull out as difficult to parse are fairly basic to me, and I find the simpler constructs of many other authors intensely dull to read. With that said, the criticism is thus almost certainly valid, but I'd much rather write what I'd be interested in reading, rather than toning it down.
This is one of the reasons I would never classify myself as a good author :)
That doesn't make it a comma splice.
That's what it's there to do. I take you think there is something wrong with that?
As for the things to be explained... I guess I just don't see what relevance any of them have to the story. You know, horses for courses and all that. It is interesting, though, since I've done much the same in other places and thoroughly split the room between folks who loved it for exactly that and folks who couldn't connect with it because of the same.
I'm probably just pitching to the wrong crowd!
3711148 Unfortunately I still have not found the proper technical term for the "comma-followed-by-and construction" that seems to plague a lot of amateur writing. It's not quite a splice, not quite a gerund, but looks a bit like different things. Some day I'll find some way to explain it correctly. The gist is that if you have one, it's often a time to rethink if the comma should be reworked into a period.
There is wisdom in recognizing your audience. As I often caution, however, one must be wary of blaming the reader for a story's shortcomings. One should never assume that the reader is the problem unless they have exhausted every other potential problem (those problems being the author and their writing
).
I will admit a preponderous bias in the type of fiction I enjoy, based on my reading style. I tend to stick on things that make no sense or are difficult to parse. I did not find the story poetic, merely messy. I find beauty in witty descriptions, in evocative language, in clever phrasing, but not in meandering or muddled imagery.
if you want an illustration of just that, you can look at a story I edited for. It is called The Secrets of Bitmore Theater. The author, kegisak, has intentionally cultivated a sort of meandering, flowery style that treads very close to purple prose. The original Gdoc for chapter 1 is still active; the comment history may not illustrate much but the volume of comments I made probably says something. You can find my lengthy comment over here.
After editing about 3 chapters of that story, the author and I mutually agreed to part ways. There was such a massive disconnect between our styles (along with other factors like available time), that we agreed it was for the best. Does that mean either of us was wrong? Of course not. But encountering other styles--examining how and why they work and don't work--is an important way to learn and grow. And I like to think that the ultimate goal of every writer, that lofty unattainable ideal worth striving for, is a story that is so well-written that it appeals to those outside its usual style demographic.
3711176 "The gist is that if you have one, it's often a time to rethink if the comma should be reworked into a period."
Why? Prose littered with periods is such an eyesore and annoyingly common. The clauses are thematically linked, and I think I'd used quite enough semicolons already, so don't see the issue. I definitely want to see it, though.
As for trying to edit a vastly different style... Yeah. I know that one all too well.