CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #19 — Old Friends · 10:12am Jan 27th, 2016
Title: Old Friends
Author: RBDash47
Found via: Requested review
Short summary: A little girl sees Death at a funeral one day. As the years go by, she sees him more and more, and they slowly build a rapport with each other.
Turns out the little girl is Celestia.
The Title/Description: Title is generic, but at least it has a connection to the story.
The description, like for most twist stories, is difficult to judge. It's bland and doesn't say much about the story, but that's obviously intentional to avoid spoiling the twist. I think it could've said more and still preserved the mystery, though.
Genre(s): Twist Delivery, Philosophical
What does this story do well?: This story is intentionally written in vague terms. The characters are given broad strokes, the timeline is loosely defined, and many details are withheld. This actually works to the story’s benefit. It helps to mask the story’s twist. At the same time, once the reader adjusts to it, the gimmick doesn’t make the story much harder to read.
The characters also work well. They are mostly defined by their dialogue, but the majority of their interactions feel interesting. I particularly liked the exchange where the girl notes that “things tend to look after themselves, at least for a few minutes.” Most of their exchanges are brief, but it still gives a good sense of both characters.
Where could this story improve?: This story’s foremost problem is that it does nothing with its reveal. The reveal doesn’t make the reader suddenly reexamine all the story’s previous events, it doesn’t create an “aha” moment. It doesn’t inform or catalyze future events, because the story ends right after the reveal.
Because of all this, the plot feels hollow. The entire story builds up to this reveal, but the reveal doesn’t spur any strong emotion or plot development. The story just ends. Now, one could make the argument that this is supposed to make the reader reflect on the greater meaning of it all. In particular, what it means about the protagonist. The final exchange between the girl and death is so anemic, however, and the story offers no other sort of clue or speculation for the reader to build on.
The story has some deleted scenes, but they share the same issue: they fail to impart meaning or impetus to the previous events. I can see why they were deleted; they don’t add anything to the story. The story also has a sequel, and it appears that it might actually use this initial story as the catalyst for a plot. That begs the question, though, of why it’s two stories instead of one.
In a single sentence: A story that delivers a twist competently, but doesn't offer the reader anything afterwards.
Verdict: Downvote. This is another one of those stories that I had to mull over my verdict; it was on the cusp between No Vote and Downvote.
It is written well; aside from the occasional tell-y sentence or piece of flat dialogue, it reads easily. It accomplishes so little, however, that I can’t in good conscience recommend it. It doesn't even provide a catalyst for speculation or philosophizing, because the story offers nothing for the reader to build upon. This might change upon reading the sequel. If the sequel is so crucial to the story’s construction, however, then it should not be a separate story.
3715461
Honestly, I'm not too surprised, and I also can't really argue with any of the critique presented herein. Old Friends (and Home, come to think of it) are more "meditations" than "stories"; there's no real plot or conflict as such, just protagonists coming to grips with mortality. I think I only get away with that because it's so short, really.
To get a little meta, and I suppose to offer up something in the way of a defense to the assertion that the twist doesn't give the reader anything, Old Friends is also a meditation on my own headcanon regarding certain aspects of the protagonist. To that end, it is irrevocably dependent on the greater canon of the show. and in turn, the twist is intended to make the reader reconsider not just the sparse events and discussions of the story, but canon and/or fanon at large. Presumptuous, perhaps, but I get a kick out of the idea, and it does seem to have resonated with a good portion of its readership.
To answer the unasked question, cleverpun, the sequel in no way attempts to expand the original's philosophizing and won't, I don't think, answer any of your complaints about the original; I wrote it to play around a little more with my headcanon for the protagonist, and to figure out why she can see Death when nopony else can. (And, frankly, to torture them both a
littlelot, just to see what happens.)Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration; I appreciate it.
3715461 I'm a maverick who doesn't play by the rules. Or I'm a whiner with high standards. Opinions vary wildly.
3715825 There's nothing wrong with a story whose goal is to promote (re)interpretations of canon or present headcanon. In fact, a number of the stories I've reviewed I classified as "Headcanon Delivery". Making the reader ruminate or speculate is a perfectly legitimate goal for a story to have.
Such stories need to have some prodding, however, to work effectively. They need to point the reader in a direction (or give them a choice of directions, or even dead ends, depending on the story). They need to scatter some clues about, before the scavenger hunt can begin in earnest. What the readers end up finding depends on them, of course, but the story still needs to hand out the maps.
As mentioned in the review, this story doesn't do that. It presents an idea, but doesn't include enough prompting with that idea. It admittedly comes close, at some points. The obvious one being why the protagonist can see Death: can she see him because she is immortal, or is it the other way around? And what does that say about her sister? And if Death is a featureless pony whose cutie mark is nothingness, then why is he male? Et cetera. There's lots of beginnings of ideas here.
But the story didn't give me any of that, I had to do it myself. I think speculation traps/philosophy pieces like this have an easy time in this fandom; a lot of readers are willing to insert stuff in there without prompting from the story. A number of the fandom's curation organizations even have an obvious bias towards that type of story.
Just because the audience is willing to forgive mistakes, however, doesn't mean one shouldn't examine their own work.