CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #21 — The Quest by iisaw · 5:04pm Jan 31st, 2016
Found via: Requested review
Short summary: In the middle of an impassable forest sits a castle, guarded by a dragon and deadly traps. In that castle lives Princess Twilight, who has the power to cure all the world’s problems. So the fairy tales say.
A particular pony knows the fairy tales aren’t accurate, but he decides to try and speak to the Princess anyway. He needs her help with something that threatens the entire world. When he arrives at the castle, it turns out he was right about the inaccuracy, but not in the ways he expected.
The Title/Description: The title is generic and bland. I actually had to keep checking it whilst writing this review, because I had trouble remembering it.
The description is intentionally sparse, but I think this greatly misrepresents the story. It misleads the reader about the story’s tone and content, which is the opposite of what a description should do.
Genre(s): Adventure, Philosophical
What does this story do well?: This story is written well on a sentence level. There are several awkward sentences and visuals here and there (moreso at the beginning), and there are a few scenes where the blocking of the characters is difficult to follow. But generally the story is easy to read. It is easy to follow the majority of sentences, the descriptions are usually adequate, and the first-person narrator is not too intrusive or annoying.
Most of the characters are archetypal, but that works to the story’s advantage. When spending so little time with characters, they need to have their traits and personalities broadcast to the audience quickly and efficiently, and this story does just that. You have characters like the jaded spy who’s still an idealistic optimist deep down, the brusque librarian wary of newcomers, and the cheerful girl with emotional management skills. Add a layer of snarky back-and-forth over everyone, and a few deviations because of species traits, and you have a decent cast of characters in a short space of time.
The story also has a good setup. The “unreachable location from which no one has returned” is a good, traditional plotline. The story introduces it well, particularly the buildup at the beginning of the story before the protagonist actually starts out.
Finally, the story makes some attempts to ask a question of the audience. I often say that good art strives to ask questions of its audience: tries to make them think or contemplate. This story spends a lot of its time trying to set up a question, and it addresses a very important, universal theme: the difference between a utopia and a dystopia. The story is well-written enough that it can focus on asking this question. Even if it doesn’t succeed as well as it could (see below), the attempt is worth mentioning.
Where could this story improve?: The story’s first and most visible problem is that Princess Twilight’s character is painfully flat. Every moment she is onscreen is spent being some combination of overpowered, effortless, correct, and/or capable. I won’t call her a Mary Sue, since she isn’t the protagonist and that term has very specific connotations. She is still the focus of the story, however, and the story does seem to spend disproportionate effort on making her look good. The way that she solves every problem without any effort or conflict gets very old very quickly. While her large wealth of resources might make sense for an old magical being, the trappings of her personality and her overwhelming competence strain both belief and story construction.
Because of this quasi-Mary Sue rendition of Twilight, the story lacks conflict. Even the initial section where the protagonist is trying to reach the castle (and all the buildup it received) are neutered by Twilight’s behind-the-scenes influence. When the story finally reveals the reason the protagonist went to the castle, that too is handled in mere paragraphs. There isn’t even any emotional conflict: while the protagonist has strong reactions to events, Twilight and her subordinates don’t bother to participate. The result is a story completely lacking any form of real conflict, and it makes the story boring.
The story is also very expository. Many parts of the story are spent on giving information to the audience in very blunt and explicit terms. This wouldn’t be so bad for things like historical context or similar, but it also includes opinions. There are several times when the audience is told how they should feel, or where a particular viewpoint is presented as unequivocally right without presenting in-story evidence for it. This may come down to the character giving out the exposition, but that only makes Princess Twilight that much more insufferable.
Because of the above, the story’s main question is muddled. Because so many things are mentioned to the reader instead of shown, or it is taken for granted that the reader will agree with them, it damages the story’s ability to ask effective questions. Since this story is part of a series, that may not hold true for them as a whole, but it is still noticeable for this single entry. The author’s note and Dark tag seem to indicate that the story is intentionally trying to paint the situation in the story as not ideal. That it is a necessary evil and the reader is supposed to judge if it is worth the sacrifice. Asking good questions, however, requires that all sides of the argument be given equal credence, and this story fails to do that on many levels.
In a single sentence: A story that is competently written, but lacks conflict and fails to ask meaningful questions.
Verdict: Downvote. This story is one of those that is well-written on a sentence level, and whose characters (save one) and setting are effective. Despite this, it fails at its major goals. If taken as an adventure story, it lacks any meaningful conflict. If taken as a philosophical piece intended to spur thought and discussion, it doesn’t present its main question/conceit in a fair and engaging way.
Because this story is part of a series/shared universe, these issues may be changed by events in/knowledge of those other stories. Given the fundamental problems with this story’s presentation and major secondary character, however, I don’t think additional material from the setting would create such a simple fix.
I have to offer a quick aside: given the voting patterns in the reviews you've posted, and the general quality-relative-to-FIMFiction-at-large of the stories you've been examining, I think you might be unseating Titanium Dragon from the downvote throne.
I appreciate the insight in your reviews, they just regularly startle me with the ratings given to authors and stories which I have come to associate with a general level of quality.
3728016 Only 38% of my reviews so far have been downvotes: 38% have been qualified recommendations/ambivalent and 24% have been upvotes (assuming one only counts my longform reviews). Considering Titanium Dragon reviews a literal ton of stories, I highly doubt any titles are up for contention any time soon
One reason I do longer reviews that cover positives and negatives is to help readers make an informed decision, in spite of my personal verdicts. This review is a good example; several of the areas of growth I list are subjective things. I also intentionally listed one point under both sections.
I like to think I am egalitarian, if nothing else. After all, I've written a longform review of one my own stories, and another two blog posts highlighting stories of mine that were too bad to be worth publishing.
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**nod** Thanks for the added insight. There might also be some selection bias at work here because you've just done a string of reviews of downvoted stories. And I remember you downvoting both of Horse Voice's stories you read, which isn't actually true: you upvoted Writing on the Wall. Those numbers will definitely help me recalibrate.