Present Perfect vs. Twilight's List · 12:26pm Feb 3rd, 2016
I’ve still got a whole bunch of stories in my group under the “Old Favorites” folder, so I’ll take any excuse to read them and finally clean that thing out. This time around just so happens to be the first time I’ve reviewed a fanfic in printed format! (I also have a copy of The Spiderses, but I got that after the review.) Yes, I’m talking about Twilight’s List by kits, a classic piece of TwiDash that I apparently helped edit around the same time I was writing Dance ‘Til We’re High. It was self-published in one of those mass runs, producing a 150-page book with illustrations by Underpable, Somepony and Madmax, not to mention the author himself, and praise quotes from TAW, Cloudy Skies and Wanderer D.
So how does it hold up against literally four years of unending shipfics? Click below to find out!
Maybe I shouldn’t have to say this, but have a disclaimer: I may be a little biased toward this story. Not because I like the ship, not because the author remains a friend of mine, but because I edited this and am mentioned in both the printed and online formats. I mean, nothing gets to me quite like seeing my name attached to stuff. :V (Also, the phrase “present in perfect measure” appears in the text. Plus, he wrote “HORSECOCK!” under his signature. Always a fun time, the EQD Pre-readers.)
Yet I had little to worry about, bias-wise, going into this story. I had some vague recollections of how it went, and most of them were wrong, so I got to read it for the first time all over again.
The plot goes like this: Twilight, in perfect season 1 & 2 form, is working on checking off essentially a bucket list she wrote as a filly. The one checkmark that still escapes her is “go on date, get first kiss”. So she decides to write up a list of her friends to figure out which she’s the most compatible with and settles on Rainbow. (Note: this was nearly TwiJack!) From there, things move forward thanks to Twilight’s nerdiness and Rainbow’s tendency to tune ponies out when they’re being nerdy. There’s a lot of potential for tearful drama, but for the most part, things stay reasonable, and the romance is very natural.
But for all that this is touted as a TwiDash — perhaps the TwiDash, though Cloudy Skies’ story Building Bridges, written at the same time, may have kickstarted the ship — Twilight’s List is, at its heart, a story about the mane cast as friends. When the focus isn’t on Twilight and Rainbow trying to figure each other out, we’re treated to scenes of Rainbow and AJ bantering, Rarity and Fluttershy giving (bad) relationship advice, and Pinkie being Pinkie. Really, no one writes the characters as true to season 1 and 2 slice of life as kits. (Though he would likely point to Cloudy Skies to prove me wrong.) The writing masterfully changes shape when the POV changes, and from Twilight’s breakdown near the end because she’s assuming things to Rainbow’s self-assured mantras of “I’m not nervous, why would I be nervous”, everyone comes off as resoundingly in-character, even if Rarity and Fluttershy are played slightly as antagonists.
That note about Twilight points to the main theme of this piece: the romance stories we experience in popular culture are really poor templates for building actual relationships. Rainbow Dash demonstrates why: ‘common knowledge’ about romance relies on assumptions, which always lead to problems, and gatekeeping with erudite 'rules'. Rarity and Fluttershy take the latter role, doing so because they prophesy disaster if the ‘rules’ are not followed, and Rainbow goes along with them for reasons that make sense in-character, i.e., wrong assumptions. This of course, leads to a lot of angst on her part, but also Pinkie’s best scene in the whole story.
One thing that surprised me was the drama. Not that it exists — the moment you see the setup, you can guess what’s coming, but it’s almost 100% guaranteed you’ll guess wrong. This isn’t “Rainbow got super into what Twilight wanted to be a fake relationship and got hurt”. Instead, we get Rainbow missing the part where it’s fake, getting into it, and then refusing to let Twilight declare everything ruined when the truth comes to light. It's Twilight who has a breakdown near the end because of those previously mentioned assumptions. Of course Rainbow’s going to be hurt, because that’s what happens, right? Well, Rainbow Dash is too cool for having her heart broken, and since Twilight was into it as well, they drop all pretense and get together.
On that note, this story very deftly skirts a number of shipping pitfalls. Rainbow and Twilight start with no attraction, building it naturally over the course of the date. (There could have been more buildup, but that would only have served to draw the story out unnecessarily.) Twilight wrestles with her feelings, but not in an “am I gay” or A.S.S. sense. Rather, she’s so autistic focused on the ‘experiment’ that she can’t conceive of the idea that maybe, just maybe, her feelings have crossed the boundary from theory to practice. And yeah, she’s maybe a little dense when it comes to her own emotions, but wasn’t that season one Twilight to a T? For sure, she’s written asocial and bookish enough for the characterization to be sold. If nothing else, it speaks to the idea of multiple intelligences, and Twilight has always been book-smart, not feelings-smart.
One thing I love about this story is the date. Twilight takes Rainbow to Canterlot and they end up seeing a Daring Do play put on by an acting school. It’s bad because students — this joins Twilight’s continual grousing about how poorly the date is going — but Rainbow ends up enjoying it a lot. Twilight’s dinner plans don’t pan out, so they go to Donut Joe’s. And of course, there’s the whole super-cute cloud ride thing near the end. The whole time, they learn from each other (the absolute best scene is in Donut Joe’s place, where kits really shows off the show-tone world-building) as well as learning about each other. Mostly, it’s Rainbow showing Twilight how to cut loose a little. Long story short, if there wasn’t a great date in the middle of this, it wouldn’t be great story.
Missteps were few. I agree with another reader who said that scenes tended to be long and fluffy, yet somehow the fluff was interesting. As I said, this is primarily a story about the mane six being friends, which plays into that. A chapter called “Rainbow Says Yes” kills a lot of suspense (he said, as if the tags didn’t). While Twilight, Rainbow and Pinkie are voiced perfectly, the others pale a bit in comparison, which isn’t to say they’re bad, just not as good. And this last thing I’m calling a quirk of the printing: punctuation issues. It always involved em-dashes, usually in the form of a quote mark being on the wrong side of a space, but it culminated in a record six quote marks in a row at one point, and something that looked like -)-)-). c.c I don't think that shows up in the online version
Twilight’s List is the fic that launched a thousand ships. TwiDash simply wasn’t written prior to it and Building Bridges, and I have a lot to thank those two stories for. Though entrenched in season one tropes that have since become somewhat passe, Twilight’s List stands as a shipfic among shipfics, one that does romance right.
5/5
A true classic.
And now I’m sad Twilight’s Lust never got written. :(
I've never been a fan of shipfics, tbh.
Blame me for being a traditionalist.
I actually have a half-written review of this story, and it is a really great story.
I do have to say one thing, though - while the ending actually does a pretty good job of subverting expectations in some respects, it also suffers from the fact that it is kind of an anticlimax, and while it works, it does feel a little bit truncated in a way.
That said, this story has been a fixture on my "15 stories you should read" list since I first read it.
Huh. Turns out I've already read this. I'd honestly forgotten. That probably means I should give it a reread at some juncture.
Im going to read twilights list
Pick on kits about that, PP. We'd all love to see it. We know kits can do mature.
It's shipping and I didn't downvote it. That says a lot.
Of course, I didn't upvote it either :P
3730388
Titanium Dragon approved™!
3730423
I pointed him to the review!
Hmm. I liked this one, but thought it was too long. I'm not interested in its historical significance if I'm just looking for a good read, either. That said, I'm not a big shipfic reader, so it did pretty well to get me to like it at all. And I was very pleasantly surprised by how it ended. I like it about as much as I'm ever going to like a story like this, I guess.
Knowing that I will never have a fic ever regarded as a classic simply for not being first into the fandom will always annoy me.
Maybe I should just stop writing; it's not like anything I've written will be remembered through the ages with any significance.
Is it wrong that I feel this way whenever people talk about the oldest stories like they are the best?
Am I wrong for believing that newer writers can be just as good as older writers?
It's so hard to tell at times when you old hats actually love something, or are just feeling great amounts of nostalgia.
3730658
Honestly, there's a higher bar to clear at this point. It's not enough to have a novel idea, the signal to noise ratio in the Fandom has veered drastically towards noise, so getting a good fic recognized as good and building momentum is a lot harder now.
That said, most of the classics are considered that because at the base they are true to the show, setting, and characters. They read as the kind of thing the show might write if they decided to cover a plotline. Looking at your catalog, I don't really see much that fits that mold. Crossovers and Shonen style escalation are fanfiction tropes, but at the end of the day relatable slice of life is king.
That's my view at any rate.
One of the fics I'm very pleased to own a physical copy of.
3730423
Didn't kits quit writing fiction like, two years ago now?
3730658
Quite a lot of old stories are super butts, though. Don't let it discourage you!
3730807
Yes, but he's not completely gone...
3730807 He only quit because he has twins to take care of and he can't write from work anymore.
3730658
You could, y'know, read the story and form your own opinion :P
3730855
As a dad to twins myself, I can definitely empathise with this. And I even get paid to stay at home and look after them!
3730807
3730855
From the man himself:
3730658
3730658
Very few people remember which story was first, frankly; the exceptions are relatively rare. Who remembers what the first displaced story was? I guess people remember the first Five Score story, but that's because it was the one that named the "genre" so to speak. People remember Blink and Dying to Get There, but not Faster Than Starlight.
Being topical is nice, but really being first isn't as important as being best.
They aren't, but a number of skilled authors have come and gone. Everyone starts out on a different level. Kits was a fairly solid author who wrote some interesting things and went into some depth about them, and a few of his stories are classics. Absolute Anonymous was pretty amazing.
No one remembers user 492 from 2012 who wrote a bunch of crap and then quit in 2014.
The early fandom stories ended up getting a fair bit of "press" due to there being less competition at the time, so it was more likely for a significant fraction of people to read any given story; these days, we have far, far more stories to choose from.
Looking at my own favorites list, I'm pretty sure that 2012 is just overrepresented due to people having had more time to find and read the good stories from that era.
Nah, Twilight's List is genuinely awesome for a lot of reasons.
Some older stories which are popular didn't hold up nearly so well.
3730658 Hey man, there's always the Royal Canterlot Library to get into. That's my goal.
3732176
I guess it's nice to dream.
3732188 No, see, most of my stuff is crap, but I have one story in working on that I earnestly believe will be good enough when I finish it someday. In fact, if I recall, you do a lot of pre-reading, so if it is OK you will probably be one of the people I ask to pre-read it.
3731404
I'm going to sound like such a huge asshole for saying this, but my first impression of kits is a frequent commenter on this blog who had almost nothing to contribute but bitterness and cynicism. That got on my nerves quickly, and I applaud him for recognizing this and quitting while he was ahead. If he hasn't cooled off or changed, he should stay gone; I don't want him back.
But I look forward to reading Twilight's List anyway, because he wasn't that sort of person when he wrote it, was he?
3788157
No, when it comes to this fandom, he's always been bitter and cynical. :B
3788411
Well, then he should spend more time writing and less time commenting.
3788557
These days, he just does art. :B