OMPR Guest Post: Twilight Snarkle, and Bronycon · 11:52pm Jul 6th, 2016
As a last act before heading to Bronycon tomorrow morning, a cross post:
Once again, Chris Chris of One Man's Pony Ramblings has got it into his head that vacations are a thing, and the sort of thing he should do. That's means guest posts, and I've participated once again with an author analysis of Twilight Snarkle, split in two parts for length (and, possibly, to cut down the amount Chris needs to draw from his buffer 
).
Reproduced and combined below break.
Once again, Chris has been kind enough to lend me his soapbox for the day—thank you, Chris—and I’ll once again be using it to explore the works of an early fandom author. But where I was already well acquainted with Somber’s work before doing his author analysis two years ago, in this case I’m largely seeing my subject for the first time. My first exposure to Twilight Snarkle was Chris’s review of “Two Ponies,” and apart from reading and thoroughly enjoying that story, I haven’t revisited him much until now, though the extremely complimentary things people have had to say about “Order from Chaos” in particular have kept him on my radar and RiL.
“Two Ponies” hit Equestria Daily at the end of June, 2011, towards the beginning of the first inter-season hiatus. Although this unusual romantic character piece is very different from the crossover work that makes up the bulk of the Twilight Snarkle bibliography, it does display some features that recur frequently.
With a couple of minor exceptions, his stories feature the world of Equestria, but none of the familiar characters from the show apart from the classic alicorn princesses, Celestia and Luna, instead focusing on OCs. In this case, the story revolves around Smudge and a few ponies whose lives he touched at the beginning and end of his own: Copper Key, Cayenne, and Spice Drop. Smudge is a slow but kind and earnest earth pony, and was well matched as a foal with first Copper Key, whose infirmity and wistfulness made him a good complement for her, and as an adult with Cayenne, an energetic and inquisitive filly intrigued by the understatedly mysterious loner. The writing style, tending towards simple and direct, has a fairy tale feel that allows the rapid development of the friendships and—after a fashion—loves between Smudge and Copper Key and Cayenne, quickly, while the level of detail given to key events and images enables the build-up for emotional payoffs, as in this case describing one of Smudge’s great pieces of art:
To the left was a delicate, almost frail earth pony. She had a dancer’s legs and a regal bearing, and her hazel eyes glittered with mischief. Her coat was a faint jade green, almost white. Her mane and tail were a deep forest green, worn long, but they were thinning - only a few hairs grew high enough on her neck to fall as a forelock, and her tail was more of a suggestion than a reality. She sat against a weathered tree trunk. She was beautiful. And she was dying.
It also displays another aspect of the writing the story uses to emphasize plot points or themes: repetition. This paragraph mostly consists of a word-for-word restatement of Copper Key’s introduction at the beginning of the first chapter, and this kind of restatement of description or dialogue shows up repeatedly. In “Two Ponies,” the method also reinforces the major theme of repetition in life, end especially that although life may offer very similar situations at different points, you do not need to make the same choices in each case. Cayenne, though her loss of Smudge echoes his of Copper Key, need not direct her gaze always behind her, or hide the beauty Smudge had created from the world.
“Two Ponies” is an excellent debut for Twilight Snarkle, an emotionally powerful and very well structured story with few notable weaknesses, mainly a somewhat superfluous epilogue and a first few paragraphs that would have fit better as a prologue or long description, and Princess Celestia explicitly stating the moral.
The follow-up, “Kindness,” is something of a step down. Set in an AU in which Twilight Sparkle returned to Canterlot after the S1 premiere, it follows the quiet desperation and isolation of Fluttershy, who is almost utterly alone since the death of Angel. It covers some of the same feelings as “Two Ponies,” and brings Princess Luna in (dodging full-form Sad Luna) to deliver a message that Fluttershy need not remain forever alone, retreading Luna’s own path (if less destructively), if she is willing to accept Luna as a friend.
This was somewhat overwrought, and went needlessly dark when the story had Fluttershy contemplating suicide—“She could move into Ponyville... or move to another town... or slide silently into the dark waters here...”—and similar to “Two Ponies” had an ending that wasn’t necessary to the story, making a sudden jump to Celestia’s perspective to recapitulate, if anything even more explicitly, the moral and parallel between Fluttershy and Luna. Along the way, Fluttershy’s voicing is off, even taking the tone as granted—for example, “I don’t feel any appreciation for what I do... nor love, nor respect.” Simply put, this is one of Snarkle’s more skippable stories, especially since it didn’t cover much new ground compared to “Two Ponies.”
Snarkle returns to form in the first installment of the Sonic the Hedgehog crossover series which comprises by far the largest part of his work. I must preface this by saying that I had at best a cursory knowledge of the franchise going in, though I’ve been in that situation before with other pony crossovers (most notably FoE, where I knew even less) and it’s worked out fine. Happily, this was once again the case with “Order from Chaos,” a series of journal entries by Dr. Robotnik following his arrival in Equestria near the town of Pasofino. The only part where I felt greater familiarity with the other half of the source material was when he appeared surprised to find the world populated by talking ponies—after all, his enemies are talking animals—but I gather in hindsight it might be related to Sonic and the rest being “mutants.” So while I cannot say whether this is an accurate portrayal of the character, the story did independently build him up as a hypercompetent tinker and inventor with a sharp sense of observation communicated directly through the facts and concerns noted in the journal, such as the puzzling orbital mechanics of the moon or the mineral content of the water and plan to make a still to deal with it. Elements of desire to leave behind his former life and not to once more go down the path of seeking complete control over his surroundings and the conflict between them come out through projects taken on around town, and the need to suppress an impulse to carry them out to an extreme conclusion that would automate away the roles of his neighbors.
“Order from Chaos” is very much a character piece, with few plot points and those that exist focusing mainly on how they affect Robotnik—or Worker, as he goes after magically learning Equestrian due to a spell performed by Pasofino’s mayor—and his reactions. That said, it’s not as though he isn’t interacting with the ponies he encounters. Since he’s building a new life, he adapts his mechanical orientation to toy making as a livelihood, and gets to be friends with some of the residents of Pasofino. The two key events, though, relate to milestones in him becoming a unicorn: an initial transformation, and getting his cutie mark (the image of which, included in the story, is a delightful visual pun). The shock to Robotnik of getting a cutie mark cut through the fact that for the reader, that the segment it occurred in would feature it was heavily telegraphed—the significance of the setup and the general tone had all the markings of a cutie mark story, which was also the case of Smudge’s in “Two Ponies.” For me at least, this was a plus, as knowing it was coming built up to a moment of catharsis when it was observed; whether a positive feature or a negative for a given reader, this is a recurring feature of Snarkle’s writing in other aspects as well, as for instance in setting up the ship with Robotnik’s love interest.
Once again, there is an ending different in character from the body of the story, in this case, switching to a short scene between the princesses. While it, again, is used to draw a parallel between the main character and Luna’s own history, as well as state the moral of the story—drawing again from Snarkle’s preferred well of second chances and the ability to at least recover from an inauspicious past—this time the structure is different. Rather than being entirely severable from the rest, it serves as a promise for what’s to come in the sequel, and thus I found its inclusion more welcome than in the previous cases.
From the epilogue of “Order from Chaos” to his next project, “Moon & Memory,” Twilight Snarkle jumps from Luna seeking affirmation from Celestia that all ponies, not just she, “deserve a chance at redemption” to the path that brought Luna to needing that chance herself, and some of the first steps towards grasping that chance. In doing so, it serves as a prequel to and alternate perspective on the S1 premiere, and a bridge between it and “Luna Eclipsed.”
“Moon & Memory” presents a more extreme Nightmare Moon than the baseline, existing in reaction not merely to loneliness or a lack of recognition but explicitly feeling trapped in a subservient role, but moreover savagely embracing the effects of the story’s more realistic approach to the advent of eternal night—it brings cold and famine and very nearly a collapse of civilization with aspects calling to mind Azimov’s “Nightfall” before what would ultimately be death for all the mortals of Equestria—as justice for the world’s affronts to her.
It’s here that Snarkle first shows he can write an action scene as well as the more down-to-earth, as at the start of the fifth chapter:
The Moon Princess ducked behind a broken column, her eyes wild, her chest heaving. Such ferocity, such power! She was unprepared, and unpracticed. Where had her sister come from? Where had she been hiding? As if to answer, the top half of the column vanished in a gout of flame. No time to think. Not now.
She gathered her wits and teleported to another vantage point, appearing on a rocky outcrop that was familiar to her. She she (sic) had spent many nights here, when she was younger, perfecting her work. She could see her sister, now: bloodied but unbowed.
The prose matches its pace to that of the scene it conveys, and though the character of the events are very distinct from those in the prior stories, they still serve in large part to develop Luna as someone who has lost much, and is given the chance to regain it. In a sense, it is the complement to Dr. Robotnik’s story in “Order from Chaos”: where that picked up from his decision to leave behind a life that had wrought destruction on his world upon the realization that victory would be empty and defeat would mean death, and covered his building a new one on virgin soil, “Moon & Memory” covers the cycle of conquest, corruption, and defeat, only ending with a search for a path forward.
Of course, such a path need not be smooth or always proceeding in the direction desired, which brings me to the first sequel to “Order from Chaos,” “Justice.” Picking up years after his arrival and initial integration, Robotnik, now fully identifying as Worker, is on a trip to Canterlot to expand his toy business by distributing to the city. He’s very successful, and while there, pops the question to Skyshine, the mare who had been shipteased in “Order.” This and the wedding are the highlights of the story, but serve mainly as a frame for the real plot.
Luna is a fan of Worker’s toys, unaware of who the manufacturer is, and gifts one of his clocks to Celestia. Intrigued by the mechanism, far more elaborate than anything from Equestria and more efficient by an order of magnitude, she summons him to Canterlot to find out about him. In the process, she discovers that he was not always a pony, and investigates his transformation, ultimately determining that Luna cast a forbidden spell to effect the change. The central conflict is the trial to determine if Luna should be banished from Equestria for having cast the spell.
Unfortunately, the conflict and the plot build around it are deeply and fundamentally flawed. The contrivance that Luna forgot the law against the spell is one of the lesser problems, which include illogical sequencing of events—this passage, for example,
And what of the populace, when they hear of this? What of Luna’s reputation, when it emerges that she has committed a magical crime? She’s worked very hard, these last few decades, rebuilding her image to that of a competent and sensitive ruler.
“That much is true,” she mused, aloud. “Since her return, Luna’s made incredible strides towards reconnecting with her people. She’s even shed that ridiculous Canterlot Voice. She’s adopted more modern forms of speech and mannerisms, and has worked hard to understand the concerns and wishes of contemporary ponies.”
And beyond Luna’s reputation, Celestia, what of Luna? Don’t you care that the very thought of exile is enough to crush her? How much she’s missed you, these last thousand years? Because you sent her away once before?
comes as Princess Celestia is considering the sentencing of her sister, rather than at some point in the investigatory phase before even deciding on the nature of the prosecution, when a decision could shape if and how knowledge of the crime was released in the first place (and it should be noted that in the case of Nightmare Moon, it’s pretty clear that the princesses haven’t been entirely forthcoming about what happened). She brings up the possibility of lenience, but dismisses it because “the law demands a price,” but the story ends with no price being paid for reasons far less legitimate than merely offering clemency or a suspended sentence on the basis Luna had requested: rather than recognize the mitigating circumstances actually present, she uses Worker’s past as a murderous and megalomaniacal supervillain bent on world domination, which he testified to in court in Luna’s defense, to support a claim that Luna had acted to protect Equestria against a great villain as did Twilight Sparkle and her friends when using the Elements against Nightmare Moon, something contradicting the indications given of Luna’s actual intent. All this is compounded by the fact that the person on trial had previously been guilty of abduction of royalty, attempted murder, an attempted coup, trying to bring about eternal night, and generally making a go at entirely overturning the political, economic, and social basis of Equestria, and her punishment had been…nothing. If extenuating circumstances allowed for a “price” of zero in that case, why is that impossible (until it isn’t) in this one, which seems to justify far less a punishment than then?
Now, the goal of the story seems to me to have been to get to Worker’s confession in court in front of his new wife and all his friends from Pasofino, the forgiveness and reunion that follow, and more mundanely setting up Worker’s place in Pasofino and Equestria going forward. The speech itself is largely fine (if oddly placed) and his ultimate acceptance to be expected given not only Equestria generally but also Snarkle’s recurrent use of second chances as the backbone of his stories. The goal was accomplished, but the logic and motivations of the events surrounding and enabling them don’t withstand even cursory scrutiny.
Snarkle follows up his heaviest story, after a fifteen month publishing gap, with his first FIMFiction-original story, and one of his lightest. “CMC ART” is a 1700-word comedy about what it says in the title. The punchline is pretty good, and there are some fairly funny lines along the way, like Pinkie’s “Now, this is sort of an emergency party, so I only have three different kinds of cupcakes and one kind of punch, but that’ll be okay! Let’s PARTY!” and, in narration, “The party lasted well into early evening.” But jokes were pretty widely spaced, and with only one story-level joke, I would have welcomed it if the story came closer to FIMFiction’s 1000-word minimum.
Dream and Memory (mature)
Mere days later comes the next entry, “Dream and Memory,” the only story closely tied to “Two Ponies” and a return to some of Snarkle’s key strengths. What’s new is the focus on sex: it’s a diary entry by Smudge sometime after meeting Cayenne, detailing a wet dream he had about Copper Key. Although certainly erotic, nostalgia for a love that at most might have been, but never was, is the main emotion I took from the scene. Although most of the text covers their foreplay and sex, the sense of time in the dream covered hours of the two merely sitting together, content and at peace with the sun and the stars.
It’s very worth reading for anyone who enjoyed “Two Ponies” and isn’t repelled by explicit sexual content in pony fiction, but it does contain the one case I noticed in Snarkle’s work where a writing error noticeably impinged on readability (otherwise there are some typographical or paragraph spacing errors, possibly related to FIMFic import problems, and minor mistakes like lie/lay or quotation marks at the end of paragraphs, and doubled words as seen above, but rare and easy to read through)—Smudge is at one point described as prone, and it took a few paragraphs to realize that the actions described were not just improbable but impossible and he must have been lying face up.
Worker returns in “Hope,” the entry in the series that feels most like a crossover. Where in the previous two entries Worker’s identity and past were largely academic, in “Hope” catches up to him at the speed of sound—Sonic’s arrived, and he wants to retrieve Robotnik so he can be punished for his crimes.
I could see fans of the Sonic franchise taking issue with Sonic clearly being the villain of the story, even briefly grappling the issue himself before charging onward. Whether determination bleeding over into obsession is something believable for the character, I couldn’t say, but since he was more present as a problem to be solved than as a focal character, it matters less than it would in the reverse case. In any event, he’s a good foil for Worker in terms of abilities and temperament, and offers an idea of what might have been had Worker not decided Robotnik was worth leaving behind.
What takes center stage is Worker’s response to this threat to his new life and his family, now including a daughter, Snowdrop. And that I thought was done quite well, both directly straining relationships with ponies who had heard of his past life but may never have really accepted it as something real and serving up temptation to exhume long buried tendencies to protect all he’s gained. There was real tension on this front, and it was one of the highlights of the story.
That narrative takes the form more of a chess match than a typical action story, as there is little direct interaction between the principal actors—Sonic on one side, Worker and the princesses on the other—for most of the story, with instead a sequence of scouting actions and indirect attacks to which the others respond as they are able. This enables the conflict to play out in such a way that neither Sonic’s physical advantages nor Worker’s in friends leads to a speedy resolution, so the drama on Worker’s end has time to develop. However, some of the choices related to the conflict are frustrating, such as Worker’s (and Skyshine’s) decision to wait to contact the princesses until far later than is justifiable, or this, which I think encapsulates the issue nicely:
“No matter.” Luna returned her sister’s gaze. Celestia quickly assumed a mask of serenity. “Are you prepared to go, or would you prefer to take care of a few things before we leave? I was hoping to convince you of the need for urgency. In fact, if you are willing, I feel we should consider teleporting.”
It seems like a responsible reaction to what they know, and a suitable sense of urgency. What’s missing, though, is that Luna was hanging out in her aerie alone before Celestia found her, realizing that she would be there because she wasn’t in her chambers—hardly the course of action I’d expect from someone who believed time was of the essence, which would at least include sending a message to her or going to meet her proactively.
The plot problems are very minor compared to those in “Justice,” however, and long the way, Snarkle treats us to his characteristic detail work on the setting, such as how the differences in the royal sisters’ personalities is reflected in their respective portions of Canterlot Castle (“Where her sister preferred direct paths and bold expression, Luna infused her surroundings with her art. Passages tended to shift when you didn’t look at them, and the guards kept random patrol routes out of necessity rather than any larger strategy.”), and to time with the ponies that make Worker’s new life so worth keeping, and every so often a dose of humor, usually dialog-focused. The story ends with a new revelation that provides the motive force for the final story to date in this crossover, tying Worker and Luna even more strongly than before.
But first comes a brief slice of life written for a Pre-Reader Secret Santa event, in which Luna sets up Celestia on a date. It’s light and fluffy, and ends on a bit of a joke, built up to by Celestia’s obliviousness, but there’s not much there. Although it raises a couple questions, “Horizons” is basically a nice enough, harmless slice of life that’s okay for a quick read, but not likely to be remembered.
“Fine Steps” is a different beast entirely, basically a catch-all repository for side stories to the “Order from Chaos” series, at this point once again the importance of the specifics of the Sonic franchise fading to indiscernible.
It starts with the follow-up to the problem introduced at the end of “Hope,” which mostly lays the groundwork for some of the later chapters. It clears up some questions and features a more personal Luna than has mostly been the case through the “Order” series, and Worker, Luna, and Skyshine play off of each other well. However, there’s a 400-word digression to Snowdrop’s point of view, the purpose of which entirely eludes me.
Next up is a scene following some of the other ponies in Pasofino just after Worker and Skyshine’s wedding. Bulwark’s never been much for romance, and Skean (who is mercifully the only character written with a heavy accent: “I jes need t’ shut m’ geggy so I dinnae look a dobber”) is the new weather pony in town. They hit it off, bonding over a conversation about their names and the differences between their homelands. It’s natural and charming, and makes me wish that “Horizons” had actually been shippy.
The third jumps way back in time to before Nightmare Moon, as Somber Dreams attempts to teach Celestia a form of magic, secretly in service to an unknown lord. Dark and full of intrigue, this expands on a conversation between Celestia and Luna from “Hope,” and I’d like to see it followed up on someday. It’s the last publication of Snarkle’s second burst of output before returning a year later with the remainder of “Fine Steps” to date.
Chapter four has a desperate alicorn Worker, his wife and children long dead, confront Luna about why he is an alicorn, and why he’s unable to take his own life, or that of anything else. Part of the premise I find odd, but the misdirection and clash of personalities are strong points, and it leads into the next story.
Chapters five, six, and eight cover why alicorns are unable to kill any living thing except in defense of Equestria. It is the story of how the champions of the pegasus and unicorn tribes, Celestia and Luna, became alicorns not long (relatively speaking) after the three tribes came to Equestria, and what happened to Aurum, the champion of the earth ponies. One of the most well rounded of Snarkle’s stories, this combines world-building, some insight into the princesses as young mares and how some of their differences have stuck with them (or not), and a couple of well-executed action scenes, among other aspects. It does go the route of having Celestia and Luna not actually being sisters, though, and I could see that being a sore point for some readers.
The interlude in the seventh chapter covers Worker’s daughter Snowdrop’s first lesson as Princess Luna’s student. The interaction between the two is nice and it allows some growth for Snowdrop as one of Snarkle’s major characters in the series after the princesses, Worker, and Skyshine, and another major draw is the atmosphere as Snowdrop learns some basic aspects of lucid dreaming.
Overall, “Fine Steps” is a worthy continuation and expansion of the stories starting in and built around “Order from Chaos,” and Snarkle’s largest departure from the redemptive and second-chances themes that have suffused most of his stories. I’ll be delighted to see any updates if he returns to publishing.
Twilight Snarkle had some ups and downs as an author in his three bursts of activity. “Kindness,” “CMC ART,” and “Horizons” are skippable, and the latter two suggest to me that he operates best working within a larger framework, and actively trying to say something about the characters he’s putting on display. There are better people to go to for a quick laugh or bit of fluff. “Two Ponies” still stands up as an excellent example of achieving a bittersweet tone, and of exploring love in ways beyond a typical romance; “Dreams & Memory” does the same with nostalgia for a counterfactual, and strikes me as well-done erotica along the way. Together with “Moon & Memory” and the “Order” series, they delve deeply into loss and recovery, and especially the (in Equestria, at least) ever-present opportunity to reach a better future. “Order from Chaos” is itself a wonderful character piece and entry in the journal genre, and though immensely accessible for those lacking knowledge of the Sonic IP I’m sure only more enjoyable those that have it. “Justice” was the greatest disappointment of the Snarkle bibliography, but I’d consider it worthwhile as the price of admission to the much superior conclusion of the trilogy and especially “Fine Steps.”
For more writers than most, I think Twilight Snarkle is best at the level of the scene, for all he’s helped by the focus within a scene provided by being part of a larger story. So many of his scenes deliver sentiment and character, or give an impressionistic snapshot of a broader event, and do so wonderfully. And when these frames are tied together loosely, as in “Two Ponies,” with its three related fairy tales, or the remembrance of key frames in the Nightmare Moon saga in “Moon & Memory,” or even the journal entries of “Order from Chaos,” they can allow for interpolation of so much more than just what was put on the page. But when bound more tightly, seams tend to show, as with the puzzling motivations and contrived conflict in “Justice,” or lack of communication in “Hope.” This, I think, is why I’ve found “Fine Steps” the strongest of the “Order” sequels: each story is largely its own thing, and delivers what it needs to, then is gone. Even in the story of Celestia and Luna’s ascension, told over three chapters, there was little connective tissue between scenes, with each logically independent of the others for the most part, like the scenes of a road trip movie. The connection was not so much the plot, but the three tribal champions.
I don’t know if we’ll ever see more from Twilight Snarkle, but if he does return to writing pony, like his Equestria, I’ll be ready to give him another chance. And unlike so many of his characters, it won’t be because he screwed up the first one.
All the cool people I will not be seeing at Bronycon >:|
4073457 Wish I could see you there too. :(