Oct
27th
2016
The Perilous Romance of Swans is now done · 10:33pm Oct 27th, 2016
And I for one would love to know what you thought of it as a whole.
Yes, I understand that it ends on an odd note, and that is intentional. It represents the sort of highs and lows that Gosling will face.
Anyhow, I AM DONE! Now, I will work on finishing up or otherwise updating other stories now that this one is out of the way.
And soon, but I don't know how soon, The Perilous Gestation of Swans will begin.
I absolutly adored The Perilous Romance of Swans, and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.
more Blank? more The Catch? We never got a ending on How I Learned to Stop Being Harmonious and Learned to Love Chaos more finish that up? its been over a year on Princess Luna's Suicide Solutions it could use love. two years on Blinded By the Sun. an unprecedented month on the chase. going over older stores To Dance In Shadow jumps to mind.
loved it . It was very well done. can't wait for The Perilous Gestation of Swans.
Loved every chapter, sort of a prince and the pauper story with both protagonists being combined into one. Again with your stories, good mix of all emotions, happy, sad, angry, comedy & romance. Always glad when another chapter came up to read, always a day brightener.
Is it just me or Gosling way up there on the list of Fandom's Best OCs?
4274158 Gosling is best pony :P (OK, OK, Tarnished Teapot is stiff competition.)
This has been one seriously busy decade for Equestria, that's for sure!
Overall I ejoyed it highly.
I would like to give some constructive feedback that is purely from my point of view.
I enjoy the shared universe (Weedverse) you have crafted for these stories. It is obvious reading the other interconnected tales that some events take place corurently during Swans. However, (and this may be me overlooking things) there seems to be little mention of these events in swans. A good example would be the Train Ride in PTSSFFF. While not every little thing will be mentioned in Swans you would think such a dangerous situation Gosling was in would be brought up by Celestia or Luna and the fact of how close a call that one was.
Other than the way the story doesn't seem to acknowledge events in the other stories as much as those stories acknowledge this one my only other gripe was the characterization of Cadance.
The way she entraped Gosling in to a relationship with both Celestia and Luna is something I find reprehensible. While it all worked out OK more or less, forcing someone to choose between their very traditional values or to be in a polyamours marriage just seems out of character for Cadance. While I can see her wanting to help all three it just seems like forcing ponies who aren't in love to marry is just...brutally wrong.
Mind you my opinon on this is colored by experience. Having traditional monogomous values and being in a serious relationship with someone who wanted to have a polyamorous relationship. That didn't end well and lessons were learned.
That's just my take away.
I still loved the story, look forward to it's coninuation, and as always I respect you as a writer and a storyteller.
-Bear
4274217
Swans happens before PTSSFFF.
4274229
Well that explains that.
You still managed to make a version of Cadance I want to slap on principle. That's not a bad thing, just means you wrote a character I love to hate. An interesting take on her.
4274232
The princesses, they is skeevy, all of them.
4274234
But are they skeevers?
If so I know a Khajit that will take care of them if you have coin.
I quite enjoyed The Perilous Romance of Swans, it was the last of the core trilogy (Tarnish, Sumac, Gosling) I started to read in the Weed Cycle and was on the surface a starkly different read as it focused almost entirely on relationships over adventure. I realize now that relationships are the driving force in all of the stories in the Weed Cycle, and that Perilous Romance was still an adventure, just a more localized, more personal one. It all makes it tricky to try and analyze this individual story as you write fiction like Pink Floyd wrote their albums. Sure "Money" might be a great song but without the context that comes with the entire album the experience is incomplete. It means I have to ignore some things like Animancy, Equalism, and etc otherwise I'll start talking about your work as a whole.
The narrative pacing of this story was well executed for the most part, showing the ebbs and swells of the characters as they became closer to each other. In a way the story flowed like a crashing wave, starting out high and quickly reaching difficult rocky terrain until at last things settled into a calm sea. Still a lot lurking beneath, but pleasant and placid for now. The ending was abrupt, yes, I feel like one more short paragraph or scene could have tied it up a bit more cleanly but I agree with you that it does end at a good resting point, the perfect place for more plot to spring forth.
Character development in this was quite nice, while no one had anything conclusive every character feels like they are in a better place than they were at the beginning, despite struggles and often because of them they reached a better place than they were. At the same time everyone is still fragile, still growing, which is both apt and poignant.
This was probably the most comical story of yours I've read, not that some of the one-offs haven't made me laugh more densely but the comedy was rich and prevalent here, and that was much appreciated. Gosling's banter with Celestia as well as the physical comedy that included Seville, Hush, and Hotspur were delightful.
One thing did seemed off beat to me, and that was Gosling's inner ear damage. It did help determine his character as someone who would put the needs of others over himself, even to a fault, but with the problem all but fixed by Cadence's surge in the maternity ward the significance of the event seemed muted to me, made me wonder if it was necessary for Gosling's character or the plot of the story. Perhaps a case of characters and their competence dictating events?
I liked Cadence's character in this story and in the Weed Cycle in general. When her grand plan was discovered my first thought was, "Bold!", as she was basically hoping to see Gosling do the "right" thing, being happy with it, and everyone else involved being happy with it too and betting that against a storm of drama and royal fury. Give it to the Princess of Love to make the right choice, eh?
There's a whole other discussion that could take place about cultural parallels between the peoples of Earth and the peoples depicted in MLP:FiM and the Weed Cycle. It was an interesting choice to use Jewish American culture as a basis for the First Tribes, the parallel is easy to see, and after an initial bit of confusion on my end it all clicked, and I'm eager to see how Gosling's new role within the faith will play out in the future.
There's certainly more I could say but it's getting late so:
A wonderfully enjoyable and heartfelt read about the adventures of love, politics, and personal growth that left me eager for more out of ten.
Huh, now I really like how Cadance is written here. Granted, she's kinda going out on a limb, but then, I think some of the point is that as an effective princess who actually intends to make Equestria a better place, she kinda has to. She does put Gosling in a bit of a bind, but my read is that she pretty much already knew how that was going to turn out, and wouldn't even have attempted it otherwise. But, by taking that risk, she kills several birds with one stone: she reinvigorates Celestia, sets Luna on the path to healing, helps revitalize the First Tribes and shakes loose a stricture that, in Equestrian terms leastwise, is probably doing them more harm than good. She's also insightful enough to know that if she hadn't tried that, she could easily have wound up having to face down a tide of rising chaos without the Royal Sisters to help her, and that would have been a dicey situation indeed.
In the Weedverse, Equestria is changing an awful lot, and mainly for the better, and Cadance is one of the big driving forces of that change. (As is Twilight Sparkle, but since she's the major focus of the show, she gets a bit less limelight here). Or at least, that's how it seems to me, from a reader's perspective.
I thought you were only going to end this part after the wedding?
I like both this story and the prequel, and i am hopefull for the sequel to this one as well.
4275139
The wedding will take place in Princess Twilight Sparkle's School For Fantastic Foals.
4275143
ah, i see.
thank you.
I wish there was a title page I could sit spamming F5 on. Till then I'll just have to wear out another mouse on the click the button game. Will Cadance's extra bonus track from the wedding footage be shown?