Paul's Thursday Reviews LVI · 1:07am Nov 18th, 2016
First thing's first: no reviews next week. By happy coincidence, my next regular Break Week comes over the Thanksgiving Holidays!
But alas, I won't be being lazy all that time. A friend lassoed me into pre-reading his original fiction months ago, and the story's finally ready for me to do so. This is likely to take me some time. More importantly, it's eating into my own daily reading/writing period. I know it's sacrilegious to say so, but I do like to do non-literary things with my day. The result is that I'm likely to spend the next two weeks doing a lot less work on my own stories, be that writing or editing.
I don't mind. It's high time I did something not pony related for a while. Maybe it'll help me do better once I'm back to focusing 100% on it. And it's not like I'm not writing horse words, I'm just doing it at a much slower pace.
Alrighty, let's get to the reviews.
Stories for This Week:
The Only One in Color by RazgrizS57
Celestia by Arad
The Wayfarers by TheFictionAddiction
Letters from a Little Princess Monster by Georg
Antithesis by Thought Prism
Total Word Count: 163,021
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 2
Pretty Good: 0
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 0
None: 0
The Only One in Color
16,802 Words
by RazgrizS57
I feel the need to point out that this author’s name sent me on an hour-long scouring of wikis in order to reminisce on what used to be one of my all-time favorite video game franchises. It led to me discovering that there’s supposedly a new one being made, and the hope that it will be an improvement over the most recent entries has me unnecessarily excited. So thank you, RazgrizS57, for inadvertently bringing this to my attention. I’m sure my wallet will be cursing your name sometime in 2017.
So, the story. Imagine, for a moment, this crazy idea: Pinkie is color blind. Let it seep in for a moment.
In The Only One in Color, we find a twelve-year-old Pinkie moving to Ponyville with her aunt and uncle, the Cakes. While they are busy in town hall trying to get some paperwork done, Pinkie finds herself waiting in the carriage with a raging storm outside. This is all fine - if boring - by her, but then a similarly aged filly asks to be let in from the rain. Now trapped in a confined space with a talkative little Dashie, Pinkie finds herself thinking about things she really doesn’t want to think about.
In a way, you can think of this as an ‘origin story’ for Pinkie. We learn where a lot of her ideas and phrases come from, including the Pinkie Promise and her love of smiles. All of it is painted in the sad light of a pony who can only see in shades of grey and pink, which adds an interesting slant I certainly never anticipated.
What I liked most about this was how it really digs into the mind of Pinkie, revealing her to be a lot smarter, thoughtful and considerate than her in-show demeanor suggests even while supporting the idea that she’s moving towards that familiar personality. Making Rainbow her catalyst worked perfectly, taking her energetic and friendly manner and applying it to a sad, scared and lost mind. One part wisdom and one part blatantly unaware, Rainbow’s presence in this story is a breath of fresh air both for Pinkie and the reader.
The writing is also a nice touch, particularly in the way it describes the world that is Pinkie’s carriage. The way the storm and the carriage interacts with the fillies plays with the overarching concept, reflecting how Pinkie has become a prisoner of her own mind. The use of the scene to subtly underwrite the entire mood and subsequent escape is downright masterful, and strongly supported by Pinkie’s demonstrated ability to take in fine details. Indeed, without those details I don’t think this story would have been half as interesting.
I can see why this story did so well, and for once I am happy to support the overwhelmingly positive rating that it has justly earned. This story is nothing like I expected, but ended up being everything it should be. RazgrizS57, you now have my attention.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Stardust was a strong crossover story in which Twilight found herself caught in the wartorn world of the XCOM series of games. The story was made especially good by its flawless combination of Equestrian and XCOM concepts without requiring any knowledge of the games themselves.
Celestia, however, is an entirely different animal. While set in the same universe as Stardust, it is strictly Equestrian with no reference to the XCOM universe (with one potential exception that you’ll miss if you’re not looking for it). Set prior to the unification of Equestria, the story follows the villainous goddess of Equus, Solaria. Solaria believes the world can only be perfect via a rigid, orderly caste system, and anything that does not fit into that system is to be removed… by any means necessary. Her only response to things which displease her is violence, and her godlike status makes it so that not a soul, not even an army of dragons, could possibly hope to harm her.
Enter a being from another world: Discord. Seeing the stagnation of Solaria’s world, he attempts to convince her to reform. When she refuses, he hits her with a spell that renders her unable to cause physical harm to any living thing. With no means to enforce her tyrannical rule, Solaria panics and flees from society in search of some means of escaping her curse. And so things remain… until she meets a wizened old unicorn and his precocious granddaughter in the forest.
This is a Celestia headcanon I can get behind. The story, for all its brevity, effectively shows how Celestia grew into being the pony she is today. It provides a great reason behind her tendency to never directly act in her nation’s or citizen’s defense, her manipulative nature, and her distinct love for her sister. It cements Starswirl’s reputation in their world, gives a clearer picture of why the races were so divided for so long, and even gives us the origins of the Elements of Harmony. It does all of this, and manages to do so in a way that is believable and highly enjoyable to read. And there's so much more hidden in this story, I just don't have time to get to it all.
If I had to point out anything I didn’t care for, it would be that I feel the story could have better demonstrated Solaria’s development. What we have isn’t bad at all, but every now and then a topic would come up that seemed a little sudden or an observation would be made that felt as if it came too early. I think this may have to do with a lack of time awareness; that is to say, it’s hard for the reader to place just how much time has passed from one chapter to the next. Was Solaria with Starswirl and Lulu for weeks? Months? Years? There’s not much to go by in this regard, and I think it would have helped to lessen the suddenness of some of the events.
Alternatively, Arad could have written a few more scenes to demonstrate more changes in Solaria’s character. However, I can see the potential for that to add needless extra material too, and it’s possible that Arad actually cut things away to give us a more refined, tight pacing. If that sacrifice was made, I won’t complain, because what we have is very well paced.
All in all, I loved this story. It somehow manages to cover a large variety of topics believably, and while I would have loved to have seen more of this world's history, I think it ended at a good place. I question the need to having the prologue and epilogues, but those are minor issues. For all the good that is this story, the only thing keeping it from landing a Round Robin feature is that it’s already past the popularity limitations for it.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
The Wayfarers
72,557 Words (Partial Reading)
by TheFictionAddiction
Requested by Cyb3rSamurai
I know I’ve said it before, but for those of you not in the know: I usually don’t read incomplete stories. I only do so under specific circumstances, such as (in this case) a request. I typically don’t like doing it, but every now and then it pays off. In this case, I only read up to Chapter 12, since that’s how far along it was when it finally hit my 5-weeks-ahead schedule.
The Wayfarers focuses on two groups. The first is Alabaster (who should have been named Abrasive), Little Whisper and Midnight Dreary, three ponies from outside Equestria’s borders looking for a new life in the free world. Unfortunately, they’re showing up a few short months after the whole Tirek thing, and outsiders aren’t looked too highly upon right now. On the other side of the spectrum is the griffon mercenary Quill and his adopted filly Speira, who are in the Crystal Empire on business. They’re getting a firsthand look at how far Equestria has fallen in the last few months; recovery efforts after Tirek have led to a collapsing economy, Royal Guards and Mages are deserting and turning to banditry in droves, and the country is steadily falling into a dark and dangerous time.
The most interesting character in this entire story is Speira, a 12-year-old filly who has been trained by her father to be nothing short of a lethal weapon, but is still an excitable child on the inside. I loved her character, ever trying to be the mature pony and earn her father’s love but also wanting to go out and do foal things. And before you go thinking her father’s an evil asshole, Quill is himself an interesting character, living a violent life but loving his child dearly and only wanting to prepare her for the hard life he believes is ahead. I thoroughly enjoyed the dynamic between these two and would have loved to have learned how they met.
Sadly, Alabaster, Whisper and Midnight didn’t interest me as much. This is unfortunate since they are, effectively, the primary characters of the story. This is largely because nothing seems to happen to them that is of any consequence. Oh, sure, they get kicked out of Dodge Junction, but by their manner it doesn’t seem like anything unusual for the trio. Alabaster’s a prick two thirds of the time without reason, making him hard to appreciate, Whisper is the clichéd ‘secretly a changeling’ character with a heart of gold, and Midnight is the tired amnesiac trope. None of them have been able to hold my interest for very long.
But this isn’t a problem with their character designs, not really. All three of them have potential to be interesting. The problem is the ponderous nature of the story itself. The story plods along, showing you all sorts of things that I suppose are meant to introduce the characters and get us acquainted with the world. If this were to be a slice of life, that might not be so bad, but this is supposed to be an adventure. We don’t even get a hint that something big is supposed to happen in this story until Chapter 8, and that’s an amateurish one-sentence narrative declaration. Heck, we don’t get any real sign that something interesting and important might be about to happen until Chapter 10 when Shining Armor personally requests Quill’s presence, and even then we’re being forced to wait another three chapters at least.
If you’re trying to write an adventure and make things interesting, you don’t spend ten chapters setting the scene. The hook is weak, and with nothing else to evoke interest for so many chapters, I can see why this story is lacking in attention. But it’s too late for the author to pick up the pace, because it’s now Chapter 13 and most of the readers have moved on to more exciting stories. And honestly, I’m not encouraged to follow this story to see where it’s going. We should already know by now.
Kudos where they are due. TheFictionAddiction is doing a decent job of crafting a fully realized world, Speira and Quill are certainly interesting characters, the gradual revelation of changeling headcanon may be worth looking at, and it may be interesting to see how the princesses rule over a country in decline. Also, anyone who can update his story on a monthly basis like clockwork is worth noting.
But the story is just too slow to launch.
Letters From a Little Princess Monster
33,493 Words (Partial Reading)
By Georg
Sequel to The Monster in the Twilight
As I watched in the background, I kept getting notices about this story updating. By now, it has stretched out to over 250,000 words, and I was starting to question the style of the story. I suspected it might be one of those ‘neverending’ pieces that is a bunch of small stories in an endless stream. Georg somewhat confirmed that, but suggested I read up to a certain point in the story, and I thought ‘why not?’
Letters starts immediately where The Monster in the Twilight left off, with Monster (that’s Twilight, for those of you not in the know) having been reborn as an alicorn filly and moving to Ponyville with her adopted mother, Zecora. The story follows her efforts to get over her many traumas and adjust to public life with the help of her foal friends, the remaining Mane 6, and showmare-turned-town-librarian Trixie. Doesn’t make much sense? Yeah, you really need to read Monster before reading this one.
Georg’s typical laissez faire is back in play here, with the story regularly meandering around to different topics not entirely related to the main subject. However, this doesn’t bother me as much as it did in the original. This is mostly because of the altered nature of the story as something ongoing, which leaves the impression that unexplained things could be brought back for a proper bit of detail later.
I’ve also become more tolerant to Georg’s frequent use of comedic tangents. They seem less common here, for one. I don’t think I’m the only one who believes the recurring ‘Big Mac gets all the Princesses’ joke doesn't do anything positive for the story. I didn’t let it bother me too much this time, and I think that’s largely because I’m coming to accept Georg’s humor-centric style. But honestly? When I see this variety of attempted humor appearing side-by-side with genuinely serious issues more suited to a dark story, I can’t help but think that the author needs to pick an audience and stick with it.
But what about the parts that are actually important to the story? Well, those are worthwhile. From Monster trying to fit in to Luna facing the Nocturn race Nightmare Moon created for the first time, there’s a lot of decent drama in there. It never seems to fall into melodrama, although that’s partially due to the author’s insistence of maintaining at least a grain of humor in everything that ever happens. That I don’t believe to be a bad thing, as it balances out the seriousness quite nicely (Monster’s observations are always the best parts).
All in all, I like what I’m seeing. While the overall style is more of the same thing we’ve already seen, I do get a subtle impression that Georg is honing his skills. I’m considering reading another few segments of the story for further review, although I might make it a longer one this time.
Still no rating from me, though. Story’s gotta be finished before I do that, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of it anyway.
Antithesis
8,848 Words
By Thought Prism
Sequel to Name Rater
Name Rater starred the titular character, a pony whose special talent is to be able to identify traits in others via a mere look. With this ability, he is responsible for naming every pony born in Equestria, and was made immortal (and technically a prince) by Celestia and Luna just so he could continue doing so. Antithesis is a sequel only in that it takes place in the same universe as Name Rater. I don’t hold this against Thought Prism, as I often set my own stories as ‘sequels’ simply for the benefit of demonstrating chronology. This story was written in response to the old conundrum: if you could go back in time and kill Hitler while he was still a child, would you do so?
The story starts with Name Rater going to see Princess Twilight because he's seen some dark things in a newborn foal he’s named Anthesis. Her special talent is – will be – inversion. Given the nebulous nature of this ability, Name Rater wants to investigate what this means in a practical sense. He is directed to Zecora, who lets him drink from the same potion Twilight used at the beginning of Season 4 to look into the future (because apparently it can look back and forward).
What he finds is a perfectly normal, well-adjusted filly. He follows her gradual, average, happy upbringing with no clues whatsoever to negativity.
Then she gets her cutie mark.
First off, I like this concept. I love the idea behind Antithesis, an idea that could make for an intriguing story should Thought Prism ever consider fully exploring it. I would like to see a sequel that explores Antithesis being tutored and trained in an effort to not go down the road destiny insists upon. But for now we’re offered only a glimpse at what she could become and the solution Name Rater and Twilight come to.
Where the story fails, however, is in its focus. 90% of the story centers on Antithesis growing up and how she becomes an unbeatable monster. Then we get to the topic that, supposedly, is the entire point of the story? Why isn’t that the focus of at least 50% of this tale? And Twilight came to her conclusion far too quickly, even with Name Rater there to encourage it. There are still alternative options, alternatives that might doom Equestria anyway, but still options I’m sure Twilight would have taken for the sake of the slim chance of success.
But it’s not even the fact that Twilight agreed with Name Rater in the end that bugs me. The argument lasted what, five minutes? This is not a decision to be made off the cuff. There are three other princesses to get involved, debates to be had, repercussions to be recognized! And let’s not forget that Name Rater only saw the beginning of the end, not bothering to look and see how everything would turn out. That matters.
So yes, I like this story, but I think the crux of the tale was given far too little importance, which deadens its overall value in my eyes. Had Thought Prism taken a bit more time to focus on the debate rather than the debate’s cause, I likely would have appreciated this more.
As a side note, I see what you did there with the crayons, Thought Prism. Nicely done.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Liked these reviews? Check out some others:
Paul's Thursday Reviews XLVI
Paul's Thursday Reviews XLVII
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Paul's Thursday Reviews XLIX
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Paul's Thursday Reviews LI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LIV
Paul's Thursday Reviews XLV
Want me to review your story? Send me a request! Check my profile page for rules.
Now that you mention it, yeah, I kinda did rush that ending didn't I? Not only that, but I effectively compounded my own error by heavily emphasizing it as the main theme of the piece. Now, I'm honestly not sure what I was thinking when I wrote it. Still, I'm more proud of it than some of my other works, and I'm glad you found the concept largely enjoyable, at least.
Hmm. Maybe I should recruit some prereaders, help me hammer out similar kinks in my upcoming works. My creativity clearly isn't the issue, it's how I execute my ideas. Thanks for the enlightening review, Paul.
PS: I'm glad you thought it was neat, but whatever you saw in the crayons, it was unintentional. I was just picking random colors.
Perhaps it was a subconscious smarts coming through. Allow me to point it out:
1) What color was the crayon that turned yellow?
2) What color did Twilight change to?
I read and enjoyed "The Only One in Color." Now, I know the story's been edited since I read it, so this might not apply anymore, but it bugged me that the word "color" was made invisible, because that's not the effect that should have been going on. Pinkie's colorblind. That doesn't mean those colors are invisible to her; it means they just look like hues of gray.
I agree with you that the prose in the narration was good. Evocative word choice, nice use of language. The problem I had with it is that it was completely misdirected as a first-person narration for Pinkie. It sounds nothing like her. Yeah, I'll cop to the possibility that she has a huge personality shift after moving to Ponyville. It's not that she's quiet and contemplative where one might expect her to be exuberant and wacky. She has a reason to be not so happy right now, and it's fine, even a good idea, to have the narration reflect that. But she uses very advanced language here, with complex phrasings, sophisticated imagery, and lots of big words. And that's not going to change just because she revised her outlook on life. Her decision to actively use them, perhaps, but not her fundamental knowledge of them. This is language on a level Twilight uses, but how many times in canon does Pinkie fail to grasp pretty simple concepts (for comic reasons, to be sure) or not understand a similarly fancy word Twilight's used? In short, while her mood might change, her intelligence isn't going to, and unless she's deliberately acting dumber in canon (and why would she?), it's a pretty big inconsistency. Now, if this had been an omniscient narrator? No problem. Then it's not Pinkie, so it doesn't have to match her. But the way the story's written, it is her.
That said, readers don't always make that connection, and they can keep up this dichotomy of the character and narrator being the same yet not the same, so if that's not going to bug them, I can definitely see the prose being engrossing to read. It may just be me. I did discuss this in an Equestria Daily forum with two other PRs who'd read it independently, though (Ferret and Slorg), and they agreed. That doesn't make us objectively right, of course, but at least it makes me feel better that I'm not conjuring the idea out of thin air.
I have to say I got hyped when I saw your name in the doc. Glad to see you working on the project!
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Alternatively, it could be that the three of you need to learn to relax, get that death grip off the steering wheel, take a few deep breaths and learn to just enjoy the ride.
But this is you we're talking about, so let's get realistic. While I can definitely see the logic behind your argument, and would argue that most people certainly wouldn't notice (although I can't say that conclusively), I don't think it's hard to imagine Pinkie has having that level of intellect given what she can do in the show. We've seen her high organizational skills (Party Pooped), engineering (any episode involving party cannons, flying gadgets or whatever), seemingly bizarre spurts of logical conclusion and frequent instances of perception that can either be attributed to a sixth sense or a strong capacity for observational analysis. Yes, all these things could be chalked down to just the show playing around (Twilight bursting into flames, anyone?), but they could also hint at a secret intellect.
Why would she hide that? There are many reasons. Maybe she's worried ponies might be put off if she shows how smart she really is (her insecurities have been laid bare before). Maybe she thinks her 'fun' personae doesn't mesh well with a visible intellect. Maybe it's a way to keep everyone second guessing how she does the things she does ("She's just being Pinkie Pie."). Maybe it comes and goes, as in part of some mental disorder. There are tons of ways to justify it.
Of course, the fact that there are tons of ways to justify doesn't put the story in the clear, because there's no way each individual reader is going to bother with trying to make said justifications. But if we assume most readers won't notice in the first place (and again, that's not something we can prove), then it only matters if the author was actively trying to impress the high-browed judges.
Bear in mind, I'm not saying you're objectively right or wrong. All I'm saying is that there are ways to justify Pinkie's intellect as shown in the story. The problem is that trying to justify that within the story would have been well out of bounds with the story's scope, which I think makes it a bigger problem than it probably should be.
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...
My presence gets people hyped?
...
4307174 I mean, at least I got hyped. I would think our friend might've gotten pretty hyped. Overall hype levels probably rose a little.
4307172 I don't know what you mean about having a death grip on the steering wheel. I mean, I don't see how it's too much to ask that when a narrator is identically Pinkie that she should sound like Pinkie or that the difference should be explained. A reader can always make up his own reasons to make it plausible, but at some point, the reader's having to do what should be the author's job. Say Pinkie had a Greek accent here, a severe gluten allergy, a large scar on her cheek. How far can an author push it before he needs to start providing a justification? It's the narrator being OOC, which is a common thing to call out authors for. There's also a difference between an author making a conscious choice to break the usual guidelines of writing and one who has to take on the baggage of a choice he didn't realize he was making.
Relax? Sure. I said I enjoyed the story. I also enjoy good special effects, but that didn't necessarily make Transformers a good movie, even though I can enjoy it for them. I'm simply being honest. That bothered me about the story, not because I went into it looking for that or looking to be bothered in general, but just because I read it, and it didn't feel right to me. That's got nothing to do with relaxing. That's just how I read a story. I go along with it, and when something trips me up, I stop to see what it is and understand why. Maybe it's a misspelled word, a strange phrasing, a logical inconsistency in the plot. And for every one of those things, I've had authors tell me each one shouldn't matter, that I should be able to gloss over them, but where to draw the line? That's the trick, isn't it? What can we excuse, and what do we insist is essential? For my money, narrative voice is one of the most important things to get right, because that's the window through which you experience the story. Others can divorce themselves from that, enjoying the words for the words and the story for the story, and not caring if the two meet. There's nothing right or wrong about enjoying a story, Hell, if you're wrong about this one, so am I. But I don't see what it accomplishes to brand it elitist for a reader to want these things from a story or for the author to aspire to them. It's not like getting that right would alienate the people who aren't bothered by it. Might as well have as broad an appeal as you can.
You've read "Simply Rarity," right? I never have. I constantly hear this same criticism of it: that it's a wonderful story, but that it's not about Rarity, but I can't say whether I agree, of course.
So, yeah, both of us understand what the other is saying. That's all I really wanted.
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Well, I started a practice of taking every other review set and making them nothing but the type of story I was most overloaded with at the time, which occasionally meant requests, so I got to it faster. I've finally got my Re-reads down to a manageable level, so I'm likely to stop that practice soon, but hey, at least I got to yours, right? Had I been doing my normal methods before, you'd have likely been waiting until February or so.
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Well, I suppose I have no room to argue when it's put in that light. I'd like to debate this one a bit more (because for once I'm actually liking this one), but I'm not sure I could come up with anything convincing.
Plus I have to leave for work in three minutes, and I could never formulate an argument in that kind of time.
There's a lawyer joke that roughly goes: A junior partner in the law firm goes to his father, who just retired, and says, "Dad! I resolved the Filvert family will!"
The father says, "You resolved it? Why? I left that to you as an annuity, much like my father left it to me!"
Letters From a Little Princess Monster is much the same, I fear. I may be writing chapters on it until I'm old and grey... Wait a minute. I'm already old and grey.
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Could be worse. You could be like me: completely grey by 25.
I like to tell people it's my wisdom showing.
5707299 One of my roommates in college was grey down both sides. Never got carded in bars. From him, I got my general dislike for CW McCall (after about the fiftieth play of his records in a row) I'm just glad I inherited my mother's hair, because my father's hair wasn't there by the time he was my age. (still a little grey around the edges, Mr. Fantastic style-ish.)