Recommended Story Reviews #17 – Eternal · 12:50am Mar 10th, 2017
I’ve not been doing terribly well lately. Let myself just sort of fall apart, not really do… anything of value, really. I read and reviewed some stories, but I didn’t want to post them, because I wanted this to be my 1000th review… I worked on some writing, but didn’t finish it, because I let myself get stuck…
And then, today, I decided I was tired of being stuck, and read Eternal in its entirety, from start to finish, in about six hours.
Eternal was an instant classic; I remember back when I joined the fandom in 2013, it was one of the stories that the fandom had produced, a reputation it has maintained. While many recall its focus on Twilight and Celestia, it focuses on Luna as well, while wrapping itself in mythicism.
What makes it so special? And does it stand the test of time?
Eternal
by Device Heretic
Adventure, Sad
159,827 wordsMany years after sending her beloved protege to Ponyville, unease sits heavily on Princess Celestia's heart as her relationship with Twilight Sparkle seems to have cooled despite all they've accomplished together. On the advice of her sister, Celestia sets out to investigate and resolve the lost connection with her most faithful student. What does it mean to be a Faithful Student...or a Princess of the Sun?
Review
This story is written to be a piece of pony literature, and it shows. This is a novel-length work, approximately the same length as The Two Towers, and it is designed to be a weighty work, the sort of thing you thump people upside the head with.
Set some indefinite length of time into the future, the story starts with Princess Celestia receiving a very perfunctory, impersonal letter from (unicorn) Archmage Twilight Sparkle, who is overseeing the preparations for Fluttershy’s wedding. It seems Twilight wants Princess Celestia and Luna to attend. Luna has been spending time with Twilight, but Celestia has been growing ever more distant – too distant, really. And as Celestia realizes that she has let her faithful stud… Twilight slip away from her, she decides to go to Ponyville to spend some time with her.
But even in Ponyville, Celestia and Twilight stand apart; Twilight tries to be perfect, detached, and yet simultaneously warm, a crude facsimile of Princess Celestia’s own demeanor. While Celestia and Luna fret over this, and how bad things have gotten, Celestia comes to realize that her graduation of Twilight was a mistake – that Twilight was still seeking her approval, and had never truly come into her own, as well as the fact that Celestia herself was building up an artificial distance between them.
Then things get mythic. Celestia loses control of herself and starts burning as brightly as she ever has, sending Rarity and Twilight into temporary stupors, the latter of which Luna has to rescue Twilight from. Worse, Celestia herself falls into a terrible torpor – one not even Luna herself understands. It is up to Twilight and Luna to dive into the mind of Celestia and try to bring her back to herself.
But Celestia has been Equestria’s Eternal Sun for a long time. Just as Luna waxes and wanes, so must Celestia rise and set. But she hasn’t set in a long time…
The thing most people remember about this story is the dive into Celestia’s mind, which does, in all fairness, occupies nearly 50,000 words. What I had forgotten was just how long it takes to get there. The dive only happens at the end of chapter 5 – 63,000 words into the piece. That’s a full Brave New World or As I Lay Dying into the story!
And indeed, the plot itself only gets into full swing in chapter 3 ,which is more than 20,000 words into the piece.
This is not a fast-paced work. And indeed, this is a pacing issue – in memory, this story didn’t have that much happen in it. The full arc is not that long in terms of mindspace, and indeed, many much shorter works feel like as much happens in them as happens in this.
This slow pacing does have some value to it – we do get to learn, in great detail, how the main characters (Luna, Celestia, and most especially Twilight Sparkle) feel about things. There are many extremely long discussions, and indeed, this story features a conversation which lasts 16,000 words, though it is broken up a bit with flashbacks. And the length of it makes it feel wearing, which helps us to feel the weariness of the characters – by the end of the work, Luna, Twilight, and Celestia have all been put through an emotional wringer by the things they’ve seen. And indeed, I suspect that if this work had been shorter, it might not have had this layer of impact.
But at the same time, I was left wondering how it managed to spend so many words on so little. In particular, the first three chapters are a very slow burn; it is only really when Luna has to delve into Twilight’s mind (a preview of the much longer delve into Celestia’s mind) that things start to pick up. But the story still manages to spend an extremely large amount of time in delivering its content, and I can’t help but feel like this story could have been made a lot punchier.
Moreover, the first three chapters are told from Celestia’s point of view, but it deliberately hides the central conflict of the piece – we don’t really find out what is happening until almost the end, despite the fact that Celestia must have known what was going on earlier on, even if she was in denial about it – indeed, she even mentions feeling guilt over it. This bothers me somewhat, as the first person perspective here feeds us a lot of thoughts, but just sort of avoids a major subject.
Still, this piece contains some good stuff. The delve into Celestia’s mind is very memorable, and the various interpretations of Twilight and Celestia’s relationship which the story throws up in this section – and how they are all wrong in their own ways – is a fun thing to read. Indeed, it is because of these many angles that this piece is so memorable; these 50,000 words of story give us a lot about how Twilight, Luna, and Celestia feel about each other, and it really puts the characters through the wringer as their various thoughts, desires, and fears become manifest in Celestia’s mind. This whole section is a very interesting section of trials, all the more so because we care about Twilight and Celestia’s relationship.
The very mythical vision of Luna and Celestia given here doesn’t really square with what the show has, though it was written back in season 2 and it works quite well as its own particular mythology – Luna and Celestia are interesting characters as presented here, and the story gets a lot of mileage out of what little had been seen of them in the show. The worldbuilding here is interesting, and the fact that it is all made intensely personal works very well – it isn’t just about stuff, it is about how it is all impacting people.
By making the mythology so intensely personal, it makes the mythology work to further the characterization of the characters, and it makes us care about the mythology precisely because of its direct influence on the characters. The backstory delivered throughout the piece works well for adding extra pieces to Luna and Celestia.
The story as a whole has a great deal of emotional weight to it – it is all about getting to the root of how characters care about each other, with the adventure being intimately tied to this characterization. Indeed, the central device of diving into people’s minds makes the various battles in the center of the mind matter. It isn’t just a series of external challenges, it is a series of challenges which are intimately related to the relationships between the characters in the story, and as it goes on, we see an increasing level of complexity, as the characters have to deal with all the hurts they have delivered onto each other over many years – or in some cases, centuries – in a single day.
In the end, the conclusion is not only a conclusion to the central conflict in the story, but also offers a great deal of emotional closure both between the characters and the audience, as they are all forced to work through their issues before the events of the plot make that impossible. They all clearly love and care about each other, and by the end of it the reader is left with no doubt in their mind that Twilight, Celestia, and Luna all love each other. While the story is in many ways sad, it is also hopeful, and by the end of it, despite things having gone badly, they also have gone very well as everyone finally has the chance to bind and heal their emotional (as well as magical) wounds, and to stop inflicting them on each other.
However, it is not perfect. The story has the whole of the mane six (plus Spike) represented in it, but in the end, they don’t really contribute a vast amount to the plot. Indeed, a lot of what they do feels like decidedly side content, and almost none of it ultimately impacts the main plot of the story in any way after the first few chapters. Moreover, as noted, the start of the piece feels a bit stuttering, and a bit like the story itself isn’t quite sure what it is shaping up to be – it looks like Celestia is going to be fixing Twilight, but the story ends up being the other way around. While this sort of misdirection isn’t a bad thing, it feels oddly dissonant from the rest of the work, almost like it was working up to be a different story than it was before radically changing directions. Given that this story was posted in a few days, I’m pretty sure that this was not the case, but it does feel strange.
I also have to admit that I disagree with the ending in some critical ways. In particular, it seems to think that Twilight’s mortality just makes her more special, but in the end, it doesn’t really do a particularly good job of earning this conclusion (one which I disagree with thoroughly anyway).
Still, this is a piece of Pony Literature, and its reputation was well-earned. If you’re looking for a story about the relationship between Luna, Celestia, and Twilight, this is a piece that might well be worth your while. That being said, this may not be for everyone; if you can’t stand slow pacing, this story may put you off before it can really hook you.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended if you don’t mind slow pacing, and one of the fifteen stories you should read.
I have let this hang over my head for too long. Hopefully, henceforth I will be more productive.
I am two poems away from finishing a 10,000 word long TwiDash story, A Thousand Roses. I have another review set I’ll have finished soon. So hopefully, I shall once again join the land of the living.
For those of you who have noticed my silence over these last few weeks… sorry. I shall try to do better in the future.
Here's to the next 1000 reviews!
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 171
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 603
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2108
1000 reviews. Quite a milestone, TD! Congrats! *raises a cider to the next 1000*
Ugh, I hate this story. D: It's so dumb! You're dumb! I'm dumb. :B
gj41k
4449879
Why did you hate the story? Slow pacing? Did you not approve of Twilight like-liking Celestia? The mythicness of it?
Wait, I can look this up! You write reviews!
4449884
This, but also this. :B
DH seemed to be someone who wrote a lot of Twilestia yet absolutely hated the idea of them being in love. It's confounding! And I say this as the author of the Beer and a Knife Fight trilogy. :V
4449892 On the bright side, at least DH finished his weighty, deeply emotional Twilestia story. [cough]Composure[/cough]
/still holding out hope that it finishes at some point
4449910
Yeah, Composure was a neat thing. Though sadly, I have my doubts it will ever get finished.
Not that I'm one to talk... I swear I'm going to finish my incomplete stuff!
4449892
Admittedly I've only read a couple of his stories, but I liked both Eternal and Just Words. Eternal does sort of ship Twilestia, but it isn't a shipfic (though man, he loves SpitDash and threw it in there as part of the "the rest of the mane six are in this story for some reason but don't really do anything" subplot), and really it is quite ambiguous at the end as to whether or not there was actual romance between Twilight and Celestia.
Just Words is gloriously tragic and is very much not a Twilestia shipfic, given it is a Momlestia one.
Darn it TD and PP, now I gotta go read Eternal and jump on the bandwagon of reviewing it...
4449930
It has actually been reviewed seven times! Including by the Pony Fiction Vault.
4449977
But you and PP are the only ones I can find/ truly care about... not that I don't care about other reviewers, but I trust you guys the most. Next on the trust scale comes Loganberry, but he hasn't reviewed it.
Congrats on 1000 reviews!
That TwiDash story sounds intriguing.
Eternal is a weird story for me. The first time I read it, it was a struggle to finish and was the first story I contemplated leaving unfinished (back before when I tried to read every story no matter how much I disliked it). Having reread it a while back though, the slow pace that left me bored to tears on my first read was no longer an obstacle in my read. In fact, similarly to you, I read the story in two sittings. And now it's sitting on my top favorites bookshelf. Huh.
Congrats on the 1000 reviews, TD!
There's a good story in Eternal, but it's located somewhere on the other side of an editor with a hacksaw.
4449922
He's got another (light) SpitDash fic, and it's probably his best one. He should've stuck with what worked. :V
4450011
Aw, thanks!
Always lovely to hear things like that.
(Take that, other reviewers! Don't worry, I still love you all
)
4450052
Thank you!
4450141
And you as well!
Maybe it is because you know that there's a payoff for what you're wading through? Knowing that the story is actually going somewhere interesting may help mitigate its slow pace.
Congrats on 1k! And welcome back!
Gotta go with 4450212 on this one. I tried twice to make it through the first three chapters, and failed both times. It's heartening to hear that it gets much better afterward, but I'm probably not going to have the spirit for try #3.
4450390
That's a good point. But on the other hand there are stories like Dangerous Business which I found slow the first time and still wasn't especially impressed the second time. It could also be a factor of content matter, I suppose.
4450141
Strangely, I went back to look at the comment I made after finishing this story because I remember hating it a lot, but it's a positive comment! I remember it being a slog to get through and thinking that at some point the last half of the chapters could be read in any order, not really making it a narrative. It is an exhaustive fic, and exhausting to read.
4450609
While the first three chapters are the weakest part of the story (and a bit weird, as I noted in the review, insofar that they feel a bit like they belonged to a different story, though they do make sense with Eternal), the slow pacing is something which is present throughout the piece. So, yeah. Probably not worth making another attempt if it put you off the first two times.
As Bad Horse said:
Out of curiosity, have you read Skywriter's Heretical Fictions?
Congrats on the grand review!
I read this story as it was coming out, and I think that may have had a significant effect on my perception of it. Oddly enough, my opinion closely mirrors your own, though I may have enjoyed it more; it's on my Top Favorites bookshelf.
If I read it today... well, I've just recently abandoned a couple of long fics that weren't necessarily bad, just slow. So, yeah... from a different perspective, or changing tastes, it might not fare so well.
Great review. I remeber when I finally got around toreading this story. It became one of my favorites.
Congratulations on 1000 reviews!
I generally consider that a red flag… but then again you've written 1000 more reviews than I have
4451337
It is a red flag. But not everything that sends up red flags is bad.
Red and black alicorn OCs are a huge red flag, but The Saga of Dark Demon King Ravenblood Nightblade, Interior Design Alicorn is wonderful.
Eternal is very slow-paced, but it ends up being a good story because of its content, and the slow pacing does work for it to some extent, though it could probably stand to be many tens of thousands of words shorter than it is. But I judge something based on what it is, in the end - and in the end, it is a very interesting story.
That said, it isn't for everyone - the slow pacing is definitely offputting for a lot of people, which is why I hightlighted it in my review. It really IS something that a lot of people simply cannot and won't stand.
4450912
To answer your question, I'm honestly not sure. I have a checkmark next to its chapter, but I haven't upvoted or bookshelved it, which is unusual for me (especially for a writer like Skywriter whose works I almost universally upvote). I'd guess I opened the chapter at one point and realized I ought to read the source work first?
As a little bit of interesting trivia and perhaps an explanation for the odd first three chapters, at the time the story was going to be going in a completely different direction. DH commented that the story originally started with Twilight and Luna in a relationship that I think had yet to be revealed to Celestia with the conflict coming from Twilight accidentally lucid dreaming Luna into Celestia several times during their more steamy dream sessions and the story would have dealt with her unresolved feelings towards Celestia. He claimed it had been going in a direction more akin to Romance Reports and talks with Varanus aimed in a new direction after either chapter 2 or 3 had already been published.