Read It Later Reviews #73 – A Mark of Appeal · 4:48am Mar 24th, 2017
Two Thursdays ago, I read Eternal.
Last Thursday, I finished my latest story, A Thousand Roses, and got it ready for editing.
Today, I decide to tackle another longfic, this time one I had not previously read – Estee’s A Mark of Appeal.
A Mark of Appeal
by Estee
Drama, Medical Mystery
132,435 wordsAs the centuries pass, cutie marks come and go. Some are common: the healing cross, the basic compass rose, the courier bag. Others are extinct: no more mercenary companies, no more mercenary marks. A few are incredibly scarce, coming along once a generation or less: the mark for luck falls into that category. A number only manifest when the call for them arrives: train tracks didn't appear until it was railroading time. But for the most part, ponies take their mark with its associated talent and magic as a blessing in their lives -- no matter what that mark turns out to be. And they accept it as they accept themselves.
Luna, in her first truly open palace session dealing with the public, is about to meet the exception: Joyous Release, a pony who wants nothing more than to be rid of her mark forever -- and every bit of the talent which comes with it.
But marks are permanent...
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
Oi. This is a long story. I know Eternal is long, but this felt longer, and took longer to read, despite A Mark of Appeal being almost 30,000 words shorter.
And yet, at the same time, this story also felt shorter than Eternal did.
It was a weird experience.
A Mark of Appeal is a story primarily about Princess Luna and Princess Celestia. The titular mark of appeal appears on a pony named Joyous Release. Per pony naming traditions, a name this terrible is accompanied by a terrible cutie mark – namely, the image of a mare’s hindquarters.
She’s a pegasus pony with a special talent – sex appeal.
And it’s a special talent that is not only so powerful that it crosses all lines of gender and orientation, but it demands attention, basically making her into a pony that everyone wants to get their hooves on.
She doesn’t like her talent. But worst of all – she can’t turn it off.
She’s been lurking around the wild zones around Equestria, wrapping herself in nasty-smelling sacks and hiding from other ponies, but upon hearing that Princess Luna was holding an open court session, she decides to take her chances and show up.
After all, it isn’t like the guards are going to stop her.
Too bad that Luna and Celestia are just as susceptible to her mark as everyone else.
And they really want to help her, and will go to the ends of Equestria and beyond to prove it.
This seems like the core conflict of the story. But it is, surprisingly, not really what the story is actually about.
This story is really about Luna and Celestia being very old and very important people. It is about how the world depends very heavily on their continued existence and leadership, and how their power, while potent, is also at times difficult to use because of the enormous risk it entails to the world should they fall.
Luna and Celestia control the Sun and the Moon, and should they both fall or perish, everyone else might very well be doomed. This casts a rather dark pall over a lot of the story, as Luna and Celestia have to struggle with being enormously powerful but still not being able to take certain risks because should something happen to them, the world would be in serious trouble. It is outright stated that in the past, ponies have died to their inaction, and yet, simultaneously, Luna and Celestia are constantly compelled to act, because they are good ponies who want to save not just the world, but all the ponies in it.
This is very much an Estee story, with all that entails. Set back during Season 3, between the freeing of the Crystal Empire and Discord’s reformation, the story documents Luna and Celestia’s attempts at trying to find some sort of way of fixing Joyous’s problems, while focusing a great deal on Celestia’s psychological scars and baggage, as well as her interactions with her sister and the world in general. Indeed, while the story starts out with Luna, Celestia is ultimately the primary protagonist; the plot is mostly told from her perspective, rather than her sister’s, and a lot of the emotional angst comes from Celestia’s borderline depression. This story delves into immortality angst, with a lot of it being directed at Celestia’s frustrations with the burdens that her station brings – though for all of Celestia’s angst, really what tears at her is death, something she herself is not eager to embrace, though she does have some borderline suicidal thoughts.
This is one of the biggest ways in which this story is likely to be offputting to audiences – if you don’t like Angstlestia, you aren’t going to like this story. It is perhaps the single largest theme in the work, and man, is there angst. Normally people expect Luna to be the angsty one, but here it is Celestia who is the damaged goods after running Equestria solo for a thousand years. That said, if you like Celestia melodrama, this story has lots of juicy melodrama around Celestia, so this is actually probably a selling point for you.
The other major offputting thing, however, is much less situational – this story has huge pacing problems. It is too long, repeats itself, has a deep emotional low in the wrong place in the story, circles around subjects for far too long before diving in, and repeats itself.
And yes, I wrote repeats itself twice intentionally.
Estee loves worldbuilding, and this story is full of it. In fact, I’d say one of the selling points of Estee stories is the worldbuilding. This story does a lot of hinting at Luna and Celestia’s backstory, as well as the nature of their connection with the Sun and Moon, and some hints about the true nature of what the Sun and Moon actually are (though, alas, mostly hints there). There’s a lot of hints about Big Important Things that happened in the past…
And this is one of the problems. The story does a lot of hinting at stuff and circling around major revelations. And then it doesn’t actually reveal them. And the thing is, this is 132,000 words long – it could have stood to get some shocking revelations. Instead, however, it is more shocking hints, and the story oftentimes spirals around something for two scenes before it builds up to the reveal… and then the reveal is far smaller than the buildup.
This happens several times in the story, and I have to admit I was pretty frustrated by it. Indeed, using two scenes instead of one is something this story does a lot, and it diminishes the dramatic impact of a number of events. Even more frustratingly, the circling often feels like it results in unnatural conversations, where characters are straining to be mysterious… even towards other characters who already know, and who they know already know. The times where the story outright was more straightforward – such as when Celestia is trying to seduce Joyous by talking about her own Dark and Troubled past, thereby building an emotional connection with her, as well as when Celestia makes use of the Sun – it felt like the revelations were more natural.
But when Luna and Celestia talk around what one of their old friends did in vague terms, and even who that friend was for several scenes, despite it containing both internal monologue and an argument between two characters in the know, they avoid saying a lot of things which naturally would have come up, and the attempt at being vague about the character in question feels very awkward and forced.
This doesn’t mean that the story has to give up everything – hinting at unseen things is a good way to interest people and to make the world feel larger than the story which is presently inhabiting it. But at the same time, when you spend several scenes on something, ending it just by giving a name and no other real details is just frustrating.
If it just happened once, it wouldn’t be that bad. But it happens a lot – and often to the detriment of the pacing of the main story, even on the occasions where it does push the main plot along after a few scenes.
This sort of thing makes the story a bit of a slog to get through at times, as the more times this sort of thing happens over the story, the less you trust the story to actually deliver on its various implications.
The story’s self-derailment doesn’t stop there, though – there are a number of scenes which frankly just felt unnecessary. The group goes off to the Crystal Empire, but the main purpose of that trip seemed to be showing off how Estee imagines Luna and Cadance got along – it is about 15,000 words of sidetracked plot which, frankly, did very little to advance the story line. While some stuff was brought up by Cadance, the story spent an enormous amount of time on it, and most of it felt like it was not really that relevant to the plot of the story it was attached to.
The story also feels like it is kind of repetitive in some of the conversations about Luna and Celestia’s Very Special Status as People Who If They Die The World Is In Deep Trouble. While this is an interesting theme, a lot of the conversations about this felt repetitive – rather than approaching things from a new angle, it felt like it was hitting on the same angle a great deal. Moreover, there is a large chunk of a chapter about a third of the way through the story about Celestia and Luna contemplating what they would do to kill themselves and make sure the world continued on should they suffer from the condition that Joyous suffered from and no cure could be found. While I can imagine them having a conversation like that, and this was really the only point in the story where they could have had that conversation, it did not feel like it fit the pacing of the piece – it was quite an emotional low point, but it was very, very far displaced from the climax, and ultimately just kind of felt out of place because it never really goes anywhere. While such a conversation is potentially interesting, I’m not sure that this story was really the right place for it.
If I sound annoyed by the pacing, repetition, and digressions, it is because I am. The core of the story is actually pretty interesting – the idea of the sisters solving a medical mystery, while having to deal with long-suppressed emotions of wanting someone, Celestia’s angst, and worldbuilding along the way is genuinely interesting. But the story feels like it is half again too long for its own good, and the slow pacing is frustrating as it makes it a slog to get to the next plot point.
This will be a huge deal-breaker for a lot of people. This is not the Estee story to start with, and if the slow pacing in other Estee stories bothers you, it will likely drive you insane here.
If, however, you can actually put up with this – if you actively enjoy Estee’s writing style, or are a big fan of his Tryptych setting – there is something for you here. Estee has some fun with his worldbuilding in this story, talking about minotaur culture, as well as filling in some details about Luna and Celestia’s origins. Some talk goes into cutie mark magic, and letting a cutie mark define you – and how that is different from what is going on with the victims in this story. There’s a fair bit of character definition for Luna and Celestia. And if you can actually put up with the maddeningly slow pace, the core story of Luna and Celestia (along with the cast of OCs) figuring out what is going on and resolving the central medical mystery is actually interesting.
Indeed, this story has quite a few OCs in it, and while the story is never told from their point of view, they play important supporting roles. Joyous Release plays the largest role, both as an unwilling focus of amorous attention from the sisters, as well as something of a locus of tragedy, as her life has been derailed by the effect which caused her talent to spiral out of control. While both of the sisters know that their attraction to her is driven by her talent, another part of it is the fact that neither of the sisters have had any sort of romantic relationship with anyone in… well, millennia, if ever (though there are implications that there might have been someone that each of them cared about way back during the war with Discord). Beyond being someone they want to save, she also is a source of tension between them, as well as a source of general discord due to her special talent being an enormous problem to deal with.
While she is interesting as a force in the story, though, I couldn’t help but feel like this character didn’t end up terribly compelling as an actual person. While it is perhaps intentional in the start of the story that she is more of an object than a person, reflecting the fact that Luna and Celestia are both initially attracted to her because of her out-of-control talent, this unfortunately made it harder to actually sympathize with Luna and Celestia seeming to actually, genuinely like her as a person. Indeed, she plays up the Broken Bird angle pretty hard, and always felt rather two-dimensional as a result – it was basically all “man, her life is horrible” or “she trusts in the princesses to fix this problem!”
I also have to say that this also slightly undermined the “Luna and Celestia genuinely do want someone” subplot, as unfortunately, every time the story seems to be developing actual emotional connections between the sisters and Joyous, the story undercuts it with “Welp, that’s just her talent mind controlling them again.” Which, while it does do a good job of showing just how insidious Joyous’s talent is, makes it hard to root for either sister making kissyface with her, something the story seems to want us to do in the conclusion of the piece, as the rest of the story worked so hard at making the whole thing messed up that it felt strange that there was a hint in that direction at the end.
Ambassador Torque Power, of the minotaur nation of Mazein (which is a truly terrible pun), as well as Referee Moonsault, add a major political dimension to the piece. Torque Power is an early victim of Joyous Release, struggling against her power early on when Luna and Celestia are hoping that her power doesn’t work on minotaurs (it does). Torque Power acts as a friend and secondary confidant for Luna and Celestia throughout the story, talking to them about their problems and trying to help them out, even if Luna and Celestia can’t quite tell him everything (a fact he isn’t terribly happy with, but simultaneously understands). He, along with Referee Moonsault (a prominent minotaur in the Mazein democracy) serve not only to push the story along, but also as a reminder of the political ramifications of what is going on – Joyous Realease’s talent is not only a big problem, but also potentially a weapon, but the entire situation around people’s innate magical talents going out of control is actually an international crisis, as we come to realize that the potential spread of the problem extends beyond the borders of Equestria. While both accomplish their purpose in the story, I couldn’t help but feel like a few times in the later part of the story that Torque sort of disappeared, then reappeared, despite being with them the whole time.
The secondary helper OCs are doctors Vanilla and Chocolate Bear, who are Heterosexual Life Partner doctors who at first seem bit part characters but who later actually end up getting more development than Joyous does. While they are frequently played for laughs (especially Vanilla, who has a tendency to zone out and let his mind run off on strange tangents, and get overexcited to the point of fainting) they actually end up showing quite a bit of pathos as well as the story goes on, taking their jobs as doctors quite seriously and worrying about Joyous release, as well as the potential implications of her condition being infectious. They also end up serving as an avenue to explain some aspects of the Alicorns’ true nature, as they learn about it while running tests.
In the end, this story was simultaneously interesting enough that I wanted to keep reading to see what happened and enough of a slog that I felt like I was getting worn out by going through it. I was occasionally frustrated by the story dancing around the point, and some of the repetitive mysterious conversations that hinted at Big Things annoyed me when it didn’t feel like they paid off very well. And yet, there were pieces in here that I found compelling, and they ultimately proved enough for me not to put it down even as it took far too long to get to the point.
Recommendation: Frankly, this is a story for people who are fans of Estee’s other works. If you’re interested in the world that Estee works in, and have read other stories of his and enjoyed them, this might be for you. But this is not the place to find out if you are interested in his verse; if you’re not already interested in his verse, I’d recommend reading something else.
Admittedly, this sort of thing is why I so often put off reading longform fics – while they have a lot of space to breathe, I’m often left wondering how it is that the story ultimately didn’t feel like it filled out all the pages.
But on the other hand, if I never read any such stories, I’d miss out on a lot of interesting things.
I’m not sure what the next longform fic I’m going to read is; my You’re Next bookshelf contains seven novel-length works, four of which clock in north of 100k words, and there’s several more stories that lots of people liked (like The Best Night Ever) which I should get to reading. I suppose we shall see.
Until then, I suspect I’ll be reading more short stories, and working on my own writing.
I hope you all enjoyed A Thousand Roses; I’m going to be trying to put out stories more frequently once more.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 187
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 603
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2090
I will never understand how you can squeeze out 36, 37 counting the recommendation, paragraphs out of a single story... even if some of them are rather short.
4469880
I usually do it when I have a lot to say about a particular story, most often for very long stories like this. Usually, I won't write quite so much about a story unless it either does something I really want to talk about, or it creates mixed emotions in me about its quality.
That said, longer stories sometimes necessitate longer reviews, so that people can get a better idea of what they're getting into. A shorter story generally doesn't generate as much to talk about review-wise, and writing a review that is longer than the story it is reviewing is kind of silly.
If you're looking for recommendations on the next longfic to tackle from your You're Next bookshelf, I would highly recommend Lost Time by bookplayer. I think it is her strongest story (though I haven't yet read her latest, ongoing story), and it creates the perfect set of conflicts to explore the characters of Rainbow Dash and Applejack. While tagged a romance, it's much more a story about growing into adulthood. I'd probably rank it in the top five best stories I've read on the site.
Thanks for this review. I liked a lot of Estee's style, but not their worldbuilding... so this's one of my favorite Estee stories: it takes place largely inside the Sisters, and with a comparatively few characters.
(Also, Mazein is a pun? I totally missed that, and I'm still not getting it?)
4469977
The Minotaur in Greek mythology lived in a maze. Maze-in.
Estee's style is very distinctive and this is a very Estee style story, for better and for worse.
Austraeoh, if you want to disappear for a month.
4469983 Maze-in.
It's a very Estee story in some ways... but not in others, which's a big positive in my view. We don't see his Average Equestrian Pony who (as IIRC someone said) is a blend of Diamond Tiara and Suri Polomare. Nor do we see the full-yellow Lying Press. Sure, there's that one lot of criminals... but they're exceptional, clearly so to some degree and potentially so to whatever degree you want. Instead, we get some good, kind-hearted OC's and a lot of good Luna and Celestia.
(Plus, I didn't think the Crystal Empire sequence was a sidetrack. Taking Joyous to the Princess of Love was an obvious answer, and it advanced the plot by proving there was no magic on Luna or Celestia. And on top of that... it was fun.)
Huh. This is really weird, I think that I started reading A Mark of Appeal before all other works by Estee, and it was that which made me follow her.
On the other hand, when I started reading it it was about a third of the way through, so having each chapter be delayed might factor into it too.
4470000
To be fair, there's that vindictive scene at the end of the story with Celestia which feels kind of tonally weird. And they do mention the press being awful. Several times. :V
4469922
Weird how I'm only getting the notification now...
Anyway, I get that longer stories take longer reviews and all, but still...
4470158 Eh, if it is too long, you can just skip down to the end where there's always a short summary. Then you only get a paragraph. Me, I just read any TD review of an Estee story until the word Tryptych gets brought up. Then it's time to skip to the end, because at that point, I know the story is a skip ;)
4470196
It's not too long or anything, but when I review I'm lucky if I get to three paragraphs. Though, my paragraphs are usually of the longer variety, none of these one sentence things.
Here are all of my authorial responses, based in my knowledge of what's truly going on with all intentions and background material, to the points TD has made in this review.
There's no point in trying to argue with a critic.
Also, I was just informed that reading my work is like playing minotaur golf, so @#$% my life. Wheeeee!
4470069 Well, yes, at the very end. I found this story when it was only half done, so I'd already solidified my feelings about it before then.
I'll second 4469942's recommendation for Lost Time. It's easily among my top three favorites of bookplayer's stories.
That said, if you do decide to read Cold in Gardez's Salvation, I'd also recommend you try reading the original contest version here. Might give you something interesting to compare it to.
4470231
Hopefully with fewer broken computers.
I feel like you've nailed some over the over all problems with Estee's style of writing. Lots of hints and background, lots of worldbuilding as well but somehow feels like something is missing. It's less prominent in his shorter stories (and isn't as annoying as his tendency to insult characters he hates even in stories they have zero connection to) but it really does get in the way of his longer work.
An for why Vanilla and Chocolate Bear were fleshed out, I think that's because they are JD and Turk from Scrubs.
You keep using male pronouns yet I thought Estee was female... .
I genuinely do love Estee's writing but one problem they have is wanting to add in hint and foreshadowing across the various stories so the readers have to pull together all of these threads in order to give the reveal more oomph. Like in this story we find out why Sun and Moon are Always Capitalized, like Proper Noun Names should be, but we don't get told what race the Sisters started as, it being obfuscated in the narrative, when it would have been more natural for them to just say it. We get more hints in Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private, enough I'm confident in saying they were born Earth ponies but so far there hasn't been any conformation on that matter.
This is nice for the people who read all of the stories and love pulling together these disparate little hints and clues but introduces the problem of hiding information when it really shouldn't be hidden, such as the one you pointed out, when Celestia and Luna were talking about their "old friend" and wind up not saying names or anything of any real importance, which is a determent to the individual stories when it's done in an obvious manner.
I never got the feeling that Celestia was angsting over death, at least not to the extend you made it sound like. She has (platonically) loved and lost, mourned but moved on, ready to love and lose again while not forgetting. Anyone who has lived as long as she had will get a bit morose when going through the full list.
I found her being such a massive prude to be more of a sticking point. At least that is how I took her feeling that she shouldn't allow herself to have sexual desires, let alone sexual desires for another pony. It's been a while since I read the story but I remember there being an oblique reference to masturbation and her thinking of it as something dirty and how she had outlawed it for a while, but I may be getting my stories mixed up. I do know it was in this story that she was using a lot of double think that her "sexy dreams" were OK because it wasn't her but Joyous's "condition" that was making her have them in the first place and that she wasn't a bad pony because of that. You'd think after living so long she'd have loosened up a bit but, nope. I'm sure there's more to it than we've been told but.. .
Over all I really enjoyed the story, so that's something.
I have to ask though: Did you know that the Doctor's Bear are a reference to J.D. and Turk from Scrubs? And that Vanilla was just taking J.D.'s character ticks up a few notches with the day dreaming and passing out and all?
As for what you should read next off of your "You're Next" bookshelf I highly recommend Salvation, it's a lovely story about the masks people wear and how sometimes even the person wearing the mask forgets it is a mask.
Both Lost Time and About Last Night are also really good stories. I never did finish Background Pony so I can't give it a full recommendation but what I did read was very well done and I intend to get back to it someday... .Never enough time.
4471932
I'll be honest - it has been a long time since I watched Scrubs, and I only ever watched maybe a dozen episodes, if that. But I didn't really realize that was who they were supposed to be at all while reading it. I only found out after I had finished that that was who they were supposed to be. Honestly, I didn't make the connection... and still don't, really. I mean, I get that JD does the whole daydreaming train-of-thought thing, but... well, I dunno.
As for Celestia being a prude - I think you're confusing this story with another one. While it is true that Celestia does not let herself feel that way for other ponies, she doesn't seem to actually care much about pony sexuality. She personally has decided that she is permanently Off The Market, something she has tried to impress on the other alicorns, but... well, the one thing that the Cadance scene DID highlight was the fact that maybe this whole thing was giving her an outlet.
Geez, TD, you are HARSH. And PICKY! Wow. I dunno, maybe I just read faster, but I don't like short stuff as much. It's barely there before it's gone... Meh. I prefer long fics to oneshots, honestly. Maybe you're just weird, or maybe I am. Who knows. I just hate that you manage to make Estee feel so lousy.
4478378
More seriously, a lot of it is about having the right length for the material in question. Someone once said that good writing is like a skirt - it needs to be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.
Short stories and longer works often address things in different ways and have different focuses. The longer a story is, the more space it has to develop things, but also the more space it needs to fill profitably.