Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXI · 11:02pm Apr 27th, 2017
You know what's annoying? When you get to a chapter you have little interest in writing, but have to get through to get to the good stuff. That's where I'm at now with The Silence, and even pulling off 1,000-2,000 words a day for the last 4 days this week, it feels like I'm just grinding through it at a Tank's pace. Worse, I don't feel as though I'm writing it very well as a result. I'm probably going to go through it and make a lot of changes before it gets released, which I don't see happening until next week at earliest. Which is crummy, because it's been a while since I've updated anything.
On the plus side, I've learned that my new desktop is good enough to play those high-demand games I've been after for the past three years and let me go back and forth to Word on my second monitor. This means I can play through a day in a game like Ark: Survival Evolved, park my character in her safe little house come nightfall and spend the entire in-game night working on a story. That is awesome, and it has boosted my rate of writing significantly.
But what I really need to do is get over my video game addiction and put writing back at the top of my priorities list. But damn it, I've waited so long to be able to do this, it's hard to let go! I guess I'll keep things up for now, but once I've finished going through Kingdom Hearts I aim to get more productive as a writer. Compared to what I was doing three years ago, this is pathetic.
But you're not here to hear me complain, yes? Reviews!
Stories for This Week:
Back to Normal by Trick Question
The Broken Mare by darkangel_31314
Telltales by Hyperexponential
The Night Rages On by Overload
Elements of Honor by SpitFlame
Trixie in the Gryphon Empire by Phaoray
Total Word Count: 183,220
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 1
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 2
Needs Work: 0
None: 0
Back to Normal
10,029 Words
By Trick Question
I didn’t know what to expect, but that certainly wasn’t it.
I presume this story takes place right after the defeat of Tirek, although if so I find the choice of timing poor. In Back to Normal, Twilight reveals to her friends a new device she’s invented using notes she found from Starswirl (which Celestia might have told her not to touch). The device is intended to let her and her friends safely view other universes without being detected by said universes. When she tries it out for the first time however, things go very wrong. Now Twilight and her friends have been transferred into the bodies of their counterparts in another universe – male counterparts – and they need to find a way back pronto!
First instinct: “Oh, yay, another gender swap story. Excuse me while I move on.”
But then, it doesn't function like your typical gender swap story written for laughs. Instead, we have a very serious personal problem from Twilight’s past coming to the forefront and taking center stage while she and ‘Prince Helios’ discuss ways to fix the situation. Barring a few tasteless jokes from Pinkie (eh, it’s Pinkie, what do you expect?), this is a much more serious take on not only the concept of gender swapping, but another real-world issue that I didn’t see coming.
The story is certainly interesting, but also a little vague. Trick Question offers an entire chapter that is probably meant to clear things up, but honestly? I can’t help but think that some people will read that chapter and completely miss the implications. In truth, I’m not 100% confident of the implications myself, although I think I know what’s going on.
Also: bonus points for not using the tired, established R63 names for the Mane 6. Way to be creative, author!
In all, I like this. It’s unexpected, takes to an old idea from a different stance, and manages to keep us in the dark about the deeper issue until the very end. It could have been a little clearer, and I might be just a tiny bit saddened that we didn’t get to see how the stallion versions of the Mane 6 reacted to being in the mares’ bodies, but I’ll take it.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
The Broken Mare
19,965 Words
By darkangel_31314
Twilight wakes up to find herself in the Everfree Forest, with no idea how she managed to get there. Even more alarming: she’s pregnant! Upon making it back to Ponyville, she is even further troubled to discover that she’s been missing for the past year and has been presumed dead by all.
This story is simple in its manner, and shows numerous signs of being written by someone new to the practice. LUS runs rampant from beginning to end, the narrative is constantly telly, and events happen at a rapid pace with little to no time to let the events sink in or affect the reader. What would have been something along the lines of 40,000 words when properly developed comes out at about half that length, with predictable repercussions.
But while the delivery is amateur, the story itself is quite good. It largely involves brainwashing and an attempt to revive the Nightmare, and it is intriguing in its potential consequences. I think that, should the author take some time to really learn how to present the events, we might get some quality stories out of darkangel_31314. So, in an endeavor to help this author along:
First thing is to slow down. Some scenes had decent logic behind them, but flew by far too quickly to be realistic. The single best example of this is when Rarity and Spike come to see the newly returned Twilight. Spike gets a few choice words in, but is otherwise completely ignored in favor of getting Rarity’s story out, and he never gets another opportunity. I get it, some people don’t like Spike, but that’s no excuse; he has been at her side since birth. There isn’t a single character in this story who should have a more touching reunion with Twilight than this guy, and you’ve effectively blown him off. Slowing down to consider the situation for everyone involved and writing to address them will help you in big ways.
Second, stop telling us everything the characters are thinking and how they feel. It’s the old Show vs. Tell argument, and while there are plenty of instances where Tell is perfectly valid, you used it everywhere. Give us body language, give us atmosphere, give us scenery. The faster you run through a scene, the less invested we are in it. Of course, don’t go too slow either or you’ll run into the same problem.
Third, and very specifically, avoid Lavender Unicorn Syndrome. Yes, we are aware that Rarity is white and a unicorn and Fluttershy is yellow and a pegasus. You don’t have to remind us 50 times over the course of the story. Once is enough, and even that’s too many for established characters from the show. I know people think it’s better than saying ‘he’ or ‘she’ a thousand times, but it really isn’t. There are better ways to achieve variety.
And… that’s all for now. Take heart, darkangel_31314; the idea is a good one, you just need to polish your prose a bit.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Telltales
2,698 Words
By Hyperexponential
Saw the ending coming from a mile away. That’s not a bad thing.
This story starts off with a changeling barging into Rarity’s boutique late at night, quickly followed by Applejack and Twilight. Now she must find a way to prove to her friends that she is who she says she is, or else.
What I immediately liked about this story is that it showcases that which makes the changelings so frightening in concept, although it does so in an obvious way. The consequences of the events are dire, and made all the worse by how there’s no way to know if AJ and Twilight made the right decision in the end (frankly, I don’t think so). Then, when the fires have passed, you get that ending.
‘Awful things’, indeed.
While I thoroughly approve of the concept and how the story played out, I’m not too fond of the execution. This is a story meant to showcase the true horror of what changelings can be. Shouldn’t it, y’know, be scary? Hyperexponential’s big mistake in my eyes is that they made no attempt at all to generate the atmosphere necessary. At no point did I feel tension or fear or anxiety because of what was happening, aside from what little the bare concept offered. This is the only major flaw of the story to me, but it stands out and is serious enough to knock this story down a peg in my rating.
In summation, great idea and well written, but approached from the wrong angle. I’d still recommend it if you’re looking for some decent darkfic material, but it just lacks the punch I’m looking for in these sorts of stories.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
The Night Rages On
2,903 Words
By Overload
Recommended by Pascoite
A natural cataclysm has struck Equestria, taking with it hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives, including that of Celestia. The sun no longer exists, and for a year now the land has been trapped in a state of eternal night. Luna traverses Equestria seeking some method of reviving the sun, but stops on the one year anniversary of the End to visit the grave of her sister.
Right off the bat, I can’t help noticing what Overload did right: a total lack of exposition. We didn’t need a thousand words of detailed explanations regarding why Luna is wandering the world alone at night, and the author doesn’t offer any. Instead, we learn about it through quiet ruminations and, ultimately, a conversation between Twilight and Luna. How rare it is to see someone doing this correctly, and it always gives a story higher marks in my book.
On top of that, we have an interesting new world just brimming with possibilities, of which we only barely scratch the surface. Like so many of these stories, I would love to see a sequel purely for the pleasure of exploring more of this post-apocalyptic wasteland Overload has conjured. Bonus points for producing an end-of-the-world scenario that hasn’t been caused by some evil force, societal folly or one pony’s dumb mistake. With all the post-apocalyptic tales out there so eager to pin the blame on ponies (or humans, for that matter), it’s nice to see someone take things from a different angle for once.
If I had to criticize anything, it would be that Luna’s problem in the story is not very new or interesting. Still, with all the good aspects of the story – good prose, strong dialogue, appropriate pacing, hints at worldbuilding, etc. – I think this little niggle can be overlooked. My thanks to Pascoite for another great recommendation!
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Elements of Honor
89,439 Words
SpitFlame
Requested by SpitFlame
This easily qualifies as one of the hardest calls I could possibly make. This is a tricky story in a variety of ways, and one’s opinion of it will vary by extremes from reader to reader. I came out of the story thoroughly pissed off, but even so I am at war with myself over whether or not that’s a bad thing for the story in and of itself.
SpitFlame requested this story after I thoroughly rejected his atrocious Consoles vs. PC (Princess Edition). Which… makes sense, really. Who wants something clearly never created to be good to be their legacy?
Elements of Honor is a crossover of the video game Dishonored. The author insisted that no knowledge of the game was necessary to jump into this story. That turned out to be completely incorrect, as a great many ideas, concepts and at least one major character show up that leaves the reader completely lost unless they are approaching the story with a general sense of ‘just go with it,’ which itself doesn’t mesh well with the nature of the story on the whole.
The story stars Corvo, a psychopath who decides to go to Equestria for no clear reason, although he insists he’s there to help with their current problems. As it turns out, he came to Equestria once before and attempted to murder Celestia and Luna by sheer violence – and almost succeeded. Curiously, Equestria is in fact in the midst of some serious turmoil that Corvo just happens to be aware of and is directly connected to for reasons he doesn’t understand. And that’s just the beginning of what turns out to be a story both pointlessly convoluted and annoyingly straightforward.
My rapid conclusion is that SpitFlame is not a native-English speaker, and also that they come from a part of the world with a very different cultural view of how storytelling and literature works. I can’t be absolutely sure of this, but the issues I see here are exactly the kinds I’ve experienced from such people.
The first problem is the writing style, which is archaic, overly formal and telly in the extreme. Not a single character sounds like their in-show counterparts or, from what little I’ve seen of it, the game. It is grinding and frustrating at the best of times, and anyone who cares even a little about prose will toss this aside within a few paragraphs. The strain continues as numerous lines say things that don’t make sense or, at the very least, don’t mean what I think SpitFlame believes they mean. Characters repeat themselves frequently – sometimes in the very next sentence. Worst of all are the nonsensical statements that are somehow treated as deeply intelligent, logical declarations that really just serve to confuse and slow the events down – or as I dubbed them, explanations that explain nothing. For example, declaring that pertinent, useful information doesn’t need to be shared, studied or discussed because it would only waste time to do so (that one happens a lot).
But again, I strongly suspect that this is due to cultural differences in the interpretation of logic and how stories should be told. If one observes stories, games and movies from different cultures, it can be seen that these sort of oddities are not uncommon. Am I to declare the story terrible because it happens to not fit in with my cultural comprehension of the author’s natural style? These elements all come off as really, really bad for me, but in some other country halfway around the world it might be considered literary gold.
I have no way to know, which is why I’m trying to emphasize here that the problems throughout the story may not be a matter of poor writing skills so much as a poor cultural translation. This goes even deeper, stepping into the nature of the story itself. That story involves an extremely convoluted plot featuring extensive mind games that are wholly unnecessary considering the final goal. Corvo could have achieved his goal in a few days rather than three months if he’d just used tried and true methods. Instead we’ve got constant circling arguments and carefully controlled word choices complete with lengthy inner monologues determined to tell us the exact consequences of every line uttered to the point that I just want to slap Corvo and Celestia across the face.
What do you mean you can’t kill that pony right now? You’ve had hundreds of perfect opportunities in the last week alone!
What do you mean you can’t just arrest the villain without proof? You know what’s coming, and you’re the monarch of the nation who has the last say in everything that happens!
The ending leaves me with a sense of unease amidst my fury. To me this ending should not be possible, and I want to punch the author for making it so. Repeatedly. It's not so much a matter of what happened as of how and the many, many ways it could have been easily avoided. But at the same time, I have to pull myself back and really think on what’s going on and my reaction to it. Is it that easy, or is it simply my headcanon getting in the way? Or worse, perhaps it’s my passionate appreciation of the Royal Sisters that drives me to such hatred? Or – and here’s the kicker – it might be that the author wanted the audience to hate the ending. I am not happy, but at the same time, I’ve written plenty of stories of my own with unhappy, tragic endings and relished the audience’s venom.
And why? Because when the audience reacts strongly, regardless of the nature of the reaction, you know you’ve hit a chord. And make no mistake, Elements of Honor hit me. Just not in a way I liked.
Did I like this story? No. In fact, from the first day of reading it I wanted nothing more than to be done with it as quickly as possible, because the writing style alone was excruciating. The plot is needlessly convoluted and the ending made me want to react violently.
But I will not condemn it. If I’m correct and the author does come from a different cultural background, then I don’t believe I have the right to do so. I also have no room to shoot down this story for its ending considering what I’ve done in some of my own stories. The only thing I can say with total objectivity is that I think anyone who really cares about proper characterization, who wants the bad guy to get what’s coming to him, or comes from a native-English-speaking background will not approve. Unless they want something quirky or cruel, I suppose.
All of this assumes I’m right about the author being from a different culture. If I’m wrong about that, then this story lands solidly in the None category of my bookshelves. But if my assumption is correct?
Bookshelf: Worth It
Trixie in the Gryphon Empire
58,186 Words
By Phaoray
Completed Story
Ah, Trixie. Some hate her. I love her. And I most certainly enjoy reading stories about her. She continues to be one of the most interesting characters to read about by virtue of not being one of the good ponies, even when she’s being a good pony. It’s not quite the same as the anti-hero I think, but definitely similar. Stories starring her are frequently fun for a variety of reasons, be they adventurous or comedic or just plain quirky. This one falls in that first category.
Here we start off with the usual Trixie opening: she’s down on her last leg, miserable and trying to find one last solution. That solution is to visit the Gryphon Empire and find some way to convince the Gryphon king to reopen trade with Equestria. Is it a long shot? Absolutely. But she’s out of options, desperate and maybe just a little crazy thanks to a combination of the two.
What Trixie doesn’t know is that there are rules in the gryphon capital city. The instant she stepped through the gates, she inadvertently triggers a ‘hunt’ that paints a target on her back. And this isn’t a little friendly game the gryphons are playing either; the hunt ends if she goes for a month without getting caught… or gets turned into dinner. Literally.
Phaoray does a lot of things right with this one. The story is action-packed, well paced, and filled to the brim with worldbuilding involving gryphon culture. The icing on the cake is the deeper-than-usual treatment of Trixie’s character, showing her devoted efforts to change her ways based on the views of the Elements – albeit through the teaching of a book written by Starlight Glimmer that I strongly suspect was penned before her reformation. In many ways, the delving into Trixie’s psyche and her efforts to be better than what she inherently is is one of the biggest draws of the story, right up there with her constant fighting to survive. How nice that it happens to be the primary purpose of the story, with the Hunt just being the background for it all.
There’s only two things that bugged me about this story. The first is Princess Luna. As extremely predictable as it is, we get the pleasure of watching her attempt to save Trixie by visiting her in her dreams. Predictability X2: Trixie is an unawares dreamweaver and, while untrained, can control her dreams to a certain degree that makes things hard for even Luna to deal with her. I didn’t mind the fact that Best Pone makes repeated appearances here or even that Trixie was able to match her in dreamweaving, albeit unwittingly.
What I do mind is that there’s no closure for her. Luna gets three big scenes that show her trying to help Trixie, and then? She disappears from the story. Sure, it may be a ‘natural’ result, and her appearances do lead to Trixie’s inevitable solution in a roundabout way, but the fact that Luna’s side of things is completely absent from any conclusion leaves me disappointed. After all her hard work, her reward is to be forgotten?
Phaoray clearly wants Nightmare Moons.
The second thing that bugs me is the ending itself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely an ending, and I would even go so far as to say it’s a good one. But at the same time, it leaves things a bit too open for my tastes. After all this development and the interesting events, the story stops there? I think an epilogue would have been most appropriate! Things after the story could have gone any of a hundred ways, from Trixie’s head on a chopping block to her being back in Equestria to meet the source of all her devotion. I’m okay with open endings, but I don’t think it was called for in this instance.
Despite this, I still come away with good feelings for this story and the Great and Powerful Trixie. After all the crap she went through, I hope the end can be considered good for her. The story is fun, exciting, and dramatic. It was more than worth the time invested, and one I would definitely recommend.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Liked these reviews? Check out some others:
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXVII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXVIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews: Round Robin Edition
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXIX
Paul's "Wait! It's Not Thursday!" Reviews
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXX
You Are Here
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIV
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXV
Want me to review your story? Send me a request! Check my profile page for rules.
I appreciate your criticisms. I'll do my best to improve and overcome these problems.
I'm just happy that you managed to finish the whole thing. I really enjoyed reading your review, even if you weren't super enthusiastic about it.
Thanks.
I'm glad (if surprised) that you enjoyed Back to Normal. It's not my lowest-rated story (which would be Recycled, even though I love it), but it's definitely my most controversial. The original comments thread was inadvertently deleted when I revised it, but the amount of hate I received was just overwhelming. One user called for a boycott, one very well-respected user held the story hostage with a downvote if I didn't change a tag, I've been called transphobic more than once (which is rather amusing at about 15 years post-transition—normally that only happens on tumblr), and I suspect the story permanently damaged my relationship with some of the power players in the LGBT groups here (which may be one reason Girl Talk doesn't appear in the main LGBT group).
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As someone who lives in the real world, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. I didn't even consider the possibility of it being controversial, which is why I said nothing on the topic in my review. Hell, transgenders should be the most appreciative of the underlying issue of the story, because what is it if not being uncomfortable with the body you're in?
I have no idea what the social justice warriors went nuts about, but honestly, I don't care. The views of the SJWs are of no interest to me, except perhaps for the sake of humor.
I assume you're not talking about just the first game in the series, right?
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Not even remotely.
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I assumed as much, but I wished for certain clarification.
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Most of the controversy had nothing to do with the transgender aspects of the story. People were very, very angry about the choice Twilight made, and when I said I felt it was morally questionable but not outright "wrong", it unleashed a torrent of horrified responses that I could hold such a ghoulish opinion. The loudest critic was bookplayer, whose ethical perspective on the subject was rigidly dogmatic (we ended up taking it to pmail until her responses started getting kind of insane at which point I stopped reading them). Somepony called for a boycott of my stories (presumably a call to downvote everything). Most of the amusing quotes on my main page come from that single story (the rest are from TSJ or from one of my ill-conceived stories that ended up getting taken down, Mares in Pairs).
As for the transgender stuff, it was a mixture of things. I tried submitting it to the large LGBT group and got an angry response that it had no LGBT content (the group owner didn't read the entire story). When I pointed out it did at the end, I was told they only accept quality stories and was discouraged from ever submitting to the group again. I did join the "Free LGBT" group which I presume exists because others had a similar problem with Lady Froey's management of the large one. Some readers commented that I shouldn't write a story without using Trotsworth's names because those are widely considered fanon. Some ponies were offended by Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie (honestly I can't imagine her not doing that), or by Rainbow Dash's mild misandry, and took those as caricatures of transgender people (even though those two characters were not transgender in the story), or as a sign that the story was not respectful of transgender issues because it contained a bit of slapstick humor.
Sexy Pudgy Pinkie Pie was the one who started the comments section by bragging that she was downvoting my story without bothering to read it because my bio at the time said I liked Homestuck, and that meant I was "a faggot" that should leave Fimfiction. She kept making terrible comments, all of which were downvoted into oblivion, but it dominated much of the early discussion. The reason I mention it with the transgender aspects is more recently she said in front of others on Discord that she wanted to apologize for being a bitch for so long, and I thanked her for the apology. But she replied that she wasn't sorry about the comments she wrote because my story was transphobic. This must have been a retcon because her initial downvote and comments came far too quickly upon publication for her to have read any of the story (plus, she'd bragged about not reading it). I assume word probably spread about the story being 'transphobic' in some circles because it's kind of hard to believe she went back and read it, but it certainly could be a legitimate complaint. She added that it didn't matter that I was transgender. Either way she wasn't clear about what was transphobic, and when I asked for clarification (and offered to dig up the old comment thread from Fimfarchive) she said to drop the subject or she'd ban me from the server. (She banned another user who complained about her attitude while I was talking to her.) I wasn't banned, but I left the server because I didn't feel welcome and I wasn't getting much use from it. It was a server for people who like girls with dicks (as long as they aren't me, heh) and for D/s roleplay, and as much as I'm interested in discussing transgender issues, that wasn't really what the server was designed for, and I don't do roleplay anymore.
Despite all this, I'm planning a sequel.
I think the first story left too much unanswered, and the real meat of the tale is in Twilight dealing with the repercussions of her decision. I expect similar controversy, but not nearly as much drama. We'll see.
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In short: I never know what to expect from readers! But this is half the fun.
Fortunately, I've never had anything quite as horrible as that experience here. The hate for TSJ mostly came from readers who made assumptions about where the story was headed, but this is entirely intentional because those ponies are not the target audience for the message the story is intended to deliver.
(One of the main points of TSJ is to routinely subvert what the reader thinks is going on based on Twilight's unreliable point of view.) I've had some harsh criticism before (mostly on stories I've removed), sometimes insulting, but I don't take it personally and I'm grateful to have it. Back to Normal is the only crazypants one.
I have a friend who was complaining about how hard ARK is today.
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Hard? Well, I suppose it is if you go solo and try to hit the interior of the island early, which is suicide.
I do go solo (I was never much for multiplayer), but I'm doing mostly fine with my camp on the far South side of the island. Plus I modded the game so that my character's max level is 2,000 instead of the normal ~130 and changed the leveling requirements so that I gain levels faster, at the cost such that it'll take 8x as much experience to reach the max level and I unlock new construction/tool options a lot more slowly. It can be argued that I'm cheating, but when you're going singleplayer there are certain things you're just not going to be able to do without a few advantages.
Yep, you need all the details and the background for that one, pivotal moment in your story you are dying to write make sense, but, well, you gotta sit down and write through it.
Just starting to come out of a two-week period consisting of little beyond work and Mass Effect Andromeda, so I know what you mean. It's the reason why it took me so long to comment on this review.
I am happy you for the most part liked my story. A lot of this story was me experimenting and learning different writing methods and types of scenes. Took forever for me to try a Luna dream scene because of how cliche they felt. Cliche works so long as you add your own style to it, so I finally decided to try it in this story.
As for your main two issues, I am planning on addressing them at some point with an epilogue. My ability to make a decent ending for this story seems to be quite an issue. Twice now I have altered and added to the ending chapter to fix issues, but it still seems to not be very satisfying. Per the norm, once I stepped back from the story for a few days in each alteration, I found ways to better fix things, but so far is has still been unsatisfactory, so I plan to make an epilogue to go over a little more to briefly address Luna and events over a short time period after Trixie sneaks into the castle.
Quite happy with your review and stories, and looking forward to more of both in the future.
It's a long time since I read that one but... I remember you're quite right about it. It's not a bad story, just... issues with how its told. (Sounds bloody familiar to me lol). I will also add that the The Broken Mare is problematic not It's not a bad premise but... I feel Twilight should be a LOT more traumatised. It's the ponies aroudn her that are horrified, but she is surprisingly... stable.... someone as neurotic as Twilight going through this... stable... doesn't make a ton of sense.