Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVI · 7:37pm Jun 8th, 2017
Well. First attempt at a blog since The Update (duh-duh-dunnn). Looks like the old copy-paste method is getting some slightly different results. No matter, I shall adapt.
I have no strong opinions one way or another with this The Update (dun-dun-dunnn). The top part is a bit brighter than I like, but I’ve come to understand that most people have some mental dysfunction making them like bright colors. Poor things. As for all the bugs, I figure Knighty and crew will figure those out in time, and the majority of them don’t affect me anyway. This The Update (dun-dun-dunnn)’s new preview system really threw me for a loop, though.
In story-related news, I finally finished the rough draft of Derp and sent it to Pascoite for a pre-reading first pass. My intention is to find two more pre-readers and get each of them to give it a look, then send it back to Pascoite for a second run. Only after all of that and I’ve received all the arguments/counterarguments/oh-my-Celestia-my-eyes-are-bleeding’s will I actually go in and pretty it up. I figure this way I can get everyone’s opinion about every desired change.
I’ve got some background changes planned, but I can always address them later. Let’s just get to the reviews. We’ve got another strong set this week!
Stories for This Week:
The Keepers of Discord by Hoopy McGee
I Am Chaos by Feather Sigil
Bouts of Forgetful Artistic Destruction by HoofBitingActionOverload
Biblical Monsters by Horse Voice
Where the Sunflowers Grow by Bluespectre
Total Word Count: 203,898
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 3
Pretty Good: 1
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 0
None: 0
The Keepers of Discord
11,445 Words
By Hoopy McGee
This story takes place in an alternate universe where Keep Calm and Flutter On never occurred (pretty sure it was written before the episode aired), and Discord is doomed to remain a statue until the last of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony are dead. But Celestia remembers Discord’s remark about how lonely it is being a statue. Suspecting that Discord is aware of things even while petrified, she decides to perform what she thinks is a kindness, but to him is the ultimate act of cruelty: she hires a pony to be his personal caretaker. They clean the bird poop and talk to him and read to him and make his little garden clean and everything he absolutely does not want. Well, except perhaps the bird poop bit.
This story is told almost entirely from the perspective of Discord as he watches and listens to the Keepers of Discord go about their work of caring for his private spot in the Royal Gardens. And while Discord doesn’t sound half as... well, Discord as I would imagine, I still enjoyed the tale. As he goes through three (and a half?) generations of Keepers, his steady growth from their presence is at once touching and interesting. From the kind Ember Spark to the cold Evening Breeze right up to the delightful Sunny Meadows, each Keeper gives him something a little different in their own ways that ultimately make escape not the glorious thing he expects it to be. For a story about sitting around doing nothing as a statue, it’s pretty eventful.
This story is well written and very well paced. About the only thing in it that gives me pause is the astounding long lives of the Element Bearers – what, did they each live to be 150 or something? Ignoring that one curiosity, I found this one to be an endearing read and one worth getting into for those aspiring slice-of-life writers out there. By all means, give this one a gander.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
I Am Chaos
2,955 Words
By Feather Sigil
Well, that was nothing like I expected.
I Am Chaos is not really a story. Rather, it is a moment in time in which Discord undergoes a crisis of existence and reflects upon the nature of his own. While there’s no attempt at clarity in terms of timing, I strongly suspect this is meant to take place just prior to his first defeat by Celestia and Luna (I am very much amused by his constant referral of them as “Wet Blanket” and “Indoor Voice”).
It is important to note that this story was written well before the airing of Keep Calm and Flutter On, so readers have to approach it as though everything from that episode onwards means nothing at all. This is a Discord truly enslaved by the nature of Chaos, and as such this is an interpretation that could never be redeemed or reformed.
As long as one goes in with this in mind, and is interested in a little chaos-oriented philosophical rambling, I see no reason not to dive in. It’s thoughtful and introspective. It’s also rambling, which fits perfectly with the theme, and the occasional odd formatting only further backs that up. In summation, it’s about as Discord as Discord can get, minus the ability to identify with others.
Not a bad show, provided you can ignore the show.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Bouts of Forgetful Artistic Destruction
4,822 Words
By HoofBitingActionOverload
Recommended by horizon
I went into this one blind. Horizon recommended it, and I didn’t read the description, check the tags or even glance at the characters. I had a suspicion it would be about Discord, as it just sounded like a Discordy title.
So imagine my surprise when I find myself enmeshed in a little story about a pegasus librarian in Canterlot dealing with a pre-Ponyville Twilight Sparkle who simply refuses to leave her library on the night of a traditional pegasus festival. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Our librarian is troubled in many ways, but more importantly, she’s convinced that Twilight is suffering from something she is intimately familiar with.
If I had to pick any one word to describe this story, it would be ‘atmospheric’. HoofbitingActionOverload does an incredible job of keeping things interesting even as absolutely nothing is going on simply by the style of the story. Flashbacks, metaphors and vivid descriptive energy swirl around every moment as our steadily faltering pegasus friend faces her own fate and tries, in her own quirky way, to spare another from it.
In case it’s not obvious by now, this isn’t a direct story. Indeed, it has no need to be. Everything you need to get what is happening is present like cookie crumbs for your brain in need of licking up. I for one am very happy to have read it. It’s strange, fascinating, tragic and altogether a delightful read. I’m still kicking myself for having missed it in the Writeoff it was written for.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
PS: I’m re-watching the series from scratch, and only now do I finally understand where this author gets their name. I feel silly for not having realized it sooner.
Biblical Monsters
10,946 Words
By Horse Voice
Requested by wYvern
What happens when you combine religious paranoia with an unintended visit from a talking purple horse? Take it from Horse Voice: if you assume the worst, you’ll bring about the worst. And I ain’t talking about a little smackdown, either; things are going to get biblical on your ass.
Two men in the coast guard are working at a lighthouse, doing their routine duties and waiting for the coming break in the bad weather, when what should show up on their doorstep than an unconscious alicorn. Turns out Princess Twilight Sparkle performed a magical mishap that landed her on Earth. As she comes to know her two ‘rescuers,’ however, they come to know her, and the things they learn make them uncomfortable.
This story is a hard read, one that will make you cringe at the implications. However, I do want to jump on one thing right now: it’s easy for someone to read this and assume it has an anti-religious intention. On the contrary, this is a story that comes to pass due to religion, as in there was no avoiding it. This is something I think Horse Voice handled with impressive skill, taking the words of the Bible itself and giving them a certain, unexpected literalness.
But as I’m reading this story, I keep wondering about what is happening and why. The two men, one clearly reasonable and the other… eh, moderately reasonable, have their faith and their views. They are meeting an alien creature for the first time, and this creature is telling them things they never expected to hear. While their ultimate action is irredeemable, I don’t think I can blame them for their suspicion and fear.
And that’s perhaps the most frightening element of this story: two normal, generally decent men doing something they know to be horrible for the simple reason of fear. It’s not very far-fetched at all, or so I think. And while I can’t blame anyone for wanting to see them punished for their actions I am, more than anything, sorry that their actions went against a creature as innocent and loveable as Twilight.
And on that note, I can’t help but be interested in the idea of seeing what happens next. If one could take the biblical End Times to its full extent with ponies, that would be a serious crossover achievement (assuming, of course, you’d consider MLP and the Bible to be a ‘crossover’).
This was a fascinating, if incredibly saddening, story about misunderstandings, fate and fear. It certainly left me thinking, and I strongly recommend it.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Where the Sunflowers Grow
173,730 Words
By Bluespectre
Sequel to Ice Fall
Alternate title: In Which Bluespectre Finally Writes About the Characters Fans Wanted to Read About All Along.
For those of you who forgot, Ice Fall tells the story of two soldiers in the war between Celestia and Luna 1,000 years ago. Oh, and a side story about Celestia actually, you know, defeating Nightmare Moon. Ice Fall itself was a pseudo-sequel to the story When the Snow Melts, which was about Celestia hiding in feudal Japan (or the Equestria Girls version of it) to recover from a fight with her sister and falling in love with a local reed worker named Rush. Now, hundreds of thousands of words later, Bluespectre gets back to telling us more about Rush’s relationship with Celestia.
I can’t help but think that the only reason this story exists is so that Bluepsectre can expand upon equestrian culture and the social changes sweeping the nation in the years after Nightmare Moon’s defeat. Oh, sure, the story stars Rush and Celestia, but it goes through so many sweeping tangents that it feels less about them and more about the world they’re in. It’s a curious but not uncharacteristic move on Bluespectre’s part. I suppose it being a good or bad move will be dependent upon individual interpretation.
It seems the primary point of this story is to develop Rush’s understanding of Equestria, and in that the author succeeds. From dealing with the nobility, coming to learn about foreign lands, meeting the common ponies who fought on both sides of the war, right down to battling dragons and discovering the tragic history of Celestia’s enemies, Rush (and, by extension, we) learn a lot. It’s some Grade-A worldbuilding that is seamlessly intertwined with the events of the last story. If Bluespectre has nothing else, they have a solid grasp of cultural and world development.
Then there’s the building relationship between Celestia and Rush. Well, I say ‘building,’ but I’m not sure that’s accurate. Most of the story involves them being separated and reminding themselves – over and over again – that they love the other. With the reasons explained. Again. And again. And again. This steadily grew more and more annoying as it kept happening. We get it, author, they’re in love because of reasons X, Y and Z. Can we please move on with the story? And this is why I said the story feels less about Rush and Celestia and more about Equestria, because that’s where all the interesting stuff is.
That’s not to say the characters are bad, mind you. Many of them are very interesting. The most interesting one was Queenie, who had everything a reader could possibly want in a character in need of closure. Such a shame she drops off the map of the story once her primary part is over – another one of Bluespectre’s writing tendencies that may or may not annoy people. But for what it’s worth, the characters are endearing and fun to learn about, even when they’re being… ‘off’.
Another issue: readers have to accept this apparent idea in Bluespectre’s head that mare and stallions are so different as to be aliens from different planets with incompatible language systems. I don’t know how many times the stallions in this story talk as if the mares are crazy or impossible to reason with. It takes gender differences to a new, unreasonable and unrealistic level that you’ll just have to roll with.
Then there’s the weird time jumps coming back, where we’re doing one thing and having an interesting conversation and wait now we’re hours later in an entirely different area and when did that happen? This is clearly meant to be some sort of ‘their mind was elsewhere’ trick, but it just comes off as bad transitioning. Like how Celestia goes from being imprisoned in a bubble to giving a lecture to the nobility to flying to some long-forgotten campsite, which you hear all about... but what you never saw at any of that time was how they apparently: stopped to change Rush’s clothes (twice), gathered up food and supplies for the trip, and made arrangements with ponies at the castle. All of which come into play later, so why are we not hearing about any of them until long after the facts? These moments struck me as the author going “Oh, crap, I forgot they needed to do that!” and shoehorning the facts on the spot rather than going back to fix the problem.
But perhaps what bothered me most was the strange plot devices. A mere common pony somehow has the ability to convince a dragon to target one and only one pony? What, did the mare save the dragon’s mother from Nightmare Moon during the war or something? The threat felt like something Bluespectre cooked up just so that there could be a big battle with a dragon at the end. Or how about the fact that Celestia is apparently able to visit the Eternal Herd (i.e. where everypony goes when they die) on a whim, so why is the threat of Rush dying even considered a threat? For that matter, the Eternal Herd seems like a perfectly peaceful (if boring) place, so why is anypony afraid of death? Is Celestia simply refusing to let anyone know about what the world is like ‘beyond the veil’?
Then there’s the writing, which suffers from issues that have haunted Bluespectre from the very beginning: comma splices, incomplete sentences, blatant typos, verb mishaps and other grammatical problems litter the entire story. I’d have expected the author to have gotten better at dealing with this kind of thing by now, and this isn’t encouraging.
All in all, Bluespectre’s writing talent has yet to catch up with their ambition. While I enjoyed the story in general, I can’t help but feel as if the author hasn’t grown any over the last few hundred thousand words. I’m seeing all the same mistakes that I was willing to forgive in the first story, both in writing style and plot development, and they’re wearing the varnish off the finished products. The story isn’t bad, but the great worldbuilding and characters aren’t enough to raise the story above an average rating.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Liked these reviews? Check out some others:
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIV
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXV
You Are Here
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIX
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXX
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXI
Yeah, Horse Voice is an exemplary author.
I know exactly what you mean. XD
Thanks!
I’ve been silently following you for a while, to see if you would discover my work. This was a review worth waiting for.
Believe it or not, a few times I did consider writing Biblical Monsters: Part II. One idea involved a researcher trying to figure out the real reason for Twilight’s death. But that wouldn’t be literary. The other idea would involve the original protagonist being punished--by himself and others--for what he has done. But what could it say that the original story hasn’t said?
Besides, I’m no longer angsty enough to return to this old thing. It’s best if it stands alone.
Make sure to check out Horse Voice’s “Visual Companion to Biblical Monsters”. It adds a lot of context to the fic, and the photos are really nice too.
4565431
Ah, but it was a view that was requested. Without that, would I have ever found it? If you really want me to review something of yours, just say so! ...then again, now that I have a story by you, I will inevitably be reading more. It'll just take me over a year to get to it.
Eh, I know how you feel about sequels. There's often times a temptation for one. When you balance that against all the other things you could be writing it, however, it suddenly becomes a question of necessities. I won't mind if there isn't a sequel.
4566267
Very tempting, but I'm a bit leery of requesting reviews, since I often seem to request the wrong story for that critic, who proceeds to verbally shred it. Fortunately, I'm the patient type.
I enthusiastically second your recommendations for The Keepers of Discord,
Bouts of Forgetful Artistic Destruction, and Biblical Monsters. I was preparing myself to be severely irritated if you failed to give your highest rating to any of them.