Present Perfect vs. Arrow 18 Mission Logs · 7:22pm May 10th, 2018
Hey hey, I'm gettin' things done! :D Are you ready for next week, because I am!
Admiral Tigerclaw's Arrow 18 Mission Logs: Lone Ranger is a classic HiE story, and that genre tag is probably why I haven't read it until now. I don't think I have much else to preamble about, save that there's an unfinished reading by Nimbus Productions that I did not use. (This story was murder on Fimfic's TTS. D: ) Let's dive right in!
Long story short: I was a fool to ignore this story for as long as I did. At the risk of short-circuiting this review, this is one of the best HiE's I've ever read — and remember, I've read both Project Sunflower and Through the Well of Pirene — and something I would consider a gold standard for how to do the genre correctly.
A large portion of this success is due to the initial premise: a spaceship is sent from Earth some centuries in our future to explore a solar system with some odd characteristics, and due to (sadly unspecified) politics, there is only a single astronaut on board. First contact scenarios have always been my favorite type of HiE, and not just because using them allows an author to avoid most of the "Brony dies and goes to Equestria" tropes.
The second reason this story is successful: multimedia storytelling. It's not exactly hypertext — the strongest nod towards such is, unfortunately, a whole ton of images that were hosted somewhere that isn't working with Fimfiction anymore — but the narrative jumps from the standard daily logs of our protagonist to audio and video transcripts and even e-mail and chat correspondence from the folks back on Earth. The hook moment for me was in chapter three, when we see Randy speaking with Twilight in English for the first time, as a video transcript. Seeing first-hand Twilight putting to use all the effort she'd given to learning the language really drove home how much this was a meeting of two cultures. I was filled with the wonder of scientific exploration.
If there's a third reason? Verisimilitude. This story is filled with aerospace jargon of the sort that made me think either the author had done his research, or was personally involved in the industry. (Spoilers: It's the former!) And it's all presented in such a way that it doesn't matter whether or not you understand every word; the important stuff is easy to pick up from context.
So what happens in the story? Well, after Captain Randall Evans — whose name we don't learn for quite a while — arrives in Equestria, he starts trying to stalk the native and learn about their culture, which doesn't work out too well. Then he and Twilight start trying to learn about each other despite the lack of a shared language. Then Twilight discovers computers, and nothing is ever the same for any of them.
One thing that really gets me about this story is that it's a way for the reader to view themselves through the eyes of a pony, despite the viewpoint being firmly in the human's ballpark. (Minus a few entries written by Twilight, all of which are great.) I think it's because Randy is a blank slate who we get to know through the course of the narrative, while the ponies are all familiar to us. So despite their alienness to our narrator, we can interpret and understand their reactions to him and his technology. At the risk of pretentiously neologizing (:V), it's this weird fourth-person effect, and it's just so compelling. Maybe I should have put it up there in the reasons why this story works so well, because it certainly qualifies.
What it really helps is the stretches where Arrow 18 is content to be a standard "meet the mane six" story, or close to it. (It takes a long time after a first encounter for Applejack to become relevant, and Fluttershy barely ever shows up, despite being the first pony Randy sees.) I may be repeating myself, but everything on Equestria is new to Randy, so that sense of discovery is pervasive, and that's a great way to keep even mundane scenes exciting.
It's funny just how much of this is slice of life. Randy's presence is noteworthy to the ponies, but this is goddamn Ponyville, they're used to seeing weird shit. In fact, they don't really even make a big deal about him until some kind of town meeting is held, in which Twilight nominates herself to be the first pony astronaut. I really appreciated how easily this human can just be accepted by the ponies; it made sense, yet by not making things necessarily easy on him, due to having to deal with a few curious ponies he can't talk to for a while, it avoids the downfalls of its imitators.
That town meeting scene fires up the drama, of Twilight insinuating herself (and Rainbow Dash) onto a mission to achieve orbit and head back to Randy's main ship, more of a space station in functionality. Aside from being miffed at Twilight's insistence she go, Randy has to deal with the fact that ponies just aren't ready for space flight. Suffice to say, that orbital mission is tense and intense, and what follows it is some really crunchy interpersonal drama.
All this is not to say the story is perfect, far from it. An early chapter features Randy being hog-tied by Applejack and dragged to Carousel Boutique for a fitting, which was… honestly ridiculous beyond words. Thankfully, that sort of thing is relegated almost entirely to that chapter, minus the running gag about the taser.
I was miffed by something else, though. One of my favorite aspects of this story was the names Randy comes up with for the ponies, which later end up being off even when he's able to translate them from Equestrian, see also "Pink Pie". Except, well, when they aren't. For instance, when he meets Spike? He's "compelled" to refer to him as "Spike". When Rainbow Dash's name translation comes up with a few choices, he decides that "Rainbow Dash" just "feels right". It was honestly hard to swallow, especially as, again and again, he kept lucking into the right names. It's one thing when Twilight tells him her name's closest approximation is "Twilight Sparkle", and quite another when he figures out "Princess Moon" should really be "Princess Luna".
I will say this was almost absolved near the end, during an audio log filtered through a translation spell. Queen Chrysalis (formerly Queen Mothra, in not one but two of the best name-related jokes in the story) refers to Princess Celestia (formerly "Princess Heaven") as "Princess Celestia"... and then Celestia corrects her to "Princess Celestial". That is how you make translation work. :) By, y'know, not making it work. I just really appreciated that, okay? D:
I feel I've not even begun to scratch the surface of this story. Partially, it's because there's so much good stuff for the reader to discover, I don't want to spoil anything, but partially it's also because I've been sitting on this for a while and I just want to get the review out, you know? ;_; I've never done this before, I don't know what's wrong. So before I bid farewell, let's see if there's anything funny or relevant in my notes:
- An early note mentions that predators like manticores aren't going to attack strange creatures unless they're desperate. Given that I've recently read a story lampooning the "human falls into the Everfree and gets attacked by a manticore" trope, this was another thing I really appreciated.
- There's a subplot about various recording devices planted around Ponyville going missing. It wasn't too hard to figure out who might have taken them, but the reason why? That was a huge surprise, and one of my favorite reveals.
- Not only is the real-world science believable, there is some astounding conceptual engineering at play in figuring out how to get ponies safely into orbit. It was impressive!
- The takeoff scene, which includes a full pre-flight check, is undoubtedly the most fascinating string of jargon I have ever or will ever read.
- I mentioned Chrysalis earlier; a subplot later in the story deals with integrating changelings into pony society. It felt like a weird thing to include in an HiE, but as changeling fics go, it wasn't too bad.
- If you're not too into sci-fi and thinking maybe you should pass this by, consider that just as much effort has been put into explaining things like magic and how the sun and moon work in Equestria, and it's no less fascinating.
- Not to spoil anything, but the ending of this story is pretty hard to take. I mean, it's a serious downer after everything you go through to get there. But I'll say this: it's earned. What goes wrong is well and truly foreshadowed throughout the whole thing, to the point where I was actively worrying about it.
You know what the worst part of Arrow 18 is? It'll probably never get a sequel. :( By the end, I was well and truly in love with the setting, the way Randy's very presence has a tremendous effect on everything around him, and the promise of future relations between Earth and Equestria. There's a side story, unfinished, about Twilight's own research notes, but I suspect it won't be finished, either. :C
Arrow 18 is a really excellent fanfic, the kind of story I think needs to be used as a reference more often than not. The whole purpose of Human in Equestria stories is wish fulfillment, but there's nothing saying you can't have your wishes fulfilled alongside a good plot with strong characters and interesting goddamn world-building.
5/5
A true exemplar of the HiE genre.
...I've never even heard of this.
...
...
RiL-ed.
4857475
Make that a Read it Now. It’s that good.
This story is literally the first story I ever added to my fave bookmark.
There's also the unfinished Twilights perspective version.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/41863/arrow-18-mission-logs-sparkles-notes
4857500
Yeah, I mentioned that near the end. :)
Personally it felt like the ATC caved to pressure for a new chapter, wrote a rushed ending and gave up. Otherwise it was a definite contender for best HiE, I agree.
4857512
The ending does feel a tad rushed, and I could buy the epilogue being a response to hue and cry.
4857475
Man, I reviewed this all the way back in 2015. It is hard to believe I've been doing this for so long.
Looking at the comments there, apparently Present Perfect read this because I did.
So, given it took three years, can we expect your take in 2021?
4857516
4857512
The last three chapters all went up on the same day, actually.
The ending definitely feels rushed; there was a two-year gap between chapters 9 and 10, and then the last three chapters all went up on the same day 5 months later. I don't think it was for lack of time, I think it was because the author was trying to figure out how to tie up all the loose ends and wrap it all up in a satisfying manner. I don't think that the real problem is that it is "rushing", however, so much as that the author ended up introducing an arc very late in the story cycle (the changelings) which was adding to the rest of the story, but was pretty much tangential to the core of the piece. It seems like maybe the story had been considering going more into the politics side of things, what with the various races all coming together to discuss what was going on, and then the author realized what a hash it would make of everything.
In any case, it definitely does feel weird, and the final conversation - the message to Earth by the princesses and Chrysalis - feels very weird and out of place, as while the story is funny at times, that was really not the right place for something that silly, especially something that important.
4857615
That sounds perfectly accurate. Let's deadline that sucker.
Ah, but did you like it more or less or about equal to Pirene? :D
I must say, I absolutely love Arrow 18's explanation for how Princess Moon and Princess Heaven
can possibly have the power to move the sun and moon. Though, it also made me think there has to be like a "brrrrrrrrrrrt" sound effect every time they do (even if the frequency is too rapid to be represented that way).
4857722
I'd say it's probably right in the middle. I rated them both the same, tho. :V
4857728
XD
Yeah, this is a good one, and it feels the more so because there's comparatively so little pony sci-fi. I guess more when you do the HiE intersection, but yeah.
You're absolutely right about the effect of getting to see Randy through the ponies he doesn't know but we do. The learning process is great too, and I think it's one of the cases that does a better job of not only allowing us to get a smile out of his stumbling along the way to what we already know, but encourage thinking about what we should think in his situation given what he has to work with.
Well.... damn. I read this a very long time ago and liked it quite a lot, but I downloaded it to my kindle to do so, and missed all the pictures and multimedia, apparently. And now they're all broken links.
4858267
If I ever receive notification that they've been fixed, I will definitely check them all out again. And let everyone else know. :B
4858383
That would be awesome, thanks!
4857615
Not to complicate your math, but PP read it because I nominated it for the RCL, and while I don't remember what put it on my RCL to-do list, your rec is almost certainly the direct reason.
So it's actually TWO years per recommendation rather than three! 4857645 is gonna have to step up his game.
4862970
Okay I tried.
I avoided spoilering myself, saying I would read the story before reading your review because you gave it such high praise, but I have been, like, "Okay, when is this going to get good?" and then I noticed I'm on chapter 7 and I was bored out of my skull.
I can't decide what was worse for me - how utterly lifeless Randy was or how it really was just a by-the-numbers "Meeting the Mane 6!" story, and not a very inspired one at that.
Maybe it's just the best example of that kind of narrative and I'm just not into it.