CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner Not-Fanfiction Edition — Magic: The Gathering's Unbowed, Part 1 · 5:38am Aug 30th, 2018
Yes, you read that right. Today I'm taking a break from talking about fanfiction and magic equines. Today, I'm talking about corporate fiction and magic humans! I know it will be a transition for all of us, but there's more equivalency in writing quality than you might expect.
Today I'm talking about Unbowed, Part 1.
It stars Vivien Reid, a planeswalker (magic human with the ability to hop between different universes). It concerns her trip to Ixalan: a swashbuckling plane occupied by four competing factions; vampires, pirates, aztec-flavored humans (and their dinosaurs), and merfolk. It mainly concerns the vampire’s capital city of Luneau. Accompanied by a vampire named Frederic, this first part characterizes the city, and lays the groundwork for Vivien’s conflict with it.
Let’s start with the things this does well.
This chapter does have a lot of worldbuilding in it. The scene where the main characters are discussing the exchange rate of blood, the description of one vampire’s accent as “creole”, and the architectural and cultural observations give the world some texture and personality.
Then there’s the things this story could improve at.
This story’s foremost issue is the excessive narration and descriptive style it uses. Nothing in the story is described simply. It is the purplest of prose, the most roundabout of metaphor and complex vocabulary. For example;
But it could still pendulate its skull, still crush its quarry against the mortar and the marquetry of the stage, the body inside the ornate armor rendering to bone-bitten mush. And as it did, it screamed and this time, there was triumph in the noise.
This may be intentional, since the subject of the story is a city steeped in excess. And there are times where this flowery style is entertaining. The aforementioned description of blood and its exchange rate, or the way a hydra is compared to the natural fauna of Ixalan. But most of the time, this narration makes the story plod along without adding very much. It’s repeptive and long, without being entertaining on its own merits.
This narration is also very tell-y. It bluntly tells the audience about Vivien’s emotions and memories at every possible turn. When asked about her homeland, this is what follows;
Vivien tried not to think of an antlered silhouette rising into the sky, tried not to think of the screaming, the pop of skin as it crisps and breaks, tried not to think of how soundless it became as the world burned to white. She tried not to think of fire.
"It was beautiful." she whispered.
The entire first paragraph could easily be replaced with a contemplative pause, or even a tense silence. That second line by itself could be a wonderful way to show Vivien’s pain and allow the audience room for inference. The story does do this for some things (like Vivien’s relationship with Frederic), but it is generally as blunt as possible with its descriptions.
This bluntness also extends to the main villain and theme. This story has an incredibly shallow villain, and a very shallow conflict. It uses an old shortcut: instead of giving the villain (or hero) complex characterization, it simply tries to match their morals to that of the intended audience.
The villain practices extended animal cruelty. The hero dislikes this. It’s the same as putting a small child with cancer into your story: a shortcut designed to tug on heartstrings.
All in all, this story is not engaging or easy to read. It has too much excess in its narration to fall into “young adult” or “teenage fiction”, but lacks the substance or characterization to appeal to older audiences. Now that this setup is out of the way, perhaps the next part will move more smoothly, but I am skeptical.
(In another break from the usual, I also posted this on reddit. Perhaps it will stir up more discussion. Or it might get 3 votes and be forgotten.)
Yeah, the prose definitely seemed overwrought when the perspective character's motivation is explicitly "destroy the cancer of civilization." And her performing suicide by vampire city feels bizarre as well, though she may not know the Immortal Sun is off of the plane. Or it may not yet be off of the plane; for all of the world building, the temporal setting's ambiguous.
And it really bothers me that everyone seems to call the world Ixalan when that's just the name of a continent. The vampires are from Torrezon, darn it. And why are these vampires more French than Spanish anyway? And...
Yeah, my inner Vorthos got pretty riled by this one.
4928400 Magic's biggest problem with story has always been the specifics. The broad ideas and concepts are great (like the story of Yawgmoth and the origin of Phyrexia), but the specific plotlines and individual story beats leave a lot to be desired (like when they killed an Eldrazi titan with that friendship-fireball, or retconned away Nissa's only character traits). That's why I'm usually not a Vorthos except for broad things. This is the first magic story I've read, but I've read a bunch of the wiki's summaries of past plotlines. And I'll have a discussion about which civic duties each Ravnica guild might have any time.
I'm hoping/guessing that the Ravnica DnD book will be more interesting than most of the stories they put out