CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #35 — The Joy Hive · 6:17am Jan 2nd, 2020
Title: The Joy Hive
Author: TheDriderPony
Found via: That contest what I judged.
Short summary: In Pinkie’s own words, “You know how when you were a filly, and your parents always told you not to feed the stray cats cause they'd keep coming back? That's how this all started.”
Pinkie finds a stray changeling, and things escalate from there.
Genre(s): Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Changeling Headcanon
The Title/Description: The title and description are both fine. They are a classic example of “good enough”. They are functional; they tell you what to expect and don’t mislead you or create false expectations. But neither do they hook or impress or intrigue.
What does this story do well?: Pinkie’s character is infamously difficult to get right. Her personality consists of a delicate smoothee of quirkiness, kindness, naivete, along with planning skills and particular competence. Many portrayals of Pinkie Pie overemphasize one or more of these traits, or ignore others. This story does a wonderful job of showing every part of Pinkie’s personality. Her kindness and soul are present from the very first chapter, and her planning skills and humble nature get plenty of moments to shine as well. Never once did she feel unlike the pony we know from the show.
This story has excellent pacing, and showcases its scenario well. Not only does it incorporate the prompt (coronation) wonderfully, but it also knows how to manage its time well. The story uses timeskips excellently, and the pacing never feels rushed despite the huge chunks of time being glossed over. The ending line of chapter two is cute and funny, but also a good way to show progression in a handful of words. Chapter three offhandedly mentions “Twilight Sparkle’s new castle”, setting up timeframe in a very naturalistic way.
Finally, the story has some wonderful character moments in it, and not just of Pinkie. The first changeling she adopts develops a very defined personality (and again, we get a great sense of this development even between scenes). I particularly enjoyed the scene in chapter six discussing Pinkie’s title; the changelings have to call her something because of how their culture works, but she’s too humble to let them call her queen. The hive as a whole has a character all its own, and it’s a wonderful foil and highlight of Pinkie’s own character.
Where could this story improve?: This story’s second biggest problem is the structure of its prose. It often uses some very dull descriptions and meandering sentence structure that make it really hard to follow. Despite all the wonderful show present in the character moments and hive structure, there’s lots of times where the story tells things to the reader in a very blunt, bland way. There’s other times where the narration piles lots of things into a small space. Some examples;
Pinkie pulled open her bedroom door, entered, kicked it shut, and collapsed onto her bed with a contented sigh.
That was a slightly harder question and one which made the unicorn even more curious about where Pinkie was going with this.
Nurse Velvet opened her mouth to answer but stopped at a look from Feldspar. He shook his head. It wasn't time yet. She still wasn't ready.
A lot of the narration is dedicated to things that could have been easily inferred by the audience. This contrasts unfavorably with the showing elsewhere, and also drags the pacing and readability of the story down. The story also has a few problems with character voicing; both Pinkie and Rarity speak in an awkwardly formal way.
The biggest problem is the ending. The final conflict between Twilight and Pinkie is foreshadowed wonderfully, and the final chapter even has some good character moments from Twilight’s perspective. But just as this interesting conflict is about to come to its head, it’s interrupted by a completely different conflict from another source. This new conflict is not foreshadowed at all, and it creates a violent and jarring mood shift. I suppose, taken on its own merits, Chrysalis is well-written. They feel in-character and their defeat fits the tone of the story. But not only is it completely unexpected (in a bad way), it also neuters the conflict I was interested in watching.
And that’s not all! This ending also introduces a major plot hole; what happened to Rarity? The author actually wrote an addendum in the comments addressing this fridge logic, but their comment is so abrupt and the scenario still so contrived, that it doesn’t help at all. If anything, it makes things worse, because it adds another layer of unforeshadowed absurdity to swallow.
In a single sentence: This story managed to pull me in despite its shortcomings, and its strengths are still worth recommending, but the ending ruined it for me.
Verdict: Upvote. I had an unusual time with this story. I started out underwhelmed by its bland narration style and periodic typos. (None of the compound adjectives are hyphenated, for example). Then the story managed to pull me in despite that, thanks to its excellent pacing, scenario, and characters. Then, that ending came along and just destroyed all that enjoyment and interest I had built up. It shows how invested I was in the story; I was angry at the ending for preventing a confrontation I was interested in (in addition to its myriad other issues).
Sadly, because of the ending alone, I can’t fully recommend this. But I enjoyed my time with it before that happened, so take that as you will.
A harsh review, but not an unfair one. I agree with you on many points, as even I know that this story could have been better. At the very least it needed another pass or two through editors, but I was running low on time and chose to cut corners.
You address a lot that I was worried about and even point out some shortcomings which I wasn't aware of. At least it's a good learning experience.
Regarding... the ending. Yeah... You summed it up pretty well. I wrote myself into a corner and failed to find a clean exit.
There was some small foreshadowing, but as I reread the passage now weeks after writing it, I can easily see how it could be misinterpreted or glossed over entirely.
Now that the contest is over and done with --assuming it's allowed-- I might go back in and do some minor tweaks and edits (perhaps even an overhaul of the whole ending) if only for my own satisfaction and the sake of readers who may come across the story later.
Thanks for taking the time to share your frank and honest thoughts with me. I'll do my best to internalize your critique and use the lessons learned to improve myself as a writer.
5178929 I hope I didn't come off as too harsh: despite my criticisms, there was a lot to love in this story. I meant every word of my recommendation in the results blog. And indeed, as I mentioned multiple times, the ending bothered me so much because I was enjoying the story until then. It's a compliment that the high points were high enough to make the contrast with the lows so noticeable. (Okay, perhaps a somewhat backhanded compliment...
)
Edits were allowed even during the contest. Many authors chose not to, and that is a fair position; it ensures each judge read the same story, that we all received the same experience. Had I been participating, I would have made the same choice.
You're not the only author who had to make concessions for time; it is an unfortunate reality of submitting something on a deadline. But it is still fully your story. If you do end up changing it, I hope you make it the best it can be. And it sounds like you've already done some self-reflection on how to improve it. That desire to examine your work and do better is one of the most valuable tools an author can have.
5178929 After some rumination, I changed my verdict to an upvote. I still stand by what I said about the ending, but the ending didn't completely ruin all the things I enjoyed about the story beforehand. It was hard to swallow, but it hardly ruined everything. (There's another story in the contest that performed that unfortunate turn.) I realized I was being a little too harsh, even though the opinion of one random reader isn't particularly important anyway.
5180406
I'm pretty sure I read that story. How dare that other person!
I guess I now know beforehand at least one thing that'll appear in my entry's review.
Edit: I may have misunderstood how the ending was handled vs. whether it 'ruined everything' as the 'unfortunate turn'. My comment may be less appropriate than I thought.
5180990 I wasn't referring to your story either way. The story with an ending that ruined everything was Komm, Süßer Schein. I've never read a story that went from inoffensive (if unremarkable) to offensively bad so sharply.
I was being coy because I wanted to save it for my review of said story. It appears that the author has removed it from the site, however, so I'm not going to.