CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #42 — Seneschal · 11:08pm Mar 17th, 2020
I’m continuing my critiques of the entrants into the Imposing Sovereigns II contest. We continue down my list of “finalists”: stories which I considered awarding points to. I would like to stress, however, that I only ranked them because FanOfMostEverything made me; they are all excellent.
Title: Seneschal
Author: Kris Overstreet
Found via: That contest what I judged.
Short summary: Celestia has lost herself to grief. Ever since her sister was sealed in the moon, she has mourned non-stop for years. A corrupt noble—Prince Pyrite—rules in her place, slowly extorting the kingdom. One day, Pigeonhole—a minor scribe—comes to her, and helps her to realize something important.
Genre(s): Drama, Character Piece
The Title/Description: The title is fine. It’s in the “a single word, but an uncommon one” school, and it works fine.
The description is a mess. It’s a bit too long/uses several sentences with a huge number of clauses. It also asks some misleading questions at the end.
The Critique:
This story envisions a great scenario. Celestia being overcome by grief, and handing off her kingdom to a corrupt noble so she can mourn. It’s believable, well-constructed. The sort of idea that you see and think “there’s really not more fanfics with that premise?”
The characterization really sells this setup. Celestia being mopey, apologetic, and frankly un-regal is played up for all it’s worth. But it works. Pyrite is a bit flat, but he’s fun to hate; seeing him get his comeuppance is satisfying. Pigeonhole left the biggest impression on me. A minor detail is that she was made a royal scribe because earth ponies rarely are scribes. The fact that she became so capable, and stirs the plot into action, speaks volumes about her. A classic use of show over tell.
I could point out several details like that. (The “She understood work” line was another). The story uses some great turns of phrase and vocabulary. These little bits and bobs add up over time: make the characters and world feel realistic and engaging. It also does a great job of clearly marking jumps between perspective.
There are, however, some issues. The more minor one is there are a lot of typographical and grammar errors. I only mark down for typos if they impact the reading experience, and unfortunately that happened here. Dashes are not used correctly (or at all). There’s a mixture of curly quotes and straight quotes. Lots of sentences are constructed in a run-on fashion; lots of commas and clauses that make them hard to follow.
The biggest issue, however, is the unrealistic time frame. The story states that Celestia has been moping for twenty-four years. This is a common trope, especially in our fandom; because immortals are so long-lived, it makes everything they do last on a longer timescale. But the sheer insanity of this strained my willing suspension, nearly to the breaking point. There is some valid story construction reasons for it: because politics and government move so slowly, a shorter time would make Pyrite's machinations less believable. But the idea that Celestia could be in mourning for nearly two-and-a-half decades and still be in the state we see her in the story...
It’s certainly a melodramatic idea to inflate these numbers for immortals, and real-life people can be caught in spirals of mourning too. Indeed, in real life, some people are so damaged by grief that they never recover. But all these ideas are difficult to consolidate with Celestia’s character (both in canon, and just in this story). If she was so affected by her sister’s death, why does Pigeonhole snap her out of it in the space of a few thousand words? If her grief is so amplified by her immortality and the depth of her relationship, why is her recovery so rapid? And yes, we do see the implications that she is swallowing her grief for the greater good: burying her feelings in order to help her kingdom. And that also fits her character. But the pacing of her grief is just so awkward in every direction.
In a single sentence: A great scenario and excellent characters, sadly hampered by an unrealistic timeline and too-melodramatic characterization of Celestia.
Verdict: Upvote. Yes, I spent two paragraphs talking about the pacing of Celestia’s grief. But that is because, aside from that detail, the story was so good. That single detail almost ruined the story for me, but thankfully it didn’t.
The characters are wonderful, the scenario interesting, and the descriptions and turns of phrase good. Aside from that one overbearing detail about the time frame, and the typos/grammatical errors, this is a story worth recommending. And presumably, most readers will be less bothered by those two things than I was.
Thanks very much for the review!
I had Celestia's mourning go on for so long for two reasons: first, because I believe it would take something of that timescale for affairs to have got to a point where her vizier would have gone that far astray; and second, because I'm still wondering how and why, in the show, Celestia ever allowed a thing like Nightmare Night to arise and replace her sister with a bogeymare. I appreciate that others disagree with my interpretation of the thing, and I didn't do as good a job as I should have demonstrating what brought Celestia out of it. (Specifically, Pigeonhole coming to her woke her up to just how far things had slid while she'd stopped caring; and her vision of Nightmare's return gave her hope for a future reconciliation, a hope she didn't have before.)
As for Pyrite being flat, well yes. So is Pigeonhole, really, because you're only seeing both characters in direct relation to Celestia. I wanted to keep the focus entirely on her. I could have included bits about Pyrite's early years, when his self-dealings were small and when he genuinely did good work for the country, but that would have been a distraction from the core of the story, which is Celestia pulling herself out of intense depression.
Thanks again for the review and for your hard work judging the contest!
5222546 I did point out in the review how the timescale makes Pyrite's machinations more believable. But fixing one problem by adding another is not often good storytelling.
Let's say Celestia was moping for five years: still a really long time, but less insane. Could Pyrite still do a lot of damage in that time? Certainly. It would be on less of a large scale, and there's no implied slow corruption on his part. But you said yourself that he is not the focus of the story. I'd rather see the scale of his crimes reduced, than have my willing suspension stretched to the breaking point. It makes his comeuppance less satisfying; reduces the shock his damage causes to Celestia. But those might be worthy tradeoffs to make Celestia come off as less of a melodramatic caricature.
I have experienced grief, of course; when my father died, I took several days off of work. But I also went back to work because I did not want to wallow alone in grief. If the Celestia of this story is not like me, then that is obviously a valid interpretation. The issue comes when that interpretation is not communicated to the reader properly, and willing suspension of disbelief is strained as a result.
Ultimately, like all fiction, this is a subjective matter. This is but one reader's reaction. Hopefully my critique was useful to you.