Rage Review: Resist and Bite (Chapter 11, Part A) · 11:38am Apr 7th, 2020
Chapter 11: Rough negotiations in the Changeling Kingdom (Part A)
Charlie and Luster Dawn are trying to contact the Changelings.
Charlie and Luster Dawn both have been following the green stream and walking in the everfree forest for fifty minutes, and Luster Dawn had a fatigue expression on her, except for Charlie, he is still in good health and is very vibrant because he needs to keep pushing himself forward in order to rescue the land from the Chinese.
CHARLIE: I really feel like I care about the fate of Equestria! Unlike my lazy friend Luster Dawn, who cares not for Equestria at all.
LUSTER DAWN: It's true! I don't give a fig for Equestria, this land in which I was born and raised and treated kindly by Princess Twilight Sparkle herself! Unlike Charlie!
"Uggh! This is so tiring!" Luster Dawn complained which made Charlie roll his eyes in aggravation.
"Calm down, we're almost there I can even see the end of it." Charlie said indignantly.
"Well I bet this trip is easy for you because you are never even tired." Luster Dawn groaned.
"Well, that's because I go to fitness first in shopping centers in Sydney." Charlie replied ...
Those magical Sydney gyms! They are so wonderful that Charlie can -- in a form not his own -- walk into the ground someone born to her form who was raised in a society which seems not to have motor transportation, aside from trains!
The truth is that Charlie is an Alicorn. As such, he has the strength and endurance of Earth Ponies. Luster Dawn is a Unicorn, a member of the Kind averaging the least physical endurance.
And none of this advantage is by Charlie's own doing.
... and Luster Dawn got bewildered by the word 'Sydney'
LUSTER DAWN: "Sydney?"
(*band strikes up "Hakuna Matata*)
CHARLIE: Sydney. What a wonderful word. / Sydney. / Your health starts when it's heard .. It means no tiring / cramping would be absurd. / An exhaustion-free / municipality / Syd-NEE!
(*pan back and we see that CHARLIE is now a Celestia-sized Alicorn!*)
No, not really. And there's nothing special about the name "Sydney." It's just another meaningless place from Luster Dawn's POV.
Luster ... don't ask about it. Really. Don't.
"Pardon me but, what is Sydney?" She asked looking at him.
Oh no! She asked!
"Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west."
AAAH NOOO!!! An encyclopedia! Breaking into our world! Quick! We must seal the rift!
Author, you should realize that all these place-names are utter gibberish to any Equestrian. Or, really, much of it to most non-Australians. Heck, I'm from our world, I'm okay with geography, and I still only get about half of what Charlie's saying.
Luster Dawn was truly flabbergasted by Charlie's interpretation of this strange state capital called Sydney.
I was truly flabbergasted as well! (Though probably for the opposite reasons).
"Can you tell me more about this state capital of your country?" Luster Dawn asked ....
Truly, Luster Dawn is a mascochist.
"Sure." Charlie replied with a nod. Then he began to give her some more informations about Sydney while they were walking to get rid off the amount of boredom she has "Sydney, capital of New South Wales and one of Australia's largest cities, is best known for its harbour front Sydney Opera House, with a distinctive sail-like design. Massive Darling Harbour and the smaller Circular Quay port are hubs of waterside life, with the arched Harbour Bridge and esteemed Royal Botanic Garden nearby. Sydney Tower’s outdoor platform, the Skywalk, offers 360-degree views of the city and suburbs." He delineated.
AAAHHH!!! WE"RE TOO LATE!!! The encyclopedia has broken through! Abort, abort, all units fall back pronto! No choice but to use The Package now!
Charlie then looked at her and saw that she had wide eyes. He must assume that every information he represented to her has astounded her drastically. And she had an awe experssion on her.
"Wow." She said quietly "You humans must be very wise to create some contraptions." She finished.
Absolutely nothing Charlie described about Sydney is beyond Equestrian technology. In canon the Equestrians have many large and beautiful cities, each with its own architectural highlights.
"Pretty much." Charlie said with a shrug "But, we are sometimes very desperate for more sophisticated technology." He said with a chuckle.
Luster Dawn giggled when she heard Charlie saying that some of his kind are very desirous for a newer and more nifty technology.
CHARLIE: We are, basically, like gods made flesh compared to you silly little Ponies. But we often seek to become even wiser and more powerful!
LUSTER DAWN: Tee hee! But you're like gods! Why would you ever want to be better better than you awesome beings are already?
Unexpectedly, Charlie and Luster Dawn's conversation has actually made them arrive at the end of the green stream.
Carried on the winds of Charlie's pedantic pontification and Luster's shameless toadying, the duo have reached the Changeling Kingdom!
I'm positive the author uses "except for" when they mean "but."
And wow, this is a fat load of nothing. Though at least it represents less than five hundred words of the story... though that's still five hundred words of waste, at least part of which was literally copy-pasted from Wikipedia.
Even I would be ashamed, or I trust simply know better, than to try and present setting information like that. And that was the whole chapter, Charlie lecturing this poor mare on one single human city?
Author Wiki-barfed again.
Nobody talks like that when describing a city they're familiar with. Heck, I've described the town I live to people at my workplace, since it's a little town that's not well-known even to people of my home state (heck, when I mention the name, chances are they'll think I'm talking about the county with the same name that's a few hour drive away). Basically, I say stuff like, "Got a couple of highways intersecting right there", "Yeah, it's at the mouth of a canyon, so it gets pretty windy there", and "we've got a river practically in our backyard, it tried to kill us once, haha".
I wouldn't even talk about the biggest city in the state in Wiki-barf, I'd just ramble about the places I went to and the things I did whenever I visited, and maybe describe them for context.
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No, it wasn't (unfortunately)... there's quite a bit more to
suffer indigestiondigest in this, if you'll notice the words "Part A."I'd gone through it earlier, and well... you're in for a ride, you could say, if/probably "when" Jordan gets to covering it. I'll also say the chapter after this sent me straight into the Denial and Bargaining Stages of Grief, because holy hell, it nuked my mind, with what happened, with how nonsensical it was, at the start.
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I live in Oakland, a slightly run-down medium-sized city on San Francisco Bay which is one of the main ports on the American West Coast. Where I live is about a half-mile into the Oakland Hills, in view of the Oakland Mormon Temple (which is beautiful), and it's a pleasant suburban neighborhood.
There you go. That's a much more natural description, though it's way more compact than the way most people actually converse.
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The very title of the last chapter so far would bother me more if Luster Dawn wasn't such a poorly-rendered character.
(spoiled text alludes to the final chapter)
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I think we should henceforth call this iteration of Luster Dawn... "Lackluster Dawn."
No, really, I don't care if you became an alicorn offscreen through (if I remember correctly) unknown means, you're still lackluster because we're not impressed.