Underappreciated Author Spotlight: NaiadSagaIotaOar · 7:07pm Apr 24th, 2020
That name's a mouthful, huh? I'd love to know if it's an assemblage of random words or if there's some meaning in the combination, but I've never asked. In any case, she's an author many more people should be following. Why? After the break.
I finally got to meet Naiad (yeah, I'm not going to repeatedly type that full name) at the last Bronycon. We'd interacted a few times, and the reasons for those should surprise nobody familiar with her: a shared interest in Sunset Shimmer and the Dazzlings. Sunset may be the most compelling character from the entire franchise. I know people don't like Starlight Glimmer near as much, but she has a lot of the same appeal to me. She's someone struggling just as much with her past. She doesn't have as big a downfall as Sunset, but she's fundamentally a less stable person, making her never far from toppling back into her old ways. Sunset is similar, in a way. I don't think she's ever tempted to become genuinely bad again, but she can easily be prodded into doing things the wrong way for the right reasons, or losing her patience.
The Dazzlings... well, I really like their character design. They barely get a personality in their canon appearances, but that's where the fanfiction writers come in, right? Like many of the show's characters, the fandom's takes on them are usually pretty consistent, and while there's not necessarily anything that surprising about them in most of Naiad's stories, that of course doesn't preclude them being very well done. And they are!
Just as a quick side note, Naiad is also known for her association with forbloodysummer, a good writer in his own right.
Naiad's written 15 stories, and none are M-rated (though a couple skirt that), so they all show up when I list them. Given that her writing preferences align with my own tastes for characters and tone a lot of the time, you'd think I would have read more of these, but I'll fall back on the same complaint I always do in these blogs and say I don't get much time for pleasure reading in the midst of all the reviewing jobs I have, so not a lot of Naiad's stories are marked as read for me.
The first one I read was "Resplendence Revoked," which is also her first story with cover art. I don't know whether that signifies a first serious attempt to write, or maybe just a first serious attempt to market. Another way Naiad's writing really suits my preferences is that I love a story with pervasive atmosphere, and she does that well. This story is a good example. Through all the happenings and character interactions, there's a consistent and weighty tone about it all that goes through the setting, how the characters speak, and what everyone does, that just brings things to life. That's definitely a good skill to have as an author. It's kind of hard to talk about how to get that to work, and I could spend a whole blog post on that alone, but it's a subtle effect that elevates a story from just enjoying the abstract parts like plot, theme, and characterization to enjoying the simple experience of reading it.
Here, we see a Sunset who's decided to take on the Dazzlings as a bit of a project (and those people who've read what I consider to be the best of my own stories, it should surprise nobody that this one interested me). She has three of them to engage with, but really only tries much with two of them, and in what's a nice spin on it, they only barely tolerate her interference, so long as they're satisfied she doesn't have an ulterior motive. Even though she doesn't, the Dazzlings have no reason to trust her, which leads to some lovely tense moments in which threats are made and on the verge of being carried out.
In the end, it's hard to say which character to call a protagonist, and that's not a bad thing. Sunset has her ideas of what needs to be done to help the Dazzlings, but as it turns out, Adagio isn't as dismissive of her future as Sunset thinks. In fact, she has her own plans about saving poor, naive Sunset.
My only problem with the story was in how the end came about, where it would seem to me that Sunset should have known that what she let Adagio lure her into doing was counterproductive to what she wanted to accomplish. She has her ideas about what's wrong with the Dazzlings' situation and what they need in order to be... redeemed, I guess, and Adagio has never convinced her to change her mind about that. And yet Sunset does something to undermine that. Maybe she could be seen to do so in a moment of weakness, but then she should regret her actions afterward, or come to see that she was wrong and now things are actually working out for the best. But she does neither of those.
I know not enjoying an ending may leave a story on a sour note, but for one thing, what happens and how might not bother all readers, and for another, that doesn't diminish that I still found the rest of the story wonderfully written, and hey, Sunset did make plenty of headway on her goals for the other two girls' relationship with Adagio.
The next one I've read (and as I scan down the list of Naiad's stories, I'm a little disheartened by the number of them on hiatus 
) is... well, another brief aside. "Who We are in the Dark" is one I should have read, but I've never gotten around to it. It's the story that got Naiad in the RCL. And "Lost in Paradise," which placed highly in one of the Sunset Shipping contests.
But the next one I have read is "Fifteen Pages." Epistolary stories are not easy to write well, and I've discussed that in a guest column before. It takes a lot to make a story sound like authentic letters or journal entries. I left a lengthy comment on it, so I won't belabor the point here. It mostly sticks to the format well, but there were a couple of aspects, like having the omniscient narrator and Sweetie Belle both performing essentially the same function, and what motivation the omniscient narrator has to collect from disparate sources and present what's in the story.
Those are subtle things that go toward that framing device, but the plot itself is very well done, with some very alarming and emotionally charged decisions that are mostly in a nice, understated way, letting the reader realize for themselves what gravity they hold. The narrator does step in at times to point out things like the condition of the paper and ink to conclude what the writer must have been feeling. On the one hand, that can be seen as heavy-handed, but on the other, there may not be a great alternative, short of making a hard copy with the desired characteristics and photographing it. And hoping the reader notices those details.
Lastly, we come to "In Which Moondancer Kerfuffles Kerfuffle's Kerfuffly Bit," which of course I liked because it was written for me in 2019's Jinglemas exchange. For those unaware, someone who wants to participate will make (and receive) a request for a story about one or two characters. In the past, I've requested characters who I think would be interesting to see interact or who were similar in some way, but who were also pretty mainstream characters. Derpy and Octavia one year, Derpy and Sonata Dusk another. Last year I asked for Kerfuffle and Moondancer, who could be a pretty tough assignment. It's easy enough to simply have two characters encounter each other in a bar and have a conversation, but tougher to have a real point of connection. Naiad's no ordinary writer, though, and she did give these two a solid basis for their interaction. Very cute and funny, and surprisingly well done, considering that Naiad hadn't really paid attention to or even liked Rainbow Roadtrip. This is more a slice of life story, but for those who like the genre, it's up there among the solid examples of how to do a good one.
Naiad's early stories mostly feature Dazzlings shipping, which has been a pretty popular draw for readers, and sure enough, those stories all show a good number of views for the time period. She regularly topped 1k readers for those, and sometimes multiple thousands. So how is it that she's only gotten 132 followers as of today? She writes mostly in the Dazzlings genre, and a lot of it shipping, but that's a good-sized audience, and for people who don't actively hate that niche and will read whatever's good, Naiad won't disappoint. She hasn't written a dud story yet, at least not that I'm aware of (I wish I could say the same...). Consider checking out her stories, especially if you're a fan of atmosphere, and give her a follow.
Check out my previous underappreciated author spotlights:
Casca
Lucky Dreams
Ceffyl Dwr
Miller Minus
Impossible Numbers
Newcomers Edition with PapierSam and President Dead
Middle Ground Edition with Chris, PatchworkPoltergeist, and Norm De Plume
Good to see where the spotlight's pointed. Naiad's always a treat to read.
I'll absolutely second this, as Naiad easily qualifies among my favorite authors on the site. Meeting her (and summer, too) at Bronycon was a treat.
Naiad is always great. :D
The reasoning for her name is in the RCL interview, too!
It's an anagram! Whether that means there's some meaning to it or not depends on who you ask, I suppose. The most significance I attached to it is that several of the words in the things I whacked into an online generator were similar enough to the input to make me giggle.
Sirens are Greek and watery, and Naiad, Iota and Oar are at least one of those things to varying degrees.
Thank you for not typing it all out every time, I don't think I could fairly ask anyone to subject themselves to that.
And thank you so much for this spotlight! It's enormously flattering, doubly so with other people chiming in and all that. I'm sorry to say I've skimmed over a bit of it because my early stories here make me feel all the cringe (My RCL one and onwards I tend to feel pretty alright about, but before that, eurgh, such a New Writer). But those first stories were the ones that made me friends and got me criticism, which are the best things to get better with, so in some ways they're a much more important milestone for me and I'm glad to see one of them being mentioned here.
5249531
Well said indeed.
Hey, I've missed these. And it's even an author I've never heard of! Consider your mission accomplished, Pasco: you introduced me to a new-to-me author.
5249753
You only missed these because you were in the last one...
And how have you not heard of her? One of her stories is in RCL. Were you off duty when that got nominated and approved?
This was great - and it led me to your earlier posts of this kind too. Not wanting to pull focus from Naiad who is awesome (and who I was already following), but thanks to you I've now found a bunch of great authors I'd somehow never encountered before, so - thank you!
5249789
Yeah, that RCL story was after my time. And like a fool, I breezed right over said feature because the fic was EqG, and that's not usually my cup of tea. Shoulda guessed that if the author got RCL'd it probably meant she knew what she was doing, eh?
Naiad is my favourite author in these parts. Her stories fall into two quite distinct and different styles, with the dramas that she's best known for, but also some really sharp comedies. Accidental Matchmaking is definitely the highlight amongst the latter, and I can't think of many other dramatic writers who also have such great comic timing. Lost in Paradise, which you mentioned having not read yet, is really quite the thing, if you do get the chance to. But Adagio is the one I'd really recommend, even in its incomplete state.
This was a really good spotlight to do!
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And not the least of reasons for that is the mention you got...
5304552 That was a really nice moment, it was very sweet to learn we're that tied together in the public consciousness