Estee Ticks Off The Entire Site: Story Reviews, Round #3 (in a series of #Unlikely) · 1:44am Jun 10th, 2020
Before we start, let's tackle some NAQs.
(Never Asked Questions. Come on: like anyone actually vocalizes online.)
Why don't you review X's story?
Because X didn't personally submit their story for review.
Okay: why do stories have to be submitted for review by their author? Everyone else just picks and chooses.
Apparently I have a reputation for being cruel. (Also for being pompous and self-important, although no one's managed to adequately explain either of those last two any more than they've successfully plotted out how I can be both A. the single most important agent in George Soros' conspiracy to destroy America and B. poor. But in the end, isn't the important thing that they believe it?) And when someone calls me cruel, my first instinct is to paraphrase John F. Kennedy: I am not cruel, I resent being called cruel, calling me cruel is a deliberate lie being told to distort my reputation, and if I ever find the person who's been calling me cruel, I will DESTROY THEM.
...ahem.
The point is that if a story's author has to voluntarily offer it up for review, then I can't be accused of going after anyone. There's no bully pulpit.
Why is there a 10k word count limit for submissions?
I only have so much reading time available.
How does the Ko-Fi bribe thing work?
If you submit your story for review, I may be able to get it into a blog column. If you post a bribe into my tip jar, I will include it in the next dedicated review group. Essentially, you're skipping the line -- and that's it. The bribe does not make me say something nice. If I didn't like your work, you'll just find out that much sooner.
Will you review non-MLP fanfic work? Original stories?
It's probably a bad idea. For other franchises, I would need to be familiar with them on the MLP level in order to truly say how the fanfic had come out. With original stories, you're asking me to look at how you interpreted your own characters -- versus how the reader is looking at them. That never ends well.
Are you willing to edit my work?
No. I am self-evidentially a horrible editor. (That one's for you, Hatedom!) Besides, outside of basic grammar corrections, a lot of what editing does is bring writing closer to the editor's house style. You've seen how people react to my style. You don't want that. Ever.
Is this section basically just you stalling?
Sort of. I was outside in 90F heat. It takes a while for the rehydration to soak in.
Okay. We're going to look at six stories again and this time, I'm going to open with the two which were bribed in. We'll take random draw after that until I reach a half-dozen and sit back to watch my follower count drop. So the first one up is:
Apple Boom by Blazzing Inferno
If Zap apples make such phenomenal jam, why aren’t they used for the Apple family’s other famed delicacy: cider? Apple Bloom wants to know, and dooms all of Ponyville into finding out.
Some of the best story ideas come from asking the most incredibly obvious question -- the one so obvious that no one else ever bothered to think of it.
I've done that exactly once, and your mileage on the execution may vary. In my own case, the story was Stupid Direction-Face, and the question was When the red dragon left the cave in Dragonshy, where did the hoard go? But for this example, BI has come up with such an incredibly obvious question that I'm currently twisting myself into knots trying to find a local way out of answering it. This is a story concept which is too big to see, and one person managed to squint their way down to it. You could do just about anything with this one: in particular, Horror is immediately in play -- but we're sitting in the realm of Comedy.
Not only that, Apple Bloom is involved.
When reviewing stories, there are things I very carefully don't look at: for starters, I won't read any of the Comments, because I'm trying to go in on neutral and seeing what other people thought can influence that. It's hard to avoid the vote ratio. But in this case, I had to take a peek at something I normally wouldn't bother with: publication date. April of 2016. Which means that we're out of the Crusaders As Automatic Disaster Area portion of the timeline, a mark may be present, and some level of character maturity can be hoped for.
However, it's still tagged Comedy, the title suggests explosions, and the protagonist is Apple Bloom.
Which means that my first instinct, prior to starting the opening chapter, is that I'm going in to rubberneck. There's got to be a disaster up ahead, right? But is there also a smoking crater in the ground? A fresh hole in the ozone layer? Did anyone happen to figure out whether the ponies at the center could achieve escape velocity?
They've grown up somewhat. But they're still CMC at the core. And this is my own biases not so much creeping in as reaching for the pom-poms while working on an appropriate rhyme scheme -- but if you can't get a lone smoking horseshoe out of this combo pack, you ain't tryin'. Shall we?
- Saturday, 7 AM -
- (29 Hours Before) -
The cellar’s door creaked open and morning sunlight pierced through the musty air within. Apple Bloom stifled a sneeze as Applejack waved some dust away. “Sure smells down there.”
Applejack walked past her and descended the cellar steps. “It ain’t so bad, Apple Bloom. Now if we left it shut up all season with pony-knows-what-inside, then it’d be mighty ripe.”
Leaving the cellar alone for all eternity sounded just fine to Apple Bloom. Her forelegs still ached from the freshly-concluded Zap apple season. The prestige of heading up jam preparation had almost been too much for her hooves to handle, and in retrospect felt suspiciously like that time Granny Smith had sold her on how fun painting a fence could be.
(Incidentally, 'pony-knows-what' feels awkward. Ponyisms can add some welcome support to a story, but there are times when they just call too much attention to themselves.)
I'm going to ignore 'Saturday' on this one, mostly because we've already had that discussion. What I want to point out is the countdown.
Pixar, as a studio, has openly admitted that they like to have a ticking clock in every plot. Must do this before sunrise. Have to escape before Darla shows up. Got to justify Movie #5 in the franchise before 2024 because Onward had a two-week box office and we need something where people will show up.
We're being openly told that there are twenty-nine hours 'before'. Before what? Who knows? But everything we see from here on may be aimed directly at the moment when the timer runs out. It's meant to build anticipation. For a dramatic story, that can transition to tension: a comedy is more likely to build its structure on a series of facepalms as each successive brick gets knocked out of the wall.
With the simple announcement of a clock, the author makes you wait for it. And trying to find out what you're waiting for may be enough to get you into the next section.
Which starts at nine hours after.
So now we're centering. Something happened at Zero to create a dividing line. We're looking at approach and consequences, but we need to reach the actual event. Being tantalized in two temporal directions. This is Advanced Reader Torture --
-- but it's also a style which some readers won't put up with. Those who are allergic to mysteries won't do well with this: the ones who were hoping for a simple, quick laugh will leave. Anyone who ducked out on Inception has already hit the Back button. But you can't please the whole of the audience: there's no such thing as universal acceptance, and anyone holding out for it had better also be working on immortality for something to do while they wait for a very long time. Every style choice costs you readers, because readers are fickle things and at least one person probably clicked in because they were hoping it was a story about Apple Bloom exploding. And will downvote because it wasn't.
You learn to live with it.
As opposed to AB, who has a lot of things to live down.
In terms of editing, there are times when the story feels slightly punchy. Some sentences come across as short and choppy, paragraph length goes minimal in a few places, and I spotted a few areas where it seemed as if a word might have been missing.
She set the dust pan down and walked over to the Cakes, who hadn’t strayed from their tear-filled vigil by the window since Apple Bloom arrived.
I swear there's a 'had' which scrambled out the gap.
But all of this is pointed forward -- and backwards -- at a single question: what happens when you make Zap Apple cider? And we approach it from the buildup and the aftermath. Apple Bloom did something, without really meaning to. And I like having the dual discovery vector, I'm trying to piece it together, I'm waiting for the laughs --
-- and I'm still waiting.
This is a comedy. It just executes that definition on the Greek side of the dictionary: a story which ends well for the protagonist. Apple Bloom gets some degree of positivity from the conclusion. But in the buildup from what came prior to the event, it's mostly watching her feel miserable because she can't seem to make the cider. In the aftermath, she's miserable because it all went wrong. And when the explosion comes (because of course there's an explosion), it doesn't come across as comedic.
She tried so hard, she fell so far. She didn't get anything right until the end, and that by accident. It has nearly all the aspects of a tragedy and eventually, that's what it started to feel like.
I was looking for more in the way of raw silliness. Okay, this is setting up what went wrong. You're saying that resulted from whatever took place in the center? Buildup from two directions, and I still say this story's greatest strength is the format. But I didn't laugh. I didn't even really find a place where I smiled. It's a decent construction, and there's something at the core -- but comedy is one of the most subjective genres there is. I didn't find anything funny, and that's just me. But if I can't see the humor -- then I can't see it as a comedy. If anything, this one feels mistagged.
I avoid the comments. But it's hard not see the vote ratio. People loved this story. Seventy upvotes for every downvote. You don't achieve that every day. For Just about all of those who cared to register an opinion, this story worked.
But for me...
It's a fair light drama. But I can't see it as a comedy.
...wow. So that's what it's like to be the one on the other end.
Well, if nothing else, I did just reprove that bribes don't get you anything positive. Who else paid their way into pain?
Escalation by Krack-Fic Kai (with Chapter 3 by Masterweaver)
Pinkie Pie finds herself unsure how to act after falling for another girl. While she tries to sort out her feelings, her sisters decide to check this girl out and see what makes her so special.
Things escalate.
Part of the Oversaturated World.
There's nothing scarier to a new reader than a 'verse.
An author has written a group of stories which share a setting, slowly building divergences into a unique environment over the course of many thousands of words? Then every time a new reader walks in, they are being handed a test on a subject where they never took the class, didn't even know there were courses available, and not only are they breaking out in heavy sweat as they await the inevitable failing grade, but it also turns out they're doing all of this in their underwear. Or, worse, they aren't.
You're supposed to be reading fanfic about the show! You're familiar with the series! You know how things are supposed to work at the baseline, and now the baseline is different? The concept of a 'verse is enough to send many fresh arrivals screaming their way out of the long description at a sonic propulsion rate of what would be, if not for certain scientific limitations, Mach 3.
Yes. I recognize that I'm the one saying this. I've been struggling with this one ever since the 'verse label went on. (There are semi-scheduled bashings in a few places which repeatedly suggest that the whole thing is better off not existing, which also applies to the author. The more merciful versions state that I might be sort of completely intolerable in a better way if I stuck to disconnected one-shots.) Because a 'verse exists at the intersection of two dreaded tropes: Continuity Lockout and Archive Panic. A new arrival isn't aware of what they're supposed to know, and they're afraid of sorting through the amount of material it'll take to find out. 'verses are why the major comic book companies reset their worlds every few years -- well, that and they've convinced themselves that they're dealing with a different kind of wrestling fan, so every storyline can be recycled after seven years. The marks won't care, and the smart marks will presumably appreciate the references.
A 'verse is not necessarily a good thing to encounter for the first time. You might take the initial step into the line for the ride of your life -- or someone forgot to attach the safety harness, allowing you to get thrown for and from the loop. And here we have a 'verse: one which, like just about everything else, is FOME's fault. One does not simply introduce a little magic into the world...
I'm not going in entirely blind here. But I'm not familiar with every twist and turn. I don't know what all of the divergences are, or what they've ultimately built. This is the reviewer equivalent of watching a series pilot, then checking back at Episode 162. Let's hope at least one original character is still alive.
So Pinkie is attracted to another girl. We can build off that. We know Pinkie, don't we? Or rather, we know the core version of Pinkie, and many 'verses wind up twisting a good distance away from the originals. (YES, I AM STILL AWARE OF THE IRONY.) So how is this one doing?
The initial night of the meeting was neither dark nor stormy, so it had to be put off.
*snerk*
...okay, you got me. Not quite a Bulwer-Lytton contender, but definitely in the spirit of subverting the base. Moving forward...
...and I am very confused.
Okay. So this is a crossover with RWBY, which I did not spot because I'm not really familiar with the series and in the Equestria Girls context, 'Ruby Rose' is a fairly normal name. Also, there's a church and Sunset is in charge of it. It has to do with magic. And bacon. In the form of horses. Something like that. Plus Pinkie and Ruby are playing at being spies, but Sunset has put a Taboo on her own name and when it gets brought up, she appears to see what's going on, which really, really makes me wonder how long it's going to be before the whole evil empire thing sets in. She's running a church: she's already halfway there.
This is what happens when you come in during the middle. I could mention a few editing mistakes and spelling swaps, but I would be doing so as a means of distracting myself from the feeling of floundering. (We can stop bringing up the irony now, right?) All I know is that Ruby is here and appears to have been present for some time, so now I'm not sufficiently familiar with a 'verse and a franchise: the resulting displacement is in fact exponential. There's no opening summary of previous events. No slow-track establishing shot or scroll of text moving up the screen. Forget about 'previously on'. You just got dropped in and if you don't know what's going on, tough.
And that is why new readers flee from 'verses. I'm already partially locked out, because I don't know what happened before this. I don't know how much I need to read in order to understand the current situation. Where do I even start?
...this story was submitted just to teach me a lesson, wasn't it?
Okay: lesson learned. Account deletion possibly to follow. But in the meantime... it's not a bad story. There's some fun play with language, and you seldom get that many Pies in one place. But no matter how well some of the phrases were crafted, it doesn't change one core fact: I don't know what's going on. I don't understand how we got here from there: I'm not even all that sure about where 'there' is. The characters have grown and changed, because that's what characters should do -- but it all happened while I wasn't looking. It creates disconnect: not just between original version and current, but between reader and story.
It's an art, when it comes to fanfic. How do you change a character enough to make them different -- yet still keep them as a recognizable version of themselves? Something a fresh arrival is still capable of not only recognizing, but connecting with? You can do it over the course of a story -- but what happens when you come in during the middle of a more extended tale? And like so many arts, it's tricky to execute. I won't say that I've succeeded at all times, and there are those who would laugh if I claimed any number over zero.
How do you write a Pinkie who's been through all this, and keep her as Pinkie?
Or a Ruby?
Where the @$#% did Ruby come from?
I'm locked out. I don't know what's going on. I have no idea where to start. There's a back-issue catalog of sorts, and I can spend as much time as I like doing the research -- but how many new readers are going to go that far?
Not many. Because a 'verse is inherently terrifying.
And that is what this looks like from the other end.
...I swear y'all are ganging up on me.
Flotsam And Jetsam by Masterweaver
Eepl su bi hish shuploo. Zhshio shuplii bu zhshio wiipetliirupeshumee, iig ke reei bo klolv.
--Shre Leyshuroo bo Shoommlv (Scale's Grateful Regality), Sea Serpent Philosopher. Rough Translation:
"Water binds us all. To deny the current is to deny existence, and is the essence of foolishness."Written for the ultimate crackshipping contest.
The other possibility is that y'all are just collectively screwing with me.
I'm watching you.
...okay. This is a case where the long description only has one piece of relevant information for me: 'crackshipping'. Two characters are going to be shipped together and when I see who they are, I'll probably wish I was on crack.
Shipping is slightly more difficult than pimping: at least with the latter, you know exactly what you're putting in front of the audience every night, and pimping means those viewers are shipping your product with themselves --
-- well, that simile did a full 720 over the shark. Let's try it this way: it's easier to explain putting one person forward and alone than it is to get two people together. With normal shipping, it helps to try and explain why there's a connection, because you still can't put any two characters together and expect love -- at least not without a lot of bluffing. But a crackship doesn't care. Here is Character A. Here is Character B. This is happening, and the reason it's happening is called 'crackship'. You are not supposed to ponder the deeper romantic connection, nor should you wonder how mating is even possible or what the kids are gonna look like. They're shipped. Deal with it.
The long description tells me almost nothing. Let's try the tags.
...pony Siren fighting game romance.
I am picturing Mr. Game & Watch's octopus.
There is a chance I just outcracked the author. Let's see what actually happened.
The light filtered down, through the ripples and the grains of the higher layers, scattered off the scales and shells of those who swam above. Chirps, growls, and hums reverberated through the watery sands, their colorful owners floating through the assortment of plants and other sedentary creatures, some looking for rest, others for sustenance. A microcosm of existence, bound to the outside world only by that which drifted in, the abandoned and forgotten.
One such bit of flotsam swam carefully through the warped, twisting pillars of cast-off shells, eyes darting round the inhabitants. It could be forgiven to mistake this one, perhaps, for a native; there were many akin to its shape... yet, and yet, there remained some differences. There was a certain curve to the mouth, a certain fluidity to the coloration, and the eyes... not so simple as those around, but gleaming silver with an intellect more akin to those who lived dry. They tracked the many inhabitants, looking over their coloration with interest beyond mere hunger. Yet hunger was there, as it so often was.
It was merely... aimed.
This is strong writing. It's not going to appeal to everyone: there are readers who flee as soon as any word hits three syllables and 'microcosm' is going to make their brains vomit. But it works for me. It's just that at the moment, it works as a drug dealer rotating a glass vial under a sunbeam, because anyone looking at prism effects playing off the walls may not be thinking about the fact that he's about to destroy their brain.
I am not filing this opener under 'setting and mood', because 'distraction' is a little more blatant. What hath he wrought?
...hath he about to wring?
What's future perfect on 'hath'?
...and did I ever get this one wrong.
So let's clear this up: this is not a crackship in the classic sense. It's a crackfriendship, and the 'crack' element is bringing the two characters together without explanation, worry, or care. They met and they learn to like each other: deal with it. Kids are probably not coming and if they are, picturing the mating is your problem. And when it comes to who's on the other side of this pairing -- I'll be honest: I don't know enough video game lore to spot the character. I never recognized who it was, had to look it up after the Author's Note provided the name, and that meant I spent too much of the story running over the Smash roster and wondering who I'd missed. (The character in question is not an active fighter.)
If you're looking for crackfic in the typical definition: nonsensical events, zero long-term consequence, anything goes -- this isn't it. Two entities meet, with their meeting as the lone fantasy aspect. They have one thing in common: the water itself. But half of the pairing has lost her original home: she can still visit, but to stay too long is to die. The other has no way to reach her new habitat without giving up breath. They can meet for a few minutes, with the woman using artificial assistance to stay alive. She can't go home again, in so many senses. And the one she meets can never leave.
How does Sonata see a trip beneath the waves? She spends a lot of time playing with the other entity. There's something playful about the Sirens, because that playfulness is how they lure others to their deaths. A number of writers see Sonata as someone who's a little weaker than the rest, good for taco jokes and little else -- but that base state remains: this is a predator. Is she just revisiting old hunting grounds, knowing she can never kill that way again -- but possessing a ready respect for those who are still capable of drawing blood? At best, she's a former murderer. The one she's visiting kills for what it sees as survival -- but it's also ready to wound in order to prove a point.
They dance, in their way. But a predator dance is about evaluating the strength of the other: if there's enough to oppose, you might offer respect and go your own way. And if there's weakness, you strike.
Each sees a matching strength. There's another option for that: alliance, and traveling together for a time. One still hunts, one no longer can because her weapon is gone.
I was left wondering not what each perceived in the other, but what was regretted. If, with killing lost, the playfulness can only dance around the predator who can still act. If Sonata was living vicariously through the wounds caused by another.
It's not as if she's a tame Siren...
Recommended.
Okay. That takes out the bribes and the most recent submission. I'll reach back to the original blog for the remaining three, and start playing random draw. After all, there's no way we could keep a conspiracy against me going through multiple Comments sections.
...let me dream for a while. It's all I've got...
Spin the wheel, and we land on --
-- well, this is going to be awkward.
A tied date... Literally by CaioCola
It's not romantic if you are tied in your chair against your will…
That’s what Spike was repeating not just to himself in his head, but screaming to the entire restaurant while looking at the person who had him captive.
What would you do in this situation?
Edited and Profreaded by:
CategoricalGrant
Edited and Profreaded.
Profreaded
...oh boy.
Hey, CG? Y'missed one.
(Muphry's Law strikes deep...)
This particular submission came with a special request.
I would like to receive some critics and points on where I should start a sequel, like what kind of ideas I should have and how the sequel should start.
Half of this is impossible. I am not capable of telling people what kind of ideas they should have. I can't even tell myself what kind of ideas I should have, because I had to swerve my car around a tortoise crossing the road and now I'm stuck with a concept where Rainbow sends Tank to the store so he can pick something up for her and somehow, this leads to all of Ponyville entering DEFCON 1. I did not tell my brain to have that idea and if I had any ability to pick and choose what kind of idea might arise, I probably would have gone with something else. And in the case of the former... let's just say there are a few authors who would be told in no uncertain terms to stop thinking of their most precious things, or at least that latest W40K unit. This is not a power I can be trusted with.
There are people who make their living trying to sell the means of having ideas, and I'm not going to classify most of them as con artists because at least when you fall victim to a con artist, you get a story out of it. In my experience, an idea is something which happens. It's not so much a process as an event and for example, I have a tortoise. Also a fire extinguisher.
But I can at least look at the story and try to suggest where a sequel might lie. It's just that... this is a story about being tied up in a public restaurant against your will. This is with an Equestria Girls setting, it has the Romance tag, the main characters appear to be Adagio and Spike, and that means my first pre-reading instinct as to where a sequel should start is prison.
There's a minor who's been tied up, in public, against his will. I can start listing the charges if you like.
And the story has been tagged as a romantic comedy.
The story, put mildly, has some explaining to do.
It's not romantic if you are tied in your chair against your will…
That’s what Spike was repeating not just to himself in his head, but screaming to the entire restaurant while looking at the person who had him captive.
The predator’s smile made him nervous every time she looked at him. She seemed to savor him like a predator savor its prey.
Others may describe her as: A young woman, whose notable features are her long, poofy hair, and voluptuous body. They were most clearly shown as she swung her hips while walking. They very incarnation of the beauty itself!
For Spike, he was looking at one of the trio of sisters who had had a great fight against his sisters and their friends. They were his friends, but he didn’t feel like they were. But that mug smile from the kidnapper herself revealed she knew about him. Maybe it was because he was there when the final showdown between his sisters and her friends, against the trio of manipulative sirens who were singing songs and eating all the evil energy from the people at his school.
Hey, CG! You missed --
-- never mind...
At this point, I have to establish that English is probably not the author's first language. The writer appears to live in Brazil, and that's why we may have gotten things like 'They very incarnation of the beauty itself!' But that's why the story was edited by a native speaker, and -- it's still rough going. For starters, let's look at this assembly again.
For Spike, he was looking at one of the trio of sisters who had had a great fight against his sisters and their friends. They were his friends, but he didn’t feel like they were.
Part of the issue here is word repetition. We're using 'sisters' and 'friends' twice each in quick succession, and the definitions become increasingly muddied. On the 'sisters' repeat, there are two separate groups in play -- but the fact that the same word has been used twice can create a moment of reader confusion. And with 'friends'? It's hard to say what's going on there. The defeated trio are now his friends? Those who associate with his sisters? Flip a coin. Either way, he's dubious about the relationship, and I'm just about as dubious about my own guesswork.
And I'll be fully honest: if I hadn't been asked to review the story, this is probably where I would have hit the Back button. The base topic is one I would be reluctant to approach, even from an author I trusted. But I already feel as if I'm going to spend most of the piece fighting my way through the translation barrier, one syllable at a time. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but... I don't have good vibes here.
However, being a critic still means staying in your seat through the end credits. Just as if you'd been, to pull out a not-at-all-random comparison, bound in place. So I'll keep reading.
He couldn’t believe it when using an app on his cellphone to find a date led him to the very girl that he had prayed many times to never see again.
This is a sentence on technicality. It's meant to serve as a summary: how Spike got into this mess. It can be diagrammed, and feel free to try because I haven't seen a decent Möbius strip in a while. But it leads into:
“What did I do to deserve this?” Spike sighed. It was a terrible idea for him to go to the restaurant without backup. He had been knocked out in a surprise attack, and woke up in front of the table decked out with candles, wine and meat.
“You should thank God, because now you have me, Adagio, the most beautiful siren in the world! I have to say, you are looking very handsome today,” She complimented. Flattering oneself, Spike had noted, was a clear indicator of a certain type of personality. Just like one girl who referred to herself in the third person... and that concentration on his mind were broken when she made a contact touching his arm.
When she touched his arm, Spike had only one thought:
“RUN, YOU STUPID BOY, RUN!” He screamed internally, while he tried to release his hands to make an escape. Unfortunately they were tied too hard together to make any progress.
...okay. Let's stop for a few seconds. There's something I have to tell you.
This story has a vote total of 45 : 8.
We're going to mostly ignore the page views here, because that count is four digits and when you get those views normally, there will be more than fifty-three total votes. I'm guessing that it was a case of writer and editor taking frequent looks at their own work before posting. But the fact remains that forty-five people liked this story, as opposed to only eight who didn't find favor and whatever total didn't care to register an opinion.
Sometimes I wonder if it's just me.
Because for me, this is painful. I know the author is trying. I know that translation is a problem. But we have things like 'tied too hard together' and I know that's out of order. Using quotation marks for an inner thought, with no italics to distinguish that speech isn't taking place? It looks like Spike is openly screaming at himself to run -- and a second later, we're told that didn't happen: the gear shift required can crash the transmission.
I think I can see what the writer is trying to say. But that's not how it's emerging into the world. A road which was meant to be smoothly paved is cratered in linguistic potholes, and all I can do is drive forward and wait for the axles to crack.
“Well, while we enjoy our night, let’s get to know each other. You already know who I am, right?” She asked, beginning to eat elegantly.
Spike looked at his food and tried his best to recreate the old trick his brother once taught him for escaping from handcuffs. ”Well, yeah, you are the one of three sirens that tried to turn the school into a chaotic mess! You even managed to break up couples and friendships!”
“I remember you! You’re the boy who punched the cute guy that said Twilight Sparkle was the girl everyone loved to hate! She must be really important to you…” Adagio said, using a napkin to clean herself.
“She’s my step sister! Even if Flash was controlled by your lure, I couldn’t let him get away with that.” He groaned remembering the conversation he had with Twilight afterward, but even she couldn’t deny she was thankful to him for what he did.
Because there's a chance this sentence structure functions in Portuguese -- but in English, people don't talk this way.
Also, she knocked him out without knowing who he was? Seriously? This is how she greets everyone who gets app-set up on a first date? Also, aren't there other people in this restaurant? Do they have a few concerns about, oh, let me think about this, the underage kid who's been tied to a chair? How were these reservations made? One table for two near the kitchen, Bring Your Own Rope? Does the place supply handcuffs for those who happen to forget their own? Pity that the House Key's been missing for three years.
“HELP, SOMEBODY HELP ME!” He screamed, trying to undo the knot behind his chair. Unfortunately, it seemed no one was listening.
And just as much one of one that the entire restaurant came down with the Bystander Effect.
The Sirens lost their magic, right? This isn't an enchantment at work? We're just looking at an entire eatery of people who don't give a @$%^?
(Goes ahead a bit.)
(No magic is being used.)
(At all.)
(But we do get this.)
“Great job freaking out like that! This restaurant is perfect for people who like kidnapping dates. The more you act like it was a kidnapping date, the better discount we get!” Adagio signaled to a waiter near the wall.
We're still being honest with each other.
If I was reading this story normally, if I'd kept going past what would have been the normal break point -- this is where I would downvote. Because suspension of disbelief has been shattered. Bondage games are cooperative: tying up someone against their will is a crime. Either your victim has been tricked into loving you by the time you leave, or this place had better have a medical supply house next door. You know. The kind which supplies medical students. With corpses.
Tell me it's a crackfic and the rules of reality have been suspended? Maybe I'll let you get away with it. But this is a romantic comedy. And it's so romantic to take someone hostage, tie them down and make them helpless and gee, what are the odds that we get a rape scene? Probably north of 0%. I am buying exactly none of this and I would be marching up to the Returns counter to see if I could get my time back.
“Great job freaking out like that! This restaurant is perfect for people who like kidnapping dates. The more you act like it was a kidnapping date, the better discount we get!” Adagio signaled to a waiter near the wall.
“Wait, there’s a place like that in real life?” Spike wasn’t sure how to react. “This isn’t a kidnapping? It’s a date?”
“Of course it’s a date? Isn’t you Mast.DragonSolar101?”
I would have already hit the Downvote button.
I am now solidly at @$%^ This.
I know what I just said. I realize I'm probably costing myself a follower, possibly a sponsor -- the works. But this is the truth: I don't believe what's going on. I don't accept this. You don't get to play Shocking Swerve without the risk of losing your audience, and I'm not willing to play along with the plot because I am not willing to buy into an environment where this kind of plot is possible.
Also, Cadance is zapping Shining with a taser. In the same restaurant. To get a discount. Spike never notices. Because that's how economics, and sound conduction, work.
I can't buy this.
So the story tries to provide me with a warranty.
It's being sold by Fred.
Have you met Fred?
“But why would he have to do with this whole hostage theme? I don’t understand…” Spike, for the life of him, couldn’t think of a good reason for such a pricing schedule.
“Well, his brother is a Hollywood director and works on action and suspense movies. His brother told him that if he could record good scenes of torture and kidnapping and record them, he’d pay him millions. We help him to direct his films, and we get food for pennies on the dollar.” Despite how ridiculous the whole scenario was, Spike began to see the reason in it. Besides, it’d be cool to become an action movie star!.
Let's look at this sentence fragment again.
Despite how ridiculous the whole scenario was
This is sometimes viewed as the writer's subconscious getting a word in and when that happens, it's called a Message From Fred. The author is calling themselves out. Yes, I know this is ridiculous, but work with me here! Besides, aren't you, as the reader, taking this too seriously?
Maybe. Forty-five others found this worthy of their approval. Of course, maybe there were a few of them who are into very specific fetishes. There is one for knocking someone out, binding them, and making them feel helpless in a public setting -- right?
And Spike ultimately goes along with the date. He does so in a way which fails to counterbalance that in which I can't go along with the story. He even pays the bill, because Stockholm Syndrome comes with a bill. And at the end, while walking in public with his 'date'...
“Alright, well, let’s go back home. I… Pinkie, what happened?” Sunset Shimmer asked, seeing Pinkie Pie’s mouth literally drop to the ground. She walked over to her friend, before a strange forced smile froze itself on her face as well.
“Sunset what happened?...” After walking in the direction of her friend, Rainbow Dash stopped suddenly in place and punched herself to make sure she was awake.
“Rainbow are you okay, you just…” Applejack saw what happened with the girls and then suddenly she knew something was coming so decided to tap her ears.
“What is going on, why are you four suddenly stop...” Surprisingly Twilight’s hair became flat the same way Pinkie Pie would be when she became Pinkamena.
“Girls wha…” Fluttershy after coming near to them she finally found what happened, she found Adagio giving a kiss on Spike’s check making her take a deep breath to let out a quiet scream but it was finished by Rarity screaming like a drama queen.
“SPIKE NOOOOOOOO”
That's how it ends.
Right there. Exactly like that. Unedited, and CG, I am only bringing this up three times because you needed to Profreaded one more.
And now the author wants to know how to proceed with a sequel.
*deep breath*
Let's falsely presume the author is still talking to me.
You are, from my point of view, asking me for script advice on Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever II. I don't understand why you made the first one. I recognize that there are people who sat through it and there's forty-five of them who might be up for a series. But I can't relate to the characters, setting, or plot. It took me less than twenty paragraphs before I had one goal for reading the story: finish it, because that way, it would be over.
I recognize that you have an audience: it's right there in the vote bar. I also see that you have an editor, and I can see ways where I feel that editing failed you in just about every sentence. But I'm not part of your desired readership. When it comes to this kind of story, I won't ever be.
Drive it further into farce? The second date has Adagio forcing Spike to rob a bank? Maybe by the fourth, she's pushing him out of an airplane, and there is no fifth date because hey, not giving him a parachute was the fun part. In that sense, I suppose there are ways in which you could continue this.
But that's the only way I would be able to treat it: farce. I feel like you wanted it to be taken just a little bit seriously: that a place like this could exist -- and I, as a reader, reject that. If it was intended as farce? Then it wasn't funny. You gave me a scared kid, and then you wanted me to believe that he could just accept this as leading into love? Romantic comedy, after all.
I didn't feel any connection. I never laughed. I just wanted it to end.
That's me. And I'm the outlier here. Forty-five people liked this story, remember? It's just that...
...I don't understand why.
Not My Fetish, Dear.
I can't help you.
Somewhere in the Comments section -- here or elsewhere -- is going to be someone talking about how I should have handled that. I am going to be called cruel, with great frequency. (Still not sure how 'pompous' is going to be justified here.)
Isn't writing reviews fun? Doesn't everyone love alienating people forever when they just wanted some constructive feedback?
Yay.
...two more. I promised I would do six in this grouping. I need two more. That can't possibly do more than cost me 90% of my followers. Maybe 93%...
So who's next?
Trixie vs. Roadside Assistance by Dusty The Royal Janitor
When Trixie's brand new wagon breaks down in the middle of Hoofington, she finds herself unable to repair her broken wheel herself. So she decides to call upon Equestrian Roadside Assistance for help.
It will be a decision she is doomed to regret as she is forced to confront automatic voice directories, unhelpful operators, intolerable hold times, lovecraftian madness, gastrointestinal distress, and moronic protocol.
Trixie will never leave Hoofington with her sanity intact.
(Inspired by events that happened to the author)
...hey, anyone remember that time when I called AAA for help after my tire blew out, and they told me my membership had been cancelled for no apparent reason or at least, not one they ever managed to really explain? And I had to get a cardholder to drive down to where I was stranded to make the call for me?
...yeah.
Never tried rendering that one into a story. Local lack of Equestrian phone service.
I've turned a lot of the crap in my life into stories (and we will now pause so the Hatedom can giggle about how the stories reflect the source). It means I understand about working things out through kicking it off to somepony else. Here: I went through this and when you do too, you'll demonstrate just how ridiculous it all is. Writing a real situation as a story creates distance, which leads to perspective and if you're lucky, some degree of reconciliation. Plus there's Ron Luciano's six words for universally summing up every life: It Wasn't Funny At The Time. Sometimes, all you need is a day and third-person limited.
So Dusty had a horrible time with roadside assistance and, presumably in an attempt to not shoot up most of a call center, decided to pass it off to Trixie. Why not? I once handed her a cell phone contract. It's easy to pass things like this onto Trixie, because she is not the type of personality who just sits back and waits for things to resolve themselves. Trixie gets involved. Trixie inserts herself into situations horn-first and if said horn happens to be lit at the time, that is now your problem. We can learn a lot from Trixie, mostly about how to be sued for damages.
However, this story is nearly ten thousand words.
That's a lot of roadside assistance problems.
...thank you, Random Draw. Let's see what we've got.
The story takes some time to establish when it is: Trixie just finished her durance at the Pie's rock farm, purchased the Amulet, got a new caravan, and she's on the way to Ponyville so she can show Twilight what for, or if she's not in a particularly British mood, 'what the buck happened to you?' She is confident in her plan, her abilities, and the fact that the Amulet has been known to distort the personalities of the weak-willed surely won't ever apply to her.
Then the wheel breaks.
The powder blue showmare groaned, slapping a hoof to her forehead. “Ugh, and it was such a good day too. Trixie does not have time for this!” she growled, angrily gazing up and down the road she had just come from, looking for the source of her woes. Her eyes landed upon a shallow rough dip in the pathway, perhaps an inch deeper than the rest of the road at best. Trixie gaped “That’s it? That’s what broke the wheel?!” she cried, with a stamp of her hoof. “Stupid lying wagon salesmen. They said it was in perfect condition.” She shook a hoof at the sky. “Mark Trixie’s words, brothers Flim and Flam! When Trixie finishes Twilight Sparkle, she’s coming for you next!”
Trixie lowered her hoof from the sky with a dramatic stamp. She snorted a little and flipped her silver-blue mane out of her eyes. Her little fit over with, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Trixie supposes, then, that she must fix her wagon.” With a flip of her stormy gray cape, the mare trotted to the back of her wagon and opened a small compartment, pulling out a spare wheel. The mare looked over the wheel carefully, looking for any cracks or imperfections in the wooden circle. Finding none, she gave herself a satisfied nod and reached further into the compartment with her magic. Removing a jack, she trotted back to the right-front wheel.
Regarding 'fix her wagon': I was so expecting a musical number there. But we're dealing with something else here, and this is as good a place as any to get it out of the way, especially since I'm already alienating people. It's on full display in the quoted paragraphs and once you spot it, you never really stop seeing it.
Fillies & gentlecolts, we have Lavender Unicorn Syndrome.
I'm not exactly immune. I don't think any of us have full antibodies with this one: every so often, especially when we have characters being brought onto the local stage for the first time or we're sorting presences out of large groups, we'll drop a few known traits into the descriptive mix. There is no total cure for LUS, and there probably shouldn't be because sometimes, a character needs to be described.
But LUS can be an issue in fanfic, and that's because it's a medium where we know what the characters look like going in. Unless something's happened to them recently, or there's a local variation which needs to be defined -- then Twilight started as a unicorn of a roughly lavender hue. And there are writers who will describe her that way. Every. Single. Time. If Twilight is present, then there is a lavender unicorn about. Later on the timeline? Lavender alicorn. Trixie is on stage and in order to remind you of that when her name alone brings up the image, here is her fur hue, the cape, and we're probably going to get around to her irises in a minute.
Lavender Unicorn Syndrome is taking the Empire State Building and describing it as 'tall'. We know.
I repeat: I'm not immune. The local Twilight is exceptionally short and slender: I frequently bring that up in stories because it helps to separate her from ten thousand other Twilights -- but I could always just stop, because the long-timers know that already. And I've said 'yellow pegasus' a few times with no excuse for it.
But here we have a bog-standard Trixie, for whom getting stuck in a bog may soon be the kinder option. We know what she looks like. What she's wearing.
With another dramatic flip of her mane, Trixie alighted her horn and placed the jack beneath her wagon. The periwinkle unicorn grabbed ahold of the lever and pushed down upon it as hard as she could with her magic.
And LUS insists on reminding us. Over and over again.
(Also, that is not what 'alighted' means. Sorry...)
Keep an eye out for LUS in your own writing. It's okay to bring up traits now and again: if somepony has no idea who Applejack is, then 'orange earth pony' may be how they see her. But when it's just the Mane Cast or one of the major secondary players out on their own, and they're the focus character -- we know what the usual model looks like. Focus on the differences. 'Lavender unicorn' isn't necessary. Telling us about recent grooves in the fur and that missing patch of mane does a lot more.
And now back to making Dusty unfollow me.
Trixie attempts to repair the wheel, and the Art Of Self-Injury gets her as far as elevating the caravan on a jack. Unfortunately, the lugnuts are beyond her capacity and the Amulet isn't meant for mere menial labor -- so it's time to call for help with this convenient phone, which Flim & Flam also provided.
...yeah.
And Here Her Troubles Began.
The story has a bad habit of overdescribing: we're not just getting blow by blow, but action-by-action (which includes the awkwardness of holding the phone in a hoof.) It actually hits a better flow when it's being more casual: at one point, the author drops five species languages in a row just by providing Trixie with the appropriate menu, and that feels entirely natural. But it's also a story about frustration, and there are ways in which going for that moment-by-moment style can enhance your chances of passing that frustration along to the reader. It's just a question of whether you're making someone feel Trixie's pain -- or just giving them their own issues with 'I READ THIS ALREADY!'
As below:
“To begin the process of assisting you,” the voice went on, “please read off your six digit ERA account number as provided on the card that came with your mobile phone.”
Trixie stared blankly for a moment before realizing what the voice meant. She quickly grabbed for the plastic card that she’d gotten with the phone and flipped it over. There were a bunch of meaningless words and numbers on it, but six digits stood out in particular.
Trixie opened her mouth to speak but the phone cut her off again. “Please read off your six digit ERA account number as provided on the card that came with your mobile phone.” The voice repeated.
The showmare huffed. “Trixie’s getting to it!” she snapped.
“I’m sorry. I did not understand your response. Please read off your six digit ERA account number as provided on the card that came with your mobile phone.” It repeated once again.
She growled. “839361” Trixie snarled out into the phone.
The phone repeated. “I’m sorry. I did not understand your response. Please read off your six digit ERA account number as provided on the card that came with your mobile phone.”
“What?!” She shouted, “But Trixie just did, you imbecilic pile of horseapples!”
“I’m sorry. I did not understand your response. Please read off your six digit ERA account number as provided on the card that came with your mobile phone.”
Which category did you fall into? Do you understand what she's going through, in large part because you've probably been through this circuit yourself? Or did you just land on I Get The Point, Thank You? Frustration comedy requires a delicate trick: proximity to the experience while maintaining the distance which allows you to not relive it all over again. Too far away and it's not funny: too close and you just get angry for the second time.
It's a balancing act. And the wire keeps creaking under your feet.
We follow Trixie as she dances around the menus. (At one point, her screams of frustration summon the police. The police do not render roadside assistance. And so we know Dusty is probably American, because dear gawds, an officer will pull over to see if you're okay and under regulations, that's it.) The Hold function is encountered. Overcrowded call lines. Poorly-played jazz, because there is no torture which cannot be made worse by hold music. She becomes upset enough to drop out of third person. The police won't assist her, but every time the fraying of her sanity caused by the two-minute music loop causes her to break a minor law, they issue her a ticket. Screaming is noise pollution and tearing up the prior tickets counts for littering. (Deep South, right?) Her mind breaks and begins searching for Great Old Ones. Then the assistance operator picks up, which is worse.
I'm going to paste this next portion for one reason: it's the best thing I've read all day.
The funny thing about insanity is that it eventually reaches a limit. Once you’ve cycled through the despair, the rage, the homicidal tendencies, the gibbering fits of horror, and the comatose ennui, you really don’t have much anywhere else to go with it. This is the moment when a pony becomes cognizant of the fact that they’ve gone completely battynuggets out of their gourd and enters a state of meta-insanity. They accept that they are no longer sane, but there’s really nothing else they can possibly do with that insanity, so they resign themselves to simply going with the flow in the world gone mad. By all rights, ponies in this state appear perfectly normal. They are calm, collected, and well spoken. The trick to recognizing such a pony is that they may be just a little bit too calm in the face of unspeakable horror or unbearable pain or ultimate despair.
Trixie had reached that level.
Yep.
That is how it be.
I should know.
I LIVE THERE.
We don't need to follow Trixie through every moment of her trials, at least not in the course of a review. Those who read the story can indulge in that level of detail. For now, just know that there's rerouting, That One Competent Person Who Went Home For The Day, mistakes made with local food, gastrointestinal distress, and Stay By Your Caravan, Please. It's the comedy of suffering, and the trick is distance. It has to be familiar enough to be funny, and it can't be so direct that you're suddenly reminded your own experience wasn't funny at the time.
It can happen to Trixie, and that allows humor to take its place on the subjective side of the border. But if it starts to feel like it's happening to you, then -- this should sound familiar -- it's too close.
For the most part, I feel this story stays on the proper side of the line -- and I'm speaking as someone who, with the Previa, achieved first-name basis with multiple tow truck drivers. There's humor here, although it takes a while before the comedy really kicks in -- and the repetitive nature for a few of the routines can take a toll. (If you think you're tired of seeing Trixie miss her repair after the second time, imagine how she feels.) At nearly ten thousand words, this piece has pacing problems. When it hits, it hits hard -- but it can dance around the ring for a while before bothering to throw a punch.
I can advise reading it, at least if you have some temporal distance from your last repair. But watch out for the LUS. And powderblue unicorns.
Or periwinkle.
Honestly, I lost track.
One more. Final victim of the night is gonna be...
Protagonist by CCC
It started over tea. Twilight and Starlight agreed to each invite one friend; and then the conversation turned to the question of what if the world around them was nothing but a work of fiction?
1700 words?
Bugs: "It's magnificent!"
Porky: "It's stupendous!"
Daffy: "It's short!"
...not so fast.
So we're looking at fictional characters discussing whether everything around them is fictional. There's a few ways to play this, and the Horror tag beckons to a few of them -- but for this rendition, the author has chosen Comedy and Slice Of Life. The character tags say the guests are Trixie and Sunset, which means Trixie now has her second appearance in two reviews and will be completely unbearable for the rest of the blog, much like the reviewer.
(Beat you to it.)
At this point, all I'm looking for is laughter without pain. But it's not necessarily that kind of story -- so let's see if I get it.
We begin in what would often be the middle: the topic has already been brought up, and the four mares are debating some of the implications. For starters, Trixie has decided that if the world is in fact a fictional setting, then she's the main character. That's right: the world revolves around Trixie, and she stands ready to prove it.
"...this I've got to hear," growled Sunset. "What is this 'proof'?"
"Why, it lies in the three of you," said Trixie. "Sunset Shimmer. Twilight Sparkle. Starlight Glimmer. Do you see the similarity in your names?"
The three of them glanced back and forth. Now that it was pointed out, the similarity was obvious... but Trixie elaborated on it anyway.
"A time of day, followed by a thing that light does. Moreover, each of you played an important role in Trixie's life, in order."
"I've never even heard of you before today," said Sunset.
"What do you mean, 'in order'?" asked Twilight.
"Chronological, by first name," explained Trixie. "First you have Sunset, then a period of Twilight, then the Starlight becomes visible. And so was it with Trixie; when the Great and Powerful Trixie was at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, Trixie had a great rivalry with Sunset Shimmer."
"I've still never heard of you," said Sunset.
There are so many ponies in Equestria who wish they could say the same.
Bluntly: this is a scene. We come in during the middle, and we go out the same way. Trixie takes a scene to reframe her entire life in a way which makes the others at the table into mere plot elements in her story. We get just about nothing for a description of the setting, much less the reason why they're all eating together. There's an excuse to have the four of them in the same room and after that, we're pretty much looking at pure dialogue. The discussion is covered, wraps up quickly, and End Scene. Also, -30- and if you got that, you either looked it up, took exactly the right class/saw the proper movie, or you're old.
This doesn't mean it's a bad scene. The characters are decently voiced, and it's easy to hear each sentence emerging from the appropriate mare. Trixie is perfectly at home with the level of ego required to pull this off, and everypony else serves as audience to her self-inflicted semi-madness: that's Trixie all over, along with the effect she tends to have on the world. As scenes go, this one's fine. I nodded a few times, smiled a little, and closed it out.
But it's a scene. I can't really describe it as a story, because it's not so much Slice Of Life as Short Cut From The Longer Film. The writer wanted to have the conversation, and so the conversation took place -- with nothing around it. I can see this as becoming a fragment within a larger work, because having these four together opens up multiple possibilities for further discussion. It's just that for now, we have one scene.
The quote above -- that's from Tiny Toons. The named characters are judging a student animation festival, and have just slogged through the kind of torture normally found in a review column -- including the kind of art film which one of you made. Yes, you. Don't deny it. They replicated the whole experience, right down to where the viewer's eyes are bleeding in self-defense because a coating of red means you don't have to see the film. And the whole thing ends with Plucky's work, which he'd meant to be his epic life story and, post-editing, wound up as -- about forty-eight frames.
And so what I thought was a joke (and couldn't find the video for) becomes prophetic.
It's good for what it is. But it could have been a lot more. A scene, not a story.
There are times when that works, and readers whom it works for. But for me, today? It's a good scene.
It's -- short.
Fresh volunteers (with optional Ko-Fi bribes) may offer up their own work in the Comments below. Assuming there are any volunteers.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the back, counting the dead.
I love this. I think that this should be her official character summary.
Bring out yer dead! (for counting)
... I can't tell if that was on purpose or not.
To be clear, if you decided to check out the Oversaturated World on your own, I'd be elated. But this... Oh, this can't possibly end well, especially not starting with a story so deep in it. One that's also a crossover, because I didn't figure out how to say no to new ideas until it was far too late. Perhaps the biggest problem with inviting people to play in your sandbox is that they'll bring in unfamiliar toys.
)
(To be clear to Kai if he's reading this, I have no issues with Escalation, but you have to admit it's far from the best introduction to that setting, and seriously whyyyy!?
Oh, thank goodness, you're at least aware of the basic concept.
I resemble that remark.
... Yeah, key word there being "basic." whyyyyyy For what it's worth, the church cropped up without Sunset's input or consent.
Not sure if you looked at the details of the contest, but the prompts were all drawn from Smash Ultimate's trophy equivalents. I had to make do with an action figure.
That does seem like a stretch for Adagio. Aria I could see testing how well her date can take a punch the moment they show up.
In my experience, there are two kinds of ponyfic writers: Those who contracted LUS at some point, and those who lie.
I understood that reference.
That could've certainly gone worse. I think. Not sure what's in the hopper, and at this point, I'm afraid to find out what else might implicate me.
Ideally cynical indeed.
PART OF THE PROBLEM
The late Isaac Asimov said something to the effect that the hardest thing in the world to write is Humor because only the bullseye counts. Stuff can be somewhat mysterious, a little romantic, kind of scary, etc. & still work. But humor, you either hit the target dead center or it flat out Ain't Funny & doesn't work.
So, if your sense of humor doesn't match the author's you're screwed. The story just Ain't Gonna Work
Alcohol is explosive. Zap Apples are explosive. Apple Bloom exists near both of them.
5281569
Do you think a coward choose this name? Also, I don't have very much submissible content and I do want to rewrite it because, objectively, it's just not very good but mainly the bravery thing.
We do need a few stories that catch readers up on certain areas, and I need to learn how to be less confusing because I feel like that's really the main thing I'm bad at. Try and get through this prologue. My editors are saints. I could explain the church, who Ruby is, maybe establish the other crossover characters (Pinkie is also Steven Universe's nephew, BTW. Bit of trivia) and since the entire verse really needs Pinkie logic running in the background somewhere it'd be a good starting place. Maybe instead of it being about the crush directly, she's experiencing power inconsistency?
There's probably a really funny Entrapta story in here somewhere.
I got my bribe's worth, that's for sure
. Sorry I didn't make you laugh, but I'll agree that comedy is highly subjective. I think I picked this one because it's less pies-to-the-face wacky comedy and more Pinkie-tried-to-separate-crystalized-sugar-from-broken-glass-by-taste-why-would-you-do-that-Pinkie, which I figured might be more your speed. Also, I don't think I have any pies-to-the-face wacky comedies, so there's that.
I'm intrigued by your checking the publication date to gauge when in the show timeline this took place. That totally makes sense (especially for the CMC), but makes me wonder: what percentage of ponyfic is written as an immediate reaction to the latest episode versus semi-evergreen stories that could've happened anywhere between seasons 1 and 4, for example?
Oh, and I'm notorious for missing words during no matter how many editing passes I (or others) make, so thank for you pointing another one of those out!
That sounds like experience talking...
Reminds me of the time I got stuck in snow. A few minutes later the local police then got stuck in snow behind me (following in my ruts in unplowed snow). They never checked to see if I was okay, yet were perfectly happy with accepting my assistance in getting them unstuck. They thanked me by driving off. Two hours later I was finally pushed out by a Hummer.
I totally geeked out at this and shouted, "It wins!". Thank you for the trip down memory lane!
I like your reviews, because they are honest, harsh but fair, and come from someone eminently qualified to give valuable advice. Also they are generally entertaining as well.
Personal confession time: While I have been a Patreon supporter for quite some time now, the only works of yours I have not yet read are the Triptych stories. Because I came in after the main story was already complete, and dang that's a lot of words. Some day when I have time... but I feel like a bad fan, because how can I really assess your work when I have never read your magnum opus?
Oof. Honestly, I really wasn't thinking about all your constant troubles when I suggested this one. That was probably a little tone deaf of me. Sorry if this was a little too personal. Maybe I should've suggested one of my other shortfics.
Yeah, I fully expected this criticism. I know I shouldn't but I just get itchy when I refer to a character by their name a dozen times in a single paragraph.
You know how if you repeat a word like "applesauce" over and over and over again for long enough it stops sounding like a word altogether and honestly just starts to sound like a droning jumble of annoying squawking? It's like the writing equivalent of that. When I've written the name "Trixie" twelve times in a single paragraph, I just can't help but think "I need to break this up with something. Anything. Somehow."
It's a bad habit, and one I need to break, but it's harder than it sounds.
Honestly, most of your criticisms seem to be the exact same things I beat myself up over, so you probably don't have to worry.
Yeah, bit of plot contrivance there, I'll admit. The important thing was that Trixie needed to have the phone, and phones aren't exactly a huge part of the world of FiM so I felt I had to bullshit a reason that one might exist, I guess. I think I just wanted to get on with the inevitable shitstorm so I jotted down the first thing that came to mind and moved on.
Yyyyyyyeahhhhhh. This is one of the biggest problems I have. My constant penchant for overexplaining details and purpling up my prose, combined with the aforementioned Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, all kind of gloms together at times into a bit of a monster. They're some really bad habits that I picked up a long long time ago.
Honestly the core problem is that I'm actually kind of a dullard.
Whenever I try to read books or stories, I tend to trip up when authors leave out details that one could normally expect their audience to fill in. Like, if you've got two female characters in a scene talking to each other, and you only refer to them as "she" and "her," I start to lose track of who's talking and when. Likewise, if you have a scene where, say, somebody was talking on a phone earlier in the scene and then later that same person gets into a car, and you don't explicitly show the person hanging up the phone and moving to the garage, I tend to do a double take. I say "wait, when did he hang up the phone? Did he take the phone into the car?" And then I spend a good couple minutes rereading the scene and trying to figure out what I missed before I realize "the author just didn't show the character doing these things and expected us to infer it." And then I feel stupid.
Things like this have tripped me up for literally as long as I can remember. I specifically remember an "Arthur" book I read when I was a teeny tiny kid about Arthur getting chicken pox. In the story, DW gets jealous of how much her family is pampering Arthur and she decides to fake getting chicken pox too. So she, and I quote "Opened up her marker box and looked for a pink one."
I swear to god, I spent like ten minutes as a tiny six year old trying to puzzle out "A pink one WHAT?!"
...yeah. I wasn't the brightest kid.
So for as long as I can remember, I've tried to be very specific about exactly what is happening at every moment in my writing to try and cut down on any potential confusion the reader might otherwise experience. Unfortunately, in the process, not only do I underestimate my own audience's intelligence, but I vastly overcompensate, filling my prose with minutiae and tiny details and stage directions and whatnot that do not matter in the absolute least and could easily be cut out if I were just a little less insecure about my own ability to make my ideas clear, and had a little more faith in my audience's intelligence.
I've been trying really hard to cut back on the purpleness of my prose (as well as the LUS) for a while now, but it never really seems to take. It's become especially problematic when I try and write action scenes, I've noticed.
Yep.
East half of Texas, so yeah, kinda.
Honestly, I'm mostly just kind of ecstatic that you felt like there was actually humor there and that I stayed on the right side of the line of "funny vs frustrating" most of the time, even despite the deep shade of violet that my prose tends to take on and my pacing issues.
It's a little too bad that it seems like the experience was a bit spoiled for you by your own personal sagas of frustration with your own car. Especially given your "laughter without pain" comments when you reviewed "Protagonist"
I guess I'm glad to know that it wasn't an entirely miserable experience though. Thank you for reading it and giving it a fair analysis! :)
Maybe if you ever open this sort of thing up again I'll suggest "Twilight Sparkle Ships Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash" instead. That one's only 2000 words or so.
I'm glad someone appreciates my work.
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Um, I know I established that Rose Quartz is Cloudy's mother in that setting, but we have another issue there.
That one Brazilian author that got his story reviewed...
Honestly, I’m from Brazil myself and errors like the ones shown are pretty much the reason why I keep a copy of Elements of Style on me.
If anything I feel like you did the right thing by pointing out how poorly edited and structured that story was. The way it was executed also gives off the vibe that the person who wrote it is quite young too.
I need to read this.
Honestly, the sequel is a much better introduction to Ruby and her cast, I might just let this go, some things just aren't accessible.
At least you've never written "butter-yellow pegasus". R-right?
My advice for sequels: If you have an idea, write it. If you just want the views because people liked the first story and are clamoring for more, maybe try something else.
Onward is a good movie, I saw it in theaters and was very satisfied with it. Sadly it suffered from being a new IP, poor publicity and the pandemic cutting it's time in theaters short. It's not for everyone, people with siblings and/or lost a parental figure will probably appreciate it more but the story held itself together, the jokes are good, the setting fun and I wouldn't mind a sequel (not that I know what the sequel would be about...)
Pretty much
Don't worry, though, you're still a bloody good writer if my mild-to-moderate addiction is anything to go by.
You're right, the story I submitted is short. And, moreover, it very much is a single scene.
There's a good reason for this, and it is that I suffer from a slight degree of garrulity, particularly anytime I try to write a complete story. Or, in other words, (what I think of as) the best of my complete stories clocks in at a smidge over 16000 words, more than one and a half times your limit. There are reasons why you would not want to do a review on something that long, and they are very good reasons; you have to frequently deal with Stuff which is so much more important than ponyfic. (And I believe that the capital letter on Stuff is also very much deserved).
So, I guess all I can say is a very polite thank you for the review, and I'm glad you enjoyed the scene.
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I disagree with that. Humor that can be meant to have you rolling on the floors can end up with a grin and chuckle instead. In fact it can be pretty hard to judge if humor has hit exactly on the bullsye
for some reason, a weird collection of crack-shipping stories comes to mind: "tainted love".
a bunch of short stories that "ship" Twilight with Chrysalis!
i particularly like the one called "evil Twilight, good Chrysalis."
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Don't tell me, get a Ouija Board & tell Isaac.
Parasol?
(Yeah, I know. Unless otherwise indicated, it's probably Fluttershy. 
)
5281641
That's it! LUS is an attempt to stave off the written form of semantic satiation! It all makes sense!
Well you read the prequel so might as well put this monstrosity up for review:
Pinkie Pie's Problematically Private Passion's Parental Personages Presented Perpostorously Prior Publishing Previously Paraphrased Preoccupation
I wonder if it will be any better or worse.
Dang it, I wish I hadn't been basically offsite for the last four months so I could've gotten in on this at the start. Can I still submit a story for review? I'd quite appreciate it if you'd be willing to deign do me the great kindness of tearing Autumnfall Change to shreds please. I've been starving for detailed criticism, and I think it's safe to say that of the terms one could use to describe these blogs, "detailed" and "criticism" are high on the list.
Also, while I don't want to say anything that might keep you from going in blind, I would be particularly interested in your answers to a couple of questions:
What do you think could have been done to improve the story as it currently stands without increasing the wordcount? (Since it was originally written for a contest and I was already way over the length limit. Irony what irony?)
What sorts of new material could be added to retroactively address the issues you spot, and which issues do you think would need to be addressed most urgently? (Since I'm planning to go back and continue/extend the story once I can muster the time to actually sit down and resume writing the thing, and it seems unlikely that I've already identified all of the problems that are likely to cause readers trouble.)