Present Perfect vs. Days of Wasp and Spider · 2:03pm Dec 30th, 2020
Luna-tic Scientist's Days of Wasp and Spider is one of those old, old stories I was always interested in — mostly because of the title — but never could get around to reading until now.
And when I say "now", I mean "back around June". c.c; I'll talk more about it in a future vs. post, but suffice to say, this story got me through the pandemic lockdown, social upheaval and threats of fascism that marked 2020 as a year in the US. (He said, as though any of those things are not still currently an issue.)
Being as it is fairly old, I'll be diving head-first into unmarked spoilers in this review, so if you haven't read this story, take my word for it up front that it's totally worthwhile and go check it out. :) Let's do this.
My very second note on this story is "you can tell this is sci-fi because our first character is an alicorn named Fusion Pulse".
Yes, it quickly becomes apparent as one navigates the creation story opening that not only is this science fiction, not only is it set in the far distant past rather than the future, but that our main character is an alicorn. And it's not just that Fusion is an alicorn with a goofy name; every pony character in this story is an alicorn, because that's the only kind of pony which exists at this time. And yes, they all have goofy names.
Our heroes are Fusion Pulse, a test subject in the service of a Hive Academician, and her younger sister Gravity Resonance. Goofy names, right? But hang on, there's a few words in that sentence you likely did not understand, so let's talk world-building first, because it's fantastic.
The world in which this is set is, as I said, in the far past from the Equestria we know from the show, or even the time of the three tribes from the Hearth's Warming story. The dominant species are in fact Diamond Dogs, known to themselves as "the People" but referred to by ponies and other races (the only other one featured in this story is griffins) as "the Masters". The People live in underground Hives — our primary setting is Lacunae Hive — which are super-technologically advanced compared to our society, nevermind anything set after this story. And this is of course in spite of the fact that they work side-by-side with alicorns, who all wield phenomenal magic power.
And when I say "work side-by-side with", I mean "have enslaved via physical, mental and chemical means using a quasi-religious mechanism called The Blessing". We'll get to that in a bit.
Our main People characters are Academician Vanca (the title is basically a substitute for "Doctor"; she's essentially a theoretical physicist) and her assistant, Student Korn. There are a few others we get POV of, mostly from the paranoid and oppressive Security forces, who make appearances, but these two last as major characters pretty much through the entire story. Vanca is a no-nonsense scientist studying "Anomalous Physics", and the very first scene of the piece involves her testing Fusion's capabilities in a dangerous energy-channelling experiment whose text chamber includes more than one pony-shaped carbon smear on the walls. Korn is far kinder, generally concerned with the ponies' health and well-being. He ends up being the best friend a pony could ask for by the end, for all that he has to struggle against his fears of reprisal by his own people for what he's doing to help out the ponies.
The ponies, it should be mentioned, are generally referred to as "servitors" by the People. When addressed directly, it's typically "the pony", as in "The pony will stand on the marked location and await further instructions." They're treated like animals, despite the fact that they can think, speak, fly and cast magic. I mean, the ponies who specialize in medicine are called veterinarians! They're taken care of as cattle would be, given pens to live in in their family units, fed literal food pellets out of a hole in the wall, but between the treatment they receive from the People and the harsh actions of the Blessing, life is not super great for ponies in this story.
As for the Blessing itself, it's given to ponies via techno-ritual when they're of a certain young age. A sci-fi crown is placed on the head, and it releases some kind of magical horror into the nervous system, which gives the Blessed endorphins and other good feelings when doing a good job for the Masters, and terrible pain and guilt when they fail, or have anti-Master thoughts, or anything else that might send them down the road to freeing themselves were they to have control over themselves. The negatives can get so strong that they send ponies into catatonia, what's known as "punishment fugue", a feedback loop of depression and guilt that is generally incurable. Of course, there's also a downside for the Masters: ponies will not allow a Master to get into situations which would harm them, and as we see later in the story, will sometimes make themselves great, unstoppable nuisances when Masters are trying to deal with dangerous threats.
And so begins the actual story, when a freak accident frees Fusion Pulse from her Blessing and makes her realize that, yeah, life's pretty terrible, her people are slaves, and without the constant threat of immediate internal punishment, she can actually against what Masters tell her, up to and including fighting for her own freedom. This of course just makes her life worse, as she has to try not to seem like there's anything wrong with her, lest she be euthanized, while trying to figure out how to free others from the Blessing.
Man, I just want to keep talking about the setting, because it's so great. Did you know ponies, or at least alicorns, can see magic? They drop into something called "shadow sight", trading normal vision for an x-ray look at how magic flows in and through things. It's used to great effect when Fusion is looking at other ponies' Blessings, seeing these horrid glowing tentacles that wrap about their brain stems. It's an ability that gives them a great advantage over the Masters as well, since a lot of the tech they use is powered by magic-holding crystals.
Okay, you know what the coolest part of this whole setting is? Its focus on time. Everything is reported with seconds as the base unit. So a kilosecond is about 15 minutes, a megasecond is around a week and a half, and a gigasecond is a little over three decades! Minutes and hours generally are not used, though days are. Everything's seconds, and everyone, be the pony or People, is highly aware of how many seconds any given task is going to take. It's such a weird detail, and yet it's so utterly pervasive. I really got into it after a while.
You know what else is really cool about this setting? Using Diamond Dogs as the primary race. Especially back in season one, it was a big deal that there were things like door knobs in Equestria, all sorts of tiny background details and animation errors that suggested Equestria had once been the domain of something bipedal and upright with hands. And what race that MLP:FiM comes preloaded with has those traits?
It was a much better call than just trying to shoehorn humans into Equestrian prehistory. Especially since we get tons of Diamond Dog culture (and, y'know, nothing was ever done with them anyway). You've got bureaucrats referring to themselves by name, or as "this one", the way the Dogs in the one episode did. I dunno, I thought it was great.
Anyway, by now you're probably wondering about those alicorns and why we should give two hecks about them. Well, Fusion Pulse is a specialist in magic output, and she's white and has pink hair and a "labor tattoo" (god, I loved that) of a sun. While Gravity is better at fine manipulation, and is blue on dark blue with a moon tat.
But remember, the sun's named Celestia and the moon's named Luna. :) Well, one of them anyway. I don't recall how many there are.
So yes, this is a story about Best Sisters, as kids, trying to free themselves from the oppressive enslavement of the Diamond Dog race, and it's amazing. Freedom from oppression is in fact the best part of this story. It's like a handbook for throwing off fascism, which was exactly what I needed this year. It's not just "hey, throw a fit and kill some dudes and you'll be fine", but really gets into the weeds with questions like "how are you going to handle having to fight the people who should be on your side?" No punches are pulled, and it gets really dark and gritty by the end. I mean, look at how the Dogs live in the show versus where their civilization stands in this story; you know the Princess had to do it to 'em.
Which brings me to one of the most amazing things I've ever realized about a fanfic.
See, I so far haven't even touched on the secondary plot. The very first scene of the story is not, in fact, Fusion working with the Academician, but the first parts of a very abstract creation story which continues at the start of the next dozen or so chapters. And when I say "abstract", I really mean "extremely hard to follow". It's talking about crystals and constructs and harmonics and never stops to explain itself whatsoever, but by the time it's done, you sort of get the gist of it.
It's actually a very important part of the story, as something called Chaos (that is very clearly what will become Discord) tries messing with ponies and People while dodging the thingummies that are trying to erase it from existence. It takes advantage of Fusion's broken Blessing to link her power to the sun, for instance, and helps goad her into rebellion.
But the really fascinating portion is when we get the story of how everything came to be. Because throughout the piece, we hear People, especially their priests, talking about how they're Maker's chosen or the first people — hence why they're just called "the People" — and that's why every other race is subservient.
And the thing is, they're not wrong.
The Diamond Dogs were literally the first sentients created by the thing they would know as the Maker. The Dogs were then in turn able to master genetics, and created the ponies and griffins as servant races. (I haven't talked much about the griffins because they're not that important. Suffice to say, they're mostly just military grunts, and bound to subservience similarly to ponies.) So, whether they know it or not, they really are the first people.
And yet, they're clearly in the wrong.
So that most powerful of statements this story is here to make is
Even if you're God's chosen people, that doesn't give you a right to oppress others.
Think about that! Far too often, stories link closeness to divinity with right to rule. But even if you're a creation of a creation of a creation, you have the right to life, freedom and self-determination. And that is not a message I have ever heard or thought about in my entire life, until I read this story.
It sticks with you, man.
So, let's talk about downsides. There are only a few, but they're rather massive. First is the writing. Generally, it's fine; the author's got a penchant for making technical detail interesting and action scenes exciting and flowing well. But the first third to half of this story is fraught with typos and editing mistakes, some of which persist to the end. This would not be such an issue, save that the author already spent time trying to clean up the writing — the early chapters are marked as such — and still missed all this stuff. Also, the author seems like giving us the same scene from multiple viewpoints, which is fine (there are so many POV characters in this story, you guys), but it does get a little overdone after a while and lengthens the fic quite a bit. So that's a mark from me.
Second is that, well, this is part 1 of the story. <.< As it wound down, I found myself thinking, gee, there aren't nearly enough words left for them to overthrow Diamond Dog society! And sure enough, it ends with our protagonists and one more simply having freed themselves, safe and sound, if not necessarily whole, wondering what to do next. It's an end, but it's not satisfying, and if I'm going to treat this as a story on its own — I mean, the sequel wasn't posted at the next chapter, what else can I do? — that's another mark against it.
(Though in perfect fairness, I am going to read that sequel next when I should be reading two other longfics first. That is some high praise coming from me.)
Last, and maybe more of an issue though it didn't bother me at the time, is the ending lacks in the character department. The last half dozen or so chapters involve Fusion having been knocked out just after releasing Gravity from her Blessing, meaning the younger sister has to do all the heavy lifting of trying to fend off a massive Security force of People, ponies and griffins, while keeping them both safe and trying to figure out a way to finally leave. It's a long, awesome action sequence, to be sure, and Gravity gets herself torn way the hell up, but it's just a very odd choice to spend all this time building up your main protagonist, only to have her become completely agentless for the last quarter or so of your story.
Also, a major character just disappears at some point. But these are points others have brought up; like I said, I wasn't too bothered in the moment, though I definitely noted the lack of agency.
So I feel like this is the point where I go through my notes to point out stuff that's funny or forgotten before we wrap this up.
- One of our earlier POV characters is a griffin, just another one of the grunts who's notable for being a screwup. At some point, he dies, and we get a different griffin grunt for occasional POV changes. And I remember noting how their voices didn't change appreciably, how there was almost no fanfare for transitioning from one to the other, and it really drove home how expendable griffins are, and how much the servitor races are not really expected to have, like, individual personalities.
- Said griffin's name is Gunnulf. Text-to-speech did not like this, and decided he was alternately named "gunnels", "tunnels" and at one point, "gummy". I had to start calling him "gun wolf" to get anywhere.
Speaking of, at some point speech-to-text decided I was reading a story about fools, not foals, and so we get
and that's why this master is afraid of the fools, because the blessing is required to keep them under control
Fusion is watching a blessing with your Shadow site and sees what exactly the crown is doing to the brains of the fools
fusion and gravity are being transferred to the Griffin carrier, and the fools are likely to be euthanized
- Agent Salrath, the villain who disappears, was actually a really good character. She exemplifies the kind of paranoia that makes someone a competent law enforcer while simultaneously turning them into a violent oppressor.
- The story has a midpoint "bad ending" April Fools' chapter that I actually found really fascinating. I don't know how it was presented serially (if it hadn't been identified as April Fools' when originally published, I could see it upsetting a lot of people), but it leads into the story By Way of an Apology.
- Fusion ends up with a fake left eye. Can you imagine Celestia with a fucking glass eye? Think about how she's always got her mane covering one side of her face. It blew my mind. And it's another one of those details I really wanted to see the denouement of!
- Though it maybe sounded like everything that happens in this story is Chaos's doing, and Fusion was just its puppet or something, the connection does work both ways. She learns how to teleport — ultimately, the most important part of the escape plan — by analyzing what Chaos did to her.
- Also, there's this very cool textual thing when teleporting happens, just a line that reads "discontinuity". I thought it was neat.
- One more dangling thread is the third pony who escapes with Fusion and Gravity. His name is Lilac — given to him by Gravity because he actually doesn't have one — and he's extremely naive and easy to manipulate because he's been a test subject his whole life. At the end of the story, his Blessing is removed and he's just beginning to deal with that hill of beans. But I just want to know who he becomes! I mean, he's got to be important in canon, right?
So there you have it. Not a perfect story, not even a complete story, but hot damn was I here for Days of Wasp and Spider. Now I just have to ask: Which one's the wasp, and which one's the spider?
4/5
This story got me through 2020.
And I may start reading the sequel, Final Solution today even! :D Because I'm not waiting for the new year to start exercising again, right? Right?
That was something I found enjoyable about the story. A lot of myths and other content treat the right to rule with being equal to the right to be a tyrant. Seeing how far the Diamond Dogs have fallen because they decided to be cruel instead of wise and just made for a lot of wonderfully dark worldbuilding.
I asked the author this. It's actually the Diamond Dogs! You can find out about this in the comment exchange here. I'll have to use the metaphor myself some time. It's a good one.
I really admire people who can write long-ass stories like this and make them (mostly) work. This one’s been sitting on my read it later list for probably six or seven years at this point.
5424810
Oh, so they're both of them! :O I couldn't figure it out because... like, a spider could catch a wasp in its web, but the wasp could still sting it to death, so maybe the Dogs are the spiders and the ponies are the wasps, but the wasp could also just swoop in and kill a spider if it wanted to... @_@ Metaphor.
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Yeah, I originally thought it could be Celestia and Luna too, but about half-way through the story, I realized something was up. Instead, it is a metaphor for the final days of the Diamond Dogs.
This all sounds... kinda silly. Like, I'm all for a good revolution, throwing off shackles, and sticking it to The Man, or I guess in this case, The Dog. But as I read the first half of this, the one question screaming in my mind was, "How the hell did Diamond Dogs manage to enslave friggin' alicorns?" Like, you even say the alicorns have PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER, including the ability to move celestial bodies eventually, so how did Dogs become their masters even with their "advanced technology?" Then you mentioned The Blessing, which is a pretty good idea, but the question remains how did the Dogs even get the alicorns to submit to it in the first place?
Then you get to the big reveal: Diamond Dogs created the alicorns, thus they were literally born into slavery... and this just raises even more questions! Like, if the Dogs designed them from the ground up, why did they even allow them the ability to think rebellious thoughts? Why not cap their intelligence at a point where they are able to do what you want them to, but are mentally incapable of functioning without you? Why would you create a race with this incredible power only to rely on fallible technology to control them instead of programming it into them? If the Dogs need them to be smart to perform these experiments, why don't they just do it themselves? They're supposedly super smart, yeah?
For that matter, why design them with such strong magic in the first place? Why give them the ability to wield forces that could lead to overthrowing you? That's like putting the Three Stooges in a room filled with banana cream pies, then walking through in your most expensive suit expecting everything to work out fine! And if they designed them just so they could use magic, why not do it to themselves? Instead of going through the laborious process of literally designing a new form of life, why not use their mastery of genetics to alter their own genetic code so they could access magic? Even if you use the whole "Hubris of
ManDog" excuse for why they went through all the trouble to create an entire species just to control, being that arrogant seems like they would want this power for themselves.And then if you do actually create this wicked powerful race... why treat them like shit? Why make them live as cattle or pets? Why not at the very least give them the illusion that they are cared about and they matter to you? It just seems... ridiculously cruel and stupid.
Finally, we have the bane of every prequel ever: if all this incredibly advanced technology exists, where did it all go in the show? Why are ponies pulling trains in Season One instead of using flying cars, or their own wings via genetic engineering? In all fairness, this is probably an AU, so this likely isn't a concern, but still.
The obvious parallel here is us eventually creating robots with AI to do our work for us. And indeed, when that day comes, we are going to have to have a hard conversation over the nature of sapience. However, whenever we do manage to create these self-aware robots, I highly doubt we're going to make them the Iron friggin' Giant.
This whole thing just pops the e-brake in my mind. It makes the Dogs sound like every arrogant and powerful evil empire you've seen before. "Hmmmmmmmm-yes, we are soooo powerful and sooo divinely chosen to rule that we will put in place every single thing that would be necessary to overthrow us, and we won't give it a second thought because the very idea of our sapient and resourceful slaves could ever break their shackles is soooo most unorthodox that I shall now laugh in contempt at the mere mention of it. AH-HUM-HEM-HUM-HEM-HUM-HEM!!!!!"
I don't know man. This is probably a good story like you said, but I'm weird in that sometimes little details stick in my mind and I just can't suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy it. And now that little detail is a central conceit of the story. Combine that with the fact that you said we don't even get that Revolution Begins moment by the end, and yeah. I think I'll pass on this one.
This is old enough that it's one of the stories that I read as it came out instead of waiting for it to finish. I remember how excited I was every time a new chapter came out. It kept me eager to read more through nearly a quarter of a million words, and that's a respectable achievement. It does something that very few "real" novels manage and that is to blend social and epic hard scifi into a coherent whole. That we know where it will all end up is both a great strength and a great weakness (sort of like writing a romance set in ancient Pompeii), but the moment-to-moment journey is gripping.
The sequel is more of the same. There were a couple of times that I felt it was a bit drawn out, but at 400k words, I suppose that's unavoidable. I agree with your rating of 4/5, but if both of the parts were "boiled down" to the essential plot and character beats, I'd give them a rock-solid 5/5. Leaving aside the advantage of having ponies in it, this is excellent scifi.
Ah, good to see you're finally reading this! You may have read my own review on the series, but two things should be pointed out. The first is that the second story starts right where the first one left off, so much so that Luna-tic Scientist admitted to me they were meant to be one big book. The only reason they weren't a single story was that they feared newer readers would balk at the size and give it a pass on that alone. As such, you are doing yourself a big favor comprehension-wise by reading the sequel immediately.
The second thing is a reminder: the primary technical theme of the story is escalation. What you've read so far has barely scratched the surface of where it's going. Things get a lot more exciting.
This story easily qualifies for me as one of the best on the site for a variety of reasons. Reading your review tempts me to give it another read on my next reading vacation... although it's a ton to read in just a week.
I remember reading this when it was coming out. Like iisaw I was completely engaged by it. To answer your question about the April Fool's chapter, if I remember correctly, it came out after the story had continued past that point so there wasn't much stir, though is is still rather quite powerful.
I was reading the sequel when I kind of got burned out on pony for a bit and it's just been too heavy for me to pick up again though I honestly do intend to eventually.
oh boy I have a feeling you're going to enjoy the sequel.
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Between your comment and Paul's, I'm getting quite excited. :D I already read the introduction today!
Certainly a story I was riveted to during its release. I've actually been hesitating on the sequel for some time when I have enough schedule space to get it all at once.
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not to spoil anything but certain gripes are addressed in the sequel.
Ah, I couldn't get into this story when I first gave it a shot a few years back, but your rating and some of the comments here have me strongly considering giving it another go.
This sounds really interesting! Looks like even if i dont finish it it will be worth the time to check out.
You make it sound very interesting. I'll thank you if I ever get around to reading it. Or curse you, depending, of course.
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Well said. :)