Paul's Thursday Reviews CCLXXXV · 10:19pm Feb 24th, 2022
I know nobody here wants to talk politics, and I have no intention of doing so now. But just so that I’ll have a marker/reminder for it when I inevitably come back to these reviews in a few months’/years’ time: Russia just invaded Ukraine. As we all knew it would. Moving on…
Having higher standards is a right pain sometimes. I have this new shipping story, I’m about 4/5 finished, but I have a lot of problems with it. Some ideas hit me late and now I’m wondering if I don’t need to seed them earlier in the story. I’m not sure the shipping is coming through like it should. Worst of all, I’m at a late scene and I find myself unsure how to approach it.
I remember, there was a time when my entire attitude towards this stuff was “Get it down, publish the chapter, write the next one. No take backs.” Now I want the entire story to work well from beginning to end and it’s harder to finish one. I’m a lot happier with the end product, but the inability to churn material out burns. I’d like to try releasing one story in the old way again, if only for the sake of having material being released with greater frequency/consistency, but once you shift attitudes like this it’s hard to go back.
Bah, no matter. I’ll finish this story then get back to the other ones, i.e. the ones I’m supposed to have been working on this past month. In the meantime? Reviews.
Stories for This Week:
From Dusk to Night by KuroiTsubasaTenshi
Rules of Etiquette by I-A-M
Total Word Count: 337,919
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 2
Worth It: 0
Needs Work: 0
None: 0
From Dusk to Night
287,975 Words
By KuroiTsubasaTenshi
Sequel to The Necromancer's Ambition
Dusky Down is many things, but the swiftest, most all-inclusive description is “paranoid trouble magnet pegasus with a clinical case of wanderlust”. She resides in Ponyville as a weathermare, likes to spend her evenings at the bar with her friends, and goes journeying every summer for no other reason than a desire to travel. She was also raised to see danger in every corner. This is a good thing, because danger is definitely looking for Dusky. Luckily, she has a lot of good friends willing to help her out.
I was really looking forward to this one. I greatly enjoyed The Necromancer’s Ambition and was particularly eager to see Ivory and visit Pasture again. Imagine my surprise when it turns out that Ivory is nowhere to be seen and instead we get this meandering, seemingly directionless follow-along of the many adventures of Dusky Down. I expected Dusky to be the focus; she was the protagonist of the last story, so there was no reason to expect otherwise. But I thought, given the prominent role Ivory had in the last story, that she’d be here too. Kind of a let-down, really.
What we get instead is Dusky Down going from location to location dealing with all sorts of problems, usually with the help of her friends. Some of these events are (relatively) minor, like her friend Terra suddenly discovering her motherly instinct or drinking buddy Mahogany trying to get out from under his overbearing ass of a father. Some are personal, like planning a wedding or figuring out how to deal with the ever-nervous Night Light (not that Night Light) trying to court Dusky. Then there’s the serious shit: being assaulted by murderous ghosts, evading deadly criminal cartels, magic duels, standing against insane dragons, and even getting involved in a couple civil wars. Ivory even shows up at the end to do her whole necromancer thing.
Dusky is extremely lucky to have Rainbow Dash as her boss. When you’re used to having to take time off to go save the world, you don’t bat an eyelash when one of your subordinates regularly does the same thing.
Let’s get to the characters. I spent the story uninterested in a few. Night Light’s whole thing was “be nervous” and “like Dusky” and Mahogany does little to draw attention to himself, just for example. But then you get the interesting ones, like Aster the grouchy filly, Terra the eternal match-maker, or Merri the goofy-but-shockingly-capable foreign warrioress. My favorite character was Star, a superbly capable battlemage who acts as Merri’s eternally serious straight mare and foil and was generally awesome at every opportunity. It was watching these characters that made this story so enjoyable for me.
The adventure part is quite good. Dusky spends the entire story going from one near-disaster to another, which often requires her to fight for her life or, at the very least, find a way to escape with her wings intact. In these sequences KuroiTsubasaTenshi did as well as could be hoped for, regularly leaving us in tense situations. My only issue with these scenes is that sometimes they read too clinically. Take, for example, the scene in which our heroes go up against a poltergeist and finally find a way to fight it. You’d expect this to be an emotional moment given the risks, and that’s true for a while. But then you get to the pivotal last moment when they finally win and it just… sorta… ends. And I’m like, “Wait, it’s over? That’s it? Shouldn’t that have been, I dunno, more eventful?” I’m willing to chalk that one up to taste, but it still felt like a bit of a let-down.
Other oddities remain. I think the biggest one is the Twilight mystery. Dusky regularly hints that something big happened between her and Twilight Sparkle, some deadly adventure that left terrible lasting impressions on the perky purple protagonist. It reads like there was another story written involving these two that, for some unidentified reason, the author chose not to make a note of in either story’s description or the author’s notes. This event is alluded to multiple times, and every time it came up I was annoyed because I had no idea what specifically was being alluded to. Looking at the author’s library, I have come to believe that it was referencing one of KuroiTsubasaTenshi’s earlier stories. Best guess: the author thought that because they were referencing something in their own library the reader would be familiar with the events, which is not a good assumption to make. They might also have thought that the references were light enough to not impact the reader’s awareness, which is generally true, but I still think informing us of the source material of what was being discussed would have been better.
Then there’s the oddity that is the sisters Merri and Star. As much as I enjoyed them, these two confused me. Okay, they are nobles from a foreign country that has a significant warrior culture. Fair enough. But what the hay are these two doing in Ponyville, of all places? At no point is this ever explained. Oh, we know why they left their homeland, sure. But nopony, not even the eternally curious and paranoid Dusky Down, bothers to ask: what made them decide to come to Ponyville? When you consider where they come from – geographically, culturally, socially – their choice to settle down there doesn’t seem to make sense. I was always waiting for someone to finally ask this question, yet somehow it remains unspoken. I understand it’s not a big deal given the big picture. Why not settle in Ponyville, right? But for some reason this one question really stuck in my mind throughout the story, especially during the one long Merri/Star story arc.
There’s one other caveat: it really helps to have read The Necromancer’s Ambition recently. It’s been a year-and-a-half for me, which means there were a lot of things I’d forgotten. These things begin to rear their heads, particularly towards the end when Dusky finally returns to Pasture. Next thing I know the author is doing some name-drops and acting like I’m supposed to get something important from them and all I can do is stare blankly at the page and go “who?” I remembered once the characters started alluding a bit more to what happened with those characters, but it still took a moment and the intended reaction was lost entirely. So yeah, don’t wait a year-and-a-half between The Necromancer’s Ambition and this.
I digress. While I did have a few issues with the overarching story, this one was largely a hit for me. I enjoyed (most) of the characters, the adventure was fun, the slice-of-life entertaining. It can feel a bit meandering for a while as each story arc feels like it has little to nothing to do with the previous one, but it’s all strung together by a common enemy that resolves itself nicely at the end. I see no reason not to recommend this one.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Tiny Equine in Everfree — Pretty Good
The Necromancer's Ambition — Pretty Good
Treasure — Worth It
Rules of Etiquette
49,944 Words
By I-A-M
Sequel to Rules of Engagement
When Octavia was but a child, she had a special teacher, a young woman named Serenata Dazzle. Serenata taught her how to play the cello, how to carry herself with dignity and grace, how to be a lady. Octavia loved Serenata, but the woman moved away and that was the end of things. Until one day, passing through an airport on her way home from a performance, Octavia spies none other than Adagio Dazzle, and by God, she looks just like Serenata. Octavia can’t resist following her, a decision that leads her to the Last Note Lounge.
Rules of Engagement was a sex-intensive leap into the heated romance of Sunset Shimmer and Aria Blaze. This story begins just before that one ends (if I’m reading between the lines properly) and has Octavia and Adagio into a relationship that isn’t quite so heated in some ways but is no less sizzling in others. Their relationship shoots off practically immediately, albeit not quite in the same way Sunset’s and Aria’s did.
Sunset and Aria were… tempestuous. Difficult. Bumpy. Octavia and Adagio, in a stark contrast, are more or less head-over-heels in lurv from the get-go and make no (or from another angle, many) bones about it.
Fortunately, I-A-M has enough awareness to know that the same formula won’t work twice, especially with such different circumstances. Octavia faces her own unique challenges, challenges related to her career, her sense of morality, and her personal standards. And Adagio is, appropriately, a very different siren from her sister. Indeed, her depiction is one of my favorite parts of the story, lining up with some of the best interpretations while making some contextually appropriate tweaks.
I did have a few issues with the story. Like it’s predecessor, there are a lot of sex scenes, but this time they didn’t feel quite as… ‘valuable’ to the overarching plot. Some of them had important underlying bits of information and character in there to benefit our awareness of the relationship and the current mindsets of our protagonists. Others were just sex scenes that could have been summarized or skipped entirely (to the author’s somewhat credit, they do keep the unnecessary ones short).
There are also these unpleasantly stereotypical insinuations, such as the idea that industrial plants spew out literal green smoke (they do not) or that being conservative automatically makes you homophobic (it does not). I-A-M’s depiction of Detrot is more fitting of a current-day Chinese urban center than any modern U.S. city, and the excuse that Octavia is landing into career trouble because the orchestra’s financial backers happen to be conservative comes out as a shallow political hit. It would be different if the story was underlined by a continuous theme of political talking points, but it's not. I'm expected to take it seriously, which means that these little jabs felt out of place.
I don’t think Rules of Etiquette is quite as good as Rules of Engagement. It doesn’t utilize the sex scenes as well and the overall challenges facing Adagio and Octavia don’t feel as significant or interesting as those that faced Sunset and Aria. Which, to be honest, is kind of weird; I can’t really explain why I feel that way about the latter issue. My best guess is that Sunset and Aria’s conflicts are conflicts of the relationship itself, whereas Adagio and Octavia are more akin to “us against the world”. Yes, I think that’s it. Octavia and Adagio, they clicked. They meet, they’re in love, now let’s fit this thing into the world. Aria and Sunset were more “I want to make this work but damn are you frustrating”. I think I just like that more. Does that make this opinion biased? I think it does.
So, final thoughts. Rules of Etiquette is quite good as a story overall, but it’s also a different story, with a different kind of relationship to explore. That means it will appeal to a slightly different audience, although the hopeless romantics will eat it up regardless. It has a few minor issues, but nothing too significant. If you’re interested in an uncommon ship and don’t mind a bit of graphic sex, there’s no reason not to give it a go.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Rules of Engagement — WHYRTY?
Stories for Next Week:
just cozy glow. by Mica
Fallout: Equestria - Duck and Cover! by hahatimeforponies
Raison d'Etre by Rose Quill
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Oh damn, you picked up Duck and Cover, huh? :D That was a good time.
Your thoughts on Rules of Etiquette pretty much echo mine exactly. Also, I see you've got a Mica fic next week. I don't recall if you've read anything of theirs before, but I think you'll love their stuff.
If I remember correctly, the Twilight allusions in From Dusk to Night were towards Evil's Twilight (which is more of a Twilight story where Dusky got introduced as a side character), just in case you're curious enough to revisit this universe.
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I suspected that was the case. But since KTT couldn't be bothered to directly link it to Dusky's stories and I'm trying to be more picky about what goes in my lists (so as to keep them from spiraling out of control again), I think I'll put the author on the wait list for the time being.
Thanks for the review! I think I agree that the criticisms are pretty fair. I'll readily admit that I'm not as good with repeating relevant information as I should be, so I'll definitely keep working on that.
With particular regards to Merri and Star, I tried to push that they were basically going hotel and hotel with Merri engaging in... "conquests", so to speak—and Star trying to rein her in (the whole of the initial conflict with them starts because of Merri's tendencies). I'll try to make those kinds of details clearer in the future.
5639588
Yeah, I can understand why you'd see that as a problem. You're right in that I didn't think it was something that needed to come to the forefront for full explanation. But looking back, I can definitely see how it rides that line where it can end up feeling like it needs one.
I'm disturbed that I haven't seen any fimfiction posts about Ukraine. It makes all of the community's social activism look like posing. But perhaps no one is talking because no one can think of anything we can do about it.