Paul's Thursday Reviews CCCI · 7:48pm Jul 7th, 2022
Hello again, peoples. How y’all doin’?
You know what I saw recently? “Ya’re.” That’s right, “Ya’re”. Do you know what “Ya’re” is supposed to be? It’s supposed to be Applejack’s accent turning “You all”, or “Y’all”, into “You are,” hence, “Y’are.” They’re trying to second-person singular (I think that’s the right term) “Y’all”.
And yeah. It hurts. This is wrong on so many levels. As a proud Southern Boy, I’m actually kind of offended by this bastardization of my native tongue. You will never, ever, under any circumstances, hear someone say “Y’are”. Except perhaps pirates, and then not with this purpose.
I don’t mind when people write out accents, provided they don’t go overboard. An occasional “Y’all” or a missing vowel can do wonders with how readers ‘hear’ a character. I only emphasize that there should be rules in place. Only do one, at most two things in a character’s speech and let the rest be assumed. Try to be consistent. And for Luna’s sake, don’t make up sounds!
Anyway... I just got an idea for another Concepts & Creations blog this weekend. It’s one of those series that I’ll probably never finish despite really wanting to. So look forward to that, I suppose. My most recent short story has been brought to a temporary stop due to factors outside my control, so I’m currently focusing more on other projects, such as the next BPH, the Guppy Love originalfication, and re-creating the BPH world in an original setting.
Aaand that’s all I’ve got. How about some reviews?
Stories for This Week:
The Enchanted Kingdom by Monochromatic
The Endeavor Within by Mike Cartoon Pony
Radiowaves by mushroompone
Accidental Matchmaking by NaiadSagaIotaOar
Certain Advantages by The Descendant
A Recipe for Disaster by ThatOneWriter
Total Word Count: 270,081
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 2
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 0
Needs Work: 1
None: 0
The Enchanted Kingdom
221,501 Words
By Monochromatic
Sequel to The Enchanted Library
Princess Twilight is free from her thousand year prison. Which is good. Yes, very good. She can be with Rarity again, and they can work on finding and freeing Princess Luna now. They don’t have to talk about this secret and oh-so painful something that stands between them. It can wait. Even if it tears them both apart.
The Enchanted Library was a delightful romance/adventure set in an AU where the four alicorns of Equestria were imprisoned by Discord a thousand years ago only for Rarity to stumble upon Twilight’s library in the Everfree. A story about trauma and overcoming self-defeatism, it ended with Twilight’s freedom and arrival in Ponyville to be with Rarity.
The Enchanted Kingdom continues where we left off, with Twilight and Rarity going to Hollow Shades and working to free Luna, who they believe is trapped somewhere nearby. The town has been cursed so that while foals can meet with Princess Luna in their dreams, they lose their faith in her on their tenth birthday and spend the rest of their lives looking upon her as we might look at Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Rarity has spent the last two years working closely with Pinkie Pie – one of the extremely few ponies to free herself of the curse and stay friends with Luna as an adult (so to speak) – and developing a plan to free the princess. With Twilight there, they have everything they need.
The story’s predecessor had a good deal of action, mostly due to Rarity exploring Equestria in search of clues towards both freeing Twilight and finding Luna and Celestia. This story has a lot less of that, instead putting much more emphasis on the underlying, lingering traumas that both Twilight and Rarity face as a consequence of the last story. That doesn’t mean there’s no action at all, mind; towards the end things get quite adventurous.
But the important thing with this story is the characters and their deep personal struggles. Mono has stated in the past that these are stories about overcoming trauma, and it shows clearly with this one. I’ll spare you the spoilers. Suffice to say the topics that come up are painful to witness, and seeing our heroines overcome them is a grand moment for all involved.
On the lighter side, Mono once again demonstrates that she knows how to write Rarity and Twilight. Rarity’s penchant for melodrama and attention seeking are delightful, whereas Twilight’s tendency to become laser-focused on things and Twilighting are on full display. Always endearing to see a huffy Rarity being levitated around because her marefriend’s too fascinated by the latest modern doohickey to realize what she’s doing. Throw in ever-helpful Fluttershy and Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Spike being Best Buds, and Pinkie Pie being… well… Pinkie Pie, and we’ve got the full cast being their typical endearing selves. There’s also Incantation, a changeling apprenticed to Pinkie and Rarity who is plenty of fun all on her own.
And, of course, we’ve got Luna. Yes, Best Pony is present. It should come as no surprise at all that the story’s central conflict involves Luna’s traditional woes of envy, miscommunication, and self-loathing. I don’t mind that Mono went the typical route here, as she interpreted it in a way that felt fresh and interesting, especially with Rarity’s and Twilight’s issues underlining it.
It’s a shame that there’s this painfully long wait we’ll be facing for the third story to finish. This is made all the worse by Mono’s abandoning the site for her own private hideaway. From what I can tell, her plan is to leave The Enchanted Carousel as-is on FIMFiction and gradually repost and finish it on TFHS… which appears to mean an even longer wait than we might have had before. A pity. I guess I’ll just have to check in every now and then until it’s done.
Regardless, The Enchanted Kingdom is well worth the read. What’s that? You’re worried that you have to read The Enchanted Library to get to it? Stop whining and do it anyway, because TEL deserves the attention. Far be it from me to commend popular opinion, but it did get voted as the #1 MLP fanfiction of all time for a reason.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Enchanted Library — WHYRTY?
Our Illusion — WHYRTY?
Injuring Eternity — WHYRTY?
The Princess's Gift — Pretty Good
T-plus Seven Hundred and Sixty-Nine Days — Pretty Good
The Endeavor Within
7,641 Words
By Mike Cartoon Pony
Requested by Mike Cartoon Pony
There are many things Sunny Starscout doesn’t know about Phyllis Cloverleaf. Those things lead to one certain but uncomfortable fact: Phyllis cares a lot more about Sunny than she’s ever let on. Now, a year before the return of magic, the CEO of Canterlogic must find a way to get through to her best friend’s daughter.
This is a story told in two parts. The first part has Phyllis Cloverleaf making one final, desperate attempt to convince Sunny of the wisdom of living in fear. It’s a move that is as painful to her as it is to Sunny, and perhaps more so when it fails (as we all know it must). The second part is after magic returns, and Phyllis faces the arduous task of admitting to Sunny how wrong she was.
Amidst all of this, I really only have one question: Why is it nobody ever brings up the topic of Sunny’s mother?
At any rate, this is a hard-hitting story. Told entirely from the perspective of Phyllis, it showcases her logic before and after the return of magic and, more specifically, how painful her position is in both instances. It’s also a dive into the relationship between her and Sunny, or as much of one as could be done given the circumstances. Mike Cartoon Pony (am I the only one who fervently wants to throw a “the” in there?) does an excellent job combining Show and Tell in tasteful ways to hammer home Phyllis’s discomfort. It’s the kind of story I didn’t know I wanted until it was brought forth by a capable author.
And with this, Mike Cartoon Pony demonstrates that they are indeed a capable author.
I suppose if I absolutely must point out something to criticize, it would be that sometimes a given moment felt like it was going for a little too long. This didn’t happen often, and was most prominent to me during Phyllis’s and Sunny’s conversation on the hill. The worst part is that I get the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that it’s something I am guilty of in my own works.
Still, it’s small potatoes compared to the overall positive feelings I have for the story. Great character awareness (at least by the very limited amount we got of Phyllis), strong sense of atmosphere, solid parallels in plot structure and character connectivity. I see no reason not to recommend this.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Radiowaves
19,987 Words
By mushroompone
Requested by notAperson
Night Glider is facing something she’s wholly unprepared to face. To get away from it, she takes a job as a fire lookout in Smokey Mountains National Park. It’s a quiet, peaceful, isolated place. Perfect for taking time to think, to avoid, to forget. That would be a lot easier if local weatherpony Clear Sky wasn’t constantly bugging her on the radio. Clear Sky’s not the only one, either…
It is an amazing coincidence that the very night before I read this I conceived of a story with a similar, but not identical, premise. How curiously the mind works. I am not complaining. I would also like to point out that I wouldn’t mind doing that job for a summer; five months in the wilderness with nothing to do but watch for fires, write, and occasionally chat with the person on the radio? Sign me up.
So what of the plot? It stars a post-Cutie Map Night Glider, back among civilization with her cutie mark where it’s supposed to be. She’s suffering from a malaise that keeps her permanently grounded, not because of any injury but of some unspoken trauma. She accepted a five-month summer job in hopes of… I’m not sure even she knows. Her only companion is Clear Sky, who works in another tower out of sight. Unlike Night Glider, Clear Sky is a veteran of the post, maybe even a permanent resident. Their interactions, told almost exclusively through radio communication, make up the backbone of the story.
Then there are the mysteries. What is Night Glider hiding from? Is Clear Sky also hiding from something? And the big one: who are the two other voices on the radio, the ones that follow Night wherever she goes, the ones as unpredictable and hard to track down as ghosts? Not all the mysteries will be solved. mushroompone is mature enough to understand that not all of them needed to be.
On top of that is the prose, which is excellently handled. There are times when it’s descriptive, granting a clear picture of what Night Glider is witnessing. There are times when it is flowery, basking in the mood without overstaying its welcome. There are times when it is brief, sharp, clipped, pushing the intensity through brevity. Every moment feels intentional, done with purpose. There was no moment in the story where I felt the author didn’t know what they were doing or why, and that is rare.
This is one of those uncommon isolation stories, similar to the likes of Winston’s Seashell or The Cloptimist’s Away. It’s not a form of story for just any writer, because it demands that the reader’s attention be held with minimal action, few characters, and the ability to use tools beyond dialogue to tell its tale. It’s a kind of story I thoroughly enjoy the idea of, and love when an author can get it right. mushroompone absolutely got it right, blending together a mix of isolated loneliness in the wild, a descriptive flare that never falls into purple prose, an ongoing mystery, and a desperate but unacknowledged need for closure, all trapped within the limited communicative abilities of a two-way radio. This is a story that knows what isn’t said is just as important as what is, and a lot is unsaid. Getting it right is a tightrope act and this author was up to the task.
Well done, oh fungal one.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Accidental Matchmaking
5,181 Words
By NaiadSagaIotaOar
Adagio Dazzle has outlined a very specific rule for the sirens to follow from here on out: absolutely no interaction with Sunset Shimmer whatsoever. To Aria, this makes hanging out with Sunset the most natural next step possible.
A ship I’ve never seen before featuring two of my favorite EqG ladies? I jumped in for that alone. Alas, Naiad treats it with far more humor than romance, to the point that the entire story is really more of a comedy than anything else, so my hopes for approaching the topic seriously were dashed right away.
…
Doesn’t mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy myself, though.
So we end up with Aria as a dyed-in-the-wool rebel and death metal enthusiast hanging out with guitar-shredding kinda-sorta-not-quite good girl Sunset Shimmer for no other reason than it’ll piss Adagio off. Along the way we get bank robbing proposals, Sonata enjoying popcorn, Adagio playing with guillotines, and Aria maybe-not-really-kinda-never-out-loud acknowledging she might have a girlfriend now. It’s silly fun with all kinds of over-the-top descriptions of how crazy these characters are.
As long as you’re alright with turning your brain off for a half-hour, you may find something entertaining here.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Lost in Paradise — WHYRTY?
Who We Are in the Dark — WHYRTY?
Requiem — Pretty Good
For Eelsies — Pretty Good
Certain Advantages
12,054 Words
By The Descendant
Re-Read
Celestia and Luna have decided to grace the annual Sisterhooves Social with their participation. Rainbow Dash sees this as the perfect opportunity to take advantage of a dupe. Oh, look, there’s Spike…
I laughed. Need I say more?
Oh, very well.
First, my thanks to NumberFifth for pointing out that I had this story in my bookshelves but somehow never reviewed it – or, if I did, it’s somehow not in my records. Thus did I decide to come back to it and see if it was everything I remembered. The answer is yes… but also no.
What I remembered was a stupid story full of idiocy and nonsense. And… that’s not wholly wrong. But I think I had a stick up my butt back then, because I found this a lot more enjoyable than memory served. The base premise is Celestia and Luna acting like complete buffoons during the race, complete with Celestia eternally trapped in a cider barrel, Luna incapable of holding back, a ton of pie being eaten in a manner that might be considered inappropriate, mutant chickens, and a few other things that I shan’t explain here. A lot of elder sisters end up clamping hooves over their younger siblings’ eyes and ears. Aside from that we’ve got reality-defying amounts of shock, invading diamond dogs that have no idea what they’re up against, outrageously capable male masseuses, Twilight in a seemingly endless panic, and the occasional Scootaloo sighting.
To summarize: this story is whack. I imagine most of you will get a kick out of it. Come in expecting some silly fun and you’ll probably be alright.
Jump on in. The grape juice is just fine.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Tangled Up in Blues — WHYRTY?
The Father of My Children — WHYRTY?
The Railway Ponies: Highball — WHYRTY?
Dear Idiot — Pretty Good
A Sweet Taste of Cake — Worth It
A Recipe for Disaster
3,717 Words
By ThatOneWriter
Twilight’s got a date! Eager to be romantic, she decides to cook a meal for the occasion. The only problem: Twilight has no idea how to cook. At least she has one of the most patient marefriends ever.
Slice of life? Sure. Romance? Yeah, I’ll buy that. Comedy?
Eh, not so much.
This is an incredibly straightforward story. Twilight makes food, Twilight serves food, Twilight realizes she can’t cook, the end. The story doesn’t really do anything with its premise. The first two thirds of it is just describing her making the meal in unnecessary detail. Some of this I get – anyone with a modicum of cooking talent/experience will see what she’s doing wrong as she does it – but not all the details were necessary. It ends up as a long-winded buildup to a conclusion that you’ll have seen coming the instant you discover exactly who her marefriend is.
We didn’t even get any pot monsters. You lied to us, cover art!
“X character can’t cook” is about as old a concept as they come, which means an author really has to deliver on the content and creativity to make it interesting. Alas, ThatOneWriter’s attempt is about as cookie cutter as it gets.The author needs to try experimenting with the prose and getting witty with the language if they want this to be worthwhile.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Silence — Pretty Good
Icky-Sicky Pinkie Pie — Worth It
Trust This — Worth It
Stories for Next Week:
The Haunting of Carousel Boutique by mushroompone
The Luna Cypher by iisaw
Trinkets by Pen Stroke
Fluttershy, Royal Game Warden (?) by JimmySlimmy
End by Pav Feira
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Wow!! Thank you for the absolutely glowing review! Radiowaves was a real "necessity is the mother of invention" fic - I just had to take part in that crackship contest, dammit! Coming up with the pairing was more mathematical than anything (generating lists of characters I felt good about writing, generating a list of possible pairings, and slowly eliminating those which were not at all rare or original), and the plot grew from that. I think I surprised myself with its quality as much as I seemed to surprise everyone else!
I appreciate your thoughts. I fight the need to solve every mystery very hard in my work (funnily enough, I think The Haunting is a great example of my inability to leave well enough alone), and it's motivating to hear that leaving things open-ended actually works. Your compliments regarding my prose are appreciated just as much - it's something I work at to ensure the balance is correct, and no one concept or moment gets undue emphasis. I'm a bit of a risk-taker in that regard, and there's nothing more satisfying than hearing that the risk was worth taking.
Again, thank you so much for your work! I've recently started doing reviews myself and boy are they a lot of work. Your effort is monumental. I enjoy reading your reviews every week, and I'm honored to be a part of one!
"Ya're"...
You could at least place the apostrophe in a place that makes sense, if you are going to be making up stuff like that.
I've flip-flopped a bit over the years in how I feel about written-out accents. Nowadays I think it's fine for something like "y'all", where it's more of an actually different word compared to "you all" or similar equivalencies. What I don't like so much any more is when they try to spell out the same word being pronounced differently, like "Ah" in place of "I." I think that can quickly become a very lazy way of writing a character. You should be paying more attention to word choice and sentence structure, if you want a character to have a distinctive voice. But that's harder, of course.
Anyway thanks for the review! I'm always happy to see people liking that one, because I sat on it for about a year being convinced it just wasn't any good. There is a shortage of good Sunset/Aria romance, but it was nice to write something that didn't involve somebody's world collapsing disastrously.
Leaving aside the absolutely abominable rendering of AJ's accent to which you were unfortunately subject...
...Do southerners really not say "y'are?" In the Upper Midwest and Southwest (which are the only two areas I have lived long term, and are all I can definitively speak to), it's entirely standard. In casual speech, you'd never say "you are" as two distinct words unless you were specifically emphasizing one or both words; you'd say "you're" or "yer" where the stress falls on "you," and "y'are" where the stress falls on "are." E.g. "If you're/yer going, so am I," or "Y'are coming, right?" It had never occurred to me that that wasn't a US-wide speech pattern!
"Ya're," though, is clearly an absurd apostrophe placement, and it hurt my soul a little bit to read it.
Y’all’re
Y’all’ren’t
Am I evil enough yet?
Only derivative I'll accept of y’all is y'alls' as the plural possessive case. If you start going crazy with over-accenting speech, you start turning all glides into words. Can I becomes Cannai, bought a becomes boughtuh...
Only time I change the accent with AJ is if the words completely change. I know in my natural Texas twang, I still use you. It's not ya all the time.
"Ya sure?"
"You can't know that for certain, that's for dang sure."
I read and enjoyed our resident ghost's fic as much as you did and for the same reasons, so I won't belabor that.
5670861
5670864
Ice Star is actually correct here. I hear "y'all're" pretty commonly around North Carolina and usually see it written that way as well. Though "y'all are" would be pronounced with such a slight difference that it may not be worth spelling it as a double contraction. (As an aside, one pet peeve is when people do some sort of visual accent that doesn't actually change how something is pronounced.)
Radiowaves is one of those stories where the premise sneaks up and kicks you in the teeth
glad to hear it's as exciting as it sounded at first glance :D
5670872
It warms my heart that the majority of y'alls' comments are over the abomination that is ya're. The proper conjugations mimic those of the (somewhat deprecated) Spanish vosotros, which is also quite literally 'y'all'.
This may be drifting a bit afield into thought, but maybe someone will find it amusing:
Without knowing the context of the story in which it was used... as a broader point--this is a pony world, who is to say whether they are bound by precisely the same argot as current human language?
Could it not be a bit amusing when stories craft neologistic words and turns-of-phrase? (I suppose there are two levels of this: Ponyisms/Pony Puns and straight-up neologisms). In fact, it would make me think that Applejack is not a US-southerner in Equestria, rather she's an Equestrian countrysider.
Of course, if the author was attempting to accurately portray true Southern American English and failed, that is a different situation. And if the story had been about real world humans, that would also be a different situation...although even regional dialects can differ. And, to be fair to your complaint, even when playing with grammar, "Y'are" is probably inherently better than "Ya’re" for any number of grammatical reasons.
As a non-American who's exposure to Southern accents comes primarily from tv and film, I'll refrain from getting in on the experienced opinions here, though I largely agree with everything.
I especially concur with NaiadSagalotaOar (5670860) in that I only write out accents phonetically where the word feels properly different – I don't care for "Ah" in place for "I", which has certainly accompanied Applejack for a large chunk of her appearances in Ponyfic, though less so as the years went on, I've gathered. That said, I'm still not sure I'd be able to write Applejack authentically without getting someone more knowledgeable to proofread her dialogue. Perhaps it's a good thing that in two of my fanfics where she would have made speaking appearances, they were cut for pacing reasons! A personal challenge for another day.
Not to say I don't use some accents and colloquiums in everyday life myself, but relative to most of my country, saying "how're ye" and throwing in "innit" and "ain't it" to your sentences is mild.
Yeah, I really need to read The Enchanted Library.
Difficulty in balancing time for a 337K fic only goes so far as an excuse, especially for a fic that acclaimed. Though at my going rate with fics that long, Monochromatic may well have finished The Enchanted Carousel by the time I get through The Enchanted Kingdom! 
I'd binged nearly all of The Descendant's library in my pre-rating days, and Certain Advantages was one I'd favourited. Quite curious to see whether it can hold up to that when I return to it soon, because I'm more aware now it does have it dissenters, relative to the near-universal acclaim of most of his Ponyfic résumé.
And mushroomepone must be quite the author, to get a writeup like that! I've read a couple of their fics, but scattered around enough that I didn't really connect them to the same author, not enough to form an impression. Still, I've got another of theirs on my list suited for that purpose, and off this acclaim, looking forward to that.
As if it needs saying, thanks ever so much for an enthusiastic review! I look back on this story quite fondly, and I definitely feel it's my best Ponyfic thus far. I'm especially gratified you feel the character headspace and sense of atmosphere were strong; my biggest worry was modulating tone, and its effect on those aspects. Though I've been writing fanfic for nearly 13 years now, I still think my biggest weakness is being a one-tone or one-style author, where I can lean it towards different genres, but the overall way prose is expressed remains largely the same. Perhaps because I self-taught myself mostly via screenwriting.
Still, my other stories are lightweight Slice of Life pieces, so that this worked as a Drama must mean I didn't do half bad. I think it's a sign of how objectively close I, the author, have been to it that I had never thought about it being hard-hitting, or painful, or discomforting, least not the way you highlight those points.
Ha, that was my raison d'être for writing this in the first place; sometimes, a character relationship unexplored in canon just has obvious "they clearly have a history together" ramifications. Somehow, this one, once I'd dismissed writing Haven due to feeling unable to equal several existing fics, compelled me to see if I could wring something out of Phyllis, a character who's basically a plot device in the film. And, y'know, I did. Plus, even now, when we have more than double the G5 fics compared to when I wrote this, it's still a wholly unique take on her, and her past with Sunny.
I find it interesting that Phyllis came across more sympathetically then I wrote her, for what it's worth. Probably just means I'm overvaluing those side character moments on her business efficiency, and highlighting when she drops her business front, that link the showy marketing mare from the film to the more introspective one here.
Oh, it's also nice to get a response to this that doesn't say the backstory between Phyllis and Argyle was the best part and they wanted more of it. That very much was a 'less is more' aspect, least for this story.
Lastly, I certainly appreciate that the structure and character connectivity all felt solid. My screenwriting part of my brain can overvalue that, and consequently I'm fiddly about it not coming across as mechanically done. Or, indeed, the story as a whole showing the mechanical nuts and bolts a bit too clearly. Sometimes an author's too close to best judge how seamless all that is, and the best they can do is make it all organic to the best of their ability.
Well, there was the early draft when Phyllis was…
Never considered that, but you're probably right!
Think it was just me being lazy in taking my YouTube channel name of Cartoon Karma that I try to use most places on the internet for an attempt at branding, which I attach Mike in front of in more one-on-one correspondence spaces. Evidently, I converted it to a Fimfiction username without thinking about how it would fare sounded out.
Oy. Even now, I still find Chapter 2 a little loose in the micro pacing. Certainly, structurally, the wrap-up chapter should be shorter than the main one, or at least neck-and-neck, not 355 words longer. I mean, it's immeasurably better that what it once was: two weeks after release, I shortened it by 1,200+ words by removing Sunny basically recapping her moment of despair in the film, something not remotely worth the extra establishing links between the two leads.
As it is now, I think Chapter 2's in that position of everything therein being needed, to the point of further shortening requiring rethinking the actual flow of the incident. Which, yeah, you have to let go of a fic after a while. How much of this occasionally lagging pacing is down to my prose style's tendency to linger on moments, getting us into a headspace and moment of atmosphere, sometimes more than is needed… well, I leave that to the reader.
Too late to make a long story short, but thanks once again, my friend!
5670861 There's a bit of New York in the way I've heard it prounouniated as You's since there's no need to hold strictly to is/are singular/plural if you're going to mangle the rest of the word.
"You's gotta hold the handle of that hammer real good, or--"
Applebloom jumped away from the workbench with a howl of agony, shaking one hoof.
"Yup," said Applejack. "You's learning, now."
Oh.
Oh, god, no.
Get it AWAY!
I'm with you, this is like, actually offensive to my southern born tongue. A crime against language in ways I can't properly express. Gross.
When I joined this site, I was hell bent on writing an Applejack focused story as an Applejack fanboy. Needless to say, after many years of doing it, I've gotten my own feelings on accents narrowed to the following: So long as its consistent and it remains legible, then it is fine. I was totally guilty of several accent crimes in my early career, but I think now I've gotten it down to a formula. Oddly enough, the worst form of an 'accent' I've ever found in any book is Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange. I can handle made up words to a degree (this is actually the chief reason I hate alien sci-fi with a passion), I can handle broken English, I can handle very heavy accents, but the moment you make me learn an entire lexicon just to understand your book is where I draw the line. It doesn't help that I think the story was bad on its face as a whole, but I hold a grudge toward it for making me familiar with its way of speaking.
5670871
This for sure. Though, as a fellow Texan, how do you feel about 'cha' at the end of things? Such as ain't'cha/aren't'cha/won't'cha, etc. As often as I've heard this growing up, I've never felt that 'ain't ya' or similar variations properly capture the slur on the whole.
5670864
Nah, dude, I use this. Regularly, even. this is just a thing here.
5670939
If it alters the first word significantly, I will sometimes write it as as such. Don'cha and Wha'dya make such cuts because it changes the natural contraction into slang. Y'all is already messing with you all, so I don't spin that into y'all're. To me, it rolls yall-are phonetically when I turn the twang on. Close to saying yellow with a really rural twang, so I write that down as y'all are.
Edit: Ain't also doesn't get the cha treatment for the same slang reason.
Oh, boy. On the one hand, I'm extremely happy to check back in after largely being absent for all this time and find that my better stories have been reviewed favorably by one of the reviewers I respect most. (I've missed most of the reviews over the last three years or more.) On the other... eh... I was still figuring a lot out when I wrote Recipe for Disaster. The temptation is still there to try to rewrite those early stories, or perhaps to just quietly mercy kill them in the dead of night, but I should probably just put a disclaimer and leave them as relics of the progress I have made as a writer.
Thanks for the continued readership! It's interesting to me when something in one of my stories catches the eye of a reviewer and I get these kinds of downstream reviews of some other ones.
I'm in southwestern BC, which means despite living in what I would argue is the most culturally "American" part of Canada, my interaction with southern accents and contractions is basically null. Only time people use y'all up here is when they're imitating a Southern caricature or they're trying to sound hip with the kids. Y'all is confusing enough for me. Y'are makes my brain hurt.
Our accent is probably closer to a typical Pacific Northwest accent, with some the occasional stoner talk or hockey slang thrown in. Occasionally you'll get people coming in from the prairies or Northern Ontario with their "ey bahd howzabouwt we grab a packa darts and go ouwt ferarip?" ...And then there's the Newfies with their off-brand Irish accents...
We do all say "soary" though. That stereotype is definitely accurate.
Also, delayed joke, but it woulda been funny if you had made review blog 300 consist entirely of stories by author CCC.
Hey look, I've actually read two of next week's stories! Partially because I requested one of them, but it'll be neat to get your take on The Luna Cypher too. I found it a bit muddier plot-wise than its predecessor, but it was still a fun ride.
See you next week!
Ya're
That's like people using "xem" as a pronoun. I'm sorry, but what even is that?
Somebody call an ambulance, because I just had a heart attack.
Thanks for reviewing Radiowaves so early
I only told you about it four months ago and i thought for sure that it would take you much longer to get to it than that, but I'm glad you got to it earlier than i thought you would.
Whoa. I did not expect this blog to lead to a big debate on accent usage in fiction! Sweet, and potentially useful. Of all these things I see a lot of different suggestions that, on their own, sound reasonable and effective. My one conditional would be limitations. If you've got ten different things you could do to replicate a character's accent, pick two and only use them. Maaaaybe three, provided the third one's not common. Saturation is the fastest way to make a character indecipherable.
5670860
I have to admit, it was the placement of the apostrophe that most bothered me. Even worse is the reminder that I used to do the exact same thing, i.e. writing it out as "ya'll" instead of "y'all". I just know that somewhere out there in some dark, illiterate corner of all the literature I've written is still an instance of that hideous example of my former ignorance.
While I don't mind "Ah" so much, the prevalence of "I" as a pronoun makes it a risky prospect for general use, much in the same vein as "ya" for "you". That being said, an observant and careful author can use the two in various ways in the same story. As 5670871 noted, we Southern folk do use both "you" and "ya", and the same is true with "I" and "Ah". We emphasize different sounds at different times, depending upon context and intent. This is an extremely fine difference to be aware of though, and may only be directly obvious for... shall we call them "native speakers?" But an author who can set some rules around when to use and not use them can do wonders for the 'sound' of their characters.
5670861
Really? Fascinating. I can't say I've ever heard that, or if I have I didn't realize it because it went by too quickly. But no, we Southerners definitely don't use "y'are". Our term would be "y'all're". Yes, I know, that looks terrible, but phonetically it's accurate.
But like 5670872 brought up, "Y'all're" and "y'all are" are similar enough that in writing I'd just stick to "y'all are", because it's easier for the uninitiated to recognize and the "y'all" part informs them of the accent being used well enough.
5670864
You say that as though there's some upper and lower limits to reach for. Just be evil, man.
5670871
I've seen that a few times, and yes, it looks terrible. That being said, if you can come up with something very limited for a specific character, it could work. But that's a risky maneuver that I'm sure the vast majority of authors would abuse to their own detriment, so maybe it's better to not even try.
5670885
Huh. I was completely unaware of this. Neat.
5670890
I can absolutely see an ambitious author trying to take the whole "this is how creatures in this world speak, don't try to connect it to the real world" angle. But I would only accept that as an excuse if it was a clear intention being made, something you would know either through in-story topics involving the language or by the author acknowledging it in, say, an author's note. And if that was the case, you can bet I'd be analyzing it to ensure they follow their own rules.
5670908
The moment you wrote that dialogue, I thought I was seeing Apple Bloom talking with Babs Seed. But now that you bring it up, it could make for an interesting dynamic if Applejack picked up a little Manehattan in her dialogue from her brief visit there as a filly.
5670936
Preaching to the choir, my friend.
5670939
I for one am okay with this, provided it is kept to a set of rules and not made overbearing.
5670859
And thank you for such a great story! It's always the ones we decided to do on a whim that surprise us, is it not?
Oh-ho, a fellow reviewer, eh? I may have to keep an eye on this "Fillydelphia Oracle", then. Always glad to hear my reviews are being so positively received!
5670860
It was the Sunset/Aria ship that caught my attention in the first place. And yeah, it wasn't what I was expecting, but it was a lot of fun regardless! Glad you decided to let this see the light of day.
5670882
I don't know if "exciting" is the word I'd use, but I'd certainly describe it as "good literature".
5670893
There is no excuse for a reviewer not to read The Enchanted Library. Definitely find a way to squeeze it in there!
I recall that the first time I read Certain Advantages I wasn't pleased by it. I still rated it somewhat well if I recall, but it was one of those "I don't like it, but the author knew what they were doing" situations. I think back then I had a stick in my butt regarding how people interpret the princesses, having it in my head that their interpretations needed to be 'respectable' or something.
So much this. I'm of the opinion that narrative perspective should determine narrative form, so when the perspective switches from one character to another – between stories, between chapters, between scenes, etc. – the narrative should adjust appropriately. But so far I don't think it's something I've learned to do effectively. Being able to do so is a long-term goal of mine that I don't expect to ever be truly satisfied with.
While that was interesting, it never struck me as even remotely being "the point", so I saw no need for expansion, at least not in this story. That's its own topic entirely, and if it is to be explored it should be in a story devoted to that.
1,200+ words of recap? Whew. Yeah, I'm glad you made that decision.
Certainly familiar with this. It's the entire reason my C&C blogs exist.
5670950
To be honest, it was the cover art that drew me into this one. Shallow, I know, but I suppose that's why cover art exists in the first place.
I would suggest leaving it there, perhaps with the disclaimer if you really feel the need. To me, one of the best things an author can do for themselves is go back and reread their old material to remind themselves of past mistakes and how far they've come.
And welcome back, even if it's only a brief check-in!
5671013
Shorter stories are getting a lot easier to approach nowadays thanks to my queue of short/medium ones having been largely emptied. The only real reason it takes me so long to get to things now is how far ahead I've gotten with my review schedule. As of right now, anything I decide to read next would be a solid fourteen weeks ahead of schedule.
I've actually decided not to schedule anything over the next three weeks as a result of that. The big stories will already be giving me 30k+ words/day for the next three weeks anyway, why throw even more on top of that when I'm four months ahead of schedule?
5670955
Of all things, it's a discussion about accents that spurs me into contributing from my pit of inactivity. Funny how the world spins
As slight context for where I'm from in mooseland, I was born and raised in the GTA (that's Greater Toronto Area, for all of you who thought I meant Grand Theft Auto) and only about an hour's drive on the freeway away from Toronto proper, so I generally have whatever accent most native GTAers have (welcome to Trono), though I'm sorely lacking on the Toronto slang part. That's beyond me but mans out here picking up some of it from the six.
I remember, when I was younger, I sent a New Zealander into a laughing fit over how we say "sorry". They kept going "you say it like 'sooo-ree' [think "door"]" and I went "no???? I don't???????" At this point, I've just come to accept that I say "sorry" like something. Is it "soary"? Maybe. It feels different to me when I say "soary" and "sorry". I tend to say it more like "soh-are-ree", with the "soh" and "are" blending together so you get more just the r-sound. Who knows for sure, though? Not me.
I also remember finding out the reason behind the "aboot" stereotype. I'm paraphrasing from my memory of the article I read so I may be oversimplifying things, so any linguists/phonologists well-versed in the accent can correct me on this. It all really has to do with the Canadian Raising accent, which I think the entirety of Canada has but varies on which parts/pronunciations the accent affects; Newfies in particular don't really have it, because they have their own brand that they're sticking to and honestly good for them, while I think mid-west (Alberta?) has it stronger and people do occasionally say "aboot" over there but don't quote me on that. Part of the Canadian Raising accent affects "about" and it basically boils down to how Canadians transition from the "ab" to the "out". For us, our transition when you slow it down is like "ab-eh-out" (you could argue this means we say "eh" way more often than we think we do), while in the US the transition is generally more like "ab-ah-out". The tricky part about it is that the "eh-oo/ou" transition doesn't exist in the American language or at least isn't very common among all their accents, so the closest that they can compare it to is a straight "oo" sound, hence "aboot" becoming a US (and then international) stereotype about how Canadians speak.
5671025
I don't know if it's a strength or a failing of the English language that you have to know several other languages to get most mileage out of it. Case in point, when writing the Old Ponish dialog in Extended Cut, it really helped to know a little German to understand the proper conjugations for all the haths and hasts and arts and what not.
Well, Radiowaves certainly goes on my read-it-sooner list! (I've already read TEL and TEK.)
I'm not certain, but I think I actually used "y'all're" in one of my stories. I really dislike using "Ah" instead of "I". I think most people pick up on accent through word usage rather than trying to convey the actual sound of the words in most cases. That road leads to horror shows like the Uncle Remus books. "Going" becoming gon, gone, g'on', and even gwine*... none of those work well, and they mostly become the textual equivalent of speedbumps. "Goin'" is about as far as you can safely push it, IMHO.
Maybe we need a guide to writing Southern accents as badly as one for Early Modern English?
----------
* I am not kidding.
5671040
My mother grew up in Toronto, and my aunt stayed there her whole life. It was funny to hear Mom when she came back from a visit, as she'd reacquire the accent. Same with my dad and Buffalo. But yeah, the "aboot" thing strikes me as more Scottish than Canadian, though maybe there are regions that say it that way? Toronto area always sounded closer to "aboat" to me.
5671044
Pretty much all Romance languages do the same thing. Heck even other languages like Japanese have a "y'all" word.
5671087
I have absolutely no authority when it comes to Southern American English, but as a minor and almost certainly unrelated aside, gwine has occasionally been recorded in written British English. I don't have a specific example to hand, but I could see it turning up in archaic southwestern English (from somewhere like Devon). I don't think anyone would use it now, though I stand to be corrected!
5671025
Oh, but I like to be flattered.
5670872
I figured the first one was probably real. I’ve certainly used it before, but I don’t live far enough south for me to verify its authenticity as you have, nor do I live far enough south for y’all to be the norm, but oh well, that’s just how I talk.
5670939
Ah, whoops, forgot to reply to this one. I’ve never seen it used outside of memes before. Though, I’ve said it myself, despite the region I live in being atypical for even y’all to be used as the standard.
5671150
Huh. That's interesting. Funny how accents and vocabulary get traded around. I've heard that there a group preforming Shakespeare plays while attempting to use a period-correct accent, and they end up sounding like Americans... at least to British ears!
5671031
It does have some of the most solid cover art I've used in terms of drawing interest. Like Icky Sicky Pinkie Pie, though, it's not terribly fitting. I would love to replace some of these covers with commissions, but I likely never will. Broke people problems.
I'm actively working on a sequel for The Dull Afterglow, the one fic that's stuck in my craw as something that's good enough to be salvaged, but still could have been done better. I'm still undecided about any of the other rewrites (partly because there's no clean way of publishing the rewrite alongside the old one), but that solution satisfies the urge to see what I can do now with basically the same idea.
5671025
What are your feelings about fictional languages? I ask because I've run across several stories that make out fully developed "equestrian languages" that aren't just english with a funny name.
As to the Ya're thing, my inner "ear" has been trained a fair amount via all the fanfics I consume, and while I'm a Midwest lad that was quite wince-inducing even for me.
I could probably use some coaching/editing on my own stories if you or anyone you know might be interested in taking a look-see.
5671190
I shall quote my response to SparklingTwilight down below:
Editing is my least favorite part of the writing process, regardless of who's material I'm editing. If it's my own, I get annoyed because I'm having to fix things I thought didn't need fixing. It it's someone else's, then a process that should take an hour every 10,000 words (reading) is now taking three hours every 10,000 words (editing) because I've got so much to say. Granted, the actual time taken depends upon the quality of the writer, but regardless it's guaranteed to eat a much larger chunk of time out of what I already have available. Simply put, if I were to edit anyone's story I would have to be caught in the right mood at the right time and preferably with my reading schedule not as packed as it usually is.
Plus, someone's already convinced me to edit theirs sometime in the next month, so...
You might be able to ask 5670893. He did great stuff with my own work. But that was pre-reading; dunno if he does editing too.
5671025
RE: "I can absolutely see an ambitious author trying to take the whole "this is how creatures in this world speak, don't try to connect it to the real world" angle. But..."
Ok!
I found another ya're. For your enjoyment and tracing of the linguistic trend insofar as it has spread throughout this site
: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/387081/2/little-lost-raichu/chapter-1-first-contact
I did not think I would ever see that term... and yet, it appeared.