And I'm back with another review. Wanted to do a quick one before college struck at my free time again. When I saw the tags for this one, I knew I had to give it a look through.

As always, this is entirely my opinion based out of my personal experiences. Please don't think that I'm out to bash anyone's story. I'm just going to give my honest opinion as an aspiring professional author. Take all of it, some of it, or none of it as you see fit. Writing is an inherently subjective process after all.

No Longer a Doppelganger by Jack of a Few Trades

Where to begin? As an avid slice of life author, I couldn't help but smile after reading the description. A kind of prequel story to the episode Amending Fences focusing on Moon Dancer's reaction to Twi blowing off the party. How awesome is that? I love simple plots that allow room for characters to shine through. Also, I've been dying to read one of Jack of a Few Trade's stories. Dunno. Guess his avatar sucked me in . . .

Then I read the story. Not what I was expecting, but pretty good overall! It's definitely in a higher quality tier of fics on the site, and the characterization speaks bounds for the author. Most all the issues I have with this fic relate not to the story itself, but how it is told. The overly-objective style quite jarring, and that had to be my biggest bone to pick with the story as a whole. In my opinion, objective storytelling and character pieces never go well together. The whole idea of a character piece is to get inside the mind of the character, and it cannot be fully realized without a subjective style.

Interestingly enough, I felt as if Jack of a Few Trades did use a subjective style, but only in select areas of the fic. That compounded the issue. It showed me that he could write subjectively, but failed to do so for some reason beyond my understanding of the situation. This might not make much sense until I explain what in the heck I'm talking about, huh?

What is a subjective style anyway? Well, a subjective style takes narration and, rather than having it from a solely neutral bystander's perspective, puts it into the character's perspective. This involves the use of tools such as similes, metaphors, descriptions as the character sees it (which don't have to jive with reality), thoughts, and pointed undertones. Objective describes situations from a bystander's point of view with exposition to explain a character's thought process. Why am I such a strong proponent of subjective style? Because it grants you the opportunity to show rather than state a characters intentions, thoughts, motivations, goals, view on life, etc. etc. You cannot get that from an objective point of view, at least I've never seen it achieved that way.

Why I say this story is written objectively is that some portions are written like a shopping list of actions. Yes it gets what is going on across, but it does so in a way that does not enhance the story or the characterization in any way. And, in my opinion any sentence not adding to a story takes away from it. The readers doesn't care about Moon Dancer stepping out of the shower. What they care about is the significance. And that's not always easy to convey, particularly in the beginning of the story. It wasn't until several paragraphs in that we are actually given any significance to the actions. I believe we're given some small hints like Moon Dancer glancing into the mirror, but not on the emotional level.

You see, setting a story isn't just about setting the scene. Jack of a Few Trades does this marvelously. However, he fails to set the emotional scene. A lot of authors will read stories like this and go, "What, it's fine!" And it may well be. However, you'd be amazed at what failing to set the emotional scene does for the end result. Authors who don't set the scene end up with their pacing shot to kingdom come. Leave aside the plot pacing, because I'm talking about characterization and emotional pacing. It's something that is every bit as important and often overlooked.

In this story, we get a lot of wonderful characterization. However, almost all of it comes towards the end of the story. I shan't spoil it for you as it's a good payout overall. However, that could have been much, much stronger had the author set the emotional scene beforehand. Failing to set the scene from a character standpoint is like dulling your sword before entering a fight. Sure, you might come out okay, but it won't be as smooth, and it certainly will be more painful for all involved.

Despite that, I really thought Moon Dancer had a good run here. The characterization when it was shown proved spot on, and I could infer how she was feeling from the descriptions. I love how the author took the time to show why Twilight's rejection upset her so much. My favorite bit had to be the flashback with the haircuts. The execution of the sequence could have been done better, but the idea itself was heartwarming. It explains why they have the same manestyle in a crazy clever way that just made me smile all over.

At the end, the pacing could have been slower to maximize the emotions and thought processes. However, what was there proved to be pretty dang powerful. I really enjoyed that last bit.

Grammar-wise I noticed nothing. If there was an issue, it was small enough to go well under my radar. Good job!

Nickpicky crap would be that I wanted more sentence structure and length variation. Don't I always? But, it's not bad by any means. Just a touch distracting.

Overall, this story has LOADS of potential for a mega characterization payout. However, the author fails to achieve all of it because of the objective POV and the dirth of emotional set-up. I really enjoyed the plot and the author's take on Moon Dancer as a character. The end payout was good enough for me to give the story an official rating of RECOMMENDED. I strongly encourage you all to give it a read-through as it really is a wonderful short story.

— Bluegrass

4851983 Wow, didn't expect this to be waiting for me when I got back online today! Thanks for the review, Brooke!

I feel like you really hit the nail on the head for this review, because Doppelganger is not the story that I consider to be my best work. Almost every single issue you noted can be traced back to one simple cause:

Haste.

If you look at the date that story was published, you'll see that it was posted on July 5th. Only one day after "Amending Fences" aired. That means that I viewed the episode (which I remember doing actually late in the day on the 4th of July), got hit by inspiration, formulated an idea, wrote it, got it edited, and got it published all in about twenty-four hours. And no, I did not lose sleep in order to write it faster.

Though, it is what it is. It was a fast fic intended to ride the wave of post-episode stories. I very well could have and probably should have taken more time to more carefully craft the story, but I was actually afraid of exactly what the fic was about. I was afraid that someone else would get the same idea and post theirs before me, and therefore, my story would be the Doppelganger. And because of that fear, I let the story lose out on some of its potential.

Wow, I ended up saying more than I thought I would here. Thanks again for the review, Brooke!

P.S.: You've been wanting to read my stories for a while now? Well gosh, you're gonna make me blush!

4852060

you're gonna make me blush!

That's my job!