Scrambled Serenity by Ice Star

Amount Read: 100%

Verdict: Reject (6/10)

Reason:

This is a narrative that takes the awkwardness of relationship where one or both parties know they aren’t ready for a relationship and takes the direction of switching the members’ parental roles.

While this concept has been done before, its execution in this story is done reasonably well with genuine humour sprinkled in with the romance and drama. The reader can somewhat relate to its main thematic concept, compromise. In it, Princess Celestia learns about her upcoming child, and she must come to terms with it by making concessions for something she never thought would come to pass. This can be quite difficult to do for someone who must also think of ruling the citizens of Equestria as well. The story does well in addressing that parenthood is not something that should be taken lightly, that it takes dedication and time to properly raise a child.

There are a few oddities about the narrative, however, that I feel I must address. Let’s start with the opening paragraph:

Celestia was looking over a letter when Discord arrived. The letter was the first curious thing. It was from Ponyville, more specifically, from Twilight Sparkle inquiring about a list of missing objects.

The first sentence or so is very brief. It doesn’t appropriately set the scene or do much to draw the reader in. I find it peculiar that it draws the reader’s attention to the letter, jumps to Discord for a brief second, and then back toward the letter’s contents. I feel the flow is broken by this abrupt introduction, and this is the very first sentence of the story.

Correct me if I’m incorrect, but the third sentence feels slightly awkward. The ‘more specifically’ seems to be formatted as a nonrestrictive clause, meaning that one should be able to remove that information without changing the meaning of the sentence. If you were to remove it, you’d get ‘It was from Ponyville from Twilight…’

Other awkward phrases are present in the story, but thankfully they’re few and far in between. There’s only one other one I wish to highlight. In the example below, I couldn’t tell if it was missing words, using a word inappropriately, or some mixture of the two. Regardless, ‘with false calm’ is somewhat mystifying.

"Discord," Celestia said with false calm, "Why do you have such a large egg?"

There’s only one spelling error I could find in the story, and I’ll just highlight it here for your convenience.

"I love the child in there, but... It's a catious love, Discord.

Additionally, I feel there are some points in the narrative where the art of concision can be applied. Certain phrases don’t seem to add much to the narrative as a whole. Here are a few examples.

She didn't get another word out.

"It's a surprise for you!"

It wasn't a face she wore often, but wasn't unusual to see her with - with Sunset Shimmer it had been a common sight.

The first quote can be implied, while the second is just superfluous information. I think if we’re to have superfluous information, it would stand to reason that we would want to load it with some deeper meaning, something that might not necessarily show the reader more of the character’s personality, but something that might give us more depth to a preexisting one.

For example, a teacher might not just be dedicated to her students, she might be dedicated at the cost of other faculties in her life. The fault might already be highlighted elsewhere, but that loaded description would give it more weight. (Note: It is possible that the quote does do this and I simply didn’t catch that. If that’s the case, I’d love to discuss this in more detail)

There are a couple of storytelling aspects that raised questions to me. I suppose it isn’t a huge ordeal, but perhaps Princess Celestia was a little quick in accepting that Discord and she conceived a child in that manner.

It doesn’t go into the how, and rightfully so as that would only serve to confuse the readers if some convoluted reason was to be given, but perhaps it would feel more realistic if she disbelieved him or if the reader got to see more into their relationship before divulging this bit of information. Before he revealed who the ‘father’ was, I wasn’t aware they were a couple (though I suppose I could have assumed as such if I had paid attention to the cover art prior to reading it)

One final note to walk away from is how quickly Princess Celestia is ready to make concessions to help raise their child. They were talking about alternating one year at his place, away from the citizens of Equestria and one year in her castle. I didn’t see much in the way of assurances that her previous worry of leaving the citizens to their own devices had been unjustified.

That being said, this story was quite enjoyable for some of the aforementioned reasons.  It’s a gem that could use a bit of polish, but it manages to touch my heart in spite of it, and I’m sure more than a few readers. Though I must reject this story at this time, I would love to see some of the concerns I had with it fleshed out or rectified.