Title: Throw Off The Veil
Author: OkemosBrony
Genre Tags: Slice of Life

Rating: 6/10 (Rejected)

“Throw Off the Veil” is a delightfully short fic, entirely surrounding one evening of Coloratura’s internal monologue. No, really, this entire fic is a brick of prose - there’s not a word of dialogue or poetry to be seen here, unless you count the opening headlines at the start of the fic as “poetry”. 

I’m not all too bothered by this sort of “talking head” style of narration, since having an omniscient third party focused entirely on one character isn’t at all unheard of. However, as well written as the fic was, I feel like the narration style held it back in some ways that separated it from its character and as a result I thought it lacked that personal emotional touch that first-person narration could have added. 

At some points we do manage to get this inside look like the following line towards the end:

As she played, wincing at the atrocious sound quality, warmth began growing inside of her heart.

...yet the follow-up or execution on this line is then cut abruptly short by the line that follows it, because of the narration style:

Despite the fact that the piano was not something any musician of her caliber would ever use even in a tuned state, simply playing it made her happy.

Maybe I’m just a dumbass and don’t understand writing all that well, but these emotional connections to the character feel as though they’re not allowed to stick around for more than a few sentences at a time. We’re told that Coloratura’s mother was suffering and eventually passed from cancer and we’re told that she was missing passion from her music, both of which are sad things in their own way but again there isn’t a whole lot of room left in the fic left to explore the question of “how does this make her feel?”

I will clarify that there are some lines that do follow up sufficiently in an emotional capacity, but instead of this story feeling like Coloratura's, it felt like the writer was making their own observations on what could make for a sad story commenting on the state of the music industry while dealing with the loss of family members. Coloratura, as a victim of the narrative style, was simply an example they could choose to pull from. 

I didn’t particularly dislike the fic nor did I particularly like it. I thought some of the descriptive lines about Colora’s surroundings were appropriately placed and not overly wordy as some fics tend to be. That at least helped it stay focused and I was particularly impressed by the creativity in the following line towards the start of the fic:

The allure of extravagant, four-hour-long-breakfasts-that-turn-into-brunch-that-turn-into-lunch with outrageous dishes from faraway lands featuring ingredients she’d never heard of with ponies whose combined net worth totalled half of Equestria’s economy only lasted so long.

The level of exasperation that Coloratura undoubtedly feels here is brought out best by this line and I’m disappointed that the rest of the fic didn’t have more voice to contribute to the greater emotional weight that this fic needed to carry. 

Thanks for submitting though. Cute little fic that I would recommend to pass a short amount of time on but I wouldn’t recommend it for the Cafe’s “Accepted” folder.

That is all,

-TK

7586477
oh heck this group's still alive?

7586479
Not really. I'm just passing the time by going through the oldest submitted fics and reviewing them whenever I can now. One guy being on reviewing doesn't exactly feel like "alive", if you're asking me.

7586480
i suppose.