Hello, everyone! ‘Tis I, Cyo, here to haunt you all with excessively long reviews and a slow update schedule!

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CuttothestoryembedcauseIsuckatjokes—

[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

Right, from the top. This week’s story is a pretty heavy one, and I’m sure you can figure out the general idea of this story just from a quick look at this little embed.

...yes, it’s suicidal Pinkie.

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

I’ve had enough. I’ve finally had enough.

I feel like it should have come to this long, long ago. I don’t see how I’ve held this up so long, in truth. I guess I have a lot more self-restraint than I thought.

Not anymore. Now, I’ve finally had enough.

This fic takes place entirely in Pinkie’s mind. It’s a pure Stream of Consciousness fic — and for those unfamiliar with the term, this is where the only thing we get to see in the story is the character’s thoughts (the stream of their thoughts, if you will).

So, for a SoC fic about suicidal Pinkie, how does it do?

First, it’s...incredibly heart-wrenching. It’s one of those fics where you get that sinking feeling that just gets worse as you read — Tori does a great job at telling the story through Pinkie’s thoughts, and making it hit hard. From the beginning where we get our first look at how Pinkie truly feels under her smiles and cheerfulness, to the end where Pinkie brings up the suicide note she’s written and the pills she has hidden away, everything just brings home the tragic image of a depressed Pinkie with no hope left.

Soon it won’t matter. Soon, all that will remain of me is a cold, waterlogged body with flat pink hair.

Soon, the water will rise up into me, welcoming me as one of its own. I’ll live the water; I’ll breathe the water. I’ll be the water, and nopony will be able to take that from me.

Though, as heart-breaking as it was to read, it felt more like a rant fic than something written specifically for Pinkie’s character. Reading through it, the narration feels nowhere close to Pinkie’s style of speaking in the show.

...stop! Don’t start typing your reply yet!

Right, before you say that she’s just acting, I’d think that even if her appearance in the show were a mask, there’d definitely still be some similarities here and there. Even in her deepest funks, she’s never quite this eloquent — like I said, it feels more like Tori using Pinkie to write a rant fic than Pinkie herself doing so.

I will say, though, that this is not that big of an issue, at least to me. The story provides a good enough reason for Pinkie’s narration to be OOC here, so it doesn’t really affect things that much.

A little bit more concrete of an issue I have is with the writing style. Take a look at the following:

Instead of ‘warm,’ I feel stone cold. It’s like the Arctic North had planted itself right into my heart and had begun spreading, freezing what little warmth was left… ever so slowly… inch, by inch, by inch, by inch.

Instead of ‘fuzzy,’ I feel coarse. Like there’s hundreds of thousands of thorns pricking and poking every part of me, from the inside to the outside. From tail tip, to hoof sole, to belly, to mane, to muzzle.

Instead of ‘light,’ and ‘strong,’ I feel heavy, and so weak. As though there are rocks bound to the underside of my hooves, weighing me down with every step I take. The tears falling like lead weights, reminding me that I’m weak, weak, weak.

Instead of ‘full,’ I feel truly empty. Hollow. As if somepony had come with a spoon and scooped out all the love, and joy, and passion, leaving nothing but a dry pink shell behind. A wounded animal left out with no bandages, left to die alone and wither in the sun.

Instead of ‘happy,’ I feel mad. Mad, angry, enraged, whatever you want to call it. I’m mad at the townsfolk of Ponyville, for never appreciating all the work I put into those damn parties. I’m angry at all the creatures in the Friendship school, for always laughing, and laughing, and laughing, as though there was nothing in the world to be concerned about. Even when I wanted them; needed them, to stop. I’m enraged at my ‘friends.’ I don’t think that they ever, in all our years of friendship, actually took me seriously. Never. I was always just the one who couldn’t handle responsibility, or the ‘funny one,’ or… ‘Pinkie Pie.’

Kinda a lengthy quote, but like, what’s this? Stories aren’t essays, and in a 1000 word story like this one, you don’t really have words to waste on draggy sequences like a five-paragraph repetition of the same format and idea. This isn’t the only occurrence either, these mini-repetitions show up all throughout the story.

This makes the entire fic extremely draggy. Half of the words are Pinkie repeating the same idea in paraphrased words, when those words could be better spent on introducing new ideas. Not only that, this quote in particular is lacking in any subtlety whatsoever, it really feels like you’re just hitting us over the head with the point, rather than letting the ideas sink in naturally — I’ll talk more about this in the feedback.

All this makes Pinkie feel more distant than she could have been. To put it another way, she felt more like a character than she did a real person, which does make the story as a whole have less impact than it could have had.

Scores

Grammar and Use of Language: 9/10
The standard of the writing in the story might have worked against it, actually, seeing how it makes the narration feel all the less Pinkie-ish. Other than that, there are no grammar errors that I saw, and Tori really knows how to hit with impact when it counts. Good job on this!

I’m so tempted to give this Good/10, you don’t even know; but Azure already scolded me the last time I did that, so I won’t.

Emotional Impact: 7/10
The dragginess and the distance that Pinkie’s narration speaks from brings the score on this down quite a bit! Though I can’t say that I didn’t feel my heart crying when I read through this. I think we all see a bit of ourselves in Pinkie here

Character and Characterisation: 6/10
Like I said above, Pinkie’s character feels far different from her appearance in the show; so different that they might as well be two different characters. It definitely does make it difficult to merge the two together, but others might not be so bothered by this. She’s not presented in a way that makes this a very severe error or anything.

To sum up, the story does pretty well as it is, with some hard-hitting moments and pretty good impact overall. It could definitely have been improved, though. So, this story gets a 6.5/10 from me. Today’s score is even more arbitrary than usual, though, as this is kinda difficult to grade. So take it with a pinch of salt.

Feedback for Toriandthehorse

Today’s feedback comes back to the five repetitious paragraphs I brought up in the main review. Let’s take a look through the first four paragraphs. Other than the repetitions, what’s the most obvious mistake here, from a technical perspective?

Well, take a look at this. What do all the red parts have in common?

Instead of ‘warm,’ I feel stone cold. It’s like the Arctic North had planted itself right into my heart and had begun spreading, freezing what little warmth was left… ever so slowly… inch, by inch, by inch, by inch.

Instead of ‘fuzzy,’ I feel coarse. Like there’s hundreds of thousands of thorns pricking and poking every part of me, from the inside to the outside. From tail tip, to hoof sole, to belly, to mane, to muzzle.

Instead of ‘light,’ and ‘strong,’ I feel heavy, and so weak. As though there are rocks bound to the underside of my hooves, weighing me down with every step I take. The tears falling like lead weights, reminding me that I’m weak, weak, weak.

Instead of ‘full,’ I feel truly empty. Hollow. As if somepony had come with a spoon and scooped out all the love, and joy, and passion, leaving nothing but a dry pink shell behind. A wounded animal left out with no bandages, left to die alone and wither in the sun.

You’ve probably figured it out just from the title of this post, but it’s back to the most basic writing rule: show, don’t tell. Directly telling people how a character feels is rarely something you want to do, aside from a few exceptions, and definitely not something you want to repeat five times.

“But wait!” I hear you say, “Didn’t you say that we’re only seeing inside Pinkie’s mind right now? Shouldn’t I get away with just saying how she feels?”

Well! I’m glad you asked that, me-pretending-to-be-you! See, even though we have access to all of Pinkie’s conscious thoughts, it still doesn’t mean that we have access directly to her true, unconscious feelings. The conscious thoughts are still a filter to her unconscious feelings.

...I think that’s a little difficult to understand. Here’s a quick question instead: would you ever consciously think “I’m feeling happy” or “I’m feeling angry”? No, you’d think, “What a great day!” or “Ugh, this guy is really annoying!”. Or something along those lines, even those are kinda weird-sounding.

Of course, it’s easy to just say “show, don’t tell” without giving any further advice, and that’s usually just what you’d get. This is a Cyo feedback session, though, so I’ll try and give some more concrete advice.

Tell, then Show

First if you’re having trouble nailing down what to write, tell first before showing. In other words, write down exactly what you want to show before trying to word it well. This might not be so useful for simple things like, “It was a beautiful day” or, “I’m feeling really sad right now”, but it gets way better for more complicated and subtle things like, “This place reminds me of home so I’m feeling kinda sad” or, “I’m the more powerful one here, you should learn your place”.

Telling is Narrating, Showing is Experiencing

Right, this one’s less simple. In essence, though, what this means is that in order to see whether you’re telling or showing, check whether you’re just writing a narration of things that happen, or if you’re writing the experience of the people (or ponies!) whom those things happen to. Likewise, if you’re trying to show something, think of how that thing would be experienced by a character, and translate that into the narration.

That’s just about all the things I can think of off the top of my head now. Do note that this stuff are just guidelines, and if you don’t follow these tips, that’s totally fine too. Also, this works more or less alright for narration, but trying to do the same in dialogue makes things more complicated, and the second tip tends to not make that much sense anymore, without some mental gymnastics.

Whew! I really didn’t expect to write such a lengthy review when I started, but hey, guess that’s where this ended up. I may have maybe just used this as an excuse to talk about show don’t tell, but hey, it’s an important topic anyways

Have a good week ahead, everyone!

7040152
Wow, thank you! I'll definitely take what you've said to heart.

Though, as heart-breaking as it was to read, it felt more like a rant fic than something written specifically for Pinkie’s character.

Heh, probably right about that. Now that I'm back in a better place, I'll see if I can edit that a bit.
Again, thank you! I really appreciate it.

7040215
No problem! Glad you found this useful~