TApropos of the Sinners

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Drama
• Slice of Life

(Featured on EqD) A dark and tragic event occurred some years ago in Ponyville, and it involved an equally dark and dysfunctional family. They are still discussed among us to this day.

• Violence
• Sex
• Death
• OC

SpitFlame · 194k words  ·  20  1 · 755 views

Bronze Pocket is many things: a clever earth pony, a wealthy landowner, and a father of three children—Cluster Tale, the eldest and most intelligent son; Nova Steel, the brash middle-child; and Airglow Sky, humble and fresh-faced, as well as the youngest (and only) daughter. Very few of them like or trust one another, and would rather take their time and energy to other places, to simply avoid any blood-tied complications which always seems to arise from their father's antics.

And when they're together, as fate would sometimes have it, things escalate into volatility and resentment. It all starts when the siblings find themselves back at their father's house for vastly different reasons. What good, one may be inclined to ask, can come of it?

Dark, drama, death, oh my! What a lovely mix of tags, although I’m not quite sure about the SoL Only time will tell what that entails...

Setting and Plot

As of writing this review, Apropos of the Sinners has not yet been completed, so I can only judge the setting and plot by the 37 chapters currently released.

Our nameless narrator (and by proxy, SpitFlame), paints a picture of a Ponyville long before its modern depiction in the show with purple bookhorse, one whose pages of history have not yet been stained by tragedy or cleansed by heroism. While the story doesn’t delve into the schematics of the village, it can be assumed that Ponyville is Ponyville but smaller A Tinyville, if you will!

SpitFlame waits for no one and immediately starts our journey down the rabbit hole made by one Bronze Pocket (more on him later!), detailing the circumstances behind his life and what led to the arrival of his children, Cluster Tale, Nova Steel, and Airglow Sky. I will admit to taking a shine to dear Airglow, though perhaps that’s just me gravitating towards the female characters

The story, in general, is a very long-winded tale, with tangents and bursts of descriptions and backstories, and will continue to be one for the rest of the story, but if one pays enough attention to these minute details, they can pick up on one-off comments and throwaway lines that make reference to the stories written inside the story. In a way, it very much mimics real-life since no one story is entirely a standalone, as they all draw inspiration from somewhere and brush up against another story here and there, sometimes crossing over entirely to directly influence the other; Lauren Faust’s life cannot be described without the hundreds of people she met and interacted with all along the way. I commend SpitFlame for this parallelism, even if it was unintentional!

On the other hand, the story does feel like it drags on quite a bit, what with the random collection of philosophical musings thrown in to punctuate certain key aspects or events in the story. While I did find them interesting, they were also quite jarring to me and worded in enough prose to make me rather confused about the point the narrator was trying to make, and ultimately couldn’t make much connection to the events that have occurred or will occur.

I’m not sure if it was just me, but I also felt that I couldn’t quite keep track of time during the story; what feels like events that should’ve happened over the course of a week somehow happened in a single day, though I suppose that might be my own shortcomings

Another thing I noticed in the midst of the flowery language and sprinkling of drama and secrets is that quite a few plot threads were opened, but never completed; an extra train ticket, a criticism of the monarchy whose allegations continue to send ripples in the water, the sudden birth of a child and death of its mother that seemed just slightly out of place, a doctor spurred on by the past to save the present. Many things are brought up and, as of this moment, remain unsolved in the larger narrative. What places do these events have? How do they lead up to the tragedy teased to the audience in the very first line of the story? Right now, I have no answers, which both frustrates and intrigues me since I have no idea how these all tie up in the end.

7.2/10

Character Exploratioin

I’m not even sure if I have to do this part! SpitFlame seems to have taken care of delving into characters for me

Apropos of the Sinners has a myriad of original characters in its roster, but the main players seem to be Bronze Pocket and his three children. SpitFlame takes great pains to describe each of the characters for us and essentially tells us what each of them is like and what we can expect.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bronze Pocket is proven to be a businessman first, a money-hoarder second, and a pony with a possible touch of the crazies third. I’m not quite sure what is up with that last one and it’s one of the questions that has been floating around my mind while I read the story; Bronze Pocket can shift mood and tone at the drop of a hat, go from unreasonable to calm and collected, and my mind doesn’t quite know what to make of that since there are little to no pre-established facts that can justify this kind of behaviour. Only SpitFlame knows why

For the sake of simplicity, I won’t delve into the other characters, but they do receive character development beyond the basic molds we’re presented with at the start of the story; Cluster comments on what it’d be like to be a father to a daughter and later has that chance, changing his world in an instant; Nova explains that his brief affair and gambling of his fiancée’s money was a mistake and that he’s deeply ashamed of it; and Airglow has to try and figure out how a teenager deals with all of this, while possibly exploring her own character through her questioned sexuality.

Overall, very well done!
9.5/10

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

SpitFlame scores very well in all three categories! It’s obvious a lot of thought and care went into the writing of Apropos of the Sinners, so I’ll talk about something a little different this time

Prose, the boon of some writers and bane of others! Quite a bit of prose is displayed prominently in the story, which meshes well with how the story is narrated by another character (who is, as of yet, unknown) and not an omniscient point of view. The way the story is written mimics speech and one large anecdote. SpitFlame does touch into purple prose, description for description’s sake, where it feels like almost every single room must be described almost in excruciating detail. Some people love purple prose, some people hate it It’s up to the reader to decide whether they love SpitFlame’s writing style and plotlines or not; personally, I feel it is a tad tedious, but the descriptions are usually self-contained in their own paragraphs and I can skip them if I so wish.

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency: 10/10
Prose: 7/10
Average rating: 8.5/10

Final Thoughts

Brief note: This story caught me at a bad time, as I had read it intermittently while my finals were approaching, so I was unable to make note of my thoughts while reading the story. Thus, there is no “My Little Nitpicks” section in this review

A well-written story that’s setting itself up for a big payout with many pieces on the chessboard. Time will only tell how it all pans out! The philosophical commentary is not for the faint of heart

Final rating: (8.5+8.5+7.2/3)/10 = (25.2/3)/10 = 8.4/10

7078564
Thanks for the review, dude! Keep in mind that as of writing this, Apropos is only halfway through completion (4 out of the planned 8 parts have been released). Thing is, the first half of the story (i.e. what you read) is literally only the prologue. Yeah, long prologue. The main plot only truly kicks in around parts 5–6. Anyway, I'm happy you liked the characters. I'll take all your feedback into careful consideration. This was all very helpful.

setting itself up for a big payout

Oho, believe me, the payout will be epic (or at least I hope it will).

Btw, may I ask who was your favourite character and favourite scene overall? Thanks.

7078576
I’d say Airglow is my favourite! She’s a very relatable character, what with her nature as a “normal character trying to make sense of the events unfolding around her,” which I’m sure many readers can connect to.

As for my favourite scene, I’d say it was the one where Cluster described to Airglow what he would feel about a mare if he was her father. It was an amazing scene that gave us just a sliver of the more emotional side of Cluster and also how he feels about his own father and how Bronze acts. Well done on that one!