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Cyonix

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Cyonix #1 · Feb 29th, 2020 · 1 · ·

“I don’t think these seams are aligned.”

How much can you tell about someone from a small error in their work?

Well, that’s how the story we’re looking at today begins.

TStitches

The fine line between inspiration and jealously can be so hard to walk – especially when they begin bleeding together. Gold medal winner at writeoff.me!

Winston · 4.8k words · 40 4 · 645 views

I’ll not hold back from discussing plot points which might be spoilers for some people. If you care about that stuff, read the story first. Though... there’s not a lot to spoil in this short a story.

This story was an odd one for me. See, I went in expecting to like it; and if you take a quick look at the story and its packaging it isn’t hard to see why! It’s a Writeoff gold medal winner, it’s a short one-shot, and it’s written in that Slice-of-Life style that I’ve professed to having a soft spot for before. What’s not to like?

And yeah, I read it, and I liked it! But that was a month ago, for, um, reasons ^^;, and upon reading it again semi-recently, I found it a less enjoyable read than I did the first time. Why?

…well honestly I’m kinda hoping I’ll stumble on the reason for that while I’m writing the review. So let’s get to that, yeah?

We begin in Rarity’s boutique, where Sweetie Belle has just spotted a small error in the stitching of one of her dresses. And it’s not in just any dress, either — it’s a wedding dress for Rainbow Dash. For her wedding with Applejack.

But this story isn’t about Dash and AJ. It’s about why Rarity, having been told of the mistake, doesn’t really care about it. So in the next scene, Applejack confronts Rarity about this, after picking up on something going on when Sweetie Belle drops by Sweet Apple Acres for a visit.

“What I gotta ask is,” Applejack began, a bit ponderously, “when the officiator at our wedding asks if there’s anypony who objects to this union, is anypony gonna raise their hoof and say yes?”

After this, the issue becomes too obvious for Rarity to ignore — whenever she works on the dress, she finds herself not wanting to. She approaches others for advice, and through the rest of the story, figures out her problem — not that she directly has any problem with AJ and Dash getting married, but that she’s envious of the romance they share which she still can’t find for herself. And, in the end, she accepts that she’s getting too close to her work, and asks Coco Pommel to help her to finish the dress.

“Maybe that was the other problem, as well. Just like too much honesty, there’s also such a thing as false generosity – doing something not for somepony else, but really for yourself. To fit your own image of things. Gifts are supposed to be for the pony you’re giving them to, not about you. And not about trying to use them to change somepony to be who you think they should be in your mind, instead of what they are. Nopony is perfect. Resenting them for something that was only ever in your own mind? Just asking for disaster. Ruined friendship is virtually a certainty at the end of pushing down that road. And so, sometimes… sometimes, you have to just let go of a thing, when you can’t be truly, honestly generous about it.”

And… that’s the story. It’s short, pleasantly well-written, and there’s quite a lot to enjoy here. All the ponies behave in character, and the story is pretty delightful as well.

On my first read, what caught my attention the most was the perspective that Winston chooses to take here. Because the way the story is told is almost completely through dialogue, with little of Rarity’s internal thoughts and conflicts showing up in the narration. The result is that this fic feels a little subtler in its execution, and it makes for a pretty different, interesting read. There are some issues with this method, but I'll get to them later.

Before that, I mentioned having mixed feelings for this story. I'm going to try to write down what I think makes me feel this way, hopefully it doesn't turn out too messy.

Firstly, even though I've been praising this fic for being expressed through dialogue, the dialogue itself is actually not that interesting. It feels realistic, yeah, and there's no problem with characterisation — but a lot of the time it feels predictable and mundane.

And I just want to mention, there are these moments of like, sudden philosophising or something, where Rarity goes on a spiel about something or other. There are times when they fit into the story pretty well, and other times when they just sorta grind the flow of the story to a halt.

Second: another related issue is that there’s no conflict that’s clearly shown. There's a lot of Rarity exploring her own feelings and such, but through all that there's no real conflict that's very clear at all. Consequently, most of the story feels like it's just telling us what Rarity's problem is, with the whole story being centered around the reveal of that problem.

It's also because of this that the dialogue feels sorta bland to me. There's no visible conflict in the dialogue, because most of the conflict is internal. And also, the internal conflict doesn't seem strong enough to show itself in Rarity's regular dialogue — in place of this, Rarity has to break away from the normal patterns to conversation to tell us what she's feeling, which should not be happening so often in dialogue. There's very little drama involved — not in the sense of not having tension between characters, but in the sense of the story not being dramatic. And all of this comes back to my gripe with the story: it's not as engaging as it could be.

That, in the end, is why I have mixed feelings about this story. This is a well-written, well-polished story, with a lot of the things that I enjoy in stories. But at the same time, while it's kinda interesting to read about Rarity realising that she envies her friends, and while it's pretty cool to see that process of realisation taken on in such a limited narrative perspective, in the end, the story lacks the emotional meat that is so important in stories.

So, for the final score…

Final Score: 7/10

No more three components for reviews, they were always kinda arbitrary anyway.

Feedback for Winston

So, let's talk a bit about conflict. Most of my problems with this story revolve around a central point, the way that you've chosen to write the conflict in this story.

If there's clear conflict, there's usually an easy way to phrase it in a single statement. Someone wants to achieve some goal, but something is stopping them.

In this case, it's difficult to find something like that. Rarity's friends want to find out what's going on with her… and she does too. The best I can come up with is, Rarity wants to be the one to create the dress, but her emotions don't let her. But if this is the core conflict, it's not very clearly shown. Rarity doesn't show herself to want very much for anything other than the pretty vague goal of being happy for her friends. Which, well, isn't a valid goal for that conflict statement thing in this case because it doesn’t seem like it’d be expressable through the dialogue. Or maybe you can find a way, but I’m not coming up with anything

Anyway, so the solution is, find a more concrete conflict, and make sure that it shows up throughout the story. Not using narration to convey thoughts is interesting and all, but you should understand that one of the strengths of prose is that it's able to explore characters' inner thoughts much more easily than other mediums, and choosing to give up that strength should be balanced with a solid story.

I hope this helps! I've been going back and forth on my opinion about this story the whole time I've been writing (and rewriting) this review, and I'm still not entirely convinced my points are objectively right. But I figure subjectivity has to be worth at least something, huh? Also, I acknowledge that I've been holding this story to a higher standard than a Writeoff story written in a few days probably should be… but whatever. Feedback's feedback.

Hopefully the next review doesn't take a month to come out or something