So apparently this fic is famous, or something. You might have heard of it.

TNo Nose Knows

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Comedy
• Slice of Life

An ancient law thrusts the Common and the Royal together over a pair of noses.

• Alt. Universe
• Celestia
• Luna
• OC

Irrespective · 150k words  ·  2,356  46 · 43k views

Weirdly enough I'd never heard of it, until I reviewed another one of Irrespective's stories. Guess I don't really follow new Fimfiction stories. Or uh, relatively new, I guess, considering this story was published in 2017

Anyway, for those who haven't seen it before, this story is basically a Canon x OC shipfic. It follows Baked Bean, a bumbling, everyman type of character from a small village, as he goes to Canterlot on a journey of self-discovery. While there, he accidentally invokes an ancient alicorn law that basically forces him to get married to Princess Celestia. And this kicks off the whole story as the two ponies gradually start to learn about each other, and accept each other as husband and wife.

First impressions

I’m gonna admit straight off, this story was pretty difficult for me to get into at the beginning. First off I wasn’t exactly intrigued by the story’s introduction... but more importantly I was also finishing up on listening to the audiobook of Brandon Sanderson’s Starsight, which just kinda made this story’s beginning pale in comparison.

After a rocky start, though, I got really into the story, and I can even pinpoint the exact place this happened. Chapter 7 — this is the chapter where the introduction ends and Bean and Celestia actually get married. The story up to this point was okay — I thought it was pleasant, but ultimately not very engaging. This was the chapter that really drew me in, with its delightful humour, genuine emotion and super endearing characters. Before this point the story was kinda vacillating here and there, but after this is really where the fun starts, and the direction is set for the rest of the story — so if you stopped reading before this you should really go on to at least this chapter.

After this point the story is defined in broad strokes by a few key questions, as any good story should be. Will Bean be able to get over his confidence issues and do well in his new station? Will Celestia be able to love a normal pony after so long? And of course, the most important question in any Romance story: will the two ponies end up falling in love?

These are just the broadest strokes of the story, though, and ultimately I felt that they didn’t so much define the story as just point it in a general direction. What this story is more of is a collection of Slice-of-Life events as Bean and Celestia — though especially Bean — adjust to life with each other. Small stuff like Bean getting used to sleeping beside Celestia, or Celestia helping Bean out with his writing — to big stuff like Bean learning to hold court, or Celestia visiting Bean’s parents with him.

“All right, here we go,” Luna finally announced. “Baked Bean, do you take this Princess to be your lawfully wedded wife, even though you really don’t have a say in the matter?”

“I guess I do.”

“Smart move. Celestia, Princess of the Sun, do you take this stallion to be your lawfully wedded husband since you got all nosey with him?”

“Loving every moment of this, aren’t you?” Celestia darkly replied, and Luna nodded vigorously and with a huge smile. “Yes. I do.”

“Good, ‘cause that ball of hot air you have up there is heavy, and I always break out in hives when I have to move it around. I do not want to be responsible for it. And so, by the legal, lawful, and very legitimate power and authority that I hold as a Princess of Equestria, I do hereby declare you to be hitched, joined, connected, and/or married, and that you are now husband and wife. You may kiss if you are so inclined; I am going to bed.”

The whole marriage scene is comedy gold, seriously

Characters

If you haven’t been able to tell from the way I’m talking about it, this story is very character-centric and not very plot-centric. Which is not exactly a bad thing, especially because the way Irrespective writes characters is very, very entertaining. 

This story features a pretty big cast of characters — aside from Bean and Celestia, there’s also Luna, Discord, Cadance, Shining, Twilight, and Celestia’s secretary Wysteria, just to name a few. It also has a huge supporting cast, with numerous characters who show up in just a few chapters. 

It’s really a tribute to Irrespective’s skill with writing characters and character interactions that it never really seems like there are characters who don’t have at least an interesting line or five to say, despite this massive cast.

But then, characterisation is only half the story on this front. Taking a closer look at the main characters over the whole story, there’s some definite signs of character growth, especially in our main pair Bean and Celestia. 

Bean begins as a bumbling, sorta unsure stallion with an inferiority complex, and ends as a… well, a little less bumbling, confident stallion. Though he still has a bit of that inferiority complex. Celestia also changes over the course of the story, as she learns to treat Bean as her lover — something she has very little experience with.

As a little extra note, the way that Celestia and Luna specifically are written here is also pretty great. Irrespective’s managed to write them so that they at once feel both like the Princesses who’ve done legendary things in Equestria’s history, and the normal ponies with everyday problems that they are on a daily basis. Celestia is clearly very experienced, regularly giving Bean and other ponies around her life advice, but she’s also sometimes immature, and arrogant, and basically a flawed pony. Luna is given less of a spotlight, but has a very touching history with love in the past. It pops up here and there in the story, often to some very heartwarming, emotional moments.

All in all, this story’s main appeal really comes from its characters, and their interactions. If you couldn’t tell from that quote that I stole from the story up above, Irrespective has a knack for writing comedy into character interactions that makes every scene of the story extremely entertaining.

That’s enough about characters, though. Let’s move on to the next big part of any story — plot!

Structure, direction and plot

As I mentioned earlier, this is not a very plot-centric story.

That’s just another way to say that, well, this story has a bit of a weird structure. Specifically, it feels less like a fully coherent, planned-out story and more like a series of Slice-of-Life stories that happen chronologically one after another. While it’s hard to say that the events that happen in the story aren’t related, I didn’t feel like they very clearly built up to anything.

The most obvious place where I felt this was at the ending. At the end of the story, Bean and Celestia (but mostly Bean, again) become comfortable enough with each other that Celestia uh, helps Bean bake his beans, so to speak, and then Bean helps Celestia to raise the sun. 

Where most stories would have a big climax serving as the culmination of the whole story, this ending feels more like a continuation of the series of events that lead up to that point. It’s not especially cathartic for an ending, because the build-up to that point hasn’t been very solid.

I also didn’t feel like the story as a whole was extremely engaging, as I said. I think this is also because of the structure of the story — I found it pretty easy to put down, and reading longer stretches of the story wasn’t super engaging.

There are also some benefits that come with this sorta loose structure, though! First and foremost, the story is much less focused on its two main characters than it might be with a tighter structure. This means that, when Irrespective wants to show off his character writing skills go on a little tangent with other characters, it hardly feels out of place at all. The story is able to get away with spreading its focus to numerous other characters and subplots, which again, are where it shines.

Also it means that it’s easy to pick up again if you’re not reading it all in one shot, which means it’s a great story for reading in short pockets of time.

I personally enjoyed the story thoroughly, which leads me to give it a score of…

Final Score: 8.5/10

No Nose Knows is a story that is, to put it concisely, carried by its characters. Despite having an odd structure which makes it a slightly difficult to get through the whole of its 150k word count, it still manages to be extremely charming, hilarious, and heartwarming all at the same time, while maintaining a cast of impressive size. If you’re looking for a light story that you can read through in shorter bursts, this is the story for you.

Feedback for Irrespective

So I’m just gonna be nitpicking stuff here probably, I mean, have to boost the word count somehow, right?

So, one thing I noticed when reading through the story is that it doesn’t really have relevant conflict for the majority of it. What do I mean by this?

Well before we get to that, I actually noticed that a lot of the story takes place without much of an obvious conflict, or goal. This is a big reason why I got that Slice-of-Life feeling from this.

But also, while this story does introduce numerous sources of conflict over its course, I don’t remember a lot of it happening with Celestia and Bean I can think of several instances where either one of them faces conflict on their own, but few where they face it together as a couple — and even fewer where it occurs between them.

Is it just my crappy memory? Well maybe, but it definitely feels to me that a romance story should have more conflict that relates to both the characters at once. Because this doesn’t really happen, the relationship between Bean and Celestia doesn’t shine as strongly as it could have.

Making sure that they both have an important part to play in more events could probably have gone a long way towards this. There was that one section near the end of the story where Celestia gets annoyed with Bean for basically sucking up to her, but that lasts for a very short time and doesn’t really get resolved.

...though I admit it’s probably pretty difficult to involve the both of them in a single conflict, seeing as one of them’s a regular pony and the other’s the immortal goddess of the sun. But that’s my opinion on this.

It’s relatively minor, as far as feedback goes. I can tell the main draw is from the Slice of Life part of the story, and that part I thoroughly enjoyed.

Phew, it’s been a long time since my last review! Hopefully I haven’t lost my touch :twilghtsheepish:

...what have I been doing? Well, I’ve been editing an awesome story, and I’ve been doing ATG. So basically, don’t expect these reviews to come out in any sort of timely fashion for now, haha