TWhy Princess Twilight Doesn't Need Royal Guards

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy

Thinking it would be easy pickings, two thieves break into Twilight Sparkle's castle. They overlooked a couple of things.

• Profanity
• Spike
• OC
• Starlight Glimmer

ThePinkedWonder · 3.8k words  ·  609  17 · 7.9k views

Why Princess Twilight Doesn't Need Royal Guards

by ThePinkWonder

Summary:

Believing it to be an easy job, two thieves broke into Princess Twilight Sparkle's castle. With no Royal Guards protecting the castle and Twilight herself gone, her valuable possessions were as good as theirs.

Initial Thoughts: The Pink Wonder has a very unique style of writing, and it’s one that I have often enjoyed reading in the past. So, I was excited to see this one pop up for me. They seem to always go for a sort of low-key absurdism. Normal scenarios would play out, almost exactly as they do in the show, but at some point, the narrative will take a dip into the weird and surreal. Much like an Edgar Wright film, now that I think about it. Consequently, I went into this story with high expectations.

Were they met?

My Reaction: So, two random burglar-ponies, Locknight, and Tumble, both realize something that’s apparently been bugging bronies and pegasisters for years now: Twilight, despite being a Princess with a Castle, has no guards. Being the geniuses that they are, these two schmucks take it upon themselves to correct this error… mostly by stealing everything that’s not nailed down.

Now, what exactly prevents this from occurring would venture into spoiler territory… were it not for the cover art spelling out fairly well what fate awaits Locknight and Tumble inside the Castle of Friendship. I will not be spoiling that twist here, but it’s hard not to get an idea just from the long description page.

A story like this – a comedy with its big twist spelled out right there for all to see – lives and dies on its build-up. We already suspect what the ending is. We already suspect the punchline. The lead-in, the buildup, need to then entertain and mislead the audience a little, so that the joke becomes less obvious. It’s fine to just setup a joke and tell the expected punchline. But humor is made more impactful by the surprise, by presenting an unexpected result.

To borrow an analogy from the horror genre, tension and suspense are gained by either not showing “the monster”, or by making you forget about the monster for a time. We know why Twilight doesn’t need guards, but Locknight and Tumble don’t, so it’s a game between storyteller and reader, to tease out what precisely will get them. Too little build-up, and the story ends too soon. Too much, and we become bored with the resolution.

Sadly, the build-up in this story does not quite payout like one would hope. Certainly, something happens, and it is appropriately amusing. But, the lead-in to this story gave me the sensation that there would be a great big belly laugh waiting for me at the story’s end… and I never got that. Besides a few wriggling little peeves which I’ll get to in my scoring, I think the main thing that hurts this story is the lack of a true pay-off for all the buildup.

It’s like listening to a knock-knock joke, but the punchline in your head ended up being funnier than the one on the page. Now, does this mean that I didn’t like the story? Absolutely not! The tension in the early parts of the story is still fun, and some of the dialogue is quirky and personality-rich. But I would be lying if I said that it tickled me like the author’s other works. There is every possibility that this is entirely an issue of misaligned expectations. But… that is where I invite you to read the story yourselves, and make your own decisions on it.

Grammar: 7/10. While there are few, if any, spelling errors or mistakes of that nature, this story is made more difficult to read due to its stuttering narration. The narration likes to repeat itself, and not in a way that seems deliberate. It makes reading the text, at times, a little more tedious than it needed to be.   

Story: 6/10. The story itself is an amusing piece of light comedy. Or, it ends up there. As I said, the setup leads one to expect a much bigger laugh out of the end than we got. And the last section of the story takes a bizarre turn, shifting into what could be argued is an entirely different story altogether. So, be aware of that.

Characters: 7/10. That aforementioned repetition of narration and dialogue takes a bit of the shine off our main protagonists, it must be said. If done deliberately, this can be a charming trope, but it doesn’t appear to be so in this case. And while Locknight and Tumble are supposed to be unsympathetic morons, their idiocy and personality deficits really start to grind the readers’ gears in ways best left unground. Part of comedy is sympathizing with the characters, and these two are just nasty enough at times to lose that.

Final Word and Rating

7+6+7 = 20/30 = 67/100%

Why Princess Twilight Does Not Need Royal Guards is a fun work of comedy that perhaps doesn't live quite up to the opportunities granted by the setup. Its initial setup is solid, but with less payoff than one might expect. It is hampered, at times, by its own narration draining the comedic energy from the piece. And, while its characters are well-realized and rich with personality, they become too irritating to take seriously, or to care about. It’s still a funny story, with a silly plot, and some good bits throughout.

To the author: There are, really, three suggestions I’d give, if you were looking to tighten up this story, and bring up its score. The mentioned repetitions, those lines and sentences that basically repeat themselves back-to-back, could be cut down severely, improving the flow of the story. I would, personally, keep the information in the dialogue, since that was quite strong with this story.

Second, I would try to punch up the “damage” done to Locknight and Tumble. What happens to them is very tame compared with what I kept imagining would happen as I read the story. Perhaps that’s on me, but I still think it’s worth mentioning.

And last, I think it bears mentioning that the great Chuck Jones had several “rules” for whenever he or anyone else made one of the Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. Chief amongst them was that the audience’s sympathy should always lie with the Coyote. Locknight and Tumble just… lose that sympathy too quickly for me to care what happens to them. And since they are the primary viewpoint characters for 99% of the story, losing that was like losing interest in the story itself. Perhaps the author could dial down on some of their rampant stupidity? At least in the way they go about speaking to the cover art characters.

If you’d like to discuss this review, or the story itself, please don’t hesitate to comment.

7336617

Thanks a lot for the review!

First, you were right that the narration repeating itself wasn't deliberate, since I didn't even know I was doing it. I would guess that part of the reason for that was that I was trying out a narration style and techniques that could (or at least supposedly) improve my writing and lower the "telling" part of it. I'll see if I can lower any unnecessary redundancies in my next stories and overall tweak things a bit, or just go back to more like I've done it before if it turns out to just not be something that's for me.

Another thing that might have backfired a little was that I was trying to have the narration do part of the job as the dialogue to try to prevent the story from otherwise becoming too dialogue-heavy. It'll be something to take more into consideration next time when I'm in the editing stages of my stories. But as I'm on stuff that might have backfired, that stupidity was on the intentional side to help justify Starlight and later Spike getting physical with them. Before editing, their stupidity was a little lower (especially Tumble's) but it made Starlight and Spike going off on them feel just a tad OOC, even for this silly story. Perhaps any adjustments I did were done a little too well, or wasn't needed at all.

It's also interesting you mentioned it could have been better to up the damage I did, because I did imagine it being a little worse when I thought of the story, but toned it down a little once I was actually writing.

In any rate, thanks for the review and I'd try to tweak some of the things I did in my story so it (hopefully) won't have the same issues.

7336804
You’re probably better off aiming for more dialogue, as opposed to more narration. This might also just be my opinion, but dialogue is always more fun to read. It’s more interesting, and it allows you more opportunities to build characters through showing, as opposed to telling. Overall, it’s a stylistic decision which to focus on.

Repetition is really good if you want to add impact to important moments, or if you want to infuse the entire piece with a more poetry or lyrical feeling to it.

The sympathy thing is complicated, but I think the reason it makes sense is investment. When a reader becomes invested in a character, they become interested in seeing where they go, and what they do. With your two protagonists, them getting beaten up isn’t funny. It’s what should happen, at least on a moral or karmic level. Watching them get chased out of the castle by, for example, Cthulhu, would’ve been hilarious because of how absurd and exaggerated such a punishment is for simple burglary.

Like I said, it’s still a fine story. Just use these notes and ideas to make the next one even better. I always enjoy your stories because of how absurd and exaggerated the situations become. And I look forward to reading your next one!

7337219

Watching them get chased out of the castle by, for example, Cthulhu, would’ve been hilarious because of how absurd and exaggerated such a punishment is for simple burglary.

I'd be inclined to agree. Reading that actually got a laugh out of me when I thought about how that might look

Something I forgot to mention was about the Twilight and Rainbow part near the end. It was a tad bizarre, but it was more or less meant to be, or at least, it was what I was going for. As you already pointed out, the big twist of the story was all but laid out. A subversion I don't think was really an option here, so I felt I needed to do either a double subversion or have something else happen in the story that you couldn't see coming to have as an extra, unexpected punchline. The little Twidash bait and switch, revealing that this wasn't the first time somepony tried (and failed) to rob Twilight's castle, and Twilight doing a Sonic Rainboom to get Spike off Starlight's back out of jealousy was what I came up with to try to add a surprise to the otherwise obvious twist.