TInterruption and Intervention

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

During his downtime, Royal Scribe to Princess Luna, Astral Ink, receives some timely advice. Sometimes the right words from the right pony makes all the difference in the world.

• Profanity
• Luna
• OC
• Raven Inkwell

Scribe of the Nightwings · 7k words  ·  98  3 · 1.7k views

Summary: Astral Ink, the Royal Scribe assigned Princess Luna, was relaxing in his quarters when he was then visited by Raven Inkwell. A few disagreements here and there eventually lead to some uncomfortable revelations that may put Astral's position in Canterlot in jeopardy. All leading up to an unexpected visitor to appear to give some advice and a few personal thoughts that push the scribe in the right direction once again.

WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS. Read with caution.

Initial thoughts: Alright, today we're lookin at Interruption and Intervention and the first thing I noticed was that romance tag. Many know I am a big fan of romance. Mainly because I often dream about it myself and never imagined I'd actually have it, but that's not the point here. The author does mention there is only sprinkles of it throughout the piece, however I would have to disagree. I don't even think the story requires this tag. It feels more friendshipping. Sure, there is subtle hints to something happening between the two, but the trigger/execution of it is never even approached.

It's more glossed over for the main message of the story which is how exhaustion can lead to not wanting to do anything. While I did feel this story did a good job of conveying this message, there were some formatting issues for me reading wise. Paragraphs tend to read and look like walls of text, which could be easily fixed up, and there were a few spelling errors I noticed. Overall, I'd call this a decent story that takes a deeper look into the role of Luna's assistant. We all knew Celestia had one in Raven, but I never consdiered Luna having one, so that was a nice and refreshing take. Overall. I will give it a 6/10.

Heart of the story: The "heart" of this story is actually two things. The first of which is Astral Ink. He's our main character, but it's his struggle that is the other part of the heart of the story, so if the character or the moral falls flat, the whole story would suffer.

Thankfully, this isn't the case. I could clearly feel the exhaustion in Astral's voice, and the confrontation between him and Raven while seeming like filler at first, was a good setup to the overall message of the story.

Now as for Raven, while she does help progress the story along, I feel like her...lines were a bit bitchy at times. I realize how much she cares for her job, but it just felt like a bit much for me. It was never enough to truly ruin the story for me though. As she does bring up a lot of good points, but for me Astral is the character here we care about, and want him to succeed, and he doesn't lose his job so that's something. And hopefully his relationship with Luna will bloom. 7/10.

Characterization: The characters here are Astral, Raven Inkwell, and Luna. We're going to go through each ones' strengths and flaws and how they progress the overall plot and message.
Astral- He is the main character and the focus of our story. He comes into the story feeling drained and feeling like all the work he does isn't appreciated. This feeling is to be expected of some pony in his position and it gets to the point where he just doesn't want to even bother with more simple things like keeping his room tidy. Granted, this shows a lot of things to me. It shows Astral is overworked, he's exhausted, and all he really wants to do is sleep, but his duties keep him from having time to himself. Granted he does enjoy serving his Princess, and values her opinion of him, but the overall message of this story, shows that his characterization was handled well. He never felt to me like a "Mary Sue" or so "whiny" that I felt no sympathy for him. If I had one complaint it's that his feelings for Luna are never explained or elaborated beyond "I like her" and that to me feels a bit flat for what is supposed to be a romance.

Raven- Her role here sorta reminds me of an actual secretary. She cares about her job, and ensures that everything is running smoothly. She does come off as a bit bitchy during certain times, but it just goes to show how much she cares about her job. And how much she excepts others to follow her example.

Luna- She doesn't come in until about halfway through the piece, but she comes off as a concerned friend, rather than Astral's boss. It's never explained why she feels this way, or what is special about Astral other than how long he's worked for her, so the romance part feels rather flat. Like why is it even there? If you going to set it up, go all the way for it. But yeah, all the characters feel like themselves and it's refreshing to read about an Oc that isn't a Mary Sue or over sympathic.
8/10.

Story/Concept: The story/concept here is basically about Astral being overworked, and how that affects the ponies around him. Granted it's not anything like out of the world, it's a simple story about the bond between Luna, and Astral, with the focus mostly on Astral. I don't have a lot to say here other than there's nothing wrong with the story itself. However, I do recommend going back and splitting up those walls of text. Makes it hard on us readers so try to keep them brief. 7/10

Originality/Execution: It's not really the most original thing I've seen, and the execution while it did get the moral across well, it could still have used more of an emotionally gripping narrative. And I also think it would have helped to have Luna have more of an impact. The story itself is certainly something truly unique, and I do think it's a good piece, I just personally felt it could be more emotionally sound. If that makes sense? 8/10.

Overall thoughts and final score: I did enjoy this piece, granted I do feel it could have been a stronger overall message of the moral, it did a good job of showing us why we care about Astral's struggles and I want to know more. I want to also know why Luna cares about him other than just the boss/worker relationship, and how that might bloom into more. And show us body language of why Luna feels for him, and same with him. For show vs tell. I know it's hard, but it makes the story all the more impactful to the readers.

Final score: 6+7+8+7+8=36/50
7.2/10

Headpat worthy:
Boop worthy: Yes.
Meh worthy:

To the author: Keep up the good work, I see this is another story of yours I reviewed, and I'm honored you choose me once again, and I do hope you find my feedback helpful! As always don't be afraid to ask me questions, or just talk about the review, I am here to help. <3

Next time we have "Consonance and Dissonance by Applezombi." See you soon~!

Thank you for your review, Nailah. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.

This piece was somewhat...experimental when I was writing it. OC stories can be somewhat of a gamble in terms of popularity, especially when it involves interaction was canon characters. Astral does possess struggles that I deal with in my daily life, but I wanted to make sure that it wasn't too "self insert" or self serving. Give the readers a personal perspective that they could understand or relate with, you know? Thankfully, it seems as though I did a good job with this.

As for Luna's "romance", I admit that was a bit weak in this story and there's a reason for that. Again, I knew going in that any relationship (either platonic or romantic) between a canon character and OC is difficult to make genuine with it being too self serving. I didn't want to write a "Super chad gets all the mares" story, I wanted to make sort of a slow burn type deal. Although clearly, I maybe should've gone in a bit stronger.

With all of that being said, I am in the progress of writing a sequel for this fic called "Admiration and Admission". It's going to develop Luna and Astral's relationship even more and also explain why Luna has these feeling for her scribe in which I promise will pay of this time. Hopefully, people will enjoy it as much as the last piece and I hope you find yourself reading it and enjoying it as well.

Thank you for reading the piece. Your compliments and constructive criticism will be most helpful in the creation of the sequel!

Also, not sure if you noticed, but in the author's notes there's a link to a scene from the piece that I had commissioned from Little Tigress.

Really happy how well it turned out!

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Great review, Nailah! I enjoy the "celebratory" tone you take with this reviews, pointing out both what you enjoyed and what could use employment.

I find it interesting that you note how the characters simultaneously were presented as interesting and then came off, at times, as flat. Such a dichotomy suggests, to me, that there might have been an issue of pacing involved, but that's something the author would know more of than I. Good suggestions at the end, too; romance lives and breathes on subtle details that "show" more than "tell" the effect.