EComparative Mythology

• MLP: FiM
• Horror
• Slice of Life

The Student Six share campfire stories before Nightmare Night.

• Ocellus
• Young Six

Flashgen · 15k words  ·  97  2 · 2.5k views

Today’s review covers Flashgen’s Nightmare Night fic, Comparative Mythology. Most of the text of this review will contain spoilers, but my final thoughts will be spoiler-free.

Opening Thoughts

Comparative Mythology has a classic concept taken right from FiM’s playbook: the student six gather together to celebrate Nightmare Night in Ponyville, and share scary stories around a campfire at the edge of the Everfree. Through this, they are able to explore each other’s cultures and styles of storytelling… but they will also dive deeper, searching for the hidden thread that connects their stories and cultures.

I went into this fic expecting an anthology (despite the lack of tag), and planned to give each individual story its own small review. Doing so, however, would be a disservice to the broader story that Flashgen is telling in this piece. I will make reference to individual stories, but their place in the wider piece is of much greater importance than how any individual scary story stands alone.

Plot/Concept

To say that Comparative Mythology is more than meets the eye is probably as good a place as any to begin teasing it apart. It presents itself simply enough: the student six trade scary stories on Nightmare Night. As I said, this setup isn’t uncommon for the show itself! We have several episodes in an anthology-style, one of which actually takes place during a camping trip. As much as I love fictions which depart from canon, it’s always somewhat comforting to find one nestled so firmly within canon. By all rights, this fiction could have been a Halloween special.

But there’s more to this fiction than a handful of spooky stories. The concept behind this fiction is broader than that, instead asserting that each story is, in fact, different perspectives on the same force/creature as encountered by the different races across Equestria. It is Ocellus, the child of a race which has no cultural tales to tell just yet, who puts the pieces together and weaves a tale that encompasses all which came before. 

I’d like to talk more about just how this is done in the pacing section, since I believe the pacing of this reveal is just as crucial to the story as the reveal itself, but for now I will say that the content of the reveal is satisfying and complete. The story wraps itself up beautifully - purely from a conceptual standpoint, the reader is left feeling fulfilled, as each carefully dropped thread is tied up neatly in the final chapter. What more could you ask for?

5 / 5

Pacing/Length

Comparative Mythology  clocks in at a middling 15k words - not quite enough to call it a longfic, but certainly more content than the average episode of FiM could hope to hold. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that (in fact, reading this fic takes about 50 minutes, landing it in range of a two-parter), but it does mean that the repetitive nature of the stories starts to drag.

It’s unfortunate, because the repetitiveness of the stories is the story - and, with six characters, you’d want each of them to be involved, so it makes sense to tell six stories. Flashgen even makes an effort to cut this down, giving Sandbar a very short and appropriately “pony” tale (which he gets teased for a bit), and giving Ocellus wrap-up duty, but it’s hard not to want to cut one or two of these tales to cut to the chase a little more. It’s difficult. I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out, either - I wouldn’t even know which stories to cut! They all have interesting twists, and it’s entertaining to hear each character share a story that is so well-fitted to their culture. Each tale is crafted so thoughtfully and carefully that cutting even one would feel wrong, but there just comes a point when the pattern is clear to the reader… and there’s two more stories to read.

The other thing this hurts is the pacing of the reveal. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why pacing is especially important in suspense and horror - the tension is certainly there, bolstered by engaging conversations amongst the student six between the stories and a consistent feeling of unease experienced by Ocellus as she tries to put the pieces together, but it dips as the stories drag on just one or two too long. It also puts an incredible amount of pressure on the final chapter - not even 2k words - to tie together the 13k that comes before. Were two stories cut and the wordcount taken down to a total of 10k, maybe this would have felt more substantial, but it’s just too much weight to put on such a short chapter, even as well-written as it is.

I don’t have an easy answer. As much as I feel like cutting stories would tighten this up, it also feels kind of wrong to do. Then again, as much as I appreciate each story for what it brings to the table, I can’t help but feel that the grander story would have a greater punch if one or two were removed from the middle. It’s an impossible situation.

All of that said, I really devoured this story. I was carried forward through each chapter, feeling the promise of a reveal that was expertly buried and feeling a consistent rise in momentum through the first few chapters. It’s the inevitable plateau that takes the edge off, and ends up choking the pacing the tiniest bit, that keeps this from being a perfect 5 / 5.

4 / 5

Characterization

There are two things I look for when I’m grading characterization: the first is how accurate they are to their counterparts in the show, and the second is how far they’re pushed beyond. I grade this way because a good story should push its characters in new directions - perfect canon accuracy is a 4 / 5, but those little twists and turns are what takes a story to the next level.

Comparative Mythology is perfect, as far as characterization goes. The characters’ voices are excellent, not a single word feels off or out of character in the least. The conversations are balanced (a difficult thing to do with six characters to manage), and the stories work brilliantly with their cultures, interests, and fears.

But what makes Comparative Mythology perfect isn’t how closely it sticks to canon. It’s the other moments that make this story blossom so beautifully. Two moments in particular stood out to me as flawless explorations of character. First, after Smolder tells her story, there is a discussion about explanatory mythology - stories which are made to explain things about the world. It is here that we see a moment of vulnerability from Smolder, as she admits that the story she told is meant to explain an irrational fear that most dragons hold of the empty wastes beyond the Dragon Lands. The second is from Yona, when she manages to quiet her fears and tell her story with an unexpected (and yet completely believable) sincerity. They’re small moments, really not even crucial to the grander plot, but they just feel very rewarding as a reader.

There really isn’t much else to say on characterization. It was pitch perfect and then some. Really a treat for fans of the student six.

5 / 5

Writing Quality

Here’s where I have to get nit-picky again. 

To say that this story was not well-written would be disingenuous at best. This story is extremely well-written… where it needed to be. The scary stories themselves were given special attention, to ensure that they do not drag or become dull. It’s not easy to write an entirely engaging fairytale or spooky story (believe me, I’ve tried), and these are all very engaging with brilliant moments of description and prose. It’s the other places in the story, when the plot is carried by great dialogue, that the narration takes a small dip.

I’m not talking about typos or mistakes (as I do my best not to grade for those) - rather, there’s a repetitiveness in some of the narration that becomes very rhythmically obvious during longer passages of prose. There are quite a few sentences that are structured as “verbing a noun, she verbed another noun,” often back-to-back. They begin to stick out at a reader and break the great flow that the dialogue builds.

In the end, it doesn’t impact the experience very much (largely due to the bulk of the story being so well done), but there were certainly a few sections which just weren’t written as carefully. Another round of reading and tightening up those sections would be more than enough to make this absolutely perfect.

4 / 5

Je Ne Sais Quoi

I hope that, by now, it’s clear how much I enjoyed this story. There were several times when breaking the flow to make a note frustrated me so badly that I considered just dropping the review entirely and just blasting through it on my own (which I think I may do in the future). But I think it’s important to point out that, the first time I sat down to read this, I didn’t make it to the second chapter.

The direction of the story necessitates that it start on a rather bland story. Sandbar’s tale of the shadow walkers is short, vague, and doesn’t really have a true ending - there’s no sense of fulfillment or resolution, and so it reads more like an encounter with an animal than a truly scary story. Having started there, and being faced with five more chapters of scary stories, I dreaded the possibility of five more stories which weren’t the least bit scary, and put the fic down. I’m very glad I was wrong about that! But putting the most barebones story first just makes reading a good story feel like a chore. Again, it was all done with purpose and I don’t really have an alternative, but the first impression a reader gets of this story isn’t anything like what the story actually holds.

In my mind, that doesn’t hold back what the rest of this story is, but I’m sure other readers have put this fiction down before they get to the goods. 

4 / 5

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of things to love about this fic. Its concept, its structure, its style, and its characters are all rendered beautifully and thoughtfully slotted together. While it takes a chapter to find its footing, and its pacing may drag for some readers, the ride is worth every word. 

4.4 / 5

Thank you very much for the review. I had a lot of fun coming up with each of the stories and trying to match them to the "vibe" I got from each species in the show (besides reusing a story out of one of my other fics). At the same time, I think I knew trying to tie it all together into one overarching tale meant that it was going to be a bit repetitive by the end, and I did sort of undervalue how much the last chapter would need to tie it all together. I do recall some comments being confused, and the shortness of that last chapter probably didn't help. One of those things I would try and fix if I gave it another shot.

Regardless, glad you enjoyed it and took the time to give some wonderful critique.