I Can’t Cry, So I Must Scream carries with the marks of a classical tragedy, given the story premise, character selection, and overall thematic element. The story is a sort of character analysis of Chrysalis, placed in the most desperate of situations and on the wrong side of victory. There are a few things to take away from this story, but I feel there are also some parts where the story falls a little bit short in what it’s trying to accomplish. Let’s hit it. 

The storyline can be boiled down fairly simply: Chrysalis gets into a shouting match between Thorax, Starlight, and Pharynx about the fate of the changelings and who is to carry the blame. While it may be straightforward, there always is a sort of beauty in the simplicity, so this point doesn’t quite concern me.

I do think however there are points I can make about some of the executional elements. Writing a 1,000 word story is perfectly acceptable, but there are certain things a story should accomplish so it doesn’t end too abruptly, or leave the reader feeling like a story needed to be longer to succeed.

First of all, I found the opening paragraphs a bit wordy and repetitive, doing a haphazard job of setting up a scene that ultimately didn’t affect things that much (more on that in a second). The story opens with about three lines that describe a night sky before immediately slingshotting into the groundwork for the story, which I found to be an interesting choice.

I think that with a story coming in at a little over a thousand words, there is quite a bit of room to work with. Believe me when I say that I’m probably the last person who should be advising people to expand their fics given my track record, but here I do think this is an important distinction to make. Because the entirety of the story is based around a conversation, with a good almost 75% of it being dialogue in the argument. 

There are a few more points I can make about this, but I think I’ll save them for characterization. What I will say here is that the groundwork is mostly sound. However, I think that more can be done here to make the story more enticing and to sort of slow down the pacing a little. 

To digress a little bit, the pacing here is fairly breakneck. We don’t spend much time in the introductory lines and get dropped knee-deep into the argument again. While this could work in certain circumstances, I believe here it falls a little short given that the argument makes up the majority of the story, and it’s really over before it begins.

Even if the main part of the story is about the argument, I think that the characters (or Chrysalis at least) can interact more with their environment, just to help break up some of the dialogue a little bit. Otherwise, the story runs the risk of coming off as redundant and a bit repetitive. 

There are a few characters at play here, but spoiler alert: Chrysalis is the only one really here. But, for the sake of consistency, let’s cover all of them. 

I may be wrong here, but I think that each of the characters at play here (Starlight, Thorax, and Pharynx) are each supposed to represent a different viewpoint and have a unique voice given the scenario. However, I have a few problems with this idea.

My biggest issue with this idea is that I don’t feel that each voice is unique enough to be differentiable. Thorax is described as being hurtful and seems to be the accuser here, yet the author at times sort of contradicts this statement by also claiming his voice to be calm and even. Starlight on the other hand immediately hard counters any blame that Chrysalis tries to put on her. Finally, Pharynx here appears to be the voice of reason to Chrysalis, trying to reach out to her as a friend.

But with all this said, I don’t feel like these voices are as distinct as they should have been. Rather, they kind of gel together and sound similar, each of them leveling hard accusations and blaming Chrysalis for her own actions.

Conceptually this could be really cool, especially when considering the fact that none of them actually exist and they’re figments of Chrysalis’s imagination, but I did kind of see the twist coming. None of the characters felt real or in character to me, so I guess I kind of put two and two together before arriving at the reveal.

But I think this ties back to the execution and the style of the story. So much of this story is the conversation, and when it feels like all the characters are the same, I have a hard time getting invested into a shouting match between four characters that doesn’t really go anywhere.

As for Chrysalis herself, I feel like she was handled well enough. It’s very clear this story is about her internal struggle, with the other characters pretty much urging her to “do the thing,” which in this case is suicide given the tags and implications. I have mixed feelings myself about this method, and the fact that all three characters seem to be telling her to do this, but I can chalk this up to the author’s preference and the story they wanted to tell. 

I briefly mentioned the repetitive nature of the beginning, and I also found that the beginning and closing paragraphs appeared to be missing line spacings between paragraphs:

A calm night. A starry sky. A silent forest. Home of the now self-banished queen of the changelings.
Months had passed since her defeat. Since the loss of her hive. Since the loss of her followers.
She had Equestria in her hooves, and just as quickly lost it all. All she had. All she was.
Nopony saw her as queen anymore. Nopony saw her as a changeling anymore. Thorax and his hive were the changelings now. She was nothing. A bad memory at best.
And now. At rock bottom. She found herself screaming.
In a little clearing in the forest, close to the cave she called home, she had been surrounded by her worst enemies.

There were also some grammatical things, such as a period instead of a comma being used in

“If you just had been a better queen for your hive. None of this would’ve happened.” 

But these were the only things that really stuck out to me. 

In conclusion, this story attempts to accomplish several things. However, I sadly think that it’s shortcomings end up affecting it negatively. The short length combined with the rapidfire pacing, the repetitive nature of the characters, and the lack of additional details besides the main story don’t quite do it for me. If the story had any single one of these things as opposed to all three, I feel like maybe I could overlook it, but when all three are combined in this manner I can’t say that this story was effective.

To the author’s credit, this was a tricky subject to tackle, and I think the ideology and handling of the issue was done well enough. I personally don’t know if I would have had all three voices urging Chrysalis to “do the thing,” but in a character piece I suppose this can be overlooked. After all, this isn’t my story, so my gripes about that can easily be set aside. In the end, though, I think this story could use a few more tweaks to make it really standout. 

If you’re looking for a fic that explores Chrysalis at her lowest point and are a fan of internal character conflicts, this may be the story for you. 

I’m not sure if I’ve ever reviewed one of your stories before, but if not, then please don’t be discouraged! There are quite a few good parts to this story, but I think that if you clean it up and tease it out a bit this story could really be something special. Keep up the good work! 

7366792

I’m not sure if I’ve ever reviewed one of your stories before, but if not, then please don’t be discouraged!

Don't worry, this is a lot more than I expected from this story in particular.
There wasn't really a message here, as I said in the description, it's based on my own experiences with these kind of situations, and I wrote it in a fit of emotional turmoil at the time.
I do want to do something more elaborate with this concept in the future, so I will come back to this when I write it and send it to you after publishing.

Have a nice day.

7366833

No problem, good luck on your future projects!