ETale Of The Caged Bird

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Drama
• Sad

When a bird caged for long enough, they will go to any lengths to be able to stretch their wings and take flight. Follow the tale of one such bird who found the strength to break away from her shackles and take to the sky.

• OC

Golden Fang Ryu Shenron · 1.1k words  ·  24  3 · 794 views

So this is a tricky one to review for two reasons. First of all, it’s actually an extended poem rather than a traditional story, and second, it’s written as a dedication to somebody else. That means that this is going to be a bit of a different and somewhat difficult review, but I’m going to give it my best go. Let’s hit it. 

The story is, from what I can gather, about a character living in an abusive family who is able to escape by means of adoption by a single mother, referred to as a ‘ball of light.’ I think that there isn’t all that much to go on here, since there are quite a few lines directly referencing abuse and the whole idea of the bird being stuck in a ‘cage.’ Beyond that the story is mostly about this bird getting the strength to break free of her abusers and enjoy her newfound family. Besides that I don’t really know what else to add here.

The execution of this idea in poem format was handled well enough. But again, it’s hard for me to really offer any solid critiques to a story done in this style and manner. 

This section will probably be the shortest because there isn’t a whole lot to say. I’ll avoid drawing parallels between story characters and IRL people here since I don’t have exact information to work with, but again it’s pretty clear that the bird here is a representation of someone who’s been abused and grew up in a dire familial situation.

I will say that this didn’t quite give off the pony vibe and could probably pass for original poetry by itself, so props to the author for that. 

Here’s where I think I can dissect a little bit more.

The poem is told in an AAA-BBB-CCC style rhyme scheme, and while I’m not going to go and check if the author used proper rhymes or near-rhymes (because who really cares about that), I will say that the author was able to adhere to this structure pretty successfully.

That being said, there were a few rough spots rhythm and word-wise where I felt the flow of the poem was broken up. Given that a major part of poetry falls into the rhythm component (well, to me anyways), I think these bits can be reworded or trimmed a little, just so it doesn’t break the structure as much.

For example, there’s the line 

Curious about what there was to know about one another 

Which feels pretty clunky and breaks up the flow, along with the fact ‘about’ is repeated twice in this one line along. Pacing things like this are further magnified because of the poetic format, so it stands out to me more than it may have otherwise.

Besides a few rough spots here and there and some word choices that I may personally disagree with, I think the prose overall was handled well enough.

Oh, and on another note, that description is very, very long. I would highly recommend cutting it down to just a few sentences rather than almost two paragraph's worth of information, even more so since this is an extended piece of poetry rather than a story like I was expecting after reading the summary.

I never really know how to tackle poetry when comparing them to full stories, but I think this poem takes up the storytelling component fairly well. It makes the rhyme scheme work, if not for a few odd spots, but overall it feels pretty cohesive. I sadly can’t comment as to the emotional aspect of this though, but that’s really only because there are a very small number of stories that have gotten an emotional reaction out of me and none of them have been poems, so no slight to the author there. In the end, it reads a nice little piece of poetry that certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

If you’re looking for a story presented in a poetic manner, this may be for you. 

Sorry I don’t have much else to add here, but poetry analysis is a bit out of my depth and not exactly what I expect out of fanfiction. But still, you handle this piece pretty nicely, so great work there! 

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I admit, there are definitely better words that I could've chosen while typing this poem. I think the biggest flaw for me was focusing solely on that rather than what the poem was actually about and representing. That and the summary totally could've been shortened since it was not a multi-chapter story and definitely not long enough to be a one-shot story either. I'm pretty sure it threw some people off when they first saw it, making it all the more surprising that it was a poem and not an actual story. I'll have to sort that out.