Fillydelphia Oracle: Literature Reviews
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- MLP: FiM
- Comedy
- Drama
- Slice of Life
Cadence is stressed out, she has an alicorn baby to raise. Just when she thought the situation couldn't get any worse, she is called upon to solve a problem of love. Discord and Sombra's love problem.Summary:Cadence is stressed out, she has an alicorn baby to raise. She needs powerful sitters that don't quit on her. It would also be nice if Flurry stopped burning down her castle. Just when she thought the situation couldn't get any worse, she is called upon to solve a problem of love. Discord and Sombra's love problem. They are severely lacking love. So what does this stressed mother do? She puts Discord and Sombra in charge of her child. Join her as she desperately attempts to hit all her metaphorical birds with just one stone.
Initial thoughts: A story about Sombra and Discord isn’t something you see everyday,and having them act as babysitters for Flurry is what I’d consider a cute, yet charming slice of life story, with some comedic elements due to who the characters are. However, as much as I wanted to like this story and really be invested, the amount of errors with the writing/grammar, not to mention the execution, let this piece feel like a jumbled mess. I’ll get into more on why, as we go.
Score: 4/10
Heart of the story: The heart here is the relationships between Sombra, Discord, and Flurry. And sometimes even side characters like servants of the empire. Everyone gets along well, despite the circumstances of dealing with Sombra. However, the plot itself is kind of all over the place. We focus on Sombra's former relations with the empire, we focus a bit on Discord's chaos magic, and how it might help Flurry Heart with her powers. And then we focus on Cadance trying to help Sombra and Discord. This feels like a case of the idea itself was a bit too bold to have it's focus be on so many characters. Some of them, like the maid that befriends Sombra, is only really around for a few chapters and then she's just gone. Like, if you go out of your way to show Sombra befriending a crystal pony, why not go the full way?
Score: 6/10
Characterization:
Sombra: Originally, when he was the ruler of the empire, we see how menacing and frightening he is, so to see him be all cutesy and pandering towards Flurry feels vey OOC. Not to mention he makes friends with a crystal pony maid, and it happens in the course of a day. I want to believe that he can be good, but this isn't convincing me. It's only showing that the writer is forcing Sombra to act this way for the plot to work.
Discord: Discord is chaos, so it's very hard to get him right, but I believe Butter does a thorough job of getting the reader to truly believe that he really is trying, just his chaotic nature often gets the better of him. He has his ups and down's. And we get to see why he is, well Discord.
Cadance: She's the "Mastermind" behind it all. Not a role I wouldn't expect from her, she has to be strong, wise, and noble to lead the empire. She has he weak m0ments as well. Example,She overreacts much too quickly, not truly thinking her actions through, and this causes confusion not only to the characters, but the readers as well. Cadance never had much on screen time, but this version feels like a mix of good, and bad and I personally found it to be believable, if a bit rushed.
Score: 7/10
Plot/Concept: The plot is simple at it's core, Sombra and Discord learn how to adjust to a life of being good. And I really enjoyed the idea of that. The concept of Cadance being the one to do this, is not as surprising as you might think. Overall, the plot itself is a SOL, with comedic elements, while you have Cadanace on the side trying to help Sombra nd Discord with their love. Helping them learn not only how to love themselves, but also to lover others, and embrace a better verison of themselves. Despite the choppy narrative flow, I found myself invested in wanting to know if they would embrace it, or turn back to their former bad self's.
Score: 7/10
Originality/Execution: I've never seen a story like this. I've seen a lot of redemption stories, but never have I seen one like this. A tale of two former villains, learning how to re-learn about who they are, while dealing with the powerful little baby Flurry Heart. It leads itself to a lot of SOL, and Comedic potential, and I really felt like it was a good one too, that I wanted to care about.
However, the execution is where we get more of the bad. Granted, a lot of the problems are in the writing/grammar itself, but they way the plot moves so quickly, dampens the overall impact of the story itself. I really wanted something in here to change my mind, but as it is, it's rough.
Score: 5/10
Overall thoughts and feedback: I really liked the concept of Sombra and Discord being good now, and learning life lessons from Flurry, and the shennigans that happen around them. However, the execution of this piece is messy, and it is very distracting for me, and doesn't fully enable me to lose myself into the story, and that felt like a missed opportunity, but I'm hoping with my review, I can help shed light onto the why and Butter is able to improve from here.
Final Score:4+6+7+7+5=29/50
6/10
Headpat worthy:
Boops Worthy:
Needs work: Yes
To the author: I hope that my review is able to help you further process the pieces of the puzzle to make this story interesting. I want you to keep writing and not to feel discouraged. Every writer has times where the story just got away from them, and I’d love to see a more refined version of this, because it is interesting.
To the reader: Vaguely recommended if you don’t mind a narrative story that shifts it’s focus all over the place and can tolerate the many errors throughout.
Notes: Major Spoilers for the overall story below, don’t read if you want to enjoy the story first, as I’ll be addressing all the things I find as I read, the good, the “meh”, and the bad. And showing the progression of plot and story structure.
Chapter Analysis:
Chapter 1:We are immediately thrust into the story through Cadance’s POV for the first few chapters. Butter addresses it’s important, but as to why, that hasn’t played out yet. The opening both is a hook, and also a slight bit of “info dumping”
Now, while I don’t believe this is bad, it is a quite good hook to get your readers interested, but I feel like we should have been shown the redemption of Sombra, as we never got to see that in the series, and especially since this is Cadance talking about a pony she used to hate, the emotions to me aren’t as strong or as well developed as they could be. However, let us see where else this chapter takes us.
Writing note-
Now I’m sure you’re asking what is wrong with this? Well simple it’s telly, and not describing/showing the scene. To adjust this, I would imply considering that this is from Cadance’s POV so you have to be careful with the wording. Here is how I would adjust it.
I HAD to talk with my sister-in-law. Maybe, I could glean something out of her. So… that’s exactly what I would do. She sat by herself at the punch table. Now was the time to ask, so that’s what I’m doing now. “Twilight.”
Why the bold on “HAD”? To imply the dire situation, and the deep emotions that Cadance is feeling, despite her not being close to Discord or Sombra, this is her way of helping.
We get a lot of context here through Cadance explaining the situation to Discord and Sombra, and this wouldn't be an issue, if we as the readers hadn’t just heard this in a previous paragraph of Cadance panicking over what to do about her situation. The answer here is to remove Cadance’s panicked paragraph from earlier, or rework this paragraph to give the information that Discord and Sombra will need, without being repetitive to the context earlier. I would suggest altering this dialogue as you can work in body language of the freak out from earlier into the description.
This chapter is overall a decent introduction to the overall piece, but I’m hoping to see if it grows from here, as there are some issues of telly narration, the pacing being a little rushed to get to the plot of the story, and Cadence's struggle isn’t explained yet. I can’t wait to see how these things are all addressed as we continue on.
Chapter 2: Continues in Cadance's POV as told to us in the author's notes, and well, honestly. This chapter has a lot of the same issues from chapter 1. The pacing is way to swift, and it's really hard to invest myself in this story, when I don't get a chance to really know them.
Chapter 3: This chapter focuses more on Cadance once more and the issues going on with Flurry Heart. There is a lot of moving pieces that happen so fast, that you feel a bit lost by the end of it. The narration while I feel should be a strength is honestly a negative here, as it makes the story feel very “telly” and doesn’t show the actions of the characters, and simply tells us what everyone is doing at any given time.
Chapter 4:The fact that that fact annoyed him made him even more annoyed.
Sentences like this are very hard to read, and even rereading it, doesn’t really help it be clear. The only clear thing here is my annoyance with how telly the narration is, when you could simply fix this with body descriptions of how Discord is acting.
Example: Discord sulked his head, turning his gaze away from Twilight, arms crossed over his chest, snorting.
Here you get the fact he’s annoyed in a manner that is much more clear to your reader, and won’t require a re-read. Ways to help address this in the future is to sound out your sentences after you type the initial one, if it’s hard for you to speak, then it’s going to be hard for your readers to read. Helping to clear the air, makes the story all the more enjoyable. And I do believe the idea here is a good one, with much potential, it’s the narration and the way you tell us constantly what is going on, that makes it repetitive and even difficult to get through. Overall this chapter felt all over the place. It kept shifting from Discord, to Sombra, to Twilight, that even re-reading it, I felt quite lost. You need to be weary of how many transitions you have in a piece as it can be confusing.
Chapter 5: Repetitive. This chapter constantly has Cadence apologizing every other paragraph for quite some time, and it’s not interesting to hear the same thing constantly. I sense the author was trying to add emotional weight to Cadence’s shoulder’s with the constant I am sorry but this isn’t effective in what it’s trying to accomplish. It’s dull and rather bland and just leaves me feeling rather bored by the end of it, just wanting the story to progress. The other issue here is again the narration is in your face about everything that is going on, and that isn’t engaging or interesting for the reader. It just makes me disappointed in that this could be a lot better then it is, if it was given the right amount of details, body language and subtlety.
Chapter 6: This chapter focuses on background characters of the castle, Ivy, Moon and Spear and their feelings on everything that is going on with the Empire. It’s nice to see more background of the Crystal Empire, but do these characters serve a purpose to the plot, or are they just here for filler? As this was an added chapter, this question will likely be addressed as I dive deeper. However, I do feel inclined to say that the focus shouldn’t shift between so many background characters, if they don’t ultimately serve a purpose. Always consider “is this character to help further the plot? Or is the character filler?
Also it can be difficult to know the difference. However there is a way. Think about what you want to accomplish. Are these side characters going to help you help Sombra, and Discord learn more about friendship, through the bond the servants of the Empire share? Or will they see that even friends can have arguments when they disagree on how they feel about the situation going on with Discord and Sombra. It’s honestly disappointing that I feel the story wouldn’t change much at all, without these characters, so it really comes off as filler more than plot progression.
End of notes.