Tlove; not wrong (brave)

• MLP: FiM
• Sad
• Slice of Life

Cadance is the Princess of Love. That means she knows both sides of it.

• Cadance

The Red Parade · 2.8k words  ·  130  5 · 1.4k views

Description

Love is so much more than warm hugs and kisses. Love is a language. Love is what we dream of, what we never had. It's everything we've left behind. Above all, love is being brave.

Initial Thoughts

Red has a legacy of writing great tonal pieces, and they’ve chosen to write about the princess who arguably gets the least amount of love from the fans—an ironic observation, of course. But I was drawn to the last sentence of the description: “Above all, love is being brave.” Such a declarative statement invites challenge and intrigue, and I wonder how the story will handle the matter in question. 

I should also note that this was an entry to a Quills and Sofas challenge, which I assume was a speedwrite. I have no clear idea if the current version has been drastically altered from the original, but I do hope that this hardly affects my reading experience. 

Onto the story! Spoilers ahead.

Summary

Prompted by a question from Twilight Sparkle, Princess Cadance embarks on a mental journey through a series of moments that seek to answer what love is. 

Plot

There’s less plot as there is tonal strategy, and less of a story as a series of short vignettes or glimpses into other characters’ lives. 

By that, I mean that in these roughly 2.8k words, Red has decided not to follow a single storyline or conflict, as it were. Though the above summary suggests a “starting point” with regards to Twilight asking Cadance, “Do you think that love is just another form of friendship?”, the truth is that it serves more as the “first” vignette in a collection of many vignettes. 

Put together, we have that one, as well as six others, bringing the total number of glimpses to seven. Not counting the first, each are preceded by a short epigraph, perhaps a quote of some sort, or at least a tongue-in-cheek reference to something (so it feels), defining what love is: it’s a language; what we dream of; what we never had; being brave; everything we’ve left behind; and finally, what we make of it. Then respectively we see vignettes that focus on those definitions. Princess Cadance engages in conversations with the following ponies: Big Mac, Cherry Berry, Daring Do, Cheerilee, Princess Luna, and then, briefly, Shining Armor. All attempt to touch upon those epigraphs, those definitions. All end with notes of reassurance of such claims. 
 
On the surface this might make the story seem fragmentary or unfocused, but the decision benefits from being thematically linked throughout. Not only does love as a thematic concept pervade each of these vignettes, love as an effect, or perhaps a product, even a symptom, of grief and loss fills the spaces between. 

This requires heavy spoilers, of course. In each conversation, the ponies who talk to Princess Cadance describe a sense of loss as it is linked to a sense of love. For Big Mac, it is the death of his parents. For Cherry Berry, it’s her missed connection with her mother, who died when she was young. For Daring Do, it’s her firstborn stillborn, whose name, Avon Kingsly, makes up her authorial pseudonym of A. K. For Cheerilee, it’s a former spouse who passed away four years ago from lung cancer. For Princess Luna, it’s the loss of ponies, names, faces, and places, and of stars, and of the familiarity of the moon, in likely both a literal and metaphorical sense. And finally, for Shining Armor… well, perhaps loss doesn’t necessarily pervade that particular final moment as it does with the others.

But the thematic point is relatively the same. None of these ponies were able to escape loss, but moreover, none were able to escape the loss of a loved one. But the point that Cadance makes with each of them, and really, the point that she makes to herself by the end, is that you shouldn’t escape the love in the first place, or want to. Death may take, and it may be cruel, but love lasts. That is why it is cruel and good, too, to love in loss, to grieve with tears and with smiles. Loving after the living are gone is not wrong. It is brave, it is true, it is right. 

Such thematic linking makes up for the otherwise rather undeveloped vignettes—yet, I must point out that this lack of development is apparent enough to warrant observation. It would be impossible for a speedwrite to engage further with the bits of lore and headcanon that are placed with each, from family members’ identity to strategically show-forgotten spouses, but I can’t help but feel that more for such things could have been said. Alas, that is the nature of speedwrites, that not everything gets written down. What must make up for it is if the story has managed to succeed in its tone and atmosphere, if its thematic understanding of its own theme strengthens the glimpses rather than highlights how brief and unsatisfying they are.

But I believe the story has. If my only major critique for the story, which is a lack of development, is circumvented by the story’s type as well as the story’s thematic focus, then it’s hardly a critique I can justify. 

Score – 10 / 10 

Characterization

The characters who constitute the vignettes are written very much in character, in that they do sound like themselves and how they appear in the show. This is no small feat. The more condensed a story is, the less room there is for detailed examinations, so the fact that the story manages, through mere glimpses, to get characters right, is worth noting.

That said, I must admit that there were parts where it seemed like the characters were pushing for emotion—not necessarily that they were out of character, but rather that their characterization seemed ever so slightly uncertain of itself, to the point of feeling like it needed to dramatize rather than realize itself.

This would be hard to point out, since it’s a rather nuanced sense. Ponies, by definition, are emotional creatures, so turns in conversation wherein the emotional anguish rises to the surface ought to be considered believable, but at points the story feels like it wants to direct more than enough attention to the act, rather than letting the characters emotionalize on their own terms. In part, this is justified by the fact that it’s clear that each is having a private, vulnerable conversation with Cadance, but at the same time, it’s unclear if enough previous conversations have happened where she has won their trust enough to the point of getting them to open up so quickly. 

Though, again, this would appear to be a feature of the speedwrite, and also a nitpick.

Less of one, and more of a confusing one to explain, is this sense I have that Cadance sounds… off, at points. It may be due to the fact that her speech comes off as relatively formal at times, avoiding contractions and speaking much like a politician does. Or it may be due to the fact that Cadance makes speeches over and over again, in ways that feel practiced, tried and true, and therefore a bit false, not in intent, but in effect. 

It may even be due a potential issue of conflict within the story itself: Cadance’s admission at the end for not knowing if love can be fully explained, but also Cadance’s many reassurances throughout the story that it has some level of logic to it, if loosely constructed. This seems to be a great source of conflict that could fuel the subtextual or unconscious meanings behind Cadance’s words, but it doesn’t seem the story has the space allotted for such a discussion, at least during those vignettes. Again, the speedwrite rears its head here, but I cannot say it fully justifies it. There is, in the end, a sense that Cadance is off simply by not having enough space to be. 

Other than that, though, one must admit that the characters, for such a brief piece, feel right at home.

Score – 9 / 10 

Syntax

Nothing wrong stuck out to me—the piece really did sing in its simplicity. And I rather enjoyed, even if some may say it’s a bit cliché, the lines near the end all about love:

… love was something that knew no limits, nor sense nor rhythm. Love was not always happy: love was grief and loss and pain, just as much as it was warm hugs and kisses and marriage.

Polysyndeton and assonance are used effectively here, as well as a unique sense of parallelization with regards to syllables and meter, however intentional or unintentional that may be. It’s a rather poetic and simplistic way of putting a cap on the story’s overall theme, and it works nicely, too.

Score – 10 / 10 

Final Score – ( 10 + 9 + 10 ) / 3 = 9.3 / 10

Final Thoughts

Red’s stories tend to triumph in atmosphere and thematic connotation, and I’m pleased to say that this story fits that pattern. Though short, it hits all the marks of being memorable, and provides the reader not with a sense of resolution, but perhaps, if this is not speaking too paradoxically, of resolve: resolve, really, to love, and to love again, always.

I am reminded of something said in one of the episodes of WandaVision, which I wonder if this story either reflected upon or anticipated. Vision says, “What is grief, if not love persevering?” I am also reminded of something I read in a poem, once, by an author whose name I can’t remember, but perhaps that means they are as much me as I am them. There are as many ways to love as there are to die, and it’s a miracle we do not recognize either’s final destination as our own hearts. 

<For archive purposes: 9.3/10>