EBreathe

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Thread by thread, step by step. Coco would heal.

• OC
• Coco Pommel

Nailah · 3k words  ·  53  1 · 697 views

Description

Coco's life hasn't changed much since leaving Suri, she's now working at the local theater, helping make costumes for the upcoming play. But, there's a lot more behind the curtain.

Initial Thoughts

I have a soft spot for Coco Pommel. Poor mare doesn’t get enough love, in my opinion, and I like reading stories that have her in the spotlight in some way. 

The description is rather ambiguous in what it gets the reader to expect, which on one hand entices one to reader further, but on the other is ambiguous. I don’t mean this as a point of criticism, merely an observation. 

On with the story! There will be spoilers.

Summary

Even after her employment with Suri has long since terminated, Coco still feels the lingering effects of her “philosophy,” pervading her every activity and commission. A moment outside, away from work, offers Coco a chance to consider those effects, and ultimately, begin the process of reconciling with them. 

Plot

There is no single kind of short story; that is to say, there is no single way to write one. You can actually get quite away from the typical plot construction that most workshops say is the way to go if you understand how to employ other techniques to get the words across. 

This story, “Breathe,” is essentially plotless. There isn’t exactly a sense of a great upheaval in the norm, or an adventure (I use that term loosely), or a journey, or anything which we’d typically associate with plot-centered pieces. Instead, it’s a rather character-centric story, perhaps even character-glimpse, or a more accurate term may be vignette. We aren’t given a long story, merely a glance into one day in Coco’s life. 

The story, I believe, both benefits and suffers a bit from this decision. On one hand, because of its nature, this kind of story allows a deep introspective sense to pervade throughout the text. With such a sense, the story slows down just enough for the reader to get close to Coco and follow her through what amounts to two story “beats:” her work and her lunch out with her new boss, Scarlet. On that first beat, Nailah does a wonderful job of looking closely at the scene. A quote of several paragraphs should help demonstrate what I mean:

Coco turned around and headed back to her work area. The space itself was rather small, the paneling under her made of pure wooden boards. She glanced at her table where her faithful sewing machine was. Looking to the right, she took count of the rack of costumes. She had finished five already, but she still had a lot of work to do. 

It didn’t bother her, the work. She truly enjoyed when she got to sit down in her chair and turn on her machine, that little light illuminating as she turned the foot up to begin sewing. She glanced over to the fabrics already pinned and arranged, ready for her to put it all together. Creating magic with her hooves.

She took a deep breath as she looked at her machine, a gift from Scarlet. Her very own sewing machine, something that was all hers. Something that nopony else could take away from her. But it was more than that to her. It felt so simple, like the answer had always been right there in front of her, but she had ignored all the signs. She had forgotten why she became a tailor in the first place.

She pressed her frog onto the foot of her machine and began to seamlessly thread her piece together. Thread by thread, piece by piece. Coco pressed faster onto the pedal, keeping her front hooves onto the dress itself, to align it just right against the seamline, as the machine pressed into the fabric.

Every press of the foot gave her new meaning. Something to work towards. The simple flow of the dress as it ruffled up in the back of the machine, falling down over the table the more and further she pressed.

She felt relieved, to be here sewing these costumes together. To truly make her own mark on society. Manehattan wasn’t a city of friendly ponies. Most here were rude and insensitive, but that didn’t mean she had to follow their hoof steps. She wanted to make a name for herself, to show she could adapt to the culture and to the needs and desires of her customers.

While some may say that this kind of moment is unnecessary to the story’s plot, I argue that it is essential for something else Nailah wants to evoke: a sense of atmosphere. The closeness and exactness of detail makes it so that the reader feels like they are right with Coco as she’s going to work, and, perhaps knowing that drowning the reader with such exact details threatens to derail the experience entirely, Nailah has also included moments of introspection on Coco’s part. She is, effectively, doing one thing and thinking another, a technique which we see in a lot of writers who love to explore both the inner and outer worlds of characters (see, Chekhov again, and a bit of Virginia Woolf). 

I also have to admit a bit of bias here. I love this kind of feature in short stories. It’s my opinion that the some of the universally well-regarded short stories over the years, fanfiction and fiction notwithstanding, tend to have a degree of these “momentous ordinary moments.” Too often do we glance over characters simply doing things in writing, and I find that a lot of otherwise great stories suffer from a lack of intimacy with their characters. While not every story needs the exact details or such a consideration of the scene in action, a lot of short stories would benefit from such exactness, if only to aid in making the world feel “real.” 

The second story “beat” I refer to, that of the lunch with Coco’s boss, is more or less an extension of the atmospheric effect brought about by the first “beat.” It’s quiet, but also sweet, and is a nice “movement” away from the workplace, both literally speaking and metaphorically speaking. It allows the story to transition to its “heart,” as it were, where Coco and her boss talk about Coco’s current situation and reflect on how far she’s come, in terms of moving past Suri. Saying that she has or hasn’t, however, isn’t really the point, so much as saying that she’s starting to move on that is. Given the toxic nature of her relationship with Suri, this is definitely appropriate. 

All of this creates a nice atmosphere for the story. It feels cozy and concise. However, I would be remiss not to point to the fact that having a “vignette” story always has the risk of having the story end prematurely. This story might have that particular problem, especially in regards to this boss character, Scarlet.

Furthermore, because not much really happens in the story, I believe it would be inaccurate to assume every reader will be drawn to it. As much as I enjoy these kinds of introspective pieces, there is a degree of bias on my part, and moreover, I know readers may feel that the story doesn’t say anything or do anything substantial with itself. To an extent, this argument is valid: given only two story “beats,” there isn’t really a sense of resolution after the two have completed. 

Again, that may be because of the fact that the story is a vignette: it’s a glimpse into a moment and little else. I would argue, however, that it need not be anything else. 

One point of critical criticism I have is starting the story off with a brief recap of the events of “Rarity Takes Manehattan.” It actually made the piece start off with a far different tone. While it’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, the effect of the opening is that of a dramatic, frantic tone, which the story doesn’t follow through on. It made for an initially jarring jump from that recap to the story proper, a jump accentuated even further because the “tone” doesn’t carry throughout the rest of the story—everything is quieter, more subdued, less prone to the powerful dramatic display of the opening. However, I think removing that opening could easily remove that disjointed tonality.

Score – 8 / 10 

Characterization

The use of an OC is an inspired choice, but I found it hard to “get” her, as it were. The shortness of the story demands both exactness and minuteness when it comes to characterization, but this doesn’t particularly aid how the story ended up portraying Scarlet. I speak less to the question of whether Nailah has said enough about her appearance and more to the question of her diction. By this, I mean that Scarlet doesn’t sound original, as it were. Here’s why:

“Coco, darling,” began Scarlet once Coco had entered the room, “I would quite appreciate it if you joined me for lunch in the town. You have been working so hard, and I simply can’t let you exhaust yourself.”

I don’t mean to say that the word, “darling,” is a distinctly Rarity-esque word; if anything, it’s simply that Rarity adopted the word into her common manner of speaking. But because that manner of speaking is so unique to her, it makes seeing it used in other places with other characters feel a bit off. It sounds almost like a character trying to talk like Rarity rather than trying to talk like themselves. 

A close inspection of this line of dialogue reveals a similar observation. Beyond just “darling,” the cadence of what is said sounds posh and proper. Trying to separate Scarlet from Rarity is difficult, then. She sounds like a carbon-copy (she’s even a unicorn with baby-blue eyes). 

In retrospect, I wonder if this is intentional. Much of the story centers around Coco’s comparisons between Suri and Rarity, both in terms of competing ideologies and demeanor. An argument could be made that Scarlet stands as substitute for Rarity because 1) Coco doesn’t work for Rarity in Manehattan yet, and 2) that kind of parallel personality is necessary to accentuating Coco’s inner conflict. Much as I like that idea on paper, I’m not sure if the story fully accomplishes that, if that is what it wanted to accomplish. 

In part, that’s because the story already sets in motion the distinction between Coco’s two “bosses” anyway. Suri and Rarity, as we know, are already drastically different, and Suri represents almost the anti-Rarity. Coco’s reactions to either both in the show and in the story demonstrates how she has changed under either’s tutelage, meaning that the boss character who stands in for Rarity feels unnecessary, at least in terms of characterization. My main point is that a character who is a boss is certainly a good thing, and Nailah has attempted to use her in order to get Coco to “move,” as it were, but I don’t know if the Rarity parallels really help. A more distinct OC—perhaps a happy medium between Suri and Rarity—would have made her stand out for all the right reasons, as opposed to this awkward mirror image. 

Another point of criticism is how Coco talks by the end of the story. She unconsciously seems to reflect a lot of the mannerisms that this Rarity-clone has, therefore mimicking Rarity to some extent. Near the beginning, Coco has this line:

“I really don’t mind working like this,” Coco bit her bottom lip, as she struggled to form words. How could she even begin to understand?

The demureness is there, as well as Coco’s denial. While Coco doesn’t get too much character development in the show, she still gets enough that writers can give her something of a personality, beyond just being, say, an Earth-pony version of Fluttershy (before Marble Pie, anyway… I think?). 

Now take a look at something Coco says near the end of the story:

“You know, Scarlet, you can be rather charming at times. The reward for me is seeing how happy our customers are, when they get to see the costumes being worn by the actors.”

I don’t know enough about linguistic theory to say anything definitive, but my ear tells me that this sounds ever so slightly not-Coco. Perhaps it’s the use of the passive sounding “can be rather charming…”, or the construction of a prepositional phrase, “The reward for me…”. It’s hard to say. But this doesn’t sound like Coco, and I can’t decide if that’s because it was an attempt to show, tonally, how she’s changed, or if it’s a slip up from writing, as I said, a Rarity-like character. 

Still, there is this one line that defines Coco throughout the story, and which seems like the exact “voice” she ought to have had from the very beginning:

“I know, it’s just… working helps,”

Again, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but that sounds like Coco. It’s weird to have the changes between her here and her at the end, especially in regards to the way she’s speaking. Perhaps some combing over is in order.

Score – 7 / 10 

Syntax

There were some awkward examples of syntax throughout the story. There’s this at the beginning:

Standing there at the fashion show, along with the other mares

That’s a fragment, but it doesn’t seem like it needs to be, and might in fact be a mild mistake.

Some lines were confusing, such as:

Coco accepted it, and wiped her mouth as well. She sighed as she rubbed her belly, leaning back into the bench. “Ah, that was delicious. I must say, I never do this of this cafe.”

The first half of the paragraph is fine, but that line of dialogue is… weird. “I must say, I never do this of this café” is saying something, but the clarity is muddled, and the meaning therefore trifled. 

And there are some cases of redundancy in terms of detail. Sometimes there’s a “thought to herself,” which generally isn’t necessary, because when a character thinks, they will think it to themselves anyway. Other “over-justifications” are scattered throughout, though not quite enough to ruin the story’s flow. It’s just a  matter of observation at that point. 

Yet overall, the story read fine, and while some points to have to be docked for these mechanical mistakes, I never felt that they ruined the experience. 

Score – 8 / 10 

Final Score – ( 8 + 7 + 8 ) / 3 = 7.67 / 10

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed the story, despite some awkward hiccups here and there. Despite its length, it feels relatively complete, even as its mode of storytelling does inherently mean more could be said. I choose to regard it as a brief story, about Coco, in one of those moments that pass us without us realizing. It’s the moment where we take a step into the next chapter of our lives, and I suppose Coco has begun to do just that, in the end. 

<For archive purposes: 7.67/10>