EMisery is Company

• MLP: FiM
• Drama

Princess Luna not wanting to attend the Grand Galloping Gala has Princess Celestia worried about her sister more than it should.

• Celestia
• Luna

Ice Star · 2.1k words  ·  59  3 · 2.8k views

Introduction: Hello everyone, welcome to another Nailah Review. I'm sure you all can't wait to hear that I have to say. Um... though I must warn you, you should read the story before you read the review. (not that anyone listens to this)

_{SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!}

Initial Thoughts: This story is about the sisterly bond between Celestia and Luna. It’s labeled as a Drama, so I admit I’m a bit hesitant about that, as Drama is a very hard genre to do right, but Ice Star is a talented writer, so I’m hopeful they will show me just what it means to bond with a loved one.
7/10

Heart of the Story: This story is labeled as a drama. But I must confess this story doesn’t read like a drama. It reads like a Slice of Life. With drama there needs to be some kind of internal, or external conflict that causes tension between the characters.

In this piece, Celestia doesn’t want to tell Luna, that she is lonely. Luna has been on the moon for 1,000 moons, so Celestia feels guilty that she feels this way, when she should be paying more attention to her little sister and her feelings. 

While I appreciate the general “feel” Ice Star was attempting here, it just feels flat. Like I know I’m supposed to feel sympathetic towards Celestia, and want her to actually speak up, but I can’t help but feel this void. Like it feels like someone gave me a pizza but a big slice if missing. 
That to me, is a weakness of the piece as a whole, and since this is the HEART, it makes the piece feel flat and void of genuine emotions.

The way to address this, would to show more of how Celestia is feeling through her actions, and I feel like this was skimmed over, and I’m not sure why. Like the author shows Celestia brushing Luna’s mane like she used to, but the emotional tension of such a scene ends rather abrupt, and left me aching for more. Wanting the author to elaborate more on these feelings.
Google states that a Drama is a literary device. Here’s the actual text if you’re curious.

Definition of Drama

Drama is a mode of fictional representation through dialogue and performance. It is one of the literary genres, which is an imitation of some action. Drama is also a type of a play written for theater, television, radio, and film.

In simple words, a drama is a composition in verse or prose presenting a story in pantomime or dialogue. It contains conflict of characters, particularly the ones who perform in front of audience on the stage. The person who writes drama for stage directions is known as a “dramatist” or “playwright.”

Ultimately for me, this was disappointing because I know Ice Star is a talented author, and to read a piece that I feel could have really made an impact, not hit the mark, is a bit of a let down. I hope that my feedback can aid them in improving on the emotional aspect of the characters, the scene, and the tone, because there is something truly unique here.

5/10

[b]Writing/Grammar: The sleek white walls of the chamber the two princesses occupied glowed warmly in the morning sunlight. The weeks after the Summer Sun Celebration had been relatively quiet; this morning particularly so.

This sentence structure is overall sound, however I’d suggest cutting “this morning partially so” It feels a little telly, plus it repeats “morning” and we just were informed that it was morning, so we don’t need to hear it, perhaps showing the sun as it rises  in the East would’ve captured it a bit better.

There are a number of minor mistakes throughout the piece, fragmented sentences, misuse of commas, and an overuse of Telly narrative, that I felt held the piece back from being remarkable or noteworthy.

I think it's a sweet setup and an admirable idea, that an introvert/loner isn't necessarily lonely (which the show touched on with both Cranky and Moondancer in different ways), but the writing style is a bit of a slog. So many run-on sentences, unnecessary modifiers and repetitions, and some bits where they're doing a great job of showing over telling but then ruin it by telling anyway.

4/10

Characterization:
Luna: Luna feels like her former self, she’s unsure of the things around her, and that means anything and everything. She feels unsure if she is truly worthy of a second chance, and has a tendency to recoil within herself, and blame herself for the actions, even though to some extent, her grief and sadness was caused by her older sister’s glory and love from the ponies of Equestria.

Celestia: Celestia is wise and all knowing, but in this story she’s sympathetic, and tends to feel a bit of a worry wart in how much she wants her sister to be comfortable, and yet doesn’t talk to her sister about how she feels. Which I guess is where the drama comes from, but the execution of Celestia’s feelings on the situation didn’t come across to me as a reader, as strong as I feel the writer was attempting.

Originality/Execution: The idea of Luna/Celestia bonding story has probably been done to death by this point. It’s a very simple kind of story, and one a lot of ponies wanted to know about, so it makes sense a lot of writers would want to share their own interpretation, which is what Ice Star is attempting to do with this piece. However, the execution  is sloppy, feels void of genuine emotions, and lacks the atmosphere to grip me as a reader,  and for that I feel like it is rather disappointing overall, knowing how much it could have been.

5/10

Overall thoughts and Feedback: Honestly, this one was a bit rough for me to get through. Mainly because of a lack of atmosphere, and genuine emotions. I could tell what the author was going for, except for I didn’t feel the emotions the story wanted to display, and because of that, the story as a whole is frankly disappointing. 

5/10

Final Score: 7+5+4+5+5=26/50
5.2/10

Headpat Worthy:

Boop Worthy:

Needs Work: Yes.

To the author: You are a talented author, and I know that you can improve from here. I hope that my feedback can aid you in finding the emotional tones you wish to portray. 

To the reader: Vaguely recommended if you like Celestia and Luna bonding stories with little emotional drama within.

Notes-
There are no notes at this time. 

7488196
Thank you for the review! It's only taken so long to reply because this was finals week for me. There was something really crucial that I wanted to point out, namely about how your view of the genre impacted the story. I have a lot of stories tagged as drama, but they aren't all melodramas or obviously so in that way. As a genre, drama refers to anything more about the psychological and emphasis of the character's internal lives and relationships above anything else. It can be both something in between slice of life and adventure in the sense that it can focus on sweeping interpersonal shenanigans that uproot the characters' lives, but it can also deal with quiet character pieces. This was the latter.

This story is labeled as a drama. But I must confess this story doesn’t read like a drama. It reads like a Slice of Life. With drama there needs to be some kind of internal, or external conflict that causes tension between the characters.

The story was about the tension between the sisters. Celestia drew your attention the most, and that was because she very clearly talks the most and is always offering to cheer up Luna. But throughout the story, she never really listens or pays attention to what Luna says will actually make her happy. Luna offers most of her full thoughts through narration and body language, which were told/shown for a reason: the behaviors are written in a way to show that she is around someone who she previously only fought with/fought with her. Luna is frequently flinching/shying away from things in a way that shows that she's not uncertain of herself, it's that she feels unsafe, or at the very least uncertain of her safety.

As for the part about style and grammar: were there any more examples that stood out as misused or came across as errors? I would like to be able to fix them, but it is hard to tell what to look for. Some of the broad examples you gave, like sentence fragments, can have stylistic usage in prose to evoke tone or a particular emotion/voice for a character. I've used them many times before, and if there was something that didn't fit this pattern, I'd like to fix this. The comma errors, in particular, I would like to wrangle, but that is because I've run through the story with Grammarly before and none are standing out as errors when I went through it last time.

7488196
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I have to agree with Ice Star a bit here regarding the tag. I used to be very wary of the drama tag and avoid it unless a story were full of characters sobbing. But fimfiction defines it as:

Drama

This type of story focuses on the realistic, emotional reactions of characters involved in some serious life-affecting problem. It explores the various characters’ conflicting feelings between each other and within themselves.

Which sounds a lot more mild. Basically any story in which a character is going through a personal struggle or debate of some kind. It's tempting to tag such things as Slice of Life when they're lower key, but actually...

Slice of Life

A story focusing on daily, normal experiences. Unlike adventure, the story is not driven by action or discovery of new, exciting things, rather bringing the mundane to attention, such as attending school or a dinner party.

Given that Slice of Life specifically celebrates the unremarkable, day-to-day normality of a character, it's perhaps not so appropriate when a character does have big decisions to make or an issue to come to grips with. With that in mind, Slice of Life is probably the most wrongly overused tag on the site.

7495215
I’ve only heard drama to refer to that kind of over-emphasis of soap opera emotion when discussing a literal melodrama. Especially since that is a legitimate genre and not necessarily a term meant to disparage, though the former came from the latter. Most other dealings with genre definitions I’ve had use really similar definitions to Fimfic’s here.

That said, I definitely have to agree with the slice of life tag comment. People really ought to adhere to tagging guidelines more.