Present Perfect vs. The Last Human · 10:27pm Mar 12th, 2017
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! It's a cage match for the ages! One pegasus who reviews fanfics and doesn't afraid of anything! One human who's the...
Wait, what? That's not what we're doing? c.c Oh.
Darn. :B
I'm not sure if Patchwork Poltergeist's The Last Human: A Tale of the Pre-Classical Era is a super-well-known sort of fic, but given its rating, length and the amount of stuff I have to say about it, I'm gonna give it its own post. This review was requested by Patchwork Poltergeist for being my 555th follower, so it's been rather a long time in coming. :B
First, it's necessary to talk about what Last Human is. Easily answered enough: it's a crossover with The Last Unicorn, to the surprise of probably no one. But while many of you around my age likely remember the animated movie, this is explicitly a crossover with Peter S. Beagle's book, which leads to a lot of unexpected things for fans of the movie.
This is the point where I make a confession: I am a terrible 80's kid and had never seen The Last Unicorn until Thursday, when I finished reading this fic. :B (You can find my reaction here.) I mean, I sure wasn't about to read an entire other book for the sake of comparison. So I'm going to be giving a lot of analysis in terms of "before I knew what was going on" as well as "so here's the deal".
Watching the movie right after reading the fic was an interesting experience all on its own. The Last Unicorn doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but a lot of the fic helps explain some things that happen. (Likely this is due to being based on the book and the media limitations of movies.) And yet the movie actually informed a couple scenes from the fic, things like Pyrite being the source of the illusions in the carnival, something I didn't pick up on myself somehow.
The end result being, as a Last Unicorn crossover, The Last Human may be somewhat inaccessible. At the very least, a lot of character motivations are rather opaque, and I often got the sense that I was missing something.
However, that's not the final word on what TLH is. It is also a G1 MLP crossover!
Yes, you heard me right. Crossover. :B Not everyone's seen the older generations, and if EQD says that requires a crossover tag, then by golly, so it shall be!
The G1 stuff is a lot more accessible, mostly because if you've been in this fandom long enough, you've heard some of these names, but also because it's almost entirely world-building. I mean, knowing who Megan is might help, but a lot of the concepts taken directly from the original show are explained in the story, and the worst that will happen if you don't recognize the name cameos is wondering why the super-serious Pegasus Empire has a house called Whizzer. In fact, you could go read my review of G1 and have just about enough understanding of the show to have as much fun with all the names as I did.
So yes, this story actually works better as a G1 crossover than its primary crossover, at least in terms of accessibility. Am I complaining? Fuck no. The way this story bridges the gap between G1 and G4 is astounding, crafting a deep, rich history for Equestria's history, and I guess this is where I can start actually talking about the story now OKAY
The story's subtitle is "A Tale of the Pre-Classical Era". What's meant by this is it takes place in a pre-Equestrian time period when the three tribes were separate, but not exactly at war, wendigoes merely a myth hovering somewhere in the tragic future. The Unicorn Kingdom, the Pegasus Empire and the Earth Pony Nation have their own settlements where ponies of all sorts may mingle. A pair of side characters are actually an earth/unicorn couple (both mares, I was pleased to see), but for the most part, ponies live lives apart, reflected in their various beliefs about one another we see throughout the story.
This is all backed up by the G1 legends, when various characters from Wind Whistler to Fizzy to, yes, Megan, are held in various states of reverence by the ponies. Unicorn noble houses and Pegasus fraternities (or something like that) are named for various characters from the show. Creatures and places from G1 show up time and again, leaving their marks on the world. A few characters actually from G1 make appearances as well, always surprising.
And even the non-G1 world-building is top notch. When the story spends a lot of time in one community, you start getting a true feel for the sort of medieval life these ponies are living. Everything from clothing to pastimes to the way cutie marks are handled (differently by each tribe!) is explored to a degree that leaves the result realistic and fascinating. The last third or so of the story involves the main characters arriving at the settlement they've been looking forward and planning on spending a couple seasons there. Over the course of this time, they more or less become a part of life there, and it struck me that that's not really something you'd see in a modern adventure. It's touches like that which give this story its real heart.
Let's talk plot! The very first scene caught me immediately, and not just because the first line of this story is excellent. We meet the titular human — who is called merely 'the human' for the entire first half of the story — scraping out a living in the shattered ruins of a city. Yes indeed, Equestria is built on the apocalyptic ruins of human society! I was so psyched. :D Of course, this ends up not quite being the case — it's more "something something dimensional merger", but it's there.
But yes, the human, alone for years since his mother died, spends his days scavenging, hunting, reading (he lives in a library, the lucky butt; he was born in a mall!) and tending his pigeons, only some of which he eats. His world isn't exactly shattered, but interrupted by that earth/unicorn couple I mentioned earlier, who enter the city looking for a place to build a home and decide it's maybe not the best spot. They don't see him, but the earth mare, Topsoil, calls back that if he's out there, he's likely the last human, and should stay put where the world can't get him.
This, of course, piques his interest. He's met other people before, from other cities, even, and the thought that he might be the last is unconscionable. So he resolves to set off in search of other humans, notably packing lightly, as he imagines it won't be much of a journey. He meets a seapony along the way, who tells him via numerous pop-culture references (it makes sense in context) about General Yarak and the White Roc, who have something to do with where the other humans might have gone. It gives him a direction to go in, at least. Also, seapony, even if it is the G1 design. :B
If this is so far sounding familiar, know that even the author confessed to having followed the book too closely in the first half. That's another downside to this crossover: if you're familiar with even the movie, a lot of the major plot points are going to be fairly predictable.
Because yes, he's next kidnapped in the night by a travelling sideshow and strung up as another captive monster for ponies to gawk at. This is where he meets our second main character: a young unicorn soothsayer named Star Swirl.
Star Swirl was a fantastic inclusion in this role. Unlike his book counterpart Schmendrick, Star Swirl is less incompetent than just incapable. Yes, Equestria's most legendary mage was what was known as a "hollow" unicorn, completely unable to use magic on his own… save those few times when it came upon him and acted through him, taking his will for its own and doing whatever it felt like. Suffice to say, this is related to the reason he wears bells, and that's pretty damned clever. :3 Star Swirl is very awkward, though often earnest, a scholar who learns a number of hard lessons about friendship along the way. I like him a good bit more than Schmendrick.
Our first major departure comes after this in the form of a stopover in an earth pony town. We get our first major structural departure as well, as two chapters in, we have a scene from the point of view of one of the residents, the mayor's marefriend. She's an interesting pony. The sequence introduces the dog thing, which, I'll admit, I never quite got the significance of, and then we get a sudden intrusion of the Company.
A moment to say: a lot of things that happen in this story seem to just happen, for no particular reason. Experiencing it as an early 80s animation, this made sense to me, because that was the storytelling style back then: bad. And the author definitely made a solid effort to give people motivations and whatnot, it's just that they aren't always clear. And, sometimes, deer who speak in rhyme just show up out of the woods to spirit unicorns away because reason, I guess?
Happily, the Company turn out to be a thoroughly charming, if somewhat mystifying, experience, as they chatter in their poetry and bicker amongst themselves about meter. This leads us to our third main character: Heartstrings, and if you think that name sounds familiar, you're goddamn right this is Lyra's umpteen-great grandmother we're talking about. She is, interestingly enough, a nudist, as ponies in this time always wear clothing (something I had a hard time wrapping my head around!) Why she's living with the Company deer is never really explained, but I tell you what, this really threw me for a loop when I saw the movie, because I was expecting the Captain guy's minstrel to be the one who joins the party. That said, Heartstrings's "meet the human" scene is the same as Molly meeting the Unicorn, and this is another spot where the movie helped me understand what I had read, because damned if that scene left me with a ton of unanswered questions. As for Heartstrings herself, she's a very level head between Star Swirl's reclusiveness and the human's naivete, not to mention a window through which we can experience the pre-Equestrian musical tradition.
Things from progress as one might expect if they knew what was going on. A sequence of post-apocalypty scavenging goodness in a ruined human city is interrupted by the arrival of the White Roc, who lives up to all the hype even if it behaves strangely. (What it's doing is never really clear until near the end of the story.) And once the two ponies realize it wants the human alive, Star Swirl summons up the magic, which…
Turns the human into a pony.
:|
Now, if you're familiar with The Last Unicorn, this was a foregone conclusion. But speaking as someone who had no idea what he was getting into with this fic, I just had the biggest facepalm in response. Because this is a Human-in-Equestria story, at its core, but it breaks the mold in so many ways. It's so refreshing up to this point! Pony civilization built on the ruins of human civilization, a human who grows up in this world instead of being transported to it from another; heck, even the fact that it's not really Equestria they're in subverts all expectations of the HiE genre. But not even this can save us from that tried-and-true formula: when a human comes to Equestria, they absolutely have to turn into a pony at some point. The author told me this was a make-or-break event for the fic. Big surprise there: it honestly shook my resolve to finish the fic.
But other than the event itself actually happening, it's handled well. The transformation is kind of freaky; there's a long period of time where he has to get used to a new body; he has lots of flashbacks to being attacked by the Roc and spends a great while inside himself, closed off from the world. He goes through a significant identity crisis, and it should come as no surprise to TLU fans that he starts to forget who he was. From there, he gets a name (Cinquefoil), a cutie mark, and even, yes, a special somepony.
This is the point in the story where they've entered the mountain settlement, which interestingly has no name. Said schmoopy is a pegasus, Sunshower, the daughter of the General they've come seeking. (Like Prince Lir from the book, she's not his blood daughter, and this is used for some really neat pegasus-centric world-building. I do like me some old-timey pegasi.) Sunshower is probably the best character in the fic. <.< I mean, she's tsundere as hell, which is hilarious, but she serves as a very interesting foil and yet another window into the greater aspects of pony culture, most notably how they see one another. Also, she's a serious badass.
General Yarak is worth mention, too, in that he's quite a different character from King Haggard. I'm not sure I can quite do him justice, but even though he has a long monologue that went right over my head, I found his stoic nihilism to be a highlight of the second half of the piece.
All right, that's plot and characters; let's talk writing now.
If I can borrow a page out of Chris's book, I would rate the first sentence of fanfic five stars, and I might consider it WORSE after having read the story. That first sentence sets the reader up for some solid, solid writing, I'm talking gorgeous prose and inventive turns of phrase that will tickle any English major worth their salt. Hell, I'll give you a few examples of lines I just straight-up saved from the story because they were that good:
In the light, it was unwise to speak of the dead.
Star Swirl had walked out of the wildwood and into a tapestry. It was worse than being left behind.
He was the sort of pony that only wore a smile after stealing yours
Life flourished in every crevice. Truly, this was a dead city.
it is the nature of hollow bowls to fill
(Remember what I said about Star Swirl being "hollow"...)
"How do they fly if they're so big?"
"Pure bullheadedness, I'd expect."
He was gaunt and sharp at all edges, scimitar ribbed and citadel skulled
This is the kind of thing you expect to see again and again when you get a line as good as the first, or even the first line of chapter 18. There are countless short lines that speak volumes, not to mention chapter-ending zingers. I can't express how skilled the writer is; I mean, the way modern conveniences are described to Star Swirl makes them feel new, it's fantastic! Eight-thousand-word chapter blaze by, never dragging, the filler sections always stretching out the narrative with something interesting. And yet, the writing consistently aggravated me, thanks to two words:
POV shifts
After the first half-dozen or so, I stopped keeping track. I justified it to myself by noting that, every once in a while, the narrative directly addresses the reader. This story is explicitly being related to us (whom by is never revealed), why wouldn't it have the luxury to head-hop at will? Yet, it never felt right, you know? The excuse just came off as lying to myself. So yes, I'm putting it on the record: The Last Human has a terrible time with POV, and if it's done intentionally, the shifts aren't executed in a way that feels natural.
And though I said the pacing was good, the time frame never quite feels right, either. Periods of weeks or even months flash by in a sentence, and it never truly seems as though they have. I was always surprised when someone mentioned how long they'd been travelling.
Also, this story needs hella proofread. <.< Missing words especially abound rather more profusely than can be excused by the word count. Needs more goddamn commas, too. D: Literally my second note is "I need more commas, Jim". ;_; And when they do show up, they're frequently outside quote marks.
I feel I'm running out of things to cover, so let's go to that part of the review where I just read down my notes and relate interesting observations to you:
- I completely freaked out seeing mention of a "golden bridle", given that the last lengthy HiE I read was Well of Pirene... until I remembered that was just a mythology reference. :B
- Patchwork Poltergeist has excellent taste in music, as evidenced by the seapony's "dialogue". :V
- I do believe this is the first fic I've read that draws a line between Crunch the Rockdog and diamond dogs.
- The human spends a lot of time never giving us his name. It grew to frustrating levels, even after he gets a pony name. When it's finally revealed, I felt somewhat nonplussed, but I think that may be intentional; it's just his name, after all.
- Seriously, the amount of G1 wank in this fic is tremendous, and I ate up every little bit of it, but referencing Danny's fucking tape recorder hit a level of "wait, really?" that surprised even me.
- This story has a remarkable amount of brushies.
- You get to watch a man eat a fruit bat in this fic. I love it. :V
- In perhaps the story's worst turn, there is a Rainbow Factory reference. :| It was worse than the human getting turned into a pony.
- In one of the story's better turns, Thistle Whistle gets a cameo. :3 Any story that features Thistle Whistle can't be all bad.
- Once ponies start to notice Cinquefoil and Sunshower spending a lot of time together, conversation turns, with distressing regularity, to "Y'all're gonna bone a lot come spring". Like, seriously, olden ponies were way into sex.
- I do have to give the author credit for including a bit of fairly well-known fanon in the last third or so and not really drawing any attention to it. Few would show such restraint!
To conclude, The Last Human is a very ambitious adaptation of The Last Unicorn that suffers somewhat from following its source material so closely, yet uses that material as an excuse for clever and creative world-building in the MLP show setting. It draws parallels between G1 and G4 that I've never seen before, and is consistently satisfying as both adventure and mountain of G1 fan wank. :D The writing is excellent, if flawed, but overall, it's completely worth reading, even though you may get the most out of it if you've never read or seen the original.
4/5
A rousing adventure, if a questionably accessible crossover.
I wonder how many of the best stories have these moments - daring bits that divide previous fans so shockingly that they either love it or hate it. It fundamentally falls under a variant of a "twist" of some sort, something that subverts or breaks expectation and forces people to confront the story on a new level.
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I'm betting that in a lot of cases fans who walk through those events unfazed (or loving the story even more) suddenly wonder why some of their reading/watching buddies suddenly got all huffy and mad… I've definitely been on both sides of that… and in one case at least I've been a writer that instigated it
I think ghostbusters is a pretty cool guy, eh stays puft and doesn't afraid of no ghost
Speaking as someone who still has neither seen nor watched The Last Unicorn and who only knows what I do about it through pop cultural osmosis, I thought that aspect of the crossover worked rather well. Granted, that osmosis did prepare me for a few key events, including the make-or-break moment. Plus, you know, fan of most everything. Once the story quality's above a certain threshold, I'll eat it up with a spoon regardless.
Also, the dog thing seems simple to me: Dog is man's best friend, ergo humans are dog magnets.
In any case, I strongly recommend Patchwork's current major project, The Silver Standard. You'll be pleased to know that it maintains a single consistent point of view. Namely, Silver Spoon's. It's amazing. (Though, again, fan of most everything.
)
Look this phrase over, VERY CAREFULLY...
As someone who saw the movie but never read the book, my biggest gripe with this fic was how things drag on for a huge amount of time between when the protagonist becomes a pony and when they confront Yarak. However, I'm given to understanding that this is faithful to the book, which is one of the big things they removed when they turned it into a movie.
4453374 Yeah, the dog thing was probably my favorite part of the whole story. That or the tragic fate of tree-spiders.
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it lookes perfectely fien too meh :V
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That section it unusual in that it takes place over a large period of time -- both in-story and wordcount -- in one place. Up until then, that hasn't been the case, so it feels oddly stagnant.
But it's also chock-full of world-building, and most of it serves to show us (admittedly, in great and perhaps extreme detail) the mental transformation of the human/pony as he slowly forgets himself. So it's not like it doesn't have a purpose, it just depends on whether the treats thrown at the reader are enough to overcome their distaste for slower pacing.
4453473 True, I suppose a big TCB fan would probably enjoy that section the most. I was just eager to see the human face Yarak in a Roc Off.
Okay, I got to a certain point in your review, and knew I had to stop reading and go move this fic to the top of my TBR list. I read The Last Unicorn years ago, and although it's too painful for me to watch more than one episode in a row, I know a lot about the G1 ponies and universe, and have really enjoyed several fics that reference or feature them. So, the accessibility thing should be no problem for me, and the initial too-close adherence... well I read TLU a long time ago, so that may be a good thing.
Agree with nearly everything, this was an amazing story, and yeah, the way it actually manages to blend G1 and G4 together so well is one of the greatest things, and it by far does that better then any fic I've seen that tries the same, it makes it WORK so well, and the world building was just so damn epic... I don't even care if it's with these characters or not, I just want to see more stories set in this world, see more of it explored.
Kind of disagree with Sunshower in part.... mostly while I did love her, it was only after she dropped the whole Tsunshower deal... but that's at least partially just a personal dislike of Tsundere's in the first place. Star Swirl, so much yes, and I loved how even from the start, even being a 'hollow Horn" you could see why he could go on to become such a famous, world changing mage. it wasn't his raw power, it was his knowledge, and the fact he was willing to ask "Why? how?" to explore magic, to learn more, and, thinking on it.. hey we have a canon character we can compare him to now, Sunburst.
Really, just it was a great story overall, and as an adaptation of The last unicorn, there are places where it does things better, and places where this work kind of suffers for sticking to close to the book. One thing is the whole... everypony thinking the human was some weird, sick ape creature. This was meant to be how in the book, few humans could see the unicorn as a unicorn, just as a horse. But, that just does not work with humans at all.. plus it just came off more like none of them knew what a human was in the first place. Also the ending... I did not like the final ending with the human and Sunshower as.. it just made no damn sense.. at all. It was done that way just because that's how it was in the book, but in the book, it made sense why things had to be that way, plus, there was that bittersweet aspect through the whole memories thing, the the unicorn, an immortal, ageless creature, would forever remember him, forever be changed by what they shared... that is not present in this story... also that is a good spot a lot of things don't quite work well, but get into that in a bit. Also the whole name bit, agree it was... kind of...huh? just so underwhelming. Such a big deal is made about him not giving his name, then he just does and... it's never brought up that it was this big deal before. Definitely a place following to close to the book hurt it.
One direct
from the review I don't get you talked about.. and not so much with this fic but in general... never got what's so bad about POV switching, Always see it brought up as some negative... but I have never had any issue at all with it, never been able to see why... so long as it's clear who's POV you are in at the time.
4453473 4453440 Yeah, that was the point I kind of just.. ran into a "Wha? and kind of couldn't really get into the story. Though not for that long, mostly it was just from the transformation, till the human started to adapt and essentially became Cinquifoil, that transitional period between the two, mostly for how.. I just could not figure out what was going on and it was all a kind of jumbled, blurry mess till he worked it out.
This is another point where taking things from the book kind of made it harder for this story, here and there are snippets that come from the source about memories and such, like here, him forgetting who he was, but.. that worked in the book because memories were a huge theme in TLU, not so much TLH so they just feel kind of out of place.
Great review of a great story, few flaws, few missteps, but minor overall compared to just how much it does RIGHT!
4453547
Oh shit, you're so right :D
On the POV switching, I will say that you're in that the story always made it clear whose POV we were in. But constantly jumping from one head to another is a fairly nonstandard writing technique at best. Third-person limited should have only one POV per scene; if there are changes at all, they come after scene breaks. And third-person omniscient is different from this, because it won't go deep into any one character's thoughts.
8D I like to call this writing adventure That Time Patch Learned How To Novels And Messed Up a Lot.
If there's one thing I got out of this, it's that I'm not the writer I thought I was, because I'd spent my life until that point thinking I was the type who could take the rough plot points and go without a lot of planning. About midway through the Conemara arc, I realized this story was growing into something a lot bigger than I thought it'd be, and as a result the structure is kind of crap.
It also needed to be longer, or else do more telling where it was showing. Or something. There are WAY too many lose ends up in this biz. I thiiiink that might be because there was supposed to be followup sequel/side story material that I SWORE I'd get to and then never did. (If I do absolutely nothing else, I swear I'll at least do the followup Sunshower story.)
However, besides all that, I knew there was SOMETHING here that didn't quite work, and midway through Perfect commenting through the story, I realized that something was indeed the POV. The problem's that Unicorn is written like--and playing with--a fairytale, and while it was my intent to go with that style, I ended up trying to do both that AND close third person. Both of those together do not work. At all. Plus, head-hopping in general is very hard to pull off, and the way I did it just plain didn't work.
I learned something valuable as a result, so thanks for that. c:
Glad you noted this, because the two are different animals. I highly recommend experiencing both, if for no other reason than Lir gets woefully shortchanged in the film. Poor dude doesn't get a break and he makes me very sad.
In retrospect, that sets up the entire M.O. of humanity in this story: "I do whatever the hell I want."
Humans were once the boss of everything and everybody, and even 90% of them dying off couldn't convince them they still weren't. It takes months of observing how the world's shrugged off humanity and moved on, as well as the Roc literally knocking down the remnants of the human world to knock some of that mentality out of him. Also maybe gave him an lifelong existential crisis.
Ahahaha, this is literally how I described it in my notes.
Yeeeeaaaaahhhhhh.... sorry. I ain't even got an excuse.
I realized I needed some serious edits about a year after it was finished, and every now and then I'd look around and say, "PresentPerfect is coming, I should probably clean up." But then I'd be like "Yeah, but he's walking, it'll be like ten more hours" and then suddenly it's ten hour later OHGODHESHERE I FORGOT TO MOP. It's a little awkward to have someone in your house while you're still holding the mop so I was like "Welp, hope you like typos."
I'm exceptionally proud of all the lines you noted, but I'm exceptionally pleased you picked this one out because I spent at least an hour on it. (I STILL don't think I quite got it right, but it's the closest I could do.)
Ok first of all how dare uI've got a silly headcanon that says all the notorious grimdark fics are some sort of racial propaganda stuff from olden days. Rainbow Factory is akin to blood libel. Meanwhile, Cupcakes is an essay that was intended to be an equivalent of Modest Proposal ( ie "If the earth ponies claim they are so hungry, I know an excellent recipe for sweetbreads") that everypony else unfortunately took seriously.Absolutely. It's far more rewarding on that front, since unless you've taken "Unicorn" apart and gotten its symbols down to a science, there's not THAT much the crossover doesn't go that far beyond a plot overlay. In context, G1 arguably the crux of the whole darn thing, and if I had to chose a source to be familiar with, I'd personally chose G1.
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Exactly. The Caulkins are where everything stops moving and nobody does what they're meant to do (the landscaper who can't maintain a garden, the sailor is landlocked, the pegasus who can't fly, the warrior who doesn't fight, etc. ) There's constant rain, but almost nothing grows, despite being a population of 98% earth pony. It's where folks go to stagnate until they die, and everybody desperately wants to go to their REAL home. Ponies only live there because for whatever reason, they can't go anywhere else.
Everyone except maybe Sunshower, because she doesn't know anything else (and also is the only one who can leave if she wants to).
So was Yarak. ;)
Unfortunately for him, Cinquefoil's true nature is human, and humans do whatever the heck they want. In this case, it's brushies.
4453553 Hmmm, I get the theory behind it, why it's not normal at least, but.. eh.. it's just never bothered me. Feels more like "Do it because that's how it is done" then having real reasoning behind it, like "Show don't Tell" does, there is so many reasons to follow that. But.. eh minor issue, just a weird thing that's been kind of bugging me why it gets harped on.
This fic specially... between that, and like you said the way things 'just happen' just the overall tone, and the way it occasionally addresses the readers... just overall it gave the story a kind of fairy tale, or being told some ancient legend type deal. That this is in deed a stroy being told to us. Not in a major way but, just enough to give the story that added feeling of being different for it, set a rather interesting tone for how it did things. I loved it.
4453559
Enlightening comment! :D
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Game_of_Thrones_S01-E01_Eddard_Stark.jpg
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I remember thinking the Caulkins were named that because they were a sly dig at Macaulay Culkin's stalled career.
And yet, as I recall the story ends with the remnants of humanity marching out, smirking at the defeated Roc and claiming they could have beaten him themselves if they had really wanted to, and saying that now that they had all been gathered up, they were going to go found a new city/empire somewhere else.
If you do that, instead of having her die killing a Griffon (as Lyr did in the sequel,) how about have her die fighting one of those cool witches you hinted at in the end?
ALSO I forgot to link this bonus epilogue that got cut from the final story but made it into a blog.
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I wasn't (and still am not) planning on fully adapting Two Hearts, but that's a fantastic idea. Especially since I was already wrote the start of a witch story that'd end with an incident to make Sunshower hate witches until the end of time.
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And except for the coloration, he looks EXACTLY like him, too! Same build, same silly little beard, wearing a cape and insisting he's not a wizard. Like, holy crap.
I thought Thistle Whistle was g3, not g1.
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She is! That's why I didn't include her in the discussion of G1 elements. :)
So yeah, thought this might have been originally released on GDocs rather than FimFic (like "Somewhere Only We Know"), but seems like that's not the case. More recent than expected! But does mean that FimFic's measures of attention are accurate.
Man, some of that stuff from the movie sounds really different from what I remember in the book. On which note, you really should check it out at some point; thought it was great, and it was one of those books where I knew it was going to be--at the very least--extremely well written from the first paragraph.
I personally went in without any real grounding in either The Last Unicorn or G1 (apart from things like "Megan was a thing" and "so were bushwoolies"). So I didn't have any issue with it hewing too close to the crossover material on the one hand, but might have benefited from more G1 knowledge to appreciate more--though that's not to say I usually felt like there was anything I was missing that I needed for the story to work. I think this partly played into why I ended up a bit frustrated with the pacing towards the end; I wasn't familiar with what Unicorn did, and suddenly slowing the rate at which things develop late in the game works better with a published work than one that's serialized and ongoing. Three weeks or a month or more to not have much happen (some character development, some world-building, nudge the ship forward perhaps) can be fine, but it's a harder pill to swallow when that's not what I'd been used to earlier in the story. I have to confess to skimming parts, or just giving up in confusion in a couple places where (I think) a POV break was combined with a world-building addition.
Moving away from the negative, though, you're absolutely right about the language, and the world generally, and I liked all the characters; even the human-as-pony, when he got stuck in his funk, was frustrating in a satisfying way because I was anxious to see him better.
In part because of the pacing perception, in part because of the loose ends, and perhaps in part because the fairy tale style resolution didn't exactly feel right since the story wasn't quite told in a fairy tale way, this didn't end up as strong as I had initially expected, but that still left plenty of room for a great story. And I'd likely appreciate it more after reading Unicorn (especially the pacing slowdown, which would also be mitigated by the story being complete for any reread), or if I ever get around to G1.
4453374
Yes, absolutely. Silver Standard is probably my favorite long form slice of life on the site, and seems criminally underexposed.
4454153
I've put TLU on my reading list now, but...
Haha, who am I kidding, I'll never read another published novel again. :C
Also, let's be honest, the only way the original book should have ended is if Prince Lir had turned into a unicorn himself~
I will say, something that becomes clear when you read the book (which has some truly beautiful moments. I challenge you not to weep for that spider) is that it isn't a rational world.
There's a lot of times where the book gets really metatextual. It's not clear if it's the past or modern times - it feels unreal, some faerie world that exists alongside ours, not a real, breathing place.
4454819
No.
Yes, it's not exactly a rational world, or rather, it's rational under a different logic woven through that sometimes-felt veil of metatextuality. (I don't get that middle part; I don't even remember anything that particularly said post-first industrial revolution to me, but I could have missed it or lost it to recall.) And I very much challenge the idea that an unreal faerie world can't--or that this one didn't--feel like a real, breathing place.
It was a strange reality that breathed foreign air, but real nonetheless.