The Ties That Bind

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I return from the dead to give unto all of you another review, and for the first time in a long time, we are looking a story sort of about sex. Perhaps not a smut story, but one where sex is built towards and we get some lovely lesbian bondage tension going on between Trixie and Twilight in the most human way.

[I’m experimenting with a new style here to see how you guys like it as I’ve been noticing that my positives section has been a little emaciated lately and I want to be a little more positive.]

We begin the story with Trixie lamenting that the events that happened before in Ponyville have utterly destroyed her. This happens canonically before the whole Starlight Trixie fiasco, so no friendly acceptance or the like just yet. I really like this start for the simple reason of it acknowledges that actions have consequences and that even when people say they are open and accepting, there is a limit to the amount of rope they will give you. So, from there, we get treated to the struggles and mental issues of Trixie in some wonderful character building ways that humanizes her and, for me at least, serves as an excellent way to draw in the reader. Granted, this section feels maybe a little long, as it is very detailed and descriptive of everything in roughly the same way I see my stories, and that has been the most consistent problem with them.

From there we get introduced to rapist Twilight. Ok, I’m being hyperbolic, but how it goes down is a little… strange. Tell me, if you found out that someone you knew was into bondage, would you; A) Talk to them calmly, telling them you are into that too; B) Leave the information unsaid and just have it be an interesting thing you know about them; or C) Break into their home to place spy cameras in their domicile so that one day in the future you can use them to properly use an item that will render them unable to defend themselves when they are completely tied up and immobile? Yeah, Twilight even admits she thought this through and concluded that C was her best option. In short, this part is like Twilight (the book) or 50 Shades; nice at face value and/or if that is what you are into, horrifying and creepy otherwise. So in short, Twilight is in this weird area where she is still Twilight but also not.

With the creepy stalker scene concluded, the remaining chapters focus on Trixie and Twilight getting into a relationship and coming to be more than just a little friendly. And I would like to thank the author for doing the thing where at least one person realizes that the whole Trixie being a ‘villain’ is not entirely correct as, for the most part, she never really did anything bad or evil of her own volition. (Side note, the first appearance of the Flim Flam brothers had them less as con artist as they proved that they could provide a desirable product in a fraction of the time and expense. They were completely on the up and up, they were just sort of jag-offs for making the terms of the bet so severe. The conflict of that episode was more so tradition with all its inefficiencies vs progress/novelty with its potential for corners being cut as there has been less hardship to whittle away the worst practices.)

In terms of my thoughts here, this was an overall interesting story. I ‘liked’ it for its presentation of characters and world building. This story is just jam packed with world building and examinations for how things work. This was like Christmas all over again for me. I love when an author puts in the time to come up with rules and lore for their story deeper than what the show gives us and actually do their best to try to have it fit with the show while simultaneously making things more complex. The examination of nature of magic as well as the salamander were well done in my eyes and what I look for in a story.

Character wise, with the exception of a few hiccups, everyone is very believable and well written. Sans Twilight having her minor… off-ness, in going a little too far with Trixie, and my reservations with Trixie that I will address in a little bit, I can say without confidently that this is one of the few stories I would have to say do the canon characters just perfectly.

However, with my love of the characters came the double edged sword of it being me who is reviewing it. The biggest problem I have here character-wise is exclusively Trixie. Now, I will not feign innocence nor say I understand how to do it better, as I definitively do not meet either criteria, but the way Trixie was handled here was less than enjoyable to read, and that was due to the author treating her like a Mary Sue for a good deal of the story. Now I like power fantasies as much as the next guy, and am guilty of my own fair share of characters who are far too powerful to hold a compelling naritive, but what was done here was just not the most pleasant to read. In this story, Trixie is not just a prodigy at illusion magic, but is actively breaking the fundamental known principals of illusion magic. And on top of that, is reforming the understanding of the world by making friends with something thought to be a living natural disaster.

I just couldn’t help but cringe internally as I read this due to how OP Trixie is presented as being, yet at the same time is presented as this kicked puppy filled with self-doubt and insecurity. I know this was likely done to balance her out and make her more relatable, but the shear power of her here causes this to horse-shoe and make her less relatable. If Trixie would have simply been a unicorn capable of advanced illusion that didn’t smash through to unknown realms, and befriended a creature of note that didn’t result in a restructuring of how this creatures species was treated, having her be so insecure and skittish would have really sold this story for me.

Finally for the criticisms, I would like to address the structure and writing style. Now, as many of you might know, I tend to reference my own writing in a good deal of my reviews. I do this not to self-aggrandize, but more so to tell the author that I am not just some shmuck reading stories and giving scores without knowing or being willing to do the same as them. I do this so when I make a statement like this it has some weight.

Stylistically, this story is a mirror to my own writings, and everything I am about to say will be peak hypocrisy, as these are the words that have been said to me about what detracts from my own body of work.

This story is VERBOSE. While I commend it for fleshing out the world and really delving into the characters, it does so by repeating itself a little too much and by overly explaining things. More times than I can truly count, the author goes into EXCRUCIATING detail about things in a way that bogs down the pace. A good amount of this story’s words were used on describing thongs that had already been described or detailing things that didn’t really add to the story and were just there in an attempt to make sure we were picturing the exact same thing as the author.

Added on to this was the vocabulary usage. This story alone had more ten-dollar and up words than all other stories I have reviewed combined. Now this is not entirely a bad thing if your audience in understood to be older and/or more versed in the English language, but for an MLP fan-fic, the use of so many advanced words felt excessive.

Finally, in terms of writing quality, as I said, this is top notch, but what mistakes do exist were very glaring to my eyes. The less egregious error that kept popping up was the random line where there were these massive spaces between words not for a stylistic reason, but because this was likely a formatting error when importing from a justified document with different values for the spacing and borders. The second and more irksome problem I found was the lack of commas.

Now I don’t claim to be the best editor, but one thing that struck me as odd was that there seemed to be at least fifty or so locations were a comma should have been but wasn’t. Now I might be wrong and the commas needn’t be there for the section to be grammatically correct, but to my eyes, the story reads better with the ‘missing’ commas included.

Missing commas, strange lines of spaces rather than elisis, overly verbose/advanced, power wanks Trixie

Also, as an aside as this is not an actual problem with the story but a personal thing; for the love of all that is good and holy in this world and the next, please, I beg all of you, follow the example of the show and stop having Trixie talk in the third person. This story REALLY leans into Trixie doing this and it drove me up the wall in a way few can understand. My problem mostly comes from this definitively NOT being a ‘natural’ way to speak, which is proven when even the author keeps changing the severity of the speech pattern.

{Finally, D&D MAGIC SCHOOLS FOR THE WIN!!!}

Final scores;

Writing: 8/10, As I said earlier, the writing here is on point as far as it being English is concerned, with one or two peculiarities, but has the problem of leaning too heavily on telling things rather than showing them, and when it is showing them, ho boy are the descriptions and length of things on the over indulgent side. This is a decent story with solid writing, don’t get me wrong, but this style of writing is not entirely conducive to drawing in readers.

Pacing: 6/10, As noted in the writing section, the pacing is on the slower side of things by a good margin and results in a good amount of instances of my eyes glazing over. To put this succinctly, in less the first fifty-thousand words, the story reinforces that Trixie’s self-confidence is in shambles no less than ten times and in descriptive and lengthy detail. While it is important to not rush things and reinforce that having someone dominate you for eight hours and then act friendly does not a substitution for therapy make, it is also important to trust your audience to extrapolate that should the individual in question show just one or two signs of not having changed political parties, that they probably are still the same as the last time we saw them.

Characters: 9/10, As I said, this is one of the stories I would point to to answer how to write characters in line with canon. With the exception of Twilight’s minor incongruity with doming Trixie and Trixie bordering a little too heavily on the border of acceptable self-pity, the characters here feel natural and fully fleshed out.

World building: 8/10, Again, look to my pacing score. This story expands and establishes a world in all the best ways for me, but dear lord does it take it’s time going over every new thing. If I was to suggest anything here it would be to pace yourself a little more when giving your audience information. Drip-feed them new stuff regularly instead of doing an ice-bucket-challenge with the information every time you wish to make additions or clarifications.

Cuteness: 9/10, I actually felt the need to inform my friend Nailah about this story because this is exactly the type of thing she eats up. The entire story has Twilight comforting Trixie and being a good friend/girlfriend by supporting her and doing everything to prove that she has worth and deserves to have someone to be with. I just wish that there was more nuance and variance in how Twilight went about this as her actions and dialog on the matter starts to get slightly predictable rather fast.

Total Score: 41/50 or 8.2/10, This was an interesting story to review as it was a decent reflection of my own style and how others view it. I would definitely recommend giving this story a read, in my indisputably biased opinion, as what it does do well, it does well to the extent that it definitely carries you through the more unrefined portions. For the author, I will give you the same advice everyone keeps giving me. Allow your audience to imagine and infer, trust them to make connections and limit TELLING your audience what is happening in your story and give them descriptions of it. Rather than saying her shoulders slumped and having the other character comment that she is looking defeated and describing all the details therein, just give a small, but powerful description saying how her body moved and proceed on.