Present Perfect vs. To Perytonia · 12:39pm Apr 4th, 2019
I've been teasing it for a bit, but here we are!
To counter what I suggested in a previous post, I've only been reading Cloudy Skies' To Perytonia since last June. That's still a long time to get through a story, even one as long as this. Eventually, I just said 'fuck it', decided I'd seen enough of the writing with my own eyes, and let Fimfiction's text-to-speech take care of the rest for me. And that wasn't much longer than a month ago as I write this.
(Despite dragging my feet on this story in the early going, it was hard to put down once I picked it back up!)
It's a long journey, so let's get started.
To Perytonia, if it can be summed up, is an adventure shipfic set in season 2 where Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are sent to another land to make friends with the natives, and Dash and Flutters hook up. In writing this story, Cloudy Skies obviously had three goals in mind:
1) Take a deep dive into the character of Rainbow Dash
2) Introduce the reader to the culture and environs of Perytonia
3) Ship Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy
Let's break these down, shall we?
I do not believe it is possible to write Rainbow Dash more purely than she is in this story. (Though I have to be honest: One of those stupid Beanis fics about Rainbow putting her dick in everyone made me question that assumption.) We see the Rainbow Dash from seasons one and two: brash, self-absorbed, obsessed with 'awesome'. We see the Rainbow Dash from Sonic Rainboom: insecure, afraid of failure. Essentially, we see the Rainbow Dash from Hurricane Fluttershy: Not the most patient pony, but willing to support her friends through thick and thin, to lift them up when they're down and push them to make themselves be just that much cooler.
We also, surprisingly, see the Rainbow Dash from Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: not just afraid of failure but aware of her own shortcomings. It was in fact reading this story that made me come away from my season 4 watch with a better impression of that episode. Dash is not the smartest pony; she's often oblivious to what's going on, tuning out that which doesn't immediately interest her; and she recognizes all of this. And at her lowest points in the story, she wallows in it. Despite appearing in maybe two chapters, the specter of Twilight Sparkle looms large over this story, and whenever anyone — not just Dash — compares themselves to her, they come up short. It doesn't stop her from thinking about Twilight would have done in any given situation.
What's crazy is Spring Breakdown aired while I was writing this review, and it perfectly exemplifies what I'm talking about? Oblivious to the concerns of others, focused on being awesome, driven to make sure her friends are awesome. It's crazy how perfectly they captured Cloudy Skies' Rainbow Dash in that special, shipping aside. I can even see this Rainbow Dash in Grannies Gone Wild, acting stupid and against character because the words of a friend resound in her mind. And that's years after not only when the story is set, but when the author stopped watching the show.
Rainbow Dash in this story is a highly nuanced pony, despite her character arc focusing primarily on learning to accept and understand metaphor. Because let me tell you, she's really bad at it, and it turns out to be a major drawback for having her along. But since we're in her head the entire time — minus the letters that appear at the start of each chapter — she'd better be, you know?
This story is a triumph of characterization, not just for Dash. If there is one thing it did well, it was this, and it did it really, unspeakably well.
So let's talk about Perytonia and things I don't like quite so much.
An uncharitable way to characterize this story would be "Rainbow Dash misses the point for half a million words". In her defense, she's not alone; but as I said, she isn't exactly the brightest brick in the sidewalk, and she misses a ton of stuff, even things that are obvious to the reader.
So. Perytonia. It's an entire other landmass from Equestria, located somewhere to its southwest. Five cities line the coast, and it's these five cities that most of the story takes place in. Rainbow and company start in the south, in the port of Orto, traveling north to Stagrum, Ephydoera — which is contained entirely in a forest — Vauhorn and Cotronna, the capital and their ultimate goal. Along the way, they spend some time in ruins located at the bottom of a series of gorges that kind of look like some huge monster raked its claws across the countryside. They're also kidnapped outside of Vauhorn and taken to a sixth city, more a village, hidden to the west of the mountain range that borders Perytonia proper, known as the Bow and alternately the Cauldron of Storms. These are the Morrowsworn. Take some notes, because it's going to get detailed in here.
The populace of Perytonia is, perhaps not surprisingly, almost entirely peryton — the s-less plural is something I never quite got used to — who are basically deer hippogriffs, except their claws are on the back legs. They can fly, though ponies are notably faster and more agile, and they can perform levitation via their antlers. Further magics are not really gone into in any detail, with one exception.
My main problem with Perytonia is that its design shows through in just about every way. Wanting to give the ponies a challenge like none they'd ever faced, the author crafted a society that would think and behave entirely antithetical to Equestria. It quickly becomes apparent to the reader, for instance, that Perytonia is not a single country like Equestria, but a series of disparate city-states, each with its own culture, and Cotronna is not the capital, for all that it appears to be some kind of administrative hub.
And this would have been fine, except that the author also applies some headcanon that isn't entirely apparent. (The wise reader will take pains to also read through the comments on each chapter; that's how I discovered this earlier than I otherwise might have.) In short, the ponies do not live in a cosmopolitan, multicultural world like ours. They are, in fact, pretty sheltered from the world outside Equestria, and expect everything to be familiar. This means that they lack the vocabulary necessary to explain the troubles they're having understanding Perytonia — they don't know what a city-state is, and they can't fathom a nation's leader being anything less than a Princess — and again and again, they fail to grasp what's plain and obvious. (And not to heap all the blame on the ponies: Khaird, the Ortosian who sets them on the path to Cotronna, decides to let them discover Perytonia on their own, without coloring their judgment by doing things like explaining how their society works, because a previous encounter with outsiders didn't go so well.)
The point is, this story is eminently frustrating because, even when you realize the ponies lack the right frame of reference to properly serve as the diplomats they're supposed to be, they just look stupid. You will find yourself shouting at them as they miss, for the fifth time, the fact that peryton from the various cities not knowing what goes on in the other cities might be some kind of clue that they don't interact the same way Equestrians do! It doesn't matter that Rarity is the Face and takes charge in all their official talking-to-leaders work; it doesn't matter that Fluttershy is charming and able to make friends with peryton from very different cultures; they're all just as clueless as Rainbow Dash about everything, for the entire goddamn story, right up until it's too late. (A major side plot involves Rarity trying to make a splash in Perytonia with her designs; she is stymied, of course, by the fact that peryton do not have a concept of fashion. Because why would they? That would be too helpful.)
Don't even get me started about their inability to understand the concept of 'religion' when they're captured by the Morrowsworn. :|
The other way Perytonia's artificiality shines through comes in the shipping, so let me talk about that for a bit.
Honestly? I have few complaints. Fluttershy has had something of a crush on Rainbow Dash for a while, decides to make her move on this journey, and Dash is okay with it. She doesn't really know what to make of Fluttershy's affections at first, but quickly grows into the idea that "being girlfriends is awesome". There's lots of cuddling and nuzzling; I was actually impressed at how entirely non-sexual the relationship is. I mean, the three of them sleep together side by side every night and there's just nothing remotely untoward about that. Just as Cloudy Skies wanted to show us Perytonian culture, he also shows us Equestrian culture with small details like that.
Though, by the end, Dash is considering adding Rarity and even a peryton to their group. <.< She's like, consumed with thoughts of it. It was a strange departure.
The romance plot is marred somewhat by Rarity. All it takes is an off-the-cuff comment from her about how Dash pushes Fluttershy around, pushes her into doing things she might not otherwise want to do, for Dash to suddenly start questioning every little thing she does, says or thinks about Fluttershy. For weeks. This leads to Fluttershy wanting to talk to her about something, but they get captured and the plot falls by the wayside for a number of (very long, extremely empty) chapters, seemingly forgotten by the time they're back on the road again.
Of course, it's obvious to the reader what's going on. Fluttershy wants Dash to give her that extra push, to help her get out of her comfort zone, because she's not going to by herself. That's why she likes Rainbow in the first place. But it's one more thing for Rainbow Dash to be oblivious about, and when Dash stops doing it because she's really bad at actually being considerate of others, Fluttershy starts growing more and more distant, until finally she breaks up with her.
If To Perytonia were not the kind of story I'm pledged to read from start to finish, chapter 40 would have been where I said "fuck it" and gave up, because the sheer amount of aggravation reached a high note at the end of it. I was livid.
But you know what? It all actually is worth it, because their make-up, a scene that is in equal parts amazingly emotional and intensely silly, brings some of the most epic relationship drama I have ever read. It was so cathartic, though I hate that it required so much irritation on the reader's part to achieve. But yes, Rainbow Dash learns that not talking is bad, actually talking is good, and it's okay to push Fluttershy, because she's not pushing her around. Fluttershy can always say no, and Rainbow Dash is not a bully.
So how does Perytonia fit into this? Metaphor. Let's take a walk through the cities.
Orto is the ponies' first stop, a port town in southern Perytonia that's considerably more used to non-peryton than the cities north of it. There are zebra and griffins here, if not in large numbers, and to be honest, I don't actually remember what they were like too well. The ponies arrive in the middle of a festival held in the honor of the city's patron Aspect.
Oh boy, I'm going to have to unpack a bunch of stuff here. Aspects are sort of the foci of Perytonia's shared religion, except really they're characters in stories told by young and old. The way each city relates to the Aspects is very different, and not just in terms of whose patron is what. They aren't gods, and they aren't spirits; they're literally just historical characters whose exploits have been made mythic. It's very telling that, when the ponies figure out that two of the Aspects are actually Celestia and Luna, and then Rainbow tries telling every peryton she finds that she's friends with two of their Aspects, it has no effect on them. The reality of the Aspects is not as important to the peryton as the stories they feature in, in other words. It's hard to explain.
Anyway, Orto's Aspect, Myrtella, represents the harvest and love. So we begin with thoughts of love, and Rainbow Dash pretending to be Fluttershy's girlfriend so they both stop getting hit on by strangers. (Dash's coloration attracts a lot of attention, mostly from peryton does, because the stags tend to be more colorful.) A shipfic standby, to be sure, but it doesn't exactly kick things off immediately.
As for what Orto represents in this metaphor that is crumbling even as I construct it, I can't say, because I don't really remember what their culture was like beyond what I've already said. You'll see what I mean as we get into the other cities. I suppose there's something to be said about the way the Ortosians speak, just in ways that are unfamiliar to Dash but otherwise perfectly understandable; but the meat of the metaphor is most likely to be in the celebration, a starting point for what's to come.
We move north to Stagrum, where the patron Aspect is the one concerned with fair trade, whose name I cannot recall at the moment. The ponies have brought lots of regular bits and gems with them, and find the latter can purchase anything they need. This causes some amount of distress among the locals of Stagrum, however, for whom the ponies' casual generosity and oblivity to how much their gems are worth is nearly offensive. Here they meet Mirossa, the young daughter of an innkeeper, who was an early favorite in terms of peryton characters.
Stagrum's part in this metaphor should be easy to spot. A relationship isn't about one person giving all they have to the other; give and take is essential. And while total fairness as the Stagrumites demand is not, this is metaphor we're talking about. The point is to get the idea in the reader's mind. And so it is.
Next, the ponies move northward into a dense forest, the Khosta, with a very vague notion of where Ephydoera lies within. As it turns out, the Ephydoerans are warriors and rangers, their Wardens painted to blend in with the brush and trained to move without sound. They're a very serious people, keeping their city hidden and its precise location secret, even to other peryton. Their duty is to protect Perytonia from the monsters that wander in from beyond the Bow.
Before I get into their culture, I want to mention the character the ponies make friends with here. Phoreni is probably the single peryton most important to the ponies' story. Her 'flight' of Wardens encounters the ponies crashing through the forest, and she alone takes on the 'burden' of responsibility for their presence in the city. She gives them her brother's currently vacant home to sleep in and vouches for them before the High Warden. (You can guess what her role is, I'm sure.) She and her boyfriend accompany them to the Brush Games, which are one part carnival, one part Olympics, and one part artistic performance, held in Ephydoera before the huge seasonal storms that sweep across Perytonia in the middle of summer. She expels the ponies from Ephydoera after they're caught in a misunderstanding, with the knowledge that it was a misunderstanding and only subterfuge will be able to ferret out the true culprits and threats to Ephydoera.
This, of course, rather sours the ponies against her. They both understand that she's not really mad at them and also kind of don't get what the big deal is. They spend a lot of time discussing what she did. When next they see her, it's at the head of a flight storming the Morrowsworn village to rescue them. By the end of the story, it is intimated that she will be Ephydoera's ambassador to Equestria, and she herself has intimated that she would add the ponies to her herd if circumstances allowed. At least, Rainbow Dash takes her off-handed words as a proposal of sorts, and hilarious never stops bringing it up.
Because, for all that Phoreni is representative of the Perytonian culture that's the strictest, most concerned with duty and honor, most ready to take offense at slights against their character, she's not just got "a boyfriend", but three "bond-mates", two stallions and a doe, all bonded together in love. The juxtaposition inherent in her character, which we really don't learn about until near the end of the story, just always tickled me. Well, that and how much Dash is just down to fuck a deer, let's be real. But maybe there's some metaphor inherent in Phoreni, is what I'm saying.
To get back to Ephydoera, as I said, the Brush Games are a major event, featuring some solo games that Dash tried back in Orto as well as a big event called the joust, where peryton lock horns in a ring and somehow there's a story told about it. That becomes important later on; what's important now is how they talk.
This becomes a major component of Perytonia from here on out. The Ephydoerans never say 'yes' or 'no', because to do so bars nuance from a conversation. They have a tendency to answer yes/no questions by repeating the question, or a similar one, and making what we might term a fairly vague response, even for things as objective as personal feelings. This causes the Equestrians no end of problem; for all that they at least pick up on "avoid yes or no" pretty quickly, it's obvious they can't adjust their speech to match. (Of course, there's also a very good moment when they're being cast out when Phoreni looks them in the eye and tells them 'yes', and you know she's deadly fucking serious because of it.)
What I glean from this is that plain speech — or, to extrapolate one level further, monosyllabic answers — is not enough for communication, whether in a relationship or otherwise. This is a big thing that Rainbow Dash struggles with throughout the story. She's a very plain-spoken pony, maybe even moreso than Applejack, who at least has the tact to recognize how others feel when she's talking to them. The further they travel into Perytonia, the less she can handle the way the peryton talk. She's always the first one to get frustrated and demand peryton talk normal to them, and her tendency to spout a "Yeah, sure" when asked something, without ever elaborating, leaves her no room to communicate her feelings or anything else when it comes to Fluttershy.
The ostracism from Ephydoera means the ponies get caught in the aforementioned summer storm, and have to take shelter in the gorge ruins, which I won't discuss, save to say they were equal parts fascinating and confusing. It's a much longer road to the next town, Vauhorn, than any they've traveled so far.
I said earlier that the Aspects are a shared history and lexicon among all peryton, but Vauhorn is sort of Perytonia's seat of storytelling. They have an annual (?) tradition where they gather around bonfires and tell stories, in something of a contest to see who can tell the best one. The winner or winners are then judged by the town's council and eventually all Perytonia, to see what is worthy to be entered into that mental library of shared stories.
Have any of you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation?
You remember the episode "Darmok"? Y'know, Picard and an alien captain trapped on a planet with a monster while the aliens try desperately to get anyone to understand them? "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra", that stuff where they only speak in metaphors?
Yeah, that's Vauhorn. The chapter where the city is introduced are full of TNG references. :B
Thankfully, the Vauhornites are self-aware enough that they recognize not everyone, not even other peryton, always understand their constant references to Aspect stories. Not all Aspects are studied as in-depth in the other cities, after all. Needless to say, this is where the ponies actually have a great deal of trouble relating with the peryton in any form. They're taken in by a couple, Neisos and Orissa, essentially baby-talked to (I had to figure that was what it was like for the Vauhornites to talk plainly to them), taught some stories, and generally taken care of while in the city. I mention the couple because they were more great characters, fantastic to watch together, especially when their children were being terrors. From an initial misunderstanding where it seems like the speech barrier may finally sink their journey, the ponies' time in Vauhorn ends at their most successful, with Fluttershy winning that storytelling contest.
This is where my extended metaphor becomes very specifically about Rainbow Dash, because Vauhorn highlights one of her great failings: she does not understand metaphor. To Dash, stories are just recountings of things that happened, or even didn't. They can have lessons, but no greater meaning than that. In some ways, she does pick up on the peryton stories, but only to a certain level. She might grasp, for instance, that Myrtella is the Aspect of love, and name-drop her when talking about love-related things, but I got the sense that she never really got the point of the stories.
There's a minor plot during all of this where Rainbow Dash spends a lot of time talking to Princess Luna in her dreams, because unlike most ponies, she's a lucid dreamer. It's yet another aspect of the story which can be frustrating at times, but at least it's clear that trying to remember waking things while dreaming is difficult, possibly for anyone, not just Dash. My point is, Luna even tells her some stories, more familiar Equestrian-style ones, and Dash rarely gets why. Like I said, she might grasp a message in a story, but she's pretty much only ever going to do it when told straight-out what it was. She can't deal with nuance, or inference, or anything but the concrete and present. It's one more thing that gets in her way, not just in terms of her relationship, but pretty much when dealing with anyone smarter than herself.
From there, as I've said, they get captured, and thus begins them sitting in a cell in the Morrowsworn village before escaping and tootling around the Cauldron of Storms behind the Bow. It's a lengthy diversion that I frequently found tedious, because the first half involves them having zero agency (it says something that they take a while to contemplate escape, just because they expect their captors to eventually see reason, but it's boring), and the second half involves them going around in circles a lot. I don't think the Morrowsworn fit into my metaphor, and possibly they don't even have to, since no one else in greater Perytonia even knew they existed.
Point is, they get spat out of a waterfall back on the road to Cotronna, in what's maybe the biggest narrative contrivance in the whole story.
Cotronna, remember, has been their ultimate goal this entire time. They've got a sigil from the Princess and an invitation for a peryton ambassador to join a friendship summit. They're going to go to the capital of Perytonia, mount the steps of the Perytonian palace, and present this sigil to the Perytonian princess, thus completing their quest. Note that none of the Perytonian things mentioned in the previous sentence actually exist. And all the time they've been asking other peryton what to expect from Cotronna, they keep hearing the same thing: they like ceremony and ritual.
Vauhorn I think is the biggest challenge the ponies encounter to communication, but Cotronna is a close second. None of the peryton know how to interact with them. The first establishment keeper they encounter can't even figure out how to say hello properly, because she doesn't know them or their customs. They bumble their way through introductions and getting a place to stay, but you can tell they're all at their wits' end, and the same goes for the Cotronnans. And unlike the Vauhornites, the peryton of Cotronna are not keen on divulging their customs to outsiders. This leads to the climax of the story, a massive international incident that literally everyone knew was coming for dozens of chapters, because Dash is an imbecile, Fluttershy is a doormat, and Rarity has been losing her goddamn mind.
But that's not the point. And it's not the reliance on ritual governing conversation that Cotronna has to offer; it's their use of body language. Rarity or Fluttershy, or possibly both, notice this at some point, that they have very specific methods of angling the head, wings and hooves to indicate various stages of conversation. Obviously, an impossible task for the ponies to learn in short order, and even more impossible for them to replicate, as they each lack either wings or antlers.
If Rainbow Dash is stupid about metaphor, body language is on a whole other level of reality as far as she's concerned. But it's the final piece of this poor, abused metaphor I've been weaving. And as I write about it, I realize, that might not even be it, because ritual does factor into Rainbow and Fluttershy's relationship. I wasn't going to, but I may as well go ahead and sum this up.
Remember earlier when I mentioned jousting in Ephydoera? Fluttershy purchases a pair of antlers, discarded naturally and reserved for the very young or very old to still be able to participate in the joust. Rainbow Dash is able to use one pair to participate herself, and she makes quite the splash. And then Fluttershy hangs onto the antlers. Through rain and flood, through the destruction of their cart, even when they're captured and in prison, she very carefully keeps both pairs with her. And after a while, I wondered why.
Well, in Cotronna, Dash grabs the saddlebags, and Fluttershy, takes them all to a clearing outside the city, and she and Fluttershy have a joust.
It was, as I said, incredibly silly. I mean, this ritual that Dash never grasped the meaning of, suddenly in use to try and talk her problems out with Fluttershy? But it was also intense. And the ritual is what gets them back together, with, as I said, some of the best "talking it out" I have ever read, ever.
I want to mention something else in relation to the ponies' understanding, or lack thereof, of the land they find themselves in. Throughout their trip, even in Orto, there is a certain formality to the peryton's speech that they themselves never really grasp. As I suggested, their first encounter with it leaves Dash stymied; it takes her quite a while to get used to it. The peryton are often confused by her slang, her "cool"s and so forth.
And throughout the story, as they fail again and again to understand the peryton and their culture, you notice the one word they fail to heed: listen. Dash hears peryton stories but doesn't listen to their meaning. Rarity hears the peryton say they don't understand fashion and fails to listen, to understand just what that means to her personal quest. Again and again, if only they had listened, things might have gone better. Not completely perfectly, not by half, but better. Peryton are bad at explaining themselves, anyway.
So I could not get the idea out of my head that the ponies are cast as the typical American/Western tourist. I'm talking the sort of person who goes to a foreign nation and complains that the signs aren't in English and they can't find a McDonald's near their hotel. Dash certainly exemplifies this, though Rarity has her moments of cultural insensitivity as well, especially early on,.
This, in turn, casts the peryton as "foreigners". And the best I can say about this is at least they aren't yaks. <.< The yaks in the show symbolize the fear that "foreigners" have erudite cultures that are impossible to understand and easy to breach, thus causing offense. But the peryton still have an otherness to them, because their speech acts have evolved in a completely different way than any in the monoculture of Equestria, the West. And I kind of don't like that, and I'm not sure I can thoroughly explain why, so we're just going to leave it there, as a notion.
(To extend this metaphor a bit, when they get to Cotronna, I likened Rarity to a Crusader or missionary. She's very much about showing the peryton the benefits of Equestrian harmony. It was uncomfortable.)
Anyway, there you go. Five cities, five pieces of a relationship. Once I realized there was a connection to be made, I couldn't unsee it. You can hardly blame me, since Rainbow Dash actually points it out in the text. But it explains why sometimes, the history of Perytonia and the cultures it has today don't always feel organic.
And that's not to say the world-building is bad, necessarily. The stuff they learn in the Cauldron, about how Celestia and Luna shaped Perytonia's early history, was actually pretty awesome, and plays into why this story is happening in the first place. But it also kind of felt like…
Okay, so Perytonia could almost be an original place. I mean, it is, and this would then become an insertional crossover, where you just have three canon MLP characters exploring it so that the reader can learn about all the things the author has created. The link to Celestia and Luna, then, is the author saying, "But wait! This actually is in-universe world-building!" Given that you can experience all of Perytonia without ever knowing that — indeed, that's kind of the point — it again feels hokey, tacked on for the sake of being able to say, yes, this is actually ponyfic.
That part was long. I feel like I was going to talk about the shipping, but I think I already have. The shipping was good. Cloudy shipped the hell out of some Flutterdash. By the end of the story, you thoroughly understand why they belong together. That I had a severely negative reaction to their breakup was compounded by chapters and chapters of mounting frustration at everything. The shipping was good.
I've been working on this off and on over the course of about three days now, and I have definitely lost my train of thought, if that last paragraph didn't clue you in. It's time now to go through my notes (17 pages!) and see if there's anything I forgot to add that I wanted to, or that's funny and worth sharing.
- I mentioned Twilight's spectre looms large over this story. Not only does Dash think about what Twilight might know in a given situation, or how she might act when they're struggling to communicate, Rarity also compares her own magical ability to Twilight's. They always compare themselves to Twilight's best qualities; it never goes well.
- And let's not forget, the only diplomacy training any of them have came from last-minute lessons by Twilight, and Dash basically slept through hers. This was not an expedition doomed to success.
- But on that note, because they're in a society where everyone has wings and magic, the ponies don't always fare well. Rarity develops a complex about her inability to fly slowing them down (really, it's more that she's not a workhorse, and unused to traveling long distances on hoof), which extends to her magic somehow. But really, it's Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash who suffer the most in Perytonia, from being unable to open doors to having to eat like pigs.
- There's some very odd world-building involves the Equestrian tribes. For instance, Dash considers both kissing and dates to be 'unicorn things', and I could never quite get over that. Hell, even marriage is something preferred by stuffy old noble unicorns. Also, pegasi can't get colds.
- Dash's 'packing' for their trip was literally dumping the top drawer of her dresser in her saddlebag at the last moment so it wouldn't look she hadn't packed. In the second greatest instance of plot contrivance in this story, this has significance to the shipping later on.
- On the list of "things that are discussed for way too long in this story": gorges.
- Did I really go into Dash's stupidity complex? Like, not just comparing herself to Twilight and coming up short. At one point, she starts to grasp the way the Vauhornites use stories, if not the stories themselves, but she refuses to own up to it or use this knowledge, because she expects someone will tell her she understood wrong. This is the Rainbow Dash from Testing, Testing.
- I specifically want to outline the sequence involving their escape from the Morrowsworn, because it was the most bassackward thing I've ever seen. After touring the Cauldron and figuring out they can't fly out over the Bow, they go back to the village. Fluttershy makes friends with a panther, who leads them toward it stealthily. They decide to check out a storage cave even though the sun is coming up, and get caught. Dash is ready to throw down, but they're interrupted as the Ephydoerans, who the ponies had contacted for help via bird, show up and draw everyone's attention. Then they climb into a boat and get swept downriver, ending up in an underground lake and eventually the aforementioned waterfall. It's just… it's so weird that we never got to see that scene play out in real time. I always found it a strange thing to have done.
- The Cotronnans have surnames, while none of the other peryton do. I don't know if there's any significance to this, nor is it ever explained.
- A trope I'm very pleased was not used: After their climactic failure in Cotronna, Dash stumbles upon an old peryton storyteller (known as a 'claw-priest'). It seems like it's going to be one of those scenes where the hero finally learns too late what it was she needed to avert tragedy, but not really. She does learn something important, but it's not a case of "If only they'd done this sooner".
- There's a pair of chapters that each start off with a bunch of letters from the ponies' peryton friends coming to their rescue. The first chapter was extremely satisfying to see, but it actually just sets up those of the following chapters, which were even more satisfying.
Funny stuff!
I realize this story is basically just the ponies walking around and talking about all the World building they don't understand
Oh great, the forest persons aren't friendly
I used speech-to-text for the bulk of my early note-taking, and it did not take well to the word 'perytons', among others. My favorite misinterpretation is "Puritans", but I find the above also funny.
Fluttershy has suddenly developed a freaky knowledge of how much they don't know about history
Dash's problem is that she's trying really hard to be conscientious, and she's not very good at it
Fluttershy zapped herself because Dash was too busy thingkin bout storm
love means snot in your mane
I'm surprised at how much muzzle-to-butt action there is, without a hint of sex
much like Rainbow Dash herself, this is beautiful and stupid
Said of her joust with Fluttershy.
congratulations, Rainbow Dash, you're the smartest donut in Perytonia
(I actually bolded this in my notes.)
It's a shame that Cloudy Skies is gone, because I really wanted two things from this story: A side-story about what Twilight, Pinkie and AJ get up to on their diplomatic mission to a foreign land (all we see at the end is some wounds and jewelry they've brought back with them), and a sequel. I mean, I was really hoping the epilogue would involve the peryton ambassadors coming to Equestria for the first time. I really wanted to see that. But I can't fault a long-needed reunion between the mane six, because it was really deserved.
Also, I wanted to know two things, and maybe someone else who's read the story can tell me:
- Who or what is the Ever-Soaring?
- What the hell was up with earthquake voice in the Morrowsworn town? D:
To Perytonia is Cloudy Skies' magnum opus, and from reading the journals he wrote about it, it came out pretty much the way he wanted it to. He knew it would make people upset, but it was the story he wanted to tell. The things he set out to do with the story, he did well, some of them exceedingly well. Half a million words of deep characterization and world-building is no small achievement.
4/5
Ultimately worth the frustration.
...Gee, that was 12 pages and 6000 words all by itself. D: Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
My plan now is to blow through the short list of one-shot fics I've been collecting for a bit, then two or three more long fics before getting back to my audiobooks like I've been saying I need to do for a year now.
That's quite the review!
We'll see about that!
I always love reading your long reviews, even when I end up not wanting to read the story reviewed. With this one, I think I've gotten the best bits without having to make the 500k journey. Still, I might pick this up one day when I'm ready for a marathon read. Going straight through, I might have a slightly different experience.
I originally read this as Present Perfect vs Ponyta.
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I left a lot out, like the creatures they find the Cauldron. I try to do that when a story's worth reading on its own, but I really can't fault anyone for not wanting to pick up something over 100k at a moment's notice. :B
Thanks for writing this. I have been tempted to read Perytonia on more than one occasion, but I kept bouncing off the shipping in Chapter 1 — in short, it contained everything I hated in shipfics in a neat package. But the ideas in the rest of the story are certainly intriguing enough. Maybe one day I will get around to finishing it.
The Joust is a story because it's Kabuki swordfighting. I thought a weeb would ping on that.
Also I'm unsurprised that you missed it but it did sneak Rarity into their relationship.
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I wholly recommend it. It's one of my favorite stories on the site. A lot of the things PP says are detractions are actually just him being picky as usual, something going over his head as usual, or just forgetting about things rather than actual problems with the story.
("Plot contrivance" because he forgot that there was banditry mentioned as occurring on the road to Cotronna)
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No, them getting kidnapped isn't a contrivance. Them escaping and ending up just a short walk from their ultimate goal is. <.<
And I definitely know nothing about kabuki. o.o
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That's not what I meant. It was stated a couple times that the cultist dudes were banditing on the road to Cotronna, i.e. where they ended up after they escaped.
Perytonia is sort of like if you took Greco-Roman and East Asian (especially Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) cultures and tossed them into a blender. The "story" aspects of The Joust were pretty well explained during those scenes, and is pretty reminiscent of Kabuki/Noh theater.
Thanks for writing this! I enjoy reading your longform reviews.
Darn, I should really try getting back on this story. I made it around 20 chapters in several months ago, but while I could see the build-up to something grand, it always felt like a bit of a slog to get through the chapters. Maybe I oughta try the text-to-speech too!
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It works wonders. I read from about right where you stopped through to the end in under a month!
>Yeah, that's Vauhorn. The chapter where the city is introduced are full of TNG references. :B
All us beta reader made comments. Cloudy has never seen that episode of TNG. Yes. We all made the assumption as well.
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Convergence!
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Hmn... kindles have text-to-speech... and I really like long-ass stories.
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Temba, his arms wide.
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Literally cannot reccomend it enough. I hand it out to everyone. It's so friggen good.
I generally adore Cloudy's work, but I have to admit I've never finished this story. It just rests too hard on Dash being stupid for me to keep going after a point. Not necessarily a fault in the story since that's the characterization Cloudy wanted, but there it is.
Not sure just what to take from this in terms of whether to read it, as it evidently comes out as well recommended but contains a ton that does seem like it would frustrate.
Also, I could have sworn that TNG episode was TOS, if only for the reason that I've seen it, and I've seen all of TOS and like four episodes of TNG. :V
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You just picked four good episodes of TNG! :)