In Which Reviews are Revealed, Criticisms are Noted, and the Author Comes Away a Wiser Idiot · 4:48pm Sep 8th, 2020
Blog Number 91: Three Reviews Edition
I've actually had a few more reviews this year - especially if you include in-depth comments and one piece of competition feedback - but these three I've gone quite some time without acknowledging (over half a year, in one case). That is very negligent of me, so this blog intends to rectify that.
In Which PaulAsaran Reviews The King and the Changeling, and Neither of Us Has Any Idea Why
First up is PaulAsaran's Paul's Thursday Reviews CXCIV, in which The King and the Changeling receives a "Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?" rating. Which... frankly causes my brain to crash. Even he doesn't seem sure how he stumbled across this random fic.
Myself, I always find it odd to see older works reviewed. Past a certain point, my early work just becomes "there". It's "done". Even a couple of my incomplete fics fall into this pit.
A large part of that is obvious: good chunks of it is primitive juvenilia, and I still toy with the idea of deleting at least a couple of the more incompetent examples. Some of it is just that the topics/characters/world-building notes tackled therein haven't stuck in my mind as much as others have. And a third part of it is that, especially during 2016, I tended to err towards the experimental for some fics, which means I don't have a high personal investment in them compared with passion projects.
The King and the Changeling was one such "just there" non-memorable experiment. True, I still have an interest in writing Breezie fics: it's been a while since I wrote about them, and of all the pony-esque species introduced, they tend to be among the more overlooked despite having some tantalizing world-building details associated with them.
On top of that, I did have some vaguely intellectual fun putting a very OOC sub-tribe of them through some fairy tale beats of the Grimm variety, with a pinch of Just So story when it comes to the changeling origin story that results from the King of the Breezies' (un)ethical decision-making. Plus, it's my first attempt to write Queen Chrysalis, one of the show's best villains.
But... like I said, it's just sort of there.
Maybe my priorities have shifted over the years, but when I call this review a pleasant surprise, the emphasis is on the "surprise". Chrysalis alone I think I tackled much better later on, to say nothing of the Breezies in my other, much more ambitious and (personally more memorable) 2016 fic featuring them. I certainly have no idea how it's "tragically underviewed." If anything, it's got a relatively respectable view count for one of my fics, in the high hundreds. Compared with some, that's pretty good going.
Still, this is a great review for a fic - a pleasant surprise - so let me put emphasis on the "pleasant" too. Because it was, on top of being fascinating to boot. 
In Which Tangerine Blast Reviews Transient, and We Both Confirm It Is Weird
Next up is Tangerine Blast's [TOP 10] Dynamic Duo: Rarity and Pinkie!. Which I'd promised to address about three months ago. Sorry, Tangerine! Punctuality is not my strong point!
Transient. Oh, Transient. It started out as a dark mickey-take on the Friendship Map Missions: send two friends across the continent with no explanation as to what they should be doing or why, and then have the mission turn out to be "defeat the hellish psycho monster involved" - a mission that gives them existential, mind-sapping nightmares they're forced to either muddle through or die tackling.
(Needless to say, I really dislike the Map plot device and narrative set-up, despite the fact the resulting episodes are often among my favourites, especially in Season Six.)
That particular set-up involves some psychosis-induced symbolism and an increasingly jumbled sense of time and space as Rarity possibly goes insane and Pinkie tries to figure out how to handle and normalize it. So of course most of the resulting comments - and the review here - point out how weird it all is, and not always for the better. (To be fair, it's a solid criticism I understand ever since it's been pointed out to me).
What I like about this review, though, is that it has a limited space to talk about the fic among other fics, so it goes straight to its main strength and weakness. Anyone reading it can use it pretty cleanly to decide whether to take the fic or leave it. That's my idea of a sharp review, all right, and in a good way.
Rarity and Pinkie's mutual relationship here - specifically how they handle each other's psychoses and especially especially their respective attitudes to old age and senescence (it makes more sense in context) - was what I was anxious to flesh out and demonstrate convincingly, and the review distils that and even gives a quoted example to drive the point home. Admittedly, it doesn't specifically mention the "old age and senescence" angle, which was what a good chunk of the self-worth issues and fears involved, but I'm being churlish: the core point gets across.
I haven't got much to add about the Top Ten format, or the fact that I appear to have come 8th. It just means I got nine other examples I could use for reference, and so long as it's a Top Ten for doing something good, I'm game. 
In Which PaulAsaran Comes Back To Review Limestone Pie Meets Petunia Paleo, Because Limestone
Last one is another PaulAsaran review blog: Paul's Thursday Reviews CCXVIII.
This time, the fic on the chopping block is Limestone Pie Meets Petunia Paleo, a Blue Chameleon debut that was almost considered for the Royal Canterlot Library before I pointed out that Blue Chameleon and Impossible Numbers were one and the same, so it would technically be against the Library's own rules to feature me twice. I don't know. I had an attack of conscience, or something. Happily, I'm over it now because I'm a greedy devil for attention, mwahahaha!
And... yeah, "Pretty Good" sounds about right. The fic's biggest and most obvious flaw - when it was a Writeoff.me contestant, and ever since - is that it skips over a lot of the bonding between Limestone and Petunia, and goes straight to the ending with them effectively being besties. This is a level of development not really supported by the fic as-is.
There's an easily explained reason for that: I wrote the thing to a deadline in about five hours. It was an entry written at the last minute, and more for self-amusement than out of any serious belief it would score all that well in the contest. (The fact that it proved to be my only medal-winning ponyfic there was one reason I stopped participating about a year later).
So as a narrative, it's a blatantly hobbled one. Paul doesn't mention the gap in his review, nor the other what-seems-to-me-obvious flaw: that Petunia Paleo isn't all that interesting as a character (I'm hoping to give her a better outlet in a future fic). Still, I'm going to assume they go some way towards justifying why the fic doesn't earn the coveted "Why Haven't You Read This Yet?" ranking. In addition, it's just not that ambitious, even as a Slice-of-Life fic, when you get down to it.
It's mostly Limestone being Limestone at ponies, which is... well, like I said, I wrote this basically as amusement rather than high art or anything particularly get-up-and-go.
I bring up these flaws because one thing that strikes me about Paul's review is that he doesn't mention any flaws, for something that ranked lower than the previous fic of mine he tackled. Even if it was just confirmation of something I already knew, that sort of thing can be quite useful for a writer to strengthen the suspicion that such things aren't just the hang-ups of a particular reviewer, but might be a systematic issue to address in the future.
As for why I haven't modified the fic despite knowing the flaws: sometimes, I just don't. There have been cases where I've rewritten or even occasionally overhauled a fic based on repeated constructive criticisms (Beyond the Herd initially was written more unconventionally before people pointed out that made it awkward to read) or a major problem being brought to my attention (Lure of the Flower, for instance, was half-complete when a massive plothole was brought to my attention).
Usually, though, I prefer to take any lessons I've learned and apply them going forward. This not only allows a sense of progression over time, enabling me to see the fics as useful checkpoints on my literary travels, but easily bypasses the counter-fear of wrecking a fic with too much overzealous change. And frankly I just don't fancy changing things. Historical interest, prudence, or just laziness: take your pick.
Overall, it's honestly quite a glowing review, but then, well, Limestone. "Vaguely abusive and obsessive grouch with delusions of self-importance" pretty much covers a lot.
Some more specific notes of interest that are mentioned in the review:
- He mentions some overlap with other Pie-family fics and their concepts. I'm assuming one of them is Roam-Springa by Pascoite, at which point I might as well admit that we both just borrowed from a common source: the common understanding of Amish Rumspringa. And I emphasize "common understanding", because the real thing is kinda misunderstood in popular culture: it's better described not as a chance to live somewhere else or else forever hold your peace in Amish society, but to get the "teenage" out of your system before adulthood. The Amish style of the Pie family, though, pretty much guaranteed the connection, and I've always had the idea that the Pie family version of the tradition there was how Pinkie ended up living in Ponyville.
- Marble and Maud get a bit of a ding in the review. This is a Limestone guy, through and through. Myself, I gravitate to the idea that the Pie family are just a big basket case of crazy, only it's more obvious with some than with others. I'd like to address each one in turn someday, rather than have them be cameos here.
- Paul does introduce me to the idea that the Pie sisters specifically represent Pinkie's various fandom personalities. I'm having a hard time seeing how Maud fits this theory as anything other than a deliberate antithesis, but the idea that Marble and Limestone represent parts of Pinkamena (the quiet, sad version and the hostile, delusional version) definitely gets a few mental cogwheels clicking into life.
- Something that tickled my funny bone was Paul mentioning "the true story of Holder’s Boulder, at least as Limestone recalls it". But in all seriousness, that last bit is something I want to do more often: not just drop history on the reader, but toy with the idea that the version presented might have been distorted by the teller or by whoever told the story to them, but that there's no certain way of telling whether the story actually has been distorted. Not only does it work as a characterization point (of course Limestone's pride in her family might push her to exaggerate), but it feels very much more understandable and realistic an approach to history than the "all myths/legends/etc. are true" approach fantasy often depicts.
In Which I Am Pompous About Reviews, Because I Like Getting Good Ones
Ah, reviews. The double-edged sword of social judgement (and it is social: anyone who is impervious to judgement is impervious to society as a whole).
Sometimes, you like the shiny sword because, well, positive reviews swing just right. They look good.
Sometimes, you like it because even negative ones that get you a scar on your leg can teach you why you shouldn't swing that way rather than this way. Not forgetting there are times when you swing like an amateur and it's best to learn pretty quick why professional swordfighters don't do that particular stupid move.
On the other hand, there are risks. Positive reviews can ironically cause problems if they're cagey enough to leave you in the dark as to what, exactly, you did right. Especially if you feel like you're swinging at air and have no idea how you'd fare in a proper performance, especially especially against more serious opponents.
Negative reviews should go without saying: no one likes getting a stab in the neck, even if it's (supposed to be) for their own good. Some negative reviews barely qualify as that, which means you don't even get a consolation prize for being butchered.
Of course, reviews aren't solely for the writer's benefit. They're of theoretical benefit to the audience, most obviously as entertainment. Who, for example, doesn't enjoy a critic with a sarcastic sense of wit? Even their victims can marvel at how well they're being skewered.
They're also more obviously helpful to the audience as "come hither" summons or "abandon ship!" warnings, which is better served if the review goes into some detail about what they're likely to find rather than just reiterates "GOOD!" or "BAD!" and takes hundreds of words to basically do nothing else. (Keep an eye out: you'd be quite surprised how many reviews may boil down to that uninformative simplicity under all the digressions and distractions).
And naturally, it's of benefit to the reviewer if they want to share their experience or, more often than not, vent.
Anyway, I'll keep on looking out for 'em and I'll keep on collecting 'em. And I'll take the opportunity to shout out and say "Ta very much!" for the ones I do get, especially since I'm largely fortunate enough to receive some good ones like these.
Thank you all for reading! Thank you all for reviewing! And thank you for not throwing peanuts at the stage and booing! (That is very important!).
Well, till next time. Impossible Numbers, out.
Hmm. Review-inspired self-reflection. Probably something I could do more of. Or, you know, any of.
Also, I wasn't expecting to find something as powerful as "anyone who is impervious to judgement is impervious to society as a whole" in this blog, but darn if you didn't slip it in there.
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It was more that I'd promised to publish a response to those three reviews - I've already done so for the other ones I've received this year - but I just never got around to it for the longest time. Myself, I don't need an excuse to self-reflect. More often, I need an excuse not to do it too often, lest I spiral inwards. Self-indulgence is a risk just as imbalanced as a total lack of any self-awareness.
As for that sentence you highlighted, it just sort of came to me. I think it's better seen as neutral, though I also think it causes problems very easily. There are moments when going against society and its judgement is necessary - hence the dangers of conformity - but being generally unmoved by other people's thoughts and feelings can more often be a bad sign, e.g. of narcissism and callousness.
As they say, we are all our own worst critics.
Neither of those reviews listed much in the way of flaws, I note. That happens at times. To be honest, it bugs me when I write a review without mentioning them, because helping authors improve is the primary reason I started the blog in the first place. Yet I've always been more of a casual reviewer, and I don't intend to go through the stories I read with a fine-toothed comb trying to identify something bad to harp on about (much in the same way I won't comb through bad stories to find something good to discuss). Sometimes, a story just works for me, and I say as much. Sometimes, someone will come along afterwards and point out a flaw that I entirely agree with, but didn't notice at the time. It happens.
Not exactly; the ding was entirely jovial in nature. I love Maud's continuous deadpan deliveries, she's a ton of fun to write and explore as an individual. I've not done much with Marble beyond a few cameo appearances (Bulletproof Heart) or as an important aspect of a plot's background (No Heroes: Life of Pie). I like Limestone more for a great many reasons, not least being how unorthodox she is as a character in FiM and the potential she has as a character.
That is indeed what I as thinking of. Was that also the one that introduced to me the concept of Marble having made a vow of silence? I can't recall, but I know for sure there was a story I read prior to yours in which that was a thing.
You're welcome for the reviews! Hoping to do more in the future.
I don't think I've heard of Tangerine Blast before. :O You're doin' a good!
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Well, it's not like I'm going to throw a hissy fit because you didn't point out any flaws. Everyone knows that kind of writer is just a myth.
Myself, I stopped posting reviews a long time ago, not so much because I didn't have views but because I don't usually enjoy the experience. Plus, I find it hard to judge whether it's actually working, tossing my opinions at someone and hoping like heck they don't take offence at what I said. I find it becomes an exhausting business pretty quick.
Oh. My mistake.
Basically, because she's a grumpy git.
Which I totally understand, since that's what made her fun to write in my own work.
In fact, what I quite like is the idea that Limestone, for all her grouching, is as insane as Pinkie in her own way. The obsession over Holder's Boulder is one part of a much larger self-important delusion in which she is literally the rock in an ever-changing and chaotic world, and all the grim self-imposed duty that comes with that. She thinks she's the only one who knows what's really going on, and all of it involves the single most important thing in the entire universe: rock farming.
God, I had fun writing this one.
Not that one, I'm sure about that, though I don't know what other story it could be. In any case, it's pretty easy to look at Marble and come to the conclusion, "Ah, so she's under a vow of silence." I'd quite like to write a fic for her at some point in the not-too-distant future, but she'll have to get in line with about a dozen other projects competing for attention.
And, of course, nice to hear from you, Mr P.A.! Thanks for the reviews, and apologies again for taking so long to respond to them.
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Well, now you know, whatcha gonna do abou' it?
Looks like they've been around for a while, and have been pretty active these last few years (I only stumbled across them because of this review). They've done a few other [Top Ten] style reviews this year, as well, which might be worth a look.
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They are, I like these blogs. :D
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I for one enjoy it immensely, hence the reason I've been doing it for so long and am thinking about branching out once my RiL is down far enough.
I used to worry about offending people. Sometimes I still do. But I've grown a tough skin in regards to that. It's gotten to the point that I merely accept it as a possibility and keep going, always aware that someone might jump at me. It has happened a time or two, but it's far more rare than I originally expected it to be.
I must acknowledge that if ever there is a significant change in my life (say, a family), I wouldn't be able to do it in the same way I am now. It takes a lot of my time.
There's great cosmic irony in reading this after running into the rudest proofreader I've ever met. Inadvertent tonic!
Reviewing (on the internet!) is a strange thing because putting aside the horrible online review culture, a review anywhere other than literature is an introspective but definite thing. We did well here, but how could we manage time or invest profits better? What worked Here and what can There learn from it? Literary reviews on the other hand...if you're talking about magazines and websites, you're either gonna get a technical rundown or a quick opinion piece. And this is because even in those spaces built around books and films, there's definite limits on space, you've got to keep things concise.
Which is also why I think so many of those actual reviews wind up being technical. It's a lot easier to be concise when you're talking about mechanics and how they work or don't work. Also, even if someone's looking for your opinion? Opinions are inherently fickle things. Enough new information and you could change a long held opinion tomorrow.
So yeah! Can be hard to articulate why you like something but-- or why you don't like something but appreciate how it works, and oh hey, you have until the end of the week to do this. It's understandably easier to note when someone's made a spelling or grammar error because that's something you can definitely say is incorrect. Defining someone's voice and your reaction to it, on the other hand...
Then there's the fact this is all in regard to My Little Pony fanficiton. A certain amount of perspective and expectations to bear in mind, there.
That's partly why, myself, I tend to just talk about what I liked and maybe mention if I'm uncertain about something. Like, that's the thing. I like this. I wasn't sure about this. Not that I feel things should be kept Stepford Wives smiley the whole time, but when it comes to someone else's writing, that's...really where it feels things stand. They're over there with what they said and what they feel, I'm over here with my reaction to it. I've never understood the idea of "Helping Writers Improve" except in a technical sense, because correcting errors or providing a soundboard for their arguments is one thing, a very helpful thing. But there's something very definite about that word, "improve", and it's hard not to start thinking about improving to who's standards exactly, or think of it as tampering with someone else's voice.
And yet again, this is fanfic. You're more likely to be dealing with someone who wrote a mad little idea they had and only hit the keyboard to kill some time than you're going to be digesting the works of Arthur Miller.
But I'll qualify all of this by acknowledging that's just me. 'Cause. Y'know. You qualify an opinion by the act of describing it as an opinion.
Always interesting to read your perspective and I'm glad things are going well for you. Ear marking Transient for later, and I owe you a few words on The Literary Hypothosis at some point too!
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I do want to get back to you on your comment in my prior blog post, but there's a lot of detail there to cover. Plus, I'm not fully confident I can contribute much to it yet (your point about comedy, for instance, chimes a lot with some views of my own I'd been harbouring for a while, but I don't know how best to articulate it to that kind of depth). If nothing else, I wanted to assure you I most certainly haven't forgotten about it.
Anyway, to current matters!
This is all from a relative online neophyte (I use the Internet a lot, which isn't to say I've "mastered" it), but I disagree with the idea that literary review is necessarily harder or airy-fairier than any other kind. Between general opinion and nitpicking grammar, there's still a lot of fruitful ground one can cover. It's just a story in another medium, with all the overlap that implies.
When I was reviewing for the writeoff, I tried to avoid the easy "list of grammatical errors" approach because myself, I felt it was like critiquing cutlery on the Titanic. If a piece was obviously of a particular genre, I tried to think less "Do I like this?" and more "Does this do the genre well?" If it's horror, for example, I aimed to point out instances of tension or creepiness, places and examples where an author could look and focus on what seemed to work, or on what needed changing. And I usually tried to provide examples and breakdowns to make it easier to spot what I was getting at.
Sometimes, I might go "higher" and try to spot what the "point" of the work was, what it seemed to be getting at. In a sense, it's a cross between a subtle argument (or not so subtle, if it bashes you over the head) and a tapestry with words, wherein you can spot larger moments of flow and awkward moments of discord. I might also isolate particular genre conventions or worldbuilding/characterization pieces, either because I enjoyed them for their own sake or because I thought they "fit" or "resonated" neatly with the bigger picture.
My point is, I think literary review can be introspective and definite without boiling down to boring grammar pedantry or wishy-washy "I like this/I didn't like this" signalling. Especially when I think of things like focus (e.g. what's being brought front-and-centre right now?), perspective (e.g. how much of the scene is captured in a particular paragraph?), or quotable passages (e.g. what's a "signature scene" or "money shot" in this fic?), I think there's enough to get an idea for efficiency and skill in wielding words, paragraphs, and overarching story elements to Help a Writer Improve.
But the key is what an author is trying to do. Crude as this may seem, I see artistic works as a kind of invention, and inventions have a function, a means of fulfilling it, and a context in which that function matters. These things might be loosey-goosey when it comes to the notorious field of art, but art is a constructed thing and comes under the same broad umbrella. Hence a tinkering artist can gain from picking up odds and ends, getting the odd prod, and sometimes dropping a few habits that aren't particularly helpful.
While I can't tell an author what their mission statement or guiding philosophy is going to be, I think a large part of the process is higher-order technical mastery and knowing a lot of good tricks. Adaptability, flexibility, and the ability to switch between different levels of understanding and coordination: that is how a mission statement or guiding philosophy goes from mental concept to real-world creation.
Of course, I ended up not reviewing anything after a while and quit the writeoff thereafter, so take this soapbox speech of mine with a pinch of salt!
True, I gather a lot of authors aren't here to become literary giants or anything so ambitious!
Perspective and expectation are never bad things to have, in any case. 