http://www.fimfiction.net/story/278614/catching-butterflies
Maybe I’m just not sufficiently jaded, you know. Maybe I can’t see the trees for the oh so winsome forest. This story has four tags: Romance, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe and Human. It’s not out of boundary or anything, but it certainly is stating the contents in an aggrandized fashion. Romance is a minor part of it, and rather spoilery, I might add. I’d hate to be categorical, because then I’ll be just like those across-the-board taggings, which I hate, but I see red every time there’s a story with four of them, or even more.
I need to
take a breath. This day has been nary a relaxing moment congested. I only chose
this story because of it’s manageable length, and because it looked kind of charming,
which it was, with a stipulation or two. Why do I always pick the
offish/winsome ones? Is it my destiny to wallow in ambiguity, never a day free
from the shackles that binds me in my unquenchable quest for knowledge? Know
what? … Forget it! You could try “silence says more than a thousand words” but
I know that’s just an excuse for people who aren’t good with words, so let’s
go, yolks!
Ya see,
there is another character is this story. Eris is her name. She a tough gal, it
appears. She encompasses the archetype of cynical sarcasm and is a thorn in the
side of Butterscotch’s friends. Why? Because they’re friends- actually, they’re in love, but the other doesn’t
know it yet, and they’ve only got 24 hours to profess their love before the
world ends, what a jam! Actually again, I’m being silly. The last part wasn’t
true, though it does speak bounds and leaps, the repeated use of these tropes
and how they tie into the same story, told by different people, over and over
again. I suppose there’s something fundamentally compelling about it, and
relatable, I’m sure, for many of the people visiting fimfiction. Love is
something we all feel in some aspect of our lives. It’s all encompassing yet
beyond description, for you peasants at least. Something vague and ethereal
like that can be depicted however the depictor see fit without overreaching any
kind of boundary in terms. The author of this story did just that, and fiddled
us a standard fare image of teenage love. I accepted, reluctantly a bit maybe,
but the humanity is there.
This is
also an example of opposites match, with Eris’ crude, unrefined, troublemaking
behavior weighing against Butterscotch’s meek, withdrawn, courteous style okay-ly. I didn’t feel like Eris was as big of a meanie as the story tried getting across. Instead, I racked my head away from my computer screen and onto the
fact that everyone was a douchebag to her for no reason. This was never
addressed, if it was indeed part of writer’s intention.
Here comes
the disconnect––why couldn’t the story have been about this? A Fluttershy
fable, showing off her bestest characteristics. The others would’ve been
douchebags to Eris, Butterscotch would’ve defended her and the thing would
escalate accordingly until Butterscotch exploded at them, causing them to
reconsider and better their ways. It’s a perfect little premise for a simple
little story such as this one. Considering what we learn up until the
culmination at the end, I was totally convinced this would be the writer’s
unexpected, twist, surprise ending, it simply doesn’t make sense otherwise. The
mid-story infodump we get on the background between Eris and the mane six would’ve
been all for nothing, and hoh, by the way, don’t even get me started on that.
There’s reason they call the beginning of a story “the exposition”, because the
only best alternative to cutting off a conversation with heaps of information
that ought to be conveyed gradually is to limit it to the story’s exposition (there’s also some
other reasons but they aren’t important…).
The
characters dip in being two-dimensional, with the gist of their actions and behavior
obstructed by poor dialogue tagging that explains what would be easier to
assume. To be more exact, there are a lot of saidisms, as well as action tags
coupled with explanations on why and how a character does something, all
requires deciphering (in other words, relating them back to a character) and little is actually stated about their feelings. You
can only get so far, using adverbs, as apposed to relating things to the reader
using a character’s five senses, which is more effective for the most part. Otherwise, the
portrayals are done surprisingly well and the characters aren’t just cardboard
cutouts, for whatever it’s worth, which is a lot, probably. Another thing––very
confusing metaphors when showing is actually used: “,’ Berry had said with all
the speed that sound could travel with.” (Psst! Plus, there’s a grammar error
in there…)
One last
thing about the dialogue, bear with me still- no, you know what? I’ll show you,
this: “‘Of course Berry.’ Dusk Shine replied. ‘We wouldn’t miss it for the
world. Also you shouldn’t do that, you could get hurt.’” Punctuation error in
there, I know. Also, notice how the dialogue emotes. Speaking of notes, I
scrambled this down on a word document in my computer as I was reading: “Calculated dialogue, as apposed to reaction in words”. What I mean by
that is, the dialogue’s alive in a sense, because it’s a representation of
characters’ feelings and thoughts in compression, as apposed to real-life
dialogue, which isn’t streamlined, ineffectively enough.
The two
statements made by Dusk Shine are discordant and adding “also” between them
isn’t going to change that. Let’s springboard from that into calculated
dialogue as a general theme. The second and less obvious problem with this
specific piece of dialogue is that it conveys the character, without actually
conveying anything else. In the context of the story, Berry [???Crunch???]
slides down the banister outside the school entrance; first character tic,
whereupon Dusk Shine goes: “You shouldn’t do that, you could get hurt.”; second
character tic. This didn’t add anything to the story. It conveyed nothing
except for Berry’s quirkiness and Dusk Shine’s killjoyness and if these
characters are who I think they are, ––which, to be honest, isn’t really that
hard to guess––it doesn’t matter a gosh, darn, damn bit, does it? Even so, it’s distracting
as a matter of course when you break off the happenings of the story with a
small piece of character fodder like this, which happens repeatedly throughout Catching Butterflies.
To scrub up
the things I’ve missed, there’s also a general problem of indecisiveness with
the narrator who kind of, sort of thinks like this, or that! Once again, like
the dialogue tags, the narrative doesn’t emote, though there are elements of
showing. If the characterization on Eris and her interplay with the male/female
mane six mesh is the strongest aspect of this story, this is definitely the weakest.
Next, time and location is conveyed through loopy cursive with an out-of-place
meta joke shoved in there; a completely useless mechanic when such information
could easily be made implicit (which it is, mostly).
Here, I
want to make it clear that I was charmed. I laughed and felt a little awkward
at times, while I stand by all the issues noted in this review. It was a
fun, innocent little time, riddled with problems of different sizes, some of
them fixable. Part of the “literary” (big quotation
marks) cynicism in me died when I read this, which isn’t a small compliment to
say the least. On the other hand, it really isn’t presentable at all and
certainly far from A-grade material. I 100% acknowledge the effort and humanity
that went into writing this story, flounder as it may do on many other levels.
Fuck recommending/unrecommending it! You yourself decide. I know I’ve done mah
job well if it comes to that. Heheh, I’m pancake!
