Reading Pony Fiction 'Til I Croak: Waffle Critiques: Negotiations

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/301668/negotiations

“I’m not worth it, I know,” the waffle encrusted.

I’ve never seen a story with two pre-readers and three editors that has so many grammatical errors, quite astonishing actually. Mmm, a kick in the back for you, and no doubt you feel to stab me, don’t you? With that knife of yours, which you hold in your flimsy hands, but I rarely mention anyone involved in or out of the process of penning in these review-thingies because it’s gotten me in trouble before, oops! How does it feel being called out anyway? Like, meaningful or something? Probably not, hmm, I shouldn’t try to flatter myself like that.

In an apocalyptic Conversion Bureau-future, the ponies came to our human world, started a war and lost. Not so misanthropic now, are you, people? Yes, I’ve seen a lot of people-friendly stories lately and I like it; they’re a little more equivocal usually. Anyway! Twilight––who’s capitulated––is stuck with a raw deal and has to negotiate her sexy butt out of it with a U.N. representative of the world Earth and they’ve a surprisingly ideological conversation filled with drama and hapless candor. From one end of the negotiating table to another:

1. Grammar and Style……………………………………………………

2. Structural Integrity – Part 1: Superfluous Bits………………………

3. Storytelling Dynamics………………………………………………

4. Suspension of My Disbelief – Part 1: Borrowed Tension……………

5. Structural Integrity – Part 2: Preamble to the Deconstruction……

6. Structural Integrity – Part 3: The Deconstruction……………………

7. Structural Integrity – Part 4: The Summary…………………………

8. Suspension of My Disbelief – Part 2: A Weird Subtext……………

9. Suspension of My Disbelief – Part 3: Affected Pathos……………

10. Final Conclusive Summary…………………………………………

SPOILER WARNING: Warning for extensive spoilers, especially in section 4 and onward.

…

1. Grammar and Style

Silliness aside, for a story with two pre-readers and three editors, I’ve literally never seen so many grammatical and stylistic issues. Here are the notes I took on them from the beginning to about halfway through the story:

Disclaimer: Parentheses and brackets inside of quotes, not part of quotes

Enumeration, conjunction: “… families, griffins, [and] even…”

“… Africa, South America[,] and such (such? such countries? Countries/areas like […] such wanted, grammatically incorrect) wanted…”

Was enough was enough! (“I researched their bloody history and figured that this alone was enough was enough for us to change their ways.”)

The following sentence contains a statement, not a question, and “… was to combined” has the wrong tense of the word “combine” (“It made me wonder what would happen if magic and technology was to combined?”)

Princess Celestia is not but has a mindset (“It was a different mind-set than Princess Celestia[‘s]; …”)

I’mma nod you in the butt!! (“The door opened and the guard nodded [at/for] me to enter.”)

This part doesn't flow well (“I did my best to look as calm as possible, but inside[,] I was ready to teleport. Well, chances are[,] (or) [that] I wouldn't be able to.”)

Careful about your dramatic pauses (“It sounded... so wrong to me. To think that humans could make something so powerful... render our greatest strength to nothing so quickly.”)

Use a preposition or relative pronoun for clarity, or separate the sentence into two clauses, the narration changes perspective between Twilight and Doyle and in a way that is confusing (“The door closed behind me and I was left alone with a single human at a table, [with] (or) [2.and] (or) [3.who had a] a set of notes [2.was] in front of him.”)

Second sentence is a dependent clause, because “like” is used upon presenting a simile (“I’ve been under them before and it felt wrong. Like a part of my soul was being sucked away.”)

You probably want to either put a comma in front of “continued,” as he “continued [speaking]” or specify what he “continued” doing in-sentence, as a reasonable stylistic choice (“I didn’t say anything, but he continued. “The reason I am here is because, …”)

The hyphen is used as if it is an en or em dash, you can’t use a hyphen for an aside, as far as I know (“‘It’s because of her, her ponies, and some humans who don’t want to commit genocide-like you tried to do-that want to make sure we can have a peaceful co-existence,’ said Mr. Doyle.”)

I see no reason why “They were happy.” can’t be a part of the previous sentence, so perhaps to improve the flow, one could add a semicolon maybe? (“I admit there were complications, but they were peaceful. They were happy.”)

Nor the right… ” (nor is a conjunction used upon inviting a further negative statement, as with after using the word “neither,” for instance, and by the nature of the word, can only introduce a dependent clause and should therefore not be in its own sentence) (“ …You had no right to force us to become something we never wanted to become. Nor the right to limit what we could think, feel, or choose.”)

“… almost came close to…” redundancy (“‘Humanity has always learned by failing and falling. We fall one step, but rise two more. It’s the way we learn, Ms. Sparkle. From what I understand, your kind almost came close to extinction as well if not for a miracle.’ He leaned forward. ‘Strange how there are no historical records of the time before that.’”)

Also:

Huuuuh? ;I (“My horn flickered a bit out of anger.”)

Whatever, you know, whatever. Still, the problem goes beyond this since it’s also a matter of phrasing spouting dissonant lines of prose, or such that doesn’t even make sense, like this confusing metaphor which charges light bulbs with meaningless meaning: “… almost lifeless if not for the small light bulbs they had.” Another example is: “The yaks were this close to declaring war on us, …” This close? How close?

There're also milder examples like "Never before had I, or any Equestrian for that matter, ever dealt with such a strange race such as humanity at the negotiating table.” or “According to some of my reports, there were a few countries that didn’t hate us in areas like North America and a few European countries.” which fold back on themselves and gratuitously repeat words and phrases (“such as” and “countries”).

What shouldn’t be its own sentence is, namely: “I had cried for Pinkie Pie. Rarity. The Crusaders. All the ponies that died in the bombing of Ponyville.” Sentences need to say something (a complete thought) and at the very least, contain a subject and a verb, to be grammatically correct, and I don’t accept this as a stylistic choice. It’s hard to read and the punctuation makes the narration linger for too long, like a kind of affectedly self-imposed incoherency. Mouthfuls aside, it’s not good, and it’s so distractingly noticeable that I probably wouldn’t bother. Here’s another example:

“The discussion continued on to other topics. What areas ponies could travel to and the same for humans in each others land. Protection from radicals on both sides. Economics. What we were allowed to have military-wise.” None of these are their own sentences; they’re each part of an enumeration of the subjects Twilight spent her night discussing. “What areas ponies could travel to and the same for humans in each others land.” and “Protection from radicals on both sides.” are not main clauses for instance and you can see how “what” acts as a relative pronoun in the first sentence and not as a subject, and how the second doesn’t even contain a verb. Once again, I vehemently disagree with this style of writing, since to me it looks really ugly and as a result, breaks my immersion to pieces, to small toothpick pea sets made of feces. Yeah, point made.

“But no... she didn’t listen. None of them did. And now we’re paying the price for doing the right thing. What made it worse was that Discord joined her, his loyalty was to her first and foremost. And with him helping humanity, despite his magic being limited on their side of the world, we had even tougher opponents than before. All because Lyra Heartstrings couldn’t keep her damn monkey-loving mouth shut.” The fourth sentence within this paragraph obviously contains two main clauses, without a conjunction (a comma splice). More importantly though, coordinating conjunctions (conjunctions used to join main clauses) are used at the beginning of sentences to a fault. All the “ands” and “buts” quickly become noticeable because they’re words that continue on something previously stated, and you’ll hence traditionally find them within sentences, as apposed to on their outset.

In terms of mode, the fanfic is a first-person, personal garble with Twilight as the narrator, whose voice remains intact from beginning to end, a little too intact in fact, to the point where clarity is actually sacrificed for character. What I mean by that is that sound linguistics are challenged by the theatrics of the prose, case in point: “It sounded... so wrong to me. To think that humans could make something so powerful... render our greatest strength to nothing so quickly.” Twilight certainly isn’t shy about her dramatic pauses; I think the presence of the narrator overrides the integrity of the writing, basically. Another way to put it, if you want it in more technical terms, is that the viewpoint character––Twilight––and the narrator are completely inseparable.

Making a story work completely from the perspective of a certain character in terms of grammar, style, perspective, etc., and still have it be a well-presented story, is extremely difficult, and the rule-breaking endeavors within this fanfic simply aren’t dynamic, and therefore not convincing. The use of short, choppy, verbless sentences; spontaneous bouts of ellipses for consecutive dramatic pauses, within paragraphs; and starting sentences with a coordinating conjunction instead of joining them together, are an example of this, language meant to feel as if it’s coming from a specific character as they’re telling the story, but that mostly serves to break immersion, only because these techniques are so infinitely overused, and all for the purpose of pacing the narrative, which you don’t have to break the rules or commit stylistic sins in order to do.

…

2. Structural Integrity – Part 1: Superfluous Bits

The premise be praised, because it’s conducive to so much tension and characterly hardship, which is bad for the characters––a regrettably, much exploited social class of fiction––but good for us. According to the premise, there was somehow a portal between Equestria and Earth, which lead to the discovery of humans. Ponies came to find that humanity is a terrible, murderous, sinful race, thus Equestria declared war against Earth and systematically genocided any people who would not be converted a la Bureau-style. Humanity won, a formidably gruesome victory, if I say so myself, which I do, and- err, what’s this:

No, I can’t cry now. I can’t cry for the thousands if not hundreds of thousands dead... I can’t cry for Cadance or my niece. At least not now. I had cried for Shining Armor during the invasion of New York City. I had cried for Pinkie Pie. Rarity. The Crusaders. All the ponies that died in the bombing of Ponyville. My parents in the Siege of Canterlot. Princess Luna in the Battle for Jerusalem. I lost so much.

Hey, you summarized it for me! Because of all this, Twilight must negotiate a peace deal with U.N. representative Anthony Doyle, a… negotiation, if you so will, and this is the story.

By the way, that paragraph which happened to quote itself stuck out to me. The pre-readers must’ve liked it but personally, I thought it was ill advised. It’s a laundry list––the horrible grammar almost makes it look like a bullet point list––of dead ponies. I don’t see why I need to know how X pony died in Y or something like that. It seems needlessly macabre and isn’t important to the story even, really. All I, as a reader, need to now in a narrative sense, is that everyone Twilight knew, except for Spike and Celestia, are dead. The same goes for this paragraph:

I didn’t like it, but I had little choice in the matter. They held all the cards. Two of my friends were dead, as were two of the four alicorn princesses while another was in a comma. I was the last princess remaining to hold any power. Applejack had joined a rebel group to continue the war with Rainbow Dash, neither of whom agreed with my surrender (another two friends I had lost). Fluttershy was no longer my friend after her betrayal. The six of us who defended Equestria for years were broken. Our friendship was dead.

What do you mean, “They held all the cards”? All of Twilight’s friends and loved ones could yet be at her side and they would still hold all the cards. It’s just a phrase, followed by a non sequitur. What is it about Cadance’s and Luna’s deaths, as well as Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s ill-advised act of seppuku that put the stakes for the negotiation in humanity’s favor and why does this matter? To me, this looks like thinly veiled window dressing for another obituary, since this reason for referring back to her dead friends is so weak, i.e.: “They held all the cards.”

Everyone Twilight knew are dead, and that’s terrible, is there anything more to it? This isn’t a 200,000-word epic. It’s a 4000-word short story, and so, I would practice some editorial discretion with the gruesome and unpleasant-to-read lists of tragedies, that are irrelevant to the plot by the way, if I were the author. Anyhow, I also found these paragraphs interesting:

I was escorted by my own personal guards along with those of the U.N. I could feel their hatred even without staring at them, and knew that some of them wanted nothing more than to shoot us and be done with it. If this was the attitude of just these few soldiers in this underground bunker, I feared what the rest of the world would be like.

According to some of my reports, there were a few countries that didn’t hate us in areas like North America and a few European countries. Other places like what remained of the areas once known as the Middle East, Africa, South America and such wanted nothing more than for us to be wiped out. Our surrender to humanity likely saved us from being exterminated via their nuclear missiles like... like the Crystal Empire...

Knowing what countries does or doesn’t hate ponies might seem compelling, but how does it help the story? This stood out to me during my second reread, how for all practical purposes, these two paragraphs convey exactly the same thing. The only difference it that the second tells us which continents does or doesn’t “hate” the ponies of Equestria. It seems hairsplitting, since it’s never relevant to the predicament of the characters, nor does it help to build atmosphere in my opinion, since it’s stating the obvious––we can infer that most of the world hates Equestria based on the first paragraph, which makes the second one feel repetitive and therefore, superfluous.

Atmospheric tidbits are fine and we can think of every paragraph of the exposition as its own insular information packet that is each supposed to convey something different about the “world of Negotiations” as it were, which I think is completely reasonable since this is a 4000-word, alternative universe story, which can afford to dawdle in details as long as it keeps with the overall length of the story, and more importantly, remains interesting. I think it does, aside from the three paragraphs after “No pressure, huh?”, which I found corny in their meta-ness, and all the paragraphs about Twilight’s dead friends and Fluttershy’s betrayal, which seemed really trite and out-of-place, considering none of it is ever never brought up again, nor is it even remotely relevant to the characters at hand and as far as world-building goes, it’s strangely, barely even mentioned or explained, in manner that seems lackadaisical and mean-spirited, since we aretalking about dead ponies and Fluttershy.

However, aside from the aforementioned examples, there really isn’t any meaningful waste of space with regard to the exposition, which clocks in at around a comfortable 1,000 words: a fourth of the story, and elegantly floats together, from intercutting descriptions of Twilight approaching the negotiating room, to the dialogue-heavy portion of the fanfic. The conversation between Twilight and Doyle continues into exposition territory for around 1,500 words, and the tension that need be to keep the reader’s interest comes from the shared malice between one and the another, only after which the central conflict––the question of Celestia’s execution––of the story comes into focus, and the next 1,500 words are spent on escalating this conflict, which looks to pay off in a “best bad decision” (but really doesn’t, we’ll get to that); let her die or abandon peace, and ends with a single paragraph that summarizes Twilight’s feelings about the situation. All in all, this is a very evenly structured story.

…

3. Storytelling Dynamics (or, what is the optimal way of telling this story?)

Of course, I can’t look inside the author’s head and see his/her intentions, in writing the story, but I don’t think it impertinent to believe that I can make some pretty educated guesses. For instance, the sentence “My horn flickered a bit out of anger.” is supposed to be evocative as apposed to confusing. I may assume that she had a little magic outburst and that this made her horn flicker, but it’s a logical leap in my head, far enough that after the second or so it takes to figure it out, it will already have brought me out of the story.

Very theatrical showing dramatics, coming from the author: “He slammed his hand down and I flinched, backing away.” I can appreciate that but a few notes of contention and maybe I’m being nitpicky, granted, however, part of the action is strikingly unspecific, going from a description of what they are doing to “backing away.” Doesn’t that just stink when you read it? It’s like “yeah, he punched his fist into the table and oh, oh, oh, yeeeeeah, she jerks herself away from him, twistingly” and then it goes “eh, um, she moves… aback?” How about “I flinched away from him”?

“‘Is responsible for everything that has happened,’ stated Doyle, slowly standing up.” Let’s take a moment to deconstruct this dialogue tag, which I find characteristic for this story. Firstly, Doyle didn’t “state” that Celestia “is responsible for everything,” nor did he “declare it,” “assert it” or “announce it”; he “said” it. None of those other words actually describe what’s happening and instead adds subsequent meaning where it isn’t welcome. I mean, is it really of interest to me as a reader that the aforementioned piece of dialogue is “stated”?

It also forces another logical leap, and this is why the principle of “show, don’t tell” is so important, because when you write narrative prose, everything has to be crystal clear as it goes on because you want to immerse the reader, which in itself, is storytelling in a nutshell. While reading, one barely notices the said tag “said,” barring violent repetition of the word, but “stated,” because of the logical leap, is obtrusively noticeable, and you don’t want to go back over a sentence a second time to understand what’s happening since it reminds the mind that it’s reading a story. I believe words like “said” or maybe a said tag that relates to the action of speaking like “yelled” or “spat out” would be better than simply saying that Doyle “stated” his feelings, which we know.

Secondly, Doyle stated it, “slowly standing up.”? Adverbs aren’t quite words of showing, but they don’t break immersion necessarily, as much as they draw attention to themselves. I suggest to use them sparingly or not at all, but I’m sure some would disagree with me. In my experience, the eye will stop for a moment at an adverb to decipher it, since it isn’t quite action or exposition but an expository device that informs action, and this is also why in my experience, it’s better to put the adverb after the verb if you can, because the eye will gloss over the sentence to find the action to associate the adverb with, and it becomes easier to lose immersion in the brief downtime, when the narration loses its momentum.

“‘Is responsible for everything that has happened,’ said Doyle, standing up, though slowly.”

This was the best I could do, using the word “slowly” to inform the action of “standing up”. I put in the conjunction “though” to keep the sentence from feeling disjointed. Of course, this looks clumsy and is kind of unreadable as action, because now “though” brings an unwanted emphasis to the adverb of “slowly” instead. It’s not unusual that this happens, which is why I don’t like adverbs very much. My suggestion: “‘Is responsible for everything that has happened,’ said Doyle, rising to his feet.” Specific wording (“rising” as apposed to “standing slowly”) always trumps the use of adverbs in the mode of action.

Here are all the instances of the word “sigh” being used in a said or action tag, together with their respective pieces of dialogue:

I sat down and for a while neither of us spoke. Mr. Doyle then sighed and leaned back on his chair. “For the record, nobody can hear us inside of here. There are no mics, recordings, or anything of the sort. Nobody will attack, hurt, or kill you while you are a guest and trust me, there are a good number of us humans who want you dead.”

“They were programmed to be what you wanted them to be,” said Mr. Doyle with a sigh.

Mr. Doyle sighed. “Let me ask you one last thing, Twilight Sparkle. Your overall goal was to make us ponies and build a new Equestria here on Earth. One of peace and friendship, right?”

Mr. Doyle shook his head and sighed. “Who's been controlling the sun and moon in your old world since you’ve been here?”

“Ms. Sparkle,” said Mr. Doyle as he got up and sighed. “For what it’s worth I am sorry.”

The common theme seems to be that Doyle is wise and above the fray, but the use of the word “sigh” to communicate this is too on the nose, in my opinion. He “shook his head and sighed,” and “leaned back on his chair and sighed,” did he? It’s too direct and in your face, and dare I say it, a little cartoony. Obviously, if that’s what happening in your inner storytelling mind then that’s what you should write but as I read it, I think: You don’t really believe that, that he “leaned back on his chair and sighed,” that’s not what someone actually does before what is probably the most important negotiation in the history of humanity. It smells is what it does.

Here’s a really nice exposition paragraph:

I finally made it to a steel door where one of our human escorts swiped a card and typed some code in a computer. Human technology was always so amazing to see, even now. To think an entire race did this without magic. It made me wonder what would happen if magic and technology was to combined? It was a different mind-set than Princess Celestia; she hated their technology. She told me that their scientific advancements were always for the name of preserving humanity, yet everything they created they also used to destroy or abuse. They had destroyed their environment and were killing each other by the millions-sometimes billions-each century.

One card swipe is diverted into lines and lines of text, delineating Twilight’s feelings, and then Celestia’s, on human technology. The crux of this is to show us where they differ on humanity in a subtle way, because it becomes important, later in the story. Grammatical problems that I pointed out earlier aside, this is a very seamless paragraph of emotional exposition, which is hard to deliver naturally in the mode of exposition if you need it to foreshadow something, because while the backstory may foreshadow, it is often immediately relevant to what’s happening in-story and therefore, easier to immerse the reader with, but when it comes to exposition about the characters’ emotions, the reader will wonder about a piece of information whose only purpose is to foreshadow, and the author understanding that––at least instinctually––is why this transition works so well: from card swipe and code typing, which is immediately relevant; and Twilight’s fascination with human technology, which is indirectly relevant; to Celestia’s resentment against human technology, which is of tertiary relevance and unrelated to the rest of the exposition, but flows together with the exposition nevertheless, because of the way that the information was sequenced.

I would’ve rephrased this one so it doesn’t eject droplets of exposition like it does now, which the flawed style of writing that enumerates information too much is––in my opinion––tangentially responsible for:

Original: I had so many to cry for but I couldn’t afford to now; I had to be as strong as I could for my little ponies. The fate of our nation, my people, and the comatose Princess Celestia, who was kept in secret below Canterlot, was in my hooves. And I was all alone. That was the request, myself and myself only.

What I would do: I had so many to cry for but I couldn’t afford to now; I had to be as strong as I could (I’m not saying it!). The fate of our nation, my people, and Princess Celestia, who was kept in secret below Canterlot, was in my hooves. (Now I’ll move the part about Celestia in the Thalmann-generator paragraph and change it around a bit.) She had used nearly all her magic to protect us from the nuclear missiles (conjecture) and the resulting fatigue threw her into a coma. I was all alone. Myself and myself only, that was the request. (There we go, much more natural in my opinion.)

The reason why I moved the part about Celestia being in a coma into its own sentence is because it came out of nowhere, in the original version. It was like a slap in the face: WHAP! That’s a pretty big bombshell to drop on the fly, bullet-point style, and then expect the reader to forget about a second later, only to be unceremoniously returned to and explained a few paragraphs later, so I thought it deserved its own sentence upon the reader learning it.

To summarize, the action is fine but generally too adverb-y for my taste, the fanfic barely contains any description of setting, and the exposition yo-yos between strong flow and downright tasteless irrelevancy to the plot. As for the dialogue, which I haven’t forgotten about, and which constitutes the bulk of the story, I’ll talk more about in a later section of the critique. Rest assured that I don’t think there is anything wrong with the character voices, in terms of diction at least, or I would’ve mentioned it previously, but I do want to talk about characterization and the tone of the dialogue and I can only do that in the later section. Any other comments I could make on the dialogue are inseparable from that.

4. Suspension of My Disbelief (or, internal logic processing mechanism… ACTIVATE!) – Part 1: Borrowed Tension

Yeah, I’m now going to comment on the substance of the story in a totally objective way… not! There is no such thing, obviously. First, I must say that the idea of this story in and of itself is fascinating, definitely “conducive to tension” but also just a really cool idea for a fanfic. My initial premonition was that the fate of the world would come to rest on this single, momentous negotiation between Twilight and a human in a battle of the minds and instead, it turned out to be a rather personal story about Twilight and her losses, and the negotiation is more a corollary to that than a natural conclusion of it. Granted, reading the description, especially the short form of it, maybe I was remiss to assume but I do think that would’ve been a lot more interesting regardless. This may also be because melancholy is not my cup of tea. You get into it and immediately you’re supposed to identify with Twilight, mulling over the prize of war. I’m not a defeatist and I doubt I’ll ever be faced with unequivocal defeat, as in this fanfic, and make no mistake about it: this is a story about defeat. The plot line begins and ends with defeat, and Twilight’s losses run deep, so you’d better make me care, because relate, I can not. Am I unfair to judge the story for what it isn’t? Don’t know; don’t care, but here are my biases I guess, if that’s how you want to take it.

The exposition exposits general background knowledge on the war and Twilight’s feelings versus Celestia’s on humans, and the necessary information to know the course the war took. Why it happened and how it finally ended is all pretty much handed to the reader on a silver platter in the opening part of the story. Point is, you can more or less piece together how the story is going to end through the exposition. Neither through misanthropy nor ponythropy, but rather, Celestiathropy! Yep, because when Celestia left Equestria behind, there was no one to raise and lower the sun and moon which means, in Twilight’s words, that everyone was “Either burned by an eternal sun or frozen to death under an eternal moon.” Does that mean Luna is evil too? Well, never mind! But wow, how boring! Way to send moral ambiguity out the window and away with the wind. Without an interesting conflict, the only thing left is frothy melancholy and bullet point lists of dead ponies.

The entirety of the story––both the exposition and the rising action––is in substance one long build-up to the reveal of Celestia being the big, bad villain all along, and Twilight not knowing this is the only thing, keeping the conflict between Doyle and her together, which is mind-shattering because the conflict is eventually resolved by Doyle practically outright telling her what she’s supposed to know, so this of course begs the question: why didn’t he do it when she entered the negotiating room? Why did he have to wait until there was time for a dramatic reveal at the end of the story, before he would do it? Can you believe what sort of tension easing that would’ve done, if he had just explained it to her after she entered?

“Yeah, so your mentor and supposed benevolent ruler who instigated the war was really an evil tyrant all along, who would’ve thunk?” And she would’ve been like: “I’m sorry... for everything.” Except at the beginning of the story instead of 4000 words in. I think the negotiation would’ve gone a lot smoother if those were the conditions but whatever. Wouldn’t want to spoil a much suspenseful plot twist, would we, huh? Even the scene where it is revealed is written weirdly, with Doyle basically badgering her to hand over Celestia until this happens, literally out of nowhere:

Mr. Doyle sighed. “Let me ask you one last thing, Twilight Sparkle. Your overall goal was to make us ponies and build a new Equestria here on Earth. One of peace and friendship, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“In your old world, Princess Celestia and Luna controlled the sun and the moon, but they can’t do it here, right?”

“Yes, that was one of the first things we discovered,” I said, a sinking feeling growing in my stomach.

“And back in your old world there were other races. Griffins, zebras, dragons, minotaurs, yaks, changelings, diamond dogs, deer and more right?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?!” I demanded.

Mr. Doyle shook his head and sighed. “Who's been controlling the sun and moon in your old world since you’ve been here?”

...

... No.

…

Yes, it’s true! I can’t believe it too, Twilight; you were actually about to make a “best bad decision” (when a character has to choose between two or more terrible alternatives) and maybe go through some type of, um… character development! Never mind that Twilight didn’t figure it out herself; I’m not questioning that though I do find it dubious, but Doyle didn’t tell her about it either? It shatters my suspension of disbelief, honestly, and ironically, what might have made story work would’ve been if this plot device didn’t exist, and Twilight actually would have to choose between Celestia’s death and war. It would also solidify the theme of this story as “loss” and the falling action maybe could’ve dealt with how you handle loss and what the prize of losing something you won’t get back is, from Twilight’s perspective.

Another issue I have is that this story deals in something I call “borrowed tension”: when all the tension between the protagonist and antagonist is derived from something that happened before the story began. The emotional stakes for the story are vestiges of a war in which––of the narrator’s own admission––ponykind are the aggressors and Twilight is a hapless victim of circumstance, and that’s how we’re supposed to empathize with her. She’s obviously deluded herself into thinking what Equestria was doing is okay, since humanity is eventually, unambiguously portrayed as being in the right, and I contend that this is immediately apparent upon reading the exposition. This is what the story was going for: flamboyantly portraying Twilight as the hapless victim and Anthony Doyle as wise and above-it-all, and pretty angry for a government official.

Everyone––both pony and man––is unambiguously in the right, and I stress this because the tension doesn’t primarily come from the misunderstanding between Twilight and Doyle, with regard to Celestia, since she doesn’t come into the conversation until after ca. 3000 words into the story and 2000 words into Twilight and Doyle’s conversation, but rather, it’s derived from past transgressions in the form of shared malice between two sides in a bloody war. It’s derived from the past basically, and the characters’ predicaments in-story simply aren’t that interesting, especially since I could––as I said––easily figure out which side was in the right and which side was in the wrong, solely based on the exposition of the story.

What’s interesting is how Celestia managed to manipulate Twilight, who is a very smart character in her own right, and how Anthony Doyle and Twilight knew each other during war, which they did, according to her, but those things happened way before it even began, so while Negotiations may have the anatomy of a well-structured story in terms of narrative, for all practical purposes, it isn’t, because it deals in “borrowed tension” with the pretense of an actual conflict.

The issue––for me––with this fanfic is that it has a predictable story and that once you figure the beats, both of the characters and conflict, it becomes a lot less engaging, and because of “borrowed tension,” the tension between the characters is house of cards-tier weak and a light breeze could cause it to tumble over. It only need be that the plot twist is revealed for it to happen, because when it happens, you come to the realization that there never really needed to be a conflict in the first place.

…

5. Structural Integrity – Part 2: Preamble to the Deconstruction

Did it sound like I was done? Pfft, not by a long shot! Riddle me this, whoever’s reading, what do you call it when you know something’s wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it? Intuition? Schizophrenia? There’s something oddly methodical yet strangely dramatic about the way that this story is written. Let’s return to two paragraphs that I criticized for being superfluous, because my hunch is there’s something about them that I missed:

First, I’ll go on and make the fickle distinction between emotional exposition and background exposition: information intended to inform about a character’s thoughts and feelings, and information intended to inform about the internal logic of the story and its events. The reason for the qualifier “intended to inform” is that both types of exposition are often reactive to the other. For instance, you might write, “Sarah was so angry. It was horrible! She couldn’t believe how angry she was.” Or you write: “Sarah was so angry, because her father had died from murder! It was horrible! She couldn’t believe that someone had murdered him.”

We learn that Sarah's father was murdered, but let’s say we already know this. Then what is the point of reiterating his death to the reader? It’s because it’s “intended to inform” about the character’s inner feelings and their personal predicament. One sentence tells us that she's sad and the other that she's sad, and the reason why––her father's death, so the other gives us a better understanding of her sadness. Both are still emotional exposition but one contains concrete information while the other does not. Background exposition, on the other hand, is information that’s necessary to be able to follow the plot of the story. Let's say that the story's about Sarah's revenge, but we're never told why she wants revenge. We can't very well expect to logically make sense of her actions, without that, so it's plot-necessary.

Note that both of these are often interchangeable, as well they should be, and when they aren’t, you may still find components of both in either kind of exposition, which makes the standard slightly interpretive. It will become apparent very soon why I make this distinction, but to be certain, there are qualitative differences in how you deliver each, and challenges that come as a result.

The issue with exposition, not just in the mode of exposition but also in its figurative sense of “information in general” in a story, is always the relevance of the information conveyed, first and foremost. In this sense, I have already established how I think these two paragraphs fail. Now, I’ll do my interpretive dance and try to figure out why these two paragraphs that tell the reader absolutely nothing, exist. Rest assured that I acknowledge this is completely subjective, and I’m not trying to act an authority on the subject; it’s just that I genuinely believe I can make some pretty educated assumptions.

What do the two aforementioned paragraphs have in common? The grammatically bumbling, so-called “bullet point list” style of writing that I criticized in the Structural Integrity-section of this critique comes to mind. The plot thickens, so for what purpose? Not for informing us that most of the world, except for some parts of Europe and North America hates Equestria, or that Luna died in the “Battle for Jerusalem,” I don’t think. These are significant names and significant history, in the context of Negotiations, according to Twilight. Here’s the final puzzle piece: all the name drops. I’ll try to summarize as much as I can in a bullet point list of my own, wherein I emphasize the name drops. Everything in quotes is taken directly from the story and if you read the two paragraphs above, I think you’ll agree that nothing is taken out of context:

“Countries” that doesn’t hate Equestria:

· A “few” countries North America

· A “few” countries in Europe

“Countries” that does hate Equestria:

· “What remained of” the area “once known as” Africa

· “What remained of” the area “once known as” South America

· “What remained of” the area “once known as” The Middle East

Areas “exterminated via their nuclear missiles”:

· “The Crystal Empire…”

That’s the first paragraph, and here is the second one, bulletpointed:

Some of the “thousands if not hundreds of thousands dead” whom Twilight “cried for” and where some of them died:

· Cadance

· Twilight’s niece

· Shining Armor in the “invasion of New York City”

· Pinkie Pie

· Rarity

· The Crusaders

· The population of Ponyville, in the “bombing of Ponyville”

· Twilight’s parents in the “Siege of Canterlot”

· Princess Luna in the “Batte for Jerusalem”

The fanfic is invested in aspects of its own lore that the plot isn’t, and it isn’t subtle when you think about it. Fluttershy betrayed Twilight for humanity; Rainbow Dash and Applejack became rebels and funnily enough, two of them did die in some nondescript way, but that may have been in the “bombing of Ponyville” too. It’s difficult to see because of how the paragraph is laid out. And Lyra Heartstrings of course betrayed ponydom for humanity, which was genuinely funny in a self-aware kind of way. But, the author's effectively lying to the reader about why they should be invested in the story in all of the paragraphs I referenced above. The story isn’t about the “invasion of New York City,” Fluttershy’s betrayal, or the world demography of pony hatred; it’s a personal tale about loss, yet bigger and more important things outside of the scope of the story keep trying to rob it of its emotional focus.

If you’re going to spend a large section of a fanfic about a conversation between two people in a room, in a bunker in the middle of nowhere, describing large world-changing events, then I’m going to want to be there and see those decisions being made, and feel the characters going through the emotional turmoil that led to those decisions. I don’t want to be in some shitty military bunker and hear a conversation where they talk about those events, and that’s an inherent flaw of the story because it doesn’t want to own its central theme. All of Twilight’s big, dramatic, emotional moments are in direct reference to past sins, to before the story began, and not to her own plight, in the moment.

The emotional exposition does inform about Twilight’s inner feelings but not her personal predicament––her conflict this story within, and indeed, she doesn’t go through much of a conflict, as far we know. We can assume that her trust for Celestia keeps flailing gradually throughout the negotiation and that only at the end does she reach her breaking point, and maybe that’s true. I hope it’s true, but I dunno because the narrator (i.e. Twilight) refuses to tell me. This all goes back to the idea of “borrowed tension” with the pretense of a conflict and it demonstrates that the issue with the conflict isn’t only unambiguity but also that the poor emotional focus of the borrowed tension, towards the past, always towards the past, damages my ability to identify with Twilight, since I can’t quite follow with her on her emotional journey throughout this story, for reasons stated.

The tone of the two above paragraphs is also an issue. The first one is written in a droll and businessmanlike way, which accentuates the nonsensicality of the wording used: “According to some of my reports…” What does that mean? “Some” of your “reports” say that the populations of entire countries “hate” the ponies of Equestria? You mean like an opinion poll? It’s almost as if the author tries to make it sound more exciting than it really is, so it isn’t “opinion polls.” It’s a couple of those elusive, top-secret “reports” which compartmentalize something as subjective as public opinion into the two brackets of “does hate” and “doesn’t hate.” I think I’m being slightly nitpicky right now, but the contents of the paragraph are stated as fact and written to be taken at face value, so that’s what I’m doing.

The second one subsequently plunges into an emotional whirlwind of death and destruction, using the over-the-top anaphor of “I can’t cry for…” as a rhetorical device. Yeah, you’re very stealthily revealing that background information by leaning back on Twilight’s “cry for” pathos, which is emotional exposition. I’m so sucked in when she blithely mentions a bunch of apocalyptic, world-changing stuff in passing and uses “cry for” as an excuse to do it. This paragraph is obsessed with death, so it tells us morbid, horrible things in an overly emotional way that is designed to match the serious tone of its subject matter. No! Unearned pathos this way is, author. To invoke Ken Ham: “We weren’t theah, you can’t observe that.” You can’t expect us to care about something that you don’t put down any effort to make the reader identify with. To mention something in passing does not give us an understanding of it, emotionally. Rather, if you would actually show us how Twilight feels about it in a less heavy-handed and more direct way, that would be something entirely different. I’ll get to some examples of ways in which you can do that after the deconstruction. Wait! The deconstruction, I say?

…

6. Structural Integrity – Part 3: The Deconstruction

I’m going to make a breakdown of all the exposition paragraphs in the story in terms of emotional and background exposition, and some others too, which I’ll get to. Once again, the standard I use is somewhat subjective because I need to interpret the intentionality of the writing as either “intended to inform” about background or emotion or otherwise, and categorize it accordingly. With that said, I promise I’ll explain myself as clearly as I can. Note that this isn’t an editing job, and that I won’t search for grammatical or stylistic issues or quirks, in the writing. I only wish to explore the form and to an extent, the substance, of the exposition in this section.

I’ve explained “emotional exposition” and “background exposition,” but whoever reads this should know that these are pet terms of mine, and that they often don’t reflect whether exposition paragraphs are well put-together or not. What they do reflect is density of information, and howthis information, hopefully, serves the plot or the characters, or both. I feel remiss to explain this but I should anyway, for people who aren’t familiar with literary theory, so here goes:

The idea of being laconic stands above every other principle in storytelling, except for clarity, without which nothing else matters. It’s about effectiveness of form, which should in turn be dictated by the plot. The form of the story or what’s flatly referred to as the “execution,” shouldserve the plot dutifully, without spite or irreverence, or worse, self-centeredness. It’s a modest request that people are somewhat lambasted for, when they can’t live up to. Every one sentence is expected to have purpose but not only that, accomplish several things at once. First, give context to the plot; second, uphold an emotional subtext (show, don't tell); and third, create tone. An effective story, in whatever wicked way a story can be considered “effective,” is one that accomplishes these three things invariably. This is where the adage “less is more” comes from; the story is the focus, so the story you must aid in all that you do.

The reader doesn’t read your grammar, or your style, or your nifty dialogue tags even; they read the story and NOTHING ELSE BUT. Because, the story is the sum amalgam of all these things, not any of them by themselves. If two people are simply having an easygoing, jovial conversation, and all the other text is full of flowery words and big, grand descriptions, then that's one element pointing in one direction, and another pointing in the other. That is what I mean when I say that the execution should serve the plot. The tone of the writing should reflect what's actually going on, in the story. It sounds boring and discouraging to say, but in this sense, the author is severely limited by what the plot allows them to do.

It’s not complicated, what it boils down to. It's that everything that doesn’t lift the story, works against it, and almost aggressively sometimes too. Immersing the reader into the happenings of the story is the goal, after all, and the focus of the reader is laser-sharp since they’re actually trying to experience the story, and it tends to cut through all of the intentionality of the writing, both the thoughts and feelings, there or not, that you try to manipulate the reader to accept as real and true, in the moment, so when something’s affected, it shows, so it’s very important to know clearly what you want to say. Briefness is immersion’s best friend because it strengthens the immediacy of the narrative prose and gives it a stronger punch, a quality of being specific and forthright, which immersion craves. It also keeps the reader from being bored because 99 percent of the time, they read for the characters, and probably don’t want to slog through parts that doesn’t have anything to do with them.

Back to exposition, so, exposition should of course also adhere to this principle. Remember when I said that emotional exposition and background exposition are often interchangeable, well, how about we call that “interchangeable exposition,” for clarity’s sake. Interchangeable exposition is background exposition (information that’s relevant to the plot) but where a character’s thoughts and feelings regard the information that’s being conveyed, so there’s an emotional subtext. You can use certain “charged” words to shade the writing so as to suggest a character’s feelings, like a “large, gaping gap” for instance, as apposed to a “big door.” This is the art of implying an emotional subtext, a.k.a. “show, don’t tell” as its commonly known, through which you can inject a character’s perspective, into the writing.

Interchangeable exposition is superior to both because it gives the writing a strengthened quality of being laconic. Some consider it a necessity that they both are invariably interchangeable, which I understand, but it’s incredibly hard to accomplish in the mode of exposition because of how feelings and thoughts don’t always jive, and you can’t force-push them together either. All I ask is that you try, then I’m happy, and it’s not a big detriment if you can’t sometimes, either, but what adds to the laconic does.

There is one more type of exposition I didn’t mention. Curious, you say, and you might ask, what could it be? The dreaded Chekhov’s gun, of course, also known as the “space-filler,” also known as the “broken promise,” also known as purposeless. Well, not completely true, since if it’s not memorable and doesn’t self-centeredly and spitefully claim attention away from the rest of the story, it can be there, if only to put a fine point on either other kind of exposition, and give paragraphs a natural preamble and/or denouement. But it’s poison to have too much of it, because it undercuts and stabs a story’s quality of being laconic, and often to death too, to the point of no recovery. I call it “decorative exposition,” according to its expected purpose. It will also be part of my breakdown, so I hope none does mind.

I will color coordinate the paragraphs and explain it why I did, the parts I did, and relate it to how effective each part is in conveying the exposition and by extension, engaging the reader:

Blue: Action (which cuts into the exposition, occasionally)

Orange: Background exposition

Purple: Emotional exposition

Green: Interchangeable exposition

Red: Decorative exposition

Here we go:

I checked my papers for what had to be the sixteenth time. Usually Spike was here to help me keep my files organized, but I needed him back in Equestria to keep order. He had grown up so much since I first hatched him from his egg, and the war only made him mature faster than I would have liked. If the worst was to come from this meeting... Well, I trusted him to carry out the backup plans I had prepared just in case.

The first sentence is an action that suggests nervousness. The rest of it is pretty clear-cut, in my opinion. Knowing why Spike wasn’t there to help keep Twilight’s files organized isn’t necessary to be able to follow the plot, as a reader. Her reminiscing about the olden days of yonder, when Spike was hatched, isn’t either, but it does inform about her feelings, which would make it emotional exposition. The final sentence of the paragraph hints at “backup plans” that are never returned to, but in the moment, it utterly makes sense to the reader that Twilight might fail at whatever she’s doing, and backup plans are necessary, in case of failure, so it logically ends the paragraph, which was a window into Twilight’s emotional state, more than anything else.

I sucked in a deep breath before calmly following our guides down another corridor. It was time to see if Equestria would survive or be destroyed, and it all rested on my shoulders.

She anxiously treads corridor after corridor, in action, and the narration hints at what’s to come in one foreboding, simple, evocative sentence, in interchangeable exposition.

No pressure, huh?

A little on the nose there, don’t you think? You’ve already brought it home that Twilight is nervous, so there’s no need to state it out loud, and it ruins the entire purpose of communicating it indirectly through subtle means, as you’ve been doing so far.

I could remember the first time I ever had to represent Equestria with another race. It was almost a disaster. The yaks were this close to declaring war on us, and if it hadn’t been for Pinkie Pie I might have caused the first war in over five hundred years on Equestrian soil. But nothing happened then. We managed to preserve our harmony and peace. I dealt with other negotiations over time such as two warring families, griffins, even a dragon clan or two.

Here’s the first real issue I have––what the hell is this paragraph? It’s hammy as all ham to bring up Party Pooped, which was a fun, easygoing episode about angry snow buffalos, in a story about death and war, but even so, it’s not even relevant to relay. It’s total nonsense is what it is, and the only thing it does is to lead into this paragraph:

Now, however, I was going to be negotiating with a race that was more deadly than all of those we left back in our dimension. This was a race that I had known for only fifteen years. Sometimes they were brilliant, sometimes they were ruthless, and their seemingly erratic behavior scared me.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoh, humans!!! Everything is one, long emotional grunt, so emotional exposition, except for the sentence about for how long Twilight has been familiar with humanity. This has to be most stereotypical view of humanity ever, from Twilight nonetheless. Seriously, to sometimes be brilliant and sometimes be ruthless is considered “erratic” now? No, well, how so? Why? To quote a certain philosopher named Erasmus: “No man is wise at all times, or without his blind side.” People are empathic and people want to do good, whether they’re ruthless or brilliant or whatever, and Twilight should know this! She is surrounded by ponies of different stripes every day and they’re not caricatures of real-world people. Well, some of them are, arguably, but most aren’t. I simply have difficulty believing that Twilight of all ponies would generalize an entire ~~race~~species of people in such a juvenile way, as she does above.

Never before had I, or any Equestrian for that matter, ever dealt with such a strange race such as humanity at the negotiating table.

This sentence tells us that Twilight thinks the human race is “strange”: emotional exposition. Really, Twilight? You’re negotiating with a person who––by your own admission––was one of the only ones willing to give your sorry ass a chance and your instinct is to go on a childishly condescending diatribe about what a strange, curious race humanity is. Yeah, I read the author’s note and I know how it ends, but to think that Twilight would paint with such a broad, broad bucket, thrown at the canvass, is laughable, in my ever so humble opinion.

The first sentence is harmless decorative exposition. The rest of it is melancholic Twilight’s ruminations on humanity’s attitude of regarding ponydom, but… there’s a very important angle that the author poignantly swerved the paragraph toward. It’s the part that I highlighted in green, that “some of them wanted nothing more than to shoot us and be done with it.” This tells us everything we need to know, visualized and contrasted by the previous half of the sentence and remainder of the paragraph. These people hate Twilight so much that she “knows” some of them would ask no questions and shoot her if they could. It’s very strong and direct, and the paragraph ends by Twilight saying that she wonders what the world will be like, which cleverly suggests to us that the rest of the world feels the same way. This paragraph is followed by:

I’ve already discussed this paragraph more than enough. The issue is that it self-centeredly aggrandizes the story’s own lore without concern for whether the reader would be interested in learning it or not, and throws subtlety out the window and just names a bunch of countries that “hate” Equestria and its inhabitants, but it does tell us why ponydom surrendered to humanity (plot-relevant information=background exposition), since if they hadn’t, humanity would’ve bombed them to death, like… um… kind of, uh… like… the Crystal Empire… or is it? I marked it as interchangeable exposition but it really isn’t convincing at all. What, did Twilight croak up in the middle of her monologue and cough up an ellipsis followed by a tear-eyed proclamation, followed by another ellipsis? Yeah, it informs that the Crystal Empire was nuked but it does it in the most hammy way possible: through grammatical emotes, which does make it interchangeable exposition but ineffectual interchangeable exposition, in any case.

This one is the infamous dead ponies list, through which the reader can come to the conclusion that a lot of ponies died and that… um, death is bad, and Twilight’s sad… I dunno, I’ve discussed it to death at this point anyway. It’s emotional exposition, thinly veiled in the pretense of purpose. Once again, it’s hard to care when I know literally nothing about these world-changing events, and the story isn’t about them anyway. It’s about the negotiation between Twilight and Doyle that doesn’t even gloss over these events.

I had so many to cry for but I couldn’t afford to now; I had to be as strong as I could for my little ponies. The fate of our nation, my people, and the comatose Princess Celestia, who was kept in secret below Canterlot, was in my hooves. And I was all alone. That was the request, myself and myself only.

“Cry for” still shows no subtlety of emotion, however many times you choose to use it. It doesn’t describe how Twilight feels about the situation at all. It merely says that she’s sad and that we should feel sorry for her. Well, duh, all of her friends are dead, and she couldn’t even cry for all of them, which is the true tragedy of her predicament. I actually like the rest of the paragraph, except for the comatose Celestia thing that I talked about previously. It has a very foreboding tone to it, which I like, dearly, and the poignant immediacy of emotion is there too. This paragraph says“No pressure, huh?” without actually having to state it out loud, so there’s what subtleties can do for you.

The corridors were black, almost lifeless if not for the small light bulbs they had. We passed an armed sentry every two minutes, their guns ready every time. I hadn’t thought such horrible weapons could be made. I researched their bloody history and figured that this alone was enough was enough for us to change their ways. Make them just like us and introduce them to the concept of friendship and harmony.

♪ Loving you is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful! ♫ Yeah! All right, I’m the man behind the curtain; pay no mind to him while he appreciates the subtlety of this exposition writing. In truth, it’s peculiar, because the story goes from hammy to subtle in a second and a half, in a way that’s actually slightly unsettling. The first sentence is a description that doesn’t really make sense, which I talked about previously, but the subsequent image of Twilight and her escorts, passing by an army sentry pointed at her every two minutes or so is quite creepy, and, Twilight learned about humanity and found justification to force change upon them: character building. With that said, the idea of introducing the “concept of friendship and harmony” to humanity is pretty silly, but I’m sure the author has a sense of humor about it too.

A good portion of them accepted it, becoming the ‘newfoals’ just like we had hoped. What we didn’t expect was such resistance and eventual distrust. That was why Princess Celestia said we had no choice but to force them. If they could not accept our harmony by their own free will and be taught a different path from their destructive ways, then we had to convert them to ours to save them.

I guess this would be a bad time to mention that I haven’t actually read the Conversion Bureau, though I’m more than familiar with the premise. Am I supposed to know what the “newfoals” are? It’s a guess I had in my head as I was reading, that Twilight was talking about people, turned to young foals of a new pony kind, but how was I supposed to know until at around the middle of the story, where it’s actually explained. Anyhow, this paragraph was the first warning sign for me of the Tyrantlestia trope, because it’s verbatim explained that Twilight didn’t have anything to do with the decision of going to war with humanity, which is very, very conspicuous. Otherwise, it’s a dense, well-rounded exposition paragraph.

It seemed so simple back then, especially with the barrier protecting us from harm and slowly taking over the Earth, but it was gone. Now we were the losers, and they were the winners. We were just trying to save them... but I guess they didn’t want to be saved.

How would you, Twilight, feel if an alien race of people entered Equestria and tried to impose the concept of consequentialism or moral relativism or something, upon Equestrians? Don’t throw hand-grenades in glass houses, Twilight, for Christ’s sake. Personal frustration, sorry! I guess I could believe that Celestia would’ve been able to manipulate Twilight in this way, so I’ll once again refrain from complaining. I like “Now, we were the losers, and they were the winners.” It has such a fateful, disquieting feel to it, to just state it in clear terms like that. The only thing I would change would be to switch the ellipsis in the final sentence for a comma. I know I said I wasn’t going to comment on grammar but it really, doesn’t, look good.

I have already explained why I think this is a great exposition paragraph. It’s about relevance to the plot versus emotional subtext, so as to engage the reader logically and emotionally. There’s a clearer explanation of it that I wrote out above, but in short, it’s the natural transition from action, to Twilight’s opinion, to background knowledge that informs about Celestia’s motivations, using the previous transgressions of humanity as a focal point, that I like so much. Especially since these previous transgressions actually are relevant to the story, yet they don’t need to be described in intricate detail because as humans, we already know about them. I would delete “she hated their technology” from the sentence about Celestia’s mindset though, since the green part of the paragraph tells us everything we need to know through subtle means, and it already seems to me like this paragraph was structured to bring attention away from the fact that this is a very pertinent piece of foreshadowing exposition. Or it would, if it weren’t for:

She believed they advanced too fast, made too much, tried to become more than they should. I didn’t fully agree with this, but I took it to heart nonetheless. I obeyed her because it seemed she was right. Technology was dangerous... the war only proved that.

Here is the central issue I think I have with this story, in three words: no… subtlety… whatsoever. This short paragraph magnanimously explains the entire story to us readers, literally. It’s all there, as Twilight’s strange habit of explaining characters’ feelings and motivations verbatim, dispenses to the reader her character motivation in a single sentence: “I obeyed her because it seemed she was right.” Wah-puh-tuh-huuuuuuuh?!?!? So does that mean Celestia’s wrong then? Or that shecould be wrong? Or that some thinks she’s wrong, but not Twilight? But no, because Twilight still thinks she’s right, as evidenced by the very next sentence. Why, author, do you keep strongly implying that Celestia’s wrong, in Twilight’s––who agrees with her––own inner monologue? Is Celestia right or not?

I basically knew that Celestia was in the wrong at this point during my first read, but I don’t think I was supposed to. I think this demonstrates what I said in the Suspension of My Disbelief-section: “… you can more or less piece together how the story is going to end through the exposition.” To be fair, I don’t actually know if it’s intentional or not. I can only say that I think it’s a detriment to the story because it ruins the tension of the ending sequence, when Doyle tries to get Twilight to surrender Celestia for execution.

The door opened and the guard nodded me to enter. I did my best to look as calm as possible, but inside I was ready to teleport. Well, chances are I wouldn't be able to. No doubt their Thalmann Generators were stationed everywhere and working at full power.

As in the card swipe paragraph: there’s the action of the guard, nodding for Twilight to enter; the emotional exposition about Twilight’s feelings with regard to the situation; and the Thalmann generator reveal. It’s another “refer to the character; refer to the backstory”-transition where the action works as a natural springboard to the emotional exposition, which in turn, works as a natural springboard to the background exposition that floats together with the emotional exposition and becomes, you guessed it, interchangeable exposition. Can you see why I find this standard useful now? You can do this with any piece of information you want the reader to know and make it seem natural if the text provides with springboards between both the action, and the different kinds of exposition.

Thalmann Generators, or Anti-Magic Generators as they are sometimes called, were the key weapon that brought about our defeat mid-way through the war. They were what brought down the barrier, allowed Princess Luna to be defeated so easily, ultimately forced us to surrender as our forces were slaughtered, and helped cause Princess Celestia to fall into a coma after using nearly all her magic to protect us.

There’re some things evocative about this paragraph and some things less so, but the first sentence works well as not being such, since it’s simply stating a simple fact to the reader, that Thalmann Generators is what brought about Equestria’s loss. All of the remainder is a roller coaster ride, across the uncanny valley, in an explanation of the fall of Equestria that I find somewhat frustrating, and not because it isn’t well written either. My issue, I guess, is that for such an important part, for Twilight personally, it doesn’t seem colored by her thoughts and feelings much at all. It’s not emotional enough, is what I’m saying, if that makes sense. The key words/phrases that try to color it are “so easily,” “slaughtered,” “nearly,” and “protect us,” and they stand out and make the writing bubble a little, but it’s not enough. I already advocated to move some of the information being presented in this paragraph, into another one, but let’s forget that, and work with what we have.

Firstly, I question why Twilight still refers to them as Princess Luna and Princess Celestia: their formal names. Especially do I question it in this big, blustering paragraph about war and destruction, which should be at least somewhat charged with spontaneous emotion, and she knows them; is she truly devoted to granting them inane respect by using their titles forever? Anyway, this is my suggestion:

“… allowed them to kill Luna so easily, ultimately forced us to surrender as our forces were slaughtered, and made Celestia fall into (“helped cause Celestia to fall” sounded kind of stilted) a coma after using almost all her magic to protect us.”

I used the word “them” to refer to humanity, contemptuously, and switched “defeated” for “kill,” which is an angry word but not so angry that it brings the reader out of it, I think. And “almost” is a better word than “nearly.” It’s just a more forceful word, in my opinion.

It sounded... so wrong to me. To think that humans could make something so powerful... render our greatest strength to nothing so quickly. I’ve been under them before and it felt wrong. Like a part of my soul was being sucked away.

Here’s an okay emotional exposition paragraph that demonstrates Twilight’s repulsion with the Thalmann Generators. Honestly, I’m actually not sure how this is supposed to add to the texture of her character and help us understand her better, in the context of this story, but I won’t question it, as it might, I suppose, in a way I hadn’t thought of. The ellipses strain on the serious tone of the writing, somewhat, and there’s not enough emphasis on the word “wrong,” in the second to last sentence, so maybe put a comma in front of “before” and bring to two last sentences together, not to mention that the second sentence is not a full sentence but a dependent clause.

The door closed behind me and I was left alone with a single human at a table, a set of notes in front of him. I knew this human very well. His name was Anthony Doyle, a member of the U.N.’s Peacekeeping Department, and he was perhaps one of the few high ranking politicians who were willing to give us a second chance.

This is pretty self-explanatory, huh? “I knew this human very well.” colors the next sentence, and the description of Doyle as “perhaps one of the few high ranking politicians willing to give us a second chance.” is affecting and to the point, for Twilight, and makes it a sentence of interchangeable exposition.

Here is the word count for each respective type of exposition:

Action: 5+10+24+14+12+13=78 words

Background exposition: 20+30+14=64 words

Emotional exposition: 6+42+17+46+45+16+26+25+10+24+25+15+3=437 words

Interchangeable exposition: 32+37+21+41+34+72+35+36+5+18+12+19=362 words

Decorative exposition: 54+14+84+15=167 words

It speaks to the ambitions of the author, what choices they make in relaying necessary in-story information, and what––in substance––irrelevant “decorative” appendages follow. Of course, you should always strive for briefness but clarity, in every manner of the word, supersedes that. If something’s impressively brief but doesn’t make a lot of sense, you change it. If something says what needs to be said but in a way that isn’t engaging to the reader, you change it. If something isn’t immersive, you change it. If something doesn’t fit, you must acquit, the text I mean. It’s all about finding the balance between clarity and the quality of being laconic, and not saying too much, or not enough, though clarity is always preferable of course. The question is, do you pacify your reader’s search for deeper meaning in your expository meanderings?

7. Structural Integrity – Part 4: The Summary

Now we get to the fun part, the summary that is. The entire, introductory exposition part of the story, if you want to define it as ending where the negotiation begins, which I will, is exactly 1123 words long, though if you want to discount all action and description, of which there are 78 and 15 words respectively, it’s 1030 words long. In any case, it’s not important how many words exactly there are. This is just to create a broad idea of how large the sum total is. Remember once again that this is not an objective standard and is only meant to visualize how the exposition adheres to the so-called principle of being laconic, and how it doesn't.

There're 64 words of background exposition versus 362 words of interchangeable exposition, so almost all of the plot-relevant exposition has an “emotional subtext” and speaks to how Twilight feels about what’s being conveyed. Next, there're 437 words of emotional exposition, which is a startling number. Much of it is about Celestia and her feelings and motivations with regard to the situation, which I really, really take issue with, since––as I said––it ruins the plot twist. Sometimes, the story is subtle and straightforward, and other times, it’s Christmas dinner a la fucking ham. And, actually, it’s not a difficult case to make at all, though it would seem to be. The reason it isn’t is because:

Sometimes they were brilliant, sometimes they were ruthless, and their seemingly erratic behavior scared me.

She believed they advanced too fast, made too much, tried to become more than they should.

To think that humans could make something so powerful... render our greatest strength to nothing so quickly.

These are three completely random sentences of emotional exposition that I picked out of the text just now. Can you see a pattern? Here are another three:

I had so many to cry for but I couldn’t afford to now; I had to be as strong as I could for my little ponies.

We were just trying to save them... but I guess they didn’t want to be saved.

Technology was dangerous... the war only proved that.

The interchangeable exposition paragraphs are melancholic, but in a good way. They contain a depth of emotion underneath the information that’s being conveyed, that doesn’t intrude or take precedence, because the information is favorably aided and colored by Twilight’s thoughts and feelings, to speak in a general way. That isn’t to say that this “depth of emotion” or emotional subtext is, ehum, immediately relevant in any way, shape or form to the actual ongoings of the story (because it thrives on borrowed tension), but that’s beside the point.

The emotional exposition is… well, a lot, and it feels like overcompensation, in a way, since it simply often repeats things that the interchangeable has already said or will make abundantly clear in a later paragraph. It’s like it tries to spell out all of its emotional subtext, word for word, to the reader, in fear that they won’t pick up on it, which is, to be blunt, quite ill-advised. For starters, it’s very hard to do while still making it seem natural at the same time, but also, narrative prose in the mode of exposition isn’t even an efficient way of conveying a character’s feelings to begin with.

Here’s a thought: If those above sentences were all pieces of dialogue, the reader would read them as if they were said by a character, with inflection that is, and the unnatural, ellipsis-induced pauses would seem natural and make more sense, except for the “cry for”-thing, which frankly, is melodramatic all on its own, outside of the context of story. There’s also things that are just clichéd and corny, like the “I guess they didn’t want to be saved”-thing. Aside from all that, well, it’s too forthright and forceful I guess, but it’s hard to point to one specific reason why. It seems to me that the author tries too hard to be urgent and in-the-moment with their exposition, to the point where it feels like the emotional parts are supposed to be read in the voice of a person who’s on the brink of some kind of breakdown, and with very dramatic stylistic tendencies to boot.

The emotional exposition is entirely made up of short, fateful statements, and nothing is ever allowed to not be somber, tragic or melodramatic. It’s like Twilight’s a ruined wreck of her former self, except that whenever she, as the narrator, isn’t describing her thoughts and feelings, she seems relatively collected, and it’s this disparity that makes the exposition hard to read, and not just “the exposition” in the sense of the opening part of the story, but everything in the mode of exposition as a whole, within this story, of which there are a lot. I believe the wild tonal shifts between the forcefulness of the emotional exposition and the relative subtlety of everything else is poison to immersion, as was my experience, personally.

Finally, there’s the so-called “appendages.” There’re 167 words of decorative exposition, or really, two paragraphs and a blurb at the end of the very first paragraph. The first one is the build-up paragraph to Twilight’s ponderings about the strange and wonderful race of humanity. That entire three paragraph lump, I frankly find silly, and out of character for her, in how childishly it treats Twilight’s perception of humanity. The second one is the “what countries hate us; what doesn’t”-paragraph that I consider both ridiculous and superfluous in its own right, by dint of melodrama and the report-thing. The ending portion of the paragraph does contain pertinent information––like the reason Equestria surrendered or why the Crystal Empire was nuked––that the story returns to later, during the negotiation, but the rest is just gibberish, in my opinion.

Both of these paragraphs, plus the two that follow in the buildup to Twilight’s fateful “Never before had I, or any Equestrian for that matter, ever dealt with such a strange race such as humanity at the negotiating table.”-line, feel superfluous. And it’s a decent line, I guess, but the rest is just Twilight generalizing about humanity and calling them “erratic” and stuff, like she knows something that we as readers don’t, yet refuses to tell us. Why does she have this goofy, demonic view of humanity, when we as readers know she’s smarter than that? Fine, maybe the war has skewed her view, but the author never communicates this anywhere in the text, so I’m left to wonder, why!?

Through and through, this is a very exposition-heavy story. When you put together the entire word count, it’s 2321 words, and to be clear, that is not exposition as in “information in general,” but exposition in the mode of exposition (narrative exposition). That’s more than half of the entire story’s 4565 words, and to be blunt, it’s too much. This is not a criticism against the quality the exposition, though it’s too often melodramatic and disengagingly describing things that have nothing to do with the situation at hand. It’s a criticism against the writing style as a whole. I know I said that exposition is not immersive, and by its nature it isn’t, since it’s the mode of “information” and the least interpretive of the four modes, leaving little to the imagination, but it’s not impossible to make it engaging. It’s just really, really, really hard, and a gratuitous effort when writing such a minimalistic story such as Negotiations, that’s shock full of winding, emotional paragraphs meant to express how Twilight feels about everything, everywhere, and also contains paragraphs about large, world-changing events, outside of the scope of the story.

It seems to me that there’s so much the author wants to say in as few words as possible, but I object. If something isn’t engaging or immersive, or doesn’t make much sense, you change it, and all these three things happen separately and simultaneously many times throughout the story, even outside the parts that I explored. Sure, there are some good exposition paragraphs, but that’s exactly my point! If communicating to the reader a feeling, or an event, or both, doesn’t work in exposition, you shouldn’t keep it there; you should transfer it to one of the other, more naturally immersive modes. Instead of talking about Twilight’s dead friends in voice-over, maybe what you want to do is to depict their death scenes in action, from Twilight’s perspective, and hit at all the beats of her tragedy that way. If she wasn’t at the scenes of these tragedies, maybe instead you could depict the moment she heard about it and how she reacted to it, at the time. You could describe the setting of one or several of the places where they died and allude to her sorrow, through those descriptions.

I know, it would make the story a whole lot longer, but author, you were the one who decided their deaths were so important to begin with, so as to return to them several times in the exposition, and you don’t keep large swaths of something that’s neither interesting, nor engaging, and sometimes tasteless, in your story. To clarify, their deaths are obviously important to Twilight, but they’re inconsequential to the outcome of both the internal and external conflicts of the story, and therefore, unimportant in that sense.

Sooner or later, you just have to come to terms with the fact that you can’t have your exposition cake, and eat the story too. One of them has to go, and it’s not the story, I’ll tell you that much. It’s not that I’m opposed to the concept of describing feelings in exposition, don’t get me wrong; it’s just that there’s so much of it here. It eats up the narrative flow and shatters the forward progression of the story to pieces, lodged in between the––in comparison––few actions and scarce pieces of dialogue scattered here and there, around the exposition. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic but I really do find this to be a basic faulting of this story. My advice is to find another way to relay this information, or not do it at all, simply. As an author, you may think that all of these ideas are fascinating and stuff, but if there’s not a place for them to engage the reader, then there’s not a place for them at all, especially when they dominate the narrative thusly, and forces the reader so far away from the forward progression of the story, or the plot, as they do.

8. Suspension of My Disbelief – Part 2: A Weird Subtext

It’s time to discuss the dialogue, what do you know. Why haven’t I done it until know? Well, judging construction (*cough* *cough* Storytelling Dynamics *cough*) as its own category can be a clumsy way of going about things sometimes. In particular, it can be clumsy when the quality of the dialogue strongly relates to the tone and themes of a story. I hope to make you understand where I’m coming from, in a moment. To begin with, I’ll obnoxiously repost two paragraphs that I think you’re more than familiar with by now:

What the hell am I doing!? Well, look, I underlined some things. The author wrote, and I quote: “Other places like what remained of the areas once known as the Middle East, Africa, South America and such…” Africa and South America are continents, and the Middle East is a small area in Africa’s Northeast and the Southeast corner of Asia, with a population of 371 million people, and, and, The Middle East is part of Africa and Asia. I think you see where I’m getting at. It’s not a sound transition to make, from Africa and South America, to the Middle East, as if it’s on the same level, both in terms of area and population, or as it wasn’t part of two of the aforementioned areas. I know that the Middle East is of political relevance right now but the politics of the Middle East is never addressed in the story, nor is it a theme, so you have to wonder, why is it mentioned out of nowhere?

On its own, this may seem like a trifle of a hang-up, except when the next paragraph comes around and name-drops two major world cities: New York City and Jerusalem. It importantly says that Luna was killed in the “Battle for Jerusalem,” as if Jerusalem would be some important, strategic area, for a potential invader. Why is Jerusalem mentioned? Is there any particular reason? The next context clue is the dialogue, which I’ll address now. I’ll post the paragraphs that caught my interest and comment on them respectively:

Mr. Doyle leaned forward and I trembled under his gaze. “Princess Celestia’s name is more hated than Stalin’s, Hitler’s, Pol Pot’s, Mao’s, Attila The Hun’s, Osama Bin Laden’s and Satan’s at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was Satan himself. She is a blight on not just us but you as well. You worship her blindly. Even now, when you have lost everything, you refuse to see the monster that she really is!”

I don’t hate Satan, personally. I don’t care about Satan but guess who does?

Oh, we found some very interesting notes in Princess Celestia’s study as well as a few members of her inner circle who spilled their guts. Did you also know that it was her who suggested to Princess Cadence that she should use the Crystal Cannon to wipe out Rome and Mecca? She thought the destruction of our most religious cities would leave us demoralized. In truth she united the world’s religions with that little stunt, especially after that failed invasion of Jerusalem. I never thought I would see the day where Christians, Hebrews, and Muslims worked side by side in one united army of faith. And what did that lead to for you? Oh yeah, nuclear devastation for the Crystal Empire. How much do you think she used that as a rallying cry for more ponies to join the army?

Spilled their guts, does he mean he killed them? What does “spilled their guts” mean? Anyway, that isn’t what I wanted to discuss. Remember the “Battle for Jerusalem” line in the dead ponies list? Here’s the actual payoff to that line and it’s, um, for lack of a better term, extremely hamfisted. The preceding paragraph, by the way, talks about the atrocity of turning humanity to ponies and sterilizing them along the way, and Twilight drops this weird line about how she can’t have children herself, which is very convenient for her, since it helps her accentuate the impact of this dramatic moment. I guess you could call it a plot device but it’s not even consequential to the outcome of the situation. It just comes and goes like that.

More importantly though, and what I really want to talk about before I derail myself a third time, is the line about how the three major monotheistic religions united and became one super religion:“‘… I never thought I would see the day where Christians, Hebrews, and Muslims worked side by side in one united army of faith.’ …” I want to reiterate that there’s no buildup to this line and that it comes, only slightly out of nowhere. And why an “army of faith”? Can’t it just be an army? What’s so faithful about it? And there are billions of Christians and Muslims in the world, versus a few million Jews, or “Hebrews,” as the U.N. official refers to them. Why is a government official going on a tirade about religion anyway?

“-and now they are mindless drones who preach about the glory of Celestia like some brainwashed Jehovah Witness,” finished Doyle, shaking his head. “Tell me, Twilight Sparkle. Have you MET the newfoals? Seen them? Heard them? Talked with them? As the inventor to a part of the potion that turned my people into them you must have seen the results.”

I winced. Truth was I had. And... I didn’t like what I saw. The potion was to make them just become more pony-like, only with restrictions on their sinful natures, hindering such emotions as greed, lust, and hate. Yet... something went wrong. They just became blindly obedient to Celestia, hating everything about humanity and did anything ordered by any pony. They didn’t harm each other, in fact they were nice... just... too nice. It almost reminded me of Starlight Glimmer’s ponies before I freed them from her.

Here’s the line in its full context, I want to focus in on the underlined parts. First, what about their “sinful natures”? “Sin” is a religious concept that should be more than foreign to Twilight, but on the other hand, maybe she only used it as an expression. Even if that is the case, the idea of Twilight even relating to the concept of sin as an idea is bothersome to me. It goes on: “… hindering such emotions as greed, lust, and hate…” The story obviously alludes to the classical ethics of virtue, that ponydom apparently used to try and change humanity into something better. “Greed” and “hate” I get, though they aren’t exactly “emotions” less than futile facts of human nature, but I see the point of it, and accept it, personally. “Lust,” I can’t wrap my head around. What’s wrong with lust? And by the way, don’t ponies have lust? Why does Twilight single out lust by dint of humanity’s supposedly “sinful natures,” as an inherent bad?

“She manipulated everything and decided to make herself a god to rule over this world for you and your kind without even once asking us if it was okay. Without even trying to work with us, negotiate, or even help us she just decided to come in and rule over us by making us in her own image when the only image we deserve to be is the one God gave us.”

Reading this paragraph, it’s pretty difficult for me to keep alluding to this major subtext of the story, without stating out loud what it is, which is a major issue for me since I wanted there to be an epic reveal at the end and everything, but whatever. It was obvious to begin with anyway. The fanfic has a heavy, religious slant that has no business being there. It never has anything to do with anything that’s happening at any point, during the plot. It’s just kind of… there, floating out in the ether. The authorial worldview of the author, through a looking glass, you might say. This line is self-explanatory and the least subtle of the religious allusions of this story. We can extrapolate from it that Doyle is obviously religious, which is fine.

I want to note though, it’s illegal for a government official to invoke God or his personal beliefs in general, in a formal negotiation, unless it’s part of an esoteric negotiation method I didn’t know about. Besides, it’s a personality trait of Doyle’s that the story never actually explores and more likely, is not a personality trait and just the author projecting themselves onto the character. Twilight also has a strikingly monotheistic religion-centric worldview, though it’s subtler with her. The author obnoxiously superimposes their brand of virtue ethics onto Twilight when she couldn’t possibly have come from a background where lust wasn’t permissible. Never could I have imagined Twilight talking about sinfulness and harmful emotions until I read this story.

As far as underlying themes go, this is a weird one. It’s kind of impossible to ignore once you’ve noticed it and while it doesn’t bring the story down, the authorial worldview weighs heavy throughout, and mars my suspension of disbelief. Even if you accept the characterization in which regard I’ve admonished it, which you might, the strange mentions of the Middle East as if it was on par with the world continents and the “Battle for Jerusalem,” whose mention later led into an anti-payoff of a rant about the three monotheistic world religions, never mind Hinduism or Buddhism, or any a one in the half of the world, outside of the west, these strange mentions and tangents surely have no place in this story.

…

9. Suspension of My Disbelief – Part 3: Affected Pathos

In this section, I hope to explore the core of this story’s fundamental faulting, and what I think the author did so wrong, and that goes back to––surprise, surprise––the dialogue. Let’s take another step back and examine the dialogue from an overhead perspective, as I did with the exposition. First, Twilight enters the negotiation room, Doyle and her greet one another, and the discussion ensues. It’s easier if I just go through the dialogue to illustrate this, so here goes. Oh, and by the way, I’ll do a last run-through of grammar and style here as well, since there were some things I missed:

I sat down and for a while neither of us spoke. Mr. Doyle then sighed and leaned back on his chair. “For the record, nobody can hear us inside of here. There are no mics, recordings, or anything of the sort. Nobody will attack, hurt, or kill you (if nobody will “attack,” then isn’t it a given that nobody will “hurt” or “kill her” either) while you are a guest and trust me, there are a good number of us humans who want you dead.” I didn’t say anything, but he continued. “The reason I am here is because, despite your attempts to completely exterminate (“completely exterminate” seems redundant to my ears, since “exterminate” does mean “destroy completely”) my race, there are some of us who don’t want to utterly destroy (what, so everyone wants to almost “destroy” her kind, but not utterly, this also feels redundant) your kind. As you know, some ponies sided with us during the war and if not for their help we might not have won. You know of Lyra Heartstrings I presume?”

He says that she has no cause for concern and moves on to how some ponies sided with humanity during the war and that without their help, they might not have won. His mention of Lyra Heartstrings motivates Twilight into a three-paragraph barrage of self-thought (that I cut out of this run-through) where she thinks on the betrayal of her friends and the implications of it all. After that:

“I know of her, yes,” I said in a tone that made it clear I didn’t want to talk about it.

“It’s because of her, her ponies, and some humans who don’t want to commit genocide-like you tried to do-that want to make sure we can have a peaceful co-existence,” said Mr. Doyle.

Dependent clause, cowboy, and in general, this second piece of dialogue doesn’t make sense. It’s more obvious if you take out the aside: It’s because of her, her ponies, and some humans who don’t want to commit genocide that want to make sure we can have a peaceful co-existence. Yeah… and? It’s because of her that what happened? Presumably, it’s meant to say: “It’s because of her, her ponies, and some humans who don’t want to commit genocide––like you tried to do––that we can have a peaceful co-existence.” Anyway, copy edit-mode off, what happens in the next paragraph?

“Mr. Doyle. We were not trying to commit genocide, we were trying to save you all,” I said, trying to stay true to my mentor’s beliefs. “Before we came here, you were ready to go into World War Three. Your resources were depleted, poverty and corruption was at an all-time high, and you were killing each other for things such as which god to worship. We offered you a chance to be part of something greater. Something that would give you friendship and harmony. A good portion of your people accepted it-”

It’s not clear at what time in human history this takes place but judging by this paragraph, it’s definitely after World War Two and before a potential World War Three that Twilight keeps bringing up. “I said, trying to stay true to my mentor’s beliefs.” is another example of the lack of subtlety with regard to Twilight’s internal monologue. She says that she tries to stay true to her mentor’s beliefs, as if she doesn’t believe it all herself. The implication is that she’s unsure about it, I suppose, and that she tries to argue by proxy for Celestia, which obviously suggests that Celestia’s wrong, and once again, I’m not sure why the author would do that.

“-and now they are mindless drones who preach about the glory of Celestia like some brainwashed Jehovah Witness,” finished (slightly heavy-handed, non-immersive said tag, in my opinion) Doyle, shaking his head. “Tell me, Twilight Sparkle. Have you MET (I’d use italics, personally, since I think they’re less conspicuous than uppercase letters) the newfoals? Seen them? Heard them? Talked with them? As the inventor to a part of the potion (I don’t now what it means to say that Twilight was responsible for “part of the potion.” It’s one potion, what does it mean that she’s responsible for “part of” it? The author meant to say “partly responsible,” I think) that turned my people into them you must have seen the results.”

Doyle moralizes to Twilight, and she has no good argument against him. In the proceeding paragraphs (that I, once again, wisely chose to cut out), she explains and rationalizes the situation in the self-thought. Right now though, I want to focus on this nugget: “-and now they are mindless drones who preach about the glory of Celestia like some brainwashed Jehovah witness…” The author spends the entire story, surreptitiously raising the monotheistic religions of the world up, into the limelight and against the heavens, but they also have a grudge against Jehovah’s Witnesses for some incomprehensible reason. Honestly, no one cares about Jehovah’s Witnesses, except for Jehovah’s Witnesses, and while the obnoxious door-knocking of course isn’t appreciated, it’s no reason to be rude.

Know what? I don’t even have a problem with this line of dialogue. I just find it hilarious, the idea that someone would just say that out of nowhere in a conversation, like it was part of everyday locution or something suchlike: “You remember that? OH, my granny is crazy, like one of those brainwashed Jehovah’s Witnesses types, and y’know what she said yesterday. She said that…” No, no, no, no, that’s not something you say in a conversation at the drop of hat, Doyle. You have problems, dude! Whatever, whatever, let’s move on I guess… ehum.

“I admit there were complications, but they were peaceful. They were happy.”

“They were programmed to be what you wanted them to be,” said Mr. Doyle with a sigh. “I know you weren’t the brains behind the potion, that was Princess Celestia, whom we will get to in a minute, but you still hold some responsibility for that. You had no right to force us to become something we never wanted to become. Nor the right to limit what we could think, feel, or choose.”

“Even if it causes only pain and suffering?” I asked.

“Have you ever seen a human mother find her newfoal son and learn he remembers nothing about her? Have you seen children forced to watch their parents mutate into horses that don’t like them anymore because they are, and I quote, ‘Sinful, polluting and evil humans who love evil technology’? Have you ever seen people kill themselves rather than lose their humanity?”

Doyle has a firm grip on the situation at this point, and her retorts don’t shake him in the slightest. There are a lot of pathos right now, charged into his negotiation method. In fact, it’s not much of a negotiation at all. So far, it’s more of an ideological conversation, full of drama and hapless candor, in a manner of speaking. This in itself is not a slight against the story, since the author seems self-aware that this is a personal story about Twilight and her losses, and the negotiation is more a corollary to that than a natural conclusion of it, anyway. What is a slight, however, is this: “As you know, some ponies sided with us during the war and if not for their help we might not have won. You know of Lyra Heartstrings I presume?” This is how the conversation began, and then after Twilight’s three paragraph monologue:

“I know of her, yes,” I said in a tone that made it clear I didn’t want to talk about it.

“It’s because of her, her ponies, and some humans who don’t want to commit genocide-like you tried to do-that want to make sure we can have a peaceful co-existence,” said Mr. Doyle.

“Mr. Doyle. We were not trying to commit genocide, we were trying to save you all,” I said, trying to stay true to my mentor’s beliefs.

And Lyra Heartstrings is forgotten. She never becomes relevant again; she doesn’t spring up in conversation again; she’s gone from the story at this point, yet Doyle brought her up. At this point, Twilight and Doyle are arguing about the potion that turned humanity into ponies. Paradoxically, that makes Lyra irrelevant to the plot, despite inciting the conversation between the two main characters. “You know of Lyra Heartstrings I presume?” is a moot question, since it never goes anywhere, so why is it there? It has no plot purpose, so what does it do? It instigates another three paragraphs of Twilight’s internal monologue, which is made up, entirely of emotional exposition, is what it does.

The central conflict comes into focus 1,500 to 2,000 words into their conversation, depending on if you count the narrative/exposition parts from before Doyle says: “We want her dead.” To begin with, they discuss Lyra Heartstrings (and innumerable other ponies’) betrayal, after which, they discuss how ponydom turned humanity into newfoals. Therefore, I believe you can divide this initial conversation into two beats: the “Lyra Heartstrings beat,” and the “newfoals beat,” or beat 1 and beat 2. The newfoals beat begins with an interruption:

“-and now they are mindless drones who preach about the glory of Celestia like some brainwashed Jehovah Witness,” finished, shaking his head.

It includes all the parts I’ve gone through so far, and continues with:

I was silent, but I admit there was some sympathy for them in my heart. Seeing such things might have been traumatizing, but it was all for the Greater Good (the greater good is capitalized here, and I see no reason why) as Princess Celestia would say. Yet... were these humans so determined to stay who they were that they were willing to die then to be ponies? I just... I couldn’t understand it.

Why? Why stay a war-and death-loving human rather than become a peaceful and harmonious pony?

“Humanity has always learned by failing and falling (emphasis in this sentence is on the word “failing,” so if you take that out: Humanity has always learned by falling. In short, the metaphor doesn’t make sense. How about: Humanity has always learned by failing and flailing.). We fall one step, but rise two more. It’s the way we learn, Ms. Sparkle. From what I understand, your kind almost came close to extinction as well if not for a miracle.” He leaned forward. “Strange how there are no historical records of the time before that.”

“It was a time of war and death, why would we focus on such a painful past?” I asked (the question mark and said tag “I asked,” are not mutually exclusive. Said tags can be slightly immersion-breaking sometimes, and you should avoid using them, given the opportunity, in my opinion, unless they’re a normal “said,” barring superfluous repetition, and unless they’re one that actually relates to the action of speaking, which can elevate the dialogue, if what’s “said” obviously isn’t being “said,” quote unquote. Anyway, long story short: “?” means “asked” and “asked” means “?”. You don’t need both.).

“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” he said. (this line is violently clichéd, in my opinion) “But about the newfoals. I will not lie and say that the potion doesn’t have some uses. According to our scientists, we can use it to help recreate lost limbs, cure diseases, and such. (“such” is overly formal and seems to imply that recreating lost limbs and curing deceases is something menial) We’ve had mild success in adapting it, but we want a potion to turn the newfoals back into humans again. Your scientists will work with ours to create this.”

Isn’t it extremely suspicious how this “time of war and death” (or the time “before that,” I guess) isn’t in the history books? Well, not really. Bad things happened, and keeping records on bad things is bad. No! That’s the reasoning of a precious child, not Twilight. “Those who don’t learn from history…” conversely, is equally ridiculous. We learn from history for context on current events, not merely to avoid calamities of origins past. The term itself, I don’t take issue with, but in the context it’s used, of course we’d want to know about the time before ponykind came close to extinction. Why wouldn’t we? What, because the times were rough? Because bait-and-switch? The history apparently doesn’t exist because the past was “painful,” regardless if Twilight would want to focus on it or not. Why pretend otherwise? She’s rationalizing; Twilight is written to rationalize. Why is she so dumb?

“... fine, but in return you also help us create one for those who want to stay as ponies,” I pointed out. “There are a good many that chose to become one of us of their own free will.”

“That’s fine, but they must contain their memories, personalities, and emotions as they were before. Nothing different,” he stated.

And with that, one deal was done. Now it was my turn.

With that said, how do you know all those who did choose to become ponies would want to stay that way after Celestia brainwashed them? Certainly, it’s a rhetorical question since you, Twilight, don’t actually know that she did. However, Twilight, you still know that they’re brainwashed, as evidenced by this exposition paragraph:

They conveniently became “blindly obedient” to Celestia, so how do you rationalize this?

“But it was still better than the alternative. It was better than relying on that human nature that caused them to always repeat the same mistakes over and over. And we had plans on changing them to be a bit more... normal. We just had other priorities such as the Conversion Bureaus and the war.”

It’s funny, because I know through the author’s note, that they actually wrote this story to condemn this kind of thinking, where “human nature” is a buzzword, synonymous with evil. Yet to do that, he/she had to sacrifice Twilight’s intelligence and common sense. In some respects, her obliviousness is believable and I want to believe it moreover, because I want to immerse myself into the story, but you can’t explain away something like this. The reason why the newfoals became “blindly obedient” to Celestia remains unexplained, and the story doesn’t even acknowledge this, and Twilight doesn’t even acknowledge this, and this marks the end of the newfoals beat, so it is never returned to again. After that:

“We want to repair our homes. We’ve lost so many cities and lands to the war that we want help rebuilding them (it’s difficult to visualize this, but it’s kind of like saying: “I’ve lost so many candies that I want help getting more” or “I’ve lost so much money that I want help, regaining it.” It sounds like Twilight is trying to emphasize that because they’ve lost so many cities and lands, they want help rebuilding, which should be self-obvious). Medical aid and food is also a requirement,” I stated.

“Understandable, but but (double but) we need it as well for the cities and homes you destroyed, why not compromise?” Mr. Doyle said, writing something down. “We’ll help you restore your cities and homes, but in return our refugees get to live in your nation. Some will live in human-only settlements, others will share with ponies. Think of it as a long-term plan to get our races to coexist with each other. Having human children grow up with pony foals might help ease tension.”

“I suppose there is benefit in that,” I muttered. Even I knew that the power of friendship and magic would not be enough to heal the wounds between us. It would take generations for it to happen.

If we were stuck on this planet, then perhaps we had to get ready to live with it.

Following this, there’re some paragraphs of self-thought where Twilight describes the duration of the negotiation, up until the conflict comes, where the dialogue then resumes. I wonder something fierce how the Lyra beat and the newfoals beat plays into the conclusion of the story, and then I realize, they don’t. In essence, the story doesn’t develop a plot up until this point, about 3000 words of narrative prose after onset, because nothing up to this point has any bearing on the central conflict of Celestia’s potential execution, and really, nothing at all does, in the end, since the glaring fact of Celestia being evil literally resolves the conflicts.

External resolution: Doyle gets Celestia’s head.

Internal resolution: Twilight is satisfied with beheading Celestia because she’s evil.

Win-win, and the throes of emotional exposition remains yet. The thing is, it’s not only emotional exposition; it’s the lines upon lines upon lines upon lines of interchangeable exposition, nominally relevant to the discussion only, because beat 1 and 2 consist of fake plot that doesn’t go anywhere. The callbacks to the exposition are there, but they’re clumsily injected conversation, bereft of substance. It’s even more apparent when Doyle brings up the world religions, and how Celestia tried to demoralize humanity by attacking the most religious cities, out of nowhere, onlybecause it was set up to be mentioned later, in the exposition.

To reiterate, this is a well-structured story, in terms of narrative, and it holds strong to its tension building in the negotiation between Twilight and Doyle, where the hapless victim Twilight rationalizes wilder and wilder, and the wise authority figure Doyle sets his foot closer and closer to her flimsy case. The thing is ultimately though, the characterizations are not convincing and often clichéd, and the character voices, while convincing in terms of diction, keep having the author’s perspective and sometimes voice, creep into them. This is a story about war and death that––while earnest and structurally well put-together––is frequently unrealistic, and which seems more interested in its own ideas about a potential apocalypse, than it is, even in actually telling a story.

The premise be praised, because it’s conducive to so much tension and characterly hardship, but deny the premise its plot and it’s merely a slapdash blend of incoherent ideas. That is the significance of an actual plot, or an actual chain of events, is that is gives the story a central theme and a purpose, and that is something you want out of your story. Why didn’t the author write out Twilight and Doyle’s interaction as a chain of small decisions made by each character that each, progressed the situation in some way? Maybe I make it sound too complicated, but it’ssuch a no-brainer that this is how it should’ve happened. The Lyra Heartstrings beat could’ve naturally progressed into something else, instead being just shoved aside, to make way for more disjointed conversational exposition. Why doesn’t their conversation go anywhere, is what I’m asking.

Why the plotlessness, the never-ending paragraphs of emotional exposition that never substantiates itself in Twilight’s actions and the interchangeable exposition, whose callbacks does not affect the outcome of the story in the slightest? And that isn’t even half of it––it doesn’t feel like the author put in much of an effort to keep their perspective separated from the characters and their outlook, and by extension, it’s doesn’t feel like they tried to imagine themselves in the positions of their main characters, also judging by Twilight’s stereotypical outlook and that Doyle didn’t tell her about Celestia’s betrayal until at the end of the story.

I get the impression that the author downplayed Twilight’s intelligence––though it might not have been completely conscious––only so that they could play up Doyle’s, since this would be the most convenient way of telling the story. And that’s what it boils down to in the end: convenience. It feels like the story constantly goes for the most convenient answers to the questions it poses to itself, as apposed to the truest ones. Kill Celestia and save your kind, or let her live and doom ponydom forever; this is a significant question for Twilight, and it’s conveniently brushed aside for miscellaneous dramatic plot twist that anyone has seen a thousand times before. To see Twilight actually handle the implications of this decision, as expressed before, would be infinitely more engaging, but a bigger challenge for the author. In the same vain, the questions posed by Doyle are by Twilight handled in the same way:

“Strange how there are no historical records of the time before that.”

“It was a time of war and death, why would we focus on such a painful past?” I asked.

Or:

“… Have you ever seen people kill themselves rather than lose their humanity?”

… (the next two quotes are respectively taken out of the first and the second of the exposition paragraphs, following this piece of dialogue)

Yet... something went wrong. They just became blindly obedient to Celestia, hating everything about humanity and did anything ordered by any pony.

But it was still better than the alternative. It was better than relying on that human nature that caused them to always repeat the same mistakes over and over. And we had plans on changing them to be a bit more... normal. We just had other priorities such as the Conversion Bureaus and the war.

Let’s face it, even if Twilight is subconsciously rationalizing, these answers to Doyle’s questions aren’t reasonable at all. You can call it a bait-and-switch or you can call it a strawman but regardless, both of these answers are non-answers, in that they literally avoid the question, and that’s not something Twilight would do, to my mind, to avoid the question. She only does it, it seems, because it’s more convenient for the author that way, and so it goes on, throughout the story. Compromises aren’t forbidden and often necessary, if one doesn’t quite know how to portray a certain character or situation accurately, and in that sense, minor copouts can help a story. For instance: what if two characters go to a luxurious restaurant and you don’t know how to convey a luxurious restaurant? You can either read up on luxurious restaurants, or if it isn’t such an important scene, you can just make shit up.

That’s fine, but here, the entire story feels made up at the top of the author’s head, both in terms of characterization and the feeling I had––that I alluded to before––that this just isn’t what a real negotiation looks like. I mean, I’m not a professional negotiator or anything so I don’t know, but my guess is that the author isn’t either, since most of it just feels like a candid conversation in the form of an ideological discussion, and from what I know, negotiations don’t go like that. I’m not saying that the author couldn’t potentially write such a story if they wanted to; I’m just saying that they didn’t, and a fundamental detriment, this is, to my disbelief which I’m trying to suspend.

Negotiations has a great premise, but a premise especially that thrives on character interplay, because the basis for it is literally a conversation between two characters. For all of its ideas about how a pony-induced apocalypse would look like, and some of them are pretty clever, admittedly, (for instance: Rainbow Dash and Applejack joining a rebel group, after Equestria’s surrender, and Lyra’s betrayal, pfft) but for all of its ideas, the most central elements: the conflict, emotional subtext and tone even, are all affected pathos: the conflict, because Doyle could’ve just told Twilight from the beginning; the emotional subtext, because her pleas are disjointed and don’t go anywhere; and the tone, for various reasons, but mostly stylistic ones (ellipsis-attacks, exposition lists, verblessness, and general stylistic quirks that I’ve gone over, previously). The story has a good many redeeming aspects, such as the thorough internal lore and Twilight’s often––though not always––convincing voice, but everything that’s pivotal to Negotiations’ success is lacking. It all goes back to the characters, basically, and the characters just don’t do it for me.

10. Final Conclusive Summary

Numbers, they don’t lie. Numbers never lie, and that, we’re not negotiating. Numbers are your friend. Numbers, you can trust, and good ideas are not a must. You write to make a proclamation, or else you write to entertain, or if a mental stain is eating at your brain and lo, you can’t refrain, I doubt that you'll remain. I don't think you'll remain; to my mind, it's the same. Reverberating thoughts and feelings that are lost, are generating plot, to counter what is not, meet feelings that are not. Numbers never lie, but people do, so you decide what to think. Intentionally or not, I think this story is emotionally manipulative. I’ll be honest, and this is I superimposing my editorial view, I suppose, but it’s childish. There’s only one word to describe it: childish. Twilight and Doyle think in childish terms and the reality of the situation dissolves to dust, as a result.

The expository writing style is unintuitive and one must put a looking glass to it, to understand what it’s really trying to say about Twilight’s situation, and it turns out, things that are quite vacuous. Her disposition: vacuous. The story harkens back to events she doesn’t need to describe for us to understand that she’s scarred by them, and her feelings as to these events, the story keeps in vague, melodramatic terms. The story never goes beyond, “she’s sad”; it does not attempt to explore the implications of her sadness. I think the closest you’ll get to a central theme is the fact of loss in life, and how you handle that. I mean, the narration does seem to dabble in that, now and again, such as when Twilight says she “can’t cry,” which, while emphatically unimmersive, may paradoxically be the best piece of characterization of the entire story, because it implies a reach, out of the sadness, such that Twilight doesn’t really want to be sad, and that’sdimension.

The negotiation is not depicted believably, dumbing down Twilight and elevating Doyle to make it seem as if he has utter control over the situation, all the while as their conversation goes on and doesn’t go anywhere. The fanfic takes 3,000 words to develop a plot and knowing that, in context, tells me why I don’t think this story works. Generally, it seems more interested in communicating a tone of death, sadness and destruction than it is in portraying its characters accurately, or progressing their situation at all, at that. Very little happens throughout a relatively formidable 4,000 words, and for all emotional exposition aplenty that makes an appeal to the reader, to empathize with Twilight, the actual ramifications of her predicament––rather than the ramifications of her friends’ given deaths––are hardly explored.

Twilight’s thoughts and feelings about the situation are all one-note, and her character isn’t allowed to breath, by extension. We never see her genuinely assess the situation logically, and think about why Celestia said these things about humanity, which I believe is what she would do. Yes, it’s understandable to bemoan a troubled past from years since, but Twilight does nothing else but, throughout the duration of the story. What is this fanfic trying to tell me? It’s like it’s trying to make me feel sad for the sake of making me feel sad, with little worry as to why it does this. What is the point of this story? I don’t know, honestly. I can’t see any moral and I can’t see any major attempts to entertain the reader. I think it’s a blend of “this story doesn’t know what it wants to be” and the heavily expository writing style that maybe is supposed to immerse, but doesn’t, but who knows? Regardless of what the answer is, I sure as hell know it isn’t for me.

Reading Pony Fiction 'Til I Croak

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Friday, August 26, 2016

Waffle Critiques: Negotiations

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