6-Star Reviews Part 39: Spark

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Am I the only one who thought Cranky Doodle Donkey's story was incredibly tragic?*  I mean, it's not clear how long he spent looking for his sweetheart, but given what clues we had (the old-timey appearance of the flashback, the hair loss, etc.) the length must have been measured in decades.  This poor guy wasted most of his life searching in vain, and only found his true love in his twilight years.  Are they still young enough to have children, assuming they want any?  And what happens if it turns out that the girl he spent one night dancing with all those years ago isn't quite as perfect as his memory made her out to be?

And even if things do work out between them, they might not have long together.  There's obviously a tuberculosis epidemic in Ponyville (first Bon-Bon, now Rose.  Who's next?), and the elderly have weakened immune systems.  One or both of them will probably be dead within a few weeks.

...Or maybe it's a children's cartoon show and I'm overthinking things.  In any case, my review of Avery Strange's Spark, after the break.

*I still can't believe that I wrote that sentence with complete sincerity.  Confound these ponies, they drive me to take seriously the trials and tribulations of a cartoon character named Cranky Doodle Donkey.

Impressions before reading:  There seems to be a belief among some readers that I despise all shipping.  This is untrue.  It would be fair to say, however, that I've found comparatively few shipping stories I enjoy.  A lot of this has to do with the fact that an unrealistic or poorly set up romance is one of the quickest ways to break my suspension of disbelief.  Maybe I should do a post of "shipping stories Chris doesn't hate" or something.

In any case, I'm not going to pre-judge this fic for the shipping tag, but there are a few hints to go on elsewhere.  The additional tags include "sappy," which doesn't really sound like my sort of thing, but the description promises to reveal, "dark secrets about the elements, the alicorns, and [Twilight's] past."  That seems promising.

I notice there's a short second story by the same author included in the post.  I'll include it in my review.

And last but not least, pre-Nightmare Night Luna!  I always have fun going back and seeing what people thought the moon goddess would be like back before we got to see her canon personality.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Princess Luna has been growing progressively weaker, and Celestia sends for Twilight Sparkle to aid in caring for her sister.  While trying to discover a cure (or even just a cause) for Luna's decline, Twilight stumbles upon revelations both personal and earth-shattering.

Thoughts after reading:  Since this story was written well before season two, and since it deals extensively with Equestrian history, it should come as no surprise that large segments of it have been completely shot to hell by Discord, canon Luna, the Hearth's Warming play, and the upcoming appearance of Princess Cadence.  Obviously Avery Strange can't be held responsible for any of that, but I know some readers are put off by such retroactive discrepancies.

There were several formatting errors in the first two chapters (missed or doubled gaps between paragraphs, for example), and the editing was pretty poor throughout.  Not as bad as a few of the other fics I've reviewed, but when there are one or more significant errors every couple of paragraphs, it's a real distraction.  The only really consistent problem was punctuation coming out of quotes; the rest was a mix of missing words, superfluous commas, misused expressions ("[doing so] was out of the option," for example), and homonym mixups.  The story was never unreadable, but it takes a lot of fun out of ficreading (for me, at least) when there are so many basic problems present.

Since it's sort of a pet peeve of mine, I'll mention that there's a pretty clumsy reference to the Luna + abacus meme in this story.  By "clumsy," I mean that it serves no function in the story whatsoever--all references to abacuses and Luna's skill therewith could have been excised entirely without causing any harm to the overall narrative.  Having an entirely superfluous shoutout to another fanfic in what is supposed to be a story with a fairly serious tone, and referencing a goofy, lighthearted comedy no less, is pretty jarring.

I was not thrilled with the pacing and setup of the shipping.  After reading the first chapter, I was actually feeling pretty optimistic on that front: having Twilight play nurse to Luna is a great way to have the two characters spend a lot of time together, and anyone with friends or firsthand experience in long-term care knows that it's not exactly uncommon for a patient to develop feelings for his/her nurse.  Sadly, this opportunity to let the two characters develop an organic relationship was thrown out in favor of having the two declare their love for each other after spending something like 24 hours in one another's presence (during most of which time one or both were asleep, no less).  The author even eliminated the possible excuse that they were not actually in love so much as in lust by having the two do a soul-meld which revealed to both of them the absolute sincerity of the others' feelings and intentions.

The last two to two-and-a-half chapters were full of twists, turns, and shocks.  I wish I could say these were well-executed, but I was extremely unsatisfied with the way the major reveals were conducted and subsequently played out.  Obviously, I can't say much without resorting to spoilers, so up here I'll simply observe that I found Celestia utterly unbelievable, and a number of moral/metaphysical questions were created and never addressed.  For a more in depth and significantly more spoiler-y accounting of my problems, look behind the tag:

Casting Celestia as an evil tyrant is all well and good if you're writing a dark/random comedy and don't care about things like believability, but it's not an appropriate choice here. The problem is that the portrayal of Celestia in this story is directly contradicted by every single appearance she makes in the show. When you write something which is quite literally antithetical to your source material, there had better be a really, REALLY good in-story explanation, or else it becomes impossible to take the fic seriously.

There is no such explanation here. The closest we get is that "the Nightmare" (is it an independent entity? Is it an expression of self-loathing which has gained sentience? It appears to have a mind of its own, but it's not clear what the author thinks it actually is) has possessed Celestia since long before she banished her sister, and since then has done such an amazing job of hiding its true nature as a creature of unmitigated malice which believes that none of the ponies other than Luna are "real ponies" or are worthy of any consideration, that the entire nation of Equestria has failed to catch on. For at least a dozen centuries or so.

I'm sorry, but that's a tough sell in any scenario. When it is abruptly thrown in the reader's lap like a live grenade, it shatters any suspension of disbelief. By portraying Celestia as something that she clearly isn't in canon, without any explanation or even more than a passing attempt to justify all the inconsistencies between the fic and the source material, the author destroyed my ability to treat the subsequent conflict seriously.

The author also mentioned that "the Nightmare" had to let "the real Celestia" interact with Twilight, so that the latter would trust her and do her bidding. I'm sure this was intended to help explain some of the contradictions with canon, but it really just brings up even more questions. Are we to take from this that Celestia, the real Celestia, was indeed complicit in the Nightmare's plans for Luna? If not, why did she never attempt to warn Twilight? Why did Twilight and co. never see a single sign that Celestia was anything other than a loving and benevolent monarch? I just don't see any way to match what's described in this story with anything approximating the characters in My Little Pony.

And frankly, I have to wonder if Celestia/the Nightmare wasn't right all along. At the very least, her opinion that her subjects/slaves aren't "real ponies" and thus needn't be treated as such would appear to have merit in the abstract. By the end of the story, it's been revealed that all modern ponies are either artificial constructs created by Celestia and Luna, or are the offspring of such constructs. While it's clear that golems (aka all ponies except the two princesses) can develop some form of consciousness, are they truly sentient? Can they feel pain, or do they merely react to stimulus? Do they have, for lack of a better word, souls? And why doesn't anyone seem put off by the idea that they are/are the product of mindless husks, robots essentially, which have been given some unclear form of awareness by equally unclear means?

The robot analogy is a good one, actually. What if we developed a robot that could pass the Turing test and was capable of making independent decisions? What would the moral implications be? Would it be "alive?" Would it have the same rights as a person? If it did something against its coding, would that be a moral decision or a mechanical error? If its code were deleted, would it be "dead?" If its code were altered, would it still be the same creature? I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer here, at least from the perspective of a writer dealing with these issues in a story. But the omission of any consideration for any of these questions is glaring. If I was one of the ponies who just discovered that I was essentially an automaton with an uncertain, and possibly quite limited, amount of discretion to make decisions, there'd be a lot of things I wanted to talk about. The fact that this would apparently make me unique among Equestrians leads me to believe that either 1) the author didn't think through how any of the characters would react to this news, or 2) that the Nightmare really was right all along; the ponies are not really sentient (and thus, able to comprehend things like their own purpose or limitations), they just are able to act out a passable imitation thereof. But it's clear that the author doesn't intend us to buy into option 2. That being the case, I have to conclude that the way the characters all act at the end doesn't make a lick of sense.

And as far as the second story goes: it has the same technical problems as the larger fic, but is actually pretty sweet.  Frankly, I think I'd have liked it more as a stand-alone; I still had a sour taste in my mouth from the way the first story wrapped up when I read it.  In any case, it's a fine epilogue, if somewhat tangentially related.

Star Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ (what does this mean?)

I wish I could take some sort of vindictive pleasure in giving out low ratings, but I can't.  I really hate putting a single star down when I'm rating a fic, but in this case I don't feel like I have any other choice.  Between the poor editing, the abrupt and unrealistic shipping, and the issues with the last few chapters, there's plenty to say about this story.  Sadly, precious little of it is positive.

Recommendation:  I do not recommend this story.  If you really like Luna x Twilight and can wrap your head around the ending, maybe you'll enjoy it.  But it's not something I'd have 6-starred; anyone expecting to read one of the greatest stories in the fandom will be sorely disappointed by this.

Next time:  Creeping Darkness, by Pen Stroke