6-Star Reviews Part 113: Eternal

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A sign of just how terrible my sense of humor is: I spent most of an afternoon recently idly trying to figure out how to make a workable joke with the punchline that in bizarro-universe England, all the subway signs would read "Lacuna Matata."

Take your time...

Okay, finished groaning?  Sometimes, there's a fine line between brilliance and stupidity when it comes to punnery.  Clearly, this was not one of those times.

Below the break, my review of Device Heretic's Eternal.

Impressions before reading:  My familiarity with this story is mostly limited to the drama surrounding its author (whose pony-related accounts have been repeatedly hacked, and who has apparently been a magnet for abuse at the hands of trolls of various stripes).  That doesn't give me much of an opinion about the work itself going in, though.

A 150,000-word story with the sad tag is concerning--that's an awfully long time to keep up a tone of despair and hopelessness--but I do have a soft spot for stories which deal seriously with the implications of immortality, which this would appear to be.

Also, it appears there's a sequel.  Or rather, there was--it's since been deleted, so this review is Eternal only.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Celestia's realization that her relationship with Twilight has cooled over the years triggers a cascade of events which threaten the very fabric of Equestria.

Thoughts after reading:  Trying to believably portray an immortal in literature (or anywhere else, for that matter) is a task fraught with peril.  As countless depictions of vampires, elves, demigods, and slash-happy Scotsmen have shown, watching the world turn and the people you love grow old and die while you remain the same isn't something that happens without leaving a few mental marks.  So when addressing the concept of immortality in fanfiction, one of the biggest make-or-break elements is invariably going to be the amount of thought that went into what living thousands of years, with the promise of living thousands more at the very least, does to a character.

This awareness of the ways in which unending existence might affect someone is present in Eternal at all points, and is without a doubt the greatest strength of the story.  Celestia's entire characterization is informed by her knowledge that she will continue, and both her tragic flaw (I use the phrase in the classical sense) and her emotional makeup are examined in detail, yet show no cracks in their believability despite being focused upon so unsparingly.

Indeed, this story is primarily a psychological study of its major characters, and on all counts shows a great deal of thought and insight into the ways in which the mind can be made to turn on itself.  Many things which might seem to be plotholes at a glance (Luna's counterproductive behavior early in the story, for example) turn out to have clever and often insightful explanations.  Better yet, many of these explanations (including that of the example just mentioned) are never directly stated, the author choosing to rely on his readers to be able to make the necessary connections between revealed information and behavior.  Reading this story requires a certain level of involvement, which necessarily creates investment, and I thought Device Heretic did a great job of fostering and encouraging that sense of investment throughout.

However, there are some occasions where the desire to let the reader come up with the answer on his/her own results in frustrating ambiguity rather than thoughtful introspection.  The most significant of these being one of the major reveals, I'm going to have to hide it behind a spoiler tag, I fear.  If you aren't prepared to just take my word for it and don't mind me talking about the ending, click below:

It's never made entirely clear what would have happened if Celestia had simply "set" after Discord was defeated like the Sun wanted her to.  Celestia seems to suggest that not only would there be civil war, but that the not-yet-undone chaos which Discord wreaked couldn't have been fixed (or at least, couldn't have been fixed as quickly) without her there and fully empowered.  Moreover, it's not clear what would have happened had she set at any time while her sister was gone.  Would the literal sun still have risen and set without either Celestia or Luna present to control it (although I think the relevant chapter was released after Hearth's Warming Eve, the story as a whole was conceived and begun before it aired), or would she have been dooming Equestria to an icy death?

Given this ambiguity, it's hard to take everypony's assertions that Celestia's actions were a horrific betrayal at face value.  Perhaps they were, or perhaps the alternative to her actions was somewhere between tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dead (counting all sapient creatures, not just ponies), and the complete eradication of life on the planet.  Really, the reader has no basis to prefer one interpretation over the other.  There were plenty of other places where a bit more clarity would have been nice, but the fact that at the end of the story I still had no idea whether Celestia had committed an unspeakable act of betrayal or took the only moral course of action (albeit for the wrong reasons, initially) seems to me like a pretty massive failing.

On a point related to that ambiguity, there were times throughout the story when information was parceled out far too stingily.  There's a fine line between leading the reader on and jerking the reader around, and the steadfast refusal to clearly express what the stakes are in certain areas right up until the epilogue smacks of the latter.

The writing quality is quite good through the first three-quarters of the story or so; although there are a few too many meaningless modifiers for my tastes (saying that someone nodded "a bit" or smiled "a little" is only effective if used sparingly.  Otherwise, it becomes a mere linguistic tic, rendered meaningless through overuse), it never reached ridiculous levels, and the language structure was otherwise good.  Towards the end, however, I began coming across pacing issues relating to narrative detail.  Too many times, perhaps in an attempt to keep the story from becoming any longer than it already was, paragraphs detailing secondary characters or sub-plots devolved into mere lists of actions.  While it's certainly true that an author should match the narrative focus to the importance of a given scene, this can be taken to unfortunate extremes.  When the shifts are abrupt, as when there are several pages of tense dialogue rendered in full, followed by a one-paragraph description of a several minute long fight (for example), it gives the whole story a feeling of disjointedness.

Still, and I cannot emphasize this point enough, Eternal is a story that encourages the reader to think.  The sheer amount of energy expended on imagining and realizing the psyches of three very different ponies (Celestia, Luna, and Twilight) is astounding, and throughout its 150,000-plus words, it never falls into pointless navel-gazing.  Indeed, the navel-gazing here is invariably done with purpose, and the story as a whole not only generally holds up well to inspection, but positively demands it.  That's not something you often see out of fanfiction, and it's definitely worth recognizing.

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

The best parts of Eternal are those where it examines, subtly but deeply, the worldviews of its major characters.  The actual story itself, however, suffers from some unfortunate ambiguities and pacing issues, especially in the later sections.

Recommendation:  Readers who enjoy character studies will find this one positively incisive in that regard, and to them I definitely recommend this story.  Those looking for lighter reading will probably not get very much out of it though, and anyone looking for tight construction will be disappointed.

Next time:  Postal Blues and Grey Feathers, by The_EE