Tales of Yip

A Day in the Life of Average Statistic

Right off of the bat, we’re put into an introduction detailing us with all sorts of expository details about a typical pony, Average Statistic, concerning how painfully average he is:

“He spends his free time reading the newspaper, ensuring his apartment room is as neat and orderly as it could be, working on some of the accounts he manages at the bank, paying his taxes, and doing the numerous other tedious day to day activities the normal citizens of Equestria do.”

The dull, very tell-y tone of the first section (before the break) is essentially negated by the section after, which effectively shows how habitual and boring his mornings are:

“At first, his hoof fell just a few inches short of the clock, hitting the side table just like every morning, before he successfully managed to hit the off button the second try.”

We’re introduced to gems like these, which allows the reader to infer that he has a very boring, typical life. It’s a strong case of showing vs. telling even if the writer is doing both at separate parts of the story, which introduces a case of redundancy. The first section also has a few grammar quips on its own, including a couple of tense issues:

“Average’s special talent is finance. Specifically, his job was to balance checkbooks and other accounting duties which he performed...”

Where Average’s special talent is, at that moment in the story, finance, but then the reader is made to believe that, in the context of the present, his job was to balance checkbooks, etc (past tense). It’s questionable whether the tense change from present to past tense after the first break works the best, but it can get by if the introduction is put into the past tense. Besides that, there’s another case in redundancy right before and right after the break:

“Just like his entire life.” and then “This day in Average’s life began just like the ones before it.”

The subsequent several paragraphs do an alright job at furthering this monotonous lifestyle, even if it does trudge on a little and could probably be skimmed down before the reader loses interest. There’s a bit of a problem with passive voice, one example being the following:

“Upon reaching them, he peered through the curtains and looked out...”

This—and the other times—that passive voice is used can be remedied by making it active, which would be “He peered through the curtains once he had reached them, and looked out...”. The passive voice makes the story even less active to the reader, and could negatively impact their interest in the story further.

There are a couple more iffy grammar and style moments found early on, coupled with the occasional awkward sentencing, but as the story goes on, it’s not too terrible:

“...despite the fact he aspired to make sure it didn’t.” —when it should be “the face that he”.

“...as he inspected his face and smoothed down any wayward hairs in his coat in an attempt to make himself look halfway decent.” —tell-y.

“He would’ve preferred to stay in the shower longer than he had, even despite the cold water,” —even despite is redundant and invalid, as you would use “despite” or “even though the water was cold”, but not a combination of them both.

These are just a few examples out of several, but again, it’s not too terrible.

Now then, putting aside the general grammar and style concerns hovering around the story—most notably in the introduction, as mentioned before—it felt quite beige, that is to say every line feels too brief, feels too straightforward for the reader to enjoy it. It’s understandable what you’re trying to do with this story, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the premise is, by default, slow, overdone and often a little forced to try and make some sort of impact on the reader.

For what it’s supposed to do with the premise, though, it was quite well done. Average is essentially representing every one of the middle-to-lower class ponies in Equestria, which in itself is a great theme to explore. The way you showed this is through Average’s reactions; we see the events going on in the story as quite menial, but we notice when he casually encounters them without being bothered in the slightest. It’s one of those “one image is worth a thousand words”, except it’s more like “one reaction is worth a thousand images”, which can definitely be explored by readers further as a world where his reactions mean that Average is used to the tedious life he lives, or it could mean that he finds mediocrity to be his bliss.

Because of the slow pace, a good portion of readers might not enjoy it. A smaller group would read it thanks to the value to realism and detail the story provides, which can be thought-provoking and interesting to consider. The beige prose and iffy start, though, makes me consider this a pretty close pass for The Royal Guard—if the redundancy of the beginning and maybe some thoughts/reactions are expanded on in subsequent edits, then I see no reason why something of this quality can’t make it into the group.

Torn Between

(Before filling out this review, I winded up reading 2 chapters—the first will be the one touched on the most).

There are some mechanical faults in the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, which I’ll expand on after I mention a crucial mistake made evident in the very first sentence:

“Normal days tend to be a occurrence that can draw itself out into a normal week, a time of casual smiles filled with opportunities to get work done and take the time to appreciate the simple pleasures life can bring.”

We’re subjected to something that already breaks our concentration on the story, as an inconsistent style of the writer being really “close” to the reader per se (that is to say the writer is mentioning a fact directly to the reader as if he were speaking it himself) often does. The story slowly delves into some descriptions that more tell a story than deliver straight facts, but it’s rather difficult to get back into it once the focus has been broken.

Back to the mechanical issues regarding that first paragraph:

“The lavender pony stood as the center...”

And also shown in the paragraph after:

“With his green spines and purple, reptilian body, Spike resembled a childish variation off a B-rated monster novel...”

These two sentences are cases of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, where a character (in these cases, Twilight and Spike) are referenced in multiple different descriptions, with Twilight having already been described as her name and later on as a purple mare, etc and Spike being described as a grumbling dragon and by his own name. These examples and more can be fixed by using pronouns corresponding to each individual character, or using their names while appropriate; try counting every example where a character is referenced in a chapter and restrict the number of ways you can describe them to two essential ones.

I won’t link the entirety of the story, but it’s apparent that it’s incredibly telly:

“Spike looked at the afternoon sun blazing outside and longed childishly for the freedom of all the ponies he saw wandering about in their daily lives; he wanted to do anything other than waste his precious time relocating dusty old books.”

This runs rampant throughout the first chapter, and I took a look at future chapters briefly—it doesn’t stop at the start of the next chapter. What you’re doing, author, is telling us how Spike feels (and telling many other things, but this pertains to the quoted sentence) without giving us anything to infer on, leaving the whole thing uninteresting and quickly put down by a great deal of readers. What you can do is have Spike look out the window, go outside, etc and sigh (or equivalent, where applicable) at others having fun—or, better yet, have him take a look at the bookshelf, then glance out the window or imagine ponies having freedom, and sigh. That shows what he feels instead of telling us.

“The owners of the shop, a gray mare with an air of pure classical music and a pale unicorn who seemed to exude the word "rave", always made Spike wonder about the stability of the shop; always arguing about music and yet somehow retaining friendship,”

There also seems to be a problem with semi-colons as noted above. While this particular one can get by, as the two clauses are related, it’s the second example of semi-colon usage in the same paragraph, and overuse of any punctuation mark is generally never a good thing. It promotes clunkiness, break of flow and awkwardness.

And, even though it’s correct in theory, your paragraphs are structured without a space between them in conjunction with very large text sections. Not having spaces in your formatting while having these long paragraphs can lead the entire thing to look like a wall of text, which becomes rattling and difficult to read from. Shortening the paragraphs (the sections themselves also seem to suffer from droning on and on about pointless material) or adding spaces in between them can help to solve this issue.

A few other grammar and style quips:

"I, uh-",—No comma necessary, as it’s both outside the quotation marks and an interruption was already initiated.

“...antics by each passing minute, "Of course, Spike, cool your jets."”—Does this sound like something Twilight would say to Spike? Very out of character, and easy to fix.

"Well",—Another example of comma misplacement for dialogue.

Besides the technicalities mentioned above, I found the majority of the story to be quite lacking. The characterization could use some definite work—the actions and dialogue of Rarity and Twilight specifically, which made them feel more like husks of their predetermined personalities instead of themselves. However, with that, I did find that Spike was done quite well. His obliviousness, childish attitude (in a sense) and overall confusion seem to fit the mark pretty closely. But, because of the lack of proper characterization with other characters, the interactions between Spike and the world feel slightly off, as it were.

The paragraph right above took a bit from the second chapter, which also (mostly) echoed the technical issues from the first. The shipping element of Spike having two different possibilities is quite overdone, and the execution is really what would make or break this fiction; as it is now, with the technical awkwardness and poor characterization/story flow, it’s a pass for The Royal Guard.

A Faded Touch of Blue

Few technical errors can be found in this piece, but there some confusions with conventions that generally aren’t changed for stylistic preference:

“Her coat was pearly white with shades of yellow in it: her mane a velvet black color,”—Colon misuse, should be a comma as it’s two parts to describe her body in the same clause.

“At first stumped, she remembered the ticket given to her by an old pony she met by chance inside the city.”—This (it continues for a bit) and other similar examples, although not too common in the story, still “tell” something when it is much better shown by some other means. This example isn’t too bad, and really informing the reader with it is acceptable, but it’s slightly worse in a few other spots.

I also found it quite interesting that “hoofs” was used instead of “hooves”. I recognize that it’s purely a matter of preference, just as single/double quotes for dialogue would be—but they’re the same in that single/”hoofs” are not commonly used, and the unorthodox spelling shook me a little bit.

Besides those and very minor grammar quips, it was a solid story mechanically.

The introduction was very smooth, one that I found to have a good amount of detail and hook to keep the reader interested. Nothing in the first several minutes of reading is particularly “gripping” enough to warrant surprise, but it’s still a competent beginning. The detail to the garments that the main character, Moxie, are described longer than most clothing would—but this importance is clearly shown as essential to the story. Moxie feeling restricted in her decisions, as made by others, is partly shown in these descriptions.

The characterization was strong and consistent. Moxie’s experiences out in the public were, as mentioned before, quite telly, but it doesn’t detract very much from how she experienced them and how this makes an impact in the present-day prose. She is made exactly to be someone from Saddle Arabia, and the comparisons between her and her parents is made quite clear—at the same time, her personal thoughts on her own ponies’ customs make her more than a single-dimensional character.

Another interesting point is how you were actually able to integrate her experiences and tell Moxie’s story at the same time as describing how different the societies are in Equestria and Saddle Arabia. World-building and societal commentary? A strong combination, and done quite well.

The grammar is solid, the characterization is consistent and smooth and the subject matter is interesting and does more than just one thing. This story has my approval for entry into The Royal Guard.