To Drown A Butterfly
by Matthew DePointe
(Spoilers)
References
Description
Set in the backdrop of 50's noir Hell's Bakery, Los Pegasus. These gripping crime thrillers stars Serendipity Eggstrum Ponetti. An unforgettable story of loss and redemption as our anti-hero tries to get rich quick. In a city with four million stories, this is only one of them.
Rating
Teen
Genre(s)
Alternative Universe, Dark, Mystery, Random, Slice of Life, Thriller
Characters
Chapters
4
Word Count
7,863
Synopsis
To Drown A Butterfly is a short crime story based in the noir genre. It's one of Matthew DePointe's best works, and starts off very neat.
If there's one thing you should know about me, you can easily trick me for a good story if you make a decent setting. In the first chapter we immediately get down to business with our anti-hero blackmailing a mare and milking her for what she's worth. Though he is not the good guy, he isn’t portrayed as the bad guy either. In this chapter, our anti-hero uses an “associate” to steal a necklace that’s owned by the wife of one of the richest ponies in the Las Pegasus County. She, doing what we would probably do, buys her own necklace back from, Ponetti.
Taking advantage of her inheritance, he extorts her for 20,000 bits—way over the price of what the necklace is worth. After a short frit, Ponetti convinces the mare too call up her husband and bring the money. He also uses the motivations of: “If it’s not here in twenty minutes, every minute it’s late the price will double.”
After getting his money, Ponetti drunkly leaves the bar, still somehow sober enough to make his way around. We’re immediately confronted by a twist. Ponetti pulls the necklace from his pocket, and it’s revealed that he was going to deceive her. He was going to keep the real necklace anyways and sell it on the street for a bonus 6,000 bits. Yet, shameful to admit, however, he kept the fake one and gave the real one too the mare; this may be due to the fact that he was drunk, or this rivals with his own morals.
In the next chapter, we meet Ponetti at the bar again; this time meeting with a new client. After another short chat, the client offers a job. The job is too escort a pony by the name of Clockwork to a mansion for “petty playing” with an unwillingly mare; then beating her senseless with a pipe. But instead of dyeing, she’s left blind and scared.
When the meeting is over, Ponetti does some thinking. He’s left with the fate of a pony in his very hooves. Though, he is not the good guy, he claims that the only reason he is a criminal is because it’s part of his get-rich-quick-scheme. Drunk he is though, he is no murderer.
The story starts too spiral down when he spends most of the third chapter being drunk and going from place to place. The events are kind of hard to explain (counting that I am new), and which is why we will get down to the final chapter.
Ponetti confronts Clockwork in a dainty house, while at the same time he keeps notice of how dirty the house is. While Clockwork is asleep, Ponetti blocks off his room (there’s a pony outside the door, passed out high), and cleans up a bit while he waits for Clockwork to wake up.
When he does, Ponetti explains his job and what he’s there for. Turns out, those stops that he made in the previous chapter involved him going to a bakery too pick up a cake. Ponetti gives Clockwork his last meal, as is his way of saying, “I’m sorry I have to do what I got to do.”
We are immediately followed by another twist when Ponetti gives Clockwork a bottle of sleeping pills. Believing that if Clockwork commits suicide, Ponetti will be free of guilt knowing that Clockwork won’t die a painful death. We don’t exactly see if Clockwork makes the decision, though. As accepting as he was too listen to Ponetti, it sounded like he was convinced.
Ponetti learns his place and decides to stick with the way he follows: which involves getting drunk a lot.
Opinions
The overall impact of this story wasn’t very notifyingly receiving to me. While it started out impressive, it all goes down hill in this list:
1. Extortion
2. Client has work
3. Drunk
4. Drunk mishap
5. The end
What the story is missing is detail. I first noticed that it was all running low in chapter 2, where we’re already getting into the story. I personally don’t think that the author chose the right moment too really began the plot; the most that we learned about him is that he’s drunk and that he is sometimes an asshole.
We do get provided with backstory throughout, however. In chapter three we meet a mare he has a type of “love-passion” for. While chapter three had better moments then chapter 2, it honestly felt padded. Most of his exploring is filled in with only a thousand words. He basically gives the synopsis himself.
I think the ending would be good if he just put a little more effort into it. I do believe that it was a good ending, but hardly anything happened. Perhaps if we see him struggling to make the decision a little more, it would be in the right place.
Suggestions
I believe that there’s potential in this story being good. Perhaps if the story is rewritten, the author adds more details, maybe another chapter or two, it would turn up nice. The beginning was my favorite part because it depicted his ways and left a good impression. I want to see that more in this story, other than him getting drunk and prowling about.
Ratings
Quality Rate: 5
Not Recommend
Fun Facts
Present Perfect read this story and he responded to the last two chapters.
That pony was a poop pony. <.< That was a poop pony in the story just now.
So when I saw the comments before I read the third chapter, I thought there was going to be a poop monster. :/
Resolution
by xjuggernaughtx
References
Description
The Joining.
Adagio had heard the ritual’s name spoken in hushed tones ever since she was a little girl, but what did it mean, exactly? Now that she’s come of age, she’s about to find out.
But knowledge begets more knowledge, and not all truths are comforting. In the swirling coastal fog, pathways aren’t always clear, and sometimes it’s hard to tell friend from foe…
Rating
Teen
Genre(s)
Adventure, Dark
Character(s)
Chapter(s)
4
Word Count
16,709
Plot
With a battle between hippocampi and human at its breakage, Adagio and Dazzle converse in the interior of Adagio's mind on an adventure that will decide the future fate of which Adagio may bare.
Synopsis
The synopsis will be skipped for this review due to the trouble of writing it.Things will hopefully go back to normal in the next review. I'll eventually write the synopsis somewhere in the future, but it's troublesome enough as of now.
Interview
I found that there were some things in the story that I didn't quiet understand (even the simplist). So I got an interview with the author and asked him a series of questions.
This story doesn't seem very cannon, yet you refuse to label it as "Alternative Universe." What's the reason to this? Does it take place before or after *Rainbow Rocks?*
This story takes place long before Rainbow Rocks. Adagio has just turned twelve, but is late for this rite of passage because her mother has basically shielded her from it. Most of the viable candidates go through it at age ten. Starswirl send the Sirens through the portal, so it must have happened in Equestria’s distant past, and since this story predates that encounter, it’s older than that.
I haven’t labeled this as “Alternate Universe” because I feel like Rainbow Rocks offered us contradictory information. We are told that the sirens are beasts that ravaged Equestria before they were sent to whatever land that Canterlot High is in. However, during the finally, we don’t see the Sirens transform into the hippocampus forms. They summon them. They also don’t seem to be closely linked to the forms. They don’t react when the hippocampi get attacked. They don’t seem to feel the deathblow that the gigantic unicorn thing dealt to them. The Sirens call up the hippocampi and then just seem to let them do their thing while singing.
These two things don’t really reconcile all that well. Starswirl’s book says one thing while the onscreen seems to say another. To me, it seems logical that the more accurate of the two things is what we actually get to see. It looks like three girls summoning three monsters, and then directing them, rather than three monsters shedding their disguises as girls to do battle in their true forms.
As for anything else, well, this story is about the history of Adagio, and the movie doesn’t give us any other history, so there’s really no canon to compare it against.
Most throughout the story we get introduced to a lot of dialogue. This would crown the fic to be labeled "boring" to a lower stabled audience. What were you expecting to get out of the fic before you published the first chapter?
I’m a very dialogue heavy writer, in general, so most of the people that follow me are ready for that. I did expect that this story would be considered boring by a lot of people and that it would have a limited audience. It’s what happens when you write a dark story about a niche character. When you go in knowing that the story isn’t very likely to find a wide readership, it frees you from that concern. I just wrote it in a way that felt comfortable for me.
Is there anything in the fic that you wanted your audience to notice, but no one caught on to it?
I’m not really sure if people caught it or not, but there wasn’t a lot of discussion about how Dazzle made his arguments. I wanted him to be instructing Adagio on how to be this cunning, conniving person, but also to be doing the exact things to her that he suggested that she adopt. That would make him an unreliable character. You’d never know if he was using her or helping her or what. He makes logical arguments and shows her all kinds of persuasive things, but who’s to say any of it is truth, no matter how hard he stresses that it is.
Additionally, I made Dazzle a logical character. His whole character is about conceiving and executing efficient plans, but in the end, I forced him to use emotion rather than logic to win Adagio over. She resists his attempts until he finally offers her the thing she’s always lacked: love. I wanted it to be the last ditch attempt that Dazzle secretly despises using. It’s a loss for him. For all of his cleverness, he has to fall back on something so basic.
Was there a different/original plan for the story?
The original plan for the story was just the battle between Adagio and Dazzle on the cliff. I wrote that scene with the thought that it would just be this two thousand word mini-fic about something interesting. Then I decided that we needed to know why she was at the cliff, so I added her dad. Then I thought we needed to know that this creature was a bigger threat than just a physical powerhouse, and that maybe Adagio hadn’t really won on that cliff at all. That stretched the story out for a long time. I needed Dazzle to move Adagio from a headstrong, idealistic girl into the rather Machiavellian character we see in Rainbow Rocks.
What was the biggest struggle when writing this?
Time and scope. This story just kind of kept going. I would think I was about to wrap things up, and then figure out that I needed several thousand more words to properly explain this or that. As the world unfolded, I just had to keep up with it. At the time (and still), I just didn’t have a whole lot of spare time to write, so it felt like the story just dragged on and on.
As a fanfiction writer myself, I spent six months writing the first chapter of my most recent fic. Suffice to say, it was the hardest thing I've ever written. The point to this is: Along with your biggest struggle, how hard and how long did it take to write this? Do you have any solutions to fixing problems like this/these?
This story took me approximately six months to write. However, that wasn’t six months of three hours a day or anything like that. It was six months of finding a spare hour sometime within a week and using it. It was the most grueling story that I’ve written because it just would not end. I’d think I was on the verge of finishing it just to figure out that I needed a whole bunch more to adequately flesh something out. In the end, I still didn’t put all the detail/plot that I wanted to have in there. I started to get nervous that A) it would never get done, and B) it would get bloated because I’d get too attached to the things that I’d worked so hard to get into the story. After reading it more times than I care to remember, I figured that I had enough there to tell the story. I’ve never been totally satisfied with Resolution. It was an interesting idea that came along at an inconvenient time. To really make it sparkle, I think I’d need to double its length. There is just so much detail that could be added to enrich the story and make that bond/relationship work between the characters. I wanted it to seem both predatory and necessary for them both, but I don’t think I totally pulled that off. They are both needy and neither of them is trustworthy. No one in this story is trustworthy. In the end, I think the flavor of that is there, but Adagio is a flatter character than I’d like her to be. I like where she ends up in the last chapter, but I didn’t give her enough character before that. Dazzle is better, but the point of the story is to move Adagio to where we see her in Rainbow Rocks. Dazzle spends all of his time doing that. It would have been better to have them take it at a slower pace. No one changes beliefs and personality so quickly. I just didn’t have the time to write that story.
I had a hard time keeping up with some of the plot. From my perspective, it seemed that the humans were at war with the hippocampi. Can you explain what was really happening?
If by humans you mean the siren race,
(I forgot the story didn't have a human tag XD)
then yes, that’s what was going on. The sirens and the hippocampi were engaged in a war that was at a stalemate, so it was dragging on forever and causing endless casualties. Both Adagio and Dazzle wanted something better for their people, but the leaders of their races wanted to keep things as they were, both out of fear of what is different and because it afforded them opportunities. They preferred the devil that they knew.
What would you like to say to people who disliked this story? What would you like to say to people who plan on reading it?
What we like or dislike is subjective. If most of the people who read this story disliked it, then I would pick their brains and find out what I’d done wrong. I have my own ideas of where I think this story could be improved, so there is value in knowing if I’m good at diagnosing my own fiction or if I’m way off. If most of the readers love the story, then that’s an easier problem to deal with. Getting critical feedback about a story that everyone loves is a challenge, but it’s a heartwarming challenge, at least. But as far was what I’d like to say to people that disliked it, well, I’m not really sure besides just wanting to know what they didn’t like.
I’m pretty critical. I dislike about 75% of the media that I’m exposed to. I pick everything apart. I fully expect that people are going to do that to my stuff, as well. None of my stories are perfect, so if anyone disliked this, that’s expected. I think it’s flawed, but I do think it also has a level of quality to it. I like this story, and no amount of people disliking it changes that. I don’t love this story. I mean, outside of the fact that I created it. I have affection for it, but I try not to be too blinded by that.
So if you disliked it, I still hope you’ll pick something else that I’ve written up and give that a shot. I’d suggest The New Crop, which is my best story, but I’ve got a good variety of things to choose from. All I’d like in return is a comment letting me know why you feel the way that you feel. Those comments/votes are really the only payment we get as authors. They are appreciated.
To those that are interested in reading this (at least interested enough to read this review), thank you for that interest. I worked very hard on this story. It still has some things I’d like to change about it, but it is the culmination of lots of effort by both me and my pre-readers/editor. It’s not about the Adagio that you know. It’s about a girl who is becoming that character. You’re not going to get wacky high school antics. That’s the uphill battle that this story has to work against. However, I do think it’s a unique look into what might have been.
Opinion(s)
It's titled Resolution because they have to find a resolution, is what goes through my mind when I read this story. Throughout we are given a conversation between Adagio and Dazzle. Most of it is about claiming maturity with her power, as that topic is brought up throughout. Most of all, though, they must be at peace with each other in order to end the war between the hippocampi and sirens.
It's the dialogue that really gets my attention, though. It fits so well with the tone of the story. Most of it is cleverly worded. A+
Overall, this was very neatly written and well thought out. While it is dialogue heavy and tends to get boring at times, it sends good vibes to those with the knowledge to understand. This fanfic isn't for everyone; but it does prove its worth the time all the way from the setting, to its climax, and resolution (no pun intended).
Suggestion(s)
Gosh, I wasn't really expecting to like the story. Let's see... what is there to suggest? Make it less boring? that might be an ability, but it could risk the fine plot. There's nothing to suggest. This was practically a book in my eyes.
How about, for those who happen to read this review and decide to go for a scan of a chapter or two, let me know what you think needs some addition.
Ratings
Quality Rate: 8
Recommended; Must Read; Recommended for Masterpiece
(Great dialogue, well written, great plot, time spent patiently, and not for the average reader)
Fun Fact(s)
You can view the original ending to Resolution among the story xjuggerscrapsx. View the original chapter here.