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No. 132142
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>>132141
Might start waxing rambly here, so apologies in advance.
>So what's the real issue here? The "no basis whatsoever" or the "same-sex character"? Because one is a difference of opinion in approaching character's romantic interests and the other is something that can be addressed in story. Thinking about it, I guess the answer is both, for different reasons. If I'm reading shipping, generally I want to be shown the romantic interest blooming first, before everyone else knows about it or talks about it. It's a private thing and how a character responds to the realization that they're developing a crush depends on the character. So when I complain about "no basis" what I mean is, on the one hand, that I haven't yet seen any kind of behavior out of Sunset that would lead me to believe, on the basis of an objective consideration of the events, that she actually has a crush on Twilight. But on the other hand, neither have the other characters in the story, at least as far as I can know so far from what you've written. To the extent that you are making the other characters take Sunset's slightly over-enthusiastic concern over Twilight's visit as evidence for it, I simply don't buy that as being something that someone could realistically consider evidence of a crush. The problem with it being a same-sex romance is that, at least in a universe where most people are heterosexual, there seems to be even less reason to assume romantic interest on the basis of such an ambiguous gesture which would not necessarily imply a romantic interest even if it were toward someone of the opposite sex. On the other other hand, I suppose that might have been your way of implying that Sunset Shimmer (and maybe Twilight Sparkle as well?) is actually already out of the closet prior to the time the story begins and that her attraction to girls is something that the others already take for granted. In that case I can only protest that my pre-existing headcanon must have led me to make certain assumptions that confused me.
>The "Rainbow Dash bouncing a soccer ball" thing is more of a character trait, same as if the pony version was, say, napping in a cloud or doing tricks. I also don't like those kinds of things. They always feel perfunctory and uninteresting to me.
>I notice you didn't pick on Rarity's designing dresses or Pinkie's being with the Cakes and baking treats. Those could both be examples of "copy and past(ing) show assets." Why, then, the focus on things specific to Equestria Girls? I could and maybe should have included those as examples, but I don't have a lot of patience for multiplying examples once I think I've already made my point clear enough. So, the answer to the question at the end is: no reason.
>Point there, then, is that it's less copying out of laziness and more establishing that this is the character and what they do, why they're in a given place, how they handle a situation. It's a bit of shorthand to say that yes, (on the surface at the very least) this is Character X because they're doing or saying what Character X does or says. Okay, I understand the goal now, but I still dislike the means you chose to attain it. Though that kind of thing does serve the higher goal you described, it's not interesting in itself. I realize "interesting" is pretty subjective, so you're free to disagree with me, but just as a thought experiment, try to think of something--other than nothing at all--that you could have had those characters doing that would be less interesting than what you actually had them doing.
>The "expodumpy dialogue" you don't explain at all. I probably latched onto this criticism because it was most prominent in the very first scene and thus stuck in my memory. I could point out a few examples if it's not already obvious what I'm talking about, but probably I overemphasized this criticism in my first post. Probably also the effect was amplified because expodumping is essentially a flaw of pacing and I was seeing pacing problems everywhere.
More generally, expodumps have their place. Their place is in a natural lull in the overall pacing of the scene. I assume you know how pacing works: generally the highest action comes at points of resolving tension, but tension is what keeps the reader turning the page, so you put your necessary exposition at points where tension is already high, or else use the exposition itself in such a way as to raise the tension. The bit in the first scene--which was what stuck in my mind initially--with Sunset explaining about the Race and about how Twilight is coming, and Applejack responding with an essay on her family's collective unconscious... besides the fact that it's kind of weird to imagine those exact sets of words coming out of the mouths of those characters at that time, there's the fact that this is how the story starts, so the excitement, the hook is just not there.
>Also unsure on the "forced character interactions" bit. Is it the "railroading" of the plot that forces characters together to interact, or is it the "shipping goggles" of characterization that mean some characters are doing things unexpectedly? It's partly the unexpected/unrealistic actions, but more it's the sense that you had a predetermined course for each of these conversations, that this course was conventional and popular and contained no surprises (hence my reference to pop chord structures), and that while the actions of the characters in them were on one level plausible, on another they just didn't feel authentic.
>The "lack of creative ideas" criticism comes from where, exactly? What is it based on? It's based on the fact that I wasn't surprised by anything that was important to the story. But let me take a look: I'll look through again and write down anything that strikes me as though it couldn't have been lifted from the show or from a "standard generic EQG fic" and then we'll see what we've got. - Semi-Annual Seasons Race for the City - Rake Up Canterlot - animal shelter’s parade float for the Summer Solstice Celebration parade - "Fluttershy is the lead..." - Rainbow's camera with the big memory card - Mrs. Cake's wine That's about it. It's only 2300 words so the number of the ideas is not the issue. The real problem is that these ideas are just extraneous side material that add flavor to the story but don't affect it substantively. The story itself, so far, is entirely straightlaced and vanilla.
EDIT: Thinking about it a little more, maybe some of these things are going to become important later? I don't want you to get the idea that I'm criticizing parts of your story that I haven't seen yet; when I say these things are extraneous, I only mean that that's what they appear to be as of now. Also, by how "important" a given element is to a story, I mean something roughly like a measure of how easily that element could be replaced with something different without affecting the rest of the story very much. And so I just want to stress again that up to this point, considering the 2.3K introduction as a whole, that any of these elements could be fairly easily replaced with others without substantially affecting what you have. So, all that just to clarify what I mean by saying those things are unimportant. /EDIT
>If the rest of the story were finished or least in such a state as to have more material to read, would you continue reading for pleasure? The answer is no, but on the other hand I scarcely read any ponyfic for pleasure anymore, and when I do my taste is really weird and idiosyncratic, so the test of whether I would read a story for pleasure or not is really not a useful one to apply for most purposes.
>I don't have a gauge for how you feel about shipping. I can be moved by shipping. I think anyone who says Dear Esther was better than Gone Home, for example, needs to put down the bong. I don't like most shipfics because they tend to cop out with sex appeal, or move too fast, or not play the tension right, or betray the realism of the relationship dynamics, or break the magic circle. However, I have to question why my opinion of shipping should matter with regard to the introductory piece you submitted to me. Your piece may be setting the ground for future shipping, but in itself it contains very little by way of the things that appeal to me in a shipfic qua romance. None of the giddy feelings, none of the uncertainties and imagined terrors, none of the passion or regret or shifted paradigms or even physical pleasures, none of any of that is present in what you've shown me so far. There's only, if you'll pardon the expression, Rarity singing "Sunset and Twilight sitting in a tree," and Sunset saying "Nuh-uh! Shut up!" But I'm well past the age where liking girls is something I'd be embarrassed to have someone else find out about, so I really can't relate to that emotion.
So, to answer your question more directly, I like what I consider good shipping but I dislike most shipping. So I'm not sure what that means about how I feel towards shipping as a whole.
Last edited at Mon, Mar 16th, 2015 01:55
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