Read it Later story count: 91 (-1)
Words read this week: 47,674
All right, two days late I know, but at least I've recovered enough to actually write this review now! These things are always easier if I like the fic, since then I only have the problem of not letting the review run away from me. This is shaping up to be an exceptionally boring intro para, so let's move on...
Mothering, Someday by Impossible Numbers
Twilight Velvet and Derpy
G4; Drama/Slice of Life; 48k words; May 2020; Everyone
Mare's Day, a tribute to motherhood. Twilight Velvet is the ordinary mother of an extraordinary family; Derpy is the opposite. They normally wouldn't cross paths, but in a town where an outsider can become Princess of Friendship, anything's possible.
Twilight Velvet is off to Ponyville to see her daughter, but she's nervous. She hasn't seen Twily since her coronation, and for reasons she's arranged to take flowers that her daughter will then give to her for Mare's Day. But before that, she encounters a certain wall-eyed grey mare, who she is desperate to avoid telling she's the princess's mother. The two talk and bond and feel their way and learn and don't learn and hint and infer and... well, and eventually they meet Derpy's daughters, who are very different indeed. From each other, and from their mum. This is a story all about insecurities, but despite that it's written in an assured way that isn't afraid to dwell on apparently small domesticities. My favourite thing here, though, is how Derpy is written: I hate the "Derpy is dim" approach, and IN absolutely does not fall into that trap. An excellent, if sometimes deliberately awkward, read about families and their rough edges. A very solid four. ★★★★
As you'd expect, spoilers lie in wait beyond this point!
As I said, I really enjoyed how Derpy was written in this fic. One of my favourite moments came after several chapters of me thinking one slightly surprising weakness in the writing was the way Derpy kept failing to spot "My daughter Tw—" lines from Velvet. IN is a better writer than that, of course, so I should have known better! A difficult trick to pull off, which I think was, is the way that Derpy is somewhat slow in certain areas and forgetful in others, but isn't stupid by any means.
I'm now going to jump to Amethyst, who was the most unexpected character here. She reminds me of nopony so much as Limestone Pie, and I suspect that was deliberate. After all, she has gemstones for a cutie mark and a strong background with Golden Harvest. We don't get to find out everything regarding exactly why Ammy (taking my life in my hooves there!) is as she is in this story; maybe it's Twilight's fault for taking her Winter Wrap Up job... I don't know whether there are any other fics set in this continuity, but if so I'd be quite interested to read them sometime.
Dinky is of course a completely adorable scamp, since it's a legal requirement that she be, but she's also sneaky and giggly and determined all in one. The scene where she catches Velvet sneaking into Derpy's "motherhood manual" room is both funny and somewhat heartbreaking. Speaking of which, there's very obviously some background to her that we're not being made privy too, as well: "Oh, my mother's still alive" and the associated air-frosting hit like a train.
What's interesting, and in true Impossible Numbers style kept lightly hanging in the air, is the age range in the Hooves family household. I'm possibly not observant enough to have seen any actual confirmation of this, should it exist in the fic, but Derpy seems in the show to be roughly in the same age range as the core characters and considerably younger than Velvet. Yet she has a filly the age of Amethyst? I can't help wondering whether that has to do with Derpy's clearly sad history with her own mum.
Or, indeed, mom. One small thing I rather enjoyed about this story, whether deliberate or not, was IN's use of a rather Transatlantic English. Ponies do washing up and put post through letterboxes, but they also throw curveballs and trains have engineer's rooms. It's like listening to Rarity, I suppose. :P On a more serious note, the style seemed to me to fit the story perfectly. It's restrained, holding something in, but underneath that there's a real love for Derpy.
Something that was really extremely interesting was Velvet's fear of her daughter's power. The Haute Cuisine vignette about the soup was a fascinating bit of foreshadowing of "Lesson Zero", and I didn't fail to spot the passing reference to Twilight possibly changing living things into other objects (hello frog-orange). It's a very different kind of fear to worrying that your teens are in with a bad crowd, and it's an element of Equestrian society I'd be fascinated to see explored more in ponyfic.
So, anything I wasn't sure about? The Haute Cuisine stories were all nice, and important for in-story world-building, but that section did last a long time and I felt myself slightly hankering after a change of scene by the end. Lyra's cameo was a lot of fun, though, and her slightly unhinged approach added a nice touch of levity to what at times was an emotionally demanding read. The ending was also very brief, and maybe the sentimentalist in me would have liked a real reconciliation scene with Twilight.
All in all? Mothering, Someday really satisfied me. The character work was extremely good, and that's always something I enjoy seeing. Everyone, even the bit players like Savoir Faire, came over in a way that fitted their roles. The fic asks some important and interesting questions about what family really means (hello Golden Harvest) as well as pondering on the insecurities of motherhood. There are more little touches than I can note in here, but that just makes it all the better.
As often happens after I'm late with an update, next week's five stories will all be very short. They are:
Friends Forever by Wrangle Wolfe
Mercy by TheNocturnalLoner
There Are Many Gravities by shortskirtsandexplosions
Thankful by LadyKimba
One Night by Mirta
Woohoo, was THIS a nice surprise! I've enjoyed some nice seats on the ponyfic roundup train before, but this? First-class service all the way! You are doing rotten things to my ego right now, haha! :D
ReplyDeleteSo very nostalgic to see I was in the writing zone, and so thoroughly just... whoa, six years ago!? And to have produced a - completed - 47.6k-word fic, of all things, when I rarely crack above 20k? Prove it to me, and I still wouldn't believe it.
It's just so complicated, you know? To see how different things were.
Anyway, onto the review itself!
"An excellent, if sometimes deliberately awkward, read about families and their rough edges. A very solid four. ★★★★"
I haven't even done anything lately, and this nevertheless triggers in me such a keen "I'M BACK, BABY!" moment. Four stars here is good stuff.
"As I said, I really enjoyed how Derpy was written in this fic. One of my favourite moments came after several chapters of me thinking one slightly surprising weakness in the writing was the way Derpy kept failing to spot "My daughter Tw—" lines from Velvet. IN is a better writer than that, of course, so I should have known better! A difficult trick to pull off, which I think was, is the way that Derpy is somewhat slow in certain areas and forgetful in others, but isn't stupid by any means."
The irony is that, of the entire Hooves household (can I call them that?), Derpy's both the last one I developed over the years and the one who changed the most. I remember experimenting with her portrayal in various fics over time, and - as e.g. FanOfMostEverything commented - not always with complete success (most obviously, making her more of a dim-witted disaster area in some fics: Practical Nightmares Only did that especially early on).
Instead, in my early days, I was - of all characters, given my penchant for obscurities - mostly focused on Amethyst, with Dinky along for the ride (she too needed better fleshing out over time - part of which I actually owe to a review you gave of one of her fics). Derpy was kept at arm's length for a while, at least partly in defiance of popular orthodoxy, then later brought in as a family friend, gradually becoming more of a mother figure (e.g. in Goldilocks and the Three Months Spent in Young Offender's Prison), and then just part of the family as I finally figured out her dynamics with the other two (catalyzed by Golden Harvest's role over time).
No denying there's a bit of "kindhearted simpleton" stereotyping going on there, but something I hit upon as a turning point (not sure how clear this is in the current fic) is the idea that Derpy's not that bright in the immediate, but she IS self-aware, and that gives her a long-term way out of the usual dim-witted shenanigans. Most obviously, Amethyst's the one actually running the place with her approval, she encourages Dinky's intellectual side, and Goldie's a sensible backup. She's not passing exams anytime soon, but she's got enough open-minded humility to know when a particular hour needs a particular mare.
And yeah, once it clicked with me, there was a massive appeal in a character so strongly defined by her good-willed nature. I like to think that bit at the end was a case of empathic intelligence: unlike Amethyst and Dinky, who accosted Velvet immediately with their own concerns and interests, Derpy had... more felt than thought through the implications already. Plus the (pegasus-notable) determination and natural enthusiasm: I just think of Derpy as spiritually a very big, loyal, lovable dog (which also amusingly contrasts with the cat motif of Amethyst). Did I mention I have a soft spot for dogs? n.n
Like I said, it took a while (read: roughly a decade by this point) for Derpy to go from barely ignored sideshow to crucial player in my personal fanon, but she got there.
"I'm now going to jump to Amethyst, who was the most unexpected character here."
DeleteGaaaaawwwwwwd, this hurts to read, for personal reasons. Like I said, Amethyst was one of the earliest background characters I got a solid beat on (read: from 2013 latest), starting with her voiced cameo in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", which I cannot resent as an ep for that reason. The launching point was Cathy Weseluck's sarcastic delivery, which pretty much seeded the rest. There really is a massive story behind her... and I can't tell any of it, because I'm still furiously committed to publishing it one day and don't want to spoil anything. So far, she's mainly made appearances without that background, and for a struggling author like me to self-deny that badly, that's fundamentally frustrating.
Getting back to the here and now, that's probably why I find the comparison to Limestone Pie funnily surprising, yet also understandable (she IS pretty angry in this, isn't she?). One thing I can expand upon is that, in my conception at least, Limestone is her own brand of Pie insanity chiefly defined by a sort of suspicious irritation with the wider world, whereas Amethyst is basically the clinical, clean rationalist behind the Derpy throne. But I do see the overlap, given their fierce domestic protectionism (and the fact that in this fic especially, Ammy's regularly getting her hooves trodden on, hence the constant anger).
More broadly, of all the Hooves household, Amethyst is easily the most marginalized and overlooked... in the fandom, that is. Yet I generally find popular ideas of Derpy and Dinky a bit too treacly and dreamy, so Amethyst became to me a sort of "reality check" on that: sentimentalism can only get you so far. Effectively, she's the reason Derpy can function in the real world. In a story about how lovey-dovey Derpy can get towards Dinky over breakfast, Amethyst would be the one checking the cupboard stocks, packing the school bag, and getting the washing up ready. In a way, she plays the role of the witches (and to an extent, Granny Weatherwax) in the Discworld series: amidst a world of fantasy, wishful thinking, and nonsense, she's the stubborn one doing the mucky job of making it practical and survivable.
Granted, I can get pretty sentimental in my fics - I get very self-conscious these days if I overdo the crying scenes, for instance - but that general ethos of vying to subvert, course-correct, or counterbalance it is something I try to keep close by. I remember, for instance, the ending of this one could get a bit cloying with the reconciliation scene after the big argument... so I shoved in a seemingly random digression about the Centipede Dilemma that confuses the heck out of everyone else present. Derpy gets overwhelmed by the gift-giving moment... and Dinky the kid casually and a little too indecently boasts about having access to a knife to carve hers. The big, gooey reveal about Derpy's awareness of Velvet's true family ties... involves Golden Harvest getting increasingly annoyed wondering what the heck everyone's talking about. Just little pockets of air when the writing starts getting too deep or threatens to drown on itself: that's the theory.
Returning to Amethyst, I do like the worldbuilding nuance of wrapping up the main storyline satisfactorily but not necessarily solving every side detail along the way, and her role here (while forced by my own reticence) played into that nicely. I don't want a fic to be too pat. I like hinting at a bigger world out there, sometimes explicitly (a lot of Velvet's life and its parallels to the ponies who turn up in the fic), but a bit of implicit mystery adds flavour too. So... yep, keep guessing about Ammy. ;)
"Dinky is of course a completely adorable scamp, since it's a legal requirement that she be, but she's also sneaky and giggly and determined all in one. The scene where she catches Velvet sneaking into Derpy's "motherhood manual" room is both funny and somewhat heartbreaking."
DeleteI don't know if you ever read my blog post on how I shaped my version of Dinky over time, but roughly speaking: of the three Hooves' (I gotta admit it feels weird to type that, as I usually don't bother with the Hooves "surname"), she's arguably the most complex. Or at least the one I put the most conscious effort into making complex.
It's no secret I usually shy away from "cute ickle filly" Dinky, and one of the ways that manifested was in a deliberate attempt to make her unlike Twilight. I still carry the Matilda comparison, and what's easy to forget is that Matilda could be both a scheming prankster when crossed, and a bit too assured of her own maturity (one thing from the book that's unexpectedly stuck with me is a bit where Miss Honey invites Matilda over to her own run-down hovel, and the little prodigy gets a bit too insensitively nosy about the living arrangements, then realizes and has to backtrack and apologize). Since Twilight's obviously a rule-abiding stickler, one obvious counter was to make Dinky more of a rebellious chaos spirit, so to speak.
I might have overplayed it in this particular fic, but I also took a leaf out of the Lisa Simpson (classic seasons) playbook: for all her young genius, she's still a fallible kid. One example is Dinky's idea of a good cake: banoffee cream pie with custard, something unsubtle and sugar-loaded compared to her sister's bitter refinement. Another is the Sweetie-Belle-Rarity-on-a-bad-day level of rivalry with her sister. It's too easy to make precocious kids act like tiny adults, something I wanted to avoid in this one (again, I may have overcorrected and made her more "kiddie" than I usually would).
She's even a contrast with Derpy in multiple ways (e.g. intelligence, innocence, insensitivity). I just love comparing and contrasting characters.
"Speaking of which, there's very obviously some background to her that we're not being made privy too, as well: "Oh, my mother's still alive" and the associated air-frosting hit like a train."
I'm confused as to why these two points are linked to each other. I'm guessing you made an inference regarding the gaps in Derpy's family life back in Cloudsdale (which is what the latter was referring to) and how Dinky directly fits into that somehow? But it seems to me that past is very separate from Dinky's own history. About the only real connection I saw was that Derpy had an abusive/neglectful upbringing and simply didn't want to repeat the cycle with her own daughters.
Unless I'm missing something here...?
"What's interesting, and in true Impossible Numbers style kept lightly hanging in the air, is the age range in the Hooves family household."
DeleteHonestly, I kinda sidestepped that in the fic and more generally anyway. But canonically, especially when the flashbacks start appearing from "Amending Fences" onward (if I remember right, you can see a very young Amethyst in Twilight's class), it becomes impossible to reconcile Amethyst's age with Derpy's without just making Amethyst an adopted relative, and the wrong one age-wise regardless to still consider Derpy a stepmother. I mean, you can only hold Derpy back in class so many times before the age gap strains credibility anyway.
I just glossed over it for immediate convenience, but I would prefer to address it head-on. Someday.
"I can't help wondering whether that has to do with Derpy's clearly sad history with her own mum."
That juxtaposition again. I'll take a guess: are you suggesting that Amethyst (and Dinky?) would actually be Derpy's siblings, to match the age range? After all, you could reason at first glance that the age gap between Amethyst and Dinky wouldn't be that different from the one between Applejack and Apple Bloom, or Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo.
God, I wish I could address this directly without spoiling anything. It really does need a proper solution.
"Or, indeed, mom. One small thing I rather enjoyed about this story, whether deliberate or not, was IN's use of a rather Transatlantic English."
DeleteI think that was definitely not deliberate. I don't check every word or phrase I use, so given my media experiences, Americanisms likely just got invited in without notice.
"So, anything I wasn't sure about? The Haute Cuisine stories were all nice, and important for in-story world-building, but that section did last a long time and I felt myself slightly hankering after a change of scene by the end."
Ironically, that third of the fic was an attempt by me to add some breadth to the proceedings, with the lunch really amounting to a framing device for an anthology. One of the reasons I wrote the fic was to make up for the frankly criminal! underuse of the pairing, so a few vignettes with their relatives paired with their reactions to the same helped give the fic a more "expansion pack" feel. If anything, I'd have expected this complaint for the last third of the fic, which is easily the longest run.
Although I think what you're pointing out could be the fundamental problem - risk - with picking a framing device for such seemingly unconnected moments, especially in a longfic: it gets a bit formulaic without obviously progressing anywhere until the big Twilight two-parter drops the bombshell. At least the other two thirds have the advantage of moving to other scenes and building on previous chapters to progress (the last third, after all, is built around the back-and-forth over the big reveals).
I think you've pointed out something I can learn from here.
"Lyra's cameo was a lot of fun, though, and her slightly unhinged approach added a nice touch of levity to what at times was an emotionally demanding read."
I won't ramble on about Lyra the same way I've rambled on about the other cast members, but: YES! I love the web of connections between characters, and Lyra doubled as an excuse to make more canonical connections (the wedding, obviously). Plus, kooks are fun!
(And I learned something about ley lines while researching that part. Writing can be educational, who knew?). :P
"The ending was also very brief, and maybe the sentimentalist in me would have liked a real reconciliation scene with Twilight."
Yeah, I think either I was going for a Monster's, Inc. "kitty" ending there, or I was just tired and wanted a final money shot as an excuse to stop. It's conspicuously short.
Really, I've always struggled with just ending these damn fics. One of the downsides of getting a juggernaut going is figuring out how the brakes work on the fly. Doesn't help I keep doing this for contests and then struggling with the deadline. It's, um, a work in progress? Heh.
There's a ton more I could talk about (with Golden Harvest, we've barely scratched the surface - for one thing, I was happy to work in her other fan name), but at this rate I'll likely get flagged as a spambot, so I'll just content myself to say I ADORED this review. Straight to my bookmarks collection. And I find it incredibly flattering-embarrassing that you compared my writing style to Rarity, of all ponies! Albeit one does creatively indulge in the literary extravagances of the infamous purple prose (whilst secretly being common as muck, innit?), do I not? ;D
DeleteAnd the Clover the Clever story-within-a-story was my attempt at a broader narrative "filigree", as TV Tropes puts it, because I really like fleshing out...
And, um, the unexpected humanizing parallels Dinky makes between Velvet and Twilight (e.g. polite kindness)...
And the fun I had with Night Light, short as his cameos were...
OK, I just gotta stop before I write you a novel of notes. See what I mean? I told you I suck at ending things.
Thanks again for the wonderful gift! A real morale-booster, and a pleasure!
You're very welcome, and I'm glad it boosted morale! A wonderful comment to read, as well, and I loved going through it. For the Dinky point, I can't quite remember now but I suspect I thought Derpy might have been a mother young enough that her age itself created problems, especially with her parents.
DeleteStrong review! This one's been on my list for a while, so I suppose if I get back to reading more than a shortfic a month, I should make space for this to be one of the first longfics. Lord knows it's on the shorter end and thus easier to fit in for such.
ReplyDelete