Ponyfic Roundup 314: Spotlight on Drifting Down the Lazy River

Read it Later story count: 187 (-1) 

A week late, but at last here is another Spotlight edition of Ponyfic Roundup! I can't even remember when I last did one of these, though with luck the wait before the next one won't be quite so absurd. Off we go:

Drifting Down the Lazy River by Georg
OC, Seaponies, Celestia and Luna
Romance/Adventure; 99k words; Feb 2017; Everyone

A frustrated young orphan with a talent for painting attempts to run away from his rural village and escape to Baltimare on a raft, only to find out that the river Fen holds an unexpected answer to his problem: Seaponies

This is the sequel to The One Who Got Away (PR 233), and it definitely helps to have read the original although I'd suggest it's not strictly necessary. This fic, which has significant and deliberate echoes of Huckleberry Finn, is both longer and better than the first. Our hero this time is not Baron Gaberdine, though both he and young seapony Ripple are major supporting characters. It's an orphan named Turpentine who is deeply set on being an artist. His devotion to that shines through all the way through the fic, and though very occasionally I wondered whether he was sounding a bit adult for a ten-year-old colt, Turpentine's unhappy foalhood has reasonably made him old beyond his years in some ways. I was pleased to see that his orphanage wasn't a place of terror and misery, which makes a change in fiction! PaulAsaran says, "The pacing is perfect, the plot moves from point to point with enviable smoothness, the characters are endearing," and I can't improve on that summary. Recommended! ★★★★

There's a bit more comment – spoilery comment! – after the break.

Turpentine is an attractively characterised protagonist. He's a bit on the single-minded side, but I suppose that's a good thing for an artist. As I said above the line, how much art means to him is very much in evidence all through the piece. There's a lot of fairly technical stuff about drawing and painting in here, but Georg handles it with a light enough touch that it doesn't make a non-artist like me's eyes glaze over. The ending he gets is a nicely happy one, too. I'm glad; I was a little worried briefly!

His seapony friend Ripple really lights up the story whenever she appears. Although there's sadness and tragedy in her life, with the past loss of her father and the only very vaguely sketched ocean war that drove the seaponies to hide inland, Ripple is like a bubbling brook. Clear, musical, sparkling. I wasn't sure how much time this story was going to cover, so at one point I wondered whether it would be enough to make a Turpentine/Ripple romance a reasonable possibility by the end. On balance I'm glad it wasn't.

On the face of it, this is quite a simple tale, of a colt starting to make his way in the world and learning as he goes – but others learn from him, right up to the Princesses themselves. Luna's portrayal perhaps feels a tiny bit old-fandom on occasion for a 2017 story, but I still enjoyed it. I found Celestia's really interesting, though, and there was some very nice insight into her character. For all she puts up a facade, it's not as hard to see through as she thinks it is. Turpentine's ability to paint what he sees, not just what a photo would reveal, lets him do this. Clever.

Gaberdine is, as I said, a supporting character this time, albeit a major one. There were a few points at which he felt just slightly superfluous, but generally he felt that way in-story too. The bits and pieces of Sen we got were fun. Pearl, living up to her name, is bright and beautiful and very hard to see inside. More intriguing is Caractère from the art shop. I liked the way his somewhat shady past was revealed, though the conflict that resulted seemed to be over a little too fast.

One largely off-screen character I found myself liking a lot was Mother Windrow. At first I thought she'd be either a neglectful orphanage owner or at best some ancient crone. Not a bit of it: she's only old from Turpentine's perspective and is in fact not yet fifty. She's also the closest thing to a parent Turpentine has had since he was orphaned. I was delighted when she turned up in person quite late on, though I am a little sad for her having seen the colt move on from her care at last.

It's nice having a story that's mostly set away from the big cities, even if Baltimare and Canterlot do both feature significantly. The Huckleberry Finn feel is definitely present and correct, with a sense of the river being somewhere that time can move a little more slowly and even important things do not have to be rushed. Any niggles were minor: Luna's use of the word "prat" seems very weird to my British brain, and though established in the first fic I'm still not a huge fan of the occasional tech. All in all, though? An excellent story for reading on a lazy day or two.

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: it's back to the normal format. Stories reviewed will include Liquid Truth's Oxygen Factory.