This was a difficult story to review.
It fit all the guidelines for me to review it, so on paper it should've be entirely possible, given a few reads and some introspection afterwards, that I should've easily been able to sit myself down and type up a bunch of words, seeing as that's my job on this blog. So, what's kept me from giving a concise and more conventional review for this story? Did I even like this story? Find out after the break.
If you've clicked on the link already, then you might've seen that the description page is vague as it only consists of the word "Exhaustion", the picture for this story is cryptic and ambiguous, and the story contains zero words. Yes, you read that right. The reason for that and why this got past moderation will be explained shortly, so for now my description of this story is simply "artsy".
Artsy. The word alone will scare people off as it implies other words, like 'pretentious', 'confusing', and 'stuuuuuupid', and I was like this too not too long ago. I'll admit that if it weren't for OanCitizen of That Guy With The Glasses, then any kind of 'artsy' media would go over my head instantly. What I've learned from him is that this is a very bad stereotype, because if a story or movie is 'weird' or derives from the normal three act structure, then it suddenly goes over peoples' heads. I'm not saying that art-house films or something with a 'deep' meaning is automatically better than your average superhero movie or mystery novel, but blowing something off for being out of the ordinary is for plebeians, quite honestly.
The first thing you'll notice about this story is the whole 'no words' thing, and to me the first thing that came to my mind was Creepypasta. See, I've known creepypastas to be sneaky about what they're after, but then again the only tags on this story are 'Tragedy' and 'Sad'. Then again, it could be one of those meta creepypastas, which are super-duper sneaky. Upon reading the story, I found myself having trouble highlighting the text onscreen. And then it hit me:
Its just an image.
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| [Source] |
I won't reveal what that symbolizes, so let's continue. (I do want you to actually read the story after all)
Now, I don't read many 'artsy' stories or watch 'artsy' movies, because they're not my preferred genre; that and for the most part they tend to go over my head. I'm not a very clever person is what I'm saying, though apparently I'm smart enough to read and understand this story. (The comments section helped just a little bit with that, though.)
See, the basic plot or story of this fanfic is just streams-of-unconsciousness from both Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia. You can tell, because the hue of each letter, purple and orange for Twilight and Celestia respectively, the author of these unsent letters, along with striking italicized black text showing the thoughts of these authors that aren't written down....I think. (This is all up to interpretation, remember?) There are also some sentences in teal for some literal flavor text showing a sentence written as a rhyming verse. It actually pretty cool to read just the rhyming text. Another thing to mention is the green text (not that kind, 4channers) that appear in Celestia's letter, but I'm not sure how that fits. Maybe its like a combination of the teal and black text?
Because this is written out to be streams-of-consciousness about life, its meaning, knowledge, and immortality, the story might appear to be long-winded and overly drawn-out. I've mentioned in my discussion of Complexity vs. Simplicity that it doesn't matter how long or short a story is, as long as its entertaining, and this story delivers that entertainment well. Just reading all the fluffed-up metaphorical text and discussions and thought processes that these characters have gives my inner-writer a hard-on. For the some, its like staring at 'Modern Art', but for me its like a nice trip to a museum.
Speaking of museums, I was asked to go to one with some family today, but I turned it down to review this story. I think I have my fill of art by now, suffice to say.
Now some of you may be asking yourselves, "Why ponyfiction?" And with that is the obvious, "Why the hell not?" Like I said, just because this wasn't written in a typical three act story doesn't diminish the enjoyment of this fanfic. With that said, this could've been written as a normal fanfic, maybe even a shipfic, with the themes in this story, those themes being the pursuit of knowledge and how immortality is both a blessing and a curse. Then again, that's all been done before, and shipping is rampant in this fandom already. This is a unique approach to those themes, dressed up in an artful and interesting way...to me, at least.
I figure that some of you will take my advice and read this story, regardless of if you will like this story or not, or if you 'get it', and some of you will leave this review with nothing, but that's art for ya, and art is a beautiful thing left for its viewer to interpret. I'm not even sure I get half of what I read in the actual story, but it was still worth my time.
And before I go, did you catch my drift?
~30kbpm~
[Also, why the blueberry crap is Howard Stern a judge on America's Got Talent? They could've gotten someone with talent at least.]
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