Unique voice, high readability, and the having and eating of cake

[Feo Takahari]

TLDR version: is it bad to have a story that makes you go TLDR, if the alternative is a story with a generic voice? Also, is this a false dilemma?

I recently read a My Little Pony fanfic, the first two chapters of which were among the most ponderous I've seen in the English language. It wasn't stilted, it wasn't exactly purple, and it didn't even have inconsistent flow--that flow was simply slow as molasses, like so:

Nearly two years ago, he had stepped into his first day, imagining adventures in the stacks of literature and lore that would fulfill his voracious mental appetite for themes and meanings. To be a part of this wonder that left him spellbound and captivated since he first moved to Canterlot in his budding youth. To reach out and deliver unto others the same swaths of literary joy for others to devour as hungrily as he did. To a long-running descent into a grim realization of the true nature of slaving within the confines of the structure he’d grown to love in his more naive years, he had yet to even reach the appetizer of mental nourishment. Instead he had only been served meager scraps of mundanity and tedium.

The Canterlot sampler platter. A proverbial buffet line of rice balls whose flavors would only differ in the color of toothpick stuck through it. All the same form of monotony intricately and delicately displayed beneath a different banner, either to fool those stacked within the endless echelons of drones or give the mental delusion of belonging within a system where they’d otherwise feel redundant.

And grandiose glomping griffons, even his mind could only describe his job with mundane run-on sentences as frivolous as the very labor itself.

Yeah, imagine 30,000 words of that. It's quite witty at times, and I immediately sympathized with the characters, so I was willing to stick it out, but I was planning to post a "words words words" macro at the end and claim this made up for my failing to get through Les Miserables. But for better or worse, the author listened to all the comments telling him his story was overly purple, and the remaining 238,000 words radically changed in style:

If there was any silver lining in all this, word spread quickly of a certain pegasus being awarded the Alicorn Cross, Celestia’s highest prestige. Not even to a Lieutenant or Commander, but just an ordinary guardspony taking charge where there was nopony present to give instruction.

But how odd, he couldn’t even retain a firm hoofhold on that bright spot. His own recollections of news and events over the last year recounted numerous instances of "the hero of the week." Those who stood bravely against a vicious hydra...already an old tabloid. Defeating a stubborn red dragon through diplomacy alone, even after disturbing him from a century's nap...so yesterday. Even those who outwitted a powerful smooth-talking demigod of chaos...only months later to be given a cold reception at a garden party with a dismissive condescending goading of "important ponies? These ruffians?" How heroes came and went, replacing one another for as long as the goldfish memory of Canterlot would allow.

And before the week’s triumphs could even sing its departing adieu, it burned out with the silently shunned cataclysm of the setting sun.

The wit is still intact, and the flow certainly runs faster. I wouldn't say it's dumbed down in any way. But it's written in the same voice as a lot of other fanfic, and its delivery doesn't really stand out from the crowd.

The simple question is "which do you think works better?"*, but a more complex one is "was there a way to do both?" Do you think it was possible for the author to retain the intriguing uniqueness of the first passage while being as comprehensible as the second?

* Let's set aside the whole "it's a My Little Pony fanfic" thing for the moment--plenty of successful fic in this fandom uses much more complex language than is associated with the show itself.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think that in order to keep reading a text like the first one I would have to have a genuine interest in the story from the start. It would have to be about something I'm interested in and that I care about. If it was I might very well stick with it and, once used to it, enjoy it.
With the second example I'm not sure that would be required for me to stick with it longer.

 

[wordwalker]

I'd say "unique voice" might be confusing the issue. Usually that means it's unique in certain ways, and those have their own strengths and weaknesses. Things like "Rich detail / too long" are their own balancing act... but it becomes a voice issue if the author pushes it further, which means taking more chances.

So I'd say this isn't a "have/eat cake" paradox, it's whether the author pushed a thing too far-- and whether the advantages of that, some "uniqueness bonus" it deserves, and the quality of other sides of the writing add up to more goodwill than the problems of it.

 

[Ayaka Di'rutia]

The first excerpt could definitely be whittled down so it was more cohesive, with less adjectives and metaphors...I had a hard time reading through it, it's hard to explain everything.

Personally, I think the second one works a lot better. They were still able to get their message across without so much flowery language. I'm a believer in keeping things simple, and you can still do that with long sentences, as long as they're structured properly and you don't overdescribe (or underdescribe).