Site Post » Reviews Round 11 · 3:47am Jan 17th, 2013
Open on: ocean
EXT. CURSED OCEAN – DAY 1
Rolling waves, cresting with white foam stretch across the horizon.
PAV FIRERA
(voice-over)
FiMFic is a flooded wasteland. A Cursed Ocean, in which single outpost of decency remains. Stretching from Pip to Burning Man Brony …
A massive submarine surfaces, parting the water.
… Seattle's Angels.
Fade to:
INT. HALL OF FICTION
In a darkened room, lit by a single, naked bulb, three men are donning uniforms.
In the darkness, and due to low budget, their faces are always hidden in shadow.
But in their hands we can see laptops, pens, paper, and the occasional coffee mug. And we can see their suffering is inherent in their sluggish movements …
… as they place the papers down on a central table, revealing a trio of fics:
Clarity
Love . Sick
An Imaginative Performance
They stack the papers neatly, preparing them for collation.
Then, one of them, Nick Nack, grabs a stapler.
Places it near the right-hand corner of the papers.
Staples it.
Corejo curls his fist around a pen, an LED light flashes red.
A metallic voice rings out:
ID OK
The LED turns green.
He slips the pen into his front pocket.
The other two do the same.
Finally, they pull what look like hoods over their heads.
Now they move in such a way that the light falls on their faces.
The lower-half of their features are visible, revealing boyish faces and eager grins. The top-half of their features are obscured by masks. Pav Feriera is Sweetie Belle, Corejo is Scootaloo, and Nick Nack is Apple Bloom.
Title:
ROUND 11
STORY 1
Clarity, by Kegisak
I don’t really know what I want to say about this story. Perhaps it’s just my personal biases that keep me from doing so, but I just couldn’t get into this one. Dialogue and actions between them were natural and sincere. I could feel the emotions running between characters like I could the water from a faucet, should I choose to stand up and go do so. There is certainly much internal narrative to be had—and it’s done relatively well; plenty of detail is put into perspective and feelings, an important aspect of any shipping story, though I think this may be the reason why I wasn’t fond of it.
Large blocks of narrative are devoted to the main character’s feelings. This isn’t a problem, as it sets the mood the piece requires, but the methodology of narrative fill-ins and what is happening at the moment feel smushed together. The repetitive usage of “I” didn’t help much, either. First person perspective sort of warrants it, but it still felt invasive.
I’m sure there was a story of gold in there somewhere, but my eyes simply couldn’t dig deep enough.
So, clarity huh? Where life is, at first, an unending morass of confusion and uncertainty, and then a single moment, everything comes into focus. Understanding emerges. Life can move forward once again.
Admittedly, Clarity starts a bit painfully. Nothing really happens for the first 1k or so, and the character is stuck in a cycle of “fog angst doubt wandering I hate my roommates etc”. If I didn't know better, I would think I was reading the opening of a bad HiE fic. However, there's a purpose to this, as one of the central motifs of the story is this contrast of fog verses clarity. So, by all means, push through the opening and keep reading.
The story picks up once we are introduced to Neon Lights. While their encounter is a bit too serendipitous for my tastes, the narration really comes to life at this point (surprise surprise). Sunburst finally emerges from his shell. We start to see his true character, his hopes, his desires, his frustrations, and his joys. Sappy though it is to say this, Neon Lights truly does bring out the better side in Sunburst. They have a very enjoyable chemistry, as we see not only what Neon does for Sunburst, but how Sunburst comes to terms with his own life and takes the reins. That may sound somewhat one-sided, but in fact Neon takes his own joys out of the few-day encounter as well.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this one. When the narrator wasn't trapped in his "fog", the narration was quite fluid and engaging, and there was a lot of charm here. If you like your romance fics bittersweet with a warm 'n fuzzy finish, give this one a shot.
Newton’s fifth law of romance fiction states that, for every same-sex coupling the world reads, an equal but opposite-gendered story must emerge somewhere. When people approach me and ask, “Nicknack, what’s with all the lesbians in My Little Pony,” my best scientific guess (not a theory, but a hypothesis) is that we, as a mostly-American culture, are still riding out the wave of male homosexuality that Ang Lee unleashed upon the world in 2005.
Actually, it probably has to with double standard of “FUCK YEAH, LESBIANS!
However, some people aren’t content to “go with the flow of lesbianism.” This gives rise to a small subset of this fandom that actually writes honest-to-goodness, male/male gay romance. Some of it’s porn. Most of it is centered around the “closet” story (in which, character discovers he’s gay, and... for some reason, Equestria is as bigoted as mainstream American culture). But Clarity, by Kegisak, is a gay romance story that’s less about “gay” and more about “characters.”
Which is how any story should go.
I like Clarity because it’s a very quiet story. I’ll disagree with Pav; the first thousand or so words of this story were brilliant: a muffled fog of social avoidance, a cold night air... the silence at the beginning of this story is as much part of Sunburst’s character as any of his actions. The first dialogue in the story is when Neon, the other half of the gay equation, breaks that silence. That’s a brilliant microcosm for the rest of the story, where Neon works at breaking Sunburst out of his shell and gives him a sense of clarity.
I’ll agree with the “HiE” comment that Pav made, in that for the first half of the second chapter, I kind of forgot that these were ponies, not humans. That’s not a bad thing, however; it just shows how relatable the characters are. My criticisms for this story are reserved for the musical quotes that are inserted into the story in a way that feels disjoint, and... generally, the conclusion of this story. The conclusion was felt rushed which, coupled with the song lyrics (The Sound of Silence is now romantic?)... kind of let me down, near the end of the story.
However, Clarity is by no means a bad story. It’s certainly a soft, quiet trip through a cute little romance. Even though the ending might fall a little flat, I still recommend this story to anyone who’s not afraid to expand their horizons in the search of a good story.
STORY 2
Love . Sick, by KitsuneRisu
Do you know what a sine wave looks like? This thing, right here. This story is kinda like that. It’s got lots of ups and downs. The story in its entirety follows this pattern, cresting at simply brilliant (in terms of both writing concisely and vividly, and perspective adherence) and troughing at poor, almost-funny-in-how-bad-it-is execution.
Quite a few descriptions and similes stand out as terribly awkward no matter the context, much less this being a horror fic. That said, though, many more were simply perfect.
In terms of what was chosen as the dark/creepy/disgusting things that happened through the fic, the only ones I had problems with were the Scootaloo bit and the ending. I won’t spoil anything, though.
Those things aside, the biggest problem of this story was perspective adherence and internal narrative. This is what both glorified and damned this story. Often the narrative would jump to and from Twilight, between characters at random places, and back again with no real reason. It made it hard to stay with Twilight through the whole ordeal.
I may sound harsh in this review, but this story is definitely one of the better I have read in a long while. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.
Wait, what? The synopsis has Twilestia? And I wasn’t even the one who proposed reviewing it?! Huzzah! At last, I can abuse the power of my position on the front page to enlighten the masses about The One, True Pairing. Your typical Flutterdash or Twixie is all nice and stuff, I suppose, if you don’t know any better; it’s much the same way that Apple Bloom Eats Some Orange-Flavored Jello seems like a literary masterpiece if that’s the only fanfic you’ve ever read. But true connoisseurs understand that Twilestia Is Bestia. At long last, Seattle’s Angels can showcase a good Twilestia shipfic, and the populace can learn the error of their ways. Lemme just pop this thing open, start to read it, and we’ll see just... exactly what we’re... working...
Oh dear.
Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh-dear.
Man, Love . Sick. How to describe it without going all spoilery? It’s not your traditional romance fic. I mean, it definitely does deal in romance; it’s not mistagged or anything. It’s much more closely aligned with horror, really. Romantic horror. And I don’t mean “you forgot to pick up asparagus on the way home from work and now the wife is pissed” horror, neither.
See, from the very early episodes, we’re taught again and again that Equestria isn’t Earth. Friendship can be weaponized. Weather doesn’t operate on its own. Elements of the world, from kindness to laughter, from harmony to chaos, are incarnate in pony (or draconequus) form. Too often, we, as fanfiction writers, force our desires upon these characters *cough* without really considering all of the ramifications. Sure, there’s human challenges to overcome in a shipfic: compatibility, jealousy, courtship. But what uniquely Equestrian forces are there to overcome? The episode Hearts and Hooves Day gave us a small taste of the possible: a love “poison” which could cripple those who consume it with a love so powerful that they simply waste away. That’s just one. What else could be out there, in the dark murky depths of Equestria? KitsuneRisu gives us another.
Granted, it’s not a well-explained or justified force (the Epilogue may be a particularly big letdown for some). Like good horror, however, it isn’t explained, and explaining it isn’t the point. It is, it exists, and the characters must adapt or pay. Even though the chapter titles spoil that there’s going to be a “let’s meet each of the Mane Six” plot, it still managed to surprise me with the extent of the—for lack of a better term—eloquent depravity. YMMV there, naturally, but damn, the juxtaposition between some extremely beautiful prose and some rather f
ed up events was quite intoxicating. The Mane Six are truly warped by the forces, in a manner that’s shocking, hard to believe, yet darkly plausible. Worse (the good kind of worse), the story is ambiguous on when this all started. Did Twilight set it off with her proclamation in Chapter 2? Or did her feelings for Celestia, developed before the start of the story, trigger these changes? If so, how long were her friends harboring their own secrets? It’s almost an eerie warning against the dangers of so flippantly pairing two ponies together for kissu kissu.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m a fan of dark stories. One thing I don’t quite go into detail over often, however, is my love of horror stories. I love being scared in stories, even if I have to sleep with one eye open the night after.
It should also come as no surprise to anyone here that the Internet is full of some fucked up shit. I’m not talking about all the gore or weird fetishes that cause more of a shocked reaction; I’m mostly talking about things that freak you out on a more... psychological level.
”Why hello, Timmy. I’m Mr. Happy Face! Yay!
So saying that I like KitsuneRisu’s Love . Sick is... honestly, something I’d take with a grain of salt. I like how delightfully fucked up this story is. It’s a “horror” story, but it’s definitely more on the psychological level of horror than the creepy level (there’s a bit of that in there, but it pales in comparison to when it’s revealed what is chasing Twilight Sparkle).
What I don’t like about the story is how... honestly, I feel it could do more. It’s quite fast-paced (I read through 18k words in about 25 minutes), making it more akin to a slideshow of messed up images and ideas than a story about them.
But still... this is Cupcakes, if Cupcakes had been written with a serious intent rather than to troll. I like that KitsuneRisu pulled that off.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a shower.
This story perfectly captures what it feels like to be in a school play. From Sweetie Belle’s nervousness, to the problems that arise in children’s school plays, to the play itself, Bob From Bottles knows what he’s doing.
Everything is relatable, well-written, and situationally hilarious. The jokes come in a variety of forms, all of which hit their mark—a tough thing to do in such a long story. The pacing is spot on, characterisations equally so, and it had me laughing in all the right places—regardless of the fact I read this story way back when it was first published. It’s simple and effective. All that can really be said against this story is the cliché ending. But that’s more of a “following the usual fantasy story” thing.
I could keep talking about how good it is, but frankly, I’d be wasting the time you could be spending enjoying it. So go do that.
Oookay, need a bit of a palette cleanser after that last story. Well, good thing, because out of nowhere, musical theater!
Well... okay, no, not quite. Still, though!
I hate Bob From Bottles. This isn’t the first story of his that I’ve read; An Imaginative Performance is actually probably the best of his that I’ve read, at least in terms of scale and world-building (err, play-building... whatever). And for the umpteenth time, he makes it look so effortless to write something that’s cute, fuzzy, light-hearted, and downright hilarious at times. Excuse me while I go delete my Fimfic account and then throw my keyboard off a bridge.
Seriously. Fillies are inherently adorable, so Bob is hardly performing alchemy by writing adorable fillies. But it’s how he’s doing so—how often and how successful—which is the key here. It’s the little tics in the personalities of characters like the CMC and Diamond Tiara. It’s the constant flubs, hiccups, mistakes, and ad libs of a childhood stage production. It’s how Apple Bloom, serving as the in-character narrator of the play, rationalizes all the absurdities from the previous sentence into the internal consistency of her storybook universe: sometimes bending with a self-placed lampshade, other times breaking and delivering a wry aside to a classmate. And of course, songs! These definitely fall into the YMMV category, since not everyone appreciates a stanza of lyrics with no tune to accompany it in the middle of their prose, but given the rest of the world-building, the songs really serve to carry the story through and keep the feel-good nature of the story properly arcing. Plus, I’m a sucker for humorful lines in otherwise-serious songs, and the play within An Imaginative Performance has its fair share of that.
I took only a few minor issues. Some characterizations like Dinky’s and Snips’s feel weak by comparison. The ending also felt a little weak (regrettably, a common trait in this round of stories) in that the play’s ending started to meander a bit before its closing number, and then there was close-to-no wrap-up after the final curtain. But these are minor quibbles at best. At first, I had found it odd to see that Apple Bloom was the only tagged character for this story, but it actually makes much sense in hindsight. Apple Bloom’s journey through this story via the role of Blue Petal is what we’re here to see, and it’s what’s more than worthwhile, and it’s what’ll have you reaching for the Favorite button. Really now, how many times does a story need to make you d’aww or gigglesnort before it proves its worth?
And now, for something completely different: A comedy about how wacky it is to put on a performance!
…
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that Bob From Bottle’s Imaginative Performance isn’t really breaking new grounds in the realm of literature. It’s a play within a story—and then it turns out that there’s a dream sequence within the play. It kind of reminds me of my favorite Christopher Nolan film, actually.
Actually, Batman punched me so hard that my amnesia makes it hard to remember what movie that was in.
What I do like about Imaginative Performance is that it mixes the whole “backstage drama” with immersive acting—that fun little trope where actors putting on a play become the characters they’re portraying. So, the fact that the stage set was built by a bunch of ten-year-olds means that you get zany bits of tongue-in-cheek lampshading the random collapsing trees and other parts of the stage.
So... it’s a story about a play based on a story, and the immersive acting makes fun of the play on a meta level. It’s difficult to intellectualize why I like that so much, but I do.
At the same time, it’s difficult to really critique this story. There were some problems I had with the play, but was that because the foals’ adaptation? The original version? Or was it Bob’s fault in writing? I honestly don’t feel my qualms with the story are anything that the human author did to this story, which is quite ironic and a job well done. My only one complaint was that, at one point, Dinky uses some pretty heavy vocabulary for a like fifth grader, but the moment she’s doing that in, it’s a much better scene than my own mild preferences.
So, in short... this is a cute story about a play. The moral’s actually pretty well done compared to Hearth’s Warming Eve, and I found myself laughing more than a few times throughout this piece. Give it a try; you might like it, too.
EXT. SEATTLE'S ANGELS BOARD ROOM/ROUNDTABLE – CONTINUOUS
Four men sit around a large steel table. None of them look up.
The man at the head of the table speaks.
SEATTLE_LITE
When I heard you guys'd called a 10-24, thought I'd better check it out myself. Seeing as I forced this job on you.
He glances around the table.
What happened this week?
NICKNACK
Reviews.
SEATTLE_LITE
You guys look like you've been through it.
COREJO
Fics were uncooperative.
SEATTLE_LITE
Aren't they always?
He nods to where the pile of fics lies on the table illuminated by a fluorescent light.
SEATTLE_LITE
So how did they do? Pass or fail?
On the three reviewers.
Looking towards the fics.
As they stare, the light beats down harshly, almost flickering—
—but they stay perfectly still.
Then, underplayed:
PAV FREIRA
They're a pass.
Seattle_Lite nods.
SEATTLE_LITE
Knew they would be.
Pull back from the scene.
All four men stand up.
Exit the boardroom.
One through a door near the back, labeled:
Management
The other three through an automatic door that parts in the middle with a metallic hiss.
The door closes behind them with another hiss, its heavy lock clicking shut with a muffled thud.
Fade out—
Okie Dokie Lokie
Mr Happy Face!?
Silver out!
Wulpkusck.
I like this style, or format if you will, of review. It's almost like a fic in itself!
Yup. Yup. Yup...well, I have a lot of work to do before I can get here...
I cannot believe you guys read Love.Sick. <.< That's the fic whose review nearly broke my mind.
That typo makes for a beautiful piece of irony.
720213
What delicious irony. Heh, I spent a bunch of time making sure none of the bbcode was messed up, so I forgot to actually proofread.
By the way, the first person who gets what the into/outro are a reference to gets a high-five from me
Dat Les Miserables pic...
D WHEN DID YOU SEE DREDD AND WHY HAVEN'T WE BEEN GUSHING ABOUT IT
721297
ALEXMAGNET
psst, hey, you! Yeah, you!
Here's your high-five.
There is a satisfying smack when the two hands meet.
They step away from each other.
Hands falling slowly to their sides.
ALEXMAGNET
By the way, WandererD doesn't write the intros and outros. It's written by one of the reviewers, and in this case that's me.
The more you know...
Alexmagnet slinks away into the shadows, leaving behind a crumpled up piece of paper.
Arcainum picks it up.
Reads it.
The note reads:
P.S. Dredd was one of the best movies of 2012.
Fade out -
720721
Agreed! Source for that, btw: http://alpheusrgb.deviantart.com/art/Les-Miserables-Applebloom-Version-317943451
721421 HE WROTE THE FIRST ONE SO THAT WAS THE PRECEDENT I WAS FOLLOWING
ALSO YEAH DREDD WAS AMAZING AND HONESTLY DESERVED BETTER SUCCESS THAN IT GOT, AND I FIRMLY BELIEVE EVERYONE SHOULD BUY THE DVD/BLURAY TO MAKE SURE THEY'LL MAKE ANOTHER ONE
ALL CAPS
721738
Fair enough.
Dredd seriously deserved a lot more attention than it got. From what I saw, critics weren't fond of it, but there were a few that saw how great it actually was. By the way, I did buy the blu-ray, and I just finished watching it about 5 minutes ago (still awesome).
Yay!
And once again, you draw my attention to 2/3 proposed fics.
Going to give these writers some much-needed views right now
Why do you guys review stories I've never heard of!? Like, how do you pick stories to review?
726844
Well, we slush through Fimfic's massive pile. Granted, it's guided slushing, efforts which people are invited to help with here, and also some oh-I-know-this-guy-he's-so-underrated connections, but yep - it's mostly slushing.
Two authors which have pretty darn high chances of being featured, for instance, are Bob From Bottles (the third feature for this week being his) and Redsquirrel456 (on principle, though like half of his stuff's on EqD, so they're well-viewed, kinda). Both are amazing authors which I'd place alongside Cold in Gardez in terms of style maturity, but have you heard of them? Probably not. I'm sure the extra plug here isn't too much a breach of principles, riiiight?
721421
Also, I've never seen a more swagtastic intro/outro. I'd offer you one of something that you'd like, but
eww nonah not really, so have one of something that I like.Have a Patchy.
mlpchan.net/fic/src/1353331840834.png
721421 726934
yo i got dis
i.imgur.com/GMh81kG.png
727744
*slow claps*
Do... do I want to know about Mr. Smiley Face?
Wanderer D!!!
I published a story. I tried to give it the tags "Slice of Life" and "Adventure", but it wouldn't let me, because they're conflicting.
The characters sit in a house, (slice of life) and tell a story (adventure). Now tell me why that doesn't work.
745924
I think that you should choose the one that dominates the story.
If the story is actually about the characters that tell / listen to the tale, then go for the "Slice of Life" tag.
If the story is more focused on the tale that is being told, and relatively less focused on the characters telling / listening to it, then go for the "Adventure" tag.
But really, when you choose both, you confuse readers. They have no idea what to expect from your story when you do that.
This isn't even choosing the appropriate tag for your story anymore. This is choosing the least confusing / most relevant tag, so that when we filter search results with respect to tags, we find what we're looking for.