Wanderer D's 100% Randomly Unbiased-in-Choice Reviews 000001! · 7:41am Jan 24th, 2014
Hello readers!
This is Wanderer D, posting finally a review blog of some sort. This is more in kind with what John Perry has done with 'John Perry suffers the Featured Box' than one of those regular review blogs or groups, only I will go a step beyond and review not what is featured and therefore already in people's eyes... but rather I'll randomly just select something that's on my screen.
Who are you to judge my/their stories?!
I'm Wanderer D.
Why would you do this?
Because. And anyway, who cares as long as random stories are read, right? Now, I'll be brutally honest here. I'm not going to give you seven paragraphs of why the story is good or bad. But I will try and write down both and my final verdict.
This verdict is my unrepentant, completely biased opinion. It doesn't mean squat in the long run anyway, because you should read something instead of blindly trusting some random guy to read it for you.
But, you know, you might find that you agree with my thoughts on a story. And that could be good. Or bad.
So, how does this work? What are your standards?
I'm not going to give people crap about grammar unless it's so terrible it deteriorates my eyeballs. In which case, yes I will definitely point that out, but, outside blatantly grammatically-and/or-spelling-and/or-punctuation-wise-offensive stuff like what I just wrote, I will concentrate on the content of the story. Character development; plot development; message; feel; whatever.
Wow, you sound like a totally kewl bro that is so humble and amazing!!1 Can I give you my fic to review?
Hell no. Weren't you reading? I will randomly, completely, effing randomly, just click a new, recently submitted story. The only thing I will not review here is clop because of the adsense thing.
I knew it! You hate clop!
Learn to read.
W-well then, you're biased in your choices!
If you write a story with ponies in diapers I will not read it even at gun-point. But other than that, this system is as unbiased as it gets. I guess the bias would be in the random timing I choose to do this, but I really don't care.
Anyway, enough Q/A. Have at thee, first random fic!
First Impression
Oh gods.
That description.
I have to wonder how you're supposed to not read past the warning and yet need to read what follows to understand why not to read what follows the warning. Also, this needs an OC tag.
Okay. Let's see past the translation software/English conflicts. Because that's where the bad grammar/punctuation/spelling comes from. English is NOT the author's first language. This doesn't mean that he shouldn't get an editor, but hey, let's see what this story has to say.
This is the anecdote of a pony that found a book containing dark secrets. It's interesting that the author is going for first person narrative... it gives it a bit of an H.P. Lovecraft feeling to it... a scholar, first dubious and dismissive of warnings suddenly finding himself overwhelmed by the contents of a book.
The translation does affect reading though; some words don't translate as well as they should, although with some patience and an open mind you can get what the author was going for. Choosing a word in say, Turkish, won't necessarily translate the same meaning in English.
Thus, the slow spiral into madness this pony writes about loses a bit of 'oomph'. However, the story in itself is actually pretty cool, if a bit... short. It is actually a nice horror story, like I mentioned above, very similar in design to how H.P.L. wrote his early work.
I feel, however, that it would have benefited from describing more who this pony was, as well as a description of how the ritual was performed... yeah, I know, sometimes less details are better, but not when there's no details at all. Although I understand that the author put himself in the character's... horseshoes and didn't want to 'reveal' how some things were done, had he described parts of the ritual, it would have been a more powerful image.
The ending part... man, if he had better grasp of English, it this story would have been much more so enjoyable. A bit more development for the author, and this story should be re-written into a proper short story that will definitely get somewhere.
If it's left as it is? It'll probably be downvoted to hell just because of the grammar alone.
The character himself was interesting. Clearly a seldom-used type of OC; the scholarly-type (that's not a random cute mare with no objective). From the get-go we see this character as an enthusiastic researcher. While the whining does get a bit excessive in my opinion, his words do give you the image of this educated fool eagerly getting his hooves on something invaluable and delving into it with a voracity that is the privilege of those that love what they do.
Some sort of introduction, however, would have been good. It doesn't need to break the flow of the story, or the first-person narrative. "I am Dr. Fleethooves, a unicorn archaeologist, researcher, scientist... and fool." Or something along those lines to give us an idea of who he is, instead of suddenly dropping a: "Hey, coincidence, I'm a unicorn, I can cast the spell!"
The character evolves as he's driven into a more desperate need to understand the words of the book, which obviously is evil. More struggle would have helped, but even as it is, for the amount of words, it still conveys that sense of desperation... and the little reveal is not bad at all. I especially liked how Sombra was really included.
Verdict: Yeah. I liked it. Could be improved, but hey, a rewrite with some of those issues above resolved as well as better grammar? I'd re-read.
Who the hell is the bold text? I want to kick that guy in the face.
1752599 HUE
1752601
Colour.
Nothing will go wrong. Nothing.
1752613 Really.
1752615 Okay
It's gone
Happy?
1752603 Fukayou
Got me in trouble
1752613
It's funny because those are the colours of the Pan-Arab flag. Fucking terrorist.
1752621 Twas the point
I find it difficult to make the time to bother reading much of anything that doesn't read the way silk feels. At the bare minimum.
Being a non native English speaker/writer is no excuse.
And if I sound like a pompous British-accent-loving dick, bear in mind that I'm also a non-native English writer. However, I strive to keep my grammar in check, and would never subject the eyes of the readers to something translated with f*cking google translate.