Badfic Slaughterhouse 4: The Quest for Peace (but with badfics thrown into the sun instead of nukes) · 8:40pm Jul 18th, 2014
Good grief! It seems I really do read a lot. Better post this before it piles up too high.
Now, my problems can become your problems. Read on, and your free time will soon suffer the same fate as mine.
You’ll have the advantage of knowing which ones are crappy, though, so you can avoid them.
Final Approach, by U.S.SOakland
UPDATE: This story has been deleted. Good riddance.
Tags: Random, Slice of Life, Human
Synopsis: Second-person story about a human in a spacecraft over Equestria or something.
Review: I noticed this in the feature box, and when I saw at least half a dozen glaring errors in the description, I wondered how the hell it got into there. I couldn’t resist clicking it.
It’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s amazingly, astonishly, mind-bogglingly, earth-shakingly bad. In the first paragraph alone, there were no less than TEN errors in basic grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling—more if you count comma splices as being both punctuation and capitalization errors. In addition, the story is told in the most ineffective second-person narrative I’ve ever seen.
What’s worse is that a lot of the errors are inconsistent, so the author is not only incompetent; he also doesn’t give enough of a damn about his readers to do even the most cursory of proofreading. He even tells a person in the comments that he doesn’t care if people have problems with it.
Verdict: Screw this guy, screw his story, and screw the people who got this trash featured. Every view this story gets is a travesty; every upvote, a crime against nature. I truly feel sorry for the story approver who undoubtedly lost a piece of his soul when he had to allow it to be published.
Pretty Fly (For a Fluttershy), by Flint Sparks
Tags: Comedy, Random
Synopsis: Swaggershy and Dashtag Yolo take on the Mare for control of Cloudsdale.
Review: Full disclosure: I edited this. It’s as good as I could make it.
Okay... that's not really fair to Flint, so I'll be serious. Being a pop culture parody, this is going to resonate with a very particular sense of humor. For what it is, it's good. Instead of parodying particular people or events (with one notable exception) it focuses on lampooning the culture itself, and it does so by telling a complete story. Sure, the story is ridiculous and the characterization is sketchy, but it retains enough of the original personalities for them to be recognizable.
Totally biased verdict: It’s funny. Go read it unless you totally hate humor or have ever said YOLO before doing something stupid. If the latter, go do it again, please, and keep trying until Darwin catches up.
One Moment, One Nightmare, by ValdimarGreen
Tags: Slice of Life (It really should have one or two more)
Synopsis: As Twilight faces off against Tirek, time slows down, and she has an encounter within her own mind that may offer the solution to her problem.
Review: I was linked to this one by a friend who thought I’d like it. Alas, she wasn’t right about that. It’s pretty familiar territory for me after reading Cerulean Voice’s The Ultimate Alicorn and GaryOak’s Miasma, and while it isn’t particularly grim like those two are, it doesn’t take any risks, the resolution of the conflict lacks proper explanation, and it’s plagued by a host of mechanical errors.
Verdict: If you really like stories about the Nightmare, have a look. It’s short enough to read in a few minutes, so there’s no big loss even if you feel your time was completely wasted.
A King Unmatched, by Mister Friendly
Tags: Dark, Crossover, Adventure, Alternate Universe
Synopsis: Twilight and co. cross the ocean to save Neighpon from Godzilla.
Review: This story made a good first impression. The prologue is as atmospheric and foreboding as a Godzilla story should be. Unfortunately, chapter one went into a massive exposition dump that had me yawning around the halfway point. Now, I know Godzilla films have been paced rather slowly, especially the good ones, but they maintain a sense of mystery and tension the whole time, whereas this story just bogged down in explanations for several thousand words. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Not that there’s much of it to finish yet.
Other things that made the story unnecessarily difficult to get through were a lot of basic mechanical errors—indicating a lack of proofreading—occasional LUS, and a brutal infestation of inappropriate bookisms and adverbs.
Verdict: Maybe I’ll try reading this again someday, but for now, I can only recommend this for hardcore kaiju fans who are willing to slog through the slow bits in hopes of finding a good Godzilla story waiting to be told in future chapters.
Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, by Sharaloth
Tags: Comedy, Random
Synopsis: Everypony in Ponyville turns into a copy of Twilight Sparkle.
Review: First of all, this fic is tagged comedy, but it doesn’t start out very funny. What it does offer at the beginning is an interesting, original premise and a lot of great ideas. It’s written in an ambitious style based heavily around referring to everything as a lavender unicorn. It’s a single joke, repeated endlessly, but the funny thing is that it can actually work. There are also other jokes about common writing errors thrown in, to varying degrees of effectiveness.
The problem, however, is that while the POV character, Rarity, is always known for who she is while the identity of every other pony is in question, she is never referred to by name in the narration after the transformation, instead only referring to her as “the lavender unicorn.” An author with a strong sense for comedy would generally use Rarity as the straight man mare, but Sharaloth pushes the joke too far by denying it that grounding, robbing much of its potential impact and making it more difficult to read than it needs to be.
Verdict: There’s some good material here, and it’s written reasonably well, so I recommend having a look if you want to try out an experimental sort of comedy.
The Good Ship Lifestyle, by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Tags: Comedy
Synopsis: Cheerilee doesn’t have a boyfriend, and the rest of Ponyville is determined to fix that.
Review: The story has a perfectly fine premise, and it manages to get a few good chuckles as it escalates. However, it fizzles out well before the end. It’s based on a single joke, but it’s short enough for that joke to hold it up. Unfortunately, instead of escalating, the joke is pushed to the side, and it turns into a bland slice of life story with a dull conclusion. This could have made for a really funny comedy, but the author blew it.
Mechanically, it has some issues, but it’s plenty readable.
With a ratio of 1039:16 at the time of this writing, there are obviously a lot of people who liked it, but that seems to be a trend on fimfic. Safe, inoffensive stories that take no risks—even if they fail to live up to a fraction of their potential—are rewarded with lots of attention and high upvote:downvote ratios.
Verdict: If you’re a big fan of Cheerilee or like safe, fluffy, stories that won’t surprise you, this is a good bet. Otherwise, I just don’t see the point.
The Better Angel, by ArguingPizza
Tags: Dark, Sad
Synopsis: After Twilight Sparkle is murdered by griffons during a diplomatic visit, Luna lays siege to their kingdom.
Review: First of all, this is dark, brutal, and unsettling. There are no happy endings here, and it’s debatable who gets the worst of it. However, it’s generally well-crafted—aside from some ugly bookisms and an over-reliance on adverbs—and it makes it points efficiently.
Verdict: Gripping and powerful. Highly recommended for fans of vengeance stories and alicorn badassery. Only avoid if you’re totally opposed to any of the things I’ve mentioned.
On Wings, by BlueBastard
Tags: Comedy, Slice of Life
Synopsis: Cheerilee suddenly becomes a pegasus, sending her life into chaos.
Review:First of all, don’t look at this as a comedy. That tag is misleading, as humor is not a focus. That said, there’s a lot of merit on the Slice of Life front. While it seems, on the surface, that the conflict is centered around Cheerilee’s transformation and the problems it causes, it’s really about her inner turmoil and self-doubt. The subject matter is given due attention and handled pretty well.
The downside is that the story is loaded with saidism abuse, LUS, exposition dumping, and useless adverbs. It also has a very out-of-character moment for Apple Bloom, and I think it might have wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly, considering the nature of the issue.
Verdict: I think it really speaks for the quality of the content that I’m still going to recommend checking this out, even with those issues. It’s a very good character piece that touches on some uncommon themes and handles them elegantly.
Every review on this blog: [multiple paragraphs]
My story: "Go read this."
2297478 Well, it is... Um... unique. Like peaches.
I have to admit I'm following Lavender Unicorn Syndrome. It's... different.
2297511
Yep. Very "different." I think it's a hilarious concept that would require a very specific skillset which, unfortunately, the author doesn't have, imo. Nothing against the guy, of course. He's quite good as an adventure writer.
2297478 Well we like you just the way you are, Flinty. One in a million.
*hugs*
2297539 Are you saying I can't rap?
Oh wait, wrong story. My bad! D:
2297578
I wasn't talking about you, Flint. I know your raps are dope swag #yolo, brah.
I feel dirty...
2297583 Speaking of which, as the editor of that story, I have a question...
Would it be a good idea to rewrite all five chapters, minus the rap battle, in flowery prose as a "translation" chapter?
Also, sorry about that space fic. The description hurt my eyes. I haven't had the courage to click the chapter link.
2297592
No way, Flint. Doing that would ruin the joke in the last chapter by running it into the ground.
2297594 Touche.
Oh, hey, a mention!
And thanks for confirming what I knew already about Final Approach.
2298035
In a sane world, it wouldn't need confirmation, but in a sane world, it wouldn't be featured.
Still, I wouldn't usually hold it against the author, but shrugging off complaints about his grammar pisses me off to no end. If you don't care about making your work look good for the people who read it, you shouldn't publish it.
2298057
^This, a thousand times this.
2298035 2298057
Just a moment ago, that story got added to a group you may have heard of... it's called "Rage Reviews".
I wonder how that happened?
2298836
Gee... That's quite a coincidence.