Most Dangerous Game Judging Reviews - 4 · 5:38pm Jul 21st, 2014
The last lot of reviews for the Most Dangerous Game competition. Don't forget to vote for the finalists here! I will upload the reviews of the finalists after the competition has finished.
Rest for the Weary, by Nightwolf289
Story: A dying soldier travels to Equestria, turns into an alicorn and meets Fluttershy.
I didn't really get a feel for this story, I'm afraid. There's an awful lot of timejumps that just skip over all the character development, so it is more like getting snapshots of something longer than an actual story. All we know about the soldier is a few melodramatic speeches, and despite the length it seems like everything happens too fast. There's not really much more to it than 'Fluttershy cares for someone', which is a well-tread trope all by itself.
Prompt: Human in Equestria, OC alicorn, shipping (a bit)
Less is probably more in this case. The OC alicorn part, for example, is unexplained, and nothing would change in the story would the human have been turned into a normal pony. The human himself is very undeveloped, which makes the relationship undeveloped. The story skipping months in between sections doesn't help this either.
Two Roaming Souls, by Belligerent Sock
Story: In the future, Spike wanders the lands with a little human, looking for a witch
I wanted to like this story more than I did. The style is good and the start is intriguing, but as a whole it feels very incomplete. The entire story is about Spike travelling into the forest with a human (who remains a cypher) to find a witch. They find the witch, it turns out it is Zecora, and she informs them that the girl is a seventh Element of Harmony and... that's the end. It feels more like chapter 1 of a longer work than something in its own right, as it ends just as it begins to explore its premise.
Also the human speaks in anagrams. I found that annoying, as it just created more work to actually enjoy the story.
Prompt: Human in Equestria and Seventh Element of Harmony
While the actual setup of the story is nice, the human aspect feels very disposable. Due to the aforementioned language issues, there is no real engagement between her and Spike, and she remains a mystery. In many ways you could replace her with any other creature or even object, and the story would work the same. The writer tries for a double-score by inserting a seventh element right at the very end, but this backfires and just raises more questions than it answers. Sometimes, less is more.
The whole thing feels like the setup to something longer. It's a story I'd enjoy reading, but taking this chapter as the entire story, doesn't feel complete at all.
The Hunter’s Story, by Borg
Story: A pony hunter discovers that ponies are actually intelligent.
An oddly dark story; part of the style is quite simplistic in places, but that helps make it feel that big darker, as it's left to the reader's mind to work out some of the nastier stuff that is left unsaid. I liked the general concept behind it, but everything happens very fast. There's not really much time to get into any of the character's motivations and the idea that this character (and many other humans) have been in Equestria for over two years and yet none of them ever realised ponies could be intelligent stretches credulity too much. None of the ponies really react as if Equestria has been under siege from humans stealing ponies either, it's all business as usual. If there was more time spent working on these background issues, the story would have ended up a lot stronger.
Prompt: Human in Equestria
I like that the prompt wasn't a straight human arriving in Equestria, and actually involves another maligned idea, that of 'ponies arriving in our world', instead postulating that this is because humans actively travel to Equestria to hunt them. As before though, it's not really developed much past that, and there are several glaring plot holes that distract from absorption in the story.
Trial by Flower, by AugieDog
Story: Ponyville's third (fourth) most popular seed seller gets to help out when crocodahlias attack.
Crocodahlias! What a great name! This story gets points from me just from the cleverness of this. It's a nice story; the characters are all well defined in a short space of time, the main character has a good voice, and the pacing is good. There's not a whole lot of incident in the story, but it is short so this works in its favour.
Prompt: Second person and OC shipped with mane
Two prompts used here, with varying degrees of success. I thought the second person narration was excellent: there's a good use of voice, and the writer gets all the characterisation across effortlessly. I also appreciated the use of the format in skipping time from the point of view of the main character as well. The shipping is less successful - I enjoyed the distraction of him liking Twilight and her not knowing his name, when the real ship was with Fluttershy, but that ship, whilst telegraphed early, lacked an amount of substance, based mainly on Fluttershy liking the look of his backside.
Awakening, by Razalon the Lizardman
Story: A human travels to Equestria and discovers he is really a fictional character created by ponies who record the adventures of lifeless meat-puppets onto crystals for entertainment.
The idea of a human travelling into the fictional Equestria being flipped on its head is an interesting one, but I'm not sure the story really explores this in any meaningful way. The set-up, that Lyra and Iron Will have a room full of meat-puppets that they move about and film on crystals is a bit hard to accept given how outlandish it is, and there's not really much effort put into explaining why this is a logical chain of events.
For a story told in second person, we don't really get any view on the character's emotions. He (I assume) sees the bodies of all his family and friends lying discarded, and barely seems to care, then we are told they break down, but the narration style doesn't change at all to reflect this. Then the main character recovers really, really quickly! It's an interesting idea, but not really supported by the rest of the story.
Prompt: Human and Second person
As I said before, I really liked how the 'human in Equestria' prompt is turned on its head, even though the story doesn't really fulfil the promise of the concept. The second person narration starts well, but as the main character practically drops out of the story for the last third, it becomes more third-person. It feels like a trick was missed at the end, if the point is that the main character is undergoing mental turmoil, you would expect the narration to focus on that rather than a clinical description of what everyone else is doing.
Eternal Love, by BumbleFlow
Story: Luna falls in love with a pony.
Pretty much as it says on the box. Unfortunately this story is riddled with grammar and spelling errors which are very distracting. I am generally quite laid back about stuff like that, but even I found it hard going. The sentences are either really short or really long with lots and lots of commas, that makes it a strain to read, though the style does improve towards the end. I'd suggest to the writer that they go over their story and use what they learnt as they wrote it to rework the start.
As to the story... I was intrigued by the description, about how Luna falls in love with a mortal and decides to make him immortal, but... that's the entire story. That's it. That's actually the ending of the story. I don't like judging stories on what they're not, but it feels like the interesting idea happens at the very end and then isn't explored. The rest is a rather rushed romance.
Prompt: OC falls in love with mane character
Yes, falling in love with Luna is dangerous, as far as the fandom goes! Props to the writer for trying a tricky one. However there is no real build up to any of the relationship, and the actual 'getting to know each other and falling in love' section mostly happen between chapters 1 and 2. The OC doesn't really have much of a personality either. As a result, the reader never really gets a chance to get to grips with what is going on.
Weeping Fire, by Civviq Writer
Story: There's quite a few grammar errors I picked up right off the bat, which unfortunately spoiled the reading of this. The story is about the reader travelling to Equestria and turning into a pony where they meet their terrible alicorn OC, Weeping Fire, fall in love with Applejack and then go home.
I feel like it falls too far on the side of 'parody' for my liking, especially given the contest rules about no parodies. The story is also very rushed, with so much going on that it's hard to get involved at all. Making it longer or focussing on one or two of the many plot elements inside it would have helped focus the story, as it is there is just too much going on and it becomes confusing.
Prompt: second person and OC alicorn
I'll give the writer points for trying, there's more than one prompt used here! (Yes, I know you only need to use one, but fortune favours the bold!). There's definite second person and OC alicorn, also an attempt at human in Equestria (though they are ponified so it doesn't count) and one of the mane 6 falling in love with an OC (the main character falls in love with Applejack, but it is unclear if she returns the feelings, as this is near the end and it feels quite rushed.
I think the narration counts as second person (as it seems to be narrated at the reader), there are tense mistakes and it shifts into first person a few times, which is distracting.
The use of the OC alicorn doesn't really seem to have much to do with the story, in that if you take her out it would pretty much be the same, given how light the actual story is. Their name also changes halfway through to 'Healing Fire'. Additionally, calling the alicorn a 'terrible Mary-Sue' in the story seems to push it too far into 'parody' which is against the rules. Still, I will give points for effort, as there is a big effort to go all-out.
Servant of Chaos, by Yukito
Story: A unicorn is left with wings after an attack by Discord, and everyone hates her for it.
This story is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's quite refreshing, and paced well. Nothing about it outstays its welcome, and the basic idea is nice. On the other hand I found the core concept hard to swallow - yes, the story talks about how terrible Discord's attack was, but only briefly and then we only get the hatred towards the character to back it up. Without that foundation, everyone seems mean for the sake of making a sad story sadder. The ending also seemed very contrived, with the main character getting a chance to save the life of the little pony that befriended them, when no-one else could! That said, I liked the style, and I don't say that often about first person present tense!
Prompt: OC alicorn
An interesting use of 'OC alicorn' as they aren't technically an alicorn... or are they? Sadly the story doesn't really seem that interested in exploring that idea. It's also very difficult to place the setting - is it in the past, the present day, or the future? We have a mention of Celestia, so whilst everyone is hating on this pony for being 'marked by Discord', surely someone would have thought 'hang on, they look like a princess!'. None of these are deal breakers, but their omission was very odd, especially in a story dealing with the experiences of someone in the main character's situation.
Foals, by Scarheart76
Story: Celestia has babies
This story annoyed me. I'm seriously really annoyed right now. Not because it was bad, far from it. It was a great story, or at least start of a story. Yes, what we have so far is excellent, but it is clearly just the setup for something longer. More than anything, this is clearly a chapter 1. It's a story I'll be wanting to follow, but in its current state it isn't even a story and as such is impossible to judge. If it is complete... it's not a story. If it isn't complete, then it is very good, but can't be compared to the other, complete stories in this competition.
Prompt: OC alicorn and Human in Equestria
The OC alicorn aspect, ie Celestia's babies is very good. Yes, they only appear at the end, but their impact is felt throughout. The human in Equestria aspect is literally shoehorned in and serves absolutely no purpose at all. You could remove the parts with the humans and not a thing would change about the story.
The King in the Mountain, by Carabas
Story: So, it turns out Celestia has a brother she keeps locked away in Tartarus!
I'm in two minds on this one. On the one hand, the pacing is quite odd. The first section where Celestia arrives at Tartarus doesn't really add much (if anything) to the plot and actually, I found it a bit confusing, as it wasn't apparent it was Tartarus Celestia was going to visit until she actually entered. The meat of the story starts 1,500 words in, which is a bit of a pace killer for a piece so short, especially as this preamble doesn't really seem to add much to the overall themes of the story.
Once we get to the story proper, there's bits I liked, and bits I liked less. I liked some of the sprinklings of pre-history put into the story in a non-infodumpy way, I liked the idea of each alicorn having some sort of personal 'Nightmare' within them (which begs the question, what is Twilight's?) and the author has some fantastic turns of phrase. I can buy into the central concept, but the OC alicorn comes across as a bit comically villainous for my liking, murderer of cities and children that he is. As a result, there's not really a moral argument to be had (as he's super evil and is unrepentant about it), it's not about what to do with him (as he's been locked up there for years) or how Celestia feels (we know from the start she is still quite angry, as yes, he's a horrible murderer). The ending was interesting, though! I feel like the story would be stronger as a whole if it had more of that ambiguity in it.
Prompt: OC Alicorn
We've got an evil black alicorn, though it seems like Carabas is playing it a bit safe by having him be a sibling of Celestia's from pre-history. The story is certainly about the evil alicorn, and there's some interesting alicornisation stuff thrown in to boot. It's not the first evil black alicorn I've seen, and it won't be the last, so while it loses some points for originality, it gains those points back by using it in a more novel way. Once the actual story starts, it gets quite a lot done in a short space of time.
And That’s How Equestria was Made..., by Dusty the Royal Janitor
Story: Equestria is created!
This is a tricky one to judge, actually. It's not a story in the traditional sense, instead it is a creation story, set out like a tale of old. There's no real plot or thread moving through it apart from 'the creation of the world', but at the same time, this isn't something that type of story really sets out to do, so that isn't a failing. The style of writing certainly feels right and I like the G1 references. There's some nice original idea here, but it does feel more like a source document to support other stories than a work in its own right.
Prompt: OC Alicorns
OC alicorns! Loads of them! Coming out of your ears! I feel that the writer has played it safe a bit by having all the OC alicorns as god-like beings in the distant past, but then he does do some ridiculous things such as having one with six wings and yet still make it feel 'right' in the sense of yes, these are akin to the crazy Greek gods. There's also an alicorn Lauren Faust called Faust; I know that is a lot of people's headcanon and I won't begrudge anyone for it, but it isn't the most original idea and dangerously skirts the 'don't use any existing OC rule' for this competition.
Remember Vigil, by Supersnot
Story: An alicorn called Vigil stands guard over something mysterious, and meets Twilight Sparkle.
I feel this is a story of two halves. On the one hand, there's an interesting idea here, the writer doesn't overplay his hand by revealing too much, and it's a very focussed story. On the other hand, there's not much to the plot, nor is there really an exploration of why Vigil is standing watch over something he knows nothing about, apart from some ponderous asides. Stylistically the story is quite difficult to get on with. Part of this is due to grammatical issues with comma overload, but part is due to the voice. It's very stilted - at first I assumed this was because Vigil was narrating it, but once it hits third person, the narrative style is the same, and then Twilight talks in the same tone. It's quite heavy going, I'm afraid.
Prompt: OC Alicorn
It's an interesting use of an OC alicorn, in that they're not obviously all-powerful, but just stuck in a location as a guardian. Unfortunately it does mean they are interchangeable with any other guardian character such as, say, a sphynx or golem or anything. There's nothing about Vigil that makes him uniquely alicorn, nor does the story explore this; you could swap him out with any other mythical long-lived creature and it would read the same. It's a minor criticism, but something that struck me, especially in a competition that revolves around the prompt.
The Magnificance of Pinkamena Diane Pie, by The_Weatherbug
Story: Pinkie Pie gives a speech about how earth ponies need to murder everyone else, all earth ponies are cool with that.
With dark stories, and especially stories like this that have a plot which relies on pretty much every aspect of the theme being changed completely (in the olden days, the unicorns and the pegasi murdered babies! Flim-Flam get to adopt Apple Bloom! Pinkie Pie's a bit like Hitler! Everyone is into good old ultra violence!) there needs to be some sort of easing in and worldbuilding to ensure the suspension of disbelief. There's not really anything like this in the story; instead we have Pinkie Pie as 'Pinkamena' giving an angry rant about how in the distant past, the unicorns and pegasi were jerks, so the earth ponies need to kill everyone and take over, and the entire audience is absolutely fine with this concept.
Pinkie doesn't sound anything like Pinkie Pie. It could be argued that this is the point as she is 'Pinkamena', but then that begs the question of why use her in the first place if her personality is going to be completely different. The story tells us that Pinkie is a bit crazy, and that everyone is going along with her for some reason, but never why. Given the use of 'you' in the second person, this lack of motivation is a bit strange. The idea of angrily wanting justice for some ancient wrong which is completely out of living memory is actually an interesting one, and relevant to our own world, but this story doesn't really explore that. The idea that something bad happened thousands of years ago is seemingly met with a logical 'let's kill everyone now, then!' without any dissent. Then Pinkie murders Thunderlane because he's a filthy pegasi.
Also there's a spelling error in the title.
Prompt: Second person
The narration isn't really that involving. For example, early on apparently 'you begin to rant a little', but as the story doesn't give a hint as to what 'you' are ranting about or anything you say, it creates a divide where 'you' don't feel that you are 'you' at all, as you don't know what 'you' are doing. Unfortunately, the narrative style doesn't add anything to the story. 'You' are just a passive onlooker, watching Pinkie Pie give a speech so there's never a chance to do anything interesting with the prose style. All of the action is taken up by Pinkie Pie and other characters; it would just take a few tweaks to turn this into a third person story.
Outlier, by FanOfMostEverything
Story: A human wakes up in Equestria, has a chat with Lyra, leaves.
I need to be quite careful here, as it seems that this is an authorial self-insert. I was going to mention that I felt the use of long, verbose speeches upon waking up in Equestria didn't seem particularly 'realistic', but then I don't know the author. Perhaps this is how he speaks. The latter half of the story flows better and is a lot more naturalistic, but the first half feels really stilted. I can't tell from the story whether the human knows what is going on (he certainly has some long speeches prepared and knows some mysterious acroynms [which are only explained in the author's notes, bad writer, bad!]) but at the same time acts confused and doesn't even know if ponies speak english. I imagine this is more down to the length of the story and tryng to get everything in it that needs to be there, but having such self-assuredness alongside confusion about some of the basics was an odd mix.
Actually, that's a thread that goes through this story. I like the central idea, but there doesn't seem to be any point where the main character has any sort of change or comes to a decision about his situation. He seems to arrive in Equestria already knowing what he is going to do (nothing) and why, but at the same time is quite surprised. Apologies if this is not what is happening, but that is my reading of it. It feels like the important part of the story happened in the moments before the story began.
Also, there's a Harpflank and Sweets reference. That made me smile.
Prompt: Human in Equestria
This is a story that is not only all about the prompt, but grapples with it and attempts to deconstruct it, the idea being 'what would it really be like?' or at least deals with that question for the author’s own situation. I can even forgive the use of Lyra in this sort of story, as it is needed for the deconstruction genre. I'm not sure if it goes far enough in this respect, in that while we are told the character's thought processes, we don't really get to understand them.
You really missed the point of my story.
No worries, though; I didn't expect a lot of people would, least of all the judges. I only wrote it because Obs rejected my original entry which was completely different in both prompt and story.
2304391
It is very possible. I did have to go through 64 stories, I was pretty frazzled at the end of it!
2304395 Like I said, no worries.
Very fair, very well reasoned. I was dreading this, but honestly? This is the exact sort of criticism I needed. I'm probably not going to go back and alter the story for the sake of posterity, though I may revise it and post that as a second chapter.
For the record, the idea was that story-me knew the show but was also aware that an actual Equestria could be very different from it. Also, the whole ambivalent, indecisive, paralyzed-by-fear thing.
In any case, I suppose that's what comes of trying to build a story on a foundation of stream of consciousness. Thank you. On the exceedingly off chance I ever decide to write more self-insert stuff, I'll bear this in mind.
Very fair and constructive critique of The King In The Mountain. The initial excess of Tartarus and the unsuitability of the fairly flat Astralus as a main focus were things other commentators picked up on as well. Happy I could provide a few 'fantastic turns of phrase' at least. What were they, out of interest?
2304391
"Sir, are you classified as equine?"
"Negative, I am a meat puppet."
2306351 I feel that is a reference to something, but heaven help me cause I don't know what it is.