Badfic Slaughterhouse #10 · 4:41pm Sep 1st, 2014
Prak: “One shall review; one shall fall.”
Crappy Author: “Why throw away your sanity so recklessly?”
Prak: “That’s a question you should ask yourself, Crappy Author.”
Crappy Author: “Wait… That doesn’t fit. My sanity’s in no danger, and—”
Prak: “Shut up. Time for reviews.”
The Fury of a Human, by Atrunia
Tags: Dark, Alternate Universe, Human
Rating: Teen, Gore
Length: 1,926 words (Incomplete: 2/2 chapters read)
Synopsis: It’s another LoHAV story.
Review: So I saw this in the feature box, and I thought to myself, “Let’s start off the new blog with something awful.” Fully expecting to be disgusted, I opened this story up and started reading. Brace yourself, folks; it’s actually pretty good.
… Nope. Couldn’t keep a straight face. [/obviousportalreference]
It’s a LoHAV story, and being the concept that disproved Sturgeon’s Law by being 99.8% crap (at best) instead of the predicted 90%, of course it’s terrible.
On the mechanical front, there’s surprisingly little wrong, aside from having enough comma errors to make a third grader cringe.
The story uses an AU not because the author wants to create an interesting world, but because he needs certain things to have happened to put his character in the right place. The world is basically the same as the canon Equestria, as far as I’ve been able to tell. The main character is as stereotypical as you can possibly be: an angry sorcerer—dressed in black, of course—who wants to take down the princesses. Discord appears as a plot device to get the story moving and to show how much more competent the main character is, and of course, Mr. Edgypants is running around with a utility belt full of magical runes whose purposes will only be defined when the author thinks of something the character needs.
Being a LoHAV story, it’s required by some unwritten law to have flashbacks, and the flashback in chapter 2 is an exposition dump that rushes through everything that might be the slightest bit interesting.
Verdict: In terms of technical quality, this is slightly above average for a LoHAV fic, which is tantamount to being one of the best hockey players in Ecuador. It’s still bad, but I’ve seen much worse. If this fad is something you enjoy, you’ll probably eat this up. If you don’t read every new jerkass-overpowered-human-screwing-up-Equestria fic, avoid it.
Mayor Mare Has a Problem, by Noble Thought
Tags: Comedy, Slice of Life
Rating: Everyone
Length: 1,870 words (Complete: 1/1 chapter read)
Synopsis: When Mayor Mare’s stack of paperwork gets too big, she goes nuts.
Review: There’s really not a lot to say about this one. It’s a short, silly story built around a single joke. It milks that joke just a little too far, unfortunately, and it fails to end on a strong note because of the loss of traction, but it doesn’t wear the gag out completely.
The only errors in the writing are things that grammar nazis (like me) will notice. Specifically, semicolons are misused, there are a couple of capitalization errors, and some phrasing isn’t as clear as it could be, which made me re-read at least one line to be sure I understood it.
Verdict: It’s short and fun, and it’s an idea you probably haven’t read about before. Check it out.
The Great Equestrian Novel, by Syeekoh
Tags: Comedy
Rating: Teen
Length: 2,564 words (Complete: 1/1 chapter read)
Synopsis: Queen Chrysalis talks to her editor about her new novel, which is a piece of crap.
Review: Unlike the previous story, the humor here is varied, and the subject of the jokes shifts frequently as they talk about different aspects of the novel. Its scope is limited to the interplay between two characters, and that allows them to quickly build an entertaining dynamic. The subject matter is absurd, but it’s entertaining.
In mechanical terms, the story is pretty clean, although it has an occasional problem of starting new sentences following dialogue tags as though they’re part of the previous line. There are two significant issues, though, which make it harder or more annoying to read than necessary.
The first problem is a lack of pronouns. Crystal Night and Chrysalis are almost always referred to by name, and it’s easy to blur them together because of their similarity. Their genders are opposite, so it would make sense to call them by gender-specific pronouns more often. Or perhaps say “Queen Chrysalis” instead.
The second issue is repetitive construction. There are long stretches where every paragraph consists of: Character does a simple action. “Dialogue.”
Verdict: This is a pretty entertaining story with a tight focus and a good mix of jokes. Some of the humor may turn off a few readers—the meta jokes were my least favorite—but there’s plenty of other gags to keep your attention. It could use another layer of polish, but you can do a lot worse than this if you’re looking for a few giggles.
The Sun Won’t Come Home, by bahatumay
Tags: Adventure, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 2,887 words (Incomplete: 2/3 chapters read)
Synopsis: Fifteen years after Celestia disappeared in battle against Sombra, Twilight travels to an alternate world to find her and bring her back to Equestria.
Review: This story got off to a quick start and covered a lot of important points in its first two (short) chapters. I less than three thousand words, it showed Celestia’s disappearance, Twilight’s obsession with finding her, Twilight’s trip to a new world, her initial impressions of that world, and the first major event there. While I appreciate quick pacing, that’s a little too fast, unfortunately.
The battle between Celestia and Sombra is described in too few words, as though it was nothing more than a bullet point the story needed to hit instead of a pivotal event that’s intended to grab the audience’s attention. Fifteen years pass between that battle and the next scene, but even though Spike is present, no detail is given about how that much time has changed him, and Twilight gets the same neglect, although it’s less bothersome in her case since she can be assumed to look the same.
There are also some logical inconsistencies, such as Spike using a technique on Twilight that’s never appeared in the show, making it meaningless when she defeats it. Also, Twilight casts a spell that’s supposed to make people overlook her unless they’re specifically looking for her, but the rules of the spell seem to change the moment they become inconvenient to the plot.
Mechanically, the story is fine. There are some minor issues with redundant word use and an overreliance on adjectives and adverbs, but those can be overlooked easily enough when the rest of the writing is solid. Which it is.
Verdict: As much as I griped about it, I actually found myself intrigued by this story. Sure, I’d have preferred that the story take its time a little more, but it’s also better for it to get to the point fast and introduce the main conflict before getting bogged down in minutiae. This has the makings of a good character-driven adventure, and I’ll be watching with interest to see where it goes.
Discord’s Parting Gift to the CMC, by silvadel
Tags: Comedy, Slice of Life
Rating: Everyone
Length: 45,587 words (Incomplete: 3/8 chapters read)
Synopsis: Discord turns the Cutie Mark Crusaders into alicorns.
Review: I wanted to love this one, but despite its promising concept, it started to let me down within three sentences. It’s too damn rushed. No time is taken to set scenes properly, and it jumps from location to location with hardly any indication. Every action the characters take is related in the simplest terms possible, which is just boring. Here’s an example of what I mean:
After an unpleasant half a minute, Scootaloo got the point and glided towards the library with Rainbow Dash behind her. She opened the door to see Twilight standing in the middle of the room. Her horn was glowing as she levitated books around.
This one paragraph glosses over a tense moment between Scootaloo and Rainbow, makes only the briefest mention of their first shared flight—an event which should be a big deal to Scootaloo—and transitions between locations to introduce another character. This should have been no less than three paragraphs.
The stilted, awkward dialogue—seeing Scootaloo speaking without contractions yanks me right out of the story every time—often serves no purpose but to advance the plot, and characterization is dumped by the wayside. It’s unfocused, and it spins its wheels by describing characters repeating mundane actions, and it frequently bogs down in stuff that isn’t funny or relevant.
The story also has a nasty case of saidism abuse and misused commas.
Verdict: It fails on nearly every level. I recommend staying far away from it. Still, I really did want to like it, as I see huge potential in the concept. If anyone knows of a better story with similar subject matter, let me know in the comments. If nothing like it exists, maybe I’ll just write it myself.
Sometimes They Come Back To Annoy You, by Eskerata
Tags: Comedy
Rating: Teen
Length: 5,491 words (Complete: 1/1 chapter read)
Synopsis: After their tragic deaths, the ghosts of the Mane Six haunt Ponyville.
Review: First of all, this is a black comedy. If you don’t like grim humor, you’ll want to stay away. In strictly mechanical terms, there’s nothing to complain about. It does, however, suffer from a case of saidism abuse.
Where this story rises and falls is in the circumstances of the Mane Six. The ways in which they died are a mixed bag, and not all of them are funny. Frankly, the story of Pinkie’s death made me tempted to stop reading right then and there. Their hauntings of the other characters are sometimes entertaining, but at other times, it’s like they’re happening just to tick a box on a checklist. Near the end, the style takes a swerve and shifts from black comedy to meta humor. It wraps up on a more serious, somber note, giving closure to the piece but again creating inconsistency in the tone.
Verdict: Overall, this is a functional piece of work that tells a complete, comprehensible story in spite of its weaknesses. If you like black comedy and aren’t bothered by meta humor, it’s probably worth having a look at this. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like it, but it’s not likely to be a waste of your time.
The JaAm Cycles: Hot Shot and Hugh Jelly, by PresentPerfect
Tags: Comedy, Random, Crossover
Rating: Teen
Length: 4,353 words (Complete: 2/4 chapters read)
Synopsis: A transformer teams up with a jelly-loving pony to find “jaAm.” Or something.
Review: Well, this was a lesson learned: always read the description fully. The concept sounded insane, but I figured since it was a PresentPerfect fic, it had to make some sort of sense and—Oh God, it’s a trollfic from hell.
Everything about this is intentionally terrible. Just making sense of the ridiculous misspellings and odd sentence construction is a chore, and I couldn’t be bothered to do it.
Verdict: If you like trollfics (The Spiderses, in particular) you’ll get a kick out of this, but I couldn’t Nope my way out fast enough.
Let’s Get Boyfriends, by MythrilMoth
Tags: Romance, Comedy, Adventure
Rating: Teen, Sex
Length: 1,249 words (Incomplete: 1/1 chapter read)
Synopsis: Since none of the Mane Six have boyfriends, Pinkie challenges them to a game, in which they each draw the name of a random eligible stallion and try to make a love connection.
Review: This is a sequel to Let’s Be Evil, which I (mostly) adored. It has a poor rating—most likely from shippers who disapprove of putting the Mane Six in hetero relationships—but it doesn’t deserve the hate.
The author is using comments to determine the pairings, a practice I’m not fond of, but if the previous story is any indication, there should be a lot of excellent humor to come, even if there isn’t a plan behind it. It is a problem if the pairings are boring, though. After all, there’s no comedy in pairing Soarin with Rainbow Dash or Cheese Sandwich with Pinkie. And unfortunately, that looks like the direction things are going.
Speaking of humor, the prologue delivers some pretty good jokes. MythrilMoth’s humor lacks subtlety, which I always appreciate, but it makes up for that in cleverness and effective delivery. However, LBE had some lame chapters, so this could go either way.
It reads easily, and there are no significant mechanical problems to report.
Verdict: For the moment, it’s a promising start to a potentially hilarious story, and I recommend checking it out if you've read Let’s Be Evil, but it could fall flat due to the pairings being comment-driven.
Want me to take a shot at a particular story? Make a request in the comments.
Rules:
—It can be yours or someone else’s, and I don’t care whether it’s good or a train wreck.
—You can request a story of any length, but I won’t guarantee that I’ll read anything over 10k words, and if I do, I might not read all of it.
—One request per person per review post, and only on the most recent one. No retroactive requests.
—If I don’t like your story, don’t be butthurt over it. It's just one guy's opinion, and I'll probably recommend it for someone, even if I hate it.
I love your reviews
What Manes said. Also... thank you for the note on the semicolons and capitalization.
I swear I've learned my lesson since I wrote this story. *fixes* Though sometimes it's a lesson I need to keep relearning.
I was sitting here wondering how I could encourage your masochistic tendencies. And then I had an idea. Recommend a tag collab for you to review.
Tainted Love: A Twysalis prompt tag Collab
Also, never stop reviewing. Unless you're going to write a sequel to Roll for Initiative, of course.
2419925 2419934
I'm always happy to entertain. I'm also happy to improve the quality of your Read Later lists. Hopefully, I've managed to do both.
Noble, we all have our little sticking points. I always tell my editors to keep an eye out for certain tendencies I know I have, but might not have totally ironed out. More often than not, they tell me I did it anyway, despite knowing better.
2420002
Well, that looks like it will be an interesting challenge. I accept.
A sequel to RfI may well happen, but before I consider it, I want to finish There Goes the Neighborhood and get my next long-term project—The ABCs of Conquest—rolling. However, I am considering the possibility of calling in another writer to do a guest chapter of RfI while I work on other things.
2420029 Can you do a review on one of my stories? As always, I'm looking for ways to improve.
I've been trying to think of something not my own that I'd like to see you put through the badfic slaughterhouse... but I tend not to keep them on my favorite or read later list, and they kinda pass outta memory pretty quickly. And I don't wanna put any of my actual favorites up here, implying I think they'd be in it for badfic.
So... something I wrote in two hours.
It was Beauty that Killed the Beast
2420032
Name a specific one, and I'll have a look.
2420451 Hmmm. I think it'll be Higher Senses. Can't wait to hear your review on it.
I had a lot of problems with that story and I wouldn't be surprise if you find something wrong with it
Mayhap you can do a Competition Edition in which you review each fic in the Twyrant's Kingdom competition? A bit later down the track when the long runners have been judged?
lol i trol u :V Promise I won't do it again, but thank you for trying.
Ironically, writing like that is extremely taxing, and as a result, the third and fourth installments are considerably more readable. Also considerably more filled with Hugh Jelly x Unicron shipping.
Well, at least you didn't hate my ghost-fic. Saidism abuse? Well, I'll have to work on that. I had never written a funny story before, so this was a departure for me. I'm glad you sort-of liked it.
2420686
I have no interest in doing that. I like to read a mix of genres, and I look for new concepts. Reading different takes on the same idea would drive me bonkers. Besides, TRG is kicking around the idea of putting together a contest in the (hopefully) near future.
2420785
Yeah, that would have to be irritating. I've tried writing that way before, albeit not for storytelling purposes, and it was a nightmare.
I don't have to read the rest, however, to know that Hugh Jelly x Unicron is my OTP.
2420465
No problem. That's short enough for me to have a look between TRG reviews, and I'm a sucker for Scootaloo stories. I'm also brutal on them, though, so consider yourself warned.
2420029
Your therapy bill.
I hope you enjoy it.