Badfic Slaughterhouse Special Edition #2: PonyFall (+ Five Score comparison) · 9:10pm Apr 20th, 2015
The Badfic Slaughterhouse is open for business, and it’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff once more. The good stories I’ve recently read will be appropriately lauded, but as for the bad ones… Well, the badfic grinder is ready for fresh meat.
It’s been months since I read and reviewed Five Score, Divided by Four and a few of its spin-offs, so this follow-up has been a long time coming.
As with the previous series, PonyFall is a collaborative project about ponies being sent to Earth. However, while there are notable similarities, the premises are opposites in other ways. For example, in Five Score, people start turning into ponies, and in time, it becomes clear that they were ponies all along, and they’ve been banished from Equestria by Discord. In PonyFall, the ponies arrive on Earth with their memories intact, but they’ve suddenly taken on human forms.
As before, I’ve chosen a selection of stories from the chosen series. Consider yourselves warned that while I’ll be avoiding or tagging major spoilers for PonyFall throughout the reviews, the follow-up segment at the end (in which I compare the two) may have untagged spoilers.
For this project, I decided to review these stories (mostly) in the order of their original publication. Also, I will only be looking at stories that are listed on the PonyFall group page.
Now, let’s get started and see whether the first story’s neck has a date with a garland or a guillotine!
PonyFall: Majestic Royalty, by DragonLS
Tags: Comedy, Random, Alternate Universe, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 42,995 words (Status: Incomplete – 9/9 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: A guy finds a humanized Princess Celestia in his yard.
Review: Before I get into the review proper, I just want to address an issue of tagging. The AU tag is supposed to be used for stories that diverge heavily from the canon setting. It isn’t supposed to be used for stories where the canon characters actually travel to another world.
Ponyville. Probably the most populated and visited town of all, was a distorted and ruined mess.
Wait, what? Ponyville is a huge city and major tourist destination? Okay, I guess this really is an AU story! Carry on. Move along. No lollygaggin’.
So the setup for this series is pretty simple. It’s set at some indeterminate point before season 3, and Discord has once again escaped from his stone prison. He nullifies the Elements of Harmony again and goes about his business of wreaking havoc. The ponies stand against him, but they’re no match for his power without their trump card. Then, something goes wrong. A clash of spells causes Discord and the nearby ponies to be transported across dimensions, turned into humans, and dropped into the laps of a bunch of bronies.
In this case, Celestia appears in Georgia—at the home of Gerald “DragonLS” McCormack because this is a self-insert series. He finds her unconscious and naked.
As a character, Gerald is less than believable. Considering that this is an unabashed self-insert, the author is either a liar or has the most bizarre life of any writer on this site. He apparently comes from a wealthy family, but he wanted to get away and live on his own, so he has a small house, but his parents hired a butler for him, and he built a complicated obstacle course in his backyard…
The most unbelievable thing, however, is his reaction to finding a naked, unconscious woman in his yard:
A woman at first glance, completely naked without any clothing and sporting a pair of double D breasts. I stared a few moments longer before checking her out…
Not in that way, you damn pervert…
Addressing the reader aside, I think this is more telling of a deviant attitude on the author’s part than what’s implied of the reader. After all, any young, healthy, single, heterosexual male with a pulse who finds a busty, naked woman in his yard is absolutely, 100%, without fail, always going to check her out in that way.
The mechanics are shaky—lots of missing/misplaced commas and improper dialogue punctuation—but not offensively bad, although it definitely has a negative effect on readability. Adverbs are overused and sometimes used repetitiously. The past tense first-person narration tends to slip into present tense at times.
Of more pressing concern are the frequent grammar issues. Common phrases often have the wrong words, and sentences are sometimes constructed in confusing ways. The worst impact of the grammar problems is on characterization. Wrong word choices and clumsy sentence structure make characters sound dumber than they should be, and Celestia is hit especially hard by this. Thankfully, these issues mostly clear up in later chapters—as more proofreaders and editors are used—but it’s hard to get past a bad first impression.
The prose is mostly functional, but it’s frequently repetitive and mostly artless, especially when it tries to be clever. Moments of exceptional quality are rare, and at its worst, you get ridiculous stuff like this:
I took a small deep breath as these thoughts riddled my mind with confusion. I decided to turn around and head towards the kitchen. The police needs to pick this woman up anyway, and I immediately gasped when I saw who was behind me. The familiar black suit made no effort to recognize who it was. I took a couple of small breaths as I saw Gordon in front of me.
So how many ways is this paragraph a car crash? Let’s try counting them:
Why say he “decided” to turn around and head to the kitchen? Why not just say he “turned around and headed to the kitchen”?
Police “needs.”
He gasped when he saw that it was Gordon, his butler? The construction implies that the identity of the person was unexpected, and that’s the one person he should most expect to be there.
The black suit made no effort? Shame on that lazy suit.
No, you already said you gasped when you saw Gordon. You can’t gasp and take multiple small breaths at the same moment.
Did I miss any? If so, point ‘em out.
Sadly, the final nail in this story’s coffin is the one thing that could have saved it: the plot. After forty-three thousand words, nothing of importance has happened. In a nutshell, this is nothing more than a story about Celestia getting turned into a human, getting dropped in the real world, and learning about how humans live from a guy I don’t find interesting.
The most recent chapter, published almost two years ago, indicated the potential for a larger story, but this entry in the series hasn’t delivered.
Verdict: It’s stories like this that tempt me to start posting in Rage Reviews. I could have a field day ripping this one to bits, but for a blog post, I can hardly comment on a fraction of the things I find hilariously stupid. It gets better in later chapters, but it’s hard for me to recommend this story to anyone, especially Celestia fans, due to her poor characterization for much of its length.
PonyFall: Rainbows, by Silverness
Tags: Random, Adventure, Slice of Life, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 35,489 words (Status: Incomplete – 9/9 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: A teenager finds Rainbow Dash in his yard.
Review: And here we go again. This time around, we’ll be looking at Cody “Silverness” Lofton of Indianapolis, Indiana, who finds Rainbow Dash. Once again, our protagonist is in a fairly absurd set of circumstances, though not as nuts as Gerald’s, thankfully. Cody is a teenager, still in high school, who’s staying at home alone while the rest of his family is out of town because self-insert characters obviously have some space warping, time altering superhuman power of convenience to prevent parents from ever being involved.
As characters go, Cody is uninteresting. He’s basically led around by the nose by Rainbow’s actions or immediate needs, playing straight man to her antics. For the most part, his dialogue is fine. Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, is portrayed as a complete moron. I’ll give credit where it’s due—most of her canon personality is on display—but you’d think after a few cultural mishaps, she’d learn her lesson. And it seems that she does eventually learn it, but that doesn’t help her case when she willfully destroys a valuable object, pretending to think that it’s something else, just because she’s bored.
As for the content of the story, it’s like it was built around the same checklist as the last one. Naked humanized pony lands in yard of brony as human. Humanized pony bonds with brony. Humanized pony is unintentionally fed meat. Humanized pony thinks a car is a monster. Humanized pony and brony go shopping. If all of these stories follow the same formula, I’m going to be clawing my eyes out before long.
The story tends to get bogged down in minutiae. This ranges from little things, like a couple sentences about parking a car, to bigger things like thousands of words about what they do in a video game, or an explanation of stuff in Stargate. I’m sure that kind of thing appeals to the segment of the fandom that revels in fantasies about hanging out with their favorite characters, but for anyone who wants a real story, this kind of thing just gets in the way:
We paid for the clothes, which totalled around $70. Thankfully, most of the clothes Rainbow chose were on sale, or else I would’ve had to pay an arm and a leg for it all. I thanked Anna for helping us out before leading Rainbow in search of a place to eat. An hour later, we found ourselves inside a White Castle down on South Street. I stayed in line to order our food while Rainbow went to find us a table. When it was my turn, I got two Original Slider meals for both of us. The cashier handed me the receipt and the two medium-sized cups for drinks. I filled up our drinks from the soda fountain, giving myself Coke and Rainbow water.
When the order finally came, I had taken little sips from my drink out of boredom. The order sat on the counter once an employee placed the last box of fries on the tray. I left my spot and walked over to the tray and picked it up, placing both drinks on them. I made my way over to the table Rainbow claimed where a bored Equestrian waited, tapping her fingers on the table. She finally decided to lift her head and noticed I was making my way to the table.
How much of that did we really need to know? I don’t care how much the clothes cost, whether they were on sale, what they ordered, what size their drinks were, whether Cody poured them himself, whether he sipped his drink, etc. This kind of irrelevancy adds nothing to the narrative and bores people like me who want to see something actually happen.
Of course, when things do happen, they wind up annoying me just as much. Early on, Rainbow tries to escape from Cody’s house, and she winds up witnessing a murder. That seems like a big deal. I mean, it would be a big deal to me. It would probably be a big deal to you, as well. To Cody and Rainbow, though, it’s something to angst over for a couple thousand words and forget about.
Thankfully, this story is at least easy to read. It’s proofread pretty well; errors are rare and generally unobtrusive. The prose isn’t exactly elegant, but it’s serviceable and does manage some charm when it’s most needed. My biggest complaint is in an area most people don’t care about: dialogue tagging. I know you’ve all heard this before, but when a character says, “I’m sorry,” I don’t need a dialogue tag telling me they “apologized.” I especially don’t want to see words like “smirked,” “sneered,” or “grinned” used as dialogue tags. Those are not dialogue verbs, people, and in large numbers, they press my berserk button.
The last time this story was updated was in Nov 2013, so it’s unlikely that it will ever continue, and judging by the direction it was going, it probably wasn’t going to do anything interesting anytime soon.
Verdict: If you want to read a story about a guy hanging out with his favorite character, I guess you’re likely to enjoy this. If you expect more from a supposedly huge story spanning more than half a dozen fics by as many authors, this will probably infuriate you.
PonyFall: Onward Valiant Crusaders, by Fullmetal Pony
Tags: Sad, Slice of Life, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 126,544 words (Status: Incomplete – 26/26 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: A college student stumbles across the humanized Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Review: I’m getting pretty sick of the prologues to these stories. This one at least takes place somewhere different, but that’s immediately offset by the complete absurdity of it. As it opens, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are in the Everfree, being even bigger idiots than usual. Why was this important? Why couldn’t they have started in Ponyville like all the other characters in the collab?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the logical issues are compounded by the poor quality of the writing. Out of forty-one paragraphs, only two of them do not begin with a line of dialogue. Even those two contain dialogue later in them. In addition to the repetitious structure, the prose is riddled with adverbs, Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and horrific saidism abuse.
Thankfully, some of these issues improve rapidly when the narration switches to the obligatory first-person and we’re introduced to our self-insert main character: John. Last name? Unknown. In fact, very little is known of John for quite a while, and even after finishing the story (to date) I’m still not sure what he’s supposed to look like.
Anyway, John is out for a stroll one day when the sky turns pink, he smells fudge, and three little girls appear near him. Why do they all appear together when all the other ponies so far have wound up scattered around the globe? Who knows? There’s a far more important question to be asked about their appearance.
Why are they wearing clothes (proper human world clothes, no less) while all the other characters appear to be naked when they land? Is it because they were in the Everfree? Perhaps they went along a different route to get to earth that took them right through an interdimensional clothing store.
Honestly, it probably has more to do with the author being creeped out about the idea of finding a group of naked preteens, so he changed the rules of reality to save himself from that embarrassment. To me, it really just means one thing: there might not be a shopping trip chapter! Yay!
There is one. FML
Thankfully, the story’s structure, overall, isn’t as boring as the previous ones. There are plenty of conflicts, and when Discord gets involved, the story really takes on a different identity. It’s also nice to see a self-insert whose family actually plays a role instead of magically disappearing for the sake of plot convenience.
The characters are a step up from the previous stories, as well. John has a bit of personality, makes some odd choices, gets into plenty of trouble, and does manage to feel like a guy who’s been thrust into the role of caregiver for a group of children, despite being totally unprepared for it. The CMC are characterized rather well, with each one possessing different traits, approaching situations in different ways, and having different reactions. I was bothered by their constant cutie-mark-this and cutie-mark-that in early chapters—it felt like their only identity was as a group, rather than individuals—but that dynamic didn’t last long enough to be a serious strike against the story.
Side characters are more of a mixed bag, unfortunately. While John’s early allies, Jane and Sybil, are established well enough and play an important role, they disappear after a while. John’s parents are mostly just there to worry about him and let him act like a dick at them, while his sister acts like a bitch because she (rightly) thinks he’s up to something. Her plot reaches its end in a bizarre scene that reminded me a lot of Cruella de Vil at the end of 101 Dalmatians, which is perplexing when you consider that her only antagonism came from being stand-offish and inconveniently observant.
Mechanically, the story is passable. Missing commas are a fairly frequent issue, and some spelling and grammar goofs are scattered throughout it, but it remains readable. It’s obvious that the proofreading on some chapters was better than others.
Again though, the saidism abuse drives me insane. To give some idea of how bad the issue is, I counted the dialogue tags (discounting those that might or might not have been intended as such) in the last two chapters and divided them into categories. Out of seventy-six tags, “said” was used eleven times, which is the highest concentration I’ve seen in the story. Of the remaining sixty-five, fourteen were redundant, and another fourteen used verbs that are incompatible with dialogue. I know some people say “sighed” or “chuckled” are okay as dialogue tags, but I don’t buy that. You might be able to say a couple of words while sighing or chuckling, but not whole sentences, and you definitely can’t “quiver” dialogue.
And if you can, you should take that act on the road.
Verdict: This one is better, but it still has some issues. I’m getting sick of seeing the same culture shock scenes played out in every one of these stories. It would also help if it felt a bit more self-contained. Still not recommended as stand-alone reading, but perhaps if read in conjunction with the next one…
PonyFall: Australia, by TheSlorg
Tags: Slice of Life, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 123,045 words (Status: Complete – 33/33 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: An Australian guy finds the humanized Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Angel Bunny.
Review: The story starts with a completely unnecessary infodump, giving information about Pinkie Pie’s personal history that anyone who’s watched the show (i.e. the story’s target audience) already knows. As hooks go, it sucks. Thankfully, it gets into more interesting material after a few paragraphs, especially after Doug “TheSlorg” Collins finds Pinkie and Fluttershy in the woods while on a camping trip.
As for how interesting—well, that’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, you do have to suffer through the same checklist: reactions to eating meat, shopping for clothes, strange reactions to cars… When the story is treading the same ground all the others do, it’s at its least interesting. On the other hand, it has a lot more conflict than even the CMC story did, and that helps keep the story moving. While slightly shorter than the previous one, a lot more happens.
That’s not always a good thing, though.
The biggest problem with the story comes at the end. With most of the other stories still incomplete and probably abandoned, the author takes it upon himself to conclude the whole story in the most contrived method possible. Massive spoilers ahead: The only stories which had converged with the Australia story were the CMC one and the Twilight/Luna one, so while those characters actually made it on their own, the rest of the characters—minus Celestia and her keeper, who are conveniently written out—are teleported to their location in the final chapter by a mysterious character who had only been seen a couple of times and suddenly reveals himself to be an antagonist, spews a load of insane babble about his motivations, and starts trying to murder people with a meager knife despite having a portion of Discord’s powers, even with Discord himself trying to stop him. It’s so rushed that I had to keep looking back to see if I somehow skipped a chapter.
To make matters worse, the story doesn’t actually end, despite being tagged “Complete.” It just shunts all the characters off to different worlds with different partners, effectively pressing a reset button on the scenario and setting up another part to the story that won’t ever be completed. Or even started, in most cases. The only author who’s actually posted a sequel is TheSlorg, and it’s been put on hiatus after only three chapters.
So to sum up the stuff under the spoiler tags, the slapdash ending is confusing and unsatisfying, and it further cheapens the other stories by making a firm statement that this is the only story that really matters. Instead of ending the story, it just moves it to new ground.
Honestly, I have to wonder what TheSlorg was thinking. It was obvious by the time he ended it that most of the other stories would never be completed, so resetting the scenario with the characters shuffled around only serves to cheat readers out of a real conclusion. Even if that was his original intent, when it became obvious that the project wasn’t going to be finished, he could have changed course and rewritten the ending to deliver some closure. But he didn’t.
Even if the story’s ending was a pile of ass, though, there was still some good stuff in the middle. Doug, Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Angel (yeah, he’s there as a human too) are all characterized well, and they go through plenty of juicy emotional turmoil. Their conflicts are all believable, and for the most part, they resolve in equally plausible ways.
The supporting characters, on the other hand, don’t fare so well. Doug’s wife appears about halfway into the story to turn the scenario upside down, but she hadn’t even been directly mentioned before that point, and her existence was only hinted at once that I noticed. When she appeared—at the most inconvenient moment possible for Doug, no less—she was nothing but a Diabolus ex Machina. The most seemingly important person in Doug’s life was reduced to a mere plot device. Doug spends some time moping and lamenting his marital problems, but who can actually care about that when no time was spent on building the relationship?
The other major supporting character, Moey, is an entertaining goofball, but he’s also used primarily as a plot device. Had he appeared more frequently, his arc might have interested me more, and I might have cared when he got murdered at the end.
In terms of writing quality, TheSlorg’s work is in a completely different league than the other authors I’ve covered so far. It’s far more concise, and he has a better sense about when to skim over less important events, so the balance of show vs tell is stronger. Narration and dialogue often flow naturally into one another. However, it has a couple of annoying issues. One is a tendency to refer to the ponies as “the former pegasus,” “the former bunny,” “the former filly,” etc. The other one is—you guessed it—crappy dialogue tagging.
You know, I’ve spent an awful lot of time in this post complaining about saidism abuse, and I thought, based on a conversation I had with TheSlorg about dialogue tagging last year, that this story would be the one to break the trend. It isn’t. In fact, it may be the worst of the lot. Redundant bookisms are rampant, non-speaking verbs like “beamed” get used as dialogue tags on numerous occasions, and instances of “said” leapt out at me because of their rarity.
Yes, the problem is so severe that it turns “said”—something that should be virtually invisible—into something that was actually distracting to me because I was getting used to having my intelligence insulted by tags that made absolutely sure I understood “That’s right” is an expression of agreement.
There’s also a bizarre retrospective chapter that shows up as it starts building toward the end, which not only bored me by retreading ground I remember perfectly well, but also dropped a lot of hints about the ending. It was totally unnecessary, and it felt like a desperate attempt to keep people reading by saying, “I know the story hasn’t been very interesting for the last few chapters and the rest of the project is falling apart, but big things are about to happen!” To make things worse, it made promises about the ultimate direction of the story that didn’t end up happening, probably because the conclusion was rushed.
The story’s mechanics aren’t flawless, but the comma errors aren’t severe enough to affect readability.
Verdict: While the characters are interesting, and the portrayal of Pinkie and Fluttershy in the human world is about as good as you’re likely to find, the story falls apart at the end. I’d only recommend reading it if the character drama interests you and you can live without a real conclusion.
PonyFall: The Dawning of Twilight, by MrBackpack
Tags: Adventure, Slice of Life, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 43,623 words (Status: Complete – 14/14 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: A guy finds the humanized Twilight Sparkle and Luna.
Review: I gotta be honest; at this point, my motivation to continue is shot. I’m forcing myself to keep going.
This is the only other story in the series that’s marked “Complete,” but it’s also a third of the length of the previous two stories. What does that mean? Well, it means that it’s a whole story that reads like the last chapter of PonyFall: Australia—rushed as fuck. Seriously, it screams from one plot point to the next with hardly a line spared for characterization.
The only concession to Twilight’s personality is that she reads some books. Luna appears out of nowhere, and most of her story is completely untold. The main character interacts a little with his fiancée and goes to his job, but any side characters that are introduced get no more than a few quick lines before they fall to the wayside. Consequences to actions go unfelt.
Compare this to the CMC story, in which the girls each have their own distinct character traits, and they all have unique problems that they face throughout the story, as well as different reactions. The self-insert in that story has his own trials, and we’re given enough time to understand the gravity of his problems. We get to see the psychological stress he’s under from having to care for three alien children while keeping them hidden, being badly injured by Discord, having his living conditions turned upside down, and having to make life-altering choices. None of that is present in The Dawning of Twilight.
The story’s logic is pretty laughable at times, and a lot of events are contrived. For example, while reading the previous stories, I wondered how this group, who had no contact with the others, knew to meet up with the others in Australia. The answer is: they didn’t. They just happened to go there, and they just happened to run into the Pinkie/Fluttershy group. Yeah, there’s a potential explanation for it—a guy with the powers of Discord pulling their strings—but it still feels cheap after seeing how much trouble the CMC group had with getting there, and the conclusion feels even more jarring and out-of-nowhere than it did in the previous story I covered.
On the technical front, the story is readable, but it has a lot of basic punctuation errors, mostly in the form of missing commas and comma splices. Some chapters, especially the prologue, have grammar issues. Spelling errors are uncommon, but there are plenty of places where a word is missing or an extra word was left in when a line was changed.
And as seems to be par for the course with this series, it has a problem with saidism abuse. I don’t think it’s as bad as the last two, which seemed to be actively insulting my intelligence, but it’s bad enough that “sighed” seems to be used as a tag more often than “said,” and that’s a litmus test there’s no excuse for failing.
At least there’s no shopping chapter, though.
Verdict: Too rushed to be worthwhile. No effort is made to establish bonds between the characters or to endear them to the audience.
That’s it. I’m done. I had planned to review the Rarity story next, followed by Applejack, and then I’d have closed it out with the story that features Discord. After five of these, though, I just can’t take any more.
As you may recall, the original idea behind these Special Edition posts was to examine similar series, first on their own, and then compare them to one another. I had planned this set to encompass three blogs. However, this series just didn’t give me enough to work with, so I’m going to skip the dedicated post and use the extra space from skipping three stories to compare them here!
Premise:
In Five Score, Divided by Four, the ponies are betrayed by Discord and banished from Equestria, forced to live new lives on Earth for 25 years before regaining their pony forms, albeit still without their memories. Throughout the story, the people-turned-ponies struggle to adapt to their new bodies, remain hidden from humans, figure out their goals, screw like bunnies, find other ponies, defeat Discord, and save Equestria.
In PonyFall, a magical accident sends the Main 6, the CMC, Celestia, and Luna to Earth, where they find themselves in human bodies. Furthermore, they’ve all landed in close proximity to brony fanfic writers. What follows is a lot of shopping, plenty of former ponies having experiences with our carnivorous tendencies, characters traveling to Australia without anyone getting molested by the TSA—a death blow to suspension of disbelief—a completely random villain attacking at the end, and a cliffhanger.
Winner: Five Score. The stakes are higher, the dangers are more prevalent, and a lot more thought has been put into the scenario.
Best Main Six Portrayal:
Obviously, this is going to be a tricky one to judge, considering the differences. In PonyFall, the Main Six are split up among a variety of different authors, and the results vary. Rainbow Dash is portrayed as fierce with an underlying vulnerability, which is fine. On the other hand, she’s intentionally destructive and oblivious, which is less fine. Pinkie and Fluttershy get a very effective treatment, and although Pinkie gets pushed to an extreme I have a hard time buying into, I have little to complain about. Twilight, alas, is where it all falls to pieces. She’s just kind of there, and almost none of her canon personality comes through.
In the interest of fairness, I did make myself skim through the AJ and Rarity stories to get an idea of how they’re portrayed, and both seemed adequate. Nothing leaped out at me as being particularly great or awful.
Now here’s the hard part. Unlike PonyFall, the Main Six in Five Score were all covered in the main story, so they were in the hands of a single writer instead of spread out. Rainbow Dash was the central character in that story, and while she eventually starts showing some core character traits, she starts out as a pretty generic self-insert character. Applejack never achieves anything in terms of characterization. Rarity and Pinkie are portrayed strongly, though, and Fluttershy is close to her canon personality with enough differences to make sense within the setting. Twilight, once again, is the butt monkey. She’s portrayed as a super genius who has no other worth to the group. None of her leadership abilities shine through, her magic is pretty basic, and she plays second fiddle to Rainbow Dash throughout most of the story.
Winner: While this one is pretty close, I’m going to give the nod to PonyFall due to the exceptionally strong characterization of Fluttershy and Pinkie. While Five Score is at its best when dealing with Rarity and Pinkie, it can’t reach the same height. Meanwhile, the low points are pretty equal, so there’s nothing to offset that edge.
Best Single Story:
Five Score: A New Hive is easily the strongest story in its verse, as far as I’m concerned. The conflicts push its well-rounded protagonist harder than any of the other stories, and it quickly establishes an identity all its own without disconnecting from the source fic.
The best in the PonyFall continuity is definitely PonyFall: Australia. Although it has a rushed ending and lacks payoff, the characters are well-developed and interesting, and the conflicts keep rolling, ensuring that it avoids boring the reader.
Winner: While the nature of the conflicts are different, Chris/Chrysalis and Doug are both pushed to their physical and mental limits, so neither one can claim victory on that merit. A New Hive has a strong build and a firm conclusion, but the quality of the writing in PonyFall: Australia is superior. That’s not quite enough to offset the difference, though. A New Hive simply tells a better story, and that’s why it takes the victory.
Overall Writing Quality:
Of the five PonyFall stories I read, only one stood out as being well above average. However, the editing quality was reasonably consistent.
Five Score has a couple of well-written stories, although they’re not outstanding. Some of them are absolute trash, and the main story is decidedly sub-par.
Winner: This one goes to PonyFall.
Completion:
Most Five Score fics are incomplete, but the one that matters most is concluded. The rest can at least be inferred.
PonyFall is incomplete. Even the stories marked “Complete” aren’t actually finished.
Winner: Duh.
Best Collaborative Effort:
While PonyFall is advertised as a collaboration, it amazed me at times just how little collaboration there actually was. With a single exception, none of the stories truly merged until the very end, and along the way, none of them actually touched on all of the others. The Rainbow Dash story, for example, only crossed into the Applejack story via a single chat room session and never touched any of the others. At the end, several of the stories are dragged, practically kicking and screaming, into merging with the Australia story via deus ex machina.
On the other hand, Five Score was not conceived as a collaborative project, but the author eventually opened it up for others to write stories about the characters he wasn’t using. While most of the side fic authors didn’t coordinate with one another, TwistedSpectrum made plot information available to them, ensuring their work could be consistent with the main story, and he started acknowledging side fics in the main story when they merged, even going so far as to make sure those characters had something to do in the climax.
Winner: Neither story has a truly high degree of collaboration, and the amount of participation was pretty similar, but when you consider that one was intended to be collaborative and the other wasn’t, the edge clearly has to go to the latter. Five Score wins.
Best Primary Antagonist:
Discord’s role in Five Score was mostly as a mysterious far-away force that didn’t actively persecute the ponies. The only time they truly confronted him was at the very end. However, his influence was frequently felt, and he did actually communicate with a few of the side fic characters.
On the other hand, he actually appeared in person throughout PonyFall, appearing before several of the characters. Discord, however, isn’t the ultimate threat, and that character only reveals himself to be a danger at the very end.
Winner: In Five Score—with one major exception—Discord is purely a psychological threat until the end, when he wreaks some serious havoc on the ponies. In contrast, he actually does some damage over the course of the PonyFall stories, and if he ended up as the villain, he might have won, but because he was replaced as the primary antagonist at the last minute by someone else with idiotic motives, Five Score takes the win in this category.
Appeal:
PonyFall would primarily appeal to people who are interested in the idea of spending time with their favorite pony characters. Being set on Earth grounds it in a setting people are already comfortable with.
Five Score is more of a fetish sort of thing. The idea of actually turning into a pony—and often changing sex—would have greater appeal for cloppers and misanthropes. The mature version of the original story furthers that impression.
Winner: Okay, I’m not really sure how to even pick a winner here. I think I’ll give it to PonyFall because it seems like that idea would resonate more with mainstream audiences.
Best Australian Protagonist:
Doug “TheSlorg” Collins makes for a reasonably well-rounded character, but his circumstances are a little too convenient to be very believable. As a self-insert, though, it could actually be true.
Mark “Daring Do” Sheffield—praise His holy name!—may be a Mary Sue, but He/She is also God, so I can only hope I don’t get a nasty case of smiting for my decisions.
Winner: Obviously, it has to be Doug... Nope, I can’t do it. My fear of a celestial being using me for lightning bolt target practice wins out, so I’m giving this to Mark “Daring Do” Sheffield; glory be unto Him.
Best Overall:
The Five Score universe presents a tale of loss, revenge, self-discovery, and occasional boning, depending on whose work you’re reading. The types of characters on display are varied, and it does some interesting things with the personality traits of existing characters by inserting them into new lives. Pacing problems are a frequent concern, and the quality of the writing, taken as a whole, is only average at best.
PonyFall delivers stories about culture shock, human selflessness, and friendships that transcend the boundaries between worlds. Being bronies, the protagonists will likely be relatable to most readers, and the variety in their backgrounds helps keep them from blurring together. With a reasonable standard to its writing, reading this series never becomes a chore.
Winner: I’ll admit that I’m not exactly a fan of either series. While neither one fully lived up to the potential I saw in their concepts, both have merit for fans of the Pony on Earth concept. As for which one wins, though, I have to go with Five Score, Divided by Four and its bastard children.
Want to call my wrath down on a particular story? Make a request in the comments.
Rules:
—You can request a story of any length.
—It can be yours or someone else’s, and I don’t care whether it’s good or a train wreck, but I make no guarantees that I’ll read anything. These are requests, not orders.
—One request per person per review post, and only on the most recent one.
—If I don’t like your story, don’t be butthurt over it. It's just one (really picky) guy's opinion, and I'll *probably* recommend it for someone, even if I hate it.
Prak, why do you do these things to yourself? What is this? Four hundred thousand words or so? That's a sizable novel filled with Human/Pony interactions that you didn't care for. You have a stronger ponyfic stomach than I...
Anyone that could tell she is a Double D at a glance already checked her out that way.
3001262
Well, I couldn't know unless I tried. And I honestly thought this sounded better than Five Score.
3001331
Very good point!
The amount of suffering you went through so that I did not have to makes me quite grateful.
Oh how you hit the nail on the head with your summary of PonyFall.
That ending to PonyFall: Australia? Completely rushed, and not the ending we had hoped for. That said, I think we did alright, considering how the original concept by series creator Draquine was: "Here, this pony appears in front of you. Have fun writing what happens next!"
Here are some more fun facts:
* We were the first large collaboration between authors to work on a single storyline. Unfortunately, this means we had the pleasure of learning the hard way as to what works and what doesn't, and what kind of problems can arise by trying to tackle a story in this way.
* At one time, there were thirty six writers in the PonyFall collab. Thirty six!
* You know those annoying prologues? Those were inserted as a way to keep the series from being banned by the FiMFic admins, as they initially felt the stories weren't "pony enough."
* There are plenty of grammar issues in PonyFall: Australia. As a story I had been writing for two years, you can see a lot of mistakes in earlier chapters that improve as the story progresses. I never really learned my lesson about saidisms until after the story was 'complete,' however.
* You were spot-on with the motivation for the recap chapter.
* The initial idea was that some ponies would make it home, and others would not. The conclusion to the story was to involve the emotion of realizing that not everypony was going to make it home. This fell apart as authors drifted away from the project and failed to honor promises that they would catch up to the main storyline.
* The ending to PonyFall: Australia was totally deus ex machina. I'm not satisfied with it, but I needed to find a way to get the series away from having authors who were further ahead (myself, Fullmetal Pony) having to rely on the others to actually get something written.
* The PonyFall sequel series, Worlds Apart, was meant to be a way to allow those writers who wanted to continue to be able to, while allowing writers who fell behind or didn't want to continue to drop out. This plan has failed since only one other writer (MrBackpack) has actually fulfilled his promise to complete his story. The others have basically disappeared.
* I actually am considering altering the ending to PonyFall: Australia, with the knowledge that the others will likely never complete their stories. I may also alter my Worlds Apart story, which features Apple Bloom, and simply make it the 'one' sequel... a story that can tie up all the loose ends and follow all of the characters through to completion. This, of course, would require a colossal effort on my part, and I currently don't have the time to deal with it. I do want to complete the series, though.
* Also, almost all of Doug's storylines (not involving ponies) are true, as are all of his possessions, his car, and every location mentioned in Australia, right down to the location of the toilets in the campgrounds, and which wildlife can be found in which areas.
There's plenty more to know about PonyFall and how it turned out the way it did, but this comment is long enough as it is. Hit me up with a PM if you'd like to learn more (such as the 'curse of Twilight' and how we went through at least seven writers for her before settling on MrBackpack).
And I'm fairly certain we'd welcome you with open arms, sir!
Yeah, too bad about the PonyFall. It sounds like a neat idea, but I speak with experience when I say collabs are heck when you're just doing a school project; when trying to make something of quality, troubles like 3002248 seems inevitable.
Oh wow, Prak, JesusfuckingChrist, you're a... well, you're a something. I would say crazy madman, but that doesn't do the madman credit. You fit more along the messiah archetype, but instead of getting crucified by your hands and feet it's just your balls. Have fun with that. Love you forever.
Oh, also, read read and review this thing riiiiiiight here! That's right, Prak, choke on it. Choke on it reeeeeeeeeeal good.
3002248
Fun facts indeed! It's nice to know my speculation was largely accurate. I hadn't considered that the prologues might have been necessary to get the stories past moderation, though. They get pretty annoying, but I suppose they were a necessary evil.
3002272
Alas, it's not to be. At least, not as long as I'm associated with the Royal Guard. And with that group about to relaunch with revamped policies and new methods (Royal Guard 2.0, basically) I need to keep my hands fairly clean.
3002407
Bob, words cannot describe just how much you disturb me sometimes, and I love you for it.
3002456
I desperately want to say, "OH HELL NO," but something about that thing is just mesmerizing. I honestly can't wait to open it up and see how it disgusts me.
And that right there killed off any hope I had for these being good. This sounds like wish fulfillment to an extreme. Well, wish fulfillment and bad attempts at comedy.
Speaking as a Rage admin, I would gladly add you to the official reviewers list anytime you want. It'd be great to see you really cut lose on a story.
Now then for the request. I got something that may help push the worst parts of these stories out of your mind: Crackle's Perfect Partner by NoPony YouKnow. It's a Crackle clopfic.
3002557
FYI I already read that entire story. Word of warning: the author is an awful person. The comments didn't tell me that. The author himself doesn't exemplify it. No, it was the story itself. I now know that author more than his own mother. It is disturbing to say the least. Once you go down that road there's no turning back, Prak. Be warned, it's a road you'll most likely be mugged on. Don't wear any fancy watches on you. Carry a rape whistle too. Don't look anyone in the eyes. Also, since I know this will most likely devastate you, the grammar is ungodly and it certainly doesn't get better any time soon. At all. Good luck with that, and may God or whichever one you believe in have mercy on your soul. If you don't believe in God, ask Bill Nye the Science Guy to give you some weed. You'll need it, trust me.