Random Review #8: In a time of need

(Warning, minor spoilers for both In a time of need and the EQG comic it's based on will be present. You have been warned.)

I've never been a major follower of the MLP comics. I've never been a big fan of comic books in general, and the things I'd heard about the comics from people like Silver Quill or Voice of Reason didn't exactly make me want to rush to find them any time soon. However, I have a friend who is into that sort of thing, and every once in a while, he lends me one and tells me I should give it a look.

That's what happened last week. Before I left town for my Grandmother’s funeral, this friend came over to my place, and apologized for my loss, befoe lending me an EQG comic book, specifically the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Holiday Special comic, i.e. the Anon-a-miss comic.  He told me that he hoped I would give it a read when I wasn’t busy doing the funeral, and hoped that it would give my mind something to think about when I wasn’t at the funeral.  At the time, I didn’t think much off it, and figured that they were just trying to be a good friend.  After reading it though, I’m not sure if it was good intentions gone wrong or him just trolling me, because the comic in question was absolutely dreadful, and actually managed to make me legitimately angry.

I won’t go too in depth on the comic now, both for the sake of time and due to the fact that it’s become so infamous that most of you probably already know about it from reputation alone, but to give the basics, the comic stars Sunset Shimmer, almost immediately after the events of Rainbow Rocks.  Because someone can’t stand the fact that friends might occasionally want to spend time with friends, they create an account called Anon-a-miss, spread widespread personal rumors about everyone, and frame Sunset for it.  This results in everything Sunset Shimmer worked so hard for in Rainbow Rocks being smashed to bits, leaving Sunset Shimmer’s life in shambles and making the entire school hate her once again.  The perpetrator eventually comes clean, and everything is magically okay again.  Despite a decent setup, the resolution is hastily rushed, every character’s behavior aside from Sunset comes across as despicable and horrible, the reveal of the perpetrator creates a ton of plot holes, and the fact that there’s no punishment for the perpetrator (hell, they practically get rewarded for it) convinced me that this was the snowball that started the run of terrible ‘redemptions’ in the show that Season 5 would turn into a running theme.  I’ll be kinder than a majority of people and say nothing else about it for now, other than that it was a huge turd.

After I'd first finished reading it, I decided on a whim to check to see if Fimfiction had any stories relating to this comic, and unsurprisingly, I found quite a few fics about it, the quality of which ranged from atrocious to really damn good.  Out of all of them, however, one specific fic stuck out to me, and the more of it I read, the more I became convinced that I needed to make a review of it.  That fic is none other than In a time of need by Small Muffin, which at the time of writing is nineteen chapters in, sits at an impressive rating of 474 likes to 25 dislikes and has well over nine thousand views and 600+ comments.  But the question remains: Is In a time of need a good story, or is it a trainwreck that only  achieved fame by providing a different outcome to a hated product? Well, let’s take a look inside and see for ourselves, shall we?

Let’s start off with a basic summary.  Like many Anon-a-miss fics, this story takes place around the final act of the comic, but with a slight twist on it.  In this case, Sunset gets so overwhelmed by the abuse that she ends up fleeing from Canterlot High before the perpetrator comes clean.  While she’s fleeing, she ends up getting caught in a blizzard, and despite the fact that she wore the thickest outfit she could, the cold eventually causes her to collapse.  She accepts her death, but just before she loses consciousness, she’s rescued by the most unlikely of saviors: the sirens.  Even more surprising than that, however, is that Adagio and her sisters seem to show genuine concern for Sunset’s well being, despite their last interaction.  Although Sunset is skeptical of them at first, the sirens do give her a reason why they care about her, and since Sunset ultimately has nowhere to go thanks to the Anon-a-miss incident, she ends up staying with them, at the very least until she’s found her footing.  While this is happening, the other Humane 5 end up discovering that Sunset wasn’t the creator of the Anon-a-miss profile, and as a result, form a large search party to try and find Sunset so they can apologize to her.  The Humane 5 eventually discover that Sunset is with the sirens, but when they try to apologize to her, they discover that Sunset reacts to them with absolute vitriol.  After they abandoned her when she needed them most, Sunset wants nothing to do with any of them, and acts towards most of them extremely aggressively.  For the most part, the story’s focus is on whether or not Sunset will ever forgive her friends and return to them, or if she will remain with the sirens and try to build a new life there.

Let’s start with some of the positives, because there are quite a few.  I really, really like this premise.  One of my biggest problems with the Anon-a-miss comic was how Sunset seemed to get over her life getting torn to shreds far too easily, and I really like the way this story addresses it.  We start off seeing Sunset at her most broken state at the beginning, which does a good job at getting readers invested early on, and for the most part the story does a good job at showing the pain and conflict Sunset is going through.  In addition, this story did a really good job at making me absorbed.  Many chapters leave readers on some form of cliffhanger, with the early ones making the reader curious about why the sirens are helping their old enemy, while later chapters that happen after the Humane 5 find her keep readers curious about whether her old friends will be able to make some progress on the road towards being forgiven by Sunset.  I kept reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen next, which is something that a lot of stories I’ve read recently struggle with.  The core story itself is very solidly put together, and really made me want to see what happened next.

Another thing worth talking about is the characters and the emotions they go through, which is overall just… okay.  Most of the characters themselves are pretty good.  Most of them are fairly in character, and when a character is acting strangely, there’s generally a good reason why.  I also feel that the character interactions are pretty good and generally make you feel what the characters are going through, though many have a problem I will discuss a little later.  Admitedly, I feel that Sunset spends just a bit too much time crying, but given how she was treated in the comic, it does make sense.  The only characters I have a real issue with from a character perspective are the Dazzlings, or more specifically, Adagio and Aria.  While Sonata is portrayed okay, coming across as a quirky gal who isn’t great at keeping things secret, Adagio and Aria aren’t written all that well.  Just for fun, I did an experiment in a few chapters where I switched every instance of the word Adagio with the word Aria and vice versa to see if it made a difference.  Sadly, it didn’t.  With one possible exception, Adagio and Aria seem to have the exact same personality in this story, and the fact that I could consistently switch their dialogue without it seeming out of place strikes me as a problem.  While they do work okay for the story, I think it would’ve made it better to have them talk in slightly different ways, such as having one be more pessimistic and upfront, while having the other being a bit more optimistic but sarcastic, for instance.  Still, that is a bit of a nitpick.  They do work okay for the story, and they do act slightly different from one another every now and again.

In terms of how the characters express emotion however… well, that’s where things get a bit tricky.  While it isn’t handled terribly (generally speaking, they do work), I did find as I continued that when the characters expressed anger or sadness, it was almost always really over the top.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the things that happened to Sunset were reprehensible, but when it happens so often, and rarely slows down a bit to show something other than frustration and misery, I found that it eventually grew repetitive. 

That could’ve been forgiveable though… if the way the story describes things wasn’t so poor.  Very few of these emotional scenes felt that they were built up all that well, since the story almost never takes time to describe a scene to us, opting instead to just say what the characters said with little to no description given to facial expressions, body language, or tone of voice:

The only sound that could be heard was that of Sunset crying into her arms. She had just told the three sirens the story about what had happened to her in the last few weeks. The story of how she was abandoned by those she trusted, those who said they would always be by her side. And now she was slumped over the table, crying herself dry.

"So let me get this straight," Adagio began, "On the simple assumption, that you might, maybe, possibly, be this Anon-A-Miss person, they all just left you like that!?" she asked.

"That's horrible!" Sonata said, "And I'm a siren who tried to take over the world!" She moved over to the crying mess of a girl and gave her a hug, "Hey, d-don't cry. It's okay, they can't hurt you anymore," she said, trying to comfort the poor girl.

"I think they've done enough as it is..." Aria mumbled.

This is one of many heavy scenes in this story, and while it’s passible, it’s also not particularly well described.  In addition to skipping entirely over what Sunset said, (which could’ve been done easily without coming across as redundant by just having Sunset say a summarized version), this scene doesn’t show how characters react to it over time through expression changes or the like, and it doesn’t do a good job at describing the shock and concern that the sirens seem to have after hearing this. Heck, the only inclination I have that Adagio is the least bit affected by the confession is that her dialogue ends with a ‘!?’!  Because of this, many important scenes feel dull and unfinished.  Want an example of how to do it better?  How about doing something like this?

The only sound that could be heard was that of Sunset crying into her arms. She had just told the three sirens the story about what had happened to her in the last few weeks. The story of how she was abandoned by those she trusted, those who said they would always be by her side.  Her emotions finally overwhelmed her once she had finished, and left her crying into her sleeves on the table.

The following seconds passed by in near silence, as the sirens stared at the broken girl in front of them, their eyes wide in shock.  They could scarcely believe that the same girl who had saved her entire school from them could’ve been abandoned by that same school so easily.  After about fifteen seconds, Adagio snapped out of her stupor and cleared her throat, causing Sunset and the other sirens to look up at her.

"So let me get this straight," Adagio began, "On the simple assumption that you might be this Anon-A-Miss person, the whole school just up and abandoned you!?" she asked, her mouth twisting into a grimace as she spoke.  Several tears fell from Sunset’s eyes as she quickly nodded her head, before burying her face into her arms again.

"That's horrible!" Sonata exclaimed, her eyes blinking rapidly as if she were trying to avoid crying herself, "And I'm a siren who tried to take over the world!”  Sonata scooted over to the crying mess of a girl and gave her a hug, "Hey, d-don't cry. It's okay, they can't hurt you anymore," Sonata said as soothingly as she could manage, trying to comfort the poor girl.

Aria let out a grunt and looked to the wall beside her, her shocked expression now replaced with a scowl, "I think they've done enough as it is..." Aria mumbled.

I just made that up in a few minutes, but you can see the difference, right?  Not only does the extra detail make it easier to visualize the scene in the reader’s minds, but it also helps the reader hear the tone of each siren, which in turn makes the dialogue come across stronger.  While the emotional scenes certainly aren’t terrible, they could’ve been a lot stronger if they set the scene some more.  I want to be invested in these moments, but the dialogue heavy and description light way this story does it makes it hard sometimes.

Actually, come to think of it, the pacing as a whole is rather inconsistent.  It’s hard to explain, but the pacing in this story is good on a larger level, but is really poor in terms of individual moments.  On a larger level, it’s paced pretty darn well.  The major events gel nicely into one another at a believable pace, the story leaves you curious about what’s going to happen next as you read, and as I said before, the core story itself is solid.  However, that’s mainly talking about how the major events flow into one another.  The major events on an individual level, however, feel rather rushed.  I mentioned earlier that the story rarely describes things very well, and because of that, a lot of individual moments feel rather rushed.  To cite another example:

"Ari, that's not helping," Sonata replied. Aria stood up, and walked away from the table, and towards the door, "Where you going?"

Aria opened the front door, "I'm going for a walk, I'll be back later," she replied as she walked out, and slammed the door shut behind her.

"Gee, you're a great help..." Sonata mumbled.

"I've... I've got nowhere to go..." Sunset cried, "No one wants me around..."

"Hey, that's not true," Sonata continued, "We're right here,"

"You shouldn't have even bothered saving me out there..."

These six paragraphs combined feel like they should be the length of only one or two paragraphs.  Everything feels really brief, and as a result, it makes the individual moments feel rushed.  This isn’t a big issue if it only happens every once in a while, but in this story, the rushed moments are the rule rather than the exception.  This could’ve easily been solved by fleshing everything out more, but sadly, this story rarely bothers to do that, opting instead to rush from one line of dialogue to the next without setting the scene, which makes many individual moments feel really sloppy, greatly harming the final product.

The final thing I’d like to bring up is the grammar.  I’m not gonna dance around it; the grammar in this story is not very good.  It’s not nearly as bad as some of the things I’ve reviewed, but I was still finding grammar errors a lot even without looking for them.  Just for fun, let’s take a random chapter of the story and see how many issues we find, shall we?

"You want a drink, or something?" Adagio asked, opening a section of the cabinet

Unnecessary comma after drink.

Adagio took a sip of her drink, "Do I really need to tell you?" again, Sunset didn't bother to reply.

Again shouldn’t be lowercase here, and it would fit better in the story if it was preceded by something like ‘Adagio asked.’, or even ‘Once’.

"Look can we change the subject?" Sunset asked.

Look should have a comma after it.

"Huh?" Sunset lifted her head off the table.

This is the first time in the chapter that the story implied that her head was lying on the table.  In fact, we were told several times earlier that she was looking down at the table, not lying her head on it.  As such, ‘Sunset looked up from the table’ would work better.

Maybe she could trust them, after all, if they wanted to do something to get rid of her, they would have just left her to freeze last night.

Run on sentence.

On the other had, these three had taken over CHS with little to no effort.

Hand.  On the other hand.

"There's not really much to tell but," Adagio shrugged, "Alright,"

I’m not sure why exactly these two sentences are split like that.  It would flow a bit better if it was made one sentence with the Adagio shrugged part either in front of or behind the dialogue, or if it ended the first sentence with an ellipses after the word tell, and the second sentence saying the ‘but alright’ bit.

Adagio handed the man a fifty dollars note, "Keep the change."

Dollars aren’t called notes.  They’re called bills.

Sonata was stood up

This should either be ‘was standing up’ or just ‘stood up’. 'Was stood up' means something very different than what is happening here.

She was about to stop paying them anymore attention, but when the person took their hood down, Aria recognized her, though, she couldn't think up a name.

Unnecessary comma after though, and I would recommend describing the mystery girl’s appearance a little more as well.

Adagio walked over to the table, and put her newly acquired trey of drinks down.

It’s tray, not trey.  A tray is what you put food and drink on in a cafeteria or restaurant, while a trey is a term for either a three point shot in basketball or for a playing card or die with three spots.

"We've got what we came for now come on."

Lack of punctuation in general.  Would be better off being split into two sentences: ‘We’ve got what we came for.  Now come on!’

The three of them continued walking around town, and their pursuer was never far behind, and as she tailed them, Adagio soon noticed this girl was constantly looking around for someone else, as if she herself was worried she was being followed.

Another run on sentence.

"Oh, what's wrong, to cold for you?"

Wrong to.  Should be too.

Her and Aria were carrying Sunset out of the alley.

She and Aria.

Adagio looked down at the unconscious Sunset, whos head was resting on her shoulder.

I think you were going for who’s, but even then that’s incorrect. The correct word here is whose.

Those are just the things I noticed on a first read through, by the way.  And yes, every chapter is like that. While some of them are small beans, it becomes a bit of an issue when every chapter has a ton of grammar errors, and it doesn’t help that the descriptions are often so lacking, which makes the story feel incredibly sloppy.

The tragic irony about this story is that, from a core perspective, In a time of need is very solid.  The interactions between characters are oftentimes solid, the way the characters act feels very realistic and believable given the circumstances, the story’s major events fit together very well, and I did find myself invested enough to want to see what happened next most of the time.  Unfortunately, while the core story is solid, it’s also severely lacking in polish, to the point where it can become distracting.  Between the constant grammar issues, the lack of description, the fact that individual scenes oftentimes zoom by, and the fact that most chapters are about 80% dialogue, it makes it difficult to become as invested into the story as I should be.  I want to love this story!  I really do!  The concept is great, the characters are believable, the emotional scenes can be really powerful at times, and I do want to see what happens next!  But what do those things matter if I’m constantly getting sucked out of the story by shoddy presentation?

So, with all of that said, my final score for the story is a 6.5/10 (Slightly Above Average ): If it weren’t for the lack of description, the overabundance of dialogue without describing the visuals, and the meh grammar, this would’ve scored a lot higher.  I did grow to care about the characters, I thought the interactions themselves were fairly solid (albeit lacking in detail), and the story is generally quite absorbing, doing a good job of making you want to see what happens next.  Sadly, this fic’s crippling downfall is that it’s not at all good at fleshing things out, which makes quite a large number of scenes feel rather dull and rushed.  I can live with the grammar, but the fact that most of this story just dashes from one line of dialogue to the next without fleshing things out makes some scenes not come across as strongly as they should at best, and flat out ruins them at worst.

Because this is a pretty popular story, allow me to emphasize this one more time: This story is by no means bad, and easily runs circles around the comic it’s based on (though that’s hardly a difficult thing to do).  However, it is rather flawed.  The story has a ton of potential to be fantastic, but it’ll need some polish before it reaches it.

(PS: If the author happens to be reading: Thanks for making it this far.  I hope that this review will help you when writing future chapters.  If you have any questions about anything I said, or want some assistance or something along those lines, then don’t refrain from asking.  I’d be glad to help this story out any way I can.  Cheers )

Comments

[Small Muffin]

Well this is new. This is the first review of a story of mine I've come across, and I don't really know how to react to this. (Though that could just be because I'm REALLY tired.)

Honesty I'm surprised this got half the attention that it did, let alone how much people seem to enjoy it, as I don't think it's all that great, and is just something I do when I want to in my spare time because I want to. (Granted it hardly ever updates nowadays.)

Personally I would've given myself something along the lines of a 4, but that's just me, or probably a 3 because of my grammer.

I appreciate the review however, thanks for taking your time to make it. This probably wasn't the best kind of response, but like I said, I don't really know how to react to a review targerted at me, and I'm really tired.

Thanks again for the review. Small Muffin.