Club Scene
By maxxxxxx

Reviewed by Rinnaul

I read this story while walking the sales floor at work. This might make me sound like a terrible slacker, but that’s only because I am. Also, the day before I’d spent about two hours properly zoning and setting the video game section, only for my manager to come in the next day, put all the misplaced games right back where I’d pulled them from, and declare that fixing the video game section was “a waste of time”. So I wasn’t in much of a mood to put effort into my job that day.

Regardless, no detailed notes this time.

Rainbow Dash and Twilight have been dating for a while, but have had a falling-out. One of many recent ones, from the sound of it. So Dash decides to handle this by going to get drunk and be irresponsible. Bar fights, making out, and implied wild sex ensue.

Rather than having one ongoing conflict, the story instead hops from one minor conflict to another, with only the occasional quip from Dash to remind us that this is all Twilight’s fault. While this sort of thing can work very well in a slice-of-life or Random story, here it feels very haphazard, like the author was just making it up as he went along.

The lack of exposition beyond a simple explanation that Twilight and Dash were in a relationship and having problems weakens the overall story, as it undermined the characters a great deal, but I’ll discuss that in it’s own section. Events are easy to understand, but things just happen too quickly most of the time. It seems as though that author is trying to squeeze too many events into too short a story.

Also, why would Equestria have strip clubs? Ponies don’t wear clothes.

The most jarring scene in the entire story is one I can’t exactly fault maxxxxxx for, because it involves his characterization of Octavia. The fandom are the ones who decided she would be a stuffy, perfectionist, intellectual who was otherwise a good pony. So I can’t complain when the author writes her as basically an overgrown Diamond Tiara, because that’s just a headcanon conflict.

However, Rainbow Dash cheating on her marefriend, no matter how angry she was at her? Applejack seeing an upset and angry Dash and opting to just move on? Twilight calling Dash a slut and punching her in the face? These don’t feel like the ponies we know.

Furthermore, all the characters are very, well, flat. I know you can only do so much with 5,000 words, but the characters have such little presence that the only things which stand out are the parts which feel out-of-character, making those issues all the more glaring. Dash is angry. Octavia is a bully. Vinyl wants a good time. Twilight’s kind of a bitch. That’s about all I get out of them.

Also, as I said in the previous section, very little exposition is given to Twilight and Dash’s relationship. I found myself constantly distracted by it, wondering why they were even still together given what the story suggested about the frequency and severity of their fights.

Eventually, I concluded that, like many RariDash or Twixie shipfics, they loved their mutual seething hatred for one another.

First things first, generally the story does well with showing rather than telling, but it does fall back on lines like “swishing the liquid around in boredom” or “looked at her friend with empathy” at times. The style otherwise is fairly simple and fast-paced, which is fitting enough for the plot, though at times perhaps too fast. There’s a little Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, too, with Dash being called “the rainbow-maned pegasus” a bit too often.

My only real objection is the near-constant use of cursing. “Bitch”, “slut”, and “cunt” are constant, as are “buck you” (in some ways more jarring due to being fandom slang) and, well, every other swear in the book. I don’t mind obscene language – after all, I use it often enough in my personal life – but here it’s just excessive, and its constant use becomes and jarring distraction.

There’s also a major missed opportunity that I feel is best addressed here. Dash and Vinyl are getting plastered, but Vinyl knows a spell that allows ponies to communicate clearly no matter how drunk they are. This means we miss out on one of the great joys of writing drunk characters – letting them slur their words into nonsense.

I can’t say I’ve ever read a TwiDash story where they have a fight and Dash runs off to make some bad decisions, but that may just be because I haven’t read that many TwiDash fics. While I’ve never seen it before personally, TwiDash is a very common ship (the most common by far, actually, going by Derpibooru tags), and nothing in this story stands out as particularly novel, beyond its unusual characterization of Vinyl and Octavia, which was a side point at best.

Biggest and most consistent problem: Misattributed dialogue, with the action for one character next to the dialogue for another, an issue maxxxxxx has had in other stories. The frequency of this mistake and the confusion it causes are the biggest reasons for the low grammar score.

Beyond that, there are just a normal array of typos and punctuation errors. Let’s clean up this sentence from the opening paragraph to illustrate:

It was a typical night at Ponyville's newest, most happening club and everypony was enjoying getting lost in the music and strippers. Everypony, that is, except for a certain melancholic rainbow-maned pegasus who sat at the bar, her night of getting wasted alone having only just begun.

Missing comma, “everypony” is generally one word, comma splice, “everypony” again, missing comma, missing comma, missing hyphen, extraneous comma, and tense mismatch.

Here are a few others I notice on a quick look-over:
- getting drunk, didn't (comma splice)
- it's contents (word confusion: “its”)
- set the drink (word confusion: “sat”)
- counter, everyone else (comma splice)
- all by your self sugar cube (“yourself” is one word, and should be followed by a comma)
- their bodies, sensually (extraneous comma)
- she wouldn't be want to go (extra word: “be”)
- Your not (word confusion: “you’re”)
- looking for. A waiter, her horn (should be “looking for: a waiter. Her horn”)
- her horn light up (should be “lit up”)

These are by no means the only mistakes, but they serve as a good sampling of what can be found throughout the story.

Give your romance more attention. Remember, just having two characters in a relationship doesn’t make the story a romance. Romances are stories where the relationship takes center stage, or goes through major developments during the course of the plot.

Establish the romance before you jeopardize it. The entire time I was reading this story, I kept wondering why Twilight and Rainbow were even still together. Nothing we see here, nor anything that’s said, gives any reason for the two to not break up.

Reign in the cursing. A bit of foul language makes for good emphasis, but think of it like using bold font. Used sparingly, it can emphasize words and give characters stronger voices. In excess, it distracts from the story and makes things difficult to follow. Furthermore, it eventually starts to make you look like you have a weak grasp on the language, as excessive vulgarity often suggests that one has nothing more clever to say.

Find a proofreader. There are many issues with your grammar and a number of typos, and not all of the grammar issues are ones that I would normally be able to identify. However, you should specifically look into comma usage, particularly comma splices and run-on sentences.

Consider how characters would react to events, and keep them as true to the source material as possible. I understand from your comments on the story that you didn’t write this with keeping everypony in-character in mind. However, regardless of your intent, most readers will find this a point of contention. We’ve seen from “Return of Harmony” and “Canterlot Wedding” that Twilight doesn’t generally get angry when she feels betrayed, she’s utterly crushed by it. I’d expect her to run from the bar and find a secluded spot to cry it out, not start a brawl. If you want the story climax to feature a big fight like that, maybe Twilight isn’t the character to use. Rarity and Dash seem more like a couple who’d come to physical blows. Or Dash and Applejack, maybe. Alternatively, build up the conflict more and push Twilight to a point where she’d use violence.

Mind your mood. You’ve tagged this Comedy, and while the final scene is somewhat amusing, the majority of the story focuses on either Dash and Twilight’s problems, ponies generally treating one another like dirt, or Dash making bad decisions. It feels like a particularly grim Slice of Life rather than a Comedy. Either reconsider your tags, or try to lighten the mood.

Narrative: 4/10
Characters: 3/10
Style: 6/10
Originality: 4/10
Grammar: 4/10

Final Score: 21/50

Verdict: Needs Work

The story is tagged as a Romance/Comedy, but the Romance is never developed, and frankly, it’s never actually funny, beyond a slightly chuckle-worthy reveal in the final scene.

If you like trollfics where the entire gag is that the cast is out-of-character, you’re craving confused drunken antics, or are absolutely starving for TwiDash having relationship issues, this might have what you’re looking for.

3141055
great review

3141055 thanks bunches for the review , nothing i can really say in thins stories defense here though. I can tell you i definitely wrote it in a hurry, ( i wrote it in like 5 hours) on a caffeine binge after i heard the song "so what" by Pink at work. So, i definitely got ahead of myself with this one, some people enjoyed it, quite a few did not. I had fun imagining out the scenes at the time but in retrospect, your review definitely makes sense... yeah, i think i should get an editor. I have that problem with a lot of my stories, getting better, but not great yet anyway thank you for reading