Hello! I’m Froggie, and I am here reviewing a story called “Scandal” by Syeekoh. I can’t link it because it’s mature, but you can find it here.

This is… a weird story, definitely. I’m still not sure what happened here. It’s worth noting that I have not read this story’s precursor, as it’s marked as a sequel, but a general rule of thumb for writing sequels is that you should be able to understand everything in the sequel without having to read the prequel.

Onto the story itself, then. The basic concept of this story is, and you might not want to read the rest of this paragraph if strange and violent acts of sex (I think what happened was sex, anyways), Luna and Celestia watching a sex tape of Shining Armor and Cadence filming a homemade torture porn tape. In this tape, Shining Armor slits Cadence’s wrists to penetrate them, and he rips off her horn to penetrate her with it as well as his own horn. Shining then has Flash Sentry sell it to an adult film store, where their self-titled tape is titled “Bloody Sunday”. Oh, and Shining Armor apparently did this to conceal the fact that he is gay from the public.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. Shining Armor, to conceal the fact that he is gay, filmed himself torturing (albeit consensually) his wife and then released it as a sex tape. If you’re really that ashamed of being gay and want to hide it, why not just kiss Cadence in public? Generally speaking, those seen kissing people of the opposite gender in public are generally seen in the public eye as heterosexuals. I’m not convinced that Shining Armor has to film a torture porn tape to convince people that he’s not gay.

The main bit of the story is Luna and Celestia reacting to the tape. Luna is very nonchalant about the whole thing, whereas Celestia is sickened by it. Seeing as how this story has a Comedy tag, I think this is supposed to be the funny part. However, this just… wasn’t funny. Any comedic value that I saw was from Luna’s reactions (i.e. worrying about the stains on the carpet rather than Shining slitting Cadence’s wrists. It might’ve just not been my kind of humor, but I feltl that the opening of the story distracted heavily from the comedy, as I was still trying to make sense of what the hell was going on.

Grammatically, this story is okay. I saw no glaring errors there. However, the construction of the sentences leaves something to be desired. One example:

“Shut up and kiss me!” Shining shouted as he forcefully kissed Cadance on the mouth.

Using ‘kiss’ so close to each other there is a bit redundant. I already know that Shining is going to kiss Cadence, so you don’t need to tell me that he is kissing her again. I’d change it to something like:

”Shut up and kiss me!” Shining shouted as he forced himself onto Cadence.

Here, I know that he’s kissing Cadence and is forcing himself onto her, without repeating any information.

My advice to you, Syeekoh, is to reevaluate your characters. This story made little sense; there was no reason for Shining Armor to film a torture porn tape in this story, and that really takes away from your story’s quality. Analyze your characters, analyze what they do, analyze why they do it, and analyze if it makes sense for them to do it or not. If you’re feeling confident after you’ve done that, find some people to bounce your ideas off and make sure everything checks out. Some common resources for many authors to go to for help is Skype groups, pre-readers, and friends. Don’t be shy about joining any Skype groups or asking for help; they’ve saved many a story from utter failure, including some of my own. I’d also recommend reevaluating the comedy behind this story, as it’s not particularly funny. If you’re looking for dark comedy influences, I’d recommend watching some dark comedy classic movies, like Pulp Fiction, Fargo, and American Psycho. They’re all gory, dark romps in humor, and have often been cited as some of the best dark comedy films of all time.

Final Thoughts: The central driving force behind the story is the comedy behind Celestia and Luna, and that just didn’t feel funny for me. This story needs to reevaluate its humor and why its characters do what they do. Needs work.

3430141
wat?

3430141 Thank you for your review!

You see, I had this problem when I first joined fimfiction where I would just crap out any idea that I had, sense be damned if it was something I wanted to write. However, upon reading your review, I now see the utter ridiculousness of what you have just spelled out. I want to say that I wrote it for myself, but that'd be utter bullshit seeing as how I uploaded it onto the site. I will say, however, that I do write for my own personal artistic integrity and hope to improve with every story I write.

I have since joined a good amount of Skype groups and have been bouncing ideas off of them.

Once again, thank you for your review, which I will take into consideration in the next story I write.