The Pack
By Vinyl_Wubs

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Sometimes, we do things we know we’re going to regret.

Reading a pile of 600,000 horse words that isn’t Fallout: Equestria is going to be one of those things.

At 680,591 words, “The Pack” is the 14th-longest story on FIMFiction, the fourth-longest Mature-Sex fic, and the longest Anthro story by a large margin.

Is it worth it?

Only one way to find out (for me, I mean—once the review’s done you can go off of that).

So, apparently werewolves secretly live among ponies. And they’re not actually evil or murderous or anything. They can control it. Personally, I think this strips the concept of any real purpose outside of being an excuse for furry fanfic, but maybe the author will do something interesting with it.

Actually, the idea of pony werewolves where they just turn into wolves, and not a mixed form, would be kind of cool, but this is an anthro fic, so I bet we’re getting the more typical variety.

Sorry, just putting off diving into this thing.

We begin with two new “stallions” arriving in Ponyville: Stardust and J Dog, which it a completely normal name for a pony.

Right off the bat, I’m seeing missing punctuation everywhere, and the worst case of saidisms I’ve ever seen. The characters: question, respond, say, begin, scream, say, reply, say, respond… It does transition towards just using “said” more often as it goes on, but at the start it’s a saidism every other time.

Pinkie appears, in her most manic screaming lunatic form. While she’s babbling to Stardust about cupcakes and parties, J notices a cloaked figure in the distance. I imagine this is meant to be foreshadowing, but it’s so blatant and heavy-handed that it just seems silly.

Anyway, they want mates. Their word, by the way. I was already afraid from the description that this was just heading towards making the mane six their harem, and the fic just keeps reinforcing that.

What is “but unlike you I don’t feel like I’m inadequate Moon Moon” supposed to even mean?

And we’re announcing scene changes with banners declaring which character’s point of view it is, including a switch from third-person to first.

And right away, J Dog meets Vinyl and Octavia, we get a quick rundown of his preferred types of music, and learn that he was in a band. I’m not sure when you have time to join a band when you’re living in a reclusive werewolf commune thing, but okay.

So Vinyl and Octavia are straight for once, but Vinyl’s last coltfriend left her for a girl in Octavia’s band and for some reason Vinyl blames her. They’re having a fight over it, apparently, which is strange because they approached J Dog with what seemed to be a friendly argument over strings versus electronic instruments. Anyway, as soon as Octavia explains the situation to J Dog, Vinyl overhears and immediately makes up with her.

And then Octavia starts cuddling him and Vinyl feels up his crotch while giving him some dirty talk. The two of them basically promise him sex for his help with their fight, when all he did was sit on their couch and not interrupt for 30 seconds. And he’s already planning on sharing them with Stardust.

And then the story combines his next two tasks to simplify things, and takes the time to lampshade this, when really the detail was entirely unimportant and could have been skipped. After that, we’re on to the library, where J Dog meets Spike, who doesn’t know where to find the carpentry books J Dog wants, and directs him towards Twilight.

Point of order, Spike can find everything in that library. That’s why Twilight relies on him.

So, she’s referred to as “lavender-skinned” rather than lavender-coated, and her name is written “Twilight Sparkles”. And as soon as he gets what he needs, she rushes him out the door. His next stop in the town hall, where someone’s house is supposed to be demolished, and the story doesn’t go to any great lengths to keep us in the dark about it being J Dog and Stardusts’.

Frankly, with how the Vinyl & Octavia scene went, I was fully expecting Twilight and the mayor to be falling over themselves to get at his cock, too.

Okay, I’m going to admit, I’m only reading a few chapters in detail. The rest I’m skimming.

Chapter two is Stardust X Fluttershy, and constantly switches POV between the two of them. Also, Fluttershy seems to be taking “be assertive” to mean “randomly shout things.” She’s also a big eater for some reason.

Chapter three has masturbation jokes, a flashback to his time in the band, and is generally hard to follow.

Chapter four brings us implied FlutterSpike and a suicide joke from Pinkie. I’m actually rather fond of that ship, but it kind of comes out of nowhere.

Apparently our mysterious cloaked figure has been Chrysalis, and she desperately wants J Dog’s cock, too. And she gets it, in the first actual sex scene in the story. Normally I’d applaud something in the clopfics folder waiting five chapters to get down to business, but in this case we haven’t been setting up a romance, we’ve just been hanging out in Ponyville, doing whatever. Chrysalis’s interest came out of nowhere.

It’s the first time we’ve seen her even speak to him, and she’s begging him to fuck her and offering an entire hive of sex-slaves in return. The sex itself is fairly dull, consisting of dirty talk from either side and a lot of unsexy, repetitive description of the act. “Allowed me to sheath my entire man sword into her” is only the beginning.

We switch perspectives again, to Chrysalis this time, and they go at it again back at his place.

Another flashback, this time apparently to the war that sent the werewolves into hiding, and we pull out all the stops in making it very clear that werewolves were innocent victims in this. Males being executed, females being raped and beaten… We go all-out. So J Dog wakes up crying and Chrysalis holds him.

They’re supposed to have shower sex the next morning, but apparently Chrysalis is tripping out on something and gets taken back to the hive. But fortunately for J Dog, one of her daughters, a queen in the making herself, decides to take her mother’s place.

And then it happens off-camera.

Okay, you just wrote out two major sex scenes. Why skip the third? If you’re not going to write it out, why even tease it?

Moving on…

For the record, apparently Fluttershy is a J-cup. The story makes it a point to note the cup size of each female.

And the more I read, the more it seems that “werewolf” just means “anthro pony with a dog cock”, cause that’s the only difference I’m seeing.

Part of the next sex scene is from Fluttershy’s POV, and sorry, but this is unmistakably a guy describing her. A woman in a sexual situation isn’t going to give thought to her soft, round ass. She’s going to focus on how her partner makes her feel. I mean, it could be kind of fascinating writing a sex scene from a narcissist’s POV, and having her completely focus on herself during it. Actually, I’ll be kind of disappointed if there isn’t a Trixie or Diamond Tiara story like that out there somewhere.

Anyway, after the sex went on too long and took a bit of a rapey turn, they finally finished up and Fluttershy asked if he’d like to bang all of her friends, too.

So, apparently I was right.

The interactions with the women start feeling kind of misogynistic, as well. Particularly when one of the guys (I’ve lost track of which at this point, thanks to the constantly-switching first-person perspective) is caught with a second woman, and advised, roughly, “just give her a few minutes, if she really loves you she’ll forget all about this and go back to loving you.”

At this point, I’m just hitting about every 10th chapter and skimming through them. Sorry, but I don’t have time to read that much.

Apparently something’s trying to control Cadance and drag her into the pack. I’m betting this is Chrysalis, but the story isn’t clear from the bits I read.

It seems the duo have adopted Scootaloo. My irritation at the cliche is offset by the relief that they aren’t just fucking her, too. However, apparently old enemies of werewolfkind are out to kill J Dog and Stardust, and Star winds up in the hospital.

Welp, nevermind, ten chapters later and Scootaloo is joining in on the fun. As well as, let me see… Cadance, Chrysalis-as-Cadance, and Pupa-the-young-changeling-queen-also-as-Cadance, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight. There have been references to Shining Armor being involved, but they tend to either suggest he’s gay or just wants to fuck his sister. One way or another, he doesn’t seem to be with Cadance. Oh, also, Chrysalis and her daughter can conjure tentacles to make up for the male-female disparity during the orgy scenes.

Apparently Stardust got out of the hospital, since he’s joining J Dog in fucking half of the female cast.

Oh wait, should have kept reading, there. Because suddenly, Futaloo! I don’t know why Scoots has a dick, and I don’t know when that happened. Personally I have no objection to the concept, because I like futa. I generally prefer the characters aged up past the CMC level, but even some foalcon isn’t that bad. This, though… It seems to just be trying to cram every fetish it can think of into the sex scenes now.

Anyway, then Futaloo drinks a mystery potion that Pinkie found and suddenly she’s aged up, has much larger breasts and dick, and her wings are grown out fully. And then Star starts sucking her off, so apparently this is a bisexual orgy-pack. Maybe Shining Armor is just a part of the group. Some of the positioning doesn’t make much sense and the writing in the scene still leaves a lot to be desired, so I think I’ll be skipping ahead a few chapters again.

Oh, and dialogue suggests Futaloo has fucked Sweetie Belle, too.

Another flashback, this time to one of J’s childhood nightmares and being bullied, and I’m jumping ahead again…

So they can transform! We’re just now seeing it 55 chapters in. Well, maybe they did it before, I have been jumping around. Regardless, first time I’ve seen it. Anyway, so J Dog and Stardust are fighting this demon named Baloque. Or Baloque is some guy they know and the demon took his form. It was kinda hard to understand. Anyway, the other characters show up after Star is taken out of the fight, and are about to attack J Dog because they think his transformation has gone out of control. But fortunately, Star had a video camera recording everything. And fortunately, Twilight notices it and decides to see what was on it right there during the battle. And fortunately, the first thing she saw revealed that Baloque-demon-thing was actually the bad guy. And then they blasted it with the Elements and happy end.

Wait, no happy end? We’re not even halfway done yet?

This could have been like three fics.

Also, by chapter 50 they’re apparently banging Celestia and Luna, too.

I think I’m done about here.

This is actually the first time I’ve reviewed a story without reading the entire thing. No matter how bad or dull, I always stuck through to the end, up until now.

The problem here was, in part, the length. When a story clocks it at nearly 700,000 words, it has to be something incredible for a reader to devote enough time to it to read the entire thing. That’s why, despite all of its publicity and praise, I still haven’t read Fallout Equestria. I’ve read side-stories by other authors featuring Littlepip, and I like her. But I haven’t actually played any Fallout games (though I picked up New Vegas during this year’s Steam Summer Sale, so that will change eventually), and one good character has yet to be enough of a draw for me to devote that much time to a ponyfic.

Here, we don’t have a Littlepip.

Stardust and J Dog are not interesting characters. They’re bland everymen who the readers (or, I suspect, authors) can project themselves onto. Sure, we’re told in an author’s note that J Dog is the aggressive, dominating one and Star is the romantic, but that only comes out in the sex scenes, and not always then.

Even the fact that they’re werewolves adds little. Normally, werewolves in the context of romance are about uncontrollable passions. That’s why they have rage issues and uncontrollable transformations. It’s about how passion is dangerous. They just make that danger a deadly physical one. Here, up until the reader had already gone through about 150,000 words, “werewolf” just means “this anthro pony has a dog-cock instead of a horse-cock.” It’s a slight twist on the sex scenes, with a line or two about the feeling of their knot entering or swelling inside someone, or pausing as they wait for it to shrink before pulling out.

I’m not even objecting to the shape of it, either. I have a FurAffinity page. I’ve seen plenty. Just that nothing is really done with it.

Then there’s the harem setup itself. And that’s what this is. It’s basically the standard harem anime series, but with two male leads. I guess part of the intent was to have the two acquire an absurdly large stable of women (and guys or futa, apparently), but that’s usually a setup for light comedy in those sort of stories, and it’s driven by the interaction between a large number of cast members who are in an intimate environment. And even then, it usually boils down to a single pairing by the end.

The other characters are weak, too. Really, nobody here has much presence. The characters’ personalities are muted, and when they do come through, it often feels out-of-character. Twilight being short with J Dog, or Fluttershy inviting Stardust to fuck her friends? Those don’t sound right. Never mind Chrysalis begging for anything, much less a mate.

Their interest in the boys is usually a flimsy thing, as well. Vinyl and Octavia were the first, and in my opinion, worst example. What did J Dog do to earn a night of fun with them? Not interrupt a rant for 30 seconds? And he’s honestly the first person they dragged into this asinine fight who bothered to even do that?

And the sex. The sex was almost universally bland and mechanical. The story tried to carry those scenes with a lot of shouting and dirty talk, but those are spices at best. There was no meat to it. I didn’t feel any connection to the characters during those scenes, and at times the descriptions were hard to follow or made no sense. I can’t imagine how someone would be getting a blowjob and be able to finger their partner’s ass without being in a 69 position, for one.

I was honestly disappointed to see Scootaloo brought in as a sexual partner after the guys adopted her. That smacks of all kinds of abusive situations. I really wonder if it was necessary to make her a futa, as well. Again, I don’t object to any of these in concept. I’ve read and enjoyed foalcon (and done editing for it, too), and I love futa (I’m bisexual, and consider them the best of both worlds), but how it was done here just felt, well, questionable.

The overall plot was uninteresting and difficult to follow, and seemed to hinge upon these mysterious ancient enemies hunting down the werewolves. Or was it demons? I can’t even tell. The story opens on a slow pace and stays there until the major plot lines come up. Then it launches into high-speed for a bit before dropping back into the slower pace again. The idea of the werewolves being hunted and persecuted wore thin quickly, and little else supported the story.

On grammar and spelling, missing punctuation was a constant problem, and “saidisms” (words unnecessarily used in pace of “said”) were prevalent as well. Sentence structure in general was very simplistic, more geared towards action than romance.

Finally, you may have noticed that throughout this review, unlike my normal habit, I have refrained from pony language. “Anybody” instead of “anypony”, “women” or “girl” instead of “mare”, etc. There’s a reason for this. Beyond names and the occasional reference to the races (unicorn or pegasus most often), this was barely pony-related. The characters had skin tones as often as coat colors, hooves were rarely mentioned, and if not for the “Anthro” tag, I honestly would have assumed this was humanized most of the time.

Put a bit more emotion and a bit less “feral rutting” in your sex. Hell, even feral rutting can have a lot of emotion in it. But what you have is just about the physical act itself, and nothing about what it means for the characters engaging in it. The mechanics could use some work as well, as yours tends to be a bit mechanical and repetitive. Try reading some other clop authors and seeing how they do it. Try these guys:biologic orthodoxy (left the fandom, but his stories are still up), Mercury Zero, Rocinante, Idiotcornball, Shrinky Frod, and dirty little secret. These documents could be a lot of help, as well: The Erotic Thesaurus and Clop Vocabulary List.

On the sex topic, try to avoid the silly metaphors. “Sheath my man-sword in her” has to be among the most absurd things I’ve ever read in a sex scene, and I reviewed a story where Trixie fucks the Kool-Aid Man.

Have a good proofreader go over your writing looking for those grammatical errors. Misused or missing commas are the most prevalent problem.

Avoid saidisms. When attributing dialogue, if “said” would work, just use that.

Trim down on the points of view. Maybe restrict it to entirely one guy for a chapter, and then entirely the other guy for the next, and just alternate them. Having so many different POVs, particularly when you jump between first and third person, distracts the reader and separates them from the story. When writing clop, you never want to distance the reader from the story.

Try and give your non-main characters a bit more presence and strength. This will help not only with your characterization, but also put more emotion into your sex scenes and get the reader more invested in the story.

If you ever decide to rewrite this, split it up. This fic is absurdly long, and seems to have several distinct storylines. Making each it’s own story would seriously cut down on reader fatigue and the intimidation factor a story this size has.

Massive length, confusing plot, bland characters, bland sex, and weak grammar earn this a:

Needs Work. To be frank, this story just bored me, despite featuring a number of my favorite fetishes.

I couldn't agree more. This story is shit and needs a ton of work, the authors are a bunch of sex crazed maniacs!

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I learned way more about you reading this than ever talking to you.

Side note: The "Moon Moon" thing is an old meme caused by someone's result on a Werewolf Name Generator or something of that sort. Moon Moon is an intellectually disabled canine (usually a white wolf or husky) who forgets how to dog or does other ridiculous things.

3448335 I talk about this stuff pretty regularly in this group's Skype chat. I think everyone else has gotten used to it by now.

And that explains much. I like how there's a random ponification of it on the first page.

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I wound up thinking some more about this story while driving earlier today, and realized there were aspects I did like about it. Unfortunately, those are things that the story brought up but ultimately did little or nothing with.

First, the idea that a werewolf's human (or pony) side and wold side could have completely different personalities is full of possibilities, either for comedy or drama. On the comedy angle, I submit that if this story were to be rewritten, the protagonists are Moon Moon and Doge in their feral forms.

More generally, werewolves can fit into Equestria in an interesting way.

Werewolves are generally depicted as beings cursed by dark magic, who undergo a transformation influenced by the moon. In Equestria, Luna, who wields power over the moon, used dark magic to transform herself into Nightmare Moon. What if werewolves are a creation of the Nightmare? Frankly, the connection seems so obvious to me in hindsight that I'd be amazed if it hasn't been done before. There's a lot of conflict to be derived from that setup as well. What if a certain faction of werewolves follow Luna as she is, while another seeks the return of Nightmare Moon? What if they're feared because all the lore about them suggests they were a cult devoted to Nightmare Moon?

There's a lot that could be done with this. Now it's just a question of people pointing out all the fics that have already done it and informing me that all of my ideas are old and busted.