Legion’s Plague
By Dragonborne Fox

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Haven’t done a Dragonborne review in a while. These always turn out interesting, though I question its presence in the clop folder. While DF never shies away from mature topics, sex is rarely the entire focus of her stories. Much more often, the story is Mature/Gore for violent combat scenes, with Teen-level sexuality; or else the story at some point involves rape. In neither case does sex become the focal point, which is kind of the definition of clop. But maybe she’ll surprise me.

This is a sequel to one I’ve already reviewed, but there was a third story in between these two that I haven’t read.

And the very first thing I see is a mangled wreck of a run-on sentence. First line in the fic: “A purple alicorn mare with a darker purple mane with a fuchsia and lighter purple streak shrieked as she galloped along the ruined streets of what was once a large town.”

First up, you’re generally writing for a brony audience. Drop the Lavender Unicorn Syndrome and just tell us it’s Twilight, we’ll know who she is, unless you’re doing a fakeout and want us to think it’s Twilight before revealing it isn’t. Even if we stick with what you have, it really needs cleaned up. Punctuation is missing, and the words are too repetitive to follow. It would be better if you found specific color names instead of “purple”, “darker purple”, and “lighter purple.”

A lavender alicorn mare with a rose-streaked violet mane shrieked as she galloped along the ruined streets of what was once a large town.

Just simplifying that description made all of that so much easier to read, though for the record, Twilight’s mane is sapphire blue with violet and rose streaks. But that’s complicating things again.

Even then, this is a pile of LUS, and it would be vastly better for you to just say it’s Twilight.

Descriptions tend towards the melodramatic, with the occasional lapse into the vague and simplistic, which just comes off as ridiculous. “White ick” is probably the worst offender.

Also, some word confusion I saw in DF’s other fics returns here. “Backside” is the ass, not the actual back.

The narration has a habit of suddenly developing a stronger voice for a few lines, exhibiting much more emotion than we see from it elsewhere. These points also tend to feature cursing within the narrative which, as I often point out, is usually a poor choice.

Descriptions are hard to follow. When the bipedal ponies began to approach Twilight, I couldn’t tell if the “deformed” flesh was meant to describe the entire body, or if it was actually referring specifically to their genitalia. Word choice implies the latter, but that shouldn’t be a question at all.

Saidisms abound. Characters shriek, sob, choke, ask, sigh (twice), shout (twice), state, retort, sigh, snap, reply, bellow, rasp, scoff, sigh, heave, complain, retort, sigh (three times), snort, shriek, cry, bellow, cry, say (finally!), cry, shout, heave, demand, reply, say (twice, even!), cry, reply, bellow, and sigh. Out of 40 dialogue attributions, “said” only appears three times, when 90% of the time it’s the one you ought to be using. On top of that, dialogue often suffers from poor punctuation, usually where the dialogue ends with a full stop instead of a comma, and the subsequent attribution is capitalized.

The second scene introduces a number of characters, and frankly, there are way too many. In the first chapter alone, we’ve met Twilight, Katie (human-fox-girl-thing), a girl with horns, a brown-haired boy, a female werewolf, a male werewolf, a changeling with three horns, an older woman, a blonde boy, a pink-haired girl, a green-haired woman, a red-haired man, Rarity, somebody’s mother, a half-demon man, Zecora, and Scootaloo.

And it’s not like I’m pointing out background characters to gripe. Each of these gets a full description and at least one spoken line. I had to list them by description because the ever-present LUS means everyone is identified solely through descriptors. No characters are named when described—the narrative only uses their names once a character does. Worse, many of these characters remain unnamed as the chapter ends. LUS is confusing enough on its own. With 17 characters, it’s completely impossible to follow.

On top of that, I have no idea who the majority of the non-canon characters are. I remember Katie from Arcane Shadow, but that’s it. Everyone else is a complete mystery to me.

So much time is spent describing characters that I can’t follow the action. I have no idea what’s happening immediately or what the overall situation is. And it’s not just characters. There’s a brief battle where one of the humanoid characters uses a magic staff. More time was spent describing this staff in great detail than went into describing the battle itself.

On the subject of that battle—really? Killing all the enemy soldiers, reanimating them as zombies, and then making them rape their former commanding officer until he reveals the villain’s plans to you? I really hope that isn’t what sent this towards the clop folder. Clop is supposed to be sexual. The intent of it is to titillate. This isn’t clop—it’s a particularly twisted Dark fic. Mature: Sex tags don’t make something into a clopfic on their own, any more than Mature: Gore tags make it a gorefic.

Chapter Two adds even more characters, bringing in Sweetie Belle, NoLegs the cat, Fluttershy, Umbralina (changeling foal and apparently Fluttershy’s foal), a batpony stallion werewolf thing, Lazarus (another human), and Applejack.

We’re now at 24 characters, two chapters in, and I still have no idea what’s happening because we’ve spent this entire time describing characters and having them chat with one another. Honestly, I don’t think anything happened to advance the plot in all of Chapter 2.

The chapters aren’t following any logical division. One ended and Two began in the middle of Alexis (horned girl? I think?) and Scootaloo arguing. Two ended and Three began in the middle of Twilight explaining things and Alexis interrupting. Chapter breaks are actually breaking up conversations.

We’re finally getting into the plot, though. Apparently every character thus far has some amount of magical ability. And some sort of tokens or talismans are binding part of their magic and weakening them. So they need to get them back.

No word on how, why, when, or where this happened. No mention of weakened magic before Twilight exposited that—in fact, back in Chapter One, Twilight was teleporting and Rarity using telekinesis—and no mention of these talismans before, either.

So despite getting that exposition, I still have no idea what’s happening or why.

It isn’t helped by the chapter suddenly switching to a dream sequence for Alexis—not that it ever described her turning in for the night—which she explicitly compares to Silent Hill. While it isn’t necessary that we show someone going to bed if it can be inferred by the next scene being waking or a dream, the confusion arises from the previous scene cutting off so abruptly. Without a conclusion to the debate in that scene, nor a proper scene transition, it feels like we’ve missed some pertinent information.

Honestly, had the conversation at the start of this chapter taken place at the end of the previous, and we just opened the chapter on Alexis dreaming, this would make a lot more sense.

A presumably magical weapon is pulled from thin air (literally, as per the narrative), given a name, and then no description whatsoever. This is a complete turnaround from prior chapters, and still not really a good thing. While the long descriptions served mostly to overshadow the narrative and confuse me, the total lack of description means I have no visual of the scene, which is just as bad.

I think Alexis was the one who fought the guards in chapter one, so presumably this is that same staff, but without a name then or a description now, I don’t know for certain.

The events of the dream are interrupted by Alexis remembering some event from her childhood that hasn’t been referenced in the story at all up until now, and the scene turns into a brief rant about child molestation that really comes out of nowhere. We add at least one more character when she starts referencing the Epic Battle Fantasy characters, as this saga originally began as a crossover with that series of browser games.

I won’t count the demon who appears in the dream, but with the addition of mysterious dreamwalker unicorn Kelpie, we’re at 26 characters.

Speaking of, this whole story has been filled with poor pacing. A lot of time is spent on needless description while the story languishes, and actions scenes are rapid-fire confusion. The story’s focus seems to jump every few paragraphs, and nothing is ever given enough time to properly play out. Kelpie’s introduction is a shining example, as the whole thing amounts to “Hey, I saved you from that demon. You can call me Kelpie. Gotta go now, bye.”

We introduce out 27th character, Kaleb, in a battle scene that somehow manages to be even more confusing than anything else in the already-confused dream sequence.

Chapter Four exposits some things, but nothing that actually applies to anything we’ve seen already. Instead of answering any questions we might have about the story thus far, it’s just adding ever more detail. Who’s sick? With what? When did it happen? What’s this monster slayer business about? Why are the Greek gods involved?

That last question is the big one for me.

the female werewolf, the Wind God, dragoon, strawberry and pinkish-blonds, and murky-haired man

We’re back to identifying everyone with descriptors and I have no idea who any of them are. That list is a group of people waiting for Alexis and Fang (presumably the male werewolf—I’ve lost track of that one, too), but I couldn’t tell you anything more because we have so many characters who are so poorly defined that the entire thing is a confusing mess.

The story is trying to assign names, but going about it in a thoroughly awkward fashion—a conversation where everyone needlessly refers to one another by name, because we’re sticking to our rule that names only appear in the narrative once they’re identified by dialogue. And unfortunately, we’re a bit late for this, because I’ve already got too many characters running around this story to care that much about which ones each of these are.

And this. Just… this.

Lazarus sneezed.

Lancelot kept rubbing his eyes like they itched.

Alexis shook like a leaf from both being cold and afraid.

Amelia was drinking a lot of water.

Jaden was tired.

Nick was fiddling with a metallic crossbow.

Showing the readers what the characters are doing is all well and good, but nothing here is relevant. This is just a list of activities with no connection to the plot and no context for any of it. Plus, there’s no rhythm to this at all. It interrupts the story and brings the flow to a dead stop because it’s just a list.

And yes, apparently Equestria wasn’t just heavily inspired by Hellenic myth, but is in fact based upon them. Kaleb appears in the story proper, having been sent by Poseidon.

I was going to read the first six chapters to get a full 10,000 words, but I can’t see this improving much no matter how far in I go.

I know I’m not even getting into the meat of the plot yet, but that’s part of the problem. This story is simply far too complex. In the first four chapters, we’ve introduced nearly 30 characters, shown that there’s some sort of apocalyptic problem going on involving a cult, and tossed the Greek gods into the mix. But that’s it. None of those things move the story forward, they just set up conflict without taking a single step towards resolving any of it.

Beyond the story dithering on with its absurdly large cast, problems are rampant. LUS dominates this story more severely than anything else I’ve read. Saidisms are the rule, with “said” itself appearing rarely enough that you can count it’s per-chapter uses on one hand. Pacing is very erratic, with long periods of inactivity filled by interaction between characters we can’t care about because there are just too many, occasionally interrupted by very rapid-fire and confusing action scenes, usually battles.

I’m sure some of these things are explained in the previous stories in the saga, but what I can remember from Arcane Shadow doesn’t answer any of my questions, and even if it did, stories should be self-contained. I may not understand every detail, but if I can’t follow the plot without doing the required reading, it’s a problem.

Grammar is consistently weak, the usual problem being incorrect punctuation for dialogue, and misused words are a frequent issue.

At least we don’t have Arcane Shadow’s insistence on using “caterwaul” as an attribution this time.

Simplify, especially in your early chapters. If a character doesn’t have a starring role in the story, go ahead and leave them out until you need them to appear. Thirty characters is unworkable for anyone. I know you like giving cameos to friends, but after a while, that starts to negatively impact your story.

Saidisms are an annoying distraction. Unless you need to use something else to convey a particular emotion, “he said” is the way to go.

Don’t try to constantly identify characters by descriptors. It’s confusing enough even in simple stories, but with this many characters, I couldn’t follow a single thing. Generally, it’s better to get a name out first and describe later—or introduce the name very shortly after introducing the character. Once we’ve waited three chapters to find out who Brown Haired Man Number Four is, we’ve lost interest.

Pacing. You want the story to move forward at a more or less steady clip. Of course, some rest periods make sense, as do some periods of frantic activity. But allowing the story to linger on minutia for two chapters and then throwing a brief but fierce battle in doesn’t hold anyone’s interest.

Grammar. Incorrect: “Dialogue.” He said.” Correct: “Dialogue,” he said.

DF’s fics often have a good idea at the core, with a solid adventure forming the basis, but get bogged down with structural and stylistic problems. This is the first thing she’s done that I haven’t been able to finish, because those structural and stylistic problems completely bury any good that might be happening here.

Needs Work.

Finally, from what I saw, this is no clopfic. It belonged in one of the Adventure, Crossover, or Dark folders.