The savior hath arrived!

Thank you for clicking on me! I'm the newest and possibly youngest commentator in this group! I'm a sixteen year old sophmore in high school who loves writing and criticism. I guess that's the most I'll say. Enjoy!

To Drown A Butterfly is a short crime story based in the noir genre. It's one of Matthew DePointe's best works, and starts off very neat.

If there's one thing you should know about me, you can easily trick me for a good story if you make a decent setting. In the first chapter we immediately get down to business with our anti-hero blackmailing a mare and milking her for what she's worth. Though he is not the good guy, he isn’t portrayed as the bad guy either. In this chapter, our anti-hero uses an “associate” to steal a necklace that’s owned by the wife of one of the richest ponies in the Las Pegasus County. She, doing what we would probably do, buys her own necklace back from, Ponetti.

Taking advantage of her inheritance, he extorts her for 20,000 bits—way over the price of what the necklace is worth. After a short frit, Ponetti convinces the mare too call up her husband and bring the money. He also uses the motivations of: “If it’s not here in twenty minutes, every minute it’s late the price will double.”

After getting his money, Ponetti drunkly leaves the bar, still somehow sober enough to make his way around. We’re immediately confronted by a twist. Ponetti pulls the necklace from his pocket, and it’s revealed that he was going to deceive her. He was going to keep the real necklace anyways and sell it on the street for a bonus 6,000 bits. Yet, shameful to admit, however, he kept the fake one and gave the real one too the mare; this may be due to the fact that he was drunk, or this rivals with his own morals.

In the next chapter, we meet Ponetti at the bar again; this time meeting with a new client. After another short chat, the client offers a job. The job is too escort a pony by the name of Clockwork to a mansion for “petty playing” with an unwillingly mare; then beating her senseless with a pipe. But instead of dyeing, she’s left blind and scared.

When the meeting is over, Ponetti does some thinking. He’s left with the fate of a pony in his very hooves. Though, he is not the good guy, he claims that the only reason he is a criminal is because it’s part of his get-rich-quick-scheme. Drunk he is though, he is no murderer.

The story starts too spiral down when he spends most of the third chapter being drunk and going from place to place. The events are kind of hard to explain (counting that I am new), and which is why we will get down to the final chapter.

Ponetti confronts Clockwork in a dainty house, while at the same time he keeps notice of how dirty the house is. While Clockwork is asleep, Ponetti blocks off his room (there’s a pony outside the door, passed out high), and cleans up a bit while he waits for Clockwork to wake up.

When he does, Ponetti explains his job and what he’s there for. Turns out, those stops that he made in the previous chapter involved him going to a bakery too pick up a cake. Ponetti gives Clockwork his last meal, as is his way of saying, “I’m sorry I have to do what I got to do.”
We are immediately followed by another twist when Ponetti gives Clockwork a bottle of sleeping pills. Believing that if Clockwork commits suicide, Ponetti will be free of guilt knowing that Clockwork won’t die a painful death. We don’t exactly see if Clockwork makes the decision, though. As accepting as he was too listen to Ponetti, it sounded like he was convinced.

Ponetti learns his place and decides to stick with the way he follows: which involves getting drunk a lot.

The overall impact of this story wasn’t very notifyingly receiving to me. While it started out impressive, it all goes down hill in this list:
1. Extortion
2. Client has work
3. Drunk
4. Drunk mishap
5. The end

What the story is missing is detail. I first noticed that it was all running low in chapter 2, where we’re already getting into the story. I personally don’t think that the author chose the right moment too really began the plot; the most that we learned about him is that he’s drunk and that he is sometimes an asshole.

We do get provided with backstory throughout, however. In chapter three we meet a mare he has a type of “love-passion” for. While chapter three had better moments then chapter 2, it honestly felt padded. Most of his exploring is filled in with only a thousand words. He basically gives the synopsis himself.

I think the ending would be good if he just put a little more effort into it. I do believe that it was a good ending, but hardly anything happened. Perhaps if we see him struggling to make the decision a little more, it would be in the right place.

I believe that there’s potential in this story being good. Perhaps if the story is rewritten, the author adds more details, maybe another chapter or two, it would turn up nice. The beginning was my favorite part because it depicted his ways and left a good impression. I want to see that more in this story, other than him getting drunk and prowling about.

Quality Rate: 5
Not Recommend

Present Perfect read this story and he responded to the last two chapters.

That pony was a poop pony. <.< That was a poop pony in the story just now.

So when I saw the comments before I read the third chapter, I thought there was going to be a poop monster. :/

4920237 Wait, what? This story was reviewed here a few months ago. Was it resubmitted? It got a Must Read from Bluegrass Brooke.

4920256 It was in the box. The only reason it didn't get a must read from me was because the lack of certain moments.

4920256
4920343 Clearly, we must put Bluegrass and Savoured into a Thunderdome-style-arena, to battle for the rights to review this fic.

Seriously though, nice review. Very detailed.

Other review can be found here.

The reason why this story was reviewed again was mostly because we, the admins, didn't remove it from the submission folder. I'll have that topic covered in a forum post.

As of right now though, this story will retain it's higher rank due to our dual review policy.

This review is will stay as is though, since it can help the reader gain some insight.

4920410 Fair enough.

Not a bad review for your first time out I have just a few suggestions though.

-Make sure you point out more objective reasons for a story's rating. Grammar, pacing, and characterization are great things to rate a fic on.
-Avoid spoilers if you can. If you tell everyone everything about the story, then there's less reason to read it, even if it's given a positive review.
-Make sure you check your own grammar for your reviews. I saw a few errors with "to" vs "too," which can make people shake their heads if you did review partly on grammar.

Also, while opinions will always have a place in a review, the objective reasons should drive it. This improves your credibility. This is also why I, and likely others, try to avoid conflicts of interest by reading friends' stories, stories about characters we have an irrational hate for, and genres we don't like.

I hope this advice can help your next review even better Welcome to the group.

4920653 I'm thinking of getting rid of the synopsis part since it's so time consuming. I don't focus on grammar too much unless it was a real bothersome or it was really well.