Planet of the Ponies.
By theanonymousbrony

Reviewed by Rinnaul

This one was daunting.

I considered gimmicks.

I considered a photoblog descent into madness where I talked to my blind bag toys.

I considered just playing more Dungeons Of Dredmor.

In fact, I did play more Dungeons of Dredmor, but that just delayed the inevitable.

I bitched in the staff chat.

I was offered collab reviewing.

I tried making white chocolate pudding, and wound up with a vaguely chocolate-flavored sort of icing instead.

I made chocolate chip cookies and those turned out fine because I make awesome cookies.

I made tea. Earl Grey.

But no.

I discarded the gimmicks. I left the toys in their shelf display (except my Big Macintosh plush — where I go, he goes). I quit bitching about this topic in particular. I declined the collabs. I turned off Dredmor once I finished crafting a full set of clockwork armor. I ate some cookies.

I took on a 700,000-word anthro clopfic on my own. I can handle this one by myself, too.

With tea and cookies.

Quick Recommendation: Between the unlikable protagonists, absurd plot devices, forced attempts at humor, weak writing, and casual sexism/racism/ableism, there’s really nothing worth seeing here.

Okay, I haven’t done this in a while. And I mean that beyond the fact that I just haven’t been doing reviews in a while. I mean doing commentary as I read. But I grabbed a longfic, and it… well… you’ll see.

It was the day after graduation, I was in the car with my family as they were about to take me to my graduation cruise. But it's not just the regular kind of cruise like in Titanic; no, it was going to be a cruise unlike any other. A cruise in space!

I’m going to try to avoid quoting the entire story and doing line-by-line commentary, but there are seriously enough problems here that I could do that. Also, this is the first of many movie references. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “this event refers to an event from a movie”, but just in the sense of “the narrative brings up movies constantly.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

“Space cruise? That sounds a bit far-fetched! But perhaps he graduated from some sort of space-oriented degree program and thus has special permission to be on the maiden flight.”

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. This guy, and his two friends, have gotten first-class accommodations on the maiden voyage of the first space cruiseliner as a high school graduation gift.

I mean, fuck. I just got a new PC for mine, and that was a big deal.

But I have a bigger problem with this setup.

They all thought that something like this could only be possible in Futurama; but today, I--and some friends of mine--, are going to be one of the first people to be on a space cruise to Mars! Or, as they put it in Star Trek, "To boldly go where no man has gone before."

One of the functions that pop culture references serve in fiction is establishing the setting of the piece. If someone talks about Candide, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver’s Travels as if they were modern cultural touchstones, I can assume the character is from a Western society in the mid-18th to early 19th century. If Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are household names, perhaps the story takes place in Russia near the end of the 19th century. References to Suikoden suggest either Japan in the middle of the Edo period, or Konami in the mid to late 1990s.

And when you drop references to mention Titanic, Futurama, Star Trek, Wall-E, Youtube, Red Dead Redemption, Star Wars, Total Recall, Gangnam Style, After Earth, E.T., Toy Story, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Karate Kid, and Family Guy… Then your setting is pretty obviously early 21st-century America.

But with spaceliners and replicators.

It feels really, really silly, is my point.

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...BLAST OFF!

Do not do this. Just… don’t.

It’s been a while since I’ve done TFS quotes.

"Hey there," I said, "I'm in this kick ass suite with my two buds, and we are officialy in space!" I then pointed the camera at the guys and we each took our fair share of saying and doing any goofy, random shit that might go viral on youtube.

This is something called “telling”. It’s okay in small doses, or when you need to skim something unimportant. But when used excessively, or used to skim over things you’ve made a point of highlighting, it makes for very dry, dull reading. You don’t need to do a lot of “showing” to fix it. Just give us some idea of what the guys are doing.

Now might be the best time to introduce myself and my friends.

Fuck, I wasted the Bardock quote on that “blastoff” thing.

No, it’s never the best time to do this. It’s never even a good time to do this. You need to build interest in your characters and let details come out naturally over time. If you never get to describe them in full, that’s fine. Physical appearance isn’t super important outside of romance or porn. The character’s personality and actions take precedence. Infodumps like this interrupt the narrative with stuff the reader doesn’t really care about.

With that out of the way, we then chugged down the rest of our coke and we started having a montage of us doing crazy shit in the suite while Jonathan played Gangnam Style on his Ipod.

Describe things. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the guys are making a montage video for Youtube, and not that you literally cut away from the scene with a “MONTAGE HERE” note. Because if it’s the latter, that goes beyond telling and…

I really wish I was willing to reuse that Bardock thing.

But really. If you actually skim the action with them “having a montage”, you’re not just telling instead of showing, you’re refusing to show or tell at all.

"Everyone remain calm, we have just happend to have found ourselves in the midst of a meteror shower. We will try our best to steer clear of it as soon as possible; but in case of emergency, we strictly advise you all to wear an oxygen mask." we were then given these little oxygen masks that looked like the same kind from After Earth.

Okay. Okay. We’re going to have to take a moment, here.

First, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Meteor showers are an atmospheric event, and they are spread out far too much to threaten something the size of a ship, unless you're talking about megastructures like the Death Star, star destroyers, or Deep Space 9. Asteroid fields are even more spread out. The only thing dense enough to pose a navigational threat would be orbital debris or, at relativistic speeds, interstellar dust. At the speed you'd have to be going to make this cruise reasonable, both would rip any craft apart, so the risk would have to be addressed, no matter how remote. Between the replicators and the most frequent references, you seem to be drawing heavily from Star Trek. If they’re using the same technology (despite this being set in 2013, as now established in the character-description infodump), then I assume this craft features a navigational deflector. If they do, this shouldn’t be a problem. If they don’t, how did they even get out of Earth orbit?

Okay, nerd moment over, the more important thing.

That’s not how references work. You keep just pointing out similarities to movies in lieu of writing out descriptions, or referring to movie scenes as sort of weak similes. The problem is, doing this doesn’t give the reader any information unless they know your reference off the top of their head. There’s nothing wrong with dropping references. Hell, I love doing it. But they need to be a bonus, not vital to the narrative.

Let me quote some lines from one of my stories (that I haven’t updated in like two years). It’s even another HiE fic.

"Weather Wax's Hexes and Hauntings?" he replied without looking around the corner. "Three times. The last time, you declared it 'outdated hogwash written by a miserable old hag', end quote."

“You’ve double-checked the calculations in Rides Winds’ Expeditious Retreat twice now. You still teleport faster than any spell he developed.”

“And if you bring up Ponder Stabling’s Applied Arithmetical Thaumaturgy one more time, I’m leaving you to this and going to Rarity’s for the day.”

“I’ll be sending Celestia a scroll to pass on to old Mustang Redcollar at the Canterlot Archives,” he said, already pulling a blank paper from the desk. “If there’s anything useful in the uncatalogued books, he’ll know where to find it.”

Now, as far as most readers are concerned, Weather Wax, Rides Winds, Ponder Stabling, and Mustang Redcollar are just random background ponies that Spike names off. They can continue with the story, and knowing that much is enough for them to, hopefully, enjoy it.

If my readers are also familiar with the Discworld series by the late Terry Pratchett, they’ll catch the references to Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind, Ponder Stibbons, and Mustrum Ridcully. But it’s just a bonus for them — they don’t have any greater understanding of the story than the people who missed that.

And then somebody amongst the crowd shouted, "WORMHOLE!"

That’s not how this works either!

Wait, wait. Sorry. I get it now.

The Star Trek you’re basing this on is Generations! You poor bastard.

but when Jonathan and I tried to stand up we suddenly felled back in pain!

Felled back.

After coughing out some water, Andrew cried, "What the Hell just happened?!"

I hadn’t brought it up before because it wasn’t particularly noticeable, but from here on out it draws more and more attention. You have a bad habit of saidisms - words that replace “said” in dialogue tags and either add no meaning, or are misused. It’s a weak attempt at building sentence variety, but you’re better off just using “said” whenever it works and varying the sentence structure instead. Of note, “cried” is a clear favorite to use in this story.

I couldn't see anything, probably because I didn't have my glasses on. I didn't know if Jonathan or Andrew were with me so I cried, "Hey guys, where are you?!"

This is one of those saidisms, and it’s our friend “cried”. The problem I have with this word is it’s a very strong, very dramatic word. You see it more in older period pieces, but in a modern context like this, it feels a little archaic and out-of-place. There are ways you could make it work, but here, it really doesn’t. And once we realize he’s just waking up in a hospital, it feels super awkward.

You want a “cried” moment, here’s a classic.

Since we’re on the Trek thing anyway.

then I started to hear voices; but not Jonathan's or Andrew's voices, but different voices instead. One voice sounded girly, the other sounded western, and the other sounded tom-boyish, and the other sounded fancy, and the other sounded calm, and the last one sounded super-girly. I then started to hear these voices having a conversation.

Oh, where to begin… I get you’re shooting for their accents here, but for one, naming them off in a list is pretty unnecessary. You could have just led into the conversation with the first being “a feminine voice”, and then gone on with “another voice, this one with a southern twang” and “a third voice, this one with a very posh tone” and so on. The very simplistic writing here is just cringe-inducing, and it keeps going through almost the entire scene.

As for the entire rest of the scene…

Look, I get that you’re trying to play the minutia for comedy. The problem is, well, it just isn’t funny. Maybe it could have been, but the language is simplistic, the scene is so busy that it all just drags on, there’s virtually no description, the gags are all very tired cliches, the human characters are melodramatic to the point of being inane, and the ponies’ reactions don’t feel natural in the slightest.

Feeling like Fluttershy here.

Also, why can none of them see? At first, from the “HD upgrade” remark, I assumed Jeffrie wore glasses and was blind without them, but I don’t recall mentions of glasses for the other two, and the description implies they’re literally blind before Twilight uses her healing lasers.

And then the purple pony said, "Oh, of course, allow me to introduce ourselves. I'm Twilight Sparkle, and this is Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie."
After I heard all of their names, I began to laugh non-stop! The blue pony called Rainbow Dash flew up to my face and said, "What's so funny?"

Jeffrie is kind of a jackass.

Anyway, the rest of the scene is frankly more of the same. It goes on too long, lacks focus, plays to cliches, and just generally fails to be funny.

To this Twilight said, "No, we were told to find you and your friends, and that's exactly what we did. So you better get used to us!"
There was no way in Hell that me and my friends are going to get used to seeing these obnoxious, girly, sissy ponies! So I tried to get rid of them by using a Jedi mind trick. I waved my hand in front of them and said, "You want to go away, now." They all had confused looks on their faces. I tried this trick on many people before, but to no avail. I figured that maybe it could work on ponies; because it's just like what Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak minded." And since these ponies are clearly nothing but a bunch of dumb animals, who just happen to have the ability to speak, then they must be extremely weak minded.

Twilight sounds so out of character, and Jeffrie is still a jerk.

Apparently they've never heard of Jedi's--or hands for that matter.

Ponies have never heard of hands?

Nope. Hands, fingers, and all forms of gripping appendages are totally unknown in Equestria.

"Oh good, the three of you are awake. I was beggining to think that you were all dead; but now that you're all right, you and your friends are free to go."

Well, looks like Equestria does post-procedure care about as well as America does.

Then Pinkie Pie popped out of nowhere and said, "I'll tell you why." We then heard background music being played out of nowhere, and then Pinkie Pie starting to sing a musical number!

This is only funny if you describe it and build it up. And yes, optimally, that means making up some lyrics.

"I am Princess Celestia; I am the ruler of Equestria."
I was like, "A female leader?"
"That's right," she clarified, "I am a female leader."
Me and the guys were silent for awhile, and then we burst out in laughter! "A female leader," I said, "now that's adorable!" we were laughing because the whole idea of a female leader was preposterous. To think that a woman could be as good a leader as a man.

…

I hate your characters so much.

"Oh nothing," chuckled Celestia as she began to smirk, "I just summoned a lightning bolt to strike your rear end."

Gonna be blunt here: this is dumb. This whole scene is so dumb. I can’t put a positive spin on this.

Celestia is a bit of a prankster, yes. After all, the “Trollestia” meme had to originate somewhere. But she uses tricks like they were zen koans, to change the perceptions and challenge the expectations of others. They’re never cruel or childish like this.

But as for me, I said, "No, no. Mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm. No, no, no! Hell no! NO! NO! I refuse to...no! NO!"

I applaud you on properly inserting a Cop Out reference. I would have given you more points had you repeated Tracey Morgan’s entire rant instead of just approximating it.

And after Celestia forces the… “protagonists” back onto the plot train, it’s off to Chapter Four, and we’re that much closer to the goal here.

We looked down and we saw with our very eyes, a real dragon! As everybody knows, it's been every boys fantasy to see a real dragon.

AND EVERY MAN’S FANTASY TO SLAY ONE

We then chuckled abit until Spike had said, "Oh yes, it's right next to the pony atlas."
I was like, "OK, do these ponies literally just insert the word 'pony' in everything?"
And Spike was like, "How should I know? I'm a dragon."

Who was raised entirely by ponies.

Okay… This is just turning into me highlighting everything I see that bothers me. I’m trying to avoid that, but there’s just so much… At least here I can point out another joke that falls flat for a number of reasons. In part it’s because it relies on the characters behaving out-of-character (why should it ever seem unusual to any of them that they use the word “pony” where we use “person”?), in part because it’s dwelling on minutia that nobody really cares about (seriously, the language quirk is a dumb in-joke at this point), in part because they’re severely exaggerating the issue (it’s a substitution used in one or two words, not “everywhere”), and in part because they just keep bringing it up over and over.

"You know, I wish that you guys will stay. Because you seem pretty cool to me."

You can’t endear your characters to the reader by having one of the canon characters call them cool, particularly when they’ve kind of been assholes so far.

The next day, I woke up and to my surprise I noticed that Andrew was snuggling Jonathan! I could hear Andrew saying fucked up shit like "Oh yeah baby" or "You know just how daddy likes it", and while I was hearing this, I couldn't help find this to be both funny and fucked up at the same time.

Just… so… childish. This is part of what makes the human characters so unlikable. They embody all the worst traits of being juvenile males.

As Twilight was leaving, Jonathan--for some strange reason--was just watching her leave. Even when Applejack was giving us a tour of her place, he was still just standing there and watched where Twilight had left.

But after I had snapped Jonathan out of his trance, we were able to continue with Applejack's tour. "Now as you three may already know," said Applejack, "me and my family are the ones responsible fer supplyin' Ponyville with apples." as she was telling us this, she then noticed that Andrew was staring fixedly at her. "Uh...ya lookin' at somethin', sugarcube?"

Are they… getting shipped with Twilight and AJ? I mean, at least you’re setting it up, but seriously, give them a few days first.

"That's what I just said."

This little running gag with AJ is actually kind of amusing, but it’s buried under all the other issues and easy to overlook.

Then I said, "Well it's either that or watch their grandmother sleep."

And that is the best line in the whole story so far, because it ends on the 10,000th word and I can stop reading.

Also my brain keeps parsing this as “sleep with their grandmother” and I’m not sure why.

But before we wrap up, there’s something I saw further down that I need to call out.

As Andrew was finally getting back on his feet, I walked up to him, patted him on the back, and I said, "Keep up the good work, buddy ole pal!" I then walked back to Jonathan and Apple Bloom and said, "Hey, you want to see something funny? Look what I did to Andrew." They both looked at Andrew. And when he had finally turned his back, they both started to laugh at what I did to him. What I did was put a sign on his back that said: NOT A REAL MAN.

I actually had a better AMV lined up for the second one, but it featured exposed breasts so it wouldn’t be allowed here.

Anyway, I think that’s a good, representative place to stop — juvenile humor, simplistic writing, and an undercurrent of sexism/transphobia.

…

…Okay. No, really, I was going to stop there. But then I kept on reading a bit to see if the shipping thing was really going to play out. And yes, two of the boys have crushes on ponies in their first full day there. Not that I have any problem with this; just see my stories about Elizabeth and Big Mac. I just question the pacing.

No, what brought me back to this review was this gem:

"Let's not think of it as bestiality," said Andrew, "let's instead think of it as interspecies."

"No Andrew," I said, "interspecies is when humans of two different races pair together. What you two are suggesting is a human and an animal--who just happens to have the ability to talk--be paired together. That's not interspecies, that's bestiality.

interspecies is when humans of two different races pair together.

interspecies
Humans
different races

This is the wrongest thing.

Okay. Maybe you want Jeffrie to come off as an awful person, but then why did no one correct him? This is either deplorably racist or stunningly ignorant, and since his remarks go unchallenged, it reflects pretty badly on the author. Humans are all a single species: homo sapiens sapiens. The last of our fellow hominins were homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis, both of which died out at least 25,000 years ago. After that, just the one. Race has nothing to do with species. In fact, race has very little to do with anything at all.

That’s not to say that race doesn’t exist — near-weekly events in the news in America the past couple years clearly indicate otherwise. But race only exists because we as a society act like it does. Biologically speaking, the “races” are clusters of data points on a continuous spectrum of genetic factors, nothing more. Talking about the “caucasian race” versus the “african race” beyond demographics is about as scientifically sound as talking about the “blonde race” versus the “brunette race”.

Not that some people haven’t done that, of course.

But beyond a handful of alleles determining pigments and melanin levels (and a few less-noticeable secondary physical traits like body fat distribution and jawbone shape), there’s not enough difference to declare the different races “subspecies”, let alone different species entirely.

And that said, Jeffrie is technically correct on human-pony relations being “bestiality”, but that’s a limitation of language, because definitions in use don’t account for sapient non-human creatures. Being stubbornly literal, a human and a neanderthal mating (which we know occurred, as neanderthal DNA influenced modern humans) would be bestiality, as would a human and an elf in other fantasy settings.

But unless you’re trolling or being pedantic, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that the key factor is intelligence, not species, and human-on-pony is xenophilia, not bestiality.

Now, on to chapter 6, because at this point I feel I must face this as a personal challenge.

...and surprisingly, there’s actually very little to say. I mean, Jeffrie is still a total jerk, the humor is still juvenile, the writing is still simplistic, movie references are still used in lieu of descriptions, and the other two guys are still more props for Jeffrie to play off of rather than full characters. But there’s nothing new to bring up.

Well, other than that he might have some foe yay going on with Rainbow Dash.

I skimmed over chapter 7, at least appreciating that Rarity was handling these clowns appropriately, until I hit this line. It’s like this shit is timed, every other chapter or so, just to renew my anger at this story.

"No," I corrected her, "You said not to wipe it on the table; I wiped it on the floor."

"Are you just flat out insane?!"

"Nope, I just have Asperger's Syndrome."

That is not an excuse for doing whatever the hell you want you raging asshole.

…Let’s say that was directed at the character.

Now. Author.

Autism spectrum disorders are another thing that Do Not Work That Way.

Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by restricted and repetitive actions, interests, and behaviors; and difficulties with communications and socialization. Asperger’s, in particular, is a rather mild disorder. Those who have it might fail to realize that they said something to cause offense, might keep talking about something long after the person they’re speaking to loses interest, or otherwise fail to react appropriately in social situations.

Jeffrie isn’t doing those things.

Jeffrie is deliberately taking actions that will cause offense and anger people. He knows what he’s doing. He knows the reaction it will provoke. He knows and doesn’t care, because he wants to offend. That isn’t Asperger’s, it’s sociopathy.

Anyway, I kept reading through Chapter 10, and to be honest, it never really improves. At all. I mean, racism doesn’t come into play again, and the ableism is a bit less egregious, but beyond that? There’s really only one new bit of information.

Because I was mistaken.

Jeffrie isn’t getting shipped with Dash for Foe Yay. He’s being shipped with Fluttershy, because she’s vulnerable, and thus exempt from the shitty behavior he exhibits towards his friends and basically everyone he meets.

Okay, there are a lot of problems here, but first I want to focus on the biggest one. Not the most pervasive one, mind, but the most problematic. That is, very easily, character.

First, the canon characters. They never quite feel like themselves. In part it’s because they’re exaggerated a bit too much, and they inherit the “randomness” and simplistic style found in the narrative.

Second, Andrew and Jonathan, Jeffrie’s dual sidekicks. Neither of them feel like actual characters. Like I said before, they’re more just props for Jeffrie to interact with and excuse his terrible personality by always forgiving him despite him being even more awful to them than he is anyone else.

And that brings us to the real crux of the problem: Jeffrie.

Author, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I will assume that you don’t actually believe any of the terrible things espoused by your character or thrown into the story in a misguided attempt at humor. Or, perhaps, you honestly are attempting to depict Jeffrie as a terrible person who will be reformed by the magic of friendship, etc. The problem with that is, Jeffrie’s attitudes are never challenged within the story as far as I read into it.

When he claims women are incapable as leaders, his friends are on board with that.

When he implies that Caucasians, Asians, and Africans are separate species, nobody corrects him.

When he insists that his supposed autism spectrum disorder absolves him from behaving like a decent, mature human being, his friends back him up on it.

When his narration includes judgemental remarks about another character’s “mentally disabled” manner of speech, well, that’s narrative, and that voice is yours, unless that stance is challenged elsewhere in the story.

This all gives the impression that the story supports these ideas, and that you, being the one that wrote it, support them in turn.

However, even beyond that — even if you were to go back through and remove all of those deplorable concepts from the story — it doesn’t change the fact that Jeffrie is a colossal prick. He’s aggressive, vulgar, abusive, immature, and generally hateful. Even if he weren’t a sexist, judgmental bigot, he would still be a wildly unlikable main character.

Sure, a generally bad person can be a good protagonist. That’s the whole point of “Dan Vs”, for one, and any number of examples of deeply flawed protagonists can be found in all kinds of media. But there are always caveats with these characters: in most cases, that the character has other traits positive enough for us to forgive their negative traits. Dan genuinely loves animals. Yusuke Urameshi of YuYu Hakusho is a delinquent punk with a bad temper who starts fights, but his nature is far kinder than his general persona would suggest, and he’s willing to risk and even sacrifice himself to help those in need.

There are a few other approaches, but as it stands, Jeffrie has no redeeming qualities, and a bunch of reasons for the reader to dislike him. You might argue that he’s kinder than he lets on, like Yusuke, but he doesn’t even show inordinate kindness to those he likes. No, he just treats them like a decent person. Being gentle with an emotionally vulnerable person isn’t a virtue, it’s not being awful. Treating your friends kindly and making up after a falling-out are not virtues, they’re having friends in the first place.

Rant over. I’ll just make my other points in the next section.

You need a more likable protagonist, one way or another. Even if you mean for him to grow out of it over the course of the story, nobody’s going to get far enough to see that if he’s so off-putting at the start.

The racist/sexist/etc shit has to go. I don’t know if it was meant to be funny, to show that the protagonist had a long way to go, or if you actually believe it. In the first two cases, it doesn’t work because the presentation gives the appearance of the third, and that’s probably the source of many of your downvotes. If it is the third, then I think it’s beyond the scope of My Little Pony fanfiction reviews to attempt to correct that.

Tone down the reactions and emotions. Everyone overreacts to everything, and it makes the whole story feel hyperactive and childish.

Romantic pacing. Actually, emotional pacing in general, but most of all the romance. “Love at first sight” is rarely a strong trope, and in this case, we’re trying to establish interspecies attraction for two different characters in the span of a day or two. Let the couples-to-be spend some time together and actually get to know one another before kicking off the interest. Which leads naturally into my next point:

Develop your secondary protagonists. Right now, you could pretty much cut Andrew and Jonathan entirely and lose nothing but two cheerleaders for Jeffrie’s behavior. If you want them to serve major enough roles to be deuteragonists, as it seems to be, they need a lot more development.

Describe things. Don’t just throw out a line like “just like that one scene in E.T.” and rely upon reader knowledge to fill in the blank. Actually tell us what happens.

Honestly, I would ditch the “Star Trek” opening you have. It has no bearing on the rest of the story, and it sets a ridiculous tone from the start because this is otherwise a modern-day fic. There are any number of more mundane excuses for dropping humans into Equestria, from flying into a storm cloud and coming out the other side in Equestria (Rocinante’s “House of the Rising Sun”); to getting lost in a thick fog while driving a country road (Admiral Biscuit’s “Highway 502”); to doing shrooms on a camping trip, wandering into the woods, and blacking out (my own “Odd One Out”). Hell, you love making movie references, why not use Stephen King’s Langoliers? The characters fall asleep on a flight to whatever vacation spot their parents paid for (Cancun, maybe? Is Cancun still a thing like it was in the 90s?), and wake up to find they’re the only ones aboard and the plane is about to crash. Three teenagers trying to prevent a plane crash with no help would be a hell of a lot more exciting an opening than going on an anachronistic cruise and making Youtube videos.

The canon characters feel off. I think it mostly comes from the tendency to overreact and be melodramatic that I see among all the characters, but regardless, their reactions rarely seem entirely fitting for the characters we know from the show.

Double-spaced paragraphs are easier on the eyes than indentation when it comes to reading on a screen, particularly with your tendency towards short paragraphs and your small indentations.

Finally, your writing style could use some development. Your basic grammar is perfectly workable, but there are some issues present. More importantly, the end result feels simplistic and repetitive. You’d do well to develop greater sentence variety and a broader vocabulary, but those are beyond the scope of a tips section, and are best developed through exposure and practice. Read more and write more, and they’ll work out.

Between the simplistic writing, ridiculous plot devices, offensive and unlikable protagonists, questionable depictions of the canon cast, juvenile humor, sexism, racism, ableism, poor pacing, and lack of a coherent ongoing plot, the only score I can assign this is:

Needs Work.

However, to be honest, I don’t think this story can be salvaged in its current form. My honest recommendation is to scrap it and start anew with a clear plot and without relying on the idea that being offensive is inherently funny, either for the characters or within the narrative.

The appropriate answer here is to burn it all.

5517039

The last of our fellow hominins were homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis, both of which died out at least 25,000 years ago.

Possibly one more, if you're interested.

5517122
I considered mentioning the Denisovans, but didn't understand the use of "sp"/"ssp" in the scientific species name, so I wasn't certain if they were considered a true separate species from humans or Neanderthals. Plus, they're supposed to have died out 40,000 years ago, so they still aren't "most recent" anyway. Figured it was simpler to skip them.

5517039 You take that back! Hubert would NEVER insult Princess Celestia!

He doesn't have the guts.

5517039 For this, you shall ride Shiny and Chrome! WITNESS RINNAUL!

That picture of Granny Smith in a bikini will always haunt my nightmares. Thanks for bringing them out of the subconscious again, Rin!

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Any time.

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First off, I appreciate the time and effort that you put into this review. Despite it being negative, I definitely found it to be--for lack of a better word--helpful in noticing things that need some more work. I'm more than happy that my fic finally got chosen to be reviewed, but for a group called "The Pleasant Commentator and Review Group", you sure did seem to have no problem in making your criticism feel as harsh as possible. The moment you refered to me as a "poor bastard", I was already having the feeling that you're breaking your own groups rules at this point. Now, since I read everyone of your nitpicks, I feel it should only be fair that I nitpick some of the things you've said.

“Space cruise? That sounds a bit far-fetched! But perhaps he graduated from some sort of space-oriented degree program and thus has special permission to be on the maiden flight.”

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. This guy, and his two friends, have gotten first-class accommodations on the maiden voyage of the first space cruiseliner as a high school graduation gift.

I mean, fuck. I just got a new PC for mine, and that was a big deal.

But I have a bigger problem with this setup

First, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Meteor showers are an atmospheric event, and they are spread out far too much to threaten something the size of a ship, unless you're talking about megastructures like the Death Star, star destroyers, or Deep Space 9. Asteroid fields are even more spread out. The only thing dense enough to pose a navigational threat would be orbital debris or, at relativistic speeds, interstellar dust. At the speed you'd have to be going to make this cruise reasonable, both would rip any craft apart, so the risk would have to be addressed, no matter how remote. Between the replicators and the most frequent references, you seem to be drawing heavily from Star Trek. If they’re using the same technology (despite this being set in 2013, as now established in the character-description infodump), then I assume this craft features a navigational deflector. If they do, this shouldn’t be a problem. If they don’t, how did they even get out of Earth orbit?

Buddy, this story is fictional: as in not real. So why should you care if nothing realistic happens in this story? I certainly don't; and that's I allowed this story to embrace the fact that it's fiction and not non-fiction. Because that's just what this is: a story. Not an autobiography detailing an actual event, but a fun little story just to pass the time. That's like saying that the Wizard of Oz sucked just because it showed a tornado transporting a little farm girl to a fantasy world.

The Star Trek you’re basing this on is Generations! You poor bastard.

I'm just gonna point out right now that I'm not really a big Star Trek fan. I might make references to it, but that's mostly in the same way the Nostalgia Critic likes to reference the Matrix despite the fact that he's not actually a fan of that series.

This is one of those saidisms, and it’s our friend “cried”. The problem I have with this word is it’s a very strong, very dramatic word. You see it more in older period pieces, but in a modern context like this, it feels a little archaic and out-of-place. There are ways you could make it work, but here, it really doesn’t. And once we realize he’s just waking up in a hospital, it feels super awkward.

Dude, I'm not a human thesarus. I try my best to use other words besides "said" or "cried", but I'm still only human after all.

Also, why can none of them see? At first, from the “HD upgrade” remark, I assumed Jeffrie wore glasses and was blind without them, but I don’t recall mentions of glasses for the other two, and the description implies they’re literally blind before Twilight uses her healing lasers

I made it more than clear that Jeffrie was wearing glasses before receiving Twilight's "healing lazers" (if you were just wondering whether he was near-sighted or far-sighted, I could always include that information), I'm pretty sure that I mentioned Jonathan wearing glasses as well, as for Andrew I guess could have it be said that he was having to wear contact lenses before this.

Ponies have never heard of hands?

(Derpibooru)

(Derpibooru)

(Derpibooru)

(Derpibooru)

(Derpibooru)

(Derpibooru)

Nope. Hands, fingers, and all forms of gripping appendages are totally unknown in Equestria.

I'm gonna assume that you never saw the last part in Equestria Girls where Rainbow Dash says, "What are hands?" I'm pretty sure that alone disproves your little theory that every citizen in Equestria knows what hands are.

I applaud you on properly inserting a Cop Out reference. I would have given you more points had you repeated Tracey Morgan’s entire rant instead of just approximating it.

That because I chose to go with the trailer version of that scene as appose to the one in the movie. Also, are you trying to say that as long as I don't refer to any reference by name it'll count as "properly inserting" a reference.

This is the wrongest thing.

Okay. Maybe you want Jeffrie to come off as an awful person, but then why did no one correct him? This is either deplorably racist or stunningly ignorant, and since his remarks go unchallenged, it reflects pretty badly on the author. Humans are all a single species: homo sapiens sapiens. The last of our fellow hominins were homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis, both of which died out at least 25,000 years ago. After that, just the one. Race has nothing to do with species. In fact, race has very little to do with anything at all

If that part offended you so badly, then I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to purposely be racist, I was just writing down whatever came to my head. It's little observations like this that can help me know that my fic needs improvement. So how can I change into not sounding racist? Should I delete "different"? Should not use the word "race"? Should I replace "interspecies" with something else? Just explain how I can make that sentence not offend anyone again.

Now. Author.

Autism spectrum disorders are another thing that Do Not Work That Way.

Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by restricted and repetitive actions, interests, and behaviors; and difficulties with communications and socialization. Asperger’s, in particular, is a rather mild disorder. Those who have it might fail to realize that they said something to cause offense, might keep talking about something long after the person they’re speaking to loses interest, or otherwise fail to react appropriately in social situations.

Maybe now's not the best time to mention that I actually have Asperger's Syndrome.

Second, Andrew and Jonathan, Jeffrie’s dual sidekicks. Neither of them feel like actual characters. Like I said before, they’re more just props for Jeffrie to interact with and excuse his terrible personality by always forgiving him despite him being even more awful to them than he is anyone else.

Funny, Shiftylookingcow also thought that Jonathan and Andrew didn't stand out much. I don't know, I always thought those two were just fine. I mean, Jonathan is a whiny dramaking who tends to quit easily and might even get jealous from time to time. Andrew is sort of the simple muscle type who's somewhat more gentle compared to Jeffrie and Jonathan but shows that even he has limits. That's probably the main reason why I decided to rewrite this story.
As for your reaction to the "simple writing", it never occur to you that that kind of style was intentional? This story is told by Jeffrie's perspective mind you, and let's not forget that he's a highschool graduate; not college or university, or even a private prep school, just regular highschool. So it makes more than enough sense that Jeffrie wouldn't use the same words that Twilight Sparkle used for describing how her wing power machine worked in a story that he's telling. And as for how he acts and treats everyone, that's because this is how a typical boy would act. I know that there are some boys who more sensitive and in touch with their feminine side, but as you can see, Jeffrie, Jonathan, and Andrew, are not those types of boys. They're rough with eachother, they like acting tough, they don't like anything that can be considered "girly". In fact, their whole demeanor can be sumed up with "MEH-YAN!" Also, from the way they were acting towards the ponies, you can easily just see them as representations of non-bronies.
Bottom line, still very happy to have my story be reviewed, and any aditional feedback on how I can fix the problems you pointed will be appreciated.

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Wow. That's a lot of complaining. Let me address some things since Rinnaul was bouncing a lot of this off of me while he wrote.

First off, I appreciate the time and effort that you put into this review. Despite it being negative, I definitely found it to be--for lack of a better word--helpful in noticing things that need some more work. I'm more than happy that my fic finally got chosen to be reviewed, but for a group called "The Pleasant Commentator and Review Group", you sure did seem to have no problem in making your criticism feel as harsh as possible. The moment you refered to me as a "poor bastard", I was already having the feeling that you're breaking your own groups rules at this point. Now, since I read everyone of your nitpicks, I feel it should only be fair that I nitpick some of the things you've said.

Couple of things here. One: "pleasant" in our case means polite. It does not mean that we are not thorough, nor does it mean we have to pull punches. Two, his "poor bastard" comment was meant in an obviously slang/pitying way rather than a direct insult as he was pairing it with a joke about the poor setup of the referenced movie.

Buddy, this story is fictional: as in not real. So why should you care if nothing realistic happens in this story? I certainly don't; and that's I allowed this story to embrace the fact that it's fiction and not non-fiction. Because that's just what this is: a story. Not an autobiography detailing an actual event, but a fun little story just to pass the time. That's like saying that the Wizard of Oz sucked just because it showed a tornado transporting a little farm girl to a fantasy world.

I'll just start by quoting Mark Twain: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

What this means that your story has to be plausible. Within the realm of possibility. Logical.

Now, yes. Wizard of Oz has a young girl being transported to a magical land via tornado. However, this starts with the first plausible idea: that a tornado can pick up and carry a house away. Nobody will deny that a tornado of any great magnitude can't do that. By starting with a plausible point, we are able to accept the next step via suspension of disbelief: that a tornado is powerful enough to carry a house to another world entirely. We root the implausible in the plausible and are able to swallow it. The best lies are 9/10ths truth.

You have an implausible premise: space cruises in the 2000's. We didn't and don't have those. You're expecting your readers to swallow a complete fabrication without accepting any plausible way for it to occur. Therefore it is rejected as an impossibility and affects the ability of your reader to get into the story.

Dude, I'm not a human thesarus. I try my best to use other words besides "said" or "cried", but I'm still only human after all.

Using more words wasn't his point. If you must tag a line with a dialogue tag, using "said" is best. It's invisible to the reader. We overlook it constantly.

However.

We only overlook it if we don't see it too often. If every other line is "he said", "she said", "Twilight said", then we're going to notice it. In order to combat this, there are two other ways to handle dialogue. Establishing a conversational pattern is one, where you let the back and forth speak for itself. The issue here is not to go on too long or you get what's called "talking heads" where the characters seem to exist in a white space where they interact with nothing. The other is the action beat. This is where your character does something, like walk across a room, shake his head, pick up a glass, punch a wall, whatever, in order to show what's going on, give more character, and yes, make sure we know who's talking. By utilizing all three of these, you come up with varied prose where your tagging becomes invisible.

And yes, you can use other words than said, but not too often or that's noticeable.

I made it more than clear that Jeffrie was wearing glasses before receiving Twilight's "healing lazers" (if you were just wondering whether he was near-sighted or far-sighted, I could always include that information), I'm pretty sure that I mentioned Jonathan wearing glasses as well, as for Andrew I guess could have it be said that he was having to wear contact lenses before this.

You were clear on Jeffrie, but not on the other two. Also, how would Twilight know what to do to cure him? Magic in the setting, particularly for Twilight, is a very rational process and she would need to know what's wrong in order to identify the proper spell, yes?

Also, are you trying to say that as long as I don't refer to any reference by name it'll count as "properly inserting" a reference.

In a way. Name dropping references does nothing for a reader. It doesn't tell us what was most important from the scene or movie or book to warrant referencing. By describing or quoting the reference, you give that information. Naming it as well is optional at that point.

If that part offended you so badly, then I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to purposely be racist, I was just writing down whatever came to my head. It's little observations like this that can help me know that my fic needs improvement. So how can I change into not sounding racist? Should I delete "different"? Should not use the word "race"? Should I replace "interspecies" with something else? Just explain how I can make that sentence not offend anyone again.

Interspecies is the mating between species. A horse mating with a donkey is interspecies and results in the mule. They are related species, but not the same. So saying that mating between the ponies and humans would be interspecies is correct.

What's wrong with your statement is the assumption that the sociological definition of race is the same as the biological definition. When we speak of race in terms of humans, we're referring to the sociological definition, which is more about superficial physical and cultural traits. We are all the same biologic species.

Maybe now's not the best time to mention that I actually have Asperger's Syndrome.

We actually kind of figured that. That still doesn't make your character any less of a jerk for acting like his Asperger's is an excuse for his behavior in such a flippant manner.

Think about how you would act if somebody asked you not to do something, and you still did it albeit with a slight change. And they got mad at you. Would you blow them off and act like your disorder excuses you? Or would you apologize, even if you still explain that you have Asperger's?

Hopefully, it's the latter. And if it is, then you should know that your character should do the same.

As for your reaction to the "simple writing", it never occur to you that that kind of style was intentional? This story is told by Jeffrie's perspective mind you, and let's not forget that he's a highschool graduate; not college or university, or even a private prep school, just regular highschool. So it makes more than enough sense that Jeffrie wouldn't use the same words that Twilight Sparkle used for describing how her wing power machine worked in a story that he's telling.

Simple writing does not equal simple worlds. Simple writing is when you use the same sentence structure repeatedly. It is when there is no variation. Your pattern does not change. This means your writing becomes very monotonous and dull.

Much like I did in the above paragraph.

You can change it up. When writing, sometimes you can start with a dependent clause. Or use a sentence fragment. You can use short ones. You can use long ones which display the complexity of the English language in terms of grammatical elements--many of which we stole from elsewhere and adapted to our needs--and relish in the poetic beauty that is our tongue.

Variety is the key to complex writing. Not the word choice.

that's because this is how a typical boy would act.

.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

#notallboys

You don't get to excuse asshole behavior via gender. Sorry. Not when I can name more than five times your representative body here of men and boys who are much, much better behaved than your characters that I know personally. By the way, going back to Rinnaul's statements of sexism in your story: this excuse is sexist too.

It's fine if you want them to be jerks and asses. It's better if you can give us a reason for that besides "well they're boys". Characters don't get that excuse, by the way. See the earlier Mark Twain quote. Your characters always, always, always, have to have a reason for what they say, do, and act. Even if you never explicitly state why, you have to know it. This is the only way that you can maintain the all important key to a believable character: consistency. If a character is inconsistent, then we won't believe them. And people don't act like jerks for no reason.

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Asilin got to you first cause I was at work and then had to get some sleep, so I’ll skip the things she already covered thoroughly.

I'm more than happy that my fic finally got chosen to be reviewed, but for a group called "The Pleasant Commentator and Review Group", you sure did seem to have no problem in making your criticism feel as harsh as possible.

I'll admit I'm the harshest reviewer currently active with us, and I regularly push the boundary on that point. In fact, I realized I was getting more aggressive than usual as this story went on, and considered dialing it back some. However, I decided that it would be best to go ahead and lead with my actual reactions. That way you could see the kind of reaction your story can elicit.

The moment you refered to me as a "poor bastard", I was already having the feeling that you're breaking your own groups rules at this point.

That was a joke, son.

In particular, the implied joke was "Oh, you poor soul, you actually watched Star Trek Generations."

Dude, I'm not a human thesarus.

That's actually the opposite of this problem. It's entirely possible to write entire novels without using a dialogue tag other than "said" and have them read well. Asilin covered this point more than enough, though.

I'm gonna assume that you never saw the last part in Equestria Girls where Rainbow Dash says, "What are hands?" I'm pretty sure that alone disproves your little theory that every citizen in Equestria knows what hands are.

Just because the writers make a bad joke that doesn't make sense in the setting, it doesn't make the joke less bad, nor does it mean it now makes sense within the setting. For a different example, Twilight has used the phrase "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" on the show itself. There are two paths we can take, here. On the first, the reference could make sense within-universe, implying that in addition to ponies, the setting also features horses. As horses can be "gifted", they must be property, implying either they are to ponies as apes are to us, or they were (or are) some kind of slave race. Whether they keep their nearest genetic relatives as pets or have enslaved another race (her use of it implies such "gifts" would be commonplace), either would be fairly dark — and Twilight's flippant use of the remark as a punchline suggests the practice is not considered untoward in any way.

On the second, the joke was effectively a fourth wall gag, and can't be considered to have really happened within the show, because it wouldn't make sense.

In this case, despite Rainbow Dash meeting numerous creatures with hands (or very similar features), she has no idea what they are. That doesn't make sense, so I'm perfectly willing to dismiss it as another nonsensical gag.

Also, EQG isn’t canon to the show anyway.

Also, are you trying to say that as long as I don't refer to any reference by name it'll count as "properly inserting" a reference.

Your other "references" were more like "name dropping". The problem isn't necessarily that they referred to something by name, the problem is that's the only thing they did. They provided no information to the reader. Let me pull out a few and share my reactions to them.

the best way to describe him is that he looks like a Latino version of Jay Baruchel — Okay? And what does that look like? The only Jay Baruchel role I'm familiar with was from an animated feature, so I've never actually seen the guy.

we were then given these little oxygen masks that looked like the same kind from After Earth. — That's nice. I've never seen it. Mind telling me what they look like?

Jonathan then screamed like Drew Barrymore when she saw E.T. for the first time — First, wait, Drew Barrymore was in E.T.? Second, kay, what does that sound like? Do you have any idea how long it's been since I last saw E.T.? Probably well over 20 years, now.

he and Jonathan then started to do that suffocating act that Buzz Lightyear did in Toy Story. — Given that I was about 10 years old when that came out, and have seen in a grand total of maybe three times in the intervening 20 years, could you tell me how that goes?

Andrew then did that painful sigh that Peter Griffin did in Family Guy — So... how does this differ from any other sigh? I ask because I don't watch Family Guy.

That's the problem. You're just name-dropping other shows in place of describing things, which leaves understanding of your story entirely up to your readers' familiarity with pop culture. You can get away with this to an extent if the name-drops are truly household names, but even then I’d restrict that to comparisons to celebrities, not their particular roles.

So how can I change into not sounding racist? Should I delete "different"? Should not use the word "race"? Should I replace "interspecies" with something else? Just explain how I can make that sentence not offend anyone again.

"interspecies is when humans of two different races pair together.

The problem with this is that “race” in the real world is used almost exclusively in a sociological sense: black, white, Asian, etc. That use is a social construct without any grounding in genetics in the first place, and it also has absolutely nothing to do with species. It’s offensive because saying this implies that white people, black people, latinos, Asians, etc., are not the same species, i.e., some of them are not human.

Since the one making this statement is white, presumably he believes whites are the only true humans.

Given that he’s a white guy from the American South, that statement is more than problematic, because it was one of the grounding principles of the institution of African slavery.

In short, it makes Jeffrie sound like a white supremacist, and nobody calls him on it.

Another, less critical problem, is that Andrew is actually right, regardless of whether you adjust the definition of “bestiality” or “animal” to account for other sapient species. That’s because “bestiality” would fall under the umbrella of “interspecies sex”. In fact, because of the way we define the words, they’re functionally synonymous if one partner is human.

If you don’t want to cause offense, leave race out entirely. But you honestly need a completely different argument anyway.

Maybe now's not the best time to mention that I actually have Asperger's Syndrome.

I expected as much, since Jeffrie has a very self-insert vibe to him.

I pray you don’t act with malice aforethought, set out to cause deliberate harm, and then try to use your condition as a Get Out Of Social Consequences Free card like your character did.

And as for how he acts and treats everyone, that's because this is how a typical boy would act. I know that there are some boys who more sensitive and in touch with their feminine side, but as you can see, Jeffrie, Jonathan, and Andrew, are not those types of boys.

Leaving aside the inherent sexism of “boys will be boys”, they act more like middle schoolers than guys who should be heading into college. I knew maybe two guys who were still this immature when I graduated, out of a class of around 300.