Life is a series of failures and the specter of death draws ever nearer. Guess I’ll do a review.

“Needs Work”.

Those two words tend to upset people.

That’s probably because it’s basically our failing grade. “Needs Work” stories seem to range from “everything here is objectively terrible and offensive”, to “this is a pile of incomprehensible nonsense”, to “get thee to an editor, go. Farewell.”

But the spread of stories it covers is a little broader than that, and this story falls into this last category: Things that almost work, but have clear problems that need to be addressed. And the problems with this fic keep it from being enjoyable.

But first, relevant and important imagery.

Second, before I start breaking down the problems with the fic, I’d like to point out it isn’t all bad. For one thing, at least, the joke regarding the size of Lina’s horn was just great, and the airship battle was alright.

But now we come to the less interesting, non-breasts-related topics.

So, what brought this story down? While there are a few other issues…

“FIRE BALL!”
Not a moment later did a small explosion catapult a swordsman clad in blue and black armor off the road.
“Aiyeeee!” he screamed.

…the two biggest culprits are poor pacing and lack of tension. There’s also the issue of the story being cliche and unsubtle about it, but most stories fall back on similar ideas — that’s what makes them tropes in the first place. However, they can only work if they either put some novel twist on the idea (like, say, retelling classic fairy tales but as steampunk), or the story is strong enough to carry reader interest despite the ideas being familiar. That’s where the pacing and lack of tension come in.

Arguably, the poor pacing and lack of tension here are two sides of the same problem, or they at least go hand-in-hand. The poor pacing is really just a matter of the story rushing from scene to scene without spending any time to build things up or develop the tone. Unfortunately, getting pacing right is mostly a matter of experience. There seems to be a pretty direct correlation between a story’s pacing and flow, and the amount of time the author has put into writing in general.

However, on the “lack of tension” side of things, there’s one glaring, recurring flaw that I can absolutely point at: the characters overcome all challenges almost immediately, and with nearly no effort on their part.

Lina can’t cast in pony form? She’s producing unstable effects a couple paragraphs later and gets it down the next time she tries using magic at all.

They need air travel to catch up with the apparent villain? Trixie knows an airship crew. They’re right over there.

Their airship’s balloon is punctured in a battle, and they can’t continue? Good thing they landed on top of the secret to ancient antigravity technology. I mean… come on. That’s the kind of shit you got in early Final Fantasy games.

Not only does it make for ridiculously rushed pacing, it also guarantees that you can never have tension in a scene: You immediately rescued your characters from their problems the last four times, so why should I worry this time? This can work if the story is blatant, obvious parody, but it’s either going to be a brief string of gags about tropes, or you need to subvert things to keep the reader invested.

Now, in regards to the “Needs Work” rating, I can say this isn’t on par with some of the incomprehensible nonsense, accidental racism, blatant sexism, total irrelevance, or pedophilia I’ve encountered. In fact, it’s better than four out of five of those (sorry, the pedo fic may be creepy and gross, but it's a very well written creepy and gross).

But it's still not really enjoyable. Strong writing can cover for weak story, and weak writing can be forgiven when there's strong story. But when neither are particularly strong, it Needs Work.

I know I usually do some meme shit here, but Megumi Hayashibara is great so have the classic Slayers opening.

Also, for those interested, Funimation’s fucking amazing Youtube channel has basically all of Slayers in Japanese, and some of it in English.

Slayers: Subtitled, Dubbed
Slayers NEXT: Subtitled, Dubbed
Slayers TRY: Subtitled*, Dubbed
Slayers REVOLUTION: Subtitled
Slayers EVOLUTION-R: Subtitled

*For TRY, they have all 26 episodes on Youtube as far as I can tell, but only the first four on the playlist for some reason. I don't feel like searching enough to find out if the Dubs are incomplete or just not indexed.

6532614
I am so glad there are so many fans of Slayers here.
While it does sting, I get it. This story felt like I didn't elaborate as I did with my other story at the time.
My readers essentially egged me into fleshing out this crossover concept in a sequel I'm much more satisfied with in terms of flow and detail.
The idea to write this was an impulse, but I definitely should have given it the love that the second story got. I guess gearing this as a one-shot was my biggest failing here.
I am happy for the review!

6532625
Would you consider re-writing it at some point? Maybe you can take a month and just inject all the love and work you put into the sequel?

I'm just curious. Good luck and happy writing, my friend.

6532614
Ah. pacing. I've always found that to be tricky.

6532640
I fully intend to do so!

6532625
There is one thing that I thought of while reading this, but didn't bring up in the review because it's mostly me thinking about how I would do it, and that's really not the point here.

Well, two things, but "do delusionally narcissistic Trixie instead and make Lina suffer the realization that she's stuck with the pony equivalent of Naga the Serpent" would be a totally different story, and I kind of implied it in that one image comment anyway.

The more interesting thought was that Lina goes in overconfident because she thinks she can fall back on her black magic, but when she tries to cast Dragon Slave it fails, because black magic draws power from the mazoku, and they don't exist in Equestria. She's still a powerful mage... just not one that can one-hit-KO dragons. That's the kind of setback that can make a story stronger. Not only is an OP protagonist brought down to a mortal power level, but it lets the reader wonder where you'll go with it. Does she have to just be more clever than usual? Does she find a different approach? Does she discover a new entity to draw black magic from (kind of like when she fought Shabranigdo and had to upgrade to Giga Slave), and if so, what ramifications does that have? Does she find a way to draw power from the mazoku even in this new world, and if so, what ramifications does that have?

Basically, something that makes the reader go, "You're going somewhere with this, but I'm not sure where" while also making the characters have to work harder for it.

6534010
Thanks! That's the sort of question I answered in the sequel, but having Lina come to the conclusion in this story definitely helps. Basically, Equestria is so saturated with magic, she didn't need monsters/mazoku for black magic.