SSR: Strong Emotions · 12:41am Nov 19th, 2013
Well, what is there to say. After being consumed by them, I transcended them. To this day they hold no power over me, and any tide is no more than a wave draining away with nothing to grip. So, review over, roll credits.
The only thing living in my fish tank is a hamster.
The void beckons to her
Starlight 'Toraka' Sparkle
So AC HIV is coming out on Thursday, and I'll have to play its multiplayer. Well there goes food money for the month...
Emotions keeping you down? Simply join the void between persons.
...
Wait, why are we still here? We're done! Nothing left to say? What, there's a fic by that name? What kind of narcoleptic retard names their stories like that?
Ahem. I may not have done a single review in the past few days, or months, but who says that I don't still have it in me. Let's read... eugh, reading.
Alright. Time for a merry little round of count the tropes!
So we start out with Twilight Sparkle (1) trying to reconstruct incomplete magic (2) yet fucking it up (3). Instead of the intended effect of turning ponies into Changelings (4), she pulls into Equestria (5) the mind of a human (6) who conveniently (7) just died (8) of a stroke (9). Naturally, his (10) part is described first-person (11) showing him moving up the ranks (12) after doing a crappy (13) job that killed him (14). Who is he? Early twenties (15), American (16) middle layer (17), only mildly educated (18), technically not against kids (19) but hating their antics (20) and the most attached to his pet (21).
Back to Twilight (22), who is just barely (23) managing (24) to contain the fuckup. Spike (25) comes down (26) to be amazed by the magic (27, you'd think he'd be used to it by now) until the mist she created gives shape (28) to an intruder from another world (1322).
Not the best topic you could've picked, mate. Actually it could have been very interesting. As she discovers this new world, each new shape grants her another perspective. Yet as she relishes in leaving her old form behind, its memories still tear at her, destabilising her mind with each new personality she learns to take. Still change is impossible, and thus she continues life as an empty husk sucking personality from others.
Could have been if it wasn't just limited to body, even with the terrible Author Insertion. At least try and fail horribly to hide it! Actually, it could have been great even without the psychic drama if only losing the AI. Still, why not take a piece of each form's personality? There is enough to be found there to fill more than a novel. I should know. I lived it.
Oh yeah, what the fic actually is. Well, read my stuff? Great, then you don't have to read the fic. Basically that, except worse and with no commata. It's bad enough to have Hasbro steal my ideas with scary accuracy, but now her too? Confounding.
I do not know how in the fuck this got into feature box, or even any ratio greater than 2 at most. It's not bad in the traditional sense, except that every five sentences could be packaged into a single one thanks to circular logic showing every aspect of the same boring point, and there's zero punctuation, and the main character is terrible even for author insertion, and that its format kind of sucks in differentiating between different styles, and while we're at it, that different styles of narration are used in the first place, and its beyond generic plot, which still somehow rips off my concepts with literally every idea it tries to present.
Oh yeah, humans. For those too lazy to use the ponies that already reflect our aspects and need to have it spoonfed to them with all metaphors banned.
If you ignore that and image it being a good fic with the format and language it deserves if the author is any near how experienced she claims to be, with only in-world content, then I suppose it's not bad. Now there's a quote to put on the front: "If you ignore everything that makes it bad, it's decent." ~Person who wrote more in a single project than you have read.
One word of advice to the author, get off your ass and tend this project yourself. You can throw even more editors at them, but how likely is it they are going to write it for you? Even if they actually did (which doesn't seem like it), what is the message given to readers? Your story had to pass five editors and seven editions to get to this level, which is hardly good? You know how many people edited that? Not one person besides the author, and you know the difference between the two. So get up, read the writing guide that is literally on-site, grab a dictionary, and tend your fucking text.
And work on the redundant logic while you're at it.
I reject your reality and substitute actual ponies.
Follower of the lost god English
Meteor 'Toraka' Sparkle
If you're gonna do something, do it right. Don't wound. Don't burn. Shoot to kill. Anything else is insane.
Perhaps we're about to see the singularity of most generic fiction. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps I killed him. Realisation of what he turned into.
Did you actually read the fic? I don't mean skim, I mean read. Let's m8ke a list of the points wh8re you're wrong in your rant.
1. The spell's effects are tempor8ry.
2. What m8kes you think he died? That was just his rationaliz8tion, since he almost cert8nly did not 8elieve Equestria actually existed, and even if he had, it's even less likely that he would have thought he was 8eing pulled through the Veil into it.
3. It's pro8a8ly not a self-insert. I think that style gets done enough that people generally put self-insert in the description.
4. Punctu8tion is fine, and no run-on sentences, unlike what you've got here. Ex:
5. HiE fics and fics with tropes are not 8ad 8y virtue of 8eing those types of fics. All fics should 8e r8ted on th8r own m8rits, not on th8r tropes/premise alone, or even together.
6. Every author could use a good editor. The role of an editor is not to write the story, 8ut to point out grammatical mist8kes/plot holes and suggest solutions for said pro8lems.
TL;DR: Go read it (my comment), then come 8ack here. If you still haven't read it, the OP cannot even 8e called a review and you (Toraka) are not the follower of the lost god English for the stupidly simple reason that English is not lost. My response-rant is completed.
1520176 Okay then. Since metaphors yet fail me, here's clear language.
0. Why do you have a lisp in typing? Keyboards aren't expensive, copypaste the missing letter if necessary.
1. Might have better ranted on that I said it'd actually transform a pony. Aside from that, I never said it WASN'T temporary, though the fic's whole point is that it isn't.
2. Well, first, he kind of got hit by the figurative (and literal) truck, so for all purposes, he IS dead. Then, I am playing onto another trope as I was above with the Changeling transformation.
3. You mean, aside from that it matches all of his data with scary accuracy? Even if it isn't, the character is such a generic representation of the target audience that it might as well be. (I'm judging based on that literally every HiE is one.)
4. Comedic effect, look it up. Aside from that, am I the one writing the story? (Also, commata are a thing. Not with him, but they are.
5. Its own merits, right. Wait, didn't I? It's a generic, hardly imaginative HiE with language just barely not bad enough to form a good complaint and cringeworthy logic and narration style.
6. Clearly, they didn't do their job well. If this is the thrice edited and heptuply-revised product, what does it say about him?
7. Until people use "I" where it belongs and banish the "me" to the dungeons where it belongs, yes it is lost.
1520369
0. It's not a lisp, it's a typing quirk.
1. No comment
2. OK then. You do have a point th8re. Somehow I missed that whole p8ragraph.
3. That's what he knows. It's not easy to write stuff you don't know, especially when it's earlier in your writing career.
4. It wasn't particularly funny. It just m8de you seem like you had no right to comment on 8ad grammar when you have such a long run on sentence yourself.
5. That's what I mean. You're judging on 88sic premise, n8mely, HiE. If you're going to do reviews, do reviews on stories that you actually like.
6. I see one pre-reader, and only the edits that people put in the comments. I don't understand where you get `thrice edited and heptuply-revised' for this fic.
7. `me' has its pl8ce in the sun, just as `I' does. Th8y are just used in different pl8ces. Specifically, `me' is when I'm the o8ject, and `I' is when I'm the su8ject (like in that sentence).
1520727 Indeed, both forms have their place. I just find that "me" is getting far too dominant, to the point where "I" is nearly unused except for the obvious usage.
You'd be surprised how far I ignore premises. However, when they become central to the topic, they need to be taken into account. That it's a human now being a somehow kinda technically Changeling drastically changes the story than if it had been a pony. I try as well as I can to judge fics on their technical aspects alone, but again, it all blends together in stories. Perhaps I am swayed by HiE, but I'll still praise a good story and blame a bad one. This one just didn't really have anything to it. HiE is a concept both done beyond death already and having to fulfill higher standards to feel the same quality, so when there's a story that's just average, it may have been better off trying pure pony.
As far as I can remember after four hours of sleep, the author mentions himself in the end note that he had two editors working on it, an experienced writer checking the concept (don't get me wrong, the concept is good, but the execution is meh), and seven drafts until he came to this. While I'd love to, I know that I can't demand perfection from everyone, not even myself. However, that's a lot of work put into it, so when the end result shows simple mistakes that should realistically have been caught in the final read by the author himself (people do that, right?), one can't help but wonder how much effort was really spent.
Speaking of which. Saying that it's his first piece in a very long time implies there is some experience, plus he has obviously been reading a fair lot in the meantime. Again, there's the embarassing technical errors, punctuation, all that. That would also mean that he would be wise enough not to use a character that could be, even if he isn't, himself. Protip, never write about things you know. Suppose for a second that he really is his own character. How would the author personally react upon meeting Fluttershy? (Barring "OMG IT'S A PONY".) Then, how would the actual character react, already living in Equestria for a week and knowing that he currently has the shape of... Pinkie, and could turn into Fluttershy any moment? Completely different things, but a self-insertion may act the same as the author, or even just react unpredictably based on private factors that the reader doesn't know.
Even if it's a pony, there always needs to be a certain gap between the author and the character, something that uniquely tells them apart. Without it, character development would be heavily swayed at best, even if they manage to live as separate entities.
As a last word, the story just feels unfocused and overall poorly edited, even with some clear potential behind it. What I mean is that you could have a street conversation and end up with the same style. Obviously I would be more careful with my (dis)use of commata in a real story and use different language there than here where no one cares. Example from an upcoming fic, guess what it's going to be:
1520857 I know, I know! It's going to 8e interesting. At least from that teaser.
1522576 It has arrived! Go read it in this moment.
No, pony episodes are less important. What are they going to do now? Postnatal analogies?