A Non-Clopper Reviews Clop: Maud's Surprise Part Ein

Welcome to the first installment of A Non-Clopper Reviews Clop. Now this series will have a few rules, one of which I'm breaking here with this first one.

1) It has to be clop-focused. No stories that just happen to have clop in them
2) It has to come from the feature box or a recommendation. No new box stories or stories found just browsing.
3) No anthro or humanized. (I'm breaking this one, but I have to start somewhere)
4) No fetish fuel fics.
5) No gore fics.

And without further ado, here is the first review.

Maud's Surprise
By: Dreamscape

Pinkie Pie jumped up from the hard wooden bench upon which she sat when the loud metallic screech of the train’s breaks filled her ears as it came to a halt before her. She then rushed forward as the conductor, dressed in a sleek blue, golden trimmed suit and hat, opened the door of the central cart. A cloud of smoke hissed from the engine’s exhaust pipe and briefly blocked the warm rays of sunshine, before spreading out into the blue expanse above.

Right off the bat, it felt as if the author was trying too hard. He took “Pinkie heard the screech of the train’s brakes as it pulled into the station, coming to a stop in front of her. The conductor stepped out from his post and opened the doors, allowing the ponies inside to escape from the cramped interior,” and just went all out with it.

“Sweetie sweet sweetie.”

Second issue. It’s a failed attempt at getting Pinkie’s unique speech pattern thrown in there, some twisted form of her description of Gilda as a “meanie grumpy mean-meanie-pants”

Ah, here’s a third problem. It’s small and nitpicky, but that’s what people read reviews for. Look at this screencap and tell me what I find wrong with it.

The formatting is inconsistent. It seems to be an isolated case, so we can forgive it, but its mere existence in a story that’s in the feature box irks me beyond belief.

Ah, the next part. “(S)lightly tutu-esque”. Nice. I believe that’s what we in the reading industry call redundancy. The -esque suffix already conveys a sense of “it’s sorta like it but not really,” and then adding the “slightly” means that it’s “slightly sorta like it but not really.”

“Oh, we should probably get back home so you can unpack, huh?” Pinkie asked almost worriedly, realizing she had been forcing her sister to stand before her with the heavy weights for Celestia knows how long. “Want me to help carry?”

I’m sorry, what? “Celestia knows how long”? No, Pinkie knows how long. She’s been standing with her for the entire fucking time. She can remember everyone’s birthdays, anniversaries, half-birthdays, and whatnot, but she can’t remember the last two minutes? This seems like an incredibly forced intro to a cliche’d and trite sex scene, like what I’d expect from hardcore porn. Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.

With that Pinkie let out a joyous giggle and expelled an, “Okie dokie lokie!” before she turned and bounced enthusiastically towards home. These skips were rather slow compared to those of which she’d normally preform, due to the fact of her sister’s much more methodical walking technique. This made it look as if they were bounding leaps rather than small, quick hops.

First off, that is the stupidest place I have ever seen an author put dialogue. While it makes sense, it breaks up the whole flow of the paragraph. Secondly, it’s “perform”, not “preform”. Google Documents catches that, damnit. You preform opinions, but you perform a play. They are not interchangeable, and this should have been caught during one of your read-throughs.

“I really don’t get why you want to hold off your welcome back, slash, end of your rock research trip party until tomorrow.”

Oh please no. If you’re going to say “slash”—which in of itself isn’t a bad thing—don’t do it between commas when the person talking wouldn’t pause there.

Maud paused mid-step and turned her blank looking gaze towards the mare in what could be assumed to be curiosity, although her face was as stoic and un-telling as ever.

Okay, we get it. Maud is this expressionless robot unless you’re Pinkie and can read her. Could you stop bringing it up every five seconds?

Pinkie suddenly thrust her hand down into the tight crevice between her two breasts and explored a moment before pulling out exactly what she was searching for, a rock candy necklace.

I'll just ignore the whole boob-storage thing and chalk it up to it being a clop story. Again with the grammar mistakes. I make them, you (obviously) make them, and everyone makes them. However, something like this should be fairly blatant. “a rock candy necklace” doesn’t work. In order to make it work properly, you have to change the comma before “a” to a semicolon (: in case you didn’t know) or move it to another part of the sentence entirely.

“Pinkie, those aren’t for storage,” Maud said, pointing to her sister’s perfectly rounded, pink pillows.

I understand euphemisms, I really do, but is one necessary here? It feels—once again—forced and purple, like you’re taking a normal story and adding as many descriptive words as you can without it bursting like Mr. Creosote.

“Yes it du-huhs,” Pinkie sang out ecstatically.

No. Just. . . no. I feel the need to mention that you can say the word “said” more than nine times during a chapter that is ninety percent dialogue and action tags before moving on. My main point here is the breaking apart of a word to get a “Pinkie” sound. It fails, in my opinion, because all it is is juvenile. I get images of bratty third graders on the playground that are angry because they aren’t fourth graders yet, but stuck up because they are almost at the top of the pile. That is not Pinkie, I might add.

“Not as sweet as the candy!” Pinkie burst out before bringing a blue piece up to her mouth and mercilessly shattering between her bright white teeth.

I’m running out of creative ways to say “Please stop.” I found yet another glaring error in “mercilessly shattering (it) between her bright teeth.” If you couldn’t tell, the word in parentheses wasn’t there before I added it. You forgot a whole damn word there.

“Well…what is it?” the giddy mare then asked, her body shaking anxiously until she finally sprang upwards in the form of a jump.

Now remember, Pinkie isn’t recognizable as Pinkie unless you blatantly rip off her actions and phrases from the show.

“Yes, I guess you could consider it that,” Maud explained monotonously.

By this point, we fucking get that Maud doesn’t speak in more than one tone at a time. STOP. TELLING. US.

The distant chirps of birds and the chattering of ponies filled her ears as she gazed down at the small bits of rock which were scattered across the path. Sedimentary, she noted. Very usual for gravel. As she continued to admire the variety of sedimentary rocks which passed beneath her feet, the intense rays of the sun beat down upon her neck, thoroughly warming her entire body.

. . . There is nothing witty to say to this. This is literally the stupidest fucking thing I have read in my life. Ever. Congratulations, you took the cake. Nothing gets dicks up like a bland character talking about fucking rocks. I never knew someone else knew this obscure and totally true fact, and I’m glad to know that I’m not alone.

Before letting out her reply, Maud wrapped her hand around Pinkie’s, slid her fingers in between the gaps of her own, and squeezed tightly. “I want to take our sisterhood to the next level.”

. . . I’m going to bed. I can’t deal with this shit. I’ll continue with this sometime, maybe tomorrow. Just. . . fuck.

-HB