Review: God In-Laws · 8:24am May 4th, 2014
All masochism aside, I figured I would go and read something that wasn't utter garbage. For this, I am avoiding both the mature tag and any other tag I know that's probably going to find a way to piss me off and bias my opinions. Choosing something to review wasn't really all too hard. A quick glance at the featured box, and a couple of eyelid twitches later, I came across something that doesn't look bad from the cover.
Yes, I judge books by their covers, especially when the description sounds like it was fed through Google translate once in every different language then printed out, cut up, and rearranged by a bipolar koala.
This wasn't that.
Before I even start off, I have to state my... unfamiliarity with shipping. God In-Laws seems to be more of an after-shipping story, but without reading it, it seems to be shipping nonetheless. I hardly tend to read shipping, and apart from what I believe to be one mehishly written clopfic, I've never really experimented with it myself. Reading this is going to be a slightly new experience to me. I've always found shipping in such a limited amount of words very difficult. You may either give a fun little sample of the beginning, or swim around playfully in the middle, but in such a short amount of words, I believe that it is nearly impossible to do both. It's simply not enough.
Anyways, I should read the story now.
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Okay, short summary: Celestia and Twilight are marefriends. Celestia gets drunk as shit and Twilight asks her about her parents. Celestia later tries to resist but teary-eyed Twilight who is overemotional about personal secrets pesters her into revealing shameful secrets. Celestia's parents are weird-as-fuck, vague god/creator/guardian thingies.
That sums it up in brief, but the story itself is a little more than that.
I have to say, the beginning of the story was rather amusing. I got a good case of the smirks when Celestia decided it would be a good idea to chug an entire bottle of wine in order to avoid a question, then ended up answering that question anyways. That, and the whole cool, don't-give-a-shit-that-the-princess-is-here parent situation with Twilight was pretty cute.
The shipping elements that I expected to be there, weren't, and for that I'm not sure whether I should be thankful and disappointed. The story came off to me as an interest piece, and not much more. It feels like the author got an interesting idea about Celestia's parents, then came up with a good excuse to introduce them and that idea just happened to be this story. While more than half of the story belongs to Twilight and Celestia, it feels like 'Mother' and 'Father' are the real purpose that this story exists, as vague as they are.
The second half was a little confusing when it came to perspective, and let me say why: The first half of the story was strictly from Celestia's perspective, but after one of the page breaks it switched to Twilight's perspective. This is where I got confused. The swip-swap between Twilight and Celestia's perspectives in the second half really threw me off the edge, considering there was no warning to the switch and it seemed to be completely irregular in that regard. There were some points where I was completely confused about perspective.
But the narrative voice was rather nice. It flowed prettily and happily along and coaxed an approving smile or a nod from me here and there over the course of the story. It was very fitting, to say the least.
It was interesting, though I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Celestia and Twilight were obviously vehicles used to reach a more fun idea than simply Twi X Celly, but that's okay; they were good vehicles. The beginning ran a little boring for me despite the simple amusement, but once Celestia's parents came into play I was legitimately interested to see where the author was going to take me.
Nonetheless, I can't help but feel I was cheated. It feels like I went to a big wonderful amusement park to ride the big wonderful roller coaster that rockets through a scary tunnel and a fun loop, but when I get in line for the roller coaster and finally get on the roller coaster and it climbs its way all the way to the top, it takes a detour around the scary tunnel and the fun loop, and while its all interesting to look at, it leaves a severe longing to figure out what's inside the scary tunnel and just how fun the fun loop really is. And when I finally get off the ride and ask the attendant why I didn't get to go through the scary tunnel and the fun loop, they shoot a confetti popper off in my face then bludgeon me with wifflebat until I run away and stop asking about the scary tunnel and the fun loop. If anything, it's disappointing to be faced with such a cool idea then let down with such little explanation. Of course, this may have very well been the author's intention, and considering God In-Laws is a one-shot, I can't really complain about how much it didn't provide in such a limited number of words, because I know that if it had gone on any longer, it would have reached that point where a story becomes too long for simple enjoyment.
Still though, I really want to know what's inside the scary tunnel and just how fun the fun loop really is.
I suppose I'll never know.
But it sure was fun to look at from a distance.
Thanks a bunch for the review, Sorren! It's nice to get some genuine criticism for this thing. :B
2075992 Very welcome.