Fic Reviews V · 4:31am Aug 7th, 2014
I think I’m going to just start going through my Read Later list in order or least-viewed to most-viewed. Plus whatever ones I read in the meantime.
Abel was the first human to come to Equestria, and will be the first to die there. He has five days to live.
I don’t recall where I found this, but the premise sounded interesting enough. I don’t normally do sadfic or HIE (ignore two three of my most popular stories being in those categories), but picked it up on the strength of that concept alone. It started off fairly mediocre. Basically this human was like a second father to Silver Spoon, and got her to quit being a bitch. But he’s been completely cut off from magic, and apparently that kills you.
Chapter one featured Abel talking to Cheerilee, both of them being weepy, and trying to decide how to tell Silver Spoon that he had so little time left. And that was fine. A bit trite, but fine. And then Chapter Two came around, and I almost had to stop reading there. I can’t accept Discord crying into someone’s shoulder over an impending death, especially not a random human OC we only met 1200 words ago.
Chapter three is where I did stop reading, because that’s where Celestia collapses weeping into the OC’s shoulder, after a tearful “Don’t you dare leave me!” speech. The only times she’s gotten this way in canon are over the banishment of Luna and the thought of losing mirrorverse Sombra (and that was in the comics, so that one’s canon status is dubious at best).
That is easily my biggest problem with this story (though poor grammar and an awkward writing style also deserve mention). The canon characters feel very OOC, and the protagonist comes off as a Gary Stu, because we have zero context for these relationships. We don’t know why they, or we, should care about Abel, and it gives the impression that he is liked and important solely on the grounds that he is the protagonist. This might have been acceptable, given a little more context, had his relationships been restrained to Ponyville characters. But once we start bringing in god-tier names like Discord and Celestia, it gets hard to swallow.
I wanted to like this, because I like Biker_Dash. Even if it was an Orphan Scootaloo story and I’m not fond of those.
But there are constant tense switches (and a poorly-handled POV change), it tends towards the telly end of things, and its emotions are just overwrought. Like the scene where Scootaloo visits her parents’ graves—”This is all she has to look forward to; the knowledge that she will never have her mom and dad hold her again, and that her life will just be empty and alone for however long that she survived in this cold and dreary place.”
It’s less trying to tease the emotion out of you and more trying to punch it into your face.
The ending was kind of cute, though.
Legality Abnormality
by alexmagnet
Essentially, this is a mosaic piece with three scenes loosely connected by the framing story of “Twilight finds a book on bizarre facts from Equestria’s legal history”. I loved the first scene with Celestia and “Senator Limon”. It was just the right balance of sensible and ridiculous, and seemed like exactly the type of thing Celestia might pull on the show when getting frustrated with a meeting. The other two, though, went much further with the concept, taking her to the full Trollestia/Tyrantlestia extreme. While that treatment lost a lot of the humor that came from keeping it more suited to the show, I do have to give the story props for managing to combine those two in a way that, more or less, made sense.
Wakeup Call
by Standard Deviation
So… Human-X-Futashy romanticlop. That sounds more or less exactly like something I would want to read. However, on the whole, the story was rather bland. I can’t really pick out anything that I liked about it, but I can’t really pick out anything I objected to, either. Also, the entire story consisted of, essentially, making out and a lot of touching, but nothing in the way of actual sex, other than what was suggested to have happened offscreen at the end. Finally, from the title and how some of the description was handled, I was expecting the conclusion to involve fellatio, and was disappointed to find it was more conventional (if futa-topped) sex.
Those Forgotten
by shinygiratinaz
Written for the Most Dangerous Game contest, and one of the few entries I read from it. The ending is excellent, with Discord finally having to face the consequences of his actions in the past, now that he truly understands the pain he caused. However, the rest of the story is a bit confused and lacks impact, serving only to set up the final revelations without bringing anything to the table on its own. I haven’t really been able to pinpoint the problem, but I think it might be spread a bit too thin. Maybe if the story focused on just one or two ideas, and tried to deliver impact through description it would work better, but it’s hard to say.
One more thing I can say about this, and I'll put it behind spoilers because it reveals the entire conclusion. I think the best part of this may be the realization that Celestia had been hanging onto hope for her lost kin for centuries, and made the attempt to release and reform Discord solely for the chance at having them back, only for him to explain that they were beyond even his reach. I don't think anything else could absolutely crush her like that did. I really wish the rest of the story had carried that scene better, because there's a lot of potential for some really powerful stuff, here.
Momma Fluttershy
by SoulHook
This was linked on someone else’s page, among a bunch of stories that seemed to be comprised mostly of gory shockfic along the same lines as Cupcakes. My first thought is to say I clicked it at random, but I suspect I unconsciously just went for whatever looked like it would disturb me the most. Those who follow these review blogs, look at my Favorites, or just read my Pleasant Commentator and Review Group reviews are probably aware that little phases me, and on the surface, not much in here should be a problem for me. After all, tentacles show up in some clopfic in my Favorites, I’ve praised fics in my reviews for delivering on quality gore, and I’ve criticized rape fics not for the inclusion of rape, but instead for simply doing it badly.
Not that “tentacle rape” was really the key point here, but I think the forced entry is close enough to count.
This is one I downvoted. Though, if it were on PCaRG, I’d probably just mention my issues with it and hand it off to Cromegas_Flare for review, as I try to avoid doing reviews with a bias. That’s why I don’t usually review sadfics. They tend to not reach me.
Sorry, lots of tangents here, I know.
Anyway. Part of my downvote was for the concept and contents, yes. As a father (and, let’s be honest here, a decent person), I don’t generally like it when terrible rapey gore-fests involve foals or pregnancy. Fluttershy having her wings meticulously broken bone-by-bone in one of Cromegas_Flare’s fics? Sure, I actually wanted that scene to get more focus. Some random OC being dismembered and slaughtered in one of Dragonborne Fox’s stories? I praised the concept, and only asked she work on her pacing and characterization. A HiE crossover character being penetrated and literally drilled to death by a thorn-covered tentacle in another of hers? I applauded her for turning my stomach.
Dinky raped and then impaled? I’m immediately done with a fic that I had, up until that point, been laughing at as a ludicrously over-the-top black comedy.
I don’t know if it’s because it involved a child or pregnancy, or if it just went on too long, or just that something about how it was described seemed too brutish and heavy-handed. Whatever it was, there was nothing here that I enjoyed. It’s a minor point after the concept, but there were some consistent typos that appeared every time certain words were used, and as the language of the story is actually fairly limited and repetitive, those mistakes were frequent. It just made me twitch a bit every time I saw one, eventually.
Twilight Turns Into A Red And Black Alicorn
by Syeekoh
I saw this one in the Featured, and it looked like a funny concept. And while it was well-written enough, for some reason Syeekoh decided to play the transformation for drama instead of comedy. What should have been the setup for a solid random comedy as everyone freaks out around an ever-more-exasperated Twilight, instead touched on that very briefly and then concluded with Twilight crying over the changes. It was an odd thing for her to get upset about, too. Twilight has never been one for appearances—all the way back in Episode 1, she decided to just carry on with her day after Dash completely destroyed her mane. And then she got wings and was pretty unfazed by that, too.
It also struck me as odd that she was convinced Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie somehow executed a master prank as she slept, rather than what seems to me to be the obvious assumption: that this was all Discord’s doing.
All in all, a funny concept that went with some strange choices that didn’t really work for it.
Bells of Paradise
by Cromegas_Flare
So, starting at the bottom of my RIL list, we find… a 30k story on Hiatus. I don’t really have that much free time right now, so let’s go for the short ones down here. Which brings us to… a cancelled Slice Of Life by Cromegas_Flare.
Okay, I love Crome, he’s an awesome guy who can write some gut-wrenching gore and chilling darkfic. But he needs a proofreader. This one was clearly posted incomplete and without any editing, and it shows. But the spelling and grammar aside, the story thus far seems nice enough, just showing Sweetie and Rarity on vacation. I honestly kind of want to know where he was going with it. My only problem (outside of it needing a proofreader) was an out-of-nowhere and pointless appearance by Pinkie Pie.
Twilight, Applejack, and Peach Schnapps
by Burning Skyway
This one came from that brief fad about Twilight and peaches, and it’s pretty heavily downvoted. Worse than my Peaches Anthology, for that matter, and my thing was awful, so I’m cautious going into this.
Well, there are some distracting punctuation and capitalization errors, as well as a few typos, but I think the bigger issue is the overwhelming amount of Apple Accent. I know people like to try and express AJ’s dialect phonetically, but the typical way people do it is pretty extreme. I think I’m in a good position to comment on that, because I wouldn’t write my own speech this way, and, being from West Virginia, I have a similar accent.
Really. If it was a minute to five and you asked me what time it was, you’d hear “foah fiddy-nahn.”
Asilin makes fun of me for it. 
The weird thing is, for all the overuse of Apple Accent, Peach Schnapps herself is stated to be German (or Germane, I guess), and we don’t get a humorously over-the-top accent for her.
You know, like this guy.
Anyway, for all of that, it was funny enough, and doesn’t merit the lopsided score it’s gotten.
Cunt
by moviemaster8510
Saw that title in the new stories as I was checking my messages and I had to click it.
I’m gonna go with “trollfic” on this one, seeing as how it reads like an anti-Brony’s mockery of cloppers. And then just goes weird and kind of terrible. I would have thought that was actually how this came about, or it was a misguided first attempt, but the author has like 20 stories published and over 350 followers.
You might like it if you’re a major fan of anilingus, trolling, or generally miserable things.
Pranking With Your Reverse Gender Self
by Surplus Flow
Hey, look at that. R63 crossover that isn’t just random selfcest clopfic.
I have no idea where I found this.
Well, the story features the author’s OC, and from the way it’s written, he seems to have been introduced in a previous story. There wasn’t a prequel linked, though, so right off the bat I’m a bit lost. The writing is kind of bland and awkward, and there are occasional POV slips where the story will randomly jump from third-person to first for a sentence or two. I’m seeing some missing words and punctuation as well.
That and the OC comes off as a Gary Stu. He’s a secret agent for an interdimensional MIB organization, lives in a mansion, has access to a lot of secret futuristic technology (which he abuses for casual things like summoning Coca-Cola from Earth) and weapons (which are named but never described), and is stated to sometimes be capable of performing greater magic than the Princess. And he’s improbably lucky.
Oh, apparently, in this world Celestia and Luna are Queens, and each has a prince as a son. So maybe the great feats of magic are intended to be in comparison to those characters, and not Celestia and Luna. Still, that doesn’t really lessen the Gary Stu feel going on here, and frankly, I’ve gotten bored of this before finishing even the first chapter.
It’s been on hiatus for over 6 months now, so I doubt I’d be missing anything, anyway.
You apparently need to be more discerning in what you add to your RIL. :B
2350896
I really do. Then I wouldn't have 700 things on it.
Though about half the things I do in these blogs were impulse clicks on things I see on the front page.
2351052
Yeah, I do that a lot too. Good thing I never read anything off my RIL! :D
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