Badfic Slaughterhouse #20 · 12:40am Feb 24th, 2015
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, step right up and feast your eyes on the one, the only, the amazing, terrifying, utterly stupendous Badfic Slaughterhouse! Inside, you’ll find all manner of stories. Marvel at the magnificence of the good ones, and cover the eyes of your children because the bad ones are going straight into our handy-dandy, one of a kind, industrial strength badfic grinder!
Be sure to stop at the concession stand on your way out to purchase your very own miniature badfic grinder, ideal for shredding the average Twilight paperback and making crinkle cut fries!
Since the reviews have been getting longer, I decided to start cutting back on the number of them per post. Instead of eight, I’m gonna try six. Maybe I’ll cut it down more in the future.
Second Sun, by Carabas
Tags: Comedy
Rating: Teen
Length: 12,367 words (Status: Complete – 4/4 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: An experimental spell splits Celestia into two opposite halves of her personality.
Review: First of all, let me just say that the comedy tag is somewhat misleading. While there is certainly plenty of humor, it doesn’t seem to be the focus. The real heart of the story is in its examination of Celestia’s character, and that’s also where it delivers most strongly.
Her two halves are portrayed convincingly, and when the wild side isn’t being played for laughs, it’s actually the more sympathetic one, despite being less reasonable and prone to violence and general jackassery.
On the negative side, though, the story feels like it wasn’t planned very well. The primary issue is with the handling of Twilight and friends, who are soon called in to help deal with the problem, despite Luna already knowing that it would resolve itself in short order. Their presence is justified later on through the use of a convenient Diabolus Ex Machina, which introduces its own minor logic hole, but there was just no need for them to be involved at all, and the story is weaker for it.
The writing is generally solid, but dialogue tagging is problematic, and I don’t just mean in the tags themselves, although there are some terrible saidisms which, as you know by now, get on my nerves. I mean, really, why would anyone think “blazed” is a dialogue verb? The big problem is that it often isn’t immediately clear who’s speaking. In scenes with a multitude of characters, speakers need to be identified quickly, and passages like this one are troublesome:
“So,” started Applejack as the train wove through the mountains leading to Canterlot, “Why do you think it was Princess Luna that sent the letter rather than Celestia? Has she ever done that before?”
“No, she hasn’t. I hope Celestia isn’t indisposed,” replied Twilight Sparkle, frowning as she paced from one side of the carriage to the other. “Luna mentioned another crisis. Maybe that’s what it is? Perhaps Celestia’s been hurt, and something about the Elements of Harmony can help her.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe she’s just super-busy with ruling the country, and whatever this crisis is, it’s taking up more of her attention.” Rainbow Dash, who had managed to contort herself into a comfortable resting position on one of the hard train seats, shrugged. “This might not be anything special – or, you know, be at the lower end of the spectrum for special when it comes to summons from one of the princesses.”
While that first paragraph is tagged appropriately—aside from the awful bookism—and the second one isn’t much of an issue, the third one takes way too long before identifying the speaker. Until I got to the action tag, I thought it was Pinkie speaking. Seriously, read it in both of their voices, and see if it doesn’t sound more like a Pinkie line.
Also, as is common among British authors, Carabas has no handle at all on Applejack’s vernacular. Her lines are uniformly awkward, and trying to read them in AJ’s voice was frustrating.
Mechanically, it’s fine. There are some small errors, but it’s above average in nearly all respects.
Verdict: It doesn’t explore the concept as fully as I’d have liked, and it definitely doesn’t live up to its comedy tag, but it’s an interesting character piece that I’d recommend to Celestia fans or anyone who finds the idea intriguing.
Liar, by Ephraim Blue
Tags: Slice of Life
Rating: Everyone
Length: 3,298 words (Status: Complete – 2/2 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Applejack lies. A lot.
Review: The fundamental idea behind this fic is a strange one. It’s built around the notion that Applejack is a habitual liar, who had been lying throughout the entire series, and she became the Element of Honesty because she talked out her ass about some things and just happened, completely accidentally, to be right. That bit of character assassination also manages to undermine the entire concept of the series.
Right from the beginning, the story starts off on the wrong foot by spending several paragraphs spouting philosophical nonsense about the nature of truth and lies, and it doesn’t improve. It mostly consists of retellings of scenes from the show and a few that were made up, in which Applejack tells a bunch of lies and feels guilty about it or something.
Here’s an example:
"Now, listen here. What Ah'm saying to you is the honest truth. Let go, and you'll be safe."
That entire statement was full of lies. When she looked up, she saw Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy lowering Rarity and Pinkie Pie down to safety, but she couldn't hold on to Twilight much longer. All she could hope for was those two pegasus would be able to catch her in time.
The purple unicorn looked at Applejack with eyes full of worry. She trusted Applejack. With one final breath, she let go of her.
The two pegasus did manage to catch her in time. Applejack felt relieved that her friend survived, but felt even guiltier, because she lied when she said she knew she would be safe.
The truth was, she didn't know she would make it at all.
As you can see, the prose is completely devoid of artistry and about as subtle as an army of giant, chainsaw-wielding Vikings. Emotions are always told, never shown, and it has a variety of other flaws that occur once or twice apiece, such as fourth wall breaks and perspective slips.
In mechanical terms, it’s sorta passable, but there are a plethora of punctuation errors.
Verdict: I can’t think of any reason to recommend this to anyone. It’s a complete waste of time.
And the Leaves Shall Tell of Its Passing, by StormDancer
Tags: Slice of Life
Rating: Everyone
Length: 5,630 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Fluttershy befriends a wolf. The description tries to make it sound grander, but that’s what it boils down to.
Review: I’ll say this right up front: I don’t ‘get’ this story. I don’t understand what the point was supposed to be, and I’m clearly not its target audience. The author seems to be rather proud of it, though, judging by his/her author’s note at the end, which talks about how there are a bunch of things going on in the background of the story that people might miss.
For me, it was dead boring. Nothing really happened in it. Fluttershy goes on a trip to a lake, meets a wolf on the way, invites it to join her, “sings” with it, watches the sun set… There are no obstacles or challenges, and without some sort of conflict, there was just nothing to keep my interest.
To make matters worse, the prose is overwrought, loaded with pointless phrases that make irrelevant points or draw attention to meaningless things. When it’s doing well, it can be really effective. For example:
There was the rustle of her hooves on sparse grass and moss of course, but there was also a melody crafted by the woods itself. The chipmunk, which watched her from the safety of it's nest, chittered cheerfully while the wren took flight, adding its wing-beats to the whispers of the trees which had begun to sway in the light breeze. The sing-song calls of jays and finches provided backup to the chirping of crickets and the soft footfalls of the ermine which had come to investigate the yellow pegasus. Overhead, a bat adjusted its wings unconsciously as she passed, completely unaware of the visitor to its woodland home.
I really liked that paragraph because it quickly established the presence of a bustling ecosystem and provided some solid imagery. However, when the pendulum swings the other direction, you get stuff like this:
Fluttershy smiled softly as she passed, wishing them well as Mr. and Mrs. Willowfluff came out to greet her, their little bunny babies clustering about them as she passed. With a moment's consideration, Mrs. Willowfluff darted out and offered her a tiny blossom as a gift. She, of course, accepted it with a warm smile and a gentle nuzzle before resuming her walk, the bridge disappearing behind the weathered trunk of an old oak tree.
The first sentence is fine, but the rest is a mess. The beginning of the second sentence is unnecessary and a little confusing, and the third sentence ends with a participial phrase that adds no worthwhile imagery and fails to serve a proper adjective function to the preceding phrase.
It also has a problem with word repetition. The word “moment,” for example, appears almost 50% more often than Fluttershy’s name does.
Mechanically, it has a wide variety of comma errors, as well as a few spelling errors and confusing phrases. Although none of them appear consistently, there are enough of them to adversely affect readability.
Verdict: If you think imagery of the sort shown above is enough to make it worth your while, by all means, check this story out. However, if you want something with substance, look elsewhere.
Rarity’s Quest to Save Literally Everything, by PegasusMesa
Tags: Romance, Adventure
Rating: Teen
Length: 17,083 words (Status: Incomplete – 2/2 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: A mysterious stallion puts Rarity into a time loop so she can save the world.
Review: I’ve always been a sucker for time loop stories, so when I found this lurking in my Read Later bookshelf and realized what it was, I had to pick it up. After blowing through the first two chapters, I was pretty eager to see more.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in five months.
Now, I’m in no position to throw stones on this one, considering that it’s been even longer since I updated There Goes the Neighborhood—I swear, I really am trying!—but that has to affect my recommendation, especially since it ends on a note of pure WTF.
As for the story itself, though… Well, in a nutshell, it’s pretty good.
Rarity makes for an interesting choice of protagonist, considering that she’s not exactly the action hero type, and she’s portrayed well. All the nuances of her personality are on display, so she’s very well-rounded. Perhaps she says “darling” a little too much, but other than that, I don’t see any reason to complain.
The other principal characters seen so far are Luna and a mysterious stallion named Hay Budget. While Luna retains the thin vestiges of her canon persona, there really isn’t much to work with, so her characterization is hard to fault. Hay Budget is an intriguing enigma, with just enough information known about him to tease his deeper mysteries.
As the scenario builds throughout the first chapter, it maintains a solid pace and a good deal of suspense until it culminates in a big event that kicks the plot off in earnest. The next chapter proceeds through the usual questions about a first loop but manages to avoid being clichéd by having Rarity adjust in time to jump into action and make significant headway on the first attempt, leading to an interesting escalation of the scenario.
I just wish it continued on from there.
The prose is lean and efficient without being bare-bones, which is the way I like it. There’s plenty of cleverness in the presentation, and there are some good laughs to be had, even though the story’s tone isn’t overly comedic.
Mechanically, it’s pretty solid. A few hiccups here and there, but nothing serious.
Verdict: This is a solid start to an adventure I’d like to see more of, and it should be of particular interest to fans of time loop stories like Hard Reset. However, it’s hard to recommend dropping anything to pick this one up when its fate is uncertain.
Tags: Sex, Comedy, Random, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Human
Rating: Teen
Length: 16,237 words (Status: Complete – 4/4 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Rainbow Dash visits Twilight’s home to study for a test and finds that her family are nudists.
Review: Another non-clop, supposedly comedic story about nudity that made the feature box. I’m not sure what that says about the site, and I definitely don’t want to think about what it means for my own reading habits, so I’ll just gloss over that and get to the point.
The first thing to know about this story is that the tags are BS. “Sex” is reasonable because there’s quite a bit of innuendo, but “Comedy” is a stretch—the humor is inconsistent—and “Random” is an outright lie. Everything is explained. Thoroughly. Sometimes too thoroughly.
The premise is a bizarre one, and the idea of such a story having a teen rating and no romance tag… Well, that caught my eye. And sure enough, there’s no real shipping. It’s a straightforward tale about Rainbow coming to grips with the nudist lifestyle. If nothing else, at least it’s focused on the point it’s trying to make.
Unfortunately, it makes the point a little too much, drawing out its length a few thousand words longer than it needed to be. When the same internal conflict plays out in the narration for the third or fourth time, it gets boring.
Now, I’m not a nudist, and I readily admit that I have no idea whether this story accurately portrays them or not, but when it wasn’t tripping over itself to reiterate a point that was already made, it didn’t seem off. Whether it’s authentic or not, I bought it.
There wasn’t much time taken to show the familiar parts of the characters’ personalities, but nothing felt out of place—possibly excepting Shining Armor, who’s never been shown in this sort of capacity—and when Twilight showed off her nerdiness, it felt reasonably authentic. Special props for characterization go to Cadance, whose near-insufferable perfection from the show was on full display.
The quality of the writing has its ups and downs. The few punctuation errors don’t hinder readability to any significant degree, although there are some missing/extra/misplaced words that cause momentary confusion. The prose is largely effective, but it’s too sparse in certain areas, especially in regard to setting scenes. Dialogue mostly reads naturally, but it’s occasionally difficult to tell who’s speaking. Also, it doesn’t always make sense, as instanced in this exchange:
“Cool. Break now?”
Rolling her eyes, she made a “shoo-shoo” gesture with her hand. “Fine. I’ll give you five minutes.”
Rainbow leaned forward on her knees and ran a smirk across her lips. “I’ll give you ten.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Seven.”
“Eleven.”
“You… you just went higher.”
“And I’ll keep going higher. Take it or leave it.”
“…Eight,” she relented, shaking her head.
“Heh, awesome.” Satisfied in her glorious victory, Rainbow plopped onto her back, her head resting on her hands underneath.
If someone can explain how the end of that exchange makes sense, please let me know.
A lot of the usual amateur errors appear frequently, including infrequent (but highly annoying) LUS and pervasive saidism abuse.
Verdict: This one probably lives and dies by a reader’s interest in its concept. If you think it sounds like a fun idea, go right ahead and check it out. Otherwise, you probably have more interesting stuff in your bookshelves.
Together Forever, by Snake Staff
Tags: Romance, Sad, Dark, Adventure, Alternate Universe
Rating: Teen
Length: 38,307 words (Status: Complete – 11/11 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Hundreds of years after the death of his body, Shining Armor is still with Cadance in the form of a crystal golem. Some ponies think that it’s about time for him to finally die.
Review: You know how I usually rag on first person stories that change PoV? In most cases, it’s because you can’t immediately tell who’s narrating. In this one, after every shift, the name of the new narrator is written right up at the top. Not very elegant, but it works.
There’s some good material here, and the setup is intriguing. Shining’s conflict is developed well in the first chapter, and Cadance’s problems tie in nicely. The build-up to the final confrontation is strong (although a little heavy-handed for my tastes) and the climax delivers.
Despite the solid foundation and climax, though, this story absolutely falls to pieces in most other regards.
Before I pull out my pitchfork and fire up the grinder, there’s one little thing I want to mention. This may well just be a pet peeve, but it really bothers me when the princesses are referred to as goddesses in a story like this, even though it clearly shows that their power is limited and they can be killed.
Now, the first thing to note is that the narration is loaded with infodumps—paragraph after paragraph of exposition and philosophizing, usually bringing the story to a complete halt for hundreds of words at a time, often to tell us things we already know, presumably just because the character currently narrating hasn’t said it yet, even if others have.
It’s not easy for me. I remember when Shining Armor was just a thin recruit barely out of colthood with an adoring little sister and not-so-hidden crush on my niece. When it became clear that she reciprocated, I encouraged them to date. When Shining earned his promotion to Captain, I remember feeling a great sense of pride in his achievements. Even then, I thought of him as a sort of family. When he finally proposed marriage to Cadence, I could not have been happier to perform their marriage myself. The look on my niece’s face when I pronounced them husband and wife reminded me of my own face on my wedding day, thousands of years ago now.
That excerpt, delivered from Celestia’s PoV, is a prime example. It doesn’t contribute anything because we already know pretty much all of it. And it doesn’t end there. The infodump continues for at least half a dozen more paragraphs before delivering new information.
It also meanders around, filling time with meaningless events that have no bearing on the larger narrative and don’t advance characterization.
My biggest complaint about this story, however, is that its primary conflict—the first one to be introduced, which drives all the others—remains unresolved at the end and gets dangled as a sequel hook. Things have hardly even changed from the status quo at the start of the story. There was some neat stuff along the way, but if nothing progresses, what was it all for?
The mechanics are generally passable, although there are frequent punctuation errors throughout the story, which sometimes have an impact on readability, and missing words are a recurring problem. Some chapters have issues with missing capitalization following dialogue, but most readers won’t notice that, and it doesn’t have a severe impact.
Verdict: I didn’t like this at all, but I know a lot of people will. If you can handle the infodumps and want a tale of intrigue between alicorns—ultimately, Shining Armor turns out to be little more than a plot device to set up a conflict between Cadence and Celestia—this will likely be worth your while.
Since I'm tinkering around with the format, I'm open to suggestions. How would you guys suggest improving it?
Want me to take a shot at a particular story? Make a request in the comments.
Rules:
—You can request a story of any length.
—It can be yours or someone else’s, and I don’t care whether it’s good or a train wreck, but I make no guarantees that I’ll read anything. These are requests, not orders.
—One request per person per review post, and only on the most recent one.
—If I don’t like your story, don’t be butthurt over it. It's just one (really picky) guy's opinion, and I'll probably recommend it for someone, even if I hate it.
I am completely baffled as to what the appeal of something like It's Just Anatomy might be. If it doesn't exist to excite prurient interests, isn't a comedy, isn't even particularly absurd, and has nothing to do with ponies (I mean, they have to be humanized here because the premise literally makes no sense if they're ponies), then what's left?
Unrelated: these posts are a lot of fun to read. Six fics, eight, however many works for you, just keep 'em coming!
Ah another Prak exclusive. Good job, ye olde wagon. You've carried us far.
I'd like to suggest Then Tomorrow Came. It's a grim dark TwiDash tale that I absolutely love, but it's not easy to read. It hurts your soul, because Twilights emotions in it just... Oooph. Anyways, I'm just curious about your thoughts on it.
I'm curious, my friend -- have any writers reported an increase in views/votes/whatnot after your reviews?
I ask because I'm tempted to ask you to peek at another one of my works some time...
2826453
I really don't have any idea. No one's ever said anything about it.
2826092
Added it to my request list.
2825293
Yeah, it really doesn't make a lot of sense. I think the suggestiveness of the title and its description contributed to its success, though. Sex sells, as they say, even if there isn't really any sex.
2831817
Just wonderin'...
2831832
Fair enough, but it can't hurt to make a request if you have something you want to get more eyeballs on.
2831834
I'm thinking about it. I mean, even if I point you towards one of my goofy parodies, at least you'd be reading something intentionally stupid for a change...
If I had to bullshit a defense, our Southern is Received Pronunciation. Terrible, awful, no-good wires may get crossed.
In any case, cheers for the review of Second Sun. Glad it did a few things you liked, and I've tried to avoid as much baroque dialogue tagging in subsequent pieces.
You're also, for it's worth, the third person to take me to task over the inclusion of a Comedy tag on a story. For three different stories. Apparently, I unintentionally write serious things.
2832059
There isn't really a need for any sort of defense. Applejack's vernacular is so different from what's spoken over there that most British authors have a hard time with it. It's tough to write across a cultural gap.
As for the Comedy tag, it isn't that the story isn't funny; it's just that the humor isn't the focus, which is what that tag implies. The story isn't any worse for not being an outright comedy, but the tag can create some false expectations.
2832199
I just find it curious. Your reservations with the tag mirror Titanium Dragon's own thoughts on another Comedy-tagged story I've written. For both that and Second Sun, I did set out to make them comedies - and ended up, by your own and his accounts, making something serious leavened with a bit of humourous content.
No worries.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this story. I'd also like to point out grammar errors are being edited and some chapters may merge. I'd say more, but this is a mature-rated story... :(
Hmmm... shame you didn't like my story. I am working to correct the punctuation errors, and I do appreciate feedback nonetheless.
Oh, and when you find the time, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at another story of mine, Friendship is Grievous.
Looks like I'll have to start updating that story now. Glad you enjoyed it, though.