Random Review #4: It's Me Forever · 2:04pm Mar 10th, 2015
(Disclaimer: Well, it's been a while since I did just a straight up review. I wasn't going to do those anymore, but ultimately, I needed to get my opinion out somewhere else before I commented on the story, so I've decided that the best way to do so would be via classic review. Also, please note that this is all my personal opinion. If your opinion on this story is different from mine, that’s perfectly fine. I’ll do my best to explain why I feel the way I do about it, but you are by no means obliged to agree with me. If you do disagree, then let me know what you thought about the story and why. Now with all of that out of the way, let's begin.)
It’s Me Forever. This story has commonly been regarded as one of the best 'serious' FNAF fics on the entire site (it has 100 thumbs ups, for crying out loud!). I’ve seen a lot of people shower this story with praise lately, but the two that stood out for me were DerpyMuffin7 (a fellow writer/reviewer who put this story in his top 5 stories on the entire site.), and Roarin Thunder (a reviewer that I hold in a very high regard, even though he can be very hard to please at times. I rarely see him saying that he enjoyed a story in a comments section, so it was surprising to see his seal of approval on this fanfic). So, after hearing so many good things about it apparently being the best thing to come from the FNAF group, I decided to finally sit down and see what all the fuss was about. So I read it. What was my reaction? Dashie, would you do the honors?
Thank you. Yeah, I thought it was seriously underwhelming. While it wasn’t terrible, it also contained a bunch of issues within it that other readers apparently either didn’t notice, or just chose to ignore. Although it did have its moments of greatness, I felt that ‘It’s Me Forever’ ultimately didn’t live up to its potential. Why? Well, let's talk about it.
Ok, before we begin talking about pros and cons, here’s what you need to know about the plot: in FNAF, it’s widely believed that the animatronics kill people because they’re possessed by five dismembered children, who were killed by some guy commonly referred to by the FNAF fandom as ‘the purple guy’ (Creativity FTW!). ‘It’s Me Forever’ is a story that wants to show us everything from the perspective of one of the deceased, specifically the one in the Freddy suit. From there, it shows the child basically noting how the world he is now trapped in is a complete hell from which there is no escape. It’s trying to make an antagonist (a murderous animatronic bear) seem sympathetic, basically. And that’s really all you need to know about the plot.
Let’s start with the positives, since I feel that it’s only fair to give ‘It’s Me Forever’ credit where credit is due. First off, the idea is excellent, mainly due to the fact that a majority of FNAF/MLP writers seem to be afraid to take a proverbial tiptoe away from the tried and true formula of ‘replace ‘x’ with a random MLP character, and then play out the five nights.’ This story has the guts to try something very different by trying to make us actually feel for the antagonist, which is something I found quite interesting. In addition, the grammar is excellent (I could count the grammar errors I found on one hand, and that was with my Readingsins goggles on!), the pacing is solid, the prose was pretty good (albeit a bit pretentious) and the story has some really powerful moments within it (My personal favorite is when the kid is trying to call out for Pinkie in Act 2. That scene was really something else, at least for me). In addition, the story’s atmosphere at first was incredibly gripping. Yes, at the beginning, I was loving how this story was playing out! However, as the story went on, I was more and more frequently reminded of a certain quote:
Now with that being said, no new system is without it’s… kinks.-Phone Guy, FNAF 2.
Why was I reminded of this quote? I was reminded of it so often because the problems with this ‘new system’ (new idea) got more apparent the further in I got.
So, what exactly are my problems with this? Well, I have three main problems with the story. The first issue I had comes from the kid himself, or more specifically, how he constantly beat me over the head with exposition about his situation. Before you rush to the comments, let me answer some things here: Yes, I know that this was intentional. Yes, I am aware that this is a tragic situation where that sort of thing can be accepted. Yes, I do think that he was justified in his complaining. And yes, I did feel sympathy for him… at first. However, as the story went on, I found that my sympathy slowly changed to irritation. Why? I think it was because spewing that exposition was all this kid did. It was literally all the characterization he got. Seriously, what do we know about this kid? All we know is that he was murdered, and he’s now stuck in a haunted bear suit. That’s literally it. He never shows that he ever had even an ounce of personality (Did he used to be funny? Smart? Quirky? Boring? What about this kid makes him interesting? Short answer: not much.) The only thing he has going for him is that he was killed. And yes, that did make me feel sorry for him for a while, but sooner or later he needed to have something more to him than that for me to continue feeling bad for him. However, I found that he simply didn’t. For the first third, I felt really bad for him. In the 2nd third, his constant recycling of the same basic exposition began to get irritating. And by the time the story reached its final third, I just wanted him to shut up, or at the very least talk about something different for a little while. It was kind of like having a friend complain to you about a tragic situation. Sure, at first you feel sorry for them, at least if you’re, as Twilight would put it, a true, true friend, but if they just kept constantly complaining about it to you, without saying anything else, then eventually you’ll grow sick of it, and just want them to stop. Same deal here. I’ll explain how I feel this could’ve been done better after I describe issue two, since they basically go hand in hand.
My 2nd issue is Act 3. Yes, all of it. Y’see, in Act 3, the story gets… sloppy, mainly because the final act drops in quite a bit of unnecessary exposition on the reader, such as a (brief) description of the murder, as well as a (brief) discussion of the 5 of them in disrepair during the events of FNAF 2. The way this story handled the exposition in the final act made it feel like the story was saying, “Oh yeah, and then this and that happened. Forgot to mention that earlier. My bad!” In addition, said exposition was too small for it to be of any particular interest, and came too late for it to have any relevance to the plot, meaning it only succeeded at making the final act feel messy. The really sad thing about this is that these moments of exposition could’ve worked great! All the story needed to do was give them a bit more detail, shift them around a bit, and POOF! Problem solved. Not only that, but it would’ve helped solve my first problem too! What do I mean by this? Well, let me give you an example: in Act 1, while they were singing the birthday song, perhaps our main character could’ve had a flashback to the day of the murder, (since he can’t stop himself from singing, he decides that he may as well reflect on the past that got him here.
Ex: ‘The song started, and the false voice began to sing into the microphone. I tried my hardest to stop singing that vile song that I’ve been forced to sing for as long as I could remember. I knew by this point that I could never stop it, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from trying. However, once again, my efforts were in vain; I couldn’t stop that song… that horrible song that I was now forced to sing every day, for the rest of my life. I sighed internally and thought back. Back to the day before I was sentenced to this prison. *Insert flashback of day of the murder here*)
From there, if the flashback went into some detail, showing us some personality for this kid, what he was doing just before the murder, what his likes/dislikes were, or maybe even showing some interactions with the other victims before it happened (y’know, just something to show that this kid wasn’t always the Debbie Downer who currently inhabits the suit), then not only would the exposition dump in Act 3 be less gratuitous, but it also would’ve made the complaints about the prison he’s in feel more well-distributed and earned, rather than them just being everywhere simply because they can be. In addition, it would’ve let us learn more about this kid, which would’ve helped some of the more skeptical readers like myself feel more sympathy, since it would create a contrast to how he was then, compared to how he is now (for example, maybe he used to be the kind of guy who’d always like to make others smile before the murder, but after his soul was imprisoned in the suit, he eventually felt his happy outlook on life get crushed, as shown by how he is when he’s complaining. Y’know, just something to show that this kid’s personality was affected by this in some way, since as it is, I could just assume he was always like this).
And finally, my last big problem with this story was its ending. Now, don’t get me wrong, at first I actually liked the ending’s idea, what with the kids not wanting to do these murders, but being forced to anyway. That, admittedly, was quite tragic. However, when I actually took a step backwards and thought about it, I realized that the ending was ridiculously cheap. And by cheap, I mean that it’s an ending that wants to get a certain reaction out of the audience, but it ignores all logic and continuity in order to do so. Here’s the question I have about the ending: if he didn’t want the guard to die, then WHY THE F**K DID THE ROBOT KILL HIM ANYWAY?! Now, before you go down into the comments section and type something along the lines of, ‘Duh. It’s because the kids have no control of the suits! Did you even read this story before reviewing it, or do you just want to hate on something that’s popular?’ Just hear me out. See, in the games, we know that the original animatronics were haunted by the possessed, which is the reason why they murder people. This is supported by several pieces of evidence within the games (the newspaper clippings, the good ending of FNAF 3, etc.), as well as a reveal by Scott Cawthorn (the creator of the FNAF’s series), where he revealed that the reason the animatronics attacked was indeed because they were haunted, presumably by the murdered kids (or in this case, ponies). Hell, even the story itself points to this at first with lines like:
They had no idea, no idea of the evils this restaurant was capable of…and who was still haunting it.
All of this points to the animatronics only killing because they are possessed by the kids. However, for the animatronics to kill because they were possessed, the ones possessing them would have to want to do it (you don’t get something you’re possessing to do something you don’t want to happen, ok? You just don’t.) However, the story clearly shows that the kids aren’t in control of this, as shown by our main character saying this near the end, while the suit does something different:
No…
I stepped forward.
I can’t live like this!
I placed my foot inside the entrance.
Look at me! Close the door! Run! Do something!
Clearly, he doesn’t want to kill. So, if the kids don’t want to kill, than why the hell are the animatronics killing anyway? The only hypothesis I can come up with for that (that makes any sense) is that the robots were programmed to kill at night. That, however, brings up another question: who in the world would program kid’s singing animatronics to do that? Even if we are to assume that some psycho actually did program them to do that, for whatever reason, then I have to ask: Why the hell did they not kill anypony until after the kids were forced to inhabit the suits if they were programmed to kill at night? I’ve tried looking at this from every angle, but no matter which way I look at it, it doesn’t make sense, meaning that the author put it in in order to get a specific reaction out of the reader, whether it made logical sense or not. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the very definition of a forced ending.
Now, that’s enough of me flinging questions and evidence around; how could this sort of ending be done better? Well, that’s tricky, I have to admit. For the ending to make logical sense, the kid has to be causing this attack out of his own volition. However, that would be hard to make sympathetic, wouldn’t it? I’ll admit, I’m not sure what would work best. The best thing I can come up with is maybe he feels more anger in the darkness then he does during the day. When there’s light around, and there are other ponies cheering him on, the kid inside would just be depressed. However, when he’s alone in the dark, perhaps he feels more blind rage than anything else, now that he’s truly all alone, with nopony there to acknowledge him. Perhaps that’s when his thoughts go from sadness, to just flat out rage. In his blind rage, he goes on his walk, but he doesn’t actively realize what he’s doing, only snapping out of his anger once he’s heard the scream he makes during the murder. Once he hears this scream, he gets his sense of self back, and sees that he’d killed the night guard. He’d end up going through some serious guilt, realizing that in his blind rage, he’d once again cost somepony else their life. He’d become a monster… just like the purple guy that put him in this situation in the first place. Then he could end with the ‘forgive me’ line, or something like that.
Yes, I know that it’s not a great ending. Then again, neither was this story’s ending. The way the story wants the ending to be told makes it ridiculously difficult to come up with an ending that makes us feel sorry for the character in the suit, but still makes sense logically. (I probably failed in the other direction, I admit.) Personally, I think it would’ve been best if the story ended at the point where Pinkie left, ignoring the night aspect altogether, but if the story just had to have a night segment, it needed to make it fit in logically, as opposed to having it create a plothole.
There are a few other problems I have with it (like how it can’t keep its continuity constant, for instance.), but ultimately, those other complaints are just nitpicks. Really, the three problems I mentioned above are my only major qualms with this story. With that being said, those things really did ruin the mood for me. It focused too much on the prison, rather than the prisoner. If it showed us what the prisoner was like before he entered this prison, mixed in with the exposition about the lack of control he had, then I think that this could’ve been an amazing story. Instead, it decided to just stick with spewing exposition about the exact same thing over and over again, to the point where it just got tedious. I could go on and on about this, but I’d just be repeating myself, so let’s go ahead and give this story a final verdict already.
Final Rating: 6/10 (average 
) I can’t really call this story bad. The story had some really great moments (both from a dark standpoint and a sad standpoint), the idea was great, and grammar and pacing were really spot on. However, I also felt that the story could’ve been so much more than it actually was. That’s why I personally think that this story is incredibly overrated. It’s not ‘Mare Do Well: Fallout’ or ‘The Rise of Spike the Dragon’ *shudder* levels of overrated, though. It’s more ‘Their True Desires’ or ‘Let’s Giggle at the Ghosties’ levels of overrated (both of which are stories that I personally like, but don’t understand why they got the hype that they did): There’s a great idea for a story in there, and the story does show flashes of the idea’s true greatness from time to time, but it ultimately falls short for one reason or another. In this story’s case, it fell short because the exposition of the prison overstayed its welcome, causing the main character to become annoying, as opposed to sympathetic. If this story focused more on the character himself, then I probably would’ve been more impressed with it, but as it is, it’s not a bad story overall. If you’re a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan, I still recommend checking this story out, if for no other reason than to see a unique take on the standard Five Nights/My Little Pony crossover. However, if you’re not a fan of Five Nights at Freddy’s, then this story probably won’t be enough to change your mind.
End Review.
And there you go, there’s my opinion on ‘It’s Me Forever’. Phew, that took a while. If you disagree with me (which I’m sure at least a couple of you will), then let me know in the comments what about the story drew you in (or possibly why I was too nice too it, I dunno). I’d love to hear your opinions! Cheers 
Ha! You must have me confused with another DerpyMuffin.
But let me explain myself. When I placed that story on my "top list", I did so for a few reasons.
1. I have an extreme amount of bias, as the fanfic's pretty much my child.
2. The concept is revolutionary, and it gave a lot of people hope that there could still be good FNaF crossovers.
3. I consider it to be the best in the genre, not the site. I don't think anyone could claim the latter.
Even with that said, I've debated taking it off multiple times.
And by the way, you mentioned Roarin Thunder. Fun story, I was the one who PMed RT the link to the story when it was published.
Pay no attention to the thread behind the curtain.
I swear I've heard that line before.
Overall, I have to say that while this story was entertaining, it did have some major flaws. More importantly, I never noticed the plothole. Good catch!
Oh yeah, and there's a sequel by a new author.
2866066
*looks over review*
Oh my God, you're right! I meant to say DerpyMuffin5! Dang it! For you, I should've put the word 'reviewer' in quotation marks, since, unlike 5, while you're not a reviewer in the traditional sense, I can (and oftentimes do) count your comment reviews as a sort of review.
1. Understandable.
2. Yes, I agree. If only more people tried to be creative with it.
3. So, it's not in the top 5, huh? Damnit, Derpy, don't lie on your lists!
Hmm? Why? (I guess that does explain why he was there though, since he usually only comments on bad fics.)
Why not? I say let 'em look if they want to, since without that thread, this review wouldn't even exist!
Look dude, I'm sorry about that. It was just too quotable for me to pass up! I'm sorry that it you were so quotable! (Hope you aren't angry about it...)
Is that one about Springtrap?
BTW, I'm considering commenting on IMF, basically doing the same thing I did in this review. Think it's a good idea? Cheers
It seems like you have the same problem with the story that I have with the story "Past Sins" I liked it but I don't think its the best story on the site
2866646
He commented on another story that he was tired of people just showing him bad stories.
I'm not angry.
Yes, yes it is.
2866066 Oh yeah, almost forgot: next lackluster literature I'm gonna do is gonna be on a horrible FNAF fanfic. Do you have any suggestions?
2866647 Well... sort of. Unlike Past Sins, I doubt anyone considers this story best on site. Rather, I was more confused as to why it got so many thumbs up, despite being an ultimately mediocre fanfic IMO. The only real connection between Past Sins and It's Me Forever was that I found both to be overrated.
2866678 Are you referring to the JoblessEditor one? Not a day passes when I don't wish I had said more than "a bit extreme".
2866692 Well, I haven't decided which one yet (I wanna make sure I review the worst of them all, so I'm looking carefully to see which story was handled worst), but that's one of the canidates.
Yeah, I noticed that response. I was half tempted to respond to that comment of yours with a comment saying "a bit of an underexaggeration.", but I ultimately decided to say to Jobless more or less what Eldorado said to that guy that told you to go shoot yourself, and then take my leave. It's too bad that the story was deleted, though.
2866678 that's what I was trying too get across
2866741 By the way, forgot to mention. When I proposed the idea in the group thread, I had planned for it to be a multi-chapter, ongoing story with 5000+ word chapters, each one fleshing (pun intended) out the kids' personalities, and means of coping to the situation. Also, I wanted more focus put on the backstories of these kids. Was one a nerd? A bully? The dreamer?
Unfortunately, JDPrime22 chose the one-shot path, and while the results aren't completely disappointing, I planned for it to be better.
Awesome review! Thanks for taking time out of your day to do this!
2902181 You're quite welcome. Thanks for giving it your time! Cheers