• Member Since 22nd Jun, 2014
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FireclawDrake


More Blog Posts3

  • 469 weeks
    Review Blog #1: Guilty Pleasures

    Hey guys,

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    4 comments · 452 views
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    Spring! (And a request from you!)

    Hey guys!

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    3 comments · 275 views
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    Hooray!

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    0 comments · 251 views
Apr
1st
2015

Review Blog #1: Guilty Pleasures · 7:49pm Apr 1st, 2015

Hey guys,

I'm starting my review blogging off with a personal favourite story of mine: one that I've read through a few times already. I'm starting with one of my favourites so I can set out a layout and get early feedback on my review style and format. Feedback is always appreciated! I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum but be warned that I'll need to talk about what happens in the story at times. So... Spoiler Alert!

By the way I'm starting with a mature, sex-tagged story. Just so you guys are warned. :twilightsheepish:

The story in question is:
An Escort's Journal by Disco Knight.
Rating: Mature
Completion: Incomplete
Tags: Sex, Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life
Character Tags: Derpy Hooves, Original Characters, Mane 6

Short Description:

Guilty Pleasure (an obvious pseudonym) is a male escort living just outside of Ponyville. The story is told from a first-person perspective through the protagonist's journal. The story follows Guilty as he lives his life: from haircuts, to poker night, and of course, being "on the job" as it were.

Review:

The first fanfic I ever read from the brony community was Romance Reports. If you're unfamiliar with that story, it's essentially a coming-of-age story for Twilight as she muddles her way through the intricacies of dating, sex, and love. It does contain explicit sex (clop), but the fact that the sex scenes were well-written and hot came second to the fact that the story itself was so engaging. Another one of my first forays into the fanfic community was Xenophilia, another staple of the clopfic community. Like Romance Reports, Xenophilia offered an engaging story, excellent world-building, and fairly hot sex scenes. What interested me about these stories was their treatment of sex and related topics. Now, let's be clear: sex is a fairly taboo topic in our culture. Most novels which do include sex usually gloss over the actual act. One of the things that drew me to these particular stories was that the sexual content is extremely important to the story. Just like in life, sex is an important part of a relationship - vital moments, turning points in relationships, both of these can occur during a sexual encounter.

An Escort's Journal is another example of using sex-related content to tell the story. And there would really be no avoiding this since the protagonist is a prostitute. Since the story is written from a first person perspective, we really get inside of Guilty Pleasure's head throughout the whole story. The author does a great job of letting us see how strange of a relationship with sex that a sex worker might have. It offers us a radically different perspective, and as far as I'm concerned, that's worth the price of admission on it's own. This is especially true when Guilty begins to develop romantic feelings for one of his clients.

Now, I talked straight upfront about the sexual aspects of the story first so that people fully understood what they were getting into should they decide to read the story. It definitely has sex, and the sex is definitely not skippable if you're going to get the full impact of the story. Heck, most of the time the sex scenes are so engaging from a story perspective that I'd rather focus on reading than clop. Heck, in one of the sex scenes, Guilty Pleasure is so distinctly uncomfortable with what his client wants him to do that it actually made me uncomfortable to read it. With that full disclosure in mind, I'm moving on from sex (though it may come up a time or two throughout the review - it's pretty central).

One of the things that really stands out to me in this story is the depth and breadth of characterization that goes on. Guilty Pleasure is a very complex person, with alot going on in his head and in his life. He struggles with his self-identity as he's always putting on an act for his clients. We're given steady glimpses of his past throughout the story. We are able to slowly piece together what's brought him to this point in his life, while at the same time leaving us begging for more details. This is done masterfully. So masterfully that I ended up binge-reading all 200k words of this in one sitting when I first discovered it (and eagerly awaiting new chapters). But it's not just Guilty Pleasure that's a deep character. The Mane 6 are all presented as we know and love them, but with little quirks and depth that assures us they aren't just part of the scenery - heck, one of the Mane 6 serves as the story's primary antagonist. Other Ponyville regulars are brought to life vividly and full of character - and the sexual encounters with them only serve to enrich them.

It's not just the Ponyville regulars though - Disco Knight introduces a few OCs here and there to really bring to life the world around our protagonist. The foul-mouthed barber from Manehatten who retired to Ponyville is one such OC. Close Shave is so well-written that it makes reading a freaking haircut interesting. Seriously.

I'm going to put it on the table now: I'm a crier. I cry during intensely emotional moments of stories. Things don't even have to be sad: tearing up/crying is my emotional outlet. Hell, I've teared up while watching MLP in the past. I say that so that you take it with a grain of salt that I cried several times over the course of this story. What you should take away from that though is that there are some great emotional moments as Guilty struggles with making friends and a life in the rumour mill that is Ponyville.

Now that I've sung the praises, let me remind you that this is one of my favourite stories on the site, but that doesn't mean it's completely perfect. The early chapters especially seemed to have missed being proofread and could definitely use another pass to clean up the errors. Inconsistent capitalization can be found in almost all the chapters.

Further, at initial glance one might accuse this story of being sexist against women. I want to tread carefully with this topic because this is something I'm very sensitive towards, and it's also something that I think is very important, especially in the male-oriented world of porn (even though I wouldn't label this story as porn, despite the explicit sex). The reason why this accusation could be levelled at this story is because the main character repeatedly states that he knows how mares work, and that he knows them inside and out and what they like. He describes mares specifically as being "ashamed" of their sexual desires. Instead of accusing the story itself of being sexist, I would say instead that Guilty is written as intentionally coming across as sexist. It can be difficult to separate the two given that the story is written from the first person. However! Given the breadth of characterization across the women in this story - and the fact that Guilty himself isn't exactly a "manly" guy - I don't believe the author is being sexist. To reiterate - it's part of Guilty's character that he's a bit sexist, and is a result of his rather jaded views towards his profession.

Now, I don't believe in a number rating system since I don't think a complicated opinion can be easily represented numerically. Instead, I'll just give my final recommendation.

For An Escort's Journal: if you are okay with explicit sexual content, this is a must read for anyone who likes Slice of Life stories.

Thank you for reading my review, and please provide feedback!

Report FireclawDrake · 452 views ·
Comments ( 4 )

Alright, we got our first review!

Now, feedback.

I've been thinking about a project for a long time now, and one thing that has been keeping me from getting started on it was that I couldn't decide on what format I should do it in, but now I realize that, like most TV Shows, comics and the like, it would evolve over time into a more unique and characteristic format the more I would work on the actual content and focus less on the format. (I don't work on that project now, I'm busy with other stuff).

So here is what I have to say about your concerns for format:
Don't worry about it too much and just keep at it. Eventually, you should get a feel of how you like to make your reviews and it will begin to reflect your priorities as well.

It was interesting that you were rather open with your personal history and feelings toward this fic, as it definitely gives it a more personal touch.

For now, I really don't have anything to critique about this critique. You seem to know what your talking about and it was rather concise. It does feel a there is room to grow.

I do feel that your first review with a fic that you are not familiar with will be a much different experience and I look forward to see how you do with it.

Keep up the good work!

You know, that review is pretty lame. Not very much, but still. You should really work on it. And why to bring up whether Guilty is a sexist or not? What does it have to do with anything?

2973149

What else would you like to see in a review? It's my first one so I'm on pretty shaky ground as far as what I should and shouldn't include.

As for the sexism part, I felt the need to make the distinction between sexism which is inherent and unintentional, and deliberately characterized, since it can be a major factor for people when they decide to read a story. I definitely felt it was important enough to include, but if you feel differently that's cool.

2973491 As it was said before, it's good that you are open with your personal history and feelings toward this fic, but the part, where you're speaking about it is way too long, pretty much as long as the part where you discuss the story. It's not like I'm against personal history and feelings in a review, certainly not, but everything needs balance.

Now for the main part: I felt that the text was rather insipid. You keep on praising the story, but in the end it's hard to understand why exactly is it so good? Instead of complimenting the story in general, I think, you'd better concentrate on describing specific things you liked/disliked about the story.

In general, your review isn't complete. For example, you could mentioned, that this fic is as much about sex as it is about relationships and how one can build one. That we are able to see the inner dynamics inside different kinds of pairs on different stages and under a different circumstances. That Guilty is a decent psychologist and through his eyesight we are able to observe a whole lot of delicate changes in pony's behaviour and emotional state. You could've mention that this story contains evil Applejack, and that's a major thing and not everybody would like it. Or on opposite it can attract people's attention. You could've mention that this story has a decent romantic line! All in all it feels like you leave out a big chunk of this story outside of your review.

Now about Guilty being a sexist. He's not perfect. He's manipulative and egoistic. He's a coward, and sometimes a bastard and a bitch. He's all of this things (which you could've mentioned in your review). But. He is not a sexist. I simple can't see that in him. Yes, he did mention that he knows how mares work, but I don't believe it should be understood as "I'm superior to mares", but more like "I know what mares want and I can give it to them". In the end, it's his special talent.

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