Badfic Slaughterhouse #25 · 6:21pm Oct 21st, 2015
The doors of the Badfic Slaughterhouse have opened once more, and six more stories now stand before their judge, jury, and potential executioner. Which will be found worthy, and which will be thrown into a grinder for your twisted amusement? Read on to find out.
In this edition of Badfic Slaughterhouse:
—Drunken poker shenanigans.
—Abel and Caine, reincarnated as astronauts.
—Sunset Shimmer gets hammered.
—Being gay makes ponies stupid.
—Twilight traverses dimensions in search of good TV reception.
—Ridiculousness that defies description.
Let the first defendant step forward.
What Did You Call Me?, by bookplayer
Rating: Teen
Tags: Romance, Slice of Life
Length: 1,570 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Some new friends make an embarrassing assumption about Rainbow Dash’s sexuality.
Review: Yeah, I know you all probably read this when it was in the feature box. I want to talk about it, though, so you’re just gonna have to suck it up and deal.
You might say this story speaks to me. Not in the actual content, but in the way it’s emblematic of everything that makes me want to start taking estrogen supplements so I can unironically use the expression, “this really gets on my tits.” But does that mean I think this is a bad story?
Well, no, not at all. It’s perfectly decent, for what it is. My issue is that it amounts to so little. I just don’t get why authors are so happy to release material that’s so meaningless.
In this story, Dash and Big Mac are on a date in Manehattan, waiting to see some musical, when they have a chance encounter with a local stallion, whom they hit it off with. Afterwards, they go to a gay bar to meet the other guy’s friend, and the aforementioned misunderstanding happens.
My first problem with this story is the characters. The two stallions have one prominently displayed trait: they’re gay. Then they have different secondary characteristics to set them apart: one likes musicals, and the other doesn’t. They serve strictly as a plot device for the author to express a questionable observation about Dash in the form of a story.
Second, the misunderstanding itself, while not exactly what I was thinking it would be, doesn’t amount to anything. It’s brushed aside practically as soon as it’s revealed, further giving the impression that the intent here wasn’t to tell a story; it was to make a statement about Dash’s behavior.
Just as the characterization (or lack thereof) implies an absence of effort, so too does the prose. Scenes are minimally set at their beginning, and the environments are quickly forgotten. While conversing, the characters perform only the simplest, most mundane, and to be frank, most boring of actions.
Mac smirked and rolled his eyes. “It’s a gay bar, Dash. Didn’t ya’ see the bouncer wink at me?”
Dash blinked. “Oh!” Her eyes went wide. “Hold on, you got your cover waved for being hot? That’s awesome!” She grinned and nudged Mac proudly.
Arch smiled and rolled his eyes. “Tats likes muscle stallions.”
Mac just took a drink of beer, then smiled and shrugged. “Farm work’s good for a body.”
Every action is simple, and they seldom connect to anything else. Instead of a flowing narrative, it feels like the story is being told through a series of gifs and sound bites.
Verdict: I’m sure this story has plenty of appeal for people who still find questions about Dash’s sexuality interesting, but other than that, there’s virtually nothing for me to recommend. It doesn’t hold up as a romance because there’s no depth to the relationships, and the characters offer nothing new. I wouldn’t say it sucks, but if you’re discerning about your reading material, you can find a much better way to spend a few minutes.
A Night Guard’s Duty, by Aces_High
Rating: Teen
Tags: Sex, Dark, Comedy, Adventure
Length: 5,723 words (Status: Complete – 1/2 chapter(s) read)
***This story's chapters were taken down for revision just prior to the release of this review.***
Synopsis: A ridiculous OC with a ridiculous backstory and ridiculous skills fights ridiculously in a ridiculous war against ridiculous griffins alongside ridiculous versions of Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.
Review: Did I mention it’s ridiculous?
Did I also mention that it’s garbage? No? Well, look at how it starts:
Dear Mom,
You asked my why I wanted to join the fight against the Griffins. It's all really simple.
Dad was killed in Manehattan when a couple of gangsters beat him to death. You wonder how I survived? He died fighting for me to run away. He yelled at me "Go and save our species. And tell your mom I love her." It told you that we bat ponies are not considered equals. We are second class citizens.
That's why I joined. I want to bring some recognition to our species. I want to go and finally gain some respect.
Don't cry for me. You wanted me to be happy, and that is what I am here. I promise that I'll be safe.
Love,
Elita Fang
Do I really have to say anything about that? If you don’t see why that’s stupid, you might like the story regardless of all the hate I’m about to bury it under, so go ahead and check it out.
This may seem hard to believe, but that’s actually one of the best parts. From there, it goes downhill.
The story is tagged as a comedy, and its approach to humor seems to lie in referencing pop culture every few lines, whether it comes in the form of a griffon with a caricaturized German accent re-enacting the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the main character calling Rainbow Dash a Justin Bieber fan, or having a notable character named after… Oh, screw it. Just see for yourselves.
"Name's Deloran, by the way. Yes, it's supposed to be spelled "D-E-L-O-R-A-N" to the readers. I'm not the racecar."
Yes, that is an actual line of dialogue. I am not making it up or obscuring its context. It is every bit as stupid in the story as it is here. Maybe more so.
And despite making that point, his name is still spelled “Delorean” at least once in the story.
The pacing is ridiculous (have I used that word already?) with many scenes lasting less than a hundred words. The grammar is just bad enough to be annoying without creating unintentional comedy. The protagonist is insufferable, and the portrayal of Rainbow Dash and Twilight could be called character assassination by someone with a talent for understatement. Embedded videos and links appear frequently throughout the story.
Verdict: This story is awful, but it’s not quite awful enough to hit my sweet spot of so-bad-it’s-good. Avoid at all costs unless you need fodder for a comedic review.
Chill, by FloydienSlip
Rating: Teen
Tags: Dark, Human
Length: 6,177 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Lyra rescues two humans from a crashed spaceship and takes them home.
Review: While I’m not really a fan of human-in-Equestria stories, I can still appreciate a good one, and this has all the outward signs of being something interesting. The humans aren’t self-inserts, crossovers, or anything else that’s usually crap, and even though Lyra is an overly predictable—perhaps even cliché—choice of pony to find them, it doesn’t seem like it would affect the story much. But is the story actually good?
Sort of.
One of the first things I noticed was that the scenes are set with the same care I expect from a stampeding herd. The only instance with any particularly nuanced attempt to describe the setting is when Lyra goes into the crashed ship. Throughout that scene, Lyra interacts with unfamiliar technology, and seen through her eyes, none of it makes much sense or is delivered with any sense of context. The sense of alienness is so thorough that I, as a human, had a hard time making sense of this human environment.
The principal characters in the story are Lyra and the two humans, although Spike makes a short appearance in the middle. For the most part, Lyra gives me nothing to complain about, although if I had a chainsaw handy, I probably would have used it on my monitor in an attempt to carve out the six paragraphs meticulously detailing her process of casting a translation spell.
The humans, on the other hand…
Between them, they have just enough character development to make me realize they’re not characters at all; they’re exposition machines. They reveal information to Lyra about how Equestria was once their home before having a crazy argument that justifies the story’s Dark tag.
Their reaction when Lyra speaks to them is completely absurd.
“Do you understand—?”
“You talk! You’re a talking pony!” The creature shrieks a name I can’t pronounce and I leap backwards, head low and hooves clutching the ground. The second creature doesn’t react much better than I do, opting to fall off the sofa completely.
“Yeah, um… what kind of creature are you?” That was idiotic, Lyra. Really? What a terrible question.
“We’re both humans,” he says. I can’t get my tongue to say the word correctly. “What’s the atmosphere made of here?” the creature asks. The voice is so deep that it must be male.
I see his logic. “Nitrogen, mostly, but I think we breathe oxygen. You’d have to ask Twilight Sparkle, she has all the answers.”
The creature seems to consider this, shrugs, and removes his helmet. His face is close to normal, thankfully. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. A dark mane covers his scalp like ponies, but his ears are rounded and attached to the sides of his head. It’s far from grotesque, so maybe that’s why I can feel my heart rate go down. He breathes in deeply, coughs twice, and exhales. And then he does something that puts me at ease immediately and crushes all of my doubts about him.
He smiles.
So they have a quick freakout—including shouting some name that isn’t clarified and which Lyra probably wouldn’t recognize as a name in the first place—before immediately recovering and getting down to business. And after a random smile, they’re all friends.
But as silly as the pacing is, the lack of characterization ultimately turns out to be this story’s fatal flaw. When the brothers quarrel, they’re not acting as characters; rather, they’re serving as mouthpieces for different ideas, one of which is batshit bonkers. The conflict resolves in an equally insane way, and I just didn’t care about it because neither of the participants had done anything to make me care about them. If a random dragon had appeared out of nowhere and eaten them both, I’d have had pretty much the same reaction.
Verdict: I didn’t care for this story, and I can’t see it having much appeal, but if you’re a fan of mildly misanthropic HiEs, you might find something to like.
Rating: Teen
Tags: Comedy
Length: 6,348 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Braeburn, Big Mac, Soarin, and Caramel meet up for a poker game.
Review: I’m going to say right up front that I loved this. The humor is sharp, the pacing flows nicely, the jokes are varied, the characters play well off one another. It gets a lot right.
Unfortunately, the story has a tendency to undercut its own humor by explaining some of the jokes. For example, consider this excerpt from the first scene:
Pearl cleared her throat. "You said... four stallions in one hotel room?" She gulped. "Drinking and 'fooling around'?"
"Yep!" Braeburn gave the wizened mare a smile. He was happy she was taking an interest in his colts-only weekend. It gave him something to talk about on the long train ride out to Neighagra Falls. "A lot of ponies say it ain't decent. Heck, a bunch of 'em would make it illegal if they could." Braeburn tried not to judge other ponies' ideas of what was right and proper. Gambling is a sin, after all, but what's a colts-only weekend without the traditional poker game?
Pearl narrowed her eyes at the impossibly gorgeous stallion. "I see..."
"But sometimes you just need some private time to bond with the colts. Friday night, everypony's itching to go. We all get so pent up after a while." Braeburn loved Appleloosa as much as the next pony, but it was still nice to get away and break the routine sometimes.
Pearl stuttered, "...b-because you miss fooling around with each other?"
"Uh-huh!" Braeburn frowned for just a moment. He didn't want to presume she knew about a colts' weekend – she was a mare, after all – so he decided to explain the poker game from the beginning. "We start off in a circle, and I usually take the lead." Somepony has to be the first dealer.
I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but while I did find this part funny, I’d have laughed more if the innuendo stood on its own and wasn’t explained until the end of the scene.
Another thing I can complain about is that Vivid Syntax is obviously an experienced Texas Hold Em player who understands the game’s nuances, and that blinds him to the ignorance of others. For example, when a character who isn’t very good at the game gets dealt a seven and a deuce (of different suits, no less) we’re shown that the character thinks it’s a good hand, and anyone unfamiliar with the game probably wouldn’t know that it’s actually the worst possible hand. Therefore, the joke would be lost on them.
Still, even if it isn’t flawless, it’s a fun story that keeps the jokes flying and doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Verdict: Overall, this is a pretty hilarious read. Some of the humor is undercut by explanations of the jokes as they happen, but it still works. I’d only recommend avoiding it if you dislike crass humor.
Friday Night Twilight, by BlazzingInferno
Rating: Teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Human
Length: 1,806 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Twilight Sparkle is a serial home invader who forces a guy to watch MLP:FiM. For science.
Review: Hey, look at that! I’m reviewing something from the request list!
And I’m thoroughly confused by it.
The idea of Twilight appearing in some guy’s apartment to watch the show is an interesting one, to be sure. And with her forcing the inhabitant to watch it with her, it seems like a perfect setup for something comedic. But this isn’t comedic. It’s played completely straight, so it feels more like it’s trying to make some sort of statement. Is that statement about the show? The fandom? The perils of eating peanut butter in the shower? Hell if I know.
The unicorn horn on her forehead briefly glows, and the TV station changes. I made the mistake of touching it once. It was like sticking a finger in an electrical outlet, followed by getting beaten with a club. Don’t anger a creature with four blunt appendages that values personal space.
“Can’t we just watch some football tonight?”
“Those games are boring, and they take way too long. We need to check up on what your world left out of the past two week’s episodes.”
“Isn’t watching a show about yourself kind of… narcissistic?”
“Of course not, this is important scientific…”
I tune out the rest. This is a well worn argument that I never win. Instead I drum my fingers against my soda bottle and watch the TV do its magic dance. Twilight can make any show come on, commercial free. I keep trying to convince her to let me stop paying for the cable entirely, but she won’t hear of it.
Perhaps the moral of the story is that it’s okay to break into a home and heap physical and mental abuse onto its owner, but if you steal cable, you’re the reincarnation of Hitler, and your parents are Satan and Tirek.
The writing is solid, but as shown above, there’s a frequent lack of dialogue attribution, which can occasionally cause confusion about who’s saying what.
Verdict: I’m still not sure what I should make of this. It’s an interesting idea, it’s presented reasonably well, and it doesn’t outstay its welcome (whether that applies to the sequel, I can’t say) so I guess it would have some appeal to anyone interested in stories about ponies in the real world.
Sunset Shimmer Doesn’t Bluff, by HMXTaylorLee
Rating: Teen
Tags: Comedy, Human
Length: 1,893 words (Status: Complete – 1/1 chapter(s) read)
Synopsis: Remember when Sunset was bluffing about hitting that mirror with a sledgehammer? In this fic, she wasn’t.
Review: Okay, there’s an elephant in the room, and it’s going to get discussed before I talk about the story itself. This author claims to be in trouble with the law due to some… unsettling material being found on his PC. I was unaware of this when I read the story. Heck, I didn’t even look at the author’s name. I just thought it looked interesting, and I only found out about the author’s problems when I looked at his profile to figure out why a story that seemed perfectly decent had quickly piled up a few downvotes.
In the interest of fairness, I am disassociating this review from my personal opinions about the author. If you want to discuss him or the crime he confessed to, please don’t do it here.
So, as for the story itself… We’ve all thought about it. What sense did it make for Sunset to threaten the portal? If she hit the mirror, the hammer would just go through it, right? Well, this fic addresses the issue head-on, and even though it’s a bit dated for a reaction piece, more effort went into it than you might expect.
The comedy in the story is drawn from much more than the central concept, which is surprising for such a short story. It blends slapstick, wit, subversion, exaggeration, direct references to past events from the show, and slightly unreliable narration to ensure almost everyone will find something to chuckle at. Of course, that also means some jokes will fall flat for nearly everyone, but any comedy writer knows that’s unavoidable.
There was only about an hour left before the portal closed, and Sunset Shimmer was going to run one last, desperate gambit; threatening to destroy the portal to Equestria, preventing Twilight from ever returning home to her friends, unless Twilight surrendered the crown to her. That crown, and the Element in it, were key to Sunset Shimmer's diabolical plan.
And what was that plan? To bring a bunch of zombified humans through the portal, slow and stumbling, so that they might face of against the might of Equestria's equine denizens. What odds did a magic wielding unicorn possess against a shambolic teenager? Or the winged dynamos that comprised the pegasus race, how could they possibly hope to best grounded Neanderthals? Surely, Equestria didn't stand a chance! Of course, that meant that Sunset Shimmer couldn't actually destroy the portal - but Twilight didn't need to know that!
The writing is reasonably solid, although it has some relatively minor punctuation goofs and a lot of questionable choices, such as a smattering of LUS, some redundant saidisms, a few redundant lines of prose, use of a phonetic accent in Applejack’s dialogue, and liberal use of caps lock to show when characters are yelling. I also wish certain descriptions were a bit more dynamic, and at least one important moment (when Sunset gets hit in the head by a flying hammer) was hamstrung by weak word choices.
Verdict: A pretty solid little comedy that gets some solid laughs while poking fun at something we all thought was dumb. Hard to go wrong unless you think that scene in Equestria Girls was fine or can’t get past the author’s personal shortcomings.
Want to call my wrath down on 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 or review it.
—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.
Here you go.
Edit: I'll also note that the week before I posted that story, I posted a 22k humanized AppleDash fic that I'm really proud of; a period piece touching on some interesting things about women like Dash in historical periods. Very few people bothered to read, compared to this one, and no one has reviewed it.
So, that's kind of Part 2 of the answer to your question.
Wow, I actually added something to my RIL off one of your reviews. :O
Have I requested anything from you lately? <.<
3486746
Not that I recall.
It's worth mentioning that "Chill" was written for the More Most Dangerous Game, which is the main reason why Lyra is featured as the protagonist. It's also worth noting that minimal editing was done for "Chill," considering it was written shortly before the deadline. This is why I've rewritten some of the story upon receiving some feedback, but it hasn't been updated yet.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about what works in the story and what doesn't.
3486729
Interesting. That other one slipped under my radar. I usually enjoy your writing, so I'll try to check it out soon.
3486806
There's nothing to disagree about. What works for one reader won't always work for another.
3486851 Fair enough.
In general I find that HiE stories that treat it like alien first contact (whether through a ship crash landing or some sort of portal device like a stargate) are a bit better than average.
Thank you for reading my story, and for judging it on its merits. Saidisms are my Achiile's Heel, but I'm glad you got some laughs from it despite some of the shortcomings!
3486749
In that case, I would like to see what you make of this. :)
3487416
Added it to the list.
Thanks for the review!
I wrote Friday Night Twilight in the late night hours following the S4 finale, and for some reason it became my first story in the popular list, and netted me a bunch of followers. And yet I figured everybody would hate it...
As for what it means... Partly it was just me playing around with the concept of Twilight accosting some human on a regular basis as a means to drink soda and watch the show. From that came Twilight's uneasy views on how adored she is by her own fandom, and the idea that the show isn't that accurate a depiction of what's going on in Equestria.
The sequel runs through S4 with Twilight's commentary on its various events, and an actual bond forming between her and the human she's been bothering for years. It was my first story to reach the featured box, and my first story to generate a sizable reader backlash to how I chose to end the tale
I have a request for a review, if I may.
It's a story I wrote a while back.
It's called "The Rise of an Alicorn's Destiny." It's about a black and red alicorn OC that tells Twilight Sparkle his life story. I don't understand why it never quite caught on - the main character is very powerful and very handsome, and as such, his story should be very well liked.
Given the name of your blog posts, I think you might find this story to have some appeal.
3490885
Added to my Requests bookshelf.