FIMFiction Review #2

It's that time again people! Another story to be reviewed, and this time it has actually been requested by the author, SpitFlame. So without further ado. Let us dig into this puppy and see what we can find!

The Elements of Honor by SpitFlame

Description

Seeking redemption, Corvo—a problematic mastermind—helps save Equestria from threats which far surpass the limits of Celestia and Luna; but it all becomes much more difficult than they could ever imagine, escalating into a hopeless, war-like mental chess match.

Concept

Damn… well, damn. You know I have to say that SpitFlame did quite a good job with this story. The concept was quite an interesting Human in Equestria story and so I find myself here reviewing one fanfic that at first I thought I had it figured out, but then to my own naivety it slapped me across the face like a fish jumping out from its watery home. But of course to explain further to the concept the beginning is, as usual, a good place to start off.

Now the concept of this story is that we find our favorite assassin from the game, Dishonored, teleporting into Equestria, which from some exposition we learned that his previous attempt was to kill both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. As the description says, he is trying to seek redemption for this previous assassination attempt upon their very lives. And of course, coincidentally, Equestria is having a problem of its own that both all four princesses and friends cannot seem to solve.

However, as the description also reveals that these events slowly evolve into events that, as SpitFlame said in the description, “escalating into a hopeless, war-like mental chess match”. And so there and than I should have guessed the ending outcome to it, but as I stated I let my own naivety ruin my prediction for what would ultimately happen to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. But I, unfortunately, digress…

Now as I said the concept is good, although a bit lackluster since most stories like this always revolve around a protagonist from a game coming into Equestria (although thankfully SpitFlame is able to explain this, thank goodness) and so which brings me to the next bit; the story’s tags. Now unlike my last review, I felt that Yamazaki’s, The Black Knight, had one unnecessary tag, which that being dark.

But with Spitflame’s chosen tags he proves to have knowledge on all of them throughout this story.

In short, SpitFlame has shown that he knows how to write a story such as this one, which truly does deserve it’s dark and mystery tags.

Plot

The plot of Elements of Honor, is quite a complicated story, but SpitFlame has written it in a way that is not so complex and easy to follow. It starts with Princess Celestia and Princess Twilight convening over an assassin from some unknown location that tried to kill both Celestia and her sister, Princess Luna. Which then goes to Corvo, our protagonist and seemingly the main character who returns to Equestria. He seeks redemption for what he tried to do and from there the ponies sort of vow to help him out.

And of course the first ponies he meet are none other than Princess Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia. Of course not believing him at first they threaten to destroy him until Celestia slowly decides that she will give him a second chance, and that leads to her giving him a room and a breakfast meeting with all the ponies he ended up trying to hurt the first time. Although not before she has some of the guards beat him senseless just to make sure that he wouldn’t harm anypony. And when Twilight wakes him up for breakfast and once he arrives to the dining hall not everypony is excited to see him return.

Now at one point, I’ll have to say this. There was a moment during the breakfast scene in chapter three when Princess Celestia spoke up after she decided to give Corvo another chance, that some of the ponies who didn’t trust him seemingly did a one eighty with their trustworthiness. Albeit that totally wasn’t the case, it just felt rather odd though that they slowly trusted him, which oddly felt immediate. In some cases that can turn into a bit of a loophole that can be hard to cover back up.

But once he sort of has their trust, which I’ll put mildly, “has” their trust in a sense like how a cat doesn’t think twice about batting a dog’s nose just for laughs, they bring Corvo to this strange object they mention that has appeared in The Crystal Empire. Of course on a train ride over to the Empire, the ponies get to know Corvo a little more, while he learns more than they do about him.

One thing I will state at the moment, which is another thing I’ll get to later on is the fact about Pinkie Pie. I mean, did anyone else get an odd sense that she was slightly out of character for this whole adventure? But I digress. Once he and the girls arrive they end up encountering some Windigos in a blizzard that’s surrounded the Crystal Empire. Which in this case, that is left up to Corvo to deal with them but is hurt badly in the fight which Princess Cadance has had a team of medical ponies heal his leg and put a brace on it.

Of course Corvo, not one for lazing around the place like my cat after beating his sister senseless he finally sees the problem for Equestria being this unknown tree of origin that just suddenly grew from out of nowhere. This tree has markings similar to his and runes located in specific branches of its shape. He is than presented one with that Princess Celestia had been delivered after her guards found it in a cave nearby the city.

So he takes this rune and puts it in the corresponding slot in the tree, which makes him black out of course and later we find out gives him the ability of pyrokinesis, which is basically the power to control fire from an object related to its elemental abilities. That of course is after he gets done defending Canterlot from an army of Timberwolves that also just suddenly attack the city.

So with this added fact he vows to save Equestria from this very strange force and hopes to redeem himself in the process. Now I don’t have to remind you all that follows is just a bunch of adventures, each filled with dangers and obstacles that take either only Corvo to solve or everyone that goes after the specific stone. I mean there is a nice little moment when Corvo does get to have some one on one time with our favorite female protagonists.

With each adventure, from Corvo almost dying to a terrifying monster, to the girls almost becoming entirely engulfed in an avalanche, then of course leading to Corvo almost dying again but by the claws of Diamond Dogs each set of adventures lead the girls, Corvo, and princesses to the truth. But slowly after each stone is gathered, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are thinking that Corvo might be behind all of these strange occurrences in Equestria.

But SpitFlame has done such a good job that even I wasn’t sure it was Corvo all along until the thirteenth chapter, which is when he fully reveals that this has been Corvo’s doing all along. Like shooting fish in the barrel… and please do excuse my analogy there, he has been unintentionally leading them along until he got the second to last stone, which as we learn in this chapter was the one that would give him back his memories.

With his ally, The Outsider, helping in an non confrontational way that he so does love to do we see Corvo’s scheme finally coming to fruition. But at one point it certainly does seem like he has finally been cornered behind Princess Celestia and Princess Luna’s schemes to find him out. But what SpitFlame did especially at the beginning was so clever. There was a specific chapter, I believe it was ten or eleven, where Princess Celestia and Corvo were in a chess match against one another.

In this moment, SpitFlame had created a falsified foreshadowing moment in which I thought that Princess Celestia would be the ultimate victor over Corvo’s mind game. But when chapter fifteen rolls around, all hopes for Celestia and Luna’s victory seems to dim a little when Corvo gets the seventh stone, which is the one that contains all of his powers from before.

So in the end it comes down to one serious contest of mind games between Princess Celestia and Corvo. And at one point I thought that Princess Celestia was dead from none other than Corvo himself. Although like what SpitFlame has done before he got my hopes up that she had not died from what was later determined false at first was to be poisoning from a plant he named Unexplained Opium, which in his cannon is a flower that is extremely toxic and cannot be cured by any of their potential magical abilities.

Of course that is when Princess Luna thinks she has him beat, but it turns out that Corvo was one step ahead of Princess Celestia and in all actuality, he had killed Princess Celestia with the flower, but by simply rubbing it against the upper part of the lid where Celestia would drink from. Which of course surprises Luna that she her sister is actually now confirmed dead. Corvo disappears from Luna’s sight, in which she goes to Twilight for aid.

But Luna, adamant about fighting Corvo alone goes to fight him. Now this was an odd moment, for I have no idea how Corvo killed her, but he did by constricting her or something along those lines. I have no clue if he shot her, or something to do with his own magic powers but he did something that stopped Luna in her tracks. Now a flaw here is Corvo vaguely explains about waiting for the moment she would leave. Although it is explained through some logistical terminology, it is something I still can’t even grasp.

With both targets now dead, he acts like some mighty god who's just received his wings for the first time and celebrates alongside The Outsider just as they are about to leave Equestria. But he is stopped by both Twilight Sparkle and Discord, who I forgot to mention was gone for the entirety of the story because of The Outsider threatening the life of Fluttershy. Of course no more death’s ensue because Corvo escapes the grasp of Twilight and Discord with The Outsider, and it is later mentioned that he also destroyed The Royal Archives so they could not uncover a dimensional teleportation spell.

And in the end, Corvo sort of loses his mind as he proclaims himself “The Lord” over his own realm. But in some sense The Outsider says that he’s doomed Equestria by destroying their Royal Archives, which leads to the fact that they may not be able to defend themselves as well as they could in the past. And so we’ve finally reached this very dark and foreboding conclusion to a well-written story.

If I had to be honest, I’d say that the mystery was well written for a story like this one. In fact, SpitFlame has managed to do something that I myself would find hard to do, except for some circumstances, and that is killing off main characters like Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. And so the plot is one that is rather complicated, yet unique in its own right. Unfortunately… I will say that when he went back in time during chapter thirteen, I feel like that was a little bit of lazy writing, for it should have been mentioned much earlier in the story, rather then told right there and then.

That is, oddly, the one thing that this story does suffer a bit from. Of course SpitFlame does a lot of showing, but I’ve also noticed bits where he just straight up tells us something rather than showing it and letting us truly imagine in some bits of the story. But all in all, still quite a well crafted story.

Setting

Now the setting, as I have mentioned before in Yamazaki’s story, The Black Knight, we find our familiar old Equestria with a few different settings that SpitFlame seems to expand upon, like Foal Mountain and Whitetail Woods. (Of course Whitetail Woods is in the show. But with a monster being in there which was not so before, this was the slight expansion for this place). Now of course this is also set in a pretty early beginning of before season four begins, with Twilight being a Princess as I stated earlier in this story. But truly, I do admire SpitFlame for keeping the good old fashioned Equestria in this story.

Characters

For the characters we have an array of them. To be frank I’ll just list them off here starting from the main protagonist of this story being Corvo, to the uncaring godly being only known as The Outsider. From there we see our lovely favorite characters from Equestria: which begins with Twilight Sparkle, then Spike in one very short instance to even Owlicious. And of course it goes down like this for, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Apple Bloom, Granny Smith, Big McIntosh, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Cadance, Shining Armor, and that is pretty much it. If I do or have forgotten anypony do please tell me so I can remember them.

So to start off with, characters as far as I can tell were spot on. Corvo being the silent protagonist of the game, Dishonored, gains a voice here in this take with SpitFlame, who makes me really despise this character, but sort of truly imagine what a pissed off guy like him would sound like, after being betrayed like he was in Dishonored. Then he we have his pal, helpful to some extent, The Outsider… who I don’t recall very well since it has been a long time since I played the game at all. But he seemed quite the charming guy… for an uncaring deity as usual. Both were interesting in their own ways, but the sudden madness from Corvo was quite unexpected, and I even feel a little out of character even for a man who originally had no voice to begin with, quite literally as well since no one voice acted for him. All in all, the whole mad with power thing seemed a little too… unrealistic for a character like himself. And The Outsider… eh, sort of dull and boring, without much being too interesting about him if I am to be honest.

In a way, I feel it was a valiant attempt by SpitFlame to make Corvo the silent protagonist interesting, and a deity like The Outsider not bland like he kind of is in this story… but ultimately it is not such a successful attempt. However, I do admire that he at least tried, since there was so much to work with in the first place, and honestly quite a mess since there was so little to go on from both a silent character to a uninteresting god-like being.

Now to the other characters. All of the main six were pretty good and well written, and I definitely believed in their characters… with a few exceptions. For a couple of the characters of these six I found a little out of character at points where Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie did come across as… odd. Twilight did feel rather… slow in this story. Like not as perceptive as she usually is. I honestly felt she would be alongside Luna and Celestia, planning like them in order to figure out if Corvo truly was working for them or not. And Pinkie Pie? Well… she seemed rather bold and sort almost bully-like in some instances that definitely was off character for her. Heck I’d say that she was kind of not as happy as I was used to her being.

Now some of the minor characters were pretty much Shining Armor, Princess Cadance, Big McIntosh, Granny Smith, and Apple Bloom. All of them were written well, although most didn’t show up much like Cadance did, and even then Cadance didn’t show up all that much either.

Then the last two ponies on this list were the unfortunate Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Definitely felt depressed when they died… but I honestly thought SpitFlame did an amazing job writing them in character. They were both believable and I felt terrible for their dark fate. So in the end it truly was a sad blow that they were both killed in the end. But one thing I thought was rather… odd. Was that Corvo killed Luna by suffocating her. How and why, as I stated is still even too hard to explain. He trapped her in a room, where there was no possible oxygen and she just died? I mean that is a little unrealistic if I do say so myself. I mean again, I just don’t understand what he did that killed her but it’s just so confusing that it makes it bad. For a very confusing death, it just doesn’t seem right or make any sense.

Final Review & Score

So now we come to the clear end of the story. An unfortunate tale of woe that can only be described as one set by the very corrupted Corvo, power-hungry, and bent on trying to save his own world by any cost necessary. The story, Elements of Honor, by SpitFlame does quite a good job in fully grasping the bleakness that comes from Dishonored’s version of an ending, and truly does sell this. Not only did I enjoy the way this was brought out, but I really loved SpitFlame’s take on his victorian style of writing. It really immersed me in the whole sense of where I feel Dishonored is in our factual human timeline, for being a fictional place itself.

But before I finalize my grade I must say speak of the ill of this story. For one, there are many technicals that must be brought to light. First off let us begin with the minor nitpicks. Firstly there was a moment and could have been more when he referred to the girls we know and love, as the Mane Six. Now unfortunately that sort of breaks the immersion because no one else except the fandom calls them that, which is out of story and doesn’t match well for being inside of a story.

That is my only small minor problem. But the rest are sort of major. For one he had multiple scenes where there was multiple internal character dialogue. That being the fact that two characters cannot be thinking at the same time in the same chapter. It completely throws me off and all of a sudden, I wonder, “Are they telepathic like Thomas and Teresa from, The Maze Runner, series”? Because if that was the case that I would understand. But no, unfortunately not so much. It makes it feel not as surreal and just kind of tells rather then shows.

The next big gripe I have is that SpitFlame did quite a bit of telling here and there. Now don’t get me wrong, because I don’t exactly remember bits of where he did, but there were some points where I felt he just told me what I wanted to know without making the characters truly tell us like the should have.

And to add to the fact, some of his characters were… somewhat unrealistic. Corvo felt unrelatable, other than the fact that he desired to protect his home… which by the way is a complete hellhole. If I was him, I’d rather go someplace else than protect that piece of crap city. Twilight felt a little… slow to figure out everything and Pinkie just didn’t feel so cheerful like I’m used to her being. Plus I still don’t know how Luna died because it still to me is rather unclear. Did Corvo somehow choke her to death with some telekinetic powers? Did Luna just suddenly decide to stop breathing, which then would in turn mean she just desired to stop living and kill herself to make it easier for Corvo? Only the author fully knows!

But my biggest gripe besides the characters and disorganized character thoughts, the one thing I felt was totally bad was the pacing. God… this seems to be the one common problem that everyone I’ve read so far has dealt with. They tell you time has passed, even though the characters should be the one’s showing you this. Now I’m no better than most writers, but I can tell when there’s a pacing problem, and boy did it feel rushed in some bits of the story. I honestly thought that SpitFlame’s story was going to be over and done with in like two seconds sometimes, even with seventeen chapters. A whole three months or more had passed by in this story, which in all honesty is not a bad thing, but it was told to us which did make it a bad thing in the end. I mean for one you don’t just state hours passed, or ten hours passed without showing some form of recognition in the characters. I mean he did that perfectly at one point, but the rest just felt like a muddled mess. Now I’m not saying I know any better. Heck, SpitFlame has been at this longer than I have, and this just shows that even pros like him sometimes don’t find their own mistakes as often, which is the same case for me.

So there you have it, folks. I have said what I enjoyed about this story, while explaining what I thought could definitely use some work. So what is my final grade on this story? Well in all honesty, it got quite a good rating, although was lowered severely due to its problems I’ve already mentioned. Therefore I give the story a… 7.2/10. Concept was sort of not too original but definitely did feel unique while the plot was quite complex and did not have too many loopholes from as far as I could tell.

However, it would have received a much higher rating if not for the character problems it did seem to have. And plus the added fact that it had some bad pacing here and there, along with the fact that there were multiple thought bubbles from different characters when there shouldn’t have been in the first place. Actually… I take it back. The pacing is my second biggest problem with this story. It’s the multiple character thought bubbles that are now beginning to really annoy me.

When you start writing multiple thought bubbles from different characters and you just leave it like that… that gets a little irritating. I mean if it was a thought conversation where two telepaths were talking I’d be fine with it. But a reader cannot be able to know what multiple characters are thinking at once. (Just to let you all know, that’s just my opinion). In fact, I have no idea who was the main focus in each part, except for the fact when it was just Corvo or Celestia, or Luna who were the three focus characters. Even then, I didn’t know if Corvo or Twilight was the main focus character in some proportions. That’s the one bad thing about multiple thought bubbles. You have no idea who in the hell is the main focus character.

And one last thing. Another thing that still really gets me is just, how the hell did Luna die? One cannot simply suffocate inside of a room where there’s no oxygen. I mean if it was in space somewhere then maybe, but one does not just stop breathing and die right there. All of an explanation we get is that Corvo was watching her suffocate to death and that’s it. No final action by him other than just watching her. And even then I sort of felt like this was just a rushed way to get rid of Princess Luna, which then kind of made this battle I was waiting for anti-climatic. The one thing that does make me irritated is that there is no explanation on how Luna died. She just suddenly stopped breathing… rather lazy writing if I’m to be honest. And even then Corvo doesn’t explain how he cut off all necessary oxygen to survive. Unless the dungeons were deep enough in the earth to do such a thing, then that would be believable. But Luna walked down like a flight of stairs and that was it.

Oof… man did I rant on about that. But I do stand by my rating of a 7.2. SpitFlame did quite a good job, but other then that this story did have its bad moments, although more good than bad if I am to be honest. Still… quite a dark story with an ending that is… somewhat believable. But I digress, and do thank SpitFlame for allowing me to review his story. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this review, and I shall see you all next time!