Wacky Box Reviews #2: Get Wack · 12:25am Mar 30th, 2016
Hey guys guess who's back with the wack. Featured Box Reviews time let's go.
So, just like last time, I've got two major review categories:
1. stuff in the box that I would personally pick up and read
2. everything else oh boy
I'm going to guarantee at least one fic review for both categories. If there's more stuff in there that super catches my interest or I just super feel like suffering, I'll probably do an extra review in the week just for those fics or something, but for now two reviews at a time is looking pretty much like a full plate.
So let's do it.
"This looks good I guess" pick:
Our World is Suffused With Sound by Cynewulf
You can't go home again. That's what they say--and Sunset Shimmer happens to agree. You can't go home again. You really, really can't.
(I really hope this title makes more sense when you've actually like read the fic)
Sunset Shimmer is a pretty good target for exploring the whole self redemption and regret arc. She's arguably the best thing to come out of the whole equestria girls thing, except for this one fanimation with the pillar men:
I'll be honest, "I've burned all my bridges BOO HOO" and other variants of Sunset Shimmer reflecting on her past villainy have probably been played out at this point, but I know Cyne's a cool author so I'm willing to give this one a shot.
The fic starts with Sunset typing like fanfiction or something at her computer but she's like really sad about it. She's listening to music on her phone because she can't afford speakers and there's like vivid mental imagery and symbolism as she thinks about stuff. We all did that when we were teenagers let's be real.
The prose is good by the way, I'd give it a 4 or so on my fic-o-meter. It's strong enough that I'd call the style a plus, and I'd argue that's an especially good thing for a fanfic because the average quality bar is kind of low. You can make a concept that's frankly kind of overdone look y'know, interesting and readable just by physically writing it better than most of your predecessors. Go figure.
Also Sunset used to smoke. There's a weird amount of time spent on this fact relative to everything else. It's mentioned twice, and there's like a whole half paragraph just expositing on it near the scene's end.
She wished for a cigarette again. There was something magical about the curling smoke and the rain coming down in sheets and her breath hot on her own hand. But she’d stopped that. No more. It was really Twilight--this world’s Twilight--that had been the final straw. Smoking was rare in Equestria, too rare to have much of a stigma attached, but here there was a lot of baggage and the thought of this world’s Twilight noticing the lingering stale tobacco smell had been a little too uncomfortable, somehow.
I mean, I'm assuming it's important to this particular depiction of her character somehow, but I know more about her former smoking habits than pretty much anything else at this point. I don't even know what she's writing, and that seems to be the major focus of this opening scene. I guess it's supposed to be homework maybe but it's not super clear. Fanfic isn't too unreasonable guess right now.
There's a scene break. Sunset meets Twilight for coffee once a month. I feel like you'd want to go out for something nicer than coffee if you're just doing it once a month but HEY WHATEVER I don't make the rules. We get some exposition on the circumstances behind that, like Twilight's schedule and coffee preferences. They also banter about stuff I guess. They've got a good back and forth going, so props for that.
Twilight talks about Celestia and how she lost her as a teacher-friend when she graduated into princesshood. This makes Sunset kind of wistful about writing letters so she tells Twilight to write a letter to Celestia and tell her how she feels. This is roughly where I figured out that the fic's conceptual core revolves around Sunset's thoughts on Celestia specifically and not just vague ennui and a generalized longing for home. It's actually a pretty subtle build-up overall and I'm not sure how good or bad that is. It's a stylistic choice I guess. I probably would have tried to draw more attention to it personally, but Cyne's got his own thing going here and I'm not going to say his choice was worse.
In the next scene, we find out that Sunset's been writing like a book report I guess. About a character whose situation is a LITERARY PARALLEL of her own.
Red Schism’s living conditions further drive the point home, she wrote. He sleeps on a couch, with his own dirty clothes as a blanket, eating seldomly and paying rent even more seldomly. In fact, we are shown him interacting with other human beings very rarely before the murder of the pawnbroker.
Well, it wasn’t exactly art. She was starting to just want it done. She would fret over perfection when there was something on the screen to actually fret over. Besides, the sound of keys clacking was oddly therapuetic. It focused the mind and kept it tightly guarded from… everything.
His isolation from the world he has previously known--out of school, out of work, and seperated by both choice and geography from his family
Or y'know I guess it could still be fanfiction.
Then she gets invited to a party, but that's not important because the party never actually shows up. Or gets mentioned. Except for a line or two in the next scene where Sunset Shimmer mentions that Pinkie called EqG world Twilight SciTwi
because who doesn't mirite
(I don't think this scene needed to exist tbh. Most of its pertinent information could probably have gone into giving the opening scene a better conceptual hook, instead of being kind of vague like it is right now. maybe that's just me I'unno)
Okay I'm not going to keep play-by-playing this, because I've written too much on it already but I'm going to go into why I don't really NEED to keep play-by-playing this in Obs Thoughts.
Obs Thoughts: Honestly I don't think this fic's strength is drawn from its plot as much as like its whirlwind of emotions and off the wall thoughts. It kind of rambles and it spends a lot of time talking about random irrelevant things like smoking and caffeine and parties that are never really relevant. But it also works. I think it's one of those kinds of fics that want to be FELT more than read, and to Cyne's credit he does a really good job of making that happen. Sunset Shimmer has ennui, random intrusive thoughts, and angst. Just like real teenagers. Also she has regrets about her relationship with Celestia, and the fic is pretty good at quietly building that up as her conflict. It's not like the most tightly plotted fic ever and it's not like there are any STUNNING TWISTS, but it really gets you into Sunset's head, and I think that's cool.
I give this fic a warm apple pie
"Time to suffer" pick:
Just The Sip by Flutterpriest
this fic is mature so stop scrolling now if you're not okay with that
Thirsty? No, you're not. But Milky Way is insistent on forcing you to try a drink of her milk. Can you withstand her tricks? Or will you finally give into her whims and taste defeat?
Jesus Christ.
So I'm not a big fan of the second person perspective, but there's nothing really wrong with the writing. I'd give it a 3 I guess. It doesn't draw any attention to itself good or bad and I can't really complain about it.
But as for the fic itself
well
This is one of those fics that kind of exist just to BE. Like someone thought up a random scene in their head one day and said I'M MAKING A FIC FOR THAT. It's one of those Greek mythos things where you like axe open Zeus' skull or cut off Uranus' balls and somehow that just makes a full god pop out into the world. You don't really ask why it happened, it just did. There's a new god now and you have to live with him. His name is Just The Sip.
So, kind of brutal, but I'm going to save you guys some time here
this fic is about Milky Way (that one pony whose thing is having like really big crotch bazongas) wanting to make You drink her breast milk
but you don't want to
I'm serious, there aren't really any jokes, there aren't even really any super out there passages I can riff on. It's entirely riding on whatever inherent humor you find in a pony wanting to make you drink her boob urine. I mean I feel kind of bad honestly, I was ready to go into this looking for like WACKY HIJINX or at least hilarious porn logic. But there just kind of isn't.
There just kind of isn't.
The premise doesn't really speak to me much either way, but I think fics like these could really benefit from making like standalone jokes or going really hardcore hilarious on their descriptions of everything to make them worth reading. As it stands, you kind of don't get anything here that you couldn't have gotten from the description and your imagination.
"Just a sip?" she asks.
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Come on, I said please."
"Please give me a million bits."
"Now you're just being absurd."
"No, you're being absurd."
this fic's the only thing being absurd here bazinga.
Milky convinces You (not me) to drink her chesticle semen by promising to pay your rent for three months. It's never really clear why she's so obsessed but man okay free rent for three months that sounds like a deal.
Surprise you kind of like it
Surprise Milky's also kind of creepy about it so you spit it out before things get too weird
The end
Actually it doesn't even really end. I mean, words stop showing up on the screen, but like, it feels kind of unfinished. Like there was supposed to be more but there's nothing more TO the fic's premise, so it just kind of stops.
You head down to your room and slam the door to your bedroom. The apartment goes silent as Milky looks down to the glass in front of her. She downs the whole mug in one gulp and smiles, a thin milk mustache on her face. Stepping down from the chair, she lets out a light belch and licks the mustache away.
"You realize since you didn’t swallow, I'm not actually paying your rent, right?"
"I. HATE YOU. SO MUCH."
Seriously it ends there. I tried looking for more but it doesn't actually exist. Not even in your heart.
The end.
Obs Thoughts:
Nah okay that's not entirely fair, but it's still not that great. I guess you'd want to read this if you find the premise kind of charming at first glance and you want to extend the brief feeling of warmth it gave your cold barren gut. There's not really a fic here otherwise. I guess that sounds harsh but I honestly don't know what else to say on it. Sorry.
I give this fic an air-injected candy bar that also sort of triggers trypophobia
Tune in next time
You put more effort into linking things then I put into writing it
If an axe murderer held my beloved mother ransom and demanded I carefully plot out a story, a tightly plotted coherent story or she dies...
... I would sigh, apologize in advance and ask if she wants me to adopt her cats/preferences for casket color
Because I am barely able to converse coherently.
Glad I skipped that last one because I was also expecting shenanigans. I mean, what else could be written into a story about milk-based rape? Nothing, I guess, and that's what we got. :B
Good to see that the feature box is still strange.
Looking forward to the sequel where you do drink the pastel horse milk and suffer some explosive diarrhea along with bloat.
It also symbolizes how she sees the two worlds. It's beautiful.
Twilight insisted on it. Being just coffee suggests Twilight chose it to be less of a big deal because Sunset didn't want to do it.
"Red Schism" = Rodin Raskol-nikov, the protagonist of Crime & Punishment, who murders a pawnbroker to try to be consistent with utilitarian ethics. It doesn't look to me like Cynewulf is doing anything with the C&P ref. A red herring.
3836449 But give it a few til you're really craving some chocolate and then you'd be game?
Another intriguing box of stuff obs. It feels like moving back home and going through the boxes in your attic that you packed years ago and have no idea what may be in them.
And in some cases, question why you bothered packing it away.
Damm!
Reading these reviews is almost as fun as reading your fic.
Almost enough to make me write something just for the remote cahnce of getting one of these
BAZOOPER
BOJANGLES
BAGINA
ZIMBABWE
BAZOOKA
CLIFF BLESZINSKI