Wacky Box Reviews #3: Wack to the future · 7:51pm Apr 6th, 2016
Hey guys wacky box reviews again. You all know the drill by now
probably
go read the others if you haven't figured it out
let's do it
"This looks good I guess" pick:
'member when by RarityEQM
Twilight is home for the holidays, and she and her brothers have a special little tradition between them as they reflect on the events past.
Trufax I'm actually vulnerable to good cover art. This is mostly anecdotal on my part but there seems to be like a rough correlation between someone's ability to choose aesthetically pleasing covers and their writing ability. It's not a SUPER strong correlation, but like, it also doesn't seem super baseless y'know? We all know to avoid OC creator covers let's be real.
So I can't really play-by-play this one, mostly because there really isn't that much to play-by-play. It's less than 2k words, and to be honest nothing really happens in it. It's a moment in time basically. I think it would have fit better in the cosmic order if it had been like a character scene in a much bigger narrative, but I guess it also works as a standalone shortfic. Like I said last time, some fics sort of exist to be felt more than heard. The fic isn't really selling you on a narrative as much as like a chunk of character work and an emotion you can feel while you read it.
It's like when you're awake in bed at one in the morning and that weird monster claw rises up in pitch black night to stroke your cheek. Only this is more of a happy fic so imagine it's like a good monster that really loves you. It's kind of like that.
It's basically Twilight, Shining, and Spike all sitting around and recounting like old family stories. "Remember when you ate like a ton of gummy bears and threw up on the carpet and it was super gross" stuff. The fic sort of presents as comedy, or at least it's tagged comedy, but it's not really funny or trying to be. It's too "You sort of had to be there" injokey to really be FUNNY, but like, it makes it clear that this is a family (and spike) and they all have a history with each other and love each other.
Twilight sort of thinks on how she used to be sad sometimes in a paragraph or two. It's a grounding bit that sort of contextualizes everyone laughing at injokes, and I think it's what really sells the fic's emotional punch.
They injoke until Twilight's mom yells at them and then they go to bed
and that's basically the fic the end.
I'd give the writing about a high 3 or a low 4ish prosewise. The dialogue is pretty slick and the style is better than average, but I wouldn't really call it a draw of the fic. Mostly because the fic doesn't really exist as a fic but as kind of an emotional high. It does its job pretty well I guess all said.
Obs Thoughts: This fic is an emotional ploy.
but it's also like one of the better emotional ploys, because it knows how to use a lighter touch and it doesn't overstay its welcome. It's not really hard to figure out that it basically exists to warm your heart, but it's just sweet enough that you'll still get sort of a buzz if you aren't a robot.
I give this fic a cake pop
"everything else" pick:
(I was going to do that one fic where starlight glimmer bangs spike here
but I figured this shouldn't just be the unofficial clopfic slot
so I rolled another fic instead)
Young Amazons by Wanderer D
In her successful attempt to stop Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer ends up in the universe of The Batman. Now, with the help of her mentor Zatanna Zatara and two best friends—Barbara Gordon and Pamela Isley—she has to figure out her place in a brand new world.
This isn't a bad fic honestly. I didn't even pick it with the assumption that it was going to be a bad fic. I know D and he's a cool dude. It's just also a crossover with The Batman universe and I don't actually know anything about that besides y'know Batman. It just wasn't in the pool of fics I would feel like reading if I had the chance.
So I'm not the target audience here is what I'm saying.
Crossovers occupy kind of a weird space where you have to be a fan of like two franchises at the same time to really "get it". Some crossovers do better about it than others, generally the ones where it ADAPTS ideas from one franchise into another franchise, like Aquaman's Harmony or Fallout Equestria (I'm not digging up another link for this one you all know where it is), but it's ultimately kind of rare for a crossover fic to make you care if you aren't at least passingly familiar with the franchises getting crossovered. Kinda sucks but I guess that's just how the batcookie crumbles.
The fic opens up more or less at an alternate ending of Equestria Girl 3, where Sunset Shimmer and alternate Twilight are going in for a fistbump of friendship. But instead of love winning Sunset sacrifices herself and saves Nerdlight. Then she gets trapped in like a dimensional rift I guess that sends her to the DC universe.
This is probably one of the better "one character randomly winds up in another universe" setups out there because it takes advantage of a canon moment and like brings it around to serve the premise's ends. There isn't really a gold standard for this sort of thing, but it's ultimately better than situational contrivances like "Hey let's build a machine/cast a spell that opens up dimensional gateways and then get surprised when it sends us to another franchise's universe"
Jesus there are like a million of those
It's probably one of the more natural implementations possible within the bounds of a teenage highschooler from the Equestria Girls universe winding up in Gotham City. That's all I can really say on it.
I'd put the writing at around a high 3. D's a solid writer all said, but I think his strength is more in narrative building than spinning words. The writing conveys everything it really needs to, so it's totes serviceable. There's just also sort of a dryness to it and it winds up feeling kind of stiff sometimes. It's hard to really put into words what could be better about it, so I'm not going to argue the point too hard. Here's a passage that I think sort of illustrates what I mean:
Droplets of water on her face made her stir and try to block more from splashing her.
Sunset groaned rolled over, only to slide down the pile of trash she had landed in, upending at least three trash cans at the base before she came to a stop.
She tried to make sense of what was going on, looking around in confusion. What had happened to Twilight? Sunset herself was back in her normal clothes, leather jacket included, and completely soaked already from the rain, alone and in an alley for some reason. She had a pounding headache, and felt weak all over.
you be the judge I guess.
Anyways she wakes up in Gotham City basically. There's the usual WHERE AM I stuff and Sunset's briefly confused about why she looks like a real human now instead of an orangeoid pastel homo sapien. Also Sunset's mobile plan doesn't cover interdimensional travel so she can't call Fluttershy. It's kind of the standard scene setting stuff whenever a character winds up in a strange new world. I feel like there has to be a better way to handle this sort of thing somehow, or at least a different way, but there's nothing really wrong with it.
She gets accosted by some random thugs. You pretty much know the archetype if you've ever been exposed to Batman and/or aren't a time traveller from the 1800s. They're dumb gangster mooks and they want to like I'unno mug her or rape her or something.
TOO BAD SUNSET SHIMMER HAS SUPERPOWERS RAAAAGH
HULK HOLD THEM OFF TEMPORARILY
She pushes them back just long enough for Zatanna to show up. Zatanna's like a magician superhero apparently and I think she was in Justice League Unlimited once or twice. That's basically all I know about her.
Doctor Fate also crashes the party. As far as I know his super power is being Marvel's Doctor Strange with a gold helmet
They talk about Sunset Shimmer basically. There's a lot of words about how she's from another dimension and she can wield like chaos AND order magic. Also she could be dangerous.
Sunset wakes up and she talks with Zatanna. They introduce themselves and talk about magic and stuff. It's actually pretty easy to keep track of without knowing much about DC's ideas about magic, even though you still won't really know who Zatanna and Doctor Fate are.
After all the talking is over Zatanna and Doctor Fate agree to let Sunset Shimmer hang out with them. To be continued.
Obs Thoughts: I don't really know what to say on this one. It's a crossover for a universe I'm not really intimately familiar with, so I'm just blatantly not the target audience for it. Even so I'm not sure it manages to stand out in its genre. It does a better job of getting a character from one universe to the other than most, but other than that it subscribes to most of the usual tropes. Sunset Shimmer's in a strange universe, there's a lot of talking about who she is and what to do with her, and oh man is she ever going to get home?
It's got potential as a premise I guess, and there's some space to do cool stuff with comparing Sunset's magic to DC Universe magic but like, as of its first (and currently only) chapter I just don't sense anything that's really exciting or memorable about it. Sorry D
I give this fic a batman cookie
Tune in next week folks
I gagged a little. I just had two cake pops a few weeks ago, and the utter sickness they caused me means I will NEVER eat them again. Oh man, I think I may hurl...
EEEEEEEEEEE A Review from one of my favorite writers!! Thank you so very much Obselescence!! This really made my day! Thank you again from the bottom of my little heart
And thus my super-villain origin story was born—a less than stellar review from Obsy drives me to madness and now I will have to impersonate him @ Bronycon. At least we're both from Texas, sorta.
Interesting choice of fics this week.
>tfw Harmony ;_;
I see that you're familiar with the joys of parenting and/or pet ownership.
3852330
I like it. I am also from Texas. My back story shall be that when I was 12 I inhaled paint fumes and wrote a story and got rejected. I have been waiting for a chance to enact my revenge!
3852326
I can not handle icing. Ruined me and gives me a headache. I can inhale an entire bag of gummy bears though.
I look forward to more of these reviews brother, there actually rather addicting.
For a moment I got Wanderer D and Obsolescence mixed up in my head, and I thought you were doing a double-blind review of your own fic. It made this blog post a lot weirder.
3854006 legit I did the same thing