Wacky Box Reviews #7: boy I've done a lot of these lately · 3:34am May 10th, 2016
Hey guys it's one more wacky box reviews. You can probably expect the once a week schedule again from here on out.
"I mean it's cold in gardez" pick:
Completely Safe in the Reference Section by Cold in Gardez
After a harrowing and dangerous quest, Twilight Sparkle and her friends have recovered Excelsior's Ecstatic Codex from an evil zebra cult intent on ending the world. The Codex, one of the greatest works of dark magic ever forged, carries within its pages a limitless collection of vile, twisted spells, all specially devised for anypony who opens the cover.
What do you do with a book of dark magic? If you're Twilight Sparkle, you put it in your library. Because that's where books go.
After all, books are for everypony.
It's probably not an exaggeration to say the fanfiction game begins and ends with Cold in Gardez. Dude's a legend. Qualitywise he's probably an easy pick for top five best authors in the fandom
Also he's outplaced me in pretty much every EqD contest we've been in together so MAYBE I'M A LITTLE SALTY about that
So let's see what the buzz is on his latest fic.
The thing opens up with Twilight and co. returning from a bunch of wacky interdimensional shenanigans. Everyone's covered in ectoplasm when they drop out of the portal because interdimensional tunnels are spooky business and filled with ghosts I guess.
also ecto cooler's coming back
The main takeaway from the whole thing besides everyone being covered in ectoplasm is that they stole a book. It's called the Excelsior’s Ecstatic Codex because it belonged to Excelsior and the dude was really happy about codices. They stole it from an evil cult and it's kind of implicitly an evil book so the smart money says it's actually the necronomicon.
It's pretty much to cold's credit as a writer that he didn't cheap out and CALL it the necronomicon
or the ponynomicon
or the necrofoalcon
Everyone's like "Hey Twilight you should probably burn that" but Twilight's like "chill guys it's a book there's only one thing we can do with it"
And then I guess everyone's like "Great thanks for burning it" because that's the end of the scene
So a week later Rarity walks in and she's like "Twilight why is the necronomicon in your library " and Twilight's like "It's cool Rarebear I put it in the reference section so nobody can check it out" and Rarity's like "That's patently ridiculous" and Twilight's like "yeah I wrote the patent on ridiculous"
Then Dash comes in later and she's like "Hey can I write some stuff down from the necronomicon" and Twilight's like "Well I don't see how that could result in wacky shenanigans"
Anyways I'm not going to keep play by playing this because if I did I'd basically just be doing the abridged series version of the fic and not actually reviewing it. Honestly it's good stuff go read it. I'm not going anywhere
I mean this review won't be going anywhere, I'll probably be at like burger king or something by the time you get back.
If I had to put this fic in a box I'd say it's a fusion dance between slice of life and comedy, at a pretty high level.
“It has something about everything! No matter who reads it, Excelsior’s Ecstatic Codex will provide dark and forbidden knowledge on the topic most relevant to that pony. Those zebras we stole it from were most interested in resurrecting Cthubl’lekth the Eyeless, so the Codex provided them with spells and techniques they could use to—”
“Yeah, okay, got it.” Rainbow flipped another page. “So you’re saying, like, if Applejack read this, it would be filled with spells and stuff about apples?”
Twilight frowned. “Applejack is a complex pony with a wide range of interests and characteristics, Rainbow. Not only is Honesty her Element and primary value, but she is also a loving, hardworking and determined mare. You can’t just condense her entire being down to ‘apples’.”
“But it would probably be apples, right?”
“Well… I mean, probably. Statistically. But there’s still a lot more to her than just apples.”
The fic's basic concept is kind of inherently goofy, and it swings way harder toward comedy at the end, but the whole thing is peppered with like a groundedness that fits better with slice of life. It's honestly a remarkable level of restraint on Cold's part. I mean if you handed the premise of "Twilight has basically the necronomicon" to basically anyone else I'm pretty sure you'd see the town getting attacked by like an elder god around the midway point.
Instead Cold goes for more of a discussion on the freedom of information versus the dangers presented by that information. I guess it's kind of undercut by the fact that Twilight's defending an overtly malevolent source of information, but the general idea of the argument sort of holds up. Rarity even gets an insightful character moment where she talks about the dangers of falling victim to an evil book. In general it really gives the fic this level of sanity that keeps the whole thing focused even when it goes nutty.
Well mostly anyways
If I had to criticize one thing about the package it's that the tone could probably be more overall consistent. The fic is in general a pretty good mix between slice of life and comedy, but individual scenes can swing kind of hard toward the comedy or the slice of life half. A couple of Rarity's scenes with Fluttershy go pretty light on the comedy, while the ending goes almost too deep into the zany zone. Imo the package could probably have been improved by evening out the levels some, but maybe that's just personal preference and it's really not that big a gripe either way.
Prosewise I'd hand this fic an easy 4. There's nothing in here that's going to rearrange your understanding of english's possibilities but it's solid and it says everything it wants to say. It's basically the writing equivalent of a really good sandwich. It's not really the end-all be-all of food but it tastes great and there's nothing really to criticize about it so hey what more do you want
Obs thoughts It's cool and I recommend it
I give this fic a cold stone creamery in gardez
"relevant to my interests" pick:
Cosmic Sans by Akumokagetsu
Heads up this review's probably going to have undertale spoilers so go play undertale and then come back before you go any further.
If he lost, the world reset.
If he won, the world reset.
If he died, the world reset.
If he lived, the world reset.
Now he's in a whole new world, and the mechanics of the old world might follow.
So most folks who know me probably know I'm a pretty huge undertale nerd. So since the featured box finally has a crossover I know the source material on I might as well tackle it. I guess I'm going to go ahead and apologize to akumo here in advance because me being a nerd on the subject is probably going to make me more nitpickingly critical of the fic overall. So take everything with a grain of salt here is what I'm saying.
Anyways this fic looks like it goes into sans. For those who don't know this is pretty much him in a nutshell
Like I said I'm a huge Undertale nerd and this is going to get pretty spoiler heavy but if you don't care about that
BASICALLY sans is a pun machine skeledude who walks around making puns all the time. Except if you do a genocide run and murder everyone in the game but sans he reveals that he's actually a superboss and he knows that you (the player) have the power to save your game, reset the game if you lose, etc. It's pretty heavily implied that the main reason he's lazy and cracks jokes all the time is because he's kind of cynical about that. No matter what he or any other character actually does, everything's destined to get reset when you decide to start up a new game, so he figures it's fine not to care about stuff.
I'm saying this because like 90% of his backstory is locked up in the game's various endings and even some secret stuff that you aren't likely to find unless you watched a youtube vid on it. But it seems to be this fic's focal point. Honestly it's kind of a weird choice of concept to base a crossover fic on, because if you only have like a casual understanding of Undertale you probably aren't likely to get this fic. It seems like it's targeted at Undertale fans who also like my little pony rather than like the other way around.
So there you go I guess
Anyways sans lands in Equestria and Twilight gets kind of freaked out about him being a talking skeleton. It's kind of the usual crossover biz. This fic is weird because I honestly don't have a lot to say about it plotwise. It's like a quintessential crossover episode. Characters from one universe are in another universe and there's a villain that has to be defeated. Then they work together and defeat him. The ending sort of plays at ambiguity but for the most part it's kind of a cut and dry plot, which I guess works for media executives who figure it'd be a great promotional thing for both franchises but I don't really see the value of that sort of approach in a fanfic.
I'm being kind of harsh I guess. I'unno.
I'm actually familiar with the source material this time so something that kind of glaringly leaps out at me here is that crossovers really aren't conducive to writing characters the way they're really meant to be written. Honestly I've never really seen a crossover scenario, amateur or professional, where every character on both sides feels totally and honestly true to their source material in the middle of their weird collision of worlds. There's always sort of a "crossover vibe" to the whole thing that makes it feel kind of stilted. The characters don't really feel like the characters you know and love, but more like lower budget versions of themselves for the sake of the crossover.
who even came up with this one
Akumo manages to land sort of a vaguely goofy laidback tone with sans, but I don't really sense it as a great representation of the character. There's something off about it and I can't really explain what.
“*Yeesh, you seem really hung up on the whole talking skeleton thing,” the self proclaimed 'Sans' stuck his hands back into his still slightly crispy blue jacket pockets. Every jerky movement made her want to twitch. Watching the walking dead wasn't something that her brain seemed to want to comprehend, understandably. “*I can just stop talking and start staring awkwardly at you like you are at me, if you want. Is that a custom here or something? If so, it's cool. I'm great at staring contests.”
It just doesn't FEEL like what sans would say in the situation. I mean it's flippant and nonchalant but there's sort of an extra edge of cleverness missing that really keeps this version of sans from selling me. Maybe it's just me though. Your mileage may vary.
What's even weirder is that the fic casts Doctor Gaster as a threat that sans has to go deal with. It's kinda baffling because there's so little canonically about Gaster in Undertale that it's hard to say much more about him than the fact that he existed at all. The fact that Akumo decides to bring him in as this kind of pseudovillain just sort of seems like a really wacky choice. And I guess it more or less confirms my suspicions that this is really Undertale fanfiction with some pony mixed and not really the other way around, or even an equal mix.
I give this fic about a 3 prosewise. There isn't anything really wrong with the writing per se, although like I said the presentation of the characters doesn't really do it for me.
Which isn't really bad, but I mean this probably would have fit better on wherever you post Undertale fics instead of fimfics.
Obs Thoughts: I mean I guess this really comes down to how desperately you want to see sans the skeleton in equestria. If the answer is anything more lukewarm than "I mean I guess I like both of those things independently but I don't really feel a need to see that" then you probably don't have to read this fic. If you really really want to see sans in Equestria, I guess this'll get you your fix.
I give this fic a bunch of food suspended in a gelatin mold
tune in next week
I really don't think it's a good idea for anyone to be using that term
it could be
misconstrued
It was apparently Rebecca Sugar's idea, the creator of Steven Universe.
:D
These really are beautifully wacky reviews and I love them
My biggest problem with Akumokagetsu is that he seems to have an idea for a story, and then immediately start writing it. As if just the idea itself is enough to sell the prose, and 99% of the time it just isn't.
There's no substance there. It always feels like just an attempt to hit the minimum wordcount threshold to classify the idea as a 'completed' story before moving on to the next idea.
3934764 Either that or "Oh look at how edgy this is" kind of ideas that go nowhere.
I'm guessing you're going to keep doing this until you run out of foods to name?
3935228
Sorry man.
Like I said I'm kind of a huge Undertale nerd so I feel like I might've been more critical on it than I would be for a crossover I don't care about
so y'know grain of salt.
I have seen crossovers where all the characters feel like themselves but it's extremely rare. Much more common is the author having one side pretty well down but the other being warped. And of course there are also crossovers where nobody seems right. I hesitate to say if the second or third of these options is the one I see the most.