The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Reviews #02: Rise of the Alicorn Prince · 6:27pm Aug 14th, 2016
Greetings once again, my good ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second addition of The Good the Bad and the Ugly Reviews, my new review series for longer fics.
Before we begin, a quick reminder of my simple scoring method:
The Good: Fics of clear high quality, showcasing the work of an excellent or promising author.
The Bad: Fics of clear low quality, showcasing the work of a poor or inexperienced author.
The Ugly: Fics blighted by an underlying nastiness, against characters or real people, showcasing the work of an unwise author.
Today we shall take a look at an OC alicorn centric piece, clocking in at about one hundred and seventy seven thousand words:
Tags: Gore, Adventure, AU, Dark, Romance, Tragedy.
Description:
Taking place before the Season 4 finale ever happened, a unicorn weilding powerful dark magic rivaling King Sombra awakes from a thousand year sleep, stopped by Celestia herself. Unfortunately, with the Elements of Harmony placed back in the Tree of Harmony, Celestia, Luna, and Twilight Sparkle failed to stop Lucifer, slain by his powerful arcane arts. As all hope seemed lost, there is one who can finally end the fifteen long years of his tyranny, and that pony is Princess Twilight Sparkle's flesh and blood, Solaris, the firstborn male alicorn in Equestria's history. The teen must go through dangerous challenges with the help of the remaining five Elements of Harmony, but with each test comes a grave cost that will scar him for the rest of his life. Will the young prince be able to stand triumphant and defeat his foe, or will the emotional scars tear him apart and make him falter in his endeavors?
First Impressions:
Oh dear.
I could probably just end this section right here and move on. "Oh dear" is a good summary of the first impression that this fic, via its first page, gives. That said, I might as well do this properly.
To begin with, there's no cover pic. I maintain that no cover pic is better than a hideous cover pic; something like a badly done pony creator OC shoddily photoshopped in with the Main Six will simultaneously attract trolls whilst driving off earnest readers.
That is the worst case scenario.
No cover pic is simply a missed opportunity, as there is nothing to draw the eye. Nothing to attract readers in. That is the case here.
Then there is the description. This is an author's advertisement, and it is critical in getting people to take that all important step of clicking into chapter one. The only people who will be clicking on this evidence are those interested in seeing just how bad it's going to be.
We have:
1) Wall of text, with grammatical and spelling errors obvious even at a quick skim.
2) OC directly compared to canon character (Sombra), named "Lucifer." Red flag.
3) OC alicorn protagonist, child of canon character (Twilight). Teen. Likely an author avatar. Second red flag.
On top of that, consider the tags. We apparently have a dark, gory adventure, set in an alternate universe, which is also a romantic tragedy.
I stand by "Oh dear."
Story and Characterisation:
To begin with, this is our principle antagonist, one of the two characters on whose shoulders the success or failure of this fic ultimately rests:
She looked up as she heard maniacal laughter above Celestia's body, a unicorn stallion wielding an ethereal sword of darkness in his dark red aura.
His coat was black, as well as his mane and tail. His hair reached down to his shoulders, as wild as his insanity. His eyes were blood red as well as his horn, which was curved upward to a sharp point. This stallion almost seemed to resemble King Sombra, the evil unicorn king who attempted to take the Crystal Empire, using the same dark magic as he did, his eyes leaking a green aura from the corners. He looked younger than Sombra though, and he seemed a lot more sane despite using arcane magic at his disposal. His cutie mark was a red skull, the eyes stabbed through by two daggers.
He is a walking, talking bad guy cliché. A check list of what not to do if you intend for your readers to take your antagonist, and your fic, seriously.
The red and black colour scheme, the "sword of ethereal darkness," the skull and daggers cutie mark. All these things scream trying too hard. Way too hard. Throw in the direct comparison to Sombra, which we already had in the description, and things become clearer: he is Sombra, basically, but with added edge.
For the purposes of comparison, let us look at the antagonist of a good fic. In the case of Harmony Theory, we have Max Cash. Cash is a dangerous sociopath and a quite remorseless killer, but this is not obvious through his appearance: he is a light brown unicorn with a dark brown mane and tail.
The author instead relies on good writing and good dialogue to convey Cash's menace. The impression is always that nobody is really save around this guy.
A more famous case would be Ramsey Snow from A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin holds him in reserve for a few books, letting the reader see him only through second hand accounts. And when he does bring him in, he is not some ubermensch. Rather he is "big boned and slope shouldered, with a fleshiness indicating he will be fat later in life." Martin lets Ramsey's actions speak for him; he is seriously nasty, and there is a palpable sense of malice whilst he is on page. This did not happen by accident; Martin spent a long time carefully setting it up.
Compare that to what we have here. A pseudo Sombra with a still edgier look and a silly cutie mark, looking for all the world like an escapee from an old eighties tv show. Except, of course, that young audiences were not expected to take Skeletor seriously.
In this introduction, taking place in a dream, our master of bismuth proceeds to take off Celestia's head. That should make me feel something. It doesn't.
I don't feel anything when he proceeds to butcher Celestia, Luna and Twilight in reality either. Wielding a katana no less. Without even trying.
I don't feel anything when he himself is killed, in an overblown, bloodsoaked final battle.
And so it is for the whole fic. The telly style of writing, the cliché antagonist, and the lack of meaningful build up all prevent me from gaining the investment I would need to care what happens to anyone here.
I certainly don't care about the protagonist. Here is his prophetic introduction, from the same dream:
Within that light was the silhouette of a pony, hovering forward as its wings flapped strongly. As the pony moved closer, he revealed himself as an alicorn.
His coat was pure white, his torso protected by a golden cuirass, gold gauntlets that covered his forelegs, and a helmet of the same color that covered most of his face. Through the holes in the helm, Twilight saw a pair of eyes as blue as a clear, cloudless sky, determined though troubled.
The white alicorn sped off at breakneck speeds, faster than Rainbow Dash could if she pulled off a Sonic Rainboom, flying toward the madpony. Thousands of ethereal swords and daggers appeared from the unicorn's arcane magic, each blade shattering to pieces as the alicorn punched through them, his hooves a blur at the rapid pace he threw them.
Meet Solaris. As with our antagonist, he is a collection of clichés wrapped neatly with a host of red flags. Note the second direct comparison to a canon character, Rainbow Dash. Note the anime style violence. Note the use of the word "troubled."
To compliment our edgelord antagonist, we have a wangstlord protagonist. He is a teen, fifteen years old, which is undoubtedly the same age as his author, who writes what he knows.
Some examples:
"Oh, sure! Talk for mom when she's too busy with her duties as a princess!" Solaris yelled, growing more angry as his feeling of neglect hurt him emotionally. "She doesn't even care about me anymore! She doesn't even write me any letters, telling me if she actually loves me or acknowledges I'm her son! She left me and abandoned me!"
Actions, of course, speak louder:
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he flew into his worn out punching bag and began venting out his rage on it, punching and kicking as hard as he could. He managed to knock it off its chain, yet again, but he didn't care, watching it fly off and hit another part of the wall, mere inches from the entryway where his family watched.
From the moment of his introduction, the wangst starts. Solaris wangsts about how bored he is. Then he wangsts about how hard he has it. Then he wangts about his love interest.
He whines and he moans, he moans and he whines. He is violent, self centred and unpleasant.
He is not alone; the wangst is quite contagious. Spike, for example, wangsts about how Rarity practically stole from him (the Rarity "owes" Spike fallacy is well in effect here), and ever the wangst goes on. Still, Spike gets his "vindication:"
"It's not." Rarity kissed Spike's snout, assuring him that what he experienced was no dream. "That was for my horrible selfishness toward you, making you do everything I asked and brushing you off when you did a wonderful job helping me."
Even more than edginess, it is wangst that forms the core of this story.
Shining, here a double agent, wangsts. Spike we have covered. The Mane Six each wangsts in turn. Indeed, each is sacrificed in turn, for the wangst is central to everything:
"...N-No..." More tears fell from his eyes as the realization kicked in. It had all made sense, Rarity's, Applejack's, and Rainbow Dash's deaths all in the same time frame after he had succeeded with each trial. Rarity's assassination attempt in the middle of the night when he beat his test around that same time, Applejack bucking him out of the passage and getting crushed mere moments after he beat his second test, and now Rainbow Dash, getting killed by a crystal stalactite that seemed stable, but fell directly on top of her and impaled her. It wasn't just Lucifer who had killed them, Solaris was responsible as well. His tests were cursed. "...I-I...I'm...killing them..."
And that, in one paragraph, is a fine summation of this story. One hundred and seventy seven thousand words of edge and wangst.
Conclusion:
This is clearly the work of a young author (fifteen I reckon, the age of his stand in) with little experience in story telling, and who has not done his homework on this site. Many of the errors here, indeed most of them, are roads well trodden and well documented.
For its cliché antagonist, its blatant self insert protagonist and its edginess and overblown teen wangst, I name this fic among The Bad:
A shame. There really needs to be some kind of pamphlet. "Welcome to Fimfiction! Here's What Not to Do."
...What possessed you to even start reading it, though?
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I am pretty sure that such a document would stay unread.
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In a way, there is. Had he read and understood the writers guide, he would have avoided many of the errors on display here.
As is, he is figuratively and literally sacrificing canon characters for the glorification of
himselfhis OCs.4149551
That would be the reason I gave: "How bad could it possibly be?"
Still, while I admit that this was a low hanging fruit (it might be more accurately described as a 'tuber'), it was still instructive to review it. If nothing else, such reviews give a good indication of which tropes in Fimfiction are best avoided, and what does and does not work when constructing and writing a story in prose literature.
Also, I find reviews of crappy fics entertaining to read and write. This fic had a definite 'car crash' quality to it.
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Well, I can agree it was entertaining to read, but that had to hurt.
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It did have a bit of 'so bad it's good' about it; it was basically a long list of Things Not To Do in prose form. At times I had to stop and think: "Did he really just do that? He must surely know how bad of an idea that is."
So yeah, it was a bit of a slog. I don't exactly recommend it!
Still, it was far from the worst fic I've ever reviewed...
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I took a look. You, sir, are a glutton for punishment and this isn't healthy. :)
Makes me want to add something worthy to Rage Reviews just to do something nice for all these people. :)
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Yeah. Alicorn Prince is bad, but there's a bit of comedy there. Commander Thorn? That's just bad. Horribly, soul numbingly bad. And it just gets worse and worse and worse.
But even it, horrible as it is, is not the worst fic on site. That title belongs to this fic, reviewed here. If you are a genuine, stone cold, dyed in the wool masochist, the serious, hardcore sort, then read it. All two million plus words of it...
For as many parodies as I've seen, it always astounds me when I see that people are still unironically writing this sort of fic.