The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Reviews #03: Your Human and You · 10:44pm Aug 19th, 2016
A good day to you my rather splendid ladies and gentlemen, I hope it has been and shall continue to be fun and productive.
Today I bring you the third edition of The Good the Bad and the Ugly reviews, featuring one of the most well known HiE's on the site. Before that, though, a quick reminder of our classifications:
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.
Before we continue, a warning: today's review is of an M rated fic, and it is thus for good reason; discussions concerning sexual situations between humans and ponies are unavoidable in this review. Note in particular: rape, female on male, will be discussed.
Todays fic:
Your Human and You
by MadMaxtheBlack
Tags: Sex, Gore, AU, Comedy, Dark, Human, Romance, Slice of Life
Description:
For Equus, humans have always been viewed as animals, creatures that could neither think nor reason. That's the way it has been since humans were first discovered nearly a thousand years ago. All that changes for Twilight Sparkle, newly crowned princess of Equestria, when she finds out that her human is as intelligent as she is.
Max, a human from Earth, finds himself stuck in a world where ponies rule and humans are treated as pets. Now, with the help of his "owner", he must adapt and learn his place in this new world. That shouldn't be too hard, right?
However, something unseen is lurking in the background, pulling strings, and a darkness stirs deep beneath Canterlot.
...and what dark secrets do the humans of Equestria hold?
First Impressions:
I will start by saying that I am not surprised that this fic attracted so much interest.
The title is snappy, refreshingly brief and works well with its subtle inversion of the normal and mundane. I good attention grabber.
The cover pic is doing its bit in the attention grabbing stakes as well; it is in the top tier of cover pics on site. Allow me to explain:
Bottom tier cover pics are things like pony creator images featuring the OC star of the fic. These are a red flag for savvy readers and fit only for attracting trolls.
Middle tier are things like frames from the show or images from the internet. Providing the author chooses wisely, these are generally perfectly serviceable.
Top tier are specifically commissioned artworks, done specifically for the individual fic, which is what we have here. The artist has done a fair job, with good use of outlines on the human depicted in order to allow for a better fit with a near show accurate Twilight. While not perfect, the blending of a realistically proportioned human and the more cartoonishly proportioned pony is one of the better attempts I have seen.
The description itself is also pretty damn good: there are two good hooks in the described conflict and the AU itself, it is concise and well written with no glaring errors and the Planet of the Apes ribe is really working in its favour.
Aside from the tags, which are far too numerous, my first impressions are favourable. On the topic of tags, the combination of mature and sex generally means porn, or at least smut. Further, that many tags is generally a good sign that a fic doesn't know what it wants to be. Telling indicators of things that are to come...
Story and Characterisation:
“Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distintly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
Thus began A Christmas Carol, and just as it is critical to understand the status of Marley's vital signs if that great work is to make sense, so it is vitally important that one understands the nature of the AU in Your Human and You if anything I say further is to be meaningful.
That said, allow me to describe the fics key premises. First, in this alternative Equestria, humans are well known and commonplace. But they are not like humans as they are on our Earth. For a start, they aren't sapient; they have about the same intelligence a dog. Think Planet of the Apes.
Our non sapient humans have been domesticated by ponies for centuries, and are frequently kept as pets by them.
From here, however, we get rather less family friendly and take a big old dive into weirdville. For the ponies have other uses for humans aside from pets and working animals. They like to have sex with them. A lot.
This is so common that mares will openly and loudly discuss the matter in public places. Indeed, mares seem almost incapable of resisting:
She walked up until she was standing right in front of me, her cheeks a rosy color. She then glanced around to see if anybody was looking at us. Seeing that no one was watching, she lifted one of her front hooves and patted me on the head. Hmm... so she only wanted to pet me? I'm okay with that...
...but then her hoof started to travel downwards.
And it almost always is mares, with the exception of Blueblood, hypocritically condemned for his own sexual interest in humans.
Despite their popularity, for one reason or another, there is evidence that humans in this setting don't actually make good pets:
"Ah hope he isn't territorial, or one that don't like young ones. Humans can be aggressive, even to their own young sometimes. Usually the males, if they get annoyed or provoked." I furrowed my brow slightly at that information. Humans here are aggressive towards their own young?
Mr. Cake seemed to have finally noticed where the foal was. "What are you waiting for?! Get her out of there!" His voice sounded slightly panicky as he turned towards Applejack.
"It is not that simple, Mr. Cake! If we approach him now, he could become aggressive towards Pumpkin or us and then the foal could be hurt." Oh come on! That's profiling! I hope this doesn't get too out of hand...
And here we have the root of my first major criticism of this fic. Imagine a world where beastiality was commonplace and socially acceptable. Something that was not only permissable, but that you could chat with your friends about casually over coffee. Have you got that, my good ladies and gentlemen?
Now imagine if said beastiality, for no apparent reason, was only acceptable with one species. Dogs say. And only permissible for women. Anything else is gross and wrong and taboo.
That's what we have here, and it makes very little sense.
Now, this might be fine if this was intended as a oddball raunchy comedy, after the fashion of the Carry On series. And some chapters are like that. But not all of them; as the tags suggested, this fic has a bit of a split personality. Here is a part of the protagonists introduction to Equestria:
The silence continued for several more seconds, accompanied by the soft sound of something moving. A small whimper echoed around the room as they moved him into a better position. The sound of metal scraping on metal could be heard as the unicorn opened the shears. I screwed up my face, trying hard to block out the sound, but to no avail. A brief pause followed, then a sudden swish and…
I didn’t see it happen. I never want to see it happen. But the sounds that echoed around the metal prison as those unicorns forever took away what made that wretched soul a man, followed by that bone chilling scream, will forever haunt my darkest nightmares.
Quite enough to give anybody mood whiplash.
Particularly our protagonist Max. Max has issues as a character. For a start, he does some really, really dumb stuff, and is not called out on it nearly as much as he should be. His biggest initial act of dumbassery is his failure to communicate with the ponies. When sent to Twilight to be her pet, this is his priority:
Unable to reach a bathroom, or a nearby window, that left only one option. I wasn’t happy about it, but I’ve seen my dog do it several times, and if I was going to act like an animal, I might as well do it too.
The urge growing, I looked around the dark room. Spotting my prey just within my reach, I smiled. Standing up, I descended upon the poor rug.
This should wake her up in the morning.
Rather than attempt to communicate, he concludes that defecating on rugs is the best way to spend his time. It's not as if his author doesn't like him. Quite the opposite:
“H-his m-m-member is l-larger than most h-humans,” Fluttershy managed to say, refusing to look up. Twilight’s face immediately lit up as well, wings snapping out.
The wing-thing must have something to do with arousal... I was now sitting there, glancing between the two flustered mares, each one unable to look at the other.
Note again the barely controlled and unlikely sexual responses our hero invokes. He is on the wrong end of many unwelcome advances provoked by such; indeed, the many traumas he suffers should have badly effected his sanity. The fact that it didn't is handwaved.
Max, in spite of many opportunities, only tries to communicate with Twilight when he believes he will be got rid of. And from there, they develop a romantic relationship that unfolds slowly over rest of the six hundred thousand words and counting fic.
Somewhat of a poor start to a relationship, one might say; taking a dump on your spouses rug is odd in the extreme. Still, some romcoms have done worse.
But this isn't really a romcom. It gets dark.
The consumption of this relationship is what finally caused me to abandon this fic. As might be expected from what we have seen so far, this fic incorporates heat in mares as a concept. It generally uses this for comedy purposes.
Sadly not always, however. Recall that I said this fic has a split personality? In one chapter it might be silly cringe comedy, but in others it gets seriously unpleasant. Twilight, under the influence of her heat, essentially rapes the human protagonist, due to her inability to control herself.
This is all the worse for Twilight having spent most of the fic in character.
He gets her off the hook by giving retroactive consent, and Twilight only gets a serious lecture from Celestia for her trouble, but the damage was done.
Conclusion
This fic has a fascinating premise, and some good writing, but it is poisoned by its fixation on sex, and, above all, its inability to decide what it wants to be. It moves between silly sex comedy and dark drama with dizzying speed, and never finds its true identity.
All this, while problematic, is forgivable. But depicting an otherwise in character Twilight as incapable of controlling her base instincts and raping a human is not. For this startling piece of character derailment, I name this fic among the Ugly:
Edit: Removed NSFW links.
I'm not sure where you're seeing the excellent writing--the prose is awkward and reads almost like how someone would write if English wasn't their native language and they hadn't quite gotten the hang of it. Which is actually how most fanfiction reads, so I guess there's that.
That was one of the stories I have been avoiding. Looks like my hunch was correct, I wouldn't like it.
Thanks for confirming that. :)
Eh I still love it.
4159204
Excellent is relative here. I wouldn't compare it to the work of Pratchett, say, but it's a lot better than a lot of what I review. Not a high bar, granted
I remember a time when I thought Diaries of a Madman and Your Human and You were the best things out there.
Such dark, dark times.
4159223
I judge writing as excellent when I can read it and my attention naturally remains on the content rather than the writing itself. There are a few authors on this website who can do that, but not many.
4159232
Good point. I will edit it to some good writing, rather than excellent.
I tried to read this one and got up to the third or fourth chapter before I broke my neck from mood whiplash and had to stop. Great review as always.
Yeah, this one even I don't like. Snapped my suspension of disbelief like a twig.
I actually have an explanation for that one.
I started following this story early on, when it had, I think, about two chapters, and even then people would point out how stupid Max's behavior was. In response to that, either in the comments of the story itself or in a blog post somewhere, the author explained that it was actually part of a bet he'd made with a friend. He was challenged to write a HiE where the human protagonist does not communicate with the ponies in any way for the entire first half of the story. According to the story's initial plan, that meant he could only try to interact around chapter 7 or so.
So yeah, his dumbassery is actually meta-dumbassery, which modifies the worseness factor in an indeterminate way.
How long it took to get there is what made me.
I gave up around chapter 46 (Way to stick to your plan, author, by the way) when they'd been teasing the first kiss for about two whole chapters, and I just thought of the romance as a subplot that was bogging down the whole fic by obstructing the resolution of the actual important elements of the story.
I knew that whatever answers I wanted out of the story (mainly A) What's Discord up to and B) What are the humans digging out from under Canterlot) would be forever condemned to wait in line behind the massive glacial behemoth of the romance, so I decided I didn't have the time to wait another three million words for Twi and Max to finally sex it up properly so the actual story could resume.
Also the rising levels of special snowflake syndrome as the story progresses and introduces the dozen or so side characters that would usually be ridiculed if they were the stars of their own fics became unbearable after a while.
Mood whiplash is right.
While in Ponyville, he gets molested and nearly raped several times by mares. It's mostly played for laughs.
Then Blueblood tries it, and it's a thing of only barely describable horror, leading to immediate and bloody punishment for the prince that comes just shy of ruining his life completely and forever because people in the comment section (me, for example) pointed out how hypocritical that would be.
Do you think there might've been a homophobic undertone at work here? I'd rather believe there wasn't, but I can't shake that sense.
4181927
I don't think it's homophobic, so much as buying into / exploiting the double standard of female on male rape. That is played for laughs (except when it isn't; this fic is very inclined to have its cake and eat it) but when Blueblood tries it, suddenly it's serious business.
Note also that no other males show interest in humans, and Blueblood is depicted as a perverse for doing so. It's very hypocritical, and the prose is not neutral; it is clear that the audience is expected to take this at face value.
4181951
That sounds logical, yes. I guess there would need to be a bigger sample size to see whether it's a general Dick is Ick factor, or if attempted rape is okay-ish when it's a mare. Unless it's not, like you said.