Lizardman Reviews #1: Stalking the Box · 11:02pm Aug 24th, 2016
Woohoo! The time has finally come for me to cast my soul away to the dark bowels of Fimfiction and join in the ranks of poor, unfortunate saps who dared venture into that sacred Box in search of quality ponywords. Shall I eventually succumb to the inevitable crushing despair, or cling onto hope until the very end? Let's venture forth and find out!
Dramatics aside, here's the first round of Lizardman Reviews, where I shall randomly pick three fics from the Featured Box and review them objectively and fairly, giving my thoughts before, during, and after reading them in that order. Gifs will be infrequent. Warnings will be given for Mature-rated stories. Plenty of fun to be had for everyone involved! Hopefully.
Let's get started!
Today's RNG picks: 1, 3, 7
My Fluttering Heart by Titanium Dragon
After the birth of Princess Cadance's fourth child, an adorable little pegasus filly, Princess Flurry Heart wants to know why none of her brothers and sisters are alicorns.
Her parents claim not to know why she's different.
They're lying.
Before reading: So, that cover art leads me to believe that Chrysalis is somehow involved with Flurry Heart's alicornhood. We've all seen fics where Shining does the naughty unwittingly (or completely wittingly, because Fimfic knows not the concept of standards) with Chrysalis. Even so, I don't know how that'd tie in to Flurry Heart being born as an alicorn. Granted, genetics aren't my thing, so let's see what the author has cooked up. The description is decent, and I know Titanium Dragon is at least somewhat a good writer, so I shouldn't have anything to fear. Hopefully.
While reading: So the fic opens up with Flurry Heart, her little brother, and Sunburst conversing about stuff. Like, stuff that most adults would prefer their children know nothing about, but fail to realize that children aren't stupid and can handle just fine. Titanium does a great job of writing about these things from a childish POV, too.
“You said there was lots of blood!” Her brother whirled on her.
“Yeah. Gross blood.” She wrinkled her snout. “You really wouldn’t like it. And Mom hurt a lot. And she was cranky.” Flurry paused, tilting her head. “But she loved us anyway. Even when she was shouting at Dad.”
“Yes, well, Princess Cadance was, well…” Sunburst shuffled.
“ ‘Pushing out a bowling ball,’ ” Flurry Heart quoted.
Case in point.
All the mechanics of the story are sound, as well. Grammar and spelling are good, the pacing is nice, and overall the story has me interested in seeing where it goes.
After a while of back and forth fluff between those three, Shining Armor comes and brings Flurry Heart along to meet the newest addition to the Crystal Empire's royal family. More cute fluffy back and forth follows, some great characterization, some positive vibes surging in yours truly...
Warning: Flash Sentry cameo!
Flurry Heart meets her new baby brother. The question of 'why am I the only alicorn child of this family' kinda comes out of nowhere here, and I can't help but feel, at least from the way Flurry is characterized, that she would've asked this question already. Meh, not really a major criticism.
The scene cuts to Shining Armor having just murdered Chrysalis. Quite horribly, in fact.
Shining Armor’s legs trembled as he looked down at the smoldering corpse that had once been Queen Chrysalis. Smoke rose off shattered chitin, her diaphanous wings now little more than tattered stubs rising from her iridescent shell where she lay on her side. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, her head fetched up against the curved wall of the cave.
Like, damn.
So, Shining Armor found Chrysalis inside a cave. For some reason. There's a disappointing lack of background info on what Shining was doing here. Then he finds a foal, and after putting two and two and two together, realizes Chrysalis did the naughty with him back at the royal wedding and popped out the demon baby Flurry Heart.
Like, damn.
The next scene is Cadance and Shining discussing what to do with the baby and how to keep her backstory under wraps. It's all believable for them, and it explains everything quite nicely.
Final scene is more fluff.
After reading: My overall thoughts on this fic can be summed up as follows: solid characterization but a kinda lackluster story.
The only thing that really stood out to me was Chrysalis' murder. Chrysalis is quite possibly the most complex villain in the show, caring wholeheartedly for her own children, but being completely apathetic to the well-being of other species. Seeing her die in any fic leaves one with a mixed response, and that's great, because it shows she's a three-dimensional character, which is always a good thing.
All the same, this fic will satisfy anyone who likes cute father-daughter fluffiness. Give it a read if you're in the mood for pure sugar.
Mature story incoming!
Precious Little Cewestia by dirty little secret
Because alicorns age slowly, Celestia still looks like a little filly, even though she's actually 121 years old. She doesn't fuck like a filly, though!
Before reading: Oh boy...
(Obviously) contains pseudo-foalcon.
I'll be upfront and say I'm not a fan of foalcon. That said, I do have to question the logic behind fictional underaged humans engaging in sex acts being a problem, but it being perfectly okay for underaged anthropomorphized animals to do the same. This world confuses me at times, it does.
Well, better get started on the story, then...
While reading: The fic is told from some random royal guard's POV, some time in the distant past, as indicated by the description. Everything's mechanically sound, but the prose isn't doing much to hook me and get me emotionally invested in the story. Granted, that's never really an issue for people who actually like reading sex stuff, but as it is, my dread over having to read eventual foalcon isn't being countered by, at the very least, an engaging narrative.
Princess Celestia arrives back at her room, having given her personal guards the slip and now sharing the company of our anonymous unicorn guard. She then starts doing suggestive exercises in front of him, and he's all like "I'm supposed to keep a close eye on her no matter what." and I'm like "Contrivance. Contrivance everywhere." and you all are like "hahahahahaha" or maybe "uggghhh".
The story (pffffht) proceeds with all the dirty talk and fucking you'd come to expect from these kinds of fics. And apparently Anonymous Guard the Perv is now part of Celestia's secret harem. Because why not?
After reading: It's foalcon. Decently written, but whether or not you'd care to read this is more or less determined right from the outset. Give it a read if you're into this kind of thing.
A Little Midnight Chat by Nordryd
Sunset gets up in the middle of the night for a small midnight snack. Downstairs she finds Twilight awake as well, struggling to write the counter spell. Sunset offers condolence, and ends up learning a big secret about Twilight. One that makes Sunset's heart flutter.
Before reading: It looks like we've gone from sex stuff to just shipping. Nice change of pace, even if I really don't care about SunLight (DaringBlood ftw!). Still, this one's short and (presumably) sweet, so I'm going into this feeling pretty good about it.
While reading: So this fic is essentially one giant heart-to-heart between Twilight and Sunset, culminating in them confessing their love for each other. It's short, sweet, but it could use a little more substance. The prose is quite dry, and all in all I really don't care too much for the narrative, cute as it is. This feels like one of those fics that gets written because the author just wanted to put something out there for the sake of it, because the narrative really is just that bare bones. If you're gonna put out a story where the focus is more on the character interaction and not so much on development, the least you can do is provide a solid narrative that really gets you into the characters' minds and showcases their attitudes towards the presented topic. Just having them confess their feelings for each other in the most underdeveloped manner isn't going to do the story any favors. Put in more effort, is the message here.
After reading: If you're looking for a short and sweet fic to tide you over for about five minutes, or if you're into SunLight, this fic should appeal to you. Personally, I really don't care, but at least it left something of a warm feeling in my gut while I was reading it. Which is more than I can say for the previous fic, at least.
And that's it for round one, ladies and gentlemen and kids aged thirteen and up. I'll be back next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and so on and so forth...
Maybe consider putting the mature story(s) at the bottom of the blog, even if it mess up the order? That way if you don't want to read the mature review you can just exit out right there and not search for the point where the mature review ends and the next SFW review begins.
4169681 I'll take that into consideration from now on.