The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Reviews #05: Twilight's Nude Party Experience · 10:36pm Sep 8th, 2016
Greetings and salutations, my good ladies and gentlemen. It is my fond hope that you are in spiffing good form.
Before we proceed, two things. Firstly, our scoring:
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.
Secondly, a warning: below the break will be quotes from a fic that is outright pornographic (it is, in fact, porn) and not at all safe for work (NSFW). It is also not at all safe for brain (NSFB). Note, however, that I will not include any explicit quotations. Please be aware of this before proceeding.
Today's review is somewhat odd for me; I do not, as a general rule of thumb, review outright porn. For a start, there is just so much of it; on FIMFiction alone, the Clopfics group has five thousand six hundred and ninety three stories as of this writing.
To put that into perspective, if you were to read one a day, every day, it would take fifteen years, seven months and five days to complete the collection.
Much of it would receive essentially the same criticism; one can only type out "It dispenses with canon characterisation, is disturbingly misogynistic and disregards any attempt at logic or storytelling" in so many ways, so many times.
One might ask, therefore, why I am bothering to review this one. With that it mind, let us look at today's fic:
Twilight's Nude Party Experience
By Very Sleepy
Tags: Sex, Comedy, Equestria Girls, Human, Slice of Life
Description:
As the newest member of the CHS family, Twilight Sparkle feels it is only natural that she put forth an honest attempt to get to know her new fellow classmates. She may be a tad nervous but fortunately for her, Sunset Shimmer is there to help every step along the way. Besides, what better place would there be to start than a party at a mansion without any parental supervision whatsoever?
There’s only one problem before the mingling could begin… A certain nonnegotiable rule for all female attendants that must be met in order to be admitted.
But Twilight would have to figure out whatever that rule was later. For now, she was wondering why all the girls were taking off their clothes before they were allowed inside…
First Impressions:
My very first thought, upon seeing this fic, was: MythrilMoth has a fan. At first glance, this looks exactly the sort of thing he would write; a raunchy sex comedy featuring the human Mane Six and Sunset shimmer, with dubious characterisation and lots of sex.
The cover image fits the aesthetic nicely; MythrilMoth tends to favor show accurate images and has a definite preference for Equestria Girls. The described scenario is right out of his play book as well. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I saw the comment of the man himself:
Okay, I'm sorry, no.
This...
*sigh* At the risk of coming off as a hypocrite considering some of the things I've written for the sake of porn, this might be the most alarmingly misogynistic, sexist thing on this entire website. The very PREMISE of this story is just dripping with objectification, and in a spectacularly bad and demeaning way. Then on top of that, you've got the cringeworthy peer pressure angle...
Again, hypocrite for saying this given some of my body of work, but this. Is. WRONG.
Emphasis not mine.
Remember, this is a guy whose bread and butter is Equestria Girls fics where Sunset Shimmer and the human Mane Six are sexed up, objectified blatantly and characterised as far more sexually active than is remotely likely.
Take a good look at just how much he has gotten his knickers in a twist. Nor was he alone; a site mod felt the need to comment, essentially telling the commentators to cool their collective tits. I was quite intrigued as to how bad this could be...
Story and Characterisation:
With all apologies to JumpingShinyFrogs, should she be reading this, there is an old saying: if you take a frog and put it in boiling water, it will hop right back out. If you put it in cool water and heat it slowly, the frog will not realise it's peril and die.
This is a myth. It is, however, very relevant to this fic. The fic begins with cool waters; there is a party at Flash Sentry's place and basically everyone will be in attendance. Human Twilight (Henceforth Twilight) has been asked along by Pinkie, who has left out some rather important information: all girls in attendance are expected to be naked. Not so much as a sock.
Let me now address the elephant in the room:
"It's porn. It doesn't have to be realistic, it doesn't have to make sense and who cares about characterisation in porn? Of course it's misogynistic, it's porn. You just have to accept these things."
I know there is a touch of straw about this. That said, these very defenses were used in the comments section of the reviewed fic and others like it.
Naturally, I disagree with this. Basically, this is saying: it's porn, you don't get to criticise it. To hell with that; I will criticise whatever the hell I like. If you are posting a story here, I presume that you are posting a story. If you are writing prose literature, then the normal rules apply; you don't get a free pass just because you're trying to facilitate sex scenes.
Good erotic literature can and does exist. If you're going to write porn, then write good porn.
Let us return to our regular review.
Right out of the bat, we have two big problems: the first is subtle: the characterisation of Pinkie Pie. Pinkie has invited Twilight under false pretenses: Twilight hasn't been told a key fact:
“So, w-we don’t have to get naked?!” Twilight asked.
“Actually… we do… if we want to stay that is,” Sunset sighed. “Guys can stay fully dressed though. Only girls have to strip. We can’t even wear socks.”
Why is this out of character for Pinkie? I will tell you. Pinkie's modus operandi is straightforward: she seeks to make others, particularly her friends, happy. That is the whole point of the parties.
What we have here is Pinkie putting Twilight right on the spot; it is highly unlikely that Twilight would be remotely happy about this and she would know it. She can be oblivious, but she is not stupid.
This is subtle though; the water is still cool enough and our frog is in reasonable health. Still, it is important: just as the water is going to get hotter on our poor frog, so too will the characters get more and more OOC, and the apex has to be seen to be believed.
Our second problem is about as subtle as a jackhammer to the ball sack. This is the premise of the fic: just to get through the door, any girls in attendance are required to strip naked.
Now now, A British Gentlemen you dilapidated misery, you might say. It's porn. Unlikely and unrealistic scenarios are par for the course. But even allowing for that, this stupid. Comically misogynistic, of course, but also utterly, utterly stupid.
Getting drunk and stripping in back rooms? Sure. Strip poker? Why not. Skinny dipping? Go for it. There are any number of semi plausible ways to get girls at a party naked. But demanding school girls, stone cold sober and newly arrived, just strip off at the entrance?
Our water is getting warmer. It gets worse: not only are we expected to swallow such a demand, but we are also expected to believe that they would just be good with it. All of them:
Twilight watched in even greater shock as a completely nude Rarity helped Fluttershy unfasten and drop her bra. Fluttershy for pete’s sake!!! The pink haired and not-so-shy-anymore girl could only giggle as a group of routy male students barged in, running off down the hall without stopping amidst a roar of hoots and whistling aimed at the naked girls. Fluttershy kindly picking up her and Rarity’s discarded clothes and politely handing them off to the front door attendant, who placed them away. Then the two girls quickly took off after the crowd to meet up with the rest of their friends.
Quite in character, I'm sure you will agree.
But this is merely the start of it. One thing that separates this fic from the crowd is the way it escalates; the situation gets ever worse and more repugnant as the fic progresses. Having established the house rules for the sake of both Twilight and the audience, the fic now has to get Twilight naked and through the door.
It is here that this fic goes from stupid to outright unpleasant:
“Because it’s fuuuuuunnnn!!! Pinkie Pie suddenly shouted out from the stair top balcony above, already wearing a lamp shade as hat. Of course she was already butt naked from the moment she set foot inside, but Twilight felt that would have been the case anyway regardless of her nudity being required… or even desired for that matter. “We’re young and wild! So live it up you silly goose!!”
“B-but, Pinkie! How could you girls possibly agree to this?!?” Twilight stammered.
“By saying ‘ok, sure’!!” Pinkie exclaimed, before running off in her true-to-self sugar rushed manner, her breasts and butt bouncing wildly in every which direction.
Consider our situation. Twilight has been invited under false pretenses, she is stressed out and confused, and now the pressure is on. Get naked Twilight, no matter how frightening and embarrassing you find the idea. Just strip off. Be there or be square.
We, the audience, are expected to swallow this as something that the main cast would do. That she would be put in this situation, and then pressured in this manner. Sunset even prevents her from covering herself with her arms.
That water is getting pretty dangerous for our poor, unfortunate frog.
The water is getting hotter, and our escalation continues. Aside from all girls being naked, Flash has one rule: no outright sexual assault. Which his expresses regret over. What a saint.
Cameras, though, are fair game; our school girls are apparently not only willing to casually strip as the cost of entry, but they are also completely okay with many intimidate pictures of their breasts and genitals being taken by any male who feels so inclined. All of the girls are apparently completely fine with this. Hotter and hotter the water gets.
The boiling point approaches however; Twilight protests the chauvinism, and Rarity answers:
“You see darling? You’ve got it all wrong!” Rarity continued, turning back to Twilight with a confident expression. “Here we have every strapping young man our school has to offer at our complete beck and call. All of them willing bend over backwards to please us and keep us this way just because that thing dangling between their legs tells them too. Hehe… And the only thing we have to do in exchange for this divine service is show a fraction more skin than we normally do at the beach. No, darling… if anything, we are the ones taking advantage of them.”
Rest in peace, my poor amphibian. We hardly knew thee.
This stands alone as one of the most backwards things I have ever seen in any fanfiction. I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by going into detail on its self evident wrongness.
From here, we have a predictable decent into exhibitionist lesbian sex for all the main characters, including poor Twilight. And after all that horrible nonsense, it's not even particularly good porn.
Conclusion:
He has since edited it, but in his original comment, Obselescence remarked that when he had to clear a Princess diaper and incest fic, no one was prepared to die on those hills. I would argue that that is a false comparison; the fic he refers to makes itself known for what it is.
Imagine, instead, a fic that presents itself as vanilla porn, with comedy. But then we get incest. And then we get diapers. And then we get scat. With not a single laugh to be found.
That, more or less, is the case here. We have, at first glance, a sex comedy. That's what it looks like, that is what most readers signed up for.
But then it starts cranking up the chauvinism and misogyny and the black morals to ever higher levels, all delivered in ernest and with not a peek of a laugh anywhere in sight. Porn this may be, but it is Ugly:
Yeah, this froggy drowned herself in the pot after the first quote. Pretty impressive considering frogs breathe underwater through their skin.
Well I'm ready to saint you for making it through this. I debated taking this one on myself, but I was not prepared for this sort of anarchy.
I think it's worth nothing that MythrilMoth's idiocy is, while present, represented on a sort of sliding scale of ugliness. MythrilMoth is sophomoric. His writing tends to read like his hormones are constantly running on high and he's vomiting out everything he imagines without much of a filter. It can be bad and it can be objectifying, but it's usually self-evident objectification that doesn't try to take itself entirely seriously (with a few exceptions). "Everybody Does Sunset Shimmer" is more or less right there in the title an announcement of "this is going to be terrible and silly and have the maturity of a fifteen year old".
Where this story goes too far even for him is specifically, I think, in the endorsement of the really gross sexual ethics. It's not that every girl at the party consents, it's that their consent is portrayed as being because their boobies give them the power to bend men to their will through arcane magics of some variety, and specifically the idea that they're not giving anything up in this dynamic.
Like if this had been a kink fic written by someone conscious of the power dynamic at play here - because, yes, this is a form of power play - this would've effectively been some kind of D/s situation or an everyone-here-is-interested-in-sex situation or something. But instead we get this twisted world where Rarity declares oh yes, we do in fact have all the power in this dynamic because we are willingly objectifying ourselves for the amusement of men. And the other unspoken implication that this is something all girls are okay with.
Like that's the exact point where this story is no longer just "bad" but also "ugly". That inverted dynamic that it isn't even conscious of, and readers outright defending that dynamic because hey it's porn.
I've read (and if I'm being honest, enjoyed) some really kinky shit in my time on FimFic. It takes an awful lot to really squick me.
This was squick.
4199888
To be fair to MythrilMoth, he can write well when the mood takes him; there have been a couple of fics of his that I have enjoyed.
You do make excellent points, though; it was the statement by Rarity that convinced me to review this fic. I didn't even analyse it in my review, I simply led up to it. I feel it speaks for itself.
What really hammers it home, though, is how earnestly the fic presents its conclusions; there is no wink to the audience, no "yeah, we know this is bullshit" moment. The whole set up is played completely straight.
4200482 There was also Inside, granted...I would dangle that over his head if he didn't have a whole legion of fans who are likely to roast me at a drop of a hat.
Anyway, I don't understand why some teenage girls would still follow him if he made stories of sexualised, poorly characterised teenage girls.
How the hell did I miss this review? This is one of the most undeservedly defended stories I've seen in quite a while. So many people bent over backwards for this fic, I'm surprised knighty hasn't flipped the website upside down just so they can keep reading. "It's porn, so standards don't apply" is a pathetic excuse, and I was furious at how often it was thrown out there, especially when a site mod did so. Simply disgusting.
Thank you for the quality review as always.
4209455
To be honest, the reason I reviewed this here is because I assumed either yourself or kamikakushi would review it for Rage.
So I figured I'd sneak this review in first.
I'm glad you liked it.
The comment section was quite the show. Ironically, it provided far more laughs than did the alleged comedy fic itself.
4209508
We didn't plan on it. The story isn't good, but it wasn't bad-bad taken at face value. What got me riled up more than anything else was the excuses made in its defense.
4200482 Granted, he hasn't written pr0n in awhile now.