The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Reviews #08: MLP · 9:49pm Jun 19th, 2017
Greetings my good ladies and gentlemen on this sweltering summer afternoon. I hope to find you cool, refreshed and revitalised.
Today I bring you a fic with a nasty case of split personality. Be forewarned: some of you will not, and should not, be joining me on this journey. There are bad things herein; I will outline trigger warnings below. They are appropriate in this case.
WARNING: The fic reviewed contains passages detailing the overt sexualisation of young children. The fic includes defences of, and justification for, the sexual abuse of children, and sexual relationships between children and adults. Some of these passages will be quoted for the purpose of this review. If this will cause you destress, DO NOT PROCEED.
For those of you who remain, a reminder of our scoring system:
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.
Onward, then, to today's fic:
Tags: Sex, Gore, Adventure, Romance, Dark, Drama, Alternative Universe, Human.
Description:
A high fantasy reimagining of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Long ago, the cruel God of Chaos Discord ruled over the world. The other Gods overthrew him and sealed him in the deepest Hell of the prison Tartarus, then waged war for his empty throne. The Goddess of the Sun Celestia emerged victorious, then sealed six more dark Gods in six more Hells of Tartarus. The remaining Gods ruled over the world's lands under Celestia, and as High Princess her reign brought an age of peace.
A thousand years after Celestia's defeat of Nightmare Moon, the Goddess of the Night, the mortal peoples hold the festival of the Summer Sun Celebration to commemorate her victory. However, on the eve of the Celebration a mysterious organization releases Nightmare Moon from her prison. In response, Celestia tasks her young apprentice, the sorceress Twilight Sparkle, with preventing the unsealing of any more dark Gods. With the aid of her own apprentice and her five strange new friends, Twilight begins her mission to put an end to the return of the seven Sealed Gods- especially Discord, the dreaded Lord of Chaos.
Now with a TV Tropes page!
Co-written with Snowflake Sparkle. Cover art provided by my wonderful and talented friend, PastelDemon. Read about my plans to adapt this story into a manga, anime, and game in my flagship fic announcement.
First Impressions:
I must confess, my good ladies and gentlemen, that my first impressions of this fic did not come from this site at all, but from tv tropes, which linked to it.
Once on the first page, however, I saw enough to convince me to move forward. I am quite partial to a good AU, and this one looked like it had promise as a deconstruction of the show with a somewhat darker tone. The coverpic, whilst hardly fine art, is nevertheless decent enough. The tag list gave me pause: that many tags rarely bodes well.
All in all, though, I went in with cautious optimism. Little did I know.
Story and Characterization:
There is a famous rhyme, by a gentleman named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, that best summises my feelings towards this fic:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
Horrid indeed. You have a fair idea of what's coming, my good ladies and gentlemen; my warning made that quite plain. Still, we will get to that.
Let us first consider what this fic is trying to do, as summed up nicely by tv tropes:
author's stated goal is to bring the darker and more taboo implications of the original show to the forefront in order to demonstrate its hidden brilliance.
A lot of what this fic is attempting has been done before, with mixed results: the idea of using fanfiction to examine what a kids show such as MLP might look like with its "for all audiences" filter removed has been around for decades, and examples for MLP: FiM have been around for as long as the fandom has.
How successful this it depends very much on the quality and maturity of the author. In the hands of a gifted author, this can lead to such works as the legendary goodfic Don't Panic, which uses an examination of Tolkien's lore, along with studies into contemporary real life times periods, to document a more likely Middle-Earth experience for a "Typical American Teen Girl" (which were a plague upon the LOTR fandom at that time) than usually gets depicted in fanfics.
In less capable hands, such things can, and do, end up a childish, edgy mess.
What we have here, by and large, is a mixed bag.
On the one hand, Gilda is allowed to be a much more effective bully than she was in canon. The fic uses her character, along with Fluttershy's and Rainbow's, to study the effects of homophobic bullying via aggressive, homophobic culture of the angels, this fics humanised stand in for pegasi.
The author examines the effects on bullying via character interactions and their various self defense mechanisms: Fluttershy becomes ever more withdrawn, Gilda adopts bullying tactics herself and Rainbow covers up her insecurities via a façade of braggado. We see further examples in Lightning Dust, whose response is to go deep into the closet and become a homophobic bully herself.
On the other hand, while the author shines when he or she allows the audience to reach these conclusions through good character interactions and story telling, he or she appears unwilling to abandon the crutches of direct infodumps. From the prologue:
However, one Goddess saw the suffering of the mortals and took pity on them: Celestia, the Goddess of the Sun. She united the other Gods and led them into battle against Discord, the cruel Lord of the Gods. Their battle was great, hard, and devastating, and though Discord vastly outmatched the other Gods they were able to narrowly escape the jaws of defeat and claim victory against him. The Gods prepared for him Tartarus, the great prison of Hells, and sealed him in stone in its deepest Hell.
Following Discord's downfall, the Gods waged another great war amongst themselves for his now-empty throne. Celestia emerged victorious, and sealed five more dark Gods in five more Hells of Tartarus: in the second Hell she sealed Tirek, the God of War; in the third Hell she sealed Chrysalis, the Goddess of Lust; in the fourth Hell she sealed Sombra, the God of Darkness; in the fifth Hell she sealed Sonata, the Goddess of Music; and in the sixth Hell she sealed Scorpan, the God of Storms.
This sort of thing really shouldn't survive the first draft; a more elegant why to impart this information should have employed.
Telling in general is all to often employed by the author: on occasion, half chapter long info dumps on characters may be found. This is all the more startling as the author generally has a good grasp of characterization.
With one exception.
We return, as we often do, to Spike. It is very, very obvious that Spike is one of the author's favourite characters. Normally, in such cases, we end up with one of the two great badfic Spikes: the unstoppable harass and the abused woobieball. I am pleased to report that this is not the case here: Spike is likable and polite. As the fic is fond of telling us. Through Sweetie Belle:
Spike. Sweetie smiled and a faint blush grew in her cheeks. Ever since Spike came to Avalon with Twilight at the beginning of the summer, Sweetie had slowly developed an infatuation with him, fed by her fascination of how perfectly he fit how she'd always imagined her mentor and sweetheart would be.
Was Spike handsome and brilliant? Oh, yes. But though he was perhaps as intelligent as Twilight was, he was still quite easygoing and laid-back. And even though he was small, it didn't make him any less good-looking; his large eyes, cute face, and warm smile caused Sweetie to speculate at what a gorgeous bishonen heartbreaker he'd be when he was fully grown. Even though he looked like he was Sweetie's age, Sweetie noticed that even Rarity and her friends would occasionally admire him.
Through Apple Bloom:
Apple Bloom weepingly embraced Spike.
It was late dusk when they completed the treehouse. Spike and the Crusaders stood upon the wooden stairs, leaning against the handrails and looking up into the sky. Apple Bloom turned to look at Spike, then smiled again. She decided: she didn't care what her family said or thought anymore. She didn't care that Spike was a boy, or that he was an Elf; he was one of the most amazing friends she'd ever had. She'd do whatever she wanted with him, and she wouldn't let anyone stop her.
She began blushing again, and softly giggled. He still made her nervous, but she decided that she could get used to it.
Even the guys want him:
Once they began walking back to the others, however, Rumble's eyes fell upon Spike, who was busy selecting a glass soda bottle from a metal tub of ice. At that instant, Rumble immediately froze, and a blush began to creep into his face.
Noticing that Rumble had stopped following her, Scootaloo turned back to him and said, "Rumble?"
"Who- who's that?" Rumble said, his eyes still fixed on Spike.
Scootaloo followed Rumble's gaze, then grinned. "Oh! That's Spike, the guy I was telling you about earlier!" she said.
Spike is beautiful. Spike is perfect. Everyone loves him, everyone fancies him. He always knows the right thing to do or say. He is good at everything he does. The isn't just limited to children, either:
Before Twilight had a chance to respond, Spike swiftly reached across her front, grabbed her wrist, turned her to face him, then leapt up to wrap his arms around her neck and grip her torso between his legs. Spike was kissing her; right then, right there, for all of their friends to see.
Twilight made a muffled cry in protest, and her face burned violently as she cast a glance towards the other four girls, who were all gaping astonishedly at the astounding sight that laid before them.
Spike wasn't just kissing her; he was kissing her deeply. It was quite passionate and sensual, as though he really was her lover. Twilight had never been kissed before, and so she was utterly lost as to how to respond for a few moments, but then she decided to play along; she closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him, as well, and began mimicking the motions he made with his lips and tongue. She actually found it extremely enjoyable, and she felt herself growing deeply aroused by her apprentice's alluring scent, beguiling taste, and soft, gentle touch...
FYI: In this fic, Spike is twelve.
Which brings me to my major criticism of this fic: significant parts of it amount to propaganda in favor of pedophilic sexual relationships between adults and children, and creepy sexualisation of children in general.
It's woven into the narrative essentially from start to finish. The first hints were in the mentor system. Essentially, young elves (read: unicorns) have, as a normal part of their education, a one on one mentor student relationship with a young adult to help them learn magic. This typically starts when they are older children or young teens. This relationship is sexualised to hell and back:
"Ugh! I'll never get this!"
"Coral..."
"Uh... E-Emerald...?"
"If you can memorize this, I'll give you a kiss."
"Sweetie Belle!"
Eyes widening with panic, Sweetie hurriedly closed her volume of Sea Breeze and shoved it under her pillow. She heard her sister's voice again, closer this time, "Sweetie! Are you in your room?"
The author states that these semi pornographic romances are "by far the most popular" genre. Note the girls age ranges: nine to fourteen.
Yes.
Things get worse with Scootaloo. We, the audience, are treated to frequent insights into her hypersexualised brain, including her desire to seduce Rainbow Dash, her thirst for sexual intercourse with her peers (and Spike, for "practice") and her thoughts on when best to set her plans to seduce other girls in her age group into motion. Not to mention her many (non explicitly described) masturbation sessions.
She's nine.
I will be frank, ladies and gentlemen. My grown up hat is now on. No joking, no messing around. The thoughts and behaviour we see from Scoots in this fic is NOT normal; a nine year old girl showing this level of sexualisation would normally be a key diagnostic sign of having been seriously abused.
Age inappropriate sexual knowledge and behaviour, and attempts to initiate child on child sexual abuse, or to proposition adults for sex, are all serious, serious red flags. This sort of thing would merit immediate intervention and investigation by the appropriate authorities in real life.
The fic gives no indication that any such abuse is taking place. As of this writing, Scootaloo is in a good home enviroment.
Rather, it seems that this is simply done to normalise the sexualisation of children. I can come up with no other sensible explaination.
I should make clear, the fic never goes into any explicit details (I would have reported it if it had). Even so, what it is doing is ill advised in the extreme.
It is book two, chapter three, however, when things really start boarding the train to Fuckthisshitsville. In it, we are introduced to a new "hero", Dr. David Baker, the father of Pipsqueak, via a four thousand word infodump on his background.
And such information!
We learn:
The good Doctor was pursued by his eleven year old student for a relationship.
The good Doctor eventually excepts this relationship, becoming her "boyfriend."
The good Doctor asks permission from the girl's parents to start a sexual relationship with her, expecting to be shut down like a flesh eating bacteria infected deli. They grant it.
The good Doctor gets official permission, from the authorities, to have a sexual relationship with his eleven year old student.
The good Doctor impregnates his now twelve year old student.
The good Doctor marries his now twelve year old student.
The good Doctor becomes a father, to Pipsqueak.
The good Doctor is bullied by his mean, horrible colleagues, who do so in a remarkably childish manner.
But it's okay, she's "mature":
After this incident, however, David never quite saw Tesseract the same way again; she had shown great romantic interest in him, and she seemed to regard the possibility of becoming his girlfriend with every bit as much of the seriousness and gravity as a woman twice her age would. Additionally, David would be lying if he claimed he wasn't at all attracted to her, too; though Tesseract wasn't as pretty as Rarity, she was still a small and adorable girl with a lightly freckled face; large, brown eyes that rested behind thick round eyeglasses; and a head of well-groomed, wavy auburn hair.
...And now I need a bath.
This is a pedophile fantasty, plain and simple. It incorporates the justifications and excuses actual, real life pedophiles use. It incorporates a scenario straight out of the pedophile wish list: a situation where the abuse is allowed and facilitated by the very people who should be protecting the child. It even has a happy(ish; she dies in an unrelated accident) ending.
It is disgusting.
The author does offer commentary:
The idea that I was trying to get across is that even though Rarity really shouldn't have had a sexual relationship with her teacher [at age ten], there are still questions worth asking; questions such as, "Is there any ethical nuance at all when it comes to adult-child relationships?" "Are those who've slept with children complete monsters, or do they deserve some sympathy?" and "Exactly what is it that makes such relationships wrong in the first place?"
Not at all am I advocating the idea that such relationships are acceptable; quite the opposite, actually. But I think it's dangerous to make the subject such a taboo one that no one will even think about it; therefore, I try to provoke thought about it.
This is not how you go about doing that.
Be under no illusions: the text expects the audience to side with the "good" Doctor; there is no neutrality in this matter. It goes out of its way to talk about how happy she was and how everything went as she wanted. This whole segment was a propaganda piece for an inherently abusive, asymmetrical, pedophilic relationship.
It is where I noped the fuck out.
Conclusions:
"And when she is bad, she is horrid."
The sort of horrid that involves microwaving cats. I believe I have said enough. For its creepy, creepy musings on child sexuality and child sexual abuse, I name this fic among the Ugly:
Ew.
Just ew.
Ugh. Paedophiles and their apologists infest anime fandom (and even commercial producers create a disturbing amount of paedophilic material).
It didn't sound from the little you described that the characterizations or world matched up all that well with canon, even given the AU tag. Seem to me that it's just another person piggybacking on the fandom to try and spread their own socio-political worldview, using AU as an excuse to entirely ignore anything resembling canon. Encouraged, no doubt, by this site's unfortunately indulgent, wink-and-a-nod attitude toward paedophiles.
Bookmarked to read later.
Um... how is this story even allowed on the site? This seems to be very close to skirting the 'no underage humans having sex in your stories' rule, if not outright breaking it. And I have no intention on actually reading this to find out if it does cross the line.
No... just... no.
"Ah-ha!" said the Dan, who handles red-inked warnings the same way he does the Spanish section of his futon assembly instructions. "This is in fact very clever. Real ponies live to about 40 without making sugar a tremendous part of their diet. presuming the titular little ponies enjoy the same lifespan, nine years puts them at about the 20-25 range in comparative age. This is more than just needless realism, it is a brilliant explanation for the somewhat dubious levels of maturity. At a healthy nine, ponies like the Mane 6 may be productive adults, but still have the actual experience of nine-year olds. Hence the immature fights, obvious lessons, etc. A brilliant bit of world building that
"Never mind," Dan continued mid-stride. "This is a hugely creepy defense of pedophilia. While I do enjoy a live-and-let-live attitude to clops with theoretically-deplorable fetishes, there is a big difference between writing a rape fic and then posting a defense of rape. Which, now that I mention it, is exactly what pedophillic sex is."
4583997
Yeah, this fic, and the chapter with Dr. Baker in particular, was in it's way the most disturbing thing I've read on site. And I've read a lot of shit. This whole fic was intended to present the idea of sexual relationships with seriously young kids as normal and healthy. It was very, very creepy. The author doesn't even have the excuse that "They're not really kids, just foals. That doesn't count, right?" That you see on some of the more pedophilic shit on site: these are human children being described here.
The worst thing? I expected none of this. I signed up for a slightly darker, humanised AU. I got a thesis arguing that nine year old kids are chomping at the bit for sex and actively abusive pedophiles are A-Okay dudes. I was not a happy bunny.
All this creepy shit adds nothing to the plot: you could (and really, really should) strip out the lot of it and the plot would be completely uneffected.