Samey reads Shadowbolts: "You're Mine" by Ghostly Light · 10:06pm Jun 29th, 2018
Those of you who know me probably noticed that I like Shadowbolts. Paradoxically, the vague characterisation they got in the movie makes them perfect characters to write, discovering and developing their personalities (in other words, you can make shit up as much as you want). Some authors can do that better (sadly, at least two of them don't write that much anymore), some can't. And this is where I got the idea to review a couple of Shadowbolts stories to see some different takes on them. Today, we'll take a look with a certain fic I read recently, called You're Mine by Ghostly Light.
[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]
Currently standing at 21:3, it is, as you can see, a shipfic featuring no one else but Indigo Zap and the one and only mistress of tact and diplomacy, Sugarcoat. It's apparently a longer, mature rated of "Give Them Back" by the same author, which is a short story about Indigo stealing Sugarcoat's glasses which leads to shenanigans and, as a result, the two getting together because well, it's a shipfic. Anyway, as far as I can see, the fic starts right where the previous story ended. Let's take a look at the description:
After a few weeks of dating, Indigo is told Colt Crush is still flirting with her Sugarcoat, and that doesn't fit well with the athlete.
Warning(s): The 'Sex' tag will come into play in later chapters
Uh-huh. As you can see, the story is rated M and one of the chapters is additionally marked as NSFW, so we know what we're getting into. The fic doesn't exactly explain things, so it's definitely better to read the first installment, wherein we can learn a bit more about Colt Crush:
She would just have to think happy thoughts as this played out and hoped for the best. The chances of that were very little considering how so many guys in their class liked Sugarcoat like she did. One being a very flirty guy named Colt Crush, and he would always flirt with Sugarcoat.Made Indigo's blood boil one time as she saw Sugarcoat blushing at Colt's pickup lines and how he brought her a rose and basically anything she wanted that day. Expect if she wanted him to leave her alone. Because he never left her side and at one point, they even held hands. She could remember Colt's words as he approached her with a smile one day. That day Indigo swore he wouldn't be able to feel his fingers if she had the chance to beat him up with ease and didn't get in trouble for it.
So, the guy is always flirty and always flirts with Sugarcoat, we get it (also, Indigo is getting ballistic because of it, because why not?). Also, from You're Mine proper, we learn that
Apparently, her mother took a liking in Colt Crush, not even knowing about his flirty ways, and wanted Sugarcoat to date him, not some girl.
Generally, all the guy does is being flirty. I mean, come on, the guy is called Colt Crush, what else could he do? Conflict in literature, exhibit A: an antagonist. Well, the guy possesses the personality of a cardboard cutout (we'll come back to it later) and there's nothing more to him than "generic
popular high school guy #1966". But well, who needs this when we have exhibit B:
Sugarcoat's mother didn't even give Indigo a chance before she demanded her daughter to break up with Indigo Zap or else she wouldn't be interested in her daughter's life anymore. Possibly even disowning Sugarcoat while her father tried to change his wife's mind about the two.
An obligatory bit of nostalgia: in the dark, grim past known as the year 2007, when George W. Bush was still the president of USA, space shuttles were still flying into space, everyone rode a dinosaur to school, and Al Gore got a Nobel Peace Prize, Samey90 had a friend (well, they were eating Chinese food, like, a week ago, so I guess they're still friends). Back in 2007, this friend did like her gay anime fanfiction. Samey was a bit more into lesbians, gave no fucks about anime, but eventually (in 2009) wrote his first fic, which is still available somewhere on fanfiction.net (50 brownie points for a person who finds it). Anyway, before writing a fic, Samey happened to read some other fics just to get the feel of it and, after a while, noticed that every single author's recipe for drama are homophobic parents. Or dead parents. Or dead, homophobic parents.
It's nice to see that nothing changed over the last 11 years. And I bet this trope was already getting tired back then.
Anyway, enough of that. All characters are kinda flat and when they aren't, they're horrible people. It sounds weird coming from a guy who usually writes horrible people, but it's a different thing to write them intentionally and another to lapse into horribleness while making an honest attempt to avoid that. We have that Colt Crush (seriously, who names a kid Colt Crush?) who has no personality beyond being "flirty" (more like rapey, given that he still tries to hit on a gay girl). Okay, he's an antagonist there. Is Indigo any better?
“Right, stupid question,” Indigo waved her hand with a small smile on her face. Her eyes trailed over Sugarcoat's head right to Colt. He was glaring at her with hate in his eyes. “Kiss me.” It was blunt and was not a question. It was more like a command.
Sugarcoat blinked at Indigo Zap, feeling a bit shocked at her demanding tone. This tone was new from Indigo. “E-Excuse me?” Now that was a question instead of demanding it.
“I said, kiss me.” Indigo repeated herself.
Again there was that tone. That brand new tone Indigo had. If it were anyone else, it would hold no effect on the honest girl, but this was different. Different and Sugarcoat suddenly liked it? It took a lot of effort not to bite her lip while Indigo was using this tone.
Shit.
This could be consider a turn on if there weren't any other people around to see her knees start to shake a little. But there were people, so Sugarcoat had to keep it together and swallow her pride. She leaned to kiss her partner. It was a little kiss but it was still good enough.
Well to her it was. To Indigo Zap, it was the opposite.
“Not a good enough kiss, Sugar.” Indigo gave her a slight growl. “The only time you kiss like that was our first kiss, which was when I stole your glasses, and when we out shopping with the girls. I want a real kiss, like the ones you give when we're alone.”
“You're not getting one of those kisses, not in public,” Sugarcoat replied with her usual tone, trying to keep the shakiness of her voice out. “When we're alone, then you may get them.”
Yeah, nothing better than making your girlfriend uncomfortable just to spite Mr. Perfect. To quote the title of series of blogs by a better writer than me, it feels rapey. The further bit doesn't make it much better:
That plan failed, but another sparked in Indigo's mind. If Sugarcoat wasn't going to give her that kind of kiss, then, she would just have to give Sugarcoat that kind. And her lover could not say no, because Sugarcoat wouldn't see it coming, unless she said 'then I'm going to give you the kiss', and she wouldn't do that.
Indigo watched as Sugarcoat began walking away towards their class, and she knew Colt would be going to walk beside Sugarcoat like a friend. Then probably flirt with her girl, and that wasn't fitting well.
Silently, she ran up to Sugar and grabbed her hand, twirling her around and kissing her. There was no doubt that Sugarcoat's eyes went wide before she melted into the kiss. Slowly kissing back before pulling away, and a few seconds to breath before she was kissed again.
What is she doing!?Sugarcoat thought before she returned the kiss.Is she trying to make me weak or something?! As if that demanding tone wasn't enough!
Before long, the kiss finally ended and Indigo was smirking brightly. “That's how it's done!” Sugarcoat swore she saw her rub the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Idiot,” Sugarcoat mumbled, her cheeks glowing a faint red. “Never do that again. Understood?”
“Yeah, yeah, got it.” Indigo Zap gave her a thumbs up.
“Aww! That was so adorable!” The two tensed up as they gazed over to the side and saw Lemon Zest, Sour Sweet, and Sunny Flare standing there. Lemon with her phone out while the other two girls smiled. “Sugar, you should return the favor to Indigo!”
I wonder if Lemon, Sour and Sunny's reaction would be the same if Colt Crush did that. Or any other guy. Yay for double standards. On a side note, I wonder if the author is going to deconstruct that somehow, because one of the Colt Crush's lackeys films the whole scene (just like every high school antagonist, Colt Crush has three of them. To quote an old Russian joke, one of them can read, the other can write, and the third one watches out for the dangerous intelligents. Also, the author consistently refers to the process as "video tapping").
The third chapter gets somewhat better, mainly because it starts from Colt Crush's perspective. There are some attempts to give him more depth:
If there was one thing Colt Crush hated about Indigo Zap, it was how she got Sugarcoat. That and how she always got on to the team for the Friendship Games, despite how Cinch would always say he would get on next year. Nope. Indigo always had to win the spot, then again, it was nice seeing their School win instead of CHS, but hey, first time for everything.
There were always secrets about himself he never told anyone, expect for Bolt and Emerald, but other than that, there wasn't much to him. He was a regular guy who found himself being good at pickup lines, and always got the girls to blush brightly, even if their boyfriend was standing right there.
He guessed that was why everyone probably hated him, but at the same time didn't really mind him. Even to Colt it was confusing just as it was to everyone else in the school, and they all knew how Colt would act when a boy would defend their girl, giving up just like that with a smug smile.
Okay, he's a petty accidental pornomancer, but I guess that still counts as depth. Also, there's some rather cryptic mention about one of Colt's sidekicks (Bolt Shot), his troubled childhood and his father, which is either a reference to some earlier story I'm not aware of, or a nice bit of worldbuilding we never learn more about (just as it should be).
On a side note, Crystal Prep history teacher is called Mrs. Adder, Blackadder, by any chance?
Oh, and just when I hoped for some drama involving the video, it was all crushed by a revelation that Lemon Zest is a girlfriend of another of Colt's pals, Emerald, and regularly sends him videos of Sugarcoat and Indigo making out. With Indigo learning about that only after the fact. And no one seeing anything wrong with that except poor Colt Crush himself, if only because he doesn't like to watch girls making out, what a pansy (or maybe it's just Indigo and Sugarcoat?). Anyway, the chapter ends with Colt Crush being told to fuck himself and him running away to promptly do that.
Afterwards, the plot gets rather monotone. There's making out, making out interrupted by Indigo's brother, a scene with Sugarcoat's parents, Sugarcoat getting lured to the locker room where, with dubious consent, Indigo does unsafe for work things to her and boy, I wish I was kidding with that last one. The scene itself is nothing to write home about, with the hallmarks such as the narration referring to the relevant bits as "soft core" and Indigo's “Right, right. You can pay me back later.” after the fact. Which she then repeats. And then narration tells us that "She [Sugarcoat] knew Indigo wouldn't let it go until she did pay her back". Time to call the cops? Hardly. Fic's logic demands that Sugarcoat starts to plan another get-together. I wonder if it involves the cops.
Before she's done, we get the gang going shopping (my old heart rejoices seeing that people still describe characters' clothes in great detail), a mention of Sunny having access to cameras in the locker room, Rarijack out of nowhere, and a daily reminder that Colt Crush is a bad guy, this time without him even being present in the scene. Just girls assuming he won't give up on Sugarcoat as if one sex offender in her life wasn't enough. Speaking of, Colt indeed doesn't give up and decides to take a page out of Indigo's book and kiss Sugarcoat whether she wants it or not and then run away because he's afraid Indigo will find him and kill him like a motherfucking pansy he is. Luckily for him, Sugarcoat only tells her mother, thus miraculously curing her homophobia.
Yes, you heard that right. I so wish I was shitting you, but I'm not.
The story is still incomplete, so all bets are off on whether Indigo or Sugarcoat's mother get to castrate Colt Crush first. That'd be quite interesting to see.
So, to sum things up, chemistry in this fic is not present. Nobody acts like a real person. Sugarcoat doesn't feel like herself (remember, she dared to snark at Principal Cinch in the movie, but here she's capable only of weak protests against whatever Indigo and Colt do to her). Despite the lack of canon personality all the possibilities for character interpretation, Sunny, Lemon, and Sour Sweet were reduced to brainless shippers. Also, there seems to be a running gag of everything Indigo and Sugarcoat do getting recorded and sent around for shits and giggles. Grammar isn't the worst, but it is somewhat sloppy in places, with sentence structure as unnatural as characters' behaviour. There are quite a few misused words, like aforementioned "video tapping", "quite" being used instead of "quit", and "spry" instead of "spray".
So yeah, that was quite a fic to start with. I believe the author has potential, but this one was not the best thought-out piece of literature. Romance is a tricky genre and this one most definitely ran into a lot of pitfalls. I wish the author all the best in their future writing and hope it was an interesting review. See you on the next one 
Great review of what reads to be a horrible fic.
Thought the three guy Russian joke was for cops. At least it is here.
Oh and one story down , plenty more to go. How long will you last, I wonder.
4891940
It's a rather stealth one, I must admit. Upon first reading it, I mostly noticed blandness and technical aspects. Then I reread the sequence of events leading to the sex scene and the scene itself. The implications were rather unfortunate.
4891955
Yeah, it's usually about cops. Also, I have a fic on my mind. A few, in fact.
4891983
Massively bad implications, there. It's all right if I take your word on it, right? ;)