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PaulAsaran


Technical Writer from the U.S.A.'s Deep South. Writes horsewords and reviews. New reviews posted every other Thursday! Writing Motto: "Go Big or Go Home!"

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Aug
16th
2018

Paul's Thursday Reviews CXXVII · 8:42pm Aug 16th, 2018

Ugh. Such mixed feelings right now.

First, the good stuff: as you all probably know, Bulletproof Heart released on Sunday! It’s already been a solid success, but it’s not even close to being over. Right now the plan is to release a chapter every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. This means it’ll take roughly two months to get to completion. I’m currently running last-minute edits of the chapters at a rate of about a chapter a day, which is taking up almost all my potential writing time, so my other projects are taking a back seat for the moment. No worries! I’ll get back to working on Life of Pie and Famous Last Words as soon as the editing work is done. Oh, and that original fiction too, not that anyone here cares about that.

I’m already hearing some muttering regarding the lack of overarching world background and some declarations about what’s going on with this world. I want to note right now that there is a significant bit of background, some of which will be established and talked about in-story. The plan is to gradually explain things over the course of the three seasons (i.e. the three books) rather than offer some explosion of exposition. Royal matters in particular will have to wait until at least Season 2.

Moving on, this week. Ugh, this week. The reading material for this specific blog has been killer on my schedule. Right now my schedule is only just ahead of the release dates, which is frustrating. I like my nice, comfortable safe zone of always being a few weeks ahead of the release, and this review session alone is responsible for annihilating that lead. That’s not to say the stories are bad, it’s just that they were really long and kept me from scheduling other things while I dealt with them. This is specifically because I allowed myself to take one of them and throw it onto my schedule outside of my usual rules, so it’s entirely my fault for letting that happen.

But it’s over now. I’ll have to intentionally manipulate my schedule and read things out-of-order to make sure I can start getting ahead again, but hopefully that won’t last long. This does, however, make it clear to me just how important my long-term schedule is for releasing these review blogs consistently. As such, I seriously doubt I’ll be making such allowances again. If I do, it’ll only be when I’ve got a really big lead. And on that note, my current long-term review schedule is booked up for almost a full year, so if you want me to read anything 70k or longer, be prepared for a significant wait.

Alright, enough whining. Reviews!

Stories for This Week:

Cartography of War by Daetrin
Not What I Wanted by TheExhaustedBrony
Around The Bend by Chatoyance
The Night Is Young, And So Am I by Akumokagetsu
Red Meat by Hap
Equestria Delivery by JLB
Shadow of an Empire by Max Florschutz
After the Races by very trustworthy rodent
Another Slice of Pie by The Fool
Hell Yeah by sunnypack

Total Word Count: 593,308

Rating System

Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 3
Pretty Good: 2
Worth It: 3
Needs Work: 2
None: 0


You’re not a proper reviewer until you’ve read Cartography of War.

You should read Cartography of War!

Why haven’t you read Cartography yet, Paul? Lame.

Okay, okay, I get it! Yeesh…

In truth, I’ve had my eye on this story for a long time. Years, in fact. But the moment I saw it was a sequel, I told myself I would read everything that came before first. This meant slogging through the ‘meh’ Off The Edge Of The Map, the somewhat less ‘meh’ Apotheosis, and the first story in the set to be really good, Triptych. And now, at long last, I get to the one that everyone told me made the effort worth it.

And y’know what? ‘Everyone’ was right.

A prequel rather than a sequel, Cartography is set shortly after the banishment of Nightmare Moon during the last days of a war between Equestria and the gryphon island of Eyrie. Far from the front lines, we start with Equestria’s premier cartographer, Compass Rose, who returns to her expedition’s camp to find all her friends slaughtered by gryphons. She also finds a lone, injured gryphon named Gérard. Gérard was betrayed by his own and needs to get back to his camp hundreds of miles away, but with his wing injured he can’t fly and doesn’t know the land. Rose has a gift for finding the right path, but couldn’t possibly survive in the wilderness all by herself. Like it or not, these two are stuck together for their mutual survival.

In this story we finally see Daetrin come into their own as a storyteller. All the other stories might have decent stories behind them, but it seemed the author was always more interested in worldbuilding and providing wowing visuals than developing the plot. With Cartography, it is the other way around, and the result is a vastly superior product. That’s not to say that Daetrin abandons worldbuilding. Far from it. But instead of making the story about worldbuilding first with a plot built around it, this time we have a story where the plot and worldbuilding feed off one another in a shared harmony. It’s everything it needs to and should be.

The result is a riveting adventure about two people from vastly different cultures learning about and relying on each other, turning classic enemies into close friends. At the same time we get to learn a lot about Daetrin’s vision of pony and griffon cultures in areas that aren’t typically expanded upon even in stories centered around worldbuilding. That’s another big shift: no longer is Daetrin trying to amaze readers with shiny new creatures and ruins and mysteries and landscapes. Instead we get the more direct – and arguably more important – things about who ponies and griffons are as civilizations. It’s a very different direction of worldbuilding for this author and one I thoroughly approve of. That an author can shift things around and try different avenues is always something to praise.

Of course, there are a few similarities. Readers who have been through Off The Edge Of The Map and Apotheosis will recognize the familiar formula employed here. In a sense, it’s become something of an MO for the author. But I’m willing to forgive that since Daetrin handled it in a more down-to-earth slant this time and took a few different directions.

Ultimately, this is a story built on character, and those are always the best ones. Cartography is no exception. Watching Gérard and Rose grow as individuals is a vast improvement to seeing Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy not grow at all. This is a wonderfully done story that easily outshines anything this author has ever written before, and it more than deserves all the praise it has earned. Read this. You won’t regret it.

Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
TriptychWHYRTY?
ApotheosisWorth
Off The Edge Of The MapWorth It


Not what I expected.

That’s my own fault for getting pulled in by the cover art and title rather than the description. Silly me.

This story has a curious setting in which a film is being made in Equestria regarding the return of King Sombra. Strangely, The Mane 6 and the Princesses (among others) are all starring in the movie as themselves. I find this particularly odd, as I imagine all of the characters involved are famous enough and busy enough without adding ‘movie star’ to their resume, especially considering they live in a world with no definitive evidence that movies as we know them exist. Thank goodness for that AU tag.

Anyway, the story stars one Black Pearl, who has been given the role of King Sombra. And he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he’s the villain, but he has almost no lines. Hardly glamorous. Twilight, noticing his grumpiness, decides to encourage him.

I wish I could say this was an emotional and interesting piece. Unfortunately, it’s not much of anything. Black Pearl is unhappy, Twilight listens to him whine, she cheers him up, story ends. It’s fast. Unrealistically so. Black Pearl goes from miserable to thrilled at the drop of a hat. I don’t care what the show tells us, Twilight isn’t that charismatic. Heck, going by the content in the story, I almost feel as though she didn’t even have to try. Maybe Black Pearl really is that simple of a character, I don’t know, but I’m not buying this resolution.

Maybe if TheExhaustedBrony hadn’t solved the problem with a couple weak lines, I’d be more appreciative. But as it is this story is just… sort of… there. It’ll need to have a far greater sense of conflict to be worth recommending.

Bookshelf: Needs Work

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Discussions With a Defeated QueenNeeds Work


When Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash accuse the no-nonsense, impeccably organized Twilight Sparkle that she is incapable of loosening up and being spontaneous, she decides to prove them wrong. How? By… by taking an unplanned route to the train station! That’ll show them! Twilight Sparkle is one crazy mare, yo, randomly walking down streets without even checking the street signs. A paragon of zany, naughty spontaneity, yep.

That’s when things start to get weird.

It is my (potentially flawed) understanding that Chatoyance’s views and perspectives regarding ponyfic and canon makes them a polarizing figure in the fandom. I was told by assorted sources that this story is a scathing review of everything wrong with the show past Season One. On that second note, I can kinda-sorta see where these neigh-sayers are coming from. But let’s ignore the, er, politics of the situation and focus on something a bit more important (cringes in preparation for backlash).

That would be what this is as a story. The problem: everything Twilight is seeing is not what she knows, from mountains randomly appearing and disappearing in the middle of Ponyville, Rarity abruptly changing from a generous soul to an attention whore, or the town market suddenly becoming a frenetic free-for-all of vicious capitalism. How did this happen, and is there any hope of going back to the Equestria she knows and loves?

The majority of the chapters relate Twilight’s constant struggle to understand what is happening around her. Here I feel Chatoyance did a wonderful job translating Twilight’s growing horror, to such a degree that this almost feels like it was intended to be a horror story. On the other hand, I also feel as though the author stretched this sequence on for too long, giving us example after example after example ad nauseum. This may have simply been Chatoyance’s desire to point out as many perceived ‘flaws’ in the show as possible, or it may have just been a plot-oriented goal of making Twilight’s situation seem more and more hopeless. It’s hard to say, but in either case I felt like the problem was milked a little too thoroughly, even if it was generally well-written.

I also found fault with the Vulcan-like subservience to absolute logic and organization that Twilight displays in this story, which seemed itself to be an exaggerated caricature of Twilight from Season One. Or at least, that’s how I found it at first. In a curious irony, it appears Chatoyance took Twilight’s ‘issues’ to an extreme level as a means of being able to react to the extreme issues of the rest of the show. Initially I couldn’t tell if this was very clever or a tragic mistake… until Twilight got to meet the ‘new’ Celestia and the explanation for All Things™ came. Then it struck me as very clever.

Which brings me to the excuse for why everything is. Honestly, I loved it. I thought it was creative and original, and it has huge potential for later stories. I’d love to see if Chatoyance did anything with this idea. I hope so.

Overall, Around the Bend is a little long in the tooth, but otherwise an intriguing exercise in MLP:FiM revisionist theory. I was at times entertained and amused, and the conclusion worked wonderfully. It’s clear that a lot of people found downvotes appropriate for the story, and I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the content or the author, but for me it’s got full approval. If you’ve not become ensconced in the apparent thought war surrounding this author and are willing to go in with an open mind, then there’s no reason not to read this.

Bookshelf: Pretty Good!

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
I.D. - That Indestructible SomethingWHYRTY?


Newly coronated Princess Twilight has some royal duty or other to attend to, and for once Spike insists that she go without him. Turns out, he’s got a lot on his mind lately and would rather spend some time thinking. Then Rarity shows up, and he decides it’s time to put an end to an issue that’s been plaguing him recently: it’s time to say goodbye.

The formatting makes no sense whatsoever. Double and single spaced paragraphs are thrown around without rhyme or reason. It really bugged me. But nowhere near as much as the lack of an introduction.

Okay, no, not really. There is an introduction. It explains why Spike is home alone. It also gives us enough to make clear why Rarity is visiting today, assuming the reader is willing to knock two brain cells together. What it doesn’t do is put the real issue on display. There’s no hinting at Spike’s real problem, or at least none we can properly attach, until he blurts it out. It felt jarring and a little confusing. This is made all the worse by the nebulous nature of Spike and Rarity’s relationship; the way they talk, you’d think they’ve been dating long before the story started, and yet the latter part of the story suggests they’re still ‘just friends’. Which is it, author?

Overall, the story felt… mediocre. I couldn’t really get into the mood and atmosphere, was confused by pertinent aspects of the story the entire time, and was frequently annoyed by the weird formatting. I’m sorry to say I was hoping for much more.

Bookshelf: Needs Work

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Second Coming Of FluttershyNeeds Work


Red Meat

1,264 Words
By Hap

Ponyville’s resident human has a problem: without eating meat, he will die. After Twilight finishes explaining this situation to the majority of her friends (minus Fluttershy), they all have to find a way to get him real meat without, y’know, killing anything intelligent.

Le sigh. I had really hoped that this story would be about everyone learning Fluttershy is tougher than she looks. I mean, she spends all her time around animals, some of whom are carnivores. She has to be aware of and accept the idea that some animals eat other animals. But instead, we get a long, (intentionally) scientifically inaccurate explanation for why the human must have meat, followed by a punchline. Excuse me while I :facehoof:.

That said, I am positive that a lot of people will find the punchline hilarious and nod their heads in agreement. In fact, given the vast upvote/downvote ratio, I’d say it’s a sure bet. So while this story doesn’t appeal to me in any way, I will put it on the middle ground because, clearly, it appeals to just about everyone else.

Bookshelf: Worth It

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The DonutierWHYRTY?


Equestria Delivery

187,407 Words
By JLB
Requested by JLB

Well. This may have been the most violent thing I’ve ever read.

Equestria has gone to hell. The princesses and the majority of the Mane 6 are dead, the Crystal Empire’s a ruin, and Twilight Sparkle sits on the throne doing nothing to improve things. Crime runs rampant as Queen-less changelings struggle to be accepted as part of pony society while forces external and internal steadily work to grind down the once great nation. And in the urban sprawl of Carol City, Ditzy Doo spends her days as a single mother and her nights as the ultra-violent vigilante known only as Pigeon.

Themed off of the game Hotline Miami (which I have never played, but get the gist of), the story focuses largely on Ditzy as the Pigeon following orders from the mysterious organization Equestria Delivery. Those orders universally mean visiting areas of changeling-dominated crime syndicates and slaughtering every living creature on the premises, changeling or not, in ultra-violent fashion. It’s very similar to what you’d expect from the game.

Which is a bit of an issue. This is a story, not a video game. When you write a 15,000 word chapter and over 10,000 of those words are nothing but nonstop, visceral, gorey combat, it tends to get boring very quickly. Imagine that happening chapter after chapter after chapter and you get an idea of what you’re in for. Eventually JLB decides to start feeding us some actual plot, but the action always takes top priority. There came times when I started skimming/ skipping the combat scenes until I got to a point that was actually important to the plot. JLB could really learn to think Quality over Quantity.

That’s not to say the action scenes are bad. They’re not, they’re mostly great. There’s just way too many of them going on for way too long. And I get it, this story is themed on the ultraviolent Hotline Miami, but I don’t think that’s a justification considering how different the mediums are. As Michael Bay continues to not learn (or care about), nonstop action does not a good story make.

So what about the story? There’s actually a lot of potential in the mystery of it all. Who or what is Equestria Delivery? What happened to the Princesses and the rest of the Mane 6? Why is Ditzy a mute? Why are changelings openly living in Equestria now, and what is the full story of this so-called Wedding War that keeps getting mentioned? Since when did Ditzy Doo become a supreme combat specialist capable of slaughtering dozens of trained, veteran warriors of multiple species all at once without breaking a sweat?

Eventually we get answers to these questions. I emphasize eventually, because most of it won’t be answered until literally the very last chapter. For those of you who think it’s in poor taste to make the reader wait that long, I agree. These are things that should gradually be revealed as the story goes on, not in a side story told after the real one is over.

Oh, did I mention that? The last six chapters of the story aren’t even part of the main story, but instead act as an extra side story, a sort of ‘what if’ alternate version where Ditzy is no longer the main character. Instead she dies and is replaced by a drug addicted, psychopathic, unlikable, unrelatable killing machine known as Handsome. Seriously, Handsome has no redeemable qualities whatsoever. The fact I figured out who she is by the second or third chapter starring her does not change that.

Which brings me to JLB’s storytelling style. It’s… different. I liked the approach for Amnesia: To Err because it did an incredible job emphasizing the main character’s madness. I’m sorry to say it doesn’t work as well here. The swear-riddled dialogue largely doesn’t tell us anything and is mostly pointless, and the narrative tends to go on long descriptive bouts of saying nothing at all with the occasional hint of what we really need to know. It’s a very rare thing to say that there’s too much show in a story, but I think this qualifies. Pretty much everything needs to be interpreted by the reader, and since every reader will come up with a different interpretation, that means nobody really gets the right idea. It’s only with the next-to-last and last chapters that you really come to understand what the heck’s going on. It’s particularly frustrating when the author begins giving us real information and makes it look like things are about to make sense only to throw us into some psychedelic, hallucinatory dream sequence that muddles all meaning into an indecipherable mess (JLB does that a lot). Handsome’s big final chapter in particular suffered horribly from this, turning the final scene of hers into complete nonsense. Seriously, I have no idea what happened there.

And let’s not forget the grammar and terminology issues. I’m pretty sure by now that JLB is not a native english speaker given the kinds of mistakes I see here. Most of them were only minor distractions. Except one: for the love of Luna, it’s not “safe for”, JLB, it’s “save for”. This one error stuck out like a sore thumb, mostly because it is used over and over and over again and always in the wrong way. It made me want to tear my hair out in frustration.

Now, with all of that out of my system…

The story isn’t bad. In fact, the story’s actually really good. Ditzy’s situation is tragic and mysterious and interesting. By the end of her part, which is the majority of the story, I was really rooting for her. I didn’t care for Handsome’s part, mostly because Handsome is an unlikable and uninteresting nutcase, but Ditzy’s story is legit good. I wish JLB had kept this strictly to Ditzy and fed us all the information in a steady stream rather than save that information for what amounts to an expensive DLC thrown in to appease the players screaming for more a coherent background. The fact you have to wade through so much to get to the plot is a serious detriment to this story on the whole, but the story is definitely a good one. If I had any advice for JLB right now, it would be to stop with the psychedelic hallucinatory nonsense and start telling the story in a way that doesn’t require slogging through tens of thousands of words of blood, information-deprived dialogue, unrealistic behavior, and indecipherable fever dreams. This is not a video game, so don’t treat it like one.

I’m rating this in the middle ground because, again, the story is good. But until the narrative and the characters get off the crack, I don’t think it’ll get far.

Bookshelf: Worth It

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Amnesia: To ErrWHYRTY?
VIS_016.eviWorth It


Shadow of an Empire

243,860 Words
By Max Florschutz
AKA and Requested by Viking ZX

Over the last few years it’s become something of a minor tradition that whenever Viking ZX’s real-world clone (I’m still on the fence about which one’s the evil one) publishes a story I read and review it, both here and on Amazon. Max has consistently produced great material that never fails to please. It is a curious trick of fate that he released Shadow of an Empire just as I was winding down my own work in creating Bulletproof Heart, which released exactly ten days after this review was written.

Set in an all-new fictional universe (although we got a sneak peak in Max’s short story anthology Unusual Things), the story is set in a steampunk world in the empire of Indrim. Salitore Amazd – Sali for short (and I still don’t know for sure how to pronounce that last name) – is an Adjudicator working in the Outlands, a desert region on the edge of Indrim, whose job is to dispense justice in whatever way he deems necessary with the Empire’s blessing. When a fallen-from-grace nobleman decides to implicate him in his scheme to foment revolution, Sali is caught flat-footed. Luckily, certain people back home knows the noble’s claim is crap, and so they send one Meelo Karn, a fresh young inquisitor and a rising star in Indrim’s law enforcement, to help him find and put a stop to this so-called ‘revolutionary’.

Max has taken on a wide range of genres with his stories, but typically focuses on Adventure. This time he adds Western under his belt, along with a smattering of magical fantasy and steampunk, with maybe a hint of post-apocalypse if I’m reading between the lines properly. It’s an ambitious combination, but Max proves himself up to the challenge. The primary focus of the story, at least initially, is worldbuilding. Much of it is spent gradually revealing elements of how this western universe functions, with everything from native trade activities to water sources to explanations of magic. The result is an ever-growing and complete universe that worldbuilders can certainly appreciate for its scope and depth. Along the way we are served continuous hints that there are many parts of Indrim we have yet to see, and with that the unspoken promise of more to come.

This comes with one caveat. When a person thinks ‘Western’, they inevitably expect shootouts and brawls and action. For this story, however, you get through more than half of it before any of that happens. It was a little disappointing at first as the story centers on Sali’s and Meelo’s constant travelling and investigating, which in and of itself almost always means arriving on the scene after the action has stopped. That might seem like a problem.

But when the action finally does happen, I quickly forgave Max the wait. Things go from patient discussion in the hot sun atop a pair of horses to being trapped in a crumbling house with massive monsters ripping off the roof in a torrential rainstorm and guns running on empty, and suddenly you realize why Max has been saving his actiony bits until later. Whether it’s being chased by an army of wolf-mutants (remember that post-apocalypse thing earlier?), dodging bullets in the streets of a desert town, or going one-on-three against war machines, Max pulls no punches. The action is thrilling and fun and definitely worth the time invested.

And of course there’s the mystery, which is something that Max feels the need to include in practically every multi-chapter story he writes. I was able to guess at a lot of things because Max loves to leave crumbs of evidence all over the place. I figured out who Sali’s uncle was almost as soon as it was declared he had one (although it may just be that Max and I think a lot alike). Still, there were other mysteries that boggled, such as the mystery of the Grey Knights and who employed the villain. Come to think of it, I’m tempted to call shenanigans on that last bit, as the final revelation seems to come out of left field. Knowing Max, he probably seeded some clues early on in the story, but I read this over a five-week period and don’t recall a lot of the earliest details.

I also see Max shuffling more and more towards avoiding certain tropes. For example, everyone expects a romance subplot, right? I mean, come on, we’ve got gruff but honorable Salitore with young and capable Meelo. There’s no doubt in my mind that the first thing the shippers expect is for something to happen between these two. And… nothing. Not so much as a sniff of romance in the air. Not that the topic is entirely dodged – Meelo does get an opportunity to poke fun at Sali when his eye lingers on a certain doctor – but all in all Max skirts around this subject almost like it doesn’t exist.

Is that a bad thing? No. Well, if you’re a devoted shipper, it might. But ignoring those people (and I say that with the added notice that I’m typically one of them), I think it’s a refreshing move. As brought up in one of Max’s more recent blog posts, this is evidence that romance is not a must have in every big story that comes by. By God, a man and a woman can team up, work together for months, spend weeks at a time alone together, and not become romantically inclined? No, it’s not madness, and I applaud Max for taking the road less travelled.

All in all, this was a treat. It’s more grounded than some of his other works (Colony comes to mind), but still has that sense of sprawling scope I’ve come to associate with this author. It’s got worldbuilding, it’s got mystery, it’s got action. It’s a delightful ride through a new western world and I can’t wait for the sequel (because if I know Max, he’s already got one in mind).

Keep ‘em comin’, Maxi. I’ll see you at the next story.

Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?


Adagio Dazzle has moved on. She lives in a town far from Canterlot with her lovely girlfriend Trixie and is a local star on the street racing scene. Her life is comfortable, and she’s happy with it. Until, one evening years after the events at CHS, Aria Blaze shows up at her door with news and an offer. Adagio thought she was done with the Dazzlings, but that doesn’t mean they were done with her.

This was a powerful tale. It’s all about forging one’s own path and accepting the responsibilities of past decisions. It’s subtly dramatic, with a curious manner of maintaining its strong atmosphere through minimal interference. It does lean heavily on exposition at times, and yet it somehow manages to do so without taking away from the mood, the pacing, or the ever-present sense of quiet struggle and loss. It is, simply put, masterfully written.

I’d like to say more, but I honestly believe this is something that needs to be experienced personally. It speaks for itself, and that’s a rare thing. Combining vivid characters and strong emotions without ever tipping into melodrama, this is about as good as it can be. I loved it from beginning to end, and it definitely deserves more attention than it has.

Read this. Just read it.

Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!


Another Slice of Pie

31,974 Words
By The Fool
Recommended by Pascoite

Written in a time before there were such ponies as Limestone, Marble, and Maud, Another Slice of Pie tells of Pinkie’s sisters Inkie and Blinkie and their journey to learn about their family history. Well, not exactly. It’s about a lot of things. Their relationship with their parents and each other, why Pinkie Pie left the rock farm, the origin of the Pie Family’s unusual abilities, the true identity of Granny Pie, these things are all explained in decent detail.

Conceptually speaking, this story is golden. It covers a vast range of topics in a very short wordcount, and yet manages to keep it all connected and important. The story flows smoothly from one topic to the next without ever feeling rushed or overdramatic. The characters are all well-defined and developed too. The story is, in essence, a great example of doing a lot in only a few words. Certain people like me could learn from the example.

There are some caveats. The most significant is that the story leans heavily on exposition. In the author’s defence, they tend to do so in ways that keeps the narrative going and doesn’t sacrifice the mood, which is a great way to handle exposition in general. On the other hand, it gets annoying sometimes to see scenes where a character is supposed to be talking about their personal story and The Fool flies by it with a bit of exposition. Yes, it’s faster, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the effect of hearing the character detail it personally, now does it? But again, it got the point across, and the author took careful strides to at least keep the atmosphere going at times like these. For the sake of shortening the story, I must admit it was effective.

I enjoyed this one. It stumbled once or twice, but in the overall it’s a great pre-Season 4 tale (that was written after Season 4, curiously enough). I’m happy to recommend it.

Bookshelf: Pretty Good!

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!


Hell Yeah

85,584 Words
By sunnypack
Completed Story

Eight-year-old Twilight (yeah, the cover art is deceptive) summons a demon from the Other. Why? Just to see if she could, of course! The demon, who gets named Morpheus, is miffed by having been summoned by a magus who doesn’t seem to have any inherently destructive interests and doesn’t want him to do typically demonic things. But he can’t do anything to his summoner or disobey her, which in turn means he can do no harm to… anything, really. He’s just here. In Equestria. Good God, the filly might even try to be his friend. The horror.

This feels like a HiE self-insert story, except the human is a demon with superpowers. No, no, wait, that doesn’t mean this is a bad story. It’s actually pretty good. Watching the rude but loyal Morpheus suffer through having to follow around an ever-friendly filly Twilight is actually a lot of fun. And while he’s definitely superpowered, the story doesn’t make him OP, instead giving him a lot of limitations and legitimate threats to keep things interesting. Other demons, demon hunters, tricky magical traps, and the entirety of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns avoids making this boring. Of course, it’s got the trope of ‘make the unfriendly newcomer friendly’, but that’s to be expected. The story is ultimately character-driven and heartfelt, and not bad on the whole.

There are two issues. The first is that the story is dialogue-heavy, forcing you to guess at the emotions of the characters through what they are saying rather than offering many narrative queues. There are numerous occasions where there are no queues, you just have to read what is said and somehow know the intended tone and emotional backdrop. This works fine in some basic dialogue situations, but if you’re trying for an emotional scene it fails spectacularly.

The second is the villain, who literally comes out of nowhere in the very last chapter as an OP, impossible-to-defeat, nameless supervillain that gets maybe three thousand words of existence in the entire story. Yes, we saw her minions and there were allusions to the fact that someone was pulling the strings, but this is not how you handle the big bad guygirl of the entire freaking story. She doesn’t seem to exist for anything other than to make an epic last-minute climactic conflict. Boo.

But ignoring these issues, Hell Yeah is a decent enough fic that I enjoyed. I mean, come on, it’s got filly Twilight Sparkle bossing around a mighty, unholy demon for a week and making him be a good guy. What’s not to like about that?

Bookshelf: Worth It

Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!


Stories for Next Week:
Silence by Sleepy Panda
Cutie Mark Crusader Magicians, Yay! by DrakeyC
Trixie's Favourite Pony by Blueshift
Much Ado About A Belle by SuperPinkBrony12
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Report PaulAsaran · 1,459 views · Story: Bulletproof Heart ·
Comments ( 18 )

There's a legitimately interesting moral quandary around a human (specifically) eating meat when everything except fish is sapient, and it's kind of disappointing that I've never seen anyone try to really capitalize on it.

A bunch of good ones. Darnit. And yea. Both. There goes any free time I've got for a while.

Wait, we can request actual novels outside of fan-fiction?

Paul, thank you so much for your review! I always look forward to reading them. Not just because I enjoy stoking my ego a little bit, but because you will not pull a punch, and have no qualms saying it when something is wrong or out of place, so I know I'm getting a solid critique.

I'm glad you enjoyed Shadow of an Empire so much, and am very grateful for the review. I'm glad I was able to deliver another novel so worthy of praise, and you can be guaranteed this wasn't the last we'll see of Indrim. For now, sure, but in the future? I've always got plans within plans ...

I'm also glad to hear that the action paid off in spades. It was a lot of fun to write, and as usual, I like to keep improving and delivering better and better action sequences. Glad they came through in all their various settings and appearances!

I can also see that I'll need to work on my misdirection. A few of my readers, as well as you, are getting too good at spotting the breadcrumbs! Time to switch it up a little!

I also am glad you liked the complete lack of romance. As you thought, it was intentional. Not every story needs a romance, and not every member of the opposite sex is automatically romantically attracted to the other, and I felt that Shadow's characters were very much into that vein of interaction. Professionals! It's not that I didn't feel I could do a romance (done it!) but rather that it didn't have a place here, and I thank you for the applause and the acknowledgement that it worked.

And yeah, those clues you wondered after are there. You haven't quite been able to predict all my breadcrumbs! :raritywink:

Again, thanks for a great review, and I'll have more for you to read soon!

JLB

This has turned out much messier than either of us wanted it to, hasn't it? Equestria Delivery honestly is a very... ...different fic. Your review is more on the negative side, which is understandable. What I think is curious is that I'm actually not going to even argue. At all. As a matter of fact, we happen to share most of the exact same thoughts on the story. I don't even know where to start...

Just as an example, the point you make about the overabundance of action. If you're wondering how I felt like it was a good idea - I didn't. It took until around chapter 10 for me to realize that some of our ideas just weren't working out. That they were actively acting to the story's detriment, and were INCREDIBLY hard to write to boot. Thing is, there was no longer any going back. Not for me. I wasn't going to revamp the whole style of this fic... Subtle changes were made, but they're hardly even noticeable. It just kept getting worse from there on out.

This fic really is a cautionary tale. For me, that is. You see, back in 2015, me and my co-writer had a bright and novel idea. We'd make a Hotline crossover that'd do everything to be as close to the games as possible. That's why this is the showiest fic in existence. That's why for most of the fic, most of the action is told in an impersonal passive tense. That's why there's music for every scene. That's why the dialogue is so vulgar (and you read the cleaner version!). That is why you're fed table scraps of lore and exposition at best, until a separate story comes along to explain things (though unlike Hotline, here I actually do explain things). So on and so forth - it all felt like a really, really cool idea at the time, and we were both really excited. This would be the style of this fic, something to set it apart from all the rest. I would step away from what I knew to work, and try to do something different, something no one else does.

Only then it turned out that the actual setting this takes place in, not to mention the stories of all the different protagonists, as well as the way they connect, are all fffaaaaaaaaarrr more interesting than we realized. What used to be the fic's very heart became its biggest detriment. My stubbornness was my downfall, in the end... Because honestly, there was no saving this story from the course we'd plotted at the very start. I tried, but all I could do was mitigate the disaster. So, yeah, not only was I making all these suboptimal choices - I was making them WHILE fully aware of the fact they were suboptimal!

It was kinda hellish, and I'm glad it's behind me. Trust me, I'm never doing anything like this ever again. Dear gods, no. This was horrible. Maybe it's an impressive fic in its own right at the end... But the amount of effort it took from me to get it to this point? To the point where even I still agree it's a mangled mess plagued with questionable decisions? No. My decision making needs a serious adjustment, I know that now. It'll be a long while until I write another story - or continue an ongoing one - but I'll try to make a story that doesn't do all in its power to prevent you from enjoying the actual story. Because you were right - this is a story, not a videogame. I INTENTIONALLY decided to make it as much like a videogame as I possibly could. By when I realized that the sheer potential and scope of the story was crippled by this decision... but I'm going in circles now.

So, now that I'm done saying that I agree with all the negative points you make (aside from Handsome, and the fact that so much is up to interpretation until the end; those are personal preference, though - I don't see as much wrong there), there are a few questions I wanted to ask, regarding things your review didn't really go over. I realize it's already one of your longest, and you have a bunch of other stories to review, but still, I think these are important aspects of the story that I'd be remiss not to get your opinion on.

1) The whole fact this story has a full soundtrack, which a lot of the scenes are practically built around. That, and the 'artwork' that pops up now and again. I personally think this is something that's... not ever really been done? Certainly not something you can make a Hotline crossover without. You don't really mention it in the review, so I do wanna know if it did much of anything. It's got its ups and downs, I'm sure.

2) And the other two OC protagonists. I realize talking about them at any sort of length is difficult, because almost all of that is spoilers... but still, they're both quite important to the story, even if they get less chapters than others. In the end you only mention Ditzy and Handsome, while these two do have their own... quirks and twists. All in all, I do think that without the music, the artwork and these two characters, the story would have been even more dreary than it currently is. Two original characters with their own points of view from which to look at one of the good things in this fic, which is the setting.

Also, lastly?.. I guess I should be thankful that you even considered adding a story of mine to your stalked list, what with all that's transpired. I'm not sure why you even did that. Still, while this may not sound all that nice, I'd probably prefer if you just didn't bother - with the one you chose in particular. It's very tiny, but it's also (spoiler alert) massively underwhelming and not particularly well written, even if it lacks my signature LSD fever dream scenes... no actually it has that too...

I'd probably suggest another story to take its place, but it's around 50k+ (Paper Prince - it's also complete) and it's probably not a very courteous thing of me to outright meddle with your decisions. If you wanna do the one you chose, then, by all means. It's just that I'm borderline considering removing it from my library... so in my opinion, it hardly deserves to get a review, especially one that people will actually read. As opposed to that other story. Which I'd understand if you'd rather not take on, even if it'd be deep into 2019 by when you do. I may not have recommended myself very favorably with all that's happened.

Oh, and I had NO idea that I've been writing 'save for' as 'safe for' this entire time. It never even registered for me. I know that it's meant to be 'save for', but I've been typing in 'safe' for years, and I never even realized. I've got nothing...

So thanks for taking your time. Yeah, I put that at the end of a needlessly huge reply to your blog. I'm not sure why writing is a thing I even do at this point

...Well, I haven’t read Cartography of War.

Though I am getting there, as Apotheosis is about 3rd in my current reading queue.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

buh D: I have a bunch of "written by Fimficcer" novel links in my notes

I'm never going to get to read them ;_;

Yay, I've read a couple!

I mean, of course I've read "Anotther Slice of Pie," since I'm the one who recommended it. I don't actually remember what happens in it. I read it over 3 years ago. I do recall having the same issues of exposition. It'd build up to something through dialogue, then instead of letting it play out, kind of do a time skip and tell it through exposition after the fact. The perspective started jumping around a lot, too, but I still found it a pretty good story for the atmosphere alone.

And on atmosphere... I didn't recommend "After the Races" as well? I know Bad Horse was really in its corner, but I figured it would have made the list I sent you. Anyway, this story is all about atmosphere, and it's a great example of how to do that well. I wonder if this is a somewhat polarizing story. I found it had nothing but atmosphere, and I'm usually someone who's pretty lenient on that front. But this felt to me like the exposition leading up to a story, and then stopping before we actually got the story. We know how things got this way, but we don't get to start down the road of how they're going to subsequently develop. It's got the kind of open ending I always rail on authors about, where there aren't any possibilities for future outcomes suggested, much less invested with any emotional charge. This led to an interesting back and forth between me and Bad Horse about whether a story actually has to have those things, but we eventually had to leave it at "agree to disagree." Normally, I think it is possible to tell stories without what are considered vital ingredients—I had another interesting discussion with Blueshift about whether a story had to have a climax—but it would take a skilled author to do it well. In the end, it doesn't surprise me that some well-read people are really on this story's bandwagon, but the thing is that I should be one of them, given my love for good atmosphere and willingness to excuse lots of things in a story for its sake, and yet I found it unsatisfying, if a great example of word crafting and dialogue writing.

4920884
And what's more, the single greatest expert on this topic should be Fluttershy, but nobody ever capitalizes on that either.

4920886
What? Free time? :rainbowderp:

4920907
I think it's less to do with missing the hints as it is the time frame in which I read the story and the distractions I had in the meantime. There was a period of a week where I didn't read anything, including Empire, which was unfortunate as it got my head out of the game. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and am definitely looking forward to the next one! At this point I've practically exhausted your library, though.

4920950
Heh, I remember saying that a few years ago. "Oh, I'll get to it soon enough. I mean, one of the prior stories is in my queue, so..." I think my only regret right now as a reviewer is how long it takes me to get to anything in spite of my productivity.

4920986
Eh, I'm only really reading Viking's because he asked me to ages ago and we've sorta become one another's major supporters.

4920998
Well, I don't think it's proper to hate everything you've ever written. But you do have a ton of stories, which makes picking my next read at once easy and frustrating. I figure I'll be mining that horsewords vein for a while yet. Surely I'll find a nugget of gold amongst all the coal soon enough.

4921034
I liked After the Races at least partially because it didn't follow the rule of making its story lead to something. It was my distinct impression that the story had its own points and wasn't meant to lead to anything bigger than itself, if that makes sense. I mean, yeah,there's this whole 'threat to take over Equestria' thing Aria brings up, and normally I'd point at that as a big deal that needs to be addressed somehow, but for reasons I can't put my finger on, it felt right that it didn't.

I dunno, I just really enjoyed the story for what it was.

For what it's worth, to me Cartography is the story I had been trying to write before, but I didn't know what I was doing. Partly it was learning how to properly write, partly it was jumping to OCs so I could make the kind of character I wanted.

4920888
Wanted to answer this separately so that it's not lost among the others, because this point is important: no, you cannot.

Unless the story is yours.

This is a blog for MLP fans. I'm not going to expand it into something beyond that, not here. If I do, I'll make an entirely separate place for it, rather than do it on a site devoted to MLP (and in a few years FIMFiction may go beyond that, if hearsay is to be believed). Any story that is not related to My Little Pony will not be reviewed here with the sole exception that the story is by a FIMFic author who specifically requested I review their non-MLP story. At least in that case there are people on the site – fans of the author or those who like to see FIMFic authors succeed in the so-called 'real world' – who have an interest in what I'm reviewing. In all other scenarios, I will not review original fiction or non-MLP-related fanfiction.

4920920
Oh, wow, the feeling of writing a train wreck but seeing it through to the end? My sympathies, I've yet to have that happen to me.

First off, I liked Nexus. He was an interesting character and I wish we could have seen more of him. It's a shame what happened – thoroughly disappointing – but as one who has written sad endings more than a few times I can't criticize the decision. I think the story would have been better served if he'd had a larger role in the whole thing, especially in regards to potential interactions with Ditzy. That not happening was a case of criminal neglect.

Second, I liked Thorn in a general sense, but we don't get enough of him at all. At least Nexus gets a lot of interesting scenes, whereas Thorn is mostly a background character with the occasional opportunity to talk. His only solo chapter in Ditzy's part was just more of what we were already seeing, and his big moment in San Fran was great but too late to cement him as a major character of interest for the story. Like Nexus, making him a more defining presence in the whole thing, preferably with direct interactions with the other characters, would have gone a long way towards improving both him and the story as a whole.

As for the music? Frankly, I saw it as little more than an annoying distraction. With the crazy nonsense sometimes going on in the story a reader has to pay far closer attention than is normal in order to understand what's really happening, and all the music did was make that harder. Aside from that, if you have to use another medium to channel the atmosphere and emotion you're after, then clearly you're doing something wrong. It's just like authors using pictures in the middle of their stories: it shouts to the reader "I have no idea how to do this with words so I need a crutch to get past this scene". I tried listening to the music while reading on at least three separate occasions throughout the story, and each time I felt the entire exercise was unnecessary. I probably would have touched upon that if I hadn't already had so much to say.

As for the story selection... yeah, I'll do The Paper Prince. Ideally, I'll do all of your stories. I picked Styx because it looked like you had a series going and I wanted to go through that, but Styx isn't hard-wired into my schedule yet. It was merely put at the bottom of a very long list of stories, typically read in order, so that I'd eventually get to it. It's only when a story lands into my review schedule proper (at least six weeks prior to reading) that I stop accepting suggestions and changes.

And no worries, I still have faith that I'll find something good. Amnesia: To Err was a top scorer for me, as you'll recall, so I know you can make your highly unusual style work.

Hap

Ha!

Yes, I intentionally avoided writing anything meaningful for that story. It's a (slightly) expanded form of a blog post I wrote during the height of overly-dramatic, angsty HiE stories that clogged the feature box at that time.

4921139
Well, I for one am glad you found your way there. I think we can chalk this up to the traditional mistake many writers make, and a rule I now offer to a great many newcomers asking for advice: Never try to make your first story into an epic. Heck, I certainly did, and... yeah, it didn't come out all that great.

4921144
Heh. Well, at least you tried something different. :raritywink:

Hap

4920884
See my reply above. There were tons of stories like that, at one point. None of them did it well that I'm aware of, and to this day I shy away from HiE as a genre. But so many people tried, and failed, that I wrote this story just to mock the concept.

Well, the library notifcation I just got for my fic makes me excited for next week. :raritywink:

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