Paul's Thursday Reviews CCXLVIII · 8:11pm Apr 29th, 2021
It’s that time again. What time, you ask? Time to put out the call for pre-readers!
As of yesterday, I finished the first draft of Part One of my new Chrysalis-centric fic. For clarity, there will be two parts, each its own story in the same AU and both focused on Chryssy. I intend to release them as separate chapters of the same story. I’m probably going to put in a commission request later today too.
The first part has come out to ~15,000 words, give or take 500 once I’m done with my first editing sweep. After that I intend to have some pre-readers look it over. I want three. I have one. So now I’m asking you guys: if anyone wants to pre-read the story for me, I’m taking volunteers. I’m mostly looking for ways to improve upon the plot. It’s a slice-of-life drama, and that’s as much as I’m willing to give away in the open right now.
I intend to start work on the second part today, and I think it will be shorter. Since it’s going to be a separate story, I figure there’s no harm in letting the pre-readers get started on Part One in the meantime. And yes, I do intend to use the same pre-readers for Part Two.
This story has been a breath of fresh air. I’ve not been so invested in something in a while. I’ve actually managed to produce more than 2k words/day this week as a result. Hopefully I can take that wonderful momentum I have and transfer it to BPH and my other projects once this is done. Fingers crossed!
Let’s get to the reviews, shall we?
Stories for This Week:
Men and Monsters: Metempsychosis. by Perfectly Insane
Silent Love - Part One by Sagami
Questions & K.K.! by Azure129
Names by Razor Blade the Unicron
Total Word Count: 142,196
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 1
Worth It: 0
Needs Work: 3
None: 0
Men and Monsters: Metempsychosis.
61,296 Words
By Perfectly Insane
Pinkie Pie just turned 18. Her father thinks it’s time she took some tests.
I knew what this was going in. The description, the tags, and the improper use of punctuation in the title told me everything I needed to know. Reading it only proved my predictions right. All I’m left with now is a question of what the heck made me decide to give this one a chance. Given its length and position in my lists of stories to read, I can only assume it was added in a time before I knew better.
Anyway, this is your typical story written centered on mental and physical torture as pretty much the central theme. This is the inevitable Pinkamena variant, obviously. It’s set in an AU where the Equestria Girls world is basically filled with endless evil, although we’re somehow supposed to believe that this is still the canon EqG world. To summarize, Pinkie’s father is the leader of an international crime organization known as The Syndicate, and wants to mold her into the next leader. Also, the Apples are a mafia-esque crime family, Applejack is the leader, and they are rivals with the Syndicate.
The whole point of the story is the “tests” Pinkie is put through. These include: A) being left in the wilderness for a month with nothing but the clothes on her back, B) being left in the hands of a psychopathic torturer for a month who has been instructing to come up with creative new methods every day, C) be the guinea pig for some mad experiments that make pseudoscience look like Einstein, and D) get put in a room full of murderers and rapists and try not to die.
And it. Is. Bad.
To start, Perfectly Insane has no idea how dialogue works, both in terms of grammar and not being forced nonsense. Every time a character says anything, the formatting is thus:
"So, when's this party getting started?"
Blake asked blatantly, his usual obnoxious, cocky tone very present.
You read that right, the saidism comes in a completely different sentence in a completely different paragraph. Even when there isn’t a saidism, Perfectly Insane follows this formula. What makes it worse is that when the story starts,theyatually have the dialogue grammar correct, and they transition to using this, which means somehow they became convinced this was the better option. Whoever taught them that needs to have their writer’s permit revoked. They shouldn’t even be allowed to have a notepad and pencil, much less a keyboard.
Funnily enough, the bad grammar I anticipated (other than the above) is largely nonexistent. There are a few slip ups here and there, but nowhere near to the point that period in the title would lead me to expect. But the author still has a problem with a repetitive writing style, frequently saying something and then restating it in the next sentence, only in a longer way.
Let’s get to something more serious: the plot holes. Take, for example, the time when Pinkie discovers the bodies of her sister Inkie and Blinkie (Pet Peeve: This was written five months after we had the Pie Family canonically described, so there’s no excuse for getting this wrong). Her sisters were put under the same test she’s going through now, and didn’t make it out of the whole “survive in the wilderness” part. Except it’s been months at least, possibly even years since she last saw them. Their corpses should be dessicated husks at best. But no, she finds them as if they just died an hour ago. And oh, hey, their bodies are being eaten on by rats, so technically there should be nothing but bones left, if that. Apparently Perfectly Insane has no idea what happens to a corpse left exposed to the elements and saw no reason to to look into it. That or they thought completely defying how reality works would somehow make the moment more dark and edgy.
One of the excuses made for letting Igneous get away with this stuff is that he’ll kill every student and faculty member of Canterlot High to hide that Pinkie and her siblings ever existed. Because yes, performing mass murder on a scale that would catch global headlines is the perfect way to hide something.
How about the psychopath who makes a living on mental and physical torture apparently falling for Pinkamena and miraculously deciding he cares about her wellbeing where he didn’t for anyone else he ever tortured because… uh… because.
Then there’s Igneous himself, who is a ridiculous caricature of a villain who spends the entire story being a hopeless bastard of an ass only to turn around in the last seconds of his life and suddenly, miraculously have emotions that aren’t described entirely as “you’re a worthless waste of air, please die”.
I was never invested in anything happening in this story. Every character is evil, Pinkie herself is unrecognizable and unrelatable, and because wannabe angsty-edgy material of this sort has been done half to death, every moment was entirely predictable. It’s literally just “Pinkamena gets tortured, the end”, and they don’t even bother trying to do that in a creative way.
Men and Monsters has two things in its favor. The first is, again, the grammar, which isn’t so bad aside from the nonsensical dialogue formatting. The second is that the author does a halfway decent job of trying to get into Pinkie’s head. It’s a step in the right direction towards making her unrealistic shift in character more believable, although that benefit is ruined by how quickly said change actually happens (which is literally a matter of hours, maybe less). Still, I give Perfectly Insane credit for giving us at least that much.
This raises a question that I’ve long pondered and never found a satisfactory answer for: can torture porn actually be good? Admittedly, there are certain things Perfectly Insane is doing with this story that are fine from a plot development standpoint. Pinkie has a goal, a motivation, and she technically grows as a character, even if that ‘growth’ is her becoming an uber-violent weapon of war, death, and hate. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end. But the characters are all nonsensically over-the-top, to the point that I can’t take anything seriously. I think that may be the fundamental problem with these stories: they try to take something ridiculous and make it ominous. The end result is a story that takes itself seriously yet feels like a parody. I have no idea how to take something like this – a focus on hyper-evil abominations being an everyday commonality in an otherwise realistic world and torture being the primary theme – and make it appealing to your average readers. It’s not interesting, it’s not entertaining, it’s not even disturbing. How do you take something like this and make it objectively good literature? I have no idea.
I didn’t see anything in this that was different from the usual of this subgenre. If Perfectly Insane can stop trying to be an edgelord and write stories that have a point other than endless waves of pain for its own sake, maybe there will be something better in their future. It’s one of those instances where I see smatterings of potential amongst the waves of issues, so there is hope yet.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Silent Love - Part One
74,896 Words
By Sagami
Vinyl Scratch has moved from Manehattan to attend Canterlot High School. Why? Stop asking questions. What’s more important is the other girls at the school she becomes friends with. These include longtime friend-with-benefits Lyra Heartstrings, local pianist Bon-Bon, and the other new kid: isolated, unprepared, innocent Octavia. It’s that last one that matters the most, of course.
I decided to try this one out specifically because Sagami writes Vinyl as a mute. I was very interested in seeing how they addressed that challenge. They didn’t bother to do anything particularly special with it though. I mean, yes, it’s part of her character, but only in how she communicates with others (texting, writing on paper, and sign language if she knows her audience can understand it). It doesn’t have much of an impact on how the story is written. On the one hand, that was disappointing, as I was hoping Vinyl being mute would make a big difference in terms of the plot and Vinyl’s perspective. On the other hand, it’s encouraging; Vinyl isn’t treated as anything unusual beyond the obligatory communication problem, and that is the true definition of inclusion. So she fails as a golden opportunity in literary experimentation, but succeeds greatly as a demonstration of appropriate social awareness.
Anyway, the story is simple. Vinyl is a criminal unwittingly attracted to Octavia. Octavia is a good girl stuck in a terrible home situation with parents who make “strict parenting” look like a day at the beach, to the point they won’t even let Octavia be off family property outside of going to school. They’re an over-the-top parody of elitists and arguably the primary villains of the story. As such, the majority of the story is Vinyl, Bon-Bon, and Lyra trying to help Octavia escape from her sheltered life and be a teenager with normal friends, up to and including breaking her out of the mansion for a party.
You’re probably wondering about that “Vinyl is a criminal” bit. It’s no exaggeration. Vinyl commits at least two crimes throughout the story, one of which might be deemed a misdemeanor and the other a felony depending on your jurisdiction. Lyra is an accomplice/enabler in both cases, and they even manage to get Octavia involved in one of them. Of course, since they are the “good guys” of this story, they face no consequences for their actions. Make of that what you will. In their defense, the second guy deserved to have something done about him, and since legal means were clearly failing...
Oh, Celestia and Luna are also potentially criminally liable. They discovered that one of their teachers was doing something blatantly illegal and… don’t get the authorities involved. Celestia claims it’s to protect the school from an investigation/scandal that could ruin the school year for the kids. Which is a profoundly stupid excuse. I mean, she just fired a teacher who she found evidence was doing major crimes on school property with a strong potential for negatively influencing her students, and her solution is to let him go without any reporting so that he can do all the same things at another school? So it’s okay to ruin the lives of students at other schools, so long as Canterlot High is safe. Apparently.
Sagami’s plot logic isn’t all there, as you can see. Still, I’ve seen far worse. I think the most jarring element is the dialogue of the students at CHS, particularly Lyra. I mean, we have samples of how she speaks in Equestria Girls, and it is not even remotely like this. I’m not sure why Sagami decided to deviate so thoroughly from an established personality, but purists will likely take offense. That Vinyl does it too in her writing and thoughts is forgivable since we have no samples of how her thoughts actually sound. I wonder if Sagami is of the belief that all people from inner city areas happen to speak like this. They even use it in their author’s notes, so maybe that’s just the dialogue they’ve been exposed to.
Which reminds me: Sagami is not a native English speaker. They’re from France, and it shows. The translation is decent, enough so that I never had a problem understanding what the author meant. Yet it is loaded with technical errors, such as creating made-up plural versions of words, or strange word choices that mean almost-but-not-quite what was intended, or words that are phonetically similar to the intended word. Sagami could use an editor to clear up some of these issues. But again, what Sagami intended was clear enough that it didn’t interfere too much with my enjoyment of the story.
There are some strange cultural points though. Like salmon pizza. You ever heard of salmon pizza? ...maybe in California.
I was also a little confused by the direction of the story. At the beginning, Sagami paints it to look like the P.E. teacher is the villain. And indeed, they do find a way to “defeat” him in the end. But he literally appears for two scenes. That’s it. Not much of a villain. Octavia’s parents (well, her father) got the same number of scenes but had a vastly stronger representation considering her every decision was based upon their looming presence in her mind. Her parents were villains; the P.E. teacher was an afterthought. When I got to the end, I was left with a sense of “that’s it?” I felt like we’d seen a beginning and were starting to maybe approach the incline of rising action then… stopped. With no climax or conclusion. Just… the plot stops here. It’s an anticlimactic, unsatisfying end.
Then again, maybe Sagami did that on purpose. After all, this is “Part One”. Maybe they felt if they made the story too long it would intimidate potential readers so they divided it up into multiple parts with no regard for proper story arcs or transitioning?
I liked the story in general, but at the same time it never stood out to me. The potential in Vinyl being mute is largely ignored. Her relationship with Octavia is clearly the main purpose, but the story doesn’t do anything new with the pairing. There’s nothing wrong with how Sagami approaches the story, but neither did I find anything to hold my attention. At no point did I ever get a sense of gravitas. I don’t think this has so much to do with the events as it does the writing which, doubtlessly as part of the language barrier, never manages to make any one scene feel more important or critical than any other. And it is now, while writing this, that I realize that the story has no sense of pacing and atmosphere.
Still, I hope Sagami keeps going. None of these issues are unsolvable. As they say, practice makes perfect.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Questions & K.K.!
3,606 Words
By Azure129
Celestia hears from Spike that Discord’s private nickname for her is K.K. What kind of nickname is that? She puzzles over it for days, but can’t figure out what it stands for. Unable to solve the mystery, she decides to ask the God of Mischief about it directly. But Discord doesn’t give up his secrets easily…
I feel like this could be a prequel to Interesting Nights. Almost.
The story comes in two parts. First, Celestia negotiates with Discord on what she’ll do in return for learning the secret. What he demands of her is surprisingly tame and entertaining, and I knew right away that she’d enjoy it. Afterwards, it’s about Celestia coming to realize that Discord… doesn’t like her, and how she tries to fix that.
Basically, it’s friendshipping between Discord and Celestia. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’ll love this. I have no problems or critiques, either; the writing is good, the depiction of both characters is spot-on, and the ending is fun. That Luna cameo was also a nice touch.
Good show, Azure129. Perhaps next time I’ll read something from you that isn’t DisLestia related.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Interesting Nights — Worth It
Names
1,097 Words
By Razor Blade the Unicron
Sequel to The Elements of Randomness
Royal Guardspony Twilight Sparkle has been sent to Ponyville to deliver the Elements of Harmony to the current bearer of Magic. Whose name she can’t recall.
This was a short and simple thing that I barely would consider a “story”. It feels more like a bridging scene between two stories than anything. And given that there’s a second sequel to The Elements of Randomness, I strongly suspect that will prove the case… although it does make me wonder why the other sequel isn’t listed as being a sequel to this rather than the other story. That would have made a lot more sense, right? Guess I can’t know for sure until I read it.
Anyway, there’s nothing to this. It’s Twilight forming a hypothesis about Amethyst Star’s family history, and nothing more. It’s over almost as soon as it starts, and I’m not sure if it does anything that the next story (if my assumptions about said next story are right) couldn’t have done on its own. So… yeah. Not sure why this exists.
Still, there’s nothing “bad” about it. It’s not poorly written. It just doesn’t do anything, even with the supposed premise of the story unto itself.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Elements of Randomness — Worth It
Stories for Next Week:
A Lost Soul in a Dark World by Lightning Note
A Beginner's Guide to Heroism by LoyalLiar
Dream Lover by avidreader07
Night Of Faded Sun by Soufriere
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Slice-of-Life with Chrysalis? I highly doubt Fluffle Puff is involved, but that's where my mind first went.
Um, yes? I'd argue you've written multiple examples yourself. It just doesn't work as the main focus of the story, because there's no real plot otherwise. But, say, an adventure story where the protagonist has to escape literal hell while suffering greatly along the way totally works.
Given the subject, it took me forever to figure out this word was "saidism", and was that ever a confusing reread.
That second one almost sounds worth the writing issues. Like a non-fantastical humanized version of My Roommate Is a Vampire written by someone who can actually tell a story.
Except the comparison does it no favors. :B I am really tired of standard ScratchTavia setups.
I'd like to be a prereader!
Hello, Paul. We've never talked, but I've been reading your review blogs for many months by now (I've even started reverse tracking through your older ones when looking for stuff to read), and they're an absolute hoot and a real valuable resource.
Anyway, if you're looking for a pre-reader, I'm offering my services for this two-shot! Apart from another else, I'm building towards some fic(s) myself which I'll want pre-readers and editors for, and I think it's important to get experience from the other side of the equation - and also to just help out with some Pony words.
Can't offer much proof of my writing experience here (I only have one pic published currently from the Jinglemas four months back), but I'm well capable of offering critique and insight into most kinds of stories, even if the ones I would write might be a little more narrowed in terms of genre and content.
Must be an important fic for you, to commission a cover for it! So I'd be happy to help however I can.
5509312
I don't think I would qualify anything I have ever written as "torture porn". But maybe that's the problem; maybe my definition is whack.
5509373
It took me a few minutes to think of what you could have possibly confused "saidism" with.
5509387
Yeah, I was really hoping Silent Love would add something new to the mix. Alas.
5509510
What's important to me is that the cover art be good and appropriate to the given topic. Which tends to be difficult when seeking out pre-existing work. There was a time when I frequently commissioned new art for my stories just to ensure the cover art made sense. That stopped when my finances took a hit, but I think I'm good for this one.
Alas, I've been out of the game for commissioning art for so long I've kinda-sorta lost track of who is doing it anymore. I may skip the commission process for this one simply because of how long it may take to get some art done.