Paul's Thursday Reviews CCLXIV · 9:16pm Sep 9th, 2021
It’s been an uneventful week, outside of the gargantuan amount of paperwork. I kept looking for the part where they demanded my signature in my own blood atop a pentagram, but I guess the house I’m trying to buy isn’t extravagant enough for that.
The moment that struck me as the most silly was the one-page form, consisting of only a couple sentences, in which I had to write down that, no, I don’t owe any child care because I’m single, never married, and have no children. Those weren’t options I could choose, they actually demanded I write down the reason I didn’t owe child support.
I felt like I was in an interrogation room, light shining in my face and a scowling man on the other side of the table:
“How much are you paying in child support?”
“I don’t pay child support.”
“What? What kind of deadbeat dad are you? Do you not love your kids? Do you not want them to be healthy? Do you hate children? Why do you hate children?”
“B-but I don’t have any kids! I never did!”
“Likely story, Deadbeat.” *shoves paper and pen in my face* “Confess! Write down exactly why you think your precious children, spawn of your loins, are unworthy of daddy’s cash!”
Do they not have my tax returns that specify I’m single and not paying child support? Do they not have my bank records that show no extra money being pulled out for undisclosed reasons or sent directly to an individual regularly? Didn’t I already confirm this as part of the pre-approval process by checking a few little boxes on a much bigger form? Why am I repeating it in a completely independent form that apparently exists for no other function?
It’s stuff like this that makes me think the U.S. is over-regulated.
Meh, whatevs. Who wants some reviews?
Stories for This Week:
Rainbow Dash, Element of Magic by aceotaku
How We Met by Rated Ponystar
Big Red by Merc the Jerk
Total Word Count: 144,210
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 0
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 2
None: 0
Rainbow Dash, Element of Magic
17,371 Words
By aceotaku
Rainbow Dash has the unique distinction of being the only pegasus in history to be able to cast unicorn-style magic, which makes her quite the famous individual. For reasons unspecified, Princess Celestia – whom Rainbow has never even met – assigns her the task of supervising this year’s Summer Sun Celebration. Celestia’s student, Sunset Shimmer, is far from okay with this.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Rainbow Dash switched with Twilight Sparkle. The idea is stupid on its surface, but I’ve seen it done well before and I was curious to see if aceotaku might pull it off.
Rainbow Dash isn’t the only sweeping change in the story. aceotaku decided swapping two ponies wasn’t good enough and so completely rewrote the Mane 6 down to their very cores, making them wholly new and alien creatures. Might as well be OCs, really. This isn’t a criticism, mind you; if it’s done well then this kind of thing can really sell a story. Here we find Twilight as the farmer and yet taking on the Element of Generosity, while Applejack becomes the fashionista yet has the Element of Loyalty. Weird, but not in a bad way.
Until you get to Rarity, still a unicorn, trying to fly. As far as I can tell, without either magic or technology. Nope, she’s just leaping around and falling on her face. Yeah, I didn’t appreciate seeing the best of the Mane 6 reduced to this… stupidity. All the others I could buy to some degree, but Rarity just came out as a well-meaning idiot and I’m not sure why aceotaku thought this was a good idea. Best theory is that they don’t like her and found this punishable by relegation to eternal comic relief.
All of this comes to the central point: this is not a story to take seriously. At all. Rarity was the most egregious, but there are many instances of characters being profoundly dumb in this series. Examples include Celestia claiming old age as an excuse to forget about the 1000th anniversary of her sister’s banishment and Nightmare Moon being legitimately unaware that plants need sunlight to survive. I’m tempted to include everything Sunset Shimmer in this story.
Not to mention that this desperately requires proofing. Missing words, sentences that make no sense even in context, misspellings, there’s a constant stream of problems in the writing that will make anyone who cares about “good” writing leave the story before the end of the first chapter.
On the plus side, aceotaku seems to have their own serious doubts about the quality of this story. It’s entirely possible that me pointing out the issues is redundant for them. Seeing as they have stories as recently as October 2020 and this was written waaaaay back in February 2014, I can acknowledge the possibility that they’ve grown over time. I’d be willing to give another story by this author a try just to see if there are any improvements.
But as for this story, it didn’t do anything for me. While I say you shouldn’t take it seriously, I couldn’t say with any confidence whether it was meant to be taken seriously. That constant uncertainty hurt the story quite a bit in my eyes. The poor writing, strange (if not outright stupid) character behavior, and a complete lack of subtlty or atmosphere served as nails in this story’s coffin.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
How We Met
49,651 Words
By Rated Ponystar
Filly Fluttershy has a rough time of it. She can’t fly, her teachers have decided she’s a lost cause, and all the other foals at flight camp make fun of her. Then a blue blur crashes into her, and her life takes a drastic turn.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a story that focused specifically on the life and relationship of Rainbow and Fluttershy, which is why this story premise caught my attention. I was really looking forward to a reenactment of their lives before the arrival of one Ms. Sparkle. Alas, Rated Ponystar doesn’t linger on their foalhood for very long, instead blowing past it so that we can see them as adults reuniting after a long separation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that decision, it’s just not what I was hoping for.
As much as I am a shipper, I was also disappointed when the author decided to make this a romance. At the same time, who can blame them? It had to be so very tempting. I think I would have liked to have seen their bond as, I dunno, surrogate sisters or something, if only because the romantic slant is so common. I won’t begrudge the decision though.
This story will probably work well for the hopeless romantics. But for me it was largely… uninteresting. It felt to me like Rated Ponystar had made a checklist of romantic tropes and sought to get as many of them in there as possible. Extremely coincidental events leading to rescue of life and limb? Check. Pining over someone but unwilling to confess? Check. String of awkward events preventing confession? Check. Friends trying to help and bumbling things up? Check. Desired love interest falling in love with someone else? Check. Helping desired lover get with that someone else? Check. Unintentional kiss after an unexpected romantic moment? Check.
Yeah. We’ve all read this one a bajillion times. If you’re looking for some traditional romance tropes, here’s your fix.
This is also one of Rated Ponystar’s earlier fics, and it shows. The writing is subpar, with lots of what I would call “new writer mistakes”, mostly involving sentences that don’t say what the author clearly intended. It also extends to the author’s notes, which remind you on a chapter-by-chapter basis that Rated Ponystar doesn’t own MLP (because clearly you thought otherwise) or tries to get you excited with nonsense statements like “Will X happen? Find out next time!” (Oh, yes, I’m so hyped. Woo. Hoo.) or “No, this isn’t the end of the story.” (And here I thought the following 10 chapters were going to be blank!)
Still, this is an early story by an author who has gotten better over the years, and that warrants some appreciation. We’re dealing with a long-beloved ship, at least among those who ship it, and I imagine those who just want to see some relationship drama will enjoy it immensely. Let them have their pleasures. If you’re looking for anything else – at all – then you should probably steer clear.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle — Pretty Good
Never Forget Me — Worth It
Sanguine Kindness — Worth It
Negotiations — Worth It
Aftermath of a Fallen Star — Worth It
Big Red
77,188 Words
By Merc the Jerk
Sequel to Diamond in the Rough
Alice Apple has run away, leaving a note behind explaining that she intends to find and bring back the exiled Princess Luna Orleith. Her brother, Big Mac, heads out to catch her and bring her home. This would be a lot easier if the child’s destination weren’t the perilous, pirate-infested Ghost Rim.
This cooperative series started with a bank heist, then an Ocean’s Eleven-style casino robbery. But now we know the situation fully: Chrysalis has replaced Celestia, whose fate is unknown, and the Mane Six are out to stop her in whatever way they can. Apple Bloom, or “Alice” as she’s known in this humanized AU, is feeling useless as her sister Jack keeps risking her life and gets the brilliant idea to go find Princess Luna. Luna herself has been exiled from Torani (this world’s Equestria), unaware of her sister’s replacement and merely believing Celestia has gone insane. Caught in the midst of all this is Mac chasing his sister, Shining Armor (“Lewellyn Shields”) as her also-exiled Captain of the Guard, dreaded pirate captain Gilda, and tribal chief Zecora.
Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this AU.
A few things surprised me as this story went on. For starters, while Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle do make appearances, neither of them agree to go with Apple Bloom Alice on this journey of danger. Considering the tendency of authors to never let Crusaders go into danger without the others, this was both unexpected and welcome, even if it does mean we don’t get much more than a cameo of Best Filly-turned-Human.
It’s also kind of hard for me to visualize the ships that appear so often in this ocean-bound, pirate-filled adventure. I mean, when you think of pirates, most people imagine wooden sailing vessels and cannons and the like. But this story is a strange mixture of modern and past, sometimes making it hard to get a grasp of how things should look. Apparently, there are cannons. Apparently, these ships are made of steel. Apparently, this is supposed to make sense.
Uh… The Monitor vs the Virginia, anybody?
I’m reasonably sure these are supposed to be some sort of hybrid metal/wood ships, though it’s kind of hard to tell. I feel like I’m missing something, but I’m not sure if that’s due to my own mistakes in the reading or Merc failing to properly describe what we’re dealing with.
Still, these are minor niggles. The story mostly comes in three parts. The first is Alice trying to get to the Ghost Rim and find Luna which, ultimately, becomes her trying to survive as a stowaway on Captain Gilda’s pirate ship. I really enjoyed Gilda’s role here as a foul-mouthed, gritty leader of pirates who secretly has good intentions. Sure, it’s not a new character type, but Gilda makes it work well with her regular efforts to maintain her piratey bad guy persona while sneakily making sure Alice is safe from pretty much everything. Iron Will as her straight-faced second-in-command was just the icing on the cake. I never imagined Apple Bloom and Gilda doing things together, but this story makes them really work as a friendshipping duo.
The second part is Big McIntosh pursuing Alice, which is fairly straightforward. Not surprising; Mac’s a straightforward guy, at least as depicted here. To be honest, Mac’s role in this story was the least interesting to me. His entire story arc is “find Alice, stay alive”. He doesn’t grow as a character like his sister, he never faces any memorable hurdles, and his personality never offers anything to catch our eyes. He’s just… Big McIntosh.
The third part involves Luna and Shining Armor Lewellyn, first as exiles turtling up on an island base, then meeting and befriending Zecora and her tribe, then taking the fight to the pirates that have been trying to cash in the hefty bounty on Luna’s head. I enjoyed this one – mostly because of Zecora and Luna being awesome both independently and together. Merc even ships these two, which is another pairing I never seriously considered but is sold nicely here. Lew takes up most of the perspective on this one, which is interesting considering he’s regularly shown up by both leading ladies, and yet when the shit hits the fan he and his men prove more than capable of handling themselves.
Actually, the whole “capable” bit is something of a problem. There isn’t any sense of risk in the majority of this story. Every time the exiles run into a potential challenge, they mow it down like so much grass. Ditto for Big McIntosh. And just when Alice was starting to show some potential for danger to herself and her mission, Gilda comes along and everything is more-or-less easy for them from that point onwards. Until the very last battle – and I mean the very last – I never felt like there were any real stakes or threat to be had.
Even the final fight had some serious issues, mainly stemming from how impersonal it was. Merc wrote the events as merely happening, one blow to the next, without any emotional investment. This was Big McIntosh’s big moment, the one time he gets to really shine, and we have no idea how he feels about any of it. Is he desperate? Is he confident? Is he just going through the motions? No way to know, because all the narrative is telling us is that he’s throwing and receiving blows and oh, that one might have hurt. Considering this is the climactic moment of the entire story, I’d say it’s a poor show. Having an over-the-top villain who can’t help pontificating on his inherent superiority doesn’t make the fight itself more interesting.
I know that all of this makes it sound as if I didn’t like the story. Which isn’t the case; I was quite interested to see where it was going and how the situation would resolve itself. Plus Zecora, Luna, and Gilda being awesome, and Shining proving he’s not just a pretty face in armor (for once). Yet as much as I wanted to see more, the story never managed to wow me or turn things up a notch. In the end it felt like a run-of-the-mill adventure story, nothing too grand nor too boring. It’ll work for those looking for something unusual or with a slightly different setting, but if you’re seeking a truly epic, emotional tale, eh…
I still plan on reading more from this AU. I’m not sure how many stories there are left in it, though.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Diktat — Pretty Good
Fool's Gold — Pretty Good
The Laughing Shadow — Pretty Good
Stories for Next Week:
Injuring Eternity by Monochromatic
Black Bloom by Bronycommander
Twilight Sparkle of the Royal Guard: The Rising by King of Beggars
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Oh dear, bring a tissue box next week. Probably two. Oh, oh gosh, I'm going to need one if I think about it too long.
Hey, I just noticed that you didn't post a link to the review on Rated Ponystar's story.
5580475
Oh, did I forget to do that this time around? *checks* Yes, yes I did. Thanks for pointing it out.
These I-don't-own-mlp disclaimers are probably a left over from the early days of pony videos, that glommed it's way to fimfic, when people were still to figure out how to avoid copywrite strikes.
5580547
Oh, no, not at all. Those copyright disclaimers in fanfiction existed long before MLP:FiM was a thing. I remember seeing them in the 90's on Gundam Wing and Final Fantasy fanfiction. Back then it made a certain sense to have them as online fanfiction was a very new thing and people were still testing the waters of what they were and were not allowed to do.
But FIMFiction is an MLP:FiM-centric site. It has its own Copyright notice on literally every page, so making your own is redundant at best and annoying at worst.
Even then it doesn't really matter. If Hasbro decided tomorrow to shut FIMFiction down, they could, and no number of copyright disclaimers are going to stop them. It's a paper shield that we hide behind in hopes the big scary monsters don't see us, but provides no protection whatsoever.
I apologise that youdidn't enjoy my story and since the VAST majority of my stories so far are set in the same universe, I can'tpromise you'll like them much better, but who knows? I am very open about accepting criticism of my work.
and yeah the...spellng/grammar problems. I tend to miss errors while reviewing my work, and tend to default to just posting immediately after I've donea chapter. Another problem, at least back then (Not sure if it's still a real problem now, thugh it's still a THING) is how I tend to write chapters PRETTY far apart of each other (hell, some stories I didn't finish until like YEARS later), and since I forget to actually re-read what I wrote this leads to me forgetting certain details or plans, which can lead to some...issues.
If you do end up reading any other stories I have written, then I hope they are better (I...do have apprehension about a few of them).
I should also note I am incredibly lazy and dumb .3.
5580547
honestly itjust sorta became a THING peeps did when writing fanfics back in the day, regardless of if we needed to or not.
I'm late as per normal, but thanks for the review brother, always appreciated!