Reviewer comments:

As harsh as this review gets because the story "wasn't good enough to make me moist," to be honest, I'd say this is a decent fic. Not pants-shittingly amazing, perhaps even a bit clumsy, but an interesting read nonetheless. I only recently found out that this was released before EQG, so the character "Breaking Dawn" could almost be considered "Sunset Shimmer before we actually had Sunset shimmer". Then again, they probably look nothing like each other. I can't remember, since it happened quite a while a go, plus I haven't actually read this fic beyond the first handful of chapters, but my memories definitely bring up the same kind of vibe as Sunset did, and that definitely deserves praise. I also enjoyed the whole "it could and should have been us" thing, combined with the fact that our "heroes" (anti-heroes?) aren't just a stereotypical group of thugs. In a way, I could almost be rooting for them, although I'm not sure how far they went to get what they wanted...

Who knows? I may reread this someday.

Also: the end of this review is also the first time the "rivalry" between me and twitterdick surfaced. I confess: I was the one to shoot first. But hey, somebody has to do it, right?

The review itself:

Well, it would seem that after one long, dull, and yet incredibly busy hiatus, I have finally managed to return to the neverending task of delving into the works of aspiring MLP fanfic writers, if only to serve as one of the few clear-minded individuals who will remind these cretins of just how pathetic their efforts truly are. It was about fucking time I did, too, since a rather impressive backlog has built up in the group after I left to take part in the first of the many drinking sprees of the holiday season. And now that my most recent hangover has found its way out of my system, I am once again capable of tolerating exposure to the filth that you all regurgitate upon us.

Fortunately, one of my final actions before this period of inactivity was snagging a rather promising work for myself from said backlog, in the vain hope that this might just be the first genuinely good fanfic that I would come across during my career as an irate reviewer. And Vengeance of Dawn is certainly promising from the get-go, if nothing else. The title alone was more than enough to catch my attention and elevate my expectations, and I haven’t even read a word of the short description yet, let alone the story itself. Not to say it’s the most impressive or the most original title that I’ve ever seen, but it still has a certain “dynamic” and “expressive” quality to it that I can’t even properly describe. Just the way it sounds paints the picture of a rather dark and intense tale in my mind, the kind that shakes the very foundations of what we’ve come to know and love (or even hate) about the show.

Unfortunately, the tags didn’t exactly match this first impression, and the short description itself was even a bit clumsy. There’s nothing but a vague and awkward outlining of the story ahead, not to mention you speak of characters embarking upon a “dark path”, yet there is no “dark” tag. Perhaps it’s supposed to mean that wherever they go, the lighting will be fucking awful? To be honest, I didn’t read far enough to be able to properly answer that, but I certainly can guarantee that it doesn’t refer to how “bright” the creative mind behind this story was.

Still, despite all of these misgivings, I jumped into the story with high hopes and a song in my heart, ready to embark on another epic journey of epic proportions and full of all other sorts of epic epicness. This journey was off to a bit of a bumpy start once I realized just how bad the author was when it came to properly editing their own writing. While it isn’t terrible, it certainly isn’t the winner of the “Grammar Nazi Monthly Award”, either. Punctuation is the greatest issue among all of them, being absolutely horrendous at times, thus giving the text an awkward feel that I simply cannot ignore. Often I can’t help but think that most of the content in every chapter is the result of multiple rapid-fire writing sprees that subsequently received little to no editing at all. All that said, the text is still somewhat readable, and even contains a few sections that are absolutely stellar, so I guess I could rate it “average” in this regard.

But now we come to the most critical part: rating the content itself.

Those of you who are simple-minded enough to have wasted your time with our recent “top and bottom five” post might recall me saying that I despise nothing more than disappointment. Vengeance of Dawn is the perfect example of this. A story that promises so much at first glance, yet delivers so little once you actually decide to look into it. I mean, even if I were to look past the somewhat unoriginal premise, or the fact that the name of the antagonist is “Breaking Dawn” (I can’t help but suspect that the author was deliberately trying to combine that with a certain purple alicorn’s name to remind us of that sodding book series), this fic just doesn’t live up to the “grand adventure” and “journey of the soul” that it so desperately tries to shove down my throat.

In fact, you know what? “Disappointing” isn’t even the right word. This story is frustrating. Every time I feel that it is finally on the right track and starts to reach for something remarkable, it somehow manages to derail itself at the last moment. Every time it starts to actually build its own universe, flesh out its characters, outline the conflicts, and create a tense atmosphere, it immediately shatters the illusion of a decent story with some half-assed jump to the next plot point, as if it were in a hurry because it needed to take a piss.

Protip: outlining a premise for yourself is one thing, rushing the whole story into it without adequately addressing every important detail is another. The first few chapters of the story are basically all of Dawn’s friends telling her: “well, I don’t know... overthrowing the entire government seems like a little too much. Are you sure you haven’t gone insane?” And then, just when you start hoping that you’ll actually get to see some decent character conflict, they immediately go: “meh, what the hell… count me in!”

Are you shitting me? She’s asking them to take part in a coup d'état, not a fucking class reunion! And this type of disjointed pacing haunts you almost all the way through the first few chapters like a stone lodging itself in your shoe and calling your mother all sorts of colorful names. We get a few long and incredibly tedious parts explaining just how “miserable” some ponies are, then quickly skim through all the important bits, such as who the fuck these ponies are in the first place, and what the hell they’re planning to do. How the hell are we supposed to care for these characters if we don’t even know them? I actually couldn’t even tell who was who in one scene where they’re all together, since we hardly spent any time exploring their characters up to that point.

From what I could gather, the story is trying to build up a parallel between the Mane Six and Dawn’s circle of friends, aiming for the whole “not all of us get to be the heroes who reap the benefits, and we’re not happy about that” type of idea. The latter isn’t portrayed as some “evil gang” hell bent on taking over the world, but as a group of loyal friends trying to help one of their own and wanting to take back what (they believe) is rightfully theirs. And that is… okay, I suppose.

There’s plenty of room for good conflict in a story like this, and we would be able to get a glimpse of it, too, if it weren’t for some of the sloppy writing. A lot of the themes (e.g “poverty vs. ‘the top one percent’”) are inserted into lengthy sections and are extremely forced, while the more important ones are downplayed, such as the fact that Dawn completely ignores the positive effects of Twilight and her friends’ ascension and only cares about grabbing power for herself. I get that we’re reading most of these from her perspective, but it hardly ever comes across as her being misguided, which I believe she is. Instead, it almost feels like one of those retarded “redemption stories.” The kind that says: “Oh, this villain isn’t really evil! They just had a really dark past, full of all sorts of hardships! PLEASE FEEL SORRY FOR THEM!”

Well, who knows? Maybe the more serious stuff will only come to surface later. Maybe it’s just shitty storytelling. I couldn’t be arsed to find out which one it is before spewing forth this review. All I can say is this: all the pieces are on the table. We’ve managed to get that far. Well done! Now all you need to do is move them into the right places, instead of just balling them all up and throwing them into the face of the reader.

I don’t think I need to go into it any further. Overall, while I append this next sentence with a gigantic asterisk, I would say that I recommend taking a look at Vengeance of Dawn. Based on how far I managed to get before writing this review, it is nowhere near as good as it could be, but I was seeing a few signs that the author managed to retrieve their head from their arse after the crash course of the first few chapters, and is able to turn this mess into something spectacular. A couple of suggestions to help them with that:

1) Trim the first few chapters somewhat. We already know Twilight and her friends well enough, but the same can’t be said about Dawn’s gang. Not until we’re at least ten thousand words in, and that’s just wasting my time.
2) Work on your pacing. Lose the lengthy “FEEL SORRY FOR THEM NOW” sections, and don’t skip the ones developing the characters. If all I ever see is Dawn being a bitch, and her friends being cardboard cutouts, then I won’t really give a crap how poor and underappreciated they all are.

I shall conclude my review with a quote from the story in question, just to emphasize what kind of material the author should strive to create, as opposed to all the bland Bull Swag that surrounded it:

The apothecary blanched, shifting from one hoof to the other, "Such perilous drugs I have, but Canterlot's law forbids the sale of them."

Breaking Dawn smiled, laying out a fat purse of bits upon the table, "Here's fifty bits for Canterlot's law. Will obeying it make you so rich? I know you need this money.

The apothecary hesitated, his eyes alighting with greed, and he laid his hoof upon the gold.

PS: Some of you may have noticed that, despite it being a recurring theme in the original works that have inspired our group, not to mention several of the reviews that the group itself has produced, I tend to refrain from messing around with the titles of the stories in my reviews. In other words, I don’t write something like “Pensions and Lawn” when I mention the title, no matter how “funny” some people might think it is. Still, I was actually planning to add that to my repertoire when I felt a distinct lack of it compared to some of the other reviews that have popped up lately.

Recent events, however, have forced me to reconsider this decision. Although indirectly, and perhaps even unintentionally, I have nonetheless been most rudely insulted by a certain victim of ZP Reviews when they said something along the lines of “twitterdick writes the best reviews,” and he is one of the most prominent offenders when it comes to this gimmick.

This is unacceptable. Despite my negligible amount of respect for my colleagues, I refuse to be outdone by any of them, and I will not degrade myself by mimicking any of their silly literary tics…

That is all. Thank you for your attention!

4172606 *eyetwitches* You call that quote good? I can only imagine how bad the rest of it is then.

Apothecary = a building housing a selection of herbs and tonics, a primitive pharmacy.
Apothecarian = One who runs an apothecary.

The building has hooves and can blanch? And this is a HIGH POINT?

4172623

u mad bruh?

Seriously though, I believe I mentioned that the grammar is anything but "spotless". Ignoring that, the scene itself is quite good.