Booking for Velvet
By Mr Ghostman

Reviewed by Rinnaul

So, I see “incest” and anything involving the Sparkle family, and exactly one thing comes to mind.

But then I realize it’s tagged for their parents, and it actually says “incest roleplay”. And then… I’m still at least kind of interested, because mature fics about those two are surprisingly rare, and I’m still riding that TwiShine train of thought, so I’m expecting something unique.

I mean, a couple engaging in sexual roleplay of their own children’s incestuous relationship? That is some kinky shit. And it would have played perfectly into my crackfic headcanon that the Sparkle household is a sordid hive of debauchery.

To clarify: crackfic headcanon (n.) — Personal theories about a subject which one does not believe could actually apply to the source, but are instead a source of lulz or crackfic fuel.

And then it turned out it was just generic age-play with an incest twist. You know, female partner plays mommy?

But, this grows over-long for a funny header. Let us discuss this matter further in the actual review.

Quick Recommendation: A writing style that tends towards the simplistic, weak sex, and some strange characterization, mean this is really only worth a read if it really hits your fetishes.

First things first, I applaud you for keeping the comics canon that Twilight Velvet wrote Daring Do.

Season 4 Episode 4 never happened and you will never convince me otherwise.

The second and third paragraphs read very strangely. They shift the point of view from third-person limited focusing on Velvet, to third-person omniscient. It also gives the reader the background of the conflict directly. Really, it reads like a part of the long description, and would honestly fit better there.

The characters have a habit of expositing their issues to empty rooms. It’s a bit of telling that really interrupts the flow of the story. This being third-person limited for the most part, it’s perfectly acceptable to just show us Velvet’s thoughts.

Rather than this:

Velvet sighed in annoyance. “I’m always getting stuck on this part of the story!” she grumbled. “Now, if only my sweet Nighty Lighty was here right now.”

“Honey, I’m home!” Night Light sung happily as he opened the doorway into their bedroom.

It reads much better as almost solid narrative:

Velvet’s keystrokes slowed, and her hooves came to a rest in front of her typewriter. She sighed. At a loss for words when she reaches the climax, once again. She needed something to distract her for a bit. If only her dear Night Light were home.

“Honey, I’m home!”

The sound of the door opening followed by Night Light’s call shook her from her thoughts…

Next, the characters are unbelievably perky. I don’t mean that as a piece of hyperbole to stress the point. I mean they aren’t behaving in a manner that I, as the reader, find believable. Yes, sometimes couples with act in this sort of cutesy manner with each other. I can tell you that from experience — I’m married. But these two take it to such an extreme that it becomes silly, and strains the believability of the story.

“Bingo! And that is where my name’s o!”

That’s such a singularly bizarre line that I felt it needed to be highlighted.

There’s a bad habit of emotional telling, here. Let me go through the first scene and grab some examples:

Velvet sighed in annoyance.

Night Light sung happily

caused her to blush in amusement. (This one is passive voice, too.)

she greeted sweetly.

Night Light exclaimed happily

Velvet smirked in amusement.

Night Light asked excitedly.

Velvet giggled from embarrassment.

Night Light asked excitedly

Night Light begged melodramatically.

Velvet said as she smiled amusingly.

While adverbs are hardly a sin, they can start to stand out if they’re overused. This particularly obvious usage is commonly known as a “Tom Swifty”. And while this isn’t being done on every line, that it happens this many time in a single scene is pretty telling. It doesn’t help that the sentence structure is pretty repetitive, as well.

“Oh boy, you have no idea how much I love The Adventures of Daring Do!” He clapped his forehooves together, smiling like a little colt.

Night Light’s behavior really bugs me, and I’m sure in part that’s just because I preferred RealityCheck’s ponified Hunter S Thompson take on him. But even accounting for that personal bias, once again the characters just come on too strong. Night Light seriously behaves like a child. Not an excitable and geeky adult. The characterization itself becomes distracting.

However, it didn’t stop him from asking her out to a dance for the school prom when no other mare would dance with him.

The whole flashback piece is kind of rushed and awkward, but this in particular stands out because it makes it sound like she was his last choice — that he didn’t ask her for a dance until he’d been turned down by every other mare at their school.

prompting him to use the puppy-dog eyes at her

This particular awkward “because of this he did this” phrasing shows up several times. It reads very awkwardly because it turns Night Light from the actor to the thing acted upon. It’s almost passive voice, but there’s nothing to act upon Night Light. Instead, this construction makes it so he is, effectively, acted upon by his own prior action. In either case, “prompting him” is redundant. You can just say, “giving her puppy-dog eyes”, or better yet, describe his expression instead of just telling us what kind of face he’s making.

More talking to themselves in the bathroom scene.

Through the entire first scene, Night Light’s name is spelled without a hyphen. In the next three scenes, it’s hyphenated. Then, from the breakfast scene on, it’s done normally again.

The actual fetish is introduced rather abruptly. The only lead-ins to the subject prior to Velvet saying “my dear son” are her saying “Mommy’s very proud” and, arguably, Night Light’s childish behavior. At most, it’s introduced as an interest of Velvet’s. There’s nothing to suggest Night Light has even a passing interest until he responds to her saying that.

As for the actual fetish, as I said above, I was hoping for something that would at least be unique, if not something I’d be personally interested in. Unfortunately, this is a pretty standard approach to the subject: essentially, role-playing an oedipus complex. Beyond not seeing why this should appear to Night Light, the main issue is that the age-play aspect of it. Like the characterization earlier, things just go to an extreme.

“Mommy?” Night Light asked in a little colt’s voice, “I have little oopsie on my no-no and I don’t know why my no-no is so big.”

This is going past colt and into “foal” territory, which is going to turn some people off, even beyond the incest roleplay. A certain amount of age regression is expected when doing anything involving an oedipus complex. Otherwise, you’re just talking about doing your mom, which is kind of gross because she’s old enough to be, well, your mom.

And yes, I’ve read, enjoyed, and even edited foalcon stories. But when I see foalcon, despite the name, I’m not generally expecting, you know, actual foals. I’m more expecting the CMC or their classmates — underage by our standards, but clearly (within the context of the story) physically sexually mature, aware, and likely active. In cases like this, I’d at least update your warnings to include “very young age-play”.

For the record, the above won’t affect your rating. I try to avoid judging on content, barring rare and particularly offensive circumstances.

I can’t really go into detail on the clop scene without breaking rules about mature posts, but the actual sex is pretty weak and bland as well. It’s in need of a great deal more detail, as what’s here is pretty repetitive and utilitarian. There’s no real attempt to draw the reader into the scene or really paint a picture of what’s happening. It just lays down the events plainly and directly.

There’s some thoroughly unsexy word choices in both the dialogue and the narrative, as well, ranging from the clinical, to the childish, to the just plain silly.

“May I stick my no-no inside your love pouch?”

That line got a groan out of me, and it was far from a sound of pleasure. It had less to do with the baby-speak or foal age-play, and more to do with the use of the words “love pouch”. That’s a term that really has no place outside of particularly stupid Bloodhound Gang songs.

Like so.

Their special story ended on a relatively happy note.

I would genuinely be hard-pressed to find a duller line to end an erotic story on. There’s not much emotion in it to begin with, and there’s not really any thought bridging the “our special story” theme with the incest/age-play fetish. But what really kills it is dropping “relatively” in there. Why would you use a modifier that only serves to weaken the emotion of the line in such an important place?

Tone down the characters. Their behavior comes off as a parody of a married couple, not an actual romantic bond.

Try to introduce the fetish interest for both characters before you get to the point of actually using it. I had no idea Night Light might want any of that until he reacted to his wife’s words. And what made her think he would? She might have creeped him out and turned him off of sex entirely if it wasn’t a fetish of his.

Make sure you’re being consistent with your names, even for something as minor as hyphens.

There are better ways to exposit than having characters talk to themselves, particularly in first person or limited third person stories like this. Just lay their thoughts out in the narrative if they’re the viewpoint character.

Spice up the sex. Get into what everything feels like. Don’t stop with “his cock entered her”. Describe what she feels as it happens. How it feels for him. “Wet and hard” isn’t enough.

Don’t be afraid to use “said” when it works, but conversely, you should also consider mixing up your sentence structure and dialogue tags a bit more. If nothing else, ditch the Tom Swifties.

Even beyond the fetishes not being quite what was advertised (and far from what I was expecting or hoping for), the story suffers from unrealistic characterization, awkward grammar, weak exposition, and a dull sex scene.

Needs Work.

4044821 Thanks for the review and you're right, the clopfic does need work. Lots of work in fact.

This is going past colt and into “foal” territory, which is going to turn some people off, even beyond the incest roleplay. A certain amount of age regression is expected when doing anything involving an oedipus complex. Otherwise, you’re just talking about doing your mom, which is kind of gross because she’s old enough to be, well, your mom.

Well to be honest, I really don't have that incest fetish like that. I think I should have removed the age-play entirely and just stuck with the sibling incest role-play instead. Sorry if I creeped you out.

I will never understand the shit that passes for"Erotic" on this site.

4045248
Nah, you're far from creeping me out. Go back through the forum and check out my older clop reviews. This one is pretty tame, all told. I was mostly stressing the age-play thing as another point on which it failed to be sexy to me, and that it might upset someone who wasn't ready for how far it went.

4045340
We're all just here to tell stories about tiny horses. And sometimes those stories involve boning. And those stories will run the gamut of quality, even the ones about boning.

Alternatively, we're a bunch of sick furry pervs.

4045378 I see. Still, thank you for the feedback of my clopfic. In fact, I have another clopfic in the works and this time, it's under heavy revisions before publishing.

4045378 I'm pretty sure the alternative is right. Especially with all the bullshit with anons in Equestria or the lazy anthro sex.