The Legend of Brave Rick
By Exelion

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Okay, let’s try to keep this streak going. What’s up next?

It's been a year and a half since a failed experiment brought as a result the human invasion to Equestria. After having lost absolutely everything, the ponies seemed to be in crossroads, and didn't seem to find a solution. At least, that's what they thought until they put down their hopes on an unexpected ally.

...oh dear.

What do you get when you combine Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, and Fern Gully with blue cat aliens?

But now we’re replacing blue cat aliens with ponies.

Damaramu shall… wait.

I referenced Dragon Half in the previous review. Twice in a row would be excessive. Let’s pick something a bit less obscure this time.

Quick Recommendation: Unless you want a very misanthropic take on humans and the military, and are extremely forgiving of weak writing, this is best avoided.

Normally, I only combine the commentary and review for very short fics where I wouldn’t have enough to say to justify two separate sections. This one, though, is a 50k, the generally-accepted length for a short novel. The problem, then, is not that I’d have too little to say, but too much.

In short, this story is a wreck, in both presentation and content.

I’m going to start with the presentation — by which I mean spelling, grammar, POV, character and narrative voice, and overall construction — because I feel not all of the problems here can really be laid at the author’s feet.

The most glaring problem in this story, clear from not just the start, but even the description, is the language. Misused and missing words are frequent, sentence construction is almost universally awkward, and it seems to struggle with even basic grammar. Some examples.

Great news went all over Ponyville, the project “Everfree Energy” was about to become true. Everypony ran crazed, entering the forest with courage, searching for clues of the above-mentioned project.

Applejack was the first to come, and the scene was not so far from the forest’s reality. Twilight and Zecora were giving the last touches of what would be a big event in the life of Ponyville, maybe even in all Equestria.

Let’s just go over this one section. Even ignoring smaller problems like comma splices, this is awkward and confusing. It’s not the worst writing technicals I’ve ever reviewed, but it’s close.

“Was about to become true” was probably meant to be “was about to become reality”.

“Everypony ran crazed” suggests a panic, rather than the probably-intended excitement.

“entering the forest with courage” is awkward, and could be rewritten a number of ways, but the clearest would probably be “putting aside their fears of the forest”.

“searching for clues of” is another strange point. “Eager to find out about” the project, maybe?

“the above-mentioned project” is the kind of writing that never works in fiction outside of parody. There’s only one project you could be talking about so you can just call it “the project”.

“not so far from the forest’s reality.” I honestly have no idea what this is trying to say.

And the last sentence is just generally awkward.

This is the kind of writing that makes up the entire story. By the end of the first chapter, I was wondering if English was even the author’s first language.

And it probably isn’t, as a look at their author page tells me they’re from Argentina.

And that’s why I can’t lay all of the blame for this on the author’s writing ability. Still, though, this is in dire need of a good editor. And, as I always point out, an editor’s job isn’t just to make sure you have no spelling errors, but to help ensure your writing as a whole is the best possible. That includes cleaning up writing like what I quoted.

So, that was technical writing. How about POV, character, and narrative voice?

“Do you believe it will run, Zecora?” Twilight looked to Zecora, a little nervous.

“Fret not my little pony, the threat is in your mind only,” answered Zecora “What sends your voices dulcet? You had no quarry finding the connections of dawn and sunset.”

“I believe it’s just a sensation made by the situation, that’s all,” said Twilight with a little of self-distrust.

The POV is a bit shaky. I could be third person omniscient, and I’m leaning towards just labeling it as such, but is also has some features of multiple third-person limited. Part of the problem is that the voice never changes. Dialogue is stilted and unnatural, which may also be a result of the language barrier, but each character sounds more or less the same, and that voice is shared by the narrative.

Let’s pull another scene.

“Of course sugarcube, don’t ya think that we were going to leave ya in a moment like this” replied Applejack.

“And this could be an opportunity to impress everypony with my new hat, and learn something from this too. Er-Without mentioning that this could be an opportunity for everyone of course.” Rarity faked a smile, looking to her friends.

“But how do we know of it’s utility? We don’t know what it is or what’s made for. I don’t believe that a bunch of roots tied like a circle raised from earth could be of any use for anything ever.” Rainbow Dash hovered in the air, overlooking that tied up roots masterpiece.

There are some attempts to differentiate the characters — AJ says “sugarcube” and her accent makes a vague appearance in using “ya” instead of “you”, Rarity is transparently narcissistic, and Rainbow Dash dismissive of progress. But these are really just tossing in the most superficial stereotypes of the characters. None of the language sounds natural, and some — particularly from Rainbow Dash — sounds utterly out of character.

Here’s an experiment.

I promise you that nothing wrong will happen.

This couldn’t wait, it was not easy to maintain a magic flow constantly for long time

Don’t you want to know what is on the other side of this?

We can’t rush, we must make a plan.

I beg to all the present people to take a step back, this could be a little dangerous.

Those quotes include narration and dialogue from Twilight, Celestia, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. Try and pick out which character said each. You’ll quickly notice that all of them read more or less the same.

Before I move on to the less-objective parts of the review (characterization, realism, and plot), I’d like to highlight one more aspect of the story structure.

The story actually opens on a framing device — a great-grandfather telling his great-grandchildren stories of the war a whole three generations in the past. We then flash back to the scene I’ve been quoting from, and at the conclusion of that scene, the story time skips ahead 18 months to the middle of a battle in the human-pony war. We don’t learn how the war began until Chapter Five, which causes some problems in sympathizing for the protagonist.

On that point, the subjective matter of story content.

“Of course I must go, I have to help them!” He yelled while he was trying to turn on his bike by kicking it, but his tired body prevented it.

The group, surprised by his attitude, he really wanted to help them, as if all that division was his family, with difficulty one of them answered:

“Captain, we know you want to help them, but you are very weak at the moment, you would be just a hindrance and an easy target.”

“I don’t care, the ponies need me!” angrily exclaimed.

Oh, so many things to cover here…

Okay, so we’ve basically got a Going Native/Mighty Whitey story, thus my reference to Avatar previously — though I think the plot will be more in line with Dances With Wolves). So, if I think it’s more in line with a Hollywood classic than an over-the-top and easily-mocked scifi blockbuster, why did I reference Smurfcat Bravedance?

Well, cause the story makes it clear that Equestria is a beautiful, idyllic wonderland, while humanity is just a bag of dicks.

Now, in all of these type of stories, the Home team is painted in a pretty negative light so we support the protagonist switching sides. But, we can generally understand the reasons for their actions.

In Dances With Wolves, we have fighting over territory and the horrors of the American Civil War.

In Avatar, we have monks who punch people with fire and it’s AWESOME humanity seeking a cure to all its ills in the physics-breaking element “unobtanium” (god this movie was stupid).

Here, I don’t know why they’re fighting, so I can’t understand the hero’s motivations. I mean, granted, we’re shown the start of the war in Chapter Five, but first, that’s all the way in Chapter Five, and two, once we are told, the reasons are so vague and generic that it really explains nothing.

In one of the visions that Rick has (I’ll get to that one in a moment), we learn that humans travelled to Equestria and some started living there. But there were some racial tensions, and eventually a fight between humans and ponies broke out. The humans demanded that Celestia allow them to provide more security to their people, and she, for some reason, agreed. So the humans brought over their corrupt and violent police force, and set about establishing a pro-human police state. When Celestia went and asked them to knock that shit off, the human leadership basically said “Well fine, we’re just gonna have a war, then!”

Because apparently, these humans aren’t from our world, but from a Civilization game with my brothers-in-law.

Not that I’m much better.

And so then the human forces burn down Sweet Apple Acres, destroy Ponyville and execute the Mayor, and then take Canterlot.

Cause Humans Are Bastards.

This all happened over the course of a mere 18 months, too. Pacing issues, by the way.

Oh, real quick, going back to the word usage notes from before. This one stood out.

“AAAAAAGGGHHH!” He murmured in pain.

“AAAAAAGGGHHH” is a loud sound. Mumurs are quiet.

Yeah, I had to.

And, judging from his reactions to these visions, this whole time Rick has somehow been unaware that he and his people have been fighting an almost one-sided war against a mostly-civilian and near-defenseless opposition.

And for the record, the ponies as presented here are doing surprisingly well, and the human forces seem to be going pretty slow and inefficient. I highly recommend reading The Salvation War to get a good look at what we’re really capable of.

Now, about those visions!

Rick picked up an enchanted scroll, and got blasted with some kind of magic. It showed him various visions of how lovely Equestria was, and caused him to feel weak and sickened when he considered the prospect of hurting the ponies. So where John Dunbar in Dances With Wolves finds a new life away from the misery and chaos of the civil war, and Jake Sully in Avatar fell in love with a native woman and the native way of life… I can’t help but feel that Rick here is being brainwashed into it, backed up by Twilight dropping a sort of Mark of Justice effect on him.

The end result is a conversion that feels as though the character had no choice in the matter, which really weakens the protagonist’s position as a hero.

Some of my issues lie with the content and how the plot is set up, and there’s little to be done for those. As for the rest…

Find an editor who’s willing to put in a lot of work to make serious revisions to your grammar, word choice, and sentence structure.

You might cut the framing device. It doesn’t seem to add much to the story.

Consider introducing the causes of the war earlier, and in a more straightforward manner. Holding off on it, as you do now, undermines the conflict and the protagonist.

Give a reason, at least to the human characters, why things have escalated so much.

Between the language issues, weak characterization, bad pacing, and questionable plot choices, this scores a:

Needs Work.

Amazing review Rinn!

I completely lost it at the Civ V screenshot and caption. It was just...glorious!

It was a fair review, thank you.

So, my first editor did a bad job? I trusted in the wrong person? I don't have enough English to know that was bad, even after the revision of the editor.

*Sigh*

At least my others oneshots went well.

Moving to the bad pacing, I realized that when the fic finished in the Spanish version. That's why I wrote a prequel to explain the whole thing and a sequel to give Richard greater importance, more physical/psychological tests and development.
On second thought, maybe I should have started with the prequel.

And for the plot, well, I don't regret nothing

Again, thanks for your time to review this