The Element of Hate
By Shadow Bolt

Reviewed by Rinnaul

In continuing my trend of putting a joke in the current review that I really should have thought of for my last review, that bit about having a fetish for sad Trixie in the last review’s intro really should have lead into a Megatokyo/Mac Hall reference.

Also, admitting I have no fucking idea what is going on in Megatokyo anymore.

In other news, I saw this on the shelf at my store today.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

“Rinnaul, that was a gag from two reviews ago, and all you did was riff on the author’s own gag. You didn’t even rate the story all that highly. Why won’t you let this go?”

And the answer is that I can never trust anything under that name again. You don’t understand how serious this is. Hubert is insidious, and must be stopped. But surely the danger can’t be so great, you insist. After all, he’s just a stereotypical loser in a fanfiction. Well, that’s exactly the problem.

Look, there’s this concept in philosophy, okay. Imagine a chair. Now, there’s a particular idea you have that defines what a “chair” is, right? Well, that’s called a—

Several paragraphs of confused rambling about the internalization of standards from the collective consciousness have been cut, as we at Rinnaul’s Better Judgment are taking the rare action of putting our metaphorical foot down, as not even we are sure what his point is anymore. Instead, enjoy some random sexy fanart.

We now return you to your irregular, unscheduled, review.

—before we are all Hubert. And that I why I propose we preemptively lobotomize Star Destroyer in the interest of humanity’s future.

But for now, let’s look at this story.

Quick Recommendation: While the idea of dark elements being a curse upon their bearers has potential, this story is plagued by poor grammar, weak writing, and a severely unlikable main character.

Okay, let’s start with just the cover page. Right off the bat, you’ve basically got an OC-centric “seventh Element” story, with an OC sharing your username, which are three things that all have bad reps. That’s not to say your story will be bad, but it’s keeping bad company, and that’s going to make people wary from the outset. It’s kind of like how the fedora and trilby are fine articles of clothing, but the image associated them has been co-opted by douchebags, or how Charlie Chaplin was rocking a pretty awesome style of moustache up until about 1939.

Anyway, you’re really going to need to sell this idea with your description, and the generic “‘twas a happy day in Ponyville” opening really won’t help with that. You’re better off trying to find ways to make the reader curious about the story, and asking, basically, “but will the bad guy win?” isn’t going to do that. I’d also cut the apologies and excuses at the bottom from the description. Saying it’s “cliche but worth it,” “don’t be too harsh first fic,” and “downvotes are from haters” actually make you look worse in the long run, like you’re trying to offer excuses for poor quality rather than improving your craft.

And you bring up the tags at the bottom. I hadn’t even looked at them, but yeah, your tags are a bit confused. Try and reduce them to what the story is really about. A darkly-comedic adventure is certainly possible, like… let’s say a story where Fluttershy relapses into Flutterbat every night, and drinks blood in that form now. Common enough. But now she must travel to far-away lands to find a permanent cure for her condition, and keeps picking up travelling companions who insist on accompanying her over her protests, and she always eventually relents and lets them join because, well, it’s Fluttershy. And then transforms at night and kills them for their delicious blood, and wakes up the next morning just kicking herself for doing it again.

Hell, I kinda want to read that now. It might make for a good Austraeoh parody.

But that same story, played more or less for serious, but with some comedic elements coming from Fluttershy’s personality, is a bit of a different beast. The first story earns a Comedy tag, because Comedy is a recurring theme. The second doesn’t, because lighthearted moments in a serious story does not a comedy make. I strongly suspect this story is latter type. The presence of the Comedy tag alongside the Sad tag is also difficult, and again I suspect this is really a matter of certain scenes going one way or the other, rather than a consistent mood.

Again, sad comedy is entirely possible. Just one of the harder things to pull off. I can imagine a story where Pinkie Pie or Discord copes with loss would be a good candidate for that combo. It’s just that the two rarely actually work together.

Anyway, the tl;dr for the last like, four paragraphs: Use a genre tag for a story only when the story consistently follows that mood or genre.

But, moving on to the story proper.

Ah, and opening the story with quotes, also known as an epigraph. This is something I generally recommend avoiding, since they are so rarely done well. I can’t recall any fics I’ve read that have done it successfully (the Doctor Who/Firefly crossover A Life Less Extraordinary used it, but they didn’t really add anything, and it was pretty forgettable in that respect), and I’ve only used it myself once that I can recall, in a Megaman story on a message board that is long dead, now.

The thing with an epigraph is, it needs to contribute something to the overall story, and fit into that story. In the case of multiple quotes, they should all follow a similar theme. Right away, the Terminator quote is out of place. Not only does it not fit the theme of the other two, but the phrase “a storm is coming” is pretty empty, without context. Again calling back to A Life Less Extraordinary, those exact words were used repeatedly by River Tam to foreshadow the arrival of The Doctor, but in that case, it fit the context. River is psychic, and prone to saying strange things that the rest of the crew know to pay attention to, regardless. It lead Captain Mal to the conclusion that The Doctor would be a very important person, without which he may not have trusted him aboard his ship. And finally, those specific words are appropriate as they are a callback to one of The Doctor’s titles, “The Oncoming Storm”.

However, for all the problems in that first quote, the other two might actually be the larger issue, as both are about anger, not hate. And no, hate isn’t just very powerful anger, the word for that is “rage”. Hate can be angry, yes. But hate can also be dispassionate just as easily. It can be fearful. What hate really is about, is about the dehumanization of its target (or de-whatever-ization, you know what I mean). It uses “othering” to distance the target from the hateful one, making it impossible to sympathise with them, and thus possible to attack in ways that would seem terrible were they used on someone or something more “like yourself”. Having these opening quotes about anger when the character is meant to be hateful makes me afraid he’s just going to be this really pissed-off guy.

Okay, now the actual story proper.

The opening here is pretty generic, the “(character) meandering through town” intro that’s only one step removed from the “weather report opening”. I also notice pretty quickly that the writing style is pretty plain, and the narration is very prone to telling.

A bigger issue, though, is that the story mixes tenses randomly. I’m going to just quote a chunk of the first scenes and highlight let Asilin point out the different tenses in use:

Twilight Sparkle was trotting through Ponyville, enjoying the fresh air on a bright sunny morning. After a long night of studying Twilight decided to take a break from reading to see what her friends were up to. Earlier she had already visited Rarity to see if she wanted to hang out, but she was too busy with a big order that she regrettably declined. She then went to see her good friend Pinkie Pie who was also too busy because she was helping out with the Cakes for a party. (This last sentence is okay because it ends the switch to a past time frame. The first past tense in the sentence is understood to be in the same time frame as the past perfect)

“I’m sooo very sorry, Twilight,” she said. “I really want to hang out, but the Cakes are a little behind because the babies were keeping them up all night so they’re a little exhausted. That’s why I’m helping them out by making some delicious sweets for the party the Cakes are going to."

Twilight was feeling a little sad from hearing this, but Pinkie said, “Come by later today and we’ll have such a fun time.” (Another technically correct sentence, but the construction detracts from the emotion)

So now Twilight is walking around thinking of what to do next, Rarity and Pinkie Pie were both too busy to hang out. I guess it can’t always be as slow at their jobs as it is at the library. She then thinks about whom she should see next.

Knowing the time, Applejack would be hard at work on the farm so I doubt she’ll be available and nopony has seen Rainbow Dash so most likely she is probably taking a nap somewhere in the clouds like she always does.

Running down the names on her mental list there was only one pony left that she hasn’t tried yet Fluttershy. Now with a destination in mind Twilight hurried to Fluttershy’s cottage near the edge of the Everfree Forest to see her kind friend and see how’s she’s been.

Upon arriving at Fluttershy’s cottage she noticed that none of Fluttershy's animal friends were seen. (“Seen” is missing the infinitive phrasing of “to be” before it)

“That’s weird, usually whenever I come by to see Fluttershy, her animals are always around.” As Twilight looks around she noticed that she couldn’t see one animal, she also noticed how quiet it was. There were no birds singing, no squirrels running through the trees, no bunnies hopping around, no chickens pecking, it was as if there was not one living thing around. Feeling cautious Twilight walked up to Fluttershy’s door wondering if maybe she knew what was going on with the animals. Upon knocking the door Twilight heard a quiet shriek from the inside of the cottage. She knocked again this time she called out to her friend.

“Fluttershy, it's me, Twilight,” she said. Then she waited for a reply which only took a few seconds.

Past Tense is Blue.
Past Perfect is Orange.
Past Imperfect/Past Progressive is Red.
Present Tense is Green.
Present Perfect is Pink.
Present Progressive/Indicative is Yellow.

And Asilin’s notes are italicized in Twilight Sparkle Purple.

Now, I’m going to admit, there are more tenses there than I know anything about, but she left this open, so maybe that will help.

She just read over this and told me that wouldn’t actually help, and suggests this instead: English Page.

I was going to drop a Schoolhouse Rock video in here, but they never covered tenses, and Conjunction Junction, however informative, is irrelevant.

And if I’m going to be irrelevant, I might as well be completely irrelevant.

Seriously, why do you people put up with this shit from me?

Anyway, there are numerous other grammatical issues, like subject-verb agreement, extra words, missing words, and improper punctuation, but I’m not going to point out every single instance of those.

I’m going to be blunt here, this is really turning into a chore to read. The bland writing and tendency toward telling slow the pace down to a crawl, and leave every scene feeling like it’s going on for ages. As an example, I’m sure the scene where Fluttershy gives Twilight a lift was only about 500 words. But I couldn’t wait for the story to just move on from it, because blandly detailing each and every action and emotion from the characters was just so tedious.

There’s a bad habit of over-explaining here, as well, something I see a lot of in fanfiction. You can leave some things unsaid, because you can assume you readers, being familiar with the source material, already know them. We know Fluttershy is Twilight’s friend. We know Zecora is her friend. We know Zecora lives in the forest. We know the forest is dangerous. You don’t need to lay all of that out for us.

Inserting thoughts into the narrative by just italicizing them isn’t always the clearest means of adding a character’s inner thoughts, but it is generally accepted. However, if you’re going to do this, make sure you don’t forget the italics. I thought you’d suddenly shifted into a first-person POV there for a minute.

I really don’t buy Twilight losing her temper so easily. She’s prone to frustration, yes, but not so quickly. She’s probably one of the most even-tempered of the characters, with only Applejack being consistently better about it. She’s also very modest — that was basically the entire point of Boast Busters — so I can’t see her yelling at a cloud-house that she “will not be ignored”, or calling someone a “jerk” just for not being home.

And yeah, the antagonist is looking pretty underwhelming, as it seems he’s really just angry, not hateful.

So, in the second chapter, the epigraph quotes are about being hated, rather than being hateful. We’re getting a bit closer, but that still doesn’t feel appropriate to me. The Shrek quote lays it on even thicker that the character will be the victim of irrational hatred and prejudice, but everything I’ve seen so far suggests that he’s the source of such feelings, not the target.

Reading on, he doesn’t seem particularly hateful or even angry — no more so than Twilight’s outbursts. Really, it seems more and more like Twilight was right, and this guy is just kind of a jerk.

I keep wanting to point out all the times and ways the narration is heavy-handed, telly, bland, or poorly constructed, but there’s just so much of it and I’m trying to avoid filling this with the same point over and over.

And… black and red OC. Remember what I said earlier, about keeping poor company? You’re already wearing a fedora with an OC fic. The seventh element angle adds a poorly-maintained and unmanly beard. When the OC is black and red and named after you, you’re tipping your hat and saying “m’lady”, and there is no longer any hope for you.

Well, there is, but at this point you’d need to basically be doing something like the Most Dangerous Game Contest and attempting to deliberately subvert and do something new and unique with these tropes, and you’d really need to sell it as such. This… is still feeling pretty cliche, all told.

Anyway, so we learn our antagonist is the Jerkass Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and he’s so pissy because everyone hates him for no reason at all. So, points for the quotes being applicable, I suppose, but if he really is the victim of meaningless hate, that’s actually a very weak character.

Now, that being said, I’ll grant an out — let’s assume (or maybe just plot out a new story here, who knows) that Woobie Shadow Bolt, being the “Element of Hatred”, is just one of six Elements of Disharmony. Now, what if these dark Elements gave their bearers power comparable to the true EoH, but while wielding that dark power, they themselves are subject to it. The Bearer of Hatred (counter to the Element of Kindness, I suppose) is irrationally hated. The Bearer of Deception (anti-Honesty) finds he can trust no one. Then we’d have Greed for Generosity, Despair for Laughter, Betrayal for Loyalty, and… Solitude is an obvious one for Friendship/Magic, but I think I’d rather something a bit more expansive, to cover all the things the sixth Element can represent. I think Anomie, Ennui, or Nihilism might be the best bets.

Now, those guys would be scary. Someone get on that idea.

Moving on, the clash of ideologies really could have been expressed better. And once again, Twilight Sparkle is coming off as rather arrogant, where I really think she’d be more likely to attribute her successes to her friends. The real problem, though, is it’s just so blunt and bland. It amounts to:

Woobie: Friends are for losers, I hate everything.
Twilight: But friends are better than hate!
Woobie: No, hate is way super better than friends.
Twilight: I can totally prove friends are better.
Woobie: You’re on.

And… I’m sorry, but his whole thing about “Hate would have won faster” just makes him sound delusional. He’d have been competing against Nightmare Moon at her own game, Discord would have found him hilariously easy to manipulate, and the Changelings would have pretty much just eaten him. The villain drives the story, but this guy just gets on my nerves. That’s not a good thing for a story.

Next chapter plz.

And now the quotes seem to be about how the OC is wrong? That seems at cross-purposes to earlier ones.

And we’re adding Shadow’s POV now, in alternating scenes with Twilight’s. This really doesn’t help the story’s pacing or ease of reading. You’d probably be better off keeping it to just her.

So much telling, so little showing.

And once again, he just doesn’t seem particularly hateful. Or even all that angry, for that matter. He’s just… got a bad attitude because people don’t like him. Not much villain motivation there.

The thing is, when the heroes are accidentally antagonizing a villain, I should be worried for them. I should be thinking “they are setting themselves up for such a fall” or “oh god, when he turns on them, it’s going to be brutal.” But with Shadow… I have so little investment due to all the telling, and his motivation is so weak, I just find myself rolling my eyes at his outbursts and waiting for him to get over himself.

And here’s another thing that just gets annoying, and really drives home the “Anti-Sue” vibe I keep getting from Shadow. He keeps countering everything Twilight suggests with “Well, when I did that, everything sucked, so clearly your message is bullshit.” And why? Because he’s been the target of constant hate and abuse for no reason. Over and over. Honestly, it doesn’t even sound like things that would really happen in Equestria. It more comes off as making things up to justify his behavior.

That could apply equally to the character or the narrative.

And here, here is a place Twilight should have been angry!

Of course people don’t like you, you prick! Whenever anyone causes you any offense, you throw tantrums, lash out with your magic, and scream at them! With how much she was snapping at him before, I can’t believe she let him shout down Fluttershy with that little fit and sending her fleeing into her house.

I get you’re trying to make this character seem justified in his anger because of how he was treated, but I don’t feel sorry for him, I feel pissed at him. I regret this taking place post-S2 rather than post-S3, because I’d love to see Discord to slap him down for that stunt.

Okay, sorry, need to get back to my happy place.

...Okay, that’s still not doing it. Time for music that no one can stay angry during.

It’s stuck in your head now. You can thank me later.

I will at least grant that the chapter titles referencing the Elements are clever.

This is going to be the last chapter I do full commentary on. I’ll read a bit more to reach 10k, and maybe skip ahead a bit, but by the end of this we’ll be just shy of hitting it anyway.

...or I was going to do full commentary, but so far it’s really more of the same.

Once again with the instant dislike Anti-Sue deal. Sure, AJ’s answer was honest, but how about giving why she got such a bad impression of him? Nothing about the angry glares he shoots at everyone? The thing with angry people is, you can tell. It’s not hard to pick up on when someone is just simmering like this guy, and it tends to feel threatening. It can’t help but think his own behavior is the source of 90% of his problems.

Nevermind her statement was honest, yes, but also utterly tactless. She’s not completely devoid of social graces, no matter what Rarity may think about her.

The rest of the scene is more of Shadow justifying being bitter about everything by turning their arguments around on them based on things that feel unsupported by anything we’ve seen on the show or in the story, outside of Shadow’s own experiences and statements.

Okay, I wanted to make this bit longer, but there’s just not that much more to say. And, since I’ve just wrapped up the section on the Apples, time for sexy Granny Smith.

I went and skimmed over the last few chapters. While the writing technicals improve as the story goes on, the story remains bland, and Shadow himself stays intensely unlikable. A very devoted proofreader/editor could work out the grammatical issues and such, but the character issues will more likely need a rewrite.

I was still trying to figure out what his deal was, and yes, the Element seems to be a factor, but… from his statements, I get the impression it never made anyone hate him, it just made him angrier about being shunned. So either he’s still an Anti Sue, or he’s still primarily the cause of his own problems. Neither make me feel particularly sympathetic towards him.

While the story has some serious problem with grammar and tenses, as well as some confusing formatting mistakes, those do seem to become gradually less pronounced as the story goes on. However, the real stumbling point is our villain protagonist, Shadow Bolt. He repeatedly makes claims to justify his attitude, but we only hear those from him, and they clash so severely with the Equestria we know that they seem unlikely. Thanks to this, he just comes off as a bitter, angry, and severely unlikable character.

I’m not sure if the story is uncertain about whether it wants him to be sympathetic or not, or if it’s just meant to fall on one side or the other and conveys this poorly. And either route can work, they just work a bit differently.

To quote Celestia, "There is a difference between a monster and a destroyer. A monster has no heart, a destroyer may just be heartbroken."
(I’ll note I haven’t actually read this; I just got that line off of its TVTropes entry and thought it was a good line for her.)

But I’ll say more about that in the next section.

Another major problem came from the other characters, particularly Twilight. Most of them seemed at least somewhat out-of-character or oversimplified, and in the earlier scenes, Twilight definitely was.

The last major point is that there was just so much telling through the whole story. From character’s thoughts and emotions being stated outright, to adverbs being used to add emotion to actions, everything was over-explained and too straightforward. This really hurt immersion and readability in general, and the pacing and character in particular.

Number one, you need to find a good editor willing to put in a lot of work, because you tense shifting and verb agreement problems are going to take a lot of effort to fix. At the very least, go back over your earliest chapters and try to get them on the same level as your later ones.

Number two, decide if Shadow should be an unsympathetic “monster” or sympathetic “destroyer”, because right now you’re landing right in between the two and it’s resulting in a character I hate but who it feels like the narrative wants me to feel sorry for. And sorry, but the writing quality isn’t enough to convince me you’re trying for some meta experiment where the reader comes to join the characters in unjustly hating your character. In that case, you’d be better off just making him full-on unsympathetic and dropping the reveal on us towards the end so we see him as tragic after he’s dealt with.

If he’s a monster, avoid showing things from his POV, and rework his Freudian Excuses to sound irrational and unjustified, like he’s accusing ponies of things, but he’s just a paranoid who’s seeing hate when it’s not there. Honestly, judging from the bits I saw of the end, this seems to be the intent, but he never came off as outright villainous enough to feel like it.

Now, if he’s a destroyer, keep his POV, but let him show some emotions other than anger. I saw in the end that the Element is meant to be influencing his emotions, but perhaps you could show more clearly that he starts out as sad, bitter, dejected, or annoyed, but then something in his look shifts, and suddenly he’s on a downward spiral into full-on rage over it.

In short, he need to be either more or less sympathetic, depending on which way you want to take him.

Number three, rework the opening. Right now you have, pretty much, “Such a pleasant day, I shall venture forth and love life in this charming little town! But what is this? Danger arises from the nearby dangerous place! I shall venture forth and investigate!” and that’s saccharine and annoying even in this fandom.

Number four, tone down the character behaviors. Season 2 fic or not, Fluttershy had gotten a bit better about introductions by then. Twilight has a temper, yes, but she keeps a lid on it, and it only really boils over due to ongoing frustration. She wouldn’t shout at someone and call them a jerk unprovoked. And Applejack is a bit blunt, and honest to a fault, but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of cushioning the blow or explaining herself.

While the story has a strong concept behind it, the execution falls flat and it suffers for poor grammar and weak writing, so this:

Needs Work.

And now, I leave you with another totally random video.

At about 0:12, at the first “NO! We will not let you go!”, there’s a skinny guy in black at the far left. The one walking right against the wall who pumps his fist and sings the “NO!” to the ceiling. That’s Adam, a guy I was friends with in college. The bigger guy next to him, with the blue and red logo on his shirt, is Jon, another college friend. No, I wasn’t at PAX for this. They told me about it happening later and I looked for it on Youtube, and they’re visible somewhere in the crowd in pretty much every video of it.
/CSB

5075447

we are all Hubert

Does that mean this is a long-abandoned alt of yours, Rinnaul?

5075447 My blood runs cold!...

Love that song!

5075481
No. Clearly, that was Patient Zero.

5075489
Everyone capable of love, loves that song.

5075447 You can come after my prefrontal cortex, Rinnaul, but it won't help you. Hubert is bigger than us. He's bigger than all of us. Hubert is a fucking universal constant. There is no escaping Hubert. He will continue to drag down society long after I'm gone.

Also, it's time to admit that it was a masterpiece. Not because the story was good. It's not. It's dumb. It's a masterpiece because it's true as fuck! It's like looking into the face of God.

Well, if God sucked a whole lot.

Bleh. Not reading due to too much picture spam.

I really don't understand why so many people fill reviews with irrelevant garbage, but I guess I'm just an old curmudgeon.

5075447 Good review for this fic. As for Centerfold... My memory has just been sold!

5075939

Because sometimes you need to break up the hate?

5075447 That was very pleasant.

5075939 Because it's funny and makes it easier to stomach than just a bunch of words, especially when it regards a less than stellar story... You old curmudgeon, you.

5075939
Hey. I spam irrelevant pictures and irrelevant videos. Don't just ignore half of the problem.

Also, I do it because I, for some reason, think I'm funny, which is absurd given how stupid my sense of humor is.

And much like how a great deal of my writing style in fiction is inspired by Terry Pratchett, most of my blogging and reviewing style comes from reading a lot of Cracked.com.

5076878 I get the opposite. I'd much rather someone just get on with it. Adding the extra stuff is what drags it out.

That said, I don't find harsh reviews, or reviews of poorer stories, difficult to read – in fact, I find them more interesting and useful.

5076900 Duly noted!