Another day, another review. This is my 18th total review for this group in the last year and a half, which roughly equates to a review per month out of me. I should probably start working a little harder on these things. I don’t want to let an entire year elapse between folder openings, and neither should the rest of our reviewers! Let’s get cracking, people!

Now then, on with today’s story!

Before I dive into The Misfits, I’ll say that I’m a bit wary of the fact that it’s an OC story. That in and of itself is absolutely not a bad thing, but in a community of amateur writers like this, it opens the door for more mistakes. However, it looks fairly interesting. Can these characters sway me? Let’s find out!

I can’t really make a huge deal about this considering that there is a lot of story here, and I stopped after just about chapter three. Our group guidelines require us to read 10,000 words, and I have done my due diligence on that part.

And if you were thinking it was a bad sign that I stopped so soon, you’re right.

In the first three chapters of The Misfits, we are dropped into this ragtag gang of four ponies who just aren’t normal. One is a unicorn who lacks magic and therefore made himself into a robotic tentacle monster, one is a flightless pegasus with Maud Pie abilities, the third is an earth pony from a tribe who evolved to become carnivorous, and the final member of this team is a pony-changeling hybrid.

More on these characters later. For now, we’ll focus on the story’s direction. These first chapters send The Misfits (yes, they refer to themselves as this in-story) into Ponyville on their journey to Canterlot so they can petition Princess Celestia for acceptance. While in Ponyville, they learn that Twilight lives there, and so they go talk to her and wind up sticking around in town for a bit, during which time they meet the rest of the Mane 6.

Alright, I’m just going to come right out and say it. This plot (at least in these early stages) is about as generic as it gets. In fact, because of the context of the site it is published to, it runs dangerously close to getting labeled as a lazy self-insert cringe fic. The fact that Cyber System is the name of both the lead character and the author’s screen name only helps to push it further towards that nightmarish realm of OC harem fics and Emostar Ravenclaws.

Despite this, there are only two things keeping me from dismissing it as cringe-fodder. One: The main characters are not Mary Sue’s. Two: The fact that I simply don’t know the rest of the story, and therefore I have to give the plot some benefit of the doubt. Trust me, I’ll explain why I bailed so early before the end of this review, so just bear with me here.

One final thing I want to note is that I noticed a comment on chapter one that was downvoted four times. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a constructive comment, but it really wasn’t wrong by any means either. A user by the name of ‘the host’ commented: “Dude, you have a problem with exposition.”

He’s exactly right. There is a huge problem with the exposition in this story, so much so that it is the primary reason I stopped reading so quickly.

To look deeper into this, most of the entire first chapter is a near-4000 word exposition dump. Granted, it is dressed up a bit with some character interaction and a bit of story, but this first chapter is clearly trying to get us to know the main cast of the story as quickly as possible.

This is a huge no-no. HUGE. In my humbly amateurish opinion, the biggest hallmark of an inexperienced writer is one that is too eager to get into the sotry and therefore lays all of his cards on the table from the get-go. There is no intrigue in this method. I’m not left wanting to know more about these characters. You’re basically talking at me about these characters for 4000 words, and trust me, it makes it seem a lot longer when done this way. Once the narrator tells us all about Cyber System, we get to hear each of these characters go on a monologue about their backstories and why they are where they are. Now don’t get me wrong here, because these backstories are just fine as they are, but they’re presented in such a way that it is entirely off-putting. You divulged too much information on us too quickly, and much like putting a large log on a campfire that you’ve just started, you smothered us.

So then, there is at least some coherence here, and the story has some flow in a clear direction, but that direction is addled with cliches and borderline bad-side-of-the-fandom tropes buried within mountains of exposition, and therefore, I can’t give high marks.

Grammar/Formatting— Aside from a few minor hiccups in the form of misspellings, this sotry has some pretty solid grammar.

Dialogue/Narration— Character dialogue was pretty shaky. A lot of the lines just didn’t seem to flow well from the characters, and many interactions felt forced. On the narrative side of the coin, it’s about equally as shaky. There isn’t a lot of variation in sentence structure, and there isn’t a whole lot of good description in there. It’s passable because it does keep the story going, but it doesn’t work too strongly in the story’s favor either.

On the whole, very middle-of-the-road.

Worldbuilding— Despite the fact that it’s done in a somewhat ham-fisted way, there is some pretty decent worldbuilding done. A lot of thought clearly went into it, but there’s just one problem: We are told of it, but we don’t get to see it. Granted, it’s only the first few chapters, but there isn’t a lot done to flesh things out properly.

Pacing— Blink and you’ll miss it! This story rockets us forward out of the gate, working hard to get through its exposition and start us on our way to the core of the plot, but in its haste, it suffers. It made things pretty hard to get into, and resulted in my general haste to get out of it.

Point of View— This story’s point of view is from the third person limited, my personal favorite, and it is generally told from the point of view of the Misfits. One scene shifts away to Celestia, Luna, and Discord in chapter three, but for the most part, we’re seeing this world through the eyes of our strange main cast.

Show/Tell— There is a distinctive imbalance of showing and telling, and it harkens back to the problem of too much expo in too little time.

Writing Style— If you keep track of my review template, you’ll notice that this category has lost the distinction of having its own separate place in the index, and now has been folded into Mechanics. The point value that the category previously held has been shifted to Character Development and Plot, making them slightly more weighted than the rest of the categories, as I feel that they are the two most important factors in judging a story’s merit.

And so, what of the writing style? This story really doesn’t have a lot of emotional language in it, and it really doesn’t feel like we’re inside the characters’ heads. This is a result of using a more objective storytelling style, and it doesn’t help with immersing us into the world here.

And one other thing I want to mention here is the jokes. This story relies heavily on fandom-specific jokes and meme references, like Lyra’s hand obsession or the overused and unfunny Owlowiscious saying “Hooo!” joke from the show. They really felt shoehorned into the plot, and I found myself facepalming far more than laughing.

Just, please. Use those jokes carefully. They’re very easy to ruin.

This is the real doozy that I’ve almost been dreading writing up, because this review is already running long, and I fear that this may run me well past 2000 words here. Anyway, here we go!

This story is an OC-based one, and as such, this category is the most crucial one to the story’s success. It’s the biggest factor in what sets stories like The Dusk Guard: Rise apart from the countless other fics in that vein that fall flat.

In short, this story’s success absolutely hinges on the success of the characterization. FAIR WARNING: Though I will usually give 25 points each to Plot and Characterization, for OC stories like this, Characterization is worth 30 points. You could score perfectly everywhere else and still not even score a Recommended if this point bombs.

And so, let’s get down to it. How do The Misfits stack up?

To start, let’s look at the characters again. We have Cyber System, the brave inventor who saved himself from a life of oblivion with mechanical genius, but only had it backfire and make him a social pariah because of his looks. Then there’s Dusty, the pegasus who hates heights and therefore is better suited to ground-based life. He has some major talents when it comes to digging, and is best friends with Fang. Fang is an earth pony whose ancestors adapted to become carnivorous, and he is tagging along with The Misfits to try to end the famine that his tribe is suffering. And finally, we have Mixy, the cool, calculating trickster who is genetically cursed by being a pony/changeling hybrid. When I look at these characters, I see mountains of potential. These traits are all quite interesting, and I honestly wanted to learn a bit more about them. However, as I read, those interests were replaced by a single question:

Why?

Why? Why do these characters exist? Why are they so different? What makes them so special?

Why do I know so much about them when I’ve only read three chapters?

That’s the problem, and again, it ties back into what I’ve said before. By rushing the exposition and dumping it in my lap all at once, you’ve taken all of the intrigue away from me. I don’t have any need to learn more because all I could ever want to know is right there in the opening chapter! There’s not a lot else to discover about these characters, so why should I bother to keep reading?

And beyond that, there’s the problem of character interactions. Fang and Dusty banter back and forth in ways that seem to expect me to already know the characters in their onset. There is the potential for some good chemistry among The Misfits themselves, but the thing that really puts me off is their interactions with canon characters.

From the moment Lyra is introduced, things are off to an okay-ish start. I get that the hands thing is a popular joke, and it isn’t all too terribly executed, so I’ll let it slide despite my personal grumblings. Next, the nail in the coffin: Twilight Sparkle. Twilight has been shown to be a pony who is a bit high-strung, and so when a bunch of extremely strange looking ponies show up on her doorstep, she doesn’t act the least bit scared of them? Doesn’t seem aloof?

That’s really stretching my suspension of disbelief. And so when we get yet more expo dumps in the conversations with Twilight, I’m just about ready to throw the book down out of frustration. Also the characterization that it tries to cram in there has already been stated previously, so why do we need to see all of this? Sure, there’s a couple of moments that are new, but even they raised some red flags. Fang cannot eat any vegetables at all, or they make him violently ill/poison him? Give me a break, carnivorous animals on earth eat plants all the time! It’s not exactly the most nutritious thing in the world for them, but it doesn’t hurt them in small quantities.

After that, the Princesses are suddenly super-concerned about The Misfits and are immediately ready to jump to their aid. And apparently they’re the answer Celestia has been looking for, for something coming up in the plot.

Not only is that toeing the line of Mary Sue characterization, but it all feels so shoehorned in. Most every single piece of characterization in this story is flat-out told to us either by the narrator or the characters themselves. A word directly to the author here: Cyber System, you don’t have to work so hard to get us to like you characters. Telling all of this stuff is no better than having none of it at all, and it really puts the readers off. Let your characters build slowly, reveal new things about them, and let them grow in their own ways, etc. Telling is not good characterization.

And so, are there any positive things to say? Really, not a whole lot besides the fact that I see a lot of potential to this story. I liked the idea, and the characters have what it takes deep down to shine brightly, but the presentation just leaves them without much to remember them by than their specific weird trait.

And frankly, that’s not effective character development.

With this portion of the review, I’m at a crossroads. One one hand, this story is taking a pretty unique concept, but the execution falls heavily on cliches. I think I’ll just call this one average.

Achievement— So, did this story do what it was intended to do?

I don’t think it did. It’s clear to me that this story set out with the intent to make me care about this ragtag group of misfits, but it shoots itself in the foot when it comes to execution. There is much to be improved about this fic.

Impression— And finally, my personal opinion. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to say that I was not impressed by this fic, and I don’t think I would recommend it to others either. It’s got a lot of deep problems, and my only recommendation for improving it would be to rewrite the whole thing.

So, what did all of that long-winded explanation say? In short, I found that while The Misfits certainly has potential based on its concept, the execution is just not all there. And now, for the final verdict.

Plot: Uses tired cliches and has major exposition problems. 8/20
Mechanics: While not riddled with grammatical mistakes, there is too much tell and not enough show. 12/20
Characterization: It tried, but it failed to make me care about these characters. 10/30
Originality: Fairly original concept hampered by cliche execution. 5/10
Impact: Didn’t meet its goals, and really didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Call it a harmless failure. 6/20

I think that was the longest review I've ever done. I hope you find my criticisms helpful! Thanks for submitting your story to our group, Cyber System. I’ll see you all next time!

It may have been the longest review you've ever done, but you've certainly held my interest through it. Admittedly, it's for a story that isn't particularly one of the greatest out there, but reviews like this make me really excited for the next time the admission folder opens.

Hopefully soon, right?

5358082 It shouldn't be to much longer. We have roughly 30 more reviews to knock out before we open again, and that could go either really fast or really slow, depending on how much activity we can drum up from our reviewers.

I really nedded this, I already know that I have a problem with introduction and show/tell, but I was still relatively new in the fandom and to being an author when I wrote this story (Heck, I even named my username after my character because I thought that's what some people did and I wasn't feeling creative) Anyway, I have been trying to fix the issues to no avail.

Anyway, enough trying to defend myself, this was one of the most constructive criticism that I recieved, most of the comments were positive and really I mostly just wanted to know what was wrong with the story and my writing style before I posted any further ideas to this site.

So in conclusion, thank you for this review, I will try to fix what I can with my expositions.

5358082
I'm hoping to have the availability arrive soon.

5357865 That is the greatest cover art thing I've ever seen. And I watched 2 Girls 1 Cup.

5358238 I'm glad you enjoyed this, man! If you have any questions for me going forward, feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll try to help in any way that I can. But for now, I'll link you to probably one of the single most helpful sources of writing advice I've ever run across. He's an author on this site named Viking ZX, and he does weekly writing advice blogs that are absolutely stellar. I'll link you to one that should be fairly helpful given the subject matter at hand, and then you can find the others on his user page. Glad I could be of help!

http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/344438/being-a-better-writer-that-opening-chapter

This is the real doozy that I’ve almost been dreading writing up, because this review is already running long, and I fear that this may run me well past 2000 words here.

2000 is overlong to you? I think I average 4000...

Also, the title just made me think of this: