The Rise of the Ultracorn
By Brony kaiju soldier

Reviewed by Rinnaul

[11/27/2016 8:52:28 PM] Rinnaul: I keep thinking, if we burn out like Twilight's Library did, Jack is going to be our Twilight-the-Pony — that one last crazy bastard hanging on and reviewing until the bitter end. And yeah, I think we're the top group that accepts self-promotion, now.

Let that one sink in. We've always kinda been the dumb, random, dysfunctional stepchild of the feature groups.

And now all the competent, admirable ones are gone, leaving just us, the crowd of meme-spewing disorganized jackasses.

[11/27/2016 8:53:30 PM] Minds Eye: Last ones standing, bitches

[11/27/2016 8:55:02 PM] Rinnaul: Which might imply we should get our shit together. But I think we all pretty much collectively agreed that would be boring and for losers, and have instead decided to throw back a few shots, scream "EXCELSIOR!", and charge flailing at the submission queue whenever we actually remember that it exists.

[11/27/2016 8:55:10 PM] Rinnaul: And then get bored and wander off for a while again.

[11/27/2016 8:56:06 PM] Rinnaul: I think I've just written the intro for my next review.

The way I see it, basically, Twilight’s Library, The Royal Guard, and Royal Canterlot Library are (or were) like…

Then Seattle’s Angels and Equestria Daily are like…

And then we’re like…

Also I’m reviewing some weaboo crossover thing.

Quick Recommendation: While it might have merit to Ultraman fans, dull over-description and lack of appeal on the crossover side means it probably won’t recover from the weak opening for most readers.

IT HAS BEEN DECIDED.

The reviews take too long, and something has to go. On the one hand, Commentary is easily the most time-consuming aspect of our review process. On the other, it’s literally in our name. But I figure we can either drop that, or the sexy ponies and memes.

So, the review.

I considered doing the whole review in song parody, but that would be really hard and rather unkind. Also it keeps bothering me that “telly” and “cliché” don’t quite rhyme.

But in seriousness, the story opens weakly, and that sets the reader against it. It’s not just the Purple Alicorn Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, either, though that’s the most blatant issue with the first scene. It’s also prone to emotional telling — beware when you find yourself frequently using adverbs to indicate emotion — and the tropey-ness of it all. Opening on a prophetic dream of the oncoming villain that causes the hero to wake in a cold sweat? You’re on a well-tread path even if your villain monologue isn’t bland and generic — and, unfortunately, yours very much is.

Now, the thing about LUS is it both requires more work on the reader’s part to always be connecting a description back to a character rather than a name, and it also wastes the reader’s time because, when we’re describing a known character, it doesn’t actually tell us anything new.

Because you’re writing MLP fanfiction on a MLP fansite, which will be read almost exclusively by MLP fans (unless Asilin claims your story). You can make some assumptions here. We know the Purple Alicorn is Twilight because she’s the star of the show, and nothing is gained by calling her that instead. We know the green/purple dragon boy is Spike, the universe’s punching bag. And he deserves it. FIGHT ME SPIKEBROS.

And every time I see it, all I can think is:

Because seriously, we know who they are.

Now, on the other hand, there’s the Ultraman characters. And Ultraman in general. I might catch some flak for this if this statement is being made in ignorance, but I think it’s fair to say that Ultraman is pretty obscure these days. So, you may think you’re justified in going all-out in describing these characters. There’s a couple problems with trying to paint a mental image for us this way, though.

First, and honestly, this is the smaller problem, is that this is an information dump. There’s nothing that makes me want to read through all of that “red armor with blue plates and yellow dome eyes on a chartreuse body” or whatever, and so I’m compelled to just skip it. Not only that, not everyone can put information together the same way. If the reader is weak in translating listed information into a mental image, the problem is even worse — it’s not just information presented in an uninteresting way, it’s uninteresting and useless information.

The big problem, though, is why should I care?

Why do I care if Ultra-Shinjoja has a ponytail, and Ultra-Taro has a special bracelet and strange eyes, and Ultra-Zero has a forehead gem?

The problem with LUS before was, at its heart, that this is a MLP site, and so MLP characters are known factors already. We don’t need the extra info. It’s a waste of our time, because we know and care about them already.

Ultraman is not exactly pop culture. You can’t bet on readers knowing anything (or caring) about it going in, so the characters are unknowns. Even if someone is familiar with your crossover source material, then they already know these things and you’re wasting their time, bringing us back to the LUS problem. On the other hand, if they don’t know it, then these unknown characters are functionally OCs, and we all know the problem with “character sheet” descriptions.

I mean, we do know it, right?

…

Okay, let’s say you’re stopped by some person, and you can’t escape the conversation. Like you have to be nice cause it’s your boss’s mom, or you work in retail and your resulting subhuman status requires you to humor the socially maladjusted.

Anyway, so your captor starts talking about someone you don’t know. They’re not telling a funny story with a long setup or anything, they’re just… talking about them.

They’re like, “Hey. There’s this guy, Steve, okay? Steve always wears a hoodie, and has ear piercings, but not like in both ears, just like five of them in one ear. And he wears girl jeans, because he’s a hipster and his parents have failed him, as you might have guessed. His favorite girl jeans are slightly lighter in color than you might expect jeans to be, and there’s a faint bleach stain down around the ankle, but Steve thinks that adds character.”

And they just keep going. And going. And going. They’re like an Energizer Bunny of irrelevant, stupid information and some irrelevant, stupid person, and the more they talk the more you just want to punch their teeth in and—

Sorry, sorry, having a Retail Employee Moment.

I need something to refocus.

Don’t look at me like that. You saw the reviewer name at the top of this page. You knew what you were getting into.

The thing is, infodump descriptions turn you into the Hated Spewer Of Irrelevance, and your character into Steve. Do you want Ultramen to be hipster scum? Do you? Exactly. Don’t do this.

The thing is, even then, what I wrote isn’t as bad as pure infodump. I made the description funny (FACT — mocking hipsters is always funny, even for an early-Millennial feminist bleeding-heart Liberal like me), and threw in the occasional joke or odd turn of phrase to maintain reader interest. It’s 3 AM and I’m writing a rambling review — I can’t NOT go on dumb tangents. In contrast, what you have are just lists of data points, taking up 600 words across the first two chapters at the time I’d written this.

And this is why I can’t do short reviews, Jack.

Oh, but, if you are going to do detailed descriptions within the narrative, one more piece of advice — don’t describe from our POV when the scene is in a foreign POV. Like Zero’s armor should only be called “bizarre” if it would be so within the context of the Ultras, or else you distance the POV from the scene and hurt immersion.

Anyway, getting back to the review, Shinjoja is the main character, isn’t she? Cause I kind of hate her. There’s a fine line between “this character is flawed and has a lot of work to do before they can grow into the Hero” and “obnoxious, unlikable brat”. I think the real problem I’m hitting with her is she isn’t showing any positive qualities at all. Arrogance, recklessness, blame-shifting, apathy, histrionics… Oh, wait, she’s a teenager, isn’t she? Not a good place to be coming from when trying to make a likable character.

But no, you’ve got to get some traits in there that make us want to root for her.

I think I’ve hit the major points, though I will note that the LUS/over-description is an ongoing problems, and there are some fairly frequent word usage and spelling/typo problems I see throughout. And while Twilight and Spike were done well enough, I couldn’t help but feel the rest of the Mane Six came off very flat, with sometimes-questionable characterization.

I’m going to be cutting the Tips section from here on out, barring complaint from the other admins or the authors I’m reviewing. I very rarely have anything to say in it that isn’t just reiterating points I made in the main review.

What really hurt this were the lengthy and unnecessary descriptions, as well as a failure to hook me on the Ultraman side of the crossover. Maybe someone who’s already a fan of that franchise would enjoy this, but for someone unfamiliar, there’s not enough here to get and hold the reader’s attention.

Needs Work.

I’ve seen worse, but it can be much better.

5662325

And now all the competent, admirable ones are gone, leaving just us, the crowd of meme-spewing disorganized jackasses.

Shameful I didn't think of that when we had the conversation.

I’m going to be cutting the Tips section from here on out, barring complaint from the other admins or the authors I’m reviewing.

In all seriousness though, I've been frustrated before by comments on my stories saying that I have typos and the like in them, but no one says where they are. So I missed them when I was writing the story, and rereading the story, and they were missed by my editor, but now I have to comb through the whole story to find them. So maybe a big tip section isn't needed, but you did note word usage and spelling problems. It might be pleasant of you to highlight one or two of them to let the author know what they were to narrow their search or what to keep in mind for any future writing.

Probably the latter. Stories sitting in the folder for over a year and all.

Well. It's shorter, at least. Still not short though, lol. :p

5662325 It was a good review... but then you put Boston at the end. At that moment, it became a great review.

5662325 Come on, man. You missed the best Boston song of all time.

Shameful.

Thanks for the review. I've been contemplating on what I should do with this.

5662325

leaving just us, the crowd of meme-spewing disorganized jackasses.

B-b-ut...
I don't spew memes. I hardly even but pictures in my reviews!
Do I have to do memes now?