Playing The Villain
By Northern Desert

Reviewed by Rinnaul and Asilin.

Rinnaul! What’s a Displaced Fic?

It’s one of those stories that’s almost a crossover, but instead of a crossover character actually going to Equestria, it’s some author-insert dressed up like the character. But then they get all the powers of the character cause wish fulfillment.

Oh. You mean like that one fic you’re doing?

Well, yeah, but mine is actually good and has a moral message and stuff. And I never work on it.

Okay then. I can do this.

...Rinnaul. I can’t do this.

Okay. I’ll get the liquor and meet you on the couch.

Quick Recommendation: The story might have some good ideas later on, but the dull and frustrating protagonist makes it difficult to get past the first couple chapters.

First up, apologies this took so long. We thought we were doing something clever that would produce funny commentary quickly. Then it turned out that actually putting together the final project was an hours-long tedious slog (like 9+ hours SOLID of working on this) that eventually reached a point where if I had to choose between “finish this review” or “beat my face against the keyboard until I bleed to death from my forehead while screaming constantly”, then “screaming keyboard suicide” would have just barely won.

So now we’re just going to redo it the right way. Which means re-reading it. Death glare at husband for making me re-read this thing.

Come on. Half the reason for the redo is to be nicer about it, like Andrew WK teaches us.

*reading dramatically* And the misplaced dramatic period! Oh god this opening is tedious. “From pony to—”

Oh wow, I forgot how… um… original this opening one. The canon geek in me is screaming.

”—to draconequus.” And a misspelled draconequus. This is a fandom word. You have no excuse for misspelling your own fandom words. “Outside, a storm was wreaking havoc across the world.” Oh wow, a dark and stormy night? What is this, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest?

I don’t know what that is. I do know that there are a lot of misspelled words. And Celestia leads thanks to fairness and kindness, but also says things like “coming back to bite me in the ass.” And is morally conflicted about Tirek’s fate, but also he can shove it up his ass because she doesn’t care anymore, consistent characterization plz.

And the griffon queen Alexentric, the diamond dog king Mudrowler, Eris leader of the draconequui, Blackfang lord of dragons, Carapace emperor of the changelings… How much of this is even canon?

Well… those races exist in the setting. Beyond that?

Actually, nevermind, it doesn’t even matter anyway. This whole first scene is pointless. It does nothing to actually lead into the real problem. The only major points are trying to reform Tirek and Eris having a premonition, and those could be mentioned anywhere — they’re minor points. The story doesn’t become interesting until you introduce the villain. Without that, the opening scene is basically all filler with no conflict. And then we jump into this stream-of-consciousness thing where he’s figuring out his powers…

Standing on a beach talking to himself.

Yes! And it’s just. More. Filler. All this does is put ideas out there, but nothing actually advances. You can’t just have the character stand there and explain what he wants to do. He need to go do it.

...was that really necessary?

ABSOLUTELY.

“Of course! I’m shooting lasers, lasers, with my eyes!” *sigh* And that’s the other thing with this guy. He’s just so childlish.

Would it make you feel better if I referenced Austin Powers for this one?

Yes, yes it would.

And then we find out he’s telepathic! And this dragon village conveniently has the Bionicle-specific unobtanium that he needs, because of course it does. And then he fights some dragons and easily wins because of course he does. And for some reason the mask thing can watch Bionicle by viewing his memories, so there are a bunch of fourth wall breaks.

Also he keeps setting up subversions and lampshades, and then plays to trope anyway. Repeatedly. It’s a little frustrating.

I’ll give him credit — his logic makes sense. It was provided in a big infodump after the fact, and that pretty much spoiled the effect, but the logic was solid, eventually. But he has so many was to just take what he wants, and never takes advantage! And given the logic we had at the time, it just gave the impression he had no idea what he was doing.

And… Really, I think we could cover the rest of this chapter, but I think it’s really more of the same. It sets up subversions then plays to trope over and over, until he gets everything he wants despite his best efforts.

That was Overlord. It’s pretty awesome on its own, but more importantly, it does what most Displaced fics are trying to do, and this one especially. Watch it here and learn how to make a villain protagonist awesome. Or just watch it cause it’s awesome. And then curse it for being a one-season advertisement for the light novel. Seriously, so many anime series pull that cocktease shit right now.

Also, this is the Evil Overlord List. Read it, and keep it in mind when writing villains, and especially villain protagonists.

Now, that out of the way — the fic itself. There are problems with infodumps, switching POVs, and a lot of irrelevant information, but I think the biggest issue is going to be the main character. A strong villain and a strong protagonist are both very important to carry a story. When you have a villain protagonist, one character is serving both those roles (at least until a possible Greater Evil turns up later), and if that character is unengaging, there’s very little to hold the story together. And yeah, this guy has problems.

Really, it’s a problem of intended presentation versus reader perception. He’s supposed to be a badass, but he has a childish fascination with his powers. He’s supposed to be clever and a strategist, but lets other characters lead him along. He’s supposed to be above stupid villain tropes, but goes along with them over and over. He’s supposed to be ruthless, but never presses his advantage. The end result is a character that’s just consistently frustrating to read about.

On top of all of that, the format of the first two chapters leaves a lot to be desired. We have multiple first person narrators, but no differentiation of the actual voices, which means it’s difficult to tell an immediate difference between the POVs. The actual conflict hasn’t been presented: is our villain protag the real evil or is it something else?

And, ultimately, it fails in the worst possible way: it’s just dull. So much time is spent trying to prove that our villain is badass and powerful that we lose momentum in the actual plot and are actually convinced of the opposite point. This is not a badass. He’s just a guy getting lucky and thinking that equals badassery. And that’s a problem when we’re supposed to be interested. It could work if he wasn’t consistently rewarded and rewarded well for his shenanigans. So where’s the incentive for him to learn?

The primary thing is that you need to address your protag. You need to figure out what kind of image you want for him. Is he supposed to be a badass? Then figure out how to make him seem like that and commit to it. Don’t undermine him by having him go against his own decisions. If you want him to seem a bit more bumbling, then do it. But you need to sell us on your character idea and run with it.

If you’re going to subvert the trope, subvert the trope. Don’t have the character declare that he’s too clever to do the thing characters in his situation always do, then turn around and have him do exactly /that regardless. Unless,of course, your goal is to make him look foolish.

Stick to limited POVs. Don’t switch off at unnecessary points.

Talking is better than narrating, but acting is better than talking. Don’t just explain plot points to the audience via the narrative — show them with the characters. Unless you absolutely must, don’t do that by having characters explain things to each other or ponder them out to themselves. Act.

Start as near to the action as possible. Some setup is inevitable, and Displaced stories have a few concepts to work out before they can really get going, but a chapter and a half of moral arguments and masturbatory displays of power aren’t going to excite anyone (displays of masturbatory power, however, will probably excite some people, but they know who they are).

There were many problems, but the overriding factor was really the frustrating and dull protagonist. This story

Needs Work.

Congrats on surviving that. Displaced is one of the few types of stories I won't touch, as the entire genre is effectively unrelated to MLP despite a superficial pony paint job, and service no purpose aside from angsty adolescent wish-fulfillment power fantasy. Or, to put it more succinctly, Displaced is cancer.

I never got the appeal of Displaced beyond wish-fulfillment.

5841465

DisplacedFanfiction is cancer.

Fixed that for you.

5841465
My only real objection to Displaced as a concept is that having the crossover character be a HiE in a transformed costume rather than actually being the character themselves never adds anything of substance to the story. You're just telling the crossover story with the addition of some combination of "figuring out how my powers work" and fanboying over the powers they have. I suppose adding a different perspective could be enlightening, but that's never used well.

The whole reason I started writing my own Displaced-style story was to set up a scenario where the character being a transformed regular human was a key plot point.

Amusing review to read, bravo. But I am a bit confused about into what displaced protagonist turns into. Review says misspelled draconequus but at least the first chapter says Makuta Teridrax from something called Bionicle series.

Can't make myself to read the story though so I have no judgment about quality. Maybe one day? Honestly my hat is off to the reviewers who can go past their own prejudices and be fair to the story that has alienating premise for reviewer.

5843613
Bionicle is a LEGO project that started out as an offshoot of LEGO Technic and then spun into one of LEGO's biggest properties. From the bits I've seen of it, it was a sci-fi/fantasy series that felt a lot like Transformers but with magic.

The main character in this fic turns into this guy:

I guess he's the Sarumon or Sauron of the franchise. I've never gotten into it.

5843613

It helps not being part of the fandom. I really only hear about these sort of trending premises second-hand through Rinnaul, so the only thing a story like this has to fight against is my prejudice against bad storytelling.

And that's what we're here to help improve upon, right?

5843889 Actually I do not mind crossovers that I know or don't know. Sometimes it is better not to know in case it is one of those crossovers where ponies replace characters so you can't predict the plot. You know, you get to discover something potentially cool and then you want to see the main source.

That being said the material that is used does mater and how it used. In this case what puts me of is the sci-fi robotic nature of the selected crossover and that it only is related to protagonist that is not related to that universe and is just a rather bland human (then again maybe he grows?). I am also a bit skeptical usually about too much expanding of MLP world and seems to me that it would be better at some point for story to be set in creators own world but well original stories don't tend to attract readers like fanfics of big fandoms.

I don't think this story is bad, I am just sadly not an audience for it because of my particular taste. I'll try to give it a fair chance this weekend and to other stories reviewed here. It is least I can do for all those authors.

Oh wow, I completely forgot I requested a review for this fic! Great to see it up, so I do appreciate you for taking the time to actually read the story and let me know some of its flaws. There are definitely some issues with the story itself, that I knew, but it's great to get another party to look at it from another perspective, especially someone who has done several reviews before this one, and point out issues and give me tips!

I'm an author that wants to constantly improve and while it's slightly disappointing to see how many problems there really were with this story, but it's a learning experience. I'll be sure to take this review into account for any updates or new stories I may write. So again, my gratitude to Rinnaul and all the other reviewers who are apart of this group and dedicate their time to read others stories and give them helpful feedback!