Last Night A DJ Saved My Life

By Vocal Brony

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Argh it took me so long to finish this. I had so many distractions and only most of them were Skyrim. Anyway, Vocal did this in his review, so I’ll do it in my review of his story: the music I write to, because I try to be awesome in all things. On with the review.

From the Top
Right off the bat we get the words “The world is feasting upon us”. That’s a hell of an opening line, and each chapter has something similar as a header. Unfortunately, primarily due to some other problems the story has, I was less than enthused at seeing them after a while. There are a number of typos from early on, the most common ones being homophone confusion, such as “specs” rather than “specks”.

The story introduces some interesting ideas about drug use impeding magic, but does little to develop it. In fact, magic use in this world seems a bit different from what we see in the show. It seems more strenuous, more unstable, and more connected to the health of the caster.

We start having some imagery such as “water screaming through pipes” which comes off a bit melodramatic and over-the-top, as well as some repetitive word use - “azure” appears four times in short order. However, we also have some good images, such as when Twist gets a shower. The thought of dirty, rusty water being used for bathing is something we all naturally recoil from.

Twisted finally gets a full description, but it’s long and a bit heavy on appearance details, while the descriptions with their heavy use of colors start to become hard to read. We also start getting more and more setting references from here on - the Cortex, the Downzone, Spires, the Trottingham rebels - all of them with no context to help explain.

This quickly turns into a major immersion-breaker, and remains so for the duration of the story. This is clearly a dystopian AU, but without context for these references, I just feel like there’s a prequel I should have read for any of this to make sense. And, indeed, there is a Prequel link in the description. However, it’s not publicly viewable.

We have a ”cool guys don’t look at explosions” moment as Twisted trashes his apartment amid a frankly bizarre “laughing mad” breakdown, and find out that our protagonist is probably possessed by Sombra. There’s a lot of repetition in the descriptions and thoughts, another thing that becomes an ongoing problem. In these early scenes it’s the constant references to flowing water, difficulty walking, and his feelings about Vinyl.

We’re starting to really see the third of the story’s three major problems - and I’m going to use a term I am not fond of here - “purple prose”. The descriptions are becoming ever more elaborate and dragging the story’s pace down with how excessive they get. They’re longer than need be and interrupt the pace, and are frequently needlessly verbose, using “lacerated” where “cut” would suffice.

The goal of the language is clearly to stress that our protagonist is at rock-bottom. Every word highlights depression, filth, destitution, and self-hate. Unfortunately, it simply piles it on too thick. As I said, I don’t really like calling it “purple prose” as it is rarely flowery or overwrought, but the constant reminders of his situation simply become tedious to read.

It’s often hard to tell who’s speaking, as any attributions get lost in the description, something which worsens any time Sombra is involved.

The growing romance between the OC and Vinyl is starting off well, but doesn’t get much attention.

In addition to the excessive description, there are some contradictory word choices, such as “a small amount of blood poured out”. The blood is stated to be a small amount, but “poured” instead implies a very large one.

That’s about the end of the second chapter, so I’ll stop the commentary here and move on to the review.

Execution/Presentation
The point of view seems to be consistently third-person following Twisted, but at times it feels as though the point of view shifts away from him, either during a confusing dream sequence or because the PoV gets lost amid the prose.

While the environment is described extensively, I don’t think I could really describe it for you after the fact. I was drawing comparisons to Coruscant, Midgar, and Shadowrun’s Seattle in turn. Rather than establish the scene, the story instead focuses on establishing atmosphere - it’s dark, dirty, poor, oppressive, etc. Unfortunately, between the story’s tendency to belabor the point and the protagonist’s own frequent musings, the impact is lost and we never really see clear a picture of the world he lives in.

The flow was easily the story’s greatest weakness. Presentation was needlessly long, and managed to be simultaneously vague and descriptive. Essentially, the story uses a great many words to say relatively little. This did improve at one point, and the story was better for it, and that was during the exploration and combat in the “Elderlane”.

Mood
The intent seems to be depression, loss of self, and the feeling of futility in the face of a dystopian society. While those emotions were conveyed, the style of the story did more harm than good. The extensive verbiage is so overwhelming we lose track of the mood.

Grammar
You get a B. While there are many errors, they’re usually simple, understandable ones such as word confusion. Here are the ones I noted as I read the first two chapters:

- “turned a corner into the lounge” (need a comma, semicolon, or dash afterward)
- “specs of rain” (you want “specks”)
- “colours true beauty” (apostrophe in “colour’s”)
- “costed a pretty penny” (just “cost”)
- “cardboard box acting table” (not sure what this is - acting as a table?)
- “this retched city” (you want “wretched”)
- “made my decent” (you want “descent”)
- “a few lose seals” (you want “loose”)
- “begging to close down” (you want “beginning”)
- “the boy scorned” (I suspect you meant “scowled”)

Tips
Cut back on the prose, and edit with an eye for clarity. You have a strong setting, but it’s hard to see through all the extended musings on what it’s like to live in it.

Rating
Needs Improvement.

As with my previous review, I struggled with where to put the final score on this one. However, in this case, I finally opted for the lower score. The deciding factor was the knowledge that, were I not reading the story for review, I likely wouldn’t have gone past the first chapter or two. After that point, it was simply a struggle to read.

2791597

This is a bloody great review, man.

I've known for a while now that my writing can be tedious, but the full extent hasn't really been... well, I don't actually have an editor. However, I've begun looking for one, and I plan to re-write and re-format the chapters piece by piece, with extra eyes along for advice. Grammar is very much where I fall short with errors that shouldn't be, but you're right, my biggest failure is pacing.

Which is ironic, because it's also one of my biggest pet peeves.

The earlier chapters were written fairly long back, and aren't up to the descriptive standard of the newer; but nor are they up to my current standard. Given all this, I'll be bookmarking this review as a 'reference guide', and I'll have to get in touch with you once it's re-written; hopefully, your next review will be more flattering.

I won't be removing a lot of scenes, more so adding them, extending or detailing them some more. Purple Prose is probably a good term, seeing as it's hyper in depth but not flowery as such.

Anyway, I personally, approve the hell out of this fantastic review.