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ChudoJogurt
Group Contributor

A Better World
by The Spirit of Evil

Summary:
The cutie map sends the mane six to an alternate universe where crime and villainy have been eliminated, and their counterparts ruthlessly enforce Harmony.
It is, by the author's own admissions inspired by and uses a lot of Justice League cartoon episode of the same name.

Grammar
It's good, but it is not perfect. There are a few problems here and there - the mix-ups with "it's" and "its", the non-hypenated compound adjectives, numbers not written out and similar minor mistakes and typos. Definitely not fatal, and barely even en eyesore, but it is there. 17/20

Style
It's kinda rough around the edges. The word choice is not always the best, and there is a tendency to use "began to..", "started to..." and similar auxiliary phrases when they are unnecessary and even disruptive to the flow. All sort of "said"-isms too litter the text, making it more clunky. Same goes for the sentence structure and length - it is not the worst case I've seen, but it does have similar simplistic sentences chained together, which makes reading less interesting and emotional than it could be.
e.g.

Twilight felt the gentle warmth of sunlight on her face as she slowly regained her senses. She found herself on top of a small wooden bed, covered by a thin blanket. Morning light filtered through a window above her, gently lighting up the cozy bedroom. Several other beds lined the walls, with their covers strewn about indicating they had been slept in.

This is the area that really, really needs some good polishing and reconsideration, to work, but I think fixing this would make the difference that can push this fic from "readable and interesting" to "really good", especially if some show/tell mix-ups are also resolved.
On a nitpick level, Zecora's dialogue rhymes most of the time, but not always. And I know it's pretty hard to write, but still.
24/30

Plot and Characters
The plot is reasonably paced, makes sense and sets up everything rather nicely. It's not entirely original - as the summary section indicates - and it follows all the classic twists and turns of what you'd expect from the setup without any cleverness or twist, but it's pretty well done. The only big problem is too much borrowing from the source material, up to and including whole scenes and verbatim dialogue. After the "A Frim Hoof" it slips from being clever, to being somewhat tedious and finally to just outright lazy.

The use of Trixie, Zecora and Iron Will as terrorists/freedom fighters against the opressive regime of Equestria was fun and funny, and pretty well done, kudos on that. There is certainly too little of that in the fic, though.
Characterisation... is somewhat worse. The attempt is there, but it does not quite work. The character dialogue is at times not distinctive, the antics of Trixie and Pinkie are cartoony, but a bit off kilter for me. Additionally, I think there are simply too many characters - the Mane Six, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, Zecora, Iron Will, Daring Do, evil!Shining and Cadence, etc. There is not enough spotlight for all of them, so perhaps it would make sense to not involve some of them at all.
One more thing - I liked the reference to "just one bad day" but that's a different comic, and not sure that it makes sense.
And a nitpick - too many chapters end with Twilight being knocked out. This cannot be healthy for the poor pony, and it's very repetitive for the reader.
28/40

Personal Preference
I genuinely like this fic. I think a bit more in-depth work is needed on dialogue and style, and I would definitely not mind a clever twist somewhere, but it has made me sympathetic with the characters and eager to read on and find out how it ends and what will go on further, even if the line-by-line cartoon reenactment (with questionable analogy choice) have dimmed that excitement somewhat.
I was not amused by the mention of IRL politics in the fic. Sad.
6/10

Total Tally:
It's without a doubt a solid work that achieves what it was intended to achieve, if not perfectly. Kudos to you, The Spirit of Evil, well done.
Next time, though, try to make something that you can really call your own.
75/100

Thank you for the review, it definitely brought up very useful points for improving the story. I'll work with an editor on the style and grammar, but I do have a couple questions. First, you mention the characterization is a bit off, and particularly that the dialogue is not distinctive. Could you elaborate a bit more on that specifically? Second thing, you mentioned the "said-isms". How can I distinguish who's speaking without doing this, especially with many characters involved in the scene? I also find it helps to convey the way a character is saying something (passionately, sadly, etc.) but if it feels disruptive to the story rather than helpful then I'll try to find another way to do this.

Also er- don't mean to be a joke killer but were you joking or serious about the IRL politics? Just want to make sure, this fic definitely did have a political bent but I wanted to inspire discussion, not offend :twilightsheepish:

ChudoJogurt
Group Contributor

5844445

First, you mention the characterization is a bit off, and particularly that the dialogue is not distinctive. Could you elaborate a bit more on that specifically?

I don't have any good advice here, but that's what I felt as I was reading the fic - everybody talks about the same way. I mean there are obligatory "darling"'s and "egghead"s and Applejack's accent, but there was little distinction in the vocabulary and phrasing that would truly make the characters' speech different.

Second thing, you mentioned the "said-isms". How can I distinguish who's speaking without doing this, especially with many characters involved in the scene?

Attribute speech with actions and descriptions. Then you don't need "she said" because if there's direct speech and then action or description involving the same character, you don't need to explicitly said "...she said" or something like it.

Also er- don't mean to be a joke killer but were you joking or serious about the IRL politics? Just want to make sure, this fic definitely did have a political bent but I wanted to inspire discussion, not offend :twilightsheepish:

I was not offended, but I do perfer my pony fiction and my IRL current-day politics to be separated. Somehow I don't think that stating that Common Core is unambiguous evil is in any way tangential to the plot or fic in general.

Ah gotcha, the common core thing was just supposed to be a joke but yeah I can see what you mean

Hmm, I see you changed things slightly. You mentioned the borrowing from the source material getting tedious, and I think I somewhat know what you mean. The adding in of my favorite scenes from the episode (and Injustice) were kind of self-fanservice. Can you point to any specific moments where disliked the references/analogies? Were there any moments where you liked the references to the source material?

Also, at the end, you say I should make something independent of other sources. I am planning other fics that are purely my idea, but I really wanted to apply the concept of "A Better World" to mlp, especially since in the show there is little moral gray and few questionable choices. The protagonists always have the moral high ground, so I felt this was a good way to make the canon characters question that, especially in the last two chapters. The Elements of Harmony are portrayed as unequivocally good, and I wanted to show that that isn't the case, that they can go too far. In short, I liked applying this idea even though it wasn't original, but I see your point.

ChudoJogurt
Group Contributor

5844889
The whole two chapters of borrowed scenes were definitely too much. And the Batman dialogue with the Starlights barely even makes sense.

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