Division
By sxvxge27

Summary: This is, ostensibly a story about racism in Equestrian brought to us not by the careful deconstruction of canon material, but by authors whim and fancy and an AU tag.By promising, straight in the summary to "explore the effects of these divisions on everyday lives, the alliances ponies form to gain power over others and the cost of bringing true peace and harmony to Equestria." it is already shaping up to be as beautiful and majestic as an OC edgelord red-and-black alicorn in the first rays of dawn.

Grammar:
Pretty good, really. I have not found any mistakes of substance, other than ending dialogue lines with full stops in places where a comma would be called for.
18/20

Style:
Despite having full marks for grammar, this fic is pretty hard to read. The language is circumlocutious, unwieldy and very repetitive. A rare evocative (if stock) turn of phrase is quickly drowned in the sea of chesspiece genericness that is the style of this work. It also seems to clash with itself especially in dialogue, as if the protagonists are either severely bipolar or extremely unsure what emotion they wish to convey.
In addition, the exposition is shoehorned without any regard for pacing or appropriateness, sometimes just with a parenthesised aside smack in the middle of the phrase.
Finally, the use of gore in the fic is gratuitous, superfluous and unnecessary. It adds nothing to the story or the characters and is only introduced for the sake of perceived "maturity"
6/30

Plot:
The story is about racism, as it is mentioned in the long summary, and it is dealt with about as much subtlety or sensitivity as a HAMMER TO THE FACE. Characters are racist (tribist?) not only without reason but also to detriment of their own immediate self-interest. And yes, sometimes one's ingrained racism just can't be helped, but this is not the case.The racism is also explored not through the subtleties of thought and social interactions, but by characters shouting (or thinking) racial slurs at each other, and seems to be weirdly confused with classism ( the first chapter even seems to allude to either some generic revolutionary worker movement or straight-up early communist groups). Further on even this scant premise seems to be abandoned in favor of the run-of-the-mill political drama, which is about as subtle and nuanced as the author's take on racism.
What is more important, it has nothing to do with MLP as we know it. It would've made miles more sense to have this story take place in the time just after the unification of the three tribes and the founding of Equestria, where one could really believe that tribal tensions ran high and there was a real mistrust of each other, and then make use of characters like Commander Hurricane and Princess Platinum, as opposed to making it in the time of Sunset Shimmer, which, one assumes, was not that long before Season One of the show, but also with Luna not being Nightmare Moon, and other weird and pointless alterations to the setting.
That being said, it has a somewhat reasonable, and partially interesting premise, decent pacing and makes an earnest attempt at having characters. I liked the Latin too.
20/40

Personal Preference:
Eh. It's not horrible. I found the idea bland, the setting entirely unconnected to MLP and confusing, characters unlikeable and unrelatable (or, in the case of characters other than Princesses - mutilated and changed with no rhyme and reason), and gore and sex unnecessary and grating. At the same time it is undoubtedly a piece of creative writing, that, if I disregard the horrid execution, could actually be almost readable.
5/10, I've certainly seen worse.

Total Tally
This is not as bad as I thought it would be going in, and certainly not "black-and-red OC alicorn" bad, but in the final account both the ideas and the execution suffer. This is hard to read and entirely bereft of contents that would make it anything but pointless to do so.
49/100

5988138

"That's right dog, run away now."

Couldn't agree more with the 'hammer to the face' metaphor, especially for the introduction.

Maybe a more... subtler way of inching in to the idea that there is racism here would have been better to start the reader off? Therefore inching us towards the main crux of the story, pulling the carrot in as we inquire "why are they acting this way?" "why did they do that?" before showing it... making it a bit more of a mystery.

Or maybe an "Inglorious bastards" kind of intro, where there is clearly division, but what the result is going to be is a bit more mysterious.

Thank you for the review. I appreciate your honesty and I will take all of your criticisms on board to improve my story.