Blunt Review: The Element of Hope
by shootingstar212

Summary:
This is a Human in Equestria story, that at least promises not to be " Human is lost Element". Which, given "Sex" tag and the "M" rating is a small consolation. It promises (right in the long description) to be a story "Maturing, Friendship, Recovering, and Self-Worth." which sort of implies that author does not trust his story to actually tell that.
Not a great start.

Grammar:
Surprisingly, despite some errors in the long description, the fic proper is written reasonably well. I do not generally like things written in the present tense, but here it was not at all irritating, which is a no small feat. However, there still are errors, mostly in punctuation (especially the semicolons) and capitalization, but there are few spelling ones as well ("creek" vs "creak", for example, in the bit I quote lower, or a bizarre spelling of "hunny" which cannot in this context be a Winnie the Pooh shoutout)
12/20

Style:
It's pretty rough around the edges and somewhat abrasive. The short, abrupt sentences, the occasional badly chosen or repeated word, and other minor yet annoying flaws riddle the fic. The semicolon is used as a sentence separator way too often, creating cumbersome, overburdened, disjointed sentences, that are riddled with chess piece micro-gesture descriptions that bog the reading down.
Consider this bit:

"Not what I wanted." I think. I continue down the hall, it's hard to see because of the darkness. the floorboards creek with every step I take; almost like I'm in a horror movie. With a little bit of feeling around, I find another door. Opening it up reveals a room. There's a night stand, next to a king sized bed. On top of the night stand lays a lamp. The nice green drapes covers the windows, also a good sized dresser. "This ought to do for the night."

Youtube links are pasted into the fic, which is never-ever-ever a good idea, and really break you out of whatever reading momentum the author managed to set up. Bad idea.
Same goes for the frequent POV changes. Those tend to be pretty annoying.

12/30 This seems to have been written as a screenplay, not an actual fanfic - the author imagined what was going on in his mind, and then merely put it on the paper as he saw it, without any consideration of difference of medium between a cartoon episode and literature, and with little care for employing the tools that literature allows.

Plot:
The protagonist is indeed a human in Equestria, adopted as a child (from nobody knows where) by a unicorn. He can use unicorn magic (for reasons never explained) and everypony hates him because he's not a pony, to the point where when he saves Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash (which of course he does) , they still call him a freak.

In short, this is a self-pitying fantasy with barely slapped-on pony job, that does not care for setting, characters, logic or common sense, throwing those under the bus for the idea author has in his head. "Ponies (other than Twilight Sparkle) being racist pricks?" Sure, let's go with that. "The human adopted by a unicorn is surprised to know that he's adopted?" That makes sense! "Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash needing saving from a single changeling?" Why not?

The pacing is a bit on the fast side, with "Travis" making friends with Twilight Sparkle in a span of half a paragraph, and zero effort on his part, and the introduction that might as well have been an infodump. His character (other than being lonely and hated and different gentle snowflake) is never actually shown.

Overall, this is not as horrible as most HiE fics, but a next great American novel it is not. 15/40

Personal preference
It's not as bad as I thought, definitely, and so far there was nothing to justify "M" and "Sex" tags, so that's a relief. However the incessant self-pity of the author's avatar, who is this nice average guy whom everypony hates for no reason and he is very sad is so... childish, it really spoils the fic. Combine it with the mangled setting of racist homophobic (as in hating the homo sapient species, not the sexual orientation kind) ponies, the style trying and failing to be visual in a written medium, and you get yourself a 2/10 fic.

Total tally:
This fic, first of all, is an utter whine-fest and has so far very little to do with MLP. The only thing it can grow into is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, and those are dime a dozen.41/100.

They're called "blunt reviews" for a reason. Thank you very much! I'll be sure to take what you said into consideration.