Soft Hands contest reviews! - Soft Hands

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PresentPerfect #1 · Aug 3rd, 2016 · 5 · ·

As promised, I have posted a review blog including each entry, which you can find here.

In this post, you will find extra commentary in the form of constructive criticism, for the most part, because that's outside the purvey of my usual reviews. This is where you can read how to fix stuff that went wrong! Presented in reverse chronological order, Mature fics first.

Oh yeah, I should've said this first PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES TO YOUR STORIES UNTIL THE RESULTS ARE OUT, we want to keep the judges' experiences all the same.

DICKFIST: There's a lot of 'as' in that one sentence about the right hook. I want to say the description gave me the wrong expectations for this story, but it kind of didn't. How many human dick spells are there? The chapter title contradicts one of Lyra's statements! You got a "for the love frosting" in there, and "she could help thinking." The Llamas With Hats reference was genius. This whole thing is genius.

Twilight's Bathroom Is Flooded With Soft Hands: Why is "Dragon" capitalized? Why is "Tactical Airstrike"? You forgot to capitalize "ponyville" a couple of times, and also a couple of "i". But my god, this is glorious. Way better than the original.

Soft: The prompt drops in the sex scene killed it for me. (I don't ever want to see the word 'soft' in a clopfic again.) Granted, the sex scene killed it for me, but that's just me. POV's a little shaky; telling this from Ember's POV was a good idea, but then you get some thoughts from Spike in there. I very much appreciate you skipping over round two. But yeah, as clopfics go, it's at least got really clean, solid writing.

Lyra's Quest for Pliable Paws: I like these italicized words; they suggest that all is not well and set me slightly on edge. (I wish they had continued more consistently throughout the story.) "And to the library that held within" doesn't need 'that'. Spell out numerals. Hm, I thought that mention of the distracted caster was going to be building up to a Fly reference; I wouldn't have minded it! Not a ton of typos, but this could use a quick proofread. I'll mention too that at first it sounded like Lyra was trying to use teleportation for transformation; summoning makes far more sense. You use 'torn' twice in two sentences. The "oh shit" is a little off-universe. I'm surprised by how humorous you made an exploded person, though.

They Come at Night: Great first line, but then it immediately jumps into not explaining what 'they' are or going into more detail, which is jarring tonally, and something of a letdown, though by the end of the first scene, I'm set totally on edge. Avoid phrases like "My eyes stare"; she's the one who's doing the staring, not her eyes. That last semicolon in the "Wind blowing" sentence should be a colon. The repetition of the first line of each scene does a really great job in building tension and showing how the situation progresses. And perhaps no line is so creepy as "I've lived here by myself for my entire life". I spent the final scene with my hands over my mouth. Jeez.

The Hardest Hand: "Came through the window to the ponies", "one of them on the card", referring to the stallion as 'they': this is full of awkward word usage. I, too, am confused as to why the mare is wearing a bra. For the second time this contest, I have physically slapped my forehead, vis-a-vis Derpy's bluff. Okay, I'm not sure how much feedback you actually need/want, nor if it would be helpful at all. Of course, your biggest mistake was listening to Pascoite, that meddler. :V

Little Miss Canterlot: I'm confused as to what's supposed to be conveyed by "Mmm-mnh-mnh". A smidge disappointed you didn't go more into what Sweetie has to do to get ready for the pageant; that's a pretty big time skip, plus it doesn't really seem like Apple Bloom and Scootaloo actually do anything, aside from cheering. Also, "Lady-stilts"? The scene with Diamond Tiara's gymnastics routine is something of a POV-shift, since Sweetie's not there and the rest of the story has focused on her for the most part. You've got a "Sweeite" in there. The end is missing two things: buildup of tension, and a reaction from Diamond Tiara. In fact, you could have gotten a lot of mileage out of DT's antagonism. If there's anything you change later on, I'd suggest using that to add conflict, but as a slice of life, it works pretty well the way it is.

Handmade: "Figment of a dream" doesn't quite make sense. The "cold sensation" section is kind of really dark; I'm not sure you meant to go that far into horror. (I mean, our protagonist has no mouth but must scream…) Honestly, I don't have a lot of feedback to give, because you pulled this off quite nicely. (Well, other than "where's your Human tag?" :B)

Handiwork: Though I was amused by Twilight's reason for wanting to participate in the contest, the dialogue doesn't always feel in-character, especially Spike using words like "rather". This is a random comedy, though, so I'm not sure how useful feedback is going to be. I did at least laugh!

Metal Gear Soft: I really wish that you'd included a link to the "DX:HR trailer" in the description or something; I had to Google it to find out what it was. Watch your tenses! The way the code names and characters are introduced is pretty matter of fact; you could definitely stand to work those into the narrative more naturally. For instance, the "Yeah I'm Cheerilee" line is too direct; we know Cheerilee's in this story, so identifying her as having been a teacher should suffice. This happens a lot throughout the story, where you have the characters outright explain what's going on for the benefit of the audience. Despite that, I never got a really good sense for this, what things look like or how they're doing any of this, what the 'enhancements' really mean. Crossovers (at least, I assume this is, though it's not tagged) need to be accessible to those who don't know the source material, especially in contests when you've got people who have to read them. Why does everything go italics in the first chapter? You should definitely find yourself a proofreader to catch things like that. When you've got two female characters in one scene, be careful using 'she'. The hyphenated false starts ("Liq-Cheerilee") don't really work in narration. And lastly, that final scene feels rushed, and the joke falls flat. It's not a good use of the prompt.

Give Me a Sign: There are better ways to make a protagonist sympathetic than making them pathetic. Starting Kyle's story earlier could have helped with that, so that we see his troubles rather than being told about them. Same thing goes with emotions. I don't know if you have any experience with Deaf culture, but it's not represented well here; that line about his inner monologue not being 'normal' is a good example of why. It's spelled "strode"; you should definitely try and find yourself a good proofreader. Lastly, "person is sad/friend cheers them up" isn't really a story, per se. You could definitely do more with this idea.

The Best of Tensions: One would think that there being no ripe grapes or apples would in fact be when Berry could find booze the easiest. It has to be fermented after the harvest, after all. Try not to use 'and' twice in a sentence. It's 'ethereal', you only need one quote to quote inside a quote, and there's a spot where you didn't capitalize the first word after a cut-off bit of dialogue, and you've got 'set what had'. Otherwise, it's fine! My only other question would be was she imagining regular Spike or "Sir Spike"? Because I assumed it was the latter, which only made this funnier.

Manus Dei: The biggest complaint I can see about this story is that it seems to exist outside of canon, but that's what you were going for, and it works quite well. I do wish that you had taken one more step with Jet Set's last line, about Celestia and love and mercy, and twisted that around into religious screed, echoing The Cask of Amontillado or somesuch. Watch for commas outside quotation marks and the occasional uncapitalized 'I'.

The Horrors of Inappropriate Amounts of Lotion: There's a 'callus' that should have an -ed on the end. The only thing I could suggest to better the writing is to slow it down a little — there's a spot near the end of the first scene where Starlight speaks, but it's not obvious it's her — though this does accomplish what it sets out to do.

Fuzzyfurvert

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Fuzzyfurvert #2 · Aug 3rd, 2016 · 1 · ·

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