Story: She Smells of Berries
Author: The Bricklayer
Reviewer: AusFlick
Percentage Read: 100%
Score: Rejection [4/10]
Reason:

She Smells of Berries is a story that felt relatively promising from the start. I found quite a few things about it that I liked and felt like the story had quite a bit going for it, however, it unfortunately felt like declined in quality as the story progressed.

The stuff at the beginning where Tempest was contemplating her life, her past, the present, and whether or not she deserved redemption was where I felt like the story was at its strongest. I felt like it was doing a great job at further developing Tempest as a character. Fleshing out her past that was glossed over in the My Little Pony movie, and giving her a more understandable reason for being a villain in the movie. That being her friends abandoned her after she was attacked by an Ursa Minor, causing her to lose any trust she may have had in her friends. The mindset she’s in feels relatively close to how she’d feel after the events of the movie.

The writing style within this section is also quite well done. The descriptions were initially pretty competently written. If this was the focus of the story, and it lived up to its full potential, I certainly would be giving a higher score, especially since the score I was going to give the story sadly steadily declined as I read on. I think this is because the stuff I was enjoying the most in the fic was eventually pushed to the sideline, that being the writing style, and Tempest’s mindset on if she can really redeem herself, or if she was prepared to move on.

In addition, right from the start, while the writing style felt competent, it also felt off. It felt kind of stilted, almost as if something was missing. It took me several paragraphs to eventually pick up what it was. The story feels very emotionally dry. While I appreciated the story giving more depth to Tempest, not once did I feel any emotion whatsoever. I can see there’s effort in the writing style, and it has a lot of potential, but I would’ve liked to see the story have a lot more emotional weight to it.

Another issue I had with the fic is the dialogue. The dialogue overall just felt very monotone to me, almost as if every word being said was selected as a neutral default response. The scene where Tempest talks to Twilight onward didn’t cut it for me, because this stilted dialogue almost immediately took me out of the story and had me lose interest.

I wasn’t a fan of the scene in the bathtub either. For the reason I listed above, I couldn’t get into the relationship between Tempest and Twilight, and I couldn’t feel any chemistry. One thing I should say though is that I am extremely hard to impress when it comes to romance, and what I’m saying here is more than likely reflecting that.

Above all that, there are a couple of things that bothered me, but they’re things I just find nitpicky. For example, there’s a line in the narration that uses the term ‘like I said before,’ which is incorrect terminology considering the story is being told in third person.

There’s also a very mild case of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, at one point quite literally. Lavender Unicorn Syndrome is a huge pet peeve I have in Fimfiction, and have a really strong personal bias against it. Fortunately the Lavender Unicorn Syndrome isn’t a huge deal since it shows up few and far between. All in all, these are just nitpicks and a more minor criticism than the ones listed above.

Thank you for submitting to the Reviewer’s Cafe, as I can see your potential, but for now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give this story a rejection.

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So the story was too stiff and condensed despite having an interesting premise and being competent overall? That seems to be a common issue, so I have three questions:

What would you suggest in order to iron out the writing and add more emotional weight to the story? How could the dialogue have been changed to make it more natural? What do you think is the most difficult part of constructing an engaging romance?