Title: Them’s Fightin’ Words by Freglz
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Reject (3.5/10)
Reason:

*insert witty joke about how I’m never around to review*

Yes, I’m finally doing this. Review time! So, the main thing that stood out to me and the biggest reason why I’m rejecting this is pretty simple, in that things just get very over the top very quickly in this, but not yet at the point where it branches into absurdity.

The contrast in tone between the beginning and end of this story is pretty striking. At the start, we get a pretty familiar scene — Applejack and Rainbow Dash trying to outdo the other in some competition, this time watching paint dry. It starts out as a fairly lighthearted exchange between them, nothing out of the ordinary we haven’t seen before either in fanfic or in the show itself. However, by the end, we’re being treated to Mayor Mare’s massive conspiracy to blow up Twilight’s castle through the power of rap music, all aided by Spitfire.

While the story is constantly just upping the ante with loads of meta and ridiculous humor, it still is a constant stream and never really allows any of the previous level of inanity to stick with you and create any real impact. Making things more and more silly is acceptable, but when it happens so fast you both get used to it and don’t have a very good reference point, so the jumps aren’t as striking and humorous as they would be otherwise. Successful humor that is raising the bar throughout its routine is effective because it gives you enough time to get comfortable with the level it’s currently at, then gives a big enough jump once you’ve finally accepted that that the new level seems more absurd than the previous absurdity we accepted.

Finally, I felt the style of the mechanics was a little jarring. Technically you’re clean, like one or two typos but those are frankly expected in a story of that length. But having so many small little paragraphs with short sentences makes the writing feel choppy, and it makes it difficult to go through since it feels like you keep being given the individual parts instead of being one unified whole.

Overall, this story was a bit shaky in its execution. It is too over the top to be taken serious but not over the top enough to be absurd, never allows its humor to sink in, and is a choppy read. So, for those reasons, I am rejecting this fic.

Humour is incredibly subjective; that's something I'll just have to accept. But I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "being given the individual parts instead of being one unified whole". And I would like to see an example of good comedy, in your opinion.

6639013
By that I just mean like one idea is being presented to us in more sentences and paragraphs than is necessary. It feels as if all the parts of said idea are present, but the mechanics of how they're presented doesn't tie them all together very neatly.

As for good comedy that carries some surrealist elements, Monty Python is the classic example. In the following video, for example, the phrases start out as simply incorrect, and at a few points the level of absurdity is raised to nonsense and then finally clearly suggestive statements. A jump is more impactful in comedy than numerous steps covering the same distance, as we are capable of adapting quickly to a situation and so small steps allow us to continually get used to the environment whereas a jump is much more of a shock to us since it gives us all the adjustment we must do all at once instead of spreading it out.