Under the Bed by tyrannosaurianrex9

I would like to start out by stating the obvious. I love stories where the main character(s) is/are crazy and questioning reality. It's why Silent Ponyville is one of my favorite stories and a Bloodborne crossover was my first fic. I say all this because this story is in line with that type of story. The premise of Twilight losing her mind to “the thing under the bed” is one I quite enjoyed. The pacing, while a little fast for me, is well done in so far as it is able to create some drama and mystery.

To start the criticisms, one of the first things I noticed was that the story needs an editor. There were several small mistakes that just don't read right and draw the reader out of the experience. [I noticed that the story has an editor so I would suggest that the author has them go over some past chapters to fix some issues there] This leads to the second problem I have with the story, the dialog. The issue with the dialog is that it doesn't feel right, it feels stilted and unnatural, like the characters were written by a computer program rather than a person. The main issue is that a large portion of what is said is purely functional, only conveying what needs to be conveyed or describing the surroundings. While this is following the idea to cut out everything in a story that isn't needed, dialog is the one area that this rule needs to be bent. By not having extraneous details or action tags in the dialog the characters don't feel like they are individuals with their own quirks and lives outside the story. Finally, the characters. This really bummed me out because the premise was so good, the problem is that the characters just aren't themselves. Pinkie threatening to not be friends, Twilight saying “and stuff”, and just the general attitude of characters is off.

Final scores:

Concept: 8/10, while I enjoy the premise, the idea comes across like a weird version of Silent Hill with reality buring around the edges and the use of “bad individual punished/forced to face the worst parts of themselves.

Characters: 2/10, this was the biggest weakness to the story. Twilight and Pinkie are not written in a way that befits who we know them to be. Additionally, when secondary characters are used in later chapters, their inclusion almost feels like an afterthought as they don’t contribute to the story in a meaningful way.

Pacing: 7/10, this was well paced. The only major improvement would be to extend the time it takes for Twilight to start having the major mental problems as it feels almost like she goes from normal to unable to properly see the world as it is.

Summary: this was a decent story, but the characters really made the story suffer. While writing the review I was looking for a second area of weakness to dock it points as when I finished the story I was not too in love with it. But, when I steped back and looked at it I only had an issue with characters. This is a good story held back significantly by its use and portrayal of characters. 17/30 or 5.66/10

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Yeah... I really need a good editor even though I'm not really a good writer. Also, I haven't finished the story yet.