The Elements of Absolution by leeroy_gIBZ

Reviewing alt universe stories is a bit of a challenge. On one hand, you get to examine a different take on how the character's that you know would respond and see entirely different worlds based on the author's imagination. On the other hand, you get the lovely experience of "The actual Tartarus is this shit, these characters aren’t written properly at all”. As such, I actually had to read the tags of this story

Now, remember how I said an issue with alt universe is the nonsense that happens with established characters? Well, something that I loved about this fic were the OCs. OCs galore. The simple fact that the story didn’t cause me to constantly ask why this character was used made me happy. In total, there are only four cannon characters used to any significant extent. The story takes less of an Injustice path for an alt universe and more of a Back To The Future path. Secondly, it was about characters that in D&D terms could best be described as either Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil. We don't get to see much in regards to main characters that are just flat out evil or so unlikeable that even Skeletor is saying you might have gone too far. It's so rare that I was pleasantly surprised by the novelty

Now to my favorite, and usually longest, section, the criticisms. First off,  the writing is a bit off. Now structurally, there aren’t too many hiccups, a few here and there, but the main issue is that there are several instances where words are either misspelled/misused or entirely missing. I was so disappointed seeing as there were three people that looked at this story and all said: “yeah, that looks good”. The story really should have a new editor look at it and go over all the chapters to find the issues to fix them. Second off, the pacing is off. Now, this might be due to the story having the third issue of basically being MLP S1:E1+2 as written by an angry teenager, but things were not paced properly. Things just kind of happened without much lead-up, foreshadowing, or reason. The most egregious pacing issues were in regards to the combat. Now, I will never say that I can write combat better, I am probably a worse offender than this author, but combat just kind of... happens. It isn't epic, it isn't intense, it is just a JRPG fight, people trading blows with a piece of 2X4 until the one with smaller numbers rolls over. And finally, as mentioned, the lack of originality. The story can best be summarised by this: “what if the elements of harmony, and quite frankly the entire world, were a bunch of raging thunder-cunts with as many redeeming qualities as a Venezuelan has rolls of toilet paper?” The story is the first two episodes of season 1 but with personalities totally flipped. I just wasn't drawn in due to the story not taking me somewhere I haven't been before.

Final Scores;

Plot: 6/10, It’s not terrible, but the lack of much originality kind of killed my interest in reading on as there wasn't much that I could latch onto that were things I would like to see in a story.

Characters: 7/10, Take the Elements of Harmony and discord their personalities. While they are fairly different from their canon counterparts and feel like their own characters, they are all kind of a bunch of ass hats with little other personality other than; sack of shit.

Writing; 7/10, There were just so many easily visible errors in the chapters that I was getting both irritated and developing a feeling of sympathy. The author should either kick their editors into shape or get a new one to start looking over the chapters because with three pairs of eyes looking over this story, none of these mistakes should be here.

Total score: 20/30 or 6.66/10, I was really hoping for something special here, unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal of originality, compelling characters, and the prevalence of rookie mistakes despite so many people looking over it drastically reduced the enjoyment I found in reading the story.

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Thank you for the review. I'll take this into consideration for my future projects.