TRed and Purple

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Comedy
• Random

When a strange foe kidnaps all of Twilight's friends, it is up to Twilight to participate in the greatest gladiator match in recent Equestrian history: The Princess of Friendship vs the Lord of Enmity!

• Violence
• Death
• Twilight
• OC

Leondude · 3.1k words  ·  9  2 · 702 views

Read: Completed at 3,126 words, 1 chapter
Rating: 4/10
Recommendation: Skip

It remains my firm opinion that alicorn OCs are not good. Furthermore, this story has failed to convince me that they can be ironically good either.

Its a normal day in Ponyville, until Burning Hatred, Lord of Enmity, appears and challenges Twilight to a fight to the death. Now, this would be all well and good but Hatred has more edges than bismuth, which is notoriously edgy. Its damn near impossible to take him seriously as a villain when his entire character seems to revolve around being the kind of hateful jackass not even 4chan wants to be in the same conversation with.

And this would be okay too, if he was funny. The problem is that he isn’t; at least he isn’t to me. If this is supposed to be satire of pointlessly edgy MLP fanfic, what point is this making? I’m not laughing at any of this because Leondude plays it all straight and writes this seemingly unironically too. Hatred is a prick and Twilight is annoyingly bland in reacting to him. Yet, the book horse isn’t deadpan enough to build comedy off that; she reacts, just not realistically. Some firehaired goon kidnaps your friends and the first thing you ask him is why? Also, if this is supposed to be pointing out the protagonist’s supposed hypocrisy as to who gets redeemed and who “gets to taste the rainbow one last time'' having the viewpoint character be a total douche without redeemable characteristics doesn’t really create any meaningful discussion. At least Starlight and Discord were charismatic and Stygian and Luna were sympathetic - Hatred is neither of those things, and we’re forced to spectate his actions for four thousand words words.

Furthermore, Leondude’s writing isn’t great here either. It is not bad per say but it isn’t good either. It’s just long. A large portion of the story is devoted to the fight between Twilight and Hatred, which Twilight for some reason immediately agrees to - despite being able to stop time - but hey, this is supposed to be a comedy. The issue here is that the writing drags on and on. The fight itself isn’t exciting in the slightest, not when the paragraphs get up to twenty lines of back-and-forth duelling. None of what I presume is supposed to be heart-pounding action is divided in a logical manner - long paragraphs aren’t that exciting and what dialogue there is separating them is fairly bland as well.

To conclude here, I can at least commend Leondude for a giving a decent enough conclusion to the story - actually letting Twilight free her friends and having them participate in the battle was a nice touch, for what little contribution they made. But even that ends abruptly, almost cynically in fact - as if the Main 6 and assorted handlangers (Starlight and Spike) aren’t the “good guys” at all. Let me remind you though that the alternative here is a psychopath who kidnaps children and tries to murder people with pointlessly overcomplicated swords.

Plot: 2/5. Mediocre satire at best
Characters: 2/5. Cardboard or insufferable
Style: 2/5. In need of a good trim
Execution: 2/5. Made a fight to the death boring
Overall Rating: 8/20 = 4/10

To Leondude: My advice to you in future would really be first and foremost to look at how other writers execute their villains - and I don’t just mean execute as in kill off. Look at Sherlock Holmes’ Moriarty for the kind of character who can pull off being an absolute dick and the most intelligent person in the room. Maybe check out Steven King as well to see how he writes “hate-sink” antagonists, like IT. Also, I’d recommend that you definitely get your work edited in future - again, long paragraphs and uninspiring narration does not an exciting time make.

For something like this: If you want to see a dislikeable antagonist done well, check out alarajroger's take on one here, with Discord as the hero (no matter how much he might insist he isn't.)

As always, if you enjoyed this review, why not have a look at some of my other work here?