Hallo, everypony! Hope you're all having a good day~

Here's today's story. It's back to a short story for this week.

TLonging

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Thriller

What if you were given the chance to make all your dreams come true, but at the cost of your humanity?

• OC

BradyBunch · 3.2k words  ·  39  8 · 915 views

Also, just a quick reminder that you're only supposed to submit your stories to one folder! The only reason why this one's being reviewed at the moment is that I got to it before Drache rejected it from the group. So keep that in mind for the future!

Anyway, without further ado:

A short summary…

This story centers on Butter Bloom, a patient who's been hospitalised for the past three years for cerebral palsy, a movement disorder which he has a particularly severe case of. He's bed-ridden, and the disorder makes him unable to speak properly. This has made his life utterly miserable, to the point that he's angry and hateful at everything (or almost everything, at least) around him. 

One night, as he's wallowing in his plight, he's approached by an entity that offers to grant him all his wishes, drawn to him by the amount of hate in his heart. What follows becomes something like a nice villain origin story. 

Review

What's it like to be trapped in your own body? 

At its core, that's the feeling this story is trying to express. From the get-go we see things through Butter's eyes, and we hear all his thoughts. We hear how he's a pony with hopes and dreams, how he's someone who's full of spirit as he imagines himself being an awe-inspiring spellcaster, falling in love, starting a family… 

Of course, this is almost cruelly juxtaposed with his appearance in real life: a slobbering, incoherent pony, confined to his bed and wheelchair because of his condition. And I felt that — I felt Butter's spirit being crushed as he's constantly reminded that he'll never be able to achieve his goals, or fit in with society enough to form anything close to friendship. BradyBunch's writing here worked really well in conveying that feeling to me.

Though I guess it's kinda my job to play Devil's advocate here, so here's also what I think: while BradyBunch did a pretty good job here, Butter's emotional escalation while he's brooding does feel a little flat. Like, all the emotions are definitely there, but because the story relies a little too much on telling instead of showing them, they don't shine through as strongly as they could. 

After this though, the draw becomes less of an emotional one and more of figuring out what the shadow spirit thing that shows up is and what the limits of its power are. The spirit makes Butter an offer to give him ultimate power, and he has to choose whether to make the deal or not. 

It kinda works?

Like, sure, it's cool seeing the spirit trying to convince Butter, and there's a little suspense in seeing whether he'll take the offer or not. But in the end, there's not much of an obvious drawback to taking the offer other than the vague feeling that the spirit is evil. And it really doesn't seem to matter to Butter, so the whole scene feels devoid of any conflict.

Scores and some feedback

Grammar and Use of Language
Pretty good! The grammar is consistently accurate, aside from some tense errors here and there. The writing style delivers on Butter's emotional state pretty well, and I could really hear his frustration through the words. Nothing much to say here, really. 

Good/10

Characters
Original characters are tricky to write. With show characters there's usually been enough set up to give the characters enough depth that readers already understand the characters going in, and all we need to do is to make sure they stay in character. Original characters still need to be sold to readers, though, which is tough to pull off. 

Butter is written pretty well here, if you couldn't tell from my little preface above. His emotions make sense, and the writing stirs up sympathy for him pretty well. He's definitely a well-written character!

Though… well, I wouldn't say that he's great, either. Yeah. I do understand his emotions. But to just be told that his hate of the world is great enough to have attracted this super-powerful doesn’t feel very convincing. We don’t even really see much of him hating others, more of just… frustration, I guess. It comes down to the "show don't tell" rule again; showing us how Butter reacts with hate to the world around him would probably help to sell the idea more than just that spirit thing showing up and saying that Butter is a hateful pony.

7/10

Maintaining Interest
This story was… satisfactorily interesting.

… that sounds really condescending actually, sorry

Well, what I mean to say is, I was only interested enough in the story to continue reading to the end because of the premise.

Where the story failed a little was in actually following through on that premise. After the shadow spirit thing shows up, the story feels like it’s just going through the motions. The story is pretty much predictable from this point on. Mind, the problem isn’t with the ending being generally predictable; rather, the problem is that every action taken from this point on has very predictable reactions. 

Further, the spirit is never really defined further than 'powerful evil thing', and Butter's choice at the end doesn't feel like it's a huge dilemma for him. So this part just felt a little lacking to me.

5/10

In summary…

 
This is a pretty functional story! Everything here definitely works, from the setting to the characters to the plot. But though the story is definitely well-written, no amount of good writing can make a story interesting on its own. It does work as a cool villain origin story though, if you're interested in that

Overall score, 6/10. Probably could have been longer to explore the concept a little more, but functional nonetheless. Have an upvote from me!

Huh, today’s review was shorter than usual, huh? Well, as always, if there’s anything you don’t agree with, or anything you think doesn’t make sense, feel free to leave a comment; I’d be happy to answer

It does work as a cool villain origin story though, if you're interested in that

That was my goal from the start. I had the idea of this guy in my head, but I never intended on expanding it beyond the origin, because I already have enough on my plate. Glad to see you liked it. I like making people think, and seeing them squirm from words alone.