Fanfic Reviews – Incomplete Edition · 4:00am Nov 24th, 2014
Wow, 2 weeks without posting. Not my worst, but not something I was expecting. Essentially a combination of maratoning Babylon 5 with my usual lazyness.
Anyway, here are all the fics I didn’t finish, or more accurately, permanently gave up reading. I am a fairly compulsive reader, so when I start something, I usually go the whole way through, even if I am not enjoying myself too much. However, from time to time, I stumble into some which I simply can’t get through. So, in an effort to see what (if anything) ties these together, find below the break:
Αλεκτρονα
Crossed Paths
My Princess Alluring
The Games we Play
No scores this time around, since I didn’t finish any of these stories, only a not saying up to where I read them. Also, expect more snark than the usual, since I clearly didn’t enjoy these too much.
darf – Αλεκτρονα – Literary Fiction
Ponified Ulysses.
I don’t even know why I started reading this on the first place. Not only I find darf’s serious work problematic, but I also have a long standing hatred of the modernist movement, and Joyce, in my book, is the worst offender. Not necessarily because his stuff is significantly worse than his contemporaries’, but also due to the lasting influence of his approach to literature. I won’t go into a long aside about this, but expressions like “pretentious pseudo-philosophy”, “style over substance”, or even “fetishism of subtext over text” would be involved.
Otherwise, it is hard to talk about the fic proper, because it is “just” a ponified Ulysses. Twilight Sparkle walks around on an average day, overly complex sentences show how she thinks about the world around her, darf showboats his writing skills, etc, etc. Characters appear, dialogue straight out of the show is rendered with unusual speech tags, and nothing of consequence happens – And that is the point. It is expertly written, certainly took a lot of work, and is everything that draws me away from what passes for “literary fiction”.
Why it should be read: For a competent ponification of Ulysses.
Stand out moment: Not in the fic proper, but I like that the author started writing a series of blog posts to talk about the fic. The authorial intent in this was more interesting than the work itself. It is a shame darf left ponyfic behind, I’d love to see these concluded.
40% of the single chapter read.
The Rogue Wolf – Crossed Paths – Crossover
Indiana Jones, Samurai Jack, and the Mane 6 get sent to an alternate dimension.
I tried to finish this story three times to date, once while it was being published, and twice more after Present Perfect’s review made me notice that I had never finished it and didn’t know why. This is one of those “death by a thousand papercuts” kind of deals, where I give up despite nothing terrible actually happening. In fact, I found the whole thing to be profoundly meh, enough that the prospect of 100K+ words of that quickly became unthinkable.
The writing overall is pretty good, very evocative, despite an annoying tendency to have two distinct characters speak in the same paragraph. Action is another strong point, with clear scenes and interesting scenarios. However, pretty much everything else irks me. Dialogue is overly descriptive, leading otherwise interesting character bonding moments to become a slog to go through. This is then made worse by some intolerable Applejackisms (things like using “mebbe” instead of “maybe” come to mind, as well as many others), and just how often half the cast seems to be holding an idiot ball. It is annoying.
However, my biggest issue, and exactly the thing that made me give up, is characterization. It is the type of thing where, while nothing is overtly wrong, there isn’t anything actually done right. Every character is more a caricature than anything else, rendered in their broadest possible strokes, all the nuances that make them interesting gone. Indy is the worst offender in this, and the way he is rendered reminds me way too much of his characterization in Crystal Skull. This is certainly related to how many characters are involved on the story,but I have seen this kind of stuff done right before.
Overall, it is a shame. There is just too much lost potential on this story as a whole, and I wish I enjoyed it more than I did, considering I enjoy quite a bit all the universes involved.
Why it should be read: For the only Indiana Jones/ Samurai Jack/ MLP crossover on the site (I bet).
Stand out moment: I liked the first Indiana Jones scene quite a bit. Certainly made me go further than I would otherwise.
5/12 chapters read.
Lapis-Lazuli and Inky J – My Princess Alluring – Shipfic (Mature, Clop)
Queen Chrysalis changes the past, making so that Cadence breaks up with Shining Armor, becoming Twilight’s lover instead.
N.B.: Instead of my usual format of talking about the general issues, I am gonna dissect my experiences with this fic part by part. This means that the review is full of unmarked spoilers up to chapter 8. If you don’t want to see this fic spoiled, just know that I consider it overall more disgusting than Fall of Equestria, and skip to the last paragraph.
This fic broke me. After reading Romance Reports and Salvation (Future review), I decided that long form clop could certainly be done with a story might have some merit after all. This was the first other fic I tried in that genre, and it made me give up trying to find any others on my own. Not to attack the authors, but this is my personal perfect symphony of shit, managing to hit all possible wrong notes in such rapid succession it left me dazed. We kick off with some terrible Tyrantlestia in full “all destinies are mine to control!” mode, and it only goes downhill from there.
Thing is, Cadance rebounds from Shining’s relationship by accidentally seducing Twilight, whom she was currently babysitting. She becomes her best friend shortly after, taking her to adult parties and the like. By the time she was 15, in a fic that is clearly using age by human standards, she had already helped her sleep around a few times (all told in flashback), until they accidentally have sex in the most contrived way possible and become an actual couple.
This beautiful cocktail of Pedophilia and Grooming would have been disgusting on its own, but nothing to make me hate the story – I believe that any fetish is okay in fiction, so long as it is used with a clear purpose. However, this fic is painfully unaware of how creepy it is. Worse than that, it seems to want the reader to picture Twilight x Cadance as a perfectly healthy, normal relationship, between two consenting mares of equal standing. It even has Twilight rebuke critics to that “age-gap nonsense”, as if she was talking about two adults some ten years apart that meet and start dating.
The fic has this tendency to simply handwave crucial changes, the hard parts so to speak, in order to reach this new status quo. It certainly cares little about these perfunctory occurrences, wanting to just show things happening like in canon, only with a very different setup, and characters being suddenly completely different people, more wish fulfillment than AU character development.
By the point we get to the time of the pilot, Twilight is a nymphomaniac swinger extrovert, all hand-waved as her “studies of intimacy and romance”, and always accompanied by Cadance. She is a completely different character by this point, except that she still acts like her show counterpart whenever the story needs her to follow the show. For fuck sake, she spends her introductions in Ponyville being proactive, more checking out the rest of the Mane 6 than anything else – except that she is repeatedly stated as still being shy, since the fic tries, somehow, to pretend that this Twilight is the same character.
From then on, the story only seems to get more infuriating, with Cadance going to Ponyville with Twilight, disguised as a Pegasus called Love Beat. From this point on, the fic seems to get tired of handwaving all the changes away, and is simply about two OCs, not-Twilight and Love Beat, living together as a couple on the Golden Oaks library. It is pretty clear that all the story so far was just setup to reach this new status quo – despite little that actually justify this change being portrayed on the fic proper. Instead, everything before acts to make this Cadance-light as creepy as possible.
It also features Celestia at one point caring more about scolding Cadance for helping Twilight than seeing Luna, in a moment of pointless character assassination.
And from then on, up to where I simply gave up, the fic becomes about the immaturity of the relationship of not-Twi and Love Beat. They have been living together for months now, after being on an intimate relationship for about 3 years now, and the fic tries to extract drama about their official status, with a whole plot of the Mane 6 setting up a scene for Twi to ask Cadance to be her marefriend during the Gala, far more than most couples would do for a marriage proposal. At one point, the fic even refers to Cadance as “The mare whom, by evening’s end, was going to be Twilight’s marefriend.”
That chapter climaxes (hah!) with a Cadance x Twilight sex scene. Her love magic, however, turns the Gala into an orgy. Because whatever self-control the fic had is long gone by this part, and these one night stands while magic-addled become the basis for long standing relationships. Rarity and Celestia sleep together there, and, judging by the comments, end the fic as a couple. I am so glad I gave up at that point.
I hate this fic more than anything on this site. It is offensively bad. It has one of the worst portrayal of relationships imaginable. Every single character goes through some idiotic character assassination. It is contrived, skipping all the necessary character development in order to show the characters in a new situation. But worst of all it is unbelievably creepy, reading more like a love letter to pedophilia than anything else. To paraphrase Red Letter Media, “No other fic has made me feel as much as My Princess Alluring. The feeling was pain, but it has awakened parts of my brain, and then killed off those parts.”
Why it should be read: So you can share my pain
Stand out moment: Bizarre as it may sound, the sex scenes are pretty competent and restrained, even if they don’t add anything of significance to the narrative.
8/14 chapters read.
AbsoluteAnonymous – The Games we Play – Romance
Somepony is dressing like Mare-do-well, in a seduction game with Rainbow Dash.
While I couldn’t get through this story, this is the one on this list I am most likely to try reading again. It isn’t terrible by any standards, and I bet it is pretty enjoyable for those that appreciate shipping. However, the chapters up to where I read create a conflict with significant issues, which only seem to deepen (and get ignored) the more the fic progresses. I am willing to believe the story actually addresses those later on, but the very slow pacing, and little empathy from Rainbow’s friends, coupled with the repetition of the significant issues of the Mare do Well episode, made my distaste with this story too big to continue past a certain point – even after multiple attempts to pick it up again.
Thing is, Mare do Well seems to enjoy torturing Rainbow psychologically, despite the fact she is set on having them fall in love. As a concept that is fine, and I’d love to see the fallout from that, but it is certainly the setup for the most dysfunctional relationship ever. After 7 chapters of that, and as you see Rainbow get flustered by the thought of Mare do Well, it became just too uncomfortable for me. It is fine to show the progression in their relationship, but after some ~40k words of Rainbow getting treated poorly, I couldn’t bring myself to read on further, despite wanting to see what happened next.
I appreciate the idea of “having to hide in order to show your true feelings”, and the other themes being developed here. However, this is a case where nothing in the story managed to grip me, and the other parts just pushed me away.
Why it should be read: If your tolerance for shipping is higher
Stand out moment: I do like how the starting scene goes, it is a great set-up.
7/22 Chapters read.
To be perfectly fair, this whole thing might have been more of an excuse for me to vent about “My Princess Alluring” than anything else. Still, I guess that I dropped these fics not because they are bad, but by the lack of anything that grips me for an extended length. Even in University Days, which I despise, I was more or less curious to see what would happen next, and the things I dislike never really disgusted me.
Huh. Well, sucks to hear about My Princess Alluring. I was kind of curious about it, but that's because I thought it was just Twilight and Cadance hooking up after Twilight becomes a Alicorn.
Crossed Paths is remarkably okay. I was mostly just impressed at how ridiculous the crossovering is, and how well the characters worked together.
2613673 Yeah, I went to read it for that reason. From what I could grasp, Twilight eventually becomes an Alicorn and marries Cadance in this version. Part of the idea of this story is that things kinda happen in the same manner, despite the obvious changes.
2613758 Yeah, I was pretty impressed with that too. I just didn't feel I would get much more from reading more of it.
Reading your Beatdown of Princess Alluring was pretty funny. Have you considered making a Rage Review about it?
> "Worse than Fall of Equestria"
Oh, c'mon, Soge, tell us how you really feel.
Seriously, that's … a pretty strong assertion, to say the least. I suppose I could see it, on the grounds that something that's subtly but deeply reprehensible is more problematic than something which is aggressively reprehensible on its face, but you're clearing a damn high bar.
2614551 It is a high bar, but really, that is the closest reference I got.
Fall of Equestria is like that guy at a party who keeps telling racist jokes because they are "edgy", laughing out loud all the while. You can't ignore it, and you are sure that at some level he does believe in what he is saying, but he at least seems to know it is wrong.
On the other hand, Princess Alluring is like someone coming to Halloween in blackface, and striking conversations about the dangers of racial miscegenation.
2614281 Should take a bit of reworking, but I might do it.
I do plan on trying to read Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake someday, if only to study the prose so that I can use it to simulate the thoughts or speech of the eldritch monstrosities I want to incorporate in my nascent fantasy setting. Thank god my beloved Pynchon and David Foster Wallace aren't technically modernists or else I'd feel really awkward talking to you!
I'm also glad that someone else distrusts darf as much as I do. As insensitive as it may be to say this, I'm not sorry to see him gone. (Seeing your MPA review now, I think we share even more common ground since it was the story "Not Now Big Brother" and his partner in writing that one's other story "Right Now Big Brother" that made me lose my mind and vow never to read his work again.)
As for My Princess Alluring, I read it all the way through a while back, and I feel stupid for not connecting the dots like you did. Let's see, what do I remember from after you stopped reading? All I know is that the royal wedding is between Shining Armor and Luna (I was glad that they didn't leave him twisting in the wind when I first read it, but now that I think about it the ship comes out of nowhere (probably the same cause as Rarilestia) and it's a power imbalance not unlike Twilight and Cadance) and that the follow-through is yet another thing where the writer got angry at the ending to "Canterlot Wedding Part 1" with everypony shitting on Twilight and deciding that they needed to "rewrite" that episode. As much as I understand their gripes with that, it still bothers me when people just bluntly slap the writers in the face in that specific way. I don't know why, especially since that whole grooming thing should have alarmed me much more. Also, the wedding is what triggers Twilight's ascension and Celestia ends up beign the only character besides Chrysalis who knows they're in an alternate timeline. Can't say I blame her for keeping that a secret, though I guess you would.
2614150
Oh yeah, that too. I forget when their wedding happens and whether or not it's before or after Shining and Luna's. Maybe it's only the engagement that happens by the end?
2615198
Maybe I'm just trying to save face because I didn't catch on either, but I doubt that the author had enough self-awareness to know what they were actually advocating. Stephenie Meyer didn't ship Jacob with Renesmee because she likes NAMBLA; she did it because she's an astonishingly ignorant human being who doesn't know what grooming is either. So for me, My Princess Alluring is like this cute person at a party who seems like a pretty cool and charming person to get to know, maybe even start a friendship with, and then they start complaining about affirmative action, welfare scammers and the Ferguson rioters and gushing about how awesome Atlas Shrugged is, and I start looking for a way to escape without ruining the party. AppleloosanPsychiatrist is more like the blackface guy.
2624627 The Jacob x Renesmee (How can someone think that is a good name?) love situation feels more like an unintended consequence than anything else. The whole thing is so lazy, essentially wiping away one of the core conflicts of the series, that I can't say any though was put into it.
Princess Alluring, however, seems to care a lot about explaining and justifying the relationship, and even references the idea that their relationship might be misunderstood by others. For me, that was the tipping point.
And I never read any of darf's clop, but the rest of his work, besides the stuff under NSTST, feels pretentious and superficial.
2629152
I actually felt like Not Now Big Brother would have worked pretty well if it wasn't a pony fic. It was the first time when I felt very strongly that something should stay the hell away from ponies, especially with the characters it uses (and assassinates).