FiM Fiction Review - Fool's Gold

Sorry for the late review. I've been running around like a madman all week and lady luck hasn't exactly been fond of my efforts to get reviews done. Not to mention I've come down with some horrid bug flying around. Albeit it did give me a chance to wrap up in blankets and push on through Merc the Jerk's Fool's Gold. The glass half full right? Fool's Gold is an action-packed adventure that definitely has its moments, but also has its fair share of problems. Characterization can be a bit rough at parts and while the Mane 6 are not exactly the personalities we know and love from the show, they pull on through and stick to their cores. Decent dialogue drives much of the story. It feels a bit odd at first due to the action-driven nature of Fool's Gold but steadily improves as you get a feel for the pace and humor. Overall, Fool's Gold feels mediocre at the beginning and hits a few bumps along the way out but achieves what it set out to do: be a fun action-packed ride. Onward to the review!

FiM Fiction Review - Two Worlds; One Family

Here we go again. I'll be blunt. Kind of like a band-aid: if you know it'll be painful, might as well take it off quickly. MrEnter's Two Worlds; One Family needs many revisions. From pacing to characterization, this story is horribly flawed. Although there are some moments that tear you up a bit, the characters are uninteresting and the reader has little reason to care for them. We see the main character barely develop due to some poor storytelling choices and There not much reason to care for the sub-conflict involving the Mane 6. When other original characters are added to the story, they hardly move the plot (if there was any) forward. The list really goes on and on. Two Worlds; One Family is in desperate need of some rewriting and a lot needs to be thrown out or polished. However, if I mentioned all the issues this story has here, it would be called the intro. Onward to the review!

FiM Fiction Review - The End [Stories Back From the Read - Season 1]

I get the feeling I'm going to get a lot of hate for this. Shalrath's The End is by far the most liked story reviewed on this blog, but I would fail as a critic if I told you I was impressed and therefore, earn your hatred. Nevertheless, a critic who doesn't expect to be hated obviously didn't read the job description thoroughly and didn't realize that hatred simply goes under “occupational hazard.” The End is at best a solid story with an excellent presentation but sub-par story elements. Even with its solid dialogue and good structure, The End is likely to disappoint those of you looking for a deeper read with lousy character development and poor story progression. For the sake of getting it over and done with, onward to the review!

FiM Fiction Review - Everfree Courier

Human in Equestria stories. They float to the top of my inbox more than you might think. Kind of like the way my notes have somehow wandered off my hard drive for the last few days. Creepy if you ask me. I felt that DVAN56's Everfree Courier had several issues. The largest of these issues are the characters. Besides being straight up unnaturally unpleasant to each other, they often have "mood swings" and seem like clones. This is only exaggerated by the poor dialogue which is often predictable and linear. In a close second, Everfree Courier has many technical issues and weak storytelling. I really do hate negative reviews. I'm not just doing it to pick on you guys. Nevertheless, onwards to the review!  

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Everfree Courier by DVAN56
Complete (Finished Jan 17, 2013) 
The Everfree forest needs a package delivered and only a human can do it in these dark times. The man must fight his way through the lands of Equestria to Canterlot if he is ever to see his home again. Read it here.   
Tags: Adventure, Human 
Rating: Teen 

I believe Everfree Courier would benefit greatly from a proof-reader. There were multiple grammar and spelling errors. The strangest of all these errors was that Everfree Courier suffered from a strange case of switching tense while writing. While most writers write in past tense (for example: Jane tiptoed to the door and opened it carefully), this story switches between past and present tense, sometimes mid-chapter or mid-sentence. This rather large technical error confuses the reader and is bad writing practice.  

The next rather large technical issue with Everfree Courier is a little something I like to call the Diary Syndrome. When a story suffers from Diary Syndrome, it is like a diary, just listing off the events of the story and adding commentary here and there. The end result is something that is clunky and rather undercooked. It affects pacing, making the story skip through plot points and shortening the story overall.  

I believe that most stories that feature a post-apocalyptic Equestria really set out to tug at your heart strings. It's knowing the land and its people during better times that makes you cheer on the protagonists in hope of a "restoration to the land's former glory." I'm afraid Everfree Courier doesn't set the mood to really make the reader care. Descriptors are bland and linear, making it feel like not much attention was given to fully flesh out the environment.  

As said in the introduction, the character are not exactly this story's strength. They are a minor bit clone-y and aren't always consistent with their established personalities. However, it's not really the characters that are weak, but their dialogue. Dialogue is undeniably the strongest avenue to showcase characters but Everfree Courier abuses it. Conversations feel fake and extremely linear. Not to mention there is a lot of explaining in the story. These explanations aren't exactly conversations, but long lines of dialogue that explain a story element.  

I usually don't like to mention story elements and concepts, since these reviews mostly highlight story mechanics and the likes, but I felt this needed to be mentioned. Everfree Courier's storyline is disjointed and it felt like many of the story elements didn't need to be there in the first place. Not to mention the story slams on the brake too often to explain these overly complex elements that didn't do much to change the storyline. Remember, originality shouldn't be at the sacrifice of a good, clean story arc.  

This brings me to my next point, where is the story arc? I keep getting the whole epic journey sort of vibe but Everfree Courier is much too short to really make me feel like the characters really withstood a challenging ordeal. I really don't mean to compare, but take ToixStory's Freeze Frame for example.  It is clear that ToixStory fleshed out just want kind of hurdles his characters were going to have to face to reach their ultimate goal. The readers really get a taste of how they had to face the hurdles of the conflict at hand and each other as a team. I didn't feel that with Everfree Courier. Instead, it was just Get From Point A to Point B with one or two little setbacks. I honestly wish this story was a bit longer just to truly see how the character handle their day-to-day ordeals. Not to mention the characters didn't exactly change over this time. After all, a story is not about what happened, it's about what happened to the characters and how it changed them for better or for worse.  

In the end of the day, Everfree Courier has a lot of potential but just needs to full flesh out its dialogue and characters. If it bring its imaginative story elements and characters together into a more tightly knit storyline but also widens its focus to show the reader "the journey," I believe DVAN can really put something amazing together. I see a lot of potential with you DVAN, and I wish you the best of luck with your future ideas. This has been Admujica. You guys have a great weekend.  

Everfree Courier gets a score of: 3 out of 10  

Poor dialogue and characterization plague an already weak story arc 

Read it here.   

FiM Fiction Review - The Human and The Tall One

I couldn't help but notice that I have been giving out lower and lower scores as of late. I think I might just be growing a bit ill-humored and therefore more willing to burn a box of puppies. I never liked the bloody things anyways. TheMadBrony’s The Human and the Tall One has an entertaining main character that is driving force behind this story. The conversations he has with himself are hilarious and while it doesn’t express internal conflict, his multiple personalities provide very amusing commentary. However, this story is quickly weighed down by mediocre dialogue and bad characterization. Even more so, the narrative and writing need some work. This is going to be another negative review, isn't it? Yep! Onward to reviews!