Pannic Reads Stuff He Hates

Feature Box Funsies part 2

So I'm kind of tired right now. So let's see what's on the fimfiction feature box.

So there's a 2k-word clopfic about Fluttershy trying out glory holes. Meh. Something that's apparently Twidash except with Equestria Girls stuff or something. A Human/Queen Chrysalis clopfic. Some Daring Do thing that judging by the ratings and the fairly decent and imaginative story description apparently doesn't suck. "Gamer Luna VS Button's Mom," which probably isn't very good but I don't think anyone really cares apart from people who follow tumblrs 'n' stuff... Wait, why do I have the mature box checked? I hate clop.

"The Game of Thrones, Alicorn Style." Which apparently has nothing to do with that tv show or the books and is just a comedy with all the princesses. Something with Rainbow Dash as Captain of the Wonderbolts and having to deal with paperwork and stuff and that sounds kinda like a neat idea. I mean, seriously, that sounds like a neat story idea and that got pushed out in place of something with Twilight Sparkle in a futa gangbang?

"The Dragon's Rogue." This thing's tagged Romance, Alternate Universe, Human, and Anthro.

[Anthro characters. Set in a rule 63 universe.]

Davril Longfang thought he’d finally got it made, one final contract that would fill his pockets with so much coin he’d be able to retire from the often dangerous job of being a professional thief.

A contract to steal something very powerful from a cruel ruler in a faraway land beyond Cyrium.

Now, stuck in a completely new world with its own problems and internal conflicts. Davril has to fit in with the locals whilst at the same time trying to fulfill the contract given to him by the stranger.

Well, I'm sold. I like how this description has nothing to do with ponies. Let's take a look.

It was the beginning of winter in Cyrium. The harsh snow hailing from the frozen north, covered the vast majority of the northern parts of the country. The large Dalmora mountains, once covered in lush trees that reached into dozens upon dozens of points that could be seen through the entire country, now lay covered in a thick blanket of snow, almost blending into the clouded skies that dominated the north.

Okay. This prose isn't terrible. I hope it gives some of indication on what Cyrium is or the Dalmora mountains are. Or what they have to do with ponies.

Already I feel like this author wanted to write some sort of fantasy story, but he figured his chances of getting recognition were better if he put it on fimfiction instead of fictionpress.

This weather would have easily bothered those who lived in the much warmer southern Kingdoms, often regarding the folk who settled in the north fools and simpletons. This talk never bothered the northern Kingdoms though, for to them, it was the perfect life.

Oh. So it's like A Song of Ice and Fire. Got it.

Davril Longfang enjoyed the winter as well. The cold weather would usually mean that waring Warlords, Mercenary bands, bandits and other types of groups would be retreating back to their lairs in order to divide their loot, prepare themselves for raids on caravaneers traversing the cold climate and generally rest up. This was Davril’s favourite time of the year.

I'm noticing that certain words are being capitalized that probably shouldn't be. Words like "kingdoms," and "warlords," and "mercenary." Not unless these are, like, proper nouns and titles and stuff. Is that a worldbuilding detail? Are these formal titles?

It’s what brought joy to his life about his occupation. All around Cyrium, Lords, Barons, Nobles and other such wealthy persons would often have problems with raiders attacking their outposts or towns before any of the local military could do anything to stop them, there was also the problem dealing with hit and run raids on caravans that would often see them out of their personal belongings.

And often, they’d pay a lot of coin in order to have them returned.

Which meant contracts would often be given to a special type of mercenary. One’s who could get in and out of a building or stronghold stealthily without being discovered or if captured, couldn’t lead angry bandits or authoritative figures back to the ones who hired them in the first place. Davril was one of these people, a thief for hire, paid to do the jobs that guards were unable to perform due to the legal ramifications. They weren’t evil, neither were they good.

This is making me think of how much I'd rather be playing Thief. It's also made me think of something that's vitally missing. Mainly the fucking ponies. That's what I'm on the site for. Instead I'm given huge chunks of exposition.

For the past seven years, ever since he had turned eighteen, Davril had been trained and shown the ways of being a successful thief by various people. From the infamous Thieves Guild hidden in the city of New Port to the Red Falcon Company of Andonar, Davril had managed to learn the trade and turn it into a successful business for himself.

You know, I'm just thinking.

Wouldn't it be better for the story to introduce us to Davril by showing him doing something? Like, a scene of him doing some sort of sneak-thief stuff? Here it's just pouring exposition on. And there's a good time and place for exposition, but this is just an infodump at the beginning. I mean, I mentioned A Song of Ice and Fire earlier. If you think how A Game of Thrones started, you'll recall we immediately started on a scene with three members of the Night's Watch going and doing their job. There was exposition and stuff, but it weaved naturally into the action in a way where we were given information as it became relevant to what the characters were doing.

So far we've gotten a bunch of names and stuff and we don't have any idea what this is supposed to be about. And it continues.

In those seven years he has had his fair share of failures as well as his successes, ranging from imprisonment - only to break out several days later - to near death experiences at the hands of swords, axes, magic, arrows, bolts and even an angry housewife at one point in his life. But for all of his success, Davril had always wanted something more from his life, a bigger challenge. He’d covered the entire world pulling off contracts, from the Altorian Empire in the west to the Five Kingdoms of Men in the east, and was bored. Nothing was exciting anymore.

Story, we need an emotional connection. We need a reason to be interested or care. Your opening about the snow on the mountains is pretty and all, but that should be used to set the scene for something to happen or establish an atmosphere for something to happen. Here you've moved from setting an atmosphere to a very clinical description of some random dude's backstory, and I have no idea whether or not I'm supposed to care about the character.

I mean, Murky Number Seven also started with the protagonist rattling off his backstory, but that was fairly bare-bones. Mostly it was just to establish that he was a born slave and he missed his mother. It was also probably a case where the first-person narration actually helped, because that way we got to know his character. And it was also part of a framing device. And even then, that was only like a page of stuff before we got to see Murky in his usual routine, and we get an instant emotional connection with the character. You see, it's best if we actually get to know the character organically through their actions in the story as opposed to an essay about their life up to this point. And then it starts talking about how he's bored.

Even now as he walked down the streets of the small town of Maltasor on the Empire’s border, watching as the local children played in the snow as their parents supervised and went on with their daily lives, it reminded him of the days were the snow would mean the income of new contracts and pay. Something that now brought him nothing but boredom.

Oh, shit, actual action is happening right now. As in, things are doing things. Not very interesting things, though.

Also, there's a slight danger to characters who are bored. They tend to be boring. So reading this, I'm bored. Wait, does this mean my blog is boring?

As he trudged along in the snow, the wind tried to tug away at his hooded cloak, he wrapped it around him tighter. He soon came to his destination and a small smile formed on his face.

The White Dragon.

The Dragon was the town’s only tavern and one of Davril’s favourite places in the entire world. Not only did they not care about what you did for a living there, but they had some of the finest ales the north could produce. With a quick stride he pushed open the door and entered into the building, instantly being hit by the warmth within.

At this point it's very obvious what this story's problem is. The author was more focused on making prose that looked nice than he was on the elements of storytelling. You can do all the colorful language and scene-setting you like, but that has to serve the story. So far there isn't really a story. In fact, this would be much improved if everything before this section (or maybe the one before) were completely axed, or at least cut up and the information provided were put into the story in a more organic way. Then again, the other problem...

“Ah, Davril!” A shout from the bar caught his attention, “How’ve you been me boy?”

Davril smiled at the barkeep, he was a fairly aged and stocky Dwarf, something of a rarity to see in the north as they hated the snow. He was sporting a slightly dirty white shirt that was underneath a even filthier brown apron, not that Davril minded. The Dwarf had a long and knotted brown beard that came to rest halfway down his chest, making up for the lack of hair he had on his bald head.

Yeeeeep. We have a generic fantasy dwarf.

With another stride, Davril quickly made his way over to the bar as the Dwarf stepped out from behind the counter before firmly grasping Davril’s hand and shook it in greeting.

“Evening, Bolaris,” Davril greeted warmly, “The same as usual, yourself?”

“Not too bad, not too bad. Come, you look like you’re in dire need of an ale!” Bolaris chuckled, ushering Davril to a stool.

“Am I that predictable?” Davril laughed as he took his seat.

You kind of are.

You know, I don't really have that much of a problem with unoriginality. I mean, let's look at My Little Pony, where each of the main characters actually fits into a very stock archetype - the bookworm, the tomboy, the shy one, the glamorous one, etc. But the appeal there is that it does new things with them, like how the bookworm is a princess and how the fashionista is an artist. Having a cliche isn't a problem in and of itself as long as you can make it fun.

And Equestria is just a more interesting fantasy universe than this, with its own rules and stuff. It's got Princesses who are a big deal, Schizo Tech, weather factories, and an overall nice mix of fantasy elements and recognizable modern elements that help the setting get a unique style that's also very easy to relate to.

This is just boring. We have what appears to be a generic medieval fantasy setting. There are thief guilds. There's a stocky dwarf with a beard and he likes ale. It's always ale in these settings. It actually gets to the point where I start to suspect that this setting is generic on purpose, to highlight how bored the protagonist is. For example:

Bolaris poured out a large wooden tankard of ale for him, sliding it to Davril then carried on wiping down the counter as Davril took a heavy swig. As Davril slammed the half empty tankard onto the counter and let out a satisfied sigh, Bolaris began the conversation.

“So, you completed any good contracts as of late?” he asked, spitting into a tankard before wiping it with his cloth.

“Don't get me started…” Davril grumbled before taking another drink, “Same old shit as I usually get, steal a couple of trinkets. You know the drill.”

But even if this is intentional, I must reiterate: Bored characters are boring.

And how is it that settings that are so rich in detail and variety and lore like Tolkein, Warcraft, and the various Dungeons and Dragons settings, tend to inspire stuff that's so... uninspired? Fucking Standard Fantasy Setting. You know something about the Dungeons and Dragons video game Planescape: Torment? Your first party member is a floating, wisecracking skull. And he's voiced by Yakko Warner. And I mean, shit, at least The Witcher had unlockable boobs.

So Davril continues talking with this dwarf guy about stuff. And he's going back to talking about how he's bored with his thievery. This might be nice if the fucking narration hadn't already told us. And then there's a joke about how the dwarf likes drinking. Because that's never been in a fantasy story before.

The tavern was roaring with laughter as Bolaris and Davril leant on one another, the bar counter littered with dozens of tankards. By now their drinking had caught the attention of the other tavern goers who had since joined in the drinking, sharing jokes and stories as the evening went on. Currently, Bolaris was telling everyone a story from his days as a guard.

“Wait, wait it gets better, when the guard woke up his keys were missing and the prisoner was never heard from again!”

The tavern laughed louder as Bolaris slapped his knee hard, his laughs overwhelming the other patrons.

“Anyway, thats how I lost my job as a prison guard.”

As Bolaris continued to laugh along with Davril, some of the patrons had slowly stopped laughing, unsure if Bolaris was being serious or not.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooou.

Alright, everyone who wants to be an aspiring writer: Just because it was funny when Team Fortress 2 did it does not mean that it is funny when you do it.

So Davril is drunk and after a while he decides to go to bed.

Failing to open the door by normal means due to his intoxication he resorted to roughly slamming his body weight into it, breaking it open and falling to the floor with a loud thud. After laying on the ground groaning from landing on his face, he got up and used the nearby bed for support to stand himself upright. With a kick of his foot, he slammed the door shut, then he clambered into the bed and fell into the pillow with a soft ‘poomph’ and gave a sigh in contentment.

So... you break the door open by slamming into it, and then you're just able to kick it shut? Wouldn't the door be broken? Or was it just stuck?

So he goes to bed and the scene changes.

As Cyrium’s twin moons shone brightly down on Maltasor, a soft silence hung over the small town as the cold winter wind gently blew about. A few guards, stationed there by the Empire, patrolled the deserted streets wrapped warmly in thick, heavy fur cloaks. Two of them leaned against the wall of the tavern as they shared a bottle of warm liquid under the dim glow of a lantern.

“By Xerillien it’s freezing!” one grumbled, “remind me again how we got stationed here exactly?”

“Normal procedure, Milo,” the other replied, swigging from the bottle, “every couple of months they swap the guards around in Maltasor with Ravenwood, figured you would’ve known that.”

No, story. You can't do this. You can't give me more exposition without giving me some idea about why I'm supposed to care.

So Milo bitches about the cold a bit... maybe that's nice because it's actually characters interacting and stuff. You know, the thing that's supposed to help the audience get to know the characters and connect with them.

I'm sorry, but there's just something missing in this My Little Pony fanfic... oh, I know, the fucking ponies.

So blah blah blah, these two guards talk, one of them is a "Snow Elf" because we need more fucking names of things thrown at us.

As the two continued to talk, they remained oblivious to the hooded person watching them from ontop of a nearby rooftop carefully. The stranger jumped from the roof into a darkened alleyway and landed with a soft crunch as they hit the snow, leaning against the side of the building and focusing their attention once more on the two guards.

Waiting for a moment to focus on the two guards, a soft glow shone from under their hood and the guards heads briefly shone before vanishing in a second.

So this figure knocks the guards unconscious. Pretty sure that means the human guard is going to die, meaning that he was pretty much completely pointless unless Snow Elf guard takes it upon himself to avenge him, and then the figure goes into the tavern.

So this figure goes up to Davril's room and wakes him up, offering him employment or something. And I'm wondering:

Is there a reason this had to be done in the middle of the night? Is there a reason this person needed to knock out the guards? Why couldn't she just walk into the tavern? Or wait until the next morning?

So he tells her to fuck off and she impresses him with some sort of magic what makes him unable to do shit.

Say, I just thought of something. What if, instead of the narration just telling us that he's a thief and that he's bored with what he's doing, we opened on him doing a thieving job. And during this thieving job it's really tense and stuff, maybe he's inches away from tipping off a guard, or maybe the guards are already tipped off and looking for him. So you have this tense situation, but he's completely bored. Maybe he's got a piece of parchment that he's doodling on while they're looking for him. That way we have an exciting opening and our protagonist is introduced in a way that makes him stand out, and illustrates his predicament.

As opposed to a generic fantasy thief walks into a generic fantasy tavern and drinks generic fantasy ale with a generic fantasy dwarf.

But anyway, the lady explains she has a job.

“As I was saying… I have a job for you, if you’re interested.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?”

“I’m an ambitious creature and I want to have a certain ruler… out of the way in order to achieve my goals, but to do this I require a powerful magical artifact.”

Why is she straight-up telling the dude she wants to depose of a ruler? Can't she just describe the artifact she's after? Otherwise you're just gonna clue him in to the fact you're up to a nefarious scheme, and a guy in his position doesn't want to draw attention to himself that might get him killed for conspiring to depose a ruler. I mean, did Constantine tell Garrett what he wanted the Eye for? No he didn't! Because that would've been fucking stupid!

Davril more or less tells her this, but the lady assures him that this ruler is totes evil and shit. Davril points out he's well-known in every Kingdom(sic) in Cyrium, she replies that this kingdom isn't in Cyrium at all. It's in Equestria.

Finally we get to the fucking ponies.

So Davril considers, and the lady (who apparently has fangs) tells him she'll give him a shitton of gold, making him richer than the Altonian Emperor. Of course, for all we know, the Altonian Emperor's wealth might consist entirely of fool's gold, but apparently Davril's impressed. He just asks this:

“I’ll need time to familiarize myself with the layout of the land, as well as the city the ruler rules from and its neighbouring towns. Just so I can lower the risk of myself being caught.”

She agrees:

“Very well, you’ll have ten days before I will contact you. Then you have a week in order to complete the contract or you will be replaced.”

Uhh, lady? You do recall that Equestria is a kingdom that consists entirely of ponies, right? The decidedly human Davril is going to stick out like a sore thumb. I thought when you were gonna be thieving you wanted someone inconspicuous.

Davril nodded in understanding, during his early days he had failed to complete some contracts on time and it had been passed on to another. What he didn’t catch onto was the true meaning behind her words.

“Okay… so how do I go about getting to Equestria? By a specific boat or?”

"Or is it just a general boat? Things are different if it's just a general boat."

But he doesn't go by boat at all! She opens a big portal and pretty much just kicks him through before following him.

And that's the first chapter of this thing. So what does it do wrong?

It bombards the reader with its bland, unoriginal setting and generic protagonist, and I get the sneaking suspicion that all this stuff about said bland, unoriginal setting isn't going to mean a whole lot, given that the protagonist has been sent through a portal to Equestria, which I'm suspecting is like a different dimension or something. I mean, his home setting talks about having two moons. I don't remember Equestria having two moons.

Instead of establishing a protagonist and a reason to care about him, the author just dumps him in front of us and expects us to be interested in him. But the problem is that this character is completely boring and he doesn't really do anything in this chapter. All we see him do is:

1. Walk into a tavern.

2. Drink with his buddy.

3. Go to bed.

4. Get woken up by someone who is totally trustworthy and offers him a contract.

5. Takes the contract.

Not a whole lot that strongly characterizes him. You know what would have been better? Maybe if you established your thief character by showing him doing some thieving.

So what have we learned in the end?

We've learned that all the purple prose in the world doesn't mean a thing if you don't do what's really important: establish a reason for the reader to care, or at least give them something to be interested in. Though I guess I could say I'm interested in how the story will handle the ponies...

Comments

CCPrime Since: Dec, 1969

Sep 28th 2013 at 2:47:08 PM

Wow. That was so generic, it was literally painful to read, even WITH commentary! There's no way that even ponies would go any way toward making it good.

CCPrime Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 16th 2014 at 10:26:09 PM

Say, did you ever get around to looking through the rest of this story?

Pannic Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 24th 2014 at 5:24:33 PM

I'm afraid I did not. I gave the author a ring on fimfiction.net and detailed a less scathing version of my critique. He was actually very receptive. So I didn't continue.

However, I'm planning to kick up this liveblog again, going back to the roots.

It's Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons.

Live Blogs Pannic Reads Stuff He Hates Pannic2013-09-27 21:31:39

Comments

Live Blogs Pannic Reads Stuff He Hates
Pannic2013-09-27 21:31:39