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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

6-Star Reviews Part 144: The Vagabond

To read the story, click the image or follow this link

As was brought to my attention recently when someone asked me why I never give stories more than three stars, it's been a while since I came across anything that really blew me away in my (nearly complete!) journey through the 6-star stories.  Mid-February was the last time I gave a story four or five stars, in fact.  Will this be the fanfic (or pair of fanfics, as the case may be) that breaks the slump?  Find out after the break.

Impressions before reading:  The story description and tags don't seem, at first glance, to mesh well (saying someone is "condemned to a fate worse than death" seems to me to take an awfully liberal view of what's entailed by the "normal" tag).  Beyond that though, there's not a lot to say going in.  Past the original work, there are two sequels; the second sequel is incomplete and looks like it's staying that way, so I'll leave it alone and review the first two works seperately (POST READING EDIT: Actually, I'm going to put them together--there's just not enough to say about one that isn't true of the other).

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  (The Vagabond)  A mysterious pony, suffering horrible injuries, stumbles into Ponyville one day.  Twilight and company care for him, while learning of his mysterious, tragic past.

Thoughts after reading:  Even considering the wordcount of the fics, this review has taken me a while to get finished.  The reason is that, frankly, I didn't want to keep reading after the first chapter.  But I did, and here's my conclusion: I have literally nothing nice to say about these two stories.

Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.  I can honestly say that I've read stories that had worse editing, worse canon characterizations, more hackneyed plots, or which I personally found more unenjoyable than this one. Heck, I could say all that even if I were just comparing it to the 6-star stories I've reviewed.  But the fact of the matter is, there was not one thing about reading these that I can honestly say I liked, or even that I thought was done well--a relatively rare feat for a fanfic of any sort.

The problems start with the technical; although actual misspellings are rare--not absent, but rare--punctuation throughout is a weak point in the story ("Lemon Lime took [his hoof] to shake, but ended up being lifted and lowered several times, '...' Lemon Lime's eyes were the size of saucers, '...so would you like to join me?...could use the company.' he said voice cracking.").  Run-on sentences are also distressingly common, and paragraphs frequently shoehorn in reams of tangentially related odds and ends, lacking any obvious coherence.

On a larger level, construction is a major issue in the first story (less so in the second, though the problem never disappears).  POV changes and time skips regularly occur mid-chapter, without so much as a line break, and these sudden (and on some occasions, not immediately obvious) shifts are jarring and disorienting, often requiring a bit of re-reading to figure out why the story has abruptly jumped from Twilight in her (always capitalized, apparently) Library to Pinkie having a sugar crash some time later.

Characterizations are poor.  The main six all appear in the story, and only occasionally act anything like their canon counterparts.  Applejack suggesting early on that a doctor shouldn't be called to tend to the (very obviously on death's doorstep) stranger whom Fluttershy had just stumbled upon because it would be too expensive stuck out to me as a particularly dramatic departure from the show's characterization, but all the ponies bear at best superficial resemblance to those who star in FiM.  As for the OCs?  They are, to a man (pony, whatever) one-dimensional caricatures.  Dr. Mend in the first story, and Luna (pre-S2, and at her most angsty) in the second, both come to mind as particularly poor examples.

These characterizations weren't helped by the wooden, tone-deaf dialogue.  Speakers frequently launch into mini-soliloquies about their mental or emotional states, and equally frequently resort to hilariously overwrought lines more suited to theatrical parody than an ostensibly dramatic fanfic ("'Let me die!' he screamed, 'I can't take it anymore! It's all too much!" he gasped, "I didn't mean to! I DIDN'T MEAN TO! Oh, Celestia! I killed her! She was my only friend. I LOVED HERRRRRRRRRRRR!'").

As for the plot?  Without saying too much, both stories trade on really dark premises--and in the case of the first story at least, much darker than I suspect the author intended.  However, these exceedingly disturbing setups (the first story, for example, posits that murderers in Equestria are condemned to be tormented by the vengeful ghost of their victim, an that few ponies so cursed survive more than a few months themselves) are never really addressed, nor worked into the larger setting of Equestria.  Plenty of fanfics have shown that it is entirely possible to deal with adult themes without breaking suspension of disbelief, but the effort to meld the tone of the show and those themes is utterly nonexistent here.

Star rating:   (what does this mean?)

I really can't think of anything positive to say about this story that isn't just, "well, it's better at x than this other fic..."  If that isn't damning with faint praise, I don't know what is.

Recommendation:  I don't recommend this story.  There are worse things to read, sure, but hey: I don't recommend them, either.

Next time:  Pony Psychology Series, by Saddlesoap Opera

19 comments:

  1. Heh, I can still remember when some other story that never got finished used that image as its cover. Can't remember the name of it; all I do know is that it started as an Assassin's Creed crossover, dumped those aspects within a few chapters for some incredibly random stuff, and just proceeded to get worse and worse until the author gave up.

    ...

    Sorry, but I have nothing to say about The Vagabond. I gave it a shot, found it rather trite, and moved on. Good luck with the next set of stories.

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    1. I edited that story. It was written by Nukiemuffin (or something along those lines). I honestly don't know why I bothered, since i didn't like it either. Put more hours than I care to think about into it and I can't remember the name either.

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    2. Memories of Days Long Past; it was interesting early on, but like too many long fanficts, it was clear the author hadn't found out how to get from here to there. So the bottom fell out and well, you know the rest.


      I have no opinion on this story, but I've been waiting a long time for Pony Psychology to get reviewed.

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    3. Ah yes, MoDLP: the story with just enough interesting ideas to make you feel bad about not at least skimming through the latest chapter.

      And to you, Bugs: do you know I've never even touched any of the Pony Psychology stories? I have no idea how that happened; they were insanely popular, and everything I've heard about them has been positive. I've been looking forward to this one for a while now, too.

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  2. Hmm, I wonder if the author can tell that his story is this flawed, and that's why he hasn't uploaded it to FiMfic.

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    1. Personally, I think FiM Fiction is a better platform for writing fics than Drive. However, sometimes uploading stories to FiM Fiction is just an annoyance. Some people just prefer Drive for its simplicity and editor.

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  3. Don't get excited just yet, Chris. There are still plenty of incomplete stories for you to review. Spacegirl certainly isn't going to update anytime soon, so you may as well get that over with

    I was going through some old posts here and realized that about 10 months ago I'd promised to (eventually) read Shades of Grey and offer my feedback. I still have yet to do so. My apologies, Inquisitor. This time I'll actually put it in my queue so it doesn't get passed over... and I'll probably bump it higher than I'd normally place a story of its length 'cause now I feel bad

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    1. Don't worry. I was re-writing it, but real life issues have slowed that down to a crawl. I'm hoping I can have it complete again in about 2 months.

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    2. Ah. I was actually planning on reading it during my vacation next week, but I can wait if you'd rather have feedback on the final product (just made a FIMFic account so I can do that without cluttering Chris' comments section any further). Either way, I'll have lots of reading to catch up on

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    3. I certainly don't mind either way; I was just thinking in terms of maximizing your enjoyment of it :)

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  4. Linespace and indents? Begone, foul deamon!

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  5. Yep, that sounds pretty much about right.

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  6. I remember this story.

    Well, actually I don't. I remember seeing it on the front page of EqD and in story update posts. I never actually read it. Not beyond the first chapter anyway. I'm not sure what turned me off from it. I think I just found it rather uninteresting. It WAS a while ago.

    Out of curiosity, what actually happened in the story after the first chapter?

    And question for you, Chris. Coming down to either this or Brotherly Bond, (which is the only other review of yours I remember being this negative), which is worse?

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    1. Definitely Brotherly Bond, assuming we take "worst" to mean "one that I disliked the most." The Vagabond was "just" not good, while Brotherly Bond was aggressively offensive. I was frustrated and bored by the former, but the latter actually angered me.

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  7. Will this be the fanfic (or pair of fanfics, as the case may be) that breaks the slump?

    Knowing absolutely nothing about this fic, I'm gonna take a wild guess and go with... no.

    *opens blog post, scrolls down*

    Boy, do I hate being right all the time.

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    1. Betteridge's Law: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

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  8. Hey Chris what's your plan after you go through all the six stars stories? Are you going to go through the five stars? Review stuff not on eqd?

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    1. Well, I'm going to retire the 6-star reviews--or at least, the name. Past that? I'll keep posting fanfic commentary, but I haven't decided exactly how I want to go about doing that yet.

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    2. The format of your mini-reviews is a good place to start. Just keep us updated on what you've read, maybe take requests, and write longer reviews when you have a lot to say about a particular story. I think people will definitely be interested in knowing what you think about fanfics so long as fanfics are important. :)

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