Para's Old Lengthy And In-Depth Fanfiction Reviews

First of all,

You will see why this is relevant later.

I am Jaxxon M. Citadel, age 27, and I’m much more than just your average Brony.

Yes.

Yes you are.

You're...

...

...

Um...

...

Shit.

...

...

No.

No you're not.

You're exactly like all the other bronies.

Except you are now going to get reviewed by me.

The ride will never end, baby. We'll do such glorious things together.

(Title credits now roll, consisting of somebody hanging cut-out name tags in front of a badly drawn parasprite with oversized tits while humming fanfare in such a way that it sounds remarkably similar to farting)

Anyway.

As you may have noticed by now, I only bequeath the honor of Lengthy, In-Depth Reviews to people who do everything they can to earn it. They earn it by being utter and complete douchebags, in a way so obvious and so fetid that nobody could ever mistake this for an attack blog when I'm dissecting just how much their godawful bullshit opinion pervades what they write.

That's really the key. It pervades their writing. I can tolerate unpleasant authors--I am one. But there are a few people whose unpleasantness actually, tangibly, finds its way into their work. Sometimes, this is in the form of a smug, smarmy atmosphere (as in the case of an author who I will review another time) or sheer laziness, as in the case of Ace, the writer of Ace Combat: Divided Feelings (or whatever it was)-- you know, my last review, where the guy ripped off Bad_Seed_72 and Blueball Blitz because he was too uncreative to come up with his own ideas.

Once in a while, though, there's a special case; a disturbance so profound that it comes out in the form of actual, specific statements in and about the fic.

This is one of those cases.

See, The Mare Who Wants a Human Child is a typical story about a human who falls in love with a pony. Yeah, yeah, we've heard it before. But oh, you wouldn't believe what nightmares you can find buried beneath the first layer of permafrostshit in some of these fics.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning.

The Mare Who Wants a Human Child is the story of Jaxxon M. Citadel, a 27 year old brony who is not like all the other bronies. Yes, I know. I'll make fun of it later.

Here are the relevant parts of the summary that aren't devoted to smugboxing about getting featured:

Thanks to my own genius (and quite a bit of luck), I've managed to open a travel agency to allow Bronies to take vacations to Equestria.  However, I hadn't expected to fall in love, and now I have a secret family who I must keep hidden from my parents and siblings at all costs.  This is a story of my struggles to keep my wife and foals a secret from my own flesh and blood in the human world.

Yeah.

BTW, the idea of him having a secret, forbidden relationship will become really, really relevant in a bit, just like that hot man at the top. Wait for it. We're getting closer.

Based partially on a dream I had.

But honestly, that's not where I started facepalming. No. It was neutral to me until I opened it and read the first line.

I am Jaxxon M. Citadel, age 27, and I’m much more than just your average Brony.

That line... actually does not sum up everything that's wrong with this fic, but it tries pretty goddamn hard.

Edgy misspelled name? Check. Oddly specific age older than the usual brony age and thus probably also the writer's age? Check, although actually I think he's 23. But I digress. Statement of being part of a particular group while also claiming to be "more than your average [x]" where [x] is the group in question? Check! Abrupt introduction showing no understanding of flow or atmosphere! Check.

There, I made fun of it.

And as I read down, I knew instinctively

I managed to imitate the book portal idea from the game Myst, and apply it to a slightly modified version of the complete script of My Little Pony:  Friendship is Magic.  Now I can go back and forth between Equestria and Earth whenever I want

that this would be an unparalleled exercise

“Honey?  I need some help with the kids again!”

in cultivating my own personal hell to look forward to

I’m secretly married to Lyra Heartstrings

when all the facehoofingpalming and cringing either caves in my face or causes me to break my own spine by accident.

Actually, I can't lie: this story isn't especially awful at this point. It's soulless, which is far, far worse. It's an idea with surprising potential, all of which is wasted on a generic self-insert gary stu fic.

It's not BAD, per se. It's just boring. Basically jASSon wants to have a brood of mutant freaks with Lyra, who has a gigantic humans fetish. There's like 2 lines of explanation for this, but eh. They can't be together, forbidden romance, bla bla bla, people angry, guns shooting, badass gary stu--you've read this all before, so why should I explain it again? It was in every other gary stu fic in history.

He is a gary stu, by the way. A self-insert. So is Lyra. So is everybody the author doesn't hate. More on that in a bit.

The dialogue and interaction is surprisingly good for a story of this nature; I'd go so far as to say it doesn't reek of pure undiluted autism like most other human in Equestria fics always do. It's still stilted at times, but there's little that's particularly cringeworthy aside from the content it's showing. The narration, though, is obnoxiously smug and self-celebratory at times:

Oh, did I mention that the two of us can actually think semi-clearly during sex?  Well, we can.

They have sex, they interact with their kids, they do stuff. It's cute. His clop writing isn't totally awful, just... really fucking lacking, like everything else in this. And although it could be argued that he's going for a minimalist effect because of how sparse the detail is, seeing as it's not just a clopfic, I highly doubt that's the case. But I think you'll get why he doesn't find writing about nice hetero sexy time appealing in a bit.

What makes this so memorable, or part of it, is related to the gary stu part. Jaxxon is an immense gary stu, don't ever think otherwise--he's a clever, yet misunderstood, genius with a hot body and a hot pony wife living a tortured existence because society won't accept his innocent differences. But there's not much at all to say about it, really. I can't even be arsed to go find examples because, well, the whole thing is an example.

The problem with this story, more than anything else, is that this is one of those things where the creator lets their political and social beliefs do far more than influence the writing. This thing is a dissertation of soapboxing on various topics. Even the non-soapbox parts have soap suds on them. These characters are nothing but self-inserts (at best) and finger puppets that regurgitate the author's thoughts on a particular topic (at... not even worst).

Let me give you an example or two. Just two, actually, because I want to get to the real gold of this review. There are tons of other examples if you care enough to look.

“For example, from what the show tells about this world, all the denizens are clearly heterosexual.  Unfortunately, due to the show never going into detail besides just showing that the only romantic relationships in the show are straight, some fans have taken… liberties on the lack of detail.”

My wife shuddered.  “If you told Princess Celestia about that, I think she’d demand to speak with the producers of the show about this world and force them to clarify that that is not normal here.  We have support groups for ponies like that.”

Oh, god.fgdhj

Oh god this is literally setting itself up.

And I'm not just talking about the homophobia. That's obvious. No, there's something far more hilarious in this story that we haven't gotten to yet. But it'll come in just a bit. Heh... cum.

In the meantime, take a look at this.

“Son, isn’t owning a fully automatic weapon illegal?” my father asks as he eyes the weapon with concern.

        “Not really,” I explain as I pull out three clips of twenty rounds.  “The mainstream media is just so anti-gun that they act like they are.  There’s a federal fully automatic firearm registry, and I’m on it.  Buying ammo and weapons that fall into that category isn’t easy, though.  You usually can’t find them at gun shows or weapons stores.  I bought this stuff on a military base, and it was far from cheap.”

Chrrrist.

Do I even need to?

I own four firearms and I still found that grating.

Are any of you familiar with the comic artist known as Jay Naylor? Because this guy has exactly the same problem as Naylor does--his work is a combination of excessive fanservice, soapboxing, and strawmanning, with little actual substance between all that. Attempts to tell an epic story are fisted by the use of characters as either mouthpieces or strawmen, and they even have the same brand of douchebaggery to spew, and everything else is dropped in favor of gratuitous panty shots, cleavage, and badassness.

I really don't have much more to say about this beyond that. I couldn't even keep up with the plot because it was so convoluted and boring--something to do with angry people not liking the idea of a grown man fucking a pastel horse and trying to lynch them, or the mafia, or Scrubs, or that one time in Badass Land, or something. It's utterly irrelevant; there's no real growth in the fic, just the author using every single character he likes--particularly Lyra and his gary stu--as puppets to talk about his political and fandom beliefs at every opportunity.

So, really, this wasn't worth reviewing. It's not horribly bad, it's not particularly out of the ordinary, it's not good, it's not anything. It's just bland, uninspired HiE fuckery with some clop and plot thrown in. There are people who will find it entertaining, sure--I can understand it legitimately appealing to people who like HiE, because the premise is slightly out of the ordinary.

But then there's that little thing about homosexuality in Equestria.

And I'm going to focus on that a lot for the rest of this review.

Because, really, it hasn't been talked about enough in the flames the story has gotten. It needs to be brought to the attention of the masses, because it's what made me want to review this at all.

We've established several times that the author is a soapboxing conservative. Let's look at that in depth.

Look.  I'm the kind of person who believes that right and wrong are set in stone.  Public opinion can just go f itself.  Throughout history, there have been societies that popularize some kind of wrong act and think that just because they say it's right, it suddenly is.  I'm sorry, but I have difficulty supporting the lifestyle of people who throw rocks at missionaries from a religion that just happens to disagree with them.

Hint: when the word "lifestyle" is involved, and the speaker is Christian, we're talking about

fucking huge sinful gay anal faggotry

Yes, yes. I know.

This person is advocating the bestial impregnation of animals by humans while at the same time bashing homosexuals for being an abomination.

That would be enough, and I'm not going to lower myself to mocking a guy for basically fapping to about half the stuff I schlick it to.

So, I was going to wrap this up, still a little bit confused and feeling that I was still missing out on something important... and then I saw it.

AND THEN

LIKE A SHINING ANGEL FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE

THERE WAS THIS (emphasis mine):

I'm not "anti-gay", I'm an ex-gay, whether you choose to believe me or not.  Take a look at this link:  http://www.homosexuals-anonymous.com/  People like these helped me to overcome my unwanted same-sex attraction.  Yes, I was born that way, but I didn't want to stay that way.  You can change almost anything about who you are, and orientation isn't set in stone, either.

Look, normally, I don't do ad hominem attacks outside of Skype.

This is no different.

Before any of you go whacking your dick against the report button, this shit that I am talking about is all in his story. I don't care what OP does in his personal time. The homophobia, the conversion therapy advocacy--It's all in his story, the notes for his story, or explained in the comments when people asked him what the fucking hell he was thinking.

Let me explain, without even using his comments as a reference:

It's a story about a man who's in a socially forbidden relationship that he's hiding from the world at large.

This man wants a kid with his partner but seemingly can't have one.

The world hates their union.

Derr, I wonder if this could be a subconscious expression of something.

Furthermore:

OP made Lyra an ex-lesbian (or at least someone with a psychosis triggered by being accused of being gay).

Equestria is shown to advocate gay conversion therapy.

Several times.

So does the narrative.

If anyone thinks this is not relevant, please, I eagerly await your presented anus to jam both fists into.

Oh! And the author's notes also preach that pseudoscientific garbage, by the way.

When asked about his homophobia, he explained that homos can be cured for Jesus.

This man is using his story's popularity to preach something incredibly harmful to people who might be insecure or ashamed of their sexual/gender identity. He's advocating harmful "therapy" that's been proven repeatedly to be ultimately ineffective and psychologically scarring to those who undergo it. He will think this is a good and righteous thing, but I happen to disagree with him, and since we're in Britain (as per the location of kniggy's sex mansion) I don't have to abide by any de facto freedom of speech between anybody at all, because Britain is a monarchist nation that only cares about the freedom to drink tea.

You can preach whatever you like, and I'll respect it where I'm required to, and maybe even defend it, because I think fedora atheism is far more annoying than Christianity of any brand--but the moment you sneak that crap into your fucking story, it's fair game for me to comment on right here.

Things like this are why I try to keep my stories as apolitical as possible, whenever possible. FIMFics in general are neither the place (some hoers country) nor the setting (my little talking pastel hoers) to cram politicfagging into the narrative.

This is not a bad fic, by most measures. But what it stands for is hypocritical, and what it advocates is disgusting.

I have already spoken against the author enough, so I won't even begin to address the blogs he made about his fic getting reviewed by Rage and ending up in Plan 9. That's been addressed repeatedly elsewhere, and I'm actually not making this solely to attack the author--just the mountain of garbage under the surface of his story. It's just... difficult... to convey the full measure of what utter faggotry this thing is comprised of without knowing exactly what kind of faggotry is going on behind the scenes.

It's a mediocre mess that got popular because I don't even know why. But it's a mediocre mess with a hidden core of hate and self-denial, like... like injecting fucking Zyklon B into a McDonalds cheeseburger. Both are bad for you, but one of them is a lot worse for you than the other.

Here's a link if you want to read it for yourself.

~para