Wheeeee, finally finishing this up! Thank fucking god. Tomorrow more regular reviews, and then eventually I’ll try to do the final round.
This is a cute one. It’s also a weird one, since it’s not actually a historical piece but a fairy tale. I wonder how many recycled plot bunnies were spawned by R1? Anyway, it has the slight emptiness a lot of fairy tales have, where there’s not much explanation around them and the characters are more like archetypes than anything. Also, I felt bad for the witch.
FIC: The Legende of the Bloud Knight and Spece Sylph (Kanaya♦Karkat)
So back in the first one, there was this deliberate badfic written with Tavros’ quirk. This one is written in Ye Olde English.
FIC: Freude der Welt (John♥Karkat)
Good job with the atmosphere, but like a lot of AUs the characters are mostly identifiable by name rather than behavior.
FIC/ART: Rhapsody in Blue (Aradia♥Sollux)
SEQUENTIAL ART: A Ship for a Shipper
Cute, but it’s mostly extended setup for a pun. The setting is steampunk, not historical, the characters have little personality.
FIC/ART: The Beginning of a Beautiful Matespritship (Kanaya♥Rose)
Another one that does a good job at transposing the characters without losing on either setting or personality.
FIC/ART: Motherfucking Tales of Yore (Gamzee♥Karkat)
I don’t know. The story itself seems fine, it just seems to have an inconsistent connection with the characters. The bit with Nepeta is a good summation: on the one hand, Nepeta doesn’t want to be cured of being a cat, because she’s Nepeta, and this is funny, IC, and the cat is adorable. On the other, Nepeta has a huge crush on Karkat, why would she turn down being kissed? (You could still have the joke she wants to be a cat – Karkat kisses her, she turns back into a girl…then she kisses him again and changes back. Or it doesn’t work because she made up the whole thing just for this purpose.) And it’s another fairy tale.
Adorable and full of a lot of nice character moments. It has the usual problem where moirallegiance is basically friendship, but it gets a pass here because it’s a story focusing on another mirroring moirail pair, so it’s easier to read the two as a stable moirail pair.
FIC/ART: Back to the Alternearth Jurassic (Karkat♥Sollux)
When I started on this one I thought we’d finally be seeing one of these that doesn’t start off with the assumption they’ve always been in a relationship and looking forward to finally, finally seeing one of these that showed them getting together. But then a few pages we suddenly run into the established relationship. It’s not just lazy, it’s that it highlights that they’re not really in a relationship every time they have normal banter like they they do in canon only for Sollux to suddenly abruptly shove in some innuendo at the end. It’s doing the exact opposite of selling the pairing.
What this reminds me of are KH fics that would try to copy the plot of the game but say that Sora and Riku were in love. The fic would go “Canon scene, new scene that tries to explain how actually canon scene consisted of Sora thinking about how in love with Riku he was, canon scene, new scene that tries to explain how that one actually consisted of Sora and Riku’s love, repeat until I stop reading. All these ever accomplished was taking a pairing that was quite plausible in canon and making it look impossible. There are a lot of pairings that work or even have subtext but that doesn’t mean they can be treated as current canon.
FIC: Prehistoric Wasteland (Alchemiter)
Really good, but I would have really preferred the disaster to not be the actual extinction event. A local volcano would work, but with this I really can’t shake the depressing fact that they’re just delaying the inevitable. If it wasn’t for that I’d have completely enjoyed this.
FIC/ART: The MacGuffin File (Dave♥Terezi)
I think this one does best at actually being an alternate history. There’s a couple fic that have nice background notes, but none to the same degree. Lovely characterization, nice background pairings, all around a great job.
It’s art. Competently done, could be any character.
ART: The Musician and the Law-Breaker (Eridan♥Sollux)
Also art, less competently done.
FIC/ART: The Cupric Page (Dave♥Tavros)
Readable instead of Ye Olde Irritating, thank god. The way it’s composed is quite well done, in fact. Otherwise…pretty much your standard little-connection-to-canon-cast AU. And I don’t much like the plotline either – my dislike for inevitably the villain Vriska is probably petty, but there’s also something irritating about having Tavros get the courage to slay her for to protect his true love. Another fairy tale.
SEQUENTIAL ART: Untitled (Eridan♠Sollux)
…this has nothing to do with the characters, and it’s not spades either.
FIC/ART: running this race to win (but nothing’s for keeps) (Terezi♠Vriska)
This one is just somewhat amateur overall.
FST: Jazz and Class: A Mixtape (Jade♥Kanaya)
A very well written story, but one where the setting seems to have overtaken the characters. It’s done with enough skill I think it works as fanfic, but for something that’s supposed to focus on a relationship and by extension their personalities, I don’t think it’s the best fit here.
FIC/ART: Put On a Show (Karkat♥Terezi)
Rather lackluster. There isn’t much reason for why the characters are in their roles, and the romance is just a matter of them being in one.
FIC/ART: Karkat X (Jade♥Karkat)
This is sadly gone, which is a shame because I think people were really missing a larger point for the obvious problem. The real issue is that Karkat isn’t anything like Malcom X. Malcom X was an intelligent, thoughtful man whose anger was a response to the situation. Karkat is a shouty teenager whose anger is a smokescreen to avoid dealing with his real emotions. He’s also a wuss and full of squishy friendship feelings. Karkat X is combining two people who were both outwardly angry but got there in very different ways. If you want a good combination, Karkat and Martin Luther King would have been far better. (…so would having Karkat be dealing with blood color instead of being for all trolls, but I suppose that was inevitable given this is a human/troll pairing.)
FIC: Have a Flashy Time (Eridan♥Karkat)
More dubious characterization, and the setting didn’t impress.
FIC/ART: Another Castle (Bro♥Dave)
I really don’t know what’s with the Bro/Dave ones. This time we have “okay, so they’re fucking” as the storyline. Also, the art is terrible.
FIC: All’s Fair (Eridan♠Vriska)
This one is similar to the Jade<3Kanaya, in that it’s more about very similar people in a different setting. Unlike that one, the pieces don’t fit very well. Making Vriska a nurse at a hospital is terribly random and there’s no connection to their canon relationship because Eridan has way too much power over her here, or should. Had Vriska been a doctor or at least a respected nurse rather than someone one strike short of being fired, it might have worked, but… It’s a shame, because otherwise this one does a pretty good job at portraying blackrom. It even manages to make it fit with them as humans.
FANADVENTURE: Restart Game (Dave♦Terezi)
A lot of effort. But the plotline was random and Terezi seemed OOC, and the gimmick was just annoying. (And more randomly evil Vriska.)
FIC: Be the Other Girl (Ectobiology)
Somewhat convoluted in terms of plot (it might have been better to go full AU instead of doomed timeline), but definitely adorable.
FIC: The Witch of Perigee Swamp (Dave♥Jade)
Fairy tale rather than historical, and pretty flat. There’s no real conflict either.
FIC: Night of the Meteors (John♥Rose♥Dave♥Jade)
““Oh good,” said Mr John Egbert, another brother cumfriend cum lover ” I don’t know why they bother having a warnings section when it’s not getting used. This is actually a decent steampunk version that manages not to seem as ahistoric as most, but there are certain issues with this pairing that any story centering on them really needs to address.
It’s art. And not especially historic art.
Another ambitious one. It’s not actually a game, but it’s a good way to bind together music and slight animation shifts. Equius’ inclusion is the weak point here – oddly, I feel it might have been more shippy if it hadn’t been intended as such, if that makes sense. I get the impression with a lot of these that the shippers think how the pair works is just obvious, so they aren’t actually good at developing it. This is really about Aradia and Tavros, with a plot contrivance to get Equius into the picture.
FIC/ART: The Legend of Harleycles (Jade♥Rose)
This is an odd one. I think the best description would be that it’s about different characters with a lot of canon mannerisms on top, so it still manages to include a lot of what’s appealing for those characters. But the catalyst for the relationship was somewhat forced (Jade is already interested in Rose) and I felt the ending was rushed, though – I think it’s a suicide, though that could be clearer.
Quite impressive, and gets a lot across just with body language.
FIC/ART/FST: Rip Her To Shreds (Terezi♥Vriska)
Adorable and so very, very Vriska. It also does a good job of creating an alternate fallout for the two of them that works in a human AU.
ART: Time is [L]OVE (Dave♠Karkat)
I really don’t know.
“So back in the first one, there was this deliberate badfic written with Tavros’ quirk. This one is written in Ye Olde English.”
Ye Middle English, actually, and the person who wrote it would be able to tell you the difference. (/overly-defensive of internet friends) Of course, if you can’t read it, accuracy doesn’t really help.
Ye Olde generally only means middle and later anyway, since actual Old English is practically another language and so escapes flippant modifiers.
Haha, yeah, the point of that sentence was really just that Nex knows what she’s doing. I actually thought it was completely awesome, but I can understand why other people would disagree.
Oh, it looked well done, I just literally can’t get through it so I can’t comment on the story. The Tavros one looked IC too.