Hello, everypony. I am the Critique and welcome to another day of Nightmare Month!

Last week, we saw a story that was less about the ‘horror’ and more about the ‘horrible’. Dat ending though… With that in mind, I’ve decided to look into a much darker story. Hopefully that will give us some scares that actually keep me up at night and not the scares that send T.V’s through my window.

A story called Shadows of the Everfree by Angelfire

How very typical. The Everfree Forest is, of course, the only scary place in Equestria. There are no other place scarier than that. Besides, Shining Armor’s armpit.

See? A terrifying image.

The first thing I want to draw attention to is the little poem at the start of the story… And why it fails epicly.

There is still a tale yet to be told

Of several ponies searching for gold

They went away to hunt for their fortune

Onto the very edge of oblivion

Once they found what peaked their interest

They stirred the darkness within the forest

One by one they fell to the fright

Until only one was left in the night

All alone under the moonlit sky

The last bits of light fled from his eye

Why the hell did you just rhyme ‘fortune’ with ‘oblivion’?! They don’t fucking rhyme! They aren’t even the same fucking syllable!

Sorry, I just get a little upset when people try to rhyme that shouldn’t. You can call me a hypocrite when I finally do that long awaited review where I do it entirely in rhyme.

In the land of Equestria there are many ways to live ones life.

Unlike most places, where you are usually given the options for slave or tax accountant.

From being a librarian to a teacher, weather parolee to apple farmer.

To angry pony who complains about things nopony else cares about.

So the story introduces a group of characters who are going on some kind of treasure hunt. The first is Maximus Dare, who is a good attempt at making a name as stupid as Cypher Rage, but falls just a little short on the pretentious meter.

Next, we have Jane Doe, a girl who doesn’t know her real name, and just stuck with the name Jane Doe… Okay, legit. And probably the only character who actually has a clever name. I’m sure that will get ruined by the end of this.

Next, we have Beast and tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar.

then there is Beast, a massive earth pony with dull blue fur & a black-blue mane,

A massive, blue haired beast? … Why does that sound familiar?

Do you mind, Doctor McCoy? I’m in the middle of something.

There is inventory. The menu screen that holds all your items and equipment, but can only hold up to 14 slots.

And two others, but I’m not even going to bother with them, since I’ve only known these character for about 2 paragraphs and already I don’t care. Not because that we don’t know anything about them. It’s because anything we know about them is pretty much given to us in the paragraph that introduces them.

Way to tell us who your characters are instead of… you know… you guys know what I’m going to say, so I’ll let you guys say it.

The group starts to discuss the expedition that they are supposed to be on and that tomorrow they will begin their journey. I question the reason this scene exists. It doesn’t really develop the characters, it doesn’t tell us what they are looking or why and just serves to delay us from the true point of the story. Why didn’t they just start the story at the start of the expedition where the interesting stuff is already on it’s way, instead of piddling around for 500 words. I wouldn’t have mind if the characters were anyway developed by the end of this scene.

Anyway, Maximus goes to Twilight’s library to gets some information on the Everfree Forest and is all buddy, buddy with her. Oh, good. I think that’s a record for the ‘How Fast Can You Befriend the Main Six” award.

He goes back to Sugar Cube Corner for Pinkie Pie’s mandatory cameo… I mean… to meet up with his crew before they go on their adventure. And we start off our amazing adventure with the most amazing thing that the story can offer us… Packing!

“Hey Sketch you done packing yet!” Maximus called out.

“Almost!” Sketch replied agitated, “It would go faster if you helped!”

“But if he did help you wouldn’t be working as hard!” Jane replied for Maximus, “& where’s the fun in that?”

“There, done,” Sketch called again finished packing his bag. The earth pony handed his travel pack to Inventory who gladly accepted it & placed it on top of the others he was in charge of.

Fortunately, due to the terrible pacing of this story, the scenes are over before you realize they were even there.

The group travels through the forest and makes their way across some old bridge before coming to the ruins of a castle. This would be rather an unique discover if Twilight and her friends didn’t discover this back in season 1!

The group decides to investigate the castle to see what riches lie inside. And to answer your question, yes, this story was written before Castle-mania was aired, so I’ll let slide the inaccuracies to the canon.

The group finds some kind of door in the deepest parts of the castle and discover that it is locked. They decide to spend the night there. Again, Castle-Mania doesn’t exist yet! During the night, one of the characters I didn’t bother naming hears a faint sound in the castle.

He goes to investigate when a mysterious creature attacks him. By… singing to him?

Tears welling in his eyes Midas continued to try & spark the torch all the while the voices grew even louder. In his efforts Midas dropped the flint he was using to light the torch & began to quietly cry; the voices now sounded as if they were standing next to him & sounded as if they here humming a tune.

Actually… with a little reworking… that could have been legitimately creepy. I’m serious. Having a group of sirens sing a really scary song is really effective. And that actually would have been cool to see. Too bad it’s in this story that doesn’t know anything about showing us anything! Want proof you ask? How about this scene where Beast is secretly in love with Jane, who is the wife of Maximus? Even though, the fucking idiot has not even had a fucking line of dialogue or has done anything to demonstrate that in the slightest?!

Back in the camp all was quiet, the five ponies lie sleeping within their tents. Beast was dreaming of Jane, whom he had been in love with since he had first seen her, when he heard a familiar voice call out.

Yeah, you are not in love with Jane, bro! You have said nothing, done nothing, nothing nothing that would possibly indicate that! So, how the fuck are we supposed to know that?! Are we supposed to just take your word for it?! That’s not how good storytelling works! You have to show us the things you want us to believe! I could say I own the universe and Celestia bows to my every whim, but unless I have some fucking evidence to back it up, nopony is going to fucking believe it!

… I wasn’t going to make one of these ‘Show, don’t tell’ speeches, but I just know, somepony cums everytime I do.

Beast sees Jane in the distance, giving herself a flirty slap on her flank to him and he of course decides to follow her. Way to think with your pants, bro. I’m sure nothing bad will happen to you.

Beast was slightly dumbfounded, ‘is it really that obvious that I like her?’ he thought but followed even faster seeing as how she seemed interested in him as well.

If it was, I must be a complete idiot. I mean, I can obviously tell when somepony likes somepony to the point of obsession.

What? What?

I think he is trying to tell you something, sir.

Well, whatever, it’s not important.

Beast follows her and discovers that the creature is some kind of shapeshifter who can take on others appearances as well as being able to know things that not even the audience knows.

“Midas? Is that you?” Beast asked the strange pony. The earth pony raised its head to reveal a skeletal face, Beast gasped & fell backwards, the pony before him let out a blood-chilling shriek & Beast felt his body grow cold. The easy going earth pony could feel nothing anymore.

Oh, I know he’s easy going. He’s already gone.

The other pony I didn’t bother to name goes to look for his brother, who I guess has a psychic connection to him… As most siblings do.

He goes to the door to see his brother’s skin and muscle has been eaten by the Symbiote from Spider-Man.

Midas then fell lifeless on the ground & Sketch could hardly believe what had just taken place, but before he could react he felt a tingling from underneath the patches of black liquid across his body. Sketch scraped a small batch off to find it was eating through his flesh; he cried out at the sight & began to quickly try to remove it. Try as he might the Black ichor consumed the pony & all that remained was a hollow skeleton.

So, the killer of this story is Venom? … Okay, I’ll take it.

The menu screen gets worried that something is wrong in the castle and wakes up Cypher Rage to investigate. They got to find Jane… funny, you’d think with Cypher and Jane being married they’d sleep in the same tent. Cypher must have said something about her cinnamon rolls being shit. Just add that to the list of things that the story doesn’t bother showing us.

Jane, it turns out, had gone ahead and found the corpse of left by Venom. Venom then attacks the group and gets ahold of the inventory screen destroying all your items. Damn it, I had a Super Potion I was saving!

Jane and Cypher Rage make a break for it, but before you can say, “Pacing? What’s that?” Venom manages to get Jane and kill her too. Wow, not even a paragraph later. I’m not kidding. Look, look!

The others gasped in shock as he struggled to remove the thick liquid. Before Maximus could react his companion melted into the black ichor releasing one last shriek of pain as he faded away. The remaining ponies were stunned & instantly, from the pool that was once Inventory, rose a dark, shadowy figure of a pony. Maximus & Jane galloped from the horror down one of the adjacent halls & not long after came upon a large room. As soon as the duo entered the fireplace ignited lighting the terrors it held. The room looked as though it were a kitchen & on the table at its center lay the mutilated corpse of Beast. He was lying on his back with his stomach torn open & all his organs were missing. His face was the most horrific of all, his cheeks were carved in the shape of a smile from ear to ear & his eyes were missing just as Midas’ were. In the doorway behind them the two ponies could see tendrils of the black ichor appear from the shadows. Maximus surveyed his surroundings to find an escape route & found a garbage chute in one corner. Motioning to it Maximus led Jane over & climbed in, he stopped himself a short distance down to see if Jane had made it in yet. She was about halfway into the chute when several tendrils grabbed her & began to force her out.

“Jane!” Maximus cried trying desperately to save her.

Maximus starts to then remember all the great times he’s had with the others… The time he met them… No, seriously. That’s all this guy could come up with for the ‘friends’ he’s been on several expeditions together. God, the intro sequence had more of a diverse memory selection than this!

And so, Cypher Rage, realizing that his name was too stupid to live, gives himself up to Venom and let’s this horrible, horrible piece of shit end.

And what a piece of shit it is.

While nowhere near as bad as some other stories I’ve reviewed in the past, it has some serious issues with it.

Number 1: The characters are completely underdeveloped. With barely any dialogue between them, we don’t actually learn anything about them. We are TOLD what they are like, but we are never given a chance to SEE any of it. The story just asks us to trust it as it just throws a pie that isn’t there and expects us to believe that we are covered in whipped cream in a hilarious fashion.

The story needed to show the characters behaving like it told them too. Instead of just taking the shortcut of telling us.

Also, the characters have no chemistry. The most we get out of the chemistry of these characters is between Cypher Rage and Jane Doe. Who have a couple of minutes of lovey, dubby stuff.

Also, because I don’t give much of a shit about the characters, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for them when they die or want to see them get out of a situation when they get in trouble.

Number 2: Venom (the unnamed monster) is just not that interesting. The creature in this story doesn’t really have a personality, motive, backstory or anything that would add a little bit of intrigue to it. It’s just kind of the tool used to kill. All we really know is that it wants the characters. Why? Does it eat them? Assimilate them? What? I’m not expecting this huge explanation, but something would have been great. Hell, I think the xenomorphs from Aliens got more of a backstory.

Number 3: For a story that is supposed to be a horror story, it’s actually not that scary or intense. It has gore, yes, but it’s really not that gory. It’s due to the terrible writing and lack of descriptions. If this story wanted to be gory, it needed to up the descriptions a lot. If this wanted to be horror, it needed to build a frightening and disturbing atmosphere.

Which brings me to the greatest sin that any horror story can commit, it’s pacing. This story’s pacing is so fast that you can barely have time to build a horrifying atmosphere. If you blink, you’d basically miss the entire story. And that’s not a good thing in a horror story. A horror story needs to take its time and build up a scary world. One of my favorite films is John Carpenter’s Halloween.

It is paced so well, that is actually takes an hour before anyone is actually killed (assuming you don’t count the first 5 minutes). Instead, it uses its time to build this atmosphere by having the killer stalk his target.

And while a much faster paced story can work, like in Nightmare on Elm Street, another one of my favorites, it still managed to keep its terrifying tone.

Bottomline, this story needed to take a lot more time to build up the kills and the horror in general. There, honestly, were the tools to build a relatively decent horror story here, but it has no idea how to build them. And so, we wait for a real horror story.

Have a good day, guys.