OLD VERSION:

“It's one solid wall of text! Where is the formatting? Where are your paragraphs?”

“B-but it doesn't matter how it looks if the story is good.” Fluttershy crouched down and pressed her hooves together in front of her face.

Rage Reviews tore off his glasses and slammed them against the table. “Presentation is very important. Would you eat a salad that's on fire?”

“N-no!”

“Then why would anyone want to read something that burns the eyes!?” The man leaned over to glare at her. His pupils were so tiny that they might as well have been missing. The whites of his eyes were littered with pulsing veins.

Fluttershy winced and backed herself into a corner. “P-please don't hurt me.”

“Harrumph.” Rage Reviews leaned back and put his glasses back on. “It's poor sport to attack the author. I do have some pride. But this—” he stroked a hand across Fluttershy's manuscript, almost as if he were caressing it “—this is fair game.”

“Um...” Fluttershy poked her head up but her ears stayed flat against her skull and she looked around for exits. She did not trust that man at all.

“Ick. Mary Sue alert.” He frowned.

“Hey! Her name's not Mary Sue.” Fluttershy found herself correcting him, even though her instincts told her to flee. He was volatile and vulgar, but he was also holding her story. She couldn't run off and abandon her baby. Besides, as much as she dreaded it, some part of her really did want to hear what he had to say.

“A Sue's a Sue, regardless of what the actual name is, if you bother mentioning it anywhere.” He paused to scan the first paragraph again. “You know, as far as Sues go, this one might actually have some hope. I was expecting an obvious alicorn self-insert, but a seemingly plain, albeit strangely colored deer? It could work if done right.”

“What's so strange about teal?”

“It's—” the red man pointed a finger at the butterscotch pony with pink hair “—nevermind.”

“I did mention her name. What do you mean you can't find it? And why do you keep calling her Sue?”

The red man gnashed his teeth back and forth. “I'd know what her name was if you actually bothered to capitalize any of your proper nouns!” He narrowed his eyes again, but the edges of his glasses caught the light and glinted in Fluttershy's face, ruining the effect. “And a Mary Sue? Simply put, that's a derogatory term for an obvious author self-insert whose only purpose in the story is to receive all of the love and attention that the author wishes she could receive herself.”

“N-no! That's not what she's like at all. Teal Dear is very different from me. She's a deer; I'm a pegasus. She's not shy. She's good at a lot of things. E-everypony loves her.”

“Wow. I didn't even have to say anything and you just proved my point.” He last words sounded like a growl.

“What?” Fluttershy blinked. She shook her head and her ears popped up.

“Did you listen to yourself? You just described somebody that you want to be.” Fluttershy's mouth hung open, but the red man wasn't done yet. He slammed a fist on the table, causing the whole room to shake. “That's a bad thing! Mary Sue almost always makes the story she's in terrible.”

“My story's not terrible!” Fluttershy jumped up and tried to snatch her manuscript away from the red man, but he held it out of her reach. She overshot and hit the wall, sliding down in a tearful heap. “Why are you doing this?”

“I do this because I can.” Rage Reviews licked his lips. “Your tears amuse me.”

“You're an awful person,” Fluttershy sobbed.

Rage Reviews went back to reading the page. His left eye twitched and a vein popped out of his forehead. “Not nearly as awful as this fetid piece of garbage! Learn about the birds and bees? Are you implying that Mane-iac is going to rape the orphans if she doesn't get her way?”

Fluttershy jumped up. “No! I'd never say something like that! H-how could you even suggest something like that!”

“Because 'birds and the bees' is a common euphemism for sex? Even if I took it at face value, you do know that owls are birds too, right? Thus her threatened change in curriculum is only a minor divergence from their scheduled lesson.”

“But she's a supervillain. Everything she does is bad.” Fluttershy crossed her legs as if that was the end of the argument.

Rage Reviews frowned and looked at the next part. “Mane-iac wipes the floor with the Power Ponies? In a scene that's so rushed that even Fili-second complains about how fast it is? Seriously?”

“B-but—”

“You're telling me that the six most powerful superheroes in all of Maretropolis not only can't even manage to have a decent fight with their arch nemesis, but that the battle is not even worth describing at all?”

“Um.”

“Entire issues are devoted to the epic battles between these characters, and you just have her sweep them under a rug so your crappy self-insert Mary Sue-deer can look better by comparison? Congratulations. You've just alienated anyone who's a fan of the Power Ponies for no good reason.”

“T-that's not true! Fans will love this.” Fluttershy stood up on her hind legs and crossed her forelegs.

“Seriously?” Rage Reviews raised a single eyebrow and bared his teeth in a snarl. “Why?”

Fluttershy waved a hoof in front of her in little circles. “It's, um, riveting.”

“Riveting? Riveting? What's compelling about this? Your flat and uninteresting characters? Your terrible dialogue? Your horribly contrived plot? Your lack of any detail on anything whatsoever?”

“Hey! I did describe something!”

“Something other than your Sue?”

Fluttershy was quiet for a moment, and put her hoof down. “The cage?”

Rage Reviews slapped a hand on Fluttershy's table and scraped his nails across its varnished surface. “Repeating the same adjective four times in a row is not how you describe something. Especially when said adjective, 'inescapable,' doesn't even begin to describe how it looks!”

“B-but I put a lot of thought into that,” Fluttershy's eyes teared up again.

“Your mind must be a broken record, because you frequently repeat yourself for no good reason. It adds nothing! Why waste space describing anything of value when you can repeat what you've already said a few more times?”

“B-but I added all the detail that's important. I-it's all about the big picture. Nopony really cares about the tiny details.”

“Aaah!” Rage Reviews' bald head burst into blue flame. “Tiny details? How about major plot points? How did Mane-iac capture the orphans? What does a tail-tangler even look like? What the fuck is 'assault lick?' I can't even tell if that's supposed to be a clever pun or just another horrible misspelling. Where is this story even taking place? Are they in a building? In the street? On the bottom of the ocean? Randomly floating in outer space? I don't know because you don't even tell me something as basic as that!” The flame died out and a black smoke ring rose from his head, like some kind of unholy halo.

Fluttershy sobbed. “O-okay, I admit it. I could have added more detail. B-but the story's still good otherwise—”

“No! It's fetid garbage!” Rage Reviews stood up and clutched the back of his chair. The wood cracked in his iron grip. Fluttershy jumped and backed away. In a moment of silence, the man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Without further comment, he sat down in the seat and began reading again.

His recent outburst was destructive, and Fluttershy couldn't get the awful stench of sulfur out of her nose. She pondered leaving to gather her friends and kick him out. Suddenly, the red man made a cackling sound. He clutched at his sides and it took her a moment to realize that he was laughing. “What? What's so funny?”

“This is just so awful that it crosses the line into absurdity. If your story wasn't so horribly formatted and badly misspelled, you could probably pass it off as comedy. Teal Deer is trapped by a wooden floor? Because she's afraid of getting splinters in her hooves? There are so many things wrong with that that I can't even begin to describe them all.”

“Hey! Splinters hurt.”

“Anywhere else and I'd agree with you, but hooves aren't even alive. They're made of cretin. They have no feeling. If they did, you'd never be willing to put on horseshoes, which, I'd like to mention, are held on by nails.”

“Um.” Fluttershy held a hoof in front of her face. “Deer don't wear horseshoes, so there!”

Rage Reviews slapped himself in the face. “But they still have hooves. It still makes no sense.” He shook his head. “The fact that you're serious just makes this sad. I know you're not that stupid. I think, perhaps, that you're so blinded by your passion for your story that you can't even see the obvious.”

Fluttershy hopped off the ground and hovered, pointing a hoof at him. “You're the one who can't see how great it is, not me!”

The man snorted. “In denial much?”

“Hey! You're one to talk mister demon human thing. I don't have to listen to your lies.”

He lifted his reading glasses to show off the bloodshot whites of his eyes. “And yet, you still are.”

“J-just so I can prove how wrong you are.” Fluttershy huffed and slapped her forelegs against her hips. Rage Reviews shrugged and resumed reading.

Rage Reviews glanced up from the page. “You remembered that Humdrum actually exists? I'd give you a cookie, but the ones I bake are full of fucks, and I don't actually have any of those to give.”

Fluttershy's eyes widened and she raised an eyebrow. “...what?”

Looking back at the document, the red man snarled. “Since when does Humdrum randomly have narcolepsy?”

“Um...”

“Why is your Sue even blaming Mane-iac? She didn't even do anything. Humdrum defeated himself!” Rage Reviews twisted his head around and he lowered his eyebrows into an angry 'v.' “The only way that you could think of to keep the lamest sidekick ever created from upstaging your Sue was to saddle him with a debilitating medical condition? That speaks volumes for your Sue, and I do hope that you realize just how cruel that is.”

“He doesn't have narcolepsy! He just fell asleep that one time! Stop making stuff up!”

The man cackled again, and Fluttershy frowned as he laughed. “Given that nothing in your story could conceivably take place in the Power Ponies cannon, I don't think you're in a good position to accuse somebody else of fabrication.”

“Hey! It's fanfiction. It doesn't have to follow the cannon. The whole point of it is to write what you want to.”

“That's only true if you're writing for yourself. You yourself said that your story was for Power Ponies fans. Don't you think they'd prefer to see the characters they know and love acting like themselves and not moronic idiots who can't even tie their own shoelaces until your Sue shows up to save them?”

Fluttershy pointed a hoof at him.  “Ha! Well, um, that is...” She pulled her hoof back and twisted it back and forth in front of her face. “...shoelaces?”

Rage Reviews turned the page. “Chapter four? Yeah, no. Not only did you not mention any previous chapters, but all that came before this point couldn't be more than six hundred words total. Nobody takes tiny chapters seriously.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it's an obvious sign that the pacing of your story is so fast that it'd get a speeding ticket at the Wonderbolts 500?”

“Hey! It's not that bad.”

Rage Reviews snorted. “...says the author who admitted that she didn't include any details whatsoever. It really is that bad.”

Fluttershy landed and wrapped a wing in front of her face to hide her tears. “S-stop making points that are so hard to refute.”

“Let's see what's next... Hm... I don't know why Mane-iac is so surprised that your Sue escaped the wooden floor. Anyone can do that by, you know, not being quadriplegic.”

“That was supposed to be dramatic.” Fluttershy sniffled.

“You can't build suspense by 'trapping' your Sue with something that doesn't threaten her at all and has a million obvious exits.” Rage Reviews shrugged. “This story is bad but it's not really making me mad.”

Fluttershy spread her feathers and peeked out with a slightly bloodshot eye. “You want to be mad?”

Rage Reviews glared at her. “You forget what I am.”

Fluttershy folded her wing and nervously gnawed on a hoof. She was begging to accept that her story wasn't good, but now she had to worry about the living embodiment of anger in her living room. Had she written anything that could set him off? Could anypony handle him if he really got mad?

The man spat and Fluttershy jumped. “Wings? That's how your Sue escaped from the floor? Hold on a minute.” He skimmed the page. “Antlers? on a female deer?”

“That's explained later,” Fluttershy blurted out.

Rage Reviews ignored her. “Magic deer powers?” He slammed her manuscript back on the table and jerked his head back, screaming. “I take it all back. This is a crappy alicorn self-insert! By having magic powers you've completely invalidated the entire rest of the story! She could have used them at the very start and nothing else needed to happen. This whole thing was a waste of time!”

“Um.” Fluttershy tried to set aside her feelings of shame and dejection. “A-are you okay?”

He huffed and scooped up her story again. “Bah. I'd be more upset if this thing wasn't so short. Good thing it's over.” He scratched at his chin. “But where did you explain the antlers...?” He flipped the last sheet over. “Oh? It looks like there's an epilogue.”

A knot formed in the pit of Fluttershy's stomach. “M-maybe you shouldn't read that part.”

He raised a thick eyebrow at her, then snapped his head back to read the page. As he did so, his fingers clenched, crinkling the paper.

“Careful—you'll tear it!”

“You did not just—!” Rage Reviews shook. He gently set the papers down. “Excuse me for a moment.”

“Um...” Fluttershy softly backed away.

The man pulled his reading glasses off and snapped them shut. His hand trembled as he stuffed them into his shirt pocket. He took a deep breath and slapped the palms of his hands on Fluttershy's table. His face contorted, baring all of his teeth. The air above his head shimmered. He let loose a scream so powerful that everything in the whole room shook. Books fell off shelves, china broke, and the birds fled their birdhouses. While he screamed, his head turned counter-clockwise, popping and snapping as it rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

“Oh my gosh.” Fluttershy covered her mouth with her hooves.

After his head came full circle, it burst into flames. “How dare you!? How dare you!?”

“What? W-what did I do?”

Veins buldged out of his forehead as he spoke. “You randomly broke apart Mare-velous and Radiance just so they could be in a relationship with your Sue, along with the rest of the Power Ponies. That alone is infuriating, but the way you justified it is unacceptable. Teal Deer is, and I quote, 'part male deer.' ”

Fluttershy glanced out a window. She wondered if spraying her guest in his head-flames with a garden hose would be rude. She'd better not; she'd never forgive herself if she accidentally get her story soggy. “Could you please calm down?”

“I will not calm down!” He pounded a fist on the table. “Do you realize that you've implied that lesbians aren't capable of real love!?”

Fluttershy's eyes popped open and she jerked her head back. “What? No!”

Rage Reviews narrowed his eyes and his flames died down to a simmer. “Repressed feelings much?”

“I do not have repressed feelings for my friends!”

He raised an eyebrow, but opted not to comment further. “To make matters even worse, the reveal that she's male makes even Humdrum want to love 'her' too! That is wrong on so many levels that I don't even know what to say.” Rage Reviews snatched up the manuscript again and held it out in front of him. “You know what? I'm done with this!” So many veins popped out that they covered eighty percent of his face. “Eighty percent rage!” He jerked his hands, tearing her story.

“No!” Fluttershy screamed. She held a hoof out, but it was too late. Her story was already torn in half. Rage Reviews tossed the papers in front of him, caught them, and tore them in half again. Fluttershy gasped and her eyes twitched. He went on tearing her story until it was fine confetti; he even used his teeth.

“You story was so bad that it was a bane to all who read it. It was an unfortunate letdown and it truly mangled the mind. The romance was sudden and horrifically awkward. Splinters in hooves? You did no research whatsoever.” He brushed his hands together and turned his nose up at the shredded manuscript. The fire on his head flickered and puffed out. “And that's what I think of your story.”

“My story! You-you...” Fluttershy sputtered. She shook in place. Her face grew dark and shadows seemed to encompass her side of the room.

“Um, Fluttershy?” Rage Reviews got up and edged towards the door.

“You tore it to pieces!” He gaze locked onto him and she snorted, folded her ears back and spread her wings. Her pupils shrank to points.

The red man looked into her eyes and saw into her soul. The fury in her heart was a magnitude more than his own. “Oh, shit!” He ran.