Reviews Fanfic / With Pearl And Ruby Glowing

Just barely hitting an extremely delicate balance

CW: Sexual abuse vaguely discussed.

I'm very picky when it comes to fanfiction dealing with subjects like child molestation. Way too often it can appear gratuitous, or even outright romanticized which is disgusting. WPARG doesn't romanticize its subject matter, but I'm not sure if one could say it's not sensationalistic to some degree, though this varies from series to series.

I've only read parts of the main series and a few side series. I don't know every film that's referenced here but the stories I recognize I really appreciate. My absolute favorite is the Adaptational Mundanity and anthropomorphism. It's pulled off very well, especially when it comes to queer and disabled representation as I think the films' fantastic elements can really resonate with those communities. The characters are believably human and it's fun to recognize which characters in the fic represent the canon characters, and how their settings are translated (like making Sully work in a toy factory).

I also really like the writing style. It's the kind of series you could easily imagine writing for, because it has a very straightforward formula, but the language is really evocative without getting too explicit. Sometimes it veers into Purple Prose, and it can feel the tiniest bit pretentious, but most of the time it hits the spot just right. Apparently a lot of this graphic material is inspired by real world stories, and while that's very sad, it helps the fic feel very real. It really tugs at my empathy and that's important to me.

However, as is to be expected with a fanfiction with this subject matter, I think there are times in which it goes too far, mostly when it comes to the content not directly adapted from a film. I think the God's Will First cult can get a bit too narmy at times because it's so over the top, but I do like the way they're written in the POV series about the cult's victims. But I think the constant police rape is a bit over the top, mostly because it tends to happen in stories that already involve sexual abuse, so at that point it just feels like throwing more abuse onto the character for the sake of it. I get that this is a thing that happens in real life, and it's often as unsubtle as written here. But god, it's just too much to read sometimes. I really don't like the police series because the villain POV feels too gratuitous and I don't think it's an effective satire either. A lot of chapters know when to stop with this, but some of them just pile on the abuse and it's often not even relevant to the character's development.

So this fic isn't for the faint of heart. I don't even know if it's a helpful read to cope with sexual abuse, because only a few chapters really have happy endings (though some side stories, like the one focused on Boo's friends and drawings, are quite wholesome). But I like the psychological horror of it all. Just as long as it's psychological and not "BAD BAD BAD."