Z Reviews: Double Feature Part 1: Welcome to Pony Vale · 12:43am Dec 4th, 2014
This time's review will be of Welcome To Pony Vale , authored by Distaff Pope, reviewed by me, TheifofZ. If you like this review, check my blog for other reviews, or follow this link to go to the post containing the mission statement and a list of all the stories I've reviewed so far.
As always, here's how I'll be doing this; First I'll cover the story idea, and writing style and quality of the story. Next, I'll look at the actual story itself, including character motivation, action (if the story has any), and the general plot. Finally, I'll throw down my egotistical and opinionated rating, declaring exactly how good, or bad, I thought this was. And yes, I will do my best to avoid spoilers for the plot IF POSSIBLE. If the spoiled events are integral to the story, I'll throw down spoiler warnings instead, and ask that you proceed with caution. Always remember, folks. This is all opinion. Disagree with me? Think I'm dead wrong, or spot on? Argue about it in the comments if you want. It's cool. Noone has a truly humble opinion, after all, but make sure you read the review first.
This month I was planning to do special little things for all the reviews, if the author requested. However, this review, the story's author requested I do NOTHING SPECIAL. So I will now attempt to do just that. 
With all that cleared up, and without any further ado, here we go!
Welcome to Pony Vale is, for those who aren't familiar with it, a loving homage of Welcome to Night Vale, a podcast presented as a radio show played in the unsettling and disturbing town of Night Vale. (You can find the site for it, and all the broadcasts, here. I highly advise it. It's really cool.) Obviously, the story isn't just a direct copy of the events of Nightvale, nor is it ponies moved to the town. Instead, it's more of a "what if Ponyville had a creepy alternate double reality called Pony Vale, ruled by a mysterious Council and terrorized by strange and horrible things, and what if there was a radio broadcast in that creepy town?" Honestly, the writing style is fairly polished and smooth, and while events from the podcast have their own shadowy, distorted reflections in Pony Vale, they feel like they're there for the readers who are already familiar with the source material, rather than as a cheap copy. In the spirit of the podcast, too, there -is- an overarching story that weaves through all the various announcements, special events, and breaking stories in the broadcasts, and it takes a long time for it to really begin picking up steam. There aren't many chapters out yet, so I can't really go into details about it yet, sadly, but I am looking forward to finding out just what is going on.
The story has two seperate halves to pay attention to; the first half is the story of the town itself, told through radio broadcasts by, of all ponies, Rarity. Each broadcast discusses certain special events that are going on in the town at that time, such as the annual picnic and lottery (and sacrifice), or the creepy old mare that showed up at the edge of town to recite the litany of each and every sin commited by the ponies living in Pony Vale, and other terrible things. The other half of the story follows Twilight after she stumbles into Pony Vale, and the various trials she faces coming to terms and trying to deal with the horrible mirror town she's arrived in shortly after purifying Nightmare Moon. There are hints of budding romance between Twilight and Rarity, but aside from Rarity's continuous and fervent declarations of Twilight's beauty (which is still a send up of the original show's radio host and his crush on the new scientist that arrived in the first episode), it's handled slowly, and hasn't developed into much yet. The characters themselves are all well written and are just similar enough to the original characters to strike an Uncanny Valley feeling... which is certainly intentional. (Except Pinky Pie/The Pink Herald. But I'm not dealing with her. Eeeenope.) And it's all handled with just enough ominousness and bleakness that the entire thing is mildly unsettling at best.
Overall, I give the story a solid 8 out of 10 mustaches, and 4 out of 5 shocked Twilights. 
Any opinions or major points you'd like to make go in the comments below. Advice, Major Corrections, story suggestions, and fan mail can be PM'd to me. ... if I ever get fans. HAH!
Final Note: Yeah, it's really great and all, but I can't help but feel like it's missing something... each chapter is really short, and I keep expecting more events throughout town than what there are. Also, I seriously love Night Vale. ... which is only to be expected, as I also really love H. P. Lovecraft's writings, which Night Vale was based off. Ia, Ia, Pinkie Fhtagn.
Just curious: For your reviews, the "mustaches" are consistent and are used as the story's rating, but then the "out of five" rating is different every time. What's the purpose of having both? What does the second rating mean, and how does it relate to the first?
I have no idea what the second rating means; I decided to do it on a whim, really. Each one is unique to the story I judge, though.
The rough estimate of the second rating would be "How much did I actually enjoy reading it." But apparently there's more to it than that.
My brain is weird.
An interesting note, that I'm sure nobody's really interested in is that I try to keep each "podcast" at a bit over 2000 words because it would take roughly twenty-five minutes to read out loud (Or ten minutes depending on how fast you can talk, but I think a radio broadcast would tend towards speaking slower). Anyways, I shoot for that timeframe because it corresponds with roughly the amount of time the WTPV podcasts take (sans weather).
More importantly regarding the length issue is that... I write all this on Sunday, give it to my editors to look over Monday through Friday and then do all (or most of) the editing on Saturday. I say all this mainly because... I don't know, I thought it would be fun to offer a little behind the scenes peak at how the episodes are made like they are.
Also, if I could complain about one issue in my story (is that allowed or do I have to pretend my story is completely perfect?), it's that I don't like how... rushed the TwiRity feels. I mean, Rarity saves Twilight's life and then they're dating in the next chapter because... ugh, cliche. What I really want to do is write a companion story, Welcome to Life in Pony Vale, perhaps, that focuses on the start of Twilight and Rarity's relationship, running concurrent with episodes 3-7 in WTPV. Don't expect it soon, but expect it.
2646951 Given that this was posted before they straight up started dating, it didn't feel rushed at the time.
Now I'm inclined to agree that it does, indeed, feel rushed. And hey, behind the scenes from authors are cool. It's nice to see how you approach your story. (Also, I always secretly want the author to reply and point out why they do things as well. Comments are for discussions!)
2648274 Yeah. I think the last chapter of the year is going to explain why things developed so quickly (hello missing time) and then we'll see where things go from there.