Celestia's Tiny Student _Review

Celestia's Tiny Student
Tags: Alternate Universe, Slice of Life
Rating: Everyone
Author: CommanderX5

This is a fic that I personally enjoy very much, and it’s been quite the pleasure to read through it again so I could write this review. I would definitely recommend this fic to any a fellow brony, and would also classify it as a good example of Alternate Universe fics in the fandom.

Sporting a total of 1654 likes as of today (March 31st, 2016) this is a fic that is recognized as one of quality among the fandom, and it’s not that hard to see why when reading it.

This fic first aired … Actually, we don’t really know the exact date this first was submitted to fimfiction because the beginning chapters were redone, and reuploaded. This makes determining the lore that was available to CommanderX5 as he was writing this a bit more difficult to determine. I even messaged CommanderX5 to see if he remembered, and even he doesn’t know when he first aired it. So, we’ll just have to work with the earliest date we’ve got, which is June 22nd, 2013. This lands it’s earliest chapter at 5 months prior to the release of Season 4, and 6 days following the first Equestria Girls movie.
*Edit April 17th, 2016* The original air date of this story was June 14th, 2013. This lands the initial posting of the fic 2 days before the first Equestria Girls movie. Turns out the initial air date it posted to the left of the character tags. *End edit*

This means that it actually first aired around the reveal of Princess Twilight, before the Tree of Harmony was introduced, and following the reform of Discord.

However, given the time setting of the story, as well as the fact that it’s an AU (Alternate Universe), CommanderX5 is able to bend, rework, and explain new lore as it comes up.

To more fully understand what I mean in regards to AU, I first need to explain real quick what it means for a story to be set in an AU.

FimFiction.net defines Alternate Universe stories as, “Stories that take place in a world significantly diverged from canon. Changing the outcome of major events, large setting changes, or anything else that represents a large break from canon, particularly if the change is something that does not happen during the story itself. Stories that start at a point in canon and diverge through character development or other in-story events generally do not qualify as AU.”

So what major event(s) does ComanderX5 alter to diverge itself from canon? That, my dear reader/follower, is where the plot comes in.

Plot: At Twilight Sparkle’s entrance exam, where she is asked to hatch a dragon egg, she has a massive magic surge that quickly spirals out of control (a la canon). When Celestia cannot stop the magic surge (this is where the major break from canon begins) she shrinks Twilight down to the size of a small mouse so that the surge can become manageable.

In order to help Twilight learn control over her power, Celestia takes her on as her personal student…who must now learn how to live in a world that is 10 times bigger than her, and also deal with the political ramifications that arise from her position as not simply Celestia’s personal student, but her tiny personal protege/daughter (yeah, Celestia is much more involved in Twilight’s growth in this fic).

The Actual Review:
My first impression of the fic is one that meets high expectations with it’s immersive details that does not distract, nor disconnect the reader. This is a fic that seems to have an excellent start.

However, right off the bat, I can also see something that can be detrimental to an author’s story: grammatical errors within the first two chapters.

While the grammatical errors aren’t really all that bad in quantity and severity, the first two chapters of any story is the one that has to be as close to perfection as possible. The reader has been convinced that the story has potential to be worth his/her time by the introduction. The first chapter is where the author needs to pull the reader into the story, and the second chapter is when he needs to seal the deal to keep the reader going. Mistakes during this segment of a story can be the equivalent of getting small cuts right where your major arteries are (i.e. you could actually die if you don’t do something about it).

Luckily, as I said at the start of the paragraph prior, the mistakes aren’t that severe, and can be forgiven.

If you can handle the numerous small bumps in the road (no pun intended), however, you are really in for a treat as you get to see the real attraction of this fic: Twilight’s experience as a pony the size of a small mouse (Ok, the fic says 1/100th her size, but that’s actually way smaller than the imagery he uses to describe how small she is). *Edit April 17th, 2016* The fic specifies that Twilight was shrunken down to 1/100th of her mass, not her actual size, so this is actually a bit accurate *end edit*

We do indeed see the Twilight that we all know and love: She will exaggerate the consequences of the mistakes she makes to absurd degrees, and absolutely loves to study and read.

However, due to the fact that Celestia practically raises her in a completely different manner than what is canon, the difference in how she turns out is also pretty large. Particularly, I have noticed two key differences between the Twilight that is established canon, and CommanderX5′s Twilight.

1) She grows to develop an absolute love of pushing herself to the limit of her abilities, and she does so quite frequently due to her small size. This is also where a very large amount of the appeal for this fic comes from.
2) She has a very strong, and firm, sense of mercy. If she can shift blame onto herself, she will, and she will accept any and all punishment that would go along with this.

Of course, what makes a good story is seeing how the main character(s) deal with the trials that come up in their lives, and boy does Twilight deal with trial after trial in this story.

As I said in the Plot Summery of this review, there are two major trials that everything Twilight encounters can be categorized as: 1) her size, and 2) the political and social ramifications that result from her situation.

Being so much closer to Celestia as she’s growing up, events occur that eventually snowball into more political, and even social trials. Due to the fact that many of them are results of said snowballing, I really can’t talk about what they are without giving away spoilers.
However, everything ultimately revolves around her small size. The main attraction of this entire story, and the bonus stories that extend from this, is seeing how Twilight overcomes small, insignificant trials (like learning how to drink from a teacup that she could easily fit in), to large, important trials (like becoming accepted by the Canterlot nobility when she is finally revealed to the world). The adventure created by the fact that Twilight is now so small turns what would otherwise be a very boring and mundane script into an exciting, and even inspiring, story.

This is a story that can really bring out feels (no sad ones! There is a reason this fic lacks the “sad” tag), and make us eager to see how Twilight will overcome the next challenge.

When to Read it: Make sure you have time to spend to sit down and enjoy a good read, because this story will draw you in. A good 30 minutes a reading session would be advised at least.

Rating: As much as I enjoy the story, I can only really give this a 7/10 rating. Grammatical errors can be found plentifully in this fic, though the reason for this will be explained in the next section. The focus of the plot also seems to shift from point to point without any real overarching theme throughout it all.

Despite that, however, the rise and fall of of each plot point does help to carry the reader through the story, eager to see how Twilight will perform in each one.

Additional Notes: Remember all of those grammatical errors I’ve been harping on this whole review? Well, as I was re-reading this fic, taking notes to put this review together from, I noticed a pattern. The grammatical errors were almost always having to do with the tense of the words: present when they should have been past and such. These are the kind of mistakes one will find in the works of someone whose grasp on the English language is quite rusty. So, I asked CommanderX5 what his first language was to verify this suspicion. Turns out I was right.

CommanderX5′s first language is Polish, and he really only ever uses English when he’s on the internet. As such, his English is not that great. Legible enough to be able to understand, but it’s very clear that his grasp of the language is quite lacking, which evidently showed when he first started posting this fic.

He was informed, quite thoroughly it sounds, of his numerous errors, and was even offered help along with these critiques and criticisms. As such, he was able to straighten out much of his fic, and expand it to fix the errors of flows that he had (his first three chapters were 4, 6, and 7 respectively).

While this does not excuse the grammatical errors of this fic (hence my rating), it does make said errors much more understandable, allowing for more forgiveness than could ever be actually offered in an official novel.

I also asked CommanderX5 where he got the idea for this fic (hey, everyone with an interest in writing wants to expand their resources of fiction ideas). Evidently, this was not his first fanfiction. It was simply his first fanfiction that actually got off the ground.

After losing the first draft of his first attempted story (a fanfic of the highly regarded Past Sins by Pen Stroke) in the mail (didn’t know about google docs till later), finding too many errors in his writing with a Changeling Twilight fic, and numerous other attempts, he came across this little known fic: Twilight’s Tiny Trouble. He had a story idea of having Twilight using her magic to her extraordinary limits much more than the show allowed her to, and this story gave him the answer of how to make this possible: shrink Twilight to a diminutive size. After TwippleDash, the author of Twilight’s Tiny Trouble, helped out with CommanderX5′s first three chapters … Well, you’ve read about the reception he got.

Ending: And that’s my review of Celestia’s Tiny Student. It has numerous side stories, one of I would highly recommend reading being My Little Medic, which occurs in the midst of the story (and I would also recommend reading that one upon concluding the chapter Bonus Ch - My Little Medic); and it also has two sequels, one of is still ongoing as of the release of this post, which are both fantastic. This series, dubbed the Twinyverse, is one that any brony claiming to be a fanfic connoisseur would have somewhere in his library.

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