Reviewing the Lunaverse: Part 4 (Stories 12-14, Webisode 4) · 7:14am Nov 6th, 2012
Well, last time was…not fun. So let’s take a look at a few more, shall we?
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Webisode 4: A Canterlot Morning
Written By: Grass&Clouds2
SYNOPSIS:
Octavia is back in Canterlot, her career still cruising along despite failing to betray her friend and doom Equestria thanks to partisan bickering. But a short talk with a masked intruder during practice may be all it takes to break her rock-hard exterior and show her true feelings…
REVIEW:
“A Canterlot Morning” is mostly a continuation of the events of “Musicians and Dreamers,” centering around the fallout of Octavia’s actions. As such, a lot of the story is exposition, first through the narrative’s reaction to the various movements and pieces of Octavia’s piece to the discussion of how she really feels about things. We also get two more characters introduced (I won’t reveal who just yet), as well as more buildup for how wicked and awesomely evil Greengrass is supposed to be. Other than that, however, this really isn’t a story where things happen. It’s reflective and quiet, and while that might help it bridge the gap between the Octavia we see in M&D and the one in “Symphony,” there really isn’t a lot of crème filling in this Hostess Cupcake.
OVERALL RATING: Okay
This is pretty much the weakest of the three Octavia stories, although that feels more out of design than anything else. If you’re following the entire arc, then go for it. Otherwise, this might be one to skip.
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Story 12: Scootalong to the Cheer
Written By: Blackbelt
SYNOPSIS:
Cheerilee has had an awful day, and it’s all thanks to Scootaloo. After taking so much abuse and physical torture, she finally snaps and calls a parent-teacher conference with her father. Meanwhile, Scoots teams up with Diamond Tiara to get the perfect make-up present and apologize. Will they pull it off? And why is Tiara interested in helping to begin with?
REVIEW:
This story is a bit of an oddity in that it seems to promote a one-sided infatuation with Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo; in particular, DT is in love with Scoots, but doesn’t know how to show it. While I don’t have a problem with shipping in and of itself, it’s kind of odd to have kids who shouldn’t be old enough to even know what going into heat is start hooking up. Of course, that doesn’t happen, and it’s mostly played for straight comedy, but it is worth noting.
Scootaloo is actually fairly close to canon here, and thankfully is not an orphan here. (Or a chicken, either.) Diamond Tiara, meanwhile, gets an actual special talent: accessorizing. She’s also played a lot nicer than on the show, where she’s just a stuck-up bully who terrorizes the CMC because they don’t have marks. Granted, she’s still a jerk, but she’s also given a heart of gold, which earns her the ire of the superstitious townsfolk because gold is the color of Celestia and thus evil, ending with it getting torn from her still-breathing carcass and destroyed to protest Corona’s mere existence.
…This review just got very dark, didn’t it? In any case, their antics are pretty amusing, and the added dimensions are pretty nice. On the other end of the scale is Cheerilee. Considering she’s the Lunaverse’s Applejack, it should be a good thing if she’s used at all. But instead, she basically spends the entire story wishing doom on Scootaloo, up until she finally believes she’s out to get her. Everything gets resolved in the end, but it’s like Pinkie’s breakdown in “Party of One:” funny, but also rather unpleasant to watch.
OVERALL RATING: Okay/Good
This one has enough funny material in it to be worth reading, but the presentation of Cheerilee didn’t leave me horribly impressed. The writing also has quite a few technical gaffes and errors, or at least enough that I started actively noticing them. Still, it’s not a bad story by any means.
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Story 13: A Hard Bargain
Written By: Zap Apple Smash
SYNOPSIS:
Three legitimate businessponies approach Ditzy with an offer for employment with their Manehatten construction business. Of course, they’re obviously up to no good, and it’s up to Big Macintosh and Caramel, big time bounty hunters, to crack the case!
REVIEW:
“A Hard Bargain” introduces us to the Equestrian version of the Mafia, complete with your usual Mob figures and agents working behind the scenes to twist the hoofscrews. But wait, it’s actually about Big Mac and Caramel working as bounty hunters! But wait, it’s about Cheerilee getting a suspicious job offer in Fillydelphia and Trixie trying to find out which noble is screwing them over! Really, the only thing connecting all three is Big Macintosh, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t care too much for making him a bounty hunter. It just seems like an utterly random choice.
Another casualty of the story is Ditzy. Most of the Lunaverse have shown her to be kindhearted and nice, but also with some degree of street smarts. After all, she’s raising a daughter on her own with a meager postal worker’s salary; some common sense is a necessity. In the early chapters, however, she’s painfully naïve when speaking to the mobsters, and doesn’t wise up at all until they’ve outright threatened her with retaliation. And when Dinky is inevitably kidnapped, she pulls a 180 and damn near murders a pony to get answers. Yes, she’d be wanting to find her daughter and fast, but that’s pushing her Mama Bear tendencies way too far. Not that we get to see the daring rescue, since almost all of it happens off-screen.
A lot of the problems seem to stem from a major revision that occurred towards the end of the story. According to G&C2 (thanks, man), the original version of “A Hard Bargain” had Big Mac and Caramel as members of an entire underground vigilante group called The Network, who were set up all over Equestria to bring down criminals the law couldn’t normally touch. Obviously, this didn’t fly for a couple of reasons. This story was added very late in the first season, long after the room for conspiracies and secret societies had been filled to capacity. It also painted an incredibly dark view of the Lunaverse’s Equestria, which is something that the universe really did not need at that point. Throw in some serious complications this raises with Big Mac and Caramel in later stories, and it’s pretty clear why this never stuck. Without the Network, however, the story just seems to flop about and never really add up to much.
Also, am I the only one who finds it ironic that this would be “too dark,” and yet the first chronological story takes the happy ending from the pilot and shoots it in the face?
I’ll shut up now.
OVERALL RATING: Meh
“A Hard Bargain” suffers from poor characterization and a lack of solid focus. Big Mac as a bounty hunter just doesn’t feel right, even in an AU, and none of the plotlines really add up to a whole lot. About the only good joke in here is Trixie singing in the shower, which opens and closes the story and is freaking hilarious. Besides that, however, it also has a lot of spelling and grammatical errors; not enough to make it unreadable, but they were still a rather serious distraction. Give this one a pass.
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Story 14: Carrot Top Season
Written By: Grass&Clouds2
SYNOPSIS:
It’s time for the Annual Great Equestria Farm Competition, a cooking/produce contest between the various farms in Equestria. Sweet Apple Acres and the Apple Trust plan to win like every year, but a little prodding from Trixie gets Carrot Top to enter as well. The rest of the town eventually joins in to support her, if only to get back at Applejack and her dwindling sanity. Can the Bearer of the Element of Generosity successfully win the competition, keep the peace between SAA and the rest of Ponyville, and deal with two confidence ponies that suspiciously entered town around the same time?
REVIEW:
“Carrot Top Season” is a frightening beast to behold, not only because of its size, but because of just how many plotlines it manages to cram into itself. You have Carrot Top betting the farm on a longshot competition, Applejack losing her mind, the town forming a Farmer’s Union, Flim and Flam, Greengrass, agricultural blight, ancient famines, and everything else you can imagine happening in just one story. And does it work? No, it doesn’t for a couple of reasons.
Carrot Top herself is perfect here. She’s trying desperately to keep the peace in a town turning into a warzone, and despite wanting to take joy in SAA’s oncoming downfall, she ultimately can’t bring herself to do it. She’s just too nice of a pony for her own good. And in the first two or three chapters, Applejack was fine as well. She’s not nice by any means, but she’s level-headed and business savvy, and knows what will happen to Carrot’s farm if she loses the competition. The first quarter of the story or so shows a lot of promise, all things considered.
But then you get to everything else.
Flim and Flam really don’t work in this story, which is a real downer since that’s what got me excited in the first place. Not enough fics use these two, and even in an AU, I thought it would be nice to see them again. But instead, they get defeated in one chapter, come back several chapters later to get defeated again, return a third time to cross the Moral Event Horizon and kidnap Apple Bloom, and finally get arrested. The first encounter is the only one that really works, but they’re revealed and taken out way too quickly. After that, they lose their Harold Hill-style personalities that made them so endearing in the show itself, devolving into generic thugs by the end. And yet again, they’re puppets for Greengrass; after Octavia, that plot twist really lost its luster, especially when it’s these two.
The Farmer’s Union on its own isn’t a bad idea, but the way it’s set up is troubling for me. The farmers join Carrot Top out of spite for Applejack, which soon extends to the rest of the town. The tone has a very “Big Business vs. Mom-and-Pop Store” feel to it, and I honestly don’t care for that. Not only does it make the whole town look like vultures out to celebrate over the carcass of Sweet Apple Acres, but it feels very dark and out-of-place for this kind of story, and really only seems to serve as a means of advancing the story’s most fatal issue:
Applejack herself.
So what’s wrong with the farm pony? Well, let’s go back to LNLD. There, she was portrayed as a more underhanded, but still determined and hard-working pony who cared about her business and was just a bit of a traditionalist. Here, however, she’s picked apart piece by piece until she’s revealed as a broken wreck of a pony, clinging to an old folktale about the Trust holding off famine until she surpasses L!Twilight in insanity. She’s also utterly paranoid about everypony, driving the whole town to turn against her. Heck, she abandons her little sister just so SAA won’t be disqualified. The story tries to chalk it up to sleep deprivation, a la “Applebuck Season,” but this goes waaaaay beyond that episode to the point of sheer parody. Does the story honestly ruin her forever and ever? No, of course not. But it’s still a mark against this one.
OVERALL RATING: Meh/Okay
“Carrot Top Season” is a bitter disappointment. Flim and Flam are changed into cartoonishly evil bad guys without any of the personality and charisma that made them work in SSCS6K. The Farmers Union is introduced in a poor, rather questionable manner, and it wouldn’t be until “Tales of Ponyville” that it could honestly be considered a serious positive for the setting. But the worst thing is the mess it makes with Applejack. She’s transformed from a strong-but-slightly-crooked businesspony into a pitiful shell of a being for what amounts to cheap sentimentalism. Still, it’s technically well-written, with a few humorous moments mixed in, so if you can overlook its other problems, this might be a story worth looking into.
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NEXT TIME:
* Duke Greengrass hatches an evil plot…OF DOOM!
* Our heroes endure a rainy day…OF DOOM!
* Octavia must play a forbidden musical piece…OF DOOM!
* The foals must discover why everypony in town is drunk…ON DOOM!
* Raindrops goes on an epic barbarian adventure…OF DOOM!
COMING SOON…
…
DOOM!
…
(What? I’ve only got one more of these to do right now. You try thinking up something clever for the bottom!)
Lunaverse, y must mane six be evil in you?
Ah, another set of reviews. Excellent!
Yes, I think we're all happy that Scootaloo isn't an orphan, for once. I think Heavy Roller added some nice bits of comedy to the story, as well as being a good foil for Cheerilee early on (though I wish he'd stuck around to the end of the story).
You're welcome for the Network stuff. I think I'd have to agree with most of your criticisms there.
I'll have to quibble with you on one thing in the CTS review. AJ didn't purposely abandon AB to win the competition; in fact, she immediately began running off to look for her. The problem was that she was so sleep-deprived by that point that she was physically incapable of assisting with the search; as I recall, when she began to go look for AB, she either collapsed or ran into something right away. That was why Big Mac more or less ordered her to be the one to stay behind and watch the tables; she couldn't help with the search, so that was the most useful thing she could do. No matter how bad she got, she wouldn't abandon her sister if she had any other choice. (Then again, maybe I could have explained that better).
That all said, I still don't think that I wrote AJ as being much crazier than in Applebuck Season, where she also chewed out and dismissed her friends (Fluttershy with the bunnies, Twilight the whole time), drove ponies away, and ended up doing a fair amount of damage to the town (baked bads!) But I suppose we'll just have to disagree on that.
In retrospect, I think I would have changed how I wrote Flim and Flam (and hey, if RDD follows through with the idea of having some kind of 'Special Edition' of the Lunaverse, maybe I will. :-) ). Where I think I went wrong there was trying to differentiate between the two; you'll note that Flim is always the one who wants to bail out while Flam keeps doubling down and going to further lengths. If I did it now, I'd have them keep their con-pony slickness the whole time, casually shifting to the backup schemes (farmslayer, AB) while maintaining their fast-talking ways.
The end of this post makes me want to shout REEEEEEEEED RIIIIIIICHAAAAARDS!!!!!
I think this takes Carrot Top Season off my list. AJ's characterization was my biggest gripes with the Lunaverse. Don't think I have the fortitude for that one.
More review? Let’s get to it then:
This, for lack of better words seemed unnecessary
Kinda gotta agree on the Cheerilee matter.
Gotta agree with you on a Hard Bargain, though I’m certainly glad the Network didn’t get included even if it would have tied the fic together a little better.
Not really sure I’d say Carrot Top’s was dark even with the union town ETC stuff, though I agree with most of your other points on it. Also Applejack didn’t abandon Applebloom she was specifically instructed to wait behind because seeing as she could barely stand up she wasn’t liable to be of much use. Also Applejack was never meant to be crooked.
I also kinda agree with Grass and Clouds that Applejack sleep deprived in Lverse isn't "much" worse than Sleep deprived maneverse.
though I did feel the motive was overused later in the fic.
Wow I really don't have as much to say any-more, though I wasn't really coming here to argue personal opinions/rating of stories so that's probably why.
A Canterlot Morning I will get read at some point.
I do like the Trixie singing in the shower joke.
M6 characterization tends to be a bit of a trigger issue for me, so I will probably continue to skip CTS for the time being.
'Cause of the way "Tales" is structured you essentially have six stories in there to review. Or three if you want to look at the first four chapters as really just one thing.
The point is...your workload is HUGE....keikaku dōri...MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
(No, but seriously, I buckled down and finished "Tales" as quickly as I did specifically becasue you were doing these reviews. So...yeah, actually, keikaku dōri - just as planned)
One of these days, I'll have to find all the technical gaffs and fix them.
And if you wanna blame anything for DT liking Scootaloo, blame Family Matters, cause that's where it came from.
But anyway, your review was alot nicer than I thought it would be. Thank you.
478756
But AJ's sleep deprivation is worse, or rather it is presented as such. In Applebuck Season it is played for comedy and laughs, but in Carrot Top Season is just another way to cruelly twist the knife as her character is slowly assassinated until everything that was ever admirable and worthy of respect about her is gone and replaced with a quivering sack patheticness.
Tearing a character apart like that can be a tool for building them back up into something better, but despite cramming so many other plot threads together while rushing the CT-vs-AJ rivalry to a premature end, this fic stops short right at the end and leaves AJ with no hope of anything resembling a happy ending. Worst of all it never had to do any of that; AJ didn't need to be torn apart and rebuilt, because she was just fine the way she was, a bit of an arrogant business mare that put the welfare of her own family above that of the community, but even in the show she's been shown to do things like abandon Ponyville to the Parasprite swarm. The rivalry was ever supposed to be about destroying AJ but building CT; this fic did a fair job with latter, but throughly crewed up the former.
478797
It was a joke.
Lighten up and have a laugh.
479016
Umm... yeah, sorry that I couldn't do a better job of that. Did my best, but I've got my own tea of editors for a reason.
It wasn't so much that it was too dark, it was more of taking the darkness in an unfun and prosaic direction.
Honestly, I feel like Applejack's insanity in the story is alrgely due to the stress of the entire situation as she was desperate to 'save her farm' without really realising she was the bad guy in the situation, and the town turned against her alrgely cause she said some REALLY dumb things in the ehat of the moment. We DO canonically see Applejack not respond well to competition, and this mixed with her pride and her AU version's arrogance did not mix well. I;m not saying its not hard to swallow or even fun to read, but I do find some sense in it.
Also, said story was Duke Greengrass' first full appearance in story, so its kinda important too.