Drake's Thursday Reviews #10 · 9:42pm Mar 21st, 2019
For today's review we have one singular story of a longer fic, Crusade at Midnight Castle by Carabas
This fic opens on a simple idea - Tirek defeated Twilight and has established his dominion over Equestria. The CMC, overlooked because they were young and lacked cutie marks, look through the ruins of the library for ways to fight back, and come across an old fairy tale that is basically the G1 "Rescue at Midnight Castle" story. Presuming this is the story of how Tirek was defeated in ancient times, and the Rainbow of Light is just an old name for the Elements of Harmony, the CMC take the story as fact and set out to re-enact it in order to defeat Tirek.
So, the most problematic element of this fic is the tone - it is seriously skewed. The CMC are comical fillies, while Tirek is a very serious foe. Their scenes don't mesh, Tirek's scenes with him using Discord's powers to turn the Mane Six into his obedient minions clash terribly with the CMC discussing how to approximate the adventures of Firefly and Megan through Dream Valley with terms and characters that exist in modern Equestria. A premise like this would work great for comedy or adventure, but the nature of its heroines and villain means it can't be both, and it tries to and fails. If anything Tirek is even worse than he was in the canon, and the fic mentions blood and broken bones at times, making for a dark atmosphere whenever the centaur shows up.
Tone aside, the other major problem with this story is the human. Firefly had Megan, so the CMC decide they need a human, too. In a highlight of the fic with a Discworld-esque discussion of how absurd but not-impossible it is, Scootaloo just trips across a portal to the human world and kidnaps a human to take back to Equestria to help him. Who? No one. It's an OC as far as I could tell, and we never learn his name, the CMC name him "Yrr" because they can't talk to each other directly. Yrr spends most of the story terrified, confused, and injured, and honestly contributes exactly nothing to anything.
It's a shame the human element is just a footnote, because a human who recognizes how dangerous their situation is could have done a lot to bridge the gap between the comedic and dramatic tones of the story. I also am quite disappointed that it was a random human OC the three kidnapped, I had the thought that maybe it ought to have been Flash Sentry (not Sunset, she wouldn't work for this story). Some scenes of Yrr's oblivious mistreatment by the CMC are obviously meant to be comical in his abuse, and even if I don't hate him, the scenes would be a lot funnier if it was Flash that had been roped into this adventure. But even if it was an OC, there is a lot they could have brought to the table, but they brought nothing. Because of the language barrier, Yrr almost has no dialogue and never gets any time to show personality. He's just here because Firefly had Megan and the CMC need to follow the story.
Two other points of detractment are that character voicing is quite skewed, and the brainwashed Mane Six are very underutilized, with half of them not even appearing until the final battle.
All that said, the story does have its good points. A lot of the humor is decent, it's cool how the story connects to G1 and I love the idea behind the fic. Again, the CMC trying to beat Tirek by re-enacting an old fairytale version of Rescue at Midnight Castle, that could be a great and fun adventure. Stuff like Steven Magnet filling in for the seaponies, and Zecora as the shaman, and Spike filling the role of Scorpan, these are all fun and cool ideas. But the fic needed more polish to really make those good ideas shine.
Overall it was a bit uneven, but I don't regret reading it.
Much obliged for the review! It's good to see older stuff of mine still getting eyes from time to time, and especially gratifying to see folk go into detail about what they think worked and didn't work.
And having read it, I totally agree with every point you raise here.
This point especially. No argument there. Looking back on it, it wobbles far too much between dark-ish comedy and outright dark. If I was to ever re-write it, I'd definitely want to consistently lean into the former tone, and only hint at a bit of drama when the final confrontation rolled around. Tirek was made much too cruel and sinister and unfunny, and likewise for the corrupted Main Six.
Fair points on the human as well. Yrr's oblivious mistreatment by the CMC, his own predicament as a HiE who's hopelessly ill-suited for the setting, and the utter lack of joy he gets from the whole experience could have worked equally well with an existing human like Flash, who could have brought a smidge more actual character to the table.
Glad you don't regret reading it, though, and thank you for taking the time to read and review it.
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And thank you for writing it.
And yes, personally I would have wanted more comedy, the CMC have the potential to be some of the funniest characters when used properly, and they did that here often. If nothing else, a story where the CMC kidnap Flash Sentry could be worth some luls.