Late-Night Scenes on the Buckball Pitch by mushroompone is the next story that I will be reviewing today. It appears to be a short slice of life piece today that seems to use the environment around the characters to describe something about their experiences, emotions and thoughts. I would recommend you to have a read through the story first before delving into this review due to the spoilers that will come, but as usual, I’m sure you will just ignore my plea to read.

ELate-Night Scenes on a Buckball Pitch

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

How can you love a game when you aren't sure who will win?

• Twilight
• Rainbow Dash
• Rarity
• DJ P0N-3
• Octavia

mushroompone · 3.6k words  ·  31  1 · 439 views

Summary

A couple of ponies find themselves on a Buckball pitch late at night. How they got there isn't important; the important thing is that they're there, and the air is cool, and the cicadas are singing, and the sky is a brand-new color. I mean, how can you love a game when you aren't sure who will win?

Content/Plot Analysis

This piece is a fascinating one. The story uses the perspectives of three different groups in the body to broadcast an overall message. The short introduction and conclusion of the story focuses on the experience a couple had watching a game of Buckball with the tension, or friction, between the two explicitly shown. The body of the piece looks into three different perspectives of three different groups of ponies spending time in the Buckball pitch in their own respective ways. It is through the development of their collective experiences will you glean upon an overall conclusive message that is common and congruent to the experience initially described, at least to some extent in my view.

It is a thought-provoking piece. The atmosphere and the environment of the Buckball pitch was conveyed superbly to link the thoughts and emotions of the characters each of the perspectives the author has chosen to explore. The way the author has chosen to describe the sharpness of the blades of the grass on the pitch, the sounds of the cicadas and the crickets greatly assisted to drive the arc of how the characters were feeling at that instant.

Indeed, by and large, I agree with the author’s perspective. Sometimes these emotions are incredibly difficult to describe and convey normally through plain prose and explicitly stating them in the piece. The usage of the environment to draw a link with these emotions made the piece resoundingly memorable. It sharpened the impact and strength of the emotion described in the story that could be felt dear and true as though you were there. The vividness of this helped the story shine beautifully in this department.

The repetitiveness executed in the story was also done well. It helped to drive that underlying message embedded in each one of them that connected the perspectives of all the parties together.

However, I felt that the individual scenes of each perspective proffered in the piece were perhaps too short. I wished that they were developed more to show that tension or that level of connection or that level of reminiscence within each of the perspectives, though it could certainly be argued that they would come across as somewhat draggy.

I disagree. The writing style the author adopted in this piece made each of the perspectives unique and special in its own right, and working on each of the piece's characteristics, or that part or aspect of the message portrayed in the conclusion would be able to let each scene come forth more vibrantly and more concretely show the message each one is trying to say.

Either way, this is a delightful piece that leads one into a journey of exploration. An exploration of how you perceive and make out the message of each perspective. I believe that this is unique for every individual, for everyone would have different ideas and thought processes on the same piece. We all have different ideas and experiences on how we think about the sights and sounds of the Buckball pitch, and we would hence surely have different insights into this piece.

This is why I have left the review as spoiler-free as I can. It is not justified for me to force upon my own personal judgement and thoughts about this piece, but it is for you to decipher them for yourself. It is a story of self-discovery, one for you to think and reflect upon after you finish reading.

Language

There are no language errors of any import. Throughout the piece, the language was executed marvelously. I especially appreciated the sharpness of the short, single-sentence paragraphs that emphasized each one with great effect.

Stance

I cannot recommend this story enough. This is an amazing read, and an incredibly underrated one. Do check this piece out; I’m sure you will not regret it.

Content/Plot: 17/20
Language/Readability: 10/10
Overall: 9/10