This is my short biography. It is a biography. And it is short. Maybe you should just read my stories instead...
"Sugarcube corner," Fluttershy said.
Pinkie shrugged. "Never heard of it."
.
AU Magical Mystery Cure: What would happen if Twilight didn't help her friends get back on track after switching their cutie marks? As it turns out, not much in the long run. The Mane 5 are smarter than you might think, and start to figure out things by themselves.
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Nice!!!!
i.imgur.com/OBnhhmP.png
Well done! I'd note that the actual episode had them still realizing they were friends, but honestly that makes the episode make even less sense.
This is the main gripe I had with the episode: Given time, the story would have resolved itself, and even if Twilight had acted immediately, she should have explained the situation instead of 'appealing to their friendship.' The show's friendship lessons are usually great, but the episodes' plots must reflect the lesson, and this one missed. The fact that this was the "conflict" that sparked Twilight's alicorn transformation only compounded the problem, since there were so many better episodes (in Season 3 alone) that could have done the job.
I'd love to see the epilogue to this if you get time. Once again, fine work.
help im ded
acting like Zecora?
4892886
Shamelessly
It gets me EVERY TIME :P
copiedreferenced from Secret of My Excess, where, after Zecora long-windedly and cryptically explains why Spike keeps growing and stealing stuff, Twilight says something like "you mean the more and more he collects, the bigger and greedier he gets?"4890838
NOT NECESSARILY. :D How about a Magical Mystery Cure Movie, 90min long where each friend gets 15mins of despair before getting fixed plus 15 minutes of exposition / ending! Then you can sell mixed-up Mane 5 toys! And books! And bedspreads! Et cetera! CA-CHING!!!
4890868
Yeah, the episode made very little sense. And it felt VERY rushed. They probably needed a two-parter...
So this story ended up being fairly mediocre. I took an interest in it because I seem to hold the unpopular opinion of having enjoyed MMC, and I like things related to things I like, good or bad. So while I am normally inclined to just pass over mediocre things with little or no comment, this one gets some attention for that reason.
There were several things I thought were done well for the premise. Rarity and Pinky were great choices for the initial solutions and subsequent leading of the others. The situations that brought about their incidental solutions were rather believable, and their efforts to piece things together seemed well thought out as well. The "plot" flowed rather nicely for the most part.
I also enjoyed the characterization of the main two characters, Rarity and Fluttershy. They were not overdone in any area like I often see, and as I said above their thought processes were believable. It was interesting seeing the transition from cursed to sane for Rarity, and the contrast it made to the experience Fluttershy had witnessing Pinkie's curing while remaining cursed herself.
As I said though, the story was mostly mediocre. Most of what is good about it is a general lack of glaring flaws. General, but not complete a lack. There are two pretty large flaws that sort of sneak up up you at the end, so this part is spoilery for those who have not read.
The first is Twilight/Rarity which itself has two parts. The premise is that Twilight wasn't needed for the problem to resolve itself, and that was fairly well showcased by the natural initiative of Rarity and Pinky once they were cured. However you gave us a couple of brief glimpses of Twilight's activities in the meantime, and had her spend the entire time bawling in her room. I'm not sure if this is to imply that the solution takes place in the brief span of time that Twilight spends sobbing about her screwup as per episode timeline, or just an effort to lampoon the hell out of her. Judging by the end of the story, it seems more of the latter. Involving her in a more meaningful way or at least not giving the impression you forgot about her by the end of the story would have worked wonders for avoiding this glaring flaw.
In addition to finishing the story without her assistance, none of the friends apparently felt like checking on Twilight to make sure she was OK, or asking her to tag along to help on the farm, or anything. Rarity even briefly thinks about her and the possibility that she is also cursed, but rather than having concern for her friend, she discards her as a source of possible help in fixing the immediate focus of her worries: the weather. Rarity thinking of her friend as a mere tool that is useless to her current problem is really off-putting.
The second big flaw is the actual ending itself. As pointed out in the author note, there was no real way to solve the problem of a broken down farm in a short span of time. At that point what was otherwise a serious-toned story (even managing to involve Pinkie Pie and a party and remain serious) flipped the switch to stupid and involved a literal switch to turn the farm back on. After seeing the almost casual and elegant way you handled Dash's cure, by pointing out the cloudbusting/weather was not itself the cure, but how fast Dash was flying and enjoying herself while doing so was, I expected better with Applejack and her farm. It seems obvious to me that just the day of hard work itself, as well as reconnecting with the other Apples would have done the trick. The actual completion of fixing the farm wasn't the important part.
In addition to those glaring flaws, there was a couple of small flaws that I feel bears mentioning. Despite the fact that this story is generally a full reworking of the MMC episode, you still end up quoting it in several places. Perhaps this was intended as a way to reinforce the events from the episode in your story, but it came across as lazy writing. The shouting of the party participants of "PINKIE!" seemed really out of place, but many of the other quote felt a bit forced at best as well.
Another small flaw was one of formatting. You put a chapter break in the story instead of actually splitting the story into chapters. What.
In the end, the story failed to really stand out or excell anywhere. It had some rather crippling flaws in it, and it was based on a fairly weak premise to begin with. It could have been much better, but I doubt that enough motivation exists to really do this story properly.
Twilight is not going to be a princess!!!
4894575
Thanks for pointing out the thing with the chapter breaks, I'll remove them.
I see your point when you say that Rarity behaved a bit oddly, only focusing on the weather instead of checking on Twilight, fixing Applejack while she had her attention (she could have taken Applejack to Sweet Apple Acres right away instead of dragging her all around town for no reason whatsoever). I guess that was poorly done on my part. I was trying to go for Rarity reasoning that getting rid of the bad weather was most important since it negatively affected the most ponies, whereas ugly dresses, a shortage of apples or awkward parties weren't as nearly as bad. (Then again, the ugly dresses would be pretty important for Rarity...
) And they'll go check on Twilight in the epilogue right after Applejack is back to normal, so once the story is whole this might not seem so coldhearted to you. (Besides, although this is no excuse and only so because of pure contrivance: somepony's got to be last.)
As for your other two points...the idea of this whole story was basically keeping everything about MMC the same--the spell, the time, the personalities of the ponies + dragon at that period of time--except Twilight's intervention, having her crying montage last all day instead of (presumably) a few minutes like in the episode. Hence the direct quotes from the episode and similar / same scenes. Some things happened differently, like Fluttershy not trying to leave Ponyville, since she didn't have the chance to fail throwing "another" party and give up and go back to Cloudsdale, but other things, like the animals attacking Rainbow Dash, wouldn't have changed between the two timelines and had to be kept consistent.
As for the Applejack part...in the episode, Sweet Apple Acres was restored from a couple of bare trees to its former glory in a matter of a quick musical montage. I wanted to have the before and after in the story as well, but also have it be realistic. I'd compare it with Pinkie Pie's situation--Pinkie Pie started off slowly but quickly "relearned" her special talent, then, as a result of a seemingly random trigger (maybe it was seeing everypony so happy, but since it was Fluttershy POV you can't tell), everything flushed back to her. The "relearning" process was vital for Pinkie Pie to get back into the swing of things, so to speak, but without a trigger, however meaningless on its own, she might have not earned her cutie mark back. With Applejack, a day's (or actually more like afternoon's) worth of hard work helped her quickly relearn her cutie mark talent, but she needed a trigger. Maybe if one of her friends had mentioned an "apple bloom" on a tree it would have triggered her then or, when talking about types of apples, a "granny smith". I went with the switch trigger since it killed two birds with one stone--got Applejack back to normal and got the farm back to normal.
Anyway, sorry you didn't enjoy the story. Out of curiosity, were you the one so far to downvote it?
This is better than the real MMC.
Isn't anyone going ever yell at Celestia for giving that spell to twilight knowing that she would cast it and what would happen.