Clover the Clever, Student of Starswirl the Bearded, scholar of magic, bearer of the Flames of Friendship, and hero of the fledgling nation of Equestria has just finished his latest quest to apprehend and stop a master criminal and insidious sorceress. Now he must contend with a task that is often more difficult than it appears: returning to the life he left when he went on his journey.
The chronic and rampant memory loss the witch left him with is not going to help.
Written for MagnetBolt as part of the annual Jinglemas Secret Santa Swap!
Prepread by the lovely Wanderer D and Cynewulf. Any typos and errors left are my own. Those two are good, but not miracle workers.
Chapters (1)
This turned out great! I was wondering what someone would do with a wide-open prompt like Clover the Clever and you nailed it with some interesting stuff. Great work and I hope you have some great holidays to go along with it!
9999973
I'm really glad. This was a challenging project for me and you can ask my compatriots to confirm I was worried up to the final hour. I'd hoped based on your stories that you'd enjoy this kind of tale, but you know how being an author is.
Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hearth's Warming, and a Hopeful New Year!
There’s not nearly enough good Clover stories. You have helped to fill that gap. Many thanks, friend!
Well written
Oh wow, this was fantastic. Having a swashbuckling adventure with Clover after dealing with the memory loss artifact from Forgotten Friendship was inspired, and it was sad seeing his reactions to everything he had forgotten.
Granted, I have a soft spot for Clover, but this was a good read about a problem I don't recall seeing anyone cover in ponyfic before. Fun treatment of the amnesiac hero, and great job finding a great hook out of a nebulous prompt to begin with!
Goodness, it's been a while since I saw the first Hearth's Warming episode. I kind of forgot that all of those characters associated with the holiday existed.
So, this was really good. Clover was a lot of fun, an interesting personality as he tries to grapple with losing his memories. I particularly liked how you didn't make him totally forget who he is. So many stories that focus on amnesia go the predictable route of having someone totally forget who they are until someone reminds them who they are. It was an interesting choice for him to only lose some. Good work on this one, bro.
This is shameless and I love it.
Magnificent stuff from start to finish. That three-day time limit means that Clover lost a lot of information in the Memento-esque fight with the memory witch. The consequences coming back to haunt him is a brilliant concept, and I'm surprised no one else has really dealt with it. And the way you were able to reconcile his conspicuous absence from the Tragedy of Stygian was truly ingenious. The only thing I have to wonder about is where his other friends are. Surely Smart Cookie and Pansy would want to see him after this long mission.
And I have to appreciate how Clover's type likely leads to certain modern-day Skylight Lightverbs. Also, I wonder whatever happened to those bandits in the human world...
In any case, thank you for a great read, and a belated happy Jinglemas.
No one has ever written about this concept before. I love it. And there was a large mood whiplash between [Comedy] and [Drama] towards the end. The transition was flawless, of course.
I personally like your take on Clover. Smart, ingenious, humane, and obvliously, clever.
Well, this was delightful