Maud Pie's tried to balance her family, friends and bearing the Element of Laughter for so long. But now, in Las Pegasus's biggest casino, her house of cards starts tumbling down.
This entry is for both NitroIndigo's Secrets: A Swapped Roles Contest and the Quills and Sofas Speedwriting Group's 'Hot off the Press II' speedwrite.
Pic credit goes to bakki.
Thanks to TheHatMan, PearlescentTT, Snow Quill, and Speccer for proofreading/editing.
WARNING: Maud's good at craps, but crappy at being good.
Chapters (1)
I absolutely adore the prose on this one, one of my favourite aspects of this work, as well as the creativity behind the ideas you came up for this roleswap, making this a remarkably original story overall.
Im calling it, this will be the contest's winner. There, if anyone asks you, I said it first.
10359821
Appreciate the vote of confidence, myself. I do think this might be my best T-rated work yet.
Ehhhhh
This could probably have used a once-over in the editing department, but far be it from me to ever seriously call out spelling or grammar mistakes. Just a note. I know it's likely a consequence of the fact that this was a speed-write.
This was definitely a neat pair to switch; while fairly obvious since Maud and Pinkie are sisters, sometimes a choice is obvious because it's the right choice. You did a pretty good job with giving Maud the Element of Laughter a distinct voice; she might be Pinkie's sister, but she's no Pinkie. Likewise it was a good choice to make Pinkie still have her Pinkie sense and 4th-wall breaking capabilities. All in all you avoided the most obvious problem that could have arisen, that being that the two basically just swapped names and birth orders but nothing actually changed.
The whole time I was reading this I got the vibes of an old Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Season 4's "Superstar", in which a character used magic to make the world more-or-less literally revolve around him. I feel like something similar has happened here. There's an ongoing sense that Maud is not supposed to be the Element of Laughter. Everything is working out for her, personally, and everyone seems to love her, but in a way that's not right.
The one thing that seriously hurts this story, at least for the contest that I'm judging in, is basically the fact that it was part of a speed-writing contest. This fic is basically a single scene or two, but it's not really a complete story. We have conflict but no real resolution; climax, but no dénouement. While there's nothing wrong with writing one story for two contests, I can't help but think that this story might have been just a little bit better if you'd taken the time to expand it further before submitting it to the Swapped Roles contest.
Still, all in all, good work! I enjoyed it highly.