[REVIEW] OK, so perhaps I am a little crazy...

So every so often, a story is clever and engaging, but ultimately results in being just popcorn entertainment.

You know, popcorn entertainment. It's entertainment that's like popcorn. All empty calories, seems filling, practically no nutritional value, great with butter.

OK, maybe not necessarily that butter part.

Random Elements is NOT one of those fics. I'll readily admit, though, that at first I thought it was. In fact, right up to the epilogue, I thought I'd just be enjoying the ride to get to the sequel (Random Elements: Coincidences can Happen, review pending my reading it) and simply forget about the unpleasant bits, rather like watching only the podrace and lightsaber battles in Star Wars 1 in the desperate hope of forgetting the wooden acting and any mention of midiclorians. (Damnit, Scott Kurtz! Why couldn't you make your webcomic text searchable for easy reference?! Also, Princess Cadance did not have midclorians implanted! I mean wings!)

When I reached the Epilogue, though, and caught myself saying, out loud, "[SPOILER-CHARACTER NAME REDACTED], you clever bitch!" with a massive grin on my face and had to remember that I wasn't actually in a world of magical prancing ponies enough to shift that to "Stryke, you clever bastard/bitch/[insert affectionate-yet-vulgar-and-slightly-irreverant gender/sex/orientation/special-snowflake-value appropriate vulgarity here]!!!"

...yeah, that sentence got away from me.

ANYWAY, while this one suffers from a bit of herky-jerky character development and a few clearly forced plot points, it's no worse than the show, and I think we ALL remember no-so-fondly the Magical Mystery Cure's problems with that. By the time you hit the point where Fluttershy confronts Fluttershy, you've left all of these problems behind, as the author has clearly gotten their feet under them.

I've got to stop with the metaphors. Or would that be a simile?