Solo Fic Theather V – Taking Care of Animals, by Nicknack · 2:54am Aug 18th, 2014
I'm currently in the process of reviewing all the short fics from this write-off, so have a single review – a criminally under-appreciated story at that.
Nicknack – Taking Care of Animals – Detective Fiction
In an Alternate Equestria, Applejack helps an investigator catch a serial killer.
This story was a pleasant surprise, managing to far exceed my initial expectations. It also should, or maybe must be read without spoilers, which, sadly, makes the AU a hard sell, and asks for quite a bit of patience from the reader as it moves its essentially malformed pieces in the early chapters. The gist of it is that Twilight never managed to revert Starswirl’s spell during Magical Mystery Cure, and the Mane 6 drift apart in radically different directions as a result, having no memory of their previous friendship. Figuring that out for yourself is one of the main attractions of this story, and reading it without that in mind is highly recommended.
The problem is, much of the tension is dependent on the reader's ignorance, as you spend the earlier chapters trying to understand just what is wrong in this AU. It should be more or less clear by the half-way mark, but it needs that tension to properly build up the characters’ relationships, as well as make you anxious about their uncertain fate. Thing is, in this genre you rarely feel anxious about the fate of the PI, or mostly anybody else, since the killer is more a force of nature than anything, up to the point you figure him out. However, by keeping that theme as the central thread, but focusing the reader's tension into another point, it manages to make the whole thing thoroughly suspenseful. And, by figuring everything out, a secondary point of tension quickly appears, managing to keep stakes high in what might have been a fairly formulaic tale.
It is also remarkable in that this is a crime story that uses all the Mane 6 in an effective way. Twilight is the Murder Victim, Rainbow Dash (who has lost her wings) is the investigator, Applejack is the audience analogue that gets entangled on the situation, Rarity is the suspect that turns out to be a victim herself, and Pinkie Pie is the murderer, able to enter and leave any place at any time. Fluttershy doesn't really appear until the very last chapter, but that helps keep the tensions high, and make the final more hopeful than it might have been otherwise. All of these work to different degrees, and while Pinkie Pie is a bit problematic in its tonal dissonance and meta characteristics, the interpretations that the author uses were great, specially in how their cutie marks are reinterpreted, and their shared story changed. Rainbow’s butterflies in a yellow square for “framing animals” is certainly the best, but there are lots of subtle touches to their post-MMC pasts that make it very interesting. It manages to imply trauma without showing much of it, or relishing on the fact.
That is certainly this story best virtue: Knowing how to change the characters to their new circumstances, while still keeping the core of who they are intact. It manages to be tragic and horrible, but still bizarrely honest to the show core, managing to feel unreasonably dark while still recognizably pony. This surprised me, and it mostly didn't make me stop and say that "this isn't pony at all". It also has the honor of being the first fic I can remember that uses Collateral Shipping that didn't drive me up the walls, that is, shipping that isn't essential to the narrative but to which a substantial amount of time is dedicated. I guess that it was the very nuanced way it went about it, to the point that when AJ and RD discover they might have feelings for each other it feels like a budding relationship that they can work in,and not that they were two souls falling in love in the direst circumstances, or whatever shit Dan Brown does in his novels.
Not to say that this fic is perfect. Not only it could certainly use a good dose of polish, but the almost post-apocalyptic consequences of the killer don't really mesh with the stated motivations, which coupled with the tonal dissonance in this part, made one of the central points of the narrative pretty hard to swallow. In fact, I found that to be the weakest point overall, and I believe that the story would be much better with some strategic changes in this department. Still, I really liked the story for what it does right, and that is a lot. Definitely one to check out.
Why it should be read: For the great way it portrays an alternate Equestria.
Stand out moment: The whole sequence of them finding Rarity's body, and her cameras, was golden, a trully remarkable rollercoaster of emotions.
9/10
Color me intrigued.
Checking it out now.
I read the last chapter just to see what happened, since I generally don't do very well at all with dark suspense. The idea of Pinkie Pie as a serial killer is absolutely horrifying.
2504033 There is a scene where she appears in the dark, in a room with locked doors, and attacks a character from behind.
And I'd classify it more as a dark mystery than a suspense, really.
Considering the author who wrote this hates pinkie's character. I am not surprised at all that they made her the killer it was bad enough that his pinkie hate was obvious in his other stories he even proves here with this one. He's using his writing skills to bash on pinkie's character.
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I am pretty sure the author just wrote the whole thing just so he can trash pinkie's character. Nicknack is a pinkie hater it shows in his heart of gold and feathers of steel fic. He's using his writing to bash pinkie's character. If you ask me that's a waste. Why waste your writing on something you hate so much? Like I get it he wanted to show Gilda in a sympathetic light but still he used the fic to trash pinkie by using Gilda as his mouth piece. And now he's using AJ as his mouth piece to trash her. How nice :| it's clear the guy hate her this story proves it.
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This isn't really about thrashing Pinkie's character, and AJ isn't a mouthpiece for the author in any way, sense, or form. In fact, it is pretty redeeming of Pinkie's character. Yes, she is the villain, but the fic comes to it by the perspective that she cares too much about her real friends, which she remember from "seeing" the alternate reality where everything is fixed, to be able to deal with this new situation. Finding herself in this world of dopplegangers leads to her dissociation. Other than the tonal whiplash of the murders themselves, it really has nothing to do with denigrating her character.
If anything, giving AJ the wanderlust she has in this fic is much more character destroying than anything that Pinkie goes through.