Z Reviews: Keeping It Simple

Breaking my regular format for a moment to say things. Thanks, everyone, for your patience during my vacation. As a reward for waiting, I actually came back. (Aren't I swell?) So I'm back and all settled in, and all that's left is getting myself back in the habit of doing these. I hope you'll all keep enjoying my reviews, and give the stories I pull up a read during the rest of this year. First review of Oh-Fifteen, aw yes. Normal format resumes... Now.
This time's review will be of Keeping It Simple, authored by Ivory Piano, reviewed by me, TheifofZ. If you like this review, check my blog for other reviews, or follow this link to go to the post containing the mission statement and a list of all the stories I've reviewed so far.
As always, here's how I'll be doing this; First I'll cover the story idea, and writing style and quality of the story. Next, I'll look at the actual story itself, including character motivation, action (if the story has any), and the general plot. Finally, I'll throw down my egotistical and opinionated rating, declaring exactly how good, or bad, I thought this was. And yes, I will do my best to avoid spoilers for the plot IF POSSIBLE. If the spoiled events are integral to the story, I'll throw down spoiler warnings instead, and ask that you proceed with caution. Always remember, folks. This is all opinion. Disagree with me? Think I'm dead wrong, or spot on? Argue about it in the comments if you want. It's cool. Noone has a truly humble opinion, after all, but make sure you read the review first. With that out of the way, here we go!

I'm not going to lie, Big Mac is one of my favourite background characters in the entire series, and Slice-of-Life stories have always been of interest to me, and Keeping It Simple combines the two into an amusing tale that follows Big Mac when he's forced to get off the farm more, make friends, and just maybe, fall in love. Maybe. The writing here is really well paced, and scenes flow seamlessly, making it easy to see what was happening in my mind. As well, the grammar is particularly strong, with nary a stray comma nor quotation mark, so it was really easy to lose myself in the story without noticing.

The story itself starts off shortly after a Noodle Incident with an overladen cart and the Mane Six causes Big Mac moderate injury, which causes the girls to feel indebted to him. As the tale progresses, he's drawn off the farm due to inevitable forces of womanly persuasion and his inability to do his normal work, and while certain issues in his family life begin to come to the head, other aspects of Big Mac that were previously hidden begin to be drawn out as well. It's a masterful exploration of a character as interpreted by the author, with plenty of personality and obvious foils to build a very strong story around. As Big Mac is forced to explore his own life and feelings, this also causes other characters around him to explore themselves as well, and it's not hard to see the amount of care that was put into building the world. Because of this, the characters are all very strong and clearly developed, although some of them are intentionally unclear on some of their drives and personality, this only helps build interest in them. As the characters continue to learn more about themselves and the bonds that they have, each continues to further define into something crystal clear, with well handled interactions and nothing forced or awkwardly implemented by the author. (There's plenty of awkward between ponies, but it's written and used well.) As the story is more of an exploration of a character taking place in a Slice of Life, the plot is fairly simple, but the emotional and mental complexities run much deeper than expected, and although much of it, at face value, looks like a RomCom, it's anything but. Many of the scenes serve to better highlight and explore how different characters interact and to show how they approach the world.
Surprisingly for a Slice of Life, there's a decent amount of adventure and action, but the scenes and details are handled very well, with careful phrasing that makes the intensity easy to feel without feeling out of place, and beyond just that all the interactions have a level of detail in action that most authors gloss over or ignore. While it might not seem important, and if it's done poorly it makes things even more drawn out and poorly paced, if it's handled well, descriptive scenes that involve more than just talking heads can serve to continue building up a character, and help keep the reader invested in continuing the story.

Overall... I give this story 9 out of 10 moustaches, and 5 out of 5 Eeyups.


Any opinions or major points you'd like to make go in the comments below. Advice, Major Corrections, story suggestions, and fan mail can be PM'd to me. ... if I ever get fans. HAH!

Final Note: In the spirit of Big Mac: Eeyup.