FIMfiction Review #1 + Update

Good evening, everypony! Hopefully you're all glad to hear my voice again... or rather see a blog from me. Anywho, I've come to tell you all that the process of my story writing has gone good so far. My first romantic story is almost done with, so that's a plus. And I'm almost done with the final chapter that marks the halfway point with The True Nightmare: Epitaph. So don't you worry none little fillies and gentlecolts, for that should be done here soon. Oh! And yesterday was my second anniversary for my writing history! Two whole years of writing... wow. I'd never thought I'd see the day that ever happened. But enough about that. I'm also going to say that I am beginning my own little review session of FIMfiction stories here on the site. And I've actually got one here that I can show you tonight! Hope you all enjoy!

Now I'll explain my own rules on what I look for in a review. Firstly, I focus on the main themes: that being the Concept, Plot, Setting, and Characterization of characters. And on an added note, the story has to be complete before I can give my full analysis. Now without further adieu, let us get on with it.

The Black Knight by Yamazaki

Description

A mysterious object is discovered in the night sky above Ponyville, and a radio picks up a strange transmission. A discovery will redefine the history of Equestria and the origins of ponykind.

Concept

The Black Knight has an interesting concept. Sad to say that this kind of idea is usually done so often, that it is not as original as I would have liked. But nonetheless, part of the concept is original to an extent. Twilight Sparkle, (or the alicorn princess for this timeline), learns of a satellite and later finds out that it is known as “The Black Knight”, which is dubbed by Princess Celestia herself.

Now of course the concept is good. I rather find anything involving space to be quite an interesting read. It’s simple, basic, and yet has a good touch to story. However, like I said earlier, it is sort of hard to pull off a story like this, since there are some more numerous stories I’ve read before involving the same idea of a pony discovering Human technology, or technology that could be something even different from our own.

The next bit is to fit with the genre. And of course I felt that the Adventure tag did work well with it, due to the fact that Twilight Sparkle does travel up a mountain to get a better view at The Black Knight. However… the other tag I found to be a little off putting. Yamazaki has given this story a Dark tag as well, but I honestly didn’t find the story to be dark at all. Maybe it was because of the idea of a once ancient civilization, far more advanced than Equestrian civilization that it could be a bit dark. But really there was nothing that truly fit that tag, making it rather unnecessary because there was no Dark theme to it at all.

All in all, the concept was nice, but there are just a few minor tweaks that need to be added to it.

Plot

In the case of the plot, I can say that the plot does exist (thank goodness). We are first introduced into the story with a little praise about Princess Celestia from Twilight Sparkle’s point of view. Which then proceeds to the beginning where we watch as Twilight sits down on her bed, in her room with the radio on.

Twilight lives in the same timeline as before in the cannon show, but they have radio technology portrayed in this fan story, rather when they did not have it in the actual show. (Although I would bet it is somewhere before season four and even before the first EG movie). So she tunes into the radio, although Ponyville has no broadcasting stations available at the time. She does so because, as we all know, Twilight is a tech nerd, so she just turns it on because she is always excited to learn more of what she can.

However, she notices a strange coded message in the sound of beeps, which she notices is not Equestrian. At first she sends a message to Princess Celestia about it, only to get one back that tells her to not worry about it, and that it may just be pulsar star. So she goes to investigate by flying up high the first night, but is unable to get any closer to it. But she soon tries again and does get a closer look, although still unable to get much closer, although with the pair of binoculars she brought she is able to get a decent look at it. Princess Celestia, however, catches her after Spike notifies her about Twilight’s odd behavior. (Which I do find a minor problem with).

Spike was never introduced into the story once. How does he know that she’s been acting weird if we never get his character into the story? There’s not one moment where Spike is introduced and we have Celestia appear only because he sent a message to her after two days of Twilight doing her calculations about the velocity of the Black Knight satellite. Of course in some occasions I can accept that a character doesn’t have to make an appearance for some scenarios, but this one certainly needed Spike in the story to make it more believable, and that it didn’t just happen due to Spike somehow knowing about Twilight’s little problem without even starring in the story.

So other then that, Celestia gives a little backstory about how she first discovered the satellite and goes on about the possible idea of a past civilization, possibly far more advanced than Equestria. Other than that, all we get is the dubbed name for this satellite and the story ends with the possibility of life beyond Equestria and their home world.

All in all… it was an alright plot. It explained Twilight’s desire to know more about other worlds and showed how far she’ll go to sate her curiosity. However, it was certainly rushed and did little to go further into detail. And another problem was that Spike was missing from the story, when it was obvious that he should have been at least a partially crucial character. So in short, plot is alright but could definitely use a little fine tuning.

Setting

And as per the usual, we find the good, same old setting of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. What I like about it is that it retains that same normality that I do love, staying in the same age that they currently are with the show. The only change, which I feel is a little minor, but does make its usefulness known in the story, is the invention of the radio in this timeline of the MLP universe. Again, this part is rather minor and did more good than harm.

Characters

Now for the characterization of the only two main characters, which would be Princess Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia. And I have to say that they’re alright. They definitely fit their characterization, with Celestia at least showing her concern over Twilight once she learned of her former student’s interest in ,The Black Knight satellite.

Twilight was also portrayed well, as we got to see her book studious nature and persistence in obtaining information that could relate to any new kind of technology. And I can see that she’d even risk a bit of her skin to find out about some mysterious alien craft. All in all, characters were well done and I saw no major flaws in them.

Final Review & Score

As for my final thoughts, it was an alright story. Yamazaki certainly has done a good job, and I liked his take on the mythos of our own conspiracy theory of the possible extraterrestrial satellite, the Black Knight satellite, that could be orbiting our polar-orbit. And the ending did leave me with a satisfaction of the mystery being answered by Celestia, and the possibility where this satellite could have come from. But there are certain flaws that do keep me from enjoying the story fully. As for my grade, I’d give it a… 6.7 to a 6.9/10.

This story was good and I certainly did like the characterization of Celestia and Twilight, plus the good old fashion setting of everyday normality of Equestria. And even the concept was put nicely with its adventure tag. However, the reason I did not enjoy the concept so much was because it was given a dark tag, and I found that it didn’t really match up with the story itself. Sure I can see that there was a certain reason, like the thought of alien spacecraft can get pretty dark, but it just did not really make much sense to me.

But that’s not the whole truth to why I gave it the score I did. It was because of the fact that he mentioned Spike in this story, yet not once did I see his character ever appear beyond Twilight only mentioning him. And the pacing… was quite a bit too fast if I am to be quite frank. The story felt rushed and these, along with Spike being essential to the plot but not even shown in the story, along with the unnecessary dark tag, was the sole reason why it got the score it did.

All in all, it was a good story and a promising idea. It was executed well, but unfortunately fell flat without Spike, since Yamazaki made it sound like he was important, although not bothering to even show that significance. The unnecessary dark tag is minor, but with the pacing and plot having one huge hole in it, I just wasn’t so satisfied.