Review #84 - Glimmer Can I Ass You a Question? , Pandelirium · 4:56am Apr 8th, 2017
And now, now I get the Petriculture Cycle finished with Pandelirium. For those of you tired of those stories, have a newly discovered author to go along with it. Oh, princeps, in case you're wondering, Song of Madness will probably be out tomorrow.
Oh, and before I jump into this, be sure to do this survey of my reviews before 8:00 PM US Central time tomorrow, April 8th. This is, of course, completely optional and by no means am I expecting you to do it, nor will I be hurt in any way should you choose not to.
Glimmer, Can I Ass You a Question? by Tired Old Man
Pandelirium by Kwakerjak
Glimmer, Can I Ass You a Question? by Tired Old Man
(Comedy)
Twilight knows Starlight Glimmer has been reformed under her guidance. Er, mostly—she’s still a work in progress, but there is no doubt Starlight is improving in her eyes. However, there’s just one bad habit Twilight noticed that’s been nagging at her ever since she first saw it. But how would she converse about it? Should it be handled delicately? And when would she bring it up? Today. Today, she would talk about it.
Review
Well, I would call this one a comedic slice of life story, with hints of an adventure style mystery. The characters, though, are not so great in my opinion. First I shall rant talk about Twilight. She gets worked up way too easily, like, Lesson Zero levels of worked up. This, when coupled with her obsession to fix it, equals a cringe-worthy character. The lesson she learns at the end was rather obvious during the fic before it beat you in the face with it. And since all it takes for Twilight to realize the lesson is a sentence or two from Celestia, it feels rushed and weak, not to mention a bit unbelievable. Now, Starlight, she's really only there as a plot piece so Twilight can learn her obvious lesson. Discord is there for comedy later in the story, and to show off Twilight's obsessiveness. And now Celesta. I face-hoofed with her first speaking role. Not only does the author fall into the trap of LUS, but she acts like an entitled bitch who gave a gift and said gift has been disrespected. I mean, just look!
"No, I didn't. I gave you a journal to fix, spent a good four hours of my day patiently waiting in an ethereal memory void to perform a top secret alicorn ascension ritual just for you, and I gave you a free pair of wings and title to boot!"
See? So much cringe. Okay, time for Luna... please kill me before I have to slander Best Princess. She's a petty, childish pony who doesn't think about anypony other than herself. Pretty much all I have to say about her.
Second paragraph. The strong point of this one is interactions between Starlight and Twilight, and I really wish the author had stuck to that instead of adding everything after Dash and Pinkie. After Dash and Pinkie it felt rushed, unedited (story wise, not grammar), repetitive, cheesy, and altogether pointless. Random thought here, I believe this story would have been better had it been something serious, such as: an adventure/ mystery/ shipfic for Twilight and Starlight, established/ grown Twi Twi and Glim Glam's friendship, change the words on Glim Glam's flank and make it a story about regret, made it a mystery, mixed any of those listed, etc. But, the author didn't. And so we run into the weaknesses.
The greatest of those weaknesses being... characterization. If you read the rants, you know why. The characters were sacrificed to make it a comedy fic, which was not the best of ideas. While I can't complain about the comedy itself because it's funny to somepony reading it, I can complain about the second greatest weakness... pacing. It started out great, but right after Discord is when it started getting worse, and worse, and worse... nearly to the point of screaming at my computer like a sports fan that's angry about a play. But, seeing as I have been ranting for quite a while, I shall end it here.
Recommendation: Not Recommended. (In short, beautiful ideas and amazing possibilities, horrible execution).
Pandelirium by Kwakerjak
(Adventure, Alternate Universe, Comedy)
After Twilight Sparkle made her biggest secret public much earlier than she'd originally planned, the lives of the Element-Bearers and their closest friends somehow managed to become even more complicated than they already were. Yet despite the flurry of all of the added activity this brings, Princess Celestia decides to undertake a particularly ambitious project: the reformation of Discord. She delegates the task to Penumbra Noctis, who, more than anypony else, can empathize with the draconequus' situation, and who is therefore best suited to showing Discord the magic of friendship. On the surface, it's a very reasonable plan. Unfortunately, Discord has never had much patience for reason.
Review
So, you know how with π's review I complained that it was a repeat of Magic Duel? Well, this one starts off with Keep Calm and Flutter On, but almost immediately deviates from the plot and evolves into an epic, if slightly confusing, adventure. The reason for this confusion is that it has multiple stories going on at once. Stories which I cannot talk about without spoilers, so those will be in spoiler text at the end. Now then, Penumbra. Penumbra is witty, clever, and manipulative (But in a good way). These are only the basic categories, and there are still subdivisions of her. Sadly, those would require a reread to find. Discord is a pretty good character. He likes messing with the Main 6, he can't resist a game, and he genuinely tries to have fun with what he's doing. His character growths come in the form of Penumbra's challenge, but that's actually a spoiler. I don't want to go into detail about what everypony else does to avoid spoilers. I can, however, tell you that they support Penumbra with various filler and/or plot related tasks, and are quite like their show versions in terms of characterization. Except for Rainbow and Fluttershy. Rainbow is slightly toned down, and Fluttershy is a little too shy for my liking. Think of Fluttershy as she appears in the beginning of Putting Your Hood Down. Trixie! Trixie is plain old insane and is seen falling deeper into insanity. She's also slightly manipulative and becomes a Mary Sue during a certain scene. No, I am not actually abusing "Mary Sue."
Second Paragraph. This one, because it has so many stories in one, can be hard to follow at times. Especially since the chapter titles are in reverse order. This one does suffer in giving usefulness to secondary characters, however, it has great interactions and rarely does a character fall out of character. If you read Petriculture and then this one, you will notice an extreme improvement. At times, though, it does get a bit telly because it's a scene of nearly nothing but dialogue. Kwakerjak also makes some bold moves with the general story... combining multiple sources of canon to write this, but at the same adding non-canon ideas to make it his own. If you've read things like comics, there are high chances of you seeing this. One thing I can't tell is who the main character is. I've got the protagonist, Discord, with his guide, Penumbra, but I can't decide on the main character. It's one of those two, though.
The greatest weakness then is something I've been complaining about for many things recently... plot conveniences. This is where the plot happens because it needs to happen, because the author wanted to be done with the scene, because the author was unsure how to write the scene, or the author had to write the scene at different times and it suffered for it.
Recommendation: Recommended/ Highly Recommended. (Great ideas, fairly great execution. I just wish some of the characters had been more involved or, in the case of Trixie, less OP.
