Random reviews 3 · 12:30am Aug 29th, 2017
It's random review time again! I wonder if I should make this a more regular thing. It'd be tough sticking to a schedule, but maybe it'd be worth it. This time, we have shipping, horror, and alternate universes! (But not all at the same time).
Oh no, he's cute by Tinybit92
A Flurry In Your Heart by Psyga315
Bloody Bones by Arkensaw Pinkerton
A Different View 2: Return of Harmony by Polaris Solarmoon
Christmas At Dash's by xscout159xx
A shipfic, yay! It's well-rated, too, but I should really stop looking at the ratings/view count. I've always said to myself that the opinions of other people should not influence mine. In fact for a while I used to browse Fimfiction with an extension that would hide all upvotes/downvotes on the site.
Anyway, this fic. It's a Flashlight. I'm cool with that! I like me some Flash, particularly as this is pony Flash, who has more potential to be an interesting character.
The story starts with a recently-ascended Twilight Sparkle getting lost in the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Empire one, not the Friendship Castle. (Although, that said, this story was written during the Season 4-5 hiatus, which means that Twilight would have just gotten her new digs by now in canon, but anyway. Story says it's earlier that that and I ain't gonna argue).
Twilight randomly bumps into Flash Sentry, because she's canonically obliged to. Flash is smart enough to have noticed this trend, at least. In fact, Flash is... well he's kind of a smarmy jock, actually, and I hate it. That's not a complaint, mind you, it's good writing and it does play perfectly into Flash's character. Like the human Flash, pony Flash clearly thinks he's cooler than he really is, to be trying it on with a princess like this. Especially Twilight. The fact that she's blatantly crushing on him is no excuse.
A bit of flirting later, and Twilight is left with the realization that pony Flash is cute and that she fancies him, which - naturally - sends her into a complete panic, because Twi doesn't know how to romance and also she's still got feelings for human Flash, which is confusing and everything. But, her friends, who all have varying experience in romantic matters, give her a pep talk and encourage her to at least try asking pony Flash out, since it's obvious that she wants to. And even though I don't much like what I saw of pony Flash in this, I can get behind the sentiment of "you'll never know if you don't try".
It's a cute and well-written little encounter, although it feels very much like a snippet rather than a complete story. The fic ends without Twilight following up on or resolving anything. The author notes that it was just an excuse to see how dorky Twilight would get when faced with her first crush, although to be honest I didn't really see it as dorky on her part. The dialogue is nice, especially among the Mane Six.
In the comments I saw that PaulAsaran reviewed this fic too. Oh man, he's like an actual proper serious reviewer with a backlog and a schedule and a well-thought-out rating system and everything. Damn. I hope he doesn't break my legs or something. :(
Notable moments
• Fluttershy accidentally admits that she has a crush, too, before realizing her slip-up. This is adorable.
VERDICT: Okay
Second-person fic! I almost never read these! I've never quite gotten the hang of second-person as a perspective. Even though they should be immersive, I think my brain just kind of rejects the idea of outside control. But let's give it a shot.
According to the description, I'm a freelance mercenary, and Princess Flurry Heart wants me to go tackle an ice dragon that's frozen the Crystal Empire. Well, that's pretty cool at least. I get to see Equestria in the future.
Here's a short recap: An ice dragon is resting near the Crystal Empire and causing a harsh winter there (I guess in the same way that the dragon from "Dragonshy" blanketed Ponyville in smoke). Shining Armor wants to murderize it with an army, but Princess Flurry Heart, who's a teenager now, reckons she can convince it to leave. Which she does. Shining and Cadance are shocked when they hear what she did, but eventually realize she had it under control, and they even give me a job for being so noble and protecting her.
This is a pretty good story. I skipped out a whole load of stuff in that synopsis, because it's worth reading for yourself, particularly what Princess Flurry's talent is and how she treats others.
But the second-person thing? Totally unnecessary. This shouldn't have been a second-person story. That perspective adds nothing to the fic whatsoever.
Firstly, it's second-person past tense, which is a perspective that just doesn't make any sense to me at all. How am I experiencing something I did in the past? I could understand if it was second-person present, because then it'd be like a roleplay or a video game, but making this past tense just adds another barrier to the experience.
Secondly, I (the mercenary) am not even the main character in this fic. I'm pretty much redundant, and my character even points that out at one point in order for the story to refute the idea - which, to be honest, just makes my character come off as a Mary Sue. The story is about Princess Flurry Heart, and it's a good story about Flurry Heart.
Thirdly: the problem with making me a secondary character is that I don't have any character. If this was in third-person, then the mercenary could have been given an interesting backstory, and I might actually have been touched by what happens to him at the end. But since I didn't really know him, that didn't really work. And I think that's the real killer with second-person fics. I'm always going to be taking the place of someone more interesting.
Notable moments
• Princess Cadance makes a chunk of crystal grow out of the ground, and apparently that's incredibly valuable and enough to pay the mercenary with, which I find completely bizarre. Maybe it's some kind of advanced rock farming?
VERDICT: Okay
Horror fic! Another one I wouldn't usually do.
I like the opening of this fic, which cleverly ups the tension by including a mystery hook and having Rarity reach an obviously wrong conclusion in trying to figure it out. We the audience know that she can't be right, but at the same time, we don't know exactly what is going on, so of course I want to keep reading. Well played.
There is, ultimately, a twist to the story, and I figured it out before the reveal. I'm not going to spoil it, but I think most people will figure it out, especially if they know it's coming. However, that means I can't say a lot about the plot.
It is a dark story, and in my opinion, it's dark done very well; a sort of fairytale darkness where it's almost mundane slice-of-life until the true horror comes to light. It's really well executed. Even if you do know or figure out the twist, the payoff is still very much worth it. If you want something short and dark, I recommend this.
The fic has some long monologues by Fluttershy, but unfortunately, the author has the rule for multi-line dialogue backward. You're supposed to omit the closing quote and include the opening one, not the other way around. It's a bit confusing at first.
VERDICT: Good
A sequel! Okay, sequels are a problem I expected I'd have to deal with at some point, since picking fics randomly means you're bound to hit 'em sometimes. I will read them, though, and judge them on their merits, but I'm reviewing them with the understanding that I may be missing details that are supplied in previous installments.
Personally I think that if a story is well-written enough, jumping into it halfway through isn't a bad thing. In fact, I have done this before with novels and even with ponyfics, and sometimes, I find it actually makes the experience more interesting, since now I know that there's a story about how we got to this interesting place.
So, this is the A Different View series, which I've never read obviously, but it says it's an AU. Cool! I love AUs! It's a very recent fic as well, published only 2 months ago.
We start off in the POV of one Dianne Pie, who lives in a library, and I'm going to guess is our Twilight substitute, because the very first thing she does is look for a book. And she has an assistant called Aegis Diamondscale, which is a cool name and who I am going to assume is a baby dragon.
Ah, and Dianne Pie actually breaks the fourth wall to introduce new readers! Hah, see, the author actually predicted that people might jump into the middle of the series and was ready for it. So this is Pinkamina Dianne Pie, who is indeed the current librarian of the Golden Oaks Library. Ahhh, that takes me back. Good times. I miss that tree. Dianne doesn't tell us much else, though. I assume she probably defeated Nightmare Moon or who whoever the big bad is in this universe.
The author spells "Equestria" like "Equestra", and I can't tell if it's a spelling mistake or if that's actually the name of the land in this AU. Anyway, Glitter Brightstar shows up, and she's our Pinkie substitute. Oh, and she has a dragon assistant too. Wait, really? And her assistant can do the dragonfire mail thingy? Huh. That's cool.
So Dianne Pie gets called to Canterlot and meets up with her friends there. Wait, why didn't she meet up with her friends first so that they could all take the same train? Aren't they all from Ponyville or wherever it is Diane lives? Well, I guess I can't make that assumption. One of her friends is called Quartz, which is another cool name. Everyone has cool names in this AU. Oh, and Princess Luna is the ruling princess apparently.
Polaris Solarmoon shows up. Hmmm, now he was mentioned earlier as an author of one of the books Dianne was looking for. And he also shares a name with the author of the fic. And he seems to be a high-level mage or something, because he can teleport. But he's not one of the Mane Six? Interesting. A modern day Star Swirl, maybe?
Anyway, Discord shows up, he's taken the Elements, hidden them in a maze, he takes the magic from the Mane Six, etc. - basically the same setup as the canon Return of Harmony. I learn the names of the rest of the Mane Six at this point: Jeweled Apple, Fluttersky, Prism Shine, and Quartz Bell. See? Cool OC names. Well, except Fluttersky, maybe. I assume that's not a typo.
Polaris Solarmoon seems to be some hands-off overseer type. Maybe something like Zordon, I guess? A sort of impotent god with all the power but a restriction on using it.
Anyway, they start doing the Return of Harmony thing where the Mane Six get Discorded one-by-one. Aside from the different ponies, this plays out exactly like the canon version. Even some of the dialogue is identical. At least until they get to Fluttersky, where the story does actually take a turn I found quite interesting. Fluttersky apparently is Fluttershy, albeit an alternate version of her with a very aggressive Rainbow Dash-like personality. And Discord, being an extradimensional being of chaos, mistakes her for the canon Fluttershy. Unfortunately, calling her "Fluttershy" turns out to be one of her berserk buttons, and she beats the everloving crap out of him. This distracts Discord enough for Polaris to god-mode a solution to the crisis which frankly makes no sense, but anyway, it saves the day. Discord agrees to be reformed by Prism Shine, who is the actual Fluttershy substitute for this AU. The day is saved, everyone celebrates, and Dianne Pie ends the story by staring at me through the fourth wall, because she can do that.
God damn it. XD This story is a guilty pleasure for me. It's very amateur indeed. The grammar is sloppy, with poor punctuation that does nothing to help the spartan dialogue. There's the classic amateur practice of using "*CHARACTER X's POV*" to signify a point-of-view change (which isn't even necessary; Dianne Pie is the only viewpoint character in the first act, and she actually introduces herself directly to the reader!) The author makes up devices that aren't necessary for comprehension, such as indicating a Discorded character with the suffix "D-". The story lacks much meaningful detail beyond the characters and places that show up. The pacing, while not as bad as I've seen it in other fics, is still far too fast. We don't learn anything about this universe's Discord. Parts of the plot are lifted wholesale from the show. The plot is ultimately resolved by deus ex machina (even if Fluttershy beating the crap out of Discord was hilarious).
It is, without doubt, a badly-written fic, but dammit, I really do appreciate the inventiveness and drive which motivates someone to create an AU. It made me nostalgic in a good way. Plus, a Pinkie Pie who has Twilight's studiousness but retains her fourth wall abilities? That's a pretty neat idea.
Notable characters
• Fluttersky "Phoenix" Firewing, who has an awesome name and serious anger management issues.
VERDICT: Tolerable
[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]
This is an old fic indeed! At first I was like "wait - 'Christmas'?", and then I checked the date and found that this came out literally 5 days before the episode "Hearth's Warming Eve". So, no continuity error here! This is ponies celebrating Christmas.
...unfortunately, it's terrible. And by terrible, I mean, this 2400-word fic has 4 paragraphs. Dear god, I haven't had to deal with a legit wall of text in some time. Here goes...
Apple Bloom shows up to Scootaloo's house to deliver a Christmas gift, a blanket that she made herself. Dawwww. Silly fic. Everyone knows Scootaloo doesn't have a house. The two have some cute moments, and then go out looking for Rainbow Dash, because Scootaloo's got a gift for her. Eventually, they find Fluttershy, who instead tells them why they can't find Rainbow Dash, and explains that Dash suffered a horrible family tragedy at Christmas when she was young, and thus doesn't celebrate the day.
Scootaloo convinces Fluttershy to take her up to Dash's so that she can try to talk her out of her funk. It all gets a bit sad, but ends on a positive note.
Yeeeeeaaaah... this story isn't any good. It's got some cute moments in the beginning, and I enjoy winter-themed stories as a rule, but the grammar is atrocious and sucks any real drama from what could otherwise have been a not-too-bad sadfic, and the tragedy is laid on way too thick.
Notable moments
• Scootaloo sold her scooter to buy Dash a Christmas gift. And this is early season 2 Scootaloo, when scootering was a big thing for her. I'm not crying dammit
VERDICT: Poor
Ooo, I can't wait to check out Bloody Bones
Are you Strong Enough to keep doing these reviews?
While I do Believe In you, Reading all these fics must be a Hard day's night work for you, although if you could turn back time I doubt you'd do anything diffrent.
And if you do this reviews becuase You just want to have fun, then Carry on, just as long as you enjoy it time after time, maybe your True Colours shine as a fic reviewer in this Ordinary World, and yes I did planned out this comment long before, and while Everypun Hurts I sure hope you Don't look back in anger
You haven't read enough stories.
I do like this verdict; it's not one I've seen any other reviewer use.
I'm mildly intrigued by the second-person fic, if only because the majority of 2p stories seem to be clopfics and it would be interesting to see what an E-rated one can do. I might put Bloody Bones on the list eventually, because Fluttershy, horror or not. The rest... I think I'll let you be the go-to reviewer for those.
Oh, and it seems Singularity Dream has noticed you, so expect these to get a mention on the Big Master Review List! :)
4651805
oh god
oh my god
I can't take the pressure
That guy is awesome