GaPJaxie Reviews: A Changeling Walks Into A Bar... · 2:48am Dec 24th, 2019
Last year, for Jinglemas, I had to write a story for Shakespearicles. He specified that it should contain Discord and Berry Punch, two characters I didn't really know what to do with. I fretted for weeks and worried I would miss the deadline, but ultimately managed to write something I was pretty happy with.
It's a sweet story. People liked it! And by all rights, things should have ended there. But this year, something strange happened. By random lot, Shakespearicles drew me as his story recipient. He had the opportunity not merely to pay me back for last year, but to outdo me. To upstage me. To prove once and for all that he is not merely a man, but a legend! The World's Strongest Writer™
He knew what he had to do. He would write a sequel to The Perfect Drink.
And it's awesome.
In The Perfect Drink, Berry Punch uses her earth pony magic to prepare the titular drink for Fluttershy. In A Changeling Walks Into A Bar Ocellus and the rest of the Student 6 learn what happened, and they can't restrain their curiosity. What does the perfect drink taste like? Is it strong? Sugary? If you drink it, does it turn you into an alcoholic? Maybe, for changelings, it tastes like love.
None of them are old enough to legally drink, so they decide to have Ocellus sneak into Berry Punch's bar for them. She goes in disguised as Rarity -- a tricky infiltration to be sure. Rarity has many distinctive mannerisms, and impersonating her requires careful observation, guile, finesse, and grace under pressure.
"Yes," Rarity said. "I'd like one 'The Perfect Drink', please."
So she gets caught immediately.
But it's okay. Ocellus won't get to drink underage, but she might get what she needs.
A Changeling Walks Into A Bar is an excellent character-driven piece about Ponyville's favorite bartender dispensing some wisdom to Ocellus. Ocellus learns about impersonating Rarity, about the nature of magic in Equestria, and about why underage changelings shouldn't sneak into bars. But most of all, she learns about herself.
"That's another life lesson for you: Never confuse what you want with what you need. You have your health. Food in your stomach. A roof over your head. Friends and family that love you. So what else do you need?"
Bad sequels rehash the plot of the original. Good sequels use the original as a jumping off point to tell their own story. And by that standard, A Changeling Walks Into A Bar is indeed a good sequel. It uses Berry Punch's role as a wise bartender from the first story, but changes everything else, using her as a framing device to give us a glimpse into the life of someone else entirely.
I don't want to spoil the story, because a lot of the fun of reading it is in the small details, but the setup is good, the characterization is great, the way Berry Punch is handled is a respectful homage to the original story, and it contains some very fun speculation about magic in Equestria that might just be part of my headcanon now.
In short, it's awesome, and you should go read it.
Okay, first of all,
media.giphy.com/media/Uqk3V8JQHwD3iwjcpA/giphy.gif
But if my ego gets any bigger, I'll be attracting women with gravity instead of just my rugged good looks.
To say that it out-does the original? I don't know about all that. I just knew that as soon as I saw that I drew your name for Jinglemas, with Berry listed as one of the characters, I knew I needed to pay some kind of homage to The Perfect Drink, with the Berry Punch you wrote. So I went back and re-read the original and bookmarked it.
i.imgur.com/y9UVtHM.png
I forgot that was a public bookshelf. Oops.
But it was too late. There was no going back. I was committed to writing a sequel to one of the best stories on this site (that I didn't write
)
But what to do with Ocellus? What would be her Perfect Drink experience? I wrestled with it for a few days. I went to my usual haunt to get a feel for the tavern experience, and to think about Ocellus.
While I was there, a group of young adults tried to get in. The doorman turned away all but the one with a convincing ID. She walked up to the bar and the bartender checked her id again. He decided that it looked fake and gave her a glass of water, telling her that if she needed a drink, it was all she was going to get. And just like that, I had my answer. It is true what they say:
The best writing comes from real life experiences.
But what about the mythos of "The Perfect Drink?" What even was it? I wanted to know. And I knew I couldn't be the only one who wondered. I read The Perfect Drink again twice more, and thought about what the experience was for each character (the two we see) who get The Drink, and it struck me was that it wasn't about the drink at all. It was the experience associated with it.
And the taste of the drink, much like smell, was tied to memory. The memory of that special experience. That was what made The Drink as unique and special as each pony that received it.
What would be the experience for Ocellus? She's a student. She's still young, (too young to be drinking) and still learning. Learning life lessons.
That was what needed to happen for Ocellus that night in the bar.
That was the story that I needed to tell.
If anything, A Changeling Walks Into A Bar just reinforces the feeling I have every time I click into a Shakespearicles story: It certainly looks like I'm where I should be, but I'm not sure that I'm actually allowed to read something so grand.
Already read it, but thanks for the review. :)
5174036
And thanks for the background!
5174036
The story was really insightful both self-contained as a response to the original tale. I agree with Jaxie: Well done.
And don't sell yourself short. Real life handed you some juicy, story-ready experiences, but making all the pieces fit together meaningfully? That was all you.