FIMFiction Review #9

Hello everybody! I'm back and with a review of a story that was hilarious in its execution, even for an old story by this author. So, without further adieu, we shall jump straight into it!

Long Story Short, Things Went Down

By Aragon

Disclaimer: Just a heads up but I thought I'd add this in. This is a story Aragon wrote a sometime ago, so it may not be up to par with his current skill in writing and storytelling. That being said, while I may critique it in my usual method, this story in no means is where he stands in the present; more like a place where he was at a certain point in time.

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Description

“When Carrot Top discovers that her coltfriend is cheating on her, her first reaction is to kick him to next Monday. The fact that at the moment her coltfriend is attending Blueblood's birthday party doesn't seem to convince her otherwise. The good news, her friends are all there to get her out of trouble. The bad news, her friends are all a bunch of sociopaths.”

Concept

So onto the first bit. The concept of the story is this. Boyfriend has done something oh so absolutely wrong, and the girlfriend wants to get payback. And said girl’s friends are trying to stop her before she makes some terrible mistake. Funnily, there’ve only been a few movies I remember (mostly bad ones) where the formula is that said girl’s friends are all in for ruining her boyfriend’s life.

The opposite happens here as the rest are doing all they can to stop Carrot Top from committing an act that would get her in extreme trouble. It’s a familiar route indeed, but the story itself has a few other twists and turns that help to exhibit the unique aspects of Aragon’s take on this well-trodden path.

Setting

This part isn’t too extensive. The majority of the story takes place in Canterlot’s upper section, in and close to Blueblood’s home. And only briefly in Ponyville. Nothing too major here.

Plot

So for the story, it’s not super duper complex. But the short version is that Carrot Top’s boyfriend, or former boyfriend, Cheating Bastard has indeed cheated on Carrot Top. So Carrot Top goes to teach him a lesson, her friends try to go and get her out of there, and as the story relates, long story short, shit went down.

The actual plot in long form is about the same. We find out through Carrot Top’s friends that her boyfriend, Cheating Bastard, has supposedly cheated on their friend. So in turn, not wanting their friend to go to jail they do what they can to get her out of a situation that would ruin her life forever. The thing is, however, is that while in the process of trying to save Carrot Top: the characters, Bon-Bon, Derpy, Lyra, Octavia, Time Turner, and Vinyl, fuck their plan up beyond belief.

Their act is to simply survey BlueBlood’s house (where Cheating Bastard is located), all the while, having hilarious dialogue with one another in some mean-spirited yet funny ways. Turner with Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, while Derpy scouts from the air and Vinyl stays behind struggling with Turner’s computer, the rag-tag rescue operation finally begins.

Only to start off with hilarity. There are multiple moving parts to their necessity to gain entry into the house. Octavia convinces Turner to help her in seducing the only two guards keeping the house safe, with her stating that one of them is into other stallions (Turner comparing his target stallion as some walking mountain). While Derpy keeps an eye out for Carrot Top, leaving Bon-Bon and Lyra to find a way to break in.

Vinyl being just barely removed from the in the moment action is also keeping tabs on where Carrot Top is located (which is hilariously done via tracking chips due to Turner being a weird and possibly perverted stallion sticking chips in all of the aforementioned mares). Octavia and Turner’s part starts off well, or rather, Octavia is doing well. Turner inadvertently makes the stallion believe him to be an insane asylum escapee.

Lyra and Bon-Bon (somewhat before this) sort of dick around before finding out that Blueblood has a drug garden. One important drug they find is named Red Fantasy, or rather, FTS (Fairies, then Shit). In turn, once the guards are away, they believe in this brilliant idea to get all the ponies high and shit, which works out well... sort've. But Derpy gets high in the process since the bag of FTS she was carrying sort of blew up in her face when set on fire (which Lyra did with her magic).

At first things were sort of working out in their favor. But their efforts quickly spiraled out of control. The two guards are now alerted to the fact that something fucked up is happening at the house. Turner gets knocked out, Lyra like the sociopath she is is using a statue of a dolphin fucking a pony to break the legs of the noble ponies who are too stoned to get away or scaring them just because, Derpy is losing her shit, and Carrot Top, all the while, is still trying to find Cheating Bastard.

It all accumulates to Cheating Bastard threatening Octavia (once she managed to finally get inside the house while also somewhat high) by inciting violence against her, only due to the fact that she’s Carrot Top’s friend. Lyra and Carrot Top are beating the shit out of the two guards who had returned to the premise, and Bon-Bon has to knock sense back into Derpy and wake Turner back up. All before the Royal Guard arrives. But of course, the kicker then comes in.

The two guards, who are not pegasi, only seemed to bluff that the Royal Guard was coming, which Turner explains once he’s finally reawakened due to a hilarious deus ex machina (around the fact that Derpy was forced to kiss his cutie mark which is an hourglass, which somehow got her unstoned while she then kisses him and he is miraculously healed). In turn, Bon-Bon has to get her ear piece to Lyra while her friend is currently fighting with Carrot Top.

Said fight starts after Lyra sets fire to the house which in turn dangers Octavia, who is then completely chewed out by Vinyl who shares with her some words that I can only imagine are terrifying if they managed to frighten this version of Lyra (more on that later). The rest of Turner’s plan follows as he figures if they can get the Royal Guards to come to them with a signal, then they’ll all be seen as heroes.

In the end, Octavia is saved, Carrot Top gets to beat the crap out of Cheating Bastard, and all seems right in the world… until I believe a day or two later during the retelling of said events to Carrot Top follows into the group beating the shit out of each other, and all getting sent to the hospital. Overall, the plot was quite enjoyable and pretty well paced. One additional fact if I may add.

The fact that Vinyl sort of has a crush on Octavia. And in turn, caused Octavia to have a fit when Vinyl made it sound as if her cello friend meant nothing to her (which in actuality she was really kind of slightly peeved that Octavia fooled around with Derpy, and just was bad at telling Octavia how she truly felt). Was fucking hilarious. This in turn was what helped edge the plan further into disarray.

So... this whole story was hilarious. The pacing was excellent. The comedy was on point (I mean come on, it's Aragon we're talking about here. Dude could make a joke about kicking a baby into some hilarious escapade), not to mention that even with the characters being annoying (personality-wise, I'll get to that later), the story made them bearable enough to a point where they were the ones carrying the story along, moreso than them being driven by the plot. No doubt, even for an old story of his, Aragon had me in stitches for a good... ninety-six percent of the story.

Character

Yes the plot and story was good. But it was the characters who shined throughout the whole experience. The characters who were the one to drive the story. In essence, the only two characters who appeared very little were Fleur De Lis and Cheating Bastard. The former being a hilarious inversion of the elites of Canterlot’s nobility. For she’s actually intelligent in comparison to the likes of Jet Set and Upper Crust. In turn towards the latter, I absolutely love the pony’s name, Cheating Bastard.

It is extremely funny to a high degree. Not to mention his name is used to a perfect few moments in the story. Now onto the meat of the story. The major and hilarious characters. So I figured I’d go about it in a unique way. Starting from who was the most tolerable. Starting with Derpy. Aragon’s interpretation of Derpy in this particular story is a prudent mare who is pretending to be innocent. 

Who in all actuality, is kind of a creepy but amusing sex fiend of sorts. At least that is what I got when her sexual tension was rising the hotter Turner got with his words during his argument with Bon-Bon. I mean the fact that he turned one of the fandom's most precious little cinnamon buns into some raging sex demon was not only out of the blue, but all the funnier for it. Next was Octavia, who was the opposite. A mare who used her appearance to great effect and also had brains on her side. And the moments in this story via Aragon’s twist on her personality was also quite entertaining. 

Also, apparently, even with some bits mentioned that she's iffy about being seen as a lesbian, seems to have her shit together compared to everypony else. Next was Time Turner and the intelligent but arrogant and possibly perverted version of said stallion. Now I expected him to be a slight bit arrogant (after the canonical Slice of Life episode sort of showed that idea), but again, with another sneaky curve ball from Aragon, he made me do a double-take on Time Turner. I mean, the dude being kind of a closeted yet not so much perverted stallion was like... what the fuck, but in a good way.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd pissed off everyone in some form or another before this story started. You know, before he inserted tracking devices into them. Now then. Vinyl was a hilarious addition and possibly the closest personality I have in mind for her. And comparatively to Octavia, I feel like she's the only other pony who sort've has her shit together. I mean, besides the fact that she was flushing random crap down Turner's toilet after finding out he made an idiot mode on his computer for Vinyl. Oddly enough, the other inversion that made me laugh more at Lyra than Vinyl, was the fact that out of everypony else, only Vinyl has ever scared Lyra in this story.

Which once I get to Lyra, is quite an impressive feat for one of the less insane ponies in this story. The last four (Vinyl included) were possibly some of the funniest characters in the story. Very close to these in hilarity was both Lyra and Carrot Top. Both in turn were about equal in terms of the hilarious brutality both carried but to different degrees. Which, in terms of Carrot Top, was a fucking brute of a mare. No wonder Cheating Bastard was so afraid of her. She dominated the bed every single time they did the fun stuff, and considering he was scared of her during sex, I can't even begin to imagine what she did to him under the covers, and when she did eventually beat the crap out of him.

Second to the last is Lyra, who is possibly the biggest sociopath of them all. Like… oh my god. She was willing to slam the dolphin humping a pony statue to injure the noble ponies, and found an odd joy in her causing others pain. I mean, this isn't even the worst of her. She kicked Bon-Bon in the head and found an enjoyment out of that (only slightly regretting it after her "friend" disappeared for a bit). It's amazing that out of all of them, she's willing to torture others during a fight, dragging out their pain as long as possible. If this doesn't even signify her as a sociopath, I honestly don't know what will.

Last but not least is Bon-Bon. Okay, so here's where things sort of change a little. I thought she was funny. I mean, at least at first. I did enjoy her sarcastic demeanor. Had a witty retort and long dialogue to make a wordsmith blush. But it did (about five chapters later) become a bit of a slog to go through. Although, to give credit where credit is due, I can imagine this was on purpose. After all, in this group of supposed "friends", she seemed to be hated the most. Considering that may be the case, I think it’s quite effective. I mean after a while I wanted to jump through the computer screen and get her to shut up just for one second (much like how happy Vinyl was when Bon-Bon went quiet thanks to Lyra kicking her in the face).

But even with the issue with Bon-Bon, there was not too much that I felt was off. In fact, Aragon’s interpretations were quite funny and I had a fun time seeing how they interacted throughout the entire story. In part, I feel like this was the best part of the whole story.

Technicality

So for this part. I figured I’d run through the story and see if I could pick up anything that looked odd to me. (Added for posterity's sake from earlier, but there'll be a bit of a disclaimer at the bottom).

“Shut up, Bon.” Lyra rolled her eyes. “The thing is, Turner, that you were smart when you decided not to ‘prank’ me like that. You would have ended up badly.” The end of this sentence might have been written weirdly for me? I figure this was probably an accident though.

“Pfft.” Turner coughed. “Vinyl, you have somehow got to the main code, so you shouldn’t touch anything because you could... well, you could mess up the entire computer.” Okay, this time around it’s the first part of the sentence at “Vinyl”. I believe there should be a “to” in there. Oh and the “got” should be a “get”

“Every stallion and mare received the goose’s might fuckery, according to the legend,” I believe “might” should be “mighty”.

There was more Derpy muttering, this time questioning the moral of Turner’s mother. I believe it is “morales” instead of “moral”.

“Freaking great,” muttered Bon Bon. “It’s like it’s my birthday again. What’s next? A piano falls in my head?” “in” should be “on”.

“She knew that Cheating would enter through the door she was staring at at some point,” One at should be deleted.

“Derpy’s a friend, Turner’s a friend, one is hot and the other’s an idiot and why the hell would I feel uncomfortable with something I actually asked?! Hung up!” It should be “hang up”.

“Of course.” Octavia stopped acting like an idiot and walked to the guards again. “Thank you, kisses, now let me alone,” she managed to mutter before getting too close to do so. Okay. So I believe the sentence “now let me alone”, should either be “now leave me alone”, or you could re-work it as “now let me be.”

It’s not something good at all, of course, but, you know how this work. “Work should be “works”.

Now. There’s a decent amount of mistakes. But this is a story that was written like… six years ago. So understandably, this certainly isn’t indicative of Aragon’s writing nowadays. That and English isn't exactly Aragon's native language. That I'm fully aware of. Yes there's quite a few bit of mistakes but they're still pretty insignificant, since they are simple spelling mistakes, so nothing too major to worry about here.

Final Review & Score

Okay. Now for my final thoughts. The story itself was pretty decent. A unique take on the story of revenge where instead of it being a serious affair (much like Cheating Bastard’s dalliance with somepony else than Carrot Top), it is played up for laughs, and I overall enjoyed the hilarious chaotic downturn in her friends’ plan to save her from a lifetime of jail. It also definitely surprised me here and there, keeping me somewhat on my toes.

The funniest part about this whole story was the fact that Carrot Top’s friends came to rescue her. And by ‘friends’ this was probably my favorite aspect to think about during the whole story. These so called “friends” are so negative towards each other. Like… even calling these ponies friends with one another is almost dirty in an odd way. It’s like saying zebras and lions are friends just because the lions like to play "tag" with their striped compatriots, or cats and dogs are friends because the dog won't think twice to slobber all over the feline's skull.

You get the jist of what I mean. How these ponies are friends is what makes this story so hilarious. Cause with all the shit they put each other through, they somehow manage to successfully save Carrot Top from going to jail. The only downside I could really see was the… well, overuse of Bon-Bon’s sarcastic dialogue. I do understand that she was meant to be annoying on purpose. 

And to that, I did find it hilarious to a degree for the first five chapters. After that… it did become a bit grating after a while. But even with that one negative, there was hardly much to complain about throughout the story. It itself was good along with the pacing. So really, not much else I can say for a funny story. If I were to give it a score… I’d stick it around a… 7.6/10. It had quite a few good moments but Bon-Bon’s constant sarcasm did grow rather unassuming after a while. 

Hell, for an old story written by Aragon probably only a couple years into his beginnings, I’d say it’s pretty good. In turns of recommendation. I do believe that saying it is for “everyone” is a bit ludicrous. Humor by default is subjective, and I can imagine that not everyone might be into what Aragon does. While I wouldn’t say Bon-Bon ruined my enjoyment, sarcastic comedy can be hard to get through (I imagine) for some people.

I at a certain point (even though my humor is quite broad) found her sarcastic dialogue to become a bit draining. So unless you’re into that sort of thing, or Aragon’s humor in general, it may not be for you.

However, if you’re willing to give his comedic story a try, or any other of his more recent works, I’d definitely suggest this or something else fitting to your tastes. All that aside, thanks again for checking out my review. This story was a lot of fun to read over again, and considering how it holds up even to today, sort of goes to show the skill that Aragon has with words. Anywho, that's all I got. Again, thanks to you all for checking out my review and I hope to see you all later.