It's that time again: time for a new review! Since The Quill and Sofa Shop won October's contest, the story Fleeting Fancies is the one to be reviewed this time. Our newest reviewers TimeLord Whooves and Comrade Sparkle were gracious enough to bless us with this round of reviews.

From TimeLord Whooves:

This has a nice, simple plot. Luna, the lonely princess of the night, is joined in her room by a very foalishly playful Fancy Pants, who attempts to woo her with his fanciful tendencies and display of artistic prowess.

In my own opinion, both Luna and Fancy Pants seemed really out of character but that’s not to say it wasn’t good. In fact, Fancy here reminds me a little of Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream who is a very enjoyable character. In the case of Luna however, I have seen many different ways of writing her, and a few times I have seen her as being more logical than anything, though I’ve never seen her as being against poetry. It’s an interesting perspective to say the least.

I don’t feel there is much actual romance in this story; to me it feels more like Fancy Pants is setting a trap for Luna to fall into his hooves, which is slightly romantic in its own way but is still more mischievous than anything.

It could have been longer, the way it is now is more like it’s been built up to the middle of the story. It feels like it just stops before it reaches the climax, even then, climax is not always the end.

The writing itself is smooth and flows well, though there are a few times where it is kind of odd. One place the same word shows up twice in a sentence. There is also an unneeded action tag after one of Luna’s questions, two lines before, Fancy Pants asked a question to which there was added an asking tag, but then Luna asked a question right back and there was a speaking tag added to it. I know it’s not a good idea to put two asking tags so close to each other but in this case, it’s better to drop Luna’s speaking tag entirely.

Then there’s the poem, I’m not sure if you wrote it yourself or if you found it somewhere but; the first two stanzas were good, however, the third and forth stanzas didn’t have a good flow to them. The last one was good except for the last line which seemed like it was added for the sake of having a line there.

Personally, not enough romance in this story but still the winner in my eyes.

And now for Comrade Sparkle:

Story: Fleeting Fancies by The Quill and Sofa Shop
Reviewer: Comrade Sparkle

Alright. Fleeting Fancies is a short, slice of life story centered around a somewhat anti-social Luna and mischievous Fancy Pants. Luna sits in her room on Nightmare Night as Celestia hosts a Masquerade in her honor, doing not much more than dwell. Her angst is interrupted by the sudden and perplexing appearance of Fancy Pants, and they proceed to play a ‘game’ wherein Luna has to figure out how he got into her room. This interaction sets the stage for the rest of the fic, as that coy, playful relationship is explored in earnest.

The story does a few things quite well. Foremost, I feel, is the symbolism of Fancy Pants. The name Fancy Pants, to me, refers exclusively to his, well, pants (the things he doesn’t wear at any point in Sweet and Elite). I never thought of it as anything more than referring to his station. Quills, however, presents a very interesting take on the name. They write Fancy as being much more than the quality of his pants. Fancy, in the story, represents the idea of frivolity, of flights of fancy. It’s an intriguing thought that I quite fancied, hehe. Beyond that, the story’s idea is very solid, and presents an interesting premise for exploring the characters.

Grammatically speaking the story was well above average, albeit not perfect. A few missed commas stick out to the trained eye, but probably wouldn’t bother the average reader. Technically speaking, however, I found the story more than a bit wanting. It is told in present tense, which, beyond not being the norm, is done with no observable reason. To put it plainly, the story does not benefit from being told in that manner. Beyond that stylistic decision, Quills, on a few occasions, slips into past tense. It’s not terribly frequent, but it shows some uncomfortableness with narration, and jars the reader. Quills also decided to use third person omniscient, when I feel it would have benefited more from third person limited. Third person omniscient leaves us frustratingly distant from the characters, when the characters, not the story, is the focus. Because of this decision the only way she could really give us a glimpse into Luna’s thoughts was with some often cumbersome and awkward adverbs that really detracted from any potency their words would have otherwise had. This fact, I feel, almost makes the characters seem a tad out of character at times. While ‘angsty Luna’ is an accepted trope, the inability to really immerse myself in her character made her seem more like a petulant child than a genuinely morose immortal. The last thing I’ll mention is the structure of the story itself, and by that I specifically mean the end. It grasps for a suitable denouement, and instead finds poetry. Not to say that poetry itself is bad, so much that in this story it was blocky, and awkwardly shoved in. It might have been nice if it were properly integrated, and if we had a better idea of what Luna was thinking during the whole ordeal. As it stands, however, it transitions into some flowery poetry and then ends very, very flatly. There was no resolution with the ending, no finality, no hint towards what might happen. I’m not arguing against ‘open-ended’ or ‘vague’ endings, but this one was really just quite lazy.

Overall, I feel a few decisions made on how to write the story really stopped this from being something quite good. And I do mean good, Quills clearly has a good mind for stories and characters both, and I think with a bit of practice she’ll write some truly fantastic fiction in the future. As it stands, though, I probably wouldn’t recommend Fleeting Fancies.

And that's it for this round! To our reviewers, tomorrow we'll discuss the next batch of reviews. And to Quills, congratulations on winning the contest!