The New Crop
By xjuggernaughtx

Reviewed by Superluminous

Hey. I'm here. This is a review.
Prepare yourselves.

By the way, I loved this story's premise. 'S Big Macintosh hitting Blueblood for money ;)

Commentary

The story starts well. Big Macintosh looks at a cracked mirror and monologues in his adorable drawl about how he won't look as good after the boxing match he needs to win to save his entire family.
It's not quite that quick, don't worry. He prepares himself for the fight, taking the time to examine his sister and Granny Smith. He walks out to the boxing ring.

I already loved the story by this point. End of chapter one, I'm hooked. My brief summary does it no justice whatsoever, but I've got another five chapters to cover. I'll get to specifics later in the review.

Big Mac gets in the ring and squares off against his opponent, one "Prince" Blueblood, and the two poke each other with hooves. I'm not sure I've completely grasped this boxing thing, but the horses do stand up in it, so that's a thing. Anyway a few uppercuts, jabs and 'crosses', whatever they are, later, round one's over and I'm really happy with the story. 'S good.

You see, I'm skimming to avoid spoiling it in this commentary, but it's really well written. There were a couple of grammatical slips, but they refused to break my immersion. Always promising, that.

Chapter three's much of the same, just with more thinking of the past on BM's part. I'll let you know now that there are four chapters about the fight, and I'm not going to repeat myself when I say I like the description. The boxing's well-described. That's a great thing about this story, but the real gold is the story you piece together from small memories and flashbacks throughout. At the beginning, there's this feeling that something's gone horribly wrong for the characters, and it's fairly obvious what after a couple of Mac's memories, but even knowing this, I felt the need to confirm it. It couldn't be true.

And reading on only brought more elements into play. The fight gets bloodier and bloodier, more and more desperate, as Mac remembers what he's lost and recognises what's at stake. However, his opponent needs to win as well. Neither can afford to lose, and it's wonderfully told through the gritted teeth of a man stallion getting hit hard. The intensity builds magnificently, and then it happens.

You realise that the end isn't the happy occasion you wanted all along. Regardless of the outcome, the characters will not live a happy life. They'll live, but that's it. They will never get back what was lost.

That's their lot.

It's both soul-crushing and immensely satisfying, and I love it. You should too. I'll be recommending this for a long time to come.

Review

Execution/Presentation

Point of View
The story was written in first person, from the perspective of Big Macintosh. It stays consistent and does so well. Not sure what else to say here. I have no idea how it could be improved upon. It's first person and stays that way. It's from Mac's point-of-view and stays that way.

Overall Style
The style is nice. It's simple enough to sound like it could genuinely come from the Big Macintosh of the show, yet doesn't seem to think the reader stupid. Nor does it seem to convey stupidity on Mac's part. It actually feels completely genuine. Like, episode three showed him as an insightful – if quiet – pony, and he's really damn insightful in this story, like when he realises Blueblood must win the fight for reasons not dissimilar to his own. Style was beautiful and characterisation on point.

Flow
The story goes at what I consider to be the correct pace. Everything that needs describing is described, but not in a way that forces it to slow down. It keeps up, yet doesn't go too fast. Again, everything that deserved description was described, and before I forget, described really well. I was drawn into the world of the story, something with which I'm unfamiliar, at least on this site. Like I said, it was well-paced and well-described. Top marks from me.

Mood

There's an intensity to this that I wasn't expecting when I began reading it. It seems simple, if slightly odd, (it's about horseboxing) so I was quite surprised when I got into it. It's not nice, not at all, and I'd certainly hate to be any of the characters. You quickly learn that Mac's got everything to lose, but very little to gain. As the story progresses, that feeling grows and changes, and there's a real sense of urgency. It was dynamic, yet smoothly so. Everything evolved organically as more information was revealed. I couldn't commend this more, honestly.

Grammar

Not perfect, but among the best I've seen on this site, and any small mistakes (and yes, they were truly small) failed to break my immersion even a bit. I'm an editor, and I generally spot mistakes without actively seeking them out, but it really did take a second run through to find them. That's going to differ from person to person, but I'm giving the grammar an A+ because it impressed me. I'm not usually impressed by the infrequency of errors in a story, usually due to them being less than infrequent, and usually glaringly so.

Tips

Get someone to look through it again and fix those small grammatical slips. Not that it's necessary, really, but this could get into EQD post-edit. A true masterpiece, in my opinion, and I want to see it do really well. No disrespect meant to the editor and helpers, I swear. Don't know most of them, but I'm sure they're great guys.

One More Thing

I touched on this before, but it deserves its own section.
We all know Big Mac says little. However, many of us forget episode three. You know, the one where he says sentences. Anyway, he has an established, canon personality and way of speaking, and this story hits it right on the head. Horsehead. Whatever.

So yeah, Mac's canon. However, this is an AU fic, and that usually means characters are written horribly in-canon but out-of-character or just OOC.
Not this time. Macintosh still speaks like usual, thinks as he speaks, and says little, but he does so in line with the story's universe. His thoughts are of darker things than usual, and he's reasonable about it. It's always a welcome surprise to see AU characterisation done well.

The same can be said for the other two Apples, but their circumstances affect them more directly.

For instance, Applebloom's got a bad eye and Granny Smith's hip is at her. While the hip is normal in the show, Granny can usually spend her days in her rocking chair. In this, she's managing the boxer who gets food on the table, and her life was ruined by her ancestors. She doesn't have time enough to sit around all day, and money's something they don't have. She's bitter and motivated, which actually makes a lot of sense when you think about the rest of her family. Stubborn mules, the lot of them. She and Applebloom give Mac some of their meals to keep him strong enough to fight. More Apple family showing through there.

In all, I think the characterisation was perfect and adapted beautifully to the universe of the story.

Read it.

>Applebloom

I have failed in my training of you, Superluminous-chan.

Senpai will never notice you.

I <3 this story so much. The narrative voice was amazing!

4056088
Oh noes! Pls forgive me.

4056122 No. You're going to the rice fields.

4056033
4056099 Thank you for the kind review and the support. I truly appreciate it.

Oh, and a 'cross' is a punch that crosses over the center line of your body. So if you were to try and hit your opponent's chin with your right hand, ideally, your punch would end up with your fist over his right shoulder (your left), crossing your center line along the way. A cross is considered a power punch or knock-out level blow.

4056033
Another reason to follow ya:
You do reviews!

Glad this is getting some notice. It is an exceptional piece of work, and I imagine my standard are probably higher than most of yours.

4083888
I'm generally the tough one on here, and yeah, this is great.

But impressing 4056099 is the real challenge in this group. She's not even a fan of the show.