Helloooo, all you random FiM people out there! Zodiacspear here once again with another review for the PCaRG! Today, I bring you a review of The Party Hasn’t Ended, by themouthofmush. One would think with a screen name like that they’d be spewing out romance stories all the time, right?

...I am unashamed.

Anyway! Apparently, this fic was inspired by a fandom song, which was in turn inspired by another fic on site. I took a listen to the song (found it okay), but didn't read the original fic. As always I will focus upon the key points of Plot, Characters, Atmosphere, and Grammar. With that line restated once again, let’s dive right into it.

First off, we have the tags: Romance and Slice of Life. I’m going to be honest in saying that this feels more Slice of Life-y than Romance. The romance is there, but… we’ll cover that soon enough.

Secondly, we have the character tags: Pinkie Pie and Other. The ‘Other’ being Royal Riff. If you don’t know who that is, it’s this guy.

If you didn’t know who he was, here’s your medal, you weren’t the only one. When I first read through this, I thought him an original character and was going to judge accordingly. However, once I learned he was an established character… well, he’s still pretty OC. As far as I can remember we’ve had no characterization of Royal Riff at all in the show. If I’m wrong here, please, someone let me know. Riff here is, for all tense and purposes, an original character.

I will add that I think Thunderlane should be added to the character tags as well as he he got about the same screen time as Pinkie Pie—who is the love interest here.

Next, the description:

It’s Spike’s birthday and everypony in town is celebrating it with him. Everypony, except Royal Riff. Why isn’t he at the party with all of his friends? Is something bothering him?

Short and sweet. The author did a great job with the description, it gets to the point and has the reader wondering why Riffy is so antisocial.

Key Point - Plot: With such a short word count, the plot is pretty straight forward. While I normally avoid spoilers, to even discuss the plot, I’m going to have to. The plot of the story revolves around Royal Riff as he struggles with his bummed state of remaining home when he could be at a party that is clearly being heard from across town. The author puts Riff’s home on the other side of Ponyville but still his windows shake in their frames from Vinyl Scratch’s signature style of deafening everyone around her. We see Riff struggle with his inner demons, but really don’t get any sort of explanation of why he’s so depressed until nearer to the end of the story. We really just see him… mope and daydream about how moopy he is.

Even when we do find out what’s causing his moodiness, I found myself jarred by the revelation because there really isn’t any set up. He doesn’t talk or even think of the actual problem until it’s right in front of him. No real clues, nothing. It’s eluded to once as there was another reason why he didn’t go, but nothing for us to grasp.

Key Point - Characters: Of the three characters, Riff gets the most screentime. We see that there’s something bothering him from wanting to do something he’d rather be doing than eating an amazing meal. As he mopes, he passes out for some unknown reason and daydreams being at the party. Here, we see Thunderlane, being that one friend at a party that we either love because he’s too energetic (and borderline asshole), or hate him for that same reason. When Thunderlane goes offscreen to hang out with Twilight—because that’s just the thing to do—Pinkie shows up, stuff’s Riff’s mouth with a cupcake, and says a few silly things. Here, Riff turns into a stuttering idiot and is just transfixed by Pinkie Pie because he has a hidden crush on her. She even goes so far to kiss the guy when she said he missed some icing and didn’t want him to miss it.

*Sigh* I’m getting off track here again, let’s focus back on the characters. I’ve already covered Riff and Lane, so let’s focus on Pinkie Pie. I will admit that the author wrote her very well. She actually sounded and acted like I’d expect Pinkie to do, with maybe the exception of the spontaneous kiss. But, I’ll let it slide.

Key Point - Atmosphere: As people have likely picked up by now, I never really got immersed into this story because it was so jarring with how the romance was handled. I will admit that learning a bit about Riff was enjoyable, but I never found myself getting into this. Maybe it was because of my unfamiliarity with Royal Riff that I never found myself looking at the world through his eyes. Perhaps if he had dwelled on what was actually bothering him, and let us know what it was, we could see him struggle with his desire to go to the party and be near the pony he has a crush on. As it stands… he just comes across as moody to just be moody and that never sucked me in.

Key Point - Grammar: The grammar here can use a touch up. While not bad, there was a few times where he remembered a comma before/after a direct address, then other times, forgot. A few of the phrasings also seemed a bit off, but with it being first-person perspective, it might just be how the character phrases things.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts: This story, while not bad, definitely could use some work. Find a way to make Riff more involving, work the romance in rather than just throw it in there, and maybe even extend the story a bit more would do it wonders. The way it ends, I felt it a bit curt and an odd place to cut it off. It would have helped the romance part much more if we saw Pinkie’s reaction to his bold move of kissing her (despite being so nervous around her in his daydream) and adds the feels, it could work still.

I know this review might sound a bit on the harsh side, but I’m just trying to give an honest opinion and hope it helps the author out with his story. It’s never my intention to put someone down when I review.

Don’t forget to leave a vote or comment on a story you read, it means a lot to the authors.

Additional Thoughts!!: I just wanted to add this because I found it funny.

As much I tried to be against it, to not show him how right he was, a lazy grin on my face. “Y-yeah, but it had to be done. Octavia requested a bunch of her ensemble’s strings to be restrung, which is taking me longer than it should, not to mention that I still have to retune Frederic’s piano.”

If he had to restring all the instruments that Octavia owns, I can see why he’s so strung out.

This is Zodiacspear signing out before someone murders me for that one.

That title sounds so familiar.

5921236 Try working on paragraph structure and transferring to the next topic. You're good, just need to fix those two things. Also, remember: it's okay to throw out a few spoilers if it's relevant to the review, but at least have the decency to use a spoiler tag. Even if you put a warning beforehand, a person who wants to read the story and is randomly scrolling through the review could see it.