There are plenty of firsts in our lives: first steps, first words, first friends...first time falling hard for somepony. For Greyscale, these come evident when he meets a mare called Twilight Sparkle.

I'm struggling to come up with anything substantial to say about an overview of this story. There wasn't much to love, but at the same time, there's not really enough to hate either. It's mostly three friends talking about the new mare in town. With an extended daydream sequence.

One positive thing that I can say--something some of you may be concerned about by reading the description--is that this canon/OC romance is handled decently. It doesn't try to be this Mary Sue type thing where Twilight instantly falls head-over-heels for the main character. I appreciated that much.

On the flip side, it doesn't try to be much of anything. The characters weren't compelling. They didn't have anything interesting to talk about. The romance is a one-sided crush, and the plot doesn't really cover much ground. The story just... um... exists?

Fuck it; I'm overthinking this. Copy/paste ahead.

It was a typically average day in Ponyville—the sky was clear with a hint of clouds coming in later on in the day

Don't kick off your stories with a weather report. If you can't think of anything more interesting to talk about than boring and normal weather, why should readers care about what you write?

“Seriously? I just had to be out of town when all of the cool things happened, huh.” I said as I let out a sigh.

Four paragraphs in, and there's a switch from third-person to first-person. Also not a good sign. The story stays in first person after this, but consistency is key in a story. Especially right off the bat like this. It's good to let the reader think you know what you're doing.

I looked at my friend’s blue eyes. “Eh, oh well. Not like I can go back and be here when it happened, huh Icy. Well, at least not yet.”

He let out a small chuckle and shook his head. “Still trying to figure that out, aren’t you. I keep telling you that it’s an impossible feat you got there.”

“And I keep telling you that I’m sure I can find a spell that will allow me to do that.”

Grey, the earth pony, wants to learn a time travel spell for some reason. And it's never brought up again after this exchange. No explanation given, no exploration of his motivation for this, no depth added to the character whatsoever. Which is a problem for all three OCs in this story.

The three of them come from three different owners, according to the long description. Fair enough. I have no problem with friends writing about each others' characters. My problem is that they seem to be written as if the reader knows who they are already. The line about time travel above, for example. The idea is brought up and dropped so quickly it's like a surface trait of Grey that's common knowledge for everyone. Or this line:

Tart gave me one of his ‘devilish grins.'

I have no idea what you're talking about. A devilish grin, yeah, but I have no idea what a Tart devilish grin looks like, or why he's noteworthy for having them.

Think of Fluttershy for a moment. We all know where her "Yay!" comes from. We've all seen the scene (many times over for some of us), so when we see a "yay!" written in a story, we have that context of a quiet little cheer for us to understand. That would also raise an issue of relying on memes to flesh out your characterization, but it's still context.

Same thing with Icy:

He was giving us his ‘stop or I’ll stop you’ look (trust me when I tell you this, he could.)

Again, what look is this? Describe it to us.

The writing around Icy just has a strange timeline. We find out in chapter three that he has an eye injury that never came up in his physical description in chapter one (he may even have only one eye, which is something you might think to be a pretty black-and-white thing to know about a character). We learn he has Royal Guard training after his intimidation is told to us above, and after he slaps a choke hold on Tart.

Why couldn't that have been shown to us earlier? Why couldn't we have seen his eye injury, or seen him carry himself with some pride and confidence that might have gotten instilled in him by the guard? It's almost like the author made things up about Icy as he went along. Which is weird, because Icy wasn't his character.

Things just sort of... happen from there. The three OCs talk like a Skype chat room. Grey makes a poor first impression on Twilight. Then he makes a decent second impression. And nothing about this story seems to mean anything.

This part for example:

I saw who I bumped into and gulped a little. In front of me was a grayish blue pegasus mare, who’d you’d probably get confused with her sister if it wasn’t for the pink bow in her baby blue mane.

“H-hey Flitter...”

“Hey Grey...h-how you been?”

“I’ve been good...you?”

“Good too...”

We just sat there, in silence, trying to look at one another by not looking at one another, and failing badly at that, for what felt like hours.

There's no explanation for this. The two of them just sit on the ground awkwardly for no reason. I suppose this might be another thing where I don't have context and the two of them pissed each other off in a previous story from the author. I hope it is. Like they used to date and had a bad break up or something. That would make sense.

That would make sense, but there's no clue in the story itself. No one mentioning "You don't remember the last time you dated?" when Grey was crushing on Twilight or anything. No hint after the bit I pasted up there either. Barely any interaction between the two of them afterwards at all. So... was I so desperate for showing details that I made up something more fleshed out and logical than the author had in mind?

I've come full circle. I started this review struggling with coming up with something to say, and now I'm doing the same at the end. When the best thing I can say about a story is what it isn't (a Mary Sue) things did not go well. The story is just... there. The characters are just there. And nothing of consequence happens. It was a pretty dull read.

*CLAP*

Me: oh, someone posted a review.
^sees image^

Good review. Nice jeans. :D