Another Wednesday, another review from your friendly Spy.

Plot line: Together and Equal…? (Now being abbreviated TAE) is a multi POV story that, from the chapters that have been posted so far, centers mainly around Mask Roles, a 16 year old changeling that lives in an Equestria that has integrated changelings into their society. With the rules set in place alongside the changeling integration (See Complexity for more details) we follow Mask as he starts his first day at school where he gets singled out immediately because her classmate Wolfe asked a question about changelings in class. After going in depth about changeling magic for the class he encounters more prejudice from the lunch mares and fellow students he encounters the first ponies, apart from his teachers, who don’t care that he is a changeling much. As he listens to a spat with Wolfe and Tempest, Mask overhears ponies behind him talking about him. Their talk finally gets on his nerves he leaves the table and thus we are given the first POV swap in the story (discounting the shift from 3rd person to 1st person in the first chapter).

The POV shifts to that of Wolfe where Brainiac hints that Wolfe might like Mask more than he lets on but he brushes it off as trying to be friendly. Leaving a short time after, Wolfe heads off to find the last member of his little group of friends, finding them with Mask before the POV shifts back to Mask. A few more POV shifts between Wolfe and Mask occur before the end of the chapter with the only other major thing happening being that Stormbringer essentially acknowledges that he is going to be the school bully.

Complexity: Now then TAE has a fairly simplistic theme and uses our favorite technicolored equines to deliver it unto us: Racism and prejudice are bad things. Wolfe and WindSilver (Now abbreviated as WaWS) goes into a long rant in the beginning of the second chapter that says this theme more eloquently but I don’t feel the need to copy it down when you can read the story yourself. While the premise is simple WaWS does a good job in the decidedly more complex part of the story so far: world building. This is, in my opinion, the one of the strongest points of the story. During the short paragraphs where he does go into direct world building he manages to build a solid foundation for how the changelings in Equestria fit in alongside special laws made for them. When the story is next updated I am looking forward to how he expands upon this foundation.

Character development: Character development in TAE is good enough for the first two chapters that it lays a good foundation that must be expanded on to maximize each character’s potential. WaWS definitely made me interested in the character of Mask and his plight, but all of the other characters including Wolfe and his clique need more development in my opinion. Something that makes them stand out from the sea of clichéd characters.

Length: Reaching a total of 7,156 words, TAE stretches a little bit farther than most stories I’ve seen do with only two chapters published. The first chapter stood roughly average for most stories on this site at 1,688 words. The second chapter, standing at 5,468 words, was a bigger jump in word count than I normally see on this site.

Spelling/Grammar: As per usual, my grammar isn’t all that great. I can make it passable when necessary, but I still can improve greatly on it. TAE’s grammar is done well enough for me that it isn’t unreadable and I can ignore any minor mistakes I might see.

Mood: The overall mood I saw in TAE was one of stress and frustration, alongside the undercurrent of romance. The stress and frustration comes out while Mask is still new to school, the pressure of trying to fit in alongside the frustration he feels whenever he hears ponies discriminating his kind definitely adds to his character well. The undercurrent of romance I spotted with the tag in the story description and the banter between Wolfe and Braniac. It has potential, but it needs to be executed properly.

Uniqueness: This is most definitely not the first changeling story I’ve seen. Hell, it’s not even the first integrating changelings into Equestria story I’ve seen. It is, however, the first changeling story where they were already integrated and doesn’t follow a changeling that was in the invasion directly. Following a teenage changeling does have the potential to deliver the message better than an adult would I believe.

Your personal thoughts: Normally this is not a story that I would read often. I normally read adventure and crossover fics in my free time, with the occasional romance one-shot here and there. TAE brought forth to me a rather interesting take on changelings where they weren’t being the antagonists or some side characters that are dropped in then forgotten about several chapters later. If WaWS continues this story I would continue to read it if only for the world building that has been done.

Final Score: For good world building, minor grammatical mistakes, and some characters needing more development I give Together and Equal a score of 88/100.

“Changelings are like me in some ways, or is it that I’m like them in some ways?”
~Spy11887