Ham Radio Rarity by TheKMExperience

Well, it's not as often as I would like that I come across a story with an idea that I have not seen before. Ham Radio Rarity is a new and interesting idea where Rarity gets it in her head to put on a radio play with only like a week of practice before it is put on and with minimal voice actors, her friends plus Anon. Well, it goes over as well as you would imagine a group of first-time voice actors given minimal practice time and lead up would go. 

This story was a fairly good read. First up is its novelty. This is honestly the first story of this type I have come across on this site. While I have read plenty of stories where the gang is exposed to Human music, I have yet to see a story where the ponies actually use a radio as we would. In terms of its progression, the story felt like what actually happens in real life where things break down and you have to try duct tape the flaming pile of un-goodness that things usually devolve into. It was nice to read the comedy that came from a group of friends that don't know the first thing about acting, voice work, improv, and script reading come together to put on the world first radio drama. I could smell the “this is all going to go up in flames” signals from a mile away. 

But the premise of this story is a double-edged sword as it creates the issue of, well, all dialog all the time does not a good story make. While I loved the idea and am actually a big fan of radio plays/podcasts, as a story I have to read it just doesn't translate as well. As an example, watch an episode of Zero Punctuation, then just listen to an episode, then just read a transcript. Something gets lost every time you move away from the primary source. Now, I will not discount the idea that a dialog HEAVY story could not be done well, I’m sure it can, but this story is just not the example I would use. A second issue I have with this 3K word story is, say it with me, pacing. This was meant to be a 30 min radio play that took 21 minutes. Well, it took twenty minutes to read it and that's including the background story, and I'm a fairly slow reader. The story just kind of hits plot points without really building them up, leading to things feeling a bit rushed. The Pinkie scene and ending to the story just kind of came out of left field without buildup or telegraphing. And that leads me into the last problem, the characters. Fluttershy and Pinkie were just not Fluttershy and Pinkie. In the case of Fluttershy, why does she have stage fright? No one can see her and we know from the acapella episode that her stage fright is not that severe that just knowing someone is listening to her renders her a statue. And with Pinkie, in Too Many Pinkies, we see that if a friend tells her to not do a thing she is more than willing to accommodate, so why does she go rogue suddenly? Overall this story could have benefited from a few thousand more words that would have made the play feel like it happened over the course of half an hour and to add to the dialog in a way that things didn't sound so off. 

Final scores:

Writing; 7/10, The dialog could have used a little tightening up but overall the story was well put together and served to get things across. 

Characters; 6/10, This is hard to fully voice but things just were not quite right here. We had Pinkie and Fluttershy seemingly going off character while most everyone save for Rarity was kind of just there and could have been substituted for most anyone else without affecting the story.

Plot: 8/10, Save for Pinkie just up and taking over the play and assuring it would die a horrible death the plot is well handled and flows well.

Final score: 21/30 or 7/10, This was a decent story with some interesting concepts that was just weighed down by issues in the way dialog is handled and in how characters are allowed to act. Overall, I would like to see something like this attempted again but with the problems I mentioned tightened up.

6975433
Nice review, I rejected this story previously because I wasn't sure how to go about it, but I'd say you handled it well.