EThe Shopping Spree

• Equestria Girls
• Comedy
• Random
• Slice of Life

Stick. To. The PLAN!!!

• Other
• Pinkie Pie (EqG)
• Sci-Twi

23 KM To Nerdiness · 2.5k words  ·  46  3 · 680 views

Well, Twilight and Pinkie go shopping. That’s it. That’s the story. Shopping Spree is pretty much a light, easy read about an everyday experience following two almost polar opposites: Pinkie and Twilight. 

Yeah, the plot is pretty much what I said it was. Set in the EQU universe, it explores what happens when Twilight and Pinkie win a free shopping spree and their various plans as to how to utilize it.

I recognize that this is a silly little one-shot fic, but I do have some problems with it. First of all, the rules of their shopping spree are never really laid out. I was coming into this thinking that they had won like free groceries for a year or something, instead they have three minutes to get all the groceries they want for free. This line was really mentioned only once in passing, so I think it’d be easy for readers to miss out on what’s going on.

Again, the aspects of the shopping spree do seem to drive the plot of the story. The girls have three minutes to gather all the groceries they can, and if they don’t check out at this time they lose everything. These limits were probably imposed storywise to give suspense to the story, but they don’t seem to accomplish this.

The details of the spree seem brushed over and unimportant, therefore they don’t add as much suspense to the story as the author probably wanted. Or maybe I’m just using fancy words to describe a story that’s inherently comedic and random. I’ll leave that for the reader to decide.

The beginning of the story is also quite abrupt. After one introductory line, the reader is immediately thrust into a store. After that there isn’t really any setting development, and we don’t get any for the rest of the story. I think that the author would benefit from taking a moment to describe the store and set it up for the reader. They can even take this moment to add in some more jokes to maintain the comedic nature of the story.

Ultimately, I just don’t have very much to say about the plot. It isn’t overly complicated and it has enough detail to stand, it just… bored me, I guess. Perhaps I’m expecting too much out of this fic, but I do feel like more can be added to the plot to make it funnier and more exciting.

There are two primary protagonists (or main characters. I don’t know why I’m breaking out all of these fancy literature terms today) in the story: Pinkie Pie and Twilight. I’m not all that confident speaking on the EQG iteration of these characters since I don’t like human stories (which I believe I did say in my bio), so I won’t say if their portrayal here are ‘accurate.’

Pinkie here seems to maintain her air of randomness and spontaneity while Twilight is described as an overanalyzt (just like me). Pinkie later does try to act as a good friend to her neighbors and Rarity whereas Twilight strangely dismisses these desires in the name for money. Again, I’m not familiar with EQG, but if this were a pony fic I’d say this is odd of her.

Other than that, their personalities don’t seem to play as big of a role as I thought they would have. Sure, Twilight’s desire to maximize their profit is a driving point of the story, but Pinkie seems to abandon her attitude in favor of moving the plot along. But, again, I feel like there could be more. Call me selfish, but this is a fairly short story with a lot of room to grow. Tease out the three minutes. Throw in details of Pinkie wanting to grab more items with Twilight insisting that they can’t. Maybe she starts a conversation with someone in the crowd. There’s a lot of ways to go with this story.

Didn’t find very many typos, but there was one thing that was nagging at me the entire time: excessive dots. Here’s some examples from the story:

"9.........8.........7........6..."

Twilight hooks her boot through the bottom of the cart and is dragged past the line as she holds on to over ten cans of caviar.

"5.........4........3..........2.......1..."

Three dots (or ellipses if you’re an editor) are sufficient. This is kind of overkill, even more so because it isn’t consistent, and the amount of dots used seems to vary each instance. Excess punctuation like this tends to distract a reader and ruin the experience.

Finally, there are quite a few blocks of nothing but dialogue. I would recommend that the author add dialogue tags because even if there are only two characters, tags would allow you to insert actions to further the scene.

I don’t know, I had a hard time picking things to talk about here. I spent most of the time writing this review trying to figure out if I should explore certain aspects or if I was overthinking it. At its heart, I think its a silly story that doesn’t really have a direction. Which is fine if that’s what the author intendended, but even if that is the case, the story can be made even better.

As it stands, I found myself actually being a little bit bored by the piece. I think its because the conflict and suspense of the prompt aren’t as developed as they could be, and the main meat of the comedy seems to lie in the depictions of Twilight and Pinkie.

Don’t let my words dissuade you, though. I don’t mean that this is a ‘silly’ story in a demeaning way. I simply meant that it fits the tags in that it is comedic and slightly random. If you’ve got the time, give it a shot and draw your own conclusions. 

If you’re looking for a short and comedic story about a mundane, everyday event, this might be the story you’re looking for. 

I truly hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but as I said before, I had a hard time finding things to talk about. I’m not sure what your intentions were for this story so I’ve been picking my words carefully. I may have been a little bored, but it does take quite a bit to make me laugh or smile. Don’t be discouraged, I think you can definitely make something out of this fic!

I do have my reading notes for your fic, if you would like to see them let me know.

Plot: 4/10
Characterization: 6/10
Grammar: 8/10

Average: 6/10

7175460
Midnight *has only a few lines and yet is not a character* *cries*

7175562
Well... Midnight was largely inconsequential to the plot. As was Rarity. Taking them out wouldn’t drastically alter the course of the story.

7175941
Rarity*does drama queen cry*

Alright.

7175941
Sounds fair