TRomantic Mischief

• MLP: FiM
• Equestria Girls
• Romance
• Comedy
• Anthology

A bunch of one shots with Jake Taylor and the gang

• Sex
• Human
• Alt. Universe
• Twilight
• Spike
• OC
• Sunset Shimmer
• Starlight Glimmer

TheHardie-Boy · 86k words  ·  105  19 · 3.4k views

IMPORTANT: Before I begin, I want to outline a few things. First of all, I was asked to only review the chapters titled ‘Going to the Gala,’ so that’s the section I’ll be focusing this review on.

Before I begin, I just want to say that if you are requesting a review from me and have any specifications as to what part of your work you want reviewed, feel free to let me know beforehand. I would have missed this note if I had just skimmed the description.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into it. As I indicated in my reviewer profile, I am not a fan of the human in Equestria genre. That’s not to say that there aren’t amazing stories about humans in Equestria, but it’s just not something I’m interested in. That being said, I will review these kinds of stories, but if I find one submitted to my folder, I expect it to be different.

Because when it comes to this genre, there are a lot of stereotypes that make one kind of story almost indiscernible from another. And it goes beyond this genre, tropes are a problem in any genre both in and outside of fanfiction, hell I’m even guilty of using them. But all this being said, tropes as a whole turn me off from this genre specifically, which is why I said in the last paragraph that if you want me to review a HiE story, I’m expecting something different.

I think you can see where I’m going with this, so let’s extrapolate.  

As I said earlier, I was asked only to focus on three specific chapters. In these chapters, the human OC Jake is invited to the Grand Galloping Gala with his marefriends Twilight and Starlight. He learns his third marefriend Sunset had a falling out with Princess Celestia and goes out to fix it. Then, he gets shunned by the Canterlot nobles and gets angry before his marefriends calm him down.

Now, I know nothing about the author’s “Jake Taylor Universe” other than what’s been presented in these chapters, so I will keep this in mind. However, this doesn’t really detract from one of the central problems of this story for me. 

Even though I only read three chapters, I walked away from this feeling like I had read an entire, longer Human in Equestria story. I think that this can be both a good and bad thing. The good thing is that as an anthology, this works perfectly, because I don’t need any prior knowledge about the story to understand it, the plotline stands fine on its own, and there isn’t any huge infodump to bring me up to speed on what the heck is going on.

The bad thing is related to what I said earlier about tropes. These three chapters feel like an extremely generic HiE story, and it honestly feels like I can just guess the central plotline of the main story despite never having read it.

I like stories that aren’t afraid to go in a new direction, to do something unexpected, or to do something bold that nobody could have seen coming. Sadly, this story didn’t provide that. As I was reading, it honestly felt like I had a checklist of ‘HiE Tropes’ and was just running down the list, checking things off as the story progressed.

Let me explain. Jake, the main character, was orphaned at a young age and has a tragic backstory, he constantly puts others above himself without looking out for himself, had a hard time fitting into Equestria when he first got there but is now loved by everyone, forms a harem, and suddenly feels out of place again when he goes to Canterlot but is brought back when others show him what he’s really worth.

As a plotline, is this perfectly sound? Yes, of course! It makes sense and follows a degree of reasonability. The problem is that when I see a story tagged with humans, this is pretty much what I think of. I tried to go in with an open mind and hoped it would do something to make it stick out, but sadly I was left disappointed. 

To the author, if it seems like I’m being especially brutal here, please bear with me. As I’ve said multiple times, this story just isn’t in my wheelhouse and doesn’t appeal to me. You may want to pick a different reviewer should you want a second opinion. But this probably isn’t what the author wanted me to talk about, so let’s change gears and go into the plot of the three chapters.

Ignoring all of my complaints about tropes and stereotypes for a second, the plot is fine. My biggest complaint would be the very abrupt changes in narration styles, switching from first person perspective to omniscient third person to third person following a specific character. I recognize that your story is already very long and it’s probably too late to change this, but this narration style threw me for a loop and I don’t know if I can get behind it.

There were a few odd pieces of plot where things just didn’t quite line up, for example, after Jake storms out of the ballroom, he knocks over a waiter. Then we get the line:

After about five minutes of looking around, Sunset was getting nowhere. All she had managed to find was a tipped over flower vase, courtesy of her’s truly.

Luckily, after a while, she came across a waiter on the ground, his suit covered in wine.

“Here, let me help you up,” Sunset said, offering a hoof.

The waiter took it and stood up. “Thank you. I have no idea what that thing was, but it certainly needs a crash course in basic etiquette!”

So… the waiter was just lying on the ground covered in wine for five minutes?

Again, this is such a small detail that it doesn’t really matter, but cleaning it up will definitely help with the story. I pointed out other minor things in my reading notes should the author want to see them.

Now let’s get into where I think the author wanted help the most: the reconciliation between Sunset and Princess Celestia. This is supposed to be the climax of these three chapters, the emotional high that everything was building up to.

I honestly had a hard time deciding if this was emotional or not. I think I can blame myself for a good portion of this, because first I was already a bit frustrated with all the tropes, and second because it takes a lot to get an emotional reaction out of me. But I think it serves well as a climactic moment for these three chapters.

The character behavior feels natural, and I do get the sense a lot of thought was put into this scene. It comes off as well crafted and well written, so great work! If I could suggest anything, it would be to take some more time to build everything up before the waterworks open. These are two characters who haven’t seen each other in years, and they’re scared but also excited.

If you need inspiration for this scene, check out PingZing’s “Happiness Under Gray Skies” which is a full oneshot tackling this specific concept.

There is definitely a catharsis at the end of the story, even if it’s quite short and doesn’t have a lot of build up, but it is most definitely impactful with the author’s decisions and the falling action.

So overall? The emotional scene is very good, but the tropes and other aspects of the story prevented me from enjoying it to the fullest. That is not to say that this is the author’s fault, I’m willing to shoulder most of the blame here just because I don’t like HiE and have a different set of expectations. 

I don’t have much to say here because again, I only read three chapters. I don’t know if Jake Taylor is an OC or how much of the author resides within him, so I won’t go in depth into critiquing his nature.

There were a few lines of dialogue that felt unnatural for their characters, specifically Twilight and Princess Celestia. Also, I couldn’t really detect any discerning features between Twilight and Starlight, and I wish the author made more of an effort to differentiate between them and make them stand out more. But other than that, I don’t feel confident saying much else because I’ve read so little of this story. 

Grammar was mostly sound. No specific, recurring errors stood out to me, but there were a few typos and odd punctuation errors that keep this just short of a perfect score. 

So… yeah. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t like HiE. So please, please, please take that into consideration when thinking about this review. This is a story that’s not in my wheelhouse, and if you want to blame me more than the story then please do so. It just doesn’t appeal to me at all and I don’t think I would have ever read it if it wasn’t requested.

But, then again, this is a review of an HiE story from a reviewer who doesn’t like HiE. So take this with a grain of salt. Because the author’s writing style is sound, the plotline is solid, and the story as a whole doesn’t have any major glaring issues. I just didn’t like it, but don’t blame the author. 

If you like fluffy HiE stories, then go ahead and give this one a shot. 

I don’t really know what else to say besides what I’ve said already. This probably wasn’t what you were expecting or wanting, but please remember this is outside of my preferred genre. I highly encourage you to request another review from someone more qualified in this field, because as it stands I don’t think I’m the best person for this one. Again, you’re doing a fine job with writing, so don’t get turned off by this. Most of my dislike just comes from my own personal preference, and there really isn’t anything you can do to change that. Keep up the good work! 

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

Plot: 3/10
Characterization: 5/10
Grammar: 8/10

Average: 5.33