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TEquestrian City
It's been almost a decade since the Battle of the Bands and Sunset Shimmer has been trying to clean up the mess she made. After series of unrelated crimes, Sunset, now known as The Phoenix, may need to finally ask for help.
Malcontent · 177k words  ·  180  14 · 5.1k views

It's been almost a decade since the Battle of the Bands and Sunset Shimmer has been trying to clean up the mess she made. After series of unrelated crimes, Sunset, now known as The Phoenix, may need to finally ask for help.

Pack your bags, we’re heading to Equestrian City! Today we have a vigilante story styled after a TV show. Now, I’m not a superhero fan myself, but I get Batman vibes. A messy situation with a disguised hero trying to clean it up? Batman vibes there. Now, let’s get into it!

Note: This review was written when the story was still incomplete, stopping at Chapter 19. The review was completed on May 30th, 2020.

Plot and Setting

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Equestrian City takes place in the titular city located near Canterlot City in the human world (ie, the EQG world). As hinted at in the summary and revealed in the prologue, disaster struck Canterlot during the events of Rainbow Rocks, leading to the destruction of CHS and its surroundings and the evacuation of all of its surviving residents. Magical in nature, the disaster infused some humans with powers and these humans have come to been known as meta-humans (or metas for short), but that has also led to the crime rate surging and the mergence of meta-humans acting as heroes for the populace. So, in a way, there’s some Spider Man vibes here (Spiderman? Is it one word or two? I get conflicting Google results.). The story follows Sunset Shimmer (and later, the rest of the main EQG cast) as she tries to uncover just what happened during the Battle of the Bands that led to the present day and fix it.

To put it mildly, Equestrian City kind of jumps all over the place with its plot. There are a lot of page breaks that I immediately connect to as jump cuts in a TV show where we see different parts of the plot, almost always different plotlines that will inevitably converge at some point. A bit jarring to see them and some felt outright unnecessary. What exactly does Pinkie’s favourite show have to do with the rising action? I couldn’t tell you.

There are also plotlines that are raised, but never resolved within this story. Several characters appear and do things that don’t seem relevant to this story, such as the Eastern Empire and the fate of Sci-Twi. They’re brought up and delved into for a bit, but as Equestrian City starts to reach its end, it looks like these parts of the story are being set up for what’s coming next. The only problem? They feel entirely out of place in the plot of the story. Sure, it’s intriguing, but it’s a dangling string with no end. To use a well-used literary principle, Malcontent has shown us several Chekhov guns, but they are never fired. I suspect that we will all be left wondering about these plotlines when the story concludes, which could lead to some dissatisfaction about them never being completed or addressed again.

The world (or rather, universe) that Malcontent built is interesting and creates a large, over-arching plotline that will presumably be answered by the story’s end. It’s one of the biggest questions I had when reading the story and, to my knowledge, it hasn’t quite been resolved yet. It will be interesting to see Malcontent will deliver on this long-awaited plot point or save it for the next story in the universe.

Overall, Equestrian City is densely packed with action scenes interspliced with a wandering plot that was pretty predictable. With all the characters that were being introduced, I saw one critical scene coming from a mile away, even without the character tag on the story.

Section rating: 7/10

Character Exploration

Ay caramba, where do I start? Equestrian City has a pretty large cast of characters and it almost feels like Malcontent wants to make every character introduced that has a name be important when they might actually only be there for a scene or two. Putting that aside, there’s about 12 or so key characters, only 2 being OCs. This leads to a rather interesting predicament when it comes to the portrayals of the other 10 characters.

The majority of the main cast is made up by the EQG cast, except for Sci-Twi who is actually the original Princess Bookhorse Twilight, and aside from Sunset, Rarity, and Twilight, the Main Six all feel rather… two-dimensional: Pinkie is party-time-all-the-time, Rainbow is all about awesomeness, Fluttershy doesn’t like hurting people, and there’s not much to be said about Applejack since she got introduced rather late in the story. All of their portrayals can essentially be boiled down to their stereotypical character traits from the show with some trauma sprinkled in, so it took some of the weight of the disaster away from it. If it was as devastating as it was made out to be, you’d expect some people to drastically change. That happened for the 3 characters I singled out, but it doesn’t feel like it for the others.

Rarity is an interesting case. In my opinion, she is simultaneously one of the most developed characters in the story and one of the least. As noted many times, Rarity became an alcoholic following the disaster of Canterlot City and likely deals with a lot of negative thoughts, undoubtedly being one of the most emotionally affected of the main cast. The only problem is that once she stops, it’s like her personality completely shifts. Now, I can’t say I have much experience with this (ie, alcoholics), but I’m pretty sure it’s not that easy to quit and I don’t think the effects on her mindset and personality would be that drastic. There’s a lot of opportunities with Rarity’s character arc that ultimately felt like they fell through, which I think is a shame because of her unique situation within the main cast provides a lot of ways that the story/world can be looked at.

Another character with lots of potential and not as much execution is Aria, one of the main antagonists of the story. I can’t quite go into her character without a heck ton of spoilers, but it essentially boils down to Aria’s personality being on a one-track loop. The ideas, thoughts, and emotions introduced in her first solo scene come back ad nauseam with very little change. Where Rarity flipped from one end of a spectrum to another, Aria remains firmly in one spot for practically the entire story so far. Given how the story is going and how it’s seemingly almost at its end, I don’t think there’s going to a point within Equestrian City where Aria’s character is developed a lot, and it’s beginning to look like we might not get another chance unless Malcontent and Co. write a prequel that focuses mostly on her. Like with Rarity, it feels like a missed opportunity, but the story is what it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As for the OCs? One of them feels like a cardboard cutout to serve as the love interest, while the other is written as a manipulative villain. I found both a bit lacking, especially the latter one since they have a much larger role to play in the story. We're told what the villain's goal is, but their motive feels shallow. Yes, it'll benefit them in the long run, but surely that can't be all there is to it, right? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't :applejackunsure: If there's more, I think it'll only be revealed in a side-story or one of their last words in the story, much like Aria.

Section rating: 6/10

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

Right off the bat, Equestrian City was a little… painful to read. There are some missing words here and there, such as:

Snickering and then laughter came from behind the duo. “Congratulations! You’ve killed a sofa.” She pulled out an item and the sound of metal against metal rang out before a couple items clattered to the ground. Both thugs held their hands while they hissed in pain. She stepped back and hit the ground with her metal

What’s the metal thing? I wasn’t sure either until a staff was described a few paragraphs later. Some small mistakes are scattered throughout the story, both in the narration and the dialogue:

Shadow swiftly sidestepped the strike and simultaneously smacked the knife out of Louie’s hand. He recoiled while cursing and holding close his throbbing appendage. “You okay Louie,” Swirl asked only to receive a glare. “This is why I tried to tell you but nooo, don’t listen to Coffee.”

Shadow swiftly sidestepped the strike and simultaneously smacked the knife out of Louie’s hand. He recoiled while cursing and holding close his throbbing appendage. “You okay, Louie?” Swirl asked only to receive a glare. “This is why I tried to tell you but nooo, don’t listen to Coffee.”

The general wording of the phrasing feels a little off to me, but it’s bearable. I probably would’ve used “This is what I tried to tell you” instead since Coffee is complaining about his earlier warnings or extend the phrase a little to, “This is why I tried to tell you to stop”. Using “why” generally needs the actual reason, either said by the original speaker or answered because “why” was used in a question.

Overall, these moments of odd wording that make me go “Wait, what?” appear all throughout the story. It’s… tolerable, if you have a lot of patience, but there’s so many of them that it’s going to test you in almost every paragraph :facehoof:

There are also some punctuation errors/misplacements, especially surrounding dialogue, but these can be fixed by going over the text with a fine-toothed comb. Missing apostrophes, at least one missing period, and more than a few weirdly placed or completely missing commas litter the story. It broke a bit of the story’s immersion for me, since I would’ve expected a story/project with this much thought put into its universe to have a keen eye during its writing.

Moving onto formatting, I was intrigued by how the chapters were stylized after TV show episodes, but it might have coloured my opinion of the story when I started reading. I had gone into the story expecting each chapter to play out like an episode, where one (or two) episodes would have self-contained stories with an over-arching narrative that can be pieced together from scenes scattered throughout the “episodes”. That isn’t exactly what ended up happening, so I was a tad bit disappointed when it felt like we only got to around halfway through the season when it came to when and where plotlines ended. Judging by how TV shows generally have 20-30 episodes per season, Equestrian City looks to be wrapping itself up in the next few chapters, unless Malcontent wants to gear up for a season 2. We’ll just have to wait and see… :rainbowderp:

Otherwise, the general formatting of the text itself is pretty alright. There are a few moments here and there where a new paragraph is started or a dialogue line is said where the wording feels off. Same goes for consistency, but there is one scene where there’s a slight continuity error in which one character leaves but is never shown coming back before they’re suddenly back and actively participating in the scene again (chapter 16, around ¾ ways in). Unless they got slapped with teleportation powers and I missed that bit, I think this was just a mistake on the author’s part :twilightsmile:

Grammar: 7/10
Formatting: 8/10
Consistency: 8.5/10
Section rating: ((7+8+8.5)/3)/10 = 7.8/10

My Little Nitpicks

Prologue
Exposition, get your exposition here! Limited issue, so get your exposition before we run out of time!

A dark blue… what?

The slender female with a dark blue hue attached to them walked with a steady yet determined pace.

A dark blue… hue? How do you attach a hue to someone? Can you do that? Has science evolved this far? What is the meaning of life if it’s not 42??? :derpytongue2:

Art
I was not expecting art! What a pleasant surprise :D Although there is little to no art otherwise, so… a two-and-done surprise? I have to assume there’s more art coming whenever the artist gets around to doing them.

Joking Saddles
Sassy’s conversion into villainhood is very Joker-esque. A vat of chemicals that ultimately lead to her transformation and/or disfigurement if you squint? Sounds like the Joker and everyone knows the Joker’s story, so I’ll assume that some inspiration was taken from the Batman series :rainbowwild:

Jingle bells, this ship sails!
I am surprised at the inclusion of a Christmas interlude, but hey, the story is formatted like a TV show and the Christmas special is a staple component. Speaking of the ship, it’s really being pushed. Gee, I wonder how this is gonna go… :ajbemused:

Mental soundtracks
Not gonna lie, every time Aria appears, my mind starts playing “Battle of the Bands”. I cannot tell you why that song in particular, but hey, the Dazzling songs are good songs :pinkiehappy:

The wrong kind of class reunion
Wow, who would’ve seen that coming? The Humane Seven (is that a thing? Or is it just Mane Seven? Main Seven? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) are back together!

Malcontent
If I squint real hard, I think this counts as a self-insert story, but I could also be wrong :twilightsmile:

Final Thoughts

Equestrian City is a decently written story that superhero fans would likely be interested in. The reading experience has a few bumps and bruises along the way, but determined readers will be rewarded with converging plotlines and the makings of an epic season finale. For those interested who are itching for more, Equestrian City is part of a wider universe called the Metaverse that has several other stories written to satisfy your appetite.

Final rating: ((7+6+7.8)/3)/10 = (20.8/3)/10 = 6.9/10

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