EQuantum Leap Forward

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

Cheerilee wakes up twenty years in the future, in the body of Big Mac's daughter. Now she must find out how to get back to her proper time and body.

• Big Mac
• Cheerilee
• CMCs
• Sugar Belle
• Lil' Cheese

Halira · 134k words  ·  252  8 · 2.7k views

“Quantum Leap Forward by Halira is the first story that I will review that will be more than one hundred thousand words long. In fact, I have never reviewed a story that is even more than twenty thousand words, so this will certainly be a challenge to me. My reviews generally go well in-depth into the scenes of the story, no matter how short or long the stories may be, so I will not be compromising-”

“Erm, that’s not exactly advisable I think…”

“Oh, right…I should focus on the big picture. I’ll leave that scene by scene analysis for shorter stories.”

“AHEM! Okay, before I continue, I must warn you – this review will cover the contents of this story in a detailed manner. If you do not intend to spoil the story for yourself, do not read beyond this line. I repeat, do not read beyond this line!”

“Alright, if you are reading this, you must have agreed to the terms above! This will be a very long review, so I would advise you to sit down comfortably and grab a cup of your favourite beverage. Without further ado, let’s begin!”

Summary

Apple Bloom attempts to brew a potion during a Show and Tell session organised by Cheerilee, but the potion she was making was bubbling uncontrollably, causing Cheerilee to react instinctively with a fire extinguisher. This resulted in a massive explosion that caused Cheerilee to be transported twenty years into the future and into a body of a unicorn filly aged eight. What could possibly transpire in a world twenty years into the future?

Content/Plot Analysis + Flow/Communication

To better streamline my thoughts, note that this section will discuss both the flow of the story and the plot simultaneously.

Let’s start! The story begins with Cheerilee preparing for the show and tell session. The author has built up this aspect of Cheerilee being extremely cautious of the proceedings of her session by ensuring that she has a wide assortment of safety precautions in place in the case of an emergency. Cheerilee continues with her reading of the letters left behind by her graduating class while waiting for the classes to commence, with relatable responses put forth by the author. The start provides a good foreshadow for the story to continue by setting the scene of the relationship between the teacher and the soon-to-be graduating students, developing the characterisation of Cheerilee and even some of her students at the start of the story well.

The story proceeds with the show and tell session with Apple Bloom began haphazardly mixing liquids together that began bubbling incessantly to the obvious concern of Cheerilee and even the rest of the class. The author again builds up the anxiety and the fear of the possibility of something going wrong throughout this section, though I felt that this could be better executed. To explain my point, allow me to quote the aforementioned text –

The bowl started to bubble and shake. Applebloom dropped it, eyes wide and smelling of worry. That was all the prompting Cheerilee needed. She grabbed up the fire extinguisher and hopped towards the bowl with ready to let loose the fire extinguisher's contents on the volatile mixture.

Applebloom gasped and tried to wave her away. "Miss Cheerilee, no! You can't do that. You'll add new ingredients to the potion!"

The warning came too late, as she had already pushed down the nozzle to let loose the foamy liquid inside.

I think that the addition of linking phrases such as “immediately” or “without any hesitation” into the sentences of the quoted excerpt would help to string the ideas that resulted in the incident. This would not only make this excerpt smoother, but more importantly build the speed and the tempo to show how there was no time for Apple Bloom to react in time despite her best efforts, as it would also show how quickly things went awry. This could be executed in various places throughout the story, too. Nonetheless, the conclusive sentence at the end of the author’s account of the accident was sharp, capturing the attention of the reader instinctively, quoted below –

Then there was a bang, and everything went black.

This accident caused Cheerilee to be transported twenty years into the future into a unicorn filly aged eight called Candy Apple. When she came to, she was obviously disorientated in the chaos, and the author develops this aptly. The narrative style of writing here that shows Cheerilee’s thought processes and logical intuition reflecting upon her actions to decipher her whereabouts is fitting. A worried friend of Candy, Lil’ Cheese, came to assist her in understanding the reality she was thrust upon. Through the conversation, Cheerilee quickly realised that Candy was a fan of pretending to be other ponies, as Cheese instantly accused Candy of doing so for Cheerilee, even though Cheerilee was actually in Candy’s body in reality.

Here, the mystery begins: how will Cheerilee distinguish herself as part of something apart of Candy when virtually everyone believed that it was merely Candy acting to be Cheerilee the entire time? Perhaps, more importantly, how will Cheerilee, as a caring tutor, assist Candy to break out of this spell of characters seeping into her soul, affecting her livelihood? I must comment that the author has thought about framing this mystery exceptionally well, for I had no guesses on how this was going to be resolved whatsoever, and I had to rely on subtle hints and clues dropped by the author to deduce how this was going to be resolved in the end. From an overview of the mystery, the author has built this from the very start, slowly teasing out small nibbles of information for the reader to deduce and calculate, allowing the resolution of the entire conflict to be rather enjoyable for the reader.

In fact, the story hurls many challenges at Cheerilee for her to overcome, beginning with the fact that prior to being transported into Candy’s body, Candy was independently involved in a huge potion brewing mishap of her own, causing many members of the school board and the school management, such as her teacher Silver Spoon, to have a poor impression of her. Furthermore, to the perspective of others, Candy was perceived to be an excellent liar, for when she was so-called “impersonating” other ponies, it was the actual souls of those ponies essentially taking over her body, acting out as themselves as Candy Apple. This had happened numerous times, prompting everyone to immediately throw out any possibility that it was not Candy Apple who was doing all these, in favour of the fact that she was merely pretending, as a naïve filly. This is fantastic; the scope of these problems gives many opportunities for the author to showcase how difficult it would be for Cheerilee to solve this problem, and even on how she was to go about solving them.

For their safety’s sake, Cheerilee and her teacher Silver Spoon left the room to be confronted by Spoiled Rich complaining about how discipline standards in the school were dropping in a snobbish and even sarcastic way. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to say that her characterisation was done masterfully through the story at specific pivotal points. The dialogue that Spoiled Rich had in the story was simply…wow. I would feel my blood effectively boiling at the attitude conveyed by Spoiled Rich towards the members of the school she was a board member of, which I was sure that the author was going towards. Despite Principal Doo’s (oh my!) intervention when she arrived conveniently at the scene, the group had to admit that Spoiled was correct to say that their proposed actions were too lenient, for Candy had stole the reagents for her experiment.

I’ll try not to spoil too much of the salient content of the story here. Moving forward into the next few chapters, Cheerilee tries desperately to prove to many ponies that she was not Candy Apple, but despite her best efforts, she failed. This ultimately throws her into almost an existential crisis, which is very relatable in my mind, because there was no pony else that would believe in what she had to say and were just forcing these opinion and beliefs into her that she was Candy Apple and she was pretending. However, Candy’s room offered many hints that allowed her and the reader to begin piecing together the pieces of the puzzle.

In these chapters of Cheerilee trying to develop an argument to prove her actual identity, I realise that the author adopts a very narrative tone throughout, to portray the thoughts that Cheerilee had felt when she was reacting to each new circumstance. Although this style of writing would be absolutely ideal for the reader to understand the situation that Cheerilee was in, this made the story’s pace slow during worldbuilding scenes. One side of me believes that the slower pacing of the story would help the reader to internalise the subtle hints that the author would like to drop and the style of writing would help the reader to empathise with Cheerilee, to see how she would make of each and every hint, which I have to agree. Yet, I felt that some parts could be trimmed, for I felt that some of the author’s narration made the story slightly draggy. I was also pondering over the impact of removing some of Cheerilee’s thought processes from the story, and on whether it would be better to do so, as it would spark the reader’s mind into considering the evidence that Cheerilee had genuinely, rather than continue reading for the answers and create an appropriate suspense.

Granted, for instance, the environment that Cheerilee was in was unfamiliar to her at the time, and the author wishes to show how different things were in comparison to the time and place she was familiar with, but I have to say that the exposition lengthened the story and it gradually slowed the pace down. To qualify my statement, I have to say that a balance should be struck. Structuring the scene is important and this mode of communication to do so from the perspective of Cheerilee may be insightful to the reader’s point of view, but the author could consider the pacing of the story. In addition, I felt that some of the exposition could be broken up into smaller, more digestible paragraphs that would help to demarcate the ideas stemming from them more efficiently.

Notwithstanding what was discussed earlier, the following chapters are eventually rewarding to read; the author was able to craft the plot such that it convincingly gave Cheerilee information to work out despite the challenges she faced to ultimately prove herself true and bring out the real Candy Apple’s personality back into herself. Furthermore, I enjoyed the suspense between each chapter that gave away to plot twists that were nice, pleasant surprises, especially nearing the end.

But wait! The story isn’t over yet! Despite her revelation, there was a final problem at hoof; due to the disruptive acts that Cheerilee did in school as Candy Apple, the school board was meeting to discuss whether Candy was due for a suspension from school, no doubt a proposition headed by Spoiled Rich. Again, Spoiled Rich was such a character in the story, props to the author for that. I liked how she was portrayed in the story and it really made me hate her, which was somehow satisfying to me. Oh, and to see her proposal be defeated by a vote…that was great!

Regardless, let’s talk about the ending before I close off this section. The author links the events that led to the story back at the ending, which is a nice touch. But perhaps I wished for a more explicit message at the end with the morals that the story could like to portray, though maybe this is just me. I felt that the story had many lessons that the author would like to communicate and maybe the opportunity to bring these out in an encompassing way would be a great finale.

Language

Throughout the story, language errors were uncommon, and here are some of the more notable errors I have found, separated into the appropriate sub-sections.

Spelling

"Is that so, Principle Doo?”

"Is that so, Principal Doo?”

They mare looked around frantically for a second, as if preparing to hide, then stopped her gaze on her son.

The mare looked around frantically for a second, as if preparing to hide, then stopped her gaze on her son.

"Let us list off the reasons why we have been forced to call this meeting," Spoiled continued, looking down at a partially enrolled scroll in front of her.

"Let us list off the reasons why we have been forced to call this meeting," Spoiled continued, looking down at a partially unrolled scroll in front of her.

Syntax

She grabbed up the fire extinguisher and hopped towards the bowl with ready to let loose the fire extinguisher's contents on the volatile mixture.

She grabbed up the fire extinguisher and hopped towards the bowl, readying herself to let loose the fire extinguisher's contents on the volatile mixture.

Applebloom was never going to be allowed to demonstrate making potions in this schoolhouse again; not after this, not even if she was brought on as a teaching assistant.

Applebloom was never going to be allowed to demonstrate making potions in this schoolhouse again; not after this, not even if she was brought in as a teaching assistant.

The closest to feeling sensation from it had been when she rubbed it, thinking it only a lump.

The closest to feeling sensation from it had been when she rubbed it, thinking it was only a lump.

Tenses

They must have all run away when the explosion, or whatever it was, had happened.

They must have all ran away when the explosion, or whatever it was, had happened.

Cheerilee grit her teeth behind her lips.

Cheerilee gritted her teeth behind her lips.

Articles

On rare occasion, she'd been forced to sit a student down privately and explain it, but not the whole class!

On a rare occasion, she'd been forced to sit a student down privately and explain it, but not the whole class!

Stance

This is a fascinating read, and one that I would recommend. To improve, I think that the author should consider streamlining the thoughts and narration of the story to help concentrate the ideas within it so that the story would be more impactful onto the reader as the tempo would be heightened. Remember, I am more than happy to talk about your story.

Content/Plot: 8.3/10
Flow/Communication: 6.5/10
Language/Readability: 6.5/10
Overall: 7.1/10