What Is to Be Done

EWhat Is to Be Done?

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Sad
• Slice of Life

Gallus is unconvinced anything will change for the better. Gabby thinks otherwise.

• Gabby
• Gallus

Mykola · 1.4k words  ·  90  0 · 1.6k views

Now this is an interesting one. The story we have here is an AU about Gallus and Gabby in Griffinstone prior to Gallus’ enrolment wherein the griffins were presumably never visited by AJ and Pinkie and they were left to become a 1980’s era soviet state with all the talk of secret police and crimes against the presumed party. Unfortunately, this story isn’t all too long, so this review is going to be on the short side.

In terms of what I liked, this story is an interesting start point for a story, with mystery, well-handled characters, and what looks to be a good deal of thought put into the world building. While I will say that the HEAVY use of actual human history overlaid with MLP is a minor turn-off as it feels less organic/well thought through, and more a quick and dirty way to get a premise together, its use here could easily be argued to be more like a set dressing as there is next to nothing lore-wise explained as to how things operate.

Regarding the characters, this story is very faithful to the canon with Gallus being a stereotypical griffin and Gabby being the eight year old she is. However, what Is nice to read is the fact that the author took the time to change up the characters enough to add to what was established in the show in a way that makes sence.

All that being said, the negative here is more due to personal taste. You see, I feel that any story that one posts should be able to stand on its own, see one of my first reviews, Fog on the Window. The issue here is that this story has lore to it, and of a good amount and quality, but the ‘story’ is just shy of two-thousand words. The problem I have with this is that it’s like being shown a few highlight clips from Band of Brothers, but with zero promise that you will ever get to watch the whole thing. There is a great amount of good things, but unfortunately there just isn’t enough here to justify this being its own story in my opinion.

Final scores;

Writing: 9/10, The writing here is solid, having very few mistakes when it comes to grammar and structure. The only change I would suggest would be to add to the word count with the sort of things to just explain several items brought up as things like the existence of slug throwers as there are a few terms and words that seemed a little presumptuous to use without explanation.

Pacing: 8/10, The pace here is speedy, giving little time for us to see the world we are in and get a read on who we are dealing with as they relate to canon. While yes, the pace is right for something this long, the problem I see is that too much is being said over too short of a period of time to make the story being told feel like it was done right.

Characters: 9/10, What is there to say? These are the characters from the show done rather well, with incongruities being attributable to the change from canon. The only downside I see is that these are characters that stray maybe a little too far into the one note category as we don’t see all too much variance in the personalities they display.

World Building: 7/10, This world seems like there was a decent amount of thought but into the structure and rules of the world, making it feel lived in and thought through. However, I can not overlook the fact that the premise being used is from the real world, so that fleshed out and interesting world is more a result of a technicality.

Mystery Quality: 8/10, This is sort of tied to world building here as the mystery mostly comes from the question of how the griffins got to this point and what exactly is going on. These questions are unfortunately something outside of the scope of the story here, leaning to a feeling of blue-balls for me

Total Score: 41/50 or 8.2/10, This is an odd one to finalize. On one hand, I cannot recommend this story on the grounds that, well, I view this as more of a story prompt or story starter than a legitimate story, while on the other, this story shows a good deal of talent/skill when it comes to the craft. Ultimately I can only say this, If you like ‘stories’ based on the skill of the writer and/or the premise, this would be a good read, if you prefer more traditional stories, this I would have to say is a pass from me.

Thank you for the review, I understand it is quite short, though admittedly this fiction was not something that I was originally planning on posting. This was all written during the onset of turmoil in my own country of Byelorussia, and so this was more venting frustration on my end. I understand this lack of context may distract from a traditional narrative story, but I feel it important to mention. I appreciate your frankness with this review and pointing out the pitfall of the story, I am looking forward to implementing this as I move forward!