This review is part of our April Fools’ Review Bomb, with a new review each day leading up to April 1st.

Overview

It’s been a year since Twilight’s coronation, which means a season finale level threat must be just around the corner. So where is it?

This is a comedy about Twilight searching for a problem where none exists, very reminiscent of Lesson Zero. Good comedy is hard, and this one falls off the rails a little looking for it, but the basic setup is good enough that the show used it, so let’s just jump right in.

Characters

There’s only one real character here, and it’s Twilight. While there are plenty of other ponies that make brief appearances, none of them have enough presence in the story or are distinctive enough to really consider them characters. 

Unfortunately, Twilight’s character here is lackluster. This story wants to be a character-driven comedy, with the jokes stemming from Twilight’s flaw of desperately searching for something that isn’t there. Unfortunately, unlike Lesson Zero, this story is set post season 9, when Twilight has evolved enough that she should really know better. This piece doesn’t take that development into account, and more importantly, doesn’t bother to have Twilight actually bounce off any of the other ponies in this fic. Each scene is much the same - Twilight insists that a problem must be brewing, the pony she is interrogating tells her it isn’t, and Twilight eventually gives up and tries again with the next victim, having learned nothing.

The issue here isn’t the setup, it’s the payoff. There’s no real difference between any of these scenes, because they aren’t tailored to the ponies Twilight is talking to - since none of them show any real signs of personality - and because Twilight doesn’t change between them. As a result, Twilight feels one-dimensional, and the joke gets repetitive very quickly.

Plot & Pacing

The plot here is paper-thin, and suffers from trying to tell the same joke multiple times without mixing it up. Moreover, it seems actively determined to rob the story of tension at any cost. Twilight’s attempts to cause conflict are repeatedly shut down by literally everyone in the story, meaning that in the end, not much actually happens. The one real event in the story is Twilight accidentally hurting herself badly enough to send herself to the hospital, in a manner that doesn’t lend it any weight whatsoever. And of course everyone around her is quick to assure her that no real consequences will occur, anyway.

The story eventually meanders its way into a conclusion of “everyone is happy, all the villains will never make trouble again, let’s go have a party,” and there’s a short final chapter showing this that doesn’t even seem to be attempting to be a comedy anymore. It’s a strange genre shift to slice of life, except nothing interesting happens.

In terms of pacing… the story has trouble keeping things fresh, and that makes it drag. On top of that, I would be remiss to not mention the literal wall of text that is plopped into the middle of the longest chapter - literally a thousand words of stream-of-consciousness journaling from Sunset Shimmer, with no real breaks and containing almost no information that isn’t just her commenting on events from the movies. It’s almost impossible to read.

That said, I will give credit where it is due - the story does have one genuinely funny joke that made me laugh both times it appeared, involving the royal guard and cleverly double subverting the “guards are useless” trope. It’s just a shame that the rest of the story is trying to get comedy out of Twilight instead.

Technical Skill

The prose here is passable, for the most part. Nothing obviously wrong, but very flat dialogue and a lot of extraneous words without much actually happening. The characters other than Twilight all feel very rote and samey, and of course the massive journal block in the middle is fairly inexcusable. Nothing stands out here, and as a result I was neither lost nor particularly engaged.

Rating

Character: 2/5 

The side characters are pretty much all the same with no distinguishing traits, and this is a Twilight that has learned nothing from her time in the show, and continues to learn nothing during this story.

Plot: 2/5

The main joke doesn’t land, despite being told over and over, and then the story forgets it’s a comedy three quarters of the way through.

Mechanics: 2.5/5

The writing is bland and the dialogue doesn’t make characters feel real. This story’s prose does not inspire engagement.

Final Score: 2.16/5

A comedy that only has one joke that works, and it’s not the joke it’s trying to focus on. Nothing is egregiously wrong here, but so too is nothing particularly done well.

Final Thoughts

This story failed to hook me. The premise is good - even with a post-canon Twilight - but she doesn’t learn anything and there’s no variation to the main joke. With side characters that felt more distinct, and a Twilight that bounced off each of them differently and evolved as the story progressed, this could work, but it just isn’t what’s here.