Welcome to WAR! I am SwordTune, the manager, representative, only employee, and sole proprietor of “We Are Reviews, SP.” Fresh off the factory line, today we have a review for “The Clever One” by Winston.

EThe Clever One

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Drama

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

• Starlight Glimmer

Winston · 1k words  ·  164  6 · 1.9k views

Plot Analysis: Being just about as short as a story can be on FiM, The Clever One is structured less like a modern story/fanfic and more like a parable. Starlight finds a genie, shenanigans ensue, and a lesson is learned. 

Characters: Although the story features Starlight Glimmer, her character fulfils the role of the wisher. In order to be receptive to the lesson, this Starlight is at the stage where she is still quick to act with magic, but slow to consider the consequences. The genie of the story fills the role of the genie archetype, a trickster with an attention to detail when it comes to words.

Dialogue: Nothing to say, nothing to take away. The story is driven by the conversation between Starlight and the genie, and the reader is able to pick up on just enough details to know what is happening around them.

Overall: 7/10. It’s good to see a parable-like story with a clear lesson. I think in modern times, people tend to fall back on older parables for lessons as if the age of the story adds to the truth within its lesson. However, the idea of a powerful trickster genie/djinn has a solid place in modern fantasy writing, to the extent that it has been an archetype in properties like D&D, The Witcher, and Alladin. 

For the Author: This story was written for a writing event, so perhaps there were restrictions on how much or what you could write on. What could have been done was taking the tropes of genie/wish stories and turning against them, perhaps writing a story where the genie is outplayed or the wisher gets everything they want because of reasonable, well-worded wishes. These premises would result in a different lesson as well, and those differences together might be able to make the experience more creative.

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For the Reader: It’s really short, so even if the lesson has been done before and the character archetypes are familiar, you can still read this in a very short amount of time.

<For archive purposes: 7/10>