EHaunted Holidays

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

A bartender deals with the last night of the season, and a strange customer.

• OC

Punished Bean · 2.1k words  ·  14  0 · 333 views

Last night tending bar at a small restaurant at the western-most tip of Equestria before the tourist season truly ends. It's Nightmare Night, and there is a peculiar guest coming.

Opening remarks

Haunted Holidays is a slice of life written by Punished Bean with an intriguing premise of some peculiar guest I look forward to meeting. I am somewhat leery as I have never read work by this author before and it is usually difficult to write a good fic with nothing but OC characters. 

Regardless, I am interested in seeing what comes of this. Onward. 

Technical

There are missing articles in the story (primarily “the”), otherwise good. 

9/10

Character

An OC cast is incredibly difficult to pull off in fanfiction. Some manage to pull it off, however, in this case I feel it did not because it succumbs to the same problems as other stories of a similar fashion. 

Mainly that they aren’t given enough time to be cared about. 

There are four named OCs introduced in the story. The personalities of three of them seem more entwined with their occupation and life positioning than having actual traits. 

There’s the gruff cook, the kind absent boss, the newbie, and the mysterious stranger. All of them have very surface level personalities and never enough depth for the reader to truly become invested in their lives or interactions. They never move outside of their cast typing and their actions appear to be less the actions of a character and more pieces of the plot. They pushed the story along, but they never felt like they had any active role in it.  

I feel that this stems primarily from too little time focused on any of the characters to truly flesh out their personalities, which is a common problem with OC based stories. 

The story being told from a first person perspective also takes away from this. In certain ways this could be useful as you can reinforce the main character’s world view, but instead it’s more a tunnel vision based vehicle to go through the individual plot beats. 

If the story is OC based, even if its slice of life, it is very important to take the time in the story to properly establish the characters and have the reader really become invested in the story of the characters, not just the story itself. 

As is, the characters in the story feel more akin to plot devices. 

3.5/10

Concept

The ideas present in the story are interesting, but the execution falls flat. The idea behind the restaurant, the small strange notes about what the mysterious stallion’s preferences are, and the ending all hint at these interesting concepts, but I feel that they are placed rather than written. 

For example: how the stallion prefers his food. It's written into the story, it's interesting, there's a talking point, a point of contention with the main character, but it's brought in then forgotten about within a few paragraphs. This happens at several points and I feel that it could have been more elaborated on or better incorporated into the narrative. 

When you have a shorter story, every word is worth more than average and any decided plot point must add as much to the story as possible. The story could do with some tightening up and focusing on developing the existing ideas more. 

There are a lot of interesting ideas at play, but overall I feel that those ideas need more development and for the story to be tightened up. 

4.5/10

Vibe

Firstly, the pacing of the story is good. The prose is also acceptable and does a good job of guiding the reader through the plot. As a story, it's very easy to read and follow along with. 

However, this story needs some work in execution. The main issue I believe, separate from prior mentioned issues, is that no risks have been taken with this story. It’s a by-the-books slice of life featuring OC characters and because of that it gets lost in the tidal wave of other fics in the genre.

There are so many pieces of this story that are interesting and have the potential to really bring out a fantastic piece, but ultimately feels very run-of-the-mill.  

It is also somewhat frustrating taking the perspective of the server in this case. I feel that either the story should have actually been from the visitor’s perspective, a small glimpse into his life on this important day, or play up the mystery of him by focusing solely on the interactions between the server and the stranger. 

With everything in mind, it’s a very average story. 

4/10

Closing Thoughts

Haunted Holidays is an average OC based slice of life. It is technically sound and has interesting pieces to it, but ultimately feels very average. I would give this a read if you’re up for something casual.  

4.25/10

<For archive purposes: 4.25/10>

Personal Score

The story was okay. It had interesting ideas, but ultimately fell flat for me. I give it an average score for personal enjoyment. 

5/10