EA Changeling Goes to the Market

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Random
• Anthology

Ponyville is very confused.

• Alt. Universe
• OC
• Changelings

Lux Tenebris · 1.3k words  ·  547  14 · 6.7k views

• Review of "A Changeling Goes to the Marke" by Lux Tenebris
• Summary: A Changeling goes to Ponyville Market; shenanigans ensue.
• Story Publish Date: 2021/07/27
• Story Rating: E
• Word Count: 1,311

A Changeling Goes to the Market by Lux Tenebris is a short story that is simple and concise about what it is supposed to do. It is a simple story that’s here to entertain about an encounter at the Ponyville Market. 

To summarise the thousand word story, a changeling goes to the market, confuses a shopkeeper with a burning and talking pebble, purchases a pendant, and proceeds to disappear and leaving a confused shopkeeper who yearns for a drink. 

It is simply that — a joke aimed to merely lift the mood. There isn’t any further, deeper meaning underlying in the story that I could tell. 

To do so, this story seeks to entertain by utilising the absurd. The “absurd” here could be defined as the subversion of normal expectations within a scenario for various purposes. The absurdity in a story like this, is the absence of proper meaning nor explanation of a given item or scenario. The concept of an undisguised changeling in Ponyville pre-reformation, is absurd. This is because you cannot form a reason why such a case can occur. And using such absurdity, you can take it and form a scenario. 

The sheer absurdity of the situation forces the reader to become the shopkeeper in the story, and thus face the absurdity head on. Such an encounter can be argued to be done well. However, it feels a bit too absurd and doesn’t fully utilise the changeling’s own existence as the focus and relies on the rock’s absurdity more than that of the changeling. This seems to subvert the expectations the reader has when reading the story, and doesn’t fully utilise the changeling’s potential in the story. 

Specifically, the author could have leveraged more on developing the changeling as a more central way to deliver the absurdity of the story. Due to this, the story’s attempt at comedy feels a bit plain and not that much effective. The story’s comedy relies on relying on the absurdity of the situation more than providing a good joke. Whilst the absurdity of a situation can be a good setup, the story relies too much on it to be effective, so much so it becomes expected to be random, and not absurd. 

Thus, this story is a decent story to read, even though it is relatively unremarkable in its attempt to provide comedy. By relying too much on a single focus point for its absurdity,  the comedy derived from this angle of absurdity weakens as one continues reading. As a result, I believe that introducing more absurd elements from the perspective or the very presence of the changeling would improve the comedy of the story. As such, it suffers in the quality of its delivery. 

TerribleSpeller’s Review Matrice:
[Engagement]: 5/10
[Insight]: 2/10
[Character]: 4/10
[Technical]: 5/10 

[Overall]: 4
Recommended to those who wish for a short story to read to brighten up their day. 

That was a very interesting read, thank you for the review. I will take this into account when writing comedy in the future. I will also try to take your criticism of the character work into account for the sequel story that I am writing on for these changeling shorts.