A rare accident while brewing a familiar concoction has left Zecora unable to communicate. Unfortunately for her Pinkie happens to be there, ready to help with her natural ability to somehow always know what ponies are thinking. But will Zecora's wisdom pushed through the filter of Pinkie Pie come out clearly enough for the shaman to fix what ales her.
My first time writing for any writing contest. May pairing contest 2020 submission. Hopefully a Pinkie/Zecora pairing is weird enough to qualify. Thanks to my wife for all the weirdness that might be about to go down.
My usual stuff applies. Love hearing from people, so feel free to let me know what you think, good or bad.
Chapters (1)
Nice, though an hour and powder are kind of a slant rhyme.
10256060
There were a few of them. I honestly thought that was one of my less bad of my bad rhymes. I kinda have been planning a Zecora story for a while, guess I need to just keep planning it. You know, like forever
10256069
It was good. Rhymes are always a little tricky when you are trying to work them in to regular conversation. Especially if you need to work in the odd term or two. Best Rhymes for powder I could find were louder and chowder.
10256086
Now that I think of it I could rework it to end on sour. Thanks. This really does help
This was a fun pairing. Zecora and Pinkie as a duo is a good idea. Pinkie is somewhat childish and full of energy. Zecora is mature, but quirky in her own way. It seems like an obvious combo and it was an option all the way back to Season 1. It's kind of weird that people haven't been pairing these two together all the time for the last 10 years...
As for the premise of this story, I like the idea of employing Pinkie's apparent mind-reading abilities. If done in an episode of the show, I think it would be really fun to see Libman attempting to sound like Zecora when talking for her! This premise does mean that Zecora can't speak for half of the story, but you do a fair job of showing how she is feeling and, again, Pinkie speaks on her behalf, so we still get to see the pairing.
To be fair, the set-up isn't great, as it relies on accepting random Pinkie nonsense, but I suppose I can forgive that as Pinkie-being-Pinkie.
The bulk of the story is mostly used as an excuse to explore Zecora's relationship to the inhabitants of Ponyville and to force Pinkie to attempt to reconcile with Zecora for her behavior in Bridle Gossip. Frankly, I wish that that had been the main focus of the story instead of a plot point to set up a nice conclusion. It's a touching moment at the end, sure, but a story about Pinkie trying to make things right for how she treated Zecora would've been amazing! And I don't think it would require much change.
For example: In a slightly modified version, Pinkie shows up to apologize for her behavior (instead of just as a result of the Pinkie sense) and the same basic events transpire before she gets a chance to even start her "I'm sorry" song. She then spends time trying to fix this new problem with Zecora, only for things to get worse, or at least not seem to get any better. They can't seem to find the ingredients they need and Zecora seems to become increasingly frustrated by Pinkie's shenanigans while they're supposed to be on a mission to make things right. Pinkie eventually breaks down and admits that she was trying to make things right the whole time, but now she's gone and ruined everything, and it's okay if Zecora never wants to see her again because she was such a meaniepants and now Zecora can't even tell her how mad is! Only for Pinkie to then have a conversation with herself (between herself and Zecora) where Zecora explains that she can see the effort Pinkie is willing to put into their relationship and that that desire to make amends means more than what Pinkie did to her in the past. And the two then methodically gather up the rest of the ingredients and Zecora's voice is restored in time for the conclusion.
As it is, though, I still really enjoyed this story. I don't just throw anything into my Favourites; every single story in there is there for a reason and I would recommend them all to anyone on FiMFiction, this one included.
Well done!
10268326
)
Thanks so much for the critique and the suggestions. Not enough people leave constructive criticism anymore.
It was a little difficult for me to get the story properly set up. I had sort of wanted to do the contest but after like two weeks didn't have any ideas. My wife was the one who thought Pinkie and Zecora would be a good and interesting pairing so thank her for that. The premise was both of us, the title was all her, and the writing was me, (probably why it was the weakest part
The part that made me want to write it was a lot of the stuff that was at the beginning of the story, and the stuff you said I needed more of. The Zecora starts to think something and Pinkie completes it for her stuff. Now that you suggested it I do want to add more. Don't know if I will but I still like your suggestions. Thanks so much again