The Day I was Accused as an Impostor

by Ika Musume

The FINAL chapter

Technology in Equestria is on the rise. Maybe someday, ponies will see space. Possibly the final frontier. Throughout pony's travels, they will thrive through teamwork. Friendship, even. They will have to call meetings, report problems to each other, and maybe sometimes they'll even have to catch an impostor. Are they up for the challenge?

Musician friends Vinyl and Octavia excitedly boarded their newly crafted vehicle, The Wub Rocket. Vinyl had crafted the cutting edge sonar technology to take them beyond the clouds and into the stars. Joining them were friends Derpy Hooves, Lyra Heartstrings, and Bon-Bon. None of them had ever been in space before as nopony had, so their heads were filled with wonder. One friend seemed to have their mind elsewhere. Bon-Bon had barely spoken, and was looking around shiftily during the entire boarding. She was acting suspicious to say the least.

"3... 2... 1... BLASTOFF!!!" The Rocket took off into the sky. The friends all sat buckled into their chairs and laughed, though Bon-Bon seemed more intent than amused. The ship had finally stabilized and their voyage was orbiting around the planet. Ponies gazed in awe as they were able to see the stars up close for the first time. While everyone was distracted by the wonders of the outer realms, Derpy suddenly rushed off towards a big red button.

"Emergency meeting!" Derpy had never sounded so serious. "I found Lyra knocked unconscious when I went to go check on my secret muffin stash! She could have been dead!" The friends all looked around in total shock.

"One of us has to be the culprit," said Octavia, "but we are all such good friends! None of us would ever even consider such violence as an option!" Vinyl nodded in agreement.

"That settles it," Derpy announced. "There has to be an impostor among us!" The friends began staring each other down, Lyra resting in a chair with an ice pack. She wasn't well enough to speak yet.

"Say," Octavia put out. "Bon-Bon has been acting quite suspicous, if you don't mind me saying."

"No way!" Bon-Bon was enraged. "Everypony knows I love Lyra too much to ever hurt her!"

"It's the perfect cover!" Octavia was at her limit. "Derpy, what do you say we eject this impostor?"

"On it!" Derpy saluted with a dazed look on her face. She selected a Bon-Bon icon on a monitor, and the ceiling opened above the pastel pony as she careened out into space. If this wasn't the real Bon-Bon, the friends would have to turn back immediately and find her.

("Bon-Bon" was the Impostor.)

VICTORY

Author's Note:

If anyone thought this was funny, thank you. I needed the reassurance more than you could know.

Comments

[GodzillaSpino]

It's not laugh-out-loud funny for me, but it was funny in a way that I liked it. You made a few grammar mistakes, but that's beside the point.
8/10. A good story that I really liked, but if your aim was for a laugh-out-loud story, either your aim was short or I'm too challenging a target.

[Ika Musume]

10750372
Thanks! Yeah I was going for the ironic kind of humor where you're just like not necessarily breaking out into laughter but at the same time you're thinking "ooooh how fitting" or "heheh that reminds me of something else funny"

[GodzillaSpino]

10750375
Score has been raised to 9.5/10. Now all you need to do is fix some grammar mistakes, though that's optional, because there's only a few in this story.

[Ika Musume]

10750386
Thanks, and I think I will fix the grammar mistakes. Originally I didn't really check errors because I thought it added to the air of irony but I can see how that can take away from the overall quality.

[Ded account]

10750372
I agree with this user
I laughed a bit on the inside but it's a bit annoying when they come to such a quick conclusion it's like this
who ate my cupcake?' Said Pinkie Pie. 'Maybe Tank did' Said Rarity. 'Lets throw Tank into time out' Said Pinkie. *Throws tank into time out area* if he didn't do it Rainbow will kill us (He did it)

So it was a 6/10 vote from me.

(I'm sorry if this sounds rude but I'm just trying to help )

[Ika Musume]

10750476
Lol it's okay it's not rude lol They were really quick to go to conclusions and the reason for that was because that's usually how it is in Among Us; people just go off of baseless conjecture and are in a rush to eject on the grounds of someone seeming "sus" lol

[fanreader999999]

Humor is hard

[EverfreePony]

All right, so, I finally got around to reading this. In short, the story is not really bad, but it’s not exactly good either.

First and foremost, you open the story with what it’s called an info dump. You just flood the readers with lots of expositioned information about what’s going on and why, and even with the fact that this story is ironic. We shouldn’t be told that Twilight is excited—we should learn that through her actions and dialogue lines. And unless you go for some kind of meta-humour (which is not the case here), you shouldn’t tell us this is ironic. Let the story speak for itself. Also, this:

baby Flurry Heart (Cadence's baby)

A few of her friends were traveling, but she was able to invite her friends Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, and her sister-in-law; Cadence. She was a little hesitant to invite Rarity and Applejack to the same sleepover because they had fought at one in the past, but she knew that they had grown past it.

It’s fine to write a story in a way where you assume that the readers don’t know the show. However, you still have to do this in a natural way (no “Cadence’s baby” in brackets!) and keep it consistent through the whole story. While you rather lengthly introduce us to Twilight’s friends and family, you don’t really care to explain what a changeling is later on in the story. So, do it in the whole story or don’t do it at all.

Now, regarding the biggest issue of this story: its pacing. In case you don’t know, a pace at which a story moves is defined by the amount of information given and also by sentence length. Longer sentences and more information mean slower pace, shorter sentences with less info result in faster pace. The pacing defines how fast the readers read through a part and allows you to affect the realism of some scenes—e.g. if there’s a very emotional, maybe even intimate scene, go for lots of details and longer sentences. If you need a scene to move faster, as in some tense situations or even a snappy banter, you should go for faster pace. However—a big however—too slow pacing will lull your readers to sleep (I’m looking at you, 19th century realism writers), and a story moving at a break-neck pace doesn’t allow the audience to get immersed in the plot and enjoy the scenes.

Your story suffers from the latter. It moves forward so fast that there’s no time to linger on the jokes or to do proper build-up so that the humour is actually funny. For example, you want the readers to believe that the talk about Flurry is a serious argument and want to joke about them arguing about such a silly thing. However, the issue is that from the reader’s viewpoint, the whole argument lasts just a few seconds, which makes the humour fall entirely flat. Both chapters suffer greatly from this. Also, it’d be good to at least add the ‘Anthology’ tag since the second chapter is completely unrelated to the first one.

[Ika Musume]

10750958
Thanks for the advice! I started this fic like the day before April Fools and I wanted it to be done by then so I rushed a lot and missed many crucial components. Next time I write something and I don't have a 1 day deadline, I'll be sure to put your advice into action!

[EverfreePony]

10751576
Glad to help! And ideally never rush your stories, their quality suffers quite greatly most of the time.

[Bradthefox]

("Bon-Bon" was the Impostor.)

yes
because SAY IT WITH ME

SHE WAS SUS