Here we go again! I currently do expect to post PR 277 next week, but I may well have a break the following week. We'll see. For the second successive PR, I have three fics under review. And for the second successive PR, my RiL story count is steady at 233! That does, however, hide a little bit of churn, as I've added a few new fics and removed a few I don't think I'm ever likely to want to read.
Observatory Hill by Skywriter
Scootaloot by Game-BeatX14
Everyone's a Changeling by Aquillo
★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Observatory Hill by Skywriter
Twilight, Luna, Fluttershy and Spike
Adventure/Comedy/Slice of Life, 11k words; Jan–Sep 2012; Everyone
The thrilling exploits of one not-so-quiet night spent stargazing.Twilight declines to go with some of the other ponies to a huge rock concert in town. The trouble is, its light shows are playing havoc with her search for a dark sky in which to observe a new star. Princess Luna might be able to help with that... There's some nice Luna/Twilight friendshipping here, and as a bonus we get a fascinating insight into the then quite newly returned Princess of the Night's relationship with her sister. I always like a dangerous Everfree, too – Ursas this time. The fic's biggest problem is that this is "Luna Eclipsed" Luna turned up to 11, with heavy ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, and this has dated badly and quickly becomes very wearing to read. And there's a lot of it. Some minor but irritating mistakes, like errant apostrophes – "HOW DARE'ST THOU!" – don't help. Fluttershy being terrified of "Nightmare Moon" also feels creakily dated now, and at one point, Luna even laments Twilight's lack of an abacus. There are a few places where I felt like I was missing references to some earlier story, but since this is the author's earliest Fimfiction tale I don't imagine I was. We also get a slightly weird hint of future TwiLuna at the end. File this under "interesting early artefact"; Skywriter has written many smoother-reading fics since. ★★
Scootaloot by Game-BeatX14
Scootaloo
Comedy/Random; 1k words; Oct 2014; Teen
After endlessly failing at earning her cutie mark for so long, Scootaloo has come to the conclusion that her special talent must involve higher risk activities, and tries to earn her cutie mark in bank robbing.There's no real justification given for the above, nor for the fact that she starts her mission "touting [sic] a micro sub-machine gun". If that doesn't bother you, then this fic does at least live up to that [Random] genre tag pretty well. I don't mind the randomness myself; my own problem with this is that it doesn't feel in the least like Equestria. At one point, a character says, "There's, like, fifty thousand cameras in here. It's a bank, bruh." I can't imagine a pony saying that even in Manehattan – and this story is explicitly set in Ponyville. Add in a gratuitous creepy remark from one character (admittedly marked as such) about Scootaloo's appearance and some pointless bad language and this just didn't do anything at all for me. It has a +132/-3 thumbscore, though, so I'm clearly in a minority. ★
Everyone's a Changeling by Aquillo
Chrysalis and Changelings
Comedy; 2k words; Jan–Mar 2013; Teen
Everyone's a changeling. You, him, her, that. If it moves, it's a changeling. If it breathes, it's a changeling. If it's alive, it's a changeling. And Chrysalis is utterly sick of it.If you've read Benman's Changelings, Changelings Everywhere (PR 91) then you may be getting feelings of déjà vu at this point. This comes at the idea from a different angle, though. After a not-really-very-comedic-at-all opening, apparently set in an Equestria where Chrysalis defeated Twilight (though there's no [AU] tag), it gradually becomes clear to the Queen – and us – that the level of changelingness in the world is, shall we say, extreme. We're not only talking ponies actually being changelings. Not only mammals. Actually, not only lifeforms at all. You get the picture. Chrysalis sets off on a long journey through the now-almost-featureless land, and at her destination she meets someone rather familiar... a strange story that kept sparking but never quite caught fire. The concept is fun, but for a fic tagged with just the [Comedy] genre marker, it's really only funny in quite brief flashes. ★★
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: stories reviewed should include Tofazz's A Faded Touch of Blue.
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