Read it Later story count: 315 (+3)
Carousel by Thornquill
Rarity
Dark/Drama/Horror; 70k words; Mar–May 2016; Teen
There is a part of Ponyville’s past its citizens forgot, a part that was left to rot... until Rarity encounters a dark power in Old Town Hall.Set several years before the show begins, this fic follows a newly-independent Rarity as she sets up what will eventually become the Carousel Boutique. Unfortunately for her, the building – or something or someone in it – doesn't seem to want her to succeed. This leads to some very tense and sometimes truly scary scenes, as well as one with a more domestic angle that's utterly horrific. The best thing this fic does is to be frightening without the need to resort to blood and guts. As the long description makes plain, this is a slow-burning horror, so you should expect plenty of slice-of-life stuff, including Rarity's relations with several of the future Mane Six. Some interesting ideas about magic, too. The ending is a bit of an anticlimax, and there are one or two slightly forced links with canon. Still, the heart of the fic is so good that it outweighs these concerns. A strong four. ★★★★
A bit more on Carousel, including major spoilers, follows the page break.
By far the best part of this story is its sheer scariness factor. There's very little actual violence, and chapter eight is a perfect example of this. The part of that chapter where Rarity apparently murders Sweetie Belle by sewing up her mouth and nose is terrifying – but it has all the more power to shock because of how calmly it's done. It's so smooth that you could almost miss the sheer horror of it all unless you were paying attention. Very, very impressive.
The later scene where Rarity comes close to suffocation after the house's gas taps are turned on is also very good – and I found Pinkie Pie's determination to rescue her friend extremely satisfying, too. Pinkie herself is the most interesting of the other canon characters in the story: I did wonder occasionally whether she was behaving a little too maturely for a pre-show Pinkie, but she's written so consistently that after a while this niggle disappeared.
Applejack is also very strongly written, especially in her ferocious protection of the friends she believes (rightly, as it happens) Rarity has wronged. The scene in the marketplace, for example, was gripping in the extreme. I found this AJ absolutely believable and would gladly have read more of her. I didn't find Fluttershy quite so satisfying: she certainly isn't written badly, but at times her character seems a little too developed for the pre-S1 era.
Rarity's parents are ever-present, though not in drawn that much more detail than they are in the show. Her dad's habit of calling her "Marshmallow" is, frankly, silly – it amused me, but I can see why it irritates other readers. I suppose it goes with those rather forced horse puns such as "Victorneighn". (As a Brit, seeing that contrasted with the perhaps overused term "Gilded Age" seemed strange.) Also, wouldn't "Rachmareinov" have been better than "Rachcoltinov" in the last chapter? :P
So then, Toola Roola. She's now G4 canon, but that wasn't the case when Carousel appeared. The early misdirection about "a pink Earth pony" is very slightly clunky, but I quickly started to be intrigued about Toola, and what her connection was to Rarity and the strange goings-on in her new house. The strange and twisted paintings at first made me think of the Dali-style canvases Rarity views in "Sweet and Elite", though it soon became clear they were more. Toola's is the real tragedy, not really over even as the story ends.
Ms Dog-Ear, the librarian, didn't have quite as many details filled in as some, which was a slight shame given what we learned about her closeness to Toola Roola. (The photo of them together makes me wonder whether they were simply best friends or "best friends".) Minimum Mortgage, the estate agent, largely faded from the story as we moved from slice of life to out-and-out horror, and that was also slightly disappointing.
Carousel has some interesting ideas about magic. It's nothing new in fiction for mirrors to have strange powers, but this fic uses that very well. The idea of unexplained ripples of magic floating around here and there isn't new either, but again it fits well enough. The big revelation is what Pinkie Pie reveals at the climax of the story about Earth pony magic and how it differs from Unicorn magic. (Very unusually for a recent fic, tribe names are capitalised in the Hasbro style.)
Well, I say "the climax of the story", but it's actually a couple of chapters from the end, which does create a problem. After that, we move back to slice of life, and it all seems a bit... pedestrian after what's gone before. There's also a longish speech from Rarity in the final chapter that doesn't really sound like her ("When we do that, though") and feels more like Voice of the Author intruding. A little cameo from, presumably, Twilight doesn't feel organic, either.
Still, these small annoyances don't change the fact that the core of Carousel is outstanding, one of the best pieces of atmospheric ponyfic horror I've read. If you read this with the lights off on a winter's night like those Ponyville is enduring in the fic, it's odds-on that you'll feel your flesh start to crawl at least once or twice. You may also find yourself checking your mirrors for cracks and wondering about whether you left the gas on...
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: back to mixed short fics. Exactly which mixed short fics has yet to be determined.
Yeah, oh boy. :D Oh boy.
ReplyDeleteYeah.