Ponyfic Roundup 395: Spotlight on Oversaturation

Read it Later story count: 86 (-5)

The Platinum Jubilee weekend had a lot of things to offer, many of them great fun and even some of the others (such as the occasionally iffy weather) suitably British. Somehow I found time between all the street parties and pageants and purple steam engines and tins of commemorative shortbread to read a long enough fic for a Spotlight here. I've read a few stories by FanOfMostEverything, most recently the delightful Trade of the Trix (PR 382) but a longer tale is something rarer. So here we go!

Oversaturation by FanOfMostEverything
Sunset Shimmer, Mane Seven, Discord and Other
Adventure; 37k words; Aug–Oct 2015; Teen

Too much of a good thing is filling the human universe, and Sunset Shimmer is the only one who can solve the problem before it annihilates her new home.

Set during S5 of FiM and largely written before Friendship Games appeared, this is a look at what might happen if magic started... leaking from Equestria and... infecting, for want of a better word, the human (as in Canterlot High) world. Ponying up is happening more often, and that's only the start. There's some really good character work in here, with Sunset Shimmer at the centre. The other Manes spark off each other nicely, and Twilight (as in Sci-Twi, mostly, ish) turns out to be more important than you'd think. She's not the only one either, but hay, spoilers. Some fun little deviations to see why such-and-such happened in canon – a late scene with Blueblood complaining that Twilight got a castle amused me greatly, too. This is definitely a fic where things escalate, as the description up there makes clear, and since my personal preference is for more grounded magic (so to speak) that wasn't quite so much to my own taste. There's one very convenient setup near the start, while not all the weird and wonderful stuff thrown at the wall quite sticks—but a pretty high proportion does. A top-end three for me, but those more into EqG and/or more receptive to... let's say Tree of Harmony-style stuff, best I can do without loadsaspoilers, might well see it as a four. If Oversaturation appeals to you, the story has spawned a whole bunch of side-stories by various authors. ★★★

That's the spoiler-free version. You'll find more of my waffling, but with spoilers, if you continue past this point.

Sheesh, that summary wasn't easy to write without spoilers! Now I can relax a bit. As I said, the characterisations were my favourite parts here. Sunset Shimmer is great at the centre, still struggling a little with being human (though mostly while driving...) Allowing for when it was written (so no Timber Spruce, how terribly sad) the girls all feel right, and even if Twilight eventually becomes quite different from where canon Sci-Twi went, in the context of this fic it's absolutely fine. Ditzy Doo (in this CHS-world she's only "Derpy" as a mild insult) is not like her FiM counterpart, being rather more magic-sensitive and indeed a bit reminiscent of the dimension-hopping version we saw in Meta Four's Alarm Clock (PR 107). As for Pinkie... well. She's Pinkie.

And then there's Mr. Discord. On the plus side, his characterisation is great, exactly as I'd expect a human analogue of you-know-who to be, and I particularly like the way he reacts when magic floods the human world. The revelation near the end that he was once married to Abacus Cinch offers more questions than answers, but I just let that bit wash over me. The one thing that does grate slightly is the "Not A Human Testing Installation" just happening to be ready and waiting in Canterlot High. Okay, you can talk about fate and what was destined to happen (looking at you there, Harmony) but it still feels rather convenient.

Edit: I had completely forgotten this, but the NAHTI is canon. It's in one of the pre-Friendship Games shorts. Thanks to FOME in the comments for pointing this out. Still convenient, but that does soften my reaction slightly.

I mentioned Harmony, so let's get to the way things start small (well, ish) and then go up and up. I'll lay my cards on the table and admit I'm not the fandom's biggest lover of Astral Plane, overarching-fate-of-multiverses stuff. Those who read my Spotlight on iisaw's (excellent) The Twilight Enigma back in PR 118 won't be surprised. Or indeed of the Tree itself as an actual being, or representation thereof. My head points out that it's a long-honoured storytelling tradition for the weird and magical being say there isn't time when asked to explain something awkward, and that Celestia's enigmatic smiles do much the same thing, but my heart would still have preferred Harmony to actually answer the bloody question when Sunset asked what "intended" meant!

I really liked all the little wandering down side alleys to talk briefly about this and that. If you dislike these sidenotes, you may find Oversaturation less to your taste, but I enjoyed them. Want to know how Vinyl got that Transform-a-car in Rainbow Rocks? It's here. Wondering whether Fluttershy's work with animals is relevant to her abilities? It is. Remember that scene in the first movie where Pinkie pulls a balloon off her dress? So did FOME! We don't get told everything – in particular, a line that Principal Celestia has "led an interesting life" doesn't go any further, though that of course leaves readers free to imagine what may have been.*
* This is one case where "what may have been" and "what might have been" are very much not interchangeable

Okay, let's talk about cutie marks, and I don't just mean "cutiesynthesis" (though I love that word, cheers Sunset). This is one of the odder parts of the story, and according to the author was the catalyst for the whole AU in the first place: wondering why EqG humans have cutie mark-like symbols on their clothes. I'm not sure how I feel about said symbols being from a bizarre cult-like religion considered taboo to even mention (despite being very prominently visible) but it does provide a great "culture shock" scene where Sunset Shimmer realises that she's long been putting her foot in it by asking other students about the things...

The Sirens play an unusual role in this fic, not even appearing until about halfway through. Well, I say "Sirens" but mostly it's Sonata Dusk. Aria fades out after her first scene (though she is the utterer of the one and only serious swearword in the whole fic, which may or may not be significant) while Adagio is pretty much only there for the other two to acrimoniously split from. I like how the fic gives Sonata quite a bit more depth to her character ‒ this isn't just a bunch of "Taco Tuesday!" silly lines. You may well find yourself having a more then negligible amount of sympathy for her, which is impressive writing considering Sonata's behaviour over many centuries.

This being a FOME story, I was expecting some pop culture references, and indeed we get them. They're generally unobtrusive if you don't know the inspiration, such as an amusing one to the old Street Fighter games, and I expect I missed some entirely. The odd nod is slightly more clunky (shower curtains) and not being a Magic: The Gathering person a late mention of a school named Ravnica meant zilch, but mostly they work well. My only significant irritation, though, was an entire sentence in untranslated Cthulhu-speak in a chapter end A/N. Doing this without so much as a footnote or inline link (in a fic that uses the latter several times) isn't really fair on knowless readers.

On the whole, though, Saturation is a very good read. While it isn't without a few faults, skating over some rather thin ice in places, it remains enjoyable enough to stay upright in spite of those little wobbles. The fact that so many side stories exist also significantly diminishes the possible issues about such a large change to humanity (the flying, the feathers, Discord being godlike there too, all that jazz) occurring so close to the end of the story. There's a fair bit I haven't covered here (I guffawed at the "Welcome!" joke) and I feel I've slightly shortchanged Sunset herself—but this review is long enough already. Ambitious stuff, and certainly with more hits than misses. I can well see how it spawned a universe.

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup, it should be back to four stories. I hope they will include Pascoite's Pinkie-centric drama Author! Author!