So, finals are over, and winter break begins. I was intending to read chapter 37 of Fallout: Equestria around this time, but a few thoughts occurred to me - the thing is over a hundred pages long, and I hate this story. Why would I read this when I have video games to play and my own crap to write? For the moment I've also taken on a sort of Wargames mentality with the fic - "The only winning move is not to read."
I was gonna do a write-up, giving a run-down on my collective thoughts so far, admitting a handful of things I was wrong on and re-iterating my other points, but then the browser reset and I lost my shtick. Maybe God's telling me to give it a rest for a while.
So with that, I'll move away from Adventures in Violence and Angst and go onto The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine. These next chapters are based on Swarm of the Century, and a problem shows up. What is the central premise of this fic? If you answered "Twilight has a dick and the rest of the main cast want to bone him," you'd be correct. Somehow the author appears to have forgotten this and these new chapters, collectively titled A Parasprite's POV, do not really stay true to this. It starts off with, well... Narration from the point of view of a parasprite. Periodically through the chapter it goes back to the parasprite, with a bunch of yadda yadda about the Buzz and the Snack. Eh. It works.
The chapters follow more or less the same storyline of the episode. Princess Celestia is due to visit, and Twilight is overseeing preparations. The author decides he's gonna be funny with the large amount of cake being prepared that Pinkie Pie was scarfing through at the beginning of the episode, and makes up a wacky backstory that explains the origin of Cakelestia (remember "Ponyville Confidential"). Basically, there's a mountain that Celestia's father etched laws onto, with commandments to love and tolerate (subtle), and one day while her parents were out, Celestia etched a commandment to feed the princess cake. And they couldn't un-etch it, and so when Celestia took over she kept the "Princess" title so she could still get the cake... wait, why the fuck am I going on here?
The most notable deviation is with Pinkie Pie. She attempts to derail the storyline by, rather than getting random instruments to play a polka, gathering random crap and trying to force the author to come up with something else. Also haw haw making fun of how the cartoon show doesn't make sense.
I am now thinking of stories that have done the metafiction angle so much better. The musical Into the Woods did that pretty well.
Also, Pinkie Pie hits Dusk Shine in the balls with a crowbar again. You know what sounds like a fun activity? We should all come up with our own creepiness rankings - who's the creepiest member of Dusk's harem, and who's the least creepy? I'm leaning towards Rarity for the creepiest and Trixie for the least creepy.
Another gag in this chapter: Recall that bit in the episode where Rarity has Rainbow Dash putting on a fancy outfit that she hates? Well, here we get that and more, long story short Rainbow Dash gets Rarity's hairdo. And it starts to mess with her brain, and we all know where this is going. There's also this wacky nightmare sequence.
There's also this recurring shtick where Dusk seems to be the only sane one in the group, and he's the one giving sensible advice to the girls, but it's all kind of clunky and I'm not sure it's what Twilight would do. He just feels condescending and it detracts from his likability.
There isn't a whole lot to say about the chapters here, but like I mentioned, the deal about how this story was supposed to be wacky harem antics with Dusk Shine has kind of fallen by the wayside. The only thing of that nature that comes up is that Dusk comes back to the library to overhear Trixie talking about how he's gonna be totally turned on by the maid outfit she has on, followed by her flustered denial.
Anyway, at the end Pinkie Pie comes in with the result of her hard work - a big robot parasprite that leads them out. And then as a result of that Pinkie Pie gets a bunch of money and builds theme parks. Oh yeah, and the robot parasprite is called a spritebot. Huh. I really can't get away from that damn fic, can I?
Comments
