LNLD takes an interesting premise and succeeds in building pretty inventively from it rather than just being a cookie-cutter fic, where every mention of Celestia is whited out and scribbled over with "loona" and every frame of Twilight has a hat photoshopped onto her head. Instead, things are rebuilt from the Luna-Celestia reversal on up, and changes are made that don't immediately spring to mind when one imagines a Princess-swap. The canon Mane 6 are no longer the Bearers of the Elements here and it shows, though (at the risk of stirring up the already-numerous coals of contention) the changes are ones I'm okay with.
The fic is a lot more open with the vices of all its characters than show canon, a fact that extends to the Luna 6—-Trixie shows clearly that she is a good-hearted mare, but can get short-sighted and vindictive, for example. In the same way, the Mane 6 aren't exactly cackling villains—-Applejack holds all other local produce farmers in the grip of the Trust, but out of genuine (if wholly, blindly deluded) concern rather than spite; likewise, Twilight (who doesn't actually appear in this particular installment but shhh) does what she does not because she is evil but because she genuinely doesn't know any better. While their actions are not wholly excused on these accounts, they are at least understandable.
As for the quality of the writing itself, I find it enjoyable. The characters tend to feel pretty vivid and the narration has an interesting range of tones that all seem to work at the very least. Not to mention the fact that RDD managed to do a musical number that serves as a battle (not easy to do in a text medium, even with an accompanying song to hear) in a way I felt really worked.
LNLD: An interesting premise with a pretty great result.
LNLD takes an interesting premise and succeeds in building pretty inventively from it rather than just being a cookie-cutter fic, where every mention of Celestia is whited out and scribbled over with "loona" and every frame of Twilight has a hat photoshopped onto her head. Instead, things are rebuilt from the Luna-Celestia reversal on up, and changes are made that don't immediately spring to mind when one imagines a Princess-swap. The canon Mane 6 are no longer the Bearers of the Elements here and it shows, though (at the risk of stirring up the already-numerous coals of contention) the changes are ones I'm okay with.
The fic is a lot more open with the vices of all its characters than show canon, a fact that extends to the Luna 6—-Trixie shows clearly that she is a good-hearted mare, but can get short-sighted and vindictive, for example. In the same way, the Mane 6 aren't exactly cackling villains—-Applejack holds all other local produce farmers in the grip of the Trust, but out of genuine (if wholly, blindly deluded) concern rather than spite; likewise, Twilight (who doesn't actually appear in this particular installment but shhh) does what she does not because she is evil but because she genuinely doesn't know any better. While their actions are not wholly excused on these accounts, they are at least understandable.
As for the quality of the writing itself, I find it enjoyable. The characters tend to feel pretty vivid and the narration has an interesting range of tones that all seem to work at the very least. Not to mention the fact that RDD managed to do a musical number that serves as a battle (not easy to do in a text medium, even with an accompanying song to hear) in a way I felt really worked.