Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Fandom Classics Part 86: Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight

To read the story, click the image or follow this link

Writeoff's over, and that means everyone's putting their stories up!  I'd link to them, but there's seriously a dozen or so that are already on FiMFic, so I'm only going to link to my favorite story out of the group (and 4th place finisher), Baal Bunny's Funatics.  Go read that if you need something tooth-rottingly sweet in your life.

Or go read my incisive, hard-hitting review of meme-asaurus's Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight, down below.  Can't go wrong either way!



Impressions before reading:  "A barely 1000-word comedy" usually presages ill on FiMFiction.net, but word on the street (i.e. the person who suggested it) says that it's brilliantly funny.  Well, I do always get a chuckle out of the "German comic" by which the cover image is inspired (those of you newer to the fandom might not appreciate this, but the very first European comics were so amazingly bad that that fooled a lot of people--I mean, look at this), so hopefully this story delivers some laughs, too!

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Prince Blueblood realizes that there's only one pony perfect enough for him: Twilight Sparkle.  Now he just needs to tell her.

Thoughts after reading:  I'll give the story this much: I laughed at the author's note.  But for the story itself... there's really not much here.  The joke is "Blueblood is an idiot," of course, but the story doesn't really do anything with that other than showcase his obliviousness a few times.  That's fine for what it is, but there's just not much here.

The story is also riddled with writing issues.  While spelling and punctuation are fine, there are a lot of misused words and muddled phrases, often several per paragraph.  And while Twilight's actual reaction might be in-character, her voicing leaves much to be desired--though at least some of that might be aforementioned writing issues (“'I’ve told my answer, and it’s not going to change five seconds afterward!'”).

In the end, this story delivers pretty much the kind and degree of humor you'd expect from the description.  That's not something I mind seeing in fanfiction, but about the best I can say for this story is "it's fine for what it is."

Star rating:


As a reminder, a single star in my rating system denotes anything from "typical fanfic" on down.  This story is a perfect example of typical fanfiction for its genre (a single characterization joke stretched to the minimum wordlimit), and while that's definitely not something I mind (again, I did laugh (well, snort sensibly) at the author's note), it's also hard to give an enthusiastic recommendation to.

Recommendation:  If you want 1000 words of "Blueblood cluelessly proposes to Twilight," this will deliver on that joke perfectly well.  If you're interested in anything else, this isn't the story for you.

Next time:  Letters from a Friend at the End of the World, by alexmagnet

5 comments:

  1. I was familiar with the actual German comics, but somehow missed that parody. Thanks for rectifying that

    Somewhat looking forward to the next review, though I don't feel like adding another longfic to my queue

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    Replies
    1. Trivia: that parody comic, much like the Transformers JaAm comics, was created by our own Blueshift.

      Of course, now that I've typed that, I'm not 100% sure, but it's probably a good guess.

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  2. This story sounds like it should have been in comic form. The short, one note jokes tend to work better in that medium.

    Letters... I'll be looking forward to what you think about that one.

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  3. Yeah, it was a bit shallow. It still gets a laugh from me every time I read one line though. It's just so perfectly Blueblood.

    “Please reconsider!” Blueblood’s voice said, muffled by the wood. “You’re forgetting that you’re immortal! Every minute you spend without me is a minute of my all-too-short life slipping away! Before you know it, I’ll be a withering old corpse by the time you realize that you love me! We have to make our moments we have together count!”

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