Review: Star Trek Phoenix

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/490591/star-trek-phoenix

Warning: politic is involved. As all proper star trek critique should... and swearing, as all shitty rants are.

The attention whore inside me is tingling again!

Really, fimfiction should have a review system other than like-dislike. At least tags and advance search system is great, unlike a certain fanfic website.....

Well, I have to say that this is the best mlp-startrek crossover so far. It carved out its own place in star fleet without heavily relies on star trek main casts, doing its own star fleet things with original characters like any proper star trek spinoff and cross path once in a while. Even I who didn't watch next generation (TV series) understand what's going on as a whole and still enjoys it without biased from nostalgia.

Making good fanfic is hard, making original fiction is even harder

The choice to kept equestrian casts small and made it one of the main point of story paid of well, giving author's more daring option of scenario to put characters in without breaking illusion of belief.

Overall, Definitely in my top 10 on this site.

Now for the things that are not so great...

Firstly, technobabble.
The technobabble for magic is really bad. Absolutely horrendous. Like 'The Maretian' bad (another great fanfic BTW). Like we all know its all bullshit fictional concept. But that's also true for all star trek’s techs too.
Technobabble is an art of selling snake oils, making pseudo-science not only cool but feel real.
For example, instead of just saying "sleep magic make anyone without magic resistance sleep"

Make it little long winded, confused readers a little with big words while still express main ideas.
"Sleep magic operates by manipulating the entropy of the astral body, inducing a rapid and profound drop in energy levels that leads to deep sleep. However, it only affects those without strong magic resistance, as it relies on a delicate balance between energy manipulation and the limitations of the target's astral body."
Then someone jammed in and said layman's term. Everybody nodded in understanding

...doesn't that fitted with star trek more?

Soshite, the federation's characterization
There are two federation. The first one is the original, perfect post-scarcity space communist society in original. Everyone happy, they do their jobs without monetary incentive. All member races lived in harmony, happier life than evil hideous galactic fascist like the Klingon or corrupted feudalistic empire like the Romulus.
The second version of federation is this space militaristic empire. Racism still exists within imperial cities, psychopathic higher ups and secret police (Section 31) backed by officials to served their own agenda. Great men like Picard and Kirk must continue their eternal fight against such tyranny to keep the beast at bay.
That's why I always feel disconnected when a character say that post-scarcity civilization that everyone happy while suffering in Starfleet’s chain of command, It's always feel like propaganda spewing from mouth of brainwashed people.
...and trash talking about 21st century human without any good reason.

It came out as some kind of malice from author. There's this scene when they talk about how stupid crypto currency is. And immediately shows that they used federation credit, an inferior form of digital currency. It's showed that in DS9 federation credit is worthless, inoperational without the federation running the space station and controlling central system. The problem physical currency do not have. The problem that cryptocurrency try to solve.

Yup, it's really bad.

Schließlich, too much sherlocks, too much humpy dumdees
Everyone creepily observe everyone else closely, all the time, no needed for big brother here.
Every subtle movement, every little tone shifts. You must be able to notice everything and can hide expression near perfect if you want to be 'normal' in this fanfic.
That's not how healthy person/pony/alien should act.
Not only that, everyone also have fragile little ego, landmine that their conversational partner must navigate. Mess it up little bit and the bomb go off.

Can you ops to be a loner? Nope! That’s twilight's whole character arc. She might be a little asshole in her emo phase but she try to kept it to herself and done all jobs she were given perfectly and diligently, like most researcher do.
Nope that's the worse! Can you see you're making this gal that trying to invade your personal space feel bad?

What's about being friendly to everyone? Guess it, bad!

You must respect senior officer because this is militaristic fascist. You must also kept up with socialization happy by breaking regulations and laugh with them because otherwise you're the bad one.

Why don't you smile and enjoy Friday night pizza party you worthless little shit?

Story-wise it work flawlessly and enjoyable, but not so much when look at it in a big picture, even more so when it was unapologetically treated as 'perfect society'.

From blog posts, I know author is married. I hope that he just go with the flow and doesn't actually believed in what's he is writing. For his wife sake (don't know if he has a kid). We don't need any more Stalinism apologists in our world (I dare you to looked up list of all the group they killed when they came into power, hypocrite)

Yes, yes, the federation was accidentally turned into tankie dystopian because its capitalist soulless owner want to milked it dry. Have to keep viewership rating up somehow, right?

Nevertheless, my complaints are minors at best. little defects in otherwise a perfect novel(that's what made it so jarring).

I’ll go watch Orville now, bye!