[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

I read: Completed as of this review at 3.8k words, 2 chapters
I rate: 3/10
I recommend: Skip

Were you disappointed with the series finale? I recall /mlp/ having a field day bitching about it. But, then again, they’re channers. They bitch about everything. Personally, I thought it was pretty good. However, not everyone agrees - even I think it could’ve been better, dialogue getting tightened up and whatnot. Alas, I do not believe that this story is an appropriate alternative to the events presented in the show.

What we have here, dear reader, is a fix-fic - of sorts. Instead of being petrified, our three villains are instead… banished? Sort of, sort of banished. Basically, they managed to debate the Equestrian leadership into turning off their OP magic and letting them go free to travel the world and, for some reason, they actually choose to stick together too. Okay? So, the story follows their antics after that, occasionally cutting back to the Mane 6 as they attempt to work Grogar’s Bell.

And here is where we run into an issue. This all is supposed to be funny. It isn’t. As far as I can tell, the comedy is supposed to stem here from the character’s over-the-top reactions to fairly standard events, as well as the narrator being lemony and cutting in to snark every so often. The problem is that this does not work - here, the writer does not show the required skill to pull that kind of narration off. Instead, it just looks lazy to capitalize the arguments the characters have and StoryHart’s running commentary makes this story very “tell” heavy - which, again, isn’t great for a comedy because you miss out on witnessing the antics first hand.

Furthermore, the writing itself - past the narration - is also fairly stitled. As aforementioned, this doesn’t help the comedy because the writing doesn’t flow properly and instead catches up on grammar mistakes and spelling errors. Which this story is littered with to the point of distraction. Add in some stilted dialogue and overall clumsy narration in terms of describing, either too briefly or with too much unnecessary detail, what the characters are doing and you have a non-comedy that’s hard to read and doesn’t really work as an adventure because it sounds half the time like an MSTKed recap of an actual episode.

One thing I really do commend StoryHart on though is making Pinkie a villain or, at least given there are only two chapters out right now, setting her up to be one. It is a relatively rare idea and seeing go mad with power would be interesting. However, she’s only in the story for about ¼ of it and the rest of the time we’re stuck with cardboard versions of the villains.

Plot: 3/5. The villain redemption idea for the finale is reasonably popular and I admit StoryHart’s take on it has potential.
Characters: 1/5. None of the characters really sound like themselves and the narrator as a character feels totally unnecessary and immersion-breaking.
Style: 1/5. Running commentary can work. It doesn’t here though and the grammar doesn’t either.
Execution: 1/5. I did not find this entertaining at all.
Overall Rating: 6/20 = 3/10

To Lunestia StoryHart: Get an editor, please. I knocked you down two points in the grading above because the poor phrasing and bad grammar makes this difficult to read and genuinely hard to understand at times. Also, if you’re insisted on doing your narrator as a real character, maybe take a look at CS Lewis or Lemony Snicket - both authors do this idea really well and the latter’s have a lot of good comedy while the former’s also touch on ideas of redemption and adventure.

For something like this: At the End of Ambition also handles the idea of the three villains sticking together and adventuring - albeit in a better style with some genuinely moving moments.

If you enjoyed this review, check out more of my work here.