Fanfic A Novel Idea That Lost Its Luster
I've been following this story since it began at the start of 2014, and after nearly a full year I've become disillusioned with it. With the story arc as of this review being subpar, I stopped reading and thought back on the story. And, speaking as an early fan - it honestly isn't that good when you take a step back.
When the ponies and Pokemon are interacting is the best part. We see Celestia have an Aegislash devote itself to her, that's brilliant. Rarity gets an Aromatisse, Applejack's farm is invaded by Bug-types, Luna helps Darkrai learn to control his dream magic, all great ideas.
However, there's a lot of problems swarming those good ideas. The fic is not a continuous narrative, more a series of adventures with different characters doing different things at once. Except while other authors break up such things into different fics, this author crams it all into one, and it makes things very difficult to follow. This is especially true in the latest story arc as of November-December 2014, which focuses on romantic couples and thus is constantly shifting focus between different groups. This fic really has too many characters for its own good, and they come and go seemingly as the author decides he wants to write about them again, and then they're forgotten about for 10 chapters. Some of the subplots are interesting, but it's been 50 chapters and some of them don't seem to be going anywhere, or are going there too slowly to hold interest.
What really began to drag the fic down is its increasing focus on the Gene and Belle romance, and incorporating elements from tRecursive Fanfics. For the former, Gene is not an interesting protagonist in any regard, the only character trait I can pin down for him (besides generic heroism and bravery) is that he and Belle hump like rabbits. For the latter, the fic already has a lot of subplots going on. When the author expects readers to start looking at other stories by other authors to know what's going on, no.
There were some creative ideas worth exploring in this, but the execution is rather mediocre. This would work better as a series of interconnected fics, like the Lunaverse, but instead all the characters and plot elements are left fighting for screentime in one story, and the result is an uneven and sloppy mess. Once the novelty of the crossover wears off, there's not much to see here.
Fanfic Agreed with the previous reviewer.
This idea has potential, but... it's squandered and crushed beneath the load of trying to include characters from every single story in the recursive fanfictions.
Gene and Belle... are honestly not that interesting, because every bit of dialogue between the two is at Tastes Like Diabetes level of schmaltzy. Can't go a sentence without these characters assuring each other of their love.
I think the main issue IS how romance has taken up the bulk of the story, or rather, how it's focused less on the adjustment of Pokemon in the world and more on the conflict between old-world law enforcement -which has no authority- and Equestria.
Part of what rubs me the wrong way about this is... it reminds me of an episode of Fillmore, in which some visiting student had and abused diplomatic immunity and was getting away with so much.
And then there's the bashing... There are characters included just to be bashed and tormented, and people laugh at it because 'it's just X'.
Honestly, one of the most interesting aspects of the story WAS the character Abby, but she's quickly nosediving for me, particularly when one of the later chapters, after her mentioned chewing out from her boss, is her trying -and succeeding- to get an agreeing opinion on her cursing habits.
This character caused extreme, painful nerve sensetivity to a mare that lasted a week, and then forced a fandom-hated character to hear every negative thought about him because he called her an 'animal'.
... Had this been some no-name background pony, or someone like Octavia, would any of these fans of this be laughing?
Again, nice idea... not so much on the execution.