/mlp/ Fanfic Reviews

When Your blood throws a fit

FimFiction Link - Short ID: 507203/when-your-blood-throws-a-fit

Published: Nov '21

Review in No. 37854707
'When Your blood throws a fit' is a one thousand and five-hundred word SoL oneshot featuring two OCs. The main character, one Forget-me-not, is suffering from sickle-cell disease, which causes immense pain for her every once in a while. To cope with her condition she mostly distracts herself with movies or by talking to a batpony who she started feeling romantic affections for. The story follows one of her days, during which she suffers from a major flare-up of her illness.
First and foremost, while there are a lot of problems with this story, I have to mention that I do admire the author's decision to choose such an odd topic. I'm sure most of us have heard of this disease, but I doubt that, unless you're or someone you know is affected, it's something you really ever think about. So, in terms of creative premises, this fic certainly delivers. Sadly, however, where it doesn't is the actual narrative.
Simply put, while the budding romance between the two ponies is kind of cute, the story whizzes by so fast that we hardly learn anything about either of them. Due to this, nothing really feels either earned or too impactful. For instance, aside from the cover image, the author doesn't even consider it prudent to describe the characters' appearance in detail, aside from one or two minimal nods, like explaining that the protag's magic's color is sky-blue. While such things can be ignored if you use the canon cast, once you go OC, you kind of have to give some sort of description or the reader is left in the darkness. Also, unless the main protag is called Forget-me-not Flower, the author suddenly changes her name mid-story. The only reason this didn't confuse me more is because there only really are two characters in the plot.
Flower is, for some reason, the florist of Luna, received experimental wing-prosthetics from Twilight, and lives deep under the Neighgara-falls in a batpony-city called Nox, despite being of Appleloosan-origin. The sad thing is that all of these sound like interesting plot-points, which could make for intriguing narratives even individually, but because they are presented so matter-of-factly and without any buildup, I sort of just feel like I've accidentally stumbled upon chapter 40 of a three hundred thousand-word fic or I'm reading the sequel of a fic that was never released.
Finally the fic's prose is lazy at best. Some sentences start with lowercase letters, random exposition is thrown in inside parentheses and the single chapter's title has a typo. None of these ruin the story per se, but they don't exactly inspire confidence about the author caring about their story.
Overall: 3/10 As with so many fics, this too has a good concept that's ultimately ruined by a rushed and not well-enough thought out narrative. I can't recommend it.