FimFiction Link - Short ID: 507550/the-royal-bakers
Published: Nov '21
'The Royal Bakers' is a two thousand and three hundred-word oneshot. As it turns out, while Celestia is great at making pancakes, she is an absolute disaster when it comes to cakes. Luna, after witnessing the tragic extent of her sister's failings, offers to bake one with her, during which the two sisters bond over their past memories.
As one can easily realize from the summary above, this isn't exactly a high-stakes story. There isn't really even an actual conflict, other than, of course, the fact that Luna can't sleep due to Celestia's incredibly loud attempts at baking. However, as this is a SoL story, I don't consider this a problem. Especially because the fic is actually very comfy and heartwarming. The already cute narrative is further enhanced by the story's nicely-written prose, which really carries the atmosphere. The author really hams up Celestia's absolute shock when she realizes there is no more cake in the pantry and through dramatic repetition and vivid descriptions of the sisters' emotions turns an otherwise banal scene into a comedic one. None of the jokes really feel like knee-slappers in this story, but I also don't think this is an issue. They are still amusing and, just like the lack of high stakes, their goal is also to make the narrative feel simply nice. I also have to mention that I liked the author's attempt at justifying Luna's baking-skills. It feels believable and logical, not to mention, calls back to a really nice episode.
As for negatives, I don't really have many things to say. The only thing that really jumped out at me was the fact that the story spends quite some time emphasizing how important Luna's job is and how important it is to her, yet by the end of the fic morning breaks and the whole thing is just largely forgotten about. I don't really expect the author to mention any sort of serious negative repercussion, but maybe it could've been played for a joke. A simple "Wait, since you're here, who watched over our subjects' dreams?" / "Oh. Oops." exchange could have worked for me. It's not a massive issue either way, but for a story that does almost everything else very well, this felt surprisingly noticeable.
Overall: 8/10 A short and sweet fic. While it doesn't bring much new to the table, nor does it shake the reader with some sort of massive philosophical epiphany, it accomplishes well what it sets out to do: It makes you feel warm and nice inside. I very much recommend this fic to anyone who's looking for such things.