FimFiction Link - Short ID: 163482/the-heart-of-an-author
Published: Jan '14 — Dec '14
This is an extremely well written mistery, which is a rarity.
Fluttershy writes a murder mystery novel and asks Twilight to read it and give her feedback. Then the story follows Fluttershy's novel, going back and forth between it and the "real" world, where Twilight tries to figure out why are things happening the way they are, and solving the mystery. The first novel is a dud and Fluttershy and Twilight have a minor falling out due to it, but Fluttershy manages to write a remake of sorts, and the process repeats. Don't think it's just a retread of the first time, though, Flutter's book is better, has different set pieces, different murders and puzzles, plus now the vague antagonist of the previous book gets to shine and is an all around great antagonist.
Honestly, it's a great story.
For 19 and a half chapters.
Then two OC's get introduced and are revealed to have been the masterminds behind Fluttershy writing that novel. They're pitting Twilight against the villain of the book because they're elder beings beyond time who need entertainment.
To be fair, the OC's were introduced early in the story. Sort of. One had a scene early on that felt incredibly tacked on, but it went by so fast and wasn't brought up again, so I just thought it was the author including a friend's ponysona into the story. I had forgotten about her by the time she popped up in the, uh, twist. The other one was kind of worse, because someone let a kitty with a Japanese name on Twilight's doorstep and she adopted it. It was quite weird, but I didn't think anything of it, until it turns out that the cat is also one of those entities and puts Twilight's mind into the world of the second book Twilight wrote and pits her against the antagonist of the first book, who was great.
She had a personality and felt more like a real character than the two OC's who are the real antagonists. Hell, when those two OC's make an interlude and transport Goldie and Twilight into an interdimensional breakroom for tea, she gets lobotomised and starts acting all sheepishly instead of the menacing force she had been through the whole--Jesus Christ. Fuck this. Fuck this story. I hate it so much, god damnt it.
Also, let's focus on that bit about the cat with the Japanese name. It was only on my third attempt at reading this that I found out this was an adaptation of sorts of a Japanese VN. This was back when tags had colours unique to the genre, so I don't know how I missed the "Crossover" tag.
I've read the story three more times since I originally dropped it and managed to finish chapter 20.
Guess what happens. The Golden alicorn rewrites the chapter so it contains an epic battle between Celestia and Luna that makes no sense to have happened in the story for reasons even Twilight herself says are dumb.
I have not been able to read beyond that, and neither should you.