FimFiction Link - Short ID: 508126/the-foalsitter
Published: May '22
'The Foalsitter' is a two thousand and seven hundred-word oneshot. A young Chrysalis captures a young Cadance, but things don't work out as she expected.
This is an odd story. It begins with a scene in a blood-soaked dungeon where Chrysalis threatens to torture Cadance until she gives the young queen her love, but not only does she seem to be into this, the duo converse as if they were partners or at the very least sex-buddies. However, the moment the reader accepts and rolls with this, the story changes gears abruptly and most of the rest of it is spent with Chrysalis disguised as Cadance happily foalsitting a child Twilight. We're treated to a bunch of sweet scenes and cute interactions between Twilight and not-Cadance, until the story suddenly shifts again for a moment and we're shown how Chrysalis was apparently abused in her youth by her mother.
I guess the thing that confused me the most was what this story was trying to be. Individually every scene works more or less. While I'm not really into the schlocky BDSM romcom between the two characters, I also wouldn't necessarily call it badly written. And again the scenes with Twilight was cute and comfy SoL. Individually both could have been made into nice fics, however, cutting from one to the other didn't really work nicely in my opinion. The story almost completely forgets about Cadance and she is ignored until the very end, even though it could've been a nice morbid joke to see her struggle or be bored out of her mind while Chrysalis is having her merry way masquerading as her. Or perhaps the story shouldn't have revealed that the all-too-perfect Cadance isn't who she seems to be after all until the very end, which would have made the fact that she's good with children - especially the one who would prove to be her eventual nemesis - all the more surprising. Speaking of, I found it a little odd that Chrysalis who admits to have only just learned how to shapeshift and making such basic mistakes as messing up the color of her eye and forgetting to change her voice to Cadance's is able to immediately and perfectly behave like a pony and completely win tiny-Twilight's trust and friendship. I wouldn't really call this a dealbreaking issue, but it does feel like a missed opportunity to see her struggle a little to get into the pony mindset and maybe say some stupid things only to damage control and fix the situation. As it stands the story has little to no conflict through most of its length and even the little there is at the end just feels like the author trying to hastily tie up the plot.
Overall: 5/10 The story has comfy scenes, moderately funny humor, and an interesting concept, but doesn't do nearly enough with it to really become anything memorable.