/mlp/ Fanfic Reviews

I'd Only Dream Of You

FimFiction Link - Short ID: 520607/id-only-dream-of-you

Published: Aug '22

Review in No. 38912810
This is a crackship shortfic with Doc Whooves and Luna. There is a mystery wherein Doc disappears every morning, but it is explained almost immediately in the fic.
Besides being a crackship and in first person, the story is set pre-NMM and the romance is tied to Luna's downfall, all of which together you would expect to result in a terrible story. The thing is, the story would have to actually deliver on the expectations you have of cringeworthy garbage and other poorly written elements in order to actually be bad. Two things make this story unusual and recommendable, the first of which is that basically everything you would expect to be bad is simply missing. It's almost as if the author pre-skipped it for you, so you don't have to skip it yourself. Since those things are fairly bad, there's almost nothing left.
What is left in the story is a few good scenes based on the disappearing Doc concept, which is explained just enough to make the story work and doesn't stand up to any critical thought. Those scenes are tied together with some bare scaffolding to turn them in a story, with smoldering wreckage of canon as a backdrop.
The second thing that makes it recommendable is, obviously, that the disappearing Doc concept is quite unusual.