FimFiction Link - Short ID: 448877/the-princesss-bit
Published: Sep '19 — Mar '22
As a sequel, this fic is significantly more polished than GTG. Mitch describes what’s happening in the AU in a way that’s better integrated into the story, and reads less like going off onto tangents. It is still almost entirely slice of life in terms of the perspectives and descriptive focus on what is happening. Another change from GTG is that despite the SoL content, it always has a direction that it’s going in, through a series of arcs: assemble the Crystal Guard, then make the airship ready for adventure, then go on adventure. Finally, a much wider variety of characters are used for perspective.
My favorite single thing about The Princess’s Bit is that it actually delivers on the promise of another fic I read, Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift, even to the point of using the actual phrase Night Shift. The batpony lore, culture and rituals as “mares-in-black,” guardians of Equestria, while also being a unique brand of NMM cultists is just fantastic.
Another major highlight is the character Fish Eye, a pink hippogriff that sports all of Pinkie Pie’s positive qualities and basically none of her negative ones. She's bubbly, extremely insightful and observant, unusually generous, and adorably naive. All chapters featuring her perspective were wonderful.
Lastly, this fic doesn’t complete the story. Even so, it has an absolutely fantastic ending; Mitch proves that his talent for this isn’t limited to just ITCON. I don’t have anything negative to say about this fic, except that if you suffer from the unfortunate condition of hating GTG, this one is still extremely similar, so you would only hate it less.
P.S. GTG implies that Sunset Shimmer has a role, but she doesn’t.