FimFiction Link - Short ID: 550222/anglerfish
Published: Jan '24
'Anglerfish' is a 6.7k horror oneshot. Fluttershy notices that Twilight isn't acting quite right.
I saw the story hanging around in the sinbox for a while, so I figured "eh, it's not long, why not read it?"
Beyond some obvious signs that the author hasn't written too many fimfics before (the amount of LUS here is almost impressive), it's actually quite a nicely written little story. There is an attention to detail that I really liked, Fluttershy hides in her mane to show she's bashful, the story elaborates how she doesn't 'actually' understand animals, just spent enough time around them to know what they mean, etc. There is clear effort here.
The horror too is quite nice at first. Twiggles is acting crazier than in 'Lesson Zero'. She's constantly smiling and she seemed to have forgotten how to blink. It doesn't exactly take the rest of the M6 long to figure out, that something is wrong with her. I'll spoil the story now for reasons that will be obvious in a second, but if by some chance you still want to read it, now is the chance to hop off.
Alright? Alright. It turns out that the Twi slinking around town is actually a Mirror Pool clone. But unlike the Pinkie clones, she's a lot more unstable and she needs to consume magic to survive or else her body will start deteriorating. Cool concept so far. Pretty creepy too. So what does the story do with this? Bloody well nothing. Fake Twi waltzes into Fluttershy's cottage, admits to being a fake and says "lol btw Twilight loved you and I love you too because I have her memories. Will you help me kill ponies?" and Fluttershy says "lol actually I loved Twilight too, but I didn't think she loved me back and I don't want to be heartbroken, I love you too" and she helps the monster wearing her crush's skin kill ponies. Oh, it's also implied that she allowed Fake Twi to murder all her animals as well. No, she's not brainwashed or possessed. She doesn't ask for any proof or make sure the monster can't actually survive in any other way. She just goes "sure, let's do it" and then cold-heartedly invites Rarity and even physically assists in her T-rated murder.
My reaction to this was a quiet "fuck". But not the impressed one, rather the "How did such a good concept go so south so quickly?"-kind. The "twist" if you can call it that comes far out of left field, turns both villain and protagonist completely OOC, and leads to an ending that would otherwise be creepy, if it wasn't so annoying how we got there.
Overall: Before the reveal this could've been a strong 6/10 or even a 7 if it nailed the ending. After the reveal, I couldn't give it much higher than a 3 and even that's just because the description of the monster and its method of feeding carries the scene. What a waste.