FimFiction Link - Short ID: 6515/days-of-wasp-and-spider
Published: Jan '12 — Dec '13
I presume this fic needs no introduction. It's from 2012. I am only 5 chapters (25,000 words) in to the fic, but thoughts of dropping it frequently occur and I suspect my opinion won't change any time soon.
The good is that the author knows how to hold suspense. I want to keep reading to see what will happen with the Griffin attack and I was very interested in what the Chernobyl-like scene was going to do. I find little else to praise. I would normally have some good to say about the characters, but the pony characters are so indistinct and unremarkable that I am struggling to recall which of Fusion and Gravity is our protagonist. I can certainly guess, but I shouldn't have to.
The bad is that it reads as if the author is going out of their way to pick difficult words. This is apparent when the fic is going in to heavy sci-fi mode. You can find several examples at the start of every chapter, but I am sure that the likes of "megaseconds" are already notorious. The griffin scenes also have the likes of "Yes sersjant!".
If there is a great fic in here, I have yet to see it.
I'm about halfway through this now and I finally understand it. Fundamentally, it's a character drama. Once you're past the start, the viewpoint character tends to change several times per chapter. This is the fic's main strength. The author is a pretty good character author and I can believe that the decisions that each character makes are ones that they actually would. The earliest chapters focus on the main character, Fusion, and are weaker for it. You don't read this for the sci-fi or the pretentious-looking introductions in the early chapters. You read it because you want to see what each character is going to do next.