FimFiction Link - Short ID: 459400/mind-over-matter
Published: Jan '20 — May '21
"Mind over matter" is a 65 thousand word story that is supposed to be about a human drug addict (Leo) being transported to Equestria into the body of a colt who's just escaped his abusive parents. "supposed to be" because that's not what this story is. I'll elaborate later.
I did not like this story. The writing is a bit stilted at times and often the author just tells what's going on (i.e. Leo felt bad, leo thought this, leo walked there), it tells too much and shows too little. But honestly, the prose is not that bad, and that's not the main problem of the fic.
Another problem is that every ten or so chapters the author recaps what happened in previous chapters in the way of "doctor notes". You see, after being transported to Equestria Leo stumbles around a forest a bit, bites himself to see if it's not a dream, breaks his hoof and finally finds a town where he is put in a hospital. From time to time you'd see a thousand words long chapter with "doctor's notes" that would simply describe what happened with Leo in the previous chapters, like "Leo ate this, then x pony visited Leo, Leo fell asleep, etc". It is pretty annoying and unnecessary, and can be shortened to a couple of sentences.
Also, the fic is very repetitive. I understand that MC has been through a lot of traumatic experiences, but i you quickly get tired of reading the same internal dialog "I fucked up my life because i'm a stupid junkie, i can't change. No, i can change. No, i can NOT change!" and so on for the tenth time. Honestly, reading a lot of the chapters, especially the later ones, felt like a chore.
But none of these things are the main problem of the fic. This story is not what it purports to be - it is NOT a story about a recovering human addict in the body of a colt. It is a story about a previously abused and slowly recovering colt from Equestria. The human part doesn't have ANY bearing on the story. Sure, the main character has these long and tiring discussions with himself in his head about his drug addiction, about whether he and this foal are one and the same or two separate entities, about what he wants to do in Equestria and so on, but this doesn't matter, because if you remove all the internal monologue it changes literally nothing and what you're left with is that colt's story. The main character doesn't act like a human, he never tells anyone that he used to be a human and his actions do not in any way differ from what an ordinary foal in this situation would do. And this is what disappointed me the most about this story, because if you look past the repetitiveness, all the issues with writing and past the boring plot, you aren't even left with a "human in a pony's body " story this fanfic purports to be. Why not just write a story about a colt instead if the human part doesn't matter?
I do not recommend reading this fanfic.