FimFiction Link - Short ID: 533783/sugarcoated
Published: Apr '23
Sugarcoated ia a 1k HiE Horror story. Horse in Equestria, that is.
Yeah an everyday equine is sent to pastel pony paradise and he has trouble processing it all. Thankfully, the ponies of Equestria are willing to lend a hoof. It's interesting to see how the horse is afraid because many of the mannerisms of the ponies remind it of the behaviour of humans. The way they speak. The way they use utensils to eat. The way they live inside houses. It's too much for the poor terrified horse.
Interesting... but it failed to leave a mark with me, and I'm not sure why. I like a lot of what it sets out to do, and it pulls it off nicely. But once I finish the story, I don't feel it reached any particularly high place. It's fine, but that's the best I can say about it.
I've never read a Horse in Equestria story before, so after the review above I felt like I had to check it out.
This is a 1k first-person story about a horse that suddenly wakes in Equestria. There are stream-of-consciousness elements where some phrases or sentences are italicized. When that happens, it indicates a shift to some kind of collective equine memory that recalls either the freedom of being a wild horse or the torture of domestication.
The story's primary merit is its lyrical prose. The prose is much, much better than most fics. It's genuinely good prose, not merely by the standards of fanfiction but even by the standards of traditionally published fiction. Unfortunately the prose is also the fic's main problem. It spends too much time waxing poetic and not enough on plot. As a result the story is extremely simple: The horse approaches an Equestrian town and is horrified to see civilization. It's intended as horror, but judged as horror, it's ineffective. There's a setup, and then the story runs out of words. It could just as easily be tagged "Drama." In my opinion, the last sentence should have come about two-thirds of the way through, and then there should have been some resolution.
I rate this a 7/10 because of the outstanding prose. But don't expect a 7/10 plot because this doesn't have it.