Nostalgia Month: Sunny Skies All Day Long

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/20685/sunny-skies-all-day-long


This is going to feel just like an actual episode, they told me. You are in for a treat, they told me. You are moving up toward the brink of greatness, they told. Well, I have something to tell you; you depraved, tasteless bastards. Oh, I have something to tell you alright. I… did not particularly care for it… 

Am I to be blamed? Be the judge of that yourself. Just as I am here to be the judge of this story. Oh, aren’t we having the bestest of times. So, the premise goes as such, Princess Celestia has growned tired of all the sissy, prissy, frivolous suck-upping she is forced to deal with day out and day in. Thusly, she forms a brilliant scheme through which she is to promenade right into Ponyville, undercover, so that our lil’ princess can be made able to enjoy a little spare time away from all the hard work and overblown formality.

Disclaimer: The views and grammatical prowess expressed within does not necessarily reflect CW's of today. 

As of so, it starts off with Celestia having a conversation with Luna, whining about how everypony just won’t stop throwing glitter at her wherever she goes. Luna suggests that Celestia is to take her “solar power” (an unintentionally humorous choice of words by the way) off of her head in order to return to her teeny, weeny original form so that she can visit Ponyville and have a day off, just once without everypony recognizing her. It is left unclear what effect this “solar power” exactly has on her nor if it holds any kind of reflection toward her visceral permanency as with Luna’s… eh, lunar power, I guess. All we know is that it’s one hell of a cool plot tool so I’d say that’s fair enough.

At the beginnings of the story, when Celestia had her little talk with Luna; my mental image of her somewhat evaporated into the projection of a querulous teenager, which I don’t think is a good thing. Sunny Skies All Day Long is told from a third person perspective in Celestia’s point of view and here’s the problem: Trying to force the psyche of one, over a millennia-old character, into such a frivolous, easygoing slice-of-life story successfully would doubtlessly make this a piece of impeccable hilarity. Yeah, yeah, but that was also doubtlessly not what was done here. You see, this character, as I hinted at before, is not Celestia. I am not buying it and nor will I do any time in the future unless I am exposed to some kind of incisive brainwashing process and even then… I’m not sure. And I know what defenders of this work is going to say now, they are going to quarrel on about how maybe, just maybe, Celestia acts a tad bit differently around family than she does in public and that when she is finally not recognized, she may just relax and be herself a little bit more. Well, the proof is in the jelly, my fellows; her age, take a gander at it. I would like to remark that the princess does not hold the characteristics of a person, hardened throughout the years, nor does she seem as collected, why, comfortable in communicating with her surroundings, both mentally as well as physically. So if Celestia is not Celestia, then who the flying pudding is she? Hmm, just that, a querulous teenager, a person is seen freaking out at several occasions which compared to moments in the show through which she has stayed perfectly calm, appears as nothing less than a walk on top of a roof, visible from the edge of a whimsical park. This in turn, kind of discombobulates the entire point of having Celestia visiting Ponyville undercover all in the first place.

Then now, we’ve established that the Celestia of this story is not Celestia. But I have simply got no choice but to exhort on the fact that the other characters are all well-characterized. Except for Luna… what do I know? She is given an estimate of two lines or something throughout the course of this story; in that regard, you may very easily compare it to the show. Incisive lines and a couple strings of sloppy dialogue were left to be found but the author held them few and far between one and another. Seeing its prose in its entirety left me somewhat encumbered, it was rather telly and did not fret in wasting any time on environment descriptions or taking advances on more than just a few particular scenarios and as such, making the story pretty jumpy and fast-paced throughout. Some may argue that this was necessary in order to keep the episode-feel intact, which I suppose you could. But may I then come forth with the fact that it does at one or two instances, not even advance in places which it would arguably be required to in order to create a cohesive episode, e.g. Rainbow Dash and Sunny Skies’s little flying experience near the outskirts of town. Displaying it from a linguistic point of view leaves me with very little to say other than that it does its job passably enough. Looking past that, there certainly seems to have been a very fine editing job done here, I have to say. I didn’t find a single grammatical error throughout the course of my reading.

Now, there is one thing that has been bugging since the very first moment I laid my eyes on this piece of fiction. One question I simply have to get out of my system immediately. Why is this not a comedy? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am not necessarily speaking about a laughing fest. It might as well just be a good ol’ fashioned, humour-lies-in-the-pudding kind of comedy where jokes are seamlessly implemented into the story. Come on, the jokes practically write themselves! And there is hardly to be any compatibility issues seeing as the show itself is spotted with jokes of different kinds. But this story is near-humourless, and for what? Sunny Skies scratching her teeth over the sort-of-not-really-sort-of conflict regarding whether she is going to be discovered or not? This would have worked spectacularly as a comedy and you know it!

All in all, we’ve got a humourless story about a querulous teenager coming to Ponyville, smothered by its gawky story-telling and jumpy pacing. Oh, I’m going there… it’s a freakin’ HiE-story! Heheh, jokes aside, this story deserves more credit than that. It came in with a great concept and proved to have some pretty effective dialogue at its dispense. Sadly, it fell flat in means of characterization regarding its most important character, simply making it despatch from what could have been this concept’s strongest means of enjoyment and utterly ruining the entire point of basing this story upon this concept. This, as well as the phenomenal chance it had at some great jokes which does really just place more ground for in what ways it could have succeeded. PhantomFox’s one renowned fanfic falls undistinguished, you may skip this over and you wouldn’t miss a thing. Bye for today, my little hoodlums!

Unrated