FimFiction Link - Short ID: 479916/vampirism
Published: Oct '20 — Feb '22
'Vampirism' is a thirteen thousand and six hundred word romance shortfic. Rarity is bit by a changeling and she slowly begins to transform into one.
Changeling fics are some of my favorites and I even like the idea of having Thorax run off to Ponyville instead of being the instigator of becoming skittlebugs. The prose is serviceable and I don't have much of a problem with the base concept of him and Rarity finding a deeper bond through their attempts at dealing with her transformation.
However, sadly I feel like the fic doesn't really accomplish anything it sets out to do. There is no conflict in this story. Rarity immediately forgives Thorax for completely changing her life. The rest of the M6 immediately accept who she is now. Sweetie Belle acts scared for five minutes then becomes a staunch supporter of her. Her parents are okay with it after a minute. Even the rest of the town deals with the issue extremely quickly despite how hard the story tried to portray that they'll be the hardest to convince. Thorax himself is hardly relevant to the story despite being a main character, his entire role is to apologize profusely while other characters get scared by him then forgive him.
So the ostracism aspect is anemic, but surely at least the transformation part is good, right? The issue is almost exactly the same: While Rarity does act a bit uncomfortable early on, she accepts the change in the blink of an eye. Of all the characters, she's probably the one I'd imagine fainting or getting a panic attack the moment she loses a lock of hair. And yet she just rolls with it and continues to work, when half her damn coat falls out. The story lacks a horror tag, so I didn't expect psychological trauma or anything serious like that, but I was hoping the story would do anything with it. I've seen characters act more worried about catching a cold. Also everyone gives up the search for a cure extremely quickly. Twilight concludes it in seconds that "welp I couldn't do anything in a single day's worth of work, so it's probably incurable."
Okay, so this leaves the romance part. It's... meh. It happens extremely quickly and predictably. It's the classic "dorky guy doesn't think he has a chance, but he actually does"-kind of story. There is an admittedly pretty funny bait and switch joke at the end of the fic that stems from their romance, which I did appreciate, but aside from that, like everything else in this fic, it just happens far too quickly to really feel impactful.
Overall: 3/10 This is a story that should have been told in a far slower-boiling fashion, focusing a lot more on the individuals' reactions and how they cope with something so unprecedented and life-changing. As it stands there is just nothing to engage the reader. The conflict is weak, the drama is practically nonexistent, and the characters themselves hardly take seriously what should have been a traumatic experience. Can't recommend.