FimFiction Link - Short ID: 521238/rainbowseum-dashcosis
Published: Aug '22
'Rainbowseum Dashcosis' is, besides being a mouthful, a four thousand and three hundred-word oneshot. An OC and Twilight are stuck in a pocket dimension as they turn into Rainbow Dash.
If there is one thing I cannot fault at all in this story is the creativity of its premise. Though characters turning into others isn't exactly a new concept turning it into a comedy in journal format to me felt pretty fresh and fun. Not to mention it made the whole thing entertaining even though I am very much not a fan of the concept otherwise.
This also leads us to the most salient dividing point in whether you'll enjoy this fic or not: That is, this story is extremely innocent. Frankly, beyond the single extremely vague mention of the OC and Twilight fucking there is really nothing here that stops this fic from being E-rated. Nothing has lasting consequences, the characters handle the transformation extremely well both physically and mentally, there are little to no moral quandaries (except for one that the MC hoofwaves away), and due to the premise technically none of the story's events affect the larger world (except again for a minimal incident which is handled off-screen.) If you're willing to accept this and read the story as a mostly wish-fulfillment comedy with a wacky premise, it works very nicely in my opinion. It isn't necessarily the most memorable story ever (due to largely the lack of stakes,) but it's cute, it's an easy read, and despite the OC being a literally who, he is entertaining enough to carry the plot. I also really enjoyed Twilight's little footnotes. Very fitting to her and a nice use of the format. Finally I liked the reason given for the existence of an RD virus. It is an absolute asspull and would feel like a stupid cop-out in a more serious fic, but here it made me snort. Plus, I have to admit, beyond its absurdity I quite like the creativity of it.
On the other hand, if you're expecting a story where characters slowly lose their identity as they're forcibly morphed into someone else, or the fear of a possible pandemic, or any similarly heavy topics, you'll be sorely disappointed, so it's best to just do away with assumptions like that. I suppose this is the only real negative side to the story I can name, there is no real tension because every problem is either immediately neutralized or turns out to be a nonissue, so by the end I was only really reading to see how the author would tie loose ends up. Though again, since their intent was just to write a comedy fluff, I can't even really fault them for this.
Overall: 6/10 It's a simple story with a good premise. Neither the prose, nor the narrative wowed me in any exceptional way, but it's a decent fic that I can recommend to people who don't mind OCs and implied romance with said OC, and enjoy very low-stakes comedy.