FimFiction Link - Short ID: 521039/a-little-trust-goes-a-long-way
Published: Aug '22
'A Little Trust Goes a Long Way!' is a sixteen thousand-word shortfic. The Cutie Map calls the M6 on an adventure, but before they could leave Starlight Glimmer appears to thwart them.
Considering this is the author's first story and they are known to be ESL, there are a lot of mistakes I can sympathize with, but - personal feelings aside - this fic sadly bleeds from many wounds both on a technical and narrative level.
Let's start with the former: The fic is full of typos and grammatical issues. The author often marks plurals as possessives and several words that don't need to be capitalized regardless are ("Mare's" instead of "mares.") This combined with sometimes nonsensical usage of verbs, for instance:
>“After this horrible day, I don’t think I could bare having to see Sweetie Belle like that again.” Feigned Rarity.
leads to a story that's still legible, but not very pleasant to read. I wouldn't say I was ever really confused, but ideally all of these mistakes should have been fixed during a proofreading session.
As for the story, I feel like the title, the description, and the actual plot are at odds with each other. I went in with the assumption that this fic would be about the roadtrip the M6 takes, but after the first few chapters this completely falls to the wayside as the story focuses on Starlight's attack on Twilight instead. The biggest issue in my opinion is that everything feels very coincidental. Starlight stumbles upon Ponyville the exact moment the M6 starts to prepare to leave. The CMC happens to be around and trust a complete stranger. Twilight and Zecora stumble upon Starlight in the big, dark forest. etc. I understand this story was mostly based on a dream which is the most rational thing, but when it comes to a narrative, things should make logical sense and while some things can be handwaved away to make the plot flow easier, a good story still needs to be a continuous flow of events, instead of a series of lucky coincidences.
The inclusion of Discord is questionable as well. He acts almost all-knowing, mentioning Starlight's name and how she could be defeated, but does nothing to meaningfully help the M6 and yet he is still praised at the end. Also I find Rainbow's method of putting both herself and Scootaloo in danger to snap her out of the curse bizarre to say the least.
On a more positive note, I appreciate the author's attempt at including Zecora. She is a hard character to write and while some of the rhymes felt forced and none of them were particularly playful, it was still neat to see her being used.
Overall: 3/10 Typos, grammatical issues, and a coincidence-driven plot prevent this story from truly shining, despite having a neat premise and some fun moments. However, it's also not offensively bad and it's clear that the author wants to improve and so I wish them luck and more success in their next fic. Can't recommend.