FimFiction Link - Short ID: 529410/human-in-equestria-any-speedrun-kill-celestia-ending
Published: Jan '23
This is a comedy fic that on its face is just an attempt to cram as many fandom and speedrunning references as possible into a story. At this, it certainly succeeds, with old references like Lyra, Sweetie Belle and Button Mash, as well as somewhat newer ones like the best pony and her pineapples.
However, I didn't really expect it to capture the entertainment factor of speedrunning nearly as well as it did. Some of the physics jokes were repetitive, but there were actually quite a wide variety of speedrunning techniques referenced and incorporated into the story. The humor in the explanations was pretty good in this, and generally throughout the fic (always excepting references I personally hate, such as Gamer Luna and Button Mash in particular).
The story was clearly written quickly itself (ha) and has some spelling errors but otherwise is very coherent and well written for a Random-tagged fic. I enjoyed it.
I'm not usually one to enjoy crackfics, but this was some gourmet shit. The story weaves in- and out-of-universe narration well, and the "gamification" of the world and characters was absolutely on point. It wasn't lough out loud funny, but it is at least very amusing.
Only complaint I have is that the "some ponies realising this guy is a speedrunner" subplot got dropped harder than a bag of 15 bits, and the ending sequence felt a little off. Still well worth the time, though.
You know what I checked it out and I agree. A decent light read. A couple of times it came just a bit too close to being too heavy-handed and corny with its jokes, but it stopped shy of getting actually annoying for me. It also came close to overstaying its welcome - as there's only so much you can do with the humor of the premise without overstretching the joke - but again I don't think it did. In the end it ended up being an enjoyable and amusing read throughout. I agree that it weaved the in and out of universe narration excellently, using this to successfully execute on a concept that could easily have turned out to be unreadable cringe garbage if not done just right.
I also absolutely hate when authors write Pinkie Pie by introducing her and having her immediately launch into a run-on sentence that just keeps going on and on and oh wow Pinkie is so hyper and guys look at this she's still talking and there's some words are CAPITALISED for almost NO REASON but I can't write and all I know about Pinkie is that she's hyper so I'm writing her HYPER and look guys she's so in-character isn't she? So I really appreciate how this story lampshades this by turning it into a gimmick in the game itself, makes into an actual thing the speedrunner has to deal with, and adds an Easter Egg too.