FimFiction Link - Short ID: 159465/brothers-and-sisters
Published: Feb '14 — Mar '14
This fic is largely a delivery vehicle for batpony culture and lore. It doesn’t try to stick to canon compliance, and there is a whole collection of night ponies, one for each of the main three tribes. The story follows two timelines for the nyctan pegasus in the long description and cover art: a high school arc about a triathlon and a present day arc about tracking down and confronting Luna about her brattiness.
There’s rather little attention in the story paid to the princesses, which might be for the best, as both of their characterizations are poor. Not that they are shoddily put together, but rather that they suffer the infliction of too many character flaws to be able to help themselves or each other.
As for Lucky Break himself, there isn’t anything to dislike about him, which is one of the reasons I disliked reading about him. “Gary Stu” comes to mind, although he objectively isn’t one, but that it comes to mind at all is a problem. Regarding nyctans, the story has a persistent racism theme going on, with the school arc including plenty of baseless discrimination and bullying against ponies with dark colors. Lucky (nearly) always takes the high road, (nearly) always has the moral high ground, (nearly) always makes the right choices. (Nearly) anypony around him who takes issue with him is an antagonist, and wrong. Also, he has great, supportive friends and a cute GF. Did I mention he’s a royal guard, good at sports, and studying to become an EMT?
Anyway, the fic maintains a good, low-stakes atmosphere nearly all of the time. I didn’t care much for the school arc, or his various interactions with the princesses, but there was one particularly hard-hitting make-up scene between Lucky and his brother Slipstream towards the end of the story that made up for a lot of it. The tie-in between Luna’s bad behavior and description of seeing the potential in her that was hidden under her bitterness was also well done.
I don’t think Luna had to have such terrible characterization in order to make this fic’s story and themes work, there was probably a way to do it without her having to be such a shit. I mean, I read Tunafics that manage that all the time.
This fic didn’t really stand up to all the other RCL fics in the list, but if you would like to read about fairly mundane batponies and their traditions and origins, I don’t think you’ll outright regret reading this one.