...Okay, I have nothing better to do. So let's look at one of the most popular pony fics into the totality of existence. One that's already been discussed to death and I have absolutely no reason to bring up again. Let's do something that much more talented fanfiction critic already did and look at Past Sins and get this over with.
SYNOPSIS:
A thwarted attempt to resurrect Nightmare Moon creates a small Alicorn filly, who Twilight finds and takes into her care. Now named Nyx, the little filly must hide her true nature from those around her while dealing with school and her social life...until she gets found and turns into Nightmare Moon, upon which she...um, conquers Equestria and then mopes for about six chapters before finally...um...
Look, you know this story already. Let's not get into brass tacks here.
REVIEW:
EVERYONE has some idea what Past Sins is. Even if you haven't read it, there's really no escaping its influence. Back in 2011, this was the pony fic for the first drought, and so many people just worshiped this thing to a horrifying degree that it only drove others to utterly despise it. And thus, Past Sins became the first truly huge non-episode Base Breaker in the fandom's history, eclipsing even Cupcakes and its vile spawn.
So, we know that Past Sins is important. The question now is, is it a good story? And the answer is a resounding, unquestioning...meh.
Let me get this out of the way first: when Past Sins is good, it is very good. The overall story has a lot of potential, Nyx's predicament is a theme well worth exploring, and there is some very good buildup leading up to Nightmare Nyx's coup. The first half actually kept me enthralled for the most part, and I was really looking forward to seeing where this story would go. The writing isn't anything spectacular, but it's serviceable and gets the point across well enough.
But then the revisions came, and with them a lot of problems.
Let's start with one particular instance that pretty much got wrecked in the transition. The biggest source of tension and fear in the first half is what Celestia would do if she found out about Nyx. After all, she's basically Nightmare Moon, but without her sister attached. The first version of the story had Celestia ready and willing to murdera young filly if she turned out to actually be Nightmare Moon. This was a hideously out-of-character decision, but at the same time it made the scene where Nyx is taken away against Twilight's will actually fairly powerful. But when the revisions came, Celestia was suddenly ready to just let her go if she proved to not be a threat at all, all references to executions and death were dropped, and Twilight seemed a whole lot less hostile...until she suddenly freaks out at Celestia taking her. Without that dramatic edge to the previous events, the scene loses all its power and just becomes an uninteresting mess.
Characters are all over the map. Twilight is probably the only one who I can say is written consistently well, while the others basically exist to provide exposition or enact tired fan memes. Trixie's role in the story feels totally forced, and even if it's just a minor point, it's still a distraction in an already fairly poor chapter. Celestia, even after the revisions, is rendered horribly, becoming an incompetent moron who basically gives the Big Bad the keys to the principality. And Luna...was a total non-presence until the revisions, where she was more or less turned into Celestia 2.0, shoved into scenes she had no purpose being in, and getting banished in the dumbest way possible.
(By the way, how is Nightmare Nyx able to so easily banish the princesses? If it took the most powerful magic in Equestria to send her to the moon, how can she more or less do it just by looking at them?)
But all of that pales in comparison to the biggest problem in this story: Nyx herself. We have two versions to work with, and neither one works at all. Filly Nyx's only defining characteristics are that she's cute and she cries about everything. It's the same problem I have with Dinky from the Lunaverse, only she at least does something productive once in a while. Filly Nyx is ultimately a flat character, and Pen Stroke's attempts to remedy this situation only made it worse.
When she becomes Nightmare Nyx, she gets a few trace elements of a personality, but she still spends more time moping and moaning than actually doing something about her situation. Even after she's realized what's actually going on, turns good again, and starts fixing the mess, she refuses to actually release the princesses until she's spent weeks being a weeping mess, gets called out by Zecora, and almost dies in an utterly contrived monster fight.
That leads to the ending. There's really not much I can say about it other than that it's boring, horrifying in ways Pen Stroke probably never intended, and barely resolves much of anything. There are a couple sequels (both written and not written by Pen Stroke), but none of them really matter all that much, nor do they really resolve much of anything.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I know a lot of you love this story, so I'm honestly sorry when I say that I am not a fan. This was a good enough story back in the day, but that's it. Once the show fired back up, we got bigger and better stories. Going back to Past Sins makes its flaws all the more apparent, and the constant attempts to update it and keep it relevant just make things worse. While there are some good elements here, this really feels several chapters too long and Nyx was in desperate need of more character.
Overall, this story wasn't terrible like a lot of its anti-fans would say, but it's still very meh overall.
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- 2 Days Remain -
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