Fanfic postmortem: Pressed For Time [ Previous review ]
What is it?
Pressed For Time is another of Aragon's slightly absurd, slightly profound comedies. Vinyl and Octavia - complete strangers - need to hug for eight hours, or the bomb wedged between them will explode. And just to keep things interesting, the city is also being invaded by an army of monsters.
Yeah.
This is first and foremost a comedy. Entire scenes are devoted to the goofy back and forth between Vinyl, Octavia, and the other characters they encounter. There's plenty of action and danger, but even the action is mostly played for comedy. But there's also a few more poignant and emotional moments, which stand out all the more thanks to the wackiness surrounding it. The story may seem like fun nonsense, but there's a genuine emotional core to it.
At 90k words, it's longer than a lot of silly comedies, but only moderate length for an adventure story.
What I liked
I loved the humor. The back-and-forth snarking, the wacky situational humor, the running gags that get re-used in inventive new ways; rarely did a joke fall flat. However, the writer definitely leans towards the absurd kind of humour. Not simple "lol so random" jokes - things always make a perfectly twisted kind of sense - but if you're not into silliness, this is not the story for you.
The characterization is also very well done. Each character has clearly different personalities, quirks, and goals. Given the story has a surprisingly large cast, it's impressive that every character brings a unique presence to the story. Octavia was the standout for me, with Celestia and Luna runners up for very different reasons. Vinyl was more of a straight-man, but even she brought an unexpectedly different perspective.
The plot itself ended up being surprisingly compelling. The surface plot is fun nonsense, but as the story goes on we start understanding what's really going on and why it's important. Aragon has done a lot of meta-stories, and this continues his trend of examining Harmony, Destiny, and what happens when the Chosen Ones don't answer the call.
What I disliked
As much as I enjoyed the rambling comedy, the story does stretch on a little in a few places. There's scenes where nothing but snarking happens for thousands of words, and it's fun most of the time, and actually relevant surprisingly often, but still. Maybe a few gags should have been trimmed for the sake of pacing.
The story wraps up in a very satisfying way, but there were a few plot threads we don't see fully resolved. Mostly related to secondary characters, and they mostly get some wrapping up, but their stories were so interesting that I wanted to see them fully wrapped up. I'm just a sucker for denouemonts.
Mixed feelings
The main antagonist is fun, terrifying, and largely a mystery. Maybe that's for the best - not all antagonists need a backstory. On the other hand, there's a few quite intriguing hints dropped about it that seem like they could be really interesting to explore. Maybe a missed opportunity, maybe a wise decision to focus on the main story.
Final thoughts
This was a lot of fun. Kept me chuckling for the better part of a week. It's fairly new, but has already carved out a place in my top 10 comedy fics.
If you enjoy silly adventures - which you probably do, if you like Friendship is Magic - then I recommend you try this one. The humor's not for everyone, but given how much fun I had, I think it's worth giving it a chance.
Submitted April 25, 2019 at 10:22PM by stphven
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/bhi623/fanfic_postmortem_pressed_for_time/?utm_source=ifttt
