Mini-Reviews: Christmas Edition, Part Two of Five!

The holiday ficcing continues!  By the way, you'll notice I haven't said anything about the leaked stuff; I glanced through some of the highlights, and it's pretty much all stuff that makes me sad.  Even the stuff in there that makes me happy also makes me sad--like, I had a good laugh at [I'm putting it below the break, but rest assured it's 100% spoiler-free], but it was a sad laugh, you know?  Like, it makes me sad that these are the people in charge of wrapping up the show, and the "they didn't know" defense just makes it worse.  Ridiculous pettiness would be one thing; ignorance and apathy are sadder to me.

Oh man, that got grumpy fast.  Okay, done talking about that.  Here's a funny screencap and another mini-review!

The Last Windigo, by Doctor Disco

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Applejack tells the CMC the tale of how the final survivor of the Windigo race came upon a little filly, deep in the woods... and did the unexpected.

A few thoughts:  Unfortunately, this is a bit of a mess.  That starts with the editing, which is a weak point throughout; its/it's confusion, missing spaces, and the like abound.  The story-within-the-story is extremely telly and rather trite, which could be argued to be in-character for Applejack (if we assume she's a mediocre storyteller, anyway, which doesn't sound implausible), but which doesn't match the reactions or "but it's really a true story!" conceit.  Meanwhile, the intro-exo are an unmoored mix of exposition and random humor ("The Cutie Mark Crusaders rushed excitedly to sit in front of Applejack, who now inexplicably had a red and white hat on her head. Apparently Applejack didn’t know how it got there either, as she went cross eyed trying to look at it before sighing") that I didn't find to be to my tastes, personally, and which I more broadly felt weren't a great fit for the tone that AJ's story itself was aiming for.

Recommendation:  If you enjoy stories-within-stories and are more interested in idea than execution or tone (there are some Hearth's Warming history bits here, albeit presented in ungainly dumps), this might be worth a look.  But it's probably not the best choice for a more general audience.