>>42631616
>These parts read like a story about a mental disorder or something.
Well duh, it's a Pinkie Pie fic.
>>Celestia brings 3 other ponies
Guards do not have a thinking mind when on duty, signified by their identical coloration. They're pony-shaped golems.
>leads to Celestia bursting into laughter
Because she's smitten with the genuine cuteness of Pinkie Pie, who says things like that without hesitation.
>I think it finished strong.
Yes, but it started pretty strong, too.
>I think what we got fits very well but more would've somewhat spoiled
Agreed. The fic stopped exactly where it should've, which is a skill that's unfortunately rarer than you'd hope.
>I definitely think the author was using a bit of his same headcanon
But it's good headcanon. Perytonia never ever [in the book club].

>>42631648
>It was more of the same, for the most part.
It was, but not quite. This is definitely the shipfic part, which only started for real in the last or second-to-last chapter last week.
>we could have used a *bit* more Luna, you know?
Definitely could've, yes. Maybe the author was incorrectly afraid of biasing the fic even more towards Celestia's scenes, or maybe he didn't want to interrupt that final stretch of romance chapters.
>two counts on which I think the fic is worthy of some recognition
Three, because you miss the biggest one by far.
>That's it.
Your soul will not reach Equestria.

>>42631699
>it hardly measures up to The Creature/Knight or Maize
I think it could be higher than them, easily. The prose is worse and the story is "objectively" less intricate, but the stuff that you mention as nice immediately catapults it super far ahead.
Those are ponyfics. Firstly PONY, secondly FICS, and also implicitly stories third. You can go off that path if you have a way to use the setting or the characters for some other purpose, but this is such a good example of respecting and contributing to the PONY part that CiG should weep knowing he could never be this good despite being a much better writer.
And yes, Twice as Bright isn't a literary nobel material, and I would also not pick it as a fic to prove to a normie how "good" ponyfics can be, but that's not what it was meant to be. It's a Ponyfic.
>[Twilestia] on its own merits
>it doesn't exactly leave me wanting more Pinklestia,
Well yeah, Pinklestia is a crackship and that Twilestia touched on a lot of good ideas for the ship. But taking a crackship and selling it to the readers like a regular shipping fic that's not any worse than the "default" pairings also deserves praise. It works a lot better than you could hope, and twice as well in a show-adjacent story.