You know, cutie marks are actually patches of differently coloured fur, so they accomplish nothing by tattooing themselves once they're already ponies. But far be it from me to be nitpicky, so onto the actual story.

Though I've never read it, I'm familiar enough with Four Score to understand your story, and I enjoyed it. I don't think there was much which could have been added to it. The intro is efficient, the set up is good, and I chuckled at the result.

This is obviously not meant to be a retelling of FS with merged ponies, but rather a vignette portraying a humourous 'What if?' and I think it does quite well.

If anything, I would have liked to see a bit more character interaction between our leads

Still, solid work.

Doing my tour of stories with low count reviews.

I buy the first part. There are some flaws in it (I'll come back to it later), but the premise is definitely here.

I have a problem with the second part, especially with the first sentence.

One week later we had both fully transformed into magical talking pony creatures, just like in the show.

If jarring could be illustrated, this would do greatly. You setup a mystery and in a blink of an eye, BAM, they are now ponies. Okay, I guess? But then, the story ends with the characters trying to figure out a way to alter cutie marks. That's not what you set up your story for. Like I said, you set up your story like a mystery and ending on such a plain things is also jarring; and it deveives what I (and maybe other readers) was expecting.

I'm seeing that you poked some fun at the fandom but this felt too light. I would advise to emphasize on this more or completely remove it.

Now let's go back to the first part. Like I said, the beginning was good and solid. We have some nice interaction between the two characters, like this one:

"Isn't the rainbow dude the main character?"
"No, more like the worst pony on the show. I like Pinkie Pie so much better."
"Good job, you can't even get yourself the right pony tattoo."

However, I have two problems. The first one is that, unless the tattos are not permanent, I can't buy the character not getting mad at having her butt tattooed with the something she finds at best silly. Even if I like the show and the fandom, if I woke up with a cutie mark on my butt, I swear I would kill my friend. Or at least be very angry.
The secone one is tied to the first. Overall, the characters react pretty casually to tattoos appearing on their butt and becoming ponies. Since it is not to be a common thing in the universe you created (unless I missed something), they can't just be like "okay, I got a tattoo now. Okay, I'm a pony now."

Anyway, I would suggest to focus on the first part and expand from it. You can have a nice mystery fic with the characters trying to solve what all this means while they are slowly changing, both physcally and mentally.

Thank you for sharing.

I never got into the story this piece satirizes, but I've read the first couple of chapters so I got the references. As a consequence, I snickered quite a bit reading this entry.

The limited space was used efficiently, the dialog flowed well, and the idea itself was fun and the right match for the story length.

That said, I'm not sure how well it would work for somebody not familiar with the original source material. I'm well aware that such is the curse of parodies, but if and when you'll decide to expand it and publish it somewhere, I would recommend adding a bit more context to it all.

Still, entertaining and competently written, which is quite an achievement in 24 hours. Thank you for the submission.

This is a nice story, with good writing and an engrossing plot.

My main issue is I'm having a hard time connecting with the characters. They need more personality before I can identify with them, and without that element it's hard to care about what happens to them.

I don't understand the extra spacing at the end. Why is there a 'half-break' there?

I'm also not sure what the ending implies. It sounds like you're saying the new marks changed her successfully, but the number you put on there made the coloration of her pelt ridiculous? Because it doesn't sound like you're saying 'it stayed the same' with that sentence.

Sorry. I had to reread this to realize what happened at the end, and also that it didn't take place in Ponyville. The lack of reaction from the rest of the world was kind of bizarre. How do you hide something like that while walking around in public?

Why not try to remove the tattoos or cross them out instead? Is the theme here about trying to be somepony you aren't? That's the only cohesive message I'm feeling.

I see from >>Orbiting_kettle above that there must be a parody element that I've missed, so maybe that would help my confusion? I'm not sure. You need a little more context here to make this a stand-alone story, either way.

>>Trick_Question
This is a reference to Five Score Divided By Four, which is a fic on fimfic about humans on Earth who turn into ponies, starting with their cutie marks. (It's perhaps more notable for stirring up a lot of drama through inspiring a lot of bad fics set in the same universe or whatever, eventually resulting in a quasi-ban on the stories as site policy)

This fic takes that basic premise and runs through it very fast in order to focus on absurdity; since the pony you would turn into is indicated by the mark that appears on your butt, then if you were to change that mark then you'd change the pony that you turn into! Which is obviously not how magic would work, but it's a good enough joke, albeit one that probably doesn't make sense unless you know the original source it's referring to.

>>Trick_Question
Oh! Also, there's no reference to three eyes. That should really come up if you want to use that title.

The gems kind of look like eyes, which is what I was assuming would be referenced...

>>sharpspark
In that case, there's the problem of 'you have to know this particular story', but the author knows that.

Also, though, there's the coincidence of the tats being done the night before the tats appear... and also the fact that if the fake tats were done first, they shouldn't influence the body, no?

...I'm reading way too much into these stories

One week later we had both fully transformed into magical talking pony creatures, just like in the show.

?!

Oh, reference to some popular fic. Well..

Above the break is fine. Decent back and forth, some intrigue, believable, reads well, I want to know what happens next.

After the break things go off the rails pretty hard. Even knowing the reference, that's a really abrupt transition, and the narrative arc flies off into space. Reads like the author had a good idea for the start of the story, but then ran out of either time or ideas and the later parts never gelled into something coherent. So, essentially, same as >>Fenton. Thanks for writing!

This story is way too understated. Like about everything.

Both of our characters are basically straight men (even when they're not) and they end up sandbagging everything. This miiiight work better if I was familiar with the source material (since sandbagging broader concepts can be funny!), but since I'm not, all I get is a sandbagging of the content being put out to entertain me.

Overall the idea is cute, as is the logic applied at the end, but yeah, it doesn't do much else for me.

...I don't get it. And I think it's because I have no familiarity with the source material. I can't judge this fairly, and will have to abstain.

I feel like a dick every time I do that. :/

>>Posh
Honestly, I think abstaining is usually being overly nice. If a story doesn't work for you because you don't know the source material, then it didn't work for you and the rating should probably reflect that.