It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #57 · 10:54pm Apr 20th, 2022
Last week, the spotlight was on Cozy Glow. And this week (after a suggestion from Nailah) it seemed a ripe time to turn it to another of the trouble-causing foals: Flurry Heart.
And I choose to begin with axxuy's You Get an F in Shipping.
Born out of The Writeoff Association's challenges, it opens with a simple scene: Princess Cadance stops by the School of Friendship to visit her daughter. And it's of critical importance that she does so, because Flurry Heart has made a horrible, terrible error.
Flurry ships RariJack when obviously RariTwi is the morally correct answer. Worse yet, she ships TwiDash and Cadance cannot allow this to stand.
Essentially, this story is the Always Ship This meme in story form and it's a delight. Cadance is in peak mad shipper form, Flurry is an unrepentant know-it-all teenager, and Twilight has no idea any of this is coming. The story's short, sweet, and hilarious, ending with a great smack of a punchline that any fic writer will get a laugh out of.
On the longer side we have another fave of mine: Destroyed in a Flurry, by SockPuppet.
While Twilight is on a sabbatical to Earth, her family comes to spend some time with her. Flurry Heart quite enjoys it, but the highlight? Getting invited to the birthday party of the human child next door. Which is how Flurry Heart - the pint-sized princess - ends up going full chaos gremlin mode inside a bouncy castle/ball pit/laser tag arena with a horde of other sugar-charged children.
If you don't read that and instantly see the humor, I don't even know what to say you stone-hearted monster.
But seriously - it's absolutely wonderful madness. Particularly the poor suffering Sunburst (and completely unhelpful bodyguard Flash Sentry) as he attempts to keep Flurry to minimal destructive power and happy at the same time. All the insanity of hyper seven year olds, compounded by one of them being a flying, teleporting horse who shoots lasers.
And yet.
And yet it's also touching, too. Because one of the key parts is that Flurry Heart is a Princess. And princesses don't get to have a lot of friends, particularly their own age. So for once, Flurry has peers who don't care that she's royalty. It adds the perfect bit of d'aww to a story full of chaos. The artificial pineapple flavor to balance out the ghost pepper of the comedy.
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Thanks again!
Fun fact: every setting in that story was a real birthday party I took my daughter too. Just add alicorn.