It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #104 · 7:43pm Mar 15th, 2023
When I came up with the idea to use the closing entries of year two to flush out stories that I was super into but felt guilty about suggesting because they're already so popular/well known, I figured it would be a chance for an easy couple of blogs and fangasm over awesome stuff. After I started the process, it turned out to be way harder: I had room for ten entries (less, after I did some theme matching), and piled up more than forty stories that fit my criteria. It's been a constant struggle to decide which ones to include, and it's ended up with a lot of big names (stories like Oversaturation, Just Dodge!, and The Celestia Code) being pushed off to later dates. Not any slight against them, just simply that something had to give on the list. (A lot of things, really.) On the plus side, I think doing this little bit has broken my mental resistance to avoiding 'big names' so hopefully this won't be such an issue going forward.
But speaking of big names, today's lead story is exactly one of the ones that I've stumbled over historically: it's a favorite of mine but also so high profile I feel like everybody's read it. (But then again, I thought the same about The Enchanted Library and the comments were packed with people saying they hadn't, so…) Now, most of you have probably looked at the Rating sort for story searches - the site's internal attempt to rank what stories are the most popular by way sorting by like/dislike/views in a ratio I'm pretty sure is stated somewhere but I've never bothered to look up. With nearly 150,000 stories published on the site, being in the top rating brackets is tough: past experimentation with one of my stories showed that the one like or dislike could move a story more than a hundred places. There's a bunch of stories that rank consistently at the top, though, and it's a veritable who's who of the site's best authors and most iconic stories. One really excels, however, because it isn't just a story that's highly rated. It's a set of four stories in a series that are highly rated - when breaking into the triple digits means your story's in the top 1% of the site and making it into the top 100 is a pipe dream for almost everyone? It isn't unusual for this series to have two of the four be in the site's top 10 and it's rare that all four aren't in the top 50. (As of the writing of this, the worst is ranked at merely #30 overall, with the highest at #6.)
I speak, of course, about Tantabus, Mk. II and its sequels by Rambling Writer.
When Luna comes careening into Twilight's bedroom and demands to be taught how to be a mother, it is revealed that following the Tantabus incident, she's been tinkering. A second Tantabus was created - not to torment Luna but to act as an assistant in the patrolling and maintenance of dreams. It was going quite well until the new Tantabus turned around and called Luna 'Mom', making her she realize that it had gone from a dreamstuff automaton to a self-aware creature that had far exceed its original programming.
Of course, that's just the starting point - the second Tantabus has a long way to grow. From Luna and Twilight puzzling out just what it is and how it became sentient, to it choosing a name and identity, to its first steps in interacting with both the dream and real worlds, to, well, the events of the show past its creation. The Tantabus unfolds into its own self in a world that evolves just touching the edges of Equestria, both affecting each other and separate.
And that development is the first part about why this story (and series!) really takes off. The Tantabus starts quite childlike, but develops into a wonderful character over the 300k-ish words. Eventually it grows into a sweet spot: knowledgeable enough in its area of expertise to be an expert; enough other gaps in experience to regularly be out of depth and have challenges; the right balance of humor and seriousness when needed; creativity and a just slightly askew perspective to make the mundane interesting. Particularly when it starts to cross over into touching real world events (Tantabus Communication Protocol being a prime example), things get funky.
Throughout it all, there's a great comedic touch to things. Sure, there's some serious moments but it strikes a very show-like perspective in that there's an undercurrent of fun even when things are dire. (Partially because even in the roughest moments, the protagonist is a talking hole in space that thinks in computer code. It takes an edge off when the main character is that little bit inherently odd.)
Things stay pretty fresh, too - there's plenty of new quirks to the Tantabus' situation that throw things into chaos. Even seemingly quiet slice-of-life stuff takes on a new perspective when its being dealt with via the medium of dreams alone.
Now, if we're talking highly rated comedies, I gotta also add The Great and Deathless Trixie by Blarghalt. I distinctly remember it holding the #1 spot back when I first searched by that order, and it's hovered at or really near there for years.
The story's plot is… well, pretty straight forward. It's only 2000 words, so the long description pretty much hits it on the head already.
Trixie's line of work is dangerous. But she's a careful showpony, and that's why she's only died a few dozen times in her career.
She thinks this is normal.
Seriously, that's a description master class. How could I improve on it?
As for the story itself? It's flat out comedy gold. It's short, to the point, hilarious, and brutally efficient with words. There's no wasted space, and it uses what it's got in damn near perfect comedic timing.
Honestly I can't add a whole lot to this beyond restating that it's funny as hell. I loved it so much I riffed on the general idea with a story of my own, which is a damn rare thing for me. It's easily one of my top five favorite comedies, and the site as a whole generally agrees.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
... Sorry, I'm still adjusting to the idea of one of my stories getting mentioned in the same breath as The Celestia Code.
But yeah, some fine picks this week.
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Dude, you're legend. I've got twenty four of your stories in the selection pile for this blog, Could hardly be a list of the site's best without giving you at least a mention.
Aha, this time I've read and liked all of these: the two featured fics and the three linked near the top. All good reads! Though I think it was The Cloptimist who opined that Blarghalt missed a trick by not titling it The Late and Powerful Trixie...
Damn these fascinating fics! What a distraction.
Something I've learned even in just my one year of Ponyfic reviews is that there will always be enough people who haven't read a much-read classic. Even more so nowadays, with a higher percentage of newer faces not around when these classics were originally doing the rounds. So there's always something to be said for reviewing or recommending those stories if they hold up! I did The Keepers of Discord just the other week, and it was still worthwhile regardless of its hefty view counts or being a Top Ten rating mainstay.
And that's when one's in the upper echelons that are less cluttered to begin with; I've found an extra like had made any of my published stories leap up a solid 800-3000 places, and a dislike can drop it 8-15K. Not that ratings in those bands really mean that much beyond having enough likes to convince readers on the fence to give it a go, but it's worth noting.
Do you write these blurbs a decent bit in advance? Because Tantabus Communication Protocol is at #47 currently. This honestly reads as you just missing it, because How the Tantabus Parses Sleep is at #30.
What fortune; I've read all the stories featured today! Well, except for the third sequel to Tantabus Mk. II, How the Tantabus Parses Sleep, that is nearly 280K long and still ongoing (last updated in December). Alas, I read them long ago enough that I can't really say much; certainly not on Deathless Trixie, beyond the basic "Trixie as Kenny" idea. But to have not merely that levels of views, but that rating for a fic published in 2018 is bloody impressive. And not from that big an author either: Blarghalt has "only" 643 followers (and a 2nd fic in the site's top 100). It really just nails its comic premise and gets out at the right moment.
As for the Tantabus trilogy, I remember them in a bit more detail. Rambling Writer just nails the quirks of this second Tantabus that make it always a compelling and fun lead, and the events just skate by and never get boring. The character interactions are gold, and it's just all-round pleasurable in a manner that fully explains its high return rate and ratings.
Also explaining it: it's no secret that a sequel diverts views to its precursor, not just when it's first published but every time it updates. This is true for any series, but the degree to which it helps varies: we've seen many well liked fanfic sequels that nonetheless dip sharply in views and engagement with each instalments. Regardless, check the views of any widely-liked and read story with sequels and you'll see a view and upvote boost every time the sequel updates. For instance, one of my favourite stories, the ongoing and fantastic Unending Love, has boosted its August 2019 novella precursor Unchanging Love to just inside the Top 800, despite barely cracking 6K views and from an author with only three stories to her name and with sub-200 followers. And all from an uptick every time the sequel updates.
An odd but explainable curiosity is that, provided the series' style and content strikes a chord with viewers and worms its way into their hearts, I've actually found this retention and boost applies strongest to series formed of short stories and novelettes/novellas. Look at Lets Do This' Not Exactly Friends series (link goes to their stories sorted by rating), a series of 21-and-counting Alternate Universe tales of Twilight forming a Mane 6 as a filly of the series various unicorn antagonists. The first four in that series are all within the Top 200 on the site, with three in the Top 100 and two floating just outside the Top 50. Despite only one inching into a five-figure view total, and the series only having started in August 2019 (and the author only having joined Fimfiction in Summer 2018). That's bloody amazing. Sometimes, relaxing stories that are simple and easy yet just nails the character appeal just work for a lot of people.
Anyway, to make a long story short, this phenomenon applies heavily to these Tantabus stories, of course, and rightly so, it's well deserved!
I'm still weirded out at how some of my top-rated stories -- and the stories I've had the most fun writing -- all came from an incident of, "Dangit, why can't I stop thinking about a self-aware Tantabus? Maybe if I just write it, I can get it out of my head and move on." About a week later, the story had over a thousand likes and I'd gained over a hundred followers. (I also remember a time when three of the four fics were in the top ten at once... seriously, whatup with that?) The Tantabus's character is similar; I basically went, "Okay, what would be a fun character to read about?" What happened after is practically alchemical and I don't think I could replicate it if I tried.
A quote that's stuck with me comes from Michael Schur explaining his decision to end The Good Place on season 4: "We don’t want to tread water just because the water is so warm and pleasant." I've always tried to keep things at least a little bit different with each update and only writing if I feel I have a good idea. Sure, it might be fun for me, but the readers could get bored if I keep treading the same ground.
Also because of that, I might wrap up the last sequel in the coming months. I've had less and less ideas, but one of them is a nice "end but not really", open-ended closure sort of bow that provides a reason to finally stamp the story with Complete.
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Is the last sequel more a collection of episodic adventures than one overlong continuous story? And your decision above is the equivalent of coming up with a two-part finale to a tv season? Your comment very much reads that way, and the answer may influence when I do get around to reading it.
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That's pretty much the case, yes. Each chapter is an episodic short story in its own right, with the occasional two-parter. When I started writing, I kept getting story ideas for the Tantabus, but they were all one-shot ideas. I didn't want to have a massive string of "X is a sequel to Y, which is a sequel to Z, which is a sequel to AA, which is a sequel to...", so I slapped the Anthology tag on there to keep everything together. There is some continuity, but it's never strong, more like, "Pinkie Pie met Cheese Sandwich in 'Pinkie Pride', so she knows who he is in 'The Last Laugh'." Calling the conclusion more like a season finale is a perfect way of looking at it.
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Keepers is absolutely one on my list, and yes, it is very much worth a reader's time.
I do, but how much 'in advance' means depends a lot on free time availability. In this case, that part was written the evening before posting - and I didn't miss it, the top tiers are really just that volatile.
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Mood.
Which is just plain wonderful advice to any writer. (And while I do love Moondog's saga, I'm also heartened to hear you've got the plans to eventually wrap them up. Every story needs an ending, after all.)