It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #149 · 7:45pm January 24th
So in my last quarterly update blog, I noted in one of my current projects that I had recently been inspired by a story. And I don't think it's quite fair to keep sitting on that story for this blog. I mean, I made the note, I gotta at least link it, right? Besides it was in the queue and had a match already. So this week's stories have a focus on the infamous Alicorn Amulet.
The story I'd been referring to specifically is Break Away: The Alicorn Amulet Collaboration. It's posted under cleverpun's account (as they're the project lead as well as a contributor) but it's an anthology collab between a bunch of big names: Titanium Dragon, No Raisin, Chris, FanOfMostEverything, Moosetasm, Crack-Fic Casey, nioniosbbbb, Sollace, and Winston. That's a heck of a murderer's row of authors.
The plot is simple enough: After some study, Twilight and Cadance figure out part of how the Alicorn Amulet works. Namely that it siphons magic from the wearer to sustain itself - but that in turn it needs to use power to tempt them in the first place. So the way to destroy it is to confront it: to be tempted, to force it to use energy, and then to reject it. Essentially, to slowly run down its battery. And so comes a procession of ponies - the strong, the weak, the noble, the unknown - to face down the Amulet's temptations and remove the threat from Equestria.
So yeeeeah, this one's awesome. I mean, look at that author list! This story's got a great concept to begin with and then it's put into the hands of that crew? Every chapter's got its own flex and there's highlights for days.
Like FoME's chapter for Derpy. It's the one that primarily inspired me on the piece I mentioned working on. It's just so damn good - Derpy in prime form as Equestria's Best Mother, fighting the proper fight for her daughter. Her quiet determination and stubborn tenacity is inspiring and it's great to see her put front and center. Or there's Titanium Dragon's chapter with Twilight that serves both as exposition and character play. It fits perfectly with Twilight and sets up the rest of the fic beautifully by showing just how dangerous the Amulet can be. And of course I can't not mention Crack-Fic Casey's Pinkie Pie chapter near the end. It's sad and beautiful and so Pinkie that it hurts.
Really, in all it's just what you'd expect from this group of authors. Every chapter's got great moments and combine to a truly top notch whole. This story's one of those in my "How does this not have triple the views and likes as it does?" pile because while it isn't an unknown? It's got far less attention than it really deserves.
So flipping the script a little, I'm gonna go to Rambling Writer and The Amulet Job.
When the Alicorn Amulet gets stolen out of the Castle while Starlight's minding it, things get messy. It's in the hands of an infamous antiquities smuggler and black marketeer and there's only one way to get it back before it's sold to some unscrupulous fiend: steal it back. So Starlight and Rainbow Dash gather a team to travel halfway across Equestria, break into a heavily guarded casino with an impenetrable vault, then escape an army of guards, mobsters, and police. Simple! No way it can go wrong!
Heist stories are pretty tough to write. I've tried my hand at it a few times and the sheer number of interlocking pieces is a nightmare. You've got a pretty large cast of characters, intricate plans, an obligatory double-cross or two, keeping the time pressure on while still giving the story enough room to bloom… It's a very tricky balance. Fortunately Rambling Writer's up to the task and manages to keep all the plates spinning properly.
And I stress that there's a lot of moving parts in this one. Particularly once the team arrives on site in Trotter Gorge and starts to flesh out their ranks with some of the locals (and non-locals who just happen to be in town). It's a wildly eclectic set of personalities and skills that bounce off each other in funky ways: Starlight spends much of the time flipping between highly capable and in a total freakout for having lost the Amulet in the first place; Dash is her usual crazy self who barrels forward despite being totally out of her depth; Bon-Bon tries to act as the adult in the room; Derpy is the wild card; and so on.
Plus there's lots of little fun details: my personal favorite is how Thorax (when he eventually shows up) perceives his fellows. It's a neat thing that really sets his perspective apart but also makes total sense when you account for how a changeling would think.
This one's probably the best heist story I've read on this site, and is of a quality you'd expect from somebody like Rambling.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
Break Away was a ton of fun to work on, yes. And I'm still amused by the concept of Best Pony combating the Amulet with the darker, even more terrible power of bureaucracy. Ancient horrors just can't compete in the modern marketplace.
Amulet Job is also a fantastic heist, and...
Need to get on that.
Wait.
I never finished it? Oh dear.
I wonder if it being an open "collaboration with each chapter by a different author" story is a part of that? Sure, it means extra publicity off each of those authors, and great word-of-mouth among their followers. But to all the casual browsers, it only invites comparisons to the many poor examples of the form. Also doesn't help such fics are usually frivolous affairs, not one continuous storyline, which rarely "works" with this many cooks, thus deterring people.
I'm sure there are plenty of examples of stories like this which hit great views regardless, but this coming in 2017 (most of the one I can think of at least started earlier), and the host author of the project not being as big a name as many of the ones on it, probably don't help either.
Looks and sounds fun, though! Definitely one of the more intriguing hooks as to the logic behind the dark magic of the Alicorn Amulet I've seen. With how loosely and from-nowhere it came in "Magic Duel", fanfic has had a field day over the years with it, that's for sure!
As for Amulet Job, I like a good heist story when it's done right, though as you note, they are hard to nail and juggle. But I have little reason to doubt Rambling Writer, the chap's a tour de force.
I adored Break Away back when it came out! Such a fantastic concept for a collab
I always had this idea for an epic trailer for it which was sadly stymied by my lack of an animation studio
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It's possible. That's one thing that's kind of stymied me mentally because that's how it frequently is. You'd think having a stack of notable writers working together would grab huge attention and yet it rarely seems to. I've never been able to really puzzle out why.
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Preaching to the damn choir. I can think of at least a half dozen projects I've had that exact situation for. "It would be beautiful! ....except it would take a year and a team of professional animators to make and I can barely use MSPaint correctly."
Glad you feel that way! No doubt, part of it is that--while it has plenty of well-respected ponyfic names--the only two biggies in terms of follower count are FoME and TD. Having a Winston or the like may add cachet, but only brings in a couple hundred followers (okay, bad example, he's got a bunch more now, but he didn't circa 2017). And more broadly, I think people are quite reasonably wary of multi-author collections, since there are a lot of... let's say, "poorly-curated" examples of the same.
But I thought cleverpun had a great idea for the collection, and mostly did a nice job of getting everyone on a similar page without reigning in peoples' imaginations. Not every chapter fits together perfectly, perhaps, but I think you said it well: all the other authors did manage to get their own "flex" into their piece.
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That might be part of the issue here: since I'm a 2019 reg (and it's 2024 now), to me a lot of those names are ones I know well and have a number of stories I enjoy. So the perspective is an issue since I can't/didn't see it when the collab first came out.
My willingness to read these kinds of collabs hinges a lot on how they're done, and it's been so long that I don't remember what camp this fell into.
What I'm fine with is when someone has a complete story and invites authors to add to it or come up with new stories that would fit in a continuity with it. What rubs me the wrong way is when an author starts a story or merely has a concept and basically asks other authors to finish it for him.