Subtle reviews #4: "The Games We Play" and more. Also why I read ponefic. · 1:14pm Apr 13th, 2013
It's that time again (>implying there is a schedule for this. Nope). AAANYWAY.
First up is The Games We Play by AbsoluteAnonymous.
Now, this story is special to me, and that's not because of how it's written. Or maybe it is. Anyway, one day, long long ago (I think August 2012 somewhere) I was browsing the web at random. At that point, I was somewhere in the middle of season 2 (yeah I was really late to the game you just lost it, btw, but whatever). It was definitely during the summer holidays, because on that particular day (not a Six Flags commercial reference), I happened upon the Pony Fiction Vault. I knew fanfics existed, so undoubtedly they existed of MLP too, but the whole description of that site was basically:
If suddenly, all other ponyfic websites explode, at least this selection will be preserved for future generations.
Okay maybe not like that, but it also had PDF's. I know that over the course of a few days, I read a few of them, and my first impression was that the whole writing was of much higher quality than most of the garbage on sites like fanfiction.net (eww*). But really, at one point, I read ALL of this story in less than a day. That was when I realized "did I just... spend, like, idunno how many hours reading this... thing?" I did. And I actually liked it.
Not long after that, I found fimfiction, which is a helluvalot better than fanfiction.net.
Oh, right, review. I recently decided to reread The Games We Play. I discovered there was also a "Supplementary Materials" thing, and by the time I discovered that, a reread was in order. And also to see if the story is still good even if I already knew the outcome.
It is. It's a nice story, which for some reason is tagged Dark and Sad here on fimfic (in addition to Romance and Slice of Life), but is simply "Shipping" over on the PonyFictionVault. Which is more correct. Sure there are a few darker or sadder moments in the story, but if this were a printed book, it wouldn't have those tags. So anyway, recommended. Also, get it directly from the PFV so you don't accidentally spoil yourself in comments.
So, what else have I been reading? A couple of oneshots, the one which I remember the most at the time of writing this is Tchernobog's Mood Wings. Because AppleDash.
Then again, I also read a NSFW FlutterDash story that was actually good.
"Well barbeque, make your choice. What is your OTP then?"
To be honest, I don't really have one. There are things I tend to prefer over others (like AppleDash over RariShy, for example), but that doesn't mean I avoid ships. Well at least ships within the main six. With a few exceptions, I don't really want to read a lot about most of the background ponies. Sure, if someone points towards something and says "go read it", I will (probably. someday). I'm just not actively on the lookout.
The one major exception to this case would be crack shipping. It doesn't have to be 'wat dafuq did i just read' per se, sometimes a serious take on a weird ship can be fun too. Also a 100K+ Soarin' x Nurse Redheart simply needs to happen.
To conclude, I can probably say that I am working on a new oneshot, which is going to be about drunken ponies. No idea at how many words it's going to turn out, but it's already over 3K, and then I still have some scenes to write.
With that said, until the next time~ <-- tilde. because.
* = since then I haven't really been on that website anymore.
Oh nostalgiafics. Shortly after finishing season 2 (late April 2012... -ish), I was having fun trying to make sense of everything. EquestriaDaily happened to feature a backstory fic, Of Harmony and Chaos, which I read and loved. Still, it wasn't until TTEOAP that I really started looking for pony fics. (According to fimfiction, Mood Wings was the first Romance-tagged fic that I read here).
Pipsqueak's Day Off is a pretty well-done background ponies fic. It's not a shipfic, but there's light shipping. I'd recommend throwing it onto your Read Later list.
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Oh I totally forgot about that TwiDash one you linked in the previous one. I'll start on it tonight. TTEOAP was already on TR, PDO is now added to dat humongous list.
Hey I can read other things too! One of the stories I'm reading at this very moment is actually completely ship-free! I'll probably include it in the next round.
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More than half of your favorites have the Romance tag ._.
Have you read Romance Reports? If I ever delve into the NSFW side (as if ponies are SFW), I imagine I'd start there.
Thanks to you, I lost The Game too.
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I only use favorites for tracking purposes. I usually only read a couple paragraphs (or none at all), then track it to wait until the story is completed. I have numerous Adventure and Random fics offline (I just don't review every single story I read). And a lot of those were already completed when I found them.
Romance Reports is on the list of things to read, it just needs to pop up on my ereader someday. So I can't say anything about that.