Fic recs September 18th · 4:23pm Sep 18th, 2013
In case you missed the update to my IDW3 blog -- and really, why would you have seen it? -- we can stop the fandom now, it is no longer necessary.
H: 2 R: 3 C: 1 V: 2 N: 0
A Chat With Rainbow Dash by John Perry
Genre: Headcanon
For some reason, seeing “The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation” listed as a sponsor in the description made me laugh an awful lot. Probably due to a childhood spent watching PBS. And let me just say, reading this directly after TCB is kind of a trip. The setup could easily qualify it as a side-story, albeit one in which bronies exist on Earth. (A trope of many HiE stories that don't also fall into BiE is that the show does not exist in the same universe as the ponies. Generally, I appreciate that.) The “I” is a researcher who’s studied both humans and ponies, and MLP is referred to as a “documentary series”; Dash reads and reacts to fanfiction, with links even. It’s a queer little bird of a story. But focusing on all that really misses the point: the titular chat. Her reactions to everything presented to her feel genuine and in-character. I can fault the author for perhaps not focusing on that as much as I’d have liked (a significant portion of the story is taken up by the narrator telling us about Equestrian society). Well, and not having a plural for “pegasus”. It definitely feels like an interview though, like something you’d see on television with the interviewer filling in details in between quotes from the interviewee. It’s just that the interview questions don’t bring out a great deal of personally interesting stuff, despite the narrator’s obvious prowess as an interviewer, and as good as the interview is, it's not Rainbow Dash that's the most interesting part of the story. I really appreciate the final touch of the bibliography at the end though.
Recommended
The Voice of Reason by Pascoite
Genre: Self-Affirmation
A quick note: Since they don’t tend to generate a lot of views, I’m not going to do signal boost journals anymore. If need be, I’ll read lots of stuff to get a rec blog out within a day or two of a story posting so I can help the author get a few more views. My relationship with this story is interesting, as I read it first as two separate stories, both written for writeoffs if I’m not mistaken. I recall not being overly enamored of either, but it turns out all the pieces needed was each other. This is a very solid piece that plays to Derpy-related tropes but doesn’t succumb to them. We see her battling self-doubts ingrained from a life of ridicule (hinted to stem mostly from her clumsiness, not her eyes, thank goodness) and finally taking steps to surround herself with ponies who can help her pull herself out of her depression and step into the light, as it were. So, despite the Sad tag, it’s a very uplifting story with a wonderfully cute scene in the middle.
Recommended
The Sound of Sunlight by Chicken Vortex
Genre: Music Rivalry
Not long ago, I read recently-penned story by NTSTS called Refrain (I reviewed it July 16th) about Octavia’s awful childhood that she spent playing and hating the piano. She eventually discovers the cello and at the end of the story, and finds joy at long last in playing it. It was very bleak and beautiful, and this story could be favorably compared to it, without the bleakness. This time around, Octavia starts out playing — and hating — the cello, and eventually learns to find joy in doing the one thing everypony says she’s good at. I think that's a good message: learn to love what you do. What surprised me most about this story was the portrayal of her parents. Like so many stories centered around her musical background, they’re very strict and she’s considered a shut-in because she’s always practicing. But her parents, even her father, are both very loving and very free with their affection for her. It’s a balanced characterization that draws them away from the more obvious villain trope they could have filled. Filling it instead (not to his detriment) is Frederic Horseshoepin, a terror of a pony who’s presented as more conceited than Prince Blueblood. He’s absolutely horrible to Octavia, albeit not without justification, and I rather enjoyed watching his character arc through the story. In the end, this turns out to be good fanfiction, because the power of friendship wins the day.
Recommended
Dreamflow by KitsuneRisu
Genre: Dream Adventure
When I use the word ‘pretentious’, it’s generally code for “I didn’t understand this and that makes me angry”. But really, the word should suggest something more along the lines of ambitiousness (that makes people angry). Setting off to try something new is never easy, both for the work one must put into stepping outside their own safe zone and for the fact that any experiment has a chance of failing. Here’s one that succeeds. What Kitsune Risu sets up is a duality wherein dream scenes are all narration (except one line! he cheated!) and waking scenes are better than ninety percent dialogue. What this does is it keeps us in the characters’ heads during the waking periods, paradoxically lending everything in the story a dreamlike quality even when not presenting dream imagery. It’s a gimmick that ultimately works for the story. Speaking of dream imagery, it was quite good: most of these dreams, especially Applejack’s reactions to them, feel like dreams rather than random or meaningless strings of events, which is not always something authors can pull off. There’s great attention paid to how things shift and twist within a dreamscape, how time passes differently and the mind tells us things so that we can know them without having to actually experience them. Also speaking of things that are done well, I really respect an author who can write a good Pinkie Pie. She’s honestly fairly low-key throughout this story, as Applejack exhorts her to be serious (and she proceeds to put on one of many Serious Hats), but she’s funny and insightful without being lolrandom. Nowhere does this make more of a difference than in the second line of dialogue. Remember how I said the waking scenes are mostly dialogue? The idea of “talking heads” is something that has been drilled into me as a pre-reader as Things What Are Bad, but the fact is, a conversation should be followable without dialogue tags if the characters have strong voices. I guessed the first line of dialogue was Applejack’s, simply by virtue of her being the focus up to that point, but the instant I read Pinkie’s response, I knew she had to be who was talking. And while this story does get pretty dark and scary in places — Kitsune has quite the ability to craft spooky atmosphere — it’s never outside the realm of possibility for a pony having a nightmare, and the story ends firmly entrenched in the themes of the show. Add to that a really engaging mystery and you have an A-class piece of fanfiction. This is why experimentation is worthwhile.
Highly Recommended
Tiny Equine in Everfree by KuroiTsubasaTenshi
Genre: Badfic CYOA
This. This story. This story, I can’t. .-. This is, in essence, “Choose Your Own Spiderses”. The writing sounds like the transcription of a Russian with Asperger’s, and not only are there actual Spiderses references, you can be turned into a spider. And meet a zombie. And be eaten by more things than I can count, the zombie included. And find holes in reality after you’ve finished all the linked chapters and gone back to the chapter list. For being under five thousand words, this has a ton of hilarity to experience and I was laughing my ass off through the entire thing. If you appreciate badfic, please, for the love of crap, read this story.
Troll Recommended
A Bedtime Secret by MalevolentSpoon
Genre: Shipping
What an odd way to tell a story. Applejack tells Apple Bloom the tale of how she and Rarity hooked up as a bedtime story, and unfortunately the author takes this opportunity to write the story in vernacular, which made me go “ew”. Stranger yet is the interjection of ‘regular’ narration when Apple Bloom interrupts, without scene breaks. Add in the smattering of typos and this story isn’t gonna be for everyone. As to the story itself, it uses the “I’ve always loved you” trope, but elevates it slightly, giving us a timeframe for “always” and a good amount of reasoning behind it. There is, in other words, a trigger for Rarity’s love that isn’t generally present in lesser shipfics, bringing this slightly above the status of “February fic”. Which isn’t to say it’s not still silly, because it is. Worse is the epilogue, which is completely extraneous and could have been a separate story unto itself. Apple Bloom reacts to Applejack's tale by deciding to confess her feelings to her crush, and… it’s Spike. I’m so glad that ship fell out of favor after season two. There’s also Twixie shoehorned in because ship all the ponies I guess? Suffice to say, the epilogue destroyed any goodwill I might have felt toward the story, and I’m not reading the sequel.
Vaguely Recommended
Fluttersertive by Pen Palomino and Saddlesoap Opera
Genre Comedy
Show writers best be clinging tightly to that “We don’t read fanfic, no really” sign, because if anyone had a case for suing ‘em, it’d be these folks. Because while I’m sure “Fluttershy takes a course to learn to be more assertive” is the kind of idea two people can come to separately, and “Fluttershy applies everything she learns to the extreme, hurting those around her” is the obvious logical way to make that concept funny… Well, there’s a “go to the back of the line” line in here that just hits a little too close to the episode for comfort. And of course there’s no minotaur and the ponies she ends up yelling at are pretty much everyone except Pinkie and Rarity… But that’s kind of more than a coincidence there, don’tcha think? I’m just sayin’. That policy is bullshit anyway, and they know it. Unfortunately, I feel silly making this accusation, because I liked Putting Your Hoof Down and after reading this story, I think the episode outshines it. Yes, it has some flaws, but it also has some great gags and I’ve never had a problem with Fluttershy acting the way she does. This story, on the other hand, never really reaches that same high as far as the comedy goes. Furthermore, the motivational speaker’s scene relies far too heavily on a Chris Farley SNL routine that wasn’t ever really all that funny to begin with. Plus there are some really unfortunate dialogue choices, specifically Rarity continually saying “dah-ling”. People more into slice of life than I am will no doubt enjoy this more than I did, but those looking for laughs a minute or “the fans did it better first” will want to look elsewhere.
Vaguely Recommended
Pirates for a Day by DawnFade
Genre: Completely Adorable
Pipsqueak and Dinky play pirates. They find treasure. It's fucking adorable. What, you need more than that? Fine. This is a story about the power of imagination and the joys of childhood. It revels in the independence children feel on their own and the power of friendship. If that's still not enough for you to want to read this story, then I salute you. Me, I’ll just be curled in the corner, leaking tears of joy from my everywhere.
Highly Recommended
I love reading your story reviews, PP. They really make my day.
Ever since I followed you, my read later list has never gone below the six-hundred mark, no matter how much I read.
I read Dreamflow a while back and thought it was quite good, and I was really pleased to see Kitsune mention earlier that it had made EQD
Holy shit Sound of Sunlight is my favorite Octavia fic ever (and was my favorite fic for quite a while). I almost forgot about it until now.
Honestly, I couldn't get into Pirates for a Day. Reading it felt too much like I was watching other children play instead of feeling like I was a child again, which is what the good CMC episodes do.
Getting to the definition of the word "pretentious" involves linking it to "pretend". As in, a work of fiction/art that pretends to be intelligent, poetic, or deep despite having very little of value to impart to its audience. The example that comes most readily to my mind is Southland Tales, one of the shittiest yet most ironically enjoyable movies I've ever seen. That particular movie tries to give itself the appearance of being something significant, rife with symbolism and meaning, and yet in actuality is just a hodgepodge of smarmy witticisms, barely-baked ideas, and trite generalizations. I get so much amusement at how much of a titanic misfire the whole movie is. Seriously, you have to see this shit.
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ythxu :3
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Ever since I started doing this, my read-later list hasn't gone below 1600. D: No matter what I do!
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Oh sweet. :D See, this is another reason I read old shit on EQD.
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NOTHING IS SAFE, JOHN
NOTHING IS SAFE FROM PRESENT
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I'm just really into DinkyPip. :B I can't wait to read the sequel because it's aged-up shipping.
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Yeah, that's why I went with "ambitious". It's a nice of saying a person is trying to look smart. :B
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Except that there are cases where the ambition pays off and the writer doesn't just look smart, regardless of an individual reader's willingness or capability to understand and/or accept the material on its own terms.
In other words, if you don't like Infinite Jest, the problem lies with you.
1358969
When the experiment works, the pretentiousness then lies in how angry the reader is at the author for being smarter than they are. :V
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Eh, I prefer DinkyRumble, myself.
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Then why don't you like The Conversion Bureau, Present? Something is definitely missing here if you don't see how amazingly brilliant that story is, with all its textual cadence and amazing technical inconsistencies. And throughout that, it still manages to retain the classic sense of 'pretentiousness'.
It is lovely and you should feel bad for not liking it. You should write a story in it. You should write 'The Conversion Bureau: The Beardening'.
Joking aside though, I saw this just last night before I collapsed off to bed, and I had the best sleep ever. Way to stroke my ego, man. But I'm really glad it paid off, and I'm glad to see you liked it. Honestly, I was thinking that EXACT thing with the talking heads, haha, and I was fighting my natural instinct to stick in reporting clauses every so often because that's what you do, darn it.
Also I didn't cheat, grr! The line of dialogue marks the point where the narrative styles converge!
But you already knew that. I'm just absolving myself from blame.
Thank you very much for the kind review and thank Celestia that you liked it. I don't think I would be more mortified if you hadn't.
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Blasphemy. :|
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This may be more likely than you think.
You're right, you pretentious bastard. :|