Two Excellent Stories by Ardashir · 4:05am Jul 17th, 2014
I should call everyone's attention to two really well-written stories by Ardashir. These are:
This is a fantastic crossover between MLP:FIM and Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" short stories, about musician and student of both folk music and folk magic John the Balladeer. When an evil human mage threatens Equestria, John the Balladeer may be the only one who understands his magic well enough to stop it. This is the best-written Human In Equestria story I've ever read, taking the Ponies seriously as their own creatures and Equestria as its own culture -- similar to that of Western Humans, but hardly identical. The characterization of the Ponies is excellent. This is how Human in Equestria stories should be done.
Ardi, a sapient wolf, gets chased into Ponyville by an angry Dragon. When the Ponies want to attack him too, as a potentially-deadly predator, he must somehow hide -- and the only way to hide is within a magical disguise! Things get worse for Ardi. Then they get even more worse. Then ... I don't want to reveal the surprises of this tale, but this (with its sequel) are one of the two stories which has most affected by own fanon portrayal of a particular race. Read it. It's really, really good -- a combined adventure, well-timed screwball comedy, and much more!
There is a sequel,
but so far he's only posted the Prologue. Trust me, the story is extremely good.
Thanks for doing this, I mean that. I'll have to remember to make some blog posts about the stories I enjoyed here on FIMfic myself.
And especially thanks for the praise for My Little Balladeer. I'm planning a sequel for that one too, involving Twilight and Luna searching for (and finding) John in Luna's dream realm. Unfortunately, they're not the only ones to find him there, and John's dreams can be a very, very dangerous place, with Twilight seeing everything from the monsters and sorcerers he's faced to the 'frozen Chosin' in the Korean War.
OT but in the latter I'm trying to see if I can manage something my father told me he heard of from a Korean war vet, of seeing Chinese infantry mass-charge and overrun a ridge set with 6 quad-.50's all firing at once. Seeing that would be enough to give anyone nightmares!
Luna may well have seen things that bad in her long life -- I doubt Twilight has, though!