Fic recs, May 17th · 4:57pm May 17th, 2015
I’m upping my rating for BlazzingInferno’s First Act to Recommended. It’s a little ridiculous, yes, but Trixie’s a fairly ridiculous character, and on a second read-through (I just approved it for EQD), it really holds as a solid, clever backstory. If you passed it up earlier, now's you chance to correct that mistake!
Neighrator Pony has part 2 of Bad Horse’s Bedtime Stories for Impressionable Young Colts and Fillies!
Head below the break for reviews of The Devil's Trick by soundslikeponies, Zyrian's Velveteen, and three other fics!
H: 0 R: 3 C: 0 V: 0 N: 2
A Short Fluttercord Story by MLP Xovers
Reading by Illya Leonov and Otiscat123
Genre: Shipping
I would not have read this had it not been for Illya’s reading. The title alone, despite being four words long, contains three things I hate: lack of originality; a denotation of brevity, which, coupled with the Romance tag, suggests Bad Shipping; and Fluttercord. I have to give it credit, though: that title perfectly sums up this story. Discord realizes he gets fuzzy feelings whenever he’s around Fluttershy, tells her he loves her, she reciprocates, they kiss, end on Angel joke. The writing is passable, but this is bad and I don’t even think fans of the ship will want to read this, because it leaves precisely nothing to the imagination.
Not Recommended
The Devil’s Trick by soundslikeponies
Reading by Scribbler, et. al.
Genre: Suspense
Twilight investigates the journal of a guard who disappeared after the changeling invasion of Canterlot.
This story has such a great atmosphere, with Twilight visiting a wing of the archives where she can’t even bring a light because it might damage the texts stored there. The tension builds steadily as she searches for lost pieces of the journal and reads their contents. The ending is the perfect thing to set your heart racing. That said, it does kind of just end on something akin to a jumpscare, without resolving anything, so I was a bit disappointed as far as the story goes. There’s also a question of just how believable this actually is, but that’s also tangled up in how much one wants the revelations to be true. I think this is worth reading because it’s such a good thriller, though, so don’t pass it up if you like a scary mystery.
Recommended
A Joke Too Far by ZOMG
Reading by Dr. Wolf
Genre: Joke’s in the Cover
I’ve never seen a more appropriately-titled story, because this is a piece about driving a joke into the ground. You remember that goofy story about Celestia, Luna and Cadence being thrown into Tartarus by Tirek? Well, this is like that one, except instead of complaining that her face is broken the whole time, which is funny, Cadence spends the entirety of this fic trying not to laugh, which gets old quickly. A few things caught my attention. For starters, there’s some good backstory and character dynamics in here, like Cadence and Shining’s unspoken communication near the beginning. This does go somewhat beyond the situation presented in the cover art, as Cadence takes control of the joke, and then Celestia takes control, making her regret it. But those happen at and past the halfway point, respectively. The rest of the story is really poorly paced, spending too much time filling in details and not enough making jokes. I’d heard about this story before reading it, and I have to agree with the reviewers who say it just doesn’t work. It’s also more proof that what the majority of Fimfiction readers want is predictability.
Not Recommended
Velveteen by Zyrian
Genre: Bittersweet
Sweetie Belle gets another chance to go crusading.
Imagine my surprise when an old entry from last year’s Trotcon Speedfics came through my inbox! :D Dumb fabric! Far from the goofy trollfics those events tend to inspire, this is a heartfelt, sincere piece, a serious look at an outlandish What If scenario. You’ll just have to read it to find out. I will say that there are some minor punctuation errors, but that’s not enough to really deter the reader looking for an interesting twist on a classic future fic scenario.
Recommended
The Clarity of Darkness by Trick Question
Reading by Agent0Fluffy
Genre: Sci-Fi
Twilight and Applejack face their end before a black hole.
This is the weirdest fucking shipfic I have ever read, a mix of futurism and spiritualism from the last writeoff. It's just about the damned strangest way of getting two ponies together, in universe or out, that I have ever seen. It’d be like if Trixie and Fluttermac’s kid from The Incandescent Brilliance had survived and gotten together at the end. But I didn’t label it shipping because the hard science, the metaphysics, and the claustrophobic “characters meeting their death” scenario really take center stage here. (Also, most of the really mushy stuff is reserved for the finale, which can technically be skipped.) But yeah, despite being about a ship I’m still not really into, this is just weird enough for me to like it. I’m banking on that for my recommendation.
Recommended
The Clarity of Darkness has just about everything I want in a story, and also shipping. I think that says more about me than it.
3076034
Oh, you two!
At least add a link to my story, you doof. Here. Otherwise, chances are nobody is gonna know what the heckle are you talking about.
Interesting that you compared A Joke Too Far with A Hell of a Time, though! It also made that connection when I first heard of the former. Guess wacky, bad, OOC comedies about the three Princesses that are not named Twilight are doomed to be similar-ish. Mine won, though! Yay.
Still, 90% of the reviewers out there gave it a "meh", so it's sort of a pyrrhic victory, but whatever.
On another note -- everybody complains about "joke in the cover" stories (me included), but those are always popular as hell, if quickly forgotten. Makes me think of that Obs blog about fame.
3076081 I was wondering why he didn't give you a link since it felt pretty clear to me which one he was referring too.
3076081 Because they're written with the purpose of being a quick laugh and forgotten almost as soon as they're read.
3076081
Or I could not do that and wait for God to provide all things. :V Hey, it worked! (No, but thx. <3)
3076242
Literally because I hadn't the faintest idea what that story was called. <.<
3076343
If you Google "Tartarus Celestia Luna Cadance shitty comedy" it's the first result. Seriously. So you've got nobody but yourself to blame here!
If you had posted that review a month ago or so, I could have told you to look at the Top Rated Stories list and search for number one. Then I would have done that 90s anime snobby laugh to make sure y'all got that I was being a snob in an ironic sense. A Hell of a Time is my most popular story, but definitely not the one I like the most.
3076242
I guessed he had no idea which one it was, and turns out I guessed right! That's why I linked it in my comment. You got it immediately because you know me and my stories and all that, but it's not exactly a famous story, so it's almost guaranteed that anybody who reads that review will miss the comparison.
Hell, PP himself missed it, he only remembered the story vaguely, even though he reviewed it himself. What a nerd.
(Just kidding, PP, you know I love you. Even though you're never in the fucking Skype group and thus we've never talked, god dammit.)
3076253
Yeah, that's the thing -- they are popular because they're easy to read, only need to be competently written to be enjoyable, and you read them in two minutes or so. And that's definitely not a bad thing?
Like, I believe those are genuinely good things. A quick laugh is not something bad, yet everybody's really snotty about it. Myself included. Even though I've written "quick laugh" stories too (hell, the one I was talking about in this comment is a perfect example of that). I think there has to be something more, though -- something to do with the transparency of it, or the sense that writing that story is "cheating", because the main joke is already written for you.
Dunno. It's an interesting topic, that's what I mean. Fimfic has this weird dichotomy in which everybody hates bandwagons and particular genres/styles, yet those are always popular as hell. And not always in the "bad" sense -- I'm talking stories with really good ratings here.
Sometimes I wonder if that has anything to do with the quality of the story at all, in fact. I personally haven't read A Joke Too Far (I just looked at it, saw the ratings, thought "Man, that feels so familiar", and then moved on because it's rare for me to read a fic nowadays), so I can judge, but I get the feeling that stories like that can be harshly judged for no other reason than the "Joke in the Cover" genre.
Hell, the name itself sounds kind of derogatory.
I'm not saying PP's review is bad, of course -- I haven't read the story, but I usually tend to think the same as PP, with a couple exceptions (guy has no taste in shipping). And he seems to make a good point. But I haven't read, so I can't really say yet.
Meh. Food for the thought, I guess? I forgot the point I was trying to make.
3076496 Dude, I wrote the darn thing and I'm not even bothered by the review lol. The most thing I'm annoyed about is that there's a couple more notifications from it rather than what I've been writing lately—the horse died three or four months ago, dammit XD. And, really, I do think we're all a bit guilty of forgetting that those short little things are just supposed to be fun, not really anything big. So... Uh... I dunno. Everyone just have fun? lol
Though, to your point on bandwagons, everyone hates them until they're the ones who start them. So, I kinda just shrug off that bit. And to your point on not reading AJTF: you're missing nothing. Literally nothing. It was written, simply, because Silfoe noted that she wished she could write a story about the picture and I said "gimme a bit". The real joke, as said by another friend, is that it wasn't supposed to get more than a hundred views.
Oops?
3076034
But you could post that there if you wanted to, and I wouldn't complain. 
I accidentally deleted all the comments on it, too.
Either way thank you! You guys are too sweet!
I actually thought you'd initially given First Act a Recommended, but I'm not complaining either way
Huh. That last story reminds me of this comic called Trillium, which is about a guy from the early 1920s and a gal from the 4th millenium meeting each other through a rift in time and space. It's a really weird and interesting science fiction romance story that ends with both of them getting sucked into a black hole, then reincarnating in a single body.
3077699
Whoa. o.O
God, that was a good story.