Fanfiction Reading Update #168 · 11:03am Jul 24th, 2015
Advisory: contains unmarked spoilers to Memoirs in Ink and Blood and Withdrawal
Work continues to slowly move forward with that weird clopfic, which is named Fight Club and has nothing to do with the movie or novel. I just liked the name. 50,000 words isn't too long for a clopfic with no sex in it, is it? And I still have five chapters to finish. The fanfic writing ride just doesn't seem to ever end. At least it's been fun. And I mean that. I've had more fun writing Fight Club than I did writing Regent, which goes a long way to explaining why Regent's basically a deadfic these days. It's hard writing something when you're burned out writing it and not having fun doing it.
I've also updated my userpage's “Current Story Progress” thing to reflect the progress that's being made on Fight Club, as well as a couple oneshots I've started to work on.
The Lunar Rebellion updates with the expected revelation of the protagonist not actually being dead and the joys and logistics of a month long underground siege.
Fanfic reviews and more after the break!
Grimdark oneshots are quite common. Most have war, or natural disaster, or insanty as their plots. Most tell very little of what's going on and only give a very brief window into the events and the idiot balls that were needed to cause those events. Most end with a “gut punch,” that horrible scene that concludes things and leaves you with a bad taste and regret for ever bothering reading the damn thing in the first place.
Memoirs tells the tale of what happens after that gut punch. Celestia and Luna created Twilicorn. But, much like a horror movie, their creation turned on and overthrew them in a bloody coup that served as the oneshot prequel's gut punch. In the end, the body count had most of the title characters and some supporting ones dead or dying and Twilight as Immortal God Empress.
Afterward, the characters—from Luna to Shining Armor to Discord—try to pick up the pieces and fight against the entropy that is the grimdark setting they find themselves in. Each chapter takes on the first person perspective of a different character. Uniquely, each chapter also has a strict word count limit. Something that is pretty unnoticeable from a reading perspective, but was likely a huge pain for the author.
Each chapter reveals a little more of what's going on and tells a somewhat disjointed, but still interconnect plot. Luna and Discord are trying to overthrow Twilight and set right that which went wrong, Shining and Blueblood struggle under Twilight's despotic rule, while Twilight herself revels in her unlimited power. While it may be disjointed, it's still able to work surprisingly well and gives the story its own unique style.
But as the story approaches its end, it begins to come undone. Throughout it all, Twilight's been unstoppable and the grimdark train doesn't even slow down from where it left off in the oneshot—and it left off with five of the Mane 6 brutally murdered. There's no stopping the grimdark ending to the story... until it does get stopped.
Twilight gets defeated not by Luna or Discord or some plot device introduced in chapter three—but by a deus ex machina sent down from the author. The citizens of Equestria, tired of Twilight's rule, simply walk right up to her, whip out the Elements from their “hope,” and topple her reign. It really strikes as something not out of place from the show itself, but that's just it. It's not the show.
It's a grimdark fanfic where most of the main cast has been killed, the rest imprisoned, and the remainder clinging to a fleeting, desperate, delusional hope. It's an ending that fits right in with the show, but is widely out of place for the fic and really strikes as the author getting written into a corner but not wanting to go with the obvious downer ending.
The disappointment of the Elements use is slightly made up for by the aftermath, which quickly settles back into the fic's darker style. The Elements don't kill Twilight or banish her, they merely “reform” her. And leave her to live out the rest of her life knowing that she killed her friends, family, and nearly destroyed Equestria. All the while, her dead friends try to comfort, reassure, and forgive her—all in vain. Who ever said the Elements were merciful?
While the ending may have caused great disappointment with its seeming asspully nature, the rest of the fic acts to counterbalance it with a unique style and structure and the final resolution is able to end the fic on a darker note while still retaining the “happy ending.” Still, that weak ending does hurt it. Memoirs in Ink and Blood is upvoted and receives:
...moustaches out of five.
Every episode introduces new ideas and concepts into the fandom. New headcanons get crafted to replace the old ones that canon destroyed. New characters are introduced to delight that fan artists. New music is heard that will jump start the hundreds of acoustic and rock remixes. And new plot seeds are planted in the garden of fanfictions. I remember staring in awe at Fimfiction's homepage after A Canterlot Wedding and realizing that fanfics would never be the same again. A whole new species, a whole new villain, a whole new plot. In an instant, a dozen new genres were created.
These days, that kind of excitement seems to have dissipated. The fandom has stabilized and, dare I say, calmed down since the hecticness of 2012. Sadly, that also means that many of the plots and ideas canon injects aren't as used by the community. I couldn't recall a single fic that used the plunder seeds from S4. The treebrary got a few cheap feelsy oneshots but wasn't ever used in a long multichapter. The many “what if?” scenarios were rarely explored.
Withdrawal decided to do all of those and inject a little canon-based plot in the sea of clopfics and slice of life onehsots. Twilight successfully defeated Tirek, but, in the princesses' desperation, they underestimated the effect being able to eat magic would have on Twilight and she suffers a nasty case of title drop.
The story picks up the slice of life football and runs with it. As Twilight slowly recovers and tries to fight her heroin magic addiction, she picks up a couple hobbies. Sparing with Luna—which gave me nasty flashbacks of Duel Nature and the jimmies that fic destroyed—and trying to salvage the shattered remains of the treebrary by watching the small bit of tree that was left grow back in. All in all, a fairly nice, fluffy affair. Even with the little mystery elements like Twilight's cuts or the evil hooded mare sprinkled in.
But there was one thing that kept on nagging at me as I read each chapter. It was the dark tag that sat snugly next to slice of life. With no real darkness in sight, I had figured it was just there due to the whole “Intervention” plot. I shrugged off the apprehension and carried on reading about Twilight's fairly easy recovery.
Then, one day, slice of life fumbled the football and dark picked it up for a fifty yard recovery, putting it within field goal range. The fluffy plot imploded spectacularly. For it was all a ruse. Twilight hadn't been recovering but was harvesting the plunder vines for their magic, in the process whipping out some memory erasing spells on both herself and Spike. Those mystery elements were revealed for what they were—the dark tag sneaking its way in.
And, in keeping with the theme Memoirs set, right near the end is where the story itself fumbles. Twilight runs away from the princesses and her friends when she realizes what she's been doing and winds up living with a changeling and the foal he's “adopted.” It's here that things slow down and really don't go anywhere.
The interactions with the changeling and foal, while a little nice, really strikes me as filler. The obvious idea is that the changeling—a creature that feeds on love—would teach Twilight about her addiction or ways to help recover from it, but that is quickly brushed away and dismissed by the changeling in the story. Which, sort of leaves the whole thing kind of pointless. The changeling subplot doesn't enhance the story, it is just there.
And then the story updated to completion. A horrible feeling of dread filled me. The plot did not strike me as something that could be amicably resolved in one chapter. And that only left a grimdark ending as the alternative. While I was relieved to find it did, in fact, end happily, it also seemed to end very quickly. Twilight's real recovery is hastily speed through in a single chapter—and isn't even fully finished by the end of the chapter, only being left with a hopefulness that Twilight will fully recover. Somewhat ironically, the actual plot of the story—Twilight recovering from her magical addiction—is dealt with in a single chapter right at the end.
While the ending did drag the story down somewhat with the changeling subplot and rapid finish, the shocking twist was one of the best I've seen in a fic, and its use of canon-related plots and ideas is able to craft an entertaining story none the less and show that there's a lot more to canon than just what you see on Youtube, all you need to do is give it a little imagination. Withdrawal is upvoted and receives:
...moustaches out of five.
Possible Trackings reports in!
A Darkened Land might be starting pretty slow, but I know from experience that world building AU fics can really pick up, so I hop on board the ride to find out.
Inferno, that story that partially scratched the natural disaster itch I've had, rises from the deadfics and as a result is re-tracked.
I'm also delighted that Her Mother's Daughter can be removed from the deadfics bookshelf as well. Who ever said authors made final decisions?
I have so many Oneshots, I just don't know what I'll do!
Gone, Gone, Gone plays up the tired and old “who wants to live forever” plot but swaps out Twilight in favor of Discord. It's an okay fic, but “who wants to live forever” has really beaten itself into the ground. There's not much left to wring out of it.
Her Blood Ran in Hollows of the Floor dishes out some of that old fashioned “Twilight succeeds Celestia by killing her” that's been puttering along since S1. You'd think they would have worked out a smoother succession method by now. While it follows the plot with little to no deviation, it still does it well, and the genre isn't so tiring (yet) as to become cliché.
When I first put Dr. Rainbow Dash, MD, PhD, etc. on my RL list, it was a fluffy comedy oneshot. When I read it, the [Dark] and [Tragedy] tags were ominously staring me in the face. The fic is just one more example of how difficult it can be to juggle humor and darkness and why that darkness can very easily overwhelm any comedy and leave you with that bad taste in the mouth you get after reading a grimdark fanfic.
Sympathy For the Devil provides a whole new spin on “who wants to live forever?” by combining it extremely well with the very little used Tartarus and Tirek. Very seldom will a “last line” gut punch work so effectively... even if it did remind me of one of those "character does a bunch of stuff only for it to be revealed a single minute has passed" comedy montages.
Untitled is downvoted for being a really crap story full of pretentiousness and a muddled and confusing plot with no satisfaction. At its base is a Luna x Human parody that could have been nice, but is ruined by heaps of useless “deep” filler.
RIP Deadfics (2014-2015)
I am utterly shocked to discover that Expectations, the story which inspired Ascend and was the most frequent target of its references, has joined the cemetery of canceled stories. It remains favorited because it genuinely is one of my favorites—Ascend would have never been, otherwise.
To Build a Kingdom gets added to the deadfic pool as well after I realize it, too's, been canceled.
Black Heart is added to deadfics as well for the very same reason.
Polaris gets kicked to the necropolis as well with one chapter left unread.
Princess Luna Kidnaps a Kingdom joins the growing funeral procession. And, with it's only chapter being posted before I wrote my first pony fic, I cannot remember a single thing about it.
Mare of War, a story I always felt was a little too OOC, also gets cut for the very same reason.
Crucible becomes the last casualty of this little favorites cleaning.
And that's all I read for the dayquarter.
# of story updates remaining: 477.
# of “Read Later” stories remaining: 1,041.
"Maybe he means a different Crucible...."
...oh, poo.
Good to hear from you again. :) You have a way of finding fics I've never heard of (and then telling me they're cancelled).
Polaris I enjoyed largely because Luna's scenes with Twilight were pure shipfuel. Didn't even need the shipping goggles.
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Crucible was wonderful, though the Trixie/changeling sideplot should have been a separate story entirely.
No kidding regarding the mid-story twist in Withdrawal, that was so well done. It's like getting punched in the face and not really minding because it was such a well thrown hit.