Liveblog Announcement · 1:08pm Jul 27th, 2015
Something I've been considering for a little while now, though I'll probably try and come up with a wittier title for it...
Anyway: there are a lot of great fictions in this community. I'm not talking about stories which people like, or which end up in the Goodfic Bin- I'm talking about the BIG stories, the one's which everyone has heard of, the stories which gain a reputation (for good or for ill) amongst the fandom. Stories like Fallout: Equestria, Cupcakes, Background Pony; the kind of stories which are so popular they inspired entire sub-section's of the community dedicated to them.
They are the kind of stories I keep wanting to read, but never really get round to it... so maybe having a public forum would help me get around to doing it.
So, this is a new feature, which I'm going to try and keep a somewhat regular schedule with. I'm going to read a chapter from one of those "Epic" stories, posting my thought's on it in the blog as I go. I finish one story, then move on to the next one.
I'll be starting next week with Past Sins, but are there any other requests or recommendations people would like to see?
Hmm. Do you want merely greatly popular fics, or great and good fics? The classic example of a story that's the former but not the latter is My Little Dashie. Mind you, if you're considering doing Cupcakes then high quality can't be the only criterion, I guess!
So... I'm currently about 40% of the way through The Life and Times of a Winning Pony -- and that certainly fits what you want, given that it pretty much single-handedly established Cloud Kicker's fanon reputation to the point where I could write a one-shot based on that without ever having read a Winningverse story!
Fallout: Equestria is pretty much a given, though it's (obviously) very long. PresentPerfect did a liveblog on that, and (though I didn't follow it live) it's pretty funny even in retrospect. There's Anthropology, easily the most popular "Lyra and humans" fic, and Eakin's Hard Reset trilogy. Plus On a Cross and Arrow, which I didn't like that much but which really helped the R63 genre to boom.
Also, I guess one or other of the early/popular OctaScratch fics. My Roommate is a Vampire, University Days, that sort of thing.
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I'm kind of aiming for those "fandom greats", for good or bad. I'm also trying to avoid things I've read before -simply because then it's not so much an honest First Look as it is "I remember this!" or "this is good foreshadowing!"
(Unfortunately, that means I have no plans to do Life and Times or Fallout: Equestria. On the other hoof, that means I don't have to do Cupcakes!)
Everything else you mentioned, though, is stuff I've heard of and haven't read, so I'll add them to the list!
3273370 I'll be particularly interested if/when you get round to Hard Reset, since that one really divides opinion. For example, I really enjoyed it but xjuggernaughtx got really annoyed by it. (Can't say more because spoilers!)
Of course, you could just go down the "Most viewed" column here, skipping anything that looks too distasteful and (depending on your criteria) anything unfinished.
What about Silent Ponyville?