Fic recs, March 3rd! · 1:44pm Mar 3rd, 2017
If by any chance you have me on Skype, don't expect to see me there much anymore, not that I ever was before. Everything's moved to Discord now.
You might notice something a little unorthodox at the end of this blog. This is due to good news: I've finally caught up with Captain Sand! :D After two whole years! So he goes into the general milieu of my fic readers finally, and I get started on other things. Specifically, I start book 4 of Project Horizons today. Of course, I was dumb and started reading a longfic the other day, but whatever, I'll just get that finished up quickly he said. :B
...So I just posted this and immediately got "please login to edit your account". And had to login! c.c WTF, Fimfic?
H: 0 R: 0 C: 7 V: 0 N: 0
Listen by Taialin
Genre: Character Piece
Rarity goes to Fluttershy's to relax, and finds her sitting by the river, doing nothing.
Though this is written in Rarity's POV, I feel like it's really a look at Fluttershy through her eyes. We learn that Fluttershy likes meditating and has yet to be able to convince any of her friends to join her. When Rarity inadvertently does, well, it turns into a nice bonding experience for the two. This is the start of a RariShy trilogy, but fear not if you aren't into shipping: there's no hint of it here, or rather, it's just the friend kind of shipping. That said, while I'm interested to see where the sequel goes, this didn't leave much of an impression on me. Rarity and Fluttershy are both well in-character, though I was surprised Rarity didn't go to her place because, y'know, having cat problems, go to pony who knows animals? It leads to a nice solution at the end, but still. This is just sort of the laying out of an idea, but it's pleasant enough.
Recommended for Slice of Life Fans
Birds of Few Feathers by DraconicXeno
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Mature: Sex
Genre: Genderswap/Impregnation
Gabby asks Scootaloo to visit her in Griffonstone and help with a problem.
Given the story's description, I had expected Scootaloo to end up with the dick. <.< I mean, attached to her. I mean, coming out of… Okay, I'm gonna stop. D: This is like Gildash for the newer generation, so it hits up against my general distaste of interspecies stuff, but let's face it: I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been at least a little interested. And while fans of gender-swapping will likely enjoy the highly detailed transformation sequence — I've honestly never seen its like — I really should have let the impregnation tag scare me away, because there was far too much of that by the end. Taste aside, this does have some issues. The narrative is frequently explainy, POV is not a thing once the sex starts up (seriously, clopfic writers, stop doing this, I'm tired of pointing it out), and there are some poor word choices. (Plus a few funny ones, see also "it was like a battering ram".) There's shipping at the end just because. This also does something I've never seen before: world-building in service to sex. The "problem" mentioned above is Gabby needs to lose her virginity so she can be accepted as an adult among griffins. Like… what? Okay. Also worth mentioning that heat is a thing in this, and at first it seemed like it just might be Scootaloo's way of explaining how aroused she was, but then it's suggested estrus can override sexual preference, so I'm not sure how to feel about it overall. In total, this is decent at best, but if it sounds like it presses your buttons, it's probably worth reading, and hey, different pairing.
Recommended If You're Into Gender-Swapping (or Impregnation)
Friendship Hate Mail by PonyThunder
Reading by Lead Bread
I have nothing in particular to say about this guy other than he's a solid hit! Go check him out!
Genre: Comedy
Twilight is baffled by the newest letter from Celestia.
I can't help but feel this is a bit more thoughtful than your standard "obvious joke" feature-bait shortfic. The main joke is Twilight's reaction to the letter, but there are other funny things besides. There are some neat little details here and there, and the asides are interesting, even if they don't always carry the story along. Yet I also can't help but feel I didn't get it. I mean, I more or less did, but I'm not sure I did. It may just be that I'm really tired today. But it's pretty decent for what it is.
Recommended as Light Reading
So Sunset Shimmer Doesn't Like Screwing Horses Now by a sick depraved bastard
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: Sexual Comedy
Given how many fics there are about Sunset having sex with horses in the human world, I kind of couldn't pass up one that purports to be about exactly not that, regardless of whatever unfortunate implications it might contain. Thankfully, it was the thoughtful look into human sexuality through the eyes of a former pony I've been craving lately. You can pretty much guess from the title whether or not you'll be interested in reading this; I had quite a few laughs.
Recommended for Fans of Sexual Comedy
Marble Madness by Twinkletail
Reading by Brian Random and Sugar Cloud
Genre: Romance
Feeling an instant attraction, Big Macintosh and Marble Pie try to find a way to get to know one another during Hearth's Warming.
MarbleMac: functionally interchangeable with FlutterMac, save that the show writers gave it to us. (Likely because they recognize the inherent beauty of FlutterMac but work off a strict "no dating" policy for the mane six. Y'know, minus Twilight.) Also save for the fact that they might be related. And, frankly, I wouldn't even have a problem with that, if not for the fact that the show itself had Pinkie constantly clamoring about that fact while possibly trying to get the two together, as this story suggests she was doing. It's like, imagine two friends of yours hook up, and they find out they're like, third cousins or something — far enough unrelated for legal and ethical concerns not to be an issue — but they never stop talking about it. Like, they're just really into the idea. You'd start thinking that maybe they were into some weird roleplaying or something. That's MarbleMac, and the reasons why I'm not a fan. But if you can leave all that aside, the ship is pretty cute (if you don't, for some strange reason, require FlutterMac in your life), and this story is equal parts adorable and funny. It does spend rather too much time summarizing Hearthbreakers, though, which leads to a fairly bland opening, but if nothing else, I had a lot of laughs, and it all leads to a fun ending. So long as you don't think about incest.
Recommended for Romance Fans
Fluttershy Discovers Toys by Flutterbawse
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Sequel to Fluttershy Discovers Masturbation
Mature: Sex
Genre: Solo Play
Fluttershy finds a strange shop on the outskirts of town, and the even stranger things it purveys.
The first story was so cute and funny, I was definitely interested in the sequel. Turns out, the idea only has enough traction for one fic and isn't as interesting the second time around. This is thusly a very straightforward clopfic, with nothing really making it stand out. POV might have been shaky.
Recommended Only If You Like Clop
Twilight Sparkle Tries to Write a Clop Fic by Sollace
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: Comedy
She doesn't do too well.
If this story didn't leave much of an impression on me, it's likely because there have been numerous fics with the same premise, all of which were considerably funnier. I try not to judge stories directly against each other, because each author has the ability to bring something new to the table, but that's likely the reason I didn't get more than a few chuckles out of this one. Moreover, I would present this as a treatise on how not to write a story, directed solely at what Twilight is writing. I mean, I don't care if you're writing clop or not, you're going to have to keep backtracking and adding things and rethinking yourself if you don't go into a story with at least some idea of what you want to do. You don't need a fully structured outline, but for god's sake, at least think about where you want things to go!
Recommended for Laughs
Does Discord have a decent mobile app?
4442567 I hear it does, minus some of the functionality, but I'm not a mobile user, so I can't say from experience.
Is this... is this seven Conditional Recs? That's the entire post!
Quote of the century right there.
Thank ye' for the review. I'm sorry it didn't get you more chuckles.
4442567
Indeed it does, if you're willing to stretch the meaning of 'decent'. It works for almost all daily usage, and you can still default to the browser for any missing features.
4442709
I want to again stress that I mean that in terms of what Twilight's writing, not how you wrote it. D: I do occasionally say that at criticism, but not in this case.
4442792
Alright, it's all cool.
I haven't really seen any of those other reviews (haven't been following all that long).
Not that I ever use any IMs ever, but I wish they'd stop changing. AIM is still around, you know. Well, apparently.
As for these... I can ignore all the sex ones, which cuts things right down. I've already read (and quite liked) Listen. That leaves two, I think. :P
4442993
And you already seem to have jumped at one of them!
A friend of mine still uses AIM. He talks to one guy on it. That should tell you how much AIM is actually used. :B
...So I just posted this and immediately got "please login to edit your account". And had to login! c.c WTF, Fimfic?
Yeah, that happened to me for the first time in it seems like years a week or so ago. Dunno what was up with that.
So Sunset Shimmer Doesn't Like Screwing Horses Now has to be one of the best (broadly construed) "Pony Does X" titles I've seen in a while.
4443008 Oh yeah... So Sunset Shimmer won't get a full-on read-and-review, though. I was just amusing myself by skimming it and seeing if my prediction of the ending would be right. And it was. :P
Aright, so "So Sunset Shimmer Doesn't Like Screwing Horses Now" manages to do a bit of didactic shouting at the audience while keeping it generally humorous and in-character--but by far the best part is the end. Both Sunset's big finish and especially Fluttershy. That broke the tension that had been built perfectly.
"Tries to Write" captured a feeling of frustration and circling around pretty well, being out of your depth, but in the end that's not what I tend to be looking for in a story. Didn't operate that well on a comedic level for me, unfortunately.
4443741
Dude, you are on point with the PH responses, do you stalk that fic regularly or something. c.c
4443836
Ya caught me. :V The "project horizons" story search is basically my FimFic homepage. Similarly, I've had OMPR continuously open since like 2012. Etc. Bookmarks are for people who have enough control over their lives to close tabs. x.x
But it's worth noting that back before the story was brought here, when it was still being published (even now, actually, but the place is basically dead), the PH forum thread was push-notify for any response, not just for when someone responded to one of your posts a la FimFic. So I got used to that, and basically kept that up after it did come here, especially after realizing the quirk where you wouldn't be notified of someone's response to one of your comments if the response was on a different chapter than the original comment.
4444202
I'm glad you realized that last bit. It only occurred to me, well, after I started reading PH. I have to wonder how many comment replies I've missed over the years. :/
4443741
I'm glad somebody figured out the main reason why I did that. I think it would've been quite awkward without that joke :p
If you liked how the Sunset story explored human sexuality (and I'm referring to PresentPerfect here as well), I would strongly recommend reading my other story on the subject, which basically drops the comedy and shows what would likely happen after Fluttershy said something like that. You may not quite like it, but I'd still be interested in what you thought.
The Sunset story was actually supposed to raise some interest for that one again, but things didn't quite work out like that :p
4445041
I checked out the other one and enjoyed it, but not as much as Sunset's. Some of that is that Fluttershy's is a fairly standard coming out scene, but with the move to a different orientation that fit as something which is still much more universally seen as taboo. But even with that, it's something I've seen plenty of times before (notably I remember someone [Bad Horse?] once joking that you can't have your twist be Braeburn coming out as gay; that's his whole thing). The implementation was fairly solid on the front end, and contra some of the commenters I do think that the roles were appropriately divvied up: AJ's the inflexible one; push come to shove, Rarity stands by her friends in the face of social pressure which could damage her longstanding goals, and has since Season Two at least. The consciousness of the attention it would draw to Fluttershy was a high point.
But the Princess Celestia thing struck me as both an unsatisfying deus ex machina and a diversion from the real point; whether Fluttershy is also attracted to other sapient species is kind of an orthogonal issue, and the use of the one to mitigate the perception of the other strikes me as somewhat wrongheaded. Especially so since apparently there was already a degree of acceptance of interspecies relationships. Granted, if Twilight managing the release of Celestia's history were a separate story rather than introduced as a relatively easy out for fixing Fluttershy's problem, it's something I would probably be interested in reading (perhaps with some tweaks to the premise, like a slightly more adversarial relationship with Equestria a la Estee--okay, not like that, but enough that doing so is a risk to Celestia as well--and without the "not as bad as expected" response to the pony-diamond dog relationship, so that the conflict is a bit higher-stake).
Anyway, the premise with "Sunset" had more inherent appeal to me. The idea of her friends suspecting her of holding scandalous desires which she doesn't--and supporting them--has a lot of dramatic and comedic potential that hasn't been done elsewhere. And the reasons why Sunset would not (or would) be attracted to horses in the human world make for more fertile ground for direct character work (as opposed to induced, as with how Fluttershy responds to coming out, being the face of a lifestyle...). There's more room for an author to work with reasons for a change across worlds, bodies, situations, that go into Sunset's sexuality, compared with the relatively static Fluttershy is attracted to animals, because that's her orientation.
As for the arguments related to ethics, abuse, consent... maybe I would have liked "Fluttershy" better if the arguments were ones I hadn't already been aware of and thought about. Again, they were delivered well, and the pieces fit who they came from. But they weren't new to me, and that's something of an anchor considering how much of a focus of the story they are.