Fic recs, April 25th: Kaleidoscope edition! · 1:23pm Apr 25th, 2020
Back in November -- I know, I know, the Before Times were ages ago -- Fimfiction was inundated with a bizarre flood: multiple stories bearing the same cover art, image and -- if comments are to be believed -- description, though the latter would eventually be changed per story. I, for one, wanted to know what the heck was going on. The answer?
It was an event organized by the Quills and Sofas Writing Group, whose prompt was the title and cover image. From this sprang 15 unique stories (though many sources say 17; I have to imagine two were taken down), well polished if varying in quality, and only a few of which make direct reference to more than a few items in the collage.
Of course, people didn't much appreciate the flooding, so all these stories to a one have a fairly even green/red bar, which is a shame. That kind of thing drives away skittish readers, and many of these are quite worth reading. You can look below to find out which those are. :) Also a review milestone!
(I've done review blogs where all the stories are written by the same person, or read by the same Youtuber, but all having the exact same title? So I've just taken that bit out and put the author's name as the link.)
H: 3 R: 4 C: 4 V: 1 N: 2 I: 1
KrazyTheFox
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight and Rainbow enjoy their usual reading time, even on vacation.
This is a very easygoing piece about reading, and one other heretofore unknown facet of Rainbow Dash's character, and what it means to Dash and Twilight. This has a very pleasant setup, and overall I enjoyed the writing. Twilight, however, makes a poor show, first with an offhand mean comment to Dash, then later with an extreme overreaction. That bit is at least discussed by them, but between the two happenings, I felt Twilight wasn't written quite as well as she could have been, and it left a sour taste in my mouth.
Recommended If You Aren't Too Concerned About Character
Flashgen
Genre: Mystery/Shipping
At this year's Gala Masquerade, Twilight and her friends have a friendly wager.
This is marvelously creative. A masquerade ball with magical masks to hide everyone perfectly, and Twilight trying to figure out which of the attendees are her friends. Do note, the shipping doesn't happen until the very end, almost a non-event, but I got very shippy vibes off the whole thing and was quite pleased with how it panned out. :) I'm glad these aren't all going to be the same!
Highly Recommended
Silver Shadows
Review #6400!
Genre: After-School Special
Where to begin? The author obviously has no experience with alcohol or bar settings. Or hospitals. The writing is technically clean as a whistle, but structurally too fast, with characters jumping logic gates between paragraphs and major issues being glossed over. Speaking of which, I have never before now read a ponyfic that includes an underage pony threatening a bartender with reporting them to the police for having had sex with them — a lie — so they can get alcohol. For underage drinking. Quite honestly, the naked ploy to tug at the reader's heartstrings via a bog-standard "Derpy is a bad name" story is the least of this piece's issues. It just doesn't work, no matter how you slice it.
Not Recommended
Cloud Hop
Genre: Sci-Fi
As it stands, this piece is currently a single chapter, marked incomplete, that feels like the outline for a chapter or two of something much bigger. I'm talking Murder of Elrod Jameson levels here. You've got a bleak future setting, a homeless human just trying to get by, and into his terrible life comes a pirated AR app featuring one Twilight Sparkle. We only see snatches of the world around him, and time passes rather quickly across scene breaks, but if you ask me, this is totally worth keeping an eye on if the author decides to continue it. I really hope he does.
Incomplete
Mitch H
Genre: Historical Crossover
The painter was visited by a mare in his dreams, with a face he could not forget.
Funny, I'd literally just been wondering if anyone had written a serious crossover starring Hitler, and here we are. I'm glad it was someone good like Mitch H doing this, too. Because I mean… You can't just write a sympathetic piece about Adolf Hitler. You just can't. So this is a story about a frustrated artist suffering in the trenches of World War I, and also hey he's an anti-Semite and a massive hypocrite. The story is very clear about that last part very early on, and that's important, as is the highfalutin, epic imagery that cuts to the core of the inherent childishness that drove a bad artist to lead a crazed cult in burning half the goddamn world. Also there's some equation between Hitler and Nightmare Moon, for the people in the back. The writing in this is stellar, the subject matter is dangerous, no one ever do this again, one is all we need.
Highly Recommended
TheLegendaryBillCipher
Genre: Shipping
An author gets a special late-night visit.
Huh. I hadn't considered before that the princesses stepping down from their thrones changes the power dynamics with potential romantic interests. I will, however, consider that this story doesn't exactly approach its romance in the now. "Never before have I met somepony who appreciates my night" rings a lot more hollow after season nine, in other words; this felt like it could have taken place in season two if not one. Beyond that, the writing is good, though I was extremely miffed by a one-paragraph backstory drop for our OC protagonist early on. It was completely unnecessary, the rest of the story gives us a good picture of what she's like. And what she's like is filled with self-doubt, so this might feel a little on the nose for those of us who write. :/ Overall, I couldn't be satisfied with this, but as I said, the writing is good.
Recommended for Shippers Only
rainsilent
Genre: EQG OC Fic
Sunset promised she'd take me through the portal.
Yeah, this one's actually spelled "Kaleidescope", but we'll give the author benefit of the doubt here. So this is one of those stories where the point is that, by the end, the reader will have encyclopedic knowledge of everything the main character has done in their life. Whether or not the reader cares about the character is another issue. When this isn't focused on our unnamed protagonist, it's giving us painstaking, tedious detail of Twilight's castle from the inside, with only a hint of "I just got turned into a pony" new experiences. And the whole "we're pretending this is a date for some reason" plot setup isn't even explored in any meaningful way. The writing is typo-free — I'm beginning to suspect these were all heavily proofread before posting — but I found myself bored through the whole thing.
Not Recommended
Undome Tinwe
Genre: Human AU
Rarity goes to confession.
What a strange way to present this story. Rarity going to a church — in this world, the Catholic-seeming trappings are nevertheless focused on some sort of Goddess — to confess her sins to Twilight, used very well in her role as some kind of Mother Superior. Said sins include breaking into a royal vault, stealing valuables, and dispatching guards along the way. Like, I want to read that story! :O That said, I did like watching her flirt with Twilight through the bars, as it were, much to the latter's discomfort. This sketches out a really intriguing setting, and I can only hope the author writes about it again.
Recommended
_Moonshot
Genre: Historical
Celestia was not always as she is now.
So this was a challenge to write a story that changed scene with each paragraph. Turns out if you do that, you end up with a really confusing, dreamlike story. I applaud the effort however, and this is helped by being allowed to repeat scenes so the story can continue. That said, I kind of don't buy the depiction of Celestia's mother. I mean, that in particular stands out against the hospital (which I assume takes place now) and the scenes of epic battle. It just doesn't fit. And those looking for some kind of concrete answer about what's going on will likely leave this feeling unsatisfied. Still, it's got some cool shit, and the various disparate scenes do hang together, against all odds.
Recommended If You Enjoy Experimental Fiction
Syke Jr
Genre: Tragedy?
Canterlot's last church is about to be burned.
It's been a while since I said this and really meant it, but I don't get this. It introduces a number of large concepts without exploring any of them in detail, but the main omission, in my eyes, is what, exactly, religion means to ponies. There's a line in here that specifically rankled me, a pony musing that protesters outside the gates are "so wrapped up in progress [they] turn to the destruction of something beautiful." On the surface, it sounds like a plea for architecture preservation, which I can get behind, but churches also carry a symbolism beyond that. In our world, that can be connections to ecclesiastic excesses, holy wars, or systematic oppression. But in Equestria, what symbolism do they have? Why is anyone trying to take them down? There has to be some reason, but I could not glean it from the pages, and so am left with a mopey story complaining about secularism. The pins were not set before they were knocked down, so it's just conservatism for conservatism's sake.
Vaguely Recommended
Jay Bear v2
Genre: Slice of Life
Ocellus finds a secret hole in the old changeling hive.
I haven't read too many Student Six fics, but this one was pretty good. Ocellus is front and center, with a very creative reformed-changeling's-eye-view of what's going on around her. She can describe her friends' love, and the way it all moves, plus she knows the truth of the secrets they find. This wasn't deep, but it was definitely interesting, and written quite well.
Recommended
The Seer
Genre: Dark/Shipping
Whether they're real or not, Rarity's memories feel real.
You know, I rather despair at the ratings bars these stories have. That much red is going to turn most readers away unless they know why it's there, and that it has nothing to do with the content of the story. If you're one of the people who was downvoting these on principal, whether or not you read the stories, please consider going back and reconsidering them on their own merits, because you missed some great stuff like this. This is just… I have no words. It's art. Fantastic writing, fantastic concept. It will leave you with a sense of lingering melancholy and wonder. It approaches death in a completely new way. It's powerful and unique and makes great use of the low word count. I can't praise it enough.
Highly Recommended
AleaJactaEst
Genre: Changeling Fic
A lone spy enacts a plan to figure out why changelings are going missing from the hivemind.
So this was really something, a gripping thriller from start to finish that has a lot of simple but interesting ideas about changelings and how a hivemind. My one complaint is the ending; maybe the author will clear it up before I post this, but it felt incomplete, unspecific, the kind of cliffhanger you use to end a chapter so the reader will keep going to the next one. I won't say it ruins the story, though, and I think this is definitely worth the read. Maybe someone else can figure it out.
Recommended
TheDriderPony
Genre: Comedy
Once again, Derpy tries to run from her mistakes.
I love going through the first scene of this piece — very serious, with a lot of blood pacts and consorting with demons — and wondering just what is up with that Comedy tag. Then the reveal hits, and this is nothing but hilarity. :D A new take on an old trope is just what the doctor ordered.
Recommended
Zontan
Genre: Archaeological Mystery
Twilight is called to investigate a site related to the Pony of Shadows.
This was sadly a little too short to be meaty enough for a solid mystery, though it does present some interesting and fun bits of solving ancient puzzles. The writing is a little on the flat side, especially compared to the other stories in this event, and there's an entire scene with a drunk batpony that doesn't actually add much to the story and could probably have been excised in favor of more mystery.
Recommended If You Like Ancient Puzzles
It's a shame this didn't pan out. Heck, even while I was looking at some you recommended and I hadn't read, I had stop myself from closing the tab after looking at the thumb bar. Some of these stories really do deserve a fairer shake than they got. Still, I'm not sure what they expected. Not exactly the most enticing approach.
That’s a bit of a philosophical conundrum. For my part, my view is that the group chose to not just be storytellers, but stuntmen, and therefore the votes on the stories from the FiMFic user base are a perfectly valid way to express how much we appreciated, or didn’t, the stunt. The best stories ever written on FiMFiction might be among those 17 stories, but the group elected to post them in a way that was guaranteed to inspire vitriol. At the end of the day, the image and descriptions of stories are essentially the marketing campaign for your story. And the marketing campaign for these stories was pretty clearly, even if not intentionally, “get these other non-Q&S stories out of the way and come read OUR stories”.
Some of the group seems to have thought it was a bad idea but went along with the rest of the group anyway. Others seemed to know the negative response that was going to happen but nevertheless posted it because they looked forward to that result. Still others seem to have been blindsided because they just didn’t think about the optics of what they were doing. At least a few of the people I talked to stated outright that they didn’t care what the folks on FiMFic thought at all, expressing frank apathy or disregard. Some were a mix of two or three or all four of these.
Ultimately, though, the group seems to have realized overall, if not necessarily on an individual level, that the whole thing was a mistake, and learned that things that sound like a good idea among a small group of friends don’t necessarily hold up when exposed on a broader front. To date I’ve only read one of the Kaleidoscope stories, the one by Rainsilent. He (she?) was the first one who admit that a mistake may have been made and expressed that he (she?) could understand the negative response the stories were getting even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it. He (she?) expressed empathy.
As for the rest...well, damage has been done. It’s not something I hold against any of them; we all make mistakes. Hell, pull up a chair, I’ll tell you a tale or two of my own. I’ll absolutely read and have read and will continue to read other stories by the Kaleidoscope authors and Quills & Sofas regularly puts out stories that I enjoy. But I’m not going to be peering into the Kaleidoscope any time soon.
Can confirm: at least one story was taken down—one participant, Winternacht, got so annoyed by the backlash (apparently, they were German and thus received a lot of undeserved harassment for the Hitler fic that they didn't even write) that they deleted all of their stories from the site. Quite a shame, too—I didn't read their entry into the Kaleidoscope, but their other work seemed pretty promising.
That whole thing was kinda a mess. At least most of the stories were actually pretty good.
5249954
My take on it is, the damage has been done. The downvote brigade assuredly kept any of these stories from gaining the featurebox or any other notoriety, but the time for such has passed, why not give them fair shakes now? They obviously aren't all worthy of pure praise.
5249956
Wow, shit. That's not okay. :|
The long descriptions are different, but the short ones remain the same (a big part of the downvote storm, I think, as that's all that was shown in the New Stories column) - I believe it was a stipulation of the exercise that they all have the short description "Inspiration is a strange thing. There's no predicting where it comes from, nor where it can take you."
5249980
Oooh, that would make sense. :O I'm surprised that was allowed, honestly.
Thank you for the very kind review mate I sincerely appreciate it. Its really heartening to hear you liked the piece!
More than that, though, thank you for reviewing the set! We have so many talented artists over on the server and it was saddening that what was always intended as a fun and exciting little curiosity turned out as things did.
And, if these reviews and stories have piqued anyones interest, please feel free to join us at Quills and Sofas! Whether you want to participate in the contests or just chill out, everyone's welcome!
Thanks again, Present! :D
Thank you for reviewing my entry. I apologize profusely that you read it though. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone myself.
The story was a challenge with two stipulations. The challenge was to be as descriptive as possible with an emphasis on the environment. The stipulations were only two characters and no dialogue. Knowing it was a challenge I decided to get quite experimental with it. It was never going to be a quality story of any real measure as a result of how much experimentation that I put into it. It really didn't help that I had a hard cap of 2,500 words and I decided to remove what would have been key story parts for a lot of unnecessary descriptions of The Castle of Friendship.
Appreciate the review Present, and for taking a look at all of the entries. I think if there hadn't been a word count to be concerned about, I would have made it a bit longer and with some more ship tease before the end, but I'm glad it turned out well enough.
As 5249954 says, though, it really wasn't a sensible thing to do on a large public site like Fimfiction, most of whose users had no idea about the contest. It did come across as a "Look at me!" stunt, and frankly I can't find it in myself to criticise the downvote-on-principle people on this one occasion. (To be clear, I wasn't one of them.) I think making all the fics look basically identical was unfair on site users and just plain obnoxious, even if that was diluted a bit later with the descriptions.
That said, reading down the list here has still given me a couple of extra stories for my RiL list. I'm not going to hold this against the authors or their stories now, when considered individually. There are some very fine writers in there, and some of the fics look fascinating. But I'm adding them in spite of the way they appeared, not because of it.
5249985
5250018
I mean, looking at a few of the early comments - and this illustrates the capricious nature of Fimfiction votes in general, I guess! - it seems more than one reader mistook this stunt for either a site glitch, or a user spamming the same story multiple times using a bunch of alts, and mashed the red arrow accordingly.
The contest folder gives a fair approximation of the sight that greeted visitors that day.
(and yes, thank you to PP for digging in and giving this overview - some of these sound really fascinating!)
This themed review blog was a good Idea. I think it's the only way most of these stories will get any appreciation.
5250018
The extra-fun thing about this debacle was the doubling-down of some of the participants when the general reaction was bad.
5250052
Yeah... combine that with RainbowDoubleDash's comments about people's reactions and it doesn't paint a very pretty picture. It's the group that apparently "didn’t care what the folks on FiMFic thought at all, expressing frank apathy or disregard" that I find the most unimpressive -- that attitude reminds somewhat of those who've Left The Fandom but still love to come back and tell us how stupid we are to like MLP.
The rest, though? It was a misjudgement, and we all make those. No problem there. I know I've made plenty. Since I don't know who the authors were who (apparently) no longer give a damn about Fimfiction or, by extension, its users, I have a choice of either blacklisting every story here to make sure I cover those, or blacklisting none of them. I don't want to do the former, so the latter it is.
5250076
Honestly, I have nothing but respect for people who are able to sheepishly say, "Well, that worked out a lot better in my head."* It's certainly better than, "You peasants are unable to appreciate my Obvious Genius tm!!!"
-------------------
*And I think that includes the majority of the Kaleidoscope authors.
5250123
The thing is that I encountered no small number of the latter during the whole Kaleidoscope thing too. And to be honest...well, look at The Seer's post up above.
We have so many talented artists over on the server and it was saddening that what was always intended as a fun and exciting little curiosity turned out as things did.
A person could easily read this as "it was just a joke" and not be wrong for doing so. The phrasing definitely makes it come across as though the FiMFic user base carries the onus of the blame for how things went down. It's sad that we didn't get what the talented people at Quills & Sofas meant as fun. This was definitely a prevalent attitude at the time, as well, to the point where if I recall correctly even Wanderer D commented on it, and he was largely on their side in the whole debacle.
(Which was a whole other layer of problems, the fact that Wanderer D gleefully was looking forward to the site's reaction to the Kaleidoscope, completely disregarding the legitimacy of the feelings of the FiMFic user base at large).
But I will admit that I'm coming into this with a degree of bias, as certain of the Q&S members took the opportunity to renew some drama between me and them even though the Kaleidoscope was entirely unrelated to that drama.
And also I'll admit that my own reaction to the situation (to respond to each Kaleidoscope story with distinct posts but the same overall message, on the idea that turnabout is fair play) was also visceral and poorly thought out and wrong. I'm not blameless in this. No one is blameless in this. But I've seen precious little assumption of their fair share of the blame from Qills & Sofas. Most of it roughly echos The Seer.
To paraphrase "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari", they're not sorry for what they did, they're sorry that they got caught. Or at least that's the impression that I was left with.
5250076
Heh, in one of the many MLP Discord chats a couple years ago, someone came in saying he hadn't watched the show in several seasons now, and the latest episode was garbage. I remarked that it was probably a bad idea for someone to wander into a community of show fans and complain that something he hadn't even seen was terrible. I promptly got lambasted by someone else I won't name (but shouldn't be too hard to figure out, if you think about it) for not letting people be free to think whatever they want.
5250198
Have to admit I'm curious if you can recall which episode.
I dunno, Reality Check? I wasn't really a part of the larger FiMFiction community until recently.
5250223
I don't remember which episode. It was probably season 7, but the larger point was that the person was going to call everything garbage on principle without even watching it. It wasn't Reality Check, but it is someone whose mere mention tends to start drama, and I'd rather keep that out of here.
5250229
Fair enough. I've caused enough needless drama in my life, no need to actively search for more.
For my part I actually barely remember most of Season 7, or at least I find it hard to distinguish episodes in it from previous seasons. I have a funny feeling that a lot of episodes that I really like are actually in Season 7 and yet I can't remember them as being Season 7 episodes. The whole season just slips right under my radar somehow.
Well, except "To Change a Changeling", I know that's Season 7, but that's because Thorax is my favorite character in the show so of course I know the one where his brother was introduced.
5249993
The really odd thing about how you approached that personal challenge -- which, by the way, good on you, taking on an extra challenge in a writing event like this -- is that you specifically drew attention to Sunset not talking. Like, she could have simply said nothing, you could have described any dialogue in short, vague terms, but instead it's specifically laid out that she wasn't going to talk to the main character. And that just struck me as a strange choice to make.
5250006
Yeah, a few of these could have benefited from a few more words.
Thanks for the review! I got the rating I pretty much expected. It's not my best work, but I wanted to try writing a mystery because it was something I hadn't done before.
I'm super glad to see this blog materialize, because I remember you expressing interest in them when they first went up, and that was hard to miss when so many people were just blindly downvoting them. I had a lot of fun writing mine, and I know so did everybody else, so I hope this brings them some of the recognition they deserve.
(Mostly Seer's, not mine, but still)
5250260
There was a reason for it. You never got to see it, unfortunately.
I had intended to play with that in the story via the two of them going on something of a scavenger hunt. The two characters trying to complete a scavenger hunt without talking sounded like a really fun thing to write. I wanted to make it clear why they weren't talking in advance to avoid issues for the reader. That was the first way to do that that came to my mind and I just went with it. Obviously I cut the related content. It didn't make sense to keep that in either however, I felt that keeping it was the better option with the time that I had left rather than rewriting the required part. I had what may have been a respectable story in mind and I threw it away in the name of
poor decision makingexperimentation with a challenge.Thanks for the blog and for giving the stories a chance! I swear one day I'll push past the conditional recommendation
My story was super challenging to write, and I believe I described it as a "fever dream" once it was done, so I am totally okay with this review. I suppose my intent in including Celestia's mother was to have some early event on the timeline where she could stand up for herself, and blur the lines between past and present regarding what Celestia could change. I wasn't quite sure how understandable the entire thing would be once I finished, so any concerns brought up are totally understandable.
I appreciate all the interesting points brought up regarding the fics. Some of them were noticed during the actual voting, and some were not -- makes me wonder what biases the speedwriting group as a whole might have compared to you, or a general audience.
Thank you, for this blog and for the kind words
And about my story, yeah, as I said, the ending was a bit of a rush job, but even more importantly, a consequence of poor story-planning overall. The entire plot is, frankly, but at least it serves it's purpose well enough.