A Discussion About Free Speech and the Rise of Nazi Hysteria · 4:43am Jul 22nd, 2020

I lied. It’s clickbait. It’s really Fanfiction Reading Update #180. There’s enough political shit and wanting to start civil wars in everyone else’s blog posts. Go read theirs or Knighty’s, which started all this, if you want to dive into what will eat the next six months of this site’s life. I, meanwhile, will talk about horse words one last time before the partisans knock down my front door.

Rites of Ascension kicks off its next story arc, this time set in Manehattan. It’s theme is evidently changelings and mob warfare, so it’ll certainly be a change of pace. Oh, and Dash had a brain aneurysm. The suddenness of it was equally matched by how quickly it was dealt with. No idea why it happened other than to take her out of the next story arc.

The First Amendment only applies to Possibly Trackings.

Watching the Watchers is tracked for being a “Federation fucks up first contact” fic. Though I wish there wasn’t so much fucking magibabble in the thing. Sometimes, it felt like I was reading the MLP Technical Manual. I also wish the Federation scientists weren’t so incompetent that they spent weeks not realizing Equestria was on to them.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting Oneshots in a theatre and causing a panic.

And I Would Live in Stone takes us on another trek into the “what happens to the Trio after they’re stoned?” plot. And the answer is the unstoppable alicorn meets the immovable changeling. A nice little character piece on Chrysalis. And, as is typical for these oneshots, the comment section immediately turns into a torture vs death penalty ethics debate.

The Phoenix Festival takes a dive into the little utilized spooky mystery genre. In this case, it’s a Cadance “Who Wants to Live Forever?” plot that’s reminiscent of Together Forever, only with Celestia fully on board this time.

The fact it’s a oneshot hurts the story as it make sit feel rushed. You’re not able to savor the spookiness or the increasing dread because it’s already moving on the to next scene. The ending is also lackluster and really drains away the horror and dread that’s a hallmark of the genre. Far from some horrible forbidden dark magic ritual powered by an orphan, the reveal shows Cadance used… a weird ethically quandrious euthanasia device that Shining’s happy to go along with.

I cut myself on the edge of Magic will never die. Seriously, though, it’s a really baffling story. I guess it’s supposed to be a “Who Wants to Live Forever” Twilicorn goes insane fic but it’s so philosophically dry. There’s no emotion behind Twilight’s insanity, just her killing Celestia as she babbles about abstract concepts.

Every Five Hundred Years Twilight decides to potentially cripple Equestria by wiping her memories of the last five hundred years. Let’s hope an ancient evil or foreign power doesn’t decide to take advantage of the chaos. I’m also really wondering what that’s supposed to accomplish from a mental health perspective given the “Who Wants to Live Forever” stuff probably sets in after the first two centuries or so.

The Boopening is a disgustingly obscene piece of trash written by a person with utterly vile and disturbing fantasies. The first part of that sentence is a joke, as the classically absurdist premise of “boop rape” demonstrates in a pretty by-the-books parody. The second… well, just don’t look at his story page.

The word Deadfics has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”.

I discover several months late that Hands, one of the early HiE parodies, has been canceled. Kind of sad given it spurted back to life last year after a long stay in limbo. It’s apparently being rebooted, but reboots almost always have a foot in the grave from the start.

And that's all the fanfics I read for the week.

# of story updates remaining: 535.

# of “Read Later” stories remaining: 1,205.