Fic recs, February 21st! · 10:16pm Feb 21st, 2021
In case you were a part of the recent call for help, it went well. Feel good. :)
Slight change of plans from what I said last time. I quickly gave up on that longfic, and also FOME came through on his threat to write another OW story, so I'm just gonna go back to audiobooks, and then a new fic reader after that. :B Though I don't look forward to the next edition I'll be doing, more on that later.
For now, six fics with a crazy bell curve.
H: 2 R: 0 C: 2 V: 0 N: 2
Future Congestive by FanOfMostEverything
Genre: Oversaturated World Comedy
Even sneezes can be magical.
This is a surprisingly light piece for the OW AU. Mostly just a short, slice of life-y comedy about Sweetie getting sick and Rarity fussing over her. This is, of course, coupled with revelations about what, exactly, getting a simple cold can entail in the Oversaturated World, which was amusing. Though I must say, this series focuses so much on the Humane Seven, I kind of forgot the CMCs had any kind of special abilities, and so was rather miffed when Nurse Redheart was all like, oh, yeah, it's your future sight that's the problem. Like, c'mon, at least pretend to act surprised, I am! :| Anyway, doesn't have a lot of appeal outside of the niche of avid AU readers.
Recommended for Oversaturated World Fans
Where There Is Smoke by Fizzy Orange
Genre: Lunaverse Action/Comedy
The Tyrant Sun may have been defeated, but she hasn't been idle. Her newest plot to wreak havoc among the moon-loving subjects of Equestria: unleash the phoenix!
Likely the last Lunaverse story I'll be reading for a while, as the next one is 60k. :B Time to Lunafy A Bird in the Hoof! I appreciate this piece for a number of reasons. Firstly, no one's used Corona in a major role since the reworked pilot, so it's good to see what she's up to. I was amused to note that Spike is sort of returned to his G1 roots, with Corona as Tirek and Zecora as Scorpan. Also, at the end of Fizzy Orange's last story, Trixie had gotten herself an assistant in the form of Pokey Pierce, who here takes a major role and ends up being quite the character! I also like the danger inherent in using Philomena as an instigator. In this piece, whenever she gets ashed, she comes back larger, stronger and usually angrier, so things keep spiralling out of control. Granted, this ends up with the author writing themselves into a corner, but Luna's solution to the phoenix problem was so unexpectedly hilarious, I felt forgiving of the deus ex machina. :) That said, there are some issues, starting with the writing. Apparently, the author's normal editor wasn't available, and it shows in many ways. This fails the Zecora Test. A secondary plot about a royal auditor coming to see whether the insurance claims coming from Ponyville are legit is… not that interesting, admittedly, but it's okay. However, it's stretched further by a tertiary plot about Prince Blueblood trying to blackmail Trixie, which never really goes anywhere. (Also, apparently he is not the same character as Viscount Blueblood, which was news to me.) So while a bit of a mess, this is still fun, and furthermore takes some big strides moving the major pieces of the Lunaverse around in ways I've not really seen done since the primary stories.
Recommended If You Can Deal With Editing Problems
Things Better Left Unseen by Take
Genre: Shipping Comedy
Twilight's made a device to see into other worlds.
Pretty sure I found this author's sole story by searching for my usual internet moniker. And, well, this is what I get for randomly reading things by authors because I like their name. <.< The story's main conceit is something I just couldn't get into. Like, yes, it's funny because it's a very roundabout "Rainbow Dash gets all the mares" joke, and there's the Kitchen Sink reference, and watching the mane six be kind of weirded out that one of their friends might be involved with them in another world. But the longer it went on, the more I got the sense that this was really a "shipping is gross" kind of story, and it stopped being fun. Though the real killer is the Cupcakes reference. :/ It's honestly okay other than that, but no thanks.
Not Recommended
Breaking the Ice by Krickis
Sequel to Looking Glass
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: EQG Drama
It's been five years of not bringing up the worst thing that ever happened to them, and it's high time Sunset did something to make it up to Applejack.
Well, here's at least one more Who We Become story I can read quickly. :) This spins off of one of the more dramatic moments of Looking Glass, and you'll absolutely want to have read that story first. Apart from it being excellent in its own regard, you'll also be rewarded by reading this sequel now! Because damn. In the same way that Inner Strength was the kind of shipfic I've always wanted to read, this is the kind of story about friendship that I've always wanted to read. 'Cuz, like, you know how friendship is magic and all? You know how that's, like, the founding principle of this show that brought us all together? Yeah, far too few stories really focus on it, and when they do? They tend not to make it as important as this one does. The message here is really that, while friendship may be magic, it's not easy. Really, it's just like any relationship. We get to see the Humane Five in Sunsetless moments contemplating just how weird it is to be friends with her now, and that's not something I see often. But the centerpiece is Sunset's relationship to Applejack, which has a longer history than any of the other girls, and it goes some surprising places here. Like, by now you're probably going, "Oh, what, Krickis wrote another amazing story? Tell me something I don't know." But yeah, Krickis wrote another amazing story. :) Can't wait to have a chance to get to the rest.
Highly Recommended
Open Up Your Eyes by Pascoite
Genre: Slice of Life
One Hearth's Warming, Princess Twilight suggests Sweetie Belle help Tempest Shadow get back in touch with her foalhood.
I have to be honest, the sheer amount of rhyme and alliteration in this story had me scratching my head at first, but somehow? It's actually the entire point. Why not have as much fun as possible writing a story? Who says it has to be written a certain way? And so it goes with Tempest as she tries her best to remember what it was like to see the world with a foal's wonder. It's just such a clever way to supplement the story's message, as we get inside the head of a pony trying to figure herself out (and really, recover from trauma). I think this was real good.
Highly Recommended
Bros in Equestria by Mandroid
Suggested by StardustSurvivor for being my 888th follower
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: 2P HiE
Two bros end up in Equestria and try to get home.
Here it is, friends: The last of these old, old, old promised reviews. And this is the one that broke me. :( I always tried to read these stories all the way through, but I knew I wasn't going to like this one before I started, and I was absolutely right. Barely are we told that our main characters share an apartment before said apartment is launched to Equestria to run us through every first encounter trope you would expect from an HiE. The only thing this does to distinguish itself from so many other similar stories is have two main characters, but that doesn't change the fact that they are both boring, bland blank slates. (Thankfully, "Anon" and "Mous" are names they give themselves so they don't have to reveal their actual names. One wonder why that was necessary.) The writing also leaves much to be desired. The point at which I knew my preconceptions were correct was when Fluttershy asked the pair of humans what kind of animal they were literal minutes after Rainbow Dash had asked the exact same question and gotten the same answer, and no one noticed. No, I didn't stay long enough to discover what sorts of developments might happen, but I also didn't care, especially not when Celestia asks Mous if he likes bananas. It was that and the revelation that ponies have TV that really killed it for me. What lazy world-building, really! The whole time, I just kept asking myself, did I really want to read over 100 chapters of this? (God, how are there over 100 chapters of this?) And the whole time, the answer vacillated between "no" and "very no".
DNF: 4/102
You have no idea what Redheart has been through in the last few months. In any case, rest assured that I probably won't have another OW story in the pipeline for some time.
... though I could always go into just what left her so jaded by flu season...
Dang, I'm very flattered to receive another review, and such a positive one at that! It makes me just a little sad that this is the last WWB story you're likely to read any time soon, since the next story, Playing House, is extremely long (off the top of my head it's 270k I think). And when the speed I'm going on the audiobooks, it's not looking likely that that'll happen any time soon
5458626
yeeeep :B
I would exhort you to continue writing shorter stories, but that does not seem to be a thing that can happen. :V
5458629
I actually do write a fair amount of shorter WWB stories, but yeah, you've gotta read through novels to get to them.
I actually just wrote a WWB oneshot earlier this week. Dunno when it'll be published because I'm currently unable to get cover art, but for you, you've got 586,326 words to read before getting to said one shot
As for non-WWB stories, I have a few shorter ones you haven't read. Flower Crowns and Dinner Dates is a fluffshot, and honestly nothing special, but not a bad story imo. Side by Side is a oneshot and much better than Flower Crowns. Heart of the Forest is pushing it to claim it's shorter because it's 50k but deer god I wish more people would read this story it's my least popular despite being one of my faves
In Quiet Moments is another fluff fic, but this time it's everything a fluff fic should be and is one of the stories I'm most proud of. And Great and Powerful, Darling! is honestly my favorite title, like, ever, and a decent fic too lmao.
</shameless_self_promotion>
Looks the last eighteen were “bonus” chapters, the last-of-the-last breaking 18k words, or about 7% of the total words. Like you, I DNF, but only after two.
Haha, by now you should automatically assuming alliteration and rhymes when you see a Jinglemas story from me. I've done that in all 5 of them, though I think this may only be the 3rd one you've read.
I have to admit here that my first thought on seeing that title was that it would be about Bros in Equestria. Okay, that would be RPF and I don't like RPF as a rule, but I'd probably read that one ahead of the one you actually got.
5458680
I might be the only American on this site who had the same thought upon seeing that title. XD
I clicked on Bros just to get a closer look and noped out the second I saw the note in the description about there being lots of embedded YouTube links for songs to “set the mood.” Clearly I’m too old and set my ways to review stories...
5458680
My awful, awful brain saw that and I flashed on Venture Bros in Equestria... and I strongly suspect I would read a story like that.
5458695
In four chapters, I don't think I found one, either.
TTS would've really shat itself if I had, I suspect. :B
5458869
If there isn’t at least one meta “can’t be read by TTS” story (that’s still an actual story) on this site I’ll be very disappointed.
5458904
You don't have to be meta to come up with a story TTS can't deal with. :B
What's been on my mind for a while now is writing a story where TTS reads every word flawlessly, meaning the whole thing is a jumble of misspellings and homonyms. I mean, it can't even say "mares" or "manes" properly, we're talking some real dire hoop-jumping here.