It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #36 · 9:33pm Nov 24th, 2021
We're going to be taking a long dive into lesser known authors in December (and more on that next post), so before we go into that I think it's time to pull out some of the big guns.
Both of these stories are masterworks by highly skilled authors - and they also share the extremely uncommon narrative device that they're told in reverse chronological order.
The first - Raven by SaintChoc - was something I grabbed when I went "I should read all of the top-rated stuff on the site and get a real look at the biggest guns." It was going to be a fairly busy day at work, so I figured a nice little 6k piece should make for some light reading at lunch.
I was not prepared.
It begins at the end: Raven Inkwell serves tea to the Princesses - Celestia, Luna and Twilight. After Twilight comments that Raven looks tired, the aide takes a moment to look at herself in the mirror and finds a grey hair. A few minutes later, Celestia asks Raven if she's thinking about retiring. And Raven faithfully replies: "I will be with you as long as I am able."
The story that follows - or more aptly precedes - charts the course of Raven's service under Princess Celestia. And I'll say no more because I don't want to further spoil what's revealed.
Those of you who know my writing know I love a story that's built like Rainbow Dash: tight, compact, powerful, wasting no words to drive its proverbial knife into the reader's heart. This is one of the best examples of just that. Raven is an absolutely beautiful story that uses every syllable artfully to dig into the reader's emotions. It's hard to talk about what it does well without diminishing that impact - perhaps the best I can say is that there's a reason it's in the RCL and consistently ranks in the top ten stories on the site.
It is one of the tales that I hold up to myself as an example of what I strive for in my own writing. All in a deceptively tiny, innocuous package that catches you off-guard.
I normally would fret over who I pair something as powerful as Raven with. Fortunately, the other logical entry into this pairing is someone I know can hold their own. The Red Parade is an RCL author himself and a powerhouse of an author. His story - falling//in reverse - pairs wonderfully with Raven both thematically and in quality.
Similarly, it starts at the ending: two ponies looking at a painting that was picked up from a Manehatten flea market. They comment on the quality and muse aloud about where it might have come from and what stories it might be hiding.
The next chapter opens with Soarin standing over a grave.
Falling is quite similar structurally to Raven - both go backwards in time as the story advances, tracing things back to their origin. In this case, it's a tragic love story. But again, I don't want to go deeper because it's only 2533 words and I don't want to ruin things. Suffice it to say, this is Red Parade in prime form (even including a brief Fiddlesticks cameo!) and top tier emotional writing packed into a tiny word count. It's gone deep under people's radars - it's got 1300 fewer likes than Raven and is one of Red's least viewed pieces. But it's got a powerful quality to it and uses every one of those few words to get that across.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
Friggin' heck, I've read both of these already. Seconding that they are both, in fact, very good shit.
There was a pop song like 7 years ago that told its tale of losing love due to infidelity in reverse and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the band, only that they had a butterfly logo. I almost saw them at the Observatory in Santa Ana but was too depressed to make it out.
ahh, Raven is great :D
5610840
Well, would this help? It should at least give you a list of what bands played there during those years so you've got something to search through.
5610861
Probably, if I rememberThe name when I see it. I feel like there's probably a subreddit for this or something. Also I'm using voice to text in my phone is being slow and I'm driving so I'm not going to fix the errors
Oh, Raven is one of my all time favourites, heh