Fic recs, March 12th: G5 Bingo edition! · 2:49pm Mar 12th, 2022
As part of the Generation 5 Bingo Writing Contest, I promised I'd review the winners, and they've finally been release, so here we are! :D I organized them in order from bottom to top vis-a-vis the official rankings.
H: 1 R: 3 C: 1 V: 0 N: 0
Memento by Regidar
Genre: Drama
Hitch Trailblazer meets a chimera.
I can't explain why, but I found myself thoroughly engrossed by this story. Maybe it was just the idea that chimeras can live long enough to span franchise generations. Maybe it was trying to figure out if this was the one we saw in Somepony to Watch Over Me, or if that was the mother she spoke of. Whatever it was, this has solid dialogue and makes its point without ever really stating it, just by drawing parallels between characters. Good stuff!
Recommended
The Once and Future Nuisance by FanOfMostEverything
Genre: Adventure
Sugar Morning gets caught up in Sunny Starscout's latest trip into Equestria's deep past.
Yaknow, if not for the cover art, I wouldn't have even known there was a pony named Sugar Morning in the movie. And yet she's got a character tag and five stories with it on the site already? c.c Okay. So this is a neat little adventure linking one portion of G4 to G5. (Considering what the bingo prompts are like, I suspect that will be a running theme.) I definitely didn't see where the reveal was going to lead, and the very end is really cool. Before that, we get a strong link between Sunny and Sugar, which I appreciated. If nothing else, it really drives home what a small and insular community Maritime Bay used to be. I'll admit I had a little trouble paying attention, maybe my medication's starting to wear off, who knows. But this was good, surprising world-building no matter how you slice it.
Recommended
A Parent's Love by Yukito
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: Shipping/Drama/Mystery
Two months after the restoration of magic, Sunny's father miraculously returns from the dead. And that's just the start of her problems.
Word to the wise, don't look at the bingo prompt for this one, because it's a huge spoiler! And yet, even going in knowing what the big reveal was going to be, what happened after that reveal really caught me off guard in a good way. This is a great concept for a G5 fic, and while it starts off rather blatantly summing up the events of the movie, it's helped along in a huge way by excellent character writing. I mean, I've only seen the movie once. I think? I haven't watched it since it came out, is my point, and despite this, I could hear the characters clearly. This is especially true of Izzy, which is good, since she's our main character. I will say, the shipping is just kind of dropped in there at the start, almost as if it's a given, but I can kind of forgive that since it's so intrinsic to the plot. I would definitely like to see this story develop into an AU. :)
Recommended
Lämp by ChibiRenamon
Genre: Comedy
When Sprout is approached by two strange-looking ponies, it soon becomes apparent that he is the one who will have to save ponykind from another calamity. Unfortunately.
Wow! This was a fantastic comedy that went nowhere I ever expected. I mean, considering all the other stories in this contest, crystal ponies showing up in Maretime Bay isn't all that surprising, right? But you'll never guess just what these crystal ponies are like. Never. And I'll admit, the Ikea jokes went right over my head, but just knowing they were meant to be Ikea jokes was enough for me. All in all, this was hilarious and I had such a great time with it!
Highly Recommended
Magic and Memory by Summer Knight
Genre: Adventure/Drama
A lonely batpony's life turns upside-down when she discovers a strange creature in the woods. And that's not even including magic returning to the world!
Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, an author comes out with "nobat" and "anybat". >.< Way to make me hate a story in the first two sentences. I kid (mostly), and my good graces were quickly regained when our two main characters meet and find they have a linguistic disconnect, namely between Latin and… 'yeet'. I'm not kidding. That's the funniest thing I've read all year. Too bad this wasn't a comedy, I could have gone with more of that. :) That said, the idea behind this, of Grogar waking up with amnesia in G5, is fantastic. (Also, it's based off a tiny background detail from the movie, which just makes it better!) But the execution? Not so much. I guess this contest had a 10k word limit, and you can really feel it here. I'd almost say it was a mistake to try turning this idea into an entry for this contest; I don't even think 15k would have been enough to do this justice, and the result is rushed and cramped. This undercuts things like the batpony actually developing a friendship with Grogar. I mean, there's one chapter where she goes from yelling at him to defending him across a scene break. Abrupt shifts like that do it no favors, making it hard to really grasp the characters' motivations. And while the idea of switching POV over each scene was a good one, again sometimes it feels like a character has almost nothing to say to drive the story forward. Though I will add, I felt like Grogar was written excellently, at least if we can assume Discord was doing a pitch-perfect Grogar impression in season 9, and why wouldn't we? So yeah, if this were rewritten with more room to breathe, I think it would be an excellent adventure, but as it is? More a solid proof of concept than anything.
Recommended If You Aren't Turned Off By Fast Pacing
ooh, happy blog #2424, very satisfying :O
I agree. It should've been 'nobatty' and 'anybatty'.
That aside, A Parent's Love sounds intriguing. I'm gonna check it out.
Not how I'd expect "I wasn't on enough drugs to fully appreciate this story," but I'll take it.
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Leave this instant-
Huh, the biggest surprise here is that the contest only got 5 entries. Previous ones were much larger. Oh, wait, there were 31 in the contest folder. This is just you delivering the promised reviews of the winners.
And odd that FoME's story uses Sugar Morning while the character tag is Sugar Moonlight. Or was that a typo? I didn't click into the story to see what she's actually called in it. I didn't know she had a name either, though admittedly I retain few names from the movie beyond the 7 or 8 main characters. That's what the series is for!
Super
that I barely missed the cut. (I don't care about the reviews, I just want to force you and Paul to read what I write.)
But the production of good stories is a
definitely.
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You know how changeling fic writers will use 'everyling', etc.? I have come to realize that it should properly be 'everychangeling', because 'everypony' has the same cadence. :V
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Eh, I might have gotten it wrong. It surprised me, though, just how many random G5 ponies have tags already.
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EVERYBUGGY.
Wait... have you not read Motherly or Veneer? I think those might be the only stories where I use the term.
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I think they're often reading what you write anyway...
Grats to all the winners!
Glad that Arcelia pulled out a Judge's Choice too
I'm glad you liked it! Most people seem to really dig the atmosphere of the story, and that's really what it is at its core—an atmospheric piece that's just trying to get its readers immersed in the mood/vibe/energy/whathaveyou presented. Things don't so much as "happen" in my works as characters pontificate on setting and deeplore infodumps while in meticulously painted Super Cool™ backdrops.
This prompt was actually quite convenient for me because I was planning on writing a story about aeons-old chimeras before I even entered the contest. There'll be a fic of mine that answers this question coming down the pipeline sometime soon so expect it by the end of the 20s
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woot :D