It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #60 · 6:36pm May 11th, 2022
It's been a little bit since a new author focus, and I just happen to have two on my list! So that works out nicely.
The lower-rated of the two would be Sweet Sentimentalist. The author - Dawn Leaper - has most of her stories focused around the SoarinDash series of His Other Half, but I prefer this one.
The story starts with Rarity's first memories of love: an aunt's wedding and her budding dreams of love and handsome princess and beautiful dresses. It moves forward a step at a time along her journey of love: from first crush to high school popularity to watching friends be married to her heart growing more lonely each year. It's an interesting third-person introspective as Rarity - the beautiful, the stylish, the romantic's romantic - confronts her inability to actually find love.
I really do love this particular understated aspect of Rarity's character: she's the one of the crew to pursue love the hardest, and yet the one with the worst luck in it. This story's great about how it leans into that beat, giving a good long look across her life at it. It puts it into wonderful context without dwelling on the show's events and it really makes you feel for poor Rarity.
It's a character deep dive while still being relatively understated. That's tough to do, but Dawn Leaper pulls it off quite well.
Plus the ending brings a smile to my face. But that's the romantic in me.
The Mature rated entry today is a bit more of a question mark. The author - LiberatedGirl - is someone's alt but I have no idea who's. Still, that's new enough to count for me! (Seriously, I don't know who the other you is but please write more.)
The story in question would be Comfort - a story that's mature in rating and in topic, though I would say not in content.
And it's the topic that really makes this story: Octavia and Vinyl are dating. They're in bed. And Octavia is wrestling with mixed feelings. She loves Vinyl - but she's not ready for sex.
That's why I love this story. It's such a simple problem and one that's damn relatable, but it's also a really tough subject. It's something that there's a lot of social pressure to - after all, you love someone, the sex just comes with it, right? That's how society says it works! Romances end with impassioned kissing and clothes being ripped off - or at least a fade to black. But it isn't true for everyone and every relationship, and this story confronts it head on.
It's also so damn honest and pure along the way. Vinyl is a damn angel - understanding and supportive, even if you can tell she'd rock Tavi's world in a goddamn second if asked. And poor Octavia wrestles with those social pressures and her own self-doubts in a way that I figure nearly all of us can understand.
And - like the other story this week - it ends on a wonderfully sweet note that gives me the warm fuzzies.
Also I really just love the line:
I’m beginning to realize that love is an improvised piece.
Goddamn that's art.
[Adult story embed hidden]
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wow, a serious story about unease with sex? :O I never thought I'd see the like!
I mean, I wrote one, but it was a comedy, so... :B