It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #102 · 11:34pm Mar 1st, 2023
So back at #100, I mentioned there were stories I waffled back and forth on if they were 'too popular' to bring up and gush about. And bluntly, today's blog is pretty centered on two of the prime offenders for that attitude. Because they're both beautiful romances that are way popular, but I can't really talk about my favorite stories without mentioning them.
Now for the first of them, it's a bit of a crackship. This pairing only has thirteen romance stories site-wide, but ten just happen to include the pairing in a larger cast and another one is a sidestory/sequel. So really, there's only two stories of this pair and both are in the 1,000+ like club. And while the other is still quite good and a great read, the top still belongs to Rune Soldier Dan's The Blueblood Chronicles.
The story initially starts with Prince Blueblood starting a diary. It mostly establishes who he is: a cork-horned flankhole, albeit one with more depth than the canon one. He talks about his purposely frustrating gold-diggers who come after him just because he's a prince; his cohorts in the Egalitarian Equestrians charity organization; the still uneasy relationship with his newly returned Aunt Luna; the fond mothering of Princess Celestia; and so on. It's at the last's insistence that he 'get out more'. So he sets off to Ponyville, planning to set up a branch of the E.E. there and expand the charity's reach outside of Canterlot. Arriving in an unconvincing disguise, he has several meetings - most of which go less than perfectly - before fate literally falls from the sky. Derpy - Ponyville's resident cross-eyed mare - makes a bad landing during a storm and is saved by Blueblood carrying her to safety. When she abruptly hugs him the next day as thanks... well, something clicks. After all, she's the first pony to ever thank him without any expectation of personal gain.
So this was one of the earliest romances I read on the site, and to this day it remains one of my absolute favorites. The first couple of chapters are a little slow - one has to set the scene and build, after all - but it progresses quickly into downright adorable. Chapter 8 is peak for that - Blueblood's invitation to the ball is just hands-down a prize of a scene. Not that the climax in Chapter 9 is a slouch, mind you. (And the epilogue is teeth-rotting sweet.)
And that leads into my next thing I love about this: one of Fleur's lines is a great summary of one of this story's strengths.
“I think, Mon Cheri, that Blueblood is a stallion of two natures. He is very kind, but very rude. These two parts of his being have traveled so far apart that they have met on the other side of the globe, at their greatest extremes. Lady Celestia help any who stand in his way.”
Because this is a damn near perfect demonstration of how to write a protagonist who's a complete jerk but still likable. Blueblood in this is a thoughtless idiot, a rich prat, and somehow also a noble hero at the same time. His interplay with Rarity in particular is great, but Blueblood's just perfect throughout.
Plus, "Cake at now" makes me burst out laughing every single time.
And then, of course, if I'm going to talk high-rated romance - and stories that are 'must read' - I must predictably talk about the elephant on the site. The Enchanted Library by Monochromatic.
This story was a monkey on my back for the longest time. I couldn't possibly call a list of stories I love complete without it, yet who hasn't read The Enchanted Library? (Obviously there's some people, given that it still pulls in two to three hundred views a day.) But for those who haven't...
It is Seeking Night - a holiday based around an ancient myth that once Equestria had four princesses instead of one. The tale, as it goes, was that a thousand years ago a powerful Spirit of Disharmony grew angry and sealed away Princess Sunny, Princess Selene, and Princess Booky. Only the ancestor of the current Princess of Equestria - Princess Denza - was spared and her descendants continue to rule. When Sweetie Belle and her friends go missing during the festivities, Rarity sets off into the Everfree to find them. When she does locate them, she finds them beside a tree with a plaque declaring it to be the Ponyville Public Library, donated by Princess Twilight Sparkle. And inside she finds a massive library - and an ethereal, ghost-like alicorn with a purple coat. It's then that Rarity starts to believe in fairy tales like the Princess in the Library.
One of my other doubts about recommending this story is that I'm not sure I can do it justice. Monochromatic is an absolute titan of an author. The Enchanted Library was voted best fic on the entire site at BronyCon 2019. This basically is patient zero for RariTwi's popularity as a ship. But I still gotta try, because how can I not gush a bit about it?
TEL is your archtypical romance/adventure - it's just as much about Rarity's ongoing quest to save Twilight from her fate as a ghost trapped in a library as it is about their building romance. Both halves are wonderful, too: the romance side is obviously top-notch as they not only get into each other's lives but also deal with their own problems and insecurities. Twilight's carrying a lot of baggage even beyond being a ghost; Rarity's painfully out of her depth and wrestling with how to rise to the occasion for a literal fairy tale princess (who somehow also both does and doesn't act like one.) On the adventure half, it builds well as the usual suspects are pulled in, each just different enough to really set them apart from their canon versions. Pinkie Pie's a big part in all this and a treat as Mono's version makes so much more sense in her eccentricities. The peak for me is in Chapter 34, and I won't spoil beyond saying I think anybody who's read that part gets why I re-read that one a lot.
The sequels - The Enchanted Kingdom and the still currently developing The Enchanted Carousel - are similarly must-reads as they continue the storyline. TEK is particularly strong to me as it explores the Rarity/Twilight relationship following the very impactful final chapter of TEL that radically alters how they interconnect.
Again, I'm sure this one's kind of well-tread ground but any list of 'favorite fics' just plain feels incomplete without it.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
I have actually never read The Enchanted Library. Twi/Rarity is not my go-to because I never could see them as more than friends. But with a recommendation like that I'm willing to see myself happily proven wrong.
i never read them, but only because i tell myself-it can wait, there are others that deserve more views.
so i found this treature:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/382470/surviving-sand-island
it's very awesome, one of my acquaintances on this site even read it all in half a week.
made me wish that we can discover more of this great story.
wow, that's some high-end recommendations! :O
5716149
That one's actually in my Read It Later - Long shelf currently! I expect it to be good - The 24th Pegasus is a talented author.
5716182
That friend of mine also recommended it after finishing. it's just that good.
And he is indeed very talented, RariDash is 20% more fabulous because of his story.
Thank you for these recommendations, the tree of great writing on this site is truly a giving one
Time to dig in!
Still haven’t read Enchanted Library!
It’s just very hard to find the bandwidth to review a 300K+ fic when doing weekly Ponyfic reviews. But it’s been on my radar for ages, and will continue to be going forward. It’s just being acclaimed and praised by far too many people, and I’ve read enough of Monochromatic’s RariTwi one shots to know she makes this pairing captivating even for this non-romantic.
As for Blueblood Chronicles, I’d seen it around but never realized it was a Derpy/Blueblood fic. Cover art, you know.
Blueblood’s a hard sell for me, as is Derpy, frankly, but this isn’t too long, and you’re advocating for it. Worth considering. 
Pretty much the same for me as for Mike when it comes to The Enchanted Library: it takes a lot for me to go for a 300k-word story. Even a third of that is much longer than I usually read. But then I keep seeing people (like you right here) saying how great it is. It feels like the kind of book I might have read had it been in print, but sadly that's not a realistic option -- as far as I'm aware, it has been brought out in printed form, but by Ministry of Image. And their stuff cost an absolute fortune to import to the UK, way beyond what I could justify, even before some rather more obvious problems with ordering from Russia appeared more recently... so if and when I do get around to reading The Enchanted Library it will have to be electronically. As I've already said, it's a huge undertaking for me to read a single fic that long -- but your blog today has made it just that little bit more likely that I will.
(As an aside, to my fellow Brits: if you want hard-copy ponyfic, Ponyfeather Publishing is a far more affordable option as they sell via Lulu, who print and ship from within the UK for at least some of their titles. Monochromatic's The Mono-Logues is among the smallish range of works available that way, and indeed is why I have a copy of that myself.)
Thank you for the awesome (as always) recommendations! I was in need of some high-quality romance fics this week.