It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #132 · 8:28pm Sep 27th, 2023
So last week I originally had a different story paired with Merge Request, centered around a theme of 'romances written entirely through electronic communication'. But halfway through writing up the blog, I realized that the second story (today's first) paired even better with another story that had been on my waiting list for a while. So I re-oriented last week to a Midnight Sparkle theme so I could do another one for this week: Wallflower Blush crackships.
See, Wally is fairly one note for her romances: there's currently 182 Wallflower Blush romances and 134 of them are with Sunset Shimmer. So finding another ship with her is a little troublesome. Fortunately, these two are both off the wall and good, which makes them all the more interesting.
We'll lead with an always reliable author: The Red Parade and his wonderful short, Per My Last Email.
As is required for all school clubs at CHS, Wallflower submits the gardening club's monthly expense report and is snarky because 'nobody reads these anyway'. Much to her surprise, Strawberry Sunrise (in the Office of Student Affairs) does read the emails. And she's just as snarky. And they lived happily ever after.
This one's a great bite-sized romance. Short, sweet, and does a lot of making you read between the lines about what's going on outside the raw text. It's all entirely emails, after all, so you gotta read into things a bit.
Fortunately, even on the surface it's fun. Wally and Strawberry are snarky little twerps, they've got good banter going on, and this is just the sort of exchange you'd see out of bored high school government. They're such teenagers and it's hilarious.
Like I said: short and sweet, since it's a 1000 Words 2022 entry. But fun!
And on the other side? We go from 1000 words across five chapters to a single 14,000 word chapter. And the snark being dialed up to 11. Because we're tackling No Filter by ReedHoarse.
The Rainbooms meant well. They set up 'Friendship Brunches' so they could gather all their friends-slash-former-enemies together to have bonding experiences and be buddies and not go evil again. Then in an effort to force friendship, the Rainbooms ditch one day, leaving three former magically corrupted humans together: Wallflower Blush, Juniper Montage, and Vignette Valencia.
Those who've read Bookish Delight would expect that Wally and Juniper would mesh. But no. Unfortunately it's Wallflower and Vignette who bond. And they proceed to be absolutely horrible people together.
So you know the meme about how introverts don't make friends, they just get adopted by extroverts? Yeah, that happens here. This story's also the living embodiment of "Oh no, they're perfectly horrible together." Vignette brings out the snarkiest parts of Wallflower, enhancing them with her deep-seated bitterness and anger at the world. In turn, Wally acts as a constant enabler to Vignette's whims, often suggesting even worse ways to exercise them. Occasionally with a baseball bat. And she also pushes Vignette to elevate her from a whiny social media personality to choosing violence.
Did I mention they're horrid together? You can encapsulate them with this little text exchange:
VV [08:55]: smh K-Lo is vagueing about me
VV [08:56]: wanna write a callout post about her
VV [08:56]: plssssss convince me not toMe [08:57]: Do it
VV [08:57]: ur the worst friend
Me [08:57]: Do it and send it to me before you post so I can make it worse
But weirdly, they're also good for each other. Vignette provides Wallflower the encouragement (well, the enabling) for her to get out into the world more - first with a slightly unhealthy parasocial relationship and then a very unhealthy proper one. (That peaks with them making out on top of K-Lo's car that Vignette just smashed with a baseball bat.) On the other side, Wally doesn't restrain her deadly snark and actually does a good job of keeping Vignette's ego in check. Or at least directed. I mean, there's lines like this:
“I don’t know what to say. You’re insulting me, but it’s so layered in self-deprecation that I can’t say anything back.”
Damn that's great characterization.
Anyway, refocusing back to the story. They're horrible together, enable and provoke one another, and it's beautiful. This is a love story is kind of the opposite of a Starlight/Trixie romance: those two make each other better, these two make each other worse. The relationship's given plenty of room to breathe and grow in a fairly reasonable manner - even if it's like watching a train wreck - and I just love the unique flavor of it all. It's so wildly and refreshingly different from the average Wallflower ship. (I'd say the same for Vignette but she has a tenth of the stories. Literally one author makes up a third of all Vignette stories.)
This one's become kind of a cult favorite among some of my friend circles, and for damn good reason. It's got great dialogue (oh, the snark), a highly unique pairing that's well developed, and I can't stop looking at the beautiful mess.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
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Scampy wins \o/
Whoa. Outside of Lyra/Bon Bon and Octavia/Vinyl, I have to wonder if there's another other pony so overwhelmingly paired with a specific character (not counting character with so few stories that a few stories is all it takes: only upwards of 100 here). I knew it was kind of the thing with Wallflower, but wowzers. Chalk up a victory for that ship's fans!
The riots shall be quelled as you have delivered on the promised story of No Filter.
We are sated for now.
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At a quick scan, the only others that hit that level are established couples (like Mr+Mrs. Cake). There's only four I can find that even pass the 50% mark: Sugar Belle with Big Mac (though very not the other way); Sunburst with Starlight Glimmer (ditto); Adagio Dazzle with Sunset Shimmer (same); and Diamond Tiara with Silver Spoon (that one's mutual.) But none get close to the nearly 75% of SunFlower.
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Telling findings, one being a canon pairing, and two others childhood friends. And also Adagio/Sunset, because it's a hero/villain pairings where they're humans and determined, manipulative-to-different-degrees leaders.
Weirdly, despite Sunset/Wallflower falling into exactly that, I wasn't thinking of pairings where one character is largely with the other, but the other is not overwhelmingly with the first (because obviously Sunset mostly gets paired with Sci-Twi). Hence only the two big fandom pairings!