The Best of Slice-of-Life - Shelf 1 · 10:40am Nov 19th, 2023
Hiya, lovely peeps!
In light of my most recent blog post, where I highlighted my favorites from my comedy shelves, I have decided to do the same thing to another one of my closed shelves - slice of life!
Arranged alphabetically, with a little commentary, here are the highlights!
The Best of Slice-of-Life (1)
Making the mundane awesome.
The Better Together short, ‘A Display of Affection’ was among my favorite of the entire series. And this story, A Matter of Credit, does it so much justice. Taking place directly after the short, it explores an aspect of Sunset’s character that is not so focused on - her artistic side. It talks about her background, her hobbies and identity outside of magic. And of course, Rarity is an absolute delight in this.
I’m a sucker for post-canon stories. Especially those that focus on Twilight’s job as sovereign. Friendship Bewitched finds Twilight and Spike encountering someone they’d never thought they’d ever see - Grogar. The real one, mind you, not Discord pretending to be him. This story is great because it offers us an authoritative and regal Twilight who gets the chance to make major diplomatic decisions on her own. And all the characters are great, too. Spike is snarky yet helpful, Grogar is evil yet pragmatic and Discord’s surprise appearance is loud and hammy.
James Pwyll is undoubtedly the king of slice of life. At least of half of that my SoL shelf is taken up by his works. This one however, is among his best. Mostly conversation driven, Legacy is Twilight having a chat with Spike about her upcoming role as Equestria’s ruler. But it’s not about her capacities; it’s about her legacy, her reputation and the impact she’ll leave behind. It sheds light on some very interesting things I had never thought of before. Short, but hits the spot.
If there’s one way to describe this story, it’s ‘cute’. Twilight is behaving like an little filly, all while Dash is excitedly teaching her the wonders of cloud-napping. Not much else happens in the story, but it’s so adorable. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time.
Discord and Twilight have a very delicate and complicated relationship. They have so much potential, yet are so fundamentally different that they can’t see their similarities. I always adore stories about these two, but the best one in the bunch is What About Twilight? Following the events of S5’s “What About Discord?”, Twilight goes to the draconnequs’ house to confront him about his actions. He then proceeds to dissect Twilight’s personality as well as her group dynamic with her friends. I won’t spoil what it is exactly he says, but this story is so worth a shot.
And that’s it, folks! ‘Best of Slice of Life (2)’ is currently open for entries. Ya’ll stay tuned for what it coming next, which is ‘Heartstrings’!
