The Best of Random - Shelf 1 · 10:43am Dec 13th, 2023
Hiya, lovely peeps!
About a month ago, I closed my first Slice of Life shelf. Today, I closed Best of Random.
People will tell you that comedy is the hardest genre to tackle. I disagree. Random is the hardest genre to work with. I mean, how does one even define that category? It's basically just comedy, only denser and wackier. I like funny, but random is a whole other story. So the fact that I managed to fill a shelf with a hundred stories speaks volumes. Anyway...
Let's discuss the highlights!
The Best of Random (1)
None of these stories make any sense, and yet, somehow, they do.
The only entry on the list that isn't a comedy. The random here comes from the fact that ghosts aren't an established magical phenomenon in Equestria. It still manages to be funny, and also somehow have an undertone of sadness. This mishmash of genres is makes Pearanormal Encounters so endearing and great. And also, twilight and pear is an odd pairing that surprisingly works.
This one is funny because it's relatable. Who hasn't encountered this situation before? The premise is as follows: Cadence attempts to help her daughter with math, and utterly fails. The humor isn't just derived from Cadence's failure at math, it's from the math questions themselves. Cadence's and Flurry's brains, as well as my own, stopped working a few times as we read them.
There exist very few stories about the early days of Starlight's cult, and boy oh boy, is this one a treat. Like the descriptions says, Starlight gathers her cultists and attempts to name their town. Problem is... All names are special. The plot gradually dips into wackier territory, starting with a rather tame meeting and somehow ending with the building on fire. Don't ask; just read.
Combining random with actual plot, and making the characters not OOC, is a tough challenge. And yet, PoisonClaw aces it. It's all about making the premise ridiculous. In Wait... Horses Can't Vomit?, Sunset gets hit with culture shock and discovers that Earth's horses can't puke. AJ and Dash are baffled that Equestria ponies can, Twilight is fascinated and Pinkie is Pinkie. Princess Twilight also makes a wonderful cameo. What amazes me about this is how in-character everybody is. If not for the slightly gross subject matter, this is totally something that could've happened in the show proper.
I'm a sucker for good alicorn stories. And in this one, a single paper manages to create a chasm between all of them. Celestia breaks down upon discovering her rating, Luna insists hers doesn't matter and Twilight and Cadence have a sisterly fight. When the author says there's OOC humor, there is, but for the most part, it's not as OOC as DrakeyC made it out to be. Still really good and funny, though.
I know I said Heartstrings was gonna be the next shelf, but this one came first. The thing about Heartstrings is... I don't try to force stories in it; it'll happen when it'll happen. That, and Heartstrings went down a story when I moved Spectacular Seven to Alternate Universe.
But it'll happen! Stay tuned!
