Fic recs, March 14th! · 3:57pm March 14th
Lotus Moon has done a reading of Fleety's What's Philomena's Name?!
Hey, help out Regidar, he's looking for experimental fics! Self-promotion allowed!
Happy pi day! My recent decision to stop using Tumblr on the regular has indeed left me with more time during the day, as well as a somewhat improved emotional state. :) Allow yourself to do things like this from time to time!
Which is not necessarily a general exhortation to do as I do. I'm about to go get lasers shot into my back. c_c;;;
H: 2 R: 5 C: 1 V: 1 N: 0
No! Not the Tickle Monster! by superpony55
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Cute
Okay, no surprises as to what this story is about, but who cares? It is intensely cute, and things only get better when Twilight's parents show up. Really good work writing a kid here, too. I liked this more the longer it went on!
Recommended
Debt to Society by mushroompone
Reading by TheLostNarrator, et. al.
Genre: Dark/Drama
An incident at work unlocks Scootaloo's repressed traumatic memories.
Love it when a good writer gets into a controversial AU. :) Fact is, this is an excellent story, but being related to Rainbow Factory is going to make a lot of people turn their noses up at it. And you know what? I am deciding to be okay with that. The ones who don't will be rewarded, and mushroompone has plenty of other excellent stories besides. But yeah, this is really good, treats the Rainbow Factory story as an urban legend, but shows us an adult Scootaloo grappling with repressed trauma. She has nightmares she can't remember, bad enough to make her leave her original job, and she even suffers what I can only assume is a PTSD flashback at one point. All of this while working at a dead-end retail job in a Ponyville that's maybe a bit more like our world than one might anticipate. (The ponies certainly do swear a lot!) On that note, I want to mention how good a choice Rumble was for his role. He is kind of a little shit in the show, and seeing him as the stoic but much beleaguered normal one, I dunno, it just works for him better than it would have anyone else, I think. Anyway, Highly Recommended for Fans of Dark Fics.
Recommended
Open to All by Casketbase77
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Comedy
Fleetfoot's task: Tell the first Breezie to apply to be a Wonderbolt he's not getting the position.
Look, you can't make this shit up. :D This story is great, hilarious even, driven entirely by the unlikeliness of its setup. Breezies just suck so much, you guys, but this little dude tried so hard to be a Wonderbolt. His reason for doing so is heartwarming. Heck, the way he talks, with Ponish being a foreign language for him, is fantastic. And for once in my life, I stayed through the reading into the author's note, and while that technically isn't part of the story, it nevertheless elevates this in ways I wasn't expecting. I have never liked Fleetfoot; this story may very well have changed that. And that isn't a small thing.
Highly Recommended
I See No Foals by gapty
Reading by Lotus Moon, et. al.
Genre: Horror
When Twilight discovers a fenced-off portion of forest that seems not much different from any other, she is compelled to investigate.
Let's talk about SCP-2316 for a minute; rarely do I have a captive audience for this sort of thing. :3 djkaktus is a phenomenal writer, a rising star in his day who quite literally defined an entire generation's style on the SCP Wiki. And 2316 is one of his most effective, despite also being one of his shortest (kaktus has a reputation for writing novel-length articles). In a guide to horror writing he later penned, he would cite 2316's refrain as a cornerstone of his approach: you come up with a phrase to repeat throughout a piece, and I don't remember a whole lot past that, but 2316 is the ur-example thereof.
All that being said, knowing anything about SCP-2316, or the SCP Foundation as a whole, is entirely unnecessary to approach this story. Heck, reading 2316 first might even be a bad idea! The author was at least wise enough to use it as inspiration, not simply bring the situation into pony world. The end result plays with the ponies' general naivete and easy lives, along with a "don't think of a white elephant" setup that makes one wonder just what the hell is going on. It's atmospheric and tense, and quite good if you like creepy pony fics!
Recommended
Royal Decree by Starswirls Beard
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Friendshipping
Rainbow Dash crashes into Twilight's library for the last time.
I think if I'm going to ding this story for anything, it's presentation. Yes, the opening scene is pretty funny, but overall the point isn't comedy, the author's note even basically says so. And though the title and description focus on Twilight handing out her first royal decree, that's barely an issue in the story itself. This is basically just a simple demonstration of doing friend things good. And there's nothing wrong with that!
Recommended for Slice of Life Fans
Doll Judgement by Oroboro
Reading by Agent0Fluffy, et. al.
Genre: Dark
The Cutie Map sends Twilight and Rarity to a strange and mysterious town in the middle of nowhere.
Man, season 5 was wild. We had a full map of Equestria, with plenty of landmarks and towns on it that had never appeared in the show and were just begging for world-building. The brand new plot device was the Cutie Map, with its endless possibilities for sending characters on adventures and just as endless questioning of just what the fuck it was. And, early on at least, you had Starlight Glimmer, who made a huge splash in the season premiere and then vanished rather than being truly defeated as other villains had. The possibilities, again, were endless. To this milieu comes this story, which makes great use of all those elements and more. That said, it's funny: at first, I was all, "There's nothing quite like watching characters stumble blindly into a creepy doll horror." But that's not where this goes at all. The pacing, admittedly, is rather fast, but this sets up what could have been a series of Twilight and friends being sent out by the Map to fight villains or other obstacles set by a Starlight working from the weeds. This really went nowhere I had expected, and it is quite cool, if also quite dark!
Recommended
"So… About the Weather." by Not Enough Coffee
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Shipping/Comedy
In which Gallus attempts to ask Silverstream to lunch.
Two main things. First, I like that this started directly in Gallus's head, but it very quickly shifted tense to a more standard first-person narrative. Losing that present tense directness definitely cost the story something. Second, it's not particularly funny, though it does at least build to something. Mostly, I just had to wonder what he even saw in her, considering her reactions. Oh well, not my thing.
Vaguely Recommended
Sugarcoated by GroaningGreyAgony
Reading by Lotus Moon
Genre: Horror
This is one of those stories I had to knuckle down and read twice, just to get it all in my head. It's quite obvious from the start our unnamed first-person narrator is a wild horse, grappling with PTSD from the lingering memories of the truest horror: domestication. In short order, we get a series of very solid images from their memory that sum up just why their life has been so traumatic up to this point. And then, around the time I was wondering how exactly is this MLP fanfiction?, the story asks us a pointed question: What happens when a wild horse, feeling so victimized, comes across Equestria? It's a simple but brilliant concept, like the dark mirror of Autumn Wind's works, and honestly, one of the most unique fics I've ever read.
Highly Recommended
Flat-Earth Fluttershy by Jinzou
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Random Comedy
Everypony knows the earth is flat, Twilight.
Between this story and Critical Role's third campaign, I have discovered that it is really funny when comical, childlike or otherwise fantastical characters believe the various extreme conspiracy theories that persist in our real world and remind us there will never be a true era of human enlightenment. In this case, the gist is mostly just how frustrating it is to try and argue against this kind of misinformation, though neither that nor Fluttershy being the one who believes it is the entire joke. (Also, I have to mention just how amusing the casual Spike hate was. You don't see that much anymore, lol.) This was pretty funny!
Recommended
Great. Time to bring out the tonic experiment.
Strong assortment! I’ve read two of these, one being Flat-Earth Fluttershy which I found good for capturing the frustration of those kind of arguments and having an unexpected end punchline. I don’t remember there being Spike hate, which either means it’s actually done in good taste (doubtful) or I banished it from my mind like all similar out-of-line things.
As for Casketbase’s fic, he do be the master of the flashfic, and this is both really funny and rather poignant in its character depth. That it makes the arsehole that is Fleetfoot… likeable (?) is a nice bonus.
Also, lasers in your back?
Assuming that’s referring to your big decision, and isn’t just a way of saying you’re removing a tattoo or something, didn’t know that was part of the process on that side of the torso. Unless it’s laser hair removal?
Now I thought of the white elephant. How do I get rid of it? It won't leave my room!
Oh wow! Thank you so much for the recommendation ^^ Debt to Society was a story conceptualized and written within the bounds of a contest (including a 10k wordcount cap), but I had so much fun with the concept that I think often about returning to it to write a much-expanded version that takes a lot more time to develop the relationships amongst the core charactes as well as the themes relating to disability. Maybe someday! If anything, it really made me fall in love with older Rumble as a protagonist. I'm glad I got to revisit him in this year's nightmare night fic and poke around in his blank-flank-ness some more :)
Again, thank you!! This was a lovely notification to receive :D
5772292
Laser hair removal, yes. :B It was, in fact, significantly less painful than I had anticipated! Almost no pain whatsoever, in fact!
The Spike hate is hilarious, because it's just so incidental. Spike barely makes an appearance, just two moments that fit naturally into an old fic featuring Twilight. But both times, the disdain for him is just dripping off the page. I find it so funny the author actually took the time to include this in the story. XD
5772294
the solution I have heard is think of a red balloon :B
5772333
I cannot overstate not only what a good choice Rumble was for that role, but how well you wrote him. :D