): Recommendsday blogger, fic writer and all-around awesome chap TCC56 does too, and in his latestGhost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #111 · 5:00pm April 29th
It’s probably not a surprise I don’t play party multiplayer games much. What I have said in here has probably spelt out that I prefer games with clear, linear objectives with definitive ends, and while I’m all for playing with friends, in person or online, doing the same against strangers runs its course once I’m used to the game. So it was certainly an experience last Friday when I found myself playing that (by now ancient 
) early lockdown hit, Fall Guys.
If you’re wondering why, it was an (optional) work social. Being all remote these days (we have an office, but barely half the employees live within commuting distance, a solid third are outside the country altogether, and it can’t even fit all the people who could go – when there isn’t an event or visitor, it typically only have five people working there most days), they’ve been having fun games online socials for a year now. Mixture of things, from drawing prompt games to recognising songs chosen by others. With some prizes thrown into the mix! Last Friday’s one was a Fall Guys FiestaTM, the third one now, and the last for the foreseeable future. Probably it’s chosen due to being free, on multiple platforms and supporting cross-platform play.
By coincidence, I’d missed the last two, one due to being on annual leave and the other due to not feeling in the mood at the time. Well, this time, knowing it was the last one and that most socials were events I rarely stood a chance at winning (I’m an okay drawer for a non-artist, and anything on pop culture will have too many gaps for me), I was set to give it a go. I panicked when a meeting I was in beforehand ran over, but thankfully when I jumped in they were still doing a few practice games. Having tried the game out a bit the prior night, and with only 16 people playing this time as most had their fill on prior occasions, surely I had a fighting chance this time?
Nope! 
I flushed out of most rounds pretty quick. Like many games, it helps to be familiar with the controls and movement of the characters (they are of the clumsy sort here), as you waddle to the goal or avoid rising obstacles to be the last one standing. And like the best party games, it’s designed to allow for a lot of upsets, so even beginners won’t feel like they’re pitifully outclassed. It’s telling that in a for-fun extra round in the rhino charge battlefield afterward, I did much better, tying for first place on one. Somewhere where it helps to be well-versed with reliable “dodge the charging boss” tactics from many a Mario game!
Regardless, though, I did have a good time, and it did freshly remind me, as someone who doesn’t play party multiplayer games, the joy that can be had with them when playing with people you know regardless of how you do.
Hm. I wonder if that other friend group of mine still plays Among Us on the weekly… Dunno if I’d like it, but no harm in checking, I suppose.
Recently, as I was updating the archive for Monday Musings, I noticed a further discrepancy between the number of reviews there and in the Reviewed bookshelf off another story I’d reviewed been delisted/deleted. People have their reasons for removing them and it's their right to do so, but it still bites to have what is now three dead links. Then, I had a brainwave: Fimfetch! A couple of minutes searching and updating some links, and now those reviews point to the stories there, in the blogs and the archive. Just feels more complete, and while I will take them down if the author(s) ask, otherwise, this feels fair and true to reviews that were of active at the time of publication.
Yep, quiet enough this week that a peculiar video game experience and a bit of blog housekeeping is all I can think of. Fitting for what below is a small week too after covering one of the granddaddys of Ponyfic adventure novels, The Celestia Code, last week. Not that anyone minds, I’m sure. 
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
She Kills Monsters by chiko
Shipping by Admiral Biscuit
History Repeats by Bookish Delight
The Vulture's Coinflip by Odd_Sarge
Ocellus' Gift by Necrogen Lord
Weekly Word Count: 26,129 Words
She Kills Monsters by chiko
Genre: Drama/Adventure (w/Death)
Rarity (EqG), Sweetie Belle
15,000 Words
October-November 2019Reread
Ever since Sweetie Belle passed away, Rarity has lost herself in her work. She’s dropped out of school, barely associates with her friends, and has just been going through the motions. Then, right as what would have been her sister’s graduation is fast approaching, her old friends show up with an Orges & Oubliettes campaign that Sweetie Belle wrote herself, feeling Rarity should play it with them. For the story within seems to be not only personal, but partially about Rarity herself.
Inspired by an identically-named stage play (though reportedly it takes little beyond the premise, for that was a comedy), the first thing one will notice is the fic is 30 chapters long, and each chapter is 500 words. It’s told in alternating scenes of the O&O session (with italics, underlined and bold styling indicating which of the three players is speaking over the campaign’s story), other present-day scenes of Rarity navigating the pieces of her life and finding out more about her long-gone sister, and past interactions they share. Those two aspects combined is quite a risky storytelling structure to apply, and most authors would be lucky to make a competent work out of it. Chiko has made a magnificent work out of it.
Now, occasionally some moments feel cut off from their true potential, or that they should have gotten more than one chapter. And there are the odd scenes that don’t contribute much to the overall arc or point of the story. But by and large, this is a masterclass in using so much with so little: letting statements and final thoughts hang as ending notes where the silence and/or transition does the work for us, conforming to fragmented snapshots and memories that reflect Rarity’s mental state as it fluctuates during the different threads. The level of depth that’s reached by the end from the moments throughout, and at some of the key reveals, is nothing short of breathtaking. The 500 words almost never feel like that, with how much is packed in.
It’s a brittle, hard work of healing, yet it is by no means a crushing, depressing one. We rarely go too long without a moment of quiet, humane beauty, often in the mundane, and in all three threads. There’s even wit and humour, and not just in how Sweetie has transported familiar characters into the campaign either. Word economy is just as strong here too, and especially in the multifaceted pair of ending chapters, the fic hits a staggering bittersweet note.
If pressed, I might say some characters are pulled slightly in some directions contrary to themselves to facilitate the story. Obviously Rarity’s memories and perspective colours that (her parents certainly aren’t done many favours), but in many ways, Sweetie Belle sometimes feels closer to Scootaloo than Sweetie herself. Least, in how different her interests are from Rarity. The work sells it quite convincingly, so it’s not really a problem. Just a curious one given alternatives were available for some.
Make no mistake, though, this is a lovely, beautiful, probing piece of work, and another rare demonstration of what can be done with EqG as a setting. Small wonder the Royal Canterlot Library nominated it before the Imposing Sovereigns II contest it was written for (where it placed 2nd) had even wrapped results (judges overlapping between both bodies sat the nomination out, of course 
), and I am really glad chiko reinstated this fic last March after suspending it in mid-2021. Being from an author who never published any other horsewords, it’s criminally underread, and even if it’s not quite what personally scratches my itch, there’s no denying its quality.
Rating: Excellent
Shipping by Admiral Biscuit
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
CMCs, Rarity
1,375 Words
March 2014
Another attempt to get their cutie marks, another disaster. While dealing with the rathersappy aftermath, and casting their minds around for their next crusade, the CMCs attention turns first to what Apple Bloom heard Applejack and Fluttershy saying about ‘shipping’, and then Sweetie Belle’s confusion from when she poked at one of her sister’s romance novels. Thus they concoct a surefire scheme. Because they may have tried writing for their marks, but they never tried shipping…
This isn’t any less trivial and fluffy then the Human in Equestria or Pony on Earth stories Admiral Biscuit is mostly known for (though to be fair, Human-tagged stories only make just over half of his stories). And it is, more or less, a one-joke fic. But on top of being the right length for one, the bits of dialogue on the way to the punchline are reasonably well-chosen, and the tone and mood feels right at home with the Faust-era CMCs adventures, for all this came out late in Season 4. The sideways and meta humour about these children being totally undisturbed about the adult concepts they came across and misinterpreting it, that all has a good balance, as does the few meta jokes. And there’s even a little to be learned unobtrusively about some of the older oddities of the postal system.
Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, but it uses the simplicity in a charming and affable way.
Rating: Decent
History Repeats by Bookish Delight
Genre: Slice of Life
Fluttershy, Discord
2,221 Words
May 2015
In the twilight of the Grand Galloping Gala, Discord is still privately mulling on the argument he and Fluttershy had. Afraid to approach her quite yet, he’s midway through mending bridges with the rest of the crowd when she approaches him, asking for some private talking space outside. What she says isn’t quite what she expected.
There’s two approaches to this. It’s mostly just your standard episode reaction fic of characters further mending the pieces in a way that wasn’t in the episode either due to pacing or convenient “for kids” writing. The interest there mostly lies, when Fluttershy apologises for her part, with Discord resisting the need to showboat or milk it for all it’s worth, instead taking it in stride and admitting he’s still getting used to this whole friendship thing. The narration voicing for Discord is quite solid (one could easily hear John de Lancie saying this), which gives it more authenticity, and lets the character moments between the two feel more natural.
The thing that elevates it is one of those “aha” moments, of Bookish Delight drawing parallels between here and Fluttershy at the first Gala in the text of the piece. How much it elevates it will depend on the reader’s weakness for spotting such connections, but it is one of those that feels serendipitous for how it happened by coincidence even within the show’s writing process itself. It’s a nice bonus to a good piece of modest but effective characterisation (and the lack of anything resembling Fluttercord, even in hints, helps too – not everything needs to be turned into a ship).
Rating: Decent
The Vulture's Coinflip by Odd_Sarge
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash
5,682 Words
May 2023
Scootaloo doesn’t have anything for the latest Show and Tell, though she puts on a brave face when the topic comes up. When she hears of a mysterious cave on the lake bordering the Everfree Forest, rumoured to be filled with all manner of treasured trinkets for foals who make their way there, it sounds too good to be true. Even she knows better than to go there alone, though, so she manages to get Dash, who went there herself in her youth, to take her there. But the cave itself turns out to be a place one must enter alone…
The first thing one will notice about this story is how quiet it is. Not in the sense of not having dialogue, though many scenes lack it altogether and even those with it are selective in what they use for effect. No it’s more in the sense of a certain subdued restraint to the prose, and what little we get of Scootaloo’s thoughts – this is the kind of fable that deliberately keeps up from direct character interiority, outside of what can be inferred and what characters do say. That approach lends it a certain mystique, content to let a lot be simply felt rather than said. I wouldn’t even necessarily call this atmosphere, though it does have that in the flashes of the forest and the strange cave within.
One thing the story isn’t, is scary – everything about the tone leaves the possibility of danger at the door, all without sacrificing the intrigue. It leads to an unexpected direction within the cave, revolving around the purpose each of us has, what we get and give from others in that, and how we strive to be like them while being our own thing.
Scootaloo’s position in all this is interesting: the story is pointedly set before she met the CMCs (I can actually think of very few stories I’ve read of her this far back, which is odder the more you think about it), and when she had never just hung out with Dash before. Between that and the story’s tone, it manages to sell a far quieter side of her (while still have brash moments in the story’s plot setup early on), and the way Odd_Sarge pivots between these aspects and shows her thought process makes for a very intriguing way to get inside a child’s mindset.
The end result is a strange fable of a fic, but a very generous one in a sideways kind of way. It’ll entertain Scootaloo fans quite a bit, but I think it’ll work even better for those who don’t normally gravitate towards fics featuring her, weird as that sounds. Its strengths are that offbeat.
Rating: Pretty Good
Ocellus' Gift by Necrogen Lord
Genre: Romance/Slice of Life
Ocellus, Snails
1,849 Words
December 2020Reread
Now Hearth’s Warming is here, Ocellus is ready to pick up a gift she pre-ordered for her coltfriend, buckball pro player Snails, some time back. She has trouble battling the butterflies in her stomach as she meets him for a quiet moment later to exchange their gifts. How will he take it?
You know, for all that I cover quite a few Jinglemas stories, off wanting to get the substantial chunk I read in my pre-rating days boxed away (it’s less than 20 now…!), most pairings there tend to make sense and be common-ish. Even the more outlandish, out there ones tend to have a certain high concept that justifies them before you start reading. Actual crackfic pairings are rather rare, and certainly not unwelcome – the Original Pairings contest is a joy, after all – but there isn’t much of that here. This fic hasn’t hunted for much of a reason for Ocellus and Snails to be together in terms of playing off their personalities. They just are together, and the late-game reason why Snails fell for her feels like an after justification. Not helped by the dialogue for both not quite feeling authentic either: it’s unclear how much time has passed since the show (Smolder and Spike are together now too), but it seems the Young Six are still in school, and the blander personalities of Snails (his trademark adorkable slowness is gone) and Ocellus doesn’t do it much favours.
That said, it is cute, I can’t deny, and even if it’s not doing much to take advantage of either character, they don’t read as incompatible: the reaction is on the “…Huh” tier rather than the “yeah, no” barometer. Let that, and your attraction to an ending adjacent to a Gift of the Magi type-story (adjacent, not quite the same), be the barometer here (they’re a hard sell for me, but not an auto turn-off either).
Rating: Passable
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 1
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 1
Decent: 2
Passable: 1
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
I avoid multiplayer like the plague, partially because I'm too addicted to video games as it is to dare add a social element to them, but also because I'm so behind on the games that most of the one I play that do have a multiplayer component aren't very active anymore. That said, if my company had a video game get-together like that you can bet your ectoplasm I'd be there.
Oh, but I feel this. I agree it's their right to remove their stories, but I wholeheartedly believe there is no such thing as a good reason to do so.
Oooh, She Kills Monsters! That was a good one.
5778633
Improving writing wise and cringing at the awful quality of your own work.
5778634
Ah, yes, the awful quality of old works. That wonderful reminder of where we've been vs. where we are now.
Keep it around. Remember that there's always room for improvement. Let the struggling newcomers see examples that improvement can happen. Celebrate what you once were; it reminds you of what you could be.
5778636
I rather celebrate my achievements now than have someone decide my previous works determine my current ones—especially when the achievement mainly is having found people willing to edit your work to an acceptable state so that natives don't wish to rip their eyes from their face because of ones sentences.
Or having negative connotations/regrets with your works. Like those that reveal you're better off not writing anymore.
5778640
As an unrepentant optimist, such things as negative commentary phase me little beyond the immediate reaction, and I don't do "regrets" in my writing so much as "things I know to keep an eye on in the future".
But I can at least acknowledge that not everybody (possibly not the majority) share my self-confidence. It is in trying to see the world through the lens of others that I accept that people have the right to remove their old material, however much I disagree with their decisions.
She Kills Monsters should have been on my RiL list ages ago, especially as an RCL fic. Always fascinating when someone with one story and hardly any followers puts out a single fic of that quality and then disappears. (Of course, it may be an alt account; who knows?) To your entire lack of surprise, the Scootafic is also going on the list!
Nothing much to say about your intro, since (as you know) that type of gaming is largely alien to me, the odd round of Skribbl.io aside. Glad you had fun, of course!
5778634
Honestly, I respect authors who choose that (and I don't review stories that aren't public at time of posting) but I would very much rather they didn't. There are some outstanding writers on this site whose early stuff is well below their current standard. I actually end up admiring those authors more for how hard they've worked and how much they've improved. So my view is pretty much Paul's here.
Ah, the rare Excellent! That goes on my list then.
5778642
Just because someone decided to downvote your valid points I'm gonna upvote your comments.
5778654
Why, thank you! Much appreciated. I shall join upvotes with you in solidarity.
5778644
Acknowledging that many alt accounts tend to hide who they're an alt of (excepting keeping M-rated stuff separate, if they want people to know it's them, why wouldn't they just put it on their main?) I think I remember chiko stating in their RCL interview that they'd been leapfrogging around many websites and fandoms with different names, and considered each username a "chapter" of their life they had and then moved on from (and were also only 21 when they wrote this fic). They also said they'd been in the MLP fandom on and off over the years, and first came to it with another user's encouragement and saying their first stuff was way worse.
Now, that could be interpreted as first fic overall, not first ponyfic, but it does seem to point towards chiko having had one or more Fimfic accounts beforehand. In any case, they seem to be the recluse type who makes an account for a particular story they have and then vanishes from the fandom until they have another brainwave, and repeat the cycle anew.
It’s probably better for those more in tune with Scoots’ rare, quieter, musing, worried, introspective side, as opposed to how she normally carries herself. Thankfully, you like both!
You can thank Rune Soldier Dan for getting me to read it, he gushed about it offhandedly last month during my Scootaloo spotlight saying that though the character doesn’t usually do much for him, this fic did. it was enough to pique my curiosity!
I mean, it's pretty alien to me too. But as you can attest with Skribbl.io, while you aim to win, such things are (generally) no less fun if you don't, thanks to the company. Long as the same person isn't dominating on repeat!
That's how this thing which I do very rarely was for me this time.
This is something I think I could stand to better express when I review older works by an author who's improved since. Doesn't matter when it's mostly due to them being rereads, even a token "the author improves" wouldn't go amiss. And it wouldn't be token, anyone who's been on a writing journey should appreciate the increase in strength. People don't stop being infallable in their writing just because we find out they didn't start that way.
5778633
That's another big reason for me too on top of the ones mentioned above or in prior blogs. I'm often in little rush to be playing things when they're big and current, and as such, aside from Mario Kart and Pokémon, little I play when they are current-ish tend to have a multiplayer component.
Well, even if my company is an app developer, not all that many of us are, like, hardcore gamers or such. Especially with the age range of the staff (from early 20s for some on graduate traineeships up to late 50s), many don't play games at all, and are there interest-wise for the learning goals aspects, or the business side of things. As such, events like these are a healthy mix of noobs, casuals and hardcore players. Hence why a games like Fall Guys keeps it fair, nearly anything else would be too weighted towards the gamers.
Course, that doesn't stop the music round being weighted towards those with pop culture knowledge, or the drawings events towards those in the art department, but I digress…
5778640
5778642
Funny story, guys: when I saw I had this many comments from the two same people, and as there were no others thus far I knew they were replying to each other, I thought "oh no, is this the first argument of vitriol on a matter of opinion between two commenters on one of my blogs?"
Thankfully not, it was civil enough. I even feared the origin of those dislikes for a moment, but the end moment of upvote solidarity warmed me greatly. You'll get the same from me too!
While I am a lot closer to Paul on this one, I see your viewpoint too gapty, as I am not always as confident and self-assured as he is. If I felt removing old works would improve the chance of newer work getting noticed, it might be something I do, and indeed in some fields that would be the case (like YouTube). But generally speaking, that doesn't really apply to Fimfic: people hardly ever go browsing through other people's backlogs, and when they do, they're usually committed enough to that author that weaker earlier works won't break their faith.
That said, I have made post-release edits, sometimes substantial ones, to my fics, something Paul emphatically doesn't, so evidently I do get more unnerved easily. But even that's more about the fic than about me as an author.
This is a good example of what I mean. While not a sentiment I agree with, it's one I can see. So I respect it. Onwards and upwards with you, my friend!
5778664
Just a minor point of correction here: I do, in fact, go back to edit my old material from time to time. But it's always fixing typos or maybe from reading a single sentence that bugs me. Nothing sweeping. When I say I don't go back and edit my works, I mean big modifications like adding whole paragraphs or dramatically altering a scene.
Man, She Kills Monsters is so good. So good!
Wow, hey! You'd be surprised to find that this was actually a good bit of my intent toward putting the work together. I'm super glad to hear someone say as such!
I wanted the story so quiet in order to properly frame this part of her life: not merely showing she felt aloof, but also showing the edges of what she could want. The quiet bears Scootaloo's potential, and the cove a way for her to earn the rest of her self-awareness; her newfound view of the future becomes an incentive to explore, and importantly, to care.
I hope that's not too odd. But then again, the story is a little odd and weird, because Scootaloo doesn't know how she'll fit into things as she is. But she has to—and wants to—go somewhere, find the pieces she likes, and make something of her future.
I generally disagree with authors who want to remove their own stories, though I can understand the sentiment. Two of my own (Glory and A Great Endeavor, for the curious) are ones I've mused deleting now and then and may very well have had I not continued to write new stories and push them further and further from my mind.
The only one here I know is Vulture's Coinflip, and it is amazing. You described very well how it accomplishes a feeling of mystery without cheapening it by trying to evoke fear. The low-stakes fable of a cave that grants foal's wishes that actually exists just outside of town is like the opening to one of the good old children's books that aren't afraid to challenge their young readers. And the reveal that it's a Breezie just looking to make the world better in their own small way feels so delightfully appropriate for both the MLP universe and that storybook whimsy.
5778698
It's a great story!
5778703
Now I haven't been a child in quite a while, nor do I hang around them these days on the regular, but the best children's books and those which stick around longer are always the ones that challenge them, I've found. So many nice, safe books in the other mould vanish from memory super quick.
Even when they're E-rated and ostensibly for children, fics capturing that kind of whimsy are few and far between. Most folks don't try because it's a tricky balancing act, I suppose. But results like this show it's worth it for sure.
5778698
Not surprised at all, actually – I do look at author's notes prior to writing the review, in case they'll inform me better.
So I didn't fully pluck these observations just from my own intuition. Just mostly. 
It is odd, and a decent bit. But who said odd had to be bad? It gives this piece immense character, the way you pull it off, and I think most people who read it off my recommendation here will find it altogether unique in a way that is likely to linger in the mind.
Whatever way you spin it, you wrote a cracking fic!
Take pride in that.