Fic recs, August 31st! · 9:42pm August 31st
Art Inspired is in serious need of help!
There two -- count 'em! -- milestones in this blog! :O
And in lieu of posting a separate State of the Writer since it's so late in the day, I'll just say this: My house is full of flies, my head is full of sad, and my future is full of darkness. How are you?
H: 1 R: 1 C: 6 V: 1 N: 0
The Truth Is… by Crystal Moose
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Random Comedy
Pinkie Pie has a secret she can't keep from her friends anymore.
So this is pretty straightforward. Pinkie has a secret, she wants to tell her friends, she's afraid of how they'll react. We get your boggest of standard coming-out stories, with her friends running the gamut of reactions (Applejack, of course, being the one who's not okay with it). But surely she can't just be telling them she's gay, right? That's all smokescreen, right? Well, of course it is! And all the joke is compacted into the final scene, in which we're very deftly shown what Pinkie's truth is, and I thought it was both funny and clever. :)
Recommended for Laughs
Why Celestia Never Helps… by Huk
Reading by Lotus Moon, et. al.
200th Review of 2024! (why so late? ;_;)
Genre: Dark/Drama/World-Building
It has to do with why the Badlands are named such…
This is a perfect example of how you can fix 'plot holes' through world-building with disparate elements. :D Seriously, any time I hear someone, even myself, complain about something that did or did not happen the show, I just think of it as more fodder for the fanfiction machine. This has everything I want from a good Badasslestia story, from the awesome showdown to the centuries of angst that follow. Cardboard World Celestia isn't a new thing, exactly, but I really never get tired of it, and Huk took the idea and made new hash from it.
Highly Recommended
Pinkie Pie's Skeletal Bud by Radiated Darth
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Comedy/Undertale Crossover
Pinkie literally bumps into a new friend in the Everfree Forest.
You know, as much as I adore Undertale, I've never really looked into or given a lot of thought to writing fanfiction about it. Must be like Adventure Time, where I feel like it's a complete story and have no further questions. Point being, I'm not really sure what constitutes good writing for Sans, Papyrus, or literally any other character from the game. You can probably guess why I bring this up. As for the story itself, well, it's the most straightforward "get a pony to interact with a character from another franchise" sort of crossover you can imagine, and there isn't much else to it. Not bad, but not terribly notable either. 2013 was a different time! I like when Papyrus calls her a horsey.
Vaguely Recommended
Three Bolded Words by Casketbase77
Reading by orange_man_from
Hey, another new reader with a solid delivery! :) No bells or whistles, just the kind of thing I like to see. Onto the list he goes!
Genre: Medical Drama
Lightning Dust isn't a stupid pony, but there are three words on her psych eval that she doesn't know the meaning of.
I'm going to unbury the lede and spoil what the three words are when I say this is a very solid and sympathetic look at a character with narcissistic personality disorder. A diagnosis like that can be hard to grapple with on many levels, and Lightning has quite a few of them. I also found myself actually agreeing with her for once in my life; something I've been saying a lot lately is that one of the biggest lies I was ever made to believe in my life is that every problem has a solution. Some things, you can't just 'fix', and that goes double for mental health issues. And I probably don't actually have to say it, knowing this audience, but that can be really hard to deal with. So yeah, between good mental health depiction and a strong character in beleaguered nurse Speedy Recovery, this is a very good fic!
Recommended
Maud-nagerie by EileenSaysHi
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: EQG Comedy
It's a slow day at the museum, so Maud is naturally willing to help a friend.
The writing in this is very good, from pacing to world-building to use of the characters (particularly important when Maud Pie is involved, if you ask me). That being said, it's missing something, and by 'something', I mean 'the rest of the story'. I don't think this was an idea that was easily contained in exactly a thousand words, and it suffers from basically having no punchline. I want to impress: I like it, I really did. It's just all setup with no payoff. There's maybe a hint of trouble on the horizon, but without actually getting to see what Maud does in the upcoming situation, it's hard to say whether everything was worth it.
Recommended for Maud Fans Only
Hoof-Holding Degenerate by CategoricalGrant
Reading by No One and Nobody
Genre: Random HiE Comedy
Princess Cadence has a plan to help out her aunts.
You know, in the few years since this was written, there's been a lot of talk about the word 'degenerate', specifically due to who tends to use it and in what contexts. <_< Thankfully, if there's a reason to like this, it's the central premise, stated plainly by Cadence early on: Everyone is deserving of love, and no one should only give love. Like, this is your sign, your signal, your wake-up call; if you've spent your life giving and caring for others, make sure you're getting the love and care that you, too, deserve. Selfless sacrifice is laudable, but it also should not be all a person does. You owe it to others to take care of yourself, so that you can, in turn, take care of them. Anyway, this is basically just a bunch of memes smashed together, and a lot of the comedy comes from "Steve", who I would describe as a boorish simpleton, and the various princesses' reactions to him. It's not my usual thing, but it was fun.
Recommended for Laughs
Orbital Accidents by The Lunar Samurai and Auramane
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Random Comedy
The Orbital Friendship Cannon is not a toy.
Talk about stretching a meme to its limit. How much Gamer Luna can you stand? This at least has the decency to mark an Equestria with TVs and orbital friendship lasers as an AU, which I appreciate, but seriously, that's about all there is here. You can see the whole story once Luna shows up. Well, almost. In the story's defense, I did find the very ending amusing, specifically Luna's solution to not get in trouble. Very silly.
Recommended for Gamer Luna Fans
A Vicious Cycle of Nightmares by Hoofprintz
Reading by Lotus Moon
Reading by Jack Oat
This wasn't a good reading to try and evaluate a reader with, and I'm taking that into account. She's got good delivery, and is quite a natural at a Rarity voice too, so good pick on her part! I just hope she figures out OBS in the near future. Call this a maybe!
Review #8800!
Genre: Body Horror
Rarity isn't well.
Reading this, I assigned meaning to it as a metaphor for — or possibly just a demonstration of — either living with chronic pain or some kind of mind/body disconnect. Plumbing the comments, I regret to find that I was correct. :( My heart goes out to the author for having to live with this. But unless you really feel like dialling your empathy up for a bad time on another's behalf, there isn't a whole lot else here. I blame having just read an exceedingly good story about Rarity going through a degenerative body horror scenario. As a story, this pales in comparison, but as a personal chronicle, it's unfortunately kind of terrifying!
Recommended If You Like Your Horror Real
Rainbow Dash vs Chair by 6-D Pegasus
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Random Comedy
Hey, who left this lawnchair in the middle of the street?
If it's not obvious, this goes for silly, and it goes hard. I mean, for a second there, I kind of got into a vibe with the silliness, it seemed like it was going to carry its premise straight to the end. Then Rarity shows up. I'm not really gonna say anything one way or the other, but you'll need to be able to withstand a large amount of nonsense coming at you all at once for this one. XD
Recommended for Fans of Random Comedies
Three Bolded Words is for sure one of Casket's strongest stories. It saw its way to a Really Good for me, not an easy feat for his snippets that, being often spur-of-the-moment one-shots based on a piece of canary or a brainwave high concept, can feel less like an actual story as a result. Not this one, and while "you can't fix this" isn't that uncommon in Ponyfic, it's given extra heft from Lightning's perspective here. Highly recommended reading!
I can't believe you reviewed my nonsense shitpost fic xD glad you vibed with it for a bit haha. It was written in 30min with no starting premise or plan, so it was bound to lead to chaos hehe
Well. That's... unfortunate. Hope things get better soon!
Happiness, Applejack realised, is the failure to understand that at any time, you could wake to find somepony at your bedside, somepony with a knife. The next day, she watched closely as all the ponies with bright futures were speaking. Nothing they said came out of their mouths - every single word was released by a blindingly red throat wound.
Keep going. Hang in there. Keep busy. Take care of yourself. Other magic words...
Why Celestia Never Helps… goes on my list. When it's well done, this sort of story is like candy to me.
iisaw said the first bit better than I could, so I associate myself with his comment there. I hope it's uphill (in the good sense of uphill) from here on in.
Huk's Celestia fic is going on the RiL list. Sounds intriguing, and I like a Tia fic that's not just about chess or tea. Casketbase is an author whose works I'll dip into from time to time anyway, so I'll probably get to Three Bolded Words eventually, when I'm in the right frame of mind for a story like that.