Fic recs, November 9th: Lightning Runner/Empress Daze edition! · 2:37pm November 9th
Who just came back from the dead, why it's none other than GutiuSerenade with a reading of shortskirtsandexplosions' The Bird Feeder!
And Scribbler has done a reading of TooShyShy's Scratch, with Radiant Bleu!
Goddang, I've had this ready to post for several days now and I still missed Friday. D: Today I'm getting to a new reader channel, namely Lightning Runner! Along with readings, he's done a bunch of music, and nowadays the channel seems to be active, but focused on the furry fandom. That being said, there was only one new story on the channel! Everything else he's done, I've read before! So this isn't an edition! The List!
MythrilMoth's Trixie and Spike Go Down the Hoooole!
Twinkletail's Twilight Sparkle Doesn't Do Anything
ocalhoun's Arachnophilia
P-Berry's How to Train Your Cat-Bird
Skywriter's Mare of Many Hats
So our next reader would be Empress Daze, but they also only have one story I haven't already read! Facehoof emoji. 
So it's still not much of an edition. The List:
PhycoKrusk's Toast 'n Goblins
BrassHeart's Awkward
PonyThunder's Fluttershy Needs a Haircut
Ave Celestia's My Roommate Is Not a Vampire
This of course leads to a third reader, who is not going to actually appear in this blog because… Oh my god, y'all, this channel's huge, I'm so screwed D:
So yeah, here's to another few years of just listening to one channel and then having to catch up on everything else! :'D
H: 2 R: 3 C: 0 V: 2 N: 4 NA: 1
Princess Stupid Jerk McButt Has a Picnic With Her Dumb Friends and Fluttershy, by the Great and Powerful Trixie by Twinkletail
Reading by TheLostNarrator, et. al.
Genre: Comedy/Shipping Drama
Once upon a time, there was a pony named the Great and Powerful Trixie…
What do you guys think: Top 10 Greatest Ponyfic Titles of All Time? Top 5? Top 10 Greatest Story Titles of All Time, Period? :D This is so good. I should not have to tell you why or how it is good; that should be obvious from the title and description and chapter titles and Trixie. The audiobook is likewise fantastic, btw. If anything, I was impressed that Twinkletail kept this up for as long as he did. :D Bravo!
Highly Recommended
One Last Visit by Flaming cheese
Reading by Raptormon "Raptormon132" OneThreeTwo
What a name. c_c So this guy's all right. A little quiet, mostly because of a low-quality mic, and the music could have been mixed a bit better, but he was audible with little effort. That said, this is another channel that hasn't focused much on readings (he's only done two others, one a poem on DA and the other I'm just gonna go ahead and do right now), but interestingly has been doing blind reactions to the show at a very, very slow pace! He's still working on it!
Genre: Sad
Fluttershy just wants to see her friend one more time.
This is a pretty maudlin tale about death and being sad and stuff. And I don't think it's particularly effective just because there's so much telling to be had. We're told how Rainbow died. We're told how she came back. We don't get to see any of the interesting stuff, just a lot of dramatic crying. I was not into this one.
Not Recommended
Rainbow Dash Goes to the Dentist by RainbowMaestro
Reading by Raptormon
Genre: Slice of Life
Or she would, if not for one little problem…
This is a story that completely missed the whole 'friendship' part of the show. >_> Rainbow Dash is actually written well: She's prideful, she's worried about her image, she's trying to do better than she did at the Best Young Fliers' Competition, she really likes telling us about her character traits and motivations. Contrast this to Twilight and AJ, the other two main characters. Applejack is, admittedly, really concerned about Rainbow's health because of this impacted tooth… but one almost has to ask why? Nevermind they're gonna get married in the future, that wasn't a thing back when this was written; why the hell is Applejack chasing Rainbow around Ponyville, trying to force her to go to the dentist? It's maybe in character, but it's strange. Stranger still is Twilight, who is dismissive and judgmental, and who heads home early because she has better things to do. I could not reconcile the way she's written here with her actual character. She really crosses a line with her final pronouncement before she and Applejack, yes you're reading this right, give up Rainbow Dash and leave her alone. And what kind of a line is, "Who are you to say who you are or aren't?" It's no wonder Rainbow's afraid her friends are going to laugh at her; the Element of Loyalty receives no loyalty whatsoever from the ponies she calls friends. And maybe all of this wouldn't be so bad if this story were at all interesting at its core. "Character doesn't want to go to the dentist" is a plot we've seen done many a time, most if not all of them successful, and all of them sharing one commonality: they were comedies. This is an inherently comedic premise. Sure you can do it as something of a guide to try and help people who actually are afraid of the dentist, but that would require there to be friends in this story who are actually supportive. :| Goddamn, poorly written stories sometimes give me just so much to talk about.
Not Recommended
Compound Fracture by Equimorto
Reading by Scribbler
Genre: Body Horror
I can feel it… moving…
Welcome to a new kind of body horror! This isn't just the horror of having a body made of meat and goop and now, oh no! All my inside goop is outside now! And that's bad! There's some of that, yes, but this is more about the horror of your body being damaged, and just how little control we have over ourselves when our bodies are in distress. Twilight can feel herself going into shock, so she's not in pain, but her bones? She can feel them?? That's not good??? And things spiral out of control from there into an absolutely wild finale. Like, I don't even, wow. This is not for the faint of heart, but it does have a fantastic hook! Highly Recommended for Horror Fans.
Recommended
The Lavender Letter by Sunchaser
Reading (part 1) by journcy
Here's a name I know! He's got a very natural reading style, and the intro was mixed very well. Sadly, it's another dead channel, but it's a good one!
Genre: Epistolary Twilestia
I must apologize to the author, for all that they're unlikely to read this: I only read this story to evaluate the reader, because the only other reading he did was WovenWord's Wonderbolt, which I've already read. <_< I was quite surprised to click the link from the video and find out that not only was I following the author, but this was, in fact, the only one of their stories that I had not either read or planned to read. Because Twilestia. To be fair, the first letter of this story is very good, setting up a scenario where all of Twilight's friends get shipped off, to other ponies or each other, leaving her the odd mare out and with romance on her mind. Rarity's role in the story is particularly satisfying for a general shipper. And at least Twilight has the sense to quit being Celestia's student before declaring her love for her, to remove the power dynamic issues. Well, a power dynamic issue. That relationship still has a lot of other issues, if you ask me, one of which is even brought up in the story! So, yeah, I'm not going beyond the first chapter, and I'm not going to ding the author because I was basically railroaded into reading a story of theirs I knew ahead of time I wouldn't like. At least it's good letter-writing.
No Rating
History of Bullet Drop by Legoarmyman1
Reading by Lightning Runner
Genre: HiE Self-Insert
The sole reading on Lightning Runner's channel that wasn't for a fic I hadn't already read is the single chapter of an incomplete story from 2013, the only story written by an author who vanished from the site just over a year after it was published, that has four times as many downvotes as it does upvotes. <_< You can imagine my trepidation going into it. But between the reading introduction that's clearly meant to set this story up for ridicule and the anti-government sentiments of the first couple paragraphs… I'm not kidding, I went and looked up school shootings in 2014 to see if any happened around August with a perpetrator named Josh. c_c;;; Didn't find any, thank goodness, but still. This is something a young person decided to write, and yes it's not good, and yes it hits a lot of HiE cliches. Pointing that out doesn't exactly require effort. I will say, this single chapter does create a complete, if rather abbreviated, story. And I was highly amused that Celestia, upon learning a human has entered her realm, sends for Lyra. Just to show up and see the human, seriously, not even because she has any particular special knowledge. That's fun.
Not Recommended
Scootaloo vs. a Stupid Cop by Unicop
Reading by No One and Nobody
Genre: Random Comedy
But the title repeats itself. <_< Gotta be honest, I don't know how to react to police-related comedy anymore. Sure, plenty of them are as dull-witted and pedantic as this one. The joke of 'even a child knows the law better than you' gets pretty old pretty quickly, though. And it's not that I am defending the cop, far from it, I was honestly just waiting the entire time for him to plant a knee in her face. :( Though this was written in 2016, so maybe that wasn't on everyone's mind.
Vaguely Recommended
It's Almost Time by ForgottenBliss
Reading by Drawdorable VA (The Author!)
Unfortunately, the quality here is really low. He's quiet, and there's a horrible buzzing in the background because I had to turn the volume up so high. Also, he spent a good quarter of the video with a rambly intro! And didn't do any editing. So, not gonna listen to any others by this one, but there's really only one other anyway, so it's not a huge loss.
Genre: Sad Luna
Luna is ready to return to Equestria. But she's not the only one trapped on the moon…
Poor, pathetic, sad, sorrowful, agentless Luna. :/ This hits every branch on the tree that led to the Happy Luna Contest, despite having been written several years afterward. And honestly? That's okay. That's hardly a crime. What raises my eyebrows is that this is based off an animatic created by someone who also recorded a song based off another song from the Jekyll and Hyde musical. And some of the lyrics from that first video's song show up here as dialogue, word for word, which explains both why some of it is quite good and why a lot of it doesn't make any sense. It's meant to be sung, not spoken with direction and narration in between. Point being, that's plagiarism, and I'm not sure to what level because I don't know that musical. But really, we should all know better.
Not Recommended
Immortal Affliction 2 - Subjects 3 & 4 - Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash (MLP Infection AU) by Magpiepony
Sequel to Immortal Affliction - Subject 1 - Rarity (MLP Infection AU)
Reading by TheLostNarrator, et. al.
Genre: Medical Horror/Romance
Subjects 3 and 4 were afflicted congruently, albeit with wildly different results.
Okay, I am now seriously into this AU. As a story, this isn't quite as good as the first one, possibly because it follows the same format, so it lacks that element of discovery. But it's also setting up what I believe we can expect for the rest of the series to come. Pinkie is suddenly afflicted with bouts of hysterical laughter, difficulty breathing, and unexplained floating spells while Dash is generating electric shocks, some of them lethal, and also being really aggressive and paranoid. So it's clear whatever is going on, it's based off not their special talents, nor their Elements, but the actual aesthetics of their cutie marks. Also, they're a couple. :) Yay, good shipping! Also, also, the scariest part of this recording was actually shortly after they're taken into the hospital, and an interview with Pinkie is interrupted by uncontrollable laughter and pained, gasping breaths. So now the question is, what's going to happen to Fluttershy and AJ — we get a brief hint toward the end that they aren't exempt — and why oh why is this happening in the first place? Alongside this, we get just the tiniest bit of personal information about the doctor overseeing these cases, and that suggests even more in the future. I mean, if she's not just a name on the page for the sake of the framing narrative, then surely her identity will be important in the future. Super into this, for the long haul!
Highly Recommended
Loss of a Heart by Cora Zone Unicorn
Reading by Janice Marie Audio (the Author!), et. al.
Wow, not only did she do a reading of her own story, she got Scribbler to help out! :) And this is a very solid production, good presentation, music was mixed well. Onto the list she goes!
Genre: Grimdark AU
King Sombra has returned. The Crystal Heart is gone. There is no hope left.
Yeah, uh, so how much do you want to see a dark outcome of the season three premiere? I can imagine this as the origin story for the Sombra dark future in season five, and other than that, the draws here might include Twyrant or Twibra. However, especially for the latter, I can't imagine those being particularly successful as draws, since the impetus is just "Sombra brainwashes Twilight". Other than that, the writing was… not bad, but definitely could have used tightening. Ultimately, I'm grasping at straws to find things to say about this, good or bad, because it's just, "What if Sombra won?" and there isn't a whole lot past that to latch on to.
Vaguely Recommended
Five Should Be Enough by Arcainum
Reading by Scribbler, et. al.
Genre: Time Loop
After a horrible accident on the farm, Applejack goes to extraordinary lengths to save her brother.
Gee, it sure has been a while since I saw a story bragging about getting a five-star rating on EQD. :) So if anything about this piece feels familiar or predictable, remember that there weren't quite as many famous time loop fics back in 2012. Because this is a little predictable, but it's also very good, and those other stories don't tend to feature Applejack, so that's a nice change. I was impressed by the breadth of ways Arcainum came up with to kill off Big Mac, and the timing of the day transitions was perfect, very good use of one of those horror-inducing mantras. I don't really think I have many notes on this; if you like time loop stories and don't mind them being really dark, this is super worth it.
Recommended
How to Survive in the Forest by Seismic_Newton
Reading by Empress Daze and Blackout459
Genre: Comedy
Vinyl and Octavia go camping. Some would say this is a mistake.
What a funny story. :D A perfect odd couple, they play off each other in hilarious fashion while a comedy of errors happens around them, mostly caused by Vinyl. There are a couple instances of real-world tech showing up, as well as "Oh my god", but this is old enough to have a letter to Celestia at the end, so I can let it slide. If nothing else, it sets up a great running gag. I so appreciate this author's approach to ponifying things being just sticking "pony" in front of the name. XD
Recommended
Man, rough set this time. That's a way higher number of Nots than usual.
5814954
yes, and very weird that it's high at both ends with no Cs c_c
The pipeline of "Get an alert that PresentPerfect favorited a story" to "Figure out that someone might have done a reading of it and find said reading on Youtube as a result" is real :P
I'm glad you enjoyed the story! And even more glad that you helped me find that fantastic reading
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Wasn't it, though? :D
Nice to see new channels getting featured. A few I can add to my collection.