Fic recs, April 24th! · 11:11pm April 24th
Lotus Moon has done an April Fool's Day reading of Fon Shaolin's How the West Was Won, with Just Gamer!
And TheQuinch has gotten together a whole boatload of people (including Lotus Moon and DeftFunk!) to do a reading of Palm Palette's Pony Please!
Nothing special today, just five normal story recs, which is kind of special all by itself. :) I need to spend more time just diving into relatively reasonable length stories from my RIN like this.
H: 1 R: 1 C: 2 V: 0 N: 1
End of the Rainbow by OnionPie
Genre: Sad/Drama
As was recently pointed out to me, this just so happens to be the last of OnionPie's stories I haven't reviewed, and who doesn't love a good hat trick? :) Well, I hate to say it, but while this isn't bad, I definitely did not save the best for last here. Scootaloo wanting to kill herself because no parents and can't fly is just such a Thing, you know? It's been done. Clearly, the author wanted to do the concept at least a little more justice -- and did! But only a little. The writing is pretty flowery, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. The current scene is interspersed with flashbacks that actually do a lot of heavy lifting for the story overall, if only because they provide a bit more context and motivation for what Scoots is doing. Also, I like the bit where we learn how Scootaloo got her name. But however you slice it, this is only going to appeal to a small cadre of fans, I would think. But hey, I did 'em all!
Recommended for Scootaloo Fans
A Hard Bargain by Zap Apple Smash
Genre: Lunaverse Dramedy
Okay, I find myself in a situation suddenly! A Lunaverse story I don't actually want to finish. Which is a bit of an issue, because what if it leads into future stories? This AU is old enough, Fimfic didn't have sequel tags, so who knows what all I might miss in future installments? Then again, given the way the Lunaverse seems to have worked, writers tended to stick to their own corners of Ponyville, focused on their own plots and particular side characters, so I might be able to just skip this author's works in the future. In this case, we get to learn about Big Macintosh, who — let me remind you — being part of the Apple Family and all, is theoretically a bad guy. I mean, Applejack certainly is! But him, I'm not too sure about at this point, and I really don't want to finish this story to find out. Between the very childish representation of mafioso-style thugs from Manehattan and Big Mac being, of all things, a bounty hunter, this is full of not-amazing ideas executed not-so-well. But what killed it for me was a background pony threatening to "love and tolerate the shit out of" someone. 
It was a different time, and it's been quite some time since I read a story this bad.
DNF: 4/9
Coda by Krickis
Sequel to Thicker Than Water
Genre: EQG Drama
Fluttershy isn't a good person anymore.
Apparently, some people have taken offense to the way human Fluttershy is portrayed in Who We Become; I, for one, think Krickis is bold as fuck for turning her into a broken, traumatized shell of a person, trying desperately to forget her problems with sex and booze. For everyone else, there's MastercardCoda. :) This is a story about therapy, if anything, and how good it is for people. (One A/N even states that she's relied a little too much on the healing power of friends and lovers; while they're both important for someone to have, the usefulness professional help cannot be overstated.) Moreover, this story pulls no punches. Therapy isn't "talk to man on couch for an hour a day till normal", it's a method for reshaping how you think so that you can live with all the garbage rattling around inside your head all day. We all need this, because if you are alive today, you have been traumatized. The stigma is wrong, just as the expectation that there are any easy fixes — or any "fixes" at all, for that matter — for mental health issues is wrong. So this is maybe the best portrayal of therapy in ponyfic I've ever seen. It's not the entirety of the story, however! This fills in a few gaps from previous stories in a series of chapters that are disconnected from time but still tell a coherent story. We get to not only see what the band she's been touring with means to her, but how she's living life outside of touring. We get to see the consequences of her actions, some of which were rather shocking. We see her complicated feelings about Sunset running off and marrying another her. And ultimately, we get to see her starting to heal and find a way to move on from the past. Progress isn't always a straight line, and there will be bad days in with the good, but any progress is good progress, and each success will build on the next. (Now if I could only internalize this train of thought myself, like do as I say, not as I do, lol.) This is the very definition of a sidefic, but if you've been reading WWB, you've surely read it already. And if you still don't like human Fluttershy after seeing her side of things, well, I don't know what to say to you. There's not a whole lot more the author could say on the subject!
Recommended
First Date by Rose Quill
Genre: EQG Shipping
Another Fall Formal gives Sunset and Twilight a chance to go on a real date.
Huh, this is a Homecoming story that isn't marked as a sequel! Thank goodness for those chronology posts authors enjoy making. :) So, I gotta be honest, this is pretty basic. It's nice seeing these two together, they have good dialogue with one another, and there's even room for more than just Twilight to feel like she needs to apologize for something going slightly wrong during their date. But there's not a whole lot else besides, nothing that makes this date particularly about them, and the story is quite compressed overall. Plus, there are some writing hiccups that irked me; this is told from Sunset's first-person POV, and at one point she refers to Twilight internally as "the scientist". So, not the best entry to the series, but inoffensive at worst.
Recommended for Shippers Only
Quoth the Raven by KitsuneRisu
Genre: Drama/Light Romance
Moonlight Raven's older sister, Sunshine Smiles, has set her up to meet a pony. A pony who, supposedly, is a lot like herself…
The Comedy tag on this story is interesting. This isn't really a comedy; it's funny, don't get me wrong, but that's not the point of the story. The comedy itself mostly comes from the fact that the characters saying and doing the things these characters do are colorful talking magical horses. It's just much sillier to hear someone rant about the dark forces of Tartarus when their hoofsies are marshmallows, you know? Anyway, in this story we learn that not only is the darker half of the pair of ponies introduced for a scene in Canterlot Boutique a super-dark goth, she's a weeb. XD And also, fascinatingly, someone who has woven a thick suit of armor around herself to keep from acknowledging just how much other ponies can hurt her, whether they mean to or not. It's brilliant watching the character KitsuneRisu created unfold, and the deeper we get into her psyche and the traumas inflicted on her by the past, the more we come to understand just how vulnerable she is. I dare say this has some good advice for getting into any sort of relationship, not just potentially romantic, and that's a rare thing!
Highly Recommended
Eyy reviewed! Always a good day when I get a PresentPerfect review. Gosh you're close to the end now, I'm a little sad to see it coming up after all this time! Or well, the end being relative since this series is not over yet, but still...
Anyway, thank you for the review, the kind words, and the support over the years!
The Only Person Who's Reviewed Every OnionPie StoryTM. And yeah, "End of the Rainbow" is pretty blah - even Onion said so, when I sent him Paul's review from last year. Speaking of Onion, though, the 10th anniversary of What Is Left will be in August! I'm still figuring out how I'll commemorate that...
Wow I remember pre-reading Quoth the Raven, it was so much fun. That was a hot minute ago.
I always wanted to get into the Lunaverse but it's kinda ridiculously big.
5842599
oh, am I the only one? :O I thought someone else had already gotten them all! well then :D
5842640
lol, it sure is!