Fic recs October 7th · 1:48pm Oct 7th, 2013

Another writeoff come and gone, another silver medal to add to my tremendous collection of silver medals. <.< I lost to a good one this time, lemme tell you. I can't wait to review that story when it's up here.

H: 0 R: 2 C: 3 V: 0 N: 0

Pick Me Up at Seven by Jondor
Genre: Shipping Mystery
Rainbow Dash awakes to AJ's demands that they go on a date. She's not asking Dash out, she's saying, “We’re going on a date tonight.” Dash spends the rest of the story trying to figure out why while simultaneously enjoying the hell out of AJ’s company. The main draw here, I think, is the humor. The story is consistently funny, and we get just enough hints at what might be going on to move things along and keep it interesting. As for the shipping, well, this is how you ship two friends together believably. That said, the ending is… complicated. Going into it, I’d been expecting the whole thing to turn out to be a setup, followed by misunderstanding and heartbreak. What I got was better than I expected, but also a little disappointing, yet worthy of spoilering. This is yet another story about ponies getting drunk and doing things they might regret. That there are no regrets is the reason why it wasn’t entirely disappointing. ~~Also, there’s lots of hot horse kissing. :V~~
Recommended for Shippers

Broken Monotony by DawnFade
Genre: Bar Night
Yet again, ponies drinking at a bar. I dunno, I kinda like this regardless, maybe because it’s SoarinJack. (I love how the author makes it very clear to us who the ‘mysterious pegasus stallion’ is early on without being overt.) It’s just a scene of two ponies talking in a bar and enjoying each others’ company, as a much-needed escape from their normal lives. That said, there’s not much here for readers not invested in the ship, and it just kind of ends with the promise of sex in their immediate future.
Recommended for Shippers

Flying Lessons by Ponyman
Reading by Scribbler
Genre: Slapstick Comedy
Visual comedy, the sort we see in the show, is often difficult to pull off in a written medium. I know I’ve tried a couple of times and been less than successful, but I like it, and this story is full of it. It’s nothing but good, clean fun as ~~Ditzy~~Derpy teaches Twilight the basics of flying. This is substitute-Pinkie-Pie Derpy, so there’s a lot of scatterbrained shenanigans to be had, not to mention some fun backstory for her. It’s not a perfect story (the ending’s a little ‘eh’), but I didn’t stop smiling throughout the reading. This is a very cute story.
Recommended

The Art and Science of Letter Writing by Pascoite
Reading by Scribbler and DaWillstanator
Genre: Epistolary
Pascoite is, if I’m not mistaken, a rather outspoken opponent of letterfics in general, so you know he’s not going to screw around with the genre. He does a great job of letting the characters breathe on the page-within-the-page, and by focusing on romance and emotions, avoids a lot of the tellier aspects generally associated with letter-writing. This is a really heart-wrenching story of misunderstandings brought forth by attempting to read between the lines. If anything, it’s a treatise against long-distance relationships (though I wouldn’t go so far as to ascribe any such viewpoint upon the author; let’s not freak out, here). You just have to feel for Twilight as she stumbles into and then through her attraction to Big Macintosh. A really memorable fic for sure, since I’m doing this reivew from memory. :)
Recommended

The Lessons of Eternity by Fedora Mask
Reading by Scribbler
Genre: Future Fic
Reading this so soon after that emo Cadence fic is nothing short of surreal, yet I also feel it owes a lot to Eternal, whether as a continuation, an alternate ending, or just inspired by it. This time around, it’s Twilight who’s tired of eternity, just a mere three centuries after the show. In that time, she’s had a number of lifetimes’ worth of experiences with Celestia, including falling into and out of love. As uncomfortable as I am with the main conceit of Celestia essentially talking Twilight out of assisted suicide, I can believe that Twilight would eventually hit that sort of low were she to have eternal life. What I have a harder time believing is just what a bitter bitch she’s become in the meantime. Celestia too. A lot is suggested by how they act towards one another, yet there’s not quite enough there to fill in the gaps of how they got where they are. It was nevertheless interesting to listen to, so there’s that.
Recommended for the Writing More Than the Content