Fic recs, November 7th · 5:22pm Nov 7th, 2013
SON OF A BITCH
I just finished editing my nine fic reviews, and instead of closing a tab, closed the entire fucking browser window.
Tragically, I could have prevented this.
Thank god I at least have the titles written down somewhere. Forgive me while I try to piece these back together. This is going to be a short one now, because there's no way I'm rewriting all of those from memory. You'll have to look up the readings (they're all by Scribbler; I'll mark them with asterisks if I can remember which ones they are) yourselves if you're interested, I'm sorry.
*That's All by Archmage Ludicrous: Highly Recommended
Normally I do these in the order I read them because OCD, but in this case, you all need to read this story so I'm putting it first. Thank Scribbler for introducing me to it, it's one of the best portrayals of Pinkie I've ever seen, especially considering how short it is. She's not over the top, yet she's perfectly in character. This story really needs more exposure and I'm doing everything I can to promote it. (So of course this is the journal I fuck up.) (Later reading by Midnight29)
Diary of the Stalked by The Lunar Samurai: V
Suggested by JustImagine for being my 345th follower. I compared this to an SCP tale, which won't mean much to most people. It's not bad, but it doesn't really provide enough to bite into. Some of the entries give just enough to increase the tension, but it's never more than that.
A Twist in Fate by JustImagine: N
I did this one for JustImagine since his request was so short. Unfortunately, I didn't like it. Human Twist finds Daring Do's hat in an alley and then meets its owner. Interestingly, she becomes the writer of the Daring Do novels, but there's a lot of characterization that's glossed over with a "ten years later". There's also a question of whether Daring is real, but it's in a "I have no idea what I'm reading" frustrating way rather than an "is she or isn't she?" coy sort of way.
*Silence by ilikepie56: N
This story is poorly tagged. Rarity tells us Sweetie's accident is tragic, but never why, leaving it a "tragedy" in the evening news definition of the word. It could have been tragic had the admittedly interesting ending taken a darker twist, but it didn't. And it's not sad because, despite the fact that a pony dies, there's nothing happier than knowing a loved one is safe and happy in the afterlife.
*Apples Don't Fall Far...: N
A CMC future fic where they're not only grown up, but have foals of their own. They apparently all made sure to marry stallions who were a different species from one another, if their kids are anything to go off. Ultimately, I wondered what the point of this is, since it just stops. No doubt a side-effect of being written for Thirty Minute Ponies.
*Longevity by RainbowBob: R
Previously, I had this big long spiel about RainbowBob, but I guess I shouldn't be commenting on authors in the first place. Suffice to say this is the first story of his I've read and I liked it. It's an idea that was suggested to me to write once, and now I don't have to. Tank outliving Rainbow Dash is, I think, far more powerful an idea than similar setups with Celestia or Spike or Princess Twilight, because he doesn't understand what's going on. That said, this story isn't exactly mind-blowing. It's got a good characterization for Tank, but it's ultimately just adequate at what it sets out to do. Still, I liked it because it wrung genuine emotion from me and I didn't feel manipulated.
*For the Sake of Tacos by Professor Coruptus: V
I can't this story. I was expecting a Nothing Gold Can Stay payoff and instead got a punchline that I probably should have seen coming. The title sadly gives everything away. Expect Scootadoption by PinkieDash.
Halo Man in Equestria: Humping Is Magic by Ethesto: N, DNF 1/11
As trollfic, this is at its best when it's making fun of online gamers: Halo Man talks like a twelve-year-old boy, his views on the necessity of corpse-humping are hilarious, and the author calling Spartans "halos" never stops being funny. But any time it's focused on ponies, it becomes dull and the flaws become glaring. It wasn't something I wanted to read 30k words of.
*Five Things That Never Happened to Twilight Sparkle by obabscribbler: V
And here's the one I really didn't want to lose, though I can probably rewrite it in full since I just finished listening to this not an hour ago. After Biblical Monsters, this was probably the Scribbler reading I was most looking forward to. Unfortunately, I think my expectations were too high, as I was ultimately disappointed. This presents five dark "what if" scenarios for the climaxes of five different episodes. The first is based around the pilot and actually has a good implication: that had Twilight overcome her introversion and tried to make friends -- the wrong friends -- she would have doomed Equestria to eternal darkness. But it got to the end and presented your average "Nightmare Moon takes over" scenario and I was left going, "That's it?" Part two deals with Swarm of the Century and is probably my least favorite. First, the twist is based around, not poor decision making as the others, but bad luck. Second, it could have been far more effective had it stopped right after the new effects of the spell were revealed, leaving the reader to suffocate under so much fridge horror. Instead, it extends the scene far too long and is just this side of a gore tag. The third scenario I didn't like because it ends in Twilight succumbing to Discord's curse and committing suicide, which is never a satisfying end if you want to go dark. The fourth part I barely even remember, it's based around A Canterlot Wedding. The last part I would call the best, but even then it's disappointing. (Maybe just because I wanted a showdown between Sombra and Rapidash!Twilight.) It does provide a nice horrific ending, at least. I'm not sure there's just one place where this piece falls down, but it definitely could have done more with its concepts: subversion, tragedy, or fridge horror as I said above. Not enough emphasis was put on decision making, even in the first scenario, and that's really what the purpose was here. Let this not be a black mark on Scribbler-the-writer, however. She did one thing really right, which is providing enough extra background and character observations to make these show scene retellings worthwhile. You all should know by now how much I emphasize that, and she really pulled it off, so that I never felt exasperated by hearing things I've heard time and time again.
So help me I will never press control-X again.
You will press Control-X again, Present.
It is only a matter of time.
Many times after typing up a lengthy comment or post, I copy all the text into a word or notepad document before hitting submit. That way, I keep all my stuff in case the worse should happen. I know this comes after the fact for you, but maybe it will help with later posts.
Good selection here!
I write all my blog posts in OpenOffice or Scrivener (or anything that's built to recover your work in case something like this happens) and then copy/paste into the browser.
Seconding the rec of That's All. I might like Applejack's presentation even better than Pinkie's.
Was not a fan of Longevity. It was a big pile of sad (competently-executed sad, at least, but nothing great) with no plot or emotional arc. The entire story happens before the story starts. I think someone read Sun Princess and tried to copy it without understanding what made it good. Longevity's strengths are its brevity (a lesser author would've stuck around longer hammering on the same points) and a solid understanding of the "show, don't tell" thing.
The "Five Things That Never Happened" concept can be fantastic when done right. That's why I was so disappointed in Scribbler's story; I expected so much more.
My first exposure to the concept is still the one I consider to be the best: this Sonic the Hedgehog fic written in 2007. Hilariously, that story was inspired by a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic written by... Scribbler!
It's the ciiiircle of life~!
Yeah, I did that to reviews a couple of times. Now, I copy-paste them from a google doc.
Of all things, that Halo Man story actually sounds pretty funny. Note I say it sounds funny; I've got plenty of familiarity with this kind of story, and in my experience they're generally (much) better when experienced via summary. I don't think I actually need 30k words about corpse-humping, thank you very much.
There's a handy Firefox extension (also apparently available for chrome and safari) you can download called lazarus that allows you to recover text entered into online forms. It has definitely saved me from losing significant amounts of text many times.
... Well, that was expected. Thank you very much for the honest review, though. It was a story purely made for fun, so it's not exactly my best.
Admittedly, I wasn't planning to do this. I actually planned allow Twist to talk more with Daring Do and learn more about the woman. Probably allowing more characterization... but I was... truthfully saying, lazy.
Also, in my earlier outlining for the story, I had planned to make the mystery whether Daring Do was real or not the main plot of the story. And allow Twist to fight with herself if her encounter with Daring Do was just a drunkard or the actual Daring Do. Geez, I really should've followed my earlier outline for this story.
So, thank you for the review and I'll keep all this in mind if I ever re-write the story.
firefox > history > restore previous session
Restores all the text as well, I've used it to recover several multipage-long /fic/ posts.
Not sure what the equivalent (or if there is one) on chrome is.
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See
I keep my notes in a google doc so I can compile them over the course of three or however many days
And then I copy them over into the blog post for editing
But if I copied instead of cutting I would still have the original notes on hand! Yeah!
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It's a small internet after all. o.O
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I MIGHT HAVE TO LOOK INTO THIS
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I'm sorry I couldn't give you a better review. :/ I mean, I had one, but it's gone now.
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>implying firefox
Yeah, that's not a thing in Chrome. Has to be a forced shutdown or crash to get a session restore.
I choose to think the end of this sentence was cut off and should have read 'for Vendetta'. Mainly because then I would get to wear a Guy Fawkes mask (good time of year for that anyway) and blow shit up. Bad day = strong urge to blow shit up.
I think that scenario is ultimately what led to this fic's downfall. Upon reflection, no, it's not my best work. Not even close. To be fair, however, it was never meant to be. Five Things ... was a catharsis fic, pure and simple. I'd had a crappy day at work and my insomnia grabbed my eyelids and held them open as a result. I wrote this fic as a means of exorcising some imps in my head after a long (read: months long) dry spell of writing, posted it on FimFic and then forgot about it. I submitted it to EQD only because I was pretty new to ponyfic at that point and submitted pretty much everything I wrote. To this day I'm not sure how or why it is the most popular of all the one-shots I've done, but its popularity was the reason why I decided on that one for a subscriber special.
Yeesh, that was a very ham-fisted way of saying 'I agree with most of your points'. If I'd had the time or inclination when first writing it, I most likely would have elaborated a great deal more than I ended up doing. Short fics aren't my usual fare and when something diddly (read: under 10'000 words) comes out of me it's usually a catharsis fic (insomnia - yay [/sarcasm]) or a request by someone.
Oh buggeration. This fic is not the best introduction to my writing. Though it's not immediatly obvious, given my latest upload, I generally don't do darkfic. For many of the reasons you listed, it's not my forte, so as a first fic ... eesh, sorry.
Yay. *grabs praise and holds it close* Precioussssssss ...
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You should still do this. The Fawkes mask, anyway. :B
Nothin' wrong widdat. :B
>popularity
>this fandom
That's the nature of the beast. :B
I made certain to note the one positive simply for this reason. I believe in you, Scribbler. :)
Obviously this needs to happen. It should be called "A Something What Didn't Never Not Happened at Twilight Sparkle II".
OH GOD I CAN SEE IT NOW