Fic recs, April 21st · 6:14pm Apr 21st, 2014
I suddenly find myself needing to report on fic reading-related things now, which means directing your attentions to this video. The short version is Doom Pie is leaving the Doom Pie Network and Intrapulation is taking over for him. Very interesting, a better result than the channel stopping or being deleted. Sounds like he’s got a lot of ideas in store for pumping out content. Kind of a weird thing. I still haven’t caught up with all the content on this channel, either. D:
Would anyone be interested in me doing a rec journal of incomplete, likely never to be finished stories? Mostly stuff from EQD that I pre-read long ago and has since dried up, plus a few old favorites from Ponychan are what I have in mind. I'm not really sure what the point would be, unless any of them start up again (lol), but maybe there are some masochists among you who enjoy seeing new ideas regardless of whether they're complete or not. (I do know that one of the stories has at least a fully completed 'book', so there's that.)
H: 0 R: 3 C: 5 V: 0 N: 0
My Sediments Exactly by Twinkletail
Reading by Porpoise Pete
Reading by Dr. Wolf
Reading by Lucero the Pegasus
Genre: Crackshipping
You knew this had to happen, right? A pony who says little and a pony who expresses little: how could they not be shipped? At its heart, this is mostly just a comedy, the actual shipping (thankfully) not moving beyond looks and mute feelings. Everything is timed well and there’s a great “Big Mac doesn’t get to speak ever” joke near the end. The author really gets what makes Maud work as a character, and I might even have more appreciation for the episode for having read this. That said, I do feel like it’s one of those stories that just revisits a character from the show without expanding them much (most of the ‘action’ revolves around Boulder and rock poems), but that’s pretty much all I have to say against it. Even people who aren’t into shipping should enjoy this if they like Maud.
Recommended
The Fragile Art of Bonsai Trees by Regidar
Reading by Flame Lionheart and Scribbler
Genre: Introspective
This is a quiet, cute story about Fluttershy tending to a small tree and the animals that live around it. I particularly liked that it shows her taking care of insects, something we don’t see much of in the show. And yes, there’s an “I want to be a tree” reference, but thank what you will, the author doesn’t just let it slide, instead going into the desire somewhat and thus saving it. I do rather wish the word “ecosystem” hadn’t been used so much, as it felt a little heavy-handed. I mean, yes, I get that this tree supports its own little ecosystem, I do not need to be told this over and over. But if any of that sounds less like something you’d want to read, let me just say that this is a short piece, no longer than it needs to be, and the ending is well worth it. It feels jarring at first, but as far as I can tell, there's a ton of foreshadowing. It's very clever!
Recommended
Tea Time by Einhander
Reading by Porpoise Pete
Genre: Conversation
Why is Celestia taking tea such an indelible image, and so attractive to writers? I don’t get it, myself. It might have something to do with these stories always making me feel wrong somehow (because I just heat water in a microwave and throw a tea bag in for ten or fifteen minutes before pouring in a few tablespoons of sugar). Anyway, I like how this one is written: Cadence having an internal monologue about her life and things going on in the Crystal Empire, mixed with Celestia talking to her and no responding dialogue. Then the roles switch, and I feel like that’s really where this picks up. (Cadence’s backstory is kind of muddled, and this doesn’t “listen” very well; I had to go read it myself.) There’s some decent world-building centered around letter-writing that gives the Crystal Empire and the crystal ponies real character, not to mention pointing out Cadence’s inadequacies as a ruler (which I maybe enjoy a little too much). This also does do a good job of demonstrating how important Cadence is in the overall story of the show, but honestly it’s not doing much for me, and it’s entirely because of that fairly dull first section. Maybe someone more interested in Cadence’s character would get more out of it, but I think I may just have to write this off as the odd flub from an otherwise good writer. (And I could have done without the Thor reference). And for the record: “get down on one hoof” just doesn’t work as a ponification. I mean think about it: what image does that phrase suggest? They have knees, you know.
Recommended for Fans of Cadence and… Tea?
Bradel and Horizon Write Stories
So if you follow either of these guys, you already know that they got together at BABScon, got drunk, and started writing in Google Docs. I thought I would go ahead and review the stories they wrote for a lark. Note that I had some difficulty getting the document to load because there are a shitton of comments.
Bradel and Skywriter Visit Canterlot by Bradel Bound
Genre: Meta
Bradel and Skywriter’s author-insert OCs go to Canterlot and Skywriter gets distracted by tiaras. Also, Horizon shows up to cause trouble and there’s a spaceship. Mostly, this is just a long string of near-incoherent self-awareness and it’s really funny. As drunk writing goes, it’s a little disappointing (not enough typos, though the non-sequiturs more or less make up for that), but I’m tickled because Bradel plugged one of my stories and if I had enabled comments I could have put in a direct link to it but nooo, so I might be a little biased. Between the ‘end’ of the story and the beginning of horizon’s is a load of comments that make no sense because they're backwards, though I’m not sure they’d make any more sense read bottom to top anyway. If you like trollfics and watching drunk authors talk to each other, make sure you pass your eyes over this.
Horizon’s Story by horizon
Genre: Also Meta, I Guess
This starts off with Celestia berating Pinkie Pie for drinking too much, and, uh, I’m really not sure what happens next. This definitely delivers on the drunkfic promise, however, slowly devolving into typo-laden direct author comments to the characters. I guess the first one’s a better story (somehow), and this one’s funnier, but together they are quite the experience.
I Don’t Even
Reminder by Fangwarden
Genre: World-Building
This is a quick vignette about a pony-raised Diamond Dog participating in an ancient Diamond Dog ritual for what I gather is the first time. This was written for the World-Building Alliance, and like all the stories I’ve seen with that tag, it was quite good. For as short as it is, the characters are surprisingly vibrant, the interplay between the two at the start of the piece really popping. I did feel like I was missing just one or two tiny things, and there’s not really any conflict, but this does a good job crafting a small facet of Diamond Dog culture and overall, I liked it.
Recommended
The Last Gift by Old Toby
Genre: Scootalove
This starts off as your average Scootalove piece, but rather than turn into another flying lesson, the story revolves around Rainbow Dash trying to help Scootaloo get a cutie mark in doing scooter tricks, and that going horribly wrong. Now, I like this, because — and this is admittedly my own interpretation — Dash is shown as nurturing the talent Scootaloo already possesses instead of one she might never attain. That’s pretty neat. That said, it’s kind of difficult to pass off a character-building story from the perspective of an outside character. It’s Rainbow who learns a thing or two over the course of this story, but it’s all told by the end because the POV is mostly Scoot’s. That, and this wraps itself up pretty quickly once the plot is revealed, not to mention leans heavily on Scootorphan for the emotional climax. But it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it shows that, even post-Sleepless, we could still find ways to put new spins on old tropes.
Recommended for Scootalove Fans
The Library of Discord by Chinchillax
Reading by Chinchillax
Genre: Immortality Fic
Don’t let that genre tag scare you: this goes way beyond your standard immortality story, by orders of magnitude. Though that phrase reveals an issue I had with it: this story is full of numbers. Now, after praising Statistics so highly, I feel like something of a hypocrite criticizing number usage here. But in Statistics, the number-emotion format helped mitigate some of the meaninglessness of the numbers. It was possible to concentrate on the orders of magnitude, or the differences between numbers, to get just enough of an idea of their meaning in the context of the sentence, not to mention the numbers never really went too far beyond the imaginable. In this story, the numbers are so huge that they are completely unfathomable (not to mention there’s a lot of math thrown around). This is used to express the central concept of The Library of Babel, on which this is based, but after a certain point, you go from “really damn big” to “completely meaningless” once again. Which is not to say it’s without merit, of course. It presents a really original take on Discord. Though, in trying to make him something of a sympathetic, even tragic figure, the author ends up infodumping his life story at the end of the piece. Not to mention, given that this comes off as something of a reaction to Keep Calm and Flutter On, the overarching plot has him going stone-free-stone-free in a ridiculously short amount of time. Still, the concepts explored are interesting, and the chapters tend to end in really good spots. I never found myself bored, just slightly mind-boggled at the digitry at work.
Recommended If You Aren’t Numberphobic
Do such things exist?
2031947
Basically Alexstrasza. No-one else.
Pfft, Cadance has fans, just not Cadence.
2031977 Has he considered therapy?
2032012
The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem
You know what? Characterization for the crystal ponies and Crystal Empire is something I don't have enough of now. Lord knows the show didn't give it to me. So that's enough to make me read Tea Time.
Also, I saw Bradel and Horizon write Bradel and Horizon Write Stories. I feel privileged to have commented.
hey, thanks for the rec! I'm actually somewhat proud of this story, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I honestly think that I overused "tiny" more than ecosystem, yet one could argue that was dependent on the style
2031947
Cadance is Best Princess.
Also, I was totally not expecting to see PP reviewing me and Horizon getting drunk and yelling at each other for 90 minutes. But we did have fun! And we may be doing this again, in the future.
...I'm just going to become "That one guy with all the drunk writing", aren't I?
Oh, great. Now that one of my stories has scored an "I Don't Even" I'm going to have to derive complex roots of polynomials in order to get my average PP review score.
I just tried, and came up with "apple." That can't be right.
Reviews of incomplete, probably never to be finished stories? Why, yes! Yes, I think you should do that right away. Might I interest you in some pissed off Cheerilee?
2040253
:|
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