Fic recs, January 1st 2015! Happy New Year! · 2:07pm Jan 1st, 2015
Man, I feel bad. I mean, normally I hate New Year's, but everyone's going "Ugh, 2014 was such utter crap I am glad it's over" and I'm sitting here like, "2014 was pretty good for me ._.". I guess it's just me, then.
>still liking Sonata Dusk
>in 2015
Time for review changes! You'll get to see the "displaced summaries" in action finally! Also I'm gonna try out this "List all the fics!" thing and we'll see how people feel about it. :B
Angels by Zaphod
Old Paths, New Directions by An-Twan Star
The Final Hearth's Warming by The Princess Rarity
On the First Day of Hearth's Warming, Background Ponies Gave to Me... by Yorkie Pie
The Dragon's Riddle by horizon
One Hearth's Warming Eve by Caisius
One in the Same by Bullet25
Okay, yeah, I can totally dig this. Just have to copy-paste the stuff from my spreadsheet and replace the tabs with 'by'. (That's why they're title-author, fyi.) If people like it, I'll keep doing it! :D (Except for huge special edition posts, of course, that would be stupid.)
H: 1 R: 0 C: 3 V: 0 N: 3
Angels by Zaphod
Reading by Scribbler, Mary Medley and Rarityfangirl31VA
Genre: Confused
Fluttershy’s attempt to spend Hearth’s Warming with her marefriends is marred by Angel’s sickness.
This is story is a bit of a mess. For starters, it was written for a “random polyamory” game, and this shows. Having Fluttershy, AJ and Twilight in a triad with no forethought gave this story an absurd surrealist edge that I could never shake. It doesn’t help that this qualifies as Bad Shipping: AJ doesn’t feel like herself at all (Alien Shipping Syndrome?) and I never once believed that Twilight was an active part of this relationship. Plus, why did they need to be in any kind of romance at all? This would have turned out the same if they hadn’t been, for all that it’s about them enjoying the holiday and unwrapping presents while Angel lays upstairs on his death bed. I'm not kidding about that, either: he’s literally described as gaunt and having trouble breathing and only getting worse, and after a short cry at his bedside, they’re all la la la la la happy presents funtimes. Oh, and Fluttershy tells the story of how she met him, which really didn’t do anything for me. This is an example of why writing games and contests do not often produce good work; this story has no idea what it wants to be about, aside from fulfilling its prompt.
Not Recommended
Old Paths, New Directions by An-Twan Star
Genre: Gilda Redemption
A visit from the Princess of Dreams sets Gilda on a crash-course with her past.
This was originally published as Gilda, an Honest Opinion? in the Outside Insight contest. Here’s my original mini-review:
Gilda is now delivering mail in Canterlot; she reflects on her life, both dreaming and waking. This is full of talking heads and Gilda really doesn’t sound like Gilda. Plus, the characters tend not to act realistically.
So yeah, I didn’t like it. However, the author went and rewrote it heavily enough that it’s all but an entirely different story now, and I am treating this as a separate review. (You can find the original as a bonus chapter.) This still has some minor dialogue issues, and the narrative lapses into telling now and again, along with getting stuck on minutiae, but hot damn, I’m really impressed at how much the author improved this. Granted, a lot of it is taken up by backstory and some pretty detailed world-building, though that helps it feel very Outside Insight-y still. The main plot, though, is probably the strongest part of this. Gilda is painted as an outsider both in pony society and her own, thanks to her understanding of the ponies. The use of Lightning Dust is pretty great: she makes for a great foil to Gilda, also bruised by Rainbow Dash, but every bit her equal. I wish she’d been a bit more of a focal point, but she does liven up chapter two, at least, and this story is at its best when they’re bantering. This gets off to a slow start, and is about equal parts griffon world-building and Gilda redemption, but it’s a good look at Gilda and, again, a great turnaround for a contest entry I’d written off like so many others. Check out the original version if you want to see how much an author can improve.
Recommended for Gilda Fans
The Final Hearth’s Warming Eve by The Princess Rarity
Reading by TheLostNarrator, et. al.
Genre: Poor, Pathetic Scootaloo
Scootaloo, shopping for the perfect Hearth’s Warming gift, runs into Rainbow Dash.
I’m sorry, this is another of those would-be tear-jerkers where I ended up laughing by the end. When Scootaloo’s “life savings” is less than a hundred bits, you know the author is using her just to tug at the heartstrings. It’s hard not to see through that kind of manipulation. (It all comes down to why the story is titled as it is.) The writing is fraught with LUS and word choice issues. The Hearth’s Warming shopping scene is very Earth-analogue. And Rainbow Dash is a total bitch; if there’s a pony version of NotAlwaysRight.com, she would end up there. The best thing I can say about this story is that it’s very old and I know the author has improved quite a lot in the intervening years.
Not Recommended
On the First Day of Hearth’s Warming, Background Ponies Gave to Me… by Yorkie Pie
Reading by Akash the Reader
Genre: Randumb
Celebrate a terrible Hearth’s Warming Eve with Lyra, Bon-Bon, Colgate and Derpy.
This is one time I highly suggest not listening to the reading. Having no idea what was going on, and given that Akash started with the description, I assumed he was doing a skit where the ponies interrupt him constantly. But no, the interruption is actually part of the story, complete with Fimfiction pony emoticons, and merely one of the reasons I absolutely hated this fic. The others are a pair of characters: “Dumblecolt” and “Mrs. Timare”. The latter has got to be a reference to something I’m not privy to, and all I could think during her scenes was "Who the hell is this?" As for the former, I only ask What was the author thinking? This is almost anti-humor. And given that the story ends with the narrator getting fed up with all the interruptions and quitting… Sometimes, there comes a story that escapes my ability to review it. This is one of them. It is absolutely one of the worst fanfics I’ve ever read, despite the writing being decent, and I do not know why it was written.
Not Recommended
The Dragon’s Riddle by horizon
Reading by Illya Leonov and the Youtube AllStars!
Reading by Midnight29 and Zethis
Genre: Fable
The age of dragons has come to an end. Whoever answers the dragon’s riddle shall rule the new world.
This was a really great entry in the “Just Over the Horizon” writeoff, a contest that spawned far more meta-usage of the prompt than was really necessary, if you ask me. Said prompt is the key to this story’s titular riddle, for instance, and that’s the last I’ll say about that. Watching the pieces fall into place is lots of fun, but honestly, this is just some cool super-historic world-building. I can totally buy the setup. Not to mention, it’s really funny just how gleefully clueless the minotaur leader is. With a great story and solid classic fable-style execution, this is a must-read. (And a must-listen!)
First Highly Recommended of 2015!
One Hearth’s Warming Eve by Caisius
Reading (part 1) by The Looney Turtle
Man, there are just a ton of great fic readers out there to be found. (The last few I’ve discovered have all come from EQD’s Nightly Roundups, fyi.) This guy has good volume, good projection, and a very pleasant, husky voice. (He sounds like a young Jeremy Irons.) My only complaint is that he needlessly cut up a one-shot into tiny pieces (the reading actually isn’t finished, as I write this). But that’s hardly a reason to say no.
Genre: Holiday Special
A stallion down on his luck has his Hearth’s Warming Eve brightened by a bubbly pink baker.
This story has all the trappings of fanfic disaster, but I feel like the author was able to pull it off. By not setting up the OC in the beginning as a poor pathetic thing, but rather someone suffering for the mistakes he made, it gave me enough goodwill to be interested in his story when he dumps it. That, and a disgraced city financial advisor is definitely not your standard OC. I also rather appreciated the break in the story at the end, how it goes from present to past, and the way it resolves, even though I’ve seen that ending time and time again, and it hardly ever works. Well, either I’m just in a good mood, or this is the odd story that makes it work. The writing does have some flaws, notably typos, which weren’t picked up by the reading, of course. Still, I think this is a good example of how not to fall into the usual traps of sad OC fics.
Recommended If You Don’t Mind Rough Writing
One in the Same by Bullet25
Reading by webshoter, et. al.
Genre: Mystery
DJ Pon-3. Octavia Philharmonica. Living together, but never seen together. A mare named Amber is out to prove they’re the same pony.
(An aside before we begin: blurbs like that are why I wanted to separate out the summaries. I think it looks much nicer, don’t you? :) This is a pretty great story, but it’s going to be hard to swallow for many readers because of the Earth-analogue setting. The ponies swear like people (minus “buck” for “fuck”). They have cell phones. (I understand that younger people who’ve grown up with SMS-ready cell phones approach the world via text message, but I can’t honestly see ponies texting. It just doesn’t make sense, even if you can justify the technology.) Most damning is a receipt in the middle of the story with dollar signs on the prices. So why read this? A new interpretation of Vinyl and Octavia, for one. A mystery whose pieces come together just short of the truth, for another. Honestly, that’s the best part of this: our little conspiracy theorists stumble across evidence linking the two musicians, but the truth turns out to be far stranger than the fiction-within-fiction. And best of all, the author doesn’t waste time explaining things, making for a perfect ending. I think this could work better as non-pony urban fantasy, and have told the author as much, but as it stands, it’s a pretty decent piece, and definitely what I was looking for, given the premise.
Recommended If You Don’t Mind Non-Poniness
Ew, not the greatest start for the new year. Clearing out all the junk early?
I have to say the Dragon's Riddle impressed me as well.
Good choice for highly recommended!
Oh man. If PP's giving a story that genre, you know you done goofed.
Well, thanks for reading it, I guess? I'm not quite sure why that story out of all of mine is getting attention like this. It didn't really have a need to exist outside of me having fun with the prompt game, so I'm not terribly torn up that you didn't like it.
2693272
I hate to say it, but rec levels tend to fall when I'm relying solely on audiobooks. :B
2693524
Yeah, sorry. :/ I likely wouldn't have even known about it if not for the reading.
I know exactly how that goes. 2014 was freaking great on my end.
2693617
The worst thing that happened was I didn't get a job and ran out of savings. Which, y'know, just kind of business as usual, really.
But I got health insurance! I saw doctors, plural! My ass is fantastic, thank you for asking okay you probably didn't want to know that but still :B
Hey, awesome! After a rough 2014, it's great to see the new year start off on such a flattering note --
Present
Preeeeeseeeeeent
FTF'Y
Dumblecolt sounds like the best insult I ever heard.
As for 2014, I can't fault the year I finally decided to start regularly blogging at screenburntheblog.com (bring your friends!), but I remember Film Crit Hulk saying that he'd caught up with 2014 and 2013 music and thought that the latter was better. As luck would have it, I'd listened to over a hundred albums from both years and I have to admit, I agree with him. Not sure if it's the worst year for music of the decade so far (I get the sense that's still 2011) or not, but at the very least I got St. Vincent out of the deal.
2693914
No joke, typing on tihs laptop is harrrd D:
...Begrudgingly, I shall allow this.