Fic recs, April 7th (Happy 2000 reviews!) · 12:38pm Apr 7th, 2015
Hey, it's time to get back on the three-day schedule! :D Can your butts handle it?
I keep posting this because this episode single-handedly did away with an entire season’s worth of knocking Fluttershy off the top of my favorite pony list. That’s powerful, man.
Neighrator Pony did a reading of the excellent Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea. Also, there was a second reading of the (also) excellent An Unexpected Love Story, by Lost Narrator, Goombasa, and couple other awesome people, that I forgot to include in that blog post.
Check below the break for reviews of FanOfMostEverything's The Perfect Barnstorm, themaskedferret's very first story ever, and my 2000th review!
H: 1 R: 3 C: 3 V: 1 N: 1
Once a Crusader… by Carpetbagger
Reading (part 1) by FFFluttersh169
Genre: Slice of Life
Scootaloo considers the repercussions of getting her cutie mark before her friends.
This has a lot of structural problems: simple typos, a lot of telling and over-modifying, plus a very bizarre use of centered text that I couldn’t figure out the purpose of. Plot-wise, it’s both a laundry list of every show trope and your average “one of the CMCs gets a cutie mark” story. The conflict is entirely “Scootaloo won’t listen to her friends”. The way she gets her cutie mark is pretty silly. I mean, that she’s inspired by her hero to win a race is cute, and well expressed even, but doing a Sonic Scootboom — winning the exact same way as Rainbow Dash — suggests a dearth of original ideas. If there’s anything worthwhile about this, it’s the reveal at the end that Apple Bloom and Sweetie already had their marks. I wish it’d been played more for laughs, honestly. Overall, this just isn’t all that interesting, unless you’re majorly into low stakes stories about the Crusaders.
Not Recommended
Also, I’m downgrading FFFluttershy on my reader review list. <.< I don’t know if my old laptop had better audio output or what, but I can’t hear her for shit these days. It doesn’t really matter, since she’s not active anymore and I’m almost done with her stuff.
Princess Pinkie by Wonder
Genre: Comedy
Pinkie Pie wants to be a princess.
Unrelated, but it really bothers me that the only reason anyone outside the SCP Foundation is going to know the phrase “XK-class end-of-the-world scenario” is because every picture of alicorn Pinkie Pie on derpibooru is tagged with it. And that’s sad because the phrase has a lot more meaning than a simple meme (the full spectrum of K-class apocalypse scenarios is fascinating), and also because Pinkie deserves so much better. Anyway, this is rife with punctuation and capitalization errors, written in a fairly haphazard way, telly and rough around the dialogue. That said, the author has Pinkie’s personality down pretty well (though I was less impressed by the others’ reluctance to search for her), and I have to admit her plan actually working is really funny. This does take a turn for the serious near the end, and while it feels abrupt… Well, in a show of surprisingly speedy authorship, the author expanded the ending before I had a chance to publish the review — literally the same day I commented on the story — so I think that’s worth an A for effort. I do hope the author keeps writing. :)
Vaguely Recommended
The Perfect Barnstorm by FanOfMostEverything (and Bad Horse)
Genre: Comedy
Applejack’s barn is upside-down. And full of water.
So the way this story works is that Bad Horse wrote the first 13 lines and challenged people to finish the story. Unfortunately, FOME used those lines verbatim. I say this not because of any notion of plagiarism, but because Bad Horse and FOME are very different writers, and the difference between that initial bit (which is hilarious) and the rest (which is also quite funny) is palpable. That said, this does hit its own stride in time, and the end result is lots of fun, even if it feels a bit like the author didn’t have the whole thing planned out. It has some of the best usage of colored text since I Am Demon, and a good cameo from Apple Bloom. I will say that I’m disappointed most of the action happened behind the scenes, but for a ridiculous premise, this handles itself well.
Recommended
Sheepish Talk by themaskedferret
Review #2000!
Unofficial sequel(ish) to The Perfect Barnstorm
Genre: Comedy
Applejack wonders why a sheep would name her child ‘Lanolin’.
Okay, so first a ton of background. Never the Final Word is a collection of continuations and unofficial sequels of other people’s stories. Many of the entries are written by horizon himself, but he also takes contributors. They range from a couple hundred words to a couple thousand and I’m going to be going through them in the near future to suss out all the ones written about stories I’ve already read just fucking read them all because I have too many unread chapters in my library. This story in particular is just based off a single throwaway line from FOME’s story, so reading that one first honestly isn’t even necessary. But I’m not done with the background! I’ve known ferret for probably close to a year now, and in that time, I have made it my duty to badger her into writing something. :V Well, she did, somewhere along the line, and never told me about it. But I found out, you betcha, you can’t hide from me! V: So that’s why I deliberately made sure ferret got my two-thousandth review. I’m so proud of you frt and also you are a butt. Anyway, as for the story itself, it’s a little unfocused, but it only seeks to explain a single word in another story, and does so in an amusing way. The dialogue is strong, which is good, since after the first paragraph or so, that’s all it is. I never had difficulty telling who was talking. The only other comment I have is that the names were kind of majorly weird, and I wonder if it’s just because I don’t know much about sheep. I mean, it’s taken this long for me to get used to horse puns; adding another species into the mix is too much to keep track of!
Recommended If You Like Slice of Life or Sheep
Under a Tree by Noble Thought (formerly Lambent Dream, formerly… wait…)
Genre: Slice of Life
Fluttershy finds Applejack on a hill under an oak tree, and tries to talk to her.
This is a reworked version of My First Tree (still extant as a bonus chapter), which Noble/Lambent apparently got a lot of negative feedback on. (I’m actually not certain I reviewed that story now, but I know I read it for some reason.) And, well, this is immediately majorly improved. Fluttershy’s voicing is perfect, if a bit narrator-y at times, and the flow of the conversation, or lack thereof, is really natural. It’s still the same story, but it’s told better. Plus, it’s pretty clever how it’s able to explore Fluttershy a little while mainly focusing on Applejack. Their friendship frames a story about family and earth pony life, told in a pleasantly meandering manner by Applejack. And then there’s the other story here, the one neither of them really want to think about. This is what slice of life stories really need to be like.
Recommended
Those Who Live Forever by Moose Mage
Genre: Literary
Ms. Cloud does her best to make sure her daughter can take the School for Gifted Unicorns entrance exam.
This came highly recommended by Cerulean Voice, by which I mean he badgered me into reading it. It seems to be part of what I’m going to call a growing trend: literary fiction posted on Fimfic with a severe dearth of pony names (see also Mrs. Polaski in Grey). However you slice it, there seems to be a sudden rush of authors, either just now writing or just now being noticed, creating stories like this that get tons of traction among the various fic reviewers (of which I tend to be the last). Now don’t get me wrong: the writing in this piece is exquisite, the second line especially being astounding and definitely not working outside of ponies. This is a story subsumed by a particular event in the show, and I don’t want to spoil what it is, since it’s used so tragically. But once the exam is over, I feel like the plot becomes shaky. Certain things have to be accepted for this story — and it’s quite a wonderful story, about pursuing dreams and good parenting — to work: that the School has an age limit; that Delores would know to go where she did; that Celestia would be so overjoyed by events that she would neglect even one of her little ponies. I think, to borrow parlance from Titanium Dragon, that this story is overall Worth Reading, and I will see what else the author has done, but I felt just a tiny bit let down. (FYI, the author has a rationale behind the lack of pony names in his stories, which I will present here without further comment.)
Recommended
Method Acting by Pascoite
Reading by Neighrator Pony
Genre: [REDACTED]
A lone phoenix watches ponies farm rocks.
I really loved this one back in the writeoff. Now that it’s expanded, Pascoite has added in a thread about the timelessness of phoenixes that makes the ending even better. And if there’s a reason to read this, it’s for the ending. I’m not gonna give a single thing away, just know that everything that happens, everything that seems purposeless, has a purpose.
Highly Recommended
Collide by KitsuneRisu
Reading (part 1) by Wayart
This guy has a nice, mellow voice. Unfortunately, he also has a very thick (Russian?) accent, and the end result is he comes off mumbly and unintelligible. I mean, I could understand him, but it required perfect silence and a good deal of concentration. If you’ve got issues with understanding accents, he might not work out for you. But I won’t say he’s bad; I really do like his voice.
Genre: Drama
Applejack hadn’t wanted Rarity to come with her to Dodge Junction, but she did anyway. Now, fate has left them stranded in the desert.
I think this can be favorably compared to Mistakes Were Made, hearkening back to bookplayer’s assertion that Rarijack is best written after the romance has passed. (Hope I got that right.) Granted, a good three quarters of this piece is spent slowly building up to the tumultuous climax, but what a climax it is. And perish any thought against Rarity’s characterization: this story’s crux is outing the various misfortunes perpetrated against her character in season 2 (e.g., “she got away with lying” in Sweet and Elite). It also explores just why the plain-spoken, honest one would want or even need the one who isn’t plain or honest about practically anything. As a Rarijack shipper, this tickled in all the right ways, and I suspect anyone who likes relationship drama will appreciate this. Non-shippers need not apply.
Recommended for Shippers
Night Light by Thyrai
Reading by Lucero the Pegasus
Genre: TwiDash
Twilight wakes up next to Rainbow Dash and tries to remember.
I cannot adequately sum this story up. Maybe it’s the fact that I had to listen to the reading piecemeal, and that sometimes I couldn’t quite hear what was going on. (Sidenote: Volume aside, this marks a remarkable improvement in quality for Lucero’s readings. If you weren’t impressed with him before, give him another chance!) It starts off with a very purple but ultimately good “waking from dream” scene, turns into not-your-average amnesia fic, and then… I dunno. It’s like a long string of scenes that are unrelated apart from being about Rainbow Dash and Twilight’s relationship. It made my TwiDash parts very, very happy, and that’s all that really matters.
Recommended for TwiDashers
Seeing Fluttershy bob her head in the video there, and along the side with your other blogs at the same time, was just too damn adorable, son!
Also I really didn't like Method Acting in the writeoff. It confused the heck out of me and I had no idea what was happening. But I'll put that down to my perception of deeper subtext lacking, and my low-level reading ability, rather than because the story itself wasn't good.
Now that it's expanded, I might have to take it out for another spin. Hopefully I'm not as dazed and confused by it second time around.
2955894
It's not really got any subtext, just a wonderful twist. :)
2955899
See how much it confused me? I don't even remember its contents except for somehow I think Rainbow was a griffon and Twilight was a phoenix. And I didn't understand how or why.
I'll give it another go later.
2955925
Well, the ending's not overt, I guess. :B Give it another shot.
Oh goodness, I'm a headliner.
It was weird enough when people were calling me a pillar of the community when I published I Shall Please. (Also, fun fact: The colored text uses the colors of Pinkamena's mane and coat.)
And yeah, Method Acting is awesome.
Congrats on two kiloreviews!
2955967
ooh, nice detail about the color :D
Oh my gosh >< I thought you were joking when you said you were going to review it! I'm going to quietly go freak out somewhere else. And yes, the names are sheep puns. I have an author's not for it that Horizon will be tossing up later, since it sort of got posted before I realized ^^;
I'm so glad you liked it, and had such nice things to say.
Re your "Sheepish Talk" review, Ferret actually submitted some additional information to me about the sheep names, which I've added as an author's note to the chapter. This should answer most of your questions.
Edit: Apparently 2956773 and I saw this post around the same time, it just took me longer to post my comment.
Wow, 2000 reviews.
Well done, PP. Well done. I'm honoured to be part of the batch, too. If there's any way I can make your life more difficult, don't hesitate to ask.
2956773
Mmm... sheep. SHEEP. MMMMMMMMMMM. Heh heh eHE Heheh EHheh. HEhe.
2956773
Thank you for the author's note, that was quite helpful and I just sort of assumed you were using sheep breeds so yay me! :D
Now go write something on your account! :3
2957061
Ohh, you already have. :V
2958296
And I shall continue to do so.
=3