Friday's Featured Fic: The Heart of an Author

The Heart of an Author
Author: Oroboro
Genre: [Murder Mystery] [Dark] [Meta]
Word Count: 137k
Synopsis: Mystery. Love. Magic. Murder. Truth. These are all important elements in the murder mystery Fluttershy has written, and is now asking Twilight to read. But the novel stars 'Twilight Sparkle', and she wrestles with the metafictional dissonance involved in reading a novel about herself and her friends. Twilight must do her best to solve the mystery, reconcile her own feelings about this ordeal, and figure out just what Fluttershy is trying to say by writing all of this in the first place as the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

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Before we begin, I want to make it known that this is a thematic crossover with the visual novel 'Umineko No Naku Koro Ni,' which I have never read, and have only the faintest knowledge of, so I can honestly say that you don't need to have any knowledge of the source material to be able to assimilate the narrative.

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across this story. Mystery as a genre is all but nonexistent on Fimfiction, and murder mysteries even more so. Fluttershy writes a mystery novel, and then asks Twilight to read it, with the caveat that she has to 'solve the mystery.' On the surface, it sounds fairly straightforward, but there's one small hitch: the characters of Fluttershy's mystery novel are none other than Twilight and the mane six. Five years after the events of the show, Twilight and the mane six are leading separate successful lives, and once a year get together for a reunion of sorts. This year, they've chosen to hold their reunion at a vacant mansion, far from civilization. At this point, the story plays out fairly predictably: circumstances conspire to trap the mane six within the mansion, a body is discovered, Twilight goes about

But this is all just a ruse. A red herring, if you will. Because this story isn't just a murder mystery, it's an introspective examination of the entire genre. I know that sounds complicated, but the story handles it in such a way that it really isn't. After Twilight finishes Fluttershy's novel, and makes her feelings known, Fluttershy decides to write a second novel--which serves as a kind of quasi sequel to the first to the first. And this is where things start to take a turn for the strange. Sadly, I can't go deeper into this story without going into spoiler territory, but suffice to say, it's a wild ride.

They say that a good mystery story is like a contest between the reader and the author. If that's true, then Heart of an Author is like a contest between Batman and that one goon.

Metaphor!

To put it bluntly, by the time I was done with this story, I felt like a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest; Heart of an Author subverted my every expectation, debunked my predictions, and led me by the nose in a merry chase of misdirection. Fans of the mystery genre will love it. Check it out!

[Link to Story]

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Comments

[Danger Beans]

Published early because I won't have time to tomorrow. Cheers!

[Oroboro]

Thanks for the feature!

At this point, the story plays out fairly predictably: circumstances conspire to trap the mane six within the mansion, a body is discovered, Twilight goes about

I think a line got cut off here.

[Danger Beans]

3053743

You're most welcome. And I actually cut about a third of the original text out because it was too spoilerific. So that's an oversight on my part.