Fic recs, July 9th! · 9:14pm Jul 9th, 2015
To my detriment, I’ve been playing a lot of Sentinels lately, so much that A) I’m not getting shit done that I should, and B) I came up with a crossover idea. I pray to God I never write it, because it’s so dumb. D:
Hey guys, check out this comic dub I did of one of weaver’s FNaF things!
Apparently, my fic made the featured box for a hot minute. :B Cool. (Also, if you abbreviate the title, “YCGYF” sounds like Ye Olde Englishe. :V)
Thanks to my newest patron, Cerulean Voice, for supporting these blogs!
Exciting stuff today, including Cold in Gardez's Naked Singularity and The Last Crusade by CyborgSamurai!
H: 1 R: 3 C: 1 V: 1 N: 0
He’ll Never Leave Me by Draconian Soul
Reading by Emogak and The Lost Narrator
Reading by WhoLandon
Genre: Sad
Pinkie tells the tale of how she met Gummy, as well as how he’s doing now.
In hindsight, this story should be right up my alley. It’s got a good Pinkie narration voice (though with occasional bits that are more writerly than stream-of-consciousness), and she’s a very good unreliable narrator. But I guess it was just really obvious what was going on? Or maybe it wasn’t set up well and fell flat? I was certainly exasperated by all the telling-of-things-we-already-know at the start. This particular backstory for Gummy isn’t terribly revelatory, either. It’s an okay piece, I guess, but it really should have worked better than it did.
Vaguely Recommended
Mega Doki-Doki Flashlight Mix by Tall Tales
Reading by Brendaniel
Genre: Anime-style Badfic
This is a thing of beauty. All the tropes of terrible stories written by weeaboos, rolled into one huge wink. The tone is spot-on, plus it makes fun of EQG tropes on the side. If you enjoy intentional “so bad it’s good” parodies, don’t pass this up.
Recommended
An Old Coot by Bachiavellian
Reading by Illya Leonov and ShadowOfCygnus
Reading by Crafty Arts
Genre: Future Fic
Spike is awoken from his nap by a little filly.
This was from the last writeoff, and was quite the good story. It presents a believable future that has nevertheless changed from the status quo in some big ways. Magnolia is a believable character, and watching her grow over the course of the story is a highlight. Of course, Spike’s also great, and seeing both the ways he’s been fit into the world and how he’s become somewhat bitter while remaining himself is likewise great. This is a solid piece!
Recommended
It’s Gonna Be a Mathacre! by Zodiacspear
Suggested by Protopony350 as a Patreon reward
Genre: EQG/Dexter’s Lab Crossover
The evil Math Magician attacks Canterlot High, trying to make students do their homework.
First off, I don’t really know Dexter’s Lab, and I don’t know who this character is. Lack of foreknowledge didn’t hamper my understanding of the story, at least. This is pretty much just an excuse to make lots of math puns, and I’ll admit a few of them were pretty funny. The writing is along the lines of “quick crackfic”, and the punchline doesn’t make sense without the original video (thankfully provided), from which it is directly derived oh goddammit now I’m. Still, the preponderance of puns keeps this from just being a rehash of something else, and if you like such things, it may be a fun diversion.
Recommended If You Like Puns
Naked Singularity by Cold in Gardez
Reading by Captain Sand
Reading by GutiuSerenade, et. al.
Reading by Savrin Drake
Reading by BleedingRaindrops
Genre: Comedy
Twilight drags her friends into her latest, rather ill-conceived idea: write a romance novel!
I’d have reviewed this one sooner, but the reading was such poor quality, I couldn’t hear a damn thing. :B So Cold in Gardez is well known these days for pieces like Lost Cities: literary, full of big ideas and beautiful descriptions. Then there’s Naked Singularity, a classic Gardez comedy, and one of his all-time most popular pieces. (It is, in fact, his most-viewed on Fimfiction.) It’s a well-earned honor. This is a hilarious piece about fiction writing — always near and dear to my heart — with a slight droll edge to otherwise perfect S1/S2 characterizations, from whence the bulk of the comedy comes. Of course, the fact that it’s about Twilight writing a romance novel is even better, and the excerpts printed in the story are hilariously bad, pitch-perfect sendups of both Twilight’s character and the entire romance genre. This story is as much a guilty pleasure as the novels it parodies. It’s just so delicious watching Twilight blunder her way through the tropes of romance with her own personal touch, and the buildup toward the tragicomic end is fantastic. It’s hilarious and sexy and really makes you feel like you’re peering into Twilight’s deepest, darkest thoughts. In all likelihood, you’re one of the fifty-thousand people who’s already read and enjoyed this, and don’t need me to tell you it’s great. But if not, now’s your chance to make up for lost time!
Highly Recommended
The Last Crusade by CyborgSamurai
Side-Story to Five Score, Divided By Four
Genre: EiH
A young man and his friends discover that they have more in common than just liking a certain cartoon about colorful ponies.
Preface: This review is likely not going to be as descriptive or helpful as it could be. I started reading this story when I pre-read it for EQD, and that was, oh, a good two years ago. I’ve been following it ever since, but the details have of course faded over time. I’m going off vague impressions and the fact that the story has kept my interest all this time.
So with that said, I probably need to talk about Five Score. It was a Thing for a while, like Ponyfall, and the basic premise was that Discord won at the end of season five (hey, it could happen!), turned a bunch of ponies into humans, and sent them off to live on Earth. They had new personalities, new lives, and many of them weren’t even the same sex, as is the case with the main characters of this story. The way the stories are presented — and I should mention Last Crusade is the only one I have to go off, as I haven’t even read the original, though I will — this comes off as “random people are turning into characters from the show”. You can maybe see the appeal, to the broad MLP fandom audience.
Why Last Crusade caught my attention was its characters. Mage (it’s been so long, I can’t remember his real name; I think it’s something like Magellan?) is a fully-realized person, who leaps off the page almost from the get-go. His friends likewise feel like real people, and their interrelationships are believable. His sister is a hoot and adds a grounding factor to an otherwise outlandish fantasy. It also helps that the potential for this setup to be wish-fulfillment, self-insert garbage was never really explored. The characters don’t enjoy what’s happening, at any point. This isn’t “maybe we’ll all turn into ponies and life will be awesome”; the change is traumatic, and after it happens, there’s shit that needs fixed.
While the writing shines all throughout, this story does suffer from two things. First, it had to play second fiddle to Five Score, as they were being worked on concurrently. Because of this, there are long stretches in the middle where it seems like all the interesting stuff is happening off-screen. This eventually goes away toward the end, but there’s only so far things like “Shining was dating someone who wasn’t Cadence” can carry the story. You’ll need a hefty investment in character drama at the halfway mark, is what I’m saying.
My only other complaint actually has to do with the transformation itself. It was kind of horrific to watch, though Cyborg assuaged most of my fears about what are essentially the soul-deaths of the “real” characters who start the fic. It’s certainly more a personal qualm than anything, and the fact that these pony-people end up being amalgams of their “true” selves and the people whose lives they’ve inhabited for twenty-odd years does keep everything feeling fresh. (I suppose I could criticize the ending for being ridiculous — everything always comes back to the Elements — but nothing about this story isn’t, and what happens just so cool.)
Last Crusade is, if anything, an example proving the rule “there are no bad ideas, just bad writers”. (And I don’t mean that as prejudgment of Five Score.) It’s a lot of fun, and definitely a unique take on melding humans and ponies.
Recommended
I think Naked Singuarity was the second CiG story I read -- after The Contest, which I (first) read in my very, very early days in the fandom. Very glad to see it get an H here, as it's one of the few stories that I have genuinely had to stop reading on a crowded train because my giggles were starting to annoy other passengers. :P
That explanation makes that genre of story make a lot more sense. The description I'd heard previously made it sound extremely bizarre, while this... is still bizarre, but is, at least, coherent.
Thanks for the review, PP! Glad you liked it! :)
3223663 Heh, something similar happened to me while reading that fic. Except in my case I did actually burst out laughing. Probably the only time I did something like that.
I remember back when I decided to read all of Cold in Gardez's short comedies. Naked Singularity was my favorite because it was the only one that didn't end abruptly. I understand why the other stories ended the way they did; they had delivered the punchline and going on after that point would make them less funny than the author wanted. But I preferred the closure Naked Singularity brought, and it was also hilarious to boot.
3225119
There's a big difference between writing up to a punchline and writing something that's funny all the way through.
I still like The Contest. :)
3225378
I forget which one that is. I'm remembering another CiG fic where the CMC fuck things up and it ends while they're still in the process of making a new catastrophe. The ending deals with some the mane six realizing that they misled the CMC and have some responsibility, but there's no denouement or cleanup or anything like that.
I'm not sure if you know, but GutiuSerenade also put together a full cast reading reading of Naked Singularity. P: Just thought I'd point him out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3oLlG5ngKY
3230487
I'm not following him yet, which is why I missed it! :O Thank you.