Recommendations: If a Pony Catch a Pony, Legends of the Night Guard, Cool Jazz · 1:57am Sep 3rd, 2012
Good stories that haven't gotten many views:
If a Pony Catch a Pony: This is an Octavia story inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. Looks like it will be Octa-Scratch, though I'm only on chapter 6. Comparing it side by side to Catcher in the Rye, the writing is not as electrifying as Salinger's, but that may be due to Octavia not being the Holden Caulfield / James Dean rebel-without-a-cause type. But it's okay not to be as good as Salinger. It was good enough that I checked. It's the same kind of story as Pipsqueak's Day Off: No evident theme or plot (yet), but it takes you deeply inside the head of the main character, who is so interesting that you keep reading. This story had only one like when I found it this morning. It deserves much more.
Legends of the Night Guard, Alfalfa Falafel: Not much here yet. Plot inspiration is from Lovecraft, but the writing is better. I have faith. I love the idea that the Night Guard is a reformatory for criminals. The few clumsy things in the prose seem to be due to the late-19th-century style that it's imitating. Only 37 views but already 9 thumbs-up, which is a fantastic if statistically insignificant record.
Cool Jazz, Owlor: Twilight (first-person) goes to a nightclub by herself. She doesn't understand everything, but gives it her best shot. Short, fun, well-written. Owlor has many other stories, but I haven't explored them yet.
Honey Mead pointed out this pair of poems: Contemplations. My taste in poetry is suspect, but I think the second one, a dialogue between Luna and a repressed Nightmare Moon, is pretty good.
(And Burning Man Brony: Fear and Loathing of Equestria, by me. But you knew that already.)
What little-known stories do you recommend?
MY OWN
anything by bookplayer.
NOT MY OWN
and I read your new story. Correct, not so many views this time round.
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I dunno. I might have to come back to this one.
I found this story about what an author thought would really happen after the commercial break for "Boast Busters" to be pretty good. It's actually what I thought would happen at the end of the episode, so the actual ending from the show surprised me.
I've got so many Read Later stories already that I don't think I can add any new ones for a while.
"What little-known stories do you recommend?"
"you" as in the audience:
The Box
Still Life
The Cutie Mark Cru-Spaders
You are responsible for a third of my read later list.
331612
This is a pure sadfic. It is a little long for something the purpose of which is to punch you once in the gut, but it's all beautiful, and if you would like to be punched in the gut right now, this story will oblige.
I am a bad horse. I didn't read Church's story because it was, like, 2:30AM and I was really tired, and then in the morning I was re-editing the middle of my own story that had just gone live, and by the time I was done the notification had scrolled away into oblivion. Church is a bad person and will make you feel bad.
331614 pjabrony is good. That was cute; it would have made a good ending. I would also have liked to see an ending where Trixie really was more powerful in every way, and Twilight had to learn to deal with it. But I'm probably the only one.
The Marshmallow Problem. Starts off as a riff on a silly fandom gag, but it just keeps getting crazier and crazier and crazier.
The Upheaval series, it's dark fantasy, not the most grimdark story I've read though it does contain some rather dark moments, it meshes with the canon of season 2 almost perfectly (the first story was being written during season 2, so that's more based on season 1) and builds from there, filling in most of the un-answered questions (it won't be canon with season 3, just because it would be too hard to work in stuff), I could definitely see it being what MLP would be if the show ever got taken in a more adult direction
Night's Favored Child, what if Nightmare Moon had beaten Celestia and ruled Equestria instead? This story is that exact 'what if' question, going back to the time of when Twilight was a foal, Equestria is definitely a more dark place (in more ways then one), another awesome read
331716 Thank you, that was hilarious, well-written, and true to the characters. Especially Twilight.
Ancient Harmony.(Selfless promotion....)
You know. Finding a fic that is truly one I like and also underappreciated/exposed is really hard. Most of the fics I read with minimal views/comments/votes on FimFiction are suffering what I call "unconsolidated linkage". For instance, 5 out of 5 of my favorite fics (completed) have underwhelming stats, despite being featured on EqD. However, none of these EqD features link back to this site. They are all GDocs links.
Some of my other favorite but lesser exposed stories here started up on DA or fanfiction.net. Their fanbase is spread out.
As such, I will try to refrain from recommending these "spread thin" fics, because that is not the same as being unrecognized.
So, by that criteria, the only fic I can recommend as one that is in my favorites list and massively underappreciated is Breeze by Space Brony written in the format of a journal Applejack is keeping which becomes a chronicle of an adventure to assist a mysterious pony in the pursuit of the one he loves while trying to solve the mystery of why she left.
It's nothing mindblowing, but the author has a real gift for drawing the reader into the scenes.
There is one other, but that one is unpublished currently, oh well.
I make a point of spotlighting (in my rec-box) good stories with less than 100 upvotes, so I have a few close at hoof. To Endure for the feels (about Celestia's mortal husband), and The Equestrian Spring for the politics (a pony stands up to the royals to spark a democratic revolution). Also a fan of The Canterlot Embassy for similar reasons, but the story was taken down for rewriting.
I'll be keeping an eye on the others mentioned here as well.
Of the Fair and All After needs more love. It's pretty obvious why it's overlooked: it's a subdued, subtle, short slice of life fic that doesn't cater to any obvious fandom fetishes or gags. But it's also perfectly well-written, crams in a lot of understated depth into a very small space and does an amazing job bringing the casts' relationships with each other into full three dimensionality through Spike's eyes.
Of course, I could just like it so much because it explores the Spike/Twilight and Spike/Crusaders relationships a bit, which are some of my favorite underexplored topics. Nonetheless, it pains me that something as well-written as this has so few up votes when a random 'funny' or 'sexy' fic gets a million up votes from shippers without any real effort paid to the prose or plot structure.
Oh, almost forgot Inky Swirl's Hay Loft. A poignant little parable about not letting who you are suffer because of who you are.