Fic recs, May 27th · 12:38pm May 27th, 2016
More news than reviews!
It just so happens I ran into Chromosome the other day, and he told me about his webcomic, Diviners of Solun. It's so far pretty interesting, and if you like high fantasy, it promises to have a lot to enjoy. :) Check it out!
Illya Leonov has done a reading of A Million Little Lights! (I'm starting to notice a pattern to his recent readings…) There's also a new guy, S Ninja, who makes his reading debut with Super Trampoline's White Space! He's on the keeper list! Also, he's open for suggestions on what to read, so flood him with notes. :D (He just did Princess Celestia Is Riddled With Bullets!)
In case you thought I was kidding about that Blackjack body pillow I mentioned in the PH review, here it is. (Don't worry, it's SFW.) I just can't even.
Quick ethics question: If an author has unpublished all their work, yet it is still accessible, via links left in their own journals even, does a reviewer have an obligation to leave those works to rot in obscurity? This is different than if they'd been deleted, obviously, which is a thing that can be done on this website.
Shit, there's a lot to talk about. D: Sorry. If you wanted a hardcopy of The Celestia Code, your chance is here! There's even a discount code!
Lastly, I've updated my fanfics document, with the "Unwritten" category finally in use. This will be for stories that exist only as outlines; I've moved a few "Unfinished" entries there, too. Lots of new stuff to look forward to!
Oh yeah, and I've got some fic reviews for ya today! :B Head below for a look at Daedalus Aegle's Discourse on Fillies, among others!
H: 0 R: 3 C: 2 V: 0 N: 0
Peachy Pie and Misty Moon Keep the Realm Safe Until Dinnertime by Pascoite
Genre: Cute/Dark
Had to read this one again, as I remembered it from the writeoff. :) Worth noting the Dark tag is a spoiler, but there it is, big and red on the front cover. As for the story itself, it's a fun little piece about fillies playing Princess of the Realm. Some readers may be put off by the writing style, which is playful and fairy taleish, but those readers hate fun. :V Pascoite has made a name out of providing pleasing twists at the ends of his stories, and this one is no exception.
Recommended
The Gathering by Bad Horse
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Slice of Life
Who can resist the call of tax exemptions, or the chorus celestial?
Oh, I remember this one from the writeoff, too. It treats alicorns as, not gods per se, but certainly unfathomable cosmic beings, and as a bunch of them gather (heh) in space somewheres, Celestia sits around, listening to GhostOfHeraclitus's Dotted Line talk about taxes while they chatter in her ear. It's really more a scene than a story, but tiny details around the edges paint the full picture and give weight to the ending. Dotted is written well. Par for the 'Horse, if you will.
Recommended
Discourse on Fillies by Daedalus Aegle
Genre: Character Piece/Philosophical
I'm likely the dozenth person to pass this story across your desk in the last week; if you didn't really want to hear about it one more time, mea culpa. But it is definitely a piece worthy of praise. Playing Luna off Diamond Tiara with "us reformed fillies gotta stick together" was a stroke of genius, and this makes good use of its premise to expand on various things we learned in Crusaders of the Lost Mark. Alongside that, we get a look at Diamond Tiara as being just a kid, one who's grown up too fast, takes everything personally, and just needs someone to validate her emotions. The differences in both opulence and responsibility between her world and Luna's put the finishing touches on a really clever juxtaposition. However, this feels like three stories, or perhaps two halves of one bookending a second. Part one deals with their similarities; part three about Diamond's fears for her family. Between these is a lengthy analysis of Machiavelli's The Prince. I'm not kidding; it's two characters thoroughly discussing the ramifications of The Prince, with lip-service given to fit it into the setting. It provides a good background for Diamond's before-her-time cynicism, but it's not something you expect to see in the middle of a fanfic, and a jarring transition from part two to part three demonstrates that it maybe doesn't work as well as you'd want. But regardless of whether 16th century literature interests you or not, this satisfies on the basis of its characters alone, and if you were looking for a good extension of Crusaders' somewhat ham-fisted Diamond Tiara redemption (that is, something that explores redemption as an ongoing process, rather than a destination, and extrapolates her feelings and family dynamic into something a little more realistic), look no further.
Recommended
Ultimatum by Starscribe
Genre: Sci-Fi/HiE
An encounter with an alien force leads Twilight Sparkle to vie for the very existence of her planet.
This is not the kind of story you can tell in 16k words; maybe twice that many, but definitely novella-to-novel length. There are a lot of holes I found myself unwittingly using bits of Project Sunflower — a distinctly better take on the subject — to fill in. And it gets off to a bad start with Twilight fucking everything up because she can't keep her nose out of other ponies' business, to say nothing of the fact that Celestia should have known better than to try and keep secrets from her. But for all that, there's a really good kernel of a story in the middle of this, of the reasons why humans created the Princesses to elevate Equestria to a space-faring planet. Thematically, this piece is really strong, and I enjoyed and appreciated the first contact scenario and its "you can't be an alien, you look like a pony" mantra. :) I just wish that there were more to this, because the alien 'ambassador' comes off as more a plot device than a character, despite a good character lurking beneath her surface. All the background sci-fi stuff is really cool, too. Overall, I liked it, but it may feel thin to some readers.
Recommended for Sci-Fi Fans
Dystopian Circus by Pearple Prose
Genre: Dark
Celestia and Discord watch as the last bits of Equestria crumble.
As you may or may not know, Pearple Prose left the site a while back, only officially announcing it recently. :( I happened to look back through some old reviews and saw that I'd told him I'd review this story, then never did it. And now it's too late. D: But here we are. If there's anything about this story that might drive readers away, it's that it hammers the "grim" half of grimdark relentlessly. Celestia is completely resigned to the destruction of Equestria (though thankfully this takes place after she'd tried her best to stop best). She and Discord laugh about things. There's a lot of talk about how friendship can't solve everything. The other thing readers may object to is that this is another "humanity vs. Equestria fic", but that I say, you could replace any mention of 'humanity' with anything else; we're just our own most familiar destroyers. Still, you can't fault that very first sentence, it's fantastic, nor can I fault the phrase "deadliest booger ever blown". (No context on that one!) So maybe not a fic with wide appeal, but still a great piece of dark fiction, with an ending that is equal parts cathartic and horrific.
Recommended for Dark Fans
You... ran into Chromosome?
Dude, I live in the same city as he and I haven't run into him, you lucky bastard!
3976108
The wonders of Skype. It was his birthday recently! :)
Technically, after a semi-recent rule change, unpublished stories are not intended for readers, only for review/edit/polish. Arguably, you doing a review of the unpublished fic would fill that niche, but then you'd be recommending it to readers which is less kosher. Granted, I assume that rule was more intended for never-been-published fics rather than published-then-revoked fics, but given how quickly the site's users cry favoritism (inb4 someone attacks my post), I'd avoid the drama altogether if I were in your shoes.
Of course, you could ask a mod for clarification.
Thanks, and thanks for recommending Dystopian Circus. Wow, that's dark, with a complex juxtaposition of two opposite kinds of naiveté.
I didn't finish DIscourse on Fillies. I got to the end of chapter 2 and there were no questions in play to me keep reading, so I didn't.
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Chapter three of Discourse:
Raises a whole new question, however, that largely re-contextualizes the whole story. It's not the smoothest transition from chapter two to chapter three, but I found it to work quite well in the end.
Mike
Hm. I was never a fan of "Dystopian Circus." The first part went well enough, but then it went into weirdly juxtaposed uber-dark and sight gags. Plus it's never satisfying to me when there's just pointlessly aggressive humans. There's never anything offered about what the nature of the conflict actually is, and without that, I'm left to assume "humans are killing ponies just because." And people wouldn't do that, so there's a big suspension of disbelief.
I remember liking "The Gathering" from its write-off, but I don't remember how high I voted it.
3976375 True, it made the entire human race a single flat character, one we've seen in too many TCBish stories. What I liked about it was the ironic twist of Celestia spending the story dwelling on Twilight's fatal mistake of dooming all ponies by being naive by being too nice, and then making the same mistake herself, only in the opposite direction.
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Thankfully, I've forgotten who I was asking about. You're probably right anyway.
3976375
Honestly, it's "What if Ultimatum turned out bad?" I don't know how I keep doing this.
If they're not around anymore, then they won't know anyway, and even if they deleted their work, you're under no obligation not to reproduce a duplicate somewhere. Kafka wanted his work burned after hks death, and Brod properly honored his request by publishing anyway, thus allowing the great artist to be oh-so-dramatic and demand his own eternal silence, while still being heard.
Funny you should mention Chromosome ...
Shhhh...
3976705
Ooh, it's not out yet? :O I'm looking forward to it though, I've always needed to read that.
Also good luck ;_;