Fic Rec + Updates · 6:22am Aug 20th, 2016
Hi everyone!
I hope everyone's been doing awesome. I've been doing a bit better, resting a lot at home and writing to pass the time. I'm still suffering from headaches and respiratory problems, but I'll be going to the neumologist next week and hopefully this will all be over soon. My condition has made it hard for me to focus lately, and I miss being able to breathe like a 23 year old and not, well, an 80 year old.
Writing wise! I've been working on a new fic this week, and it's actually the last installment of my take on Earthsong's Bodyguard!AU. It's about halfway done, nearly 10k long so far, and it's silly, fluffy, and has all of the mane six. I hope to have it done by this weekend, after which I'll have it edited, posted and then soon after I'll have Death's chapter 2 posted, and then I can go back to ghost!au.
Though, for now, I'd like to talk about one of my new favorite reads:
Holy cow, this fic.
I'm not lying when I say it's possibly my favorite MLP fanfiction, dethroning even Ardensfax's Shadow of a Doubt (also known as the fic responsible for turning me into RarTwi trash). The story begins in the city of Venaria, where Sophie, a young human girl, sees her studies interrupted upon meeting a most peculiar, almost mad woman claiming to be a Princess from another universe entirely. Soon after, Sophie finds herself accompanying this strange princess to the ends of the earth on a quest to go back home.
This story is weird in the most wonderful of ways, and I could honestly gush about it for days on end.
Cynewulf's writing, ever as poetic and ever as enthralling, weaves a story that is easy to read and yet impossibly difficult to let go. He takes a first person narrative, which is usually very hard to do right, and does it in such a way that it's so easy to imagine yourself sitting alongside our heroine, listening to her tale. His worldbuilding is fantastic, as always, and done in such a way that this new world feels completely familiar. In some ways, it is.
I don't want to spoil much about the story, but I'd like to talk about Twilight. I thought a lot about what captivated me from this story, and I've concluded that it was seeing our princess in such a different light. I thought about the show itself, how Twilight Sparkle has never been a mystery because she is, in many ways, the audience surrogate. Twilight is what we know, and we're interested in learning more about other characters.
Through the eyes of Sophie, however, new life is breathed into Twilight simply by showing us what a fascinating being she is. Even though I already knew who she was, Sophie's fascination of Twilight was contagious, and it was so easy to understand why she'd be driven to follow the odd princess to the ends of the earth, back to her own universe, back to her own home across the well.
I had the immense privilege of being allowed to watch as Cyne wrote this, and it's honestly been a very long time since I was so captivated by a story, since I'd drop everything to watch words appear on a screen, to wait with bated breath for the next paragraph, the next dialogue, the next scene. There were several times where he'd stop writing, and it was with great shame and yet none at all that I'd find myself immediately messaging him on skype, asking (see: demanding) to know why he'd stopped, and how he couldn't stop! I wanted more!
I told him, when he finished, that this story felt like the kind of story to read on a winter night, curled up on a couch with a hot cup of coco, listening to the sound of wood crackling in the chimney. It's a wonderful story with wonderful writing and I highly recommend it. Though it's a short story in itself, only ten thousand words, it's a poignant story that lingers on after it's done.
Go read it! Gogogogogo!
A recommendation from Mono?
OK this story I have to check out.
4160226
IT'S SUPER GOOD ooooohmygosh
4160230 you've already sold me Mono I'll be reading it tomarrow.
Any fic good enough to make the author of my favorite romance story have to write a blog about it I simply have to check out.
Well, I made a recommendation to you, so I might as well accept one of yours in kind.
Plus, I don't have much else to do today.
EDIT: Just got done reading it. That was a spectacular story.
I'm sorry your having headaches and breathing troubles! I hope the doctor you go to next week can help you with that.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY-wait...
Cynewulf's fic is now on my read it later list, thanks to you! I'm looking forward to checking it out.
Neurologist, or pneumologist?
[Brain-sciencey thing or respiratory-sciencey thing?]
RariTwi never ends, so I am skeptical on having a last installment ... especially in a RariLight AU, from you
Yet I'm worried you might be far too serious and actually put the last one up ... as the last one 
Wishing you all the best, with writing and everything else (life)~!