Fic recs, November 17th! · 2:44pm Nov 17th, 2016
No news again, huh. :B Well, as always, you can head below the break for reviews of Thorax Staghorn and the Mystery of the Bacon Festival by horizon, Sporktacles's Alicornication, Tyrant Celestia's Trip to the Moon by naturalborn derpy, and a bunch of other stuff! I even read one of those of my own volition! It's hard. D:
H: 1 R: 2 C: 4 V: 0 N: 1
Night Owl for Hire by Enigmatic Otaku
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Mature: Sex
Genre: Comedy/Clopfic
Desperate to pay the rent, Vinyl Scratch answers a very vaguely worded job offer.
I put a slash in the genre because the comedy and clop really don't intersect; and on that note, the comedy is the stronger part. If I had to recommend this for anything, it would be the unusual pairing alongside Vinyl's characterization: she's a sex-crazed moron, and it's endearing. As for the plot, it's straightforward; as for the sex, it's okay, maybe with a few poor word choices; and as for the writing, it's got some issues, most notably that I wish POV had stayed constant. But, for what this is, it's an amusing read, and if you like unusual pairings, it's definitely good.
Recommended If You Like Clop
Thorax Staghorn and the Mystery of the Bacon Festival by horizon and Not_A_Hat, and apparently FanOfMostEverything, Scramblers and Shadows, Quill Scratch, Morning Sun and possibly more?
Drunk Reading by Morning Sun and I have literally no idea who else
This is a drunk reading of a drunk writing that already isn't conducive to being read aloud. But hey, it's Morning Sun, everyone loves Morning Sun!
Genre: Crackfic
So the live drunk write-a-thon is something of a horizon tradition, and I usually review them afterward because I don't know, I like the lolz? It contains bacon, drinking, snogging, snotting, incest, ponies turning into other ponies, changelings, Discord, in-line images, hilarious commentary, tiaras, poetry, and the greatest Star Wars-related simile ever written. You know what you're getting into before you read this; you know how you will feel.
Troll Recommended
Alicornication by Sporktacles
Genre: Comedy
Stemming from the season six opener, we get this goofy-ass thing involving just about everypony being alicorns. It's about the stupidest story I ever read, by which I mean it's about the funniest story I ever read. If you enjoy sexual humor especially, you will get a big kick out of this, but there's more to it than that. (Shining Armor's full title is hysterical, possibly due to the last fic I read.) If you like goofy shit, this is some of the goofiest!
Recommended
Tyrant Celestia's Trip to the Moon by naturalbornderpy
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: Comedy
When Celestia goes evil, there's only one solution: send her to the moon!
This is a perfectly hilarious sendup/parody of tyrant Celestia fics, with quite a lot more going on besides. It's one of those fics where not only do ponies do outrageous things for stupid reasons, but those around them don't react in the way you'd expect. That's what makes this so funny. Just read it.
Highly Recommended
28 Pranks Later: The Aftermath by Sparrow9642
Reading by The Author, DarkNightPrincess and Jade Hunter
His mic quality is pretty low, with a lot of background hiss, but at least I can say that, loud as the music may be, it never overtook the narration. He is fairly mumbly, though (sounds like he has a cold). I'd consider looking into more of his readings, assuming they aren't all just his own fics. (I don't think they are...) On a side note, I've never heard of the two VAs before, but they were both cast well. :)
Mature
Genre: Grimdark
Rainbow Dash discovers a dark side to her cookie prank.
So, my first impression was that the writing isn't great. There's a lot of repetition ("smell" is used an awful lot), limited vocabulary, and overall everything is simple and plain. The horror aspect seems based on "more blood is scarier" (to wit, the author really emphasizes the word "blood" in the reading), but the medical mystery actually caught my attention. Then Twilight kills Applejack. :| At that point, the story turns from "at least grimdark fans might like this" to "what is this ridiculous, silly nonsense?" I mean, really, there's no suggestion of holding out hope to find a cure or figure out what's going on? I was wondering what the purpose of this fic was until that happened: namely, it's "have Twilight kill everypony". That's it, that's the whole fic: Twilight kills everyone in Ponyville, feels bad about it, and then dies, the end. Like I said, silly.
Not Recommended
So a Pony Walks Into a Gun Shop… by totallynotabrony
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: PoE
...Because she wants to buy a gun.
A criticism I've seen leveled, and used myself, at many a Halo, etc., crossover centers around authors spending unnecessary paragraphs describing the characters' weapons in great detail. It's almost never important to the story, qualifies as info-dumping, and is going to be inaccessible to anyone without an equal amount of knowledge on the subject. That is pretty much the entirety of this story, but since a lengthy exposition of gun knowledge is what it's ultimately about, it's not a problem. Furthermore, the quick run-down of basic gun safety is actually knowledge one can put to use! I was intrigued by the background of this, the idea that Equestria and Earth have somehow collided and seem to be getting along peacefully was a nice setting for this single interaction; I would read more in the same setting. As a story, well, there isn't actually much to it, and the comedy is more or less limited to the incongruity suggested by the title. But as stories with humans and ponies go, this is pretty good, and it's never too much of one thing.
Recommended If You Like Human/Pony Interaction
Big Mac and Sombra Debate Philosophy by Esle Ynopemos
Reading by Scribbler, DaWillstanator and GuituSerenade
Genre: Random
Sucked into an alternate dimension, Big Mac unexpectedly finds somepony to talk to.
Say what I will about the fic readers getting me into these long story collections, Scribbler just gave me a free chapter read! :D As for the story itself, well, the main joke is pretty obvious (what do you expect out of two characters whose lines consist of one of two words?), but I found the body of the story surprisingly enjoyable. That said, the final punchline falls flat, mostly because it breaks the taciturn character archetype being played with here. Then again, the author's note is kind of hilarious; how often do you hear that? Still, not a waste of time.
Recommended as Light Reading
Ship to Wreck by totallynotabrony
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: Comedy
Flash Sentry finally gets Twilight onto his boat, but romance is the last thing on her mind.
This isn't exactly what I would call "coy" about its symbolism, but hey, at least it's there. What makes this work is Twilight's steadfast obliviousness to everything but SCIENCE, and Flash's chagrin thereto. Points for good use of classic Greek mythology. The punchline stuck, and I laughed rather a lot.
Recommended
I can claim personal responsibility for the Star Wars simile. Also all the LHC references. I wasn't even drunk; I just didn't give a crap.
The reading on the drunkfic was mostly Morning Sun, KwirkyJ, and me. Morning Sun was the Irish one, KwirkyJ was the talented (and sober) one, and I was the useless one. :P
Fair enough, I really don't care, but I have other readers who would disagree with your opinion on 28 Pranks Later: The Aftermath. The story was written specifically for my Month of Macabre series of readings, so it was a guarantee that this story wasn't going to end happily. I'll explain the reason why Twilight gave up, because SHE KILLED TWO OF HER FRIENDS IN A TIME PERIOD OF AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES! How would you feel if you had to kill two of your friends in a time duration of 5 minutes. You'd feel like shit, and feel completely helpless. Basically what happened was Twilight got impacted severely by her having to kill her friends to free them of their suffering, leading to a severe depressing feeling that impacted her sanity, causing her to lose hope out of depression from killing her friends. That's a grimdark. Another thing, the reason I sound like I have a cold in my narration, is because that's my grimdark narrating tone. I've fixed the fuzziness in the audio, and have gotten better.
4306218
Glad to hear your audio has improved, it's all about time and sticking with it. :) I'll be back for more of your readings, definitely.
The problem with the story is that the decision comes completely out of left field and doesn't seem like one Twilight would make. She would analyze, she would evaluate, she would use stasis spells or whatever magical mumbo-jumbo you can come up with to save her friends at any cost. Is mercy-killing them within her personality? I would say yes, especially if you're going for shock value, but not until every last option had been tried and exhausted. They had only barely contained Rainbow Dash and identified the source of the contagion when it's just, "Whoop, oh well, gotta kill AJ". And yeah, she's gonna feel bad about it, no argument there. My point is, you rushed into the final decision, and it comes off as the hand of the author guiding the character instead of the other way around.
4306306 Wel, if you are looking for answers to what happened to RD, Twilight, and the rest of Ponyville, I'm in the works of a sequel called "28 Pranks Later: Twilight's Transmissions," and explains what happened within the 28 days after the epidemic was exposed.
Somehow it feels karmically appropriate that the cosmic trainwreck of Bacon Staghorn is labeled as my fault despite me only contributing like three paragraphs to the story.
I'm still not even sure who wrote what, because I was handing out edit rights like candy once I got drunk enough. I do know that 4306150 is responsible for the best jokes, though.
Once I get a few free minutes (after today's flight to Seattle) I've gotta post the non-drunk fic 4306167 co-wrote. It's a lot more readable.
4306325
...That's not what I'm getting at.
4306592
If it wasn't your fault, I wouldn't know who to blame! :V