Story Reviews » SA Reviews #97 · 4:06am Jan 29th, 2017
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Somewhere, hidden away, a batpony mare worked feverishly. Her tiny army of small yet accurately modeled figures, held together with plastic glue and painted in perfection, was all but done. It would all be perfect, all complete. Nothing could ruin this moment, nothing could interfere. She’d made absolutely sure that nothing whatsoever could find her. She’d gone far away, covered all her tracks, built an entire bunker, read the Uplifting Guardsman’s manual like a hundred times, and done horrible dark magics to ensure her utter privacy.
Just a couple more guardsponies and the company would be finished. Wasn’t this relaxing? It was. Very peaceful. Just like Cadia, where nothing EVER HAPPENED. So relaxing that she’d forgotten what it was she’d been up to before all of this. It was… something, probably. Something involving doing things.
But that didn’t matter now. Warhammer had a way of narrowing down priorities.
Smiling blissfully, she set back to wor—
“I FOUND YOU CYNE ARE YOU WRITING?”
It all happened too fast. One moment, peace. The next, anarchy. A ferret dropped from the ceiling, landing on the desk with a big, friendly grin. The batpony promptly tried to fly away. The desk, of course, was kicked in the process. Many things flew in the air, all of them things which should not, ideally, be in the air.
“How? Why? What?” asked the bewildered bat from her place on the floor. Turns out that trying to awkwardly fly when you suck at flying leads to accidents.
“Oh, you left your skype open! And ‘cause you asked me to remind you. And ‘cause it’s your first SA post and you’re a layabout,” Ferret replied happily.
A beat. “Wait, what was the first one?”
“Nothing! Nothing which invalidates the fictional setting of the tiny story I am definitely not inside of by calling into question its basic assumptions via a deliberate and sustained breaking of the suspension of disbelief for the purposes of ironic amusement and direct authorial communication through a chosen comedic mouthpiece! Now, did you write your reviews?”
“I… wait, I was supposed to write reviews? Is that what y’all, er, we do?”
“Yeah! Did you?”
“Uh... “
ROUND ##
Coco Pommel finds herself an accidental partner to a controversial figure, as they both make their way home to Equestria. Unfortunately, said figure is in the possession of a very curious artifact; one which has set some rodents of ill-intent fast on his trail...
Do you like adventure? Do you like thrills? Do you like Coco Pommel? Do you like learning more about one-note characters that turn them into fully fledged characters in their own right? Do you like worldbuilding? How silly, of course you do! And if you don’t, this is the chance to correct such a glaring gaffe.
This is borderline pulp action of the highest quality and the amount of work put into it truly shines. Every action feels fresh and sharp and the adventure leaps off the page to attack your eyeballs.
The main antagonists here are the Rats and they are very impressively fleshed out. They have hopes and dreams and their own culture as they clash with our protagonists. The author does a really good job of making them feel like a unique species.
Dr Caballeron really stands out here. He really come into his own here and remember this story dropped before the excellent Stranger than Fanfiction which helped flesh out his character. The good doctor here really comes into his own, both taciturn and friendly by turns.
This is a solid adventure story to really sink your teeth into.
Have you ever read pulp fiction from the age before the Great War? I’m talking Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, or his She, or Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, or Well’s The War in the Air? Wait, no? Seriously, not even… okay. What about Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
There we go. The rest of you think about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’ll do.
That is sort of what this story wants to do. That feeling that the old fathers of science fantasy and adventure created and which would give birth to a dozen different sub-genres and traditions. It begins with intrepid explorers and clueless sidekicks and some incredible danger to be had. John Hood even manages to squeeze in an innate dastardly group, while mostly sidesteppin’ the jingoism that plagues the great writers of adventurers who may or may not also be doctors of some sort.
Coco Pommel plays the clueless but loveable sidekick, lured in by circumstance and perhaps a bit eventually by the charisma of Cabelleron, and Cabelleron himself is of course… Allan Quartermain. He totally is. I would find you parallels but I don’t have a copy of… like ANY of those books on me right now. Losing your interweb-free PDFs is suffering, y’all.
All of this to say: while I usually want my adventure to have more obnoxious scenery chewing, because I’m a glutton for purple, the fast pace is fun. But what I enjoyed about this was John Hood’s sense of adventure. If you’re looking for a nice adventure fic, and you don’t mind short chapters, then here you go!
Nine-year-old resident wimp Doldrum Whimper has a dream: to bulk up and become the buffest colt his town has ever seen, so he'll get some respect in school and no one will pick on him ever again. Only, he's not actually bulking up from his current program.
But not to worry, the Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange has items for everyone's interests, and that includes the old strong stallion books that were all the rage back in the day. Why, there's tonnes of books about making winners out of wimps.
Only... one problem: he's only got enough for one trade, so he has to pick the right one.
This is going to be tricky.
This one surprised me.
I love a good SoL fic, and anyone who's ever asked me about stories knows this. I love when people can write about the mundane and show just how beautiful it is, how surprisingly meaningful and filled with complexities the tiniest moments of a life can be, and do so well.
The story is, basically, about a young colt who lives in a village “crazier than Ponyville” that seems to be basically populated by super intense soccer moms and Crossfit disciples. Whimper is a small kid. He would like to be not a small kid, and with a book from his mother in tow, he goes to the Rainbow Falls exchange to find himself a winning book to magically buff him up.
Whimper is about what you’d expect. He’s timid, nervous, and uncertain. Making choices is difficult for him because he puts pressure on himself to make the perfect choice.
Look this story is all just a HUUGE Hegelian dialectic and I liked a lot of things here. I liked Flora, Whimper’s mother, and I liked what she had to say. I liked the fitness ponies, who were chuckleworthy but also felt like real people having a bit of fun. I liked that Whimper himself changes, and that I believe it when he changes. It makes sense. I can’t stress enough how refreshing it is to see a story where a character changes based on a single thing in the body of the story and I actually 100% believe that that event could in fact produce the change that we see.
I love the fact that Whimper and Peachy are kids, and they feel like kids, and they act like kids. That’s harder to get right than people think.
This one is good, and anyone looking to write episode-like SoL should consider looking into this story.
If you like stories that feel like they could be an episode of the show, look no further. This is an exceptional story and if it was a friendship letter it’d be about figuring out what you want can be tricky, but if you really think it over you’ll learn what fits best. And that sometimes ponies can have hidden depths.
This focuses on a young colt named Doldrum who wishes he wasn’t so weak and scrawny. He decides that he should find some big tough ponies at the Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange to help teach him.
Here the story really starts to shine as Doldrum meets some wonderful characters who all have a different way of helping him. From lifting weights to eating right to running laps and more end up making his head spin. He struggles to make sense of his options without making what he feels would be a bad decision.
He takes a break to talk to his mother, a lovely mare with a good head on her shoulders. She reminds me of Tito’s mom from ‘The Weekenders‘ if I’m honest(And anyone remembers that show). That right blend of being able to talk to kids and not down to them, but also enough to not give them the answers.
Eventually he makes his decision and I won’t spoil anything. This story made me smile the entire time and really made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I’m a sucker for good Slice of Life and especially for good episode style stories and this one is exquisite.
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STORY 3
Will the last pony to leave... by Not_A_Hat
600 million years in the future, all life is gone from Equestria. The Sun Princess is feeling a little down.
I can’t recall when I first read this story, but it’s one I come back to every once in a while and it always makes me smile when I read it. Which is funny as the author says they were in a melancholy mood when they wrote it.
To me this story is optimistic. It’s about remembering the good times in the past and still moving forward with things. To looking towards the future and celebrating what has come before and what may yet come again.
The story is what it says on the tin, Ponies(And the other species) have moved and grown to the stars and beyond. They’ve outgrown the galaxy and moved onto other solar systems and places and Celestia is having a few final thoughts before she turns out the light and moves on.
This is a beautifully written piece and really captures Celestia beautifully. Her joy at seeing ponies succeed ad grow and her sadness at having to say goodbye to the world she knew. At the same time, she’s hopefuly for what it will mean for her moving forward.
I’m especially impressed at how little Sci-fi actually makes it into the piece. This easily could’ve been a sci-fi epic and instead is a sweetly happy character piece.
The 20th and 21st centuries have been awfully full of stories about the End of the World. “Post-apocalyptic” is a generic tag that triggers all sorts of responses from people. Good, bad, or indifference, sick of it, whatever. My favorite all-time show, the Twilight Zone, probably ended the world in one way or another about sixty times.
This story may look like it is yet another bleak tale about the end of the world.
And it is! Except that it’s not. It’s kind of a story about Celestia, except that it’s not.
Underneath this story is another story that I think most of us can relate to: what happens when something is over? You know the feeling of “what now?” that comes after you clean out a room or apartment, and the last box is packed? Or the feeling you got the day after you graduated? The day after any big accomplishment or long, grueling trial. That feeling is what this story is about, and I appreciated it. I’ve felt that feeling a lot. Not_A_Hat’s take on the melancholy after the end is refreshing, despite being a little short, and it’s a nice little look at the idea.
STORY 4
Grayscale by FloydienSlip
In her pursuit of the Cluster, a lone unicorn finds a town that has been ravaged. As she searches the remains, she discovers that hope can be found in even the most dire of circumstances.
Another apocalypse… of a sort.
I confess—I like mystery. I like stories that give me a brief, shadowy glimpse and then thumb their noses at me, all whilst reciting poetry in Swahili but backwards. Or, put in a less farcical manner, I like stories that have an obviously large amount of world that could be shown, but only allow us a brief glimpse of part of that world.
Grayscale does this, to a great degree. We have some vaguely defined disaster and a lone wanderer. Sprinkled throughout their journey are tantalizing hints at the nature of this event—including references to something known as the Cluster—as well as to the dangers of this new, changed world. Few of the dangers are spelled out in full. There are others, and we are told about them, but Floydien gives us only his narrator’s snide thoughts about them and that’s it.
We don’t know the significance of what the narrator finds or doesn’t find, and we don’t know what he needs.
And personally? I like that. There’s something a little Theatre-of-the-Absurd about that and it’s interesting. Above all, this story is mysterious, and it will leave you wanting to know more. And that feeling is a good feeling.
This is a piece that I almost find hard to talk about. Not because of the emotional impact, though it definitely has one. But more because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of comparing it to other things and not letting it stand on its own.
It’s akin to Fallout: Equestria in that it’s clearly a post-apocalyptic world, a blank empty canvas, nothing but grays and ash surround our narrator. Broken buildings litter the landscape as they search, hoping and praying for something.
Also like End of Ponies it’s a single pony searching on their own. Searching for something unknown. Perhaps first aid supplies? Others? Magical weaponry to destroy this oft-mentioned but never seen ‘Cluster’? It’s not entirely clear.
But at the end of it all it’s none of these stories. Grayscale is clear in that it has a message for us, but wants you to tease out that answer yourself. It’s not going to hand you the result on a platter, it wants you to decide what is being sought and what is eventually found.
“Seeee? That wasn’t so bad!” The Impossible Ferret said from the desk that was now actually a table with far too much paper on it.
“How did you—”
“Magic. The same way I add the em-dashes to replace all of the silly double dashes you write in the google doc, and that you’re writing now.”
“But… but I’m not…”
The Ferret tsked. “Now, now, you were doing so well! But you’ve got to keep up with the meta, you know? Get with the game. You’re not gonna make it long in here if you can’t keep time.”
“There’s no musi—”
The trumpets came first. Nothing made sense anymore. The Ferret with her tiny yet adorable paws had been replaced by a tiny ferret-sized cosmonaut.
“What is happening?” Cyne asked, horrified.
“Writer's block, mostly!” Answered the ineffably adorable breakdancing Ferret Space Comrade. “And also a play on a one-off joke earlier in the writing regarding the fourth wall. And break dacing cosmonauts are perhaps the only objectively awesome thing to all people.”
“You’re mad!”
The breakdancing stopped. The Ferret looked right at the camera, somehow managing to achieve the perfect Office-camera-staring-look, and also summoning a camera as there hadn’t explicitly been one there before, because that would be ridiculous.
“Oh, am I?”
Feel free to visit our group for more information and events, and to offer some recommendations for future rounds. See you all next time!
Just a note: you forgot to put NaH's image in the post.
4400838 Sadly that story has no image and is poorer for it >.<
And you forgot to list an author for the first one. Or put a round number just above it.
Rip in pieces, Cadia ;_;7
<_<
>.>
Should've been painting a Nightlords warband. They are an army which some things, ideally, should be flying through the air.
I think by this point NASA should be asking the Angels for help, as they have probably gone to space more often.
4400949 NOTHING BAD HAPPENED
As long as it doesn't feature the mane six having an adventure without Spike, I'm 100% sold.