Fic recs, February 15th! · 5:17pm Feb 15th, 2017
Protopony is looking for positive stories to read!
Ha ha, wow, I've been procrastinating pretty bad lately. :V Head below for a bunch of things I liked, and one thing that's at least worth considering.
H: 0 R: 5 C: 0 V: 1 N: 0
The Stolen Book by Monochromatic
Reading by Dr. Wolf
Genre: Slice of Life
Once upon a time, Twilight met a young filly who also liked books.
The big problem with this story? The description, and to a lesser extent, the title. Don't read 'em, they give the whole thing away. D: Even if you're unable to ignore those, though, this is a really fun read, mostly cute but with a pair of funny endings for its two main scenes. Admittedly, I could only think of The Battle of Fort Book, but other than being really cute and featuring a scene of Twilight meeting one of her future friends as a filly, it's divergent enough to stand on its own. In all, this is good stuff, and will satisfy anyone who appreciates sweet stories about adorable fillies.
Recommended
Broken Inside by Togashi
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Mature: Sex
Genre: Tragedy
From the description, I expected this was going to be asexuality angstfic, and I could make some vague moralizing about how important personal writing is, even when the subject doesn't fit the setting. Instead, this ends up being about pedophilia, the exact thing I didn't want. And yet, it almost does for that was Diamond Tiara Gets Filthy did for incest. If this story does anything right, it's having sympathy for who Rainbow Dash is while not condoning what she does. If it does anything wrong, it's mashing in an internet analogue for more or less no reason. But while most of this focuses on Rainbow feeling like she was made wrong and trying to hide it, the subject matter overall is going to be far too uncomfortable for many readers to tackle, not to mention the molestation scene goes just a little further than many might want, myself included. (I think the author is more used to writing porn.) So I don't know who would want to read this, but if you stumble across one story about this kind of thing, I'd rather it be this one. You could do far worse.
Vaguely Recommended
Finding Heaven by Agent Bookfort
Reading by Illya Leonov
Genre: Adventure
A traveler meets a legendary dragon, and helps him try to find what he's lost.
Honestly, that's a mis-tag: the adventure is merely suggested, and we never see the end of it. No, this is more about a character improving themselves by taking in the viewpoint of another. To be sure, there's a lot of adventure hallmarks to this: the world feels huge, despite us only seeing a tiny slice of it, and never in great detail, and there's some world-building done as well, mostly via the exchange of money. And of course, it's no big secret to figure out who the dragon is or who he's looking for, but the concept of this future is something that really tickled me. In the end, this is sweet, and worth reading.
Recommended
A Visit from the Sisters by Anon A Mous
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Reading by VisualPony, et. al.
Genre: AiE/Poem
The Princesses aren't about to let Anon spend Hearth's Warming alone.
I have to like this, because it's written in the style of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", which as we all know is actually called A Visit from St. Nicholas, by which I mean I really should have seen this coming. And yes, there are lots of close-rhymes and at least one line where either it goes on too long or there's just no rhyme at all, but on the whole, this was too well-constructed and too funny for me to focus long on the flaws. I mean, if nothing else, the last two lines are hilarious, a perfectly flippant way to end a story about a lonely drunk getting unwanted attention from best horse sisters. It's your standard AiE at its heart, but goshdarnit, I really enjoyed this.
Recommended
If I Fell by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Reading by Scribbler and Redbook
Genre: 2P Slice of Life
Big Macintosh wonders what it's like to fly. Fluttershy does, too.
This will not blow anyone's mind, but it's a very well put-together piece about Fluttershy, with a little FlutterMac just because. The second-person perspective is sort of a non-issue: it neither adds nor subtracts from the piece overall, and if nothing else, you're Fluttershy, so it's more the role-playing sort of story than usual self-insert-doing-things-I-would-never-do. Overall, quite nice.
Recommended
Inquiry by Rao the Red Sun
Suggested by Rao the Red Sun for being my 700th Follower (ha ha wow it's been a while)
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight Sparkle seeks answers about her newfound princesshood.
Hey, remember when I did these? This is the kind of thing I'm trying to get back into right now, and since this (handed to me only recently) is the only one under 100k words, it gets done first. :V This gets off to a bad start by reminding me of Eternal, with its header of scene titles. Why is that a thing? But after that, it's all good. The writing's flower, but pleasantly so, and this doesn't rush in setting Twilight through a series of scenes with the other princesses, asking them questions as she tries to figure out who and what she is, and what she's expected to do. I particularly like her camaraderie with Luna, and the chance to have her acting responsible around somepony else was a neat scene to include. If one thing lets this down, it would be Twilight's dialogue: it sounds like the narration, which at least has the upside of consistency. But while I can see Twilight talking like this — and to be fair, it absolutely fits the scene where she and Luna are being playfully formal with each other — it's not what she sounds like normally. I suppose it's possible the author was going for extra formality as something she might consider necessary with her new station, but that's never really specified. Still, this is a really good piece, the kind of thing that could fit in with the whole "Immortality Angst" genre if, y'know, it were angsty, or if it tackled the idea of immortality with more than two lines. It's a pleasant read, and unstoppably optimistic.
Recommended
Thank you present <3
Hey PP
PP
Poopduck.
That is all. You may carry about your day as usual.
Also a pedophilia fic that doesn't get an NR? I think this is one of the signs of the apocalypse, next one coming around Friday/Saturday.
Foalcon is the reddest line I have, so I don't think Broken Inside is going on my list. It is a relief to see that vaguely serious stories dealing with the topic do exist, though. Of the others, If I Fell is one I'm about to read, so the R is promising. ST's is... ST. Don't think I know any of the rest.
Hah! It was The Cadance Condominium all along! Now buried in the peat of recursive meta-fiction!
PP, if you could hold off reviewing this until I've finished it, I would appreciate it. It's not your fault, you didn't know.
Another awesome set of reviews PP n_n
You see right through me, PP. Kinda feels weird to be the only member of the sub-100k club, but hey. I'll take what I can get. Glad to make the "recommended" pile.
4423888 What bugs me the most about "Inquiry" is that I see from our records it was just some minor cleanup away from being featured on Equestria Daily. I thought I recognized the title/author combo from our queue. I always regret seeing a story come that close then never get resubmitted, and this is definitely among the few that stick in my mind the most.
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The pain of it is that I did almost all of the cleanup within a week or two after originally receiving the feedback from... I don't remember exactly, his/her user ID looked like an IP address. Great bloke though. But, then life got away from me and here we are ~2.5 years later and I've finally pulled my head out of my posterior. You will, hopefully, be happy to know that I just finished re-submission mere moments ago. Further trips to Mars will absolutely not take as long to return ever again.
And thank you for saying my story was memorable. I needed a win today. PP and you delivered.
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you saw nothing