Signal Boost · 4:51am Feb 22nd, 2017
A pal from off-site just got into Ponies about a month ago, and got so excited he wrote a fanfic. And I think that story's views have been unjustly low. (Full disclosure: I also helped with this story's proofreading.)
It's a ship-fic that's unlike any other I've read (admittedly, my exposure to shipfics is a bit limited). Here's a comment I posted on the story, on that topic:
The mixture of romance and adventure genres was very interesting. So many other fics that combine the two will essentially have the adventure plot and the romantic developments running parallel. The events of one plot will influence the other, and maybe both will climax in the same scene, but still the audience gets a lingering sense that the author could have completely excised either the adventure or the romance without affecting the other too much. But not in this story! The romance is the adventure here. Now I wish there were more stories like this.
And the romance itself is a refreshing alternative to the usual ship-fic formula. Here, the love confession is the prologue instead of the climax. Rather than dragging out a "Will they or won't they?" you focus on the growing pains from after the relationship's established. And I can't remember the last time I've seen a story's main couple portrayed as such an initially lop-sided relationship. (If this is how you, as a self-identified TwiJack shipper, write TwiJack's relationship, I don't want to imagine how you'd write a relationship you actually dislike!)
In addition, there's also lot of focus on how the rest of the mane six, and the rest of the Apple family, feel about this relationship. With so many fics that focus exclusively on the happy couple, it's nice to see one that examines how their relationship affects everypony around them too.
In that regard, Single Point of Failure has a lot in common with A Delicate Balance—the other convention-flouting TwiJack romance fic by someone from TV Tropes. It's just that Single Point moves a lot faster (it's a complete story in only 50,000 words), and builds up to higher stakes rather than sticking to slice-of-life.
It's great to see new people reading pony. And writing it is even better! I'll take a look at it