Fic recs, February 24th! · 3:31pm Feb 24th, 2017
Story idea for grabs: There've been a lot of fics where ponies go to earth and watch MLP:FiM on the TV, My Little Dashie being perhaps the most famous (or infamous) example. So write a fic where one of the ponies comes to earth, meets a brony or something, and sees the show on the TV... only she doesn't recognize anything that's happening. Twilight's a princess? Discord's reformed? Place the pony at any point in the show's history you want, but the point is, the show chronicles adventures in that pony's future.
So, you remember when I used to read fics all the time and the audiobooks were just a supplement to that? Yeah, me neither. But that's what I did this time, so you can head below for looks at All's Fair in Love and Sharks by KingMoriarty, Meta Four's A Survey of the Work of Vinyl Scratch (Abbreviated), JapaneseTeeth's Octaves, and a whole bunch more! It's like I'm a real fanfic reviewer or something! :V
H: 2 R: 2 C: 7 V: 0 N: 1
Unfortunate Unfortunates by Zyrian
Mature
Genre: Sexual Comedy
A mare and her husband swap genitals and find out it's not all it's cracked up to be.
I like this piece, but there are two things wrong with it. First, it's just a short scene enumerating its premise. Quite a lot could have been done with the idea, but this is merely its barest bones. Second, it's not very pony. I suspect this is due to it having originally been written as a non-pony story, go figure, but there are a lot of references to real-world phrases with no ponification, and they caught me askew. Still, the concept is sound, the treatment of it is funny, and if nothing else, the mare who tells the story is a hoot.
Recommended If You Like Gender-Swapping
Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony by Opium4TmassS
Reading by TheLostNarrator and Quill N. Lead
Reading by Sparrow9642
Sequel to Flutterschmooze
Genre: Creepypasta
Dear Hasbro...
I wasn't super-impressed with Flutterschmooze, but as I said in my review for that story, this one intrigued me, and Lost gave me a reason to read it. Turns out, I like it more. It's got some creepypasta tropes — the response letter I saw coming a mile away, and the ending is pretty hokey — but it works. If nothing else, I suppose cursed dolls and creepy TV are scarier than Five Nights at Freddy's. The one criticism I would level at it is that it doesn't really hold up as epistolary writing. It's supposed to be an e-mail, but it reads somewhere between someone talking out loud and a regular story, the end, again, stretching disbelief somewhat. Still, I felt the ways in which it fails the format enhance the creepiness. I might just read the sequels, now!
Recommended for Horror Fans
Dear Twilight Sparkle, Get Fucked! by kalash93
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Mature: Sex
Genre: Comedy
Celestia is getting tired of all these friendship reports. Luckily, she has a solution.
This is a pretty straightforward OOC-style comedy. I didn't get any laughs until about the one-third mark, but after that, I found myself amused. :) Twilight's reaction at the end was perfect, though that's balanced by the long lists of euphemisms for sexual acts. Still, this is good fun, and right on the line in terms of "does it need a mature tag?"
Recommended for Laughs
Petunia Paleo and the Giant Coprolite by Admiral Biscuit
Genre: Light Comedy
Man, why didn't I include this one in the poop edition reviews? :( I suck. Anyway, this was written based on the image, which Bad Horse found some time ago, in the process all but daring Biscuit to write this piece. As for the story itself? Not bad. It's really more slice of life than anything, ending on a fairly obvious crude joke. But if nothing else, you get a decent sense of both museum life and archaeology in Equestria, and I was very pleased to learn that the titular pony is, in fact, the filly from the start of Fault in Our Cutie Marks. The one with the skull cutie mark, remember?
Recommended as Light Reading
Sharktavia 5: All's Fair in Love and Sharks by KingMoriarty
Genre: Fairy Tale?
Uh…
Well, howdy-do, a Sharktavia fic that wasn't around when I did the edition way late! :B Bizarre as the Sharktavia concept is, this one takes the cake. It's honestly just one of the most earnestly strange things I have ever read. Not strange in a bad way, or a funny way, merely content to be its own thing. And it's so well-written! Nary a random tag to be had, and there's your boat. Just read it, it's almost beautiful.
Recommended
Doubts of Silence by The Engineer Pony
Sequel to Sounds of Lunacy
Genre: Sister Shenanigans
Luna prepares her revenge for Celestia's prank.
I liked the original so much, I had to read the sequel. :) I couldn't shake the feeling it was a little hollow, though maybe that's a side-effect of Twilight's role. (I sort of anticipated things going the way they do.) The ending also leaves some questions. It's probably not as strong a comedy as the first, though the buildup does work, and it fills that need for watching Celestia and Luna behave like sisters. That's important to me.
Recommended for Princess Fans
A Survey of the Work of Vinyl Scratch (Abbreviated) by Meta Four
Genre: Comedy
I had to read this because I was informed that I was being parodied in it. HOW DARE THEY (I don't see it, though.) I pretty much have to like this story, regardless, being a severe music nerd and (unpaid, unnoticed and currently inactive) critic myself. It's a wonderful sendup of the overimportant pretentiousness of music journalists, chock full of references to real-world albums and actual music reviews. (Don't feel bad if you don't get them; there's a journal at the end that explains everything. It was a lot of fun.) This story is a companion piece to another, though I don't think reading that one first is necessary. That said…
Highly Recommended
Octaves by JapaneseTeeth
Genre: Drama
Even Octavia might have to agree, Vinyl Scratch is going places.
I think all that reading this story first would do to Survey is deflate some of the majesty of the horse music puns and informs us that Spilt Ink was incorrect about DJ Pon-3 being a duo in his first review. But they both stand alone perfectly well, which is good, since their tones vary so wildly. This is, in many ways, your standard ScratchTavia fic (minus shipping, of course): Octavia's the stoic, no-nonsense classical musician, Vinyl's the gung-ho, egotistic DJ looking to make it big in the electronic music scene. But at the center of it all is this beautiful friendship, as Vinyl does make it big and then finds out that mainstream success isn't all it's cracked up to be. And while one can make the accusation that Octavia isn't much of a driving force in this story, rarely seeming to have any goals other than doing well in school and propping Vinyl up, that may just be because this is Vinyl's story, told from someone else's POV. She's the one who does the most growing throughout the course of it, and the ways in which she changes, bolstered by Octavia's pep talks, are really satisfying by the end. This is a pretty successful albumfic, too, with the "sharp" chapters mirroring what I can only assume are tone-only interludes between tracks, serving as calm counterpoints to the gradually ramping drama. I haven't read a lot of JapaneseTeeth's work, but this is definitely the best one so far, a really solid piece of character work with a harsh and poignant look at the world of professional music-making.
Highly Recommended
The Glaring Gaffes of Gabby Gums by FanOfMostEverything
Reading by ShadowOfCygnus
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Comedy
Featherweight, editor-in-chief of the Foal Free Press, issues an official apology for and retraction of the Gabby Gums articles.
Man, this is old enough to have been an episode followup for Ponyville Confidential! It's a lot of fun, too, playing off the various made-up articles that actually appear in the episode (many of which turn out to be true!) while adding in a lot more that are equally funny in hindsight. I was a little dismayed by the amount of fandom jokes in this piece, but one can attribute that to its age, and I can't even say they weren't funny (I especially like the bit about Derpy, which surprised me). If anything caught me off-guard, it's the liberties taken with pony names, which were sometimes distracting; I've never liked the use of "Belle" as a last name for Rarity's family, for instance. Still, this is a funny piece, and another good example of in-universe writing.
Recommended
An Advanced Lesson in Friendship by AndrewRogue
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Genre: Shipping
Starlight and Trixie's friendship just got complicated.
I came into this expecting a shippy "What happened last night?" comedy. And, to be fair, I got some of that: Starlight's freakout in the opening is fun, and Trixie is super-adorable as she figures out just what they did. But then it smacked me upside the head with unexpected feels. Suffice to say, I really loved this. Now, maybe it's just my all-consuming need for Starxie talking, because honestly, nothing happens in this. Certainly, nothing happens that I haven't seen dozens of times before in other fanfics, with other pairings. But seeing these two go through it just hit me in the right spot. I mean, yeah, it won't have any appeal to anyone who's not into shipping, but c'mon, this is basically canon anyway. :V
Recommended for Shippers
Omnomnipotent 2: The Sesame Crusades by All of the Above and Doom Trot
Sequel to Omnomnipotent
Genre: Random Comedy/Sesame Street Crossover
So, in Omnomnipotent, the Equestria Girls dealt with a homicidal Cookie Monster who had the powers of a god. In this… stuff happens. I mean, really, this is just a thousand words of non-sequiturs. It's doesn't do anything with its main idea, and it's not even funny! And yet, I laughed, rather a lot. This is for lovers of crackfic only.
Troll Recommended
Nightmare's Knot by Berry Punch
Reading by Scribbler, DeftFunk and IMShadow007
Genre: AU/HiE/Romance
A human stumbles upon Nightmare Moon, held captive in the Everfree castle.
I like it when a story, even one I didn't enjoy, gives me a lot to talk about. The first thing that went at least somewhat wrong in this, for me, was the AU. I couldn't grok it, and that really bothered me. Nightmare Moon is being held prisoner in some kind of magic circle in the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, and not the moon. She claims Celestia put her there; reference is later made to Discord's reformation, meaning this takes place after the show starts… or else the AU is far more extensive than I give it credit for. But, were that the case, the point could be made that this has nothing to do with the show other than featuring certain characters, so we're going benefit of the doubt here. So did she never come back, I mean, was this her original prison, or did the Elements work differently the second time around? I don't know.
The second problem is that story: to make Nightmare Moon sympathetic, Celestia is cast as the villain. Our human protagonist recoils in horror at the punishment she's levied upon the Nightmare. Despite her showing up at the end, seeming very like herself, Celestia's actions have the pallor of evil written across them.
Third is the "romance": I did not buy it. I mean, for starters, I'm not into horse/human relations, but that's just me. (In the story's defense, I was pleased to see that Elliot's knowledge of Celestia didn't come from having seen the show, but because she was taking care of him in Equestria.) The problem is that it takes place over the course of three days. This is explicitly stated in the text. It doesn't help that Elliot tells her the story of Snow White; making that connection to a fairy tale just demonstrates how hokey this whole thing is. Nightmare Moon has been alone for centuries, she's desperate enough that the first sentient being she sees becomes her sole source of relief from the loneliness. That does not make for good romance, and her proclamation that he is her "prince" — that being the thing which breaks the prison and demonstrates her as being "reformed" — only reinforces that desperation.
This story bounced off me in just about every way possible. An attempt was made to track the course of the visual novel this was based off of, but it wasn't integrated well into the show setting. I'd only recommend this to fans of human/pony romance, but then only if your standards are very, very low.
Not Recommended
Hoopy McGee's "Interview with a Princess" did that. The human protagonist spoils the events of "Return of Harmony" for season 1 Celestia. And as a result of this foreknowledge, in the "real" Equestria, Discord's escape only lasts a few seconds.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/4061/interview-with-a-princess
Yeah, even I don't know what my deal with giving ponies last names was, and to an extent, still is. I guess it just didn't feel right to write a newspaper article and not have full names in it.
Thank you for the review I appreciate the criticism.
Oh, and I can confirm that none of the reviews in A Survey of the Work of Vinyl Scratch were intentionally modeled after any ponyfic critics. Not sure why Chris thought that one might have been a parody of you.
4435034
I was at least 88% joking when I told him that.
Though you must admit that if any of us ponyfic reviewers were to write a meme-based review, it would most definitely be PP!
...or some poor human in a Ponyville house, watching 'My Little Brony' on TV with Lyra and spluttering every few minutes, "It's not like that! Really!"
4435062
This would be the HiE story I would read.
...so long as it was short...
...and there was no romance...
...though comedic interjection of Lyra's fanon human fetish might be acceptable...
...maybe...
...
4434816
well shit D:
And I've already read that one! :|
4435060
I cannot actually deny this.
4435062
I think I've seen something along those lines before, at least.
Nice. It's great to know you enjoyed my story. Thanks for the review.
Also, I should probably get around to submitting that to EQD. I don't think I ever got around to it.
4435471
I'll put in a good word for it if'n ya do! :B
I have to say I love that story idea… but there's too much on my plate already
4435546 Cool. Thanks.
Love the idea even think there a pony it could work with Pinkie Pie. All the fourth Wall breaking and her abilities could come from her having traveled to and back from another reality and time.
Thought I had a few thoughts on the idea I doubt I would try writing. Only done 4 one shots all short.
Glad you enjoyed my utterly shameless shipping!