Random 10 reviews · 9:44pm Aug 11th, 2017
Sometimes I have ideas. This is one of them.
Step 1: Write script to randomly select 10 fics from Fimfiction, on the condition that
---- a) they're complete
---- b) and less than 2000 words
---- c) and I haven't read them already
Step 2: Read and review aforementioned fics.
Step 3: I didn't plan this far ahead
THIS IS A GOOD IDEA
THIS CANNOT FAIL
It's kind of an experiment, really. I just wanted to see what happens if you reach into Fimfiction and scoop a bunch of it out. It's like getting one of those random geek boxes, only full of ponies!
These are the 10 fics my script randomly chose for me:
Discord And The Gang Pony by Heyah
An Order to Fill by Star Grazer
The Last Words of Rainbow Dash by Flint-Lock
Comma Comma by Soufriere
Story of Discord by Discordofchaos
Raunchy Rodeo Revelry by Scootalonely
BUCK's Britannia: Give 'em the boot by Barrobroadcaster
I'll Fly Higher by thatguyfromkfc
Two Ponies, One Key by GeodesicDragon
A Luscious Loophole by QuickFics
I'm not really any kind of reviewer, but I'll try to give my thoughts on each one and also rate it. Are you ready? I'm ready. Here we go!
This is a crackfic, in which Discord dates that seedy stallion who Pinkie traded her party cannon to in "The Gift of the Maud Pie". Or at least, he says he's going to. In fact, most of the fic is just Celestia and Discord chatting in a coffee shop.
Somehow, they do actually manage to have a relatively serious discussion about Discord's new romance (so cracky, the gang pony doesn't even get given a name, and only shows up as the story is ending). Celestia is worried that Discord might be led down the path to evil again if he dates Gang Pony. Discord isn't concerned, however, because he's Discord and he's too busy breaking the fourth wall throughout the whole fic to care. Not much to say about this one. It's a silly fluff piece that doesn't really go anywhere.
Notable moments
• Discord illustrates Celestia's failures to prevent those close to her going down the path of evil, by summoning plushies of Sunset Shimmer and Nightmare Moon. It's not actually that notable. It's just cute. I like cute pony plushies.
VERDICT: Okay
This fic was published during the Season 2-3 hiatus, and thus features classic unicorn-flavored Twilight, although it's actually a Rarity fic. Twilight visits the Carousel Boutique to ask if Rarity can fix her Gala Dress after she accidentally zapped it with a spell. Rarity fixes it. And... that's it, really. It's about as slice-of-lifey a fic as you could get.
Twilight doesn't quite feel in character, somehow; there's a distinct lack of peppiness from her, almost like she and Rarity aren't quite on speaking terms, which I don't think was intentional. Overall it's well-written enough though. It's not bad if you just want an abbreviated day-in-the-life-of-Rarity-where-nothing-really-happens. The author says it was a practice fic for writing Rarity in longer stories.
VERDICT: Okay
This fic is a suicide note. Well, how pleasant. As the title suggests, it's a suicide letter from Rainbow Dash, who has some kind of cancer that can only be stopped by removing both of her wings. Since Dash doesn't think life is worth living without wings, she decides to go out in a blaze of glory rather than resign to this fate.
It's well-written throughout, and Dash is very much in character (although this feels more like season 1-2 Dash) and the author is trying very hard to make me cry because Rainbow addresses each one of her friends individually in the letter, but I'm a tough cookie dammit. A well-constructed and economical short sadfic.
Notable moments
• Rainbow Dash can't spell some of the more difficult words pertaining to her condition, like "amputate" and "chemotherapy", which is a joke that I generally enjoy. Except, y'know, in fics where Dash freaking kills herself
• As well as her fellow bearers, Dash leaves a message for Scootaloo too, which is a detail that I'm glad wasn't missed. Even before "Sleepless in Ponyville", the Dash-Scoots sisterly bond was well-established in the fandom.
Notable lines
• "I admit, when I moved to Ponyville, I thought you were a stuck-up, snobby drama queen. And, no offense, I still do."
VERDICT: Okay
In this fic, Celestia bans commas, and she bans them so hard that even the fourth wall feels it. Yes, this fic is written entirely without commas or semicolons.
Naturally, Twilight freaks out, because... actually, did the show ever show Twilight to be a grammar tyrant? It comes up a lot in fanon but I can't remember her ever correcting anypony's grammar in the show. Anyway, without commas, the fic has the bizarre fast-paced feel of an amateur writer's first story, but of course it's written by someone who knows their grammar all too well, and I think is poking fun at authors who don't.
From the absurd premise, the fic only gets more bizarre and fourth-wall breaking from there, and although it does attempt to offer some kind of a plot and resolution, it ends before that can happen, which I think is the point. XD The author does note at the end that it's an experimental fic.
It's the kind of absurd humor that I generally enjoy, although I think the execution was lacking; it's a bit too random to properly capitalize on its premise, and there's no real payoff. I also feel it leans a bit too far toward the snarky side, making the characters (particularly Twilight) more mean-spirited than they actually are. Sometimes that can be funny, but I think it detracts from what is otherwise an amusingly bizarre fourth-wall-skirting story.
Notable moments
• Twilight attempts to demonstrate the Oxford Comma to Spike. Without using commas. It's not very effective.
VERDICT: Okay
As the title suggests, this one is an origin story for Discord. The draconequi, it seems, were in fact an entire race at one time, which does actually make some sense (after all, Cheerilee originally identified Discord as a draconequus, implying that they do have a concept of what that is). Discord, it seems, was born into the royal bloodline of the draconequi, but with a disability; his uncontrollable chaos magic, which led to him being shunned and outcast and... exiled to the Everfree Forest when he was five years old? Wow, that's harsh.
Anyway, Discord eventually comes across a filly Celestia, who (along with Luna) is apparently being trained for war by Star Swirl the Bearded. Hey, that's pretty cool. Discord figures that since he's plotting revenge on his family anyway, he might as well join forces with them. Eventually the war comes, Discord gets his revenge, Celestia finds she's been betrayed, and uses the Elements to seal Discord away, the end.
I hate to be negative, especially to amateur authors, but... this story is terrible. The grammar is bad, the plot is so fast-paced that it leaps years ahead from one paragraph to the next; there's almost no characterization, barely any dialogue, and what dialogue there is is melodramatic and cheesy. The story offers almost no detail to be interested in; we don't learn anything about the draconequus race, or what chaos magic is (in fact, it's only halfway through the fic that we learn that all draconequi have chaos magic, which means that... Discord's chaos magic is uncontrollable, but nobody else's is? What?). All in all, it's a poor fic.
Notable moments
• Discord kills five hellhounds with a sword he made from the remains of a demon. I don't think I was supposed to laugh at that, but I did.
VERDICT: Poor
[Adult story embed hidden]
Oh dear. ^^ The only Mature fic in this selection, and it's a clopfic. I did include Mature fics on purpose; I don't usually read them, and part of this experiment does involve reading things that I wouldn't normally seek out, so... here goes... ^^
The fic opens with a young bull named Conrad, who is apparently being imprisoned against his will and forced to perform depraved acts for an audience of perverted ponies. The opening's not bad actually, at least in terms of setting the scene, giving a good sense of what it might be like to be locked in a wooden cage at a sex rodeo.
Then he gets bound and raped by a bunch of mares, and it's all pretty miserable and I'm not going to describe it for you. After that, Applejack shows up and... seduces him into having sex with her, I guess? I think it's supposed to be a pleasant scene as a counterpoint to the earlier rape, which just comes off as mood whiplash to me. And then it's over and the fic ends.
It's competently written for the most part, although it is somewhat wall-of-texty. And Applejack does definitely have sex with a slave bull in the middle of a rodeo arena, so the fic delivers on its title.
VERDICT: Okay
Hah! This fic was an entry for BUCK's fanfiction contest in 2013. BUCK is of course England's now defunct MLP convention, which I went to twice, although I didn't attend the 2013 one. Anyway, that's a pretty neat random coincidence, which gives me a little insight into the fic before I even start, because I know that Britannia was the BUCK mascot. I've even got a T-shirt of her!
Anyway, Britannia, who's an official in the Royal Guard, has been tasked with firing three cadets who all have undesirable character traits; one who is a kleptomaniac, one who keeps changing color (yes, really), and one who shouts all the time. Eventually, however, Britannia realizes that she has, at one time, displayed all of those traits, and so decides to reassign them instead of dismissing them. Which is pretty stupid in my opinion, since there's a big difference between accidentally stealing someone's pen, and being a compulsive thief, but anyway. It's a fluffy competition piece, nothing special. What I found most amusing is the author's explanation that in order to make the fic comply with both BUCK's and Fimfiction's rules, they had to make it exactly 1000 words long.
VERDICT: Okay
Dear god, is this the Rainbow Dash Tragedy Hour? This fic was published around the middle of season 2, which coincidentally is about when I joined the fandom.
It's an Orphan Scootaloo fic, which opens with her at Rainbow Dash's deathbed. They have a short heartfelt conversation, then Dash dies, then we learn that Scoots isn't technically an orphan but was abused and kicked out on the streets by her father. Amazingly, the fic manages to have a happy ending thanks to a sudden appearance by The Doctor.
I'd say more, but this fic is only 560 words long. Yes, it's complete, too. I'm guessing that it might be from a time when Fimfiction was allowing stories to be shorter than 1000 words? The fic's okay, but nothing really happens, and also the author seems to forget at a couple of points that Scootaloo's a girl, which is an odd mistake to make.
VERDICT: Fair
GeodesicDragon! Now there's a name I recognize. I mean, I don't think I've read any of his work, but I know he's like a powerhouse of fictioneering or something. I'm expecting this to be good.
The story is about two OCs who have a new house, but are only given one key, and can't agree on who should have it. This results in an argument, a bit of a fight, and a chase scene through Ponyville, which in my opinion we don't get enough of in pony stories. Eventually they realize that they dun goofed, and agree to share the key sensibly, at which point a magpie comes along and nicks it anyway.
It's short and amusing, and the setting and action puts me in mind of those moralistic Enid Blyton short stories, like that one where the two kids can't agree to split a stick of rock evenly, so this bigger kid comes along and keeps biting bits off of it until there's none left. A not-bad short.
VERDICT: Okay
In our final short fic, Pinkie wants to lick somepony's horn. She says so at the very start. However, she's been forbidden from doing so by Princess Celestia herself, so what's a horn-hungry mare to do? Well, that's where the titular loophole comes in. She steals Star Swirl's unfinished spell book from Twilight, and uses it to ascend to alicornhood, thus endowing her with a horn that she owns and is therefore within her rights to lick and I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. Unfortunately, Pinkie forgets about the limited reach of equine tongues, and thus isn't physically able to achieve the desired licking.
This fic is silly.
It's good, well-written silliness though, and it's amusing to experience everything from Pinkie's crazy perspective. Also, I always love it when characters go completely overboard for completely trivial reasons, so I liked it.
Notable moments
* Pinkie steals a book from Twilight in the dead of night, which is strangely similar to my first story Read It And Sneak. Pinkie even makes reference to the episode on which it's based!
VERDICT: Okay
And, that's it! Overall, a mostly okay bunch of fics with no real standouts, although I think that's because it is really difficult to write a great fic that's also short. The next time I do this, I think I'll try for fics that are a bit longer.
I read it as "massage". Though I guess there was no happy end in this fic...
Am I qualified to disagree with this?
Is 'fair' worse than 'okay'? Sometimes ratings are not obvious.
4630913
But yes, "Fair" is one rung below "Okay". Actually "Fair" should be something more like "Tolerable", in that it's not very good but I didn't dislike it.
I thought too hard about the ratings, then decided that I'd never be able to come up with any reasonable or satisfying rating system and just went with my gut, and then I forgot to say what my ratings actually mean.
4630910
YES.
4630926
Yeah I thought it was the other way. Fair usually is one step below good, okay is a synonym for fair but can have less enthusiasm and more ambiguity so I think most will flip those the other way.
I really liked these quick reviews of yours.
4631079
Thanks! To be honest I couldn't think of a lot to say on each because I have the literary skills of a brick, but I'm hoping to improve.
A-HA! This is why none of my fics have been in a random review!