Fic recs, October 8th! · 2:40pm Oct 8th, 2017
Got a fic idea you want written by someone better at writing than you? Cynewulf is open for commissions! With very reasonable prices, I should add.
Scribbler and Caitbug have done a reading of RainbowBob's Feed Them!
Speaking of audiobooks, it turns out the new one I'm getting into was the sequel to a story I hadn't read, so I had to remedy that right quick, and then there was some stuff on my RIL that needed read, and now here we are. :B Movie blog coming probably later today, and then I'm going to have to figure out what to do with all those leaked episodes. D:
H: 1 R: 2 C: 1 V: 1 N: 0
A Place for Pinkie by Chinchillax
Sequel to The Library of Discord
Genre: Sci-Fi
A Queen's duty is to find souls a planet where they can be happily reincarnated for eternity. So what's to be done with a soul that's found nothing but misery in 47 lives?
It's been such a long time since I read Library of Discord that I don't honestly remember it. And that's actually not a bad thing, because it means the sequel stands perfectly well on its own. It's one of those cosmic headcanon stories, where Celestia and Luna's mother, Queen Galaxia, is an unfathomable entity tasked with creating planets and stars and systems and just seeing what happens when they change the rules for how they work. It does a lot of explaining how things on Equestria get where they are, alongside being an origin story for Pinkie specifically. That said, the explaining part might be the downside, here. The constant zooming in and out of scale gets a little disorienting, but when this is picking through the series pilot or other aspects of the show scene-by-scene and going, "Here's what Galaxia was doing at this very moment," it gets rather tedious to read. I mean, walking through the mane six for anything is old hat at this point. I also had some reservations about the dialogue; I mean, Chinchillax has avoided his elder gods sounding officious and maybe too serious to believe, but in doing so has gone the other direction, so they just sound like regular people, which leaves them feeling a little deflated in terms of importance. The writing gets a little shakier as the story goes on, too. Still, this is a neat piece, and shows a lot of thought put into incorporating this kind of galaxy-level world-building in the show's setting.
Recommended If You Enjoy Cosmic Headcanons
More Precious Than Silver or Gold by Georg
Reading by Illya Leonov, Luna Farrowe and Thornquill
Genre: Cadence of Cloudsdale/World-Building
One fateful night, a dragon flies into a pony settlement, seeking treasure that will grant her power, and finds something much more important.
When a non-Skywriter author writes Cadence of Cloudsdale, I take notice. No surprise that the combination of CoC and Georg produced something quite excellent. :) Happily, I don't think you'll need to have read any CoC beforehand to understand this — why Cadence is in an abbey is explained, and knowing who Auric is isn't important to his role — but you should of course read all of those stories, and this might just be an excellent gateway to doing so if you haven't already. What else you'll find is some meditation on the nature of dragons, solid writing, and a chain of events stretching off into canon, to a point I would not have expected. Like I said, this is an excellent piece, go and read it.
Highly Recommended
Open Up Your Eyes by Lil Penpusher
Reading by Lotus Moon
Genre: Movie Reinterpretation
Housekeeping: I'm going to be using "Movie" as a genre tag the same way I use EQG, just so everyone knows. Also, since we're still in the spoilers period for the aforementioned, Imma try and keep spoilers out of this review. This was, I believe, written prior to the movie's official release, based off the preview videos of various songs, none of which I watched, so I'm just kind of assuming that's where the material came from. Point being, this is one of those stories where nothing of import really happens, and so it needn't worry about being subsumed by canon. It's a "what they were thinking" combined with "what happens without the song", and otherwise comes off as exactly the same as the scene in the movie. Both characters sounds right, so that's something, though I do question the use of both italics and bold in the writing. Overall, did not leave an impression on me.
Vaguely Recommended
Ethical Quandaries by Majin Syeekoh
Genre: EQG Comedy
Starlight Glimmer has a question for Sunset.
This is not your average "two characters talk philosophy" story. For one, Sunset's mostly just concerned why the question was asked in the first place. For two, this is mostly about Starlight being a pedantic nerd and also a fantastic foil for Sunset. And number three, it changes course right in the middle of the conversation and ends up in a spot I didn't see coming. If you're not into EQG stuff but at least know who Sunset is, this might be worth the read regardless, especially if you also like Starlight.
Recommended
I Can't Decide by shortskirtsandexplosions
Genre: EQG Shipping
Starlight and Trixie spend a day in the human world.
I kind of really wanted to read this, which is why I also chose the previous story. This was kind of everything I wanted. :D Lots of romantic tension filtered through skirts's typical "all ponies are cutest ponies" viewpoint, discussion of what being human is like for a former horse (I particularly appreciate the line about ears), Trixie being whiny, you name it, I loved it. If you don't care about EQG, well, there's literally no characters belonging to that franchise here, only the knowledge that Starlight's been through the mirror once already in the shorts. So go read it, ya darn fools!
Recommended
Glad to see you enjoyed More Precious Than Silver or Gold. It was a fun project to work on.
Also, a reading of Feed Them? It's at times like this I am annoyed that Bob never linked to my numerous sequels that we worked on together. Darn you, Bob! *shakes fist*
Man, I still miss Bob. Hope he's doing well, wherever he is.
Pedantry and logical insanity are two of my favorite topics.
Wow, you actually reviewed it? Wew.
Thanks! I know it’s really just a reinterpretation of the movie scene and what would have likely happened if it weren’t for the song, but I liked the idea, so I wrote it. It was fun to write, anyway, and fun is what counts!
So yeah, thanks again!
Thanks for the review :D
A Place for Pinkie is really more of a sidequel to Library of Discord. There's just no way to give a single story on FiMfiction two different stories as a prequel. I actually had intended the story to be standalone. But then I ended up writing a combined sequel. And then I went back and forth between A Place for Pinkie and the big sequel novel several times, editing it to be more cohesive.
I have no idea what you should do, man
You could avoid watching them, but then you have to actively work to avoid spoilers. OR you could watch them and become the person accidentally providing spoilers. It's just a no-win situation D:
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I think what I'm gonna do is watch them all (not today, that movie blog took me four hours to write x.x), write up all muh blergs, and then portion them out over a few days. I can do the followup blogs when they actually air.