Fic recs, November 15th! · 1:04am Nov 16th, 2017
For all you voice actors out there, aspiring or otherwise, here's a short article with some basic tips! (I can't control my space anymore :C)
Totally not ponies-related, but if you like board games, video games, or card games, go check out the Kickstarter for One Deck Dungeon Digital. I haven't played the game myself, but it looks like a fun roguelike, and it's being made by the people who made Sentinels Digital, so they know wtf they're doing. As I write this, it has just funded, but there's so much more left to be unlocked!
Ugh, geez, this one snuck up on me. D: I mean, I got everything read today that I wanted to, but I kind of wanted to have had it done hours ago, y'know? At least there's a good crop this time around, including The Door by EbonMane, SirTruffles's Three Left Turns and Life Among the Living by Kamikakushi!
H: 3 R: 2 C: 1 V: 1 N: 0
Under Her Sky by Minds Eye
Reading by Scarlett Blade
Mature: Sex
Genre: Romantic Clop
It's high time Vapor and Sky Stinger acted on those long-held feelings.
Man, these guys were over in a hot minute, weren't they? <.< I liked getting this look into their relationship blossoming into romance, though. The sex is a little flowery, but not to the point of ridiculousness; it's good, I liked it. That said, I have questions, like "Is she getting off to music?" and "Why does she have earbuds?" Ultimately, not enough to diminish my appreciation for this.
Recommended
Making Up for Lost Time by Evil Betty
Reading by Winged T. Spears
Mature: Sex
Genre: M/M Clop
An unexpected letter adds a shine to Braeburn's crappy day.
I will always champion M/M ships in this fandom, because with the preponderance of straight males (and yes, I'm one of them), frickin' somebody's gotta. It sure doesn't help that we've got a whole six male characters with actual personalities (and far fewer back when this was written), at least one of whom is definitely interested in mares. But guy horses can be just as cute together as lady horses, as this story shows. It's quite well written, and Braeburn and Soarin's meeting is adorable as fuck. Really, the only thing I can say against it is that exists primarily for the sex, so YMMV. I've certainly read worse clopfics.
Recommended If You Like Clop
Deafened by Silence by Infernity Zero
Reading by Scribbler, et. al.
Genre: Dark Discord
Discord's visit with Vinyl Scratch left more of a permanent mark than with other ponies.
See that genre tag? Not a fan. Along with what he does to Vinyl at the end, Discord also essentially tortures Octavia, and this is just not anything along the lines of what he did in the show. It's kind of infuriating, too, because the writing in this is decent, and there's an early scene with Discord's tail that's a good example of how to write him. But I can't reconcile what happens in this story with what his character was actually like. The only reason I don't give this a lower rating is because it is written well, and I can't deny it's an original way to explain (head)canon.
Vaguely Recommended
The Door by EbonMane
Reading by Winged T. Spears
Genre: Ghost Story
Twilight's second sleepover was going well, until the clock struck thirteen.
Oh wow, it's story number ninety. :O And one I've apparently read, but not reviewed, before! This is good stuff, and it has one of the best opening lines I've ever seen. :D Solid, creepy horror writing, but not too scary. Fitting for the show, in other words. If you're not too into horror, this would be the kind of story you'd want to read.
Highly Recommended
Three Left Turns by SirTruffles
Genre: High Fantasy
A princess tries to buy tomorrow.
Fantasy tags are hard to hang on fanfiction of a series which is itself fantasy. But high fantasy is not the realm of MLP:FiM, not like it is in this story. The market to which Twilight goes is the kind of otherworldly place you'd find in a Neil Gaiman novel, not anywhere in Equestria, nor likely beyond it. "Otherworldly" is the right word for this piece, too: the writing is abstract, wrapped in concepts that can be sold. No one is identified as anything other than a neutral signifier or "it". There is no actual dialogue. It's all very evocative, though it may frustrate the reader who lives in the concrete, but I found it fascinating and unique in the sea of ponyfics.
Highly Recommended
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story by Chatoyance
Genre: Speculative Fiction
One hundred and thirteen people awake to a choice none of them expected to make.
You know what tag this story is missing? Horror. Just when I was thinking that Chatoyance was ignoring how evil CelestAI was and the happy ending was a waste of a good premise, this whacked me right between the eyes with a "how do you know what's real is real?" thunderbolt, and that made it all worthwhile. This will be best appreciated by those who've read the original, though it does explain quite a lot of the core premise if you're unfamiliar. And of course, if you're interested in things like the ramifications of cryonics, well, this is a fanciful take on a potential future, but it may nonetheless be tantalizing.
Recommended
Life Among the Living by Kamikakushi
Genre: Mental Illness
Every seven days, Fleetfoot's psychiatrist will ask about her week. It never gets any better.
Oh, hey, a story about dysthymia. I have that! :D It sucks! But damn, I can't remember the last time I read a story that was so about me, and this one stars Fleetfoot, of all ponies! That is, in fact, my only real problem with it. Granted, Fleet's had, what, a handful of lines in the past few seasons, and she doesn't have any real personality besides sometimes being a dick? I'd say that's more headcanon than anything. So this is a good issue to hang on her, and it's definitely taking place in the future, given Lightning Dust's appearance. Anything could have happened. Tackles a tough issue with panache and leaves you with an uplifting ending; quite a good read!
Highly Recommended
Thank you kindly for the review! Glad you enjoyed it
Glad to see you reviewing stuff SA told you to read.
4726747
No one tells me what to read! >:V
Unless they pay me. :B
I remember Three Left Turns! Pretty strong story, that one.
Wow, stacked lineup this time.
Life Among the Living - Strong emotional piece, and hit home for me on a personal level. Maybe not as strong as for someone sharing quite the same issues, but various elements there are pretty recognizable in my own experience. And I think it might be one of the better stories I've seen about what comes after someone makes the 'bolts and is on it for a while. Due to the frame we normally see it through, with Dash, it's much more of an end-state than something that happens along the line--or you see well post-retirement (and got a bit of that with the guy from "Rarity Investigates," too, I suppose).
"Three Left Turns" was an example of excellently done impressionism, but I'm left feeling somewhat ambivalent about it because apart from "Bad thing is probably going to happen and Twilight needs to sell off every bit of herself to stop it" most of the substantive detail needs to be projected onto the story by the reader. I guess that's fine, but it's not the kind of thing I really prefer, at least to this extreme. ... It kind of ties in to how it was originally tagged SoL, I think. I guess since it basically ends in failure, the surrounding detail matters less. On the plus side, I think it's an example of getting a lot of mileage out of tropes/ideas readers are expected to bring in and, in this case, using the medium of fanfiction to get more than would be possible from a generic fantasy setting.
"The Door". Okay, gonna First Sentences in Fanfiction this shit: "It was a dark and stormy night, and Rainbow Dash couldn't seem to stop bragging about it"
Great way to skewer a cliche and use it to an independent effect, while maintaining its signaling power. Says horror-adjacent and funny right off the bat, and fits perfectly with the character it introduces the story with. But. Missing punctuation in the first sentence is also a bit worrying. And yeah, it seems like a good representation of the whole, for good and ill. (Notably, it's time once again to remember that there's a world of difference between "Come inside Twilight Sparkle" and "Come inside, Twilight Sparkle." :V And the placement of that in the fic close to its peak intensity didn't help my immersion, sadly.)
Its roots as a Season 2 (or earlier) fic show pretty clearly, and that works for both good and ill. LUS and the like is something of a problem, and for all that it matches the feel of the last bit, I could have done without ending on a meme. That said, the tone generally matched early FiM really nicely, and the kind of story fits well too.
I'll cop to thinking at the start it was a prank by Twilight on the others.
"Under Her Sky" was... I dunno. Well done sex, and it was incorporated nicely into the rest, but the lead-up wasn't grabbing me at all and there was some sentence-level editing that could have been done. (E.g. The badge itself was more than she had ever hoped to get before arriving at the Academy, but even that didn’t compare that to getting the weight off her heart by keeping secrets from her friend.)