Goooooood morning-evening-whatever FimFic! We are now on to Round Two, and the next roster of Seattle's Angels are here to present you with three more, meticulously hoof-chosen hidden gems for your reading pleasure! The Angels have mixed it up a bit this time, with a taste and spice spanning the genres. No matter what your reading preferences, you're likely to find something to suit your palette. Now, without further blather—on to the features! And authors, congrats!

I’ll be the first to admit that most sadfics suck. Most feature ranty whining, which no amount of good grammar can make interesting. Let’s face it, Celestia having lengthy monologues about Twilight dying has become so predictable that it’s not even funny. Happy Birthday to You, however, goes deeper than most, and the thought put into it shows. If you want proof that [Sad] is not necessarily bad, look no further than here.

Special points to note include the skilled wordcraft at play. Descriptions of scenery not only describe the scene, but also give hints about the world beyond, creating a dynamic setting in a few sentences about grass and cake. Repetition is used to very good effect, and if you let yourself dwell on its meaning, you realize that there’s actually an answer to go with that question. Every word, every sentence, serves its intended purpose and some. Even the summary gains more significance than its face value upon reaching the end.

And it’s this understanding of significance that makes the story shine, not just in style, but also in plot. Too often, deaths are played for little more than shock value. Here, though, every little aspect of a birthday party is shown to matter, even more so when nothing can ever be the same any more, and the best part? It’s completely relatable, almost shockingly close to home. That nameless, faceless narrator? That could be you, or I. This is a beautifully layered story; even if you don’t like tragedies, have a look just to appreciate just how powerful a mere handful of words can be.

This is repetition done right. This is sad done right. This is a story done right. Yes, I liked it; quit asking me already.

Happy Birthday to You isn’t particularly sad in the sense of sobbing and blubbering all willy nilly at the end. It hit me deeper than that. Seeing these birthdays year after year paints an impressive picture with a small number of words. A birthday doesn’t simply mean that you are one year older; your friends are older, and your world is older. We all have a desire to cling to the good old days and relive them. Sometimes this is possible, and sometimes it isn’t, but time is decidedly a one-way street. A recurring event like a birthday serves as a poignant metric for how life has adjusted one year to the next, and even though we are only seeing the party itself, it reveals far beyond the face value of its descriptions.

Happy Birthday to You isn’t sad because Rainbow Dash broke her wings and also she’s in a coma and also she has cancer. It’s sad because it’s real. Perhaps a little too real, as this story doesn’t always feel poni at times, and for some FimFic readers that can be a turnoff. Read this one, though. It’s a birthday party worth attending.

“DO I LIKE IT?” YES, BUT IT STILL MAKES ME SAD!

Tragedy—of the deepest, most personal sort—seems an almost alien concept to the MLP ‘verse. Sure, we’ve seen ponies suffer all manner of ill fates, but at the end of the episode, there’s always a laugh and an upbeat theme song to let everyone know that adversity is only fleeting. Sometimes, however, things happen that can’t be fixed—like when you lose a sock and its partner is left forever alone. Or in this fic’s case, where the loss is something that similarly cannot be recovered.

It is a complex thing, dealing with loss, and it is thus worth mentioning how compelling this fic is in its simplicity. There’s little eloquence in its composition, which elegantly serves to drive home the stark heartache of its narrative, and the meaning behind the repeated phrase at the end of every paragraph evolves as the fic goes on, despite being composed of the same four words. All of this adds up to characterize our narrator in a most mournful fashion, making the immutable scenario he or she is caught up in all the more tragic.

And at the end of it all, it seems to ask the question: what happens when you let tragedy define yourself? Does tragedy simply breed more tragedy? Read on, and try and puzzle that one out yourself.

Drakness. I’m aware of how I spelt it; it’s a word we’ve most likely encountered at one point or another, and says leagues about the genre as a whole. “Let’s have Twilight meet an evil monster!” the faceless masses cry, and proceed to churn out pages of Twilight doing nothing but running, sobbing and screaming. Today’s feature has no nonsense of the sort, and is a nice taste of [Dark] done right—where the tone is soaked, permeated with it, not just Full Black OC McOCson.

Flashgen excels in building up, by first creating a perfectly normal base to work from. Seemingly unimportant side notes, an indicator of an unworried Twilight, aid in strengthening contrast; the book of combat spells, disregarded so cheerily initially, is turned to for solace later on, a reflection of how susceptible our minds are in the face of the unknown. And the author takes his time in preparing, because the payoff is worth it. Throughout the fic, Twilight’s voice is very well-controlled; the descent is slow but sure, and it is that creeping surety that gives birth to true horror. There is also a gimmick at play; I won’t spoil it for you, but when you do find it, think about what it means. Can you feel the weight of those implications?

Now, in terms of emotional response or shock, this elicited little more from me than a shiver. But in terms of pacing, sequence of events, characterization, and above all, entertainment value, A FLEet|ng L|ght |n thE DArknEsS has won my full respect.

If Happy Birthday to You was sad done right, then A FLEet|ng LIght |n thE DArknEsS is fear done right. Why? Because I don’t care about the specifics of the monsters in this story, at all. I’m not supposed to care; the monsters are intentionally an unknown. If you went to a haunted house this past Halloween and had random guys in rubber masks jump out at you, that wasn’t fear. You were, if I may quote Randy Marsh, startled. Most of us have grown beyond this. Now, on the other hoof, fear of the unknown? If you don’t know it, you can’t be prepared for it. Fear of helplessly watching your safety slowly erode? By definition, if you’re helpless, then you’re powerless to stop it. Fear of watching your friends suffer, not in the cheap-o Saw or Final Destination way, but emotionally? One of the reasons FIM resonates so well with all of us is because of how character-driven the series is. Flashgen captured that essence, and gave us a horror tale where the fear is largely derived from how the mane characters are reacting to their circumstances.

Also of note, the story makes an effective use of the oft-maligned journal format. Right at the onset of the story, it is revealed that somepony wrote this journal, and somepony else found it and analysed it. Because of this triple-layer of narration, the journal itself, moreso than the journal’s writer or reader, serves as an unreliable narrator, which adds a delicious amount of mystery and suspense into an already suspenseful story. Those of us who are not clever ponies (such as yours truly) may benefit a second readthrough to catch all the nuances contained within. Now come, unravel the mysteries of this journal.

((My points about “feeling startled versus feeling fear” notwithstanding, it is worth mentioning that I read this story late at night, and turned off the lights in this room shortly after finishing it. At that exact moment, the AC vent directly overhead decided to kick on, blowing cold air onto my neck. Flashgen, my dry-cleaning bill is in the mail.))

REMEMBER, KIDDIES, THE DARKNESS IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!

To quote Lovecraft: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

This fic has taken this concept and run, cackling, into the night with it. This is true horror—not the sort which jumps out of the sock drawer and goes “Blarg! You are now scared!”—but the sort which builds up slowly and terribly, filling its reader with an inexorable dread. The plot, to describe it without spoilers, is relatively straightforward (dark happenings overtaking Ponyville, innocent townspeople disappearing, etc.), but where it shines is in its presentation and compounding atmosphere. The descent into ever-deepening darkness is made all the more disturbing by how it affects our heroines; this is not a fic to read if you’re looking for a happy ending.

If you are, however, looking for one last horror fix after Halloween, look no further than this fic. You will be disconcerted, you will be unnerved, and you will enjoy it. And if you keep your eyes open, you’ll find the mystery is even more impenetrable than it appears at first glance. Really—even I’m still trying to figure it all out!

[Comedy] and [Random] that doesn’t feature Pony X Finds Y? Blasphemy! In all seriousness, though, this fic takes an amusing idea and spins it into an amusing story, the gist of which you can probably infer already from the cover image.

Where Pip was sweet, Griffon a Load of Bull is cartoonish. It does exactly what it has set out to do, and the antics match the premise. The style utilizes a lot of similes for descriptions, which, interestingly, help to sustain the freshness of the story, on account of how goofy some of them are. Iron Will is characterized nicely, and bounces off Gilda in a manner that can be only described as fun. The shenanigans build up properly, and there’s a rather nice ending to be had.

Sure, the tags are somewhat off (for more information, check out Wanderer D’s blog posts on the matter), and it’s fluffy, but it’s interesting, and, I daresay, unique for taking the path it has taken. Definitely worth the fifteen minutes to read.

Tired of horror and sad fics? Time for minotaurs and griffon chicks!

Iron Will is larger than life and unwieldy, and thus is some of the prose in Griffon a Load of Bull. Heck, the second paragraph of the story contains the analogy: “Muscles in his arms shifted like sacks of apples being rearranged.” That gives the reader a pretty clear understanding of the type of story they’re in for, and yet it works. There’s little point it using a character like Iron Will without a wink, a nod, and a healthy dash of hijinks, but even with an amusing premise like meeting Gilda, Impossible Numbers is able to deliver some intriguing character building here. It casts an interesting new light on Gilda’s episode without feeling like one of those heavy-handed apology fics that characters like Gilda or Trixie keep popping up in. This feels organic and plausible, yet doesn’t take itself overly seriously in the process.

After the somewhat heady stories in this week’s reviews, Griffon a Load of Bull is a great way to cool back down.

WHEN REVIEWING ASKS YOU TO THINK, DROWN THOSE THOUGHTS WITH DRINK!

This fic has an effective cover image. I respect that. It’s really just two screenshots from the show cut together, but it nonetheless says everything you need to know: it’s Gilda and Iron Will together, and neither is very pleased with the situation.

Stories like this, where two characters are thrown together so their personalities can clash, are always a bit hit-and-miss. It’s like trying to match up all your socks after they’ve just been through the dryer—you might get a pair that work well enough, but there’s no guarantee they’ll work as a perfectly synchronous whole. You might get a solid narrative out of it, or you might end up with one green and one orange sock, and nothing good comes of the clash.

Moving on before that analogy overtakes the review, I’d say that this story succeeds, maybe not to a profoundly enlightening degree, but nonetheless, simply having these two headstrong individuals bounce off of one another leads to an entertaining ride. What’s more, the author has made use of some very effective physical description that lends the whole fic an air of overblown proportions. It’s a fun little “What if?” scenario that, while perhaps pushing the subjective limit of canon, nonetheless manages to keep things interesting throughout its run.

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DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT PM the reviewers asking them to review your story. There are lots of them, so have faith in them and in your story, they'll get there.

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~WD & Seattle_lite