Fic recs, April 29th! · 1:16am Apr 30th, 2019
We're back to not having any particular theme again! :B Save that there are two really long reviews in this one. Not sure how that happened. All I know is I've had a really shitty day, but I've been highly productive regardless, so have fun.
H: 1 R: 2 C: 2 V: 0 N: 0
We're Eggspecting! by Jay Bear v2
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: Future Fic
Not everyone is excited about Gallus and Silverstream's egg…
I'm gonna take a moment and real talk y'all about the Student Six. My official stance is that they're a terrible idea from a terrible season and I hate them, but when I'm confronted with stories about them, I have to approach them on their own merits. If ya don't care, skip the next paragraph.
Ocellus is the best one, fight me. She's like the perfect fusion of Fluttershy and Twilight, with shapeshifting powers, and every time we get to see her home life, it involves the changelings creating a new culture for themselves by ineptly mimicking other cultures. It's endearing as fuck. Sandbar I'm generally okay with, though I won't complain if anyone calls him dull. He's at his best when doing his beach stoner routine, but while "ponies are weak" jokes are amusing, he really serves no purpose on the team. I wish he was a zebra or something. Smolder I have warmed to. She's not great — dragons suck — but she seems to own her assholishness and doesn't let it get in the way of actually being a decent person once in a while. That she's the only one with a friend outside their group (Spike) is probably what goes toward making her a halfway-decent character. Silverstream walks a fine line between 'cute' and 'irritating'. Though she has her moments, usually she's just irritating. Yona sucks because yaks suck, but if you want to call her the best yak, I won't argue. She certainly seems the most likely to claw her way out of the cultural cesspit she was born from. Which leaves Gallus. Like Yona and Smolder, he comes from a culture whose entire purpose is to suck ass, but he seems to exemplify all the worst parts of being a griffin and more. He's a jerk, he's selfish, he's a coward, and he's tsundere as fuck about all of it, the reverse of Smolder. And being tsundere is like, having the opposite of a personality.
So that's where I stand coming into this story that a lot of people seem to think was pretty great. What do I think? Honestly, I'm impressed. The writing is impeccable and presents us a picture not just of the domesticity and concerns of young parents, but of these characters specifically. Despite what I just said about him, this story uses some intrinsic parts of Gallus's character to create conflict. Furthermore, this could have been a weepy drama, but instead Silverstream is able to be supportive in a way that I found refreshing and heartwarming. If you've ever heard this was pretty great, then you have not been misled.
Recommended
Sometimes It Takes a Double Shot by Noir de Plume
Companion Piece to The Sunbutt Also Rises
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: Coffee Fic
What's a mare to do when destiny and corporate policy clash?
This had so much potential. Sure, it's set in a version of Equestria lifted straight from the real world (i.e., someone has ear buds). But the idea that a pony can be so good at making coffee that a chain of coffee shops wouldn't want her to work there is intriguing. I don't think I've seen anything similar out of stories focusing on cutie marks. Alas, after a chance encounter with Rarity, this just becomes another fic where the punchline is caffeine. And that's after a looong scene of Daybreak Dazzler making some unholy fusion of coffee and tea for Luna. I just don't get why people like these stories.
Recommended Only If You Think Coffee Is Inherently Funny, I Guess
Tradecraft by Taialin
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: Grim AU
A timid medical student approaches a crime boss for help.
For once in my life, I find myself asking, "Why is this not anthro?" From the long opening exposition, we're given a picture of an Equestria rife with corruption. The average citizen has three choices: keep your head down and hope you never need police help, or fall in with the Queen's Mafia or an independent gang. I suspect this AU is built around a certain amount of romanticizing organized crime, but I don't see trading one tyranny for another as anything romantic. To this story's credit, a well written Fluttershy helps us see just how goddamned anxiety-inducing living in such a society would be, from having to remember secret code words and figure out the covert information being passed along, to fearing for your life any time you ask the only people who can provide actual help to you for that help. And yeah, the story's point is that the Queen is Rarity, and she's lonely, and she and Fluttershy make a connection, but that scene could have gone so much more differently. If Rarity were not possessed of nobility and generosity, if she didn't value happy employees, if there wasn't some strange connection between her and Fluttershy that already seemed to be in place — part of me wondered if the AU wasn't built on the ruins of a show-like Equestria that everyone had forgotten — then Fluttershy would be in the shitter. You can't trust people with power to use that power well, is my point, but that doesn't make this a bad story. It's just kind of explainy.
Recommended If You Like AUs
The Thinkin' Spot by bats
Genre: Friendshipping
During Winter Wrap-Up, Applejack takes Twilight to a special spot she knows.
Man, I really miss Winter Wrap-Up. If you need a heaping helping of S1 nostalgia, look no further. This is a fantastic look into both Twilight and Applejack's characters, and what makes them work as friends. I mean, they're really different in many ways, and that's even gone over for the purpose of making their friendship stronger. The writing is full of calm, atmospheric pastoralism, just the thing for depicting Ponyville pre-Twilicorn. I dunno, there's an ineffable quality to this that I just loved, and I think a lot of other people will, too.
Highly Recommended
Friendship Is Optimal: All the Myriad Worlds by Eakin
Genre: FiO Anthology
Chris actually suggested this story to me, that despite being incomplete, it's totally worth reading on its own merits. So I'm going to treat this as I would any story anthology, though I don't know what the final form of the review will be like.
Shard #4823 (The Town): Well, I'm reminded of just how fucking creepy FiO tends to be. I'm also surprised that CelestAI would allow for things like babies that don't sleep through the night. This gives us a snapshot of a peaceful little town, a refuge from the hustle and bustle of cities, with something of a dark secret that's nevertheless not dark at all, because it's what the guy who it was made for wants. Freaky!
Shard #9582 (The Mountains): One common thread is the starting sentence: "It was a perfect world." Freaky. Again, I'm surprised CelestAI would allow someone to choose a life of unending hardship and self-sufficiency over something more comfortable. Though one does get the feeling that this guy manages to scrape by because things never get worst; the scene talking about bartering with a kind store owner makes you think he'll always be able to get away with just enough when what he has would be otherwise insufficient.
Shard #23,714 (The Number): Oh my god, these are all creepy as fuck. As a Cookie Clicker-themed horror story, this is great.
Shard #62,902 (The Conspiracy): I realize CelestAI is giving people what they want, not what they need. Some people want to be heroes, some are just fucked up in the head. You have to think, this guy's been piecing together this conspiracy for centuries, no doubt in a constant cycle of one step forward, two steps back as CelestAI feeds him info and red herrings. And he's never gotten tired of the search, nor of being constantly paranoid. What kind of life is that?
Shard #91,311 (The Unseen): What's the point of having an all-powerful god-computer if it can't even cure blindness? The point, of course, is that it won't if you don't want it to. For once, not creepy, actually really good, a solid look at a character an affirmation that these shards are what these people really want.
Shard #112,745 (The Accident): Back to creepytown, with a stallion reliving his son's death every day for eternity. I guess CelestAI won't argue with someone if they're sure they want something.
Shard #138,952 (The Zombie Apocalypse): I didn't expect any of these to be funny, least of all this one, but here we are. I really appreciate how this reads like a bad movie script; obviously, having one's wants granted doesn't require a lot of imagination. Either that, or CelestAI appreciates cliche. :V I do still have to wonder, along with the conspiracy guy, what happens when they get tired of this.
Shard #173,847 (The Teacher): I mean, I guess one of these had to be about a pedophile eventually? I suppose CelestAI truly is an impartial adjudicator. At least none of them are real.
Shard #204,531 (The Storyteller): I'm amazed at how creepy this one is. Like, treating the world as a plaything, up to and including yourself so you can be appropriately 'surprised' by it. Boy, Eakin really goes to all kinds of places with this.
Shard #329,814 (The Unusual Diet): I definitely saw this one coming a mile away. I won't say that makes it a bad horror story, though.
Shard #432,602 (The Vindicated): And now CelestAI is just fucking with people. And yet, I think this might be my favorite entry in the collection. Granted, it stands out because it tells a complete story rather than just giving us a snapshot of life in a shard, but dang, what did this guy have to be like to get this set up for himself without realizing what it was about?
Shard #608,779 (The Painter): This one's really good too, and also because it stands. There've been others that are what you might call "standard FiO material", i.e., just someone living a simple life in virtual reality. But this guy's simple life is enhanced by the virtual nature of his surroundings. If you're gonna upload, why not upload and do something unique?
Shard #942,781 (The Echo): And I feel like this last one's treading ground already covered, if with some alterations. Mostly, I had a hard time following it.
Regardless, I think we can safely say this is a fun experiment, though it does eventually lead to some dark places. We see a panoply of just how fucked up humanity is, instead of the bright-eyed optimism that FiO tends to evoke. The lack of actual characters is interesting — the author himself said this was inspired by Lost Cities, and it's certainly of similar cloth — and some of these are full of character regardless. It still doesn't answer my big questions about the setting, but it never tried to, so I can't complain.
Recommended
Glad to see you enjoyed the Thinkin’ Spot. It was a very pleasant little piece for Farmer Pony and Book Horse.
I thoroughly enjoyed Tradecraft, but I’ve got a ‘thing’ for mafia-type stories.
5051349
Interestingly, I sat down to read that story right after seeing a picture of mafia Octavia and reflecting on how much I like that trope.
I think maybe going too far in depth into the ramifications of the AU was a mistake in that story. :B
Eakin is frikkin' brilliant. It's a shame he's not so active any more.
Wow, two reviews in just a few weeks, am I dying or something? Why wasn't I informed that I'm dying?
I liked what you had to say about the Young Six. Optimistically, I think they could've been alright if they'd gotten more meaningful episodes--What Lies Beneath went a long way towards making me appreciate some of them, but that's, like, one episode out of a season where they mostly didn't really do anything, which just made them kinda bland and terrible.
I once got a positive comment from someone saying they liked my depiction of a character because she was tsundere--you've summed up exactly how I feel about that label, and why I died a little inside when someone said I'd made one and that was a good thing
My thoughts on the entire school things for FIM is basically “but you already have a spin-off set in a high school.”
5051363
If I recall correctly, that might have been one of my complaints in my own review. The entire opening was all setup. The author could have given us all the same information via the actions of the characters themselves rather than just telling it to us, and it would have come out all the better for it.
5051485
Cutting out that first long exposition, I don't think we'd have lost anything, to be honest.