Fic recs, July 2nd! · 12:18pm Jul 2nd, 2019
Oh heck, I apparently missed that Scribbler had done a reading of Golden Paw's Remember Vigil from the Most Dangerous Game Contest, featuring VisualPony and Emogak! :O
So this is almost an edition, but there were only four fics in the video I was watching last night. <.< Enough for a blog, at least!
H: 0 R: 0 C: 4 V: 1 N: 1
The Nightmare After Nightmare Night by SaddlesoapOpera
Reading (part 1) by Faux Snyder
Y'all oughta know this name if you've followed the fandom's music scene. But according to the description of this (admittedly very old) recording, this was why she made this Youtube channel. Wow! Though she never did another story… A shame, because this is really good. The best readings are always by women who can do VA work, after all, and she did a great job. Only downside is the music is mixed too loud; either that, or because it's the classic "Nightmare Night", I found myself focusing on the familiarity of it too much. Either way, it's a shame she never did more.
Genre: The Nightmare Before Christmas Crossover
On Nightmare Night, Rarity finds herself falling through a door in a tree to a strange new world.
Well, that was fucking weird. The crossover took me by surprise because I didn't look at the tags before reading, but even still, half the time I wasn't sure what was going on. Rarity finds herself in Halloween Town, her friends chase after her to rescue her, they all find themselves becoming the things they're dressed in costume as, and then Rarity goes evil and they have to defeat her. And yes, the costumes mean Applejack is a real scarecrow, Pinkie's a chicken, Rainbow Dash is a bad guy, Twilight is Star Swirl back when he was someone's RPG character, and Fluttershy is a tree. Why is she a tree? Because this was written in 2011 and that was still original ha ha no, it was a trite idea even back then. This power, of course, is why Rarity terms herself the Pumpkin Queen and takes over the town, but even then, I was never quite sure why anything was happening, to say nothing of how the final scene reframes everything. Meanwhile in Ponyville, Luna needs to keep it night so they don't get trapped in Nightmare world, and bedlam occurs for no particular reason. This skates by the Zecora Test on a technicality (switching to Swahili is no substitute for rhyming in English!) And not only are there tons of pop culture references, the Lock, Shock and Barrel cameo plays no role whatsoever on the story. This was obviously one of those stories written out of love for the material, with more enthusiasm than anything, but it is nowhere near Saddlesoap's best.
Vaguely Recommended
I Will Not Fail by Raptormon132
Reading by André Luc Martinez
Genre: Star Wars Crossover
Tempest Shadow gets a visit from the big guy. No, not the Storm King, the other big guy…
So André Luc Martinez, aka S Ninja, did his "reading bad fanfic" panel again at this year's EFNW, and I'm going through the video to hear what he did. Sadly, I was expecting this would showcase purposefully bad fics, because that's more fun, but here we are with something that could be better than it is. The primary issue is it spends a tremendous amount of its wordcount telling us exactly what happened in the movie, from how the ponies were locked up by Tempest to what Grubber looks like. The other issue is it doesn't have any real point. Darth Vader shows up, he and Tempest talk, he Force chokes Grubber, I discover how much I needed to hear Grubber being Force choked. Seriously, that's the only part I liked. It's not unconscionably bad, but an editor's influence would have gone a long way to improving, well, everything. I hope the author keeps writing.
Not Recommended
BRICK by Bok
Reading by André Luc Martinez
Genre: Random
BRICK.
The one thing you miss with this reading is that every instance of the word "BRICK" in this story is written precisely that way. That being said, this is surreal as fuck and I don't even know what was meant to be going on. That being said, there's a halfway decent punchline, which is to say I laughed out loud at it but I don't know if it's necessarily good. At least this was intentionally funny! Or weird, as the case may be.
Recommended If You Like Random
Pickles & Milk by moonbutters
Reading by André Luc Martinez
Genre: Trollfic
Spades Duck's wife has pregnant needs, but also the changelings are invading!
Oh my god. This is like, early Protopony levels of trolling. Maybe early Super Trampoline. I'm such a trollfic connoisseur that I can make judgments like that. Spades Duck is an amazing nonsense OC. There are Youtube links and long, incredibly specific descriptions for things. There is no fourth wall. There is lots of violence and swords. There is FlashLight. Most of all, I'm pleased that there aren't really much in the way of pregnancy jokes, all but the title instead being pregagnancy jokes, which I appreciate the hell out of. :D The reading only covers the first chapter (I think?), which is fine, since that means you can go appreciate the rest of this your own darn self!
...And then you keep reading and it turns into surreal horror and some kind of My Harshwhinnial shit. c.c Man, wow, what?
Troll Recommended
Scootaloo and Luna are on Fire (E-Rated Edition so Andre Can Read It At His Everfree Northwest Bad Fanfiction Panel) by Super Trampoline
Reading by André Luc Martinez
Genre: Random
Let's put them out.
The cover art for this pair of stories disturbs me deeply, for reasons I cannot fully comprehend. So there are two versions of this story, and as far as I can tell, the not E-rated version differs only in the second chapter. If we're being honest, I like the E-rated version ever so slightly more. It's not a big deal. I do love the way this is written, like we're kids going on some magical journey via the power of our imaginations and discovering the world around us. And that it's on fire. There's no particular point to this, but there is a bizarre kind of internal logic, and that's all you really need. One of Trampoline's artsier pieces, if I do say so myself.
Recommended If You Like Weird Shit or Scootaloo
Thanks for the review! I will say that it's unfortunate EFNW doesn't do after dark panels, because shitfic reading obviously benefits greatly from haven't a more-than-PG rating.
Wait, was "Anthropology" not sung by AwkwardMarina originally?
5083031
Oh, shoot, I'm dumb. :B
Well, Faux is still a singer...