Fic recs, April 3rd: TheEnderBrony edition! · 5:06pm Apr 3rd, 2020
A couple people are asking for donations right now, but in ways different from what we normally hear around this site: Chessie's call to action. Coyote wants blood.
It's Friday and I'm home doing laundry. c.c Quarantine is a fucking trip.
Next up on the audiobook reading chopping block, we have The Ender Brony, now just Ender! (Banzai4000 took down their stuff, sadly, or they'd have been next.) You know the drill by now:
nanashi_jones's Scootaloo, Where Are Your Parents?
Subsolar Drift's Letters from a Secret Admirer
Bloody Brandy's Lawless Love
Akumokagetsu's Evil Belle
EbonMane's Tired
SpitFlame's 127 Pets
Cryptic Metaphor's The Reason Luna Isn't Allowed Coffee
EbonMane's The Cough
Tumbleweed's What Do You Do With a Drunken Unicorn?
Patchwork Poltergeist's Somewhere Only We Know
Kamikakushi's Princess Twilight vs. the Pointless Button
totallynotabrony's Deep
theworstwriter's The Birds and the Bees
DontWannaKnow's Scootaloo Is Slightly Flame Retardant
Dennis the Menace's My Roommate Is a Vampire
Akumokagetsu's Strange Tastes
It looks like he hasn't done anything since 2016, but at least he left us with readings of some good stories. :)
H: 1 R: 1 C: 3 V: 2 N: 4
Don't Go Down There by aCB
Reading (part 1)
Genre: Horror
In the dead of winter, Fluttershy's least favorite season, she goes to visit her friends. But something is wrong tonight...
This piece is a combination of the original and the cliche. I've never, for instance, seen Derpy used in a horror story, at least not that I can recall. And I really like how the cold is portrayed as an entity all to itself. But at the same time, this is a horror fic where the characters tell scary stories, one of which comes unbidden to the teller and then becomes prophetic. (And the other of which is "Who was phone". <.< What.) There's also the old small town cult setup — though I was a little unclear on what exactly is going on — not to mention a murderous Pinkie Pie. In total, it's not great, but neither is it awful. Might be okay for horror fans.
Vaguely Recommended
the worstest story ever tolled by MeesterBob
Reading
Genre: Trollfic
Rainbow Dash wants babies.
So this is a classic example of a "trying too hard to troll" sort of story, but it actually gets better as it goes. I mean, it's still not amazing, nevermind that it's not on the site anymore, but I laughed at the joke about Luna's butt. That's not nothin'.
Vaguely Recommended
Pinkie's Free Candy Van by Arwhale
Reading
Genre: Random Comedy
After taking too much Adderall, Pinkie Pie invents a conveyance that will let her distribute free candy to everypony!
Silly is the word of the day, and this delivers silliness in spades. It maybe lingers too long on each scene, the one explaining where the van came from in particular, but it still manages to fill its time with things that amuse. So long as you find Pinkie accidentally acting like a child predator funny, that is. Nor can I say much for the punchline. Still, I enjoyed this.
Recommended for Laughs
Wake by Homfrog
Reading
Mature: Sex, Non-Con
Genre: Clop
Lyra awakes to her marefriend sucking on her horn.
Gee, I had to mature tag this myself because I had no idea it was mature. :| Don't take your stories down, people! Anyway, I found this otherwise hard to categorize. It's got some comedy, it's got some cute, romantic stuff, it's got a little drama. I would have dinged it for the non-con, except that Lyra and Bon-Bon actually sit and talk about what happened afterward, like what? That never happens in clopfics! Also, I'm phenomenally amused by Lyra dreaming about pancakes. :D This wasn't bad!
Recommended If You Like Sexual Fics
Just Being Pinkie Pie by HoofBitingActionOverload
Reading
Genre: Shipping
Those who see Pinkie Pie staying out in storms would say she's just being Pinkie. They don't know it's an act of love.
This is a simple, highly whimsical look into the psyche of one P. D. Pie, and it's marvelous. HBAO is a great author, we already knew that, and I think even non-shippers might find something to enjoy here. That said, for all that I'm always on the "Yay, PinkieDash!" train, I found myself a little disappointed that they were already a couple when the story starts. If this were some kind of secret thing, a wistful yearning of Pinkie that Dash might love her, dutifully putting her wellbeing at risk just to show how much she cares and staying positive despite all the setbacks, that would have made the sentiment even stronger. But, well, you can't have everything, and it's still good.
Recommended
Twilight discovers ebooks by Mackan90096
Reading
Genre: Random
Whenever I see a story with a huge red bar, it means one of three things: it's actually trolling and people don't get the joke; it's about something unpopular; it's actually bad. Rarely, it seems, is the last instance the case, and as I listened to this reading, as I heard the reader slowly lose his mind every time he said "purple", I found myself wondering whether this could be insane comedic genius, or just a failure of spectacularly hilarious proportions. After actually running my eyes over the text, I have to say it's the latter, though perhaps "spectacularly hilarious" is an overstatement. This is just poor writing, with foreign formatting, demonstrating what you might expect from someone's first fic. Not really worth the read, though the listen might amuse.
Not Recommended
Her Brother Doesn't Talk Much by Alpha Scorpii
Reading
Reading by Sagefira
I keep finding new readers! She unfortunately stopped making content in 2016 and only ever did a reading of Sun Princess besides this one. It's a shame, because the rest of her channel is music and VA stuff, and she's got the voice and delivery to back it up. This was really good.
Reading by BigAshRandomVids
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Slice of Life
But she doesn't mind.
This is a simple, monumentally heartwarming story about Big Macintosh, told by Apple Bloom. You see a lot of stories about her relationship with her sister, and not nearly as many give that emotional depth to her brother. I really can't express how well the perspective works, keeping things tightly in the lens of a child's experiences while allowing us to take everything in. It's a shame this author isn't around anymore, this was fantastic.
Highly Recommended
Rarity on a Ball: The Fanfic by Miyajima
Reading
Reading by VisualPony
Genre: Comedy
I'll say this much: I was expecting a novelization of that classic comic linked at the start of the story, which would have been a pointless exercise but precisely the kind of thing that happened back when stories had 3-digit numbers (and wordcounts!) Instead, this is a continuation of that comic… which is equally pointless. You don't have to see what happens next to know what happens next, nor did the comedy really land. It's so short, and yet I don't feel like my time was well used.
Not Recommended
Faith by Edock
Reading (part 1)
Genre: BiE
A brony tries to discover whether Equestria is real.
Interestingly, the first chapter of this was marked read for me. <.< I must have pre-read it back in the day, that's usually what that means. And I have to say, reading that first chapter again was a real chore. The writing is okay, but most of chapter 1 is introducing our protagonist, who is incredibly average, and his sob-story of a life. It made me think of Aragon's recent blog post, wherein he talks about using comedy to make the reader care about a character; for sure, detailing how much of a sadsack this guy is didn't make me give a darn about him. Plus, the entire basis of his journey is "our world is so dark and Equestria is so perfect, it couldn't have appeared in my life if it didn't actually exist." Like, wow, fuck you, way to deny the creative contributions of Lauren Faust and everyone else who worked on the show. So I did something I never do: I skipped ahead. I just had to know, is the Sad tag there because of this dumb asshole's tragic backstory, or because his quest would wind up fruitless? Well, it's more the latter. The story apparently involves him adventuring for years to find all the Elements while being harangued by Discord. The details weren't anything I found — and it's worth mentioning, the writing is significantly worse when I'm actually reading it — but in the last chapter, he wakes up in a hospital after having been in a coma since the beginning of the story. And supposedly this is not a huge "fuck you" to the audience because he Learned Something. Well, this was clearly too ambitious for a first fic, so it's not exactly a colossal failure, but I'm glad I don't need to spend more time on it.
Not Recommended: DNF 1/7
Button Mash Goes to a Slumber Party by GeodesicDragon
Reading
Genre: Comedy
If he wants to get his Joyboy back, that is.[/i[
Oh, wow. Button Mash. You sure haven't been relevant for a hot minute. :B Still an incorrigible shithead, I see. I have to say, this was a lot more wholesome than I was expecting. After the CMCs dare him to do something impossible as a prank and he nevertheless succeeds, I was really scared about what item he might have procured. <.< It'll make sense in context. That said, my main complaint is the ending. This feels like a chapter one; it should at least have a sequel. Instead, it sets up something for the next day and then just ends. I'm not sure why. Still, it could be worse, and I did have a few ha-has.
Recommended for Laughs
The Snow in Her Mane by Arcanist Ascendant
Reading
Genre: Shipping
Twilight meets Sunset in the Crystal Empire for the second time.
SunLight's usually good, but this is hardly satisfying. Neither pony feels like herself. Sunset is a mopey bag of angst, while Twilight spends the story being an internal drama queen, at least until after the kiss, when she gets moony. Not to mention, the story is fraught with thesaurus abuse (you don't find a word like "aurulent" otherwise). The best thing I can say about it is that at least it continues after the kiss/confession combo. Even if you're desperate for SunLight or pony smooches, you could at least find a fluff piece that still exists on the site.
Not Recommended
"Aurulent" would make quite a good username here.