It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #72 · 7:11pm Aug 3rd, 2022
Historically, #recommendsday has focused on shorter works - mostly because there's a lot more of them and I'm a short/flash fiction writer myself. I feel like adding a bit of bulk to everybody's reading list this week, so I'm going to pull out two series that should be on everyone's must-read list.
I'll be leading with Not Exactly Friends by the exceptional Lets Do This. Clocking in at 19 entries and 300,000 words, it's bulky read but it breaks down well into digestible parts (which I very much appreciate.)
The story's basis is an alternate Elements story, and it begins with Twilight meeting a new student at school: Tempest Shadow. The two fillies bond quickly as Twilight does the greatest kindness for Tempest: she doesn't care about the disability of the broken horn. So Tempest instantly connects to her, come hell or high water.
From there, the rest of the group forms up slowly: the runaway Starlight Glimmer; the savvy trickster Trixie; the castaway Sunset Shimmer; and Moondancer, the moon-touched outcast.
A lot of why this one works where so many other alternate Elements stories fail is that it doesn't copy the S1 events. Yes there's some similar beats, but the story is still distinctly theirs. Things are different, yet manage to maintain enough of a mirror to be recognizable - and that's a tough balance to hit. As well, the time is taken to show why these characters are together and how they work as a team. The cores are unchanged, but the story's different.
And it works great. It's highlighted as well by a ton of interweaving - events, beats, and characters from the canon timeline move through this alternate one, similarly just similar enough while still giving this world the chance to breathe.
Honestly, too, it gets better as it goes along. The first arc is good, but the second, when Discord arrives on the scene? There's some damn great drama in there.
The other story/series today is another on my list of things I've wanted to feature for a while. And it took me time, partially because I was torn on just which one of the stories to lead with. It's a complicated continuity, and just because a story came first chronologically doesn't mean that it's the right on-boarding spot. In the end, I settled on:
Playing House, of Krickis' Who We Become series.
So this one's harder to sum up simply, because it's 1.3 million words across 25 stories by five authors. But my best attempt? It's a LGBT+-oriented story focused primarily on Sunset Shimmer's disaster of a life, intersecting with her friends on both sides of the mirror. Her obsessions, her self-destructions, her tragedies, and most particularly her loves. And Playing House is the critical juncture for it all, going over her relationship with the human Fluttershy and how it leads into where both their lives go.
Now before I go deeper, I will please remind folks to read the content warnings because they are not kidding. While the series as a whole is rated T, Krickis does not pull a single punch. Expect a lot of terrible things to happen to the characters across this: not in the bloody horror way, but in the way that the world just grinds you. The lives of characters falling apart, relationships burning, abuse, alcoholism, grief, self-hatred, prejudice, dysphoria, the works. It's a slice of life, but it's a rough life.
But that's where it's amazing. The characters suffer, but it's realistic suffering. It's easy to connect to because it is (and they are) human. So it hurts like hell. And you get attached. And you care, which is one of the greatest complements you can give an author about their characters. I could point a dozen or more significant moments in these stories without any effort, because what happens sticks with you.
The realism and reasonableness also elevates it. Sunset and Fluttershy fall in love, graduate high school, move in together... and still struggle to make ends meet. They have to work to keep their relationship together, and when tragedies strike they react like people. They don't just cruise past those details, and that's what makes up the core of the story. And that's why it's so heart-wrenching: we understand being tired after a long day of work or trying to find the budget to do one nice thing for your SO. This is one of the site's best stories for giving that real, human connection and making the reader give a damn.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
Mm, these are both series I've been aware of for quite a while, but due either to length commitments, or feeling uncomfortable with aspects of their stories/worlds, I haven't jumped on them. At least, not fully: in the case of the Not Exactly Friends series, I did read the first four entries, up until Trixie's introduction in Never Any Doubt. This was many years ago now, as they were new, but I think I wasn't getting much out of the "assemble a different Mane 6 of Twilight and her unicorn rivals/enemies/former enemies from the show" plotline, it just all felt typical. The characterisation was grand, but not so good as to obviate the other problems. And it could possibly be a taste thing, but I didn't care for the fragmented nature of doing them as many single-chapter stories, it felt (and for most of Lets Do This' work, it still does feel) like a cheap ploy to get more views and attention then they would as extra chapters. Especially when it means longer stories that have multiple chapters - yet are split in two.
Obviously I have been told in many places by many people that the series is worth going with, and that's been fighting my personal feeling that I often don't get as much out of Lets Do This' work as others (or, at least, some of his writing tics do consistently detract from his work). So getting confirmation that it picks up as it gets to its arcs is nice, though Discord's introduction comes a fairly hefty way into the series, and I'm not sure if I want to wade through all the setting up and yet another pilot redo. We'll see.
As for the Who We Become series, it's a mixture of length commitments, having so much of its runtime be so depressing (I can take dramatic, tragic and sad stories, but not to any length) and the heavy EqG focus that puts me off there. But all I've read does make them sound really good, so I'm all for others diving in.
Playing House is fantastic. :D
Not Exactly Friends and it's universe have been favorites of mine since I discovered them. Particularly priceless is the story where Sunset joins the group, thanks to Trixie fixing the mirror's timing (I am so not going to spoil that).
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You're on the money there. It's excellent, but there's no denying the massive length and it hits like an emotional truck. I think it's worth it, but I can totally understand why somebody would balk.
I finished reading the entirety of Playing House today after finding it from this post, and I have absolutely no regrets.
It’s one of the few stories on this site that have made me cry - and considering I read a lot of dark, tragic stories, that’s saying a lot.
I can’t add anything to what TCC56 has already said without spoiling anything, but if you typically enjoy stories from the same genre and with similar themes, Playing House is definitely a must-read.
Randomly searching for my name in blogs pays off again! Yes, I'm a vain bitch, but I'm a vain bitch who got found a kick ass review of her work, so who can really blame me here?
It's interesting to me that you single out Playing House as the jump on point, but I'm not going to disagree. Largely I'm just here to say I deeply appreciate your kind words and directing others at my work.
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(I totally do it too, and I think most writers at least do occasionally.)
It really was a difficult pick. I think in the end I went with Playing House because it puts a lot of the others into critical context: either giving reasons why certain things happened that way, or acting as something that gives earlier moments in the story a different light when you know where the story will be going. Still, there's like three or four different spots that could work as entries and it took me some time to decide what would be 'best'.