It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #73 · 8:39pm Aug 10th, 2022
So it's been bothering me for months that I have yet again managed to take a blog which does two stories a week and ended up with an odd number of stories on the shelf. Today, I'm gonna finally get around to doing something about it.
Fortunately, I have a pair of three-piece blogs in reserve and I'm more than happy to pull one of them out. So today's uniting theme is something less about tags or themes and more about my personal opinions: these three stories are the ones I hold up as 'perfect'. Not mechanically, but they're the stories that when I write? These are what I aspire to and what I try to reach for.
The first on the list is probably my #1 story on the site: One Last Regret by PoisonClaw.
On a chill Thursday, Sunset Shimmer asks her friends to meet her for coffee. There, she reveals her final secret: the flash drive she's kept that has blackmail material on nearly every person at CHS, both student and staff. It was the tool she used to keep her iron hold on the place, and something she's held in her back pocket even after her redemption. The other girls react... less than positively at the revelation.
Now (in a common theme for today's works) I could rant for pages on all the parts about this story that I love. But a lot of what it boils down to is characterization and brevity.
This is a story with zero wasted space. It's short, to the point, and uses every word effectively. There's no empty padding or meandering that doesn't add to the main thrust of the story, and that makes it far more potent than the relatively short 3500 words.
It also nails the characterization right on the nose - even with relatively limited dialogue, the characters are strongly readable as themselves and that is applied to the situation in ways that boost their essential identities. Rainbow Dash is particularly notable here: in a lot of stories like these, Dash is the one who gets labelled as a thoughtless meathead. But in this one? Yeah, she shows her mistakes but they're for understandable reasons and in ways that don't undermine who she is, rather than because hurpdurp hotheaded jock. This is also essential Sunset Shimmer, too: it really leverages both her pre- and post-redemption identities to give a character that thrives in its flaws.
This story, more than any other, is what I idealize and strive for in what I write.
Second up is another Sunset Shimmer piece, though of a very different tack: Justice3442's Out Of Space.
Derived from/made in response to Holy's The Last Page, it tells a tragic tale of separation and finality. The magical journal between Equestria and the human world is running out of space. And when it does, that means the end of both communication and transportation between the two worlds - the connection will be severed. Months of work between Sunset and Twilight have come to no solution, and they reach the last page of the journal.
And that's where the original goes into drama and this story goes full madcap.
This, my friends, is what I cite as peak comedy. It's a serious, somber story that abruptly turns to insanity in the best way. It ratchets up the melodrama and turns it into laughter by taking things down an entirely logical path that is both ridiculous yet stays true to all the involved. And both the drama and the comedy is all the stronger for it, because the story plays out exactly in a way that fits who these characters are. Sunset's final desperate plan is so very her, Twilight's reactions are dead on point, and Starlight is... well, painfully Starlight.
That and the final confrontation is hilarious.
The epilogue chapter's just a cherry on top.
Lastly, we have one that shockingly involves no Sunset Shimmer at all. I know, weird!
But it's still massively, unspeakably good. And those of you who know me can almost certainly guess that the last (and longest) entry today is Luna's Daughters by SockPuppet.
The other entries on this list were chosen for their ability to pack character into a tight space with no wasted words and prime comedy - this one stands tall for being one of the site's best dramas.
The dawn after Princess Luna's return to Equestria, she asks Celestia a simple question: What happened to her family? To those she left behind when she was sent to the moon? And Celestia quietly tells her it has been a thousand years since then. And then we have this beautiful, perfect exchange:
"Are my daughters dead?"
"My sister... you know I will never lie to you. So before you ask me questions, think: 'do I really want the answers?'"
"Are my daughters dead? My husband?"
"Yes, for almost one thousand years."
"I... but... but... but not ten hours ago... I ate breakfast with them."
And then, once they have returned to Canterlot, Celestia tells her sister the heroic and tragic fates of her descendants. For
"Nopony writes an epic about an easy or painless death."
This blog is late because I pulled the story up to glance through for a few choice bits and I ended up re-reading the entire thing for the twelfth or so time. That should tell you something right there.
This story is stunning. It's one of the best pieces I've read for the characterization of Princess Celestia, it builds truly epic tales that are part of Equestria's early history, and it flat-out sings with some of the site's best prose. It reads like so many historical legends in that it's larger than life and yet so damn familiar and relatable.
And most importantly, the emotion it carries with it is undeniable. Luna's daughters are original characters that exist only for these 18000 words, but their stories are enough to move me to near tears and make my heart ache for what they go through. (The Choices We Make remains the only story on the site that's actually made me cry, but this one did manage to get close.) It says so much that Sock manages to spend just five thousand words on the likes of Tranquility and makes me care about her, even though I know from the beginning what's going to happen to her.
And then the ending. That ending. Those last 247 words are just... goddamn, every time I write a story, I pray to create an ending as powerful as that.
New or catching up? Try Recommendsday: The Index for your story needs!
Well, if you have qualified these three as perfect, then I suppose I'd better read them pretty soon, hadn't I? Sunset, EqG and all.
And Luna having had a family and daughters? I mean, there's so many Celestia & Luna fics out there, I'm not remotely surprised this exists, but I've yet to read a story where Luna had birthed children before her imprisonment. Usually just ones where she had a lover. Most intrigued, especially with that level of emotional scarring.
Who’s Sunset Shimmer
5678837
idk, some dumb horse or something
Huge thanks!!!
Luna's Daughters is an excellent story. The sequel Her Majesty's Coast Guard is just as good.