NorrisThePony's Recs,
Volume 1: "Who the Hell is this Guy Edition"

Hey, how's it going? I'm NorrisThePony, your newest reviewer, here to recommend some stories!

Without any further ado, get your recs below!

1) A Royal Appearance by FanOfMostEverything

This story is a cute bit of Celesteacher holiday fluff about Celestia spending her Hearth's Warming Eve not at some classy banquet or party, but instead in the humble company of Twilight Sparkle and her family. Now, with the story's extremely brief length considered, this would already be enough to deserve a read, but there's more to this fic beyond simple sugary saccharine; it also explores an intriguing aspect of Twilight Sparkle's magic surge. Instead of blindly believing that she is destined for great things, an intriguing level of fear and wariness is presented in the minds of Celestia and Twilight's parents.

In a sentence, A Royal Appearance is both a successfully adorable story and a story with a clear amount of thought and realism applied.

2) Gnosis by Morning Sun

Gnosis: \ˈnō-səs\ {Noun, Greek} A knowledge of spiritual or supernatural mysteries.

Gnosis is Darkfic done right. I have no intention of spoiling anything here, although any spoilers I could offer would merely be my interpretation of the story anyways. The details that are presented to the reader are rich enough to form multiple conclusions regarding what exactly is going on in the story, but never enough to successfully narrow it down to a definite answer. There are many subtle indicators that really require closer reading to locate.

I'm well aware that this style of "Up to YOU to decide" storytelling is fairly off-putting to certain readers, so please keep that in mind going into this story. Anybody looking for a twisted story will enjoy this, provided they have a bit of a twisted mind of their own.

3) Under A Silver Moon by Danger Beans

Under A Silver Moon is a Horror/Mystery story done in a style reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft and Agatha Christie, without ever bluntly borrowing much from either. The gist of the set-up is that a brutal murder in Canterlot requires Luna's expertise, but there just might be something much more sinister than murder forming from within the shadows.

Beyond the engaging and moody Noir-style writing and the snappy, natural-sounding dialogue, this story gets extra points from me for having a portrayal of Discord that I can actually handle. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I've never been too fond of Discord, and his presence in the character tags was almost enough to sway me from this fic. I'm glad I wasn't stupid, because it's a great take on his character, and he is used interestingly in the narrative.

Sitting at under 300 views, this story is deserving of a whole lot more.

4.) If I Were a Pony... by Pen Mightier

I don't have anything particularly profound to say for this one. It's a very funny Chrysalis redemption story that takes a somewhat cliche and ridicolous concept and simply runs with it. I'd offer some comment about characters acting OOC, but it's done in such a delightfully silly way that I can't really find a problem with it. The humour really reminds me of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which is welcomed any day of the week. For example:

Everything was so burnt the dish was still practically smouldering. The toast was burnt. The cheese was burnt. The tomatoes were burnt. Even the juice was burnt. It was the very antithesis to food. It was an anathema unto cuisine. It was food where all the matter had extinguished itself into antimatter. It was anti-food.

It's sitting at only three chapters and almost a year between the last one, so hopefully nobody lynches me for recommending a possibly dead story.