Ponyfic Roundup 100: End of a Century

On 26 March 2014, I posted the first Ponyfic Roundup. In the two years since then, a few things have been tweaked and I've probably become a little less generous with my ratings — but in essence PR remains what it always was. I'm not sure whether I'd have believed you if you'd told me in 2014 that I'd still be making these posts now, but I still enjoy reading ponyfic — I don't think I could continue if I didn't — and so PR isn't going anywhere any time soon. (There won't be one next week, though, because of the Easter holiday.)

Now, one of the things I've tried to avoid (though I didn't do too well in PR 1!) is only reviewing stories that are big enough and old enough to look after themselves. I do review those, but I also really want to give some exposure to fics that don't get noticed by the great and good of Fimfiction. With that in mind, Ponyfic Roundup 100 is devoted to overlooked stories. All six of the fics I look at here had under 100 views at the time I downloaded them. (They were all at least a month old, so none were chosen just because they were very new.) Was it a good idea? Well... probably not. Still:

Are you a Robot? by FIMScourge
Who Could Win A Rabbit by Honeycomb
Flutterball's Conquest by PlanetKiller
The Second Annual Cherry Hill Championship by Lore-Lei
Champion; Thy Name Is Angel by Black Hailstorm
Silver Star and the Temple of Crimson Forest by SilverStarApple

★: 2 | ★★: 4 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0

Are you a Robot? by FIMScourge
Pinkie Pie
Dark; 1k words; Jun 2015; Teen

War changes much.Especially for Pinkie Pie.

This story is told in the first person by Pinkie and feels like it was based around the "war" alternate timeline from the S5 finale — but no: it pre-dates that episode by some months. There's a good deal of death and destruction in this, although not gorily described. It's interesting to see a very dark take on Pinkie that doesn't take the easy "Pinkamena" way out, but it's just too strange to engage me much. Not bad at all technically, and so short that it's worth a try if the premise intrigues you. It doesn't really feel very pony, though. ★★

Who Could Win A Rabbit by Honeycomb
OC
Slice of Life; 1k words; Sep 2015; Everyone

Turtledove tries out for the school's track team.

As I know to my cost, this combination of genre and character tag tends to get few reads, and the obscure title (apparently an Animal Collective song) doesn't do it any favours. It's a fairly standard story about a pony who tries her best and realises something about herself in the process. Competently written and inoffensive, although there isn't much else here. Unlike one commenter on Fimfiction, I do like the author's use of furlongs to measure race distances. ★★

Flutterball's Conquest by PlanetKiller
Pinkie Pie
Comedy/Random; 1k words; Dec 2015; Mature

Pinkie Pie and her friend play an "innocent" game during a party, but is writing about it going too far with Twilight?

This fic has fifteen views after three months, which must be some kind of record. The title character, against my expectations, is simply a rather uninteresting pegasus OC who somehow manages to defeat Pinkie Pie at a weird game dozens of times running. Pony names are often not capped up, there's a horrible typo in a chapter title and it's debatable whether the whole thing is a story at all. Eduard Khil gets a random name-check late on. I give the author credit for the A/N stating that this was written to help them "level up" their skills, and I wish them luck. This fic, however, you can pass on. ★

The Second Annual Cherry Hill Championship by Lore-Lei
Other and OC
Slice of Life; 5k words; Mar 2015; Everyone

Cherry Berry and her family live their lives as one would expect from farmers. Wake up, harvest, feed the animals, sort, do housework have some rest, go to sleep. 'Luckily' for her, she has a little sister to spice the bland days up.

This fic makes Cherry Berry the daughter of Cherry Jubilee, which actually I'm surprised I haven't seen done before. It's quite a pleasant read, albeit a bit iffy technically, and I particularly enjoyed one of the activities Cherry dreamt up for her sister and her. There isn't quite enough substance here for a three, but it's a decent two-star fic and would probably appeal to those who like simple slice-of-life stories. ★★

Champion; Thy Name Is Angel by Black Hailstorm
Angel and Fluttershy
Alternate Universe/Dark/Drama/Thriller/Tragedy; 7k words; Jan 2016; Teen (Gore)

A cute bunny who's been through it all, saves the life of a mare lost in Everfree Forest

Yes, it really does have that semicolon in the title. Anyway, I was pleased to see a story that combined Everfree and Angel, two things I don't think the fandom always treats that well. Despite a rather awkward narrative style, there's a moderately interesting origin story in here — the trouble is that it really doesn't feel like an MLP story. Angel, who narrates, is very militaristic — to the extent of carrying (and using) a knife. Barely scrapes a two, since it does at least have that Everfree angle. ★★

Silver Star and the Temple of Crimson Forest by SilverStarApple
Characters
OC; 10k words; Jan 2016; Everyone

There is an ancient temple outside of Equestria, a temple even experienced explorers and adventurers fear to enter. A Temple supposedly impenetrable. When Silver Star reads of this temple's existence, he decides to take his skills on a test run.

The first paragraph of this thing is close to 700 words long, and there are more blocks like it throughout. As for the story itself... well, put it this way: do you want to read a description of a massively OP OC doing some Tomb Raider-style temple stuff, complete with computer RPG tropes like a "+8 Saddle of Strength"? Because that's pretty much what this is, almost all the way through. I found it a real slog, which is why it gets a one-star rating. ★

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: there won't be one next week because of the Easter break. The week after that, I'll be back to my normal "stuff that I feel like reading" approach.