Hey, would you look at that? Not only do I have three stories to look at this PR, but they're not stories that are barely over 1,000 words either! Admittedly the beautiful (for March) weather has helped, since despite everything I have managed to spend a bit of time in the back garden reading ponyfic as I'd hoped. The forecast is for much colder, cloudier weather by Saturday, though. Curses.
A Simpler Time by DJLowrider
Spell Check by SirNotAppearingInThisFic
Suri Polomare Plagiarizes Her Final Paper by Quillamore
★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
A Simpler Time by DJLowrider
Twilight and Rarity
Comedy/Slice of Life; 4k words; Oct 2011–May 2012; Everyone
Two friends realize their friendship goes back farther than either of them ever realized.The setup is simply told: it turns out that Rarity and Twilight spent some time together as fillies while waiting for their mothers to finish shopping – but never swapped names. It's a quiet piece with some nice gentle humour, and it's very domestic in tone as fics this old tend to be. (I'm guessing the fact the chapter is dated many months later than initial publication means there was a revision in 2012.) The story is very telly in places, and as you'll probably know that doesn't usually bother me as much as it does some. Bits and pieces of the dialogue also seem too grown-up for youngsters. My other objection is that the entire premise dilutes the impact of a key part of canon (the original sonic rainboom) a bit. But it's a serviceable effort nonetheless. ★★
Spell Check by SirNotAppearingInThisFic
Starlight, Dinky, CMCs, Snips and Snails
Comedy/Slice of Life; 4k words; Oct 2016; Everyone
Starlight’s spell to improve life for unicorns fails to live up to her expectations.This one's going to depend quite a lot on your feelings towards Season 6 Starlight, as she's very S6 here in the way she throws powerful magic around in an attempt to help out without stopping to think as to why doing so might be a bad idea. If that's not a deal-breaker, this is pretty fun and all the characters are nicely written. Glimmy in particular is S6-y, but spot on S6-y. One particular line from Snails made me giggle out loud, too. On the downside, a story which needs a fairly lengthy blog post (linked in the end A/N) to explain why several things are the way they are is maybe not being entirely fair on the reader. An easy three even so. ★★★
Suri Polomare Plagiarizes Her Final Paper by Quillamore
Suri Polomare, Coco Pommel, Cadance and Twilight
Equestria Girls/Comedy/Slice of Life, 5k words; May 2016; Teen (Profanity)
Suri Polomare needs a decent language arts paper to stay in the Crystal Prep fashion program. Coco Pommel has a decent language arts paper. And she doesn't suspect a thing...Without doubt the best thing about this story is Suri's narration, which captures her intonation and mindset perfectly. Enough so that I was mentally yelling at her from fairly early on. She fits into Crystal Prep pretty nicely, as you'd expect, and being the spoiled rich girl she is, she's not inclined to work if she can get someone else to work for her. Enter Coco Pommel... as with "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Coco doesn't have a good time of it for quite a while. But in the end you'll be cheering, especially when Twilight turns up. Another strong three. ★★★
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: stories reviewed should include Goblin Scribe's Flashes on the Horizon.
I've only read "Spell Check" of these, and for my money, it was only okay. It relied on a lot of sight gags, which are hard enough to do in writing, but in these cases, we didn't even get to see the immediate aftermath. Reactions sell a sight gag, and when you only see how the characters react to it hours after they witnessed it, it just comes across as drab to me.
ReplyDeleteI think my more positive reaction to it might be significantly because I really like S6 Starlight in a way many people don't. "Every Little Thing She Does" is (for the time being, anyway!) well up near the top of my favourite episodes in that season.
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