Ponyfic Roundup 460: New Blood Contest winners, part 1

Read it Later story count: 94 (nc)

Words read this week: 26,255

Welcome to the first half of a two-part special edition of Ponyfic Roundup, in which I'll cover some of the stories entered for the New Blood Contest. This was open only to accounts created in 2020 or later, and 12 of the 29 entered fics ended up getting some kind of recognition. I shall be having a look at all of those over the next fortnight. Let's get going with the first half dozen!

The Champion by GrangeDisplay
Starry Nights Over Knossos by sirenc0re
Secret Garden by Discombobulated Soul
The Ponyville Files by LastToTheParty
Sisters' Moon by WaywardSon
Blood and Glamour by Mindscape

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 4 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Honourable mention; Bonus prompt #4: "The main character’s name and identity is never mentioned."
The Champion by GrangeDisplay
Other and OCs
G4; Random/Slice of Life; 4k words; July 2023; Teen

In the dead of night, an unlikely mare partakes in the fantastical world of pro-wrestling.

Wrestling and Pony have mixed before, even in (extended) canon in the shape of IDW FiM #29. The Champion is an interesting take on the "identity never mentioned" bonus, since it's very easy to work out who the protagonist is. Instead, the author uses the masked, costumed, theatrical nature of wrestling to do it. Imaginative! I particularly liked the explanation of why the mare in question enjoyed playing a baddie in the ring: that was clever and satisfying. I'm not a wrestling fan, so the parallel with a real-life wrestler meant nothing and a few terms (eg "suplex") had to be looked up. The prose is just slightly raw in places – a few tense mismatches, for example. Wrestling fans will surely lap this up, but I quite enjoyed it too. ★★★

Honourable mention; Bonus prompt #4: "The main character’s name and identity is never mentioned."
Starry Nights Over Knossos by sirenc0re
OC and Luna
G4; Slice of Life; 4k words; Jul 2023; Everyone

Starry Nights- young aristocrat and perpetual tourist- ventures abroad to the island republic of Minos and learns to accept the past one step at a time.

Same bonus prompt as The Champion, but a more conventional approach to the no-name thing. I always enjoyed the Greek mythology that FiM used as inspiration, and this fits nicely into that. "Starry Nights" is of course a pseudonym, but whose? Well, that would be telling, but it's not desperately hard to work out. The fic has plenty of atmosphere and the minotaur city is of course maze-like! I do think it tries to pack in a little too much for the contest's 4,444-word limit;¹ all the world-building feels better suited to a longer tale. If I wanted to nit-pick, there's a little slightly bumpy writing ("a millennia") and "shitty" doesn't belong in an E-rated fic. A top-end two that would probably be a three with a bit more room to breathe. This is apparently the author's first ever "beginning, middle and end" story, and given that it's not a bad start at all. ★★
¹ That said, this was the only fic this PR not to be at or within a few words of the maximum.

Honourable mention
Secret Garden by Discombobulated Soul
Roseluck and OCs
G4 AU; Sad/Sci-Fi/Slice of Life; 4k words; Jul 2023; Teen (Death)

Roseluck is a criminal. One whose machinations are endangering every last individual aboard the starship she has found herself on. She won't stop, though. She can't.

A sci-fi story set on a self-contained starship, starring Roseluck, in which plants play a key part? So far, so similar to Silent Whisper's Symbiosis (PR 443). This is something different, though. Rose is an earth pony on a ship where her tribe is seen as having no specific abilities or skills in the way the unicorns or griffons or yaks on board do.¹ The focus stays tightly on Roseluck as we follow her, and that works well. We get fed bits and pieces of the starship's culture, rather than having it all dumped on us at once, another good decision. The fic is sometimes rather tell-y, and it could do with a proofread (you can't have an oblong sphere), plus the original catalyst for the ship's existence is a little too vague to make Rose's position really hit home. Still makes it into the threes, not least for its heartwarming ending. ★★★
¹ Though she then demonstrates one, which does undermine that point a bit.

Honourable mention
The Ponyville Files by LastToTheParty
Twilight
G4; Romance/Mystery; 4k words; Jul 2023; Everyone

Did you know that Equestria had a secret service all along? Celestia only knows what happens there. Now Twilight is given access to learn more about its secrets. But what’s that? An agent is hiding among the ones closest to her!

"Celestia allows Twilight access to the secret wing" isn't a new idea in itself, but that's fine – all the more so when there is an eye-catching idea next: that someone in the shadows is watching over Twilight as she lives in Ponyville. A large chunk of this fic is made up of the reports Twi unearths in the archives, which deal with mysterious code-named characters like WALL SMASHER and FLOWING RAINBOW. I'm not a fan of so much ALL CAPS, and the use of actual episode names was really strange, though Sweetie Drops being in there was fun. The romantic element may divide opinion: it didn't feel entirely earned, though fans of said ship (spoilers!) may well enjoy it. There's a little epilogue that puts the box of files in a new light; again, that felt a bit too "because I wanted to" for my taste, but I can see other readers smiling at it. This is the author's first fic and in a few ways it feels like it. They don't want for ideas, though. ★★

Bonus prize: "From the beginning, you know the end"
Sisters' Moon by WaywardSon
Sunny and Izzy
G5; Slice of Life; 4k words; Jul 2023; Everyone

Sunny wants to find out why, after generations apart, all ponies call an eclipse the Sisters' Moon.

Ooh, a G5 fic! Not only that, but a series-based G5 fic, if the presence of Sparky is anything to go by. Through first Izzy and then Zipp, Sunny discovers that all the tribes refer to an eclipse the same way. Why? Via Grandma Figgy, they find their way to somepony who might just know. I enjoyed this, not least for tying together G4 and G5 lore (something you'll need to be at least okay with) in a way that many stories by more experienced authors stumble on. The explanation for the eclipse is a little on the sad side, but the world-building is interesting and overall this feels as though it could be an episode's story without much alteration. Quite honestly, I'd rather watch this than much of the actual stuff I've seen in Make Your Mark. The story that most surprised me of this week's batch: quite a high three-star rating here. ★★★

Bonus prize: "Include a bug"
Blood and Glamour by Mindscape
Fluttershy and Chrysalis
G4; Adventure; 4k words; Jul 2021; Teen

Fluttershy has a secret. A problem she needs help with, but one she can't tell her friends. Instead, while searching for help, she finds it in the most unlikely of places.

I like to see the [Adventure] tag, as it's not used as often as it might be. Fluttershy has been keeping her bat side a secret from everypony, but she's finding it ever harder to manage alone. She visits a rather secretive place where some (fuzzily explained) magic means what happens there, stays there... and comes face to face with Chrysalis. Their interactions, in a place where the Queen cannot hurt her deadly enemy, are the highlight of this fic. Her explanation of the power of changeling blood is a slight stretch and maybe another place where a fic suffers from the word count limit, but the rest is so appealing with its nods to classic vampire stories that I can forgive that. As such, another three-star rating. ★★★

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Next time, I'll be reviewing the other two Bonus Prize fics and the four actual prizewinners. Because I'm only attending UK PonyCon for (most of) the Saturday this year, I won't need my customary week off reviewing. Besides, I'll need something nice to take my mind off the interminable coach, bus and taxi journey home on a train strike day! Here's the list:

A Modest Proposal by Jymbroni
A Lovestruck Folly by A whisky man
Pitfalls by heartlessons
One day I am gonna grow wings by TheInfamousFly
A Study in Chartreuse by Serketry
Sabot Élégant's Not So Savory Adventure by Chromentazol