Ponyfic Roundup 504

Read it Later story count: 94 (-1)

Words read this week: 12,786

Lots of blogs on Fimfiction about this year's Everfree Northwest convention. They're generally good reading, too. Mind you, EFNW and its bookstall have made me think about something. In particular, those stories which have physical-exclusive content. Although most of this blog is aimed globally, I am British and the sheer cost of ordering physical ponyfic books from the UK is not a trivial matter.¹ I may expand more on this decision in a later post, but in short: I have decided that I will only be reviewing stories in their free, online forms, barring truly exceptional circumstances. (This does not apply to commercial publications like the official chapter books.)
¹ The one major exception has been Lulu, since they print standard format books in the UK too. Indeed, that's how I got Cold in Gardez's Completely Safe Stories collection. However, they've cracked down on fanfic in recent times, so much less ponyfic is now available that way.

All right; on to today's list. These are the top five entries in the Dialogue Only Contest, reviewed in reverse order of placing, with the fifth placed story covered first and the winner reviewed at the end. Since they're all short and since I decided not to review the hon menshes as well, this week's Ponyfic Roundup has a very low word count. That won't be the case next time, as you'll see in the footer. The fics on the slate today are:

Unsent Letters, Unsung Failures by gloamish
Quasar by kleia
The Cuckoo's Lament by Jade Ring
One Planet, Slightly Used by FanOfMostEverything
The First in a Decade by taterforlife

★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Unsent Letters, Unsung Failures by gloamish
Twilight, Spike, Celestia and Mane Six
G4; Sad/Slice of Life; 3k words; Jun 2024; Everyone

Twilight Sparkle thought friendship was supposed to be about picnics and songs, not fights and hurt feelings. She never sent a report about the reality being a mix of both, but she got close a few times.

An interesting start with the fifth placed story! We follow Twilight through some of her... friendship development, I suppose would be the best term for it. There's a suitably early-series feel to this, with little happening outside the domesticity of Ponyville. Meanwhile, there are flashbacks to some of Twi's earlier interactions with Celestia. These are shown right-justified, which only just worked on my narrow phone screen and so made things a bit hard to follow at times. Probably best to read this one on a larger screen if you can – and I think it needs to be read, not listened to, otherwise the mildly experimental formatting has no impact. Maybe suffers a little from the constraints of the contest rules (I'd like it more with just the odd tag, which wasn't permitted) but it's still a good read. Top-end three, maybe shading a four if you have a larger screen. ★★★

Quasar by kleia
Spitfire
G4; Dark/Sad/Sci-Fi; 3k words; Jun 2024; Everyone

The final logs of lost astronaut Spitfire have finally been recovered. What they reveal is a horrifying truth yet to come.

Bias acknowledgement: I have a personal dislike of Zalgo text, which this fourth placed story uses, albeit very sparingly. Anyway, the fic isn't really dialogue, since (virtually? Possible spoilers...) every word is spoken by Spitfire in the form of voice logs. There's a nice sense of creeping dread as the situation gets worse, and as you realise what's happening there's a little mystery in there as well. I'm unsure why Spitfire's camera doesn't work in space,¹ but maybe that's a clue to what's going on as well. The end A/N says "To be continued", so who knows? Overall, I enjoyed this despite not being fully clear even by the end exactly what was happening, so another highish three. ★★★
¹ Our-world cameras have worked in space. I don't know what future Equestrian tech cameras use, of course.

The Cuckoo's Lament by Jade Ring
Sunset Shimmer and OC
G4 EqG; Dark/Drama/Sad; 2k words; Jun 2024; Teen (Death)

Sunset Shimmer has a confession to make.

That's a literal confession, by the way, as in being in a booth and talking to a priest. Since Sunset isn't a Catholic, it's not a regular confession, but the priest agrees to talk. I'm not a Catholic either, so I can't comment on how accurate his part is, though he isn't quite playing things by the book himself. It turns out that Sunset's confession is... well, spoilers. It's not a concept that's entirely new to me in ponyfic, but it's rare and it's told really well here. In fact, when you stop and think a little, it's terrifying. At least at the time of writing, there's one truly horrible likely implication that nobody in the Fimfiction comments has picked up on. A line in the end A/N initially irritated me slightly as I'm not generally fond of authors doing that, but on reflection I can see why Jade Ring might not have wanted to make it clear until afterwards. The fic works as-is, and works very well. Had I been judging these fics, this one (which actually took the bronze medal) would probably have been the winner. High four and certainly recommended, but it is disturbing in more than one way. ★★★★

One Planet, Slightly Used by FanOfMostEverything
Mane Five, Misty and Flim-and-Flam
G4/G5; Drama/Sci-Fi/Slice of Life; 3k words; May 2024; Teen

Nothing inspires seller's remorse quite like the end of the world

It mildly amuses me that Fimfiction can't make its mind up with tags: Main 6 but Mane 5. I use "Mane" for both, of course. Anyway, the runner-up story comes in two parts. The first sees a clearly damaged Flim and Flam discussing their situation – they're stuck on a post-apocalyptic tropical island, since FoME also entered this for a second contest simultaneously. I really do love how their dialogue is written; it's almost but not quite their show personalities, which is perfect here. Maybe a slightly meta aspect to a little confusion they have, but it works so I'm all for it. The second chapter centres on the G5 gang, discussing whether they should maybe go and have a look at... you've guessed it, a tropical island. I loved "Hi, Pipp! Hi, Pipp's parasocial relationships!" and there's more fun to be had where that came from. A very nice piece, as you'd expect from a very reliable author. ★★★★

The First in a Decade by taterforlife
Twilight and Discord
G4; Slice of Life; 2k words; May 2024; Everyone

In which Discord and Twilight have a dialogue about his first big screw-up after ten years of good behavior.

That shortdesc sounds very conventional, doesn't it? The story isn't. For a start, Fluttershy has married – but her husband isn't Discord, and the draconequus has not been coping very well. His dialogue with Twilight is very much a multi-level one. There's the usual snappy back-and-forth, very slightly reminiscent of Monkey Island insult duels on occasion, but there are also some much deeper emotional currents. The fact that neither Twilight nor Discord are naturally good at such stuff is a plus in terms of the story. The author says at the end they "could have worked much harder on this if [they] had wanted to", and I suspect if they had done, this could have been truly amazing. It's still pretty darn good, though, and I very much appreciate taterforlife not just doing a standard FlutterCord approach. The good Discord voice (calling Twi "Celestia Jr" is absolutely him) gets this well above middling and to a top-end three. ★★★

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So, all five stories were good, solid reads. Excellent! Also on the matter of contest fics, the Thousand Words Contest III prizewinners will start being reviewed in PR 506. As suggested last week, though, I'm going to break that series up a little this year – so it'll take longer before I reach the end, but I'll also have a bit more variety along the way. Next week, I'm going to change gear once again and have a Spotlight review of a very old story and one that's been on my RiL list for literally years. Namely, this one:

Twidark by Isseus