Ponyfic Roundup 513: Spooky Special

Read it Later story count: 93 (nc)

Words read this week: 33,007

It's Halloween today, which is a much bigger deal in the UK now than it was when I was a kid but seems to be here to stay, so a themed edition seemed like a nice idea. Published at (almost) midnight GMT, you'll note! All the five fics on the slate today have darkness or horror or both at their cores, though they achieve that in quite different ways. Here's the list:

Tick by billymorph
Zombie of One by Impossible Numbers
Meat and Bone, Sinew and Bile by RB_
A Crazed Gleam by FanOfMostEverything
Into Darkness by Donnys Boy

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

Tick by billymorph
Twilight
G4; Dark; 1k words; Oct 2015; Teen (Gore)

Hello, Twilight Sparkle. This is the six million, four hundred and twenty-three thousand and third time you’ve failed to save the world.

A small story, albeit expanded a bit from a Write Off entry, and very much in the time loop genre. It's solidly done and the character who talks to her inside the loop, although one I was expecting, is also nicely written with good dialogue. This kind of fic has been done many times before, though. It does enough to be worth the read, and it's crafted nicely enough for a three, but nothing in it utterly startled me. ★★★

Zombie of One by Impossible Numbers
Berry Punch and Ruby Pinch
G4; Horror/Sad/Slice of Life; 18k words; Nov 2021; Teen

Ruby is having a terrible nightmare. She can’t run from it, she can’t hide from it, but she can never, ever tell anyone about it. And it only gets worse when she falls asleep.

Perhaps the most frightening kind of horror story is one that feels real in an almost ordinary way. This is one of those, and your heart may very well break. As you'd expect from this author, there's excellent character work with both foals and adults (Derpy stands out, largely for one important late scene). Also a small but noticeable sprinkling of things familiar to me but maybe less so to most American readers.¹ As to the actual nightmares... you may well get an inkling quite early on, but the big reveal (more effective for not being flashy) still knocked the stuffing out of me. Life is messy and ends aren't always tied up neatly, even in Ponyville. This is really not the kind of ghost story where you all laugh about it afterwards, but is certainly haunting. ★★★★

¹ "Cooker", "washing-up liquid", baked beans as breakfast food, etc.

Meat and Bone, Sinew and Bile by RB_
OC and Luna
G4; Horror; 5k words; Nov 2022; Mature (Gore, Death)

The scalpel slid quietly through the alicorn's dead flesh.

It takes a lot to get me to read an M-rated story with the [Gore] warning tag, but several people told me this one was worth it. In fact it's very different from most such fics, as the narrator is carrying out a medical dissection. Of Princess Luna. The clinical language and descriptions (apparently quite authentic, according to Fimfiction comments from those who know) do mean the story actually feels a bit cold in itself for a while, but keep at it: there's quite the punch coming. By the end you're likely to see a new angle to Luna; at least, I did. I've never seen a "dead alicorn" fic done like this before, but I think it's a success. ★★★★

A Crazed Gleam by FanOfMostEverything
Discord, Starlight, Twilight, Spike and Changelings
G4 AU; Romance/Dark; 4k words; Dec 2015; Teen

A most disagreeable person makes good on his earlier promise.

This is a sequel to FoME's A Mad Glimmer (PR 498), which you should definitely read first. This time, we start off in the "Discord wins" timeline from the S5 finale. Twilight immediately asks for his help against Starlight, and he agrees to assist – in his own way. This involves taking Glimmy to show her the full extent of what happens in a timeline where Twilight and the others aren't in Canterlot at the end of S2. It's... not pretty. Inevitably Starlight's depiction and circumstances have significantly dated,¹ but Discord is a pleasure to read throughout, not least because his morality is so believably other. Oh, and either a phrase in this is a deliberate Hard Reset reference or I'd like it to be. Tricky to rate in 2024, but it's interesting even now, so three stars seems right. Just be prepared for something much more disturbing than usual from this author. ★★★

¹ FoME wrote the fic to come to terms with his feelings about her redemption. A link in the end A/N expands on this.

Into Darkness by Donnys Boy
Pinkie Pie and Rarity
G4; Romance/Dark/Adventure; 5k words; Nov 2013; Teen

Late on Nightmare Night, after the rest of Ponyville has gone to bed, Pinkie Pie descends into the dark and silent basement of Carousel Boutique. Didn't anypony tell her it's not safe to venture out alone at night?

As the story opens, Pinkie and Rarity have serious recent history – Rarity confided her feelings and Pinkie, blindsided, reacted with laughter. Now Rarity has been obviously absent from Pinkie's party, so Pinkie breaks into the Boutique. (The Pinkie logic does fit together in context.) I thought I knew where it was going at one point – but no. This is a satisfyingly scary page-turner that also offers up a reason Rarity was absent from "Luna Eclipsed". Really nicely done. ★★★★

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A fine week! Next time, of course, it's back to the Thousand Words Contest III medal winners, and the second half of the Bronze stories. Six of them once again, covering the Horror, Comedy and Experimental categories. The fics on the list will be: 

She Can't Be Here by Flashgen
Safety First! by gloamish
Foreign Object by RB_
Ballistics are Friendship by AltruistArtist
Paragraphobia by Silver Needle
paradise, fleeting [sic] by alafoel