Read it Later story count: 92 (-1)
Words read this week: 6,000
She Can't Be Here by Flashgen
Safety First! by gloamish
Foreign Object by RB_
Ballistics are Friendship by daOtterGuy
Paragraphobia by Silver Needle
paradise, fleeting [sic] by alafoel
★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
She Can't Be Here by Flashgen
OC
G4; Horror; 1k words; Jul 2024; Teen (Suicide/Self Harm)
I awoke to her silhouette on the wall. I shut my eyes immediately.
There was only one Bronze Medal fic in the Horror category this year, and this was it. Told in first person by an OC as his partner comes to bed. Although, the protagonist's reactions don't suggest a happy relationship. We gradually find out some of why. I'm not sure this is horror, exactly, possibly more disturbing tragedy – though that didn't have a category – but it's certainly upsetting, and to create such vivid OCs in a thousand-worder is impressive. I feel it might have been more effective without the required warning tag, a case when site rules perhaps slightly dilute the impact. Still a strong story, though. Top-end three. ★★★
Safety First! by gloamish
Starlight and Trixie
G4; Comedy/Horror; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Starlight studies a cursed artifact — with all the required safety measures, of course. What is she, stupid?
The first of the Comedy stories at this level, unless you count FoME's last time which actually medalled for Slice of Life. This one also has the Horror tag, but scored for Comedy. Clear? Anyway, I laughed several times at this one, which is good going. There's a great gag about a magazine title, for example. Starlight and Trixie go so well together, as usual, and both convince in character. Maybe slightly less effective for us non-American readers owing to one running joke that relies on a term not used – or even that widely understood – over here. Everything else, including the start and end, is so much fun, though. An easy four from me. Loved it. ★★★★
Foreign Object by RB_
Ocellus, Twilight and Starlight
G4; Comedy/Horror; 1k words; Jun 2024; Mature (Gore)
Ocellus teaches anatomy. A feel-good comedy about education where absolutely nothing bad happens and no one gets hurt.
A Mature-rated comedy is not a common sight, but here is one of that breed. It probably didn't need to be, but RB_ mentioned in a comment some past issues with Fimfiction staff when rating gory fics T, so... Anyway, Twilight is at the School of Friendship for an evaluation, something that makes headmare Starlight nervous. Ocellus's changeling anatomy class (yeah, you can tell where this is going, can't you?) is somewhat on the... practical side. With herself as visual and tactile aid. This one didn't quite land for me, as I don't really feel Twilight, who has seen a lot, would be quite so squicked – but I'm clearly in the minority. At the top of the twos, but I'm sure many will rate it much higher. ★★
Ballistics are Friendship by daOtterGuy
Chancellor Puddinghead and Smart Cookie
G4; Comedy/Random; 1k words; Jun 2024; Everyone
What if Earth Ponies had Ballistic Missiles during the Unification Era?
Comedy again, but this time going all-out for utter ridiculousness. See that shortdesc? Yeah. Tells you what you need to know, dunnit? daOtterGuy does what is needed with a story like this: going at the completely absurd premise with utter conviction. The way the missiles arrive is maybe a slight weak spot, but Puddinghead and Cookie have some really fun dialogue. Mind you, the fact that there's no [Alternate Universe] tag is slightly strange, and also... a little disturbing. ★★★
Paragraphobia by Silver Needle
Discord and Fluttershy
G4; Comedy/Random; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Discord is afraid of units of discourse
An Experimental winner now. It's not a huge surprise to see Discord featuring in this category, so I was hoping for something a bit new and different. This was certainly that: Discord actually has the phobia in the title. It's reasonable enough that he could actually tell he's in a story where Fluttershy couldn't. It's a perfectly good fic, and I appreciate it having a story rather than just pushing the experimental aspect so hard it reads more like a clever writing trick. I just feel like I expected what was going to happen most of the way through , and that left me feeling slightly underwhelmed. I think it's another top-end two for me, then. ★★
paradise, fleeting [sic] by alafoel
Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Luna, Trixie and Braeburn
G4; [no genre tag]; 1k words; Jun 2024; Teen
A few ponies yearn for paradise.
I wasn't aware you even could submit a fic without a genre tag these days. Still, this is definitely an Experimental story! Six chapters, each featuring one character (the sixth is Applejack). All are short, but some are shorter than others – one is a single sentence. I found myself able to get a glimpse of what was going on, but really struggling to put it all together, feeling I was missing something. The author offers their own thoughts in a longish Fimfiction comment, but I strongly advise against reading that until you've spent some time considering the story for yourself. My incomplete understanding makes it hard to rate this really highly, but what I did understand, I liked enough to award this a three-star score. Also, Applejack's chapter is glorious. ★★★
Back we go to non-contest stories next time, and this is what I'll be covering then. A Spotlight, egad! With the Bluetooth keyboard, I can write longer posts with slightly more comfort than with the phone alone. This isn't an especially long fic, but it does reach my guideline minimum for a Spotlight of 40,000 words.
Of The Night by TheBrianJ
On that first one, I've certainly wrestled on the author side whether to include a trigger tag that spoils plot elements. There really isn't a good answer. The best possibility maybe would be whether to allow those kinds of tags to be spoilered so that a reader would only look at them if there were things that would trigger them. Or perhaps accomplish the same by listing those tags in the shortdesc rather than the official tags.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you found these on the whole less enjoyable than the pewters. Not completely surprising, since these are the more subjective genres, but what bothered you about the lower-rated ones are things that would likely bother me too.
Wait, who wrote "Ballistics are Friendship"? The title blurb says AltruistArtist, but the review text says daOtterGuy.
It's daOtterGuy. A mistake on my part, now corrected. Thanks!
DeleteSpoilering trigger tags might work, yeah. I might even do it here if there were an easy way to do such tags. (I know Chris managed it for his star ratings, but I don't think I've seen anyone else so so.)
every once in a while, I come across a fic with no genre tag, and I have that exact reaction XD
ReplyDeleteDid you know a couple of your ponyfic roundups (513 and 511) don't have their ponyfic roundup labels? I just checked it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://louderyay.blogspot.com/search/label/ponyfic%20roundup
An unwanted side effect of my having to do everything on the phone right now – it's much more fiddly to do tags. I'll go and fix those, though. Thanks!
Deletea few interesting ones - definitely giving Paradise a look!
ReplyDelete