Read it Later story count: 93 (-1)
Words read this week: 5,000
Senescence by Aquaman
House of Grass by Cold in Gardez
Flutter's Eye by Strawberry Sunrise
Safe Sex, Trixie-Style by Dubs Rewatcher
Narrative Cage by gloamish
★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Senescence by Aquaman
Twilight and Discord
G4; Drama/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Yesterday, Twilight and Discord had two things in common. Now, they just have one. Twilight wants to talk about it -- and to her surprise, Discord is willing to listen.
Stories where immortal Twilight comes to terms with the death of her friends are ten a penny. Stories where immortal Discord comes to terms with the death of Fluttershy are at least a couple a half-crown. Fortunately, this Drama medallist does something new. This is a surprisingly quiet story with a quite different Discord from the one you might expect. Considerably more reflective in his tone, though still perfectly believable and satisfying. After all, Fluttershy changed him and he'll never be the same again. Perhaps Twilight won't be either. My only irritation is a minor and personal one: I don't much like the common euphemism "passed" for "died". This fic packs a remarkably strong emotional punch for such a short story, and it's one of those I could immediately accept as likely to happen. After you've read it, I suugest reading this great comment by horizon. ★★★★
House of Grass by Cold in Gardez
Fluttershy
G4; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Teen
Some summer nights are just too hot for sleep, especially if you're a pegasus.
"Dedicated to everyone who who's had one of those nights, and hasn't been able to get to sleep," says the author in the longdesc. Here it's Fluttershy who is lying awake and thinking, and eventually deciding to move outside. The joy of this piece was in CiG's gloriously rich prose. The way 'Shy's thoughts shift towards... well, spoilers... is so smoothly done it flows like wine. You might not agree with all her thoughts, but I suspect you'll absolutely believe she thought them. I did. A lovely character moment, utterly Slice of Life in the very best of ways. Pretty high in the four-star band for me. ★★★★
Flutter's Eye by Strawberry Sunrise
Fluttershy
G4; Dark/Horror/Second Person; 1k words; Jun 2024; Teen (Gore, Violence, Death)
Fluttershy’s left eye is much like any other eye.
This one medalled for Horror, but it could probably have qualified in Experimental as well. It's written in both second person and first person plural, which is a combo I've never seenn before.¹ As mushroompone says in their comment, the end result is almost impossible to describe – not easy for the likes of me! But it's certainly visceral and has that horror-story knack of being both off-putting and compelling at the same time. Well written and pulls off the dual narrative voices startlingly well. A fairly uncertain three-star rating, since I found this intriguing yet couldn't quite get to the bottom of it. Definitely worth giving it a go, though! ★★★
¹ I particularly like first person plural, and indeed I wrote some myself last year.
Safe Sex, Trixie-Style by Dubs Rewatcher
Trixie and Fluttershy
G4 EqG; Comedy; 1k words; Jun 2024; Teen (Sex)
Trixie and Fluttershy are forced to put together a school assembly on safe sex. The finished product is anything but safe.
"Dedicated to Dr Ruth Westheimer", who turns out to have been one of those people everyone knows about in the US but nobody's heard of over here. That doesn't really matter to the story, fortunately. Trixie and Fluttershy are somewhat despairing at their school reproductive health textbooks being about 250 years out of date. Trixie isn't inclined to work much; Flutters wants to do a good job, even though standing in front of the school and lecturing about sex scares her. The principals are very nicely in character, though I would have liked to have laughed a little more given it's tagged as pure [Comedy]. I suspect that the satire here doesn't work quite as well if, like me, you don't have personal experience of the US educational system. A fairly common issue with EqG fics, that. Three stars even so, partly for a spot-on line about a goblin. Really. ★★★
Narrative Cage by gloamish
Twilight and Discord
G4; [no genre tag]; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
The Reformed Villain takes the Hero on a brief tour of the narrative's bounds.
This medallist actually did score in Experimental. It also turns out to make this week's slate a full house of fics where Fluttershy is mentioned, albeit not centrally and not until late on this time. I swear I didn't plan this! Narrative Cage very much features non-linear chronology, which is reasonable as Discord is himself not bound by such conventional things as the march of time as he converses with Twilight. What's nice is that the story brings Discord back from the jovial trickster of late-series FiM to the much darker character he was always hinted to be, albeit not in the same way. As so often with Experimental fics, I don't think I grasped all of this. What I did glimpse was a very clever piece of metafiction exploring the nature of story. Three stars from me, but I think that's mostly down to my just not fully clicking with most experimental fics. ★★★
Back
we go a regular edition of PR next time out, and this is what I'll be reading for that. Five stories, with one mid-length fic and four short and (I hope) sweet tales. Here's the list:
Of Love, Snow and Shadows by Feather Book
Ragamuffin Fights a Giant Rat by EileenSaysHi
Forgotten by milesprower06
TRIBUTE [sic] by Lamms
The Offspring by Flutterpriest
I did like Dubs' fic, but like you, it wasn't the uproariously funny thing I'd expect of a comedy medalist, though I assume it must have been for the judges, so that's fair. It just didn't jive as well with my sense of humor, and that's for someone who is on this side of the pond (though the conceit here is definitely exaggerated).
ReplyDeleteI get the feeling Dubs' style meshes pretty closely with these particular judges' preferences, though that's just an impression and a very general one. Possibly slightly less well with me.
DeleteYeah, Senescence was a good one!
ReplyDelete