Ponyfic Roundup 566: Comedy Edition

Read it Later story count: 91 (nc)

Words read this week: 11,646

Before anyone asks – if they're strange enough to be waiting for it – no, I haven't forgotten that I need to watch "Spring Breakdown" before too much longer. I wish I could! For now, though, it's (I hope) time to have a good laugh! Five fics with the [Comedy] genre tag on the block today, and here they are:

Twilight's Almost Last Nightmare Night by Anotherrandom
Chaos Theory by cerealkiller78
Spring Fever by Takarashi282
We Learned Something Obsolete by Lise
Hungry Games by lunabrony

★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Twilight's Almost Last Nightmare Night by Anotherrandom
Twilight, Spike and Celestia
G4; Comedy/Slice of Life; 3k words; Oct 2025; Everyone

Twilight is ready to give up on celebrating Nightmare Night. Spike takes issue with this.

Twelve years old, thinks Twilight, is getting too old to celebrate such a silly evening. Spike, aged six, does not agree. The problem, as ever, is getting through to Twi – who doesn't have the nicest time at school, surrounded as she is by foals much older than her. This is a cute little story, and I do like Spike's initiative and clear care for the pony who adopted him. It does rely rather heavily on the quote it takes as inspiration, especially later on, and there's a persistent problem with tense mismatches – perhaps linked to the author not being a native English speaker. Still, a gently amusing piece. Highish two. ★★

Chaos Theory by cerealkiller78
HuMane Seven, Discord and Other
G4 EqG; Comedy/Random; 1k words; Nov 2021; Everyone

The humane gang sing their petition to Lauren Faust for the holidays. Chaos ensues.

Actually a 2016 fic; the author explains that in those days Fimfiction wouldn't accept a story that so obviously featured Hasbro. (I didn't know that rule existed!) Anyway, this is structured around an increasingly wild version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", although it suddenly shifts to Hannukah in the middle for reasons explained in-story. It's potentially promising, but it suffers from [Random] disease in that by later on it's just a bunch of characters (even a cameo from Sprout!) shouting random things. Which isn't really funny. One of those top-end one-star fics. ★

Spring Fever by Takarashi282
Twilight, Twilight Velvet and Celestia
G4; Comedy/Slice of Life; 3k words; Apr 2019; Everyone

Ever concerned about school over her own health, Twilight Sparkle sneaks out of her house to avoid an absence.

Despite being ill, Twilight has much the same attitude towards a potential "absent" marker as she would years later to a potential "tardy". Velvet goes to the school to warn Celestia that Twi might try to sneak in, leaving Night Light in charge or her and the toddler Spike. A gently amusing domestic comedy, which I think rightly steers clear of making things too madcap. A very nice epilogue scene, too. ★★★

We Learned Something Obsolete by Lise
Changelings, Octvia and Vinyl Scratch
G4; Comedy; 3k words; Feb 2018; Everyone

Prince Blueblood goes on a date with Rarity. Only he isn’t Blueblood, she isn’t Rarity, and then things get slightly complicated.

Written for this contest run by Aragon, this is a funny and slightly brain-melting story of changelings in Ponyville. They seem more mischievous than dangerous, so I'm assuming they're post-reformation. It's hard to say much about this without spoilers, but it's one of those fun, low-stakes bits of absurdity that tends to resonate with me. As such, this gets a very solid three, near the top of that band. ★★★

Hungry Games by lunabrony
Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Babs Seed and OC
G4; Adventure/Comedy/Random; 1k words; Jul 2014; Everyone

Not at all related to the franchise, the Cutie Mark Crusaders go to the movies and watch a movie trailer. That's it. That's all there is.

The CMC (including Babs) are in a Manehattan cinema, which is a bit of a step up in luxury from the Ponyville establishment we saw in "Babs Seed". Naturally they have to sit through a trailer (only one? Lucky Crusaders) and that's quite nicely designed. A very appropriate toyetic tie-in, too. There's not really any more to this than that, and it's a vignette rather than any sort of layered story, but it's a nice tea-break fic. Top-end two. ★★

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I'm going to stick with the genre editions next time. And the genre I've picked is... Horror! Since I'm reading short stories as usual, it'll be an interesting test of how well the fics' authors can squeeze real tension and creepiness into a few thousand words. Here's the slate:

No Pony Else Was In The Room Where It Happened. . . by Matthias Unidostres
Everyone Lives by Lets Do This
More Precious Than Silver or Gold by Georg
Red Apples by billymorph
Rehearsal by Petrichord