Ponyfic Roundup 169: Let the Sky Fall

I note that iisaw has finished The Skyla Pseudonym. That means I can read it! And yes, I intend to give it a spotlight here in due course. I'm really looking forward to reading this.

Read it Later story count: 404 (+2)

I'm still awfully busy with stuff not related to this blog, so it's been a struggle to find time to read. I know I don't have to do this at all, but I enjoy it! At least I've managed a slight increase over the story count from last week. Here's this time's selection:

What's In The Box? by naturalbornderpy
Voyage's End by The DM
To Love the Sun by Magello
Numberography by ph00tbag
Daring Do and the Curse of Ahuizotl by horizon

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0

What's In The Box? by naturalbornderpy
Pinkie Pie
Random; 6k words; Nov 2016; Teen

Pinkie Pie sits alone in a room with an unopened box. What's in the box, you ask? Only everything.

Given this fic has chapters named after Fimfiction genres, all exactly 300 words long, I was expecting meta. And it is, but not in quite the way I expected. It starts out as "Here's an Adventure minific, here's an AU minific..." but about a thousand words in, it develops into something much more interesting than a bunch of disconnected chapters. It never stops being odd, perhaps a little too odd at times, but there is an actual story in here, one which works quite cleverly within the confines of its unusual structure. ★★★

Voyage's End by The DM
Twilight, Celestia, Luna, OCs and Other
Alternate Universe; 7k words; Jul–Oct 2014; Everyone

What happens when your entire understanding of the universe is flipped upside down by something as simple as a message in a bottle?

As the cover art makes clear, in this AU Twilight and co have discovered the golden record sent out with the Voyager probes. Twi persuades the (other) princesses to let her join a mission to intercept it, and the ponies try to discover where it came from and whether they can find that planet. This is a hugely popular story, with 18k views and ranked ninth on Fimf at the time of writing, but I found it rather disappointing. My main sticking point is the fact that it barely feels Pony at all, with very little that couldn't be replaced with Generic Alien Civilisation. There's also too much "said a unicorn mare" stuff, which I found distracting, and for an apparently decently science-checked story it's a glaring error to call Alpha Centauri a planet. The short chapters near the end engaged me a bit more, but it still felt lacking in focus. ★★

To Love the Sun by Magello
OC, Celestia and Luna
Romance/Dark/Alternate Universe/Human/Sad/Tragedy; 3k words; Jun 2014; Teen (Gore)

You thought to love even the sun.

In this entry for the Most Dangerous Game contest (in brief: take a horribly overused fandom premise and make it work), Magello goes all-out and uses about six horribly overused fandom premises. And, yes, makes it work. A second-person story, this starts with the narrator telling you you're a fool. At this point, we don't even know who you are; that, and why the [Tragedy] tag in particular is warranted, are revealed only slowly. The story kept me guessing right up to the end, too. My main problem is with Celestia's characterisation: she's so different from what we see in canon that it dragged me out of the story somewhat. Even so, very much above average for second-person fics, and impressive to get a readable story at all with the number of iffy premises employed! ★★★

Numberography by ph00tbag
Other, Celestia and Luna
Adventure/Comedy; 7k words; Jul 2014; Everyone

A bedtime story about a legendary unicorn.

Time for another RCL inductee! Although this is tagged as a comedy, the humour is generally fairly gentle and the world-building is what I found most interesting. It's set during Discord's first reign, as Clover tells a bedtime story to her daughters – an amusingly whiny Celestia and Luna – of how Star Swirl gained knowledge of higher mathematics from a dragon, who rather steals the show later on. In this, Star Swirl is frustrated at his inability to count above four – or eight, if another pony's hooves can be pressed into service – and seeks the secret to counting higher. The language of the traditional pony fable piles on the "'Twas my ken" stuff a bit much for my taste, but YMMV on this. And yes, that big number you encounter at one point was chosen carefully... ★★★★

Daring Do and the Curse of Ahuizotl by horizon
Daring Do and Ahuizotl [you astound me, Holmes]
Horror; 1k words; Aug 2014; Teen

Another subterranean temple. Another priceless magical artifact. Daring has fought Ahuizotl for the fate of the world before … but this time, she's learned who killed her father, and only one of them is going to walk away.

I read this expanded Writeoff minific once and thought, "Well, that was solid, I guess, but the genre tag is pushing it a bit." After all, Daring fighting Ahuizotl to the death is grim but not really horrific. Then I read it again – and something I hadn't caught the first time absolutely hit me. If you pay attention, it'll do the same to you. Also, it has an archaeologist pony called Howard Carthorse. ★★★★

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: I over-analyse stories about ponies and Twilight comes along and tells me off by singing at me. I hope.