Ponyfic Roundup 177: Puck will make amends!

Yes, PR is back! Whether or not this is a good thing is for you to decide, but I'm hopeful that there won't be another gap in the series this side of Hearth's Warming. I may even get a review of The Skyla Pseudonym out by year's end, though don't put your last penny (or indeed any penny) on that one.

Read it Later story count: 396 (-3)

Four stories this time. All very short, but that's partly because my time is also very short at the moment. They were chosen by skimming a list of highly-rated fics of less than 2,000 words. They all feature Rainbow Dash in one way or another, but that wasn't a deliberate thing. For newcomers, please remember that a story I consider average gets two stars, not three. This week's fics are:

Buckball Abstract by Pineta
Em Dash by Cloud Hop
Dragon Bucking by deleteme29358
Rainbow Unicorns by Hopeful_Ink_Hoof

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0

Buckball Abstract by Pineta
Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Starlight Glimmer
Comedy/Slice of Life; 1k words; Sep 2016; Everyone

Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer are big fans of buckball.

Something of a prequel to "Buckball Season" (an episode I really like), this little scene shows RD and AJ trying recruit Twi or Glimmy as the necessary unicorn. (You can argue about alicorn eligibility. Certain characters do!) The former two come across the latter pair in deep discussion, using a buckball version of the baseball sabermetrics concept. This is a slight problem for we non-American, non-baseball fans, as it does make the story a bit dry at times – in character, but still dry. I suspect those who get more of the sabermetrics references might rate this higher. ★★

Em Dash by Cloud Hop
Rainbow Dash and Twilight
Comedy/Slice of Life; 2k words; Oct 2014; Everyone

Rainbow Dash makes the mistake of showing Twilight her Daring Do fanfic, and gets lectured about the proper use of dashes. This is followed by the worst pun in the universe.

This is a fairly standard, yet still pretty funny, "Rainbow writes terrible self-insert fic" story. It rambles and digresses and makes stupid puns, and it's all the better for it. The pun at the end is not remotely as bad as I'd been hoping, but that slight disappointment doesn't stop this being nice, silly fun. Read it on a colour screen. ★★★

Dragon Bucking by deleteme29358
Spike, Rainbow Dash and Twilight
Slice of Life; 2k words; Jun 2012; Everyone

Spike goes on the ride of his life when he complains to the wrong pegasus.

That pegasus being a very 2012-vintage Rainbow. She's impulsive, loud and (frankly) stupid at times, though my biggest problem comes late on, when she does something to Spike – albeit with good intent – that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I wonder whether I'd have appreciated this more before the (to me) more satisfying Rainbow/Spike team-up in the S7 finale. ★★

Rainbow Unicorns by Hopeful_Ink_Hoof
Rainbow Dash, Celestia and Spike
Alternate Universe/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jun 2014; Everyone

What if Rainbow Dash was a unicorn instead of a pegasus

The most interesting aspect of this fic is that Rainbow is not only a unicorn, but Princess Celestia's student. There are any number of questions to explore there, but we don't find out much. There are a couple of amusing scenes, such as one involving Prince Blueblood, but there just isn't the space to do much with the intriguing concept. ★★

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: if you're really lucky, you might even get five reviews!