Ponyfic Roundup 199: In the Valleys of the Land of Song

Title explanation: this song

The weather seems at long last to be taking a turn for the better. After what seems like an eternity of cold, grey murk, the sun has been seen this week – and by this time of year, with sunset not until after 8pm, when it does come out it can feel very warm even if the air temperature is still in the teens. However, this is not Weather Roundup, so let's move on.

Read it Later story count: 336 (-2)

Thanks in part to finally getting a new mobile with a screen big enough to read on without squinting, I've managed another five-fic week! If you're old enough, you may dimly recall a period when I did this all the time. Quite a mix of themes and characters this time, though one fic is there specifically because of one I reviewed last week. The five are:

Life Choices by UnlicensedBrony
Anytime by Super Trampoline
Words Unspoken by wille179
I Don't Hate Cutie Marks by Forces of Darkness
She Said No by Kodeake

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

Life Choices by UnlicensedBrony
Twilight and Celestia
Dark/Random/Slice of Life; 3k words; Feb 2015; Teen

Some types of magic carry with them a heavy price. Celestia is faced with the grim task of teaching this to her growing student.

Set during Twilight's later studies, this is a quiet, solemn fic that considers a moral aspect of having great magical power and does so in a thoughtful way. Despite demonstrating a magical ability that is certainly not canon, Celestia is notably well characterised, and her exchanges with Twilight are well judged. The fact that death is a theme made this rather hard for me to read, as UnlicensedBrony, whom I knew well enough to chat to online and at a few meets and cons, died in early 2017. At least his writing lives on. Spare some time for the Fimfiction comments, as the signal:noise ratio is high. ★★★★

Anytime by Super Trampoline
OC
Slice of Life/Tragedy; 2k words; Apr 2017; Everyone

The war's over and your fiancé is back. Your once dead town is showing signs of life again. But you feel more muted than ever. Only one thing is there for you, anytime at all.

The sequel to Feeling That Way (PR 198), and the two stories make a pair; thanks to Pascoite for pointing that out. I was impressed by the first, but this one may suffer slightly from diminishing returns – in terms of the depression it's more of the same, and however realistic that may be it doesn't always make for the best story. Luckily the focus on what has been done to the ponies' relationship gives it a slightly different flavour. It didn't hit me quite as hard as Feeling That Way, probably because I had an idea what was coming, but still a high three and I definitely echo the advice to read the two fics as a pair. ★★★

Words Unspoken by wille179
Mane Six, Other and Spike [and many, many more]
Dark/Random/Sad/Tragedy/Human/Alternate Universe; 8k words; Sep 2014; Teen (Gore)

These are the last words that were never said. Birdshot.

By "birdshot", the author means a collection of tiny stories, some under 100 words. This is a collection of death scenes, but the tone varies wildly – and deliberately so: some are dead serious, if you'll pardon the expression, while others are played for laughs. A few of the scenes connect with others, but there's no running thread. If you can look past the frequent proofreading fails, this is a good one to dip in and out of, and it's satisfying when you reach one of the collection's gems – the very last chapter of all is one of these. ★★★

I Don't Hate Cutie Marks by Forces of Darkness
Twilight and Starlight
Random/Slice of Life; 1k words; Apr 2016; Everyone

Apple Bloom accidentally mentions cutie marks around Starlight Glimmer. But Starlight doesn't hate cutie marks...

The debut story of an author who arrived in early 2016, wrote a few fics and then disappeared without anyone really noticing. Which may be a shame, as there are some potentially interesting things in this story, even if the execution is lacking. Starlight has some nice moments, the best being mid-rant, and there's a fun bit of headcanon right at the end, though maybe not a particularly workable one. On the downside, Twilight seems terribly dense in places, Starlight's "real reason" for setting up Our Town doesn't convince and the final line is much too wordy and so lessens the impact of that headcanon reveal. ★★

She Said No by Kodeake
Twilight and Celestia
Slice of Life/Alternate Universe; 4k words; Aug 2014; Everyone

Another disaster has struck Equestria, and Princess Celestia sends for the Elements of Harmony to band together once more. She gets a response she never expected from her former student: No.

S4-vintage, not-yet-used-to-princesshood Twilight feels that she's being used as a pawn by Celestia, pointing out all the suspiciously convenient things that have happened to her over the years. An interesting idea, but I found the execution pretty off-putting. Where it all falls down for me is in the characterisation. For example: "I will tell your friends about this!" Celestia threatened loudly. Does that sound like Celestia to you? Doesn't to me, and the [AU] tag doesn't change that. The author is open about their "growing dislike of Celestia" in an A/N, but in truth it's all too obvious. The epilogue, which is almost as long as the main chapter, is better and includes some perhaps over-the-top but still interesting interplay between Tia and Twilight. If only the first had been written like that, too. In the Fimf comments, the author says to people disliking said epilogue, "I don't care. I never cared. I spent less than three hours on this entire fic." Well then. You can probably add at least one star if you like the author's take on  Chessmaster Celestia. I really don't, and so I didn't enjoy this fic very much. ★

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Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: the two hundredth edition! Yes, it will have a theme. No, I'm not telling you what it is. Wait and see!