A somewhat minimal edition of Ponyfic Roundup today, I'm afraid. There should have been three stories in the mix, but one has been unpublished or deleted since I saw it, so we're down to two. They are:
Filial by Dafaddah
A little big secret by Centurion-Pike
★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.
Filial by Dafaddah
Twilight, Trixie, Spike and OCs [seaponies]
Adventure/Comedy/Slice of Life; 7k words; Jul 2012; Everyone
A story about the most important relationship in everypony's life.This is an old, old story, so we're talking unicorn Twilight here, and the seaponies who feature quite strongly are not in any way based on the eventual G4 characters. Twilight and Spike find themselves summoned to the underwater kingdom and there discover another seapony: the Blue Mage – Trixie! This is a fun setup, and there's also some potentially exciting adventure involving a dangerous creature. However, the fic never really catches fire. I think a reason is that the sense of wonderment at being under the waves that both the 2017 movie and "Surf and/or Turf" gave us isn't really strong enough. The relationship between Twi and Spike is resolved in a way that unavoidably feels strange to the modern reader, though it was a common enough approach in 2012. There's even a letter to Celestia at the end! The slice of life stuff here is generally solid and the fic remains readable all through, but the adventure and comedy aspects do lack just a little spark. At the top of the two-star band, therefore. ★★
A little big secret by Centurion-Pike
Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Griffons
Slice of Life/Alternate Universe; 5k words; May 2020; Everyone
Rarity has entered into the world of the Canterlot Aristocracy, a world so different from her humble upbringing in Ponyville. So, imagine her surprise when she finds one of her friends already there.This time it's a really new story under review. 3.7k views in the space of three weeks is impressive these days, so my interest was piqued. Some interesting world-building in here, for example the Griffon servants speak "Germane", which is rendered as (rather shaky) German. The author says it's based on headcanon from S4, hence the [AU] tag now; fair enough. What we learn is very interesting and could be the springboard for a whole series of stories, but I wish more had been done with it here as it's all a bit ho-hum – minor but frequent punctuation errors don't help. A bigger complaint is that there's no real surprise when the twist occurs, as the description and character tags and cover art make it pretty obvious what's about to happen. Also, I just don't believe Rarity of all ponies wouldn't know what a drawing room was. So, potentially interesting but a bit frustrating – hence my rating. ★★
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: stories reviewed should include Baal Bunny's Collaborators.
I take it this means the wasps are defeated, in which case huzzah!
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to comment on that second story without it sounding like sour grapes, never mind needless negativity towards another author, but... when I see such a new story already gathering considerably more views and upvotes than anything I've ever written, and I can't really understand why, then I can't help but be confused. No offence to the author, I wish them well - and it's good to know a new story from a relatively non-established writer *can* still rack up the stats!
It's usually more about intangible things, like how the cover art strikes people, which character tags they prefer, and what's a fad at the time that really brings in the readers. If only quality and readership went hand in hand, but then you wouldn't need folks like Logan, since you could just search on the most-read stories. That said, 3.7k really is an unusually high number these days.
DeleteI'm really not sure why the read count is so high. The public stats show the usual pattern of most views being in the first couple of days, and there are no standout referrals listed. (In fact, this blog has the most: six!) Fimfiction's own stats show there has been a noticeable upturn in the number of new accounts being registered in the last few weeks, but even so 3.7 is a lot.
DeleteI had a look through the story's comments just now, and I don't recognise many of the names. FanOfMostEverything is the most prominent, but then FOME not commenting on something like this would probably be more noteworthy!