Posted early by mistake. Whoops! Oh well, might as well leave it up now.
Read it Later story count: 137 (nc)
My apologies for
the fact that there are only two fics in this week's Ponyfic Roundup.
That's because one author nuked their account very recently. It's
actually quite a long time since that happened to a story I was going to
include in PR, whereas a while back there was a bit of a spate of
nukings. Anyway, I'll try to do four stories next week, though as usual I make no promises. The two I do have for you today are:
A Lesson in Preening by Wabbajack
Second Best by DiscordedSheepcityUSA
★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.
Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Applejack
Romance/Comedy; 9k words; Feb 2013; Mature (Sex)
Twilight interrupts a private moment between Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Somehow, Twilight winds up doing scientific observations on erotic preening practices. But as things start to get more heated, Twilight goes from observer to participant.
The general class of "Twi does science on sex and gets turned on" isn't especially rare, but this isn't at all a bad example of the genre. The short description above tells you most of what you'd want to know, but it's decently written and – importantly – it generally stays sexy rather than squicky. The world-building about pegasus wings and their extreme sensitivity feels solid, and the AJ/Dash stuff is enjoyable and really quite erotic at times. Twilight's unworldly nerdiness is maybe played up a bit too much: at one point she exclaims, "I didn't mean to commit coitus interruptus!" Okay, there is a [Comedy] tag here, but that line made me laugh for the wrong reasons. There's also a bit of LUS. On the whole, though, unless you really dislike the idea of these three mares getting it on, this is one well worth a look. A pretty high three from me. ★★★
Second Best by DiscordedSheepcityUSA
Twilight and Sparkler
Slice of Life; 2k words; Jun 2015; Everyone
Twilight has an interesting conversation with Sparkler when she finds her sitting on a park bench all by herself, looking very depressed. To Twilight's dismay, SHE'S the reason Sparkler is so upset.A simple tale inspired by the scene in "Slice of Life" where Amethyst Star (=Sparkler) lets it be known she used to be Ponyville's best organiser. This fic is set shortly after "Winter Wrap Up", with Sparkler rather sad at her apparent demotion. Twilight's encounter with her is something I was interested to find out about. In the event it holds few surprises, but the fic's ending is rather heartwarming. It's dragged down a bit by excessive wordiness, though, which does dilute the simple sweetness somewhat. ★★
Next time, stories reviewed should include Vivid Syntax's look at the loneliness of the long distance Princess Twilight, For When It Rains.
I never understood why there couldn't be two organizers, but then canon kind of addressed that when Pinkie thought she had to abdicate to Cheese Sandwich.
ReplyDeleteIf you still want to review nuked stories, you can get them from fimfetch.
I've had the policy for a while now only to review stories which are public on Fimfiction at the time of posting (or at least scheduling) the PR in question. I don't delete them retrospectively, though.
DeletePonyfic Roundup on a Tuesday, ahead of time? What sorcery is this?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't read that first one, but the concept of how pegasi biology/customs work has always interested me (there's one old-school fandom fic I adore of Twilight starting to do research on Pegasi, only for her to not know until told be Dash that staring at pegasus wings closely when you're not closely intimate with them is socially unbecoming. It's a much better one shot then it sounds, and has one of those Leonardo da Vinci body anatomy type diagrams as a cover photo). So despite the M rating, I might give it a go.
Because it was short, I read Second Best (and one of the commenter's is right, I can only hear that in Mrs. Doyle's voice now) right now (well, in the last hour, you know). Kind of underwhelming, not just because of the wordiness, but because there really was little substance to it - very little is said and what is said is done so in plain, ordinary speak that doesn't feel like how humans (or ponies) actually communicate. Feel like a quickly hashed-out first draft, and while the end is nice and heartwarming, the execution is too rudimentary for me to say much else about it.
You may also have noticed in those comments that I'd apparently read this before, in 2016! Not for PR, though, unless it's entirely slipped both my mind and my Calibre database. :P
DeleteOh, and I'm assuming that "old-school fic" you refer to is Tchernobog's Mood Wings. I reviewed it in PR 300 and gave it three stars.
DeleteThat's the one! I'll reserve full judgement until I reread it, but it feels like a 4-star for me, using your scale; the "info dumps" by and large really worked for me, and it strikes a good balance between pegasus behaviour feeling true to what we know from the show but also giving us lots of interesting bits that captivate the reader (well, this one, anyway).
Delete