It hasn't escaped my notice that I am rapidly approaching Ponyfic Roundup 400. For once I do have an idea about what to do with that, though it may well turn out to be a stupid idea. We shall see, and of course so shall you. Well, unless I get cold hooves and decide it's so stupid that I'm going to do something else instead or run away to sea. Ahem. I've been busy this week, so all four stories this time are shorts:
Ich Steh' Mit Einem Huf Im Grabe by axxuy
Someone Steals Rainbow Dash's NFTs by PresentPerfect
Princess Celestia and the Laser Pointer by SirNinji
Two-Player Game by mushroompone
★: 1 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.
Octavia
Sad; 1k words; May 2021; Teen (Suicide/Self Harm)
A beautifully written and intensely bittersweet one-shot looking into the mind of an utterly dedicated musician. It's not an easy read, and that warning tag isn't there for the hay of it. (The title translates as I Stand with One Hoof in the Grave.) I must admit, though, that I struggled to understand all the intricacies here. It was one of those frustrating experiences when every so often I'd glimpse something awesome (using the word in its literal sense) but never quite saw it coherently for long enough. That's my fault, not the author's. Its last line may well knock the stuffing out of you, regardless. Due to my inability to fully grasp the scale of all this, on my own terms of rating (how much I personally enjoyed a story) I have to score it accordingly. Thus, a top-end three that really deserves to be a four – and for many readers I suspect it will be. ★★★In every performance, Octavia plays one wrong note. Her life depends on it.
Someone Steals Rainbow Dash's NFTs by PresentPerfect
Rainbow Dash, Twilight and Applejack
Comedy/Random; 2k words; Feb 2022; Teen (Profanity)
It's not about the art, okay? It's about owning something unique! Or at least something that was...
And now for a searing investigative documentary set at Funko HQ short about Rainbow being incredibly stupid. Again. This is basically a lightly ponified rant about NFTs, but I won't complain about that. The Equestrian version of a blockchain is utterly ridiculous and I loved it. As a story it's really too weird for its own good, and at times I had no idea exactly what was being ranted against (hence the high two star rating) but as a cry of anguish at the continuing failure of the world to see this lunacy* for what it is, more power to its elbow. ★★
* The lunacy being NFTs, not this fic. Possibly.
Princess Celestia and the Laser Pointer by SirNinji
Celestia and Other
Comedy/Random; 2k words; Jan 2013; Everyone
Princess Celestia chases a laser pointer. That's about it.
I mean, you can't complain about that short description. This is a "written in an hour" story that unfortunately feels it. If you don't mind Celestia being utterly fillyish and stupid from time to time, there's the skeleton of a fun, stupid tea-break comedy here. It reads like something from even earlier in the fandom's history than January 2013, admittedly, but slapstick silliness certainly has a place. This fic needs a lot of tightening up, though: it reads like the kind of thing you might find on Wattpad by an enthusiastic but very inexperienced teenage author. (One section includes the word "table" four times in two shortish sentences, and not for deliberate comic effect.) There's also an ill-judged little bit late on that doesn't fit the tone at all and indeed should have bumped the rating up to [Teen]. You can probably give this one a miss. ★
Two-Player Game by mushroompone
Rainbow Dash, Cheerilee and Starlight Glimmer
Romance/Comedy/Slice of Life; 8k words; May 2022; Everyone
Rainbow Dash is determined to reclaim the top-scoring spot on her favorite arcade cabinet.
A wonderful CheeriDash fic. Yes, you read that right. It's set almost entirely in a terrible restaurant ("smelled a little bit like the inside of an ear" is a fantastic description) distinguished only by a certain arcade cabinet. Dash is really not happy when a mysterious TMM replaces RBD at the head of the high-score table. Meanwhile, Cheerilee is in there trying to get her marking done. The two end up crossing paths for perfectly ordinary reasons. Multiple times. Starlight is on hoof too, which helps when Rainbow can't see the figurative nose in front of her face... this fic has so many great touches. For one thing, it actually addresses (albeit lightly) how Cheerilee feels about the School of Friendship. The little bits of colour about the restaurant are wonderfully disgusting. (Starlight openly wonders why restaurants like this find sleeping/unconscious customers a normal thing.) It's not quite a perfect fic: I find it hard to believe Cheerilee wouldn't at least recognise Starlight, and there's a clunky "ten seconds flat" line. But on the whole, this is highly entertaining stuff. It's even better if you've read issue 29 of the IDW comic, by the way. Not in any way necessary, but that adds another layer to the fun. An easy four and an easy recommendation. ★★★★
Next time, I hope that stories reviewed will include iisaw's Alicorn Adventures short On the Rocks. (There you go. Your nudge paid off!)
I don't know if that's a normal phrase where you're from, but from where I stand, "more power to its elbow" is utter nonsense and the best thing anyone could say about that pile of nonsense XD
ReplyDeleteYup, it's a common British English expression meaning "Good for them".
DeleteIndeed it does seem to be mainly British, though I've seen it in Canadian, Australian etc publications too. Commonwealth English, at least.
DeleteI honestly had no idea the phrase wasn't common in the US -- but then it still to this day throws me slightly when I see "handwriting on the wall" in an American publication. Over here the shorter "writing on the wall" is far more common -- about 5:1 on a quick Google .uk search just now.
I'd never heard it before either! I assume it's so a bloke can lift more pints?
Delete@Logan: Take it from an old guy, it was "the writing on the wall," for most of the phase's existence in the US. It seems to have undergone cliche drift in the past couple of decades.
It's not too dissimilar from what we say, which is just "more power to them/you". Which usually is less "good for you" and more "I disagree with whatever you just said, but I'm not going to argue with you right now." Kinda like how "bless your heart" in the Southern US is an insult. <.<
DeleteOh yeah, over here too "bless" (often the one word) often actually means "this person is being really, really naive/dense/stupid". We do say "more power to you" as well, but I like the elbow version.
Delete@iisaw: I have no idea, to be honest. I've seen it suggested that the expression is originally Irish, since Irish bagpipes are powered by elbows and not by blowing, but I don't have a clue whether that's true.
On that first one, did you just feel a general disconnect for not understanding it too well, or was it more that it used too much technical music lingo for a layperson to understand? Either way, it sounds like something I should give a try. And I was chuffed (a Britishism that on sound alone I would have guessed had the opposite meaning) that decades after taking German I could still understand the title. Though especially the way it uses the apostrophe, it makes me think it's a quote from somewhere, quite possibly the origin of the common phrase? (Sounds a bit like Schiller to me...)
ReplyDeleteMostly the first -- there isn't an unreasonable amount of jargon in there. And "chuffed" is indeed an odd one, now you make me think about it!
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