Read it Later story count: 92 (+3)
A typo I made (not here) the other day sent me careering off down a track of silliness. "Spice at Your Service" was the error. I don't actually care much if at all about Dune, but given that spice is (so I'm told) a bit thing in that world, maybe there's something to be done crossover-wise with that setup. Anyway, with UK PonyCon rapidly approaching, I somehow still found the time to review my usual four fics for Ponyfic Roundup. This week, I have:
The Circle and the Cross by Chris
Dusk's Travels by Bluecatcinema
What If Twilight Sparkle Died? by Eclipsesun
Confusing in Nature by UltimatePinkiePie
★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
The Circle and the Cross by Chris
Rarity
G4; Drama/Mystery; 6k words; Dec 2020; Everyone
After returning from the first solo mission the Friendship Map has ever given out, Rarity calls her friends together to tell them what she encountered—and what she now knows she must do.
Of the 21 fics Chris has on Fimfiction, this is the last to be published. In some ways it's reminiscent of a very popular ponyfic concept, but it takes a different path that I appreciated. (Yes, I know I'm being vague there. Spoilers.) The story is narrated by Rarity, whose narrative voice I really liked. She's the more verbose kind of fic Rarity here, not the quieter type who just pops in the odd beautifully crafted aside, but I don't think she's unreasonably wordy. She tells of her meeting in an oddly remote area with an archaeologist (not Daring Do) and how what they found there changed everything. The story makes good use of some interesting mythology, and the characterisation is predictably satisfying. The ending quite deliberately raises more questions than answers (see the Fimfiction comments when you're done) but if you like atmospheric suspense with a dash of quiet horror, this is for you. I had a good time with this one. ★★★★
Dusk's Travels by Bluecatcinema
OC
G4; Adventure; 18k words; Oct 2013; Everyone
Dusk Glow goes on a grand tour of Equestria.
Dusk is the alicorn son of Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry, who is also married to a model. A tough life, really. This story is an episodic tale in which he has a series of adventures and learns about life and himself as he does so. Dusk bumps into a frankly suspicious number of major FiM characters in various corners of the land, but though he faces danger he always prevails with their help – and the help of his rather overdone powers. We also get timberwolves, changelings and thestrals. Oh my. Characterisation is up and down (Discord hasn't heard of Twenty Questions?) but it is fun to explore places like Tall Tale that we never saw in the show. This isn't a dreadful fic, but it's pedestrian and repetitive and we never really feel much tension. A modest two-star rating, which could be improved with some attention to detail and plot tightening, plus a less OP Dusk. ★★
What If Twilight Sparkle Died? by Eclipsesun
Mane Six and Spike
G4 AU; Sad/Tragedy; 1k words; Oct 2012; Everyone
The story of what sad pony lives there would be if Applejack accidentally let go..
This is a... counterfictional, I suppose. It considers a world where AJ's promise in the S1 premiere was not kept. That setup could make for an interesting fic, but sadly this is really not that fic. It hurtles through its plot at a rate of knots and it's hard to keep up at times. It uses "Flutters" in straightforward narrative text. More seriously, the other ponies, who are clearly devastated ("Applejack took off her hat. Princess Celestia folded her wings") make comments at Twilight's graveside that simply don't fit with the setting. After all, this is a time when, Celestia and Spike apart, they barely knew Twilight and certainly hadn't become her closest friends. Add in some random shipping because why not, and this isn't really a story I can recommend. Though I can absolutely see Pinkie Pie offering a cupcake to a spirit. ★
Confusing in Nature by UltimatePinkiePie
Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash and Apple Bloom
G4; Romance/Random; 1k words; Nov 2014; Teen
Scootaloo has more than one decision to make, and one might just cost her a friend...
Set a little in the show's future (as of 2014), this is the only story on this author's account. Considering they were only active for a couple of months, that's maybe not surprising. Scootaloo is now a little older and has developed a crush on Apple Bloom. She talks to Rainbow, who is frankly a bit of a jerk about it (and an adult referring to Featherweight as a "hot piece of flank", even in confidence to Scoots and meaning it from Scoots' POV not hers, is downright creepy) though to be fair to her she does also provide some actual advice. Whether you want relationship advice from Rainbow Dash is a good question, but she does. Unfortunately the fic then doesn't go anywhere much. It stops abruptly and feels like the prologue to a longer piece. Doesn't keep its tenses consistent, either. Scrapes a two. ★★
Next time, I hope that stories reviewed will include Estee's meta (or is it...?) comedy Autoapproval Was A Mistake.
Holy carp, how did I miss that story by Chris? Well, I'm gonna fix that oversight as soon as possible!
ReplyDeleteAs for the others... Thanks for taking a bullet for us, Logan!
Them's the breaks in this line of work! But the Chris story made up for it. :)
DeleteOof, not the best week of fics. Everything but Chris' is a hard pass. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, they come and go.
ReplyDeleteAh, I remember Autoapproval was a Mistake. Published barely a year ago. Estee's fics remain an acquired taste, and frankly I'm not always in the right mindset to read them, they are ideally cynical through and through. Plus these days especially, they're frequently overlong (course, I'm not relying on them to support myself). But within that parameters, this is a winner, and Spike being frustrated at the unreliability of Ponyville's citizens works fine with this intelligent depiction of him. More than fine! I predict much satisfaction on your end next week.
I don't read much Estee, partly because I don't have a great deal of interest in the enormous Triptych collection. So I thought this standalone might be a reasonable option. Was it? Well, we'll see. ;)
DeleteI know I've read and liked a couple of Estee's fics, but I also tried really hard to read the Triptych thing and just couldn't. There are certain situations, characters, styles, dialogue, plots, foreshadowing, etc. that will grab me enough to maintain my interest, and it had none of that after 10K words of investment.
DeleteJudging by the number of people who like it, it's a matter of my tastes being misaligned about 180 degrees from the story rather than any fault of the writing.
It's really a shame, because I love enormous fics! I just finished Cynewulf's The Night is Passing, and despite a bit of preferential misalignment there, too, I always wanted to know what was going to happen next as I read through over a half million words.
< / i > Damnit.
DeleteAh, looking for Dune crossover material? You might not get all the jokes if you haven't seen/read it, but this blog entry of FoME's is full of silliness:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.fimfiction.net/blog/899917/fome-thinks-too-much-the-bene-sediment
I'm not really au fait with Dune stuff at all, beyond the very basics, but I don't mind reading FOME stuff as a rule anyway. Thanks. :)
DeleteThanks for the review! Very mysterious and spoiler-free, as I suppose it appropriate for a mystery. I'm glad you liked it!
ReplyDeleteAs an irrelevant side-note, this story came out of the writeoff, which usually has a simple, open-ended phrase as a prompt (e.g. "The Last Line," or "There is Magic in Everything"). This particular writeoff, the prompt was... Ot. Just those two letters. It was apparently the culmination of a long-running in-joke.
Anyway, I took the prompt rather literally, but it was fun to see everyone's attempts to come up with a cohesive tie-in to Ot. Off the top of my head, I remember "Overtime," "Obsolete Thaumaturgy," and "Ot all started with a typo."
-Chris
It was a tough review to write for exactly those reasons. I didn't want to mention what the mythology you used was, as it came as a fascinating surprise to me. And yeah, I'd heard about the "Ot" thing somewhere before. Just goes to show, you can't keep a good ficcer down!
Delete