Read it Later story count: 95 (+5)
A bit of a boost to the RiL tally this week, partly because of a few contest entries being added and partly because of a couple of stories that were well reviewed elsewhere. As far as my reviewing goes, it's time for another set of four short stories. As a sneak preview, I'll be reading a longer fic over the Hearth's Warming break, but you'll have to wait and see to find out which longer fic. Not Project Horizons, I think I can disclose that much! Here we go:
Tirek Season by TheDriderPony
Adagio Dazzle, Fanfiction Author by Majin Syeekoh
Feared Abandonment by TheEvilCookie
Misty Needs a Hug by EileenSaysHi
★: 1 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Tirek Season by TheDriderPony
Tirek, Other and Mane Six
G4 Crossover; Comedy; 6k words; Mar 2022; Everyone
A wrong turn at Albuquerque throws an unexpected wrench in Tirek's plans for total domination
This was the runner-up in Estee's "Who Crossed Over My Little Pony?" contest.¹ in which authors were asked to mix Pony with a classic cartoon character. In this case, it's Bugs Bunny, who shows up during the events of "Twilight's Kingdom" and causes predictable mayhem. This is a good deal of fun, as long as you're at least vaguely familiar with Looney Tunes humour – and, let's face it, who isn't? Bugs is his usual mixture of madcappery and guile, and Tirek is of course pretty easy to wind up. However, and I think this is what lifts the fic above plain old "hijinks ensue" territory, Tirek is still dangerous. Bugs has to work at beating him, with the help of some suitable cartoon humour (his choice of a magic wand at one point is bizarre and yet entirely logical for his world). There are one or two in-jokes that may pass by some readers – if you haven't seen Space Jam you'll miss one, and there's a passing reference to Toei, for example – and I'm not sure a latish section involving Rainbow Dash's romantic aspirations really works quite as well as the rest. It's also rather a shame that we get so little Discord, as Discord and Bugs could have made a fascinating team-up, and he's canonically important to the S4-finale setting. But the rest is great fun, even allowing itself a playful dig at a certain infamous fandom product at one point. If you don't actually dislike Bugs Bunny, I find it hard to see how you would dislike this story. Recommended. ★★★★
¹ The results post is here, infuriatingly not linked anywhere from the contest group itself
Adagio Dazzle, Fanfiction Author by Majin Syeekoh
Adagio Dazzle
G4 EqG; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jan 2015; Everyone
Adagio struggles to write her first fanfiction.
A fairly straightforward meta piece about fanfic writing, but points for choosing an unusual protagonist to represent the poor beleaguered author. This is the damaged, defeated Adagio of the aftermath of Rainbow Rocks. She's the kind of fanfic author who does it as a way to cope. So that's good. What's less good is that it's not all that interesting. Why is Daring Do the person Adagio has become obsessed with? Where's the twist that would make this fic different from all the other "X writes a fanfic" meta-fics around here? Bookish Delight in the Fimf comments (spoilers!) sums this up very well: it's a thousand words of nicely written not-a-lot. If you've never read a story like this before, this isn't a bad choice. If you have, there's little to detain you further. ★★
Feared Abandonment by TheEvilCookie
Mane Six
G4; Sad/Human; 1k words; Mar 2018; Mature
Twilight fears that her friends abandoned her
I have not the slightest idea why this fic is rated M. In content it's a mild T at most. Anyway, TheEvilCookie has no fewer than 429 published fics – not a typo – so I thought I should read one, and I chose this story at random. It seems to deal with humanised but not EqG characters, but it's hard to tell. In the fic, Twilight's friends ask her not to come with her when they go out, and Twi becomes frightened that they hate her. It's really not convincing at all for her character, and nor is the admittedly rather happier reveal at the end. It's just... there. There doesn't seem much reason to detain yourself with this story. ★
Misty Needs a Hug by EileenSaysHi
Zipp, Misty and Mane Five
G5 AU; Drama/Sad/Slice of Life; 3k words; Oct 2022; Everyone
After Misty flees the sleepover, Zipp notices she's still in the garden outside the Crystal Brighthouse. Zipp ends up learning something unexpected about the strange newcomer -- and how she can help.
This branches off from canon during the events of "The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover", so you'll need to be reasonably familiar with Make Your Mark. It's a nicely designed story with Zipp using her detective instincts to first track down Misty but then also to try to understand her. What starts off as a mystery turns into quite a touching connection between the two ponies. Zipp's tact and thoughtfulness really appealed to me, and I ended up wanting to hug Misty too. They're two of the most popular G5 characters, and this fic won't do that any harm. You do feel it's incomplete in the tale it tells, but that's perhaps inevitable given that canon has not finished the story yet either. I'd read a sequel to this, if it ever happens. A pretty high three and well worth it if you're after G5 stories with a little bit of emotional depth. ★★★
Next week, I hope that stories reviewed will include horizon's prizewinning dark romantic tale Queen of Clubs.
TheEvilCookie, as I discovered recently, is the name-swap of notorious badfic writer Evictus, well known for yeeting large quantities of poorly written, poorly conceived stories onto Fimfiction.
ReplyDeleteHey, two fics I've read and reviewed! Neither here because of that, of course, though I have basically identical sentiments on them (if a little softer on the Misty one, which barely scraped a Pretty Good, meaning a mid-★★★). Not much to add, they both deserve their success – I even share the feeling of Tirek Season succeeding for Tirek still being a threat and Bugs having to work to help the others to defeat him, as well as finding the ignorance of Discord a weird choice. Goes both ways sometimes, but still far more positive for this one, naturally.
ReplyDeleteOuch on the other two, though. Not the Adagio one so much, even if it's not worth checking out. But, that other one… Especially off what Present Perfect reports, that's a yikes. You're always going to get authors who churn out whatever ideas hit their brain without thinking if they're good, much less taking the time to write them well. But to name-swap to try and get another push at doing so… Well, at least their fics, from a brief glance on my part through their backlog, are very obviously bad. So the warning shall stick.
A bit of a boost to the RiL tally this week, partly because of a few contest entries being added and partly because of a couple of stories that were well reviewed elsewhere.
Oh no… Might the RiL count inch over 100 again, after keeping it below since October 2021? I hope not, for your own sake more than anything. Though certainly it'll be a while before I start anticipating it dropping below 80, as it almost did back in July (82 is what it hit, to be accurate). At least you're able to keep it in relative balance. More than can be said for Spike, as Twilight once noted: "Aw, he can't even keep his wittle balance…!"