More stories today. Honestly, I don't really know what to say here any more. Oh, except that if you get a Terry's Chocolate Orange, you don't eat it like this. You hit it on something – usually a table/desk, but some people insist on using their forehead, and then you unwrap it. Also, if you haven't ever eaten a Terry's Chocolate Orange, you're missing out. Well, unless you don't like orange chocolate. Then you're not. Onward!
C'mon Rarity! by Vera_the_Pegasister
The Last Year of Starswirl the Bearded by WovenTales
The Contingency Letter by TCC56
Decadence by Coconut
★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
C'mon Rarity! by Vera_the_Pegasister
Applejack and Rarity
G4; Romance/Comedy/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2018; Everyone
Rarity and Applejack are on their first casual date, but Rarity has hesitations about jumping into the pond with Applejack. Simply short and sweet fluff.
That shortdesc tells you most of what you need to know. This is low-key¹ domestic fluffshipping and, to be honest, it's far from the worst of its kind. Applejack and Rarity have different ideas about spa dates and mud, but they clearly care a lot about each other. Nothing much happens, but that's not the point. This is Vera's only published fic, and though it is clearly a new author's story, it wouldn't need too much polishing to become something a step up from that. Given the A/N asking for help with improvement, I think it's a shame that this ponyfic career came to an end so quickly. ★★
¹ In the dictionary sense. I'm too old to use it to mean "kinda" :P
The Last Year of Starswirl the Bearded by WovenTales
Clover and Starswirl
G4; Drama/Tragedy; 4k words; Jun 2017; Teen
Starswirl's destiny leads to what he would rather avoid, and rather than accept it, the wizard sets out to change his very soul.
The winner of this small contest organised by SPark. Here are the events that led up to "Starswirl's unfinished spell", as featured in "Magical Mystery Cure". We experience these from Clover's point of view, which is interesting as the tension in personalities with Starswirl really comes through well. The fic does start off with a closed time loop, which may irritate readers who've seen too many of those, but this one seems efficiently done and doesn't really get in the way. It's a little unfortunate that the second half of S7 rendered some of the story canon-incompliant just a few months after its publication, but look past that and there's a pretty solid background to Starswirl's history and the setup for Twilight's eventual ascension. A top-end three. ★★★
The Contingency Letter by TCC56
Twilight and Celestia
G4; Drama; 2k words; Apr 2021; Teen (Death)
After taking the throne, Twilight sorts through Celestia's old papers. In it, she finds a letter addressed to her. Addressed - and never sent.
Inspired by the real-life Contingency Speech, the thankfully unneeded broadcast President Nixon would have delivered had the Apollo 11 astronauts not come home, the letter in question is from Princess Celestia and discovered by a post-S9 Twilight. The letter would only have been sent had Celestia died during the fight against Nightmare Moon. It's a great concept, not entirely original of course given its real-life inspiration but none the less effective for all that. In a couple of thousand words (less, given the necessary framing) Celestia has to tell Twilight what must have happened, what she must do now, what she regrets about Luna's banishment and more besides. That it doesn't feel rushed, and that it feels like a letter and not an infodump, is testament to the author's writing ability. I admit to being slightly biased against fics where Tia does the "Luna's turning into Nightmare Moon was all/largely my fault" thing, as not only is it used a lot in the fandom but I don't think that's really the case anyway. This fic's Princess does go down that route to an extent – although it doesn't overwhelm the story. For me this is another top-end three, but if that last aspect isn't a problem for you, nudge it over the line to a four. Either way, it's very good. ★★★
Decadence by Coconut
Twilight
G4 AU; Dark; 1k words; Feb 2022; Everyone
Twilight Sparkle was so, so alone.
Here we get a glimpse into a world where not only did Twilight fail to defeat Sombra, but her employment of dark magic ended up corrupting her. It's a potentially intriguing story, but sadly it only is a glimpse. The fic rushes through everything, so very little is explained or illustrated. Much of the story is taken up simply with details of Twilight's brutal rule. As Nightheart says in the Fimf comments, this reads like the last chapter of a considerably longer story. A scattering of minor but irritating technical errors, too. There are still some bright flashes here – the last line is very effective in context – but not enough. A marginal two that is frustrating as it could have been so much more. ★★
Next week, I hope that stories reviewed will include AugieDog's poison joke-related TwiShy story Such Sweet Poison.
Who knew chocolate oranges were such a foreign concept? :O
ReplyDeleteAnyway, blaze it etc.
They were made in England for many years (in York) but these days I think they're produced in France. Not sure, though.
DeleteAnyway, minus 10 billion points for that. :P
I've read the one by WovenTales. I liked it, but I felt like the ending had only a tenuous connection to the rest of the story. As I look through, I've read three things by this author, and I liked them all, though they all had similar issues with sticking to a character perspective in one way or another. This was years ago, and I ended up reviewing all three for him. I told him they were good already, but that one writing problem was holding them back from being great. It was disappointing that he never cared to revise any of them or at least apply that toward making his next story avoid the same problems.
ReplyDelete