Words read this week: 25,758
A quick word on the BBC/HBO His Dark Materials, which has finally ended after a Covid-delayed three and a half years. S3 was pretty good, a moderate four-star effort on my scale. The characters being too old did get in the way a couple of times, and a certain kiss is much more highly charged on the page. But the very end was nicely done and affecting. I still prefer the novel trilogy (which I want to re-read) but for a very hard story to adapt I think the producers did pretty well. Okay, back to the world of Pony, and here are today's five fics:
Âme Câline by The Cloptimist
Gone Fishin' by Present Perfect
Velvet Missteps by PhycoKrusk
Dark and Deep by arcum42
Supersedure by Zontan
★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Âme Câline by The Cloptimist
Starlight and Trixie
G4; Romance/Slice of Life; 6k words; Feb 2021; Teen
Starlight cuddles Trixie as the sun comes up. That's it. That's the whole story. (Well, mostly.)
StarTrix is a popular ship – they have so much chemistry in their late-series show appearances, after all. Here, the duo don't actually become a couple until the big battle in "The Ending of the End", and Starlight's narration post-dates that. Some nice light-touch world-building early on (I love the point that AJ got her cutie mark due to the sunrise) and there's fun in how Glimmy admits she completely failed to notice Trixie's increasingly obvious signals. There's one place where I am forced to suspend my usual dislike of small-font coloured text as it really works in context. Things do get slightly samey for my liking later on, but there's a short epilogue from Trixie's perspective that lifts it up again. Oh, and that title? It's from a 1967 Michel Polnareff song, and the title was officially (if slightly awkwardly) translated into English as "Soul Coaxing". A top-end three for me, but if you love your fluffy ships and this pairing, maybe bounce it up to a four. ★★★
Gone Fishin' by Present Perfect
Applejack and Scootaloo
G4; Random; 2k words; Aug 2022; Teen
Applejack finds out she and Scootaloo share a deep, hidden pain.Inspired by "The Last Crusade" episode, this depends on how much you can suspend disbelief for the sake of random weirdness. In particular, you need to buy that Apple Bloom doesn't actually know her parents are dead. As for Scootaloo? Her parents are away. But is that away or Away or, well, "Away"? Applejack's conversation with Scootaloo is strangely moving despite its weird touches. I want to agree with Posh's comment (spoilerish) that it's pushing it for S9 AB to be so naive... but considering how the CMC canonically behave later that same season, maybe not. Also, the ending is utterly ridiculous and made me laugh. Hence, this nudges into the threes. ★★★
Velvet Missteps by PhycoKrusk
Twilight, Sombra and OC
G4 AU; Adventure/Comedy; 10k words; Nov 2015–Feb 2016; Everyone
Join Velvet Step, ballerina extraordinaire as she tries to traverse dimensions with the help of a stressed-out princess and her father-in-law-sort-of. Between you and me, her chances don't look too good, but what do I know? I'm only the writer.
This is the sequel to Anypony for Doomsday? which I really liked recently (PR 427) and is written in a very similar style, with narrative asides, multidimensional shenanigans and Sombra's relationship with Twilight (not that kind) continuing. I think you'll be a bit lost here unless you've read the first fic. You get more editing mistakes (part of the story!), more silly montages, a stupid repeated phrase that the writer says they don't really understand, you name it. I'd think this would be of interest to anyone who liked the first fic, but I didn't find it quite as fun: there's a slight sense of diminishing returns creeping in by the end, and I'm not that surprised there were no more sequels. One more serious irritation: Velvet Step is an OC from The Velveteen Mask, a side story to a series I don't know by Crystal Wishes, whose personal OC also appears as as a (more minor) OC in this fic.¹ Fortunately you don't need to know who they are in advance, but once I discovered this I was forever wondering if I'd missed references. That just slightly diminished my enjoyment of this story. I still found it amusing, but for me it didn't match its predecessor. ★★★
¹ I won't be reviewing anything by Crystal Wishes, since they've disabled comments on all their fics and I treat that as DNR
Dark and Deep by arcum42
Dinky and OC
G4; Dark/Horror/Tragedy; 3k words; Jan 2014; Teen (Gore)
The woods are lovely, dark, deep... and dangerous. But Dinky wasn't planning on going anywhere near them. Her mommy told her not to, and she always listened to her mommy...
This is a bit of a fairy tale. I don't mean the cute'n'fluffy kind, I mean the Grim(m) kind. Those genre tags aren't messing about. It starts off reasonably pleasantly and gradually gets ever darker, with a memorably creepy OC. I don't want to spoil what happens but after you've read this, a look at the traditional tale of Mr Fox will show influences (acknowledged in the end A/N). I always wonder very slightly whether "stranger danger" messages from mothers entirely work for Ponyville, but that's minor. This is a superior little chiller. ★★★★
Supersedure by Zontan
Thorax, Ocellus, Chrysalis and Changelings
G4; Slice of Life; 5k words; Sep 2021; Everyone
I am not like other changelings.This fic is done in reflective narration – and its narrator is only named halfway through the tale, so I shall likewise be cautious. They are a changeling in Chrysalis's hide who discovers they can steal love from other lings and not get caught. Well, that's what they think anyway. There's plenty of drama in how they survive, and plenty of hive-related world-building to go with it. Chrysalis is given just the right blend of cruelty and charisma, too. You maybe have to squint a bit regarding the canon-compliance of some of the chronology, but if you can look past that this is pretty compelling stuff. The title of the fic is a real-life term, and one I thought fitting here. ★★★★
Next time, I hope to review:
All Skin and Bones by redsquirrel456
Chilly by kits
Power by Darkswirl
Omelet by GaPJaxie
The Palace Bird by silver hands
Lefevre's version is a cover, the original is by (the great but mostly unknown in Anglophone pop world) Michel Polnareff :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, the version you linked there is one I'd never heard before - the more well known Lefevre version was this one, which was used as background music for Radio Caroline:
https://youtu.be/0sciVHycXOA
Thank you for the review. I still feel really good about how parts of this came out - the small coloured text and the epilogue are two of my favourite things I've written. I just love them as a couple!
Uh, I meant to post the link to Polnareff's original too. Apologies for the link spam.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/ax7R71cbpRQ
Thanks! I'll update the info in the post when I'm back on a PC later today. :)
DeleteAnd done -- I think!
DeleteHurrah for French pop music!
DeleteThe title's very hard to translate - it basically means "soul hugs" or "cuddly soul" but the word Câline has connotations in French of both being huggable and also needing hugs, and the lyrics are in the form of a personal ad from the singer's soul looking for a literal soul mate, so even though it probably cost it readers it just seemed like a really nice fit for a romantic story with cuddles!
Dang, high ratings today! :D The last line of Gone Fishin' is one of those ones that makes me cackle with glee every time I see it.
ReplyDeleteI'm somehow completely unsurprised Crystal Wishes disabled comments on all her stories. >.> Also, you misspelled PhycoKrusk!
I don't think I ever encountered Crystal Wishes, so there's nothing I can say regarding her. I've fixed the name error, though. Thanks! That annoyed me, as I really dislike getting people's names wrong when they're right there on their page.
Deletereally, it's his fault for misspelling PsychoKrusk :V
DeleteLogan'ss Word Count this week < Ghost's Mike Word Count this week
ReplyDeletePhew, we're out of the Bizarro World. Or the changeling impersonator's done its homework on Logan. :P Then again, that full preview of all the fics next week is new…
Joking aside, great to see you get that feature in here. I always like clicking on them with PaulAsaran's review to fully know what to look forward to next week. I often did the same with the one fic you'd tease every week, but getting to do that with all five now is ace. Good job, Logan.
As for the fics, I was much the same on Supersedure (even if my review at the time, being only my 6th blog, doesn't show it all that well). The drama, the hive world-building and Chrysalis' ruthless, all told with fantastic first-person restrained narration that means so much more later on. Give or take the canon-compliance of some of it, it's a real winner.
As for the rest, both Âme Câline and Gone Fishin' have been on my radar for a while, never quite lighting up enough to truly catch me. Starlight and Trixie is a hard pairing to sell me on, platonic or not, and PP's fic seemed like one of their offbeat gimmick ones, a harder sell for this spirit. Meanwhile, the dark fairy tale Dark and Deep has caught my interest, though we'll see if that sticks. All in all, a solid if not spectacular roster this week.
Nothing I know from next week, that getting a GapJaxie fic and one from kits (a post-return one, at that) certainly ain't to be sniffed at! See, the preview feature's already generating excitement. :)
it is definitely an offbeat gimmick fic XD
DeleteI'm definitely hoping to keep the full preview list as a regular feature. Hooves crossed!
DeleteOoh, Ame Caline. I rather liked that one. I think it'd edge up to 4 stars for me. I'm biased toward liking Starlight anyway, but this was some nice soul searching by both characters, and as you say, the epilogue was particularly effective. Like we've discussed before, it's disappointing when a story is ostensibly letters or journal entries or the like and it simply doesn't sound realistic for the medium. This one does a very good job of sounding like an authentic journal.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, it was one of the things I liked about it. It's right at the top of the threes for me, so perhaps on another day it would have sneaked into the fours. Either way, I'm glad I read it.
DeleteGlad to hear you liked it. As for why there haven't been more sequels, the answer is "Time": I have none.
ReplyDeleteAh, indeed, a feeling probably most of us know very well. There are too few hours in the day. Well, week. Well, month. Well, year. Well, lifetime.
DeleteJust finished His Dark Materials last night. (Had to wait to see it until it was available to buy on Amazon.) I love the book trilogy, but I have to say the series was an extremely good adaptation. The visuals were beautiful, and not overdone, and the dæmon models and animation were excellent. Best of all, it felt like all the changes/deviations from the books were in service to the original story, and not someone's idea of "improving" it.
ReplyDeleteMajor HDM spoilers ahoy!
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I don't think anything could have lived up to the books for me, since some of my favourite scenes just didn't fit (I adore how book!Mary slowly becomes part of mulefa society) but this adaptation made a very good attempt. (Rather like the 1978 film of Watership Down in that sense, actually.) I got on better with some of the changes than with others, as you'd expect. I was pretty sceptical at first about the Mrs Coulter/Spectres stuff in S2, but they won me round.
Inevitably there were things that didn't work for me. I thought the Bolvangar scene in S1 was poorly done -- I just didn't feel as intensely outraged and scared as I did in both the book and the 2007 film. And in the very last episode I was quite disappointed that we never got Will reaching out to touch Lyra's dæmon -- a hugely significant moment.
But I agree that it looked wonderful (when they weren't filming everything in the dark again...) and I liked the actors. A part of me missed having more dæmons on screen, as the 2007 movie had, but I understand the reasons for that. I thought the acting was mostly very good, for example Father Gomez really made my skin crawl as he should.
I believe Philip Pullman himself was quite heavily involved with the adaptation, which probably goes some way to explaining your last point. I certainly read that he insisted that the mulefa should retain their wheeled propulsion, even though the specific type had to be altered. I'm not always that keen on Pullman's ideas (The Secret Commonwealth is my least favourite novel of his) but I've few complaints here.
Additional: I didn't think the S1 Bolvangar scene worked as well as it should have... but a certain scene at a river in S3, now that was a different story. That was as heartbreaking as it should be.
DeleteI really should go back and watch the entire series—maybe read the books along side.
ReplyDeleteSince you mentioned them, I loved the series mulefas! I also liked the bit with the subtitles that showed Mary learning their language. Honestly, I would have loved a couple of episodes just concentrating on them.
I thought the way they did the subtitles was clever and imaginative. Now I've seen it in action, I'd like to see it in other series where someone's learning a new language. :)
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