Read it Later story count: 93 (-2)
Words read this week: 27,113
¹ Yeah, I've already said this on Fimfiction – but not here.
A Brush with Pride by abrony-mouse (review requested by author)
Scootaling by GrassAndClouds2
Ragnarok by Pascoite
Daydream at 20,000 Hooves by UnknownError
Radio Ga Ga by Pagemaster
★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Review requested by author
A Brush with Pride by abrony-mouse
Shining Armor and Flurry Heart [and Other, Mustafa Combe]
G4; Drama/Slice of Life; 2k words; May 2022; Everyone
Mustafa Combe’s wonderful moustache is his pride and passion, but will it help him to win a coveted prize?
You'll see who "Mustafa Combe" is in the cover art, though I can't remember exactly which episode this background pony comes from. This is a cute story, light-hearted enough that a [Comedy] tag wouldn't have been out of the question. This being Equestria, there's a contest for facial hair, and some of the little touches – Sunburst's goatee being an actual goat – are very chucklesome. I'm not a huge fan of the use of inline illustrations (especially as a couple of links are broken) and there's a weird persistent typo ("combe" for the implement itself) but for the most part this is a cheery glimpse into a sideline of Equestrian society that could have fitted quite well into the show. For that reason, it makes the threes. ★★★
Scootaling by GrassAndClouds2
CMCs and Rainbow Dash
G4; Slice of Life; 13k words; Sep 2012; Everyone
Scootaloo's a changeling. How will her friends react?
Not long into this story, we move to the Everfree Forest, where secret changeling Scootaloo has hidden to morph into... Rainbow Dash?! Yes, she's coming as close as she can to not just adoring but being her idol. However, her friends come after her and find out... Given the publication date, changelings are generally seen as bad, and while it's heartwarming how Sweetie and Apple Bloom and most of the other ponies accept Scoots' true identity, there's the odd section where this message of inclusiveness towards others who are different gets a bit too clunkily obvious in its delivery. (A couple of Cheerilee's lines, for example.) Still, this is a 2012 fic, and back then things did seem simpler in Equestria. The framing story, involving the CMCs working out a madcap catapult scheme, is very entertaining and so this is a top-end three. ★★★
Ragnarok by Pascoite
Gummy, Discord, Fluttershy, Twilight and Pinkie Pie
G4; Dark/Comedy; 5k words; Jul 2014; Teen
As many such things do, it all started with Discord trying to help. And now Fluttershy can't escape the apocalyptic proclamations. Next time, she'll try the trick of wishing for no wishes.
Note that publication date: this was absolutely not a reaction to "Slice of Life". In fact, in a way it anticipates it. Discord appears as a genie when Fluttershy rubs a lamp, offering her a wish (within reason). By mistake she wishes to know what Gummy is saying – something Pinkie appears already to know. It turns out Gummy is broadcasting portents of doom, and unsurprisingly 'Shy is discomfited. Cleverly and smoothly written as expected from this author, with a nice blend of darkness and humour. I did take a little while to warm up to the twist, as initially I felt it stretched credulity a little bit. I still have a slight reservation about that, so this is a lowish four-star rating. Even so, it's a really entertaining fic, and all the clever little touches (wait for the stick joke...) make it a satisfying read. ★★★★
Daydream at 20,000 Hooves by UnknownError
OC, Kirins, Celestia and Luna
G4; Comedy; 6k words; Apr 2023; Everyone
With Princess Twilight ascending the throne, the first commercial planes present new opportunities. For some more than others.
This fic is set a bit after the show, so the more advanced tech level doesn't necessitate an [AU] tag. Earth pony Rind Watermelon and his fiancée Smoldering – who happens to be a kirin – are heading for Kiria to see her parents. Rind hates flying and tries staring out of the window. Then he sees Celestia land on the wing. There's more than a hint of gremlins here – the aviation version, not the movie – but the author also quite deftly weaves in the odd jibe at racial profiling, airline food and the like. Just occasionally this is a tad too bluntly done, but mostly it works well. Good character writing of Rind and Smoldering's interactions makes this a solid, enjoyable read. Quite a high three here. ★★★
Radio Ga Ga by Pagemaster
Apple Bloom and Applejack
G4; [no genre tag]; 1k words; Jul 2011; Everyone
[no shortdesc]
This is a really old story – number 215 on Fimfiction. It's a very simple, very old-fandom tale in which a sleepless Apple Bloom asks her big sister why the stars have gone. It turns out that the stars were... us. Bronies. Presumably the idea is that the show ended and the fandom dissipated; this is never explicitly stated, a decision I like. There's nothing amazing here, but it's rather sweet and avoids the self-congratulatory meta some similar fics fall prey to. Worth a quick look. ★★
NB: This is the only story under this username, but the author says that Nathan, author of the even older Porcelain Secrets (PR 35), is also them.
A pretty decent week! I'd like to have a look at the Dialogue Only Contest winners and hon menshes (five of each) in the next few weeks. There'll probably be a couple more regular editions before that happens, though. Next time, this will be the slate:
Larger Than Life by Equimorto
Mended Hearts and Wings by BronyBrozly
Sol Invictus by Seer
Mindscapers by Heroic412227
I've read "A Brush with Pride" (even though somehow it's not marked as read—maybe I did so without logging in?) and had about the same reaction. Pretty good as a low-stakes slice of life.
ReplyDeleteHaven't read "Radio Ga Ga," though I appreciate the Queen reference. I've always liked that song a lot, even though my impression is most people don't.
Glad you enjoyed the silliness of "Ragnarok." It was written from a prompt, which can be hit or miss, but Present Perfect helped spark an idea with me. DeftFunk did a particularly good reading of it.
From the bottom up:
DeleteYou're welcome. I suspect it was an idea that could have gone messily wrong in less experienced hands, but then that applies to a lot of things!
I'm fairly fond of "Radio Ga Ga" (the song) but then I'm fairly fond of Queen as a whole. I don't know whether there's a Transatlantic divide in levels of appreciation for it, but my impression is that it's quite consistently popular here. It reached number two in its day, but was kept off the top by "Relax". Since number three was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", that was a pretty solid week for the UK charts!
I knew abrony-mouse way back, when we were both regulars on the old UK of Equestria forums. I knew nothing about him as a writer, though, so it was particularly nice to find I enjoyed his story.
glad you liked it too! Also, I must read that fic - have added it.
DeleteI was actually living fairly close to where you are now (though not in the UK) when Radio Ga Ga came out, and I enjoyed seeing it, along with the others you mention, on Top of the Pops. It was interesting to see which songs popular in the US didn't even register over there, plus the European chart-toppers people here had barely heard of when we returned.
DeleteIndeed, there was a lot more of a Transatlantic divide in music in those pre-internet days. One that comes to mind is "Jacob's Ladder" by Huey Lewis & the News. Number one in the US, wasn't even released as a single in the UK. Almost certainly much better known here now, thanks to the internet, than it was in the 1980s.
DeleteNot a half-bad rebound from last week! Pascoite would be the sort to make a 4-star fic out of that premise, and for a fic published in the site’s first few days, Radio Ga Ga sound less rickety then most. Though I do wonder what led the author, after publishing that other mentioned story on the site’s first day (and two more in the next few days), to make an alt account for publishing another five days later. Most strange.
ReplyDeleteAlso happy to see a fic from the new reviewer on the block barony-mouse do solidly too. Always room for some goofy comedy. Or in this case, going by the tags, a dramedy.
I am curious about the standard of the fics that placed in the Dialogue Only Contest. If throwing a dart to pick one out, most suffer from author staring hard to tell a story that’s coherent and clear and intuitive to read, and isn’t padded to even get to 1,000 words. Guess we’ll see later this month.
Pascoite is a very reliable author. I don't adore everything I've read of his, but I've always at least liked his stories. Nothing's ever scored below three stars, from memory.
DeleteOn the dialogue contest: oh, me too. I have a vested interest of course, having entered it myself, but I'll certainly be intrigued.
The problem with a gimmick like "dialogue only" is you'll get too many entries that never find a way of taking advantage of it. That is, they're stories that are forced to be dialogue only even though they'd be better as a regular story. The best uses of gimmicks are when they enhance the story, as in it's a good story that happens to be dialogue-only, versus a story written dialogue-only for its own sake and tries to come up with a plot to justify it.
DeleteThat's all fair comment, and I suspect I may find a few of the stories I read slightly awkward for that reason. Mind you, I think the fact that it attracted over 90 entries is quite interesting in itself. Thousand Words contests aside, that's very large indeed for a ponyfic contest these days.
DeleteRagnarok was great. :D And hooray for remembering an old author like Nathan!
ReplyDelete...So is no one going to acknowledge that 20,000 Hooves is just a ponification of a Twilight Zone episode? c_c
I think I saw Radio Ga Ga mentioned in passing by a commenter on an old EQG article about something else entirely! I had no idea the author was also Nathan until I read the blog linking the two accounts.
DeleteAnd no. I didn't watch The Twilight Zone. It was shown over here from time to time, but it was never a central part of our TV culture. Nor did I watch Futurama, so I didn't get that "Scary Door" chapter title reference until someone pointed it out.
Ah, well, I haven't seen Futurama either, so I can't complain about that. :B
DeleteNot so much Twilight Zone the TV series. The movie that preceded(?) it had a story about William Shatner as a passenger on an airliner who could see a gremlin outside tearing up the wing and engine, but nobody else could see it. As much of the series as I've watched, I never saw anything but clips from that movie. Ah, as iisaw says below, both the movie and series tackled that.
DeleteI'm guessing that'd be "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", which was (and I'm going on IMDb here) a 25-minute episode from 1963 of the regular show (1959-64). The black-and-white series never had a feature-length special. But as I haven't seen that either, I'm not much help!
DeleteAh, now I see it was filmed more than once. No wonder I was confused! https://collider.com/twilight-zone-nightmare-at-20000-feet-episode/
DeleteYep, Shatner starred in the episode, and John Lithgow starred in the movie segment with Dan Aykroyd. (It was an anthology format.)
DeleteYay, glad you liked Brush with Pride :) Mustafa is from the Crystalling ep - he camps out with the others
ReplyDeleteRagnarok sounds fun; on the list it goes.
ReplyDeleteI've seen both of the Twilight Zone versions (movie and series) of the 20,000 story, so I must give that one a look.