Ponyfic Roundup 509

Read it Later story count: 94 (-1)

Words read this week: 27,684

As you read this, I'll be just about to set out to UK PonyCon. It's the convention's 20th birthday, and I'm hoping it'll be great this year! Naturally, I will report back afterwards. But let's get to the fics. It's back to non-contest fics for this week, and there are the usual five stories. Four of them had been on my RiL list for a while, whereas one (The Additional Alicorn Affair) was picked at random – within the bounds of a couple of parameters, such as being complete and not too long – from Fimfiction's search results. Here are the five:

One Sprout, Many Buds by Whinifree
"For I Am A Jelly God" by Posh
The Additional Alicorn Affair by PonyFate
Butter Up by GaPJaxie
The Darkest Day by Summer Knight

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

One Sprout, Many Buds by Whinifree
Sunny, Izzy, Hitch, Zipp and Pipp
G5; Slice of Life; 4k words; Oct 2021; Everyone

Only days after the conclusion of her adventure, Sunny Starscout's new friends ask her a very serious question about her old friend Sprout.

As the publication date shows, this G5 fic was based purely on the movie's story and characters. The author has a decent take on them as well, for example giving Pipp a suitable sign-off line ("Pipp Pipp and away!"), having Izzy not quite understanding what boundaries are, and investing Sunny with a properly hopeful, inclusive personality. Most importantly, she wants to make amends with Sprout, despite his actions in the film. If the G5 series had had the tone of early G4, it might have been something like this. A heartwarming read. ★★★

"For I Am A Jelly God" by Posh
Mane Six, CMCs, Other and Derpy
G4; Dark/Comedy; 11k words; Mar 2012; Everyone

Nothing can stop the Smooze

There is jam, or possibly jelly,¹ rushing through the streets of Ponyville and swallowing up everything in its path. The CMC are among its first targets, but it doesn't stop there. Before long we realise the awful truth: the Smooze is back! This was written for a contest with a word limit, and that does show a bit – the ending, in particular, feels like it could have done with a smidgen more space to avoid its rather disappointing referencey last line. The fic is Posh's oldest completed fic, and indeed it's very much an old-fandom one, what with jokes about Sweetie being a dictionary, multiple (too many, really) references to Twilight as "egghead" and even a touch of LUS. You'll need to roll with that to have fun here, and I mostly can. It just doesn't quite work for me in 2024 as well as it might have done in 2012. Top-end two. ★★
¹ I'm British, remember, and over here "jelly" means what the Yanks call Jell-O...

The Additional Alicorn Affair by PonyFate
Twilight, Pinkie, Spike and Luna
G4; Comedy/Slice of Life; 6k words; Jan 2014; Everyone

Twilight and Pinkie Pie discover records of another alicorn. But first - what is the masculine form of alicorn?

This – its author's only fic – was the story I picked (nearly) randomly, and considering its dreadful +2/-11 thumbscore I was expecting a total mess. I didn't quite get that. Okay, it's not a particularly good story, with various things grating from bizarre names ("At Still"?) to things like "Spike, the dragon" to an almost complete reliance on occasionally stilted dialogue. The main plotline, dealing with a character's prophesied return, makes rather little sense in the end, too. But the journey to get there is often fairly fun and just occasionally there's a great moment, such as the sheer walls of Ghastly Gorge reminding Pinkie of the feeling of walking into Twilight's library. The Additional Alicorn Affair has too many small problems to read that smoothly, and it desperately needs a proper ending. A low two, but that's an advance on what I'd imagined after seeing the sea of red on its ratings bar. ★★

Butter Up by GaPJaxie
Fluttershy and Applejack
G4 AU; Slice of Life; xk words; Mar 2015; Teen

Butter Up isn't Fluttershy -- but she does play her on TV.

The third in GaPJaxie's "Actingverse" series set in an AU where the Mane Six are characters played by other ponies – and where our focus is on those actors. It really helps to have read the first two, by the way. Anyway, Butter Up, who plays Fluttershy, frankly does not come over as a particularly likeable individual. Deep Cover (who plays Applejack) talks to her, not altogether to BU's liking, at a rather less than upscale café. As we go on, there's chat about studies, food and game theory. Yup. As a bottle episode kind of fic, this works really rather well, and the needle between the two ponies is quite gripping: it's instrumental in winding things up and drawing out the big reveal. The very last para didn't quite grab me the way I'd hoped, but the rest really did. Probably my favourite of the three I've read, enough to nudge it into the four-star bracket. I'll try not to take years to get to the next one... ★★★★

The Darkest Day by Summer Knight
Starlight and Trixie
G4; Comedy/Random; 1k words; Aug 2021; Everyone

Starlight Glimmer runs out of coffee. Equestria may never recover.

The Comedy/Random combo is a lot harder to get right than many writers believe. For a start, except for a few specific bits of weirdness, there needs to be an actual story there. Fortunately, The Darkest Day does have one! It's not simply a case of Starlight panicking about having no coffee and Trixie trying to calm her down, although that is there. In truth it's the ending that pushes this clearly above the run-of-the-mill; the reveal isn't all that extraordinary, but it is amusing and it does make perfect sense in context. At this length, that's enough. ★★★

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I'll be posting on my normal Wednesday next week. The reason I don't need to have my customary week off for the convention is that I'll only be looking at 6,000 words of story: the six remaining Pewter Medal winners from the Thousand Words III competition. These will cover the Comedy and Experimental categories, and the fics will be as follows:

Cult of Personality by Cold in Gardez
Shoot for the Stars by SnowShine
The Thing About Chess by Odd_Sarge
Luna Luna Luna Luna by Botched Lobotomy
Cloaked Fate by Lunaria
Hierarchy of Needs by AugieDog