Ponyfic Roundup 518: The Golden Ones

Read it Later story count: 92 (-1)

Words read this week: 5,000

A quick PSA: thanks to those PC problems I'm several months behind with my Fimfiction courtesy notes on fics I've reviewed in the last few months. I do intend to start catching up on those before too long! But for today, here we are at the very last look at the medal-winning fics  from this year's Thousand Words Contest III. It's a particularly exciting Roundup today, because the five stories under the microscope today are those that won the competition's highest honour, a shiny Gold Medal. I'm writing this intro before I've read the stories, and I'm really rather eager to get stuck into them. They are:

Our Creation Myth by AltruistArtist
Artificial Sunlight by gloamish
Equestrian Family Values by daOtterGuy
Squatters, Right? by GrangeDisplay
Rainbow Dash Reads the Manual by Bandy

★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 4 | ★★★★★: 1
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Our Creation Myth by AltruistArtist
Sphinx and Other
G4; Drama; 4k words; Jul 2024; Everyone

After Somnambula's disappearance, Prince Hisan meets with the monster who made her a hero.

Not a common choice of characters, and even less so without the Somnambula tag. It's set some considerable time after the events we see in the show, and despite its brevity the fic is split into a number of chapters. As more than one of the contest judges remarked, this reads like mythology more than it does a conventional story. It's somewhat enigmatic, but then how could you have a sphinx-centric tale that wasn't? And yes, there's a riddle here. Very interesting reading, with more depth than a thousand words should really allow. ★★★★

Artificial Sunlight by gloamish
Twilight and Celestia
G4; Sad/Sci-Fi/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jun 2024; Teen

HMS Philomena is a starship designed to ferry ponies across a gap of 150 light years and three generations. Twilight Sparkle is the middle generation: she was born and will die in the darkness of space. Her job is to maintain the ship's AI, Celestia.

Ooh, a generation ship story! As the shortdesc says, this Twilight is not only far from Equestria, but she will never feel solid ground beneath her hooves at all. She is not immortal, which arguably makes this an AU although the author clearly didn't think so, and she also narrates in first person. It's a sad story, because of Twi realising what she can never have, but it's not a story in which everything is in deep shades of black. What it does have is a tremendous amount of fascinating world-building. Like so many other excellent fics in this contest, it has the potential to form the heart of a wonderful longer story. Very satisfying slice of life, and a fairly high four. ★★★★

Equestrian Family Values by daOtterGuy
Twilight and Flash Sentry
G4 AU; Dark/Horror; 1k words; Jun 2024; Teen

Always follow mandated Equestrian Family Values

Another story in which a remarkable quantity of world-building is packed into the small allowed space. daOtterGuy has a very fine record in Thousand Words contests, and this fic illustrates just why. Although so very different from canon Equestria, this dystopian AU feels scarily believable and (as with 1984, which several commenters mentioned) is all the more discomfiting for having so many everyday touches. This is another tale where I'd have loved more than 1,000 words, and apparently the draft version of this fic before being cut to size did provide a little more background.¹ It's still gripping, however. This is a dark and violent story, with one or two societal attitudes entirely alien to "our" Equestria, but there's enough essential equinity remaining to make it work outstandingly well. The fic has a relatively large number of downvotes, but sadly I'm sure that's because of people downvoting purely for a certain plot point. I don't always agree with contest judges, but I'd have given this one a Gold myself. ★★★★★
¹ Not part of the review, but I wish some Fimfiction commenters would bear in mind that we're not all American and so vague references to "recent [US] events" from last summer won't land at all with all of us.

Squatters, Right? by GrangeDisplay
Twilight, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Pinkie Pie
G4; Comedy/Random; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone

Twilight learns an important lesson about what truly makes a house a home.

The newest writer here (account created August 2022) and that's always exciting to see. This is a funny comedy, which is a great start. I have no real idea how squatter's rights work in America, but happily that's not necessary. We start out by discovering that Fluttershy doesn't actually own her cottage and move on from there. Every step is both logical and ridiculous, and you really can believe that Equestrian law has ended up like this. This one doesn't feel as though it really needed to be longer; it's perfectly suited to a short fic. Of all this week's stories, this is the one to pick if you're looking for a light but satisfying read to kick back and have fun with. ★★★★

Rainbow Dash Reads the Manual by Bandy
Rainbow Dash
G4; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone

Operation Manual | P3G-SUSpensor Mana-Charged Wing Braces | A Product of the Healthcare and Assisted Mobility Division of P3G SYSTEMS | "For All of Life's Ups and Downs"

We end this week with the Experimental winner. Fimfiction famously bans “Manuals” or “User Guides”, and for a while early on I wondered how close to the wind this story was sailing in that regard. The reason I changed my mind even before finishing it was that it wouldn't work at all without a very amusingly in-character, out of action Rainbow Dash. It's that aspect of the fic that makes it a story for me, rather than just a demonstration of writing skill. The non-linear nature of Rainbow's read is just one among several very nicely judged touches that make this far more than just an in-universe manual read. Don't forget to read the longdesc, as it definitely adds flavour! ★★★★

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Very satisfyingly, the Gold edition provided the best average score from me as well as for the contest judges. I'd be very much up for reading expansions or side stories for several of these stories. Next week, I'll be doing the "five short stories" thing again. I'll then have another edition on the 18th, which just might have the odd festive touch, followed by my Hearth's Warming break. When I return from that there'll be a Spotlight I've been planning for some time. Here's 11th December's slate:

Rarity the Anarchist by Blarghalt
All Things Being Equal by Obsidian Chitin
The Muse of Fire by Lets Do This
Pictures of Lily by cleverpun
Ponyville, Our Ponyville by Botched Lobotomy