It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #124 · 6:21pm Aug 2nd, 2023
It's been a bit since I did a new author feature, and I realized my pile of ones I wanted to draw attention to was stacking up. Let's take a few off that stack then, shall we?
And I gotta start with gapty. It's damn wonderful to see an author just explode like they have: at this point the account's been around for 15 months and is at 31 stories. Pretty good ones, too! I actually had a couple to pick from, but in the end I couldn't not pick Overpowered
I'm a sucker for 'human Twilight is a borderline mad scientist' stories because c'mon they're wonderful. And this is Twilight trying to use it for good: her notes as she attempts to develop both a quantifiable system for tracking geode power levels and an alert system to keep the girls from going overpowered/underpowered. All told via a few quick notes and a bunch of computer code annotations. (Plus with a little extra twist at the end.)
This story reminds me a lot of FanOfMostEverything's Merge Request, which is very much not a bad thing. Where it leans different, though, is in how it tells the story: almost everything here is implied and happening off-screen rather than being directly told. That's difficult to do well, and the decidedly non-standard format here raises the bar higher - but gapty does a pretty solid job with it. As I've said in previous recommendations, when my primary compliant is "I wish there was more of this," it's a sign of success.
Now, I'll say that this format's not for everybody and I can see some folks bouncing off the odd formatting. But it's really part of what makes this unique, and gapty has a good hand with experimental stuff.
The last chapter is where I really go "I want more" because the implications it makes are fascinating and suggest the beginning of a much bigger story. It's a great tease, particularly in retrospect to the earlier chapters (and how they add together.) I won't go too deep into it so as not to spoil, but I quite like this unique take on the subject and it shows off the author's chops with unusual story approaches.
On the other end, let's have a bit more relationship Twilight in The First Night by ThisPonyIsNamedSinewave.
Twilight's still brand new at Canterlot High, so it's time for the trail by fire: a party at Pinkie Pie's. She arrives early - of course - and spends a bit of time sitting around feeling awkward - of course - while they wait for the others to arrive. Then Pinkie Pie kisses her. And she's not the only one. And the situation makes poor Twilight more and more confused as she tries to make sense of the relationship dynamics of her new friends and why do they keep kissing her.
An interesting observation for me that polycule fics for the horse Mane 6 are pretty common, but for the humans they're not. I don't have numbers for it, but ponies being polyamorous seems to be way, way more common in the fandom. So seeing one here is an interesting step outside of the norm. It's handled (mostly) well here, at least: each of the girls approaches the situation fairly uniquely and specifically to them. It shows who they are - I particularly liked Applejack's chapter. When you get down to it, all six of them are basically the same scene, but the particulars of who they are change just what happens. And that's great character work.
Poor Twilight, I'm a little mixed on. Not her writing! That's not it at all - but on one hand I find poor, beleaguered Twi damnably entertaining as she struggles to reconcile what's going on with her awkward self-image, while on the other I also wanna slap the girls upside their heads because consent you stupid idiots. (Which is also why I like Applejack's chapter.) Talk, damn it! Stop being coy! They're teenagers so being dumb is genetically required, but--
Anyway.
But yes, this is just a wonderfully sweet polyfic. Love it and love the overwhelmed Twi. Also love that the author's an old account (2013) that's just done their first publish now. Kudos for that. Seeing old lurkers step up is just as refreshing as seeing new faces that take off. Welcome to the writing world.
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Both lovely stories, yes. I'd love to see more stories in the same world as Overpowered.
I really do need to read something of gapty's, beyond flashfics of course. Must see what jumps out from their list -- not sure this one does, but that's a personal taste thing and I'm sure I can find something.
Fascinating story about the second fic's account, though: assuming there weren't any previous fics that have since been deleted, waiting a decade between signing up and publishing your first story must be some kind of record!
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Gapty's got a higher than average hit rate for me - I don't like every one of their stories, but most and that's pretty good considering the rate they're coming out at. Aside from the two I mentioned, I also really liked Elevator Show.
I suppose I'm gonna have to look into reading something of gaffe's too, aren't I? Dunno what yet – any author with that high a leaning on EqG (25 of their 31 stories have the tag) is going to have a lot of it off-limits for this phantom. However, the story you have featured is a borderline case, so it might be the one. Or might not. We'll see.
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Closest instance I can think of is Azure Notion, of the top-notch Unchanging Love (which you were most impressed by and gave 4 stars) and its even-better in-progress sequel Unending Love. Despite publishing the former as their first story in August 2019, they joined the site on launch day, July 10th 2011, and were only the twenty-ninth user overall. Eight years ain't ten, but it's something! As I understand it, the reason for never publishing in that time was hesitation about the quality of several drafted outlines, but sharing the outline of Unchanging Love with one or more other Bronies at a 2019 convention (I don't want to commit to it being Bronycon, given the quick under-a-month turnaround that would mean) prompted this one to see the light of day.