It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #16 · 6:19pm Jul 7th, 2021
Sometimes deciding which set of stories to pick just falls into my lap and becomes obvious.
Lead this week is one that's not underappreciated - but it's one I vehemently plug when I get the chance and consider to be damn near mandatory reading for any serious reader on this site. Namely: The Choices We Make by Monochromatic.
Everybody knows Mono - The Enchanted Library (and sequels!) are horse-famous to an extreme degree. Mono basically created RariTwi. This story is very different - Pinkie Pie focused Equestria Girls - but for those who haven't I'mma tell you right now: there is a reason that this is Mono's story in the Royal Canterlot Library rather than The Enchanted Library. (editor's note: TEL was entered into the RCL as well, but as part of the BronyCon 2019 contest a year later and stands separate. It also is, I believe, the only instance where an author has been featured in the RCL twice.)
The story's hook is very, very simple: Friday evenings, Pinkie Pie volunteers at the city's Suicide Hotline.
That's it.
It doesn't need anything more than that.
I would call it the most emotionally powerful story on the site. Reading it made me weep. Even as someone who hasn't personally struggled with issues of depression and suicide, it is strong enough to be a hammerblow to the chest. And it is perfect Pinkie Pie. It is a story that, if the show weren't restricted to being the blandest of E-ratings, would be 100% canon and I treat it to be so in all of my own works.
Read it. Maybe not now (because it is not light), but if you follow this blog series and listen to my recommendations for just one story? Make it this one.
Normally I would feel bad about having somebody play the #2 slot to something as obscenely powerful as The Choices We Make. It's one hell of an act to follow. But somebody has to and I think there's one up to the job: blue wallflower by Mica.
So y'all know me. I'm big into how Sunset Is Best Human/Pony/Princess, into Sad Wally In Snow, into Trixie Is The Best Moron and so on. It comes up far less, but I also absolutely cannot stand second person POV stories. Like, I utterly hate them and it's a near automatic skip when I see one. In my Upvoted story shelf of 3376 stories (as of current), I have two that are tagged with second person POV. This is one of them.
Mica blew this one out of the park with a potent, surreal story of Wallflower talking to an unseen You. Giving painful insights into the mind and actions of her depression in a way that manages to both confuse and hurt simultaneously. It's not something I can easily describe or put into words, beyond that reading it makes me dread. The feelings in it are wrong in a way I can't put into words, and yet they're familiar enough to connect. This story was strong enough on that front that when it was published it made several of us discuss if it was a suicide note in story form. (It wasn't. I'm thankful for that.) I hate second person POVs, but this one uses it masterfully. It's beautiful.
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The Choices We Make is heck of a story. Definitely something everyone ought to read.
Yeah, Mica is really good at writing darkfics.