Site Post » Reviews! Round 47 · 9:21pm Jul 6th, 2014
Seattle's Angels is a group that promotes good stories with low views. You can find us here.
He struck a match and held it up, searching the shadowed crevasses of the cave. His gauntleted hands scraped all along the weathered stone of the walls, searching for a catch. There had to be something.
Maybe it’s the lever in the middle of the room.
“No, no, it’s never the lever. Whenever they make it that obvious, it’s a trap.” Plum shifted his ebony forged helmet to get a better look at the low-lit cave. “There has to be another one of those smaller switch things, or maybe the stupid bird-fish-snake pillars.”
We’ve been searching this room for a good five minutes now. It’s all just coffins and rubble.
“I honestly don’t know why I brought you here. At least Lydia could have carried my stuff and lured a few draugr out. All you do is talk.”
As if it’s my fault I’m stuck like this.
“Have you ever even considered how stupid I look with a flour sack strapped to my back?”
Is that a rhetorical question?
Plum’s hand finally caught on the secret switch, cleverly hidden on the wall directly next to the iron gate. “Hah! Told you,” he said, instinctively pulling it.
The cavern rumbled like a mammoth with indigestion, but the gate did not budge.
That can’t be good.
“No, look. I’d bet we just need to pull that other lever now.”
Plum turned around to face the lever and froze.
What is it?
“No . . .”
Plum, what do you see?
Before the ebony-armored hero stood a horrific amalgamation of papers, wrapped together to form the facsimile of a man. If one looked closely, they might see the slurred sentences, bookended by URLs and pictures of ponies.
“No, no, they found us even here!”
What? What is it?!
“It’s a fanfiction atronach!”
The loose-leaf beast reared its head, opened its maw, and spewed a stream of poisonous ink onto the poor pair of pilfering plebeians.
“Agh! It’s burning through my ebony mail of plot resistance!”
Hit it with your sword!
Plum gurgled an affirmative, but his ink-coated sword only managed to mark an errant streak of black over the beast’s side.
“It’s too strong, mate,” he said as the ink ate away his armor. “I think this may be the end.”
Turn us around. I have an idea.
ROUND 47
STORY 1
Decomposition, by DannyJ
His defeat during the siege of the Crystal Empire did not kill Sombra. He was already dying. Now alone in a frozen wasteland, his final moments approach.
Sombra! Who doesn’t love Sombra? A truly excellent villain, with lot's of great—
No, yeah, you’re right. Sombra’s contribution to MLP has been rather lacklustre, it’s true. Yelling about crystals and slaves does not an interesting read make. Various authors around the site have tried to make up for his less-than-stellar characterisation in the Season 3 Opener, but it’s not exactly easy. Having so little to work with is both a blessing and a curse. A curse, in that… well, you’ve got so little to work with. There’s almost no character there, so building a character can be tricky. But it’s also blessing, as the lack of rigid facts can, in the right circumstances, allow ideas the space they need to properly flourish.
The story picks up where the finale left off, with Sombra slowly dying as a result of the magical rainbow doohickey. From there, the focus is on Sombra’s spirit. What drove the former king to make the choices he did, and what motivated him to see those choices through. His reflection on his past actions, as well as the choices he makes at the end, go a long way to making up for the lack of Sombra-building in the show, and I'm okay with this.
An interesting read, certainly, and with a nice little ending that rounds it off, it’s worth checking out.
Since the show botched Sombra’s canon characterization, a lot of pieces like “Decomposition” come in to right the show’s wrong and give a little more shape to an otherwise horrendously flat character. In this particular case, the audience gets a look into Sombra’s slow fade into oblivion.
What really caught me about this story was how the author portrayed Sombra’s resolve. Most other stories attempt some sort of resolution where the villain lets go of the cruelty that they lived out. However, in this rendition, Sombra holds to his convictions of strength and power straight to the end. Even though he’s fallen, he’s weak, and he’s dying, he refuses to see value in anything besides power. Rather than redeeming Sombra, the author shows us the full extent of his corruption, his certainty in strength and power. Every ounce of his thought is dedicated to that unbreaking ideal, showing that power, as an ideal, had long since conquered him.
And yet still, we get just this little spark near the end, where it almost seems like he’s chosen to die for something else. He gets a taste of the other side, of what might have been, but in the end he still dedicates his final words to the only legacy he ever held. It’s a job well done and well portrayed.
I can see some readers getting a bit tired of the interior monologue in the piece, but I think the author does a nice job of keeping it moving forward. For 4000 words, it certainly accomplishes quite a bit. It’s definitely one of the finer pieces I’ve run into.
STORY 2
The Twin Mountains, by Benny
Something sinister brews at the base of the Celestian church in Canterlot, strange forces across the sea begin to explore the world, interactions with griffons from past the mountains tense, and slumbering menaces stir beyond the Dragon Doors .
A quick note to all you authors out there, before we begin. You see this thing?
A fancy little doodle to indicate pagebreaks, aye? Well, it looks fine in this blog post, and may look fine for the majority of readers who’ll see it, but…
That just looks a bit daft, doesn’t it? The site lets people change the colour of the background, so sticking to one shade ain’t the best idea. In future, if you’re gonna have fancy doodle thingumabobs, go nuts. Just make sure they’re on a transparent background, yeah?
But anyway, on with the story. And it’s an Alternate Universe story. They’re always interesting, I find. Not the easiest of genres to pull off well, despite the stereotype of “Oh, something doesn’t fit with canon? Stick AU on it and call it a day”. It doesn’t work like that. If you want to change something in the MLP canon to make it a new universe, you need to give sufficient reason for said change.
In my world, everyone is Rarity. Because, uh… reasons
In Twin Mountains, the entire world has been changed, and it’s because of Celestia’s actions. After banishing her sister to the moon, she chose to reside on the highest mountain top in some colossal valley, for an unknown reason. No living creature has seen Celestia in a thousand years. The cities in which ponies reside seem to have some great rivalry between them, mirroring the situation in pre-equestria. To add to that, the description tells of various impending catastrophes, such as a gryphonic invasion. There’s some truly beautiful worldbuilding going on, with good justification to boot. It almost brings a tear to my eye.
I’m not going to lie, however. We’ve only got two chapters so far, and it’s just approaching the six thousand-word mark. It is very much a story still in its infancy. But it’s showing a lot of potential, so I, for one, am going to keep an eye on it.
The first thing that caught my eye in “The Twin Mountains” was the description. This story does a lot of worldbuilding in just the first two chapters, but it pieces things together in a way that keeps the reader interested, rather than info dumping. The author shows off every scene to its fullest, and the result is wonderful and effective. Places are made into symbols and conflicts, rather than just being places, and that’s a feat that few can claim on this site.
Even though the story is centered around original characters, the readers immediately get a pretty nice hook. Add some strong and natural characterization, and we end up with some very solid and very human characters. Amulet has the curiosity and the drive to keep this story moving forward. Better yet, even the characters we only get a glimpse of seem to have more than meets the eye. They don’t feel like tools to move the plot or single-faceted faces meant only to be looked at once. Everyone we’ve seen so far is there for a good reason, with personalities that make them unique and memorable – certainly not something we get very often with adventures.
The concept is very strong, and I can already tell this story is going to be epic in the greater sense of the word. What the author has already accomplished in two chapters is outstanding, and I can’t wait to see where this story heads.
Your history books will tell you that Star Swirl the Bearded, as he has come to be called, was a lonely, powerful old Unicorn who never understood the magic of Friendship. But history only ever remembers one side of the story.
Star Swirl the Bearded stories aren’t particularly uncommon. Nor are ones where he features as a student to the princesses. Nor are ones revolving around the magic of friendship.
What is rare is one that can do these things well.
The story begins with Star Swirl completing his training under Luna, and becoming student to Celestia. An idea that, surprisingly, I’ve never seen before. I quite like it, actually, as it plays to the strengths of the alicorns’ characters. But I digress. What follows is definitely reminiscent of the pilot episodes of Season 1. You know, student is told to make some friends, student is upset, makes friends, evil things happen, blah blah blah. And yet, it both works with the story, and does so in a way that leaves me not caring about however predictable it may be.
The strength of this story is its characters. Celestia and Luna are appropriately celestia-and-luna-ish, mixed with a hint of… youthfullness? Naivete, perhaps? They seem younger, regardless, which suits me just fine.
Surprisingly relevant.
Star Swirl is a focussed, anti-social young unicorn, as seems fitting, but the friends he makes aren’t just palette-swapped Mane 6 members. Each one feels suitably unique and well-rounded, serving to add a nice bit of depth to what could have been a fairly bland retelling of the first couple episodes.
The story isn’t perfect, mind. I noted a number of syntax errors in the first chapter, but thankfully these iron out quickly, and the rest of the story is good enough that I feel confident in recommending this nice take on Star Swirl’s history.
The Tutelage of Star Swirl is definitely a good read so far. It has a well developed protagonist, some good narration, and of course, the overarching conflict. Even though it parallels the show’s pilot in many ways – which does make things a bit predictable – it’s a whole new cast of characters, as well as an arguably more menacing set of villains.
The narration is pretty easygoing. One thing that shatters the parallelism with the original pilot is the fact that there is so much more time to let everything develop. The pacing feels just right for this sort of plotline. Even though the story’s not finished yet, it’s in a great little groove.
It’s also refreshing to see that the Starswirl’s friends aren’t just reskins of the original six. They have their own independent personalities that are satisfying and fulfilling in their own right. The interactions seem pretty natural for the most part, and it’s entertaining to see Starswirl’s panicked calculations on the social battlefield. The dialogue occasionally gets a bit awkward, but for the most part, it feels real and natural.
Overall, though, I think what makes this a story worth reading is the worldbuilding. The time before Luna’s banishment is a blank slate that the author takes full advantage of. The alternate setting makes what may first seem like a familiar and parallel plotline into its own powerful story. Even though the author introduces many original characters, their well-developed personages keep them from feeling extraneous. For readers who like long-term commitment, it’s a nice, effective, novel-length story, but still incomplete.
Certain alicorns have no regard for the rules of space and time. An astral sub-dimension becomes a potent weapon in what appears to be a divine prank war. Shining Armor hits the sauce.
Good god, Pav’s influence must be spreading. I’m recommending a shipping story. Shining Armour isn’t the only one who needs a drink tonight.
A pony image for every occasion. Gummy is mai waifu.
A number of our regular readers may recognise this one, actually. Apparently, it won third place in a competition thingumabob, run by the *shudder* TwiLuna shipping group. I think I need a shower…
But I digress. Two Pair is an intriguing one. The opening few scenes were… pretty baffling, I’ll admit (although the author appears to want them that way). In fact, the author’s notes make mention of how he tweaked them to be less confusing, so I have no idea how I’d handle the original version. There’s no denying it’s an effective hook, however.
See, the main plot of this story revolves around timey-wimey shenanigans. Shining Armour is woken up in the middle of the night by future!Twilight and future!Luna hunting down future!Celestia, who needs to be hunted down, for some reason. Also, Twily and Luna are a couple, which freaks Shining out to no end. What follows was a series of twists and turns that answered one question by asking three others, and made me completely forget it was a shipping story, right up until it became important. Which is good, I feel. It didn’t feel forced, or rushed, merely the natural progression of events. I wish more authors would do this.
Something I love is the characterisation of the two Princesses who came back from the future. To start, both seemed really rather alien, robotic, and… well, just straight-up weird. But as the story progresses, and the reader sees more of their personalities, it becomes clear that this is merely the effect of having lived for multiple millenia, and it feels very natural. And yet, despite the focus on the timetravelly thingies, I think it was Shining Armour that sold it for me. His introspection on his role as Twily’s older (now much, much younger) brother, his external view on the godhood the two time-travellers share, and his wit throughout is rather endearing. I think my favourite quote is as follows:
That, and some late-night resentment over the fact that he could work his way to the top of the royal guard, act as the trusted protector of the ruler of all Equestria, help to rule an entirely different nation, and still somehow be the less accomplished sibling.
So yes, Two Pair is a shipping story I feel confident in recommending.
For those of you who haven’t already filled your mind with enough time travel babble, I recommend “Two Pair.” It has intrigue! It has confusion! It even has shipping!
On a more serious note, this was certainly a good read. Although shipping is not exactly my field of expertise of favoritism, all of my sensors indicate that this shipping is acceptable and pleasing. As far as sensibility goes, most of the timey-wimey gobbledygook is answered by the end, and the questions that aren’t answered are – as far as I can tell – unanswered for a reason. I can actually say without a doubt that this has been my favorite fanfiction about time travel. It managed to pull off a very satisfying ending while still keeping the reader guessing all throughout. For a story of ten thousand words, that’s very impressive.
The characterization was very satisfying. The interactions were realistic and sensible – granted that these are time-travelling pastel alicorns – and the development was spot-on. Whereas a lot of authors tend to make new, somewhat exaggerated personalities for their distant-future versions of the princesses – this may be one of the last sentences I would ever expect to write – the personages of the multi-millennial princesses in “Two Pair” feel fairly natural, at least with the way the author presents them. My suspension of disbelief wasn’t broken, and that says quite a bit.
Overall, it’s a great story, and although ten thousand words may seem a bit short in hindsight, I think its meanings give it a much broader scope than most would expect. In my opinion, that alone makes it a worthwhile read.
Plum surveyed the horribly mangled body of the atronach, every bit of white exchanged for a smelly, charred black. Bits of paper burned lifelessly all about the room, pockmarking the walls with dying flames.
“What the hell did you do?”
Remember when you were trying to sweet-talk Faralda at the College of Winterhold?
“We agreed never to speak of that.”
Well right before she started electrocuting you, I managed to pilfer a Scroll of Fire Storm from her room.
With the fiend vanquished, the iron gate eased open, as if the cave could sense the death of its guardian. Behind it was a perfectly unguarded chest of obligatory dungeon loot. Plum ran over, armor still steaming, and threw up the lid.
Inside rested a single troll skull.
Feel free to visit our group for more information and events, and to offer some recommendations for future rounds. See you all next time!
Why does no one ever recommend my stories?
2262947 I feel your pain, my friend.
Rarity, these rarities want to change your rarity. They don't want Rarity or any of these rarities to live here because it's bad for their rarity. They use Rarity to try and force rarities to believe they're rarity. If you let them stay here, they will build rarities and rarities. They will take all your rarities and replace them with Rarity. These rarity have no good rarity to live on Rarity, so they must come here to Rarity. Please, let these rarities stay where they can grow and prosper without any rarities, rarities, or rarities
2263090 I'm the dude playin dude disguised as another dude
Rarity is enough of a reason all by herself.
There's been some mistake, I think you meant to recommend The Tin Mountains or something.
BUT I did manage to mostly fix the page break thingy.
EDIT: ALSO I just want to point out that people who use Medium Dark are weirdos.
2263090 Because Southpark
Oh man, I'm very pleased that Two Pair rec went through so quickly. :D People need to read that story! And at least three others from the Most Dangerous Game contest!
I'm confused. "Enough" time travel? How does one have "enough" time travel? That's like
enoughenuff dakka. It isn't actually possible, just an ideal to strive for.In any case, thanks for the cool things to read.
2262947
Seattle's Angels are about promoting stories that people haven't read, so you're essentially saying you wish nobody read your stories
2263090
The feature box is not ready.
2263117
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2263173
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2263228 i.gyazo.com/ef38a932a9083e767555146ce9398aa2.png
2263254
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2263258 mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw3931_small.jpg
2263263
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I'll stop, now.
2263272
Good, cause I don't think I could've topped Fluttershades riding a skateboard.
2263228
i.imgur.com/m6DkJux.png
So fabulous!
I would so live on a world where everyone is Rarity
Wait, would that mean that I would be Rarity, too?
So shocking.
all these fics sound amazing btw can't wait to check them out2263228 I have stories with low views which I'd like to think are at least somewhat decent.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Ahem. I mean. Thank you, gentlemen. Most appreciated.
Ohjesuschristwhydidnobodytellmeistillhaven'tevencorrectedallthegrammarmistakesandiwasn'texpectingthisandohmygodijustwasn'texpectingthisithinkiloveyouguys
2263173
Speaking of the Medium Light formatting style in particular, FimFiction's built in [hr] tag is completely invisible on that setting.
2265450
Are you suggesting that the nigh imperceptible extra two pixels of space aren't obvious enough?
2265703
I was just saying that it's kind of silly to call someone out for using a custom divider when the default one doesn't even work right on those exact same settings.
Edit: If I see something that doesn't look right when reading a story, I can always change my settings. Having a black divider with a transparent divider, as was suggested, wouldn't work well on the 'Dark' setting.
Some of the settings do more than just change the colors too. In any of the 'pony' formats, Knightly's magical code automatically adds a line break after every carriage return. This works great for authors who enjoy posting walls of text, but it does horrible things to poetry. It's not really worth worrying about something that doesn't work in a custom format. Anyone who changed their view to one of those knows how to change it back too.