It Is Recommendsday, My Dudes #135 · 9:09pm Oct 18th, 2023
Here there be dragons.
Not quite the usual kind, though - we're not talking Spike or even Garble and Ember. These dragons are more the traditional sort, both integrated with a little alt-u magic. But just as important as the dragons is their treasure and the hoards they accumulate. These two examples have... well, somewhat unique treasures. But I'll let the stories get into those specifics.
Our first is part of the Cadance of Cloudsdale series - not by primary author Skywriter but a guest side story from the similarly venerated Georg. While reading the main series is useful, it isn't required and the story does stand on its own.
Oh, right, the story. That'd be More Precious Than Silver or Gold.
Piro is not a great dragon - she is a weak one. Very weak. Out of balance, with barely a hoard to her name, she soars along the windy coast. Her goal is a great treasure: one more precious than silver or gold and unclaimed by another dragon. Add it to her hoard and it could return her to strength. So she arrives at the half-completed fortress that guards the treasure. And penetrating the walls, she finds it is not gold. Not silver. It is a foal. A tiny pink alicorn.
For starters, just look at the friggin' pedigree of this story. Georg, writing a story based off Skywriter, with cover art by Harwick. Not many stories can boast that kind of a who's who. (And that's without mentioning the huge names in the editor credits!) The whole thing just screams quality, and it lives up to it.
The opening half is just wonderful environmental story and character-building: the swooping pass over the coast by Piro, the slow entry into the fortress, the building tension and greed... Mm. It's art. The whole thing's just beautiful. Then the dragon arrives to see the foal Cadance, and it all shifts into fairy tale mode. All the phrasings and dialogues are just a slight bit awkward - not reading how a person would speak, because these aren't people. They're legends. They're myths and parables, acting out a play. That little awkwardness is needed because it separates them from the real, and that makes the story as a whole flow better.
And 'fairy tale' is really the way to describe the story as a whole. It feels a story retold generations later about Cadance's origins, floating just outside the real. This is easily one of the best Cadance origin stories out there.
The other today lacks quite the same stunning pedigree and features a much less impressive dragon, but it still holds up in quality. The Youngest Dragon comes to us from Lightwavers, an author with a very interesting library. They published their first story on 2 August 2017, released 18 stories in the next year, and then just abruptly stopped. (I always find that kind of dynamic fascinating for some reason.)
But to focus on the story:
Rarity is on vacation in the 'lovely' town of Gold Springs. She stops by a gem seller's to pick up a little something for Spike. There's a brief haggle, she pays, he gives her the change, and there's a dragon in it. A tiny, minuscule dragon the size of a sparrow. And it's clinging fiercely to a 50-bit coin. Rarity's 50-bit coin. So now she's stuck with it.
Far less dramatic than the last one, this story falls snugly into 'cute slice of life with a few twists'. There's no high drama, no eloquent speeches. Just Rarity and her sudden micro-dragon companion. And it falls right into the niche I usually describe as 'comfy'. There's a little mystery about the tiny dragon's origin - mostly at the very end, where it's resolved soon after - but the majority is just Rarity And Adorable Chirping Dragon.
Honestly I don't have a ton more to say about it beyond that - it's not a complex story. But it's a nice one. A 'relax with a bit of popcorn' story. It won't shake the world but it's comfortable and makes me smile and really? That's all it needs to do.
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Sometimes, an uncomplicated, fun, comfy story is exactly what you need. I'll have to give that a read!
And yes, More Precious etc. is heck of a story. Pretty much anything to do with "Cadance of Cloudsdale" is.