Fic recs, November 29th · 3:40pm Nov 29th, 2014
Loganberry is turning out to be quite the mover and shaker. He writes, he reads fic, and now he reviews! Yes, he’s the head of Louder Yay, and I rather like his review style, so check him out. :D
This just in: Fimfiction revealed to be only 11% porn!
There She Is!! I of course mean Sonata.
Hey, remember how the last journal was all C's? Hahahaha, hold onto your butts.
H: 3 R: 1 C: 2 V: 0 N: 0
Appletheosis by DuncanR
Genre: Philosophical
After losing track of Apple Bloom in the Everfree Forest, Applejack meets a serpent. (Not to be confused with The Assumption of Applejack, or Appletheosis by Blue Print, which was published at the same time the writeoff which spawned this story happened.) This is a lot of things, mostly a Biblical crossover, but it also includes references to various other religious traditions as well as G1. (That last part is perhaps one of the most deliciously surreal bits of it.) It is in some ways a deconstruction of the futility of ascribing to ponies the societal constructions unique to humankind, yet it makes this statement while doing just that, and pulling it off. (You haven’t lived until you see Pinkie get into a theological debate when she doesn’t even know what theology is.) And of course, it’s a good character piece, funny and even touching at times, and helped quite a lot by not being a one-way street: as the ponies try to figure out the snake, he's also trying to figure them out. The writing is good, aside from consistent it’s/its confusion and some talking heads. This is a pretty thrilling ride that only gets better as it goes, and it was a pleasure to lose to it all those writeoffs ago. :)
Highly Recommended
Shipping Goggles by AbsoluteAnonymous
Reading by TheLostNarrator, et. al.
Reading by BleedingRaindrops
Genre: Meta
Rarity enjoys shipping her friends, much to their dismay. This story would have been a very different creature if written by someone other than AbsAnon, but it’s obvious from the details of how shippers approach their subject that the story is meant to lovingly lampoon the genre, even as the characters spout very logical arguments against shipping. I can take a joke at my own expense, and this one is utterly hilarious. I should probably say that the writing has some season one-era issues, mostly LUS, but I really don’t care. I adored this from start to finish.
Highly Recommended
Collaborators by Baal Bunny
Reading by DeftFunk, Scribbler and Illya Leonov
Genre: Comedy
Ahuizotl enacts his greatest scheme to defeat Daring Do: suing her for libel. This is a hilarious story from start to finish, and it’s no wonder it came in second in the most recent writeoff (it was actually my favorite entry). I don’t have a lot to say, really. It’s a great behind the scenes look at how Daring and Ahuizotl might interact in the real world. It’s got a fantastic premise and plays it to the hilt. The writing is excellent (and the overall structure is improved from the writeoff), and you won’t see the ending coming. Baal Bunny has certainly made a splash. (Not surprising, since he's actually AugieDog.)
Highly Recommended
Burning Bridges by NinesTempest
Genre: Romance/Drama
Applejack and Rainbow Dash are gearing up to let their friends know they’ve been dating, but all that is brought to a halt when Applejack’s mother comes back to Ponyville on short notice. Okay, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way: this has a bunch of typos, Applejack says “ah”, and you’ll have to accept the relationship from the get-go. That said, it’s not hard to. It takes a lot to make me like AppleDash, and this story is a perfect example of how to do it. You’ve got thick, delicious character building. Nines demonstrates that Applejack can be a convincing emotional wreck even when her parents are alive. The interpersonal drama is ratcheted up to ten as Applejack deals with how she should act toward a mother absent her whole life. Tropes are brushed against but allowed to play out on the characters’ own terms, instead of what the reader expects. AJ’s mom is a hoot. Most especially, the affirmation of their affection toward the end of the story is really convincing in ways I don’t expect from shipfics. For a story invalidated by season three canon, this holds up really well, and is definitely worth the read.
Recommended
Dash’s Date With Destiny by theworstwriter
Genre: Slice of Death
Rainbow Dash meets a stallion, and has to catch a train. As if I needed more reading projects, I have taken it upon myself to not only read and review the stories in the writeoff group, but to actually hunt down and add all the old entries I can find. (You'll have noticed if you've got notifications turned on for that group.) So here’s one from the very first contest. It’s pretty easy to tell from the outset that “Dash is dead” is what’s going on. That’s not the point, however. This is a story about Rainbow Dash being awesome. It helps that she’s characterized really well. (“She was doomed. Worse, she was going to lose.”) The writing isn’t the most memorable I’ve ever seen, but this will definitely be worth the read.
Recommended for Rainbow Dash Fans
Snowy Night by MariusIoannesP
Reading by Doctor Cobra
Reading by Scribbler, et. al.
Genre: Wish-Fulfillment
Luna makes a wish to see an old friend who’d she’d wronged, one last time. A sequel to the animation by Silly Filly Studios meant to insert Snowdrop into the Eternal Night and give Luna some closure. This is very nakedly about giving Luna closure, the sort of story written by an author who can’t bear to see a character suffer (even if he does go for the bittersweet ending rather than the full happy one). It’s an open ploy for feels without any conflict or real character-building. With that said, I think the reason why I never fully panned the animation is that the idea of a pony who invented snowflakes is clever world-building that shows an understanding of the way Equestria works. An extension of that idea, then, is… well, it’s a point in the story’s favor. But overall, I wouldn’t recommend this to a wide audience, it’s pretty low-totem-pole fare.
Recommended Only If You Really Liked Snowdrop
And on an entirely unrelated note, I had a ridiculous bit of cognitive dissonance just now. It’s a very weird thing to be browsing G3 pages on My Little Wiki, lamenting the girliness and general undesirability of that generation, only to close the tab, go to the reading of this story, see the image and go, “All right, now it’s time for real ponies!”
Wow, three H's? Did you luck out or what? *RiL grows*
Wait, wasn't there one R in the mix, too?
If you haven't read it, give Shipping Sickness by Skywriter a shot. It's very silly in about the same fashion as Shipping Goggles. Though much more absurd.
2622960
Shshshshhhhh...
2622964
I will be! (I'm gearing up for a Skywriter edition, after all.)
I just suddenly realized that you might quite like my story Applied Starlight, since it has a lot to do with previous-generation weirdness.
I usually wouldn't so blatantly self-promote like this, but I just had an "Aha!" moment when I read that quote.
Well, thank you for reviewing my story "Snowy Night" at least. I've always wanted someone to review my story.
You and I clearly have a difference of opinion on what I was trying to do in my story. 
Love you <3
2622984
YUSSSSSSŠ!
2623083
I'm working on writing a Grand Unified Theory of MLP. Spike will be central to this. In the meantime, you've convinced me to move that up. :B
2623095
Yeah, I'm not terribly enthused about Snowdrop. It's not a bad story, I just didn't find it too interesting. :) Happens.
I... find this very hard to believe, even when I have the evidence in front of me. Talk about the squeaky wheel...
PP why.
Really like the selection today, especially the criminally underrated DuncanR. Read the writeoff version of Appletheosis, and it struck me for two reasons. First, how he managed to talk about such a hot-button issue as RL religion interjecting itself into Equestria. He accomplished this in part because of the second reason, that "religion" was not one specific RL counterpart but moreso Religion the concept, with many many elements taken from a broad spectrum of past and present religions, blended together deliciously. Particularly when originally drafted under time constraints, it was very impressive to see that creativity applied toward a tasteful assessment of the topic.
2623463
That meme is so funny right now Pav omg
And you're totally right.
PP it is very difficult to browse through your reviews when both of my hands are engaged in butt-holding D: I have to scroll with my nose.
2623463
I'm not surprised it's a low percentage by wordcount (IIRC it's about 50/50 by raw number of stories). Applejinx notwithstanding, it's a rare Mature/Sex story that can carry itself beyond a one-shot. Non-mature content dominates the longfics.
2623361 Wait a minute! You are the guy who wrote that story about Snowdrop and Nyx making out that I thought was too silly!
Eh, for my money, I found "Appletheosis" incredibly boring. I couldn't get myself to care about any of the characters. But to each his own.
2623559
Just don't sniff your hands afterward. :B
2623563
Yes indeed! :D
2623361 Was Spike in Tales? I haven't watched it properly and I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't. It's too bad, really.
2623559
No; check the counts in the pictures. Either way gives similar numbers.
2623859
No, so three gens is the record, methinks. (Of course, G3.5 is technically still G3.)
2623973
Hm.
Tried to dig a little deeper into this but I can't get the story/wordcount statistics to show up in the upper right like in PP's screenshot. Hey 2623996, how'd you do that?
2622984 Shipping Sickness is my all-time favorite comedy on this site.
2624218
knighty did it :B
2624857
Ah, that's why I couldn't find it either. I've been wanting to know that statistic for a while. I hope showing the storycount and wordcount like that will be added in some later update to fimfiction.
2624857
I'm going to ask on behalf of 2623973 and 2625257 (who have gone to vast amounts of effort to scrape the site to find these things out), myself, and other stats geeks: would you be willing to run some basic category searches and report the # of stories and wordcount, to take a deeper snapshot of statistics for published stories on the site? This may literally be the first time anyone's surveyed published stories by age bracket. This is a golden opportunity to get better data about tag and category use, see what percentage of site stories/words are completed vs canceled vs ongoing, and answer burning questions like "Has SS&E literally written 1% of all words on the site?" (Prediction: No, but I wanna see how close he gets.)
2623973
This continued to bug me, but I figured it out. I had a wire crossed in my head; I was remembering that knighty cited that about 50% of users had View Mature turned on.
2625343
Man I'd love that data to be apart of the API.
But I may be able to answer the SS&E question.
Sorting the July Author data by wordcount, SS&E and Imploding Colon, his alt (he may have more I don't know) have a combined wordcount of 3791602 words. So in total, 0.37% of the words on the site.
2625370
SS&E has a list of alts on the right side of his user page, which is probably incomplete, because he's actually an artificial intelligence releasing stories 24/7 at the known maximum human typing rate.
2625478
Alright, with those alts, he's up to 4093122 words, so .40% of the words on FiMfiction. At least as of July.
One of my irrational fears is that someday I'm going to come across an amazing fanfic that I consider a masterpiece, only to discover it was actually written by software.
Theoretically it might be possible to build software that will read in all of the fanfic on FiMfiction and output a story based on the collected data. There's a lot of very smart people in this fandom that I half wonder if there will be someone with the computational know-how to write such a program.We already have newspapers today that run software written articles, it's possible that software will get better and better to the point it can write good stories.
Sorry to hijack your blog post, Present Perfect.
2625343
lol I dunno
I think the context of those images was "coming soon". But don't quote me.
2625567 One scrapped idea for my master's was to do exactly that – publish a handful of computer-generated fics through dummy accounts based on a number of parameters (Like, say, populating the database with just the top-1000 fics, feature box entries, etc.), and then study the correlation between their reception. Sadly, I abandoned the idea on an early stage, mainly due to how unreliable this data would be.