My Finished Favorites (75-51)

All right, no fanfare for this one. Back to the list!

TL;DR: Read Life is a Lemon, Of Challenges and Kisses, This Isn't My House!, The Diary of an Evil Pony, There, They're, The Numbers Don't Lie, Nothing I Wouldn't Do For You, and maybe the first ten chapters or so of Millenium Wake.

75. Why Am I Pinkie Pie?
This was a cool little fic about a guy who gets switched with Pinkie Pie. The rest of them travel out to find a way to switch them back. There's... some part where he meets Pinkie Pie in his body? Or maybe it was they start to fight over control. Don't quite remember, but it's a fun trip, regardless.

74. Let's Find You a Date!
Oh, look, another shipfic about a practice date turning into a full date. Apparently, I quite like that idea in a story. :P This one is fun, though it involves bars, which is whatever. Oh, and it's RariTwi, if that's your thing. (Lookin' at you, Monochromatic!) :P

73. The Haunting in Ponyville
Lyra and Bon-Bon move into a house, but it might just be haunted! Oh noez! Spoilers: I don't... think it was actually haunted. I don't remember. I seem to remember it being some weirder twist. Still, though, it's a good one if you like wacky Lyra antics.

72. Tooth and Nail
Oh, hey! This is that one fic where Celestia wakes up in an insane asylum, and she... wait, no, it's not. XD This is the one where she gets warped onto Earth, and she has to figure out how to survive without her magic and whatnot. You know, there are lots of humans in Equestria stories, but there aren't nearly enough ponies on Earth fics for my liking. Okay, so she's a human in this one, but still. (Anybody got any good recs for that? My absolute favorite of the genre, where no mare has gone before, died not long after it started.)

71. The Mailmare
This one is... remarkably like "Hostile Takeover," actually, only with Derpy instead of Fluttershy, so shift the tone from "adorably cute" to "adorably goofy" appropriately.

70. Life is a Lemon
This is the most touching story I've read about... a pony who thinks she's a lemon. Okay, it's probably alone in that category, but still, it's way more touching than a premise like that deserves to be! If anything, you've got to read it just to see what the heck I'm talking about!

69. Role Reversal
In this story, Twilight and Spike reverse... roles. Yup, pretty much what it says on the box. From what I recall, it falls a bit on the indulgent side, where everything is great for Spike now that he's an adult and friends with the mane 5. And I seem to remember it being a bit typo-y, though that may be me mixing it up with "The Dragon Who Would be Pony."

68. Of Challenges and Kisses
Aww... "Of Challenges and Kisses." It's a Featherweight-Scootaloo shipfic, which I haven't read a whole lot of but I'm sure exists in plenty. It's about... a challenge... to get a kiss. Dangit, fic writers, why do you have to use such on-the-nose titles?! So... yeah. If you like cute fics like these, check it out. (Oh, and it apparently has a sequel I never read, but it's only one chapter long and two years waiting for an update.)

67. Dance of the Rainbow
This fic is... actually really hard to describe, now that I think about it. It had a really weird update schedule back when I was reading it. It's about... Rainbow Dash trying to organize a dance in the Sweet Apples Acre barn, but she refuses to have any of her friends there. So they sneak in anyway, and it turns out... [SPOILERS] she's actually like a duchess or something? I honestly don't remember. It was just kind of an odd twist ending that didn't amount to too much. Still, there was this interesting cat-and-mouse in the body of it.

66. This Isn't My House!
This one I refuse to spoil. Go read it. It's about a guy whose house keeps being replaced by rooms owned by Equestrians. Seriously, go read it. Words cannot do it justice.

65. Ponies Explaining Ponies
More straightforward titles. This one's about ponies explaining various aspects of pony life. Here's the chapter title list: "Fluttershy and Wingboners," "Applejack and Farm Animals," "Rainbow Dash and Social Politics," "Rarity and Fashion," and "Twilight and Princess Stuff." If that interests you, give it a shot. It's just over 5K words, so it's an easy read.

64. Through the Looking-glass and What Pinkie Found There
This is a companion fic to The Sisters Doo, so if you haven't read that, you absolutely must, must, must read that first. It's on my Grand High Classics list. But trying to explain this fic without you having read that fic would be pointless, so... just go read that.

63. Common Ground
I... do not remember this fic. I think it's kinda like Winds of Change, only with a rogue changeling instead of Rainbow Dash? It's got like a gazillion chapters, so I'll have to come back and read it more carefully some time.

62. The Gemmed Satyr
I already talked about this one in reference to its prequel, The Sweetest Gem. My review was pretty straightforward:

"The Gemmed Satyr" is pretty okay (though it's no "Green")

So there you go.

61. Pinkie Pie Goes on a Diet
Apparently this is "Unoriginal Titles" edition here on "Finished Favorites." It's about Pinkie Pie going on a diet, and it's quite funny. I was about to type "absolutely hysterical," but... eh, not really? It's not A Slice of Life, exactly, but it does merit a few chuckles here and there. The ending in particular is pretty fun, but I won't spoil it.

60. The Diary of an Evil Pony
Oh, this one is great. It casts Fleur de Lis as a sort of femme fatale type who dates rich stallions in order to mooch of them and steal their stuff. Okay, I'll admit, the way it shakes out is pretty boilerplate: she eventually falls in love with him, wants to abandon him because she feels she's not good enough for him, but he takes her back in anyway. Seriously, I don't even need to spoiler that. You all know how this goes. Still, the writing's great and the character is fascinating, so definitely check this one out.

59. There, They're
I have a particular fascination with the topics of literacy and grammar. Grammar's the obvious one, 'cuz I'm an editor and all, but literacy's a little odd. I've always been able to (and loved) reading every since I was little. For someone to not even have the capacity to read... it completely blows my mind. That's why The Twilight Hours is one of my favorite fics on the site, along with another fic that I apparently didn't put in any of my libraries like an idiot. It's about Twilight making herself illiterate to protect herself from a memetic virus that attacks people via text. (EDIT: Found it! It's Words Failed Her.) Which is a pretty similar concept to "There, They're," actually, to segue back to the actual topic of this review, only without the, er, attacking part. Or the "making herself illiterate" part. But it does have a memetic virus thing! Shut up, moving on.

58. Pinkie Teaches Physics and Stuff Happens
... I'm not even gonna comment on this one. Basically, if you liked the Alternate End with Pinkie Logic in "It's Impossible!", you'll like this. (But it's different enough that I totally didn't plagiarize it, honest.)

57. Cheating Death
Why do I still have this on my list? It's not even that good. It's about this guy who cheats death (...dangit) and slips into Equestria. But he doesn't even make out of the Everfree Forest before [SPOILERS] he's killed by a manticore attacking Fluttershy. I think at that point, Death gives him another out because he's such a good-hearted soul? Seriously, it's awful. Don't bother.

56. The Numbers Don't Lie
Everyone has a number over their head representing how many times they've lied. The only pony with a 0 is Twilight Sparkle herself. It's... basically her freaking out that everyone around her isn't a perfectly pure paragon of honesty like she is. B-but it's a way better fic than I make it sound! It's by SS&E, who has basically two speeds: "nuanced genius" and "make it rain crackfics!", and this one's in the first category. I promise.

55. En Fuego
(Incorrect) Spanish for "on fire," in case you were wondering. This story is about... well, do you remember when Twilight's mane turned into cartoon fire in "Feeling Pinkie Keen?" Well, she's afraid of that happening again and setting fire to something important. (Clearly, she needs to read Chuubo's Magical Wish-Granting Engine.) :P It's pretty short, so I'd say take a few minutes out of your day and check it out. It's a pretty good fic, but it's not setting the world on fire. (...No pun intended.)

54. Fun With Changelings
This one's about Vinyl Scratch adopting a changeling named Wubsy, and she (and Octavia) try to keep it safe from the townsfolk . That's... about it, actually. I have no opinion on this fic.

53. The Sky is Falling
This one is a really neat fic about Rainbow Dash trying to woo Twilight Sparkle. Yup, another TwiDash. I actually don't have any specific preferences toward shipping, but since Twilight is my favorite character of the mane 6, I tend to read a lot of stuff with her in it. Anyways, "The Sky is Falling" is pretty good, but nothing too out there.

52. Millenium Wake
Oh, "Millenium Wake." You were doing so well. You started with a fascinating premise: Rarity falls into a magic sleep and wakes up one thousand years later to find everyone she knew and loved dead and a bizarre dystopia replacing her home. You had psychotic holograms, dark imagery, and strange creatures. But then you brought in the human character (whom I won't spoil), and your side plots stopped making sense, and then you got a whole bunch of the MacGuffins at once, and then the author gave up and you had to have someone else take over... This had so much promise, but it just started falling apart at the end. Otherwise I would have put it in the GHC. Also, don't look at the picture for the story, because it spoils... everything, basically.

51. Nothing I Wouldn't Do For You
This is a really cool shipping fic. Let's call it Rashomon-esque. It tells the same story, but from the perspectives of its main characters (Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity), one to each chapter. You've gotta check this one out, if only for the novelty of it.

So there you go, another 25 hammered out. But having talked about these, I am just aching to do the Grand High Classics when I'm done with this set. But I promise, I'll get to those in time.