Fic recs, July 30th! · 8:21pm Jul 30th, 2018
TheJediMasterEd turned me on to a very good blog by Heartshine about childhood psychology and the ways it can influence character building. This is the kind of stuff writers need to know! Nyronus also wrote a great blog about embracing success, which is more useful if you've got low self-esteem (like me). And Estee has an excellent breakdown of the HiE genre and why it generally doesn't work.
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but it's possible you've forgotten in the last year: VisualPony started a reading of iisaw's The Twilight Enigma, and he's now continuing it! Or else releasing one chapter per year. :B
Winged T. Spears is now Ichabod Creep! He's sticking with creepypasta readings from now on, but he had one last pony fic: The Descendant's The Song of Syhlex! Thanks for the pony reads, Ichabod! :)
Chromosome himself informed me that the third part of the White Box animatic actually exists. It's done! :D Hurrah!
Illya Leonov's latest reading is Esle Ynopemos's Fluttershy shortfic known as Title! Emogak has done a reading of Holy's Worn Leather! And my own latest entry is Carabas' Terra Incognita!
You can really tell it's been weeks since I posted last. Every time I screw up, I just worry about how many people have stopped caring. x.x Hopefully the high grade of stories I read this time -- and the way-long review of the audiobook I just finished -- will make up for the silence. Please love me. D:
H: 3 R: 2 C: 3 V: 0 N: 0
Chuckling Over My Cheery-O's by chrumsum (formerly The Maverick, formerly Chromosome)
Genre: Comedy
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash have an existential crisis over breakfast.
Did you guys realize Chromosome is back? (If you read the news on this blogpost, maybe...) He even posted a new chapter to his excellent story Anno Domini! And… this thing. Which I am responsible for. And proofread. :V It's pretty damned hilarious, with a heaping helping of lush imagery and pure philosophy. You might think this is a lot of things, but you would be wrong unless you think it's pure fucking gold, because it is. Read it, you will get a major kick out of the goings-on.
Highly Recommended
Chicken Little by Zyrian
Genre: Dark Comedy
Sunset Shimmer stands trial for the death of a classmate.
As the story goes, Zyrian was dared (or something) to write a fic about Sunset killing a homeless person. So we have this. The punchline is a real groaner, but a certain class of fic reader will get a real kick out of the story.
Recommended for Terrible People
Without Another Word by Jack of a Few Trades
Genre: Sad
It's been years since Grand Pear left for Vanhoover. He should be over it by now.
Put simply, this is an excellently written story about Grand Pear getting news of his daughter's death and not dealing with it. Not well, anyway. The drama and character work are superb, absolutely top-notch, wringing every last drop of angst potential from one of the best tragic characters in the show. If you like stories about fallible people making mistakes, you really can't go wrong with this one.
Highly Recommended
Sundowner Season by Cherax
Genre: Emotional
Rarity travels north and tries to forget.
This is a real artsy-fartsy story, which — don't get me wrong — is something Cherax does well. But I rather clocked out in the first chapter, when Rarity meets an OC who peppers her speech with swear words and windbags at length about art and being underappreciated and how 'home' is a trap, and who presents Equestrian society as rather entirely like our own. It was very on-the-nose, is what I'm saying. But the imagery work is fantastic; that and the good journal-writing are definitely what you should come here for, not to mention this does an excellent job of communicating Rarity's ennui. Also, it's definitely set post-RariJack. The narrative does meander so, however, and I often found myself lost by it more than lost in it. There's a little tiny mystery that kept me going through the whole thing, at least, but it ends in a pleasant pile of headcanon. The journey is definitely worth it.
Recommended
Sandbox by Summer Dancer
Genre: Slice of Life
The last thing Sunset needs right now is to be foalsitting some brat.
Do you want to read three thousand words of Sunset Shimmer being mean to filly Twilight? You're goddamn right you do. This is great, in many ways I cannot fully articulate. At the very least, there's far more going on than Sunset corrupting an innocent filly.
Highly Recommended
Bat Ponies Aren't Real by Ice Star
Genre: Headcanon Dump
Luna would know.
Do you guys understand what a feat it is to get me to read a story the day it comes out? You need to write something this promising. :V And, well, okay, it didn't quite live up to the ridiculousness I was hoping for, not being a comedy and all. Cadence is written really oddly, and while it starts building up to some humor early on, this is just Luna dumping some headcanon that is, at once, way out there and perfectly reasonable. Not really what I was hoping for, but not offensive.
Recommended If You Want the TRUTH
Mongolian Horse Friction by Admiral Biscuit
Genre: 2P HiE Random Comedy
Is it too much to ask to get stoned in Equestria?
...Or you could publish something whose conception I was present at a convention for. <.< There is no explaining this fic succinctly, I'm sure Biscuit will have a blog at the end doing that job for me. In the best tradition of Biscuit's HiE fics, this is a good look at Equestrian culture (specifically, drug culture), though for considerably funnier reasons than usual. It's also got the lowest ratio of sexual content to nudity I think I have ever seen; well done. Not amazing, but worth it if you really want to see a human struggling to get high in pony world.
Recommended If You Like Drug Humor
Mantles by Ponky
Read by Fimfiction
Genre: Dark Superhero Action
When Apple Bloom discovers the world outside of Ponyville has changed for the worst, she decides something has to be done. And what a farm girl from the backwoods can't do, Mare Do Well certainly could…
Imagine my surprise and confusion when I went to this story and found I had the first eleven chapters read. I have to assume I was following it — maybe even pre-read it for EQD? — up until the point when Ponky disappeared, when it fell out of my recollection. But it was fun to get back into, certainly; superhero fics are something we have a distinct lack of. And Mantles is… Well, I'm of a few minds about it.
If this story does anything well, it's building up the origin and legend of Mare Do Well. Granted, it takes a good eight chapters before Apple Bloom ever dons the cowl, but in that time, we're given ample introduction to how grimdark the world has gotten in the last twenty years, why Apple Bloom would make a good costumed vigilante — she's kept up with her karate lessons since her try-everything phase in Call of the Cutie, plus she's apparently good at voice mimicry, which is important for maintaining a secret identity — and then a very morbid reason why she needs to be one. It's the legend that really drives this, how Mare Do Well goes from near-forgotten relic of Ponyville's past to urban legend on the mean streets of Canterlot to a shining symbol of hope for a downtrodden people. Apple Bloom is never really able to deal with that, which is great.
And of course, if you want pony superheroes, you will get them in spades here. Mare Do Well inspires a number of other ponies (and a zebra!) to take up mantles of their own, and they end up forming a super-team by the end. :D Their powers and motifs are varied, from Harness's "bloody executioner" motif and well-trained (I think) physical abilities, to Spritemare's "got bit by a radioactive Parasprite" origin and wings-plus-strength-plus-duplication skill set. A couple of them are even canon characters, the reveals of which are lots of fun. Spritemare was definitely my favorite, for a number of reasons, not least of which is this story's excellent portrayal of her second- and third-generation immigrant family.
The plot, then, involves Apple Bloom going to Canterlot for art college, this of course having been started back in season two, long before we knew what her canon cutie mark would be. (On that note, it's very interesting watching this go from "solidly season two" to "solidly season five" after Ponky picks it back up post-hiatus.) There, she meets up with Sweetie Belle, who helps her adjust to the changes that have taken place in literally everywhere but Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle, you see, is now the Princess of Dusk, and rumor has it she sent both Celestia and Luna to the moon before taking over Equestria and sending it to the dogs. Gangs rule the streets and crime is everywhere, up to and including murder. Ponyville, meanwhile, has been cut off from the rest of the country, and is technically no longer in Equestria. Mail leaving Canterlot is checked, and trains have been ordered not to let ponies off at Ponyville station, for all that they still pick them up.
Oh yeah, and Pinkie Pie is dead. And Zecora. And Bon-Bon. And even Derpy. And while I kind of felt after the third reveal that the author was just trying to torture Apple Bloom by that point, all but the final death on that list is actually plot important.
If that sounds like a lot to take in all at once… yeah, it absolutely is. The things said about Twilight are true, even, and have some very interesting if not necessarily satisfying motives, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The one thing I want to say about all the grim darkness is that, other than a few on-screen murders, it's not overbearing, and, more importantly, the spirit of Equestria yet persists. A late scene where Ponyville is being invaded by an army shows that its heart lives on after the invasion is stopped and the invaders are immediately forgiven by the ponies they were just holding captive. Heck, you don't even need to wait that long: we're treated early on to an entire song on the train to Canterlot, a very pony thing that sets up the Canterlot reveal to be a major shock by comparison.
This brings me to the writing, which is, at its very worst, workmanlike, just getting us through the details of what we need to know. But more often, it's quite good, building atmosphere and tension to go along with the darkness. More than one action scene is well-paced and exciting. The overall pacing is comic booky, which is to say, after that initial slow build, it knows what parts to leave in and which to gloss over.
The story also does a really good thing that I've noticed is a storytelling technique in Steven Universe. That show involves a lot of sequences of a very childish thirteen-year-old going into space and fighting monsters and aliens, often with near-disastrous results. And whenever one of those space-fight arcs is finished, we have a solid two episodes, minimum, of the characters sitting around, just talking about their feelings. When I first noticed the pattern, it annoyed me, because the downtime episodes are never as exciting or lore-packed as the action episodes. But then it occurred to me, this is about catharsis; the characters need to sit down and get their feelings out so they can cope with what's just happened, because no one's really equipped to go through that kind of thing. It's like Whedon's line about telling a joke: it helps with the trauma.
Mantles does the same thing, making sure the characters have time to sit down and talk about what's happened with each other. It doesn't always help — they don't have all the answers, and sometimes things come up that prevent them from talking all the way through a problem — but it's a good idea nevertheless. Mare Do Well and Razorwing may be awesome superheroes, but they're still ponies, and ponies don't deal too well with, say, finding out a gang is trafficking ponies, or watching someone they were just fighting die in front of them. I really appreciated the downtime.
So let's talk about things I didn't appreciate: the romance. There's no Romance tag on this fic, and though I can't give it too much crap because Fluttermac, it would have been nice if it had stayed away from the topic altogether. We're introduced to an OC early on, Harper Heartstrings, Lyra's son, who turns out to be sweet on Apple Bloom. Not to give too much away, but since he's her reason to don the cape, she ends up being way angsty about "what could have been" when she could have just been avenging a friend, you know? And then Razorwing crushes on her when they start working together. And then she crushes on Harness, which I was less irked by because he's one of those canon characters I won't reveal, but still, come on. Razorwing and Spritemare even flirt during an operation. Nothing comes of any of it, but, Harness aside, the guys are all pretty skeevy, with Razorwing in particular just not knowing how to talk to mares. c.c It was gross.
The other thing that really bugged me: Applejack. When we're introduced to her at the start of the story, she's living alone in a one-story house and eating apple peels, the farm being overseen by Big Mac and Fluttershy. It's never really explained why she's not living on the farm, and certainly not why she's living in such squalor. She's central to Apple Bloom's character arc, and has a very important role right near the end of the story, but as far as I can tell — and again, I'm not giving anything away — everything that happened is the fault of her going out of character at exactly the worst time possible. I did not like that.
Which brings me to what might be the nail in the coffin for some. Mantles has one of if not the worst endings I have ever read in a fanfic. Like, that wasn't poorly written all the way through. It's unspeakably unsatisfying. It was almost enough to get me to flip my vote. The story just runs out of gas and goes, "Okay, I guess that's it, everything's fine now" after so much buildup. The only saving grace is that it's maybe a thousand words out of a story that's over a hundred thousand long. But it's bad enough that it seriously taints the journey taken to reach it.
I could mention a few other things, like the referential jokes that suddenly make an appearance near the end, or how some of the pony names are just downright terrible. Though I do have to add, this not only passes the Zecora Test, it short-circuits it completely; that was a trip. Mantles is, therefore, the Mare Do Well action adventure you maybe always wanted, with a bad ending. It's probably worth the trip, though, and that's what I'm keeping in mind here.
Recommended
I remember being very frustrated by Mantles. We had an epic start to an epic concept that was showing all the right signs of being as perfect a gritty superhero flick as you could reasonably expect, and then... we get the ending. After I complained about it in review form, Ponky showed up to admit that he’d done that because he’d gotten tired of the project. Which I can kinda-sorta understand, but dude, if a project has grown stale, put it on hiatus. At least that way you might rediscover your fascination with it in a few years and come back to finish it proper. And yeah, I’ll admit, seeing a story unfinished is a downer, but slapping on such a cheap ending is arguably worse.
Still, if you ignore the ending, Mantles was an awesome piece of fiction overall.
4910633
That all makes sense, and your last line sums it up perfectly.
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Suddenly... I do.
4910663
I told you :V
Hey, I helped out on 2 of these stories! Both the Grand Pear one and the Sunset Shimmer one.
Ah, "Sundowner Season." I had exactly the same reaction as you. That mare on the train just annoyed me more than anything else, and the conversation with her dragged on way too long. Though the writing itself was rather good, and that would bring it up to a "recommend" for me, too, but I never felt I had a good handle on the character motivations that even caused the story to happen at all. So we're in the minority. As to the journal format, I both found it effective and not. It definitely comes across as sounding authentic. It just can't decide what kind of journal it is. It changes from being for Rarity's eyes only, to addressing whoever might read it in the future, to Applejack, and there's no corresponding change in the narrative focus to mirror that and validate why it's being done that way. So either it's left as an exercise for the reader and it just went over my head, or the author wasn't paying attention.
4910708
Freakin' hilarious!
“Is...Is it alright if I...hold your hoof?” Sunset looked down at Twilight’s big, pleading eyes, filled with hope and vulnerability. It was the most heartbreaking face Sunset had ever seen.
“No.”
Totally lost my shit at that point!
hey dang, glad you liked the mistake you helped give birth to. such a weird fucking story and so far outside my comfort zone as a writer. personally it didnt feel funny as I was writing it bar a few lines, so it's a bit surreal that it went over ok.
In my defense, I was paid to write Chicken Little