Pony Stories 173

So many Most Dangerous Game contest stories. I’m only a half-dozen in and already feeling a bit overwhelmed. The good news is there have been a few pretty good ones, at least one really good one, and only two not-so-good ones. So the quality seems to be holding at a good level. Which is good since I haven’t even gotten to my favorite authors on the list yet.

Be Strong Now by Closer-To-The-Sun

Sweet story, a little sad. Maybe more than a little. It’s a letter from Applejack’s father to her, written soon after she was born. Plenty sentimental. Decent writing, but nothing jaw-dropping.

Ditz and Spitz: Origin of Derpy by Poinger

This is a backstory of Ditzy story. I liked Sisters Do better, but this was still good. Some fairly heavy feels in here, some a bit bluntly executed. No real lightness or comedy. I’d recommend this for Ditzy fans and anyone who doesn’t mind somewhat heavy-handed emotion-tugging. I’m starting to really like Spitfire as a character. Might need to look up more wonderbolt fan fiction.

A Bolder Note Than This by Headless

Another story that left me wanting more. This gives a good emotional moment, but without any real context. So more of less it is just heart-tugging for its own sake. With more build-up and character development this would be an amazing story. As it is, it’s just a solid scene.

First Week of Winter by Relaxing Dragon

This had way too much crammed into it. This was a good story that was trying too hard. Had some decent horror moments, but just isolated ones that didn’t really connect. This was a mix of My Little Pony, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the movie The Mouth Of Madness. Too much going on. The Thing mixed with pony might be good, though that level of paranoia in MLP is a hard sell. Mouth of Madness with pony could work pretty well. Both together is just muddled.

There were a lot of boring parts and the pacing was poor. It kept building up something, had a big reveal scene, then more dull business as usual scenes. The built-up moments had no real impact and we got no afterward reactions. I wouldn’t call this a great story and the mane six aren’t written all that well. It’s hard to believe they would distrust each other so easily considering that in the middle of a changeling invasion the words ‘real me! real me!’ is considered a good enough proof of identity.

I managed to get all the way to the end of this story, but for about half of the story I really didn’t care what happened. I pretty much lost all interest in what happens to the characters when Rainbow Dash, element of loyalty, kills one of the other characters because she’s scared that pony might be a monster. Like not even with good reason, it’s just a paranoid fear reaction. At that point all I wanted was to see if the author puts a reset button at the end.

This story was basically just a failure of execution. Which is better by far than a failure of concept. At least the author had ambition, even if it was relying too heavily on other people’s stories. If you want some pony lovecraftian themed horror, you might want to give this a shot.

Mission: Implausible by JohnPerry

Between Knife in the Dark, the fan animation of Octavia fighting changelings, and this story, I’m liking the badass ninja Octavia. This was a very fun story. Octavia and Vinyl Scratch as secret agents taking down a bakery cartel. It felt like pony through and through and had the pair as friends and nothing more. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

You Only Live Twice by JohnPerry

Sequel to previous. The bit referencing the Colbert Report seemed a bit out of place. I didn’t think it fits with MLP all that well. Just too modern and pop culture referential. I didn’t like this one as much as the first story in the series. It had too much modern spy movie and not enough pony. This was more of a very modern Bond story with some little bits of pony, whereas the previous story was a much more even mix in my opinion. Few things I did like: The pinkieton detective agency was amusing. As was Vinyl Scratch’s love of her bass cannon (which she named Wubsy).