Put this off and now I have to rush off for the D&D game. Where our party is about to be utterly annihilated by a Air Elemental. Hopefully I will survive. Probably by running away as fast as possible to find a spot to hide.
- Seven Girls, Nine Hundred Forty Three Miles, and One Minivan. by Tumbleweed
- BY THE BLACK AXE OF NIGHTMARE MOON! by Tumbleweed
- Climbing the Mountain by Talon and Thorn
Seven Girls, Nine Hundred Forty Three Miles, and One Minivan. by Tumbleweed
Fun road trip story. One bit at the end that reminded me a bit of Aragon’s bank heist story, but only because it was a moment of hijinks in a casino. Worth a read if you want a EqG road trip short story. Plus Fluttershy steals a baby tiger as a background detail.
BY THE BLACK AXE OF NIGHTMARE MOON! by Tumbleweed
A bit more serious than the last one. An interesting version of Nightmare Moon and some magic elements in Luna’s past. This is a story that would be a lot better as a movie actually. The visuals would be really impressive. As prose you can visualize it, but not quite the same.
Climbing the Mountain by Talon and Thorn
A Lunaverse story. The first new one (to me anyway) I have read in a while. I reread several of the ones I enjoyed to get back in the mindset of this particular AU and remembered why I enjoy them so much. This story was good but not great. A bit of rough writing here and there. Nothing wrong, just not as much polish as it could have in a few places. It also had some trouble with pony body language, lot of it defaulted to human standard. I still dislike the use of the term arms when talking about ponies, which came up once or twice. It did have a cool idea about goats in a worldbuilding sense. Wish there had bit a bit more of that. I would say this story had the usual flaws of one that was written as it went. Lots of ideas that got touched on that never really went anywhere. Like the main character getting a reputation for helping out the non-pony minorities, or the thing about goats absorbing (and eating) magic. In general the story seemed to ignore the high fantasy side of pony, yet also didn’t do much with the political side of things. It was pretty much slice of life through and through. Which falls under the category of a decent to good story that had the potential to be a great story. The benefit of both hindsight and not having to deal with the stress of writing it myself.
I wouldn’t suggest it as an entry point to the Lunaverse, but if you like that AU and have read most of season one this would not be a bad choice to add to your read later list assuming you don’t mind the issues I commented about above. I also continue to think that Princess Luna is kind of a poor leader in this AU. I get why she does how she does and it makes sense, but still sucks.
The City of Doors 