This could also be called “four shipfics and a random story”. In my Rarity shipping kick, I read the rather strange Every Mare Needs Her Stallion as well as three RariLight pieces. Then, just to round things off, I read one of the highest rated stories on FIMFiction, Discord Applies for Citizenship Papers, which happens to also be extremely short.

How did they all stack up?

Read on.

Today’s stories:

Every Mare Needs Her Stallion by InquisitorM

Not a Princess by Monochromatic

Let’s Find You a Date! by Soundslikeponies

Felt Heart by Tchernobog

Discord Applies for Citizenship Papers by CCC

Every Mare Needs Her Stallion

by InquisitorM



Sad, Slice of Life

7,964 words After Fluttershy threw a tantrum in Ponyville's marketplace, Rarity invited her over for some good old girly gossip. The Fluttershy that turns up on her doorstep, however, is absolutely not the one she was expecting. Somefilly has a secret and Rarity isn't above using a few tricks to find out what it is.

Why I added it: Present Perfect recommended it.

Review

Fluttershy is happy.

Like, really happy.

And physically friendly.

And radiating beauty even more so than usual.

And showing unusual confidence.

And she refuses to tell Rarity why.

But Rarity understands, and even if Fluttershy can’t – or won’t – tell her, Rarity is more than happy to take advantage of her friend’s happiness for a very fun day out together. But as the day goes on, Rarity has an increasingly harder time not bursting from her curiousity. She has to know. Is it a stallion? Or a mare? Or maybe even… her?

This is a kind of strange story. Some folks have called it “difficult”, but I’m not sure if it was difficult so much as it was just strangely constructed – the story seemed to be pointing in a very different direction than where it actually went, and Fluttershy and Rarity’s overall behavior felt very much at odds with the eventual direction the story went. A huge amount of emphasis went into just how friendly Fluttershy was being that day, and while Fluttershy being happy – and her anger the previous day at a pony in the market – made sense in context, the sort of physical actions taken by the ponies are given a lot of emphasis and feel strange. While some of those make sense in light of the end of the story, a lot of what they were doing felt very intimate in nature, to the point where a photographer realized that he needed to leave the room. I’m not entirely convinced by Fluttershy’s actions that she doesn’t like Rarity, or that it isn’t reciprocated, and I don’t feel like the ending really successfully recontextualized a lot of that behavior – some of it worked, but a lot of it didn’t. And consequently, the story, interesting and well-written as it was, all kind of came apart at the end, and I was left having a hard time buying into Rarity’s final thoughts in the piece – what should have tied it all together and capped it off instead left me feeling like the piece wasn’t quite coherent.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

Not a Princess

by Monochromatic



Romance, Slice of Life

1,608 words With all her fantasies about royalty, one would think Rarity falling for a princess would be obvious... except, Twilight hardly acted like a princess. That's why Rarity loved her.

Why I added it: It made the popular stories box and I don’t read much RariLight.

Review

This is a short and kind of rambly piece about how Rarity likes Twilight the pony, not Twilight the Princess, because Twilight isn’t a proper princess – she has almost none of the attributes of a proper princess, and the only one she really does have is selflessness and self-sacrifice.

While I think the core sentiment is a very good one, this story never really came together for me. The story transitions from a third person Rarity ramble about Twilight Sparkle not really being a princess to a brief piece about Twilight being upset because Rarity rejected a job in Manehattan so that she could stay in Ponyville with Twilight. None of this is bad, but the presentation doesn’t feel quite coherent; the actual structure of the prose itself bothered me from time to time, but the real problem was that the second story in the piece didn’t really rely on the thoughts from the first half of the piece nearly as much as one might hope; indeed, the second half of the piece could have been easily written with them not being in a relationship at all.

I was kind of reminded of bookplayer’s excellent In the Service of the Princess of Friendship, but this story just didn’t have the same sort of impact as that story had, and I think that was because of the lack of cohesion. In bookplayer’s piece, all of the lines were pointing the same way, and the central conflict – to be a farmer who occasionally strapped on a piece of magic jewelry and saved Equestria, or to be a leader who occasionally went out and bucked apples – was a strong thread run throughout the length of the piece. Here, the two halves of the story didn’t really feel so neatly aligned, and consequently, the story didn’t quite come together for me.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

Let’s Find You a Date!

by Soundslikeponies



Romance, Comedy

41,071 words When Rarity finds out how little Twilight gets out of the Library, things get out of hand as she decides to take it upon herself to teach Twilight the ropes of dating. As Rarity drags her around, Twilight begins to have a good idea of who she wants to ask out.

Why I added it: I had read it previously, and am on a bit of a RariLight kick for some reason.

Review

When Rarity discovers that Twilight has never been on a date, Rarity tries to teach her friend about flirting, bar-hopping, drinking, and dating. Over the course of the story, Twilight flirts with Carrot Top, gets hit on by an OC named May Flower who really wants to sleep with Twilight, and Twilight comes to recognize that she has a crush on Rarity. But does Rarity know, or is she blind to Twilight’s attraction? Is Rarity just trying to let her down gently, or redirect her attention elsewhere? Or does Rarity just not know what to do?

A story about dating, flirting, attraction, and sex, this is a surprisingly unromantic shipfic. Instead of characters who are unable to spit it out, it portrays characters as having a wide variety of issues – while Twilight struggles with expressing her attraction openly to Rarity, she also struggles to quantify her attraction towards Carrot Top and May Flower as well. A lot of the attraction is fairly surface-level – attitude, flirting, physical contact, physical attraction, with some hints of deeper attraction for more complicated reasons. The story doesn’t really depict any character as being in love with anyone else, and instead portrays their reactions in a more mixed manner.

I struggled with the first chapter of this piece – the scene where Rarity is trying to determine whether Twilight likes mares or stallions is pretty awkward, and while it introduces Carrot Top in a scene whose consequences reverberate throughout the rest of the piece, really up through the first night in the bar, the story doesn’t really find its legs. After that point, though, things start falling more into the groove of things, and over the course of the piece May Flower, who at first seems very shallow and one-dimensional, gets more flesh added to her, while Carrot Top also ends up getting a bit more fleshed out. A lot of the characters feel a bit superficial, but that’s actually a core part of the story – that a lot of attraction is superficial, and that in the end, it isn’t really wrong to be superficially attracted to someone, but that a deeper connection can be made afterwards. This is something which isn’t really touched on very often in stories like this, but is very much a reality of a lot of casual dating – a lot of it is about seeing if two people work together without really knowing each other well to begin with, and this story depicts it as such in a surprisingly unromantic manner. The characters are awkward, but also ultimately honest about their feelings, and the story doesn’t pretend like what the characters have is true love.

The story really grew on me more towards the end of the piece, as Twilight tries to juggle the various ponies in her life and figure out how to actually approach Rarity and ask her on a date without messing things up, while simultaneously fretting about how to gently let down Carrot Top and successfully reject the very persistent May Flower, who is a lot less unlikable than Twilight thought at first.

That being said, the story did sort of struggle towards the start, and the story isn’t short – at 40,000 words, it is the length of a short novel. Still, I suspect that RariLight fans are likely to be interested in it, as would be anyone who is more interested in a less romantic brand of story about dating.

Recommendation: Worth Reading.

Felt Heart

by Tchernobog



Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life

34,587 words Rarity discovers an old tradition involving the exchange of felt dolls as a sign of affection. This sparks a brilliant plan to play matchmaker with her friends, and between herself and Twilight. But brilliant plans never go as expected, do they?

Why I added it: It was recommended to me, Tchernobog is a good writer, and I’ve been putting off reading it for ages.

Review

Rarity overhears Luna and Celestia talking about the ancient tradition of giving a doll of yourself to your loved one as a mark of your affection. Originally a familial gesture, it had evolved into a declaration of love before it had faded from living memory – save that of Luna and Celestia.

Rarity has long been nursing a crush on Twilight, and decides it would be a good idea to send a doll of herself to Twilight. But she doesn’t want to give herself away; she wants to gauge Twilight’s reaction first. And just sending a doll to Twilight might be a little bit suspicious. But Rarity has noticed the looks that Applejack and Rainbow Dash have been giving each other, and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie have seemed awfully friendly lately…

This is a very cutesy story about dolls sent out to bring ponies together, and the conflicts – and eventual success in pulling their relationships out into the open – that they bring.

But it is also a story which contains north of 30,000 words of Rarity not being able to spit it out. And it is primarily here that I felt like the story stumbled.

Best Young Flyer documents a relationship between Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo that has them getting together, breaking apart, Scootaloo briefly dating another love interest, the Best Young Flyer competition, and Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo getting back together at the end. It feels like a novel. And yet, it is only 32,833 words – more than a thousand words shorter than Felt Heart, which starts with Rarity learning about the dolls and ends with Rarity finally fessing up to what she did.

And it hurts because, while we see Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie come together, and Applejack and Rainbow Dash start to come into the open about each other, almost nothing happens between Rarity and Twilight, and yet, ostensibly, that’s the ship which drives the story into happening in the first place. Rarity is pretty clearly holding the idiot ball for pretty much the entire story, and Rarity’s plan doesn’t really make sense to begin with, which meant that I struggled with empathizing with her. Rarity wanted Twilight to find out about the doll, but for some reason she couldn’t just tell her? Indeed, the story repeatedly emphasized how much of a coward Rarity was, not wanting Twilight to find out, even as she gnashed her teeth over Twilight not finding out, and while I do understand the mixture of trepidation and attraction that people can feel over other people, the whole story ended up feeling drug out as a result. Time and again, when the story focused on Twilight and Rarity, nothing happened to advance the plot. After a while, I came to dread these portions because they ended up feeling frustrating to read, as they were all fundamentally the same – Rarity wants Twilight to find out, but not from her, and is also scared of Twilight finding out, and something comes up that stops Twilight from finding out.

That being said, other parts of the story were cute. Pinkie Pie’s dilemma over her own personal Fluttershy doll versus the extremely nice doll that Rarity made is cute, and the interaction (and bickering) between Rainbow Dash and Applejack was cute throughout the story. The very brief scene at the end of the piece with Luna and Celestia made me chuckle a bit, and the story concluded on a reasonably strong note.

But I wasn’t really left with a good idea of why these characters should be together, or why I should be rooting for Rarity’s ships. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are cute together, as are Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, but the story didn’t really tell me why I should want these ponies to kiss. Even Rarity’s motives in pursuing Twilight felt underexplored. I can’t help but wonder if my positive feelings towards the AppleDash in this piece is because I already ship them – I was not left feeling all that positively towards Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, whose relationship, such as it was, seemed to be built entirely on blushes and hugs and Pinkie Pie trying to make Fluttershy feel better about her doll. While Rainbow Dash’s relationship with Applejack was much more substantive – the two were actually secretly dating – I’m not sure if it would have worked as well for me if I wasn’t already a shipper.

By the end of the piece, I had the feeling that it took too long to get there. I didn’t hate it, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that it was mostly a fluff piece – something intended to impart warm and fuzzy feelings on the audience rather than do something substantive with the characters.

Recommendation: If you like slow-paced stories which focus heavily on ponies being cute together, especially if you already ship these pairings, you might enjoy this. But if you’re looking for something more complicated, or dislike FlutterPie or AppleDash, you’re apt to be disappointed.

Discord Applies for Citizenship Papers

by CCC

Comedy, Slice of Life

1,157 words Discord, with the help of a pegasus, attempts to fill in a form designed by someone who never expected a near-immortal Dragonequus to try to fill it in.

Why I added it: It is one of the highest rated stories on FIMFiction.

Review

Discord tries to fill out citizenship papers, and discovers they are ill-equipped to handle immortal spirits of chaos. But you know, you have to satisfy the bureaucracy…

This story is basically a bunch of Discord complaining about filling out paperwork. On the one hand, it is quite predictable. On the other, it is quite short, and the ending was vaguely amusing. Still, it is hard to say that there was much real “meat” here; it is a very lightweight story that stays well within the boxes for stories of its type.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

Summary

Every Mare Needs Her Stallion by InquisitorM

Not Recommended Not a Princess by Monochromatic

Not Recommended Let’s Find You a Date! by Soundslikeponies

Worth Reading Felt Heart by Tchernobog

Not Recommended Discord Applies for Citizenship Papers by CCC

Not Recommended

In other news, chapter 5 of Mistletrapped is complete and in editing, and chapter 6 is being worked on.