Sunday 30 July 2017

Twilight's Ultimate Guide to the MLP Fandom

I can't remember how I found Twilight's Ultimate Guide to the MLP Fandom the other day, but I'm glad I did. It's a text-heavy page that tries to give a potted introduction to our weird and wonderful fandom, written by someone called Ajedi32 – here's the original Reddit post it's linked from, though I didn't find it from there.

There are sections covering animations, games, music and so on, but of course I was most interested in the fanfic section. Sadly Ajedi32 doesn't seem to be much into ponyfic, but there's a list of ten twelve stories they've had recommended to them. I've read them all apart from Through the Well of Pirene, and I'm now starting to read that one!

The Reddit post was made earlier this year, which means it's more up to date than some of the similar guides we see around the net, though perhaps not that up to date – it generally seems to cover up to around S5. One oddity is that it tries to avoid the most unavoidable spoiler in the fandom by referring to, eg, the "[Redacted] Twilight Orchestral Suite"!

Also oddly, the list of books includes Journal of the Two Sisters but not the Elements of Harmony guidebooks. The chapter book list is complete up to Starlight Glimmer and the Secret Suite but doesn't feature Trixie's book. Still, none of this stops the guide being a pretty good example of its type if you don't need pictures and videos every paragraph.

9 comments:

  1. That feeling when you don't make the cut. :(

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    1. Well, Anthropology is in there, so it's clearly not entirely quality-based. :P

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    2. Never read it but... jeez, over 7,000 upvotes?! The total up and downvotes across all of my stories aren't even half of that!

      Actually, I hate to say it, but that list contains a bunch of "meh" stories. I guess they are fandom touchstones, but still "meh."

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    3. I think that's part of the reason they're there. My Little Dashie is referenced so often that you're going to get confused if you don't have any idea at all what it is. Same with Past Sins.

      Also, you're not missing much with Anthropology, unless you're really into the "Lyra and hands" stuff. I found it a big disappointment.

      At least The Celestia Code is on the list. That's probably my favourite of all those listed.

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    4. There is some of the really popular dreck in that list (like University days), but otherwise it is a pretty solid introduction to fandom fanfic.. They even point people towards good resources for quality fanfic. It could have easily been a list of generic shipfics.

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    5. I don't actually hate University Days, as long as I treat it as an undemanding read for 12-year-olds. Okay, it seems to be only me and Present Perfect in that group around here, but still. :P

      Also, it's not My Roommate is a Vampire.

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    6. I've never agreed with you more thoroughly.

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    7. Also, this is one of the first times I've seen a newcomer-targeted fanfic resource that mentions Chris's site. I was particularly pleased to see that. :)

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  2. Whoa! Celestia Code made the Fanfic list. That's so cool!

    I'm very surprised that Beyond Her Garden didn't make the music list, though.

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