Let's Read It's Elementary My Dear Rainbow - by bats · 3:08am Apr 18th, 2013
Note: Freshly edited to get the name of the fic right.
So, for this experiment I’ve selected It’s Elementary, My Dear Rainbow, for the following reasons:
1) I know that bats is insanely smart, yet I’ve barely read any of his stories.
2) I like romance and comedy, and this is romance and comedy. Besides, it’s been forever since I read any TwiDash.
3) bats will probably not hate me if I say bad stuff about him. He’s also probably well aware that I’m secretly an idiot. So hopefully I won’t offend him too much.
I highly recommend that you read this fic first! The whole story is spoiled in this review, and you’re missing out on bat’s awesome writing in exchange for me goofing off! I’m serious, the fic is here: It’s Elementary, My Dear Rainbow.
I read the fic as I was writing the review (this is important to note), and it’s well worth your time. There are some issues in there, but in general it’s cute and funny and will make you feel happy, if you don’t mind TwiDash.
The TwiDash isn’t really the focus, more of a given- this fic will not convince you to ship TwiDash, but you also don’t have to buy that Twilight and Rainbow Dash are in true love forever to enjoy it.
Anyway, enough about the shipping. I apologize to bats for everything I’m about to say about his fic. And if you guys are amused by this, let me know and I’ll do this to someone else soon.
Now join me, as I talk about what happened in this fic, we discover the happy yellows and I offer my best plots ranking. Sound exciting? Let's read!
The early spring sun drifted through the windows of Golden Oaks library, the first fingers of dawn spelling the end of Luna’s dominion and the beginning of a new day. The happy yellows found their way, as they always did, directly against Twilight’s eyelids. The lavender unicorn stirred, still half asleep, scrunching her eyes against the glare attempting to rouse her. As her mind threatened to swim into lucidity, her body rebelled by rolling away from the accursed morning. Shifting her position, her foreleg settled on a warm, fuzzy body gently rising and falling and her muzzle landed against something soft and slightly damp.
Bats. Bats, I am talking directly to you. I know you warned me of lavender unicorn syndrome. You did not warn me of “happy yellows” syndrome, which is a totally new syndrome I’m making up just for this paragraph, where we randomly omit the noun and use nothing but adjectives that describe it in its place.
I’m not trying to be snarky! Honest! I’m just giggling madly at the happy yellows, and I am not even on drugs.
Really.
Okay. Back to the story.
Her violet eyes shot open and held the gaze of two magenta orbs just as wide as hers.
Orbs? Really? Orbs are like, fanfic writer 101. Don’t use them. Nothing is an orb, but especially not eyes.
So, Twilight and Dash see each other and there’s some slightly purpleish prose terror that they slept together.
They struggled apart, biting at the cruel covers that kept them trapped in a snuggle until the fabric gave way with a loud shred. Ruined sheets thrown wide, they stood several feet apart, panting from the sudden exertion of panicked escape and staring at each other. The looks of shock slowly blossomed to horror, their twin blushes growing even darker, as the odor held in the sheets wafted up. Twilight’s lilac shampoo, Rainbow Dash’s strawberry body wash, and the tangy, musky scent of sweat.
Okay, leaving aside the fact that I don’t think there’s a noun so far in this story without an adjective attached, this is a good paragraph. What’s awesome about it is that it’s about them thinking that they had sex, and the paragraph describes them trying to get away as if they were having sex. It’s the perfect way to give the reader the same idea. bats is a clever pony!
Then Twilight and Dash go downstairs for coffee and figuring out how the heck they got there. And we get dialogue! Which makes bookplayer a happy reader. After establishing that they can’t remember anything, Twilight decides to detective this thing out, and starts looking for leads.
“Oh. Uh, I knew that.” She scratched the back of her head with a hoof, grinning sheepishly. “Well, I woke up from a nap and went to Sugarcube Corner to meet Pinkie Pie about…something…and it’s kinda blank after that.”
Current theory: Pinkie Pie gave them the special brownies. Let’s see if I’m right.
Anyway, they determine that they were also at Sweet Apple Acres. But before they leave, Twilight wants to look for clues here.
“See, I told you you’d be fine! But before we go, we should look for clues.” Her violet eyes narrowed as she scanned the room. She got to her hooves and began stalking around the kitchen.
Perhaps Twilight should look in the bedroom? Where they know they were? Instead of the kitchen, where they may or may not have even been last night?
“What’re you…looking…for…” Rainbow Dash’s eyes settled on Twilight’s rear end, which was bobbing rhythmically as she dug through the deep cupboard. Her indigo tail twitched back and forth as she worked, her hips swaying left and right and up and down. Rainbow slapped herself with a hoof and dragged her eyes off the dancing flank.
It’s my personal theory that Applejack has the nicest rear end of the mane six, from the point of view of your average pony. This is followed by Twilight, then Rarity, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy. Even though the animation of them is all pretty much the same.
I have no idea why I have headcanon on this.
Anyway, Twilight wasn’t looking for clues in the kitchen. She was looking for her magnifying glass, so now she can look for clues in the only room she knows that they were in, the bedroom.
Or the library. Whichever. Rainbow Dash doesn’t care anyway, because she’s busy totally-not-admiring the second hottest flank in Ponyville.
“Just a minute, almost done.” Finishing her careful coverage of the room, Twilight came up empty. It was not a surprise to the huffing pegasus; the room was still spotless from Spike’s careful ministrations the previous day. “Alright, let’s check the bedroom now.”
With Pinkie’s special brownies finally wearing off, Twilight decides to check the place where the clues are actually likely to be.
By the way. . .
Rainbow Dash was way cooler than this day was letting her be.
Loved this line. I have a serious soft spot for Dash’s awesome taking over the narration. See also: Twilight’s List.
Anyway, in the bedroom Dash checks Twilight’s desk, and Twilight checks Dash:
Sky blue, firm, flexing flanks hung suspended over her workspace, attached to a pony bent well over the desk to half-heartedly shuffle papers around.
Sorry, Twi. I’m not following. You’ve got the flanks.
But there are clues! In the room where they actually were! Who would’ve thought. A note about fixing the Apple’s cart, and a purple feather from Cloud Kicker, which Rainbow Dash recalls was from their threesome setting up a rainstorm by Sweet Apple Acres.
So they decide to go to Sweet Apple Acres, and not Sugarcube Corner, where they both remember being first, because apparently Pinkie makes some really good brownies.
After a bats Squiggly Page Break (TM) they head to Sweet Apple Acres, where Applejack affirms that they were there, and they were in a hurry to leave.
“Alright, Twi’. I didn’t catch everything said, but I gathered you and RD came from somewhere together because ya both had errands to run out here. Both of ya were in a hurry and when you were done you both left together pretty quick. I don’t know where y’all went, but if I had to guess I’d say Fluttershy’s.”
Let me guess. They left Fluttershy’s and went to the Carousel Boutique, but neither Fluttershy or Rarity will tell them anything. Then they finally go to Sugarcube Corner and figure out what happened.
Two bits says I’m right. Any takers?
They head over to Fluttershy, where Twilight had to magic something and Dash had to move birdseed. But it isn’t a total waste because we get more uncomfortable lust, and because Fluttershy tells them:
“Oh, yes.” A bit of strength had returned to the butter yellow pegasus’ voice. “You said Rarity had asked the two of you to stop by on your way over from the farm.”
Called it.
I find it interesting that authors always shop things like this around to four friends (I read a lot of shipping fics, so it’s always four, because the pony involved isn’t consulted about whatever.) I have trouble with that number. For some reason, there’s some structure built into my brain that makes me do two ponies for clue/advice gathering or delays of some sort, then a conclusion.
Not saying that there’s anything wrong with dropping in on all the mane six, just a kind of weird thing with my head.
So anyway, while there, Twilight finds a clue! Somepony has opened a bag of birdseed!
“What can I say, Twi’?” she struggled out through choked giggles, “I like the taste of bird seed.”
Somepony got the munchies from Pinkie’s brownies.
I’m re-titling this fic “Dude, Where’s My Virginity?”
Twilight finally tosses her magnifying glass, and they head to the Carousel Boutique for their fanfic mandated visit to Rarity. Where they find nothing but more not-so-carefully concealed lust for one another.
Watching her friend’s shoulders and haunches flex and relax with nervous energy was more soothing than the tea.
I’ll give you that, Twilight. Dash’s legs are probably hotter than yours. But AJ still has her beat.
Also: Why do I have opinions on this?!
Finally, deciding that they really need the answers to this, they go to Sugarcube Corner, aka the place they knew all along they were at first. Where Pinkie explains exactly what happened.
“Of course!” she trilled, leaping over the counter to join them. “You came by to try my top secret, mega-mystery donuts!”
. . .
. . .
I was kidding, bats! I was kidding about the brownies donuts!
Okay, so, it wasn’t really the donuts. It was a spell to make them forget the taste of the donuts, along with everything else that happened. Twilight helpfully wrote herself a note that was hidden in her mane the whole time that explained everything.
So, knowing that they didn’t have sex, Twilight and Rainbow Dash go home to have some purplish prose and coffee and sex.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash sat across from each other at the unicorn’s kitchen table sipping coffee. To the sky blue pegasus’ pleasant surprise, she found she could taste her drink.
I love how Dash’s inability to taste things and Twilight’s messy mane are tied together at the end. Seriously love it.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the note and the donuts were never hinted at earlier. I feel vaguely cheated when mysteries don’t give me enough clues to solve them myself before the characters (but then I feel vaguely cheated if I solve mysteries before the characters.)
That being said, this is a 5,000 word MLP fanfic, so I feel vaguely cheated out of all zero dollars I paid for it, and the cute, funny, in character dialogue was more than enough to cover that.
I really enjoyed this fic. Everything that wasn’t supposed to be romantic hit all the right notes, including Twilight and Dash’s uncomfortable attraction.
Unfortunately, there’s the lavender unicorn syndrome, which bats did warn me about, but also some purpleish prose whenever things got serious. By purpleish I mean that things never got that over the top, but it sort of felt to me like a flock of adjectives and adverbs got loose and landed on every available space. I’m not sure if he was trying for that? If he was, he should go have a look at Twifight Sparkill and her hot, steamy thesaurus lovin’. If not. . . maybe it went away with the lavender unicorn cure? I don’t recall it being a problem in recent things of his I’ve read.
And of course, there were the happy yellows. The happy yellows are not unfortunate. They're amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful funny. bats is an great intelligent, and he’s not going to hate me for this review.
What did you guys think? About the story, about the review, about Pinkie’s magic brownies donuts. . . give me a reason to do this again. Or not.
Well, that was a joy to read.
This line here: "it sort of felt to me like a flock of adjectives and adverbs got lose and landed on every available space," nearly killed me. I tend to go rather purple and need to be reined in, but I'm slowly getting better so a lot of my newer stuff (which is what I assume you've read of me) doesn't quite suffer from such...luminous verbosity.
And so you're aware, you could be roughly 500 times more harsh before you even got close to offending me. I'm pleased you enjoyed, pleased you picked something of mine, and pleased to read this. I'd love to see more things like this for others in the future. Or you could do one of mine again if you wanted.
1016452 I"m trying to picture something 500 times more harsh.
Would that just be a review wherein he replies to every paragraph of your story with the word "Cunt?"
500 times is a lot of times.
1016456
I'd probably be amused by that as well.
To be honest, the only criticism I find offensive is criticism based on faulty logic. Pulling my story apart and explaining how awful and terrible it is because obviously the characters aren't lesbians is offensive. So long as a reviewer's reasoning isn't built on fallacy, they can call me a cunt-faced whore for using the word 'the' too many times if they want.
1016465 I'd be amused by it too, actually, but probably not for rational reasons. I must be tired because I've been giggling non stop since I made that little comment...
I should take a nap. It really wasn't very funny.
Looking forward to reading this and the story in parallel! (Unfortunately, I probably won't get a chance to do it for another day or so, thanks to RL workload, but I think it's very cool that you're doing this.)
You might be able to get away with it for Applejack's eyes, but only in a comedy, and only if you describe them as "emerald green orbs [glaring] lustfully". And you'd better be intending a reference to The Eye of Argon (references to TEoA are wholly inappropriate outside of comedies parodying poor writing).
Link goes to the MST, because I don't want to inflict the original upon some poor unsuspecting soul.
I chuckled through the story and giggled through the review.
Very interesting, and in this case quite entertaining, style of commentary.
Moar, plz.
Mind if I use the "let's read" idea?
Loved it!
Do this again.
1016452
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I truly did enjoy the fic, I'm glad this got me to finally read it.
I'll keep more of your fics in mind for the future, but I'm eyeing 1016482 next, if he's still willing to let me at one of his fics after he reads this.
1016583
Not a bit! I didn't make it up, so no one even has to ask me.
1016615
In regards to future stuff of mine as a possibility, I would like to direct you towards a comment left on my blog about this:
If you get around to reading the sequel at some point, I'd like to request hearing about the reaction to this as well, Let's Read or not.
In all fairness, this is Sherlock Holmes inspired, and that tends to be the theme of all Sherlock mysteries
I had a fun time reading this let's read, and I hope you get another one out at some point soon!
This was thoroughly entertaining!
1016615
Eek! This was much more fun than I anticipated – not the story, but the Let's Read of it.
1016452, that's not to say I didn't enjoy the story. I enjoyed it a lot. I have some notes written for a comment and I'll try to post one when I have more time to write later, but bookplayer already said almost everything I wanted to say, absent a couple sticky prose points and my general love of gushing over good stories.
But reading bookplayer's reaction to the story, especially in the immediate aftermath of reading it myself, that was a lot more fun than I expected. And that's for someone else's story, not my own! If you want to give one of mine a stab next, books, I'm still happy to offer them. Though based on your reading of this, I have a suspicion you'll wind up highlighting a couple spots in either story that I'm worried didn't quite live up to their potential; still, I love both giving people enjoyment and getting good, helpful feedback, so I'm not about to say no if it's on offer. I'm guessing you have one of the two I mentioned in mind already, but if you want any additional info for making a choice, feel free to PM me.
I think I might want to try some of this myself, too, at some point. I don't know how fun it is for you as a writer, but it's a lot of fun as a reader, and frankly it's kind of cool to get to interact with a detailed review like this in comments, too. Will have to keep it in mind for later.
Oh, one other thing:
So much this.
Lots of writers seem to want to use the full compliment of the Mane Six whenever they tell stories, and generally speaking I think that's a mistake. Good stories can certainly be written with all of them involved, and while I didn't think they were all needed in bats' story, none of them were unwelcome. But I think in a lot of cases, Fimfiction writers (myself included) kind of try to shoehorn them all in for completeness, even when one or two of them don't have much of a thematic role to play in the story and pretty much act as filler.
Personally, I tend to take it as a mark of good work and writerly confidence when one or two of the Mane Six go missing from a Mane Six story. The show certainly doesn't force all six ponies to play significant roles in every episode.
Again, I think bats' work is fine here. I don't think they're all needed, but they're all pleasant to read. I'm in the middle of tackling Tchernobog's "Felt Heart" right now, too – and there's a story that makes very good use of all six of them. (NB: Judging by the first chapter, it's going to be a LOT of fun, as long as one's cool with AppleDash, FlutterPie, and... Rari...kle?)
But I really wanted to highlight this point in your review, because I think it's an excellent one and more people need to pay attention to the fact that it's better to tell a good, tight story than to try to get in all your desired cameos.
1017435
I'm going to leave a comment, explaining some of my reasoning for including all of the mane six here, not because I feel the need to defend the choice (seeing as no one's actually said it was the wrong choice to make in my story), but rather because I think a lot of conversations like this end up serving as advice for other writers, and being told 'don't do something that this story did, except in the specifics of this story it was fine,' can lead to confusion if the writer doesn't understand why it worked or why the decision to use said trope was made. And I love giving advice, so here I am.
It is absolutely true that a story doesn't need to check in with every single character and often-times it leads to story overload, where more time is given to unimportant matters at the expense of the pacing and flow of a story. I did so in IEMDR for a specific reason; that damage to the flow was entirely on purpose.
The point of a mystery story is to reveal just enough information about the central plot to make it solvable, but not too much to render it blaringly obvious. The point of a mystery pastiche is to highlight all of the detective's mistakes and make the reader say, 'Twilight, wat r u doin, Twilight stahp.' This ties in a bit with the lack of hints towards the mystery solution a touch, because it wasn't the existence of the clues themselves that were important, but rather the mistakes Twilight made in making her investigation. If Twilight: combed her mane, talked to Spike, or had gone directly to Sugarcube Corner, the two would have wrapped things up in ten minutes. The fact that she didn't do any of this is the driving part of the pastiche. It's in invoke in the reader the sense that the characters are making bad decisions that makes things harder than they should be, which is the heart of the pastiche.
So, they see everyone else before Pinkie because anyone in their right mind would have gone to see Pinkie first. The fact that Twilight continued to go to other places first when the most obvious choice was what she should have done all along, is supposed to draw an eye-roll and a chuckle from the reader. The sense of 'c'mon, you're wasting time, stupid!' is entirely purposeful, because that's what I was aiming for a reader to feel about the situation. I could have done this with one or two of the others before the reveal, but I went with all of them just to make the judgement-lapse on Twilight's part all the more groan-inducing. I did try to keep each individual scene with the other girls short and snappy, though, so that while a reader felt like Twilight was wasting time they hopefully didn't feel like I was wasting their time.
Just a touch of insight as to why I did this here. Generally speaking, the idea that we need to hang out with everyone else in a story is a bad decision to make. If you're going to do it, you better have a good reason for it, especially in something that's rather short.
1017523
I agree, but at the same time, I usually find that the "talk to ALL the friends" thing is for similar reasons in most fics. In shipping fics, it often does a similar job in terms of trying to make the reader scream "just go talk to <pony>!"
All I was saying is that, while I do use visits to friends that way, there's something about a joke/story set up of two beats then the punchline/pay off that appeals to my mind. It's probably predictable, but it sort of feels like enough to get the point across, but not enough to overplay the joke or make people lose patience with the tension.
Of course, that's all in how the story feels to the writer. We all have our weird tics of pacing and style.
1017571
In general I agree with you. I used a two-stop pacing in the sequel (although it was with background ponies rather than the mane six), but on the other hand that story had more for Twilight and Dash to do aside from talk to other characters, so it had four beats: stop one, do something in response, stop two when what they did didn't work, do something else that works. It's definitely snappy and gets the point across well.
I don't know that talking to all six is necessarily a bad decision universally, but it frequently is in shorter stories. It makes sense to do in the shipping stories, yes, but I think it hurts pacing a lot of the time. But really, it depends on the writer. Anyone can make those multiple beats interesting and engaging if they have something to say with each of them. It's just maybe not the best choice, or it's too much sometimes.
"And we get dialogue! Which makes bookplayer a happy reader."
Firstly, the grammar nazi / recently self-diagnosed OCD part of me really, really wants you to replace that exclamation point with a comma
But I digress. This quote reminds me of the primary thing I've gotten out of all my interaction with you: Bookplayer is to Dialogue as Garbo is to Davenport, and also that our writing styles are complete opposites in that regard. I've written entire stories without dialogue (Cirrus being an example), which is my equivalent to trying to read a dialogue transcripts for something like Doctor Who or MLP, or any show really. Those just happen to be the two I've tried if for. They make me
And despite what you said, I read this first. Now to go read the story.
1109032
I don't know if you've ever heard the reason for that. I figured it out recently:
I'm extremely dyslexic (that's not what I figured recently, I've known that for a while). I could give you examples of just how dyslexic I am, but take my word on it. Anyway, it's always been confusing to me and my parents and teachers that I like to read so much, despite how bad I am at things like handwriting and spelling.
The answer is: I don't read. Everything I'm "reading" I'm actually skimming, to get the idea of the word, the sentence, and the paragraph. What the actual things written down happen to say isn't important to me, as long as I can get the meaning.
This means that I tend to like short, simple sentences, and paragraphs, both of which dialogue tend to be. And I really dislike large, thick paragraphs full of complex sentences, which tend to be description. So, despite my love of stories, writing, and literature, I must admit that I fall into the "reading is hard. Don't make me read a lot" camp.
On the other hand, so do a lot of other people, it turns out. And we all have thumbs up to offer.
Holy shit I was laughing so hard at the happy yellows gag. Help me.