Site Post » Reviews! Round 49 · 10:41pm Aug 4th, 2014
Seattle's Angels is a group that promotes good stories with low views. You can find us here.
Razgriz kicked down the door and charged onto the Paris rooftop, spinning in a circle to make sure he wasn’t watched or followed. The red squirrel on his shoulder pulled out a USB flash drive from the tiny backpack it was wearing.
“All right. We got ‘em. Now we just gotta find a way to get these back to HQ and we’re golden.”
“Stop right there!” shouted a voice from the stairwell behind them.
“Move it!” the squirrel barked, pointing at the next roof over.
Razgriz took the two foot long gap at a running jump, hit the ground hard, rolled and was up and running on his feet in about five seconds.
“You gotta climb more trees, man,” snarked the squirrel.
“Shut up Red!” snapped Raz. “It’s not like reviewing gets you out and about, you know.” He looked over his shoulder at the suited men chasing them. “Well, except maybe for days like this.”
He carefully climbed down onto a fire escape and took the stairs at a gradual yet hurried pace, almost tripping in places and unsuccessfully trying to kick open a window three floors down. Fortunately, the men chasing them were also so remarkably uncoordinated they could barely make the first step before stumbling over each other.
Raz and Red charged through the dilapidated hallways of the isolated apartment building, finally crashing into their cramped safehouse full of model tanks and Rarity plushie. They locked the door behind them and Raz hurried to the computer, slamming the USB drive home after flipping it back and forth a few times.
Red hopped onto the radio and used his adorable little paws to turn dials and push buttons.
“HQ, HQ!” he squeaked. “The reviews are coming in, but we got Self-Rec Society punks right outside our door! I hope you’re ready!”
“Roger that Field Team 1,” answered a bass voice from the speakers. “We copy. Commence upload… now.”
ROUND 49
STORY 1
A Psalm of Life, by Cynewulf
Poets Corner, the proprietor of the popular hangout Corner Books and unofficial poet laureate of Ponyville, has died of natural causes. His wife disappears, unwilling to bear the burden of his death and what it means. With the town in disarray over the recent flooding, very few ponies even bother to attend. Twilight and Rarity, however, are there, and Rarity soon finds that she cannot shake her friend's last admonition.
I think this fandom needs more stories that are quiet and introspective. Don’t get me wrong, I love action and adventure and comedy as much as the next guy, but it’s worth slowing down every once in a while and relax. A Psalm of Life is an incredibly soothing read, like a gentle lullaby or a kind caress.
What’s more, this story is able to tackle an utterly depressing atmosphere and make it warm and welcoming, but doesn’t actually invite anyone inside. From the beginning, it’s obvious enough this isn’t a happy story, but it’s able to stop itself from taking the sadness around it and running with it. Instead, it uses its emotions as the central plot, analyzing them and its characters rather than letting them play around the atmosphere. I found this to be a nice step away from the convention, at least as far as introspective stories are concerned.
Rarity is the story’s protagonist and it’s her emotions it focuses on. And by focus, I mean through a foggy x2 plastic magnifying glass. Rarity rambles, openly tossing her thoughts out for discussion seeking answers to questions she hardly understands herself. In the end, she doesn’t really succeed in anything, and yet she does. The concluding messages A Psalm of Life gets across when everything wraps up come together in a very, very satisfying way.
However, I do have one complaint with the story, and that’s that it’s a bit too much on verbose side of things. It isn’t exactly purple, but it’s complex. Rarity’s voice in particular comes off as being a bit much, but at least she isn’t tossing “darling” left and right. There’s also some awkward transitions in dialogue, but those hardly get in the way.
In total, this is a relaxing thing to read. It tries to do a lot and doesn’t really accomplish much of it, but that’s kind of the point, and anyone who’s fond of stories that seek to answer the tougher questions in life will definitely want to check this one out.
To start with, this story is written by Cynewulf, which in my opinion is reason enough to immediately think ‘oh, this should be good then.’ If you take the advice of rodents whose stomachs can’t digest even the smallest of acorns, then take my word on that.
This isn’t a rambling story, but it is about a pony who rambles. Rarity is struggling with finding meaning in her work following the death of a poet whom she was familiar. Coming to grips with mortality she takes a walk home with Twilight Sparkle and discusses her feelings. That is the long and short of the story. No real happy ending to find, since the end already came for Poets Corner, and yet the story isn’t entirely sad. This is Rarity trying to be thoughtful, and Cynewulf succeeds in making us feel about how she does, and about how anyone usually feels when faced with death: confused and uncertain. And yet, when Rarity realizes she must act in the face of this uncertainty, to take life by the horn and find the meaning in what she does herself, she gets a little scared. And don’t we all? Don’t we all need to go through these trials at some point, to find out what kind of person we really are?
Maybe I’m just rambling like Rarity rambled. I think one of the problems with this story is that it never really answers its own questions and put a real period at the end of its very long sentence. I’m not going to be trite and say the point is there is no point, because there is one: live your life and find the meaning in things that you can, and never get yourself into a meaningless rut. Now is the time to live.
Introspective, conversational, somewhat melodramatic, yet still finds a way to be meaningful.
Winona has always been faithful to her masters. A hard-worker when she's needed, and playful when it's time to relax. The epitome of the family farm dog. But how far will she go if one of the family were in danger? What boundaries is she willing to cross for the sake of another?
The answer awaits in the impending storm...
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found stories from the perspectives of less-sentient animals to be weird. There’s just something about how they’re generally written in order to encapsulate the minds of these animals that comes off as being strange to me. But that isn’t to say such stories can’t be written well, or that it isn’t possible to write a good story from an animal’s perspective without hindering it. Beyond Boundaries is one such tale, and I loved it.
This story follows Winona as she stalks after the Crusaders as they venture off into the Everfree Forest when, as the description alludes to, danger strikes and Winona leaps into action to save the day. The story also jumps between the present and the past, giving us enough information to tell us what’s going on, while still leaving us in the dark about what exactly is happening during Winona’s trip in the forest. It all comes together at the very end for an awesome, entirely unexpected twist that just clicks so well.
This is a story about love and sacrifice, and the bonds between dogs and their masters. Unsurprisingly, this story is very, very sweet. Like any sweet thing, it doesn’t do too much to get across what it wants either and is simple with its intentions, its themes, and its characters. Winona has the most depth of them all, and for such for such an unusual protagonist, the author handles her masterfully. Beyond Boundaries is one of the finer stories out there about her.
There are also a few grammatical quirks and awkward phrasings to be had here. But there aren’t many, nor are they even glaring, and they don’t get in the way at all of this lovely story.
Anyone who wants to see a story following a dog for a change instead of a pony should check this out. It’s not even that long, and it’s got a heartfelt message about the bonds between pet and master that I’d bet just about everyone can relate to in some manner.
Everybody likes dogs, right? They love you unconditionally, they can be trained to do all kinds of adorable tricks, they cross the very boundaries of life and death itself to bring you back from oblivion…
Wait, what?
This story is a tale of undying love—literally—that while rather simplistic in terms of story and presentation, still manages to maintain a nice balance between action and drama. The basic gist is that Winona follows the Cutie Mark Crusaders while they’re off on their latest cutie mark crusadering binge, and the whole lot of them end up stuck in a terrifying storm whilst wandering the Everfree Forest. Bad things ensue, and it’s up to Winona to save the day.
The draw of this story isn’t so much the plot as it is the idea behind it: that a family pet of all things can sometimes be the most dependable critter in the house. Winona has a simple-minded way of looking at the world that very much fits a dog. Apple Bloom is her charge and must be protected no matter what. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, she’s gonna go out there and do her dog duty. No, not that kind of duty.
Winona is about as well written as a dog can possibly be without going into ham-fisted Lassie territory, though what the Cutie Mark Crusaders do to get themselves in trouble can only be described as “Darwin Award stupid.” But hey, we all screw up so badly even the village idiot laughs at us sometimes, and it’s times like those that let heroes shine. Where the story suddenly veers into paranormal territory threw me a little, but it ended up being a pleasant surprise instead of an eye-rolling mistake.
In all, a good story to pass the time with, and a reminder that you really can make a rollicking, world-spanning adventure out of one evening’s worth of writing and a character that only speaks in barks and growls.
There's something wrong about Pumpkin Cake. She has been behaving strangely for the past weeks, smiling much less than she used to. A worried Mr. Cake tries to figure out what the problem is, and if he can help.
Honestly, I don’t think I ever expected to see a story like this, or at least with the characters it chooses. It’s a story about relationships, between father and angsty stubborn teenage daughter, this case being Carrot Cake and an older Pumpkin Cake. Oddly enough, it has little to do with actual fireflies. I’m sorry if that disappoints anyone, but stick around. This is something special.
As I previously said, this story is about relationships and for what this story does, it’s very real. Carrot wants to encourage Pumpkin to go off and explore, find what she loves to do and build her life around that. But Pumpkin wants to stay home and take care of the family business, even if she isn’t cut out to do so, evident by the story starting off with them cleaning her latest mess off the ceiling. At least she isn’t Sweetie Belle, but I digress.
What follows is some really sweet father-daughter conversation that I’m sure just about anyone can relate to, and it’s handled between some lovely flashbacks with Pumpkin and fireflies. The fireflies do tie into the story and in a pleasantly unexpected way, as the story builds itself up to the inevitable conversation. Carrot’s and Pumpkin’s characters and portrayed expertly for what the story needs to do, despite neither of them really having any character to build off of. But Lightning Bugs accomplishes this, and I find that commendable.
The only real hinderance to this story I can think of is that at times, it tells a bit too much. But that’s more of a minor quibble given what happens here.
This is a gentle heartwarming story, being cute and relatable without absolutely drowning the reader with its sweetness. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s got a fondness towards the Cake family, and to anyone wanting a nice slice of life to read in general.
This is another story based around a relationship, since that seems to have been an unintentional running theme here in our reviews. But instead of pony to profession, dog to master, or mare to self, we have father to daughter. Carrot Cake is dealing with something every father must: an angsty, almost teenaged daughter who is frustrated with where she’s going in life.
The interesting thing about this story is that it takes us several years into the future when Pumpkin Cake is a blank flank and Pound has already proven himself to be an able baker. Pumpkin manages to be as angsty as the CMC when it comes to getting her cutie mark, and she’s driving herself up the wall trying to find a way to secure a cutie mark her parents can be proud of. You can probably guess where Carrot’s inevitable conversation with her is going, but that doesn’t stop it from being sweet when it happens due to some well-handled flashbacks and well-realized characters. We can empathize with Pumpkin and Carrot both, and neither of them feel out of character… in spite of having relatively little character in the show itself. This is because we’re given a concise, quick view of who these characters are and how they react to each other fairly quick in the story, a must in a one shot.
Pumpkin Cake also has apparently developed a fascination with lightning bugs, which plays perhaps a bit more tangential of a role in the story than I was hoping, but still manages to play out in a sensible way. The story makes everything just feel natural, which isn’t easy with OCs, much less characters about whom many have their own headcanons established. Heartwarming without being saccharine, this is more of what I want to see out of FIM Fiction’s slice of life scene, and out of the writers here in general.
STORY 4
The Wreck, by JohnPerry
A.K. Yearling leads a quiet, peaceful life as a novelist living in Canterlot with her fiancé. But recently, she has been haunted by dreams of a strange shipwreck, and she doesn't know why.
I’ve come to the realization that unsettling stories are relatively few and far between, at least as far as the Dark tag is concerned. Sure, violence and blood and horror and tragedy can definitely make one uneasy, but stories that stories that exist for its ominous tones are much less common than the ones that use ominousness to help drive their story. Stories that want to keep a reader guessing, that give just enough of a tease to make them cautious of its twists and turns, because that’s what the story is about, I find are some of the most beautiful stories to read. It makes me happy to say that The Wreck this one such story, and an excellent one at that.
The story begins with A.K. Yearling, the author of the Daring Do series, in therapy. There’s this recurring dream that’s haunting her, preventing her from writing, and she slowly starts to lose her grip on reality as this dream becomes all she can think about. It warps her perfect world, and just how the author is able to juggle all these mind games while still keeping them together is admirable. What’s more, this story ties in nicely with the canon, a little thing it really didn’t need to do but just made it all the better. There’s also a really lovely element of world building to this thing that only gets sweeter as the story progresses.
However, for all that this story does, it’d never have accomplished any of it if it weren’t for the excellent characterizations, especially of its protagonist. The limited perspective truly shines in that regard, making the characters—and in turn, the reader—see only what they need to see, or at least until The Wreck twists everything like sweat-soaked rag. This story has a lot going on in it, but at the same time it doesn’t, and at just over thirteen thousand words, I find it hard to believe it isn’t longer. It’s just written that well.
Well, it’s not perfect though, from a technical standpoint anyways. I might’ve noticed a spelling error or two, but I bet it’s only because I’ve developed an eye for the stuff. Even then, this story had me completely immersed and just did not want to let me go. Honestly, I didn’t want to leave it either.
This is an outstanding example of a rather underrepresented sort of Dark story. It plays with the mind, and anyone who likes those kind of stories will be in love here. So will anyone who’s in the need for a great piece of fanfiction starring everyone’s only favorite archaeologist.
Some of us know exactly what we want out of life. We want the awesome job that takes us exciting places. We want the wife or the husband who will never fail us. We want the house next to the sea. What say you achieve all those things and life is just peaches and cream from here on in. But suddenly, things seem different. You’re looking at things from a slightly different perspective and then there’s a change. You don’t know where you are anymore, or why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you may tell yourself: “This is not my beautiful house!” And you may tell yourself: “This is not my beautiful wife!” And you may ask yourself: “How did I get here?”
The Wreck is a story about A.K. Yearling, bestselling Daring Do author, dealing with these very issues, except for the part about a wife because she has a husband now. Imagine if all those second season assumptions about Daring Do were true and Yearling is just a regular author with a regular life and her biggest problem is writer’s block. Most importantly, Daring Do is just a character in her mind to entertain children and Rainbow Dashes. Except now Yearling is having a recurring dream about a shipwreck and something inside it she just can’t quite remember, and nothing feels quite right with this perfect world, and then there’s the fact that she keeps seeing Daring Do in real life…
This is a suspenseful psychological descent into not quite madness, but somewhere very melancholy and thoughtful. John Perry is a very good writer, and he handles the heavy subject matter in this story with aplomb, given how relatively few words he’s given to work with it. I’m surprised that ‘sad’ isn’t also a tag in this story, since by the end that’s all I was left feeling. Yearling is drawn ever closer to the wreck she sees in her dreams while going further and further from the life she has already achieved, playing with our perceptions of what makes her life worth living.
There is no monster at the end of the book, but that doesn’t stop the dark tag from being earned in spades given the subject matter. Every conversation and every interaction is meaningful, or at least feels that way. Perry’s great accomplishment with this story is making the reader feel conflicted: we dread the terrible secret waiting for Yearling in the shipwreck, but at the same time we hope for it if only so Yearling’s existential torment will end. Join her on this odyssey into the mind so she needn’t suffer alone, won’t you?
“One hundred percent,” announced Raz, clapping his hands. “We’re done.”
“Golden, like I said,” squeaked Red, jumping at a loud crash on their grammar-proofed door. “Now, uh, we gotta exfil.”
“There’s a boat waiting for us on a dock at the Seine river,” said Raz. “All we gotta do is blow this joint.”
Red poked his head out the window. “Dang. Six foot drop onto a fruit stand. You ready for this?”
“I didn’t spend hours earlier today pretending I was a parkour artist for nothing,” replied Raz as Red hopped up on his shoulder. The squirrel muttered something about peanuts.
Raz took a modest flying leap as the door smashed open behind them.
Feel free to visit our group for more information and events, and to offer some recommendations for future rounds. See you all next time!
>Self-Rec Society punks
Genius.
2343609
Where the hell did YOU come from?!
2343670
The dead.
2343671
Evidently! You're not going back anytime soon, are you?
2343683
Perhaps
2343688
Yeah, well don't. You have no idea how much we've missed Her Majesty Csquared (Incidentally, this place is a total sausage-fest without you).
Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it, y'all.
Whoever wrote this intro is fucking fired. Where the shit is that direct address comma? You had one job! Well, okay, multiple jobs... but you fucked one of them up!
On a less important note, that Winona fic sounds cool, though if she doesn't die by seppuku I'm going to be extremely disappointed.
I'm shocked noone has posted this yet (Redsquirrel I saw what you did there)
Thanks for another great round of reviews folks, I was running out of reading material!
2344068
Well excuse us, Mister pre-Magic Duel.
Wait, so you're actually going to read one of these?
2344072
I love that song, though I prefer the original music video.
Man, being an SA reviewer sounds exciting!
Sure is weird that the the epic return to writing by the guy who achieved popularity through a series like Mission: Implausible goes with so little notice that he ends up being promoted by Seattle's Angels even after an ED feature.
2344068 What if it's a command telling someone else to shut up red?
Does that make Twilight Sparkle a child? Or a Rainbow Dash?
Man, The Wreck is just showing up everywhere lately.
2351326 When there's as many ships as there are in this fandom, we're bound to see a wreck or two...
2354817
Aha. Ahaha. I like that. Clever.
Thanks for the tip on "A Psalm of Life!" I've set down my own thought on it here. Two things:
1) I don't think this story "wanders" at all. Its course, which only seems random, actually traces the outline of something the author neither shows or tells. That thing is what the story is about...
2)...and it's not (entirely) what most readers seem to think it's about.
(See? Now I'm doing it too...
)