Read It Now Reviews #7 – The Sea Pony, I Thought I Knew the Sky, A Former Student of Mine, Stage Fright, Court Musician · 6:41am Jan 15th, 2015
As is common after a write-off competition, a number of stories have come out which are the result of recent competitions; this edition of Read It Now features four such stories. These stories are frequently of high quality, and almost always of high writing quality, and thus present fertile fields for reading.
The stories I read today:
The Sea Pony by Bad Horse
I Thought I Knew the Sky by nightwalker
A Former Student of Mine by Pascoite
Stage Fright by Bugle
Court Musician by Pascoite
The Sea Pony
by Bad Horse
Slice of LifeKids. Kids. Who are you gonna believe, some old book, or your Uncle Bad Horse?
So, anyway. Like I was saying. Once upon a time...
Why I added it: It was one of the best stories in the “All In” Writeoff competition.
Review
This is probably my single favorite one of Bad Horse’s Bedtime Stories for Impressionable Young Colts and Fillies. The narrator here is a very sympathetic character, a sort of disreputable uncle who is doing his best to do right by the rest of his family on Hearth’s Warming… even if it was last week.
The narrative voice in this piece is excellent, and the thinly-veiled metaphor is both obvious and very fun to read, as the whole story is obviously an allegory about himself.
I liked this piece a lot, and I think it really shows how you can get a character’s voice in your head in under a thousand words.
Recommendation: Recommended.
I Thought I Knew the Sky
by nightwalker
Slice of LifeIt's been several days since Rainbow Dash and her new friends used the elements of Harmony to banish Nightmare Moon and return Princess Luna to Equestria. Sure, there were festivals and celebrations aplenty after that, but they've all died down and ponies have gone back to their lives and their jobs. Rainbow, in particular, is working a late night shift with the weather patrol in an effort to arrange early-morning showers.
She's more than a little surprised when she sees Twilight Sparkle headed out into the woods north of town with a telescope on her back and flies down to find out why.
Twilight explains that she's there to admire the job being done by another pony, one who hasn't had the chance to preform it in a very, very long time.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
The long summary of this story pretty much summarizes what it is about. Rainbow Dash is setting up for rainshowers in the morning and notices Twilight out getting ready to set up for starwatching. Twilight explains that the sky is better and brighter now that Luna is back, and that the Moon, once defaced with Luna’s image, is now right for the first time pretty much ever.
There really isn’t a whole lot more to this story than that; it felt more like some ideas that the author wanted to share in the form of prose rather than a story, as nothing really happens. It is just a little slice of life, an evening encounter with little greater meaning, which shares the idea that the night sky would be prettier with Luna in charge of it once more.
There isn’t anything wrong with the writing, and the story does what it is trying to do well enough, but it isn’t aiming very high and I didn’t really feel enriched in any way after reading it. Some folks enjoy stories like that, and I enjoy them when the ideas explored are interesting to me, but the idea here was neither big nor new, and as such the story didn’t really touch me in any way.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
A Former Student of Mine
by Pascoite
Slice of LifeSweetie Belle had never really considered how so many ponies contributed to the mosaic of her life. At least until she thought she might not get another chance for one of them.
Why I added it: This was an entry in the “Just Over the Horizon” writeoff competition.
Review
Cheerilee is old and retired now, and no one ever visits. What use is all that she did?
Naturally, this story is about Sweetie Belle visiting and telling Cheerilee exactly why what she did was important.
Expanded and significantly rewritten, this story felt a bit less punchy than its original form, instead going for a more melancholy sort of tone, trying to push the reader to feel Cheerilee’s weariness and loneliness, as well as showing why it was all worthwhile. I’m not quite sure if it worked; I felt some of what I was supposed to feel, but Sweetie Belle’s reaction to Cheerilee picking up her medicine didn’t really end up resonating with me properly for some reason. It was a good idea, and I liked Sweetie Belle’s thoughts, but… it just didn’t end up working for me here, and I don’t know why.
In the end, this is fairly well-written, but I’m not really sure if it resonated with me properly; teaching is important is a pretty obvious lesson, and the whole thing didn’t end up quite coming together for me. It wasn’t bad, but it never really wowed me in any way, and Cheerilee’s elderly nature felt fairly generic, with creaky bones and kids these days.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Stage Fright
by Bugle
Slice of LifeFluttershy has joined the Ponytones on tour. While backstage before their first performance, she continues to question this decision.
Why I added it: This was an entry in the “All In” Writeoff competition.
Review
An extremely short and simple piece, this is a story about Fluttershy being afraid of going out on stage with the Ponytones. About half of the story is a flashback to Fluttershy’s decision to go with the Ponytones on tour, and the other half is her actually going out on stage and singing.
At about a thousand words long, this is a very short story, and unfortunately, it doesn’t really do it for me. The subject matter is reasonable enough, but it has been addressed more than once by the show itself, and many times in various mediums for various people. This doesn’t really feel like it does anything new with it, and Fluttershy’s fear of disappointing Rarity and holding back her friends, while a legitimate motivation, isn’t anything I’ve not seen before, and I didn’t really get enough to feel like I was in her (horse)shoes. The quality of the writing is fine, but it just didn’t do it for me emotionally.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Court Musician
by Pascoite
Romance, Slice of LifeCelestia's personal assistant, Pinwheel, wishes she could find a way to get the Princess to relax at the end of a stressful day. She's even found the perfect pony to help. Help Celestia, that is. Because it doesn't seem to help Pinwheel at all.
Why I added it: It won third place in the “Beneath the Mask” writeoff competition.
Review
Pinwheel is in love with Princess Celestia, and doesn’t know it.
Bronze Patina, one of Celestia’s personal guard, is fond of Pinwheel, but Pinwheel keeps blowing him off without even considering it properly.
Octavia waltzes in and seems to steal Celestia’s heart as she bonds with her over forgotten ancient music.
That is the core of this story, and it is a good one. In many ways, this is a good story – the love triangle is a powerful idea, and having the various ponies involved being pulled in different ways, and Pinwheel’s own obliviousness to what is really going on, all work very well.
This story was originally written for a Writeoff competition more than half a year ago, and took third place to another of Pascoite’s stories, A Taxing Situation, and the extremely excellent (and as yet unpublished) The Case of the Cowled Changelings. This story has a really good central setup, and watching Pinwheel building up to understanding, then doing something about her feelings builds a good bit of tension in the reader.
And yet… this story feels a little bit off at the same time. Each version of the story had its own flaws, but the flaw in both is fundamentally the same: the transitions do not always feel natural. Sometimes, the conversations and character actions feel a little bit off, typically in the form of being too abrupt. In the original version, this was most noticeable in the climactic scene towards the end of the story; in this new version, it typically strikes at a few of the scene transitions, particularly some of the bits involving Bronze Patina – and even at the end, it still feels a bit abrupt when she goes back to the topic of what to do about Bronze Patina.
I also felt like Pinwheel’s feelings come through as strongly for me towards the beginning as I would have liked; it is obvious that she is jealous, but I didn’t quite feel enough of her depth of emotion for the Princess earlier on in the story, when even she isn’t really aware of her own thoughts.
I must admit that the one thing I miss the most in this version of the story from its original version is the ambiguity of the ending; in the original, Pinwheel was left with more agency than it felt like she had in the new version. In the original, she realized that she had a choice, but in the new version, she doesn’t realize that she has a choice – if, indeed, she does – and thus feels like she is being guided towards an inevitable conclusion, when in fact that is not necessarily the case.
Still, I think it is an interesting story, even if it is imperfect in its execution.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
The Sea Pony by Bad Horse
Recommended
I Thought I Knew the Sky by nightwalker
Not Recommended
A Former Student of Mine by Pascoite
Not Recommended
Stage Fright by Bugle
Not Recommended
Court Musician by Pascoite
Worth Reading
Four Writeoff competition stories, plus a lone outlier in the featured story box, the writing quality in all of these stories was decent to high, which is always nice to see. Still, not all of them ended up delivering emotionally to me, which seems to be my biggest problem with short stories these days. The Sea Pony is an excellent example of the sort of short story which does exactly what it is trying to do, and manages to put the narrator’s voice into your head in only a few hundred words.
I’ve been working on a list of stories I’ve been putting off reading for my “Read It Later” reviews, and have already completed reading one of the five of them (Naked Singularity, which has been taken off the list and been replaced with A Carnivore's Prayer). It is amazing how much time you can waste not doing interesting things (like reading meaningless news), or put off reading longer stories because short stories are so quick to read and don’t require as much of a commitment. Hopefully, my “You’re Next” reading list is going to actually help me do what I want to do, which is to say, work through the very best stories I’ve been putting off reading - or stories that people have asked me to review (apparently to the consternation of some of their friends. Apparently they think they know what's coming. But what if I like them? What then?).
Number of stories still listed as "Read It Later - Recommended": 179.
Number of stories listed as “Read It Later”: 1539.
Aw, sorry to hear that Sky didn't strike you.
You did pick up on the fact that it was the presentation of ideas in narrative form, rather than anything grander. I'd just never personally read a story in which characters recognize that the events of Friendship Is Magic Pt 1 and Pt 2 have fundamentally altered their world and what that implies, and so I wrote it. It came from a 650 word conversation between two characters in an in-progress story that wouldn't have worked with that narrative but was enough of an idea that I didn't want to lose it entirely, and frankly needed to write something for myself.
But, in the end, que sera. Maybe I'll have better luck with a future story with you.
2724224
These sorts of stories are sometimes called "headcanon dumps" by some folks, and they're something of a mixed bag; I've written stories which were headcanon dumps of sorts myself (The Stars Ascendant being sometimes cited as an example of such, as Celestia leads Luna (and by proxy, the reader) to understand the implications of what Twilight's battle with Tirek). Some folks really enjoy them; others find them tiresome, or just bland. It really depends on whether or not the idea ends up really exciting folks.
I suspect that folks who haven't seen the idea that Luna has made the skies more interesting before will likely be more interested in it than I was; the idea wasn't especially new to me, and thus I suspect the impact of its delivery was diminished.
It wasn't badly written, mind you, and I wasn't one of the downvotes (it got a neutral vote or no-vote from me).
Congrats on getting featured, by the way!
2724232
Thank you. No one was more surprised with the feature than me.
I accept the no-vote. You didn't love it nor hate it, that's fine. Those 3 downvotes showed in literally the first hour and I have no idea who or why, as none had the stones to say. At least they haven't multiplied.
I'll see what you did in Stars tomorrow.
2724252
Eh, most folks don't comment regardless of their vote. It is pretty common; I wouldn't worry about folks downvoting without commenting most of the time (though downvoting without reading is just obnoxious). I usually try to leave a comment if I think I can help them, but sometimes the issues are pervasive.
And then other times I make extremely long blog posts trying to help them out.
I guess you have an all-or-nothing system? Because I don't see how "well written, but it didn't connect with me, and I don't know why" would rate less than neutral. I mean, I tend not to like adventure fics. I don't know why, but that doesn't mean I'd tell other people not to read them.
2725832
Yes, I don't differentiate between the bottom of my scale (none of the stories in this post got a downvote, for the record - Court Musician got an upvote, and The Sea Pony was part of an already-upvoted collection). Not recommended = something I don't, well, recommend. I don't differentiate between "eh" and "bad" in my recommendation because you can read lots of good stuff, and in any case, if you think it is interesting despite my recommendation it isn't like I'm stopping you from reading it.