Read It Now Reviews #20 – Giant Enemy Carb, Apples and Honesty, Setting the Beat, Pranks for Nothing, Just a Few Things · 6:46am Feb 25th, 2015
Time to get back into the rhythm of regular production.
First thing’s first: I released a new story last weekend.
Rose Petals
by Titanium Dragon
Romance, TragedyNo one wants to “talk” on their anniversary.
My entry in the last write-off competition, this definitely lives up to its tags. If you want to read about Fluttershy’s heart breaking, this might be the story for you.
What people are saying about this story:
“A gut punch, followed by a knife in the back.” – BlazzingInferno
“I'm left with nothing but the taste of ashes in my mouth. I feel as if I have been mugged while skipping through the meadow on the way to a picnic.” – Steel Resolve
“I don’t know that I’ve read a story where I identified with Fluttershy so completely. I think I’ll go now. ._.” – PresentPerfect
“Oh, ow. This was truly painful to read.” – dragonjek
The stories I read today:
Giant Enemy Carb by Ponydora Prancypants
Apples and Honesty by ExOttyuhr
Setting the Beat by Trumpet of Doom
Pranks for Nothing by Baal Bunny
Just a Few Things by ShortSkirtsAndExplosions
Giant Enemy Carb
by Ponydora Prancypants
Comedy, Random, Sony E3 2006 ReferencePinkie Pie isn't the only pony in town with a sweet tooth. Rarity had forgotten that today was the day the snack carts rolled into Ponyville, bringing them: the delicious phenomnomenons. But these decadent treats may turn out to be unhealthy in more ways than one. Can Rarity resist the temptation?
Why I added it: Because I am a sucker for references to Sony’s press conference at E3 in 2006. Which was nine years ago now.
You all should feel old. For those of you who have no idea what this is:
Yes, they really had a giant enemy crab in a game “based on” Japanese history. This is the origin of the Giant Enemy Crab meme, and is why there are 226 pictures of Rarity fighting a giant crab on Derpibooru. This meme is more popular than Sweetie Belle x Button Mash art.
Thanks, Sony.
And yes, the first and only chapter of this story is called Massive Damage.
The author’s note even contains the alternate description:
My take on the classic showdown based on the actual history of Equestria.
Review
This story documents the EPIC BATTLE between ponies and empty calories.
It goes about as well as you might expect.
This story contains a lot of references, and yet still has enough original humor (and uses the references in a sufficiently eyerolling fashion) that the whole thing comes together and is quite funny in the sort of way that someone would put their hands on their hips and say “That’s terrible,” while trying not to laugh.
Rarity sighed contentedly as she trotted out of the Ponyville Day Spa and into a beautiful summer’s day. “Mm. It truly is the simple things in life,” she said to nopony in particular. “A hooficure, a glass of chardonhay, a tawdry tabloid—what more could a lady ask of a lazy Saturday morning?”
Tingll tingll tingll
The merry sound of jingling bells drifted by on the breeze. Rarity froze in her tracks. “No!” she exclaimed, her wide eyes darting back and forth. “It can’t be today!”
Tingll tingll tingll
The tantalizing tintinnabulation tinkled on.
“This is impossible!” Rarity exclaimed. “A disaster! How could I have forgotten to mark it on my calendar? No matter. I will simply ignore it. I have the willpower!"
Tingll tingll tingll!
The delicate ringing crumbled Rarity's resistance like the walls of Mareicho. Instead of zigging left toward the Carousel Boutique, she zagged, spurred onward by the siren song of the bells. “If I’d have known the Trough & Tankard Fair was today, I’d have invited Sweetie Belle and her friends into the showroom and given them fabric shears and permanent markers to play with,” she muttered. “Anything to keep me distracted! Anything to keep me away from them. Dear Celestia, please let it be somepony else—anypony else—ringing those bells!”
But it was not. As soon as Rarity came upon the town square, she found she had a direct line of sight toward her enemy. Among the dozens of mobile stalls advertising food, drink, and sundry wares, one food cart stood out. This cart was painted a shocking pink. It was adorned with pink hearts and a giant pink bow. Its baby blue roof stood supported by pink-striped barber poles. The dresses and manes of the two smiling young mares inside the cart were festooned with pink bows and ribbons. Little golden bells hung everywhere the mares had found room to place them. The pink-striped lettering on the roof read “Phenomnomenons.”
“My old nemesis,” Rarity said through gritted teeth. “We meet again.” She planted her hooves and stared defiantly ahead. “I have news for you. You may know my weak point, but this year I am stronger. This year I will not succumb to your wily candied fruit and pastry cream temptations. This year I will not debase myself upon your altar of sugary sin. This year I will not wreck my diet! I swear it to be so!”
Tingll tingll tingll
“Maybe just one wouldn’t hurt.” She started toward the stall.
Recommendation: Recommended if you don’t mind referential humor, but you probably will not be very happy with this if referential humor bothers you.
Apples and Honesty
by ExOttoyuhr
Slice of Life, RandomWhen an exasperated Rarity calls her out in a poker game, Applejack discovers that she doesn’t have the element she thought she had.
(For the purposes of this story, assume that Equestrian verbs aren’t inflected for number.)
Why I added it: The author asked if it was a RariJack friendshipping story.
Review
It isn’t.
You may have noticed the some bizarre disclaimer regarding Equestrian verbs in the story description; this probably should have tipped me off to this story being weird, but as it was, it did not.
What this story is actually about is Applejack misunderstanding what element she represents.
It is a strange story, and made all the stranger by the first chapter, Horse Noises, which replaces the crucial words with [3/4-second whinny][right-ear flick]; the next two chapters then shows what it is that Rarity and Applejack each heard in the conversation in the place of the actions, and why the conversation confused them.
This was a weird premise for a story, and I didn’t end up overfond of it; while the idea of playing around with people misunderstanding something fundamental like that is potentially interesting, this didn’t really feel like it went anywhere with the idea, it just kind of happened.
The other issue I had with this was the nature of accents.
Think of aunt and ant. In most of the US, these two words are homophones; that is to say, we pronounce them identically – ant and aunt rhyme with rant. In New England, though, while ant rhymes with rant, aunt uses a vowel sound more like author. While this may sound strange to those who pronounce ant and aunt as homophones, we still recognize the words when they’re being pronounced by folks from New England; confusion with this sort of thing tends to flow in the opposite direction, when people merge words which aren’t homophones in their native accent, rather than when people separate out words homophones.
There isn’t anything really wrong with the writing in the story – it is generally well-written – but I didn’t end up quite feeling like there was much of a point to it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Setting the Beat
by Trumpet of Doom
Slice of LifeOctavia moonlights as a jazz bassist on weekends when she doesn't have a Canterlot Symphony Orchestra performance.
This is the end of one such Saturday night.
Why I added it: It won the “Most controversial” award in the “Closing Time” write-off competition.
Review
This story is a slice of life story in the sense that nothing is really going on; there isn’t any real conflict in the story, no real tension, no stakes. Instead, what we’re presented with is a very literal slice of life – an evening in a bar, centering on the musicians who are up on stage playing music to a drunk crowd of ponies. They’re tired and their night is almost up, but they’ve got two more pieces to play before the evening is through.
It won the most controversial award for a reason; nothing really happens in this story, it is entirely about the ambiance of it. The ponies talk, they do a couple pieces at the end of their shift, and then they go home. We get some idea of the personalities and what is driving them to do what they’re doing, but there’s not really anything more to it than that; it is just a description of the events of their fairly unremarkable evening.
I suspect that musicians might get more out of what the cast is up to than I did; I personally wasn’t overly fond of the piece as while it painted a picture of the evening in that club, it didn’t give me any reason to care about it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Pranks for Nothing
by Baal Bunny
Slice of LifeFour weeks after helping her new friends turn Nightmare Moon back into Princess Luna, Fluttershy's still trying to adjust to the changes that have come so suddenly into her life. Because sometimes it seems like having friends can be almost as hard as not having friends...
Why I added it: I liked the original version of this in the “Closing Time” write-off competition.
Review
This story is based on a prank that no one in the Write-off Assocation has ever done, but they totally should at some point to some poor, unsuspecting soul.
Everyone in town is talking about the awesome new story, Last Call, but Twilight Sparkle can find no trace of it anywhere. Fluttershy overheard her friends talking about it in the market, and thus mentions to Twilight that maybe one of them might have a copy.
Unfortunately for Fluttershy, she doesn’t realize that the whole thing is a gigantic prank that her friends are playing on Twilight; everyone else is in on it. One day, everyone talks about how awesome Last Call is; the next, everyone is supposed to pretend like it doesn’t exist.
And now Fluttershy is expected to play along…
This story is all about Fluttershy being adorable as she comes out of her shell around her friends and struggles to play along with a prank she is not at all comfortable playing a part in. This really plays up the season 1 adorable coward version of Fluttershy, but it plays it adorably well in places:
"Thank you, Mr. Tangelo." Fluttershy took the third-best of the oranges in her teeth, tucked it into her saddlebag, and set a bit on the counter. Giving him a smile, she turned to go and felt a little surprised that she wasn't shaking more than she was. But then Fluttershy had started surprising herself a lot in the last moon or so—making her first new friends in longer than she could remember, for one thing, and then helping those new friends when Nightmare Moon had turned out to be both real and Princess Celestia's long-lost sister.
Even more surprising, just two days ago in this very marketplace after Rainbow Dash's griffon friend had roared at her, yes, Fluttershy had burst into tears, sprinted home, and hidden under her bed. But she'd only stayed there an hour or so before crawling downstairs to have lunch. And when Pinkie Pie had come knocking at her door that afternoon with an invitation to a party, not only had Fluttershy accepted and gone, but she hadn't snuck away after discovering that the guest of honor was the very same griffon who'd frightened her so badly.
This story is, in the end, very much a fluff piece; a big, soft ball of fluff centered around Fluttershy’s struggle to fit in with her new friends and her difficulty in coping with the events of the story. However, while it seems like it would be a funny theme, the story is actually kind of sad; from Fluttershy’s point of view, the events of the story are very upsetting, and she’s pretty broken here.
Still, if Fluttershy being an adorable but sad little coward is interesting to you, you’ll likely enjoy this.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
Just a Few Things
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Romance, Slice of LifeRainbow Dash and Big Macintosh spend the day gathering supplies for Apple Bloom's birthday party. This is a good thing.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
Rainbow Dash spends all day talking to (and trying to impress) the great red brick wall that is Big McIntosh, who replies with his characteristic “Eyup” and “Enope” all day, and is wonderfully tolerant of the flighty little pegasus.
And then, after spending all day together, with Rainbow Dash failing to get more than two words out of the guy and failing to impress him in any way, they sit and watch the sun set.
This is a kind of adorable story, but at the same time it all fell terribly telegraphed; the tags pretty much gave away how it was going to end – indeed, how it had to end – and by about halfway through the story, I knew how it was going to go. And that was a bit disappointing, because the story generally failed to surprise me in any way – the story pretty much said “these two ponies are going to end up snuggling by the end” from its tags, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened.
Was it good? I wasn’t dissatisfied by it, and it did a good enough job at what it was trying to do. But it was mostly just that – adequate.
If you like the idea of Rainbow Dash trying to impress Big Mac (and failing), you might enjoy this. Otherwise, you probably won’t.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
Giant Enemy Carb by Ponydora Prancypants
Recommended
Apples and Honesty by ExOttyuhr
Not Recommended
Setting the Beat by Trumpet of Doom
Not Recommended
Pranks for Nothing by Baal Bunny
Worth Reading
Just a Few Things by ShortSkirtsAndExplosions
Worth Reading
While nothing today really blew my socks off, I still had a mostly enjoyable time reading these stories. I need to get back on the wagon for my “Read It Later” stories; I’ve been reading a bunch of new stuff, but I still keep on putting off reading the classics.
I should fix that one of these days.
Number of stories still listed as "Read It Later – High Priority": 232
Number of stories listed as “Read It Later”: 1546.
Riiiiidge Racer!
2828929
NINE. YEARS.
How the heck has it been nine years?
THIS IS TOTALLY WITTY AND RELEVANT AND NOT AN ANCIENT MEME, REALLY.
Yet another thing I had no idea was a non-pony meme. I had heard that the "Rarity vs. giant enemy crab" art trend started because one guy commissioned as many pieces in that vein as he could afford, and snowballed from there; it never occurred to me that that guy might have a motivation besides "hey, I really wanna see Rarity fight a giant crab".
Also, the meme was so far from my mind when I read that fic that I doubt the reference registered as more than a faint ping, which made the "twist" climax an absolute delight.
2828981
Yeah. Its the sort of thing you totally should have seen coming, but you thought the joke was over.
I had forgotten about being told that I needed to partake in the "prank" and how uncomfortable that made me. Not nearly as horrid as I felt after reading Pranks for Nothing, but not good.
I have money. Is emotional stability for sale on Amazon? Because ways to kill yourself sure are, and that doesn't really seem fair.
2829066
I'm not saying that the Writeoff Association is secretly a gigantic psychological experiment put together by the Evil League of Evil, but feedback on your psychological state after each
testincident is, of course, always appreciated.Wow. I only just noticed that the story is actually entitled "Giant Enemy Carb." I'm so used to that trio of words that I was seeing Crab the whole time. I thought there was going to be some kind of elaborate metaphor at work.
2829066
Honestly, I mostly forgot about the prank a few minutes after I agreed to it. That's how I keep secrets.
2828981
I'm not certain that Rarity vs. Crab is actually a reference to the GEC meme. It could have spawned from a simple, yet coincidental, attempt at randomness. GEC is not really very popular as memes go (this is the first I've heard of it, like Pterrorgrine).
2829298
It was a huge fad amongst gamers for years. People still reference it. I'm sure the Rarity vs Crab thing is a reference to it, mostly because it is too random not to be.
2829234
It is a cute name for a story about resisting the temptation to eat junk food doubly so given the ending.
2829066
I certainly never participated in any sort of prank, which is really lucky because it would have been a shame for my love of a good prank to conflict with my deep desire to leave the digital historical record unfucked. I'm sure being asked to edit old comments in arbitrary and unmarked ways would be a really distressing proposition that I wouldn't know how to respond to except with panicked deletions, if it ever happened.
God dammit Bad Horse. Allegedly.
2829066
I feel sad about not being asked! On the other hand the reputed ringleader would leave me out because I am THE DOWNVOTER
And as in the contest, I go undetected in the post-reviews :V Though it didn't particularly hit you, I'd like to know your more...detailed thoughts on my entry. I've looked forward to it for weeks :O
Go on, tear off the bandaid. I'm not scared.