Read It Now Reviews #49 – Great Big Sky, The Rainbow’s Realisation, The Interview, Everypony Lives, Mamunia · 12:00am Aug 30th, 2015
Today’s Read it Now Reviews are brought to you by procrastination. Procrastination – where you get everything done except the thing with an actual due date.
Though at least it finally made me catch up on SS&E’s recent works, read a few RariLight stories (a ship that I have long-neglected to read many stories about), and make more progresss on Mistletrapped.
Today’s stories:
Great Big Sky by shortskirtsandexplosions
The Rainbow’s Realisation by korisfa
The Interview by Monochromatic
Everypony Lives by Chinchillax
Mamunia by shortskirtsandexplosions
Great Big Sky
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Sad, Adventure
4,918 wordsA brisk wind blows Applejack's hat away. She goes chasing after it and finds herself in another world.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
Applejack is always hard at work on her farm, but after her hat blows off and she briefly spies a fantastic landscape before being brought back to reality by her sister calling her name, Applejack feels disappointed with her life.
But she can’t go chasing after flights of fancy. She has a farm to run… right?
While I agree with the central idea of this piece, and really wanted to like it, in the end, I didn’t. I’m not sure if the fantastic landscape wasn’t fantastic enough, or if I just couldn’t buy into Applejack’s mindset, or if it all just felt too telegraphed, but the whole thing just didn’t come together for me. I just never really bought into the central conflict here, and consequently, I was left feeling a bit let down by the end.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Rainbow’s Realisation
by korisfa
Slice of Life
1,611 wordsRainbow Dash has a sudden realisation concerning her friendship with Twilight Sparkle and she races through the streets of Ponyville in order to find her; what could it be that has caused the fearless pegasus such consternation, and how will Twilight react to the news?
Why I added it: It was in the popular stories box, and the premise interested me.
Review
Rainbow Dash flies across Ponyville extremely quickly to get to Twilight’s place, and then asks her out to lunch so they can talk about something important.
This story feels unfocused; in the end, the first scene feels like it didn’t really accomplish anything story-wise, and goes into a great deal of detail about the destruction Rainbow Dash wrought while racing across town to talk to Twilight, but it is all ultimately pointless; it doesn’t really add anything to the story and feels out of place.
Unfortunately, the tags also rule out the major bait-and-switch of the story, which kind of removes a lot of the tension on that side as well, though it didn’t end up getting played out quite as much as I thought it would – certainly not to the same extent as stories like Bad Horse’s Experience, which did a better job of creating tension over what Celestia’s question was going to be.
In the end, Rainbow Dash is worried over nothing, but while Rainbow Dash’s concern is potentially reasonable, I didn’t really feel like the story delivered on it – doubly so because we have seen Twilight just hang out with her friends on a number of occasions. Moreover, Twilight’s friends referring to her as “Princess” feels weird – I’m not sure that they’ve ever really done that in casual conversation. She’s just Twilight to them most of the time, but here the P-word was being dropped quite a bit in dialogue for no good reason.
All in all, this story felt like it was long for what it was, even at 1,300 words, and didn’t really deliver.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Interview
by Monochromatic
Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life
3,964 wordsAs part of her search for somepony to assist her with legal matters, Twilight spends most of her time interviewing potential candidates. When this results in her neglecting her friends, Rarity decides that as the Princess's significant other, she should take matters into her own hooves.
By which she means getting a job interview with Twilight and acting as unprofessionally as possible.
Why I added it: I don’t read much RariLight, it was featured, and I was procrastinating.
Review
Twilight is busy interviewing applicants for positions at her new castle, and Rarity and Rainbow Dash come along to remind Twilight to show up for a group get-together later that week. Unfortunately, Twilight is extremely busy and wants to get through all of her job applicants.
Fortunately, Rarity can solve that by simply “applying for a job”.
And by that, I mean “flirt shamelessly with Twilight”.
Alas, this story didn’t really cross the finish line for me. I’m not an active RariLight shipper, and by necessity, having Rarity flirt heavily with Twilight is a bit of a stretch without much setup, and that probably didn’t help my enjoyment of the story. However, I think the real issue was that the central idea of the story – Rarity coming in and embarrassing Twilight – is really the core of the story, there isn’t really a whole lot else to it, and the central point of comedy is given away in the cover art. There is no real serial escalation, and the comedy is fairly thin on the ground – more of the mild amusement sort than anything that would make me laugh out loud. The actual flirty exchange is actually fairly short, and doesn’t really escalate all that much before Rarity gets herself kicked out, and without going very far beyond the cover, the whole thing just didn’t amuse me as much as I would have liked.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Everypony Lives
by Chinchillax
Sad, Tragedy, Dark
2,607 wordsA lot has happened since Celestia and Luna disappeared nine hundred years ago. There are no wars, no diseases, no pain, no death. Princess Twilight, Discord, and Spike do everything to ensure that the utopia continues.
But even the most ideal paradises have ponies that wish it wasn't so.
Why I added it: It was featured and is about immortality.
Review
Care Free tries to commit suicide.
Princess Twilight stops him.
Nopony has died in centuries thanks to Twilight and Discord’s magic. Twilight is never again going to let a pony die.
But Care Free is done with life and wants to end it, while Twilight refuses to acquiesce.
This story felt kind of shallow; Care Free didn’t have any real rationale for dying, and Twilight’s autocratic manner meant she could never really connect with him – and indeed, seems a bit disconnected in general, and doesn’t seem to really understand ponies anymore. None of the characters were particularly believable, and thus, there was no connection with any of them.
I’m not really sure what this story was trying to accomplish, and was left feeling like the whole thing was some events that happened, without a greater context to them. Was it supposed to be a criticism of death? Of immortality? Of forcing others to live? Of people wanting to die?
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Mamunia
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Sad, Slice of Life
10,794 wordsThe rain comes falling from the sky. It brings out all the good and bad in the ponies living in Ponyville.
Today is such a rainy day.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
Fluttershy is on her way to bury a pet.
Twilight is trying to solve an ancient feud between tribes of goats and is stressing out over trying to find a translation for their language.
Big Mac is off on a date, leaving Applejack to deal with all the farmwork by herself today.
Rarity is struggling with an important dress order for Sapphire Shores when she receives a distressing letter.
Rainbow Dash is fed up with being jerked around by the Wonderbolts, and takes it out on her fellow weather ponies.
And Pinkie Pie is having a bright and cheerful day helping the Cakes and planning a party. She even is going to get to play the Quiet Game later with Gummy!
And then the rain starts, and everypony realizes that they’re letting their stress get the better of them.
I wasn’t terribly enamored with this story for a great deal of its length, and I felt like it was too long, but at the same time, predictable as the ending of the story was, I couldn’t help but like it and feel satisfied when characters finally uncoiled and let go of their stresses and let themselves feel better rather than just letting it eat them up inside. Letting go of their stress didn’t solve their problems, but it did allow them to address them and feel better about them, and in the end, it was cathartic for the audience as well.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if spending over 5,000 words on the build-up doesn’t bother you.
Summary
Great Big Sky by shortskirtsandexplosions
Not Recommended
The Rainbow’s Realisation by korisfa
Not Recommended
The Interview by Monochromatic
Not Recommended
Everypony Lives by Chinchillax
Not Recommended
Mamunia by shortskirtsandexplosions
Worth Reading
I hope you folks find these useful.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – Important: 79
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – High Priority: 327
Number of stories listed as Read It Later: 1646
Yeah, Great Big Sky really had me on the ropes. For one, I enjoyed the idea of disappearing into some fantasy land and letting go, along with the message it was attempting to convey, but when Apple Bloom entered the picture, I feel as if it fuddled the moral a bit. It tried to do and say a lot, but it seemed like the existentialism clashed with the central point of the story.
So, when's the next chapter of Mistletrapped going to be out?
3357259
Chapter 5 of Mistletrapped is actually written at this point, but I need to finish editing it myself, then send it out for editing by others. However, most of my editors are involved in the Writeoff, so they might not get around to being able to edit it this week (at least, not in the next few days), and I haven't even sent it out to them yet as I'm still tweaking it internally.
So I went and read "The Interview" from here, and I'll have to agree with you on your points. It wasn't horrible or anything, but it definitely was a 'meh'. Neither meriting an upvote nor a downvote. I certainly wouldn't go to someone to talk about it (other than you, but you reviewed it.)
I think if, like you observed, the author had stepped out of doing that same joke from the comic (can't even find the original comic for it...) and gone into more teasing and pushing it, the comedy potential would have probably tilted it to the upvote side.