Read It Now Reviews #53 – Wanting Sweet Things, Rarity Sleeps In, Far Kobresia, No Sale, To Hell With Destiny · 4:07am Sep 12th, 2015
A busy day today for people I follow – four new stories in my feed, from three different authors, including the long-absent Darf, who is oft spoken of in hushed tones, for fear that he might return if you said his name in front of a mirror three times.
Seems someone finally did. And so, I thought, what better way to welcome him back from two years of absence than to review two of his new stories?
I’m so sorry.
But those were not the only new stories out today; Estee put out a new piece, and Baal Bunny/Augie Dog published his story from the last writeoff. And I thought, given my love of playing with cosmic forces, that I’d try out Jay-The-Brony’s story about destiny that I saw in the featured story box.
Today’s stories:
Wanting Sweet Things by Darf
Rarity Sleeps In by Darf
Far Kobresia by Baal Bunny
No Sale by Estee
To Hell With Destiny by Jay-The-Brony
Wanting Sweet Things
by Darf
Sex, Romance, Sad, Slice of Life
3,105 wordsLyra misses Bonbon the same way she does every day, aching to see her even tho only a few hours have separated the two of them. What bubbles thru her head while she sits at home? Can this story even be reconciled as pony fanfiction? Read on to find out!
Note: Contains references to real world drugs and sex. Don't read if you don't like those things. Not fully edited because too many stories. Sorry.
Why I added it: Darf hasn’t written anything in two years, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually read anything by him outside of his short story collection.
Content Warning: This pushes on the upper boundary of a teen-rated story.
Review
This is… a weird but mostly well-written piece. It seems like it is going to be a piece of erotica, but the tags tell you otherwise, and by the end of it, it is obvious what it is – a slice of life piece about disappointment.
Lyra is waiting for Bon Bon to come home, and is eager to share herself with her lover. She wants her – she needs her. She’s horny (if it is appropriate to apply such a term to a unicorn in polite company), and wants to light up a few blunts and have sex.
But Bon Bon has had a bad day, isn’t in the mood for anything of the sort, and Lyra has to do her best to deal with it. But it can be hard to change your mind when it only seems to have one track.
This is a melancholy little piece about Lyra’s dashed expectations of a sexy evening at home with Bon Bon, destroyed by the realities of life and a bad day at work. And while it is a very well-rendered scene (complete with footnotes, of all things, which are rather comedic in contrast with some of the later text, and perhaps not the best of choices) I’m not sure if anyone is actually going to like it. It is real – all too real, one of the petty little conflicts a couple might have when one has had a bad day and the other wants sex but also wants to comfort their lover and knows it isn’t happening, but thinks, ”Maybe…”
If Bonbon didn’t walk through the door in the next fifteen seconds, Ponyville was going to explode.
Lyra was perched behind the couch like a cat waiting for a furry string arm to fly through the air in need of a pounce and claw-heavy throttling. Her eyes were locked on the door to the apartment, which she shared with Bonbon. Which she was in by herself, waiting for Bonbon to get home from work.
Lyra’s eyes flitted for an instant to the clock on the wall, its minute hand tipped with a curled four fingers and one pointing; a literal minute hand. Fifteen seconds had definitely passed, and Ponyville hadn’t exploded. Maybe in the next fifteen seconds then. Or else that would surely be the end.
It was 6:04PM. Bonbon got off work at 6:30PM. It normally took her three minutes and twelve seconds to walk home from the candy shop, or vice versa, depending on distractions, weather, windspeed, and assorted other factors that Lyra wasn’t gifted enough in science to determine. Her eyes glanced at the clock again. 6:05. Ponyville still here. Feeling of impending doomsday not abated. Next fifteen seconds, check again.
Normally, Lyra was not this needy. She knew what it was like to be away from her partner for a day, for a week, even for a month when Bonbon’s family had flown her to Trottingham for their 25th anniversary vacation, and Lyra had devolved into a mess of her pre-Bonbon self, manifesting all facets of revolting single marehood, only to regain her sense of self and composure when Bonbon had returned and rescued her from the disaster of herself. But that one time was an exception, because Lyra was not normally this needy.
6:08. No matter how hard Lyra tried, she couldn’t stop wanting Bonbon to come home. She needed her like candy-flavored water.
Truthfully, Lyra had been aching for Bonbon even before she woke up. She couldn’t remember the precise details of her dream, but she knew that Bonbon was there, and the wetness between her legs was as real as it had ever been when she awoke. She’d turned to Bonbon’s side of the bed, ready to lick and nuzzle into something more intense, but Bonbon was already up, getting ready, and out the door before Lyra could even beg her for just a lick before she took off. Lyra had lain in bed paused for a few minutes, her hoof hovering beside her, yearning to move downward yet knowing that there was no point without Bonbon there[2].
Recommendation: Worth reading if you are in the mood for a sexually-charged melancholic slice of life piece, but avoid if you’re looking for resolution or some sort of uplifting message, and especially if casual drug use bothers you. This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; you’ve been warned.
Rarity Sleeps In
by Darf
Sad, Slice of Life, Purple
3,355 wordsIt's impossible to fully encapsulate the sensation of waking up, only to realize you've turned off your alarm at some point while in a half-slumber, and now the world you're awake in is going to punish you for it. Rarity never sleeps in, but when she misses an important appointment, it's hard not to let herself be consumed by worrying about it. But will fussing over it make things better?
Why I added it: Darf hasn’t written anything in two years, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually read anything by him outside of his short story collection.
Review
Rarity sleeps in and misses an important appointment with a very important fashion pony.
Clearly, this is the end for her. All the other indignities that the world heaped on her, those were the world; but this? This was her.
This is a very emotionally complex piece, and Rarity's mixture of emotions - and her thought processes - feel very human, though I'm not sure if I believe they're precisely Rarity. Still, the emotion expressed is a real one, and if you like complex, emotional pieces, this might be up your alley.
However, while I do appreciate that this story communicates the ideas that it does, on the other hand, it was a struggle to read. This story is purple. Very purple. And it is split up into gigantic, blocky paragraphs which, while not quite painful, are certainly very large, and some of them just felt too bulky to me. The whole thing was lent a sense of weight by its writing style, but at the same sense, wasn’t very fun to get through:
Thought. Verve. Life. Creating something from nothing. Colour, light, division. Concept, form, actualization. Purpose to the empty thread, lead and weave, spiral and split end to narrative, intent, guidance. Croup, shoulders, haunch—perspective, plot, guidance—problems with anatomy. Spectrum, six and infinite, white and prismatic, forever the glow until sleep into sleep into never sleeping. A lone strand caught in a continuous breeze, lapse and vanish to light.
Rarity awoke from the dream she was having with the customary confusion that bordered every passage from sleep to consciousness, or vice versa. The world seemed briefly inscrutable, robbed of all its rules and structure, but as soon as the miasma of awaking presented itself, the reality of existence seemed to fall neatly into place: Rarity was Rarity, and she was at home, safe in her bed, waking to greet another day.
Even still, a sense of out-of-placeness followed Rarity as she stretched, yawned, and threw her cotton sheets and fine white blankets (with vermillion accents) back across her bed. It followed her as she made her way to the bathroom[1], brushed her teeth, cleaned her face, and laid out her make up before stepping into the shower. It followed her under the warm water, tinting every drop as it fell onto Rarity’s coat and mane, quietly but effectively robbing her of the normal soothing sense that washed over her body during her most immensely private time, when she could discard the obligations and worries of the real world and lose herself to a dimension of dancing rivulet streams and their accompanying warmth. The sense of disquiet even followed, bobbling at the back of Rarity’s mind, as she applied her makeup, did her hair, and made her way downstairs, fully prepared for her morning check of the Boutique before she went out to do errands. There was always something new to be taken care of each day, and though she didn’t talk of it often (mostly for fear of monopolizing conversation, or seeming too self-centered), being a pony whose livelihood depended on their ability to create—and, what’s more, to actualize that creativity, and to do it in a flawless, novel, continually innovative and daring and exceptionally aesthetically conscious way—meant that even the thing Rarity loved was a source of stress, and so it was nice to focus herself on mundane, or at the very least simple, tasks, so as to not become trapped in a spiral of self-creative loathing that had consumed her too often in the past, before she understood how to come to terms with the demons that accompanied any soul of purpose and passion in the world.
Rarity’s hoof was on the front door when the sense of off-ness finally overwhelmed her—there was something she was forgetting, and she wasn’t about to leave until she determined what it was. A glance around the room; everything tidied nicely, no stray threads or design papers, no sign that Sweetie Belle had reconstructed a piece of the furniture overnight with hazard consequences lying in wait…
Still, I liked it on the whole, and the ending is not quite as dense as the start. Still, if the above is a struggle to read through, you might find this story frustrating to read.
Recommendation: Worth reading if the quoted prose doesn’t bother you; avoid like the plague if it does.
Far Kobresia
by Baal Bunny
Slice of Life, Lost City
3,536 wordsThe recent reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Equestria and Yakyakistan has brought into circulation a number of stories concerning a fabled land of sedge grasses in the far northern mountains where the winds seem to speak in sibilant whispers. One pony sets out to learn the truth behind these stories.
A fond tribute to Cold in Gardez's "Lost Cities."
Why I added it: I liked it in the last Writeoff.
Review
A mysterious pony tells Double Diamond the tale of Far Kobresia, a place that the yaks refuse to speak of – most yaks, anyway. A place made for yaks, a place that simply should not exist, but does.
This is a fun little piece, and probably my favorite lost city story since the original Lost Cities. It is told in a very different style from Cold In Gardez’s originals, and Far Kobresia is more of a place than a city, but it I still a really neat little story and bit of world-building, both about the fantastic locale and the yaks.
It is also kind of a subversion of the Lost Cities stories in some ways, but how would be a bit of a spoiler.
"The wind, it's said, never blows across the grasslands of Kobresia, so deep in the mountains beyond Yakyakistan that even the inhabitants of that distant kingdom—when they begrudgingly find that they must refer to it at all—call it 'Far Kobresia.'"
I wasn't sure if I was still breathing, her voice wrapping around me like the calmness I always felt at the top of a slope just before I leaped out and began to race down its powdery face. The blueness in the air seemed to swirl like the first flurry of the season, and I was sure I could see mountains rearing up against a winter sky.
"The wind, as I said," she went on, "is rumored never to blow through those tall, perennial sedges. Yaks will assert with much shouting and smashing of tavern tables that the wind there drifts and hisses and rustles and sighs. But that it might merely blow is something they will fervently deny.
"In fact, sir, those few yaks who claim to have stumbled, half frozen, from the ice-laden storms that howl in constant, swirling confusion through that northernmost of northern spots into the sudden, sun-drenched silence of Far Kobresia report that the stillness at first makes them wonder if they've gone deaf, if somehow the storms have affected their ears the way snow blindness will affect the eyes.
"At first, they wonder this.
"At first, too, they dance with elation, especially those who report that they'd felt Death's frosty but fevered breath upon their flanks mere moments before. For summer in Yakyakistan is a thing any of us ponies would call the depths of deepest winter, and even the majority of yaks, born and raised in the yurt-filled villages and thickly-insulated stone cities, find travel outside the settlements to be a tricky proposition at certain times of the year.
"But there are always those who feel confined by the usual, aren't there?" Over the dim image of the landscape, her sideways smile made me think of a newly risen crescent moon. "Pedestrian they call the life they lead among blizzards that would challenge the heartiest pony adventurer. Sneering, they turn up their noses at the commonplace reality of the thriving civilization the yaks have wrenched from a landscape few other species would consider close to habitable. Hooves heavy with disgust, they turn their backs on the fragrant feasts and festivals and raise their shaggy brows to the heights of the mountains beyond, the sky so crisp there, it seems ready to shatter.
Recommendation: Recommended.
No Sale
by Estee
Slice of Life
10,499 wordsThere are a thousand reasons for not making a purchase at the Carousel Boutique. Some of them are legitimate. Many are excuses. The majority are lies. Falsehoods which Rarity has been listening to for years now, without the slightest touch of variety in the performances. Lies which, during the first week of Ponyville's summer tourist season. have escalated to the point where it feels like they're the only words being said at all.
So if nopony is going to buy anything no matter what Rarity does -- why not call them out on a few? Surely that couldn't do any harm, at least not more than what's already been done?
Surely...
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
Rarity is tired of tourists making up excuses for why they aren’t going to buy her stuff.
Summer after summer, she hears the same excuses.
And one day, she snaps. And calls every single customer on their lies.
This is the story of Rarity having one bad day, that she thinks is a really good day because she can finally let loose on every pony in her store – but in reality, it is just her taking her bitterness out on the world, and no matter how good it might feel now, there’s a reason people don’t do that even to non-customers.
I’m sure this will appeal to a certain category of retail worker a lot more than it did to me, taking down their customers the way they would have liked to do so.
For the rest of us, this is pretty much a character piece on Rarity being pushed too far, which is fairly decent, but has a quiet sort of sadness to it, the way that many of Estee’s stories do.
It had reached the point where the Canterlot accent was beginning to act as acid against her coat. She was a rather large fraction over six days beyond having each of the fuming, stinking, repeated words try burn through her eardrums, and since it was only the seventh day of the summer tourist season...
Rarity, if pressed on the matter by a good friend who wouldn't mind camping out on one of the Boutique's guest couches for the three hours it would take for her to fully vent, might have described the situation as painful. Wearying. "Depressive" might have gotten involved somewhere, although it would have had to wait its turn in a rather long line and help the speaker to line up a properly dramatic sentence-ending semi-swoon before being launched into sympathetic air. But Rarity had owned her own business for several years, was more than familiar with the seasonal tides and what tended to wash into her shop on cresting waves of relocated ego, and so she had other words for the way her day was proceeding.
"So," the non-customer preened as the dress came off, false eyelashes (and not even good ones at that) weakly batting in Rarity's direction while the just-removed creation was unceremoniously kicked across the floor, "I admit it does fit, at least -- to a degree, for some standards, and the colors don't seem to be doing anything too horrible when contrasted with my mane..."
Rarity (who had known it was a perfect fit before the dress was ever donned, who had seen the manestyle gain extra highlights from the reflections off myriad garnets) waited for it, and used the pause time to indulge in a few predictions of what "it" would turn out to be. Giving the rustling of feathers, her imaginary bits were likely best off being placed on –
"...but it's somewhat early yet, and I do want to see what the rest of this... 'town' -- has to offer! So I'll just drop by and pick it up on my way out, yes? Would you be a dear and set it aside for me? Make sure nopony else touches it in any way?"
Which would leave Rarity with one less piece on the sales floor for the duration of the selling day, an occupied slot in the Reserved cabinet, and a grand total of no bits collected on the dress until closing, when that nil state would miraculously transition into an angry black slash of a ZERO recorded in her daily tally.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you want to hear Rarity insult her non-customers.
To Hell With Destiny
by Jay-The-Brony
Sad, Slice of Life
2,104 wordsSpike has something he needs to say, and to be honest, it's been on his mind for a long time now. He's never said anything about it until now, but recently, he feels like he no longer has any choice. And so, on the cusp of his friends' journey to fix another friendship problem, he finally confesses to what's been bothering him.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Spike gives a little speech about how the Mane Six have been following orders from a magical map of unknown origins, from a power that doesn’t seem to be able to fix the problems that it points out, and that it is controlling their lives – just as their lives have always been controlled by outside forces.
While this is potentially a clever idea, I felt like the story didn’t actually go anywhere with it. Something like this is a great basis for a mystery or adventure story – figuring out what is behind the Tree of Harmony and the Cutie Map – but this story mostly just asks the question rather than gives any answers, and as such, it doesn’t really have a satisfying conclusion as it is really just the premise.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
Wanting Sweet Things by Darf
Worth Reading
Rarity Sleeps In by Darf
Worth Reading
Far Kobresia by Baal Bunny
Recommended
No Sale by Estee
Worth Reading
To Hell With Destiny by Jay-The-Brony
Not Recommended
I must be getting soft; either that, or people are trying to make me happy.
I approve, if it is the latter.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 81
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 337
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1663
YMMV for this bunch people.
3386078
These are kind of narrow audience stories.
Far Kobresia is a Lost Cities story, which is... well, a fairly limited audience who likes really literary worldbuilding pieces.
Darf's stories are both pretty literary.
Rarity's piece is... an Estee story.
I thought they were pretty good, but I have a tendency to like stuff like this :V
And only Far Kobresia is really upbeat among them.
You know, after checking out your user page, I do kinda wish you had a library of all the stuff you don't recommend. It's nothing personal or anything, your taste just seems to be pretty much exactly what mine isn't. I figure hey, it might also work in reverse.
3386105
What sorts of stories do you like? I tried to look at your bookshelves, but they're all private.
3386110
I don't really have any specific preferences and I mostly just use them as a sort of bookmarks folder, so it wouldn't tell you much anyway. I seriously wasn't kidding, though, I checked out your blog posts for the last three or four weeks and I liked pretty much everything you didn't recommend and vice-versa.
I think Darf's two stories accomplish something that bookplayer (at least, I think it was her) has advocated in her blog: to tell a story about a feeling that cannot be easily described. The Rarity story, in particular, describes something that feels very familiar to me--some combination of anxiety, inadequacy, and of knowing that you've been successful but that you're just waiting for you to screw things up and ruin everything--yet is difficult to concisely put into words. The prose may be dense, but it really captures some of the overthinking that characterizes such feelings.
3386118
Clearly you're the anti-TD.
Good thing we're chatting over the internet, otherwise there'd be a big explosion. It'd be very awkward to explain.
3386136
With a bang, my friend, not a whimper.
3386128
I agree. They're very emotionally complex pieces, and they're both quite good at describing that particular mix of emotions. That's why I thought they were both worth reading.
I suspect that a lot of people won't like them, though. The Rarity piece in particular is very literary.
Also because they're both sad, and people don't generally like sadfics as much.
But I thought they were both worth my time, and hopefully the quoted sections will help other people know if they're their sort of thing.
3386145 TBH I liked both of these... I hated the other one about Twilight and Spike.
I do agree with 3386128 though, each of Darf's stories has been really, really spot-on with the emotions. Reading his stories today I've felt a plethora of things... each story achieved a deep sense of something... but the something in the Twilight/Spike Story was beyond uncomfortable. I guess in that sense it was a success, beyond what these two you reviewed did for me... but I hate that story. It was the first story (and last) that I attempted to approve or fail today. It just... gah.
As for "To Hell With Destiny" I find that your reasons here resonate with mine... in a general sense, I think Jay has good story ideas. Some of them promising even... but the execution of the ones I've read has just left me with a feeling I can basically describe as "meh". He writes a LOT of stories, and they seem to all suffer from the same issues. He never takes the story past that superficial brush to the idea, he doesn't really take offered help to improve to heart, and it always ends up disappointing me... reminds me of Tatsurou a bit—although I think the latter does a better job at trying to get deeper into the characters—in that ability to come up with possibly fascinating concepts, but not really milking them as much as he can. Although to be absolutely fair to Tatsurou, I do enjoy the telling of the story however it's done, much more than the placid pace I generally get from Jay.
3386303
I haven't read Darf's other two new stories yet, but that Spike/Twilight one sounded pretty messed up, so...
Yeah.
As far as Jay goes, really that sounds like he has trouble distinguishing between a story and an idea. I have lots of ideas that don't really work as stories because they don't really go anywhere - they're more of a premise rather than a story per se, as they don't really have an arc or anything, they just kind of are.
That last one set me on edge because it sounded like the author using Spike as a mouthpiece to rant about the show. Yes/no?
3386454 3386580
The Twi/Spike story is not a rant about the show but a very real look at sexual abuse. If there is a theme to Darf's pieces it's that they don't feel very pony, but they do feel very real (the Rarity and Twilight/Caramel stories do make good use of their main characters, however). They are all very well written--for example, I really liked how the vocabulary of the TwiSpike piece changes as the perspective shifts bergen Twilight and Spike; it really helps to emphasize Spike's innocence and Twilight's depravity. The story is definitely not for everyone, but if you think you'd enjoy a literary look at some disturbing themes, it's a good read.
The Twilight/Caramel story, despite being marked mature, feels much more tame than the LyraBon sorry. It's like the Rarity story, in that it provides an emotionally complex picture of depression. If you didn't like the prose in the Rarity piece, however, the writing is even more pretentious and literary (I mean that as a compliment, though that may be a negative to others).
3386640 I think 3386580 meant the last story on the list above, not Darf's other story.
3386643 Ah that makes more sense.
Thanks for pointing that out.
3386640
Misaimed comment aside, I will agree about darf. I love As the Days Go, for instance, but I remember getting backlash when I reviewed it because it's not very strongly rooted in the show or characters.
And, well, I've just started reading all (air quotes) of his stories, so we'll see how that goes. :V
3386580
I guess you could interpret it that way, but I'm pretty sure that the actual purpose of the story was to call into question the premise - i.e. why would you follow a strange magical artifact's commands to travel all over Equestria, especially when it keeps sending you into potentially dangerous situations? Is it really benign, or does it have some sort of ulterior motive?
I think that was the point of the story. The problem was that the story raised the question but then didn't really answer it, and it felt overdramatic given the circumstances - Spike's speech just didn't feel tonally right, given the circumstances.
3386640
Darf actually changed the rating on that from M to T, apparently.
3386659
I remember that story kind of vaguely, but that does kind of stick out in my mind about it.
Just read "No Sale". Oh man. I know I've felt that way before.
3386580
Sorta-kinda? Wanderer D has it right, really, it does treat the whole topic pretty shallowly, but the words it puts into his mouth still do sound pretty natural, coming from a worried (and rather too well-read) child.
3387239
Yeah, I'm glad I don't know that feel.
Though it was still a good story even without having had that experience, as it is quite easy to commiserate anyway.