Read It Now Reviews #58 – Would It Matter If I Reviewed Them All? · 11:20pm Oct 8th, 2015
GAPJaxie wrote a story, Would It Matter If I Was?, about Fluttershy asking the totally-hypothetical question of whether or not it would matter if she was actually secretly a changeling.
This struck a chord amongst people, and 12+ knock-offs ensued. I’ve reviewed a number of them (including a writeoff entry), but here are five that I hadn’t seen before.
I blame GAPJaxie for this post.
Today’s stories:
What Matters More? by Palm Palette
Some Things Matter More Than Others by Littlecolt
Would It Matter If I Was Yer Cuz? by Vengeful Spirit
Would It Matter If I Was Trans? by pertelote345
Would It Matter If Matter Mattered by M E Lovecolt
What Matters More?
by Palm Palette
Comedy
3,801 wordsAfter the Canterlot Wedding, Fluttershy asked Twilight a difficult question. Now, Rainbow Dash flies in to talk some sense into her and to shake things up with a question of her own. On top of that, there's some sort of conspiracy going on. What are these ponies up to?
Why I added it: I blame GAPJaxie.
Review
Intended as a direct sequel to Would It Matter If I Was?, this story has Fluttershy go downstairs, only for everyone to realize that Fluttershy, rather than taking Twilight’s mind off things, has instead made her freak out about something else…
And so, Rainbow Dash is the next contestant.
Then Rarity.
Each of them asks Twilight a hypothetical question, messing with Twilight even more, but eventually Twilight figures out what is going on…
Well, mostly anyway.
While this is labelled slice of life, this is actually a comedy – the ever-escalating ridiculous questions, combined with Twilight’s freakout and the ending where we find out exactly why all Twilight’s friends were distracting her all combine to make this a rather funny little piece, a strong departure from the seriousness of GaPJaxie’s original.
On the downside, in this continuity, the hypothetical questions are, in the end, a lot less interesting because of the motivations behind them. It also has kind of flat prose in places – I wasn’t really interested in the story until Rainbow Dash’s hypothetical question came along, but after that point, the prose stopped bothering me.
Overall, this made me chuckle a few times, but it wasn’t amazing. If you’re looking for a quick laugh, this might be a decent choice.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Some Things Matter More Than Others
by Littlecolt
Comedy, Romance, Slice of Life
2,371 wordsReally quite a long time after the changeling invasion of Canterlot, Fluttershy has something she wants to finally discuss with Princess Twilight.
Why I added it: I blame GAPJaxie even more.
Review
“We’ve been friends for a long time, now, Twilight.”
Fluttershy comes to ask Twilight if it would matter if she was a changeling.
Instead, Twilight interrupts Fluttershy, thinking that Fluttershy was confessing to being gay.
An awkward and frequently interrupted conversation ensues, until Fluttershy makes a not-so-hypothetical confession about the real reason she came there…
And, well, maybe Twilight hopes just a little that Fluttershy swings that way...
Sadly, this story was kind of a jumbled mess. Twilight talking over Fluttershy constantly is potentially funny, but honestly, a lot of the dialogue felt kind of borderline in terms of being in character – it isn’t any one line, but rather the general feeling of the conversation feeling like it was being drawn off on weird tangents far more than an actual conversation between real people would. Instead, it felt like it was trying too hard to make the confession be put off for as long as possible to build up tension, as well as trying too hard to make each bit of it funny.
While a lot of stuff in this story was hypothetically funny (the bait-and-switch confession is a classic comedy trope), the pacing of the stumbling conversation ended up making it hard for me to actually enjoy it, and the various asides, both verbal and internal, just didn’t end up paying off for me to the point where it actually ended up being funny. Even the final punchline in the piece kind of fell flat because Twilight’s internal asides told us how she would feel about it earlier in the piece.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Would It Matter If I Was Yer Cuz?
by Vengeful Spirit
Romance, Random
1,279 wordsAs Caramel and Applejack are about to plummet to their deaths over the edge of a waterfall, Caramel breaks out a hypothetical question to his marefriend.
Why I added it: No, really, this is all GAPJaxie’s fault.
Review
Applejack and Carmel are about to go over a waterfall, tied together in a barrel, with no chance of escape. But before they go over the edge, Caramel has to ask Applejack one question:
Would it matter if he was her cousin?
This takes itself both too seriously, and not seriously enough, and the incongruity between these two things, rather than amusing me, actually just kind of made me feel very mixed about the story; it should have been funny, but the only part which was actually funny to me was the ending. The writing was also a bit rough in places (Applejack using ye instead of ya, as well as some awkward lines such as "Applejack, are you alright?!" asked a concerned brother of hers.
The final punchline is okay, but the rest of it makes it kind of hard to recommend.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Would It Matter If I Was Trans?
by pertelote345
Slice of Life
1,040 wordsAfter the disastrous "Brother Hooves Social", Applebloom mentions how ugly Big Mac looked as a mare. This leads to them having an important conversation.
Contains trans issues and traces of apple seeds.
Why I added it: GAPJaxie, why do you do this to me?
Review
Would It Matter If I Was?, except it is Big Mac asking Apple Bloom if it would matter if he was trans.
That is literally what this story is. It follows the same flow as GAPJaxie’s story, and even has the same sort of general questioning and probing, and ambiguity at the end.
While a lot of these stories felt extremely derivative, this felt outright plagiarized. This isn’t a bad piece, but it would be hard for it to be, given that the original was quite good… which makes this kind of a struggle, because while it is decently well-written, it really is just a direct copy of GAPJaxie’s story.
Frankly, I’m surprised this passed moderation, as this is much, much more derivative than Reality Check’s story was.
Recommendation: Do you want to read Would It Matter If I Was? except about someone being trans instead?
Would Matter Matter If Matter Mattered
by M E Deathcult
Comedy, Random, Meta
3,314 wordsTwilight Sparkle is asked if things were things.
Then she is asked if the things they were weren't what they were.
Then she is asked if the things that weren't what were were what they weren't were.
Luckily, Discord is there to make sense of it all.
Why I added it: Because once I read all of them, the stars will aid in my escape.
Review
Discord teaches Twilight an important lesson about using characters as mouthpieces for your own opinions in a story while ironically doing the exact same thing himself on the behalf of the author of this piece.
I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a particularly clever bit of meta-comedy, or if the writer just didn’t recognize that he himself was writing an Author Tract.
This story had Twilight talk to three ponies – first Fluttershy, then Pinkie Pie, then Big Mac, about increasingly ridiculous “philosophical” questions, all of which are echos of other stories – Fluttershy’s being GAPJaxie’s story, Pinkie’s being a reference to the “What if Twilight banished the wrong Pinkie?” stories, and Big Mac to “What if Big Mac was gay/trans?” stories.
As well as throwing in bizzare, surreal sequences, such as Fluttershy coming in and asking about the Word.
This was at certain times actually quite amusing, but at other times the sheer randomness of the piece ended up detracting to it – both the scene with The Word and Big Mac felt like they went too far and ended up feeling tonally discordant from the rest of the piece, straying into the realm of sheer randomness.
The biggest problem with this piece was that it came off as mean-spirited, though; while I agree with the idea that Author Tracts can be a problem (though it is worth noting that Author Tracts CAN actually be good) and that merely asking a question isn’t particularly clever, I think showing characters struggling with such questions can indeed make for an interesting story. Is it always the best way of going about writing such things?
No; it is generally better to show, not tell, and having a character tell is little better than having the prose do so. But it can lead to very good stories if done right, and I think the idea that such stories are primarily driven by people showing how smart they are is, well, wrong – I think most of them are actually driven by people wanting to make some sort of point, or simply thinking of an idea and addressing it in the most direct, obvious way.
In the end, I think this story would have been better if it had been less random, and had also hung more of a lampshade over its own hypocrisy, in that it was itself an Author Tract about Author Tracts, and I think that would have been a much better ending than the Take That, Audience! that comes at the end of this piece. It would have come off as a lot less mean-spirited, I think, had it taken a poke at itself.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you aren’t offended by Author Tracts and have a high tolerance for randomness.
Summary
What Matters More? by Palm Palette
Worth Reading
Some Things Matter More Than Others by Littlecolt
Not Recommended
Would It Matter If I Was Yer Cuz? by Vengeful Spirit
Not Recommended
Would It Matter If I Was Trans? by pertelote345
Not Recommended
Would It Matter If Matter Mattered by M E Lovecolt
Worth Reading
I think Murcushio said it best:
Sometimes I think GAPJaxie made some sort of Robert-Johnson-at-the-crossroads-at-midnight style deal for writing talent, and this is the cursed, infernal downside.
The rest of the time, I know he did.
While I liked the original, and some of the knock-offs have been amusing, in the end, I feel like this has played itself out pretty well, and a few of these have come off as being kind of mean-spirited or author tracts to me. Much as I like “X is secretly a changeling” stories, I think that folks should try to branch out and do more interesting things with them and tell more varied stories, like Kits’ Who We Are from 2012, or Sharp Spark’s excellent Bonafide.
Changelings are fertile grounds for storytelling, but we really don’t need yet another take on GAPJaxie’s version of it.
Of course, I suppose my reviewing all of these points towards the bandwagon being a successful strategy…
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 89
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 349
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1690
Played into the ground.
The only reason it even exists as a bandwagon is BECAUSE of the flame war it sparked.
It's not intelligent.
It's not introspective.
It's partisan flamebait at its best.
It was meh to start with, and held a glimmer of promise if it had been used as more than a soapbox.
But Kits did this idea 3 years ago, and still did it better.
I don't know, would it?
3453671
Oh, don't you start.
3453689 I will start if I wish, because it matters to me!
I'm just happy someone read my steaming-- er, parody gone wrong!
3453713
I think PP and GAPJaxie did as well.
Peaches, peaches everywhere....
3453780
And not a one to eat!
Pretty sure there is no escape.
You forgot this one by the great Admiral Biscuit!
"Highest meme density per word of any chapter on the site?"
"This has clearly passed a point of no return where it descends and descends and just gets worse and worse. And I want more of it."
Thank you for the review. It's pretty amusing to see so many variations on this simple concept. I'll have to check the others out.
CURSE YOU I mean thank you for helping me to beat this dead horse into oblivion. My post comes tomorrow! :V
You forgot a reference
For the record? My favorite two changeling fics? Mendacity and Bonafide. The first one for being a truly excellent take on the changeling race, the second for doing what Would It Matter If I was did with far less heavy handed drama and more sunshiny ponies.
Confirmed for second-best reading reason. (Your reason for reading Not An Adventure Clyde Adventure is still #1.)
3454267
Don't forget JawJoe's "Queen of Queens".
3453780
Gonna move out to the country, gonna eat me a lot of peaches....
Really? One fic spawned so many others? The only fic I've read that's done that is the Pokemon crossover 'A New World, A New Way'.
By the way, where's the rest of them? You haven't blamed GAPJaxie enough yet.
3454570
The original was reviewed here, and I reviewed What If I... I Mean, Somepony... Were? here. I wrote a review of the writeoff one in the writeoff thread.
I'm not going to write a review of RC's story because I don't want to get involved in that particular drama llama business any more than I am (though my personal opinion is that its nature as a rant hurt it as a story), and I didn't think much of the one by Alex Prior; I could write up a review of it, I guess, but I just didn't feel like I had anything interesting to say, and I didn't think many people would come across it. I suppose I could write up a review of KitsuneRisu's, which I might do at some point...
3454267
I need to get around to reading Mendacity.
I love Bonafide, though.
3453744
3454159
Dead horse? Oblivion? So I should scrap the better thought-out sequel to mine called "Would It Matter if Your Family Hated me?" wherein Twilight tells her family she's dating a changeling and Shining Armor hates the fact and tries to break them up, only to repeatedly fail in comical fashion? Because it's already 2000 words, but you know... That's barely the opening scene...
3454624
You already did one. It was good. Don't make this be your thing.
Save yourself. D:
3454784
I already have a thing, so hopefully I'm safe. Then again, that also contains changeling romance, so maybe that's it...
3453805
Darn it! You beat me to it!
3454498
Peaches come from a can,
They were put there by a man
(This should not be continued by anyone else, or the ninja will attack. And maybe the Mods.)
3454610
I highly recommend Mendacity, if only for Aldrovanda. Aldrovanda is great.
The original story that started the wave reminded of a story idea I had about a changeling talking to Princesses Luna after the weeding. It had nothing else in common with Would It Matter If I Was? other than taking place right after the wedding but I was thinking about taking some of the core aspects of that story and making another story titled The Things That Matter that used the framing device of Fluttershy acting like her EoH and playing Discord's Advocate for not condemning a whole race for the acts of one group.
Then I saw just how many other stories there were on that and, while the idea still didn't go away I lost some enthusiasm for it. Now? Now I think I just have to jump on that wagon. Peer pressure and all. Be one of the cool kids. Who needs bridges when there's a perfectly fine cliff to jump off right there?