Read It Now Reviews #74 – It’s Not the Wings, Consequence, There’s a Bug Licking Your Cake, Twilight is a Zombie, Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity · 2:26am Feb 25th, 2016
Reviews two days in a row? What is the world coming to?
First order of business: literally seconds before I made this post, Blue Jewel released a reading of As He Lay Dying, my story about the last moments of Jonagold Apple as he lay on his deathbed.
Thanks a lot, Blue Jewel!
Second order of business, today’s reviews! After enjoying their latest story, I read another story by Petrichord. The other four stories are all from the featured story box; I figured I’d best catch up on my reading, and how better than to start there? One of them is even from a first-time writer, which is always an adventure in risk-taking.
Today’s stories:
It’s Not the Wings by Tallinu
Consequence by Wanderer D
There’s a Bug Licking Your Cake by Petrichord
Twilight is a Zombie by Jumbled Thought
Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity by Diamond Aura
It’s Not the Wings
by Tallinu
Slice of Life
6,144 wordsTwilight is almost used to being an alicorn now. She's accepted that unexpected change, and is even happy about it, most of the time. Her magical abilities have grown by leaps and bounds, and she's starting to enjoy the freedom offered by flight. While she can't imagine ever being as good as Rainbow Dash, anypony with reasonable standards would by now consider her quite competent in the air.
But despite her growing enthusiasm and confidence, there's something that she has neglected to deal with. Something that's bothered her at times ever since the transformation, but kept getting shuffled down her list of priorities. Fortunately, she knows just the pony to talk to for help, and she won't let nervousness and self-reliant rationalization hold her back anymore. The latest of Pinkie Pie's parties provides a perfect pretext for a conversation she should've had months ago.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Twilight and Applejack have a long private semi-casual conversation about earth pony magic and stress relief.
You know how this story says “Slice of Life”? Well, this is very much a slice of life piece. It is a conversation, and it is more about world building than character development. Nothing really happens over the course of the story, and it is really all about the conversation. It lacks drama or excitement or any real arc, just two ponies talking about earth pony and pegasus and unicorn magic in a fairly low-key, down-to-earth sort of way.
Not being a huge fan of slice of life pieces, this story never actively bored me, but it never actively engaged me, either. Unless you’re a fan of actual slice of life pieces devoted to light worldbuilding and conversation, this isn’t likely to be your cuppa.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you’re a slice of life fan.
Consequence
by Wanderer D
Alternate Universe, Dark
3,856 wordsTwilight Sparkle has doomed the world. Now, she faces a choice.
Why I added it: Wanderer D is a good writer.
Review
In the grimdark future of the 16th century, there is only destruction.
Twilight, long ago, saved her friends from some sort of monster called the Arbiter. 600 years later, it returns and destroys the world, killing all the immortals save Twilight and breaking up the moon, causing it to crash to Equestria and kill most life there. Only a few hundred people survive.
Spike begs Twilight to fix things – to undo what is, and go back in time and change what was.
600 years ago, Twilight speaks to each of the other immortals, who ask her not to confront the Arbiter, but also simultaneously want her to do so, to end the Arbiter’s power and cyclic reign over them, to stop him from forcing the immortals to stand back and allow mortal heroes to fight.
What she doesn’t expect is the final immortal to speak to her being herself, from the future.
This story ends on a The Lady or the Tiger type note, where we don’t actually know what decision Twilight made. And of course, a lot of people find stories like that fascinating.
Unfortunately, this story suffered a bit from feeling contrived. Twilight’s action in going back in time is to give herself the choice to choose differently, but why didn’t she do something else, like try to figure out some way to avert the disaster and save her friends? The setup of the story felt like it created a situation where there were just so many other choices, and the decision that Twilight was faced with felt like a false dilemma – a situation in which only two options are presented, but there are a huge number of options intrinsic to the situation which was created. This ended up making the whole thing have a kind of arbitrary feel to it, and the tension in the second half of the piece just wasn’t as strong as the damage and destruction in the first half was, meaning that it sort of rode a long slide down to the end, and future Twilight’s reveal to her past self about the future didn’t end up having all that much punch because we already knew what happened in the future from the first half of the story.
The core idea is not a bad one, but the overall situation ended up feeling too arbitrary for the moral dilemma presented at the end to have the power it should have possessed.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
There’s a Bug Licking Your Cake
by Petrichord
Comedy, Random
3,573 wordsBaking cakes is part of being Ponyville's Premiere Party Planner. It's a particularly important job when the cake is for frowny ponies, or the sort of folks who don't normally eat cake.
But it's something that Twilight Sparkle doesn't seem to understand. At least, if she understood, she probably wouldn't barge into Sugarcube Corner early in the morning, screaming about Changelings invading Equestria and covert smuggling rings and blah blah blah.
It wouldn't kill Twilight to show some decorum. She clearly needs to get her priorities in order.
Why I added it: It was Petrichord’s second most recent story, and I was amused by their most recent piece. Plus, the cover art made me chuckle.
Review
Twilight Sparkle is angry. But you would be too if you found out your best friend (well, one of them, anyway) was smuggling changelings into Equestria.
Well, one changeling.
Namely, Queen Chrysalis.
Pinkie Pie, however, notes that this is all totally safe and it is all about teaching Queen Chrysalis the magic of friendship and not being a horrible meany-pants monster who is trying to overthrow Equestria.
And does so in the most aggravating way possible for poor Twilight.
This story is pretty much entirely dependent on an incredibly frustrating back-and-forth between Pinkie Pie and Twilight. A lot of the story is dependent on the audience imagining Twilight’s reactions, as the story doesn’t really do a whole lot of “painting the characters” in terms of body language or even, often, tone of voice.
Still, the voicing does come through pretty solidly, and if you think the idea of Twilight getting increasingly frustrated with an increasingly condescending Pinkie Pie is funny, this is the story for you. If reading something which is pretty much entirely focused on a single frustrating conversation for Twilight, though, this might not be up your alley, and it might be pushing it on the length side for what it is – the amusement does wear a bit thin by the end of the first conversation, though the final scene brings things up a little bit at the end.
Still, I can’t say I wasn’t amused by Twilight’s constant annoyance and getting the run-around from Pinkie Pie.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Twilight is a Zombie
by JumbledThought
Comedy, Random, Romance
1,522 words"Terror strikes Ponyville as an undead ruler roams the streets! Its shops and houses lay abandoned at her moaning hooves, and only one brave soul can save it! Will she have the heart though?"
"...Pinkie, shut up."
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Rainbow Dash comes back to Ponyville, only to find Pinkie Pie hiding in a bush costume and the town seemingly vacant.
Twilight has become a zombie, you see, and Pinkie Pie had to evacuate.
I mean, just look at her! Dead, bloodshot eyes, plodding hoofsteps, red stuff all over her face…
What else could it be?
This story is going for cutesy silliness, but it just didn’t amuse me. I guessed the “twist” from the story summary, and it didn’t really do much of anything else. Once you figure out what is going on (and it isn’t that hard), it becomes nothing but a fluff piece, and it didn’t really even grab me on the cuteness axis. The character voices were off, and the whole thing felt a bit stilted and telegraphed, like it was trying too hard to be ridiculous.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity
by Diamond Aura
Drama
2,799 words"...we could be stuck doing this for all eternity!" Twilight said.
"That's fine with me!" Starlight responded.
Starlight never thought that Twilight was actually being serious.
What would have happened if Starlight hadn't turned herself over to Twilight? If she rejected friendship, even after being given a chance to come back?
Starlight Glimmer is strong. She always has been. She always will be.
But Twilight wants that to change.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Starlight Glimmer is ravenous. Her energy is running out. Twilight can’t beat her directly, but her status as an alicorn is giving her too much staying power – she’s running herself ragged, but not to the point that Starlight Glimmer is. Even attempting to rob muffin shops isn’t working.
She needs to eat. She needs to sleep. She needs to renew herself. And she can’t.
And Twilight knows it.
The story of Starlight Glimmer being run ragged by Twilight, losing energy at every turn, slowly starving while Twilight seems to slowly get twisted by the experience, I realized as the story started taking a turn for the out of character just what was going on, and was rewarded with the ending.
I wasn’t super fond of the ending – it wasn’t as strong as the rest of the piece, and didn’t feel as tightly written – but it ended up giving the piece direction, as well as explaining some of the oddities in the events of the story.
If you’re looking for a short little Starlight Glimmer piece, about how things might have gone differently (and much worse) for her, this is a decent piece.
And it was even written by a first time author! I shall have to keep an eye on them.
No pressure. 
Recommendation: Worth Reading
Summary
It’s Not the Wings by Tallinu
Not Recommended
Consequence by Wanderer D
Not Recommended
There’s a Bug Licking Your Face by Petrichord
Worth Reading
Twilight is a Zombie by Jumbled Thought
Not Recommended
Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity by Diamond Aura
Worth Reading
And there we go.
Let’s see if I can get some writing of my own done now.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 117
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 429
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1833
Thanks for the review, TD! As I replied to a comment, the point is indeed Twilight... but she's the one setting the trap for herself by only presenting two choices. In a way, future!Twilight had already given up, but was hoping for a change, much like Celestia and the others. It's up to present!Twilight (and the reader) to decide if there are indeed only two answers to the question or not.
3775995
You're welcome!
If that was indeed your goal, I think that the story didn't really present it strongly enough. Writing stories about false dilemmas without the characters recognizing that it was a false dilemma can be tricky, because it can often end up resulting in it seeming like the story is trying to present the dilemma as a real one.
I'm not exactly how to fix it without having the characters openly note that there are other options in the course of the story, but I think that if the point was indeed to present the tragedy of the false dilemma being false, it didn't quite hit the mark.
3776003 Well the easiest way to present that is to finish the story.
But I really, really 90% of the time dislike "Lady or the Tiger" stories.
They annoy me.
3776003 Yeah, I can see how her trap being set by herself didn't translate clearly. However, given that the decision is Twilight's, I didn't want to steer the readers into one ending or another. I couldn't really spell it out. Kinda beats the purpose of a LorT story if you hold the reader by the hand and tell them what should happen or not.
Featured twice in a row! I'm beyond flattered, truly. And, heck, glad you liked TABLYC, too! You're going to give me a swollen head if you keep up the praise.
TD, you have Petrichord's fic listed as 'there's a bug licking your face' in the blog title, which confused me for a moment. Oh, and also in the tags.
3776457
Fixed! Thanks for the catch.
I think that it was Bad Horse who said that fanfic authors can have the disadvantage that when they write something that's supposed to be a clue telling the reader "Something isn't right here" the reader is very likely to instead think "That's a plot hole; this is poor writing." I ran into that "Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity" when I saw Twilight acting out of character, so I rolled my eyes and stopped reading. I'm glad this review convinced me to give it another go. I agree that the ending wasn't super strong but it at least it did a decent job of tying things together nicely.
I find the story interesting because I've been considering writing a blog post ranting about "it was an all a dream"-style endings, but I have to admit it worked here. It's a good exercise for me to think about why. I think that the main thing is that Starlight still gets character development.
There's a broken link tag under Consequence.
I'm gonna check out two of these. Thanks.