Read It Now Reviews #89 – Out of the Loop; As I Lay Smiling; Eternity; Dead Nuthatch; Yesterday, All My Tavis Seemed So Far Away · 10:21pm Jul 29th, 2016
Writers have been busy little bees, so it is time for me to be a big busybody.
Today’s stories:
Out of the Loop by OkemosBrony
As I Lay Smiling by shortskirtsandexplosions
Eternity by Taialin
Dead Nuthatch by Present Perfect
Yesterday, All My Tavis Seemed So Far Away by shortskirtsandexplosions
Out of the Loop
by OkemosBrony
Comedy
3,188 wordsTwilight has made a shocking discovery about one of her friends, one that could spell disaster for all of Ponyville, or even all of Equestria.
But it probably won't.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Twilight finds out that Starlight Glimmer is a changeling.
Too bad a bunch of other people in Ponyville are, too.
This story has been done before, and unfortunately, this wasn’t a particularly amazing execution of the scenario. It didn’t throw itself into the silliness quite enough – there was a mildly amusing conversation about ponies being changelings (or part changeling, or adopted by changelings), but in the end, it never really went beyond mildly amusing. It hit on several of the common jokes of such stories, and alas, didn’t go quite far enough with other people reacting to Twilight’s racism, with their reactions being oddly subdued.
As a result, it never quite crossed the threshold over into “funny”, and I didn’t end up laughing. It isn’t that the idea of Twilight freaking out over changelings, only to discover they are all around her, isn’t funny, it is that it has been done and this didn’t really end up going far enough with her freakout or the reactions of others or the absurdity of the situation to really make it hilarious or to make it stand out against the mileu of other such fics.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
As I Lay Smiling
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Sad, Slice of Life
4,046 wordsAfter falling victim to unfortunate circumstances, Pinkie Pie receives a visit from her sisters Maud, Limestone, and Marble.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer. Also, I can’t resist As I Lay Dying puns in story titles.
Review
Pinkie Pie got petrified by a cockatrice, and her sisters each come to see her and talk to her in turns.
There are some weird details here, like Pinkie noting the red capillaries in Limestone’s eyes, and some of the descriptions in the earlier scenes feel a bit awkward and forced. It also feels really slow paced, dragging things out as the characters approach the statue.
The story really picks up once Maud and Limestone start talking, giving the opportunity for something to actually happen in the story, as we see how Limestone, Maud, and even Marble think of their sister (though Marble’s bits felt a bit undercooked due to her relative silence). Maud’s bits, conversely, are the best, as we’re guided through her book, and then she talks to Pinkie about stuff. Her voice comes through very strongly, and her segments do a great job of showing off her character and depth of feeling.
Ultimately, this is a decent little character piece, and while it stumbles a bit at the beginning, it is fairly interesting to hear each of her sisters’ point of view – and what it says about each of them as people, as well as their relationship with Pinkie.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Eternity
by Taialin
Slice of Life, Tragedy
5,461 wordsThe greatest displays of strength are not always the most overt. Fluttershy is not whom one would consider to be a strong pony. But when Rarity digs a little deeper, she discovers in her friend a strength that carries the weight of hundreds.
Why I added it: Estee recommended it.
Review
Fluttershy is late to her spa date with Rarity. And Fluttershy is never late. She always remembers her spa date.
So when she doesn’t show up, Rarity goes to Fluttershy’s place to see what horrible fate has befallen her, only to discover that what stopped her from coming was… a dead rat.
Five Hundred Little Murders is perhaps the best Fluttershy story there is, and this story follows in the vein of that one.
But… well, you aim for the stars, and sometimes you hit London.
This story has a few weaknesses, but the largest one is that we have absolutely no attachment whatsoever to Fluttershy’s rat. Five Hundred Little Murders makes us sympathize with Carnie, and ultimate;ly, with Flitter, who is a jerk, but the tie of Carnie to Flitters gives us an emotional stake in the proceedings. Here, though, Garnet starts out dead and we’re just told about how sad it is that one of Fluttershy’s little friends died. We lack pre-existing commitment to feel sadness at the rat’s passage.
We do care about Fluttershy. And we care about Rarity. But lacking any pre-existing context to Fluttershy’s sadness, we are, more or less, being told to mourn someone we didn’t know because someone else died.
And while this may work for some people, for me, it is like if someone tells me one of their relatives or friends died who I didn’t know – it is a little awkward, and they’re sad, but I don’t feel bad about it.
And that’s the thing. We don’t even necessarily need to know the character, but we at the very least need to feel the bond strongly. Simply being told a cord has been cut that we never knew means a lot less to us than if it is one that we have been built up to care about.
That’s why stories like I Can Wait hide the death until the end – we build up the relationship between characters so that when they’re dead, we feel something get cut. I Miss You, spends the whole story showing us how the bonds between characters being severed hurts. That’s why I Don’t Want To Write This shows us the depth of Rainbow Dash’s emotions and has her break down about her relationship with her dad.
Here, though, Garnet is a non-entity, and I have no particular stake or investment in Fluttershy’s bond with her. I care about Fluttershy, and I care about Rarity, but I don’t care about Garnet, and I don’t even care about Fluttershy’s relationship with Garnet. That makes the emotion of this piece a tough sell, and having read Five Hundred Little Murders, this story lost its ability to shock me with “Fluttershy deals with a lot of dead animals.”
And ultimately, I wasn’t sold on it.
That’s not to say it is badly written – the prose is nice enough. And the story does a good job of bookending stuff with Fluttershy not forgetting, and that taking on new significance at the end.
But the story seemed to be telling me to be sad, to feel for Fluttershy, and I couldn’t.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Dead Nuthatch
by Present Perfect
Sad, Slice of Life
1,647 wordsFluttershy finds a dead nuthatch outside her home. She is a very silly pony.
Why I added it: Present Perfect is a good writer.
Review
Fluttershy has to deal with a dead nuthatch out in her yard. It is all vaguely sad, but she’s used to it, unfortunately.
This is a pretty basic story, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It is all about capturing that vague sense of “This is kind of sad but it is also a part of life,” and it does that reasonably well.
That being said, I couldn’t say I was moved by it. It was… okay. But it felt pretty bare-bones, and ultimately, I was hoping for it to tug on my heartstrings, and ultimately it did not.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Yesterday, All My Tavis Seemed So Far Away
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Comedy, Random, Sci-Fi
6,062 wordsVinyl has lost her glasses; Tavi knows where they are.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
Tavi goes to Doctor Whooves to get Vinyl’s glasses fixed. Time travel and temporal paradox ensues.
This is one of those stories that I suspect a lot of other people would enjoy more than I did. At its core it is a bit of a sci-fi comedy as Tavi struggles to roll back time to fix Vinyl’s glasses with the help of Doctor Whooves. Derpy shows up briefly and vaguely amusingly, but throughout the whole story I was stuck with a slight feeling of detachment, and I’m not quite sure why. The story bears the Random tag, and perhaps it is to a certain extent – the whole thing is very much about Octavia stepping out of the normal and into the fantastic for entirely petty reasons, and at times the story felt like it was trying a bit too hard with its random humor as characters (most particularly Derpy) and the prose itself seems to try a little too hard. Pinkie Pie’s bit, while not out of character, simply further highlighted this sort of humor, and by the end of it I was left feeling like the whole thing had been a little bit pointless.
And then the ending hit and I laughed out loud and stepped away from my computer for a moment.
So what to make of it?
I did enjoy the end of it, but I’m not sure that I enjoyed the rest of the ride all that much. It was never bad, but I was left with a constant feeling throughout the whole piece that it was not my thing, and the humor in it felt a bit forced at times. SS&E’s little touches here and there, and his emphasis of ponies being cute, added a certain bent to the whole piece.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
Out of the Loop by OkemosBrony
Not Recommended
As I Lay Smiling by shortskirtsandexplosions
Worth Reading
Eternity by Taialin
Not Recommended
Dead Nuthatch by Present Perfect
Not Recommended
Yesterday, All My Tavis Seemed So Far Away by shortskirtsandexplosions
Not Recommended
Now, to get back to work on writing.
And by that I probably mean read two more stories for the next review set. 
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 139
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 521
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1958
Something I'd add where "Eternity" is concerned is another respect in which it suffers in comparison to "Five Hundred Little Murders." While there was some indication that Fluttershy had euthanized Garnet, but it's not a focus, and the sympathy that comes from Fluttershy needing to kill an animal against every impulse we sense in her nature, because it's the right, kind thing to do, is absent. Further, stressing that she does this [ETA clarification: grieve, bury, not euthanize] for not only every large mammal, bird, and rodent, but apparently every insect pushes past the realm of believability as a practical matter and from an emotional standpoint I further have to imagine that she's emotionally crushed by the loss of a friend on basically a daily basis. It just doesn't work for me as a scale matter, where the occasional loss of a particularly favored animal and 500 euthanizations over the course of a number of years is plausible, and indeed affecting.
I've always wanted to visit London, so I guess that's alright. Of course, the only thing I can think of that points to the stars and ends up in London is an ICBM, so maybe not.
This story was, first and foremost, written as a tribute to the late pets of a friend of mine, for whom the name "Garnet" carries a lot more significance than a mere character (and Missy and Marceline, for that matter). And I did write this story very quickly for that reason, so plotholes and "missing the boat"s were bound to happen. My stance on the story has been and always will be exactly that, so the mere act of having the story reviewed as a piece of literature is praise. And, y'know, featured. (I still can't get over that.)
You're right that Garnet as a character isn't a particularly good one, nor is she well-developed. And well, because of its purpose and how fast I wrote it, I never actually intended her to be. Ultimately, the story covers three movements, and it covers a lot more ground than a 5,000 word story really ought to. There's a lot of words devoted to casting Garnet into a character that I didn't write.
Now, all this isn't to say that I'm a better writer than Eternity portrays me as; it still reflects what I feel to be some of my best work. And if that best work happens to be "Not Recommended," well, it just means I have a ways to go as a writer. So thank you kindly for the review, TD!
Ah, nope, no heartstring-tugging intended. :B Funny you reviewed two 500 Little Murders fics in a row tho...
4120936
I actually reviewed them on separate days; they ended up next to each other coincidentally when I was re-arranging the stories between Read It Now #88, #89, and #90.
4120915
You're welcome! I hope my feedback/explanation was helpful.
Besides, you're in the big leagues now; you got recommended by a 1000+ follower writer and got some reviews (I think I saw someone else review the story as well). Most people never get either.
Be proud.
4120871
Hmm. I have to ask where in Eternity you thought that I was suggesting Fluttershy euthanized all or even any of her animals. I can see the parallels you're drawing, but while my story is inspired by Estee's, it doesn't tread on nearly the same ground beside the "hundreds" part. I also have to ask where you found the thought that Fluttershy experiences this daily. Did I really suggest that?
4120966
Oh gosh, really? Mind pointing me to wherever that other review is?
4121041 I had originally included a fudge "might have" (for euthanasia) based on this:
As for an implication that she euthanized all her friends, that was bad wording on my part. Rather, by "this" I meant the high degree of grieving.
4121041
I don't remember.
I just remember someone else talking about it, but I can't find it.
4120915 I actually wouldn't take the lack of recommendation from TD to indicate that the story is seriously flawed (It's not a perfect piece, but then, our pov cares about Fluttershy, and only cares about Garnet because Fluttershy does. It would have been a different tale if Opal was in Garnet's place.) TD's recommendation comes from his own personal enjoyment of the piece, regardless of whether it was written well. I honestly don't think I've ever seen him recommend something that he didn't personally like, and I have seen him recommend some pieces that are flawed simply based on whether they worked for him. That being said, he tends to like things that are well-written, so he's useful as a reviewer in that respect. Things he doesn't recommend are often well worth reading, however, since his personal investment doesn't necessarily match what anyone else would be invested in.
4121322
Ultimately, all reviewers are only capable of evaluating things based on whether or not they think they're good. The main difference between different reviewers is how they arrive at their determination. Someone who tries to evaluate something based on whether or not it is "well-written" has chosen an arbitrary standard as well, as "good writing" is itself deeply subjective. Moreover, it can result in cargo culting, where you assume that the shape of something is the thing itself. Something may look like good writing but is nevertheless deeply flawed because your definition of "good writing" fails to take into account numerous important factors - and, in any case, how well something works is dependent on a host of factors.
There is no such thing as an objective review, because the Universe does not define "good" and "bad" - people do. That being said, what people define as good and bad is somewhat predictable, but is also somewhat subjective, meaning there is both an objective and subjective component to it. Thus, all reviews are what might be called evaluative - that is to say, a combination of objective and subjective judgement.
I should write a post about the various sorts of barometers reviewers use to determine their final judgement on things, and the advantages and disadvantages of each at some point. But the basic division is that some people try to guess what an audience's reaction would be, some people create some extrinsic metric that they score stories against, and some people use their internal calibration of how they feel about the story to try and tease out its quality. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages.
How accurately any particular reviewer's barometer matches your own helps to determine how well their recommendations will match your own particular tastes.
I'd generally say that the most useful part of a review is the part where the reviewer actually explains what the work is and why and how they arrived at their determination, as that's the bit which is most likely to be useful to you.
And obviously, if you're a writer, that's the part where you're going to get the authorial feedback you might be hoping for.
Whether or not I actually enjoy story, knowing what it is that made me like or dislike it is far more likely to be useful information as a writer.
4121452 Oh, I do understand, TD. I'm simply saying a not recommended from you isn't a condemnation of the piece, it's your personal verdict. Your recommendations are less useful than the review itself.
4121487
Yeah, pretty much. What a reviewer has to say is always more valuable than their final verdict.
Though you are allowed to puff up your chest a bit if you get a recommendation from someone. I know I do.
And in any case, even getting panned by a reviewer indicates that your story was, at the very least, something that they thought merited attention/a review, which puts it above 95% of the stories in the fandom given how few reviews are actually done.
4121320 Estee blogged about it. Maybe you were thinking of her?
Well, thank you for reviewing my work! Even if you weren't exactly the biggest fan...and even if you weren't exactly the first person to point out the flaws that you did...or the second
I'm just still riding the high from being noticed by one of the bigger names on this site and then being mentioned in the same breath as some of the other biggest names, so I'm still chalking this up as a win. Besides, can't become a better writer without constructive criticism, right?
4128298
Certainly! You got two stories in a row featured, after all; clearly, that means you're on your way up.
Keep getting featured and you'll likely continue to get more attention.
Also, keep in mind, comedy is a much harder thing than a lot of people give it credit for; doing comedy well is far harder than it seems like it has any right to be. And it is also often hit-and-miss; there are some things that some people find funny that just miss others' funnybones. No one is funny to everyone all the time.
Good luck with your future writing. I saw you got both a slice of life and a comedy featured, so it seems you don't just write one thing. Keep plugging away at it, and try to think about how you can do better.