Read It Later Reviews #60 – Wonderful; Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private; I Have a Hat; Silver Spanner, Journeymare; This Platinum Cape · 12:01am Nov 7th, 2016
Do you know that feeling when you know that you’re holding yourself back, know that you aren’t doing the things you most want to do, know that you’re spending your time on lesser things when you can be spending them on greater ones?
I do. I feel a strange sort of avoidance at times at delving into certain experiences. I would like to say it is fear of disappointment, but it isn’t; I don’t fear disappointment. I simply feel avoidant towards some things for no good reason.
But when I breach those walls, things get better. And I feel better.
Today’s stories:
Wonderful by Bootsy Slickmane
Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private by Estee
I Have a Hat by BillyColt
Silver Spanner, Journeymare by Admiral Biscuit
This Platinum Cape by Estee
Wonderful
by Bootsy Slickmane
Sad, Slice of Life
1,134 wordsDitzy Doo will make some new friends and have a wonderful day.
Why I added it: I found it on TV Tropes.
Review
The story about how Ditzy Doo will at long last make some friends and hang out with them, this is a future-tense story whose impact relies primarily on its tense. It is short and simple, and doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail about who Ditzy Doo is, but it gives us enough of a vision to, at least, potentially feel sorry for her.
This is almost too simple, and it isn’t really going to paint a complete picture of who Ditzy Doo is. But on the other hand, its simplicity makes it more generalizable, and it is really more about the emotion of loneliness and dreaming of a better tomorrow than anything else. And in that, it works, with the ending particularly veering into the sort of self-destructive thoughts that lead it to being tommorrow, instead of yesterday, that the story is about.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private
by Estee
Slice of Life
10,935 wordsIn the first days of attempting to establish the foundation of a new nation's currency, a pair of rookie rulers decided to back Equestria's economy with the greatest offering they could make to the world: the promise of their own labor. And it worked -- but there was a certain problem with the way that promise had been made, and so the original currency was eventually recalled. But the sisters never got all of it. And legally, that promise is still good.
Whether Celestia likes it or not.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
After a rather enjoyable day of meetings with her subjects, Celestia’s final meeting of the day is with an old earth pony stallion. It seems he has a collection of truly ancient coins and wants to exchange them a day of Celestia’s time.
He has a field he needs cleared.
You see, back in the day, rather than backing their money with shiny rocks (I mean, seriously, what kind of idiot thinks shiny metal has value? 
), they backed it with their own personal labor, at a fixed exchange rate.
After a nearby country went under when they ran out of shiny metal to back their money with, Luna and Celsetia realized that they didn’t have enough time to pay back what had been given out. So they did their best to get rid of that old money, and melt it down and replace it with new money.
But the old laws are still good, and while most ponies simply collect the coins (they have a great deal of collector’s value), every once in a while, somepony or another will come in and literally take a minute of Celestia’s time.
But eight hours.
To clear a field. And maybe do some other stuff, if Celestia finishes early.
But as it turns out, there are reasons beyond embarrassment why Celestia doesn’t want to do it.
This is a fun story. There’s some great silliness to it. The discussion about the basis of money was fun, and there are plenty of other fun tidbits thrown in here and there. It is a rather lighthearted thing on the whole… until we actually get to the field clearing, at which point we realize that there was a lot more to Celestia’s reluctance than we thought.
That’s the part of the story I’m most uncertain about; the transition from funny to serious feels kind of jarring, and the juxtaposition of Celestia’s PTSD with humor felt rather disconcerting. I also was left wondering just what exactly made the rocks so threatening.
The presence of the reporters also felt like a bit of an aside; while they provided some comedy, it felt like there was pretty limited payoff there.
Still, on the whole, this was an enjoyably silly piece, with a bit of seriousness thrown in. And if you actually enjoy the idea of Celestia talking about economics and the backing of money, this is right up your alley.
Recommendation: Recommended.
I Have a Hat
by BillyColt
Alternate Universe, Crossover
8,935 wordsUpstart is excited. His mother has hired a unicorn for a party. It will be so delightful to see a unicorn performing magic. It's sure to be fun for the whole household!
Why I added it: The Royal Canterlot Library.
Review
Upstart claims to have seen a fairy pony – a unicorn – in the woods. But his father, a lawyer named Letterhead, will have none of it – unicorns, and magic, don’t exist. The next day, his mother, Duchess, invites a magician to come give a performance at their mansion.
It is the same pony from the woods. But as she and her fairly typical troupe set up, Upstart wonders – is she a real unicorn? Can she really do magic? And if not, just how does she do the things she does?
The unicorn, Enchantra, is an enigmatic figure – she refuses to flat-out say she can do magic, but also refuses to say how she does her tricks, and simply says that there are some other ways that some of them might be accomplished. And despite her showmanship, there’s also a bit of melancholy about her, as she talks about the legends of how the world used to be.
Letterhead doesn’t like being lied to, and doesn’t like his son’s head being filled with frivolities. He’ll humor his wife, but he doesn’t like what is going on one bit.
The final character who plays any real role is Penner, an alcoholic writer who seems to enjoy writing fantasy stories, but whose enthusiasm for the whole affair is thoroughly measured. But he never really gets much characterization, and his role at the end of the story was a bit curious – why did he go along with Letterhead in his little charade? What was the point? And what was he thinking? The story never gives us much of a clue about that, in the end.
The story is really about Upstart, and about his struggle with mundanity and having his life touched by just a little bit of magic. He wants to believe, and is a bit gullible, but is not so insistent on magic being real that he is willing to disregard all evidence. Still, there’s something special about Enchantra.
I like this story. It is a little bit plain at times, but ultimately that serves to show the mundanity of their existence, and contrasts it with a bit of magic that Enchantra and her troupe bring into the world. It also shows off a bit of melancholy, as we see this mundane world is a bit depressing, and the ponies who most thoroughly inhabit it – Penner and Letterhead – are kind of depressing, with one an alcoholic and the other a pretty cold man. Enchantra and the alchemist Zed are both enjoyable enough to read about, and their evasiveness works well to further their mystique.
That being said, the story isn’t perfect. In particular, the story seems to use the third person omniscient, and it ends up coming off as a bit telly at times. It ultimately all reads a bit like a children’s story as a result, as the emotions of the various characters are explained to the audience in fairly straightforward ways. The real problem with it, however, is that sometimes it feels kind of scattered and distracting, as we rapidly jump between Letterhead, Duchess, and Upstart in some scenes, making it hard to really settle into one character. That said, it does play with the point of view a bit, in that it conceals the thoughts of the magician troupe, who are the central mystery of the piece.
All in all, however, I have to say it came together well, and the story as a whole has a sort of Victorian feel to it which lends it an air of authenticity – it is ultimately something which, as an experience, is a pleasure to consume. If you’re in the market for a story that reads a bit like a children’s story, and which brings a bit of magic into a mundane life, this is likely to be up your alley.
Recommendation: Recommended.
Silver Spanner, Journeymare
by Admiral Biscuit
Slice of Life
3,108 wordsSilver Spanner's first day on the job is met with skepticism from her fellow workers—but one mare decides to give her a chance, even if she is a little bit different than most construction workers in Ponyville.
Why I added it: Because it is the prequel to a more recent story. Plus, the unicorn in the cover art.
Review
This is a very slice-of-lifey story, though there is some substance to it. While working a construction job, a group of earth ponies are skeptical of Silver Spanner – she’s a unicorn doing construction work. Plumbing, no less! The pipes are probably going to leak everywhere. The foreman is annoyed – he had had to hire Hydro Jet’s apprentice because the plumber was busy today, and no one had told him that she was a unicorn.
The group of earth ponies then go out to eat dinner, and then head home.
And then, and only then – more than halfway through the story – do we actually get to talk to Silver Spanner. A brief, rather mundane conversation ensues, and the construction pony involved changes her mind about Silver, and tells the construction foreman as much the next day.
Then they go hang out together after work. The end.
This story ended up feeling kind of flat to me; the story is ultimately about overcoming discrimination, but I didn’t really end up feeling very strongly for Silver Spanner – she wasn’t really much of a person to me, and there wasn’t really enough here to make me actually care when she ended up hanging out with the construction ponies at the end. It isn’t that the idea or spirit isn’t there, but without the audience forging a personal connection with the character who ultimately overcomes adversity, their triumph doesn’t ultimately feel very, well, triumphant.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
This Platinum Cape
by Estee
Tragedy
5,267 wordsTrixie works on a magic cape to make her a stronger unicorn.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer, and I enjoyed some of the other short stories in The Elements of Elements collection
Review
Trixie’s talent is magic. She dreams of magic beyond measure – magic that would make any pony jealous who saw a mare talented enough to perform it.
There’s just one problem – Trixie is not nearly powerful enough to cast these spells. And so she writes, filling notebooks and journals with her ideas, and when those run out, covering every surface of the inside of her wagon with her notes – the walls, the ceiling, what little furniture she has…
Trixie wants to be strong enough to cast these spells. But your field strength is fixed. You can improve your control, sure – but you can never generate power beyond your limit.
Well, safely anyway. There’s a drug that can temporarily boost your magic, but at the cost of your health and well-being. There’s a dangerous magical artifact that can boost your strength, but at the cost of potentially losing control. She doesn’t want to use that.
But Trixie dreams of another way – a cloak, woven from platinum, an element which can draw in and store magic, used in powering magical devices – and occasionally, experimented with by ponies in the hopes of making themselves or their workings stronger.
Too bad it has a tendency to explode if it draws in too much magic, along with potentially other nasty side effects.
But Trixie is brilliant. She knows what she’s doing. She just has to be very careful…
This is a story set between Trixie’s first and second appearances on the show. As is typical for Estee’s work, this story has a great deal of world-building in it – but here, it is integrated very well into the story, and indeed, is integral to it. The ordinary little glimpses we get in Estee’s writing of past events are actually pertinent here, and so the story stays largely focused and on track as we see Trixie try to make herself a powerful magical artifact, and a glimpse of Trixie’s lonely tragedy on the road.
And indeed, this latter aspect – Trixie’s loneliness – is woven throughout the piece. We see that she does care about other ponies. She is arrogant, but it is a layered sort of arrogance – she is far more aware of her own limitations than she lets on, and yet, simultaneously, is arrogant enough to do the risky things she does so that she can be better, and not squander her talent like that dumb librarian. But her arrogance and pride combine to keep her away from other ponies, while simultaneously justifying her loneliness to herself as being necessary for her work. She doesn’t want to put other ponies at risk, and doesn’t want to burden them with her companionship, and so she continues her lonely life, when she could be doing better than she is if she would just let others in, something she will not do.
Watching Trixie try to better herself – try to prove herself – is fun, and the story of her platinum cape is a neat little glimpse into her world.
Recommendation: Recommended.
Summary
Wonderful by Bootsy Slickmane
Worth Reading
Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private by Estee
Recommended
I Have a Hat by BillyColt
Recommended
Silver Spanner, Journeymare by Admiral Biscuit
Not Recommended
This Platinum Cape by Estee
Recommended
And there we have it! I have most Read It Now Reviews #99 done, and I shall try to get another story for that set read so I can post it tomorrow. But first, I am going to see if I can’t dive back into my writing. I’ve written over 9,000 words of reviews so far this month (though some of them are video game reviews rather than story reviews), practically on pace for 50,000 words of reviews this month. But I want to write 50,000 words of prose as well.
I’m not on target for that. And there’s no good reason for it.
But enough about that. I do hope you guys enjoy these; this was a very solid set of stories, and this is the first time since Read It Now #54 that I had so many recommended stories in a single post.
Hopefully I’ll continue to manage to thread the needle and manage to keep picking out the good ones.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 158
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 552
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2046
Man, three Recommended and one Worth Reading? That might be a new personal best for you!
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I've been on a lucky kick of late; the last Read It Later review set had four WRs. Read It Now #99 will have at least two.
Though part of it is not putting off reading stories that I was pretty sure I'd like for no good reason, some of it is luck.
Alright, that's fair.
My biggest difficulty with the story--and one which I was unable to overcome--was that I had a limited word count, due to it being a contest entry. I had too much in the beginning and not enough at the end, and for any reader who has not read any of my other stories with Silver Spanner, it did leave them somewhat wanting. Needless to say, it also didn't win the contest.
"Almost too simple" is kinda how I've always felt about Wonderful. I'd never done a story in future tense before, and it felt really awkward and limited in what I could do with it, so it came out rather bared boned.
Thanks for the review. On-point as usual.
Got to say I didn't care much for "Good For Nearly All Princess Labor, Public And Private". It has what should be a good idea for mass silliness, with Celestia and/or Luna being forced to do wacky things due to the coins, each time tweaking the rules about the coins, until the next insane demand hits them, ultimately leading up to them being phased out.
Unfortunately, the story completely fails to deliver on that potential. It's set long after any such hijinks. And so instead, you get a lot of info dump about attempting to get rid of the coin, talk of how rules were modified without any of the amusing stuff that could have happened to lead to the rule modifications, talk of how that old Equestrian coinage isn't exchangeable by foreign countries (only good for raising and lowering the sun, which Celestia does every day anyway), a little bit about a field of rock doves, and some attempted Luna and Celestia banter. Frankly, none of it is very interesting.
It also doesn't help that Celestia needs to be told the obvious by some guard. For a story that doesn't play up the humor, it seems OOC of her to be worried about doing a bit of labor, to spend more time trying to get out of it then just doing it. And while said guard probably has some value to those that follow the verse it is set in, for someone from outside of it, it just feels like a forced celebrity cameo, a spotlight shone upon a scene that shouldn't have that much focus, and thereby detracts rather than adds to the value.
I'm all too familiar with that sort of unexplainable avoidant behavior, as are my Fimfic shelves. I'll try to use you as inspiration to break the inertia.
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What are the others? I saw The Pony Pull.
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I liked it a lot, but I suspect that I have a really soft spot for the ideas therein. I am a dork for economic stuff, and I liked the worldbuilding around it. It isn't the best story in the universe, but I enjoyed it quite a bit because it kept me engaged. That said, it does suffer from Estee's usual problem of verbosity, and, as noted, it does have that abrupt and very sharp tonal shift.
I'm sure there's a better story that you could write with the idea, but that fact didn't make me dislike this story, and I was left smiling at the end of it after having felt engaged and entertained throughout.
That's often the knife's edge that Estee's stories rely on. I think a lot of them are very dependent on you buying into the story, eccentricities at all, and when that doesn't happen the whole story misses you, and has no ability to ever pull you back in and you end up bored as a result as Estee keeps throwing stuff at you but you don't feel any connection to it.
I'd say of the two stories here, This Platinum Cape is the better, as it is much more focused. But I did think both were quite good.
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Silver Spanner gets her Cutie Mark, and she's also a recurring character in Onto the Pony Planet.
4288265 Admittedly, the story isn't labeled as comedy or random, but even from a world building perspective, it doesn't work for me.
The core idea is too flawed for that. Luna slips on ice; economic crisis! Foreign country takes out a princess; not only loss of leadership, but economic crisis! Guy wants to manipulate market, has princesses do silly things, lowering public confidence; currency devalued. The impact of travel time, which either means you can keep the princesses buy traveling from one of Equestria to the other, or else the coinage has less value the further away you are from them. And then there are the cases where people don't care about the cost so much. There's always someone with more money than sense, or someone desperate enough to try anything. Ponies with a serious medical condition will try a princess out of desperation. A rich pony might pay to have a princess show up at a his kid's cute-ceañara, because that would be seriously awesome.
It's a silly concept, and trying to take it seriously is like making a space opera about the taxation of trade routes.
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Isn't that basically Eve Online?
As was noted, the idea was, in fact, stupid, which is why they did away with it.
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Nah, that's Space Drama. Lots and lots of drama ;)
Because they were worried about what would happen if there was a run on the
banksprincesses, not because they saw the idea was flawed in a myriad of other, rather obvious, ways. Which implies that if they had enough princesses to supply the labor, they'd have kept the system going...Anyway, as you said, if you can't buy into the core concept, the story doesn't work. And I can't, on multiple levels. Which leaves it as boring info dumps and massive missed potential. But I'd love to see what would happen with a story built on this economic system in the hands of Blueshift or SS&E, two skilled writers that could take the story to the absurd places the premise invites.
Hey, that's my day every day. Still wish I could figure out why my brain does it. Until then I can comment on other people's posts while I'm avoiding the big master review list in the next window over!
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Blueshift I'd agree with; SS&E I think would go melodramatic.
I like Estee for the most part but the insistence on melodrama on everything kinda grows old - and, well, the idea that Celestia/Luna still have PTSD for multi-thousand year old incidents is...kind of a hard sell that I admit I wasn't at all sold on.
Really that's my biggest issue with Tryptych stories in general - I'm always being asked to accept that after so long in power they're nonetheless always being tripped up by stupid things like the pony version of Fox News, and I've never been sold on that. A lot of the stories in the continuum feel like they'd fit way, way better if done within the first few hundred years of their rule, rather than in modern FiM where I am always left wondering 'Wait, how is this tripping them up again?'
Like - Carabas to me does a much much better job in selling a universe at once wonderfully absurd and serious, and I have way less trouble accepting his alicorns as Mortals-Turned-Immortal.
4288492 consider making 10 to 20 smaller review lists split up by letters of the alphabet and authors name so that we can search for with stories of an author have been reviewed without our computer is freezing
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I've never had any problem with that, even on my old computer. I'm surprised the spreadsheet would eat up that much memory.
Then again, I have a thousand row long review sheet right now just for my own reviews.
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I wasn't really sold on the PTSD there either, TBH, but it didn't ultimately bother me that much, and it was, at least, an interesting idea. Though I think it was more the presentation; the idea of Celestia feeling weird about being out in a field and subconsciously thinking that the farmer was crazy until she realized that she was thinking like she was still a kid would have worked better for me, as would her glancing pointlessly at the sky after getting to work for a bit.
That said, Estee's Equestria isn't really the show's Equestria. I mean, they obviously have some events and people in common, but the characters of Estee's verse are not the show's characters, and a lot of them seem a lot more damaged as people. Estee's stories are pretty AU in a lot of cases, and seem to be getting more so over time, with more of an emphasis on the darker aspects of the setting, like racism.
I think that makes me a bit more willing to accept divergences like this than I would be in other stories, because I don't think of Estee's Equestria as being the show's Equestria (just as I don't think of Ghost of Heraclitus's Equestria as the show's Equestria either). While Estee's world is very heavily inspired by the show, it is quite a bit darker and edgier and much more points of light and the characters all feel like they are significantly divergent from their main verse counterparts.
As for the melodrama - frankly, Estee loves melodrama, and it is a core component to almost all of their works that I've read. I do understand not liking it, as Estee's writing is not to all tastes and, frankly, does have issues - which have derailed a number of their stories. When Estee lines up everything in a row, it works; when they don't, the whole story ends up being a miss. And I can understand not liking the heavy melodrama that Estee seems to insert into most everything at all.
TBH I've never been a huge fan of the not-Fox/Brietbart of their verse; it does seem a bit on-the-nose at times. It works okay in some stories, but less so in others.
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I agree with all this. And in some aspects I like the darker/edgier/whatever. But at the same time - well, like the Star Registry story. It's really kind of 'Hey, this is just being used to call out a shitty real world thing and ponify it and...???' and like in the real world it always ends in this unsatisfying depressing manner. And, well, one can tell stories like that - but if I want my daily dose of depressing stories I can just turn on the news cycle. It's a particular downer with Equestria wherein kinda the core of ponykind is they're, in a lot of ways, aspirational both for themselves and for us.
Like the story with the Piano? That's probably my favorite Estee story; it's a perfect blend of just a little less 'pure' than canon Equestria, but not so 'Everyone and everything is drowning' that I guess the main one has. And there are elements I do love like Celestia's feelings towards her mane and the revelation of its true character; there's gems of worldbuilding in there.
The problem is the insistence on milking the melodrama for all its worth - well, it's like the use of italics to emphasize stuff in everysentence to the point the ponies just think and speak so much more...something. Italics, like melodrama, can be highly effective in small doses - but it's just as important to know when to dial them back, and Estee so far has shown a large degree of resistance towards that concept. So to me at least it's slowly becoming one of those cases of 'I want to like these, but there's this constant tooth-grinding irritant present that steadily becomes more noticeable and thus irritating over time'.
If that makes sense. Also, I'm curious if you've noticed the same thing and how you move past it if so.
A slight correction: Letterhead is not Upstart's father. He's just someone else who lives at the house.
Apart from that, I think your criticisms of the story are certainly fair. Thank you for your review.
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And yet I liked that story. I think it had some interesting points in it, presented alternative points of view, as well as pointing out that, ultimately, the whole thing is a bit silly to get that worked up about, because in the end, constellations don't actually exist. And I do think that shifting it from stars to constellations was interesting, because constellations are more clearly purely imaginary, and anyone is free to draw shapes in the sky. The sadness of the people who bought constellations, combined with Luna's talk about it, Twilight's outrage (and eventual realization that constellations don't exist, and so some of her moral umbrage was unjustified), and just the general complex emotional texture of the piece appealed to me.
It wasn't just "this is an awful real world thing that happens", it actually put some thought into it and presented other points of view.
Ironically, I didn't like that one. I actually wrote a huge long thing as to why:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/438851/review-and-discuss-4-estees-100-move-50-fire
The overuse of this general structure - not just italicized text, but the sort of Esteenian structure that seems to go with it all too often - is a problem and it can cause stories to be flatter than they would be otherwise. It isn't that it isn't effective, it is that using it too much ends up disguising the bits when it should really be used to add extra punch.
Estee's writing is very hit or miss for me. They've written a lot of stuff I'd recommend (or better), but also a lot of NR stuff.
TBH, Estee's biggest problem isn't on the prose level (though that can be awkwardly overdramatic at times) but on the more macro level; a lot of Estee's stories are far longer than they have any right to be, and sometimes the stories just feel diffuse.
The thing is, Estee gets a lot of real "hits" from me, so I tolerate the misses because I really enjoy some of their stuff.
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I think I mostly agree with that - it's an interesting take on the Constellation bit too. To be fair I did like the story and I did like the conclusion, it was more a comment; I suppose just sticking with the Fox News analogue would have been enough.
But yea, on the italics - that's my point; it's good in small doses, but the fact it's everywhere has made it annoying rather than impactful for me.
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I've considered it, but a few people have also asked that I keep it as one big list so they can just ctrl-f to find things. Still pondering how to solve the problem of conflicting priorities though.
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