Read It Later Reviews #72 – Of Cottages and Cloud Houses, Ride, If Rainbow Dash Can’t Sleep…, Lazy River, Diamond is Unbreakable · 9:47pm Mar 16th, 2017
Been a while since I've been this consistently productive. I have to admit, it feels good putting out content every day.
Today’s stories:
Of Cottages and Cloud Houses by Bookplayer
Ride by Petrichord
If Rainbow Dash Can’t Sleep… by Estee
Lazy River by Estee
Diamond is Unbreakable by King of Beggars
Of Cottages and Cloud Houses
by bookplayer
Slice of Life
4,641 wordsWhen they first moved to Ponyville, Fluttershy moved into an ornate cloud house, and Rainbow Dash moved into an animal infested cottage. As they settle into new lives and meet new ponies, they quickly discover that this isn't going to work at all.
Why I added it: I read it a long time ago and liked it, and Bookplayer is a good writer.
Review
Written all the way back during the Dawn Times (i.e. before season 3), this story is about Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy moving to Ponyville. Rainbow Dash, being a dropout, can only barely afford rent on a ratty cottage out on the edge of town, while Fluttershy’s parents don’t really understand (intentionally) that Fluttershy wants to take care of animals on the ground. It is obvious that Fluttershy’s parents care in her general direction, but they don’t really care enough to see her as the person she really is – while Rainbow Dash’s father doesn’t approve of what Rainbow Dash did, and wants her to follow in his own hoofprints as a worker at the weather factory, while Rainbow Dash continues to dream big.
This is one of those stories where the outcome is pretty obvious because, you know, we’ve seen the show, and ultimately it is a story about Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy meeting their future friends for the first time, as well as reconnecting with each other (and, as you might imagine, swapping houses). It is also a little telly and doesn’t really go anywhere all that unexpected.
The real strength of this story is showing the characters of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, and adding a bit of an extra dimension to them. Rainbow Dash wants to show her dad that, despite being a dropout, she can pursue her dreams and won’t just end up leading the same sort of lame life that he did – and it also shows a little bit of her fear, because part of what drives her is not wanting to end up like her parents, and just living a boring normal semi-miserable life where she herself eventually has a foal who just ends up a dropout that she herself is disappointed in. And over the course of the story, Rainbow Dash comes to see that maybe she isn’t just in denial, but is really going to make it happen.
Fluttershy, conversely, is shown as being the child of rich parents who spoil and smother her a bit. They clearly care in her general direction, but it is also clear that they don’t quite accept who she really is as a person. Over the course of the story, Fluttershy comes to see that maybe not everything about her outside of her new dream is a bad thing.
This is a simple story, and some might find it too simple, but it is ultimately a bit of a character piece about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. If you’re looking for something super complex, this probably isn’t the right place to look, but if you’re looking at a simple look at their past, this might be up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Ride
by Petrichord
Sad
2,143 wordsPower occasionally comes with a price.
Getting your brains blasted with enough magic to make manehattan glow for a decade is a small price to pay for being an alicorn.
It's still a price, though. It comes with drawbacks.
Twilight Sparkle's still trying to learn to deal with it.
Why I added it: Petrichord is a good writer.
Review
Twilight is suffering from some side effects from her transformation to being an alicorn. Colors bleeding, sounds being too loud… so she sits down and listens to some music to help ride it out when it happens.
I didn’t really get a whole lot out of this story, truth be told. While the idea of Twilight suffering from some sort of side effects from her ascension is something which could be used in a story, here, it just was all that there was. I didn’t really get any greater sense of purpose out of this story, just someone using music to deal with their problems. There was no real sense of resolution or greater purpose, which left the story bereft of any greater sense of meaning.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
If Rainbow Dash Can’t Sleep…
by Estee
Comedy, Slice of Life
5,558 words...ain't nopony gonna sleep. Not while she's trying to manage the usually-automatic feat while within her first-ever bout of insomnia...
...and given that it's Rainbow trying to work this out, probably not even after.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
Rainbow Dash is an expert on sleep. She could write the book on sleep! If, you know, that wasn’t terribly boring and wouldn’t cut in on her important naptime.
But for the first time ever, it is eluding her. No position is working. Her pillow has betrayed her.
Maybe Twilight can help? It isn’t like she’d be asleep in the middle of the night, right?
This is a fairly simple comedy story about Rainbow Dash not being able to sleep and, thereby, making a general nuisance of herself. It is pretty simple and straightforward, but it works well enough – we get a number of silly little gags, Rainbow Dash is as irrepressible as ever, and of course it is all Twilight’s fault in the end.
Okay, really Rainbow Dash’s fault, still, but shh.
This story achieves its goal of being simple and silly. If you’re looking for something simple and silly about Rainbow Dash struggling with her inability to sleep, this might be right up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Lazy River
by Estee
Sad, Slice of Life
11,601 wordsIn the moons since her parents died, Applejack has hardly left the Acres. Pinkie has barely seen her. She's willing to do anything in order to get some crucial time with her only friend -- but Applejack always seems to have something else to do. Somepony else to speak with.
Somepony else she can listen to.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
This story is set years before the start of the show, a while after Pinkie Pie moved to Ponyville. Pinkie Pie, at the request of Big Mac, is dragging Applejack off of Sweet Apple Acres for one hour.
Applejack doesn’t want to leave.
Applejack doesn’t even want to go to school ever again.
Because she wants to listen to the echoes of her parents’ voices with her earth pony magic.
Echoes which have long since faded away to every other earth pony’s feel.
Echoes which sound a lot like her own voice for some reason…
This is a story about Pinkie Pie forcing Applejack to break out of her own self-imposed shell of isolation and mourning after the death of her parents, while dropping a lot of world-building in along the way, about how earth pony magic works, as well as earth pony culture. It shows a very different, much sadder Pinkie Pie, who struggles to make friends in Estee’s rather less cheerful Equestria, as well as an angry, stubborn, and depressed Applejack, who refuses to move on from her parents’ demise and only hears what she wants to hear.
It also has a bit of backstory about Estee’s versions of Pinkie Pie and Applejack, showing a bit of what they were like when they were young – as well as a much droopier vision of Pinkie Pie than you get from the show, one who is much closer to the depressed filly on the rock farm than the bright and bouncy one we see in the show.
I liked this story on the whole. The characters were depressed, and you could see the bits and pieces all slotting together as the story went on. It showed genuine care for Applejack from Pinkie Pie, as well as an attempt at achieving catharisis.
The biggest weakness of this story is that it was a bit slow-paced. It wasn’t an extreme example for an Estee story, but there is a certain writing pattern that Estee sometimes falls into, of things being drawn out a bit longer, which gets employed several times in this story. That being said, it didn’t drag – all the points in the story pointed back towards the main plot, with all the world-building being used to help further our understanding of Applejack’s emotional state.
But for those who enjoy Estee’s version of Equestria, this is likely to fit right into their enjoyment of that setting. And if you want to read a story about two sad, scared ponies, afraid of losing what few connections they have in the world, as well as Applejack stubbornly pushing back against letting go of her grief, this might just be up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Diamond is Unbreakable
by King of Beggars
Romance, Slice of Life
13,315 wordsAfter the events of Lies and Lyres, Spike is ready to let Rarity know about his relationship with Lyra. She says she's happy for him, but does she really mean it?
Why I added it: It is the sequel to Lies and Lyres, a story I enjoyed.
Review
Rarity is upset. How dare Spike get a new marefriend before she did!
Sure, she doesn’t love him. Sure, Lyra is a perfectly nice mare… but honestly, he spent years pining after her. Years! And he replaced her in a month?
How dare he?
Well, no matter. Rarity can go out and find someone as well!
This doesn’t go quite as well as expected.
This story follows Rarity as she meets Ditzy Doo and comes to get to know the strange mare, whose house is full of ugly, mis-matched knick-knacks but who is a sweet, if slightly odd, thing.
Given the tags on this story, you might guess how this works out.
There were some clever things in this story – Ditzy enjoys collecting strange knick-knacks because they are reflective of herself. Somepony must have loved all those things at some point, and on some level, it seems that is reflective of her own desire to be loved despite her flaws. And Rarity coming to understand this is a nice moment.
Unfortunately, while I liked this idea, I have to admit that I never got a strong mental voice out of Ditzy in this story. I never really got her voice in my head, and I was never particularly impressed with her as a character in the story. She just never really clicked with me, and always felt just a bit superficial as a character (not as in, being superficial as a character trait – just as a fixture in the story). And as the lead romantic interest, this made it hard for me to really engage with Rarity’s emotional desire to be with Ditzy.
The story structure itself also felt rather too straightforward. I never really got any major sense of tension from the story. There was very little of what I would describe as meaningful conflict in the story – while Rarity is angry at Spike at the beginning, it is really an anger at herself, and that anger goes away pretty much just by hanging out with Ditzy. There’s little meaningful conflict as such, and the story always felt like it was a foregone conclusion. And while it is certainly true that shipfics mostly are foregone conclusions, the lack of any real sense of tension or doubt meant that I could pretty much predict how the story was going to flow from the second scene in, despite having ten thousand words to go in the story. The story threw no real curveballs, and ultimately, like Playing the Scales, the whole thing felt kind of set up to get Rarity a girlfriend.
Which, I mean, obviously is the case – that’s the point of a shipfic in many cases, after all – but it always felt a bit artificial. In Lies and Lyres, the prequel to this story, we have Spike and Lyra encounter each other, we get them bouncing off of each other, and then we see things getting convoluted, as well as the conflicts that each of the characters have not only with each other, but with other people in their lives. But here, there’s not really much conflict at all, and it all feels very straightforward, even predictable, with a character who shows gallantry towards another character eventually being rewarded with their love and affection. And much like Playing the Scales, I felt like it was kind of transparently wish fulfillment-y – not as much as that story, but I still got some twinges of it.
I never really found myself cheering for Rarity and Ditzy to get together, which I consider to be a pretty important component of a romance story. It all just felt like a foregone conclusion, and the story, while it had some neat ideas, never really made me invest.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
Of Cottages and Cloud Houses by Bookplayer
Worth Reading
Ride by Petrichord
Not Recommended
If Rainbow Dash Can’t Sleep… by Estee
Worth Reading
Lazy River by Estee
Worth Reading
Diamond is Unbreakable by King of Beggars
Not Recommended
I am now down to having only eight completed Triptych verse stories left to read, plus some incomplete ones.
But several are novel length.
Perhaps tomorrow, I shall try and read A Mark of Appeal.
Until then, may you all find something worth reading.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 175
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 604
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2092
Between this and the review of MrNumbers you did recently, it seems you have a beef against stories that develop relationships with something other than interpersonal conflict between the main leads -- like, say, some kind of connection or necessity. Positive bonding, instead of it being negative. Or something. You get me.
You know that's an actual genre, right? This sounds a little like you're criticising a musical because people don't sing and dance in the streets just like that.
Ahh, shame you didn't like Ride. Message understood, though: I'll try to work my "moments" into some greater scheme in the future.
I'm guessing that was a similar issue for Paper Butterflies, eh?
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(Note that I read neither of the stories in question, so have no opinions on those specific stories.)
If you don't have interpersonal conflict between the leads, you can have an external conflict for the leads to butt up against, or a personal problem outside of the relationship for one if the leads. But having a healthy relationship doesn't mean your story doesn't need the tension of a proper arc giving the reader a reason to keep reading.
This is a major problem in TwiJack shipping, so I have opinions on it.
Ah yes, the wonderful Triptych verse... have fun with those.
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Both stories do, however. Numbers' was about Twilight understanding something about herself and Pinkie, and trying to discover what a relationship should feel like. This one is about Rarity getting over her previous 'relationship' and finding someone else, sorta rediscovering herself.
Both stories have arcs, is what I mean -- and both involve something related to personal growth, and relationships seen not as the dramatic element that brings the problem, but rather a medium for the characters to rediscover themselves (or a byproduct of said discovery).
They aren't dramatic stories per se, but that doesn't mean that nothing happens in them. It's fluff, sure, but fluff is, as I said, an actual genre. 'Conflict' is kind of a buzzword when we talk literature, but you can clearly see an arc in both fics if you read them, a direction towards which the narrative is always heading, and a clear goal.
Here I just get the feeling that TD was expecting something like a gothic romance, or a melodrama. If you judge both fics by that standard, then yeah, there's no tension -- but as I said I feel like that's missing the point a bit.
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Paper Butterflies was stronger because you did work those moments into a greater scheme. The whole story had little hints sprinkled in about what exactly was bothering Discord so much. He mentions that he has only two other friends in town, Rarity (and by inference, the others) are clearly worried about them, she brings in the quiet Big Mac to talk to him (or rather, get him to talk), they make butterflies to represent everyone but skip Fluttershy...
Heck, the fact that Fluttershy's cutie mark is butterflies, and butterflies have no obvious connection to the Summer Sun Celebration but they're making them for the celebration, was itself a big hint as to what was going on.
Thus by the end of it, when we realize just what is going on, and why Discord is upset, and why people were worried about him, there's a strong sense of payoff because those little details all worked together to contribute towards that emotional punch at the end.
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Conflict isn't a buzzword; it is a real thing. The reason why almost all stories have conflict is because it helps to contribute to said arc.
Conflict can be internal or external. It can be a character, a feeling, a natural disaster, a problem that needs to be solved...
Conflict gives a sense of progression, and it also gives characters something to push against as they grow as characters.
It is really hard to write a good story without conflict. Conflict is one of the major ways of creating a more complex engagement curve, rather than it simply being flat.
While you can definitely write a fluff piece (and indeed, there are fluff pieces I have enjoyed), the longer a piece is, the harder it is for it to get by on fluff alone. There's only so much cotton candy you can eat before you're sick of it. And even then, just because something is a fluff piece doesn't mean it has to be flat or feel like a foregone conclusion.
There can be conflict or tension or drama or shifts in emotional tone. How To Preen Your Chicken is a very popular fluff piece, but it doesn't just push on one axis of emotion, and the story surprises the audience by moving on from "Rainbow Dash is being nice to Scootaloo" to "Rainbow Dash is adopting Scootaloo". Heck, while I am not a fan of My Little Dashie, it uses more than one axis of emotion as well - if it was just Rainbow Dash being cute for 15,000 words, it would not have nearly as much punch as it does.
The Road Goes On Forever is a fluff piece, and I gave it a Recommended rating yesterday.
Fluff is a genre, and I am aware of this. But there's ways of writing more engaging fluff pieces. And the longer a piece is, the less it can rely on pushing the same angle.
Moreover, romance comes with its own set of requirements; one of the largest ones for getting together stories is that by the end of it, the audience wants them to be together. It is easy to write a story about how, say, Twilight and Rainbow Dash like each other, and want to be together. It is harder to make that interesting. You have to go beyond just "they like each other" and build a story out of it. Two characters starting to date isn't a story, it's an idea; a story is how these things come about.
Writing shipfics which are aimed at audiences which are already invested in the pairing is easier, because you don't have to do as much work in this way - but even for shipping pairs that I like, like RariJack, AppleDash, and the like, I want to care about what is going on with the characters as presented in this story. It is okay for two characters to just decide to start dating - but if that's going to happen, then there has to be something more to the story than "they are starting to date". It could be external conflict, it could be internal conflict. It may not even be related to the relationship at all, but the relationship changes how they handle it in some way.
The thing is, a lot of stories recognize the need for conflict and include something which might seem to be conflict on the surface, but which doesn't fill the narrative role of conflict in the story. I sometimes call this "fake conflict" internally, or "false conflict". But I've seen it in a number of stories over time, and it is often a letdown because the story suggests that it is some important point of tension, but the story fails to ever deliver on said tension. MrNumbers' story was about whether or not Twilight was going to date Pinkie Pie - the idea that Twilight might go on a date with someone to check things out, but would worry about letting them down/leading them on because they don't feel the same way, but they want to give them a chance - that can indeed be conflict. But as it was presented in the story, it was lacking - I never felt like it had much real weight, especially as the story moved on to the actual date. I didn't buy into the conflict; I didn't believe it.
Diamond is Unbreakable had Rarity be upset about Spike moving on, but being upset about something isn't the same thing as conflict - and while Rarity goes on to talk to Spike about it, and it is the inciting event, there is no real sense that this has a great deal of weight.
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Fluff is a genre, sure, but one that's not known for being critically acclaimed for exactly these reasons. It's similar to porn or sadfics in that it's really hard for it to capture readers looking for anything other than fluff (which is not to say it doesn't happen in all three cases, it's just rare and usually notable.) So it shouldn't be much of a surprise when a critic doesn't acclaim it.
And I don't think he's expecting gothic romance or melodrama. His top however-many includes at least three (essentially) romantic comedies, which is another romance style that usually has a strong conflict. But there's a reason most famous romances are styled as one of those three, it does usually take a conflict to appeal to a non-romance audience.
Oooh, you are going to ENJOY A Mark of Appeal! It's really interesting, goes in unexpected directions, and has SO MUCH VERSE LORE worked in. It was SOOO good. I can't wait to hear what you think of it, when you get to it!!
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I hope so!