Read It Now Reviews #107 – The Belonging Herd, Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Saturation, Modern Vortexology, Puzzling Pink Pecks on a Purple Pony Princess, Barnyard Barge-Ins · 6:11pm Apr 1st, 2017
I’ve been remiss in doing reviews this week. I’d make the excuse of the most recent write-off, but the sad reality is that I’ve been spending far too much of my free time arguing on Reddit.
Which means I might as well have been setting my time on fire.
That being said, I have gotten writing done on two stories, though neither is near to completion. One is a story about a rather cowardly dragon, while the other is my story for the latest writeoff. Hopefully, I’ll get some serious work done on them this weekend.
But that’s future TD’s problem. On to the reviews!
Today’s stories:
The Belonging Herd by GAPJaxie
Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Saturation by Estee
Modern Vortexology by Latte89
Puzzling Pink Pecks on a Purple Pony Princess by CinnamonSwirlTheBreaded
Barnyard Barge-Ins by Estee
The Belonging Herd
by GAPJaxie
Drama
5,018 wordsWhen a pony named Ruby Rails is replaced by a mysterious doppleganger, it's up to Twilight to uncover the truth!
But the more she digs, the more she hopes it turns out to be a changeling plot.
Why I added it: GAPJaxie is a good writer.
Review
Ruby Rails was a website designer. A red unicorn. She had a spider web on her butt.
Then she vanished. Instead, a blue pegasus, with a cutie mark for fair trade Griffonstone rubies, went into work, cleaned out her desk, stole a bunch of pens, and resigned.
She was arrested, of course. But she claimed to be Ruby Rails.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, if other ponies hadn’t started following suit…
This sounds interesting.
It isn’t really the story, though.
The story is really a conversation between Twilight and “Ruby Rails” about the possibility of changing yourself. And I didn’t think very much of it.
This felt like propaganda. While the story was ostensibly a conversation between two characters, what it really felt like was something which was directed at the audience, with a thin façade that it was about the people in the story. But the people were not really people – Ruby served as the author’s voice, while Twilight served as Simplicio, the person who was ultimately being pushed around and swayed by the Correct Authorial Voice. While it was not quite so transparent as that, if you look at the story, Twilight doesn’t really “score any points”. Her sole purpose in the story is to serve as a vehicle for drawing out Ruby Rail’s words, to be troubled and changed by them on the behalf of the audience.
Stories often contain messages, and there’s nothing wrong with writing a story with the idea of delivering some message to the audience vis-à-vis telling them a story.
But this story didn’t really do that. It didn’t have the characters act out a thing by example – it was more or less a character just telling the audience what they should think.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Saturation
by Estee
Comedy
11,128 wordsRarity tends to embrace innovation: after all, a pony who wishes to stay on trend must move with the times. And she loves anything which gets rid of dirt. So when she sees a new kind of shower at an expo, she becomes the budding company's first customer. Because what could be more important than cleanliness?
The common sense required not to be a new product's tester. That's much more important.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
Estee has been a busy creature this week. So many recent stories…
And I’ve actually read all three of them.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Innovation Exposition is a semiannual exposition of cool new innovations. A large number of new inventions – both magical and mundane – are showed off every year. And this year, it has come to Ponyville, a town which has not yet gotten tired of various inventions exploding (thanks, bearers of the Elements of Harmony!).
For Rarity, it is a chance to be ahead of the herd. For Twilight… well, we all can guess why Twilight might be fascinated with novel inventions.
And while the two mares are different ponies, this is a great opportunity for them to profitably spend some enjoyable time together.
This year, the single greatest innovation, the thing which the most ponies are clustered around… is a shower.
But not just any shower. It is a 360 degree shower – a shower that sends water up towards you at all angles, giving you a complete wash from every direction, a very handy thing for ponies who struggle to clean those hard to reach places.
And for a pony like Rarity, it is simply something she must have. Sure, it is experimental. Sure, it may require some assembly. But to be clean? To have a shower that has a massage setting?
It is all worth it.
Too bad this means that Rarity needs to hire a plumber to put the thing in, and there’s just one pony for the job…
As a comedy story, this really centers around two jokes – Rarity really liking the idea of this shower, and plumbers being horrible extortionists who are horrible to work with. And at 11,000 words, it is on the long side for what it is.
But I have to say, it made me chuckle.
There’s a number of funny scenes in here – the shower demonstration is amusing, as is Rarity’s insistence that the shower will be hers. The scene of Rarity trying to sell things in the shop while the plumber is working does a good job of being cartoonishly funny with its descriptions of the sounds coming from upstairs, and some of the other descriptions are amusing enough on their own. Rarity’s willingness to not live in her boutique for the duration, and the implications of the burden she put on Twilight and Spike while living in the library, is amusing. And I have to admit that the very end made me smile, just a little.
Likewise, there are several sections of prose in the story, particularly towards the first half, which are fun to read, especially in regards to Twilight and Rarity spending time together.
All of this was enough to put it over the top for me.
I do have to admit some trepidation in my recommendation – like a number of Estee’s stories, this story is rather slow-paced and long for what it is, and there certainly were a few scenes that dragged a bit. Estee’s thoughts about plumbers, or at least, about certain plumbers, are rather transparent here. And there are a fair few jokes about the not-so-punctual-or-hardworking-plumbers in here which may bother some folks, as frankly, the joke wasn’t actually that funny the first time and it gets hit on several more times afterwards.
And honestly, not a whole lot here was all that memorable.
But in the moment, I did derive enjoyment from it. This is a very cartoony story in its style of humor, but it makes it work, and while it is perhaps overlong, there’s enough here to enjoy it didn’t feel like it drug too badly.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you enjoy cartoonish humor.
Modern Vortexology
by Latte89
Slice of Life
2,952 wordsPrincess Celestia calls Twilight in to reveal one of Equestria's deepest, darkest secrets. This is definitely, absolutely the first time Twilight's heard of it.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Celestia calls Twilight to Canterlot to deal with a national crisis.
There might be slightly less of a crisis than Celestia anticipated.
This was, at its heart, a TwiLestia friendshipping story, about Twilight and Celestia being friends. But honestly, I feel like this story was a bit unfocused.
It has two main elements - the first was that Celestia had managed to overlook something extremely important, thereby setting up what appeared to be a comedy fic as it was Celestia's turn to overreact and Twilight's turn to be the logical one. This then gets replaced by the second one, the fact that Celestia is lonely and wants Twilight to spend more time with her. Ultimately, neither really pushed it over the top for me - the first was mildly funny, but didn't feel like it quite pushed itself into the more rarefied air of hilarity. The second was sweet, but didn't feel like it was tied closely enough to the first. Had the story implied that Celestia knew full well there wasn't a crisis, but had simply manufactured one in order to draw Twilight to the capital so that Celestia could spend some time with her, I feel like the story might have tied itself together more strongly - or had the first half been funnier, but also shown more of Celestia's loneliness, that might also have worked better.
In any case, it needed more something – it was technically competent, but it never really shone.
This had the shape of a story I wanted to like, but it didn't quite push itself over the top for me. I did think the ending, with Celestia making excuses for Twilight to come to the capital more and Twilight being a bit oblivious to Celestia's empty nest syndrome was cute, and I thought that the vortexology stuff was potentially funny, but it never quite made it there for me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Puzzling Pink Pecks on a Purple Pony Princess
by CinnamonSwirltheBreaded
Romance, Slice of Life
3,505 wordsTwilight loves all her friends, but lately a certain pink pony has been occupying her mind a bit more than usual: thankfully, she knows to keep such feelings to herself.
...So why has that mare been giggling everytime she passes by?
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Pinkie Pie kisses Twilight on the cheek as she leaves the library.
Twilight is 100% clueless as to why.
Her friends – very painfully and in detail – have to explain it to her.
While stories about Twilight being oblivious can be funny – Regarding the Need for Sex Education and Estrus are classics – writing them is harder than it looks.
Twilight being ignorant of something obvious is not actually very funny in and of itself, and indeed, can feel out of character – Twilight is, after all, a pretty bright pony.
Where these stories generally work is when they play with it – for example, by taking it to some absurd end because of a critical detail (as is the case with Regarding the Need for Sex Education) or recontextualizing it so that it makes sense in character but no one else gets why (as is the case with Estrus).
This story, however, requires Twilight to be missing two pretty obvious things, one of which doesn’t even make sense in the context of its origin story, which is not only directly referenced, but directly quoted. Moreover, given the context of Twilight’s supposed attraction to Pinkie Pie, her confusion about Pinkie Pie showing she is attracted to Twilight doesn’t really make any sense.
The result of all this is that the story feels kind of drug out as Twilight stumbles through the blindingly obvious, and Twilight’s behavior doesn’t feel natural, or even comically natural, just strange.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Barnyard Barge-Ins
by Estee
Comedy, False Document
11,255 words"The first thing new students of the Great Ponyville Homecoming Holiday Riot may wish to fix upon their minds is that ultimately, Mr. Rich's intentions were good and thus it could be said that in some ways, what happened was not truly his fault."
Black Friday comes to Equestria.
Once.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
This is an unusual story with a very non-standard format. The frame story is a false document – a record of the Great Ponyville Homecoming Holiday Riot, an explanation for how and why it happened, and exactly who was to blame for it. Intercut with a very formal explanation, complete with references to charts and interviews, we’re given various glimpses into events at the time, taken from Mr. Rich’s notes and written out as proper scenes.
The frame story is deliberately overwrought – it is clear that the writer (whose identity we discover at the end) is intent on making certain that blame is correctly apportioned, and is very defensive of Mr. Rich, as well as going in depth about pony psychology and the unfortunate series of events which resulted in the sale being pushed back from 5 am to 11 pm the previous evening as ever more stores became intent on opening early.
The overall nature of the humor is pretty dry as well – the story’s nature as a false document lends itself to such, and a lot of the humor of the piece comes from the anger exhibited by the writer of the false document at the true villain of the story.
I suspect that there are some people who will find this story funny. Unfortunately, I have to say I wasn’t one of them. It all felt rather too telegraphed to me. I’d like to blame this on the pacing – this story is 11,000 words long – but honestly, it didn’t feel that long to me. Rather, I think the problem was that a lot of the humor is based around Mr. Rich discovering the sort of eccentric behavior we see out of people intent on getting deals on Black Friday – which, alas, we the audience are already familiar with. And the story itself telegraphs a lot of future events, which makes them feel even less spontaneous when they occur, doubly so as the “true villain” is clearly marked out in the story well beforehand.
As such, I think this is largely preaching to the choir – the choir may appreciate the sermon, but the rest may awkwardly shuffle out after communion. I suspect it may appeal more to those who are intimately familiar with (and hate) Black Friday. But it didn’t really do anything for me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you hate Black Friday.
Summary
The Belonging Herd by GAPJaxie
Not Recommended
Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Saturation by Estee
Worth Reading
Modern Vortexology by Latte89
Not Recommended
Puzzling Pink Pecks on a Purple Pony Princess by CinnamonSwirlTheBreaded
Not Recommended
Barnyard Barge-Ins by Estee
Not Recommended
And there we have it. I’ve got a bunch of recent stories in my backlog which I still haven’t managed to read – the Imposing Sovereigns stories from a number of quarters, which somehow I still haven’t gotten to, as well as a couple of stories by Tumbleweed and several others that caught my eye. I actually have another full set of reviews ready to go, as I ended up reading like, ten stories last night.
And of course, as ever, there are those longfics on my read later list, tempting me…
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 190
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 606
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2094
Always great to see a FiMfic users reviewing other users work and reminding us that reading and commenting about work of others is important. Though didn't yet get to read those stories so i don't have opinion about those stories yet and will have to read them before I agree with you...
...wait hold on. You are planing to review/read how many stories? Holy Goodness, are you on a crusade to read every fiction on this site? I salute you, you brave and crazy person.
If you invert the colors, the Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Saturation image shows Rarity soaked in blood with a cutie mark consisting of three red diamonds.
Awww. Well, that review of Belonging Herd was fair.
I'm surprised you didn't like Barnyard Barge-Ins though! I found that story to be really quite funny at points, particularly the description of the riot itself.
4479833
According to my spreadsheet, I've reviewed 1,081 stories, including 1005 stand alone stories and 76 stories in collections.
It's a lot.
This is my 107th set of "Read It Now Reviews", which are basically reviews of stories posted in the last month. I've also got 73 sets of "Read It Later Reviews", which are reviews of stories which were posted more than a month ago, and 17 sets of "Recommended Story Reviews", which are all stories I'd recommend or highly recommend which predate me doing reviews.
Plus some miscellaneous other reviews.
I really need to post my tracking sheet sometime.
What, we're not good enough to argue with anymore? You're a fanfic reviewer! Just say something obtuse about someone's fic and we'll keep you occupied for a week over it! Not to mention Bad Horse doing his best to spread discord and disharmony via political implications of literary fiction.
What more do you need, a post from me about how much RariJack sucks?
4479840
Some bits of the riot were good (in particular, Rarity being heterogeneous... with pain!) but unfortunately the story as a whole was, I suspect, too dry for me, and the humor felt telegraphed. I'm not a huge fan of What We Wanted To Do either, a story that CiG linked to because Barnyard Barge-Ins reminded him of that...
I dunno. I mean, I approve of it being experimental and stuff, but it didn't end up working for me the way I would have hoped.
4479862
I only say acute things! No wonder no one argues with me!
Yeah, I saw that. I did participate (briefly) but, you know, it just isn't the same.
Now now, I'm not foolish enough to break the naval warfare treaties. We have to reserve our ammo for lobbing shots at those darned handlers.
Though it has been a while since anyone has posted about why their ship is the best.
4479872
That's because I started writing my Celestia/Smart Cookie fic, and everyone else realized they can pack up and go home!
(Now if I could just get people to read it.)
4479859 A thousand.... Oh, my. And you still retain your sanity. With that kind of willpower, you deserve a green ring.
Yeah, that's basically how I felt about "Belonging Herd." Pretty sure I end up ranking it above "Would it matter", not sure compared to "Change in 3 parts", but all fall flat on the whole being a story thing. Which is too bad, because The Lies We Tell to Children has been working in a similar space, while actually having more story elements, and I've been liking it quite a bit. Hopefully "Belonging Herd" won't lead to a bunch of copycats--or if it does, we can jump right to the "Do it matter if i is?" stage.
A story quoting something doesn't make it a sequel to that thing, or indicate that it originates from it. I've got quotes and refs and even the odd air elemental bound in Twilight's basement in my fics, but that doesn't make any of the references stories the "origin story" of those works. You're assuming rather more than the text indicates.
4479863 considering that I have 17 years worth of black Friday sales under my belt I found it pretty funny, but I can see how mileage may vary. That and thankfully ive never worked with a Overstock type character........or at least not one THAT blatant
You frequently review stories "because XYZ is a good writer" and then end up not recommending them. It seems that even most writers you consider to be "good" more often than not earn a "Not Recommended" from you.
Just something I noticed.
4479897
I keep forgetting to write my Cookie x Clover x Pansy fic for April Fool's day. You know, the real story of Hearth's Warming. If you know what I mean.
Sadly, my attempts at getting my friend to publish his (pretty good) story about the founders sadly have fallen on deaf ears D:
4479949
Yeah, but...
Accidentally touching someone's butt? Repeatedly?
It's also weird because the direct quotation makes it a reference to that other story. Like, why would you quote Mood Wings' definition of feathermarking if you weren't going to use it?
4479989
I do actually like Life cereal.
Also, well...
Just because someone is good doesn't mean I'm going to recommend everything they write. I mean, I've enjoyed a number of Terry Pratchett's books, but there are others that I didn't consider to be very good.
4479862
Hey, now! RariJack can be good... when it ends properly with them breaking up because they realize it would never, ever work.
4479989 I find it depends a bit on where he places the story, and when. Read It Nows that aren't yanked from the feature box favor those authors' stories being recommended. Read It Later and the "from the feature box" ones (which would include the Estee ones in this review) have a good chance of not being recommended.
4480029
I still haven't been forgiven for writing Rose Petals by some people.
I despise Black Friday, so thanks for giving me a new story to read!
4479897
Jeez I didn't realize that story only had 300 views.
Clearly I need to make
(and subsequently neglect)a Founders of Equestria group to promote stories like this. Or at least let the five fans of historical Equestrian figures find them.4480183
Neglecting groups is my favorite past time! Sign me up!
4480006
I think you're confusing the unreliable nature of the ponies in the story with what actually happened. Twilight was reaching out with her wings, subconsciously, and feathermarking Pinkie, brushing her wing tip against her cutie mark, more or less, given she was doing it subconsciously and probably didn't have the best aim.
In the show, ponies seem to refer to the area that the cutie mark appears in as the 'flank' (as in, blank flanks, etc). and in the fandom, it isn't uncommon for bronies to jokingly refer to the area as the pony's "butt" (such as caling Twilight "sparklebutt" or what have you.) Of course, in fact, the area where the cutie mark appears is neither the flank, which ends at the crest of the iliac, nor is it the buttock, which for a horse is directly below the tail between the thighs. The Cutie mark shows up on a pony's hindquarters. My point here more that in common language, people don't really use 'true' anatomical terms for areas, and Applejack jokingly saying Twilight was "swatting that booty" isn't indicative of what was actually happening. Similarly, Twilight's comment about 'sexually harassing' her friend is based on the fact that she was continually doing it to Pinkie, and the act has particularly connotations (ie that pegasus likes you). If the attraction is unwelcome, and you keep doing it, it becomes sexual harassment. (Plus her anger is partly out of fear that she's hurt Pinkie's feelings.)
Twilight is baffled by Pinkie's kiss because Twilight strikes me as the sort of person who would have to sit down and reflect on her feelings. She knows Pinkie's been on her mind for a while, but hasn't really sat down and considered why that might be.
So...Recommended if you've ever worked retail?