Read It Later Reviews #81 – Salting Snails; Philomeanie; Dictated, Not Read; Veneer; The Prisoner of Zebra · 10:21pm Oct 27th, 2017
According to my computer, I finished this review set all the way back on September 10th. I had thought I had posted it for some reason, but apparently, I never did.
Whoops.
Today’s stories:
Salting Snails by Bats
Philomeanie by Skywriter
Dictated, Not Read by Device Heretic
Veneer by Trick Question
The Prisoner of Zebra by Tumbleweed
Salting Snails
by Bats
Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life
6,925 wordsWhile Apple Bloom is away in Manehattan, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle struggle to find something to do aside from crusading. In their search for activity, they realize that they don't know what Snails' cutie mark represents. Curiosity regarding what happens when you introduce a garden snail to table salt gets the better of them. There's no case too big, no case too small. Not for Scoots and Belle:
rescue rangersbandit busters.
Why I added it: I read it a long time ago, and Bats is a good writer.
Review
One of the few ScootaBelle stories on the site, Salting Snails is the story of two bored fillies deciding to entertain themselves by seeing what would happen if they, well, salted Snails (and maybe figured out what he and snips were doing in the first place).
Sneaking around, dressing up in outfits which totally aren’t Chip n’ Dale from the Rescue Rangers, and getting caught in cramped spaces that make them both all blushy ensue.
Yes, this is a toy ship fic. For those of you who aren’t aware, a Toy Ship is basically a cutesy shipfic between two underaged characters, with a general air of innocence around it (mostly). This was, I think, one of the first such stories I read, and I was and remain rather fond of it. It isn’t something which goes into a great depth of detail of emotion about it, at least not in the sense of “Why do these two characters like each other?”, but instead into the blushy situationality of it, as the two of them are forced into snuggly proximity by circumstance and start having feelings for each other that they themselves don’t really understand. It is a cutsey story, and it focuses heavily on its rather fluffy nature – it isn’t meant to be some deep enduring romance, but them deciding they like each other, which I think primarily works because childhood crushes tend to be pretty superficial.
On the other hand, though, this is something of an issue at times with shipfics – while in real life, people might like each other for fairly arbitrary reasons, especially at first, in a story, we generally expect more justification than just “they ended up in a few slightly snuggly situations and decided they liked it”.
Thus, I’m not sure if this is something which is going to be up the alley of someone who isn’t at least already warm to the idea of shipping these two characters. But if you are, this is a cute enough piece.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you’re fond of ScootaBelle.
Philomeanie
by Skywriter
Comedy, Slice of Life
10,565 wordsLuna and Philomena: a hate affair for the ages.
A thousand years ago, Celestia's pet harrier chases a broken Nightmare Moon through the Everfree Forest. A thousand years later, a much-diminished Princess Luna attempts to feed and take care of the elderly phoenix. In neither case does it go particularly well. Set during Season One, slightly before "A Bird in the Hoof."
Why I added it: Skywriter is a good writer.
Review
A thousand years ago, Nightmare Moon skulked through the Everfree forest, bruised, but not broken, her army of nightmares burned away by Celestia Sol Invictus and her fellows. But if she can just hide long enough for the Moon to reach its height, just a few more hours, she can summon more monsters from the nightmare realm, and surely, surely, she will be able to triumph.
Today, Luna is feeling useless. She is tiny and has lost most of her power and magic, and is frustrated that she has not yet regained her former glory. She cannot possibly move the Moon or perform other princessly duties. There’s just one thing that Celestia does that Luna can do – care for Celestia’s pet phoenix.
The same phoenix who, a thousand years ago, sealed the Nightmare’s doom.
This story cuts between past and present, as we see Season One Luna struggling against Philomena, who is being an utter brat in her state of senescence just prior to her renewal, and Nightmare Moon struggling against glorious Philomena, the phoenix burning with all her beauty and glory.
This is a story which is very dependent on juxtaposition for its humor, as we see past Nightmare Moon struggling against the phoenix in a mighty duel for the fate of Equestria, and then see a bent reflection of it in the present, as Princess Luna struggles to feed Philomena and clean the phoenix’s cage. The humor comes both from Luna struggling with a mundane task against a mean animal, as well as the contrast of the situations between each other.
I have to admit, this didn’t quite work for me. The humor was rather cartoonish, which seems like it is something that is hard to pull off in another medium, but I think I might have to admit that “person taking care of mean, cantankerous animal” is something of a tired trope for me, and I wasn’t even all that fond of it when the show itself did it. Moreover, this contained a pretty large number of poop jokes, and I have to say, while fibrous nuggets can be amusing, when they actually get on or in someone, that elicits a very powerful disgust response from me which I think overpowered the humor in that part of the story. Philomeanie is also surprisingly long, clocking in north of 10,000 words, and a great deal of that was concerned with the core comedic back-and-forth which, while I can understand why others would find it amusing, did not quite touch me.
What I do feel like this story did well was stick the landing. The reflection of the Nightmare’s situation and Luna’s situation at the end was amusing, and then we get into a final part of the story which not only resolves the conflicts that the story set up, but does so in a rather poignant way, yet again by showing a reflection of past and present.
In the end, this story left me feeling ambivalent; does sealing the deal at the end outweigh the comedic sections not making me laugh?
Recommendation: If you like cartoonish humor in writing and don’t mind poop jokes, this might be up your alley.
Dictated, Not Read
by Device Heretic
Sad, Slice of Life
3,214 wordsTwilight composes a letter to the Princess about a terrible Hearth's Warming gift.
Why I added it: I read it a long time ago, and Device Heretic is a good writer.
Review
Stories like this can be tough to review at times, because a lot of them are really heavily dependent on a particular twist (which is, after you get used to the form, pretty obvious). However, this story goes beyond that, and rather than putting it at the end, it puts it partway through, giving additional space for characterization and catharsis.
Here, the focus is not primarily on the twist, but rather, Twilight’s relationship with her parents. Twilight’s parents never quite got her. That’s not to say that they weren’t proud of her – they were, indeed, quite proud of their daughter, and they loved Twilight with all their heart.
But there was always a distance between Twilight and her parents, as epitomized by a kitschy little compass with an inspirational phrase on it. It was a terrible gift, and Twilight always hated it… but kept it with her, as a reminder of how her parents did not quite understand her, and vice-versa.
This story intentionally averts the typical formula of a child coming to cathartic terms with their parents, instead illustrating perhaps a different but no less real relationship, of a disconnect where there is love on both sides, but neither side quite groks the other. And while it is a sentimental piece, it is also one that actually has real emotional impact, however sad that may be.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
Veneer
by Trick Question
Drama
2,324 wordsThree days have passed since the Great Change. Ironically, King Thorax is about to be the last bug in the Hive to learn an important truth.
The secret is something obvious he overlooked in his zeal for sharing love. It bears consequences for the entire Hive... and hard facts about who Thorax truly is.
Why I added it: Trick Question is a good writer.
Review
Thorax is told that some of the changelings haven’t undergone the Great Change so that they can feed themselves by sharing love. He contemplates how to fix things.
I thought of this the moment I saw it happen in the episode, and I’m glad to see someone wrote a story about it. However, at the same time, I have to say that this felt more like the start of a story about it – it was more of a setup than a total arc, as it basically says “there is a problem,” Throax sends for Princess Twilight, and then it ends.
If you’re only okay with reading an idea, this is okay, but it lacks a real arc.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Prisoner of Zebra
by Tumbleweed
Adventure, Romance, Comedy
22,964 wordsFlash Sentry: hero, heart breaker ... and self-admitted coward. For the first time, he details his own undeserved rise to heroism (as well as the trouble such a reputation brings him) in his own words.
Why I added it: Tumbleweed is a good writer.
Review
This is presented as a false document – Flash Sentry writing about his own misadventures. At first, this might appear to be a series of disconnected recollections – the second chapter of the piece, after the introduction to the false document, is an adventure unto itself. But the rest then concerns itself with Flash Sentry, the (completely undeserving) hero of Canterlot getting swept up into an espionage operation – for the good of Equestria, of course. He has to pose as a foreign prince to stand-in at a wedding, as the real prince is sick and it would not do for the countries in question to think that someone might be backing out of a very important diplomatic wedding.
Told in the first person, it is obvious that Flash Sentry does not have a very high opinion of himself, at least as far as it comes to valor – wooing mares, certainly (he is quite vain, and is happy to boast of how good being in the guard is for a handsome lech like himself), but he is a self-admitted coward.
Albeit, a coward who, via circumstances, gains an unwarranted (but not entirely undesirable) reputation for heroism, until of course he is expected to actually play hero once more.
This is a fun piece all the way through – Flash Sentry is rather hapless, but in a comedically charming sort of way. His womanizing is heavily emphasized at first, but then he is thrown into situations where said womanizing is no longer possible, and indeed, every mare he even throws eyes at rather wants to cause him harm for it. The whole thing is told from the point of view of a Miles Gloriosus who is full and well aware that his reputation was entirely unearned, but who, in the moment that the story was told, was taking advantage of it for his own ends. And despite his constant claims of cowardice, it is also clear that, perhaps, he is a slightly unreliable narrator about that as well, for for all the cowardly things he does, there is perhaps a bit more to him than that.
In the end, I think this is what really sells the story – if he was a complete and total ponce, he would be unlikable, but between his self-effacing nature and a certain core of someone who genuinely does care, just a little, it humanizes him and makes it fun to follow along with his adventures, rather than frustrating, and allows for the reader to cheer for him in the end.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
Salting Snails by Bats
Worth Reading
Philomeanie by Skywriter
Not Recommended
Dictated, Not Read by Device Heretic
Worth Reading
Veneer by Trick Question
Not Recommended
The Prisoner of Zebra by Tumbleweed
Worth Reading
Now, to stop procrastinating on reading Lost Time...
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 203
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 628
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2149
Oh boy, Lost Time!
Wow, you're on a Trixie reviewing bender!
I apologize in advance. 
If you have to read something by me, though, you should check out my RCL feature. It's probably the only story I've written that I feel entirely confident in saying 'it's good and if you disagree you're wrong'.
Not that it can't stand critique, though.
Anyway, Veneer definitely was the start of a story that didn't go anywhere.
Several ponies pointed this out, and I changed it to incomplete because I had something I wanted to do with it—but just before I was going to post the second chapter, Hasbro canon'd exactly the story I wanted to tell (the one with Thorax's brother). D'oh.
If you liked 'Prisoner of Zebra' may I suggest reading The Flashman books that it's a pastiche/homage to.
No rush now! I'm sure your sock drawer needs to be reorganized. And you should probably paint the inside of your chimney. And have you ever considered reviewing every story on the site in order by story number?
4709781
Probably, but I've been procrastinating on that for way more than 18 months.
The remodeller said that if I step on the floor while he's finishing it, he will "bury my body in the backyard."
I tried it once. Got to twenty-something before I quit.
Woo, thanks for the review!
4709741
Alternately, you could track down Royal Flash, the movie-ization of the second Flashman novel of the same title, which is what The Prisoner of Zebra was specifically based on. :)
4710139 I tend to dislike film adaptations >.< Mostly because I have a mental image of what the characters look like and the film rewrites that.