Paul's Thursday Reviews CCLXXVI · 10:06pm Dec 16th, 2021
Recently I had a conversation with a friend. The topic: the potential for a non-FIMFiction review blog. I’ve stated in the past that I wanted to have my own individual blog where I could both publish original fiction reviews and store my old FIMFic reviews. We then got to talking about the potential for expanding it so that it isn’t just me doing the reviews, that I instead head a team of volunteers.
I’ll be frank, I have zero faith in a volunteer review group. I’ve seen far too many of them collapse. So if I did have something like this, I’d want to ensure there is some incentive to keep reviewers coming. But I still like the idea of having a dedicated review site, perhaps one that goes beyond reviewing books. I’m especially interested in making it a site for review aggregation.
But making and running a website requires time. Dedication. A prolonged interest. I’ve got a full-time job and I want to write my own material. Do I have the time? Do I have the motivation? 2021 is set to be the least productive year I’ve ever had in terms of writing, and while I’ve found myself in a sudden writing burst these last three days I’m still not back at 100%. How do I know I can devote the time and attention required to make this thing work?
The biggest roadblock is, in fact, my ongoing review blog. I will have to seriously cut down on it if I’m going to be able to devote myself to something separate. Given that I’m booked straight through 2022, that won’t be happening soon, although I have plans in place to reduce my workload after that year.
None of this is reason not to send some feelers out. To that end I have to ask if there’s anyone with any familiarity with web design who might, if approached at a later time, be interested in helping me (and my friend) develop a proper web page for review blogging and aggregation. I doubt anything would happen in, say, the next few months, but adding some names to the ol’ contact list wouldn’t hurt.
Alright, enough of the dry stuff. Let’s have some reviews.
Stories for This Week:
She Kills Monsters by chiko
The Evening Sonata by Daniel-Gleebits
Aitran by CTVulpin
Rainbow's Factory by AuroraDawn
A Most Unusual Charm by Autumn Wind
Total Word Count: 215,031
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 1
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 0
None: 0
She Kills Monsters
15,000 Words
By chiko
Teens Apple Bloom and Scootaloo decide to pay the old clubhouse a visit. There they find some old Ogres & Oubliettes material created by their late friend, Sweetie Belle. As they examine the material, they realize that it consists of an original O&O campaign by the girl herself, with a story that is very personal and directly related to one woman in particular. They decide that the best thing to do is introduce the campaign to Rarity. Assuming she’s willing, that is.
I should start this off with a notice that this story no longer exists on FIMFiction. chiko, apparently having serious opposition to the site’s rules and policies, decided to scrub their entire account of everything it ever had. I found this story before that had happened, hence its presence in my lists, but didn’t get to it for reading until after the scrubbing. Fortunately, FIMFetch had my back with an archived copy of the story.
I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to review this properly. On the final day of reading, it disappeared from FIMFetch too. It was concerning. It was suspicious. It was confusing. But I learned my lesson from Aftersound and made sure to check back a couple days later and sure enough, it was up again. Which makes me question why it went down in the first place.
She Kills Monsters originated as a play using the exact same premise. I have no way of knowing how closely the two stories follow one another, but the situation seems to line up far too neatly with the context of the CMC and Humane Six to be stolen scene-for-scene (unless there’s some extreme coincidences going on between the play and Equestria Girls). This is a great thing, and makes for one of the best types of crossovers, allowing the author to build off another story’s idea in their own way.
The story was certainly interesting. It is told in alternating scenes of the present with Rarity learning about the sister she didn’t know, past interactions she had with Sweetie, and the O&O sessions she has with Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. Despite the very different formats, each scene reveals a little more about Sweetie Belle, creating for Rarity a much bigger and more detailed image than she’d ever had when Sweetie was alive.
The tricky bit is that each scene is only 500 words long. That’s not much time to get the point across, and sometimes the moment can feel rushed. But usually chiko managed to pull it off, especially the heartfelt scenes. This is a wonderful demonstration of doing a lot with so very little, even if the author didn’t always manage to create a seamless transition from event to event. The Silver Spoon moment in particular felt like it would have benefited from being two scenes instead of just one (although it was still a great moment overall).
I particularly love how the author was able to take mundane scenes and make them feel important. Rarity cheering her sister up with a bubble bath. Sweetie waiting impatiently in the car while Rarity goes to order herself a drink. Rarity attending a Pinkie Party. Every moment has a sense of importance, of personal value, that builds upon what everything before it offered while adding to Sweetie’s legacy and Rarity’s recovery. It was a wonderful display of storytelling.
This was a beautiful story, and I am grateful that FIMFetch exists to let us enjoy it. I feel like I need to watch the original play now. Regardless of how you feel about Rarity or Sweetie Belle, you should give this a go. It’s a heartfelt tale of the relationship between a pair of sisters.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
The Evening Sonata
134,567 Words
By Daniel-Gleebits
Sunset Shimmer discovers one of the former Sirens homeless, hungry and depressed. Seeing as she’s not heartless, she decides to let Sonata Dusk stay at her apartment.
You all know where this is going.
I’ve got an interest in stories that treat Sonata Dusk as something other than a ditzy idiot, and so this one caught my attention quickly. The story is set in (arguably) three parts: Sonata coming to accept Sunset’s friendship, the development of their inevitable romance, and the start of Sonata’s career as a painter. Along the way we also get to discover what happened to Adagio and Aria.
Before anything else, I should note that I enjoyed this characterization of Sonata. She’s still something of a ditz, but she’s not stupid. She’s quite the thoughtful young woman and – as Adagio of all people attests – the most responsible of the Sirens. To be honest, I was never much for the ditzy characters, but Daniel-Gleebits gives her enough personality to keep her endearing.
I like how the author regularly hints at the Sirens’ pasts, particularly with clear indicators that they’ve been in the human world for a long, long time. The topic of their presumed immortality never comes up directly, and I would have been interested in hearing about it, but I’ll take the indirect route. It kept things interesting. I’d like to hear an explanation for why they seem to be regaining lost memories and personality traits.
Although there is the weird note that in this AU the Sirens were never, in fact, Sirens but were always ponies. Daniel-Gleebits proffers the absurd idea that their canon forms were little more than brief transformations forced upon them by Starswirl. I assume this was purely intended as an excuse to let Sonata (briefly) visit Equestria as a pony. I can see some people rebelling over the decision, but it only lasts one chapter, so…
I was annoyed by the brevity of Adagio’s early scenes. It felt almost as though the author was rushing through her arc so as to get to the much longer, far more complex Aria arc. What the author was doing with Adagio in those early chapters was interesting, and not something I’d ever seen done with her before, but it’s over in… what, two chapters? Whereas Aria’s arc takes up at least a third of the story. Yeah, Aria is a delight to write and read, but that’s no excuse to set The Great Floof aside like this. At least Adagio comes back in the later chapters to shine in all her witchily superior and superiorly witchy glory.
I also have to wonder about the, er, ‘geography’ of this world. Apparently the Mane Six are able to access Baltimore by train easily enough, and could also get to places like Hollywood. There’s also a mountain right next to where they live, which doesn’t exist in the canon material. Oh, and they call elevators ‘lifts’, everyone takes the train and bus to get anywhere at all, and nobody owns a car. My best guess is that this is set in an AU where the country they live in is a mish-mash of American and European culture and geography, because the two seem to be getting blended together without explanation. I suspect Daniel-Gleebits is from Europe and wrote with a European mindset while trying to set the story in an American locale. Which adds an interesting flavor to the whole thing, although it may cause some readers to scratch their heads.
All of this is beside the point of the story, which is simply Sunset Shimmer and Sonata Dusk getting all lovey-dovey. This element is a delightful slow burn in which our protagonists live together, start to fall for one another, but don’t realize their own feelings until the story’s well underway. Then there’s the whole Aria issue popping in at the most critical phase of this romance, which is great; Daniel-Gleebits clearly knows that the most important aspect of a romance is making it about more than just the romance. We’ve got Sonata trying to help her sister, Aria facing a personal (and physical) crisis, Sunset caught in no-win scenarios, large charity drives, and all of it while these two are struggling with those darn feelings.
Then Hoity Toity notices Sonata. Then Fleur de Lis starts eyeing Sunset. Then drugs are involved. Then Sonata’s painting career, love life, and mental health are in jeopardy. The last third of the story has things get very real very quickly.
The Evening Sonata has a lot of strange and unexpected elements, but that’s all overshadowed by a slow burn romance and compounding, complicated issues that keep the story interesting from start to finish. I ended up enjoying myself far more than I anticipated. I think my only serious regret at this point is the ending, which isn’t an ending at all. After all the mess that Sonata and Sunset went through for this story, you would think that Daniel-Gleebits would give it a firm conclusion. But no, instead they chose to start a whole new adventure before the girls can have a chance to get over recent events. Not cool, author. I get wanting to shill the sequel, but the least you could have done was give Sunset and Sonata a moment to breathe. More importantly, it would have given this story a proper sense of conclusion, a sense that is sorely absent due to this poor decision. Which is made all the poorer by Daniel-Gleebits having given up on finishing the sequel, so the girls are never going to get that much-earned resolution.
Even so, I enjoyed this one a lot. The ending might have left a bad taste in my mouth and there are a lot of quirky unexplained elements, but overall this was a fun read that I encourage people to try out, especially if you’re a fan of any of the sirens.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
While exploring the Canterlot Royal Archives, Twilight comes across a most unusual book called Aitran, purportedly written by Star Swirl the Bearded. Having been through Star Swirl’s entire bibliography, she is nothing short of giddy at the possibilities! She never expected it to describe an island in excruciating detail, or for there to be a moving picture in the back of that island, or for herself and Rainbow Dash to get transported to that world upon touching said picture. Now they face the real conundrum: how to get back home?
Or, to be succinct: Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle play MYST.
I like CTVulpin’s methodology with this one. On the one hand, the world Twilight and Rainbow are visiting really is Myst Island, with all the exact same puzzles and frustrations. But at the same time there are a lot of differences to be had between their experience and the game. A minor one is that they discover a living space on Myst Island, which I’m pretty sure didn’t exist in the game (although it does feel like quite the oversight and it could have been added to one of the new editions I haven’t played). A major one is that Channelwood is still inhabited; RD and Twi even get an opportunity to interact with one of the natives, which absolutely never happened in the game.
I approve of the changes made. CTVulpin recognized that there’s a difference between a video game and a literary story and made adjustments appropriately. This allows everything to feel a little more fleshed out and realistic without sacrificing the core element and themes of MYST.
The potential catch is, in fact, the core element of MYST: the puzzles. The author took great pains to recreate them, intricately describing them as they appeared in the game. For those of us who played it, this could serve as a great nostalgia trip as we recall grinding our teeth in frustration while looking for very specific star constellations, trying to make the damn tree move, or worst of all: figuring out that f-ing underground maze! You kids with your in-game compasses and minimaps don’t know how good you got it.
Yet there’s a problem with this, too: the puzzles are complicated, confusing, and take a lot of Twilight’s and Rainbow’s time. Thousands of words devoted to solving puzzles rather than advancing the story. Those who lack the nostalgia advantage and the patience may find this too much to bear. CTVulpin did skim some of the most time-consuming puzzles in the game (like the previously mentioned underground maze), but it’s still safe to say that roughly three-fourths of this story involves them.
This comes at its absolute worst when the author creates paragraphs so big they don’t fit on my monitor – the extreme form of a Wall of Text – all devoted to solving a single puzzle. Yeah, that’s not working, CTVulpin. Learn to split this stuff up. Please.
The author tries to alleviate this by having Twilight and Rainbow discuss the background story during and between the puzzles. This may also surprise fans of the games, as CTVulpin decided to replace established characters like Atrus, Cirrus, Achenar, and Catrine with pony characters including Star Swirl, Clover (presumably the Clever) and some OCs. Again, I have no complaints about this as it worked wonders for maintaining the whole ponification element without sacrificing the core plot of MYST.
It also comes with a vastly superior ending compared to the game, in case anyone’s wondering.
While I liked the story overall, I get the feeling its appeal will vary depending on the audience. Those familiar with MYST may adore it for the nostalgia alone. Unfamiliar but patient readers who like mysteries (as in the plot, not the puzzles) could also get something out of this. The rest of you? I’m thinking it’ll be a person-by-person case of Hit or Miss.
Regardless, I have every intention of reading the sequel. I want to see how close it gets to Riven.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Rainbow's Factory
8,755 Words
By AuroraDawn
For eight years, Rainbow Dash has cared for Scootaloo. She raised her, taught her, prepared her, loved her. Tonight is the night where all that effort will either pay off… or be betrayed.
Written as a celebration of the original’s ten year anniversary, this is Rainbow Factory but from Rainbow Dash’s perspective. It’s not a reimagining, none of the events have changed, all the same characters are in play. It’s literally the exact same story from the villain’s point of view.
Scootaloo’s story was, distinctly, a horror tale. It targeted her mindset upon discovering her inevitable fate and the awareness that her mentor and adoptive mother was the one responsible. Yes, there was a gratuitous amount of violence at the end, but it had always been Scootaloo’s mindset from which the fear was derived. Rainbow’s Factory flips this on its head, letting us see exactly how Rainbow feels about this entire scenario; her sense of having been betrayed, the loss of the one source of joy in her life, and her resorting to rage and disconnection to resolve the issue.
Ultimately, I don’t consider Rainbow’s Factory a horror story. Oh, yes, the events are indeed horrible, but a veteran of the genre such as myself won’t be disturbed by the fact that events are happening in general. This is why I put a premium on a story’s atmosphere and being in the shoes (err, horseshoes) of the victim. Rainbow is not afraid in this story, she’s furious and in pain.
This isn’t a complaint. I’m not at all saying that Rainbow’s Factory is a bad story. On the contrary, it’s very good. As a story, I’d argue it’s superior to its predecessor (this with the caveat that AuroraDawn apparently made some changes to the original this past February, so that verdict might not be applicable anymore). It’s highly character-driven and focuses a lot less on the gore at the end, instead sticking to what really matters.
This isn’t a story about Scootaloo. It’s not a story about the Rainbow Factory. It’s a story about Rainbow Dash, and it works surprisingly well in that vein.
There are a few things to keep in mind. The most important is that this story assumes some of the events of the early seasons are still canon. Which I find preposterous given Rainbow’s blatant racism and a few other flaws that make it hard to rectify her character with a bastion of Harmony. You also have to assume that Rainbow is a pony-sized wrecking ball capable of taking tons of damage without so much as flinching. Which, y’know, adrenaline is a thing, but it still felt kind of ridiculous at the end there.
Even so, I enjoyed (for a certain definition of ‘enjoyed’) this. It’s a capable demonstration that AuroraDawn knows exactly what they’re doing. I’m considering going in and reading the rest of the stories in the RF series, seeing as there is now further material that didn’t exist before. As for this story, it’s definitely worth the read, both for fans of the original and newcomers.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Rainbow Factory — Pretty Good
A Most Unusual Charm
1,095 Words
By Autumn Wind
Twilight can’t not try out a charm scroll that has no obvious application. Rarity and Rainbow Dash ask around town, hoping to find out what it did.
I got it by around halfway through.
This author earns my praise for managing to write an entire story with such a gimmick. I gave it a go with the start of this review, and it is hard. So much respect there. The story does end up reading… strangely, but that’s part of the point.
A short but sweet little experiment. Fun, and impressive in the technical sense. Alas, as a story it doesn’t have any staying power, but it’s still worth it just for the experiment’s sake.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Tale of the Three Alicorn Sisters — Worth It
Shimmer — Needs Work
Stories for Next Week:
The Conversion Bureau by halo003qd
Good Girl by DungeonMiner
Death by Dragon by Compendium of Steve
Children of Equestria by Samey90
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One of the highest compliments I’ve yet received.
Thank you for the review, Paul! Good luck with any review blogs, too. I’ve always struggled to put how I feel about a piece into words, so I’ve much respect for what you do and the desire to expand it with the help of others.
Having just tabbed out of Riven to see if you had a review blog up, I'm definitely going to check out that Aitran story. Especially since I also happen to like to include puzzles in stories, and might learn a thing or two about doing so here. Even just designing them for a tabletop RPG versus a video game, I'm starting to realize there are huge differences in the way the solver can interact with elements and the way information is presented.
I suspect, however, that I might end up learning what I am already leaning towards- that puzzles for puzzles sake in a written work, which is non-interactive, might not be such a good idea in general.
We shall see.
On that first story, I don't know what you mean about a play. Did this story first exist as a play, and this is a novelization of it? Or this is a ponification of an already-extant play?
I've read "The Evening Sonata" and had about the same overall reaction as you, but for different reasons. On the whole, I found the writing style to be significantly and persistently on the wrong side of the "show vs. tell" scale, and I was also disappointed by the weak ending. I thought the first of the 3 arcs was quite good, and had that been a separate story, I might enthusiastically recommend it. The romance arc, while competently executed, still felt completely extraneous to me, as it ended up having little bearing on the rest. (I notice a couple of commenters who I regard as good reviewers said the same thing.) They were friends anyway, and I have to ask whether it would have changed anything about the subsequent plot if they had remained so, and I don't think it does. I found it off-putting that the author constantly had to outright tell you who the perspective character is (and doesn't always stick to it anyway). And to me, the third arc felt like a drawn-out and inconclusive denouement, where people behave in ways they had never been shown to before, like Sunset suddenly being prone to cheat or being critical of Sonata's drug use when she'd already known about it.
It's a story that somehow succeeds despite its faults, and I would definitely recommend at least the first arc of it.
God damn, do I hate Aitran. <.< It's even video gamier than Fallout: Equestria, and that's really saying something. An absolute chore to read.
5617768
It's either a ponification or just based on a play, possibly by the same name? It's been a while, I forget the details.
5617763
Reminds me of a session where I had constructed a simple platform puzzle, one where there were several cranes, each on a tall building holding platforms, and the players would need to use the platforms in sequence to move along.
Instead, to my delight, the players smashed two of the cranes into one another to form an impromptu bridge, bypassing the puzzle entirely but creating a great escape sequence as the foes chasing them simply started firing on the crane bases, leading to a Hollywood-like moment of the "bridge" becoming unstable and toppling over the edge while a few players were still on it.
That session was a blast.
5617823
Lucky you. I set up what I thought was a really cool puzzle (modified from the mechanical age "221" gear puzzle in Myst, in an MLP-setting game no less!) that my players sat and fumed over for half a session, only for me to realize I had transposed two numbers in a spreadsheet and created something literally unsolvable. I wound up giving the guy who proved it was unusable about five free rerolls he could redeem at any time, and let the party unicorn roll an easy Telekinesis check to wrench the gears into the correct position without using the controls.
5617826
Oh that is awful. Oof. Sorry to hear that! I hope the bonuses made up for it for the players!
Finished Aitran. Or, well, finished skimming it, at least. Because, holy plot regurgitation, Batman!
A few things stand out to me:
EDIT: What I meant to say was "instead of treating the Ages of Myst as blank white voids of disembodied dialogue, but there's no sense of mystery or grandeur to it".
All of this, I think, sucks much of the fun out of a puzzle scenario like this. For me, at least, a big part of playing a game like Myst is that "aha" moment, where you suddenly see a puzzle or clue that just looked weird before, in a new light that suddenly reveals its significance. The very matter-of-fact, procedural way this story is written (SuperFeatherYoshi on LOTD called this "daybook" writing) doesn't really offer that.
I'm still not entirely convinced puzzles in literature are a bad thing, as you can still experience that "aha" moment vicariously through another character, after having seen all the pieces described in their confusing form previously, possibly a long time ago. But that's not what Aitran does.
Also, this has nothing to do with the fanfic, but am I the only one who thinks it's kind of weird that characters in the Myst games always always always put their whole hand against the panel in a Linking Book? My first instinct would be to tap it with just one finger.
Huh, checked She Kills Monsters on FiMFetch and realized its inspiration, the stage play was written by Qui Nguyen, who is now working for WDAS and co-wrote the screenplay of Raya and the Last Dragon. I mean, Raya doesn't exactly have the best story, but as a Disney fan I'm curious to see what he's gonna do with his next WDAS project.
I have a friend who's been into Myst and similar games lately, maybe they'll get a kick out of Aitran.
Squarespace is the main name that I've heard over the years for website hosting services, I've had thoughts of trying it out for myself but never got around to it so I can't say much personally, everything I've heard though is that it's fairly intuitive. The youtuber SchaffrillasProductions frequently does sponsor plugs for them, you might be able to get a discount if you look over there (and maybe get some neat media analysis videos at the same time).
5617846
5617830
In my defense, I'm not sure I've ever read a story based on a video game that had a good representation of the in-game puzzles, ever. I thought Aitran did it about as well as could be hoped given this experience. I was largely willing to forgive a lot of its flaws due to the nostalgia factor.
5617768
She Kills Monters originally existed as a play, and chiko adapted it into a pony novelization. See 5617878's comment.
I acknowledge that The Evening Sonata's romance could have been removed and nothing would have changed. That being said, a lot of people (read: the romance fans) are there for the romance in the first place and won't care. Sure, it can be argued that not making the romance a pivotal aspect of the overarching plot is a storytelling flaw, but these people aren't thinking about that. They just want the romance, yo.
I think you're being a bit harsh on the third act. Sunset was never depicted as "prone to cheating", that would suggest she wanted to, whereas the story made a point to demonstrate she didn't like what Fleur was doing from the beginning. And why wouldn't she be critical of Sonata's drug use? Knowing about it doesn't make you change you opinion on the matter. It certainly didn't feel inconclusive to me, either.
5617898
Ah, yes, Squarespace. I'll look into it, thanks!
5617931
Well, she did want to cheat. Unless it was nonconsensual, and I certainly didn’t get that vibe. It’s not that Sunset was critical of her drug use at all. It’s that she’d learned of it some time significantly earlier and didn’t seem to care at all. Then suddenly when it needs to be a plot point, she does.
5617949
I see where you're coming from, but I never felt like there was any conflict. It's one thing to say you're okay with something without any actual experience involved, but but opinions can change in a heartbeat when reality slaps you in the face, and that's how I interpreted Sunset's reaction.