Paul's Thursday Reviews CCCLVI · 8:28pm May 2nd
Monday: Oh, hey, that’s a great topic for this week’s blog!
Thursday: What was I supposed to talk about today again?
Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Whelp, pre-readers have finally been contacted about Guppy Love, with the files shared. Now I just wait for them to tell me how bad it is (note my confidence). In the meantime, I pulled a fast one out of nowhere and managed to achieve my wordcount goal last month. Like exactly. I paused at the end of a sentence on Tuesday, thought “I think I might be done for now”, plugged the wordcount into my spreadsheet, and got a goal/actual difference of zero. Sure, I could have kept going for a bit later in the day, but when something that neat happens you just feel like you gotta preserve it, y’know?
I was thinking about joining the May Pairings Contest. I looked at it and almost immediately had an idea for an unusual pairing that I don’t believe has ever been done before. I promptly got to writing an introduction. And yeah, it works, but after doing so I realized that the pairing doesn’t interest me as much as I thought it would. Now I don’t know whether I’m going to keep going or not. I’ve been working on my new Rarity story in the meantime while I think on it.
In the meantime, I would like to ask for suggestions. My 2025 Long Story Schedule is already close to being full, and the most recent open date is the day before Halloween. I would really like to review a longform horror that week. If anyone has any recommendations I’d love to hear it. As always, you can check my archive to see if I’ve already reviewed whatever you’re considering.
Alright, that’s enough out of me. Let’s get to what we’re all here for.
Stories for This Week:
Moonlit Stranding by DarthBall
As Strong As Marble by Soft Feather
Sweetie Bot Gets Cancelled by 8_Bit
Travelers Tales: Discord The Champion Of Ponyville by Slippin_Sweetie
Twilight's Felquines of Xenon by Mandarko
A Rose By Any Other Name by TheNewYorkBrony
“And then… APPLEJACK WILL BE ALL MINE!” by Rune Soldier Dan
Dumb Enough to Work by Blarghalt
Burnonomics by Majin Syeekoh
Buck Outta Luck by XenoPony
Total Word Count: 145,617
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 1
Pretty Good: 0
Worth It: 6
Needs Work: 2
None: 0
Moonlit Stranding
72,686 Words
By DarthBall
Daniel doesn’t know how long he’s lived in the castle. How long Luna has been treating him as an honored, beloved guest. But he knows one thing: he doesn’t want to stay trapped in this room anymore. He doesn’t want to be Luna’s guest. Something is wrong, Luna won’t tell him what, and he’s ready to get his own answers. Luna will stop at nothing to ensure he never gets them.
When this story started, Daniel seemed awfully paranoid to me. It was somewhat ridiculous. But, as the story moves on, we eventually come to learn that he has good reason to be paranoid.
Much of the story is a mystery. How did Daniel get to Equestria, why is Canterlot Castle so empty, why is it always night, where is Celestia, why is Daniel suffering amnesia, and on and on and on. Some of the questions will get answers. Others will not. But to get any answers at all, we first have to wade through Daniel’s weird, sometimes nonsensical mind and rush to escape Luna’s choking, desperate affections.
Make no mistake, Luna is the villain of this piece. Explaining why she is the villain would go into spoilers for a story that is at its best with the mysteries being resolved by the reader. In other words…
Which creates its own gamut of problems, because this is a hard story to discuss without spoilers. But I will do my best.
This is not a happy story. Indeed, its dark tag is well-earned. We spend a large portion of the story bumbling around in confusion, owing to the fact that Daniel is the perspective character and his brain is a wreck of missing memories, paranoia, anxiety, and fear. I can see this being a big turn off for some people, because for several chapters it feels like Daniel has no direction except “get away from Luna”. The first half or so of the story amounts to an extended chase scene.
Then there will come points in the latter half of the story that are utterly confusing. Daniel will find solutions to problems and ways to fight back, and the inevitable question that will come to every reader’s mind is how? Explanations are frustratingly short in supply, even for those things that are critical to Daniel’s progression. There is an explanation for how Daniel knows and can do certain things when he’s A) a magicless human and B) suffering from amnesia, but to get to that explanation requires reading context clues (some of which are only given in the epilogue) and making a few logical leaps of faith. Again, I can see people getting turned off by this.
There’s also the matter of DarthBall’s… long-winded nature. There are some moments in the story that drag on seemingly forever, long past the point of interest. The author appears to believe that lingering on a scene is the key to making that scene emotionally powerful, and so a specific moment will keep going and going and going until the reader is starting to wonder if any progress is ever actually going to be made. Couple that with the occasional homophone and close word repetition and the reading might start to feel like a chore to some readers.
Despite all of these issues, I did enjoy certain elements of it. It’s human in Equestria with a very dark twist, taken at an angle I certainly haven’t seen before. Daniel’s situation is indeed disturbing, and the ever-present need to know how it got to this point was more than enough to keep me interested. The ending, though bittersweet at best, felt very appropriate, and most of the questions that never get answered are the ones that don’t need answering. DarthBall also has a pretty good idea of how to get into a character’s head and feel their mental state; if they could just learn to move things along a bit faster I’d find their writing style quite good.
This won’t appeal to everyone, but it earns some points for originality and will almost certainly draw the attention of fans of dark stories and lunar angst.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
As Strong As Marble
6,590 Words
By Soft Feather
Within the Pie family, Marble Pie understands that she’s the weak link. How could she not, when she so often overhears Limestone and her parents discussing the fact? She’s tired of being seen as the weak one. And so she travels to Ponyville to meet with a figure of legend: Rockhoof. If anypony can help her discover her own strength, surely it’s the strongest pony in the land.
This story follows Marble as she trains under Rockhoof in hopes of becoming a stronger pony in general. It runs under one of literature’s more well-known concepts, i.e. that physical strength is not the same as being a strong person. Rockhoof has already discovered this, and so sets out to teach Marble this lesson in his own way.
Given that the theme is obvious, the primary draw here is the unusual pairing. Let me note now: this is friendshipping, not a romance, so those of you looking for the latter can stop those thoughts right now. At least as far as this story is concerned. Knock yourself out otherwise; as a shipper, I cannot condemn others for having ideas. But Soft Feather makes it clear via the character interactions that this is purely a friendshipping tale. Frankly, I’m glad for it; not every story involving two ponies has to be a romance, y’know?
This goes through the expected ropes. Marble thinks being stronger is limited to physique, Rockhoof corrects her, she learns her lesson and goes home, the end. I’ve got nothing against this, as Soft Feather’s writing style combined with the odd pairing does well enough to keep things interesting. No, I only have one real issue with this overall story: what does this mean for Marble?
That’s the odd thing. There’s this big moment where Marble is all like “I’m going to be strong in my own way!” Except Soft Feather goes out of their way to never define what that way is. What is it that makes Marble “Marble”? What is her strength, what does she have to offer, and how is she going to apply it to her future? None of these questions are answered. Heck, none of these questions are asked. Maybe it’s a necessary ask, maybe not. I can’t say for sure if this is a subjective issue, but it nonetheless felt off to me, like an important piece of the story was missing.
Other than that? Not a bad story on the whole, especially for fans of either Neo-Fluttershy or Rockhoof.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Sweetie Bot Gets Cancelled
3,099 Words
By 8_Bit
Sweetie Bot Version 41.0.0.1 is far superior in many ways to her previous versions, especially in regards to her creative thinking processors! With all these advancements, she finds herself genuinely interested in – and moreover, capable of – creating her own art. In a frenzy of artificial creativity, she sits down at her laptop and produces so much material that she needs to use the internet just to hold it all! And then the internet introduces her to another concept: fanfiction. There’s just one problem…
This story introduces us to a genuinely interesting moral conundrum. Sweetie Bot is, indisputably, an AI. She’s also sentient. So if she decides to sit down and create art entirely on her own, it is technically A.I.-generated art. Even if she strictly used her own concept of art, i.e., didn’t just copy stuff she found on the internet (as modern A.I.’s do). Does this mean that her own attempt at genuine artistic expression is not valid?
The story centers around Sweetie Bot creating art only for her to be targeted by her classmates for generating “AI content”. This sparks a serious conversation between her, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo over whether Sweetie even can create art without offending others. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo come to the conclusion that she can’t, but I was genuinely surprised that the possibility of Sweetie Bot creating non-digital art never came up. I’d be curious to know how the ethical dilemma would play out if Sweetie, for example, tried oil painting.
Alas, 8_Bit didn’t bother to go that deep. Instead they chose to use the story as a leadup to a joke about NFTs. Poor form, author; this idea has far too much potential to be reduced to something so pointless. There was plenty of great humor already, from the simple acronym joke of FAPfiction (which got a good laugh out of me) to the fun narrative that interprets everything in terms of mechanical processing:
Sweetie Bot's visual input units shrank to pinpricks in their sockets as her audio processing unit debugged the full meaning behind her own words.
Seriously, this is great stuff, especially for its consistency. The story had all the potential to take on a genuinely interesting thought experiment while utilizing humor to keep it widely approachable.
Outside of that, there’s also the debate the CMC have regarding AI-generated art. Specifically: the CMC don’t sound like the CMC during the debate. Given that they’re still looking for their cutie marks (how that concept applies to Sweetie Bot is blatantly ignored) and their latest attempt involved crayons, are they actually old/mature enough to have this deep a conversation on the topic? I also find it hard to believe that Sweetie Bot lacks the ability to argue them into the ground given that she is, y’know, a walking, talking, sentient supercomputer. Although I suppose it would make great story material if she were somehow programmed to be limited in these regards just to up her realism as a growing/evolving/maturing individual.
…
Or I’m reading way too much into what 8_Bit strictly meant to be a joke piece. Which is probably the case.
At any rate, this ended up as a story with lots of squandered potential. There are elements here of something great, but they don’t quite add up to the ambitious whole it could have been. A shame really. Still, I loved the narrative style and, ending aside, I greatly enjoyed the humor inherent in it.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Travelers Tales: Discord The Champion Of Ponyville
10,840 Words
By Slippin_Sweetie
Sequel to The Equestria Chronicles: Prelude
Princess Twilight and her friends all had to run off on a massive friendship mission that is likely to take months to complete. In her rush to pack, she ended up appointing Discord as her… uh… fill-in? Because apparently there’s this opinion that Ponyville needs a protector for some reason? Alas, Discord is not quite prepared for the role.
First thing is first: it’s ‘Owlowiscious’, author, not owlicious. Part of me doesn’t want to harp on this too much, because let’s face it; it is a tricky name. The other part of me recalls that there is a readily available FiM wiki to demonstrate the spelling. Yet a third part reminds me that the wiki is based on Hasbro’s official naming, and Hasbro spent years insulting my French/Cajun heritage by spelling it ‘Fleur Dis Lee’. Also, even Lauren Faust after-the-fact admits that the official name was probably a mistake and that it should have been ‘Owloysius’. So yeah, all told this is an understandable mistake.
Anyway, this story follows Discord as he tries to do some of the work of the Mane Six while they’re gone. He messes up once already by starting a day late, which means he missed such important things like feeding Fluttershy’s animals or, oh, Princess Celestia visiting Ponyville (nothing a bit of temporal manipulation can’t fix). Since he struggles to understand how mere mortals do things, he gives Owlowiscious and Angel Bunny the ability to speak pony so they can act as his assistants (read: teach him how to do things the mortal, slightly less chaotic way).
Slippin_Sweetie’s usual grammar struggles made it hard to get into this one…
I’m fine, just organizing the decorations; thank you very much!
…but it does have its redeeming qualities. Discord is clearly learning from what is going on and, despite his attitude, seems to genuinely want to help. The fact that almost every pony he meets (minus one OC police chief, I note) is terrified of him doesn’t help matters. One of the more curious elements is how the author tried to incorporate Discord’s ‘being too orderly is lethal’ trait into the story, thereby making this work legitimately dangerous for him. I find the method flawed; in canon Discord had to completely surrender to order for a prolonged period of time before coming under serious threat, but in this story the first hint of order starts becoming a problem. Even so, I like that Slippin_Sweetie tried to take it into account at all, which I think is more than what most authors would offer.
Also, big curiosity: Celestia outright says in this story that if Discord dies, Equestria disappears. That’s a huge claim and nothing is offered to back it up. One has to wonder at the overarching implications. At the very least it suggests a reason behind his petrification other than ‘it’s the best we could do’.
There are still some oddities. Up until Discord decides to lecture her, Celestia’s visit largely made zero sense. I mean, we know she’s visited the town a few times in the past. Mayor Mare and the town at large should know what to expect, and Celestia as well. But instead Celestia is acting all aloof and the mayor is acting like she has no idea what’s going on or how to deal with it and the Cakes don’t know what to make and Amethyst Star can’t put together a party at all without Pinkie Pie and why is everypony acting so ignorant? This is, what, the fourth time Celestia’s come by in as many years? This should all be standard procedure for them by now!
Why the heck would Celestia give a crap about the taxes of Ponyville for this visit? Seriously, Madam Mayor, do you think the supreme diarch of Equestria goes around personally checking the tax rates of every town in the land? She’s got bean counters for that! She’s either here to relax or to visit Twilight, probably both. And again, the mayor should know this, because this isn’t her first rodeo.
As usual with Slippin_Sweetie’s stories, I like what they’re trying to do but the delivery leaves much to be desired. All the same writing issues that were present in The Equestria Chronicles: Journey Through The Crystal Mountains are still plainly visible here, and they’re still having issues with short-term contextual logic. If they could just fix these two things, the quality of their stories would shoot up by quite the leap.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Equestria Chronicles: Prelude — Needs Work
Travelers Tales: The Apple Of My Eye — Needs Work
The Equestria Chronicles: Journey Through The Crystal Mountains – Needs Work
Twilight's Felquines of Xenon
20,075 Words (Incomplete)
By Mandarko
Requested by Mandarko
What the hell did I just read?
Okay. So. Let’s try to make sense of this.
Mandarko created an AU set an untold amount of time into Equestria’s future. Ponies are now part of a massive hivemind and are all, essentially, different aspects of Twilight’s Sparkle’s brain. I think. They are nonsensically OP, with a list of magical and technological advantages that essentially make them gods, though Mandarko can’t seem to decide on their power level (one paragraph has them able to control black holes but then the very next paragraph says they aren’t cosmically powerful, just for example).
The first chapter is 15,000 words. Words of what? Exactly. It reads like a fever dream. Sometimes there’s something resembling a story going on, sometimes Mandarko is pontificating on the so-called rules and concepts of the world. Sometimes this pontification comes off as a blog post, at other times it’s more like encyclopedia entries, and it leaps around these different narrative styles continuously and without warning. Fully written out URLs leading to YouTube videos and other things are thrown around like a kid with a digital paint bucket, which suggests that Mandarko doesn’t know how FIMFiction’s link function works, except they must have some idea because these fully written out URLs also are links.
There is no indication that Mandarko has ever heard of the word “grammar”. It is also questionable if they understand the concept of “cause and effect”, owing to how difficult it is to make sense of many of the things happening in the actual “story” parts. A few notable low points:
In the dark of the night where the ork brothers scouting group is setting up camp on a cliff.
This is literally the first sentence in the entire “story”. If you actually care about how a story is written, you’ve probably closed the window already.
The cat equine cracked the armor just by touching it with its marshmallowy hoof.
alright kat off da armor, uhh boss dis kat feels like it's weight'n more dan a ton... ughh 4 tons... 10 tons...
the ork brother drops the cat on the armor and the armor cracks, the cat steps on the ground and it leaves tiny craters behind it as it playfully moves its horse tail, it jumps once and it causes a tiny quake as if a 1000 ton giant jumped in place. One of the orc brothers smashes a non-spiky hammer into the cat, but it bounces back hard smashing the orc in a pool of red energy that’s absorbed by the cat. The hammer swings and swipes a tree in half and cracks 5 boulders to dust before the hammer cracks.
The cat horses grin as one of the ork brothers instantly falls to the ground from touching it. They smirk as they start singing subtly and peering into the minds of the ork brothers.
The equine cats started growing in size to 1 to 7 feet tall and taking on more equine characteristics.
And that’s in the original formatting. You might think Mandarko just doesn’t use double spaces. You’d be wrong, because there are double spaces around that text. So is this all supposed to be a paragraph? Is it kept in its own separate group of sentences for a purpose? Does Mandarko simply not understand how paragraphs work? I’m not even going to bother with all the other issues that are blatantly obvious about this mess.
Classical music from the likes of Mozart while beautiful is objectively primitive just like 8-bit,16-bit,keygen music, the idea behind it is good, but the execution leaves much to be desired. As such pieces like Pirates of the Carribbean are cheap yet effective examples of orchestra done correctly. 90s music have a melancholic and dreamy idea behind them, but abysmal whiny singers and bad microphones. Same for 80s rock.
Why is this all underlined? Why is Mandarko suddenly directly speaking to the reader? What’s the point of giving us their opinions on music, which does not appear to have anything whatsoever to do with anything?
They can survive for long periods of time with their guts hanging out.
Uh, okay. That’s… oddly specific.
Batons carry 600 cubic meters of light inside it. A stave stores up to 4800. A remote stores up to 160. A lazer pointer up to 40.
You do realize that light does not have volume, right, author?
Eventually we get to a series of short stories, the first of which apparently involves an extrastellar visitor of this planet who is put through all sorts of hellish nonsense in a madhouse of experimentation, all while reacting in no way whatsoever how a person legitimately placed in such a scenario would react. For example, watching a bunch of scientists perform nightmarish experiments on sentient life which they slaughter in the event of a failure, then walking into another room and casually agreeing to have sex with one of these people.
There eventually comes a point that you have to just throw your hands up and accept that this is going to be a steady stream of meaningless insanity with no rhyme, reason, or purpose. I’d say that Mandarko doesn’t know what they’re doing, but that’s only partially true. What they’re trying to do is introduce us to a new AU and its wide-ranging, potentially self-contradictory rules based on throwing a thousand concepts from a thousand creative properties together in a single mesh of conceptual crossover petri dish before inviting the reader to create their own stories within the resulting smooze. So yeah, they know what they‘re doing. It’s the how that’s the issue.
Author, if you want to make a list of rules to follow in a new AU, complete with lists of places, characters, concepts, and so on? Inside a FIMFiction story chapter is not the way to do it. Your first chapter is pure chaos. Better plan: make a GDoc encyclopedia containing all the information, then link to said GDoc in the story’s cover page. Use the FIMFiction story page for its intended purpose: stories. You have some (or at least something resembling) stories, those are your individual chapters. We didn’t need 15,000 words that can’t decide whether it’s a wiki page, a link repository, or an anthology. You’re also in need of some remedial grammar/English lessons, after which lessons in storytelling would be beneficial. Hint: making a race of godly overpowered beings your protagonists is a recipe for disaster.
Does this fall under the “so bad it’s good” category? I… don’t think so, mostly because reading it is actually kind of painful. This is an incomplete story and as a rule I don’t rate incompletes, but I can safely say that if I did this would easily land in the None category.
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
A Rose By Any Other Name
5,868 Words
By TheNewYorkBrony
Sunset Shimmer and Applejack are on the razor’s edge of failing their Drama class, and a failure here would mean being held back from graduation for a year. They need to do something big to pass, and so Mr. Magnet gives them the opportunity… by casting them as Romeo and Juliet in the upcoming school play. This is a problem, and not just because Applejack and Sunset can’t act to save their lives.
This was supposed to be one big long huge story but i decided to split it up because ain't nobody got time for that.
Do you even know who I am?
*Cough* Anyway…
As these things go, Sunset has a crush on Applejack. That’s literally all you need to know to understand where this is going. Despite this being the principal theme, TheNewYorkBrony spices things up by giving the rest of the Mane Six Seven lots of screentime to just be them. This includes Pinkie trying to throw pink on the entire stage, Fluttershy in denial of being a weeb, Rainbow Dash unable to hold back her amusement at how bad AJ and Sunny are at acting, and Rarity simultaneously producing all the costumes in under a week entirely on her own and being her typically gleeful friendshipping (as in shipping her friends) self. The only one who doesn’t get a lot of attention is SciTwi, which is kind of a shame.
A decent excuse for Sunset and AJ to be crush-anxious around each other (much more the former than the latter). The shippers among us will no doubt adore it. The mileage may vary for the normies non-shippers among us though.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Diyoo Wan' Thum? — Worth It
Stupid, Sexy Twilight! — Worth It
A Close Encounter of The Cute Kind — Needs Work
“And then… APPLEJACK WILL BE ALL MINE!”
11,003 Words
By Rune Soldier Dan
Autumn Blaze has arrived in Ponyville with one singular goal: marry Her Glorious Freckleness, Applejack. And that was going just fine until, on the way to Sweet Apple Acres, she got waylaid by a rival. And another. And another. And another. Well, all’s fair in love and war, and this is most certainly war.
Fun fact: I wanted to write a story with a very similar premise to this, but after a couple pages realized I lacked the humor-based talent to make it work and so abandoned the project. And I’m fine with that, because Rune Soldier Dan’s wacky ode to apple adoration gives us all we need.
The story opens with us – and Autumn Blaze – getting introduced to the weekly war among Applejack’s many fanfillies, which includes the likes of Strawberry Sunrise, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Coloratura, and so many more. Their competition includes such things as pit traps, weaponized pastries, weaponized music, catapults, and… uh… being tied to beds (it makes more sense in context). Real Looney Tunes-esque silliness. You then learn that this happens every Saturday – because Sunday is a mutually agreed day of rest for all involved and it wouldn’t be right to disturb Applejack on her busy workdays.
But we’re not done! Because alongside this war are also concurrent battles to adopt Applejack and another group competing for Big McIntosh, and the three different conflicts sometimes unintentionally get mixed together. Some mares are even fighting two of these wars at once. Also, the Big McIntosh mares are whack; while everypony else is playing with cherry cobblers and tree sap, these girls are playing with baseball bats.
The icing on top is Apple Bloom going around with a merchant’s cart selling “supplies” to the competitors ranging from food and water to industrial saws and shears. She’s making bank off these mares, and I love it!
Also, how is it everypony who meets Autumn Blaze for the first time automatically knows her backstory? Just one more bit of silliness.
Then it’s made pretty clear that Applejack is none the wiser about any of it. So either she’s completely deaf to the sounds of war going on just beyond the borders of her farm or she’s faking it because she doesn’t want to get involved in the crazy.
And then a villain appears to up the ante.
I never stopped smiling. This is exactly the kind of story I was looking for and Rune Soldier Dan more than delivered. It’s silly fun all wrapped around the mutual understanding from all involved that Applejack is Best Waifu, There Can Only Be One, and All is Fair in Love and War. Anything I might have written wouldn’t have been half as good as this.
Bookshelf; Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
To Try For the Sun — WHYRTY?
Sunset Shimmer Hunts the Undead — WHYRTY?
The First Flame — Pretty Good
Wayward Sun — Pretty Good
Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead — Pretty Good
Dumb Enough to Work
10,369 Words
By Blarghalt
All Chrysalis wanted to do was steal a little love for her changelings. But then she arrives at Canterlot Castle disguised as a guard and detects so much love from Shining Armor that she has to investigate. This leads her to Cadance Cadence, who has an ‘accident’. Well, far be it for Chrysalis not to leap at an opportunity presented.
This entire story operates under the idea that Chrysalis didn’t have one big, overarching, long-planned scheme for the Wedding Invasion. Rather, she came upon the whole plan by happenstance, luck, and a lot of on-the-spot improvising. I was hoping this would end up as a comedy of errors in which stupid decisions and dumb luck cause every event of A Canterlot Wedding. Alas, this is not that. It is little more than the story told from Chrysalis’s perspective.
Maybe half the material is the episode directly recited. The other half is simply what Chrysalis was doing in the parts we didn’t see. There is little attempt at being creative with this, which means most of the humor comes from either A) what the show already gave us, and B) the situation in and of itself. Little effort is offered towards narrative wit and the entire story reads at one pace with not much attention given to scene setting or atmospherics. The only original and genuinely interesting part in the whole thing was when Spike and Chrysalis chat after the initial reveal, because what else are they doing to do alone in the wedding chapel waiting for the Mane Six to finish fighting? There is an effort to insert some dry humor into the story via Chrysalis’s in the moment reactions to the events, but they didn’t work for me.
You know what I would have liked to have seen? For Chrysalis to be so stressed out and struggling that when we get to Twilight’s accusation at the rehearsal that teary-eyed “Why are you doing this to me?!” line would have been a genuine breakdown. A Chrysalis-focused story that leads up to that? I bet that would be interesting in the right hands.
Instead we have this, which I struggled to get into and never really succeeded. I think I’d get more from rewatching the two-part episode. It’s clear from the attention this garnered that this is a subjective take, and far be it for me to disregard that others seem to take genuine humor out of it. But for my part, it’s clear that the story needs something more if it’s going to land more than an average rating. Honestly, I question if it even deserves that given that roughly half the story is just the episode in literary form.
Bookshelf: Worth It (barely)
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Twilightning — WHYRTY?
And then there was that one time Trixie became a communist — Pretty Good
Hybrids — Worth It
Burnonomics
1,007 Words
By Majin Syeekoh
Aria, trying to do some actual work, has problems with her hand cramping. Seeking to save her sister from the modern plague known as carpal tunnel, Sonata decides to exercise her knowledge on ergonomics. After all, if she’s going to take the classes she might as well use them!
Someone’s really trying to earn that “Random” tag.
We’ve got a Sonata who is apparently psychopathic and keeps trying to kill herself via fire in the name of being able to “feel something” (but apparently not burning at all, so I guess the Sirens are immortal in this story?). Adagio is off in some foreign land, presumably getting her face stuffed with unmentionable body parts in the name of getting a free ride between sipping martinis in bikinis in Santorini (or so Aria assumes). And Aria? Girl’s just trying to make a damn living, apparently by writing.
So wait… They are capable of feeling pain (given Sonata acknowledging that fire hurts a lot), but they can’t actually receive any physical damage (given that apparently being lit on fire does nothing to Sonata except burn her clothes off). So what, exactly, is causing Aria’s wrist cramps?
Also, Sonata’s concept of ergonomics somehow results in lots of fire. She herself has no idea how.
So again, Syeekoh is earning that “Random” tag. Perhaps you’ll find it hilarious. I’ll admit to being more bemused than amused. But hey, sometimes people wanna write dumb stuff, and some people want to read dumb stuff. If that’s you, knock yourself out.
…
I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a somewhat less dumb, longer story about the everyday lives of these variants of the Sirens, though.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Ave Sonata — Worth It
The Perfect Day — Worth It
Shychotic — Worth It
Buck Outta Luck
4,080 Words
By XenoPony
Rarity finishes a dress, gets a visit from Applejack, and… Well. The romance tag is there for a reason.
Sorry, but it was the last thing to catch my attention and if I don’t get it out now I might explode, twice: it’s Opalescence, author, not “Opal Essence”. The MLP wiki wants to be your friend and is very sad that you’re ignoring it.
If I had to describe this with just one word, it would be “wordy”. Approximately the first quarter of the story is devoted to this long-winded narrative exposition about Rarity, the dress she just made, and her feelings towards Applejack. XenoPony has this unfortunate habit of saying in twenty-five words what could be said in ten. This process often makes sentences come out long and tedious. I’m sure XenoPony believed this made things more… interesting? Atmospheric? Perhaps flowery? No way to know, but it just wasn’t working.
There’s not a lot of “content” to the story. Applejack comes in to get her buckball uniform repaired, Rarity is jealous she wasn’t invited to partake in said sport, which leads to her confessing Applejack as her ideal date. The end. I’m betting you could tell the same story in 1,000 words or less if you really wanted to. Most of the extra words here don’t seem to be doing anything.
Where’s the stuff that makes this coupling so interesting? The butting heads, the struggle of mutual understanding, Applejack’s patiennoyance* towards marshmelodrama? None of it is present, because at its core this is a bare-bones romance with no bells and/or whistles. Once you cut away all the extra words you find it’s quite cookie-cutter.
A pity. But this is an early story in XenoPony’s writing career and they appear to still be somewhat actively writing. Perhaps if they ever finish one of their more percent works I’ll go in and find they’ve improved. As for this story, I’m afraid the rating is clear.
*That’s “annoyed patience” for those of you not fluent in Pinkanese.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
No More Fun and Games — Worth It
Bonus Review: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
237 Pages
By Patricia A. McKillip
Published 1974
Sybel is the great granddaughter of a powerful wizard of legend, and she’s no slouch with magic herself. She possesses within her control many fantastic creatures, from the wise riddle-master Cyrin the Boar to the fierce falcon Ter. With her animals she lives alone on the mountains of Eld, satisfied with her solitude. That is, until a desperate young soldier from the kingdom of Sirle arrives after a lost battle with a baby in his arms.
Set in the fantasy world of Eldwold, this story begins with Sybel raising her distant cousin Tamlorn, a boy who is next in line as King of Eldwold. Tam’s future is precarious, because his father King Drede desperately wants him back and his arch-rivals, the Sirle Family, want Tam as a bargaining chip. Sybel longs to keep Tam for herself, not wanting him to grow up playing the games of men out in the civilized world. Things only get more complex when Coren, the wise prince of Sirle, falls in love with Sybel and vice versa.
The story traps Sybel in a complex weave of choices. Tam feels a desire to meet his father, though Drede is known to be a vengeful and jealous king. Sybel longs to be with Coren, though he and his five (formerly six) brothers are oath-sworn to hate and kill Drede and claim the kingdom as their own, the love of the son she raised vs. the love of the man who has captured her heart. And all that before the powerful wizard Mithran comes into the picture.
The writing style is curious. On the one hand, Patricia avoids Tell like a plague, absolutely refusing to ever explain exactly what a character is feeling in a given moment. This is combined with a prose that is oddly plain, which I think comes from the strain of that utter refusal. Thus does the author rely much more upon dialogue to get points across, with said dialogue often being flowery, long-winded, and/or eloquent. And, also, sometimes Telly. It’s like all the Tell fled the narration and hid inside the dialogue, leading to moments of characters outright stating how they feel.
It took me a chapter or two to get into the writing style. But once I did it worked quite well, much to my surprise. At no point did I not grasp the mood of a given setting or how a character felt. Patricia managed to use what tools she had limited herself to in the best ways to gain the most from them. It’s not a style I think I’d use at any point, but I can respect the skill on display.
Accompanying the surprisingly complex issues surrounding Sybel are a plethora of interesting characters both fantastic and human (for a certain definition of “human”). All of Coren’s brothers make appearances and they are all unique enough to be easy to remember despite only being present in the latter third of the book. King Drede is a surprisingly complex man for being one of the story’s primary antagonists, regularly showing guilt over his (frankly heinous) actions. Alas, there are some oversimplifications, such as how Coren declares his love for Sybel after only their third meeting, with their total interaction time equating to maybe a day. Drede beats him in terms of sheer audacity, asking for Sybel’s hand on their very first meeting, but it’s strongly implied that the offer was entirely political in nature.
Mithran is little more than a monster. He’s the kind of villain you love to hate and can’t wait to see taken down. Pity he only showed up for a brief time, even if his presence was in the background for a long while. But man, what a presence he possessed when he finally showed up! One of the signature elements of Sybel’s character is her firm sense of independence and free will, and this guy came along and very nearly stamped it out. I absolutely love what Sybel did to get out of it, even acknowledging it was practically blind luck.
But the stars of the show are the animals. Most of them are common creatures made fantastic, like Moriah the Black Cat who resides in the palaces of kings or Gules the Lyon who rules the deserts. Even Cyrin the Boar, arguably the most important of them who is acknowledged as having personally founded nations, is little more than a talking boar with a gift for riddles. But then there are the more fantastic creatures, such as Gyld the Dragon, the mystical bird Liralen or, my personal and inevitable favorite, the shadowy, whispering Blammor, a creature so deadly and powerful that only the fearless can survive an encounter.
Which brings me to the magic. In Eldwold, there are no stated rules to magic. Wizards just ‘do things’, and you are expected to accept that they can. There is a hint that the magic must be learned to some degree – Sybel’s most prized possessions are the books of knowledge she stole from other wizards throughout her life – but there is also the strong implication that to be a wizard is to simply be a wizard. For example, though Sybel raised Tamlorn for twelve years, he cannot speak to or call the animals like Sybel can; he was not born into magic, thus he has none and cannot be taught. I always like seeing magic handled in this ‘no clear rules’ manner, particularly when it is done in a way that works. And it certainly works here: Sybel is powerful, but she’s by no means invulnerable.
I came away from this one pleased. When I first discovered it a few weeks ago during a rare trip to Barnes & Noble I had no idea it was considered a fantasy classic, but now I can see why. I’m beginning to amass a number of authors with the status of “must read again”, and Patricia A. McKillip is certainly one of them now.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
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Need some editing done? Working on a story and not sure how it’s shaping up? I’m now doing editing and critique commissions! Check here for more information and PM me if interested.
Were you walking into a room or down the stairs at the time? I think someone goes around installing amnesia-inators in such places.
Chief reason why I always have a blank blog for the next week already created to dump in a topic idea in the lead to the next Monday if it should strike me.
Can't help you on the horror longfic suggestion, I'm afraid. What little I read in that genre is well-endorsed short stories. But that's likely no surprise. Also, it's still telling that even in your wind-down phase where direct requests don't happen nearly as much as they used to, you still get enough ones for the 70K+ fics to be booked on that front nearly a year-and-a-half from now. Busy lad!
I've read As Strong As Marble before, but not only do I not remember it, I hadn't put it in Re-Evaluate! Even these days, I'll still occasionally find a fic from my pre-rating days (as it was for the 2021 Original Pairings contest, the last month or two of such for me). Will read that again soon, looks plenty charming, even if it's doing the whole "leave character's new goal open-ended and ambitious but hint they'll find it in the future" thing.
Oh yeah, “And then… APPLEJACK WILL BE ALL MINE!” is a good one. Most of my favourite fics by Rune Soldier Dan are his dramas, not his comedies, but this is a strong contender for sure. He just threads the ridiculousness and the heightened absurdity of it all that it doesn't become too silly to enjoy. While still being plenty silly.
Do you have any specific examples for these that you can point out? Any details and critiques on how to improve my craft further is always appreciated! (DM if you don’t want to spoil anything here)
Also, thank you for taking the time to read my story! Im glad you enjoyed it!
I briefly toyed with doing the Pairings contest, too. The one time I entered, I rather liked the story that resulted. Plus I have a story I'm working on anyway that has an unusual pairing. Unfortunately, it's a minor one in the story's background, though, so I doubt it'd qualify.
That thing about Equestria not being able to exist without Discord reminds me of something from the combined Might & Magic IV and V game, in a "something to do" dungeon. See the Shrine of Minor Evil? Destroy it for XP. See the Shrine of Lesser Evil? Destroy it for XP. See the Shrine of Greater Evil? Destroy it for XP. See the Shrine of Ultimate Evil? Destroy it and... the world gets destroyed too, since it can't exist without that.
Hey, I've read that Felquines one! And had the same reaction. I hate to point it out, but look at the comment that has more upvotes than the story.
That Romeo and Juliet one has awfully nice cover art.
It's a given that anything by Dan is a story I need to read, but that one sounds especially so.
This is deliciously ironic.
Also, you're one of the people I'd pre-read for upon request whenever you need. Sounds like you've got an ample crew set up for this one, but it's a standing offer.
This is the chief reason for which I tend to forget to write my blogs in the first place. I'll have an idea, save it for later, and when later comes, I don't remember. Too real.
I've very glad you enjoyed And Then etc. Perhaps the most amusing detail of all was that the whole story was inspired by the cover art. The idea of Autumn giving adorable evil laughter tickled me until a use for it emerged.
As for other stories, SunJack (Appleset?) has always been to my interest, so I'll give that one a whirl.~
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No stairs, several doors. We're all doomed, aren't we?
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I have one of these too, actually. I just neglect to use it sometimes.
Ack-tually, of the 20 stories currently scheduled for 2025, only four of them are requests. Seven are direct sequels to stories I've reviewed in the past, six are me further exploring the libraries of authors I've read before, and three are risky new reads by authors I don't know.
Rune Soldier Dan is one of my favorite comedy authors, not least thanks to their Undead series that I loved from start to finish.
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Please understand, I often read/review stories months in advance of the review blog's posting, so by the time said blog goes public I've read dozens of stories in the interim. Makes it hard to remember specifics. I recall it being a consistent issue throughout the story, but I'd have to read it again to give details and I simply don't have that kind of time on my hands right now.
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Re: Discord & End of the World: I actually have a story concept where Discord is the source of all magic in the world, because what is magic but the direct contradiction of the natural order? The story would have had Discord die and then show the results as magic started gradually disappearing from the world.
Yeah, I saw that one. I'd say anyone who gives a comment like that isn't worth paying attention to. Pity it has so many upvotes.
IKR? Alas, that specific scene never plays out in-story, not least because the rest of the Mane Six are not in the audience but helping with the play as stagehands. I hate when cover art is deceptive like that, but I can understand that TheNewYorkBrony probably had very few options that would work with the story in general.
This is all-around true.
Actually, no, I don't have many, but the people I do have I trust to be capable (especially after two of them randomly started going back and fourth about gothic literature and the concept of the "virgin innocent" last night). I certainly wouldn't mind getting your feedback though! Alas, I'll be heading to my parents' place for our annual crawfish boil as soon as I get off work today and probably won't be able to share a link until Sunday night at latest.
...I can't recall, did we ever share Discord contacts?
There's something funny going on with your archive. Therefore, have some recommendations going in blind:
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
- Horror
In search of new horizons, Daring Do explores an uncharted valley. It's uncharted for a reason.- MLP: FiM
- Dark
- Horror
Have you ever wondered what happens when the sun sets, but the moon doesn't rise to take its place?- MLP: FiM
- Horror
Twilight and Friends visit an old house to celebrate a birthday with deadly results.5779349
You'll have to be more specific if I'm to make any corrections, although I know you won't be able to edit anything in it. Did you try the search (CTRL+F) function?
As to the stories, I've not read any of those, but they also don't qualify as Long Stories for the purposes of my blog. A Long Story is anything over 70,000 words. Still I may take a look at these stories someday.
The funny thing is that I don't fully remember the prompt that inspired the story. I think it had something to do with the chair.
Thanks for the honest review! In retrospect, yeah, when you look at it Dumb Enough to Work kinda is just a few scenes with a lot of scenes copied directly from the show. It's probably aged worse than most of my other fics for that reason. Funny thing was almost the entire fic was written around how, in the actual episode, Chrysalis seemed genuinely shocked when Twilight asks her what her plans were, and how funny I thought this was.