Read It Later 5: Counting Is Hard · 7:21pm Jul 16th, 2014
Welp. Falling behind certainly isn’t fun.
Apologies for taking so long to get this one out here; I’m not too pleased with myself on that. But hey, work’s a bastard and being lazy doesn’t exactly help either. Ponies be on the mind though and I’m working on something, so maybe that’ll see the light of day before the month’s over with. Something something dictionary.
Man, I need a shower. Obligatory silly image to kick things off. Find other stuff below the break.
This joke is stupid and I love it.
To start of the newsy thing, the good sir RBDash47 has recently published his long teased sequel to the excellent Old Friends, titled Old Friend, Again. I had the great fortune of helping him edit it, and while the sequel doesn’t necessarily capture the same magic as the first, it goes off to try something new while still staying true to the original’s emotion. It’s a great story regardless, and I loved it.
Moving on, there’s a new write-off underway. The prompts are being voted on now (so get in there!) and starting late tomorrow night from when this blog is published, the writing begins. These things are lots of fun, and the more the merrier.
And now onto the story reviews.
The Archer and the Smith
by Sharaloth
How this ended up on my RIL list: I remember when Harmony Theory was Sharaloth’s only story, and that grand adventure started out incredibly strong and never really lost its momentum. Not too long after I began reading that, Sharaloth published this story here, and seeing as it’s also an adventure, I assumed it’d follow the same sort of flow as Harmony Theory. Combined with the fantastical description, I’ve got high hopes.
What I walked away with: Happiness at seeing a story actually use the Alternate Universe tag correctly, and bliss because it is just so easy to get into. It’s a real fantasy story through and through, one of the purest I’ve seen this fandom produce.
The story begins with the Shaper, a blacksmith who’s the best there is in the entire kingdom. One day she encounters the Archer, who wants an arrow strong enough to pierce the thick hide of a dragon. They both end up biting off more than they can chew, but they work together to overcome each other’s obstacles, developing their extraordinary characters and building a wonderful world for them to be in.
That world building is shown in what I’d consider to be the best possible way: it doesn’t pay it any mind. There’s hints to some great upheaval, civil unrest, and places we’ve known in the show being twisted with time or destroyed entirely. There’s even a few references to some characters, though how far into the future this story takes place in, it doesn’t say, and it doesn’t need to. Because while this world is utterly beautiful, it focuses on the characters at hand. The world building serves to uphold them and their beliefs, the most notable being hope.
Mostly it’s the hope that the fallen world of the story isn’t beyond saving or redemption, and in that regard, this is a very hopeful story. It doesn’t allude to any sort of grand resistance mind you, but definitely when it comes to acts of disobedience. In the Archer’s case, it’s slaying a dragon. By my understanding, the dragon is a metaphor for overcoming a wall, where whatever it is one’s hoping for lays just beyond, and the only way to it is through that wall. This a story about hope and not backing down against a impossible odds, knowing full well you won’t walk away unscathed no matter how prepared you think you are. This story’s a lesson in bravery, and I dig it like a clown digs up Shakespearean jesters: very merrily.
However, my one complaint with this story is its ending, which compared to everything before it, seems to slow when it wants to be rushed. But that’s a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things. I absolutely loved this story, and so would anyone else with a knack for world building, fairy tales, and things that are just plainly awesome.
Afterthoughts: The pacing of this story is quite erratic, which ordinarily would be a real turn-off for me, but there’s a method to the madness here. The story focuses only on what it needs to and breezes past all the boring stuff, which is a thing I’ve noticed a lot of in Sharaloth’s other writings. I applaud it.
Better a Diamond With a Flaw
by shortskirtsandexplosions
How this ended up on my RIL list: While he may not be my most favorite author in the fandom, I’ve always found myself enjoying just about everything shortskirtsandexplosions writes with a Sad tag attached to it. Now, that story description is incredibly vague, but coupled with the cover image, I got the sense this story will be an introspective piece about Diamond Tiara, possibly having to do with her cutie mark. I love to see lesser characters being explored, especially ones that seem so flat on the surface. Let’s see how accurate that prediction is.
What I walked away with: A depressing fascination. Like you’re dissecting a furby and it won’t shut up no matter what you do but you keep cutting into it to try and shut the damn thing up. Maybe that’s a bad metaphor, but my cousin’s got a furby recently and for whatever reason, he’s in love with the thing. I want to set it on fire or something. Anyways, the story!
It’s definitely introspective. We start with Diamond Tiara going to school and being all high and mighty and downright mean to everyone, seeing them as being weaker that she is. In short, that’s her excuse for being a bully and a pompous stuck-up. But there’s a depth to this hidden just beneath the surface, for better or for worse.
I often hear bullies being called out as the weak ones, that the parts they target in an individual reflect the challenges they themselves face, and applying their angst onto others is a way to comprehend, cope with, or hide from dealing with their own inner conflicts. It’s hypocritical in a way, and this story certainly seems to try and shine a light on the angle. This isn’t to say the story tries to sympathize with Diamond Tiara, but it at least tries to get the reader to understand her and give her character some actual depth. It accomplishes this, but that message doesn’t get across so clearly. The biggest issue I found being that, for such a relatively short word count, so much goes on, and that stuff goes by too quickly and is too vaguely detailed to be easily grasped at.
This is a bit of a difficult story to read in that regard. There’s some spots that definitely hint towards the story’s deeper meaning, but I had to stop and reread them once or twice to get what relation they had with the themes the story was already playing with. The first few scenes are concrete enough to set the stage for the rest of the story, anyways, but the rest of the story more or less stumbles in comparison. If it were to slow down and take the time to make a point of the various details it brings up, it’d be a whole lot stronger than it currently is.
Overall, the story is pretty vague with what it wants to get across and as such, this isn’t an easy read. I thought the story would do something with her cutie mark and special talent, but it doesn’t really, and I think that’s a missed opportunity to tie in everything to Diamond Tiara’s character. What the story uses instead I find to be a bit weak, or at least underwhelming because of the general vagueness at hand. Speaking of characters, Silver Spoon comes across as being too much of a pet. I get what she’s supposed to be doing, but she’s rather unnecessarily exaggerated.
Afterthoughts: I liked this story for what it does, but I’m not too excited by how it goes about doing what it does. Not to say it’s bad, but it could definitely be clearer and stronger. If anyone’s a fan of worst filly and likes to pick at a story for its themes, than this is a decent place to be. Otherwise, you won’t miss too much if you avoid it.
How this ended up on my RIL list: I think I had chosen this story a long while ago for a Seattle’s Angels round, but an Equestria Daily feature quickly bumped the view count beyond our limit, disqualifying it. That description caught my eye immediately when I stumbled upon it, especially since it suggests that the journey is more important than the destination. I love seeing characters react to that idea. The thought of Twilight realizing she’s pretty small in the grand scheme of things is a bit run down, and the description more or less implies its use, but clichés be damned if they’re done in a new light.
What I walked away with: Water in my ear. This is a nice, simple story, and it does what it wants too well enough. But I think it’s a bit too simple and not developed enough to truly capture the emotion it grasps at. In that sense, it’s a bit of a sad story, which I find myself wondering why it doesn’t have the Sad tag then.
Anyways, the story starts off with Twilight trying to write what would inevitably become the script for the Hearth’s Warming Eve play, and she’s got insane writer’s block. She thinks she’s got the most stressful life right now and nobody understands the weight, when she’s suddenly given the opportunity to just sit back, relax, and think on a train ride around Equestria. On this trip she encounters some downtrodden ponies with some stories to tell. Through their interactions, she ends finding her inspiration, and the whole thing is really sweet.
Heck, the overall atmosphere is just cozy. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to curl up under a blanket in front of the fireplace. Twilight’s dilemma is played off real well I think, from where we begin in the library all the way until she gets onto the train. Then the story seems to forget all this, and for that matter exactly what Twilight’s trying to do. For starters, the various ponies Twilight encounters come and go with almost no room to breathe in between. She’s supposed to be on this train to gather her thoughts and be comfortable, to put herself in a situation to be inspired. While having the world deliver that inspiration to her through these other characters is nice, it’s also a bit lazy because Twilight doesn’t exactly do anything herself earn it, making that inspiration seem insincere.
I find myself urged to complain about the physical change in scenery: not the train, but the weather. Ponyville is under a blizzard and the play is just a week away (A week? A train trip around Equestria sounds longer, but it’d have helped to also know how long that train trip would be. But I digress.), and while she’s on this train, the snow literally disappears after she leaves Ponyville. Hearth’s Warming Eve is just around the corner, and only Ponyville is seeing snow? I understand the snowstorm was a metaphor for Twilight’s stress back home, though logically, this makes no sense. The disconnect this creates further distances this central meat of the story from the beginning, which helps make the two seem like different stories entirely. The ending then comes across as being shoehorned to tie it all back together, and as such, it’s undeserved. I also would’ve killed to see some seriously beautiful scenery, as that cozy atmosphere from before is almost absent on the train, and like I said before, there’s almost no room to breathe between the characters that Twilight meets. Having Twilight actual be comfortable on what’s supposed to be a relaxing train ride also would’ve helped.
This story isn’t quite what I expected. There’s no real build up for a grand epiphany like the story seemed to want, but even then it sort of danced around the idea. There’s also no real development on Twilight’s part, which again, I attribute to the quickness between characters appearing on the train, and I just now realized the entire train ride is a single scene. Even then, we don’t see its completion and we only seem to make a stop or two. Had the story slowed down and taken the time to show Twilight racking her head against her script, showing her stress and then working on battling that stress instead of seeing it just disappear altogether, it’d be a lot stronger.
And then there’s the use of single-quotes instead of the traditional double. I suspect this is a style choice of the author’s, but for some reason it made me read everything in a whisper, if that makes sense. It was an odd experience, and probably helped in me being ultimately unable to get into the emotion of the story. The prose is also a bit florid, and while not distracting, it’s usually where it doesn’t need to be.
Afterthoughts: Maybe I’m being too harsh. This is still a nice, sweet story, but it just doesn’t handle itself too well, where things happen too suddenly when things should have been mellow. It’s not the best it could’ve been, and while what it has does work, it seems to me like it’s only barely grasping what it wants to really be.
Flashes on the Horizon
by Goblin Scribe
How this ended up on my RIL list: I forget how this one appeared here. I think I read a blog recommending it at some point. Anyways, the phrase “flashes on the horizon” is something I know I’ve heard before in reference to war, and while I don’t know if this story will take that path, it was certainly the first thing on my mind. Maybe the technicolor lights in the sky helped me dismiss that idea somewhat, or instead hint to the use of the Elements. The mystery the description sets forth is at least intriguing.
What I walked away with: A big, stupid smile. This is story is confusing though not hard to follow, imaginative while still being heavily restricted, and it hardly explains anything. And I loved every bit of it.
It all starts with Cheerilee standing atop a hill in the middle of the night, peering out over the horizon over a hunch a dream had given her. Gradually, a crescendo of lights and sounds can be heard on the horizon and in the sky above. As things progress, more ponies are woken up and climb the hill to investigate, and all the while they’re all completely clueless as to what’s going on. Though, all they understand is that whatever is happening isn’t good. This translates to being just about the only thing for a reader to understand, as the story is heavily restricted in its perspective.
Whatever happens on the horizon isn’t what this story’s about. Instead, it focuses on the townspeople as they look on in confusion. We see only what they see, register only what they do, and since what happened never actually gets explained, the ponies are just as uniformed. This makes for a story that is very easy to get into, by putting the reader and the characters on the same level of understanding. This being the case, the characters have to be pulled off extremely well, and for the most part, they are.
However, they aren’t perfect. Cheerilee and the Mayor seem too much alike for me to attach to them both, and their personalities are bland. Vinyl and Octavia have more excited personalities, and while their narrative voices are distinctly different, they both have very strange voices. But Ditzy and Dinky on the other hand are played incredibly well. They’re natural with each other and the group, and they react like a frightened child and concerned mother would.
In total, this a very nice story that does a lot and explains nothing. I loved it.
Afterthoughts: Lots of stories do lots of things and explain nothing, now that I think about it. But here, that’s actually the point, and it does a really great job at it.
The Stars Ascendant
by Titanium Dragon
How this ended up on my RIL list: I distinctly remember this one was in the Featured Box for quite awhile. The cover art shows Twilight kame hame ha-ing Tirek, with the princesses standing before a screen watching the fight unfold. The descriptions leads me to believe that Celestia is troubled by the strength Twilight had shown in the fight, and I’ve been curious as to how the princesses would react to this display since the Season 4 finale. This story seems to want to scratch that itch.
What I walked away with: Well, I’m still a bit itchy. Not sure if that’s because it’s someplace not exactly easy to scratch at, or because I’m just not scratching hard enough. Maybe both, maybe neither. Skin works in mysterious ways.
Now, the story is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Celestia is up in the starscapes or wherever, rewatching the battle between Tirek and Twilight, and is obviously bothered by something. Luna comes to try and figure out what and in the end, offer a bit of comfort. As far as showing the princesses reacting to the big fight, well, I found that to be a bit of a let down. Though I did really enjoy what was there, it felt too short to really fill that desire. But that’s more of a personal gripe, anyways.
This story is a mood piece, as it lacks an actual plot and instead relies heavily on its characters and their reflections. However, the characters—the princesses—are rather indistinguishable from each other. Their voices are nearly identical, and while their thoughts are tied to separate ideas, the alikeness makes it feel like one character weighing two different ideas. This made it difficult for me to understand who was talking at times, in addition to dulling the emotion. For a mood piece, this is a glaring hinderance even if it’s not necessarily a big one.
However, the actual story itself is really good. The topic at hand is Twilight’s immense power and how she was able to battle Tirek to a draw, and for that reason both princesses are worried, but for reasons different than what one might think. Celestia is disappointed with herself for not trusting Twilight to originally go after Tirek instead of Discord and to further extent, running away instead of combatting him when she had all their power. Luna shows discomfort but is more or less along for the ride, serving to pick at Celestia’s mind for us, though she does try to make a point of the implications behind Twilight’s immense power. But the story is incredibly heartwarming because Celestia doesn’t care about the power, rather her relationship with Twilight. Both princesses aren’t worried about Twilight’s power, as it makes an effort to point out, and instead are more intrigued. Intrigued with a bit of caution, and it follows the feel of the show well enough. For all these efforts, I applaud it, even if it’s a bit short to really do anything with all these points it makes. But being a mood piece, I guess that’s kind of the point.
Afterthoughts: This is a short story and it’s pretty good too. Though it’s a bit more complicated than it appears to be, in part because of the confusing voicework of the princesses. Still, I liked it.
Biased and Incomplete
by DuncanR
How this ended up on my RIL list: Oh man, this story’s old. I saw it at some point somewhere when it was just published, relatively soon after the character of Daring Do was first created, and that description immediately hooked me. Rainbow Dash learning a difficult life lesson in a harsh way? Count me in!
What I walked away with: A bag of chex mix. But I don’t like the nuts so I have to pick those out. Still, it’s a pretty good snack to have and I enjoyed it.
The story begins with Rainbow Dash tagging along with Twilight to go do an assignment at the archaeology wing of a prestigious university. Having recently fallen in love with the Daring Do series of books, she’s enthusiastic to get a firsthand look at the exciting world of archaeology! Only to find it’s actually really dull and nothing like the books, and is rather disappointed. Especially when she meets the supposed Daring Do herself. But it takes awhile to get there, and that ride I found to be really enjoyable, helped by some great characterizations.
The build up and general escalation of events this story has is nothing short of amazing. At first it made me wonder why we taking so long to get to the actual meat of the story, but I found myself not complaining. Really, the story probably didn’t need to start where it did, but in the end it only served to uphold the rest of the story. Rainbow Dash’s character here is one of the best I’ve seen in quite some time, and I envy the author’s ability to give background ponies with hardly any lines—if any at all—their own unique personalities. The world that’s built here is stunningly full of life, and I loved every bit of it.
However, while the story is still able to keep up with itself, it sort of begins to stumble in the latter parts of of the story, after Rainbow Dash actually does end up meeting Daring Do. The story takes care in showing Rainbow Dash that the world of archaeology is nothing like the fictitious books she’s so in love with, and it’s of little surprise that Daring Do follows the same pattern. The lesson is heartfelt and wraps itself up nicely, but at the end it still feels a bit unresolved. Especially when the story looks like it’s trying to start itself up again, only to suddenly end. There’s a ton of implications going on in these final few scenes, a bit more than I’m comfortable with, but the story handles them well enough. Still, though. I wanted more.
Fortunately, there is more. There’s a full sequel written, and I’m excited to dig into it.
Afterthoughts: Sorry, Ponky. Looks like one of your accolades was swiped out from under your feet.
This is too adorable.
Aww, thanks.
>The Archer and the Smith
Yusss.
I'm glad you enjoyed my story!
And yes, some folks have poked me about the voices on the princesses, which I've tried to keep a better eye out for on later stories... which still haven't come out.
I've read about half of the stories on this list, and, amusingly, the other half are on my own read later list, with the exception of the last one... which has now been added to the list.
Oh, my... this one goes waaay back.
Thank you very much for the review! Criticism is always greatly appreciated. The funny thing is, I'm trying to work on a guide about how to pace stories. But as it turns out... I don't think I'm very good at pacing. I really need to learn to take a chainsaw to longer, boring-er passages, without sacrificing atmosphere.
The funny thing is, I finished the sequel before the official Daring Do episode aired. It was eerie.