R4 (Reactions, Reviews, Reference, Redirection) #0015

[<<<Previous] [Index] [Next >>>]

Here are five slightly edited old reviews:
Twilight Sparkle Gets A Free Salad by AestheticB
Derplicity by Skywriter
Ah Ain’t Got no Ack-cent! by Conner Cogwork
On The Importance Of Spelling by Softy8088
Luna’s Librarian, Twilight’s Moon by TheLastBrunnenG

Twilight Sparkle Gets A Free Salad by AestheticB
(story link) (my original review)

This one was very silly. This is actually a lot closer to the show than a lot of even the good fanfics have been. The mixture of a modern day concept mixed with absurd cartoon pony silliness is pulled off perfectly. Secretive overly enthusiastic intelligence service that gets scolded by Celestia is just the right balance of concepts.

Derplicity by Skywriter
(story link) (my original review)

Not a lot of substance here, but was a very fun read. I am starting to like the premise of non-evil changelings as ponies premise. Which has been done in various fashions in three fanfics I’ve read. There is just so much to explore about identity, deception, and forgiveness there. This story also gives a pretty good reason why the changeling queen was so bad at impersonating Cadance as well.

Ah Ain’t Got no Ack-cent! by Conner Cogwork
(story link) (my original review)

Decent story, would work much better as an episode of the show. Needed more visual and audio expression for the comedy to really work. Accent-and-speaking pattern based humor just doesn’t work as well in text form. Was still fairly funny, but not as good as most of the stories I’ve been reading. Browsing for fan fiction on my own instead of just grabbing the best off a review site or two has led to more average stories.

On The Importance Of Spelling by Softy8088
(story link) (my original review)

Another sweet and silly story about a romantic moment between Shining Armor and Cadance. Not a whole lot to say about this. Good, but not anything that really grabs you. More or less just adding another few layers to these two characters in my head.

Luna’s Librarian, Twilight’s Moon by TheLastBrunnenG
(story link) (my original review)

Straight up romance done as a series of loosely connected scenes. Which the author doesn’t pull off as well as some of the others I have enjoyed. Not nearly as good as Yours Truly, but that is probably a unreasonable standard to measure this against. Mostly this was a little disjointed jumping from scene to later unrelated scene, but it was never enough to ruin my enjoyment of the story.

There was one incredibly good scene. Done as jumping first-person internal monologues of the two main characters without any actions about what they were doing while thinking what we were reading. Yet you could tell things were happening and even what was going on even though the text wasn’t giving any descriptions at all. Was this part that made the story jump from decent to pretty good for me. Well, that scene and the second scene in the story with the ‘Twilight kissed me’ song. That was comedy gold.

No real interesting worldbuilding bits sadly. The romance between Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna was sweet, but not gripping. Needed more build-up and depth. Which seems to be a common complain of mine. Complexity, depth, and density to the levels I like seems to be very rare. Also very hard to do right as I’m discovering in my own (non-pony) writing.

As always, The Big Master Review List is here: { THE MASTER LIST }
If you know of a text-format reviewer I'm not keeping track of, please let me know and I'll see if they meet the criteria to be assimilated into the list.

If you are an author who wants a more detailed review of a story I've covered feel free to message me. My reviews tend to be fairly light, mostly just reactions to a story right after reading it. I am happy to give a more careful read and reply to anyone who wants more precision and/or feedback.