R4 (Reactions, Reviews, Reference, Redirection) #0058

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Here are five possibly edited old reviews:
Secluded by Innit
The First of Many by NotARealPonydotcom
Never too Shy to Love by True Blood
Power Surge by Kapuchu
I Love You, Dad. by NotARealPonydotcom

Secluded by Innit
[story link] [my original review]

Simple story, but good. Basically the same premise as Mottled Shadow, but so much better written. End is a bit simplistic, but keeping in the spirit of MLP so it wasn’t nearly as jarring as the previously mentioned work. This is the last batpony story for the contest I read. Voted about two days before the contest ended, since I was pretty sure the last handful would grab me given the slow downward slide of quality from the beginning. Now I just have to wait to see how my tastes match up with the mainstream fandom and see which stories come out on top for the contest.

The First of Many by NotARealPonydotcom
[story link] [my original review]

This was a very sweet story. The tale of Shining Armor’s first date with Cadance told as a story to help Twilight Sparkle relax for her first date. A bit too much modern stuff, it felt like a alternate real world instead of MLP in some places, not quite hitting that sweet spot that MLP maintains between fluff fantasy and real world parody. Still, a very fun read. Won’t be as good as what I’ll get when the Cadance Of Cloudsdale gets to that part of their relationship, but that is going to be far in the future given the glacial rate that series is coming out. I should find more Twilight Sparkle romance stories. She is just so much fun in awkward and stressful social situations. Something about nervous emotions match very well with her personality quirks.

Never too Shy to Love by True Blood
[story link] [my original review]

Sweet romance, but it did drag a bit in places. Lots of internal monologue thinking in circles scenes that don’t go anywhere. Not quite as polished as some others I’ve read as well. Think the author depicted Fluttershy as too nervous and shy here. Her emotional reactions (or non-reactions) were just a little too extreme in places. On the whole the author did a good job writing the personalities of the mane six ponies. Got their personalities close to what they are like in the show, but not quite hitting them on the nose.

Power Surge by Kapuchu
[story link] [my original review]

Short bit about how powerful Twilight Sparkle is. The story Duel Nature didn’t have the same focus, but had a much better magical fight scene between Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna. This story had a interesting little glimpse that a different personality comes out in Twilight when she is overchanneling immense amounts of magic power. There is a sequel to this that I am very interesting in reading to see more exploration of the concepts hinted at in this one, as well as see what happens next. This story does really highlight that writing effective magical combat scenes is very hard, even on top of the already present difficulty in writing a good action scene by itself. The abstraction of imaginary types of violence simply puts another layer of complexity to the writing.

I Love You, Dad. by NotARealPonydotcom
[story link] [my original review]

Incredibly sweet, and sad, story. Very emotional, but very well written. It was nice running across a excellent quality story once again. Even the good stories in the batpony contest were often a little, well, not quite to the high standards of the upper end of the quality spectrum. This was a story where the main character is looking back on years of history that happened after the current events of the show. This is one of the few ways that telling instead of showing works. Summarizing things that happened in the character’s past, but the reader doesn’t know about, can be very effective as long as you make sure to have very little exposition to leave plenty of holes for the reader’s mind to fill in. It paints a picture of the lives of the mane six ponies as they grew up and got families and careers. The ending isn’t exactly sad, but it certainly isn’t upbeat. Rainbow Dash is presented here extremely well. It adds layers to the Rainbow Dash in my head, but isn’t all in-your-face Rainbow Dash that a lot of authors fall back on as a crutch.

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