Read It Now Reviews #12 – A Joke Too Far, Princess Celestia? Do You Have a Belly Button?, Remorse, Nuzzle Locked, Arcadia · 9:20pm Jan 25th, 2015
Well, another big Equestria Daily contest has come and gone, meaning that there was a huge surge of stories from it, but that is not the only thing going on with the site. I sat down and read a bunch of stories last night, and read another today for good measure. I was a bit frustrated; some were vaguely interesting, but unfortunately, many didn't end up satisfying me in the end. I did manage to find one which was outright good, though.
There will be another one of these tomorrow, containing five more stories I read yesterday and today.
Today’s stories:
A Joke Too Far by ZOMG
Princess Celestia? Do You Have a Belly Button? by Foals Errand
Remorse by RainbowBob
Nuzzle Locked by shortskirtsandexplosions
Arcadia by Blueshift
A Joke Too Far
by ZOMG
ComedyCadance didn't know what to expect when her formerly banished Aunt Luna returned from her thousand year banishment. But, she's quite entertained by the hilarity. Especially if it means a chance to play a little joke.
Why I added it: I was thinking about writing this a story based on the exact same image, but decided I needed to do other things first. Seems someone else had the same idea.
Review
Honestly, I’m not sure what I expected, but this was actually a bit disappointing. I had the same idea – of Cadance playing along with it – but it never quite came together in my mind. I don’t really feel like it did here, either.
I think that the biggest problem here is that it never really went beyond the joke which is already in the comic, and expanded it out to 2,000 words. It is paced pretty slowly, with Cadance’s disbelief and then realization of the potential for mischief leading her to shenanigans, but the story draws it out so much that the humor is lost. Humor cannot be drawn out; it needs to move at a fairly rapid clip, as belaboring humor causes it to lose its impact.
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Princess Celestia? Do You Have a Belly Button?
by Foals Errand
Comedy, Slice of LifeAfter a discussion in class, Twilight has a very important question to ask her mentor Princess Celestia.
Why I added it: It was featured and Foals Errand mentioned it.
Review
This is very much a piece of light fluff, but I have to admit I was very disappointed by it, because the question is actually a fairly profound one – having a belly button means that you were born, and questioning whether or not Celestia had a belly button is actually a pretty clever way of asking that in a circuitous manner.
Sadly, the story didn’t really do much with it, and it was pretty much just Twilight asking the question after a little thing in class and getting an answer. I was pretty disappointed that it didn’t really go anywhere with the idea or say anything about it, or even really go into why Twilight thought to ask.
The prose in this story also bothered me, and at one point, triggered my pet peeve over using “the answer” instead of “the reason”.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Remorse
by RainbowBob
Sad, HumanI didn't have much to live for. Actually, living was my biggest problem. I didn't see much of a point to it. That is, until a certain surprise from the past opens itself up in the present.
Why I added it: RainbowBob is a good writer.
Review
At first I thought this was going to be a parody of My Little Dashie, as the protagonist is an old, fat unemployed drunk who antagonizes his wife continually in the hopes of a fight – a fight she doesn’t seem eager to give to him. She leaves, he watches TV, and Rainbow Dash pops out of a box and starts talking to him.
It isn’t a My Little Dashie parody.
This story did a good job of surprising me, but I think my enjoyment of the story came pretty much entirely out of the surprise, and after that, it felt rather like every story of the type it actually is that I’ve read. It isn't bad, but I'm not sure that I can really say I got much out of it other than the twist.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Nuzzle Locked
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Romance, ComedyThis story is a sequel to Everypony Cuddles, Sometimes
Twilight Sparkle banishes Rainbow Dash to the Cuddle Zone. Granted, her aim was a bit off.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
I take that back.
Okay, seriously, SS&E writes some good stuff. But he also writes some bad stuff, and some really, really weird stuff. Some of which is good, some of which is bad, and some of which is just weird.
This falls into “weird bad” category.
Twilight Sparkle has accidentally zapped Rainbow Dash into the “Cuddle Zone”, which causes her to pop out of an alternate dimension and randomly cuddle ponies before being drawn back into it, over and over again. Applejack and Rarity are amongst the first victims, and go to Twilight for help. Twilight then figures out how to save Rainbow Dash, and does it…
The plot is fairly nonsensical, but I wasn’t very fond of the exposition in this piece either; it felt very disjointed and telly to me. The introduction of the story in particular was very awkward, and I never really felt like I could get into the work throughout the piece in part due to taking issue with the prose.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Arcadia
by Blueshift
Sad, Slice of Life, HumanLickety-Split has sold out Ponyville to an evil frost fiend for the secret of delicious ice-cream and is about to bring about a frosty apocalypse. This can only mean one thing: It's Saturday, and there's only 22 1/2 minutes to save the world!
Only... Lyra's been having a dream. The same dream, again and again all of her life. There's something coming. Something terrible coming from out of the darkness, and it is going to destroy everything. Princess Luna seems very unwilling to do anything about it. Lyra's on her own.
It's Ponyville. Nothing bad ever happens in Ponyville.
But there is an old story. Perhaps the oldest story ever told. Even in Arcadia, there am I.
Why I added it: Blueshift is a good writer, and I’m obligated to read stories based on cryptic inscriptions in 17th century paintings.
Review
This is a delightful little story. The B-plot is that Lickety-Split, the world’s worst ice-cream maker, has sold out Ponyville to a frost fiend so she can make ice cream, and Twilight Sparkle has her usual twenty-two and a half minutes to save the world (including musical numbers)!
The A-plot is that Lyra is being pursued by a man – a human named MORPHEUS – in armor in her dreams, and she fears that, once he catches her, something very bad is going to happen. No one believes her – not Bon Bon, and, seemingly, not even Princess Luna, whose job it is to safeguard dreams.
Blueshift’s Equestria has a whimsical quality to it, which is made all the more striking by the seriousness of the visions of the human in the armor, and the story as a whole works pretty well by contrasting the two, and Lyra’s silly but all too real concerns about her menacing dreams versus the fact that nothing bad ever happens in Equestria.
If I had one complaint, it is that the intro and extro probably didn’t need to be there; while they do relate to the story, they don’t really feel necessary, and they don’t feel as strong as the main body of the story itself. As the story itself explains the meaning of the scene in the intro and extro, there’s not really much reason for them to be there.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
A Joke Too Far by ZOMG
Not Recommended
Princess Celestia? Do You Have a Belly Button? by Foals Errand
Not Recommended
Remorse by RainbowBob
Not Recommended
Nuzzle Locked by shortskirtsandexplosions
Not Recommended
Arcadia by Blueshift
Worth Reading
I’ve read a few entries into The More Most Dangerous Game contest, and of the ones I’ve read, Arcadia is thus far my favorite, followed by The Marching Madness. The previous contests both put up some interesting stories, so I hope to see the same this time around.
Number of stories still listed as "Read It Later - Recommended": 1546
Number of stories listed as “Read It Later”: 188
2746718
Heh. You, as I, apparently have not yet submitted your entry to the site...
Thanks for the review, really glad you like it! I take your point about the intro and outro, though I'm one of those people who like to do slightly weirdly-styled intro/outros. It is a weakness of mine, not gonna apologise for it!
2746980
I need to read more of your stuff, man. I followed you a while back because you wrote some good stuff and I was like "Yes, I'm going to go through this guy's back catalog of stories" and then haven't.
2746988
I'm not surprised; it is a very versatile prompt which doesn't really tie you to anything overly specific. I was just glancing through the Cupcakes-inspired stories and was rather saddened by how... Cupcakes-esque many sounded.
You know, I was going to say not to bother with my entry... then I saw you already had.
2747158
I've been reading a lot of stories, okay?
And yours was one of the only non-gore marked Cupcakes stories.
AND you are a Writeoff writer.
How could I not?
I'll have to give Arcadia a read.
2747016
Well, to be fair the Cupcakes one is a lot more specific than the others, in that you are being asked to react to a very specific story rather than a broader idea. I have a feeling most of those will be going for the 'ha ha it was really an hilarious misunderstanding/joke' setup. I'm genuinely interested to see if anyone actually did anything new with it, given how overplayed the old cupcakes are.
2747337
AugieDog's Panacea did something with it which I found interesting (it is going to be in my next set of reviews; it was pretty good, and while it wasn't quite as good as your story, it is decent enough methinks) and FanOfMostEverything wrote a Cupcakes prompt story which doesn't involve anything really dark at all, though I think it was supposed to be and the reveal just wasn't horrifying enough.
I was toying with a story idea which centered around a horrifying reveal which had nothing to do with murder, which is part of what drew me to FoME's story because it sounded vaguely like something I had been contemplating; turns out it wasn't anything like I was expecting, but it was still not murder.
That, on its face, shouldn't be troubling, given the whole point of both MDGs so far. If you have no interest in such a thing, regardless of quality, that's fine, but then you're wandering more into "what I liked" than "what was good." Such is the difference between a review and a critique, so I guess it depends on what kind of audience you're trying to reach, be it a reader discussion or something meant more as input for the author.
For me, Chris is the gold standard on critique. He's very up-front about what he actually considers deficiencies and what were more personal reactions.
Yeah there have been a surprisingly many good fics coming out of the contest. True some I've read are just rehashes... or borderline trollfics. But some are pretty darn nice. Rainbowbob's in particular I didn't see coming, though it was a nice twist with a different sort of punch in the feels than I expected. I just hope my entry is considered just as gut punching.
I'd love it if you'd give my entry a read. I put a lot of effort into trying to make it unique. It's called Recipe.